too recklessly, the rebels turned, and, incited by
Father John, piked and shot the whole detachment
(one hundred and five men), all but the
lieutenant-colonel, a sergeant, and three
privates. The garrison of Gorey at once retreating
to Arklow, followed by a crowd of terrified
loyalists, Father John attacked the town of
Enniscorthy on the 28th.

This town is bisected by the river Slaney.
The market-house, court, and the suburbs of
Templeshannon and Drumgoold, are on the
north side, at the foot of Vinegar Hill. It is a
place of about five thousand inhabitants, and
lies about twelve miles from Wexford, which is
ninety-two miles from Dublin. The garrison
consisted of about three hundred militia and
yeomanry, and they formed on the bridge, and
on Duffry-gate-hill, upon the Carlow road,
placing sergeants' guards in the market-house
and the old castle. The rebels advanced, driving
cattle and horses before them to break and
distract the enemy's fire, and at the same time
firing from behind the walls and hedges with
steadiness and celerity. The insurgents being
many of them good shots (Wexford abounding
in water-fowl), the fire was as heavy as it was
well directed. Falling back on the town
under shelter of a charge of cavalry, the
yeomanry were now beset on every side, and
were fired at from the windows. The rebels,
repulsed at the bridge, forded the river out of reach
of the musketry. The inhabitants setting fire to
the houses in the neighbourhood of the troops,
the streets were so full of smoke that they
could not discern their opponents till they saw
the charging pikes. The flames from either
side of the street met in an arch over the
yeomen's heads, singeing their hair, and
burning the red plumes from their helmets
and the tufts from their shakos. Making a
great stand in the Market-house-square, the
garrison was at last compelled to retreat to
Wexford, as Enniscorthy was being gradually
surrounded, and a night attack on their
position seemed imminent. As the green flags,
with the yellow harps blazoned on them,
pressed fast into the town, the glare of the
burning houses lit the yeomanry on the road
to Wexford. The troopers carried before
them, on their horses, the old people, the
sick, the wounded, the women, and the
children. Many ladies, wild with horror, waded
the river Slaney with their children on their
backs, and flew to the woods, where they were
hunted for days after, as if they had been
wolves. The Catholics of Enniscorthy, who
had plied the rebels with whisky during the
night, now welcomed them with screams of joy.
They set fire to all the chief Protestant houses,
dragging out the men and murdering them in
the street before the eyes of their wives and
children. By midnight, four hundred and
seventy-eight houses, taverns, store-sheds, and
malt-houses had been reduced to ashes. Cellars
were broken open by fanatics who drank
themselves mad, shouting that no heretic should be
left alive in old Ireland. More than a hundred of
the infantry, militia, cavalry, not reckoning the
Protestant volunteers, fell in that day of street
fighting; while upwards of five hundred dead
rebels strewed the fords, island, and banks of
the Slaney and the entrances of the town.

The next morning the Irish destroyed the
church of Enniscorthy with ferocious delight.
They made bonfires of the organ, the pews, the
communion-table and pulpit before the church
door, and flung the Bibles and Prayers into the
flames. They carried off the church bell on
beams to Vinegar Hill, as an alarm-bell for the
camp they were making there, and to beat the
hours.

Vinegar Hill, which rises beyond the last
huts of Enniscorthy, is conical, with a
gradual ascent from cultivated fields and
strips of pasture and potato-land, divided by
deep clay ditches, hedges, and loose stone
walls. On the top of the crater-like cone
stood the enclosed ruins of a windmill, which
was used as a prison for Protestants, and as a
shamble for their executioners. Good roads
wound round the base of the hill, and it
commanded the river Slaney. It was well chosen
for guerilla troops, who could fight from wall to
wall, and the fosses and trenches would be
troublesome to cavalry and artillery. Father
John intrenched it above and below, and on
the top he placed batteries. Ten thousand
peasants soon flocked to the rendezvous. A large
garrison was placed in the town, with an officer's
guard, relieved every day from the hill. The
glebe offices were used as storehouses for
provisions and arms. Strong pickets, sentinels,
and videttes were placed at the avenues leading
to the town, and parties were sent out to bring
in Protestant prisoners to be piked and shot
during the daily parades in the camp.

From ten to twenty priests attended the
insurgents, each of whom daily said mass
at the head of his own column, and read
the roll-call of his own parishioners,
exhorting them to extirpate heresy. Commissaries,
each with his retinue of pikemen, levied
provisions for the rebels. The farmers and
neighbouring gentry sent cattle, beer, and
wine to propitiate Father John and the other
chiefs. The hill was covered with rough tents of
blankets, chintz bed-curtains, tablecloths, and
window-curtains, part of the plunder of the
town, thrown over poles bent into arches. The
men slept on blankets round the fires, and, afraid
of being robbed, lay on their stomachs, with
their hats and shoes tied under their breasts.
The camp was a scene of drunken uproar,
debauchery, and cruelty. While the stolen cattle
were being killed and broiled in stewing-pans,
some of the pikemen roasted on bayonets large
pieces of meat with the hide still on, leaving the
carcases to rot outside the tents. The bagpipes,
fiddles, and fifes played night and day; the
drunken men danced while the half-starved
prisoners were being shot against the windmill
walls, and Father John and his brother field-
officers were feasting outside their tents, under
the green flag that waved on the top of the mill.

The atrocities of the rebel executions (not
that the yeomanry were less bloodthirsty)