'polis, being justly apprehensive that the enemy meditated to make an attack upon it in great force.

About two o'clock on the twenty-third, general Wilford, who commanded at Kildare, received an order from general Dundas to march with his whole force to his assistance at Kilcullen. On leaving the town, he sent orders to captain Wilson at Monastereven, to follow him; and, on his arrival at Kildare, to set fire to the camp equipage lodged there. From the execution of this mandate, however, he was diverted by the solicitations of Mr O'Reilly, who repre sented to him the danger of setting fire to the town by such a step. No sooner had the military left the town, than the market bell was rung by the inhabitants as a signal for a general rising; and about two thousand rebels, led by one Roger M'Garry, marched into the town, and seized all the officer's baggage, the camp equipage, and an immense quantity of pikes, fire-arms, &c. which had been surrendered a few days before. Most of the protestant inhabitants, apprehensive of being massacred, fled with precipitation to Naas and Monastereven, leaving behind them their property, which, together with their houses, was destroyed and plundered by the rebels.

Early in the succeeding morning, M'Garry, with about twelve hundred insurgents, marched against Monastereven, the garrison of which consisted of about one hundred men composed of yeomanry infantry and cavalry. As soon as intelligence was received of the

approach of the enemy, the garrison made circuits through the circumjacent country, that the inhabitants might have an opportunity of retreating into the town. During these excursions they met with numerous parties of rebels, hastening to join their leaders, with whom they had frequent skirmishes. In one of these conflicts they liberated a small party of the Ancient Britons, who had been taken prisoners: one of their own troop was wounded in the action. About four o'clock in the morning of the twenty-fourth, the garrison was attacked by the rebels, who, however, were repulsed with slaughter, carrying with them their dead and wounded, though not before they had set fire to the town. Nine leyalists, two of whom were volunteers, were slain.

The neighbourhood of Rathangan, on the twentyfourth was in a state of insurrection, and the town itself was taken possession of on the twenty-sixth by the rebels. They retained it until the twenty-ninth, when they were dislodged with slaughter by colonel Longfield, with the city of Cork militia, a detachment of dragoons, and two field-pieces.

Of the intended surprise of Carlow, the garrison was apprised, both by an intercepted letter, and by the intelligence of lieutenant Roe, of the North Cork militia, who had seen the peasants assemble in the evening of the 24th of May. The garrison, consisting of a body of the 9th dragoons, the light company of the North Cork militia, under captain Heard, some VOL. I. Hh

of the Louth militia, under lieutenant Ogle, the yeomen infantry of Carlow, under captains Burton and Eustace, sir Charles Burton's yeomen cavalry, and about forty volunteers; the whole about four hundred and fifty in number, under the command of colonel Mahone of the 9th dragoons, was judiciously placed at various posts for the reception of the assailants. The plan of assault was ill contrived or ill executed. Different parties were appointed to enter the town at different avenues; but only one attempted an entrance; the rest being deterred by the incessant firing of the troops. This body of rebels, amounting to a thousand or fifteen hundred, assembled at the house of sir Edward Crosbie, a mile and a half from Carlow, and marched into the town about two o'clock in the morning of the 25th of May, with so little precaution as to alarm the garrison at a quarter of a mile's distance, by the discharge of a gun, in the execution of one of their own deserters. Shouting, as they rushed into Tullow-street, with that vain confidence which is generally followed by disappointinent, that the town was their own, they received so destructive a fire from the garrison, that they recoiled and endeavoured to retreat; but finding their flight intercepted, numbers rushed into the houses, where they found a miserable exit, these being immediately set fire to by the soldiery. About eight houses were consumed in this conflagration, and for some days the roasted remains of the rebels were falling down the chimnies in which they had perished. Their loss is estimated at upwards

of four hundred; while not a man was even wounded on the side of the loyalists.

After the defeat, executions commenced as else where in this calamitous period, and about two hundred were in a short time hanged or shot, according to martial law. Among the earliest victims were sir Edward William Crosbie, and one Heydon, a yeoman. The latter is believed to have been the leader of the rebel column; to have conducted them into the town, and on their ill success to have abandoned them. He had certainly in that crisis taken his place as a yec◄ man, and joined in the slaughter of the assailants.

A pamphlet has since appeared, intitled, “A Nar"rative of the Apprehension, Trial, and Execution "of sir Edward William Crosbie, Bart.; in which the "Innocence of sir Edward, and the Iniquity of the "Proceedings against him are indubitably and clearly "proved."

The tyranny and injustice too frequently exercised by those intrusted with power by the administration. in this lamentable struggle was never more fully exemplified than in the proceedings which this publication narrates. Witnesses in favour of sir Edward, though protestants, and well known to be loyal subjects, were forcibly deterred from entering the court by military terror. Tortures and flogging were mercilessly inflicted on Roman catholic prisoners, to compel them to give perjured evidence against him; and

they were even promised their own lives if he should be convicted by their means. Still, notwithstanding these infamous and arbitrary measures, adopted with evident intention to overwhelm an innocent man, no charge could be proved against him; but yet, to the indelible disgrace of those concerned in this iniquitous procedure, he was condemned and executed with cir cumstances of particular atrocity. The court by which he was tried was moreover irregularly constituted and illegal, being destitute of a judge-advocate. The sentence was executed at an unusual hour, and so sensible were his judges of their own injustice, that in defiance of a special act of parliament, a copy of the proceedings was refused to his widow and family. After perusing actions such as these, we view with indignation the shameful accounts of atrocities committed by the rebels, written by men who support the proceedings of another party, and basely prostitute their talents to exalt every action of the loyal troops and subjects, however reprehensible their conduct; whilst the proceedings of their opponents are painted with every appearance of brutal ferocity that rancour and prejudice can suggest.

It is not our intention to specify individually all the atrocities and murders committed by the inferior actors in the rebellion. Many of these were undoubtedly the result of private antipathies; others dictated by the ferocity of ungovernable mobs; and are all of them, perhaps, what would have taken place in similar circumstances amongst the most enlightened and