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RIDGEWAY.


AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE

OF THE

FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA


By SCIAN DUBH.


"_On our side is virtue and Erin; On theirs' is the Saxon and
guilt_."--MOORE.


1868.




INTRODUCTION.


In the dark, English crucible of seven hundred years of famine, fire
and sword, the children of Ireland have been tested to an intensity
unknown to the annals of any other people. From the days of the
second Henry down to those of the last of the Georges, every device
that human ingenuity could encompass or the most diabolical spirit
entertain, was brought to bear upon them, not only with a view to
insuring their speedy degradation, but with the further design of
accomplishing ultimately the utter extinction of their race. Yet
notwithstanding that confiscation, exile and death, have been their
bitter portion for ages--notwithstanding that their altars, their
literature and their flag have been trampled in the dust, beneath the
iron heel of the invader, the pure, crimson ore of their nationality
and patriotism still flashes and scintillates before the world; while
the fierce heart of "Brien of the Cow Tax," bounding in each and
every of them as of yore, yearns for yet another Clontarf, when
hoarse with the pent-up vengeance of centuries, they shall burst like
unlaired tigers upon their ancient, and implacable enemy, and, with
one, long, wild cry, hurl her bloody and broken from their shores
forever.

Had England been simply actuated by a chivalrous spirit of conquest,
alone, or moved by a desire to blend the sister islands into one
harmonious whole, even then her descent upon Ireland could not be
justified in any degree whatever. Ireland had been her _Alma Mater_.
According to the venerable Bode and others, her noble and second rank
flocked thither in the seventh century, where they were "hospitably
received and educated, and furnished with books _without fee or
reward_." Even at the present moment, the Irish or Celtic tongue is
the only key to her remote antiquities and ancient nomenclature. The
distinguished Lhuyd, in his Archaelogia Britannica, and the
celebrated Leibnitz himself, place this latter beyond any possible
shadow of doubt. Scarcely a ruined fane or classic pile of any remote
date within her borders but is identified with the name of some
eminent Irish missionary long since passed away. What would Oxford
have been without Joannes Erigena, or Cambridge, deprived of the
celebrated Irish monk that stood by the first stone laid in its
foundation? The fact is every impartial writer, from the "father of
English history" down to the present day, admits, that in the early
ages, when darkness brooded over the surrounding nations, Ireland,
learned, philanthropic and chivalrous, blazed a very conflagration on
the ocean, and stretched forth her jewelled and generous hand to
poor, benighted England, and fostered, in addition, the intellectual
infancy of Germany, France and Switzerland, as well as the early
civilization of regions more remote still. Then it was that the milk
and honey of her ancient tongue and lore flowed out from her in
rivers to wash the stains from the soul and brow of the stolid and
unintellectual Saxon. Then it was, that her very zone gave way in her
eagerness to pluck his Pagan life from gloom, and wed her day unto
his night. But what of all this now?--The sin that is "worse than
witchcraft" is upon him! His hands are stained with innocent blood!
He has spurned his benefactress with the foot of Nero, "removed her
candlestick", and left her in hunger, cold and darkness upon her own
hearthstone.

Had not Ireland, at the time of the invasion, been cut up through the
fierce pride and petty jealousies of her rulers, the English could
never have effected a permanent footing upon her shores. Contemptible
in numbers, shipping and appointments, the concentrated opposition of
even a few petty chiefs could have scattered them to the winds, or
sent them "howling to their gods". But, wanting in that homogeneity
without which a nation must always remain powerless, the invasion of
the territory of one individual ruler was often regarded as a matter
of no very grave importance to those who were not his immediate
subjects; so that from this cause, as well as from, the unhappy
dissentions which harrassed the country at the period, the new colony
found the means of establishing themselves upon the eastern borders
of the island, and of possessing themselves of some of the walled
towns, which they subsequently turned to such good account in
fortifying themselves against surprise and baffling the pursuit of
the natives, when worsted in the open field.

Whether the subtle influences of a common nationality moved Pope Adrian
the Fourth--who was an Englishman named Nicholas Breakspear,--to issue
the famous Bull granting Ireland to his fellow countryman, Henry the
Second of England, or whether, as it has been alleged, no such Bull was
ever issued, and that the one still extant is a forgery, it matters but
little now. The Pope's claims extended to the spiritual jurisdiction of
Ireland only; and even had he granted the Bull in question, and assumed
the right of conveying the whole island to the English king, the
transfer was obtained under false pretenses for, from the very wording
of the document itself, it is palpable that Henry led the Sovereign
Pontiff, to believe that Ireland was sunk in the grossest ignorance and
superstition, and that, in making a descent upon it, he had only the
glory and honor of the Church in view. So terrible a distortion of the
facts of the case on his part, necessarily rendered all action based
upon his statement morally invalid at least; and thus it is, that even
those who have confidence in the genuineness of this Bull, regard it as
utterly worthless, and at not all admissable into any pleadings which
ingenious English politicians may choose to advance on the subject.

So inveterate the hostility that manifested itself on the part of the
Irish towards the invader from the moment that his foul and sacrilegious
foot first desecrated their soil, a reign of terror was at once
inaugurated in the vicinage of his camp or stronghold, by those
chieftains with whom he came into more immediate contact, and upon whose
territories he more directly impinged. In the track of both peoples,
"death follows like a squire." Neither truce nor oath was kept by the
English; while their fiery adversaries, necessarily stung to frenzy at
the presence of yet another invader in their midst, made sudden
reprisals in a manner so unexpected and daring, that the laws of the
hour like those of Draco, were literally written in blood. While the
dash and chivalry of the Irish prevented them from adopting the stealthy
dagger of the assassin, and prompted them rather, to bold and open deeds
of death, the enactments of "The Pale" as the English patch or district
was termed, were absolutely of a character the most demonical. According
to their provisions, the murder of an Irish man or woman was no offence
whatever; while the slaughter of a native who had made submission to the
Pale, was visited with a slight fine only--not for the crime _per se_,
but for the murderer's having deprived the king of a servant. From this
it can be easily perceived, that a cowardly system of warfare obtained
on the part of the English, which, were it not for the quick eye and
fierce agility of the inhabitants, would soon have resulted in their
total annihilation.

This foul and dastardly system of assassination was but simply a
leading expression of the bastard nationality of the invader. Not
one, single drop of proud, pure blood coursed through his veins. His
degraded country had been in turn the mistress of the Roman, the
Saxon, the Dane and the Norman, and he was the hybrid offspring of
her incontinence. Consequently, he had neither a history nor a past
of his own, calculated to prompt even one exalted aspiration. He was
a mongrel of the most inveterate character, and was therefore, and
inevitably, treacherous, cowardly; and cunning. Not so the brave sons
of the land he so ardently coveted. Ere the mighty gnomon of "The
Great Pyramid" had thrown its gigantic shadow o'er the red dial of
the desert, they had filled the long gallery of a glorious past with
an array of portraits, the most superb presented by antiquity. Before
the Vocal Memnon poured forth his hidden melody at sunrise, or "The
City of a Hundred Gates" had sent forth her chariots to battle, they
had a local habitation and a name, and had stamped their impress
upon many a shore. No people in existence, to-day, can look back to
an origin more remote or clearly traceable through a countless lapse
of ages than the Irish: and hence it was, that at the period of the
Anglo-Norman descent upon their borders, the chivalry of a stupendous
past was upon them: and having its traditions and its glories to
maintain and emulate, and being, besides, inspired by the pure and
unadulterated crimson tide that had flowed in one uninterrupted
stream through their fiery veins for the space of two thousand years
previously, they shrank from the treacherous and dastardly system of
assassination introduced by the ignoble and cowardly Saxon, and
struck only to the dread music of their own war cry.

Still, although in detail hostile to the invader, no great, united
effort appears to have been made to rout him out root and branch,
until he had become so powerful as to make any attack upon him a
matter of the most serious moment, and had, in addition, enlarged
his borders through sundry reinforcements from his own shores. The
few more purely Norman leaders that were inspired with some desire
at least for a more honorable mode of warfare, were utterly powerless
among the overwhelming throng of their followers who had been long
brutalized on the other side of the channel. In this connection
the proud, revengeful and chivalrous natives were had at a sad
disadvantage; for then, as to-day, they were characterized by a spirit
of knight-errantry, which disdained to take an enemy unawares.

As an evidence that Henry had the spiritual welfare only of the people
of Ireland at heart, and that the building up of the Church there was
his sole object, no sooner did he land in that country, than he
parcelled out the entire island among ten Englishmen--Earl Strongbow,
Robert Fitzstephens, Miles de Cogan, Philip Bruce, Sir Hugh de Lacy, Sir
John de Courcy, William Burk Fitz Andelm, Sir Thomas de Clare, Otho de
Grandison and Robert le Poer. At one sweep, in so far as a royal grant
could go, he confiscated every foot of land from Cape Clear to the
Giant's Causeway, denied the right of the inhabitants to a single square
yard of their native soil, and made the whole country a present to the
persons just named. Perhaps history does not record another such
outrageous and infamous act, and one so antagonistic to every principle
of right and justice. Had there been a preceding series of expensive and
bloody wars between both countries, in which Ireland, after years of
fruitless resistance, fell at last beneath the yoke of the conqueror, it
could be readily understood, that the victor would seek to indemnify
himself for his losses, on terms the most exacting and relentless if
you will; but in the case under consideration, no animosity existed
between the two nations until the ruler of one, without even a shadow
of provocation on the part of the inhabitants of the other, made a
deliberate descent upon them, and ignoring the benefits conferred
gratuitously by them, previously, on his own ungrateful land, subjected
them to every barbarity and wrong known to the history of crime.

For upwards of four hundred years of the English occupation--that is,
from the landing of Strongbow down to the period of James the First,
there was no legal redress for the plunder or murder of an Irishman,
by any of the invaders, or for the violation of his wife or daughter.
The laws of the Pale, enacted under the sanction of the King and the
people of England, subsidized, in effect, a horde of ruthless
assassins and robbers, with a view to striking terror to the hearts
of the natives, and driving them into a recognition of the right of
the usurper to rule over them, and dispose as he saw fit of their
property and persons. This right, however, was never conceded in even
the most remote degree; for, notwithstanding that the colony of
foreign spears and battle-axes waxed stronger daily, the Irish
element, disunited though it was, fought it constantly. True, that an
occasional lull characterized the tempest as it swept and eddied
through each successive generation; but never did Ireland assume the
yoke of the oppressor voluntarily, or bow, for even a single moment,
in meek submission to his unauthorized sway.

It would require volumes to recount a tithe of the frightful atrocities
practiced by the invaders upon the rightful and unoffending owners of
the soil during the long period just referred to, and especially towards
its close, when that lewd monster, Elizabeth, disgraced her sex and the
age. No language can describe adequately the various diabolical modes of
extermination practiced against all those who refused to bow the knee
and kiss the English rod. No code of laws ever enacted in even the most
barbarous age of the world, could compare in fiendish cruelty with the
early penal enactments of the Pale--so forcibly supplemented in after
years by the perjured "Dutch boor" and the inhuman Georges. The foul
fiend himself could not have devised laws more diabolical in their
character or destructive in their application. So close were their
meshes and sweeping their folds, that the possibility of escape was
obviously out of the question; as their victim was met and entangled at
every turn, until at last the fatal blow descended, and the unequal
contest was ended. But more infamous and unjustifiable still, when "the
foul invader" found himself occasionally unable to cope successfully
with his brave and chivalrous antagonists, he had recourse to a darker
and deeper treachery than even that which characterized the stealthy and
unexpected stroke of his midnight dagger. He adopted the guise of
friendship; and professing to forget the past, lured into his power with
festive blandishments the chiefs of many a noble following, whom he
dared not meet in open fight, but who, at a given signal, and while the
brimming goblet circled through the feast, were suddenly set upon and
foully murdered ere they could draw a dagger or leap to their feet. In
corroboration of this assertion, we have only to refer to Mullaghmast,
where a deed of this description was perpetrated; and of a character so
cruel and dastardly, that the names of those concerned in the inhuman
plot are now desecrated by every individual raised above the brute, or
inspired with the hope of heaven.

Nor was there any mode of propitiating the satanic spirit which seemed
to actuate the English against their opponents, from the first moment
that they set their foot upon Irish soil; for, when, in the lapse of
years, a portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Pale,
professed their readiness to conform to the manners, laws and customs
of the invader, their overtures were rejected, and they were still held
at the point of the sword, as "the Irish enemy," and denied the
protection of the laws that they were ready to obey. In short, every
move of the English, established beyond any possibility of doubt, that
their sole object was the utter and complete extirpation of the
natives, and the subsequent establishment upon their conquered shores
of a dynasty from which every drop of pure, Celtic blood should be
excluded forever.

But that day never arrived, and with God's help never shall. However
she might have suffered or failed through an occasional traitor,
Ireland, as a whole, fought against English usurpation from the moment
that she became aware of its ultimate aims, and felt its growing power
within her borders. There was, besides, in the two races, those
opposites of character--those natural antagonisms which repelled each
other with a force and vehemence not to be neutralized or unified by
any process within the reach of even the most humane or astute ruler.
They were too different peoples, with habits of thought, moral
perceptions, and ideas of chivalry at total variance with each other as
entertained by them individually. The great bulk of the English colony
was composed of unprincipled freebooters and degraded Saxon serfs; the
Conqueror having, a century previously, turned the masses of the
English into swine-herds, banished their language from court, and
reduced them to a condition of the most abject slavery. Hence their
stolid brutality, the low plane of their intelligence, and their
systematic murders. But, how different the condition of the Irish in
this respect. Far ages previous, both learning, refinement, and the
chivalrous use of arms, pervaded their shores. Evidences of the truth
of this assertion lie scattered around us in every direction. Girald
Barry--the English Cambrensis, William Camden, Archbishop Usher,
Vallancey, Lord Lyttleton, and a host of others, all bear witness to
the profound learning and noble chivalry of the Irish from the earliest
periods; while the various educational institutions throughout the
continent, founded shortly after the introduction of Christianity into
Ireland, establish, upon a basis the most immovable, the truth of an
assertion made by one of the authors just mentioned, namely, that "most
of the lights that illumined those times of thick darkness proceeded
out of Ireland". As may be presumed, then, a people so refined and
chivalrous--so sensitive to all that was noble and elevated--a people
who, as in the case of Alfred, had educated the very kings of the
invaders, as well as plucked their subjects from Paganism, were
averse to meeting the usurper on his own plane of warfare, and that
consequently, the very pride and dignity of their arms walled in, as
it were, the tyrant from any of those cold-blooded and dastardly
atrocities which so disfigured his own career.

Notwithstanding that, after four hundred and twenty years of outlawry
the most cruel and unrelenting, the Irish were, (12th James I. 1614.)
at last, admitted within the pale of English law, and recognized
nominally as subjects at least, so long had they been subjected to the
grinding heel of oppression, and the baneful influences of continuous
warfare, and so long, also, had the usurper been accustomed to treat
them as enemies, that this recognition of their claims upon humanity
availed them but very little. Under the new regime, their freedom was
merely technical only; for now the terrible ban of the Reformation,
intensified by the cruel spirit evinced throughout the whole of
Elizabeth's infamous reign, was upon them, and their persecution, which
had so long been regarded as a matter of course, experienced but little
diminution through the attempted toleration of her weak and pedantic
successor. Still, frightful and unprecedented as was the ordeal through
which they had passed, they preserved their nationality, and clung to
their traditions, hoping one day to rid themselves of their oppressors,
as they had already done in the case of the Danes; and in this way has
the case stood between both parties up to the present hour.

Although long previous to the Reformation, the atrocities practiced
upon Catholic Ireland by Catholic England were of a character the most
revolting, and although the murderous hand of the invader was never
stayed by the knowledge or conviction, that both parties professed a
common creed and knelt at a common altar, yet the intensity of the
sufferings of the Irish, or what may be termed their studious, refined,
and systematic persecution, began with the _civilisation_ of Elizabeth.
The new creed of the three preceding reigns had not, up to that period,
acquired sufficient strength to exert its deadliest influence against
the ancient faith of the people, or to be introduced as a new agency of
oppression in the case of Ireland; but now, no sooner had the "Virgin
Queen" ascended the throne, than the heart of the tigress leaped within
her; and, breaking loose from every restraint, human and divine, she at
once pounced upon the unfortunate Irish, and sought to bury her
merciless fangs, with one deadly and final crash, in their already
bleeding and lacerated vitals. The coarse, cruel fibre of an apostate
and libertine father, and the impure blood of a lewd mother, had done
their work in her case. From the first to the last moment of her reign,
she combined the courtesan with the assassin. She was the murderer of
Essex, said to have been her own son and paramour; and was, at the same
time, the mistress of more than one noble besides Leicester. According
to her own countryman, Cobbett, she spilled more blood during her
occupancy of the throne, than any other single agency in the world for
a commensurate period; while her treatment of Ireland, under the
"humane guidance" and advice of such cruel wretches as Spenser, was
neither more nor less than absolutely satanic. For fifteen long years
she never ceased to subject that unhappy land to famine, fire and
sword. Every device that her hellish nature or that of her agents could
concoct for the total extirpation of the people, was put into the most
relentless requisition by her. Under the guise of the most sincere
friendship, her deputies, times without number, betrayed many of the
leaders of the Irish into accepting their hospitality, and then foully
set upon them and murdered them while they sat unsuspecting guests at
their festive board. And yet, notwithstanding her penal laws, her
blood-thirsty soldiery, and all her revolting persecutions, the Irish
were more than a match for her in the open field, and ultimately
embittered the closing years of her life. From the first moment of the
invasion, the O'Neills--Kings and Princes of Aileach, Kings of Ulster
and Princes of Tir-Eogain--as well as other chiefs and leaders, fought
the Pale incessantly: and now, after a lapse of nearly four hundred
years, again evinced to the world, that Ireland was still unconquered,
and regarded England as a tyrant and usurper. And yet the opposition of
those chiefs and rulers to the hirelings and paid assassins of this
infamous woman and her corrupt associates, was of a character the most
chivalrous. Unaccustomed to cowardly deeds of blood, these proud
warriors preferred to meet the enemy face to face, and decide the
issues of the hour in fair, open fight. They could not entertain the
Saxon idea of disposing of an adversary by the stealthy knife of the
professional murderer; and hence it was that their pride and chivalry
had ever been taken advantage of: the invaders being convinced that no
reprisals of a character sufficiently dastardly or atrocious to meet
their own depredations, would be indulged in by their chivalrous
opponents. In evidence of the spirit that actuated both parting
individually in this connection, we may refer to the massacre of
Mullaghmast, on the one hand, where the English, under professions of
the purest friendship, lured many of the Irish chiefs and nobles to a
conference or council, and then suddenly pouncing on them, murdered
every, single soul of them in cold blood; while, on the other hand, we
may contrast with this cowardly act--which is but one of a series of
the same sort--the noble and generous conduct of Tir-Oen, at the battle
of the Yellow Ford, in 1598, where, after defeating the Queen's troops
with terrible slaughter, taking all their artillery and baggage, as
well as twelve thousand pieces of gold, the remainder of the shattered
army was totally at his mercy, when he might have put every soul that
composed it to death. Unlike the cowardly invader, the field once won,
he sheathed his sword, and ordered the remnant of the enemy to be
spared, as they were unable to fight longer, and commanded that they
should be conducted in safety to the Pale. In these two instances we
have a thorough insight into the character of the invader and the
invaded: so that not another word need be said upon this part of the
subject.

And in this manner have the O'Neills and the Irish fought the English
up to the present hour. Circumstances have, we know, from time to
time, caused a lull in the tempest of arms, but the moment
opportunity served the smouldering fires burst forth anew. Not a
single day of pure and happy sunshine has ever obtained between
England and Ireland, since the flag of the former first flew over the
latter. Throughout every single hour of seven hundred long years,
Ireland has been secretly plotting or openly fighting against
England. Not one solitary reign, from Henry II down to Victoria I,
but has been marked with Irish dissatisfaction of English rule.
Either in the aggregate or in detail, the Irish people have,
throughout that long period, been constantly asserting their right to
independence, and their unalterable antipathy to the presence of a
foreign power upon their shores. And the same spirit that fought the
Henrys, Elizabeth, William and the Georges, is alive still, and
lighting their descendants to-day; 1688, 1798, 1848, and 1868 are all
episodes of the same history; and the volume now must soon be closed.
Humanity and civilisation, common justice and the laws of nations,
demand that a people who have battled against tyranny and usurpation
for seven successive centuries, and who have still preserved intact
their identity, their traditions and their altars, shall be no longer
subjected to the brute force and infamous exactions of a freebooter
who has so long played false to every principle of honor, and who has
been the highwayman of powers and principalities for countless
generations.

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