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information had led the officers to know that there was something to be disclosed. It is true also that the lash proved the most efficacions of persuasives, that under its pressure the labours of the Revolutionary Committee were rendered futile, that the army of insurrection was deprived of half its means of injury, that the rebellion when it broke out was confined to districts where the process had been imperfectly carried out, and that General Lake's determination, though it could not prevent infinite horrors, did at least prevent a massacre on the scale of the precedent of 1641.'

It is clear, then, that the only effect of these severe measures was to hasten the outbreak, for the revolutionary chiefs saw that if they waited longer, the whole country would be disarmed.* But one Catholic historian has even ventured to assert that it was wrong to disarm the people:

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'When he denies the right of the Government to deprive the peasants and farmers of the pikes and muskets with which they had provided themselves, he assumes that they had a right to be armed. For what purpose all Ireland had for three years turned itself into an arsenal, and every village into a place of drill, he does not care to inquire. He passes over in silence the correspondence with France, and the series of savage murders which made necessary the Insurrection Act.'

It has been urged that Lord Camden knew everything about the conspiracy for years through his band of secret informers, and might at any moment have crushed it with the greatest ease, but that he preferred rather to allow it to mature into open rebellion. It cannot be denied that his spies supplied him with the most exact information concerning the movements of the revolutionary chiefs; but as they refused to come forward to prosecute, no considerable advantage could have accrued from the mere arrest of the conspirators. On two occasions, when the informers Reynolds and Armstrong had the courage to give evidence, the Viceroy acted with decision and effect. But as quickly as one batch of conspirators was swept

* Much has been made of Lord Castleragh's admission that measures were taken by Government to cause the premature explosion of 'the rebellion.' The measures in question were undoubtedly the arrest of the leading conspirators and the disarmament of the peasantry, though National historians are convinced that they were the tortures and pitch-cappings. The plan of the United Irishmen was to time the insurrection by the arrival of the French. The Government, naturally anxious to deal with an inevitable outbreak under the least formidable conditions for its effectual suppression, took the course that baffled all the plans of the conspirators. The rebellion was virtually crushed before the French arrived in August.

away, their places were immediately supplied by others. The supposition that the rebellion was fomented to carry the Union is too insulting to our common nature to be thought of, while the whole evidence of facts entirely disproves it. We admit that Pitt had for years regarded the Union as inevitable, but if he designed to accomplish it through an insurrection, why did he leave Ireland entirely denuded of English troops so as to increase the successful chances of a conspiracy that would have ended in the complete severance of the country from the British Empire? Even after the outbreak, the Viceroy had the greatest difficulty in obtaining a few slender reinforcements from England.

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The rebellion broke out in the South of Ireland on the 24th of May, 1798. Ulster remained quiet at first, for the Viceroy had disarmed the population and arrested its rebel chiefs, so that to use Mr. Froude's phrase-In the part of Ireland where the populace was most dangerous and the insurgent organisation most complete, the teeth of the rebel6 lion was drawn.' The Government had barely 40,000 troops at its command to crush the rebellion; of British troops scarcely any; of the Irish militia 18,000, all the rest were Irish yeomanry- most of them, yet not all, well-disposed, but untrained as soldiers, and no better than armed volun'teers.' Unfortunately, this army was scattered over the country in isolated and detached parties; and the plan of the rebel leaders was to take advantage of this dispersion of forceto surprise these parties separately, by simultaneous attacks in overpowering force, and destroy them before they could 're-combine.' County Kildare was the scene of the first conflict, for owing to the hostility of the Fitzgeralds to the Government, and the open treason of Lord Edward, the in'habitants had not only been left in possession of their pikes, but they were led to believe that their natural chief was ' with them, and that the cause of the rebellion was the cause of the Duke of Leinster.' It was an officer of the Irish yeomanry, Dr. Esmonde, a gentleman of old Catholic family, who directed the first hostile movement against the English power in Ireland, by treacherously calling upon a party of North Cork Militia and Ancient Britons, under Captain Swayne, at a village named Prosperous, in the middle of the night:

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At two in the morning, when sleep was deepest, before the first streaks of dawn had begun to show, Esmonde, with his Clane Yeomen and an unknown multitude of ruffians, chiefly armed with pikes, came into Prosperous. The sentinels gave no alarm and were killed, and

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then at once, before a note of warning had been raised, the rebel bands flung themselves with a wild yell upon the barracks. The door went down. Swayne's room was on the ground-floor. They plunged in and stabbed him as he was springing from his bed. The soldiers, startled from their sleep, snatched their muskets and rushed out. The mob swung back into the street, barricaded the doors to keep them secure, and then flung fire into the cellars, which were filled with straw and faggots. Beset before and behind, the miserable men were driven from the lower rooms up the stairs. As the flames pursued them they sprang out of the windows, the mob below catching them as they fell on their pikes, and as each victim writhed upon the point receiving him with a fierce " Hurrah!" The North Cork were Irishmen and Catholics, traitors to both creed and country, deserving no mercy and finding none. All who were in the barracks were killed or desperately wounded. The Ancient Britons were quartered in a private house. They, too, were hated almost equally, for they had made themselves notorious in the disarming of Ulster. Eight of the twentythree leaped out of a back window and escaped across the country in the darkness. The rest were killed. Their horses, arms, and uniforms were taken by the rebels. As the roof of the barracks fell in, men and women flung themselves weeping in each others' arms. Tears only could express their joy. "Ireland is ours!"'

The rebels then sought out the leading Protestants of the district and put them instantly to death. It is a satisfaction to know that the wretch Esmonde was hanged a few days after in Dublin for his treachery. Then followed unsuccessful attacks by the rebels upon parties of loyal troops at Clane, Naas, and Carlow. Meanwhile, an unhappy incident occurred to embitter the bloody conflict. The insurgents at the Curragh of Kildare consented to lay down their arms on condition of pardon, but, on the approach of Sir James Duff to receive their arms, a shot or shots were fired out of the rebel lines, which led the troops to suspect treachery, and immediately a fusillade was opened, which left three hundred and fifty of the rebels dead upon the field. This slaughter of Gibbet-Rathwhether it was accidental or designed cannot now be decidedhas been quoted by Irish national historians as the cause of the frightful atrocities that distinguished the rebel campaign in Wexford, but, as Mr. Froude justly observes, that in'surrection had already assumed its bloody and desperate 'character, and the flying rumours of murder and incendiarism beyond the Barrow were among the probable causes which had exasperated and infuriated the troops."

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The most brilliant chapters in the third volume are those which describe the insurrection in Wexford under the leadership of the two famous priests named Murphy. There is

nothing in Mr. Froude's narrative up to this point that displays the least historical bias, though he has not undertaken to describe any but the leading insurrectionary movements of that eventful May and June; but his account of the Wexford rising must be received with considerable allowance. He has introduced us to Father John Murphy in his own characteristic manner :

'Father John Murphy, of Boolavogue, was the son of a peasant at Ferns, and had been educated for the priesthood at Seville. He had been seated in his own country a few miles from his birthplace, and there he had remained waiting for the salvation of Israel, and had grown into a big, coarse, powerful man of forty, when his country called upon him for his services.'

Then we are told how Father John lighted the signal-fires on Corrigrua Hill on the night of the 26th of May, and began the work of massacre on the following morning by killing the Protestant Rector of Kilmuckridge, along with seven of his parishioners who had fled to the parsonage for shelter. But Mr. Froude has not told us that on that memorable 26th of May the yeomanry had, in search of arms, burned Father John's chapel and dwelling-house, as well as many other houses, under circumstances involving the loss of life. The action of Father Murphy followed the wanton violence of the yeomanry. It is quite true that the rebel-organisation existed in Wexford, and that the yeomanry were justified in disarming the peasantry, but Mr. Froude ought surely to have taken some notice of the allegations of Irish historians that the priest of Boolavogue was not a United Irishman at all, but had used his influence, along with other priests, in opposing the spread of the organisation. Unhappily, after the memorable 26th of May, which began a month of horrors vividly recalling the scenes of the St. Bartholomew massacre, there can be no doubt about the position of Father Murphy at the head of the movement.

The two priests, Father John, and Father Michael, Murphy, placed themselves at the head of an army of five thousand men, sacking houses and burning them, and killing every heretic they were able to identify. A small party of loyal troops marched out of Wexford city, under Colonel Foote, but were defeated and almost annihilated. The rebels then concentrated at Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, which became thenceforth a standing camp as well as a rallying-point for the county. Mr. Froude gives us a dreadful picture of Catholic fanaticism and blood-thirstiness at Vinegar Hill :

'Two exercises only were discharged with regularity and punctuality

on Vinegar Hill. Law might be forgotten, but religion was remembered. Twenty priests said mass each day at different points of the camp. Each day a holocaust of Protestants was offered to the national divinities. The windmill on the brow of the hill and a barn at the bottom were appropriated as prisons, and gangs of ruffians were sent out to scour the country and bring in every Protestant that could be found. Ringwood, where the feeblest of the Enniscorthy fugitives had taken refuge for the night, was drawn in the morning, as hounds draw a fox-cover. Many poor creatures, and those perhaps the happiest, were piked upon the spot. Others were carried captive to the hill, where a council of leaders was held to determine on the treatment of them. Some were for an instant and undiscriminating massacre; others, Father Roche especially, were against murder in cold blood altogether. It was decided finally that those only should be put to death who could be proved to have been actively traitors to the Irish cause. A court-martial was established in permanent session outside the windmill. The prisoners were brought before it in batches, like the aristocrats before Fouquier Tinville, and on receiving sentence were passed into instant execution on the pikes of the rebel-guard in waiting. On the first day, as an inauguration-ceremonial for the camp, twenty-four victims were condemned and stabbed or shot. As the windmill prison was emptied it was refilled from the barn. The barn was kept supplied from the country. Every day, so long as the camp continued, the bloody work went forward-the crimson blossoming of the tree of liberty, which had been planted by Grattan in '82. A large tub of water was daily blessed to sprinkle the miserable assassins and persuade them that they were Christ's soldiers. It is expressly recorded that those most ready with their services on these occasions were not the peasantry, but men who had received what is now called education.'

National historians have never ceased to deplore the dreadful scenes enacted on Vinegar Hill, which they usually attribute to the spirit of retaliation aroused by the sanguinary excesses of the yeomanry. They maintain that, as the trusted leaders of the Wexford insurgents were Protestant gentlemen like Bagenal Harvey, Colclough, Grogan, and Perry, it is unfair to attribute the massacres to Catholic fanaticism; while they further allege that such a thing as a religious war was wholly inconsistent with the policy as well as the design of the United Irishmen, as it could only estrange Protestants from Catholics and put an end to all further co-operation between them in the struggle for national independence. There can be no doubt that the insurgent leaders would have condemned, as well as prevented, the Wexford massacres if it had been in their power; but the spirit of Catholic fanaticism was fully roused, and repudiated all the restraints of Protestant leadership, as Bagenal Harvey found to his cost, when he was superseded in his

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