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REYNOLDS'S TREACHERY.

CH. XXXVIII.

in the Rebel Government. He was styled Treasurer and Representative of the County of Kildare, and Delegate for the Province of Leinster; he also accepted the commission of Colonel in the rebel army. Reynolds, like many other men, had originally joined the Union with no further view than that of compelling the Government to yield the two great measures of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform; but had been carried far beyond these points by the energy and resolution of the rebel leaders. Whether actuated by remorse, or by fear, or by a still viler motive, he was induced to betray the counsels of the conspiracy. He opened his mind to a friend named Cope, a merchant in Dublin, and a friend of the Government. After some hesitation he yielded to those arguments and importunities to which his state of mind inclined him to listen; and, having obtained, through Cope, a promise of secrecy as to the source from which the information was to be supplied, Reynolds made known to his friend, that on the 12th of March the Leinster delegates would meet at the house of Oliver Bond, one of the chief conspirators, to make final arrangements for the insurrection. This disclosure led to the apprehension of Bond, together with thirteen other persons, and the seizure of papers containing a description of the plot. The leader of the rebellion, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was still at large, and, by the influence of his family, might have effected his escape, with the connivance of the Government, had he been so disposed. For several weeks he lay hidden in the neighbourhood of Dublin; but a thousand pounds having been offered for his apprehension, Fitzgerald was traced to the house of one Murphy, a petty shopkeeper, in a back street called Thomas Street. A Secretary of State's warrant was issued, and Town-Major Sirr, accompanied by Mr. Swan, a magistrate, Captain Ryan, a yeomanry officer, and a party of soldiers, proceeded to make the

1798. FITZGERALD'S ASSAULT ON THE MAGISTRATE. 113

arrest. Swan, the foremost of the party, seeing a woman hasten upstairs to give the alarm, pushed by her into a bedroom, where he found Lord Edward lying on the bed in his dressing-gown. The magistrate immediately announced his business, and that he was prepared to execute his warrant with a force which would render resistance useless. Fitzgerald, notwithstanding this intimation, started up, fell upon the magistrate, hacking at him with a dagger, and inflicting many wounds. At this moment, Captain Ryan entered the room, and seeing Swan engaged in a mortal struggle with his prisoner, made a lunge at the latter with a sword cane, which glanced aside. Ryan then closed with his desperate opponent, and received no less than fourteen wounds from the murderous weapon which Fitzgerald wielded with savage recklessness. Sirr, having by this time disposed his men round the house, so as to prevent an escape, went upstairs, and found his two companions on the ground weltering in their blood, but clinging to the legs of Lord Edward, who was endeavouring to break away from them up a staircase which led from his chamber to the roof of the house. Sirr immediately fired his pistol, and Fitzgerald, being wounded, was at length secured.* An attempt to rescue the prisoner on his way to the Castle was repulsed by the soldiers. Swan recovered, but Ryan's injuries proved mortal. Fitzgerald, also, after lingering a few days, died of his wound. The most exquisite lyric poet of modern times, himself an Irishman and half a rebel, has attempted to invest the character of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with heroic attributes. But in truth this young nobleman was a rebel of the ordinary kind. A son of the Duke of Leinster, he had entered the army at an early age,

Correspondence,

* Mr. Ryan's Narrative, Lord Castlereagh's vol. i. p. 458.

VOL. IV.

I

+ Moore's Life of Lord E. Fitzgerald.

114

FITZGERALD'S CHARACTER.

CH. XXXVIII.

and had attained the rank of captain, when he was dismissed the service for the violence with which he expressed opinions hostile to the Government and constitutions of the country. Exasperated at the sentence which he had justly provoked, Fitzgerald went to Paris, and became the friend of Tom Paine, and other extreme partisans of the Revolution. At Paris, also, he formed a connection still more remarkable. He married a beautiful and accomplished girl called Pamela, a natural daughter of Egalité by the celebrated Madame de Genlis. On returning to Ireland, Lord Edward kept up a regular correspondence with his French friends; he obtained a seat in the Irish House of Commons, and soon distinguished himself in an assembly where words were seldom measured, and not always wise, by the extravagance and folly of his language. He early became implicated in the counsels of the United Irishmen, among whom his rank and name secured him a leading position. He had the sort of sincerity in the cause which belongs to weak and wilful minds, and the energy which springs from unreasoning vehemence. It was at his urgent instance, and upon his wild, though not intentionally false representations, that the French Government were induced to undertake the expedition to Bantry Bay; and, up to the moment of his apprehension, he was impatient to strike a deeisive blow for Irish independence, although it was manifest to common sense that such an attempt could not even for the moment be successful without foreign aid, and could not be permanently established, even if it was for the moment achieved by such assistance. Though by birth and nurture a gentleman, and therefore very different from the base and malignant spirits with whom his revolutionary tastes brought him into contact, both in France and Ireland, Lord Edward Fitzgerald did not escape the contamination of his associates. The ferocity with which he sought the

1798.

BETRAYAL OF THE CONSPIRATORS.

115

lives of the officers who came to capture him, when he must have known that resistance was vain, and the assassin's weapon which he used with fatal effect, showed the desperate outlaw, who would shrink from no deed of cruelty or blood, in his warfare against social order. His life being already forfeited for treason, the death which he provoked was little better than suicide; and, had he survived, his last act would have consigned him to the doom of a felon.

Apprehension of

Several other persons were made prisoners at the same time, in every case from information supplied by spies, who had procured ad- the Sheares's. mittance to the counsels of the conspirators. Two brothers, named Sheares, members of the Irish bar, and foremost leaders of the rebellion, were, in this manner, betrayed to the Government. Among their papers was found the draft of a proclamation, framed after the French fashion, denouncing death and confiscation against all their opponents. This paper was to have been promulgated on the day of the insurrection, which had been fixed for the 21st of May, the day following that on which the Sheares's were arrested. The insurrection was to have commenced by the stoppage of the mails; Dublin was to have been the centre of action; and arrangements were completed for the seizure simultaneously of the Castle, the arsenal at Chapelizod, the magazine in the Phoenix Park, and the camp in the neighbourhood of the city. The houses of the principal persons were to be attacked, and the leading members of the Government were to have been put to death.*

By this timely discovery the capital was saved from massacre and pillage, and possibly from a temporary occupation by the insurgents. But the plans of the rebels, though seriously disconcerted, were not de-. feated. A partial rising took place on the appointed

* Lord Grenville to Marquis 1798.-Courts and Cabinets of of Buckingham, 25th of May, George the Third, vol. ii. p. 394.

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MILITARY OUTRAGES.

CH. XXXVIII.

day throughout the island, and though the rebels were generally repulsed, yet in some instances, the Loyalists were overpowered, and horrible atrocities were perpetrated. One party, headed by Dr. EsDr. Esmonde. monde, a man of family and fortune, surprised a detachment of militia at a place called Prosperous, seventeen miles from Dublin, and burnt the barracks in which they were quartered, murdering the men who escaped from the flames. Esmonde himself, at the time, held a commission in a corps of yeomanry; and, on the day following the attack on Prosperous, dined at the mess of his regiment. He was, however, immediately arrested, and his guilt being clearly proved, he was hanged on the 14th of June.

and Kilcullen.

On the same day, attacks were made by bands of Attack on Naas pikemen on the towns of Naas and Kilcullen; the first attempt was defeated with great slaughter; but the rebels succeeded in occupying Kilcullen for a few days. On the 24th of May, martial law was proclaimed; and it may be mentioned, as a proof of the fierce vindictive spirit which actuated the Irish gentry, that when this proclamation was laid before the House of Commons, Colonel Maxwell, afterwards Lord Farnham, rose, in his place, and suggested that the proclamation should be made retrospective, so as to reach the prisoners in custody before the rebellion, and awaiting their trial in due course of law. The terrible powers conferred on the military were abused in the most shocking manner. The first example, in point of time, and the most conspicuous, on account of the rank and innocence of the victim, was that of Sir Edward Crosbie. At two o'clock on the morning after the proclamation, a tumultuous body of insurgents rushed into the town of Carlow. The garrison, consisting of about four hundred and fifty men, being prepared for their reception, the rebels were driven