Siege of Londonderry

Siege of Derry

Cannon on the Walls of Derry

Date	18 April – 28 July 1689
Location	Derry, Ireland
Result	City relieved by Royal Navy ships

Belligerents

Jacobite forces

Williamite forces

Commanders and leaders

Richard Hamilton
James II & VII
Conrad de Rosen

Henry Baker
Adam Murray
George Walker

Strength

Casualties and losses

~8,000 dead (mostly by disease)

Coordinates: 54°59′38″N 7°19′34″W / 54.994°N 7.326°W / 54.994; -7.326

The Siege of Derry, (Irish: Léigear Dhoire), was the first major event in the Williamite War in Ireland. While the gates of the old walled city were initially closed in December 1688, the siege didn't begin in earnest until April the following year. The siege lasted nearly three and a half months, ending on 30 July 1689 when relief ships bringing an English army sailed down Lough Foyle. The siege is commemorated yearly in August by the Apprentice Boys of Derry.

The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 was a relatively bloodless revolution in which James II (King of England, Ireland and Scotland), a Roman Catholic convert, was ousted from power by Parliament, who then offered the English throne to his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. In Scotland, the privy council asked William to assume responsibility for the government in January 1689, and he and Mary were formally offered the Scottish throne in March. The situation was different in Ireland where most of the population were Catholics, and James had given them some real concessions during his reign. James had appointed an Irish Catholic, (Richard Talbot), to the position of Lord Deputy of Ireland, he re-admitted Catholics into the Irish Parliament and public office, and he replaced Protestant officers with Roman Catholic officers in the army. Irish Catholics were hoping that James would re-grant them lands, which had been seized from them after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–53). James thus looked to Ireland to muster support in re-gaining his kingdoms just as his father, Charles I had done in the Civil War of the 1640s.

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