CHAPTER LXI ROBERT EMMET WHEN the Insurgents had laid down their arms, the country was given over to further horrors. The idea was to break the spirit so thoroughly, by a calculated campaign of "frightfulness," that Ireland should never dare to dream of liberty again, or offer the slightest resistance to the new chains that were being forged for her in the "Legislative Union" with England. So all through the bright summer days that followed the day of "Vinegar Hill" the shrieks of tortured men came from the Prevot Prison in the Royal Barracks, Dublin, where Major Sandys had set up his triangles, or from the "riding school" in Marlborough Street, where Mr. John Claudius Beresford carried on his pitch-cappings and picketings, his half hangings and his lacerations. Day after day were court martials, followed immediately by executions. Day after day the most terrible tales reached the Capital of the atrocities committed by the militia, the "Yeos" and the "Hessians" in the districts where they were now supreme. The statistics preserved by Cloney, for Wexford alone, of women violated, and then bayoneted or shot, of unarmed folk slaughtered in the fields and along the roads, of whole families burned alive in their cabins, of wounded men incinerated in the hospital at Enniscorthy (which went ablaze through a mere accident-"the bed clothes being set on fire by the wadding of the soldiers' guns, who were shooting the patients in their beds"), represent a degree of human suffering which even at this distance of time makes us sick to read of. What of those who in their prison cells-the State Prisoners like Thomas Addis Emmet, Thomas Russell, John Sweetman, Arthur O'Connor, Samuel Neilson-were hearing of them from day to day? Does one wonder that when a proposal came from Government that these horrors would be stopped, on certain conditions when men of honour could accept, they felt it their duty to explore the avenues to peace thus indicated? On the initiative of Mr. Dobbs, acting for the Government, seventy-three prisoners in Newgate, Kilmainham and Bridewell, put their names to a paper engaging to give every information in their power as to the whole internal transactions of the United Irishmen, and their negotiations with foreign states, with the proviso that they were not by naming or describing to implicate any person whatever. In return the executions were to be stopped, and the State Prisoners allowed to emigrate to a country to be agreed upon between them and the Government. This agreement was kept with the most scrupulous exactitude by the State Prisoners. But nobody who knows the Government's record for tearing up "scraps of paper" will be very much surprised to learn that its conditions were grossly violated by the Irish Executive—even though one of its own members, Lord Clare, had thus expressed himself to one among the prisoners, who raised a doubt as to the Executive's good faith: "Gentlemen, it comes to this a Government that breaks faith with you could not stand, and ought not be allowed to stand." The ink was hardly dry upon the paper when one of the condemned prisoners, Byrne (to save whose life was the immediate object of the treaty), was, in flagrant violation of its provisions, led forth to execution. The other, Oliver Bond, was murdered in prison. The State Prisoners, themselves, who signed the agreement were (also in violation of it) kept in prison, or internment in Fort George, Scotland, during the remaining four years of the war then raging with France. Worse still-though the fact will surprise no one acquainted with the records of English propaganda— a garbled account of the whole business, very injurious to the United Irishmen, was sent forth broadcast; and the prisoners' remonstrations were met by a peremptory message from Lord Lieutenant Cornwallis that if they dared to say another word he would annul the agreement, and go forward with wholesale executions. This breach of faith on the part of Government caused the State Prisoners to consider the contract null and void on their side also; and as may readily be surmised, they looked eagerly around, after their liberation from Fort George in the summer of 1802, for a chance to strike a blow once more for Irish Independence. Everybody knew that the war between France and England, to which the peace of Amiens had put a temporary cessation, would soon break out again; and it was common belief likewise that when the war did break out, an invasion by Bonaparte either of England or Ireland would be attempted. The United Irishmen, both on the continent and in Ireland, therefore (and in spite of all that had happened they were still numerous and powerful in the homeland), were prepared to sacrifice their just resentment against France for her failure to keep her engagements with them in '98, and enter into a new alliance with her. They had recruited unexpected allies in Ireland, itself, from among certain statesmen and politicians, who had formerly been their bitterest enemies, but who now saw themselves, to an equal degree, the victims of English intrigue-left high and dry by the "Legislative Union." It is morally certain, indeed, that though these statesmen kept themselves well and safely in the background during the events which make 1803 as tragic a memory as 1798, they took the initiative in the secret negotiations which led to them. Who were they? Shall we ever know more than Robert Emmet (who paid the penalty of their deeds) has chosen to tell us of them as he stood in the dock, making his immortal appeal to the yet unborn tribunal of his liberated country's judgment? "When I came to Ireland I found the business ripe for execution. I was asked to join in it. I took time to consider, and after mature deliberation I became one of the Provisional Government; and there then was my Lords, an agent from the United Irishmen and Provisional Government in Paris, negotiating with the French Government to obtain from them an aid sufficient to accomplish the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; the preliminary to which assistance has been a guarantee to Ireland similar to that which Franklin obtained for America." And again: "I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or as it has been expressed, 'the life and blood of this conspiracy.' You do me honour overmuch; you have given to the subaltern all the credit of the superior. There are men concerned in this conspiracy, who are not only superior to me but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord; men before the splendour of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would not deign to call you friend-who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand.” The Agent of the United Irishmen in Paris, referred to above, was Thomas Addis Emmet, who left Brussels for the French Capital early in 1803, to act in that capacity on definite instructions from the Provisional Government in Ireland. We possess in his diary from the 30th of May, 1803, to the 10th of March, 1804, with its detailed account of his transactions with the French Gov. ernment, then controlled by Bonaparte and Talleyrand, all the evidence required to prove that the Rising of 1803, so far from being, as Lord Castlereagh estimated it, "the wild and contemptible project of a young man of heated and enthusiastic imagination" was the well thought out plan of long-headed men and had a priori good reason to promise success. In the first place there was an absolute promise on the part of France of a large expeditionary force to aid the Rising in Ireland. In the second, there was an understanding with, and guarantees of co-operation from the revolutionary societies in England and Scotland. In the third, there were pledges from men of the highest social, military and political standing in Ireland to aid the movement with money, moral and other backing. If ever an effort for Irish Liberty seemed destined to succeed, it was that to which Robert Emmet found himself committed when he returned to Ireland, after his "Grand Tour" on the continent, in the Autumn of 1802. His first care, after he became organiser for the Provisional Government (which, as has been already said, had been formed before his return) was to get in touch with surviving fighters of '98, men like Myles Byrne of Wexford, and Jimmie Hope of Belfast. It is to the narratives of these two in particular that we owe our best knowledge of his aims and hopes, and the methods he adopted to attain them. His primary object was to get the country organised and armed, ready to co-operate with the French landing. The organisation of the counties was left to tried men of local influence, and as early as the Autumn of 1802 Emmet was able to assure John Keogh and John Philpot Curran that "nineteen counties could be relied upon." Very influential promises of help came from the North in particular, and the business of procuring arms went briskly forward. Early in 1803 Thomas Russell, his nephew-in-law, Hamilton, and Quigley, came over from France to help, and the greatest hopes were entertained that Russell's influence in Ulster would keep it straight this time, at least-though it had failed so grievously in '98. Emmet's own work was mainly confined to Dublin, but he was in close touch with the men of Carlow, Wicklow, Wexford, through his friends Michael Dwyer and Myles Byrne, and with the men of Kildare through one Bernard Duggan and others. Alas, Mr. Bernard Duggan, as we now know, was a paid Castle spy; and all the preparations for the Rising were faithfully retailed to his employer, the Under Secretary Mr. Alexander Marston, who let them go forward, having the comfortable assurance that he could circumvent them the moment it suited his own purpose! On the 16th July an explosion took place in a house in Patrick Street, which Emmet had taken as a depot for arms and explosives. This event, which made him regard the discovery of his plans as imminent, caused him to fix an early date for the Rising without waiting for the promised French aid. It may have been that Russell had infected him with his own fears that Bonaparte was only playing with the Irish, and this may have been an additional motive for hurrying him on. Assurances came from all over the country that if Dublin rose the rest of Ireland would speedily follow. Saturday, the 23rd of July, was the day arranged for the Rising in Dublin, in which the Wicklow, Kildare and Wexford men were to assist. The plans included an attack not only on Dublin Castle, but on the Pigeon House Fort and the Artillery Barracks at Island Bridge. But on the day appointed it was discovered that only a small fraction of the men expected to help had turned up. “1 expected," Emmet himself tells us, "two thousand to assemble at Costigan's Mills-the grand place of assembly. The evening before the Wicklow men failed through their officer. The Kildare men, who were to act particularly with me, came in, and at five o'clock went off again, from the canal harbour, on a report from two of their officers that Dublin would not act. "In Dublin itself it was given out by some treacherous or cowardly person that it (the Rising) was postponed until Wednesday. The time of assembly was from 6 to 9, and at 9 instead of 2,000 there were only 80 men assembled." The romantic sequel of Robert Emmet's story has given to the occurrences of the 23d of July an importance which the men who organised the conspiracy of which they were only an incident, did not recognise. One part of the plan, the Rising in Dublin, had miscarried, through no fault of Robert Emmet's; but if the French had been true to their plighted word the rest of the country would have risen later, according to plan, and the dream to which the gallant youth sacrificed fortune, life, and love, might yet have come true. But the French failed their Irish allies once more, and Thomas Addis Emmet, though he still continued for a time his negotiations with the agents of the First Consul, and though he actually saw an Irish Legion embodied, and Irish colours prepared for an expeditionary force, had at length to convince himself that "Bona |