News of this impending conflict came to the ears of young Charles Teeling, and although he was only a lad of seventeen at the time, he determined to try and prevent it. He was well aware, he tells us in his pamphlet on “The Battle of the Diamond,” that whether the Catholics won or lost in the fight the result would be equally disastrous for them; if they lost, they would be still more at the mercy of their savage opponents than before; if they won, Government, which was undisguisedly in favour of their enemies, would exact the severest penalties from them. He hoped that the influence which his family enjoyed both with the Catholics and the Protestants would make the opposing parties ready to listen to his proposals for peace between them. Without saying a word to anyone he set out therefore from Lisburn to the disturbed districts, but he had not gone far when he saw that the task was too serious and responsible for his seventeen years. He sent, therefore, to Belfast for Samuel Neilson, then editor of the _Northern Star_, who for many years had been the warm friend of his father in the causes of Reform and Catholic Emancipation. Before Neilson could reach him, the Battle of the Diamond had been fought and won by the Protestants, and the Catholics were, as he anticipated, in a worse condition than before. The “Peep o’ Day Boys,” on the very day of the Battle of the Diamond (September 21st, 1795) formed themselves into the famous association of “Orangemen,”[49] and these immediately set themselves to exterminate the Catholics. “They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in the county.[50] They posted up on the cabins of these unfortunate victims this pithy notice, ‘To Hell or Connaught,’ and appointed a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property was to be made. If after the expiration of that period, the notice had not been complied with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furniture, burned the habitations and forced the ruined families to fly elsewhere for shelter.... While these outrages were going on, the resident magistrates were not found to resist them, and in some instances were even more than inactive spectators.” Many fearful murders were committed on the unresisting Catholics, and it is estimated that seven thousand Catholics were either killed or driven from their homes by the Orangemen in the County Armagh alone. But the unhappy outcasts, even when they escaped with their lives, had no shelter to fly to. In most cases they could only wander on the mountains until either death relieved them, or they were arrested and imprisoned; while the younger men were sent without ceremony to one of the “tenders” then lying in various seaports, and thence transferred on board British men-of-war. During the years 1796 and ’97 the Orange magistrates, aided by troops, established a reign of terror over the greater part of Leinster and portions of Ulster and Munster.