742 Chapter XXX
for those in America in 1776. After the French showed their intentions, however,
at Bantry Bay in December 1796, the mass recruitment of United Irish went rap-
idly forward, until there were 100,000 in Ulster alone. Local societies chose dele-
gates to form regional bodies, which culminated in an Executive Directory, ready
to take over, at the proper moment, as a government for an Irish Republic. The
contrast has already been noted between the truly popular and relatively demo-
cratic though “underground” United Irish, and the conspiracy formed in 1796 by
Babeuf in Paris, with its Directory in which power flowed from the top, and which
remained shrouded in secrecy from its own handful of followers.
The British countered by reinforcing their garrison in Ireland against both in-
surrection and invasion, by searching homes and hiding places for concealed weap-
ons, and by infiltrating the United Irish lodges with spies. Command was en-
trusted to an officer chosen for his willingness to be ruthless, General Lake, who
wrote to his superiors, in 1797, that “nothing but terror will keep them in order.”^59
The terror took the form of quartering troops on the inhabitants, searches, sei-
zures, burnings, hangings, “half- hangings,” tortures, deportations without trial, and
condoning the barbarities of Orangemen and bands of yeomanry that wandered
about the country under no control. The United Irish and their sympathizers re-
plied in kind so far as possible. The appalling struggle was not between Catholic
and Protestant, and still less between Anglo- Saxon and Celt; it was a struggle of
political type, for and against an independent Irish republic.
The measures taken by the government, or taken in its name, were so effective
that the United Irish, like Kosciuszko in 1794, had to act before they were ready,
and before it should be too late. The insurrection began in Ulster in April 1798. It
soon spread to other parts of the island, with all sorts of people, such as the agrar-
ian Defenders, and those who had hitherto belonged to nothing, joining in as the
moment of decision seemed to present itself. The most serious fighting was in the
southeast, in Wexford. Here a certain Father John Murphy, who had hitherto been
politically inactive, but was maddened by the recent acts of repression coming on
top of the chronic misery of his people, emerged as a military leader of some tal-
ent, guiding a host of poorly armed peasants into battle. Other priests, while their
bishops deplored the whole proceeding, also appeared in the ranks of the rebels—
enough for Castlereagh, who was then chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, to
call the uprising “a Jacobinical conspiracy pursuing its object chiefly with Popish
instruments.” These rebel priests, said a conservative Catholic, were “the very faeces
of the Church.” Twelve Presbyterian ministers are also known to have been in-
volved in the rebellion, of whom three were executed.^60
The insurrection, however, was doomed from the start. Its higher leaders were
either on the Continent or in British jails. There was widespread participation, but
no central direction; no one knew what was happening beyond his own locality;
nothing could be synchronized, momentary successes could not be consolidated,
nor local defeats of the British turned to advantage. The hope of French armed
59 Quoted by Jones, Invasion that Failed, 19 7.
60 Dickson, Wexjord Rising; Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, Second Marquess of
Londonderry, 8 vols. (London, 1848), I, 219; McDowell, Public Opinion, 241; W. Fitzpatrick, Secret
Service under Pitt (London, 1892), 290.