XLIII. twenty-eighth, with perpetually increasing numbers, CHAP. to Camolin. Here they found a quantity of firearms, which had, at an unlucky moment, been sent by earl Mountnorris for his yeomen's use. Proceeding to Ferns, and following the fugitive loyalists thence to Enniscorthy, they appeared before the latter at one o'clock in the afternoon, in number about seven thousand, of whom about eight hundred were armed with guns. After a brave, but fruitless, attempt to defeat the rebels in the field, the garrison, consisting of near three hundred, mostly yeomen and volunteers, retreated into the town, as they would have otherwise been surrounded. The town, situate on both sides of the Slaney, was in the course of a fierce, but irregular, combat, almost encompassed by the assailants, numbers of whom crossed the river, wading to the neck; and was at length rendered untenable by a conflagration of houses, which is said to have begun by disaffected inhabitants, who fired their own dwellings. From this and other circumstances the garrison abandoned the post at four o'clock in the afternoon, and, accompanied by most of the loyal people in the place, retreated to Wexford. They were favoured by tranquil weather and the indecision of the enemy. In á strong wind they could not have made their way through the burning streets; and in their confused retreat they would have been overwhelmed by a pursuing multitude. Of the loyal inhabitants between eighty and ninety fell: of the assailants probably two or three hundred, as they had been frequently repelled with great valour by the yeomen, and had sustained at Wexford. CHAP. sustained a galling fire from the North-Cork militia XLIII. stationed on the bridge. Proceedings Wexford, whence had been discerned the smoke of Enniscorthy, was found by the distressed and dejected fugitives a scene of terror and confusion. At once were made preparations for defence, and an attempt to prevent, or retard by persuasion, the approach of the rebels. Three gentlemen of the county were then in the jail, arrested on private information, Beachamp Bagenal Harvey, John Henry Colclough, and Edward Fitzgerald. The two latter, at the instance of some officers, undertook to address in person the insurgents at Enniscorthy, for the purpose of persuading them unconditionally to disperse, and return in peace to their several homes. The rebels had taken post on Vinegar-hill, an eminence at whose foot stands the town of Enniscorthy; and were found by the two gentlemen, in the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, in a state of confusion, distracted in their councils, without leaders of general influence, and without a plan. Different objects of attack had been proposed by different persons, unsupported by general concurrence; and the greater part were dispersing to defend their houses, as they said, from Orange-men. But when shouts, repeated from group to group, announced the arrival of the gentlemen prisoners, as they were styled, from Wexford, the straggling bands collected from all sides into one body; and, retaining Fitzgerald as a leader, formed immediately the resolution of marching to Wexford. Colclough was dismissed with this intelligence, and the insurgents took post that XLIII. that night on the eminence of Three-rocks, the ter- CHAP. mination of a long, but not high, ridge, called the mountain of Forth, the northern limit of the Bargy and Forth baronies. As general Fawcet was expected from Duncannon with a considerable force, in the way of whose march this post, distant from Wexford two miles and a half, was situate, the garrison took a position outside the town, on the morning of the thirtieth, at the dawn, ready to co-operate with the general in a double attack. This officer had advanced to Tagmon the preceding night; but informed, next morning, that his vanguard of eighty-eight men had been surprized and destroyed, under Threerocks, by the rebels, he retreated with the rest of his forces precipitately to Duncannon. Colonel Maxwell of the Donegal militia, commander of the garrison, receiving advice of this disaster, made a motion toward the enemy, hoping to retake two howitzers captured from the slaughtered troops, and still expecting the arrival of general Fawcet: but, seeing no probability of success, he returned into Wexford, having lost by a shot from the outposts of the rebels, colonel Watson, a brave and skilful officer. In a council of war a resolution was formed to evacuate the town: Harvey, at the request of the officers, wrote a letter of intreaty to the rebels to act with humanity and two gentlemen of the name of Richards, members of a yeomen company, undertook the dangerous task of delivering this letter, and announcing to the insurgents the surrendry of the place. The retreat was in shameful.disorder. VOL. II. Dd Some XLIII. СНАР. Some companies abandoned their posts and fled; and their example was followed by others, insomuch that almost the whole garrison was gone before their design was known to the inhabitants. Thus numbers were left to the mercy of the rebels, even some of the armed yeomanry, who had expected a retreat in a military way, and would have accompanied the troops in their march to Dun Capture of Wex ford. cannon. These disorderly troops might have been put to total rout and slaughter, if they had been pursued, as was strenuously recommended by one of the rebel chiefs. Their course through a country, which had as yet remained perfectly quiet, was marked with devastation, the burning of houses, and shooting of unarmed peasants. Though the rebel army at Three-rocks may have amounted to fifteen thousand, yet with orderly soldiers, the town might have been safely defended, as its old walls were entire, and its garrison little less than twelve hundred men. The chiefs of the insurgents had, on the arrival of the two deputies with Harvey's letter, consented that the lives and properties of the townsmen should be protected, in case of a stipulation that all the arms and ammunition should be delivered into their hands; but Fitzgerald, who went with this proposal, found the town abandoned by the troops, and no stores of this sort left behind. Enraged at this disappointment,, and the violences of the soldiery, the ungovernable multitude, when they poured into Wexford, could with difficulty be restrained restrained from the committing of general massacre CHAP. and conflagration. Horrible beyond conception would have been the effects. Great numbers of both higher and lower classes would have been victims. Ships in the harbour crowded with fugitives, who had hoped an escape to England, all returned except two, when summoned by boats from the rebels, and relanded their passengers. XLIII. ings about 1798. The insurrection in the county of Wexford, Proceed which had at first arisen in the middle parts, in a Gorey. line extending from east to west, had now, by the capture of the capital town, involved the southern. In the northern, about Gorey, no rebels appeared in arms, but the loyalists were so terrified, that they fled in a body, men, women, and children, to Arklow, in the morning of the twenty-eighth of May. Gorey was for some time in a singular condition. Abandoned by the protestants, while the catholics remained close within their houses, it seemed a solitude; and, filled with great quantities of goods, brought thither by fugitives, who had expected a kind of siege, it presented a tempting object of depredation. An army of women assembled for this purpose, but suddenly dispersed, on false information that a Welch regiment of cavalry was approaching. As their part of the country remained still unmolested, most of the protestants returned to Gorey within three days, where they were in danger of bcing surprized, as a body of about a thousand rebels was approaching within four miles on the first of June: but these were defeated the same day by a Dd 2 small |