insignificance. After two or three abortive efforts to again bring
forward reform, Grattan gave up the hopeless attempt, and retired
broken-hearted from public life. The "United Irishmen," in the first
instance an open political body, inaugurated and chiefly supported by
Protestants, now rapidly changed its character. Its leaders were now all
at heart republicans, and thoroughly impregnated with the leaven of the
French Revolution. It was suppressed and apparently broken up by the
Government in 1795, but was almost immediately afterwards reconstructed
and re-organized upon an immense scale. Every member was bound to take
an oath of secrecy, and its avowed object had become the erection by
force of a republican form of Government in Ireland. The rebellion was
bound to come now, and only accident could decide how soon.
[Illustration: RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. _(From a sketch from life.)_]
LIII.
'NINETY-EIGHT.
It was not long delayed. The Society of United Irishmen had now grown to
be little more than a mere nest of Jacobinism, filled with all the
turbulent and disaffected elements afloat in the whole country. Of this
society Wolfe Tone was the creator, guide, and moving spirit. Any one
who wishes to understand the movement rather as it originally took shape
than in the form which it assumed when accident had deprived it of all
its leaders, should carefully study his autobiography. As he reads its
transparent pages, brimful of all the foolish, generous enthusiasms of
the day, he will find it not a little hard, I think, to avoid some
amount of sympathy with the man, however much he may, and probably will,
reprobate the cause which he had so at heart.
Amongst the other leaders of the rising were Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a
brother of the Duke of Leinster, Arthur O'Connor, a nephew of Lord
Longueville, Thomas Addis Emmett, elder brother of the better known
Robert Emmett--whose attempted rebellion in 1803, was a sort of
postscript to this earlier one--and the two Sheare brothers. Compared to
Wolfe Tone, however, all these were mere amateurs in insurrection, and
pale and shadowy dabblers in rebellion. Lord Edward was an amiable
warm-hearted visionary, high-minded and gallant, but without much
ballast, and to a great degree under the guidance of others. The
mainspring of the whole movement, as has been seen, was Protestant and
Northern, and now that all hope of constitutional reform was gone, it
was resolved to appeal openly to force and to call in the aid of the
enemies of England to assist in the coming struggle.
Insane as the idea appears, looked back at from this distance, it
evidently was not viewed in the same light by those at hand. England and
France, it must be remembered, were at fierce war, and a descent upon
the Irish coast was then, as afterwards by Napoleon, regarded as a
natural and obvious part of the aggressive policy of the latter. In the
summer of 1796 Lord Edward Fitzgerald went to Paris to open negotiations
with the French Directory, and there met Wolfe Tone, who had been
induced some time before to leave Ireland in order to avoid arrest. Lord
Edward's Orleanist connection proving a bar to his negotiations, he left
Paris, and the whole of the arrangements devolved into the latter's
hand. He so fired Carnot, one of the Directory, and still more General
Hoche, with a belief of the feasibility of his scheme of descent, that,
in December of the same year a French fleet of forty-three vessels
containing fifteen thousand troops were actually despatched under
Hoche's command, Wolfe Tone being on board of one of them, which
vessels, slipping past the English fleet in the Channel, bore down upon
the Irish coast, and suddenly appeared off Cape Clear.
[Illustration: THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. _(From a lithograph after a sketch
by Hullmandel_.)]
All Ireland was thrown into the wildest panic. There were only a small
body of troops in the south and not a war-ship upon the coast. The
peasantry of the district, it is true, showed no disposition to rise,
but for all that had the French landed, nothing could have hindered them
from marching upon the capital. But--"those ancient and unsubsidised
allies of England upon which English ministers depend as much for saving
kingdoms as washerwomen for drying clothes,"--the winds again stood true
to their ancient alliance. The vessel with Hoche on board got separated
from the rest of the fleet, and while the troops were waiting for him to
arrive a violent gale accompanied with snow suddenly sprang up. The
fleet moved on to Bear Island, and tried to anchor there, but the storm
increased, the shelter was insufficient, the vessels dragged their
anchors, were driven out to sea and forced to return to Brest. The ship
containing Hoche had before this been forced to put back to France, and
so ended the first and by far the most formidable of the perils which
threatened England under this new combination.
One very unfortunate result of the narrowness of this escape was that
the Irish Executive--stung by the sense of their own supineness, and
utterly scared by the recent peril--threw themselves into the most
violent and arbitrary measures of repression. The Habeas Corpus Act had
already been suspended, and now martial law was proclaimed in five of
the northern counties at once. The committee of the United Irishmen was
seized, the office of their organ _The Northern Star_ destroyed, and an
immense number of people hurried into gaol. What was much more serious
throughout the proclaimed districts, the soldiery and militia regiments
which had been brought over from England were kept under no discipline,
but were allowed to ill-use the population almost at their own
discretion. Gross excesses were committed, whole villages being in some
instances plundered and the people turned adrift, while half hangings,
floggings and picketings, were freely resorted to to extort confessions
of concealed arms.
Against these measures--so calculated to precipitate a rising, and by
which the innocent and well-disposed suffered no less than the
guilty--Grattan, Ponsonby, and other members of the Opposition protested
vehemently. They also drew up and laid before the House a Bill of reform
which, if passed, would, they pledged themselves, effectually allay the
agitation and content all but the most irreconcilable. Their efforts,
however, were utterly vain. Many of the members of the House of Commons
were themselves in a state of panic, and therefore impervious to
argument. The motion was defeated by an enormous majority, a general
election was close at hand, and feeling the fruitlessness of further
struggle Grattan, as already stated, refused to offer himself for
re-election, and retired despairingly from the scene.
The commander-in-chief, Lord Carhampton and his subordinate General Lake
were the two men directly responsible for the misconduct of the troops
in Ireland. So disgraceful had become the license allowed that loud
complaints were made in both the English Houses of Parliament, in
consequence of which Lord Carhampton was recalled and Sir Ralph
Abercromby sent in his place. He more than endorsed the worst of the
accounts which had been forwarded. "Every cruelty that could be
committed by Cossacks or Calmucks," he states, "has been committed
here." "The manner in which the troops have been employed would ruin,"
he adds, "the best in Europe." He at once set himself to change the
system, to keep the garrison in the principal towns, and to forbid the
troops acting except under the immediate direction of a magistrate. The
Irish Executive however was in no mood to submit to these prudent
restrictions. Angry disputes broke out. Lord Camden, the
Lord-Lieutenant, vacillated from side to side, and the end was that in
April, 1797, Sir Ralph Abercromby indignantly resigned the command,
which then fell into General Lake's hands, and matters again went on
as before.
Meanwhile the failure of the French descent under Hoche, and the defeat
of the Dutch fleet at the battle of Camperdown in the autumn of 1797,
had determined Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the other chiefs of the
executive committee to attempt an independent rising. Wolfe Tone was
still in France, eagerly endeavouring to bring about a fresh expedition,
so that their councils had not even the advantage of his guidance. The
Government had full information of all their proceedings, being kept
well informed by spies, several of whom were actually enrolled in the
association. In March, 1798, a sudden descent was made upon the
executive committee, which had met at the house of a man called Bond,
and a number of delegates and several leaders arrested. Lord Edward,
however, received warning and went into concealment, and it was while in
hiding that he hastily concerted a scheme for a general rising, which
was now definitely fixed to take place upon the 24th of May.
[Illustration: LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. _(After a picture by Hamilton.)_]
Only a few days before this date his hiding-place was betrayed to the
Government by a man named Magan. A guard of soldiers was sent to arrest
him, and a desperate struggle took place, in the course of which the
captain of the guard was fatally stabbed, while Lord Edward himself
received a bullet on the shoulder from the effects of which he shortly
afterwards died in goal. Within a day or two of his arrest all the other
leaders in Dublin were also seized and thrown into prison.
The whole of the executive committee were thus removed at one blow, and
the conspiracy left without head. In estimating the hideous character
finally assumed by the rising this fact must never be forgotten. The
sickening deeds committed while it was at its height were committed by a
mass of ignorant men, maddened by months of oppression, and deprived of
their leaders at the very moment they most required their control.
In the meantime the 24th of May had come, and the rising had broken out.
The non-arrival of the daily mail-coaches was to be the signal, and
these were stopped and burnt by the insurgents in four different
directions at once. In Kildare and Meath scattered parties of soldiers
and yeomanry were attacked and killed, and at Prosperous the barracks
were set on fire, and the troops quartered in it all burnt or piked. In
Dublin prompt measures had been taken, and the more loyal citizens had
enrolled themselves for their own defence, so that no rising took place
there, the result being that the outlying insurgents found themselves
isolated. In the north especially, where the whole movement had taken
its rise, and where the revolutionists had long been organized, the
actual rising was thus of very trifling importance, and the whole thing
was easily stamped out within a week.
It was very different in Wexford. Here from the beginning the rising had
assumed a religious shape, and was conducted with indescribable
barbarity. Yeomanry corps and bodies of militia had been quartered in
the county for months, and many acts of tyranny had been committed.
These were now hideously avenged. Several thousand men and women, armed
chiefly with pikes and scythes, collected together on the hill of Oulart
under the guidance of a priest named Father John Murphy. They were
attacked by a small party of militia from Wexford, but defeating them,
burst into Ferns, where they burnt the bishop's palace, then hastened on
to Enniscorthy, which they took possession of, and a few days afterwards
appeared before the town of Wexford.
Here resistance was at first offered them by Colonel Maxwell, who was in
command of the militia regiments. Nearly all the Roman Catholics,
however under his orders deserted, the rest grew disorganized and fled,
and the end was that the militia departed and the rebels took possession
triumphantly of the town. It at once became the scene of horrible
outrages. Houses were plundered; many of the Protestant citizens
murdered; others dragged from their homes, and cruelly maltreated.
Bagenal Harvey, a United Irishman and a Protestant, who had been
imprisoned at Wexford by the Government, was released and elected
general of the rebels. He found himself, however, utterly unable to
control them. A camp had been formed upon Vinegar Hill, near.
Enniscorthy, and from it as a centre the whole district was overrun,
with the exception of New Ross, where most of the available troops had
been concentrated. The wretched Protestants, kept prisoners on Vinegar
Hill, were daily taken out in batches, and slaughtered in cold blood,
while at Scullabogue, after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the
rebels to take New Ross, the most frightful episode of the whole rising
occurred; a barn containing over a hundred and eighty Protestant
loyalists collected from the country round being set on fire, and all of
them perishing in the flames.
In the meanwhile troops were rapidly arriving from Dublin. Arklow and
New Ross had defended themselves gallantly, and the rebels had fallen
back from them repulsed. Vinegar Hill was attacked upon June 21st by
General Lake, and after a struggle the rebels fled precipitately, and
were slaughtered in great numbers. The day before this Father Roche and
the rebels under him were met outside Wexford and also put to flight
after hard fighting. Inside the town a horrible butchery was the same
day perpetrated by a body of ruffians upon over ninety Protestant
prisoners, who were slaughtered with great cruelty upon the bridge
leading to New Ross, and only the passionate intervention of a priest
named Corrin hindered the deaths of many more.
With the recapture of Wexford and Vinegar Hill the struggle ended. Such
of the rebels as had escaped the infuriated soldiery fled to hide
themselves in Wicklow and elsewhere. Father Michael Murphy--believed by
his followers to be bullet proof--had been already killed during the
attack on Arklow. Father Roche was hung by Lake's order over the bridge
at Wexford, the scene of the late massacres. So also was the unfortunate
Bagenal Harvey, the victim rather than the accomplice of the crimes of
others. Father John Murphy was caught and hung at Tallow, as were also
other priests in different parts of the country. The rising had been
just long enough, and just formidable enough, to awaken the utmost
terror and the most furious thirst for vengeance, yet not formidable
enough to win respect for itself from a military point of view. As a
result the retribution exacted was terrible; the scenes of violence
which followed being upon a scale which went far to cause even the
excesses committed by the rebels themselves to pale into insignificance.
Two final incidents, either of which a few months earlier might have
produced formidable results, brings the dismal story to an end. In
August, just after the rising had been definitely stamped out, General
Humbert with a little over a thousand French troops under his command
landed at Killala, where he was joined, if hardly reinforced, by a wild
mob of unarmed peasants. From Killala he advanced to Ballina, defeated
General Lake, who was sent against him, and moved on to Sligo. Shortly
afterwards, however, he found himself, after crossing the Shannon,
confronted with an overwhelming force under Lord Cornwallis, who had
recently succeeded Lord Camden, and held double offices of
Lord-Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief. Yielding to the inevitable,
Humbert surrendered at discretion, and he and his men were received with
due courtesy as prisoners of war. The account given by the bishop of
Killala who was kept prisoner while that town was occupied by the
French, will be found to be extremely well worth reading.
The last scene of the drama brings Wolfe Tone appropriately back upon
the gloomy stage. When General Humbert sailed for Killala a much larger
French force under General Hardi had remained behind at Brest. In
September this second detachment sailed, Wolfe Tone being on board the
principal vessel called the _Hoche_. Outside Lough Swilly they were
overtaken by an English squadron, and a desperate struggle ensued. The
smaller French vessels escaped, but the _Hoche_ was so riddled with shot
and shell as to be forced to surrender, and was towed by the victors
into Lough Swilly. Here the French officers including Wolfe Tone were
hospitably entertained at dinner by Lord Cavan. While at table Tone was
recognized by an old school friend, and was at once arrested and sent
prisoner to Dublin. A court martial followed, and despite his own plea
to be regarded as a French officer, and therefore, if condemned shot, he
was sentenced to be hung. In despair he tried to kill himself in prison,
but the wound though fatal, was not immediately so, and the sentence
would have been carried rigorously out but for the intervention of
Curran, who moved for a writ of Habeas Corpus on the plea that as the
courts of law were then sitting in Dublin, a court martial had no
jurisdiction. The plea was a mere technicality, but it produced the
required delay, and Wolfe Tone died quietly in prison.
LIV.
THE UNION.
By the month of August the last sparks of the rebellion of '98 had been
quenched. Martial law prevailed everywhere. The terror which the rising
had awakened was finding its vent in violent actions and still more
violent language, and Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant, was one of
the few who ventured to say that enough blood had been shed, and that
the hour for mercy had struck. The ferocity with which the end of the
contest had been waged by the rebels had aroused a feeling of
corresponding, or more than corresponding ferocity on the other side.
That men who a few months before had trembled to see all whom they loved
best exposed to the savagery of such a mob as had set fire to the barn
at Scullabogue, or murdered the prisoners at Rossbridge, should have
been filled with a fury which carried them far beyond the necessities of
the case is hardly perhaps surprising, but the result was to hurry them
in many instances into cruelties fully as great as those which they
intended to avenge.
It was at this moment, while the country was still racked and bleeding
at every pore from the effects of the recent struggle, that Pitt
resolved to carry out his long projected plan of a legislative Union.
Public opinion in Ireland may be said for the moment to have been dead.
The mass of the people were lying crushed and exhausted by their own
violence. Fresh from a contest waged with gun and pike and torch, a mere
constitutional struggle had probably little or no interest for them. The
popular enthusiasm which the earlier triumphs of the Irish Parliament
had awakened had all but utterly died away in a fratricidal struggle. To
the leaders of the late rebellion it was an object of open contempt, if
not indeed of actual aversion. Wolfe Tone, the ablest man by far on the
revolutionary side, had never weaned of pouring contempt upon it. In his
eyes it was the great opponent of progress, the venal slave which had
not only destroyed the chances of a successful outbreak, and whose
endeavour had been to keep Ireland under the heel of her tyrant. To him
the opposition as little deserved the name of patriot as the veriest
place-men. Grattan, throughout his long and noble career had been as
steadily loyal, and as steadily averse to any appeal to force as any
paid creature of the Government. To men who only wanted to break loose
from England altogether, to found an Irish republic as closely as
possible upon the model then offered for their imitation in France,
anything like mere constitutional opposition seemed not contemptible
merely, but ridiculous.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN, FINISHED THE YEAR OF THE
UNION, 1800.]
This explains how it was that no great burst of public feeling--such as
a few years before would have made the project of a Union all but
impossible--was now to be feared. Pitt had for a long time firmly fixed
his mind upon it as the object to be attained. He honestly believed the
existing state of things to be fraught with peril for England, and to
have in it formidable elements of latent danger, which a war or any
other sudden emergency might bring to the front. He knew too,
undoubtedly, that no opportunity equally favourable for carrying his
point was ever likely to recur again.
He accordingly now proceeded to take his measures for securing it with
the utmost care, and the most anxious selection of agents. Two opposite
sets of inducements were to be brought to bear upon the two contending
factions. To the Protestants, fresh from their terrible struggle, the
thought of a closer union with England seemed to promise greater
protection in case of any similar outbreak. Irish churchmen too had been
always haunted with a dread sooner or later of the disestablishment of
their Church, and a union, it was argued, with a country where
Protestants constituted the vast majority of the population, would
render that peril for ever impossible, and it was agreed that a special
clause to that effect should be incorporated in the Act of Union. To the
Roman Catholics a totally different set of inducements were brought
forward. The great bait was Emancipation, which they were privately
assured would never be carried as long as the Irish Parliament existed,
but might safely be conceded once it had ceased to exist. No actual
pledge was made to that effect, but there was unquestionably an
understanding, and Lord Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, was untiring
in his efforts to lull them into security upon this point.
So much discrepancy of statement still prevails upon the whole subject
that it is extremely difficult to ascertain what really was the
prevailing sentiment in Ireland at this time for and against the project
of a Union. In Ulster the proposal seems certainly to have been all but
unanimously condemned, and in Dublin, too, the opposition to it was
vehement and unhesitating, but in other parts of the country it seems to
have met with some support, especially in Galway and Tipperary. In
January, 1799, Parliament met, and the proposal was brought forward in a
speech from the throne, but encountered a violent opposition from all
the remaining members of the patriotic party. Grattan, who had returned
to Parliament for the express purpose, eloquently defended the rights of
the Irish legislature, and was supported by Sir John Parnell, by
Plunkett, and by all the more prominent members of the opposition. After
a debate which lasted nearly twenty-two hours, a division was called,
and the numbers were found to be equal; another fierce struggle, and
this time the Government were beaten by five; thus the proposal for the
time was lost.
Not for long though. Pitt had thoroughly made up his mind, and was bent
on carrying his point to a successful issue. Most of those who had voted
against the Union were dismissed from office, and after the prorogation
of Parliament, the Government set to work with a determination to secure
a majority before the next session. There was only one means of
effecting this, and that means was now employed. Eighty-five
boroughs--all of which were in the hands of private owners--would lose
their members if a Union were passed, and all these, accordingly, it was
resolved to compensate, and no less than a million and a quarter of
money was actually advanced for that purpose, while for owners less
easily reached by this means peerages, baronetcies, steps in the
peerage, and similar inducements, were understood to be forthcoming as
an equivalent.