Following his defeat on Salisbury Plain against his son-in-law William of Orange, James II had fled from England. As the victor and his wife Mary prepared for their coronation, Mary had received a message from her exiled father: 'If you are crowned while I and the prince of Wales are living, the curses of an angry father will fall upon you, as well as those of God.'
It appeared that William would have to fight to keep the crown – and, sure enough, on the day of the coronation, 11 April 1689, news arrived that James had landed at Kinsale in Ireland with a force of French mercenaries. Within two weeks, he was in Dublin.
On 14 June 1690, William landed in Carrickfergus in Ulster and marched south to Dublin. He took the city, James and his forces playing a delaying action. The exiled king then chose to stop and fight on the banks of the river Boyne near Drogheda, about 30 miles from Dublin.
On 12 July (1 July by the old calendar), some 23,000 Jacobite soldiers peered anxiously through morning mist towards the river below them. They were mostly unseasoned Irish Catholics, reinforced with grumbling Frenchmen sent by Louis XIV. William's army of 36,000 English, Dutch, Huguenots, Scots and Germans faced them. Beset by plots in Britain and reverses on land and sea, William needed to crush the Jacobite army on the spot, but after sending part of his army across the river upstream, he failed to trap and annihilate them. But when he saw that he might be outflanked, James panicked and sent half his troops and most of his cannon to counter the move. In the end, these troops remained outside the battle, so giving William a three-to-one superiority.
Both sides fought well, but William's army gradually forced the Jacobites to retreat. James left the field, riding to Dublin and fleeing back to France before the month was out. But the battle – and the campaign as a whole – were militarily indecisive, which makes James's actions hard to understand. His alleged cowardice led to him losing much of his support and earned him the nickname Séamus á Chaca ('James the Shit') in Ireland.
The battle of the Boyne is why the word 'Orange' continues to arouse such fierce and contradictory emotions on both sides of Ireland's religious divide. To this day, people march to commemorate this definitive Catholic–Protestant encounter.
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 Battle of the Boyne 1690
www.battleoftheboyne.ie
Website sponsored by the Irish government's Office of Public Works, this has lots of illustrations, maps and detailed information of each phase of the battle.
The Battle of the Boyne
www.bcpl.net/~cbladey/battle.html
This Unionist site – which despite its poor design has lots of interesting information – comes from the ideologically opposite pole than the one above.
The Battle of the Boyne
www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/ev
ents/dates/ch5.shtm
Extract from Martin Wallace's book A Little History of Ireland.
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Battle of the Boyne 1690: The Irish campaign for the English crown by Michael McNally (Osprey, 2005)
A thorough examination of the military details of the battle, including the uniforms and weapons worn and used.
Get this book
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 Battle of the Boyne site
About 1.5 miles west of Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland
Battle of the Boyne Information Centre: 041 984 1644
The M1 Drogheda bypass passes right over the battle site via the Boyne Bridge, the first major cable-stayed bridge in Ireland. Visit the mile-long King William's Glen, on the eastern edge of the Townley estate, about 4 miles west of Drogheda, which was used by part of William's army to conceal its approach to the Boyne. From the viewing platform, you can see the layout of the battlefield. There is a small information centre.
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