stopped by the interference of Father Corrin, a priest, who, after vainly supplicating the assassins to desist, commanded them, in an authoritative tone, to kneel down and pray before they proceeded farther with the work of death. Having got them on their knees he dictated, in a loud voice, a prayer, that God might show the same mercy to them which they would show to the surviving prisoners. These solemn words had the desired effect, and the batch of victims, then waiting for their doom, were conducted back to prison.

At that moment the rebel camp on Vinegar Hill was beset by the royal troops, approaching from different sides. Many of the peasantry had dispersed to a distance through the country, but at the call of their leaders they rallied in great numbers, and with a devotedness that was wonderful under such circumstances. Several women also came with the men; and their bodies were found in the piles of slain after the battle. The Irish were almost destitute of gunpowder, having been unsuccessful in their attempts to manufacture some at Wexford. The attack was planned by general Lake, who did not think it prudent to undertake it with a smaller force than 20,000 men, besides a numerous artillery train. Generals Loftus, Duffe, Needham, and Moore, acted under his orders; the hill was to have been surrounded at every point, and the attack to have commenced at seven o'clock on the morning of the 21st of June. General Needham, however, from some unexplained cause, did not arrive at his appointed position until two hours later, when the fighting was over. For an hour and a-half the Irish maintained their ground with great intrepidity under a shower of grape shot, and a dense fire of musketry, while the want of ammunition rendered their own artillery nearly useless. At length they gave way: the space left unoccupied, or "Needham's gap," as it was sarcastically called, afforded a means of retreat too tempting for their stability; and with a loss not in proportion to the numbers engaged, they made good their way to Wexford unpursued by the enemy. The most savage cruelties were now perpetrated by the soldiery. A building in Enniscorthy, used by the Irish as an hospital, was set on fire, and the sick and wounded inmates consumed in the flames. Some hundreds of stragglers were killed after the battle, and several loyalists suffered in the indiscriminate carnage and destruction. At Wexford the gallant and humane general Moore prevented the troops under his command from entering the town while excited by victory; but the rest of the army poured in the following morning; the wounded in the hospital at Wexford were immediately

THE INSURRECTION IN ULSTER.

753

put to the sword, as were also many of the inhabitants and others, who, owing to an understanding with lord Kingsborough that protection would be extended to them on the evacuation of the town by the insurgent army, imagined themselves secure. General Lake refused to grant any protection unless all the leaders were delivered into his hands; the surrounding country became a scene of frightful destruction and slaughter, and a court-martial, which assembled so hastily that the members were not even sworn, proceeded to order the execution of a number of respectable persons, among others, of the Rev. Philip Roche, Mr. Bagenal Harvey, Mr. Grogan of Johnstown (an aged gentleman of very large fortune, whom the people had compelled to act in the capacity of commissary), captain Keogh, Mr. Prendergast, Mr. Kelly, of Killan, and others.

Let us now transfer our attention for a moment to Ulster, where the popular organisation had been most complete; but where, owing to some misunderstanding among the leaders, and the betrayal of all their plans to government, the rising did not take place simultaneously with that in other quarters, and where the movement, though spirited, was brief and partial. In Antrim the person chosen by the United Irishmen as their adjutant-general having resigned his appointment at the last moment, Mr. Henry Joy M'Cracken, a young man respectably connected, and of an enterprising spirit, was induced to place himself in the hazardous position of chief. On the 7th of June he led a body of insurgents in an attack on the town of Antrim, where a meeting of magistrates was to have been held that day. The assault was made with great order and steadiness, and the town was carried after an hour's fighting; but the military having obtained large reinforcements, returned to the charge, and dislodged the insurgents after a stubborn resistance. M'Cracken retired to the heights of Slemmish, with a small band of followers, who gradually dispersed; he escaped arrest until the beginning of July, when he at length fell into the hands of the royalists, and was tried and executed at Belfast on the 17th of the month. Unfortunately in the latter part of the fight at Antrim, lord O'Neill, a humane and popular nobleman, while entering the town with the yeomen, received some wounds from the pikemen, which caused his death a few days after. In Down the rising was more considerable, and the people had several successful conflicts with the military. At Saintfield they

* See the beautiful and affecting account given by his sister of his trial and execution in Dr. Madden's United Irishmen.

cut off a body of cavalry, and having marched to Ballinahinch they took up a strong position on Windmill hill, and on some elevated ground in lord Moira's demesne, adjoining that town. Their leader was Henry Munro, who was of Scottish descent, and, like M'Cracken, had been engaged in the linen manufacture. He possessed some knowledge of military matters, having been trained to the use of arms as a volunteer. In the disposal of his irregular force at Ballinahinch, he displayed considerable tact. On the 12th of June the royal troops under generals Nugent and Barber marched against him from Belfast. A good deal of skirmishing took place that evening, and the army having set fire to the town passed the night in every kind of excess. Munro was urged to attack them while in the midst of their debauch, but he considered the attempt would be disgraceful, and declined. The action commenced next morning. The people had eight small cannons, mounted on common carts, but only a scanty supply of ammunition, while their adversaries, who had some heavy artillery, mowed them down with a terrific and well-sustained fire of musketry and grape. One account describes the Monaghan regiment of militia, which was posted with two pieces of ordnance at lord Moira's gate, as thrown into confusion by an impetuous charge of pikemen, and falling back upon the Hillsborough cavalry, which also reeled in disorder; but, in the meantime, the Argyleshire fencibles entered the demesne and attacked the insurgents on another side, and the militia regiments got time to rally. Charles Teeling, in his personal narrative, states that Munro had penetrated to the centre of the town, and that the British general had ordered a retreat, but that the sound of the bugle was mistaken by the insurgents for the signal for a fresh charge, whereupon they instantly fled. In a moment all was lost. Although hotly pursued Munro endeavoured to rally his men on the heights of Ednavady, but the royal troops almost surrounded the hill, leaving but one passage for retreat, and by this Munro led off his men. now not exceeding 150 in number. As usual on those occasions, the Irish lost more in the retreat than in the battle; but no reliance can be placed on the accounts of the numbers slain in the several conflicts during the rebellion. It was the custom of the loyalists to exaggerat extravagantly the losses of the insurgents, who of course kept no regula muster-roll; and the number of casualties on the side of the military unless where trifling, was studiously concealed in the official reports Soon after the battle of Ballinahinch the insurgents of Down surren dered their arms; Munro fled to the mountains, but was betrayed t

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the military, tried by court-martial, and hanged at Lisburn opposite his own door. Thus was the outbreak in Ulster suppressed.

On the 21st of June the marquis of Cornwallis assumed the civil government and supreme military command. The country having been sufficiently dragooned, he was sent over with instructions to check the ferocity of the Orange faction, and to substitute moderation for terrorism. But before the new policy was carried out, a remnant of the Wexford rebellion was still to be crushed. The inhuman tactics of general Lake in refusing protection had compelled the people to stand together in their own defence, and two large bodies of the armed peasantry quitted Wexford, one entering Wicklow, and the other penetrating into the interior as far as Castlecomer, in the county of Kilkenny, where they hoped to raise the mining population. The town of Castlecomer was plundered on the 25th of June; but early on the following morning the insurgents were attacked on Kilcomney hill by a strong military force under general sir Charles Asgill, and after standing a brisk cannonade for about an hour, they retreated by the Scollagh gap in the direction of the Wicklow mountains. After their departure one of the most savage and gratuitous massacres of that sanguinary contest was perpetrated; the unoffending people of the locality, to the number of one hundred and forty, having been put to the sword by sir Charles Asgill's orders. It is needless to follow any further the wanderings of the fugitive Wexfordmen, some of whom crossed the Boyne, and were finally defeated on their return southward in the vicinity of Swords. Their fine county was nearly depopulated, and in one of the districts of it called the Macomores, the diabolical project of exterminating the last remnant of the people was actually undertaken. The rebellion was now extinguished. On the 3rd of July lord Cornwallis issued a proclamation of a very questionable character, authorising the generals to grant protection to such of the insurgents as, being guilty of rebellion only, laid down their arms, took the oath of allegiance, and complied with other conditions; and on the 17th an act of

For some years after this the embers of the insurrection still smoldered in various parts of the country; in Robert Emmet's attempted rising, in July, 1803, they flickered for a moment for the last time; and a small party of desperados, amidst the fastnesses of the Wicklow mountains, bid defiance for years to the attempts of government to exterminate them. The captain of these Wicklow outlaws was Michael Dwyer, a brave, honorable, active, and hardy man, the very type of an outlaw hero, whose exploits and hair-breath escapes have all the interest of the wildest romance. He at length surrendered in December, 1803, on a promise of pardon, but was sent to Botany Bay, where he died in 1826. See the curious particulars collected about him by Dr. Madden in his Memoirs of Robert Emmet.

amnesty (as it was called) was passed, including all who had not been leaders in the insurrection.*

Another step in the way of conciliation on the part of the government was to induce the principal state prisoners confined in Dublin to enter into a compromise, by which, on certain conditions, including permission to emigrate to some foreign land not at war with England, they undertook to give all the information in their power as to the internal transactions of the United Irishmen, and their negociations with foreign states, without, however, implicating individuals; and also to give security not to return to Ireland without permission, or to pass into an enemy's country. This agreement, which was brought about through the instrumentality of Mr. Dobbs, was signed by seventythree of the state prisoners on the 29th of July; and in pursuance of it Mr. Arthur O'Connor, Mr. Thomas Addis Emmet, Doctor McNeven, Mr. Samuel Neilson, and others, were examined on oath before secret committees of both houses of parliament; but it was afterwards confessed that government had been already in possession, through sinister

* According to the estimate generally received, the losses in the rebellion of 1798 amounted to 20,000 men on the side of the loyalists and 50,000 on that of the people; the number of the latter who were put to death in cold blood greatly exceeding that of the killed in battle. Had the other counties risen like those of Wexford and Kildare, and had the people leaders of organising and military capacity and the necessary resources of war, or had they the co-operation which they expected of adequate succour from France, it is more than probable that they would have succeeded in making their country independent. In Wexford, where it is admitted that the rising was not preconcerted, or connected with that of Dublin or other places, about 35,000 men are supposed to have turned out, and the force which might have been raised in the whole of Ireland in the same ratio to the population would have been enormous. Those who rose were undisciplined, unpaid, most imperfectly armed, and without even one competent leader in the field; yet to suppress the outbreak required a military force of 137,000 men-regulars, militia, and yeomanry-commanded by five general officers, and cost the government a vast amount of treasure. The secret service money paid to informers from the 21st of August, 1797, to the 30th of September, 1801, was, according to official reports, £38,419, and the similar payments to 1804, which must be set down to the account of suppressing this rebellion, swell the amount in that particular list to £53,547. The indemnities paid to loyalists for destruction of property was £1,500,000; the cost of the military force kept up in Ireland for three or four years was) estimated at £4,000,000 per annum. In fine, the total cost of carrying the union, towards which the fomenting of the rebellion was the principal step, has been estimated by some writers at £21,500,000, by others at £30,000,000, and by others at even a higher amount. No estimate has been attempted of the destruction of the property of Catholics. A list of 35 Catholic chapels destroyed by the Orange yeomanry and militia in the counties of Wexford, Wicklow, Kildare, Carlow, and the Queen's County during the rebellion, was authenticated by the most rev. Dr. Troy; but this was considerably under the truth, for Mr. Cloney gives a list of 33 chapels burned in the county of Wexford alone during 1798 and the three succeeding years, while it it stated that only one Protestant church, that of Old Ross, was burned by the insurgents. As to the conduct of the latter Dr. Madden observes, that "throughout the rebellion there was an abundant evidence of their frenzy being more the impulse of a wild resentment against Orangeism than any spirit of hostility to the sovereign or the state."— 1st Ser. p. 349. 2nd Ed. It is right to add, that in all cases of retaliatory vengeance the insurgents invariably respected female honour, while numerous outrages to the contrary were committed by the military.