of a second insurrection.* The Rev. Samuel Francis, my predecessor, and his family, after being once brought to the Romish chapel, were permitted to remain at home; but were in danger of perishing for want of sustenance, until victuals were sent them by the same priest, and by a Roman catholic family of the name of Fitzhenry. Mr. Francis, however, died five months after the rebellion, perhaps in conse quence of the agitations of mind which he had suffered. We may naturally suppose, from the then prevailing temper of the multitude, that the fate of the protestants of Killegny was only suspended, and that a longer continuance of the rebel force in this quarter must have involved their destruction. A ruthless mob were collecting the protestants of both sexes in the adjoining parish of Killan, with intention to burn them alive in the parish church, or, according to their phrase, to make an orange pye of them: for which purpose a sufficient quantity of faggots was prepared, when a body of brave yeomen from Kiledmond in the county of Carlow, and the march of the army from Ross, prevented the execution of the infernal design.

This army, together with all the troops already mentioned, commanded to march from different quarters to surround the rebel post of

* They are now again all become protestants, except a young man named Charles Edwards.

Vinegar-hill, constituted in the whole amount a force of above thirteen thousand effective men, with a formidable train of artillery. With such a force the whole insurgent army at this post, in which lay almost the whole strength of the rebellion, must have been annihilated by slaughter or surrendry, if the plan had been well executed. The attack began at seven o'clock on the morning of the 21st, with a firing of cannon and mortars, and all the armies were in their several posts, except that of general Needham, who arrived not at the appointed position till nine, when the business was over. For this the honourable commander can doubtless account in the most satisfactory manner, though the matter is not clear to me.* However, this and other occurrences gave occasion to some

* Sir R. Musgrave says, that this piece of conduct of general Needham arose from orders inconsistent, and impossible to be executed, sent him by general Lake. As general Lake is certainly of no such puny intellect as to merit the title of an old woman, he had doubtless good reasons for what orders he issued, and knew how to apply each instrument to its proper purpose. The commonly received opinion is, that general Lake, unwilling to permit the slaughter of so many thousands, which would have been horrible; or to urge their despair, which might have been dangerous; and distrusting the discipline of his men, who perhaps could not possibly be restrained from slaughter in case of the surrendry of the rebels, contrived a gap for their escape in the quarter of general Needham, without deigning to confide his plan to that commander.

ill-natured persons to bestow on him the epithet of the late general Needham. The rebels after sustaining the fire of the artillery and small arms for an hour and a half, abandoned their station and fled where the passage lay open for them, which passage has been ludicrously termed Needham's gap, most of them directing their course toward Wexford. Some hundreds were killed, who were found straggling from the main body after the battle; but unfortunately almost all the real rebels escaped, and the killed were persons who had been forced away contrary to their inclinations, and who took this opportunity of escaping from the rebel army, but, as they could not be distinguished, found no mercy; some of them were loyal protestants, prisoners with the rebels. As the flight was precipitate, they left behind them a great quantity of rich

*Doctor Hill, of Saint-John's, near Enniscorthy, a gentleman highly esteemed by all his acquaintances, was with his two brothers, within a hair's breadth of augmenting the number of slaughtered loyalists on this occasion. These three gentlemen, who had been prisoners with the rebels, and in the most imminent danger of their lives, ran for protection to the first whom they saw of the royal troops, and these happened to be Hessians. Three of these protectors immediately put their cocked pistols to the heads of the three gentlemen, when a pikeman, running at full speed past them to escape from other soldiers, diverted their attention for the moment: they thought proper to dispatch him first, but he led them such a chace as saved the gentlemen,

cannon,

plunder, together with all their amounting to thirteen in number, of which three were six-pounders. The loss on the side of the king's forces was very inconsiderable,* though one officer, lieutenant Sandys of the Longford militia was killed, and four others slightly wounded, colonel King of the Sligo Regiment, colonel Vesey of the county of Dublin Regiment, lord Blaney, and lieutenant-colonel Cole.

Enniscorthy being thus recovered after having been above three weeks in the hands of the rebels, many loyalists in it were relieved from a dreadful state of terror and distress. Excesses, as must be expected in such a state of affairs, were committed by the soldiery, particularly by the Hessian troops, who co-operated with the British on this occasion, and made no distinction between loyalists and rebels. The most remarkable act of this kind was the firing of a house which had been used as an hospital by the rebels, where a number of men, fourteen at least, who by wounds and sickness were unable to escape from the flames, were burned to ashes. I merely mention the fact, which is too consonant with the spirit of civil and religious warfare. Different

* The loss in general Johnson's army alone, which suffered more than all the rest, amounted to twenty killed, sixty-seven wounded, and six missing.

readers will judge differently, according to their several feelings and prejudices.*

The town of Wexford was relieved on the same day with Enniscorthy. Brigadier-general Moore, according to the plan formed by general Lake, having made a movement toward that quarter from the side of Ross, on the 19th, with a body of twelve hundred troops, furnished with artillery; and having directed his march to Taghmon, in his intended way to Enniscorthy, on the 20th, was, on his way thither, between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, attacked by a large force of the enemy from Wexford, perhaps five or six thousand, near a place called Goff's bridge, not far from Horetown. After an action, which continued till near eight, the rebels were repulsed with considerable slaughter, not without some loss on the other side, though the only two officers mortally wounded were major Daniel, and lieutenant Green. This engagement, fought in loose array, or in scattered parties, over a wide extent of ground, was, if I have not misconceived it, on a comparison of several accounts from spectators of the scene, the best fought battle of the croppy war, with respect to manœuvres of the field on both sides. By the positions and evolutions of the soldiery, and

* I am informed by a surgeon, that the burning was acci dental; the bed-clothes being set on fire by the wadding of the soldiers' guns, who were shooting the patients in their beds.