1798

by Joe Murphy

  To the army’s right, the River Slaney ploughed lazily along, languid in the afternoon heat. On its wrinkled surface, a family of swans sailed proudly, their pristine white elegance balanced upon the pale smear of their own reflections. Abandoned gabbards and sand cots were left beached against its banks, a reminder of peaceful times, seemingly gone forever.

  Enniscorthy soon became only a smoking memory behind a turn in the road and still they marched, feet grinding the earth in a long, harsh continuous growl. No one marched in step and it was all the men could do to keep each individual corps from splintering and merging with the one behind. Every so often, Roche or either of the Fr Murphys would come riding along the flanks, exhorting the men and chivvying along those inclined to dawdle.

  Twilight was beginning to purple the horizon as the rebel army tramped across Ferrycarrig Bridge, two miles west of Wexford Town. Along the march no sign of soldiers, cavalry or civilians had been seen. It was as though the whole world had been gutted. At Ferrycarrig, the head of the column veered not east towards Wexford Town but rather southwest, towards the hulking, dusky, heather-bruised mass of Forth Mountain. They passed beneath the old Norman watchtower, venerable and grizzled on its granite tor and then swung right.

  Dan was confused. ‘Why are we making for another campsite?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘I cannot fathom,’ answered Tom. ‘I do not see why we should not sweep into the town under cover of darkness and carry the place by storm. This, to me, smacks of another needless waste of time. The men are fresh, they have rested and eaten well all day.’

  ‘Perhaps Fitzgerald has given them cause to delay?’ ventured Dan.

  ‘Perhaps Fitzgerald should be flogged and sent back to the garrison that he professes such intimacy with,’ replied Tom acidly.

  Dan scowled at him but said nothing.

  In the gathering folds of darkness Roche and Fr Murphy led them up the bordering slope and through the surrounding bracken and briar. Above them, like blots of ink against the red gouts spreading across the sky, the outcropping of the Three Rocks loomed ominously. Underneath these fists of rock and dry moss the rebel army spread out on the swathe of heather and made what shelter they could from blankets and swatches of canvas. The road below was lost behind the uneven swelling of the mountain’s slope and above them there was only the vast, gemmed cloak of the night.

  Tom, Dan and Elizabeth sat out in the open, cushioned on a feathery mattress of heather, and watched the men and women around them construct tents and lean-tos, using the hafts of pikes for scaffolding. No fires were lit; orders had been passed down that light of any kind was to be immediately extinguished. Nevertheless, here and there, men who had never bowed to authority in all their days surreptitiously sucked on glowing pipes.

  Tom was about to say something, to caution Dan about the danger posed by fire amidst the tinder-dry undergrowth, but Dan raised a hand, cutting him off.

  ‘Let them,’ the elder Banville whispered. ‘They have seen and sacrificed enough to allow them the simple pleasure of a bowl of tobacco of an evening.’

  Tom grunted but still felt the need to add, ‘If they set fire to the hillside around us or give warning to any eagle-eyed yeo, then all their sacrifice will be for naught.’

  Elizabeth yawned and held Dan closely to her and on her face a contented smile played at the bow of her mouth. ‘You worry too much,’ she said.

  The following morning broke across Wexford Town like a gentle wave. A mackerel sky of dappled, sea-blown cloud gaped overhead and seemed to widen and deepen as the light gradually grew.

  The Colonels Maxwell and Foote stood tiredly on the quays and looked out across Wexford Harbour where a freshening breeze tossed the waves into saw-edged flux. Gulls, angular and screaming, scudded across the combers, delighting in the toss and tumble of the wind. The flat, wooden thrust of Wexford Bridge lanced out across the water to terminate on the East Shelmalier shoreline opposite; a long, tarred, skeletal arm clawing off into the distance. About the toll house sitting on this northern end of the bridge, a large group of people had gathered. Unlike the loyalist refugees of the past few days, these people made no effort to cross the water or make for the town. Instead, they milled about on the wave-sluiced shore and busied themselves ransacking the abandoned toll booth. Foote fancied that he could hear glass breaking, delicate and almost musical.

  Behind the two weary officers was a small detachment of equally weary North Corks. Foote regarded them with eyes that felt filmed with sand and then turned to Maxwell.

  ‘Should we order those vagabonds on the bridge to disperse?’

  Maxwell exhaled heavily and rubbed his chin with a gloved hand. The rasping sound the leather made against the stubble of his sprouting beard startled him and he looked down at his palm in surprise. Slowly, he removed the glove, smoothed his moustaches and replied deliberately, ‘No.’

  Replacing the glove and flexing his fingers within he explained, ‘With those thousands of ruffians encamped at the Three Rocks, those people yonder are most likely a ruse to split our forces. They cannot cross the bridge without being cut to pieces by our musket shot and they cannot do any mischief to us from so great a distance.’

  ‘They can cut us off from any retreat northward,’ said Foote cautiously, his eyes flickering to his superior and away again like midges across water.

  ‘If we do abandon the town,’ answered Maxwell, ‘it will be to make for the fort of Duncannon to the south.’

  He paused and looked to the west, though the crowding buildings of the busy port blocked any view of the countryside beyond. He squinted at the sky then and took a gold watch from out of his waistcoat pocket. In the dawn the inscription, With all my love, A.M., was swilled with sepia, the letters curling darkly against the bright metal.

  ‘Fawcett should be here,’ he growled angrily. ‘What is keeping him?’

  Foote considered for a moment before saying, ‘When that messenger, Sutton, arrived in from Fawcett just an hour ago he related that he had grave difficulty avoiding the mass of banditti on the slopes of Forth Mountain. He was but one man alone. Fawcett’s column must surely number in the hundreds and must find it impossible to negotiate the countryside around the rebels without drawing them down upon him.’

  Maxwell watched the crowd on the far bank of the harbour mill and swirl in agitated bursts of movement. He stood for a moment in silence before musing, ‘If we were to fix the rebels in place, then that would surely allow Fawcett to get through.’

  Foote frowned at his commanding officer, his face anxious, ‘Sir, that would necessitate leading a large body of men out through John Street and into open country. The rebel camp at the Three Rocks is said to number over ten thousand. If they were to fall all at once upon the men I am sure that we must come out the worst of it. Captain Snowe was, last night, most vociferous in his opposition to any engagement with them without at least parity of numbers or cavalry in support.’

  Maxwell sniffed derisively, ‘I feel Captain Snowe has been most abominably unmanned by his defeat at Enniscorthy. We have Boyd’s cavalry along with Captain Cox’s two hundred horse from Taghmon. We should be able to outflank the rebel position and keep them perched amongst the heather and stones.’

  ‘And if Fawcett still cannot get through, or if the rebels fall on us like a wolf on the fold, what then?’ wondered Foote.

  Maxwell smiled grimly, ‘That will not happen. If the rebels were possessed of the intrepidity they pretend to, they would have come close on the heels of Colclough and forced us to give battle immediately. Instead, they dally. I think that three hundred troops and two hundred cavalry should be enough to cool any rebellious fervour. With Fawcett at their back I am sure that they must be positively bamboozled.’

  Foote nodded contemplatively before stating, ‘I believe you should have Mr Watson ride with the men. His experience in fighting the colonists might be of great value in our current predicament.’

  ‘Capital idea,’ agreed Maxwell,
his mood visibly lifting and the fatigue that dulled his eyes seemingly fleeing with the dawn. ‘I do believe that our position might not be as dire as first we thought.’

  Foote eyed him dubiously. ‘Sir,’ he said.

  The same dawn that found Maxwell and Foote standing on the Wexford quays illuminated the Three Rocks in shades of dove-grey. Through the bracken and ferns, leaping over briar and knuckled stone, a figure came running through the cold morning light. He scrambled up the western slope of the hill and knifed between snoring bundles of blankets and ragged tents whose canvas coverings were beginning to snap and rumple in a mounting breeze. The man’s breath was coming in gasps now and he hauled himself toward the summit by balling his fists amongst the dew-slick undergrowth and pumping the burning muscles of his legs. At the crest of Forth Mountain, Roche’s tent hulked against the brightening sky with the two banners rippling out from their poles, the green and the black, the harp and the chasuble.

  The pikeman sitting at guard outside the tent’s entrance rose at the man’s approach and staring hard into the grainy dawning he called in greeting, ‘Thomas Cloney! What’s a Bantry boy like you doing running around so early. Sure, aren’t youse late for everything?’

  Then the man took in Cloney’s breathless face, his bracken-soaked clothes and asked bleakly, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I may speak with General Roche,’ Cloney panted, his hands on his knees. ‘There’s soldiers coming from the west. They’re bringing cannon.’

  Minutes later and Edward Roche was hurriedly tucking his shirt into his buff-coloured breeches and asking, ‘What would you have us do, Father?’

  Fr John Murphy was also frantically striving to dress himself in the grey twilight of the tent’s interior. He pulled on his heavy brogues and replied, ‘I am not a military man, Mr Roche, and know nothing of artillery but I do know that if we allow them to come close enough to unleash shot and shell then it will go badly for a lot of the men out there.’

  Sitting up from where he lay swaddled in blankets, Edward Fitzgerald raised his hands and commented, ‘I have not been amongst you for long enough to voice any opinion on the strengths of the fighting men nor do I feel it appropriate that I should offer any military advice in my current circumstances.’

  Roche flung him a caustic look before addressing Cloney. ‘How many are there?’

  ‘A hundred, maybe more,’ replied Cloney. ‘It doesn’t seem to be a full regiment and the soldiers are led by a lieutenant. They look like a support column.’

  ‘So where is the main body of the regiment?’ asked Roche, loading his pistols.

  Cloney shrugged, ‘There’s no sign of them. Our lookouts report this column with the artillery moving against us but the country out as far as Taghmon is free of the soldiery.’

  ‘Perhaps they hope to trap us somehow?’ asked Fr Murphy.

  Cloney shook his head, ‘I think the artillery column has just ranged too far ahead of its regiment. John Kelly of Killann wants us to trap them on the road as they cross over from the west and wipe them out. I would favour that too. The men of Bantry have missed Oulart and Enniscorthy, let us taste victory here.’

  Fitzgerald was now standing and pulling on his breeches, his face branded with a doleful expression, the outward manifestation of the conflict raging in his heart. He sighed and asked, ‘You are sure this could not be an ambuscade?’

  Cloney nodded fervently, ‘There’s not a redcoat around to bring them succour. They’re ignorant and unmindful as a new-born lamb. Kelly has a thousand of the boys assembled already. All he’s waiting for is the word from yourselves.’

  Murphy and Roche exchanged a long glance whilst Fitzgerald stared at the heather-carpeted floor.

  ‘Have it done,’ Roche said flatly.

  Captain Adams of the Meath Militia rode in some confusion at the head of his marching column. Forth Mountain rose about him in a great swollen bulge of fern and furze. To his left the slope fell away into the lightening gloom, scattered with a patchwork of rough fields that God alone knew what crops or animals could be sustained by. To his right, the hillside rose in a chaos of whipping briar and clutching bracken, dismal and painted in shades of grey and brown by the breaking day. The road his column moved along ran west to east along the flank of the mountain, dusty and overgrown, its neglect and disrepair evident in its ruts and washed-out potholes. A more desolate place he could not imagine.

  He frowned beneath the peak of his cocked hat and cast his eyes back over his column and into the silvered countryside below. His Meath infantry, all sixty-six of them, stomped along stoically with only one or two yawning from the tiredness of marching through the night. Behind the red coats of his own soldiers came the dark blue of the twenty or so men and officers of His Majesty’s Royal Irish Artillery, the silver braiding of their blue coats glowing like spider webs in the morning light. Amongst them, on heavy carriages drawn by four deep-chested horses, sat the toad-like bulk of two howitzers with all their supplies of ammunition and powder.

  And yet there was no sign of General Fawcett.

  Adams was beginning to think that he had been duped.

  The night before he and his detachment had paused for rest at Taghmon, where General Fawcett had supposedly already placed his men at free quarters, a necessity that the peasantry despised and resented. When Adams and his column had arrived however, they were informed by a group of apparently concerned villagers that Fawcett had pushed on immediately, such was the gravity of the situation in which the garrison at Wexford found itself. Taking them at their word, Adams had ordered his men to march on into the darkness, without sleep and without reconnoitring the land ahead of them.

  He had allowed himself to be made a fool of, he reflected bitterly.

  A sudden grumbling bubbled through the ranks of his men and the column came to a ragged halt, the soldiers muttering amongst themselves and one or two pointing down the slope to where the bracken and briar bristled about splintered outcrops of rock. Beside Adams, Lieutenant Wade shrugged in his saddle and called out, his voice echoing and gross in the silence, as though it were a violation of the dawn.

  ‘You men,’ he cried, ‘who gave you the order to halt? Have you something to say for yourself, O’Hare?’

  A sergeant, who was peering down-slope with a hawkish expression, started at the mention of his name and saluted sharply.

  ‘Sir, one of the men here thinks he saw something moving below on the slope.’

  Adams’s frown deepened and he twisted in his saddle to scan the hillside with eyes suddenly wary, all thoughts of Fawcett abruptly supplanted by more immediate circumstances. It was at this moment, just as the leather of his saddle creaked and he adjusted his weight to cast his gaze over the rough expanse of ditch and brush below him, that a white rag, tied to the shaft of a pike, was raised aloft from the blanketing undergrowth some hundred yards down from their position.

  The men of the Meath Militia immediately spurred into action. Flintlocks were drawn back with a sound like the crackling of autumn leaves as men aimed their muskets toward the tattered white flag that had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

  A silence fell over the column. Into that silence, for the briefest moment, Captain Adams breathed in panting anticipation until a cold fist abruptly seized his heart and squeezed as if to burst it.

  ‘Turn!’ he yelled in sudden realisation. ‘Turn, for the love of God! Face up the slope!’

  He was a fraction of a second too late, for as the words sprang from his lips, so too did a spitting roar of musketry spring from the gorse and fern and thick undergrowth behind the soldiers. Smoke suddenly coughed across the roadway and filled the space between the ditches with a roiling blue-black fog.

  Adams had no idea how many of his men had fallen to that first volley but he knew that his column was in bedlam. Within the fog of gunsmoke men had no idea from where the rebel guns had opened fire and some stood staring blankly at their fallen comrades whilst others fired blindly in the wr
ong direction.

  ‘Up the slope!’ Adams shouted, spurring his mount down the length of the column. ‘They’re above us!’

  At that moment the entire hillside above the troops seemed to explode into lethal animation. Men spilled out of the bracken as though the very land was spewing them forth. The foremost of all was a blond giant who leapt with one bound over the low ditch bordering the road and hammered into the column with all the force of a charging bull. Adams watched, horrified, as the man’s pike punched straight through the nearest soldier so that its brutal steel point exited between his shoulder blades in a sickening spume of crimson. Adams’s men were being butchered.

  Wheeling his horse, he yelled above the terrified screams of his men and the guttural whoops of their murderers, ‘Spike the guns! Don’t let them take the artillery!’

  His eyes sought out the park of cannon and its blue-coated defenders and his face slackened in despair. The rebels had already seized them. Several of the artillery men were being held, pinned and struggling, to the ground whilst a group of peasants danced around the cannons, slapping them and rejoicing as though the each weapon were some fond pet or faithful hound.

  Adams wheeled his mount once more, sawing savagely at the reins, his despair and panic rising to a hectic pitch. He could not reconcile what he was witnessing with what he knew of the world. His uniformed soldiery were being massacred, their cries obscenely desperate in the smoke and fumes.

  Through the pall he saw the horde of the rebels standing over the bodies of his men whilst others chased off through the bracken, scything down those Meathmen who had tried to run, spitting them where they begged on their knees for mercy. Frantic and dismayed, Captain Adams spun his horse and thundered off to the west, lashing the animal with every atom of his strength. Behind him a huge roar of triumph and exultation swelled and climbed, soaring into the sky, huge and joyful, like the sun rising above the brow of Forth Mountain.