Battle of Aughrim - Aftermath

Aftermath

Estimates of the two armies' losses vary. It is generally agreed that about 7,000 men were killed at the battle. Some recent studies put the Williamite dead as high as 3,000, but they are more generally given as between 1-2,000, with 4,000 Jacobites killed. However the Williamite death toll released by them at the time was only 600 and they claimed to have killed fully 7,000 Jacobites. Many of the Jacobite dead were officers, who were very difficult to replace. On top of that, another 4,000 Jacobites either deserted or were taken prisoner. What was more, they had lost the better part of their equipment and supplies.

For these reasons, Aughrim was the decisive battle of the Williamite war in Ireland. The city of Galway surrendered without a fight after the battle, on advantageous terms, and the Jacobites' main army surrendered shortly afterward at Limerick after a short siege. The battle, according to one author, "seared into Irish consciousness", and became known in the Irish language tradition as Eachdhroim an áir - "Aughrim of the slaughter". The contemporary Gaelic poet Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta wrote of the Irish dead, "It is at Aughrim of the slaughter where they are to be found, their damp bones lying uncoffined". Another poet wrote, "Our friends in vast numbers and languishing forms, left lifeless in the mountains and corroded by worms".

Since it marked the end of the Irish Catholic Jacobite resistance, Aughrim was the focus of Loyalist (particularly Orange Order) celebrations in Ireland on 12 July up until the early 19th century. Thereafter, it was superseded by the Battle of the Boyne in commemorations on "the Twelfth" due to the switch to the Gregorian calendar (in which 1 July became 11 July and 12 July became 22 July ). It has also been suggested that the Boyne was preferred because the Irish troops there were more easily presented as cowardly than at Aughrim, where they generally fought bravely.

The Aughrim battlefield site became the subject of controversy in Ireland over plans to build the new M6 motorway through the former battlefield. Historians, environmentalists and members of the Orange Order objected to the destruction of the 1691 battlefield. The motorway opened in 2009.