During that period the scattered bands of the Rapparees, half patriots, half robbers, hiding in mountain fastnesses, dispersing, reassembling, descending on the English estates for rapine or the killing of “objectionables,” represented the only armed resistance of the Irish.  It was generally futile although picturesque.

After the close of the Revolutionary War in America, Ireland received a new stimulation.  The success of the patriots of the Irish parliament under Grattan, backed as they were by 100,000 volunteers and 130 pieces of cannon, in freeing Irish industry and commerce from their trammels, evoked the utmost malignity in England.  Ireland almost at once sprang to prosperity, but it was destined to be short lived.  A great conspiracy, which did not at first show above the surface, was set on foot to destroy the Irish parliament.  This is not the place to follow the sinister machinations of the English, save to note that they forced both the Presbyterians and the Catholics of the north into preparations for revolt.  The Society of United Irishmen was formed, and drew many of the brightest and most cultivated men in Ireland into its councils.  It numbered over 70,000 adherents in Ulster alone.  The government was alarmed, and began a systematic persecution of the peasantry all over Ireland.  English regiments were put at “free quarters,” that is, they forced themselves under order into the houses and cabins of the people with demands for bed and board.  The hapless people were driven to fury.  Brutal murders and barbarous tortures of men and women by the soldiers, savage revenges by the peasantry, and every form of violent crime all at once prevailed in the lately peaceful valleys.  Prosecutions of United Irishmen and executions were many.  It was all done deliberately to provoke revolt.  In 1798 the revolt came.  In the greater part of Ulster and Munster the uprising failed, but a great insurrection of the peasantry of Wexford shocked the country.  Poorly armed, utterly undisciplined, without munitions of war, but 40,000 strong, they literally flung themselves pike in hand on the English regiments, sweeping everything before them for a time.  Father John Murphy, a priest and patriot, was one of their leaders, but Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey was soon their commander-in-chief.  At one time the “rebels” dominated the entire county save for a fort in the harbor and a small town or two, but it was natural that the commissariat should soon be in difficulties and their ammunition give out.  The British general, Lake, with an army of 20,000 men and a moving column of 13,000, attacked the rebels on Vinegar Hill, and although the fight was heroic and bloody while it lasted, it was soon over and the British army was victorious.  The rest was retreat, dispersal, and widespread cruelties and burnings and a long succession of murders.  The “Boys of Wexford” funder great difficulties had given a great account of themselves.  Dark as was that page of history, it has been a glowing lamp to Irish disaffection ever since.  It is the soul of the effort that counts, and the disasters do not discredit ’98 in Irish eyes.