CHAPTER V.

BY these arrests, however, and other precautionary steps of the government, the insurrection in Dublin, which was to commence on the twenty-third of May, by an attack on the army encamped at Lauchlinstown, and on the artillery stationed at Chapelizod, was frustrated. Notwithstanding this, and the disorganization of the confederacy which ensued by the judicious arrangements of the troops in the most advantageous positions about the capital, the appointment for insurrection was observed by many in the neighbouring counties; and the mail coaches on the northern, southern, and western roads, destroyed, as a signal to the rest of the kingdom. The western coach was interrupted between Lucan and Leixlip; the northern at Santry, only three miles distant from the metropolis; and the southern near Naas, which is fifteen miles distant. Great multitudes of insurgents assembled, and proceeded immediately to efforts of strength, particularly in attacking the towns of Prosperous, Naas, Claine, Ballymore-Eustace, and Kilcullen.

Information was received on the twenty-third of May, by the garrison at Naas, that an attack was that evening meditated to take place upon the town, and steps were consequently taken for immediate and effectual resistance. The greatest anxiety prevailed during that night and part of the succeeding morning; which was much increased by the intelligence announced by a dragoon, that the rebels were advancing against the town in considerable force. Large parties (some of whom stole unno

ticed into the very centre of the town) accordingly made an attack at an early hour, and engaged a party of the Armagh militia; by whom they were repulsed, after having sustained three vollies. In their flight, a great many pikes were dropped: three prisoners were taken, and were immediately hanged in the streets.

The attack upon Prosperous, on the same day, was more successful. The centinels were killed, and the barracks assaulted while the soldiery were asleep. Rushing into the building, the rebels immediately put to death captain Swaine. The soldiers, however, in the opposite apartment, succeeded in expelling them; after which a fierce conflict ensued, but was terminated by the rebels setting fire to a quantity of straw which happened to be in the under-ground office. The soldiers, almost in a state of suffocation, retreated to the upper storeys, which they were quickly obliged to abandon by the rapidity of the flames. Some of them, leaping out of the windows, were received on the pikes of the assailants: the remainder, making a desperate sally, endeavoured to force themselves a passage, but were nearly all of them slain in the attempt: the deputy barrack-master, who, together with his family, had concealed himself during this scene of carnage, was saved, after coming out and surrendering, by the unexpected clemency of the rebels. Mr. Brewer, an Englishman, remarkable for humanity, but who had unfortunately incurred the enmity of the insurgents, was piked to death in his own house. Mr. Stamers also, who delivered himself up for the purpose of saving a house and its inhabitants, who were threatened with extermination, was, notwithstanding a promise of safety, treacherously shot in the street. In this affair the king's troops are said to have lost about seventy men.

The attack upon Clane commenced by a considerable body, who stole into the town unperceived by all but a drummer and trumpeter, who succeeded in alarming the garrison. The houses in which the soldiers were quartered were surrounded, singly, by bodies of pikemen; so that the military were obliged to fight their way individually through the assailants. With the loss of only two men, however, and five wounded, they succeeded in assembling, and, notwithstanding the surprise and

confusion, gallantly repulsed the insurgents. In a second attempt which was made, six rebels, mounted on horses of the Ancient Britons, and dressed in their clothes, entered the town with a design to impose themselves on the yeoman as friends. One of them, however, having made a cut at captain Jephson with a sword, was instantly shot, and his companions obliged to fly with many wounds. About half past three in the morning, captain Griffith, having been informed at his seat that a body of rebels had attacked the guard of Clane, arrived in the town. He there found that the steady valour of part of his troop had so far checked the enemy, as to give time for about forty of the Armagh corps to turn out; that the yeoman and militia had not fired above three rounds when the insurgents were dispersed; and that they were hotly pursuing them and burning such houses on the common as they suspected to afford them shelter. Six prisoners were taken; one of whom was executed at Clane, the other five on the same day at Naas. About five o'clock intelligence was brought him of the defeat of the troops at Prosperous. The captain had hardly time to draw up his men, when a party of rebels, mounted on the horses, and well furnished with the arms and accoutrements of the Ancient Britons, made a charge into the town. One volley brought six or seven of them to the ground. The remainder made a precipitate flight, and took shelter behind a strong body of infantry which was advancing against the town from Prosperous. The little army of captain Griffith, not being strong enough to march against this numerous body, whose appearance was rendered formidable by the scarlet clothing and arms of the military massacred at Prosperous, retreated to an elevated ground near the common, where they could not be surrounded or outflanked. There the insurgents quickly commenced a smart firing upon them, which, however, the height of the ground rendered ineffective; while they returned a galling fire that killed and wounded considerable numbers, and at length compelled them to disperse in the utmost confusion. They were pursued with slaughter, and in their flight dropped great quantities of pikes and other arms. On captain Griffith's return to Clane, he was secretly informed that Dr. Esmond, a lieutenant of his corps, who had attended the muster with alacrity, in order to resist

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the rebels there, had led the insurgents in the attack upon Prosperous. The captain having been ordered to march to Naas, prudently took no notice of this intelligence until he arrived there; when, drawing up his men in front of the goal, he immediately committed the lieutenant. He was afterwards conveyed to Dublin, where he was tried and executed as a traitor. He was brother to sir Thomas Esmond, of a very ancient popish family in the county of Wexford. He was a man remarkable for the beauty of his countenance, the handsomeness, of his figure, the highly convivial qualities of his disposition, and the greatest knowledge of his profession; to which he added humanity and honour in his conduct in private life.

On the tenth of May, captain Beevor had been ordered to Ballymore-Eustace, with detachments of the ninth dragoons, and of the Tyrone, Antrim, and Armagh militia, in order to compel the United Irishmen in that quarter to surrender their arms, by living among them at free-quarters. As the captain in this service had about three thousand stand of arms of various descriptions surrendered to him; and as, on the twentythird of May, four sergeants of United Irishmen marched in with their complement of men, eleven to each, and surrendering their arms, received protections, he imagined that he had completely effected the object of his mission; and accordingly sent off one hundred and twenty of his men, retaining only about forty, in order to lighten the burdens of the people who were obliged to maintain them.

The imprudence of this step, however, was quickly felt. The soldiers were quartered in eight different houses, which a body of rebels, to the amount of eight hundred, attacked early in the morning of the twenty-fourth, one hundred men surrounding each house. About one o'clock, captain Beevor was awakened by the cry of a person, that the rebels would have his blood. He instantly got out of bed, when he perceived two men rush into the apartment, the one armed with a pistol, the other with a pike. As the former fired at and missed him, the captain seized a pistol which lay by his bedside and shot him through the body. He instantly received a slight wound in the shoulder from the pike of the other; but as he was

reaching for a second pistol, the pikeman closed with him, and seizing him in his arms, carried him towards the top of the stairs, where a number of rebels were ready to receive him on their pikes. By a violent effort of strength, however, the captain succeeded in getting himself extricated, when he dragged his adversary into a room where he was run through the body by lieutenant Patrickson. Meantime the dragoons, who were rallying round the captain's quarters, attacked and killed many of the insurgents, who maintained a desperate conflict for nearly two hours. In other parts of the town, the enemy had set fire to several houses in which the soldiers were quartered; killed seven dragoons and wounded three: the Tyrone militia also had four killed and two wounded. But captain Beevor, with twelve dragoons, sallied out and routed them in every direction, with the loss of three of their captains and a considerable number of men. Amongst the losses of the military was lieutenant M'Farland of the Tyrone militia, who was shot through the body.

At seven in the morning of the twenty-fourth, general Dundas, having received information that a body of rebels had assembled the proceeding night at a place called the Rath of Gilltown, and that their intention was to attack Kilcullen that day, ordered forty of the ninth dragoons and the Romneys, and twenty two of the suffolk fencibles, to march against them. The general, putting himself at the head of the cavalry, found three hundred of the enemy strongly entrenched in the church-yard, whom he immediately attacked, without waiting till the infantry came up, though the ground was broken and uneven, and though many of the rebels, armed with long pikes, had formed themselves into a strong phalanx in a road close by the church-yard, in which not more than six of the dragoons could charge in front. The charge, however, was made with great spirit; but the horse were instantaneously repulsed. Thrice they were urged by the general to renew the charge, and as often were they furiously driven back, with the loss of captains Erskine and Cooks and twenty-two privates who were killed; besides ten so desperately wounded that most of them expired soon after. The general, after this defeat, retired with his shattered force to the village of Kilcullen-bridge, where he halted for some