Two Ulster towns, Enniskillen and Derry, were to become the focal points of the first stage of the Williamite war. Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which resulted in Huguenots fleeing to northern Europe and rekindled fears of persecution in Protestant communities. Apprentice boys When the Dutch invasion threatened, James doubted the loyalty of his English troops. He therefore asked Tyrconnell to send him reliable Irish ones. These units sailed to Chester in September and early October 1688. To replace them Tyrconnell ordered four new regiments to be raised, one for each Irish province. He ordered Alexander MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim, a Catholic nobleman of Scottish origin, to raise the Ulster regiment. MacDonnell, already in his seventies, hired 1,200 Scottish mercenaries (called redshanks), making sure they were all Catholics. The unit was supposed to be ready on 20 November, but delays occurred. At that time Tyrconnell's recast of the Irish army had advanced so far that few units still had significant numbers of Protestants. One of those was the regiment of Viscount Mountjoy, a Protestant loyal to James. This unit was in garrison at Derry. Tyrconnell considered Mountjoy's regiment unreliable and on 23 November ordered it to march to Dublin. Mountjoy's regiment was to be replaced by MacDonnell's, which was not ready so that Derry was left without a garrison. When MacDonnell finally got his troops on the way, he met Colonel George Philips at Newtown Limavady, who immediately sent a messenger to Derry to warn the city. On 7 December, with MacDonnell's regiment ready to cross the Foyle River under Derry's Ferryquay Gate, 13 apprentices seized the city's keys and locked the gates. With this act Derry was in open rebellion against Tyrconnell and his master James II, who was already in exile in France at that time. MacDonnell was not strong enough to take the town by force and retreated to Coleraine. Interlude Later generations have sometimes seen the shutting of the gates by the apprentices as the start of the siege. In reality, six peaceful months passed between the apprentices' action (7 December) and the start of the siege (18 June 1689). In a similar way Robert Lundy's blunders, flight, and supposed treachery (see further down) are often telescoped into the days of the apprentices' action, while in reality, they fell into the lead-up to the siege in June 1689. On 9 December