In the North of Ireland, however, the rebellion had practically begun. The magistrates were powerless; the classes who had supported the gentry during the Volunteer Movement were amongst the disaffected. The country was in a state of anarchy; murders and outrages of every sort were incessant. That the measures which the Government and their supporters took to crush the rising rebellion were illegal and barbarous, cannot be denied; that they in fact by their violence hurried on the rebellion is not improbable. But it is still more probable that they were the means of preventing its success; just as, had the Government of Louis XVI shown more vigour at the outset of the Revolution, the Reign of Terror would probably never have taken place. Through evidence obtained by torture, the Government got possession of vast stores of arms which the rebels had prepared; by twice seizing the directors of the movement they deprived it of its central organization; and if they were the cause of the rebellion breaking out sooner than had been intended, the result was that they were able to quell it in one district before it had time to come to a head in another.
War at best is very terrible; and there were two circumstances which made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland if civil war ever breaks out there again.
From Ulster the United Ireland movement spread during 1797 to Leinster, as far south as Wexford, and began to assume a more decidedly religious character. As a contemporary historian wrote:-
"So inveterately rooted are the prejudices of religious antipathy in the minds of the lower classes of Irish Romanists, that in any civil war, however originating from causes unconnected with religion, not all the efforts of their gentry, or even priests, to the contrary could (if I am not exceedingly mistaken) restrain them from converting it into a religious quarrel."
(Had he lived a century later, he might have used the same words.) But though this was generally the case, there were complications as embarrassing as they usually are in Irish affairs. The yeomanry were mainly Protestants, but the majority of the militia were Roman Catholics, and those commanded by Lord Fingall entirely so. There was much disaffection in both branches of the service; besides which, officers and men alike lacked the discipline and experience of regular troops; but as the supply of soldiers from England was wholly inadequate for the situation, the Government were obliged to rely on any forces they could obtain. As the rebellion drifted into being a Roman Catholic movement, the Orangemen became intensely loyal, and were eager to fight on the king's side, but the Government dreaded lest by employing them they might offend the militia. By 1798, when the rebellion in the south was at its height, the north had become comparatively calm. The severities of the previous year had had some salutary effect; the staunch Protestants had no desire to aid in what had become a Roman Catholic rebellion; and the republican party had seen that the universal fraternity of the Jacobin Government of France had turned into a military despotism which was engaged in crushing the neighbouring republics and was almost at war with the sister Republic of America.
But whilst Ulster was growing calmer, the condition of the south was becoming daily more appalling. On the 23rd of May the rebellion actually broke out in the counties of Dublin, Kildare and Meath; and many skirmishes took place in which the losses on the king's side were comparatively few but those of the rebels enormous, in consequence of their ignorance of the use of firearms. The better-trained forces soon got to know that an Irish peasant when armed with a pike was a deadly foe; but when armed with a musket was almost harmless. This part of the campaign will always be specially memorable for the attack made on the little town of Prosperous, in the county of Kildare. It was cleverly made in the early morning; the garrison, taken unawares, were nearly all killed; the Commander, Captain Swayne, being amongst the victims. It was soon afterwards found out that the leader of the rebels was Dr. Esmonde, a gentleman of good family, and first lieutenant in a regiment of yeomanry stationed a few miles off, who had been dining with Captain Swayne the previous evening. He appeared in his regiment the next day, but was identified by a yeoman who had seen him at Prosperous; arrested, tried, and hanged as a traitor.
A Nationalist has recently referred to him as a martyr to the cause of Irish liberty.
By the month of June Wexford had become the centre of the rebellion. In that county it had assumed an essentially religious character (there being, however, a few exceptions on each side), and in no other part of Ireland was the war so terrible either on account of its magnitude or barbarity. The passions of the ignorant peasantry were inflamed by all Protestants being spoken of as Orangemen and a report being diligently circulated that all Orangemen had sworn to destroy the Catholic Faith-exactly the same course that was followed a hundred years later. Roman Catholic priests, wearing their sacred vestments and carrying crucifixes, led the rebel forces; and the ignorant peasants, believing them to be endowed with miraculous powers, followed them with the blind adherence that only fanaticism can inspire. And yet-so strangely contradictory is everything in Ireland-there is clear evidence that amongst those priestly agitators many were at heart deists, who were making use of religion in the hope of furthering Jacobinism. Many Protestants saved their lives by apostatizing, or by allowing their children to be rebaptized; it is but fair to add, however, that several of the older priests, shocked at the conduct of the rebels, concealed heretics in their houses and churches; and that all through the war many priests, in spite of the difficulty of their position, remained loyal and did what they could to aid the king's troops.
The rebels for some weeks held command of the town and county of Wexford, their chief camp being at a place called Vinegar Hill. The country around was searched and plundered; the Protestants who were captured were brought into the rebel camp, and there deliberately butchered in cold blood. How many perished it is impossible to say; the number must have been at the least 400.