Above: The Rebellion

The government were kept well informed of the secret proceedings of the rebels and bided their tune till things were ripe for a swoop. They knew that the 23rd of May had been fixed as the day of rising. On the 12th of March 1798, major Swan, a magistrate, acting on the information of Thomas Reynolds, arrested Oliver Bond and fourteen other delegates assembled in committee in Bond’s house in Bridgestreet, and seized all (heir papers. On the same day Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. MacNevin, and others, were arrested in their homes. A fortnight before, Arthur O’Connor and a priest named O’Coigley or Quigley had been arrested at Margate on their way to France. O’Connor was sent to a Dublin prison but father O’Coigley was tried at Maidstone and hanged.

A reward of 1,000 was offered for tlie apprehension of lord Edward Fitzgerald, the moving spirit of the confederacy. He was arrested on the 19th of May in No. 153 Thomas-street, the house of Nicholas Murphy a feather merchant, on information supplied by Francis Higgins, “the Sham Squire,” proprietor of the Freeman’s Jourrnal. Lord Edward was lying ill in bed, when major Swan, yeomanry captain Ryan, and a soldier, entered the room. But lord Edward drew a dagger and struggled desperately, wounding Swan and Ryan. Major Sirr who had accompanied the party now rushed in with half-a-dozen soldiers, and taking aim, shot lord Edward in the shoulder, who was then over- powered and taken prisoner. But he died of his wound on the 4th of June, at the age of thirty-two. On tlie 21st May two brothers Henry and John Sheares, barristers, members of the Dublin directory of United Irishmen, were arrested. They were convicted on the 12th of July, and hanged two days after. A reprieve for Henry came too late- live minutes after the execution.

The stoppage of the mail coaches from Dublin on the night of the 23rd of May, was to be the signal for the simultaneous rising. They were stopped about two o’clock on the morning of the 24th, and the people rose. But Dublin did not rise, for it had been placed under martial law, and almost the whole of the leaders had been arrested. The rising was only partial: con- fined to the counties of Kildare, Wicklow, and Wexford; and there were some slight attempts m Carlow, Meath, and Dublin, ft was premature: the people were almost without arms, without discipline, plan, or leaders.

On the 26th of May a body of 4,000 insurgents were -defeated on the Hill of Tara. On the same day or rather on Whitsunday the 27th, the rising broke out in Wexford. Here the rebellion assumed a religious character which it had not elsewhere: the rebels were nearly all Roman Catholics, though many of their leaders were Protestants.

This Wexford rising was not the result of any concert with the Dublin directory; for the society of United Irishmen had not made much headway among the quiet industrious peasants of that county. The Wexford people were driven to rebellion simply by the terrible barbarities of the military, the yeomen, and more especially the North Cork militia; and they rose in desperation without any plan or any idea of what they were to do. In their vengeful fury they committed many terrible excesses on tlie Protestant loyalist inhabitants, in blind retaliation for the worse excesses of the militia.

Father John Murphy, parish priest of Kilcormick, finding his little chapel of Boleyvogue (five miles south-east of Ferns) burned by the yeomen, took the lead of the rebels, with another priest, father Michael Murphy, whose chapel liad also been burned ; and on the 27lh of May they defeated and annihilated a party of the North Cork militia on the Mill of Oulart, six miles east of Enniscorthy.
The rebels, having captured 800 stand of arms, marched next un Enniscorthy ; and by the stratagem of driving a herd of bullocks before them to break the ranks of the military, they took the town after a con- test of four hours. The garrison and the Protestant inhabitants
fled to Wexford. About the same time Gorey was abandoned by its garrison, who fled to Arklow.