Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 4, April, 1886Various
Religion
Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 4, April, 1886
Various
Periodicals
It is scarcely necessary to recapitulate the events of that memorable
evening of July 23, 1803. At 10 o'clock a rocket sent up from Thomas
Street blazed for a moment, the meteor of insurrection, in the unwonted
darkness of that summer night. But the signal that was to have been the
herald of freedom was only the herald of failure. A small mob of men
hurried to the malt house in Mass lane, which was the principal store of
arms. There pikes were hurriedly handed out to the crowd, and then
Emmet, who had hoped to head an army, found himself the centre of an
undisciplined rabble. His hopes must have sunk low as he stood there in
the dim and dismal street, in his glittering uniform of green and gold;
but his heart did not fail him for a moment. He turned towards the
castle at the head of his turbulent horde as composedly as if he had
been marshalling the largest army in Europe. But the crowd lacked
cohesion, lacked purpose, lacked determination. It fell away from its
leader loosely, even aimlessly. Some rushed wildly at the castle;
others, at the moment when unity and concentration were of the utmost
importance, hurried off in another direction to sack a debtor's prison
and set the inmates free. While the disorganized crowd was still in
Thomas Street, while Emmet was vainly trying to rally his forces and
accomplish something, a carriage came slowly down the street--the
carriage of Lord Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
Inside the carriage were Lord Kilwarden, his daughter, and his nephew,
the Rev. Mr. Wolfe. The mob surrounded the carriage; Lord Kilwarden and
his nephew were dragged from the carriage, and killed with innumerable
pike-thrusts. The girl was left untouched; was, it is said, carried out
of danger by Robert Emmet himself, who had vainly attempted to stop the
purposeless slaughter. Before the Chief Justice was quite dead Major
Sirr and a large body of his soldiers made their appearance, and the mob
vanished almost without resistance, leaving several prisoners in the
hands of the military.
Emmet had disappeared, no one knew where--no one, that is, except some
dozen of his followers and some farmers in the Wicklow Mountains, whose
hospitality and protection were extended to the fugitive patriot. Emmet
might easily have escaped to France if he had chosen, but he delayed
till too late. Emmet was a young man, and Emmet was in love. "The idol
of his heart," as he calls her in his dying speech, was Sarah Curran,
the daughter of John Philpot Curran, the great orator who had played so
important a part in defending the State prisoners of '98. Emmet was
determined to see her before he went. He placed his life upon the stake
and lost it. He returned to Dublin, and was hiding at Harold's Cross,
when his place of refuge was betrayed, and he was arrested by Major
Sirr, the same who had brought Fitzgerald to his death, and who now,
strangely enough, occupies a corner of the same graveyard with the
"gallant and seditious Geraldine."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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