It is true enough that the Irish rose; but here again
we must learn to discriminate between cases. How did the wild folk rise?
Did they go out like the Thousand of Marsala and pit themselves against
odds of five and six to one? Did they show any chivalry? Alas for the
wicked story! The rebels behaved like cruel wild beasts; they were worse
than polecats in an aviary, and they met with about the same resistance
as the polecats would meet. They stripped the Ulster farmers and their
families naked, and sent them out in the bitter weather; they hung on
the skirts of the agonized crowd; the men cut down the refugees
wholesale, and even the little boys of the insurgent party were taught
to torture and kill the unhappy children of the flying farmers. Poor
little infants fell in the rear of the doomed host, but no mother was
allowed to succour her dying offspring, and the innocents expired in
unimaginable suffering. The stripped fugitives crowded into Dublin, and
there the plague carried them off wholesale. The rebels had gained
liberty with a vengeance, and they had their way for ten years and more.
Their liberty was degraded by savagery; they ruled Ireland at their own
sweet will; they dwelt in anarchy until the burden of their iniquity
grew too grievous for the earth to bear.
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