Cruikshank’s Water Colours

History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmett’s Insurrection in 1803

By W. H. Maxwell

Author of ‘The Life of the Duke of Wellington,’ Etc. Etc.

Take heed

How you awake the deeping sword of war;

We charge you, in the name of God, take heed!

For never two such kingdoms did contend,

Without much fall of blood.

—Shakspeare.

THE CRADLE OF THE REBELLION

The rebellious movement which, in 1798, openly burst into the horrors of civil war, had for years been maturing. The success of the American colonists in defeating the mother country, and the upheaval in France, the great Revolution, proved fatal precedents, and the easily excited minds of the Irish people led the disloyal and disaffected of the sister kingdom to contemplate the forcible carrying out of a similar policy. As will be seen, this fratricidal struggle largely resolved itself into a religious campaign between the Catholic and Protestant sections of the community.

At an early stage of the coming struggle the ulterior objects of the discontented Catholics became perfectly apparent, and some of their warmest advocates took alarm. Sir Hercules Langrish, in his place in the Irish Parliament, thus addressed the House: ‘Notwithstanding my prepossessions in favour of the Roman Catholics, I was checked for some time in my ardour to serve them, by reading of late a multitude of publications and paragraphs in the newspapers, and other public prints, circulated gratis with the utmost industry, purporting to convey the sentiments of the Catholics. What was their import? They were exhortations to the people never to be satisfied at any concession till the State itself was conceded: they were precautions against public tranquillity; they were invitations to disorder, and covenants of discontent; they were ostentations of strength, rather than solicitations for favour; rather appeals to the power of the people, than applications to the authority of the State; they involved the relief of the Catholic, with the revolution of the Government; and were dissertations for democracy, rather than arguments for toleration.’

APPEAL TO FORCE OF ARMS

Acting, however, on the resolutions they had published, the Committees determined to summon a Convention in imitation of the proceedings which were at the time violently revolutionising France, where the horrors of the great French Rebellion had already unsettled everything in 1789. Circulars were issued by their leaders—representatives elected in the counties—and on the 3rd of December 1792 the ‘Back Lane Parliament’ commenced its first session in Tailor’s Hall.

The daring measure of calling together an assembly, where the delegates debated with closed doors, was followed by a still bolder demonstration. The discontented Romanists resolved upon making an overbearing display of physical force, and declared their intention to arm, to maintain their rights and effect their objects. For this purpose large sums of money were levied, and a body was enrolled in the metropolis under the title of ‘The National Guard.’ They were arrayed in green uniforms, with a harp without the crown displayed upon the buttons and appointments. Orders were issued for a general muster on the 9th of December; but a proclamation, issued by the Lord Lieutenant, declared the body to be dangerous to the public peace, and directed the authorities to disperse the meeting should it be attempted, and employ force were it required. Many conjectures were hazarded at the time respecting the objects of the movement; some asserted that it was merely intended, by an exhibition of numerical strength, to confirm unsteady friends, and intimidate those who were opposed to them; others, however, ascribed to the National Guards more serious and sanguinary designs—‘to seize even then upon the city, and commence at once a civil war.’ Certain it is that the Government were led to apprehend that this muster would lead to a revolutionary movement, and, accordingly, the most decisive measures were taken to render it abortive.

‘THE UNITED IRISHMEN’

To follow up the progress and proceedings of the ‘United Irishmen’ throughout that unquiet period which intervened between the lieutenancies of Earls Westmoreland and Camden would be unnecessary. Their civil and military organisation, however, shall be described, and a brief analysis given of their general history from the epoch where we have broken off, when the seeds of disaffection had taken a firm root, and a conspiracy was hatched, which, a few years afterwards, became fatally matured, and exploded in 1798 with portentous violence.

Under the colour of volunteering, the arming and drilling of the malcontents continued. A proclamation, issued by the 11th of March 1793, declared these proceedings illegal, and attached penal consequences to any who should continue them. The preamble ran thus: ‘Whereas certain seditious and ill-affected persons, in several parts of the north, particularly in the town of Belfast, have endeavoured to foment and encourage discontent, and to defame the Government and the Parliament, by seditious publications circulated among the people; and that several bodies of men have been collected in armed associations, and have been levied and arrayed in the said town of Belfast; and that arms and gunpowder to a very large amount have been sent thither; and that bodies of men have been drilled and exercised by day and night, under the pretext of obtaining a redress of grievances, though the obvious intention appears to be to overawe the Parliament and the Government, and to dictate to both.’

This and the Gunpowder Act struck heavily at the military organisations of the revolutionists; while the Convention Act, subsequently passed, embarrassed the leaders of the movement so much, that an influential member of the Union, Samuel Neilson, afterwards declared, ‘That the bill was calculated to meet every part of the system, and the framer must have had their constitution in his hand when he was devising its provisions.’

‘THE DEFENDERS’ AND ‘ORANGE LODGES’

In 1794 and 1795 outrages by ‘the Defenders’—a lawless confederacy, exclusively Catholic—became general, and the Protestants associated for self-defence. A conflict between the rival religionists took place at a spot called ‘The Diamond,’ in the county of Armagh, in which the Defenders were signally defeated. In commemoration of this success the first Orange Lodge was formed on the 21st of September 1795. The system of Orange Lodges ‘was not established in the metropolis, though many years threatened with open rebellion, till the month of January 1798; and many gentlemen of high character and considerable talents placed themselves at its head, to give the institution a proper direction, and to silence the calumnious clamours of traitors against it.’ The ‘Orange’ organisation, slowly but steadily, gained strength, until the body was considered in the north of Ireland so numerous and effective, that General Knox, commanding at the outbreak in 1798, assured the Government that to these ardent supporters of the constitution the safety of Ulster might be confidently entrusted.

STATE PROSECUTIONS

Early in the annals of the movement several of the revolutionary leaders were subjected to State prosecutions for sedition. Hamilton Rowan was convicted, fined, and imprisoned, but escaped in women’s clothes from Newgate; Nappy Tandy placed under bail, but fled the kingdom to avoid a trial; Doctor Drennan was tried and acquitted; Tone expatriated himself, and went with his family to America; but Jackson, an English clergyman, and an envoy from the French Republican Government to the Irish revolutionists, was, on the 23rd of April 1795, capitally convicted of high treason. The unhappy man committed suicide, and poisoned himself in the prisoner’s bar, immediately after the foreman had announced him guilty.

The recall of Lord Westmoreland and the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam as viceroy raised the sinking confidence of the Catholic party as much as it depressed the hopes of the Orangists. The well-known bias of the Earl’s political opinions was warmly in favour of fresh and full concessions, and it was supposed that Catholic emancipation was at hand. While the Roman Catholics were buoyant with high expectation, arising from the noble lord’s appointment to the Irish lieutenancy, a sudden recall crushed their hopes and augmented their disaffection. From this period their hostility to any monarchical form of government appears to have become inveterate, and the first test required of a United Irishman—one in which a reformed Parliament was distinctly recognised—was instantly exchanged for another purely democratical.

OATH OF THE ‘UNITED IRISHMEN’

The initiatory oath taken henceforth by the United Irishmen was thus worded:—‘In the awful presence of God, I,... do voluntarily declare that I will persevere in endeavouring to form a brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and that I will also persevere in my endeavours to obtain an equal, full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland. I do further declare, that neither hopes, fears, rewards, or punishments, shall ever induce me, directly or indirectly, to inform or give evidence against any member or members of this or similar societies, for any act or expression of theirs, done or made collectively or individually in and out of this society, in pursuance of the spirit of this obligation.’

FRENCH INVASION INVITED

1796 was not fated to enjoy more tranquillity than the stormy era that preceded it. A compulsory increase of military power, under the provisions of the Militia Bill, increased the general discontent, and the public uneasiness was not abated by a discovery that the French Directory had undertaken to land an invading army to assist the Irish revolutionists, who, on their part, undertook to pay these auxiliaries, and eventually defray the whole expenses of the expedition. Additional powers were now demanded by the Irish Executive, and the Insurrection Act, which had passed in spring, was followed up by a suspension of habeas corpus in October.

There is no doubt that these stringent powers were afterwards sadly and frequently abused. Arrests on secret information—districts unnecessarily proclaimed—suspected persons sent, without the shadow of a trial, on board the fleet—military license—arbitrary impressment of beasts of burden for baggage transport—abuse in billeting—a general insolence in the soldiery,—all these formed constant subject for complaint, and, unfortunately, it was seldom made without ample provocation.

These severities were impolitic—they reacted against the Government—and the feelings of the lower orders became exasperated, but not subdued. The most deeply marked of innate feelings in the human breast is resistance to oppression, whether it be real or imaginary. The peasantry assembled by night to drill, or deprive the loyalists of their arms, whilst by day they collected in enormous numbers to harvest the crops of persons imprisoned for political offences, or under the pretext of attending a funeral, or a hurling match, they paraded in military array, with banners and martial music.

While the disaffected thus evinced warm sympathy for their imprisoned friends, reaping their corn and securing their potato crops, they were equally assiduous in shielding them from the penal consequences of their crimes. Bribery and intimidation were the means commonly employed, and should these fail, assassination was not infrequent. This system of terror too frequently sheltered the guilty from the punishment they deserved; for, dreading the consequences of conviction and consequent reprisals, witnesses prevaricated, intimidated jurors were afraid to do their duty, and the criminal escaped.

PROSECUTIONS AND SEARCHES FOR CONCEALED ARMS

In the spring of 1797 General Lake issued a proclamation, directing that all persons unauthorised to keep arms should surrender them forthwith to the proper authorities. It was declared that secret information where weapons were concealed should be liberally rewarded, and the full value of such arms as might be thus recovered should be given to the informant. That the quantity hidden throughout the kingdom was immense may be conceived from the fact that, within the year, and in two provinces alone, Ulster and Leinster, 129,583 weapons of various descriptions were seized or surrendered. In this number there were 48,000 firelocks, 70,000 pikes, and 22 pieces of cannon.

READY FOR THE REBELLION

At this period it is probable that the United Irishmen, in point of numbers and organisation, were almost as formidable as at the moment of the insurrection. In the northern provincial meetings particular inquiries were made of the delegates assembled, ‘whether they considered themselves as being sufficiently strong to disarm the military quartered in their respective districts?’ and, with a few exceptions, the question received an affirmative reply. Although too successful in corrupting the soldiers, they appear to have made very erroneous calculations as to the number whose allegiance had been shaken. Many, both of the line and the militia, became pretended converts to republicanism merely to obtain the money and entertainment offered liberally by the disaffected. Some regiments, however, became seriously tainted with disloyalty; but, generally, the active measures to counteract seduction adopted by the commanding officers defeated the attempt.

ORGANISATION OF THE REBELS

With the confidence which strength and union give to those who meditate a revolutionary essay, the leaders of the disaffected waited with impatience the assistance promised them through their agents by the French Directory.

The military organisation of the United Irishmen was grafted on their elaborately framed civil representative constitution, and was constituted in the following manner:—‘The secretary of each subordinate society, composed of twelve members, was appointed their petty or non-commissioned officer. The delegate of five societies to a lower baronial committee was commonly appointed captain of a company, consisting of the five societies who had delegated him, and who made the number of sixty privates; and then the delegate of ten lower baronials to the upper or district committee was commonly appointed colonel of a battalion, which was thus composed of six hundred. The colonels of battalions in each county sent in the names of three persons to the Executive Directory of the Union, one of whom was appointed by them adjutant-general of the county, whose duty it was to receive and communicate military orders from the Executive to the colonels of battalions, and in general to act as officer of the revolutionary staff. They were required to inform themselves of, and report the state of the rebel regiments within their respective districts, of the number of mills, the roads, rivers, bridges, and fords, the military positions, the capacity of the towns and villages to receive troops, to communicate to the Executive every movement of the enemy (meaning the King’s troops), to announce the first appearance of their allies (the French invaders), and immediately to collect their forces.

MILITARY PLANS

Besides these a military committee was specially appointed. Its labours were twofold: one was to prepare a plan for a general insurrection unsupported by foreign aid; the other, to devise the best means of co-operation with a French army, in the event of the promised descent being effected on the coast of Ireland. On this event the Directory calculated with such certainty in 1797, that a general order ‘to be ready’ was issued through the provincial committees. Those who had the means to obtain them were exhorted to procure firearms and ammunition—pikes were to be provided by the lower orders—and throughout three provinces the order was promptly obeyed. The organisation of Connaught was, fortunately, still imperfect, and at the outbreak of the insurrection the western counties were, happily for themselves, quite unprepared for action.

FRENCH INVASION

Passing over the abortive attempt at an invasion arranged between Lord Edward Fitzgerald and General Lazare Hoche in 1796, when, after months of preparations, which—like the Spanish Armada—failed ignominiously, the ships being the victims of the adverse winds, and the commander, Morard de Galles, being watched by the English Admiral Gardiner with a stronger force (18 sail of the line). The equipment, but for unfavourable circumstances, was sufficiently formidable,—the expedition numbering 15 sail of the line, 10 frigates, and 7 transports, which were afterwards augmented,—the whole comprising 15,000 troops, with 40,000 extra stand of arms, a field park of 29 pieces, 60,000 barrels of powder, and 7,000,000 cartridges. The time chosen was just before Christmas.

DISCOMFITED FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY

On the 26th December—the morning after the French admiral had issued orders to cut the cables and put to sea—Wolf Tone, who was the active spirit of the expedition, thus describes the situation to which the remnant of the invading forces was reduced:—‘The morning is now come, the gale continues, and the fog is so thick that we cannot see a ship’s length ahead; so here we lie in the utmost uncertainty and anxiety. In all probability we are now left without admiral or general; if so, Cherin will command the troops, and Bedout the fleet; but, at all events, there is an end of the expedition. Certainly we have been persecuted by a strange fatality, from the very night of our departure to this hour. We have lost two commanders-in-chief; of four admirals not one remains; we have lost one ship of the line (the Séduisant was shipwrecked) that we know of, and probably many others of which we know nothing; we have been now six days in Bantry Bay, within 500 yards of the shore, without being able to effect a landing; we have been dispersed four times in four days; and at this moment, of 43 sail, of which the expedition consisted, we can muster of all sizes but 14. There only wants our falling in with the English to complete our destruction.’

On the 27th the weather continued stormy. Several ships were obliged to cut and run, the fleet was reduced to 7 sail of the line and a frigate, the troops to 4200 men, and the artillery to two four-pounders. As a last effort this miserable remnant of the expedition determined to seek the Shannon, which had been named as the place of rendezvous. During the whole gale, which blew on the night of the 28th, a sixth separation occurred, and three seventy-fours and a frigate parted company. On the 29th the commodore signalised the other captains to steer for France, and the last ship of an expedition intended to overthrow the British monarchy quitted the shores of Ireland without having landed a single soldier, communicated with the disaffected, or thrown a musket on the shore.

The failure of the first attempt at an invasion was a fatal disappointment to the Irish Unionists; and although hopes were held out that a second armament would be fitted out by the French Directory without delay, the financial and political embarrassments of the Republic gave little promise that it would or could be effected. Hoche, who did not reach France for fifteen days after Grouchy, was nominated soon after to the command of the army of the Sambre and the Meuse. This appointment was heavily regretted by the agents of the United Irishmen, for there is no doubt that Ireland was to Hoche the favourite field of ambition that Egypt was afterwards to Bonaparte; and undoubtedly he was sincere in his expressed intention of making the second effort at invasion, had not his sudden dissolution intervened.

‘The affair,’ replied he, ‘is but suspended. You know our difficulties for money; the repair of our fleet and the necessary preparations require some considerable time, and, in the meantime, there are 15,000 men lying idle below, and, in fact, we cannot even feed them there. The Directory has resolved, in the meantime, to employ them usefully elsewhere, and has accepted my services; but be assured, the moment the enterprise is resumed, that I will return with the first patrouille which embarks.’—General Hoche to Tone. Hoche sank from rapid consumption, it is said, 19th of September 1797, in command of the united armies of the Rhine and Sambre and Meuse. Adverse fate seemed determined to overwhelm unhappy Ireland, but fortune again miraculously warded off the desperately threatening conjunction of affairs.

THE DUTCH INVASION AVERTED

From another quarter, however, the Irish revolutionists obtained both sympathy and support. Lewines, the chief agent of the United Irishmen, had been accredited to Spain and Holland, with both powers England being at war, to request assistance. From the Spanish Government he received, generally, an encouraging answer to his memorial; and from the Batavian Executive a positive assurance of prompt and powerful co-operation on the part of the Dutch republicans—a promise they endeavoured to faithfully perform.

It was an awful epoch in British history; and it would have been difficult to say whether at home or abroad the political position of England was more embarrassed and portentous. Conquest had attended the onward march of the Republicans, and victory had succeeded victory; and while Ireland was ready to explode, public confidence was shaken to its centre, for that stay of Britain—her fleet—had failed her in her trying hour, and broken into open mutiny. Such was the ominous aspect, foreign and domestic, when the Batavian Government determined to strike a blow, that, if fortunately delivered, might have gone far to dismember that island empire which had wrung from the Dutch the dominion of the seas.

Holland was a power to be dreaded. France threatened and intended a descent, but she possessed the wish, rather than the power to effect it. Her naval executive was wretchedly defective, her marine and monetary resources limited and precarious; and while the dockyard authorities declared that eight weeks would be sufficient to fit out a second expedition, it was probable—and so it proved—that as many months must elapse before a fleet could be sent afloat. With the Dutch Republic matters were in a different state. In the Texel five-and-twenty line-of-battle ships and frigates were lying manned, equipped, and ready for sea; 15,000 troops were ordered for instant embarkation; and with a quantity of spare arms, a large artillery force, and plenty of money to subsist the troops when landed, the Batavian armament undauntedly determined to push out of harbour with the first fair wind, elude Admiral Warren and his blockading squadron—if they could—or, if intercepted, stand an action with the British admiral’s forces, and thus endeavour to redeem the honour of a flag that once had been feared and respected.

The Dutch Government proved their sincerity of intention by the selection they made for the command of the expedition. The naval department was entrusted to De Winter, an officer of distinguished reputation, while the troops were placed under the direction of Daendels, a man justly considered to be the best general in the service of the Republic. The feelings of the Batavian Executive towards the Irish revolutionists were ardent and disinterested, and nothing could surpass the enthusiastic spirit which pervaded both the military and marine.

Tone relates in his Memoirs:—‘General Daendels showed me to-day his instructions from the Dutch Government. They are fair and honest, and I have no doubt he will act up to them. The spirit of them is, always to maintain the character of a faithful ally, and not to interfere in the domestic concerns of the people; to aid them, by every means in his power, to establish their liberty and independence, and to expect no condition in return, but that we should throw off the English yoke, and that, when all was settled on that score, we should arrange our future commerce with the Dutch Republic on the basis of reciprocal advantage and accommodation.’

But it would appear that against invasive efforts fortune had declared herself an enemy, and the same wind that prevented the landing of a French armament as obstinately resisted the sailing of the Dutch one. Day after day fifteen sail-of-the-line, eight frigates, and thirty transports lay at single anchor, locked up in the Texel, while a breeze, any point to northward, would have carried them to sea with eighteen battalions of infantry, four of chasseurs, eight squadrons of cavalry, and eleven companies of artillery—the whole forming an efficient and well-appointed army of 14,000 men, a force more than sufficient, under happy auspices, to have changed an empire’s fate.

Foul winds continued. The spirit of troops cooped up a month on shipboard gradually abated, and golden opportunities slipped away. Even the most sanguine began to doubt, a coolness arose between the commanders, and De Winter at last memorialised his Government, and intimated that the expedition, as far as its original destination was concerned, must be abandoned for the present. The document stated that July had been named for the attempt, that on the 9th all was ready, that the English fleet (the forces of which he rightly foresaw, would have to be faced) at that time consisted, at the very most, of thirteen sail-of-the-line, which could not make any effectual opposition, that contrary winds having prevailed ever since, without an hour’s intermission, the enemy had had time to reinforce himself to the number of seventeen sail-of-the-line, so that he had now a superiority in force over the Dutch fleet, which, of course, rendered the issue of an engagement, to a certain degree, doubtful; that, by this unforeseen delay, which might, and probably would, continue still longer, a great additional consumption of provisions had taken place, so that in a very few days there would be barely sufficient for the voyage north-about; that the season was now rapidly passing away, and, if the foul wind continued a fortnight longer, the voyage would become highly dangerous, if not utterly impracticable, with a fleet encumbered with so many transports, and amounting to nearly seventy sail of all kinds, and that, in consequence, even a successful action with the English would not ensure the success of the enterprise, which the very season would negative; that for all these reasons, his opinion was that the present plan was no longer advisable, and in consequence he proposed that it should be industriously published that the expedition was given up; that the troops should be disembarked, except from 2500 to 3000 men of the élite of the army, who with twenty or thirty pieces of artillery, and all the arms and ammunition, should remain on board the frigates and one or two of the fastest-sailing transports; that as the vigilance of the enemy would probably be relaxed in consequence, this flotilla should profit by the first favourable moment to put to sea, and push for their original destination, where they should land the men, arms, and artillery, and he would charge himself with the execution of this plan; that by this means, even if they failed, the Republic would be at no very great loss, and if they succeeded must gain exceedingly; that she would preserve her grand fleet, which was now her last stake, and, during the winter, would be able to augment it, so as to open the next campaign—in case peace was not made ad interim—with twenty sail-of-the-line in the North Sea. These were most certainly very strong reasons, and, unfortunately for the would-be invaders, the wind gave them every hour fresh weight.

FATE OF THE DUTCH FLEET

In accordance with De Winter’s advice the troops were landed, and the Dutch attempt upon Ireland virtually abandoned; for although it was ordered that the invading army should be so cantoned that it could be instantly concentrated for embarkation, its future destination was changed, and the north of Scotland was declared a fitter place for the attempt than the Irish coast. But these designs were never carried out, for the excellent reason that the British North Sea fleet under Duncan’s leadership was prepared to intervene. On the 11th October 1797 De Winter put to sea, and the memorable action of Camperdown resulted. Both fleets in numbers, men, and metal were much the same, and though the Dutch vessels were skilfully handled and most gallantly fought, their defeat was so decisive, that with this crushing blow the marine power of the States of Holland was finally extinguished.

DESPAIR OF FOREIGN ASSISTANCE

The failure of the Batavian Government in giving their promised assistance to the Irish malcontents proved in many respects most injurious to the success of the conspiracy. The ardent expectations of succour from abroad, so long and eagerly expected, vanished with the crowning victory of Camperdown. This heavy and irremediable disaster abated the confidence of the most sanguine, distracted the deliberations of the leaders, and hurried the lower classes into overt acts of violence which irritated the royalists and provoked a fearful retaliation. Indeed, on both sides exasperated feelings had produced cruelty, and, as a consequence, barbarous reaction. The troops, with the impunity attendant upon martial law, made a plea of disaffection the excuse for licence and exaction; and upon the innocent and guilty, too frequently, the vengeance of the Executive was indiscriminately directed. The summary infliction of corporal and capital punishment—the destruction of property—the severity attached to charges of sedition, when secret enmity and vile espionage would bring ruin on the unoffending, and suspicion was held synonymous with guilt,—all these severities, equally illegal and injudicious, kindled a ferocity of feeling between parties which milder measures might have allayed, accustomed men to acts of violence from which otherwise they would have revolted, and reconciled them to the terrible barbarities attendant upon civil war.

INFLAMMATORY PUBLICATIONS

Nor is it to be denied that cruelty in the authorities found much extenuation in the crimes committed by the disaffected. That accursed crime, so alien to British feeling, became every day more prevalent, and secret assassination was perpetrated by the ignorant, and encouraged by the most infamous prints which ever damned a cause. The Union Star headed its columns with a broad encouragement to murder, and individuals were regularly branded for the knife; The Press was equally violent, but its sedition was modified—the treasonable doctrines of the one being levelled generally against public securities, while a malignant hatred to the person inculcated in the leading article of the other the assassination of those who were obnoxious. Both these inflammatory prints were eventually prosecuted and put down; and while no publications ever called for the intervention of the law-officers more imperiously, in justice we must add that none were more unconstitutionally disposed of—a military mob demolished the one, the civil authorities arbitrarily suppressed the other.

To the cause which they ardently but unwisely advocated these prints were fatally mischievous. There were two great parties in the kingdom: one—the Roman Catholics—had serious reasons for discontent, for statutory enactments excluded them from civil rights; with the Protestants it was different—they had much to reform, but nothing to obtain. In the north of Ireland and part of Leinster, as it does at present, the wealth, the moral character, and hence the moral influence of the kingdom, might be considered as being concentrated; and, as it will ever be, the intelligence of the minor section of the Irish people overbalanced the physical superiority of the other. To one object—wild and imaginative—the efforts of the Protestant party were directed; to another—vague, bigoted, and impracticable—the Romanists addressed themselves. Hence the combination of interests and feelings was easily disorganised, and within six months after an eternity of union had been announced as existing between religionists virulently opposed, the discrepancy of intentions had severed the Roman Catholics and Dissenters so completely, that the conviction exists, had the issue come to trial, nineteen out of twenty of the northern republicans would have eventually joined the royal banner.

Musgrave, in his Memoirs, has pointed out this logical conclusion:—‘When Dickey, a rebel leader and a Dissenter, was on the point of being hanged at Belfast, he declared that the eyes of Presbyterians had been opened too late; and that they were convinced by the massacres perpetrated by the Romanists in the province of Leinster, that they must have had to contend with them if they had succeeded in overturning the constitution.’

The secret informer played a most important part in this fearsome history from its commencement; of these—the most important—because occupying the most influential position, was Mr. Thomas Reynolds, of the county of Kildare, who had acquired a landed property at Kilkea Castle.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Oliver Bond, two leaders in the conspiracy, having, for the reason that he possessed considerable influence amongst the Romanists, considered Reynolds a proper person to assist in forwarding their treasonable designs, practised every art of seduction to attach him to their cause; and having at last succeeded, he was sworn a United Irishman at the house of Oliver Bond in Dublin in the beginning of the year 1797, was induced to accept the commission of colonel, the offices of treasurer and representative of the county of Kildare, and at last that of delegate for the province of Leinster.

THE LEADERS OF THE CONSPIRACY BETRAYED TO THE GOVERNMENT

Soon after he was raised to this elevated situation in the Union, having discovered that the conspirators, instead of intending to reform the abuses of the State, and to abolish all religious distinctions, which was their professed object at first, meditated the subversion of the constitution, the massacre of the leading members of Government, and of such persons as should oppose their designs, he determined to defeat them by embracing the first opportunity of communicating them to some person in whom he could confide.

REVELATIONS OF THE SECRET TRAITOR-INFORMER

He had a very great friendship and respect for Mr. Cope, an eminent merchant of the city of Dublin, who, having lamented to him in the course of conversation the crimes and atrocities which were constantly committed, and which were undoubted symptoms of an approaching rebellion, Mr. Reynolds, upon whom his conversation had made a very deep impression, said, ‘That he knew a person connected with the United Irishmen, who, he believed, would defeat their nefarious projects by communicating them to Government, in order to make an atonement for the crime he had committed in joining them.’ Mr. Cope assured him that such a person would obtain the highest honours and pecuniary rewards that the administration could confer, and that he would be admired and applauded by the most virtuous and valuable portion of society. But Mr. Reynolds said that nothing could tempt him to come forward and avow himself. However, after the most earnest and pressing solicitations repeatedly made on the part of Mr. Cope, for whom he had filial reverence, he said that his friend would appear in person and disclose the particulars of the plot on the following conditions:—“That he should not be called upon in person to prosecute any United Irishmen; that the channel through which the information came should be kept a secret, at least for a time; that, as his life would be in danger upon its being known, and he must leave the country and go to England till matters were settled—which would derange his affairs, and put him to considerable expense—he expected to receive some compensation. Mr. Cope then told him that he might draw on him for any sum not exceeding five hundred guineas. On that he told Mr. Cope that the Leinster delegates were to meet at Oliver Bond’s on the 12th of March to concert measures for an insurrection.”

It will be seen that, to pierce the conspiracy, no common informer was likely to penetrate the secrets of the confederacy. Save to a chosen few the higher executive was veiled in mystery—the revelations of obscure and ordinary traitors would therefore prove unavailing—and he who could denounce the Secret Directory must be a member himself.

The traitor who had betrayed the elements of this huge conspiracy found his confidences well kept. Documents, whose authenticity cannot be called in question, are in existence, and furnish irrefragable proof of Mr. Thomas Reynolds having received for his disclosures not £500 only, but the sum of £5000 in four payments, at the following dates, and in the following amounts:—

1798. Sept. 29, Mr. T. Reynolds received....£1000

Nov. 16.....................................£2000

1799-Jan. 19................................£1000

March,,.....................................£1000

£5000

In all these curious disclosures is revealed the fact that, owing to the sensitive conscience of the informer, he in all received a very comfortable sum—including an annuity of £1000 per annum.

Moreover, on the 14th of June 1799 Mr. Reynolds received his annuity of £1000, ‘in full to the 25th March 1799; from which period till his death, the 18th of August 1836, his pension continued to be paid to him.

The amount of that pension was £1000 Irish, or £920 British, per annum, he received for a term of thirty-seven years.

The gross amount for the above period, at £920 per annum, is £34,040

Gratuity before the trials of Bond, M’Cann, and Byrne £500

Gratuities between Sept. 1798, and 4th March 1799 £5,000

Consulship at Lisbon, four years at £1,400 per annum £5,600

Consulship at Iceland, two year at £300........£600

.............................................£45,740

THE HEADS OF THE CONSPIRACY SWEPT OFF

The result of Reynolds’s information was the arrest of the whole provincial committee, consisting of fifteen members, delegates from different societies. They had assembled at the house of Oliver Bond, in Bridge Street, on the 12th of March, and were completely surprised by Captain Swan, attended by a dozen soldiers in coloured clothes. Several important papers were found upon the persons of the conspirators, some written by Byrne, and others by John M’Cann—and both these unfortunate men subsequently underwent the extreme penalty of the law.

The arrest at Bond’s was followed up by many others, and most of the Leinster delegates were promptly seized and imprisoned, while others were denounced. Among the former were Emmett, Sweetman, Jackson, and Macnevin; among the latter Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Sampson, and McCormick.

The consequences of the fatal occurrence can be readily imagined. The loss of their leaders created confusion and distrust—that they had been betrayed was evident, and yet none could point to the betrayer. No wonder that men implicated in the conspiracy trembled for themselves—treason was abroad—and what added terror to that knowledge was that none could name the individual, and hence all was vague apprehension, more heart depressing than actual but open danger.

The effect of this fetal discovery was equally injurious to the interests of the Union abroad.

WOLF TONE’S DIARY

In his ‘Diary’ Tone records:—‘I have read news of the most disastrous and afflicting kind, as well for me individually as for the country at large. The English Government has arrested the whole committee of United Irishmen for the province of Leinster, including almost every man I know and esteem in the city of Dublin. It is by far the most terrible blow which the cause of liberty in Ireland has yet sustained. I know not whether in the whole party it would be possible to replace the energy, talents, and integrity of which we are deprived by this most unfortunate of events. I have not received such a shock from all that has passed since I left Ireland. What a triumph at this moment for Fitzgibbon (Lord Clare)! These arrestations following so close on that of O’Connor, give rise to very strong suspicions of treachery on my mind. I cannot bear to write or think longer on this dreadful event.’

BELATED PRECAUTIONS

The first care of such of the leaders as remained at liberty was to fill up the vacancies in their executive; and while the shaken confidence of the Unionists should be re-established they endeavoured, by a cautionary address, to repress any premature explosion. This diplomatic document thus concludes:—‘This recital, Irishmen, is meant to guard those of you who are remote from the scene of the late events against the consequences of misrepresentation and mistake. The most unfounded rumours have been set afloat, fabricated for the double purpose of delusion and intimidation. Your enemies talk of treachery in the vain and fallacious hope of creating it; but you, who scorn equally to be their dupe or slaves, will meet their forgeries with dignified contempt, incapable of being either goaded into untimely violence, or sunk into pusillanimous despondency. Be firm, Irishmen, but be cool and cautious; be patient yet awhile; trust to no unauthorised communications; and above all, we warn you—again and again we warn you—against doing the work of your tyrants, by premature, by partial, or divided exertion. If Ireland shall be forced to throw away the scabbard, let it be at her own time, not theirs.’

DESPAIR OVER WRECKED OPPORTUNITIES

A month wore on. Every day the chances of a successful rising became more gloomy; disclosures were hourly made; and it became quite evident to the revolutionary leaders that the Government had penetrated their most secret plans, and were prepared to crush the conspiracy. As the arms and ammunition of the malcontents were detected and seized, the hands of the Executive were proportionately strengthened as the offensive power of the disaffected became less formidable. Supplementary corps of loyalists were armed and embodied; and those to whom the destinies of Ireland were entrusted assumed now an air of stern determination equally inflexible and appalling to the guilty. Daily a French invasion appeared a more improbable event. At last the truth became apparent that it was hopeless to expect foreign assistance; and the blow must be struck by the conspirators, unaided and alone.

THE DATE OF RISING FIXED

Accordingly, the night of the 23rd May was appointed for a general insurrection; and the signal for a rising en mane was to be the destruction or detention of the mail coaches after they had left the metropolis, while the counties and districts were left generally to the direction of local leaders; the insurrectionary movement in the capital embraced a simultaneous attack on the castle, the prisons, and military posts, the artillery barracks at Chapelizod, and the camp at Laughlinstown, seven miles south of Dublin.

Some of the foreknowledge of the movements of the United Irishmen was evidently furnished by the informer Reynolds, who, strange to relate, had successfully eluded detection. In making his terms with the Government the traitor had prudently insisted upon his condition, that the channels through which the information came should remain for some time a secret; a stipulation in which his employers were no less interested than himself, as, by wearing still the mask of a friend, he could retain still the confidence of those he was betraying, and whatever victims his first aim had missed might, from the same ambush, be made sure of afterwards. In pursuance of this policy we find him, as he himself admits, paying a friendly visit to Mrs. Bond, two or three days after he had marked her husband for death; and even to Lord Fitzgerald—whose place of concealment at this moment was kept secret, as we shall see, from his own family—Reynolds, under the trust reposed in him, found ready admittance. Lord Edward was at once the head and arm of the seditious movement.

THE UNFORTUNATE LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

The name of Lord Edward stands out as that of the most conspicuous actor in this lurid history of the Irish Rebellion, as a personage whose birth, talents, energies, and enthusiasm obtained for him an unhappy pre-eminence. The fifth son of the Duke of Leinster, Lord Edward was nobly born by the maternal side, his mother being the daughter of Charles, Duke of Richmond. When Lord Edward was ten years old the Duke of Leinster died, and after a brief widowhood his relict remarried, and removing to France, there Lord Edward commenced his education, which appears to have been hurried and imperfect. Subsequently, after remaining for a short time with the Sussex militia, he obtained a commission in the line, joined the 96th regiment in Ireland; exchanged into the 19th, embarked for America, with which England was then at war, and, landing at Charlestown, was placed under the command of Lord Rawdon (Lord Moira), and afterwards attached to the staff of that spirited commander.

Here the young soldier had an opportunity of witnessing field service for the first time, and in one important branch of the profession—outpost duty—it afforded frequent opportunities of exhibiting tact and address, as well as personal courage. With these qualities Lord Edward was abundantly gifted, and apparently a contempt for danger, carried to rashness. Owing to ill-health Lord Rawdon left Carolina for England, and Lord Edward rejoined his regiment (the 19th), when Greene attacked Stuart at Eutaw Springs, the result of which was a gallant and very doubtful action. Lord Edward, with his accustomed daring, was closely engaged, wounded in the leg, and left upon the field.

In this helpless situation he was found by a poor negro, who carried him off on his back to his hut, and there nursed him most tenderly till he was well enough of his wound to bear removing to Charlestown. The negro was the ‘faithful’ Tony, whom in gratitude for the honest creature’s kindness he now took into his service, and who continued devotedly attached to his noble master to the premature ending of his lordship’s career.

After the surrender of Cornwallis’s army at York Town, Lord Edward joined the staff of General O’Hara at St. Lucia; but, after a few months, he left the West Indies, returned home, and was nominated by his brother, the Duke of Leinster, member for the borough of Athy. Several years passed; his career appears to have been unsettled and undetermined—one while studying professionally at Woolwich, the next visiting Gibraltar and Lisbon, and subsequently the principal cities of Spain. In June 1788 he returned again to America, landed at Halifax, and proceeded to join the 54th regiment, quartered at St. John’s; and held a field officer’s rank in the same corps, in which the celebrated political writer, Cobbett, was then acting as sergeant-major.

Lord Edward appears—according to Moore’s Life and Death—to have been a man of nervous excitability. We find him occasionally enacting ‘Love’s Slave’—and, with all the ardour and inconstancy of Romeo, forgetting Rosalind for Juliet. Had circumstances permitted the chances are that he would have changed his military profession for the calm enjoyments of domestic happiness. But they did not—and hence, probably, ‘an uneasy mind’ sent him a second time across the Atlantic to seek, in savage or primaeval life, employment for an ardent and impassioned spirit, which, under more fortunate circumstances, would have sought domestic and cultivated enjoyments.

The active and careless character of his pursuits may be collected from an extract from one of numerous letters to his mother:—‘I have been out hunting, and like it very much—it makes me un peu sauvage, to be sure. You may guess how eager I am to try if I like the woods in winter as well as in summer. I believe I shall never again be prevailed on to live in a house. I long to teach you all how to make a good spruce bed. Three of the coldest nights we have had yet I slept in the woods with only one blanket, and was just as comfortable as in a room. It was in a party with General Carleton, we went about twenty miles from this to look at a fine tract of land that had been passed over in winter. You may guess how I enjoyed this expedition, being where, in all probability, there had never been but one person before.’

This excursion, no doubt, suggested to Lord Edward his subsequent overland journey direct from Fredericstown to Quebec.

To modern adventurers the exploit would appear a commonplace essay, but at the time the expedition was devised and accomplished, few excepting an Indian or backwoodsman would have voluntarily undergone the real and imaginary hardships of the journey. After a thirty days’ pilgrimage the young adventurer reached Quebec. One incident written to his mother is characteristic: ‘I must tell you a little more of the journey. After making the river we fell in with some savages, and travelled with them to Quebec; they were very kind to us, and said we were “all one brother”—all “one Indian.” They fed us the whole time we were with them. You would have laughed to have seen me carrying an old squaw’s pack, which was so heavy I could hardly waddle under it. However, I was well paid whenever we stopped, for she always gave me the best bits, and most soup, and took as much care of me as if I had been her own son; in short I was quite l’enfant chéri’

A final expedition he made via Detroit and Michilimackinack to New Orleans, seems to have confirmed his Indian predilections, and led to his adoption into the Bear Tribe,—an honour upon which Lord Edward prided himself no little. From New Orleans he embarked for England, and for the three years succeeding his career was passed in England and Ireland without important occurrences to mark them, beyond the outbreak of the great French Revolution, that prodigious social and political upheaval which turned the heads of Europe. This terrible cataclysm intoxicated the Irish sympathisers, who, valorous for liberty, were blind to its excesses. This bouleversement fascinated the imaginations of the men who aspired to copy its progressive developments, and to leave their record heroically impressed upon Irish history; the Emmett brothers, Wolf Tone, the brothers Sheares, Lord Edward himself, and many other enthusiasts—the guiding spirits of the Irish insurrection—drew their inspirations from the Gallic font. They were friends and developed into fellow-conspirators. For instance, take the names last mentioned. Henry and John Sheares were brothers, and sons of a banker in Cork. They had received a liberal education, and both had been called to the Irish bar. Travelling, during the wildest period of the French Revolution, they became residents in Paris while the reign of terror was at its height, and, as it has been stated, witnessed the horrible scenes enacted daily under the tyranny of Robespierre, with an apathy from which accomplished and civilised gentlemen should have recoiled. The fearless manner in which their political opinions were promulgated exposed them to the suspicions of the Executive, and shortly before the Irish conspiracy broke out,—thanks to the revelations on the part of the traitor-informer, which at one swoop cut off the entire corps of directing spirits—they were arrested and confined.

Lord Edward, more practical than his philosophic friends, had notoriously learned to act while they were ‘philosophising;’ he too had been educated in the school of the French Revolution, with the arch leading spirit of which violent movement he had connected himself by family ties. When France declared herself a republic in 1792, and the Duke of Orleans—‘the enigma of the revolution,’ as Lamartine pronounces him—had voted for the death of the king, his kinsman, possibly realising a similar fate overhung his own head, Lord Edward was too enthusiastic to lose such a spectacle of moral and political excitement, and hastened over to Paris without communicating his intentions even to the Duchess, and to that fatal visit, as his biographer Moore avers, his subsequent misfortunes must be traced. His wild and hasty attachment to French principles—for he became almost a personage of the French Revolution, and is mentioned in Lamartine’s History—his introduction to Madame de Sillery (de Genlis), gouvernante to the Orleans children, his falling desperately in love with the notoriously bewitching and spirituelle ‘Pamela,’ natural daughter of the Egalité Duke of Orleans by the lady gouvernante already mentioned, are matters of history. Pamela, on all accounts, was sufficiently fascinating to account for so romantic an attachment, and Lord Edward was in himself a perfect hero of romance, and was made all the more interesting, even in France, by this tender episode. After this union his dismissal from the British army, his return to Ireland with his bride, the surpassingly charming Frenchwoman, are merely personal details. Had not Lord Edward been steeped in the practical development of the Irish rebellion, his political career would have subsided in favour of that domestic felicity of which he sent his mother the following artless and sympathetic picture:—

‘My little place is much improved by a few things I have done, and by all my planting; by the bye, I doubt if I told you of my flower garden,—I got a great deal from Frescati. I have been at Kildare since Pam’s lying-in, and it looked delightful, though all the leaves were off the trees, but so comfortable and snug. I think I shall pass a delightful winter there. I have got two fine large clumps of turf, which look both comfortable and pretty. I have paled in my little flower-garden before my hall door with a lath paling like the cottage, and stuck it full of roses, sweetbriar, honeysuckles, and Spanish broom. I have got all my beds ready for my flowers; so you may guess how I long to be down to plant them. The little fellow will be a great addition to the party. I think when I am down there with Pam and child of a blustering evening, with a good turf fire and a pleasant book, coming in after seeing my poultry put up, my garden settled, flower beds and plants covered for fear of frost,—the place looking comfortable and taken care of, I shall be as happy as possible; and sure I am I shall regret nothing but not being nearer my dearest mother, and her not being of our party. It is indeed a drawback, and a great one, our not being more together. Dear Malvern! how pleasant we were there; you can’t think how this time of year puts me in mind of it. Love always. Your affectionate son, E. F.’

Moore significantly comments: ‘In reading these simple and, to an almost feminine degree, fond letters, it is impossible not to feel how strange and touching is the contrast between those pictures of a happy home which they so unaffectedly exhibit, and that dark and troubled sea of conspiracy and revolt into which the amiable writer of them so soon afterwards plunged; nor can we easily bring ourselves to believe that the joyous tenant of this little Lodge, the happy husband and father, dividing the day between his child and his flowers, could be the same man who, but a year or two after, placed himself at the head of the rebel myriads, negotiated on the frontiers of France for an alliance against England, and but seldom laid down his head on his pillow at night without a prospect of being summoned thence to the scaffold or the field.’

At the crisis of the conspiracy the hopes of the disaffected almost centred in this individual, who has left a memory behind which commands the admiration of many—the pity, I believe, of all. His earlier history we have already sketched, and the more painful duty of describing its hurried and unhappy close now devolves upon us. Meanwhile Lord Edward, as a military leader, devoted himself to arming and disciplining the people whose grievances he was preparing to redress by force.

Whether the high estimation in which his military character was held by the United Irishmen was justly merited or not, is a question that can never be determined. He had many essential qualities to command popular respect, and fit him to become a revolutionary leader—high birth, family influence, singleness of purpose, devotion not to be mistaken, and courage beyond a doubt. But he seems to have been a self-willed and most imprudent man, and, if his biography may be credited, the last person upon earth to whose absolute direction a nation’s fate, and the fortunes of a mighty and complicated movement, should have been entrusted.

It was perfectly notorious to the Government that Lord Edward was deeply implicated in the conspiracy; that he was the life and spirit of the plot, the hope of the revolutionists, and the selected leader of the intended insurrection. When the arrest at Bond’s, due to Reynolds’s treacherous disclosures, had fallen like the stroke of a thunderbolt upon the Union, and paralysed the boldest, it was whispered in that gloomy hour that Lord Edward had escaped abroad, and therefore the cause was not altogether desperate. That he had not been found at the secret meeting of the Leinster committee was a heavy disappointment to the Executive. It was true that, in the seizure of the delegates, the conspiracy had received a stunning blow, but it was ‘scotched, not killed.’ Lord Edward was at liberty, and consequently the masterspirit was abroad. On the score of humanity, of policy, or both, it had been hinted by the Irish Government that his escape would be connived at, and the ports left open, if he would secretly quit the kingdom. Mr. Ogilvie, Lord Edward’s foster-father, hastened to Dublin, and interviewed Lord Clare; the Lord Chancellor expressed himself with the most friendly warmth on the subject, counselling Lord Edward’s stepfather: ‘For God’s sake get this young man out of the country; the ports shall be thrown open to you, and no hindrance whatever offered.’

The offer was conveyed to Lord Edward, and rejected by him; no course remained but to apprehend him if possible, and thus deprive the hydra of its head. Among others, he was afterwards denounced by proclamation dated the nth of May, and £1000 offered for such secret information as might lead to his arrest.

On quitting Leinster House, the first place where Lord Edward sought concealment was the domicile of a widow lady situated on the banks of the canal. Thither, three nights after the surprise of the Leinster committee, he was conveyed in disguise, and there he remained a month undiscovered, although, with an imprudence not pardonable in a leader on whose safety a mighty movement hinged, he too frequently exposed himself to detection. For the feelings of the lover-husband, that would induce him to risk everything to visit an idolised wife and the children, even a callous heart would find or frame an apology. As Moore relates: ‘Her ladyship had immediately, on the disappearance of Lord Edward, removed from the Duke of Leinster’s to a house in Denzel Street, taking with her an attached female servant and the negro Tony, her husband’s favourite. The two latter believed, as did most people, that their master had fled to France, and it was therefore with no small surprise that the maidservant saw, in going into her lady’s room late in the evening, his lordship and Lady Edward sitting together by the light of the fire. The youngest child had, at his desire, been brought down out of its bed for him to see it, and both he and Lady Edward were, as the maid thought, in tears.’ Circumstanced as he was, unnecessary exposure was unpardonable. His person might be considered a sort of public property, and yet we find him walking most nights along the banks of the canal, jumping in and out of boats to amuse a child he had made his companion, and afterwards by sheer recklessness falsifying the incognito of an assumed name.

How Lord Edward could have evaded detection so long appears astonishing. An enormous reward was offered for his detection, and, as the plot became further unfolded, the alarm of the Government for its own existence superseded every other thought, and all considerations of mercy were lost in their fears. At the period, therefore, where we are now arrived, the search after his lordship was, by the emissaries of authority, pursued with as much eagerness as political zeal, urged by fear and revenge, could inspire.

Lord Edward at last seemed awakened to his danger, and it was considered by himself and friends that a longer residence where he was might be hazardous and lead to a discovery. Another asylum was accordingly provided for him at a feather merchant’s house in Thomas Street, and at Murphy’s, as the owner was called, he remained for several days in safety.

On the 30th March the kingdom had been declared by proclamation ‘in actual rebellion,’ the troops were directed to act without magisterial authority whenever their own officers deemed it proper. This fearful order loosed a licentious soldiery upon the country, and every hope of averting bloodshed ended. As the great object of the revolutionary leaders was to prevent a premature explosion, agents were despatched to hold out encouragement to the disaffected that a French invasion would speedily be reattempted. But a double failure had damped the expectations of the Directory. Hoche, the apostle of this adventurous policy, was in his grave; Bonaparte, bent on other objects, and unfriendly to an Irish demonstration; and without foreign assistance it became evident to the conspirators that ‘themselves must strike the blow.’ The plot was on the verge of coming to a head.

For the following fortnight Lord Edward—whose leadership counted for so much at the opportune and decisive moment of actual outburst—made Murphy’s house his place of concealment. Even there he received company (some of his friends were regarded as traitors to the cause), walked out at night, and, disguised in women’s clothes, visited Lady Edward in Denzel Street. He then changed his residence, and sought shelter in the houses of tradesmen, named Moore and Corwick, situated in the same street.

Some circumstances gave alarm to his friends, and Lord Edward a second time was conducted to his suburban retreat, and placed again in charge of his former hostess. Things were approaching a climax. On the 11th of May the proclamation that offered L.1000 for his apprehension appeared; the day for the insurrection was appointed; John Sheares despatched to Cork to raise the southern rebels; and, for the purpose of holding a closer communion with the Dublin leaders, Lord Edward quitted the house of his faithful protectress on the 13th May, and on the 18th he re-entered Murphy’s, and only left it on the 19th for a cell, wherein to linger out a few miserable days, and expire in the common jail, without a friend or relative to watch ‘the spirit’s parting’!

THE ARREST OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

It was evident that the Government were cognisant of these plans. The date of the rising had been determined, Lord Edward was to head the movement; his commanding officer’s uniform was ready, but it was preordained that the commander-in-chief of the rebel forces would never appear in it. From this distant point of view the operations of the Government resembled the movements of the watchful cat prepared to spring upon the doomed mouse.

On the night preceding the 18th of May it was arranged that Lord Edward, the hero and hope of the movement, now on the eve of being declared openly, should resume his residence with Murphy in Thomas Street, and he set out, accordingly, under a strong escort of his followers. One of those affrays, of common occurrence in those days of terror—which this popular escort seemed destined to attract—resulted.

It is quite evident from this occurrence that his betrayal was already complete. Of Lord Edward’s intended movements Sirr, the Dublin town-major, had received certain information; and this officer was on the spot, ready prepared to stultify the plans of the conspirators. Sirr had with him a party for the purpose, and as either of two streets would have conducted Lord Edward to his destination, the town-major divided his myrmidons,—one section occupied Wading Street, the other was posted in Dirty Lane.

A similar precaution happened to be adopted by Lord Edward’s escort; there consequently ensued in both these streets a conflict between the parties. In the street affair John McCabe, a very active member of the United Irishmen, was seized and made a prisoner; he was afterwards tried, convicted, and executed. Lord Edward, by a miracle, was left free for the moment. Sirr, bearing the brunt of the struggle, found his opponents overstrong, and was nearly losing his life. In defending himself with a sword, which he had snatched from one of his assailants, he lost his footing and fell; and had not those with whom he was engaged in a hand-to-hand scuffle been much more occupied with their noble charge than with him, Sirr could hardly have escaped. A pistol or two was snapped at the fallen officer, and the group passed on with Lord Edward to Murphy’s.

The house was under surveillance. On the morning following, evidently the eve of the insurrection, the generalissimo of the United Irishmen’s uniform—dark green, faced with scarlet—was delivered by an old woman to Murphy. This ‘his already nervous host’ concealed under goat-skins in his warehouse. At noon a party of soldiers suddenly entered the street, and suspiciously halted before Moore’s house, the man who had formerly sheltered Lord Edward. Alarmed for the safety of his guest, the feather merchant conveyed him by a trap door to the roof of his warehouse, and in one of the valleys which ran between the houses.

Lord Edward remained for two or three hours, until the alarm had subsided, and the soldiers had left the street.

At the usual hour dinner was served, and Neilson, a constant and most imprudent visitor, was invited to join Murphy and his noble guest. The cloth ‘had not been many minutes removed, when Neilson, as if suddenly recollecting something, hurried out of the room and left the house; shortly after which, Mr. Murphy, seeing that his guest was not inclined to drink any wine, went downstairs. In a few minutes, however, returning, he found that his lordship had, in the interim, gone to his bedroom, and, on following him thither, saw him lying without his coat upon the bed. There had now elapsed, from the time of Neilson’s departure, not more than ten minutes, and it is asserted that he had, in going out, left the hall door open.’

At this moment Major Sirr, who had but just received an intimation from the Castle of the place where Lord Edward was concealed, proceeded in hackney-coaches to arrest him, attended by eight soldiers in coloured clothes, and accompanied by Captains Swan and Ryan. While Sirr was disposing the soldiers below to prevent any chance of escape, Swan hurried upstairs, entered the apartment, and, approaching the bed, told Lord Edward that he was a prisoner. Lord Edward jumped out of bed, and Swan, perceiving that he was determined on resistance, snapped, or, as others say, discharged a pistol ineffectually, and then closing with his antagonist, both rolled upon the bed. In the struggle which ensued Lord Edward stabbed his opponent on the hand and body repeatedly, when Ryan entered the chamber and rushed to the assistance of his companion, lunging at Lord Edward with a cane-sword, which, however, turned on the ribs, and only inflicted a flesh wound. All three fell on the floor together; in the mêlée which followed Ryan received a mortal stab, and when Sirr entered he found Lord Edward on his feet endeavouring to reach the door, while Swan and Ryan held on desperately by the legs to prevent it. Threatened as he was with a fate similar to his companions, Sirr had no alternative but to fire, and aiming his pistol deliberately, he lodged the contents in Lord Edward’s right arm near the shoulder. The wound for a moment staggered him; but as he again rallied, and was pushing towards the door, Major Sirr called up the soldiers, and so desperate were the captive’s struggles that they found it necessary to lay their firelocks across him before he could be disarmed or bound so as to prevent further mischief. Clearly the powers would have preferred to take this unfortunate and embarrassing prisoner dead—the history of the affair makes this evident—three attempts all more or less deliberate had been made on the captive’s life in the short encounter.

An eminent surgeon was immediately brought to the assistance of the wounded men; Ryan’s injury was pronounced the most dangerous—he had commenced his share in the affray by attempting to run their captive through the body. Swan’s wounds, though numerous, were not severe, and on examination Dr. Adreen expressed an opinion that Lord Edward’s were not mortal. The surgeon’s communication elicited a brief but significant remark, ‘I am sorry, doctor, to hear it’!

On the arrival of a cavalry picket and the Rainsford Street guard the wounded men were removed, and Lord Edward was taken to the Castle in a sedan, and carried into the office of the Secretary of the War Department. On his arrest being communicated to Lord Camden, orders were given that the State surgeon should instantly examine and dress his wounds; while with a feeling honourable to his well-known humanity, the Viceroy transmitted by his own secretary a private message to the noble prisoner, giving him an assurance of receiving every indulgence consistent with personal safety. The message was conveyed by Mr. Watson, whose account of the melancholy interview is graphic and interesting. ‘I found Lord Edward leaning back on a couple of chairs, his arm extended, and supported by the surgeon, who was dressing the wound. His countenance was pallid, but serene; and when I told him, in a low voice, not to be overheard, my commission from the Lord Lieutenant, and that I was going to break the intelligence of what had occurred to Lady Edward, asking him, with every assurance of my fidelity and secrecy, whether there was any confidential communication he wished to be made to her ladyship, or whether I could undertake any other act of personal kindness in his service, he answered merely, but collectedly, “No, no, thank you—nothing, nothing—only break it to her tenderly.”’

After a delay of several hours, during which time his wounds had been carefully attended to, Lord Edward was removed to Newgate under a strong military guard, and placed in Lord Aid-borough’s room. As the carriage and escort passed from the Castle to the prison, the countenances and demeanour of the disaffected indicated how deeply they felt the loss of the leader on whom they had placed so much dependence. To attempt a rescue was determined, and, in full assurance that the effort would be made, the garrison remained under arms throughout the night.

On the 31st of May Captain Ryan died of his wounds, but it was considered, though the heat of the weather was against him, that Lord Edward would recover. Attended by a kind-hearted militia officer named Stone, and constantly visited by the State surgeon, there is no doubt that the severity attendant on his confinement as imputed to the authorities was exaggerated.

Lord Edward lingered to the 1st June, when his wounds assumed an unhealthy appearance and fever set in; the death of Captain Ryan had transpired, and the knowledge that his victim was no more added poignant sorrow to a mind already excited too seriously. It is said that the confusion and noise attending on the execution of a young man named Clinch increased this mental irritation. On the 2nd of June Lord Edward became delirious, and the attendance of a keeper from a mad-house was deemed necessary. On the 3rd reason returned, but his strength had sunk completely. The authorities gave a tardy consent for his brother and sister to visit him, a concession Lord Clare had seen fit to withhold until the last. Lady Louisa Conolly relates they saw he was cast for death—‘The two dear brothers frequently embraced each other, to the melting of a heart of stone; and yet God enabled both Henry and myself to remain quite composed. As every one left the room we told him we only were with him. He said, “That is very pleasant.” However, he remained silent, and I then brought in the subject of Lady Edward, and told him I had not left her until I saw her on board; and Henry told him of having met her on the road well. He said, “And the children, too? She is a charming woman,” and then became silent again. That expression about Lady Edward proved to me that his senses were much lulled, and that he did not feel his situation to be what it was; but, thank God! they were enough alive to receive pleasure from seeing his brother and me. Dear Henry, in particular, he looked at continually with an expression of pleasure.’

Immediately after Lord Henry and his sister had taken leave convulsions came on violently, and at two o’clock in the morning of the 4th, a gallant, generous, and enthusiastic spirit—would that it had been better directed I—parted.

After an inquest the body was interred in the cemetery of St. Werburgh, the funeral being conducted as privately as possible to prevent any exhibition of popular feeling, which, had it been more public, would have been certain to occur.

ARREST OF THE BROTHERS SHEARES

The capture of Lord Edward on the eve of the rebellion was followed by the arrest of the brothers Sheares; and had the Government required documentary evidence to establish the ruthless spirit with which the ends of the conspiracy would have been carried out, a military memoir found in the writing-desk of the ill-directed young nobleman, and a sanguinary manifesto in the handwriting of John Sheares, and discovered in the house of his brother Henry, would have been amply sufficient. Lord Edward’s document was purely military, and, although highly mischievous, it was defensible; but the proclamation to be issued on the 24th of May betrayed a ferocity of intention which no circumstances could palliate. Every paragraph seemed traced in blood; and while the sanguinary course of action which it inculcated deprived the unhappy author of that sympathy which his fate might have otherwise obtained, those who would rescue his memory from the odium of savage purpose have wisely grounded its defence upon the only pardonable excuse—insanity.

JOHN SHEARES’ BLOODTHIRSTY MANIFESTO

This explosive manifesto had been prepared in anticipation that the sanguinary programme laid down for the 23rd of May, the outbreak of the rebellion in the capital, had been successfully carried out to its reckless sequel:—

‘Irishmen, your country is free, and you are about to be avenged. That vile Government, which has so long and so cruelly oppressed you, is no more. Some of its most atrocious masters have already paid the forfeit of their lives, and the rest are in our hands. The national flag, the sacred green, is at this moment flying over the ruins of despotism!

’As for those degenerate wretches who turn their swords against their native country, the national vengeance awaits them. Let them find no quarter, unless they shall prove their repentance by speedily exchanging the standard of slavery for that of freedom.

‘Under the conduct of your chosen leaders march with a steady step to victory. Heed not the glare of hired soldiery, or aristocratic yeomanry: they cannot stand the vigorous shock of freedom. Their trappings and their arms will soon be yours; and the detested Government of England, to which we vow eternal hatred, shall learn that the treasures it exhausts on its accoutred slaves for the purpose of butchering Irishmen shall but further enable us to turn their swords on its devoted head. Attack them in every direction by day and by night; avail the natural advantages of your country, which are and with which you are better acquainted than they. Where you cannot oppose them in full force constantly harass their rear and their flanks; cut off their provisions and magazines, and prevent them as much as possible from uniting their forces; let whatever moments you cannot devote to fighting for your country be passed in learning how to fight for it, or preparing the means of war—for war, war alone must occupy every mind and every hand in Ireland, until its long-oppressed soil be purged of all its enemies. Vengeance, Irishmen, vengeance on your oppressors. Remember that thousands of your dearest friends have perished by their merciless orders. Remember their burnings, their rackings, their torturings, their military massacres, and their legal murders. Remember Orr!’

OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION

The crisis hurried on rapidly. On the morning of the 21st, the Viceroy officially to the Lord Mayor, and the day following, through Lord Castlereagh, apprised the House of Commons, ‘that his Excellency had received information that the disaffected had been daring enough to form a plan for the purpose of possessing themselves, in the course of the present week, of the metropolis, of seizing the seat of Government, and those in authority within the city; that, in consequence of that information, he had directed every military precaution to be taken which seemed expedient; that he had made full communication to the magistrates for the direction of their efforts; and that he had not a doubt, by the measures which would be pursued, the designs of the rebellious would be effectually and entirely crushed.’

A spirited and dutiful answer was voted by the Commons. ‘The Speaker and all the members immediately waited on his Excellency with the address; and to show their zeal, and to increase the solemnity of the proceedings, they walked through the streets on foot, two and two, preceded by the Speaker, the sergeant-at-arms, and all the officers of the house.’

The 23rd of May, a day that must ever carry with it deplorable recollections, dawned upon a city destined before another sun should rise to undergo every horror that attends a civil war. A gloom overspread the countenances of the royalists. Enough had been communicated by the Executive to convince the most sceptical that the long portending thundercloud was on the eve of bursting—and still the moment of actual insurrection continued veiled in impenetrable mystery.

Evening came, and no positive information of revolutionary outbreak as yet had reached the Castle. A Government spy, late in the day, communicated authentic intelligence, that the picket of yeomanry cavalry at Rathfarnham would that night be surprised and cut off, and, consequently, instead of a sergeant’s party the whole troop mounted for patrol. After narrowly escaping an ambush, Lieutenant La Touche ascertained that the rebels had actually risen, and an express, carried by a trooper called Bennett, was immediately despatched to apprise the Lord Lieutenant of the insurrection. The duty—one of the many instances of the zeal and personal gallantry with which the Irish yeomanry evidenced their fealty and devotion to the Government—was truly perilous, for the rebels in great numbers were collecting in the road and adjacent fields in the vicinity of Dublin. In the city, particularly the suburbs, the yeoman saw a great number of rebels with pikes, in the gateways, alleys, and stable-lanes, waiting the beat of their drums and the approach of rebel columns from the country which they were expecting; and as he passed they frequently cried out, animating each other, ‘Come on, boys! who’s afraid?’

Immediately the garrison and yeomanry drums beat to arms, and the latter hurried to their alarm-posts. The North Cork Militia were formed in Stephen’s Green, and the bridges of the canals, which stretch along the city north and south, were occupied by strong pickets. Those crossing the Liffey were also secured, and the communications completely interrupted.

For some nights previous to the 23rd of May beacon fires were seen on the Wicklow mountains, whose luminous appearance by night and whose smoke by day served as signals to the disaffected in the metropolis and in all the adjacent country. The same practice took place on all the mountains which extend from the Scalp in the county of Wicklow to Mount Leinster in the county of Wexford.

Where existed any necessity for this idle and unnecessary display, when all was organised and ready, and any striking exhibition must naturally add to the alarm which every prudential motive should have allayed? Why increase the fears and consequently the vigilance of the Executive? In secrecy of purpose lay success, and all was in favour of it could the authorities be lulled into a false and fatal security. The yeomanry corps, which in a few days afterwards were purified of traitors, at the moment of the outbreak abounded in United Irishmen, upon whom no shadow of suspicion had yet fallen. ‘It was discovered,’ says Sir Richard Musgrave in his narrative, ‘that near nine-tenths of the Roman Catholics in the yeomanry corps were United Irishmen, and had taken an oath to be true to the rebels in direct contradiction to their sworn allegiance, and yet many of them, after taking the United oath, had, by deliberate and pre-determined perjury, joined the yeomanry corps for the purpose of getting arms in their hands, learning the use of them, and turning them against the loyalists perhaps in the very moment of danger. In the subsequent development of the conspiracy there occurred direct evidence of the loyalist corps deliberately joining the rebels they were sworn to subdue at the critical juncture of the encounters.

The domestic servants of Dublin were deeply engaged in the conspiracy, and hence every action of their employers was revealed, and the safety of every house was compromised. Even the lamplighters lent their assistance, and darkness was prearranged to assist—as it would do most effectively—a sudden outburst, by neutralising the advantages which daylight secures to disciplined troops in a conflict with fierce and tumultuary assailants.

It has been already mentioned that the stoppage of the mail-coaches was to be the signal for a general rising. On the evening of the 23rd, at Santry, the Belfast mail was burned; the Limerick stopped on the Curragh of Kildare, and both guard and coachman murdered; the Athlone coach was destroyed at Lucan, and the Cork mail at Naas.

A number of petty affairs followed the instant outbreak of the rebellion, all characterised by the atrocities attending civil war. In these affairs the rebels were generally repulsed; but in a few they unhappily succeeded, and always by surprise, treachery, or the imprudence of the royalists. Of these we shall meet instances in the course of our illustrations. As regards the outbreak in the capital, naturally the capture of Dublin was the grand and primary object at which the conspirators unanimously aimed; and a simultaneous movement on the metropolis by the Kildare rebels was to have seconded the efforts of the disaffected within the city. Everything was in favour of success; and, as the garrison was almost drained of regular troops, and its safety entrusted to the yeomanry, that circumstance was not overlooked by the rebel leaders. In barracks soldiers cannot be easily surprised; a few taps from the drum, and a very few minutes are quite sufficient to place a regiment in battle order; but to collect irregulars, dispersed and distant from the alarm-posts they have been directed to assemble at, is a work of time, and equally difficult and precarious, as, in an attempt to reach the posts assigned, individuals and isolated parties are readily intercepted and overpowered.

This was the great design of the insurgents, and nothing could have been more easily effected when aided by the darkness of night and the intricacies of a city crowded with houses, and intersected by narrow lanes.

By an unaccountable oversight the canals, which covered two sides of Dublin, had been left open, when by stockading the bridges they could have easily been rendered defensible, and have thus placed an impassable obstruction to any bodies who might approach the city from Kildare. Before the royalists occupied the bridges numbers of insurgents from the country had crossed over, and it was computed that by one northern turnpike more than two thousand strangers had entered the city during the evening and succeeding night.

Of the chief plans propounded by the rebel leaders, the capture of the Castle with the high authorities it contained, the cutting off of the royalists in detached parties as they hurried to their respective alarm-posts at the beat to arms of rebel drums, with an attack on the jail of Newgate, the liberation of their friends the State prisoners there incarcerated, formed the grand objects of their midnight movement. The guiding spirit was evidently lacking, for the head had been cut off. On the plans of action there was a division of opinion among the existing leaders. John Sheares confined the intended operations of his followers to dealing with the Castle and disposing of the inmates. Neilson, it was arranged, should attack the jail. Accident interfered; neither plan had any success, and the leader found himself at midnight the inmate of the prison from which he had falsely calculated that he was going to liberate his imprisoned confederates.

Southwell C. McClure, a rebel colonel, who had been pardoned, gave evidence that Neilson had made preparations for his task, and taken elaborate preparations for the carrying out of his plan on Newgate and cutting off the loyalist auxiliaries in detail. He had assembled at a house in Church Lane, a noted rendezvous for rebels, fifteen colonels representing as many battalions; to each of these leaders he had produced a map of Dublin, and assigned to each the post which each colonel and his regiment was to occupy that night. In his attack upon Newgate he was to have been seconded by a large body of rebels, headed by Seagrave, who was to have secured possession of Mr. Halpin’s distillery, the windows of which flanked it, and they were to have kept up a constant fire on the front of the prison, while another party scaled the walls in a different quarter. Neilson’s preparations promised to prove formidable, and at ten o’clock this leader, having a body of rebels collected in some fields contiguous to-Eccles Street, proceeded to reconnoitre Newgate and point out the best points of attack to his supporters. Escalade, supported by a commanding fire of musketry, was the plan adopted, and from the manner in which the prison was domineered the attempt might have easily succeeded. In the most suspicious manner Neilson was always found doing compromising acts. His behaviour had helped to compromise Lord Edward’s security, and on this occasion he seems to have deliberately sacrificed his plans and his safety at the critical juncture, and thus compromised the entire scheme.

Some waste ground, then covered with heaps of market offal, and close to the prison, enabled a person to examine the building unperceived, and of this advantage Neilson, already well acquainted with the locality, had availed himself. In the darkness he trod upon a child, and the outcry brought its mother to the spot. The woman was drunk, an angry altercation followed, and no apology which Neilson could offer would conciliate the irritated poissarde. The noise naturally attracted attention; persons hastened to the spot, and among others Mr. Gregg, the jailor. Neilson, having already been in his custody, was perfectly familiar to Gregg. The latter immediately arrested him, a desperate resistance was offered, a pistol snapped, and a doubtful struggle ensued. Under a belief that Gregg’s assault on Neilson was occasioned by his resentment of the injury offered to her child, the fishwoman so far contributed by her clamour to mystify the affray that the line of posts which Neilson had established between Newgate and Eccles Street thought the noise only a squabble of drunken fishwomen, and waited in idle expectation for Neilson’s return and orders to advance, until the capture transpired in an hour or two, and the party took alarm and disbanded.

In a popular movement failure or success at first generally decides its fortunes. The attempt on the capital signally miscarried. The master-spirit was wanting at the hour of action, and he who might have given a fatal direction to efforts ill-directed and uncombined, was, with his abler associates, immured within the walls of a prison. Upon individuals alike wanting in courage and ability the hurried choice of revolutionary leadership had fallen. If Neilson’s imprudent visits to Lord Edward before the arrest subjected him to a charge of treachery afterwards, his conduct on the night he reconnoitred Newgate proves him to have been quite unfitted for command. That a man known to every turnkey should have personally examined a building in which he had been so long confined appeared, from its extreme rashness, almost to indicate indifference to the consequences of discovery.

THE REBELLION OFFICIALLY PROCLAIMED

On the morning of the 24th two proclamations were issued—the one from General Lake, the other from Alderman Fleming. Both were stringent, but the circumstances of the times admitted of no temporising measures:—

‘Lieutenant-General Lake, commanding his Majesty’s forces in this kingdom, having received from his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant full powers to put down the rebellion, and to punish rebels in the most summary manner, according to martial law, does hereby give notice to all his Majesty’s subjects, that he is determined to exert the powers entrusted to him in the most vigorous manner for the immediate suppression of the same; and that all persons acting in the present rebellion, or in any way aiding or assisting therein, will be treated by him as rebels, and punished accordingly.

‘And Lieutenant-General Lake hereby requires all the inhabitants of the city of Dublin (the great officers of State, members of the houses of Parliament, privy councillors, magistrates, and military persons in uniform excepted) to remain within their respective dwellings from nine o’clock at night till five in the morning, under pain of punishment.’

The Lord Mayor’s proclamation was equally to the point and equally judicious:—

‘Whereas the circumstances of the present crisis demand every possible precaution; these are therefore to desire all persons who have registered arms forthwith to give in, in writing, an exact list or inventory of such arms at the town-clerk’s office, who will file and enter the same in books to be kept for that purpose. And all persons who have not registered these arms are hereby required forthwith to deliver up to me, or some other magistrate of this city, all arms and ammunition of every kind in their possession. And if, after this proclamation, any person having registered arms shall be found not to have given in a true list or inventory of such arms, or if any person who has not registered shall be found to have in their power or possession any arms or ammunition whatever, such person or persons will, on such arms being discovered, be forthwith sent on board his Majesty’s navy, as by law directed.

‘And I do hereby desire that all housekeepers do place upon the outside of their doors a list of persons in their respective houses, distinguishing such as are strangers from those who actually make part of their family; but as there may happen to be persons who, from pecuniary embarrassments, are obliged to conceal themselves, I do not require such names to be placed on the outside of the door, provided their names are sent to me. And I hereby call upon his Majesty’s subjects within the county of the city of Dublin immediately to comply with this regulation, as calculated for the public security; as those persons who shall wilfully neglect a regulation so easy and salutary, as well as persons giving false statements of the inmates of their houses, must, in the present crisis, abide the consequences of such neglect.’

SURPRISE OF THE BARRACKS OF PROSPEROUS

The outbreaks in the immediate vicinity of Dublin come next in the order of alike the chronological sequence of events and of the illustrations. Slight affairs occurred on the night of the 23rd, and upon the following day. At Rathfarnham, Lucan, Lusk, Collan, and Baltinglass the royalists and rebels came in contact, and the latter were repulsed. At Dunboyne and Barretstown the escorts of some baggage (Reay and Suffolk Fencibles) were surprised. On the succeeding day Clane, Naas, Ballymore-Eustace, Kilcullen, and Prosperous were attacked, and with the exception of the latter, in every effort the rebels were unsuccessful.

Prosperous, a small but thriving town, then generally inhabited by persons manufacturing cottons, is seventeen miles from Dublin. It was garrisoned by a detachment of the North Cork Militia, some forty men under Captain Swayne, with a lieutenant and twenty of the Ancient British Cavalry. The infantry occupied a temporary barrack, half the cavalry were quartered in an opposite house, and the remainder in single billets. On the Sunday (20th) previous to the outbreak Swayne arrived in Prosperous with his detachment. He attended at the chapel with Dr. Esmond, a man of great local influence, and then implored the people there assembled to deliver up any arms which might be concealed, return to their allegiance, and receive the protection he was authorised to grant them. This exhortation proved ineffectual; some coercive measures—such as the seizure of cattle, then warranted by martial law—were resorted to; and on the 23rd it was intimated that fear had hitherto prevented the peasantry from bringing the concealed arms to the town, and that should they be permitted to enter after dark, unchallenged and unmolested, on the following night, pikes and firearms would be brought in and deposited in the streets.

It is difficult to decide whether the stupidity of Swayne or the treachery of Esmond were most to be condemned. A man individually may trifle with himself, but for him who turns right or left from the plain path which duty points to, and compromises the safety of those committed to his charge, there can be no extenuation. For Swayne’s folly there can be no apology—his pickets should have been doubled—a cart, a ladder drawn across the street, would have marked sufficiently where those who came to surrender arms might approach with full security. A step beyond it, if the challenge failed, the advanced sentry shot the intruder, and the garrison was at once alarmed. So much for Captain Swayne. His weakness was inexcusable—he died its victim—ignobly certainly, but still by the weapon of a foeman. Esmond met the doom he merited—a halter. Mus-grave’s account of the surprise is authentic:—

‘At two o’clock on Thursday morning, the 24th May, the two sentinels were surprised and killed; and both the barracks were assaulted while the soldiers were fast asleep. The barracks of the Cork company consisted of a hall, an apartment on each side, the same in the next storey, and underground offices. A party of the rebels rushed into Captain Swayne’s apartment, which was on the ground floor, and murdered him. Some soldiers, who slept in the opposite apartment, alarmed at the noise, came forth with their firelocks and expelled those ruffians from the barrack, after having killed two or three of them.

‘The house was at that time surrounded with a great number of rebels variously armed. A fierce conflict ensued between the assailants and the besieged; but it was soon put an end to by the following malignant device of the former. There was a great quantity of straw in the underground office, to which the rebels set fire, and, to increase the flame, introduced some faggots into it. The soldiers were soon in a state of suffocation; and the heat being so great that they could not endure it, they retreated to their comrades in the upper storey; but the flames and smoke soon reached them there, as the rebels continued to introduce lighted faggots into the apartments under them. Enveloped with thick smoke, and overcome with heat, some of them leaped out of the windows, but were immediately received on the pikes of the assailants, who gave a dreadful yell whenever that occurred.

‘At last the barrack being in a state of conflagration, the soldiers resolved to rush forward and fight their way through their assailants; but they, who were very numerous, formed a halfmoon round the front of the barrack, and received them on their pikes, so that but few of them escaped.5

Nothing could have been more detestable than the treachery of Esmond; though lieutenant in the Armagh Militia, he actually planned and led the rebel surprise of Prosperous. He wore the royal uniform, and yet was false to the monarch to whom he had sworn allegiance. When men of desperate fortunes swerve from the path of honour poverty may be pleaded to extenuate, though not excuse. Esmond had no plea to offer—he was wealthy, well born, and respected. He might have proved a rebel, but why play the traitor? When in the house of God loyalty was on his lips, while the heart was contemplating bloodshed. Even the tie a savage venerates could not turn him from his truculent design,—and, while he devoted him to death, he shared his victim’s hospitality—dined with Captain Swayne ‘at an inn on the 23rd of May, and continued to enjoy the glow of social mirth with him, till a few hours before the perpetration of that bloody scene which he had for some time meditated.’

The work of death at Prosperous was interrupted by intelligence conveyed to the insurgents, that at Clane, three miles off, their friends had been defeated—for although partly surprised, that little garrison succeeded in beating off their assailants.

ATTACK ON THE GARRISON AT CLANE

Clane was occupied by a party of the Armagh Militia and some yeomanry cavalry. Early on the morning of the 24th a large body of armed rebels stole into the street. Fortunately there was just time to beat to arms, although such of the soldiers as were at single billets in the town were attacked as they issued from the houses where they had been quartered, and several of them killed and wounded before they could join their comrades. The guards, however, with great gallantry, held the rebels in check until their comrades hastily turned out and formed. A few well-directed volleys routed the rebels, and they were driven with considerable loss from the town; but deeming pursuit imprudent, the royalists returned, and again formed in the streets.

At five in the morning the rebels made a second attempt, reinforced by the exulting rebels who had returned from their bloody deeds at Prosperous; supported by a column of pikemen and musketeers, a party mounted on the horses and furnished with the arms of the slaughtered Ancient Britons, whom they had cut off at Prosperous, charged boldly into Clane. A rolling volley from the royalists brought down half the party and dispersed the rest. They retired at gallop from the rebel column, which, from previous success of superior numbers, cut a strange but formidable appearance.

An affair highly honourable to the royalists resulted. ‘As they were not strong enough to attack so numerous a party, and thinking it dishonourable to retreat, the captain, Griffiths, in concurrence with the militia officers, resolved to take post on an elevated spot near the commons, where they could not be surrounded or outflanked, and there they waited for the enemy, who began a smart fire on them, but without effect, as the elevation was too great. Our troops, having returned the fire, killed and wounded a considerable number of them, on which they fled in great dismay, and were charged by the captain and his sixteen yeomen, who cut down many of those whose heads were ornamented with the helmets of the Ancient Britons or the hats of the Cork regiment.’

A disorderly flight succeeded—the rebels totally disbanding, by throwing away their own ruder weapon the pike, with the firearms and sabres they had captured in the morning, and held in but brief possession.

On re-entering Clane, Captain Griffiths was privately informed by a soldier named Philip Mite, that his own treacherous lieutenant had actually carried out the surprise of Prosperous. Having been ordered to march to Naas, at the moment when the troop were mounting, Esmond, in full accoutrements, joined it. The rash confidence that his treason was unsuspected proved ruinous to the unhappy man. He was arrested, forwarded to Dublin, tried, convicted, and hanged on Carlisle Bridge on the 14th of June.

The insurrectionary occurrences at Ballymore-Eustace and Dunlavin simultaneously with those described, offer fearful pictures of the atrocious spirit with which a civil war is carried through.

MURDER OF GEORGE CRAWFORD AND HIS GRAND-DAUGHTER

Uncompromising severity does not always produce the intended effect. On some example may strike terror, in others it will excite undying hatred, and foster the worst spirit of the human heart—thirst for vengeance. Of this truth a retrospect of the events of these calamitous days gives evidence enough, and it is difficult now to determine on which side the excess of cruelty should be awarded. Assassination on one side was met upon the other with military executions—the royalists extenuating the act under the plea of necessity, while the rebel proclaimed that his murders were committed only from revenge.

When admitting that a similar savageness of purpose might in many cases be charged against both sides, there all comparison must cease. No matter what the acts might be, the causes which produced them were totally dissimilar. The royalists took up arms for the protection of home and altar, which the fanaticism of Popery, or the accursed doctrines of the French revolutionists, were alike bent upon overturning. Allegiance to the king, and the maintenance of social order and an established government, urged the former to come forward; thousands perilled life and property from the purest motives; and when the insurrection was suppressed, sheathed the sword, drawn in the support of a matchless constitution, unstained by any act save those which resistance to rebellion had imperatively demanded. Those who have led a soldier’s life and seen service in the field know that men become the creatures of circumstances.

Let the gentlest spirit—and such are frequently united to the boldest heart—one that would not tread upon a worm or harm a sparrow, let him crown a defended breach, and he will use the bayonet unscrupulously. The feelings are influenced by the times; and if the royalists were sanguinary and unsparing, they could point to the atrocities of the insurgents, and bring forward established facts, so truculent and unwarranted, as to place those who committed them almost without the pale of mercy.

Making every allowance for the political colouring given to his history of the times, and recollecting that he felt and wrote as a partisan, Sir Richard Musgrave narrates two well-authenticated instances of unprovoked cruelty among the many that marked the rebel outbreak in Kildare, which will sufficiently exhibit the ferocious spirit of the insurgents from the moment they flew to arms.

‘The following horrid circumstances,’ relates the historian, ‘attended the murder of George Crawford and his grandchild, a girl of only fourteen years of age. He had formerly served in the 5th Dragoons, retired on a pension, and was permanent sergeant in Captain Taylor’s corps of yeoman cavalry. He, his wife, and grand-daughter were stopped by a party of the rebels, as they were endeavouring to escape, and were reproached with the appellation of heretics because they were of the Protestant religion. One of them struck his wife with a musket, and another gave her a stab of a pike in the back, with an intent of murdering her. The husband, having endeavoured to save her, was knocked down, and received several blows of a firelock, which disabled him from making his escape. While they were disputing whether they should kill them, his wife stole behind a hedge and concealed herself. They then massacred her husband with pikes; and her grand-daughter having thrown herself on his body to protect him, received so many wounds that she instantly expired.

These circumstances of atrocity have been verified by affidavit, sworn by Crawford’s widow, the 20th day of August 1798. The fidelity of a large dog, belonging to this poor man, deserves to be recorded, as he attacked those sanguinary monsters in defence of his master, till he fell by his side perforated with pikes.’

STOPPAGE OF THE MAIL AND MURDER OF LIEUTENANT GIFFARD

‘The second murder occurred on the same night. About eleven o’clock the Limerick mail was stopped by a numerous banditti, and a gentleman was slaughtered under circumstances which elicited a lively sympathy. The sufferer was Lieutenant William Giffard, of the 82nd regiment, son of Captain John Giffard of the Dublin regiment.’ The savages having shot one of the horses so effectually to prevent the coach from proceeding, demanded of Lieutenant Giffard who and what he was, to which he answered, without hesitation, that he was an officer proceeding to Chatham in obedience to orders he had received. They demanded whether he was a Protestant; and being answered in the affirmative, they held a moment’s consultation, and then told him that they wanted officers, that if he would take an oath to be true to them, and join them in an attack to be made next morning upon Monastereven, they would give him a command, but that otherwise he must die. To this the gallant youth replied, ‘That he had already sworn allegiance to the king, that he would never offend God Almighty by a breach of that oath, nor would he disgrace himself by turning a deserter and joining the king’s enemies; that he could not suppose a body of men would be so cruel as to murder an individual who had never injured them, and who was merely passing through them to a country from whence possibly he never might return; but if they insisted on their proposal he must die, for he never would consent to it!’ This heroic answer, which would have kindled sentiments of humanity in any breasts but those of Irish rebels, had the contrary effect, and with the utmost fury they assaulted him. He had a case of pistols, which natural courage and love of life, though hopeless, prompted him to use with effect, and being uncommonly active he burst from them, vaulted over a six feet wall, and made towards a house where he saw a light and heard people talking. Alas! it afforded no refuge! It was the house of poor Crawford whom, with his grand-daughter, they had just piked. A band of barbarians returning from this exploit met Lieutenant Giffard. There he fell, covered with wounds and glory, and his mangled body was thrown into the same ditch with honest Crawford and his innocent grandchild.

‘Thus expired, at the age of seventeen, a gallant youth—the martyr to religion and honour—leaving a memory behind that will ever be respected by the virtuous and the brave.’

Shortly, in the course of his campaign, struggling to suppress the rebellion, Sir James Duffs movable column entered Kildare, when it passed close to the scene of slaughter, and poor Giffard’s body was removed from the ditch and interred with military honours.

COURSE OF THE INSURRECTION

A course of cowardly assassination thus commenced was continued by the insurgents in their progress to attack Monastereven. Their numbers had increased to ten or twelve hundred men, and they were commanded by a ruffian called M’Garry. Such Protestants as they unfortunately met with were put to death, and a solitary dragoon, seized as he crossed the Curragh, was inhumanly murdered. About four in the morning they approached the town and made their preparations for attacking it.

On the 24th of May there was not a regular soldier in Monastereven; and an infantry company, with a troop of horse, both yeomanry, formed the little garrison. After a feint on the canal, and a movement by the high road, which was repulsed by a charge of the cavalry, they pushed boldly into the town, and a warm conflict took place in the main street. The well-sustained musketry of the infantry threw the head of the rebel column into confusion, when the cavalry charged home, and the rout was complete. Fifty bodies were found lifeless in the town; and as the horsemen followed the flying rebels vigorously, as many more were cut up in the pursuit. The repulse of this attack was most honourable to the defenders of Monastereven. The gallant action was achieved by loyalists alone, and of the brave men who fought and bled that day fourteen of the troop were Roman Catholics.

The outbreak of the 23rd of May was attended by many acts of cruelty inflicted upon isolated families, who, either from mistaken confidence or inability to reach a place of safety, exposed themselves to the fury of savages, whose natural truculence was often inflamed to madness by intoxication. Many individuals of great worth and respectability perished thus. Mr. Stamers, the chief proprietor of the town of Prosperous, was torn from the house of a lady where he had obtained a temporary shelter, and murdered in cold blood. Rathangan was, indeed, a scene of extensive butchery. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Moore were slaughtered there, although they had surrendered their arms on the assurance of being protected. They were murdered in the open street, and their wives had the horrible assurance that, with the shots they heard, the existence of their beloved partners had terminated. Thus Mr. Spencer, that worthy gentleman, ‘who was an active and intelligent magistrate, and as remarkable for the amiableness and affability of his manner as the benevolence of his heart, fell a sacrifice to the fanaticism of those savages, to whom he had been unremittingly a kind and generous benefactor. As his house, at the hall door of which he was so brutally murdered, was a short distance from the town, Mrs. Spencer, who was led to it in the midst of these monsters, had the anguish to see the mangled corpse of her husband lying at his door’ (Musgrave).

A number of other victims were immolated by these bloodthirsty savages, and, until relieved by Colonel Longfield on the morning of the 28th, Rathangan was a constant scene of atrocity, in which even woman forgot her sex and barbarously participated. The murders at Rathangan, while they exasperated the royalists to acts of desperate retaliation, operated against the perpetrators in another and unexpected way. The few Protestants in Leinster and the south, who had mixed themselves with the conspiracy, suddenly became alarmed, for the war had now assumed a religious rather than a revolutionary complexion. Suspicion once aroused finds abundant causes to confirm it; and while some Protestants quietly seceded from their fellow-traitors, not a few sought favour with the Government by a secret betrayal of their guilty companions.

Musgrave illustrates this point:—‘I shall mention here an incident which throws light on the spirit of the conspiracy and rebellion, and the secret designs of the great body of the rebels. One Dennis, an apothecary and a Protestant, was the county delegate and chief conductor of the plot in the King’s County, which was to have exploded in a few days; but the wanton massacre of Protestants at Prosperous and Rathangan having convinced him that their extirpation was the main object of the Romanists, though they had with singular dissimulation concealed it from him who was their leader, he repaired to Tullamore to General Dunn, who commanded the district, threw himself on the mercy of Government, exposed the whole plot, and betrayed the names of the captains, who were immediately arrested. He said to the general, “I see, sir, that it will soon be my own fate.”’ In the course of this history nothing will be more apparent than the incompetency, military and diplomatic, of many of the functionaries to whom extensive powers were confided. One while unnecessary severity was employed, and at another mistaken lenity marred every advantage which stringent measures might have effected. In military conduct the royalist commanders were too often found deficient, and almost in every instance, either to imprudence or imbecility, the insurgents were alone indebted for moments of doubtful and envanescent success. The affair at Old Kilcullen was about one of the worst military offences committed by an incompetent commander. Yeomanry officers always behaved with boldness, and frequently displayed both tact and talent when left to their own resources, while many from whose high military rank and standing something like ability might have been looked for, proved the truism of the adage, that as ‘the cowl does not make the monk,’ neither does an aiguilette constitute a general. Learning that some three hundred well-appointed rebels had assembled at Old Kilcullen, and that they had entrenched themselves in the churchyard, General Dundas proceeded to dislodge them. His force consisted of only forty dragoons and some twenty Suffolk militiamen. The rebel position was on a height—one side protected by a high wall, the other secured by a double fence—a hedge with a dike in front. Would it be credited that an English general could be mad enough to assail three hundred men thus posted with forty dragoons? Mus-grave thus narrates the transaction, and his account has been considered by those engaged to be perfectly correct:—

General Dundas ordered the Romneys and the 9th Dragoons to charge the rebels, though it was uphill, though the ground was broken, and many of the rebels were in a road close to the churchyard in which not more than six of the cavalry could advance in front.

‘They, however, charged with great spirit, though their destruction was considered by all the spectators to be the certain and inevitable consequence of it; for what could cavalry do, thus broken and divided, against a firm phalanx of rebels armed with long pikes? Nevertheless they made three charges, but were repulsed in each; and at every repulse the general urged them to renew the attack.

‘It was with the utmost difficulty that Captain Cooks and Captain Erskine could prevail upon their men to renew the charge after the first defeat. In the last charge, Captain Cooks, to inspire his men with courage by example, advanced some yards before them; when his horse, having received many wounds, fell upon his knees; and while in that situation the body of that brave officer was perforated with pikes; and he, Captain Erskine, and twenty-two privates were killed on the spot, and ten so badly wounded that most of them died soon after.’

Shamefully discomfited, Dundas fell back on the village of Kilcullen bridge, and occupied a pass in every way defensible. So thought the successful peasants who had garrisoned the churchyard and deforced an English general. They prudently declined any attempt to force the bridge, forded the Liffey at Castlemartin, and took up a position between Naas and Kilcullen—thus cutting off General Dundas’s communication with the capital.

Nothing remained for the royalist commander but to drive them from these grounds and open his road to Naas. He advanced accordingly, found them in line three deep, and with his cavalry in hand, boldly attacked the position with half a company of the gallant Suffolks. Small as the party was, three rounds broke the rebels. The cavalry charged, and the same body which had so recently inflicted a severe repulse were scattered like a flock of sheep, leaving the ground covered with their dead and wounded. After a brief but bloody pursuit, Dundas marched on Naas, to concentrate his troops and assist in covering the capital.

ATTACK ON NAAS

‘If one can imagine such a thing as a tableau, or bird’s-eye view of the rebellion from the 23rd to the 30th of May (1790), the appearance it would present would be this. Seven or eight comparatively minor explosions, lighting up the atmosphere for a short space and then going gradually out, viz. one in Meath (Tara), one in Wicklow (Mount Kennedy), a good blaze in Carlow, and four or five in Kildare, which its being Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s own county accounts for—these were Naas, Prosperous, Kilcullen, and Rathangan. The eye should then be drawn to the mighty and absorbing eruption of Wexford; taking Vinegar Hill as its crater, it would observe two streams of lava pouring forth, one due west to Ross, one due north towards Wicklow, and a third, of somewhat less importance, north-west to Newtown Barry. I rather think the first shot was fired by my regiment at Naas, as Mick Reynolds, who led the rebels, was one of the promptest of the insurgent leaders.’—The MS. Journal of a Field Officer.

The garrison of Naas consisted of a hundred and fifty of the Armagh Militia, with two battalion guns, and seventy cavalry, consisting of small detachments of the Fourth Dragoons, Ancient Britons, and sixteen mounted yeomen. The whole were under the command of Colonel Lord Gosford.

On the evening of the general insurrection (the 23rd of May) anonymous letters were received by the commanding officer, apprising him that a night attack would be made upon the town by a numerous body of well-armed rebels, and necessary dispositions of the garrison were made to receive the threatened assault. The guards were doubled, the outskirts of the town carefully patrolled, and a plan of defence prearranged to prevent any confusion when the hour for action came. Midnight passed without anything occurring to cause alarm, and as morning dawned, it was believed that the information received the preceding evening had been incorrect, and the officers retired to their quarters. At half-past two, however, an outlying dragoon galloped in, announcing the advance of a numerous body of rebels; the drums beat to arms, and the garrison occupied their alarm posts.

Perhaps the commanding officer and his staff were more than a trifle incautious and premature in deciding there was nothing in the timely warning.

In spite of the precautionary vigilance, Lord Gosford had the very narrowest possible escape from death by assassination. His lodging was situated at the summit of the hill which the Dublin road ascends. The sentinel at his door, having his attention attracted by the entrance of the rebel columns at the foot of the hill, was inexcusably so far off his guard as to allow two pikemen, belonging to the town, to slip into the hall, where they were ready to receive his lordship with their pikes as he hurried from his chamber on the alarm. And they were very near succeeding—but the sentinel turning about at the critical moment, shot one and bayoneted the other, just as his lordship was rushing down the stairs. The sentinel’s name was John Sandford; he was afterwards made a sergeant, and his son a drummer.

The rebels, who had assembled at the quarries of Tipper, advanced on the town in four divisions, each entering by a different approach, and the heaviest column moving by the Johnstown Road. The latter was commanded by Michael Reynolds, and it made a bold effort to carry the jail, in front of which a party of the Armagh Militia, the Ancient Britons, and a battalion gun were posted. But the attack was completely repulsed, and the rebel loss would have been more considerable had not the cavalry, irritated by the fall of their officer, Captain Davis, who had been fatally piked, charged too prematurely, and interrupted the play of the gun; the execution of the latter was so trifling compared to what it should have produced upon a body in close column and at canister range, that it was ascribed rather to treachery than want of skill. For forty minutes, however, desultory firing continued.

‘Large parties of the rebels, who stole unnoticed into the town through the houses and narrow lanes, fought some time in the streets, and stood three volleys from the Armagh Militia, posted opposite to the barrack, before they gave way; at last they fled precipitately in every direction, when the cavalry charged, and killed a great number of them in the pursuit. Thirty of the rebels were killed in the streets; and from the numbers found dead in back houses and in the adjacent fields a few days afterwards, it is imagined that no less than three hundred must have fallen.

‘They dropped in their flight a great quantity of pikes and other arms, of which a number were found in pits near the town, where also three men with green cockades were seized, and instantly hanged in the public streets. Another prisoner was spared in consequence of useful information which he gave. He informed the commanding officer that the rebel party was above one thousand strong, and was commanded by Michael Reynolds, who was well mounted, and dressed in yeoman uniform. He made his escape, but his horse fell into the hands of our troops.’

KILDARE AND CARLOW

The entire of the county of Kildare was now in open insurrection, and not less than six rebel encampments were formed, and multitudes of the peasantry flocked to them. The houses were almost entirely deserted. Of the Protestant clergy not a man remained, and indeed the ferocity of party feeling had attained an intensity of violence which now can scarcely be imagined or believed. An infernal spirit actuated the opposite religionists. On one side, Catholics were too generally regarded with hatred and distrust; on the other, Protestants and Orangemen were held synonymous, and to all who dissented from the Church of Rome the most abominable feelings and intentions were attributed.

The MS. Journal of a Field Officer relates: ‘One of the completest things during the rebellion was the defeat of the rebels at Carlow, in which a company of my regiment had a share. There was full information of the intended attack, but “not a drum was heard.” The soldiers, who were chiefly in billets, were allowed to repair to their quarters as usual, and remain there until it was ascertained that the town rebels had quitted it to join their fellows and arm themselves, which they did about two miles from the town. A number of sergeants then went round, and the men were brought to their posts without the least alarm.

‘The rebel column entered Carlow by Tullow Street, unopposed—the street terminating in a place or open space where stood the horse barracks and jail. Arrived here they raised a loud shout or yell, and it was fearfully responded to by a destructive fire which opened upon them from different points. Seized with a panic at this unexpected reception they endeavoured to escape in various directions. The greater part retraced their steps through Tullow Street, but a picket had by this time occupied the further end of it, and opened a withering fire. They now sought refuge in the houses: these the soldiers set fire to; a number were shot in attempting to escape the flames, but a great many of the unfortunate wretches perished in them.’

About eighty houses were consumed in this conflagration; and for some days the roasted remains of unhappy men were falling down the chimneys in which they had perished.

It will be here necessary to mention that in Kildare, within a few days after the outbreak, an amnesty for the past was solicited by many of the rebels, and, with the consent of Government, the generals commanding in that county entered into negotiations with their chiefs. How far this was a prudent measure is questionable. In the spirit of the proclamations issued—with arms in their hands, rebels should have been placed outside the pale of treaty; while at the same time the most extensive forgiveness should have been extended to such as should disband themselves and reoccupy their abandoned dwellings. In diplomatic, as well as in field abilities, the royal generals were defective, and the amnesty produced nothing but treachery and bloodshed. The former charge rests with the insurgents, the latter must be laid at the hands of the royalists.

TREACHERY IN THE MIDST OF THE CAPITAL

While the counties in the immediate vicinity of the capital were thus in open insurrection, in the city the spirit and hopes of the disaffected were still buoyant as to the prospect of ultimate success; and although the failure of the 23rd had for a time paralysed the traitors of the metropolis, they were disappointed, but not despairing, and rebellion was ‘scotched, not killed.’

The committees and ‘directories’ continued their meetings, pikes were fabricated in large quantities, the sentries were assaulted on isolated posts, the doors of royalists were marked, domestic servants were corrupted. Musgrave records:—‘The Lord Mayor’s servant acknowledged to his employer that he was at the head of a numerous body of servants who were to have assassinated their masters; that he and his party were to have murdered the Lord Mayor and his family, with two others of his servants who had refused to join this precious association, and that this atrocious deed was to have been the signal for the other servants in the vicinity to rise and commit similar enormities. Another certain proof that a revolution was not only contemplated but expected, many of the Dublin tradesmen refused to receive bank notes in payment from their customers.’

Another serious cause of alarm also was the discovery that into many of the yeomanry corps disaffected persons had been introduced, and in some the traitors outnumbered ‘the true men.’

In Kildare almost every corps was tainted, and the same remark applied to many in the metropolis. Of the country corps, the Sleamarigue laid down their arms, the Castledermot had but five well-affected men, the Athy cavalry were publicly disarmed in the market-place, and their captain, Fitzgerald of Geraldine, committed to prison. The Rathangan, North Naas, and Furnace yeomanry were all extensively disaffected, and the Clane, nominally amounting to sixty-six, could only muster five-and-twenty when the insurrection broke out.

Of the metropolitan corps many were exclusively loyal, but others were not without traitorous members. One instance will be sufficient to show how extensive and dangerous was the disaffection.

On the 29th of May, the St. Sepulchre’s corps, in turn of duty, took the guard at Dolphin’s Barn, an outpost on the southwest side of the metropolis. While on the march to the bridge, a Roman Catholic yeoman, named Raymond, entered into conversation with his comrade, a notorious United Irishman, and communicated the secret plot. He told Jennings, ‘that in case of an attack, which was hourly expected, and which it was believed he had previously concerted with the rebels, the disaffected members of the corps were to massacre their officers and the Protestants, and to deliver up the bridge to the assailants. They were then to proceed to the battery in the park, inform the guard that they had been defeated, ask admittance, and on being let in, murder the guard, take possession of the battery and ammunition, and turn it to their own use.

‘Jennings had been sworn a United Irishman, and was attached to the cause from republican principles; but being a Protestant, and having discovered from the massacres which had taken place in the counties of Dublin, Meath, and Kildare, that the extirpation of his own order was intended, he informed Lieutenant Mathurin of the plot; and he, having communicated it to the Government, Raymond was taken up, tried, convicted, and hanged on the Old Bridge on the 1st of June.’

As the Roman Catholic members of that corps, who formed the majority of it, were discovered to be disaffected, they were disarmed on parade the Sunday following, and disbanded.

The fears of the inhabitants of the city were not abated when, on the 26th of May, the Lord Mayor caused the following placard to be circulated throughout the metropolis:—

‘A Caution

‘Lest the innocent should suffer for the guilty.

‘The Lord Mayor requests his fellow-citizens to keep within their houses as much as they can, suitable to their convenience, after sunset, in this time of peril; as the streets should be kept as clear as possible, should any tumult or rising to support rebellion be attempted, in order that the troops and artillery may act with full effect in case of any disturbance.’

THE HILL OF TARA

At this period, after plundering, and a commission of other outrages at Dunboyn, the rebels, from the borders of Meath and Dublin, proceeded in the first instance to Dunshaughlin, and afterwards to the hill of Tara. Their numbers had rapidly increased; there were no military parties in the immediate neighbourhood; and unchecked and unresisted, they devastated the country for miles round their camp, to which they carried an immense quantity of booty. A few corps of yeomanry still remained in the vicinity, but they were not sufficiently numerous to attack a very strong and defensible position. Accident, however, interposed, and the royalists obtained the assistance they required.

Three companies of the Reay Fencibles, with a battalion gun, were on the march to the metropolis, and halted in Navan on the night of the 25th of May. Captain Preston, who commanded the yeomanry of that town, solicited the co-operation of Captain M’Clean to deforce the rebels....

‘After going some time in quest of the rebels they found them very strongly posted on Tara hill, where they had been four hours, and about four thousand in number, while the country people were flocking to them in great multitudes from every quarter. They had plundered the houses in all the adjacent country of provisions of every kind, and were proceeding to cook their dinners, having lighted nearly forty fires, and hoisted white flags in their camp.

‘The hill of Tara is very steep, and the upper part surrounded by three circular Danish forts, with ramparts and fosses; while on the top lies the churchyard surrounded with a wall, which the rebels regarded as their citadel, and considered impregnable.

‘The king’s troops, including the yeomanry, might have amounted to about four hundred. As soon as the rebels perceived them they put their hats on the tops of their spikes, sent forth some dreadful yells, and at the same time began to jump, and put themselves in singular attitudes, as if bidding defiance to their adversaries. They then began to advance, firing at the same time, but in an irregular manner.

‘Our line of infantry came on with the greatest coolness, and did not fire a shot until they were within fifty yards. One part of the cavalry, commanded by Lord Fingal, was ordered to the right, the other to the left, to prevent the line from being outflanked, which the enemy attempted to accomplish. The rebels made three desperate onsets, and in the last laid hold of the cannon; but the officer who commanded the gun laid the match to it before they could completely surround it, prostrated ten or twelve of the assailants, and dispersed the remainder. The Reay Fencibles preserved their line, and fired with as much coolness as if they had been exercising on a field-day.

‘At length they routed the rebels, who fled in all directions, having lost about four hundred in killed and wounded. In their flight they threw away arms and ammunition, and everything that could encumber them. Three hundred horses, all their provisions, arms, ammunition, and baggage fell into the hands of the victors, with eight of the Reay Fencibles, whom they had taken prisoners two days before, and whom they employed to drill them.

‘It is to be lamented that the Reay Fencibles lost twenty-six men in killed and wounded, and the Upper Kells infantry six men.

‘The king’s troops would have remained on the field all night, but they had not a cartridge left either for the gun or small arms, The prisoners, of whom they took a good many, informed our officers that their intention was to have proceeded that night to plunder Navan, and then Kells, where there was a great quantity of ammunition, and little or no force to protect it; and that when they had succeeded they expected, according to a preconcerted plan, to have been joined by a great number of insurgents from Meath, Westmeath, Lough, Monaghan, and Cavan.’

The defeat of the insurgents, and their complete dispersion at Tara hill and on the Curragh, were highly advantageous, as they opened the communications north and south with the metropolis, which had been seriously interrupted.

Many partial affairs took place at this time between the royalists and the rebels in Kildare, and barbarities on the one side produced on the other a terrible retaliation. The insurgents burned and murdered as they went along; the troops and yeomen shot and hanged liberally in return. The record of crimes inhumanly committed and ruthlessly revenged would only disgust a reader.

While thus Kildare was exhibited for nearly a week one wide blaze of general insurrection, another county, which in the annals of rebellion assumed afterwards a sanguinary pre-eminence, remained in ominous tranquillity. The storm burst at last, and in crime and bloodshed Wexford left every other scene of tumultuary violence completely in the shade.

WEXFORD INSURRECTION AND CONSEQUENT ATROCITIES

Wexford had long withstood the anarchy of the evil days. While many counties in Ireland were disgraced by nocturnal robbery and assassination, committed by Defenders and United Irishmen, for five years previous to ’97, it was the pride of the Wexford gentlemen to boast that their county had remained in perfect tranquillity. But in the autumn and winter of that year, and in the spring of ’98, there were well-grounded suspicions that the mass of the people had begun to be infected by those baneful principles which since proved fatal to the kingdom, that pikes were manufactured, and clubs had been formed, in which illegal oaths had been administered. In April, however, unequivocal symptoms that a disaffected spirit actuated the peasantry became evident; and although the priests laboured hard to lead the resident gentry to believe that no danger was impending, and the people by thousands swore allegiance in the chapels, and expressed open attachment to the Government, there is too much reason to conclude that the plot had been long in preparation, and that the ferocious spirit which marked the proceedings of the insurgents was not the wild ebullition of a resentment produced by injudicious severity, but the fruits of a long-cherished antipathy to those who dissented from them in faith. It was the explosion of a frantic effort of the Papists to stamp out and exterminate their Protestant fellow-countrymen.

There is no doubt violent measures produced great exasperation, and that possibly a conciliatory policy might have averted the outbreak altogether. ‘Not above six hundred men at most of the regular army or militia were stationed in the county, the defence of which was almost abandoned to the troops of yeomen and their supplementaries. The magistrates in several districts employed themselves in ordering the seizure, imprisonment, and whipping of numbers of suspected persons. These yeomen being Protestants, prejudiced against the Romanists by traditionary and other accounts of the former cruelties that sect committed, fearing similar cruelties in case of insurrection, and confirmed in this fear by papers found in the pockets of some prisoners, containing the old sanguinary doctrines of the Romish Church, which authorised the extermination of heretics, acted with a spirit ill-fitted to allay religious hatred and prevent any feeling to rebels.

CAPTAIN FATHER JOHN MURPHY OF BOULAVOGUE

Until Saturday, the 26th of May, the flame of rebellion remained smouldering; but on that evening John Murphy, the curate or coadjutor-priest of Boulavogue, gave the signal for a general rising, which was too fatally responded to. A fire lighted on the hill of Corrigrua was answered by another kindled on Boulavogue, and the rapidity with which the volcano burst appears almost incredible. Murphy, the rebel general, was the son of a petty farmer in the parish of Ferns, where he was educated at a hedge school kept by a man of the name of Gun. It appears by his testimonium and diploma, that he received holy orders at Seville in Spain in the year 1785, and probably graduated there as a doctor of divinity, as he assumes that title in his journal, which was dropped in his retreat from Vinegar Hill, and found by Captain Hugh Moore of the 5th Dragoons, aide-de-camp to General Needham.

Nothing could be more ferocious than the church-militant career of this savage man. Every Protestant house in the parish of Kilcormick was reduced to ashes, and such of their unfortunate owners as could be seized were ruthlessly destroyed. These outrages proceeded entirely from a truculent disposition—for mostly his victims were men who offered no opposition—and when rashly attacked at a place called the Harrow, he beat off the Camolin cavalry, and killed Lieutenant Bookey who commanded it.

Whether the demon spirit which Murphy afterwards exhibited had been provoked or not is a matter of controversy; some say that his house and chapel had been burnt before he took the field, and others as positively deny it. In searching through the evidence on record dispassionately, I incline to the Tatter opinion, for when his house was burned the furniture had been previously removed and hidden in a sand-pit, and when his vestments were brought from the same concealment, the leader of the loyalists observed, in reply to some insulting remark, ‘Punish the rebel if you can, but offer no mockery to his religion.’

Early in his martial career Murphy commenced his murderous treacheries, destroying the glebe house at Kyle and murdering the rector of Kilmuckridge, Doctor Burrowes, and his family, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. The house was defended with barricades by the rector and his parishioners at sunrise it was attacked by about five hundred rebels. ‘It was vigorously defended for some time, many shots having been fired by the assailants and the besieged. At last the rebels set fire to the out-offices, which were quickly consumed, and soon after to the dwelling-house, which in a short time was in a state of conflagration. The rapid spread of the flames in the latter was caused by the application of some unctuous combustible matter applied to the doors and windows of the house, which the rebels frequently used in the course of the rebellion.

‘The besieged being in danger of suffocation from the thickness of the smoke, resolved to quit the house, however perilous it might be, and this they were encouraged to do by Father Murphy, who assured them they should not be injured if they surrendered themselves without further resistance. Relying on his promise they quitted the house, on which the rebels treacherously murdered Mr. Burrowes and seven of his parishioners, and gave his son, a youth of sixteen, so severe a wound in the belly with a pike, that it subsequently caused his death.

CAROUSAL AND PLUNDER AT THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF FERNS

George Cruikshank has seized this characteristic incident for one of his graphic pictures. It will be remembered that Murphy’s father came from the parish of Ferns. The illustration is in itself sufficiently graphic, and filled with pictorial details descriptive of the incident. Maxwell has related, in reference to the plunder of the bishop’s palace, an anecdote connected with it, which marks the total subversion of principle, religious feelings, badly excited, will produce. An orphan boy, whom the bishop had found naked and starving at the age of seven years, and whom he had fed, clothed, and instructed afterwards, was the leader of these marauders, showed them every valuable article of furniture, and assisted them in breaking open the cellar. The bishop’s fine library was plundered of its antique folios; these the rebels converted into saddles.

CAMPS OF KILTHOMAS AND OULART HILLS

The first consequences of the Wexford rising was the assemblage of two large bodies of insurgents, the one occupying the hill of Oulart, ten miles southward of Gorey, in the direction of the town of Wexford; the second taking a position nine miles westward of the former place, on a ridge of the Slieve Buoye mountain, called Kilthomas hill. Camps were established on the heights, and an immense number of the peasantry, including every age and sex, flocked immediately to join the rebels.

Both camps were attacked, but with results painfully different. The garrison of the little town of Carnew, consisting of nearly three hundred yeomanry, mounted and dismounted, marched boldly against the insurgents collected on Kilthomas, roughly estimated at about three thousand men. Although, with favourable ground and enormous superiority of numbers, it might have been expected that an attempt to dislodge the rebels from their position would have failed, nothing could have been more successful than the attack, and the royalists obtained a bloodless victory. Here again, the unrelenting spirit of the times appeared, and a very gallant and daring exploit was sullied by impolitic severity. The attempt to disperse the second camp at Oulart was attended with consequences not only disastrous to the troops engaged, but its results caused afterwards an immensity of bloodshed. Through the imprudence of an incompetent commanding officer, a very gallant detachment perished, while the insurgents, encouraged by accidental success, acquired a false but dangerous confidence which involved a fearful amount of atrocity, with a reaction, in many cases to be excused, and in more to be lamented.

On the morning of the 27th of May, Mr. Turner of Newfort arrived at Wexford and announced that his own house had been attacked and robbed of a quantity of arms, previously surrendered, and that the insurrection had unequivocally broken out.

Intelligence presently came in of the murders and atrocities everywhere committed in the neighbourhood, and also of the formation of a rebel camp at Oulart. Thinking it advisable to crush the outbreak in its birth, the yeomanry cavalry proceeded to scour the country, while Captain Foote with a detachment of the North Cork militia, amounting to no men, rank and file, marched in the direction of the rebel camp; and in route to Oulart he was joined by a troop of yeomanry cavalry; however, most of the yeomen in face of the enemy proved traitors and deserted to the enemy. In rough numbers, the insurgent force might have been set down at four to five thousand combatants. Although the advance was made with every disregard of military caution, accident more than determination enabled the rebels to profit from the gross mismanagement of the force opposed to them. Contempt of an enemy, which creates incaution, has often proved fatal. The rebels fled at the first onset, and were pursued at full speed by the militia, who were so little apprehensive of resistance, that no rank or order was observed. While the rebels were making their escape with precipitation towards the northern side of the hill, they were apprised that a large body of cavalry had been seen that morning advancing against them in the opposite direction, apparently with a design to intercept their flight and co-operate with the militia by a double attack. As the Wexfordian insurgents as yet were totally unacquainted with warfare, the onset of cavalry was, to the imaginations of many among them, more terrible than that of infantry. They therefore ignorantly supposed the cavalry to be still in the neighbourhood; and while Father John Murphy exclaimed that they must either conquer or perish, they turned desperately against the militia, who had now arrived near the summit, almost breathless, and charging them with their pikes, killed the whole detachment in an instant, except the lieutenant-colonel, a sergeant, and three privates. ‘It appears,’ says Musgrave, ‘that the rebels were rendered bold and desperate by intoxication, and that from twelve to fifteen of them singled out, cut off, and attacked each of the soldiers, who did not resign their lives but at a dear rate to their assailants.’

The consequences of this unfortunate disaster speedily evinced themselves. Numbers of the peasantry who had hitherto remained neutral repaired to the camp and joined the rebel standard; and in the same ratio that the confidence of the insurgents increased, the spirit of the royalists was abated. Fearful of an attack by numbers of savage men under the intoxication of a first success, the little garrison of Gorey determined to retreat at once on Arklow; and the movement was conceived and executed with a celerity that caused the most afflicting distress to crowds of helpless loyalists, who, dreading the ferocity of the rebels, abandoned their homes and followed the retiring garrison as they best could; the situation of these unfortunates was truly deplorable, and their subsequent sufferings pitiable in the extreme.

DESTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH AT ENNISCORTHY

Flushed with success, Murphy, the fighting priest of Boulavogue, now turned his attention to the town of Enniscorthy, six miles distant from his encampment. Its possession would be important; and as the garrison amounted only to about three hundred men, of whom a hundred were North Cork Militia and the remainder local yeomanry, there was every reason to believe that an open town, accessible in many quarters and protected by a feeble garrison, would offer to the overwhelming masses which should assail it a short and unavailing defence. Accordingly, Father Murphy determined to attack the place, and he carried his resolution into effect early on the afternoon of the 28th of May.

From its dangerous vicinity to the rebel encampment the garrison of the town apprehended, naturally enough, that the first effort of the victorious insurgents would be directed against them, and they were obliged, in consequence, to be vigilant and prepared. The duty of patrolling and giving pickets was therefore most harassing; for three days and nights they had been continually under arms; but though worn out and exhausted, while reports and appearances were most discouraging, they determined nevertheless to offer a gallant defence, and nobly they realised their resolution.

Certain intelligence having been received on the morning of the 28th that the town would be attacked early that afternoon, the drums beat to arms and the garrison took the posts previously assigned to them. The North Cork Militia occupied the bridge, a cavalry corps holding the street connecting it with the town, while the Duffry gate hill, upon the Carlow road, was protected by the yeomanry and infantry. The market-house and castle had each a sergeant’s guard allotted for its defence.

The ground taken up by the yeomanry was three or four hundred yards in front of the Duffry gate, and on that point the rebels made their opening attack. On perceiving the yeomanry in line, the insurgent column halted and deployed, extending largely to the right and left, to outflank the small body in their front and cut it from the town. This done, they advanced, driving cattle in their front, and at the same time opening a heavy and well-directed fire. (As the county of Wexford abounds with water-fowl, the occupation of a fowler is so profitable that numbers of the lower class of people are not only experts in the use of fire-arms, but excellent marksmen.) The yeomanry replied to it with effect, but dreading, from the extension of the rebel wings, that they should be ultimately turned, they retired into the town, covered by a charge of cavalry, which dispersed a body that pressed them too closely, but inflicted on the gallant horsemen a very heavy loss.

The suburbs and the town itself were now on fire. A number of the assailants had got in through by-ways unperceived, the rebel inhabitants fired on the royalists from their windows (many lives of officers were thus picked off in ambuscade), while, repulsed from an attempt upon the bridge, the insurgents attempted to ford the river beyond the reach of the fire of the North Cork Militia. Pressed by numbers totally disproportionate, the yeomanry obstinately held their ground, and although suffering heavily themselves, they cheered as they observed that their own heavy and well-supported fusilade cut down the head of the rebel column and checked its advance.

‘The streets,’ relates Musgrave, ‘were entirely involved in smoke, so that the yeomen could not perceive the rebels till they were charged by their pikes. The flames from the houses at each side of the street were so great as to unite and form a fiery arch, by which their hair was singed and the bear-skin in their caps was burnt. The loyalists, bravely disputing every inch of ground, retreated to the market-house, an open space like a square, where they made a determined stand and killed great numbers of the enemy. By this effort the loyalists turned the scale and drove the rebels completely out of the town, the streets of which at each side of the river presented an awful scene of conflagration. While the troops were thus engaged in the south side of the town, another body of the rebels crossed the river, about three-quarters of a mile above the bridge, but were soon routed by Captain Snowe. On this occasion his men showed great dexterity as marksmen, seldom failing to bring down such individual rebels as they aimed at. Captain Snowe then ordered Captain Richards to charge, which he did most effectually, but with heavy loss in killed and wounded.

‘As a party of the rebels, which came from Vinegar Hill towards the glebe, still remained unassailed and their numbers seemed increasing, they were attacked by Captain Drury, with half a company of the North Cork Militia, and dispersed with considerable slaughter.’

Thus ended an action which lasted more than three hours, fought on a very hot day, in the midst of a burning town, the disaffected inhabitants of which set fire to their own houses to annoy the loyalists, and fired on them from their windows with deadly effect, picking out the loyalist leaders. In this action the yeomen and Protestant inhabitants performed prodigies of valour in support of the constitution and in defence of their property and their families.

‘It was generally believed that not less than five hundred of the rebels were killed or wounded. The banks of the river and the island in it were strewed with their dead bodies, and numbers of them fell in the streets. To keep up the courage of the insurgents every artifice was used; for even women, as if insensible of danger, were seen in the midst of the carnage administering whiskey to their rebel friends.’

In this most gallant defence the loss sustained by the garrison fell chiefly on the yeomanry and loyalists; nearly a third of the whole amount employed were placed hors de combat, the greater proportion being slain.

After the rebels were repulsed, the necessity of an instant retreat became apparent. The town was on fire, and no longer tenable by a garrison equally reduced in strength and numbers, the insurgents were hanging in an immense force about the town, a night attack seemed almost certain, and no hope could be held out that under existing circumstances it could be repulsed. A council of war was held, and, after mature deliberation, it was resolved to abandon the town and march on Wexford by the eastern side of the river, by St. John’s. ‘From the suddenness of the retreat, only a few of the Protestant inhabitants could accompany the troops, and they could carry with them no other comforts or necessaries but the apparel which they wore. Imagination cannot form a more tragic scene than the melancholy train of fugitives, of whom some were so helpless from their wounds, from sickness, the feebleness of old age or infancy, that they could not have effected their escape had not the yeomen cavalry mounted them on their horses. Some parents were reduced to the dreadful necessity of leaving their infants in cottages on the roadside, with but faint hope of ever seeing them again.

‘The town, the morning after the rebels got possession of it, presented a dreadful scene of carnage and conflagration; many bodies were lying dead in the streets, and others groaning in the agonies of death; some parts of the place were entirely consumed, and in others the flames continued to rage with inextinguishable fury. No less than 478 dwelling-houses and cabins were burned in the town and its suburbs, besides a great number of stores, malt-houses, and out-offices.’

The rebel entrance of the town was marked by the atrocities of a barbarous force, irritated by resistance, and now excited by the accidental success which circumstances had given them.

AN ACT OF VENGEANCE

In the spirit of sheer destructiveness the rebels turned their exertions to wrecking the Protestant church. Our artist has graphically pictured the wild and lurid spectacle attending the wilful destruction of the church at Enniscorthy; vestments, benches, the organ, the pulpit, Bibles, and church furniture were devoted to feed the flames and make a bonfire; meanwhile the triumphant insurgents are shown carrying off the church bell as a trophy, which we find set up subsequently, a prominent feature of the vast rebel camp in the vicinity.

THE CAMP ON VINEGAR HILL

Immediately after obtaining possession of Enniscorthy the rebels proceeded to form an extensive encampment on Vinegar Hill, from which the town, after its seizure, was garrisoned by rebel reliefs, sent down from headquarters on the mountain. Immense numbers of the peasantry flocked to this camp, and in a few days it was believed that fully ten thousand men were there collected. As this was the point on which the insurgents concentrated in greater force and for a longer time than on any other during the brief period that elapsed from the émeute to its final suppression, and as it was also, unhappily, the scene, were its atrocities recorded, that would picture civil war in revolting colours—which may be fancied but not detailed—it may be interesting here to describe its local position and the appearance it then presented.

In a military point of view Vinegar Hill is strong. High grounds, gradually rising, are crowned by a cone of bold ascent, while the country beneath, being cultivated fields, is divided into numerous enclosures, and intersected by stone walls, hedges, and trenches. On the apex of the hill stood the ruins of a windmill; round the upper height some rude field-works were thrown up, as well as on a lower ridge which the rebels occupied as part of their position. For defence by irregular troops, who trusted rather to numbers than to discipline, Vinegar Hill was particularly favourable, for the numerous enclosures afforded safe cover for skirmishers, who could with perfect impunity severely annoy any columns advancing to assail the hill, and oblige an enemy to feel his way with caution. Good roads wound round the base of the position, and a command of the Slaney added to its military value.

Its local appearance was singular and picturesque, and perfectly in keeping with a wild and guerilla sort of warfare. Although the weather was particularly hot and night but nominal, a part of the insurgents placed themselves under cover, and the position exhibited rather the varied colouring of an Indian camp than the dazzling whiteness of ‘the tented field.’ Wattles—as thin and flexible poles are termed in Irish parlance—were overhung with blankets, tablecloths, chintz furniture, and window curtains, plundered from the surrounding neighbourhood, while in the centre, from the top of the ruined windmill, a green flag ‘dared the battle and the breeze.’ A few guns and swivels were rudely placed in battery, and in whatever else the rebel executive might have been deficient, their commissariat, as the figures and records show, was carefully attended to. A local board of field officers assembled every day, and after their deliberations the larders and cellars of the neighbouring gentry were put into extensive requisition. Vinegar Hill was better provided with rude accommodations than any of the insurgent stations, for the heights on which the rebel masses herded were generally mere bivouacs, hurriedly taken up and as suddenly abandoned. These posts they termed camps, though they were destitute of tents, except a few for their chiefs, while the people remained in the open air in vast multitudes, men and women promiscuously, some lying covered with blankets at night, and some without other covering than the clothes which they wore during the day. This mode of warfare was favoured by an uninterrupted continuance of dry and warm weather, to such a length of time as is very unusual in Ireland in that season, or any season of the year. This was regarded by the rebels as a particular interposition of Providence in their favour, and some among them are said to have declared, in a prophetic tone, that not a drop of rain was to fall until they should be masters of all Ireland. On the other hand, the same was considered by the fugitive loyalists as a merciful favour of Heaven, since bad weather must have miserably augmented their distress and caused the death of many. In these encampments or stations, among such crowds of riotous, undisciplined men, under no regular authority, the greatest disorder may be supposed to have prevailed. Often when a rebel was in a sound sleep in the night he was robbed by some associate of his gun or some article considered valuable; and hence to sleep flat on the belly, with the hat and shoes tied under the breast for the prevention of stealth, was the general custom.

THE CAMP ON VINEGAR HILL

‘The camp at Vinegar Hill presented a dreadful scene of confusion and uproar. A number of female rebels, more vehement than the male, were marching out to meet the army from Newtown Barry; this was a large body which Father Roche led from Vinegar Hill to the attack of that town, which took place the 1st of June. Great numbers of women were in the camp. Some men were employed in killing cattle and in boiling them in pieces in large copper brewing-pans; others were drinking, cursing, and swearing; many of them were playing on various musical instruments which they had acquired by plunder in the adjacent Protestant houses, the whole producing a most disagreeable and barbarous dissonance.’—Visit to the Camp, Rossiters Affidavit, printed in Musgrave’s Appendix, No. XX.

They were in nothing more irregular than in the cooking of provisions, many of them cutting pieces at random out of cattle scarcely dead without waiting to dismember them, and roasting those pieces on the points of their pikes, with the parts of the hide which belonged to them still attached. The heads of cattle were seldom eaten, but generally left to rot on the surface of the ground, as were often large portions of the carcases after a few pieces had been cut away. From this practice the decay of animal matter was rapid, and the stench of the encampment in a few days became intolerable.

THE FATAL PASS OF TUBBERNEERING

This incident, one of the most fatal episodes of the insurrection, was due, like several others recounted, to the incompetence of the leaders; a fine body of men were thus sacrificed, and the situation of the loyalists was aggravated in consequence. The abandonment of Wexford followed the succession of military mistakes. The peasantry, hounded on by truculent priests and ferocious partisans, committed every enormity which can be imagined, while the royalists and yeomanry emulated this abominable cruelty, and, under the name of loyalty, too frequently perpetrated wanton and savage reprisals. Confidence between men was ended, and while the rebels dissimulated to obtain their end, the royalist, shielded by the hand of power still predominant, robbed and slaughtered ‘in the king’s name.’ On both sides there were violence and treachery. It was an unholy contest, and while Popish massacres were revolting, it cannot be denied that Protestant atrocities were neither ‘few nor far between.’ Colonel Walpole was detached from Dublin to reinforce General Loftus, that on his junction he arrogated for himself an independent command, that it was culpably acceded to, that he was ambitious to fight an action without delay, and that to oblige a minion of a Lord-Lieutenant an attack on the rebel position, the hill of Ballymore, was planned, it being considered the safest method of gratifying ‘a carpet-knight’ whose services had as vet been confined to the duties of the drawing-room. The result may be imagined. Walpole led his fine division into a well-prepared ambuscade in the fatal pass of Tubberneering, the guns were taken, the commanders shot. ‘Suddenly from the enclosures a wild yell burst forth, accompanied by a stream of musketry. Colonel Walpole fell on the first fire; the confusion was tremendous, and to fight or retreat impossible. The height and number of the fences on every side made the ground most favourable for irregular and desultory warfare, as the long pikes of the rebels reached nearly across the narrow road, and those of the distracted soldiers who escaped the first close fire were perforated from behind the hedges’ by invisible opponents. The surprise of the troops was complete, dragoons and infantry were thrown in helpless disorder on each other, and a scene of butchery ensued. The column was now completely surrounded, discipline unavailing; an attempt made by a detachment of the 4th Dragoon Guards to turn the enemy’s right flank failed. After having sustained the attack for about three-quarters of an hour with considerable disadvantage on the part of the king’s troops, and having lost their commander and three pieces of artillery, which were immediately turned against them, a retreat began in all the confusion which might be expected from raw and inexperienced troops.

‘The rebels pressed them hard, a general dismay took place, which would probably have been fatal to the whole of the column had not Lieutenant-Colonel Cope of the Armagh Militia, who had been fortunately in the rear of the column with a detachment of his own regiment, rallied and formed them on the road to impede the progress of the enemy. He gallantly disputed every inch of it for three miles. To this small band of brave men, under the command of a cool and gallant officer, the safety of those who escaped on that disastrous day may be entirely attributed.

‘Walpole, a mere Castle attache, had been very improperly employed to collect what troops could be spared from Naas, Kilcullen, and Baltinglas to reinforce General Loftus.... Walpole assumed the duties of his superior, planned ridiculous attacks, and finally sacrificed one of the finest detachments in the field.’

THE LOYAL LITTLE DRUMMER-BOY

Musgrave has thus related the touching incident of which George Cruikshank has made an effective picture:—‘A drummer, named Hunter, of the Antrim regiment, only some twelve years old, fell into the hands of the rebels in the unfortunate affair in which Colonel Walpole lost his life. He carried his drum with him, and when conducted to the town of Gorey with some other prisoners, being ordered to beat it, actuated by a spirit of enthusiastic loyalty, he exclaimed, “That the King’s drum should never be beaten for rebels,” and at the same instant leaped on the head and broke through the parchment. The inhuman villains, callous to admiration of an heroic act even in an enemy, instantly perforated his body with pikes.’

The consequences of the slaughter at Tubberneering were precisely such as might be expected. The royalists lost heart, and the insurgents acquired a dangerous audacity. Every Protestant abandoned home and property in despair, and more than a thousand individuals fled from their once happy dwellings, with wives and children, and, without food or shelter, endeavoured to seek safety elsewhere, and obtain eleemosynary support from those who still possessed a home. In the first place all, soldiers and civilians alike, fell back to Arklow, but, feeling themselves insecure even there, the retreat was continued to Wicklow.

As we have seen, the results of the insurgent success reacted most disastrously; the rebels at once became masters of Gorey, and to the army of Irish liberty in ’98 the conquest of this town proved the reverse of advantageous to the captors.

INSURGENT OCCUPATION OF GOREY

For five days they halted in and about the town, drinking and pillaging, destroying property not portable, and, as at Enniscorthy, visiting their vengeance on the church. Had their fury been expended on the building alone it would have been a matter of little import, but unhappily the contest had now taken a religious colouring, so rancorous and sanguinary that blood alone could satisfy party hatred and thirst for vengeance, and the best interests of the cause itself were sacrificed to stupid and unproductive brutalities, from which gray hairs afforded no protection, nor boyhood could claim no immunity. To satisfy this insensate vengeance upon inoffensive victims, military expediency was disregarded, and important advantages lost sight of and utterly sacrificed.

The MS. Journal of a Field Officer, in every sense an invaluable guide to the true situation of those affairs which come within the observations of this keen professional critic, dwells conclusively on this point: ‘Providentially, the rebels had too many commanders; those of the Wexford force being mostly priests, their attention was more directed to the interests of their church by purging the land of heretics than to the concerns of the “Irish Republic,” which the northern leaders had in view. Consequently time was wasted in collecting and piking Protestants, which might have been employed with far greater advantage to the cause.’

THE BATTLE OF ROSS

The operations of the rebel armies which we have already detailed, namely, the attempt on Newtown Barry by the corps under Father Kearns, and that on Gorey by the insurgents under the two Murphys and Perry of Inch, with the intervening occurrence of Walpole’s defeat at Tubberneering, must be connected by a simultaneous transaction, probably, in military importance, the most interesting which marked the outbreak.

The strongest of the insurgent corps had assembled on the hill of Carrickbyrne, under the chief command of B. Baganel Harvey, with Father Roche acting en second. Their encampment was six miles from the town of Ross, of which it was their first and greatest object to obtain possession.

The dangerous proximity of the rebel host had caused alarm for the safety of the town, and, consequently, the garrison had been strengthened. On the 5th of June the County Dublin Militia, commanded by the popularly beloved Lord Mountjoy, with detachments from the Clare, Donegal, and Meath Militia, 5th Dragoons, Midlothian Fencibles, and English Artillery, occupied the place—a force amounting to 1400 men of all arms, of which 150 were yeomen. General Johnson, a veteran officer, commanded, and his heroic exertions won the day, and must shed a lasting lustre upon his reputation as a courageous and able leader.

On the evening of the 4th June the rebel camp at Carrick-byrne broke up, and the insurgents moved bodily to Corbethill, within a mile and a half of Ross. The rebel hordes ‘moved by parishes and baronies, each having a particular standard; in their way they stopped at a chapel, where mass was said at the head of each column by priests, who sprinkled an abundance of holy water on them.’—Musgrave. After driving in a distant outpost they bivouacked on Corbethill for the night. The royalists, fearing a surprise, remained under arms, the infantry and guns in position on the southern and eastern faces of the town, the yeoman infantry holding the bridge, and the cavalry formed on the quay. Night passed, however, without alarm; and it was four o’clock on the morning of the 5th before Baganel Harvey, who had been a few days before elected to the chief command, sent a formal summons to General Johnson, which unfortunately (as some say) was not delivered. Furlong, the rebel leader, who carried it, was shot, through the ignorance of the advanced sentry, who paid no respect to a white handkerchief he waved on approaching the outposts.

The MS. Journal of a Field Officer sums up the actual military situation: ‘The movement upon Ross showed some head on the part of Baganel Harvey, the object being to force the principal passage of the Barrow, and, in conjunction with the insurgents of Kilkenny, bear down upon Waterford, which was then very disaffected, weakly garrisoned, and presented strong temptations in the way of plunder. But Harvey had no idea of attacking Ross when that event took place, and there were evidently no preparations made for it. Harvey expected, and with reason, that the appearance of his masses on the hills which domineered the town would have secured the active co-operation of the Kilkenny men from the other side of the Barrow. And this would have been the case had time allowed it, but Furlong was a popular leader among the rebels, and when he was shot by a sentinel at the outpost the mass of the rebels, maddened by the occurrence, rushed by a sudden impulse, in a mighty but disordered torrent, along one side of the road on the Three-bullet Gate, instead of making a combined movement on an open town, by which facility of approach and enormous preponderance in numbers could not but have succeeded.’ This argument is supported by the communication which Furlong carried. On searching the pockets of the dead man the following cartel was found:—

Sir—As a friend to humanity I request you will surrender the town of Ross to the Wexford forces, now assembled against that town. Your resistance will but provoke rapine and plunder, to the ruin of the most innocent. Flushed with victory, the Wexford forces, now innumerable and irresistible, will not be controlled if they meet with resistance. To prevent, therefore, the total ruin of all property in the town I urge you to a speedy surrender, which you will be forced to in a few hours, with loss and bloodshed, as you are surrounded on all sides. Your answer is required in four hours. Mr. Furlong carries this letter, and will bring the answer.—I am, Sir,

B. B. Harvey,

General commanding, etc., etc.

Camp at Corbethill, half-past three o’clock morning,

June 5, 1798.

The death of Furlong is said to have precipitated the attack, for immediately afterwards the rebels moved forward in dense masses, cheering and yelling, and directing their march on the Three-bullet Gate. The advance of this armed multitude—by some estimated as from 20,000 to 25,000 men—was described to me by an eye-witness as the most singular spectacle imaginable. The irregularity of their array—partly in close column and partly in line—had the effect of displaying their enormous strength to full advantage; while the presence of several priests, who were observed flitting through their ranks and haranguing their deluded followers with certain assurances of victory, inspired an enthusiastic fanaticism, which blinded them to danger and rendered them additionally formidable. They pushed forward four guns and a cloud of musketeers, some in extended order, and others heading the pikemen, whose crowded columns occupied the whole road, far as the eye could range.

As might have been expected, the pickets were roughly driven in, and, in a wild rush made by the rebels on the troops in front of the Three-bullet Gate, the latter were obliged to recede, and one of the guns was captured. In turn, however, the troops rallied and drove back the insurgents, and, perceiving their unsteadiness when mobbed together in the repulse, General Johnson ordered the 5th Dragoons to charge. For cavalry effect the ground was totally un suite, the numerous fences enabling the rebels to avoid the charge, while, protected themselves, they inflicted a heavy loss on men who very gallantly, but very ineffectively, had thus assailed them at disadvantage.

An entrance to the town was gained, and while some of the rebels fired the houses, others pushed forward towards the bridge. But the advance by Neville Street was swept by the steady fire of a gun placed in the market-place, which looked directly down the approach. Notwithstanding the murderous fire which fell on a dense mass of men, wedged together in a narrow street, and which shore the head of the column down as frequently as it came forward, others succeeded those who fell, and fresh numbers momentarily appeared. The troops, terrified at the armed crowds who swarmed through the Three-bullet Gate, and who, maddened by inebriety and fanaticism, seemed rather to court death than avoid it, the defenders at last despairing of offering a longer resistance against myriad hordes of infuriated fiends, retreated across the bridge.

BATTLE OF ROSS—‘COME ON, BOYS! HER MOUTH’S STOPPED!’

George Cruikshank, with his native genius for selecting effective and sensational episodes for pictorial delineation, has seized an actual incident which more resembles the effort of a romancer’s imagination than an actuality of stern warfare. The illustration is founded upon one of the paragraphs given by Maxwell in confirmation of his statement that the hordes of rebels apparently courted destruction rather than safety.

Says our historical authority:—‘One rebel, emboldened by fanaticism and drunkenness, advanced before his comrades, seized a gun, crammed his hat and wig into it, and cried out, “Come on, boys! her mouth is stopped!” At that instant the gunner laid the match to the gun and blew the unfortunate savage to atoms. Incredible as this instance of savage ignorance may appear, the fact has been verified by the affidavit of a person who saw it from a window.’

BATTLE OF ROSS—GENERAL JOHNSON RETRIEVES THE WANING FORTUNES OF THE DAY

It appeared, beyond the causes already related as having induced Harvey and his rebel myriads to feel confident of easily securing the strategically important town of Ross, that the insurgents had been induced to think that the militia regiments at Ross, from being almost entirely composed of Romanists, would have either joined them in the action, or offered a feeble opposition. The Clare regiment was considered friendly, and the Dublin County were believed not particularly loyal or trustworthy. The MS. Journal of a Field Officer is enlightening upon these points:—‘Be this as it may, their colonel, Lord Mountjoy, was heading them up the street leading to the Three-bullet Gate when he met his death by a traitorous shot, and the attachment which his men bore him superseded every other feeling but a desire for revenge. Although they had retired at first before the torrent, they rallied instantly, and showed no appearance of disaffection afterwards, but fought stoutly at Vinegar Hill. Lord M. was riding a little way ahead of the regiment when he was treacherously shot from a window by a baker’s boy. Such were the results of the fall of Furlong on the one side, and the death of Lord Mountjoy on the other.’

The forced abandonment of the bridge was a heavy repulse. Virtually the day was lost, for although a small party of the royalists, under Sergeant Hamilton, still held most gallantly a position in the vicinity of the Three-bullet Gate, had the insurgents followed up their success, a total and bloody defeat of the king’s troops must have been unavoidable. But, once within the town, drink and plunder engrossed the attention of the majority, while the admirable gallantry of that brave old man who commanded the retreating royalists retrieved the fortunes of the day.

Crossing to the Kilkenny side, General Johnson rallied the fugitives and urged them to follow him once more. ‘Will you desert your General?’ he exclaimed to the disheartened militia; but this appeal was coldly heard. ‘And your countryman, too?’ he added. The chord of national honour was touched, a cheer answered it, the old man wheeled his horse round, and, riding in front, brought back his rallied troops to the fight, and, rejoining the staunch few who still held the post beside the Three-bullet Gate, announced that a large reinforcement had just arrived from Waterford. When the fortune of a doubtful day is in the balance, a feather turns it frequently. Such was the case at Ross. The troops cheered, and plied their musketry with additional spirit and excellent effect, and, turning the rebel rear, put their massive column into a confusion which proved irretrievable, and at last, with desperate slaughter, drove them fairly from the town. The exhaustion of the garrison prevented anything being attempted beyond a brief pursuit in the direction of Corbet Hill, while the rebels made no effort to rally and renew the action, but went off dispersedly, some to their old camp at Carrickbyrne, and others to a new position which they had taken on a height called Slieve Keilter, some four miles’ distance from the town.

In this, the most sanguinary and hardly contested action of the insurrection, commencing at five in the morning and ending at three in the afternoon, the loss on both sides was immense, although in gross numbers wholly disproportionate. Musgrave states the rebels killed to have exceeded 2500, besides the many ‘carried off on cars.’ Before the walls, between Three-bullet and Bunnion Gates, and in the cross lanes and streets which led directly to the market-place, the slaughter was enormous.

In Chapel Lane the rebels lay three deep, and throughout the approaches to the main guard the streets were heaped with corpses.

The defence of this post, and the assistance afforded to the few brave men who held it, were characteristic of the desperate fighting which marks the uncompromising spirit that religious and political antipathies produce. A most gallant soldier, Sergeant Hamilton of the Donegal Regiment, with sixteen men and two ship-guns, indifferently mounted, were posted at the intersection of four streets in the immediate vicinity of the jail. When the troops retreated over the bridge, Hamilton was recommended to remove the spare ammunition he had in charge and quit a post where now he must remain isolated and unsupported. His reply was, ‘Never, but with life!’ and though frequently assailed by hundreds, he laned them literally with grape-shot, covering the approach to the guns with dead and dying men, and through every turn of a doubtful conflict resolutely maintaining his ground.

Although the leading streets were completely under his fire, the gallant sergeant was open to attack from a narrow lane immediately beside the main guard, where, sheltered from the cannon, the rebels could form in security; and, no doubt, from that point they would have carried the post by a sudden onset had not a fortunate circumstance afforded the Donegal soldiers protection from the threatened danger.

The house of a loyalist called Dowesley was in the Backhouse Lane, and occupied by the family and a lame pensioner. The part of the lane where the rebels were safe from the fire of Hamilton’s guns was, however, commanded by Dowesley’s windows; and whenever the insurgents attempted to form and attack the main guard, a close and constant fusilade from the little garrison of the house drove them from a place where they expected to find shelter while collecting for their intended attack. As fast as the muskets were discharged the old soldier quickly reloaded them, adding half a dozen buck-shot to the bullet, and so deadly was the fire from Dowesley’s dwelling that upwards of fifty bodies were found after the action heaped together in the lane.

Mr. Tottenham, the proprietor of Ross, employed six carts and a great many men for two entire days in collecting the bodies of the slain. Most of those found in the town were thrown into the river and carried off with the tide. The remainder were flung into a fosse outside the town wall and buried there. The conflict at Ross might have been shortened had the Roscommon regiment, which had been detached from Waterford early on the morning of the action, completed its march and brought its timely reinforcement to the exhausted garrison. It was also very fortunate the Roscommon regiment returned to Waterford that night, as the rebels, who were numerous and well organised there, meditated an insurrection, imagining Ross had been taken. The next day the Roscommon regiment moved a second time from Waterford and reached Ross with little opposition, although during the short interval which had occurred the country had risen en masse. On the adjacent hills parties of rebels were seen, and an arch of the Glynmore bridge had been partially broken, but the colonel planked it and passed his guns easily across. A body of rebels, who showed themselves upon a height, gave way after a round or two from the cannon, previously murdering fifteen of the refugee militiamen who had fled from Ross the day before, fell into these ruffians’ hands, and now paid the penalty of their cowardice.

With the battle of Ross subsequent atrocities, which have placed the Wexford insurrection fearfully pre-eminent in crime, were connected. One foul deed, the massacre at Scullabogue, infinitely surpassed all others, and, with the massacres perpetrated wholesale on Wexford Bridge and Vinegar Hill, has cast a stain on Irish character that another century will scarcely remove. One reads, almost with incredulity, of Autos-da-fe and Eves of St. Bartholomew, and blesses God, when he finds the narrative is true, that his lot was not cast in an age of cruelty and darkness. But the narration of scenes which discoloured the Irish rebellion makes one blush to think that the wolfish wretches who were the actors therein bore the common name of man. It is a revolting detail that historic impartiality forces on the writer, and it shall be briefly despatched.

MASSACRE AT SCULLABOGUE

When the rebels encamped on Carrickbyrne they established an outpost at the house of Scullabogue, which had been deserted by its proprietor, Captain King. A large barn was attached to the mansion; it was 34 feet long, 15 feet in breadth, and 12 feet high. This outhouse and the mansion itself had been made a prison wherein to deposit the unfortunate prisoners who by their loyalty or their difference in religious faith had incurred the displeasure of the rebels, and fell after the outbreak into their hands; and on the morning when the rebels marched on the attack of Ross, 230 ill-fated victims were then confined in a building, which proved at once their prison and their grave. A rebel guard was left to secure the captives, amounting to 300 men, under the command of three subordinate leaders, named Murphy of Loughnageer, Devereux, and Sweetman. The particulars of the butchery which took place on the fatal 5th of June will be best understood by abstracts from evidence upon oath, given on the trials of some of the monsters implicated in this hellish sacrifice. Any person who wishes for more extensive details of this most atrocious transaction will find them duly verified in the voluminous appendix attached to Musgrave’s Memoirs.

The depositions of sundry persons are briefly abridged. One who escaped the massacre, by the bribery of a rebel and the virtue of a priest’s protection, gives the following account of this horrible transaction. He states that, when the rebel army began to give way at Ross, an express was sent to Murphy to put the Protestant prisoners to death, as the king’s troops were gaining the day; but Murphy refused to comply without a direct order from the general. That he soon after received another message to the same purpose, with this addition, that ‘the prisoners, if released, would become very furious and vindictive.’ That, shortly after, a third express arrived, saying, ‘the priest gave orders that the prisoners should be put to death.’ That the rebels, on getting the sanction of the priest, became outrageous, and began to pull off their clothes, the better to perform the bloody deed. That, when they were leading the prisoners out from the dwelling-house to shoot them, he turned away from such a scene of horror, on which a rebel struck him with a pike upon the back, and said he would ‘let his guts out if he did not follow him!’ That he then attended the rebels to the barn, in which there was a great number of men, women, and children, and that the rebels were endeavouring to set fire to it, while the poor prisoners, shrieking and crying out for mercy, crowded to the back door of the building, which they forced open for the purpose of admitting air. That for some time they continued to put the door between them and the rebels, who were piking or shooting them. That, in attempting to do so, their hands or fingers were cut off. That the rebels continued to force into the barn bundles of straw to increase the fire. At last, that the prisoners having been overcome by the flame and smoke, their moans and cries gradually died away in the silence of death—and all became still.

The witness, during this dreadful scene, saw a child, who got under the door and was likely to escape, although much hurt and bruised, when a rebel perceiving it, thrust his pike through it and threw it into the flames. While the rebels were shooting the prisoners in front of the dwelling-house, a party of men and women were engaged in stripping and rifling the dead bodies; and the prisoner, Phelim Fardy, called out to them to avoid the line of his fire (as he was busily employed in shooting the prisoners), and after saying so, he fired at a man who was on his knees, who instantly fell and expired. Another ruffian, whose barbarities made him conspicuous, trampled on the dead and wounded bodies, and behaved otherwise in such a ferocious manner as to obtain from the rebels the appellation of ‘the true-born Roman.’

The barn was so limited in size that suffocation must have soon taken place from the great number of people compressed into a space so small; for besides the burning of the thatched roof of the barn, the rebels fed it by introducing blazing faggots on their pikes.

Richard Grandy, who was present, swore the prisoners were led out by fours to be shot, and that the rebels who pierced them when they fell took a pleasure in licking their spears.

A gentleman present, who had a narrow escape, assured the writer that a rebel said he would try the taste of orange blood, and that he dipped a tooth-pick in the wound of one of the Protestants who was shot and put it into his mouth.

Whenever a body fell on being shot, the rebel guards shouted and pierced it with their pikes.

They burned there several wives and some of the children of the North Cork Militia in the barn, who were Roman Catholics; but it was sufficient to provoke their vengeance that they were connected with the soldiers of an heretical king.

The most innocent victims were sacrificed; a girl was brought there in place of her sister; she was seized and sent to the barn, and her father shortly after, having gone there with his poor old wife to solicit her liberation; the parents and child were thrust into the barn together, and burned with the other unfortunates. No less than twenty-four Protestants were taken from the village of Tintern, about eight miles distant, many of them old and feeble, and led in one drove to the barn, where they perished. Two Romanists, serving-men, were burnt in the barn because they would not consent to the massacre of their Protestant masters. Another Romanist, who was travelling with a royalist pass for his protection, was intercepted by the rebels, who considered the pass an emblem of loyalty; they committed him to the barn, with a son who happened to accompany him, and both perished in the flames.

In his history of these events Taylor, after recording the dreadful massacre of Scullabogue, thus describes the retreat of the rebels from New Ross, and pictures Baganel Harvey’s feelings when he viewed the scene of the fearful tragedy enacted at the fatal barn: ‘After ending this horrid massacre, the rebels marched (exulting in their diabolical achievements) towards New Ross, but the destroying angel had gone before them, and miserably defeated that huge army in which they trusted. As they proceeded to reinforce their brother rebels they met multitudes of the wounded returning, some crawling along as well as they could, others on horses and on cars; some were shot through different parts of the body, while others had broken arms, legs, and thighs. Going on further, they met the remnant of the main body retreating in the greatest confusion, hurry, and noise, bringing with them cars full of the dead and wounded. They took their station on Carrickburn that night; several stole home, and never joined them more, particularly those of Barony Forth, who, though a race of cowards, were cruel in the extreme.’

The next morning Baganel Harvey was in the greatest anguish of mind when he beheld Scullabogue House and the barn, where the murdered Protestants were to be seen in every attitude. They lay so close, that several were standing up against the walls, and many lying in heaps in each other’s arms among the ashes of the timber of the house, while their bodies looked frightful, being burned to a cinder. He turned from the scene with horror, wrung his hands, and told those around him that ‘as innocent people were burned there as ever were born, and that their conquests for liberty were at an end.’ He then said privately to a friend, ‘I see now my folly in embarking in any cause with these people. If they succeed I shall be murdered by them; if they are defeated, I shall be hanged.’ Now convinced of the sanguinary feelings of his followers, he was determined to put a stop to it, as far as in his power lay, and that day he issued a proclamation, had it printed, sent many copies to Vinegar Hill, Wexford, and Gorey, and distributed them over the country.

On Saturday, the 9th of June, 184 skeletons were cleared out of the barn, thrown into a ditch near the place, and slightly covered with clay.

There is every reason to believe that this horrible atrocity occasioned to all but the lowest barbarians, who were banded with the rebel forces, feelings of alarm and disgust. Almost the last act of Baganel Harvey before he was deprived of his command was the publication of a general order to restrain future acts of violence, under the penalty of death; and he originated a subscription—in which many rebel leaders joined—to pay for the interment of the poor sufferers.

Years afterwards, record all the authorities who have dwelt on this cruel episode, it was the greatest wish of such of the Wexford rebels as survived, to prove that, in whatever crimes they might have participated largely, they were wholly unconnected with the burning of Scullabogue.

FATHER M. MURPHY OF BALLYCANOO AND THE HERETIC BULLETS

Of the rebel chiefs, the priests were decidedly the most despotic, and too often the most unrelenting, to the unhappy men who became prisoners to the banditti they commanded. One of the most truculent of these spiritual chiefs was Father Michael Murphy of Ballycanoo, a prominent church-militant general in the Wexford campaigns, who met his fate at the battle of Arklow. After the priest’s death the following edifying epistle, addressed to a Dublin tradesman, was found on his body; this letter, as Musgrave suggests, in the constant hurry and confusion in which he had been kept, probably in preparing for the attack of Arklow, the Father had neither time nor opportunity to forward:—

Gorey, 6th June 1798.

Friend Houston—Great events are ripening. In a few days we shall meet. The first-fruits of your regeneration must be a tincture of poison and pike in the metropolis against heretics. This is a tribunal for such opinions. Your talents must not be buried as a judge. Your sons must be steeled with fortitude against heresy, then we shall do; and you shall shine in a higher sphere. We shall have an army of brave republicans, 100,000, with fourteen pieces of cannon, on Thursday before Dublin; your heart will beat high at the news. You will rise with a proportionate force.—Yours ever, M. Murphy.

Decipher B.I.K.M.Q.Y....

The plans disclosed in this letter came near to complete realisation; but for the events of Ross and Arklow, who can say that the results foreshadowed in the intercepted letter of the slain priest might not have been realised to the very letter?

The lowest ruffians had become leaders of the mob, and several monsters, who desecrated the holy orders intrusted to them, encouraged the barbarities of their besotted followers and pandered to their superstitions. Among these wretches Murphy of Bannow and Roche of Paulpearsay were conspicuous. The latter, like Murphy of Ballycanoo, was a bullet-catcher, and while he occasionally distributed to his flock balls which had been caught in action, he promised an immunity from danger to the faithful—for a consideration. ‘He would give them gospels,’ he said (they were generally sewed to a brown-coloured tape), ‘to hang about their necks, which would make the person who wore it proof against all the powers of heretical artillery; but that notwithstanding their extraordinary utility to the Irish army, they would be of no avail unless they were purchased. The price to the better sort of people was half-a-crown; but as the poorer were zealous in the glorious cause, he would only ask from them a sixpence.’ Says Taylor, ‘Thousands of these gospels were made and speedily sent round the country.’

In the heat of action, on every repulse, and when his deluded followers retreated, Murphy of Ballycanoo had induced fresh victims to come forward, and, blinded against danger by whisky and fanaticism, they rushed on more than one occasion to the very muzzles of the guns. Were the fact not accredited beyond a doubt, it would not be believed that the drunken scoundrel persuaded the unhappy savages who obeyed his orders that his person was impervious to heretical balls, producing a handful of musket-bullets, which he averred had struck him during the action, or had been caught as they innocently whistled by. However potent the spell might be that saved the worthy churchman from lead, it proved inefficient against ‘cold iron.’ A round-shot from one of the Durham guns struck him down while leading these ignorant wretches to the charge; the ruffian went to his account, and his followers broke finally and disbanded. When the warlike Murphy fell he was but a few paces from the barricade, and was waving a banner over his head emblazoned with a huge cross and the motto of ‘Death or Liberty.’

THE BATTLE OF ARKLOW

The consternation which the intelligence of Walpole’s destruction occasioned in the metropolis may be easily imagined. Many families quitted the kingdom in despair. This, probably, was the gloomiest moment of that fearful period, but the unbounded loyalty and devotion of the Dublin Protestants shone out with increasing brilliancy, and assisted to dispel the gathering cloud.

In the metropolis the yeomanry amounted to nearly 4000 men, now armed, well disciplined, and purged from those traitors who, but a few weeks before, had thronged their ranks. With perfect confidence the city was intrusted to their protection, and from the few regular troops in garrison, the Cavan regiment, with a detachment of Reay Fencibles, were despatched to reinforce the troops in Wicklow, and enable the royalists to rally and recover the ground they had lost.

FATHER M. MURPHY OF BALLYCANOO AND THE HERETIC BULLETS

The troops were forwarded by carriages specially impressed, the command given to General Needham, and on the 6th of June the column quitted Wicklow, and after passing a deserted country and being joined by some yeomanry and armed loyalists, it entered Arklow early the same evening; some straggling rebels retiring from the town, where they had loitered, plundering and drinking, on the cavalry advanced guard appearing by the Dublin road.

The reception of the troops by the inhabitants was enthusiastic, for many, under fear of death, had already abandoned their houses to embark in fishing boats, and escape from a place which they expected to become an immediate scene of savage violence.

During the two succeeding days (7th and 8th of June) the commanding officer was engaged in making dispositions for the defence of the town and in selecting a position. Ground was marked out capable of being occupied by a body of troops so limited in number as the garrison; and while such fences were preserved as would afford cover to the royal light troops from which to annoy an advancing enemy, others that could neither mask their movements or interrupt the play of the guns were levelled and removed. Meanwhile the country was carefully patrolled, and alarm posts assigned to the different corps to take up on the rebels being reported to be in motion.

The morning of the 9th came. At noon a wing of the Durham Fencibles marched in under the command of an excellent officer, Colonel Skerrett, affording a well-timed and most effective reinforcement to the garrison, and, in consequence of this arrival, General Needham made a slight change in his dispositions, and never was a little army more curiously composed than the morning state of that of Arklow exhibited on the day of the attack upon the town.

As the evening came on, an advanced picket announced the appearance of the insurgents, and consequently an infantry outpost at the Charter-house was called in and replaced by a cavalry patrol, while by the two great approaches to the town—the seaside road and that leading to Coolgreney—dense masses were seen moving to the attack. By the former road one great column directed its march against the lower part of the town called the Fishery; by the latter an immense mass, under the command of Father Murphy of Ballycanoo, threatened the upper part of Arklow, and thus endangered the right and rear of the royalist position. To deploy their unwieldy masses appeared to be a task beyond the power of their leaders, for more than half an hour was consumed in the attempt, and when they did effect the change the line was irregular and disordered, at some parts merely in rank entire, and at others six files deep.

The royalists were already in position, the line being slightly curved, the flanks refused, and each protected by battalion guns, with two six-pounders nearly in the centre. The hedges were lined by the Suffolk and Tyrone Militia and part of the supplementary yeomen, with a small party posted in the churchyard and another at the bottom of the street which looked upon the bridge. These posts were occupied to defend the lower town. The barrack walls had been provided with a ‘banquette’ (a wooden stage attached to high walls, at an elevation which will allow the defenders to fire over the parapet), and supplied with musqueteers, while the upper end of the street was barricaded with carts and lumber, and defended by part of the Antrim regiment and a field-piece. Generally the cavalry were formed on the bridge and sands. Taking the local character of the place and the small number of its defenders into consideration, the disposition of the troops was very judicious and creditable to General Needham.

The actual strength of the rebel army was, on the lowest calculation, computed at 25,000 men, and on good authority it has been even raised to 31,000. About 5000 of the insurgents, were armed with firearms, and they brought two well-appointed guns into action. But it was not from their enormous numbers only that they were formidable. They came forward under the wildest enthusiasm, burning to exact vengeance for past defeats, and confident they must annihilate the small but daring body who, undaunted by a twenty-fold superiority, were steadily awaiting their attack. During the morning’s march from Gorey they plundered the houses of the Protestants of everything valuable, putting in requisition all the spirits and provisions that could be supplied; and, under the double influence of intoxication and fanaticism, were led on by their priests, who inspired them with ideas of their own invincibleness; because, as they assured the misguided wretches, they were engaged in the cause of heaven, and opposed to the enemies of God. To maintain that religious frenzy which was their great source of courage, at the end of every mile during the march their leaders said mass, and used every mode of exhortation and every superstitious device that priestcraft could invent. They advanced in an irregular line, which was frequently broken by their running out to file along the hedge-rows lying parallel to the position of the king’s troops, of the cover of which they endeavoured to avail themselves. Their front rank was composed of those who had firearms, and were mostly from the barony of Shelmalier, on the Wexford coast, where they subsist during the winter by shooting sea-fowl, which makes them expert marksmen. They were covered in the rear by the pikemen, many deep, while at certain intervals the line was strengthened by numerous masses of men, who were ready to supply the places of those who fell, or act as occasion might require. Each company had a green flag about two feet square, with a yellow harp in the centre, while some were parti-coloured, and equal in size to the king’s colours. Their leaders were distinguishable riding through the ranks, marshalling them and giving orders. During the engagement the rebels frequently repeated their dreadful yells, which heightened the terrific appearance of a numerous host of barbarians, who seemed confident, from superior numbers, that they could easily overwhelm the small army that opposed them.

The rebels advanced two guns by the Coolgreney road, under a sharp and destructive fire from those on the right of the Durham regiment, and the third in position at the barricade. Both of the former were dragged up by lanes on the high road and placed on high grounds, one looking on the centre of the royalist line, the other commanding its left flank.

Although tedious in their formation, the insurgent column directed against the lower town advanced so rapidly that they had nearly succeeded in cutting off a cavalry patrol, which saved itself, however, by swimming the horses across the Ovoca. Having fired the houses in the suburb, the rebels pushed on under cover of the smoke, but they never could gain the bridge, as the fire of the detached party, which covered that approach, and the second, which held the churchyard, cut down the head of the column, and finally disordered it so much as to allow the cavalry, formed on the sands, to charge with excellent effect. During a long and desperate struggle the troops behaved with a steadiness and determination which enabled them not only to secure the lower town, but to inflict a destructive loss upon the assailants.

But the grand effort of the insurgents was directed against the left and centre of the position and the barricade that covered its right flank. From behind the hedges the rebels kept up a steady and well-directed fusilade, and also commanded the royal line with such effect as to dismount a battalion gun and oblige Colonel Skerrett to advance his left wing and protect it behind a fence from the fire of a field-piece, which otherwise must have enfiladed it. The gallantry of the Durham Fencibles was unbounded. Thrice the rebels came forward in immense force against the wing of this noble regiment, and as often a destructive volley from their musketry, with grape from the battalion guns, obliged the assailants to recede from a fire they found intolerable. But, maddened by intoxication and encouraged by their ghostly leader, the deluded wretches again and again returned to the attack, and the General, despairing of repulsing the continued efforts of desperate savages, determined to yield the ground and abandon the position. Colonel Skerrett, well aware that to retire with a handful of beaten troops in the presence of five-and-twenty thousand men would lead to their total destruction, as sternly resolved to hold the post he had taken to the last; and an unforeseen event decided the fortune of this doubtful day, and crowned the gallant few with well-merited victory.

As long as the redoubtable Murphy of Ballycanoo—who hitherto seemed to bear a charmed life—remained to lead his demented and infatuated followers, all that the assailed could effect was to frantically hold their ground, their assailants continuing to rally after each repulse. It may be judged how critical was the situation of the defending royalists. Murphy, as described, had led his legions within a few paces of the barricade, and was encouraging his adherents by waving his famous banner of ‘Death or Liberty’ at the head of the advancing hordes he was leading to the charge, when a round-shot from one of the Durham guns struck him down; the invincibility charm was broken, and the rebels fled dismayed. About eight o’clock, when it was growing dusk, they began to retreat towards Coolgreney in an irregular and disorderly manner, carrying off nine cart-loads of dead and wounded. Had the cavalry but had sufficient daylight to have pursued them, they must have cut off great numbers in the retreat.

The loss of the rebels was said to have amounted fully to one thousand, while that of the royalists in killed and wounded did not exceed sixty or seventy.

Although night saved the rebels from any pursuit, and probably thus abated their losses extensively, as the wounded were enabled to crawl away, the moral effect of their defeat was incalculable, obliterating entirely the false confidence which the affairs at Oulart and Three Rocks and the calamity at Tubberneering had produced. The mischief occasioned by their first neglect of seizing Arklow when deserted by its garrison was consummated by the defeat attendant on the attempt on the part of the rebels to redeem their original error and carry the town when it had been rendered defensible. Had the insurgents not lost time at Gorey—had they advanced and seized Arklow—Wicklow and Bray must of necessity have fallen into their hands without the snapping of a flint. The metropolis, as Father Murphy’s intercepted letter revealed, assaulted by 100,000 reckless men, like the warlike priest’s followers, with the fourteen pieces of cannon at that time in their possession, joined in Dublin by the rising of a proportionate force similarly armed, might have effected their wicked object.

The effect of the defeat, and the deductive inferences from it, as drawn by Gordon as our authority observes, are interesting and correct:—

‘As the repulse at Arklow,’ writes Gordon in his History, ‘decided the fate of the rebellion, so it fortunately left undecided a question how far the Romanists would have carried religious animosity had the insurrection been successful. The violent acts of the insurgents at Gorey and its neighbourhood were not near so great as in the southern parts of the county. The former might, by an advocate of their cause, be coloured with a pretext of retaliation, since acts of the same kind had been committed by the loyalists, as the burning of houses, the quartering of men on families for subsistence, imprisonments, trials of prisoners by court-martial, the shooting of prisoners without trial, and the insulting of others by cropping the hair and covering the head with a pitched cap. But an opinion is entertained, I fear indeed with too much foundation, that if the town of Arklow had been taken, and thus a wide prospect opened for the success of the rebellion, the Protestants remaining in the power of the Catholic rebels in the county of Wexford were to have been massacred.

Many believe also that the persons excepted from the first massacre were destined for ultimate slaughter on the final success of the insurgents, and that even such leaders of the rebels as were Protestants were to be included in this proscription. The war from the beginning—in direct violation of the oath of the United Irishmen—had taken a religious turn, as every civil war in the south or west of Ireland must be expected to take by any man acquainted with the prejudices of the inhabitants. The terms Protestant and Orangeman were synonymous with the mass of the insurgents; and the Protestants they meant to favour had been baptized into the Romish Church by the priests of that communion. But whatever degree of religious bigotry or party hatred had been hitherto discovered by the insurgents, there were still many individuals who evinced the greatest humanity in their endeavours to mitigate the fury of their associates.’

CAPTURE OF VINEGAR HILL

The fatal effects of the defeat at Arklow in the subsequent fortunes of the insurrection became every day more apparent, and during these transactions the rebels who remained at Gorey and its neighbourhood were gradually dispersing. ‘A part of them retired to Wexford, bringing with them the prisoners who had been confined in the market-house of Gorey. These had been severely treated; they had been supplied with food only once in the twenty-four hours, cropped, pitch-capped, and exposed from the windows to the insults of the shouting multitudes on their march to attack Arklow, while many had been shot or piked to death. As the mass of remaining rebels had taken their station on the hill of Ask, only a mile from Gorey, after the battle of Arklow, the royal army remained some days close within its quarters, sending out patrols with caution, at first to a very small distance, and afterwards gradually advancing further. At last a troop of yeomen cavalry ventured so far on the road towards Gorey as to approach the rebel station on Ask hill, and found the post had been so thinned by perpetual desertions that not more than about a hundred men fit for action were then remaining in it, and these without a leader.’

For every reason, military and political, it was now unanimously determined by the royalist commanders that the relief of Wexford and Enniscorthy, so long and so unhappily in possession of the rebels, must be preceded by the capture of the camp and a total dispersion of the insurgent bodies collected on Vinegar Hill. To effect this difficult but desirable object a vigorous and well-combined attack would be required, and on the 16th of June the preparatory movements of the different corps were arranged by General Lake; to Generals Dundas, Needham, Johnson, Sir Charles Asgill, Wilkinson, Sir James Duff, Loftus, and Moore were assigned plans of operations covering three or four days; some of these movements were delayed from various eventualities, and two brigades were unfortunately absent at the final assault on Vinegar Hill. As the attack was to be made immediately after daybreak on the 21st, and as it was utterly impossible that by any exertions his wearied troops could reach their ground in time, Needham despatched an aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief requesting the advance to be delayed for an hour, to allow him time to get up; but General Lake could not postpone his movements against the rebel position, as an immediate assault upon the camp was absolutely necessary to prevent the enemy from detaching reinforcements to their friends at Enniscorthy, who were then warmly engaged with Johnson’s brigade. Under these circumstances General Needham, finding it impossible to get the column up, very properly pushed his cavalry forward; and when the rebels broke upon the hill, they were sufficiently advanced to cut down a number of the fugitives. General Sir James Duff, who advanced by the Ferns road, with his right resting on the Slaney and his left flanked by the light infantry under General Loftus, reached the base of the hill with occasional interruptions from rebel pickets, who occupied the high grounds on the line of march, but who were easily dispersed by a few shells from the howitzers. Previous to commencing his ascent he detached General Loftus with the light infantry and guns to seize an eminence which overlooked the lower line of the rebel position, and consequently laid it open to a cannonade at easy range. The movement was rapidly effected, and although the enclosures were numerous and the ground steep, General Loftus, by breaking down the stone fences, was enabled to get his artillery forward, and, crowning the height with his guns, he opened them with excellent effect upon crowded ranks, which were completely enfiladed. The remainder of Duff’s brigade pressed steadily up the hill, and at the same time the columns of Generals Lake, Wilford, and Dundas, with Campbell’s light companies, ascended the south-eastern face, while Johnson’s brigade mounted from Enniscorthy.

As the troops advanced they sustained a sharp fire from the rebel marksmen, who, acting en tirailleur, lined the numerous enclosures and disputed them with some spirit. The rebel cannonade was ineffective, although they had thirteen pieces of various calibres on the hill, but their musketry was well sustained, and yet, with all the advantages of a strong position, the loss inflicted on the assailants was infinitely less than could have been anticipated. The steady advance of the troops was never for a moment checked, and the movements of the columns so admirably timed that they crowned the hill simultaneously, while the rebels, availing themselves of the means of retreat which General Needham’s failure had unluckily left open, went off en masse, abandoning their cannon, ammunition, and all the plunder that had been accumulated during the period they had occupied their savage and sanguinary encampment.

If the wholesale destruction of a deluded multitude were a desirable object, certainly the failure of this movement is to be lamented, for the rebels were enabled to get off bodily, whereas had Needham reached his ground they must have been so totally derouted that no exertions could have rallied them again, and the flame of rebellion would have been extinguished. But the results of his failure, and not the cause, were severely tested at the time, and the General was censured with injustice for a miscarriage, occasioned by circumstances entirely beyond control, and of everyday recurrence in war.

The brunt of the action, and the greatest proportion of the loss, fell upon the brigade commanded by General Johnson (afterwards Sir Henry Johnson, G.C.B., who may be said, in the rebellion of 1798, to have been the military saviour of Ireland). On the evening preceding the attack on Vinegar Hill, that General advanced within a mile and a half of Enniscorthy, intending to bivouac in the vicinity of the rebel position, and bring his column fresh into action the next day. The troops had scarcely, however, piled arms when the rebels in great force issued from Enniscorthy and moved forward with the apparent intention of attacking the royalists and hazarding a general action. They advanced in close columns, covered by a number of sharpshooters, and connected by several bodies, formed in irregular lines. The rebel skirmishers, after maintaining a sharp fusilade, were speedily dislodged by the fire of the cannon, and, falling back on the supporting column, which had halted on an eminence half a mile from the ground occupied by the royalists, the guns were directly turned upon the height.

On this occasion these unfortunate and deluded men evinced an ignorance of warlike missiles which can hardly be conceived. As the round shot from the guns bedded themselves in the face of the hill against which they had been directed, the rebels rushed in numbers to pick them up. A shell from a howitzer falling, it was exultingly surrounded by a crowd of men, each struggling to become owner of this god-send. The effect of the explosion may be fancied, as when the fuse reached the powder, more than fifty of the ignorant wretches were furiously contending for the possession of the lighted shell.

According to Taylor’s History, ‘Here they were cannonaded, and on seeing the shells they were driven into the utmost confusion, as they could not conceive what they were, some shouting in a kind of delirium (as shell followed shell), “They spit fire at us”; others, “We can stand anything but these guns which fire twice!” Indeed the carnage occasioned by them was very great, and fully answered the end.’

The night passed, and at daybreak Johnson drove the rebels from the height and forced them back upon Enniscorthy. After halting an hour, to allow the general attack upon the hill to operate as a diversion and employ the main body of the enemy, Johnson pushed his column into the town. On this occasion the rebels made a stubborn resistance, their pikemen disputing the streets and their musketry firing upon the advancing troops from the windows. Every yard was stoutly contested, and a six-pounder, advanced into the open space before the court-house, was carried by a sudden rush, the gunners killed, and the piece captured by the pikemen. But it was immediately retaken; the bridge was cleared of the enemy, the Dublin regiment cheered and pressed up the hill, and although that ascent was the steepest, the brave old man reached the summit as the other columns cleared it.

The royalist casualties were comparatively trifling, and the rebel loss fell infinitely short of what might have been expected from a déroute so complete as that which followed the loss of their favourite position. As the greater number of the insurgents were cut down dispersing in the pursuit, the amount could not be correctly estimated. Probably three or four hundred might have been slain. One of their favourite generals, a church-militant leader, was included in the casualties of the day, for Father Clinch of Enniscorthy was killed while retreating after the action.

There is a military criticism which is placed here while summarising the results of this action. It is given in the M.S. Journal of a Field Officer:—‘There is one point which has never been explained to my satisfaction. After the defeat at Vinegar Hill the main body of the rebels retreated to Wexford, where they divided—one column crossed Wexford bridge, and made their way to the north of the county about Gorey; now this body must have been due north while General Lake was moving due south from Vinegar Hill upon Wexford, so that they must have actually passed each other at a distance of not six miles between the parallel roads, as a glance at the map will show. Perhaps General Lake did not consider himself strong enough to divide and occupy both roads to Wexford, or perhaps he might have thought “the stag at bay’s a dangerous foe,” and permitted them to weaken themselves by allowing them to quietly disbandon. It cost, however, much loyal blood at Gorey.’

REBELS EXECUTING THEIR PRISONERS ON THE BRIDGE AT WEXFORD

Wexford was a scene of unexampled horror, where were enacted the most sanguinary barbarities in emulation of the bloodthirsty atrocities of the reign of terror; nor can it be an excuse that the monsters avowedly imitated those terrorising scenes which were made luridly familiar by the annals of the French Revolution.

The plunder of houses and the incarceration of their innocent victims after the unfortunate defeat of the Meath detachment at the Three Rocks, which determined Colonel Maxwell’s fatal retreat from Wexford, immediately occupied the insurgents.

While the rabble were engaged in collecting numbers of ill-fated Protestants for future slaughter, the leaders went through the mockery of establishing a provisional government, and, in imitation of the French Jacobins, a grand national committee, a council of elders, and a council of five hundred were to be organised forthwith, while the dwelling-house of a wealthy merchant was put into requisition as a senate-house, wherein the different estates were to legislate for the young republic.

If it were necessary to prove the fallacy that any possibility exists of retaining influence over a sanguinary and superstitious mob by any means but acting on their ignorance or pandering to the worst passions of brutal dispositions, the rebel occupation of Wexford would afford an ample evidence, and the president of the council and the governor of the town, in their own sad stories, tell that the baser the materiel of the mob, the briefer is the authority of those who undertake the direction of its movements. Every day during the rebel occupation of the town and adjacent encampments, fresh victims continued to be brought in by the savage pikemen. In Wexford a small sloop, the town jail, and subsequently the market-house, were filled with unhappy sufferers. A reign of terror had commenced, the rabble power had become predominant, and all persons of superior rank or a different faith were denounced by wretches who associated crime with religion and slaughtered in the name of God. The chiefs themselves, particularly those few among them who had been educated in the Protestant religion, were in perpetual danger of death or violence from an ungovernable multitude, whom they had unwisely hoped to command.

With such feelings and dispositions it will be a subject of regret, but not surprise, that now the ferocity of the rabble resisted all control and blood alone could appease it. The death decree of the wretched prisoners went forth, and the fearful story of the massacre is recorded by one who miraculously escaped the fate of his less fortunate companions. It is a fearful record of butchery, and, alas! the statement is not over-coloured. The leading monster of these executions was Thomas Dixon, a relative of the priest, and he may well be described as a fiend in human form.

On the 19th of June the Protestants in Wexford received the heart-rending intelligence that all the prisoners were to be murdered the next day. That night also, one of them, while sitting alone in silent sorrow, heard the death-bell toll as loud as ever she heard it, and much more awfully. On the following morning, the never-to-be-forgotten 20th of June, Thomas Dixon rode to the gaol-door and swore that not a prisoner should be alive against sun-set. He then rode into the street repeating the same, with horrid imprecations, adding ‘that not a soul should be left to tell the tale.’ Good God! how shall I proceed? neither tongue nor pen can describe the dismal aspect of that melancholy day,—a day in which the sun did not so much as glimmer through the frowning heavens. The town-bell rang, and the drums beat to arms to assemble the rebels for the purpose of joining those at Three Rocks to march against General Moore’s brigade. In the evening Dixon assembled the murdering band, and immediately hoisted that harbinger of destruction, the Black Flag, which had on one side a bloody cross, and on the other the initials M.W.S., that is, ‘murder without sin,’ signifying that it was no sin to murder a Protestant. Having paraded for some time to give more solemnity to the scene, the Protestants who were confined in the gaol and prison ship were led forth to the slaughter, and conducted to the bridge under a strong guard of merciless ruffians, piked to death, with every circumstance of barbarous cruelty, and then flung into the river to leave room for more! While this work of blood was going on, a rebel captain ran to the Popish bishop and entreated of him ‘for the mercy of Jesus’ to come and save the prisoners. The bishop coolly replied that ‘it was no affair of his.’ All this time the sanguinary pikemen continued butchering the poor victims on the bridge; some they perforated in places not mortal, to prolong and increase their torture, others they would raise aloft on their pikes, and while the miserable victim writhed in extreme agony, his blood streaming down the handles of their pikes, they exulted round him with savage joy. In the midst of this terrific scene General Edward Roche galloped up in great haste and commanded the drums to beat to arms, declaring that Vinegar Hill was nearly surrounded by the king’s troops, and that all should repair to camp, as reinforcements were wanting. This express had a wonderful effect; the assassins instantly closed the bloody scene and fled in all directions. Some of the rebel guard returned soon after and conveyed the prisoners back to gaol. But that sanguinary monster, Thomas Dixon, returning, he soon evinced that his thirst for blood was not yet satiated by ordering out the remainder of the prisoners from the gaol and prison ship, the greater part of whom were tortured to death in like manner as the former. He then proceeded to the market-house, and having fixed his vulture eye on others, dragged them to the fatal bridge for execution. After butchering these, a lot of ten more was brought forth and barbarously murdered. The third time they took out eighteen, and were massacring them when Dick Monk rode into town from Vinegar Hill, with his shoes and stockings off, and shouted, ‘D—n your souls, you vagabonds, why don’t you go out and meet the enemy that are coming in, and not be murdering in cold blood?’ Some Protestant women followed him and asked him, ‘What news?’ He replied, ‘Bad news, indeed; the king’s forces are encamped round Vinegar Hill.’ He then rode towards the convent. Shortly after, Priest Collin was seen running towards the bridge. There were six of the poor Protestants killed out of the last party that were taken down before he arrived, and it was with great difficulty he prevailed on them to spare the rest. After using all the arguments he could, without effect, he at length took off his hat and desired them to kneel down and pray for the souls of the poor prisoners before they put them to death. They did so, and having got them in the attitude of devotion, he said, ‘Now pray to God to have mercy on your souls, and teach you to show that kindness towards them which you expect from Him in the hour of death and in the day of judgment!’ This had the desired effect; he led them off the bridge without opposition, and they were sent back to confinement. The massacre of that day ceased about eight o’clock in the evening. Out of forty-eight prisoners who had been confined in the market-house, nineteen only escaped.

Nor were these dreadful cruelties confined to the town alone. In their camps, and on their marches and retreats, the same execrable barbarities were constantly committed. No exaggeration can be imputed to those who escaped death, and afterwards described the sufferings they had undergone; for the dying confessions of many who were actors in those scenes of blood, and afterwards paid the penalty of crime, corroborated the statements of those who had been their prisoners, and confirmed their truth.

Jackson’s Narrative affords further dreadful details of the Protestant martyrdoms enacted on Wexford bridge:—

‘They thus continued till about seven o’clock to convey parties of prisoners, from ten to twenty, from the gaol, the market-house, and the prison ship, where many of them were confined, to the bridge, where they butchered them. Every procession was preceded by the black flag, and the prisoners were surrounded by ruthless pikemen, as guards and executioners, who often insultingly desired them to bless themselves.

‘The mob, consisting of more women than men, expressed their savage joy on the immolation of each of the victims by loud huzzas.

‘The manner in general of putting them to death was thus: Two rebels pushed their pikes into the breast of the victim, and two into his back; and in that state (writhing with torture) they held him suspended till dead, and then threw him over the bridge into the water.

‘After they had massacred ninety-seven prisoners in that manner, the insurgents were taken off their blood-thirsty work by the cry “to camp! to camp!”’

Musgrave, in the Appendix to his Memoirs, relates:—‘After taking possession of Enniscorthy they planted the Tree of Liberty, with shouts of “Vive la République” and “Erin go Bragh!” Here the work of blood immediately began, and continued every day, more or less, for twenty-five days—a dreadful specimen of what might be expected from such a government. One day they were so diabolical as to murder all the Protestants they had; and not satisfied with this, they sent to Wexford for more, and every day parties ranged the country, dragging forth all they could find, to satiate their thirst for blood.’

It is said that not less than four hundred Protestants were massacred in Enniscorthy and on Vinegar Hill, the bodies of whom lay unburied during several days.

Meanwhile, the final scene of the tragic occurrences promised to equal, and perhaps exceed, the terrible events which had preceded it. There is little doubt that a general and unsparing massacre of the Protestants had been resolved upon; and although, assisted by an alarm that their camp was being attacked, the Catholic bishop and clergy had induced the greater number of the insurgents to quit the town, still the most ferocious wretches remained, and seemed determined to conclude a period of anarchy and terrorism by a scene of indiscriminating slaughter.

During the confusion which the precipitate flight of the rebels occasioned (when they proposed to fire the town, only had no time!), the bloody Thomas Dixon, mounted on a very fine horse, rode through the streets with a broad sword drawn and upbraided the rebels for their timidity and their dilatoriness. ‘If you had followed my advice,’ he said, ‘in putting all the heretics to death three or four days ago, it would not have come to this pass.’ Mrs. Dixon—a worthy mate of her sanguinary husband—who accompanied him on horseback with a sword and case of pistols, clapped the rebels on the back and encouraged them by saying, ‘We must conquer; I know we must conquer!’ and she exclaimed repeatedly, ‘My Saviour tells me we must conquer!’ They repaired to the bridge to stop the retreat of the rebels, but in vain, though Mrs. Dixon drew a pistol and swore vehemently ‘that she would shoot any one who would refuse to return with her to put the remainder of the heretics to death!’ They endeavoured to raise the portcullis of the bridge to prevent retreat, but were unable to do so.

It has been said that the butcheries on Wexford bridge were perpetrated by a small section of the insurgents, kept by that sanguinary monster, Thomas Dixon, in a state of constant drunkenness, and ever ready to execute his ruthless orders. Every means were used by the ruffian to play upon the credulity and excite the worst passions of his followers, and his fiendish inventions to irritate a brutal mob appear almost incredible.

The approach of Moore’s brigade, however, freed Wexford from the banditti who infested it to the last moment, and averted the intended massacre. ‘Captain Boyd, the member for the town, and commandant of a corps of mounted yeomen, having ascertained that the great body of the rebels had returned, asked and obtained permission from General Moore to enter Wexford, and announce that the army was on its march to occupy the place. Attended by only a dozen mounted yeomen, Captain Boyd galloped down the streets, proclaiming to the inhabitants their deliverance. At five in the evening Moore’s brigade arrived at the heights commanding Wexford, and bivouacked on the Windmill Hill, while a wing of the Queen’s regiment marched into the place and took military possession. Description fails in attempting to set forth the emotions which arose in the breasts of the poor Protestants who had been doomed to destruction. Many wept with joy to see their deliverers.’

The Wexford prisons had been scarcely emptied of the Protestant prisoners who had occupied them until they were tenanted by those who had lately been the directors of the insurrection. General Lake arrived on the 22nd, and took up his quarters in the house of Captain Keugh, the ex-governor, the latter exchanging his former domicile for a jail.

SUMMARY FATE OF THE INSURRECTIONARY CHIEFS

While some of the rebel chiefs endeavoured to evade the first outbreak of the royalist excitement by seeking a temporary security in concealment, others, under the persuasion that the negotiations between the Wexford leaders and the commanding officers of the troops would lead to a general amnesty, or, perhaps, in the desperation of their circumstances, remained in their respective homes, and quietly awaited the fate they knew to be impending. Grogan had retired to his mansion at Johnstown, while Harvey repaired to Bargy Castle, from whence, as a peace-offering, he sent some fat cattle to the commanding officer in Wexford. On the return of the messenger he found that to the chiefs of the insurgents mercy would not be extended, and quitting his house, never to revisit it, he set out to join a fellow-unfortunate, who had vainly endeavoured to remove himself beyond the reach of the vengeance of the outraged laws.

Colclough, with his wife and child, had sought a temporary asylum in one of the Saltee Islands, about six leagues from Wexford; with some valuables hastily collected, and a few necessaries to maintain life, they had hidden themselves in a cave, of which the entrance was artfully concealed. There Harvey joined the unhappy fugitives; and chiefly through the indiscretion with which he had neglected to keep his fatal visit secret, the whole party were arrested, brought back, and committed to close custody.

THE CAPTURE OF COLCLOUGH AND HARVEY

To these unfortunate gentlemen, John Colclough of Ballyteigue and B. Baganel Harvey of Bargy Castle, late commander-in-chief of the Wexford insurgents, a melancholy interest is attached; and the retreat selected by the hapless fugitives has an air of romance that makes it interesting. The subject of George Cruikshank’s realistic illustration of this picturesque incident is founded upon the account given in Musgrave’s Memoirs:—‘The arrest of B. B. Harvey and John Colclough was attended with some curious circumstances which I shall relate. On the flight of the rebels from Wexford, the 21st of June, they retreated to the largest of the Saltee Islands, which Mr. Colclough rented from Mr. Grogan. Dr. Waddy, a physician who served in the yeomanry, having got intelligence of their retreat, applied to General Lake for a proper party and armed vessel to go in quest of them, which he readily obtained.

‘About three o’clock on Sunday evening, the 23rd of June, he set sail in the Rutland cutter of ten guns, commanded by Captain Willoughby, with Lieutenant Turner of the Queen’s, a detachment of his regiment, and a man-of-war’s boat with a party of sailors well armed. The island is about six leagues from Wexford, and four or five miles from the southern coast of the country. The weather was so tempestuous that they were obliged to reef their sails; and the wind being adverse, they did not descry the island till about four o’clock in the morning, and could not cast anchor alongside till eight. When they were approaching it they saw a small boat pass from the island to the mainland. As it is surrounded with high precipices, and is accessible but in one place, and as they expected to be opposed by a party of armed rebels, who, it was believed, had accompanied Harvey and Colclough, Captain Willoughby prepared to cover their landing with the cutter’s guns, and they were attended for the same purpose by the man-of-war’s boat. On landing they repaired to the only house on the island, occupied by one Furlong, who rented it from Mr. Colclough. They found there an excellent feather-bed, with fine sheets which were warm, a handsome tea equipage, some genteel wearing apparel belonging to both sexes, particularly a pair of pantaloons, which Dr. Waddy had seen on Mr. Colclough before the rebellion; and, near the house, some silk shoes and other articles hid in high ferns. They searched every suspected spot in the island, particularly a place called the Otter’s Cave, but in vain, though they had not a doubt of their having been there, as they had found, among other things, a chest of plate in a concealed place belonging to Mr. Colclough. The doctor resolved to make another effort by going round the island in a boat, for the purpose of reconnoitring the sides of it. In doing so he perceived on the edge of a high precipice one rock lighter coloured than the adjoining one; and, as the earth near it seemed to have been recently stirred, he suspected that they had been making preparations there for their concealment. He therefore again ascended the island, and found that the approach to the place which he wished to explore was steep, serpentine, and through some crags. The light-coloured stone covered the mouth of the cave, and above it was an aperture to let in the light. The doctor called out to Colclough and told him that if he did not surrender immediately, and without resistance, he should receive no quarter. Colclough asked, “Is that Dr. Waddy?” and on his saying “Yes,” he said he would surrender; and soon after he, at the doctor’s desire, gave up his arms through the hole of the cave. The doctor threw down the precipice the stone which covered the mouth of it, which fell with a monstrous crash; on which Mr. and Mrs. Colclough came forth, dressed in the meanest habits of peasants for the purpose of disguising themselves. Then Mr. Harvey came out saying, “My God! my God!” and so pale and weak from fatigue and anxiety of mind that the doctor was obliged to support him. He also had a chest of plate concealed, which he gave in charge of the doctor and his party.’

There was little of romance about the sequel; these unfortunates were simply led off by their captors direct to the scaffold. The prisoners were arraigned on charges of high treason, and tried by a court-martial. Among the first to suffer were Father Philip Roach, Captain Keugh, who deserved a better fate,—he had served his king in America,—and Esmond Kyan, rebel captain of artillery. The executions took place upon the bridge, and they were hurried over with little consideration to the last moments of the dying, or to the feelings of relations who survived them. Roach was a tall and weighty man, and, on being suspended, the rope broke, and he fell to the ground, stunned and stupefied. Another halter was immediately procured; he thus suffered the last penalties of the law, it might be said, twice over. After death the sufferers were decapitated, the mutilated bodies cast into the river, the heads placed upon spikes on the Sessions-House, exposed to public view, thus calling into operation again one of the most disgusting remnants of feudal severity upon offenders against the State.

Harvey’s trial commenced on the same evening; he appeared to be much agitated, and spoke little. It came out in evidence that he acted as commander-in-chief of the rebel forces at the battle of Ross on the 5th of June, and his letter to the commander-in-chief of the king’s troops, signed ‘B. B. Harvey,’ summoning him to surrender the town to the rebels, was produced in evidence on the trial, and acknowledged by Mr. Harvey to be in his handwriting. The unhappy man produced many witnesses in his defence, but none to disprove the main facts. He did not deny having acted as commander of the rebel forces, but endeavoured to extenuate his conduct by saying he had accepted the distinction to prevent much greater evils, which must have occurred had it fallen into other hands, and in the hope of surrendering that command one day or other, with greater advantage to the country. He had no counsel, and, after a trial which lasted eight hours, was found guilty of death; which sentence, with that of Grogan, was put into execution on the morning of the 28th. His head was cut off and placed on the Sessions-House and his body thrown into the river. On the same evening was executed John Colclough of Ballyteigue. He was a gentleman of great respectability, and bore a very good private character. On this occasion the entreaties of his widowed partner were attended to, mutilation was dispensed with, Mrs. Colclough received the body of her husband, and in the poet’s words

She laid him in his father’s grave, and had the melancholy satisfaction of giving sepulture to the body of a beloved husband.

THE ATTACK ON CAPTAIN CHAMNEY’S HOUSE, BALLYRAHEENE

The tide of rebellion was ebbing fast, dissension prevailed in their councils, the leaders disagreed, and the Wexford men separated from those of Wicklow, the latter, under Garret Byrne of Ballymanus, moving off to the hill of Ballyraheene, nearly midway between Tinehaly and Carnew. Here another error in judgment occasioned an unnecessary loss of life. The yeomanry had pursued the rebels closely, but the latter gained the high grounds and formed in a very strong position. The numbers were enormously disproportionate, and every prudential consideration should have discouraged an attack. Some of the yeoman officers were of opinion that their troops ought to halt, and that they should content themselves with watching at a safe distance the movements of the enemy. Contrary opinions prevailing, an attack was made up the hill, when the rebels, who had wished to avoid a battle, rushing down, put the royalists to flight, killing ten of the infantry, but the cavalry escaped. Two officers fell in the beginning of this action, Captain Chamney of the Coolattin company, and Captain Nickson of the Coolkenna company, both greatly lamented. George Cruikshank’s picture vividly represents the situation of Captain Chamney’s house at the critical point of the siege, which saved a portion of this unfortunate loyalist force. ‘The slaughter,’ records Gordon, ‘would have been far greater if sixty of the infantry, under Captain Morton and Lieutenant Chamney, had not taken refuge in Captain Chamney’s house at the foot of the hill, where they sustained during fourteen hours the attacks of the rebels, who attempted repeatedly to fire the house. Some—particularly a very large man from Gorey named John Redmond, nicknamed “Shaun Plunder”—advanced under a covering of feather-beds to the hall door, with the design of burning it, and thus opening a passage into the house; but they were killed in the attempt, the bullets penetrating even this thick tegument. As a discharge of musketry was maintained from the windows on the assailants, whose associates injudiciously set fire to the neighbouring house of Henry Morton (the owner being among the defenders of Captain Chamney’s house), the illumination enabled the garrison to aim at their enemies in the night, and the loss of the rebels was very considerable, amounting according to some accounts to a hundred and thirty men, by others, to two hundred.’ This ill-judged affair occurred on the 2nd of July.

It has been described how Wexford was by the success of the king’s forces ultimately liberated from the masses of its insurgent population. We have stated that the scene of their predatory warfare was changed from their native county to Kildare, and that they were reinforced by the insurgents commanded by Michael Reynolds. The junction produced little advantage, except in increasing the numbers of a tumultuary rabble, in whom there was neither unity of purpose nor any fixed plan of future operations. Every leader had some object of his own, none a particle of military talent, and their strategic conceptions were as erroneous as the execution was feeble and contemptible.

Anthony Perry, another rebel general, despairing of doing any mischief in Wexford, now so well defended, where the insurgent forces were too dispirited to longer struggle in a body against the royalists and yeomanry, when joined by a strong body under the command of Michael Aylmer, intended to penetrate into the north of Ireland, where he expected to meet with a cordial co-operation. But Aylmer prevailed on Perry to abandon his intention, and declared that it was more advisable to attack Clonard, a town on the confines of Kildare and Meath, and situated on the river Boyne, as there was but a small force to defend it; and afterwards march by Kilbeggan to the Shannon, and surprise Athlone, where, from its central position, great advantages might be expected to arise. This plan was accordingly adopted; and their united forces, amounting to four thousand men, on the 11th of July marched to the attack of Clonard.

THE REBELS STORMING ‘THE TURRET’ AT LIEUTENANT TYRRELL’S, CLONARD

Many very gallant exploits were performed during this short and sanguinary period by loyalist irregulars; but probably the defence of Clonard may be placed foremost among numerous occurrences, in which the boundless gallantry of a determined handful of daring spirits repulsed the overwhelming masses to which they were opposed, and proved that no physical superiority can quench the courage of men devoted to home and altar, and determined ‘to do or die.’ The little garrison of Clonard consisted of a weak corps of yeoman infantry, and its commander was a self-taught soldier. But military talent is intuitive, and Lieutenant Tyrrell proved that the ruder the storm, the more extensively the resources of a brave man will be developed.

On being apprised that the rebel column was in march, Tyrrell made the best dispositions for defence which his small force permitted. He occupied a turret, which domineered the road, with half a dozen musketeers, and with the remaining twenty retired into the old mansion-house. Having selected his best marksmen, they were placed at such of the windows as offered the best positions for firing with effect upon the assailants, while the remainder of the corps were secured behind the walls, and employed in loading spare muskets to replace the firearms when discharged.

The rebel cavalry, amounting in rough numbers to three hundred, formed an advance guard, and were commanded by a man named Farrel. Unconscious that the garden turret was occupied, they came forward in a trot, and the first intimation that they were already under fire was conveyed by a shot from the youngest Tyrrell, a boy only fifteen years old, which mortally wounded the rebel captain. A volley from the other loyalists emptied several rebel saddles; a panic ensued, and the horsemen galloped out of musket range, leaving Several of their companions dead upon the road. With more caution and better success the rebel footmen came forward under shelter of a hedge, and, lining an opposite fence, they opened a sharp fire on the turret, while the column itself pushed forward to surround the’ house, and unite itself with another division which had advanced to join them by a cross-road. To cut off all communication and prevent the garrison from receiving reinforcements, the bridge was occupied by a rebel guard, but as it lay directly under the fire of the house, half a score of the occupants were rapidly shot down, the bridge cleared of its defenders, the western road laid open, and the garrison communication maintained.

In both their first attempts the insurgents were heavily repulsed, but defeat seemed only to exasperate them, and they again came forward to the attack. Penetrating by the rear, an immense number filled the garden and seized the lower portion of the turret. As the ladder had been drawn up by the defenders of the upper story, the rebels, by climbing on each other’s shoulders, attempted to force through the ceiling; still the fatal fire of the loyalists was kept up; at every shot a rebel fell, and on the ground floor lay seven-and-twenty bodies. At last, despairing of success, they procured a quantity of straw and fired the building. To force a passage through the rebels was almost a desperate attempt, but to perish in the flames, which had now seized the building, was the sad alternative. Two yeomen were killed in their attempt at escape, but fortunately the other four, by jumping from a window into a hay-yard under cover of the garden wall, succeeded in reaching the main body, who were posted in the dwelling-house. For six long hours this unequal contest had been maintained, and still no impression had been made upon the gallant royalists. To confuse the garrison, the assailants set fire to the toll-house and adjacent cabins, but the conflagration served no better purpose than to consume their own slain, whose bodies they flung into the burning houses. Happily succour was at hand, and at five in the evening a reinforcement was descried by the wearied royalists, advancing rapidly to meet them.

THE REBELS STORMING ‘THE TURRET’ AT LIEUTENANT TYRRELL’S, CLONARD

One of the yeomen, who had been excluded by the sudden shutting of the gates in the morning, finding he could be of no use in defending the house, repaired to Kinnegad and represented the alarming situation of his friends at Clonard; upon which, Lieutenant Houghton, with fourteen of the Kinnegad infantry, and a sergeant, with eleven Northumberland Fencibles (this being all the force that could be spared), immediately marched to their succour. The pass by the bridge having been kept open in the manner before related, Lieutenant Tyrrell now sallied from the house, and soon effected a junction with this reinforcement. A few volleys completely cleared the roads, and having placed the Northumberland Fencibles and Kinnegad infantry in such situations as most effectually to gall the enemy in their retreat from the garden, the lieutenant himself undertook the hazardous enterprise of dislodging them from thence.

‘At this time it is supposed there were four hundred rebels in the garden, a large body being posted on a mount planted with old fir-trees, which afforded considerable protection, while many lay concealed behind a privet hedge, from where they could see distinctly every person who entered the garden, though unperceived themselves. The brave Tyrrell, at the head of a few chosen men, now rushed into the garden, and was received by a general discharge from both bodies of the enemy; but he instantly attacked the party behind the hedge, which, being defeated, retired to the mount. Here a warm action ensued, the enemy appearing determined to maintain their advantageous situation; but the yeomen, though fatigued with the heat and burden of the day, and six of them badly wounded, persevered with the most undaunted courage, and directed such a steady and well-directed fire against the mount, that the enemy were at length dispersed, and in their flight the Northumberland Fencibles and Kinnegad infantry made great havoc among them.’—Taylor’s History.

The rebel loss, when it is remembered that it was inflicted by a garrison not numbering thirty men, may appear to be overstated. In killed and wounded it was said to reach two hundred. Nor is there any reason to question the accuracy of the return. A close and well-directed fire was maintained for half the day, and some of the yeomanry were supposed to have discharged one hundred rounds a man.

After this severe repulse the remaining body of insurgents retreated to Carbery and plundered the mansion of Lord Harburton, and next day entered Meath by Johnstown. On the 12th of July they were again overtaken, brought to action, and defeated by a detachment under Colonel Gough, hunted afterwards by General Myers, and driven upon Slane, and encountered ar In all these affairs disorganised that, as a body, they ceased to have existence.

FATE OF FATHER JOHN MURPHY OF BOULAVOGUE AFTER VINEGAR HILL

The horde of insurgents with Father John Murphy of Boulavogue escaped from the Vinegar Hill déroute, retreated through the Scullagh gap, and selected Kilkenny as their field of future operations. Their progress was marked by the customary atrocities of plundering and murder, and the line of march towards Castlecomer might have been readily traced by property destroyed and houses laid in ashes.

After the continuation of their old tactics and acts of coldblooded treachery—such as the affair at Gore’s bridge, when promises of protection were given to the discomfited loyalist soldiers surrounded in an untenable position, to induce them to lay down their arms, and scandalously violated, and in a few hours after their surrender, six privates of the Wexford, two of the 4th Dragoons, and nine Protestant prisoners were savagely butchered at Kellymount by orders of Devereux, a sanguinary ruffian, principally concerned in the massacre at Scullabogue—the insurgents were discovered at daybreak halted on Kilcomney Hill. The Downshire battalion guns—under Major Mathews—opened fire, and the rebels, to avoid the cannonade and gain time to make dispositions to receive the royalists, fell back a mile. While forming, Sir Charles Asgill’s artillery were heard firing at a rebel party in their rear, and a few rounds from the Downshire guns completed their discomfiture. They broke, fled, and were cut down, scarcely resisting, the pursuit being continued for two hours with fatal effect.

This was the crushing blow given to the southern insurrection. All was lost, for baggage, arms, provisions, and ammunition were totally abandoned. A few soldiers and Protestants who had fallen into their hands and escaped assassination were mercifully they suffered a continued loss, and at last had become so totally delivered and the insurgents disbanded, and while the Wexford party crossed into their native country through the Scullagh gap, the wanderers from Wicklow and Kildare went off dispersedly, some of the least guilty returning to their own homes, while others, despairing of forgiveness, commenced an outlaw’s life, and sank the rebel in the robber.

‘Father John Murphy, a priest who acted as aide-de-camp to the great sacerdotal hero, John Murphy of Boulavogue, and who had accompanied him from Vinegar Hill, fell in this action. He had a dove and a crucifix on his buttons, and letters directed to him were found in his pocket, recommending proper places for encamping. Father John Murphy, the commander-in-chief, who fled from the field of battle, was taken at an ale-house by three yeomen, one of the name of M’Cabe, and led a prisoner to Tullow, the headquarters of Sir James Duff. He was introduced into a room where the general, his aides-de-camp, Colonels Foster and Eden, the Earl of Roden, Captain M’Clintock, and about twenty officers were sitting. Major Hall, having asked him some questions which gave offence, in a violent rage the priest made a blow of his fist at the Major, which would have knocked him down, but that he warded it off with his arm, on which, however, he received a severe contusion. On searching Murphy, in his pockets his vestments were found, with some letters from Mrs. Richards and other ladies, prisoners at Wexford, imploring him to save the lives of their husbands and relations. He was hanged on the same day; his body was burned and his head fixed on the market-house.’

Musgrave’s Memoirs, which furnish the foregoing account, further enlighten us upon Murphy’s personal traits:—‘He was about forty-five years old, light complexioned, bald-pated, and about five feet nine inches high, well made, uniting strength with agility. He was exceedingly irascible, and when in a passion had somewhat the aspect of a tiger. His pix, his oil stock, and a small crucifix were found in his pocket.’

LANDING OF THE FRENCH INVADERS IN KILLALLA BAY

In the west of Ireland the system of terrorism was also incessantly persevered in; general murders were announced, and the people continued not to sleep in their own houses to avoid surprise. The strangest means by which these imaginary massacres were to be effected were invented, promulgated, and believed, and the peasantry in many places actually remained night after night in the open fields as the only means of escaping the devilish devices of destroyers.

Musgrave has set down in his Memoirs: ‘A few days before the French landed, a report was industriously circulated that the Protestants had entered into a conspiracy to massacre the Roman Catholics, and that they would not spare man, woman, or child. It was said that for this purpose a large quantity of combustible stuff had been introduced by the Orangemen, who made a kind of black candles of it; that they were of such a quality that they could not be extinguished when once lighted, and that in whatever house they should be burnt they would produce the destruction of every person in it.’

Such was the state of Mayo and Connaught generally when, on the 22nd of August 1798, three French frigates, with English colours flying, entered Killalla Bay. No suspicion was occasioned by their appearance, and under the belief that they were British cruisers, several gentlemen from the town visited the strangers, and when declared prisoners first discovered their mistake.

Killalla was at that time a bishop’s see (subsequently suppressed on the passing of the Reform Bill). On the day when the French appeared in the bay the lord-bishop was holding his annual visitation, and the clergy of the diocese were collected in the castle, as the see-house was popularly called. The strange vessels, however, excited no alarm; dinner passed quietly, the guests were preparing to depart, when that intention was accelerated by the arrival of a breathless messenger to inform the company and their host that the French had actually landed, and an advanced guard of three hundred men were marching on the town.

Killalla was feebly garrisoned by a party of the Prince of Wales’s Fencibles and a few yeomanry, the whole not exceeding fifty or sixty men, but still they offered a bold resistance, until, with the loss of a few killed and wounded, they were finally driven into the castle and obliged to surrender. The commander of this extraordinary expedition, Humbert, after summoning the bishop to his presence, and having announced that he came from the great nation to give the Irish liberty and sever the yoke of England, which had so long oppressed them, proceeded to put into requisition his lordship’s horses, sheep, and cows, intimating at the same time that the Irish Directory, to be established immediately in Connaught, would pay the full value of the same.

The French officers gave the following account of the expedition:—‘About eighteen days before, 1500 men, some of whom had served under Bonaparte in Italy, the rest had been of the army of the Rhine, embarked on board three frigates at Rochelle, and on a very dark night eluded (beyond their expectation) the vigilance of the English fleet, which was close behind them. Two of them had forty-four guns, eighteen-pounders, the other thirty-eight guns, twelve-pounders. They said also they brought nine pieces of cannon and arms for 100,000 men, but this was French gasconnade, as they had arms only for 5500 men and but two four-pounders. The meagre persons and the wan and sallow countenances of these troops, whose numbers did not exceed 1060 rank and file and 70 officers, strongly indicated the severe hardships which they must have undergone.

‘They hoisted a green flag in front of the castle, with the Irish words, “Erin go braugh” inscribed on it, which signifies “Ireland for ever,” and they invited the people to join them, having assured them that they would enjoy freedom and happiness by doing so.

‘The first day they passed in landing arms and ammunition; the second in clothing and arming the natives, of whom great multitudes flocked to their standard, and granting commissions to Irish officers.’

Compared with the other armaments destined for the invasion of Ireland, Humbert’s was by far the smallest. The grand army, termed ‘the reserve,’ which was commanded by General Kilmaine, amounted in round numbers to 10,000; and a second, lying in the harbour of Brest, under General Hardy, had 3000 men on board. Neither, however, attempted to put to sea, and although Kilmaine never appeared in person, his proclamations were abundantly distributed.

Humbert’s manifesto was cleverly conceived and ingeniously put together:—

LIBERTY! EQUALITY! FRATERNITY! UNION!

Irishmen—You have not forgot Bantry Bay; you know what efforts France has made to assist you. Her affections for you, her desire for avenging your wrongs and insuring your independence can never be impaired.

After several unsuccessful attempts, behold Frenchmen arrived amongst you.

They come to support your courage, to share your dangers, to join their arms, and to mix their blood with yours in the sacred cause of liberty.

Brave Irishmen, our cause is common; like you, we abhor the avaricious and bloodthirsty policy of an oppressive government; like you, we hold as indefeasible the right of all nations to liberty; like you, we are persuaded that the peace of the world shall ever be troubled, as long as the British ministry is suffered to make, with impunity, a traffic of the industry, labour, and blood of the people.

But exclusive of the same interests which unite us, we have powerful motives to love and defend you.

Have we not been the pretext of the cruelty exercised against you by the cabinet of St. James’s? The heartfelt interest you have shown in the great events of our revolution has it not been imputed to you as a crime? Are not tortures and death continually hanging over such of you as are barely suspected of being our friends? Let us unite then and march to glory.

We swear the most inviolable respect for your properties, your laws, and all your religious opinions. Be free; be masters in your own country. We look for no other conquest than that of your liberty—no other success than yours.

The moment of breaking your chains is arrived; our triumphant troops are now flying to the extremities of the earth to tear up the roots of the wealth and tyranny of our enemies. That frightful Colossus is mouldering away in every part. Can there be any Irishman base enough to separate himself at such a happy juncture from the grand interests of his country? If such there be, brave friends, let him be chased from the country he betrays, and let his property become the reward of those generous men who know how to fight and die.

Irishmen, recollect the late defeats which your enemies have experienced from the French; recollect the plains of Honscoote, Toulon, Quiberon, and Ostend; recollect America, free from the moment she wished to be so.

The contest between you and your oppressors cannot be long.

Union! liberty! the Irish republic!—such is our shout; let us march, our hearts are devoted to you; our glory is in your happiness. Health and Fraternity, Humbert, Gen.

Humbert’s was a bold but wild experiment, but still it evinced the daring character of the adventurer. He had encountered difficulties that would have disheartened a soldier less enthusiastic.

To land with 1200 men in a country in full military occupation, as Ireland then was, without money, necessaries, or any resources but what chance and talent gave, proved indeed that the French general was no common soldier.

The sketch given by Bishop Stock (his involuntary and captive host) of the invading army and their daring leader is not only graphic, but faithfully descriptive of the bold adventurer and his hardy followers:—‘Intelligence, activity, temperance, patience, to a surprising degree, appeared to be combined in the soldiery that came over with Humbert, together with the exactest obedience to discipline. Yet, if you except the grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye. Their stature for the most part was low, their complexions pale and sallow, their clothes much the worse for wear; to a superficial observer they would have appeared incapable of enduring almost any hardship. These were the men, however, of whom it was presently observed that they could be well content to live on bread or potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven. One half of their number had served in Italy under Bonaparte; the rest were of the army of the Rhine, where they had suffered distresses that well accounted for thin persons and wan looks. Several of them declared, with all the marks of sincerity, that at the siege of Metz, during the preceding winter, they had for a long time slept on the ground in holes made four feet deep under the snow; and an officer, pointing to his leather small-clothes, assured the bishop that he had not taken them off for a twelve-month. Humbert, the leader of this singular body of men, was himself as extraordinary a personage as any in his army; of a good height and shape, in the full vigour of life, prompt to decide, quick in execution, apparently master of his art, you could not refuse him the praise of a good officer, while his physiognomy forbade you to like him as a man. His eye, which was small and sleepy (the effect, probably, of much watching), cast a side-long glance of insidiousness, and even of cruelty—it was the eye of a cat preparing to spring upon her prey. His education and manners were indicative of a person sprung from the lowest orders of society, though he knew how (as most of his countrymen can do) to assume, where it was convenient, the deportment of a gentleman. For learning, he had scarcely enough to enable him to write his own name. His passions were furious, and all his behaviour seemed marked with the characters of roughness and violence. A narrower observation of him, however, served to discover that much of this roughness was the result of art, being assumed with the view of extorting, by terror, a ready compliance with his demands. This latter trait in Humbert’s character was personally experienced by the bishop. An offer of the presidency of the Connaught Directory was declined by his lordship, on the plea of his sworn allegiance to the king—a pledge, he said, never to be violated; and a command that he should issue orders to place every horse and vehicle in the country at Humbert’s disposal for mounting his cavalry, and the transport of his guns, stores, and baggage, was evaded by an assurance that his lordship had been but lately a resident, and, from want of local knowledge or authority, had not the means of compliance with the French general’s request.

‘Next morning Humbert, finding that no cars or horses had been procured, became furious, uttered a torrent of vulgar abuse, presented a pistol at the bishop’s eldest son, and declared he would punish his father’s disobedience by sending him to France, and accordingly he marched off the bishop towards the shore under a sergeant’s guard, but when they had advanced a short distance a mounted orderly recalled the party, and Humbert apologised to the bishop, and excused, under the plea of military necessity, a very gross departure from the laws of la politesse.

‘The 24th was occupied by a French reconnaissance on Ballina, which was repelled by a party of carbineers and some yeomanry. In the evening the royalists advanced to Killalla in return, had a smart skirmish with the enemy, and, after losing a few men, were hastily driven back.’

On Sunday, the 26th, Humbert took the offensive, leaving six officers and two hundred men in Killalla to garrison the town, secure his spare ammunition, and drill such recruits as should join the standard of the republic. The French numbered about 900 bayonets, with treble that number of peasant partisans. They entered Ballina unopposed, and Humbert expressed considerable disappointment when no respectable persons welcomed his entree, and the body of an active agent suspended to a tree, executed by the troops before they retreated for having a French commission in his pocket, while it afforded an exhibition for Gallic civism, gave still but a sorry omen of success.

Before he had commenced his operations the French general felt difficulties which, in some degree, he was unprepared for. He came totally unprovided with money, and in the co-operation he was led from the reports of Irish agents to build upon as certain he was miserably disappointed. The first of these difficulties he endeavoured to overcome by the issue of assignats on the Irish Directory that was to be.

The first serious action Humbert had on encountering the royalist forces was signalised by a series of military mistakes, of which the French commander took the fullest advantage, and the memory of the loyalist discomfiture at Castlebar remains a discreditable page in the annals of our generalship.

It is almost impossible to conceive anything more disgraceful and unaccountable than the defeat of the royalist army at Castlebar. That the strength of the king’s army fully warranted its commander in covering the town and taking an open position cannot be denied, but still, as there was some uncertainty touching the number of the assailants, in the event of disaster measures should have been arranged for rallying the troops within the town, which a very little trouble would have made thoroughly defensible against a force so inferior as Humbert’s. That the general spirit of the troops was excellent many individual cases proved, and, with a superior cavalry and artillery, the latter particularly well served, the contest should not have lasted ten minutes.

HEROIC CONDUCT OF THE HIGHLAND SENTINEL

The party who defended the bridge of Castlebar, consisting of some gallant officers, some of the Longford, a few of the Kilkenny and Fraser Fencibles, suffered most severely, as they were exposed to a cross-fire both from the roads leading to it and from the houses on either side. The men often fell back, but were again rallied by their officers. At length most of the Royal Irish Artillery, who worked the gun, having been killed or wounded, it became useless, and the enemy were able to push forward a body of cavalry, whose charge was repulsed by this small party, and two of the foremost hussars killed within the ranks. By this charge, however, the numbers of the royalists were much reduced, and, having been deprived of the assistance of one captain and one subaltern, who were desperately wounded, they were at last obliged to retreat after having lost half their number.

‘The French appeared men qualified not only to obtain but also to improve a victory, and with singular daring a party of hussars, not exceeding ten in number, hung on the rear of the retreating royalists and overtook and captured a gun, which they were about to turn on the runaways, when a superior number of Lord Roden’s Foxhunters charged back, killed five, and drove off the rest. The slain were buried where they fell, and, in memory of the event, the place is still called French Hill.

‘The artillery taken in this disgraceful defeat consisted of fourteen pieces, of which four were curricle guns. The courageous behaviour of the Fraser Fencibles has been mentioned with admiration as a conspicuous example of gallantry against desperate odds.’

The spirited and characteristic water-colour drawing executed by George Cruikshank to illustrate the landing of the Gallic legions in Mayo deals with a noteworthy instance of individual and solitary devotion as related by Musgrave:—

‘The French approached the new gaol to break it open. It was guarded by a Highland Fraser sentinel, whom his friends had desired to retreat with them; he heroically refused to quit his post, which was elevated, with some steps leading to it. He charged and fired five times successively, and killed a Frenchman at every shot, but before he could charge the sixth time they rushed on him, beat out his brains, and threw him down the steps, with the sentry-box on his body.5

During the period that Humbert occupied Castlebar—that is, from the 27th of August until the morning of the 4th of September—the French behaved with the greatest moderation, protecting the Protestants from insult, and repressing every attempt at cruelty on the part of their ignorant and useless allies. Invariably, the invaders regarded the Irish mob who accompanied them as a pack of senseless savages, and no pains were taken to disguise these feelings of contempt. ‘The French,’ records Musgrave, ‘ate the best of meat and bread, drank wine, beer, and coffee, and slept on good beds. They compelled the rebels to eat potatoes, drink whisky, and sleep on straw. They beat and abused them like dogs, in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity. A volume would not contain an account of the brutal actions of the rebels; and the women, who were worse than the men, carried off hides, tallow, beef, cloth, and various other articles.

‘The wonder was how the zealous papist should come to any terms of agreement with a set of men who boasted openly in their hearing “that they had just driven Mr. Pope out of Italy, and did not expect to find him so suddenly in Ireland.” It astonished the French officers to hear the recruits when they offered their services declare “that they were come to take arms for France and the Blessed Virgin.”’

To the Irish priesthood the French officers exhibited a marked antipathy. Frequently a latent hatred of Protestants became too apparent, but any attempt, and many were made, to give a religious turn to the war was on the French part furiously repelled.

ENDING OF THE FRENCH INVASION

No reinforcements had arrived from France; no insurrectionary movement in the other provinces followed the descent at Killalla and the unexpected success at Castlebar. The game was played; Lord Cornwallis was within thirty miles; another day, and surrender would be inevitable; but still a chance might be ‘upon the die,’ and, like a brave adventurer, Humbert determined to put it to the hazard. After mature consideration he decided to march in a northerly direction, as that part of the country he understood to be disaffected, and also the route leading through Sligo and Donegal was tolerably free from troops, and consequently more open to him. Accordingly, on the night of the 3rd of September he sent off his baggage and cannon, with part of his troops, towards Sligo, and about seven next morning set out with the remainder, about 400 in number. With the abandonment of the capital of Mayo, Humbert’s Irish career may be said to have closed, and probably the most summary but faithful account of his extraordinary campaign is contained in his own report to the French Directory:—

‘After having obtained the greatest successes, and made the arms of the French republic to triumph during my stay in Ireland, I have at length been obliged to submit to a superior force of 30,000 troops, commanded by Lord Cornwallis. I am a prisoner of war on my parole.’ Never a despatch more brief, nor yet more true.

Four days had passed since the French and their auxiliaries had abandoned Castlebar (on being apprised of Humbert’s retreat Colonel Crawford advanced, and at nine o’clock the same evening Castlebar was occupied by the royalists), and during that time they had been harassed continually. So closely were they pressed that the fusilade between their rear-guard and the advance of the royalists was almost incessant. His great superiority in cavalry enabled Lord Lake to hang closely on their rear, from which it was impossible to shake him off, and by mounting light infantry behind dragoons, so vigorously was Humbert pushed that he was obliged to halt the head of his column and receive an attack from the advancing enemy.

While forming the leading division the rear-guard, under Sarazin, were overtaken within a mile of Ballynamuck, and that general, who commanded en second, at once surrendered. Indeed, in doing this Sarazin exercised a sound discretion in preventing the useless expenditure of human blood, and, from the daring intrepidity of his character, the sacrifice, most painful to a soldier’s feelings, would never have been made by him until every hope was over.

The following circumstances, as Musgrave has related, attended the surrender of the French:—‘The Earl of Roden and Colonel Crawford, who led on the advanced guard, consisting of his lordship’s Fencibles, perceiving an officer who seemed desirous to communicate with them, Lord Roden ordered his trumpet to sound, which was answered by the French, when his lordship and the colonel advanced into the French lines. The officer politely asked them what their wishes were. They answered to stop the effusion of blood, and desired them to surrender. The officer said that he did not command, but that he would go to General Humbert, which he accordingly did. Humbert came up, asked the same question, and received a similar answer. He then demanded half an hour to give a final answer, which was granted on condition that he halted his troops; to which he made no reply, but retreated with precipitation. Lord Roden then ordered his trumpet to sound the advance, and came up to the first and second brigade of the French army, who surrendered to about 300 cavalry under his lordship and Colonel Crawford. After this they advanced with about twenty dragoons and took possession of the French guns. Shortly after Humbert rallied his grenadiers, the only part of the army, except the chasseurs, that had not surrendered, consisting of about 400 men, who surrounded Lord Roden and his twenty dragoons. They were given in charge to the hussars. While they were their prisoners—which lasted about fifteen minutes—the French officers loaded the United Irishmen, their allies, with execrations for having deceived and disappointed them by inviting them to undertake a fruitless expedition. They also declared that the people of Ireland were the most treacherous and cowardly they ever knew. Lord Roden and Colonel Crawford continued prisoners till his regiment of Fencibles advanced in quest of their colonel, which the French hussars perceiving, requested that his lordship would desire them to halt, as they meant to surrender, and by doing so he prevented them from being cut to pieces.’

According to Gordon’s authority, ‘the troops of General Humbert were found, when prisoners, to consist of 748 privates and 96 officers, a loss of 228 being sustained since their first landing at Killalla.’ The story is incomplete without recounting the fate of their misguided auxiliaries. It would appear that the soldiers of the grande nation and their Irish allies were heartily tired of each other, and both sides complained bitterly, and apparently with reason.

From the commencement of Humbert’s movement towards the north until his surrender, not an hour passed without the vengeance of the royalists felling on the deluded wretches, who still continued rather to embarrass than assist the French army while retreating. Every straggler that was overtaken was cut down by the Hompeschers and Foxhunters who hung upon Humbert’s rear; and when the invaders laid down their arms at Ballinamuck, if blood could have atoned for treason, it was fearfully exacted, for the sword and halter were used with an unsparing hand. It is impossible to form any correct estimate of the number sacrificed to the fury of the soldiery. During the pursuit of Humbert, as the rebels preserved not even the semblance of order, but straggled where they pleased, it was not unusual to find them sleeping in dozens in the fields, some from fatigue, and more from drunkenness. No questions were asked; the coup de sabre when on march, the arm of the next tree, if halting, ended all inquiry. At Ballinamuck va victis was pronounced, no quarter was given, and, to use Musgrave’s words, ‘dreadful havoc’ was made among the unfortunate wretches, who were excluded from mercy and cut down by the hundred.

REBELS DESTROYING A HOUSE AND FURNITURE

Probably the artist has executed this characteristic scene pertaining to the destructive proceedings which were so significant of the rebellion—con amore; it is sufficiently marked by George Cruikshank’s peculiar genius for conveying a full sense of boisterous exuberance, wherein the tragic marches hand-in-hand with the grotesque, and humour of the broadest contrasts with terrible episodes, which weirdly impress the imagination. In short, this picture may be regarded as the typical contribution of the gifted illustrator to Maxwell’s History, and, as such, speaks sufficiently for itself, telling its moving tale with that native force and graphic directness Cruikshank had always at command.

It may be realised that, to gratify their native love of fun, an Irish mob finds in the humours of any given situation the satisfaction of comic relief in contrast to absolutely grim terrorism; appreciative touches of these congenial qualities are conspicuous throughout Cruikshank’s vividly pictorial realisations of the episodes of the rebellion of 1798. Herein souvenirs of the humorous touches of the amenities of Donnybrook Fair lend their spice of rough fun to relieve the gloomier horrors inseparable from the subject, while the spirit of general destruction is in full swing, and the intoxicating influence of wantonly wrecking everything at hand, or within reach, is producing chaos and spreading annihilation around; the whole spectacle of reckless ruin to characteristically conclude with a grand conflagration of everything destructible, to put the final touches to the tableau.

EMMETT PREPARING FOR THE INSURRECTION

Two names most intimately connected with the Irish Rebellion are surrounded by an atmosphere of sentiment and the glamour of romance, which endears their memories to their admirers at this distant date. The untoward fate of one, the unfortunate enthusiast Lord Edward Fitzgerald, commences the history of the insurrection; the last, Robert Emmett, comes to complete the story, his episode almost as an anticlimax. Both were lives of promise, miserably thrown away, and it is recognised that both these victims rebels destroying a house furniture of misapplied talents were worthy of a better fate, and capable of higher things.

Robert Emmett was the son of a respectable physician in Dublin, and was the younger brother of Thomas Adis Emmett, a gifted barrister who had been a conspicuous member of the rebel Directory in the fateful 1798. Robert Emmett was by natural gifts qualified to figure as a hero of romance, and his name is so regarded by sympathisers, even after the lapse of a century, wherein his fame has fitfully survived. He was a young man of fine talents rather than solidity of judgment, possessing uncommon eloquence, and no inconsiderable portion of courage and activity. He was not unqualified for the part he had undertaken, and for a service so pregnant with difficulty and danger his sanguine temperament was a necessary adjunct. He had quitted Ireland after the unfortunate termination of the former conspiracy, and resided in different parts of the Continent, but principally in France, till Christmas 1802, when he returned to his native country, filled with ambitious projects of an unreasonable and uncompromisingly revolutionary nature.

‘A quotation from one of his speeches, when a lad at Dublin University, proves the early political bias of his mind. After a brilliant eulogy on the French republic, he concluded with a remark sufficiently expressive:—“When a people, advancing rapidly in knowledge and power, perceive at last how far their government is lagging behind them, what then, I ask, is to be done in such a case? Why, pull the government up to the people!” The consequences of indulging in such language at such a time may be imagined—Emmett was struck off the College roll.’—Memoir of Robert Emmett.

On his arrival in Ireland he first went into a state of the most perfect obscurity at the house of a Mrs. Palmer, at Harold’s Cross, where he assumed the name of Hewitt. The nature of his mission did not admit of his remaining in this retreat longer than was necessary to mature his plans and form his connections. About the end of April, a house and premises of some extent, formerly a malt-house, and which had been long unoccupied, were taken in Marshall’s Alley, Thomas Street, sufficiently obscure to escape detection, and yet near enough to the heart of the city to effect the most desperate purposes. In this place Emmett lodged for nearly two months, with no better accommodation than a paillasse, and surrounded by from fourteen to twenty associates. A depot of arms was here formed on a large scale; muskets and other weapons were procured from time to time to a considerable amount, and a large manufacture of pikes was secretly carried on. There was a group of tailor hands employed in making rebel uniforms of green.

‘One of these dépôts was set apart for the manufacture of gunpowder and the construction of weapons. Some idea of the industry with which Emmett accumulated these implements of deadly vengeance, and his sanguine reliance upon thousands responding to the tocsin of insurrection, may be formed from the catalogue of the contents of his magazine:—It comprised forty-five pounds of cannon-powder, in bundles; eleven boxes of fine powder; one hundred bottles filled with powder, enveloped with musket-balls and covered with canvas; two hundred and forty-six hand grenades, formed of ink-bottles filled with powder and encircled with buck-shot; sixty-two thousand rounds of musket-ball cartridge; three bushels of musket-balls; a quantity of tow mixed with tar and gunpowder and other combustible matter, for throwing against woodwork, which when ignited would cause an instantaneous conflagration; sky-rockets and other signals, etc.; false beams filled with combustibles, with not less than twenty thousand pikes.

‘The conspirators occasionally pressed not only horses but men into their service, and forced the latter to work at different employments necessary for the object in view while confined in the depot. At the same time stores of arms and gunpowder were deposited at the residences of others of their accomplices in convenient stations of the city. The whole of the conspiracy had, however, been nearly overthrown and exposed by an explosion which took place in Patrick Street. By the ability of the conspirators, or the security of their adversaries, the accident was overlooked, or at least represented as unconnected with any treasonable design. Emmett once more changed the place of his concealment, apprehending the explosion would lead to untimely disclosures, removing to one of his dépôts situated in Mass Lane. “Here he strove to make, as far as possible, by increased exertions, amends for the recent loss. So restless was he, that he sought no further repose than that he derived from occasionally reclining upon a mattress, placed in the midst of the workmen, from which he could by night and day observe the progress of, and direct and animate their labours.”

EMMETT PREPARING FOR THE INSURRECTION

‘At length the preparations were complete, or the funds of the conspirators exhausted, and the 23rd of July 1803 was appointed for a general insurrection. Though the persons immediately connected with the principals in the plot—Emmett, Dowdall, and Quigley—did not exceed from eighty to one hundred persons, they were so far misled as to the state of the public mind, that they expected the spirit of rebellion would pervade the kingdom. The stopping of the mail-coaches was to be the signal of revolt in the country. The immediate object of the insurgents in the metropolis was the castle (“as it was felt that to have command over the seat they might speedily secure the power of government”), and the vicinity of the depot in Thomas Street was calculated to favour the intended enterprise against this seat of the government. Various rumours had been afloat for a. few days previous, that “a rising,” as it was termed, was intended; but the reports were so contradictory that the government was unable to take any measures of precaution further than the doubling of patrols in certain stations. Towards dusk on the 23rd of July, Emmett prepared for the anticipated action by superintending the distribution of arms and ammunition (of which he had a large supply) amongst the multitude that had congregated before the headquarters of the projected rebellion. But we must not omit to mention that previous to the evening the ill-success of the enterprise had been omened forth by the retreat of the Kildare men, who, after marching into the capital, were fortunately persuaded by their leaders to disband and return home.’ What ensued has been graphically described by one of Emmett’s coadjutors:—

‘About six o’clock Emmett, Malachy, one or two others, and myself put on our green uniform, trimmed with gold lace, and selected our arms. The insurgents, who had all day been well plied with whisky’ (this paragraph is most significant), ‘began to prepare for commencing an attack upon the castle; and when all was ready, Emmett made an animated address to the conspirators. At eight precisely we sallied out of the depot, and when we arrived in Thomas Street the insurgents gave three deafening cheers.

‘The consternation excited by our presence defies description. Every avenue emptied its curious hundreds, and almost every window exhibited half a dozen inquisitive heads, while peaceable shopkeepers ran to their doors, and beheld with amazement a lawless band of armed insurgents, in the midst of a peaceable city, an hour at least before dark. The scene at first might have appeared amusing to a careless spectator, from the singular and dubious character which the riot wore; but when the rocket ascended and burst over the heads of the people, the aspect of things underwent an immediate and wonderful change. The impulse of the moment was self-preservation, and those who, a few minutes before, seemed to look on with vacant wonder, now assumed a face of horror, and fled with precipitation. The wish to escape was simultaneous; and the eagerness with which the people fled before us impeded their flight, as they crowded upon each other in the entrance of alleys, courtways, and lanes; while the screams of women and children were frightful and heart-rending.

‘“To the castle!” cried our enthusiastic leader, drawing his sword, and his followers appeared to obey. But when we reached the market-house our adherents had wonderfully diminished, there not being more than twenty insurgents with us.

‘“Fire the rocket!” cried Malachy.

‘“Hold awhile,” said Emmett, snatching the match from the man’s hand who was applying it. “Let no lives be unnecessarily lost. Run back and see what detains the men?”

‘Malachy obeyed, and we remained near the market-house, waiting their arrival, until the soldiers approached.’

THE MURDER OF LORD KILWARDEN

Thus far Emmett was with his deluded followers, and the work was less bloodthirsty; but the hordes armed by their enthusiastic and visionary general of the moment were of a combustible nature, and having weapons in their hands, speedily began ruthlessly murdering innocent people:—‘The conspirators assembled previously in the depot did not exceed the number of fifty, but pikes and other weapons were liberally dispersed among the mob, and the insurgents soon swelled to the amount, it is said, of about five hundred. The night was dark, and the scene is described as tremendous; groups of pikemen and other insurgents were dispersed in various parts of the vicinity of the scene of action, while others were calling out for arms, and led in crowds to the grand depot. Directly these mob-valiant ruffians secured their weapons, they set about employing them to deadly purpose.

It was thus that the life of Lord Kilwarden, the eminent and venerable chief-justice, was wantonly taken. Driving to the castle via Thomas Street, the carriage, unhappily for its inmates, fell into the thick of the rebels at the beginning of their excited career. It is related that the judge had formerly tried and sentenced to death a youth, convicted of treason, who, unlike his confederates, refused to accept pardon upon the condition of leaving the country. After the death of this misguided lad, his relatives, readily listening to every misrepresentation which flattered their resentment, became persuaded that the attorney-general had selected the youthful victim in question to suffer the utmost severity of the law (his companions having consented to expatriate themselves). One of his family connections, a person named Shannon, was an insurgent on the 23rd of July; and when Lord Kilwarden, hearing the popular cry of vengeance, exclaimed from his carriage, “It is I, Kilwarden, chief-justice of the King’s Bench!”

“Then,” cried Shannon, “you’re the man that I want!” and plunged a pike into his lordship’s body.’

The narrative as related by one of those present is as follows:—

‘It was during the height of the insurrection that the venerable magistrate, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Wolfe, and his nephew, a clergyman, arrived in Thomas Street in his way from his country-house to the castle. Lord Kilwarden and Mr. Wolfe, his nephew, were inhumanly dragged from the carriage and pierced with innumerable mortal wounds by the pikemen. Before he expired he was rescued by a party of military and of the police; and hearing some violent expression employed as to the punishment of the rebels, he had only time, before he breathed his last, to prefer a petition “that no man might suffer but by the laws of his country.” Such a death was more honourable than that of a commander who dies in the arms of Victory, and who possibly acts a part to secure a posthumous reputation. Miss Wolfe, by the humanity or the heedlessness of the mob, effected her escape, and, on foot and unattended, was one of the first who arrived at the castle to give notice of the horrors of the night. Colonel Browne, a gentleman greatly respected, was another victim of the multitude, and was assassinated in the same brutal and cowardly manner. On the first alarm he repaired to join his regiment, but uninformed of the precise station which was occupied by the rebels, he unfortunately, in the darkness of the night, fell in with the main body; he received a shot from a blunderbuss, and was almost immediately hewn to pieces.

‘Every casual passenger who was not murdered was forced to join the insurgents and armed with a pike. This happened even to some gentlemen of rank and character. The first check which the rebels experienced was from Mr. Edward Wilson, a police magistrate, who, at the head of only eleven men, had the courage to approach the scene of insurrection. He had hardly arrived at the spot before he found his little party surrounded by a body of nearly 300 pikemen. Undismayed by their hostile appearance, he called upon them to lay down their arms or he would fire. The rebels appeared somewhat confused, but one of them, bolder than the rest, advanced, and with his pike wounded Mr. Wilson in the belly, but was instantly shot dead by the wounded magistrate. The fire from his men threw the rest of the body of assailants into some confusion, but they presently opened to the right and left to make way for such of their party as had firearms, when Mr. Wilson thought it prudent to retreat towards the Coombe. The rebels soon after met with a more formidable assailant in Lieutenant Brady, of the 21st Fusileers, who, at the head of only forty men, had the gallantry to advance to the attack. He subdivided his little force into smaller parties, and though assailed by bottles and stones from the houses, and with shot from the alleys and entries, kept up so warm and well-directed a fire that the insurgents, numerous as they were, soon fled in different directions. Lieutenant Coltman, of the 9th regiment of foot, also at the head of only four men of his own regiment and some yeomanry of the Barrack division in coloured clothes, in all but twenty-eight, hastened to the scene of action, and was successful in dispersing the mob, and securing some of the most desperate of the offenders.

‘The military now poured in from all quarters; the rebels were routed with considerable slaughter, and, before twelve, the insurrection was completely quelled.’

The brief and sanguinary affray, which was fully detailed in the evidence given on the trial of the chief conspirator, we think will bear us out regarding the in competency of the leaders and the general inefficiency of an Irish mob. More was in Emmett’s favour than he was entitled to have expected. The government, although rumour was rife with alarm, had turned a deaf ear to every attempt to awake it from its culpable security. The detective police of that day, a crew of mercenary bloodhounds, showed that within the heart of the city treasonable plans could be matured, and not a functionary suspect it. To stimulate Sirr and his myrmidons to exertion, crime was not to be prevented but committed, and a regular price must first be placed upon the offender. The apathy of the government and the imbecility of the conspiracy were worthy of each other. On the night of the 23rd of July one hundred determined men, by a well-arranged coup de main, might have easily obtained possession of the castle.

Even with that success, twelve hours would have ended the treasonable triumph. More blood might have been shed, but the end would have been the same, and by noon the next day the insurrection would have terminated as it commenced—in slaughter.

TRIAL, CONVICTION, AND EXECUTION OF ROBERT EMMETT

The madly infatuated leaders of this desperate and futile attempt contrived to evade their deluded followers before the crisis of the outbreak, in spite of their conspicuous uniforms and trappings. Favoured by the darkness, Emmett and his lieutenants, decked in their warlike panoply, contrived to escape from the city which their rash enterprise had stirred into wild excitement, and headed to that haunt of outlawed and desperate malefactors, the mountain range of Wicklow, where they foiled to raise the late rebels. Under this rebuff, for better security, the party separated, each adopting the best means within his power to evade the now uplifted hand of outraged justice. Emmett, it is said, might possibly have quitted the country in a fishing boat, but his wild and ardent attachment to a daughter of the celebrated Curran induced him to return to the metropolis and seek a parting interview with his mistress. None but a madman would have risked the dangerous experiment; but Emmett appears to have been influenced in all his actions by the wildest impulse, and, accordingly, he regained the city safely, and again took up his quarters in his old concealment, Harold’s Cross. Here he was tracked by the bloodhound who had successfully trapped Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the many misguided enthusiasts who had similarly played with treason under mistaken ambition.

Arrested by Town-Major Sirr on the 25th of August, a special commission was immediately issued, Lord Norbury presiding. The evidence was clear, decisive, and direct, and went over and unmistakably proved the facts as already described.

The story of Emmett’s arrest, as related by Major Henry Charles Sirr, appropriately closes the history: ‘I went, in the evening of the 25th of August, to the house of one Palmer. I had heard there was a stranger in the back-parlour. I rode, accompanied by a man on foot; I desired the man to knock at the door. He did, and it was opened by a girl. I alighted, and ran directly into the back-parlour. I saw the prisoner sitting at dinner; the woman of the house was there, and the girl who opened the door was the daughter of the woman of the house. I desired them to withdraw. I asked the prisoner his name; he told me his name was Cunningham. I gave him in charge to the man who accompanied me, and went into the next room to ask the woman and daughter about him; they told me his name was Hewitt. I went back and asked how long he had been there? He said he came that morning. He had attempted to escape before I returned, for he was bloody, and the man said he knocked him down with a pistol. I then went to Mrs. Palmer, who said he had lodged there for a month. I then judged he was a person of some importance. When I first went in there was a paper on the chair, which I put into my pocket (Emmett’s fervid proclamation). I then went to the canal bridge for a guard, having desired him to be in readiness as I passed by. I planted a sentry over him, and desired the non-commissioned officer to surround the house with sentries while I searched it. I then examined Mrs. Palmer, and took down her account of the prisoner, during which time I heard a noise, as if an escape was attempted. I instantly ran to the back part of the house, as the most likely part for him to get out at; I saw him going off, and ordered a sentinel to fire, and then pursued him myself, regardless of the order. The sentry snapped, but the musket did not go off. I overtook the prisoner, and he said, “I surrender!” I searched him, and found some papers upon him.’

On the witness expressing concern at the necessity of the prisoner’s being treated so roughly, the prisoner observed, ‘that all was fair in war.’ The prisoner, when brought to the castle, acknowledged that his name was Emmett.

In his address to the jury Mr. Conyngham Plunket, as counsel for the Crown, laid stress upon the revolutionary proclamation drawn up by Emmett, and pointed out the condemnatory nature of this incendiary document:—

‘Under what circumstances is he taken? In the room in which he was, upon a chair near the door, is found an address to the government of the country, and in the very first paragraph of that address the composer of it acknowledges himself to be the head of a conspiracy for the overthrow of the government which he addresses, telling them, in diplomatic language, what conduct the undersigned will be compelled to adopt if they shall presume to execute the law. He is the leader, whose nod is a Fiat, and he warns them of the consequences!

‘And how was this revolution to be effected? The proclamation conveys an insinuation that it was to be effected by their own force, entirely independent of foreign assistance. Why? Because it was well known that there remained in this country few so depraved, so lost to the welfare of their native land, that would not shudder at forming an alliance with France, and therefore the people of Ireland are told, “the effort is to be entirely your own, independent of foreign aid.” But how does this tally with the time when the scheme was first hatched—the very period of the commencement of the war with France? How does this tally with the fact of consulting in the depot about co-operating with the French, which has been proved in evidence? But, gentlemen, out of the proclamation I convict him of duplicity. He tells the government of the country not to resist their mandate, or think they can effectually suppress rebellion by putting down the present attempt, but that “they will have to crush a greater exertion, rendered still greater by foreign assistance”; so that upon the face of the proclamation they avowed, in its naked deformity, the abominable plan of an alliance with the usurper of the French throne to overturn the ancient constitution of the land, and to substitute a new republic in its place.’

CONCLUSION OF EMMETT’S EXALTED DEFENCE

After the verdict of guilty was pronounced, the clerk of the Crown asked the condemned ‘what he had to say why judgment of death and execution should not be awarded against him according to law?’ Emmett, without precisely defending himself, calmly proceeded to pour forth an eloquent impassioned attack upon the executive. The concluding passages convey the general tendency of his exalted oratory:—

‘I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my countrymen as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, “the life and blood of the conspiracy.” You do me honour overmuch—you have given to a subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your computation of yourself, my lord; before the splendour of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves disgraced to be called your friend, and who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand. [Again the judge, as frequently in the course of this bitter harangue of Emmett’s, felt called upon to interrupt him.]

‘What, my lord, shall you tell me on the passage to that scaffold which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediary executioner, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has and will be shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor? Shall you tell me this, and shall I be so very a slave as not to repel it?

‘I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my whole life, and am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality! By you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry in one reservoir, your lordship might swim in it. [Here the judge interfered.]

‘Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonour; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but of my country’s liberty and independence, or that I became the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the present domestic oppressor. In the dignity of freedom I would have fought on the threshold of my country, and its enemies should only enter by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor and the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence. Am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent or repel it?

‘If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life, O ever dear and venerable shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now about to offer up my life.

‘My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors that surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be ye patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave—my lamp of life is nearly extinguished—my race is run—the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world—it is the charity of its silence! Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done!’

Execution followed fast upon conviction, and Emmett suffered the penalty of high treason on the following day. The scene of his crime was chosen as the place of his punishment, and in Thomas Street the unfortunate gentleman met his fate with a calm and manly resignation, which elicited the sympathy of all who witnessed the painful occurrence.

If any sparks of disaffection lingered in the country, the mad outbreak of this deluded man finally extinguished them. The democratic feeling ten years before rife in the north of Ireland, and prevalent among the Presbyterians, had, long before Emmett’s emeute, been generally repudiated; a political change had been wrought rapidly in Ulster, and the educated and intelligent portion of the kingdom, whom American connection and French example influenced for a time, had detected the unsound principles of theoretic liberty, and disowned the rotten foundations upon which mob-governments are superstructed. When Russell, an early example of the republican school, attempted to operate coincidently with Emmett’s deluded attempt in the north, not half a dozen fools could be found to listen to delusory principles which had been tested and found wanting; and when he later suffered the extreme penalty of the law at Downpatrick, the utmost charity to which his quondam admirers reached was to declare that he was insane—a conclusion no doubt correct.

The End