CHAPTER LXVI.

THE REBELLION OF 1798.

A.D. 1798.-George III.

ELIEVING it impossible to bring about reform of any kind by peaceable means, the United Irish leaders, in an evil hour, determined on open rebellion; but the government were kept well informed by spies of their secret proceedings, and bided their time till things were ripe for a swoop. They knew that the 23rd of May had been fixed as the day of rising. On the 12th of March 1798, major Swan, a magistrate, acting on the information of Thomas Reynolds, arrested Oliver Bond and fourteen other delegates assembled in Bond's house in

Bridge-street, Dublin, arranging the plan of rebellion, and seized all their papers. On the same day several other leaders were arrested in their homes.

A reward of £1000 was offered for the apprehension of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the moving spirit of the confederacy. After some time the authorities received information from Francis Higgins-commonly known as the "Sham Squire"-that he was concealed in the house of Nicholas Murphy, a feather merchant of Thomas-street, Dublin. Lord Edward was lying ill in bed, when major Swan, yeomanry captain Ryan, and a soldier, entered the room; but he drew a dagger and struggled desperately, wounding Swan and Ryan. Major Sirr, who had accompanied the party, now rushed in with half-a-dozen soldiers, and taking aim, shot Lord Edward in the shoulder, who was then overpowered and taken prisoner. But on the 4th of June he died of his wound while in prison, at the age of thirty-two. On the 21st May two brothers Henry and John Sheares, barristers, members of the Dublin directory of the United Irishmen, were arrested. They were convicted on the 12th of July, and hanged two days afterwards. A reprieve for Henry came too late-five minutes after the execution.

The rising took place on the 24th of May. It was only partial confined chiefly to the counties of Kildare, Wicklow, and Wexford; and there were some slight attempts in Carlow, Queen's Co., Meath, and county Dublin. But Dublin city did not rise, for it had been placed under martial law, and almost the whole of the leaders there had been arrested. The insurrection was quite premature; and the people were almost without arms, without discipline, plan, or leaders. On the 26th of May a body of 4000 insurgents

were defeated on the hill of Tara; and on Whitsunday the 27th, the rising broke out in Wexford. There, as well as in some of the neighbouring counties, the rebellion assumed a sectarian character which it had not elsewhere: the rebels were nearly all Roman Catholics, though many of their leaders were Protestants. This Wexford rising was not the result of premeditation or of any concert with the Dublin directory of the United Irishmen; for the society had not made much headway among the quiet industrious peasants of that county, who were chiefly descendants of English colonists. Though there was a good deal of disaffection among them, chiefly caused by alarming rumours of intended massacres, they did not want to rise. They were driven to rebellion simply by the terrible barbarities of the military, the yeomen, and more especially the North Cork militia; they rose in desperation without any plan or any idea of what they were to do; and in their vengeful fury they committed many terrible outrages on the Protestant loyalist inhabitants, in blind retaliation for the far worse excesses of the militia.

Father John Murphy, parish priest of Kilcormick near Ferns, finding his little chapel of Boleyvogue burned by the yeomen, took the lead of the rebels, with another priest, Father Michael Murphy, whose chapel had also been burned; but although these and one or two other priests were among the insurgents of Ninetyeight, the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities were entirely opposed to the rebellion. On the 27th of May the peasantry, led by Father John Murphy, defeated and annihilated a large party of the North Cork militia on the Hill of Oulart, near Enniscorthy. Having captured 800 stand of arms, they marched next on Enniscorthy; and by the stratagem of driving a herd of bullocks

before them to break the ranks of the military, they took the town after a struggle of four hours; on which the garrison and the Protestant inhabitants filed to Wexford-fifteen miles off. About the same time

Gorey was abandoned by its garrison, who retreated to Arklow.

At the end of May the insurgents fixed their chief encampment on Vinegar Hill, an eminence rising over Enniscorthy, at the opposite side of the Slaney. While the camp lay here, a number of Protestants, brought in from the surrounding country, were confined in an old windmill on the summit of the hill, many of whom, after being subjected day by day to some sort of trial, were put to death. On the 30th of May a detachment of military was attacked and destroyed at the Three Rocks, four miles from the town of Wexford. The insurgents now advanced towards Wexford: but the garrison, consisting chiefly of the North Cork militia, did not wait to be attacked: they marched away; and while retreating they burned and pillaged the houses and shot the peasantry wherever they met them. The exultant rebels having taken possession of Wexford, drank and feasted and plundered; but beyond this there was little outrage: with one notable exception. While they occupied the town, a fellow named Dixon on the rebel side, the captain of a small coasting vessel, who had never taken any part in the real fighting—one of those cruel cowardly natures sure to turn up on such occasions-collected a rabble, not of the townspeople, but of others who were there from the surrounding districts, and plying them with whisky, broke open the jail where many of the Protestant gentry and others were confined. In spite of the expostulations of the more respectable leaders, the mob brought a number of the prisoners

to the bridge, and after a mock trial began to kill them one by one. A number, variously stated from forty to ninety, had been murdered, and another batch were brought out, when, according to contemporary accounts, a young priest, Father Corrin, returning from some parochial duties, and seeing how things stood, rushed in at the risk of his life and commanded the executioners to their knees. Down they knelt instinctively, when in a loud voice he dictated a prayer which they repeated after him that God might show to them the same mercy that they were about to show to the prisoners; which so awed and terrified them that they immediately stopped the executions. Forty years afterwards, Captain Kellett of Clonard near Wexford, one of the Protestant gentlemen he had saved, followed, with sorrow and reverence, the remains of that good priest to the grave. Dixon probably escaped arrest, for he is not heard of again. All this time the Protestants of the town were in terror of their lives, and a great many of them sought and obtained the protection of the Catholic priests, who everywhere exerted themselves, and with success, to prevent outrage. A Protestant gentleman named Bagenal Harvey who had been seized by government on suspicion and imprisoned in Wexford jail, was released by the insurgent peasantry and made their general.

Besides the principal encampment on Vinegar Hill, the rebels had two others; one on Carrickbyrne Hill, between New Ross and Wexford: the other on Carrigroe Hill, near Ferns. From Carrigroe, on the 1st June, a large body of them marched on Gorey: but they were routed just as they approached the town, by a party

of

yeomen under lieutenant Elliott. They fared better however in the next encounter. General Loftus with 1500 men marched from Gorey in two divisions to