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- Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
The Irish rebellion of 1798 comprised a scattered series of local uprisings and desperate incursions that, tragically for the rebels, failed to cohere. This fascinating portrait of County Leitrim in the 1790s provides important insights into the rebellion in Connaught. In Leitrim, the spirit of rebellion peaked in 1795 – three years before General Humbert's French troops and their Irish allies marched almost the full length of the county, with the government's superior force in pursuit, towards their eventual defeat just over the Longford border at Ballinamuck. Leitrim was shaken by violent Defender disturbances in 1793 and 1795, culminating in the battle of Drumcollop, which brought the county to a state of insurrection. Following the battle of the Diamond in County Armagh and the formation of the Orange Order in September 1795, large numbers of refugees from Ulster descended into Leitrim, bringing with them revolutionary ideas and a sense of outrage that helped to keep the flame of rebellion alive. But Leitrim had risen too early, and the government's suppression of the Defenders and, later, the United Irishmen, was brutally effective. Liam Kelly has made extensive use of local and archival sources to produce an authoritative and accessible account – complete with maps, illustrations and original documentation – of the two strands of his story: the rise and fall of the Defender and United Irish movements in Leitrim in the mid-1790s, and the French invasion of Connaught, which began promisingly but soon became a march towards certain defeat, with dire consequences for the Irish rebels who flew to the French standard.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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a flame now quenched
Rebels and Frenchmen in Leitrim
1793–1798
Liam Kelly
THE LILLIPUT PRESS
DUBLIN
List of Abreviations
A.H.G. Archives Historiques de la Guerre, Paris
B.L. British Library
H.O. Home Office
I.H.S. Irish Historical Studies
Ms. Manuscript
N.A.I. National Archives of Ireland
N.L.I. National Library Of Ireland.
P.R.O. Public Records Office, London
P.R.O.N.I. Public Records Office Of Northern Ireland
R.I.A. Royal Irish Academy
R.P. Rebellion Papers
S.O.C. State Of The Country Papers
T.C.D. Trinity College Dublin
U.C.D. University College Dublin
U.C.G. University College Galway
The First Stirrings of Rebellion
1793
We have numbers – and numbers do constitute power
Let us will to be free, and we’re free from that hour.1
George Nugent Reynolds, the last male heir of the Reynolds family of Lough Scur in Co. Leitrim, was only sixteen or seventeen years old when his father (also George Reynolds but better known as ‘the Squire’) was shot by Robert Keon in 1786. Keon had publicly whipped Reynolds at the Assizes in Carrick-on Shannon and, as honour demanded, a duel was arranged. Both parties met as planned early on Monday morning 16th. October 1786 at Drynaun near Sheemore. But before the ground was marked or the arrangements made Keon approached the unarmed Reynolds, shouted ‘Damn you, you scoundrel why did you bring me here?2and shot him through the head. Robert Keon and four others were sent to trial for the murder. It was felt they would not get a fair hearing in Leitrim and the case was transferred to the Court of King’s Bench in Dublin. Robert Keon was found guilty of murder on 31 January, 1788 and sentenced to death. The writ of execution was read by Lord Earlsfort, the Chief Justice of the Court:
… Robert Keon, hath been by due form of law attainted of traiterously killing and murdering George Reynolds, in the county of Leitrim. It is thereupon considered by the Court here, that they said Robert Keon be taken from the Bar of the Court where he now stands, to the place from which he came (the gaol) that his irons are to be struck off, and form thence he is to be drawn to the place of execution (the gallows) and there he is to be hanged by the neck, but not until he is dead, for whilst he is yet alive he is to be cut down, his bowels are to be taken out and burned, and he being yet alive, his head is to be severed from his body; his body is to be divided into four quarters, and his head and quarters are to be at his Majesty’s disposal …3
This chilling sentence was carried out on 16 February, 1788.
This ‘Sheemore Duel’,44as it came to be called, left two gentlemen of the county dead and shocked all of Leitrim. Their deaths and the manner of their dying gives us a glimpse into a society where violent acts were commonplace and where the official government response to such acts was often more terrible still. These acts of violence were usually isolated acts against people and property. But within five years of Robert Keon’s execution all that was to change. By early 1793 all of Leitrim was in turmoil and this state of affairs was to continue, more or less, until late 1798 when the French army had left and all the retaliations had ceased.
Some of the northern counties, most notably Armagh, were disturbed from 1785 onwards. Here the Protestant Peep O’Day Boys, a secret society noted for its early morning attacks on Catholic neighbours, and the Defenders, its Catholic counterpart, were both organised and active in attacking those they considered to be their enemy. Gradually Defenderism began to spread into the south Ulster counties of Monaghan and Cavan and by early 1793 it was growing rapidly in Leitrim. Defender-makers moved around, usually in pairs, swearing in the peasantry. For each member sworn in the Defender-maker received a shilling. George Nugent Reynolds, now in his early twenties and head of the Reynolds family at Letterfine, was in no doubt but that it was outsiders who had caused so many to become Defenders. He wrote: ‘some bad men have got among you to stir you up’.5
The Defender oath varied from time to time and from place to place. The oath in north Connaught at this time, strangely enough, included a promise to be true to King George and to the rights of his Kingdom in Ireland. They swore ‘that they must have lands at ten shillings per acre, and that they will have no farmer nor great men and that they are fifty to one gentleman.’6So the Defenders were not, a this time, part of the new Republicanism being put forward by the Belfast and Dublin based United Irishmen. Rather they were concerned with local grievances relating to land, tithes and the raising of a militia. Some joined the new society out of fear. Mrs Slacke,7who lived at Annadale House, wrote in her diary on 20 May 1793:
Tumultuous numbers gather themselves … We have been told that the mob killed a man for objecting to take the oath which they force many to swear.
But the work of the Defender-maker was easy. The majority joined voluntarily. Their plight was desperate. They had little to lose. The labourer and small tenant farmers of the county had many grievances. The majority of them lived in poverty that defies description. Chevalier DeLatocnaye travelled through Connaught just two years before that other Frenchman, Humbert, and he describes the conditions of the peasantry as follows:
The nakedness of the poor … is most unpleasant – is it not possible to organise industry which would enable these people to lead a less painful existence? Their huts are not like the houses of men and yet out of them troop flocks of children healthy and fresh as roses. Their state can be observed all the easier, since they are often as naked as the hand, and play in front of the cabins with no clothing but what Nature has given them. These poor folk, (are) reduced to such misery as cannot be imagined … They live on potatoes, and they have for that edible (which is all in all to them) a singular respect, attributing to it all that happens to them. I asked a peasant, who had a dozen pretty children, ‘How is it that your countrymen have so many and so healthy children?’ ‘It’s the praties, Sir,’ he replied.8
Such poverty was widespread. The labourer was poorly paid. He could expect at best sixpence and at worst fourpence a day for his work. If he bought a two pound bar of soap, which he seldom did, it would cost him eightpence. The land rented by the tenant farmers was too dear and they resented having to pay a tithe to the Established Church. The tithe they felt was exorbitant and unjust since they did not belong to that Church. Their anger was aimed not so much at the Rectors, since many of them were absentees, rather it was aimed at the tithe proctors who most times needed an armed guard as they went about their work.
The priests of the Roman Catholic Church were not very popular either. They too charged dues from a people who were already desperate. There were Mass dues, marriage dues, baptism dues and occasionally dues for attendance at funerals, to be paid. But most of all it was widely believed that the priests, like some of the Catholic gentry, supported the new proposals for the setting up of a militia, and that they would help draw up lists for enrolment. Many priests were threatened and near Athlone a priest was strung up by his parishioners and almost hung to death for preaching to them the necessity of submission to the Militia Act.9The doors of many chapels were boarded up and the priests were expelled and threatened with instant death if they returned. Leitrim was no exception. Mrs Slacke wrote in her diary on 19 May 1793:
We hear of great disturbances. The priests are threatened by their own parishioners.
There were many who felt that the Catholic Relief Act, which removed some of the restrictions Catholics had been living under and which came into effect early in 1793, contributed to the discontent also.10Some of the Protestant gentry felt that the peasantry interpreted the Act as a sign of weakness and that having got a little they expected more. Others felt that the Act seemed to promise much but in reality made little difference to the poorer Catholics. It merely served to aggravate the situation and to highlight a host of other inequalities.11
The weather contributed to the discontent also. 1793 was a very bad year weather-wise, with a particularly wet summer. Having already paid too much for rented land many saw their crops destroyed and this made an already desperate people even more so. But their greatest grievance of all was the proposal to set up a militia. The dramatic growth in Defenderism in Leitrim and the resultant large-scale disturbances in the county in the first half of 1793 were due primarily to the Militia Act and to a lesser degree to the several grievances listed above.
By March 1793 England was at war with France. Many of the regular government forces based in Ireland were required for war on the continent, leaving a dangerous vacuum at home. In order to replace the military moved to the continent it was decided to set up an new Militia in each county. According to Lord Hillsborough’s calculations Leitrim would have to raise approximately three hundred men for the militia.12They were to be raised by a peculiar form of conscription called balloting. It was to be officered by Protestant gentry but the majority were to be taken from the ‘lower orders’. The Chief Secretary Hobart was fiercely enthusiastic about the Militia Act. He wrote on 19 March 1793:
I look upon the militia as the most useful measure both to England and Ireland that ever has been adopted, and if I am not extremely mistaken, it will operate … to the civilisation of the people, and to the extinction of the means which the agitators of the country have repeatedly availed themselves of to disturb the peace … I am happy to add that there is every appearance of the restoration of peace in Ireland.13
But he spoke much too soon. The resistance to the setting up of the militia was growing weekly in the county. It was widely believed and greatly feared that men would be torn away from their wives and children, made into soldiers and transported to the continent to fight England’s wars for her. It matters little whether these fears were well-founded or not, the fact is that the peasantry of Leitrim believed them to be. And it was these fears, more than anything else, which prompted people to take the Defender oath, assemble in such large numbers and even engage in violent acts against the military.
Not everyone interpreted the new Militia Act in this way. George Nugent Reynolds saw the setting up of the militia as a necessary and good thing and he set about persuading the rest of the county that this was so. He felt that the Defenders were playing on people’s fears and he was convinced that these fears were without foundation. He wrote a long addressTo the Common People of County Leitrim14to persuade them of the merits of the new militia force. It was printed on a poster-type sheet and presumably posted up around the county for all the people to see. In it he pleaded with the people to return to their homes and to listen to reason. He told them they had greatly misunderstood the Militia Act and over-reacted to it. He wrote:
As one who has been your zealous advocate and protector and at all times happy and eager to open the jail doors when justice permitted the interference of mercy, suffer me to address you calmly … Don’t you see poor deluded people that you must be better off than you ever were, for when the gentlemen put guns and swords in your hands, they must trust you more and trust you better than ever they did. Don’t you see therefore that the poor people of Ireland are rising fast. You will shortly be as well off as the English who have meat and bread and ale and so will you if you be quiet, but you will get nothing by rioting but starvation and the gallows … In a county like ours where there is little or no manufacture let me ask you how do many of you expect to dispose of your time to more advantage. You best know if you have but patience to reflect whether it is easier and better to get a shilling a day for walking a few hours to the tune of fife and drum, or digging in a ditch for sixpence from the getting up of the lark to the lying down of the lamb.
Reynolds reminded the people how he and his father before him had always sided with the poor and had used their position as a magistrate and as one of the leading families in the county to alleviate their suffering whenever possible. He appealed particularly to all the Reynolds’ in the county and also reminded the people of the other contacts he had around the county:
Listen to me, listen to the other gentlemen of the county who have too great an interest in your welfare to ruin you. The brave M’Artins of Ballinamore have often assured me of their attachment, so have the Morans of Drumshanboe, so have the Mulveys. In short I am the friend of you all, and when I forget you may God forget me.
Reynolds, being a magistrate, wanted to uphold law and to preserve order. Yet he was always sympathetic to the poor. He was nominally a Protestant but was not regarded by the neighbouring Protestant gentry as being one. The 1790s was a difficult period for the young man because he was trying to maintain a middle-ground in a time of great upheaval when the majority of people held extreme positions on one side or the other. He, like the Catholic gentry and the priests, lost much of the influence he had over the poor people of the area during this troubled period 1793 to 1798. He was suspected by both sides and eventually lost out, as we shall see later, by being dismissed from his position as a magistrate by the man people loved to hate, Lord Clare.
But the common people of the county Leitrim were in no mood for listening to George Nugent Reynolds or indeed to anyone else either. Huge crowds gathered outside the chapels on the first Sundays of May in 1793. By Whit Sunday, 18 May, the crowds were vast and it was obvious there was going to be trouble. And yet the assembled Defenders carried a white flag which they said was an emblem of peace and a red one to show their loyalty to the King.15Angel Anna Slacke wrote in her diary on Tuesday 20 May:
Rumour increases, many of the gentlemen are threatened on account of the militia which they are about to raise.
And exactly a week later Lieut. Col. Craddock, writing from Carrick on Shannon, reported that
The whole of Roscommon and a great part of Sligo and Leitrim were in avowed insurrection.16
The Defenders now had great numbers in their ranks but they had no weaponry worth speaking of. During the month of May they began to raid the big houses for arms.The Timesreported that the Defenders attacked the house of
the Right Hon. Joshua Cooper of Mercury, which they plundered of arms and ammunition and drank the wines and other liquors. They behaved in like manner in the house of Captain Ormsby of Castledangan, Mr Tennison of Coalville, Mr Johnson of Adderfold in the county of Leitrim and also his son and Capt. Carter of Drumlease.17
Mr Tennison’s house was burned to the ground and the Church at Kilronan was destroyed. At Annadale Mrs Slacke and her family lived in fear of an attack:
we know not if they will visit us this night …
she wrote on 21 May, but twelve days later she could write with relief:
He (God) has kept my habitation in peace and my family in safety.
Now that the insurgents had some arms they became more daring. One of their first acts in Leitrim was an attempt to liberate some prisoners who were held in Carrick jail.
Mrs Slacke captured the mood of the time very well:
The alarm reached Carrick. A number threatened to pull down the gaol and rescue the prisoners, set fire to the town, and make havoc of all the inhabitants. The cries of the women could be heard, I am told, in Leitrim (village) four miles from Carrick. Captain Douglass ordered the drum to beat to arms, the distress of all was incredible, especially women and children whose anguish was beyond description.’18
Their distress was understandable. A large number of Defenders were marching towards Carrick on Shannon when they were overtaken by a troop of the 9th Dragoons under Captain Hall. The Defenders were routed. Nine or ten of them were killed and one hundred and fifteen were taken prisoner, and virtually all of the group were disarmed. None of the Dragoons was injured but the trumpeter’s horse was killed.19The jail in Carrick on Shannon was now bursting at the seams and despite this defeat the insurgents were still intent on freeing the prisoners there and some of the gentlemen in the surrounding area requested that they be freed ‘as the mob have sworn they will not desist until that be done.’20
The Manorhamilton area was particularly disturbed. Mr Wynne’s agent, writing from Sligo reported that ‘immense mobs were collecting in the line from Ballinrobe to Manorhamilton.’ A party of Dragoons travelling form Enniskillen to Manorhamilton caught up with a group of rebels who fled into a bog. Ten of them were captured and lodged in Manorhamilton jail.21Later it was reported that a mob of nearly five thousand people entered that town, plundered the inhabitants of their arms and committed several other excesses.22
On 26 May 1793, Captain John Gray, at the head of his 41st Regiment – consisting of two sergeants and thirty five rank and file – left Carrick on Shannon to march to Manorhamilton so that they might restore order there. They left the village of Drumkeerin at a quarter past five in the evening and about a mile outside the town (at a place now known as ‘Battle Brae’ in the townland of Lavagh) they met a large number of Defenders, some in the fields on either side and others on the road. They were led by two respectable looking gentlemen on horseback. Captain Gray, writing from Manorhamilton the following day described what happened then:
As I had no magistrate with me I did not wish to fire upon them, and as they inclined on each side of the road as if they meant to let me pass, and the men on horseback repeatedly assuring me that they would not interfere, I ordered the men to march. I had hardly given the word when they rushed in upon me, and a desperate conflict ensued, which lasted for about ten minutes, and had we not all been actuated by the determined resolution to die or conquer, we must have been all cut to pieces. I had the misfortune to have Serjeant England (a gallant old soldier) very desperately wounded and one corporal and six privates, most of them severely so; nine or ten of the villains lay dead at our feet at the time we disengaged ourselves.23
One of the dead was a Mr Ormsby who was forced to march with the Defenders and used as a shield. This was a common tactic used by the rebels. Ormsby was, most likely one of the Ormsby family who lived at Castledangan, Co. Sligo. Their house had been raided a few days previously.
Mrs Slacke wrote that the ‘misguided mob’ who attacked Gray and his men were armed with:
uncommon weapons such as scythes fastened on long poles, large hammers tied on walking sticks, reaping hooks nailed on long handles and forks made purposely long and close in the prongs, guns and blunderbusses, some swords and many stones enclosed in pieces of strong linnen suspended to large pieces of branches.24
This motley collection of weapons is one clue as to why the rebels, who were vastly superior in numbers, were defeated. The Defenders in Leitrim at this time, and indeed later too, had huge numbers to boast of but very little else. They lacked the ingredients necessary for success in battle – good leadership, discipline, order, tactical know-how, and the ability to remain cool under fire. They were numerically superior and usually fought with great passion (the rebels at Drumkeerin charged Captain Gray’s men and wrenched the bayonets from their muskets)25but to be successful in battle they needed much more. Their weaponry was outdated and the guns they had were of little use to them either because they had become damp and rusted by being hidden out of doors26or because they did not know how to use them. One man taken prisoner after the battle near Drumkeerin admitted that he levelled a blunderbuss and snapped it eight or ten times at Gray’s head but it failed to go off. So it is not surprising that in the majority of skirmishes between the military and the Defenders in Leitrim the latter, despite their greater numbers, were defeated.
Gray and his men reached Manorhamilton but had to leave all their baggage behind. Captain Vandeleur and a troop of the 8th Dragoons scoured the countryside that night in a follow-up operation and reported that in almost every house they went into they found bloody clothes and men dead or dying.27The indications are that the soldiers were over-zealous in their mop-up operation and the final death toll of the rebels was said to be between twenty and thirty. Captain Gray expressed the hope that this business would have a good effect on the people and that order would be restored.28He had his wish The killings, arrests, and subsequent transportation of some prisoners to the fleet had a sobering effect on the minds of the Defenders. The military and the magistrates seldom let considerations of justice deter them from teaching the insurgents a lesson. Hangings, floggings and transportations were commonplace. The prisoners held at Carrick on Shannon were so alarmed and afraid that they offered to join the fleet rather than stand trial.29People were terrified and this terror brought an uneasy peace.
The peasantry, having suffered much, were now more amenable and ready to listen to the assurances of George Nugent Reynolds and others regarding the militia. The proposed ballot system for raising the militia was quietly dropped and the Leitrim Militia was raised from volunteers and substitutes. Mrs Slacke wrote in her diary on 2 June 1793 that
all things seem quiet in this neighbourhood.
There had been several weeks of turmoil throughout much of the county but it was, at least for now, over. The defeat of the Defenders near Carrick on Shannon and near Drumkeerin had a salutary effect on them. Those Defenders who had escaped death, prison sentences, deportation or being sent to the fleet gradually returned to their homes. This quiet continued without any major disruptions for the remainder of that year and throughout 1794 also. But it was a false quiet. There were still many grievances and much anger. Defenderism was not gone. It was smouldering away just beneath the surface.
The Worst Year of All
1795
You soldiers of Britain, your barbarous doing
Long, long will the children of Erin deplore.’1
There had been isolated acts of violence during the second half of 1793 and all during 1794, but it was not until the Spring of 1795 that the Defenders began to gather in large numbers again in the county. Sir E. Newenham, writing from Carrick-on-Shannon, reported that by the middle of March Defenders were meeting at night, exercising with fife and drum, administering unlawful oaths and committing outrages throughout much of the county.2They generally used the local chapel as their meeting place. Each parish had a drill sergeant and it was said that they had plenty of money. Mrs Slacke described the Defender meetings in Kiltubrid:
They gather in multitudes around us every night, with pipers and fifes they parade on the road from our avenue to Lanty Slacke’s bridge;3their place of consultation is the Mass-house … What they mean is yet a secret.4
The Defenders had learned from their encounters with the military in 1793 that order and discipline were essential if they were to stand any chance of success in future confrontations with them. The drill sergeants were trying to impose some order and obviously they were at least partially successful because Camden, the Viceroy, wrote to London on 28 May stating that the Defenders in Leitrim ‘proceeded with more system and appearance of order than they had previously done’, and that they were ‘acting in more military array than common mobs’.5
The raising of a militia was no longer an issue for the Defenders in 1795 but poverty certainly was. The peasantry still lived in extreme poverty and they saw tithes, dues, low wages and high rents as the chief causes of their poverty. Mrs Slacke admitted that ‘the papists were in her mind too much oppressed’.6She was a devout and enthusiastic Methodist, but like many of the early Methodists she continued to attend the services of the Established Church. She wrote on 16 March, 1795 that:
The common people are very much burdened to support Bishops and Rectors in luxury, nor do I think it just that they should be oppressed for clergy whom they receive no benefit from either in public or in private. And almost every person in this parish (Kiltubrid) have declared that they will not pay any more tythes, and that they will not oppose the proctors when they take up pledges for the same, but would let their cattle go to pound peacefully, and when the day of sale comes they will murder any who may buy or attempt to buy any of them. They have given notice of their intention by putting up papers on the Church and Chapel door …7
