⚔ Battlefields of Britain

Siege of Waterford 1495

Siege of Waterford: Perkin Warbeck
Image: Jacques Le Boucq, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Marker: recorded battle location (no official boundary).

Key facts

Date (year)1495Wikidata P580 start time
Century15th centuryderived
PeriodWars of the Roses & late medievalderived
CountryIrelandderived

About the battle

An eleven-day siege of Waterford took place, in Waterford in 1495, after the pretender to the throne of Henry VII, Perkin Warbeck's failed attack on Deal, Kent. Warbeck was joined by Cork's Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Desmond when they went to Ireland and launched an invasion of Waterford on 23 July 1495.

Supported by "foreign mercenaries", Warbeck's force besieged the city; however, its walls were well-defended and the marshes to the east of the city were flooded by the damming of St. John's River. Attacks towards the city were repulsed and were followed by counterattacks into the besiegers' camp. These counterattacks resulted in the capture of several prisoners who were dragged into the city and beheaded. The defenders also had cannons on the walls of the city in Reginald's Tower that were used to fire on the attacking ships. These cannons succeed in sinking two of the eleven ships they faced. The battle ended on the eleventh day of the siege and was a loss for Warbeck's force. Warbeck himself escaped following the failed siege, while his supporter, Maurice FitzGerald, was "forgiven" by the crown for his role in the attack.

In the years following victory, the town's motto was granted by Henry VII as Urbs Intaca Manet Waterfordia ('the city of Waterford remains untaken').

Visiting the battlefield

Location

  • Approximate location: the point for Waterford, the place Wikidata gives as the battle’s location: 52.2583, -7.1190

Battlefields are often on private farmland: please keep to public rights of way and respect landowners.

Directions (Google Maps) OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Waterford (1495) (revision 1370746427), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations removed. No text added.

Battle location from Wikidata (CC0).

Nearby battlefields

Browse more: battles in County Waterford · battles in Ireland · Wars of the Roses & late medieval · 15th century battles

Further reading