noble-minded man, threw himself in the way of the murderers, denounced their infernal work, and insisted that it should end. Throughout the day the Catholic clergy had been invisible. Dr. Caulfield, the Bishop, declared afterwards that he was ignorant of what was going forward till it was over. If the Bishop was ignorant, other priests must have been too well informed; yet none of them interfered but Father Corrin, and he, perhaps, would have failed and been thrust aside. But at that instant an express came in to say that the battle was going ill at Foulk's Mill, that Vinegar Hill was beset, and that every man who was able to fight was needed in the field. Panicstruck, the mob scattered to their dens, as if they already saw the bayonets of the avengers. The prisoners on the bridge, who had taken leave of life, remained on their knees, unconscious of what was passing round them. The guard by and by returned and carried them back to gaol, telling them that they were respited for the night; the next day neither man, woman, nor child among the Protestants should be spared.1

As night fell the town began to fill with fugitives from Foulk's Mill, who brought word that Moore was behind them. Just a hundred and fifty years before Wexford had witnessed a too similar scene. Then, as now, a hulk in the river had been converted into a prison for heretics. The hulk had been scuttled without the ceremony of a trial, and all its inmates had perished. In recompense for that deed Cromwell had stormed over the walls of the guilty city, and every rebel found in arms had been put to the

1 Narrative of one of the prisoners, named Jackson, quoted by Musgrave, vol. ii. p. 24.

sword. General Moore, when he heard of that day's work on the bridge, might prove a second Oliver. Not an instant was to be lost. Lord Kingsborough was taken from the room where he had been confined and made governor of the town. The bloody wretches gathered at his feet and implored him to save them from the doom which they had provoked. Two emissaries were sent at daybreak to Needham, at Oulart, with a promise of surrender, if their lives. and properties might be secured; and the leaders in the town undertook to use their influence to persuade the rebels in the country to submit. Lord Kingsborough added a letter, which he could not refuse to write, though he must have known that it could not be listened to, expressing a hope that, for the sake of the surviving prisoners, who were very numerous "and of the first respectability," the offer of the townsmen might be accepted.

SECTION X.

So passed the night of the 20th of June in Wexford. General Lake, meanwhile, had completed his last dispositions, and Vinegar Hill was to be stormed at daybreak. It was creditable to the skill and spirit of the Irish that preparations so elaborate had been found necessary. The rebels of '98 were at least in earnest. They did not, like their degenerate modern representatives, dissolve like a mist at the touch of the policeman's staff. The different divisions arrived duly at their allotted stations. Dundas and Loftus lay that evening at Solsborough, on the Slaney, two miles above Enniscorthy. Needham had reached Oulart Hill. Johnstone was on Ballymakessy Bridge. At dawn they severally advanced ; and if the professed design had been carried out, Needham would have occupied the road to Wexford, and the net would have been closed on every side. From an unexplained cause the orders of the day in this one direction were not carried out, and one opening, called afterwards Needham's Gap, was left. It was whispered afterwards that the mistake was intentional, lest too terrible a vengeance might fall on the wretched beings who had been guilty of crimes so atrocious. If this was the reason, it was misplaced leniency. Nothing but some decisive and overwhelming evidence of the consequences of a rebellion carried out in the spirit which had been shown in Wexford would ever convince the Irish of the hopelessness of measuring strength with England,

or prevent a repetition of the same folly when opportunity seemed again to offer itself. Never had the villainous elements of the Irish population gathered themselves into form with more deliberation, or could have been taken at a time when the nature of their crimes would have made acknowledgment of sympathy with them impossible. Justice would, in the long run, have been found equivalent to mercy, and a stern example made them on Vinegar Hill might have spared Ireland the scenes of barbarity which for two years continued to disgrace her population, and might have extinguished possibly for centuries or forever the infatuated dreams of an impossible independence which still work like poison in her veins. Subordinate officers, however, cannot be expected to discharge duties as painful as they are serious and stern when they are uncertain of support from authority. General Lake was well aware of the irresolution of the Cabinet, and, with the natural humanity of a brave man, he was perhaps glad to be spared the necessity of adding fresh horrors to a war already savage beyond modern experience.

At sunrise on the 21st the columns closed in upon the Irish camp. Dundas's and Loftus's divisions came down the east bank of the Slaney, spread over a front of almost a mile, and as they approached the hill formed round it at various points from the north to the southeast. Johnstone came up simultaneously from Ballymakessy. The rebels held Enniscorthy in force, and Johnstone's duty was to drive them out and take possession of the bridge before the general attack commenced. A second time within three weeks the little town of Enniscorthy became the scene of a desperate and bloody engage

ment. Only after two hours of severe fighting, Enniscorthy was taken, the bridge secured, and the rebel garrison forced back over it to their friends on the hill. It was now seven in the morning. The rebel army, sixteen thousand strong, was drawn up on the open ground on the brow. Their guns, thirteen in all, of various sorts and calibre, were at the windmill. General Lake, with Dundas, attacked on the east side; Sir James Duff, with part of Loftus's division, on the northwest, from the bank of the river; Loftus himself was between them. On these three sides they forced their way simultaneously up the slope. The rebels held their ground for an hour and a half with moderate firmness. Lake's horse was killed under him early in the action. Father Clinch, of Enniscorthy, an enormous man, on a tall white horse, specially distinguished himself. But successive defeats had cooled the courage which had been so eminent at Arklow and New Ross. There was no longer the contempt of death which will make even the least disciplined enemy formidable. Lord Roden singled out Father Clinch and killed him. The rebels were afraid of being surrounded; and seeing the southern side of the hill still open, they fled down it, and escaped through Needham's gap to Wexford, from the scene of their brief and wild supremacy.

The army rested for the day on the ground, burying the dead and examining, with ever-gathering indignation, the traces of the butcheries which had been perpetrated there. The rebels, with their surviving generals, Father John, once invincible, now twice beaten, and savage in his despair, John Hay, Edward Fitzgerald, and Father Kerne, streamed