Ian Colquhoun Published Edinburgh Author

William of Orange –Irish Republican?

When one thinks of  King William III AKA ‘William of Orange’  one’s mind usually conjures up images of the Protestant champion of Europe who symbolised  Europe and The Vatican’s  struggle against France in the late 17^th century. In the UK, and particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland, ‘King Billy’ -as he is known by some- is seen by many to symbolise British Protestantism , the Protestant Ascendancy over the Catholic majority in Ireland, and as the man whose ‘chairman of the board’ approach to monarchy replaced  the mystical, god-given right of Kings symbolised by the man he ousted from the English throne after a palace coup in 1688, his uncle and father in law, King James II and VII. And of course, more crudely, he is seen as the white horse-riding victor at the ‘battle’ of the Boyne on July 1^st (not the 12^th) in 1690 just outside Drogheda.

However , closer examination of his intentions towards Ireland make his idolisation and  veneration by many British protestants seem, at best, mis-informed and, at worst, ridiculous. This article mostly concerns his attitude towards Ireland, and going by the evidence I have studied over the last few years, he would be spinning in his grave at the way in which he is remembered by the descendants of those who fought for him.

William only ever sent an army to Ireland in the first place because his rival, King Louis XIV of France, had lent the ousted King James a French brigade with which James hoped he could win back at least one part of his kingdom. Louis himself saw Ireland as nothing more than a handy recruiting ground for his armies, and as a place to divert William and his European allies from the main conflict that was engulfing Europe. Think of Europe at the time as a chess board . Louis’s move. French Brigade sent to Ireland to bolster James’ 17^th century army.  Check. William has to move troops away from Flanders to Ireland. 18^th century army sent to Ireland. An almost identical campaign happened on Sicily at around the same time.

William’s home country, the only one he ever really cared about, The United Provinces- what we would now call The Netherlands- had been torn apart by religious warfare since the 1500’s as the Catholic Spanish and then later the Catholic French  tried to conquer it. Contrary to popular myth, around half of the Netherlands was Catholic throughout this period, and the religion of Dutchmen was by no means a reliable indicator of which side a Dutchman would take in the endless series of conflicts that tore the country apart. Catholic Dutchmen fought alongside their protestant countrymen against a succession of invaders, while many Dutch Protestants sided with the invaders rather than their own countrymen. Of Course, religion is often seen by ignorant people to be the cause of wars, but the reality is that all wars even the aforementioned conflicts, and the Crusades, Thirty Years’ War and Islamic Conquests, are about money and power – religion is a factor in getting men to fight, but can be blamed no more than greed or avarice, which are wholly human causes. Religion doesn’t cause wars. Human beings do.

William, a poor general but an astute politician, realised this  early in his career. He saw monarchy as a wholly human institution, not anything to do with the divine right of Kings, more to do with the divine right of those who have money and influence to rule over those have not. In other words, in the Netherlands, he was more like a President.

It was with heavy heart that William accepted the invitation by 7 English traitors to invade England in 1688. He had no wish to harm his Uncle and Father in law, King James II and VII, and indeed, no desire to seize the English crown. His only concern was that the powerful standing army belonging to James ( 20,000 men in a field force and another 20,000 in garrisons across ‘Britain’) would join France in its war against The Netherlands. There is little if any evidence to suggest that James would have used his army in this way -  he maintained such a force because he was, with some justification, distrustful of some of his own subjects, unsurprising given that their fathers had executed his own father after defeating him militarily.

When William landed at Torbay in Devon on 5^th November 1688 with 15,000 Dutch soldiers , he had nevertheless rolled the dice. His choice of landing place was no accident – James’ powerful army had ran amok in the region  in 1685 after defeating a protestant invasion and local rebellion led by James’ own nephew, The Duke of Monmouth. They had easily destroyed Monmouth’s army at the Battle of Sedgemoor and then ‘pacified’ the region, killing or transporting thousands of locals suspected of aiding the rebels. Consequently, William was greeted by many in the south-west as a liberator.

The reasons James’ army failed to similarly crush the invasion of 1688 are complex. His army by then, thanks to increasing hostility from parliament to James’ dream of religious toleration for all , contained many Irishmen and Catholics. A few hundred  protestant soldiers defected to William, but James still had the stronger force and could easily have crushed William. It was the defection of Colonel Churchill, later to become The Duke of Marlborough, that made James’ nerve fail. Churchill was his best friend and his best General, James meanwhile, though he had proven himself no coward fighting on the continent during his years of exile and when he was Duke of York, and as admiral of the English navy, only had experience of commanding hundreds, not thousands, of men.

While negotiations took place, both armies ended up waiting on opposite sides of London. When James’ daughter Anne also defected, James began to fear for the life of his infant son James and tried to flee to France, but was caught and cheered back to London by jubilant crowds. Unconvinced of the loyalty of some elements of his army however, James fled a second time, to the protection of Louis XIV of France. Which played right into the hands of his enemies at home and was a major propaganda victory for the ‘Williamites’

William, for his part, claimed that he had come only to restore ‘English liberties’. But with James gone – after he had disbanded his army  to spare the country a third civil war,- parliament decided that James had abdicated. Curiously, communication between the two suggests that they still liked each other and neither wished the other any harm. It was all about politics.

William and his wife Mary – James’ daughter, were offered the English Crown jointly but under new terms. They would be heads of state but would have no real control over government or foreign policy. Much is made of the Bill of Rights read at their coronation, but that Bill was not about ‘freeing the common people’, it was actually more to do with preserving the status-quo. England/Britain has never had a ‘real’ revolution. The events of 1688, like those of 1642-1660, were all to do with the English upper classes who sat in parliament getting a better deal for themselves, and giving them freedom to become even richer.

History has called the events of 1688 a ‘glorious revolution’. It was neither. It was a palace coup, not a revolution, and neither was it glorious’ i.e. bloodless. Hundreds of James and William’s troops were killed in battles at Wincanton and Reading in 1688, thousands were to die in Scotland when The Scots dealt with these events from 1689 onwards, and thousands more would die as a result of this ‘revolution’ when it came to Ireland.

In Scotland, William’s army was destroyed by a Scottish force half its size at the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, but the Scots/Jacobite Army’s leader was killed at that battle and his army lost heart. With no options left, a reluctant Scots parliament had also offered their crown to William and Mary- William never understood Scotland, and cared for its population even less, as his ordering of the infamous Glencoe massacre shows. How any Scot can idolize this man is curious, to say the least.

King James landed in Ireland with a few thousand French Troops in March 1689, but asides them and a few good Irish and Scottish regiments who had stayed loyal to him , his army was largely made up of Irish Catholic conscripts, highly motivated as they believed, wrongly, that James would reverse Cromwell’s theft of their lands a generation before, but they were, for the most part, poorly armed, poorly led and poorly supplied. To all intents and purposes, James’ army was a 17^th century army armed with 17^th, and even 16^th century weapons. In contrast, the army William would send to Ireland to face them, was an 18^th century modern war machine with the latest weapons and training, and far greater numbers.

Hardly any English regiments were sent to Ireland for what has become known as the Williamite War – at least until James had left Ireland, as William, quite correctly, thought that they lacked the stomach to fight their former beloved King. Indeed, during the campaign, many English and Scots regiments on the mainland were confined to barracks.

Why James decided to face William at The Boyne is a point of much debate, even to this day. This can again be explained by his experience being of commanding battalions rather than armies, whereas William, average General that he was, WAS a general.

James should have fought William in the Moyry Pass just north of Dundalk, or he should have defended Dublin. The Boyne was an ill-fated compromise.

As for the battle itself, James had about 25,000 men, William had about 36,000, most of whom were continental mercenaries. Over 60 thousand men faced each other in 3 small engagements over an area of about 40 square miles. The main action, at Oldbridge where William’s army crossed, was fought between 26,000 of William’s men and about 8000 of James’. About 500 men were killed on each side. Casualty figures often claim James lost 1500 men, but one of his ‘French’ regiments , which was actually made up of German prisoners of war, defected after The Boyne without seeing any action, yet they have been included in the Jacobite/Irish casualties.

Contrary to myths written by the victors , James’ army retired via Duleek to Dublin in good order, their commander being one of the last to enter Dublin. They were able to do this because William forbade his own army to pursue James’ force. William had no desire to kill or capture James, as that would have created enormous difficulties for him, both on a personal and on a political level. What William wanted was for James to leave Ireland as soon as possible so that he could also leave Ireland himself and get back to the main struggle on the continent. William had no love for Ireland and was only ever there for 2 weeks.

Two big myths about the Boyne have endured. An old lie that James turned up in Dublin after the battle complaining that his Irish troops had ran away only to be told by Lady Tyrconnel ‘It is you sir, who have won the race’ is exactly that, a lie. James arrived in Dublin at around 10pm as he had been overseeing the organised withdrawal of his army, and in any case, Lady Tyrconnel was in Limerick at the time- not Dublin.

The other myth concerns the Ulster protestants in William’s army at the Boyne. William’s elite Dutch Blue Guards were a Catholic regiment who carried the Papal banner at the Boyne as The Pope funded and supported William’s enterprise against France. France was a militantly Catholic country, but the Vatican saw King Louis as a great threat to their own authority, and was appalled at Louis’ attempts to use Islamic Ottoman Turks against his protestant enemies in Eastern Europe.

When the Blue Guards were across the Boyne but suffering heavy losses to James’ best units, his cavalry, William’s ADC asked him which regiment should be sent across the river to assist them, suggesting a crack Danish unit. William, who was happy to cash in on the support of Ulster settlers but personally viewed them as little more than cannon fodder, sent his Ulstermen across the river next. There was no sentimentality in this move. William was heard to say to his staff ‘My Danish soldiers cost my exchequer money. Send in the men from Ulster, the dead cost nothing’ and then with a patronizing speech, he sent the Ulstermen across the river.

When James went back to France to plead for reinforcements, William left Ireland too, leaving his Danish general in charge of mopping up. The Franco-Irish army was defeated in Ireland’s bloodiest battle at Aughrim a year later, on July 12^th. Even then, with William’s instructions, favourable peace terms were offered to the Irish, now commanded by Patrick Sarsfield. The Treaty of Limerick as it became known promised the Irish no reprisals for supporting James, promised them freedom of worship and an end to persecution, under the condition that Sarsfield’s men either sailed to France, joined the Williamite army, or simply piled their arms and went home.  Most Irish soldiers chose to go to France in what became known as ‘The flight of the Wild Geese’.

This pragmatic peace deal was made in good faith by both sides, that is to say, Sarsfield believed he had gotten the best deal possible for Ireland, while Ginkell the Williamite general, acting under William’s specific instructions, also made the deal in good faith. Even when, just after signing the treaty, a huge French fleet arrived with reinforcements and  supplies, Sarsfield refused to break his word of honour and the truce stood.

William of Orange had seen what religious intolerance and persecution had did to his own homeland of the Netherlands, and saw that the only option for a peaceful Ireland was a quasi-secular parliament , free from ascendancy, with people of neither faith or nationality to be treated unequally. His idea for Ireland’s future government is almost like an early  draft  of the later republican sentiments of McCracken and Wolfe Tone, themselves also protestants. William wanted a peaceful Ireland without religious intoleration, persecution or bigotry- much along the lines of his own Dutch Republic, where Catholic and Protestant, by then, lived in harmony.

This considered, William is in some ways more like an early Irish emancipation advocate rather than the Arch-Protestant Papist hater of myth. If ,you read the sources and don’t believe football bus propaganda or misleading folk songs.

Sadly, William had acquired the ‘British’ and ‘Irish’ thrones because he was to be a new kind of monarch. A hands- off type, more of a chairman of the board than an autocratic Leviathan. He could ask his parliament for things, but they could refuse and there was nothing that he could do about it. Those were the ‘terms and conditions’ of his contract as monarch. The English parliament tore up the treaty of Limerick  almost as soon as they read it, and not only ignored William’s pleas for a reasonable settlement for everyone who lived in Ireland, but instead introduced even harsher penal laws that were to endure in Ireland for nearly two centuries, and lead to millions of deaths. William’s sensible idea for sensible government for Ireland was ignored by his parliament, and there was nothing he could do about it. He died in 1702 after falling from his horse , breaking his collarbone and contracting pneumonia. His horse had tripped over a mole-hill, and in many parts of Scotland, many still toast the mole who caused it.

Incidentally, next time you see  someone  waving a flag showing William crossing the Boyne on his white horse, remember that image is from a painting of the siege of Namur in Belgium some years before. William was mounted on a coal-black charger at The Boyne. Oh, and the OO was set up in the 1790’s and opposed the abolition of the Irish parliament in 1801.

I make no secret of the fact that William is one of my least favourite characters in history, but I find it odd that he is idolised by the very type of people he hated – bigots, marching bands (he HATED them, and parades), and some Scots and Northern Irish.

So,  you may be asking, what is the moral of the story? Well, it’s simple. Everyone from the island of Ireland, no matter whose side they fought and died on, was a victim. A pawn, in someone else’s game. James and the Stuart cause were never really Ireland’s cause, but they were the native Irish’s best hope, with hindsight. Every Irishman, North man or South man, and indeed any foreign troops killed in the Williamite War, died fighting for two quite despicable ‘Kings’ , who were happy to lead them to their deaths, but even more happy to abandon them to centuries of  sectarian violence once their huge ‘ duel’ in Ireland had been settled. Ultimately, as with nearly all of the troubles in Ireland, religion or nationalism were not the true causes. The cause was, and always has been, English foreign policy. Divide and rule.

Compiled from primary sources, Lenihan’s ‘1690- battle of the Boyne’, J.Childs’ ‘The army, King James and the Glorious Revolution’, and with the help of respected author and historian, Owen Dudley Edwards.