ad been taken, and the more loyal citizens had
enrolled themselves for their own defence, so that no rising took place
there, the result being that the outlying insurgents found themselves
isolated. In the north especially, where the whole movement had taken
its rise, and where the revolutionists had long been organized, the
actual rising was thus of very trifling importance, and the whole thing
was easily stamped out within a week.

It was very different in Wexford. Here from the beginning the rising had
assumed a religious shape, and was conducted with indescribable
barbarity. Yeomanry corps and bodies of militia had been quartered in
the county for months, and many acts of tyranny had been committed.
These were now hideously avenged. Several thousand men and women, armed
chiefly with pikes and scythes, collected together on the hill of Oulart
under the guidance of a priest named Father John Murphy. They were
attacked by a small party of militia from Wexford, but defeating them,
burst into Ferns, where they burnt the bishop's palace, then hastened on
to Enniscorthy, which they took possession of, and a few days afterwards
appeared before the town of Wexford.

Here resistance was at first offered them by Colonel Maxwell, who was in
command of the militia regiments. Nearly all the Roman Catholics,
however under his orders deserted, the rest grew disorganized and fled,
and the end was that the militia departed and the rebels took possession
triumphantly of the town. It at once became the scene of horrible
outrages. Houses were plundered; many of the Protestant citizens
murdered; others dragged from their homes, and cruelly maltreated.
Bagenal Harvey, a United Irishman and a Protestant, who had been
imprisoned at Wexford by the Government, was released and elected
general of the rebels. He found himself, however, utterly unable to
control them. A camp had been formed upon Vinegar Hill, near.
Enniscorthy, and from it as a centre the whole district was overrun,
with the exception of New Ross, where most of the available troops had
been concentrated. The wretched Protestants, kept prisoners on Vinegar
Hill, were daily taken out in batches, and slaughtered in cold blood,
while at Scullabogue, after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the
rebels to take New Ross, the most frightful episode of the whole rising
occurred; a barn containing over a hundred and eighty Protestant
loyalists collected from the country round being s