rdown. The Hollanders fought
with a stubborn courage worthy of their old renown, and it was only when
their ships were riddled with shot into mere wrecks that they fell into
the hands of the English.

[Sidenote: The Irish Rising.]

The French project for an expedition to Ireland hung on the junction of
the Dutch fleet with that of Brest, and the command of the Channel
which this junction would have given them. Such a command became
impossible after the defeat of Camperdown. But the disappointment of
their hopes of foreign aid only drove the adherents of revolt in Ireland
to a rising of despair. The union of the national party, which had
lasted to some extent from the American war, was now broken up. The
Protestants of Ulster still looked for aid to France. The Catholics, on
the other hand, were alienated from the French by their attack on
religion and the priesthood; and the failure of the French expedition,
while it damped the hopes of the Ulstermen, gave force to the demands of
the Catholic party for a purely national rising. So fierce was this
demand that the leaders of the United Irishmen were forced to fix on the
spring of 1798 for the outbreak of an insurrection, in which Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, who had some small military experience, was to take the
command. But while yielding on this point to the Catholic section of
their party they conciliated the Protestants by renewed appeals for aid
to the Directory. In spite of its previous failures France again
promised help; and a division was prepared during the winter for service
in Ireland. But the passion of the nation was too intense to wait for
its arrival. The government too acted with a prompt decision in face of
the danger, and an arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with three of their
chief leaders in February 1798 broke the plans of the insurgents. On the
23rd of May, however, the day fixed for the opening of the revolt, the
Catholic peasantry of the south rose in arms. Elsewhere their disorderly
gatherings were easily dispersed by the yeomanry; but Wexford
surrendered to 14,000 insurgents who marched on it, headed by a village
priest, and the town at once became the centre of a formidable revolt.

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

Fortunately for the English rule the old religious hatred which had so
often wrecked the hopes of Ireland broke out in the instant of this
triumph. The Protestant inhabitants of Wexford were driven into the
river or flung into prison. Anoth