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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

23. “The Flight of the Wild Geese”

In 1690, England’s newly crowned Protestant king defeated his Catholic predecessor, James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. James fled to Europe, leaving his mostly Irish Catholic supporters to try and retrieve the situation. Despite their best efforts, the Irish Jacobites were decisively defeated at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, and forced to capitulate.

Peace was concluded with the Treaty of Limerick, signed in October 1691. It offered favorable terms to Jacobites willing to swear allegiance to William III. Those unwilling to do so were allowed to leave Ireland en masse, and join the exiled James II in France. In what came to be known as “The Flight of the Wild Geese”, roughly 14,000 men, accompanied by 10,000 women and children, left Ireland for France.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.