0467
Nothing could have been more detestable than the treachery of Esmond; though lieutenant in the Armagh Militia, he actually planned and led the rebel surprise of Prosperous. He wore the royal uniform, and yet was false to the monarch to whom he had sworn allegiance. When men of desperate fortunes swerve from the path of honour poverty may be pleaded to extenuate, though not excuse. Esmond had no plea to offer—he was wealthy, well born, and respected. He might have proved a rebel, but why play the traitor? When in the house of God loyalty was on his lips, while the heart was contemplating bloodshed. Even the tie a savage venerates could not turn him from his truculent design,—and, while he devoted him to death, he shared his victim’s hospitality—dined with Captain Swayne ‘at an inn on the 23rd of May, and continued to enjoy the glow of social mirth with him, till a few hours before the perpetration of that bloody scene which he had for some time meditated.’
The work of death at Prosperous was interrupted by intelligence conveyed to the insurgents, that at Clane, three miles off, their friends had been defeated—for although partly surprised, that little garrison succeeded in beating off their assailants.
ATTACK ON THE GARRISON AT CLANE
Clane was occupied by a party of the Armagh Militia and some yeomanry cavalry. Early on the morning of the 24th a large body of armed rebels stole into the street. Fortunately there was just time to beat to arms, although such of the soldiers as were at single billets in the town were attacked as they issued from the houses where they had been quartered, and several of them killed and wounded before they could join their comrades. The guards, however, with great gallantry, held the rebels in check until their comrades hastily turned out and formed. A few well-directed volleys routed the rebels, and they were driven with considerable loss from the town; but deeming pursuit imprudent, the royalists returned, and again formed in the streets.
At five in the morning the rebels made a second attempt, reinforced by the exulting rebels who had returned from their bloody deeds at Prosperous; supported by a column of pikemen and musketeers, a party mounted on the horses and furnished with the arms of the slaughtered Ancient Britons, whom they had cut off at Prosperous, charged boldly into Clane. A rolling volley from the royalists brought down half the party and dispersed the rest. They retired at gallop from the rebel column, which, from previous success of superior numbers, cut a strange but formidable appearance.
An affair highly honourable to the royalists resulted. ‘As they were not strong enough to attack so numerous a party, and thinking it dishonourable to retreat, the captain, Griffiths, in concurrence with the militia officers, resolved to take post on an elevated spot near the commons, where they could not be surrounded or outflanked, and there they waited for the enemy, who began a smart fire on them, but without effect, as the elevation was too great. Our troops, having returned the fire, killed and wounded a considerable number of them, on which they fled in great dismay, and were charged by the captain and his sixteen yeomen, who cut down many of those whose heads were ornamented with the helmets of the Ancient Britons or the hats of the Cork regiment.’
A disorderly flight succeeded—the rebels totally disbanding, by throwing away their own ruder weapon the pike, with the firearms and sabres they had captured in the morning, and held in but brief possession.
On re-entering Clane, Captain Griffiths was privately informed by a soldier named Philip Mite, that his own treacherous lieutenant had actually carried out the surprise of Prosperous. Having been ordered to march to Naas, at the moment when the troop were mounting, Esmond, in full accoutrements, joined it. The rash confidence that his treason was unsuspected proved ruinous to the unhappy man. He was arrested, forwarded to Dublin, tried, convicted, and hanged on Carlisle Bridge on the 14th of June.
The insurrectionary occurrences at Ballymore-Eustace and Dunlavin simultaneously with those described, offer fearful pictures of the atrocious spirit with which a civil war is carried through.
MURDER OF GEORGE CRAWFORD AND HIS GRAND-DAUGHTER
Uncompromising severity does not always produce the intended effect. On some example may strike terror, in others it will excite undying hatred, and foster the worst spirit of the human heart—thirst for vengeance. Of this truth a retrospect of the events of these calamitous days gives evidence enough, and it is difficult now to determine on which side the excess of cruelty should be awarded. Assassination on one side was met upon the other with military executions—the royalists extenuating the act under the plea of necessity, while the rebel proclaimed that his murders were committed only from revenge.
When admitting that a similar savageness of purpose might in many cases be charged against both sides, there all comparison must cease. No matter what the acts might be, the causes which produced them were totally dissimilar. The royalists took up arms for the protection of home and altar, which the fanaticism of Popery, or the accursed doctrines of the French revolutionists, were alike bent upon overturning. Allegiance to the king, and the maintenance of social order and an established government, urged the former to come forward; thousands perilled life and property from the purest motives; and when the insurrection was suppressed, sheathed the sword, drawn in the support of a matchless constitution, unstained by any act save those which resistance to rebellion had imperatively demanded. Those who have led a soldier’s life and seen service in the field know that men become the creatures of circumstances.
Let the gentlest spirit—and such are frequently united to the boldest heart—one that would not tread upon a worm or harm a sparrow, let him crown a defended breach, and he will use the bayonet unscrupulously. The feelings are influenced by the times; and if the royalists were sanguinary and unsparing, they could point to the atrocities of the insurgents, and bring forward established facts, so truculent and unwarranted, as to place those who committed them almost without the pale of mercy.
Making every allowance for the political colouring given to his history of the times, and recollecting that he felt and wrote as a partisan, Sir Richard Musgrave narrates two well-authenticated instances of unprovoked cruelty among the many that marked the rebel outbreak in Kildare, which will sufficiently exhibit the ferocious spirit of the insurgents from the moment they flew to arms.
‘The following horrid circumstances,’ relates the historian, ‘attended the murder of George Crawford and his grandchild, a girl of only fourteen years of age. He had formerly served in the 5th Dragoons, retired on a pension, and was permanent sergeant in Captain Taylor’s corps of yeoman cavalry. He, his wife, and grand-daughter were stopped by a party of the rebels, as they were endeavouring to escape, and were reproached with the appellation of heretics because they were of the Protestant religion. One of them struck his wife with a musket, and another gave her a stab of a pike in the back, with an intent of murdering her. The husband, having endeavoured to save her, was knocked down, and received several blows of a firelock, which disabled him from making his escape. While they were disputing whether they should kill them, his wife stole behind a hedge and concealed herself. They then massacred her husband with pikes; and her grand-daughter having thrown herself on his body to protect him, received so many wounds that she instantly expired.
0474
These circumstances of atrocity have been verified by affidavit, sworn by Crawford’s widow, the 20th day of August 1798. The fidelity of a large dog, belonging to this poor man, deserves to be recorded, as he attacked those sanguinary monsters in defence of his master, till he fell by his side perforated with pikes.’
STOPPAGE OF THE MAIL AND MURDER OF LIEUTENANT GIFFARD
‘The second murder occurred on the same night. About eleven o’clock the Limerick mail was stopped by a numerous banditti, and a gentleman was slaughtered under circumstances which elicited a lively sympathy. The sufferer was Lieutenant William Giffard, of the 82nd regiment, son of Captain John Giffard of the Dublin regiment.’ The savages having shot one of the horses so effectually to prevent the coach from proceeding, demanded of Lieutenant Giffard who and what he was, to which he answered, without hesitation, that he was an officer proceeding to Chatham in obedience to orders he had received. They demanded whether he was a Protestant; and being answered in the affirmative, they held a moment’s consultation, and then told him that they wanted officers, that if he would take an oath to be true to them, and join them in an attack to be made next morning upon Monastereven, they would give him a command, but that otherwise he must die. To this the gallant youth replied, ‘That he had already sworn allegiance to the king, that he would never offend God Almighty by a breach of that oath, nor would he disgrace himself by turning a deserter and joining the king’s enemies; that he could not suppose a body of men would be so cruel as to murder an individual who had never injured them, and who was merely passing through them to a country from whence possibly he never might return; but if they insisted on their proposal he must die, for he never would consent to it!’ This heroic answer, which would have kindled sentiments of humanity in any breasts but those of Irish rebels, had the contrary effect, and with the utmost fury they assaulted him. He had a case of pistols, which natural courage and love of life, though hopeless, prompted him to use with effect, and being uncommonly active he burst from them, vaulted over a six feet wall, and made towards a house where he saw a light and heard people talking. Alas! it afforded no refuge! It was the house of poor Crawford whom, with his grand-daughter, they had just piked. A band of barbarians returning from this exploit met Lieutenant Giffard. There he fell, covered with wounds and glory, and his mangled body was thrown into the same ditch with honest Crawford and his innocent grandchild.
0480
‘Thus expired, at the age of seventeen, a gallant youth—the martyr to religion and honour—leaving a memory behind that will ever be respected by the virtuous and the brave.’
Shortly, in the course of his campaign, struggling to suppress the rebellion, Sir James Duffs movable column entered Kildare, when it passed close to the scene of slaughter, and poor Giffard’s body was removed from the ditch and interred with military honours.
COURSE OF THE INSURRECTION
Acourse of cowardly assassination thus commenced was continued by the insurgents in their progress to attack Monastereven. Their numbers had increased to ten or twelve hundred men, and they were commanded by a ruffian called M’Garry. Such Protestants as they unfortunately met with were put to death, and a solitary dragoon, seized as he crossed the Curragh, was inhumanly murdered. About four in the morning they approached the town and made their preparations for attacking it.
On the 24th of May there was not a regular soldier in Monastereven; and an infantry company, with a troop of horse, both yeomanry, formed the little garrison. After a feint on the canal, and a movement by the high road, which was repulsed by a charge of the cavalry, they pushed boldly into the town, and a warm conflict took place in the main street. The well-sustained musketry of the infantry threw the head of the rebel column into confusion, when the cavalry charged home, and the rout was complete. Fifty bodies were found lifeless in the town; and as the horsemen followed the flying rebels vigorously, as many more were cut up in the pursuit. The repulse of this attack was most honourable to the defenders of Monastereven. The gallant action was achieved by loyalists alone, and of the brave men who fought and bled that day fourteen of the troop were Roman Catholics.
The outbreak of the 23rd of May was attended by many acts of cruelty inflicted upon isolated families, who, either from mistaken confidence or inability to reach a place of safety, exposed themselves to the fury of savages, whose natural truculence was often inflamed to madness by intoxication. Many individuals of great worth and respectability perished thus. Mr. Stamers, the chief proprietor of the town of Prosperous, was torn from the house of a lady where he had obtained a temporary shelter, and murdered in cold blood. Rathangan was, indeed, a scene of extensive butchery. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Moore were slaughtered there, although they had surrendered their arms on the assurance of being protected. They were murdered in the open street, and their wives had the horrible assurance that, with the shots they heard, the existence of their beloved partners had terminated. Thus Mr. Spencer, that worthy gentleman, ‘who was an active and intelligent magistrate, and as remarkable for the amiableness and affability of his manner as the benevolence of his heart, fell a sacrifice to the fanaticism of those savages, to whom he had been unremittingly a kind and generous benefactor. As his house, at the hall door of which he was so brutally murdered, was a short distance from the town, Mrs. Spencer, who was led to it in the midst of these monsters, had the anguish to see the mangled corpse of her husband lying at his door’ (Musgrave).
A number of other victims were immolated by these bloodthirsty savages, and, until relieved by Colonel Longfield on the morning of the 28th, Rathangan was a constant scene of atrocity, in which even woman forgot her sex and barbarously participated. The murders at Rathangan, while they exasperated the royalists to acts of desperate retaliation, operated against the perpetrators in another and unexpected way. The few Protestants in Leinster and the south, who had mixed themselves with the conspiracy, suddenly became alarmed, for the war had now assumed a religious rather than a revolutionary complexion. Suspicion once aroused finds abundant causes to confirm it; and while some Protestants quietly seceded from their fellow-traitors, not a few sought favour with the Government by a secret betrayal of their guilty companions.
Musgrave illustrates this point:—‘I shall mention here an incident which throws light on the spirit of the conspiracy and rebellion, and the secret designs of the great body of the rebels. One Dennis, an apothecary and a Protestant, was the county delegate and chief conductor of the plot in the King’s County, which was to have exploded in a few days; but the wanton massacre of Protestants at Prosperous and Rathangan having convinced him that their extirpation was the main object of the Romanists, though they had with singular dissimulation concealed it from him who was their leader, he repaired to Tullamore to General Dunn, who commanded the district, threw himself on the mercy of Government, exposed the whole plot, and betrayed the names of the captains, who were immediately arrested. He said to the general, “I see, sir, that it will soon be my own fate.”’ In the course of this history nothing will be more apparent than the incompetency, military and diplomatic, of many of the functionaries to whom extensive powers were confided. One while unnecessary severity was employed, and at another mistaken lenity marred every advantage which stringent measures might have effected. In military conduct the royalist commanders were too often found deficient, and almost in every instance, either to imprudence or imbecility, the insurgents were alone indebted for moments of doubtful and envanescent success. The affair at Old Kilcullen was about one of the worst military offences committed by an incompetent commander. Yeomanry officers always behaved with boldness, and frequently displayed both tact and talent when left to their own resources, while many from whose high military rank and standing something like ability might have been looked for, proved the truism of the adage, that as ‘the cowl does not make the monk,’ neither does anaiguiletteconstitute a general. Learning that some three hundred well-appointed rebels had assembled at Old Kilcullen, and that they had entrenched themselves in the churchyard, General Dundas proceeded to dislodge them. His force consisted of only forty dragoons and some twenty Suffolk militiamen. The rebel position was on a height—one side protected by a high wall, the other secured by a double fence—a hedge with a dike in front. Would it be credited that an English general could be mad enough to assail three hundred men thus posted with forty dragoons? Mus-grave thus narrates the transaction, and his account has been considered by those engaged to be perfectly correct:—
General Dundas ordered the Romneys and the 9th Dragoons to charge the rebels, though it was uphill, though the ground was broken, and many of the rebels were in a road close to the churchyard in which not more than six of the cavalry could advance in front.
‘They, however, charged with great spirit, though their destruction was considered by all the spectators to be the certain and inevitable consequence of it; for what could cavalry do, thus broken and divided, against a firm phalanx of rebels armed with long pikes? Nevertheless they made three charges, but were repulsed in each; and at every repulse the general urged them to renew the attack.
‘It was with the utmost difficulty that Captain Cooks and Captain Erskine could prevail upon their men to renew the charge after the first defeat. In the last charge, Captain Cooks, to inspire his men with courage by example, advanced some yards before them; when his horse, having received many wounds, fell upon his knees; and while in that situation the body of that brave officer was perforated with pikes; and he, Captain Erskine, and twenty-two privates were killed on the spot, and ten so badly wounded that most of them died soon after.’
Shamefully discomfited, Dundas fell back on the village of Kilcullen bridge, and occupied a pass in every way defensible. So thought the successful peasants who had garrisoned the churchyard and deforced an English general. They prudently declined any attempt to force the bridge, forded the Liffey at Castlemartin, and took up a position between Naas and Kilcullen—thus cutting off General Dundas’s communication with the capital.
Nothing remained for the royalist commander but to drive them from these grounds and open his road to Naas. He advanced accordingly, found them in line three deep, and with his cavalry in hand, boldly attacked the position with half a company of the gallant Suffolks. Small as the party was, three rounds broke the rebels. The cavalry charged, and the same body which had so recently inflicted a severe repulse were scattered like a flock of sheep, leaving the ground covered with their dead and wounded. After a brief but bloody pursuit, Dundas marched on Naas, to concentrate his troops and assist in covering the capital.
ATTACK ON NAAS
‘If one can imagine such a thing as a tableau, or bird’s-eye view of the rebellion from the 23rd to the 30th of May (1790), the appearance it would present would be this. Seven or eight comparatively minor explosions, lighting up the atmosphere for a short space and then going gradually out, viz. one in Meath (Tara), one in Wicklow (Mount Kennedy), a good blaze in Carlow, and four or five in Kildare, which its being Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s own county accounts for—these were Naas, Prosperous, Kilcullen, and Rathangan. The eye should then be drawn to the mighty and absorbing eruption of Wexford; taking Vinegar Hill as its crater, it would observe two streams of lava pouring forth, one due west to Ross, one due north towards Wicklow, and a third, of somewhat less importance, north-west to Newtown Barry. I rather think the first shot was fired by my regiment at Naas, as Mick Reynolds, who led the rebels, was one of the promptest of the insurgent leaders.’—The MS. Journal of a Field Officer.
The garrison of Naas consisted of a hundred and fifty of the Armagh Militia, with two battalion guns, and seventy cavalry, consisting of small detachments of the Fourth Dragoons, Ancient Britons, and sixteen mounted yeomen. The whole were under the command of Colonel Lord Gosford.
On the evening of the general insurrection (the 23rd of May) anonymous letters were received by the commanding officer, apprising him that a night attack would be made upon the town by a numerous body of well-armed rebels, and necessary dispositions of the garrison were made to receive the threatened assault. The guards were doubled, the outskirts of the town carefully patrolled, and a plan of defence prearranged to prevent any confusion when the hour for action came. Midnight passed without anything occurring to cause alarm, and as morning dawned, it was believed that the information received the preceding evening had been incorrect, and the officers retired to their quarters. At half-past two, however, an outlying dragoon galloped in, announcing the advance of a numerous body of rebels; the drums beat to arms, and the garrison occupied their alarm posts.
Perhaps the commanding officer and his staff were more than a trifle incautious and premature in deciding there was nothing in the timely warning.
In spite of the precautionary vigilance, Lord Gosford had the very narrowest possible escape from death by assassination. His lodging was situated at the summit of the hill which the Dublin road ascends. The sentinel at his door, having his attention attracted by the entrance of the rebel columns at the foot of the hill, was inexcusably so far off his guard as to allow two pikemen, belonging to the town, to slip into the hall, where they were ready to receive his lordship with their pikes as he hurried from his chamber on the alarm. And they were very near succeeding—but the sentinel turning about at the critical moment, shot one and bayoneted the other, just as his lordship was rushing down the stairs. The sentinel’s name was John Sandford; he was afterwards made a sergeant, and his son a drummer.
The rebels, who had assembled at the quarries of Tipper, advanced on the town in four divisions, each entering by a different approach, and the heaviest column moving by the Johnstown Road. The latter was commanded by Michael Reynolds, and it made a bold effort to carry the jail, in front of which a party of the Armagh Militia, the Ancient Britons, and a battalion gun were posted. But the attack was completely repulsed, and the rebel loss would have been more considerable had not the cavalry, irritated by the fall of their officer, Captain Davis, who had been fatally piked, charged too prematurely, and interrupted the play of the gun; the execution of the latter was so trifling compared to what it should have produced upon a body in close column and at canister range, that it was ascribed rather to treachery than want of skill. For forty minutes, however, desultory firing continued.
‘Large parties of the rebels, who stole unnoticed into the town through the houses and narrow lanes, fought some time in the streets, and stood three volleys from the Armagh Militia, posted opposite to the barrack, before they gave way; at last they fled precipitately in every direction, when the cavalry charged, and killed a great number of them in the pursuit. Thirty of the rebels were killed in the streets; and from the numbers found dead in back houses and in the adjacent fields a few days afterwards, it is imagined that no less than three hundred must have fallen.
‘They dropped in their flight a great quantity of pikes and other arms, of which a number were found in pits near the town, where also three men with green cockades were seized, and instantly hanged in the public streets. Another prisoner was spared in consequence of useful information which he gave. He informed the commanding officer that the rebel party was above one thousand strong, and was commanded by Michael Reynolds, who was well mounted, and dressed in yeoman uniform. He made his escape, but his horse fell into the hands of our troops.’
KILDARE AND CARLOW
The entire of the county of Kildare was now in open insurrection, and not less than six rebel encampments were formed, and multitudes of the peasantry flocked to them. The houses were almost entirely deserted. Of the Protestant clergy not a man remained, and indeed the ferocity of party feeling had attained an intensity of violence which now can scarcely be imagined or believed. An infernal spirit actuated the opposite religionists. On one side, Catholics were too generally regarded with hatred and distrust; on the other, Protestants and Orangemen were held synonymous, and to all who dissented from the Church of Rome the most abominable feelings and intentions were attributed.
The MS. Journal of a Field Officerrelates: ‘One of thecompletestthings during the rebellion was the defeat of the rebels at Carlow, in which a company of my regiment had a share. There was full information of the intended attack, but “not a drum was heard.” The soldiers, who were chiefly in billets, were allowed to repair to their quarters as usual, and remain there until it was ascertained that the town rebels had quitted it to join their fellows and arm themselves, which they did about two miles from the town. A number of sergeants then went round, and the men were brought to their posts without the least alarm.
‘The rebel column entered Carlow by Tullow Street, unopposed—the street terminating in a place or open space where stood the horse barracks and jail. Arrived here they raised a loud shout or yell, and it was fearfully responded to by a destructive fire which opened upon them from different points. Seized with a panic at this unexpected reception they endeavoured to escape in various directions. The greater part retraced their steps through Tullow Street, but a picket had by this time occupied the further end of it, and opened a withering fire. They now sought refuge in the houses: these the soldiers set fire to; a number were shot in attempting to escape the flames, but a great many of the unfortunate wretches perished in them.’
About eighty houses were consumed in this conflagration; and for some days the roasted remains of unhappy men were falling down the chimneys in which they had perished.
It will be here necessary to mention that in Kildare, within a few days after the outbreak, an amnesty for the past was solicited by many of the rebels, and, with the consent of Government, the generals commanding in that county entered into negotiations with their chiefs. How far this was a prudent measure is questionable. In the spirit of the proclamations issued—with arms in their hands, rebels should have been placed outside the pale of treaty; while at the same time the most extensive forgiveness should have been extended to such as should disband themselves and reoccupy their abandoned dwellings. In diplomatic, as well as in field abilities, the royal generals were defective, and the amnesty produced nothing but treachery and bloodshed. The former charge rests with the insurgents, the latter must be laid at the hands of the royalists.
TREACHERY IN THE MIDST OF THE CAPITAL
While the counties in the immediate vicinity of the capital were thus in open insurrection, in the city the spirit and hopes of the disaffected were still buoyant as to the prospect of ultimate success; and although the failure of the 23rd had for a time paralysed the traitors of the metropolis, they were disappointed, but not despairing, and rebellion was ‘scotched, not killed.’
The committees and ‘directories’ continued their meetings, pikes were fabricated in large quantities, the sentries were assaulted on isolated posts, the doors of royalists were marked, domestic servants were corrupted. Musgrave records:—‘The Lord Mayor’s servant acknowledged to his employer that he was at the head of a numerous body of servants who were to have assassinated their masters; that he and his party were to have murdered the Lord Mayor and his family, with two others of his servants who had refused to join this precious association, and that this atrocious deed was to have been the signal for the other servants in the vicinity to rise and commit similar enormities. Another certain proof that a revolution was not only contemplated but expected, many of the Dublin tradesmen refused to receive bank notes in payment from their customers.’
Another serious cause of alarm also was the discovery that into many of the yeomanry corps disaffected persons had been introduced, and in some the traitors outnumbered ‘the true men.’
In Kildare almost every corps was tainted, and the same remark applied to many in the metropolis. Of the country corps, the Sleamarigue laid down their arms, the Castledermot had but five well-affected men, the Athy cavalry were publicly disarmed in the market-place, and their captain, Fitzgerald of Geraldine, committed to prison. The Rathangan, North Naas, and Furnace yeomanry were all extensively disaffected, and the Clane, nominally amounting to sixty-six, could only muster five-and-twenty when the insurrection broke out.
Of the metropolitan corps many were exclusively loyal, but others were not without traitorous members. One instance will be sufficient to show how extensive and dangerous was the disaffection.
On the 29th of May, the St. Sepulchre’s corps, in turn of duty, took the guard at Dolphin’s Barn, an outpost on the southwest side of the metropolis. While on the march to the bridge, a Roman Catholic yeoman, named Raymond, entered into conversation with his comrade, a notorious United Irishman, and communicated the secret plot. He told Jennings, ‘that in case of an attack, which was hourly expected, and which it was believed he had previously concerted with the rebels, the disaffected members of the corps were to massacre their officers and the Protestants, and to deliver up the bridge to the assailants. They were then to proceed to the battery in the park, inform the guard that they had been defeated, ask admittance, and on being let in, murder the guard, take possession of the battery and ammunition, and turn it to their own use.
‘Jennings had been sworn a United Irishman, and was attached to the cause from republican principles; but being a Protestant, and having discovered from the massacres which had taken place in the counties of Dublin, Meath, and Kildare, that the extirpation of his own order was intended, he informed Lieutenant Mathurin of the plot; and he, having communicated it to the Government, Raymond was taken up, tried, convicted, and hanged on the Old Bridge on the 1st of June.’
As the Roman Catholic members of that corps, who formed the majority of it, were discovered to be disaffected, they were disarmed on parade the Sunday following, and disbanded.
The fears of the inhabitants of the city were not abated when, on the 26th of May, the Lord Mayor caused the following placard to be circulated throughout the metropolis:—
‘A Caution
‘Lest the innocent should suffer for the guilty.
‘The Lord Mayor requests his fellow-citizens to keep within their houses as much as they can, suitable to their convenience, after sunset, in this time of peril; as the streets should be kept as clear as possible, should any tumult or rising to support rebellion be attempted, in order that the troops and artillery may act with full effect in case of any disturbance.’
THE HILL OF TARA
At this period, after plundering, and a commission of other outrages at Dunboyn, the rebels, from the borders of Meath and Dublin, proceeded in the first instance to Dunshaughlin, and afterwards to the hill of Tara. Their numbers had rapidly increased; there were no military parties in the immediate neighbourhood; and unchecked and unresisted, they devastated the country for miles round their camp, to which they carried an immense quantity of booty. A few corps of yeomanry still remained in the vicinity, but they were not sufficiently numerous to attack a very strong and defensible position. Accident, however, interposed, and the royalists obtained the assistance they required.
Three companies of the Reay Fencibles, with a battalion gun, were on the march to the metropolis, and halted in Navan on the night of the 25th of May. Captain Preston, who commanded the yeomanry of that town, solicited the co-operation of Captain M’Clean to deforce the rebels....
‘After going some time in quest of the rebels they found them very strongly posted on Tara hill, where they had been four hours, and about four thousand in number, while the country people were flocking to them in great multitudes from every quarter. They had plundered the houses in all the adjacent country of provisions of every kind, and were proceeding to cook their dinners, having lighted nearly forty fires, and hoisted white flags in their camp.
‘The hill of Tara is very steep, and the upper part surrounded by three circular Danish forts, with ramparts and fosses; while on the top lies the churchyard surrounded with a wall, which the rebels regarded as their citadel, and considered impregnable.
‘The king’s troops, including the yeomanry, might have amounted to about four hundred. As soon as the rebels perceived them they put their hats on the tops of their spikes, sent forth some dreadful yells, and at the same time began to jump, and put themselves in singular attitudes, as if bidding defiance to their adversaries. They then began to advance, firing at the same time, but in an irregular manner.
‘Our line of infantry came on with the greatest coolness, and did not fire a shot until they were within fifty yards. One part of the cavalry, commanded by Lord Fingal, was ordered to the right, the other to the left, to prevent the line from being outflanked, which the enemy attempted to accomplish. The rebels made three desperate onsets, and in the last laid hold of the cannon; but the officer who commanded the gun laid the match to it before they could completely surround it, prostrated ten or twelve of the assailants, and dispersed the remainder. The Reay Fencibles preserved their line, and fired with as much coolness as if they had been exercising on a field-day.
‘At length they routed the rebels, who fled in all directions, having lost about four hundred in killed and wounded. In their flight they threw away arms and ammunition, and everything that could encumber them. Three hundred horses, all their provisions, arms, ammunition, and baggage fell into the hands of the victors, with eight of the Reay Fencibles, whom they had taken prisoners two days before, and whom they employed to drill them.
‘It is to be lamented that the Reay Fencibles lost twenty-six men in killed and wounded, and the Upper Kells infantry six men.
‘The king’s troops would have remained on the field all night, but they had not a cartridge left either for the gun or small arms, The prisoners, of whom they took a good many, informed our officers that their intention was to have proceeded that night to plunder Navan, and then Kells, where there was a great quantity of ammunition, and little or no force to protect it; and that when they had succeeded they expected, according to a preconcerted plan, to have been joined by a great number of insurgents from Meath, Westmeath, Lough, Monaghan, and Cavan.’
The defeat of the insurgents, and their complete dispersion at Tara hill and on the Curragh, were highly advantageous, as they opened the communications north and south with the metropolis, which had been seriously interrupted.
Many partial affairs took place at this time between the royalists and the rebels in Kildare, and barbarities on the one side produced on the other a terrible retaliation. The insurgents burned and murdered as they went along; the troops and yeomen shot and hanged liberally in return. The record of crimes inhumanly committed and ruthlessly revenged would only disgust a reader.
While thus Kildare was exhibited for nearly a week one wide blaze of general insurrection, another county, which in the annals of rebellion assumed afterwards a sanguinary pre-eminence, remained in ominous tranquillity. The storm burst at last, and in crime and bloodshed Wexford left every other scene of tumultuary violence completely in the shade.
WEXFORD INSURRECTION AND CONSEQUENT ATROCITIES
Wexford had long withstood the anarchy of the evil days. While many counties in Ireland were disgraced by nocturnal robbery and assassination, committed by Defenders and United Irishmen, for five years previous to ‘97, it was the pride of the Wexford gentlemen to boast that their county had remained in perfect tranquillity. But in the autumn and winter of that year, and in the spring of ‘98, there were well-grounded suspicions that the mass of the people had begun to be infected by those baneful principles which since proved fatal to the kingdom, that pikes were manufactured, and clubs had been formed, in which illegal oaths had been administered. In April, however, unequivocal symptoms that a disaffected spirit actuated the peasantry became evident; and although the priests laboured hard to lead the resident gentry to believe that no danger was impending, and the people by thousands swore allegiance in the chapels, and expressed open attachment to the Government, there is too much reason to conclude that the plot had been long in preparation, and that the ferocious spirit which marked the proceedings of the insurgents was not the wild ebullition of a resentment produced by injudicious severity, but the fruits of a long-cherished antipathy to those who dissented from them in faith. It was the explosion of a frantic effort of the Papists to stamp out and exterminate their Protestant fellow-countrymen.
There is no doubt violent measures produced great exasperation, and that possibly a conciliatory policy might have averted the outbreak altogether. ‘Not above six hundred men at most of the regular army or militia were stationed in the county, the defence of which was almost abandoned to the troops of yeomen and their supplementaries. The magistrates in several districts employed themselves in ordering the seizure, imprisonment, and whipping of numbers of suspected persons. These yeomen being Protestants, prejudiced against the Romanists by traditionary and other accounts of the former cruelties that sect committed, fearing similar cruelties in case of insurrection, and confirmed in this fear by papers found in the pockets of some prisoners, containing the old sanguinary doctrines of the Romish Church, which authorised the extermination of heretics, acted with a spirit ill-fitted to allay religious hatred and prevent any feeling to rebels.
CAPTAIN FATHER JOHN MURPHY OF BOULAVOGUE
Until Saturday, the 26th of May, the flame of rebellion remained smouldering; but on that evening John Murphy, the curate or coadjutor-priest of Boulavogue, gave the signal for a general rising, which was too fatally responded to. A fire lighted on the hill of Corrigrua was answered by another kindled on Boulavogue, and the rapidity with which the volcano burst appears almost incredible. Murphy, the rebel general, was the son of a petty farmer in the parish of Ferns, where he was educated at a hedge school kept by a man of the name of Gun. It appears by his testimonium and diploma, that he received holy orders at Seville in Spain in the year 1785, and probably graduated there as a doctor of divinity, as he assumes that title in his journal, which was dropped in his retreat from Vinegar Hill, and found by Captain Hugh Moore of the 5th Dragoons, aide-de-camp to General Needham.
Nothing could be more ferocious than the church-militant career of this savage man. Every Protestant house in the parish of Kilcormick was reduced to ashes, and such of their unfortunate owners as could be seized were ruthlessly destroyed. These outrages proceeded entirely from a truculent disposition—for mostly his victims were men who offered no opposition—and when rashly attacked at a place called the Harrow, he beat off the Camolin cavalry, and killed Lieutenant Bookey who commanded it.
Whether the demon spirit which Murphy afterwards exhibited had been provoked or not is a matter of controversy; some say that his house and chapel had been burnt before he took the field, and others as positively deny it. In searching through the evidence on record dispassionately, I incline to the Tatter opinion, for when his house was burned the furniture had been previously removed and hidden in a sand-pit, and when his vestments were brought from the same concealment, the leader of the loyalists observed, in reply to some insulting remark, ‘Punish the rebel if you can, but offer no mockery to his religion.’
Early in his martial career Murphy commenced his murderous treacheries, destroying the glebe house at Kyle and murdering the rector of Kilmuckridge, Doctor Burrowes, and his family, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. The house was defended with barricades by the rector and his parishioners at sunrise it was attacked by about five hundred rebels. ‘It was vigorously defended for some time, many shots having been fired by the assailants and the besieged. At last the rebels set fire to the out-offices, which were quickly consumed, and soon after to the dwelling-house, which in a short time was in a state of conflagration. The rapid spread of the flames in the latter was caused by the application of some unctuous combustible matter applied to the doors and windows of the house, which the rebels frequently used in the course of the rebellion.
‘The besieged being in danger of suffocation from the thickness of the smoke, resolved to quit the house, however perilous it might be, and this they were encouraged to do by Father Murphy, who assured them they should not be injured if they surrendered themselves without further resistance. Relying on his promise they quitted the house, on which the rebels treacherously murdered Mr. Burrowes and seven of his parishioners, and gave his son, a youth of sixteen, so severe a wound in the belly with a pike, that it subsequently caused his death.
CAROUSAL AND PLUNDER AT THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF FERNS
George Cruikshank has seized this characteristic incident for one of his graphic pictures. It will be remembered that Murphy’s father came from the parish of Ferns. The illustration is in itself sufficiently graphic, and filled with pictorial details descriptive of the incident. Maxwell has related, in reference to the plunder of the bishop’s palace, an anecdote connected with it, which marks the total subversion of principle, religious feelings, badly excited, will produce. An orphan boy, whom the bishop had found naked and starving at the age of seven years, and whom he had fed, clothed, and instructed afterwards, was the leader of these marauders, showed them every valuable article of furniture, and assisted them in breaking open the cellar. The bishop’s fine library was plundered of its antique folios; these the rebels converted into saddles.