Battle of the Boyne

battle_name=Battle of the Boyne

Commemoration of the Battle

Originally, Irish Protestants commemorated the Battle of Aughrim on the 12 July, as symbolising their victory in the Williamite war in Ireland. At Aughrim, which took place a year after the Boyne, virtually all of the old native Irish Catholic and Old English aristocracies (dispossessed of lands to accommodate the plantations under Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell) were wiped out. The Boyne, which in the old Julian calendar, took place on 1 July, was treated as less important, third in commemorative value after Aughrim and the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 on 23 October. What was celebrated on the Twelfth was not William's "victory over popery at the Battle of the Boyne", but the extermination of the elite of the native Irish.

Related Topics:
Battle of Aughrim - 12 July - Williamite war in Ireland - Plantations - Elizabeth I - Oliver Cromwell - Julian - 1 July - Irish Rebellion of 1641 - 23 October

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By the time the Orange Order was founded in the 1790s, amid sectarian violence in Armagh, a new Gregorian calendar had been introduced. Usually the dates before the introduction of the calander on 14 September 1752 are mapped in English language histories directly onto the Julian dates without shifting them by 11 days. So for example William of Orange is said to have landed at Brixham in England on 5 November although Dutch history records he left the Netherlands on 11 November because the Netherlands were already using the Gregorian calender! Being suspicious of anything with papist connotations, rather than shift the the anniversary of the event to the new 1 July the Orange men continued to commemorate the anniversary of the battle on the "Protestant" 1 July which was the 12 July New Style. To commemorate the anniversary on the Twelfth became a traditional feature of the Protestant community in Ireland, but there are also smaller parades and demonstrations on 1 July, the date which maps the old style date to the new style in the usual manner. The 1 July also commemorate the massacre of the 36th Ulster Division on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Related Topics:
Orange Order - 1790s - Armagh - Gregorian - 14 September - 1752 - Brixham - 5 November - 11 November - 1 July - 12 July - New Style - Battle of the Somme - 1916

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It has also been sugested that the Boyne was prefered to Aughrim because the Jacobites' rout there allowed the Irish Catholics to be presented as contemptible cowards, whereas at Aughrim they fought bravely and died in great numbers. In the context of a resurgent Irish nationalism from the 1790s onwards, it is argued that the narrative of the Boyne was more comforting for Loyalists in Ireland. The commemoration of the battle of the Boyne therefore has more to do with the politics of the Unionist community than it has to do with the military significance of the battle itself.

Related Topics:
Loyalists - Unionist

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The memory of the battle also has resonance among Irish Nationalists. Most Irish people see the battle as a major step on the road to the complete British colonisation of Ireland. In the 1920s, IRA members blew up a large monument to the battle on the battlefield site on the Boyne and also destroyed a statue of William III that stood outside Trinity College Dublin in the centre of the Irish capital.

Related Topics:
IRA - William III - Trinity College Dublin

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"The Twelfth" in Ireland today

The Battle of the Boyne remains a controversial topic today, especially in Ulster where Protestants remember it as a great victory over Catholics and responsible for the sovereignty of Parliament and the 'Protestant monarchy'.

Related Topics:
Ulster - Parliament

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In the 1990s the date of the Battle of the Boyne was often marked by confrontations as members of the Orange Order attempted to celebrate the date by marching through Catholic neighbourhoods in the Tour of the North Orange Order. Part of the problem is due to population migrations caused by institutionalised sectarianism in Northern Ireland in the mid 1900s which had made Northern Ireland, in the words of Ulster Unionist Party leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble a "cold house for Catholics". Many Catholic communities resettled in areas outside mainly Protestant towns like Portadown, only to find the Catholic housing estates (like Garvaghy Road) located alongside a "traditional" Orange Order marching route. Other traditional routes for Orangemen lost their unionist population through migration, as many Protestants moved to areas where they were numerically superior as Catholics gradually came to demand civil rights. Each side thus dresses up the disputes in terms of the other's supposed attempts to repress them; Catholics still see Orange Order marches as provocative attempts to 'show who is boss', while Protestants insist they have a right to "walk the Queen's highway" and see any attempt to deny them the right to walk through traditional routes used for centuries as an attempt to marginalise and restrict their "freedoms" to celebrate their Protestant identity earned in the Glorious Revolution settlement. Thus the battle is still very present in the awareness of those involved in the Catholic-Protestant rivalry in Ireland.

Related Topics:
1990s - Orange Order - Tour of the North Orange Order - Sectarian - Northern Ireland - 1900s - Ulster Unionist Party - Nobel Peace Prize - David Trimble - Portadown - Unionist - Civil rights - Glorious Revolution

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The battlefield today

The site of the battle of the Boyne sprawls over a wide area west of he town of Drogheda. Oldbridge, the scene of the main Williamite crossing, has an Irish Government Interpretive Centre on it, which is dedicated to informing tourists and other visitors about the battle. This facility is currently being redeveloped. The other main combat areas on the day (at Duleek, Donore and Plattin - along the Jacobite line of retreat) are marked with tourist information signs.

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