war, to be baffled by a mob of country
gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall which
any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he
blasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken
from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground:
he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies
at the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for
them: he would rack them: he would roast them alive. In his rage he
ordered a shell to be flung into the town with a letter containing
a horrible menace. He would, he said, gather into one body all the
Protestants who had remained at their homes between Charlemont and the
sea, old men, women, children, many of them near in blood and affection
to the defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be the
authority by which it had been given, should be respected. The multitude
thus brought together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry,
and should there be starved to death in the sight of their countrymen,
their friends, their kinsmen. This was no idle threat. Parties were
instantly sent out in all directions to collect victims. At dawn, on the
morning of the second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged
with no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and many of whom had
protections granted by James, were dragged to the gates of the city.
It was imagined that the piteous sight would quell the spirit of the
colonists. But the only effect was to rouse that spirit to still greater
energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man should utter the
word Surrender on pain of death; and no man uttered that word. Several
prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they had been well
treated, and had received as good rations as were measured out to the
garrison. They were now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on one
of the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting him
to send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The
prisoners in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but received
no answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman, Richard
Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for their
King; but they thought it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves
in consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms.
Hamilton, though a man of lax