The Siege of Derry 1689

by Richard Doherty

  Paradoxically, the Council now decided that it was time to evict Tyrconnel’s troops from Carrickfergus and launched an attack on the town. This amounted to little more than a skirmish, and the attackers withdrew. But both sides had parleyed and agreed to despatch an account of the battle to Tyrconnel. For the attackers this was a serious mistake since the agreed bearer of the message was a friar, Father O’Haggerty. The latter had observed the Council’s forces during the encounter at Carrickfergus and was able to tell Tyrconnel that they were ill-prepared for war, with few experienced officers, and with soldiers scattered across the region in numbers far below that which had been ‘confidently reported in Dublin’. Moreover, they were also short of ammunition and of the stores needed for any length of campaign.

  Armed with this intelligence Tyrconnel issued a proclamation on 7 March in which he offered a pardon to anyone who laid down his arms while threatening those who persisted in what he described as ‘their wicked designs and treasonable practices’. Those who fell into the latter category would be treated as rebels and traitors but the king’s soldiers would treat the innocent well. Ten men were stated to be unpardonable.

  But in regard Hugh Earl of Mount-Alexander, John Lord Viscount Mazareen, Robert Lord Baron of Kingston, Clotworthy Skeffington, Esquire, son to the Lord Viscount Mazareen, Sir Robert Colvil, Sir Arthur Royden [Rawdon], Sir John Magill, John Hawkins, Robert Sanderson, and Francis Hamilton, son to Sir Charles Hamilton, have been the prime actors in the said Rebellion, and the persons who advised and fomented the same, and inveigled others to be involved therein; we think fit to except them out of this our Proclamation, as persons not deserving His Majesty’s mercy or favour.25

  By now Tyrconnel was a much more confident man than hitherto; his flirtation with a compromise with William was over and he knew that James was on his way to Ireland from France with Louis’ backing.

  Hamilton’s expeditionary force to Ulster, which Tyrconnel told James numbered 2,500 men, was estimated by others at 7,000 strong with five field guns.26 As this force marched north, an emissary from Tyrconnel was also sent northwards with a peace offer to the Council of the North. The emissary was a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Alexander Osborne, who met the Council at Loughbrickland on 9 March. The peace offer was really Tyrconnel’s proclamation of the 7th to which Osborne added that the alternative was destruction by Hamilton’s army which would then sweep through the rest of Ulster, rolling over any opposition at places such as Coleraine, Enniskillen and Londonderry. Moreover, while Hamilton’s troops were reducing the opposition in such manner, the native Irish of Cavan, Monaghan, Tyrone and Londonderry would ‘upon the approach of the army and resistance thereunto made, immediately enter upon a massacre of the British in the said counties’. Osborne reported that Tyrconnel regretted that he would be unable to prevent such a massacre occurring.27

  However, Osborne was able to provide the Council with some valuable intelligence on the Jacobite army, just as O’Haggerty had been able to provide Tyrconnel with similar military intelligence. The Jacobite army, said Osborne, was short of ammunition and ‘though their horses are good, yet their riders were but contemptible fellows, many of them having lately been cowherds etc’. This latter observation was a very inaccurate assessment of the Irish cavalry and suggests that Osborne was allowing some of his own prejudices to colour his judgement. The Council, said Osborne, should resist rather than accept Tyrconnel’s promises since the latter would certainly renege on these and make paupers and slaves of Ulster’s Protestants. As if to support Osborne’s comments on the untrustworthiness of Tyrconnel, the emissary the Council had sent to William had just returned with a promise of support and assistance to ‘rescue you from the oppressions and terrors you lie under’. The message from William and Osborne’s recommendations combined to strengthen the resolve of the Council, which chose to send a message to Tyrconnel saying that they would not lay down their arms but that they would negotiate with the Lord Deputy. Such negotiation would be conducted only on terms that recognized their rights and allowed them freedom of religion and civil liberty.28

  The Council had made one major error. Its members, deeply involved in debate and politicking, had failed to heed Osborne’s warning that Hamilton’s army was closing on them. Now they learned to their collective horror that Hamilton was almost upon them. Sir Arthur Rawdon, known as the ‘Cock of the North’ and one of the men deemed unpardonable by Tyrconnel, led a small force of yeomanry cavalry to meet Hamilton at the nearby village of Dromore in County Down.

  Rawdon’s soubriquet suggests that he may have been a man who exuded confidence and he certainly seems to have been considered a leader. Whatever his qualities, these proved of no avail in the encounter with the Jacobite army which became a débâcle. Rawdon’s force had formed a blocking line, intended to deny passage to Hamilton, but on sighting the Jacobite army the Ulstermen panicked and fled the field. This was a clear case of raw, unblooded soldiers, with inadequate leadership, losing confidence when faced with the enemy. Their natural instinct for survival took over and their horses carried them away from instead of towards the enemy. Robert Lundy recorded that he had an ‘express’ – an urgent despatch – from Sir Arthur Rawdon on about 11 or 12 March telling him that Rawdon’s soldiers had run away at ‘the sight of a few troops of the vanguard of the Irish Army’ at Dromore.

  Jacobite cavalry chased the fleeing Ulstermen through Hillsborough. Some hundred yeomen were lost, and resistance in the area simply melted away. Rawdon told Lundy that his men at Lisnagarvey – modern Lisburn – and Hillsborough had fled when they saw their comrades retreating in haste from Dromore; at neither place did the Williamites even see a single Jacobite soldier. Of those who had been in Rawdon’s force, many made for their own homes and accepted promises of protection from Hamilton. This humiliating defeat for the Ulstermen was quickly dubbed the ‘Break of Dromore’ and led to Jacobite domination of almost all of east Ulster.

  Following the Break of Dromore many Protestants from the eastern counties of Ulster took ship to Scotland or England, believing that their cause in Ireland was lost.29 These included ‘many of the officers’, among whose number was Lord Mount-Alexander. But Arthur Rawdon was made of sterner stuff and was determined to continue the fight, gathering together a force of several thousand men and leading them to Coleraine. The level of panic among Ulster’s Protestants was indicated by the thousands of refugees who were also making for the protection of Coleraine, as their predecessors had done nearly fifty years before. Coleraine was not the sole objective for refugees since many more were tramping the roads for Enniskillen and Londonderry. Macaulay provides a description that is at once harrowing and vivid:

  The flight became wild and tumultuous, the fugitives broke down the bridges and burned the ferryboats. Whole towns, the seats of Protestant population, were left in ruins without one inhabitant. The people of Omagh destroyed their own dwellings so utterly that no roof was left to shelter the enemy from the rain and wind. The people of Cavan migrated in one body to Enniskillen. The day was wet and stormy. The road was deep in mire. It was a piteous sight to see, mingled with the armed men, the women and children, weeping, famished and toiling through the mud up to their knees.30

  Rawdon and his men reached Coleraine on 15 March where they prepared to meet the expected attack by Hamilton. However, the threat was not quite as imminent as the defenders might have thought since the Jacobites were indulging in a frenzy of looting.

  Learning from Rawdon of the retreat, Lundy had countermanded his earlier orders for Dungannon and sent a message to Captain Stewart to withdraw his party from there, leaving only an officer and forty or fifty men in the castle. The remainder Stewart was to lead to Coleraine. However, most of the troops under Stewart’s command refused to follow him to Coleraine when they learned of the extent of the Jacobite advance; the bulk of these men returned to their own homes. Lundy also wrote to Rawdon to tell him that he would join him at Coleraine the next day and exp
ressing sympathy for his plight and sorrow at the cowardice of his men. And he ordered troops to deploy to Portglenone to cut the bridge there.

  At the same time Lundy called a meeting of the leading citizens of Derry, telling them of the enormity of the strategic situation. It was now inevitable that a Jacobite army would march on the city and preparations had to be completed. Chief among these preparations was the storing of ‘provisions of all kinds’. Although there was no money to pay for these, there was a promise of £30,000 to come from England and, on the basis of that promise, he had appointed four ‘known men’ as storekeepers while proclamations were to be made by beat of drum throughout the town asking people to bring in provisions for the store. Although there were as yet no funds to reimburse them, they were asked to have faith that they would be paid from the first money that became available.

  Lundy’s inspections of the city walls now led him to persuade the corporation to order the demolition of buildings immediately outside the walls, thereby preventing attackers from using them as cover under which to approach and scale the walls. If this were not done, he warned, attackers could lodge themselves within ten yards of the walls and the city could not be held in such circumstances. The demolition of these buildings would also provide the defenders with a clear field of fire. Lundy was proving that he had the eye of a professional soldier. A further innovation at his behest reinforces that perception of the Scot.

  For much of their length the city walls created a formidable obstacle to an attacker because of the topography of the one-time island on which the city stands. Even today the observer on the walls can see this. On the east side, between the Coward’s Bastion and the Water Bastion, the Foyle made it undesirable to launch an attack since this would have to be by boat, would be obvious long beforehand and would have to be carried out in the face of heavy fire. From the Coward’s Bastion to the Double Bastion the ground fell away below the walls, creating a steep, natural glacis that would have forced attackers to approach through a hail of fire. The same held true for that section of wall from the Water Bastion to the Ferry Gate. Only the length of wall from the Ferry Gate to the Church Bastion and then across by Bishop’s Gate to the Double Bastion remained and it was the area most vulnerable to attack. Moreover, the most likely direction from which an attack might come was from the south, thereby further emphasizing this stretch of wall as the city’s weakest point; the wall from the Church Bastion to the Double Bastion faces southwards.

  Recognizing this factor Lundy proposed that ‘a ravelling must be mad out at Bishop’s Gate which was the weakest place of the towne, considering the high ground that was without it’. What Lundy was suggesting, the construction of a ravelin, was a relatively new concept in military engineering, which would increase and project the defences of the city in that area. The ravelin, or half-moon, fortification was the brainchild of the leading military engineer of his day: Sébastien le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban, who later became a marshal of France. In spite of the term half-moon, a ravelin was a triangular-shaped fortification; the base of Lundy’s ravelin was against the city walls with its apex some distance forward.4 Vauban is acknowledged as one of the greatest names in siege engineering; only Archimedes compares with him. In proposing the construction of a Vauban-type work at Bishop’s Gate, Lundy was not only demonstrating that he had a good eye for ground but that he was au fait with the most modern ideas in military engineering. These facts suggest that Lundy was a thoroughly professional soldier, something that should be borne in mind when considering future developments in this story.

  On the day after the meeting Lundy had the ground marked out for the ravelin and also ordered men to begin demolishing the houses close to the walls. Officers were appointed to oversee the work. But the work on the southern defences of the city was not restricted to building the ravelin. Lundy pushed the defences out even farther with the construction of a line of outworks in the area of Windmill Hill and between that hill and the river Foyle. Having ensured that the work had begun and having appointed the overseers, Lundy then ‘took horse with Colonel Hamilton for Coleraine’. En route they met Sir Arthur Rawdon, who must have been on his way to Derry but who turned back to Coleraine with them.

  In Coleraine Lundy had all the officers in the garrison gathered together and emphasized the necessity to re-organize the broken forces that had fallen back on the town. Once their numbers were known, these men should be formed into companies and battalions with officers appointed to command them; of the nine regiments that retreated from Down and Antrim, the colonels of only two had thus far come to Coleraine. Lundy assured them that the forces of Derry, Donegal and Tyrone were marching to support them and that Lord Blaney with his men was also on the march, from the south of the province. Once these units were in place there would be a considerable body of men in Coleraine which Lundy considered ‘a good post and easy to be kept, considering their number and the strength of the place’.

  A plan for the defence of the town was drawn up. While a garrison would be posted in Coleraine itself, the remainder of the force would deploy along the Bann to oppose the Jacobites if they attempted to cross the river. The latter element should be no more than an hour’s march away so that it could move quickly to Coleraine if the town were to come under attack. Lundy’s proposals seem to have impressed the officers so much that they urged him to stay and command the garrison as governor but he told them that he could not do so, although Colonel Hamilton would return to command in two days’ time. This seemed to pacify the bulk of the officers.

  However, not everyone was happy, and some of the subaltern officers5 and almost all the soldiers ‘began to be very troublesome’. The soldiers claim to have been betrayed by their officers and drew up the drawbridge to prevent Lundy leaving the town, even threatening him with their weapons. Showing considerable coolness, Lundy asked them to put up their arms and explain their grievances to him. They had no satisfactory answer although the bridge was let down. Lundy was compelled to stay all day to pacify the garrison and commented that he had never seen such disorder and distraction with ‘everybody running up and down like mad men’. Next day the garrison was still mutinous but under arms, and Lundy, keen to return to Derry, had to ask Rawdon to place some of his reliable men on the bridge so that he could leave. Rawdon did so, but it was not until that night that Lundy was able, with considerable difficulty, to get away from Coleraine. He rode all night to get to Derry where he impressed upon the civic leaders the importance of supporting Coleraine. Should the latter fall, declared Lundy, the enemy would be at the gates of the city in four days. A sum of £300 was raised to be sent to Coleraine with Colonel Hamilton who ‘in a short while put the men on a good foot for they began to obey, they being under pay’. It seems that one of the main grievances of the Coleraine garrison was that they were being asked to risk their lives to ‘preserve their landlords’ estates for nothing’.

  At Coleraine the figure of Jonathan Mitchelburne appears once again. Commanding Skeffington’s Regiment, Mitchelburne had driven Colonel O’Neill from Toome castle before escorting Clotworthy Skeffington’s wife and niece from Antrim to Coleraine, for which service Skeffington gave Mitchelburne command of his regiment and presented him with his charger, ‘Bloody-bones’, and his scimitar. Having done so, Skeffington then fled Ulster for safety in England. But, although present when the Jacobites first attacked the town, Mitchelburne disagreed with Gustavus Hamilton about the defence of Coleraine and marched off with his regiment towards Londonderry.31

  On 8 March, the day after Tyrconnel issued his proclamation with its offer of pardon or promise of retribution, at Whitehall in London, the Secretary of State, Lord Shrewsbury,6 was writing a letter to Robert Lundy:

  I am commanded by the king to acquaint you that his Majesty’s greatest concern hath been for Ireland, and particularly for the province of Ulster, which he looks upon as most capable to defend itself against the common enemy. And that they might be the better enabled to do it, there a
re two regiments already at the sea side ready to embark, in order to their transportation into that province, with which will be sent a good quantity of arms and ammunition. And they will be speedily followed by so considerable a body, as (by the blessing of God) may be able to rescue the whole kingdom, and re-settle the protestant interest there. His Majesty does very much rely upon your fidelity and resolution, not only that you shall acquit yourself according to the character he has received of you, but that you should encourage and influence others in this difficult conjuncture to discharge their duty to their country, their religion, and posterity, all which call upon them for a more than ordinary vigour, to keep out that deluge of Romish superstition and slavery which so nearly threatens them. And you may assure them, besides his Majesty’s care for their preservation, who hath a due tenderness and regard for them, (as well in consideration that they are his subjects, as that they are now exposed for the sake of that religion which he himself professes,) the whole bent of this nation inclines them to employ their utmost endeavours for their deliverance; and it was but this very morning that his Majesty hath most effectually recommended the case of Ireland to the two houses of parliament. And I do not doubt but they will thereupon immediately come to such resolutions, as will show to all the world that they espouse their interest as their own.

  As to your own particular, you will always find the king graciously disposed to own and reward the services you shall do him in such a time of trial.32

  It took some time for this letter to reach Lundy but it was in his hands, as we shall see, by 21 March. It was also to be read at the council of war convened in the city on 10 April, just over a month after Shrewsbury put pen to paper. Much happened during that month.

  Richard Hamilton’s army reached Coleraine on 27 March. The garrison was now commanded by Gustavus Hamilton and the town’s defences had been improved, although they were still not impressive, in spite of Lundy’s earlier comments, and the Williamite soldiery had been given time to regain some confidence. This appears to have been an aspect of Coleraine’s defence that Richard Hamilton had not bargained for; his army was not prepared for a siege and carried only sufficient provisions for two days.33 The Jacobite commander, having seen the rout at Dromore, must have expected a similar reaction at Coleraine. But the defenders were determined to put up a better fight than at Dromore and now had the advantage of some fixed defences. The first Jacobite attack was repulsed. There followed an exchange of fire between the artillery on either side as well as between the opposing infantrymen. But with reinforcements on their way, the advantage lay with the Jacobites, and Hamilton decided that he would leave the reinforcing regiments to mask, or contain, the Coleraine garrison and move against Derry with his main force. This, he reasoned, would force Gustavus Hamilton to abandon Coleraine for fear of being cut off from Derry. In this thinking the Jacobite Hamilton was proved right.34