The consequences of the slaughter at Tubberneering were precisely such as might be expected. The royalists lost heart, and the insurgents acquired a dangerous audacity. Every Protestant abandoned home and property in despair, and more than a thousand individuals fled from their once happy dwellings, with wives and children, and, without food or shelter, endeavoured to seek safety elsewhere, and obtain eleemosynary support from those who still possessed a home. In the first place all, soldiers and civilians alike, fell back to Arklow, but, feeling themselves insecure even there, the retreat was continued to Wicklow.
As we have seen, the results of the insurgent success reacted most disastrously; the rebels at once became masters of Gorey, and to the army of Irish liberty in ‘98 the conquest of this town proved the reverse of advantageous to the captors.
INSURGENT OCCUPATION OF GOREY
For five days they halted in and about the town, drinking and pillaging, destroying property not portable, and, as at Enniscorthy, visiting their vengeance on the church. Had their fury been expended on the building alone it would have been a matter of little import, but unhappily the contest had now taken a religious colouring, so rancorous and sanguinary that blood alone could satisfy party hatred and thirst for vengeance, and the best interests of the cause itself were sacrificed to stupid and unproductive brutalities, from which gray hairs afforded no protection, nor boyhood could claim no immunity. To satisfy this insensate vengeance upon inoffensive victims, military expediency was disregarded, and important advantages lost sight of and utterly sacrificed.
The MS. Journal of a Field Officer, in every sense an invaluable guide to the true situation of those affairs which come within the observations of this keen professional critic, dwells conclusively on this point: ‘Providentially, the rebels had too many commanders; those of the Wexford force being mostly priests, their attention was more directed to the interests of their church by purging the land of heretics than to the concerns of the “Irish Republic,” which the northern leaders had in view. Consequently time was wasted in collecting and piking Protestants, which might have been employed with far greater advantage to the cause.’
THE BATTLE OF ROSS
The operations of the rebel armies which we have already detailed, namely, the attempt on Newtown Barry by the corps under Father Kearns, and that on Gorey by the insurgents under the two Murphys and Perry of Inch, with the intervening occurrence of Walpole’s defeat at Tubberneering, must be connected by a simultaneous transaction, probably, in military importance, the most interesting which marked the outbreak.
The strongest of the insurgent corps had assembled on the hill of Carrickbyrne, under the chief command of B. Baganel Harvey, with Father Roche acting en second. Their encampment was six miles from the town of Ross, of which it was their first and greatest object to obtain possession.
The dangerous proximity of the rebel host had caused alarm for the safety of the town, and, consequently, the garrison had been strengthened. On the 5th of June the County Dublin Militia, commanded by the popularly beloved Lord Mountjoy, with detachments from the Clare, Donegal, and Meath Militia, 5th Dragoons, Midlothian Fencibles, and English Artillery, occupied the place—a force amounting to 1400 men of all arms, of which 150 were yeomen. General Johnson, a veteran officer, commanded, and his heroic exertions won the day, and must shed a lasting lustre upon his reputation as a courageous and able leader.
On the evening of the 4th June the rebel camp at Carrick-byrne broke up, and the insurgents moved bodily to Corbethill, within a mile and a half of Ross. The rebel hordes ‘moved by parishes and baronies, each having a particular standard; in their way they stopped at a chapel, where mass was said at the head of each column by priests, who sprinkled an abundance of holy water on them.’—Musgrave. After driving in a distant outpost they bivouacked on Corbethill for the night. The royalists, fearing a surprise, remained under arms, the infantry and guns in position on the southern and eastern faces of the town, the yeoman infantry holding the bridge, and the cavalry formed on the quay. Night passed, however, without alarm; and it was four o’clock on the morning of the 5th before Baganel Harvey, who had been a few days before elected to the chief command, sent a formal summons to General Johnson, which unfortunately (as some say) was not delivered. Furlong, the rebel leader, who carried it, was shot, through the ignorance of the advanced sentry, who paid no respect to a white handkerchief he waved on approaching the outposts.