by Joe Murphy
Under the blue of the morning, Dan was baffled by the circumstance in which he found himself. For the first time since the Rising began he felt his soul crowding with reservations. For him not just the prospect of success but the very nobility and motives of the United leadership were abruptly undermined and tottering.
He and his ashen company of panting pikemen had almost reached the Three Bullet Gate when the noise of the conflict waging in and around its ragged arch grew to a spitting crescendo. The soldiers’ musketry snapped forth in volleys that ripped into the rebel ranks as they crossed the open ground. The foremost of John Kelly’s column had flung themselves upon the defenders at several points and here the gunfire was replaced by the shrieking of men spitted by pike or bayonet and the hollow clacking of musket stock against pikestaff. Smoke made an acrid dry fog before the gate, swaddling all in its choking folds.
Yet Dan perceived that all was not as it should be here, either.
A narrow lane ran along the base of Corbet Hill and beyond it, retreating up the slope and away from the battle, Dan’s disbelieving eyes could see battalions of panicked insurgents. Anger flared within him; anger and moral outrage that these men would leave their companions to be hacked to pieces and picked-off by musket fire.
As all this passed through Dan’s mind, a despairing cry went up from the tail of his column.
‘Cavalry, Mr Banville! Jesus Christ, we’ll all be killed!’
Dan whirled and roared at his men, ‘Steady, damn you! If we run we’ll be slaughtered.’
They had by now crested a low tongue of scrubland lolling out from Corbet Hill, and from this vantage point Dan watched as a long snake of red-coated cavalry slid from out of the Market Gate. Each horseman wore a crimson coat with white crossbelts gleaming across his chest. On each head sat not the familiar bearskin crest of a Tarleton helmet, but a broad black bicorn with a white and red pom-pom that danced to the strides of the horse. Their collars were a deep blue and in their wide, white gauntlets they carried the brutal, glittering lengths of heavy straight-blade cavalry swords. Their horses bore them on relentlessly.
Dan addressed his men, his heart pulsing, ‘Make for the gate. Form square and provide a rearguard for Kelly’s battalion. If you do anything else we are damned.’
Hectically, his men barrelled past him, racing for the narrow laneway across which ragged groups of rebels were still streaming away from the battle. The laneway and paddocks below it overlooked Kelly’s position and Dan knew that the cavalry men were galloping for this same narrow stretch of road. If they gained it before his men had a chance to cross the ditches and intercept them, Kelly and Cloney would be caught between the hammer of a cavalry charge and the anvil of the soldiers’ bayonets.
Breathing deeply, he watched his column thrash their way through the gorse and briar, Rouse cursing the men fleeing in the opposite direction as they went. He turned his head and saw the cavalry moving faster now, noting the corps of pikemen who sought to block their charge. The coats of their heavy mounts glistened in the morning sunlight, the coils of their muscles slewing beneath their skin.
For a brief, splintered moment, Dan thought of Tom – before his body seemed to leap forward of its own accord.
Across the slope and down towards the Three Bullet Gate he flew, vaulting hedges and ditches as briars snagged his coat and nettles whipped at his shins. The thumping of his heart roared in his ears and his breath was a bellows fanning flames through his muscles and searing his lungs.
Above him, he could see his men forming a ragged square, their pikes bristling from the four-sided block. Below him, around the Three Bullet Gate, a sort of stalemate had developed. The soldiers held their ground, their muskets spitting defiantly at the pikemen who charged, repulsed again and again. The ground in front of the gate was stubbled with the rotten crop of bodies and blood and shattered limbs. Here and there clumps of rebel musketeers tried to return fire, attempting to suppress the soldiery long enough to allow the pikemen to come to blows, their volleys ragged and their homemade powder fizzing feebly.
In the midst of one such group of gunsmen, John Kelly towered like a lighthouse in a maelstrom, his blond hair glowing and his face infused with the ruddy gush of his exertions. It was toward this giant of a man that Dan dashed, unmindful of thorns and thistle and hissing shots.
Skirting the back of the pikemen, Dan came within hailing distance of Kelly. Just as he opened his mouth to yell his warning, however, a volley of musketry from the gateway drowned out his words in a flood of smoke and flame. Dan saw the ranks of pikemen waver but hold firm and he raised his cupped hands to his mouth.
Uncaring of the frantic desperation that tore at his voice, he roared, ‘Cavalry, John! Cavalry are behind you!’
John Kelly remained turned away from Dan, his proud face directed towards the mass of redcoats that barred his way into the town. A slight farmer with a whiskered, pointed face tugged at Kelly’s elbow and pointed to where Dan stood in the middle of a patch of empty ground between two blocks of insurgent pikemen; ground that spat up dusty coughs of earth as musket balls pattered about his feet.
Dan saw Kelly turn, his great head lifting in his direction and saw the frown that darkened his wide brow. Following Kelly’s gaze, Dan flung a glance over his right shoulder and what he saw transformed his nerves to threads of ice.
Along the laneway, beneath the retreating rebels, a hundred heavy horse had assembled, their red coats blazing and their horses dancing in expectation of the charge. Below them his own small corps looked like the desultory scrap that it was, huddled together in fear, its pike-heads trembling like a fevered pulse.
Gasping, breathless from his race across the fields, Dan was suddenly torn between his men and the relative safety of the rebel companies surrounding Kelly. Anguished, he turned from his little block of infantry and flung a beseeching gaze towards John Kelly. If the blond colonel swung his gunsmen around, it might give Dan’s corps a chance to fall back without being hacked to pieces.
As his eyes fastened upon Kelly he was shocked to see a slow smile open across his features. John Kelly stood and pointed with his sword, its tip jabbing the air insistently.
Confused, Dan spun on his heel, drawing his own sword and pistol, convinced that Kelly meant to warn him of some danger now bearing down on him.
Instead, what he saw dragged his own lips into a deadly grin.
Beyond the cavalry, on the slopes above the lane, the rebel flight had stalled. Groups of men were rallying and forming ranks and files. All across the hill, the general retreat was halting. As if stemmed by a tourniquet, the haemorrhage of men slowed to a trickle and then ceased altogether. Corbet Hill reared against the morning sky like the rough shoulder of a slumbering Titan, its wrinkled flesh matted with a spiked pelt of pikes.
To Dan the contrast with Colclough’s division could not have been more marked. Here were battalions and companies standing and rallying not through loyalty to a cause but through loyalty to their friends. The sight of the cavalry had roused in them the instinctive protectiveness of a pack animal at bay. They would not condemn Kelly and Cloney and the multitude who followed them to a merciless slaughter. They were suddenly resolute, banners waving and pikes steadied.
Mere moments too late, the cavalry spread out along the laneway realised their predicament.
With a guttural roar, the serried horde of pikemen flung themselves down the hill, falling upon the cavalry’s unguarded rear like an avalanche. The savage charge consumed all before it, horse and rider were sent tumbling, transfixed by the bitter length of pike and bayonet. Within seconds twenty cavalry men lay dead and the others were flailing at the steel-frothed tide of humanity lapping at their knees, frantic to get away. Eventually those of the horsemen not speared by the initial charge fought their way free and thundered in hectic disorder back towards the Market Gate.
For a long moment Dan was stunned and then a massive, whooping roar went up from the regiments on the hill, a roar t
hat was taken up and magnified by the relieved men before the Three Bullet Gate. Dan swelled with pride as he watched his own little corps fan out into line and march down the hill, leading the victorious mass of insurgents on. It was as though the entire rebel hillside had rediscovered its spine and heart.
For the first time that day, Dan felt that victory was within their grasp.
Around the Three Bullet Gate, the suddenly demoralised defenders had begun a slow retreat in the face of Kelly’s renewed advance. The flames from the muzzles of their muskets had set the thatch of the shouldering cabins alight, and now the gateway itself, as well as the street beyond, was filled with smoke and ash and heat.
As Dan’s men arrived at his shoulder, the last soldier, his face blackened and eyes watering from spent gunpowder, was edging backwards into the town.
‘Did we do well, Mr Banville?’ Seán Rouse asked, his face blazing with conviction, his eyes shining as though with tears.
‘You have done more than well,’ said Dan. The sight of his motley corps so proud and steady when so many others had simply turned tail and fled, filled him to the brim with gratification. Clearing his throat, he said, ‘The town is ours now lads. The soldiers are running.’
And so it seemed, for Kelly and Cloney’s men were surging through the Three Bullet Gate like a swollen river through a weir and to the left a pall of smoke was rising from within the town walls, behind the Priory Gate. The two remaining insurgent columns had smashed through the first ring of defence and were inside the town. New Ross was surely theirs.
But, as Dan watched, instead of holding the gate until the Southern Division was ready to move on the quays in its entirety, Kelly had pushed his men on. Even now they were invisible behind the belching smoke. Musket fire and cries drifted out through the muffling haze like the screams of a banshee or the ghostly, disembodied thunder of a distant storm.
Dan hesitated only a moment before stabbing his sword at the fog-choked throat of the Three Bullet Gate. ‘Onward!’ he bellowed. ‘For Liberty and Ireland!’
General Henry Johnson stood at the Custom House windows and watched a throng of red-coated infantry gush across the bridge and into the Kilkenny countryside. He swallowed drily and asked, ‘We are sure that there are no Kilkenny rebels in the field?’
Behind him, his uniform singed and his face blackened by the soot of burning thatch, Charles Eustace replied, ‘We are certain, sir. The loyal subjects of Kilkenny have decided to obey the King’s peace. This Wexford rabble are without support.’
‘And yet they drive us back,’ growled Johnson. He spun away from the window and began to pace the room. His riding boots hammered into the floorboards as he spun, marched and spun again. ‘I have never witnessed such blind courage. You have pulled the men back, yes? The cannon are positioned? The cavalry in reserve? You have done all this?’
Automatically Eustace nodded, ‘Yes, sir. We have abandoned the southern half of the town and established ourselves around the bridge. The cannon are all deployed and the Clare Militia have recovered their spine and are turning the tables. Our grape shot is felling them by the hundreds, sir.’
Johnson, still pacing, his hands gripped tight at the small of his back, shook his head, ‘We cannot lose this town, Eustace. We cannot.’
Smoke drifted in banks across the windows at Johnson’s back and feathered flakes of soot spun on the fire-fanned winds like an infernal fall of snow. The room was filled with the sounds of musketry and the dull dragon’s roar of cannon.
But most horrible of all to Johnson’s ears were the screams. High above the military thunder and penetrating the stones of the building and the walls of his mind, the screams of the dying could be heard. Cheers and huzzahs swelled only to dash themselves to pieces and collapse into a swamp of agonised wails. Johnson knew every boom and chatter of cannon and musket, every roar and rallying cry, signified the deaths of dozens. The streets of New Ross were slimed with the gore of Johnson’s own deliberations. He had planned to invite the rebels on to his cannon. It was he who had turned this place into a vision of utmost horror.
In spite of his military discipline, in spite of his years, Henry Johnson was disgusted at what he had done. And yet, he found himself thinking, he had no other choice. To meet the rebels in battle, outnumbered and on alien ground, would be suicidal. And so in doing his duty he had turned himself into a butcher.
Standing awkwardly, Eustace transferred his weight from foot to foot. He cleared his throat, paused, and cleared his throat again.
Johnson, perceiving that his subordinate had some other item of information that he was reluctant to impart, stopped his pacing and regarded him with shrewd calculation. ‘Out with it, Eustace,’ he urged, his voice kind, his anger reserved for himself alone. ‘What else is there?’
Eustace licked his lips, tasting the salt of his sweat and the gritty char of the ash that covered him, and said, ‘Lord Mountjoy is dead. He was killed at the Three Bullet Gate.’
Johnson sighed like a breeze across a graveyard, ‘The poor man. Where has his talk of parley got him now? Another mark against me, Eustace. And every minute, more are added to the tally.’
Eustace frowned at his commanding officer.
Johnson turned to face the smoke and fire beyond the windows. Across the bridge he could see his troops rallying, red coats like embers in the veiling pall.
‘We hold the town,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘We hold this place or else what is it all for?’
Not on Oulart Hill, nor at Enniscorthy, had Dan felt anything like the exuberance that coursed through him as he entered New Ross. With his men roaring behind him, he plunged into the blinding mass of smoke and flame and was for a moment wrapped in a purgatory of grey. The vague, lumpen shapes of the dead and wounded bulged up out of the ground all around as he moved between the carcasses of burning, crumbling cabins.
Suddenly he was free of the smoke, and stumbled into a scene of the purest hell.
Before him, an open space splayed out into four separate streets which then wound off between rows of tall, slate-roofed townhouses. At the entrance to two of these streets, lines of terrified soldiers had formed crimson dams against the rebel flood. Two ranks deep, they lifted and fired their weapons in disciplined volleys and from the upper windows of bolted houses sharpshooters turned the ground below into a sodden mire of blood.
As he watched, a detachment under Kelly rallied and charged headlong at one of the red-coated companies. A blast of musketry flung more than a dozen of the Bantry men backwards in a bloom of gore before the others crashed home. In the centre, John Kelly was a whirlwind of violence, his sword rising and falling like a butcher’s cleaver and with every blow it arced back more slick and more red. In the inferno of the fighting, Kelly’s handsome face had taken on the aspect of a man in the throes of madness.
The soldiers stood for mere seconds before being flung back, breaking and running with Kelly’s men at their heels. At the same moment Thomas Cloney led a charge against the other troop of soldiers who turned and fled without waiting for the impact of the pikes. With a cry of brutal bloodlust Cloney’s detachment barrelled after them, as all around Dan more and more rebels swarmed into New Ross.
Dan stood for a moment before deciding that Kelly, for all his intrepidity, would face the stiffest opposition by making directly for the quays. Gesturing to his men, he ordered, ‘We follow Kelly of Killann, if the soldiers have established redoubts he may need our help.’
As these words spilled from his lips, to his right the deep boom of a cannon rolled through the streets, drowning out the lesser crackle of musketry.
At this sound many of the rebels closest to Dan exchanged uneasy looks but he snapped at them, ‘You’ll hear worse than that today. And the slower we set about harrying these scoundrels into the Barrow the quicker they will be loading their damned cannon.’
The men before him, still looking apprehensive, filed past, ducking as the soldiers occupying overlooking windows comm
enced a chattering, harassing fire down upon them. Trusting speed and the cover of the smoke to keep them safe, Dan and his men pressed on. Behind him he heard the snapping clatter and tinkle of doors and windows being smashed, and the crack of muskets and the bubbling screams as house after house was cleared of defenders.
Swinging to the left down Michael Street, staying close to the wall as he went, Dan saw the massive figure of John Kelly pressed as far as he could be into a shallow doorway. All about him his men had taken what shelter they could find in the desolate expanse of the street. Bundles of insurgents had crammed themselves like roosting bats into niches and alcoves, wedging themselves behind decorative door pillars or crouching low behind the raised doorsteps of houses.
A man beside Dan suddenly doubled over, his face curdling with pain, a gust of agony soughing from his twisted mouth – and Dan knew why Kelly and the others were so desperately seeking the least bit of refuge. Down the street, a formidable stone-faced building hulked amongst the more elegant townhouses and from its windows a veritable battery of musket barrels weaved to and fro, tracking the smallest movement in the street below.
As Dan watched, one of these muskets puffed a breath of gunsmoke and the wall just at Dan’s ear spat forth a spume of russet brick dust.
Ducking low, he muttered an inaudible curse as his heart sought to clamber up his throat. Blinking his stinging eyes, he called to his men, ‘Keep against the buildings, if you expose yourself for even a moment they shall have you in their sights!’
Above him the sun was a pale, spectral ball in the smoke and in the surrounding streets the sporadic rattling of musketry was gradually cohering into long drum rolls of shattering noise. Most terrifying of all was the rumbling thunder of cannon. Screams rose and flocked together creating a pall of noise just as dense, and infinitely more horrible, than the smoke and ash. Dan could imagine the damage that grape shot would create in such claustrophobic confines, and he whispered a prayer for the men who faced the big guns.