Williamite War in Ireland Totally Explained

Everything about Williamite War totally explained

ť For the context of this war see Jacobitism and Glorious Revolution.

Williamite War in Ireland, also known as the Jacobite War in Ireland and 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 Viscount 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 Derry and the Battle of the Boyne are still celebrated by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland today.

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, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, to invade England and to assume the Throne jointly with his wife, James' daughter Mary. William accepted the offer, primarily for military and strategic reasons. The Dutch Republic was at war with the France of Louis XIV, then the greatest military power in Europe. English Stuart Kings Charles II and James II had fostered a close alliance with France since the English Restoration and William wanted to detach England's resources of men, money and arms from France and put them 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'd 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 in the hope of securing religious toleration and political self government. They had been defeated in the 1650s and were punished by the English Commonwealth regime with land confiscations and penal legislation. Moreover, they were largely disappointed with the failure of Charles II to reverse this situation after his Restoration in 1660. However, James had given them some concrete concessions in the 1680s, 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 Catholic Irish landowning class had lost their lands and property after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649-53) 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

After William's landing in England, James' Lord Deputy in Ireland, 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, loyal to James. 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 Derry 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 7 December 1688 the gates were closed against them and the Siege of Derry 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. Nevertheless, a Jacobite force under Richard Hamilton routed a Protestant Williamite militia in an encounter at Dromore, County Down (known as the Break of Dromore) on 14 March 1689 and occupied eastern Ulster.
   When James was deposed and fled to France, King Louis XIV of France (already at war with William of Orange) gave him support in the form of troops and money to regain his crown, though he stipulated that the French troops he sent to Ireland would have to made good by the sending of the same number of Irish recruits to France. On 12 March 1689 James landed in Kinsale, Ireland, with 6,000 French soldiers. He first marched on Dublin, where he was well received and, with a Jacobite army of Catholics, Protestant Royalists and French, proceeded to march north, joining the Siege of Derry on 18 April. James had found himself leading a predominantly Irish Catholic movement, and on 7 May he presided over an Irish Parliament composed almost entirely of Catholic gentry. He reluctantly agreed to the 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, by confiscating the lands of those (predominantly Protestants) who opposed him and supported William. This parliament was later named the Patriot Parliament by Irish nationalists.
   British Williamite warships arrived off Derry, to relieve the besieged city on 11 June, but refused to risk shore guns until, ordered by Marshal Frederic Schomberg, they broke through and ended the siege on 28 July 1689.
   In nearby Enniskillen, just south of Derry, armed Williamite civilians drawn from the local Protestant population organised a formidable irregular military force. Operating with Enniskillen as a base, they carried out raids against the Jacobite forces in Connacht and Ulster. A poorly trained Jacobite army led by Justin MacCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel, was assembled at Dublin and sent against them. On 28 July 1689, MacCarthy's force was defeated at the Battle of Newtownbutler. Many of the Jacobites' 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. Partly as a result of this defeat and partly because of a major Williamite landing in the east of the province, most Jacobite troops were then withdrawn from Ulster and encamped near Dundalk.

Schomberg's campaign 1689

On 13 August 1689 William's army under Marshal Frederick Schomberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg landed at Ballyholme Bay in County Down and after capturing Carrickfergus marched unopposed to Dundalk. James's viceroy Tyrconnell, commanding the main Jacobite army, blocked Schomberg's passage southwards but didn't give battle and the two armies remained encamped opposite each other in very wet and cold weather for several weeks before they withdrew to winter quarters. The Williamites lost several thousand men from disease in this campaign, even though they didn't fight a single major engagement with the Jacobites. Moreover, they found themselves harassed throughout the winter of 1689 and in the following two years by Irish Catholic guerrillas known as "rapparees". Schomberg's troops continued to die from disease in their winter quarters, because of the harsh weather and poor food supplies. The lack of food was partly due to bad management, but also to the Jacobites' devastation of the countryside as they retreated, leaving no supplies for the Williamite army. The local civilian population also suffered terribly from this tactic.

William Arrives, 1690 - Battle of the Boyne

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 then marched south towards Dublin. After some resistance near Newry the Jacobites withdrew to the south bank of the River Boyne, where they took up a defensive position at the village of Oldbridge, near Drogheda. On 1 July, William attacked their position, fording the Boyne at several places forcing the Jacobites to retreat in order to avoid being surrounded. (As a consequence of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1753, the battle is now commemorated on 12 July). The Battle of the Boyne wasn't militarily decisive and casualties on both sides were not high - around 1500 Jacobites and 500 Williamites were killed. However, it proved enough to cause the collapse of James's confidence in victory in Ireland. He rode ahead of his army to Duncannon and from there returned to exile in France. Because of his desertion of his Irish supporters, James became known in Ireland as Séamus an Chaca or 'James the Shit'. The Jacobite army retreated to Dublin, little damaged, but demoralised and badly hit by desertion. The next day they abandoned the city and marched to Limerick. The Williamites marched into Ireland's capital on the same day and occupied the city without a fight. News of the defeat at the Boyne 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'd no choice but to fight on until they'd received guarantees that their lives, property and civil and religious rights would be respected in a 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 Williamites retreated from the west of Ireland but consolidated their hold on the south of the country in late 1690. Their forces under the Earl of Marlborough successfully took the southern ports of Cork and Kinsale
The Irish Jacobites' position was now a defensive one, holding a large enclave in western Ireland, including all of the province of Connacht bounded by the River Shannon. The Jacobites were encouraged by their successful defence of Limerick and still hoped they could win the war with help from France (though many of the French troops sent with James were withdrawn after his flight). William left Ireland in late 1690, entrusting command of the Williamite forces there to the Dutch general Godert de Ginkell. Ginkell broke into Connacht via the town of Athlone, after a bloody siege there. He then advanced on key Jacobite strongholds of Galway and Limerick. St Ruth, the Jacobite's French commander, attempted to block Ginkell's advance at Aughrim, County Galway, but Ginkell'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, the Jacobite General, was among the dead. Ginkell took Galway, which surrendered on terms. He went on to besiege Limerick. The Siege of Limerick ended with Irish surrender on 23 September 1691, when Patrick Sarsfield, despairing of any hope of victory, overthrew the French officers in command of the city and opened negotiations with Ginkell. The peace Treaty of Limerick signed on 3 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 Ginkell, 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 harshly 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, cuimhnigí Luimneach agus feall na Sassanaigh ("remember Limerick and English treachery"). Part of the treaty required the Irish army to leave Ireland for France, an event popularly known in Ireland as the "Flight of the Wild Geese". Around 14,000 men left Ireland with Patrick Sarsfield in 1691 along with around 10,000 women and children. Initially, they formed the army in exile of James II, though operating as part of the French army. After James' death, the remnants of this force was incorporated into the French Irish Brigade, which had been set up in 1689 from 6000 Irish recruits sent by the Irish Jacobites in return for French military aid.

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 wouldn't 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-18th 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, many in the Protestant community believed that their victory had saved their community from massacre and annihilation at the hands of Roman 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.

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