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July 01

• 1970 ‘For God’s sake, bring me a large Scotch’—Reginald Maudling, British Home Secretary, on his flight back to London after his first visit to Northern Ireland.
• 1916 Battle of the Somme. In the first two days 5,500 men of the 36th (Ulster) Division were killed or wounded.
• 1916 The Battle of the Somme began. Inthe bloodiest single day in the history of the British Army, 19,240 British soldiers were killed, including c.2,000 Irishmen.
• 1867 Thomas Francis Meagher (44), Young Irelander, soldier and latterly acting governor of Montana Territory, mysteriously disappeared from a steamer on the Mississippi.
• The British North America Act established Canada as a federal dominion.
• 1690 Battle of the Boyne, the first major battle in the Williamite Wars (1689–91).
• 1690 The Battle of the Boyne. The scene that morning near the village of Oldbridge was quite a spectacle. On the northern bank was King William, Prince of Orange, who had accepted the English throne two years earlier on the invitation of England’s Whig political élite. His 36,000-strong army was an international one that included Dutch and Danish veterans of Continental campaigns along with Germans, French Huguenots and, of course, Ulster Protestants, the latter referred to as ‘skirmishers’ and described as ‘half-naked with sabre and pistols hanging from their belts’. On the southern bank was King James II, until recently king of England, Scotland and Ireland, who had been deposed two years earlier in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. He hoped, with the support of Louis XIV of France, to use Ireland as a springboard to recover his crowns. His army of c. 23,500 was considerably weaker than the Williamites, consisting of Irish and French regiments and c. 6,000 cavalry, one unit of which was led by Patrick Sarsfield. His infantry, however, were poorly trained, many armed only with scythes. The battle was merely a sideshow in the wars against Louis XIV, the first test of the Grand Alliance—led by the Dutch United Provinces and including the Papal States under Pope Alexander VIII—formed just six months earlier to oppose the expansionist policies of France, at the time the world’s greatest power. The Williamite victory was down to tactics, superior firepower and sheer weight of numbers. Casualties were light, c. 2,000 dead, three quarters of whom were on the Jacobite side. Amongst them was William’s second-in-command, Frederick Herman (75), Duke of Schomberg.