Leith.] REPULSE OF THE ENGLISH AND SCOTS. I77
Cornelle, Shelly, Littleton, Southworthe, and nine
other officers, with 2,240 men.
To keep the. field (i.~., the Reserve), Captain
Somerset, and eight other captains, with 2,400
men.
?Item ; it is ordered that the Vyce Admyralle
of the Queen?s Majesty?s schippes shall, when a
token is given, send Vc. (500) men out of the
Navye into the haven of Leythe, to give an assaulte
on the side of the towne, at the same instant when
the assaulte shal be gevene on the breche.?
Captain Vaughan was ordered to assault the
town near Mount Pelham, and the Scots on the
westward and seaward.
The assault was not made until the 7th of May,
when it was delivered at seven in the morning on
dead they could find, and suspended the corpses
along the sloping faces of the ramparts, where they
remained for several days. The failure of the
attempted storm did not very materially affect the
blockade. On the contrary, the besiegers still continued
to harass the town by incessant cannonading
from the mounds already formed and others they
erected One of the former, Mount Falcon, must
have been particularly destructive, as its guns swept
the most crowded part of Leith called the Shore,
along which none could pass but at the greatest
hazard of death. Moreover, the English were
barbarously and uselessly cruel. Before burning
Leith mills they murdered in cold blood every
individual found therein.
The close siege had now lasted about two months,
PROSPECT OF LEITH, 1693. (Reduced Facainrilc aftw Grernvillr Coil us.)
four quarters, but, for some reason not given, the
fleet failed to act, and by some change in the plans
Sir James Crofts was ordered, with what was deemed
a sufficient force, to assail the town on the north
side, at the place latterly called the Sand Port,
where at low water an entrance was deemed easy.
For some reason best known to himself Sir James
thought proper to remain aloof during the whole
uproar of the assault, the ladders provided for
which proved too short by half a pike?s length;
thus he was loudly accused of treachery-a charge
which was deemed sufficiently proved when it was
discovered that a few days before he had been seen
in conversation with the Queen Regent, who addressed
him from the walls of Edinburgh Castle.
The whole affair turned out a complete failure,
English and Scots were alike repulse2 r%Ah slaughter,
?and singular as it may appear,? says a writer,
? the success of the garrison was not a little aided
by the exertionsof certain ladies, whom the French,
with their usual gallantry to the fair sex, entertained
in their quarters.? To these fair ones Knox
applies some pretty rough epithets.
The French now made a sally, stripped all the
110
without any prospect of a termination, though
Elizabeth continued to send more men and more
ships ; but the garrison were reduced to such dire
extremities that for food they were compelled to
shoot and eat all the horses of the. officers and
gens Zurmes. Yet they endured their privations
with true French sung froid, vowing never to surrender
while a horse was left, <?their officers exhibiting
that politeness in the science of gastronomy
which is recorded of the Margchal Strozzi, whose
maifre de cuisine maintained his master?s table with
twelve covers every day, although he had nothing
better to set upon it now and then except the
quarter of a carrion horse, dressed with the grass
and weeds that grew upon the ramparts.?
The discovery, a few years ago, of an ancient
well filled to its brim with cart-loads of horses?
heads, near the head of the Links, was a singular
but expressive monument of the resolution with
which the town was defended
The unfortunate Queen Regent did not live to
see the end of these affairs. She was sinking
fast. She had contemplated retiring to France,
and had a commission executed at Blois by Francis
