It will be remembered that the gates of the city were closed against Lord Antrim on December 7, 1688. Hamilton’s bombardment of the place began on the 17th of April, 1689, and lasted for three months. There was a total blockade for three weeks, and provisions became so scarce that the defenders actually devoured dogs, cats, rats, mice—anything, however revolting, that might satisfy the cravings of absolute hunger. The besiegers also suffered from bad weather and the shots from the hostile batteries. A rough computation places the total loss of the defenders at about 4,000 men, and that of the assailants at 6,000—the latter loss chiefly by disease. The relief of Derry was a mortal blow to the cause of King James, and soon afterward he lost every important post in Ulster, except Carrickfergus and Charlemont. Yet, as an Irish writer has well remarked, Ulster was bestowed by the king’s grandfather “upon the ancestors of those who now unanimously rejected and resisted him.” His cause also received a fatal stroke in Scotland by the death of the brave Dundee, who fell, vainly victorious, over the Williamite general, Mackay, at the battle of Killecrankie, fought July 26, 1689. Duke Schomberg arrived in Belfast Lough with a large fleet and army on August 13th. Count Solmes was his second in command. He laid siege to Carrickfergus, which capitulated on fair terms after eight days’ bombardment. Charlemont, defended by the brave and eccentric Colonel Teague O’Regan, held out till the following May, when it surrendered with the honors of war. It is said that King William, on his arrival in Ireland, knighted O’Regan in recognition of the brilliancy of his defence. The young Duke of Berwick made a gallant stand in the neighborhood, but was finally compelled to yield ground to the superior forces of Schomberg. Critics of the latter’s strategy hold that he committed a grave military error in failing to march on the Irish capital, which was not in a good posture of defence, immediately after landing in Ulster. Had he done so, King James must have had to evacuate Dublin and fall back on the defensive line of the Shannon, as Tyrconnel and Sarsfield did at a later period. Then Schomberg, it is claimed, would not have lost more than half of his army, by dysentery, at his marshy camp near Dundalk, where King James, in the autumn, bearded and defied him to risk battle with the stronger and healthier Jacobite forces. There would have been no occasion for the Battle of the Boyne, the memory of which has divided and distracted Irishmen for more than two centuries, had the challenge been accepted.