Mr. Pitt's scheme was doing well. Protestants and Catholics, the upper and the lower class, having been successfully set at each other's throats--the leading spirits of the popular party being snugly caged--the executive thought the moment come to harvest their Dead-sea apples. The capture of Terence was accomplished at a fortunate moment; for things had gone too far now for the project of resistance to be tamely abandoned. The proposed rising was perforce postponed that the harried Directory might for a fourth time reorganise itself. Ill-luck haunted that Directory. Tone, inaugurator of the society, was a broken-spirited exile; Emmett, Neilson, Russell, Bond, zealous disciples of their prophet, languished in Kilmainham; the Honourable Terence Crosbie (most promising blossom on the stem) lay wounded--delirious from fever--within the provost. None of the projectors of rebellion were permitted to take part in it; yet it was evident that the days of meek endurance were at an end. The places of the absent were supplied by men, ambitious but incapable: small country gentlemen of limited attainment, or farmers of little culture, who were speedily swallowed by the flood, to be supplanted in turn by furious fanatics, as ignorant but more unscrupulous than they.
Nothing was attempted on New Year's Eve. January and February passed; March and April came, and were gone. Lord Clare wondered whether he had been too precipitate, and digested Sully's saying: 'Pour la populace ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se soulève, mais par impatience de souffrir.' Had the people not suffered enough yet? The yeomanry motto had been, 'Soyons frères, ou je t'assomme!' and nobly they had acted on it. The people glared and showed their fangs, ready and willing for the fray; but they were leaderless. Those who in the emergency affected to command, racked by indecision, put off the important moment. Rebel and royalist frowned silently one at the other, lance in rest, both itching to go to work, both declining the odium of the first move. It was the last brief lull of stillness before the bursting of the storm--of the storm which had been so long in bursting. Dublin was uncertain how to proceed. If the Croppies would rise and gain one decisive victory, then Dublin, joining them openly, would turn and tear its rulers. On the other hand, should the Croppies encounter tribulation the capital would grovel at the mumbling Viceroy's feet, presenting both cheeks to the smiter with expressions of Christian meekness.
It was an anxious time for the lord-lieutenant and his Privy Council.
To the chancellor's disgust General Abercromby (who supplanted Carhampton), on whom he had counted for friendly co-operation as commander of the forces, chose this awkward period of uncertainty to retire.
'Nothing,' he bluffly said, 'could justify the behaviour of Government. If the two Houses of Parliament chose to turn their motherland into a slaughter-house, dire retribution would be sure to fall upon them some day. At all events he, a stranger, would have nothing to do with political crimes.' And so he went away; and the supreme command was accepted pro tem, by General Lake, till such time as a fit substitute could be selected.
The attitude of pugnacious Pat, eager for the fight, but lance in rest, could not be permitted to endure. That those who were wont to tread on the tails of each other's coats at Donnybrook should in incongruous fashion assume patience like that of St. Simon Stylites was merely an insult to their masters. A little more humour must be displayed by the friends of England--a few more jokes, quite broad ones now. A dozen or so of judicious murders, a grand confiscation of poor men's cattle, a few more virgins ravished--a real sharp touch of the spur, in fact. The jokers acted with a will, and the desired effect was gained. Kildare rose on the 23rd of May. Simultaneous attacks of a timorous kind were made on various strongholds, of which one only could be pronounced successful. The barrack of Prosperous was surprised in the night, the commandant killed, and a few officers sacrificed, the place committed to the flames. This was encouraging, and Government could well afford the loss of a few lives. But the rebels needed a deal of spurring; they were still too craven for an important venture; their hands were unnerved; their blood was chilled by fear of treachery. Oh! degenerate scions of turbulent Keltic kings!
The boys of Kildare, who were the first, casting distrust aside, to take the field, had been ground too low to allow the lamp of patriotism to burn steadily. After an abortive effort of a few days they sued for mercy. Slaves of the soil, hewers of wood and drawers of water, they were doomed to be; their leaders saw it now, and roundly told them so, and they retorted on their leaders. Both indeed were sadly below the mark. If those who endeavoured to command were unable to manage their rabble, the latter were no better than the most innocent of savages. In presence of the foe they forgot the little drilling they had learned, danced forward like children, with hats on pikes and wild gestures of defiance, and tumbled pellmell over each other, hit or alarmed at the first blare of musketry. The business of the disciplined cohorts was simply to stand quiet until the gibbering simpletons advanced to an easy distance; then to cut them down as the sickle mows the corn, in serried heaps upon the furrows. The boys of Kildare sued for mercy, and were graciously informed that if they would come to the Gibbet-Rath on the Curragh, within given hours on a certain day, and there deliver up all weapons of offence, they might be permitted to return to bondage and be happy. They came, having been assured that General Dundas had received permission from the Castle to show clemency. Thirteen cartloads of pikes were delivered on the plain. General Duff, who, assisted by the colonel of the Foxhunters, was acting for Dundas, bade the rebels make of these a heap, and confessing on their knees their insolence and wickedness, beg the King's pardon humbly. The craven wretches obeyed, for no vestige of courage was left in them. Bereft even of the courage to die, they kneeled, praying that the agony of death might be past. They kneeled, with misery too intense for speech, on the great plain, with heads bowed and hands clutched together--a spectacle of human abjectness harrowing enough to have made the angels weep.
'Charge!' shouted General Duff, 'and spare no rebel!'
The obedient Foxhunters (so called from the brushes they wore in their helmets) hacked down with their sabres the defenceless peasants to the number of three hundred and more. There were eighty-five widows in one single street of Kildare that afternoon. It is but fair to say that no part of the infamy of this splendid joke attaches to General Dundas, for the massacre was shown to have taken place without his knowledge or consent. Duff and the colonel of the Foxhunters must bear the brunt of it alone, along with other jests of equal brilliancy. A few of the victims managed to scuttle off, hiding in furze-bushes or behind walls, and reached Kildare at nightfall, to tell the tale of butchery. A woman who lay ill ten miles off, woke (so it is said) from a vision of her husband weltering in gore, and nothing would appease her but that her daughter and aged father should go forth to seek him. They were met by knots of country-folk flying along the road in wildest excitement.
'Bad news, old man!' they wailed as they pursued their course like a whirl of wraiths. 'Our friends lie kilt--God rest their sowls--all--on the Curragh, this day!'