It would seem that, at this point of the attack, some of the Irish soldiers began to draw off and made for the breach, which the Williamites entered with them. Half of the Drogheda regiment and some others actually got into the town. The city seemed nearly won, as the supports came up promptly to the assistance of their comrades. But the Irish troops rallied immediately and fell vehemently on their pursuers. These, in their turn, retreated from the breach, “but some were shot, some were taken, and some came out again, but very few without being wounded.” The Williamite chaplain thus describes the outcome, still preserving his tone of contemptuous hatred of the brave Irish soldiery: “The Irish then ventured (_sic_) upon the breach again, and from the walls and every place so pestered us upon the counterscarp, that after nigh three hours resisting bullets, stones (broken bottles from the very women, who boldly stood in the breach and were nearer our men than their own), and whatever ways could be thought on to destroy us, our ammunition being spent, it was judged safest to return to our trenches! When the work was at the hottest, the Brandenburg regiment (who behaved themselves very well) were got upon the Black Battery, where the enemies’ powder happened to take fire and blew up a great many of them, the men, fagots, stones, and what not flying into the air with a most terrible noise.... From half an hour after three, until after seven, there was one continued fire of both great and small shot, without any intermission; in so much that the smoke that went from the town reached in one continued cloud to the top of a mountain [Keeper Hill, most likely] at least six miles off. When our men drew off, some were brought up dead, and some without a leg; others wanted arms, and some were blind with powder; especially a great many of the poor Brandenburgers looked like furies, with the misfortune of gunpowder.... The king [William] stood nigh Cromwell’s Fort all the time, and the business being over, he went to his camp very much concerned, as, indeed, was the whole army; for you might have seen a mixture of anger and sorrow in every bodie’s countenance. The Irish had two small field-pieces planted in the King’s Island, which flankt their own counterscarp, and in our attack did us no small damage, as did, also, two guns more that they had planted within the town, opposite to the breach and charged with cartridge shot. “We lost, at least, five hundred on the spot, and had a thousand more wounded, as I understood by the surgeons of our hospitals, who are the properest judges. The Irish lost a great many by our cannon and other ways, but it can not be supposed that their loss should be equal to ours, since it is a much easier thing to defend walls than ’tis by plain strength to force people from them, and one man within has the advantage of four without.”