Cromwell in Ireland
and nightly sallies. When the great guns opened fire, and their shot made breaches in the single wall, he repaired the damage and loopholed the neighbouring houses for musketry. "He did set all men and maids to work," says a contemporary writer, "townsmen and soldiers, to draw dunghills, mortar, stones, and timber, and make a long lane a man's height, and about eighty yard's length, on both sides up from the breach, and he caused to be placed engines on both sides of the lane, and two guns at the end of it, invisible, opposite to the breach, and so ordered all things against a storm. He intrusted the defence of this inner retrenchment, or lane, to a body of volunteers, armed with swords, sythes, and pikes.
"Musket ammunition was scarce, and to a picked body of good shots this precious store was distributed; they were placed in the loopholed houses" which commanded this lane. The storm began early on the morning of the 10th of May. Cromwell's columns advanced to the breach, singing a hymn. No opposition was made until the leading troops had entered well within the walls. Few people or soldiers were to be seen, and the column pressed forward up the long lane, anticipating an easy victory.
"The lane," says the same old account, "was
54
