CHAPTER XVIII.

SUPPRESSION OF THE Wexford INSURRECTION-PARTY FEELING AFTERWARDS -GENERAL HOLT-DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY - MORAL AND MILITARY CHARACTER OF THE WEXFORD REBELS.

WITH the total suppression of open insurrection, the tranquillity of the country was far from resulting as a consequence. A contest between nations may be pacified at once, and friendly relations immediately re-established; but civil war annihilates social feeling; it is not the struggle that originates in thirst of glory, or a yearning after power; but every bad passion is enlisted the contest is marked by ferocity-and cruelty generally concludes it.

There is no doubt whatever, but the Irish executive held out the olive-branch to the insurgents, and that, in professing leniency for the past and a redress of grievances for the future, their declarations were honest and sincere. Every act, with one exception, of Lord Cornwallis,* shewed that his object was to conciliate and not coerce; and had he possessed the power to have carried out his intentions, the country would have felt the healing influence of mild government, and the violence of the royalists and outrages of the disaffected would very soon have been effectually repressed.

Whatever might have been the general feeling throughout the kingdom that those terrible scenes which had attended the insurrectionary outbreak should terminate, there was a section of both parties who, from different objects, were opposed to a return of national tranquillity. The royalists were again the ascendant party, and many who before, and through abuse of power, had fanned the smouldering of discontent into the flame of rebellion, were now, from base and interested motives, desirous to interrupt every effort at conciliation, inflame religious prejudices, and exasperate rather than appease. Of the rebels, many considered themselves placed by their crimes beyond the pale of mercy; others were afraid, from the indiscriminating violence of the yeomanry, to avail themselves of the offered amnesty, and surrender and claim protection,t—and not a few were driven to

*"On the 27th of July, the attorney-general brought in a bill of attainder against Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Cornelius Grogan, and B. B. Harvey, all deceased. This measure was considered rather an act of imprudent severity, or a sort of supplementary vengeance upon the unoffending widow and orphan, and rather as the base posthumous issue of the latter, than the genuine offspring of the present administration. To compensate, however, for this solitary instance of severity, a bill of general amnesty was passed in the course of the session, with the exception only of Napper Tandy, and about thirty others, chiefly fugitives in France."-Plowden's Historical Review.

"The various outrages that were committed in the country prevented numbers from coming into the quarters of the several commanding officers to obtain protections, as many of the yeomen and their supplementaries continued the system of

such reckless desperation, by destruction of property, or the personal indignities they had undergone, that a thirst for revenge overcame prudential considerations, and when the hope of any political change of government was over, and they were perfectly assured that an outlaw's life and felon's death awaited them, they banded in desperate confederacy-their hand against every man, and every man's hand against them.*

Ruffianly and truculent as most of these outcasts were, there were many among them who had been rendered desperate by ill-usage, and were far more sinned against than sinning. Of this number one celebrated leader was an instance-and Holt's simple narrative of the causes which drove him into outlawry is calculated to excite sympathy for his sufferings, and his crime will be half forgiven when the injuries are detailed which provoked it.

"One morning about half-past five, Mr., before mentioned, of road-money memory, came to my house with a party of the Fermanagh militia, and calling my wife out, inquired where I was. She told him I was cutting turf, and he went away. He returned again about twelve o'clock, made the same inquiry, and went away.

"I returned home to dinner, and having heard of the visits of I began to suspect he meant me no good, and yet I could not imagine any mischief he could do me, as I knew there was no guilt in me. While I was musing about the matter, the serjeant's wife came into the room much excited, and said to me, 'God help you, poor man, your life is in danger.' I rose up and asked her what she meant. She said, 'Your house is condemned, and I am ordered out of it; why I

conflagration, and of shooting such of the peasantry as they met; and this necessarily deterred many from exposing themselves to their view, and prevented of course the humane and benevolent intentions of the present government from having their due effect."—Ibid.

*"Assassinations, from religious or political motives, would probably have ceased, soon after the granting of protections, if some desperate rebels, reinforced by deserters from regiments of Irish militia, had not remained in arms in the mountains of Wicklow and the dwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy. Desertions from these regiments, composed mostly of Romanists, were much apprehended in the time of the rebellion; but providentially here, as in other instances, the event was too late for the service of the rebel cause. A very few went over to the insurgents while they were in force, and these few seemed not to relish well the change from a regular army to a disorderly multitude. Yet, from some strange movement of the mind, after the rebellion was completely quelled, and only a few desperadoes, probably not above three hundred in all, remained in arms, in the two devious retreats above mentioned, many soldiers, particularly of the Antrim and King's County regiments, joined these desperadoes, with whom they could rationally expect no better fortune than a short life of hardship and rapine, ended by gun or halter. So great, however, was the terror of this banditti in the vicinity of their lurking-places, that those Protestants who had remained in the country in the time of the rebellion, now found themselves under the necessity of taking refuge in towns. But, after a little time, the woods of Killaughrim, scoured by the army, were cleared of their predatory inhabitants, who had ludicrously styled themselves Babes of the Wood, and in that quarter tranquillity was restored to the country."-Gordon's History.

do not know.' I went to the door, and from thence saw Mr. with a party of soldiers in the direction of the turf-bog where I had been employed.

"I recollected his threat of revenge, and judging of his malicious disposition from his burning his own tenants' cabins, and shooting the man, as I have before related, I felt that innocence would be no protection against him, and that if he got me in his power, he would assuredly murder me.

*

*

*

"I hardly believed it possible that Mr. would proceed to extremities so far as to injure my family or property, though he might have taken a personal revenge upon me. ***

"How soon was I undeceived; about seven o'clock in the evening, like Lot's wife, I looked back in the direction of my home, where I had left all that was dear to my heart, my darling wife and children, and my neat, well-ordered, and comfortable habitation, where I enjoyed so much happiness, and had hoped to pass all my days in peace and quietness. I saw it in flames! what were my feelings, I leave to the reader to imagine! it is impossible for me to describe them, it was more than man could bear. I did not know the extent of the infliction; my property was destroyed, my wife and children houseless and destitute, that I knew; perhaps too they had been murdered. I roused myself from brooding over my misfortunes, and vowed revenge, and I made the vow in the fulness of my wrath; gracious God! forgive me, I knew not what I did. I was wild with grief, and agitated by the strongest feelings of detestation and hatred against the monster who had, as I believed, from malice, inflicted such miseries upon a wife and children that were a thousand times dearer to me than my own existence. I pictured to myself a thousand evils which had befallen or would happen to them, and the contemplation drove me to madness. Like a fury, I proceeded towards the Devil's Glen, a name very appropriate to my frame of mind.”*

Still the game of bloodshed was kept up-and every act of violence committed by the desperate men who had abandoned a once happy home for an outlaw's retreat in glen or mountain, was fearfully retaliated, not on the guilty, but the innocent. As the massacres were

found to be committed entirely from a spirit of religious hatred, and as the real perpetrators could not be brought to justice, a mode was adopted, which necessity alone could justify; but it proved effectual. Where any Protestants were murdered by these banditti or their confederates, a greater number of Romanists were put to death in the same neighbourhood by the yeomen. Thus, at Castletown, four miles from Gorey, where four Protestants were massacred in the night by Hacket, seven Romanists were slain in revenge; and at Aughrim, in the county of Wicklow, ten miles from the same place, seventeen were put to death to avenge the murder of a yeoman and his family;

* Memoirs of Holt.

indeed, this atrocious system of sanguinary reprisals was openly proclaimed.*

In this dangerous and unsettled state of things, the best efforts of the lord-lieutenant to pacify the country, and restore friendly relations between conflicting religionists, proved utterly abortive. The people felt no confidence in the promises of protection held out by proclamations, when they daily were plundered by the military, and nightly harassed by domiciliary visits by yeomen and supplementaries, always accompanied by insults, and not unfrequently, with loss of property and life. On the other hand, the royalists were alarmists they asserted that the snake was scotched, not killed-that the embers of rebellion were smouldering for a time, only to break out more furiously than before. They pretended to have discovered secret plots t-intended assassinations-preparations for a general massacre of Protestants, in which all, from the cradle to the crutch, should be involved in one common sacrifice to the Moloch of Popery; and as these men of evil augury were not confined to the humbler classes, their false representations had well-nigh produced the most tragic consequences, if Plowden may be credited. We give his statement, although we confess we doubt its authenticity:

"Orders were sent to the different generals and other commanding officers, contiguous to the devoted tract (Wexford), to form a line along its extent on the western border, and on both ends, north and south, on the land side, so as to leave no resource to the wretched inhabitants, who were to be slaughtered by the soldiery, or to be driven into the Even women and children were to be included in this horrid plan of terrific example."

sea.

Fortunately, had such a horrible immolation of a whole community, innocent and guilty, been ever contemplated, the humanity of the officers left in command at Wexford caused its abandonment, and those who would have rioted in blood were, in the first place, disappointed, and eventually disgraced.

That the greater proportion of the southern Protestants, however, had suffered grievously during the brief and bloody period of the insurrection, is not to be questioned. To "minister to minds diseased " by the ruthless slaughter of the dearest objects that occupy the human heart was beyond the power of the executive-but so far as worldly losses could be compensated, the government came forward with

* "Numerous atrocious murders were at this time committed on the persons of poor Protestants, who had returned too soon to their dwellings, not thinking that the rebels would again disturb them. So frequent were these murders, that the yeomanry proclaimed through the different parishes, that for every Protestant that was put to death, they would kill the priest and twenty Papists, in whatever parish such murder should be committed.' This had the desired effect; there were no more assassinations, though the robberies were as frequent as ever."—Taylor's History.

+"Incessant applications had been made to government, by different magistrates in Gorey and its vicinity, complaining that this range of country was infested with constant meetings of rebels, who committed every species of outrage, and these reports were confirmed by affidavits."

promptness and liberality. In a message delivered by Lord Castlereagh, to the House of Commons, from the lord-lieutenant on the 17th of July, compensation of loyalist losses was recommended by his majesty. The sufferers were directed to send authenticated estimates to the commissioners, and provision was afterwards made by Act of Parliament for compensation, altogether, or in part, according to peculiar circumstances. The authentication required, was to be the affidavit of the claimant, accompanied by those of the minister of the parish and the claimant's landlord, or his agent, declaratory of loyalty and the truth of the estimate.

*

That this act of restitution was shamefully abused can scarcely be a subject of surprise-and men whom position in society and easy fortune should have placed beyond the probability or necessity of committing a fraud upon an act, just and benevolent on the part of government, were found pre-eminent in rapacity.

Of course, the odium attached to the destruction of property was in the first instance attributed to the disaffected; but the devastation and plundering sustained by the loyalists was not the work of the rebels alone. "Great part of the damage was committed by the soldiery, who commonly completed the ruin of deserted houses, in which they had their quarters, and often plundered without distinction of loyalist and croppy. The Hessians exceeded the other troops in the business of depredation; and many loyalists who bad escaped from the rebels were put to death by these foreigners. To send such troops into the country in such a state of affairs, was a wrong step in government, and why plundering was permitted so long to the soldiery in some parts of the country after the rebellion had been quelled, is less excusable. The publication of some facts, of which I have acquired information, may not, perhaps, be safe. On the arrival of the Marquis of Huntley, however, with his regiment of Scottish Highlanders, in Gorey, the scene was totally altered. To the immortal honour of this regiment, its behaviour was such as, if it were universal among soldiers, would render a military government estimable. To the astonishment of the harassed peasantry, the smallest trifle, even to a drink of butter-milk, would not be accepted without the payment of the full value. General Skerret, colonel of the Durham regiment, who succeeded the marquis, observed strict discipline, and nothing more was heard of military depredation.

"But though by this conduct of general officers the royal troops assumed their proper place, in becoming protectors, not pillagers of the people, the country was miserably afflicted all the ensuing winter by

"The number of affidavits sent to the commissioners before the 10th of April, 1799, from the counties of Kildare, Wicklow, Wexford, and Kilkenny, was three thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven; and the estimates made of losses amounted to five hundred and sixty-one thousand two hundred and thirteen pounds. Of these claimants the county of Wexford furnished two thousand one hundred and thirtyseven; whose losses amounted to three hundred thousand pounds. The claims of some were greatly excessive, and many, who had acquired by plunder more than they had lost, made large demands of compensation."