The Siege of Derry 1689:
The Military History
First published 2008
This edition published in 2010 by
Spellmount, an imprint of
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2016
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© Richard Doherty, 2008, 2010
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Dedication
For Danny McLaughlin
Who taught better than he knew, and enriched many young lives.
I’ll have you learn to sleep upon the ground,
March in your armour through watery fens,
Sustain the scorching heat and freezing cold,
Hunger and thirst right adjuncts of the war,
And after this to scale a castle wall
Besiege a fort, to undermine a town,
And make whole cities caper in the air
Christopher Marlowe
(Tamburlane, to his sons)
Contents
By the same author
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Introduction
An Island City and Three Kings
The Closing of the Gates
Disaster in Ulster
No Surrender!
Guarding Derry’s Walls
Give Signal to The Fight
Expectation in The Air
Knocking on the Gates of Derry
Bombs and Great Bombs
The Mountjoy Knew Her Own Way Home
The Fruits of Victory?
Epilogue
Appendix One
Appendix Two
Appendix Three
Appendix Four
Appendix Five
Appendix Six
Appendix Seven
Bibliography
By the same author
Wall of Steel: The History of 9th (Londonderry) HAA Regiment, RA (SR), North-West Books, Limavady, 1988
The Sons of Ulster: Ulstermen at War from the Somme to Korea, The Appletree Press, Belfast, 1992
Clear The Way! A History of the 38th (Irish) Brigade, 1941–47, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993
Irish Generals: Irish Generals in the British Army in the Second World War, The Appletree Press, Belfast, 1993
The Williamite War in Ireland, 1688–1691, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1998
Irish Men and Women in the Second World War, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1999
Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross (with David Truesdale), Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2000
Irish Volunteers in the Second World War, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2001
The Sound of History: El Alamein 1942, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2002
The North Irish Horse: A Hundred Years of Service, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2002
Normandy 1944: The Road to Victory, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2004
Ireland’s Generals in the Second World War, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2004
The Thin Green Line: A History of The Royal Ulster Constabulary GC, 1922–2001, Pen & Sword Books, Barnsley, 2004
None Bolder. The History of the 51st Highland Division in the Second World War, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2006
The British Reconnaissance Corps in World War II, Osprey Publishing, Botley & New York, 2007
Eighth Army in Italy: The Long Hard Slog, Pen & Sword Books, Barnsley, 2007
A Noble Crusade: The History of the Eighth Army, 1941–1945, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2008 new ed.
Only the Enemy in Front. The Recce Corps at War, 1940–46, Spellmount, Staplehurst, 2008 new ed.
List of Maps
1. Ireland in 1689
2. The Jacobite Advance
3. Londonderry and the Surrounding Region
4. The Besieged City, April–July 1689
5. The City’s Defences and Jacobite Positions
Acknowledgements
I owe thanks to a number of individuals and organisations without whose assistance this book would not have been possible. As the reader will note from the Introduction, I have had an almost life-long interest in the subject, an interest sparked by the late Danny McLaughlin in a school classroom almost a half century ago. Therefore, my first thanks must go to Danny McLaughlin for doing his job as a teacher so well.
More recently, but still almost twenty years ago, Michael McGowan and Frances Campbell welcomed me into the world of historical broadcasting with a series of contributions on the siege in Frances’ BBC Radio Foyle afternoon programme, which was produced by Michael. In 1989, the tercentenary of the siege, I presented a radio series called The Siege Chronicles, which Michael produced. For their encouragement and support, I thank them both.
Although the siege occurred three centuries ago, there are many contemporary records still extant. These include a number of Admiralty records, among them ships’ logs, relating to the maritime aspects of the siege. I was able to consult these at the National Archives at Kew where the staff were, as I have always found them, both professional and helpful. Other records survive in the House of Lords’ Records Office, in the Palace of Westminster, and thanks are also due for the assistance I received there. Yet more contemporary documents reside in the Scottish Records Office in Edinburgh and I am especially indebted to Hazel Weir for her work on my behalf in that institution. The National Army Museum, Chelsea, was another valuable source of information which I acknowledge readily together with the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Finally, I was able to consult contemporary copies of the London Gazette in the British Library Newspaper Library at Colindale, London.
The siege, and the war of which it formed part, spawned a number of books in an early manifestation of a now familiar phenomenon, the recording of participants’ experiences. I am grateful to Mr Tony Crowe who lent me original copies of some of these books and to the Linenhall Library, Belfast and the Central Library, Foyle Street, Londonderry, for their assistance.
A very special word of thanks must go to St Columb’s Cathedral and to the Very Reverend Dean William Morton, Dean of Derry, as well as Daphne and Gerry Gallick, Ian Bartlett and Billy Begley, for access to documents and books in the Cathedral’s collection and also for permission to photograph exhibits in the Chapterhouse Museum; some of the photographs grace the pages of this book.
My publisher, Jamie Wilson of Spellmount was a great support, as well as being a good friend, and the editorial and production team, including Shaun Barrington and Clare Jackson, are to be congratulated on their efforts which have resulted in a fine volume.
To my wife Carol, our children Joanne, James and Catríona, and grandson Ciarán, I extend my thanks for constant support and understanding.
Introduction
It is often referred to as the greatest siege in British military history. Indeed, Macaulay called it the greatest siege in English histo
ry, going on to say that the wall of Derry ‘remains to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon, or the pass of Thermopylae, was to the Athenians – a sacred spot dear to memory, and enkindling by its name the fire of patriotism’. The siege is recalled on an annual basis by the Apprentice Boys of Derry, who celebrate the ‘shutting of the gates’ in December and the relief of the city in August. It is also used as a shibboleth by politicians and others, while some academics consider that the siege continues in a psychological fashion to the present day, with the unionist community in Northern Ireland feeling the sense of isolation that was felt by the defenders of Derry in 1689.
My first awareness of the siege of Derry came as a schoolboy in the city fifty years ago. Our teacher, the late Danny McLaughlin, had written an account of the siege which he read to us on an instalment basis. I was enthralled with the tale he told and can still recall his telling us about Governor Lundy who was prepared to sell the keys of Derry, as Danny McLaughlin put it, ‘for a bap’, and of how Captain Browning, commander of the relief ship Mountjoy died, like Wolfe and Nelson, in his hour of glory and triumph. The school that I attended was St Eugene’s Boys’ Public Elementary school, although we all called it the Rosemount School, and its very name is a clear indication to anyone raised in, or knowing anything about, Northern Ireland that this was somewhere one would not normally expect the defenders of Derry to be lauded as heroes. And yet that is how they were presented to us in that classroom all those years ago, as individuals at the centre of a gripping story.
In the years since then I have continued to be enthralled by the story of the siege. As a military historian I am also intrigued by the way in which the events in and around Derry during that spring and summer of 1689 are celebrated and commemorated. At the risk of being accused of mixing metaphors it has become something of a tug-of-war with politicians of different hues using it to their own ends; and, of course, it has given Northern Ireland’s unionists their rallying cry of ‘No Surrender’.
But the siege of Derry is not a story that belongs exclusively to one element of our population. Rather it is part of the history of everyone who lives anywhere in Ireland and, indeed, throughout the British Isles, while it also has resonances further into Europe. What is often forgotten in our myopic view of 1689 is the fact that, for 105 days in that year, a small city on the very edge of Europe was the hinge on which the history of the continent swung. This was not simply a spat in a war between native Irish and planter Irish but also a crucial event in the second British civil war of the seventeenth century, and of an even broader struggle for the domination of Europe. It is my aim in this book to demonstrate that events at Derry were crucial to the outcome of each of those struggles and how the defeat of the Jacobite forces helped shape a continent for the centuries to come.
It is with respect and thanks that I dedicate this book to the memory of Daniel McLaughlin.
Richard Doherty
CHAPTER ONE
An Island City and Three Kings
The Oxford Dictionary defines a siege as a ‘(Period of) surrounding and blockading of fortified place’ with the derivation of the word being attributed to the French sege or seat. It is in the nature of siege warfare that both sides spend much time sitting around and thus the entirely appropriate use of the word sege. Siege warfare has a long history, dating back to the first occasion on which people took refuge behind some form of fortification, and it continues even into our own times. During the twentieth century the trench warfare of the Great War was siege warfare in linear form and it required the development of siege-breaking techniques to bring it to an end. The Second World War also had sieges: the siege of Leningrad was the longest in modern history while another Russian city, Stalingrad, was also besieged, with the occupying Sixth German Army surrounded by Soviet forces. For the British forces, perhaps the most famous siege was at Tobruk in Libya, although the entire United Kingdom could be said to have been under siege for much of the war, while the siege of Malta led to the award of the George Cross to the island and its people. Over a decade later the French army suffered the siege of Dien Bien Phu in Indo-China, now Vietnam, while US forces were later also besieged in that country. Irish troops on United Nations duty came under siege in the Congo, at Jadotville, in 1961. Thus sieges, great or small – but usually small – have continued to be part of our history and the word has also come to describe a situation in which criminals or small groups of terrorists hold out against the police or the armed forces. Examples of the latter include the siege of Sidney Street in London in 1911 and, much more recently, the Balcombe Street and Iranian Embassy sieges, also in London.
The evolution of warfare has brought with it a further evolution in the conduct of sieges, from both sides of the fortifications. While the conduct of a siege several centuries after the demise of the Roman Empire might still have been familiar to a Roman general, the introduction of gunpowder seemed to herald the end of siege warfare but, instead, brought only an adaptation of that warfare. By the late-seventeenth century a system of ‘siegecraft’ had been developed with its own rules and protocols – one might almost say ‘etiquette’ – and European armies were familiar with the rules for the conduct of a siege and the equipment and manpower needed to lay siege to a fortified town or city. Those fortifications had also changed, the tall thin walls and towers of earlier times giving way to squatter, stouter walls with bastions that allowed enfilading fire on the attackers.1
Those rules of ‘siegecraft’ had developed their own, military, definition of a siege, which would not coincide entirely with that laid down by the Oxford Dictionary. The surrounding of a fortified place, for example, required an army capable of reducing that fortified place, be it town, city or fortress, and this included sufficient artillery to create a breach in the defences, or walls, through which an initial attacking force of about twenty volunteer infantrymen – a ‘forlorn hope’ – could fight its way to achieve entry for even more infantry.2 In terms of manpower, Napoleon believed that a besieging force had to be four times the size of the invested force to ensure success; in the seventeenth century, Vauban had advised that the besieging force had to outnumber the garrison by ten to one, with a minimum manpower of 20,000 if lines of circumvallation and contravallation were to be built. As well as artillery, engineers were also needed; their task was to provide gun platforms, or batteries, for the artillery, construct protection for those batteries, and develop other means of creating a breach, by use of mines under the defences and the digging of saps, which were tunnels or trenches, to allow access to where those mines were to be placed. Engineers were also responsible for the equipment needed to scale walls or cross defensive ditches; these included ladders and fascines, bundled branches with which to create a causeway over the ditches. Those engineers who planted mines needed to be expert in explosives. Their very risky profession had prompted Shakespeare to put the phrase ‘for ’tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petar’ into Hamlet’s mouth. The petar, or petard, was a mine placed under the fortifications, the premature detonation of which would see the miner, or engineer, blown up or ‘hoist’.
Judged even by this very basic outline of siegecraft, what happened between April and August 1689, over a period of 105 days, at Londonderry does not appear to justify the term ‘siege’. But, by the Oxford Dictionary definition, there was a siege, since the city was surrounded and blockaded during that time. Irrespective of these definitions, there is no doubt that there was considerable military activity at Londonderry during those months. Furthermore, the lack of artillery and engineering stores does not mean that the attacking army did not intend to besiege the city but rather that it lacked the wherewithal to do so effectively. The reasons for that will be discussed in a later chapter. Nor is there any doubt that considerable importance was placed on the city by both sides, nor that the echoes of those days over three centuries ago may still be heard today. So, let us examine those 105 days to see if we can define the truth of
what occurred.
In the spring of 1689 the Protestant, or Williamite, population of Ireland considered itself to be facing dire threat. Most of Ireland was under Jacobite, largely Catholic, control, and Ulster and north-east Connaught were about to be attacked by Jacobite forces. Before long, the Williamite forces would be drawing back to Sligo, in Connaught, and Enniskillen and Londonderry, in Ulster, as they waited for relieving troops to arrive from Britain. Although Sligo would change hands, neither Enniskillen nor Londonderry were to fall to the Jacobites and it was their failure to take the latter that prevented the Jacobites pursuing the strategy of using the city as a stepping-off point to cross to Scotland, link up with Jacobite forces there and march south into England to restore James II to his kingdoms. Had that happened, the course of Irish, British and European history might have been very different. The Jacobite failure to take the city was a pivotal point in this second British civil war of the seventeenth century. But why was Londonderry important? That is the central question that this study of the siege will try to answer.
The seventeenth-century city of Londonderry sat on a site with a history that already stretched back more than a millennium. Although the popular belief is that the city was founded by a Donegal monk, Colmcille, and named Doire Cholmcille in his honour, the origins of the settlement predate his era and it is quite possible that Colmcille never visited the place.3 There was an even older tradition that named the settlement as Doire Calgach and this tradition seems to date back to the first century AD. Calgach, it is believed, was a Celtic warrior and may even be the Galgacus mentioned by Tacitus as leading the Celts against Agricola’s Romans at the battle of Mons Graupius, in modern-day Scotland, in AD 89; this was the belief of Dr John Keys O’Doherty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Derry from 1889 to 1907, who was an antiquarian writer.4 As was so often the case, it may well be that the Christian church replaced the name of Calgach, which means ‘sharp’ or ‘fierce’, with that of Colmcille, the ‘dove of the church’, to rename the little settlement that sat on an island in the river Foyle.
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