‘How simple you make it sound, Kate. So, shall we surrender ourselves and then not live to see Ireland rise?’
‘Perhaps I know the English mind better than you, Daniel. Don’t you see? They have to keep us alive. Our deaths could just be the spark that ignites. Russell cannot have that happen until he is ready. Why do you think we have been left to ride so freely? The English are calling Russell a coward. I don’t think so. I think he has a plan. He is waiting.’
‘And must we play his waiting game? How can we do that? I’ve read that revolutions rise to a peak and you grab it at the hour or you lose it forever. Ours is rising fast. The people are preparing themselves, just waiting for our call.’
‘Daniel, I love you. I love every part of everything you dream of, everything you are fighting for. But …’
‘But what, Kate? Speak.’
‘You talk of our people readying themselves. You and I have spent a year with them, speaking to them, rallying them. I’ve stood by your side and watched their faces as you spoke, heartened by their cheering. But every day, Daniel, every day, I have watched them grow thinner and weaker and hungrier and the crowds have dwindled and the cheering has grown fainter. Hunger has drained them. If they have no food in their stomachs, where’s their fight? Russell knows it. Trevelyan knows it. They all know it.’
‘My God! Is that what it’s all about? Is that what you believe? Has that been their plan from the start? To starve us slowly into submission?’
‘No! Not in the beginning, Daniel. I don’t believe it was. I won’t believe it. My father would never have been an accomplice to anything so vile. It has just become so. I remember Tom Keegan telling me of O’Connell’s monster meeting at Clontarf when a million men there could have taken on the English troops and beaten them.’
‘And so they will again, Kate.’
‘No, Daniel. Clontarf’s men were fit and healthy, not men already beaten. People have had their courage starved out of them.’
‘Then what we have to do we must do soon. The longer we wait, the fewer our chances. We cannot be puppets of Russell.’
‘Is it not already too late, Daniel?’
‘Too late? Is that what you think, Kate?’
‘I don’t know what I think. None of us know.’
‘Exactly, Kate. How can we know for sure? So we must gamble. I read once that revolutions are like the throwing of a dice. Nothing is certain until the end. If we’re not prepared for the risk, if we’re not ready to lose and die, then we are not the people to ask others to follow us. Kate, you cannot be with me if you doubt me.’
‘I will not leave you, Daniel. I could never do it. That first day at Dromoland you said we would ride to the gallows together. I agreed to the terms and I’ve not changed. Nor will I.’
There was no declaration by either side. Civil war does not begin by proclamation or by any curt exchange. Like a smouldering sheaf of straw, it takes only the random breeze to set it ablaze. Was it the sensational headlined story in The London Times that twenty thousand Irishmen armed with guns and pikes had taken the towns of Kilkenny, Clonmel and Carlow, blowing up railway lines and setting railway stations and post offices aflame? Was it the report that thousands of British troops had been mobilised and were rapidly embarking on warships in Holyhead bound for Dublin? Did one or both excite and encourage men to believe rebellion was already under way? But both reports were untrue. Fiction. Hoaxes. There were no fires in Kilkenny or Clonmel or Carlow and no British troops had left any of their garrisons that week. But the spark had been struck and the Irish were about to be propelled once again in bloody contest against their English masters.
Coburn planned to split his command four ways. Immediately O’Brien returned from Paris with the expected pledge of support from the French revolutionaries, he would tour the south to recruit and organise, taking in Tipperary, Cork and all of Kerry. Meagher and Duffy would rally support along the counties east of the Shannon as far north as Meath. He and Kate would ride west to Clare and Galway and Connaught. Father Kenyon would canvas those young priests who had already secretively pledged the support of their parishes. All that was lacking now was the call to fight and the weapons to fight with.
Prime Minster Russell knew otherwise. The information he was receiving told a very different story. As his predecessor William Pitt had done so cunningly in the 1798 rebellion, he had sent his own secret agents across the Irish Sea to mingle and listen. Those agents confirmed the surge of support for Coburn and his men and that there was a popular movement for rebellion. They reported that the Young Irelanders were being feted wherever they went and that there was much enthusiasm among the crowds. But the agents added vital addendum to their reports. They wrote that the rebels were grossly exaggerating the numbers attending their rallies, that support for them was ragged and spiritless, that there was no organisation in place, no headquarters, no preparations, no plan. And crucially, that the rebels had very few weapons and no stores of ammunition.
Russell then sent his agents a question that would decide his next move. He asked them if the mass of Irish were physically fit to fight. Were they collectively strong enough, man on man, to endure a lengthy war? He received their prompt and unanimous reply. The Irishmen were not strong. They would not stand and struggle for long. They would soon die from exhaustion. Their hunger would kill more than the Redcoats’ rifles.
It was what the Prime Minister had wanted to hear, what he long expected. He would delay no longer. It was time for his planned offensive. Ireland was again about to be reminded of the futility of opposing England.
The fifteen thousand troops that he had promised Clarendon immediately set sail for Dublin. The Hussars with field artillery were sent to Mayo, five thousand troops were dispatched to Clonmel and another battalion to Limerick. The Enniskillen Dragoons were brought up from Newbridge to Dublin and two squadrons of Light Dragoons reinforced the garrison guarding Dublin Castle. The 75th Regiment, at the ready, bivouacked in nearby Phoenix Park. Moving columns of riflemen, light artillery and cavalry, able to move rapidly, were ready to scour the countryside. The fleet, anchored off Lisbon, was ordered to sail immediately to Cork and three warships, the Dragon, the Merlin and the Medusa were anchored off Waterford. Two more were within short-shelling range of Wexford. The Duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo and of Irish birth from County Meath, volunteered to advise the government on further troop displacements.
The suspension of habeas corpus was rushed through Parliament. Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Drogheda were put under virtual martial law. Irish civilians were no longer allowed to own weapons of any kind and anyone found carrying one was summarily sentenced to one year’s hard labour. If a landowner or government official was murdered, all men in the surrounding district between the ages of sixteen and sixty were expected to actively assist the police in the arrest of the murderer. Anyone resisting or failing to cooperate would be sentenced, without trial, to a minimum of two years’ penal servitude. Over one hundred and twenty people were arrested on various charges on the first night.
There was worse news from O’Brien. He returned from France but not with the much hoped-for pledge of support in his pocket. The exuberant reign of liberalism and idealism there had been short-lived. Having deposed their king, the Republicans were now fighting each other and barricades had once again been erected in the streets of the capital. The Archbishop of Paris, crossing no man’s land in an attempt to mediate, had been shot dead.
The Vatican took notice. Pope Pius IX immediately issued a Papal Prescript forbidding his flock to involve themselves in matters of State and politics. In a separate edict he directly accused the Irish clergy of ‘giving provocation to murder.’ Father Kenyon, the Patriot Priest, was summoned by his bishop, severely reprimanded for his support of the Young Irelanders and suspended. That same day he came to Coburn and told him he was returning to his parish and would remain there, obediently silent.
‘I am condemned by my own Church, Daniel. I
have no option. I cannot help you.’
‘Father, you have twenty parishes under your wing. That’s over a thousand men and boys and I need them all. You’ve given me a list of a dozen priests who you say will follow us. I need everyone one of them too. Most of all I need you.’
‘Do you not understand, Daniel? We priests are now forbidden by our Pope, our Holy Father, to involve ourselves. Do you expect me to disobey him? If I thought we had a glimmer of a chance, I would face the wrath of God for my love of Ireland. But I will not lead my people in an act of mass suicide. You talk of rebellion, but go to the towns and villages, raise the green flag and see how many gather round it. See how little spirit there is left out there.’
‘We can’t surrender now.’
‘This is not surrender. This is being wise. Go into hiding. Plan it better. Pick your time. You cannot beat the English now. They’re too strong and too many. They’re everywhere. Give way for a while.’
‘I’m damned if I will.’
‘You’re damned if you don’t. This is a bootless struggle.’
‘Then I’ll struggle on without you.’
‘You’re a fool, Daniel. You’ll be drowned in blood.’
‘Goodbye, Father.’
‘No! Not goodbye, not yet. I’ll be with you in the shadows watching and praying. That’s as much as I can do. The moment you are really in need, I’ll be there.’
Father Kenyon wet his forefinger and made the sign of the cross on Coburn’s forehead. Then he left for Tipperary to watch and wait and help feed his starving parishioners.
‘It is betrayal. He obeys his Italian master and deserts Ireland. Every priest is pulling away from us now.’
Coburn had summoned O’Brien and Meagher to meet him in Wexford. Kate sat, as usual, at Coburn’s side.
‘Are the priests that important to us?’ she asked.
‘By doing nothing they do us much harm.’
‘Maybe they’ll keep their silence.’
‘Silence too is damning.’
‘What do we do then, Daniel?’ Meagher asked.
‘Father Kenyon says we should bide our time. Wait another year.’
‘It will give us time to prepare ourselves better,’ said O’Brien.
‘People will be stronger then,’ Meagher added.
‘Only if there’s food,’ said O’Brien.
‘And what if there’s not?’ asked Daniel. ‘Do we fight the bloody British Empire with an army of skeletons?’
‘Our revolution then hangs on the potato,’ Meagher said.
‘It does,’ Coburn answered. ‘If this famine stretches further, and there’s not a decent crop next harvest, there’ll not be an Irishman alive left to fight.’
‘Then we have no choice,’ O’Brien said. ‘We do it now or we never will.’
‘Kate?’
‘You’ve always said that no one person can decide it, Daniel.’
‘Tell me then, all three of you. Do we go or do we not?’
There was a moment of silence as if each was afraid to be the first to lead in such a decision. To do nothing would be tantamount to surrender. But to fight and lose? It was O’Brien who spoke first.
‘We’ve come this far after a year of talking and a thousand meetings. If we go away from it now, will we ever return? It’s with God now. We rise and win. We rise and fall. There is only one honourable course.’
Meagher stood up. ‘I remember you saying, Daniel, that we must fan the embers of the fire. Leave it a year and that fire may well be out. I’m for it.’
Coburn clasped his hand. He looked across at Kate. She nodded.
‘So it is then,’ he said to them. ‘We do it now or we will never do it. Are we agreed?
‘We are agreed,’ they answered together.
‘Then send your men out and get the people on the streets. Target Kilkenny, Callan and Carrick. Have them out and the green flags flying. We’ll have two last rallies. Cashel is your town, William.’
‘Indeed, Daniel. It’s been O’Briens’ for five hundred years.’
‘And Waterford is yours Meagher. Arrange both meetings at the same time on the same night. Get out there and excite them. We have to make the people believe we can do it. Kate and I will come to both.’
‘Is that wise, Daniel?’ she asked. ‘The military will be there.’
‘So will our people and a thousand of them will give us cover enough. I have to be among them. They have to see me and hear me this one last time.’
‘And what then?’ Kate asked.
‘Then we’ll go at them ever so slowly, ever so carefully, attacking them in pockets. They are too big and we are too little to face them full on. But we’ll hit them in small places, again and again, biting them like a thousand thunderflies.’
‘Should we go for the railways?’ asked Meagher.
‘We will blow the lines,’ Coburn replied.
‘And the ships in Cork Harbour?’
‘All targets now.’
‘They’ll up their patrols,’ said Duffy.
‘We’ll make them helpless, however many troops they ship in.’
‘This will be a different kind of war, Daniel.’
‘It’s the only one we’re capable of fighting’, he replied. ‘We will be like the will-o’-the-wisp, moving at night, invisible by day. The English have their cannons but we have a better weapon. We have surprise, we have the unexpected. They have an army but we have patience and sufferance. Wars need not always be fought on battlefields; that much we have learnt. No soldier, no politician, no landowner will feel safe. They’ll ever be looking back over their shoulders. We will snipe at them, have them jumping at every shadow. It’s the fear that will get them, that little bit of constant terror. That’s how it’ll be. We’ll fight them with terror! We will be terrorists. They will never have had to fight an enemy like us before.’
The Rock of Cashel sat above the town, a towering mass of limestone crowned by Cormac’s chapel in the cathedral ruins. It was once the shrine of ancient Ireland and the stronghold, five hundred years before, of Brian Boru, King of Munster and William O’Brien’s ancestor. The moon, white and fully round, lit up the mass of stone, making it appear translucent. Below spread all of Tipperary.
O’Brien thought he had prepared his rally well. Messengers had been sent ahead days before with instructions to bring the townspeople to the foot of the rock, light watch fires and fly their green flags high on poles. He remembered his early time as a Young Irelander, those thrilling days of idealism and revolutionary fire. When he had dreamt of entering his ancestral home to be greeted by columns of sturdy men preparing for war. In his vision, carts would be ready laden with supplies, blacksmiths would be hammering shovels and hoes into weapons, old men would straighten their backs and women would throw off their aprons and together pull the wreckage from their tumbled homes and build barricades with the debris. Even the children would be little mercenaries come the day of the great insurrection. Such were once his dreams and now they were an age away.
He rode in at dusk with thirty men and halted within the ruins just below the peak of the Rock. He saw no watch fires, no sentinels. No green flags flew from poles, no candles flickered from any window. The town below him was silent and still. He beckoned the nearest rider.
‘Do you know O’Connor’s house?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘He has the big corner one on the square.’
‘I know it well.’
‘Go down on foot and be careful. If the military are there they are well hidden. Daniel will be coming any time now and it’s him they’ll be after. Find out from O’Connor what it’s all about. We’ll not move until you signal us with a light.’
They watched him go down. There was no sound, no shouts or calls from sentries. They waited.
‘Should one of us follow, sir?’
‘No!’ O’Brien answered. ‘If he’s caught, they’ll have you too. We’ll hold here longer.’
They moved dee
per into the shadow of the chapel ruins.
‘They say there are tunnels under here, Mr O’Brien.’
‘And they’re right. A great maze of them. I know them well.’
‘We are safe here then? If the Redcoats come?’
‘We are,’ O’Brien answered. ‘Now let’s stop the talk.’ He was anxious. Soon Coburn would come riding in with Kate and they would be expecting crowds. They were to be their cordon of safety. Without them they would have no protection.
‘There’s something going on down there, Mr O’Brien.’
There was a single dim shaft of light from the centre of the town.
‘It’s in the square. Must be O’Connor’s. Our man’s made it, thank God. We’ll wait until he calls us.’
Suddenly there was commotion. More lights shone out. A man was shouting, then more shouts were heard and women were screaming. A shot was fired, then four, five, six muskets were firing together.
In the moonlight they saw soldiers running through the streets, some holding torches, spreading out from the town, left and right. At that moment O’Brien turned at the sound of hooves and saw Coburn and Kate galloping towards him. His own horse reared.
‘Get away, Daniel,’ he shouted. ‘Go off. We’re betrayed. They’ve been waiting for us.’
But Coburn did not turn. He brought his horse to a halt between the pillars of the chapel, out of the moonlight, and dismounted.
‘Are they around us, William?’
‘I don’t know. But there’s nobody above us yet. We’ve just come from the peak. Daniel, you must go while you’ve time.’
‘William, I have all the time I need now. There is no hurry any more.’
‘Why do you say that? What’s happened? What news of Waterford?’
‘I’ve heard nothing from Meagher.’
‘And Kilkenny?’
‘Empty except for Hussars.’
‘And Callan?’
‘Every door was shut. No one dared come out for fear of being shot. There was some fighting in Carrick but what could three hundred men with pikes do against three thousand Fusiliers. As soon as the shooting began they threw down their pikes and ran. The towns are silent. Youghal, Cork, Dungarvan, Limerick … They’ve all been scared off the streets. The army is everywhere. It’s over for us, William. Over, even before we’ve begun. All this time they’ve had their own people inside ours. They’ve been too clever for us.’
Dark Rosaleen Page 23