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XLIII.

The advantage offered was with ardour seized by CHAP. general Johnson, who to rally the discomfited troops, made the utmost exertions, aided with equal ardour by two townsmen of Ross, Devereux a catholic, and Mac-Cormick a protestant, who had formerly been in military service. The latter, rushing from post to post, conspicuous with a brazen helmet and lofty stature, might strike with the semblance of the Grecian Ajax, a man of classic reading. Led back from the bridge, the troops of Johnson assailed and drove the confused rabble from the town, the outskirts of which were now in flames. Tumultuous distraction prevailed in the rebel host, regardless of commands or plans; and exertions arose only from individual spirit, which prompted men to volunteer for the fight, and to stimulate others by exhortation. By a column thus formed, the combat was renewed, and the royal troops twice driven from their ground: but the latter were a third time rallied; and the insurgents, dispirited by the mishap of Kelly, who was disabled by a wound, left to their opponents, by a final retreat, an indubitable victory.

In this irregularly fought battle, which ended at two o'clock in the afternoon, and had, with the intervention of long pauses, a duration of ten hours, the loss of the garrison, whose number was twelve hundred, has been supposed by some to have been greater than it appeared in the official account, where it was stated at two hundred and

thirty

CHAP. thirty in killed, wounded, and missing, of whom XLIII. ninety were found dead on the scene of action. To ascertain the loss of the adverse party is impos

Scullabogue.

sible. Their force on Corbet-hill is supposed to
have consisted of twenty thousand men, mostly un-
provided with instruments of war, even serviceable
pikes. Of these not more than half, or perhaps a
fourth, descended, to the combat. Doubtless the
slaughter was prodigious, as they repeatedly with-
stood, with undaunted resolution, the discharges of
musketry and cannon; and probably not less than
a thousand, perhaps fifteen hundred, fell: but I
fear, as is asserted, that not a few, inhabitants of
the town and refugees from the country, neither
engaged in battle, nor bearing arms, were num-
bered with the dead; since the soldiers treated as
enemies alike all whom they found without mili-
tary uniform.
From a foresight of this, all the
protestant loyalists, unfurnished with military dress,
had been commanded to surrender their arms and
quit the town. Those who, by disobedience to
this order, avoided the danger of being massacred
by the rebels abroad, took post in some houses,
and poured such a fire on the insurgents, that
one of the lanes was almost filled with dead bo-
dies.

Massacre of As by cowards on both sides had false reports
June 5, been propagated of a total defeat sustained by their

1798.

own party; so men of this description on both sides were eager to massacre defenceless people in cold blood. The guard-house in Ross had been

XIIII.

filled with prisoners, among whom were many loyal- CHAP. ist refugees, confined through mistake and malice. The whole would have been massacred by the runaway soldiers, if they had not been prevented by the undaunted spirit, and dignified reproof, of one Cullimer, a quaker. Unfortunately the runaway rebels had more leisure than the soldiery of this description to perpetrate a deed of horror. In the dwelling-house and barn of Mr. King of Scullabogue, at the foot of Carrickburn mountain, a number of loyalists of both sexes, among whom were at least seven catholics, were confined, collected from the neighbouring country as hostages for the safety of such rebels as should become prisoners to the royalists. Urging that the bearer of their flag of truce had been shot, that the prisoners of their party had been massacred at Dunlavin and Carnew by the royal troops, and that a similar scene was now acted in Ross, a body of fugitives from the battle forced the guard, shot thirty-seven confined in the dwelling-house, and, setting fire to the barn, caused all who were within it to perish in the flames. The number of the burned, stated by some at a hundred and eightyfour, is reduced by others to eighty. The prime actor in this tragedy is said to have hitherto remained unaccused and unsuspected, while some have been hanged for the deed, who were at too great a distance to take any part in its instigation or execution.

Struck

CHAP.

XLIII.

Struck with horror at such atrocity, and disgusted by the insolent insubordination of his troops, Harvey in the resigned his command, and retired to Wexford.

Proceed.

rebels.

From their post on Carrickburn, which they had reoccupied on the sixth of June, these troops, after a rest of two days, removed to Slyeeve Keelter, a hill which rises over the united streams of the Nore and Barrow, below Ross, probably with design to intercept the navigation between this town, Duncannon, and Waterford. They failed in their engagements with gun-boats, but captured some small vessels, in one of which was a packet. Here by a tumultuous election, they chose for chief general Philip Roche, the priest, who had returned from Gorey, after his victory at Clough; a man of great stature and boisterous manners, not ill adapted to govern by influence the disorderly bands among whom he acted, Remaining three days only in this station, Roche took post on the hill of Lacken, within two miles of Ross, where his army formed a less irregular encampment than usual, many tents being erected for the lodgement of the officers. Except a fruitless attempt of a detachment sent to Borris to procure arms and ammunition, the insurgents, lay here in active, regaling themselves on the liquors and cattle procured from the neighbouring parts; and so negligent of their safety, that, in any night, after the two first, they might have been easily surprised and routed by a detachment from the adjacent garrison.

Their

XLIII.

Battle of

1798.

Their associates at Gorey had also remained some CHAP. days without enterprise, after the defeat of Walpole's troops, and the retreat of Loftus, wasting Arklow, their time in the burning of Carnew, the trials of June 9, prisoners for orangism, and the plundering of houses. At length, assembling at Gorey on the ninth of June, they advanced northward to form a junction with a body of insurgents in the county of Wicklow, for the attack of Arklow, a post which they might have seized without opposition at any time before the very day of the attempt. Here the loyalists, who had retreated from the county of Wexford, had been ordered to surrender their arms at the barrack with promise of restoration; but these arms, on the news of the defeat at Clough, were formed into a pile and burned, to prevent, as was alledged, their becoming a prey to the rebels. But the disarming of their owners tended to weaken the royal cause; and pistols of high value, supposed to have perished in this conflagration, were seen afterwards in the possession of military gentlemen. While the garrison was preparing for flight, to escape from the victorious rebels, whose onset was expected, a guard was placed on the bridge to prevent any people from leaving the town until it should have been previously evacuated by the troops. By this management the whole multitude of fugitive women, disarmed men and children of the loyalist party was destined to fall into the hands of the enemy, if they had arrived. What could be the motive? To expect that thus would be prevented the intelligence

of

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