In order to realize the terrible position in which the loyalists were placed, we must recollect that whilst the Wexford rebels were triumphant in that county, and the movement seemed to be spreading into Kilkenny and Carlow, there was a fresh outbreak in the north; it appeared probable that Dublin might rise at any moment; the French fleet was hourly expected, and the long looked-for aid from England was still delayed.  But the Irish loyalist minority showed the same dogged determination that they had done in the time of James II, and that they will show again in the future.

The numbers engaged in the different battles and skirmishes have been variously estimated; it seems that at the battle of Arklow the loyalists did not exceed 1,600, of whom nearly all were militia and yeomanry, with a few artillery; whilst the rebels, commanded by Father Michael Murphy, amounted to at least 20,000.  Yet after a terrible afternoon’s fighting the rebels, disheartened by the fall of their leader (whom they had believed to be invulnerable) retired, leaving more than 1,000 dead on the field.

Soon, however, the reinforcements from England began to arrive; and the French invasion, on which the rebels were building their hopes, was still delayed.  By July, although fighting was still going on in the Wicklow mountains and some other parts of the country, the worst of the rebellion in Wexford was crushed, and an Act of Amnesty was carried through Parliament.  It is worthy of note that the trials of the rebels which took place in Dublin were conducted with a fairness and a respect for the forms of law which are probably unparalleled in the history of other countries at moments of such terrible excitement; we can contrast them for instance with the steps that were taken in putting down the outbreak of the Commune in Paris in 1871.  It is easy now to argue that, as the force of the rebellion was being broken, it would have been more humane to have allowed those who had plotted and directed it to go unpunished.  But as Lecky has pointed out, “it was scarcely possible to exaggerate the evil they had produced, and they were immeasurably more guilty than the majority of those who had already perished.

“They had thrown back, probably for generations, the civilization of their country.  They had been year by year engaged in sowing the seed which had ripened into the harvest of blood.  They had done all in their power to bring down upon Ireland the two greatest curses that can afflict a nation—­the curse of civil war, and the curse of foreign invasion; and although at the outset of their movement they had hoped to unite Irishmen of all creeds, they had ended by lashing the Catholics into frenzy by deliberate and skilful falsehood.  The assertion that the Orangemen had sworn to exterminate the Catholics was nowhere more prominent than in the newspaper which was the recognised organ of the United Irish leaders.  The men who had spread this calumny through an ignorant and excitable Catholic population, were assuredly not less truly murderers than those who had fired the barn at Scullabogue or piked the Protestants on Wexford Bridge.”