A body of 2,000 men, under a leader named Perkins, encamped on the Hill of Allan, and agreed with General Douglas to lay down their arms.  The General was honorable and humane, but his subordinates were not so.  Major-General Duff, to whom the arms were to have been delivered up, ordered his troops to fire on the people, when they had assembled for that purpose.  Lord Roden’s cavalry cut them down, and an immense number were slaughtered in cold blood.  Another attack took place at Tara, where the Irish were again defeated.  The insurrection now broke out in Wexford.  The people in this part of the country had not joined the movement in any way, until the arrival of the North Cork Militia, commanded by Lord Kingsborough.  The men paraded in orange ribbons, fired at the peaceful country people, and employed pitchcaps and torture, until their victims were driven to desperation.  The county was proclaimed on the 27th of April, by the magistrates; and before any riot had taken place, Mr. Hunter Gowan paraded through Gorey at the head of his yeomanry, with a human finger on the point of his sword, which was subsequently used to stir their punch in the evening.

On Whit-Sunday, the 27th of May, the yeomen burned the Catholic Chapel of Boulavogue.  Father John Murphy, the parish priest, who had hitherto tried to suppress the insurrection, placed himself at the head of the insurgents.  The men now rose in numbers, and marched to Enniscorthy, which they took after some fighting.  Vinegar Hill, a lofty eminence overlooking the town, was chosen for their camp.  Some of the leading Protestant gentlemen of the county had either favoured or joined the movement; and several of them had been arrested on suspicion, and were imprisoned at Wexford.  The garrison of this place, however, fled in a panic, caused by some successes of the Irish troops, and probably from a very clear idea of the kind of retaliation they might expect for their cruelties.  Mr. Harvey, one of the prisoners mentioned above, was now released, and headed the insurgents; but a powerful body of troops, under General Loftus, was sent into the district, and eventually obtained possession of New Ross, which the Irish had taken with great bravery, but which they had not been able to hold for want of proper military discipline and command.  They owed their defeat to insubordination and drunkenness.  A number of prisoners had been left at Scullabogue House, near Carrickburne Hill.  Some fugitives from the Irish camp came up in the afternoon, and pretended that Mr. Harvey had given orders for their execution, alleging, as a reason, what, indeed, was true, that the royalists massacred indiscriminately.  The guard resisted, but were overpowered by the mob, who were impatient to revenge without justice the cruelties which had been inflicted on them without justice.  A hundred were burned in a barn, and thirty-seven were shot or piked.  This massacre has been held up as a horrible example of Irish treachery and cruelty.  It was horrible, no doubt, and cannot be defended or palliated; but, amid these contending horrors of cruel war, the question still recurs:  Upon whom is the original guilt of causing them to be charged?