Relief from
the fleet, with the river thus closed against it, seemed impossible. Yet
scarcely two days' supplies were left in the town, and without hasty
relief starvation or massacre seemed the only alternatives.
Let us relate the occasion of this siege. James II. had been driven from
England, and William of Orange was on the throne. In his effort to
recover his kingdom, James sought Ireland, where the Catholic peasantry
were on his side. His appearance was the signal for fifty thousand
peasants to rise in arms, and for the Protestants to fly from peril of
massacre. They knew their fate should they fall into the hands of the
half-savage peasants, mad with years of misrule.
In the north, seven thousand English fugitives fled to Londonderry, and
took shelter behind the weak wall, manned by a few old guns, and without
even a ditch for defence, which formed the only barrier between them and
their foes. Around this town gathered twenty-five thousand besiegers,
confident of quick success. But the weakness of the battlements was
compensated for by the stoutness of the hearts within. So fierce were
the sallies of the desperate seven thousand, so severe the loss of the
besiegers in their assaults, that the attempt to carry the place by
storm was given up, and a blockade substituted.
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