Famous Scenes From Ireland's Story page 2

In June 1690, William himself landed at Carrick-fergus, and, marching southwards, found King James in the neighbourhood of Oldbridge on the banks of the Boyne. Everyone knows the story of King James's flight, of the despairing Irish cry, "Change generals and we'll fight you again," of James's arrival in Dublin and saying to a lady, "The Irish ran," to which the lady replied, "Your majesty seems to have won the race."

E Jacobites then retired on Limerick, the defences of which, according to the French Jacobite general, could be "battered down with roasted apples." Sarsfield on behalf of the Irish declared that it must be defended, and in the ensuing siege Limerick rivalled Derry in the heroism of its defenders. The Williamists, having failed to reduce Limerick, laid siege to Athlone, where another heroic resistance met them. The fight for the bridge of Athlone, desperate as it was on both sides, ended, through the folly of a French general, in a Williamist victory, and this was followed up, on July 12, 1691, by another victory at Aughrim. Galway having surrendered, Limerick remained the last stronghold of the Jacobites. In the end the Williamists were glad to give terms to the defenders, promising among other things the establishment of religious freedom in Ireland. Because of the breaking of this promise, solemnly given, Limerick is still known as the City of the Broken Treaty.

It is a curious fact that when next Irish Nationalism appears prominently in history, it is among the Protestant rather than the Catholic population. Dean Swift, indeed, may be regarded as one of the fathers of that modern Nationalism that embraces so many Protestant Irishmen. Born in Dublin and educated at Kilkenny School, he had no great love for Ireland, and regarded his life as a clergyman at Kilroot, at Laracor and in S. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin as a kind of exile from London and the world. He claimed independence for the Protestant colony in Ireland, however-a claim that in the course of the eighteenth century won for the Irish people an independent Parliament under Grattan.

Meanwhile, the Catholics suffered under oppressive penal laws, and the Presbyterian tenantry found the exactions of their landlords so intolerable that they rose in revolt as the Hearts of Steel. What chiefly gave birth to a new national movement in the eighteenth century, however, was the enlistment of the (Protestant) Irish Volunteers during the war with America. Raised on behalf of England, the Volunteers ended by demanding freedom both for the Irish Parliament and for Irish commerce, which, at a great convention at Dungannon in 1782, even passed a resolution in favour of Catholic emancipation. Pitt yielded, and in the following year Grattan's Parliament was inaugurated as the symbol of an independent nation.

French Revolutionary ideas were in the air, however, and some of the younger Protestant leaders began to dream of a democratic Irish nation, which they believed could come into existence only if the connexion with England were entirely broken. Wolfe Tone was the leading figure in the Society of United Irishmen, formed in Belfast in 1791, and he tells us how he and a group of friends standing on the summit of Cave Hill, overlooking Belfast, took an oath never to desist in their efforts till Ireland was independent in reality as well as in name. He persuaded Napoleon to send a fleet, but, though the fleet arrived in Bantry Bay, storms drove it back.

In 1798 armed insurrection broke out, and, while the Ulster insurgents were routed at Antrim and Ballynahinch, the southern United Irishmen were defeated on the Hill of Tara. For a time the insurgents were successful in Wexford, but at length they were crushed in the battle of Vinegar Hill in that county. A French expedition landed at Killala, Mayo, and, with Irish assistance, defeated General Lake at Castlebar in the battle still known as "The Races of Castlebar," only to be defeated in their own turn a fortnight later.

Though Grattan's Parliament was as fiercely opposed to the insurrection as was England, Pitt now resolved to destroy the Parliament and to bring the two countries into a union under one Parliament. Grattan, himself a friend of England, protested bitterly, and, in a farewell speech in the College Green Parliament-house, prophesied the resurrection of the freedom of his country. "Though in her trouble she lies helpless and motionless,"he cried," still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty:

Thou art not conquered; Beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks
And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

Three years later young Robert Emmet, best loved of all the rebels, was hanged in Dublin for attempting to foment another insurrection; but Irish hopes did not revive till the appearance of Daniel O'Connell, who was to teach the art of constitutional agitation to Europe. Born at Derrynene in Kerry, a Catholic, eloquent, witty, daring, O'Connell set out first to emancipate his fellow-Catholics. No other leader had ever led such an enthusiastic following, and during his agitation for the Repeal of the Union he had an audience of 250,000 at a meeting on the Hill of Tara.

Some of the younger men, impatient of his conviction that freedom itself was not worth "a single drop of human blood," and tortured by the spectacle of the terrible famine that swept over Ireland in the forties, founded the Young Ireland party, but the insurrection they planned in 1848 was a failure. Ireland after the famine was compared to a "corpse on the dissecting-table," and showed few signs of life till O'Donovan Rossa founded the Phoenix Literary Society in Skibbereen.

The Fenians, whose society grew from this as from a seed, failed in their immediate object, but though crushed in 1867, they survived to play a part both in the Parnellite and in the Sinn Fein movement.