After the Boyne
O'Neill, Sean
AFTER THE BOYNE By SEAN O'NEILL THE battle of the Boyne which North of Ireland Protestants have just been celebrating, established Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. In Europe it restored...
...Says Macaulay: "The history of the first siege of Limerick bears in some respects a remarkable analogy to the history of the siege of Londonderry...
...James II endeavored to revive Catholicism in England, but James's doctrines were tainted with Gallicanism...
...Men, with axes, who would be exposed to the fire of cannon and of muskets were required to cut down the planks...
...The fourth article declared: "Although the Pope have the chief part in questions of faith, and his decrees apply to all the churches, and to each church in particular, yet his judgment is not irreformable, at least pending the consent of the Church...
...No mere tissue of abstract specifications, the Gallican liberties tended to exalt the monarchy and to weaken the balance between church and state...
...Arriving at Ballyneety, the Williamites found dead men, live embers, charred provisions—the debris of their siege-train...
...It is true that the Protestant Hungarians in alliance with the Turks, had made war on the Catholic emperor...
...The significance of the battle of the Boyne was political, not military, and its political importance was due to the flight of James...
...His success inspired the Irish to hold out at Limerick, although James's viceroy and the French party urged immediate capitulation...
...secondly, by the authority of the bishops, who alone could, by their assent, give the papal decrees infallibility...
...The ascendancy of Louis would have meant the rise of disintegrating influences in the Church, for Louis was an enthuisastic supporter of the Gallican theory of the relations between church and state...
...Jealous of Sarsfield, St...
...Both places appeared to men who had made a regular study of the art of war incapable of resisting an enemy...
...Therefore the Pope can in no way supply King James with money...
...The defense of Athlone was more dramatic because at one time it was resolved into a hand to hand contest between the Irish and the English forces...
...William's general, riding to intercept him, was startled by the appearance of a sudden flash of lightning, the quaking of the earth, the noise of a fearful explosion...
...Compared with Aughrim, the battle of the Boyne was only a skirmish...
...Aughrim, eighteen miles west of Athlone, was the last stand...
...Then others came forward...
...As the arches were broken they were repaired in order that the storming party might have an easy passage...
...Both were in the moment of extreme danger abandoned by those commanders who shold have defended them...
...Cannon and muskets were fired...
...In Europe it restored Catholic solidarity...
...In the end, the Shannon being crossed by a ford lower down the river, Athlone was taken...
...It is after the battle of the Boyne that the national struggle emerges clearly, for up to that time the Irish had been dominated by English Jacobites and French diplomatists...
...Two of the volunteers returned...
...Gallicanism had an ancient tradition behind it, and had the support of the great ecclesiastics...
...In the night the English laid planks across the opening...
...Three successive Popes declined to help James II...
...The French officers had never seen such determination in defense, and they declared that the Irish were brave as lions...
...Arch by arch the English crept along till by the night of June 22 the whole bridge save one broken arch on the Connacht side belonged to them...
...Yet he must consider as the real source of trouble the inseparable alliance of King James with the king of France, and his attempts to imitate King Louis...
...At the epoch of the battle of the Boyne the religious wars were over...
...Man after man fell, but others persisted in Ithe attempt...
...Sarsfield opposed the capitulation, and his words, backed by the deed of Ballyneety, turned the scale against James's viceroy...
...After the Boyne the heroic period of the Irish resistance begins: there was the guerilla warfare waged by the Rapparees, and the brave defense of Limerick and Athlone...
...They seemed to him like sheep dotted over the pastures and bogs...
...Lanzon and Tyrconnell deserted Limerick as Cunningham and Lundy had deserted Londonderry...
...The French commander left Limerick before the siege began...
...Sarsfield had resolved to succeed at Ballyneety or to leave for France...
...On the night of June 26 the English possessed the stone bridge save the one arch nearest the Connacht side, which the Irish had broken down...
...Before he sailed William of Orange gave assurances to the emperor that the war which he was about to undertake was in no way directed against the Catholic religion, and the secular head of Catholic Europe returned thanks to him for protecting English Catholics from the fury of the mob...
...According to the Gallican view, the papal supremacy was limited: first, by the temporal power of princes...
...Ruth kept him from the scene of action...
...At a meeting of the general officers at Galway, Tyrconnell read a letter from James giving orders to such of the military officers as pleased to take advantage of the French fleet then in Galway Bay to embark for France and join him there, and permitting the men of inferior rank to submit to the prince of Orange...
...There now remained the task of bridging this distance...
...Looking from the top of a hill, he could see the naked bodies of men...
...Both places were crowded by fugitives from all parts of Ireland...
...But this struggle was national rather than religious...
...It is necessary," said he, " for the English to bring cannon against such a place as this...
...In 1682 the clergy of France subscribed to a declaration which made the Gallican theories explicit...
...The first volunteers were from a Scotch regiment, and when the eleven advanced there was a great hush of amazement and admiration...
...Louis aimed at dominating Europe...
...Sarsfield, in ignorance of the course of action, stayed behind a hill until the battle was practically over...
...The disrupting influences in Europe flowed from the personality and the pretensions of Louis XIV...
...William was forced to raise the siege...
...The Irish perceived the danger that threatened them if the planks were not removed...
...and lastly, by the customs and usages, laws and constitutions of particular churches, such as the Gallican Church in France...
...When the smoke cleared away the eleven men lay in death...
...Moreover, the example of a state with a church national and subsidiary was infectious...
...Three days afterwards when many of the slain had been buried, a historian of the war surveyed the ground...
...As he turned around to give an order a cannon ball struck him and he fell dead...
...Gallican theories were introduced into several European countries...
...What you call ramparts might be battered down with roasted apples...
...In reply to his embassy, the Pope wrote: "The Pope, as the common father of Christendom, has learned with deep sorrow of the sudden and unexpected misfortune of the king of England...
...Then Sarsfield made his dash on Ballyneety...
...Plank after plank was torn up and thrown into the Shannon...
...He was a pretender to the Spanish throne and a candidate for the office of the Holy Roman Emperor...
...In both cases religious and patriotic enthusiasm struggled unassisted against great odds, and, in both cases, religious and patriotic enthusiasm did what veteran warriors had pronounced it decidedly absurd to attempt...
...The southern city was, like the northern, the last asylum of a church and a nation...
Vol. 12 • September 1930 • No. 21
