now begin to watch us more narrowly. They raise great batteries [gun positions] opposite to the ships, and line both sides of the river with great numbers of fire locks [muskets] They draw down their guns to Charles-Fort, a place of some strength upon the narrow part of the river, where the ships were to pass.31
This was at the boom, and Walker confesses that this increased fortification of the approaches to the city not only troubled those within the walls but left them with little hope.32
Roche and Cromie had failed to bring information back to the fleet, which had been the main objective of their expedition to the city. The former was now in the city where he made efforts to signal to the fleet from the tower of the cathedral. His method was to use flag signals and, on 29 June, these were seen from the fleet, but the latter had no idea what was meant: a larger flag than usual had been flying from the tower and this was ‘lowered and hoisted four times’ and two guns were fired. Opinions on the ships were divided about the meaning of this flag: some thought that it was a Jacobite flag taken in a sally the previous night, while others considered it to be a symbol of bravado and a mark of the garrison’s last success against the Jacobites. No one on the fleet would have known that there had been a determined attempt by the Jacobites to take the city the previous night; they believed that the sounds of firing that they had heard had been the defenders sallying out.
Observation from the ships to the city would have been very difficult and, although the city had the advantage of height, especially from the cathedral tower, weather conditions reduced visibility. On 28 June there was ‘much wind and rain’ in a day when Richards described the weather as ‘very thick’, and two days later he was recording similar conditions. Since Roche’s signalling had no effect another attempt to send a messenger was made. A man called McGimpsey, whose first name is not recorded, approached Adam Murray and volunteered to swim down the Foyle with a despatch for Kirke. He carried in a bladder three letters in one of which the garrison’s commanders implored Kirke to bring relief as they could not hold out for more than another six or seven days before being compelled to surrender. McGimpsey took to the water from the Ship Quay two hours before midnight on 26 June, the bladder around his neck and weighted with musket balls so that he might cut the string that held it to his body and allow it to sink in the event of interception.33
The unfortunate but courageous McGimpsey was not to be seen alive again. He drowned in the river, possibly by hitting the boom, which the defenders thought to be broken, and had no time to cut the string. His body was washed ashore, as the Foyle almost always gives up its dead, and was found by the Jacobites who hanged the corpse from a gallows and called across to the garrison that they had captured and hanged the messenger. But the Jacobites had the letters from the garrison, and these, with that counsel of despair from senior officers in the city,5 must have been a source of great satisfaction to them.34 In fact, that satisfaction was soon transmitted by letter to King James by Marshal Conrad de Rosen, who had just arrived back at the city. George Walker notes that it was about 24 June, ‘or thereabouts, [that] Conrad de Rosen, Marshal General of the Irish forces, is received into the enemies camp’, although Mackenzie puts his return some four days earlier.35 What is unquestioned is that the siege now began to take on a different complexion.
Conrad de Rosen had brought reinforcements from Dublin for the Jacobite army and had decided on a plan to use those reinforcements to bring about a speedy surrender of the recalcitrant garrison and townspeople. On 26 June one of the senior Irish officers, Colonel Gordon O’Neill6 sought a conference with some of the garrison’s commanders. Colonel Lance and Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell went out to meet with O’Neill who informed them that King James had told Rosen that
if the city would surrender, all those who chose to go to their respective dwellings, should have liberty to do so, and any losses they should sustain, should be made up to them by reprisals; and those who would enter his army and take the oath of allegiance to him, should be entertained without distinction of religion; and those who wished to go to England or Scotland, should have free liberty. These were the conditions, which he said should be performed by King James tomorrow.36
An answer was to be given to O’Neill that night and it seems that it was at this time that McGimpsey left the city on his doomed expedition to reach Kirke’s force in the lough. But it was not until the next day that Lance and Campbell returned to meet O’Neill with the garrison’s answer, ‘which it seems was not agreeable’.37 That night ten mortar bombs fell into the city, one of which fell on a house in Bishop’s Street, the home of Joseph Gallaugher. Two barrels of powder were stored in the house and these were detonated by the bomb, as a result of which fourteen died. Ash noted that his own quarters received a hit from a mortar bomb which ‘fell upon the lanthorn . . . knocked down the dormant, then fell into the street’ but without doing any harm. By now the mortars were firing from the west side of the city, and areas that had been considered relatively safe were no longer so.38
Walker claimed that Rosen, having found that the besieging army had made no progress in the siege,
expressed himself with great fury against us, and swore by the belly of God, he would demolish our town and bury us in its ashes, putting all to the sword, without consideration of age or sex, and would study the most exquisite torments to lengthen the misery and pain of all he found obstinate.
This rather fanciful piece of prose suggests that Walker had detailed information from the Jacobite camp about Rosen’s state of mind. He then goes to state that no one was to be allowed to mention the idea of surrender ‘upon pain of death’, telling his readers that he, the governor, made an order to this effect. As with much of Walker’s writings this stands in contrast to the preceding words that indicate that no one would consider surrender since they had the strength of God to protect them.39
Further contradiction is included in the information that people were deserting the city on a daily basis and providing information to the enemy. As a result, the stores of ammunition in the city had to be moved frequently. But there was precious little ammunition left in the magazines, and the garrison had to improvize with their own locally-produced shot. This was made from ‘balls of brick, cast over with lead, to the weight of our iron ball’. Lead from damaged buildings provided some of the raw material for these ‘Derrymade’ rounds but the principal source was the lead covering that had been removed from the wooden spire of the cathedral. Although Walker wrote that the Williamite gunners were not ‘great artists’, they were ‘very industrious’ and ‘scarce spent a shot without doing some remarkable execution’.40 Once again this is an implausible boast.
Having received a rebuff to his overtures for a surrender, Rosen now began preparations for a determined attack on the city. Three mortars and several guns were emplaced south of the city ‘against the Windmill side of the town’ (this was the redeployment of the mortars mentioned above), while two culverins were brought into position opposite Butcher’s Gate.41 These were, as we have seen, either 17- or 20-pounders but more likely the latter as they were French weapons. Although not the ideal weapons for battering a wall, two culverins could be fairly effective where there was already a weakness, and the weakness in this case was provided by the opening in the wall that was Butcher’s Gate. Rosen also deployed his sappers and miners, with the former excavating a sap towards the half bastion at the gate. This, Walker describes thus: ‘He runs a line out of Bog Street up within ten perches [fifty-five yards] of the half bastion of that gate, in order to prepare matters for laying and springing a mine.’ (There is no record of the line becoming a tunnel, although that is probable and would have been standard practice; it would certainly have had to be subterranean by the time it reached the half bastion.) In addition, the Jacobites pushed closer to the Williamite outworks, which was intended both to cause problems in relieving the garrisons of those outworks and prevent the besieged from drawing water from St Columb’s well.42
This was a period of great activity and probably the most intense spell of operations during the entire siege. It was also the period when the city stood in most danger of being taken by the Jacobites. Rosen was applying all the skills of a commander experienced in siege warfare with all the resources available to him, and he must have been confident of success. Jacobite soldiers were posted in strength along the sap and were poised to seize any Williamite outworks where the defenders might slacken their watch.43
Active in the Williamite ranks was Colonel Jonathan Mitchelburne who had some experience of siege warfare; although Walker claims the credit for some of the defence’s tactics, especially the blind, there can be no doubt that an experienced soldier, and not Walker, was directing operations. One Williamite account, usually favourable to Walker, describes Mitchelburne’s reaction to this Jacobite activity:
Unremitting vigilance and exertion on the part of the enemy were directed to the mining of the gunner’s bastion,8 and for the object of approaching close to the walls if possible. Their designs having been perceived by Colonel Mitchelburne, that officer ordered a blind or screen to be erected before Butcher’s-gate, under the superintendence of Captain Schomberg, that the gate might not be demolished by the enemy’s guns, as well as to enable the troops of the garrison to prevent the enemy from sapping the bastion.44
However, some idea of the intensity of those few days is given by Walker’s account.
The enemy fired continually from their trenches and we make them due returns with sufficient damage to them; for few days passed, but some of the choice and most forward of their men fell by our arms and firing.45
Some scepticism should be exercised when reading this comment since the Williamite guns on the walls would not have been able to depress sufficiently to engage the forward Jacobite positions while the soldiers there would have ensured that they remained out of effective range of musketeers on the walls. It is unlikely that many Jacobites were injured during this phase while Rosen’s artillery continued to pound at the half bastion.
The assault was launched on the night of 28 June, according to both Ash and Mackenzie, but Walker dates it two days later.46 In the Jacobite van was Lord Clancarty’s Regiment, which had joined the besieging force only recently; it may have been among the reinforcements to accompany Conrad de Rosen on his journey from Dublin. Lord Clancarty, Donough Macarthy, was a young nobleman, nephew to Lord Mountcashel and, as is so often the case with young officers, intent on achieving glory. Avaux, the French ambassador, had written scathingly of him to his master, saying that the Irishman was both a ‘young madcap and a little dissolute’. But a young madcap was perhaps the best type of leader to conduct an assault such as that being launched on this June night. Furthermore, it seems that Clancarty might have felt himself destined to achieve success: Walker notes that the Irish ‘had a prophecy among them, that a Clancarty should knock at the gates of Derry’. In fact, the attack was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Skelton, under whose overall command Clancarty’s Regiment was operating.47
That night the Jacobite mortarmen fired twenty bombs into the city, killing a man, two women and a child ‘and afterward Alex Poke’s wife,9 her mother and brother’.48 Then, at 10 o’clock, the defenders were hit by the leading elements of Clancarty’s force, which reached the half bastion. En route, the Williamite line, or counter sap, was seized and miners were able to reach a low cellar beneath the bastion. Ash notes that the attackers ‘came over the bog, opposite Butcher’s Gate, and with ease possessed themselves of our works, there being but few to oppose them’.49 It seems that the attackers had achieved the vital element of surprise. The leading Jacobites were now so close to the walls that the defenders above could not engage them. To anyone with an inkling of what siege warfare entailed, this was a prelude to a mine being blown beneath the already weakened half bastion, after which a forlorn hope would fight its way through the breach into the city. That would be followed by a larger party of Jacobite troops, with grenadiers to the fore, and the defenders would soon be fighting for their lives.
One of Skelton’s men, who was on horseback, rode close to the gate and called for fire to burn it. But at least two of the defending officers had kept cool heads and their immediate actions were to save the day for the defenders. Captains Noble and Dunbar assembled a small group of defenders, no more than sixty to eighty at first, and led them out of the city through Bishop’s Gate; they were soon followed by other troops. The first group of defenders to sally out made their way under cover of the walls without attracting the attention of the Jacobites. Waiting until they were close to their enemies, they opened fire. This took Skelton and Clancarty’s men by surprise and forced them to fall back. In doing so they came into the field of fire of the men on the walls and, as the sally party was reinforced, the Jacobites were caught in fire from several directions. Soon there was no option but to retreat and rejoin the main body of the attacking force which was still some distance away.50 This withdrawal was carried out and yet another Jacobite plan had been thwarted.
The French commissary, Fumeron, sent an account of the attack to Louvois in which he claimed that the assault was led by French officers with the Marquis d’Anglure at their head. According to Fumeron, Anglure reached the city gate, ‘accompanied by several French officers’, who, he stated, had exposed themselves to risk on many occasions to give an example to the Irish troops. For his efforts, Anglure was wounded in the arm, ‘but lightly’, although another French officer, Captain Paget, was among the dead, who also included about fifteen soldiers.51
Not recognizing the serious threat that the attack had presented to the city, Walker finds the episode almost funny and wrote scathingly that Clancarty had made the assault because he believed in the prophecy that a member of his clan would knock at the gates of Derry.
the credulity and superstition of his country, with the vanity of so brave an attempt, and some good liquor, easily warmed him to this bold undertaking; but we see how little value is to be put on Irish prophesies, or courage so supported.52
More recently, Sir Patrick Macrory, in his eminently readable book on the siege, describes the attack as ‘an almost farcical interlude provided by Donough Macarthy, my Lord Clancarty’.53 Far from being in the realms of farce, this attack – and it was Skelton’s rather than Clancarty’s – represented what was arguably the most serious attempt by the Jacobites to bring the siege to an end. Various elements of siege warfare may be seen in the preparations for and the execution of the attack: the offer of surrender followed by the bombardment of a chosen part of the wall to create a breach; the driving of a sap to enable miners to approach the walls to place a petard; the placing of that petard; and the presence of a forlorn hope. Why Macrory should refer to the assault as he does is a mystery since he had a reputation as a military historian, but it may be that his knowledge of siege warfare was limited; his description of the attack follows Walker’s account so closely as to suggest that he accepted at face value that version of the action.
Walker claims that about a hundred of Clancarty’s best men were left dead while the miners were abandoned in the cellar and several officers and men who had been wounded later died of those wounds. Contrast this with Ash who puts the Jacobite death toll at twenty-five or thirty with ‘as we may well conjecture, twice
the number wounded’. Mackenzie agrees with Ash’s total of Jacobite dead. Ash also recorded that he had ‘never heard so many shots fired in so short a time’. He noted the Williamite casualty list at one dead and three wounded. Two Jacobite prisoners were taken, and it may be assumed that these were the unfortunate miners, left to their fate when the attack was repulsed.54 Whose version, Walker’s or Ash’s, is the more credible? Since Walker wrote his for immediate publication and to ensure his own place in history, in which he was eminently successful, his account is not always reliable. On the other hand, Ash kept a journal that was not intended for publication and which did not see the light of day until two generations later when his granddaughter first had it published. Ash was also a soldier and his observations show the eye of a soldier. On balance, Ash is a much more reliable witness to this battle.
Why did Rosen decide to attack on this side of the walls? Even the casual visitor to the city today, walking around the walls, would see that this was a far from ideal location for an attack as the approaching troops would be advancing uphill under the view and fire of the defenders. Although Rosen has not left us an account of the siege, it is possible to work out his thinking when he returned to the city. He knew that the obvious place to attack was in the area between the Royal and Church bastions where it was possible to conduct conventional siege artillery operations, using a series of parallels to bring the guns progressively closer to the walls. But the defenders had already made this same analysis – Lundy had done so for them before the siege even began – and the defences in that area had been strengthened significantly with the ravelin and the outworks at Windmill Hill. Two attempts to break in through those outworks had failed, and Rosen had no reason to expect that a third would succeed since the defenders would be expecting yet another attack. Nor was there much time left to the Jacobites: Kirke’s relief force might decide to move towards the city at any time but would be unlikely to do so if the city was in Jacobite hands. This left Rosen with one option, an assault up the slope towards the west face of the walls, a dangerous operation, a calculated risk, but one that offered a small element of surprise since the defenders would be least expecting attack from that quarter. And so he put his plan into effect, deploying the two culverins, digging the sap and creating an assault group that included some of his freshest soldiers. Had this attack succeeded, then the city would have fallen, but the quick reaction of some of the defending officers, especially Noble and Dunbar, ensured that, once again, a Jacobite attack came to naught.
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