Battle of the Boyne

battle_name=Battle of the Boyne

A sectarian battle?

The battle of the Boyne was the decisive encounter in a war that was primarily about James's attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland, but is widely remembered as a decisive moment in the struggle between Protestant and Catholic factions in Ireland. However recent analyses have played down the religious aspect of the conflict. In fact both armies were religiously mixed, and William of Orange's own elite force — the Dutch Blue Guards — had the Papal Banner with them on the day, many of the Guardsmen being Dutch Catholics. They were part of the League of Augsburg, a cross-Christian alliance designed to stop a French conquest of Europe, supported by the Vatican. The war in Ireland was also the beginning of a long-running but ultimately unsuccessful campaign by James's supporters, the Jacobites, to restore the Stuart dynasty rule to Britain. While most Jacobites in Ireland were indeed Catholics, many English and Scottish Jacobites were Protestants and were motivated by loyalty to the principle of monarchy (considering James to have been illegally deposed in a coup) or to the Stuart dynasty in particular, rather than by religion. A handful of British Jacobites fought with James at the Boyne. In addition, some of the French regiments fighting with the Jacobites at the Boyne were composed of German Protestants. In a European context therefore, the battle was not a religiously motivated one, but part of a complicated political, dynastic and strategic conflict.

Related Topics:
Protestant - Catholic - Dutch Blue Guards - Papal Banner - Dutch - Catholics - League of Augsburg - Vatican - Jacobites - German - Protestants

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In an Irish context, however, the war was a sectarian and ethnic conflict, in many ways a re-run of the Irish Confederate Wars of 50 years earlier. For Irish Jacobites, the war was fought for Irish sovereignty, religious toleration for Catholicism and land ownership. The Irish Catholic upper classes had lost almost all their lands after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and had also lost the right to hold public office, practice their religion and to sit in the Irish Parliament. They saw the reign of the Catholic King James as a means of redressing these grievances and to secure the autonomy of Ireland from the English Parliament. To these ends, under Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell they had raised an army to restore James to his throne after the Glorious Revolution. By 1690, they controlled all of Ireland except for the province of Ulster. Most of James II's troops at the Boyne were Irish Catholics.

Related Topics:
Sectarian - Ethnic - Irish Confederate Wars - Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Irish Parliament - Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell - Glorious Revolution - Ulster - James II

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Conversely, for Williamites in Ireland, the war was about maintaining Protestant and British rule in Ireland. The Irish Williamites were mainly Protestant settlers from England and Scotland who had come to the country during the Plantations of Ireland. They were a majority in the northern province of Ulster. They feared for both their lives and their property if James' and his Catholic supporters were allowed to rule Ireland. In particular, they feared a repeat of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when there had been widespread massacres of Protestants. For these reasons, the Protestant settler community fought en masse for William III. Many of the Williamite troops at the Boyne, including their very effective irregular cavalry, were Protestants from Ulster, who called themselves "Eniskilleners" and were referred to by contemporaries as "North Irish" or "Scotch-Irish".

Related Topics:
Plantations of Ireland - Irish Rebellion of 1641 - Ulster - Scotch-Irish

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