There was no sleep for the
remainder of the night, either within or without the walls. The bonfires
that blazed along the whole circuit of the walls told the joy within the
town. The incessant roar of guns told the rage without it. Peals of
bells from the church-towers answered the Irish cannon; shouts of
triumph from the walls silenced the cries of anger from the batteries.
It was a conflict of joy and rage.
Three days more the batteries continued to roar. But on the night of
July 31 flames were seen to issue from the Irish camp; on the morning of
August 1 a line of scorched and smoking ruins replaced the
lately-occupied huts, and along the Foyle went a long column of pikes
and standards, marking the retreat of the besieging army.
The retreat became a rout. The men of Enniskillen charged the retreating
army of Newtown Butler, struggling through a bog to fall on double their
number, whom they drove in a panic before them. The panic spread through
the whole army. Horse and foot, they fled. Not until they had reached
Dublin, then occupied by King James, did the retreat stop, and
confidence return to the baffled besiegers of Londonderry.
Thus ended the most memorable siege in the history of the British
islands.
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