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and against them were dispatched by general Need- CHAP. ham, from his post at Gorey, above two hundred cavalry, supported by an excellent body of infantry.The rebels, after their utmost efforts to avoid a battle, finding escape impossible from the ardour of the cavalry, abandoned the highway at the moment when they were overtaken, and poured a fire from behind the hedges on their antagonists. Unsupported by the infantry, whom general Needham had unaccountably recalled, the royal troops could neither, from the nature of the ground, annoy their adversaries, nor find other means of escape than galloping directly onward to Carnew. Their flight was impeded by cars accidentally left in the road, abandoned by their drivers. Without even wounding any of their enemies, fifty-five of this detachment were slain. The slaughter would have been still more lamentable, as the rear was surrounded, if a body of yeomen infantry, who happened casually to be near them, had not spontaneously come to their relief. A preconcerted ambuscade by the rebels at this place of bloodshed, called Ballyellis, is related by Mr. Edward Hay in his " History of the insurrection of the county of Wexford," but he has been certainly misinformed, The garrison of Carnew, who would otherwise have been surprized and put to death, were alarmed by the fugitives, and had barely time to take post in a malt-house, whence they repelled the assailants.

of the insur

Pursued by a body of yeomen, on the second of Proceedings July, these insurgents took post on Ballyraheen hill, gents. between

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CHAP. between Tinnebely and Carnew, where they were unadvisedly attacked. Rushing from the upper ground, they in an instant routed the assailants, killing two officers and ten privates. Sixty of the fugitive yeomen took refuge in the house of captain Chamney, one of the slain officers, at the foot of the hill, where they sustained, during fourteen hours, the assaults of the enemy. Perhaps among the rebels, who were finally repulsed, near a hundred were slain. Of their wild unsystematic mode of warfare they gave here a strong instance. They set fire to the neighbouring house of Mr. Henry Morton, by the illumination of which their adversaries were enabled to aim at them in the night. After this victory and repulse, they divided into two bodies, one of which took its course to the county of Kildare, the other in an oblique march, apparently without plan, approached the borders of the county of Wexford. The latter, who were observed on the fourth of July, at a place called, from some piles of stones at the foot of Croghan mountain, the White Heaps, were surrounded, in their motion thence, in the morning of the fifth, by three armies at once from Gorey, Carnew, and Arklow, but in a thick fog, which casually facilitated, though in other circumstances it might have precluded, their escape, as it concealed from their view the motions of their enemies. Coming to an engagement with Sir James Duffe's forces, at a place named Ballygullin, they fled with their usual celerity, in various directions, with the loss of hardly more than twenty, on the arrival of

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hostile reinforcements, and re-assembled on the hill CHA P. of Corrigrua. They were annoyed in their retreat by a fourth body of troops from Ferns; and, as they found themselves hunted on all sides, without a possibility of maintaining any post, they agreed to disperse to their several places of abode. As no opposition to the royal army was afterwards made within its boundaries, the rebellion in the county of Wexford may be considered as terminated here. Yet hostility still was elsewhere maintained by those Wexfordians who had directed their march to the county of Kildare,

In the last named county a body of insurgents had Their final dispersion. still remained in arms, and under some chiefs, particularly William Aylmer, had eluded the king's troops by rapid movements reciprocally from the Wicklow mountains to the bog of Allen. Uniting with these, the Wexfordians attempted, on the eleventh of July, to pass the river Boyne at Clonard, to penetrate into the western parts, and to raise an insurrection there; but were delayed so long by the defence of Tyrrel, a yeoman lieutenant, in a fortified house, that time was given for the arrival of troops from Kinnegad and Mullingar to frustrate their design. After this repulse, the fierce Wexfordians pursued unaided their plan of desperate adventure, finally separating from their less enterprising associates, against whom before, in consequence of some disputes, they had with difficulty been prevented from turning their arms. Reduced in their

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CHAP. numbers to fifteen hundred, and hunted in every quarter by various bodies of the royal troops, who were stationed every where around, they made a flying march in the counties of Kildare, Meath, Louth, and Dublin, skirmishing with such parties of the king's forces as overtook or intercepted them, and bearing the various hardships of their peculiar warfare with an amazing strength of body, and a vigour of mind well worthy of a better cause. Totally disappointed of their expected reinforcements in the county of Meath, which had been lately disturbed, they passed the Boyne, near Duleek, by a rapid motion into the county of Louth. Assailed, on the fourteenth, by two divisions of troops between this river and Ardee, they made a desperate stand; but, overpowered on the arrival of more force with artillery, they broke, and fled into a bog. Hence a part of them took the road to Ardee and dispersed; but the main body repassed the Boyne, and were advancing directly toward Dublin with their usual swiftness, when they were overtaken, in a hot pursuit, by captain Gordon of the Dumfries light dragoons, at Ballyboghill, within seven miles of the capital. As they would soon have been surrounded by detachments from different quarters, they fled, and finally dispersed, severally endeavouring by devious ways to reach their homes or places of concealment.

Warfare of the rebels. 1798.

The continuance of these men so long in arms was caused only by despair. Since the rejection of

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lord Kingsborough's capitulation, death was regard- c HA P. ed as the consequence of surrendry. After this were the chief devastations committed, apparently in revenge, in the county of Wicklow, by the peasants, and in their incursion into the counties of Carlow and Kilkenny. The calamities, occasioned by this incursion, were much augmented by the royal troops, who deprived of life or property numbers no way guilty of rebellion. From the battle of Kilcomny the rebels were destitute of cannon; nor had such engines been used by any insurgents except the Wexfordians and those of Ulster. Their great deficiency was the want of ammunition, a main cause to the insurgents of Wexford, of a failure in their enterprizes. This they had in vain attempted to remedy. Small round stones and hardened balls of clay were sometimes the substitutes of leaden bullets; and, by the mixing and pounding of the materials in small mortars, they fabricated a species of gunpowder, which exploded not, except when immediately recent, and even then with little force. They found means to manage instantly, doubtless in an aukward manner, the cannon taken from the army, sometimes applying wisps of hay or straw instead of matches. In battle they mostly availed themselves of hedges, and other such kind of shelter, to screen themselves from the shot of their adversaries; and they generally arranged their lines in such order as to suffer very little from the fire of the artillery, which they sometimes also

seized