A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  Here in mid Ulster the ideas of the Enlightenment had made little headway. Memories of seventeenth-century dispossession and massacre remained stubbornly alive.

  Drunken affrays in the vicinity of Markethill, between gangs of weavers calling themselves the Nappach Fleet, the Bawn Fleet and the Bunkerhill Defenders had become openly sectarian by 1786. The combatants regrouped, Protestants becoming ‘Peep o’ Day Boys’ and Catholics ‘Defenders’. For the next ten years and more sectarian warfare raged in Co. Armagh. Better armed, the Peep o’ Day Boys at first swept all before them. These were described by a local landlord, the Earl of Gosford, as ‘a low set of fellows ... who with Guns and Bayonets, and Other weapons Break Open the Houses of the Roman Catholics, and as I am informed treat many of them with Cruelty’. According to John Byrne, a Catholic dyer from Armagh city, some Protestant gentlemen lent arms to Catholics ‘to protect themselves from depredations of these fanatick madmen; and many poor creatures were obliged to abandon their houses at night, and sleep in turf-bogs, in little huts made of sods; so great was the zeal of our holy crusados this year’.

  In November 1788, when a Catholic mob near Blackwatertown taunted the Benburb Volunteers for marching to ‘The Protestant Boys’ and ‘The Boyne Water’, it was fired on. Five were killed. In the following July more lives were lost when Volunteers made a successful assault on Defenders assembled on Lisnaglade Fort near Tandragee.

  ‘For heaven’s sake dont forget the Powder & Ball with all Expedition,’ the Drumbanagher magistrate John Moore wrote to Lord Charlemont in July 1789. He had no hesitation in giving out arms to ‘the Protestant Boys that have none’, because Defenders ‘are now beginning their Night Depredations and Lye in Wait behind Ditches, to murder and Destroy Every protestant that appears’.

  The sectarian violence fanned out to the uplands of south Armagh. Here the Catholics—still speaking Gaelic and wearing mantles—had the advantage of numbers and turned on the Protestants with a ferocity not seen for more than a century. A horrific climax was reached when Defenders attacked a schoolmaster and his family in Forkill on 28 January 1791, an event graphically described by the Rev. Edward Hudson, Presbyterian minister of Jonesborough:

  In rushed a Body of Hellhounds—not content with cutting & stabbing him in several places, they drew a cord round his neck until his Tongue was forced out—It they cut off and three fingers of his right hand—Then they cut out his wife’s tongue and ... with a case knife cut off her Thumb and four of her fingers one after another ... she I fear cannot recover—there was in the house a Brother of hers about fourteen years old ... his Tongue those merciless Villains cut out and cut the calf of his leg with a sword.

  The magistrate John Moore wrote: ‘The whole country for Ten Mile Round is in absolute Rebellion & Confusion. Where it will end God only knows.’

  In September 1795 Defenders assembled near Loughgall at a crossroads known as the Diamond to face the Peep o’ Day Boys in battle. When the Protestants were reinforced by a Co. Down contingent called the Bleary Boys, the Defenders took their priest’s advice and agreed to a truce. Both sides withdrew, but on 21 September a fresh body of Defenders arrived from Co. Tyrone, determined to fight. The Peep o’ Day Boys, on home ground, quickly reassembled and took position on the brow of a hill overlooking the Diamond. William Blacker, a Trinity College student home on vacation, spent his time melting lead from the roof of Castle Blacker, making bullets for the Peep o’ Day Boys. Then, he tells us, the Protestants opened fire

  with cool and steady aim at the swarms of Defenders, who were in a manner cooped up in the valley and presented an excellent mark for their shots. The affair was of brief duration.... From the bodies found afterwards by the reapers in the cornfields, I am inclined to think that not less than thirty lost their lives.

  The victorious Protestants then marched into Loughgall, and there, in the house of James Sloan, the Orange Order was founded.

  Episode 148

  ‘I WILL BLOW YOUR SOUL TO THE LOW HILLS OF HELL’

  Then heigho the lily-o,

  The royal, loyal lily-o,

  There’s not a flower in Erin’s bower

  Can match the Orange lily-o.

  Following their rout of the Catholic Defenders at the Battle of the Diamond in September 1795, the victorious Protestants founded the Orange Order. This was a defensive association of lodges: like the Defenders, it was oath-bound, used passwords and signs, was confined to one sect, and its membership was made up mainly of weaver-farmers. William Blacker was one of the very few of the landed gentry who joined the order at the outset. He remembered

  the assemblage of men, young and old, some seated on heaps of sods or rude blocks of wood, some standing in various attitudes, most of them armed with guns of every age and calibre.... There was a stern solemnity in the reading of the lesson from Scripture and administering the oath to the newly admitted brethren.

  Blacker did not approve, however, of the immediate outcome of the Battle of the Diamond:

  Unhappily ... A determination was expressed of driving from this quarter of the county the entire of its Roman Catholic population.... A written notice was thrown into or posted upon the door of a house warning the inmates, in the words of Cromwell, to betake themselves ‘to Hell or Connaught’.

  A sample of what was called ‘placarding’ was sent by General Dalrymple to Dublin Castle. It warned a woman of Keady and her brother that they must not be informers,

  otherwise Be all the Secruts of hell your house Shall Be Burned to the Ground. Both his Soul & your Shall be Blwed To the Blue flames of hell. Now Teak this for Warnig, For if you Bee in this Contry Wednesday Night I will Blow your Soul to the Low hils of hell And Burn the House you are in.

  The ‘wreckers’ smashed looms, tore up linen webs, and destroyed great numbers of homes. In just two months some seven thousand Catholics were driven out of Co. Armagh. Many did flee to Connacht. Lord Altamont reckoned that four thousand had taken refuge in Co. Mayo, and his brother concluded:

  Be assured that no circumstance that has happened in Ireland for a hundred years past, has gone so decidedly to separate the mind of this country from the Government.... The Emigration from the North continues; every day families arrive here with the wreck of their properties.

  Lord Altamont built a town in the coastal region west of Murrisk in Co. Mayo for these Catholic weavers. He named it Louisburgh, after his daughter Louisa, and descendants of these refugees are living in the town to this day.

  Lord Gosford, Deputy Lieutenant of Armagh, summoned the magistrates of the county to a special meeting on 28 December 1795. These men had been either unable or unwilling to uphold the rule of law. Gosford did not beat about the bush:

  It is no secret, that a persecution ... is now raging in this county; neither age nor sex, etc., is sufficient to excite mercy, much less to afford protection. The only crime which the wretched objects of this ruthless persecution are charged with, is a crime of easy proof; it is simply a profession of the Roman Catholic faith.... A lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges of this new species of delinquency, and the sentence they have denounced is equally concise and terrible—it is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment.

  Gosford concluded by saying that he was ‘as true a Protestant as any gentleman in this room’, adding that ‘The supineness of the magistracy of Armagh is become a common topic of conversation in every corner of the kingdom.’

  Meanwhile the United Irishmen had become a secret oath-bound revolutionary body pledged to fight for an Irish republic with the aid of the French. Now tens of thousands of Defenders clamoured to be part of the coming revolution. Far from shattering the movement, the Protestant intimidation hastened recruitment by scattering highly political Catholics to the west and the south. Executed in dozens and transported in thousands to Botany Bay in the 1795 autumn assizes, the Defenders did not flinch—not even when they were excommunicated by the Catholic Archbishop of Dubli
n, John Thomas Troy.

  Until now the United Irishmen had been confined to middle-class radicals in Belfast, Bangor, Lisburn, Dublin and Cork, and Presbyterian farmers in the counties of Antrim and Down. Towards the end of 1795 their leaders made the decision to accept into their organisation tens of thousands of Catholic Defenders fired by sectarian zeal. The United Irishmen now had the field army they required—but could they control the actions of their rank and file, bent on revenge?

  For the present the United Irishmen had only one concern: when would the French arrive?

  Episode 149

  ‘THE FRENCH ARE IN THE BAY’

  On 24 February 1796 Theobald Wolfe Tone walked to the Palais de Luxembourg in Paris. There, somewhat to his surprise, he was immediately given an audience with Lazare Carnot, one of the three Directors who now ruled France. Carnot listened intently and agreed to send an expedition to Ireland. To his delight, Tone was given the rank of adjutant-general in the French army. The distinguished general Lazare Hoche, who had been placed in charge of the expedition, received his instructions on 19 June:

  We intend, Citizen General, to restore to a people ripe for revolution the independence and liberty for which it clamours. Ireland has groaned under the hateful yoke of England for centuries. The Defenders ... are already secretly armed.… Detach Ireland from England, and she will be reduced to a second-rate power.

  The only hope of reaching Ireland without confronting the Royal Navy was to set out in mid-winter when British patrols would be in port. Great quantities of arms, intended for distribution to the United Irishmen and the Defenders, were loaded onto the forty-three warships, seventeen of them ships of the line. Then Wolfe Tone and 45,450 men—crack troops who had never been defeated—stepped on board. On the morning of 15 December 1796 the fleet sailed out of the Breton port of Brest.

  Right from the start, the expedition ran into trouble. As it was heading for the open sea the seventy-four-gun ship of the line, the Séduisant, struck a rock and all but forty-five of its crew of 1,300 were drowned. Soon after this the Fraternité, carrying General Hoche, sailed out of sight and never managed to rejoin the invasion fleet.

  On 20 December General Grouchy, second-in-command, decided to open the package containing secret orders. The fleet was to sail to west Cork, to Bantry Bay.

  O the French are on the sea, says the Shan Van Vocht;

  O the French are on the sea, says the Shan Van Vocht;

  O the French are in the bay, they’ll be here without delay,

  And the Orange will decay, says the Shan Van Vocht.

  Tone described the progress of the expedition in his journal:

  December 21st ... this morning at day-break we are under Cape Clear, distant about four leagues, so I have at all events once more seen my country.... It is most delicious weather, with a favourable wind and everything in short that we can desire except our absent comrades.... What if the General should not join us?

  On the following day the French were in the bay, Bantry Bay. But the fatal decision was made not to attempt a landing until General Hoche appeared. By the time it had been agreed to make a landing on Christmas Day a violent storm was buffeting the fleet.

  December 24th ... This infernal easterly wind continues without remorse. Well, let it blow and be hanged!...

  December 25th—Last night I had the strongest expectations that today we should debark, but at two this morning I was awakened by the wind.... The wind continues right ahead so that it is absolutely impossible to work up to the landing-place, and God knows when it will change.

  By now the fleet was in full view of those on shore and the news swept through the country. The Catholic Bishop of Cork, Francis Moylan, in his Christmas Day address, urged his flock not to join the French:

  Charged as I am by that Blessed Saviour, whose birth with grateful hearts we this day solemnise, with the care of your souls; it is incumbent on me to exhort you to that peaceable demeanour which must ever mark his true and faithful disciples.... Be not deceived by the lure of equalising property which they hold out to you. They come only to rob, plunder and destroy.…

  If the sway of our impious invaders were here established, you would not, my beloved people, enjoy the comfort of uniting with the celestial spirits in Heaven ... in singing: ‘Glory to God on High and on earth peace to men of goodwill’.

  Tone’s journal expressed his disappointment at the damaging effect of the disastrous delay:

  Had we been able to land the first day and march directly to Cork, we should infallibly have carried it by a coup de main; and then we should have a footing in the country, but as it is — ?... I see nothing before me, unless a miracle be wrought in our favour, but the ruin of the expedition, the slavery of my country and my own destruction.... I have a merry Christmas of it today.

  Next day the storm became so fierce that orders were issued to cut cables and return to France. Tone wrote:

  December 26th ... Well, England has not had such an escape since the Spanish Armada, and that expedition, like ours, was defeated by the weather.

  Even without the French, however, the rising would still go ahead.

  Episode 150

  ‘NOTHING BUT TERROR WILL KEEP THEM IN ORDER’

  December 1796 had been a month of grave anxiety for the British Empire. France had launched a fleet carrying more than 45,000 men to Ireland at a time when there were fewer than 13,000 regular troops on the island. Only atrocious weather had prevented a landing. Now the government acted swiftly: an Insurrection Act effectively allowed the imposition of martial law in disturbed districts; Yeomanry corps, almost entirely composed of Protestants, were raised in every county; and conscription into the militia of young men, mostly Catholics, was stepped up.

  But news of the appearance of the French had electrified the United Irishmen and their Defender allies. Recruitment in Ulster doubled during the first four months of 1797, and as Defenderism spread southwards deep into the province of Leinster government spies were reporting that there were over 300,000 men ready in arms to rise against the crown.

  The government now acted to disarm the people. It began with Ulster. ‘Nothing but terror will keep them in order ...’, Lieutenant-General Gerard Lake wrote on taking up his post in Belfast; ‘it is plain every act of sedition originates in this town.’ On 13 March he proclaimed martial law, ordering the immediate surrender of all arms and ammunition. Military searches began at once in Belfast and Carrickfergus, spreading out to Loughbrickland next day, and Armagh in the week following. In the first ten days alone more than 5,000 firearms were seized, together with an immense number of pikes. Spies had penetrated the inner counsels of the United Irishmen, and thanks to their information Lake was able to arrest almost all the leading northern revolutionaries. Seven tumbrels left Belfast filled with prisoners to be escorted by a troop of dragoons to Dublin.

  ‘The flame is smothered, but not extinguished,’ Lake declared as he applied harsher regulations in May. In the countryside the Yeomanry were let loose, striking terror by burning houses and flogging suspects. The Presbyterian minister Robert Magill watched men being flogged at Broughshane, Co. Antrim:

  I saw Samuel Bones of Lower Broughshane receive 500 lashes—250 on the back and 250 on the buttocks. I saw Samuel Crawford of Ballymena receive 500 lashes. The only words he spoke during the time were ‘Gentlemen, be pleased to shoot me’; I heard him utter them. I saw Hood Haslett of Ballymena receive 500 lashes ...

  Almost fifty United Irish prisoners were executed, including several Presbyterian ministers. The most notorious conviction was that of William Orr of Farranshane near Antrim. Held at Carrickfergus for a year, Orr was charged with administering unlawful oaths. Even the packed jury found the evidence conflicting and recommended the prisoner to mercy. But Orr was executed on 14 October 1797 on the Gallows Green outside the town. His ‘Dying Declaration’ was printed and distributed in thousands:

  If to have loved my Country, to have known its Wrongs, to have fel
t the Injuries of the persecuted Catholics and to have united with them and all other Religious Persuasions in the most orderly and least sanguinery Means of procuring redress;—If these be Felonies I am a Felon, but not otherwise.

  By the end of 1797 Lake’s ruthless campaign had almost obliterated the United Irishmen in Ulster, where previously they had been strongest. No attempt was made to disarm the Orangemen; indeed, as recruits for the Yeomanry, they provided an invaluable addition to government forces.

  Far from snuffing out rebellion in the south, however, General Lake helped to provoke it there in 1798. In November 1797 Britain’s most distinguished soldier, General Sir Ralph Abercromby, was appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland. Two months later a tour of army units quickly convinced him that the crown forces in Ireland were out of control and that there was a very real risk that their reckless brutality would drive the people into rebellion. On 26 February he issued his report to all officers: