BY AODHÁN CREALEY
JULY
01/1690
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.
05/1924
The Olympic Games opened in Paris, where Ireland competed as a national delegation for the first time. The artist Jack B. Yeats was awarded a silver medal for his painting The Liffey Swim.
11/1274
Robert the Bruce, King of Scots (1306–29), whose brother Edward in 1315 invaded Ireland, where he conducted a disastrous three-year military campaign, born in Turnberry Castle.
17/1974
The coalition government’s Control of Importation, Sale and Manufacture of Contraceptives Bill was defeated in Dáil Éireann. Amongst the seven Fine Gael TDs who voted against was Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave.
18/1874
Cathal Brugha, first president of Dáil Éireann (1919) and IRA chief-of-staff (1917–18), born Charles Burgess in Dublin.
19/1974
The Llyn Peninsula earthquake, near Caernarvon in Wales, with a magnitude of 5.4, rocked Ireland’s eastern seaboard. It was the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Ireland.
19/1984
Shop workers in Dunnes Stores, Henry Street, Dublin, refused to handle the sale of South African produce following directions from their trade Union, IDATU. The strike lasted until April 1987, when the Irish government banned the import of South African goods.
20/1974
Following a coup d’état by the Greek junta and the overthrow of President Makarios, Turkey invaded Cyprus and the island was partitioned.
23/1984
The DART railway service between Howth and Bray was inaugurated.
26/1994
Minister for Education Niamh Bhreathnach announced the introduction of free third-level education.
31/1944
David Norris, gay rights activist, Joycean scholar and senator (1987–2024), born in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo.
AUGUST
28/1987
John Huston (81), film director, screenwriter and actor, died. Huston directed over 40 films, many of which are regarded as classics, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and The African Queen (1951). Depressed by Senator McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities, which affected many of his friends, he moved in 1952 to Ireland, where he bought the derelict St Cieran’s, a Georgian manor house near Athenry, Co. Galway, on over 100 acres and restored it at great cost. Popular with the locals—he was a highly convivial character—and very much a man for the outdoors, he was master of foxhounds with the Galway Blazers. Over the following decade he took a great interest in the fledgling Irish film industry, successfully lobbying Taoiseach Jack Lynch—he gave him a tour of Ardmore Studios—to set up a committee of filmmakers and journalists to help promote a productive Irish film industry. As a result, the Film Act (1970) offered tax breaks to foreign production companies so long as they shot on location in Ireland. Huston, however, believed it more important that Irish filmmakers made films in Ireland. For many his greatest film was his last one, his adaptation of Joyce’s masterpiece The Dead (1987), which he directed from a wheelchair, using oxygen from a tube attached to a generator, while dying from emphysema. Released after his death to critical acclaim, it was described by his daughter Angelica, who starred with the late Donal McCann, as ‘his love letter to Ireland and the Irish’.
02/1924
The Tailteann Games opened in Croke Park. Timed to coincide with the conclusion of the summer Olympic Games, two further games (1928, 1932) were held.
02/1934
The Military Services Pensions Bill was introduced in Dáil Éireann, providing pensions for those who had fought on the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War on the same terms as those who had joined the National Army.
03/1924
Joseph Conrad (66), Polish/British novelist, author notably of Heart of Darkness (1899) and Nostromo (1904), died.
08/1974
US President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford was sworn in as 38th president the following day.
12/1944
Nazi Germany’s V1 flying bomb campaign against London reached its 60th day, with over 6,000 deaths, 17,000 injuries and some one million buildings damaged or destroyed.
13/1974
Kate O’Brien (77), novelist, author notably of Without My Cloak (1931) and The Land of Spices (1941), which was banned in Ireland, died.
15/1934
Members of the armed ‘S’ division of the Garda Síochána—the so-called ‘Broy Harriers’—opened fire in a saleyard in Cork city when a lorryload of men crashed a barrier, killing a boy and wounding seven others. The High Court subsequently found a prima facie case of manslaughter against them but no action was taken.
18/1974
Nineteen IRA prisoners escaped from Portlaoise jail by using gelignite to blow open the gates.
21/2014
Albert Reynolds (81), taoiseach 1992–4, acclaimed for his role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, died.
27/1874
John Henry Foley (56), sculptor, notably of the O’Connell monument, Dublin, and the statue of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial in London, died.
31/1994
After a 25-year campaign, the IRA announced ‘a complete cessation of violence’.