CHAP, The progress of rebellion toward the south-west was checked by this bloody repulse, and by discomVarious fitures elsewhere of insurgent parties, particularly 1798. of one at Hackets-town in the same morning. On operations. the northern side of Dublin, where it was less formidable, the only large assembly found in arms, was completely routed in the evening of the twentysixth, on the hill of Tarah, by a body of four hundred Reay fencibles and yeomen. On the western quarter Sir James Duffe, making a rapid march, with six hundred men from Limerick, and arriving on the twenty-ninth of May at Kildare, completed the plan of laying open the communication of the country with the metropolis, which had sustained for some days a species of blockade. But the army of this general, who appears to have been personally brave and enterprising, committed, through indiscipline or misconduct, an act which tended strongly to confirm a spirit of rebellion among the unfortunate peasantry, General Dundas had routed the rebels at Kilcullen, had recovered that little town, and had, with the consent of the lord-lieutenant, accepted the surrendry of two thousand insurgents, posted under one Perkins, on an eminence called Knockawlin-hill, on the borders of the great race-course called the Curragh of Kildare. Permitted, by previous compact, to retire unmolested, on the delivery of their arms, they had, on the general's approach, with shouts of joy returned to their homes, leaving thirteen cart-loads of pikes on the ground. From this a disposition to surrender was becoming general, and a large body had * XLIII. had assembled for that purpose, by stipulation with CHAP, Dundas, at a place called Gibbet-rath on the Curragh, when the troops of Sir James Duffe, were marching onward from Kildare, on the twenty-ninth. On the most futile pretence they attacked this unresisting multitude, who fled in consternation, and were pursued, with the slaughter of two or three hundred, by a company of fencible cavalry, denominated lord Jocelyn's fox-hunters. As the place was totally unfit for either defence or escape, the carnage would have been far greater, if a retreat had not been immediately sounded, according to peremptory orders, by express, from general Dundas, who had been apprehensive of such an accident. From the ardour of the soldiery for the slaughter of unresisting men, a protestant clergyman, named Williamson, who had been a prisoner among the rebels, would have been hanged by these troops, if he had not in the critical moment been rescued by colonel Sankey, his brother-in-law. county 1798. of While the capital was relieved from apprehensions State of the of blockade, an insurrection had burst with fury in Wexford. a part where it was least expected. The county of Wexford had not been otherwise than very imperfectly organized, and many of its catholic inhabitants had addressed the lord-lieutenant through earl Mountnorris, protesting their loyalty, and pledging themselves to arm, if permitted, in defence of government, when occasion should occur. With exception of its yeomen and their supplementaries, about five hundred only of the royal army had been stationed in this large and populous county. These XLIII. CHAP. These were ill-commanded, disorderly, and insolent, more fitted to excite than to suppress the spirit of rebellion. Less obedient than formidable to their officers, many of the acted in like manner; yeomen while some petty men, who could only by violence raise themselves into notice, took advantage of unhappy times, in the suspension of civil government, to treat with cruel indignity objects incapable of resistance or redress. The rumours of the pitched cap, of the miseries of imprisonment, of the houseburnings, the stranglings, and the lash, had excited horrible apprehensions in the people; and when these began to be exercised on themselves, their consternation was inconceivable. Whether the resolution to rebel had not been so determinately fixed, as to be preventable by no other means than force, I pretend not to judge: but my opinion is fully decided, that no insurrection would have been attempted, if the military command, with a sufficient force, had been held by an officer, who would have enforced a salutary discipline among his troops, and exercised martial law with strict impartiality. The floggings were comparatively neither numerous nor severe, and had not become universal. None had been inflicted in the town of Wexford, nor in the neighbouring baronies of Forth and Bargy; and in these baronies no atrocities were committed when insurrection took place. But other outrages, whose extension was dreaded, were exercised by men unauthorized, yet not restrained; as the well-inclined feared, each, by interference, XLIII.' terference, to draw insult on himself. Wanton CHA P. cruelties were committed on the prisoners in Gorey," quite contrary to the wishes of the humane officer, lieutenant Swayne, who commanded there, and of a nobleman in the neighbourhood, remarkable for lenity and other amiable qualities, to whom the facts were palliated, or not made known, tion. Whatever may have been the immediate cause, Insurrec the standard of rebellion was hoisted in the night of 1798. the twenty-sixth of May, by John Murphy, coadjutor or curate to the parish priest of Boulavogue, a man of shallow intellect, fanatical, and ferocious. Instantly, on intelligence of a nocturnal assembly, Thomas Bookey, first lieutenant of the Camolin cavalry, proceeded against it with a part of his troop. To his summons for surrendry, he received from Murphy this answer of defiance, "Come on, you heretic dog;" and, unsupported by his men, he fell a victim to his courage, slain on the spot with one of his associates. The conflagration of his house, distant seven miles from Gorey, served to heighten the alarm, which on every side spread with rapidity. The commotion was sudden, violent, and extensive. In the morning of the following day, Whit-sunday, the twenty-seventh, two bodies of armed men appeared on the hills of Oulart and Kilthomas, the former ten miles to the north of Wexford, the latter nine to the west of Gorey, an inferior ridge of Slyecve-Byee mountain. Their numbers were fast increasing from reports, too well founded, of men shot in the roads, at work in the fields, and even in CHAP. their houses, unarmed and unoffending, by strag XLIII gling parties of yeomen. To dislodge, as soon Action at Kilthomas. as possible, and disperse the two armed mobs, each of which was a confused multitude of both sexes, two bodies of royal troops advanced from different quarters with very different success. The insurgents on Kilthomas hill fled in a panic, after some distant vollies of musketry, from between two and three hundred yeomen from Carnew, whom they might have surrounded and put to slaughter. The yeomen killed about a hundred and fifty in the pursuit, and in a march of seven miles, burned a hundred cabins and two Roman catholic chapels. At Oulart. The event was different at Oulart, where Murphy commanded. Here, from a chosen detachment, from Wexford, of the North-Cork militia under lieutenant colonel Foote, the rebels at first fled with precipitation, and were pursued at full speed up the hill. But, when their pursuers had arrived near the summit, in confusion and almost breathless, about three hundred, rallied by their sacerdotal commander, made so furious, close, and sudden, än onset with their pikes, that, with the loss of only three killed and six wounded on their side, they slew the whole detachment except the lieutenant colonel, a serjeant, and three privates. Attack of thy. 1798. While the country exhibited a miserable scene of commotion, houses in flames, and families flying on all sides for asylum, the loyalists to the towns, others to the hills, the bands of Murphy, flushed with suc cess, marched from Oulart, in the morning of the twenty |