The pikemen turned on them with great fury and in 'a few moments Cornet Dodwell and twenty-eight of the king's Fifth Dragoons fell, the remainder fleeing in dismay. Driving the army into the town, a desperate conflict was maintained in the streets and houses. The royalists, their artillery captured and turned on themselves, everywhere fell before the furious people. Taking refuge in the market-house, they were, after a protracted contest, driven to the quays, and finally across the long bridge, over the Barrow and into the County Kilkenny on the opposite side.

Three times during that eventful fifth of June was the royal standard levelled by the insurgents. Three times did the national force possess Ross. Three times did both sides rally and alternately dispossess each other who had alternately the upper-hand. Each time that the insurgents were victorious, numbers of the men believing the fight over, gave themselves up to plunder and drink; and thus at last, from bare want of opposing numbers, the English held the town; while through the carelessness and criminality of their leaders a great mass of men were on the outside at the camp, not knowing what to do, or uninformed of what was taking place. Cloney, who was all through the fight, which lasted nearly thirteen hours, states that not much more than three thousand participated in the battle. Of the fourth time that the insurgents retreated to the Three Bullet Gate, Cloney says "it was quite disheartening to behold the smallness of our numbers, yet," he adds, "the few who remained seemed to prefer death to

the abandonment of a victory which, throughout the day, appeared to be within their grasp.' The pea

santry who were in the series of fights which occupied that day fought with a desperation unparalleled ; and under the most gloomy circumstances continued to cheer up and incite each other upon the enemy. As they fell wounded, they exhorted their comrades to the onset, some exhibiting their scars and gashes, and declaring the pride they felt in having bled for Ireland! Some, before whose eyes the death-mist was hovering, roused themselves with anxious efforts; and others, in the last turbulent agony of life, calined to inquire "is victory on our side?" and grasping at the comforting affirmative, ejaculated that "they died happy!" and rolled into the eternal slumbers, blessed visions of an Irish Republic coming between them and Heaven.

It is conceded on all hands that had Harvey, during any period of the day, sent a reinforcement victory was certain. So little hope of success appeared to the royalists that the news of their total defeat was carried into Waterford, twelve miles, and Wexford, nineteen miles distant, by fugitives from the king's troops. Such an issue was inevitable, had not the people, in temporary delirium of success, given the advantage to General Johnson, by getting drunk, at each rally being considerably weakened, and in which wretched condition great numbers were slaughtered-as they deserved to be:--for mark you-men who cannot con

*Personal Narrative, pp. 39, 40.

trol themselves at such a time, could not guard the

state at any.

Cloney states that there were about three hundred killed and five hundred wounded on each side. Other accounts give the insurgents killed at five hundred; while the government writers greatly augment the number. Certain it is that the majority of those slaughtered were not killed fighting, but when disabled by liquor.

In the second capture of the town, Kelly of Killan was disabled; and among others distinguished on that day, must be mentioned, John Boxwell of Sarahill, "a Protestant gentleman of great respectability, high character, and undoubted courage," who was killed; Harry Hughes of Bally treat; Walter Devereaux of Ballybrittas; John Devereaux of Taghmon, then a lad, but afterwards famous as a general in the Bolivian war of independence; Michael Furlong, brother to Matthew; and a boy named Lett, only thirteen years old, who, by his presence of mind, was material in rallying the peasantry and driving the royalists the second time to the bridge. Well may Barrington remark, "There is scarcely a trait of individual courage which was not exemplified during that contest; the battle occasionally slackened, but never ceased for a moment."

This battle was the turning point of the Wexford Campaign.

As it had failed through drunkenness, it was succeeded by the most barbarous cruelty in the massa cre and burning of a crowd of royalist and Protestant

prisoners in a barn at Scullabogue, under the hill of Carrigbyrne, by some infuriated people who had, it is believed, beheld the slaughter at Ross. The chief agent of the crime was never discovered; Davis says it was not burned by the fighting men, and it is certain, that no leader of the peasant forces either sanctioned or incited the deed.

Scullabogue may have been fired by some of the fugitives from Ross, inflamed to madness and revenge by liquor and the butcheries there witnessed; or by the friends or relatives of some who had fallen. victims to Orange rage and brutality. But while it is natural to trace the deed to some such source, it is equally natural, and just as probable, that the parties engaged in the burning were incited by tools of the governmental factions, for the purpose of throwing disgrace on the insurgent arms, and creating a horror against them in the breasts of wavering and undecided people all over the country. The tactics of the British government in this respect, need no illustration to refresh the reader of history. At this particular juncture, men of loyal sympathies throughout the land had to blush for the massacres perpetrated in the name of royalty and order. Their shame was to be obliterated only by arousing their half-latent antipathies by some fresh Catholic enormity. The fears already existing in the minds of Protestants on the subject of Catholic ascendency were to be branded and seared into the very marrow of their bones; and so they were.

It is not my intention to defend the crime, or the

Catholics who are accused of it, but to give what may seem a reasonable review of both sides of the question.

Blood will have blood; and looking at the affair fearlessly, and handling it with no kid-glove affectation, I can readily understand how little was needed to excite an infuriated, goaded, reckless mob to take such revenge for broken hopes, burned homes, violated families, and tortures without number, as the maddening impulses of the moment and circumstances afforded. Every advantage had been taken to dispatch the peasantry; infancy had no innocence, age no shield; sickness no recommendation to mercy; maidenhood no inspiration of bravery, in the eyes of the factionists, who, under the name and warrant of "authorities," ransacked, ravaged, and ravished, the homesteads, the men, and the women, of the County Wexford.

"If the commanders of his majesty's forces," says Gordon, "acting against the rebels, committed any small errors in their proper province, ample compensation was commonly made by the press, in the dispatches to government published in their name, and other pieces of writing of a like nature. The numbers killed, if otherwise than on paper, might have alarmingly thinned the population of a county. I have taken much pains to make inquiry from various persons, who had been on the scenes of action, and could never find ground to think otherwise, than that the numbers of men slain among the rebels, in their several engagements with the mili