But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm and drew him aside.
“It is not time that we want!” he said to him. “What we want is to uphold the principle!”
Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on History’s page, for those who know how to understand it rightly. If the peasants can remember a principle when their property is in question, verily one may say that the times are near being fulfilled!
All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It only remained to have recourse to force. Joyce knew better than anyone what resistance he was going to encounter. Personally he thought he was going to meet death. He went resolutely nevertheless, but not without surrounding himself with a regular army.
The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had to be sent for from Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted by about a hundred emergency men, were supported besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles and revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about twenty miles from the nearest railway. The traps and horses necessary to carry all these people had to be sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give any manner of help. The same thing occurred for provisions and for the implements of the siege, pickaxes, levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable to the assailants, and which were brought down with the army to Portumna. These preparations lasted three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce at the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th of August.
On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward and left Portumna in a column, marching on Woodford.
But on their side the Leaguers had not remained inactive.
All the night long squads of voluntary workmen had been hard at work. When the police caravan arrived in sight of the village, they found the road barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the way. They were obliged to dismount and go round by the fields.
In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring heights horns were signalling the appearance of the enemy; the chapel bells began to toll an alarm peal. From all the points of the compass an immense multitude of people hastened to come and take up their position on the hills of Woodford.
When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed by Joyce, armed to the teeth, by the under-sheriff whom the duty of his charge obliged to preside at the execution, and leading on five hundred policemen, an indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven; the Irish wail which partakes of the lion’s roar and of the human sob, of the yell of the expiring beast and of the rushing sound of waters.