A Popular History of Ireland Part 40

The close of the year 1795 saw France under the government of the Directory, with Carnot in the cabinet, and Pichegru, Jourdain, Moreau, Hoche, and Buonaparte at the head of its armies. This government, with some change of persons, lasted from October, 1795, to November, '99, when it was supplanted by the Consular Revolution. Within the compa.s.s of those four years lie the negotiations which were carried on and the three great expeditions which were fitted out by France and Holland, at the instance of the United Irishmen.

On the 1st of February, 1796, Tone, who had sailed from Belfast the previous June, arrived at Havre from New York, possessed of a hundred guineas and some useful letters of introduction. One of these letters, written in cipher, was from the French Minister at Philadelphia to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles Lacroix; another was to the American Minister in France, Mr.

Monroe, afterwards President of the United States, by whom he was most kindly received, and wisely advised, on reaching Paris. Lacroix received him courteously, and referred him to a subordinate called Madgett, but after nearly three months wasted in interviews and explanations, Tone, by the advice of Monroe, presented himself at the Luxembourg Palace, and demanded audience of the "Organizer of Victory." Carnot also listened to him attentively, asked and obtained his true name, and gave him another _rendezvous_. He was next introduced to Clarke (afterwards Duc de Feltre), Secretary at War, the son of an Irishman, whom he found wholly ignorant of Ireland; and finally, on the 12th of July, General Hoche, in the most frank and winning manner, introduced himself. At first the Directory proposed sending to Ireland no more than 5,000 men, while Tone pleaded for 20,000; but when Hoche accepted the command, he a.s.sured Tone he would go "in sufficient force." The "pacificator of La Vendee," as the young general was called--he was only thirty-two,--won at once the heart of the enthusiastic founder of the United Irishmen, and the latter seems to have made an equally favourable impression. He was at once presented with the commission of a _chef de brigade_ of infantry--a rank answering to that of colonel with us--and was placed as adjutant on the general's staff. Hoche was all ardour and anxiety; Carnot cheered him on by expressing his belief that it would be "a most brilliant operation;"

and certainly Tone was not the man to damp such expectations, or allow them to evaporate in mere complimentary a.s.surances.

During the autumn months the expedition was busily being fitted out at Brest, and the general head-quarters were at Rennes. The Directory, to satisfy themselves that all was as represented by Tone, had sent an agent of their own to Ireland, by whom a meeting was arranged on the Swiss frontier between Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Conor, Dr. McNevin, and Hoche. From this meeting--the secret of which he kept to himself--the young general returned in the highest spirits, and was kinder than ever to his adjutant. At length, early in December, all was ready, and on the 16th the Brest fleet stood out to sea; 17 sail of the line, 13 frigates, and 13 smaller s.h.i.+ps, carrying 15,000 picked troops, the _elite_ of "the Army of the Ocean," and abundance of artillery and munitions of war. Tone was in the _Indomptable_, 80 guns, commanded by a Canadian, named Bedout; Hoche and the Admiral in the frigate _Fraternite_; Grouchy, so memorable for the part he played then and afterwards, was second in command.

On the third morning, after groping about and losing each other in Atlantic fog, one-half the fleet (with the fatal exception of the _Fraternite_) found themselves close in with the coast of Kerry. They entered Bantry Bay, and came to anchor, ten s.h.i.+ps of war, and "a long line of dark hulls resting on the green water." Three or four days they lay dormant and idle, waiting for the General and Admiral; Bouvet, the Vice-Admiral, was opposed to moving in the absence of his chief; Grouchy was irresolute and nervous; but at length, on Christmas day, the council of war decided in favour of debarkation. The landing was to take place next morning; 6,500 veterans were prepared to step ash.o.r.e at daylight, but without their artillery, their military chest, and their general. Two hours beyond midnight Tone was roused from sleep by the wind, which he found blowing half a gale. Pacing the gallery of the _Indomptable_ till day dawned, he felt it rising louder and angrier, every hour. The next day it was almost a hurricane, and the Vice-Admiral's frigate, running under the quarter of the great 80-gun s.h.i.+p, ordered them to slip anchor and stand out to sea. The whole fleet was soon driven off the Irish coast; that part of it, in which Grouchy and Tone were embarked, made its entrance into Brest on New Year's day; the s.h.i.+p which carried Hoche and the Admiral, only arrived at La Roch.e.l.le on the 15th. The Directory and the General, so far from being discouraged by this failure, consoled themselves by the demonstration they had made, of the possibility of a great fleet pa.s.sing to and fro, in British waters, for nearly a month, without encountering a single British vessel of war. Not so the Irish negotiator; on him, light-hearted and daring as he was, the disappointment fell with crus.h.i.+ng weight; but he magnanimously carried Grouchy's report to Paris, and did his utmost to defend the unlucky general from a cabal which had been formed against him.

While Tone was reluctantly following his new chief to the Meuse and the Rhine--with a promise that the Irish expedition was delayed, not abandoned--another, and no less fortunate negotiator, was raising up a new ally for the same cause, in an unexpected quarter. The Batavian republic, which had risen in the steps of Pichegru's victorious army, in 1794, was now eager to imitate the example of France. With a powerful fleet, and an unemployed army, its chiefs were quite ready to listen to any proposal which would restore the maritime ascendancy of Holland, and bring back to the recollection of Europe the memory of the puissant Dutch republic. In this state of affairs, the new agent of the Irish Directory, Edward John Lewines, a Dublin attorney, a man of great ability and energy, addressed himself to the Batavian government. He had been sent abroad with very general powers, to treat with Holland, Spain, France, or any other government at war with England, for a loan of half a million sterling, and a sufficient auxiliary force to aid the insurrection.

During two months' stay at Hamburg, the habitual route in those days from the British ports to the continent, he had placed himself in communication with the Spanish agent there, and had, in forty days, received an encouraging answer from Madrid. On his way, probably to Spain, to follow up that fair prospect, he reached the Netherlands, and rapidly discovering the state of feeling in the Dutch, or as it was then called, the _Batavian_ republic, he addressed himself to the Directors, who consulted Hoche, by whom in turn Tone was consulted. Tone had a high opinion of Lewines, and at once proceeded with him to the Hague, where they were joined, according to agreement, by Hoche. The Dutch Committee of Foreign Affairs, the Commander-in-Chief, General Dandaels, and the Admiral, De Winter, entered heartily into the project. There were in the Texel 16 s.h.i.+ps of the line and 10 frigates, victualled for three months, with 15,000 men and 80 field guns on board. The only serious difficulty in the way was removed by the disinterestedness of Hoche; the French Foreign Minister having demanded that 5,000 French troops should be of the expedition, and that Hoche should command in chief; the latter, to conciliate Dandaels and the Dutch, undertook to withdraw the proposal, and gracefully yielded his own pretensions. All then was settled: Tone was to accompany Dandaels with the same rank he had in the Brest expedition, and Lewines to return, and remain, as "Minister-resident" at Paris. On the 8th of July, Tone was on board the flags.h.i.+p, the _Vryheid_, 74 guns, in the Texel, and "only waiting for a wind," to lead another navy to the aid of his compatriots.

But the winds, "the only unsubsidized allies of England,"

were strangely adverse. A week, two, three, four, five, pa.s.sed heavily away, without affording a single day in which that mighty fleet could make an offing. Sometimes for an hour or two it s.h.i.+fted to the desired point, the sails were unclewed and the anchors shortened, but then, as if to torture the impatient exiles on board, it veered back again and settled steadily in the fatal south-west.

At length, at the end of August, the provisions being nearly consumed, and the weather still unfavourable, the Dutch Directory resolved to land the troops and postpone the expedition. De Winter, as is known, subsequently found an opportunity to work out, and attack Lord Duncan, by whom he was badly beaten. Thus ended Irish hopes of aid from Holland. The indomitable Tone rejoined his chief on the Rhine, where, to his infinite regret, Hoche died the following month--September 18th, 1797--of a rapid consumption, accelerated by cold and carelessness. "Hoche,"

said Napoleon to Barry O'Meara at Saint Helena, "was one of the first generals France ever produced. He was brave, intelligent, abounding in talent, decisive and penetrating.

Had he landed in Ireland, he would have succeeded. He was accustomed to civil war, had pacified La Vendee, and was well adapted for Ireland. He had a fine, handsome figure, a good address, was prepossessing and intriguing."

The loss of such a patron, who felt himself, according to Tone's account, especially bound to follow up the object of separating Ireland from England, was a calamity greater and more irreparable than the detention of one fleet or the dispersion of the other.

The third expedition, in promoting which Tone and Lewines bore the princ.i.p.al part, was decided upon by the French Directory, immediately after the conclusion of peace with Austria, in October, 1797. The decree for the formation of "the Army of England," named Buonaparte Commander-in- Chief, with Desaix as his second. Buonaparte consulted Clarke as to who he most confided in among the numerous Irish refugees then in Paris--there were some twenty or thirty, all more or less known, and more or less in communication with the Directory--and Clarke answered at once, "Tone, of course." Tone, with Lewines, the one in a military, the other in an amba.s.sadorial capacity, had frequent interviews with the young conqueror of Italy, whom they usually found silent and absorbed, always attentive, sometimes asking sudden questions betraying great want of knowledge of the British Islands, and occasionally, though rarely, breaking out into irresistible invectives against Jacobinism and the English system, both of which he so cordially detested. Every a.s.surance was given by the General, by the Directors, by Merlin du Douai, Barras, and Talleyrand especially, that the expedition against England would never be abandoned.

Tone, in high spirits as usual, joined the division under the command of his countryman, General Kilmaine, and took up his quarters at Havre, where he had landed without knowing a soul in France two years before.

The winter wore away in busy preparations at Havre, at Brest, and at La Roch.e.l.le,--and, which seemed mysterious to the Irish exiles--at Toulon. All the resources of France, now without an enemy on the Continent, were put forth in these preparations. But it soon appeared they were not put forth for Ireland. On the 20th of May, 1798--within three days of the outbreak in Dublin, Wexford, and Kildare--Buonaparte sailed with the _elite_ of all that expedition for Alexandria, and "the Army of England"

became, in reality, "the Army of Egypt."

The bitterness, the despondency, and desperation which seized on the Irish leaders in France, and on the rank and file of the United Irishmen at home, on receiving this intelligence are sufficiently ill.u.s.trated in the subsequent attempts under Humbert and Bompart, and the partial, ineffectual risings in Leinster, Ulster, and Connaught, during the summer and autumn of 1798. After all their high hopes from France and her allies, this was what it had come to at last! A few frigates, with three or four thousand men, were all that could be spared for the succour of a kingdom more populous than Egypt and Syria combined; the granary of England, and the key of her Atlantic position. It might have been some comfort to the family of Tone to have read, thirty years afterwards, in their American asylum, or for the aged Lewines to have read in the Parisian retreat in which he died, the memorable confession of Napoleon at Saint Helena: "If instead of the expedition to Egypt, I had undertaken that to Ireland, what," he asked, "could England do now? On such chances," he mournfully added, "depend the destinies of empires!"

CHAPTER XV.

THE INSURRECTION OF 1798.

It is no longer matter of a.s.sertion merely, but simple matter of fact, that the English and Irish ministers of George III. regarded the insurrectionary movement of the United Irishmen as at once a pretext and a means for effecting a legislative union between the two countries.

Lord Camden, the Viceroy who succeeded Lord Fitzwilliam in March, '95--with Mr. Pelham as his Chief Secretary, in a letter to his relative, the Hon. Robert Stewart, afterwards Lord Castlereagh, announced this policy, in unmistakable terms, so early as 1793; and all the official correspondence published of late years, concerning that period of British and Irish history, establishes the fact beyond the possibility of denial.

Such being the design, it was neither the wish nor the interest of the Government, that the insurrection should be suppressed, unless the Irish const.i.tution could be extinguished with it. To that end they proceeded in the coercive legislation described in a previous chapter; to that end they armed with irresponsible power the military officers and the oligarchical magistracy; with that view they quartered those yeomanry regiments, which were known to be composed of Orangemen, on the wretched peasantry of the most Catholic counties, while the corps in which Catholics or United Irishmen were most numerous, were sent over to England, in exchange for Scotch fencibles and Welsh cavalry. The outrages committed by all these volunteer troops, but above all by the Orange yeomanry of the country, were so monstrous, that the gallant and humane Sir John Moore exclaimed, "If I were an Irishman, I would be a rebel!"

It was, indeed, impossible for any man, however obscure, or however eminent, to live longer in the country, without taking sides. Yet the choice was at best a hard and unhappy one. On the one side was the Castle, hardly concealing its intention of goading on the people, in order to rob them of their Parliament; on the other was the injured mult.i.tude, bound together by a secret system which proved in reality no safeguard against traitors in their own ranks, and which had been placed by its Protestant chiefs under the auspices of an infidel republic. Between the two courses men made election according to their bias or their necessities, or as they took local or general, political or theological views of the situation. Both Houses of the legislature unanimously, sustained the government against the insurrection; as did the judges, the bar, and the Anglican clergy and bishops. The Presbyterian body were in the beginning all but unanimous for a republican revolution and the French alliance; the great majority of the Catholic peasantry were, as the crisis increased, driven into the same position, while all their bishops and a majority of the Catholic aristocracy, adhered to that which they, with the natural tendency of their respective orders, considered the side of religion and authority. Thus was the nation sub-divided within itself; Protestant civilian from Protestant ecclesiastic, Catholic layman from Catholic priest, tenant from lord, neighbour from neighbour, father from son, and friend from friend.

During the whole of '97, the opposing parties were in a ferment of movement and apprehension. As the year wore on, the administration, both English and Irish, began to feel that the danger was more formidable than they had foreseen. The timely storm which had blown Grouchy out of Bantry Bay, the previous Christmas, could hardly be reckoned on again, though the settled hostility of the French government knew no change. Thoroughly well informed by their legion of spies both on the Continent and in Ireland, every possible military precaution was taken.

The Lord Lieutenant's proclamation for disarming the people, issued in May, was rigorously enforced by General Johnstone in the South, General Hutchinson in the West, and Lord Lake in the North. Two hundred thousand pikes and pike-heads were said to have been discovered or surrendered during the year, and several thousand firelocks.

The yeomanry, and English and Scotch corps amounted to 35,000 men, while the regular troops were increased to 50,000 and subsequently to 80,000, including three regiments of the Guards. The defensive works at Cork, and other vulnerable points were strengthened at an immense cost; the "Pigeon House" fort, near Dublin, was enlarged, for the city itself was p.r.o.nounced by General Vallancy, Colonel Packenham, and other engineer authorities dangerously weak, if not wholly untenable. A system of telegraphic signals was established from all points of the coast with the Capital, and every precaution taken against the surprise of another French invasion.

During the summer a.s.size, almost every considerable town and circuit had its state trial. The sheriffs had been carefully selected beforehand by the Castle, and the juries were certain to be of "the right sort," under the auspices of such sheriffs. Immense sums in the aggregate were contributed by the United Irish for the defence of their a.s.sociates; at the Down a.s.sizes alone, not less than seven hundred or eight hundred guineas were spent in fees and retainers; but at the close of the term, Mr.

Beresford was able to boast to his friend Lord Auckland, that but one of all the accused had escaped the penalty of death or banishment! The military tribunals, however, did not wait for the idle formalities of the civil courts.

Soldiers and civilians, yeomen and townsmen, against whom the informer pointed his finger, were taken out, and summarily executed. Ghastly forms hung upon the thick-set gibbets, not only in the market places of country towns, and before the public prisons, but on all the bridges of the metropolis. Many of the soldiers, in every military district were shot weekly and almost daily for real or alleged complicity with the rebels. The horrid torture of picketing, and the blood-stained lash, were constantly resorted to, to extort accusations or confessions. Over all these atrocities the furious and implacable spirit of Lord Clare presided in Council, and the equally furious and implacable Luttrel, Lord Carhampton, as Commander-in-Chief. All moderate councils were denounced as nothing short of treason, and even the elder Beresford, the Privy Counsellor, was compelled to complain of the violence of his n.o.ble a.s.sociates, and his inability to restrain the ferocity of his own nearest relatives-- meaning probably his son John Claudius, and his son-in-law, Sir George Hill.

It was while this spirit was abroad, a spirit as destructive as ever animated the Councils of Sylla or Marius in Old Rome, or prompted the decrees of Robespierre or Marat in France, that the genius and courage of one man redeemed the lost reputation of the law, and upheld against all odds the sacred claims of personal liberty. This man was John Philpot Curran, the most dauntless of advocates, one of the truest and bravest of his race. Although a politician of the school of Grattan, and wholly untainted with French principles, he identified himself absolutely with his unhappy clients, "predoomed to death." The genius of patriotic resistance which seemed to have withdrawn from the Island with Grattan's secession from Parliament, now re-appeared in the last place where it might have been expected--in those courts of death, rather than of justice--before those predetermined juries, besides the hopeless inmates of the crowded dock, personified in the person of Curran. Often at midnight, amid the clash of arms, his wonderful pleadings were delivered; sometimes, as in Dublin, where the court rooms adjoined the prisons, the condemned, or the confined, could hear, in their cells, his piercing accents breaking the stillness of the early morning, pleading for justice and mercy--pleading always with superhuman perseverance, but almost always in vain. Neither menaces of arrest, nor threats of a.s.sa.s.sination, had power to intimidate that all-daring spirit; nor, it may be safely said, can the whole library of human history present us a form of heroism superior in kind or degree to that which this ill.u.s.trious advocate exhibited during nearly two years, when he went forth daily, with his life in his hand, in the holy hope to s.n.a.t.c.h some human victim from the clutch of the destroyer thirsting for his blood.

In November, '97, some said from fear of personal consequences, some from official pressure in a high quarter, Lord Carhampton resigned the command of the forces, and Sir Ralph Abercromby was appointed in his stead. There could not be a more striking ill.u.s.tration of the system of terror patronized by government than was furnished in the case of Sir Ralph as Commander-in- Chief. That distinguished soldier, with his half century of services at his back, had not been a week in Dublin before he discovered the weakness of the Viceroy, and the violence of his princ.i.p.al advisers, the Chancellor, the Speaker, Lord Castlereagh and the Beresfords. Writing in confidence to his son, he says, "The abuses of all kinds I found here can scarcely be believed or enumerated."

The instances he cites of such abuses are sufficiently horrible to justify the strong language which brought down on his head so much hostility, when he declared in his proclamation of February '98, that the Irish army was "formidable to every one but the enemy." These well-known opinions were so repugnant to the Castle policy, that that party held a caucus in the Speaker's Chambers, at which it was proposed to pa.s.s a vote of censure in Parliament on the General, whom they denounced as "a sulky mule," "a Scotch beast," and by other similar names. Though the Parliamentary censure dropped, they actually compelled Lord Camden to call on him to retract his magnanimous order. To this humiliation the veteran stooped "for the sake of the King's service," but at the same time he proffered his resignation. After two months'

correspondence, it was finally accepted, and the soldier who was found too jealous of the rights of the people to be a fit instrument of their destruction, escaped from his high position, not without a profound sentiment of relief. His verdict upon the barbarous policy pursued in his time was always expressed, frankly and decisively.

His entire correspondence, private and public, bears one and the same burthen--the violence, cruelty, and tyranny of Lord Camden's chief advisers, and the pitiful weakness of the Viceroy himself. Against the infamous plan of letting loose a l.u.s.tful and brutal soldiery to live at "free quarters" on a defenceless and disarmed people--an outrage against which Englishmen had taken perpetual security at _their_ revolution, as may be seen in "the Bill of Rights," he struggled during his six months'

command, but with no great success. The plan, with all its horrors, was upheld by the Lord-Lieutenant, and more than any other cause, precipitated the rebellion which exploded at last, just as Sir Ralph was allowed to retire from the country. His temporary successor, Lord Lake, was troubled with no such scruples as the gallant old Scotsman.

Events followed each other in the first months of 1798, fast and furiously. Towards the end of February, Arthur O'Conor, Father James Quigley, the brothers John and Benjamin Binns, were arrested at Margate on their way to France; on the 6th of March, the _Press_ newspaper, the Dublin organ of the party, as the _Star_ had been the Ulster organ, was seized by Government, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and William Sampson being at the time in the office. On the 12th of March, on the information of the traitor, Thomas Reynolds, the Leinster delegates were seized in conclave, with all their papers, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Bridge Street, Dublin. On the same information. Addis Emmet and Dr. McNevin were taken in their own houses, and Sampson in the north of England: of all the executive, Lord Edward alone escaping those sent in search of him. This was, as Tone notes in his journal, on the ill news reaching France, "a terrible blow." O'Conor's arrest in Kent, Sampson's in Carlisle, and the other arrests in Belfast and Dublin, proved too truly that treason was at work, and that the much-prized oath of secrecy was no protection whatever against the devices of the Castle and the depravity of its secret agents. The extent to which that treason extended, the number of a.s.sociates who were in the pay of their deadly enemies, was never known to the United Irish leaders; time has, however, long since "revealed the secrets of the prison-house," and we know now, that men they trusted with all their plans and hopes, such as McNally and McGucken, were quite as deep in the conspiracy to destroy them as Mr. Reynolds and Captain Armstrong.

The most influential members of the Dublin Society remaining at large contrived to correspond with each other, or to meet by stealth after the arrest at Bond's.

The vacancies in the Executive were filled up by the brothers John and Henry Sheares, both barristers, sons of a wealthy Cork banker, and former member of Parliament, and by Mr. Lawless, a surgeon. For two months longer these gentlemen continued to act in concert with Lord Edward, who remained undetected, notwithstanding all the efforts of Government, from the 12th of March till the 19th of May following. During those two months the new directors devoted themselves with the utmost energy to hurrying on the armament of the people, and especially to making proselytes among the militia, where the gain of one man armed and disciplined was justly accounted equal to the enlistment of three or four ordinary adherents.

This part of their plan brought the brothers Sheares into contact, among others, with Captain John Warneford Armstrong, of the Queen's County Yeomanry, whom they supposed they had won over, but who was, in reality, a better-cla.s.s spy, acting under Lord Castlereagh's instructions. Armstrong cultivated them sedulously, dined at their table, echoed their opinions, and led the credulous brothers on to their destruction. All at last was determined on; the day of the rising was fixed--the 23rd day of May--and the signal was to be the simultaneous stoppage of the mail coaches, which started nightly from the Dublin post-office, to every quarter of the kingdom.

But the counterplot antic.i.p.ated the plot. Lord Edward, betrayed by a person called Higgins, proprietor of the _Freeman's Journal_, was taken on the 19th of May, after a desperate struggle with Majors Swan and Sirr, and Captain Ryan, in his hiding-place in Thomas Street; the brothers Sheares were arrested in their own house on the morning of the 21st, while Surgeon Lawless escaped from the city, and finally from the country, to France. Thus, for the second time, was the insurrection left without a head; but the organization had proceeded too far to be any longer restrained, and the Castle, moreover, to use the expression of Lord Castlereagh, "took means to make it explode."

The first intelligence of the rebellion was received in Dublin on the morning of the 24th of May. At Rathfarnham, within three miles of the city, 500 insurgents attacked Lord Ely's yeomanry corps with some success, till Lord Roden's dragoons, hastily despatched from the city, compelled them to retreat, with the loss of some prisoners and two men killed, whom Mr. Beresford saw the next day, literally "_cut to pieces_--a horrid sight." At Dunboyne the insurgents piked an escort of the Reay Fencibles (Scotch) pa.s.sing through their village, and carried off their baggage. At Naas, a large popular force attacked the garrison, consisting of regulars, Ancient Britons (Welsh), part of a regiment of dragoons, and the Armagh Militia; the attack was renewed three times with great bravery, but finally, discipline, as it always will, prevailed over mere numbers, and the a.s.sailants were repulsed with the loss of 140 of their comrades. At Prosperous, where they cut off to a man a strong garrison composed of North Cork Militia, under Captain Swayne, the rising was more successful. The commander in this exploit was Dr.

Esmonde, brother of the Wexford baronet, who, being betrayed by one of his own subalterns, was the next morning arrested at breakfast in the neighbourhood, and suffered death at Dublin on the 14th of the following month.

There could hardly be found a more unfavourable field for a peasant war than the generally level and easily accessible county of Kildare, every parish of which is within a day's march of Dublin. From having been the residence of Lord Edward, it was, perhaps, one of the most highly organized parts of Leinster, but as it had the misfortune to be represented by Thomas Reynolds, as county delegate, it laboured under the disadvantage of having its organization better known to the government than any other. We need hardly be surprised, therefore, to find that the military operations in this county were all over in ten days or a fortnight; when those who had neither surrendered nor fallen, fell back into Meath or Connaught, or effected a junction with the Wicklow rebels in their mountain fastnesses. Their struggle, though so brief, had been creditable for personal bravery. Attacked by a numerous cavalry and militia under General Wilford, by 2,500 men, chiefly regulars, under General Dundas, and by 800 regulars brought up by forced marches from Limerick, under Sir James Duff, they showed qualities, which, if well directed, would have established for their possessors a high military reputation. At Monastereven they were repulsed with loss, the defenders of the town being in part Catholic loyalists, under Captain Ca.s.sidy; at Rathangan, they were more successful, taking and holding the town for several days; at Clane, the captors of Prosperous were repulsed; while at Old Killcullen, their a.s.sociates drove back General Dundas' advance, with the loss of 22 regulars and Captain Erskine killed. Sir James Duff's wanton cruelty in sabring and shooting down an unarmed mult.i.tude on the Curragh, won him the warm approval of the extermination party in the Capital, while Generals Wilford and Dundas narrowly escaped being reprimanded for granting a truce to the insurgents under Aylmer, and accepting of the surrender of that leader and his companions. By the beginning of June the six Kildare encampments of insurgents were totally dispersed, and their most active officers in prison or fugitives west or south.

By a preconcerted arrangement, the local chiefs of the insurrection in Dublin and Meath, gathered with their men on the third day after the outbreak, at the historic hill of Tara. Here they expected to be joined by the men of Cavan, Longford, Louth and Monaghan; but before the northerners reached the trysting place, three companies of the Reay Fencibles, under Captain McClean, the Kells and Navan Yeomanry, under Captain Preston, (afterwards Lord Tara,) and a troop of cavalry under Lord Fingal, surrounded the royal hill. The insurgents, commanded by Gils.h.i.+ne and other leaders, intrenched themselves in the graveyard which occupies the summit of Tara, and stoutly defended their position. Twenty-six of the Highlanders and six of the Yeomanry fell in the a.s.sault, but the bullet reached farther than the pike, and the defenders were driven, after a sharp action, over the brow of the eminence, and many of them shot or sabred down as they fled.

Southward from the Capital the long pent-up flame of disaffection broke out on the same memorable day, May 23rd. At Dunlavin, an abortive attempt on the barrack revealed the fact that many of the Yeomanry were thoroughly with the insurgents. Hardly had the danger from without pa.s.sed over, when a military inquiry was improvised. By this tribunal, nineteen Wexford, and nine Kildare Yeomanry, were ordered to be shot, and the execution of the sentence followed immediately on its rending. At Blessington, the town was seized, but a nocturnal attack on Carlow was repulsed with great loss. In this last affair, the rebels had _rendezvoused_ in the domain of Sir Edward Crosbie, within two miles of the town. Here arms were distributed and orders given by their leader, named Roche. Silently and quickly they reached the town they hoped to surprise.

But the regular troops, of which the garrison was chiefly composed, were on the alert, though their preparations were made full as silently. When the peasantry emerged from Tullow Street, into an exposed s.p.a.ce, a deadly fire was opened upon them from the houses on all sides. The regulars, in perfect security themselves, and abundantly supplied with ammunition, shot them down with deadly unerring aim. The people soon found there was nothing for it but retreat, and carrying off as best they could their killed and wounded, they retired sorely discomfited.

For alleged complicity in this attack, Sir Edward Crosbie was shortly afterward arrested, tried and executed. There was not a shadow of proof against him; but he was known to sympathize with the sufferings of his countrymen, to have condemned in strong language the policy of provocation, and that was sufficient. He paid with the penalty of his head for the kindness and generosity of his heart.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE INSURRECTION OF 1798--THE WEXFORD INSURRECTION.

The most formidable insurrection, indeed the only really formidable one, broke out in the county of Wexford, a county in which it was stated there were not 200 sworn United Irishmen, and which Lord Edward Fitzgerald had altogether omitted from his official list of counties organized in the month of February. In that brief interval, the Government policy of provocation had the desired effect, though the explosion was of a nature to startle those who occasioned it.

Wexford, geographically, is a peculiar county, and its people are a peculiar people. The county fills up the south-eastern corner of the island, with the sea south-east, the river Barrow to the west, and the woods and mountains of Carlow and Wicklow to the north. It is about forty miles long by twenty-four broad; the surface undulating and rising into numerous groups of detached hills, two or more of which are generally visible from each conspicuous summit. Almost in the midst flows the river Slaney, springing from a lofty Wicklow peak, which sends down on its northern slope the better known river Liffey. On the estuary of the Slaney, some seventy miles south of Dublin, stands the county town, the traveller journeying to which by the usual route then taken, pa.s.sed in succession through Arklow, Gorey, Ferns, Enniscorthy, and other places of less consequence, though familiar enough in the fiery records of 1798. North-westward, the only road in those days from Carlow and Kilkenny, crossed the Blackstairs at Scollagh-gap, entering the county at Newtownbarry, the ancient Bunclody; westward, some twenty miles, on the river Barrow, stands New Ross, often mentioned in this history, the road from which to the county town pa.s.ses through Scullabogue and Taghmon (_Ta'mun_), the former at the foot of Carrickbyrne rock, the latter at the base of what is rather hyperbolically called "the _mountain_ of Forth." South and west of the town, towards the estuary of Waterford, lie the baronies of Forth and Bargy, a great part of the population of which, even within our own time, spoke the language Chaucer and Spenser wrote, and retained many of the characteristics of their Saxon, Flemish, and Cambrian ancestors. Through this singular district lay the road towards Duncannon fort, on Waterford harbour, with branches running off to Bannow, Ballyhack, and Dunbrody. We shall, therefore, speak of all the localities we may have occasion to mention as on or near one of the four main roads of the county, the Dublin, Carlow, Boss, and Waterford roads.

The population of this territory was variously estimated in 1798, at 150,000, 180,000, and 200,000. They were, generally speaking, a comfortable and contented peasantry, for the Wexford landlords were seldom absentees, and the farmers held under them by long leases and reasonable rents. There were in the country few great lords, but there was little poverty and no pauperism. In such a soil, the secret societies were almost certain to fail, and if it had not been for the diabolical experiments of Lord Kingsborough's North Cork Militia, it is very probable that that orderly and thrifty population would have seen the eventful year we are describing pa.s.s over their homes without experiencing any of the terrible trials which accompanied it. But it was impossible for human nature to endure the provocations inflicted upon this patient and prosperous people. The pitch-cap and the triangle were resorted to on the slightest and most frivolous pretexts. "A sergeant of the North Cork Militia," says Mr. Hay, the county historian, "nicknamed, _Tom the Devil_, was most ingenious in devising new modes of torture. Moistened gunpowder was frequently rubbed into the hair cut close and then set on fire; some, while shearing for this purpose, had the tips of their ears snipt off; sometimes an entire ear, and often both ears were completely cut off; and many lost part of their noses during the like preparation. But, strange to tell,"

adds Mr. Hay, "these atrocities were publicly practised without the least reserve in open day, and no magistrate or officer ever interfered, but shamefully connived at this extraordinary mode of quieting the people! Some of the miserable sufferers on these shocking occasions, or some of their relations or friends, actuated by a principle of retaliation, if not of revenge, cut short the hair of several persons whom they either considered as enemies or suspected of having pointed them out as objects for such desperate treatment. This was done with a view that those active citizens should fall in for a little experience of the like discipline, or to make the fas.h.i.+on of short hair so general that it might no longer be a mark of party distinction." This was the origin of the nickname "Croppy," by which, during the remainder of the insurrection, it was customary to designate all who were suspected or proved to be hostile to, the government.

Among the magistracy of the county were several persons who, whatever might have been their conduct in ordinary times, now showed themselves utterly unfit to be entrusted with those large discretionary powers which Parliament had recently conferred upon all justices of the peace.

One of these magistrates, surrounded by his troops, perambulated the county with an executioner, armed with all the equipments of his office; another carried away the lopped hands and fingers of his victims, with which he stirred his punch in the carousals that followed every expedition. At Carnew, midway between the Dublin and Carlow roads, on the second day of the insurrection, twenty-eight prisoners were brought out to be shot at as targets in the public ball alley; on the same day Enniscorthy witnessed its first execution for treason, and the neighbourhood of Ballaghkeen was harried by Mr.

Jacob, one of the magistrates whose method of preserving the peace of the county has been just referred to. The majority of the bench, either weakly or willingly, sanctioned these atrocities, but some others, among them a few of the first men in the county, did not hesitate to resist and condemn them. Among these were Mr. Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey of Bargy Castle, Mr. Fitzgerald of Newpark, and Mr. John Henry Colclough of Tintern Abbey; but all these gentlemen were arrested on Sat.u.r.day, the 26th of May--the same day, or more strictly speaking, the eve of the day on which the Wexford outbreak occurred.

On the day succeeding these arrests, being Whitsunday, Father John Murphy, parish priest of Kilcormick, the son of a small farmer of the neighbourhood, educated in Spain, on coming to his little wayside chapel, found it laid in ashes. To his flock, as they surrounded him in the open air, he boldly preached that it would be much better for them to die in a fair field than to await the tortures inflicted by such magistrates as Archibald Jacob, Hunter Gowan, and Hawtrey White. He declared his readiness to share their fate, whatever it might be, and in response, about 2,000 of the country people gathered in a few hours upon Oulart Hill, situated about half-way between Enniscorthy and the sea, and eleven miles north of Wexford.

Here they were attacked on the afternoon of the same day by the North Cork Militia, Colonel Foote, the s.h.i.+lmalier Yeoman cavalry, Colonel Le Hunte, and the Wexford cavalry.

The rebels, strong in their position, and more generally accustomed to the use of arms than persons in their condition in other parts of the country, made a brave and successful stand. Major Lambert, the Hon. Captain De Courcy (brother of Lord Kinsale), and some other officers, fell before the long-sh.o.r.e guns of the s.h.i.+lmalier fowlers; of the North Cork detachment, only the colonel, a sergeant, and two or three privates escaped; the cavalry, at the top of their speed, galloped back to the county town.

The people were soon thoroughly aroused. Another popular priest of the diocese, Michael Murphy, on reaching Gorey, finding his chapel also rifled, and the altar desecrated, turned his horse's head and joined the insurgents, who had gathered on Kilthomas hill, near Carnew. Signal fires burned that night on all the eminences of the county, which seemed as if they had been designed for so many watch-towers; horns resounded; hors.e.m.e.n galloped far and near; on the morrow of Whitsunday all Wexford arose, animated with the pa.s.sions and purposes of civil war.

On the 28th, Ferns, Camolin, and Enniscorthy were taken by the insurgents; the latter, after an action of four hours, in which a captain, two lieutenants, and eighty of the local yeomanry fell. The survivors fled to Wexford, which was as rapidly as possible placed in a state of defence. The old walls and gates were still in good repair, and 300 North Cork, 200 Donegal, and 700 local militia ought to have formed a strong garrison within such ramparts, against a mere tumultuous peasantry. The yeomen, however, thought otherwise, and two of the three imprisoned popular magistrates were sent to Enniscorthy to exhort and endeavour to disperse the insurgents. One of them only returned, the other, Mr. Fitzgerald, joined the rebels, who, continuing their march, were allowed to take possession of the county town without striking a blow. Mr. Bagenal Harvey, the magistrate still in prison, they insisted on making their Commander-in-Chief; a gentleman of considerable property, by no means dest.i.tute of courage, but in every other respect quite unequal to the task imposed upon him. After a trial of his generals.h.i.+p at the battle of Ross, he was transferred to the more pacific office of President of the Council, which continued to sit and direct operations from Wexford, with the co-operation of a sub-committee at Enniscorthy. Captain Matthew Keogh, a retired officer of the regular army, aged but active, was made governor of the town, in which a couple of hundred armed men were left as his guards.