A besieging army should also have begun the circumvallation – the digging of an encircling entrenchment – of Londonderry. However, this was a task of almost impossible proportions for the Jacobites. To excavate the necessary trenches would have required thousands of pickaxes, spades and shovels, but such tools had not been brought with the army. Acquiring them would take time and they would probably have to be brought from Dublin. This lack of digging equipment is another indication that the Jacobites had not been expecting a prolonged siege. So, also, was the lack of ladders which would be essential in any attack on the city since many of the soldiers would be expected to escalade, or climb, the walls using ladders. Of course, these could have been manufactured locally since there was no shortage of wood from trees in the area but obtaining wood meant chopping down trees which required axes which were also in short supply. Even with the trees felled, there remained the lack of the many woodworking tools, including saws, adzes, augers and chisels, needed to turn the wood from its raw state into the components of ladders. These tools would also have to be brought from Dublin, if not from France, such would have been the quantity required.
The Jacobites were not alone in beginning active operations on the 21st. At noon that day Adam Murray led a force of 300 cavalry with a large detachment of infantry out of the city to attack the Jacobite camp at Pennyburn. Since the names of four company commanders are recorded, this force probably included four infantry companies and, therefore, some 240 men; the companies were commanded by Captains Archibald Sanderson, Beatty and Thomas Blair, as well as Lieutenant David Blair. A further force of infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel John Cairns (actually the second-in-command of Murray’s regiment) and Captain Philip Dunbar was also deployed on rising ground close to Pennyburn to cover Murray’s eventual withdrawal to the city. Sitting on the route from Culmore, the Jacobites’ Pennyburn camp represented one of the most serious threats to the garrison since the Jacobites there could cut off the city from receiving any supplies or reinforcements that might be landed at Culmore.43
Murray divided his cavalry into two squadrons, the first of which he commanded himself while the other was led by Major Bell, from County Meath. The first squadron led the attack on the Jacobites and was engaged by Jacobite cavalry, as was Bell’s squadron. Captain Cochran was bringing up the rear of Murray’s cavalry and ‘whilst some of his men were thrown into disorder, [Cochran] with a few spirited companions, bravely encountered the enemy’.44 It would seem from this account that some of Cochran’s men were shocked enough to want to make an escape but their captain’s example appears to have restored the situation since his men then fought with determination. Cochran himself was wounded badly in one leg and had his horse shot under him.45 The Jacobites fought well, as was to be expected from their cavalry, which, on this occasion, had the overall commander at Derry at their head. Maumont’s presence at Pennyburn during this battle was not planned. He had been at his headquarters, some miles away, when an alarm about Murray’s attack was received together with a call for reinforcements. Maumont decided to lead those reinforcements and took with him a troop of horse, ordering a troop of dragoons to join him on the way. His decision was to prove fatal: Maumont was killed in the early moments of the clash between Jacobite and Williamite cavalry. Allegedly his death occurred in a hand-to-hand fight with Adam Murray although there is no firm evidence to prove this; Avaux reported that he fell to a musket ball in the head, along with one of his aides de camp and a brother of Lord Carlingford.46 The Murray family possessed a sword, said to have been Maumont’s, in 1788.47
When further Jacobite cavalry reinforcements hit the rear of his squadrons, Murray ordered a withdrawal. His force was pursued hotly by Jacobites but the latter rode into an ambush since ‘In the meantime, Colonel Murray’s reserve of infantry advanced down on the strand, and lining the ditches by which the enemy’s troops had to return, cut off a great number of them.’48
Berwick, who may have been the leader of that pursuit, although a Jacobite account suggests that it was Lord Galmoy, recorded that not one man or horse of the Jacobite cavalry who survived did so without injury. Among the other Jacobite dead on this day was Major John Taaffe who was ‘a younger son of the late old earl of Carlingford’, Major Waggon (actually Wogan) of Sir Maurice Eustace’s Regiment, Captain Fitzgerald and Quarter Master Cassore.49
On the defenders’ side this had been a well-planned and well-executed operation with Adam Murray showing both a fine tactical sense and a good appreciation of co-operation between cavalry and infantry. It is possible that Murray might have been a soldier at some earlier stage in his life although no evidence survives to support this theory. His father had been a cavalry officer and Adam certainly proved to be both a very good officer and an inspiring leader. He had now given the defenders’ morale a substantial boost while the Jacobites must have been demoralized by what had happened at Pennyburn; not only had Maumont been killed but they also lost colours to the Williamites. Maumont’s decision to lead the reinforcements calls into question his judgement as a commander since his place was not in the thick of battle but to oversee all operations. Of his courage there can be no doubt and he was probably trying to raise the morale of his men. Although Murray’s men had suffered fatalities as well, these would have been offset by the morale effect of their success which enhanced the reputation of their commander. Among the Williamite dead were Lieutenant McPhedris,4 Cornet Brown, Mr McKee, ‘one Harkness and five or six private soldiers’.51 Only one of the cavalry troopers involved in this action is recorded for posterity: Trooper Tom Barr who features in the account from Doctor Joseph Aickin, one of the defenders, who later wrote an epic that certainly does not merit the description of poetry5 called Londerias, or a Narrative of the Siege of London-Derry. In his execrable verse Aickin recorded that ‘Tom Barr, a trooper, with one mighty blow/Cut off the head of an opposing foe’.52 That Murray was becoming more popular in the city is shown by Walker’s inclusion in his account of the siege of a story of how he himself had gone to assist Murray when the latter was hard-pressed.53 Walker’s version must be treated with scepticism. The victory was Murray’s and his alone.
Two days later the Jacobites added four field guns to the demi-culverin already emplaced at Stronge’s orchard, and the five guns began a bombardment. The additional weapons were sited closer to the city: both Mackenzie, who refers only to two additional guns, and Walker place them at about eighty perches (about 440 yards) from the town; this would have put the guns close to the riverbank.54 Their fire on this occasion killed several people and caused considerable damage to buildings but the Williamite artillery ‘returned the fire with spirit, and killed Lieut-Colonel O’Neill, Lieutenant Fitzpatrick, two sergeants, some private soldiers and two friars dressed in their canonicals’.55 In addition to their overall commander the Jacobites had now lost a regimental commander – O’Neill – and two of their chaplains. They added mortars to the artillery in Stronge’s orchard the following day and these fired by day and night. Their high trajectory meant that the mortars were particularly frightening; their bombs would sail high into the air to plummet down through the roofs of buildings so that no one could feel safe anywhere inside the city’s walls.
While the Jacobites were emplacing their mortars in the orchard, Adam Murray was leading another foray on the western side of the Foyle. This time his objective was a set of Jacobite trenchworks at Elagh, about a mile north of Pennyburn. The infantry manning the trenches quit their positions when attacked by Murray’s cavalry and were pursued by Williamite infantry, Murray having once again taken out a mixed force. However, the Williamite infantry were soon on the retreat themselves as a group of Jacobite cavalry appeared to protect their infantry. Now it was the turn of the Williamites to flee, which they did until they reached the trenches so recently taken from the Jacobites. There Murray rallied his men, both cavalry and infantry, and the two sides clashed in an engagement ‘which continued till near the evening’.56 Murray lost two m
en killed and another ten wounded. Jacobite losses are not known save for two: the new commander, the French general Pusignan, had been involved in the battle and had been injured seriously. Within days Pusignan had breathed his last.657 His death seems to have been due not so much to his wound, which might not have been serious, but from the ministrations of the Irish surgeons. The other known Jacobite fatality was Captain Maurice Fitzgerald. A further senior French officer also wounded at Pennyburn, the artillery and engineer commander Jean Bernard Louis Desjean, Marquis de Pointis,7 a naval officer, refused to be treated by the Irish surgeons. This was a wise decision. A skilled surgeon did arrive from Dublin but was too late to save Pusignan, although he probably helped de Pointis.59 Since France was far ahead of any other nation in the treatment of battlefield trauma at this time, it is safe to assume that the new surgeon was a Frenchman. The London Gazette subsequently published a report, said to have come from Holyhead on 1 May, of a ‘second sally from Londonderry’ and the news that ‘M. de Pusignan and the French bombadeer were both dead of the wounds received in the former sallies’.60 That ‘bombadeer’ was, of course, de Pointis, who was still very much in the land of the living.
The Jacobites had now suffered the loss of two commanders in less than a week. Such losses cannot have done any good for morale in the Jacobite army, which was probably worsened by the knowledge that not only had de Pointis been injured but that the Duke of Berwick was also hors de combat, having been wounded; so too was Dominic Sheldon, an English Jacobite from an old Warwickshire family. It seemed that the Jacobite command was being culled in a very effective manner. Command of the besieging army now devolved on Richard Hamilton. Of him Avaux wrote that his ‘incapacity was so great that it made his fidelity suspect’. However, comments about Hamilton by Avaux must be considered in the light of Louis XIV’s opinion of the Irishman: Hamilton had dared to pay attention to a lady of the French court and his behaviour had earned him the opprobrium of the Sun King who had regarded him as being of insufficient social standing to consort with a lady of high breeding: ‘an amour with one of the monarch’s illegitimate daughters drew down on him the ire of Louis XIV’.61 Thus Avaux knew that any adverse remarks about Hamilton would find an eager reader in Louis. We have another assessment of Hamilton from Macaulay, who described him as having no pretensions to being a great general although he was both a brave officer and a gentleman. However, Macaulay adds, he had never seen a siege. Although Hamilton had no direct experience of a siege, he served with French officers who knew all about siege warfare while, inside the walls, such experience was now probably limited to Baker and Mitchelburne.
Hamilton thus succeeded to the command almost by default. The euphoria of his pursuit of the Williamites across Ulster to Derry had by now evaporated in the reality of the situation for his army before the city. Indeed Hamilton’s command hardly deserved the description of ‘army’. One of his first tasks as commander was to report to Dublin, and his despatch made gloomy reading since he needed, urgently, all the paraphernalia of siege warfare, including heavy artillery and more men. Around Derry he deployed only six single-battalion regiments, none of which could muster its full strength of 600 men. His entire force could not have been much more than 3,000 strong, which is in stark contrast to the figure of over 20,000 put forward by Williamite writers.62 Hamilton also bemoaned the lack of serviceability of his men’s firearms with only one musket in ten fit to fire; this problem of unserviceable weaponry was a major headache for the Jacobites since Ireland’s gunsmiths were all Protestant and, therefore, unlikely to do other than sabotage any Jacobite weapons brought to them for repair.
Adam Murray had demonstrated a particularly aggressive spirit during these opening days of the siege. That aggression had already cost the Jacobites dear, and it is possible that Murray was aware of his opponents’ lack of strength in depth and was trying to damage further their morale. But he could not have been expecting the personal turn of events to which this would lead. The Jacobites had already recognized Murray as the defenders’ outstanding military leader and the man who had caused them most difficulties through his pursuit of aggressive tactics. Hamilton knew that Murray’s father lived nearby and decided to use the father to coerce the son. Some days later, at the beginning of May, he had Murray senior brought from his farm at Faughanvale to the Jacobite headquarters and then sent to the city to persuade his son to bring the rebellion to an end; otherwise Hamilton threatened that he would have the older man hanged.63 Although Gabriel Murray (one source gives his name as John) agreed to undertake this mission, he told Hamilton that he believed that it would be fruitless since he knew his son too well to believe that he would be dissuaded from his present course even by Hamilton’s threat. Both Murrays met at the city walls, where Gabriel relayed Hamilton’s message to Adam but then produced a bible on which he urged his son never to yield to popish power. His task over, Murray senior returned to Hamilton’s camp to meet his fate. But Hamilton’s gentlemanly instincts supervened his threat and he had the old man escorted home where he remained under protection from Jacobite troops for the remainder of the campaign.64
That Murray senior was granted protection by the Jacobites raises a question about the threat posed by King James’ army to the Protestants of north-west Ulster. Indeed, the very fact that Gabriel Murray had already been living close to the city bears scrutiny. Nor was he alone in this; there were many other Protestants living close to the city, with some of them visiting the city from time to time. Walker relates that 10,000 refugees left Derry as the siege began and that ‘many more grew weary of us’ as the siege wore on.65 Although the figure of 10,000 is undoubtedly exaggerated, it begs the question: where did these people go? It seems that most of them, lacking the means to sail to Scotland or England, remained close by. This surely casts doubt on that part of the mythology of the siege that avers that the Jacobites were intent on destroying Protestantism. If this really was the case, why did they not slaughter those Protestants who were living outside the walls?
Murray and his father had scored yet another psychological blow against the Jacobites but the latter could now claim one significant success: they had taken Culmore Fort. This was a serious reverse for the defenders since the fort, at Culmore Point, dominated the narrows where the Foyle flows into Lough Foyle. Any relief fleet for the city would have to pass under the shadow of the fort, and with it in Jacobite hands the chances of a fleet trying to force the narrows were much reduced. Culmore had been lost by the Williamites without a fight; no shots had been fired nor any blood spilt. Less than three weeks later the London Gazette published an account of the surrender of Culmore, suggesting that the garrison, although equipped with three cannon, had run out of fresh water.66
Instead of attacking the fort, the Jacobites used subterfuge to take their objective; Mitchelburne asserted that ‘King James did tamper with Captain Robert [Galbraith], Captain William and Benjamin Adaire for the surrender of Kilmore’.67 William Adair, of Ballymena, was the commander of the 300-strong garrison at Culmore but knew little of what was happening upriver in the city since communications were poor. He was convinced by the Jacobite argument that his troops had little chance against the Irish army and was promised that the conventions of siege warfare would be observed: his soldiers would be permitted to march out with all their possessions, including their swords, as well as horses and pistols in the case of the officers. Even though Berwick, who led the troops at Culmore, later wrote that his force had ‘not the means of taking [Culmore fort]’, Adair accepted the Jacobite version of events and handed the fort over. Ash tells us that
Within a fortnight after the siege began, Culmore was betrayed to Gen. Hamilton by two of the Adairs, and long Galbraith the attorney, who, it is said, sold it to the enemy for a considerable sum of money. I have heard since, that one of the Adairs has lost his senses; I know not how true this may be; but certainly God Almighty will not let such treachery go unpunished.68
The garrison of Culmo
re Fort was allowed to march out but when the soldiers reached Coleraine they found a different attitude among the Jacobite soldiers there: ‘they were not only disarmed but stripped to their shirts, their money all taken from them and they themselves sent a ’begging by order of Colonel Charles Moor, Governor of the Town’. A protest to Richard Hamilton brought the response that he would punish any Jacobite soldiers who could be shown to have been among the transgressors at Coleraine.69
It is surprising that, in spite of Culmore’s importance to the overall defence of the city, some weeks passed before its loss became known to the defenders; the news seems to have been known in London before it was known in Londonderry. Even then this was only through letters found on the bodies of dead Irish officers. One wonders how an episode such as the fort’s garrison marching out could not have been reported to the city. The garrison must have been ferried across the river close to Culmore if they were able to reach Coleraine without their departure being known to their overall commanders.
By now the Irish army was deployed from St Johnston ‘along the country about eight miles in length and Brook Hall was ordered for the Duke of Berwick, Mr Fitz-James, and General Hamilton’s quarters’ 70 (Mr Fitz-James was Berwick, the title referring to his being an illegitimate son of James.) Culmore was now garrisoned by about a hundred men while two regiments of infantry were based at Pennyburn with most of the infantry being close by. About St Johnston and Carrigans in Donegal was to be found the greatest part of the Jacobite cavalry, with two regiments of horse under Galmoy and Sir Maurice Eustace of Castlemartin plus Lord Duleek’s regiment of dragoons. In all there were about 7,000 Jacobites west of the Foyle and another 3,000 on the east side of the river.71
The Siege of Derry 1689 Page 14