A history of England

by Charles Oman

Hoche's attempt to invade Ireland.

These conspirators did not at first intend to rise without getting aid from France, and till 1796 there was never much chance of their friends over-sea being able to send them help. But when the fleets of France, Spain, and Holland were united, it seemed possible to send an expedition to Ireland. In December, 1796, the Brest squadron took on board 16,000 men, under the young and vigorous General Hoche, and made a dash for the coast of Munster. Slipping out while the English blockading squadron was blown off by a storm, Hoche's fleet got safely to sea. But the ships met with a hurricane, and were so beaten about and dispersed that only half of them reached their rendezvous at Bantry Bay in County Kerry. Hoche, their leader, never appeared, and Grouchy, his lieutenant—the man who in later years was Napoleon's unlucky marshal—shrank from landing with 7000 men in an unknown country where he could detect no signs of the promised insurrection. He lost heart and returned to Brest, without having been met or molested by the English. If he had landed, there is no doubt that the whole south of Ireland would have risen to join him. In the next year there was an even greater peril of invasion while the English fleet was in mutiny. The Dutch squadron, which was beaten at Camperdown, had been given Ireland as its goal, and might have got there unopposed if it had started six weeks earlier.

Harsh measures of the Irish Government.

Conscious of the danger which it was incurring, the Irish government was stirred up to vigorous measures. All the loyalists of Ireland—the Orangemen, as they were now called [53]—had already been embodied in regiments of yeomanry, and were ready to move at the first alarm of rebellion. Lord Lake, the commander-in-chief in Ireland, was directed to disarm the whole Catholic population, and to search everywhere for concealed arms. The order was carried out with more vigilance than mercy, as the task of finding the weapons was entrusted to the Orangemen of the yeomanry corps, who were determined to crush their rebellious countrymen at any cost. They employed the roughest measures to elicit information, flogging the suspected peasants and torturing them with pitch-caps and pointed stakes, till they revealed the hiding-place of their weapons. But, if cruel, Lake's measures were completely successful. In Ulster, where the search began, no less than 50,000 muskets and 70,000 pikes were seized, and if the same energy had been displayed in other parts of Ireland, the rebellion of 1798 would have been impossible. But the outcry caused in the Irish and English Parliaments by the rough doings of the yeomanry prevented the full execution of the disarmament, and the United Irishmen of the south retained their concealed weapons, and waited for the signal of revolt.

Outbreak of the Rebellion.

The crisis came in the spring of 1798, when the government were at last put by an informer on the track of the central committee of the United Irishmen. The leaders and organizers who had so long eluded them were at last caught and lodged in Dublin Castle, save Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who fought with the police who came to arrest him, slew two, and was himself killed in the struggle. The seizure of the chiefs, instead of wrecking the conspiracy, caused it to burst out with sudden violence, for the Irish thought that all was discovered, and that rebellion was the only way to save their necks. An abortive rising in Ulster was easily put down, but in the south-east of Ireland the whole countryside rose in arms, and great bodies of insurgents attacked not only the loyal yeomanry but every Protestant family in the district. The rebels were under no central control, and were headed only by village ruffians and ignorant and bigoted priests. Acts worthy of the Parisian mob were perpetrated by the peasantry of Wexford, where the rebellion was strongest. They shot the Bishop of Ferns, and many other noncombatants, including women and children. On Wexford bridge they put several scores of persons to death by tossing them in the air and catching them on pikes. At Scullabogue they burnt alive a whole barnful of prisoners.

Battle of Vinegar Hill.

For a fortnight there was sharp fighting in the south, for the rebels showed as much courage as ferocity. But the Orange yeomanry were stirred to frantic wrath by the atrocities of their enemies, and put down the insurrection with little aid from the regular troops. The decisive fight was at the fortified camp of Vinegar Hill, the chief stronghold of the rebels. When it was stormed, and when Father Murphy, the leader of the Wexford men, had fallen, the peasants dispersed. The atrocities which they had committed were promptly avenged, and the triumphant Orangemen hanged or shot hundreds of prisoners, with small attentions to the forms of justice.

General Humbert's expedition.

Two months after the battle of Vinegar Hill, a small French expedition succeeded in slipping out of Rochefort and landed in Connaught. But the back of the rebellion was broken, and though General Humbert routed some militia at Castlebar, he was soon surrounded and captured by Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant, who beset him with a tenfold superiority of numbers.