Battle of Aughrim

The Battle of Aughrim, by John Mulvany (1885)

Date	22 July [O.S. 12 July] 1691
Location	Near Aughrim, County Galway, Ireland 53°17′42″N 8°18′43″W / 53.295°N 8.312°W / 53.295; -8.312Coordinates: 53°17′42″N 8°18′43″W / 53.295°N 8.312°W / 53.295; -8.312 (Irish grid M781272)
Result	Williamite victory

Belligerents

Jacobite forces - Irish and French troops

Williamite forces - Irish, Dutch, English, Scottish, Danish and French Huguenot troops

Commanders and leaders

Marquis de St Ruth †

Godert de Ginkell

Strength

18,000

20,000

Casualties and losses

4,000 killed and 3-4,000 captured or missing

3,000 killed

The Battle of Aughrim (Irish: Cath Eachroma) was the decisive battle of the Williamite War in Ireland. It was fought between the Jacobites and the forces of William III on 12 July 1691 (old style, equivalent to 22 July new style), near the village of Aughrim, County Galway.

The battle was one of the more bloody recorded fought on Irish soil – over 7,000 people were killed. It meant the effective end of Jacobitism in Ireland, although the city of Limerick held out until the autumn of 1691.

The Jacobite position in the summer of 1691 was a defensive one. In the previous year, they had retreated behind the River Shannon, which acted as an enormous moat around the province of Connacht, with strongholds at Sligo, Athlone and Limerick guarding the routes into Connacht. From this position, the Jacobites hoped to receive military aid from Louis XIV of France via the port towns and eventually be in a position to re-take the rest of Ireland.

Godert de Ginkell, the Williamites' Dutch general, had breached this line of defence by crossing the Shannon at Athlone - taking the town after a bloody siege. The Marquis de St Ruth (General Charles Chalmont), the French Jacobite general, moved too slowly to save Athlone, as he had to gather his troops from their quarters and raise new ones from rapparee bands and the levies of Irish landowners. Ginkel marched through Ballinasloe, on the main road towards Limerick and Galway, before he found his way blocked by St Ruth’s army at Aughrim on the 12th of July 1691. Both armies were about 20,000 men strong. The soldiers of St Ruth’s army were mostly Irish Catholic, while Ginkel's were English, Scottish, Danish, Dutch and French Huguenot (members of William III’s League of Augsburg) and Irish Protestants.

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