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Томас де Квинси
Autobiographic Sketches

CHAPTER IX.
FIRST REBELLION

In our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground rendered memorable, not only by historical events, but more recently by the disastrous scenes of the rebellion, by its horrors or its calamities. On reaching Westport House, we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhood which had become the very centre of the final military operations, those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and which, to the people of England, and still more to the people of the continent, had offered a character of interest wanting to the inartificial movements of Father Roche and Bagenal Harvey.

In the year 1798, there were two great popular insurrections in Ireland. It is usual to talk of the Irish rebellion, as though there had been one rebellion and no more; but it must satisfy the reader of the inaccuracy pervading the common reports of this period, when he hears that there were two separate rebellions, separate in time, separate in space, separate by the character of their events, and separate even as regarded their proximate causes. The first of these arose in the vernal part of summer, and wasted its fury upon the county of Wexford, in the centre of the kingdom. The second arose in the autumn, and was confined entirely to the western province of Connaught. Each, resting (it is true) upon causes ultimately the same, had yet its own separate occasions and excitements; for the first arose upon a premature explosion from a secret society of most subtle organization; and the second upon the encouragement of a French invasion. And each of these insurrections had its own separate leaders and its own local agents. The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general predisposing causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases; but the exciting causes of the moment were different in each. And, finally, they were divided by a complete interval of two months.

One very remarkable feature there was, however, in which these two separate rebellions of 1798 coincided; and that was, the narrow range, as to time, within which each ran its course. Neither of them outran the limits of one lunar month. It is a fact, however startling, that each, though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequent in warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed through all the stages of growth, maturity, and final extinction within one single revolution of the moon. For all the rebel movements, subsequent to the morning of Vinegar Hill, are to be viewed not at all in the light of manoeuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in the light of final struggles for self-preservation made in the spirit of absolute despair, as regarded the original purposes of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes whatever beyond that of instant safety. The solitary object contemplated was, to reach some district lonely enough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested dispersion.

A few pages will recapitulate these two civil wars. I begin with the first. The war of American separation touched and quickened the dry bones that lay waiting as it were for life through the west of Christendom. The year 1782 brought that war to its winding up; and the same year it was that called forth Grattan and the Irish volunteers. These volunteers came forward as allies of England against French and Spanish invasion; but once embattled, what should hinder them from detecting a flaw in their commission, and reading it as valid against England herself? In that sense they did read it. That Ireland had seen her own case dimly reflected in that of America, and that such a reference was stirring through the national mind, appears from a remarkable fact in the history of the year which followed. In 1783, a haughty petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the Roman Catholics, by an association that arrogated to itself the style and title of a congress. No man could suppose that a designation so ominously significant had been chosen by accident; and by the English government it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace. What came next? The French revolution. All flesh moved under that inspiration. Fast and rank now began to germinate the seed sown for the ten years preceding in Ireland; too fast and too rankly for the policy that suited her situation. Concealment or delay, compromise or temporizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by the fiery temperament of Ireland, had it not been through the extraordinary composition of that secret society into which the management of her affairs now began to devolve. In the year 1792, as we are told, commenced, and in 1795 was finished, the famous association of United Irishmen. By these terms, commenced and finished, we are to understand, not the purposes or the arrangements of their conspiracy against the existing government, but that network of organization, delicate as lace for ladies, and strong as the harness of artillery horses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knitting the strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a complete history of these times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this subtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding in proportion to the extent of the particular county, and by intermediate links ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated, and in such nice interdependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwards and downwards, laterally or obliquely, of any impulse whatever; and yet so effectually shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two or three individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself, by whom he communicated with those above his head or below his feet. This organization, in fact, of the United Irishmen, combined the best features, as to skill, of the two most elaborate and most successful of all secret societies recorded in history; one of which went before the Irish Society by centuries, and one followed it after an interval of five-and-twenty years. These two are the Fehm-Gericht, or court of ban and extermination, which, having taken its rise in Westphalia, is usually called the secret Tribunal of Westphalia, and which reached its full development in the fourteenth century. The other is the Hellenistic Hetaeria, (Aetairia)—a society which, passing for one of pure literacy dilettanti, under the secret countenance of the late Capo d'Istria, (then a confidential minister of the czar,) did actually succeed so far in hoaxing the cabinets of Europe, that one third of European kings put down their names, and gave their aid, as conspirators against the Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposing themselves honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving the arts and literature of Athens. These two I call the most successful of all secret societies, because both were arrayed against the existing administrations throughout the entire lands upon which they sought to operate. The German society disowned the legal authorities as too weak for the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cognizance of crimes within its own secret yet consecrated usurpation. The Grecian society made the existing powers the final object of its hostility; lived unarmed amongst the very oppressors whose throats it had dedicated to the sabre; and, in a very few years, saw its purpose accomplished.

The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts in the organization of both these secret fraternities, and obtained their advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; nor would the government, though armed with all the powers of the Dublin police and of state thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society, but, on the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised and mastered the government, had it not been undermined by the perfidy of a confidential brother. One instrument for dispersing knowledge, employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it is applicable to any cause, and may be used with much greater effect in an age when every body is taught to read. They printed newspapers on a single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being placarded against the walls. This expedient had probably been suggested by Paris, where such newspapers were often placarded, and generally for the bloodiest purposes. But Louvet, in his "Memoirs," mentions one conducted by himself on better principles: it was printed at the public expense; and sometimes more than twenty thousand copies of a single number were attached to the corners of streets. This was called the "Centinel;" and those who are acquainted with the "Memoirs of Madame Roland" will remember that she cites Louvet's paper as a model for all of its class. The "Union Star" was the paper which the United Irishmen published upon this plan; previous papers, on the ordinary plan, viz., the "Northern Star" and the "Press," having been violently put down by the government. The "Union Star," however, it must be acknowledged, did not seek much to elevate the people by addressing them through their understandings; it was merely a violent appeal to their passions, and directed against all who had incurred the displeasure of the society. Newspapers, meantime, of every kind, it was easy for the government to suppress. But the secret society annoyed and crippled the government in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed at a shadow. The society called upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the excise; and it is certain that the society was obeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland. The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon the people not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which were then on sale; and not to receive bank notes in payment, because (as the proclamation told them) a "burst" was coming, when such paper, and the securities for such purchases, would fall to a ruinous discount. In this ease, after much distress to the public service, government obtained a partial triumph by the law which cancelled the debt on a refusal to receive the state paper, and which quartered soldiers upon all tradesmen who demurred to such a tender. But, upon the whole, it was becoming pain fully evident, that in Ireland there were two coordinate governments coming into collision at every step, and that the one which more generally had the upper hand in the struggle was the secret society of United Irishmen; whose members individually, and whose local head quarters, were alike screened from the attacks of its rival, viz., the state government at the Castle, by a cloud of impenetrable darkness.

That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak brother, high in the ranks of the society, and deep in their confidence, happened, when travelling up to Dublin in company with a royalist, to speak half mysteriously, half ostentatiously, upon the delicate position which he held in the councils of his dangerous party. This weak man, Thomas Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea Castle, in Kildare, colonel of a regiment of United Irish, treasurer for Kildare, and in other offices of trust for the secret society, was prevailed on by Mr. William Cope, a rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind by pictures of the horrors attending a revolution under the circumstances of Ireland, to betray all he knew to the government. His treachery was first meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequence of his depositions, on March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin, the government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading conspirators. The whole committee of Leinster, amounting to thirteen members, was captured on this occasion; but a still more valuable prize was made in the persons of those who presided over the Irish Directory, viz., Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as names went, their places were immediately filled up; and a hand-bill was issued, on the same day, with the purpose of intercepting the effects of despondency amongst the great body of the conspirators. But Emmet and O'Connor were not men to be effectually replaced: government had struck a fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own good luck. On the 19th of May following, in consequence of a proclamation (May 11) offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June, from a pistol shot which took effect on his shoulder. Lord Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded as an injured man. From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he had powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an early stage of their revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but an indiscretion that admitted of some palliation in so young a man and of so ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy of one who, on several grounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected his powers of self-control, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself beloved; he had considerable talents; his very name, as a sone of the only ⁷⁸ ducal house in Ireland, was a spell and a rallying word for a day of battle to the Irish peasantry; and, finally, by his marriage with a natural daughter of the then Duke of Orleans, he had founded some important connections and openings to secret influence in France. The young lady whom he had married was generally known by the name of Pamela; and it has been usually supposed that she is the person described by Miss Edgeworth, under the name of Virginia, in the latter part of her "Belinda." How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamela was certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was said to have gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which seems to argue the same sort of ignorance, and the same docility to any chance impressions, which characterize the Virginia of Miss Edgeworth. She was a reputed daughter (as I have said) of Philippe Egalité; and her putative mother was Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in that prince's family, as governess to his children, more especially to the sister of the present ⁷⁹ French king. Lord Edward's whole course had been marked by generosity and noble feeling. Far better to have pardoned ⁸⁰ such a man, and (if that were possible) to have conciliated his support; but, says a contemporary Irishman, "those were not times of conciliation."

Some days after this event were arrested the two brothers named Shearer, men of talent, who eventually suffered for treason. These discoveries were due to treachery of a peculiar sort; not to the treachery of an apostate brother breaking his faith, but of a counterfeit brother simulating the character of conspirator, and by that fraud obtaining a key to the fatal secrets of the United Irishmen. His perfidy, therefore, consisted, not in any betrayal of secrets, but in the fraud by which he obtained them. Government, without having yet penetrated to the very heart of the mystery, had now discovered enough to guide them in their most energetic precautions; and the result was, that the conspirators, whose policy had hitherto been to wait for the cooperation of a French army, now suddenly began to distrust that policy: their fear was, that the ground would be cut from beneath their feet if they waited any longer. More was evidently risked by delay than by dispensing altogether with foreign aid. To forego this aid was perilous; to wait for it was ruin. It was resolved, therefore, to commence the insurrection on the 23d of May; and, in order to distract the government, to commence it by simultaneous assaults upon all the military posts in the neighborhood of Dublin. This plan was discovered, but scarcely in time to prevent the effects of a surprise. On the 21st, late in the evening, the conspiracy had been announced by the lord lieutenant's secretary to the lord mayor; and, on the following day, by a message from his excellency to both Houses of Parliament.

The insurrection, however, in spite of this official warning, began at the appointed hour. The skirmishes were many, and in many places; but, generally speaking, they were not favorable in their results to the insurgents. The mail coaches, agreeably to the preconcerted plan, had all been intercepted; their non-arrival being every where understood by the conspirators as a silent signal that the war had commenced. Yet this summons to the more distant provinces, though truly interpreted, had not been truly answered. The communication between the capital and the interior, almost completely interrupted at first, had been at length fully restored; and a few days saw the main strength (as it was supposed) of the insurrection suppressed without much bloodshed. But hush! what is that in the rear?

Just at this moment, when all the world was disposed to think the whole affair quietly composed, the flame burst out with tenfold fury in a part of the country from which government, with some reason, had turned away their anxieties and their preparations. This was the county of Wexford, which the Earl of Mountnorris had described to the government as so entirely well affected to the loyal cause, that he had personally pledged himself for its good conduct. On the night before Whitsunday, however, May 27, the standard of revolt was there raised by John Murphy, a Catholic priest, well know henceforwards under the title of Father Murphy.

The campaign opened inauspiciously for the royalists. The rebels had posted themselves on two eminences—Kilthomas, about ten miles to the westward of Gorey; and the Hill of Oulart, half way (i.e., about a dozen miles) between Gorey and Wexford. They were attacked at each point on Whitsunday. From the first point they were driven easily, and with considerable loss; but at Oulart the issue was very different. Father Murphy commanded here in person; and, finding that his men gave way in great confusion before a picked body of the North Cork militia, under the command of Colonel Foote, he contrived to persuade them that their flight was leading them right upon a body of royal cavalry posted to intercept their retreat. This fear effectually halted them. The insurgents, through a prejudice natural to inexperience, had an unreasonable dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing about to retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came of necessity, and without design, full upon their pursuers, whom unhappily the intoxication of victory had by this time brought into the most careless disarray. These, almost to a man, the rebels annihilated: universal consternation followed amongst the royalists; Father Murphy led them to Ferns, and thence to the attack of Enniscorthy.

Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the sudden burst—the explosion, one might say—by which a Swedish winter passes into spring, and spring simultaneously into summer? The icy sceptre of winter does not there thaw and melt away by just gradations; it is broken, it is shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence brought home to every sense. No second type of resurrection, so mighty or so affecting, is manifested by nature in southern climates. Such is the headlong tumult, such "the torrent rapture," by which life is let loose amongst the air, the earth, and the waters under the earth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is in manifestations of power and life, by comparison with climates that have no winter, such, and marked with features as distinct, was this Irish insurrection, when suddenly surrendered to the whole contagion of politico-religious fanaticism, by comparison with vulgar martinet strategics and the pedantry of technical warfare. What a picture must Enniscorthy have presented on the 27th of May! Fugitives, crowding in from Ferns, announced the rapid advance of the rebels, now, at least, 7000 strong, drunk with victory, and maddened with vindictive fury. Not long after midday, their advanced guard, well armed with muskets, (pillaged, be H observed, from royal magazines hastily deserted,) commenced a tumultuous assault. Less than 300 militia and yeomanry formed the garrison of the place, which had no sort of defences except the natural one of the River Slaney. This, however, was fordable, and that the assailants knew. The slaughter amongst the rebels, meantime, from the little caution they exhibited, and their total defect of military skill, was murderous. Spite of their immense numerical advantages, it is probable they would have been defeated. But in Enniscorthy, (as where not?) treason from within was emboldened to raise its crest at the very crisis of suspense; incendiaries were at work; and flames began to issue from many houses at once. Retreat itself became suddenly doubtful, depending, as it did, altogether upon the state of the wind. At the right hand of every royalist stood a traitor; in his own house oftentimes lurked other traitors, waiting for the signal to begin; in the front was the enemy; in the rear was a line of blazing streets. Three hours the battle had raged; it was now four, P. M., and at this moment the garrison hastily gave way, and fled to Wexford.

Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, as a centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the rebel pikes, and bayonets, and fierce faces, already gleaming through the smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up the avenues of escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred, of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and the means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation, under every mode of excitement; and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate and gather under general abstractions many an individual anecdote, reported by those who were on that day present in Enniscorthy; for at Ferns, not far off, and deeply interested in all those transactions, I had private friends, intimate participators in the trials of that fierce hurricane, and joint sufferers with those who suffered most. Ladies were then seen in crowds, hurrying on foot to Wexford, the nearest asylum, though fourteen miles distant, many in slippers, bareheaded, and without any supporting arm; for the flight of their defenders, having been determined by a sudden angular movement of the assailants, coinciding with the failure of their own ammunition, had left no time for warning; and fortunate it was for the unhappy fugitives, that the confusion of burning streets, concurring with the seductions of pillage, drew aside so many of the victors as to break the unity of a pursuit else hellishly unrelenting.

Wexford, meantime, was in no condition to promise more than a momentary shelter. Orders had been already issued to extinguish all domestic fires throughout the town, and to unroof all the thatched houses; so great was the jealousy of internal treason. From without, also, the alarm was every hour increasing. On Tuesday, the 29th of May, the rebel army advanced from Enniscorthy to a post called Three Rocks, not much above two miles from Wexford. Their strength was now increased to at least 15,000 men. Never was there a case requiring more energy in the disposers of the royal forces; never one which met with less, even in the most responsible quarters. The nearest military station was the fort at Duncannon, twenty-three miles distant. Thither, on the 29th, an express had been despatched by the mayor of Wexford, reporting their situation, and calling immediate aid. General Fawcet replied, that he would himself march that same evening with the 13th regiment, part of the Meath militia, and sufficient artillery. Relying upon these assurances, the small parties of militia and yeomanry then in Wexford gallantly threw themselves upon the most trying services in advance. Some companies of the Donegal militia, not mustering above 200 men, marched immediately to a position between the rebel camp and Wexford; whilst others of the North Cork militia and the local yeomanry, with equal cheerfulness, undertook the defence of that town. Meantime, General Fawcet had consulted his personal comfort by halting for the night, though aware of the dreadful emergency, at a station sixteen miles short of Wexford. A small detachment, however, with part of his artillery, he sent forward; these were the next morning intercepted by the rebels at Three Rocks, and massacred almost to a man. Two officers, who escaped the slaughter, carried the intelligence to the advanced post of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened, marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as was the disproportion, with the purpose of recapturing the artillery. A singular contrast this to the conduct of General Fawcet, who retreated hastily to Duncannon upon the first intelligence of this disaster. Such a regressive movement was so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals, that they continued to advance against the enemy, until the precision with which the captured artillery was served against themselves, and the non-appearance of the promised aid, warned them to retire. At Wexford, they found all in confusion and the hurry of retreat. The flight, as it may be called, of General Fawcet was now confirmed; and, as the local position of Wexford made it indefensible against artillery, the whole body of loyalists, except those whom insufficient warning had thrown into the rear, now fled from the wrath of the rebels to Duncannon. It is a shocking illustration (if truly reported) of the thoughtless ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops, that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to burn the cabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre, in cold blood, the unoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful of the many hostages whom the insurgents now held in their power, and careless of the dreadful provocations which they were thus throwing out to the bloodiest reprisals.

Thus it was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or through torpor thus unaccountably base, that actually, on the 30th of May, not having raised their standard before the 26th, the rebels had already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford in its whole southern division—Ross and Duncannon only excepted; of which the latter was not liable to capture by coup de main, and the other was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northern division of the county was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style, and through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of plans. Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels had taken up a position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station from which they could march with advantage upon the town of Gorey, lying seven miles to the northward. On the 1st of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place between a mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of Gorey and a strong detachment from the rebel camp. Many persons at the time regarded this as the best fought action in the whole war. The two parties had met about two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain that, if the yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most murderous one to the rebels. As it was, they escaped, though with considerable loss of honor. Yet even this they were allowed to retrieve within a few days, in a remarkable way, and with circumstances of still greater scandal to the military discretion in high quarters than had attended the movements of General Fawcet in the south.

On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under the command of Major General Loftus, had assembled at Gorey. The plan was, to march by two different roads upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; and this plan was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel army had put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this counter movement full and timely information had been given by a farmer at the royal headquarters; but such was the obstinate infatuation, that no officer of rank would condescent to give him a hearing. The consequences may be imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of courage, but presumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led a division upon one of the two roads, having no scouts, nor taking any sort of precaution. Suddenly he found his line of march crossed by the enemy in great strength: he refused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head; and a great part of the advanced detachment was slaughtered on the spot, and his artillery captured. General Loftus, advancing on the parallel road, heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim militia to the aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men, were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who could not cross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from the encumbrance of his artillery, had at length reached the scene of action by a long circuit, he found himself in the following truly ludicrous position: The rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey, and possessed themselves of that place; the general had thus lost his head quarters, without having seen the army whom he had suffered to slip past him in the dark. He marched back disconsolately to Gorey, took a look at the rebel posts which now occupied the town in strength, was saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally retreated out of the county.