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 set on fire, and all of them perishing in the flames.

In the meanwhile troops were rapidly arriving from Dublin.  Arklow and New Ross had defended themselves gallantly, and the rebels had fallen back from them repulsed.  Vinegar Hill was attacked upon June 21st by General Lake, and after a struggle the rebels fled precipitately, and were slaughtered in great numbers.  The day before this Father Roche and the rebels under him were met outside Wexford and also put to flight after hard fighting.  Inside the town a horrible butchery was the same day perpetrated by a body of ruffians upon over ninety Protestant prisoners, who were slaughtered with great cruelty upon the bridge leading to New Ross, and only the passionate intervention of a priest named Corrin hindered the deaths of many more.

With the recapture of Wexford and Vinegar Hill the struggle ended.  Such of the rebels as had escaped the infuriated soldiery fled to hide themselves in Wicklow and elsewhere.  Father Michael Murphy—­believed by his followers to be bullet proof—­had been already killed during the attack on Arklow.  Father Roche was hung by Lake’s order over the bridge at Wexford, the scene of the late massacres.  So also was the unfortunate Bagenal Harvey, the victim rather than the accomplice of the crimes of others.  Father John Murphy was caught and hung at Tallow, as were also other priests in different parts of the country.  The rising had been just long enough, and just formidable enough, to awaken the utmost terror and the most furious thirst for vengeance, yet not formidable enough to win respect for itself from a military point of view.  As a result the retribution exacted was terrible; the scenes of violence which followed being upon a scale which went far to cause even the excesses committed by the rebels themselves to pale into insignificance.