Page:Annals of Augusta County.djvu/18

 suburbs furnished only about six hundred fighting men; but when the siege began there were 7,300 men armed for defence. Dissenters having been excluded from offices in the army, none of that class were fitted by previous military experience for command. Therefore a majority of the higher officers were of the Church of England. A majority of the inferior officers, captains and others, were Presbyterians; and of the soldiers and people generally, the Dissenters outnumbered the others by fifteen to one.

"Now," says Froude, in his History of Ireland, "was again witnessed what Calvinism—though its fires were waning—could do in making common men into heroes. Deserted by the English regiments, betrayed by their own commander, without stores and half armed, the shopkeepers and apprentices of a commercial town prepared to defend an unfortified city against a disciplined army of 25,000 men, led by trained officers, and amply provided with artillery. They were cut off from the sea by a boom across the river. Fever, cholera and famine came to the aid of the besiegers. Rats came to be dainties, and hides and shoe leather were the ordinary fare. They saw their children pine away and die—they were wasted themselves, till they could scarce handle their firelocks on their ramparts." Still they held on through more than three miserable months. Finally a frigate and two provision ships came in, and Derry was saved after a siege of eight months. The garrison had been reduced to about three thousand men. The Rev. Mr. Walker, a minister of the Church of England, was one of the prominent leaders. Enniskillen was successfully defended in like manner.

Yet, notwithstanding their loyalty to the Crown, as settled by the Revolution, and their heroic services, the Scotch Irish received no favors from the British government, except a miserable pittance doled out to their clergy after a time. They were proscribed because of their religion, being excluded from the army, the militia, the civil service, and seats in municipal corporations. Dissenters from the Irish Episcopal church were not allowed to teach school. Presbyterian marriages were declared illegal. The laws against Catholics were even more severe than those against Protestant dissenters—so severe, indeed, that they were not generally executed, public officers