XII.

CHAP. large part of his letters; and, in truth, a life passed in the palaces of Italy, in the neat parlours and gardens of Holland, and in the luxurious pavilions which adorned the suburbs of Paris, was a bad preparation for the ruined hovels of Ulster. He gave, however, to his master a more weighty reason for refusing to proceed northward. The journey of James had been undertaken in opposition to the unanimous sense of the Irish, and had excited great alarm among them. They apprehended that he meant to quit them, and to make a descent on Scotland. They knew that, once landed in Great Britain, he would have neither the will nor the power to do those things which they most desired. Avaux, by refusing to proceed further, gave them an assurance that, whoever might betray them, France would be their constant friend.*

The fall of Londonderry expected.

While Avaux was on his way to Dublin, James hastened towards Londonderry. He found his army concentrated a few miles south of the city. The French generals who had sailed with him from Brest were in his train; and two of them, Rosen and Maumont, were placed over the head of Richard Hamilton.† Rosen was a native of Livonia, who had in early youth become a soldier of fortune, who had fought his way to distinction, and who, though utterly destitute of the graces and accomplishments characteristic of the court of Versailles, was nevertheless high in favour there. His temper was savage: his manners were coarse: his language was a strange jargon compounded of various dialects of French and German. Even those who thought best of him, and who maintained that his rough exterior covered some good qualities, owned that his looks were against him, and that it would be unpleasant to meet such a figure in the dusk at the corner of a wood. The little that is known of Maumont is to his honour.

In the camp it was generally expected that Londonderry would fall without a blow. Rosen confidently predicted that the mere sight of the Irish army would terrify the garrison into submission. But Richard Hamilton, who knew the temper of the colonists better, had misgivings. The assail

Avaux, April 17. 1689. The story of these strange changes of purpose is told very disingenuously by James in his Life, ii. 330, 331, 332. Orig. Mem.

English writers ignorantly speak of Ro sen as having been, at this time, a Mi shal of France. He did not become so thi 1703. He had long been a Mareh de Camp, which is a very different thing and had been recently promoted to Le Some rank of Lieutenant General.

Life of James, ii. 334, 335. Orig.
Mem.

Memoirs of Saint Simon.

ants were sure of one important ally within the walls.
Lundy, the Governor, professed the Protestant religion, and
had joined in proclaiming William and Mary; but he was in
secret communication with the enemies of his Church and of
the Sovereigns to whom he had sworn fealty. Some have
suspected that he was a concealed Jacobite, and that he had
affected to acquiesce in the Revolution only in order that he
might be better able to assist in bringing about a Restora-
tion: but it is probable that his conduct is rather to be
attributed to faintheartedness and poverty of spirit than to
zeal for any public cause. He seems to have thought resist-
ance hopeless; and in truth, to a military eye, the defences
of Londonderry appeared contemptible. The fortifications
consisted of a simple wall overgrown with grass and weeds:
there was no ditch even before the gates: the drawbridges
had long been neglected: the chains were rusty and could
scarcely be used: the parapets and towers were built after a
fashion that might well move disciples of Vauban to laughter;
and these feeble defences were on almost every side com-
manded by heights. Indeed those who laid out the city had
never meant that it should be able to stand a regular siege,
and had contented themselves with throwing up works suffi-
cient to protect the inhabitants against a tumultuary attack
of the Celtic peasantry. Avaux assured Louvois that a single
French battalion would easily storm such a fastness. Even
if the place should, notwithstanding all disadvantages, be
able to repel a large army directed by the science and experi-
ence of generals who had served under Condé and Turenne,
hunger must soon bring the contest to an end. The stock of
provisions was small; and the population had been swollen
to seven or eight times the ordinary number by a multitude
of colonists flying from the rage of the natives.*

Lundy, therefore, from the time when the Irish army en-
tered Ulster, seems to have given up all thought of serious
resistance. He talked so despondingly that the citizens and
his own soldiers murmured against him. He seemed, they
said, to be bent on discouraging them. Meanwhile the
enemy drew daily nearer and nearer; and it was known that
James himself was coming to take the command of his forces.

Avaux, April 4. 1689. Among the
MSS. in the British Museum is a curious
report on the defences of Londonderry,
VOL. II.

drawn up in 1705 for the Duke of Or-
mond by a French engineer named
Thomas.

NN

CHAP.

XII.

CHAP.
XII.

Succours

arrive from England.

Treachery of Lundy.

The inha

London

derry resolve to defend them

Just at this moment a glimpse of hope appeared. On the fourteenth of April ships from England anchored in the bay. They had on board two regiments which had been sent, under the command of a Colonel named Cunningham, to reinforce the garrison. Cunningham and several of his officers went on shore and conferred with Lundy. Lundy dissuaded them from landing their men. The place, he said, could not hold out. To throw more troops into it would therefore be worse than useless: for the more numerous the garrison, the more prisoners would fall into the hands of the enemy. The best thing that the two regiments could do would be to sail back to England. He meant, he said, to withdraw himself privately; and the inhabitants must then try to make good terms for themselves.

He went through the form of holding a council of war: but from this council he excluded all those officers of the garrison whose sentiments he knew to be different from his own. Some who had ordinarily been summoned on such occasions, and who now came uninvited, were thrust out of the room. Whatever the Governor said was echoed by his creatures. Cunningham and Cunningham's companions could scarcely venture to oppose their opinion to that of a person whose local knowledge was necessarily far superior to theirs, and whom they were by their instructions directed to obey. One brave soldier murmured. "Understand this," he said: "to give up Londonderry is to give up Ireland." But his objections were contemptuously overruled.* The meeting broke up. Cunningham and his officers returned to the ships, and made preparations for departing. Meanwhile Lundy privately sent a messenger to the head quarters of the enemy, with assurances that the city should be peaceably surrendered on the first summons.

But as soon as what had passed in the council of war was bitants of whispered about the streets, the spirit of the soldiers and citizens swelled up high and fierce against the dastardly and perfidious chief who had betrayed them. Many of his own officers declared that they no longer thought themselves bound to obey him. Voices were heard threatening, some that his brains should be blown out, some that he should be hanged on the walls. A deputation was sent to Cunningham imploring him to assume the command. He excused himself on the plausible ground that his orders were to take direc

selves.

* Commons' Journals, August 12. 1689.

tions in all things from the Governor.* Meanwhile it was rumoured that the persons most in Lundy's confidence were stealing out of the town one by one. Long after dusk on the evening of the seventeenth it was found that the gates were open and that the keys had disappeared. The officers who made the discovery took on themselves to change the passwords and to double the guards. The night, however, passed over without any assault.+

After some anxious hours the day broke. The Irish, with James at their head, were now within four miles of the city. A tumultuous council of the chief inhabitants was called. Some of them vehemently reproached the Governor to his face with his treachery. He had sold them, they cried, to their deadliest enemy: he had refused admission to the force which good King William had sent to defend them. While the altercation was at the height, the sentinels who paced the ramparts announced that the vanguard of the hostile army was in sight. Lundy had given orders that there should be no firing: but his authority was at an end. Two gallant soldiers, Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, called the people to arms. They were assisted by the eloquence of an aged clergyman, George Walker, rector of the parish of Donaghmore, who had, with many of his neighbours, taken refuge in Londonderry. The whole crowded city was moved by one impulse. Soldiers, gentlemen, yeomen, artisans, rushed to the walls and manned the guns. James, who, confident of success, had approached within a hundred yards of the southern gate, was received with a shout of "No surrender," and with a fire from the nearest bastion. An officer of his staff fell dead by his side. The King and his attendants made all haste to get out of reach of the cannon balls. Lundy, who was now in imminent danger of being torn limb from limb by those whom he had betrayed, hid himself in an inner chamber. There he lay during the day, and, with the generous and politic connivance of Murray and Walker, made his escape at night in the disguise of a porter. The part of the wall from which he let himself down is still pointed out; and people still living talk of having tasted the fruit of a pear tree which assisted him in his descent. His name is, to this

*The best history of these transactions will be found in the Journals of the House of Commons, August 12. 1689.

See also the narratives of Walker and
Mackenzie. + Mackenzie's Narrative.
Walker and Mackenzie.

CHAP.

XII.

XII.

CHAP. day, held in execration by the Protestants of the North of Ireland; and his effigy is still annually hung and burned by them with marks of abhorrence similar to those which in England are appropriated to Guy Faux.

Their character.

And now Londonderry was left destitute of all military and of all civil government. No man in the town had a right to command any other: the defences were weak: the provisions were scanty: an incensed tyrant and a great army were at the gates. But within was that which has often, in desperate extremities, retrieved the fallen fortunes of nations. Betrayed, deserted, disorganised, unprovided with resources, begirt with enemies, the noble city was still no easy conquest. Whatever an engineer might think of the strength of the ramparts, all that was most intelligent, most courageous. most highspirited among the Englishry of Leinster and of Northern Ulster was crowded behind them. The number of men capable of bearing arms within the walls was seven thousand; and the whole world could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualified to meet a terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valour, and stubborn patience. They were all zealous Protestants; and the Protestantism of the majority was tinged with Puritanism. They had much in common with that sober, resolute, and Godfearing class out of which Cromwell had formed his unconquerable army. But the peculiar situation in which they had been placed had developed in them some qualities which, in the mother country, might possibly have remained latent. The English inhabitants of Ireland were an aristocratic caste, which had been enabled, by superior civilisation, by close union, by sleepless vigilance, by cool intrepidity, to keep in subjection a numerous and hostile population. Almost every one of them had been in some measure trained both to military and to political functions. Almost every one was familiar with the use of arms, and was accustomed to bear a part in the administration of justice. It was remarked by contemporary writers that the colonists had something of the Castilian haughtiness of manner, thong none of the Castilian indolence, that they spoke English with remarkable purity and correctness, and that they were. both as militiamen and as jurymen, superior to their kindred in the mother country.* In all ages, men situated as the

* See the Character of the Protestants of Ireland, 1689, and the Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland,

1689. The former pamphlet is the work of an enemy, the latter of a zedi friend.