OF THE MOST

IMPORTANT ENGAGEMENTS

DURING THE

Insurrection,

IN 1798..

EXTRACTED FROM JONES.

SOON after the twenty-third of May, large bodies of insurgents shewed themselves, and began to commit horrid outrages in the neighbourhood of Newtown-Barry, Ferns, and Enniscorthy, burning houses, and murdering many respectable persons. The military force in the county of Wexford was but small, the principal part of it composing the garrison of Wexford, which was the head-quarters of the North-Cork militia, under the command of Lieut. colonel Foote. The garrison of Enniscorthy was commanded by Capt. Snowe, of said regiment, and consisted of one company of the North-Cork, one company of Enniscorthy infantry (Captain Joshua Pounden's,) and one troop of Enniscorthy cavalry (Captain Solomon Richards's ;) there was also a small detachment of the North-Cork at Ferns, and the Scarewalsh infantry, under the command of Captain Cornock. In consequence of a partial advantage obtained by the rebels in an affair near Ferns, in which Lieutenant Buckey, of the Camolin cavalry, was unfortunately killed, their numbers increased to an amazing degree; and their murders,

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burnings, and devastations, were carried on with a still more savage fury; the night served but to shew more distinctly the conflagration all around, and in the day-time the crowd of miserable sufferers flying in a state of distraction into the towns for shelter, impressed the mind with the utmost horrow. In this situ

ation the troops were employed on the most fatiguing duty; unable, from the insufficiency of their numbers, to have a relief during the night-time, and of course obliged to keep their whole force continually. under arms till morning.

BATTLE OF OULART.

On the ensuing morning, Whit-Sunday, the twenty. seventh of May, a body of the rebels, of about five thousand men, took post on the hill of Oulart, within eight miles of Wexford; of which Lieutenant-colonel Foote received immediate information, from Mr. Turner, a magistrate of the county, who brought the intelligence himself. The Lieutenant-colonel lost no time in ordering a detachment instantly under arms, to march out and attack this banditti; and he deter mined to accompany it himself. The detachment ordered, consisted of one hundred and ten men, including non-commissioned officers, with Major Lombard, Hon. Capt. de Courcy, and four subaltern officers, which marched off the parade in the highest spirits, with the idea of being the first to quell this daring insurrection. When he had marched about eight miles, Lieutenant-colonel Foote perceived a body of rebels, as he supposed amounting to between four and five thousand men, posted on the hill of Oulart, the ditches also of the lower ground in their front, were lined with such of their men as were supplied with fire-arms: he, therefore, halted, the detachment on : the road, and with his pencil wrote a note on a scrap of paper, addressed to the officer he had left in command at Wexford, requiring an immediate reinforcement-this note he sent by the trumpeter of Colonel

le Hunte's yeomenry corps of cavalry, sixteen or seventeen of which had joined the North Cork on the march. By some fatality or other, which has never yet been accounted for, the detachment was moved from the road whilst the Lieutenant-colonel was wri ting this note, and a party of a serjeant and twelve men detached to endeavour if possible to take the rebels in flank, whilst the remainder of the detachment pushed forward, crying out that they would beat the rebels out of the fields; by this movement it was instantly engaged with the rebels, who fired upon it from behind the ditches, but the troops soon; beat them from these, and they retreated taking similar positions behind others, from which they were also routed with much loss. This advanced party then fled in great disorder to the hill, where the main body, chiefly pikemen, were posted; and was pursued, in equal disorder, by the unfortunate North-Cork, whose impetuosity could not be restrained, although every exertion was used by the Lieutenant-colonel to prevent it. At this critical moment, the main body of the rebels rushed down from the hill in a swarm, surrounded the dispersed detachment, and piked every man in a space of time hardly credible; the Lieut. colonel, one serjeant, and two privates alone escaping. Lieutenant-colonel Foote was wounded in the breast by a pike, and nearly dragged off his horse, but being.capitally mounted, he galloped off the ground, clearing every ditch in his way; the serjeant who had been the one detached in flank, shot one of the rebels who was mounted, and by taking his horse made his own escape how the two privates got off cannot be ascertained. Feats of great desperacy were performed by the ill-fated victims that perished; the grenadiers in particular, who having wrested their pikes out of the hands of several of their assailants, at last fell from blows and stabs behind.

THE next day, Whit-Monday, the twenty-eighth of May, the rebels, increased in numbers, to more than double, and supplied with the arms and amanu

nition they had taken from the unfortunate® detachment, which had gone out with sixty rounds per man, and very few rounds of which had been ext pended, marched to Enniscorthy in the fullest confi dence; they were commanded by general Roche, who had been permanent serjeant in colonel le Hunte's yeomenry, and by father John Murphy, a Roman catholic priest. However, Enniscorthy had been reinforced the day before, by the detachment of the North-Cork and Captain Cornock's Scarewalsh yeomenry falling back from Ferns, unable to oppose the multitudes of rebels assembled in that quarter; the whole of the combined force now amounting to about three hundred men, under the command of Captain Snowe, and together with the loyal Ferns and Enniscorthy inhabitants, every man at his post, in the best positions that the situation and force would admit of

BATTLE OF ENNISCORTHY.

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At one o'clock in the afternoon, the action com menced, by a vigorous attack made by the rebels on the Duffrey-gate side of the town, having previously turned in before them a great number of loose horses to confuse and disconcert the troops; at the same time, the ditches in front of the Duffrey-gate were lined with several hundred of their best marksmen, who kept up a galling fire: the attack was opposed by the yeomenry and loyal inhabitants with the greatest gallantry, but from the vast superiority of the rebel members, there was much danger of the yeomenry corps being surrounded-several loyal and brave fellows had fallen, amongst the rest Captain John Pounden, who commanded his brother's supplementary yeomen; but intelligence of it arriving to Captain Snowe, who was posted on the bridge, he marched up the whole of the North-Cork to their assistance. Just as he got to the Duffrey-gate, he was met by an officer of cavalry, and informed that

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it was necessary he should file off to the left, to prevent the intention of the rebels of surrounding the yeomenry, by entering a road called the Daffney-road, which would have brought them into the town in the rear of them; this he accordingly did, and took a position on that road, where a rebel column was within a very short distance of him; but instead of attacking him, the rebels detached a large body to cross the river, which was very low, and to occupy the other side of the town (Templeshannon) and the bridge which he had quitted; by which means, had it succeeded, the troops of all descriptions would have been completely hemmed in; but the North-Cork ran back through the streets as quick as possible, to re-possess the bridge, in doing which they lost a ser jeant and private by shots from the windows: however, they arrived critically in time to line the bridge, and to give a severe check to the rebel column, just then in the act of crossing the river, and a part of which had landed on an island in it. Numbers of the rebels fell upon this occasion, by the fire of the North-Cork from the battlements of the bridge; and none of their shots took effect from their confusion, from the protection of the battlements, and from most of them levelling so high, that their shot went whistling over the heads of the North-Cork, whose fire was so incessant, that it was with the utmost difficulty it could be restrained, even after the rebels had got beyond its effect. Another body of the rebels had by this time made good a landing lower down the river, but an offi→ cer and sixteen men of the North-Cork was detached from the bridge, through Templeshannon, to meet

them.

The officer (Lieutenant Brien) now in the regiment, but then only acting as a volunteer, an old officer of the line, took an excellent position, by lining the ditch of a ploughed field, from whence, by the report made by him to Captain Snowe on his return, the rebels sustained no small loss..

BAFFLED then in their first attempt, the rebels ceased any further attack for at least a quarter of an