Chapter LIII: And Last (8)

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.