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Updated: May 26, 2025
Meanwhile, they had a guide who much comforted them, saying, "It would not now be long before they met with people from whom they should reap some considerable advantage." The seventh day, in the morning, they made clean their arms, and every one discharged his pistol, or musket, without bullet, to try their firelocks.
The people of the City received them with many shots from heavy cannon that they had, and from many firelocks, and many arrows and musket-shots, so that those of the besiegers who arrived close to the ditches suffered heavily and wanted to retreat.
Not ten pounds of powder, not twenty firelocks fit for use, could be collected within the walls. Messengers were sent with pressing letters to summon the Protestant gentry of the vicinage to the rescue; and the summons was gallantly obeyed. In a few hours two hundred foot and a hundred and fifty horse had assembled. Tyrconnel's soldiers were already at hand.
The house was crammed full of arms: a little cannon threatened us on the stairway, swords, claymores, creeses, falchions, scimitars, glaives, dirks, and yatagans were nailed on all the walls, and there were muskets of every sort and size, heavy arquebuses from the north and gas-pipe guns and Arab horsemen firelocks with polished stocks like the handle of a corkscrew, all inlaid with gold, silver, and mother-of-pearl.
At midday, Stark formed his men for the attack. All were yeomanry, in homespun, rudely equipped with pouches and powder-horns, and armed with the old brown firelocks, without bayonets, they had brought from their homes.
When the English force were assembled, the ladders, which, like everything else, had been muffled, were placed against the walls; and, headed by their officers, the troops ascended. The surprise was complete. Not until the leaders of the storming party stood upon the parapet was their presence perceived. The guards discharged their firelocks, and fled hastily.
The rest, driving before them as many cattle as could be collected in that moment of panic, retired to the hills. Much beef, brandy and harness was found in the magazines; and the marshy plain of the Shannon was covered with firelocks and grenades which the fugitives had thrown away. The conquerors returned in triumph to their camp.
In a company of a hundred and thirteen, including officers, he had sixty-four armed with firelocks to thirty carrying pikes and halberds. As before his time the proportion between the arms had been nearly even; he thus more than doubled the number of firearms. Of these weapons there were two sorts, the musket and the harquebus. The musket was a long, heavy, unmanageable instrument.
Two hundred thousand pikes and pike-heads were said to have been discovered or surrendered during the year, and several thousand firelocks. The yeomanry, and English and Scotch corps amounted to 35,000 men, while the regular troops were increased to 50,000 and subsequently to 80,000, including three regiments of the Guards.
"Matter!" spluttered Mynheer Von Stroom "call the troops in with their firelocks. Quick, sir. Am I to be murdered, torn to pieces, and devoured? For mercy's sake, sir, don't stare, but do something look, it's coming to the table! O dear! O dear!" continued the supercargo, evidently terrified out of his wits.
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