It would be difficult to find a battle more indelibly etched into the folk memory of a people than the Battle of the Boyne, which remains as meaningful to Irish Protestants today as it was to their forefathers in 1690. Each year on July 12, thousands of Orangemen march to the sound of tin whistles, accordions and booming lambeg drums to honor the ‘glorious and immortal memory’ of William III, Prince of Orange and King of England. On the day of the Orange Parade, countless street murals throughout Northern Ireland depict ‘King Billy,’ as he is affectionately known to the Protestants, heroically crossing the Boyne River on his beautiful white mare.

William himself would have been surprised to learn that he had become a folk hero to so many Protestant Irishmen. To him, the entire conflict in Ireland was but an irritating sideshow to his main interests on the European Continent. The Dutch prince had accepted the invitation to come to England and preserve the Protestant religion from the Catholic designs of the Stuart King James II because he saw England as a useful ally in his principal struggle against King Louis XIV of France.

Indeed, much of William’s life was spent either at war or preparing for war against France’s ‘Sun King,’ whose great ambition was to make himself supreme monarch of Europe. Biographer Nesca A. Robb described William’s obsession with thwarting Louis at every turn as ‘the governing passion of his whole life.’ Even when barely into adulthood, William began to see France as a threat to the prosperity, religion and political freedom of his homeland, the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Louis, on the other hand, came to regard the Dutch prince as his greatest enemy.

Most of William’s contemporaries, friend and foe alike, found his life to be one of the great success stories of the 17th century. Willem, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau, was born on November 14, 1650. His father, Willem II, had died of smallpox just eight days before his birth. The leaders of the Netherlands had long distrusted Orange power and influence, which had dominated the government for the previous 70 years. Consequently, upon Willem II’s sudden death, the five leading Dutch provinces did not appoint a successor, instead governing the United Provinces collectively from 1650 to 1672 as a republic. In 1653, Jan de Witt became the dominant figure in the Dutch republic.

During that period, young Willem was cared for under various guardianships. Being a member of the House of Orange filled the youngster with a sense of the greatness of his family tradition. His guardians groomed him for leadership. At age 2 1/2, Willem had his own court. By age 4, he was making public appearances and, five years later, he began to appear alone in public. His education included a thorough grounding in military theory and instruction in his responsibilities as a future military leader.

As a child of state, Willem was surrounded by men who distrusted him and were determined to prevent his rise to power. That hostile situation schooled him from a very early age to be politically astute, to trust his instincts and to be his own best counsel.

On April 29, 1672, 21-year-old Willem was thrust into the European military arena when Louis XIV invaded the Netherlands. The Dutch had to face not just the military might of France, but of England, which sought revenge for the humiliating destruction of the English fleet at the Medway near London by the Dutch navy in 1667, and had therefore agreed to an alliance with Louis. It was a time of dire crisis for the Netherlands as the French crossed the Rhine River on June 14, and seized Utrecht on June 20. A few days later, the French were outside Amsterdam, and the Dutch government was suing for peace. Louisâ terms proved to be too exorbitant for the Dutch, who in desperation broke open their dikes and flooded the countryside, bogging down the French army. In August, the people rose in a stormy rebellion against their own government that soon swept the country. On August 27, Jan de Witt was overthrown and murdered, resulting in Prince Willem III being chosen as captain general and stadholder at the head of the government.

At that time, Louis, ignoring the advice of his best generals, dispersed his forces against the Dutch and their German allies, while waiting for the winter to freeze the flooded Netherlands and restore mobility to his army. Willem, meanwhile, found allies among fellow heads of state who were becoming fearful of Louisâ growing power–the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, King Charles II of Spain, and Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg.

In September 1672, Willem tried to take advantage of the dispersal of French forces with a series of raids, most notable at Chareroi, but none succeeded. The advent of winter in December brought a French offensive under Franois-Henri de Montmorency, duc de Luxembourg, which threatened to take Leyden and the Hague, until an unexpected thaw turned the marshy ground into a boggy quagmire, forcing him to withdraw to Utrecht. Louis II, Prince de Cond, suffered similar problems when he tried to take Amsterdam. While Dutch troops held on behind their flooded polders (lands reclaimed from the sea), their navy, under the formidable Admiral Michael A. de Ruyter, repeatedly defeated the English and French fleets off the coast.

In June 1673, King Louis, in personal command of a 40,000-man army, invaded the Netherlands and, aided by his chief engineer, Sbastien le Prestre de Vauban, briefly besieged and took the Dutch fortress at Maastricht on June 29. Willem’s allies, however, forced Louis to commit his forces to other fronts, such as the Franche-Comt, Alsace and the Rhineland. Meanwhile, growing public opposition to the war in England helped Willem convince the English government to withdraw from the conflict with the signing of the Treaty of Westminster on February 19, 1674.

Throughout the summer of 1677, Willem and the duc de Luxembourg carried on a campaign of maneuver that was generally advantageous to the French, but in which neither side struck a decisive blow. Although he had been confronted time and again by superior forces and more experienced generals, the tenacious Willem managed to thwart French war objectives against his country. Finally, informed by his financial minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, that the war was becoming a disastrous burden on the French treasury, Louis agreed to negotiate an end to hostilities. The Dutch States General agreed–over the objections of the still-bellicose Prince of Orange.

The Dutch War ended, for the time being at least, with the Treaty of Nijmegen on August 10, 1678, but the next decade was a tense period in the history of the Netherlands. Relations between Willem and many Dutch leaders worsened because the prince was determined to resist the aggressive designs of Louis XIV, while most of his countrymen desired peace. That situation changed on February 6, 1685, when King Charles II of England died and his brother, James Stuart, Duke of York, acceded to the throne as James II. In 1673, James had converted to Catholicism and that, as well as his friendship with King Louis, threatened to revive the Anglo-French alliance. Most English, who were overwhelmingly Protestant, disliked James but were willing to put up with him, expecting his daughter Mary to become queen after he died. Not only was Mary a Protestant, but in November 1677, she had married her cousin, Prince Willem of Orange.

Encouraged by the presence of a Catholic on the English throne, on October 18, 1685, King Louis repealed the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed freedom of worship to French Protestants, or Huguenots. As a result, some 50,000 Huguenot families left France. Another consequence was a revived fear of France among the Protestant princes of Germany, which Willem exploited by forging a new coalition against Louis, the League of Augsburg–also known as the Grand Alliance–on July 9, 1686.

Then, in 1688, James had a son by his second wife, causing concern throughout England that a Catholic Stuart dynasty would become permanent. In July of that year, a group of prominent Englishmen invited Willem and Mary to come over with an army and help the people rise against King James. The Netherlands government gave its blessing to the enterprise, and Prince Willem of Orange, backed by a 15,000-man army, sailed off to become King William of England.

William landed at Torbay on November 5, 1688, and marched slowly through the country, gaining followers as he went, while support for King James withered away. James fled to France on December 11, and in January 1689, a specially called Parliament declared that James had abdicated, and offered the throne to William and Mary. Although the English made an attempt to appoint Mary the sole English monarch, she rejected the proposal. William, too, had no intention of being his wife’s consort, stating that if that was all England could do for him after he had saved the country, then he would go back to the Netherlands ‘and meddle no more in their affairs.’ The two were declared joint sovereigns–King William III and Queen Mary II–on February 13. To confirm his claim to the throne, on April 21 William promised to obey the Declaration of Rights (later called the Bill or Rights), which assured the English people of certain basic rights while making it illegal for the king to keep a standing army, levy taxes without Parliament’s approval or become a Roman Catholic. The pragmatic William was willing to let Parliament limit his power in return for its support against France.

Meanwhile, James was not about to give up his kingdom without a fight. He still had considerable support among the Catholics of Ireland, and he looked upon that island as a stepping stone to the recovery of his throne. He landed there in March 1689, and William declared war on Louis XIV the following May.

Initial opposition to Jamesâ invasion was nonexistent, and he marched into Dublin on March 24–the first English monarch to visit the Irish capital since Richard II almost 300 years earlier. Within a month, however, English power in Ireland had been reduced to Londonderry and Enniskillen. Those cities managed to withstand a 105-day siege and gave William time to raise a large army.

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