A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




[2] According to my remembrance, he was Baron Monteagle in the English
peerage.




CHAPTER IX.

FIRST REBELLION.


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

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

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

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

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

That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak brother, high
in the ranks of the society, and deep in their confidence, happened,
when travelling up to Dublin in company with a royalist, to speak half
mysteriously, half ostentatiously, upon the delicate position which
he held in the councils of his dangerous party. This weak man, Thomas
Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea Castle, in Kildare,
colonel of a regiment of United Irish, treasurer for Kildare, and in
other offices of trust for the secret society, was prevailed on by Mr.
William Cope, a rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind by
pictures of the horrors attending a revolution under the circumstances
of Ireland, to betray all he knew to the government. His treachery was
first meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequence
of his depositions, on March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin,
the government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading
conspirators. The whole committee of Leinster, amounting to thirteen
members, was captured on this occasion; but a still more valuable prize
was made in the persons of those who presided over the Irish Directory,
viz., Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as names
went, their places were immediately filled up; and a hand-bill was
issued, on the same day, with the purpose of intercepting the effects of
despondency amongst the great body of the conspirators. But Emmet and
O'Connor were not men to be effectually replaced: government had struck a
fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own good luck. On
the 19th of May following, in consequence of a proclamation (May 11)
offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was
apprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin,
but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party,
Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was
wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately,
that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some
time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June, from a pistol shot which
took effect on his shoulder. Lord Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded as
an injured man. From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he had
powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an early stage of
their revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but an
indiscretion that admitted of some palliation in so young a man and of so
ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously
dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy of one who, on several
grounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected his
powers of self-control, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself
beloved; he had considerable talents; his very name, as a sone of the
only [1] ducal house in Ireland, was a spell and a rallying word for a
day of battle to the Irish peasantry; and, finally, by his marriage with
a natural daughter of the then Duke of Orleans, he had founded some
important connections and openings to secret influence in France. The
young lady whom he had married was generally known by the name of
_Pamela;_ and it has been usually supposed that she is the person
described by Miss Edgeworth, under the name of Virginia, in the latter
part of her "Belinda." How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamela
was certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was said to
have gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which seems to argue the
same sort of ignorance, and the same docility to any chance impressions,
which characterize the Virginia of Miss Edgeworth. She was a reputed
daughter (as I have said) of Philippe Egalité; and her putative mother
was Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in that prince's family, as
governess to his children, more especially to the sister of the present
[2] French king. Lord Edward's whole course had been marked by generosity
and noble feeling. Far better to have pardoned [3] such a man, and (if
that were possible) to have conciliated his support; but, says a
contemporary Irishman, "those were not times of conciliation."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.