THE DEFENCE OF DERRY.* A KNOWLEDGE of events is not
in the highest sense a know- ledge of history. Thus to know history is like knowing a country from maps. A map cannot show how a country appears to a traveller ; and a mere chronicle of events cannot show how those events appeared to the men who witnessed them. It is the highest proof of skill on the part of the literary historian, as distinguished from the man of historical research and criticism, to clothe the dry bones of mere annals with flesh and blood, and to make history appear to live again before his readers. But even when this is done with the greatest skill, as it has been done by that wonderful literary artist, Lord Macaulay, there is one source of illusion which cannot be shut out altogether, and another which cannot be shut out at all. The reader may see events truly, but he sees them with his own eyes ; it is scarcely possible for the greatest literary skill to make the reader see them with the eyes of a contemporary. And, since the events of weeks, or months, or years, have to be so told as to occupy but an hour's reading, and the reader's attention is necessarily concentrated on the critical points of the narrative, to the exclusion of the relatively long periods during which the action dragged, it is impossible for the historian, without destroying the interest of his narrative, to make the reader in any degree feel the lapse of time, and the long periods of uncertainty, hope and fear, expectation and anxiety, which fill so large a space in national as well as individual life. To feel this—to know how the drama of their own history appeared to past generations as they saw it acted before them —we must turn to original authorities.
One of the most interesting of these is contained in the volume now before us. Not much of it will be altogether new to the general reader, for Walker's True Account of the Siege of Derry—a great part of which appears to be a transcript from his diary—is one of the chief authorities for Lord Macaulay's admirably written narrative. But it has the advantage of being an original authority, written not after but during the events ; and Canon Dwyer—an Irish clergyman —has done well at this time to reprint it, with copious his- torical notes, and with other pamphlets by Governor Walker, and some of his " sermons, prayers, and speeches during the siege." Walker had not been trained to the profession of arms. He was a clergyman, being the rector of the parish of Donoughmore, in'the county of Tyrone. The defence of Derry was not mainly the work of soldiers ; both the military defence and the civil government had to be extemporised after the war had begun.
The position of Londonderry as an English colony in Ire- land was at that time unlike anything now existing ; it may be best compared to that of an ancient Greek city on the shores of the Euxine or the western Mediterranean, or of the city of Riga at the time of its foundation as a German colony on the Lithuanian coast. Its people, and the English colonists generally, regarded themselves as Englishmen; their resi- dence in the midst of a population of possible enemies, far outnumbering themselves, appears to have given them a habitual facility of political combination ; and it is probable that, for the same reason, they were more generally familiar with the use of arms than similar populations in England.
In December, 1888, Tyrconnel, who was governing Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant for James IL, sent Lord Antrim with a force of Irish and Highlanders to occupy Derry; and at the same time there were rumours of an intended repetition of the massacres of 1641. The city appears to have been with- out a Government, and, to quote Walker's words, " the graver • Tho Siege of Londonderry in 1589, as set forth in the Litsrarti Remains of Colonel the Rev. George Walker, D.D. Edited by the Rev. Philip Dwyer, scene• time Canon of Dysart and Rector of Ogashin in the Diocese of Killalee. lllliut Stook. 1893. citizens were under great disorder and confusion, and knew not what to resolve upon," when the entire current of events was changed by a number of young men, not out of their apprenticeship, who seized the keys of the city and closed the gates. History records many greater revolutions, but none more sudden or decisive. Two days later, Colonel Philips, a landed proprietor of the neighbourhood, arrived; he had been Governor of the city before, and was informally but unani- mously elected to be Governor again. On the same day, the " Gentlemen of Derry" issued a declaration " to all Christian people" of their resolution to defend the city and to maintain the Protestant religion. This declaration is one of the most remarkable of the documents which Mr. Dwyer has reprinted ; and it contains an express acknowledgment of Divine Pro- vidence in the action of the young men in shutting the gates. Lord Antrim's army went away without firing a shot; and Lord Mountjoy afterwards came "to reduce the place." Although he held James's commission, he appears to have been in Irish affairs a neutral ; and, moreover, a neutral in the unusual position of being respected and trusted by both parties. He did not fight, but negotiated. With the consent of the citizens, he left Colonel Lundy in Derry as its Governor ; and under Lundy's command, two companies, which, as the citizens were careful to stipulate, consisted of none but Pro- testant soldiers. These, although they entered the city to hold it for James, soon afterwards took their part in its defence against him.
The next attempt to " reduce the city " was made by James in person. The army under his command was little more than a hastily levied Irish rabble, with a few French, English, and Scotch officers to give them some faint tincture of discipline. James and his staff do not appear to have expected any defence. Colonel Lundy, the Governor, evidently felt himself compromised with James, whose commission he held, by not controlling the English and anti-Jacobite sympathies of the soldiers under his command. But it can scarcely be said that he tried to serve two masters. In this crisis he showed himself a coward, devoid of either good or evil ambition, and regardful of nothing but his own safety. His only plan was that every one should try to save himself; and he practised what he preached. Finding, like James in the revolution of the previous year, that of all those under his nominal command not one would obey him, he made his escape by the connivance of the real leaders of the citizens, and disappeared from public life in the disguise of a quay porter, with a bundle of fire-wood on his back.
Derry was again left without a Government. Colonel Philips had been sent to England. But the citizens acted as they had acted four months earlier on the shutting of the gates. They informally but unanimously elected Walker the clergyman, and Major Baker, as Governors. Walker, Baker, and six others were appointed colonels of the eight regiments into which their 7,500 fighting men were divided. Including Walker, there were in the city eighteen clergymen of the Established Church, besides seven Nonconforming ministers ; and these took their turns every day at both preaching and fighting. It was an army animated by the Cromwellian spirit and managed by Cromwellian methods.
Walker was evidently a man of genuine and strong piety. The book before us contains two of his sermons preached during the siege. They are in the best Puritan spirit, and inspired through and through by the thoughts of those Psalms in which David declares to God his hopes, his fears, and his confidence. Walker, in the True Account, after describing the arrangements for the defence, speaks of the difficulties of the besieged citizens ; their want of experience in war, the deficiency of their war-material, their scanty supply of pro- visions, and the inferiority of their numbers ; and then proceeds :—" In all human probability we could not think ourselves in less danger than the Israelites at the Red Sea. When we considered all this, it was obvious what a dangerous undertaking we had ventured upon, but the resolution and courage of our people, and the necessity we were under, and the great confidence and ' dependence among us on God Almighty, that He would take care of us and preserve us, made us overlook those difficulties. And God was pleased to make us the happy instruments of preserving this place; and to Him we give the glory." And in his later published " Vindication," Walker speaks of two incidents of the siege which he regards as directly providential interventions for the protection of the right cause. We quote his brief and terse narration :- " People every day going out of Derry (as deserters), the enemy had constant intelligence; and we had reason to be under groat apprehension, especially for our ammunition ; we considered how to preserve that, and having a groat quantity in Mr. Camsey's cellar, we removed it to another place. The very next day after we had removed it, a bomb broke into the cellar ; and if our powder had been there, we had certainly been destroyed."
".a. bomb from the enemy broke into a cellar. Some had the curiosity to examine what mischief it had done, and there they saw seven men lying dead, that had been working at a mine un- known to us, that, if it had not been for so miraculous a counter- mine, might have gone on in their work and have ruined us."
It is easy to urge the apparent opposition between providen- tial intervention and natural law, and perhaps it is difficult to reply, though we think it is not impossible; but we are con- vinced that such faith as this is far nearer to the truth than that ghost of a dead faith which uses the name of God while it only means changeless law and hopeless fate. Lord Macaulay has done justice to the heroism of the defenders, but there is one point in aggravation of their sufferings which he has not mentioned. We quote Walker's words :— " The besieged found great difficulty to come to the wells for water, which they often fought for, and cost some of them their blood; yet the water of the town was so muddy and troubled with our continual firing, and so many going to it, that we were forced to run those hazards."
At the beginning of the siege, Derry contained about 20,000 persons, combatants and non-combatants, of whom the great majority were refugees from the surrounding country. Derry was but a small town, with walls of less than a mile in circuit. The siege lasted three months and a half, and when the city was relieved, 7,000 of the 20,000 had died of famine and disease; Colonel Baker was among the dead. But the number of those who fell in action was wonderfully small, —only about 80. This is stated by Walker. The number is set down in figures, and we should feel inclined to agree with those who have thought it an error of pen or press for 800, but for a confirmation which appears to have remained un- known till now. Mr. Dwyer publishes part of "a diary in Latin, of Mr. H. Prescot, of Chester, Acting Registrar to the Chan- cellor of the Diocese, respecting the relief of Derry, and Dr. Walker's visit (to Chester) on August 22nd, 1689," telling of a ship which arrived at Ches ter on the 6th of that month, after a two days' run from Derry, with news of the relief of the city ; and mentioning that of 5,000 defenders (they were really 7,500), not more than 100 fell by the sword, (" Vm. hominum, gladio non ultra C. cecidisse.")* This, of course, does not include those whose death was caused or accelerated by wounds. With the besiegers it was very different ; their loss was certainly great; Walker estimated it at 8,500 men, of whom he says the greater part perished by the sword, and the rest by disease. This enormous disproportion between the numbers of those who on the two sides fell in actual fighting, shows how inferior an.
enemy the native Irish of that age were, The defence of Derry was, in fact, as much a defence against inferior assailants as was that of Lucknow. The conduct of the defence shows how the defenders despised their besiegers, and with what good right. Walker says :—" Our sallies many times began with but small parties ; Captain Noble, and sometimes other officers, when they saw the enemy make an approach, would run out with about ten or twelve men at their heels, and skirmished awhile with them. When the besieged saw them engaged, and in any danger, they issued out in greater numbers to their relief, and always came off with great execution on the enemy, and with very little loss to themselves." This is quite Homeric, and very unlike modern war. It must have been excellent for keeping up the spirits of the garrison, but could not have been attempted if the besiegers had been equal, or nearly equal, man for man, to the besieged. And yet Irish soldiers, in more recent times, have shown themselves the equals of any in the world. There is, how- ever, nothing anomalous in this. The fact appears to be that the Celts of Ireland and Scotland do not manifest any of the military virtues, except under either of two conditions. They need either regular discipline, or the inspiring command of a leader of special powers, and, preferably, of a different race from their own. But neither of these was found in the armed * Knee the above was written the writer has been informed by Canon Dwyer that this diary has never been made public before ; and that he Is Indebted for it to the kindness of Captain Walker, a descendant of the defender of Derry, rabble that followed the standard of James in the hope of vengeance and plunder. There was not time, nor was there the necessary number of officers, to discipline them into a civilised army; and neither on that occasion nor on any other, has any leader appeared in Ireland who showed himself able to do with the Celts of Ireland what Montrose and Dundee did with the Colts of Scotland.
Seven generations have passed away since the besiegers retired, ba ed, from before the walls of Derry ; and Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the British Empire, are now assailed by a danger of which neither party in that war ever dreamed, —by a sentimentality which believes that the absence of restraint will cure men of their tendencies to evil ; that good government may be sufficiently provided for by practically surrendering all guarantees for it ; that age-long hatreds may be healed in a day; and that national character, and human nature itself, are so changed, that the descendants of the oppressed may be safely entrusted with the power to avenge themselves on the descendants of their oppressors, in the confidence that both parties will know how to forgive. In the contest that has begun, it appears possible that the men of Ulster—the descendants of the defenders of Derry—may again be placed in the foremost ranks of the strife. They as heartily disbelieve the Divine right of democratic majorities as their ancestors disbelieved the Divine right of Kings ; and if necessity arises, we doubt not they will be found true to the memory of their ancestors, and to the motto of the City of Derry, " Vita, Veritas, Victoria,"—" Life, Truth, Victory."
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