Williamite War in Ireland

Williamite War in Ireland
Part of the Nine Years' War
Battle of the Boyne between James II and William III, 11 July 1690, Jan van Huchtenburg
Date 12 March 1689 – 3 October 1691 (2 years, 6 months and 3 weeks) Location Ireland Result Treaty of Limerick
Belligerents
Kingdom of England Kingdom of Scotland	Jacobites
Commanders and leaders
William III/II Frederick Schomberg † Godert de Ginkell	James VII/II Earl of Tyrconnell Patrick Sarsfield William Dorrington Conrad von Rosen Charles Chalmot de Saint-Ruhe †
Units involved
Army of the North Danish Auxiliary Corps	Irish Army French Royal Army
Strength
44,000[1]	36,000[2]–39,000[1]
Casualties and losses
10,000 killed or died of disease[3]	15,293 killed or died of disease, incl. 2,000 irregulars[3]

The Williamite War in Ireland (Irish: Cogadh an Dá Rí, meaning 'war of the two kings')^[4] took place from March 1689 to October 1691. Fought between supporters of James II and his successor, William III, it resulted in a Williamite victory. It is generally viewed as a related conflict of the 1688 to 1697 Nine Years' War.

In November 1688, the Glorious Revolution replaced the Catholic James with his Protestant daughter Mary II and her husband William, who ruled as joint monarchs of England, Ireland and Scotland. James retained considerable support in largely Catholic Ireland, where his supporters, known as Jacobites, hoped he would address long-standing grievances on land ownership, religion and civic rights. Most Irish Protestants fought for William, although some members of the Protestant Church of Ireland supported James.^[5][6]

The war began in March 1689 with a series of skirmishes between James's Irish Army, which had stayed loyal in 1688, and Protestant militia.^[7] Fighting culminated in the siege of Derry, where the Jacobites failed to regain control of one of the north's key towns.^[8] This enabled William to land an expeditionary force, which defeated the main Jacobite army at the Boyne in July 1690. James returned to France after the battle, while the Jacobites were decisively defeated at Aughrim in 1691. The war ended with the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691.

One contemporary witness, George Story, calculated the war cost over 100,000 lives through sickness, famine, and in battle.^[3] Subsequent Jacobite risings were confined to Scotland and England, but the war was to have a lasting effect on the political and cultural landscape of Ireland, confirming British and Protestant rule over the country for over two centuries. While the Treaty of Limerick had offered a series of guarantees to Catholics, subsequent extension of the Penal Laws, particularly during the War of the Spanish Succession, would further erode their civic rights.