FIRST REBELLION.
In our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground rendered memorable,
not only by historical events, but more recently by the disastrous
scenes of the rebellion, by its horrors or its calamities. On reaching
Westport House, we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhood
which had become the very centre of the final military operations,
those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and which, to the people
of England, and still more to the people of the continent, had offered
a character of interest wanting to the inartificial movements of Father
Roche and Bagenal Harvey.
In the year 1798, there were two great popular insurrections in Ireland.
It is usual to talk of the Irish rebellion, as though there had been
one rebellion and no more; but it must satisfy the reader of the
inaccuracy pervading the common reports of this period, when he hears
that there were two separate rebellions, separate in time, separate
in space, separate by the character of their events, and separate even
as regarded their proximate causes. The first of these arose in the
vernal part of summer, and wasted its fury upon the county of Wexford,
in the _centre_ of the kingdom. The second arose in the autumn, and
was confined entirely to the _western_ province of Connaught. Each,
resting (it is true) upon causes ultimately the same, had yet its own
separate occasions and excitements; for the first arose upon a premature
explosion from a secret society of most subtle organization; and the
second upon the encouragement of a French invasion. And each of these
insurrections had its own separate leaders and its own local agents.
The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries
on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for
three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by
a most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general
predisposing causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases;
but the exciting causes of the moment were different in each. And,
finally, they were divided by a complete interval of two months.
One very remarkable feature there was, however, in which these two
separate rebellions of 1798 coincided; and _that_ was, the narrow
range, as to time, within which each ran its course. Neither of them
outran the limits of one _lunar_ month. It is a fact, however startling,
that each, though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequent
in warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed through
all the stages of growth, maturity, and final extinction within one
single revolution of the moon. For all the rebel movements, subsequent
to the morning of Vinegar Hill, are to be viewed not at all in the
light of manoeuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in the
light of final struggles for self-preservation made in the spirit of
absolute despair, as regarded the original purposes of the war, or,
indeed, as regarded any purposes whatever beyond that of instant safety.
The solitary object contemplated was, to reach some district lonely
enough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested dispersion.
A few pages will recapitulate these two civil wars. I begin with the
first. The war of American separation touched and quickened the dry
bones that lay waiting as it were for life through the west of
Christendom. The year 1782 brought that war to its winding up; and the
same year it was that called forth Grattan and the Irish volunteers.
These _volunteers_ came forward as allies of England against French
and Spanish invasion; but once embattled, what should hinder them from
detecting a flaw in their commission, and reading it as valid against
England herself? In that sense they _did_ read it. That Ireland had
seen her own case dimly reflected in that of America, and that such
a reference was stirring through the national mind, appears from a
remarkable fact in the history of the year which followed. In 1783,
a haughty petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the Roman
Catholics, by an association that arrogated to itself the style and
title of a _congress_. No man could suppose that a designation so
ominously significant had been chosen by accident; and by the English
government it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace.
What came next? The French revolution. All flesh moved under that
inspiration. Fast and rank now began to germinate the seed sown for
the ten years preceding in Ireland; too fast and too rankly for the
policy that suited her situation. Concealment or delay, compromise or
temporizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by the fiery
temperament of Ireland, had it not been through the extraordinary
composition of that secret society into which the management of her
affairs now began to devolve. In the year 1792, as we are told,
commenced, and in 1795 was finished, the famous association of _United
Irishmen_. By these terms, _commenced_ and _finished_, we are to
understand, not the purposes or the arrangements of their conspiracy
against the existing government, but that network of organization,
delicate as lace for ladies, and strong as the harness of artillery
horses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knitting
the strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions.
This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a complete history of these
times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this
subtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding in
proportion to the extent of the particular county, and by intermediate
links ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated, and in such
nice interdependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwards
and downwards, laterally or obliquely, of any impulse whatever; and
yet so effectually shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two or
three individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself, by
whom he communicated with those above his head or below his feet. This
organization, in fact, of the United Irishmen, combined the best
features, as to skill, of the two most elaborate and most successful
of all secret societies recorded in history; one of which went before
the Irish Society by centuries, and one followed it after an interval
of five-and-twenty years. These two are the _Fehm-Gericht_, or court
of ban and extermination, which, having taken its rise in Westphalia,
is usually called the secret Tribunal of Westphalia, and which reached
its full development in the fourteenth century. The other is the
Hellenistic Hetaeria, (_Aetairia_)--a society which, passing for
one of pure literacy _dilettanti_, under the secret countenance of the
late Capo d'Istria, (then a confidential minister of the czar,) did
actually succeed so far in hoaxing the cabinets of Europe, that one
third of European kings put down their names, and gave their aid, as
conspirators against the Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposing
themselves honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving the
arts and literature of Athens. These two I call the most successful
of all secret societies, because both were arrayed against the existing
administrations throughout the entire lands upon which they sought to
operate. The German society disowned the legal authorities as too weak
for the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cognizance of
crimes within its own secret yet consecrated usurpation. The Grecian
society made the existing powers the final object of its hostility;
lived unarmed amongst the very oppressors whose throats it had dedicated
to the sabre; and, in a very few years, saw its purpose accomplished.
The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts in the
organization of both these secret fraternities, and obtained _their_
advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; nor
would the government, though armed with all the powers of the Dublin
police and of state thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society,
but, on the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised and
mastered the government, had it not been undermined by the perfidy of
a confidential brother. One instrument for dispersing knowledge,
employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it is
applicable to any cause, and may be used with much greater effect in
an age when every body is taught to read. They printed newspapers on
a single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being placarded
against the walls. This expedient had probably been suggested by Paris,
where such newspapers were often placarded, and generally for the
bloodiest purposes. But Louvet, in his "Memoirs," mentions one conducted
by himself on better principles: it was printed at the public expense;
and sometimes more than twenty thousand copies of a single number were
attached to the corners of streets. This was called the "Centinel;"
and those who are acquainted with the "Memoirs of Madame Roland" will
remember that she cites Louvet's paper as a model for all of its class.
The "Union Star" was the paper which the United Irishmen published
upon this plan; previous papers, on the ordinary plan, viz., the
"Northern Star" and the "Press," having been violently put down by the
government. The "Union Star," however, it must be acknowledged, did
not seek much to elevate the people by addressing them through their
understandings; it was merely a violent appeal to their passions, and
directed against all who had incurred the displeasure of the society.
Newspapers, meantime, of every kind, it was easy for the government
to suppress. But the secret society annoyed and crippled the government
in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealt
in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed at a shadow. The society
called upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as a
means of destroying the excise; and it is certain that the society was
obeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all over
Ireland. The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon the
people not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which were then on
sale; and not to receive bank notes in payment, because (as the
proclamation told them) a "burst" was coming, when such paper, and the
securities for such purchases, would fall to a ruinous discount. In
this ease, after much distress to the public service, government
obtained a partial triumph by the law which cancelled the debt on a
refusal to receive the state paper, and which quartered soldiers upon
all tradesmen who demurred to such a tender. But, upon the whole, it
was becoming pain fully evident, that in Ireland there were two
coordinate governments coming into collision at every step, and that
the one which more generally had the upper hand in the struggle was
the secret society of United Irishmen; whose members individually, and
whose local head quarters, were alike screened from the attacks of its
rival, viz., the state government at the Castle, by a cloud of
impenetrable darkness.
That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak brother, high
in the ranks of the society, and deep in their confidence, happened,
when travelling up to Dublin in company with a royalist, to speak half
mysteriously, half ostentatiously, upon the delicate position which
he held in the councils of his dangerous party. This weak man, Thomas
Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea Castle, in Kildare,
colonel of a regiment of United Irish, treasurer for Kildare, and in
other offices of trust for the secret society, was prevailed on by Mr.
William Cope, a rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind by
pictures of the horrors attending a revolution under the circumstances
of Ireland, to betray all he knew to the government. His treachery was
first meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequence
of his depositions, on March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin,
the government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading
conspirators. The whole committee of Leinster, amounting to thirteen
members, was captured on this occasion; but a still more valuable prize
was made in the persons of those who presided over the Irish Directory,
viz., Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as names
went, their places were immediately filled up; and a hand-bill was
issued, on the same day, with the purpose of intercepting the effects of
despondency amongst the great body of the conspirators. But Emmet and
O'Connor were not men to be effectually replaced: government had struck a
fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own good luck. On
the 19th of May following, in consequence of a proclamation (May 11)
offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was
apprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin,
but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party,
Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was
wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately,
that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some
time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June, from a pistol shot which
took effect on his shoulder. Lord Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded as
an injured man. From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he had
powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an early stage of
their revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but an
indiscretion that admitted of some palliation in so young a man and of so
ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously
dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy of one who, on several
grounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected his
powers of self-control, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself
beloved; he had considerable talents; his very name, as a sone of the
only [1] ducal house in Ireland, was a spell and a rallying word for a
day of battle to the Irish peasantry; and, finally, by his marriage with
a natural daughter of the then Duke of Orleans, he had founded some
important connections and openings to secret influence in France. The
young lady whom he had married was generally known by the name of
_Pamela;_ and it has been usually supposed that she is the person
described by Miss Edgeworth, under the name of Virginia, in the latter
part of her "Belinda." How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamela
was certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was said to
have gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which seems to argue the
same sort of ignorance, and the same docility to any chance impressions,
which characterize the Virginia of Miss Edgeworth. She was a reputed
daughter (as I have said) of Philippe Egalité; and her putative mother
was Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in that prince's family, as
governess to his children, more especially to the sister of the present
[2] French king. Lord Edward's whole course had been marked by generosity
and noble feeling. Far better to have pardoned [3] such a man, and (if
that were possible) to have conciliated his support; but, says a
contemporary Irishman, "those were not times of conciliation."
Some days after this event were arrested the two brothers named Shearer,
men of talent, who eventually suffered for treason. These discoveries
were due to treachery of a peculiar sort; not to the treachery of an
apostate brother breaking his faith, but of a counterfeit brother
simulating the character of conspirator, and by that fraud obtaining
a key to the fatal secrets of the United Irishmen. His perfidy,
therefore, consisted, not in any betrayal of secrets, but in the fraud
by which he obtained them. Government, without having yet penetrated
to the very heart of the mystery, had now discovered enough to guide
them in their most energetic precautions; and the result was, that the
conspirators, whose policy had hitherto been to wait for the cooperation
of a French army, now suddenly began to distrust that policy: their
fear was, that the ground would be cut from beneath their feet if they
waited any longer. More was evidently risked by delay than by dispensing
altogether with foreign aid. To forego this aid was perilous; to wait
for it was ruin. It was resolved, therefore, to commence the
insurrection on the 23d of May; and, in order to distract the
government, to commence it by simultaneous assaults upon all the
military posts in the neighborhood of Dublin. This plan was discovered,
but scarcely in time to prevent the effects of a surprise. On the 21st,
late in the evening, the conspiracy had been announced by the lord
lieutenant's secretary to the lord mayor; and, on the following day,
by a message from his excellency to both Houses of Parliament.
The insurrection, however, in spite of this official warning, began
at the appointed hour. The skirmishes were many, and in many places;
but, generally speaking, they were not favorable in their results to
the insurgents. The mail coaches, agreeably to the preconcerted plan,
had all been intercepted; their non-arrival being every where understood
by the conspirators as a silent signal that the war had commenced. Yet
this summons to the more distant provinces, though truly interpreted,
had not been truly answered. The communication between the capital and
the interior, almost completely interrupted at first, had been at
length fully restored; and a few days saw the main strength (as it
was supposed) of the insurrection suppressed without much bloodshed.
But hush! what is _that_ in the rear?
Just at this moment, when all the world was disposed to think the whole
affair quietly composed, the flame burst out with tenfold fury in a
part of the country from which government, with some reason, had turned
away their anxieties and their preparations. This was the county of
Wexford, which the Earl of Mountnorris had described to the government
as so entirely well affected to the loyal cause, that he had personally
pledged himself for its good conduct. On the night before Whitsunday,
however, May 27, the standard of revolt was _there_ raised by John
Murphy, a Catholic priest, well know henceforwards under the title of
Father Murphy.
The campaign opened inauspiciously for the royalists. The rebels had
posted themselves on two eminences--Kilthomas, about ten miles to the
westward of Gorey; and the Hill of Oulart, half way (_i.e._, about
a dozen miles) between Gorey and Wexford. They were attacked at each
point on Whitsunday. From the first point they were driven easily, and
with considerable loss; but at Oulart the issue was very different.
Father Murphy commanded here in person; and, finding that his men gave
way in great confusion before a picked body of the North Cork militia,
under the command of Colonel Foote, he contrived to persuade them
that their flight was leading them right upon a body of royal cavalry
posted to intercept their retreat. This fear effectually halted them.
The insurgents, through a prejudice natural to inexperience, had an
unreasonable dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing about
to retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came of necessity,
and without design, full upon their pursuers, whom unhappily the
intoxication of victory had by this time brought into the most careless
disarray. These, almost to a man, the rebels annihilated: universal
consternation followed amongst the royalists; Father Murphy led them
to Ferns, and thence to the attack of Enniscorthy.
Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the sudden
burst--the explosion, one might say--by which a Swedish winter passes
into spring, and spring simultaneously into summer? The icy sceptre
of winter does not there thaw and melt away by just gradations; it is
broken, it is shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence
brought home to _every_ sense. No second type of resurrection, so
mighty or so affecting, is manifested by nature in southern climates.
Such is the headlong tumult, such "the torrent rapture," by which life
is let loose amongst the air, the earth, and the waters under the
earth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is in manifestations of
power and life, by comparison with climates that have no winter, such,
and marked with features as distinct, was this Irish insurrection,
when suddenly surrendered to the whole contagion of politico-religious
fanaticism, by comparison with vulgar _martinet_ strategics and the
pedantry of technical warfare. What a picture must Enniscorthy have
presented on the 27th of May! Fugitives, crowding in from Ferns,
announced the rapid advance of the rebels, now, at least, 7000 strong,
drunk with victory, and maddened with vindictive fury. Not long after
midday, their advanced guard, well armed with muskets, (pillaged, be
H observed, from royal magazines hastily deserted,) commenced a
tumultuous assault. Less than 300 militia and yeomanry formed the
garrison of the place, which had no sort of defences except the natural
one of the River Slaney. This, however, was fordable, and _that_ the
assailants knew. The slaughter amongst the rebels, meantime, from the
little caution they exhibited, and their total defect of military
skill, was murderous. Spite of their immense numerical advantages, it
is probable they would have been defeated. But in Enniscorthy, (as
where not?) treason from within was emboldened to raise its crest at
the very crisis of suspense; incendiaries were at work; and flames
began to issue from many houses at once. Retreat itself became suddenly
doubtful, depending, as it did, altogether upon the state of the wind.
At the right hand of every royalist stood a traitor; in his own house
oftentimes lurked other traitors, waiting for the signal to begin; in
the front was the enemy; in the rear was a line of blazing streets.
Three hours the battle had raged; it was now four, P. M., and at this
moment the garrison hastily gave way, and fled to Wexford.
Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate features
in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy,
all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, as
a centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly
retreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the
rebel pikes, and bayonets, and fierce faces, already gleaming through
the smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowing
from the thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up the
avenues of escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what
is worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the
very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice;
private and ignoble hatred, of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the
mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from
intolerable wrongs and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes
and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight,
eager or stealthy, according to the temper and the means; volleying
pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation, under every mode of excitement;
and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love,
victorious and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate and
gather under general abstractions many an individual anecdote, reported
by those who were on that day present in Enniscorthy; for at Ferns,
not far off, and deeply interested in all those transactions, I had
private friends, intimate participators in the trials of that fierce
hurricane, and joint sufferers with those who suffered most. Ladies
were then seen in crowds, hurrying on foot to Wexford, the nearest
asylum, though fourteen miles distant, many in slippers, bareheaded,
and without any supporting arm; for the flight of their defenders,
having been determined by a sudden angular movement of the assailants,
coinciding with the failure of their own ammunition, had left no time
for warning; and fortunate it was for the unhappy fugitives, that the
confusion of burning streets, concurring with the seductions of pillage,
drew aside so many of the victors as to break the unity of a pursuit
else hellishly unrelenting.
Wexford, meantime, was in no condition to promise more than a momentary
shelter. Orders had been already issued to extinguish all domestic
fires throughout the town, and to unroof all the thatched houses; so
great was the jealousy of internal treason. From without, also, the
alarm was every hour increasing. On Tuesday, the 29th of May, the rebel
army advanced from Enniscorthy to a post called Three Rocks, not much
above two miles from Wexford. Their strength was now increased to at
least 15,000 men. Never was there a case requiring more energy in the
disposers of the royal forces; never one which met with less, even in
the most responsible quarters. The nearest military station was the
fort at Duncannon, twenty-three miles distant. Thither, on the 29th,
an express had been despatched by the mayor of Wexford, reporting their
situation, and calling immediate aid. General Fawcet replied, that he
would himself march that same evening with the 13th regiment, part of
the Meath militia, and sufficient artillery. Relying upon these
assurances, the small parties of militia and yeomanry then in Wexford
gallantly threw themselves upon the most trying services in advance.
Some companies of the Donegal militia, not mustering above 200 men,
marched immediately to a position between the rebel camp and Wexford;
whilst others of the North Cork militia and the local yeomanry, with
equal cheerfulness, undertook the defence of that town. Meantime,
General Fawcet had consulted his personal comfort by _halting for the
night_, though aware of the dreadful emergency, at a station sixteen
miles short of Wexford. A small detachment, however, with part of his
artillery, he sent forward; these were the next morning intercepted
by the rebels at Three Rocks, and massacred almost to a man. Two
officers, who escaped the slaughter, carried the intelligence to the
advanced post of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened,
marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as was the
disproportion, with the purpose of recapturing the artillery. A singular
contrast this to the conduct of General Fawcet, who retreated hastily
to Duncannon upon the first intelligence of this disaster. Such a
regressive movement was so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals,
that they continued to advance against the enemy, until the precision
with which the captured artillery was served against themselves, and
the non-appearance of the promised aid, warned them to retire. At
Wexford, they found all in confusion and the hurry of retreat. The
flight, as it may be called, of General Fawcet was now confirmed; and,
as the local position of Wexford made it indefensible against artillery,
the whole body of loyalists, except those whom insufficient warning
had thrown into the rear, now fled from the wrath of the rebels to
Duncannon. It is a shocking illustration (_if truly reported_) of the
thoughtless ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops,
that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to burn the
cabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre, in cold blood, the
unoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful of the many hostages whom
the insurgents now held in their power, and careless of the dreadful
provocations which they were thus throwing out to the bloodiest
reprisals.
Thus it was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or
through torpor thus unaccountably base, that actually, on the 30th of
May, not having raised their standard before the 26th, the rebels had
already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford
in its whole southern division--Ross and Duncannon only excepted; of
which the latter was not liable to capture by _coup de main_, and the
other was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northern
division of the county was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style,
and through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of plans.
Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels had taken up
a position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station from which they could
march with advantage upon the town of Gorey, lying seven miles to the
northward. On the 1st of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place
between a mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of Gorey
and a strong detachment from the rebel camp. Many persons at the time
regarded this as the best fought action in the whole war. The two
parties had met about two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain
that, if the yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at
the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most murderous one
to the rebels. As it was, they escaped, though with considerable loss
of honor. Yet even this they were allowed to retrieve within a few
days, in a remarkable way, and with circumstances of still greater
scandal to the military discretion in high quarters than had attended
the movements of General Fawcet in the south.
On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under the command of
Major General Loftus, had assembled at Gorey. The plan was, to march
by two different roads upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; and
this plan was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel army
had put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this counter movement
full and timely information had been given by a farmer at the royal
headquarters; but such was the obstinate infatuation, that no officer
of rank would condescent to give him a hearing. The consequences may
be imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of courage, but
presumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led a division upon one of the
two roads, having no scouts, nor taking any sort of precaution. Suddenly
he found his line of march crossed by the enemy in great strength: he
refused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head; and a great
part of the advanced detachment was slaughtered on the spot, and his
artillery captured. General Loftus, advancing on the parallel road,
heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim
militia to the aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men,
were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who could not
cross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from the
encumbrance of his artillery, had at length reached the scene of action
by a long circuit, he found himself in the following truly ludicrous
position: The rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey,
and possessed themselves of that place; the general had thus lost his
head quarters, without having seen the army whom he had suffered to
slip past him in the dark. He marched back disconsolately to Gorey,
took a look at the rebel posts which now occupied the town in strength,
was saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally retreated
out of the county.
This movement of General Loftus, and the previous one of General Fawcet,
circumstantially illustrate the puerile imbecility with which the royal
cause was then conducted. Both movements foundered in an hour, through
surprises, against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunately
for the government, the affairs of the rebels were managed even worse.
Two sole enterprises were undertaken by them after this, previously
to the closing battle of Vinegar Hill; both being of the very utmost
importance to their interests, and both sure of success if they had
been pushed forward in time. The first was the attack upon Ross,
undertaken on the 29th of May, the day after the capture of Enniscorthy.
Had that attack been pressed forward without delay, there never were
two opinions as to the certainty of its success; and, _having_
succeeded, it would have laid open to the rebels the important counties
of Waterford and Kilkenny. Being delayed until the 5th of June, the
assault was repulsed with prodigious slaughter, The other was the
attack upon Arklow, in the north. On the capture of Gorey, on the night
of June 4, as the immediate consequence of Colonel Walpole's defeat,
had the rebels advanced upon Arklow, they would have found it for
some days totally undefended; the whole garrison having retreated in
panic, early on June 5, to Wicklow. The capture of this important place
would have laid open the whole road to the capital; would probably
have caused a rising in that great city; and, in any event, would have
indefinitely prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions of
government. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination,
however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th, and then advanced
with what seemed the overpowering force of 27,000 men. It is a striking
lesson upon the subject of procrastination, that, precisely on that
morning of June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless. Until then,
the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitants whatsoever.
Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison had been ordered back from Wicklow,
and reënforced by a crack English regiment, (the Durham Fencibles,)
on whom chiefly at this critical hour had devolved the defence, which
was peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, but
brilliant, masterly, and perfectly successful.
This obstinate and fiercely-contested battle of Arklow was indeed, by
general consent, the hinge on which the rebellion turned. Nearly 30,000
men, armed every man of them with pikes, and 5000 with muskets,
supported also by some artillery, sufficiently well served to do
considerable execution at a most important point in the line of defence,
could not be defeated without a very trying struggle. And here, again,
it is worthy of record, that General Needham, who commanded on this
day, would have followed the example of Generals Fawcet and Loftus,
and have ordered a retreat, had he not been determinately opposed by
Colonel Skerret, of the Durham regiment. Such was the imbecility, and
the want of moral courage, on the part of the military leaders; for
it would be unjust to impute any defect in animal courage to the
feeblest of these leaders. General Needham, for example, exposed his
person, without reserve, throughout the whole of this difficult day.
Any amount of cannon shot he could face cheerfully, but not a trying
responsibility.
From the defeat of Arklow, the rebels gradually retired, between the 9th
and the 20th of June, to their main military position of Vinegar Hill,
which lies immediately above the town of Enniscorthy, and had fallen into
their hands, concurrently with that place, on the 28th of May. Here their
whole forces, with the exception of perhaps 6000, who attacked General
Moore (ten and a half years later, the Moore of Corunna) when marching on
the 26th towards Wexford, had been concentrated; and to this point,
therefore, as a focus, had the royal army, 13,000 strong, with a
respectable artillery, under the supreme command of General Lake,
converged in four separate divisions, about the 19th and 20th of June.
The great blow was to be struck on the 21st; and the plan was, that the
royal forces, moving to the assault of the rebel position upon four lines
at right angles to each other, (as if, for instance, from the four
cardinal points to the same centre,) should surround their encampment,
and shut up every avenue to escape. On this plan, the field of battle
would have been one vast slaughter house; for quarter was not granted on
either side. [4] But the quadrille, if it were ever seriously concerted,
was entirely defeated by the failure of General Needham, who did not
present himself with _his_ division until nine o'clock, a full half hour
after the battle was over, and thus earned the, _sobriquet of the late_
[5] _General Needham._ Whether the failure were really in this officer,
or (as was alleged by his apologists) had been already preconcerted in
the inconsistent orders issued to him by General Lake, with the covert
intention, as many believe, of mercifully counteracting his own scheme of
wholesale butchery, to this day remains obscure. The effect of that
delay, in whatever way caused, was for once such as must win every body's
applause. The action had commenced at seven o'clock in the morning; by
half past eight, the whole rebel army was in flight; and, naturally
making for the only point left unguarded, it escaped with no great
slaughter (but leaving behind all its artillery, and a good deal of
valuable plunder) through what was facetiously called ever afterwards
_Needham's Gap_. After this capital rout of Vinegar Hill, the rebel army
day by day mouldered away. A large body, however, of the fiercest and
most desperate continued for some time to make flying marches in all
directions, according to the positions of the king's forces and the
momentary favor of accidents. Once or twice they were brought to action
by Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously enough, once
more they were suffered to escape by the eternal delays of the "late
Needham." At length, however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of
local success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county of Dublin.
Many desperadoes, however, took up their quarters for a long time in the
dwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade of
marauders, but ludicrously designating themselves the Babes in the Wood.
It is an inexplicable fact, that many deserters from the militia
regiments, who had behaved well throughout the campaign, and adhered
faithfully to their colors, now resorted to this confederation of the
woods; from which it cost some trouble to dislodge them. Another party,
in the woods and mountains of Wicklow, were found still more formidable,
and continued to infest the adjacent country through the ensuing winter.
These were not finally ejected from their lairs until after one of their
chiefs had been killed in a night skirmish by a young man defending his
house, and the other chief, weary of his savage life, had surrendered
himself to transportation.
It diffused general satisfaction throughout Ireland, that, on the very
day before the final engagement of Vinegar Hill, Lord Cornwallis made
his entry into Dublin as the new lord lieutenant. A proclamation,
issued early in July, of general amnesty to all who had shed no blood
except on the field of battle, notified to the country the new spirit
of policy which now distinguished the government; and, doubtless, that
one merciful change worked marvels in healing the agitations of the
land. Still it was thought necessary that severe justice should take
its course amongst the most conspicuous leaders or agents in the
insurrection. Martial law still prevailed; and under that law we know,
through a speech of the Duke of Wellington's, how entirely the very
elements of justice are dependent upon individual folly or caprice.
Many of those who had shown the greatest generosity, and with no slight
risk to themselves, were now selected to suffer. Bagenal Harvey, a
Protestant gentleman, who had held the supreme command of the rebel
army for some time with infinite vexation to himself, and taxed with
no one instance of cruelty or excess, was one of those doomed to
execution. He had possessed an estate of nearly three thousand per
annum; and at the same time with him was executed another gentleman,
of more than three times that estate, Cornelius Grogan. Singular it
was, that men of this condition and property, men of feeling and
refinement, should have staked the happiness of their families upon
a contest so forlorn. Some there were, however, and possibly these
gentlemen, who could have explained their motives intelligibly enough:
they had been forced by persecution, and actually baited into the ranks
of the rebels. One picturesque difference in the deaths of these two
gentlemen was remarkable, as contrasted with their previous habits.
Grogan was constitutionally timid; and yet he faced the scaffold and
the trying preparations of the executioner with fortitude. On the other
hand, Bagenal Harvey, who had fought several duels with coolness,
exhibited considerable trepidation in his last moments. Perhaps, in
both, the difference might be due entirely to some physical accident
of health or momentary nervous derangement. [6]
Among the crowd, however, of persons who suffered death at this
disastrous era, there were two that merit a special commemoration for
their virtuous resistance, in disregard of all personal risk, to a
horrid fanaticism of cruelty. One was a butcher, the other a seafaring
man--both rebels. But they must have been truly generous, brave, and
noble-minded men. During the occupation of Wexford by the rebel army,
they were repeatedly the sole opponents, at great personal risk, to
the general massacre then meditated by some few Popish bigots. And,
finally, when all resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they both
demanded resolutely from the chief patron of this atrocious policy
that he should fight themselves, armed in whatever way he might prefer,
and, as they expressed it, "prove himself a man," before he should be
at liberty to sport in this wholesale way with innocent blood.
One painful fact I will state in taking leave of this subject; and
_that_, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain any thing I have
said in disparagement of the government; by which, however, I mean, in
justice, the local administration of Ireland. For, as to the supreme
government in England, that body must be supposed, at the utmost, to have
passively acquiesced in the recommendations of the Irish cabinet, even
when it interfered so far. In particular, the scourgings and
flagellations resorted to in Wexford and Kildare, &c., must have been
originally suggested by minds familiar with the habits of the Irish
aristocracy in the treatment of dependants. Candid Irishmen will admit
that the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in coffee
houses or other menial dependants,--a habit which, in England, would be
met instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery,
--is not yet altogether obsolete in Ireland. [7] Thirty years ago it was
still more prevalent, and presupposed that spirit and temper in the
treatment of menial dependants, out of which, doubtless, arose the
practice of judicial (_i.e._, tentative) flagellations. Meantime, that
fact with which I proposed to close my recollections of this great
tumult, and which seems to be a sufficient guaranty for the very severest
reflections on the spirit of the government, is expressed significantly
in the terms, used habitually by Roman Catholic gentlemen, in prudential
exculpation of themselves, when threatened with inquiry for their conduct
during these times of agitation: "I thank my God that no man can charge
me justly with having saved the life of any Protestant, or his house from
pillage, by my intercession with the rebel chiefs." How! Did men boast of
collusion with violence and the spirit of massacre! What did _that_ mean?
It meant this: Some Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleaded truly, as a
reason for special indulgence to themselves, that any influence which
might belong to them, on the score of religion or of private friendship,
with the rebel authorities, had been used by them on behalf of persecuted
Protestants, either in delivering them altogether, or in softening their
doom. But, to the surprise of every body, this plea was so far from being
entertained favorably by the courts of inquiry, that, on the contrary, an
argument was built upon it, dangerous in the last degree to the pleader.
"You admit, then," it was retorted, "having had this very considerable
influence upon the rebel councils; your influence extended to the saving
of lives; in that case we must suppose you to have been known privately
as their friend and supporter." Thus to have delivered an innocent man
from murder, argued that the deliverer must have been an accomplice of
the murderous party. Readily it may be supposed that few would be
disposed to urge such a vindication, when it became known in what way it
was likely to operate. The government itself had made it perilous to
profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in his
callousness and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to himself on a
path so closely beset with rocks.
FOOTNOTES
[1] "_The only ducal house_."--That is, the only one not royal. There are
four provinces in Ireland--_Ulster, Connaught, Munster,_ which three give
old traditional titles to three personages of the blood royal. Remains
only _Leinster_, which gives the title of duke to the Fitzgeralds.
[2] "_Present French king_."--Viz., in the year 1833.
[3] "_To have pardoned_," &c.--This was written under circumstances of
great hurry; and, were it not for that palliation, would be inexcusably
thoughtless. For, in a double sense, it is doubtful how far the
government _could_ have pardoned Lord Edward. First, in a prudential
sense, was it possible (except in the spirit of a German sentimentalizing
drama) to pardon a conspicuous, and within certain limits a very
influential, officer for publicly avowing opinions tending to treason,
and at war with the constitutional system of the land which fed him and
which claimed his allegiance? Was it possible, in point of prudence or in
point of dignity, to overlook such anti-national sentiments, whilst
neither disavowed nor ever likely to be disavowed? Was this possible,
regard being had to the inevitable effect of such _unearned_ forgiveness
upon the army at large? But secondly, in a merely logical sense of
practical self-consistency, would it have been rational or even
intelligible to pardon a man who probably _would_ not be pardoned; that
is, who must (consenting or not consenting) benefit by the concessions of
the pardon, whilst disowning all reciprocal obligations?
[4] "_For quarter was not granted on either side_."--I repeat, as all
along and necessarily I have repeated, that which orally I was told at
the time, or which subsequently I have read in published accounts. But
the reader is aware by this time of my steadfast conviction, that more
easily might a camel go through the eye of a needle, than a reporter,
fresh from a campaign blazing with partisanship, and that partisanship
representing ancient and hereditary feuds, could by possibility cleanse
himself from the _virus_ of such a prejudice.
[5] The same jest was applied to Mr. Pitt's brother. When first lord of
the Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even 10 or 11, P.M., were
told that his lordship was riding in the park. On this account, partly,
but more pointedly with a malicious reference to the contrast between his
languor and the fiery activity of his father, the first earl, he was
jocularly called, _the late Lord Chatham_.
[6] Perhaps also _not_. Possibly enough there may be no call for any such
_exceptional_ solution; for, after all, there may be nothing to solve--no
_dignus vindice nodus_. As regards the sudden interchange of characters
on the scaffold,--the constitutionally brave man all at once becoming
timid, and the timid man becoming brave,--it must be remembered, that the
particular sort of courage applicable to duelling, when the danger is
much more of a fugitive and momentary order than that which invests a
battle lasting for hours, depends almost entirely upon a man's
_confidence in his own luck_--a peculiarity of mind which exists
altogether apart from native resources of courage, whether moral or
physical: usually this mode of courage is but a transformed expression
for a sanguine temperament. A man who is habitually depressed by a
constitutional taint of despondency may carry into a duel a sublime
principle of calm, self-sacrificing courage, as being possibly utterly
without hope--a courage, therefore, which has to fight with internal
resistance, to which there may be nothing corresponding in a cheerful
temperament.
But there is another and separate agency through which the fear of death
may happen to act as a disturbing force, and most irregularly as viewed
in relation to moral courage and strength of mind. This anomalous force
is the imaginative and shadowy terror with which different minds recoil
from death--not considered as an agony or torment, but considered as a
mystery, and, next after God, as the most infinite of mysteries. In a
brave man this terror may happen to be strong; in a pusillanimous man,
simply through inertness and original feebleness of imagination, may
happen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating
between death as an agony and death as a mystery, not only exists with a
corresponding set of consequences accordingly as one or other prevails,
but is sometimes consciously contemplated and put into the scales of
comparison and counter valuation. For instance, one of the early Csesars
reviewed the case thus: "_Emori nolo; me esse mortuum nihil cestumo_:
From death as the act and process of dying, I revolt; but as to death,
viewed as a permanent state or condition, I don't value it at a straw."
What this particular Caesar detested, and viewed with burning malice, was
death the agony--death the physical torment. As to death the mystery,
want of sensibility to the infinite and the shadowy had disarmed _that_
of its terrors for him. Yet, on the contrary, how many are there who face
the mere physical anguish of dying with stern indifference! But death the
mystery,--death that, not satisfied with changing our objective, may
attack even the roots of our subjective,--_there_ lies the mute,
ineffable, voiceless horror before which all human courage is abashed,
even as all human resistance becomes childish when measuring itself
against gravitation.
[7] "_Not yet altogether obsolete_."--Written in 1833.