THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
The Red Hand of Ulster
History
BY
JOHN G. ROWE
Author of "in Nelson's Day," "Por His Father's Honour.
"The Pilgrims of Grace." etc.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1915
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I loved a love a royal love
In the golden long ago ;
And she was fair as fair could be,
The foam upon the broken sea,
The sheen of sun, or moon or star,
The sparkle from the diamond spar,
Not half so rare and radiant are
As my own love my royal love
In the golden long ago."
Edmund Ltamy, M.P.
PREFACE.
"The story of our native land, from weary age to age,
Is writ in blood and scalding tears on many a gloomy page."
My idea, in compiling this book, was to get away
from " the blood and scalding tears " as much as
possible, to avoid the horrible and gruesome, those
detestable cruelties and inhumanities which have
too long made Irish History a nightmare to all, which
must fill the minds of even adult readers with sickening
horror and bitter resentment, and the recapitulation
of which to-day can serve no good purpose, but merely
keep alive racial hatreds.
I have sought, on the other hand, to display in the
most glowing colours all the romance and glory bound
up in the history of a land which, I assert, is perhaps
more entitled to be called one of romance than any
other on the face of the earth, and that from earliest
times up to the present. And my object in doing so
is to awaken a deep and true love of our country and
her heroic past in the hearts of the rising generation.
V1U PREFACE.
If a perusal of this book inspire the student of Irish
History to prosecute deeper research, the author will
feel that his task a labour of love on the whole
has not been labour wasted, has not been vain.
JOHN G. ROWE.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANCIENT ERIN.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE COMING OP THE MILESIANS . . 3
II. THE RED BRANCH KNIGHTS AND CUCHULLAIN 10
III. FINN MAcCooL AND THE ANCIENT FENIANS
NIAL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES . .22
IV. THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY BY
ST. PATRICK ...:.. 32
V. THE COMING OF THE DANES. How MALACHY
WON " THE COLLAR OF GOLD," AND BRIAN
BORU BROKE THE DANISH POWER AT
CLONTARF 41
PART II.
THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
VI. How DERMOT MACMURROUGH BROUGHT
THE ENGLISH OVER . . . -57
VII. THE BRUGES IN IRELAND . . . - . 66
VIII. KING ART MACMURROUGH, THE DREAD OF
THE PALE . . - . . . -75
PART III.
THE GERALDINES.
IX. SILKEN THOMAS . . . . -85
X. SHANE THE PROUD ,;/ . . . -93
XI. GRANUA UAILE. GLENMALURE. THE FALL
OF THE GERALDINES . . . -99
CONTENTS.
PART IV.
THE TWO HUGHS.
CHAP. PAGE
XII. THE KIDNAPPING OF RED HUGH O'DOXNELL 109
XIII. CLONTIBRET AND THE YELLOW FORD . .115
XIV. KINSALE. THE DEFENCE OF DUNBOY.
O'SULUVAN'S FAMOUS RETREAT . .123
PART V.
THE CONFEDERATE WAR.
XV. How OWEN ROE O'NEILL GAVE ms SWORD
TO HIS SIRELAND ; AND HIS GREAT VICTORY
AT BENBURB 133
XVI. CROMWELL IN IRELAND. His REPULSE AT
CLONMEL . . . . . . 144
PART VI.
FOR JAMES OR WILLIAM ?
XVII. THE DEFENCE OF DERRY . . . . 155
XVIII. THE BOYNE WATER. SARSFIELD'S RIDE.
THE WOMEN OF LIMERICK . . .164
XIX. HOW THEY HELD THE BRIDGE AT ATHLONE.
AUGHRIM THE TREATY OF LIMERICK . 173
PART VII.
THE IRISH BRIGADE.
XX.- SARSFIELD'S DEATH. How THE IRISH SAVED
CREMONA . . . . . . 183
XXI. LACY AND WOGAN. THE CROWNING VICTORY
OF FONTENOY. COUNT LALLY . .190
CONTENTS. XI
PART VIII.
THE DAYS OF GRATTAN.
CHAP. PAGE
XXII. THUROT'S RAID. THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.
GRATTAN AND FLOOD .... 199
XXIII. WOLFE TONE AND THE UNITED IRISHMEN.
THE FRENCH INVASION OF 1796. " REMEM-
BER ORR." 206
XXIV. THE CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD. "NINETY-
EIGHT." WEXFORD RISES . . -215
XXV. PEASANT VICTORIES. Ross. ARKLOW.
VINEGAR HILL. BALLYELLIS . . . 223
XXVI. HUMBERT'S INVASION. THE FATE OF TONE.
HOLT AND DWYER ..... 235
XXVII. How THE " UNION " WAS PASSED . . 244
XXVIII. ROBERT EMMET 252
PART IX.
MORAL OR PHYSICAL FORCE ?
XXIX. DANIEL O'CONNELL, THE LIBERATOR . . 263
XXX. THE YOUNG IRELANDERS .... 272
XXXI. JAMES STEPHENS AND THE FENIAN MOVE-
MENT ....... 279
XXXII. THE RISING OF THE STH OF MARCH, '67 . 284
XXXIII. THE MANCHESTER RESCUE . . . 292
PART X.
HOME RULE.
XXXIV. THE HOME RULE AGITATION. THE PHOENIX
PARK TRAGEDY ..... 303
XXXV. PARNELL'S DRAMATIC TRIUMPH AND FALL . 314
XXXVI. IN SIGHT OF HOME RULE .... 324
XXXVII. HOME RULE ON THE CARPET . . .331
PART I.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANCIENT ERIN.
Let Erin remember the days of old,
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her,
When Malachy wore the collar of gold,
Which he won from the proud invader,
When her kings with standards of green unfurled,
Led the Red Branch knights to danger,
Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.
THOMAS MOORE.
THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE COMING OF THE Ml^ESIANS TO " THE ISIdbrog did not trouble
Ireland, apparently, but confined his attentions more
to her sister isle, Britain, although some authorities
have tried to identify him with the great Danish
invader of our land, the renowned Turgesius or
Thorgils.
That those two renowned marauders were two
distinct men, and not one and the same person is
pretty evident from any close study of the period
and of the separate histories of England and Ireland.
It was about A.D. 832 that the great Viking Thorgils,
whose name is more familiar under its Latinised form
of Turgesius, landed with a great fleet of 120 ships,
and conceived the idea of making the country a
Danish kingdom, subjecting all broad Erin to his
sway. The way for this ambition of his had been
THE COMING OF THE DANES. 43
paved, to a certain extent, by the numerous previous
inroads of his countrymen. Although severely checked
from time to time the savage raiders had considerably
weakened the resistance of the Irish people. These
fled now, for the most part, at the very tidings of the
coming of their bloodthirsty Pagan foes. Moreover,
the native chiefs and petty kings played into the
hands of Turgesius by their own petty, but bitter,
jealousies and warfare.
Simultaneously entering the Boyne and the Iviffey,
Turgesius and his Danes ravaged Meath, the patri-
mony of the Ard-Righ, as well as Louth and Armagh,
forcing the primate of this latter county to flee into
Munster. The gold and silver sacred vessels of
the monasteries were the great attraction to the
rapacious Pagans, who " butchered the monks like
sheep," and it was now as monastery keeps, it has
been conclusively proved that the famous round
towers of our land were erected everywhere. Within
these towers the church plate would be conveyed
from the adjoining abbeys and monasteries at the
first signal of alarm from a sentinel posted on the
top floor ; and, if besieged, the defenders would retreat
from floor to floor, taking up the ladders after them
and raining down heavy stones and other missiles until
either help came or the foe retired baffled, the latter
case being as likely as the former.
The Ard-Righ and provincial native princes offered
but feeble opposition to the Pagans, and Danish
colonies were established at I/imerick, Dundalk, and
other places, including one at Rindoon, L,ough Ree,
where Turgesius now fixed his headquarters and ruled
44 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
as the sovereign lord of Ireland, self-styled. He was
able, too, to enforce his authority in great measure
and levied a dreadful tax or tribute from the subject
Irish people round. This tribute was called " Nosegelt "
or " Nosemoney," gelt being Danish for money, be-
cause the penalty for its non-payment was the
cutting off of the defaulter's nose.
Ruled by ruthless heathens, with their glorious monas-
teries everywhere in ruins, their schools, renowned
hitherto through Christianity, destroyed, hardly left
enough to keep body and soul together, it seemed
the end of all things to the hapless people, when
there came to the dignity of Ard-Righ now a rather
empty title and dignity it would seem one worthy at
last of its glorious traditions.
All Ulster and Connaught, with Meath, was at this
time subject to Turgesius. Meath was the Ard-
Righ's own special kingdom, and it seemed a
hopeless task for him to think of anything like an
effective blow against the Danish tyrant. But High-
King Malachy determined upon a stratagem. He
feigned compliance and complacency under Turgesius' s
rule, and offered him his daughter in marriage. The
girl was most beautiful and the Danish monarch readily
fell into the trap.
The lady with fifteen attendants went to Turgesius's
palace, which was close by King Malachy's. The
attendants were apparently lovely maidens like their
young mistress, but instead they were all young men
of handsome appearance, merely disguised, and with
arms under their disguises. At a given signal they fell
upon Turgesius and his officers, slew all in the palace
THE COMING OF THE DANES. 45
but the fierce old monarch himself, and carried him
off prisoner to Malachy, who had him bound hand and
foot and drowned in I/ough Owel. Malachy then
raised and armed the subject people, and the Danish
supremacy was, for a time, overthrown.
But Ireland did not long enjoy her immunity. Fresh
hordes of Danes poured into the devoted land, panting
to avenge the defeat of their predecessors and, if
possible, possess themselves in turn of the fair valleys
and plains.
Danish colonies at Dublin, limerick, and Water-
ford had managed to hold their own, when their
countrymen everywhere else had been driven into the
sea. With these strongholds as passage-ports into
the country, the new comers spread once more over
this in every direction. From Limerick in particu-
lar, Imar, a famous Viking, and his sons, with a great
army laid waste Munster, and exacted a tax of an
ounce of silver per head in lieu of slavery.
The Dalcassians and Eugenians were the two great
governing Southern clans, as the Hy-Nials were the
predominant and kingly race of the north of Ireland.
Thomond or North Munster (Clare to-day) was the
country of the Dalcassians, who were a very proud and
haughty race, claiming exemption from taxes under
the Ard-Righ and the hereditary right of forming the
van in battle and the rearguard in retreat. From
them, alternately with the Eugenians, were always
chosen the Kings of Cashel.
About the middle of the tenth century, the Dalcassian
prince on the throne of Munster was Mahon, and he had
a younger brother named Brian, who accompanied him
46 THE ROMANCE OP IRISH HISTORY.
in all his military expeditions against the Danes. This
younger brother of the ruling sovereign was the after-
wards justly celebrated Brian Boru or Borumha, i.e.,
" Brian of the Tribute," whose memory is the brightest
of all the ancient High Kings of Erin. Students of
both Irish and English history must remark the
great and striking resemblance between Brian Boru and
the Saxon King Alfred. Both succeeded brothers,
after being those brothers' right hand men and ablest
lieutenants in the fighting with the same terrible foe,
the Pagan Danish invaders ; both conquered these,
broke their power in one great battle, the one at
Clontarf, the other at Ethandune, and freed their res-
pective nations for ever practically from the heathen
yoke.
King Mahon for a time indeed made peace with
the all-conquering invaders, submitted to them, but
Brian would not, and, retreating into the forests and
mountains of north Munster, carried on the same sort
of guerilla warfare as his Saxon counterpart did in
the fens of Somersetshire. He sallied forth from time
to time, inflicting a severe reverse on the Danes ;
he would cut off their supplies, and, sending out
frequent foraging parties, harass them in every con-
ceivable way.
At the first favourable chance he sent a letter to his
brother, reproaching him for so tamely laying down
his arms to the foreign invader, and the letter
stung Mahon to the quick. Assembling an army again,
Mahon joined Brian's guerilla band, and, once more
united in love and arms, the two brothers met the
Danes of Limerick at Sulcoit, now Solohead, three
THE COMING OF THE DANES. 47
miles from Tipperary, and routed them completely.
The victorious Thomond men then laid siege to
Limerick itself, and captured it, and King Mahon was
firmly re-established on the throne of Cashel as King of
Munster.
But the Eugenian pretender or rival to the throne,
the Prince of Desmond or South Munster, whose name
was Molloy, conspired against King Mahon with
Donovan, the chief of Hy-Carbry, and Ivar, the
leader of the remnant of the L,imerick Danes, who
had taken refuge in the holy island of Scattery and
fortified it. A peaceful conference was suggested by
the traitors at the dun or moated fortress of
Donovan, and Mahon was invited to it, the safety of
all who attended being guaranteed by the Bishop of
Cork.
Mahon went, all unsuspecting, unarmed and un-
attended, and was treacherously seized by Donovan,
and handed over to Molloy, who suddenly plunged
his sword into him. This, under the eyes of the
horrified Bishop of Cork, who had not time to intervene.
The murdered man had with him a copy of the Gospel
of St. Finnbar, a relic much venerated in the Catholic
Church, and it is said that as he held the book open
before him, deeming Molloy would never commit such
a sacrilege as to strike him through its sacred pages, the
murderer's weapon pierced " right through the vellum
which became all stained and matted with his blood."
Brian was at Kincora, the famous palace of the
Dalcassian princes, when the news of the foul deed
reached him. He swore an oath of dreadful ven-
geance, and faithfully, only too faithfully, did he
48 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
execute it. By the rule of alternate succession,
Molloy, as the Eugenian prince, now became King
of Munster, but he reckoned without his host in Brian,
if he thought that youth incapable of avenging his
beloved brother's death. Brian, by his brother's
death King of Thomond, hurled himself first, swift as
a thunderbolt and as deadly, against the Danes under
Ivar in Scattery. Ivar and his two sons were slain
and their people utterly destroyed. Now Brian turned
on Molloy, the second but chief murderer of his
brother. In a battle at Macroom between the
Dalcassians and the Eugenians, the infamous Molloy
fell by the hand of Morrogh, Brian's eldest son, a lad
of only fifteen. Siege was laid, practically simul-
taneously, to Donovan's fortress, and in its attack the
last of the three murderers was killed.
Brian was now undisputed master of Munster, but
he determined to make himself Ard-Righ or High-
King over all Erin. He invaded Ossory and I/einster,
as well as Connaught and Meath, subduing each in
turn.
The Ard-Righ at the time was well worthy also,
as it happened, of the sceptre Malachy the Second,
or Malachy More he whom our national poet Moore
has justly celebrated as wearing " the collar of gold
which he won from the proud invader." He in his
turn, rightly resenting those unlawful incursions,
invaded Thomond and defeated the Dalcassians in a
great fight. A venerable tree, under the shade of
which the Dalcassian or Thomond kings were always
solemnly inaugurated, he cut down and used to roof
part of a new palace he was building.
THE COMING OF THE DANES. 49
Malachy too, in his half of the country, had
constantly fought and inflicted reverses on the
Danish invaders. He only allowed them to remain
on condition they paid him tribute. The exploit so
celebrated by the poet Moore and referred to above,
took place when he defeated the famous Viking
chief, Tomar, at Dublin. In those heroic days it was
a common thing for the leader of one side in a
battle to challenge to single combat the leader of
the opposing side. Malachy either challenged or was
challenged by Tomar, who was bidding fair to become
a second Turgesius, and the Irish Ard-Righ killed the
redoubtable Norse warrior in a terrific hand-to-hand
duel, and afterwards fought and killed another Danish
prince named Carolus. Tomar wore a massive collar of
gold, and Malachy took this from round his neck and
clasped it about his own, and from the nerveless
hand of the second Viking the Ard-Righ took a
magnificent jewel-hilted sword.
Naturally such a man was not going to quietly
surrender his birthright of High-King to the first
comer, and a dreadful civil war was now inaugurated
between him and Brian of Munster for the suzerainty
of the island. For long twenty years the war was
waged with varying success, and unhappily, this inter-
necine strife enabled the Dane to again make good his
footing in green Erin, so much so that at last Brian
and Malachy very prudently agreed to sink their
personal quarrel and unite against the common foe.
The two Irish Kings agreed to divide Ireland between
them into lyeh-Conn and I^egh-Mogh once more, as
their ancestors had done ; and then, joining forces, they
E
5O THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
gave battle to the Danish invaders. These had come
at the solicitation of Maelmorra, King of Leinster, who
had revolted against the Ard-Righ. Harold, the
Danish Crown Prince, was in command of the invaders,
and undoubtedly the fate of the kingdom hung on the
battle that ensued at Glenmama, near Dunlavin, in
Wicklow (A.D 1000).
It was a most glorious victory for the two Irish Kings
The Danish Prince and 4,000 of his men were slain, and
the renegade Maelmorra, King of Leinster, was taken
prisoner but spared. Now was it that Brian, who was
practically High- King, obtained his surname or sobriquet
Boru " of the Tribute." To punish the Leinster
men, he re-imposed the cow-tribute or " borumha,"
which Ard-Righs had formerly exacted from them.
Most unjustly Brian turned on Malachy, who all
along would seem to have been of a nobler character
than his great rival, and insisted on being crowned
High-King. This was practically a usurpation, for the
position had hitherto only been held by descendants
of Nial of the Nine Hostages, by kings of the blood of
the Hy-Nial.
Malachy, unable to hold his own in the field, resigned
the sceptre and became, to his infinite credit, Brian's
devoted adherent as well as tributary king.
High-King Brian proved himself one of the wisest
and best rulers Erin had ever known. Once more
the country smiled with peace and prosperity Religion
again raised its head, and schools and monastic
institutions sprang up all over the land once more.
Brian held his court at Kincora with a splendour
not to be surpassed at any other royal court in
THE COMING OF THE DANES. 51
Europe. As Moore has sung, a lady, wearing gems
" rich and rare " and " a gold ring on her wand," is
said to have travelled unattended, yet unmolested,
from Tory Island to Glandore, her " maiden smile
in safety " lighting " her round the green isle."
But the treachery of the Leinster King, Maelmorra,
had only been scotched, not killed. He entered again
into conspiracy with the subject Danes, and they
sent secretly to their brethren in Norway and
Denmark, the Orkney and Shetlands, the Isle of
Man, Northumbria in England, and the Hebrides,
urging a general and united descent upon the Irish
shore.
Maelmorra's sister, Gormfleth, was the subject Danish
King of Dublin's mother, and she helped the treason
and invasion in every conceivable way " She was
the fairest of women, but she did all things ill." A
second Helen of Troy she appears to have been, and
a forerunner of that other faithless woman whose
elopement led to the Norman invasion of Ireland a
century or so later. She was the divorced wife of
Malachy and also of a former Danish prince, and
she now offered herself secretly in marriage, together
with the crown of all Ireland, to both Brodar, the
Danish king of Man, and Sigurd, Earl of the Orkneys.
Twenty thousand strong, the Danish armada landed
in Dublin Bay, the whole surface of which was covered
with their ships. Brian was not caught napping. He
received timely word of the invasion ; and, with a force
about equal to the invaders, marched swiftly on
Dublin and drew up his forces on the famous plain of
CI.ONTARF outside the city
52 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
Bloody was the fearful conflict which ensued on
Good Friday, 1014 A.D. All day the battle raged,
neither side seeming to gain the upper hand. It was
chiefly waged hand to hand with the battle-axe, in the
use of which the Irish had grown as expert as their
foes. At length the Danes began to retreat to their
ships. Malachy came up with a fresh contingent of
troops in time to fall upon them and complete the
rout. The Danes lost 7,000 men and the Irish 4,000.
But dreadful was the loss on both sides of princes
and chiefs. Brodar, the Manx Dane prince, fleeing
after the battle, came upon Brian's tent unguarded.
He and his escort burst in and found the aged
Brian who had not, on account of his age, taken
part in the actual fighting he was 88 on his
knees in prayer. The savage Viking clove in his head
with an axe, but was immediately afterwards captured
and put to death by Brian's truant guards. Morrogh,
Brian's son, who commanded in the fight, fell with
his son Turlogh, in the battle ; and Maelmorra the
traitor, the Norwegian Prince Amrud and Sigurd of
Orkney perished on the Danish side.
One more romantic episode ere this chapter is closed
As the victorious but sorrowing army of Dalcassians
was returning home to Munster, it was intercepted by
Magillapatrick, Prince of Ossory, whose father had
once been put in fetters by Brian Boru. The
wounded and bleeding heroes of Clontarf bade their
abler brethren bind them to stakes in the front rank,
so that they could strike blows with their battle-axes
though unable to stand.
This was done, and the Ossory men were so struck
THE COMING OF THE DANES. 53
with awe and admiration for their brave foes that,
with all the true generosity and chivalry of
Irishmen, they forebore to attack, cheered them and
let them proceed unmolested
PART II.
THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION
There was a clash of weapons in the air
Ruin of peace and seasonable good ;
And, flanked by gallant natures everywhere,
The green flag staggered over fields of blood.
The Norman steed was stabled in thy fanes,
The Norman bugles rang upon the heath ;
Thy children bared their hearts and spurned their chains,
And sealed their glorious constancy in death.
" Our Faith Our Fatherland,"
By JOHN F. O'DoNNEi,!,.
HOW MACMURROUGH BROUGHT THE ENGLISH OVER. 57
CHAPTER VI.
How DERMOT MACMURROUGH BROUGHT THE ENGLISH
OVER.
The power of the Danes in Ireland was broken for
ever by the victory of Clontarf, but King Brian's
successful usurpation of the sceptre of the Ard-Righ
now led to other petty princes thinking of likewise
grasping the suzerainty.
Malachy became High- King again on Brian's death,
and ruled well during his life time, but when he died
the whole country fell away, the old discords cropping
up again. It was in his seventy- third year that
Malachy " the Great and Good," died, and the
Four Masters justly style him in their Annals, " the
pillar of dignity and nobility of the western world."
He was the last King of Ireland of the true old
Hy-Nial stock.
The son of Brian, now to be known as the head
of the O'Briens, became Ard-Righ and handed on
the crown to others of his family, but the O'Briens
found foes on all sides, and another family, the
O'Connors, destroyed Kincora and subdued all
Munster. Roderick O'Connor became Ard-Righ and
was paid homage by the Clan Conal. He divided
Tyrowen between the O'1/oughlins and O'Neills, and
58 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
for a time " no Ard-Righ was ever obeyed more
readily or could bring together a greater force." But
he was destined, alas, to be the last free King of Ireland
Dermot MacMurrough, whose name has been accursed
in the hearts of all Irishmen through the succeeding
centuries, was King of Leinster. In the year 1152,
he induced Devorghil, the wife of Tiernan O'Rourke,
Prince of Breffny, to elope with him. O'Rourke
appealed to the Ard-Righ for justice, and King
O'Connor promptly marched against the offender, and
compelled him to restore O'Rourke's wife and do
penance But Dermot MacMurrough nurtured revenge
and was a second Maelmorra, the traitor of Brian
Boru's day He fled the country, hated even by his
own people for his cruelty and utter baseness, and his
cousin was made King of Leinster in his stead by
the Ard-Righ.
Panting for revenge, he sought out the Norman King
of England, Henry II., at that time in Aquitaine,
a province of France ; and here let me correct a
popular error. The Saxon was not the ancient foe of
Ireland, but the Norman. The Saxon was Ireland's
old ally. Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings, had
found support and allies in Ireland, and because he
had done so his Norman conquerors bore the Irish
no good- will.
Dermot the Traitor asked aid from the English King
to get back his princedom, and the wily English
monarch saw in giving him that aid a chance of
establishing a footing in the sister isle. Henry, how-
ever, had his hands full at the time and could not
attend to the matter He, however, gave Dermot
HOW MACMURROUGH BROUGHT THE ENGLISH OVER. 59
permission to enlist such of his followers as cared to
proceed to Ireland. Dermot returned to England,
armed with this permit, and repaired to the court
of Griffith, the Prince of North Wales. He obtained
promises of support from Griffith and several of the
Norman barons living on the Welsh borders, chief
among whom were Richard de Clare, the Earl of
Pembroke, generally known as Strongboiv, Robert
Fitzstephen, and Maurice Fitzgerald, all three
adventurers in needy circumstances.
Strongbow or Pembroke, in fact, bound Dermot
down to promising him the right of succession to
his kingdom a power which, under the law of
Tanistry, or the Irish elective method of succession,
Dermot could not rightly give and the hand of his
only daughter Eva as wife.
To open the campaign Dermot sailed back to Ireland,
accompanied only by Griffith and a band of Fleming
mercenaries, the Norman barons promising to follow
him as soon as they could get an army together.
The High-King Roderick met and slew Griffith at
Kellistown in Carlow, and Dermot humbly submitted,
giving hostages and gold for his good behaviour and
retiring to the monastery of Ferns.
In the month of May, true to his promise at any
rate, the Norman baron Fitzstephen landed with a
small force of armour-clad knights, men-at-arms, and
archers at Bannow Bay, Wexford Dermot promptly
joined the invaders with 500 horse. Wexford
surrendered to them, and Ossory was invaded, Dermot
raising a force of 3,000 of his countrymen. The
mail-clad Norman cavalry bore down all opposition,
6O THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
for their foes wore no defensive armour and were
by no means as well-trained, well-armed, or well-
mounted.
High-King Roderick, alarmed at these proceed-
ings, now held a meeting of the tributary princes at
Tara ; and, as a result, a large army was brought
together, at the head of which he marched against
Dermot and his Norman allies. Outnumbered,
MacMurrough resorted to guile. He said he only
asked to be restored to his principality, and he
would recognise the suzerainty of the Ard-Righ,
dismiss his foreign allies, and introduce no more of
them into the land, but live at peace with his neigh-
bours. He offered his son Connor as a hostage, and
King Roderick very foolishly consented to the terms
he offered.
Dermot was only waiting for reinforcements from
his other Norman confederates ; and Fitzgerald
came in the autumn (A.D. 1169), with sufficient men to
induce him to break through his solemn compact
with King Roderick and march on Dublin, which
had refused to receive him back as its prince
O'Brien, king of Limerick, now revolted against
Roderick, and, deeming the time propitious for
himself seizing the position of Ard-Righ, Dermot
sent letters urging the tardy Strongbow to come
now or never.
Strongbow was not slow to respond He sent
over a small force under Raymond le Gros, or " the
Fat," in the spring of 1170, and on the 27th of August
following, he came himself with 1,600 men, of whom
200 were heavy horse. Joined by Raymond the Fat,
HOW MACMURROUGH BROUGHT THE ENGLISH OVER. 6l
Strongbow attacked Waterford. The town was a
walled city, built by the Danes, and the citizens
resisted stoutly, twice repulsing the assailants
Raymond the Fat contrived a breach in the defences
however, and, bursting through it, the Normans got in
Dermot came with his daughter Eva in time to see
the town captured ; and, amid the smoking ruins of the
city, the ill-omened marriage of Strongbow and the
Traitor's daughter was duly solemnized. The
Normans, now swollen to 5,000 without counting the
MacMurroughs, marched through the mountains of
Wicklow upon Dublin. Fearing butchery if the city
surrendered, the citizens sent out their archbishop,
the great St. Laurence O'Toole, to parley for terms
He was received with every symptom of respect in
the Norman camp, but while the citizens were thus
deluded into temporary neglect of vigilance, two parties
of the English, under Milo de Cogan and Raymond
the Fat, broke into the city and commenced an
indiscriminate massacre
High- King Roderick had approached to the relief
of the city with a large army, but he seems at this
crisis to have been most " feeble and vacillating."
Unprepared to besiege the English within the walls of
Dublin, he broke up his camp at Clondalkin and pusil-
lanimously retired towards Connaught. Strongbow
followed at his heels, fell suddenly upon his camp
at Finglas, and routed his great host of something
like 30,000 fighting men, almost without striking a
blow. Roderick, " the vain and incapable," was
bathing at the time and narrowly escaped with his
life " Nor would his soldiers have had any reason for
62 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
regret if he was pierced by some English ance,"
writes D' Alton.
But now Nemesis overtook the traitor. Dermot Mac-
Murrough He was struck dow r n, it is said, by a
loathsome disease, to which he succumbed at Ferns,
1171. He is often referred to as Dermot ' of the
English," as he brought them into Ireland
Strongbow now proclaimed himself King of Leinster
and thus aroused the jealousy of his own rightful
sovereign, Henry II. of England, who feared that
his ambition was to become King of all Ireland:
Henry sent messengers commanding Strongbow and
the other Norman barons and knights to return to
England. Strongbow temporised by sending a sub-
missive letter, declaring that he was but trying to win
the country for his liege lord, the King, and
inviting the monarch over. Thereupon Henry, in
October 1171, sailed for Ireland with a fleet of over
400 ships and an army of 500 knights and 4,000
men-at-arms.
Apparently it was more to make a parade of his
power than attempt a conquest of the country that
he came to Ireland, and many of the native chiefs
regarded him as coming to protect them from the
cruelties of the first invaders. He landed at Water-
ford, and most of the southern princes, seeing no
hope of adequate resistance under the lead of the
incapable Roderick O'Connor, came and paid him
their homage. Among these were the Kings of
Thomond and Desmond, and the princes of Decies,
of Ossory, and of Breffny, as well as O' Carroll of
Oriel, and lesser chiefs. It is alleged that even
HOW MACMURROUGH BROUGHT THE ENGLISH OVER. 63
High- King Roderick reluctantly admitted his authority
The Northern chiefs, the O'Neills and O'Donnells,
alone refused to acknowledge him as their liege lord
In order to ingratiate himself with the Irish, Henry
threw into prison the savage Fitzstephen for a time,
releasing him afterwards. He proceeded to parcel
out the country amongst his faithful barons "as if
he had conquered it by force of arms." Strongbow,
of course, was given Leinster, Meath was given to
one Hugh de I/acy, Ulster to John De Courcy,
Connaught to De Burgho. Milo de Cogan and
Fitzstephen got Cork. Henry, nevertheless, it is
stated, made no attempt to have himself recognised as
" King of Ireland " by the Irish, but merely posed
as an arbitrator He certainly restored something
like peace and order in the land during his six
months' stay, at the end of which time he was recalled
to England to answer to the papal legate for the
murder of St. Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and by rumours of a rebellion organised
against him by his sons.
He left the government of affairs in the hands of
Hugh de I/acy, departing from Wexford on April
I7th, 1172.
No sooner was he gone than the Norman ad-
venturers began to plunder right and left, and the
native chiefs took up arms to resist their encroachments
and enormities. Dermot the Traitor's son, Donald,
disputed Strongbow's claim to the kingdom of
lyeinster, but was treacherously put to death.
The O'Dempseys waylaid and routed some of
Strongbow's men, and O'Brien of lyimerick defeated
64 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
the redoubtable Norman himself at Thurles
Strongbow escaped by the swiftness of his horse with
only a few men, leaving 1,700 more dead upon the
field.
On this, High- King Roderick took heart of grace
and seized Trim, but Raymond the Fat and De Cogan
stormed Limerick, and found one MacCarthy ready
to help them against another. Meantime Strongbow
died of an ulcer in the foot spreading upwards
over his body. Prince John of England now visited
Ireland and treated the Irish chiefs, who came to
see him, with the utmost contumely. But he treated
his Norman adherents no better He ordered castles
to be built at Limerick, Lismore and other places.
The Irish vigorously attacked these strongholds, and
captured them, and John, well named " Lackland,"
afterwards, when left Ireland as his patrimony, was
recalled by his father.
Roderick O'Connor retired in his old age to the
abbey of Cong, and there ended his days ; and during
the whole of the next century the history of Ireland
may be summed up in one ceaseless struggle between
Anglo-Norman and Native Irish without either side
gaining much advantage. The Irish defeated the
English quite as often as the reverse, and had the native
chiefs only united and sunk their own miserable jeal-
ousies of one another, they could have swept all the
vaunted mail-clad chivalry of the invader into the sea,
again and again. But alas, they would not combine
or drop their wretched squabbling, and we find even
the two grand northern clans which up to the last
maintained their independence, the O'Neills and
HOW MACMURROUGH BROUGHT THE ENGLISH OVER. 65
O'Donnells, ready to fly at one another's throats at
the first excuse, fearful of cither's rise in power.
This most lamentable lack of unity, this ceaseless
domestic dissension could only have one result, that of
helping on the English conquest, of practically riveting
the chains forged by the early Norman invaders.
66 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
CHAPTER VII.
THE BRUGES IN IRELAND.
We have said that the Irish just as often
defeated the English as vice vasa. Milo de Cogan,
who invaded Connaught in the lifetime of the High-
King Roderick O'Connor, to help Roderick's rebellious
son Morrough against his father, was most signally
defeated, utterly routed by the High-King and the
true Connaughtmen ; and, let us give the last High-
King of Erin his due, though he was not fitted
for the part he was called upon to play, or to face
the exigencies of his time, he nevertheless main-
tained the independence of his own native Connaught
No Norman castle was therein erected, no Norman
set his foot there for long.
The most brilliant victory achieved by the Irish,
though, over their English foes in the thirteenth
century, was that of the noble and heroic
Godfrey O'Donnell in 1257. The O'Donnells,
or Clan-Conal of Tyrconnell, had so often repulsed the
English attempts at the invasion of their territory
that they had come to be looked upon as the grand
bulwark of Irish liberty and a standing and
terrible menace to the entire English colony. It
was decided to make a joint effort to crush them,
THE BRUGES IN IRELAND. 67
and to this end the Viceroy and his Lord Deputy or
Lord Justice, Maurice Fitzgerald, the first Earl of
Desmond, assembled the biggest and finest English
army that had yet mustered in one place on Irish soil.
Knights and squires and men-at-arms, horse and
men sheathed in complete steel mail of proof,
marched to the muster from every Norman castle and
settlement in the country. The far-famed and
deservedly dreaded English bowmen flocked also to
the rendezvous ; and the march on the devoted
O'Donnells was begun.
The chiejf of the clan, the Prince of Tyrconnell,
Godfrey O'Donnell, " was in fact one of the most skilful
captains of the age." It was the weight of his arm
that the English had already so often felt and feared
so much. He and his faithful clansmen met
Fitzgerald's proud host at Credan Kille or Drumcliff
in Sligo, and the battle lasted for hours. It was most
stubbornly contested on both sides. The mail-clad
chivalry of the Normans hurled itself again and again,
lances in rest, upon the " saffron-kilted Irish clansmen,"
who, however, met the living avalanche of blood and
iron with a steady front of spears, from which it recoiled
broken and disordered.
Then the few Irish horse and battle-axemen got in
amongst the deadly English archers while these were
stringing their bows, and cut them to pieces, wheeling
then upon the mail-clad knights and men-at-arms as
these reeled back from the shock of the spears, and
completing the rout. Archer and mail-clad horseman
fled, intermingled in utter confusion, from that fatal
field, pursued by the swift-galloping light Irish horse,
68 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
the nimble-footed kerne and heavy-armed gallow-
glass. Fitzgerald, seeing the day lost, disdaining
flight, rushed into the thick of the fighting in search
of the Irish prince. The two met. Fitzgerald hewed
at Godfrey and dealt him a mortal wound. But,
retaining his seat upon his horse notwithstanding the
fact that at this date and for three centuries after
it, the same as long anterior to it, the Irish rode
without stirrups, the Tyrconnell chief felled the
Lord Deputy from his saddle, bleeding and dying
also, with a swinging stroke of his battle-axe.
The O'Donnells pursued the English to Sligo and
plundered and burned that town, night alone
intervening to save the survivors from utter exter
mination.
Lord Fitzgerald retired to a Franciscan monastery
at Youghal where he died in the habit of a monk.
His conqueror, also dying, was unable to follow up
the great triumph. Nevertheless he forthwith marched
to demolish " the only castle the English had dared to
raise on the soil of Tyrconnell." This was accom-
plished ; and now we have to record, to our sorrow and
the lasting disgrace of the O'Neill of that day, that
this chief thought it a favourable opportunity to fall
upon the O'Donnells, wearied and worn and disordered
as they were after their fierce fight, and destroy
them. The heroic Godfrey, feeling death strong upon
him, ordered his men to place him upon his bed or bier
and carry him in their midst to do battle with the
dastard O'Neill.
Fortune favoured the true and brave. The men
of Tyrconnell routed their ungenerous foes of
THE BRUGES IN IRELAND 69
Tyrowen, and the great Godfrey lived long enough
to learn of the fate of the day, then expired upon his
litter, to the inconsolable grief of his victorious
clansmen.
This O'Neill the following year caused himself to be
proclaimed High-King of Ireland, but his conduct
towards the heroic Godfrey O'Donnell is proof that
he was unworthy of the title or of support by his
fellow Irishmen. He may have repented of his folly
and meant well, but he had made a very bad beginning ;
and, as it happened, his military talents too were not
equal to the task. He was defeated and killed at
Downpatrick in 1260.
The next episode of Irish history of any note was
the gallant effort of the Bruces and the Scots to
free Ireland. In 1314, the great victory of Bannockburn
by King Robert Bruce of Scotland over a vastly
superior force of English under the incompetent
Edward II., put the idea into the mind of Donald
O'Neill, a truly noble specimen of his race, of seeking
the aid of the gallant, lion-hearted Scottish monarch
to achieve Irish independence.
Donald was the son of the last Ard-Righ or High-
King, Brian O'Neill, for in spite of all the incessant
turmoil, Ireland still had her High-Kings, and they
were, more or less, recognised by both Irish chiefs
and the English colonists. As heir or next in
succession to the Ard-Righ's throne, the generous
Donald offered to forego his right in favour of King
Robert's brother, Edward Bruce, and he furthermore
exerted himself to bring all the Irish clans to amity and
union, and called on all the clergy to help him in this.
70 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
He also addressed a letter to the Pope John XXII,
giving a detailed account of Irish grievances against
the English, stating that he had no hope of getting
justice from England and he had in consequence
invited Edward Bruce, brother of King Robert of
Scotland, to come and reign over them, and imploring
the Sovereign Pontiff's blessing and support. The
Pope thought to solve the difficulty by simply urging
upon the English King the necessity of treating the
Irish with more justice.
Let it be remembered that at that day it was
reckoned no crime for an Englishman to kill an
Irishman in any way, and quite a laudable thing for
the English to break treaties with the natives, to
commit the most flagrant cruelties, robberies and
outrages, without the latter having any hope of redress
save by retaliation.
Needless, perhaps to say, the Irish chiefs did not all
respond to O'Neill's patriotic appeal, though they
had not the excuse of alleging in the circumstances
that he had his own purposes to serve. As for the
bishops and priests, they " were so cowed that they
were afraid even to complain " against English tyranny.
According to Dr. D' Alton : " Monks of Irish birth
were excluded from those establishments which their
own countrymen had built and endowed."
The Bruces, however, responded, and in May, 1315,
Edward Bruce landed at Larne in Antrim with 6,000
men, " well armed in the English fashion." How
foolish, too, was it of the Irish to keep to their
thin saffron-cloth kilts instead of adopting the iron
panoply that made their Norman foes so invincible,
THE BRUGES IN IRELAND. 71
to say nothing of adopting the superior arms of the
latter ! A man on horseback could never hope to deal
so effective a blow with sword or axe without stirrups
as with. Rising in and supported by stirrups, far
greater vigour is given to a blow.
But no, the Irish would keep to old ideas and
lost their freedom through their obstinate conservatism.
A fleet of 300 ships brought over Bruce's army, and to
those that looked upon the noble sight which they
must have presented in Larne Harbour it must
have seemed that a brighter day had at last
dawned for Ireland that indeed it was the sunburst
of freedom, after all the darkness of the past two
centuries and a half. Alas, how soon were those
bright hopes to be dashed to the ground !
The truly patriotic Donald O'Neill and a dozen
other northern chiefs promptly joined the brave Scots,
In two divisions, one under the gallant Randolph,
Earl of Moray, and the other under Edward Bruce
himself, they advanced on Carrickfergus. James
Grant, a Scottish historian, in his " British Battles,"
says that on their march they utterly routed 20,000
Anglo-Irish troops, led by Mandeville, Logan, and
Bisset. Carrickfergus itself was taken but the castle was
able to hold out, as Bruce had no military engines for
its siege, and naturally was not going to delay his
march to construct such. He passed rapidly south-
wards, laying waste the English settlements and
defeating, according to Grant, " two chiefs in the
English interest with 4,000 men, in the strong pass
of Innermalam," and capturing a great herd of
cattle.
72 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Dundalk and Ardee now fell into his hands and were
burned. Richard De Burgh, the Red Earl of Ulster,
along with some of the factious Irish chiefs of
Connaught, joined forces to oppose him with the
Viceroy, Sir Edmund Butler However, Butler and
De Burgh parted, and the latter alone advanced to
meet Bruce. Acting under the wise Donald O'Neill's
advice, Bruce retreated and then resorted to a ruse,
for the Red Earl's force was vastly superior to his.
He quietly drew all his men out of his camp at
Ballymena, leaving the fires burning, the banners
flying and the tents standing, and making a circuit,
attacked the English in flank. " De Burgh's army was
swept off the field by the headlong and irresistible
onslaught of the Scots and Irish clansmen, his best
soldiers were killed, his bravest knights were among
the slain, his brother William was taken prisoner."
The victorious Scoto-Irish army marched on
steadily southward. All Ulster was now in their hands,
save only Carrickfergus Castle. At Kells, Sir Roger
Mortimer attempted to check them with 15,000 men.
They swept this force out of their path, and
Mortimer fled to Dublin and embarked for England.
Some of the Norman De I,acys now joined the
Patriots, the first of the Norman settlers to show
themselves " more Irish than the Irish themselves."
At Arscoll, Butler faced the Patriots with 30,000
men. But this great army was defeated by Bruce
also, chiefly through the discord in the English camp
among the Anglo-Irish leaders. The goddess of discord
had long opposed Ireland's efforts at independence ; she
was now temporarily befriending them
THE BRUGES IN IRELAND 73
Bruce was compelled, however, through lack of
provisions to retreat to Dundalk ; and there on the
ist of May, 1316, amid the acclamations of the Irish,
he was formally crowned King of Ireland under the
title of Edward I
Fickle Fortune seemed to turn against the brave
Bruce immediately after. He and his Irish allies suffered
several reverses, and a particularly severe one at Athenry,
where the Connaughtmen, the O'Connors, who had
declared for the patriot cause, lost 8,000 slain, being
mown down in swaths by the English bowmen before they
could use their battle-axes. The gallant young Phelim
O'Connor, Prince of Connaught, aged 23, was among the
slain. Carrickfergus Castle, however, reduced by starva-
tion, surrendered to Bruce ; and now the renowned
warrior, King Robert Bruce himself, came over to Ireland
to aid his brother, bringing reinforcements with him.
Unable to blockade Dublin for lack of ships, the two
royal brothers marched into Munster, where they met
no opposition nor any support, the factious and
unpatriotic O'Brien and other chiefs allying themselves
with their national foes. Roger Mortimer, returned to
Ireland as Viceroy, had brought back 15,000 men with
him, and the Geraldines, Butlers, and De L,a Poer had
mustered 30,000 at Kilkenny. A dreadful famine, too,
fell upon the land. With no provisions and unwilling to
ravage the territory of even their factious Irish foes,
there was nothing for the two brothers but retreat, which
they did through Cashel, Kildare and Trim, reaching
Dundalk safely. The English, though far outnumbering
them, feared to waylay them, thinned and weakened by
disease and famine, too, though they were
74 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Robert Bruce returned to Scotland, for his own king-
dom was again threatened ; but promised to send
reinforcements. In 1318, the dreadful famine being past,
and food once more plentiful, Sir John de Bermingham
took the field against Bruce, advancing northward with
20,000 men. Against the shrewd counsels of Donald
O'Neill and the other Irish chiefs, the brave but head-
strong King Edward dared to give battle with a force
little more than 2,000 strong.
The battle took place at Faughart, near Dundalk,
and almost at the first onset the heavy mail-clad English
cavalry bore down the Scottish front. An English knight,
Sir John Maupas, a burgher of Dundalk, knowing that
the fortune of the day depended on Bruce, rushed into
the Scottish ranks and slew him " with a blow of a
leaden plummet or slung-shot," from which type of
weapon it would seem that the deed was achieved by
stealing suddenly upon him and taking him unawares,
striking him down indeed by a coward blow, not in fair
hand-to-hand fight as is generally supposed.
Maupas paid the penalty anyway of his rashness,
being instantly cut to pieces by the enraged Scots.
KING ART MACMURROUGH. 75
CHAPTER VIII.
KING ART MACMURROUGH, THE DREAD OF
THE PALE.
The death of the gallant, but ill-fated, Bruce ended an
expedition, which, as Grant wrote, " had it been wisely
managed, might have changed for ever the future history
of the three kingdoms." Bruce's head was cut off and
sent to the English King, who created Bermingham,
with the main body of his clan to Tyrowen, and the
Earl of Louth. Donald O'Neill managed to retreat
remnant of Scots under John Thompson reached Carrick-
fergus, where they met King Robert of Scotland, who,
true to his promise, landed with reinforcements a day or
two after the fight. Depressed by his brother's death,
King Robert returned to Scotland, carrying back with
him the survivors of the ill-fated expedition.
Once more we have dreadful anarchy in the land,
Anglo-Irish and Irish alternately fighting one another
and among themselves, sowing the country with blood
and tears, reaping the whirlwind with a vengeance as
the fruits of their forefathers' mad behaviour, and still
following in those forefathers' footsteps and continuing
to sow the wind.
Edward III. of England, the warrior king, to do him
justice, in order to pacify the Irish and allow himself
76 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
more freedom and men to prosecute his wars in France,
certainly ordered that there should be one law for Irish
and English. But that law was made practically a dead
letter by the avaricious cunning officials of the English
" Pale." " The Pale," it may be explained, was the
name given to the territory within which English
authority and laws held sway, the word " pale " meaning
a boundary or limit. Compare paling, a fence. A
statute, indeed, was framed at Kilkenny, by which the
intermarriage of English and Irish was to be treated as
high treason, and any Englishman, using the Irish
language or dress, or in any way acting neighbourly to
the Irish, should forfeit all his property and be im-
prisoned. The outcome of this most diabolical measure
was that the Irish clans learned a little sense. If they
did not band together and wage a regular war, they at
least attacked the colonists separately on all sides. The
O'Neills became paramount once more in Ulster ;
O'Farrell, Prince of Annaly or L,eitrim, " in one trium-
phant foray, swept all trace of the foreigner out of
his territories," and the MacMurroughs of Leinster,
under their prince, carried their warfare up to the very
gates of Dublin, redeeming their name gloriously from the
stigma left upon it by their ancestor Dermot " the
Traitor."
The career of Art MacMurrough, to which we have
now come, is, indeed, one of the most romantic chapters
in all the romantic history of Ireland. Art was elected
King or Prince of his native province in 1375, when only
eighteen, and he married Elizabeth Veele, the heiress to
the barony of Norragh, an English lady of the Pale. She
thus violated the above-mentioned Statute of Kilkenny,
KING ART MACMURROUGH. 77
and the English thereupon confiscated her lands in
Kildare. The English Exchequer at the same time
stopped payment to King Art of his " black rent "
an annual sum of 80 marks, which may be better
remembered as " black mail," a tax paid to the Irish on
the borders of the Pale in order that this might be
protected by them.
The Pale at this time embraced Dublin, Louth, Meath,
Kildare, Carlo w, Wexford, and Waterford.
King Art promptly gathered an army and wasted
Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford, driving the
English colonists terror-stricken into Dublin. Richard
II., King of England, the son of the famous Black
Prince, was now on the English throne. He was so
much annoyed at the reports of the contumacy and
success of King Art that he determined to visit
Ireland in person and subdue the bold rebel himself.
Richard landed at Waterford in 1394, with a host
of no less than 30,000 archers and 4,000 men-at-arms,
and the flower of England's nobility in his train.
Instead of at once tamely submitting before such
tremendous odds, King Art anticipated him by
swooping swiftly down upon the strong, walled town
of New Ross, then an English settlement. With his
allies, the O' Byrnes and O'Tooles of Wicklow, King
Art stormed the place, " burned it with its houses
and castles ^and carried away gold, silver and
hostages."
The English garrison within its walls had con-
sisted of 1,200 with long bows, then the most
dreaded of English arms 1,200 pikemen, and 400
crossbowmen. When the King of England arrived
78 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
at the town, he found it a mass of smoking ruins,
without food to supply his army.
King Art wheeled about and hung like a gadfly
on the flanks of the mighty English host, cutting
off foraging parties, enticing pursuit, or seeming to
invite open battle, and then ambushing, entangling
the foe in morasses and wild mountain defiles and
forests, occasionally risking and daringly executing
flank and rear attacks on the march, and surprise
attacks in the night. The autumn storms, too, fought
for the heroic Art. The English were buffeted by
furious gales and rainstorms : while they could not
procure a single article of food for men or horse.
Art had swept the countryside bare. Completely
out-matched, King Richard at last invited King Art
to a personal interview in Dublin, which city the
English monarch reached with his great host sadly
thinned, bedraggled and crestfallen, humiliated as it
had never dreamed of being by the despised " Irish
enemie." Art agreed to a conference, and very
foolishly and trustingly repaired to Dublin, and there
met Richard. The King of England, after receiving
him with honour, and every attention, had him
arrested and thrown into prison on a charge of con-
spiracy, but thought better of his own treachery and
released him again.
Richard agreed to continue the " black rent " to
MacMurrough and restore his wife's property ; and,
after spending Christmas in sumptuous feasting in
Dublin, and entertaining right royally MacMurrough
and other Irish princes and chiefs, he returned to
England " with much honour and small profit "
KING ART MACMURROUGH. 79
As Viceroy he left behind him Roger Mortimer, Earl
of March, the next heir to his throne. Mortimer
was induced by the crafty officials of the Pale to
try and entrap King Art MacMurrough, to make
a prisoner of him by treachery.
King Art was invited to a Norman border castle ;
but, as he sat down to the feast, he caught the
eye of his bard, who accompanied him. The bard
had discovered the meditated treachery, and, striking
his harp, sang in Gaelic a warning to his master.
" The prince maintained a calm demeanour until,
seizing a favourable pretext for reaching the yard,
he sprang to horse, dashed through his foes and,
sword in hand, hewed his way to freedom."
Justly incensed at this second act of perfidy, Art
never trusted his Norman foes again. Once more he
roused his clansmen and allies to battle. He stormed
Carlow, a formidable fortress, and in the following
year (1398), gave pitched battle to the English
Viceroy or Deputy, Mortimer, at Kells in Kilkenny.
There were some fifteen thousand men on either side,
and the battle was a complete victory for the Irish,
the English being routed, and Mortimer, the I^ord
Deputy, slain. Other victories in different parts of
Ireland came thick and fast for the patriotic party,
and " English power seemed tottering to its fall."
King Richard, once more alarmed, came again to
Ireland, landing with a great host of 20,000 men at
Waterford, as before, in 1399 Art MacMurrough,
who only had 3,000 men, pursued his former guerilla
tactics, harassing the advancing English in every con-
ceivable way ; luring them into traps, and carrying off
80 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
all the food and fodder, so that they could find none to
keep body and soul together. An enfeebled and famine-
stricken multitude rather than an army, the English
host, after eleven days' toilsome and fruitless march,
reached the Wicklow coast, and were only saved from
perishing to a man from sheer starvation by being
met there by three ships laden with provisions.
Art, now deserted by some of his allies, who were
overawed by the martial array of Richard's force,
condescended to ask for a conference. " The news
brought much joy to the English camp." De
Spencer, the Earl of Gloucester, was appointed to
meet him ; but the conference came to nothing, Art
proudly declining to treat unless he was allowed lo
hold his territory without any homage to the English
King. A French knight, named Creton, who at-
tended Gloucester at the conference, has described
Art for us as "a fine large man, wondrously active.
To look at him he seemed very stern and savage and
a very able man. He had a horse without housing
or saddle. ... In coming down it galloped so hard
that, in my opinion, I never saw hare, deer, or
any other animal . . . run with such speed as it did.
In his right hand he bore a great long dart, which
he cast with much skill."
Richard swore that he would not leave Ireland until
he had Art in his power ; but though his army was
now swollen, with the Anglo-Irish lords, to 30,000
splendidly appointed troops, he could not break or
hunt down the Lion of Leinster ; and presently he
was obliged to break his rash oath and hurry back
to England on tidings of Henry of Lancaster's
Strongbow King Edward Bruce Silken Thomas
KING ART MACMURROUGH. 8 1
insurrection and desire to depose him. He was
deposed, as a matter of fact, and ended his days
miserably, a prisoner in Pontefract Castle.
The new King, Henry IV. of England, did not trouble
Ireland, and King Art relapsed into temporary
quiescence, having wrung from the English Pale all
his demands. John Drake, the Mayor of Dublin,
attacked the O' Byrnes of Wicklow and defeated
them, slaying 3,000 of their number. On account
of this service to the English crown " permission was
given to him and his successors in office to have a
gilt sword carried before them, as was borne before
the Mayor of London. A new Lord Deputy, Sir
Stephen Scrope, determined to reduce King Art and
marched against him in 1407. Art met him at Callan,
and for a time was prevailing when reinforcements
came up for the English, and the Irish were obliged
to give way, the brave O'Nolan falling in trying to
stem the tide of defeat.
Scrope, however, was unable to follow up his
advantage and King Art was in no way dispirited or
weakened by the reverse. He gathered another army
and over-ran the English possessions, capturing castles
and towns again in rapid succession, until, at the
head of a large army, he encamped under the walls
of Dublin itself. The English, under their Viceroy,
Thomas Duke of Lancaster, marched out to drive
away the insolent intruders upon their domains, and
Art gave them battle at Kilmainham. Either force
equalled some 10,000 men, and the fight was the
Battle of Kells over again. Art signally defeated the
Viceroy, who was carried back into Dublin severely
G
82 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
wounded, while his army was almost exterminated,
the river Liffey at that point being subsequently
called the "ford of slaughter," or Athcroe.
Why King Art did not now at once assault Dublin,
it is hard to say, save that he was not equipped with
siege engines. But in the demoralisation that must
have prevailed within the city after such a defeat, a
bold attack might have carried all before it. Still, as
D' Alton says, " the Irish soldiers of that day fought
well in the open, but had not learned to capture fortified
towns." Moreover, Dublin " was well fortified, perhaps
impossible to take from the land side, nor could the
inhabitants be starved out, for the sea was open to
them and the Irish had no vessels to blockade it."
King Art's closing years were peaceful for the most
part, and in 1417 he died, in the sixtieth year of
his age, after forty-two years' glorious reign over his
people. From the fact that his chief brehon or
judge, O'Doran, perished at the same time of similar
strange symptoms, after partaking of a drink given
them by a woman at the wayside, as they passed, it
is believed he was poisoned by his enemies.
No braver soldier, no nobler character than King
Art MacMurrough Kavanagh, illuminates the history
of our native land. He ranks with Owen Roe O'Neill
and Sarsfield, and in an age of detestable factionism
and petty jealousies, to his greater glory be it said,
" he never turned in anger on a brother Irishman."
The Four Masters speak of him in terms of lavish
praise, too, as the founder of churches and monasteries
by his bounties and contributions, and for his
hospitality and knowledge.
PART III.
THE GERAIvDINES.
Alas for my love my royal love
Of the golden long ago !
For gone are all her warrior bands,
And rusted are her battle brands,
And broken her sabre bright and keen,
And torn her robe of radiant green,
A slave where she was stainless queen,
My loyal love my royal love
Of the golden long ago.
'A Royal Love," by EDMUND LEAMY,|M.P.
SICKEN THOMAS. 85
CHAPTER IX.
SILKEN THOMAS.
The brief three years' success of the Bruces in
Ireland had so alarmed the English monarch for the
safety of his possessions there that he had, in order to
retain the allegiance of the most powerful of the
Anglo-Irish barons, created James Butler, Earl of
Ormond, and Maurice Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond,
and these two great chiefs were made Earls Palatine
over Tipperary and Kerry respectively. Within their
palatinates these two families of the Butlers and
Fitzgeralds, or Geraldines, as the latter came to be
called affectionately by the people, were practically
kings in their own right, " they could make peace
or war at will, create barons and knights, erect courts
for the trial of civil and criminal causes, appoint
sheriffs and judges ; the king's officers had no
authority." (Murphy).
The deposition of Richard II., and the seizure of the
English crown by the usurper Henry IV., surnamed of
Bolingbroke, where he was born, led to the fearful
Wars of the Roses, or Yorkists and Lancastrians,
which devastated England for many years. In this
fratricidal strife, the Butlers took the Lancastrian or
86 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Red Rose side, and the Geraldines, the Yorkist or
White Rose side, and the mass of the Irish people,
though little interested really in the struggle, took the
Yorkist side also ; in the first place, because they
considered that a descendant of Richard II. was
more entitled to the crown than the descendant of
the usurper ; and, in the second place, out of love for
the claimant himself, Richard Duke of York, who
was appointed L,ord Lieutenant or Viceroy in 1449,
and endeared himself to the hearts of all, native Irish
as well as Anglo-Irish, if not the crafty grasping
officials of the Pale, by his humanity and conciliatory,
kindly acts.
Unfortunately, perhaps, for both England and
Ireland, this great and truly noble man perished in
an early part of the war that his claim to the English
throne engendered. Had he lived and won the English
crown, how different things might have been in both
lands ! The Butlers and Geraldines flew to arms for
their respective roses, and they met in battle at
Pilltown in Kilkenny, where the Butlers were
defeated. The House of York temporarily triumphed,
too, in England, and the Geraldines were in the
ascendancy ; and Ireland enjoyed a certain amount
of peace and quietness, for York's son, now Edward
IV. as also Richard III. (Crookback) the youngest
son of that noble house, had warm corners in their
hearts for the land that had befriended their father and
their cause.
So amicable was now the understanding between
the natives and English that the Statute of Kilkenny
was a dead letter. English barons and nobles married
SILKEN THOMAS. 87
Irish wives and adopted the Irish dress, and, as Thomas
Davis wrote :
" Not often had their children been by Irish mothers
nursed,
When from their full and generous hearts an Irish
feeling burst."
Now, indeed, did the Geraldines become, as the
saying is, " more Irish than the Irish themselves."
Thomas, the Eighth Earl of Desmond, was made Lord
Deputy in 1463, and won the good opinions of all
except the Lancastrian wire pullers, who contrived to
ruin him. The ultimate triumph of the Lancastrians,
or Red Rose party, by the defeat and death of
Crookback Richard at the battle of Bosworth, led to
the decline of the power of the Geraldines and the
rise of that of their hereditary foes, the Butlers or
Ormonds.
The new Lancastrian King of England, however,
Henry VII., feared to at once displace the Geraldines,
and so continued Gerald Fitzgerald, Eighth Earl of
Kildare he belonged to another branch of the family,
distinct from the Desmonds as Deputy. This Gerald
was known as " the Great Earl." His brother was
Chancellor and his father-in-law Treasurer. At this
time, owing to the lapse of the Statute of Kilkenny
and the frequent intermarriage and better under-
standing existing between the native Irish and the
Anglo-Irish, the actual English Pale had dwindled
to little more than the county of Dublin and a portion
of Meath and Louth. The English colonists in all other
parts of the country were known as " the Degenerate
88 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
English," because they had suffered themselves to
become absorbed by, or subject to, the native tribes.
In fact, the Fitzgeralds and Butlers were now
practically Irish tribes. Had the Reformation not
come there can be no doubt that before much longer
the Irish and Anglo-Irish would have formed one
race, like the Normans and Saxons did, and possibly
have broken away from England completely.
Henry VII. was only waiting for the chance to
break the power of the Geraldines in Ireland, and the
Deputy now played into his hands by receiving and
crowning Lambert Simnel, a Yorkist claimant, as the
rightful king of England. An Irish army was sent to
England with the Pretender, led by Lords Thomas
and Maurice Fitzgerald. The king's army defeated
them at Stoke-on-Trent, and the Pretender was made
a scullion in the royal kitchen.
Still the politic and rather cowardly Henry
continued Kildare as Deputy, with the result that the
Earl of Desmond supported a second impostor, Perkin
Warbeck, but subsequently dropped him. Kildare held
aloof, but Henry was now determined to change the
order of things. He sent over Sir Edward Poynings
as Lord Deputy, deposing Kildare. Poynings assembled
a parliament at Drogheda and passed the famous
" Poynings' Law," which confirmed the infamous
Statute of Kilkenny, and reduced all parliaments in
Ireland to mere mouthpieces of England. They
could make no laws unless the English King and his
Privy Council had approved them. 9
Henry VII. was succeeded on the throne of England
by Henry VIII, the Bluebeard of history. His
SILKEN THOMAS. 89
father had reinstated the Geraldines in power, and
Garret Oge, the Ninth Earl of Kildare, was Lord
Deputy. His enemies, the Butlers, engineered matters
so well at Westminster that he was summoned
thither by the King to answer various charges, amongst
others a breach of the Statute of Kilkenny by
marrying his two daughters to the Irish chiefs of
Offaly and Ely and the wasting of the lands of the
Butlers.
Ere going, he appointed his eldest son, Lord Thomas,
as his Deputy. Lord Thomas was a young man of 21,
and was called from his love of rich attire, " Silken
Thomas." A rumour reached the ears of this young
man that his father had been beheaded. Inflamed with
anger, he at once proceeded to the Council Chamber,
accompanied by some of his grief-stricken kinsmen, his
guards and retainers. The council was sitting in St.
Mary's Abbey, Dublin. Lord Thomas was in his robes
of state, and before him marched the mace-bearer with
symbol of office, and the sword of state in a rich scabbard
of velvet, carried by its proper officer. It was the
nth of June, 1534.
" Way for the Lord Deputy ! " And into the midst
of the Council stalked Lord Thomas with a stern-set face,
compressed lips, and gloomy, flashing eyes.
" Keep your seats, my lords," he cried in Irish, as all
rose at his entrance. " I have come hither, not to
preside over this council, but to tell you of the dastard
deed that hath been done in London, my noble father's
murder, base and cruel murder. My lords, this sword of
state is yours, not mine. I received it with an oath
and have used it to your benefit. Now I have need of
9O THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
mine own sword which I dare to trust. This common
sword flatters me with a golden scabbard, but it hath in
it a pestilent edge. I return it to you, and you must save
yourselves from me and mine as open enemies hence-
forth. I am no longer Henry's Deputy ; I am his foe ;
and if all the hearts of England and Ireland that have
cause to would join in this quarrel, as I trust they will,
then shall he be a byword, as I trust he shall, for his
heresy, lust and tyranny, for which certainly the age to
come will pronounce him a prince of the most abomin-
able and hateful memory. I hereby cast off all duty
and allegiance to your master."
With that he flung the sword of state upon the council-
table, and likewise flung off his robes of office, tossing
them to his feet. His followers shouted the old war-cry
of the Kildare Geraldines, " Croom Aboo ! " " Croom,
a strong castle of the family, to victory " and also
" Righ Thomas go bragh ! " (" King Thomas for ever ! ")
The shouts were taken up by the whole of the
Geraldine train within and without the chamber and
abbey, to the horror of the Councillors, and Lord
Thomas's bard, Neale Roe O'Kennedy, struck up an
Irish battle chant, to the stirring strains of which
Silken Thomas and his followers strode from the place,
unheeding the entreaties of Archbishop Cromer of
Armagh, one of the Council, to forbear from thus
rushing heedlessly to his doom.
Young Lord Thomas, or " Silken Thomas," as we
prefer to call him, was quickly at the head of a combined
army of the Irish and Anglo-Irish. He forthwith
attacked Dublin, displaying a vigour and determination,
for all his headstrong, impetuous behaviour, that other
SILKEN THOMAS. 9 1
rebels had lacked. A plague was ravaging the city
and its resistance was feeble. He captured it, but the
castle held out against him. Archbishop Allen, one of
Henry's creatures, fled by ship, but the vessel ran ashore
at Clontarf. The Archbishop was captured by Kildare's
men, and brought before him at Artane.
" Remove the churl," he cried contemptuously,
when the Archbishop pleaded for his life and liberty,
and the words were taken to mean murder The Arch-
bishop was promptly slaughtered.
This foul deed was Silken Thomas's undoing, for it
estranged from him all the nobler spirits among the
Anglo-Irish lords and Irish chiefs. The Dublin
citizens, too, shut their gates upon him on his return
from harrying the lands of the hated Butlers or Ormond-
ists, and he was unable to force an entry again. He
applied to the Pope and the Emperor Charles V. for aid,
but the Pope excommunicated him for his alleged
complicity in the murder of Archbishop Allen, and this,
with the discovery that his father, Garret Oge, had
not been executed at all, caused many of his allies to
fall away.
The English garrison at Dublin was reinforced by
fresh troops under the new Deputy Sir William
Skeffington, who, however, was an old man and very
incapable. The rebellion dragged out until March, 1535,
the Butlers and the Pale keeping Silken Thomas and his
followers engaged alternately, by ravaging his lands
of Kildare.
Maynooth Castle was Lord Thomas's great stronghold,
and it was considered impregnable, so that he only
left within it a garrison of 100 men, of whom 60 were
Q2 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
gunners. Skeffington besieged it with heavy ordnance
never before seen in Ireland. On the third day of the
siege the north-west wall of the donjon, or keep, was
brought down, burying the cannon on that side under
its ruins. The besiegers, however, were not able, for all
their vastly superior numbers, to effect an entry into
the place until five more days had passed, when, in the
final assault, sixty of the garrison fell. The remaining
thirty-seven were then taken prisoners, and condemned
to death.
Lord Grey was now made Deputy in place of the
incompetent Skeffington ; and shortly after Lord
Thomas surrendered on condition that his life was spared.
He was sent to England and confined in the Tower of
London. The King was wroth at his life being spared,
and the Butlers also ; and, in 1537, the foolish
but heroic Silken Thomas was executed at Tyburn,
along with his five uncles who " had taken no part in
the rising," and three of whom had actually opposed
him.
SHANE THE PROUD. 93
CHAPTER X.
SHANE THE PROUD.
The sole survivor of the great and noble house of the
Geraldines was now a boy of twelve years of age, and
the English Government sought to lay hands on him
also, clearly with the design of extirpating the family.
But he had staunch friends who concealed him. First
he was hidden by O'Brien of Thomond, who passed him
on to his aunt in Cork, I,ady Eleanor MacCarthy. She
was on the point of being married to Manus O'Donnell,
Chief of Tyrconnell, and smuggled him to the North
with her.
Henry VIII. offered rewards for his capture, but
the Geraldines were now regarded on all sides as
Irish of the Irish, and not only did the Irish chiefs
shelter and befriend the hunted lad, they formed a league
the " First Geraldine league ' to protect him and
restore him to his father's estates. This league in-
cluded the O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Briens, the Desmonds,
O'Connor of Offaly, O'Carrolls, and the chiefs of
Moylurg and Breffny. To ensure his personal safety he
was assigned a bodyguard of 24 horse-men, who
accompanied him wheresoever he went ! After two
years he was put on a vessel bound for St. Malo,
disguised as a peasant, and, accompanied by his faithful
94 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
tutor, Father Leverus, made his way to Rome. There
his kinsman, Cardinal Pole, educated him as befitted his
rank, and in the reign of Queen Mary, Gerald Fitzgerald
returned from his exile, recovered his birthright, and
became Earl of Kildare.
Henry VIII. had thrown over allegiance to the See of
Rome and taken the title of " Supreme Head on earth
of the Church of England." He desired to have the
same authority in Ireland. An " Act of Supremacy,"
similar to the English one was rushed through a Parlia-
ment summoned in Dublin in 1536, but for the most
part the Act was a dead letter, Irish and Anglo-Irish
alike in the great mass remaining firm adherents of the
Roman Pontiff, and although bishops were supplanted
and monasteries destroyed by the King's troops, it
was not until Elizabeth's reign that anything like real
persecution set in.
Con O'Neill, the head of the clan, had been created
" Earl of Tyrone " by Henry VIII., but his son Shaun
or John, famous as " Shane the Proud," contemptuously
flung aside the Saxon honour of " Earl," and denied his
father's right to thus barter away or surrender the lands
of the tribe to the English Crown. He proudly received
at the hands of his clan the title of The O'Neill, thrust-
ing aside his elder but illegitimate brother Matthew,
who had been created " Baron of Dungannon " by the
English monarch, and made heir to the earldom.
Matthew, the King's O'Neill, sought the aid of the
English government to establish his claim. The Deputy
who was the Earl of Sussex, readily responded to the
request, and invaded Ulster. Shane defeated him
and his ally in no less than three battles.
SHANE THE PROUD. 95
The great stain on Shane's escutcheon is his inexcus-
able treatment of Calvagh O'Donnell. He carried off
this chief's wife, and, by many other lawless acts,
made enemies for himself in his own camp, among
those who had at first been his stoutest allies, such
as the Antrim Scots and the O'Reillys.
Sir Henry Sidney, Deputy for Sussex, entered into a
parley with Shane, and agreed, on condition of a
cessation of hostilities against the Pale, to lay the Irish
Chief's grievances before Queen Elizabeth herself. The
Queen first acceded to Shane's demands, but subsequently
changed her mind, and directed Sussex to put forth the
utmost efforts to crush him. Shane met the Viceroy's
troops near Armagh. The Irish chief had but 120
horse and a few Scots and gallowglasses with him,
"scarce half in numbers " that of the English army,
yet he boldly charged this, and " by the cowardice
of one wretch (Wingfield) was like, in one hour, to have
left not one man of that army alive, and after to have
taken me and the rest at Armagh," to quote Sussex's
own despatch.
Shane, after this victory, entered and ravaged the
Pale from end to end. My I^ord Sussex "bargained
with one of Shane's servants, Neal Grey, to assassinate
him, but the plot miscarried. The Viceroy openly avowed
to the Queen what he had tried to do, nor did he
receive any reprimand." (D'Alton.) By the Queen's
special command, the Earl of Kildare next went to the
recalcitrant Irishman, and induced him to go to
England to see Queen Elizabeth. The fearless Northern
Chief trusted to the honour of Kildare, and went, on
the understanding that no attack was to be made on
96 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
his territory in his absence, and his personal safety
going and coming was to be guaranteed.
On the 6th of January, 1562, therefore, he went to
London, and was received by Elizabeth with all honour.
According to John Mitchel, he took with him " a
gallant train of guards, bareheaded with curled hair
(as if the Statute of Kilkenny had never been passed)
hanging down their shoulders, armed with battle-axes
and arrayed in their saffron doublets an astonishment
to the worthy burghers of Condon and Westminster."
Shane comported himself at the English court with great
dignity and such a haughty bearing that a courtier
described him as " O'Neill the Great, cousin of St.
Patrick, friend to the Queen of England, enemy to all
the world besides." Elizabeth, probably attracted by
his handsome person, gave him assurances of her royal
support, and confirmed him in the title of The O'Neill.
He returned to Ireland, but found the English soldiers
occupying Armagh and a new Earl of Tyrone set up
against him. Shane thereupon threw over the conditions
the Queen had imposed upon him, and which necessity
alone had made him accept. He ravaged the lands of
those Irish chiefs who had submitted to English
authority, while still maintaining a pretended friendship
with the Viceroy.
That wily statesman, unable to cope with him in
the field, sent him a present of wine. The wine was
found to be poisoned, the Northern Chief and those
of his followers who drank some of it being taken
seriously ill. Shane now built a castle on the shore of
Lough Neagh, which he called Fuith na Gaill, or "Hatred
of the English," and he forbade anyone to speak English
Silken Thomas resigning his post as Deputy
SHANE THE PROUD. 97
in his presence. It is said he even hanged a man
whom he saw eating an English biscuit. He now turned
on the English wholeheartedly, attacked Dundalk,
captured Newry and Dundrum, and, entering Con-
naught, demanded tribute from the Earl of Clan-
ricarde. In his own territory the Brehon law " was
executed with vigour," and such was the security within
it that many quitted the Pale to live under his rule."
(D'Alton.)
In 1567, having invaded Tyrconnell, he was attacked
by the O'Donnells on the shores of Lough Swilly,
near Letterkenny. He was completely defeated,
numbers of his men perishing in the river Swilly in the
rout. Something like 3,000 of his clan fell in that
disastrous conflict, and Shane fled, temporarily bereft
of his reason with unavailing rage and despair. He
foolishly took refuge among the MacDonnells or Antrim
Scots, whom he had treated as harshly as the
O'Donnells. Received at first with every symptom
of cordiality, as he was sitting down to the banquet
he was set upon and simply " hacked to pieces," his
head being preserved and sent to the I/ord Deputy by
one Captain Piers, an Englishman, to obtain the
reward of 1,000 marks that had been offered for it.
In the words of John Savage :
" He was ' turbulent ' with traitors he was haughty with the
foe
He was ' cruel ' say ye, Saxons ? Ay ! he dealt ye blow
for blow !
He was ' rough ' and ' wild/ and who's not wild to see his
hearthstone razed ?
He was ' merciless as fire ' ay, ye kindled him he blazed !
H
98 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
He was ' proud ' ; yes, proud of birthright, and because he flung
away
Your Saxon stars of princedom, as the rock does mocking
spray.
He was wild, insane for vengeance ay, and preached it till
Tyrone
Was ruddy, ready, wild too, with ' Red Hands to clutch their
own.'
GRANT; A UAI^E. 99
CHAPTER XI.
GRANUA UAILE. GIVENMALURE. THE FAIJ, OF THE
GERAIW FORD. 121
Anaghclart Bridge across the River Lagan. The result
of their meeting was a truce, and Essex returned to
London to lay the matter before the Queen. She,
incensed at his not having crushed O'Neill, sent him
to the Tower. O'Neill made a royal progress through
Ireland, marching by way of Westmeath and Tipperary
to Cork, where, at Inniscara, he met the Munster Chief-
tains and remained some three weeks. It was a great
triumph ! Ireland was temporarily a free nation again,
practically.
Elizabeth now sent over a very different type of
man to all her former generals to fight O'Neill. This
was Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who found a
worthy assistant in Sir George Carew, the Governor or
President of Munster. Instead of meeting O'Neill
in the field, these two servants of the Queen despatched
forged letters to the lesser Irish chiefs, asserting that
as friends they wished to warn them that others were
betraying them. The forgeries were supposed to be
from the alleged traitors. In this way they set chief
against chief, sowed distrust of one another among the
Confederates, so that none knew but that his neighbour
was selling him.
Nial Garve O'Donnell, a relation of Red Hugh's, was
won over to the Queen's service either by this means
or by tempting offers of emoluments and rewards, and
so was Art O'Neill. Dermot O'Connor was induced to
betray his kinsman, the Earl of Desmond, into Carew's
hands. This Desmond was known as the " Sugane
Earl." The Waterford Geraldines, the Burkes, and the
White Knight, as the Chieftain of Mitchelstown was
called, also turned traitors to the cause. Desmond was
122 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
called the Sugane, or " Straw-rope," Earl in derision
by the factionist Irish and the English, as he had been
given the title of Earl by O'Neill and not the Queen.
In the north there were other traitors beside Nial
Garve O'Donnell and Art O'Neill. Sir Cahir O'Doherty
went over to the English with the MacDevitts, and
O'Connor Sligo turned his coat a second time. Red
Hugh O'Donnell had overlooked his former treachery,
but now, learning of his fresh perfidy, made a rapid
march, seized him and threw him into prison at Lough
Esk.
An English officer named Sir Henry Dowcra landed
in Derry, and from there sallied forth, destroying the
crops. Carew likewise destroyed the people's food in
Munster. But, deserted and betrayed on all sides,
the two Hughs set themselves back to back and still
dealt telling blows against English power. In this
stress, the two chiefs were cheered to learn that 3,000
Spaniards had landed at Kinsale and possessed them-
selves of the town and two adjacent castles. It was
September, 1601
KINSAI
to bring the two earls away. The great Hugh O'Neill
survived all his fellow-exiles, and passed away on the
20th July, 1616, nine years after his flight. He died
at Rome and the Sovereign Pontiff celebrated his
obsequies "on a scale of grandeur such as is only
accorded to royal princes and kings."
In his History of Ireland, the Rev. Dr. D'Alton writes :
" In him the Irish lost their greatest leader, the greatest
that had ever led them into battle or presided over their
councils. Both Red Hugh and Art MacMurrough were
daring chiefs, but the former wanted steadiness and
patience, while the latter confined his efforts to Leinster
alone. Unlike O'Donnell, O'Neill was cautious and
foreseeing, laying his plans with care and refusing to be
KINSAI,E. 129
led by impulse or passion. . . Had he been born a
century earlier, he would probably have driven the
English from Ireland. . . In his own day, against
the whole forces of England, he all but succeeded
and failed only because of the universal treachery which
surrounded him."
Henry IV. of France, the famous "Navarre," publicly
called Hugh O'Neill " the third soldier of the age."
Peace, too, to his ashes, lying guarded within the
Imperial City until the last trumpet ! Peace to him,
true brother, true husband, true friend, true foe, " true
to home and faith and freedom to the last ! "
The vile Nial Garve O'Donnell, O'Cahan, and other
traitors received the reward they deserved for their
treachery. Suspected by their English friends they
were thrown into gaol, where they languished till their
deaths Nial Garve for twenty years.
Who will say after that that there is no such thing
as poetic justice on this earth ?
PART V.
THE CONFEDERATE WAR.
A nation's right, a nation's right
God gave it, and gave, too,
A nation's sword, a nation's might,
Danger to guard it through.
'Tis freedom from a foreign yoke,
'Tis just and equal laws,
Which deal unto the humblest folk,
As in a noble cause.
On nations fixed in right and truth,
God will bestow eternal youth.
" Nationality," by THOMAS DAVIS.
HOW OWEX ROE O'NEIIJ, GAVE HIS SWORD. 133
CHAPTER XV.
How OWEN ROE O'NEIU, GAVE HIS SWORD TO HIS
SIRELAND ; AND HIS GREAT VICTORY AT BENBURB.
The great French historian, Thierry, in his work on
the Norman Conquest of England and Ireland, launches
out into glowing eulogies of the long-enduring struggle
of the Irish people to retain its freedom as compared
with the exceedingly slight one of the Anglo-Saxon
race.
And yet perseverance under difficulties and constant
reverses is supposed to be the great trait of the English
character, bull-dog resistance that never knows defeat,
whereas it is often asserted, as it it were a truism there
was no denying, that the Irish race are not persevering
enough. England was practically conquered by the
Normans in as many years as it took them centuries
to conquer the smaller sister isle.
Thierry compares the heroic struggle of our race for
independence against the Norman invader with the
nine hundred years' struggle of the Spaniards against
the Moors. He " calls the fidelity of Irishmen to a
cause ever lost, . . . the unconquerable tenacity of
the Irish, this immortal clinging to the hopes of one
day winning their independence, one of the noblest and
most touching things in all history."
134 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Yet there are mean, paltry natures that can see no
glory in a defeated cause, that can see nothing to
admire in fighting unto death rather than surrendering ;
whose only idea of glory and triumph is to shout with
the largest number, the conqueror, to trample on the
weak, to exult over the downfall of the brave and good
and true.
Yet the truth remains that in some causes, and that of
freedom is one of them, it is as glorious to fail as to
succeed. Success is not necessarily the measure of the
virtue of a cause.
" Freedom's battle, once begun, bequeathed from bleeding sire
to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won."
After " the Flight of the Earls," the entire six counties
of Ulster were declared forfeited to the English Crown,
and the new Scottish King of England, the false-hearted
James Stuart, false alike to the memory of his mother
as everything else, determined, as we have said, to
" plant " the North of Ireland with Scotch and English
settlers, all well affected in religion, and extirpate the
old Irish race.
Every inducement was held out to likely colonists
Rich broad acres of the fertile land were conferred as a
gift upon various Protestant bishops, guilds of London
tradesmen, and even on Trinity College. It was
London tradesmen who were given the City of Deny,
of which they therefore changed the name to London-
derry. Many privileges were also held out as a further
lure, as if any further lure were needed, to obtain colon-
ists. All that the planters were expected to do in
HOW OWEN ROE O'NEIU, GAVE HIS SWORD. 135
return for these benefits was to rob and murder their
Irish neighbours, " to hunt down the native population
as they would any other wild game," to show them and
their religion no consideration or mercy or tolerance
whatsoever.
Of course, Court favourites and " undertakers "
were found in thousands to take on so soft a job, and
so was effected what was called " The Plantation of
Ulster." By the Scotch and English settlers the
Irishman was robbed of everything worth possessing,
and was driven into the bogs and mountains, and then
called a robber or a wild " rapparee," because he dared
to object to such treatment and commit the awful crime
of trying to recover his own home and property The
Rapparees were desperate men, heroic patriots all,
fighting to the bitter end against a tyranny that was
simply diabolical in its perfection.
With the succession of Charles I., the down- trodden
and persecuted Irish hoped for a mitigation of the civil
and religious intolerance under which they lived. The
new monarch was a kindly man, unlike his father, who
was empty-headed, cowardly, and cruel. Moreover,
Charles had married a Catholic princess, Henrietta of
France. But the wily Viceroy, Straflord, neutralised
all the efforts of the Irish people to obtain the redress
the King promised them. For his services to the
English people in this respect, he was attainted and
executed by a decree of their Parliament in 1641, and
there could not have been many tears shed for him in
Ireland.
Sick of it all, the Irish people in this same year
determined to make another bold bid for independence.
136 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Roger or Rory O'Moore, a descendant of the despoiled
chiefs of Leix, entered into a conspiracy with Sir Phelim
O'Neill, chief of a lesser branch of his clan, Lord
Maguire of Enniskillen, Sir Con MacGennis, Colonel
MacMahon, and others, to revolt simultaneously,
seize Dublin Castle, where there were stored 12,000 stand
of arms, and other strong places, make prisoners of all the
gentry who were opposed to them, and expel the English
planters. The Scotch, as a kindred race, were not to be
molested. No blood was to be shed unless they were
met with armed resistance.
To any common-sense man, this seems a very reason-
able and just rising.
Everything might have gone well with the Patriots,
for there were only some 2,000 troops in the country,
and these quite unprepared ; but Colonel MacMahon
confided the plot to one Owen O' Connelly, who promptly
carried information of it to the Lords Justices Parsons
and Borlase. Maguire and MacMahon were arrested,
O'Moore and others managed to escape ; and the rising
took place on the appointed day, the 22nd of October,
1641. Sir Phelim O'Neill captured Dungannon and
Charlemont Castle ; the MacMahons captured Mon-
aghan ; the O'Farrells, Longford, or ancient Annaly ;
the Maguires, Fermanagh. All Ulster, with the ex-
ception of a few towns, within two days was in the hands
of the insurgents, Sir Con MacGennis taking Newry
with certain stores of arms and munitions of war.
The English planters fled in terror from their ill-
gotten homes and lands, and spread lying tales of
dreadful massacre and pillage and robbery by the
unlawful, but certainly rightful, new owners of the soil.
HOW OWEN ROE O'NEILL GAVE HIS SWORD. 137
Sir Phelim O'Neill was now elected as head of the
Patriot army, and the Catholic Bishops met at Kilkenny
on May loth, 1642, and bound all taking part in the
struggle to bear " true faith and allegiance to King
Charles and his successors," thus raising the " rising "
from a mere rebellion to a war in support of the English
monarch, at that time waging a fierce struggle for his
crown and head with his own rebellious Parliament.
All on the Patriot or Royalist side were called " The
Confederate Catholics of Ireland."
Meanwhile, as was evident from the Synod being held
at Kilkenny, all I^einster and Munster were now in
arms also, and the war was being prosecuted fiercely
on all sides. But the early successes of the Confederates
had not been followed up with energy, and the English
and Scotch were enabled to recover from the first blow,
and by weight of better sinews of war more money,
better arms, better generals, etc. were beginning to
triumph again. Sir Phelim O'Neill, with the best
intentions, was incompetent as a leader and wasted
three months besieging Drogheda, while the foe were
sweeping the country everywhere, winning back the
strongholds that had been captured at the outset.
The Anglo-Irish, bound by the ties of religion if not
of blood, had thrown in their lot with the old Irish,
but lyords Mountgarret, Muskerry, and Gormanstown,
Barry, and the other leaders were all anything but
capable commanders. As usual, the great Earl of
Ormond was on the English side and had 3,000 foot and
500 horse at his back ; and he had a worthy lieutenant
in the savage Inchiquin, an Irishman brought up to
hate his own countrymen and those allied to him by
138 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
blood. Of all the infamous characters of Irish history
commend us to this Lord Inchiquin, an O'Brien
" Murrough of the Burnings " as he was nicknamed
on account of his savage cruelty to men, women and
children.
Clanricarde, too, in Connaught fought on the side
of the enemies of his country ; but Lord Mayo allied
himself with the popular cause.
At this time there were a great many gallant Irishmen,
as at a later period, exiles on the Continent, in conse-
quence of the tyrannies of the previous reigns that had
driven them out of the country, righting in foreign
armies. Father Luke Wadding, a patriotic Catholic
priest, took it upon himself to go abroad and endeavour
to enlist all this splendid military material, these Irish
officers in foreign services, in the cause of their
struggling country, as also to collect money for the
carrying on of the war.
The most famous of all these foreign Irish veterans
was the renowned Owen Roe MacArt O'Neill, a nephew
of the great Hugh O'Neill, the victor of Clontibret and
Beal-an-atha-Buidhe. He had left Ireland at an early
age and was at this time a colonel in the army of the
King of Spain, having seen considerable service in
Flanders and achieved world-wide fame by the brilliant
defence of Arras, in 1640, against three French armies.
He corresponded with Rory O'Moore, the organiser
of the " Rising," and determined to take a part in the
struggle of his native land.
Gathering together what men he could, including
two hundred trained officers, he set sail with three ships
from Dunkirk. He took with him also a good supply
HOW OWEN ROE O'NEIU, GAVE HIS SWORD. 139
of arms and ammunition. On the voyage to Ireland he
captured two small English vessels. He landed at
Doe Castle in Donegal, July 6th, 1642, and was received
with open arms by his kinsman, Sir Phelim O'Neill,
who now readily and voluntarily relinquished to his
superior talents the rank of commander-in-chief of the
Confederate Army. Shortly after, other exiles under
Colonel Preston, brother of Lord Gormanstown, landed
in Wexford, and at last things looked hopeful for the
Patriot cause. But Ireland would have done better
without Preston !
Owen Roe at once set about training, equipping and
increasing the force put at his command, which num-
bered only 1,500 men, so great had been the defections
through repeated failure and disaster. The Scotch
General, Leslie, Earl of Leven, with 20,000 men, all
disciplined soldiers, feared to come to blows with him.
But levies were fast coming in to swell Owen Roe's
meagre little force. On October 24th the famous
" Confederation of Kilkenny " met, and it elected a
Supreme Council of six persons from each province,
of which Lord Mountgarret was made president. Owen
Roe was constituted general of the Ulster army and
Preston of that of Leinster, thus planting in the breast
of the last-mentioned jealousy of his brother-com-
mander. A " General Assembly " of the lords and
bishops and gentry was also convened, and passed
resolutions ordering 30,000 men to be raised, with a
sum of 30,000.
Owen Roe soon gave tangible evidence of his military
ability. He met a superior force of English under
General Monk and Lord Moore at Portlester, five miles
140 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
from Trim, in Meath, and routed it, I^ord Moore being
killed, with a great many of his troops, and Monk and
the rest made fly for their lives back to Dublin. The
Irish triumphed elsewhere, at Fermoy, where the English
general, Sir Charles Vavasor, was captured and several
hundreds of his men left dead on the field.
Disputes now arose, however, between the Irish
and Anglo-Irish. The latter were all for peace and
trusting that the King, who had no power in his own
country and was at war there with his rebellious Parlia-
ment, would grant their demands if they laid down their
arms. They were deluded in this by specious
promises held out to them by Ormond and the
Protestant Royalists. A " cessation " was eventually
agreed to, the Confederates promising the King 30,000
and help in Scotland. The help was sent under Sir
Alexander MacDonnell, surnamed " Colkitto," who
joined the brave Montrose and went through his cam-
paign.
In the following month, October 1645, John Baptist
Rinuccini, the Archbishop of Fermo, arrived in Ireland,
sent as Nuncio by the Pope. He brought arms and
ammunition and money for the Confederate cause,
and was received with the utmost enthusiasm. The
munitions of war that he brought included 2,000
muskets, 4,000 swords, 4,000 pistols, 2,000 pikeheads
and 20,000 Ibs. of powder, and were quite a Godsend to
the Patriots.
Inspired by this valuable aid, Owen Roe O'Neill
now took the field properly, threw aside the fetters of
ignoble truces and other hindrances that had hitherto
hampered his every attempt at decisive action, and
HOW OWEN ROE O'NEILL GAVE HIS SWORD. 14!
marched against the Scottish Parliamentary general
Munroe, who was wasting Ulster.
The two armies encountered one another at
BENBURB, on the banks of the Blackwater, some miles
north of Armagh, on the 5th of June, 1646. Munroe
had with him 6,000 foot and 800 horse ; Owen Roe's
army consisted of only 5,000 foot and 400 horse. Munroe's
brother, George, commanded another force at Coleraine
and was marching to his reinforcement.
Owen Roe detached the two regiments of MacMahon
and MacNiney to intercept George Munroe, which they
did, surprising him and cutting his force to pieces.
They then rejoined the main body in time to encourage
it with their success and take part in the still more
glorious victory of Benburb. Along the Blackwater
O'Neill had disposed his army between two hills, with
the rear protected by a wood. The Scotch came on in
full force and were first faced by Colonel Richard
O'Farrell, one of Owen Roe's most distinguished officers.
O'Farrell held a narrow defile through which the Scotch
had to force their way. He disputed its passage until
their artillery forced him to fall back.
The Scotch horse now charged but were checked by
the steady fire of O'Neill's infantry, and so excellently
had Owen Roe posted these that only one man was
struck by the foe's artillery. For four hours O'Neill
kept the enemy in play, wearing out his horse by ineffec-
tual charges, and gradually forcing him into a narrow
angle between the Blackwater and one of its tributaries.
The return of the Irish horse from the wiping out of
George Munroe's force increased the confusion in the
English and Scotch ranks.
142 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
O'Neill now ordered a charge along the whole line,
and "like an avalanche let loose, the Irish crashed upon
their foe." The Scottish horse attempted to break the
advancing line, but were charged in turn by the Irish
horse, who threw them back in disorder upon their
first line. Wofully shattered, this was hurled back in
succession upon the second line, and, sweeping all
before them, the Irish captured the foemen's guns,
when all became an utter rout.
" The Irish infantry charged up hill without firing
a shot," says Grant, " and closed in with sabre and pike.
. . . In vain did Munroe's cavalry charge this
determined infantry ; it threw back from its face
squadron after squadron, and kept constantly, rapidly
and evenly advancing. . . . though exposed to the
play of Munroe's guns and musketry." And again,
O'Neill's "foot moved on in steady columns, and his
horse in the spaces between the first and second
charges of his masses."
Thus it is evident that Owen Roe's army won by
no mere impetuous dash, but displayed superior tactics
and a higher discipline than Munroe's veterans.
The Scotch and English left 3,248 dead on the field.
Numbers more perished by drowning in trying to cross
the river, or fell among the bogs, pursued by the nimble-
footed Irish kernes. All their guns, tents, baggage,
and arms, with 32 colours, 1,500 draught horses and
provisions for two months, besides Lord Montgomery
and 21 officers, 150 men and stores of ammunition
were captured by the Irish, who on their side only had
70 men killed and 200 wounded !
General Munroe himself, leaving his hat, sword and
HOW OWEN ROE O'NEIIJ, GAVE HIS SWORD. 143
cloak behind, fled at top speed with the remnant of his
late proud force to Lisburn and thence to Carrickfergus.
It was a glorious victory ; and, some days later,
the 32 captured standards were borne in solemn pro-
cession by the chiefs of the Irish nobility at Limerick,
followed by the Papal Nuncio, the Archbishop of Cashel
and three bishops, to St. Mary's Cathedral where the
Te Deum was chanted and a Mass of thanksgiving
celebrated.
Owen Roe's countenance was exceedingly gentle and
gracious in expression. He wore a thick square brown
beard, and his eyes were large, bold and eloquent of
feeling ; his nose was a sharp, thin compromise between
the aquiline and the Roman a nose like Julius Caesar's.
The face, though, was not sufficiently stern or inflexible
for a leader of those troublous days. He suffered him-
self, out of modesty and nobility of character, to be too
much thrust aside by men of inferior military capacities
but ineffably superior self-conceit and more violent
temperament. The portrait of him that has come down
to us shows him wearing a flat cap like a Scotch bonnet,
with a jewelled clasp, and a shaggy fur cloak over a
steel corselet.
144 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER XVI.
CROMWELL IN IRELAND. His REPULSE AT CLONMEL.
But the pusillanimity of the Anglo-Irish, who still
wanted alliance with the Ormondist party and the
King, in great measure counteracted this splendid
triumph of the popular cause, and Ormond, " the great "
Duke or Karl as he has been called, actually surrendered
Dublin to the Parliamentarians, receiving 5,000 and a
pension of 2,000 per annum. After this unspeakable
treachery, however, to even his King, he fled the
country. Ormond sold his King rather than hand
over the capital to O'Neill and Preston who were
investing it.
And now Preston's jealousy of O'Neill aided in the
ruin of the cause also. His military talents were by
no means of a high order, yet he sought to eclipse
Benburb. With 7,000 foot and 1,000 horse he encoun-
tered an inferior force of English under General Jones,
the new Parliamentary Governor of Dublin, at Dungan
Hill, near Trim, abandoning an excellent position to
crush the latter. He was most ignominously defeated
and lost, it is said, over 5,000 men. It was a dreadful
disaster ; the Confederate army of Leinster was prac-
tically exterminated. Owen Roe came up with 12,000
men, and Jones retired within the walls of Dublin.
CROMWELL IN IRELAND. 145
The savage Inchiquin, too, reduced Munster, though
he shrank from attacking the famous Sir Alexander
McDonnell, known as " Colkitto " (the Left-handed)
at Clonmel. Colkitto and his brave Antrim Mac-
Donnells had, as we have said " formed the backbone
of the army which, under the gallant Montrose, did such
splendid service for King Charles." The heroic Col-
kitto was afterwards put to the sword in cold blood
by Inchiquin, with whom some of the Confederate
Council actually afterwards made a truce, completely
tying the hands of Owen Roe. Ormond returned to
the people he had betrayed, and, joined by Preston and
Inchiquin, invested Dublin. The garrison made a
sortie and " the great " Earl was completely routed
with a loss of nearly 7,000 men.
A new, and indeed a terrible, foe now landed in
Ireland. This was the future great Lord High Protector
of England, Oliver Cromwell. He landed at Ringsend,
near Dublin, on August I4th, 1649, with 9,000 foot and
4,000 horse, his equally dreaded " Ironsides." With his
force increased by the Dublin army to 17,000 men he
attacked Drogheda, held for the Confederates by a
gallant English Catholic officer, Sir Arthur Aston,
and 3,000 men. Speedily breaching the wall of the town
with his heavy ordnance, Cromwell flung a storming
party forward. It was twice repulsed, with the loss of
its colonel, but eventually forced a passage into the
town and this was won. The heroic Sir Arthur Aston,
however, and 250 others barricaded themselves in the
Milmount, a place of some strength in the south town,
and made such resistance that Cromwell offered them
quarter if they surrendered. Relying on the Lord
L
146 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Deputy's word, the garrison laid down its arms, and was
immediately butchered to a man. The slaughter did
not stop at that. For five days it went on, and non-
combatants, men, women and children were massacred
with the armed men. But our intention is to avoid
such barbarous horrors as the merciless, iron-hearted
Cromwell now inaugurated, and so we will not give
further details. His purpose was to create terror
and thus unnerve his foes, and his plan succeeded in a
measure.
He next turned his attention to Wexford. The
Wexford people would have none of Ormond's men,
and would only hear of having a garrison of 1,200
reliable Ulster men under Colonel Sinnott and Sir
Edmond Butler. Here Captain Stafford, the Royalist
commander of the castle, secretly corresponded with
Cromwell and admitted the Puritans into the castle,
turning his guns then upon the betrayed and amazed
town. The Irish were thus driven from the walls and
the English entered, and again, as at Drogheda, put
men, women and little children to the sword. In the
market-place, now known as the " Bull Ring," 300
women, kneeling for protection around the great cross,
were butchered by the inhuman " Ironsides " like sheep.
During the carnage, a priest stood on the steps of the
cross holding aloft a crucifix, calling on the women to
die bravely for Christ and his saints stood there, thus
exhorting and encouraging, until he was himself struck
down by an English soldier's steel.
If we execrate the traitor of Wexford, let us honour
that noble priest, also a Stafford Father Raymond
Stafford.
CROMWEUv IN IRELAND. 147
At Ross or New Ross, General Luke Taffe wrung
honourable terms from Cromwell, and General O'Farrell,
with only 500 Ulster men, forced him to raise the siege
of Waterford. Cromwell's army was now suffering from
fever and dysentery, and had Owen Roe O'Neill been
able to measure swords with him, it is not at all im-
probable that the future Lord High Protector would
have found his match we mean in the field of battle.
But just before Cromwell's arrival in Ireland, the
gallant Irish leader had been seized with a strange
malady, " attributed by some to slow poison."* He now
lay sick unto death at Cloughoughter in County Cavan,
even as he was on the point of marching south against
Cromwell. There he died on November 6th, 1649,
the last hope of the Irish Confederates. The great Earl
of Ormond promptly fled the country again, fearing to
meet Cromwell.
Wintering at Cork, Cromwell continued his campaign,
capturing Kilkenny and many other places. He laid
siege to Clonmel, defended by Hugh O'Neill, a nephew
of Owen Roe, and to whose soldierly abilities even
Carlyle gives praise. The vauntedly " invincible Iron-
sides " of Cromwell were hurled back under his eyes
with a loss of 2,500 of their number after four hours'
hard and incessant fighting. Never before had they
suffered such a carnal reverse ; and the entire Irish
garrison only numbered 1,500 men. Every man of it
had practically accounted for two of the inhuman
butchers of Wexford and Drogheda.
* The tradition, "absurdly erroneous," is that he danced in
poisoned slippers.
148 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
The grand defence of Clonmel was a fight Irishmen
have just cause to be proud of. Cromwell, finding the
sword useless, had tried treachery and made a secret
arrangement with Major Thomas Fennell, General
O'Neill's second-in-command, to betray the garrison.
" O'Neill suspected something ; Fennell was arrested,
and on promise of pardon revealed the whole plot ;
O'Neill strengthened the position the Northern gate "
and allowed the 500 Puritans to be admitted as
arranged. Then the gates were slammed to in the faces
of the others waiting to enter, and the 500, assailed on
all sides, were quickly killed.
Weakened thus in numbers, Cromwell obtained
reinforcements and breached the west wall. O'Neill
secretly formed a lane, 80 yards long, on the other side
of the breach, during the night; when the English poured
into this, thinking to carry all before them, they found
themselves in this lane, or " pound," hemmed in on
either hand by a bank of earth, timber and stones,
six or seven feet in height, with a footbank behind for
the Irish lining it to stand upon and hew and thrust
and shoot over it at their trapped foes. Two heavy guns
were set at the end of the lane to enfilade it, and in
houses along the lane picked musketeers were posted.
A deep ditch was dug in front of the guns, which were
mounted behind a parapet.
When the lane was completely filled with the storming
party the Irish suddenly popped up on both sides of
it and fell on with pike and sword, musket and scythe,
while the two guns, hitherto masked and unsuspected
by the foe, swept it with chainshot, ploughing two awful
tracks of dead and dying throughout its whole length.
CROMWEU, IN IRELAND. 149
Shut up in the narrow space and thus terribly
beset, the English could do nothing. It was a veritable
death-trap and they were mown down to the number of
2,000 dead.
A second attempt to storm that lane of death was
no more successful ; and, declaring the Irish invincible,
Cromwell turned the siege into a blockade, whereupon
O'Neill made a sortie upon an unsuspecting post of the
Puritans and cut it off to a man.
But the heroic defenders' provisions and ammunition
were exhausted. Secretly in the night General O'Neill
drew all his men out of the town and retired to Water-
ford, what time, acting on his instructions, the Mayor
went to Cromwell with an offer to surrender the place on
condition the lives, liberties and estates of all were
secured. Cromwell was willing to get the place on any
terms and agreed to those proposed. He was exceed-
ingly wroth when he found how he had been tricked,
but he abided by the conditions, well content to take the
town where he had encountered " the stoutest enemy
his army had ever met with in Ireland." In that
death-trap lane within the breach, he lost one of his
colonels, Cullin, who was shot dead, and another,
I/angley, had his left hand lopped off with a scythe.
Cromwell's campaign in Ireland was not therefore,
as is too often supposed, one of uninterrupted success.
The " Defence of Clonmel " was undoubtedly its most
glorious episode, and far more worthy of note than the
massacres of Wexford and Drogheda.
Cromwell now turned over the command to his son-
in-law, Ireton, and quitted Ireland, returning to England
on May zgth. It is just possible that he was afraid his
150 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
prestige would suffer if lie remained much longer in
the country.
Heber MacMahon, Bishop of Clogher, had taken
command of the Ulster army after Owen Roe's death.
He was defeated by Coote and Venables, taken prisoner
and hanged. General Preston, at Waterford, surren-
dered to Ireton, and this Puritan general now laid siege
to Limerick.
The heroic General Hugh O'Neill, the defender of
Clonmel, was military governor of Limerick, but he
had with him the same officer who had betrayed him
before, Major Fennell, now a Colonel. This man was
a born traitor. He betrayed the pass of the Shannon
to Ireton the ford at Killaloe, and it is probable
that he went to Limerick for the express purpose of
betrayal.
The town held out in spite of the heavy guns and
mortar-pieces that the English, closely investing the
place, played upon its walls, replying by a counter-
cannonade and sorties that did considerable execution.
Every attempt to carry the city by storm was beaten
back. Ireton offered honourable terms and the towns-
people heroically rejected them, though O'Neill, seeing
the hopelessness of the struggle, was for accepting them.
For four more months the siege dragged on, the Irish
hurling back the stormers from the walls every time
these advanced.
But a worse foe than the English arms entered the
city the plague and reduced its fighting strength to
2,500 men. Faction, too, set in, to further sap its
resources ; and now was the traitor Fennell's oppor-
tunity. He, with some other traitors and factionists,
CROMWELL IN IRELAND. 15!
seized St. John's Gate, threw it open, and, admitting
200 English troops, threatened to turn the guns of the
gate on the city if terms were not made.
Two days later the town surrendered, and, by the
Articles of Agreement or Treaty, all were allowed life
and property except 24 persons General Hugh
O'Neill, General Purcell, the Bishops of Limerick
and Emly, and others. All these were put to death,
except Bishop O'Dwyer of Limerick, who escaped
disguised as a soldier, and General O'Neill, " who was
spared because of the odium his execution would cause
in foreign countries." It is said that Bishop O'Brien
of Emly, when sentenced to death, turned to Ireton
and predicted that he would follow him beyond the
grave within a fortnight. Ireton died of the plague
in the city he had captured within the time named.
He had lost 8,000 men in reducing heroic Limerick.
The traitor Fennell received a just reward. He was
hanged by the English for two murders he was proved
to have committed. The heroic Hugh O'Neill, on the
other hand, the betrayed, was sent to the Tower of
London, " but the Spanish ambassador interfered on
his behalf, and he was allowed to go to Spain." There
" he was received with the honour due to a brave soldier
and patriot." He assumed the title of Earl of Tyrone,
and in 1660 petitioned Charles II. for restoration of
the honours and estates of his ancestors. But Charles
turned a deaf ear presumably.
Athlone, Galway, and the remaining strongholds of
the Confederates now surrendered one by one, and
once more Ireland was prostrate under the iron heel
of England. Of what followed, of the " Cromwellian
152 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Settlement of Ireland," it is not our province to say
much, as we have no desire to harrow our readers'
minds. Suffice it to say that the native population
were treated most cruelly. " To Hell or Connaught "
was the cry, and any Irish people found east of the
Shannon after May ist, 1654, were to be put to death.
But many refused to be thus driven into the barren
wilds of the West and carried on a fierce guerilla war-
fare under the name of " Rapparees " or " Tories," as
before. No less than 4,000 Irish soldiers quitted the
country of their birth and took service in the armies
of France, Spain and Poland. Religious persecution
now reached an unparalleled degree in Ireland, priests
being hunted down mercilessly for 10 per head.
PART VI.
FOR JAMES OR WILLIAM
Do you remember long ago,
Kathaleen,
When your lover whispered low
" Shall I stay or shall I go,
Kathaleen ? "
And you answered proudly, " Go,
Join King James and strike a blow
For the Green."
" After Aughrim," by ARTHUR GERAIJ> GEOGHEGAN.
THE DEFENCE OF DERRY. 155
CHAPTER XVII.
THE DEFENCE OF DERRY.
The reign of the Commonwealth or Puritan Govern-
ment in England was short-lived and practically
collapsed with the death of the dictator, Oliver
Cromwell. With their usual inconsistency, the English
people at once swung round to the other extreme,
and, throwing all the restraints and democratic
notions of Puritanism to the winds, welcomed back
the son of the King they had executed welcomed back
Charles II. with such obsequious expressions of loyalty
as to make that satirical monarch dryly remark that
"if he had only known how much the people loved
him he would have come before."
With the Restoration of royalty in England, the Irish
people hoped for better treatment, but the " great earl "
of Ormond, who had done so little good for the cause
of King Charles I., had the ear of the new King, and
took care to deceive him, and obtain a dukedom for
himself. Charles II., too, with all the goodwill in
the world, was afraid to show too much leniency to the
Irish and offend his new subjects, whose fickleness or
changeableness he fully appreciated.
His brother, who was a Catholic, succeeded him on
the English throne, and was called James II. This
156 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
monarch soon ran counter to the will of his people
by attempting to introduce toleration and religious
equality. He was a convert to the Catholic religion,,
and his eldest daughter, Mary, was a Protestant, and
had married William of Nassau, Prince of Orange
and Stadtholder of Holland, who was not only the
King's son-in-law therefore, but also his nephew. The
English people invited Prince William to come and
dispossess James of the throne, and, needless to say,,
the Dutch prince came quickly.
He landed at Torbay in the south of England on
November 5th, 1688, with 15,000 men, and James II.,
deserted by his army and fleet and all his Court
favourites, had to fly to France, whereby he was
declared to have abdicated. William entered London
in triumph.
James II. had appointed Richard Talbot, created
Earl of Tyrconnell, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Tyrconnell was a Catholic, and now he proceeded to
disband and disarm the Protestant militia and raise
a Catholic army. The Ulster Protestants naturally
resented this and took alarm, seizing on several of the
principal places, such as Deny, Enniskillen, Sligo,
Coleraine, and Culmore Fort. James II. 's only hope of
recovering the crown that his daughter and son-in-law
had deprived him of, was by retaining Ireland and
waging war from its shores. Well aided by the French
King, he landed, therefore, at Kinsale in March, 1689,
and was received, on account of his religion as much
as the fact that they considered him the rightful king
with open arms by the great mass of the Irish people.
Tyrconnell met him at Cork, and an army of 30,000
THE DEFENCE OF DERRY. 157
men, horse and foot, was speedily raised to fight for
him. But the Irish had been forbidden the use of
arms since Cromwell's time, so were wholly undis-
ciplined. The officers were for the most part country
gentlemen with no military knowledge either, and
the very blacksmiths did not know how to make
arms. The only soldiers at all in the army worthy of
the name were the Rapparees, or Tories, the hunted
outlaws who had lived, like Robin Hood and " his
merrie men " of English renown, in the hills and
glens, waging a savage guerilla warfare upon those
who had driven them from their lands and homes.
These Rapparees were so named from the half-pikes
adopted by them both as weapons and distinctive
tokens and called " rapparees." And these lacked the
steadiness of disciplined troops, being accustomed only
to guerilla or irregular warfare, that of the ambush and
sudden onfall, the fierce reprisal, to only fighting at
advantage and to seeking safety in flight when taken at
disadvantage.
Of this raw army, Tyrconnell, a most incompetent
man, was made commander, and a French general,
De Rosen, was second in command. A regiment under
Lord Antrim was sent by Tyrconnell to seize and
garrison Derry. I^undy, the governor, was a secret
partisan of James and was for surrendering the place,
but while negotiations were pending a great mob of the
*' 'Prentice Boys " rushed up and shut the gates in the
face of King James's commissioners and soldiers, raising
the shout of " No Surrender ! "
The cry was taken up by the townspeople, who
were all Protestants, and had been greatly swollen in
158 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
numbers by terrified refugees from other parts co-
religionists of course.
" No surrender ! We will hold the place for King
William of Orange ! "
It would certainly seem that at first the Williamite
garrison and volunteer combatants within the city
were numerically stronger than their besiegers, and
two regiments arrived from England to swell their
number. Nevertheless the place was not well equipped
for a siege, the fortifications were only " a simple wall
overgrown with grass and weeds ; there was not even
a ditch before the gates." Provisions, too, were
scarce, the guns poorly mounted, and there were not
many horses for cavalry.
Seeing the spirit of the townspeople, lyundy fled in
the disguise of a porter, leaving the city without a head.
" But there were not wanting men of energy and ability
to step into his place. The Rev. George Walker, the
Protestant Rector of Donaghmore, was made governor,
and two officers, Major Baker and Captain Murray,
assumed the military command. If they had little
else in the town they had plenty of ammunition,
480 barrels of gunpowder having been smuggled into
it. Stronger works, too, were now pushed forward
with.
James's troops summoned the place to surrender,
but they were fired on by way of answer, and so the very
much disappointed Catholic King sat down to besiege
the place. In all there were 7,500 trained officers
and soldiers in Derry, and the Volunteers, according to
" one who was in the city and ought to know," brought
the fighting strength up to 12,000. Moreover, they had
THE DEFENCE OF DERRY. 159
22 guns, " two of which were placed on the tower of the
cathedral."
The besieging forces did not exceed 10,000 men ;* and
they had but six guns !
King James left General Maumont to prosecute the
siege and departed for the more congenial atmosphere
of Dublin, where he could play at being a monarch still.
Maumont, on account of the poor ordnance he had,
determined to first attempt an escalade or assault by
storm, knowing well the dash and impetuosity of even an
undisciplined Irish army. But the onslaught was as
fiercely met. The 'prentice boys and other volunteers
flocked to the wall to the support of the Williamite
troops, who at first gave way and suffered the Jacobites
to capture the entrenchments at Windmill Hill. With
pike and musket, axe and adze and iron bars, the de-
fenders battled desperately with the wild Irish stormers.
The women, the wives of the colonists, were inspired
with the general enthusiasm, and, mingling with their
husbands behind the wall and trenches, handed these
ammunition or loaded their muskets for them. Some
women even rushed to the fray, like their sisters of
another faith did at Limerick later, and hurled stones
and broken bottles and household utensils at the
assailants. These were repulsed with a loss of 400 men
killed and wounded and Captain Butler son of L,ord
Mountgarret the leader of the assault, who was
captured with six other officers.
The siege now became a blockade. It was decided
'The Duke of Berwick said the besiegers were only 6,000, possibly
to start with. The highest estimate is only 20,000.
l6o THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
to reduce the place by starvation ; and in order to
prevent supplies coming up the River Foyle into the
place the besiegers built a " boom " or barricade across
the stream between Culmore Fort and the town
actually between Charles Fort and Grange Fort. Several
boats full of stones were first sunk at the point, then a
row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the river,
and great balks of timber were lashed together and
fastened to either shore by cables a foot thick.
For over three months the siege dragged out, all
attempts of the Irish to storm the walls being gallantly
repelled and the defenders occasionally sallying forth
and inflicting loss on their besiegers. But the brave
garrison was reduced to the last extremities of star-
vation : strong men within its ranks died of hunger.
Weeds and herbs were eaten, a mouse sold for sixpence,
a rat for a shilling, and tallow and hides were greedily
consumed, and this though there was at the mouth of
the river a fleet with abundant supplies from England.
At length, on the 28th of July, three frigates, the
Mountjoy, the Phoenix, and the Dartmouth, determined
to try and force the boom in the river and carry pro-
visions up to the beleaguered city. Returning the
heavy fire poured upon them from the forts on either
side of the river, the three vessels boldly stood up this
The first ship, the Mountjoy, charged the boom, and,
recoiling, ran aground. She was refloated by her
gallant crew and again put at the boom, which gave way
before the shock.
Passing through the breach, the vessels continued on
to the city and took the long-looked-for relief to the
starving garrison. Disheartened, the Jacobite general
Bursting the boom across the Foyle
THE DEFENCE OF DERRY. l6l
Hamilton General Maumont had been killed earlier
raised the siege, " the most memorable and desperate
recorded in the annals of the British Isles."
But, look at it how one may, if the garrison are to be
admired for their stubborn tenacity, patience and
" spirit of self-sacrifice which has been rarely equalled
in war" (D' Alton), must we not also admire a raw,
wholly undisciplined, half-armed army of 10,000
recruits the Duke of Berwick asserted the besiegers
did not exceed 6,000 who, with only six guns, could
shut up 12,000 well armed combatants, 7,500 of whom
were trained veterans, equipped with 22 guns, within
any place at all, and not only shut them up, but keep
them there when maddened by starvation.
Due honour to both sides, let us say.
The besiegers lost fully 8,000 men, according to
Grant, the besieged 3,000. Other, and perhaps more
reliable, authorities place the defenders' loss as high
as 6,000.
Another reverse that the Jacobites suffered about the
same time was near Enniskillen. The garrison of that
town intercepted a force under Lord Mountcashel
advancing to besiege them and utterly routed it at
Newtownbutler, with a loss of 2,000 slain and 400
prisoners. Mountcashel himself was wounded and
captured.
All Ulster had now declared for William except
Carrickfergus and Charlemont, which were the only
two fortified places' in the hands of the Jacobites, as
James's followers were called from Jacobus, the I,atin
for James. James had summoned a Parliament and
it met at Dublin on May 27th, and is known as " the
M
l62 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Patriot Parliament of 1689." The House of Peers
consisted of 54 members, only 14 of whom were Pro-
testants, but of these six were Protestant bishops.
No Catholic bishop, strange to say, was summoned.
In the Commons there were 224 members who also
consisted mostly of Catholics. Sir Richard Nagle, a
lawyer, who had written against the Act of Settlement,
was appointed Speaker. This " Patriot Parliament "
repealed all the penal laws and gave liberty of conscience
to all. It also granted bounties for ship-building and
for the establishment of schools of navigation, and
attainted of high treason over 2,000 persons who had
joined the Prince of Orange, declaring their estates
forfeit, and imposed a tax of 20,000 monthly for the
maintenance of the army.
King William of England struck quickly. He sent
Marshal Schomberg with a powerful army over to
Belfast, and Carrickfergus surrendered after a week's
siege, the garrison having exhausted their ammunition.
Schomberg, however, avoided a pitched battle with the
Irish and went into winter quarters at Dundalk. He
then blockaded Charlemont Castle, which was held for
James by Teague O'Regan with only 800 men. Schom-
berg had as many thousands with him and a fine siege
train. O'Regan was a hunchback and an elderly
man ; he held Charlemont for several months and was
reduced by hunger to the last extremity. Even then
he would only hear of surrendering on being allowed to
march out with all the honours of war. Schomberg
agreed, and forth O'Regan marched with arms and
baggage, and colours flying, his men weak and wasted
with starvation and half-healed wounds, accompanied
THE DEFENCE OF DERRY. 163
by " a large number of women and children, eagerly
gnawing pieces of dry hides with the hair on ; a small
portion of filthy meal and a few pounds of tainted
beef being the only provisions remaining in the fort."
King James conferred on the gallant O' Regan the
honour of knighthood and made him Governor of
Sligo.
And now came William of Orange himself to fight for
his newly gotten crown. On June I4th, 1690, he landed
at Carrickfergus with an army of 45,000 men, most of
whom were continental veterans, well armed, well
drilled, well officered. He had a train of 60 guns.
James at once advanced against him from Dublin with
an army of, at most, 23,000 men, Irish and French,
and with but 12 pieces of cannon. It was a piece of
bravery not to be expected of James.
164 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BOYNE WATER. SARSFIEI^D'S RIDE. THE WOMEN
OF LIMERICK.
The two armies faced each other on the banks of the
Boyne, where was fought a battle the result of which
could not have been in doubt for a moment. William's
army far outnumbered the Jacobites, was almost two
to their one, and was, moreover, better led and better
equipped in every way. The Williamites were veterans
to a man, while only a few thousands of James's army
were well trained French troops ; the rest were the raw
Irish levies, hastily drilled, and now, for the first time
seeing real battle, and that pitted against the finest
soldiers in the world. The odds were big, too, in the
case of artillery. As we have said, William had 60 large
guns, and James only 12.
Nevertheless, those raw Irish recruits fought with the
usual intrepidity of their race on that fateful ist of July,
1690.
As if to bear out the truth of the saying that " those
whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,"
James sent away six of his 12 guns to Dublin and
neglected to destroy the bridge of Slane, the key to his
position ! Only at the last moment, too, was the
ford at Rosnaree guarded, Sir Neil O'Neill being sent just
THE BOYNE WATER. 165
in time, though vainly, to defend it with 800 dragoons,
when he should have had cannon and means of throwing
up barricades. Charles I. of England, who was executed
by Cromwell and the Parliamentarians, was said " to
have been his own best general." James II. may well
be said to have been his own worst general, and but for
the gallant Patrick Sarsfield, who was created Earl of
l,ucan and was descended on his mother's side from the
O'Moores, Princes of I/eix, James was not blessed with
a brilliant throng of generals by any means.
For an entire hour, the Irish dragoons of Sir Neil
O'Neill disputed the passage of the ford, exposed to
the fire of a numerous artillery and charges of cavalry
greatly their superiors in number. They drove the
Dutch Guards and Schomberg's regiment back several
times into the river until at last Sir Neil fell from his
horse mortally wounded, when the Williamites forced
their way across. Outflanked, L,auzun, James's French
general, sent all his Frenchmen and the horse under
Sarsfield, with the six guns, to drive back that wing of
the foe.
The centre of the Jacobite position was now left
without a gun, and with only the raw Irish recruits to
hold it against the redoubtable King William himself.
Marshal Schomberg led his troops into the river at the
fords of Oldbridge. Bravely the Irish contested his
passage, although a few of the raw levies bolted, it is
said. If the whole lot had done so there would not have
been much to marvel at, seeing they were being heavily
cannonaded and had not a single gun to reply with ;
that they were all undisciplined, ill-officered troops
and were confronting veterans.
1 66 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
And yet the Williamites were hurled back with the
loss of two of their generals, Caillemote and Schomberg
himself, as well as the Rev Mr. Walker, the militant
parson who had defended Derry. King William himself
had been wounded earlier in the fight and had to hasten
to the scene to prevent disaster. His arrival put a
different complexion on affairs. The Irish foot were
borne back, overwhelmed by numbers, and at length
gave way on all sides. But the Irish horse " continued
to resist desperately." The French infantry, too,
covered the retreat well. William was struck by two
balls, one of which carried away his boot.
The Irish fell back on Duleek, turning at bay and
making a last stand at the Naul at nine o'clock. James
fled in terror from the scene taking Sarsfield, the only
officer capable of redeeming the day, with him to act
as his bodyguard. The tale is told that on arriving at
Dublin, the cowardly monarch said to L,ady Tyrconnell
that the Irish troops had shamefully run away.
" But your Majesty won the race," cuttingly replied
the lady.
The very next day he posted off to Kinsale, whence he
sailed for France, taking thither the news of his own
defeat.
At the Boyne the loss on both sides was about a
thousand killed and wounded, but the Williamites lost
Marshal Schomberg and Caillemote, two of their
general officers, and William himself was wounded,
The whole of the tent equipage, baggage, arms, etc.,
of the Irish were captured, however, with many
standards, horses, and prisoners. Their six field-pieces
do not appear to have been taken, the only artillery they
THE BOYNE WATER. 167
had, and the French and Swiss infantry retired in good
order, covered by the Irish horse, and marched into
Dublin in perfect discipline, " with their drums beating,
and colours flying, their white uniforms blackened by
dust and in many instances splashed with blood "
(Grant). So it could not have been such a hopeless
defeat, and with a commander worthy of the name
might well have been retrieved.
The Irish, however, under the incompetent Tyrconnell,
whose wife possibly might have made a better leader,
abandoned Dublin and concentrated at Limerick.
Happily now, Tyrconnell followed James to France
and the command devolved on General Sarsfield. He
had inherited the family estates at Lucan with an income
of 2,000 a year and had married the Lady Honor,
second daughter of the Earl of Clanricarde. He had
held a lieutenancy in the English Guards, and had
followed the deposed James II. to France and then to
Ireland.
Athlone Castle was held for the Jacobites by Colonel
Richard Grace, an old Confederate Catholic of 1641,
" now laden with years, but as bold of heart and brave
of spirit as when first he drew a sword for Ireland."
King William detached General Douglas with 12,000
men and a siege train of 12 cannon and 2 mortars to reduce
the place. When called on to surrender, the hero Grace
fired his pistol in the air, and said that was his answer.
Grace had demolished the English suburb of the
town and broken down the bridge. Douglas besieged
the place, bombarding it fiercely but ineffectively for
ten days ; then, hearing that Sarsfield was coming with
15,000 men, he again asked Grace to surrender. Grace's
l68 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
reply this time was to hang out a red flag, a sign of
" war to the death." With his ammunition nearly
exhausted and dreading an attack from Sarsfield, whose
name was already becoming one of terror to the William-
ites, Douglas withdrew, leaving old Governor Grace
victorious.
Sarsfield gathered together 20,000 foot and 3,500
horse in Limerick. The French General Lauzun, when
he saw the fortifications of the city, scoffingly said they
could be taken with roasted apples, and carried off the
whole of the French troops to Gal way, to support a
fatuous lunatic who believed himself to be the chosen
deliverer of the Irish race, one Balderg, or " Red
Mouth " O'Donnell. Chosen deliverer, indeed ! The
same O'Donnell did not hesitate later to betray his
countrymen.
One gallant French captain, however, named De
Boisseleau, to whom all honour be paid, stood by Sars-
field, and having had considerable experience in forti-
fication work, set himself to strengthen and improve
the defences of Limerick in every conceivable way.
King William arrived before the gates of the city in
person on August gih, 1690, and seized on the fords
north of it. On the very next day a Huguenot deserter
from his army got into the city and informed Sarsfield
that a convoy was on its way from Dublin with heavy
siege guns, pontoons and large stores of ammunition.
Sarsfield determined on a bold move.
He sought the aid and counsel of a daring and
noted Rapparee chief fighting under him, the famous
" Galloping O'Hogan," who knew every hole and corner
in the county. O'Hogan was as ready and eager as
THE BOYNE WATER. 1 69
himself for the daring attempt suggested ; and with
500 picked horsemen, the pair slipped out of Limerick
secretly under cover of the darkness on that same
Sunday midnight, August loth, by way of Thomond
Bridge, crossing thus into Clare.
Led unerringly by O'Hogan, they struck rapidly
north, making a detour to avoid William's outposts,
and crossed the Shannon again at Killaloe. Daybreak
saw the resolute little band snugly hiding in the recesses
or glens of Keeper Hill. There they remained all day,
Sarsfield sending out scouts to locate the convoy and
discover all that they might.
Only 100 strong, the convoy encamped for the night
at Ballyneety, 17 miles from Limerick, and by a very
curious coincidence chose the name of its deadly foe,
Sarsfield himself, as its password for the night a fact
one of Sarsfield's scouts informed him of. Steal-
thily, under the skilful guidance still of Galloping
O'Hogan, Sarsfield stole through the inky night upon the
camp. The outer sentry challenged :
" The password ? "
" Sarsfield," answered the owner of the name.
" Right ! Pass on," answered the sentry.
The troop passed him by without awakening suspi-
cion.
Again came the challenge from a second sentry.
" Sarsfield is the word, and Sarsfield is the man ! "
were the famous words the daring Irish general cried
in ringing tones, and at the signal the whole 500 horse-
men thundered down with flashing sabres and terrifying
war-shout upon the sleeping camp.
The startled Williamites sprang up, fuddled with
I/O THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
their slumbers, only to be cut down or made prisoners,
and in a few minutes all was over. The siege train was
captured. Sarsfield ordered the pontoons, which were
to be used for making bridges by which William's army
might cross the river, to be smashed to atoms, what
time all the guns were filled chokeful with powder,
and then turned muzzle downward and half buried in
the earth, the ammunition waggons being ringed close
around with everything else that the Irish troopers
could not conveniently carry off with them.
A train of gunpowder was then laid, and fired, as the
troops drew off to a safe distance. With a flash that
was seen in William's own camp and a report which
shook the surrounding hills and woke a thousand
deafening echoes among them, guns and waggons and
pontoons were all blown up together ceased to be.
Back Sarsfield and his gallant troop then rode as they
had come, still safely piloted by the faithful O'Hogan,
and they took back with them 100 saddle horses, the
horses of the entire convoy, with the 400 draught horses
of the train laden with what provisions and ammunition
had been possible in the haste necessary.
William had, as a matter of fact, been warned by a
partisan of his, who had seen Sarsfield cross the Shannon,
and had sent a force to intercept him. But O'Hogan
led the band across on the return at Banagher, and so
it regained the city walls in safety, to the enthusiastic
delight of all within these, townspeople and garrison
alike.
Furious at this set-back, William sent to Waterford
for another siege-train, and this time took good care that
it should reach him safely. With these guns he now
THE BOYNE WATER.
hammered a breach near St. John's Gate and hurled
forward 10,000 men to storm it. The deadly struggle
for supremacy that ensued has been recorded in song and
story and won undying fame for the heroic defenders.
The very women joined in repulsing the attack, as
we have mentioned already in describing the Siege of
Derry. They rushed into the thick of the fight along
with their brothers and fathers and husbands, the
heroic townsmen, and hurled stones and bottles and
bricks at the enemy.
" The women fought before the men ;
Each man became a match for ten ;
And back they drove the foemen then
From lyimerick on the azure river."
The blacksmith fought with his sledgehammer,
the butcher with his cleaver or caught up the
pike or musket of the fainting, bleeding Irish
soldier. The Williamites got into the streets, but
of those who did few got out again. The resistance
was heroic and fierce in the extreme. Back the Eng-
lish, Dutch, Danes, Prussians, French Huguenots, and
other heterogeneous constituents of William's army
were hurled with dreadful loss. The Brandenburgh
regiment, a Prussian one, had captured the Black
Battery when a mine set by Sarsfield was sprung under
their feet and blew up half their number.
For four hours on end that terrible fight was waged,
and over 2,000 of William's proud army were either
killed or wounded in it.
William had had enough of Limerick, and three days
later he raised the siege and marched away to Water-
172 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
ford, whence he sailed for England, leaving the prose-
cution of the war to others.
Sarsfield was not exactly a handsome man, and there
is something inexpressibly sad in his portrayed coun-
tenance as we know it. It is this sadness which, per-
haps, detracts from his good looks, and makes us deem
him not handsome, for the features are regular and
good, the eyes large and bold, the nose aquiline, the
mouth and chin firm. I,ike Owen Roe O'Neill, he
suffered from over-unobstrusiveness, unwillingness to
thrust himself forward, out of a mistaken sense of
modesty.
HOW THEY HELD THE BRIDGE AT ATHLONE. 173
CHAPTER XIX.
HOW THEY HELD THE BRIDGE AT ATHLONE AuGHRIM.
THE TREATY OF LIMERICK.
Churchill, who afterwards achieved such renown on
the continent as the Duke of Marlborough, the future
victor of Blenheim, Ramillies, etc., now took command
of the Williamite forces in Ireland. At the head of
16,000 men he forced Cork to surrender on honourable
terms, and likewise Kinsale. Tyrconnell now unfor-
tunately returned from France, and the brave Sarsfield
was superseded in the command of the Jacobites by
General St. Ruth, a very capable but very bumptious
commander. General Ginkle had succeeded Churchill
at the head of the Williamite forces. The two armies
met at Athlone, the English 18,000 strong, the Irish
20,000.
The Shannon divides the town of Athlone in two, and
the one in Leinster was called the English town, and that
on the Connaught side, the Irish town. By dint of
heavy cannonading, Ginkle drove the overweening St.
Ruth out of the English town and got possession of it.
The town, however, was left in ruins and flames, and
the Irish broke down the bridge connecting it with the
Irish town. Covered by their superior artillery, the
Williamites contrived to throw some beams over the
174 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
broken arches and partially span the gap. But very
little more planking and a passage across the river would
be available for their army to cross.
A sergeant of Maxwell's Irish dragoons, named
Costume, sprang from the ranks. " Are there ten men
here who will die with me for Ireland ? "
Ten ! A hundred and more offered. But Sergeant
Costume would only have ten men at a time.
" Encasing themselves in complete armour," and
armed with axes, the gallant eleven rushed from behind
their breastwork on to the newly laid beams and vigor-
ously hewed and hacked at these. The whole Leinster
bank of the river wreathed itself in smoke instantly
and the bridgehead was swept by a hurricane of
bullets from muskets and grapeshot from cannon.
Riddled like sieves the heroic Costume and his ten
equally gallant companions fell to rise no more. Some
of the beams had gone, but the eleven had perished to
a man.
Again a hero sprang from the ranks and called on ten
others to follow him. Again eleven men clad in armour
bounded on to that death-swept bridge and daring the
tornado of lead and iron pelting around, hewed at the
timbers. Nine fell but the other two completed the
work of destruction sent the last beam tumbling
into the river, and then regained the shelter of the
entrenchments, amid the admiring and triumphant
huzzas of their comrades.
It was a feat worthy to be recorded with that of
far-famed Thermopylae, where Leonidas the Greek
and his 300 fell holding the pass against a whole host of
Persians ; it stands parallel with that exploit immor-
HOW THEY HELD THE BRIDGE AT ATHUWE. 175
talised by the English writer Macaulay, " How Horatius
kept the bridge in the brave days of old."
Let me second A. M. Sullivan's lament that no
memorial has ever been erected to the memory of the
heroic Costume and his companions.
But their valiant self-sacrifice was unavailing after all.
Ginkle, who appears to have been a greater commander
than King William himself, threw a body of troops across
the river below the bridge and took the Irish town
also, chiefly through St. Ruth's culpable carelessness
and over-confidence. He was jealous of Sarsfield
and shared no counsel with him, though the latter was
his second-in-command. The Irish lost 1,000 men at
Athlone and fell back on Aughrim, near Ballinasloe.
Ginkle's force had now swollen to 26,000 men and he
was better equipped than ever with artillery. He found
the Irish posted on a strong situation with a bog on
either hand and the centre on a hill, called Kilcommodon.
It was the I2th of July, 1691. There were two cause-
ways across the morass in front, and Ginkle attempted
to carry these by an assault in force. He was driven back
with heavy loss. But again the jealous and vain St.
Ruth had not taken Sarsfield into his plans, and had
relegated that brave and capable officer to the sub-
ordinate position of commander of the cavalry reserve,
posting him in the rear behind the hill " with strict
orders to remain there. . . . On that eventful day
the greatest soldier of the Irish race was thus con-
demned to inglorious inactivity." (D' Alton.)
Defeated and terribly cut up, the English were in
full retreat and St. Ruth was about to give the order
for a general advance, when a cannon ball " took his
176 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
head away clean by the neck." A panic immediately set
in, and the first intimation Sarsfield had of his leader's
death was seeing, with consternation and amazement,
the whole army breaking up like a house of cards and
flying back down the hill towards him. All he could do
was to cover the retreat, and this he did to the best of
his power. Nevertheless, over 5,000 Irish fell in that
awful rout, while the English and their allies lost
about 2,000.
Galway surrendered on honourable terms to the
victors ; and Ginkle marched on and invested Limerick,
the last city left to the Jacobites and into which the
still unbeaten Sarsfield had thrown himself with the
remnant of his forces.
On the 25th August, the siege opened with a terrific
bombardment, and a breach was effected in the wall
of the English town. Ginkle, however, remembering
King William's awful repulse, feared to attempt to
enter it. Sarsfield endeavoured to get 4,000 horses
into the city but was unable to do so, and a sortie was
repulsed with heavy loss. A traitor in the garrison,
one Henry Luttrell, betrayed the passage over the
Shannon, and, throwing a pontoon bridge across in the
night at the point, Ginkle took up a position on the
Clare side of the river, completely surrounding the
city.
Sarsfield intercepted a letter from Luttrell to Ginkle
and arrested the traitor, though they were intimate
friends. Ginkle now offered conditions, and, Sarsfield
approving these, a truce was made, and on the 3rd
of October, the city surrendered on honourable terms.
The famous treaty of Limerick was signed by Sarsfield
HOW THEY HEI.
What happened ? The Irish remained staunch to
their religion through all " this inhuman tyranny
the blackest known to history." In lonely caves and
remote glens the people met in secret to worship God
according to their persecuted religion, and often priest
and people were attacked by the soldiery there, when
the priest was butchered on the altar with many of
his faithful and devoted flock.
A cruel blow, too, was dealt at Irish trade At the
instance of the English traders, in 1699, the English
Parliament destroyed the Irish woollen industry,
prohibiting altogether the export of wool from Ireland,
throwing 40,000 people out of employment and reducing
them to absolute ruin.
The consequence of all this brutal persecution and
injustice was that the country was overrun more than
ever by bands of rapparees or tories. Bands of armed
men went abroad at night, houghing cattle, mutilating
sheep, and terrorising or murdering English settlers in
lonely farms.
But let us leave this picture of savage injustice and
equally savage reprisal, of cruel persecution, and a
noble, suffering, patient people, and betake ourselves
to the shores of France in the wake of the Irish
" swordsmen "
PART VII.
THE IRISH BRIGADE.
Oh, Erin ! In thine hour of need,
Thy warriors wandered o'er the earth
For others' liberties they bled,
Nor guarded the land that gave them birth ;
In foreign field it was their doom
To seek their fame ; to find their tomb
" Oh, Erin ! " by JOHN
Now England, now thy bull-dog courage show
That courage ever claimed for thee alone ;
This is no weak assault, no wavering foe
The Irish wolf-dog at thy throat has flown ;
Though many a time his fangs have shed thy blood
When starved, and scourged, and kept upon the chain
On equal terms he ne'er till now has stood
Before thee thus upon the battle plain."
" The Battle of Fontenoy," by W. J. CORBET, M.P.
SARSFIELD'S DEATH 183
CHAPTER XX.
SARSFIELD'S DEATH. How THE " WILD GEESE " SAVED
CREMONA.
The 19,000 Irish soldiers who had sailed for France
" were joined by many others, who in the years and
wars that were to follow have made the very name
of the Irish Brigade of France synonymous with all
that is glorious and gallant."
In 1692 there were no less than 30,000 Irish soldiers
in France, and they were promptly organised into what
was known as the Irish Brigade. It consisted of two
troops of horse guards, two regiments of foot guards,
two regiments of dismounted dragoons, eight regiments
of foot, and three independent companies. Sarsfield
commanded the second troop of horse guards and the
Duke of Berwick the first.
Almost immediately the Brigade were in action
against their old Williamite foes, and their first battle
was a victory over these, the battle of Steinkirk, where
William III. of England was utterly defeated by the
French under Marshal Luxembourg, who publicly
thanked Sarsfield and his Irish cavalry for his share
in the dashing charge that bore all before it.
But alas ! on July 29th, 1693, was fought the battle
of I^anden, where again, although the English were
184 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
beaten, after a most stubborn fight, the gallant Sarsfield
was struck down by a musket ball at the head of his
men, in the hour of victory. He fell from his horse
mortally wounded, but lingered some days, when he
died.
As he lay on the battle-field with the shouts of his
victorious comrades ringing in his ears, the shouts that
once again told him the English were falling back,
beaten and discomfited, he put his hand to his breast
as if to staunch the wound, and, drawing it away
covered with blood, looked at it sorrowfully and said :
" Oh ! That this were for Ireland ! "
" History," says Thomas Davis, " records no nobler
saying."
A fine and inspiring statue of Patrick Sarsfield,
than which there is no nobler name on Ireland's long
roll of heroic spirits, stands in that city which he twice
so gallantly defended against his country's foes, and the
name of which must ever be associated with his own.
When one thinks of Sarsfield one thinks of Limerick,
and vice versa. The statue represents him in the uniform
of the period in heroic pose with sword and arm extended,
the light of battle in his eyes and face, leading on his
men to victory. It stands close by the Black Battery
where the Prussian Brandenburghers were almost
annihilated by the exploding mine.
After Sarsfield's death, the most famous officer of the
Irish Brigade was Donal O'Brien, Lord Clare. Thomas
Davis has justly celebrated " Clare's Dragoons." But
this splendid body of horse had no share in the next
most brilliant feat of the Brigade. We refer to " the
world-famous repulse of the attack on Cremona " Of
SARSFIELD'S DEATH. 185
that unparalleled feat, James Grant gives a full and
exhaustive account in his " British Battles on Land and
Sea," and thus begins the chapter : " Though they were
not serving under the British flag, the defence of Cre-
mona by the Irish was one of the most brilliant deeds
performed at the opening of the eighteenth century."
This was the work of the " Old Brigade," Mount-
cashel's, who had all along been engaged in the Italian
campaign and had not fought William at the Boyne or
Limerick.
Marshal Villeroy lay in comfortable, too comfortable
quarters, with his army, in the well fortified city of
Cremona, on the banks of the Po River. There were
4,000 troops in the place, of whom only 600 were Irish
under Colonels Dillon and Burke. Prince Eugene and
the Austrians were far away, and the city believed itself
safe from attack. But one Cassoli, an Italian priest,
having no love for the French, entered into corres-
pondence with Prince Eugene of Savoy, and offered to
deliver the place into Austrian hands. Father Cassoli
lived near the gate of St. Margaret which, being disused,
had been bricked up. An old Roman sewer, broad and
lofty, passed under the city walls, too, just there, and
came up under Father Cassoli's house.
On the night of February 2nd, 1702, Cassoli secretly
admitted a party of Austrian soldiers, disguised as
artisans, through this sewer into his house. They
promptly broke down the green masonry of the adjoining
gate, and, like a living flood, in poured Prince Eugene's
army, horse and foot, which had crept up to the walls
without, undetected by the French who were keeping
most indifferent guard.
186 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
The night was bitterly cold and sleeting and snowing.
Dispersing quickly through the various avenues, the
Austrians proceeded to possess themselves of every
post of vantage and surprise the sleeping French.
At the Po gate, close by, was a guard of 35 Irishmen,
the only guard apparently keeping anything like proper
watch in the whole city, for their officer, Major Daniel
O'Mahony was a great martinet or disciplinarian.
The 35 promptly fired on the on-coming Imperialists,
and then took refuge behind a stockade where they were
invulnerable, and against which their assailants in vain
raged. Half the 35 thrust their bayonets between the
palisades, while their comrades reloaded. They poured
in volley after volley, hurling back Count de Merci
and his Austrian grenadiers, as well as an attack from
250 dragoons.
The firing aroused the French everywhere. But as
they turned out many of them were shot down and cut
to pieces by the Austrians, now swarming horse and
foot through every street. Marshal Villeroy, rushing
out of his hotel, was captured by an Irish officer in the
Austrian service, a Captain McDonnell, a Mayo man.
Frantically the Marshal offered McDonnell 10,000
pistoles, a pension of 2,000 crowns annually and the
command of a French cavalry regiment if he would
release him.
But Captain McDonnell, though he had nothing to
live on but his pay as a captain, proudly replied to these
tempting offers :
" Monsieur, I prefer honour to fortune, and shall
maintain my honour untarnished by any such treachery
as you desire to seduce me into. You are my prisoner,
SARSFIELD'S DEATH. 187
Monsieur, and as such it is my duty to deliver you up
to those I serve, and I will certainly perform that duty."
The check at the Po gate enabled the rest of the Irish,
the two battalions of Dillon and Burke to turn out and
come to the relief of their guard. Major O'Mahony
made them turn out only half dressed, in spite of the
cold and sleet. In shirts and trousers, with their
muskets and bayonets, the Irishmen charged Count de
Merci and drove him back, then turned two guns on the
Imperialists and cleared the street.
Prince de Vaudemont, one of Eugene's lieutenants,
was outside the Po gate with 2,000 cavalry and 3,000
infantry, but through De Merci's set-back he could not
get into the city, and the Irish at the gate now broke
down the bridge outside and effectually barred his
hopes of entering. Some of the French under the Count
Revel rallied and managed to recover a post in another
part of the city, from which they began to slowly drive
back the Austrians.
In desperation, Prince Eugene hurled cavalry and
foot in succession against the Irish 600 at the Po gate.
But these held all the approaches thither and success-
fully flung back every attempt to reach it. Vaudemont
was helpless with his 5,000 on the other side. Eugene
sent McDonnell to try and induce his fellow-Irishmen
to surrender on promise of a large sum of money and
service under himself at higher pay.
O'Mahony, enraged at such an infamous proposal,
arrested McDonnell, saying he had no right to attempt
to thus suborn loyal men. Eugene then tried to induce
Villeroy, his prisoner, to send a message to the Irish to
lay down their arms.
1 88 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
" I am no longer their general, and may not," smilingly
answered Villeroy.
Count Revel managed to communicate with O'Mahony,
and directed the Irish to try and cut their way through
the foe to his assistance. Although the houses lining
the streets were filled with Austrian marksmen, the
Irish almost forced their way through, and at last,
after eight hours' incessant fighting, finding it impossible
to hold the city, Prince Eugene withdrew his troops
out of the gate by which he had entered He carried
off Marshal Villeroy and about 500 French officers
and men whom he had taken prisoners, but he left
more than 2,000 of his own troops dead in the
streets.
The Irish had saved Cremona, but at heavy loss to
themselves. Of their brave 600, they lost 239 dead or
prisoners. Burke's regiment lost 16 officers and 92
soldiers, while Dillon's regiment, led by the gallant
O'Mahony, lost 13 officers and 118 rank and file
Count de Revel fell on O'Mahony's neck and kissed
him there in the corpse-strewn public square where they
met ; then sent him to bear the news of his glorious
exploit to Louis XIV. The Grand Monarque received
O'Mahony with high honour and created him a colonel
and a count of France, with a pension, and sent special
thanks to the two Irish regiments through him, raising
their pay forthwith.
Count O'Mahony subsequently rose to the rank of
Major-General, and achieved further distinction at
Almanza and other places.
At Blenheim, although the English under Marlborough
defeated the French, the Irish covered themselves with
SARSFIELD'S DEATH. 189
glory by cutting a German regiment to pieces, and
Clare's Dragoons sustained the retreat. The gallant
Lord Clare, however, was killed, receiving nine wounds
in the still more disastrous defeat of RamiUies.
1 90 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
CHAPTER XXI.
LACY AND WOGAN. THE CROWNING VICTORY OF
FONTENOY. COUNT LAU,Y.
But not all the " Wild Geese," as these Irish exiles
were affectionately called in Ireland, fought for France,
as we have shown in the case of Captain MacDonnell,
who was in the Austrian service. Field-Marshal Count
Peter Lacy, for instance, also won lasting fame in
Russia. He had taken part in the siege of Limerick
and accompanied Sarsfield to France. He then joined
the service of Peter the Great and fought against the
Swedes, being brigadier-general at the famous battle
of Pultowa, where Charles XII. of Sweden was crushed.
Later, he was made General-in-Chief of Russian infantry,
and next we find him fighting against the Poles and
placing a new king on the throne of that country.
In 1737, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the
Russian army and conducted campaigns against the
Khan of the Crimea and the Swedes respectively,
eventually dying peacefully in his bed at the age of 73,
on his estates in Livonia.
In the Spanish service, O'Donnells, O'Neills, O'Reillys,
and Blakes and O'Farrells rose to eminence, and there
were no less than five Irish regiments at one time.
Another of the famous Irish exiles at this period
LACY AND WOGAN
was Chevalier Charles Wogan, who took part in the
Elder Pretender's or " First Jacobite " Rising of 1715
in England. He was captured at Preston, but escaped
with half a dozen others from Newgate Gaol in the heart
of London, by a bold dash overpowering the guards
and throwing open the gates. In 1718, the Pretender,
or James III., was to marry Princess Maria Clementina
Sobieski, grand-daughter of the famous Polish patriot
king, John Sobieski, a most lovely woman, as her
portraits testify. She eventually married James and
became the mother of " Bonnie Prince Charlie," the
" Young Pretender."
But it was England's interest to prevent the proposed
match, and the Princess Clementina was arrested with her
mother by the Austrian Emperor at the instance of
England and imprisoned at Innspruck. Wogan deter-
mined to effect her release, and with three brother Irish
officers, Major Gaydon, Captain O'Toole and Captain
John Misset, with the wife and maid of the last-men-
tioned, set out disguised for Innspruck, using forged
passports.
Arrived at Innspruck, Wogan contrived to pass a
letter in to the princess, and the escape was arranged
for April 27th, 1719. On that night Mrs. Misset's maid
changed clothes with the princess, who was supposed
to be confined to her bed with illness, and now stole
out of the castle in the midst of a storm of hail and snow
Wogan and his companions were waiting outside with
a postchaise and horses handy. Away they galloped
at top speed through the night, the princess and Mrs.
Misset in the chaise, Gaydon driving, and Wogan riding
alongside, with O'Toole and Misset following at some
I Q2 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
distance to intercept any one carrying tidings of the
escape or any pursuit. They made for Rome, where
Clementina married James.
Wogan and his companions were created Roman
senators by the Pope, an honour hitherto reserved for
royal personages and men of distinguished bravery or
merit. Wogan afterwards fought against the Moors
and died in 1747, a governor of one of the Spanish
provinces
" The crowning victory of the Irish Brigade, the
brightest star in the glittering firmament of their military
glory" (T McCarthy), was FONTENOY. Who of
Irish blood has not heard of it ? It is " a name which
to this day thrills the Irish heart with pride," wrote
A. M. Sullivan ; and, as John Mitchel said, " it was
an event in the history of Ireland."
On May nth, 1745, the English and their allies, to
the number of 55,000 men, faced the French under
Marshal Saxe and King Louis XV. in person, numbering
40,000 at Fontenoy, a small village near Tournay, on
the left bank of the Scheldt. The Duke of Cumberland,
King George's brutal son, known as the " Butcher of
Culloden " afterwards, for his cruelty to the followers
of Bonnie Prince Charlie, was in command of the
English and their allies. The French had been besieging
Tournay and the Allies were marching to relieve it.
All the Irish regiments in the French service the
entire Irish Brigade, strange to say were present,
under Charles O'Brien, Lord Clare and Earl of Thomond.
The Dutch attacked the French right at St. Antoine,
and the English and Hanoverians the French centre and
left. On the right the Dutch were driven back ; but
I,ACY AND WOGAN. 193
Cumberland formed his division into a solid column or
phalanx of 15,000 men, with seven cannon in its front,
and as many on either flank, and thus, marching steadily
forward, with regular volleys forced his way, in spite
of a withering fire, past all the redoubts right up to and
into the French centre. Every attempt on the part
of the French cavalry and infantry to break up or stop
the progress of that solid column of English and Germans
was vain. Broken and disordered, the finest troops
of France had to recoil before the merciless fire of the
English cannon and the steady volleys from its front
and flanks.
All seemed lost, many of the French troops were
already in flight, and King L,ouis was preparing to seek
his own safety, when Colonel I/ally of the Irish Brigade
came galloping up to the Duke de Richelieu, a royal
favourite, and suggested that four guns held in reserve
be used to batter in the head of the English column
and then that the Irish Brigade charge the enemy in
flank, backed up by the French cavalry.
Richelieu carried the suggestion to Marshal Saxe,
who instantly acted upon it, and word was sent to I/ord
Clare to charge. Only the Irish foot took part in the
charge, to the number of nearly 6,000 men ; the cavalry
were elsewhere with the French horse. The English
formed the right of the phalanx, the Hanoverians the
left, and it was against the right flank that the Irish
Brigade were flung, Thus, by a strange coincidence,
the old-time foes met once again in a most decisive
struggle.
Clad in scarlet uniforms with white breeches, the
seven regiments of Irishmen advanced as if on parade,
194 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
reserving their fire until the order to charge was given.
Then, pouring in a well-delivered volley from every
musket which sent the English tumbling over each other
in dozens, they closed with the bayonet, to the thun-
derous shout of :
" Cuimhnigidh ar I/uimneac agus fheile na Sassenach !
(" Remember Limerick and British faith or perfidy ! ")
Terrific was the impact ; and like water, the English
broke before the Irish bayonets in spite of the desperate
efforts of their officers to hold them together.
" Through shattered ranks and sever'd files and trampled
flags," the Irish tore, sweeping all before them. The
English were hurled back on the Hanoverians, throwing
them into confusion ; and like a child's sand castle
before an inrush of the tide, or a house of cards with its
foundations knocked away, the whole mighty and
hitherto invincible column of 15,000 men crumpled
up, fell to pieces, was swept together confusedly and
away back, down the hillside it had so proudly mounted,
leaving a dreadful littered track of dead and dying,
lost cannon, banners, drums, muskets, accoutrements,
and carriages. 15 of the 20 cannons were captured.
These were turned upcn the tumbling, disordered, fleeing
masses, adding to their panic. The French cavalry
" dashed in upon their track " and the rout was complete.
In ten minutes it was all over ; and, as Thomas Davis
wrote
" On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, like eagles in the sun,
With bloody plumes the Irish stand the field is fought
and won ! "
But the heavy fire maintained by the English upon the
Brigade when advancing to the charge cost it dear
LACY AND WOGAN. IQ5
98 officers and 400 men killed and wounded. The
French lost 7,000 and the Allies 21,000, of which last
number the English lost nearly 8,000 killed and wounded,
and more than 2,000 prisoners, so that the Irish loss was
very insignificant after all, compared with that of their
hereditary foes.
" The Duke of Cumberland was never able to face
the enemy again " (Grant) ; and Ghent, Bruges,
Ostend and Oudenarde at once surrendered to the
French. King lyouis rode down to the bivouac of the
Irish that night and thanked them personally, and
when the English King, George II., heard of the defeat
of his army by the Irish exiles, " he uttered that memor-
able imprecation on the penal code ' Cursed be the
laws which deprive me of such subjects ! ' When
Bonnie Prince Charlie drew his sword before the disas-
trous fight of Culloden, he cried : " Come, gentlemen,
let us give Cumberland another Fontenoy ! "
It was Fontenoy, too, which encouraged Prince Charlie
to make his bold and romantic attempt to recover the
lost crown of his grandfather. His chief of command
was Colonel O'Sullivan, and Irishmen helped him with
both money and a ship.
Colonel Count I,ally-Tollendal, who had so distin-
guished himself at Fontenoy, achieved still greater
renown. His family had come from Galway. .Born in
1702, he was the son of Sir Gerald L,ally who had fought
under Sarsfield and gone into exile after limerick.
He tried to raise an army for Bonnie Prince Charlie,
and, on the collapse of the latter's " rising," he went to
India. In 1758, he was commander-in-chief of the
French possessions there, and did his best to drive the
IQ6 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
English out of the country. Had he been well sup-
ported, he might have done so. As it was, hampered
and betrayed by his French comrades-in-arms, deserted
by the French Government at home, he was defeated
by the English at Wandewash and subsequently obliged
to surrender Pondicherry, which town nevertheless he
gallantly defended until starving.
On his return to France his powerful enemies con-
trived to have him thrown into the Bastile, and even-
tually condemned and executed. In 1778, however,
I^ouis XVI. cancelled the decree of attainder against
him as unjust and illegal, and restored to his son the
honours he had been deprived of.
Colonel Count Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator's
uncle, was the last distinguished officer of the Irish
Brigade, which was disbanded by the French Republic
in 1792 because it had remained faithful to the French
royal family. In that same year it had been presented
by the Bourbon prince, who afterwards became Louis
XVIII., with a flag bearing an Irish harp and the words
" 1692-1792, Semper et Ubique fidelis " (Ever and every-
where faithful.)
PART VIII.
THE DAYS OF GRATTAN.
The soggarths led, the pikemen fought
Like lions brought to bay,
And Wexford proved her prowess well.
In many a bloody fray,
Where wronged and wronger foot to foot,
In deadly grip was seen,
And England's hated red went down
Before the Irish green.
The Priests of Ninety-Eight," by REV. P. M.
At the Siege of Ross did my father fall,
And at Gorey my loving brothers all,
I am the last of my name and race,
And I go to Wexford to take their place.
" The Croppy Boy/' by CARROIA MAI.ONB.
THUROT'S RAID. 199
CHAPTER XXII.
THUROT'S RAID. THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS. GRATTAN
AND FLOOD.
About the middle of the eighteenth century, England
was alarmed by rumours of a threatened French in-
vasion, and sure enough a daring French commodore,
named Fra^ois Thurot, but who was really an Irishman
named O'Farrell, continually ravaged the British coasts,
until his " name was a terror and byword from south
of Berwick to north of Caithness." He was called
" The Corsair " and he swept British shipping from the
North Sea.
" This man's name became a terror to the merchants
of Britain," wrote Smollett, " for his valour was not
more remarkable in battle than his conduct in eluding
the British cruisers. ... It must be likewise
owned . . . that this bold mariner, though des-
titute of the advantages of birth, was remarkably
distinguished by his generosity and compassion to those
who had the misfortune to fall into his power, and that
his deportment in every respect entitled him to more
honourable rank in the service of his country."
With the Friponne, a corvette, he captured " upwards
of sixty " English merchant ships. He was then given
two frigates and two corvettes, and with this little
20O THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
squadron of five ships he infested the coast of Scotland
in May, 1758. Off Leith, with two ships, he fought an
English squadron of four all most heavily armed, and
left it so badly mauled that it could hardly crawl into
port. Covered with glory by this and other successes,
he was presented by King I^ouis XV. to Madame de
Pompadour, and he was entrusted with another squad-
ron of five frigates and a corvette, and despatched from
Dunkirk to ravage the Irish coast.
One of his ships foundered at sea, and another, having
to throw all its guns overboard to prevent doing the same,
returned home. Thurot or O'Farrell, on the 2ist of
February, 1760, sailed into Carrickfergus Bay and,
lying off Island Magee, of ill-repute in Irish history
notable for an alleged dreadful massacre by the Scotch
Puritans in 1642, he landed in his boats with 1,000
men, and captured the castle from Colonel Jennings
and the garrison of 150 soldiers. The Corsair
levied rations from the town and the merchants of
Belfast, threatening to burn the latter place, and he
carried off two vessels, laden with linen, from Belfast
Lough.
After remaining at Carrickfergus for five days, he
sailed off, and near the Isle of Man encountered the
English fleet. A terrible conflict ensued, 'in which
Thurot " fought with the fury of despair till a musket-
ball stretched him on the deck in mortal agony." By
that time his little squadron was more or less disabled.
He was only 33, and died in the arms of his wife, an
English lady, who was with him. His body was buried
on the Scottish coast, and we are told that the peasant
girls of Wigton and Galloway " still remember him in
THUROT'S RAID. 201
their songs as the gallant and gentle Thurret, for so
they pronounce his name."
In 1761 first appeared the Whiteboys, gangs of " moon-
lighters " who wore linen frocks over their coats. They
were suppressed by the military, but rose again in
1786 and 1822. The Insurrection Act was passed to
deal with them in the latter year.
With the breaking out of the American War of
Independence in 1775, a whole host of American and
French privateers appeared off the coast, chief amongst
them being Paul Jones, the terrible Scotchman flying
the American flag, the young republic's first admiral.
He also, after many depredations and exploits on the
English and Scottish coasts, entered Carrickfergus Bay,
where he fought and sank an English ship of war.
It was England's difficulty and Ireland's oppor-
tunity. With one voice the Irish people, Protestant
and Catholic alike, demanded that, as England could
not protect them against foreign attacks and possible
invasion, they should be allowed to organise a volunteer
force. Belfast immediately started enrolling men, and
within a year there were some 40,000 men under arms.
These were supplied them grudgingly by the Govern-
ment, but they provided their own uniforms and elected
their own officers. Among the officers were most of
the public men of the day. The famous and patriotic
Henry Grattan and the equally patriotic Henry Flood
were colonels, while James Caulfield, the Earl of
Charlemont, was given supreme command, with I/ord
Clanricarde and the Duke of Leinster in authority
under him.
Henry Grattan, who was a member of parliament
202 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
for Charlemont at 29 years of age, and had raised him-
self to the position of leader of the " Patriot Party "
by his wonderful oratorical powers, moved in 1778 an
address to the King to the effect " that the state of
Ireland required to be urgently considered." The
Government opposed him, but before the year was out
a Catholic Relief Bill was passed, allowing Catholics
to take land on lease, " and to inherit land in the same
way as Protestants."
Grattan also agitated for the removal of the res-
trictions and disabilities imposed on Irish trade by the
English Parliament, and to obtain liberty of conscience
for all Irishmen. He was, of course, a Protestant ;
otherwise he could not have sat in Parliament at that
time. He was the son of the Recorder of Dublin.
The English manufacturers, those of Manchester,
Liverpool and Bristol, " shouted themselves hoarse
with rage and even threatened to take up arms," if
the disabilities were removed. Thereupon the Volun-
teers, on the 4th of November, 1779, mustered round
the statue of William III. in College Green, Dublin,
and paraded with arms in their hands and cannon,
bearing on the muzzles labels with the significant
and patriotic legend, " Free trade or this." The cannon
roared amid the acclamations of the onlookers. It
was a grand day for Ireland. The captive warrior
queen had raised her head proudly once again for all
" her blood-clotted chain."
Henry Flood, who had accepted a place under the
Government, supported the motion in Parliament with
Hussey Burgh, the Prime Sergeant, and the Government
had to consent to it as also to a second motion in both
THUROT'S RAID. 203
Houses thanking the Volunteers for their patriotic
conduct.
The address was sent to England, but an evasive
reply was returned. Thereupon Grattan and Hussey
Burgh carried a motion refusing any new taxes. The
English Parliament yielded, and Irish exports were free.
But the Patriot Party were not yet satisfied. They
were determined to win the absolute independence of
the Irish Parliament from English control, and to this
end the great Henry Grattan worked tooth and nail,
joined now again by Henry Flood, who had thrown
up his office under Government.
A great convention of the Ulster Volunteers was
held in the Protestant Church of Dungannon on Feb-
ruary I5th, 1782, and, amid the utmost enthusiasm,
the national demands, as voiced by the immortal
Grattan, were endorsed. The Dungannon Convention
was followed, to Grattan's joy, by the repeal of still
more of the harsh penal laws against Catholics. A
Catholic might now have a horse worth more than 5,
teach in school, etc.
The whole country was united in its resolution to be
free and independent of England ; and in the face of this
determined attitude of the Irish people, backed, as it
was by the unequivocal support of 100,000 armed and
trained Volunteers, the English Government gave way,
dreading, no doubt, that Ireland might follow the action
of the lately revolted American colonies and break
away by force otherwise.
On the i6th of May, 1782, the Duke of Portland, who
was Lord Lieutenant, announced THE PARLIAMENTARY
OR LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE OF IRELAND.
204 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
The country went mad with joy ; but Flood, more
circumspect and far-seeing than the generous-hearted
Grattan, contended that the English Parliament still
maintained its supremacy over the Irish Parliament
and demanded that this supremacy be renounced by
England. Grattan called him ungenerous and un-
grateful, and they quarrelled bitterly, on which
English statesmen must have rejoiced greatly, for
united they were invincible, whereas now the country
was divided by factionism. However, Flood won his
point and forced England to pass the " Act of Renun-
ciation," renouncing its supremacy over the Irish Parlia-
ment and declaring it to be entirely free in matters of
legislature and judicature.
The Volunteer organisation, deprived now of its
raison d'etre, dwindled, and fell to pieces, most un-
happily for later times. Grattan next advocated Catholic
Emancipation, and Flood opposed it. With regard to
this Irish Parliament the Commons consisted of 300
members, of whom 64 represented counties, and 172
were returned for boroughs, which were mostly pocket-
boroughs, that is, they were owned by a few peers or
wealthy gentlemen who bought and sold them, like
articles of commerce, to place-hunters, and toadies.
The people had very little voice in the election of their
representatives at all.
In 1783, therefore, Flood brought in a Parliamentary
Reform Bill to ensure popular representation, although
it contained no suggestion of Catholic enfranchisement.
The Volunteers supported the Bill and assembled in
force at the Rotunda, whereupon the Commons rejected
it on the score that it was presented " under the man-
THUROT S RAID. 205
date of a military convention." The Volunteers very
weakly dissolved and did nothing, I/ord Charlemont,
their leader, not having in him the makings of a great
spirit. " From that time forward the Volunteers
ceased to influence public affairs." (Murphy.)
Flood retired from the Irish Parliament and went
to England and was elected to the English House of
Commons as member for Winchester. But he died
shortly after in 1791.
Gangs of the worst type of Protestants, in 1784,
drunken ruffians, calling themselves " Peep-o'-Day
Boys," went about the country in the dead of night, or,
as their name implied, just at dawn, visiting the houses
of Catholics, and on the pretence of searching for arms,
terrorising and maltreating the inhabitants. In self-
defence the Catholic farmers banded themselves together
under the name of " Defenders," and furious conflicts
ensued, when any of the rival factions met. The worst
fight was the so-called " Battle of the Diamond," in
September, 1795, at the hamlet of that name in Armagh.
Many " Defenders " were killed, and to commemorate
this conflict the first Orange L,odge was formed imme-
diately after, and so the Orangemen or Orange Society
came into being.
Other secret societies about this time were the
" Oakboys," and " the Hearts of Steel," or " Steelboys."
These were Protestant farmers banding themselves
together to resist the encroachments or exactions of
landlords, for the most part. The Oakboys wore green
branches of oak in their hats.
206 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER XXIII.
WOLFE TONE AND THE " UNITED IRISHMEN." THE
FRENCH INVASION OF 1796. " REMEMBER ORR."
Ireland had won a free and independent Parliament,
thanks to Grattan and the Volunteers, and this Parlia-
ment is often referred to as " Grattan's Parliament."
But, as we have already pointed out, it did not fairly
represent the country. The great mass of the people,
the Catholics, were not represented in it at all, a Catholic
not being allowed to sit in it. And the Protestants were
not fairly represented, either. The seats, as we explained
in the preceding chapter, were mostly pocket boroughs,
in the power of the great landholders and Ministers of
the Crown, to give to their own tools. Very few even
of the Protestant section of the population had votes
at all. Moreover, the Government were all nominees
of the English crown or English cabinet, and so really
not much could be expected from such a venal legis-
lature until sweeping alterations were made in it.
With a view to obtaining parliamentary reform, in
the first place to peacefully agitating for vote by
ballot, household suffrage and the enfranchisement
of Catholics as well as repeal of the penal laws against
them, a young Protestant barrister, named Theobald
Wolfe Tone, founded in Belfast a society that will ever
WOLFE TONE AND THE " UNITED IRISHMEN. 207
be linked with his name the society of United Irish-
men.
The fame of Wolfe Tone and the society he formed is
world-wide. Tone was only 28 years of age at the time,
and his portraits have familiarised us with his exceed-
ingly handsome, manly, open, engaging countenance
the reflex of courage, frankness, generosity and nobility
of soul.
He was a republican at heart, and a celebration of the
French Revolution in July, 1791, in Belfast, with mili-
tary pomp, by the armed volunteers and townspeople
gave him the idea of his society, or at any rate of making
use of the occasion for the advancement of its scheme.
He quickly gathered into the society, which was not
at first a secret one although all its members took a
solemn oath to further its objects such other since
celebrated men of the time as Samuel Neilson (the
proprietor of the " Northern Star " newspaper), Thomas
Russell, James Napper Tandy, Archibald Hamilton
Rowan, the Hon. Simon Butler, Dr. Drennan, Oliver
Bond, William Sampson, etc., etc. All these gentlemen
were Protestants, but the aim of the Society was to
wholly eradicate religious differences among Irishmen
and unite them all as brothers in the sacred cause
of the welfare of their country. Consequently, a
Catholic was readily admitted into the society ; his
creed was made no bar whatever to his admission.
On the contrary, the society openly advocated the cause
of Catholicism.
The membership, as it deserved, increased by leaps
and bounds ; Catholics and Protestants of the middle
and lower classes joined it in thousands, and the Govern-
208 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
ment became alarmed, realising how formidable a
united Irish nation would be.
First denouncing the society as seditious and arrest-
ing and imprisoning its most prominent members, the
Executive at Dublin Castle then grudgingly passed a
Convention Act, allowing Catholics to vote for members
of Parliament and to occupy certain civil and military
offices. This great concession was made to try and wean
the Catholics from the society, to whose agitation really
they owed it. Simon Butler, Oliver Bond, and Hamilton
Rowan were all three arrested, and fined 500 and
sentenced to terms of imprisonment as well, for presiding
or speaking at meetings of the United Irishmen.
The result of this tyrannical attempt to suppress free
speech was that the society became a secret revolu-
tionary body, " pledged to obtain separation from
England and a republican government."
Wolfe Tone, to avoid arrest, went first to America,
and then to Paris, where he saw the heads of the French
Republic and conspired with them for an invasion of
Ireland, or rather for an expedition to be sent to help
the Irish people to free themselves completely from
England.
To effect this became Tone's life-work, and he met
with considerable success. In 1796 the French Directory
fitted out an armament of 43 ships of war, carrying
13,975 troops, officers and men, and arms, artillery
and ammunition for 45,000 men, for the invasion of
Ireland, putting it under the command of General
Hoche. Had this officer lived he might have rivalled
the great Napoleon, for he was one of the ablest and
most tried generals in the French army. He was
Wolfe Tone Lord Edward Fitzgerald Robert Emmett
WOLFE TONE AND THE " UNITED IRISHMEN." 20g
known as " the Pacificator of I/a Vendee," for when
that particular part of France espoused the cause of
the Bourbons and resisted the republicans with great
success, he subdued it when others had most signally
failed by combining military ability with humanity.
If the above formidable force had landed in Ireland,
there can be no doubt that, for good or ill, it would have
separated Ireland from England. But " man proposes
and God disposes " ; it was fated otherwise.
Wolfe Tone, elate with hope and triumph, sailed with
the expedition, which left Brest on the i6th December,
1796. The weather was unpropitious. In the darkness
first, and later in a fog, some of the ships became
separated from the others. However, 35 made the coast
of Kerry when a terrific gale arose and dispersed them.
Most of them were blown out to sea, but 16 got safely
into Bantry Bay. General Grouchy, Napoleon's Jonah*
later, as he was now apparently of the expedition,
hesitated to land, although he had 6,500 men. Wolfe
Tone, who was with him, begged of him to do so. The
Fraternite, the flagship of the fleet, with the gallant
Hoche and the Admiral on board, was not among the
16 ships in the bay. It had parted from the rest
of the fleet the first night of the voyage.
Grouchy was at last induced to call a council of war,
and this, to Tone's exceeding joy, decided the landing
should take place next day. In the night the wind
freshened to a violent gale again. The ships dragged
their anchors, and were every one of them at last,
* Grouchy failed to turn up in time to help Napoleon at Waterloo,
and lost him a previous fight as well through tardiness.
P
210 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
to Tone's despair, driven out to sea. The ships had to
put back to France, where they arrived all so much
disabled that the expedition had to be abandoned.
There were only 4,000 troops in all Munster at the
time, and Grouchy's 6,500, had they landed overnight,
instead of waiting for the morrow, must have been
joined by the peasantry in great numbers and have
" marched without hindrance to Cork .....
and perhaps even to the capital."
At this time Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the brother of
the Duke of Leinster, had taken the oath of the United
Irishmen and was elected Commander-in-Chief of the
military revolutionary organisation that was being
rapidly formed. He had served in the English army
in Canada where he achieved considerable distinction.
Handsome, frank, and chivalrous, and endowed with
all the advantages of high rank and noble lineage,
he won the hearts of all with whom he came in contact,
and his lofty patriotism, added to these qualities or
recommendations, has likewise won him the lasting
affection of the Irish people, amongst whom he is still
familiarly known as " Lord Edward."
Associated with him on the Executive Directory of
the Society were Thomas Addis Emmet, Arthur
O'Connor and Dr. William James McNevin. There
was a fifth member of this Directory, but who he was is
apparently a secret that will never be solved. It is
believed though, that he was Lord Cloncurry, another
patriotic nobleman, who never openly acknowledged
his connection with the society, but certainly approved
and aided it. By the end of 1797, 500,000 men had
been secretly enrolled in the society, and of these about
WOI.FE TONE AND THE " UNITED IRISHMEN." 211
half were armed with pikes or muskets. The wearing
of the hair cut or " cropped " close became the fashion
with them, and so they were called by the soldiery
" croppies," which name became synonymous for a
rebel.
Informed of this by their numerous secret service
agents and spies, the Government became panicstricken.
The expedition under Hoche had already thoroughly
alarmed them, and they now determined, by the foulest
means possible, to cause a premature explosion of the
insurrection that they saw coming and would have so
much cause to dread. They knew that the inde-
fatigable Wolfe Tone was leaving no stone unturned
to bring about another armed invasion of Ireland, that
he was eternally worrying Napoleon and Holland,
then called the Batavian Republic, to fit out expedi-
tions. Napoleon tricked Wolfe Tone, deceived him,
and paid the penalty at Waterloo ; ay, and earlier,
at the Battle of the Nile.
The Batavian Republic was as good as its promises to
Tone. It fitted out a fleet of 26 vessels and 15,000 men
for the invasion of Ireland, thanks to him and General
Hoche, his great friend, and John Edward lyewins,
another agent of the United Irishmen. This fleet sailed
from the Texel under Admiral de Winter, but was
attacked off Camperdown by an English fleet of equal
or slightly superior force and defeated. " Never had
the English seamen harder work than in subduing
the almost equal gunnery and stubborn courage of the
gallant Dutchmen on this memorable day." (Sanderson.)
Tone had despaired of the Texel fleet ever sailing
and had rejoined his wife and children in Paris ; and so
212 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
it sailed without him. The next blow that Tone suffered
was the death in September of that same year of his
warm-hearted friend, General Hoche.
It needed but the Batavian expedition to complete
the panic and savage design of the English ministers,
and, while they arrested the most prominent of the
patriot leaders everywhere, they now let loose the
soldiery, and particularly the yeomanry and militia,
upon the unarmed and helpless people. Men, women
and children were ill-used and tortured in a way that
makes the blood run cold to read of, in a way that we
care not to pollute our pages by narrating.
These uniformed ruffians were given full permission
by the law, called " martial law," to treat the peasantry
and people everywhere as they pleased, so as to try and
goad them into rebellion. Was there ever a more
diabolical scheme ? I,ord Castlereagh, one of the
ministers, openly admitted that the Government had
this object. We shall hear more of Castlereagh later,
but we may say here that his end was suicide.
So outrageously did the soldiers behave to even
innocent and law-abiding people that the gallant Sir
Ralph Abercrombie threw up his post of commander-
in-chief of the forces in Ireland in disgust, while the
heroic Sir John Moore, another Scotsman, appalled at
the treatment of the people, exclaimed : " Were I
an Irishman, I should be a rebel ! "
The Duke of Leinster also resigned the command
of the Leinster militia by way of protest, and all decent
men drew out of the ranks of both yeomanry and
militia, so that, unfortunately, the very lowest of the
low drunken, inhuman savages beside whom the
TONE AND'THE " UNITED IRISHMEN." 213
French revolutionists were as lambs got the upper
hand and became general in the ranks of these two
forces.
To this day, the yeomanry and militia of " '98 "
are execrated in Ireland more than the regulars, with
the sole exception of two regiments of Hessians and
another of Welsh fencible cavalry known as the Ancient
Britons, who emulated their example. The Scotch
regiments everywhere refused to have anything to do
with such brutality, and one corps of Highlanders
turned their backs on a particularly gross scene which
may not be mentioned here.
It was made death, too, to even administer the
United Irishmen's oath ; and for this offence one,
William Orr, was tried and hanged at Carrickfergus on
the evidence of only one man, a soldier named Wheatly,
in defiance of all the notions that one man's word is as
good as another's in a court of law. The witness after-
wards " declared the evidence he had given was false."
" Remember Orr," became, like " Remember Mullagh-
mast," of an earlier period, the watchword of the United
Irishmen.
But for the precautions taken by the British Ministers
in everywhere pouncing on the leaders of the revolu-
tionary party, it is more than likely the Government
would have overshot its mark in forcing on the rebellion.
But, thanks to their host of informers and secret service
agents, they were able to lay their hands at once, as we
say, on pretty well all the popular chiefs. Oliver Bond,
Addis Emmet, Dr. McNevin, Arthur O'Connor, McCann,
Jackson, Sweetman and Father O'Coigley, were all
arrested, but Lord Edward evaded capture and was
214 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY,
concealed from time to time by various freinds of the
cause.
While thus in hiding, or, as it was called, " on his
keeping," he appointed the 23rd of May for a general
rising ; and, to fill the places of those arrested, the
Brothers Sheares, John and Henry, were elected mem-
bers of the Executive Council.
THE CAPTURE OF U)RD EDWARD. 215
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD. " NINETY-EIGHT "
WEXFORD RISES.
A reward of 1,000 was offered for the arrest of Lord
Edward ; and at length, in May, a despicable wretch
named Francis Higgins, a rogue and trickster who had
raised himself from the gutter to the proprietorship
of the " Freeman's Journal," and was known contemp-
tuously as " the Sham Squire," went to Major Sirr with
information gleaned by him from a lawyer named
Francis Magan.
This Magan was apparently in Higgins's power ; he
had been a United Irishman, but had drawn out of the
Society for prudent reasons. He was, however, trusted
by the United men and had been taken into the secret
of Lord Edward's whereabouts. It was long kept a
Government secret who the traitor was, and many
innocent, true-hearted patriots were unjustly suspected,
such as Samuel Neilson, and Murphy, in whose house
Lord Edward was hiding.
The evening of the i8th May, 1798, Major Sirr, the
town major, went to the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy,
a feather merchant, 153 Thomas Street, Dublin, and
silently contrived an entrance. He had with him Major
Swan and Captain Ryan, as well as a number of soldiers.
2l6 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Swan and Ryan rushed upstairs into the bedroom
where Lord Edward was reclining, half dressed, upon a
bed, about to drink some tea. He was ill, having
contracted sore throat and general debility.
Lord Edward at sight of the intruders sprang off the
bed, and, weak and ill as he was, caught up a dagger he
had under his pillow. Swan pulled out a pistol, and
Lord Edward struck at him, wounding him in the hand
and breast. Crying out that he was " murdered,"
Swan fired at the young nobleman. The shot missed.
Captain Ryan now intervened with a sword cane, and
Major Sirr, with the soldiers, came hurrying upon the
scene.
Ryan grappled with Lord Edward and the two fell
to the floor, Lord Edward severely wounded by thrusts
from his assailant's weapon, but stabbing the latter
repeatedly with his dagger. Lord Edward struggled
to his feet, and Ryan and Swan, both on the floor,
the former dying, clung to his legs. Major Sirr
rushed in and shot at Lord Edward with a pistol,
lodging several slugs in his right shoulder, whereupon,
overcome with weakness and loss of blood, " the gallant
Geraldine " fell back upon the bed, when he was over-
powered by the soldiers and bound hand and foot.
In the hall downstairs he made another desperate bid
for liberty, but was borne to the floor by a dozen soldiers
and wounded in the neck with a bayonet. The news
spread that Lord Edward was captured, and one
Edward Rattigan, a young timber merchant, hastily
collected a band of men and set upon the captors. But
the arrival of a fresh body of troops enabled these to get
their prisoner safely to Newgate Prison.
THE CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD. 217
Lord Edward was married to one of the loveliest
women of her time, the gentle Pamela, a grand-daughter
of the Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalite. They had
met casually at a theatre in Paris. The play was
" Lodoiska," and Lord Edward was introduced by a
Mr. Stone. Lord Edward was stricken with love at first
sight and proposed to her guardian for her the same
night. They were married on December 2ist, 1792,
and during the six short years of their wedded life the
young couple were devotedly attached to each other.
The portraits of Lord Edward may almost be mis-
taken for those of Robert Burns, the Scottish poet,
owing to the resemblance in the pose of the head, the
close-cut curling hair, and particularly the attire.
Lord Edward had a strikingly open, frank, handsome
countenance, in which enthusiasm and optimism are
the prevailing expressions. The eyebrows were well
arched, the eyes, large, eloquent, fearless, the forehead
broad and high, and the nose a military aquiline and
Roman combined, the mouth and chin firm, yet gentle-
looking as a woman's.
His arrest, when all had hoped he would prove another
Washington, was indeed a blow to the United Irishmen,
and practically paralysed their action, happening, as it
did, almost on the eve of the projected rising.
Samuel Neilson assembled a body of United men at
night to storm Newgate and rescue Lord Edward, but
he was captured as a suspect by the gaolers while recon-
noitring, and his men waited in vain for his return.
Lord Edward died of his wounds a fortnight later,
on the 4th June, 1798, while the rebellion was in full
swing, and he lies buried in St. Werburgh's Protestant
2l8 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Church, Dublin. The Brothers Sheares were arrested
on May 2ist, through the treachery of a pretended friend,
Captain John Warneford Armstrong, of the Kildare
militia, whose services as a military man they no doubt
hoped would be useful in the outbreak.
General Lake had taken over the command of the
royal forces and brought these up to the strength of
150,000 men. The United Irishmen had not intended
to rise until they received French or other foreign aid
in the shape of " the kernel or nucleus of an army," as
Tone wanted, so as to enable the insurgents to become
disciplined and used to arms. But the efforts of the
Government to force an outbreak were successful. The
exasperated people could endure no more of the bru-
talities practised upon them, as Lord Edward had seen,
and, on the appointed day, the 23rd of May, there were
risings everywhere over the country. Mostly they were
miserable failures. The Dublin men, under two gentle-
men named Ledwich and Keogh, were cut to pieces at
Santry by Lord Roden's dragoons. Their purpose had
been to seize Dublin castle and the artillery park at
Chapelizod.
At Prosperous, however, the insurgents despatched
the sentry, rushed into the guardroom and piked 12
men and shot Captain Swayne, afterwards firing the
barracks, and destroying to a man a company of the hated
North Cork Militia that was within it. Likewise, at
Dunboyne, the peasantry ambushed a convoy of Scotch
soldiers, slew them to a man also, and captured the
baggage ; while at Kilcullen the insurgents, under Dr.
Esmonde, defeated a troop of dragoons with a loss
of 22 men, but were afterwards attacked by a large
THE CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD.
force of troops under General Dundas, at Kilcullen
Bridge, and routed with a loss of 130 men. A detach-
ment of British soldiers, stationed at the village of
Clane, had to cut its way to Naas with considerable
loss, and an attack on Naas was only repulsed with
the loss to the King's troops of 30 men and two officers.
On the hill of Tara, " the old seat of Milesian royalty
in Meath," several thousands of insurgents had mus-
tered and the soldiers feared to attack them, and so
resorted to a ruse. Several barrels of whisky were sent
along the road and the foolish peasants, capturing
these, and drinking the whisky, were then attacked by
the military and defeated, but only after a hard struggle.
In other places, through lack of discipline and their
own headstrong folly for the most part, the insurgents
were also routed and with heavy loss, as at Carlow, where
they " marched in a very noisy and disorderly manner "
on the town and were mown down by a deadly fire,
the garrison having had timely warning and being well
intrenched in the houses lining the main street. On
the Curragh of Kildare, Sir James Duff butchered 300
men who had laid down their arms. Wherever the
soldiery triumphed, the slaughter of the unfortunate
peasants " was out of all proportion to the resistance
offered." No mercy was shown even to unarmed
men.
Seeing his church of Boolavogue set on fire by the
Orange yeomanry and his hapless parishioners fleeing
from their blazing homes and being shot down merci-
lessly, Father John Murphy, a Catholic priest, started
the revolt in Wexford, kindled a flame which was like
to have consumed British supremacy in Ireland com-
220 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
menced an insurrection, which, had it been better
directed, must have triumphed and swept the English
out of the country. Previous to this time Father
Murphy had counselled the people to deliver up any
weapons they possessed. Now, seeing that inaction or
submission was no security, that the people's exter-
mination seemed to be the design of the Government,
he gathered some men together, armed with scythes,
tied on the ends of poles, and pitchforks for the most
part, and fell swiftly and suddenly upon the Camolin
yeomanry, wholly destroying them with their acting
commander, lieutenant Bookey. This was on the 26th
of May, 1798.
With the captured horses and arms, Father John and
his men proceeded to the residence of I^ord Mountnorris,
" where all the arms were stored that had been taken
from the people for months before. These were taken
possession of," and the insurgents then bivouacked on
Oulart Hill, eight miles from Wexford, and lit bonfires
to rouse the country round.
Numbers of the peasantry flocked into the camp, and
next morning Father John was at the head of 4,000 or
5,000 men. It was Whitsunday, and in the afternoon
a detachment of the North Cork Militia, a most detested
corps on account of its cruelty, with some yeoman
cavalry, advanced against the camp. While the cavalry
surrounded the hill to cut off the insurgents' escape,
the infantry mounted to the attack.
The insurgents lay in a ditch or depression, well under
cover, and, suddenly springing up, rushed down at head-
long charge, overbearing the militia in the very shock
of impact. In a few minutes they had killed the whole
THE CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD. 221
detachment except L,ieut.-Colonel Foote, a sergeant
and three privates. Major Lombard was among the
slain with four other officers. Colonel Foote escaped
because he was in the rear and on horse-back, but he
received pike wounds in the breast and arm. The
yeoman cavalry fled without striking a blow, at the
sight of the fate of the foot.
Another priest, Father Michael Murphy, of Bally-
cavan, now joined the insurgents, and, as the Rev.
P. M. Furlong wrote in his poem, entitled " The Priests
of Ninety-Bight,"
" They drew the green old banner forth and flung it to
the light ;
And Wexford heard the rallying cry and gathered
in her might,
And swore around uplifted cross until the latest breath
To follow where her soggarths led to victory or
death."
With their numbers considerably augmented, the
two Fathers Murphy now marched to Camolin, where
they seized 80 stand of arms, and continuing on without
meeting any opposition through Ferns, gaining recruits
every step of the way, attacked Bnniscorthy on the
28th of May. I,ed on by a popular gentleman farmer
named John Rossiter, the peasantry eventually swept
the regulars and North Cork Militia and yeomanry out
of the town in headlong rout after more than three
hours' action. The day was very hot. Nearly a third
of the garrison were slain, including a captain and
two lieutenants.
A number of " farmers, with long duck guns, practised
marksmen from boyhood in shooting wild fowl," were
222 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
included in the peasant army. Father John proclaimed
an Irish Republic in Enniscorthy, which town now
" decked itself out in the rebel colours of green."
Father John Murphy, according to O'Connor Morris,
was a " real leader ... a true ruler of men, almost
a born general He attacked the garrison
in the place (Enniscorthy) with real military skill,
making a flanking movement with vigour and effect."
He is described by another authority as a man of forty-
five years of age, light-complexioned, slightly bald,
and about five feet nine inches in height, with a loud,
ringing voice.
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES. 223
CHAPTER XXV.
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES. NEW Ross. ARKI,OW.
VINEGAR
All Wexford was now practically in arms and pouring
into the insurgent camp, and the two Fathers Murphy,
joined by Father Clinch of Enniscorthy, determined to
capture the county town. It was defended by a garri-
son of 1,200 men which had been reinforced by the
fugitives from Enniscorthy. General Fawcett, com-
mander of Duncannon Fort, sent a force to succour
the garrison. On the 30th of May, the insurgents
surprised this force at Forth or Three Rock Mountain,
three miles from Wexford, killing a hundred of the
troops and capturing two howitzers, some ammunition
and prisoners. Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell with a
stronger force, coming up, attempted to retrieve the
defeat, but the howitzers were turned on him and he
retreated in haste and confusion, losing several men.
Under the nominal command of General Edward
Roche, lately a sergeant of yeomanry, who had joined
them, the insurgents advanced on Wexford, when the
garrison fled in terror. Its flight might easily have been
cut off. The whole strength of the county now, thirty
thousand men, the insurgents formed three camps and
three separate divisions, and decided to strike respec-
224 TH]e ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
tively north, west and south-west ; a great mistake for,
had they at once hurled their full force northward, they
probably would have triumphed by weight of numbers.
Father John Murphy, too, unhappily for their plans,
retired from the position of commander-in-chief, and
a Protestant barrister of landed property and consider-
able influence, named Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey >
of Bargy Castle, took his place.
Harvey had no military knowledge, and his insignifi-
cant personality was also against him as a leader of
an undisciplined peasant army. The two Fathers
Murphy had already shown their ability, and Father
John might have been to Ireland what " the illustrious
Father Morelos " was to Mexico, her Washington or
" Liberator." Matthew Keogh, a Protestant and a
captain of the Sixth Regiment, who joined the insur-
gents, would also have been better fitted for the post
of commander-in-chief on account of his military know-
ledge, instead of being made Governor of Wexford
and thus doomed to useless inactivity.
On the ist June, the northern division, advancing
upon Gorey, was repulsed with a loss of nearly 100 men.
The troops, encouraged by this success, then marched
to attack the rebel camp, on Carrigrua Hill, but the
insurgents formed an ambuscade and trapped the main
body of the troops. The peasantry lined the hedges
and thickets on either side of the road at Tubberneering
or Clough, and, first pouring in a deadly fire, fell on
with the pike. Colonel Walpole who was in command
of the troops was shot dead, and his detachment, horse
and foot, was cut to pieces in a few minutes with the
loss of its three guns. The rear of the division, under
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES 22$
Colonel Cope, fell back rapidly, the rebels turning the
three guns on it and punishing it severely. Father
Philip Roche was the leader of the peasantry here.
Gorey was now captured by the insurgents, who
decided to march on to Arklow.
The western division of the insurgents, encamped on
Vinegar Hill, attacked Newtownbarry, under two
gentlemen named Doyle and Redmond, and Father
Kearns, on the 2nd June. The rebels stormed the
town, but then very foolishly spread through it, and
gave themselves up to drinking and jollification. The
troops rallied, returned, and drove them out with a loss
of 200 men. However, the Royalists had to abandon
Newtownbarry the same day, and the peasant army
occupied it.
On the 5th June, 1798, Bagenal Harvey, with the
south-western division of this, advanced against New
Ross. A gentleman named Furlong, sent forward to
summon the town to surrender under a flag of truce,
was shot dead by the English soldiers, whereupon, in-
censed at this violation of all the recognised laws of
war, the insurgents, without waiting for orders, swarmed
down upon the town " in one disorderly body, drove
back the cavalry and infantry by the fierceness of their
charge, and captured the cannon." The troops rallied
in the heart of the town, but the insurgents fought a
passage into it, " notwithstanding that many guns were
planted in the cross lanes, to sweep the main street."
The most desperate struggle took place at the Three-
Bullet gate.
After some fierce fighting the troops " fled over the
bridge with precipitation, to the Kilkenny side of the
Q
226 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Barrow " (Grant). The town was won, but with " fatal
imprudence," the peasants acted the same as at New-
townbarry, dispersed through the town and began to
drink. " Soon hundreds were imbecile and besotted
with liquor." Major-General Johnson rallied his panic-
stricken troops, brought them back to the scene, and,
falling on the drunken rebels, drove them out in his turn,
but not until half the town was on fire.
The rebels returned to the attack, and, by dogged
fighting, won the centre of the town again when will
it be believed ? they repeated their folly, and once
more began to drink. Again they were beaten out ;
a third time they penetrated, with obstinate bravery
to the heart of the town, the firing continuing until
night time when at last, wanting officers to direct them,
they were finally driven out, after a most stubborn
engagement of more than ten hours.
They left, one authority says, 2,600 killed and woun-
ded behind them, and many of the wounded were
deliberately burned to death or put to the sword in cold
blood by the vengeful troops. Another account gives
their loss only at 1,000 men, which is the more likely
number, for the rebels actually engaged in the three
assaults "at no time exceeded 5,000." For some
unaccountable reason General Bagenal Harvey remained
outside the town, resting on his arms with the main
body of his army, and left all the fighting to a gallant
youth, General John Kelly of Killann, contenting him-
self with sending forward only a small reinforcement
under General Thomas Cloney. Had Kelly and Cloney
only been supported, New Ross would have remained
in the hands of the insurgents.
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES. 227
The Rev. James B. Dollard has commemorated
Kelly of Killann and his dashing charge at New Ross
in verse :
" The hush before the battle,
Wraps famed Three-Bullet Gate,
And there, with matches burning,
The English gunners wait.
Grim wall and gaping cannon
Defy the might of man
Not so ! with charging Wexford,
And Kelly of Killann !
Like lightnings round Slieve Cailtha
The flashing of his pikes !
His charge like bolt from heaven
Black Brandon's brow that strikes !
The troops on earth ne'er mustered,
His bristling front could scan
And face with hearts unshaken,
Fierce Kelly of Killann !
The gallant Kelly fell severely wounded in the third
assault, and on this his followers gave way, Cloney
covering the retreat admirably. The heavy loss of the
insurgents was entirely due to their drunkenness,
those who were sober suffering very little in the
pursuit.
Naturally the peasantry were greatly dissatisfied
after this disaster with Harvey's leadership, and he
was called on to resign, when Father Philip Roche, a
perfect giant of a man, who was the victor at Tubber-
neering and possessed unbounded influence, was elected
in his place.
The garrison of New Ross had consisted of about
i, 600 men, some of these being regular troops, supported
228 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY
by a battery of field guns. The assailants were never,
as we have said, more than 5,000. " The fight within
the pent-in spaces was most desperate ; the artillery in
vain swept hundreds down, the best horsemen of England
recoiled, beaten, before the serried forest of pikes or fell
under the deadly hail of concealed sharpshooters."
Sir Richard Musgrave says " that such was their
enthusiasm (that of the peasantry) that, though whole
ranks of men were seen to fall, they were succeeded by
others, who seemed to court the fate of their com-
panions, by rushing on our troops with renovated
ardour." Of the troops, 500 officers and men fell,
including Lord Mountjoy, Colonel of the Dublin Militia,
who was shot in the first onset.
" My curse upon all drinking 'twas that that brought
us down ;
It lost us Ross and Newtownbarry, and many another
town."
Maddened by the troops' burning of a hospital con
taining a number of wounded insurgents at New Ross
and the butchery of all peasants taken prisoners, with
or without arms, some of the Wexfordmen set fire
to a barn at Scullabogue and burnt about eighty
loyalists.
The Northern division next attacked Arklow on the
9th of June. Esmond Kyan, a young gentleman of
influence and undeniable worth, skilfully directed the
three guns the insurgents had, disabling one of the
enemy's pieces. But later, leading a charge of pikemen,
he was shot in the shoulder.
The two Fathers Murphy, who were in command,
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES. 22Q
managed their men with great ability " and several
times they had the advantage." The troops were
intrenched " behind strong barricades and well-suppor-
ted by artillery " (Grant).
Father Michael Murphy also personally led a column
of pikemen repeatedly against the barricades, unsup-
ported by the gunmen, who, to the number of 2,000,
having exhausted their ammunition early in the fight,
marched off the field. " The pikemen captured one
of the royal cannon and despatched the gunners," but
a cannon-shot struck and killed Father Michael, and on
that his men lost heart and gave way. Nevertheless, it
was a drawn battle. General Needham, the king's
general, was only prevented from retreating by his
second-in-command, Skerritt, and did not dare to leave
his intrenchments and barricades. The peasantry
needed only to have vigorously followed up their partial
success, to have cleared the road to Dublin.
Had the gunmen and pikemen been intermingled in
the proportions, say, of three or five pikemen to one
gunman, a solid mass of 6,000 to 10,000 men could have
been hurled in a charge against the barricades and
would probably have carried them. As it was, the
whole brunt of the fighting fell on the pikemen, who
were exposed, as they charged over the open ground,
to a ceaseless fire of the musketry and grapeshot, without
being able to reply of course, and only covered by
Kyan's three guns.
Father John Murphy at this fight was at the disad-
vantage of having only " the latest levies " of the
rebel army men who " were, for the most part, miser-
ably armed The bodies of sharpshooters seem to have
230 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
been at New Ross " (O'Connor Morris). Father Michael
Murphy was within thirty yards of the enemy's line
leading on his brigade to the charge, when struck by
the cannon-shot. He was on horseback and bore a
green flag " bearing the words ' Death or Liberty ' on a
a white cross."
Father John's column, " advancing by the sea
road, captured all the enemy's advanced positions
and drove the troops in confusion across the river
into the town." Under Father John was a gallant youth
of nineteen, Miles Byrne, who afterwards wrote a graphic
account of this and other fights in Wexford. " Though
the contest lasted from four o'clock until late in the
evening, and was very determined on both sides, the
losses were not great." Gordon, a loyalist, though
fair-minded historian, only puts the rebel loss at 300,
and this would further seem to show that the peasantry
were not defeated and only desisted from attack, in
grief at the loss of so respected a leader as Father Michael
Murphy. Miles Byrne indeed claimed Arklow as a
victory, and bitterly lamented that it should have been
abandoned.
As usual, " the insurgents had shown conspicuous
courage, and Castlereagh declared he could never have
believed that untrained peasants would have fought so
well."
As Thomas Davis, the Protestant national poet,
wrote, " Great hearts ! how faithful ye were. How ye
bristled up when the foe came on ; how ye set your
teeth to die as his shells and round shot fell steadily ;
and with how firm a cheer ye dashed at him, if he
gave you any chance at all of a grapple ! From the
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES. 23!
wild burst with which ye triumphed at Oulart Hill,
down to the faint gasp wherewith the last of your last
column died in the corn fields of Meath, there is nothing
to shame your valour, your faith, or your patriotism.
You wanted arms and you wanted leaders. Had you
had them you would have guarded a green flag in Dublin
Castle, a week after you beat Walpole. Isolated,
unorganised, unofficered, half armed, girt by a swarm
of foes, you ceased to fight, but you neither betrayed
nor repented. Your sons need not fear to speak of
Ninety-eight."
After the " drawn battle " of Arklow, it was decided
by the Wexford leaders to do what they should have
done at first, muster all their remaining forces on
Vinegar Hill, at Enniscorthy, and hazard all in one
big fight. But it was too late now to win by weight of
numbers. General Lake was closing around them with
20,000 men, equal numbers with their own poor, half-
armed, wholly undisciplined force. On the 2ist of
June, he advanced against their position on Vinegar
Hill with 13,000 men, cavalry and infantry, besides a
strong force of artillery. His strength would have
been greater, but, for some unexplained reason, General
Needham's column failed to turn up in its appointed
place at the rear of the rebel camp.
Under Lake, who was known as " the People's
Butcher," were Generals Dundas, Duff, Loftus, Johnson,
and Eustace, in command of as many divisions. The
Wexfordmen had 13 guns of small, almost toylike
calibre, mostly ship's guns brought in by the patriotic
captains of ships in Wexford harbour. The supply of
ammunition was scanty. Nevertheless, from behind
232 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
some rude earthen intrenchments they had thrown up,
the half-armed peasants made a gallant stand. " Their
leaders encouraged them by words, their women by
cries. They gave the enemy back defiant shouts, as
they faced with despairing valour the storm of shot
and shell that burst on the four sides of their position."
(I/uby). General Lake's horse was shot under him.
For an hour and a half the peasantry stood their
ground, and only broke and fled when the enemy had
mounted the hilltop. There fell Father Clinch, resisting
to the last. He was shot while riding a large white
horse and urging on his men with a huge sabre. Edward
Hay, a rebel general, was captured, with others, and
between 500 and 600 were killed.
By " Needham's gap," the routed peasants were
enabled to retreat to Wexford through a country where
they could not be pursued by cavalry or cannon, " so
that they suffered no punishment worth speaking of in
the pursuit." The pikemen could always give a good
account of themselves against their foes at close quar-
ters.
General Sir John Moore attacked the fugitives
from Vinegar Hill, or, rather, was attacked by them,
near Lacken Hill or Goff's Bridge. They thought to
retrieve the day by seizing on New Ross " in the absence
of the troops." Fighting " very steadily " for four
hours, they " retired only when their ammunition was
exhausted."
Seeing that all was lost now, they broke up into
various small bodies, and tried to cut their respective
ways through the ring of foes that girt them in. One
under Father Kearns and Anthony Perry was defeated
FURTHER PEASANT VICTORIES. 233
and dispersed ; but Father John Murphy, who first
raised the standard of revolt in Wexford, led his
band through Carlow, defeated some militia at Gores-
bridge, and, entering Kilkenny, captured Castlecomer.
Cornered at Kilcomney Hill, however, and forced to fight
at disadvantage, they were defeated ; and Father John,
surrendering, was cruelly scourged and executed, his
body being publicly burned and his head spiked on the
market house at Tullow by General Duff.
Father Philip Roche was also taken, brutally mal-
treated, and hanged ; but another small force, under
Mr. Edward Fitzgerald of New Park, who must not be
confused with Lord Edward, and the brothers Byrne
of Ballymanus, broke through, like Father John, into
Wicklow, and joined the Wicklow insurgents under
" General " Joseph Holt and the even more renowned
Michael Dwyer. With them was young Miles Byrne,
who was a son of Mr. Garret Byrne of Ballymanus.
He afterwards became an officer in the French army
under Napoleon.
They attacked Hacketstown on June 25th, but were
repulsed and pursued by a strong force. On the 29th,
at Ballyellis, outside Carnew, they turned at bay and
formed an ambuscade. The Ancient Britons, a hated
Welsh fencible cavalry regiment, were in hot pursuit,
and, coming on round a turn in the road at full gallop,
found the way stopped by a barricade of cars thrown
across the road. A mass of pikemen sallied out from
behind a wall and closed up the road behind, attacking
them with headlong fury. Gunmen lined the wall and
poured in a flank fire. The soldiers could not escape, for
the other side of the road was skirted by a wide ditch
234 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
and swampy ground, in which their horses stuck. Every
man of them was wiped out.
On the 4th of July, however, this body of Wexford-
men suffered defeat at Whiteheaps, and the formidable
Wexford rising was over.
HUMBERT'S INVASION. 235
CHAPTER XXVI.
HUMBERT'S INVASION. THE FATE OF TONE. Hoi/r
AND DWYER.
Not altogether unaided did the Wexfordmen struggle.
On the 8th of June, the Downshire men surprised and
defeated the royalists with a loss of 60 men, but on the
I2th were defeated by a large force of troops at Ballina-
hinch. Henry Munro was the leader of the insurgents
here. And on the 7th June a gallant Presbyterian
gentleman, named Henry Joy McCracken, with 9,000
men, attacked Antrim to\vn and drove out the garrison,
killing Lord O'Neill among others. A force sent by
General Nugent to retake the town was at first un-
successful, but at length, by bringing up artillery,
compelled McCracken and his men to retreat. A
few other slight actions took place, but here, as in the
rest of Ireland, the outbreak was quickly crushed.
Lieutenant William Aylmer of the Kildare militia,
nephew of Sir Fenton Aylmer, commanded the pike-
men in an attempt at Ovidstown Hill. But instead of
charging in a solid mass, as he called on them to do,
his men wheeled behind a thin line of bushes and were
simply mown down by the fire of the troops. He,
however, contrived to escape and joined the Wexford-
men, who elected him General, and he and General
236 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Fitzgerald of New Park, the victor of Ballyellis, after
the defeat at Whiteheaps, kept a considerable band on
foot in the mountains on the border of Wicklow and
Kildare. The pair eventually negotiated with the
humane General Dundas, to whom they surrendered, on
the I2th of July, " on condition that all the other leaders
who had adventured with them should be at liberty
to retire whither they pleased out of the British do-
minions."
This treaty was afterwards shamefully broken in the
case of the brave Esmond Kyan, who, on surrendering,
was court-martialled and hanged ; but Fitzgerald and
Aylmer's lives were spared, and they were expatriated.
It was urged at the heroic Kyan's trial that, as he had
been the means of saving some loyalist prisoners from
being massacred by the rabble in Wexford not the
fighting men he evidently possessed considerable in-
fluence over the rebels, and that he should have used
this influence to dissuade them from insurrection,
instead of encouraging them in it. So his humanity
cost him dear The same argument was used against
Bagenal Harvey ; and consequently another rebel
chief, with true Irish wit, exclaimed, " Thank heaven
no one can accuse me of having saved any Protestant
prisoners."
When all was over some weeks, three French frigates
entered Killala Bay and landed some 1,260 French
officers and men with three pieces of cannon, under a
General Humbert. This was on August 22nd, 1798.
Had they arrived before Vinegar Hill, the war might
have been different.
Humbert seized Killala, and thousands of the peas-
HUMBERT'S INVASION. 237
antry promptly joined him Leaving 200 men to hold
the town, he marched on Castlebar, where General
Lake had gathered an army of 6,000 men to oppose
him. " He was expected to arrive by one road ; he
chose another," through Windy Gap, and the pass
of Barnaghee, and, encountering the English army,
routed it by one charge, before a blow could be
struck.
Such was the panic of the royal troops and the
headlong way in which cavalry and foot alike fled, that
the rout is still known as " the Races of Castlebar."
The terrified royal troops did not halt until they reached
Tuam. The English lost 14 guns, 5 colours and 600 men
in killed, wounded and prisoners
Lord Cornwallis joined Lake, and the two once more
tried to come to conclusions wirh Humbert. He
repulsed them at Kilmaine, Ballinrobe, Tubbercurry,
Collooney, Ballinamore and Drumshambo in succession,
as he marched steadily on through Mayo, Sligo and
Leitrim, en route for the capital.
At Ballinamuck in the county Longford, half way to
Dublin, he was at last, on the 8th September, sur-
rounded and turned to bay by a force ten times superior
to his own. The royal troops were 30,000 strong. He
fought for half an hour, captured Lord Roden and his
dragoons in the early part of the fight, and then, over-
whelmed by numbers, surrendered. " A great and
useless slaughter," says Grant, " was made among
the fugitives " Humbert's Irish allies, to whom of
course no mercy was shown.
Matthew Tone, known as " the silent," Wolfe Tone's
brother, was among the prisoners, as also was another
238 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Franco-Irish officer named Teeling They were both
hanged.
But the English Government had not yet heard the
end of the Rising. Wolfe Tone sailed on September
20th, with a fresh French expedition under General
Hardi It consisted of nine vessels, having on board
3,000 men. Head winds separated the fleet, and,
on October loth, only four vessels entered Lough
Swilly. An English fleet of nine ships, under Admiral
Warren, appeared in view, and a desperate battle
ensued. Tone, who wore the uniform of a French
General, to which rank he had been advanced, w r as on
the flagship, the Hoche. She was attacked by no less
than four British men-of-war, but she resisted for six
hours, Tone righting as bravely as any and refusing
to seek safety in a small boat when advised to do so.
When she was only like a log on the water the Hoche
struck her flag.
Tone had commanded one of the batteries and
seemed " like a man seeking to rush upon death."
He did not wish to survive defeat and failure yet
again.
Taken to I,etterkenny, at a dinner given to the
French officers Tone was recognised by Sir George
Hill an old schoolfellow in Trinity College and an
Orange magistrate who had him arrested. He was
tried by court-martial, and, of course, found guilty.
He claimed a soldier's death as an officer in the French
army, that he be shot, not hanged like a dog. But his
foes refused to grant him such a death ; and so he is
supposed to have opened a vein in his neck with a
knife. After lingering for some days in pain, he died
HUMBERT'S INVASION. 239
on the igth of November, 1798. Many believed at the
time that he was privately murdered in his prison.
His body lies in the churchyard of Bodenstown,
Kildare. " Thus passed away," says Dr. Madden,
" one of the master-spirits of his time." Thus perished
one of the most formidable enemies England had ever
had to deal with in Ireland. " England," wrote
Daniel Crilly, " was rid of the most powerful and subtle
opponent to her sway in Ireland since the days of Hugh
O'Neill." " His fearless and unselfish devotion to his
country's cause, for which he gave up all worldly
pleasure, comfort and ambition, has made his name
enshrined for all time in the hearts of his countrymen."
(Ferguson).
" General " Joseph Holt, who was a Protestant
farmer of substance before the outbreak, kept the flag
of insurrection flying among the Wicklow Mountains
until the 8th November. His corps of " Mountain
Cavalry," which included in its ranks Hackett, as
colonel, and the bold Michael Dwyer as captain, repea-
tedly routed troops sent against it, chased these back to
Dublin. The Government offered 300 reward for
Holt's capture, and increased it later. He surrendered
on honourable terms, through I^ord Powerscourt, and
was exiled. Captain Michael Dwyer refused to come
in and participate in the pardon, and, with a few daring
spirits, easily swollen at any time to thirty or more men,
continued the hopeless struggle for years. We shall
hear of him again in 1803, when he was still holding
out.
One of his most famous exploits was that on the I9th
December, 1798. He was surprised in a cottage at
240 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
Bernamuck in the Glen of Imale, among the Wicklow
Mountains, his snug retreat, having with him only
three companions. The soldiers Highlanders had sur-
rounded the cabin and called on him to surrender.
He refused. It was the dead of night and the ground
was deep in snow. Each of the four outlaws, for such
they had been made, defended a side of the hut and
kept the assailants at bay, killing several, until these
succeeded in setting the roof on fire.
By that time two of the outlaws, Samuel McAlister
and John Savage, were desperately wounded.
" Captain," said McAlister then, addressing Dwyer,
" Savage and I are done for. We'll throw open the door
and rush out. The soldiers will empty their pieces into
us. Then you and Costello should be able to burst
through."
Dwyer would not have it at first, but McAlister and
Savage insisted, and they had their way. It was a
deed of the sublimest heroism. Embracing each other,
they flung open the door and
" Stood before the foemen, revealed amid the flame.
From out their levelled pieces the wished-for volley came."
Riddled with shot, the heroic McAlister and the
equally heroic Savage sank across one another. Then
out like furies, with clubbed muskets, burst Dwyer
and Pat Costello. Dwyer got through, but his sur-
viving companion was captured. Running like a deer,
the daring outlaw chief disappeared into the snow and
darkness, and easily eluded pursuit among his native
fastnesses.
The Rebellion of '98 cost the insurgents 50,000
HUMBERT'S INVASION. 241
persons, many of whom were non-combatants and
brutally slaughtered, the royalists lost 20,000.
James Napper Tandy, whose name is familiar to all
Irishmen from his mention in the popular rebel ballad
of '98, " The Wearing of the Green," had also gone to
France, like Tone, with a view to urging the Directory
to send aid to the insurgents. He received provisional
rank as a general in the French army, and got together
" a small body of Irish refugees, intending to form the
nucleus of an army in Ireland. They sailed in the
Anacreon and landed on the coast of Donegal, but
embarked again and sailed northward," the expedition
eventually coming to nothing. Tandy was arrested
at Hamburg, but released. Arrested again, he was
sentenced to death, but ultimately pardoned on condi-
tion that he left the country.
The pikes used by the insurgents, their principal,
one might almost say, only weapon, were fifteen to
eighteen feet long, the staffs being made of ash, and
the spear-like heads having a small keen-bitted axe-
head on one side with a sharpened hook on the other,
as a rule, for the purpose of cutting the reins of cavalry.
Sometimes the axe-head was omitted, but the hook
was always attached. Strange to say, the Wexfordmen
do not seem to have attempted to organise a cavalry
corps a decided mistake on their part, one would
think.
" The uniform adopted by the rebel chiefs was green,
faced with white or yellow, and laced with gold. They
wore white vests, buckskin breeches, half boots
(' Hessians ') and cocked hats adorned with cock
neck-feathers and green cockades." (Grant.)
242 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
A Grand National Committee of seven was appointed
by them to form a general board of direction, and
Bagenal Harvey was elected president ; then there
was a senate or Council of Elders, and a General Council
or Board of Deputies consisting of 500 members, so
that during its short-lived insurrection Wexford was
practically a republic.
The generals of the United Army were all duly elected,
and consisted of : Generalissimo, Father Philip Roche ;
Generals Father John and Michael Murphy, Father
Kearns and Father Clinch; Generals Bagenal Harvey,
Edward Fitzgerald, Edward Roche, Esmond Kyan,
Anthony Perry of Inch, Garret Byrne of Ballymanus,
Thomas Cloney, Edward Hay, Patrick Sutton (Coun-
cillor Sutton of Wexford), John Rossiter, John Kelly
of Killann, William Aylmer, Matthew Keogh, O'Hea,
Doyle and Redmond. Nicholas Gray, who afterwards
took part in a later rebellion, was secretary of the com-
mander-in-chief and signed all official papers.
Of the gentlemen of property and superior education
who formed members of the rebel senate or Council
of Elders, the most prominent were John Henry Col-
clough of Ballyteague and his brother, Cornelius Grogan,
Dr. M'Cullom, Mr. Brennan, who had held the post of
High Sheriff of the County, and Mr. Lysaght.
In all there were 16 to 20 priests among the insurgents,
but in no sense was it a Catholic rebellion. Many of the
most trusted leaders of the peasantry, as we have shown,
were Protestants, such as Bagenal Harvey, one of the
two Colcloughs, Grogan, Perry, Keogh, McCracken,
Munro, and Holt, to say nothing of Wolfe Tone, Lord
Edward, etc.
HUMBERT'S INVASION. 243
: They rose in dark and evil days
To right their native land ;
They kindled here a living blaze
That nothing shall withstand.
Alas, that might can vanquish right I
They fell and passed away,
But true men, like you men,
Are plenty here to day.
Then, here's their memory may it be
For us a guiding light,
To cheer our strife for liberty,
And teach us to unite.
Through good and ill be Ireland's still,
Though sad as their's your fate,
And true men, be you men,
Like those of 'Ninety-Eight.
244 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER XXVII.
How THE " UNION WAS PASSED."
Ireland was crushed once more and lay prone beneath
the heel of England yet again. Pitt, the British Prime
Minister, no longer had cause to dread the moral force
of the Volunteers or the physical force of an exasperated
peasantry. The power of both had been broken by
the awful insurrection of '98, so cruelly provoked and
as cruelly put down. He determined to end the Parlia-
ment he had so unwillingly conceded to Ireland, the
legislative freedom that " Grattan's Parliament " had
won, and he now advanced his scheme for the Legis-
lative Union of Great Britain and Ireland.
Resistance was out of the question by Ireland, reduced
to such utter helplessness ; and the great mass of the
people, the Catholics, were deluded by Lord Cornwallis,
the Viceroy or Lord Lieutenant, into thinking that
" Catholic Emancipation " would be granted on the Act
of Union passing into law.
On January 22nd of the year, 1799, following that
dreadful one of so much blood and heroism, the sugges-
tion of the Union was made by Cornwallis, but the
proposal was defeated by the Irish House of Commons
by a majority of five, in the debate on the Address,
although the Irish House of Lords, as might be expected,
approved it.
HOW THE " UNION WAS PASSED." 245
The country was jubilant, but, during the recess that
followed, Lords Cornwallis, Clare and Castlereagh
left no stone unturned, no vile method unused, to secure
a majority for the Union in the next Session. Needless
to say, the English Parliament had approved the
proposal. All officials who had voted against the
measure were dismissed, and peerages, pensions and
places were liberally bestowed to win votes. Owners
of " pocket " or " rotten boroughs " were bribed with
big sums of money to put in men who would vote as
was wanted, while all manner of false rumours of threat-
ening French invasions and revolutionary plots were
disseminated amongst the landed gentry, to scare them
into supporting the only means of " safety for society
and security for property, viz., a Union with Great
Britain." All these means were openly employed by
the Government to effect its end. There was no need
for concealment or caution the country was crushed
and helpless. The secret service money was also
largely used for the desired end, in bribes and corrup-
tion of all sorts.
Some of the Catholic and Protestant Bishops sup-
ported the Government measure ; but the great mass
of the people of all denominations was steadfastly
opposed to the destruction of their independent nation-
ality. The Catholics did not want emancipation at the
expense of that.
Parliament reassembled in 1800, and Lord Castlereagh,
who was Chief Secretary, brought forward the Union
Bill. Sir Lawrence Parsons, in a powerful oration,
proposed an amendment " that it was desirable to
maintain the independence of the Irish Parliament
246 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
as settled in 1782." Ponsonby, Bushe and Plunket
also spoke on the patriot side, as also a Mr. Egan.
The last-mentioned was addressing the House when a
whisper ran through it.
" Grattan ! Grattan is here ! "
The great Patriot leader had been an invalid and out
of the country, trying to recruit his health, broken by his
heroic devotion to his country in Parliament.
A tremendous shout arose without on College Green.
It was taken up in the lobbies. The doors of the
Chamber of the Commons was thrown open and " the
inspired countenance of Henry Grattan " was revealed.
Emaciated, but with preternaturally kindling eye, he
tottered feebly forward, supported by Ponsonby and
Moore.
The whole House rose respectfully, cheer following
upon cheer. Ix>rd Castlereagh bowed formally. Grattan
had been returned for the close borough of Wicklow,
which belonged to a Mr. Tighe. Egan willingly gave
way to the great orator, who, unable to stand, asked
permission to speak sitting ; and then he was heard
" to thunder again those iron words that thrill 'd like
the clash of spears." He spoke for two hours " with
unprecedented fire and splendour."
But all in vain his eloquence, his forcible argument
that " it was not in the power of the Parliament to put
an end to its own existence." In vain his glowing
words, his efforts to awaken some spark of patriot fire
in the corrupt hearts of his hearers. The division that
followed, after eighteen hours' debate, resulted in a
majority of 42 for the Government.
Pitt, the English Premier, had wanted a majority
HOW THE " UNION WAS PASSED." 247
of not less than 50. Desperately, "inch by inch,"
Grattan and the Patriots fought the measure in its
progress through the House the Speaker, Mr. Foster,
being one of its most vehement opponents from first
to last.
When in the final division in the Commons, 153
voted for it and 88 against, Foster's " lips seemed to
decline their office. At length, with an eye averted
from the object which he hated, he proclaimed, with a
subdued voice, ' the ayes have it.' For an instant he
stood statue-like, then indignantly and in disgust,
flung the bill upon the table and sank into his chair with
an exhausted spirit." (Barrington.)
The Bill received the royal assent on August 2nd,
1800, and the two Parliaments of Great Britain and
Ireland were declared to be henceforth one. Ireland
was no longer a nation ; she had sold her birthright,
or rather it had been sold over her head by her corrupt
Ascendancy representatives !
Batteries of artillery were kept in readiness to sweep
the streets around the old Parliament House on the day
the Bill passed, in case of a popular outbreak.
The Act of Union came into operation on the ist
January, 1801. As to its chief articles, they will be
found in any history, no matter how small, and so need
not be recapitulated here. A sordid business from first
to last, the selling of a nation's birthright, the Act's
only claim to inclusion here in a romance of Irish history
is its patriotic resistance by such as Grattan and Foster.
Grattan became a member of the United, or English,
House of Commons in 1805, and a persistent advocate
there of Catholic rights. He lived till 1820.
248 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
The Rev. Dr. Dalton, in his " History of Ireland,"
thus compares Grattan and Flood : " Both were men
of the highest ability .... Flood was cold, measured,
calculating; Grattan impetuous and energetic . . .
In voice and manner and gesture Flood had the advan-
tage, for Grattan's voice was thin and his gestures
ungraceful, but amid the force and fire of his delivery,
the wealth and splendour of his imagery, the beauty
of his diction, these defects were forgotten ; and if
Flood was a strong river advancing with measured
flow, Grattan was a mountain torrent . . . . -.;
carrying in its rushing course everything in its path.
In the moral qualities all the advantages were on
Grattan's side. Flood was jealous and vain, Grattan
was neither ; Flood deserted the popular cause for
office, Grattan was incorruptible ; he loved Ireland
with an undivided heart, and to serve her was his highest
ambition. The ascendancy of his talents and character
was quickly recognised, and he soon occupied the place
which Flood had filled."
Grattan had a handsome and singularly sweet,
winning countenance, though rather elongated, unlike
the broad, heavy, massive face we usually associate
with the orator and as exemplified by O'Connell, Glad-
stone, John Bright, and others. Flood's nose spoiled
his face, curving inward and then outward, to a sharp
aggressive point.
The pair are generally represented in Volunteer
uniform ; and, in the well-known picture of the Irish
House of Commons before the Union, are shown standing
together in the foreground, on the right hand side,
Flood whispering something of evident moment, with
HOW THE " UNION WAS PASSED." 249
forefinger raised to emphasise what he is saying, in the
ear of Grattan, who is listening attentively and as
evidently weighing his words.
In the same famous picture, John Philpot Curran,
the eloquent and celebrated advocate of the United
Irishmen, a trim-built, rugged-faced little Irishman,
is addressing the House, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
the patriotic Geraldine who figured so prominently
in the rebellion of 1798, is easily discernible on the
left hand side by reason of the fact that he preferred his
own head of hair to the powdered wigs of those about
him.
It was an age of duelling, and Grattan, Deader of
the House of Commons as he was, " was ever ready to
sustain with his pistols the force of his arguments."
He fought a duel with Lord Earlsfort, and another with
Isaac Corry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Corry
had made " a coarse and virulent attack on him, calling
him an ' unimpeached traitor.' " Grattan thereupon
" overwhelmed Corry in a torrent of invective scarcely
ever equalled in any Parliament." It was during the
debate on the Union. Corry particularly resented
being called "a dancing master " by Grattan, and he
challenged Grattan. Grattan " went from the House
to fight him and shot him through the arm," and " in
consequence became more powerful and more popular
than ever."
So universal was duelling and so preposterous the
ideas entertained of it, that " no gentleman was con-
sidered to have taken his proper station in life till he
had ' smelt powder,' as it was called ; no barrister could
go on circuit till he had obtained a reputation in this
250 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
way and many men of the bar, practising
half a century ago, owed their eminence not to powers
of eloquence or to legal ability, but to a daring spirit
and the number of duels they had fought."
The same author quoted above relates that when
Dr. Hodgkinson, Vice-Provost of Trinity College, then
a very old man, was consulted as to the best course
of study to pursue for the bar, whether the student
should begin with Fearne or Chitty, he replied :
" My young friend, practise four hours a day at
Rigby's pistol gallery and it will advance you to the
woolsack faster than all the Fearnes and Chittys in the
library."
Sir Jonah Barrington gives a catalogue of barristers
who killed their man and of judges who actually fought
their way to the bench.
Naturally this state of things bred a very lawless
state of society, and in Grattan's day the idle young
gentlemen about town, known as " Bucks," associated
themselves into various clubs, where they comported
themselves in the most outrageous manner. Many
of them, calling themselves " Pinkindindies," went
about with a small portion cut off the scabbards of their
swords everyone with any pretension to gentility
then wore a sword so that they could prick or " pink,"
with the naked points, anyone with whom they
quarrelled.
These Bucks were for the most part only cowardly
bullies, and merely behaved thus as a rule when they
had the courage of numbers. " Tiger " Roche, perhaps
the most famous of these swaggering roysterers, was,
however, a queer compound of courage and cowardice,
HOW THE " UNION WAS PASSED." 251
displaying either quality at different times. Another
noted bully was " Fighting Fitzgerald." " Tiger "
Roche once, singlehanded, went to the aid of an old
gentleman, his son and daughter who were assailed
by a party of " Pinkindindies," and set about the
cowardly gang so vigorously that he wounded some
and put the rest to ignominious flight.
" How did they pass the Union ?
By perjury and fraud ;
By slaves who sold their land for gold
As Judas sold his God. . . .
How thrive we by the Union ?
Look round your native land ;
In ruined trade and wealth decayed
See slavery's surest brand."
252 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ROBERT EMMET.
Ireland was generally supposed to be still crushed,
but in 1803, a fresh insurrection startled everybody
and showed that, phoenix-like, patriotism could arise
from out the ashes of its dead self.
Robert Emmet, a younger brother of Thomas Addis
Emmet, one of the leaders of the United Irishmen,
still cherished hopes of a successful rebellion against
England. He was only 25, and full of ardour and
enthusiasm and a deep, abiding love of his country.
To-day he stands out high above all others as Ireland's
dearest patriot son, the idolised patriot-martyr of the
great mass of the people. Wolfe Tone, I^ord Edward,
Owen Roe O'Neill, Sarsfield all these, bright and
illustrious names on Ireland's roll of fame as they are,
give second place in the heart of the Irish people to
Robert Emmet.
He was a Protestant and the son of a distinguished
Dublin physician, and he had been expelled from
Trinity College because of his revolutionary ideas.
His portraits show a small, compact head, with a thin,
thoughtful, yet sternly resolute face, indicating a highly
cultured and refined nature ; close-cut black hair,
falling in slightly curling, carelessly parted manner
ROBERT EMMET. 253
over a broad, high, rounding brow ; the nose, a decidedly
aggressive Roman, that of the born soldier ; the lips
tight-shut, yet full of eloquence ; the eyes large, brilliant,
defiant ; the chin firm and well-set. In stature he
was about five feet eight, and though slight in person,
he was most active and capable of enduring great
fatigue.
It is believed that in '98, being then only 20, he acted
as confidential agent for the United Irishmen abroad
He interviewed Napoleon and Talleyrand in Paris, and,
unlike Wolfe Tone, " was impressed with the future
Emperor's insincerity " as regarded Ireland and its
invasion. Seeing England embroiled in the great war
with France, he now, in 1802, determined to attempt
another rebellion. He conferred with Lord Cloncurry,
the patriotic nobleman who, as related, is supposed to
have been the mysterious and unknown fifth member
of the United Irish Directory. Cloncurry does not
appear, however, to have engaged in this wild scheme,
for such it was undoubtedly.
Along with Miles Byrne, James Hope, Thomas
Russell, who had been a lieutenant in the 64th Regi-
ment of Foot and a prominent United Irishman, Nicholas
Gray (Bagenal Harvey's secretary) and others including
Michael Dwyer, the famous Wicklow insurgent chief,
still in rebellion at that period, he formed a plan for the
sudden seizure of Dublin castle and the ministers of
the Crown there, and thus inaugurating a general
insurrection. Michael Dwyer, who visited Emmet in
disguise in Dublin, along with his two lieutenants,
Martin Burke and Hugh Byrne, was opposed to the
scheme as impracticable, but was nevertheless quite
254 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
willing to take part in it, and help it forward in every
way.
Emmet formed depots of arms in various streets in
Dublin, the principal one being in Marshalsea Lane,
off Thomas Street. Here arms and ammunition were
manufactured, forty men being constantly employed.
Uniforms were also being made by tailors in the secret
at these depots. Over 10,000 pikes and many muskets,
pistols and blunderbusses were afterwards found in
them. Emmet himself invented a hand grenade, or
infernal machine, to explode in the face of advancing
troops. July 23rd, 1803, was fixed for the rising,
but, on the i8th July, an explosion at one of the depots
in Patrick Street brought the authorities down on the
conspirators. Some arms were found, but the majority
were secreted in time.
On the day fixed for the rising, treachery and pusil-
lanimity ruined everything. Michael Dwyer and the
Wicklow men waited in vain for the messenger that was
to be sent them. The Kildare men were turned back by
a traitor, who told them the rising had been postponed.
Miles Byrne and 300 Wexfordmen also received no word
and so remained inactive, expecting it every minute.
Emmet himself was deceived. To the last he thought
he had large bodies of men at his disposal. With a
miserable following of 80 men, he sallied out at eight in
the evening, dressed in his uniform of green and gold,
from the depot in Marshalsea Lane. Some of the men
were drunk, and nearly all insubordinate. A man
rushed up crying that the soldiers were coming.
Emmet pushed on with those immediately about
him, but the stragglers began to pillage shops, attacked
ROBERT EMMET. 255
a Mr. Leech of the custom-house, and piked him. Then
the coach of Lord Kilwarden, the Chief Justice, a most
humane man, came up, and the mad , unruly mob stopped
the coach, and one Shannon ran his pike through the
unfortunate judge. His nephew who was with him
was also killed, but his daughter was left unmolested.
Emmet himself came rushing back, filled with horror
and disgust at such bloodshed, and saw her in safety
into a neighbouring house. It is supposed that Kil-
warden was mistaken by the insurgents for Lord
Carleton, who had sentenced the Brothers Sheares.
In any case the deed was a diabolical and wanton
crime.
Emmet had now lost all control over the savage mob.
A detachment of troops appeared at the corner of
Cut-purse Row, and fired on it, when it scattered at once.
Small parties carried on a few skirmishes, attacking the
guardhouse on the Coombe, and killing Colonel Brown
and two members of the Liberty Rangers. But they,
too, were dispersed, and Robert Emmet was a ruined,
outlawed, conscience-stricken and broken-hearted man.
He could easily have got out of the country though,
for he succeeded in reaching Dwyer's secret retreat
in the Wicklow mountains, but he loved Sarah Curran,
the youngest daughter of the illustrious advocate,
John Philpot Curran. Curran did not approve of the
match, and the lovers had plighted their troth in secret.
Emmet returned to his old lodgings at Harold's Cross,
a suicidal act, in order to have a last interview with his
betrothed, as she passed on her way to her father's
country house, the Priory, near Dundrum.
There he was arrested on August 25th by Major Sirr
256 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
the well-known town major, and he was subsequently
identified by Dr. Elrington, a Provost of Trinity
College.
On September iQth, he was tried for high treason.
He refused to make any defence. Curran, incensed
at his daughter's name being mentioned in connection
with him, had declined to act as his counsel. The trial
lasted only one day before I/ord Norbury, and at
midnight a verdict of guilty was returned against him.
Before sentence was passed upon him he made the
famous and eloquent speech in which he requested
" the charity of the world's silence, and that his tomb
remain uninscribed and his memory in oblivion until
other times and other men could do justice to his
character."
" When my country takes her place among the
nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my
epitaph be written," he said in conclusion.
At noon the following day, September 20th, 1803,
he was led to execution, the gibbet being erected in
Thomas Street, at the head of Bridgefoot Street, and
directly opposite the Protestant Church of St. Catherine.
" A carriage, containing Miss Curran and a friend,
was drawn up on the roadside, near Kilmainham, and,
evidently by preconcert, as the vehicle containing Emmet
passed on its way to the place of execution, the unhappy
pair exchanged their last greeting on earth." Sarah
Curran was closely veiled, but the eyes of love were
sharp. Robert Emmet put his head out of the window
of the carriage in which he was and gazed intently,
waving his hand several times till out of sight. " At
the moment Emmet passed the lady removed her veil,
Robert Emmett on his way to execution
ROBERT EMMET. 257
stood up in the carriage, waved her handkerchief,
and sank back on the seat," apparently swooning.
It was believed up to the last that Thomas Russell,
who was in town for that purpose, would attempt a
rescue with the co-operation of Michael Dwyer and his
mountain band. But nothing of the kind took place.
It would have been useless, for the Government had
taken every precaution to guard against any such
attempt, strong bodies of cavalry and infantry guarding
every approach and surrounding the scaffold. With a
serene countenance and air, Bmmet suffered death,
and his head was then severed from his body and held
up to view as that of a traitor.
Thomas Moore has " embalmed for all time the sad
story of Emmet and the ill-starred lady of his love,
who ere many years passed over followed him to the
grave " (I^uby). Moore was his fellow-student and
companion, and wrote round him the two famous
songs, " Oh ! breathe not his name," and " She is
far from the land where her young hero sleeps." This
last refers to Sarah Curran, who, though she was even-
tually prevailed on to marry another a worthy, noble
gentleman who loved her tenderly never forgot him,
and died really of a broken heart, soon after, on the
shores of the Adriatic.
What pathos there must have been, what anguish
in that last memorable interview of theirs, their meeting
as he was on his way to execution ! What a scene for
a drama !
" When he who adores thee," another of Moore's
melodies, is supposed to be Emmet's dying address to
his country ; and the poet relates how once, when he
s
258 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
was playing the air of " Let Erin remember the days of
old," in the company of Emmet, the young patriot-
martyr exclaimed :
" Oh, that I were marching at the head of a thousand
men to that tune ! "
" On the whitewashed walls of every Irish peasant's
home, beside the pictures of the Pope and of O'Connell,
there is another that is familiar to us all," writes Dr.
D' Alton, "It is that of Emmet in his white trousers
and vest, his Hessian boots, his coat of green and gold,
his military cloak, his cocked hat in his hand, his face
spiritualised by enthusiasm, his eyes filled with the light
that has never shone upon land or sea. Wherever the
Irish race has gone it is the same, and abroad or at home
the name of Emmet is one with which to conjure."
Another familiar picture of him is with his arms folded,
facing his judges at his trial, dressed in civilian attire.
Sarah Curran was not exactly handsome, nor was she
tall. She was very slight with dark complexion, and
eyes large and black. " Her look was the mildest,
sweetest and softest ever seen." The gentleman she
eventually married was Major Sturgeon, whom she met
while on a visit to a Quaker family in Cork named
Penrose.
Thomas Russell, Emmet's friend, had been captured
before the execution, and he in his turn suffered death.
He lies buried in the Protestant churchyard of Down-
patrick. Miles Byrne escaped to France and rose to
eminence in the French army, becoming a chef de
bataillon under Napoleon.
Michael Dwyer held out in the Wicklow mountains
some time longer, when, influenced by the arguments
ROBERT EMMET. 259
of Mr. Hume of Humewood, he surrendered on honour-
able conditions, and was expatriated to Australia.
He died in 1814 in Sydney, New South Wales, and
was buried there.
" General " Holt, his old brother-in-arms, had also
been transported to New South Wales, but received a
pardon in 1809 and returned to Ireland, dying in 1826
at Kingstown.
PART IX.
MORAL OR PHYSICAL FORCE.
Chisel the likeness of the Chief
Not in gaiety, nor grief ;
Change not by your art to stone
Ireland's laugh or Ireland's moan . .
But would you by your art unroll
His own and Ireland's secret soul
And give to others time to scan
The greatest greatness of the man ?
Fierce defiance let him be
Hurling at our enemy
From a base as fair and sure
As our love is true and pure. . . .
On his broad brow let there be
A type of Ireland's history ;
Pious, generous, deep and warm,
Strong and changeful as a storm . . .
Knit his look to purpose stern. . . .
And the hope that leads him on ...
Thus he spoke and thus he stood,
Proffering in our cause his blood. . .
Chisel thus, and thus alone,
If to the man you'd change the stone."
"O'Connell's Statue," by THOMAS DAVIS.
DANIEL O'CONNELL, THE LIBERATOR 263
CHAPTER XXIX.
DANIEL O'CONNELL, THE LIBERATOR.
The Irish Catholics, who had hoped that the Union
would be accompanied, or shortly followed, by the
removal of the disabilities under which they laboured,
very quickly found out that that hope was but a delu-
sion and a snare. A vigorous agitation for Catholic
Emancipation was now started and brought to the
front a man whose name soon became a power in the
land, a man who was destined to win by his wonderful
forensic eloquence those rights so long denied him and
his fellow-religionists.
This was the renowned Daniel O'Connell, rightfully
called " the Liberator. " He was born 1775, near
Cahirciveen in Kerry. Adopting the legal profession, he
was called to the Bar in the year of horror and heroism,
1798. In 1800 he spoke at a meeting against the
Union, and after it he became the leader of the Catholics
of Ireland, being elected, in 1810, the chairman of their
committee. With his legal knowledge and great
shrewdness, he was able to evade the law of several
new Acts, which were made to suppress the various
associations that he formed, and so fearlessly continued
his agitation.
At one of the Catholic meetings that took place in
264 THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.
January, 1815, O'Connell referred to the corporation
of Dublin as " beggarly." To this reference a Mr.
D'Esterre took exception and challenged O'Connell
to a duel with pistols. O'Connell though many of
his friends believed the whole affair was simply a plot
of his enemies to try and get rid of him accepted the
challenge, and had for his second a noted duellist, Major
MacNamara, known as " Fireball " MacNamara, on
account of his duelling propensities.
D'Esterre and O'Connell met at Bishop's Court
outside Dublin, and O'Connell mortally wounded his
antagonist with his first shot, D'Esterre missing him.
O'Connell, however, deeply regretted having caused the
unfortunate man's death. In the same year he was
challenged to fight another duel by Secretary Peel,
but they never met, O'Connell being arrested in
London on his way to the Continent where the duel was
to take place.
So high ran sectarian feeling in England that he made
very little progress until 1821, when a Catholic Relief
Bill rewarded his efforts and passed the Commons, to
be thrown out by the Lords. O'Connell, two years
later (1823) founded the Catholic Association, members
subscribing a pound a year and associates one shilling.
Then penny monthly subscriptions were adopted.
These subscriptions were called the " Catholic Rent,"
and soon averaged 500 a week. Government, alarmed,
promptly suppressed the Association by Act of Parlia-
ment, whereupon O'Connell re-started it under another
name, that of " The New Catholic Association," when,
ashamed of themselves possibly, the authorities did not
again interfere.
DANIEL 0'CONNEI