Williamite war in Ireland
Categories: History of Ireland | Irish wars | Jacobitism
- For the context of this war see Jacobitism and Glorious Revolution.
The Williamite war in Ireland, which could also be described as the Jacobite war in Ireland and is known in Ireland as Cogadh an Dá Rí or The War of the Two Kings, was the opening conflict following the deposition of King James II in 1688 when he attempted to regain the throne of his Three Kingdoms from his daughter Mary II who replaced him jointly with her husband William of Orange. It influenced the Jacobite Rising in Scotland led by "Bonnie Dundee" which started at about the same time. While William successfully defeated Jacobitism in Ireland and subsequent Jacobite Risings were confined to Scotland and England, the War was to have a lasting effect on Ireland, confirming British and Protestant rule over the country for over a century. The iconic Williamite victories of the Siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne are still celebrated by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland today.
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The Glorious Revolution
The War in Ireland began as a direct consequence of the Glorious Revolution in England. James, who was a Roman Catholic attempted to introduce freedom of religion for Catholics and to bypass the English Parliament in order to introduce unpopular laws. For many in England, this was an unpleasant reminder of the rule of Charles I, whose conflict with the Parliament had ended with the outbreak of the English Civil War. The breaking point in James' relationship with the English political class came when his wife gave birth to a son - which opened the prospect of an enduring Catholic Stuart dynasty. As a result of this fear, some political figures hatched a conspiracy to invite William of Orange to invade England and to assume the Throne jointly with his wife, James' sister Mary. William accepted the offer, primarily because the Dutch Republic was at war with France, with whom James was in alliance and William wanted England's resources of men money and arms to be put at the disposal of his League of Augsburg. William invaded England in 1688 and James fled after putting up only a token resistance.
However, whereas James II was very unpopular in England, he had widespread popular support in Ireland. The native Irish were almost all Roman Catholics and had fought en masse for the Stuart dynasty in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms that accompanied the English Civil War. Moreover, James had given them some concrete concessions, appointing an Irish Catholic, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell as Lord Deputy of Ireland, and re-admitting Catholics into the Army, public office and the Irish Parliament. Most of the native Irish landowning class had lost their lands and property after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. They hoped to recover these under James' rule. For these reasons, when James fled England, he looked to Ireland to muster support for a re-conquest of his Three Kingdoms.
War Breaks Out - Campaign in Ulster
James' Lord Deputy, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell took action to ensure that all strong points in Ireland were held by garrisons of the newly recruited Irish Catholic army. The northern province of Ulster, which had the heaviest concentration of English and Scottish settlers, was the only part of Ireland where Talbot encountered significant resistance.
By November 1688, only the walled city of Londonderry had a Protestant garrison. An army of around 1,200 men, mostly "Redshanks" (Highlanders), under Alexander Macdonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim, was slowly organised (they set out on the week William of Orange landed in England). When they arrived on December 7th 1688 the gates were closed against them and the Siege of Londonderry began. While the Jacobites appeared to have great advantages in terms of numbers in Ireland, in fact, the troops raised by Tyrconnell were mainly hastily conscripted peasant bands, most of them very badly armed and trained.
When James was deposed and fled to France, King Louis XIV of France (already at war with William of Orange) gave him support to regain his crown. On March 12th 1689 James landed in Kinsale, Ireland, with 6,000 French soldiers. He took Dublin and with a Jacobite army of Catholics, Protestant Royalists and French marched north, joining the Siege of Londonderry on April 18th 1689. James had found himself leading a predominantly Catholic nationalist movement, and on 7th May he reluctantly agreed to the Irish Parliament's demand for an Act declaring that the Parliament of England had no right to pass laws for Ireland. He also agreed, again reluctantly, to restore Irish Catholics to the lands confiscated from their families after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. British warships arrived off Londonderry on June 11th, but refused to risk shore guns until, ordered by Marshal Frederic Schomberg, they broke through and relieved the siege on July 28th 1689.
In nearby Eniskillen, armed Williamite civilians drawn from the local Protestant population organised a formidable irregular military force. Operating with Eniskillen as a base, they carried out raids against the Jacobite forces in Connacht and Ulster. A poorly trained Jacobite army which advanced on them from Dublin on July 28th 1689 was defeated at the battle of Newtownbutler, many of the Jacobite's troops fled as the first shots were fired and up to 1500 of them were hacked down or drowned when pursued by the Williamite cavalry. Soon afterwards most of Ulster was cleared of Jacobites.
William Arrives - Battle of the Boyne
On August 13th 1689 William's army under Marshal Frederic Schomberg landed at Ballyholme Bay in County Down and after capturing Carrickfergus marched unopposed to Dundalk where the soldiers were ravaged by fever. James's viceroy Tyrconnell raised an army to make a stand, but there was no battle and the two armies withdrew to winter quarters. The Williamites found themselves harassed throughout this winter and in the following two years by Irish Catholic guerrillas known as "rapparees". Schomberg's troops were decimated by disease in their winter quarters, due to the cold and wet weather and their poor food supplies. Part of this was down to Schomberg's organisational shortcomings as a commander, but it was also due to the Jacobite's devastating the countryside as they retreated, leaving no supplies behind for the Williamite army. The local civilian population also suffered terribly from this tactic.
Impatient with Schomberg's slow progress, William decided to take charge in person and arrived with a fleet of 300 ships at Belfast Lough on 14 June 1690. He landed at Carrickfergus, having mustered an army of 36,000 soldiers (including English, German, Dutch, Danish and French Huguenot troops), which marched towards Dublin. After some resistance near Newry the Jacobites withdrew to the south bank of the River Boyne, and on July 1st were defeated at the Battle of the Boyne. The Jacobite army retreated, little damaged, but demoralised and badly hit by desertion. The Williamites marched onto Dublin, Ireland's capital and occupied the city without a fight. James despaired of the prospects of victory in Ireland and rode ahead of his army to Duncannon and from there returned to France, because of this desertion James became known in Ireland as 'Séamus an Chaca' or 'James the Shit'. News of this defeat contributed to the Scottish Jacobites abandoning their struggle.
William's victory at the Boyne, taken together with James' flight, might have been the end of the war in Ireland. However, William published very harsh peace terms in Dublin, excluding the Jacobite officers and the Irish Catholic landed class from the pardon he offered to Jacobite foot-soldiers. As a result, the Irish Jacobite leaders felt they had no choice but to fight on until they had received guarentees that their lives, property and civil and religious rights would be respected in peace settlement.
Limerick, Aughrim and the end of the War
The war continued with the Irish retreating to Limerick, where they repulsed a Williamite assault with heavy casualties in August 1690. The Irish position was now a defensive one, holding a large enclave in western Ireland, including all of the province of Connacht bounded by the Shannon river. The Irish Jacobites were encouraged by their successful defence of Limerick and still hoped they could win the war with help from France. William left Ireland in late 1690, entrusting command of the Williamite forces there to the Dutch general Ginkel. Ginkel broke into Connacht via the town of Athlone, after a bloody siege there. He then advanced on key Jacobite stronghold of Galway and Limerick. St Ruth, the Jacobite's French commander attempted to black Ginkel's advance at Aughrim, but Ginkel's army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Irish at the Battle of Aughrim, where the Jacobites lost up to 8000 men (or about half their army), killed wounded and taken prisoner. St Ruth himself was among the Jacobite dead. Ginkel took Galway, which surrendered on terms and went on to besiege Limerick. The siege of Limerick ended with Irish surrender on September 23rd 1691, when Patrick Sarsfield, dispairing of any hope of victory, overthrew the French officers in command of the city and opened negotiations with Ginkel. The peace Treaty of Limerick signed on 3rd October 1691 offered generous terms to Jacobites willing to stay in Ireland and give an oath of loyalty to William III. Peace was concluded on these terms between Sarsfield and Ginkel, but the Protestant dominated Irish Parliament refused to ratify the articles of the Treaty that gave toleration to Catholicism and full legal rights to Catholics. In fact the penal laws, which discriminated against Catholics were updated and reinforced after the war by the "Protestant Ascendancy" in Parliament. Irish Jacobites saw this as a severe breach of faith. A popular contemporary Irish saying went, cuimhnidh Luimneach agus feall na Sassanaigh ("remember Limerick and English treachery"). Part of the treaty required the Irish army to leave Ireland for France, the "Flight of the Wild Geese" which led to the setting up of the Irish Brigade. Around 14,000 men left Ireland with Patrick Sarsfield in 1691 along with around 10,000 women and children.
Long-Term Effects
The Williamite victory in the war in Ireland had two basic long term results. The first was to ensure that James II would not regain his thrones in England, Ireland and Scotland by military means. The second was to ensure future British and Protestant dominance over Ireland. Until the 19th century, Ireland would be ruled by the "Protestant Ascendancy" , the English Protestant ruling class. The majority Irish Catholic community and also the Ulster-Scots Presbyterian community were systematically excluded from power.
For over a century after the war, Irish Catholics maintained a sentimental attachment to the Jacobite cause, portraying James and the Stuarts as the rightful monarchs who would have given a just settlement to Ireland (including self-government and restoration of confiscated lands) and supported Catholicism. Thousands of Irish soldiers left the country to serve the Stuart monarchs in the Irish Brigade of the French Army. Up until the mid-eighteenth century, France remained committed to restoring the Stuarts to their British Kingdoms and Irish soldiers in the French service fought on the Jacobite side in the Scottish Jacobite uprisings up to the Battle of Culloden in 1745.
Protestants, on the other hand, portrayed the Williamite victory as a triumph for "religious and civil liberty" in the British Isles. In Ireland, the Protestant community believed that their victory had saved their community from massacre and annihilation at the hands of Irish Catholics. For this reason, the battles of the Williamite war are still commemorated by Protestant unionists in Ulster, principally by the Orange Order on the Twelfth of July.