|
The Battle of the Boyne ((アイルランド語:Cath na Bóinne) ) was a battle in 1690 between the Catholic James II and the Protestant William III of England and II of Scotland, who, with his wife, Mary II (his cousin and James' daughter), had overthrown James in England in 1688. The battle took place at the River Boyne near the town of Drogheda on the east coast of Ireland, and resulted in a victory for William. This turned the tide in James's failed attempt to regain the British crown and ultimately aided in ensuring the continued Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. The battle took place on 1 July 1690 in the old style (Julian) calendar. This was equivalent to 11 July in the new style (Gregorian) calendar, although today its commemoration is held on 12 July,〔When the Gregorian calendar first came into use in Britain in 1752, the difference between the two calendars had been 11 days for dates since 28 February 1700. But for dates prior to then, it was still only 10 days, and this led to some confusion when recalculating dates of events that occurred prior to the start of the 18th century.〕 on which the decisive Battle of Aughrim was fought a year later. William's forces defeated James's army, which consisted mostly of raw recruits. The symbolic importance of this battle has made it one of the best-known battles in the history of the British Isles and a key part of the folklore of the Orange Order. Its commemoration today is principally by the Protestant Orange Institution. ==Background== The battle was the decisive encounter in a war that was primarily about James's attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland, resulting from the Invitation to William and William's wife, Mary, to take the throne. It is regarded as a crucial moment in the struggle between Irish Protestant and Catholic interests. The previous year William had sent the Duke of Schomberg to take charge of the Irish campaign. He was a 75-year-old professional soldier who had accompanied William during the Glorious Revolution. Under his command, affairs had remained static and very little had been accomplished, partly because the English troops, unaccustomed to the climate, suffered severely from fever. William, dissatisfied with the state of affairs in Ireland, decided to take charge in person. In an Irish context, the war was a sectarian and ethnic conflict, in many ways a re-run of the Irish Confederate Wars of 50 years earlier. For the Jacobites, the war was fought for Irish sovereignty, religious tolerance for Catholicism, and land ownership. The Catholic upper classes had lost almost all their lands after Cromwell's conquest, as well as the right to hold public office, practice their religion, and sit in the Irish Parliament. They saw the Catholic King James as a means of redressing these grievances and securing the autonomy of Ireland from England. To these ends, under Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnel, they had raised an army to restore James after the Glorious Revolution. By 1690, they controlled all of Ireland except for the province of Ulster. Most of James II's troops at the Boyne were Irish Catholics. The majority of Irish people were Jacobites and supported James II due to his 1687 Declaration of Indulgence or, as it is also known, the Declaration for the Liberty of Conscience, that granted religious freedom to all denominations in England and Scotland and also due to James II's promise to the Irish Parliament of an eventual right to self-determination. Conversely, for the Williamites, the war was about maintaining Protestant and English rule in Ireland. They feared for their lives and their property if James and his Catholic supporters were to rule Ireland, nor did they trust the promise of tolerance, seeing the Declaration of Indulgence as a ploy to re-establish Catholicism as the sole state religion. In particular, they dreaded a repeat of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which had been marked by widespread killing. For these reasons, Protestants fought en masse for William of Orange. Many Williamite troops at the Boyne, including their very effective irregular cavalry, were Ulster Protestants, who called themselves "Inniskillingers" and were referred to by contemporaries as "Scots-Irish". Ironically, historian Derek Brown notes that if the battle is seen as part of the War of the Grand Alliance, Pope Alexander VIII was an ally of William and an enemy to James; the Papal States were part of the Grand Alliance with a shared hostility to the Catholic Louis XIV of France, who at the time was attempting to establish dominance in Europe and to whom James was an ally.〔(How the battle of the Boyne earned its place in history ) The Guardian, 11 July 2000〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of the Boyne」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|