1798

by Joe Murphy

  The North Corks held for a moment in the face of this merciless onslaught. Then one, then another, faces grey with shock and fear, dropped their muskets and ran. The entire detachment broke off the fighting and turned, futilely attempting to flee. Surrounded and outnumbered, the soldiers were hacked down and spitted where they lay. Some produced bibles, some gabbled in Gaelic, all in an effort to prevent the slaughter. For the rebels, however, the pitchcap and the noose, the burned homes and defiled daughters were all too deeply branded in their minds. Hatred and fear found vent in the killing fields of Oulart Hill as the North Corks were hunted down wherever they ran, wherever they tried to hide.

  On the road at the base of the hill, the Shelmalier Cavalry had ceased their half-hearted out-flanking. They sat their horses, unmoving, astounded by the massacre of their comrades. Dan Banville watched as a Shelmalier rebel, lying flat on his belly in the blood-slicked grass, took careful aim with his strand gun and blew one of Le Hunte’s men from the saddle. At this, spurred by nauseating terror, the captain suddenly urged his men to the gallop and they fled along the road, savagely whipping their horses with bunched and flailing reins.

  In the sun-gilded distance, already a mile away, a panic-stricken Lieutenant-Colonel Foote and Edward Turner raced ahead of them, lashing their mounts towards Wexford Town. In the gore-drenched fields around Oulart Hill they left over a hundred dead behind them.

  CHAPTER 9

  Meetings at Ballyorril

  The little village of Camolin straggled in the sunshine, straddling the Dublin Road between Ferns and Gorey. Its entirety consisted of a single street of thatched, whitewashed cottages, a few slated smithies and a lone market house. In the early morning light of the 28th of May, the glowing embers of several of these dwellings sent acrid smoke twisting up into the blue. All along the double row of white-walled cottages, black gaps leered and crackled. Camolin was like a ruined smile, the holes in its terraces of cottages appearing like the rotten teeth of a dying hag or the shattered stumps lining a prizefighter’s mouth. All about these ashen cavities, the thatch of the surrounding buildings had charred and darkened but still dripped where their inhabitants had flung buckets of water to dampen the blaze. This morning however, as the sun began to edge above the eastern horizon, Camolin was deserted. Only a handful of old men and women clustered together in shocked silence at the side of the road while packs of mongrels roamed brazenly, sniffing the smoke and snarling at each other.

  On the edge of the village, Tom and Dan Banville watched the nascent insurgent army snake southward towards Ferns. Every face seemed set, every tired eye fixed on the back of the man in front. Every pike and musket, Tom noted, was now determinedly carried slanted against shoulder. It was as though the victory at Oulart had bred in the rebels a strange kind of confidence. Though their clothes were rumpled and their faces worn, they were trying to deport themselves as they thought soldiers should. To Tom, it was a grotesque parody, a children’s farce.

  ‘They seem to have taken the notion that soldiering is about not falling on one’s face,’ he muttered.

  Dan studied him carefully before replying, ‘If they wish to think that they are soldiers, then let them, Tom. If to perform a role is to fulfil that role then why should we complain that our little force thinks itself an army? I would rather march with an army full of heart and belief, than with the rabble that we were within an ace of becoming on the slopes of Oulart Hill.’

  Tom nodded in grudging agreement. Then, changing the subject, he gestured toward the marching column, ‘“Our little force” as you so put it, is not so little anymore, I think.’

  That night they had camped on Carrigrew Hill, a few miles to the north of Oulart. The bodies and the stinking gore, the flies and the carrion crows, had hastened the rebels’ departure from the scene of battle. With women, children and bloodied fighting men a ragged, formless mass, they moved quickly along the country roads. Relief and jubilation gushed through the veins of almost every member of the multitude. For Edward Roche, Fr Murphy, George Sparks and the other leaders, a slow dawn of self-assurance, of equipoise, began to break across their considerations. They had faced uniformed soldiers in open battle and had triumphed. Lack of weaponry and training had found its counterbalance in bravery and animal ferocity.

  The leaders and men all marched wrapped in a new self-confidence and tried to ignore the low sobbing of the widows of the six insurgents who had died. Tom Donovan’s wife, her face a crawling flux of anguish, keened mournfully into her shawl. The man who had killed the first soldier during that fateful clash in The Harrow had been one of the first to lose his life, a musket ball bursting his proud heart.

  The camp on Carrigrew had been set up in good order and cattle had been brought in from the surrounding fields for milking and slaughtering; these cattle now followed the insurgents as they marched, herded and kept in order by a flotilla of young boys. Camp fires had been lit and Edward Roche, now being addressed laughingly as ‘General’ by his old yeoman comrades, had set sentries on all the approaches. As night fell, a spangle of flaming cabins could be perceived guttering – a dreadful reminder that the yeomanry was not gone away.

  Yet the first sentry that came scrambling into the camp bore with him tidings, not of approaching cavalry, but of tenant farmers and labourers, committed United Irishmen and ignorant cottiers, all streaming through the night toward the rebel fires on Carrigrew. All were driven from their homes and hounded through the dark by the fluttering bat wings of terror, all were seeking sanctuary from the predations of the vengeful yeos.

  Now, as Dan and Tom watched, the body of fighting men filing past them numbered perhaps four thousand. In front of the column, Fr Murphy and Edward Roche rode in animated conversation with each other.

  Dan allowed his eyes to rove over the lines of peasants as they marched. Farmhands and ploughboys were transformed into killers by the cruel vagaries of chance. They found themselves rebels against the Crown and murderers of the King’s troops. Yet, only the previous week they had handed over weapons and promises to the magistrates, sure in their conviction that a Rising could never occur.

  Now they marched, affecting as best they could all the mannerisms of a trained army, through a country ravished by spiralling conflict. Cabins were burned, people gutted on their very doorsteps. Everywhere along the route of that morning’s march houses were smouldering, Protestant as well as Catholics, as personal vengeance was meted out and petty scores were settled under the banner of freedom and liberty.

  Dan focused his attention on the two standards being borne at the head of the column of men. The one on the left was a green flag with a golden harp embroidered upon it, the symbol of the United Irishmen. The second however was, to him at least, vaguely disconcerting.

  A handful of men from the parish of Crossabeg had been sent south during the night to investigate what retribution was being wreaked in the countryside around The Harrow and Boolavogue. They had returned relating how all the cabins had been set alight and Fr Murphy’s little thatched church had been reduced to embers. They brought with them a long, flowing chasuble owned by the priest, a vestment worn during funeral masses, now charred and torn. It was a length of pitch fabric with a white cross, stark upon the black, that would have stretched from collar to knee.

  It was this macabre remnant that the insurgents now carried beside the United banner, hanging from its pole like something dead.

  Dan and Tom moved to join the column, mixing with the men of their own Gorey Barony, and unconsciously fell into step, their old yeomanry habits dying hard.

  Smiling, Tom turned to Dan. ‘Where do you suppose we’re headed?’ he asked.

  Dan shrugged, ‘I have not the faintest but the poor old people that remained in Camolin said all the yeomanry and soldiers as well as every Orangeman and Protestant fled during the night. Our victory at Oulart seems to have quite unnerved the King’s troops and they all scampered off north to Gorey or south to Ferns. I’d presume we were headi
ng south. The garrison at Ferns is smaller and to take Gorey might be beyond us.’

  At this Tom looked at him incredulously and spluttered, ‘Of course Gorey is beyond us. Any market town with streets and defensible buildings is beyond us. Cannon and musket shot in close confines will mow these people down like corn. Beating militia, with no artillery or cavalry worth the name, out in the open where they can be charged with pikes is a far cry from storming a town.’

  A few faces in the surrounding ranks knifed Tom uneasy looks and an anxious grumbling filtered through the men closest to the two brothers.

  ‘Would you keep your voice down,’ hissed Dan. ‘The last thing we need is to be robbed of our courage by poisonous words.’

  ‘What?’ whispered Tom, hoarsely. ‘I do not see how a much-needed dose of pragmatism can be anything except beneficial to these men. If you wish to take barricades and fortifications you must have artillery. A sickle strapped to a pole is no substitute for a nine-pounder, no matter how strong the arm that wields it.’

  Dan lapsed into silence. Tom, ignoring the mutterings of the men around him, marched stiffly onward, his own silence a static charge balling about him.

  The small hamlet of Ferns, like Camolin, consisted of a single street bracketing the Dublin Road and, as the four-thousand-strong mass of peasants with its train of cattle halted on the long slope leading up into the village, it appeared eerily quiet. Not a soul stirred abroad and only dogs and chickens scratched and lay in the dust. Overhead a flock of rooks cawed and rustled their ebony wings, scything through the brightening air. On the edge of the village, the palace of the Protestant Bishop of Ferns, Euseby Cleaver, sat in ivy-crawled splendour.

  Edward Roche stowed away his pocket watch, its golden chain describing a delicate arc against the brown waistcoat he wore instead of his yeoman’s jacket, now rolled up and tied behind his saddle. ‘Half-nine in the morning and where have they all run to?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘They’ve made for Enniscorthy,’ offered Fr Murphy, the certainty in his voice prompting those nearest to him to nod in agreement before even considering his words.

  Roche was thoughtful, his words weighted. ‘I tend to agree. I do not think an entire populace, including Isaac Cornock’s garrison of infantry and those from Camolin who fled to this place, could have conceivably passed us northward.’

  He scratched his chin, stubbled now from two days in the field, and continued, ‘You’re right Father, the entire place must either have gone south to the safety of Enniscorthy or vanished into thin air. Is our little army so formidable that the whole of the military flies before us so that we must sweep them into the sea?’

  Fr Murphy swept one heavy hand across his sweat-slicked pate and grunted, ‘We can only hope that Almighty God grants it as such.’

  Roche beckoned the column forward, and with good spirits bubbling amongst the men and camp followers at the sight of Ferns empty before them, they marched happily up the hill.

  ‘I find this incredible,’ said Dan as he marched in the midst of laughing men, their children now running alongside and dodging playfully between the ranks. ‘The country is empty before us. Not one yeo or soldier has sought to stand and give battle since the North Corks. They must be overwhelmed with fear.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ agreed Tom. ‘But I would be more concerned at their absence. To meet them company by company and dismantle them piecemeal would be more to our advantage than to meet them mustered and ranked on a battlefield of their choosing.’

  The village of Ferns opened out before them as they crested the hill and, at the sound of their approach, dogs and farmyard fowl scattered, barking and squawking in the sunshine. In front of the army a lone figure stood in the dust of the roadway, a white handkerchief fluttering in his hand. The mass of rebels had lost its military regulation by now, the absence of enemies loosening men’s resolve and prompting the women and children to mingle amongst the fighters. As one, the crowd surged forward around the leaders and the lone figure, pikes and guns rattling and tangling and the two banners grounded in the dirt.

  Roche and Fr Murphy looked down from their horses at the slight, pale middle-aged man before them. He did not wear the fashionable wigs of the gentry. Instead, his greying hair was tied back in a short ponytail and his shirt was pristine white beneath his black waistcoat. He lowered his handkerchief and, taking in the desperate throng before him, their blades and guns and pugnacious faces, he swallowed drily.

  ‘Have no fear,’ Fr Murphy assured him. ‘Not one man will lay hand upon you under a flag of truce.’

  Looking relieved the man stammered, ‘My name is Charles Haughton and I have no quarrel with you or your men. I am a Quaker with no ties to the military or the magistrates. I have remained here in spite of the protestations of my friends and family. I have remained here when all others have fled at your approach to appeal to you to spare the people’s property. The folk of this village have never done harm to any United Irishman and do not deserve the terrible acts being visited upon other places.’

  ‘Terrible acts?’ railed Fr Murphy. ‘The “terrible acts” of which you speak were perpetrated first by the bloodthirsty yeomanry. These people are defending themselves from the Orange monsters that ran away so cowardly at our coming.’

  Then a raised voice interjected, ‘Father, I know this man.’

  A group of young peasants, armed only with stout cudgels, pushed through the bristling mob. They stood before Fr Murphy and Edward Roche and one of them pointed to Haughton, standing nervously under the watchful scrutiny of every pair of eyes. ‘I know this man,’ the young rebel repeated. ‘The very model of a fine human being. I would not have any person here harm one hair upon his head. Mr Haughton is a most amiable, liberal and honest man who would never conscience the tyrannies that have been undertaken by the soldiers.

  ‘Sure, only a few weeks ago he refused to sell the yeomen a length of rope on the grounds that they were to use it to hang a United man. Mr Haughton is not our enemy, sirs, and none belonging to him neither.’

  Roche regarded the Quaker in contemplative appraisal before saying, ‘Mr Haughton, do not be afraid, for the safety of your property and the property of your neighbours has been guaranteed by this man’s assessment of your character.’

  Haughton was visibly relieved and, breathing deeply, said, ‘If yourself and some of your comrades would like to come into my home I would be glad to offer you some meagre sustenance. I have not much but what I have is yours.’

  Roche thanked him and dismounted, followed by Fr Murphy. Then the two men, accompanied by George Sparks and five or six other men unknown to Dan and Tom, went with Haughton to the door of his well-kept and slate-roofed townhouse. Before entering, Fr Murphy raised his voice above the hive buzzing of the throng.

  ‘Let no man,’ he ordered, ‘harm the property of this good man or any of his neighbours. I would ask that you brave people take some rest and what nourishment you can – for great things lie ahead. Great things!’

  With that he vanished through Haughton’s open door.

  Dan and Tom exchanged glances as the rebel column collapsed into myriad smaller groups, all sitting themselves by the roadside or sprawling on the hot clay of the road itself. Dan yawned and lowered himself heavily to sit on a patch of desiccated grass that grew by the verge of the thoroughfare. Tom sat beside him, his cavalry sabre resting across his knees.

  ‘What do you make of this?’ Dan asked.

  ‘I do not think we can stay here for very long,’ answered Tom. ‘There is no wall to defend and the countryside is too open. We are vulnerable to attack at any moment and nobody has seen fit to post sentries. It is as though we have already won the war. This playing at soldiers must stop, Dan, and soon, before the people here are faced with more determined enemies.’

  The brothers sat for a long minute, feeling the aching of their legs ease with the passing of every sun-brimmed moment. Dan’s mind strayed to thoughts of Elizabeth, her hair, her touc
h, her scent. He hoped she was safe. He hoped he had put her beyond harm. He missed her. He raised his hand to shade his eyes and wipe away the tears that threatened to spill from them. Then, a commotion stirred off to their left and both young men lifted their heads curiously. From the direction of the Protestant Bishop’s palace, the sound of breaking glass carried brittle and sudden across the morning air. A ragged cheer went up and more shattering of glass was heard.

  Tom and Dan exchanged looks, Tom frowning at Dan’s reddened eyes. Ignoring his brother’s quizzical look, Dan asked, ‘Should we not intervene, in some way? They’re ransacking the Bishop’s house. I’m well aware of his proselytising against the United Irish cause but a man of the cloth is a man of the cloth all the same.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dan,’ growled Tom. ‘If you think anyone would thank you for defending the property of a known bigot then you are sore mistaken. Give them their head. If the leaders wish to put a stop to it, they can come away from the fine breakfast they are undoubtedly enjoying.’

  Dan nodded glumly, ‘But this isn’t what the United Irishmen are about. It was never envisaged that senseless reprisals should take place like this.’ He looked around despairingly. ‘My heart quails at the emptiness of this place. Honest and true persons are seeking to flee from us as though we were a band of brigands. Charles Haughton was terrified that he would be spitted where he stood. What do the people think we are?’

  Tom gauged his brother carefully before replying, ‘They think that, for the most part, we are an ill-disciplined throng of zealots bent on looting and the extermination of Protestants and, for the most part, they would be wrong.’