On the approach of the enemy, the governor, Colonel McElligot, had received orders from the Duke of Berwick to demolish the fort, burn the city, and retire with his command into Kerry; but having disobeyed this mandate, at the solicitation of the citizens, until too late, he determined to redeem his error by the gallantry of his defence, and hold out long enough to give Berwick time to hasten up succors to raise the siege. The enemy, having gained possession of the hills, opened a fierce cannonade on the city itself, and having levelled all the intervening houses, descended into the valley, opened on the citadel, and after a most spirited resistance of two days, silenced its guns, and prepared to carry its works by storm. The assault could only be made at low-water, and once each day was there assault and repulse, in one of which the Duke of Grafton[54] was killed while leading his regiment across the marsh. At length, after a desperate defence of twelve days, it surrendered on the 5th of October, on terms considered highly honorable; "but the ink with which the capitulation was signed, was not yet dry when it was violated in every particular." The Catholic people were stripped and driven from the city; the city itself was given to pillage; the Earls of Tyrone and Clancarty were wounded and grossly outraged by the soldiers and the mob, and the prisoners subjected to indignities and cruelties, compared with which death would have been a refuge. They were pent up within a loathsome fen, where, being denied food, they were necessitated to feed on putrid carrion; more than half of them died within a fortnight, from the diseases it engendered; one-half the remainder were murdered by order of one Captain Lauder, on the way to Clonmel, some time later; and of the survivors, few ever returned to report the inhuman deed.[55] Marlborough and his English army were even more barbarous than the Prince of Orange and his foreign mercenaries.