English commander William Drury brought the artillery train from Berwick in May 1573 under Elizabeth I's direct order to end the Edinburgh Castle siege. Drury approached the castle from the north via the Castle Hill, placing his heaviest guns to enfilade David's Tower and the northern face. The guns destroyed the cistern that supplied the garrison's water and breached the curtain wall within five days of sustained fire. Drury's professional competence — using artillery to deny water rather than simply breach walls — was a textbook example of Elizabethan siege craft applied to an otherwise impregnable Scottish fortress.
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