CHAPTER XXII.

Suppression of the Insurrection-Its Consequencès.

AFTER their defeats at Arklow and Ross, the insurgents of Wexford were reduced to maintain a defensive warfare, their last hope being to protract the contest until succours could arrive from France. Their principal encampment was on Vinegar Hill, a lofty and irregular eminence near the town of Enniscorthy. Here, after the example of the royalists, they established a revolutionary tribunal, that emulated the cruelties and iniquities of the courts-martial. Some of the victims were persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious by aiding in the wanton infliction of torture, but others owed their fate to secret treachery and malignant insinuation. After the country had remained for more than three weeks at the mercy of the undisciplined half-armed rabble that constituted the insurgent forces, a royal army of thirteen thousand men, with a formidable train of artillery, advanced against Vinegar Hill, in four divisions. The struggle was of course brief; the insurgents fled after a faint attempt at resistance, making their escape along the line of road destined to be occupied by General Needham's division, which from some unexplained circumstance, they found vacant. On the approach of the royal army to Vinegar Hill, the greater part of the insurgent garrison was withdrawn from Wexford. The inhabitants believed this a favourable opportunity of saving the town from the violence both of the insurgents and the soldiery; waited on Lord Kingsborough, who had been made a prisoner in the beginning of the contest, offering to surrender the town, and to procure the submission of the armed peasantry in the

neighbourhood, if security both of person and property was granted to all but murderers. Lord Kingsborough, having accepted of these conditions, was placed in command of the town. He immediately wrote an account of the circumstance, and a deputation of the townspeople went to procure a ratification of the agreement. To his lordship's letter Lake, determined to give his soldiers an opportunity of taking revenge for their former disgraceful abandonment of Wexford, returned no answer. To the deputation from the town, he gave the following reply

"Lieutenant-general Lake cannot attend to any terms by rebels in arms against their sovereign. While they continue so, he must use the force intrusted to him with the utmost energy for their destruction. To the deluded multitude he promises pardon, on their delivering into his hands their leaders, surrendering their arms, and returning to their allegiance."

On the faith of Lord Kingsborough's convention, the town of Wexford had already been restored to tranquillity. The army of the insurgents had retired to their camp in the neighbourhood, and was preparing to disperse; the leaders who had acted with humanity returned to their homes; while the perpetrators of murder and massacre sought safety in flight. In the mean time the army of the sanguinary Lake was advancing upon Wexford, which seemed devoted to destruction more certain than that of Nineveh. Luckily Sir John Moore, whose humanity equalled his bravery, lay nearer to the town than Lake, and having heard of the convention, advanced to Wexford. The town was quickly garrisoned by a few yeomen; and Moore, eager to restrain the violence of his soldiers, encamped in the vicinity. Every pretext was thus removed for subjecting the town to the horrors of military execution; but the leaders, who deemed themselves safe by the conven

tion, were seized after being subjected to indignities shocking to humanity. The country, however, was abandoned to the tender mercies of Lake's soldiery, and suffered every calamity that lust, rapine, and a ruffian thirst for blood could inflict. It is impossible to give even an imperfect idea of such horrors; they are unparalleled in the annals of human crime. Courtsmartial were then held for the trial of the insurgent leaders. They had trusted to the convention. They deemed that the lives they had saved from the fury of the mob would plead in their behalf. Many of them could prove that their participation in the revolt was produced by compulsion; but such excuses could be of little avail when innocence itself afforded no protection. With pain we must add that Lord Kingsborough acted as a member of the courts-martial by whom these men were tried; and that the Irish parliament sanctioned the iniquity, by passing acts of attainder and forfeiture against them after their death.

The insurgents, driven to despair by the news of the breach of the convention, hopeless of success, and yet afraid to lay down their arms, proceeded to maintain a desultory war, hurrying from county to county through the centre of Ireland, and baffling the royal army by the celerity of their movements. In this strange warfare, more injury was inflicted on the country in a few days, than it had suffered during the weeks when the insurgents were triumphant. Between these despairing wretches and the brutal soldiery, Ireland must soon have been a desert, but for the lenient policy adopted by the Marquis of Cornwallis, the new viceroy. He published a proclamation, authorizing the royal generals to grant protections to all who would return to their allegiance, except those guilty of murder; and thus the most desperate leaders obtained pardon, which had been refused to those cổmparativ‹ly innocent. Generals Hunter, Grose, Gascoyne, and Needham, who were VOL. II.-A a

stationed in the county of Wexford, exerted them. selves to the utmost to give full effect to the benevolent intentions of the viceroy; and though they could not wholly restrain the excesses of the savage bands of yeomanry and militia, they acquired the confidence of the peasantry, and earned the blessings of a grateful population. Such an effect had this judicious mercy in reconciling the peasantry to the government, that when the news of a French invasion arrived, they offered their services to General Hunter, in an address of equal simplicity and energy, which is preserved in Hay's History of the Wexford Insurrection.

Though the insurrection was confined to Wexford, the "reign of terror" established under Lord Camden's administration, extended over the entire south and east. Two instances may serve to illustrate the temper and wisdom of those to whom it had pleased the rulers of Ireland to intrust the destinies of the country. Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, high-sheriff of Tipperary, flogged severely a gentleman named Wright, for having in his possession a complimentary note, written in the French language, of which the worthy functionary was unfortunately ignorant. In the town of Youghal, one Desmond, after being severely flogged, was hanged in front of the jail, on evidence which, being obtained by torture, was not above suspicion. His brother, then confined in the prison, was forced to witness the execution; and soldiers were placed behind him with drawn bayonets, to prevent him from turning his eyes away from the horrid spectacle.

A kind of treaty was made between the Irish government and the state prisoners confined in Dublin. Their lives were spared, on condition of their giving the government every information connected with the conspiracy. A garbled account of their examinations was published; but still enough was preserved to show, that, if the insurrection was not provoked

by the government, it was deliberately waited for and defied. The total loss of property in this calamitous struggle was probably not less than three millions sterling. Of the royal party, about twenty thousand fell; but not less than fifty thousand of the insurgents were destroyed. The utter demoralization of a great proportion of the triumphant party was the worst consequence of this lamentable struggle. Men learned to take an infernal delight in the tortures and sufferings of their fellow-creatures. Revenge, bigotry, and all the dark passions that combine with both, were permitted to have full sway. Perjury, and subornation of perjury, were united to evidence obtained by torture. Robbery, murder, and licentious crime, committed with impunity, destroyed every virtuous tie, and every moral obligation. The state of society thus created could not all at once be changed; and, even now that a new generation has succeeded, the consequences are not quite effaced.

The French Directory, during the continuance of the struggle in Wexford, made no effort to assist their Irish allies; but, late in August, when all disturbances had been suppressed, a small force of eleven hundred men, commanded by General Humbert, landed at Killala, and soon gained possession of the town. General Hutchinson, on the first news of the invasion, hastened from Galway to Castlebar, and soon assembled a vastly superior force. Unfortunately, he was superseded in the command by the arrival of Lake, a circumstance to which, combined with the undisciplined state of the soldiery, must be attributed the disgraceful events that followed. A British army, amounting at least to four thousand men, and supported by fourteen pieces of cannon, fled almost without firing a shot, from eight hundred Frenchmen and about a thousand unarmed peasantry, who had no other artillery than one curricle gun. Want of means prevented Humbert from improving