The Battle of the Boyne

On the first of July 1690 near Oldbridge, five miles East of Drogheda, King William of Orange and King James II fought in one of the most important battles in Irish history. Twenty-six thousand, mainly Irish and French troops under King James, fought against the thirty-six thousand Dutch and English soldiers of King William.

Late in the evening of the first of July the Williamite army, better trained and equipped, began to take control. King James and his army retreated to Dublin through the Pass of Duleek. They were finally defeated at Aughrim in 1691. That defeat decided the fate of Catholicism in Ireland with the introduction of the penal laws. In 1746 in Culloden, Scotland's Catholic hopes were finally extinguished with the massacre on the return of "Bonnie Prince Charles."