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person of military skill, the fortifications mean, scan- CHA P. ty stores for subsistence, thirty thousand persons useless in war to maintain, and among these some secret foes who conveyed intelligence to the enemy; while the besieging army, commanded by James, their late king, in person, consisted of twenty thousand men, well-furnished, and conducted by officers of experience.

1689.

Having failed in his attempts to procure a sur-Siege of rendry by persuasion, James began to assail the town on the seventeenth of April, and met with a most obstinate, though irregular, resistance. The sallies of the besieged were fierce and destructive. In such enterprizes any officer volunteered to be leader, and any soldiers, who at the moment were fired with the spirit of adventure, volunteered to follow him. When the besiegers were battering the walls, the garrison sent them advice, that the trouble and expence of this might be saved, since the gates were always open, and afforded a more commodious entrance than any breaches which could be made. Having continued his assaults for eleven days without the least prospect of success, and having gained no other advantage than the reduction of the little fort of Culmore, distant four miles from the town, an advantage suspected to have been procured by bribery, James left his forces with orders to them to continue the siege, and returned to Dublin, peevishly exclaiming, that if his army had been English, he would have taken the town by storm, in spite of all opposition. Baffled in their assaults, the besiegers hoped for success from famine, while the

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JCHAP. besieged were encouraged to bear their distresses till relief should arrive from England. Eighteen clergymen of the protestant establishment, and seven dissenting divines, shared cheerfully the labours and dangers of the siege; and, in their turns, every day, collected the people in the cathedral church, where they endeavoured, by such strains of eloquence as their circumstances inspired, to raise the devotional spirit to an enthusiasm of military ardour. Such, however, is the unfortunate propensity of mankind to religious discord, that, even in the hour of calamity and peril, animosities would have arisen between the two sects of protestants, if they had not been prevented by the endeavours of the discreet and truly pious on both sides.

When the affliction of the garrison had arisen to an almost intolerable pitch by hunger, and by disease, the consequence of deficient food, fatigue, and confinement, they descried thirty ships in LoghFoyle, which they rightly concluded to have been sent from England for the purpose of their relief. This fleet contained arms, ammunition, provisions, and troops, under the command of Kirk, a man of infernal cruelty, who had signalized his loyalty to James, on the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, by horrible atrocities committed on the defenceless people in the west of England, and had, like all others of such mock loyalty, immediately deserted that prince, when fortune turned against him. A man of such a temper would make no exertions from motives of humanity. Overrating the danger

of

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of the attempt of relieving the town, he hesitated, CHAP. returned no chearful signals in answer to those of the garrison, and, having thus encouraged the enemy, who had been terrified almost into a dereliction of the siege at his appearance, to fortify the passage against him, he at length sailed away on thirteenth of June. After some time the besieged received intelligence from him, that, unable to force his way to their city, he had sailed round to LoghSwilly, to try whether he could make a diversion in their favour, and send supplies to the protestants posted at Enniskellen. He endeavoured to comfort them with assurances that he would still relieve them, that in Britain all went in favour of king William, that more forces from England were hourly expected, and that the enemy would not be able to continue the siege much longer; but he at the same time advised them" to be good husbands of their provisions," a counsel of no very consolatory nature.

of Rosen.

When, in the increasing distresses of the garrison, Atrocity Baker, one of their governors, died, and an officer, named Mitchelburne, was elected in his place, general Hamilton endeavoured to move them by persuasion to a surrendry; but, instead of yielding to his advice, they reproached him with his treachery; and, though many were scarcely able to support their arms, they threatened death to any who should mention a capitulation. Marshal Rosen, a German officer, who had accompanied James from France in the quality of lieutenant-general, and was conducting the siege with vigour and skill, enraged to

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CHAP. fury at the obstinacy of the besieged, déclared that, if the town should not be surrendered on or before the first of July, all of their faction through the whole country to Ballyshannon, Charlemount, Belfast, Innishowen, protected and unprotected indiscriminately, should be consigned to plunder, and driven under the city walls, there to perish by hun ger, unless relieved by the surréndry of the town. As on the day appointed no symptoms of submission appeared, the threat was executed with all the cireumstances of horfor. All the protestants through a great extent of country, most of whom had protections from king James, were, without the least exception in favour of sex, age, weakness, or sickness, collected and driven under the walls, on the second of July, by soldiers, who goaded them forward with precipitation. On the first appearance of this confused and shrieking multitudé, hurrying töward the town, the garrison fired on them, in a mis take, as enemies; but were transported into the extrémity of resentment, when they discovered the reality, and confirmed in the resolution of perishing rather than they should submit to an enemy destitute of humanity and every génerous principle. Many of the miserable people, thus doomed to suffer a hideous death of hunger beneath the walls, had the magnanimity to implore the garrison to perseveré, without regard to their affliction, in an obstinate defence against an atrocious foe, whose object was the extermination of them all. A gallows was erected in view of the besiegers, and assurances sent them, that all the prisoners taken by the garrison should

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should be immediately hanged, unless their friends chap. were allowed to depart; and confessors were humanely admitted to prepare these prisoners for death; but the execution was prevented by the release of the people in consequence of orders from James, to whom in Dublin intelligence had been rapidly conveyed of the infamous transaction. Some of the ablest men of this devoted crowd, notwithstanding the enemy's vigilance, had stolen into the town, and with them about five hundred useless persons to increase thé distress of the garrison. Those who, without the walls, had survived the miseries of three days, destitute of sustenance and shelter, were permitted to return to their empty habitations, where most of them perished, as the ravages of the enemy had left them no means of subsistence.

Reduced to the extremity of distress, and endea-Relief of vouring to support the remains of life by such mi- Derry, serable food as the flesh of dogs and vermin, even tallow and hides, nor able to find more than two days' provisions of such substances, the garrison was still assured by the harangues of Walker, in a prophetic spirit, that God would relieve them; and men, reduced almost to shadows, made desperate sallies, but were unable to pursue their advantage. On the thirtieth of July, when their minds were yet Warm with one of these harangues, they descried three ships in Logh-Foyle, steering directly towards them. Fearing a surrendry of the town, and consequent blame to himself, Kirk had at length resolved to make a hazardous attempt for their relief,

which