Thus ended an action which lasted more than three hours, fought on a very hot day, in the midst of a burning town, the disaffected inhabitants of which set fire to their own houses to annoy the loyalists, and fired on them from their windows with deadly effect, picking out the loyalist leaders. In this action the yeomen and Protestant inhabitants performed prodigies of valour in support of the constitution and in defence of their property and their families.
‘It was generally believed that not less than five hundred of the rebels were killed or wounded. The banks of the river and the island in it were strewed with their dead bodies, and numbers of them fell in the streets. To keep up the courage of the insurgents every artifice was used; for even women, as if insensible of danger, were seen in the midst of the carnage administering whiskey to their rebel friends.’
In this most gallant defence the loss sustained by the garrison fell chiefly on the yeomanry and loyalists; nearly a third of the whole amount employed were placed hors de combat, the greater proportion being slain.
After the rebels were repulsed, the necessity of an instant retreat became apparent. The town was on fire, and no longer tenable by a garrison equally reduced in strength and numbers, the insurgents were hanging in an immense force about the town, a night attack seemed almost certain, and no hope could be held out that under existing circumstances it could be repulsed. A council of war was held, and, after mature deliberation, it was resolved to abandon the town and march on Wexford by the eastern side of the river, by St. John’s. ‘From the suddenness of the retreat, only a few of the Protestant inhabitants could accompany the troops, and they could carry with them no other comforts or necessaries but the apparel which they wore. Imagination cannot form a more tragic scene than the melancholy train of fugitives, of whom some were so helpless from their wounds, from sickness, the feebleness of old age or infancy, that they could not have effected their escape had not the yeomen cavalry mounted them on their horses. Some parents were reduced to the dreadful necessity of leaving their infants in cottages on the roadside, with but faint hope of ever seeing them again.
‘The town, the morning after the rebels got possession of it, presented a dreadful scene of carnage and conflagration; many bodies were lying dead in the streets, and others groaning in the agonies of death; some parts of the place were entirely consumed, and in others the flames continued to rage with inextinguishable fury. No less than 478 dwelling-houses and cabins were burned in the town and its suburbs, besides a great number of stores, malt-houses, and out-offices.’
The rebel entrance of the town was marked by the atrocities of a barbarous force, irritated by resistance, and now excited by the accidental success which circumstances had given them.
AN ACT OF VENGEANCE
In the spirit of sheer destructiveness the rebels turned their exertions to wrecking the Protestant church. Our artist has graphically pictured the wild and lurid spectacle attending the wilful destruction of the church at Enniscorthy; vestments, benches, the organ, the pulpit, Bibles, and church furniture were devoted to feed the flames and make a bonfire; meanwhile the triumphant insurgents are shown carrying off the church bell as a trophy, which we find set up subsequently, a prominent feature of the vast rebel camp in the vicinity.
