Talk:Siege of Derry

Start Date questionable
I have seen in several sources that the siege began sometime in April 1689. Perhaps this could be investigated. --194.125.79.10 19:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply

The Apprentice Boys closed the gates on the 18th December 1688 (New calendar). However, the siege did not begin in earnest until April 1689 when King James II came up to Bishopsgate. The line in the song


 * "When James and all his rebel men
 * Came up to Bishop's Gate
 * With heart and hand and sword and shield
 * We caused him to retreat" (tune- God Bless the Prince of Wales)

refers to that incident. (211.72.91.97 12:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC))

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 09:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

On March 12, 1689, James landed in Kinsale, Ireland, with 6000 French soldiers. He took Dublin and marched north with a Jacobite army of Irish Catholics and Frenchmen. The army arrived at Derry on 18 April 1689 and summoned the city to surrender. ~7800 Williamites in regiments, went to city after retreating from battling 4000 jacobites,  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kindred of St. Columba (talk • contribs) 07:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

non-English translations
I don't intend to make an issue of it at this article, but I do wonder why there has to be an Irish translation of the title in the lead. I noticed this more when I looked up Livonia which had a whole line of translations into different languages from the region and it made the reading more difficult. I thought this was the English Wikipedia. Why do we need ledes to be translated into other languages? Have a look at Livonia to see what I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonia All I wanted to know was where Conrad Rosen came from. I don't need to know how to write Livonia in the Russian alphabet. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 11:00, 7 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It is common on articles where there is a bilingual aspect Snowded  TALK 19:07, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Do you see the same in a printed encyclopaedia? Centuryofconfusion (talk) 20:24, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

the recent reverts
Snowded, Was there any need for a wholesale revert of all the edits? You said that I had made the lede too long. You could have been more specific. The important thing in the lede is to make sure that confusion over the two starting dates is made clear. 7th December (Julian) for the closing of the gates and 18th April for the arrival of King James and the beginning of the siege in earnest. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 20:23, 7 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Just looking at the latest set and there are a mass of POV edits. I'm tempted to simply revert again but I'll do my best to simply get it back to a neutral state.  I suggest talking about changes first  Snowded  TALK 06:22, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Let's talk them through one at a time. They are all taken from Macaulay and I don't see that I have expressed any points of view which would be contested. Why did you remove this edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Siege_of_Derry&diff=724277406&oldid=724277320 ? It's clearly stated in Macaulay that this is what the plan was. King James planned to invade Scotland, and that's why I specifically added in that he was II of England and VII of Scotland. Some of the clans in the Invernessshire region were Jacobite sympathizers and James planned to use them as a base from which to attack England. It never happened, but in 1745, when Jacobitism was a spent force in Ireland, James's grandson (Bonnie Prince Charlie) tried it out. It is sourced material and you had no good reason to remove it. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 10:05, 8 June 2016 (UTC)


 * That is relevant to other articles (possibly) but it does not seem particular to this article. The Siege of Derry was one part of a wider strategy but did not drive it per say.  We need to avoid bloating articles with material even if referenced.  The fact that a statement is referenced does not of itself justify inclusion, there are criterial of weight and relevance that have to be taken into account.  Snowded  TALK 18:24, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Snowded, It's highly relevant. It's the central dynamic to the entire episode and it comes right in the prelude to Macaulay's chapter on the siege. Let me explain. There were three kingdoms involved. Two of them were Protestant Kingdoms (England and Scotland), and the third (Ireland) had a large Catholic majority. The bloodless revolution took place only in England. Trouble was to follow in both Scotland and Ireland. King William therefore had to suppress a Jacobite rising in the Scottish Highlands (see the articles on Killiekrankie and Bonnie Dundee) as well as securing and bolstering his foothold in Ulster. King James already had the advantage in Ireland but needed to suppress the two Williamite strongholds, Enniskillen and Londonderry, in Ulster. Londonderry therefore became of utmost importance to both William and James, as it was at the crossroads between James's plans to advance into the Scottish Highlands and William's plans to reconquer Ireland. You cannot say that this edit is not important. It is one of the most important statements in the background section. If you're going to have an article about the siege then you need to let readers know why a siege at some remote city in Ireland was of such major importance throughout the whole of the British Isles and throughout Europe as a whole. It was pivotal in the wider struggle of the Grand Alliance against King Louis XIV of France and if the siege hadn't occurred, and if Lundy had surrendered the city, then William might never have been able to land in Ireland, and a French invasion of England from Ireland and Scotland could have changed the entire course of history. This was not some poxy siege of interest only to the authors of the local parochial news sheet. It was a monumental event in British history and the statement that you deleted needs to go back into the article. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 19:29, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Let me remind you one more time what exactly the edit said. It said,

King James II (VII of Scotland) wished to use Ulster as a base to reconquer Scotland while King William of Orange wished to use Ulster as a base to reconquer Ireland. This statement couldn't be more relevant as background information to the siege. I even went to the trouble of specifying that King James was King James VII of Scotland, and you came along and removed the edit just because you think it isn't necessary. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 19:50, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Happy to accept it is relevant to the Jacobean conflict with William and I am sure it is in those articles and linked. I think it is too much detail here.  Each battle could have been critical ...  Snowded  TALK 19:53, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Snowded, What it all comes down to is that you hold the opinion that this statement isn't important background information. I beg to differ. You followed me here from another article and you don't appear to have edited here before, while I am well read on the subject material. Was it absolutely necessary for you to make an issue over this statement by deleting it without first discussing it on the talk page? Centuryofconfusion (talk) 20:05, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Restoring the Macaulay Source
Snowded, In the meantime I'm restoring the Macaulay source which was removed earlier today along with your other reverts. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Siege_of_Derry&diff=724276985&oldid=724276917 And then you told me that one of my edits needed a source. The very source that you had just removed. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 19:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I said that was one reason.  It has been reverted you do not yet have agreement on the talk page to reinsert it.  Show some patience please and explain why it is specific to this article (not to the wider conflict).  I'm open to argument as to why it is particularly relevant to this article (but not to it being in there twice)  Snowded  TALK 20:01, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Because one of the most famous accounts of the siege is in Macaulay's "History of England". And you have removed that source without even asking why the source was there in the first place. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 20:07, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * You are confusing sourcing with relevance to the article Snowded  TALK 10:42, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

What point of view is being contested?
Snowded, You reverted again. You reverted this edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Siege_of_Derry&diff=724419678&oldid=724390586 You said it is not neutral. Can you please explain to me exactly the opinion that is being expressed which you contest. The edit contained exactly the same information as the one it replaced. It was re-worded in order to make contrast with the situation in England and Scotland. And don't tell me it's not sourced, because you have already removed the source and told me not to restore it. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 09:08, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * You should read WP:BRD in respect of the process. To say 'major' is very different from 'some real' so it needs to be justified.  It seems a POV to me but I open to evidence.  Snowded  TALK 19:58, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * You'll need to try much harder than that. You said above that I made a mass of POV edits but you haven't yet been able to show me a single example. Tell me in all honesty, where any of your reverts really necessary? Perhaps it might help if you could elaborate on the point of view which you are contesting. Only then can I address your concerns. If you're going to follow someone to an article that you've never edited on before and do wholesale reverts, you really need to be able to defend your actions, and you appear to be on very weak ground in this case. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 22:44, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I've explained what I was concerned about there on the point you raise. If there are other reverts you want more detail on ask me.  Otherwise calm down, I edit in this field and have done for years so don't be surprised if a new article comes on my horizon.  Gob Lofa started a series of controversial edits some time ago (and he is on the opposite political side of the fence for you) and several us then checked other edits to make sure the same PoV position was not being taken.  Its the way Wikipedia works.   Snowded  TALK 10:45, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Snowded, In that case, your expertise is welcome here. But I should remind you that any controversy surrounding this episode in history is more over the final outcome than the actual facts of the siege themselves. On the issue of opposing political perspectives, Macaulay was a whig and his opinions are present in his book, but I haven't expressed any of his whig opinions yet, and if I do, I will paraphrase them. Macaulay wrote his book with the purpose of giving a whig counterbalance to the already established Tory account of the Glorious revolution by David Hume https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_England_(Hume). As far as I know the main conflict between the Hume account and the Macaulay account doesn't affect the siege and that it's about the negotiations at Hungerford when William was advancing on London. Hume believes that a better attempt could have been made to reach a compromise. It would meanwhile still help if you could point out a particular fact which I have inserted which you contest. I haven't dealt with Lundy yet, but at some stage I intend to mention that despite the widespread belief within the besieged garrison that Lundy was a closet Jacobite and a traitor, Macaulay believes that he was only a defeatist given the understandably hopeless situation that he had found himself in. There will be nothing POV about mentioning those two perspectives, and it is a very important episode in the siege because his effigy is burnt every year in a similar manner to that of Guy Fawkes, and his name is used in Northern Ireland as a parody for a traitor. Centuryofconfusion (talk) 13:33, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * We probably need more modern sources. There are two issues (i) POV phrasing and (ii) relevance.  I've explained one of the reverts above in respect of wording and you haven't contested that.  Otherwise I have contested relevance to this article - which is about the siege not the whole conflict which is covered elsewhere Snowded  TALK 00:30, 11 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Snowded, The one bit which you think wasn't relevant was the bit where I said that Londonderry was the intersection point between William's plans to reconquer Ireland and James's plans to re-conquer Scotland. The background section in the article as it stands at the moment, lacks this connecting sentence. We have James arriving in the South of Ireland from France, having fled from England. A reader will want to know why he heads straight to Londonderry with such urgency. It's not just to secure his hold on Ireland. He's looking farther ahead than that. He's looking at the Scottish Highlands where some of the clans north of Argyllshire are Catholic and Jacobite. In fact his grandson jumped straight to that stage in 1745 and by-passed the Ireland bit altogether. Why does William give such a priority to relieving Londonderry? Because he plans to use Ulster as his base to reconquer Ireland. Remember that Schomberg recaptured the east coast of Ulster the following spring. The connecting sentence that you removed is highly relevant as background information regarding the importance of the siege. As for the source, it was actually the editorial introduction to the siege chapter in my own paper copy of Macaulay, written by Hugh Trevor-Roper. That's 20th century. This shouldn't be something that needs to be argued over because you should surely see now that the contentious sentence is a highly relevant fact for the background section as a prelude to where it mentions James's arrival at Kinsale. James would have known that the garrison at Londonderry was holding out for the arrival of William's army. The only issue of contention in any of this is the issue that caused the war itself which was James's belief in the arbitrary power of Kings versus the Williamite belief in constitutional monarchy. As regards your example of POV phrasing, please explain to me the difference between writing 'major concessions' and 'some real concessions'. What point of view is being pushed by the former, which was my choice? The latter if anything is more POV because it implies that previously there had been concessions that weren't real, whereas the facts are that it was a simple case of James granting major concessions to the Catholics. Did you really see a POV in the former that required reverting? Centuryofconfusion (talk) 02:05, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

The mountjoy rammed the boom, and other issues?
The mountjoy attempted to break the boom by simply ramming it. In fact, she failed to breach the boom, and ran aground. She was only re-floated by the recoil of her guns, as she provided covering fire the the sailors who got out and attempted to break the thing with their axes. Only after sailors from the longboat got out and weakened the boom by attacking it with their axes and hatchets, did the boom weaken enough to allow the mountjoy to ram its' way through and break it. That's my understanding anyways. Can anyone clarify this and add the relevant info to the article?

Also, note my question on the refdesk regarding the siege at Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2012_March_5. You may find some info from alansplodge worth adding to the article, particularly regarding the builder of the fateful boom (Bernard Desjean, Baron de Pointis, a french naval engineer), as well as a link to Richard Doherty's article on the ramifications of failure of the siege on the wider Williamite War in Ireland. I think the last of these is very important, to put the outcome of the siege in its' context, and its' ramifications on the wider campaign - something which our article currently does not address.

French sources
French sources can give a different point of view of the siege that avoid the bias against the Jacobites prevalent in many of the sources, e.g. Walker and Macaulay. One must however convert the dates mentioned in the French as they are new style, whereas the dates in the present article follow the contemporary British use and are therefore old style. For example James entered Dublin on 24 March according to English sources but on 3 April according to the French. The Count d'Avaux was France's ambassador to King James. His correspondance was published as Négociations de M. le Comte d'Avaux en Irlande 1689 in Dublin 1934. However, I did not find an accessible copy of this publication on the Internet, only citations in other texts.Johannes Schade (talk)

202.142.63.126 (talk) 09:47, 18 September 2016 (UTC)