1689.]

CONDITION OF THE PROTESTANTS IN IRELAND.

81

monarch at their parting-" the best thing I can desire for you is never to see you back again." The munificent favours of Louis-his generous as well as politic honours to a fallen brother-the adulation of courtiers, who looked upon a king, however powerless, as a demi-god-these were to be exchanged for a doubtful struggle for a divided kingdom. Yet if James could

maintain a position in Ireland, he might recover England. "If king James would quit his priests," said Danby, "he might still retrieve his affairs."* His prospects in Ireland were far from desperate; they were in many particulars encouraging. The Protestants who, from the time of the plantation of Ulster in the time of James I., had been gradually changing a wild and profitless country into a flourishing seat of trade and manufactures, had recovered the effects of the massacre of 1641. Cromwell had replaced them in security by the terror of his strong arm. They were again the dominant power; the native Irish were again a subjected race. James II. out of no sense of equal justice to save the aboriginal people from the tyranny of the smaller number, had determined to depress the colonisers and subject them to the less regulated tyranny of that hatred of their race and their religion which animated the Celtic population. In two years Ireland, under the rule of Tyrconnel, was a kingdom in which the civil and military strength was almost wholly in the hands of Papists. The Protestant militia had been disarmed early in the reign of James. Tyrconnel's soldiers seized upon all arms in the possession of Protestant householders, who were alone qualified by law to carry weapons. James entered Ireland when all those likely to oppose him were thought to be naked and defenceless.

Before the Revolution was completed in England, the inhabitants of

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JAMES ENTERS DUBLIN.

[1689. Enniskillen and Londonderry had received such warnings from the attitude of the Irish government, and the temper of the native population around them, that they prepared to defend themselves against the same sort of attack which Londonderry had successfully resisted in 1641. Enniskillen repelled the attempt to quarter Popish soldiers in their little town. Londonderry secured its gates against the entrance of a similar force. Mountjoy, who was afterwards betrayed into the mission to James, was well received at Londonderry, and left a Protestant garrison for their protection, under one of his officers, lieutenant-colonel Lundy. Before William and Mary had received the crown, the whole Catholic population around the Protestants was preparing for rapine and revenge. The sovereigns of the Revolution were, however, proclaimed by the staunch citizens of Londonderry and the small colony of Enniskillen; and they abided the issue without shrinking. The men of Londonderry relied upon Lundy, as governor, who had sent his adhesion to England, and had received from William and Mary a formal appointment to his command. Upon Hamilton, Tyrconnel had bestowed the reward of his treachery, by placing him at the head of a body of troops to bring the Protestants of Ulster to submission. These troops desolated the country; and the wretched inhabitants fled before them to Enniskillen and to Londonderry. The city, which had been founded by Englishmen upon the site of the old ruined city of Derry granted by James I. to the Corporation of London, had become the chief refuge for many thousands, in addition to its usual inhabitants. Amongst those who had fled hither for succour, was the rector of a neighbouring parish, George Walker, whose name will always live in honoured remembrance.

The king of the Roman Catholics entered Dublin on the 24th of March. Devoted soldiers lined the streets; the houses were hung with tapestry; his horse trod upon flowers and green leaves. He was met at the castle gate by the procession of the host, and he fell on his knees in adoration. Despatches received from Hamilton, now a lieutenant-general, showed that there was work to do, beyond that of pageants and congratulations. The king himself at length determined to go amongst the troops to encourage them, taking with him the French officers that had accompanied him to Ireland.* His march into Ulster commenced on the 13th of April. He travelled through a wasted country from which the inhabitants had fled, taking with them their moveable goods. The position of James and his followers was disagreeable enough. It was determined to return to Dublin; and so they went back to Charlemont. But, says the Memoir, "the king received by an express a letter from the duke of Berwick, in the name of all the General officers, as their opinion, that in case his majesty would return to the army, and but show himself before Derry, it would infallibly surrender."+ James again changed his mind; and setting out towards the obstinate city the next morning, overtook the French general Rosen within two miles of the place where his mere presence was to compel submission. The trumpeter sent by the king with a summons, found the inhabitants "in very great disorder, having turned out their Governor Lundy, upon suspicion." The cause of this unexpected reception was the presence of " one Walker, a Minister." He was opposed to

"Life of James II." vol. ii. p. 330; Own Memoirs. + Ibid. p. 332.

Ibid. p. 333.

1689.]

SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY.

88

Lundy, who thought the place untenable, and counselled the townsmen to make conditions; "but the fierce Minister of the Gospel, being of the true Cromwellian or Cameronian stamp, inspired them with bolder resolutions."* James finally left Hamilton and the French generals to work their will upon the besieged, and upon the people who had not the shelter of the beleaguered city; and he went back to Dublin to meet a Parliament called for the 7th of May. We must finish this story of heroic bravery and more heroic fortitude, although the events which we shall thus attempt briefly to relate, will detain us from other events of importance for more than three months of this busy year of 1689.

Lough Foyle, the inlet of the sea which flows between the counties of Derry and Donegal, extends from its narrow entrance at Magilligan Point for about sixteen miles, when it meets the river Foyle at Culmore. The river is navigable for ships of heavy burthen to Londonderry, built by the colonists on the left bank. This city, in 1689, was contained within the walls; and it rose by a gentle ascent from the base to the summit of a hill, on the highest point of which was its cathedral. The streets were regularly laid out, in lines running to four gates, from a square in the centre, in which the Townhouse and the Guard-house were placed. The gradual ascent of the city thus exposed it to the fire of an enemy. The small Bastions were insufficient for the defence of the Curtain against a vigorous assault; and there was no Moat nor Counterscarp. A ferry crossed the Foyle from the east gate; and the north gate opened upon a quay. On the east bank of the Foyle were woods and groves, with sites of villages destroyed by the marauding soldiery. On the west bank, close to the strand, was a large orchard, which became a place of ambush. At the entrance of the Foyle was the strong fort of Culmore, with a smaller fort on the opposite bank. About two miles below the city were two forts,-Charles Fort on the west bank; Grange Fort on the east.†

Lundy, the treacherous or perhaps panic-stricken governor, had persuaded Cunningham, the colonel who commanded two English regiments sent to assist in the defence of the place, to put his troops on board ship and sail away. The indignation of the English parliament was extreme when these troops returned home. Lundy's intention to surrender being manifest, the citizens, under the advice of their reverend champion, and of a more regular soldier, superseded the governor, and he was glad to escape in disguise. The battle now commenced in earnest. The reverend George Walker and Major Baker were appointed governors during the siege. They mustered seven thousand and twenty soldiers, dividing them into regiments under eight colonels. In the town there were about thirty thousand souls; but they were reduced to a less burdensome number, by ten thousand accepting an offer of the besieging commander to restore them to their dwellings. There were, according to Lundy's estimation, only provisions for ten days. The number of cannon possessed by the besieged was only twenty. With such resources a protracted defence of Londonderry might well appear impossible. On the 20th of April the city was invested, and the bombardment was begun.

"Life of James II." vol. ii. p. 334.

+ Plan in Harris's "Life of William IIL" p. 193.

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SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY.

(1689. A strong force was planted at Pennyburn Mill, to cut off the road from Culmore to the city, that fort then being in the hands of the Protestants. It was afterwards lost. On the 21st the garrison made a sortie, and routed this force with considerable slaughter. Maumont, one of the French generals, fell by a musket ball in this desperate sally. The bombardment went on, with demi-culverins and mortars. No impression was made during nine days upon the determination to hold out; and on the 29th king James retraced his steps to Dublin, in considerable ill humour. He gave vent to that petulance which had so often alienated his friends, by exclaiming, "If my army had been English, they would have brought me the town, stone by stone, by this time."

The siege went on, amidst bombardments and sorties, for six weeks, with little change. Hamilton was the commander of James's forces, in consequence of the death of Maumont; and another French officer, Persignan, who might have assisted Hamilton's inexperience, was mortally wounded in a sortie of the sixth of May. The garrison of Londonderry and the inhabitants were gradually perishing from fatigue and insufficient food. But they bravely repelled an assault, in which four hundred of the assailants fell. Of the relief which had been promised from England there were no tidings. This solitary city had to bear, as it would appear, the whole brunt of the great contest for the fate of three kingdoms. Large bodies of troops held the country on every side, keeping in awe the trembling and starving population, that could give no succour. No friendly ship could sail up the river without receiving the fire from hostile forts at its mouth and on its banks. No messenger could safely pass by land or by water to tell of the need there was for relief. The banks of the Foyle were lined with musqueteers. The roads on the East and on the West were blocked by masses of troops. Across the narrow part of the river, from Charles Fort to Grange Fort, the enemy stretched a great boom of fir timber, joined by iron chains, and fastened on either shore by cables of a foot thick. On the 15th of June, the anxious lookers out from the high places of the city descried a fleet of thirty sail in the Lough. The English flag floated in the great æstuary, but the deliverers came no nigher for weeks. Signals were given and answered; but the ships lay at anchor, as if to drive hope to despair. Provisions were now dealt out in quantities scarcely sufficient to sustain life; and fever and dysentery seized upon their hundreds of victims. Gunpowder was still left; but the cannon balls were shot away, and the resolute men cast lead round brick bats, and fired the rough missiles upon the besiegers. At the end of June, Baker, one of the heroic governors, died. Hamilton had been superseded in his command by Rosen, when it was known in Dublin that an English fleet was in Lough Foyle. The prolonged resistance of two months by a city not fortified upon scientific principles, was too humiliating for the Frenchman, who was reported to have dragooned the Protestants of Languedoc; and Rosen, who was invested with powers as " Marshal General of all his majesty's forces," issued a savage proclamation, declaring that unless the place were surrendered by the first of July, he would collect all the Protestants from the neighbouring districts, and drive them under the walls of the city to starve with those within the walls. This was not a vain threat. For thirty miles round the remnant of the population-the old man incapable of bearing arms, and the young wife

1689.}

SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY.

85

with an infant at her breast-the children who lingered about their desolate homes, and the cripple who could fly nowhere for shelter-were driven in flocks towards the city where their friends were well nigh perishing. Some dropped on the road; some were mercifully knocked on the head. A famished troop came thus beneath the walls of Londonderry, where they lay starving for three days. The besieged immediately erected a gallows, within view of their enemies; and sent a message to their head-quarters that priests might come in to prepare the prisoners within the city for death, for they would hang every man if their friends were not immediately dismissed. The threat had its effect, and the famished crowd wended back their way to their solitary villages. It is but justice to James to state, that he expressed his displeasure at.this proceeding, and wrote to Rosen, "It is positively our will, that you do not put your project in execution as far as it regards the men, women, and children, of whom you speak; but, on the contrary, that you send them back to their habitations without any injury to their persons.'

Meanwhile the siege went on. Batteries were brought closer and closer to the city; and the firing was continued by day and night. At last a communication was effected with the fleet in the Lough. Major-General Kirk, the evil instrument of cruelty in the expedition against Monmouth, was now in the confidence of the new government. He it was who had come to the assistance of the besieged with men, arms, and provisions. He sent word by a little boy, who carried a letter in his garter-or in his button-that he found it impossible to get up the river; that he expected six thousand more men from England; and that then he would attack the besiegers by land. A doubtful hope. Famine was now doing its terrible work. The well-known substitutes for ordinary food, of horse-flesh, and dog's-flesh, of rats, of hides, were fast failing. On the evening of the 30th of July, Walker preached in the Cathedral, exhorting his hearers still to persevere, for that God would at last deliver them from their difficulties. An hour after the sermon the lookers out descried a movement in the Lough. Three vessels are sailing to the mouth of the Foyle. There are two merchantmen and a frigate. They are fired upon by the Culmore Fort and the New Fort. They return the fire. They are in the river. They are within a mile of the boom. They heed not the shots of the musqueteers, nor the guns of the Charles Fort and Grange Fort. And now the foremost of the merchant vessels is known by her build. She is the Mountjoy of Derry. She dashes at the boom. She breaks it, but she is driven ashore by the rebound. They are boarding. No. The frigate comes up and fires a broadside. The Mountjoy rights again. The three ships pass the boom safely. They are coming to the quay. We are saved. That night the four thousand three hundred of the garrison who, out of seven thousand four hundred, were left alive, feasted upon something better than the nine lean horses and a pint of meal for each man, that were left. Of the abundance that was landed at the quay amidst the shouts of the brave defenders of Londonderry, there was enough to make every heart glad of that heroic population, who thus fought and who suffered for a great principle. Bonfires are lighted. Bells are rung. The fire of the besiegers is the next day continued. But at nightfall a smoke arises from their camp, as if from the huts which had given them shelter for three months. Anothor night of watchfulness for the besieged; and as the sun of