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The Siege of Derry, or as the defenders would have called it the Siege of Londonderry, took place in Ireland during 1688– 1689. Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell , acting as the viceroy of king James VII of Scotland and II of England in Ireland, was anxious to ensure that all strong points in the country were held by garrisons completely loyal to the Catholic cause.
By November 1688, only the walled city of Derry, then called Londonderry by its Protestant colonists, still had a Protestant garrison and so the Earl of Antrim was ordered to replace it with a more reliable force. Alexander MacDonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim , despite his age of 76, keenly responded to this command but wasted valuable time searching for men who were six feet tall or more. An army of around 1,200 men, mostly "Redshanks" (Highlanders) set out on the week William of Orange landed in England. When the army arrived on December 7th 1688 the city gates were closed against them and the siege began.
James was deposed by William and fled to France where King Louis XIV of France gave him support to regain his crown. On March 12th 1689 James landed in Kinsale, Ireland, with 6,000 French soldiers. He took Dublin and with a Jacobite army of Catholics, Protestant Royalists and French marched north, joining the Siege of Londonderry on April 18April 18 is the 108th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (109th in leap years). There are 257 days remaining. Events 1518 Bona Sforza is crowned as queen of Poland and married to Sigismund I of Poland. 1775 Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Pre, 1689 and summoning the city to surrender. The King was rebuffed and actually fired at by some of the more determined defenders; tradition has the apprentice boys closing the gates and saving the city. A policy of 'no surrender' was confirmed and for 105 days the city suffered appalling conditions as cannonballs and mortar-bombs rained down, and famine and disease took their terrible toll. Conditions for the besiegers were no better and many thousands of people died, both inside and outside the walls.
British warships arrived off Derry / Londonderry on June 11th but refused to risk shore guns until, ordered by Marshal Frederic SchombergFriedrich Hermann (or Frederic Armand , 1st Duke of Schomberg (originally Schonberg (December 1615 or January 1616 1690), was both a marshal of France and an English general "of all his Majesty's Forces". Descended from an old family of the Palatinate, he, a relief ship broke the barricading 'boom' which had been stretched across the river and relieved the siege on July 28th 1689.
Historical stubs :This article is partially based on the article with the same name on http://www.irelandinformationguide.com, licensed under GFDL. Derry History of IrelandEarly history What little is known of pre- Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The earliest inhabitants, people of a mid- Stone Age, or Mesolithic, culture, arrived sometime after 8000 B