Chapter II (part 15 of 23)

Chapter II (part 15 of 23)

"In 1793 the so-called Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue was introduced. We found in Bengal, when we succeeded to the Government, a class of middle-men, called Zemindars [or Zamindars-see, also, TALUKDARS], who collected the land revenue and the taxes, and we continued to employ them. As a matter of convenience and expediency, but not of right, the office of zemindar was often hereditary. The zemindars had never been in any sense the owners of the land, but it was supposed by Lord Cornwallis and the English rulers of the time that it would be an excellent thing for Bengal to have a class of landlords something like those of England; the zemindars were the only people that seemed available for the purpose, and they were declared to be the proprietors of the land. It was by no means intended that injustice should thus be done to others. Excepting the State, there was only one great class, that of the ryots or actual cultivators, which, according to immemorial custom, could be held to possess permanent rights in the land. The existence of those rights was recognised, and, as it was supposed, guarded by the law. … There has been much dispute as to the exact nature of the rights given to the zemindars, but everyone agrees that it was not the intention of the authors of the Permanent Settlement to confiscate anything which, according to the customs of the country, had belonged to the cultivators. The right of property given to the zemindars was a portion of those rights which had always been exercised by the State, and of which the State was at liberty to dispose; it was not intended that they should receive anything else. The land revenue, representing the share of the produce or rental to which the State was entitled, was fixed in perpetuity. The ryots were to continue to hold their lands permanently at the 'rates established in the purgunnah;' when the amount of these rates was disputed it was to be settled by the courts; so long as rents at those rates were paid, the ryot could not be evicted. The intention was to secure to the ryot fixity of tenure and fixity of rent. Unfortunately, these rights were only secured upon paper. … The consequences at the present time are these:—Even if it be assumed that the share of the rent which the State can wisely take is smaller than the share which any Government, Native or English, has ever taken or proposed to take in India, the amount now received by the State from the land in Bengal must be held to fall short of what it might be by a sum that can hardly be less than £5,000,000 a year; this is a moderate computation; probably the loss is much more. This is given away in return for no service to the State or to the public; the zemindars are merely the receivers of rent; with exceptions so rare as to deserve no consideration, they take no part in the improvement of the land, and, until a very few years ago, they bore virtually no share of the public burdens. The result of these proceedings of the last century, to the maintenance of which for ever the faith of the British Government is said to have been pledged, is that the poorer classes in poorer provinces have to make good to the State the millions which have been thrown away in Bengal. If this were all, it would be bad enough, but worse remains to be told. … 'The original intention of the framers of the Permanent Settlement (I am quoting from Sir George Campbell) was to record all rights. The Canoongoes (District Registrars) and Putwarees (Village Accountants) were to register all holdings, all transfers, all rent-rolls, and all receipts and payments; and every five years there was to be filed in the public offices a complete register of all land tenures. But the task was a difficult one; there was delay in carrying it out. … The putwarees fell into disuse or became the mere servants of the zemindars; the canoongoes were abolished. No record of the rights of the ryots and inferior holders was ever made, and even the quinquennial register of superior rights, which was maintained for a time, fell into disuse.' … The consequences of the Permanent Settlement did not become immediately prominent. … But, as time went on, and population and wealth increased, as cultivators were more readily found, and custom began to give way to competition, the position of the ryots became worse and that of the zemindars became stronger. Other circumstances helped the process of confiscation of the rights of the peasantry. … The confiscation of the rights of the ryots has reached vast proportions. In 1793 the rental left to the zemindars under the Permanent Settlement, after payment of the land revenue, is supposed not to have exceeded £400,000; according to some estimates it was less. If the intentions of the Government had been carried out, it was to the ryots that the greater portion of any future increase in the annual value of the land would have belonged, in those parts at least of the province which were at that time well cultivated. It is not possible to state with confidence the present gross annual rental of the landlords of Bengal. An imperfect valuation made some years ago showed it to be £13,000,000. It is now called £17,000,000, but there can be little doubt that it is much more. Thus, after deducting the land revenue, which is about £3,800,000, the net rental has risen from £400,000 in the last century to more than £13,000,000 at the present time. No portion of this increase has been due to the action of the zemindars. It has been due to the industry of the ryots, to whom the greater part of it rightfully belonged, to the peaceful progress of the country, and to the expenditure of the State, an expenditure mainly defrayed from the taxation of poorer provinces. If ever there was an 'unearned increment,' it is this."

Sir J. Strachey, India, lecture 12.

ALSO IN: J. W. Kaye, The Administration of the East India Co., part 2, chapter 2.

J. Mill, History of British India, book 6, chapter 4 (volume 5).

W. S. Seton-Karr, The Marquess Cornwallis, chapter 2.

Sir R. Temple, James Thomason, chapter 9.

INDIA: A. D. 1785-1795. The Impeachment and Trial of Warren Hastings.

"Warren Hastings returned to England in the summer of 1785, and met with a distinguished reception. "I find myself," he wrote to a friend, "every where and universally treated with evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess the good opinion of my country." But underneath this superficial "good opinion" there existed a moral feeling which had been outraged by the unscrupulous measures of the Governor-General of India, and which began soon to speak aloud through the eloquent lips of Edmund Burke. Joined in the movement by Fox and Sheridan, Burke laid charges before Parliament which forced the House of Commons, in the session of 1787 to order the impeachment of Hastings before the Lords. On the 13th of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. {1728} There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three fourths of the Upper House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. … The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulations of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. … The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. … His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession, the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and Plomer who, near twenty years later, successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently became Vice-chancellor and Master of the Rolls. But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. … The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. The ceremony occupied two whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would otherwise have been by the silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings were occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought and a splendour of diction, which more than satisfied the highly raised expectation of the audience, he described the character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated, and set forth the constitution of the Company and of the English presidencies. … When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers and hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His sparkling and highly finished declamation lasted two days; but the Hall was crowded to suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous admiration. June was now far advanced. The session could not last much longer; and the progress which had been made in the impeachment was not very satisfactory. There were twenty charges. On two only of these had even the case for the prosecution been heard; and it was now a year since Hastings had been admitted to bail. The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when the Court began to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan spoke on the charge relating to the Begums. From that time the excitement went down fast. The spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty. The great displays of rhetoric were over. … The trial in the Hall went on languidly. In the session of 1788, when the proceedings had the interest of novelty, and when the Peers had little other business before them, only thirty-five days were given to the impeachment. In 1789 … during the whole year only seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. … At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced, near eight years after Hastings had been brought by the Serjeant-at-arms of the Commons to the bar of the Lords. {1729} … Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found Hastings guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges, the majority in his favour was still greater. On some he was unanimously absolved. He was then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack that the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. He bowed respectfully and retired. We have said that the decision had been fully expected. It was also generally approved. … It was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment. It was also felt that, though, in the ordinary course of criminal law, a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on different principles, and that a man who had governed an empire during thirteen years might have done some very reprehensible things, and yet might be on the whole deserving of rewards and honours rather than of fine and imprisonment."

_Lord Macaulay, Warren Hastings (Essays)._

"The trial had several beneficial results. It cleared off a cloud of misconceptions, calumnies, exaggerations, and false notions generally on both sides; it fixed and promulgated the standard which the English people would in future insist upon maintaining in their Indian administration; it bound down the East India Company to better behaviour; it served as an example and a salutary warning, and it relieved the national conscience. But the attempt to make Hastings a sacrifice and a burnt-offering for the sins of the people; the process of loading him with curses and driving him away into the wilderness; of stoning him with every epithet and metaphor that the English language could supply for heaping ignominy on his head; of keeping him seven years under an impeachment that menaced him with ruin and infamy—these were blots upon the prosecution and wide aberrations from the true course of justice which disfigured the aspect of the trial, distorted its aim, and had much to do with bringing it to the lame and impotent conclusion that Burke so bitterly denounced."

Sir A. Lyall, Warren Hastings, chapter 9.

ALSO IN: E. Burke, Works, volumes 8-12.

Speeches of Managers and Counsel in the Trial of Warren Hastings, edited by E. A. Bond.

INDIA: A. D. 1798-1805. The administration and imperial policy of the Marquis Wellesley. Treaty with the Nizam. Overthrow and death of Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore. War with the Mahrattas. Assaye and Laswari. Territorial acquisitions.

"The period of Sir John Shore's rule as Governor-General, from 1793 to 1798 [after which he became Lord Teignmouth], was uneventful. In 1798, Lord Mornington, better known as the Marquis of Wellesley, arrived in India, already inspired with imperial projects which were destined to change the map of the country. Mornington was the friend and favourite of Pitt, from whom he is thought to have derived his far-reaching political vision, and his antipathy to the French name. From the first he laid down as his guiding principle, that the English must be the one paramount power in the peninsula, and that Native princes could only retain the insignia of sovereignty by surrendering their political independence. The history of India since his time has been but the gradual development of this policy, which received its finishing touch when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India on the 1st of January, 1877. To frustrate the possibility of a French invasion of India, led by Napoleon in person, was the governing idea of Wellesley's foreign policy. France at this time, and for many years later, filled the place afterwards occupied by Russia in the minds of Indian statesmen. Nor was the danger so remote as might now be thought. French regiments guarded and overawed the Nizam of Haidarabad. The soldiers of Sindhia, the military head of the Marhatta Confederacy, were disciplined and led by French adventurers. Tipu Sultan of Mysore carried on a secret correspondence with the French Directorate, allowed a tree of liberty to be planted in his dominions, and enrolled himself in a republican club as 'Citizen Tipu.' The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon afforded a convenient half-way rendezvous for French intrigue and for the assembling of a hostile expedition. Above all, Napoleon Buonaparte was then in Egypt, dreaming of the conquests of Alexander, and no man knew in what direction he might turn his hitherto unconquered legions. Wellesley conceived the scheme of crushing for ever the French hopes in Asia, by placing himself at the head of a great Indian confederacy. In Lower Bengal, the sword of Clive and the policy of Warren Hastings had made the English paramount. Before the end of the century, our power was consolidated from the seaboard to Benares, high up the Gangetic valley. … In 1801, the treaty of Lucknow made over to the British the Doab, or fertile tract between the Ganges and the Jumna, together with Rohilkhand. In Southern India, our possessions were chiefly confined, before Lord Wellesley, to the coast Districts of Madras and Bombay. Wellesley resolved to make the British supreme as far as Delhi in Northern India, and to compel the great powers of the south to enter into subordinate relations to the Company's government. The intrigues of the Native princes gave him his opportunity for carrying out this plan without breach of faith. The time had arrived when the English must either become supreme in India, or be driven out of it. The Mughal Empire was completely broken up; and the sway had to pass either to the local Muhammadan governors of that empire, or to the Hindu Confederacy represented by the Marhattas, or to the British. Lord Wellesley determined that it should pass to the British. His work in Northern India was at first easy. The treaty of Lucknow in 1801 made us territorial rulers as far as the heart of the present North-Western Provinces, and established our political influence in Oudh. Beyond those limits, the northern branches of the Marhattas practically held sway, with the puppet emperor in their hands. Lord Wellesley left them untouched for a few years, until the second Marhatta war (1802-1804) gave him an opportunity for dealing effectively with their nation as a whole. In Southern India, he saw that the Nizam at Haidarabad stood in need of his protection, and he converted him into a useful follower throughout the succeeding struggle. The other Muhammadan power of the south, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, could not be so easily handled. {1730} Lord Wellesley resolved to crush him, and had ample provocation for so doing. The third power of Southern India—namely, the Marhatta Confederacy—was so loosely organized, that Lord Wellesley seems at first to have hoped to live on terms with it. When several years of fitful alliance had convinced him that he had to choose between the supremacy of the Marhattas or of the British in Southern India, he did not hesitate to decide. Lord Wellesley first addressed himself to the weakest of the three southern powers, the Nizam of Haidarabad. Here he won a diplomatic success, which turned a possible rival into a subservient ally. The French battalions at Haidarabad were disbanded, and the Nizam bound himself by treaty not to take any European into his service without the consent of the English Government,—a clause since inserted in every engagement entered into with Native powers. Wellesley next turned the whole weight of his resources against Tipu, whom Cornwallis had defeated, but not subdued. Tipu's intrigues with the French were laid bare, and he was given an opportunity of adhering to the new subsidiary system. On his refusal, war was declared, and Wellesley came down in viceregal state to Madras to organize the expedition in person, and to watch over the course of events. One English army marched into Mysore from Madras, accompanied by a contingent from the Nizam. Another advanced from the western coast. Tipu, after a feeble resistance in the field, retired into Seringapatam, and, when his capital was stormed, died fighting bravely in the breach (1799). Since the battle of Plassey, no event so greatly impressed the Native imagination as the capture of Seringapatam, which won for General Harris a peerage, and for Wellesley an Irish marquisate. In dealing with the territories of Tipu, Wellesley acted with moderation. The central portion, forming the old state of Mysore, was restored to an infant representative of the Hindu Rajas, whom Haidar Ali had dethroned; the rest of Tipu's dominion was partitioned between the Nizam, the Marhattas, and the English. At about the same time, the Karnatic, or the part of South-Eastern India ruled by the Nawab of Arcot, and also the principality of Tanjore, were placed under direct British administration, thus constituting the Madras Presidency almost as it has existed to the present day. … The Marhattas had been the nominal allies of the English in both their wars with Tipu. But they had not rendered active assistance, nor were they secured to the English side as the Nizam now was. The Marhatta powers at this time were five in number. The recognised head of the confederacy was the Peshwa of Poona, who ruled the hill country of the Western Ghats, the cradle of the Marhatta race. The fertile Province of Guzerat was annually harried by the horsemen of the Gaekwar of Baroda. In Central India, two military leaders, Sindhia of Gwalior and Holkar of Indore, alternately held the pre-eminence. Towards the east, the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur reigned from Berar to the coast of Orissa. Wellesley laboured to bring these several Marhatta powers within the net of his subsidiary system. In 1802, the necessities of the Peshwa, who had been defeated by Holkar, and driven as a fugitive into British territory, induced him to sign the treaty of Bassein. By this he pledged himself to the British to hold communications with no other power, European or Native, and granted to us Districts for the maintenance of a subsidiary force. This greatly extended the English territorial influence in the Bombay Presidency. But it led to the second Marhatta war, as neither Sindhia nor the Raja of Nagpur would tolerate the Peshwa's betrayal of the Marhatta independence. The campaigns which followed are perhaps the most glorious in the history of the British arms in India. The general plan, and the adequate provision of resources, were due to the Marquis of Wellesley, as also the indomitable spirit which refused to admit of defeat. The armies were led by Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington) and General (afterwards Lord) Lake. Wellesley operated in the Deccan, where in a few short months, he won the decisive victories of Assaye [September 23, 1803] and Argaum [November 28], and captured Ahmednagar. Lake's campaign in Hindustan was equally brilliant, although it has received less notice from historians. He won pitched battles at Aligarh [August 29] and Laswari [November 1, 1803], and took the cities of Delhi and Agra. He scattered the French troops of Sindhia, and at the same time stood forward as the champion of the Mughal Emperor in his hereditary capital. Before the end of 1803, both Sindhia and the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur sued for peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the Jumna, and left the blind old Emperor Shah Alam once more under British protection. The Bhonsla forfeited Orissa to the English, who had already occupied it with a flying column in 1803, and Berar to the Nizam, who gained fresh territory by every act of complaisance to the British Government. … The concluding years of Wellesley's rule were occupied with a series of operations against Holkar, which brought little credit on the British name. The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson through Central India (1804) recalled memories of the convention of Wargaum, and of the destruction of Colonel Baillie's force by Haidar Ali. The repulse of Lake in person at the siege of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore) is memorable as an instance of a British army in India having to turn back with its object unaccomplished (1805). Bhartpur was not finally taken till 1827. Lord Wellesley during his six years of office carried out almost every part of his territorial scheme. In Northern India, Lord Lake's campaigns brought the North-Western provinces (the ancient Madhyadesa) under British rule, together with the custody of the puppet emperor. The new Districts were amalgamated with those previously acquired from the Nawab Wazir of Oudh into the 'Ceded and Conquered Provinces.' This partition of Northern India remained till the Sikh wars of 1844 and 1847 gave us the Punjab."

W. W. Hunter, Brief History of the Indian People, chapter 13.

ALSO IN: W. H. Maxwell, Life of the Duke of Wellington, volume 1, chapters 2-12.

J. M. Wilson. Memoir of Wellington, volume 1, chapters 2-9.

G. B. Malleson, Decisive Battles of India, chapters 9-10.

_W. H. Hutton, The Marquess Wellesley._

J. S. Cotton, Mountstuart Elphinstone, chapter 4.

{1731}

INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816. Reversal of Lord Wellesley's policy. Sepoy revolt at Vellore. Influence established with Runjeet Singh and the Sikhs. Conquest of the Mauritius. The Ghorka War.

"The retreat of Monson was not only a disastrous blow to British prestige, but ruined for a while the reputation of Lord Wellesley. Because a Mahratta freebooter had broken loose in Hindustan, the Home authorities imagined that all the Mahratta powers had risen against the imperial policy of the Governor-General. Lord Wellesley was recalled from his post, and Lord Cornwallis was sent out to take his place, to reverse the policy of his illustrious predecessor, to scuttle out of Western Hindustan, to restore all the ceded territories, to surrender all the captured fortresses, and to abandon large tracts of country to be plundered and devastated by the Mahrattas, as they had been from the days of Sivaji to those of Wellesley and Lake. Before Lord Cornwallis reached Bengal the political outlook had brightened. … But Lord Cornwallis was sixty-seven years of age, and had lost the nerve which he had displayed in his wars against Tippu; and he would have ignored the turn of the tide, and persisted in falling back on the old policy of conciliation and non-intervention, had not death cut short his career before he had been ten weeks in the country. Sir George Barlow, a Bengal civilian, succeeded for a while to the post of Governor-General, as a provisional arrangement. He had been a member of Council under both Wellesley and Cornwallis, and he halted between the two. He refused to restore the conquered territories to Sindia and the Bhonsla, but he gave back the Indore principality to Holkar, together with the captured fortresses. Worst of all, he annulled most of the protective treaties with the Rajput princes on the ground that they had deserted the British government during Monson's retreat from Jaswant Rao Holkar. For some years the policy of the British government was a half-hearted system of non-intervention. … The Mahratta princes were left to plunder and collect chout [a blackmail extortion, levied by the Mahrattas for a century] in Rajputana, and practically to make war on each other, so long as they respected the territories of the British government and its allies. … All this while an under-current of intrigue was at work between Indian courts, which served in the end to revive wild hopes of getting rid of British supremacy, and rekindling the old aspirations for war and rapine. In 1806 the peace of India was broken by an alarm from a very different quarter. In those days India was so remote from the British Isles that the existence of the British government mainly depended on the loyalty of its sepoy armies. Suddenly it was discovered that the Madras army was on the brink of mutiny. The British authorities at Madras had introduced an obnoxious head-dress resembling a European hat, in the place of the old time-honoured turban, and had, moreover, forbidden the sepoys to appear on parade with earrings and caste marks. India was astounded by a revolt of the Madras sepoys at the fortress of Vellore, about eight miles to the westward of Arcot. … The garrison at Vellore consisted of about 400 Europeans and 1,500 sepoys. At midnight, without warning, the sepoys rose in mutiny. One body fired on the European barracks until half the soldiers were killed or wounded. Another body fired on the houses of the British officers, and shot them down as they rushed out to know the cause of the uproar. All this while provisions were distributed amongst the sepoys by the Mysore princes, and the flag of Mysore was hoisted over the fortress. Fortunately the news was carried to Arcot, where Colonel Gillespie commanded a British garrison. Gillespie at once galloped to Vellore with a troop of British dragoons and two field guns. The gates of Vellore were blown open; the soldiers rushed in; 400 mutineers were cut down, and the outbreak was over. … In 1807 Lord Minto succeeded Barlow as Governor-General. He broke the spell of non-intervention. … Lord Minto's main work was to keep Napoleon and the French out of India. The north-west frontier was still vulnerable, but the Afghans had retired from the Punjab, and the once famous Runjeet Singh had founded a Sikh kingdom between the Indus and the Sutlej. As far as the British were concerned, the Sikhs formed a barrier against the Afghans; and Runjeet Singh was apparently friendly, for he had refused to shelter Jaswant Rao Holkar in his flight from Lord Lake. But there was no knowing what Runjeet Singh might do if the French found their way to Lahore. To crown the perplexity, the Sikh princes on the British side of the river Sutlej, who had done homage to the British government during the campaigns of Lord Lake, were being conquered by Runjeet Singh, and were appealing to the British government for protection. In 1808-9 a young Bengal civilian, named Charles Metcalfe, was sent on a mission to Lahore. The work before him was difficult and complicated, and somewhat trying to the nerves. The object was to secure Runjeet Singh as a useful ally against the French and Afghans, whilst protecting the Sikh states on the British side of the Sutlej, namely, Jhind, Nabha, and Patiala. Runjeet Singh was naturally disgusted at being checked by British interference. It was unfair, he said, for the British to wait until he had conquered the three states, and then to demand possession. Metcalfe cleverly dropped the question of justice, and appealed to Runjeet Singh's self-interest. By giving up the three states, Runjeet Singh would secure an alliance with the British, a strong frontier on the Sutlej, and freedom to push his conquests on the north and west. Runjeet Singh took the hint. He withdrew his pretensions from the British side of the Sutlej, and professed a friendship which remained unbroken until his death in 1839; but he knew what he was about. He conquered Cashmere on the north, and he wrested Peshawar from the Afghans; but he refused to open his dominions to British trade, and he was jealous to the last of any attempt to enter his territories. … Meanwhile the war against France and Napoleon had extended to eastern waters. The island of the Mauritius had become a French depot for frigates and privateers, which swept the seas from Madagascar to Java, until the East India Company reckoned its losses by millions, and private traders were brought to the brink of ruin. Lord Minto sent one expedition [1810], which wrested the Mauritius from the French; and he conducted another expedition in person, which wrested the island of Java from the Dutch, who at that time were the allies of France. The Mauritius has remained a British possession until this day, but Java was restored to Holland at the conclusion of the war. … Meanwhile war clouds were gathering on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. {1732} Down to the middle of the 18th century, the territory of Nipal had been peopled by a peaceful and industrious race of Buddhists known as Newars, but about the year 1767, when the British had taken over the Bengal provinces, the Newars were conquered by a Rajput tribe from Cashmere, known as Ghorkas. The Ghorka conquest of Nipal was as complete as the Norman conquest of England. The Ghorkas established a military despotism with Brahmanical institutions, and parcelled out the country amongst feudal nobles known as Bharadars. … During the early years of the 19th century the Ghorkas began to encroach on British territory, annexing villages and revenues from Darjeeling to Simla without right or reason. They were obviously bent on extending their dominion southward to the Ganges, and for a long time aggressions were overlooked for the sake of peace. At last two districts were appropriated to which the Ghorkas had not a shadow of a claim, and it was absolutely necessary to make a stand against their pretensions. Accordingly, Lord Minto sent an ultimatum to Khatmandu, declaring that unless the districts were restored they would be recovered by force of arms. Before the answer arrived, Lord Minto was succeeded in the post of Governor-General by Lord Moira, better known by his later title of Marquis of Hastings. Lord Moira landed at Calcutta in 1813. Shortly after his arrival an answer was received from the Ghorka government, that the disputed districts belonged to Nipal, and would not be surrendered. Lord Moira at once fixed a day on which the districts were to be restored; and when the day had passed without any action being taken by the Ghorkas, a British detachment entered the districts and set up police stations. … The council of Bharadars resolved on war, but they did not declare it in European fashion. A Ghorka army suddenly entered the disputed districts, surrounded the police stations, and murdered many of the constables, and then returned to Khatmandu to await the action of the British government in the way of reprisals. The war against the Ghorkas was more remote and more serious than the wars against the Mahrattas. … Those who have ascended the Himalayas to Darjeeling or Simla may realise something of the difficulties of an invasion of Nipal. The British army advanced in four divisions by four different routes. … General David Ochterlony, who advanced his division along the valley of the Sutlej, gained the most brilliant successes. He was one of the half-forgotten heroes of the East India Company. … For five months in the worst season of the year he carried one fortress after another, until the enemy made a final stand at Maloun on a shelf of the Himalayas. The Ghorkas made a desperate attack on the British works, but the attempt failed; and when the British batteries were about to open fire, the Ghorka garrison came to terms, and were permitted to march out with the honours of war. The fall of Maloun shook the faith of the Ghorka government in their heaven-built fortresses. Commissioners were sent to conclude a peace. Nipal agreed to cede Kumaon in the west, and the southern belt of forest and jungle known as the Terai. It also agreed to receive a British Resident at Khatmandu. Lord Moira had actually signed the treaty, when the Ghorkas raised the question of whether the Terai included the forest or only the swamp. War was renewed. Ochterlony advanced an army within fifty miles of Khatmandu, and then the Ghorkas concluded the treaty [1816], and the British army withdrew from Nipal. The Terai, however, was a bone of contention for many years afterwards. Nothing was said about a subsidiary army, and to this day Nipal is outside the pale of subsidiary alliances; but Nipal is bound over not to take any European into her service without the consent of the British government."

J. T. Wheeler, India under British Rule, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: J. D. Cunningham, History of the Sikhs, chapters 5-6.

E. Thornton, History of British Empire in India, chapters 21-24 (volume 4).

INDIA: A. D. 1816-1819. Suppression of the Pindaris. Overthrow of the Mahratta power. The last of the Peshwas.

"For some time past the Pindaris, a vast brotherhood of mounted freebooters, who were ready to fight under any standard for the chance of unbounded plunder, had been playing a more and more prominent part in the wars of native princes. As Free Lances, they had fought for the Peshwa at Panipat, had shared in the frequent struggles of the Sindhias and Holkars in Hindustan and Southern India, and made war on their own account with every native prince whose weakness at any moment seemed to invite attack. … From the hills and glens of Central India thousands of armed ruffians sallied forth year after year in quest of plunder, sparing no cruelty to gain their ends, and widening the circle of their ravages with each new raid, until in 1811 the smoke of their camp-fires could be seen from Gaya and Mirzapur. … To thwart Maratha intrigues and punish Pindari aggressions was the Governor-General's next aim. In spite of hindrances offered by his own council and the Court of Directors, he set himself to revive and extend Lord Wellesley's policy of securing peace and order throughout India by means of treaties, which placed one native prince after another in a kind of vassalage to the paramount power that ruled from Fort William. … By means of a little timely compulsion, the able and accomplished Elphinstone baffled for a while the plots which the Peshwa, Baji Rao, and his villainous accomplice, Trimbakji Danglia, had woven against their English allies. The treaty of June, 1817, left Lord Hastings master of Sagar and Bundalkhand, while it bound the Peshwa to renounce his friend Trimbakji, his own claims to the headship of the Maratha League, to make no treaties with any other native prince, and to accept in all things the counsel and control of the Company's Government. Hard as these terms may seem, there was no choice, averred Lord Hastings, between thus crippling a secret foe and depriving him of the crown he had fairly forfeited. Meanwhile Lord Hastings' fearless energy had already saved the Rajputs of Jaipur from further suffering at the hands of their Pathan oppressor, Amir Khan, and forced from Sindia himself a reluctant promise to aid in suppressing the Pindari hordes, whose fearful ravages had at length been felt by the peaceful villagers in the Northern Sarkars. In the autumn of 1817 Hastings took the field at the head of an army which, counting native contingents, mustered nearly 120,000 strong, with some 300 guns. From east, west, north, and south, a dozen columns set forth to hunt down the merciless ruffians who had so long been allowed to harry the fairest provinces of India. {1733} In spite of the havoc wrought among our troops by the great cholera outbreak of that year, and of a sudden rising among the Maratha princes for one last struggle with their former conquerors, our arms were everywhere successful against Marathas and Pindaris alike. The latter, hunted into the hills and jungles of Central India, found no safety anywhere except in small bodies and constant flight … and the famous robber-league passed into a tale of yore. Not less swift and sure was the punishment dealt upon the Maratha leaders who joined the Peshwa in his sudden uprising against the British power. His late submission had been nothing but a mask for renewed plottings. Elphinstone, however, saw through the mask which had taken in the confiding Malcolm. Before the end of October an English regiment, summoned in hot haste from Bombay, pitched its camp at Kirki, about two miles from Puna, beside the small Sepoy brigade already quartered there. In the first days of November Baji Rao began to assume a bolder tone as his plans grew ripe for instant execution. On the 5th, a body of Marathas attacked and destroyed the Residency, which Elphinstone had quitted in the nick of time. A great Maratha army then marched forth to overwhelm the little garrison at Kirki, before fresh troops could come up to its aid from Sirur. Elphinstone, however, who knew his foe, had no idea of awaiting the attack. Colonel Burr at once led out his men, not 3,000 all told. A brilliant charge of Maratha horse was heavily repulsed by a Sepoy regiment, and the English steadily advancing drove the enemy from the field. A few days later General Smith, at the head of a larger force, advanced on Puna, occupied the city, and pursued the frightened Peshwa from place to place. The heroic defence of Karigaum, a small village on the Bhima, by Captain Staunton and 800 Sepoys, with only two light guns, against 25,000 Marathas during a whole day, proved once more how nobly native troops could fight under English leading. Happily for Staunton's weary and diminished band, Smith came up the next morning, and the desponding Peshwa continued his retreat. Turn where he would, there was no rest for his jaded soldiers. Munro with a weak force, partly of his own raising, headed him on his way to the Carnatic, took several of his strong places, and drove him northwards within reach of General Smith. On the 19th February, 1818, that officer overtook and routed the flying foe at the village of Ashti. Bapu Gokla, the Peshwa's staunchest and ablest follower, perished in the field, while covering the retreat of his cowardly master. For some weeks longer Baji Rao fled hither and thither before his resolute pursuers. But at length all hope forsook him as the circle of escape grew daily narrower; and in the middle of May the great-grandson of Balaji Vishwanath yielded himself to Sir John Malcolm at Indor, on terms far more liberal than he had any reason to expect. Even for the faithful few who still shared his fortunes due provision was made at his request. He himself spent the rest of his days a princely pensioner at Bithur, near Cawnpore; but the sceptre which he and his sires had wielded for a hundred years passed into English hands, while the Rajah of Satara, the long-neglected heir of the house of Sivaji, was restored to the nominal headship of the Maratha power. Meanwhile Appa Sahib, the usurping Rajah of Berar, had no sooner heard of the outbreak at Puna, than he, too, like the Peshwa, threw off his mask. On the evening of the 24th November, 1817, his troops, to the number of 18,000, suddenly attacked the weak English and Sepoy force of 1,400 men with four guns, posted on the Sitabaldi Hills, outside Nagpur. A terrible fight for eighteen hours ended in the repulse of the assailants, with a loss to the victors of more than 300 men and twelve officers. A few weeks later Nagpur itself was occupied after another fight. Even then the Rajah might have kept his throne, for his conquerors were merciful and hoped the best. But they hoped in vain. It was not long before Appa Sahib, caught out in fresh intrigues, was sent off a prisoner towards Allahabad. Escaping from his captors, he wandered about the country for several years, and died at Lahor a pensioner on the bounty of Ranjit Singh. The house of Holkar had also paid the penalty of its rash resistance to our arms. … On the 6th January, 1818, the young Holkar was glad to sign a treaty which placed him and his heirs under English protection at the cost of his independence and of some part of his realm. Luckily for himself, Sindia had remained quiet, if not quite loyal, throughout this last struggle between the English and his Maratha kinsfolk. Thus in one short and decisive campaign, the great Maratha power, which had survived the slaughter of Panipat, fell shattered to pieces by the same blow which crushed the Pindaris, and raised an English merchant-company to the paramount lordship of all India. The last of the Peshwas had ceased to reign, the Rajah of Berar was a discrowned fugitive, the Rajah of Satara a king only in name, while Sindia, Holkar, and the Nizam were dependent princes who reigned only by sufferance of an English Governor-General at Calcutta. The Moghal Empire lingered only in the Palace of Dehli; its former viceroy, the Nawab of Audh, was our obedient vassal; the haughty princes of Rajputana bowed their necks, more or less cheerfully, to the yoke of masters merciful as Akbar and mightier than Aurangzib. Ranjit Singh himself cultivated the goodwill of those powerful neighbours who had sheltered the Sikhs of Sirhind from his ambitious inroads. With the final overthrow of the Marathas a new reign of peace, order, and general progress began for peoples who, during a hundred and fifty years, had lived in a ceaseless whirl of anarchy and armed strife. With the capture of Asirgarh in April, 1819, the fighting in Southern India came to an end."

L. J. Trotter, History of India, book 5, chapters 2-3.

ALSO IN: W. M. Torrens, Empire in Asia: How we came by it, chapters 19-20.

J. G. Duff, History of the Mahrattas, volume 3, chapters 17-20.

Major Ross-of-Bladensburg, The Marquess of Hastings, chapters 4-7.

INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833. The first Burmese War. English acquisition of Assam and Aracan. Suppression of Suttee and Thuggee. Rechartering of the East India Company. It is deprived of its last trading monopoly.

"On Hastings' retirement, in 1823, the choice of the ministry fell upon Canning. … Canning ultimately resigning the Governor-Generalship, the choice of the authorities fell upon Lord Amherst. The new Governor-General reached India at a time when the authorities in London had a right to expect a long period of peace. {1734} In fact, both in Hindostan and in the Deccan, the victories of Hastings had left the Company no more enemies to conquer. Unfortunately, however, for the prospects of peace, nature, which had given India an impenetrable boundary on the north, had left her with an undefined and open frontier on the east. On the shores of the Bay of Bengal, opposite Calcutta, a struggle had raged during the eighteenth century between the inhabitants of Ava and Pegu. The former, known as Burmans or Burmese, had the good fortune to find a capable leader, who rapidly ensured their own victory and founded a Burmese Empire. The successful competitors were not satisfied with their own predominance in Pegu—they conquered Aracan, they overran Assam, and they wrested from Siam a considerable territory on the Tenasserim coast. The conquest of Aracan brought the Burmese to the confines of the Company's dominions in Chittagong. The conquered people, disliking the severe rule of the conquerors, crossed the frontier and settled in British territory. Many of them used their new home as a secure basis for hostile raids on the Burmese. … The river Naf ran for a portion of its course between the possessions of the British in Chittagong and those of the Burmese in Aracan. With the object of preventing the repetition of outrages, which had occurred on the river, a small British guard was stationed on a little island, called Shaporee, near its mouth. The Burmese, claiming the island as their own, attacked the guard and drove it from the post. It was impossible to ignore such a challenge. The island was reoccupied; but the Governor-General, still anxious for peace, offered to treat its occupation by the Burmese as an action unauthorised by the Burmese Government. The Burmese Court, however, instead of accepting this offer, sent an army to reoccupy the island; collisions almost simultaneously occurred between the British and the Burmese on other parts of the frontier, and in February 1824 the first Burmese war began. … If the war of 1824 may be excused as inevitable, its conduct must be condemned as careless. No pains were taken to ascertain the nature of the country which it was requisite to invade, or the strength of the enemy whom it was decided to encounter. … Burma is watered by two great rivers, the Irawaddy and the Salwen. … In its upper waters the Irawaddy is a rapid stream; in its lower waters it flows through alluvial plains, and finds its way through a delta with nine mouths into the Bay of Bengal. On one of its western mouths is the town of Bassein, on one of its eastern mouths the great commercial port of Rangoon. The banks of the river are clothed with jungle and with forest; and malaria, the curse of all low-lying tropical lands, always lingers in the marshes. The authorities decided on invading Burma through the Rangoon branch of the river. They gave Sir Archibald Campbell, an officer who had won distinction in the Peninsula, the command of the expedition, and, as a preliminary measure, they determined to seize Rangoon. Its capture was accomplished with ease, and the Burmese retired from the town. But the victory was the precursor of difficulty. The troops dared not advance in an unhealthy season; the supplies which they had brought with them proved insufficient for their support; and the men perished by scores during their period of forced inaction. … When more favourable weather returned with the autumn, Campbell was again able to advance. Burma was then attacked from three separate bases. A force under Colonel Richards, moving along the valley of the Bramaputra, conquered Assam; an expedition under General Morrison, marching from Chittagong, occupied Aracan; while Campbell himself, dividing his army into two divisions, one moving by water, the other by land, passed up the Irawaddy and captured Donabue and Prome. The climate improved as the troops ascended the river, and the hot weather of 1825 proved less injurious than the summer of 1824. … The operations in 1825-6 drove home the lesson which the campaign of 1824-5 had already taught. The Burmese realised their impotence to resist, and consented to accept the terms which the British were still ready to offer them. Assam, Aracan, and the Tenasserim Coast were ceded to the Company; the King of Burma consented to receive a Resident at his capital, and to pay a very large sum of money—£1,000,000—towards the expenses of the war. … The increasing credit which the Company thus acquired did not add to the reputation of the Governor-General. … The Company complained of the vast additions which his rule had made to expenditure, and they doubted the expediency of acquiring new and unnecessary territory beyond the confines of India itself. The ministry thought that these acquisitions were opposed to the policy which Parliament had laid down, and to the true interests of the empire. It decided on his recall. … William Bentinck, whom Canning selected as Amherst's successor, was no stranger to Indian soil. More than twenty years before he had served as Governor of Madras. … Bentinck arrived in Calcutta in difficult times. Amherst's war had saddled the Government with a debt, and his successor with a deficit. … Retrenchment, in the opinion of every one qualified to judge, was absolutely indispensable, and Bentinck, as a matter of fact, brought out specific instructions to retrench. … In two other matters … Bentinck effected a change which deserves to be recollected with gratitude. He had the courage to abolish flogging in the native Indian army; he had the still higher courage to abolish suttee. … In Bengal the suttee, or 'the pure and virtuous woman,' who became a widow, was required to show her devotion to her husband by sacrificing herself on his funeral pile. … Successive Governors-General, whose attention had been directed to this barbarous practice, had feared to incur the unpopularity of abolishing it. … Cornwallis and Wellesley, Hastings and Amherst, were all afraid to prohibit murder which was identified with religion, and it was accordingly reserved to Bentinck to remove the reproach of its existence. With the consent of his Council, suttee was declared illegal. The danger which others had apprehended from its prohibition proved a mere phantom. The Hindoos complied with the order without attempting to resist it, and the horrible rite which had disgraced the soil of India for centuries became entirely unknown. For these humane regulations Bentinck deserves to be remembered with gratitude. Yet it should not be forgotten that these reforms were as much the work of his age as of himself. … One other great abuse was terminated under Bentinck. {1735} In Central India life was made unsafe and travelling dangerous by the establishment of a secret band of robbers known as Thugs. The Thugs mingled with any travellers whom they met, disarmed them by their conversation and courtesy, and availed themselves of the first convenient spot in their journey to strangle them with a rope and to rob them of their money. The burial of the victim usually concealed all traces of the crime; the secrecy of the confederates made its revelation unlikely; and, to make treachery more improbable, the Thugs usually consecrated their murders with religious rites, and claimed their god as the patron of their misdoings. Bentinck selected an active officer, Major Sleeman, whom he charged to put down Thuggee. Sleeman's exertions were rewarded by a gratifying success. The Thugs, like all secret societies, were assailable in one way. The first discovery of crime always produces an approver. The timid conspirator, conscious of his guilt, is glad to purchase his own safety by sacrificing his associates, and when one man turns traitor every member of the band is anxious to secure the rewards and immunity of treachery. Hence the first clue towards the practices of the Thugs led to the unveiling of the whole organisation; and the same statesman, who had the merit of forbidding suttee, succeeded in extirpating Thuggee from the dominions over which he ruled. Social reforms of this character occupy the greater portion of the history of Bentinck's government. In politics he almost always pursued a policy of non-intervention. The British during his rule made few additions to their possessions; they rarely interfered in the affairs of Native states. … The privileges which the East India, Company enjoyed had from time to time been renewed by the British Parliament. The charter of the Company had been extended for a period of twenty years in 1773, in 1793, and in 1813. But the conditions on which it was continued in 1813 were very different from those on which it had been originally granted. Instead of maintaining its exclusive right of trade, Parliament decided on throwing open the trade with India to all British subjects. It left the Company a monopoly of the China trade alone. The Act of 1813 of course excited the strenuous opposition of the Company. The highest authorities were brought forward to prove that the trade with India would not be increased by a termination of the monopoly. Their views, however, were proved false by the result, and the stern logic of facts consequently pointed in 1833 to the further extension of the policy of 1813 [see CHINA: A. D. 1839-1842]. … The inclination towards free trade was, in fact, so prevalent, that it is doubtful whether, even if the Tories had remained in office, they would have consented to preserve the monopoly. … The fall of the Wellington administration made its termination a certainty [see ENGLAND: A. D. 1832-1833]. … The Government consented to compensate the Company for the loss of its monopoly by an annuity of £630,000 charged on the territorial revenues of India. It is a remarkable circumstance that the change of ministry which deprived the Company of its trade possibly preserved its political power for nearly a quarter of a century. … The Whig ministry shrank from proposing an alteration for which the country was not prepared, and which might have aroused the opposition by which the Coalition of 1783 had been destroyed. Though, however, it left the rule with Leadenhall Street, it altered the machinery of government. The Governor-General of Bengal was made Governor-General of India. A fourth member—an English jurist—was added to his Council, and the Governor-General in Council was authorised to legislate for the whole of India. At the same time the disabilities which still clung to the natives were in theory swept away, and Europeans were for the first time allowed to hold land in India. These important proposals were carried at the close of the first session of the first reformed Parliament."

S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 25 (volume 5).

ALSO IN: J. W. Kaye, Administration of the East India Company, parts 3-4.

Sir C. Trevelyan, The Thugs (Edin. Review, January, 1837).

Illustrations of the History of the Thugs.

_M. Taylor, Confessions of a Thug, introduction._

D. C. Boulger, Lord William Bentinck, chapters 4-6.

INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845. The first Afghan war and its catastrophe. Conquest and annexation of Scinde. Threatened trouble with the Sikhs.

"With the accession of Lord Auckland, Bentinck's successor, began a new era in Anglo-Indian history, in which the long-sown seeds of fresh political complications, which even now seem as far from solution as ever, began to put forth fruit. All danger from French ambition had passed away: but Russian intrigue was busy against us. We had brought the danger on ourselves. False to an alliance with Persia, which dated from the beginning of the century, we had turned a deaf ear to her entreaties for help against Russian aggression, and had allowed her to fall under the power of her tyrant, who thenceforth used her as an instrument of his ambition. The result of our selfish indifference appeared in 1837, when Persia, acting under Russian influence, laid siege to Herat, which was then under Afghan rule. While Herat was still holding out, the Shah was at last threatened with war, and raised the siege. Then was the time for Auckland to destroy the Russian danger once for all, by making a friend of the power which seemed to be the natural barrier against invasion from the north-west. After a long series of revolutions, Dost Mahomed, the representative of the now famous tribe of Baruckzyes, had established himself upon the throne, with the warm approval of the majority of the people; while Shah Sooja, the leader of the rival Suddozyes, was an exile. The ruling prince did not wait for Auckland to seek his friendship. He treated the Russian advances with contempt, and desired nothing better than to be an ally of the English. Auckland was urged to seize the opportunity. It was in his power to deal Russia a crushing blow, and to avert those troubles which are even now harassing British statesmen. He did not let slip the opportunity. He flung it from him, and clutched at a policy that was to bring misery to thousands of families in England, in India, and in Afghanistan, and to prove disastrous to the political interests of all three countries. … Those who are least interested in Indian history are not likely to forget how the Afghan mob murdered the British Envoy and his associates; how the British commander, putting faith in the chiefs of a people whom no treaties can bind, began that retreat from which but one man escaped to tell how 16,000 had perished; how poor Auckland, unmanned by the disaster, lacked the energy to retrieve it; how the heroic Sale held out at Jellalabad till Pollock relieved him; how Auckland's successor, Lord Ellenborough, dreading fresh disasters, hesitated to allow his generals to act till, yielding to their indignant zeal, he threw upon them the responsibility of that advance to Cabul which retrieved the lost prestige of our arms.

See AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1838-1842, and 1842-1869.

{1736}

Thus closed the first act of a still unfinished drama. After celebrating the triumph of the victorious army, Ellenborough sent Charles Napier to punish the Ameers of Scinde [see SCINDE], who, emboldened by the retreat from Cabul, had violated a treaty which they had concluded with the British Government. The result of the war was the annexation of the country: but the whole series of transactions is only remembered now as having given rise to the dispute on the question of the guilt of the Ameers between Napier and James Outram. Less talked of at the time, but historically more important, was Ellenborough's reconstitution of the British relations with the Sindia of the day. Political disturbances had for some time agitated that prince's court, while his army had swollen to a dangerous size, and, like the Sikh army since Runjeet Singh's death, which had taken place a few years before, had passed beyond the control of the civil power. In these two armies Ellenborough saw a danger which might disturb the peace of Hindostan. He foresaw that the Sikh soldiers, released from the stern discipline of Runjeet Singh, would soon force a government which they despised to let them cross the Sutlej in quest of plunder. Two years later his character as a prophet was vindicated; and, if he had not now, in anticipation of the invasion which then took place, disbanded the greater part of Sindia's army, and over-awed the remainder by a native contingent under the command of British officers, the Sikhs would probably have joined their forces with the Mahrattas. … But the Directors took a different view of their Governor-General's conduct of affairs. In June, 1844, all India was astonished by the news that Ellenborough had been recalled. He had helped to bring about his own downfall, for in the controversies with his masters in which he, like some of the ablest of his predecessors, had found himself involved, he had shown an unfortunate want of discretion; but, though by bombastic proclamations and a theatrical love of display he had sometimes exposed himself to ridicule, many of his subordinates felt that in him they had lost a vigorous and able ruler. Sir Henry Hardinge, who was raised to the peerage before the close of his administration, succeeded to the office of Governor-General, and waited anxiously for the breaking of the storm which his predecessor had seen gathering. The Sikhs, the Puritans of India [see SIKHS], who were not strictly speaking a nation, but a religious brotherhood of warriors called the Khalsa, were animated by two passions equally dangerous to the peace of those around them, a fierce enthusiasm, half military, half religious, for the glory of their order, and an insatiable desire for plunder. By giving them full scope for the indulgence of these passions, and by punishing all disobedience with merciless severity, Runjeet Singh had governed his turbulent subjects for forty years: but, when he died, they broke loose from all control; and the weak Government of Lahore found that they could only save their own capital from being plundered by the Khalsa army by sending it to seek plunder in British territory. Thus began the first Sikh war."

T. R. E. Holmes, History of the Indian Mutiny, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: _Sir L. Griffin, Ranjit Singh._

L. J. Trotter, The Earl of Auckland, chapters 4-13.

INDIA: A. D. 1843. Conquest of Scinde.

See SCINDE.

INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849. The Sikh Wars. Conquest and annexation of the Punjab.

"There had always been an expectation that whenever Runjeet Singh died, there would be trouble with his soldiery; and it soon appeared that some incursion was in contemplation, for which the Sikh troops were prepared by an able European training under French officers. While the strife about the succession was going on in the Punjaub, the military element of society there became supreme; and the government at Calcutta considered it necessary to move troops to the frontier to preserve peace, and reassure the inhabitants of whole districts which dreaded the incursions of a haughty and lawless soldiery. The Sikhs were alarmed at the approach of English troops, and adopted the same course towards us that we had tried with their western neighbours—they crossed the frontier to forestall our doing it. Whether this move was a device of the Sikh chiefs, as some say it was, to get rid of the army, and perhaps to cause its destruction by the British, and thus to clear the field for their own factions; or whether war with the British was considered so inevitable that the invasion of our territory was intended as a measure of prudence, we need not here decide. The fact was that the Sikh soldiery gathered round the tomb of Runjeet Singh, preparing themselves for a great battle soon to happen; and that war was virtually declared at Lahore in November, 1845, and fairly begun by the troops crossing the Sutlej on the 11th of December, and taking up a position near Ferozepore. The old error prevailed in the British councils, the mistake denounced by Charles Metcalfe as fatal—that of undervaluing the enemy. The Sikhs had been considered unworthy to be opposed to the Afghans in Runjeet's time; and now we expected to drive them into the Sutlej at once; but we had never yet, in India, so nearly met with our match. The battle of Moodkee was fought under Sir Hugh Gough, on the 18th of December, and 'the rabble' from the Punjaub astonished both Europeans and Sepoys by standing firm, manœuvring well, and rendering it no easy matter to close the day with honour to the English arms. This ill-timed contempt was truly calamitous, as it had caused miscalculations about ammunition, carriage, hospital-stores, and everything necessary for a campaign. All these things were left behind at Delhi or Agra; and the desperate necessity of winning a battle was only enough barely to save the day. The advantage was with the British in the battle of Moodkee, but not so decisively as all parties had expected. After a junction with reinforcements, the British fought the invaders again on the 21st and 22nd, at Ferozeshur. On the first night our troops were hardly masters of the ground they stood on, and had no reserve, while their gallant enemy had large reinforcements within reach. {1737} The next day might easily have been made fatal to the English army, at times when their ammunition fell short; but the Sikhs were badly commanded at a critical moment, then deserted by a traitorous leader, and finally driven back. For a month after this nothing was done by the British, and the Sikhs crossed the Sutlej at their ease. The valour of Gough and of Hardinge, who, while Governor-General, had put himself under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, had saved the honour of the English; but their prestige was weakened among their own Sepoys, and even the European regiments; much more among the Sikhs; and most of all in the eyes of the vigilant surrounding states. It was a matter of life and death now to bring up guns, ammunition and treasure. A considerable portion fell into the enemy's hands on the 21st of January, on its way to the relief of Loodeeana; but the battle of Aliwal on the 28th was again a true British fight. The Sikhs were driven into the Sutlej; and as soon as they had collected in their stronghold of Sobraon on the other side, they were driven thence by a closing struggle on the 10th of February. The Sikhs were beaten, with a slaughter of 5,000 (some say 8,000) men; against 320 killed and 2,000 wounded on our side. The Maharajah submitted, the road to Lahore lay open, and the Governor-General could make his own terms. He flattered himself that he had arranged a protectorate of the Punjaub which would render annexation unnecessary; and all who could believe in it rejoiced that means had been found to escape the necessity of adding new conquests to a territory already much too large. As the Punjaub could not pay its amount of tribute to the Company, Cashmere and some other territory was accepted instead, and given, as a kingdom, to Gholab Singh … on his paying a portion of the debt, thus reimbursing the Company, and lessening the overgrown power of the Punjaub rulers. When, at the close of 1846, the English troops should be withdrawing from Lahore, the Sikh chiefs begged that they might remain, and take care of the Punjaub till the young Maharajah should grow up to manhood."

H. Martineau, British Rule in India, chapter 20.

"Lord Hardinge entrusted the government of the Punjab to a Council of Regency, consisting of Sikh nobles under the guidance of Sir Henry Lawrence as British Resident. He refused to create a subsidiary army, but he left a British force to protect the government until the boy Dhuleep Singh reached his majority. Two-thirds of the Sikh army of the Khalsa were disbanded. The Jullunder Doab between the Sutlej and the Beyas was added to the British empire. … Lord Dalhousie succeeded Lord Hardinge in 1848. Shortly afterwards the Punjab was again in commotion. Sikh government under British protection had failed to keep the peace. The army of the Khalsa had disappeared, but the old love of license and plunder was burning in the hearts of the disbanded soldiery. The Sikh governor of Multan revolted; two Englishmen were murdered. A British force besieged the rebels in Multan. It was joined by a Sikh force in the service of the Council of Regency commanded by Shere Singh. So far the revolt at Multan was regarded as a single outbreak which would be soon suppressed by the capture of the fortress. In reality it was the beginning of a general insurrection. Shere Singh, who commanded the Sikh force in the besieging army, suddenly deserted the British force and joined his father Chutter Singh, who was already in open rebellion. The revolt was secretly promoted by the queen mother, and spread over the Punjab like wildfire. The old soldiers of the Khalsa rallied round Shere Singh and his father. The half-and-half government set up by Lord Hardinge was unable to cope with a revolution which was restoring the old anarchy. In November, 1848, Lord Gough advanced against the rebel army. Then followed the famous campaign between the Chenab and Jhelum rivers about 100 miles to the north of Lahore. In January, 1849, Lord Gough fought the dubious battle of Chillianwallah, near the spot where Alexander the Great crossed the Jhelum and defeated the army of Porus. Meanwhile Multan surrendered, and the besieging force joined Lord Gough. In February the Sikh army was utterly defeated at Gujerat."

J. T. Wheeler, Indian History, chapter 11.

"Gujrat was essentially a forenoon battle, with the whole day before the combatants to finish their work. It commenced with a magnificent duel of artillery; the British infantry occupying post after post as they were abandoned by the enemy; and the British cavalry breaking up the Sikh masses and scattering them by pursuit. Of the sixty Sikh guns engaged, fifty-three were taken. Lord Dalhousie resolved to make the victory a final one. 'The war,' he declared, 'must be prosecuted now to the entire defeat and dispersion of all who are in arms against us, whether Sikhs or Afghans.' General Gilbert hurried out with a pursuing force of 12,000, horse, foot and artillery, the day after the battle. In the breathless chase which followed across the plains of the Punjab to the frontier mountain-wall, the Sikh military power was destroyed for ever. On the 12th of March, 1849, General Gilbert received the submission of the entire Sikh army at Rawal Pindi, together with the last forty-one of the 160 Sikh cannon captured by the British during the war. While the Sikh army heaped up their swords and shields and matchlocks in submissive piles, and salamed one by one as they passed disarmed along the British line, their Afghan allies were chased relentlessly westwards, and reached the safety of the Khaibar Pass panting, and barely twenty miles in front of the English hunters. The horsemen of Afghanistan, it was said, 'had ridden down through the hills like lions and ran back into them like dogs.' The question remained what to do with the Punjab. The victory of Sobraon in 1846 gave to Lord Hardinge the right of conquest: the victory at Gujrat in 1849 compelled Lord Dalhousie to assert that right. Lord Hardinge at the end of the first Punjab war in 1846, tried, as we have seen, an intermediate method of ruling the province by British officers for the benefit of the infant prince. This method had failed. … In determining the future arrangements for the Punjab, Lord Dalhousie had as his advisers the two Lawrences. Sir Henry Lawrence, the former Resident at Lahore; hurried back from his sick-leave in England on the breaking out of the war. He was of opinion that the annexation of the Punjab might perhaps be just, but that it would be inexpedient. His brother John, afterwards Lord Lawrence, who had also acted as Resident, although as much averse in general principle to annexation as Henry, was convinced that, in this case, annexation was not only just, but that its expediency was 'both undeniable and pressing.' {1738} Lord Dalhousie, after a full review of the efforts which had been made to convert the Sikh nation into a friendly power without annexation, decided that no course now remained to the British Government but to annex. … The annexation of the Punjab was deliberately approved of by the Court of Directors, by Parliament, and by the English nation."

W. W. Hunter, The Marquess of Dalhousie, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: _Sir H. B. Edwardes and H. Merivale, Life of Sir Henry Lawrence._

R. B. Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, volume 1, chapters 7-11.

E. Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, volume 1, chapters 1-7.

_H. B. Edwardes, A Year on the Punjab Frontier, 1848-49._

Sir R. Temple, Men and Events of My Time in India, chapters 3-4.

INDIA: A. D. 1848-1856. Lord Dalhousie's minor annexations. The lapse of dependent Native States. The case of Nana Sahib.

"In applying the doctrine of lapse to the Hindu chiefdoms, on default of natural successors or of an heir legally adopted with the sanction of the Ruling Power, Lord Dalhousie merely carried out the declared law of the case, and the deliberately formulated policy of the Government of India, years before he arrived in the country. In so doing, however, Lord Dalhousie became the unconscious but effective instrument by which the old India of Lord Wellesley at the beginning of the century was prepared for its conversion, in 1858, into the new India of the Queen. … The fundamental question was whether we should allow the government of a dependent State, in absence of natural heirs, to pass like mere private property to an adopted son. The Court of Directors had at one time permitted the adoption of a successor in special cases to a principality on failure of natural heirs. It declared, however, in 1834, that such an 'indulgence should be the exception, not the rule.' … As the evils of the old system of government by sham royalties further developed themselves, the Government of India determined in 1841 to enforce a more uniform policy. … What Lord Dalhousie did, therefore, was not to invent a new principle of Indian law, but to steadily apply an old principle. … The first case in which this principle came to be applied, shortly after Lord Dalhousie's arrival, was the Native State of Satara. That Maratha principality had been constituted by the British Government on the general break up of the Maratha power in 1818, and confirmed to the 'sons and heirs, and successors' of the recipient in 1819. In 1839 the reigning prince was deposed for misconduct by the British Government in the exercise of its Suzerain rights. By the same rights the British Government then set up the brother of the deposed prince on the throne. … The Raja, whom in 1839 we had placed on the throne, applied for permission to adopt a son. The British Government deliberately withheld the permission; and in the last hours of his life the Raja, in 1848, hastily adopted a son without the consent of the Government." Lord Dalhousie, with the advice of the Court of Directors, declared in this case that the territory of Satara had lapsed, on the death of the Raja, by failure of heirs, to the Power which deposed, and it was annexed, accordingly, to the British dominions. Under kindred circumstances the Native States of Sambalpur, on the south-western frontier of Lower Bengal, and Jhansi, a fragment of the Maratha dominions in Northern India, were absorbed. "The same principle of lapse on failure of heirs was applied by Lord Dalhousie to several other dependent States. Jaitpur in Bundelkhand, Baghat a petty hill Chiefdom of 36 square miles in the Punjab, Udaipur on the Western frontier of Lower Bengal, and Budawal in Khandesh, passed under direct British rule from this cause. The fort and military fief of Tanjore were annexed after Lord Dalhousie's departure from India, but practically on the grounds set forth by his government. … By far the largest accession of territory made during Lord Dalhousie's rule, to the British dominions on the failure of heirs, was the great central tract of India known as Nagpur. This Maratha principality as now constituted into the Central Provinces, and after various rectifications of frontier, has an area of 113,279 square miles, with a population of 12,000,000 souls. The territories annexed by Lord Dalhousie in 1854 make nearly four-fifths of the present Central Provinces. … It is difficult to find any ground for the charge which Mr. Kaye brought in 1865 against Lord Dalhousie, for 'harshness' towards the man afterwards known as the infamous Nana Sahib [see below: A. D. 1857 (MAY-AUGUST)]. As this charge, however, is still occasionally repeated, and as it has even been suggested that Lord Dalhousie was to some extent responsible for the Mutiny of 1857, in consequence of his action towards Nana Sahib in 1851, I must briefly state the facts. In 1818, the Peshwa of the Marathas, completely beaten in the field, threw himself on the generosity of the British. Sir John Malcolm, then the Governor-General's Agent in the Deccan, assured him of his protection, and engaged that he should receive an allowance of £80,000 a year for his support. … There could not be the slightest pretension that it was ever anything more than a personal annuity; and from first to last all mention of heirs is carefully excluded. The records show that the ex-Peshwa, Baji Rao, was well aware of this. Baji Rao lived until 1851, leaving to his adopted son, Nana Sahib, an immense fortune admitted to amount to £280,000, and believed by the Government of the North-western Provinces to greatly exceed that sum. The Government of India at once acknowledged the adopted son's title to this splendid heritage, and out of its own beneficence added to it the Jaghir, or grant of land, on which his father had resided in the North-western Provinces. But the pension, paid out of the tax-payers' pockets, lapsed upon the death of the annuitant."

Sir W. W. Hunter, The Marquess of Dalhousie, chapters 6-7.

_Duke of Argyll, India under Dalhousie and Canning._

INDIA: A. D. 1849-1893. The life in exile of Dhuleep Singh, heir to the Sikh throne.

"Few careers have ever been more instructive to those who can see than that of the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, who died in Paris on Sunday [October 22, 1893] of apoplexy. He finished life a despised exile, but no man of modern days ever had such chances, or had seen them snatched, partly by fate, partly by fault, so completely from his lips. But for an accident, if there is such a thing as accident, he would have been the Hindoo Emperor of India. {1739} His father, Runjeet Singh, that strange combination of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, had formed and knew how to control an army which would have struck down all the native powers of India much more easily than did any of the Tartar conquerors. Without its master at its head, that army defeated the British, and but for a magnificent bribe paid to its General (vide Cunningham's 'History of the Sikhs') would have driven the English from India, and placed the child, Dhuleep Singh, upon the throne of the Peninsula, to be supported there by Sikh and Rajpoot, Mahratta, and Beharee. Apart from the English, there was nothing to resist them; and they were guided by a woman, the Ranee Chunda Kour; who of all modern women was most like Mary of Scots as her enemies have painted her, and of whom, after her fall, Lord Dalhousie said that her capture would be worth the sacrifice of a brigade. How Dhuleep Singh would have reigned had Runjeet Singh's destiny completed itself is another matter—probably like a Hindoo Humayoon—for even if not the son of Runjeet Singh, who, be it remembered, acknowledged him, he inherited ability from his mother; he was a bold man, and he was, as his career showed, capable of wild and daring adventure. He fell, however, from his throne under the shock of the second Sikh War, and began a new and, to all appearance, most promising career. Lord Dalhousie had a pity for the boy, and the English Court—we never quite understood why—an unusually kindly feeling. A fortune of £40,000 a year was settled on him, he was sent to England, and he was granted rank hardly less than that of a Prince of the Blood. He turned Christian—apparently from conviction, though subsequent events throw doubt on that—a tutor, who was quite competent, devoted himself to his education, and from the time he became of age he was regarded as in all respects a great English noble. He knew, too, how to sustain that character,—made no social blunders, became a great sportsman, and succeeded in maintaining for years the sustained stateliness of life which in England is held to confer social dignity. Confidence was first shaken by his marriage, which, though it did not turn out unsuccessfully, and though the lady was in after-life greatly liked and respected, was a whim, his bride being a half Coptic, half English girl whom he saw in an Egyptian school-room, and who, by all English as well as Indian ideas of rank, was an unfitting bride. Then he began over-spending, without the slightest necessity, for his great income was unburdened by a vast estate; and at last reduced his finances to such a condition that the India Office, which had made him advance after advance, closed its treasury and left him, as he thought, face to face with ruin. Then the fierce Asiatic blood in him came out. He declared himself wronged, perhaps believed himself oppressed, dropped the whole varnish of civilisation from him, and resolved to make an effort for the vengeance over which he had probably brooded for years. He publicly repudiated Christianity, and went through a ceremony intended to readmit him within the pale of the Sikh variety of the Hindoo faith. Whether it did readmit him, greater doctors than we must decide. That an ordinary Hindoo who has eaten beef cannot be readmitted to his own caste, even if the eating is involuntary, is certain, as witness the tradition of the Tagore family; but the rights of the Royal are, even in Hindooism, extraordinarily wide, and we fancy that, had Dhuleep Singh succeeded in his enterprise, Sikh doctors of theology would have declared his re-admission legal. He did not, however, succeed. He set out for the Punjab intending, it can hardly be doubted, if the Sikhs acknowledged him, to make a stroke for the throne, if not of India, at least of Runjeet Singh; but he was arrested at Aden, and after months of fierce dispute, let go, on condition that he should not return to India. He sought protection in Russia, which he did not obtain, and at last gave up the struggle, made his peace with the India Office, took his pension again, and lived, chiefly in Paris, the life of a disappointed but wealthy idler. There was some spirit in his adventure, though it was unwisely carried out. The English generally thought it a bit of foolhardiness, or a dodge to extract a loan from the India Office; but those who were responsible held a different opinion, and would have gone nearly any length to prevent his reaching the Punjab. They were probably wise. The heir of Runjeet might have been ridiculed by the Sikhs as a Christian, but he might also have been accepted as a reconverted man; and one successful skirmish in a district might have called to arms all the 'children of the sugar and the sword,' and set all India on fire. The Sikhs are our very good friends, and stood by us against any revival of the Empire of Delhi, their sworn hereditary foe; but they have not forgotten Runjeet Singh, and a chance of the Empire for themselves might have turned many of their heads."

_The Spectator, October 28, 1893._

INDIA: A. D. 1852. The second Burmese War. Annexation of Pegu.

"While Lord Dalhousie was laying out the Punjab like a Scotch estate, on the most approved principles of planting, road-making, culture, and general management, the chance of another conquest at the opposite extremity of his vice-kingdom summoned him to Calcutta. The master of a trading barque from Chittagong, who was charged unjustly with cruelty to a pilot, had been fined £100 by the authorities of Rangoon, and the captain of a brig had in like manner been amerced for alleged ill-treatment of his crew. To support a claim for restitution, two English ships of war had been sent to the mouth of the Irrawadi. … Misunderstandings arose on some inexplicable point of etiquette;" the British commodore seized a royal yacht which lay in the river; the angry Burmese opened fire on his ships from their forts; and, "with an unprecedented economy of time and trouble in the discovery or making of plausible pretexts, a second war with Burmah was thus begun. A long catalogue of affronts, wrongs, and injuries, now for the first time poured in. … The subjects of the 'Golden Foot' … must make an official apology for their misbehaviour, pay ten lacs compensation, and receive a permanent Resident at Rangoon. If these demands were not met within five weeks, further reparation would be exacted otherwise, and as there was no fear that they would, preparations were made for an expedition. … The Governor-General threw himself with enthusiasm into an undertaking which promised him another chance of gratifying, as his biographer says, his 'passion for imperial symmetry.' {1740} He resolved 'to take in kingdoms wherever they made a gap in the red line running round his dominions or broke its internal continuity.' There was a gap in the ring-fence between Arracan and Moulmein, which Pegu would fill. The logical inference was clear, the duty of appropriation obvious. Let us have Pegu. Ten millions of silver happening just then to lie in the coffers of Fort William, how could they be better invested than in a jungle on the sea coast, inhabited by quadrupeds and bipeds after their various kinds, alike unworthy of being consulted as to their future destiny? … In April, Martaban and Rangoon were taken with trifling loss. Operations being suspended during the rainy season, the city of Prome was not attacked till October, and after a few hours' struggle it fell, with the loss of a single sepoy on the side of the victors. There was in fact no serious danger to encounter, save from the climate; but that unfailing ally fought with terrible effect upon the side of Ava. … On the 20th December, 1852, a proclamation was issued, which, after reciting undisguisedly the ineffably inadequate pretext for the war, informed the inhabitants that the Governor in Council had resolved that the maritime province of Pegu should henceforth form a portion of the British territories in the East, and warning the King of Ava, 'should he fail to renew his former relations of friendship with the British Government, and seek to dispute its quiet possession of the province, the Governor-General would again put forth the power he held, which would lead to the total subversion of the Burman State, and to the ruin and exile of the King and his race.' But no depth of humiliation could bring the Sovereign or his Ministers to acknowledge the hopelessness of defeat or the permanency of dismemberment. … Twenty years have passed, and no treaty recognising the alienation of Pegu has yet [in 1872] been signed."

W. M. Torrens, Empire in Asia: How we came by it, chapter 24.

ALSO IN: E. Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, chapters 15-16 (volume 2).

INDIA: A. D. 1856. The annexation of Oudh.

See OUDH.

INDIA: A. D. 1857. Causes of the Sepoy Mutiny.

"The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that Native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories, and to rush into action in a paroxysm of terror. Panic acts on an Oriental population like drink upon a European mob. The annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie, although dictated by the most enlightened considerations, was distasteful to the Native mind. The spread of education, the appearance at the same moment of the steam-engine and the telegraph wire, seemed to reveal a deep plan for substituting an English for an Indian civilisation. The Bengal sepoys especially thought that they could see further than the rest of their countrymen. Most of them were Hindus of high caste; many of them were recruited from Oudh. They regarded our reforms on Western lines as attacks on their own nationality, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and that all India was held. The numerous dethroned princes, or their heirs and widows, were the first to learn and to take advantage of this spirit of disaffection and panic. They had heard of the Crimean war, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Our munificent pensions had supplied the funds with which they could buy the aid of skilful intriguers. They had much to gain, and little to lose, by a revolution. In this critical state of affairs, of which the Government had no official knowledge, a rumour ran through the cantonments that the cartridges of the Bengal army had been greased with the fat of pigs,—animals unclean alike to Hindu and Muhammadan. No assurances could quiet the minds of the sepoys. Fires occurred nightly in the Native lines; officers were insulted by their men; confidence was gone, and only the form of discipline remained. In addition, the outbreak of the storm found the Native regiments denuded of many of their best officers. The administration of the great empire to which Dalhousie put the corner-stone, required a larger staff than the civil service could supply. The practice of selecting able military men for civil posts, which had long existed, received a sudden and vast development. Oudh, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, British Burma, were administered to a large extent by picked officers from the Company's regiments. Good and skilful commanders remained; but the Native army had nevertheless been drained of many of its brightest intellects and firmest wills at the very crisis of its fate."

W. W. Hunter, Brief History of the Indian People, chapter 15.

"The annexation of Oudh had nothing to do with the Mutiny in the first place, though that measure certainly did add to the number of our enemies after the Mutiny commenced. The old government of Oudh was extremely obnoxious to the mass of our native soldiers of the regular army, who came from Oudh and the adjacent province of Behar, and with whom the Mutiny originated. These men were the sons and kinsmen of the Hindu yeomen of the country, all of whom benefited more or less by annexation; while Oudh was ruled by a Muhammadan family which had never identified itself with the people, and whose government was extremely oppressive to all classes except its immediate creatures and followers. But when the introduction of the greased cartridges had excited the Native Army to revolt, when the mutineers saw nothing before them short of escape on the one hand or destruction on the other, they, and all who sympathised with them, were driven to the most desperate measures. All who could be influenced by love or fear rallied round them. All who had little or nothing to lose joined their ranks. All that dangerous class of religious fanatics and devotees who abound in India, all the political intriguers, who in peaceful times can do no mischief, swelled the numbers of the enemy, and gave spirit and direction to their measures. India is full of races of men, who, from time immemorial, have lived by service or by plunder, and who are ready to join in any disturbance which may promise them employment. Oudh was full of disbanded soldiers who had not had time to settle down. Our gaols furnished thousands of desperate men let loose on society. The cry throughout the country, as cantonment after cantonment became the scene of triumphant mutiny was, 'The English rule is at an end. Let us plunder and enjoy ourselves.' The industrious classes throughout India were on our side, but for a long time feared to act. {1741} On the one side they saw the few English in the country shot down or flying for their lives, or at the best standing on the defensive, sorely pressed; on the other side they saw summary punishment, in the shape of the plunder and destruction of their houses, dealt out to those who aided us. But when we evinced signs of vigour, when we began to assume the offensive and vindicate our authority, many of these people came forward and identified themselves with our cause."

Lord Lawrence, Speech at Glasgow, 1860 (quoted by Sir O. T. Burne, in "Clyde and Strathnairn," chapter 1).

ALSO IN: J. W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, book 2 (volume 1).

G. B. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, chapters 1-5.

INDIA: A. D. 1857 (May). The outbreak at Meerut. Seizure of Delhi by the Mutineers. Massacre of Europeans. Explosion of the magazine.

"The station of Meerut, some 40 miles north-east of Delhi, was one of the very few in India where adequate means existed for quelling an outbreak of native troops. There was a regiment of English Dragoons, a battalion of the 60th Rifles, and a strong force of Horse and Foot Artillery, far more than sufficient to deal with the three native regiments who were also quartered in the cantonment. The court-martial on … eighty-five men of the 3rd N. C., who had refused to take their cartridges, had by this time completed its inquiry. The men were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The sentence was carried out with impressive solemnity. On a morning [May 9] presently to become historical—the heavens sombre with rolling clouds—the brigade assembled to hear their comrades' doom—to see them stripped of their uniform and secured with felons' manacles. The scene produced intense emotion. Resistance was impossible. There were entreaties, tears, imprecations, as the prisoners were marched away to jail. Discipline had been vindicated by a terrible example. The next day was Sunday. In the evening, as the European Riflemen were gathering for Church, a sudden movement took place in the native quarters. The Cavalry dashed off to the jail to rescue their imprisoned companions. The two Infantry regiments, after a moment's wavering, threw in their lot with the mutineers. Then ensued a scene such as, unhappily, became too familiar in Upper India within the next few weeks. Officers were shot, houses fired, Europeans—men, women, and children, wherever found, were put to the sword. A crowd of miscreants from the jail, suddenly set free, made a long night of pillage. Meanwhile, paralysed by the sudden catastrophe, the English General of the Division and the Brigadier of the Station forbore to act, refused to let their subordinates act, and the Sepoys who had fled, a disorganised mob, in different directions, soon found themselves gathering on the march for Delhi. In the early morning at Delhi, where courts and offices had already begun the day's work, a line of horsemen were descried galloping on the Meerut road. They found their way into the city, into the presence of the King; cut down the European officials, and, as they were gradually reinforced by the arrival of fresh companions, commenced a general massacre of the Christian population. A brave telegraph clerk, as the mutineers burst in upon him, had just time to flash the dreadful tidings to Lahore. Before evening, the native regiments fired upon their officers and joined the mutineers. After weary hours of hope for the help from Meerut which never came, the British officers in command were compelled to recognise that the only chance of safety lay in flight. Ere the day closed, every European who had risen that morning in Delhi, was dead, or awaiting death, or wandering about the country in the desperate endeavor to reach a place of safety. A day dark with disaster was, however, illumined by the first of those heroic acts which will make the siege of Delhi immortal. The insurgents had their first taste of the quality of the race whose ascendancy they had elected to assail. Lieutenant Willoughby, the officer in charge of the Magazine, and eight gallant companions, resolved, early in the day, that, if they could not defend their invaluable supply of ammunition, they would destroy it, though its destruction would almost certainly involve their own. For hours they defended their stronghold against an overpowering crowd of assailants. The train was laid: the sergeant who was to fire it stood ready: Willoughby took a last look out upon the Meerut road: the assailants were swarming on the walls. The word was spoken: a vast column of flame and smoke shot upward. Two thousand of the assailants were blown into the air [and five of the defenders perished, while Willoughby and three of his companions escaped]. The thunder of that explosion announced to the mutineers that one great object in the seizure of Delhi had escaped their grasp."

H. S. Cunningham, Earl Canning, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: J. W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, book 4, chapters 1-3 (volume 2).

INDIA: A. D. 1857 (May-August). The situation at Delhi. Siege of the English at Cawnpur. Their surrender and massacre. The siege of Lucknow.

"A few days of inactivity allowed the flame to blaze up beyond possibility of immediate extinction. The unchallenged occupation of the Mughal capital by rebel sepoys and badmashes was followed by risings and massacres in almost every station within range of the example; and from Firozpur, Bareilly, Moradabad, Shahjahanpur, Cawnpur, and numerous other places came harrowing tales of massacre, suffering, and heroism. When this terrible news reached army head-quarters, it was received with a perhaps natural incredulity. Nevertheless, a force was hastily assembled at Ambala; and with the troops thus mobilised, General Anson, then Commander-in-Chief, made preparations to march against the renowned city of the Mughal. The little force had hardly started, however, when its leader died of cholera (May 27th). It was not until the 1st of June that General Barnard, who had succeeded temporarily to the chief command, advanced in earnest against the now jubilant rebels. Meanwhile, a small body of troops under Brigadier Archdale Wilson marched out from Meerut, after a disastrous delay; and the combined force, amounting to about 3,000 Europeans and one battalion of Gurkhas, fought its way onwards till it reached the outskirts of the city on the 8th of June, 1857. We may now refer to the three great points,—Delhi, Cawnpur, and Lucknow, round which the Mutiny was, so to speak, centred during the earlier period of the revolt; namely, from May, 1857, till the arrival in India of Sir Colin Campbell in August of that year. {1742} The modern city of Delhi was founded by the Emperor Jahangir in 1631. Situated on the right bank of a branch of the Jumna river it was, as it still is, surrounded by a high wall some seven miles in extent, strengthened by bastions and by a capacious dry ditch. The British force held the elevated ground known as the Ridge, which extends two miles along the northern and western faces of the city—a position taken up some centuries before by Timur Shah and his Tartar hordes when advancing to attack old Delhi. At intervals along the Ridge stood the Flagstaff Tower, the Observatory, a large mansion called Hindu Rao's house, and other defensible buildings. The space between the city and the Ridge was thickly planted, for the most part with trees and shrubs; in the midst of which might be seen numerous mosques and large houses, and the ruins of older buildings. It soon became evident that the position held by the British force on the Ridge was a false one; and the question arose whether the city might not be taken by a coup de main, seeing that it was impossible either to invest it or to attempt a regular siege with any chance of success. A plan of assault, to be carried out on the 12th of June, was drawn up by a young Engineer officer and sanctioned. Had this assault been delivered the city would in all likelihood have been taken and held. … But owing to a series of accidents, the plan fell through—a miscarriage the more to be regretted because the early recapture of the city would in all human probability have put a stop to further outbreaks. As matters stood, however, the gallant little force before Delhi could barely hold its own. It was an army of observation perpetually harassed by an active enemy. As time went on, therefore, the question of raising the siege in favour of a movement towards Agra was more than once seriously discussed, but was fortunately abandoned. On July 5th, 1857, General Barnard died, worn out with fatigue and anxiety. He was succeeded in command by General Archdale Wilson, an officer who, possessing no special force of character, did little more than secure the safe defence of the position until the arrival of Brigadier Nicholson from the Punjab, August 14th, 1857, with a moveable column of 2,500 men, Europeans and Sikhs. And here we may leave Delhi, for the moment, deferring till later any further details of the siege. The city of Cawnpur, situated on the south bank of the river Ganges, 42 miles south-west of Lucknow and 270 miles from Delhi, lies about a mile from the river in a large sandy plain. On the strip of land between the river and the town, a space broken by ravines, stretched the Civil Station and cantonments. A more difficult position to hold in an extremity cannot well be conceived, occupied as it was by four disaffected Sepoy regiments with but sixty European artillerymen to overawe them. There was, moreover, an incompetent commander. Realising after the disasters at Meerut and Delhi that his native garrison was not to be trusted, Sir Hugh Wheeler threw up a make-shift entrenchment close to the Sepoy lines. Commanded on all sides, it was totally unfitted to stand a siege. But a worse mistake was to follow. Alarmed as time went on at his growing difficulties, Sir Hugh Wheeler at length asked the notorious Nana Sahib [see above: A. D. 1848-1856], who lived a few miles off at Bithur, to assist him with troops to guard the Treasury. For some months previously this archtraitor's emissaries had been spreading discontent throughout India, but he himself had taken care to remain on good terms with his European neighbours. He now saw his opportunity. Cawnpur, delivered into his hands by the misplaced confidence of its defenders, was virtually in his keeping. Of European succour there was no immediate hope. The place was doomed. The crash came three days before General Barnard's force reached Delhi. With the exception of a few devoted natives who remained faithful to their salt, the whole Sepoy force on the 5th of June rose in revolt, opened the doors of the jail, robbed the treasury, and made themselves masters of the magazine. The Nana cast aside all further pretence of friendship and, joined by the mutinous troops, laid siege to the entrenchment already mentioned, which with culpable military ignorance had been thrown up in one of the worst positions that could have been chosen. The besieging army numbered some 3,000 men. The besieged could only muster about 400 English soldiers, more than 70 of which number were invalids. For twenty-one days the little garrison suffered untold horrors from starvation, heat, and the onslaughts of the rebels; until the General in command listened to overtures for surrender, and the garrison marched out on the 27th of June, to the number of about 450 souls, provided with a promise of safeguard from the Nana, who would allow them, as they thought, to embark in country boats for Allahabad. Tantia Topi, who afterwards became notorious in Central India, superintended the embarkation. No sooner, however, were the Europeans placed in the boats, in apparent safety, than a battery of guns concealed on the river banks opened fire, while at the same time a deadly fusillade of musketry was poured on the luckless refugees. The Nana at length ordered the massacre to cease. He celebrated what he called his glorious victory by proclaiming himself Peshwa or Maratha Sovereign, and by rewarding his troops for their 'splendid achievements,' while the wretched survivors of his treachery, numbering about 5 men and 206 women and children, were taken back to Cawnpur and confined in a small building for further vengeance and insult. On the 15th of July came the last act of this tragedy. The Nana, having suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Brigadier Havelock's force within a day's march of Cawnpur, as will presently be recorded, put the whole of his prisoners to death. The men were brought out and killed in his presence, while the women and children were hacked to pieces by Muhammadan butchers and others in their prison. Their bodies were thrown into what is now known as the Cawnpur Well.' Lucknow, at the time of the Mutiny, was in population, in extent, and in the number and importance of its principal buildings, one of the foremost cities of India. … The Residency stood on a hill gently sloping towards the river, and was an imposing edifice of three stories. Near it were the iron and stone bridges over the river. … At the outbreak of the Mutiny the Sepoy regiments were stationed in various localities within the city; while the 32nd Foot, the only European regiment on the spot, was quartered in a barrack about a mile or so from the Residency. {1743} As was the case elsewhere, so it happened at Lucknow. While the population and native garrison were seething with sedition, the British authorities were hampered by ignorance of popular feeling, by the want of European troops, and by divided counsels. So, by the end of May, 1857, the rebellion in Oudh became an accomplished fact, although matters went on with comparative smoothness in Lucknow itself. At length, after a serious disaster at Chinhat, the British garrison was forced to withdraw to the Residency and its adjacent buildings; and on the 1st of July commenced the famous investment of this position by the rebel forces. The position was ill adapted for defence; for the lofty windows of the Residency itself not only allowed free access to the enemy's missiles, but its roof was wholly exposed. On the opposite side of the street, leading from the Bailey Guard Gate, was the house of the Residency Surgeon, Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Fayrer. It was a large but not lofty building with a flat roof which, protected by sand bags, afforded a good cover for our riflemen, and with a tyekhana, or underground story, that afforded good shelter for the women and children. But as a whole, the defences of the Residency were more formidable in name than in reality, and were greatly weakened by the proximity of high buildings from which the rebels without danger to themselves poured an unceasing fire. The siege had an ominous commencement. On July 4th the much-beloved Sir Henry Lawrence, the Resident, died of a wound received two days before from an enemy's shell that had fallen into his room. Brigadier Inglis succeeded him in command; and for three months the heroic garrison of about 1,700 souls held their weak position, amid inconceivable hardships and dangers, against thousands of the rebels who were constantly reinforced by fresh levies. It was well said in a general order by Lord Canning that there could not be found in the annals of war an achievement more heroic than this defence."

General Sir O. T. Burne, Clyde and Strathnairn, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: J. W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War, book 9, chapters 1-3 (volume 3).

_G. O. Trevelyan, Cawnpore._

T. R. E. Holmes, History of the Indian Mutiny, chapters 8-10.

_Lady Inglis, The Siege of Lucknow._

INDIA: A. D. 1857 (June-September). The siege, the storming and the capture of Delhi. Murder of the Moghul princes.

"During the four months that followed the revolt at Delhi on the 11th of May, all political interest was centred at the ancient capital of the sovereigns of Hindustan. The public mind was occasionally distracted by the current of events at Cawnpore and Lukhnow, as well as at other stations which need not be particularised; but so long as Delhi remained in the hands of the rebels, the native princes were bewildered and alarmed; and its prompt recapture was deemed of vital importance to the prestige of the British government, and the re-establishment of British sovereignty in Hindustan. The Great Moghul had been little better than a mummy for more than half a century, and Bahadur Shah was a mere tool and puppet in the hands of rebel sepoys; but nevertheless the British government had to deal with the astounding fact that the rebels were fighting under his name and standard, just as Afghans and Mahrattas had done in the days of Ahmad Shah Durani and Mahadaji Sindia. To make matters worse, the roads to Delhi were open from the south and east; and nearly every outbreak in Hindustan was followed by a stampede of mutineers to the old capital of the Moghuls. Meanwhile, in the absence of railways, there were unfortunate delays in bringing up troops and guns to stamp out the fires of rebellion at the head centre. The highway from Calcutta to Delhi was blocked up by mutiny and insurrection; and every European soldier sent up from Calcutta was stopped for the relief of Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, or Lukhnow. But the possession of the Punjab at this crisis proved to be the salvation of the empire. Sir John Lawrence, the Chief Commissioner, was called upon to perform almost superhuman work:—to maintain order in a newly conquered province; to suppress mutiny and disaffection amongst the very sepoy regiments from Bengal who were supposed to garrison the country; and to send reinforcements of troops and guns, and supplies of all descriptions, to the siege of Delhi. Fortunately the Sikhs had been only a few short years under British administration; they had not forgotten the miseries that prevailed under the native government, and could appreciate the many blessings they enjoyed under British rule. They were staunch to the British government, and eager to be led against the rebels. In some cases terrible punishment was meted out to mutinous Bengal sepoys within the Punjab; but the imperial interests at stake were sufficient to justify every severity, although all must regret the painful necessity that called for such extreme measures. … The defences of Delhi covered an area of three square miles. The walls consisted of a series of bastions, about sixteen feet high, connected by long curtains, with occasional martello towers to aid the flanking fire. … There were seven gates to the city, namely, Lahore gate, Ajmir gate, Turkoman gate, Delhi gate, Mori gate, Kabul gate, and Kashmir gate. The principal street was the Chandni Chouk, which ran in a direct line from the Delhi gate to the palace of the Moghuls. … For many weeks the British army on the Ridge was unable to attempt siege operations. It was, in fact, the besieged, rather than the besiegers; for, although the bridges in the rear were blown up, the camp was exposed to continual assaults from all the other sides. On the 23rd of June, the hundredth anniversary of the battle of Plassy, the enemy made a greater effort than ever to carry the British position. The attack began on the right from the Subzi Mundi, its object being to capture the Mound battery. Finding it impossible to carry the battery, the rebels confined themselves to a hand to hand conflict in the Subzi Mundi. The deadly struggle continued for many hours; and as the rebels came up in overwhelming numbers, it was fortunate that the two bridges in the rear had been blown up the night before, or the assault might have had a different termination. It was not until after sunset that the enemy was compelled to retire with the loss of a thousand men. Similar actions were frequent during the month of August; but meanwhile reinforcements were coming up, and the end was drawing nigh. In the middle of August, Brigadier John Nicholson, one of the most distinguished officers of the time, came up from the Punjab with a brigade and siege train. On the 4th of September a heavy train of artillery was brought in from Ferozepore. {1744} The British force on the Ridge now exceeded 8,000 men. Hitherto the artillery had been too weak to attempt to breach the City walls; but now fifty-four heavy guns were brought into position and the siege began in earnest. From the 8th to the 12th of September four batteries poured in a constant storm of shot and shell; number one was directed against the Kashmir bastion, number two against the right flank of the Kashmir bastion, number three against the Water bastion, and number four against the Kashmir and Water gates and bastions. On the 13th of September the breaches were declared to be practicable, and the following morning was fixed for the final assault upon the doomed city. At three o'clock in the morning of the 14th September, three assaulting columns were formed in the trenches, whilst a fourth was kept in reserve. The first column was led by Brigadier Nicholson; the second by Brigadier Jones; the third by Colonel Campbell; and the fourth, or reserve, by Brigadier Longfield. The powder bags were laid at the Kashmir gate by Lieutenants Home and Salkeld. The explosion followed, and the third column rushed in, and pushed towards the Juma Musjid. Meanwhile the first column under Nicholson escaladed the breaches near the Kashmir gate, and pushed along the ramparts towards the Kabul gate, carrying the several bastions in the way. Here it was met by the second column under Brigadier Jones, who had escaladed the breach at the Water bastion. The advancing columns were met by a ceaseless fire from terraced houses, mosques, and other buildings; and John Nicholson, the hero of the day, whilst attempting to storm a narrow street near the Kabul gate, was struck down by a shot and mortally wounded."

J. T. Wheeler, Short History of India, part 3, chapter 25.

"The long autumn day was over, and we were in Delhi. But Delhi was, by no means, ours. Sixty-six officers and 1,100 men— nearly a third, that is, of the whole attacking force—had fallen; while, as yet, not a sixth part of the town was in our power. How many men, it might well be asked, would be left to us by the time that we had conquered the remainder? We held the line of ramparts which we had attacked and the portions of the city immediately adjoining, but nothing more. The Lahore Gate and the Magazine, the Jumma Musjid and the Palace, were still untouched, and were keeping up a heavy fire on our position. Worse than this, a large number of our troops had fallen victims to the temptation which, more formidable than themselves, our foes had left behind them, and were wallowing in a state of bestial intoxication. The enemy, meanwhile, had been able to maintain their position outside the town; and if only, at this supreme hour, a heaven-sent General had appeared amongst them, they might have attacked our camp, defended as it was mainly by the sick, and the maimed, and the halt. … Never, perhaps, in the history of the Mutiny were we in quite so perilous a position as on the night which followed our greatest military success. General Wilson, indeed, proposed, as might have been expected from a man in his enfeebled condition of mind and body, to withdraw the guns, to fall back on the camp and wait for reinforcements there; a step which, it is needless to point out, would have given us all the deadly work to do over again, even if our force should prove able to maintain itself on the Ridge till reinforcements came. But the urgent remonstrances of Baird Smith and others, by word of mouth; of Chamberlain, by letter; and, perhaps, also, the echoes which may have reached him from the tempest-tossed hero who lay chafing against his cruel destiny on his death-bed, and exclaimed in a wild paroxysm of passion, when he heard of the move which was in contemplation, 'Thank God, I have strength enough left to shoot that man,' turned the General once more from his purpose. On the following day, the 15th, vast quantities of the intoxicating drinks, which had wrought such havoc amongst our men, were destroyed by General Wilson's order, and the streets literally ran with rivers of beer, and wine, and brandy. Meanwhile, the troops were sleeping off their drunken debauch; and on the 16th active operations were resumed. On that day the Magazine was taken, and its vast stores of shot and shell, and of all the 'material' of war, fell once more into the hands of their proper owners. By sapping gradually from house to house we managed, for three days more, to avoid the street-fighting which, once and again, has proved so demoralising to Englishmen; and, slowly but surely, we pressed back the defenders into that ever-narrowing part of the city of which, fortunately for themselves, they still held the bolt-holes. Many of them had already begun, like rats, to quit the sinking vessel. And now the unarmed population of the city flocked in one continuous stream out of the open gates, hoping to save their lives, if nothing else, from our avenging swords. On the 19th, the palace of the Moguls, which had witnessed the last expiring flicker of life in an effete dynasty, and the cruel murder of English men, and women, and children, fell into our hands; and by Sunday, the 20th, the whole of the city—in large part already a city of the dead—was at our mercy. But what of the King himself and the Princes of the royal house? They had slunk off to the tomb of Humayoun, a huge building, almost a city in itself, some miles from the modern Delhi, and there, swayed this way and that, now by the bolder spirits of his army who pressed him to put himself at their head and fight it out to the death, as became the descendant of Tamerlane and Baber, now by the entreaties of his young wife, who was anxious chiefly for her own safety and that of her son, the heir of the Moguls; and now, again, by the plausible suggestions of a double-dyed traitor of his own house who was in Hodson's pay, and who, approaching the head of his family with a kiss of peace, was endeavoring to detain him where he was till he could hand him over to his employer and receive the price of blood, the poor old monarch dozed or fooled away the few hours of his sovereignty which remained, the hours which might still make or mar him, in paroxysms of imbecile vacillation and despair. The traitor gained the day, and Hodson, who could play the game of force as well as of fraud, and was an equal adept at either, learning from his craven-hearted tool that the King was prepared to surrender on the promise of his life, went to Wilson and obtained leave, on that condition, to bring him into Delhi. The errand, with such a promise tacked on to it, was only half to Hodson's taste. {1745} 'If I get into the Palace,' he had written in cool blood some days before, 'the house of Timour will not be worth five minutes' purchase, I ween.' … After two hours of bargaining for his own life and that of his queen and favourite son, the poor old Priam tottered forth and was taken back, in a bullock-cart, a prisoner, to his own city and Palace, and was there handed over to the civil authorities. But there were other members of the royal family, as Hodson knew well from his informants, also lurking in Humayoun's tomb. … With a hundred of his famous horse Hodson started for Humayoun's tomb, and, after three hours of negotiation, the three princes, two of them the sons, the other the grandson of the King, surrendered unconditionally into his hands. … Their arms were taken from them, and, escorted by some of his horsemen, they too were despatched in bullock-carts towards Delhi. With the rest of his horse, Hodson stayed behind to disarm the large and nerveless crowd, who, as sheep having no shepherd, and unable, in their paralysed condition, to see what the brute weight even of a flock of sheep might do by a sudden rush, were overawed by his resolute bearing. This done, he galloped after his prey and caught them up just before the cavalcade reached the walls of Delhi. He ordered the princes roughly to get out of the cart and strip,—for, even in his thirst for their blood, he had, as it would seem, an eye to the value of their outer clothes,—he ordered them into the cart again, he seized a carbine from one of his troopers, and then and there, with his own hand, shot them down deliberately one after the other. It was a stupid, cold-blooded, three-fold murder. … Had they been put upon their trial, disclosures of great importance as to the origin of the Mutiny could hardly fail to have been elicited. Their punishment would have been proportioned to their offence, and would have been meted out to them with all the patient majesty of offended law."

R. B. Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, volume 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: Sir R. Temple, Lord Lawrence, chapter 7.

Sir R. Temple, Men and Events of my Time in India, chapter 7.

_J. Cave-Brown, The Punjab and Delhi in 1857._

G. B. Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, book 10, chapter 1 (volume 2).

Major Hodson, Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India, part 2: The Delhi Campaign.

INDIA: A. D. 1857-1858 (July-June). General Havelock's campaign. Sir Colin Campbell's. The Relief of Lucknow. Substantial suppression of the Mutiny.

"Meanwhile the greatest anxiety prevailed with regard to our countrymen and countrywomen at Lucknow and Cawnpore. The Indian government made every effort to relieve them; but the reinforcements which had been despatched from England and China came in slowly, and the demands made for assistance far exceeded the means at the disposal of the government. … The task of relieving the city was entrusted to the heroic General Havelock, who marched out with a mere handful of men, of whom only 1,400 were British soldiers, to encounter a large army and a whole country in rebellion. At Futtehpore, on the 12th of July, he defeated a vastly superior force, posted in a very strong position. After giving his men a day's rest, he advanced again on the 14th, and routed the enemy in two pitched battles. Next morning he renewed his advance, and with a force of less than 900 men attacked 5,000 strongly entrenched, and commanded by Nana Sahib. They were outmanœuvred, out-flanked, beaten and dispersed. But for this signal defeat they wreaked their vengeance on the unfortunate women and children who still remained at Cawnpore. On the very day on which the battle occurred, they were massacred under circumstances of cruelty over which we must throw a veil. The well of Cawnpore, in which their hacked and mutilated bodies were flung, presented a spectacle from which soldiers who had regarded unmoved the carnage of numerous battle-fields shrank with horror. Of all the atrocities perpetrated during this war, so fruitful in horrors, this was the most awful; and it was followed by a terrible retribution. It steeled the hearts, and lent a furious and fearless energy to the arms, of the British soldiery. Wherever they came, they gave no quarter to the mutineers; a few men often frantically attacked hundreds, frantically but vainly defending themselves; and never ceased till all had been bayoneted, or shot, or hewn in pieces. All those who could be shown to have been accomplices in the perpetration of the murders that had been committed were hung, or blown from the cannon's mouth. Though the intrepid Havelock was unable to save the women and children who had been imprisoned in Cawnpore, he pressed forward to Lucknow. But the force under his command was too small to enable him to drive off the enemy. Meanwhile Sir J. Outram, who was now returning from the Persian war, which had been brought to a successful conclusion, was sent to Oude as chief commissioner, with full civil and military power. This appointment was fully deserved; but it had the effect, probably not thought of by those who made it, of superseding Havelock just as he was about to achieve the crowning success of his rapid and glorious career. Outram, however, with a generosity which did him more real honour than a thousand victories would have conferred, wrote to Havelock to inform him that he intended to join him with adequate reinforcements; adding: 'To you shall be left the glory of relieving Lucknow, for which you have already struggled so much. I shall accompany you only in my civil capacity as commissioner, placing my military service at your disposal, should you please, and serving under you as a volunteer.' Thus Havelock, after gaining no fewer than twelve battles against forces far superior in numbers to the little band he originally led, was enabled at length, on the 25th of August, to preserve the civilians, the women, and children of Lucknow from the impending horrors of another massacre, which would no doubt have been as fearful as that of Cawnpore. The Highlanders were the first to enter, and were welcomed with grateful enthusiasm by those whom they had saved from a fate worse than death. However, the enemy, recovering from the panic which the arrival of Havelock and his troops had caused, renewed the siege. Sir Colin Campbell, who had assumed the command of the Indian army, had determined to march to the relief of Lucknow. He set out from Cawnpore on the 9th of November, but was obliged to wait till the 14th for reinforcements, which were on the way to join him, and which raised the force under his command to 5,000—a force numerically far inferior to that which it was to attack. {1746} On the 17th of November the relief of Lucknow was effected. The music of the Highland regiments, playing 'The Campbells are coming,' announced to their delighted countrymen inside the city that the commander-in-chief himself was with the relieving force. Little time, however, was allowed for congratulations and rejoicings. The ladies, the civilians, and the garrison were quietly withdrawn; the guns, which it was thought not desirable to remove, were burst; and a retreat effected, without affording the enemy the slightest suspicion of what was going on until some hours after the town had been evacuated by its defenders. The retreating force reached Dilhasha on the 24th, without having sustained any serious molestation. There the gallant Havelock sank under the trials and hardships to which he had been exposed, and yielded up the life which was instrumental in preserving so many others from the most terrible of deaths. While Sir Colin Campbell was engaged in effecting the relief of Lucknow, intelligence reached Cawnpore that a large hostile army was making towards it. General Windham, who commanded there, unacquainted with the number or the position of the approaching force, marched forth to meet it, in the hope that he should be able to rout and cut up the advanced guard before the main body of the enemy could come to its assistance. But in this expectation he was disappointed. Instead of having to deal with the van, he engaged with the whole rebel army, and his little force, assailed on all sides, was obliged to retire. He at once despatched a letter to the commander-in-chief, requesting him to hasten to his assistance; but it was intercepted by the enemy. Fortunately Sir Colin Campbell, though ignorant of the critical position of his subordinate, came up just at the moment when the danger was at its height. This was on the 28th of November. He was, however, in no haste to attack the foe, and was content for the present merely to hold them in check. His first care was for the safety of the civilians, the women, and the children, which was not secured till the 30th; and he continued to protect them till the 5th of December, when they were all safely lodged at Allahabad. The enemy, unaware of the motive of his seeming inaction, imputed it to fear, and became every day more confident and audacious. On the 6th he at length turned fiercely on them, completely defeated them, and seized their baggage; he then dispersed and drove away another large force, under the command of Nana Sahib, which was watching the engagement at a little distance. The army entered the residence of Nana Sahib at Bithoor, and took possession of much treasure, which had been concealed in a well. Nearly the whole of the enemy's artillery was captured; and the army, being overtaken as they were in the act of crossing into Oude, great numbers of them were destroyed. Of course, for the moment Lucknow, being no longer garrisoned, had fallen into the hands of the insurgents; but they were not long permitted to retain it. Strong reinforcements arrived, and the Indian government was enabled to send a force against Lucknow sufficient to overwhelm all resistance; and on the 15th of December this important city was in the undisputed possession of the British troops. This final recovery of the capital of Oude decided the reconquest of that country. A struggle was, indeed, maintained for some time longer; innumerable battles were fought; and the final subjugation of the country was effected in the month of June, 1858."

W. N. Molesworth, History of England, 1830-1874, volume 3, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: A. Forbes, Havelock, chapters 5-7.

_General Sir O. T. Burne, Clyde and Strathnairn._

General Shadwell, Life of Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, volume 1, chapter 11, and volume 2, chapters 1-18.

_T. Lowe, Central India during 1857-8._

INDIA: A. D. 1858. The Governor-General's Proclamation, Termination of the rule of the East India Company. The government transferred to the Crown.

"By a singular circumstance, when the mutiny was suppressed in 1858, the Governor-General, who in the previous year had been condemned for leniency which was thought ill-timed, was destined to receive censure for harshness which was declared unnecessary. On the eve of the fall of Lucknow, he drew up a proclamation confiscating the lands of all the great landowners in Oudh. Exceptions were, indeed, made to this sweeping decree. Landowners who could prove their loyalty were promised exemption from it, just as rebels who unconditionally surrendered, and whose hands were not stained with British blood, were offered pardon. There is no doubt that Canning, in drawing up this proclamation, relied on the exceptions which it contained, while there is equally no doubt that the critics who objected to it overlooked its parentheses. But its issue was made the basis of an attack which well-nigh proved fatal to the Governor-General's administration. The chances of party warfare had replaced Palmerston with Derby; and the Conservative minister had entrusted the Board of Control to the brilliant but erratic statesman who, fifteen years before, had astonished India with pageant and proclamation. … Ellenborough thought proper to condemn Canning's proclamation in a severe despatch, and to allow his censure to be made public. For a short time it seemed impossible that the Governor-General who had received such a despatch could continue his government. But the lapse of a few days showed that the minister who had framed the despatch, and not the Viceroy who had received it, was to suffer from the transaction. The public, recollecting the justice of Canning's rule, the mercy of his administration, almost unanimously considered that he should not have been hastily condemned for a document which, it was gradually evident, had only been imperfectly understood; and Ellenborough, to save his colleagues, volunteered to play the part of Jonah, and retired from the ministry. His retirement closes, in one sense, the history of the Indian Mutiny. But the transactions of the Mutiny had, almost for the first time, taught the public to consider the anomalies of Indian government. In the course of a hundred years a Company had been suffered to acquire an empire nearly ten times as large and as populous as Great Britain. It was true that the rule of the Company was in many respects nominal. The President of the Board of Control was the true head of the Indian Government, and spoke and acted through the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. But this very circumstance only accentuated the anomaly. If the President of the Board of Control was in fact Indian minister, it was far simpler to make him Indian minister by name, and to do away with the clumsy expedient which alone enabled him to exercise his authority. {1747} Hence it was generally decided that the rule of the Company should cease, and that India should thenceforward become one of the possessions of the crown. … A great danger thus led to the removal of a great anomaly, and the vast Indian empire which Englishmen had won was thenceforward taken into a nation's keeping."

S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 27 (volume 5).

The act "for the better government of India," which was passed in the autumn of 1858, "provided that all the territories previously under the government of the East India Company were to be vested in her Majesty, and all the Company's powers to be exercised in her name. One of her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State was to have all the power previously exercised by the Company, or by the Board of Control. The Secretary was to be assisted by a Council of India, to consist of fifteen members, of whom seven were to be elected by the Court of Directors from their own body, and eight nominated by the Crown. The vacancies among the nominated were to be filled up by the Crown; those among the elected by the remaining members of the Council for a certain time, but afterward by the Secretary of State for India. The competitive principle for the Civil Service was extended in its application, and made thoroughly practical. The military and naval forces of the Company were to be deemed the forces of her Majesty. A clause was introduced declaring that, except for the purpose of preventing or repelling actual invasion of India, the Indian revenues should not, without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of her Majesty's Indian possessions. Another clause enacted that whenever an order was sent to India directing the commencement of hostilities by her Majesty's forces there, the fact should be communicated to Parliament within three months, if Parliament were then sitting, or, if not, within one month after its next meeting. These clauses were heard of more than once in later days. The Viceroy and Governor-General was to be supreme in India, but was to be assisted by a Council. India now has nine provinces, each under its own civil government, and independent of the others, but all subordinate to the authority of the Viceroy. In accordance with this Act the government of the Company, the famed 'John Company,' formally ceased on September 1st, 1858; and the Queen was proclaimed throughout India in the following November, with Lord Canning for her first Viceroy."

J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 36 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: Sir H. S. Cunningham, Earl Canning, chapters 7-9.

_Duke of Argyll, India Under Dalhousie and Canning._

INDIA: A. D. 1861. Institution of the Order of the Star of India.

See STAR OF INDIA.

INDIA: A. D. 1862-1876. Vice-regal administrations of Lords Lawrence, Mayo and Northbrook.

Lord Canning was succeeded as Viceroy by Lord Elgin, in 1862; but Elgin only lived until November, 1863, and his successor was Sir John Lawrence, the savior of the Punjab. "Sir John Lawrence's Viceroyalty was an uneventful time. Great natural calamities by famine and cyclone fell upon the country, which called forth the philanthropic energies of Government and people. Commerce passed through an unexampled crisis, taxing skill and foresight. But the political atmosphere was calm. With the exception of little frontier wars, wasteful of resources that were sorely needed, there was nothing to divert the Government from the prosecution of schemes for the improvement of the physical and moral condition of the people." Sir John Lawrence held the Viceroyalty until January, 1869, when he was succeeded by Lord Mayo and returned to England. He was raised, in that year, to the peerage, under the title of Baron Lawrence of Punjab and Grateley. He died ten years later.

Sir C. Aitchison, Lord Lawrence, chapters 7-12.

Lord Lawrence's immediate successor, Lord Mayo, was assassinated, while Viceroy, in 1872, by a convict—a Highlander—at the convict settlement on the Andaman Islands, for no reason of personal hatred, but only because he represented the governing authority which had condemned the man. Lord Mayo was succeeded by Lord Northbrook, who held the office from 1872 to 1876.

_Sir W. W. Hunter, The Earl of Mayo._

INDIA: A. D. 1876. Lord Lytton, Viceroy.

The successor of Lord Northbrook in the Vice-regal office was Lord Lytton, appointed in 1876.

INDIA: A. D. 1877. The Native States and their quasi feudatory relation to the British Crown. Queen Victoria's assumption of the title of Empress of India.

"In some sense the Indians were accustomed to consider the Company, as they now consider the Queen, to be the heir of the Great Mughal, and therefore universal suzerain by right of succession. But it is easy to exaggerate the force of this claim, which is itself a mere restatement of the fact of conquest. Politically, India is divided into two parts, commonly known as British territory and the native states. The first portion alone is ruled directly by English officials, and its inhabitants alone are subjects of the Queen. The native states are sometimes called feudatory—a convenient term to express their vague relation to the British crown. To define that relation precisely would be impossible. It has arisen at different times and by different methods; it varies from semi-independence to complete subjection. Some chiefs are the representatives of those whom we found on our first arrival in the country; others owe their existence to our creation. Some are parties to treaties entered into as between equal powers; others have consented to receive patents from their suzerain recording their limited rights; with others, again, there are no written engagements at all. Some have fought with us and come out of the struggle without dishonour. Some pay tribute; others pay none. Their extent and power vary as greatly as their political status. The Nizam of Haidarabad governs a kingdom of 80,000 square miles and 10,000,000 inhabitants. Some of the petty chieftains of Kathiawar exercise authority over only a few acres. It is, however, necessary to draw a line sharply circumscribing the native states, as a class, from British territory. Every native chief possesses a certain measure of local authority, which is not derivative but inherent. English control, when and as exercised, is not so much of an administrative as of a diplomatic nature. In Anglo-Indian terminology this shade of meaning is expressed by the word 'political.' … As a general proposition, and excepting the quite insignificant states, it may be stated that the government is carried on not only in the name but also by the initiative of the native chief. {1748} At all the large capitals, and at certain centres round which minor states are grouped, a British officer is stationed under the style of Resident or Agent. Through him all diplomatic affairs are conducted. He is at once an ambassador and a controller. His duty is to represent the majesty of the suzerain power, to keep a watchful eye upon abuses, and to encourage reforms."

J. S. Cotton, Colonies and Dependencies, part 1, chapter 3.

"The supremacy of the British Government over all the Native States in India was declared in 1877, in a more emphatic form than it had received before, by the assumption by the Queen of the title of Kaisar-i-Hind, Empress of India. No such gathering of chiefs and princes has taken place in historical times as that seen at Delhi in January, 1877, when the rulers of all the principal States of India formally acknowledged their dependence on the British Crown. The political effect of the assertion of the supremacy of the paramount power, thus formally made for the first time in India, has been marked and extremely important."

Sir J. Strachey, India, lecture 11.

ALSO IN: _G. B. Malleson, Historical Sketch of the Native States of India._

INDIA: A. D. 1878-1881. The second Afghan War.

See AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1869-1881.

INDIA: A. D. 1880-1893. Recent Viceroys.

On the defeat of the Conservative Beaconsfield Ministry in England, in 1880, Lord Lytton resigned the Viceroyalty and was succeeded by the Marquis of Ripon, who gave place in turn to the Marquis of Dufferin in 1884. In 1888, the Marquis of Lansdowne succeeded Lord Dufferin, and was himself succeeded in 1893 by Sir Henry Norman.

INDIA: A. D. 1893. Suspension of the free coinage of silver.

In June, 1893, the Indian Government, with the approval of the British Cabinet, stopped the free coinage of silver, with a view to the introduction of a gold standard. The Government, it was announced, while stopping the coinage of the declining metal for private persons, would continue on its own account to coin rupees in exchange for gold at a ratio then fixed at sixteen pence sterling per rupee. "The closing of the mints of British India to the coinage of silver coins of full-debt-paying power is the most momentous event in the monetary history of the present century. It is the final and disastrous blow to the use of silver as a measure of value and as money of full-debt-paying power, and the relegation of it to the position of a subsidiary, or token metal. It is the culmination of the evolution from a silver to a gold standard which has been progressing with startling rapidity in recent years. … The remarkable series of events which have characterized, or made manifest, this evolution from a silver to a gold standard are nearly all condensed in the brief period of twenty years, and are probably without a parallel in ancient or modern monetary history. … With the single exception of England, all Europe forty years ago had the silver standard, not only legally but actually—silver coins constituting the great bulk of the money of actual transactions. To-day, not a mint in Europe is open to the coinage of full-debt-paying silver coins, and the gateways of the Orient have been closed against it. Twenty years ago one ounce of gold exchanged in the markets of the world for fifteen and one-half ounces of silver; to-day, one ounce of gold will buy nearly thirty ounces of silver. … There is a general impression that silver has been the money of India from remote generations. This is a fallacy. It has not been a great many years since India adopted the silver standard. The ancient money of the Hindoos was gold, which in 1818 was supplemented by silver, but gold coins remained legal tender until 1835, when silver was made the sole standard of value and legal tender money in British India, and gold was demonetized. … During the last fifty odd years, India has absorbed vast quantities of silver."

_E. O. Leech, The Doom of Silver (The Forum, August, 1893)._

----------INDIA: End--------

INDIAN EMPIRE, The Order of the.

An Order instituted by Queen Victoria in 1878.

----------INDIAN TERRITORY: Start--------

INDIAN TERRITORY: 1803. Embraced in the Louisiana Purchase.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1798-1803.

INDIAN TERRITORY: A. D. 1824. Set off from Arkansas Territory.

See ARKANSAS: A. D. 1819-1836.

----------INDIAN TERRITORY: End--------

INDIANA. The Aboriginal Inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY, ALLEGHANS, and DELAWARES.

INDIANA: A. D. 1700-1735. Occupation by the French.

See CANADA: A. D. 1700-1735.

INDIANA: A. D. 1763. Cession to Great Britain.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR: THE TREATIES.

INDIANA: A. D. 1763. The King's proclamation excluding settlers.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1763.

INDIANA: A. D. 1765. Possession taken by the English.

See ILLINOIS: A. D. 1765.

INDIANA: A. D. 1774. Embraced in the Province of Quebec.

See CANADA: A. D. 1763-1774.

INDIANA: A. D. 1778-1779. Conquest from the British by the Virginian General Clark, and annexation to the Kentucky district of Virginia.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779, CLARK'S CONQUEST.

INDIANA: A. D. 1784. Included in the proposed states of Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia and Polypotamia.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1784.

INDIANA: A. D. 1786. Partially covered by the western land claims of Connecticut, ceded to the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1781-1786.

INDIANA: A. D. 1787. The Ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory. Perpetual exclusion of Slavery.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1787.

INDIANA: A. D. 1790-1795. Indian War. Disastrous expeditions of Harmar and St. Clair, and Wayne's decisive victory.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1790-1795.

INDIANA: A. D. 1800. The Territory of Indiana organized.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1788-1802.

{1749}

INDIANA: A. D. 1800-1818. Successive partitions of the Territory. Michigan and Illinois detached. The remaining Indiana admitted as a State.

"Indiana Territory as originally organized [in 1800] … included the county of Knox, upon the Wabash, from which has sprung the State of Indiana; the county of St. Clair, on the Upper Mississippi, or Illinois River, from which has sprung the State of Illinois; and the county of Wayne, upon the Detroit River, from which has sprung the State of Michigan. … At this time, the inhabitants contained in all of them did not amount to more than 5,640 souls, while the aggregate number of the Indian tribes within the extreme limits of the territory was more than 100,000. … By successive treaties, the Indian title was extinguished gradually to all the country lying upon the waters of the White River, and upon all the lower tributaries of the Wabash, upon the Little Wabash, the Kaskaskia, and east of the Mississippi, below the mouth of the Illinois. Thus, before the close of the year 1805, nearly all the southern half of the present State of Indiana, and one third of the State of Illinois, was open to the advance of the enterprising pioneer. … In 1807, the Federal government, in like manner, purchased from the Indians extensive regions west of Detroit River, and within the present State of Michigan, far beyond the limits of the white settlements in that quarter. Meantime, the settlements formerly comprised in Wayne county, having increased in inhabitants and importance, had been erected into a separate territorial government, known and designated as the 'Territory of Michigan.' On the 1st of July, 1805, the territory entered upon the first grade of territorial government, under the provisions of the ordinance of 1787; and William Hull, formerly a lieutenant in the Revolutionary army, was made the first governor. … Detroit … was made the seat of the territorial government. … By the close of the year 1808, the Indiana Territory east of the Wabash had received such an increase in numbers that it was desirable to assume the second grade of territorial government. Having a population of 5,000 free white males, Congress, with a view to a future state government, by an act approved February 3d, 1809, restricted its limits, and authorized a territorial Legislature. … The Indiana Territory, from this time, was bounded on the west by a line extending up the middle of the Wabash, from its mouth to Vincennes, and thence by a meridian due north to the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. On the north, it was bounded by the southern line of the Michigan Territory. That portion west of the Wabash was erected into a separate territorial government of the first grade, known and designated as the 'Illinois Territory.' The inhabitants of the Indiana Territory soon began to augment more rapidly. … In 1810 the people had increased in numbers to 24,500, and in the newly-erected Territory of Illinois there was an aggregate of 12,300 persons." In 1816 "it was ascertained that the Indiana Territory possessed a population which entitled it to an independent state government. Congress authorized the election of a convention to form a state Constitution," and "the new 'State of Indiana' was formally admitted into the Union on the 19th of April, 1816." Two years later, on the 3d of December, 1818, the Territory of Illinois was similarly transformed and became one of the states of the Union.

J. W. Monette, The Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley, book 5, chapter 16 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: J. B. Dillon, History of Indiana, chapters 31-47.

A. Davidson and B. Stuvé, History of Illinois, chapters 20-26.

T. M. Cooley, Michigan, chapter 8.

INDIANA: A. D. 1811. General Harrison's campaign against Tecumseh and his League. The Battle of Tippecanoe.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1811.

INDIANA: A. D. 1863. John Morgan's Rebel Raid.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (JULY: KENTUCKY).

----------INDIANS: Start--------

INDIANS: American: The Name.

"As Columbus supposed himself to have landed on an island at the extremity of India, he called the natives by the general appellation of Indians, which was universally adopted before the true nature of his discovery was known, and has since been extended to all the aboriginals of the New World."

W. Irving, Life and Voyages of Columbus, book 4, chapter 1 (volume 1).

"The Spanish writers from the outset, beginning with Columbus in his letters, call the natives of America, Indians, and their English translators do the same. So, too, Richard Eden, the earliest English writer on American travel, applies the name to the natives of Peru and Mexico. It is used in the same way, both in translations and original accounts, during the rest of the century, but it is always limited to those races with whom the Spaniards were in contact. In its wider and later application the word does not seem to have established itself in English till the next century. The earliest instance I can find, where it is applied to the natives of North America generally in any original work, is by Hakluyt. In 1587 he translated Laudonnière's 'History of the French Colony in Florida,' and dedicated his translation to Sir Walter Raleigh. In this dedication he once uses the term Indian for the natives of North America. Heriot and the other writers who describe the various attempts at settlement in Virginia during the sixteenth century, invariably call the natives 'savages.' Perhaps the earliest instance where an English writer uses the name Indian specially to describe the occupants of the land afterwards colonized by the English is in the account of Archer's voyage to Virginia in 1602. This account, written by James Rosier, is published in Purchas (volume iv. b. viii.). From that time onward the use of the term in the wider sense becomes more common. We may reasonably infer that the use of it was an indication of the growing knowledge of the fact that the lands conquered by the Spaniards and those explored by the English formed one continent."

J. A. Doyle, The English in America: Virginia, &c., appendix A.

INDIANS: The tribes and families.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

----------INDIANS: End--------

INDICTIONS, The.

The indiction "was a cycle of 15 years, used only by the Romans, for appointing the times of certain public taxes; as appears from the title in the Code, 'De tributo indicto.' It was established by Constantine, A. D. 312, in the room of the heathen Olympiads; and was used in the acts of the General Councils, Emperors, and Popes."

W. Hales, New Analysis of Chronology, volume 1, book 1.

"The indictions consisted of a revolution of 15 years, which are separately reckoned as indiction 1, indiction 2, &c., up to 15; when they recommence with indiction 1. … Doubt exists as to the commencement of the indictions; some writers assigning the first indiction to the year 312; the greater number to the year 313; others to 314; whilst some place it in the year 315. {1750} In 'L'Art de vérifier les Dates,' the year 313 is fixed upon as that of the first indiction. There are four descriptions of indictions. The first is that of Constantinople, which was instituted by Constantine in A. D. 312, and began on the 1st of September. The second, and more common in England and France, was the Imperial or Cæsarean indiction, which began on the 24th of September. The third kind of indiction is called the Roman or Pontifical, from its being generally used in papal bulls, at least from the ninth to the fourteenth century; it commences on the 25th of December or 1st of January, accordingly as either of these days was considered the first of the year. The fourth kind of indiction, which is to be found in the register of the parliaments of Paris, began in the month of October. … After the 12th century, the indiction was rarely mentioned in public instruments. … But in France, in private charters, and in ecclesiastical documents, the usage continued until the end of the 15th century."

Sir H. Nicolas, Chronology of History, pages 6-7.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 17.

INDO-EUROPEAN. INDO-GERMANIC.

See ARYAN.

INDULGENCE: Declarations of: by Charles II.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1672-1673.

INDULGENCE: By James II.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1687-1688.

INDULGENCES: The Doctrine. Tetzel's sale. Luther's attack.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517; and 1517.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: REFORMS, &c.: A. D. 1865-1886.

INE, Laws of (or Dooms of).

See DOOMS OF INE.

INEXPIABLE WAR, The.

See CARTHAGE: B. C. 241-238.

INFALLIBILITY, Promulgation of the Dogma of Papal.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1869-1870.

INGÆVONES, The.

See GERMANY: AS KNOWN TO TACITUS.

INGAGO, Battle of (1881).

See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1806-1881.

INGE I., King of Norway, A. D. 1157-1161.

Inge I. (called the Good), King of Sweden, 1090-1112.

Inge II., King of Norway, 1205-1207.

Inge II., King of Sweden, 1118-1129.

INGENUI. LIBERTINI.

"Free men [among the Romans] might be either persons born free (ingenui) and who had never been in slavery to a Roman, or persons who had once been slaves but had been emancipated (libertini)."

W. Ramsay, Manual of Roman Antiquity, chapter 3.

INI, King of West Saxons, A. D. 688-726.

INIS-FAIL. INIS-EALGA.

See IRELAND: THE NAME.

INITIATIVE, The Swiss.

See REFERENDUM.

INKERMANN, Battle of.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1854 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).

INNOCENT II., Pope, A. D. 1130-1143. Innocent III., Pope, 1198-1216.

Innocent IV., Pope, 1243-1254.

Innocent V., Pope, 1276, January to June.

Innocent VI., Pope, 1352-1362.

Innocent VII., Pope, 1404-1406.

Innocent VIII., Pope, 1484-1492.

Innocent IX., Pope, 1591, October to December.

Innocent X., Pope, 1644-1655.

Innocent XI., Pope, 1676-1689.

Innocent XII., Pope, 1691-1700.

Innocent XIII., Pope, 1721-1724.

INNUITS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESKIMAUAN FAMILY.

----------INQUISITION: Start----------

INQUISITION, The: A. D. 1203-1525. Origin of the Holy Office. St. Dominic and the Dominicans. The Episcopal Inquisition. The Apostolical or Papal Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition and its terrible rule. Estimate of victims. Expulsion of Jews and Moors.

"In the earlier ages of the Church, the definition of heresy had been committed to episcopal authority. But the cognisance of heretics and the determination of their punishment remained in the hands of secular magistrates. At the end of the 12th century the wide diffusion of the Albigensian heterodoxy through Languedoc and Northern Italy alarmed the chiefs of Christendom, and furnished the Papacy with a good pretext for extending its prerogatives. Innocent III. in 1203 empowered two French Cistercians, Pierre de Castelnau and Raoul, to preach against the heretics of Provence. In the following year he ratified this commission by a Bull, which censured the negligence and coldness of the bishops, appointed the Abbot of Citeaux Papal delegate in matters of heresy, and gave him authority to judge and punish misbelievers. This was the first germ of the Holy Office as a separate Tribunal. … Being a distinct encroachment of the Papacy upon the episcopal jurisdiction and prerogatives, the Inquisition met at first with some opposition from the bishops. The people for whose persecution it was designed, and at whose expense it carried on its work, broke into rebellion; the first years of its annals were rendered illustrious by the murder of one of its founders, Pierre de Castelnau. He was canonised, and became the first Saint of the Inquisition. … In spite of opposition, the Papal institution took root and flourished. Philip Augustus responded to the appeals of Innocent; and a crusade began against the Albigenses, in which Simon de Montfort won his sinister celebrity. During those bloody wars the Inquisition developed itself as a force of formidable expansive energy. Material assistance to the cause was rendered by a Spanish monk of the Augustine order, who settled in Provence on his way back from Rome in 1206. Domenigo de Guzman, known to universal history as S. Dominic, organised a new militia for the service of the orthodox Church between the years 1215 and 1219. His order, called the Order of the Preachers, was originally designed to repress heresy and confirm the faith by diffusing Catholic doctrine and maintaining the creed in its purity. It consisted of three sections: the Preaching Friars; nuns living in conventual retreat; and laymen, entitled the Third Order of Penitence or the Militia of Christ, who in after years were merged with the Congregation of S. Peter Martyr, and corresponded to the familiars of the Inquisition. Since the Dominicans were established in the heat and passion of a crusade against heresy, by a rigid Spaniard who employed his energies in persecuting misbelievers, they assumed at the outset a belligerent and inquisitorial attitude. Yet it is not strictly accurate to represent S. Dominic himself as the first Grand Inquisitor. {1751} The Papacy proceeded with caution in its design of forming a tribunal dependent on the Holy See and independent of the bishops. Papal Legates with plenipotentiary authority were sent to Languedoc, and decrees were issued against the heretics, in which the Inquisition was rather implied than directly named; nor can I find that S. Dominic, though he continued to be the soul of the new institution until his death, in 1221, obtained the title of Inquisitor. Notwithstanding this vagueness, the Holy Office may be said to have been founded by S. Dominic; and it soon became apparent that the order he had formed was destined to monopolise its functions. … This Apostolical Inquisition was at once introduced into Lombardy, Romagna and the Marches of Treviso. The extreme rigour of its proceedings, the extortions of monks, and the violent resistance offered by the communes, led to some relaxation of its original constitution. More authority had to be conceded to the bishops; and the right of the Inquisitors to levy taxes on the people was modified. Yet it retained its true form of a Papal organ, superseding the episcopal prerogatives, and overriding the secular magistrates, who were bound to execute its biddings. As such it was admitted into Tuscany, and established in Aragon. Venice received it in 1289, with certain reservations that placed its proceedings under the control of Doge and Council. In Languedoc, the country of its birth, it remained rooted at Toulouse and Carcassonne; but the Inquisition did not extend its authority over central and northern France. In Paris its functions were performed by the Sorbonne. Nor did it obtain a footing in England, although the statute 'De Haeretico Comburendo,' passed in 1401 at the instance of the higher clergy, sanctioned the principles on which it existed. … The revival of the Holy Office on a new and far more murderous basis, took place in 1484. We have seen that hitherto there had been two types of inquisition into heresy. The first, which remained in force up to the year 1203, may be called the episcopal. The second was the Apostolical or Dominican: it transferred this jurisdiction from the bishops to the Papacy, who employed the order of S. Dominic for the special service of the tribunal instituted by the Imperial Decrees of Frederick II. The third deserves no other name than Spanish, though, after it had taken shape in Spain, it was transferred to Portugal, applied in all the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and communicated with some modifications to Italy and the Netherlands. Both the second and the third types of inquisition into heresy were Spanish inventions, patented by the Roman Pontiffs and monopolised by the Dominican order. But the third and final form of the Holy Office in Spain distinguished itself by emancipation from Papal and Royal control, and by a specific organisation which rendered it the most formidable of irresponsible engines in the annals of religious institutions. … Castile had hitherto been free from the pest. But the conditions of that kingdom offered a good occasion for its introduction at the date which I have named. During the Middle Ages the Jews of Castile acquired vast wealth and influence. Few families but felt the burden of their bonds and mortgages. Religious fanaticism, social jealousy, and pecuniary distress exasperated the Christian population; and as early as the year 1391, more than 5,000 Jews were massacred in one popular uprising. The Jews, in fear, adopted Christianity. It is said that in the 15th century the population counted some million of converts—called New Christians, or, in contempt, Marranos: a word which may probably be derived from the Hebrew Maranatha. These converted Jews, by their ability and wealth, crept into high offices of state, obtained titles of aristocracy, and founded noble houses. … It was a Sicilian Inquisitor, Philip Barberis, who suggested to Ferdinand the Catholic the advantage he might secure by extending the Holy Office to Castile. Ferdinand avowed his willingness; and Sixtus IV. gave the project his approval in 1478. But it met with opposition from the gentler-natured Isabella. … Then Isabella yielded; and in 1481 the Holy Office was founded at Seville. It began its work by publishing a comprehensive edict against all New Christians suspected of Judaising, which offence was so constructed as to cover the most innocent observance of national customs. Resting from labour on Saturday; performing ablutions at stated times; refusing to eat pork or puddings made of blood; and abstaining from wine, sufficed to colour accusations of heresy. … Upon the publication of this edict, there was an exodus of Jews by thousands into the fiefs of independent vassals of the crown—the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Cadiz, and the Count of Arcos. All emigrants were 'ipso facto' declared heretics by the Holy Office. During the first year after its foundation, Seville beheld 298 persons burned alive, and 79 condemned to perpetual imprisonment. A large square stage of stone, called the Quemadero, was erected for the execution of those multitudes who were destined to suffer death by hanging or by flame. In the same year, 2,000 were burned and 17,000 condemned to public penitence, while even a larger number were burned in effigy, in other parts of the kingdom. … In 1483 Thomas of Torquemada was nominated Inquisitor General for Castile and Aragon. Under his rule a Supreme Council was established, over which he presided for life. … In 1484 a General Council was held, and the constitution of the Inquisition was established by articles. … The two most formidable features of the Inquisition as thus constituted were the exclusion of the bishops from its tribunal and the secrecy of its procedure. … In the autumn of 1484 the Inquisition was introduced into Aragon; and Saragossa became its headquarters in that State. … The Spanish Inquisition was now firmly grounded. Directed by Torquemada, it began to encroach upon the crown, to insult the episcopacy, to defy the Papacy, to grind the Commons, and to outrage by its insolence the aristocracy. … The Holy Office grew every year in pride, pretensions and exactions. It arrogated to its tribunal crimes of usury, bigamy, blasphemous swearing, and unnatural vice, which appertained by right to the secular courts. It depopulated Spain by the extermination and banishment of at least three million industrious subjects during the first 139 years of its existence. … Torquemada was the genius of evil who created and presided over this foul instrument of human crime and folly. {1752} During his eighteen years of administration, reckoning from 1480 to 1498, he sacrificed, according to Llorente's calculation, above 114,000 victims, of whom 10,220 were burned alive, 6,860 burned in effigy, and 97,000 condemned to perpetual imprisonment or public penitence. He, too, it was who in 1492 compelled Ferdinand to drive the Jews from his dominions. … The edict of expulsion was issued on the last of March. Before the last of July all Jews were sentenced to depart, carrying no gold or silver with them. They disposed of their lands, houses, and goods for next to nothing, and went forth to die by thousands on the shores of Africa and Italy. … The exodus of the Jews was followed in 1502 by a similar exodus of Moors from Castile, and in 1524 by an exodus of Mauresques from Aragon. To compute the loss of wealth and population inflicted upon Spain by these mad edicts would be impossible. … After Torquemada, Diego Deza reigned as second Inquisitor General from 1498 to 1507. In these years, according to the same calculation, 2,592 were burned alive, 896 burned in effigy, 34,952 condemned to prison or public penitence. Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros followed between 1507 and 1517. The victims of this decade were 3,564 burned alive. … Adrian, Bishop of Tortosa, tutor to Charles V., and afterwards Pope, was Inquisitor General between 1516 and 1525. Castile, Aragon, and Catalonia, at this epoch, simultaneously demanded a reform of the Holy Office from their youthful sovereign. But Charles refused, and the tale of Adrian's administration was 1,620 burned alive, 560 burned in effigy, 21,845 condemned to prison or public penitence. The total, during 43 years, between 1481 and 1525, amounted to 234,526, including all descriptions of condemned heretics. These figures are of necessity vague, for the Holy Office left but meagre records of its proceedings.".

J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, chapter 3 (part 1).

ALSO IN: _H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages._

J. A. Llorente, History of the Inquisition, chapters 1-12.

W. H. Rule, History of the Inquisition, chapters 1-14.

W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, part 1, chapters 7 and 17.

See, also, JEWS: 8TH-15TH CENTURIES; and MOORS: A. D. 1492-1609.

INQUISITION: A. D. 1521-1568. Introduction and work in the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1521-1555; 1559-1562; and 1568.

INQUISITION: A. D. 1546. Successful revolt against the Holy Office at Naples.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1528-1570.

INQUISITION: A. D. 1550-1816. Establishment in Peru.

See PERU: A. D. 1550-1816.

INQUISITION: A. D. 1814-1820. Restoration and abolition in Spain.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1814-1827.

----------INQUISITION: End----------

INSTITUTES OF JUSTINIAN.

See CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS.

INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (DECEMBER).

INSUBRIANS AND CENOMANIANS, The.

"North of the Po, in the country about Milan, dwelt [3d century, B. C.] the great people of the Insubrians, while to the east of these on the Mincio and the Adige lay the Cenomanians; but these tribes, little inclined, seemingly, to make common cause with their countrymen [the Boian and Senonian Gauls] remained neutral in all the hostilities against Rome." But the Insubrians were attacked and subdued, B. C. 223.

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 4, chapter 5 (volume 2).

See, also, ROME: B. C. 295-191.

INTERDICTS.

See EXCOMMUNICATIONS.

INTERIM OF CHARLES V., The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552.

"INTERNATIONAL," The.

"The year of the London Exhibition, and under the auspices of the Emperor Napoleon III., a number of Paris working-men visited the English capital. They were welcomed by a London Committee of artisans, and on this occasion the wish for a closer union between the labourers of different countries was expressed on both sides. Then the Polish insurrection broke out, and masses of London and Paris working-men took steps simultaneously to manifest sympathy with the insurgents. A deputation was again sent over from Paris, and the result of this measure was a resolution to delay preparations for co-operation no longer. For some time the international idea was carefully given prominence in labour circles in various countries, and on September 28th, 1864, a congress of many nations was held in St. Martin's Hall, London, under the presidency of Professor Beesly. A committee was appointed, representing England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland, for the drawing up of statutes for an International Working Men's Association, whose seat should be London. … It was not long before the International Association became a power which caused alarm to not a few European Governments."

W. H. Dawson, German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle, chapter 13.

INTERREGNUM, The Great.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1250-1272.

INTERREX.

A temporary king, in ancient Rome.

See ROME: B. C. 509; also, SENATE, ROMAN.

INTRANSIGENTISTS.

In European politics, the extreme radicals—the uncompromising and irreconcilable factions—are frequently so called.

INVERLOCHY, Battle of (1645).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1644-1645.

INVESTITURES, The War of.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122; and GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.

INVISIBLE EMPIRE, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1866-1871.

IONA, Monastery and Schools of.

See COLUMBAN CHURCH; and EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL: IRELAND AND SCOTLAND.

IONIA.

The Ionian cities on the coast of Asia Minor bore collectively the name Ionia, though no national union was signified by the designation.

See ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES, and after.

IONIAN (DELIAN) CONFEDERACY, The.

See GREECE: B. C. 478-477; and ATHENS: B. C. 466-454, and after.

----------IONIAN ISLANDS: Start--------

IONIAN ISLANDS: To 1814. Under Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and French rule.

"Acarnania, as a glance at the map will show, is the most western part of continental Greece. But in close proximity to the mainland there stretch along the west coast a number of islands, some of them of considerable area, the history and traditions of which are inseparably intertwined with those of Hellas. They have long been known as the Ionian Islands, deriving the name, in all likelihood, from the sea in which they are situated; for their ancient inhabitants were not, so far as is known, of Ionic descent. {1753} They are very numerous, but only six of them are of any historic importance. The most northerly is Corcyra (Corfu), a long, narrow island, which extends like a lofty breakwater in front of the coast of Epirus." The other five are Paxos (Paxo), Leucadia (Santa Maura), Cephallenia (Cephalonia), Ithaca (Thiaki), Zacynthus (Zante), and Cythera (Cerigo). "Though not the largest, Corcyra is the most populous and important of the islands. It has a place in the mythic tradition, and a still greater one in the ascertained history, of ancient Hellas.

See KORKYRA; also, GREECE: B. C. 435-432, and 432.

… With the other islands in the Ionian Sea, Corcyra passed under the dominion of Rome, and subsequently became part of the Eastern Empire. In 540 A. D. the fleet of the Gothic leader Totila ravaged the coasts of the island, but did not capture the city, the fortifications of which had been greatly strengthened by the Romans. Five centuries later the island and its capital fell into the hands of a more formidable invader—the Norman Robert Guiscard, who captured them on his way from Italy to prosecute that invasion of the Byzantine Empire which was at one time so nearly attended with success. The first Norman supremacy did not last long; but in 1144 A. D., Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, took occasion of a rising of the Corcyreans (or, as they now began to be called, the Corfiotes) against the Byzantine Emperor Manuel to introduce a garrison into the city. Four years later Manuel, who was an energetic and warlike prince, laid siege to Corfu, and was assisted by the Venetians. The Norman garrison offered a most determined resistance, but were ultimately obliged to surrender on honourable terms. After the overthrow of the Byzantine emperors, in the early part of the 13th century, Corfu, with the other Ionian Islands, became part of the dominions of the Venetian republic, and so continued, with brief intervals, for nearly 500 years. The Venetian rule was on the whole favourable to the material prosperity of the island: it was admirably cultivated, and became the centre of a large commerce. Unlike most of the other possessions of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean, Corfu never fell into the hands of the Turks. They overran and ravaged the island in 1537, carrying off, according to their custom, many of the young women and children as slaves; and they besieged the capital, but its fortifications had been much strengthened by the Venetians, and the garrison was able to offer a successful resistance. In 1716 another memorable siege [see TURKS: A. D. 1714-1718] took place, during the war in which Sultan Achmet III. engaged with Austria and the Venetian republic. A large Ottoman army under Kara Mustapha beleaguered Corfu; but the garrison was commanded by a distinguished soldier, Count Schulemburg, who baffled an the efforts of the Turks, and at last compelled them to withdraw to their ships after they had lost 15,000 men. By the Treaty of Campo Formio, dictated in 1797 to Austria by Napoleon after his marvellous Italian campaign, the Ionian Islands were transferred to France [see FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER)], the rest of the Venetian territories falling to the share of Austria. The French garrisons were, however, expelled in 1799 by a Russo-Turkish expedition, and the islands constituted a republic [called the Republic of the Seven Islands]. But in 1807, when the course of events had changed Russia into an ally of the French emperor, the latter again obtained possession of the islands under the Treaty of Tilsit. The English, being masters of the Mediterranean, soon drove the French out of all the islands except Corfu. This was under French rule till 1814; and it is only fair to say that they did much for the improvement of the island, constructing some substantial roads in the interior. In 1814, during the general cataclysm of the gigantic empire of Napoleon, the French garrison was driven out of the island after a gallant resistance, and in the following year the Ionian Islands were reconstituted a republic under British protection and supremacy."

C. H. Hanson, The Land of Greece, chapter 4.

IONIAN ISLANDS: A. D. 1815-1862. The British protectorate. Its relinquishment. Annexation to the kingdom of Greece.

"These seven islands [the Ionian] were constituted a sort of republic or commonwealth by the Treaty of Vienna [1815]. But they were consigned to the protectorate of Great Britain; which had the right of maintaining garrisons in them. Great Britain used to appoint a Lord High Commissioner, who was generally a military man, and whose office combined the duties of Commander-in-Chief with those of Civil Governor. The little republic had a Senate of six members and a Legislative Assembly of forty members. It seems almost a waste of words to say that the islanders were not content with British government. For good or ill, the Hellenes, wherever they are found, are sure to be filled with an impassioned longing for Hellenic independence. The people of the Ionian Islands were eager to be allowed to enter into one system with the kingdom of Greece. It was idle to try to amuse them by telling them they constituted an independent republic, and were actually governing themselves, … while they saw themselves presided over by an English Lord High Commissioner who was also the Commander-in-Chief of a goodly British army garrisoned in their midst. … It is certain that they got a great deal of material benefit from the presence of the energetic road-making British power. But they wanted to be, above all things, Greek. … Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton [who was then—1858—Secretary for the Colonies in the British Government] … thought the causes of the complaints and the dissatisfaction were well worth looking into, and he resolved on sending a statesman of distinction out to the islands to make the enquiry. Mr. Gladstone had been for some years out of office. He had been acting as an independent supporter of Lord Palmerston's Government. It occurred to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton that Mr. Gladstone was the man best fitted to conduct the enquiry. … He offered, therefore, to Mr. Gladstone the office of Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary to the Ionian Islands, and Mr. Gladstone accepted the offer and its duties." Arriving in Corfu in November, 1858, "he called together the Senate, and endeavoured to satisfy them as to the real nature of his mission. He explained that he had not come there to discuss the propriety of maintaining the English protectorate, but only to enquire into the manner in which the just claims of the Ionian Islands might be secured by means of that protectorate." {1754} But "the population of the islands persisted in regarding him, not as the commissioner of a Conservative English Government, but as 'Gladstone the Philhellene.' He was received wherever he went with the honours due to a liberator. … The visit of Mr. Gladstone, whatever purpose it may have been intended to fulfil, had the effect of making them [the Ionians] agitate more strenuously than ever for annexation to the kingdom of Greece. Their wish, however, was not to be granted yet. A new Lord High Commissioner was sent out after Mr. Gladstone's return. … Still … the idea held ground that sooner or later Great Britain would give up the charge of the islands. A few years after, an opportunity occurred for making the cession. The Greeks got rid quietly of their heavy German king Otho [see GREECE: A. D. 1830-1862], and on the advice chiefly of England they elected as sovereign a brother of the Princess of Wales. … The second son of the King of Denmark was made King of Greece; and Lord John Russell, on behalf of the English Government, then [1862] handed over to the kingdom of Greece the islands of which Great Britain had had so long to bear the unwilling charge."

J. McCarthy, History of our Own Times, chapter 39 (volume 3).

----------IONIAN ISLANDS: End--------

IONIAN REVOLT, The.

See PERSIA: B. C. 521-493.

IONIANS, The.

See DORIANS AND IONIANS.

IONIC (PAN-IONIC) AMPHIKTYONY.

"There existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 776 B. C., besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand—Milêtus, Myûs, Priênê, Samos, Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs, Erythræ, Chios, Klazomenæ, Phôkæa. … Milêtus, Myûs and Priênê were situated on or near the productive plain of the river Mæander; while Ephesus was in like manner planted near the mouth of the Kaïster … : Kolophon is only a very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the best means of communication with the interior, these towns seem to have thriven with greater rapidity than the rest; and they, together with the neighbouring island of Samos, constituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony. The situation of the sacred precinct of Poseidôn (where this festival was celebrated) on the north side of the promontory of Mykalê, near Priênê, and between Ephesus and Milêtus, seems to show that these towns formed the primitive centre to which the other Ionian settlements became gradually aggregated. For it was by no means a centrical site with reference to all the twelve. … Moreover, it seems that the Pan-Ionic festival [the celebration of which constituted the Amphiktyony], though still formally continued, had lost its importance before the time of Thucydidês, and had become practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the Ephesia, near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more attractive place of meeting."

G. Grote, History of Greece part 2, chapter 13 (volume 3).

----------IOWA: Start--------

IOWA: The Aboriginal Inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALLEGHANS, and ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

IOWA: A. D. 1803. Embraced in the Louisiana Purchase.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1798-1803.

IOWA: A. D. 1834-1838. Joined to Michigan Territory; then to Wisconsin; then separately organized.

See WISCONSIN: A. D. 1805-1848.

IOWA: A. D. 1845. Admission into the Union, with Florida for a slave-state counterweight.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845.

----------IOWA: End--------

IOWAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SIOUAN FAMILY, and PAWNEE (CADDOAN) FAMILY.

IPSUS, Battle of (B. C. 301).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 310-301.

IQUIQUE, Battle of (1891).

See CHILE: A. D. 1885-1891.

IRACA.

See COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1536-1731.

IRAK.

At the time of the Mahometan conquest, "Chaldea and Babylonia occupied the rich region south of the river Tigris, watered by the Euphrates, and were known as Irak of the Arabs, as distinguished from Irak of the Persians, which corresponded somewhat nearly to the modern kingdom of Persia. … Irak of Arabia was at this time under the jurisdiction of Persia, and the wandering Arabs who roamed over the broad desert were tributary to Persia when they pitched their tents on the eastern side, and to Rome when sojourning on the side towards Syria; though they were at no time trusty allies or subjects. The region of Irak contains many relics of a former civilization; there are the mounds that mark the site of old Babylon."

A. Gilman, Story of the Saracens, pages 226-227.

IRAN, Table-Land of.

"Between the valley of the Indus and the land of the Euphrates and Tigris, bounded on the south by the ocean and the Persian Gulf, on the north by the broad steppes which the Oxus and Jaxartes vainly attempt to fertilise, by the Caspian Sea and the valley of the Aras [embracing modern Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Russian Turkestan], lies the table-land of Iran. Rising to an average height of 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, it forms an oblong, the length of which from east to west is something more than 1,500 miles. … As far back as our information extends, we find the table-land of Iran occupied by a group of nations closely related to each other, and speaking dialects of the same language."

M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 7, chapter 1.

See, also, ARYANS.

IRDJAR, Russian defeat at.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.

----------IRELAND: Start--------

A Logical Outline of Irish History

In Which The Dominant Conditions And Influences Are Distinguished By Colors.

Physical or material. (Red) Ethnological. (Blue) Social and political. (Green) Intellectual, moral and religious. (Tan) Foreign. (Black)

(Blue) In the history of the two islands which form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland there is a contrast of fortune which nothing will account for save unexplainable qualities of race. The Celtic warmth prevailing on one side of St. George's Channel has worked ill in politics as against the Teutonic coolness on the other; and it is probable that no change of circumstances or conditions would have altered greatly the relations of the two peoples. In their situation as close neighbors, it was inevitable that one should dominate the other. It seems to have been no less inevitable that the mastery should settle where it did; and simply by the force of more masterful qualities in the English race.

(Red) If those who dwelt nearer to the mainland of Europe held advantages over those of the farther island, they took nothing from them in the earlier generations, but were overleaped and passed by when the first movements of Christianity and Christian culture into the West began; and it was Ireland, not England, for three centuries, which nourished the purest faith and the highest civilization of the age. If other advantages belonged to the island which was richer in iron and coal, the English were not helped by them to an ascendancy which they had won before the mining of their riches began.

(Green) In the early years of the eleventh century, when most of the island had submitted to the rule of Brian Born, and when he had shaken the grasp of the intruding Danes on the seaports of the eastern and southern coasts, the state and prospects of Ireland would have seemed to be well-nigh as good as those of England at the same time. But that appearance vanished soon, and it never returned. Among the English, the tendency toward national union grew stronger with every generation; among the Irish it got no growth. The political genius of the race, remarkable to the present day in municipal politics, but rarely successful in the greater political arenas, has always been tribal or provincial in its range, and wanting in a national comprehensiveness.

(Tan) The Norman conquest of England was helpful to the consolidation of an English kingdom. The Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland occurring a century later, promoted, on the contrary, the divisions and disorders of the island. It brought a new faction into Irish quarrels, instead of a new sovereign to extinguish them. It was complete enough to forbid the growth of order from any native root of influence or authority, but not complete enough to carry order with itself. In the full sense of the term it was never a conquest. It was rather a persistent invasion, continued and repeated through more than five centuries. In every generation it inflamed anew the fierce animosity which an incomplete conquest will not suffer to die out, until the very descendants of the older intruders were infected with the native hatred of their later-coming kindred. After four hundred years of inconclusive conflict, the English were hardly nearer to mastery, the Irish hardly nearer to submission, than at first.

Then arose between them a new difference to embitter their antagonism. The Reformation of religion was accepted by one race as naturally as it was rejected by the other. But Protestantism under English patronage assumed a more hateful aspect in Irish eyes, and Irishmen as Papists became doubly odious to the English mind. So political hostilities and religious enmities fomented one another, from that time, while the primitive antagonism of race gave energy to both.

Under Cromwell and under William of Orange the subjugation was completed at last in the spirit of a Protestant crusade, and used as crusading victories have been wont to be used. The triumphant Church, planting its strong settlements in the land, assumed to itself all civil and political rights. Every office and every honorable profession were closed against the adherents of the defeated faith; its ministrations were forbidden; its priests were expelled.

(Green) But this was not all. As British commerce grew and British industries were built up, they contributed yet another to the malign confederacy of passions which oppressed the Irish people. The merchant, the manufacturer, the landowner and the farmer, on the English side, were banded by common jealousies to suppress competition in Ireland. They hindered the improvement of its resources and paralyzed its energies by atrocious legislation. They reduced its population to dependence on the most restricted production, leaving little except husbandry for a vocation, and that under grinding terms. They created by such measures a nation of peasants, as poor and as helpless as serfs, living wretchedly on precarious holdings of soil, at the mercy of landlords who regarded them with dislike and contempt.

It was under such crushing conditions as these that Ireland remained until near the end of the eighteenth century, always hating the oppressors, often resisting the oppression, but weakly or rashly, without judgment or enduring resolution. Then began a great change in the tenor of her history. Two influences of the age came into play, one acting on the conscience of the English people, the other on the mind and temper of the Irish. One has worked to the yielding of justice, the other to the firmer pressing of demands for it.

At this day it may be said that oppression in Ireland, whether religious or political, is wholly and forever extinct; that whatever remains in dispute between Celt and Saxon is from questions such as rise in every nation, and that the bitterness which stays in Anglo-Irish politics is the lingering rancor of a hateful past, not quickly to be extinguished.

----------A Logical Outline of Irish History: End--------

IRELAND: The name.

"Ireland was known by many names from very early ages. Thus, in the Celtic it was called Inis-Fall, the isle of destiny; Inis-Ealga, the noble island; Fiodh-Inis, the woody island; and Eire, Fodhla, and Banba. By the Greeks it was called Ierne, probably from the vernacular name of Eire, by inflection Erin; whence, also, no doubt, its Latin name of Juverna; Plutarch calls it Ogygia, or the ancient land; the early Roman writers generally called it Hibernia, probably from its Iberian inhabitants, and the later Romans and mediæval writers Scotia, and sometimes Hibernia; and finally its name of Ireland was formed by the Anglo-Normans from its native name of Eire."

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, page 76, note.

See, also, SCOTLAND: THE NAME; and IRELAND: TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

{1755}

IRELAND: The primitive inhabitants.

"The first people … of whose existence in Ireland we can be said to know anything are commonly asserted to have been of Turanian origin, and are known as 'Formorians.' As far as we can gather, they were a dark, low-browed, stunted race, although, oddly enough, the word Formorian in early Irish legend is always used as synonymous with the word giant. They were, at any rate, a race of utterly savage hunters and fishermen, ignorant of metal, of pottery, possibly even of the use of fire; using the stone hammers or hatchets of which vast numbers remain in Ireland to this day, and specimens of which may be seen in every museum. How long they held possession no one can tell, although Irish philologists believe several local Irish names to date from this almost inconceivably remote epoch. Perhaps if we think of the Lapps of the present day, and picture them wandering about the country, … it will give us a fairly good notion of what these very earliest inhabitants of Ireland were probably like.

See FOMORIANS.

Next followed a Belgic colony, known as the Firbolgs, who overran the country, and appear to have been of a somewhat higher ethnological grade, although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy. Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated to make way for the Firbolgs, any more than the Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans, Milesians, and other successive races; such wholesale exterminations being, in fact, very rare, especially in a country which like Ireland seems specially laid out by kindly nature for the protection of a weaker race struggling in the grip of a stronger one. After the Firbolgs, though I should be sorry to be obliged to say how long after, fresh and more important tribes of invaders began to appear. The first of these were the Tuatha-da-Danaans, who arrived under the leadership of their king Nuad, and took possession of the east of the country. These Tuatha-da-Danaans are believed to have been large, blue-eyed people of Scandinavian origin, kinsmen and possibly ancestors of those Norsemen or 'Danes' who in years to come were destined to work such woe and havoc upon the island. … What their end was no man can tell you, save that they, too, were, in their turn, conquered by the Milesians or 'Scoti,' who next overran the country, giving to it their own name' of Scotia, by which name it was known down to the end of the twelfth century, and driving the earlier settlers before them, who thereupon fled to the hills, and took refuge in the forests, whence they emerged, doubtless, with unpleasant effect upon their conquerors, as another defeated race did upon their conquerors in later days."

E. Lawless, The Story of Ireland, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: T. Moore, History of Ireland, volume 1, chapter 5.

IRELAND: Tribes of early Celtic inhabitants.

"On the northern coast dwelt the Veniconii, in the modern county of Donegal, and the Robogdii, in Londonderry and Antrim. Adjoining to the Veniconii, westward, were the Erdini or Erpeditani, and next to them the Magnatæ, all in Donegal. Farther south were the Auteri, in Sligo; the Gangani, in Mayo; and the Velibori, or Ellebri, in the district between Galway and the Shannon. The south-west part of the island, with a great portion of the interior, was inhabited by the Iverni, who gave name not only to the great river but to the whole island, and who may, perhaps, be considered as the aboriginal inhabitants. … In the modern counties of Waterford and Tipperary, Ptolemy places a tribe called the Usdiæ or Vodiæ, according to the variations of the manuscripts. In the modern county of Wexford dwelt the Brigantes; and northward from them were the Coriondi, in Wicklow; the Menapii, in Dublin; the Cauci, on the banks of the Boyne; the Blanii, or Eblani, on the bay of Dundalk; the Voluntii, in Down; and the Darini, bordering on the Robogdii, in Antrim. Three, at least, of the tribes who held the eastern coast of Ireland, the Brigantes, the Menapii, and the Voluntii, were, no doubt, colonies from the opposite shores of Britain."

T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, chapter 2.

IRELAND: 5th-8th Centuries. The coming of St. Patrick and the Christianizing of the Island. Its Schools and its Missionaries.

"Lying on the extreme verge of Europe, the last land then known to the adventurous Scandinavian, and beyond which fable had scarcely projected its dreams, it was in the fifth century since the Redemption that Christianity reached them. Patricius, a Celt of Gaul it is said, carried into Erin as a slave by one of the Pagan kings, some of whom made military expeditions to North and South Britain, and even to the Alps and the Loire, became the Apostle of Ireland. Patrick escaped from slavery, was educated at Rome, but in mature manhood insisted on returning to the place of his bondage, to preach Christianity to a people who seem to have exercised over the imagination of the Apostle the same spell of sympathy which in later times subdued strangers of many nations. He was received with extraordinary favour, and before his death nearly the whole island had embraced Christianity. The coming of Patrick took place in the year of our Lord 432, and he laboured for sixty years after; planting churches and schools, rooting out the practices and monuments of Paganism, and disciplining the people in religion and humanity. It was a noble service, and it impressed itself for ever on the memory of the race whom he served. … In the succeeding century the Church which he planted became possessed by a passion which it has never entirely lost, the passion for missionary enterprise. Its fathers projected the conversion of the fierce natives of the Continent to the new creed of humility and self-denial, and by the same humane agents which Patrick had employed in Ireland—persuasion and prayer; a task as generous as any of which history has preserved the record. In this epoch Ireland may, without exaggeration, be said to have been a Christian Greece, the nurse of science and civilisation. The Pagan annals of the country are overlaid by fable and extravagance, but the foundation of Oxford or the mission of St. Augustine does not lie more visibly within the boundaries of legitimate history than the Irish schools, which attracted students from Britain and Gaul, and sent out missionaries through the countries now known as Western Europe.

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Among the forests of Germany, on the desert shores of the Hebrides, in the camp of Alfred, at the court of Charlemagne, in the capital of the Christian world, where Michelet describes their eloquence as charming the counsellors of the Emperor, there might be found the fervid preachers and subtle doctors of the Western Isle. It was then that the island won the title still fondly cherished, 'insula sanctorum'. The venerable Bede describes nobles and students at this epoch as quitting the island of Britain to seek education in Ireland, and he tells us that the hospitable Celts found them teachers, books, food and shelter at the cost of the nation. The school at Armagh, where St. Patrick had established the primacy of the Church, is reputed to have attracted 7,000 students, and there were schools at Lismore, Bangor, Clonmacnoise, and Mayo, which rivalled it in importance. Monasteries multiplied in a still greater number, and with results as beneficial. … Writers who are little disposed to make any other concession to Ireland admit that this was a period of extraordinary intellectual activity, and of memorable services to civilization. The arts, as far as they were the handmaidens of religion, attained a surprising development. The illuminated copies of the Scripture, the croziers and chalices which have come down to us from those days, the Celtic crosses and Celtic harps, the bells and tabernacles, are witnesses of a distinct and remarkable national culture. The people were still partly shepherds and husbandmen, partly soldiers, ruled by the Chief, the Brehon, and the Priest. … After this generous work had obtained a remarkable success, it was disturbed by contests with the Sea Kings. … The Cathedral and city of St. Patrick, the schools of Bangor, the cloisters of Clonmacnoise, and many more seats of piety and learning, fell into their hands. The sacred vessels of the altar were turned into drinking cups, and the missals, blazing with precious stones, were torn from their costly bindings to furnish ornaments for their sword hilts, and gifts to the Scalds who sang their achievements. These pagans burned monasteries, sacked churches, and murdered women and priests, for plunder or sport. … Before the dangers and troubles of a long internecine war, the School of the West gradually dwindled away, and it had fallen into complete decay before Brian Borhoime, at the beginning of the 11th century, finally subdued the invaders."

Sir C. G. Duffy, A Bird's Eye View of Irish History, revised edition, pages 7-12 (or chapter 4, in "Young Ireland").

"Ireland, that virgin island on which proconsul never set foot, which never knew either the orgies or the exactions of Rome, was also the only place in the world of which the Gospel took possession without bloodshed. … From the moment that this Green Erin, situated at the extremity of the known world, had seen the sun of faith rise upon her, she had vowed herself to it with an ardent and tender devotion which became her very life. The course of ages has not interrupted this; the most bloody and implacable of persecutions has not shaken it; the defection of all northern Europe has not led her astray; and she maintains still, amid the splendours and miseries of modern civilisation and Anglo-Saxon supremacy, an inextinguishable centre of faith, where survives, along with the completest orthodoxy, that admirable purity of manners which no conqueror and no adversary has ever been able to dispute, to equal, or to diminish. … The Irish communities, joined by the monks from Gaul and Rome, whom the example of Patrick had drawn upon his steps, entered into rivalry with the great monastic schools of Gaul. They explained Ovid there; they copied Virgil; they devoted themselves especially to Greek literature; they drew back from no inquiry, from no discussion. … A characteristic still more distinctive of the Irish monks, as of all their nation, was the imperious necessity of spreading themselves without, of seeking or carrying knowledge and faith afar, and of penetrating into the most distant regions to watch or combat paganism. This monastic nation, therefore, became the missionary nation 'par excellence'."

Count de Montalembert, The Monks of the West, book 7 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: T. Moore, History of Ireland, chapter 10-14 (volume 1), and chapter 18 (volume 2).

_D. DeVinné, The Irish Primitive Church._

See, also, CHRISTIANITY; 5TH-9TH CENTURIES.

IRELAND: 9th-10th Centuries. The Danish conquests and settlements.

"The people popularly known in our history as Danes comprised swarms from various countries in the north of Europe, from Norway, Sweden, Zealand, Jutland, and, in general, from all the shores and islands of the Baltic. … In the Irish annals they are variously called Galls, or foreigners; Geinti, or Gentiles; and Lochlanni, or inhabitants of Lochlann, or Lake-land, that is, Norway; and they are distinguished as the Finn Galls, or White Foreigners, who are supposed to have been the inhabitants of Norway; and the Dubh Galls, or Black Foreigners, who were probably the people of Jutland, and of the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. A large tract of country north of Dublin still retains the name of the former. … The Danes never obtained the dominion of Ireland as they did that of England."

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapters 13-14.

"Ireland was as yet [in the 9th century] a more tempting prey for the pirates than even Gaul. It was at the monasteries that these earlier raids were mainly aimed; and nowhere were the monastic houses so many and so rich. It was in these retreats indeed, sheltered as men deemed by their holiness from the greed of the spoiler, that the whole wealth of the country was stored; and the gold work and jewelry of their shrines, their precious chalices, the silver-bound horn which king or noble dedicated at their altars, the curiously-wrought covering of their mass-books, the hoard of their treasure-chests, fired the imagination of the northern marauders as the treasures of the Incas fired that of the soldiers of Spain. News spread fast up dale and fiord how wealth such as men never dreamed of was heaped up in houses guarded only by priests and shavelings who dared not draw sword. The Wikings had long been drawing closer to this tempting prey. From the coast of Norway a sail of twenty-four hours with a fair wind brings the sailor in sight of the Shetlands; Shetlands and Orkneys furnished a base for the advance of the pirates along the western shores of Britain, where they found a land like their own in the dales and lochs of Ross and Argyll, and where the names of Caithness and Sutherland tell of their conquest and settlement on the mainland; while the physical appearance of the people still records their colonization of the Hebrides. Names such as that of the Orm's Head mark their entrance at last into the Irish Channel."

J. R. Green, The Conquest of England, chapter 2.

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"The 9th century was the period of Danish plunder, and of settlement along the coasts and in convenient places for purposes of plunder. Towards the latter end of this century the Irish in Ireland, like the English in England, succeeded in driving out the enemy, and there was peace for forty years. Then came the Danes again, but bent more definitely than before on permanent settlement; and their most notable work was the establishment of the Danish kingdom of Dublin, with its centre at one of their old haunts, Ath Cliath on the Liffey, where the city of Dublin was built by them. The establishment of this kingdom dates from the year 919, and its extent may be traced to-day as conterminous with the diocese of Dublin, extending from Holmpatrick and Skerries on the north, to Arklow and Wicklow on the south, and inland no farther than seven or eight miles to Leixlip. Until quite recently this was also the district over which extended the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of Dublin as Admiral of the Port of Dublin. On College Green used to be held the assembly of the freemen of the kingdom of Dublin, while the chiefs took their seats on the steep hill that once stood where St. Andrew's Church now stands, opposite to 'the old house on College Green,' which is so dear to the national aspirations of the modern Irishmen. There the Danes held their parliaments, agreeing on laws, consenting to judgments and contracts, feasting and making merry, just as the old Irish held their parliaments at Tara, Carman, Armagh, and elsewhere. Nor was Dublin the only Danish city. Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, all became the centres of petty Danish kingdoms, active in commerce, skilful for those times, in domestic architecture, and with political and legislative ideas identical in their essence with those of the people among whom they settled. In the course of the 10th century the Danes nominally became, for the most part, converts to Christianity. But it appears that they derived their Christianity mainly from English sources; and when they began to organize their Church, they did so after the Roman manner, and in connection with the see of Canterbury. It was not, however, till after the wars of Brian Born that Danish Christianity became either very real or at all organized."

S. Bryant, Celtic Ireland, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: _C. Haliday, The Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin._

C. F. Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, chapter 6.

See, also, NORMANS: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES.

IRELAND: A. D. 1014. The Battle of Clontarf and the great defeat of the Danes.

By a revolution which occurred in the year 1000, Malachy II. of the dynasty which had reigned long at Tara, was deposed from the chief sovereignty, and Brian Boromh or Boru, of the royal family of Munster, who had fought his way up to masterful power, became the Ardrigh or over-king of Ireland. In 1014 Brian was called upon to face a great combination which the Danes of Dublin had effected with their fellow Northmen, including those of Denmark, Norway, Scotland and all the isles. It was the Danish intention now to accomplish completely the conquest of Ireland and bring their long struggle with its Celtic inhabitants to an effectual close, King Brian and his countrymen made equal exertions on their side to meet the attack, and the great battle of Clontarf, fought on Good Friday of the year 1014, gave them a decisive victory. "Clontarf, the lawn or meadow of bulls, stretches along the crescent-shaped north strand of Dublin harbor, from the ancient salmon weir at Ballyboght bridge, towards the promontory of Howth. Both horns of the crescent were held by the enemy, and communicated with his ships: the inland point terminating in the roofs of Dublin, and the seaward marked by the lion-like head of Howth. The meadow land between sloped gently upward and inward from the beach, and for the myriad duels which formed the ancient battle, no field could present less positive vantage ground to combatants on either side. The invading force had possession of both wings, so that Brian's army, which had first encamped at Kilmainham, must have crossed the Liffey higher up, and marched round by the present Drumcondra in order to reach the appointed field. The day seems to have been decided on by formal challenge. … The forces on both sides could not have fallen short of 20,000 men. … The utmost fury was displayed on all sides. … Hardly a nobly born man escaped, or sought to escape. The ten hundred in armor, and 3,000 others of the enemy, with about an equal number of the men of Ireland, lay dead upon the field. One division of the enemy were, towards sunset, retreating to their ships, when Brodar the Viking, perceiving the tent of Brian, standing apart, without a guard, and the aged king on his knees before the Crucifix, rushed in, cut him down with a single blow, and then continued his flight. … The deceased hero took his place at once in history, national and foreign. … The fame of the event went out through all nations. The chronicles of Wales, of Scotland, and of Man; the annals of Ademar and Marianus; the Sagas of Denmark and the Isles, all record the event. … 'Brian's battle,' as it is called in the Sagas, was, in short, such a defeat as prevented any general northern combination for the subsequent invasion of Ireland. Not that the country was entirely free from their attacks till the end of the 11th century; but, from the day of Clontarf forward, the long cherished Northern idea of a conquest of Ireland seems to have been gloomily abandoned by that indomitable people."

T. D'Arcy McGee, Popular History of Ireland, book 2, chapter 6 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. Moore, History of Ireland, chapter 21 (volume 2).

See, also, NORMANS.—NORTHMEN: 10TH-13TH CENTURIES.

IRELAND: 12th Century. The great tribes and kingdoms and the ruling families.

"Ireland was now [immediately before Strongbow's conquest] divided into four confederations of tribes. The O'Neils held Ulidia, which is now called Ulster; the O'Connors Conacia, or Connaught; the O'Briens and the M'Carthys Mononia, or Munster; and the Macmurroughs Lagenia, or Leinster—all under the paramount but often-disputed rule of a branch of the Ulster O'Neils. The royal demesne of Meath, the appanage of the Ulster family, which included Westmeath, Longford, and a part of King's County, was sometimes counted a fifth kingdom. In the wild north, O'Neil, O'Donnel, O'Kane, O'Hara, O'Sheel, O'Carrol, were mighty names. {1758} On the northern-most peninsula, where the Atlantic runs into Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly, O'Dogherty reigned supreme. In Connaught, O'Rourke, O'Reilly, O'Kelly, O'Flaherty, O'Malley, O'Dowd, were lords. In Meath and Leinster, MacGeogeghan, O'Farrell, O'Connor, O'Moore, O'Brennan, Macmurrough, ruled. In Munster, by the western shore, MacCarthy More held sway. MacCarthy Reagh swayed the south, by the pleasant waters of Cork Bay. O'Sullivan Beare was lord of the fair promontory between Bantry Bay and Kenmare River. O'Mahony reigned by roaring Water Bay. O'Donoghue was chieftain by the haunted Killarney Lakes. MacMahon ruled north of the Shannon. O'Loglin looked on Galway Bay. All Ireland, with the exception of a few seaport towns where the Danes had settled, was in the hands of Irish chiefs of old descent and famous lineage. They quarrelled amongst themselves as readily and as fiercely as if they had been the heads of so many Greek states. The Danes had been their Persians; their Romans were now to come."

J. H. McCarthy, Outline of Irish History, chapter 3.

IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175. The Anglo-Norman conquest.

"The conquest of Ireland is among the most important episodes in the reign of Henry II. … There were reasons, besides the mere lust of conquest, why an English king should desire to reduce Ireland. It had given harbours and recruits to the Northmen on their expeditions; Irish soldiers had fought at Brunanbeorh [or Brunnanburgh] against Athelstane; English exiles, like the sons of Harold, repeatedly fled to the island, and awaited the opportunity of reprisals upon their own government. Irish pirates infested the English coasts, and carried off prisoners, whom they sold as slaves. Accordingly, William the Conqueror had meditated subjugating Ireland, if he lived two years longer; William Rufus once declared, as he stood on the coast of Wales, that he would bridge St. George's Channel with a fleet of ships. But it was reserved for John of Salisbury to obtain from his intimate friend, the English pope, Adrian IV., a grant of Ireland to the English crown [by the Bull 'Laudabilitur'] as a hereditary fief (A. D. 1154). … Nevertheless, the difficulty of invading Ireland seemed greater than any profit likely to result from it. The king's council opposed the enterprise; and for some years the project was suffered to sleep. But the wretched disorders of Irish politics invited the invader." Diarmaid MacMurchad, king of Leinster, having been driven from his dominions, "repaired to the court of Henry II. in Aquitaine. The offer to hold Leinster, if Henry would reinstate him, as an English fief, procured Diarmaid free quarters in Bristol, to which he speedily returned, and letters patent authorizing any English subject to assist him. Diarmaid published these, and promised large rewards in land to those who would help him to win back his kingdom. The most powerful ally whom Diarmaid's offers attracted was Richard de Clare, surnamed Strongbow, earl of Pembroke, and distant cousin to the king. … Three other adventurers were enlisted. Two of them, Robert Fitz-Stephen and Maurice Fitz-Gerald, were sons, by different fathers, of Nest, a Welsh princess; the third was Maurice de Prendergast." In May, 1169, Fitz-Stephen, with a small following, crossed the channel and captured Wexford. Some other successes soon enabled Diarmaid to make peace with his enemies and recover his kingdom, even before Strongbow's expedition had left Wales. "Diarmaid was reinstated, and English subjects had no authority to carry on war on their own account in Ireland. Strongbow accordingly went to Normandy, and asked permission to push the advantages gained. Obtaining only an ambiguous answer from the king, he determined to consider it in his favour, and went back into Wales to prepare an expedition. In May, A. D. 1170, he sent over Raymond le Gros, Fitz-Stephen's half nephew, as his precursor." Raymond defeated the Irish with great slaughter, in a battle near Waterford, and savagely murdered seventy prisoners. "In August, A. D. 1170, as Strongbow was preparing to embark, he received an explicit order from the king not to proceed. Quietly disregarding it, he crossed with a little army of 1,200 men, out of whom 200 were knights. The storm of Waterford was his first exploit; and it illustrates the Irish architecture of the times, that the city walls were trenched by cutting away the wooden props of a house that was built into them. The frightful carnage of the storm was succeeded by the earl's marriage with Eva [daughter of King Diarmaid], who brought a kingdom as her dower. Then the united forces marched upon Dublin." The Danish city was treacherously stormed in the midst of a negotiation, and "the inhabitants experienced the worst miseries of the conquered. Hasculf [the Danish or Norse governor], and Asgall, king of the Northmen, escaped on board some small vessels to their countrymen in the Orkneys." The next year Hasculf reappeared with 60 ships from the Orkneys and Norway and laid siege to Dublin. He was defeated, taken prisoner and killed; but another fleet soon arrived and Dublin was again under siege. Reduced to a desperate strait, the small garrison sallied and routed the besiegers; but meantime Strongbow had lost ground elsewhere and Dublin and Waterford were the only possessions he retained. The anger of King Henry at his disobedience caused many of his followers to desert him, and he soon found it necessary to make peace with his offended sovereign. Crossing over to England, he succeeded in winning the royal pardon, and Henry returned to Ireland with him, to assist in the completing of the conquest. They were accompanied by a fleet of 400 ships and some 4,000 men. The appearance of the king was followed by a general submission of the Irish princes, and he made a royal progress to Cashel, where, in 1172, a synod was held to effect the Church reforms which were, ostensibly, the chief object of the conquest. "The court held at Lismore to establish order among the English settlers is better evidence than any synod of the real objects of the conquest. The country was partially distributed among Norman nobles; but as the English conquest of Ireland, more rapid than the Norman of England, had been effected by fewer men, and was more insecure, the changes in the property and laws of the nation were proportionately smaller. Meath, as the appanage of royalty, of course accrued to the English crown, and Henry assigned the whole of it to Hugh de Lacy, whom he made justiciary of the realm and governor of Dublin. The object of this enormous grant, no doubt, was to balance Strongbow's power. {1759} The families of Desmond, Ormond, and Vernon received other estates. But the number of those invested was small. … The slightness of the change, no doubt, mainly contributed to the readiness with which the supremacy of the English crown was accepted. In April, A. D. 1172, Henry was able to return to England, leaving only Ulster behind him nominally unsubdued. A series of petty wars between Irish chiefs and Norman nobles soon broke out. The precarious nature of the English dominion became manifest; and Henry was forced to publish the papal grant of Ireland, which he had hitherto suppressed. At last, in A. D. 1175, Roderic O'Connor [king of Connaught, and previously recognized over-king of Ireland] made a treaty with the English crown, and agreed to render homage and submission, and a tribute of every tenth hide, in return for royal rights in his own kingdom of Connaught. At the same time, the limits of the English pale, as it was afterwards called, were defined. This district, which was immediately subject to the king of England and his barons, comprised Dublin with its appurtenances, Meath, Leinster, and the country from Waterford to Dungarvon. … From the English point of view, the kings of England were henceforth lords-paramount of Ireland, with the fee of the soil vested in them, and all Irish princes in future were no more than tenants-in-chief. From the Irish point of view, the English kings were nothing more than military suzerains in the districts outside the pale."

C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 1, chapter 30.

ALSO IN: Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapter 8.

A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People, chapters 6-7.

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 2, chapters 1-2.

T. Moore, History of Ireland, chapters 26-29.

_F. P. Barnard, editor, Strongbow's Conquest of Ireland: From Contemporary Writers._

IRELAND: 13th-14th Centuries. Under the Anglo-Norman conquerors.

"The feudal system as established in Ireland differed in important respects from that existing in England. It is usual for Irish writers to attribute much of the sufferings of Ireland to the misgovernment of England and the introduction of feudalism, whereas most of these evils may be referred rather to English non-government and to the peculiar anomalies of the Irish feudal system. The feudal system as introduced into Ireland, like most other institutions imported from England, was altered in such a manner as to retain all its evils, and lose all its advantages. The Crown in Ireland possessed no power of controlling its vassals. … In Ireland there were no manor or valuable estates that the Crown could appropriate—the entire country had to be conquered; and as the Crown did not assist in the conquest, it received no part of the spoils. Thus we find the Crown had absolutely no demesnes of its own, and, being deprived of any military force of its own, it had to rely upon such of the great feudal vassals as might remain loyal for the purpose of crushing those who might be in rebellion. The inevitable result of this policy was to kindle a civil war and excite personal feuds in the attempt to maintain order. … We have thus a feudal system, in which the Crown is powerless to fulfil its duties, yet active in preventing the greater nobles from exercising that influence which might have secured a reasonable degree of order. The whole energy of the nobles was turned away from government to war; and lest they should become local potentates, they were allowed to degenerate into local tyrants. But what, meanwhile, had become of the Irish nation? As the feudal system ignored their existence, we have permitted them to fall out of our view; but they still existed, and still were politically independent. The invaders had occupied the flat country, suitable for the operation of their forces, and the original inhabitants had retired into either the mountainous districts, impassable to cavalry, or into districts protected by the bogs, and difficult of access; nay, even in some parts of the island, where the Normans were not in force, they had re-occupied large portions of the open country. They did not retire as disorganised fugitives, but the tribes retreated, keeping their social organisation unbroken; and, although removed from their original habitations, still preserved their social identity. The remarkable point in the conquest was, that the Celtic population was not driven back upon anyone portion of the kingdom, but remained as it was, interpolated among the new arrivals. … The Celtic population possessed no definite legal position, filled no place in the feudal hierarchy, and was in the eyes of the English Government hostile and alien; the only exception to this was the case of the O'Briens, who, though not actually feudal vassals, had their estates secured by a charter, and five Irish families, through some unknown reason, were considered as the king's men and entitled to his protection; these were known as the five bloods, who enjoyed the law of England to the extent of the privilege to sue in the king's courts, viz., O'Neill, O'Molaghlin, O'Connor, O'Brien, and M'Murrough. … The Irish in Ireland were treated by the king's courts in Ireland as an alien and hostile nation; an Irishman out of the king's peace could not bring an action against an Englishman. … But, though legally ignored, the Irish tribes could not be politically disregarded. The English Government used their assistance to repress the rebellions of insurgent vassals. … They were called on to furnish assistance to the English armies, and on many occasions we find their chiefs summoned by writ of Parliament, as if feudal vassals; but the mode in which they were treated depended upon the immediate objects and want of the English Government, and the general course of conduct pursued towards them was such as has been previously stated. … We thus find the English and Irish races hopelessly at variance, and it would seem that one or other must have been crushed out in the contest; but such was not the result; they both survived, and, contrary to reasonable expectations, the Irish exhibited the greater vitality. The expulsion of the English colony was an effort beyond the power of the disunited Irish tribes; for in the darkest hours of the English settlement the power of England was ready, by some sudden effort, to reassert the English supremacy. But why did the Anglo-Normans wholly fail to subdue the Irish? …

1. The large extent comprised in the grants made to the first colonists led to a dispersion of the Norman nobles over the more fertile portions of the country. The English colony never formed one compact body capable of combined action. …

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2. The military equipment of the Normans, and their mode of carrying on war, rendered their forces wholly inefficient, when, leaving the flat country, they attempted to penetrate the fastnesses of the native tribes. …

3. From the absence of any central government, civil wars continually arose between the several Norman lords; thus the military power of the colonists was frittered away in dissensions. …

4. The English Government continually called upon the Irish barons for aids and military service, to be employed in wars elsewhere than in Ireland. …

5. Many of the estates of the Norman nobles descended to heiresses who married Englishmen already possessing estates in England: hence arose absenteeism.

6. Even the lords who resided constantly upon their Irish estates gradually lost their Norman habits, and tended to assimilate themselves to the manners, and to adopt the language, of the Irish."

A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People, chapter 8.

ALSO IN: P. W. Joyce, Short History of Ireland, part 3.

See, also, PALATINE, THE IRISH COUNTIES; and GERALDINES.

IRELAND: The Celticizing of the Anglo-Norman conquerors.

"Prior to experience, it would have been equally reasonable to expect that the modern Englishman would adopt the habits of the Hindoo or the Mohican, as that the fiery knights of Normandy would have stooped to imitate a race whom they despised as slaves; that they would have flung away their very knightly names to assume a barbarous equivalent [the De Burghs became Bourkes or Burkes, the M'Sweenies had been Veres in England, and the Munster Geraldines merged their family name in that of Desmond.—Foot-note]; and would so utterly have cast aside the commanding features of their Northern extraction, that their children's children could be distinguished neither in soul nor body, neither in look, in dress, in language, nor in disposition, from the Celts whom they had subdued. Such, however, was the extraordinary fact. The Irish who had been conquered in the field revenged their defeat on the minds and hearts of their conquerors; and in yielding, yielded only to fling over their new masters the subtle spell of the Celtic disposition. In vain the government attempted to stem the evil. Statute was passed after statute forbidding the 'Englishry' of Ireland to use the Irish language, or intermarry with Irish families, or copy Irish habits. Penalties were multiplied on penalties; fines, forfeitures, and at last death itself, were threatened for such offences. But all in vain. The stealthy evil crept on irresistibly. Fresh colonists were sent over to restore the system, but only for themselves or their children to be swept into the stream; and from the century which succeeded the Conquest till the reign of the eighth Henry, the strange phenomenon repeated itself, generation after generation, baffling the wisdom of statesmen, and paralysing every effort at a remedy."

J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 8 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1314-1318. Edward Bruce's invasion.

The crushing defeat of the English by the Scotch at Bannockburn (1314) rekindled a spirit of rebellion in Ireland, and the discontented chiefs made haste to solicit aid from Scotland, offering the sovereignty of their island to Edward Bruce, brother of king Robert, if he would come to their help and conquer it. "By consent of king Robert, who was pleased to make a diversion against England upon a vulnerable point, and not, perhaps, sorry to be rid of a restless spirit, which became impatient in the lack of employment, Edward invaded Ireland at the head of a force of 6,000 Scots. He fought many battles, and gained them all. He became master of the province of Ulster, and was solemnly crowned king of Ireland; but found himself amid his successes obliged to intreat the assistance of king Robert with fresh supplies; for the impetuous Edward, who never spared his own person, was equally reckless of exposing his followers; and his successes were misfortunes, in so far as they wasted the brave men with whose lives they were purchased. Robert Bruce led supplies to his brother's assistance, with an army which enabled him to overrun Ireland, but without gaining any permanent advantage. He threatened Dublin, and penetrated as far as Limerick in the west, but was compelled, by scarcity of provisions, to retire again into Ulster, in the spring of 1317. He shortly after returned to Scotland, leaving a part of his troops with Edward, though probably convinced that his brother was engaged in a desperate and fruitless enterprise. … After his brother's departure, Edward's career of ambition was closed at the battle of Dundalk, where, October 5th, 1318, fortune at length failed a warrior who had tried her patience by so many hazards. On that fatal day he encountered, against the advice of his officers, an Anglo-Irish army ten times more numerous than his own. A strong champion among the English, named John Maupas, singling out the person of Edward, slew him, and received death at his hands. … A general officer of the Scots, called John Thomson, led back the remnant of the Scottish force to their own country. And thus ended the Scottish invasion of Ireland, with the loss of many brave soldiers."

Sir W. Scott, History of Scotland, chapter 11 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. Moore, History of Ireland, volume 3, chapter 36.

IRELAND: A. D. 1327-1367. Oppressions of the reign of Edward III.

"Of all the legislative measures of this period the most notable was the Statute of Kilkenny, passed at a Parliament held in that town, in the last year of the decade, in the Lent session of 1367. This 'famous, or infamous,' enactment gathered up into one, and recapitulated with additional aggravations and insults, all the former oppressive, exasperating, and iniquitous ordinances by which English legislation for Ireland had hitherto been disgraced. … Among the earliest measures passed in the reign of Edward III. was a statute directed against absenteeism, obliging all Englishmen who were Irish proprietors either to reside on their estates or to provide soldiers to defend them. But this enactment was unproductive of good results. The O'Neills drove the colonists out of the 'liberty of Ulster,' and the English De Burghs, so far from helping to uphold English ascendency, appropriated to themselves the entire lordship of Connaught, made common cause with the native tribes, and adopting their dress, language, and customs, became 'Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,' threw off their allegiance to King Edward, and bade defiance to the King's authority. Thus it came to pass that before many years of this reign had elapsed more than a third part of the territories of the Pale was again in the hands of its original possessors. … Edward III. inherited the barbarous and iniquitous traditions of English rule in Ireland, but he improved upon them. {1761} He ordered all his officers in that country who had Irish estates to be removed and give place to Englishmen with no Irish ties. He next declared void every grant of land in Ireland since the time of Edward II., and made new grants of the lands thus recovered to the Crown. The tendency of this monstrous measure was to create two more antagonistic parties in Ireland, destined by their bitter dissensions to bring about the result that ere long 'all the King's land in Ireland was on the point of passing away from the Crown of England,'— viz., the 'English by blood,' as the established settlers were called, and the 'English by birth,' or new grantees. Some of the chief of the former, in despair of a career, or even of a quiet life, at home, were about to bid good-bye to Ireland and seek their fortunes elsewhere, when they were arrested by a proclamation making it penal for any English subject capable of bearing arms to leave the country. … The 'English by blood' became more and more intimately connected and identified with the native Irish, and the 'English by birth' became more and more powerless to maintain the English ascendency; till at last, in 1361, the King determined on sending over a viceroy of the blood royal, and appointed to the post his son Lionel, created shortly afterwards Duke of Clarence, whom he had married to Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter and representative of the last Earl of Ulster. But though Prince Lionel, on his arrival, took the precaution of forbidding any man born in Ireland to approach his camp, his position soon became so critical that the King issued writs commanding all the absentee Irish lords to hasten to Ireland to the assistance of the Prince, 'for that his very dear son and his companions in Ireland were in imminent peril.' The next step was the passing of the Statute of Kilkenny. It re-enacted the prohibition of marriage and foster-nursing, rendered obligatory the adoption of the English language and customs, forbade the national games of 'hurlings and quoitings,' and the use of the ancient Gaelic code called the Senchus Mor; a code by which the native brehons, or judges, of the Irish septs had decided causes among them since the time of the conversion of the race to Christianity in the fifth century."

W. Warburton, Edward III., 4th decade, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: W. Longman, Life and Times of Edward III., volume 2, chapter 1.

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 2, chapters 4-5 (volume 1).

IRELAND: A. D. 1494. Poynings' Laws.

During the Wars of the Roses, "if Ireland had any preference for either of the great contending parties in England, it was … for the House of York; and from this cause chiefly sprang the change of Henry VII.'s mode of governing the dependency which on ascending the throne he had found all but severed from his dominions. At first he had thought it best to employ the native nobility for this purpose, and had chosen for Deputy the Earl of Kildare—setting him, as the story ran, to rule all Ireland, because all Ireland could not rule him. When, however, he had time to reflect on the dangers springing from the Irish support of Simnel and Warbeck, from which he and his dynasty had escaped so narrowly, he perceived the necessity of bringing the country under a more regular government. Accordingly he sent over in 1494 (at the time when Warbeck was preparing for his descent on England) Sir Edward Poynings as Lord Deputy, a statesman and commander well experienced in the most important affairs of the time."

C. E. Moberly, The Early Tudors, chapter 6.

After some military operations, which he found to be beset with treacheries and difficulties, the new Lord Deputy held a Parliament at Drogheda—"perhaps the most memorable that was ever held in Ireland, as certainly no other Parliament in that country made laws which endured so long as two which were then enacted, and were known for centuries afterwards as the 'Poynings Acts.' By the first of these it was ordained that no Parliament should be held in Ireland in future until the king's Council in England had approved not only of its being summoned, but also of the Acts which the Lieutenant and Council of Ireland proposed to pass in it. By the second the laws enacted before that time in England were extended to Ireland also. Thus the Irish legislature was made entirely dependent upon England. The Irish Parliament had no power to originate anything, but was only free to accept or (if they were very bold) to reject measures drawn up by the Irish Council and approved already by the king and his Council in England before they were submitted to discussion. Little as this looks like parliamentary government, such was the state of subjection in which the Irish Parliament remained by virtue of this law for nearly three centuries later. Almost the whole time, that is to say, that Ireland had a separate Parliament at all it remained in this manner restricted in its action by the legislation of Sir Edward Poynings. … It should be remembered, however, that Henry VII. merely sought to do in Ireland what there is every reason to suppose he practically did in England. Legislation was not at this time considered to be the chief business of a Parliament."

J. Gairdner, Henry the Seventh, chapter. 8.

ALSO IN: R. Bagwell, Ireland Under the Tudors, chapter 8.

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 2, chapter 4, section 7.

H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 18 (volume 3).

IRELAND: A. D. 1515. The English Pale and the Clans and Chiefs beyond it.

"The events on which we are about to enter require for their understanding a sketch of the position of the various chiefs, as they were at this time scattered over the island. The English pale, originally comprising 'the four shires,' as they were called, of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Uriel or Louth, had been shorn down to half its old dimensions. The line extended from Dundalk to Ardee; from Ardee by Castletown to Kells; thence through Athboy and Trim to the Castle of Maynooth; from Maynooth it crossed to Claine upon the Liffey, and then followed up the line of the river to Ballimore Eustace, from which place it skirted back at the rear of the Wicklow and Dublin mountains to the forts at Dalkey, seven miles south of Dublin. This narrow strip alone, some fifty miles long and twenty broad, was in any sense English. Beyond the borders the common law of England was of no authority; the king's writ was but a strip of parchment; and the country was parcelled among a multitude of independent chiefs, who acknowledged no sovereignty but that of strength, who levied tribute on the inhabitants of the pale as a reward for a nominal protection of their rights, and as a compensation for abstaining from the plunder of their farms. … {1762} These chiefs, with their dependent clans, were distributed over the four provinces in the following order. The Geraldines, the most powerful of the remaining Normans, were divided into two branches. The Geraldines of the south, under the Earls of Desmond, held Limerick, Cork, and Kerry; the Geraldines of Leinster lay along the frontiers of the English pale; and the heads of the house, the Earls of Kildare, were the feudal superiors of the greater portion of the English counties. To the Butlers, Earls of Ormond and Ossory, belonged Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary. The De Burghs, or Bourkes, as they called themselves, were scattered over Galway, Roscommon, and the south of Sligo, occupying the broad plains which lie between the Shannon and the mountains of Connemara and Mayo. This was the relative position into which these clans had settled at the Conquest, and it had been maintained with little variation. The north, which had fallen to the Lacies and the De Courcies, had been wholly recovered by the Irish. The Lacies had become extinct. The De Courcies, once Earls of Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were reduced to the petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the Desmonds. The Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely than ever, the Irish habits and traditions. … The O'Neils and O'Donnells had spread down over Ulster to the frontiers of the pale. The O'Connors and O'Carrolls had recrossed the Shannon and pushed forwards into Kildare; the O'Connor Don was established in a castle near Portarlington, said to be one of the strongest in Ireland; and the O'Carrolls had seized Leap, an ancient Danish fortress, surrounded by bog and forest, a few miles from Parsonstown. O'Brien of Inchiquin, Prince—as he styled himself—of Thomond, no longer contented with his principality of Clare, had thrown a bridge across the Shannon five miles above Limerick, and was thus enabled to enter Munster at his pleasure and spread his authority towards the south; while the M'Carties and O'Sullivans, in Cork and Kerry, were only not dangerous to the Earls of Desmond, because the Desmonds were more Irish than themselves, and were accepted as their natural chiefs. In Tipperary and Kilkenny only the Celtic reaction was held in check. The Earls of Ormond, although they were obliged themselves to live as Irish chieftains, and to govern by the Irish law, yet … remained true to their allegiance, and maintained the English authority as far as their power extended. … Wexford, Wicklow, and the mountains of Dublin, were occupied by the Highland tribes of O'Bryne and O'Toole, who, in their wild glens and dangerous gorges, defied attempts to conquer them, and who were able, at all times, issuing down out of the passes of the hills, to cut off communication with the pale. Thus the Butlers had no means of reaching Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the home of their hereditary rivals and foes. This is a general account of the situation of the various parties in Ireland at the beginning of the 16th century. I have spoken only of the leading families. … 'There be sixty counties, called regions, in Ireland,' says the report of 1515, 'inhabited with the king's Irish enemies.'"

J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 8 (volume 2).

See, also, PALE, THE ENGLISH.

IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553. The reconquest under Henry VIII. and the fall of the Geraldines. The political pacification and the religious alienation.

"To Henry VIII. the policy which had been pursued by his father was utterly hateful. His purpose was to rule in Ireland as thoroughly and effectively as he ruled in England. … The Geraldines, who had been suffered under the preceding reign to govern Ireland in the name of the Crown, were quick to discover that the Crown would no longer stoop to be their tool. They resolved to frighten England again into a conviction of its helplessness; and the rising of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald followed the usual fashion of Irish revolts. A murder of the Archbishop of Dublin, a capture of the city, a repulse before its castle, a harrying of the Pale, ended in a sudden disappearance of the rebels among the bogs and forests of the border on the advance of the English forces. … Unluckily for the Geraldines, Henry had resolved to take Ireland seriously in hand, and he had Cromwell [Sir Thomas] to execute his will. Skeffington, the new Lord Deputy, brought with him a train of artillery, which worked a startling change in the political aspect of the island. The castles which had hitherto sheltered rebellion were battered into ruins. … Not only was the power of the great Norman house which had towered over Ireland utterly broken, but only a single boy was left to preserve its name. With the fall of the Geraldines Ireland felt itself in a master's grasp. … In seven years, partly through the vigour of Skeffington's successor, Lord Leonard Grey, and still more through the resolute will of Henry and Cromwell, the power of the Crown, which had been limited to the walls of Dublin, was acknowledged over the length and breadth of Ireland. … Chieftain after chieftain was won over to the acceptance of the indenture which guaranteed him in the possession of his lands, and left his authority over his tribesmen untouched, on conditions of a pledge of loyalty, of abstinence from illegal wars and exactions on his fellow-subjects, and of rendering a fixed tribute and service in war-time to the Crown. … [This] firm and conciliatory policy must in the end have won, but for the fatal blunder which plunged Ireland into religions strife at the moment when her civil strife seemed about to come to an end. … In Ireland the spirit of the Reformation never existed among the people at all. They accepted the legislative measures passed in the English Parliament without any dream of theological consequences, or of any change in the doctrine or ceremonies of the Church. … The mission of Archbishop Browne 'for the plucking-down of idols and extinguishing of idolatry' was the first step in the long effort of the English Government to force a new faith on a people who to a man clung passionately to their old religion. Browne's attempts at 'tuning the pulpits' were met by a sullen and significant opposition. … Protestantism had failed to wrest a single Irishman from his older convictions, but it succeeded in uniting all Ireland against the Crown. … The population within the Pale and without it became one, 'not as the Irish nation,' it has been acutely said, 'but as Catholics.' A new sense of national identity was found in the identity of religion."

J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 7, section 8.

ALSO IN: R. Bagwell, Ireland Under the Tudors, volume 1, chapters 9-15.

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapter 30.

{1763}

IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603. The wars of Shane O'Neil and Hugh O'Neil, Earls of Tyrone. The League of the Geraldines and the Ulster Confederacy.

"The Reformation begun under Henry VIII. was carried out with pitiless determination under Edward VI., and was met by the Catholics with unflinching opposition. Under Mary there was a period of respite, but the strife was renewed with greater fierceness in the succeeding reign. As authentic Irish history begins with St. Patrick, so with Elizabeth modern Irish history may be said to begin. … At her accession, Elizabeth was too much occupied with foreign complications to pay much heed to Ireland. Trouble first began in a conflict between the feudal laws and the old Irish law of Tanistry. Con O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, had taken his title from Henry VIII., subject to the English law of succession; but when Con died, the clan O'Neil, disregarding the English principle of hereditary succession, chose Shane O'Neil, an illegitimate son of Con, and the hero of his Sept, to be The O'Neil. Shane O'Neil at once put himself forward as the champion of Irish liberty, the supporter of the Irish right to rule themselves in their own way and pay no heed to England. Under the pretence of governing the country, Elizabeth overran it with a soldiery who, as even Mr. Froude acknowledges, lived almost universally on plunder, and were little better than bandits. The time was an appropriate one for a champion of Irish rights. Shane O'Neil boldly stood out as sovereign of Ulster, and pitted himself against Elizabeth. … Shane fought bravely against his fate, but he was defeated [A. D. 1567], put to flight, and murdered by his enemies, the Scots of Antrim, in whose strongholds he madly sought refuge. His head was struck off, and sent to adorn the walls of Dublin Castle. His lands were declared forfeit, and his vassals, vassals of the Crown. English soldiers of fortune were given grants from Shane's escheated territory, but when they attempted to settle they were killed by the O'Neils. Others came in their place, under Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, and did their best to simplify the process of colonization by exterminating the O'Neils, men, women, and children, wherever they could be got at. After two years of struggle Essex was compelled to abandon his settlement. But other colonizers were not disheartened. Some West of England gentlemen, under Peter Carew, seized on Cork, Limerick and Kerry, and sought to hold them by extirpating the obnoxious natives. Against these English inroads the great Geraldine League was formed. In the reign of Mary, that boy of twelve whom Henry VIII. had not been able to include in the general doom of his house had been allowed to return to Ireland, and to resume his ancestral honours, Once more the Geraldines were a great and powerful family in Ireland." Defeated in their first rising, "the Geraldines and their companion chiefs got encouragement in Rome and pledges from Spain, and they rose again under the Earl of Desmond and Sir James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. At first they had some successes, They had many wrongs to avenge. … Sir Francis Cosby, the Queen's representative in Leix and Offaly, had conceived and executed the idea of preventing any further possible rising of the chiefs in those districts by summoning them and their kinsmen to a great banquet in the fort of Mullaghmast, and there massacring them all. Out of 400 guests, only one man, a Lalor, escaped from that feast of blood. … With such memories in their minds, the tribes rose in all directions to the Desmond call. … Elizabeth sent over more troops to Ireland under the new Lord Deputy, Sir William Pelham, who had with him as ally Ormonde, the head of the house of Butler, hereditary foes of the Geraldines, and easily induced to act against them. Pelham and Ormonde cut their way over Munster, reducing the province by unexampled ferocity. Ormonde boasted that he had put to death nearly 6,000 disaffected persons. Just at this moment some of the chiefs of the Pale rose, and rose too late. They gained one victory over Lord Grey de Wilton in the pass of Glenmalure [August, 1580]. … Grey immediately abandoned the Pale to the insurgents, and turned to Smerwick [A. D. 1580], where some 800 Spanish and Italian soldiers had just landed, too late to be of any service to the rebellion, and had occupied the dismantled fort. It was at once blockaded by sea and by land. In Grey's army Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser both held commands. Smerwick surrendered at discretion, and the prisoners were killed by Raleigh and his men in cold blood. Flushed by this success, Grey returned to the Pale and carried all before him. The Geraldines were disheartened, and were defeated wherever they made a stand. … Munster was so vigorously laid waste that Mr. Froude declares that 'the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from Valentia to the Rock of Cashel.' Holinshed declares the traveller would not meet any man, woman, or child, saving in towns or cities, and would not see any beast; and Spenser gives a melancholy picture of the misery of the inhabitants, 'as that any stony heart would rue the same.' … The next step was to confiscate the estates of the rebellious chieftains. … The estates of Desmond and some 140 of his followers came to the Crown. The land was then distributed at the cheapest rate in large tracts to English nobles and gentlemen adventurers, who were pledged to colonize it with English labourers and tradesmen. But of these labourers and tradesmen not many came over, and those who did soon returned, tired of struggling for their foothold with the dispossessed Irish." During all this Geraldine or Desmond rebellion Ulster had remained quiet; but in 1594 it began to show signs of disturbance. "Hugh O'Neil, the grandson of that Con O'Neil whom Henry VIII. had made Earl of Tyrone, had been brought up at the English court, and confirmed in the lordship of Tyrone by the English Government. In the brilliant court of Elizabeth the young Irish chief was distinguished for his gifts of mind and body. When he came of age he was allowed to return to Ireland to his earldom. Once within his own country, he assumed his ancestral title of The O'Neil, and revived all the customs of independent Irish chieftains. For long enough he took no part in any plots or movements against the Crown; but many things, the ties of friendship and of love, combined to drive him into rebellion.

{1764}

… Tyrone in the end consented to give the powerful support of his name and his arms to a skilfully planned confederation of the tribes. On all sides the Irish chiefs entered into the insurrection. O'Neil was certainly the most formidable Irish leader the English had yet encountered. … Victory followed victory [that of the Yellow Ford, 1598, being the most important]. In a little while all Ireland, with the exception of Dublin and a few garrison towns, was in the hands of the rebels. Essex, and the largest army ever sent to Ireland, crossed the Channel to cope with him; but Essex made no serious move, and after an interview with Tyrone, in which he promised more than he could perform, he returned to England to his death. His place was taken by Lord Mountjoy, who, for all his love of angling and of Elizabethan 'play-books,' was a stronger man. Tyrone met him, was defeated [at Kinsale, 1601]. From that hour the rebellion was over. … At last Tyrone was compelled to come to terms. He surrendered his estates, renounced all claim to the title of The O'Neil, abjured alliance with all foreign powers, and promised to introduce English laws and customs into Tyrone. In return he received a free pardon and a re-grant of his title and lands by letters patent. Rory O'Donnell, Red Hugh's brother, also submitted, and was allowed to retain the title of Earl of Tyrconnel. Elizabeth was already dead, and the son of Mary Stuart [James I.] was King of England when these terms were made; but they were not destined to do much good."

J. H. McCarthy, Outline of Irish History, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: T. D. McGee, Popular History of Ireland, book 8, chapters 3-11 (volumes 1-2).

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapters 32-35.

R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, volume 2.

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 4, chapters 1-5 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1607-1611. The flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster.

"With the submission of the Earl of Tyrone terminated the struggle between the Tudor princes and the native Celtic tribes. No chieftain henceforward claimed to rule his district in independence of the Crown of England. The Celtic land tenure, the Brehon laws, the language, customs, and traditions of the defeated race were doomed to gradual yet certain extinction. … Before Elizabeth was laid in the grave, the object for which during so many years she had striven was thus at length accomplished; … but between the wars of the Tudors and the civil government of the Stuarts, still remain (the intermediate link, as it were, between the two) the fall of the able man who had created and so long conducted an almost national resistance, and the colonisation by English settlers of his demesnes and the adjoining parts of Ulster."

A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People, chapter 20.

"Lord Bacon, with whom ideas grew plentifully, had a suggestion at the service of the new king as profitable as the 'princelie policie' which he taught his predecessor. He was of opinion that a great settlement of English husbandmen in Ireland, able to guard as well as to till the land, would help to secure the interest of the Crown. Till this was done Ireland was not effectually reduced, as Sir Edward Coke afterwards declared, 'for there was ever a back-door in the north.' The only question was where to plant them. O'Neill and Tyrconnell had proved dangerous adversaries; they possessed a fertile territory, and as their 'loose order of inheritance' had been duly changed into 'an orderly succession,' they were quite ripe for confiscation. But they had been ostentatiously received into favour at the close of the late war, and some decent pretence for destroying them so soon was indispensable. It was found in a letter conveniently dropped in the precincts of Dublin Castle, disclosing a new conspiracy. Of a conspiracy there was not then, and has not been since discovered, any evidence worth recording. The letter was probably forged, according to the practise of the times; but where so noble a booty was to be distributed by the Crown, one can conceive how ill-timed and disloyal any doubt of their treason would have appeared at the Court of James, or of the Lord Deputy. They were proclaimed traitors, and fled to the Continent to solicit aid from the Catholic Powers. Without delay James and his counsellors set to work. The King applied to the City of London to take up the lands of the wild Irish. They were well watered, he assured them, plentifully supplied with fuel, with good store of all the necessaries for man's sustenance; and moreover yielded timber, hides, tallow, canvas, and cordage for the purposes of commerce. The Companies of Skinners, Fishmongers, Haberdashers, Vintners and the like thereupon became Absentee Proprietors, and have guzzled Irish rents in city feasts and holiday excursions to Ireland from that day to this. Six counties in Ulster were confiscated, and not merely the chiefs, but the entire population dispossessed. The fruitful plains of Armagh, the deep pastoral glens that lie between the sheltering hills of Donegal, the undulating meadow lands stretching by the noble lakes and rivers of Fermanagh, passed from the race which had possessed them since before the redemption of mankind. … The alluvial lands were given to English courtiers whom the Scotch king found it necessary to placate, and to Scotch partisans whom he dared not reward in England. The peasants driven out of the tribal lands to burrow in the hills or bogs were not treated according to any law known among civilised men. Under Celtic tenure the treason of the chief, if he committed treason, affected them no more than the offences of a tenant for life affect a remainder man in our modern practice. Under the feudal system they were innocent feudatories who would pass with the forfeited land to the Crown, with all their personal rights undisturbed. The method of settlement is stated with commendable simplicity by the latest historian. The 'plantators' got all the land worth their having; what was not worth their having—the barren mountains and trackless morass, which after two centuries still in many cases yield no human food—were left to those who in the language of an Act of Parliament of the period were 'natives of the realm of Irish blood, being descended from those who did inherit and possess the land.' Lest the frugality of the Celts should enable them to peacefully regain some of their possessions, it was strictly conditioned that no plantator or servitor should alienate his portion, or any part thereof, to the mere Irish. The confiscated territory amounted to two millions of acres. 'Of these a million and a half' says Mr. Froude, 'bog, forest, and mountain were restored to the Irish. The half million acres of fertile land were settled with families of Scottish and English Protestants.' It was in this manner that the famous Plantation of Ulster was founded."

Sir C. G. Duffy, Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition, pages 74-78 (or book 1, chapter 4, of "Young Ireland").

{1765}

"The City of London had taken in hand the settlement of Derry, which was now to be rebuilt under the name of Londonderry, and to give its name to the county in which it stood, and which had hitherto been known as the county of Coleraine."

S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapter 10 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. D'Arcy McGee, Popular History of Ireland, book 9, chapter 1 (volume 2).

J. Harrison, The Scot in Ulster, chapter 3.

C. P. Meehan, Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donel, Earl of Tyrconnel.

IRELAND: A. D. 1625. The Graces of Charles I.

On the accession of Charles I., "one more effort was made by the Irish gentry to persuade, or rather to bribe, the Government to allow them to remain undisturbed in the possession of their property. They offered to raise by voluntary assessment the large sum of £120,000 in three annual instalments of £40,000, on condition of obtaining certain Graces from the King. These Graces, the Irish analogue of the Petition of Rights, were of the most moderate and equitable description. The most important were that undisturbed possession of sixty years should secure a landed proprietor from all older claims on the part of the Crown, that the inhabitants of Connaught should be secured from litigation by the enrolment of their patents, and that Popish recusants should be permitted, without taking the Oath of Supremacy, to sue for livery of their estates in the Court of Arches, and to practise in the courts of law. The terms were accepted. The promise of the King was given. The Graces were transmitted by way of instruction to the Lord Deputy and Council, and the Government also engaged, as a further security to all proprietors, that their estates should be formally confirmed to them and to their heirs by the next Parliament which should be held in Ireland. The sequel forms one of the most shameful passages in the history of English government of Ireland. In distinct violation of the King's solemn promise, after the subsidies that were made on the faith of that promise had been duly obtained, without provocation or pretext or excuse, Wentworth, who now presided with stern despotism over the government of Ireland, announced the withdrawal of the two principal articles of the Graces, the limitation of Crown claims by a possession of sixty years and the legalisation of the Connaught titles."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 6 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1633-1639. Wentworth's system of "Thorough."

In the summer of 1633, Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. "It was during his tenure of office as viceroy that he attempted to establish absolutism in Ireland, in order that, by the thereby enhanced power of the monarchy, he might be enabled to turn the scale in favour of a despotic government in England. And, never at a loss in the choice of his expedients, he contended for his scheme with an energy and a recklessness characteristic of the man. In the prosecution of his ends, he treated some of the most influential English noblemen resident in Ireland with the utmost indignity, simply with the object of intimidating them, at the outset, from any further opposition. One of them, Lord Mountnorris, was even condemned to death on a charge of sedition and mutiny, merely for having made use of a disrespectful expression with reference to the lord-lieutenant, the representative of the sovereign. … Every longing of the Irish Protestant Church for independence was suppressed by Wentworth. According to his views, supreme authority in Church matters belonged absolutely and unconditionally to the king. He, therefore, abolished, in 1634, the 'Irish Articles,' which granted some concessions to Puritanism, and which had been introduced by Archbishop Usher in the reign of James I., and, at the same time, he united the Irish Established Church indissolubly with that of England. But above all things he considered it to be his duty to increase the army, which had hitherto been in a disorganised condition, and to put it in a state of complete efficiency; in order to do this, however, it was of the first importance to augment the revenue of the Crown, and in pursuance of this object he disdained no means. He extorted large sums of money from the Catholics by reminding them that, in case their contributions were too niggardly, there still existed laws against the Papists which could easily be put into operation again. The City of London Company, which some years before had effected the colonization of Londonderry, was suddenly called to account for not having fulfilled the stipulations contained in its charter, and condemned to pay a fine of £70,000. In the same spirit he conceived the idea of obtaining additions to the royal exchequer by a fresh settlement of Connaught; and, accordingly, he induced the Government, regardless of the engagements made some years previously at the granting of the 'graces,' to re-assert the claims it had formerly advanced to the possession of this province. And now, as in the worst days of James I., there again prevailed the old system of investigation into the validity of the titles by which the landed gentry of Connaught held their estates. Such persons as were practised in disinterring these unregistered titles were looked upon with favour, and as a means of inciting to more vigorous efforts, a premium of 20 per cent. on the receipts realized during the first year by the confiscation of property thus imperfectly registered was guaranteed to the presidents of the commission. With a cynical frankness, Wentworth declared that no money was ever so judiciously expended as this, for now the people entered into the business with as much ardour and assiduity as if it were their own private concern. … The collective titles of the province of Connaught were at the unlimited disposal of the lord-lieutenant; and, although, notwithstanding this result, he, at the last moment, recoiled from the final act, and shrank from ejecting the present owners, and re-settling the province, it was not from any conscientious scruples that he refrained from taking this last decisive step: to the man whose motto was 'Thorough,' such scruples were unknown. … Practical considerations alone … induced Wentworth to pause in the path upon which he had entered. {1766} Just at that time the Crown was engaged in a contest with Puritanism in Scotland, while, in England, the attempts of Charles to make his rule absolute had produced a state of public feeling which was in the highest degree critical. … In view of these considerations, therefore, Strafford postponed the colonization of the western province to a more favourable season. While we turn with just abhorrence from the contemplation of the reckless and despotic acts of this remarkable man, we must not, on the other hand, fail to acknowledge that his administration has features which present a brighter aspect. … In the exercise of a certain toleration, dictated, it is true, only by policy, he declined to meddle directly in the religious affairs of the Catholics. His greatest merit, however, consists in having advanced the material well-being of the country. He took a lively interest in agriculture and cattle-rearing, and by causing the rude and antiquated methods of husbandry which prevailed among the Irish agriculturalists to be superseded by more modern appliances, he contributed very materially to the advancement of this branch of industry. He also largely encouraged navigation, in consequence of which the number of Irish ships increased from year to year; and although it can not be denied that he endeavoured to suppress the trade in woollen cloth, from an apprehension that it might come into dangerous competition with English manufactures, he, nevertheless, sought to compensate the Irish in other ways, and the development of the Irish linen industry in the north was essentially his work. … The Irish revenue annually increased, and the customs returns alone were trebled during the administration of Lord Strafford. He was, accordingly, in a position to place at the disposal of his royal master a standing army of 9,000 men. … It was, therefore, no idle boast, but a statement in strict accordance with the truth, which he made when writing to Archbishop Laud on 16th December, 1634: 'I can now say that the king is here as truly absolute as any sovereign in the world can be.'"

R. Hassencamp, History of Ireland, chapter 3.

"Of all the suggesters of the infamous counsels of Charles, Laud and Wentworth were the most sincere:—Laud, from the intense faith with which he looked forward to the possible supremacy of the ecclesiastical power, and to which he was bent upon going, 'thorough', through every obstacle;—Wentworth, from that strong sense, with which birth and education had perverted his genius, of the superior excellence of despotic rule. … The letters which passed between them partook of a more intimate character, in respect of the avowal of ulterior designs, than either of them, probably, chose to avow elsewhere. … Laud had to regret his position in England, contrasted with that of the Irish deputy. 'My lord,' he writes to Wentworth, speaking of the general affairs of church and state, 'to speak freely, you may easily promise more in either kind than I can perform: for, as for the church, it is so bound up in the forms of the common law, that it is not possible for me, or for any man, to do that good which he would, or is bound to do. … And for the state, indeed, my lord, I am for Thorough; but I see that both thick and thin stays somebody, where I conceive it should not; and it is impossible for me to go thorough alone.' … Every new act of despotism which struck terror into Ireland shot comfort to the heart of Laud. 'As for my marginal note,' exclaims the archbishop, 'I see you deciphered it well, and I see you make use of it too,—do so still; thorow and thorow. Oh that I were where I might go so too I but I am shackled between delays and uncertainties. You have a great deal of honour here for your proceedings. Go on a God's name!' And on Wentworth went, stopping at no gratuitous quarrel that had the slightest chance of pleasing the archbishop, even to the demolishing the family tomb of the earl of Cork,—since his grace, among his select ecclesiastical researches, had discovered that the spot occupied by my lord of Cork's family monuments, was precisely that spot upon which the communion-table, to answer the purposes of heaven, ought to stand!"

R. Browning, Thomas Wentworth (Eminent British Statesmen, volume 2, published under the name of John Forster).

ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 5, section 4.

S. R. Gardiner, History of England, chapter 76 (volume 8) and chapter 90 (volume 9).

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, volume 2, book 3, chapter 1.

T. Wright, History of Ireland, book 4, chapters 22-24.

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 5, chapter 1.

IRELAND: A. D. 1641. The Catholic rising and alleged Massacres of Protestants.

"The government which Strafford had established in Ireland fell with him, the office of viceroy was entrusted to some of the judges, and shorn of the powers which gave it authority over the whole country. The Irish army, which had been formed with so much difficulty, and maintained in spite of so much opposition, was disbanded without any attention being vouchsafed to the King's wish that it should be allowed to enter the Spanish service. … Under the influence of events in England, government based on prerogative, and on its connexion with the English hierarchy, as it had existed in Ireland since Elizabeth's time, fell to the ground. This revolution however might entail important results. The Irish people was Catholic: while the Protestant settlers were split into two hostile factions, and thereby the highest authority in the land, which bore a really Protestant character, was systematically weakened and almost destroyed, the thought of ridding themselves of it altogether was sure to arise in the nation. The steed, never completely broken in, felt itself suddenly free from the tight rein which hitherto it had unwillingly obeyed. … It was the common object of all Catholics, alike of Anglo-Saxon and of Celtic origin, to restore to the Catholic Church the possession of the goods and houses that had been taken from her, and above all to put an end to the colonies established since James I. in which Puritan tendencies prevailed. The Catholics of the old settlements were as eager for this as the natives. The idea originated in a couple of chiefs of old Irish extraction, Roger O'More and Lord Macguire, who had been involved in Tyrone's ruin, but were connected by marriage with several English families. The first man whom O'More won over was Lord Mayo, the most powerful magnate of old English descent in Connaught, of the house of De Burgh. … The best military leader in the confederacy, Colonel Plunkett, was a Catholic of old English origin. … Among the natives the most notable personage was Phelim O'Neil, who, after having been long in England, and learning Protestantism there, on his return to Ireland went back to the old faith and the old customs: he was reckoned the rightful heir of Tyrone, and possessed unbounded popular influence. {1767} The plan for which the Catholics of both Irish and English extraction now united was a very far-reaching one. It involved making the Catholic religion altogether dominant in Ireland: even of the old nobility none but the Catholics were to be tolerated: all the lands that had been seized for the new settlements were to be given back to the previous possessors or their heirs. In each district a distinguished family was to be answerable for order, and to maintain an armed force for the purpose. They would not revolt from the King, but still would leave him no real share in the government. Two lords justices, both Catholic, one of Irish, the other of old English family, were to be at the head of the government. … The preparations were made in profound silence: a man could travel across the country without perceiving any stir or uneasiness. But on the appointed day, October 23, the day of St. Ignatius, the insurrection everywhere broke out." Dublin was saved, by a disclosure of the plot to the government, on the evening of the 22d, by a Protestant Irishman who had gained knowledge of it. "Several other places also held out, as Londonderry and Carrickfergus, and afforded places to which the Protestants might fly. But no one can paint the rage and cruelty which was vented, far and wide over the land, upon the unarmed and defenceless. Many thousands perished: their corpses filled the land and served as food for the kites. … Religious abhorrence entered into a dreadful league with the fury of national hatred. The motives of the Sicilian Vespers and of the night of St. Bartholomew were united. Sir Phelim, who at once was proclaimed Lord and Master in Ulster, with the title of the native princes, as Tyrone had been, and who in his proclamations assumed the tone of a sovereign, was not at all the man to check these cruelties. … With all this letting loose of ancient barbarism there was still some holding back. The Scottish settlements were spared, although they were the most hated of all, for fear of incurring the hostility of the Scottish as well as of the English nation. Immediately there was a rising in the five counties of the old English Pale: the gentry of Louth, under the leadership of the sheriff, took the side of the rebels. The younger men of Meath assembled on the Boyne, and commenced hostilities against the Protestants: so completely had their religious sympathies prevailed over their patriotism."

L. Von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 8, chapter 7 (volume 2).

"Some reference to the notorious story of the massacre of 1641 is required, not because the account of it is true and is a part of history, nor because it is false and needs refutation, but because it is a State fiction, a falsehood with a purpose, and as such deserves mention as much as the levying of troops or the passing of laws. The record of the period is not the history of a massacre, but of the deliberate invention of a massacre. … No word of massacre had been heard of in the first State document that referred to the so-called rebellion. The Catholic lords of the Pale would never have united their names and fortunes with those of murderers. … The royalists again and again urged in their treaties with their opponents that an investigation of the cruelties committed on both sides should be made, and the proposal was always absolutely refused."

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 3, chapter 1, section 5 (volume 2).

"There were few places of strength in Ulster which had not fallen by the end of the first week into the hands of the insurgents. Sir Phelim O'Neill already found himself at the head of some 30,000 men, as yet of course undisciplined, and but few of them efficiently armed; and it is not to be expected that such an irregular multitude, with wild passions let loose, and so many wrongs and insults to be avenged, could have been engaged in scenes of war, even so long, without committing some deeds of blood which the laws of regular warfare would not sanction. … Life was taken in some few instances where the act deserved the name of murder; but the cases of this nature, on the Irish side, at the commencement of the rebellion, were isolated ones; and nothing can be more unjust and false than to describe the outbreak of this war as a 'massacre'."

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapter 37.

"This [Sir Wm. Petty's] estimate of 37,000 Protestants supposed to have been murdered makes no allowance for those who escaped to England and Scotland, and never returned to Ireland. It seems to me more likely that about 27,000 Protestants were murdered by the sword, gun, rope, drowning, &c., in the first three or four years of the rebellion. The evidence of the depositions, after deducting all doubtful exaggerations, leaves little doubt that the number so destroyed could hardly have been less than 25,000 at all events. But the truth is that no accurate estimate is possible. After the Portnaw massacre the Protestants, especially the Scotch, took an awful vengeance on their enemies. Henceforward one side vied in cruelty with the other."

M. Hickson, Ireland in the 17th Century, introduction, page 163.

ALSO IN: T. Carte, Life of James, Duke of Ormond, book 3 (chapters 1-2).

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 6 (volume 2).

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 5, chapters 3-4 (volume 3).

IRELAND: A. D. 1643. The king makes Peace with the rebels.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER).

IRELAND: A. D. 1645. King Charles' treaty with the Catholics.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JUNE-DECEMBER).

IRELAND: A. D. 1646-1649. The Rebels become Royalists.

"The truce [offered by King Charles to the rebels in 1643] appears to have been well observed by each party, and resulted in a treaty of peace which was signed in July, 1646, by which the Roman Catholics obtained every demand which they put forward. This peace was nevertheless at once broken, and Ormond (who had been appointed Lord Lieutenant in January, 1643) was closely besieged in Dublin by a force, headed by Cardinal Rinuccini, the Papal Nuncio, who had assumed the command of the Irish Catholics. Finding himself in so dangerous a position, Ormond, by express direction from the king, offered his submission to the English Parliament, to whom he surrendered Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk, and such other garrisons as remained in his hands. This transaction was completed on the 25th of July, 1647, when Colonel Jones took command of Dublin for the Parliament, and was made by them Commander-in-Chief in Ireland; his total force however amounted to but 5,000 men. The war now continued with varying success, the commanders for the Parliament being, in addition to Jones, Monk in Ulster and Lord Inchiquin in Munster; {1768} The latter in 1648 joined Ormond, who in September, upon the invitation of the Catholics, returned to Ireland, the Papal Nuncio having been driven from the country by his own party, who were alienated from him by his folly and insolence. At the end of 1648 there were therefore two parties in Ireland; the Parliamentary, which had been the English, holding Dublin and a few garrisons, and the Catholics, who, formerly rebels, were now held as Royalists, and whose new leader Ormond, on the death of Charles I., proclaimed the Prince of Wales, on the 16th of February, 1649, at Carrick, as King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland. The English Parliament now at last resolved to put an end to disorder in Ireland, and with this object, in March, 1649, appointed Cromwell to the supreme command." Before Cromwell arrived in Ireland, however, the Irish Royalists had reduced every garrisoned place except Dublin and Londonderry, defeating Monk, who held Dundalk, but being defeated (August 2) by Jones when they laid siege to the capital. Though fought at the gates of Dublin, this was called the battle of Rathmines, Ormond retreated with a loss of 4,000 killed and 2,500 prisoners.

N. L. Walford, Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War, chapter 7.

ALSO IN: T. Carte, Life of James Duke of Ormond, books 4-5 (volume 3).

D. Murphy, Cromwell in Ireland, chapters 1-3.

IRELAND: A. D. 1649-1650. Cromwell's campaign. The slaughter at Drogheda and Wexford.

'When Cromwell arrived in Ireland at the head of 12,000 men, he found almost the whole country under the power of the Royalists (August 15th). A Parliamentary garrison in Dublin itself had only escaped a siege by surprising the enemy on the banks of the Liffey (August 2nd). The general first marched against Drogheda, then called Droghdagh or Tredah, and summoned the garrison to surrender; Sir Arthur Ashton, the governor, refused; he had 3,000 of the choicest troops of the confederates and enough provisions to enable him to hold out till winter should compel the enemy to raise the siege. But within twenty-four hours the English batteries had made a breach in the wall, Oliver, after twice seeing his soldiers beaten off, led them on in person and carried the breach. A terrible massacre followed. 'Being in the heat of action I forbade them,' Cromwell wrote in his despatch to the Parliament, 'to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men.' Of these, one-half probably fell in the streets; the other half Cromwell describes as having been slain at early dawn in St. Peter's Church. This he looks upon as a judgment for their previous proceedings there. 'It is remarkable,' he writes, 'that these people at first set up the mass in some places of the town that had been monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent that, the last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church called St. Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all the friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two.' … Royalist accounts assert that many hundreds of women and children were slain in St. Peter's Church: It is, of course, possible that some of the townspeople, fleeing thither for safety, lost their lives in the general massacre of the garrison. There is, however, no trustworthy witness for any lives being taken except those of soldiers and friars. Cromwell did not sanction the killing of any but those with arms in their hands, though he seems to have approved of the fate of the friars. The fanatical zeal of his letter, and the fact that he takes the full credit, or discredit, for the slaughter of the garrison; makes it improbable that he concealed anything; and this substantiated by his subsequent declaration, in which he gives this challenge:—'Give us an instance of one man, since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning the massacre or the destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavoured to be done.' With the enemy's troops Cromwell carried out the determined mode of warfare which he began at Drogheda. They were mostly scattered over the country, occupied in garrison duty. Before whatever town he came he demanded immediate surrender, or threatened to refuse quarter. Town after town opened its gates to this grim summons. Wexford, which refused to surrender, was stormed, and the whole garrison, 2,000 in number, put to the sword (October 11th). … In other respects, while Cromwell's rigour and determination saved bloodshed in the end by the rapidity and completeness of his conquests, his conduct in Ireland contrasted favourably on many points with that of the Royalists there. His own soldiers, for ill-using the people contrary to regulations, were sometimes cashiered the army, sometimes hanged. When a treaty was made, he kept faithfully to its terms. Garrisons that yielded on summons were allowed either to march away with arms and baggage, or else to go abroad and enter the service of any government at peace with England. Before the war was over he had rid the country, on these terms, of some 45,000 soldiers. Taking advantage of the divisions of his enemies, he persuaded several garrisons of English soldiers to desert the cause of Charles Stuart for the Commonwealth. His conduct of the war was so successful that, during the nine months of his stay in Ireland, the forces of the Royalists were shattered, and the provinces of Leinster and Munster recovered for the Parliament. Cromwell returned to England in May, 1650, leaving his son-in-law Ireton to complete the conquest of the country. The last garrisons in Ulster and Munster surrendered during the course of the ensuing summer and autumn. Ireton crossed the Shannon and drove the Irish back into the bogs and mountain fastnesses of Connaught, their last refuge, where fighting still continued for two years after all the rest of the country had been reduced (1651-2)."

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 12.

"No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and earnestness—no sympathy with the cause that he upheld in England—can blind us to the truth, that the lurid light of this great crime [the massacre at Drogheda] burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland; that it is one of those damning charges which the Puritan theology has yet to answer at the bar of humanity."

F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 8.

{1769}

"Oliver's proceedings here [at Drogheda] have been the theme of much loud criticism, and sibylline execration; into which it is not our plan to enter at present. … To those who think that a land overrun with Sanguinary Quacks can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these letters must be very horrible. Terrible Surgery this: but is it Surgery and Judgment, or atrocious Murder merely? That is a question which should be asked; and answered. Oliver Cromwell did believe in God's Judgments; and did not believe in the rose-water plan of Surgery;—which, in fact, is this Editor's case too. … Here is a man whose word represents a thing! Not bluster this, and false jargon scattering itself to the winds: what this man speaks out of him comes to pass as a fact; speech with this man is accurately prophetic of deed. This is the first King's face poor Ireland ever saw; the first Friend's face, little as it recognises him,—poor Ireland! … To our Irish friends we ought to say likewise that this Garrison of Tredah consisted, in good part, of Englishmen. Perfectly certain this:—and therefore let 'the bloody hoof of the Saxon,' &c., forbear to continue itself on that matter."

T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 5.

"Cromwell met with little resistance: wherever he came, he held out the promise of life and liberty of conscience; … liberty of conscience he explained to mean liberty of internal belief, not of external worship; … but the rejection of the offer, though it were afterwards accepted, was punished with the blood of the officers; and, if the place were taken by force, with indiscriminate slaughter."

J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 5, with foot-note.

ALSO IN: _D. Murphy, Cromwell in Ireland._

IRELAND: A. D. 1651. The Massachusetts colonists invited to Ireland by Cromwell.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1649-1651.

IRELAND: A. D. 1652. The Kilkenny Articles.

"On 12th May, 1652, the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered on terms signed at Kilkenny, which were adopted successively by the other principal armies between that time and the September following, when the Ulster forces surrendered. By these Kilkenny articles, all except those who were guilty of the first blood were received into protection, on laying down their arms; those who should not be satisfied with the conclusions the Parliament might come to concerning the Irish nation, and should desire to transport themselves with their men to serve any foreign state in amity with the Parliament, should have liberty to treat with their agents for that purpose."

J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, part 1, section 2.

IRELAND: A. D. 1653. The Cromwellian Settlement.

"By the term Cromwellian Settlement is to be understood the history of the dealings of the Commonwealth of England with the lands and habitations of the people of Ireland after their conquest of the country in the year 1652. … The officers of the army were eager to take Irish lands in lieu of their arrears, though it does not appear that the common soldiers were, who had small debentures and no capital, and no chance of founding families and leaving estates to their posterity. But the adventurers [national creditors, who had loaned money to the government for the Irish War] must be first settled with, as they had a claim to about one million of acres, to satisfy the sums advanced for putting down the rebellion on the faith of the Act of 17 Charles I. (A. D. 1642), and subsequent Acts and Ordinances, commonly called 'The Acts of Subscription.' By these, lands for the adventurers must be first ascertained, before the rest of the country could be free for disposal by the Parliament to the army. … Towards the close of the year 1653, the island seemed sufficiently desolated to allow the English to occupy it. On the 26th of September in that year, the Parliament passed an Act for the new planting of Ireland with English. The government reserved for themselves all the towns, all the church lands and tithes; for they abolished all archbishops, bishops, deans, and other officers, belonging to that hierarchy, and in those days the Church of Christ sat in Chichester House on College-green. They reserved also for themselves the four counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork. Out of the lands and tithes thus reserved, the government were to satisfy public debts, private favourites, eminent friends of the republican cause in Parliament, regicides, and the most active of the English rebels, not being of the army. They next made ample provision for the adventurers. The amount due to the adventurers was £360,000. This they divided into three lots, of which £110,000 was to be satisfied in Munster, £205,000 in Leinster, and £45,000 in Ulster, and the moiety of ten counties was charged with their payment:—Waterford, Limerick, and Tipperary, in Munster; Meath, Westmeath, King's and Queen's Counties, in Leinster; and Antrim, Down, and Armagh, in Ulster. But, as all was required by the Adventurers Act to be done by lot, a lottery was appointed to be held in Grocers' Hall, London, for the 20th July, 1653. … A lot was then to be drawn by the adventurers, and by some officer appointed by the Lord General Cromwell on behalf of the soldiery, to ascertain which baronies in the ten counties should be for the adventurers, and which for the soldiers. The rest of Ireland, except Connaught, was to be set out amongst the officers and soldiers, for their arrears, amounting to £1,550,000, and to satisfy debts of money or provisions due for supplies advanced to the army of the Commonwealth, amounting to £1,750,000. Connaught was by the Parliament reserved and appointed for the habitation of the Irish nation; and all English and Protestants having lands there, who should desire to remove out of Connaught into the provinces inhabited by the English, were to receive estates in the English parts, of equal value, in exchange. … The Earl of Ormond, Primate Bramhall, and all the Catholic nobility, and many of the gentry, were declared incapable of pardon of life or estate, and were banished. … Connaught was selected for the habitation of all the Irish nation by reason of its being surrounded by the sea and the Shannon, all but ten miles, and the whole easily made into one line by a few forts. To further secure the imprisonment of the nation, and cut them off from relief by sea, a belt four miles wide, commencing one mile to the west of Sligo, and so winging along the coast and Shannon, was reserved by the Act of 27th September, 1653, from being set out to the Irish, and was given to the soldiery to plant. Thither all the Irish were to remove at latest by the first day of May, 1654, except Irish women married to English Protestants before the 2d December, 1650, provided they became Protestants; except, also, boys under fourteen and girls under twelve, in Protestant service and to be brought up Protestants; and, lastly, those who had shown during the ten years' war in Ireland their constant good affection to the Parliament of England in preference to the king. {1770} There they were to dwell without entering a walled town, or coming within five miles of some, on pain of death. All were to remove thither by the 1st of May, 1654, at latest, under pain of being put to death by sentence of a court of military officers, if found after that date on the English side of the Shannon." In the actual enforcement of the law—found impracticable in all its rigor—there were many special dispensations granted, and extensions of time.

J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, preface, and parts 1-2.

ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the 18th Century, book 1, chapter 2 (volume 1).

J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 6.

IRELAND: A. D. 1655. Cromwell's deportation of Girls to Jamaica.

See JAMAICA: A. D. 1655.

IRELAND: A. D. 1660-1665. The restored Stuarts and their Act of Settlement.

"On the fall of Richard Cromwell, a council of officers was established in Dublin; these summoned a convention of deputies from the protestant proprietors; and the convention tendered to Charles the obedience of his ancient kingdom of Ireland. … To secure the royal protection, they made the king an offer of a considerable sum of money, assured him, though falsely, that the Irish Catholics meditated a general insurrection, and prayed him to summon a protestant parliament in Ireland, which might confirm the existing proprietors in the undisturbed possession of their estates. The present was graciously accepted, and the penal laws against the Irish Catholics were ordered to be strictly enforced; but Charles was unwilling to call a parliament, because it would necessarily consist of men whose principles, both civil and religious, he had been taught to distrust. The first measure recommended to him by his English advisers, with respect to Ireland, was the re-establishment of episcopacy. For this no legislative enactment was requisite. His return had given to the ancient laws their pristine authority. … In a short time the episcopal hierarchy was quietly restored to the enjoyment of its former rights, and the exercise of its former jurisdiction. To this, a work of easy accomplishment, succeeded a much more difficult attempt,—the settlement of landed property in Ireland. The military, whom it was dangerous to disoblige, and the adventurers, whose pretensions had been sanctioned by Charles I., demanded the royal confirmation of the titles by which they held their estates; and the demand was opposed by a multitude of petitioners claiming restitution or compensation [protestant royalists, loyal Catholics, &c.]. … Humanity, gratitude, and justice, called on the king to listen to many of these claims. … From an estimate delivered to the king, it appeared that there still remained at his disposal forfeited lands of the yearly rental of from eighty to one hundred thousand pounds; a fund sufficiently ample, it was contended, to 'reprize' or compensate all the Irish really deserving of the royal favour. Under this impression, Charles published his celebrated declaration for the settlement of Ireland. It provided that no person deriving his title from the adventurers under the parliament, or the soldiers under the commonwealth, should be disturbed in the possession of his lands, without receiving an equivalent from the fund for reprisals; that all innocents, whether protestants or Catholics, that is, persons who had never adhered either to the parliament or the confederates, should be restored to their rightful estates." After much contention between deputations from both sides sent to the king, an act was passed through the Irish parliament substantially according to the royal declaration. "But to execute this act was found to be a task of considerable difficulty. By improvident grants of lands to the church, the dukes of York, Ormond, and Albemarle, the earls of Orrery, Montrath, Kingston, Massarene, and several others, the fund for reprisals had been almost exhausted." New controversies and agitations arose, which finally induced the soldiers, adventurers, and grantees of the crown to surrender one third of their acquisitions, for the augmenting of the fund for reprisals. "The king, by this measure, was placed in a situation [August, 1665], not indeed to do justice, but to silence the most importunate or most deserving among the petitioners. … But when compensation had thus been made to a few of the sufferers, what, it may be asked, became of the officers who had followed the royal fortune abroad, or of the 3,000 Catholics who had entered their claims of innocence? To all these, the promises which had been made by the act of settlement were broken; the unfortunate claimants were deprived of their rights, and debarred from all hope of future relief. A measure of such sweeping and appalling oppression is perhaps without a parallel in the history of civilized nations. Its injustice could not be denied; and the only apology offered in its behalf was the stern necessity of quieting the fears and jealousies of the Cromwellian settlers, and of establishing on a permanent basis the protestant ascendancy in Ireland. … The following is the general result. The protestants were previously [i. e., before the Cromwellian Settlement] in possession of about one moiety of all the profitable lands in the island; of the second moiety, which had been forfeited under the commonwealth, something less than two-thirds was by the act confirmed to the protestants; and of the remainder a portion almost equal in quantity, but not in quality, to one-third, was appropriated to the Catholics."

J. Lingard, History of England, volume 11, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).

T. Carte, Life of James Duke of Ormond, book 6 (volume 4).

IRELAND: A. D. 1685-1688. The reign of James II. Domination of Tyrconnel and the Catholics.

"At the accession of James II., in 1685, he found the native Irish, all of whom were Roman Catholics, opposed to the English rule, as to that of a conquering minority. … Of the settlers, the Scotch Presbyterians shared the feelings of their brethren in their native country, and hated Episcopalians with the true religious fury. In the Irish Parliament the Presbyterians and Episcopalians were nearly balanced, whilst the Protestant Nonconformists, in numbers almost equalling the other two parties, had but few seats in the Parliament. The Episcopalians alone were hearty supporters of the house of Stuart; the Presbyterians and Nonconformists were Whigs. James was in a most favourable position for tranquilising Ireland, for, as a Roman Catholic, he was much more acceptable to the native Irish than his predecessors had been. {1771} Had he followed his true interests, he would have endeavoured, firstly, to unite together, as firmly as possible, the English settlers in Ireland, and secondly, by wise acts of mediation, to bridge over the differences between the English and Irish. Thus he might have welded them into one people. James, however, followed a directly opposite policy, and the results of this misgovernment of Ireland are visible at the present day. The Duke of Ormond was at the time of the death of Charles II. both lord lieutenant and commander of the forces. … Soon after his accession James recalled him, and the office of lord lieutenant was bestowed on his own brother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, whilst the post of general of the troops was given to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel. Talbot … was a coarse, vulgar, truculent ruffian, greedy and unprincipled; but in the eyes of James he had great virtues, for he was devoted to the Romish Church and to his sovereign. 'Lying Dick Talbot,' as he was called, was raised by James to the peerage as Earl of Tyrconnel. Lord Clarendon was, from the time of his appointment, hampered by his associate," who, finally, in 1687, supplanted him, gathering the reins of government into his own hands, "not indeed as lord lieutenant, but with the power which Ormond had formerly held, although under a new title, that of lord deputy. The rule of Tyrconnel entirely subverted the old order of things. Protestants were disarmed and Protestant soldiers were disbanded. The militia was composed wholly of Roman Catholics. The dispensing power in the royal prerogative set aside the statutes of the kingdom, and the bench and privy council were occupied by Roman Catholics. Vacant bishoprics of the Established Church remained unfilled, and their revenues were devoted to Romish priests. Tithes were with impunity withheld from the clergy of the Establishment. … The hatred of the Irish Roman Catholics towards the Protestant settlers was excited to the utmost under Tyrconnel's rule. The former now hoped to mete out to the latter a full measure of retaliation. The breach was widened owing to the fear and distrust openly showed by the Protestants, and has never since been effectually repaired." Before the occurrence of the Revolution which drove James from his throne, in 1688, "Tyrconnel had disarmed all the Protestants, except those in the North. He had a large force of 20,000 men under arms, and of this force all the officers were trustworthy and Papists. He had filled the corporations of the towns with adherents of James. He had shown himself to be, as ever, tyrannical and unscrupulous. It was universally believed by the Protestants that a general massacre, a second St. Bartholomew, was intended. Even a day, December 9, was, they thought, fixed for the expected outbreak. The garrison of Londonderry had been temporarily withdrawn. On December 8, Lord Antrim arrived in command of 12,000 [1,200?] soldiers to form the new garrison. Without any warning, the Protestant apprentices ('the prentice boys of Derry') shut the gates of the city in his face. The inhabitants, in spite of the entreaties of the bishop and of the town council, refused to allow them to be opened. Antrim was compelled to withdraw. Thus one rallying-point was gained for the opponents of James. Another was found in Enniskillen, sixty miles south of Londonderry. Into these two towns poured all the Protestants from the surrounding districts. With these two exceptions, the boast of Tyrconnel that Ireland was true, was well founded."

E. Hale, The Fall of the Stuarts, chapters 10 and 13.

"He [James II.] deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire dominion of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments for setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of their race. The mother country justly regarded their cause as her own. Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake. … The contest was terrible but short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defence, but an excuse: for though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. … The momentary ascendency of Popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as made the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom. Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James."

Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 6 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: J. R. O'Flanagan, Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, chapter 28 (volume 1).

IRELAND: A. D. 1688-1689. Enniskillen and the Battle of Newton Butler.

Enniskillen, then a village, surrounding an ancient castle, was, in 1688-89, one of the two rallying points of the Protestant colonists in Ireland, who supported the Revolution by which James II. was dethroned and William and Mary were crowned. The chief stronghold of their cause was Londonderry; but Enniskillen bore a scarcely less important part. "In December, 1688, Tyrconnel's troops, being two companies of Popish infantry, advanced upon Enniskillen. The inhabitants, reinforced by 200 foot and 150 horse, contributed by the neighbouring gentry, marched out to oppose them. Tyrconnel's men fled to Cavan. The Enniskilleners, then, arming themselves as well as they could, and converting all the country-houses round Lough Erne into garrisons, appointed Gustavus Hamilton their governor and resolved upon defence. … Early in May, 1689, the Enniskilleners routed Tyrconnel's troops, sent from Connaught into Donegal. They next drove 1,500 men out of the County Cavan—destroyed the Castle of Ballincarrig—and then entered the County Meath, whence they carried off oxen and sheep. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was sent with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments of foot against the Enniskilleners, who, however, defeated them, and took Belturbet, where they found muskets, gunpowder, and provisions; but unfortunately they were unable to relieve Derry, then beleaguered and sorely distressed. The Enniskilleners held out against all attacks, and refused all terms of surrender. They were now assailed from various points; by Macarthy (then by James created Viscount Mountcashel) from the east, by another body from the west, and by the Duke of Berwick from the north. {1772} The Enniskilleners sent to Colonel Kirke [commanding the English forces first sent to Ireland by William of Orange] who had arrived in Lough Foyle, and received from him some arms and ammunition; and Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant-Colonel Berry came from him to their assistance. Colonel Wolseley took the command." Under Wolseley, the men of Enniskillen, 3,000 strong, encountered 5,000 of the enemy, under Mountcashel, near the town of Newton Butler, on the 31st of July, three days after Derry had been relieved. Their victory was complete. "The whole Irish force was totally and hopelessly routed. Their slaughter was dreadful—l,500 killed, and 500 drowned in Lough Erne, whither they were driven. Mountcashel was wounded and taken prisoner. The Enniskilleners lost only twenty killed and fifty wounded. They took 400 prisoners, some cannons, fourteen barrels of gunpowder, and all the colours and drums. … The victory became known at Strabane to the Irish army retreating from Derry, which thereupon broke up in confusion and fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont."

W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapter 21.

ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 12 (volume 3).

IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691. The War of the Revolution. The Orange conquest.

Supported by a French fleet, supplied moderately with French gold, and accompanied by a picked body of French officers, for the organizing and disciplining of raw Irish troops, James II. landed in Ireland, at Kinsale, on the 12th of March, 1689, to take personal possession of the government still maintained there in his name. From Kinsale he hastened to Dublin, "and summoned a Parliament, which met on May 7, 1689, and sat until July 18. This Parliament of James has been described as a Parliament of Irish Celts, yet out of the 228 members of the House of Commons about one-fourth only belonged to the native race, and even including members of families Anglicized or of doubtful origin, not one-third of the House of Commons belonged to the so-called Celts. Of the thirty-two lay peers who attended, not more than two or three bore old Irish names. The four spiritual peers were Protestant bishops."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1, of Two Centuries of Irish History chapter 1.

"The members of the House of Commons were almost all new men, completely inexperienced in public business and animated by the resentment of the bitterest wrongs. Many of them were sons of some of the 3,000 proprietors who without trial and without compensation had been deprived by the Act of Settlement of the estates of their ancestors. To all of them the confiscations of Ulster, the fraud of Strafford, the long train of calamities that followed were recent and vivid events. … It will hardly appear surprising to candid men that a Parliament so constituted and called together amid the excitement of a civil war, should have displayed much violence, much disregard for vested interests. Its measures, indeed, were not all criminal. By one Act which was far in advance of the age, it established perfect religious liberty in Ireland. … By another Act, repealing Poynings' law, and asserting its own legislative independence, it anticipated the doctrine of Molyneux, Swift, and Grattan. … A third measure abolished the payments to Protestant clergy in the corporate towns, while a fourth ordered that the Catholics throughout Ireland should henceforth pay their tithes and other ecclesiastical dues to their own priests and not to the Protestant clergy. The Protestants were still to pay their tithes to their own clergy. … Several other measures—most of them now only known by their titles—were passed for developing the resources of the country or remedying some great abuse. … If these had been the only measures of the Irish Parliament it would have left an eminently honourable reputation. But, unfortunately, one of its main objects was to re-establish at all costs the descendants of the old proprietors in their land, and to annul by measures of sweeping violence the grievous wrongs and spoliations their fathers and their grandfathers had undergone. The first and most important measure with this object was the repeal of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. … The preamble asserts that the outbreak of 1641 had been solely due to the intolerable oppression and to the disloyal conduct of the Lords Justices and Puritan party, that the Catholics of Ireland before the struggle had concluded had been fully reconciled to the sovereign, that they had received from the sovereign a full and formal pardon, and that the royal word had been in consequence pledged to the restitution of their properties. This pledge by the Act of Settlement had been to a great extent broken, and the Irish legislators maintained that the twenty-four years which had elapsed since that Act had not annulled the rights of the old proprietors or their descendants. They maintained that these claims were not only valid but were prior to all others, and they accordingly enacted that the heirs of all persons who had possessed landed property in Ireland on October 22, 1641, and who had been deprived of their inheritance by the Act of Settlement, should enter at once into possession of their old properties. … The long succession of confiscations of Irish land which had taken place from the days of Mary to the Act of Settlement had been mainly based upon real or pretended plots of the owners of the soil, which enabled the Government, on the plea of high treason, to appropriate the land which they desired. In 1689 the great bulk of the English proprietors of Irish soil were in actual correspondence with William, and were therefore legally guilty of high treason. The Irish legislators now proceeded to follow the example of the British Governments, and by a clause of extreme severity they pronounced the real estates of all Irish proprietors who dwelt in any part of the three kingdoms which did not acknowledge King James, or who aided, abetted or corresponded with the rebels, to be forfeited and vested in the Crown, and from this source they proposed to compensate the purchasers under the Act of Settlement. … The measure of repeal, however, was speedily followed by another Act of much more sweeping and violent injustice. The Act of Attainder, which was introduced in the latter part of June, aimed at nothing less than a complete overthrow of the existing land system in Ireland. A list divided into several groups, but containing in all more than 2,000 names, was drawn up of landowners who were to be attainted of high treason. … {1773} Few persons will question the tyranny of an Act which in this manner made a very large proportion of the Irish landlords liable to the penalties of high treason, unless they could prove their innocence, even though the only crime that could be alleged against them was that of living out of Ireland in a time of civil war. … It is … a curious illustration of the carelessness or partiality with which Irish history is written, that no popular historian has noticed that five days before this Act, which has been described as 'without a parallel in the history of civilised countries,' was introduced into the Irish Parliament, a Bill which appears, in its essential characteristics, to have been precisely similar was introduced into the Parliament of England; that it passed the English House of Commons; that it passed, with slight amendments, the English House of Lords; and that it was only lost, in its last stage, by a prorogation. … These facts will show how far the Irish Act of Attainder was from having the unique character that has been ascribed to it. It is not possible to say how that Act would have been executed, for the days of Jacobite ascendency were now few and evil. The Parliament was prorogued on the 20th of July, one of its last Acts being to vest in the King the property of those who were still absentees."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 6 (volume 2).

While James' Irish Parliament sat, "sufficient men had presented themselves to form fifty regiments of infantry and a proportionate number of cavalry. But … these levies were undisciplined, and their officers, with few exceptions, were without military training and experience. There were no arsenals, and in the government stores only about 1,000 serviceable firearms were found; there was no artillery and no supply of ammunition. … What coin was in circulation was small in quantity and debased in quality. James's Government issued a brass coinage, which had no currency outside the kingdom, and even within it practically circulated only among the partisans of James, and could not consequently help in purchasing arms, ammunition, and military stores, which had to be imported from without. Under such unfavourable circumstances the war began. The first campaign comprised the siege, or rather blockade, of Derry—for the Irish, having no artillery, could not undertake a regular siege—which was gallantly defended by the Scoto-English colonists; the check of Mountcashel by the Enniskilleners, who had followed the example of Derry; the landing of Schomberg with an army of Dutch, French Protestants, and English, who went into winter quarters near Dundalk, where he lost nearly half his troops from sickness; and, lastly, the military parade of James, who marched out from Dublin, and, failing to force Schomberg to fight, went into winter quarters himself. The result of the campaign was the successful defence of Derry, and the signal exhibition of James's incapacity as a general. At the opening of the second campaign, an exchange of troops was made between James and Louis XIV., with the view of giving prestige to the cause of the former. Six thousand French troops, under a drawing-room general, the well-known Comte de Lauzun, arrived in Ireland, and the same ships carried back an equal number of Irish troops—the brigade of Mountcashel, the best-trained and best-equipped body of troops in the Irish army. … The wasted army of Schomberg was strengthened by the arrival of William himself on June 14, 1690, with a considerable force. The united armies, composed of the most heterogeneous materials, one-half being foreigners of various nationalities, amounted to between 36,000 and 48,000 men. … To meet William, James set out from Dublin with an army of about 23,000 men. The French troops and the Irish cavalry were good, but the infantry was not well trained, and the artillery consisted only of twelve field-pieces. The battle took place on July 1, 1690, at the passage of the River Boyne, a few miles above Drogheda [the rout of James's army being complete and its loss about 1,500 men. William lost but 500; but the number included Schomberg, one of the great soldiers of his age. James was among the first in the flight, and he scarcely paused until he had put himself on board of a French frigate and quitted Ireland forever]. The Irish fell back on Dublin and thence retired behind the line of the Shannon. About 20,000 half-armed infantry and about 3,500 horse concentrated at Limerick. The English having failed in taking Athlone, the key of the upper Shannon, William gathered together about 38,000 men in the neighbourhood of Limerick. Lauzun having declared that Limerick could not be defended, and might be taken with roasted apples, withdrew with the whole of the French troops to Galway, to await the first opportunity of returning to France. On August 9, 1690, William moved his whole army close to the town and summoned the garrison to surrender; but having failed, with a loss of 2,000 men, to carry the town by assault, he raised the siege and went to England. The third and last campaign began late in 1691. The Irish received many promises of assistance from Louis XIV., but his ministers fulfilled few or none of them. With scarcely any loss of men, and with a small expenditure of stores and money, the Irish war enabled Louis to keep William and a veteran army of 40,000 men out of his way. … The campaign opened in the beginning of June with the advance of Ginkel [William's general] on Athlone. The chief defence of the place was the River Shannon, the works being weak, and mounting only a few field-pieces; yet so obstinately was the place defended that, but for the discovery of a ford, and some neglect on the part of D'Usson, who commanded, it is probable that the siege would have been raised. As it was, Ginkel became master of the heap of ruins. … St. Ruth [the French officer commanding the Irish] moved his camp to Aughrim [or Aghrim], and there was fought the final battle of the war on Sunday, July 12, 1691. … St. Ruth was killed at a critical moment, and his army defeated, with a loss of about 4,000 men, the English loss being about half that number. Part of the defeated Irish infantry retreated to Galway; but the bulk of the troops, including the whole of the cavalry, fell back on Limerick, which surrendered, after a gallant resistance, in October, 1691."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1 of Two Centuries of Irish History, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapters 12, 16 and 17.

W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapters 5 and 21-23.

J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, chapter 3 (volume 1).

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2).

Sir J. Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, part 2, books 2-5 (volume 2).

{1774}

IRELAND: A. D. 1691. The Treaty of Limerick and its violation.

The surrender of Limerick was under the terms of a treaty—or of two treaties, one military, the other civil—formally negotiated for the terminating of the war. This Treaty of Limerick was signed, October 3, 1691, by Baron De Ginkel, William's general, and by the lords justices of Ireland, on behalf of the English, and by Sarsfield and other chieftains on behalf of the Irish. "Its chief provisions were: 'The Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland; or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles II.; and their Majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such further security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion. All the inhabitants or residents of Limerick, or any other garrison now in the possession of the Irish, and all officers and soldiers now in arms under any commission of King James, or those authorized by him to grant the same in the several counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo, or any of them, and all the commissioned officers in their Majesties' quarters that belong to the Irish regiments now in being that are treated with and who are not prisoners of war, or having taken protection, and who shall return and submit to their Majesties' obedience, and their and every of their heirs shall hold, possess, and enjoy all and every their estates of freehold and inheritance; and all the rights, titles, and interest, privileges and immunities, which they, or every or any of them, held, enjoyed, and were rightfully and lawfully entitled to in the reign of King Charles II.' … A general pardon was to be granted to all persons comprised within the treaty, and the Lords Justices and the generals commanding King William's army were to use their best endeavours to get the attainders of any of them attainted repealed. … In the copy of the rough draft engrossed for signature the following words, 'and all such as are under their protection in the said counties,' which immediately followed the enumeration of the several counties in the second article, were omitted. This omission, whether the result of design or accident, was, however, rectified by King William when confirming the treaty in February, 1692. The confirming instrument stated that the words had been casually omitted; that the omission was not discovered till the articles were signed, but was taken notice of before the town was surrendered; and that the Lords Justices or General Ginkel, or one of them, had promised that the clause should be made good, since it was within the intention of the capitulation, and had been inserted in the rough draft. William then for himself did 'ratify and confirm the said omitted words.' The colonists, or at all events the 'new interests'—that is, those who shared or expected to share in the confiscations—were indignant at the concessions made to the native race."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1 of Two Centuries of Irish History, chapter 1.

"The advantages secured to Catholics by the Treaty of Limerick were moderate. But when the flower of the Irish army had withdrawn to France, and the remnant could be hanged without ceremony, they began to look inordinate. The parliament of Cromwellian settlers and Government officials in Dublin having excluded Catholic members, by requiring from them an oath of abjuration, in direct infringement of one of the articles of surrender, were free to proceed at their discretion. They first passed a stringent statute depriving Catholics of arms, and another ordering all 'Popish archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, deans, Jesuits, monks, friars, and regulars of whatever condition to depart from the kingdom on pain of transportation,' and then proceeded to consider the treaty. They … resolved by a decisive majority not to keep the conditions affecting the Catholics. William … struggled for a time to preserve his honour; but it is not convenient for a new king to be in conflict with his friends, and after a time he gave way. … In Ireland the Treaty of Limerick can never be forgotten; it is one of the title deeds of the Irish race to their inheritance in their native land. For more than a century its sordid and shameless violation was as common a reproach to England on the Continent as the partition of Poland has been a reproach to Russia in our own day."

Sir C. G. Duffy, Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition, pages 155-156 (or book 1, chapter 4, of "Young Ireland").

"The Protestant rancour of parliament was more powerful than the good will of the prince. The most vital articles of the capitulation were ignored, especially in all cases where the Catholic religion and the liberties granted to its professors were concerned; and 4,000 Irish were denounced as traitors and rebels,—by which declamation a fresh confiscation of 1,060,000 acres was immediately effected. … It has been calculated that in 1692 the Irish Catholics, who quadrupled the Protestants in number, owned only one-eleventh of the soil, and that the most wretched and unproductive portion."

A. Perraud, Ireland under English Rule, introduction, section 8.

IRELAND: A. D. 1691-1782. The peace of despair. A century of national death. Oppression of the Penal Laws.

"By the military treaty [of Limerick], those of Sarsfield's soldiers who would were suffered to follow him to France; and 10,000 men, the whole of his force, chose exile rather than life in a land where all hope of national freedom was lost. When the wild cry of the women who stood watching their departure was hushed, the silence of death settled down upon Ireland. For a hundred years the country remained at peace, but the peace was a peace of despair. The most terrible legal tyranny under which a nation has ever groaned avenged the rising under Tyrconnell. The conquered people, in Swift's bitter words of contempt, became 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' to their conquerors; but till the very eve of the French Revolution Ireland ceased to be a source of terror and anxiety to England."

J. H. Green, Short History of England, chapter 9, section 8.

"In Ireland there was peace. The domination of the colonists was absolute. The native population was tranquil with the ghastly tranquillity of exhaustion and of despair. There were indeed outrages, robberies, fireraisings, assassinations. But more than a century passed away without one general insurrection. During that century, two rebellions were raised in Great Britain by the adherents of the House of Stuart. But neither when the elder Pretender was crowned at Scone, nor when the younger held his court at Holyrood, was the standard of that House set up in Connaught or Munster. {1775} In 1745, indeed, when the Highlanders were marching towards London, the Roman Catholics of Ireland were so quiet that the Lord Lieutenant could, without the smallest risk, send several regiments across Saint George's Channel to reinforce the army of the Duke of Cumberland. Nor was this submission the effect of content, but of mere stupefaction and brokenness of heart. The iron had entered into the soul. The memory of past defeats, the habit of daily enduring insult and oppression, had cowed the spirits of the unhappy nation. There were indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition; but they were to be found everywhere except in Ireland,—at Versailles and at Saint lldefonso, in the armies of Frederic and in the armies of Maria Theresa. One exile became a Marshal of France. Another became Prime Minister of Spain. If he had staid in his native land he would have been regarded as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who had signed the Declaration against Transubstantiation. … Scattered over all Europe were to be found brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish Knights … who, if they had remained in the house of bondage, could not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of petty corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race, having been withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive. A rising of the Irishry against the Englishry was no more to be apprehended than a rising of the women and children against the men."

_Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 17. _

"An act of 1695 'deprived the Roman Catholics of the means of educating their children, either at home or abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians either of their own or of any other person's children.' Another Act of the same year deprived the Roman Catholics of the right of bearing arms, or of keeping any horse which was worth more than £5. An Act of 1697 ordered the expulsion of every Roman Catholic priest from Ireland. The Parliament, which had imposed these disabilities on Irish Roman Catholics, proceeded to confirm the Articles of Limerick, or 'so much of them as may consist with the safety and welfare of your Majesty's subjects of this kingdom,' and by a gross act of injustice omitted the whole of the first of these articles, and the important paragraph in the second article which had been accidentally omitted from the original copy of the Treaty, and subsequently restored to it by letters patent under the Great Seal. Reasonable men may differ on the propriety or impropriety of the conditions on which the surrender of Limerick was secured; but it is difficult to read the story of their repudiation without a deep sense of shame. Three other acts relating to the Roman Catholics were passed during the reign of William. An Act of 1697 forbade the intermarriage of Protestants and Papists. An Act of 1698 prevented Papists from being solicitors. Another Act of the same year stopped their employment as gamekeepers. William died; and the breach of faith which he had countenanced was forgotten amidst the pressure of the legislation which disgraced the reign of his successor. Two Acts passed in this reign, for preventing the further growth of Popery, were styled by Burke the 'ferocious Acts of Anne.' By the first of these Acts a Papist having a Protestant son was debarred from selling, mortgaging, or devising any portion of his estate: however young the son might be, he was to be taken from his father's hands and confided to the care of a Protestant relation. The estate of a Papist who had no Protestant heir was to be divided equally among his sons. The Papist was declared incapable of purchasing real estate or of taking land on lease for more than thirty-one years. A Papist was declared incapable of inheriting real estate from a Protestant. He was disqualified from holding any office, civil or military. With twenty exceptions, a Papist was forbidden to reside in Limerick or Galway. Advowsons the property of Papists were vested in the Crown. Religious intolerance had now apparently done its uttermost. … But the laws failed. Their severity insured their failure. … The first of the ferocious Acts of Anne was almost openly disregarded. … Its failure only induced the intolerant advisers of Anne to supplement it with harsher legislation. The Act of 1704 had deprived the Papist of the guardianship of his apostate child. An Act of 1709 empowered the Court of Chancery to oblige the Papist to discover his estate, and authorized the Court to make an order for the maintenance of the apostate child out of the proceeds of it. The Act of 1704 had made it illegal for a Papist to take lands on lease; the Act of 1709 disabled him from receiving a life annuity. An Act of 1704 had compelled the registry of priests. The Act of 1709 forbade their officiating in any parish except that in which they were registered. These, however, were the least reprehensible features in the Act of 1709. Its worst features were the encouragement which it gave to the meaner vices of human nature. The wife of a Papist, if she became a Protestant, was to receive a jointure out of her husband's estate. A Popish priest abandoning his religion was to receive an annuity of £30 a year. Rewards were to be paid for 'discovering' Popish prelates, priests, and schoolmasters. Two justices might compel any Papist to state on oath where and when he had heard mass, who had officiated at it, and who had been present at it. Encouragement was thus given to informers; bribes were thus held out to apostates; and Parliament trusted to the combined effects of bribery and intimidation to stamp out the last remnant of Popery. The penal code, however, was not yet complete. The armoury of intolerance was not yet exhausted. An Act of George I. disabled Papists from serving in the Irish militia, but compelled them to find Protestant substitutes; to pay double towards the support of the militia, and rendered their horses liable to seizure for militia purposes. By Acts of George II. the Papists were disfranchised; barristers or solicitors marrying Papists were deemed Papists; all marriages between Protestants and Papists were annulled; and Popish priests celebrating any illegal marriages were condemned to be hanged. By an Act of George III. Papists refusing to deliver up or declare their arms were liable to be placed in the pillory or to be whipped, as the Court should think proper. Such were the laws which the intolerance of a minority imposed on the majority of their fellow-subjects. Utterly unjust, they had not even the bare merit of success. … {1776} 'The great body of the people,' wrote Arthur Young [1780], 'stripped of their all, were more enraged than converted: they adhered to the persuasion of their forefathers with the steadiest and the most determined zeal; while the priests, actuated by the spirit of a thousand inducements, made proselytes among the common Protestants in defiance of every danger. … Those laws have crushed all the industry and wrested most of the property from the Catholics; but the religion triumphs; it is thought to increase.'"

S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 8 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: _R. R. Madden, Historical Notice of Penal Laws against Roman Catholics._

_A. Perraud, Ireland under English Rule: introduction._

_E. Burke, Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws (Works, volume 4)._

_E. Burke, Fragments of a Tract on the Popery Laws (Works, volume 6)._

A. J. Thébaud, The Irish Race, chapter 12.

IRELAND: A. D. 1710. Colonization of Palatines in Munster.

See PALATINES.

IRELAND: A. D. 1722-1724. Wood's halfpence. The Drapier's Letters.

"A patent had been given [1722, by the Walpole administration] to a certain William Wood for supplying Ireland with a copper coinage. Many complaints had been made, and in September, 1723, addresses were voted by the Irish Houses of Parliament, declaring that the patent had been obtained by clandestine and false representations; that it was mischievous to the country; and that Wood had been guilty of frauds in his coinage. They were pacified by vague promises; but Walpole went on with the scheme on the strength of a favourable report of a committee of the Privy Council; and the excitement was already serious when (in 1724) Swift published the Drapier's Letters, which give him his chief title to eminence as a patriotic agitator. Swift either shared or took advantage of the general belief that the mysteries of the currency are unfathomable to the human intelligence. … There is, however, no real mystery about the halfpence. The small coins which do not form part of the legal-tender may be considered primarily as counters. A penny is a penny, so long as twelve are change for a shilling. It is not in the least necessary for this purpose that the copper contained in the twelve penny pieces should be worth or nearly worth a shilling. … At the present day bronze worth only twopence is coined into twelve penny pieces. … The effect of Wood's patent was that a mass of copper worth about £60,000 became worth £100,800 in the shape of halfpenny pieces. There was, therefore, a balance of about £40,000, to pay for the expenses of coinage. It would have been waste to get rid of this by putting more copper in the coins; but if so large a profit arose from the transaction, it would go to somebody. At the present day it would be brought into the national treasury. This was not the way in which business was done in Ireland. Wood was to pay £1,000 a year for fourteen years to the Crown. But £14,000 still leaves a large margin for profit. 'What was to become of it. According to the admiring biographer of Sir R. Walpole the patent had been originally given by Lord Sunderland to the Duchess of Kendal, a lady whom the King delighted to honour. … It was right and proper that a profit should be made on the transaction, but shameful that it should be divided between the King's mistress and William Wood, and that the bargain should be struck without consulting the Irish representatives, and maintained in, spite of their protests. The Duchess of Kendal was to be allowed to take a share of the wretched halfpence in the pocket of every Irish beggar. A more disgraceful transaction could hardly be imagined, or one more calculated to justify Swift's view of the selfishness and corruption of the English rulers. Swift saw his chance and went to work in characteristic fashion, with unscrupulous audacity of statement, guided by the keenest strategical instinct. … The patent was surrendered, and Swift might congratulate himself upon a complete victory. … The Irish succeeded in rejecting a real benefit at the cost of paying Wood the profit which he would have made, had he been allowed to confer it."

L. Stephen, Swift (English Men of Letters), chapter 7.

ALSO IN: Dean Swift, Works (Scott's edition), volume 6.

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapter 13 (volume 2).

J. McCarthy, History of the Four Georges, chapter 15.

IRELAND: A. D. 1760-1798. Whiteboys. Oak Boys. Steel Boys. Peep of Day Boys. Catholic Defenders.

"The peasantry continued to regard the land as their own; and with the general faith that wrong cannot last forever, they waited for the time when they would once more have possession of it. 'The lineal descendants of the old families,' wrote Arthur Young in 1774, 'are now to be found all over the kingdom, working as cottiers on the lands which were once their own.' … With the growth of what was called civilization, absenteeism, the worst disorder of the country, had increased. … The rise in prices, the demand for salt beef and salt butter for exportation and for the fleets, were revolutionizing the agriculture of Munster. The great limestone pastures of Limerick and Tipperary, the fertile meadow universally, was falling into the hands of capitalist graziers, in whose favour the landlords, or the landlords' agents, were evicting the smaller tenants. … To the peasantry these men were a curse. Common lands, where their own cows had been fed, were inclosed and taken from them. The change from tillage to grazing destroyed their employment. Their sole subsistence was from their potato gardens, the rents of which were heavily raised, while, by a curious mockery of justice, the grass lands were exempt from tithe, and the burden of maintaining the rectors and vicars of the Established Church was cast exclusively on the Catholic poor. Among a people who are suffering under a common wrong there is a sympathy of resentment which links them together without visible or discoverable bond. In the spring of 1760 Tipperary was suddenly overrun by bands of midnight marauders. Who they were was a mystery. Rumours reached England of insurgent regiments drilling in the moonlight; of French officers observed passing and repassing the Channel; but no French officer could be detected in Munster. The most rigid search discovered no stands of arms, such as soldiers use or could use. This only was certain, that white figures were seen in vast numbers, like moving clouds, flitting silently at night over field and moor, leaving behind them the tracks of where they had passed in levelled fences and houghed and moaning cattle; where the owners were specially hateful, in blazing homesteads, and the inmates' bodies blackening in the ashes. Arrests were generally useless. The country was sworn to secrecy. {1777} Through the entire central plains of Ireland the people were bound by the most solemn oaths never to reveal the name of a confederate, or give evidence in a court of justice. … Thus it was long uncertain how the movement originated, who were its leaders, and whether there was one or many. Letters signed by Captain Dwyer or Joanna Meskell were left at the doors of obnoxious persons, ordering lands to be abandoned under penalties. If the commands were uncomplied with, the penalties were inexorably inflicted. … Torture usually being preferred to murder, male offenders against the Whiteboys were houghed like their cattle, or their tongues were torn out by the roots."

J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2).

The Whiteboys took their name from the practice of wearing a white shirt drawn over their other clothing, when they were out upon their nocturnal expeditions. "The Oak Boy movement took place about 1761-2. … The injustice which led to the formation of the 'Oak Boys,' one of the best known of the colonial societies, was duty work on roads. Every householder was bound to give six days' labour in making and repairing the public roads; and if he had a horse, six days' labour of his horse. It was complained that this duty work was only levied on the poor, and that they were compelled to work on private job roads, and even upon what were the avenues and farm roads of the gentry. The name Oak Boys, or Hearts of Oak Boys, was derived from the members in their raids wearing an oak branch in their hats. The organization spread rapidly over the greater part of Ulster. Although the grievances were common to Protestant and Catholic workmen, and there was nothing religious in the objects or constitution of the Oak Boys, the society was an exclusively Protestant body, owing to the total absence at the period of any association between the Protestants and Catholics. … The Steel Boys, or Hearts of Steel Boys, followed the Oak Boys [about 1771]. They also were exclusively Protestant; the origin of this organization was the extravagance and profligacy of a bad landlord, the representative of the great land thief, Chichester, of the Plantation of King James I. … The Oak Boys and Steel Boys did not last long."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1 of Two Centuries of Irish History, chapter 5, with foot-note.

The landlord here referred to, as having provoked the organization of the Steel Boys, was the Marquis of Donegal. "Many of his Antrim leases having fallen in simultaneously, he demanded £100,000 in fines for the renewal of them. The tenants, all Protestants, offered the interest of the money in addition to the rent.' It could not be. Speculative Belfast capitalists paid the fine and took the lands over the heads of the tenants, to sublet. … The most substantial of the expelled tenantry gathered their effects together and sailed to join their countrymen in the New World. … Between those who were too poor to emigrate, and the Catholics who were in possession of their homes, there grew a protracted feud, which took form at last in the conspiracy of the Peep of Day Boys; in the fierce and savage expulsion of the intruders, who were bidden to go to hell or Connaught; and in the counter-organization of the Catholic Defenders, which spread over the whole island, and made the army of insurrection in 1798."

J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 5, chapter 2, section 6 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1778-1794. Concession of Legislative independence by the so-called Constitution of 1782.

"England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity. Over in the American colonies Mr. Washington and his rebels were pressing hard upon the troops of King George. More than one garrison had been compelled to surrender, more than one general had given up his bright sword to a revolutionary leader. On the hither side of the Atlantic the American flag was scarcely less dreaded than at Yorktown and Saratoga. … Ireland, drained of troops, lay open to invasion. The terrible Paul Jones was drifting about the seas; descents upon Ireland were dreaded; if such descents had been made the island was practically defenceless. An alarmed Mayor of Belfast, appealing to the Government for military aid, was informed that no more serious and more formidable assistance could be rendered to the chief city of the North than might be given by half a troop of dismounted cavalry and half a troop of invalids. If the French-American enemy would consent to be scared by such a muster, well and good; if not Belfast, and for the matter of that, all Ireland, must look to itself. Thereupon Ireland, very promptly and decisively, did look to itself. A Militia Act was passed empowering the formation of volunteer corps—consisting, of course, solely of Protestants—for the defence of the island. A fever of military enthusiasm swept over the country; north and south and east and west men caught up arms, nominally to resist the French, really, though they knew it not, to effect one of the greatest constitutional revolutions in history. Before a startled Government could realise what was occurring 60,000 men were under arms. For the first time since the surrender of Limerick there was an armed force in Ireland able and willing to support a national cause. Suddenly, almost in the twinkling of an eye, Ireland found herself for the first time for generations in the possession of a well-armed, well-disciplined, and well-generalled military force. The armament that was organised to insure the safety of England was destined to achieve the liberties of Ireland. … All talk of organisation to resist foreign invasion was silenced; in its place the voice of the nation was heard loudly calling for the redress of its domestic grievances. Their leader was Charlemont; Grattan and Flood were their principal colonels."

J. H. McCarthy, Ireland Since the Union, chapter 3.

"When the Parliament met, Grattan moved as an amendment to the Address, 'that it was by free export and import only that the Nation was to be saved from impending ruin'; and a corps of Volunteers, commanded by the Duke of Leinster, lined Dame Street as the Speaker and the Commons walked in procession to the Castle. Another demonstration of Volunteers in College Green excited Dublin a little later on, and (15th November, 1779) a riotous mob clamoured for Free Trade at the very doors of the House. … These events resulted in immediate success. Lord North proposed in the British Parliament three articles of relief to Irish trade—

(1) to allow free export of wool, woollens, and wool-flocks; (2) to allow a free export of glass; (3) to allow, under certain conditions, a free trade to all the British colonies.

{1778}

When the news reached Ireland excessive joy prevailed. … But this was only a beginning. Poynings' Law, and the 6th of George I., required to be swept away too, so that Ireland might enjoy not only Free Trade, but also Self-government. Grattan moved his two famous resolutions:—

1. That the King, with the consent of the Lords and Commons of Ireland, is alone competent to enact laws to bind Ireland.

2. That Great Britain and Ireland are inseparably united under one Sovereign.

In supporting these resolutions, Grattan cited England's dealings with America, to show what Ireland too might effect by claiming her just rights. … The Earl of Carlisle became Viceroy in 1781, with Mr. Eden as Secretary. Viewing England's embroilment in war—in America, in India, with France, and Spain, and Holland—the Irish Volunteers, whose numbers had swelled, Grattan said, to well-nigh 100,000 men, held meetings and reviews in various parts of the country. … The 16th of April, 1782, was a memorable day for Dublin. On that date, in a city thronged with Volunteers, with bands playing, and banners blazoned with gilded harps fluttering in the wind, Grattan, in an amendment to the Address which was always presented to the King at the opening of Parliament, moved, 'That Ireland is a distinct Kingdom, with a separate Parliament, and that this Parliament alone has a right to make laws for her.' On the 17th of May, the two Secretaries of State, Lord Shelburne in the Lords, and Charles James Fox in the Commons of Great Britain—proposed the repeal of the 6th of George I., a statute which declared the right of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland. The English Government frankly and fully acceded to the demands of Ireland. Four points were granted—

(1) an Independent Irish Parliament; (2) the abrogation of Poynings' Law, empowering the English Privy Council to alter Irish Bills; (3) the introduction of a Biennial Mutiny Bill; (4) the abolition of the right of appeal to England from the Irish law courts.

These concessions were announced to the Irish Parliament at once: in their joy the Irish Houses voted £100,000, and 20,000 men to the navy of Great Britain. Ireland had at last achieved political freedom. Peace and prosperity seemed about to bless the land. … That there might be no misunderstanding as to the deliberate intention of the English Parliament in granting Irish legislative independence, Lord Shelburne had passed an Act of Renunciation, declaring that 'the Right claimed by the people of Ireland, to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the Parliament of that Kingdom, is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable.' During the same session (1782), the two Catholic Relief Bills proposed by Luke Gardiner, who afterwards became Viscount Mountjoy, were passed. These measures gave Catholics the right to buy freeholds, to teach schools, and to educate their children as they pleased. The Habeas Corpus Act was now extended to Ireland; and marriages by presbyterian ministers were made legal."

W. F. Collier, History of Ireland for Schools, period 5, chapter 3.

"Had the Irish demanded a complete separation it would have been yielded without resistance. It would have been better had it been. The two countries would have immediately joined on terms of equality and of mutual confidence and respect. But the more the English Cabinet gave way the less were the Irish disposed to press their advantage. A feeling of warm attachment to England rapidly took the place of distrust. There never existed in Ireland so sincere and friendly a spirit of spontaneous union with England as at this moment, when the formal bond of union was almost wholly dissolved. From the moment when England made a formal surrender of her claim to govern Ireland a series of inroads commenced on the various interests supposed to be left to their own free development by that surrender. Ireland had not, like England, a body of Cabinet Ministers responsible to her Parliament. The Lord Lieutenant and the Irish Secretary held their offices and received their instructions from the English minister. There was greater need than ever before for a bribed majority in the Irish Commons, and the machinery for securing and managing it remained intact."

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 4, chapter 2, section 2 (volume 2).

"The history of these memorable eighteen years [1782-1800] has never been written, and yet these years are the … key to Irish political opinion in the 19th [century]. The Government which granted the constitution of 1782 began to conspire against it immediately. They had taken Poynings' Act away from the beginning of its proceedings, and they clapped it on to the end of its proceedings, as effectually as if the change had not been made. They developed in the Irish mind that distrust of all government which has made it so turbulent and so docile—turbulent to its administrators, docile to its popular leaders."

_J. E. Thorold Rogers, Ireland (A. Reid, editor), p. 25._

ALSO IN: _W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland: Henry Grattan._

_J. G. MacCarthy, Henry Grattan._

IRELAND: A. D. 1784. Peep-o'-Day Boys and Defenders.

"Disturbances … commenced in the north between two parties called Peep-o'-Day Boys and Defenders. They originated in 1784 among some country people, who appear to have been all Protestants or Presbyterians; but Catholics having sided with one of the parties, the quarrel quickly grew into a religious feud, and spread from the county of Armagh, where it commenced, to the neighbouring districts of Tyrone and Down. Both parties belonged to the humblest classes of the community. The Protestant party were well armed, and assembling in numbers, attacked the houses of Catholics under pretence of searching for arms; insulting their persons, and breaking their furniture. These wanton outrages were usually committed at an early hour in the morning, whence the name of Peep-o'-Day Boys; but the faction was also known as 'Protestant Boys,' and 'wreckers,' and ultimately merged in the Orange Society."

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, p. 722.

IRELAND: A. D. 1793. Passage of the Catholic Relief Bill.

"On February 4 (1793) Hobart [Chief Secretary] moved for leave to bring in his Catholic Relief Bill, and stated the nature of its provisions. It was of a kind which only a year before would have appeared utterly impossible, and which was in the most glaring opposition to all the doctrines which the Government and its partisans had of late been urging. … This great measure was before Parliament, with several intermissions, for rather more than five weeks. … {1779} The vast preponderance of speakers were in favour of relief to Catholics, though there were grave differences as to the degree, and speakers of the highest authority represented the genuine Protestant feeling of the country as being in its favour. … Few things in Irish parliamentary history are more remarkable than the facility with which this great measure was carried, though it was in all its aspects thoroughly debated. It passed its second reading in the House of Commons with only a single negative. It was committed with only three negatives, and in the critical divisions on its clauses the majorities were at least two to one. The qualification required to authorise a Catholic to bear arms was raised in committee on the motion of the Chancellor, and in addition to the oath of allegiance of 1774, a new oath was incorporated in the Bill, copied from one of the declarations of the Catholics, and abjuring certain tenets which had been ascribed to them, among others the assertion that the infallibility of the Pope was an article of their faith. For the rest the Bill became law almost exactly in the form in which it was originally designed. It swept away the few remaining disabilities relating to property which grew out of the penal code. It enabled Catholics to vote like Protestants for members of Parliament and magistrates in cities or boroughs; to become elected members of all corporations except Trinity College; to keep arms subject to some specified conditions; to hold all civil and military offices in the kingdom from which they were not specifically excluded; to hold the medical professorships on the foundation of Sir Patrick Dun; to take degrees and hold offices in any mixed college connected with the University of Dublin that might hereafter be founded. It also threw open to them the degrees of the University, enabling the King to alter its statutes to that effect. A long clause enumerated the prizes which were still withheld. Catholics might not sit in either House of Parliament; they were excluded from almost all Government and judicial positions; they could not be Privy Councillors, King's Counsel, Fellows of Trinity College, sheriffs or sub-sheriffs, or generals of the staff. Nearly every post of ambition was still reserved for Protestants, and the restrictions weighed most heavily on the Catholics who were most educated and most able. In the House of Lords as in the House of Commons the Bill passed with little open opposition, but a protest, signed among other peers by Charlemont, was drawn up against it. … The Catholic Relief Bill received the royal assent in April, 1793, and in the same month the Catholic Convention dissolved itself. Before doing so it passed a resolution recommending the Catholics 'to co-operate in all loyal and constitutional means' to obtain parliamentary reform. … The Catholic prelates in their pastorals expressed their gratitude for the Relief Bill. The United Irishmen on their side issued a proclamation warmly congratulating the Catholics on the measure for their relief, but also urging in passionate strains that parliamentary reform was the first of needs."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 25 (volume 6).

IRELAND: A. D. 1793-1798. Organization of the United Irishmen. Attempted French invasions. The rising of '98.

"Nothing could be less sinister than the original aims and methods of the Society of United Irishmen, which was conceived in the idea of uniting Catholics and Protestants 'in pursuit of the same object—a repeal of the penal laws, and a (parliamentary) reform including in itself an extension of the right of suffrage.' This union was founded at Belfast, in 1791, by Theobald Wolfe Tone, a young barrister of English descent, and, like the majority of the United Irishmen, a Protestant. Some months later a Dublin branch was founded, the chairman being the hon. Simon Butler, a Protestant gentleman of high character, and the secretary a tradesman named James Napper Tandy. The society grew rapidly, and branches were formed throughout Ulster and Leinster. The religious strife of the Orange boys and Defenders was a great trouble to the United men, who felt that these creed animosities among Irishmen were more ruinous to the national cause than any corruption of parliament or coercion of government could possibly be. Ireland, united, would be quite capable of fighting her own battles, but these party factions rendered her contemptible and weak. The society accordingly set itself the impossible task of drawing together the Defenders and the Orange men. Catholic emancipation—one of the great objects of the union—naturally appealed very differently to the rival parties: it was the great wish of the Defenders, the chief dread of the Orangemen. Both factions were composed of the poorest and most ignorant peasantry in Ireland, men whose political views did not soar above the idea that 'something should be done for old Ireland.' The United Irishmen devoted themselves to the regeneration of both parties, but the Orangemen would have none of them, and the Protestant United men found themselves drifting into partnership with the Catholic Defenders. To gain influence with this party, Tandy took the Defenders' oath. He was informed against; and, as to take an illegal oath was then a capital offence in Ireland, he had to fly for his life to America. This adventure made Tandy the hero of the Defenders, who now joined the union in great numbers; but the whole business brought the society into disrepute, and connected it with the Defenders, who, like the Orange boys, were merely a party of outrage. … One night in the May of '94 a government raid was made upon the premises of the union. The officers of the society were arrested, their papers seized, the type of their newspaper destroyed, and the United Irish Society was proclaimed as an illegal organisation. Towards the close of this year all need for a reform society seemed to have passed. Fitzwilliam was made viceroy, and emancipation and reform seemed assured. His sudden recall, the reversal of his appointments, the rejection of Grattan's Reform Bill, and the renewal of the old coercive system, convinced the United men of the powerlessness of peaceful agitation to check the growth of the system of government by corruption. They accordingly reorganised the union, but as a secret society, and with the avowed aim of separating Ireland from the British empire. The Fitzwilliam affair had greatly strengthened the union, which was joined by many men of high birth and position, among them lord Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the duke of Leinster, and Arthur O'Connor, nephew to lord Longueville, both of whom had been members of the House of Commons. … But the ablest man of the party was Thomas Addis Emmet, a barrister, and the elder brother of Robert Emmet. {1780} The society gradually swelled to the number of 5,000 members, but throughout its existence it was perfectly riddled with spies and informers, by whom government was supplied with a thorough knowledge of its doings. It became known to Pitt that the French government had sent an Englishman, named Jackson, as an emissary to Ireland. Jackson was convicted of treason, and hanged, and Wolfe Tone was sufficiently implicated in his guilt … to find it prudent to fly to America. But before leaving Ireland he arranged with the directors of the union to go from America to France, and to try to persuade the French government to assist Ireland in a struggle for separation. While Tone was taking his circuitous route to Paris, government, to meet the military development of the society, placed Ulster and Leinster under a stringent Insurrection Act; torture was employed to wring confession from suspected persons, and the Protestant militia and yeomanry were drafted at free quarters on the wretched Catholic peasantry. The barbarity of the soldiers lashed the people of the northern provinces into a state of fury. … In the meantime the indomitable Tone—unknown, without credentials, without influence, and ignorant of the French language—had persuaded the French government to lend him a fleet, 10,000 men, and 40,000 stand of arms, which armament left Brest for Bantry Bay on the 16th December, 1796. Ireland was now in the same position as England had been when William of Orange had appeared outside Torbay. Injustice, corruption, and oppression had in both cases goaded the people into rebellion. A calm sea and a fierce gale made the difference between the English patriot of 1688 and the Irish traitor of 1796. Had the sea been calm in the Christmas week of '96, nothing could have stopped the French from marching on to Dublin, but just as the ships put in to Bantry Bay, so wild a wind sprang up that they were driven out to sea, and blown and buffetted about. For a month they tossed about within sight of land, but the storm did not subside, and, all chance of landing seeming as far off as ever, they put back into the French port."

Wm. S. Gregg, Irish History for English Readers, chapter 23.

"After the failure of Hoche's expedition, another great armament was fitted out in the Texel, where it long lay ready to come forth, while the English fleet, the only safeguard of our coasts, was crippled by the mutiny at the Nore. But the wind once more fought for England, and the Batavian fleet came out at last only to be destroyed at Camperdown. Tone was personally engaged in both expeditions, and his lively Diary, the image of his character, gives us vivid accounts of both. The third effort of the French Government was feeble, and ended in the futile landing of a small force under Humbert. … In the last expedition Tone himself was taken prisoner, and, having been condemned to death, committed suicide in prison. … It was well for Ireland, as well as for England, that Tone failed in his enterprise. Had he succeeded, his country would for a time have been treated as Switzerland and the Batavian Republic were treated by their French regenerators, and, in the end, it would have been surely reconquered and punished by the power which was mistress of the sea. … But now that all is over, we can afford to say that Tone gallantly ventured his life in what naturally appeared to him, and would to a high-spirited Englishman under the same circumstances have appeared, a good cause. One of his race had but too much reason then to 'hate the very name of England,' and to look forward to the burning of her cities with feelings in which pity struggled with revenge for mastery, but revenge prevailed. … From the Republicans the disturbance spread, as in 1641, to that mass of blind disaffection and hatred, national, social, agrarian, and religious, which was always smouldering among the Catholic peasantry. With these sufferers the political theories of the French Revolutionists had no influence; they looked to French invasion, as well as to domestic insurrection, merely as a deliverance from the oppression under which they groaned. … The leading Roman Catholics, both clerical and lay, were on the side of the government. The mass of the Catholic priesthood were well inclined to take the same side, They could have no sympathy with an Atheist Republic, red with the blood of priests, as well as with the blood of a son of St. Louis. If some of the order were concerned in the movement, it was as demagogues, sympathizing with their peasant brethren, not as priests. Yet the Protestants insisted on treating the Catholic clergy as rebels by nature. They had assuredly done their best to make them so. … No sooner did the Catholic peasantry begin to move and organize themselves than the Protestant gentry and yeomanry as one man became Cromwellians again. Then commenced a Reign of Terror scarcely less savage than that of the Jacobins, against whom Europe was in arms, as a hideous and portentous brood of evil, the scourge and horror of the whole human race. The suspected conspirators were intimidated, and confessions, or pretended confessions, were extorted by loosing upon the homes of the peasantry the license and barbarity of an irregular soldiery more cruel than a regular invader. Flogging, half-hanging, pitch-capping, picketing, went on over a large district, and the most barbarous scourgings, without trial, were inflicted in the Riding-house at Dublin, in the very seat of government and justice. This was styled, 'exerting a vigour beyond the law;' and to become the object of such vigour, it was enough, as under Robespierre, to be suspected of being suspect. No one has yet fairly undertaken the revolting but salutary task of writing a faithful and impartial history of that period; but from the accounts we have, it appears not unlikely that the peasantry, though undoubtedly in a disturbed state, and to a great extent secretly organized, might have been kept quiet by measures of lenity and firmness; and that they were gratuitously scourged and tortured into open rebellion. When they did rebel, they shewed, as they had shewn in 1641, what the galley-slave is when, having long toiled under the lash, he contrives in a storm to slip his chains and become master of the vessel. The atrocities of Wexford and Vinegar-Hill rivalled the atrocities of Portnadown. Nor when the rebellion was vanquished did the victors fail to renew the famous feats of Sir Charles Coote and of the regiment of Cole. We now possess terrible and overwhelming evidence of their sanguinary ferocity in the correspondence of Lord Cornwallis, who was certainly no friend to rebels, having fought against them in America, but who was a man of sense and heart, most wisely sent over to quench the insurrection, and pacify the country. … {1781} The murders and other atrocities committed by the Jacobins were more numerous than those committed by the Orangemen, and as the victims were of higher rank they excited more indignation and pity; but in the use of torture the Orangemen seem to have reached a pitch of fiendish cruelty which was scarcely attained by the Jacobins. … The Jacobin party was almost entirely composed of men taken from the lowest of the people, whereas among the Irish terrorists were found men of high social position and good education."

Goldwin Smith, Irish History and Irish Character, pages 166-175.

ALSO IN: _R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times._

_Theobald Wolfe Tone, Memoirs._

Marquis Cornwallis, Correspondence, chapter 19 (volume 2).

A. Griffiths, French Revolutionary Generals, chapter 16.

Viscount Castlereagh, Memoirs and Correspondence, volume 1.

_W. H. Maxwell, History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798._

IRELAND: A. D. 1795-1796. Formation of the Orange Society. Battle of the Diamond. Persecution of Catholics by Protestant mobs.

"The year 1795 is very memorable in Irish history, as the year of the formation of the Orange Society, and the beginning of the most serious disturbances in the county of Armagh. … The old popular feud between the lower ranks of Papists and Presbyterians in the northern counties is easy to understand, and it is not less easy to see how the recent course of Irish politics had increased it. A class which had enjoyed and gloried in uncontested ascendency, found this ascendency passing from its hands. A class which had formerly been in subjection, was elated by new privileges, and looked forward to a complete abolition of political disabilities. Catholic and Protestant tenants came into a new competition, and the demeanour of Catholics towards Protestants was sensibly changed. There were boasts in taverns and at fairs, that the Protestants would speedily be swept away from the land and the descendants of the old proprietors restored, and it was soon known that Catholics all over the country were forming themselves into committees or societies, and were electing representatives for a great Catholic convention at Dublin. The riots and outrages of the Peep of Day Boys and Defenders had embittered the feeling on both sides. … Members of one or other creed were attacked and insulted as they went to their places of worship. There were fights on the high roads, at fairs, wakes, markets, and country sports, and there were occasionally crimes of a much deeper dye. … In September 1795 riots broke out in this county [Armagh], which continued for some days, but at length the parish priest on the one side, and a gentleman named Atkinson on the other, succeeded in so far appeasing the quarrel that the combatants formally agreed to a truce, and were about to retire to their homes, when a new party of Defenders, who had marched from the adjoining counties to the assistance of their brethren, appeared upon the scene, and on September 21 they attacked the Protestants at a place called the Diamond. The Catholics on this occasion were certainly the aggressors, and they appear to have considerably outnumbered their antagonists, but the Protestants were better posted, better armed, and better organised. A serious conflict ensued, and the Catholics were completely defeated, leaving a large number—probably twenty or thirty—dead upon the field. It was on the evening of the day on which the battle of the Diamond was fought, that the Orange Society was formed. It was at first a league of mutual defence, binding its members to maintain the laws and the peace of the country, and also the Protestant Constitution. No Catholic was to be admitted into the society, and the members were bound by oath not to reveal its secrets. The doctrine of Fitzgibbon, that the King, by assenting to Catholic emancipation, would invalidate his title to the throne, was remarkably reflected in the oath of the Orangemen, which bound them to defend the King and his heirs, 'so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendency.' The society took its name from William of Orange, the conqueror of the Catholics, and it agreed to celebrate annually the battle of the Boyne. In this respect there was nothing in it particularly novel. Protestant associations, for the purpose of commemorating the events and maintaining the principles of the Revolution, had long been known. … A very different spirit, however, animated the early Orangemen. The upper classes at first generally held aloof from the society; for a considerable time it appears to have been almost confined to the Protestant peasantry of Ulster, and the title of Orangemen was probably assumed by numbers who had never joined the organisation, who were simply Peep of Day Boys taking a new name, and whose conduct was certainly not such as those who instituted the society had intended. A terrible persecution of the Catholics immediately followed. The animosities between the lower orders of the two religions, which had long been little bridled, burst out afresh, and after the battle of the Diamond, the Protestant rabble of the county of Armagh, and of part of the adjoining counties, determined by continuous outrages to drive the Catholics from the country. Their cabins were placarded, or, as it was termed, 'papered,' with the words, 'To hell or Connaught,' and if the occupants did not at once abandon them, they were attacked at night by an armed mob. The webs and looms of the poor Catholic weavers were cut and destroyed. Every article of furniture was shattered or burnt. The houses were often set on fire, and the inmates were driven homeless into the world. The rioters met with scarcely any resistance or disturbance. Twelve or fourteen houses were sometimes wrecked in a single night. Several Catholic chapels were burnt, and the persecution, which began in the county of Armagh, soon extended over a wide area in the counties of Tyrone, Down, Antrim, and Derry. … The outrages continued with little abatement through a great part of the following year. As might have been expected, there were widely differing estimates of the number of the victims. According to some reports, which were no doubt grossly exaggerated, no less than 1,400 families, or about 7,000 persons, were driven out of the county of Armagh alone. Another, and much more probable account, spoke of 700 families, while a certain party among the gentry did their utmost to minimise the persecutions."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 27 (volume 7).

{1782}

IRELAND: A. D. 1798-1800. The Legislative Union with Great Britain.

"No sooner had the rebellion been suppressed than the Government proposed, to the Parliament of each country, the union of Great Britain and Ireland under a common legislature. This was no new idea. It had frequently been in the minds of successive generations of statesmen on both sides of the Channel; but had not yet been seriously discussed with a view to immediate action. Nothing could have been more safely predicted than that Ireland must, sooner or later, follow the precedent of Scotland, and yield her pretensions to a separate legislation. The measures of 1782, which appeared to establish the legislative independence of Ireland, really proved the vanity of such a pretension. … On the assembling of the British Parliament at the commencement of the year [1799], the question of the Union was recommended by a message from the Crown; and the address, after some opposition, was carried without a division. Pitt, at this, the earliest stage, pronounced the decision at which the Government had arrived to be positive and irrevocable. … Lord Cornwallis [then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland] also expressed his conviction that union was the only measure which could preserve the country. … The day before the intended Union was signified by a royal message to the English Parliament, the Irish Houses assembled; and the Viceroy's speech, of course, contained a paragraph relative to the project. The House of Lords, completely under the control of the Castle, agreed to an address in conformity with the speech, after a short and languid debate, by a large majority; but the Commons were violently agitated. … An amendment to the address pledging the House to maintain the Union was lost by one vote, after the House had sat twenty-one hours; but, on the report, the amendment to omit the paragraph referring to the Union was carried by a majority of four. … When it was understood that the Government was in earnest … there was little difficulty in alarming a people among whom the machinery of political agitation had, for some years, been extensively organised. The bar of Dublin took the lead, and it at once became evident that the policy of the Government had effected a union among Irishmen far more formidable than that which all the efforts of sedition had been able to accomplish. The meeting of the bar included not merely men of different religious persuasions, but, what was of more importance in Ireland, men of different sides in politics. … However conclusive the argument in favour of Union may appear to Englishmen, it was difficult for an Irishman to regard the Union in any other view than as a measure to deprive his country of her independent constitution, and to extinguish her national existence. Mr. Foster, the Speaker, took this view. … Sir John Parnell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed the Speaker. Mr. Fitzgerald, the Prime Serjeant, a law officer of the Crown, was on the same side. Ponsonby, the leader of the Whigs, was vehement against the scheme; so was Grattan; so was Curran. Great efforts were made by the Government to quiet the Protestants, and to engage the Catholics to support the Union. These efforts were so far successful that most of the Orange lodges were persuaded to refrain from expressing any opinion on the subject. The Catholic hierarchy were conciliated by the promise of a provision for the clergy, and of an adjustment of the Tithe question. Hopes were held out, if promises were not actually made, to the Catholic community, that their civil disabilities would be removed. … If the Union was to be accomplished by constitutional means, it could be effected only by a vote of the Irish Parliament, concurring with a vote of the English Parliament; and if the Irish assembly were to pronounce an unbiased judgment on the question of its extinction, it is certain that a very small minority, possibly not a single vote, would be found to support the measure. … The vote on the address was followed, in a few days, by an address to the Crown, in which the Commons pledged themselves to maintain the constitution of 1782. The majority in favour of national independence had already increased from five to twenty. … The votes of the Irish Commons had disposed of the question for the current session; but preparations were immediately made for its future passage through the Irish Houses. The foremost men in Ireland … had first been tempted, but had indignantly refused every offer to betray the independence of their country. Another class of leading persons was then tried, and from these, for the most part, evasive answers were received. The minister understood the meaning of these dubious utterances. There was one mode of carrying the Union, and one mode only. Bribery of every kind must be employed without hesitation and without stint."

W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George. III., chapter 38 (volume 4).

"Lord Cornwallis had to work the system of 'negotiating and jobbing,' by promising an Irish Peerage, or a lift in that Peerage, or even an English Peerage, to a crowd of eager competitors for honours. The other specific for making converts was not yet in complete operation. Lord Castlereagh [the Irish Chief Secretary] had the plan in his portfolio:—borough proprietors to be compensated; … fifty barristers in parliament, who always considered a seat as the road to preferment, to be compensated; the purchasers of seats to be compensated; individuals connected either by residence or property with Dublin to be compensated. 'Lord Castlereagh considered that £1,500,000 would be required to effect all these compensations.' The sum actually paid to the borough-mongers alone was £1,260,000. Fifteen thousand pounds were allotted to each borough; and 'was apportioned amongst the various patrons.' … It had become a contest of bribery on both sides. There was an 'Opposition stock-purse,' as Lord Castlereagh describes the fund against which he was to struggle with the deeper purse at Whitehall. … During the administration of Lord Cornwallis, 29 Irish Peerages were created; of which seven only were unconnected with the question of Union. Six English Peerages were granted on account of Irish services; and there were 19 promotions in the Irish Peerage, earned by similar assistance." The question of Union was virtually decided in the Irish House of Commons on the 6th of February, 1800. Lord Castlereagh, on the previous day, had read a message from the Lord Lieutenant, communicating resolutions adopted by the parliament of Great Britain in the previous year. "The question was debated from four o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th to one o'clock in the afternoon of the 6th. {1783} During that time the streets of Dublin were the scene of a great riot, and the peace of the city was maintained only by troops of cavalry. … On the division of the 6th there was a majority of 43 in favour of the Union." It was not, however, until the 7th of June, that the final legislative enactment—the Union Bill—was passed in the Irish House of Commons. The first article provided "that the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland should, upon the 1st of January, 1801, be united into one kingdom, by the name of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom was to be represented in one and the same parliament. In the United Parliament there were to be 28 temporal Peers, elected for life by the Irish Peerage; and four spiritual Peers, taking their places in rotation. There were to be 100 members of the Lower House; each county returning two, as well as the cities of Dublin and Cork. The University returned one, and 31 boroughs each returned one. Of these boroughs 23 remained close boroughs till the Reform Bill of 1831. … The Churches of England and Ireland were to be united. The proportion of Revenue to be levied was fixed at fifteen for Great Britain and two for Ireland, for the succeeding twenty years. Countervailing duties upon imports to each country were fixed by a minute tariff, but some commercial restrictions were to be removed."

C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 7, chapter 21.

"If the Irish Parliament had consisted mainly, or to any appreciable extent, of men who were disloyal to the connection, and whose sympathies were on the side of rebellion or with the enemies of England, the English Ministers would, I think, have been amply justified in employing almost any means to abolish it. … But it cannot be too clearly understood or too emphatically stated, that the legislative Union was not an act of this nature. The Parliament which was abolished was a Parliament of the most unqualified loyalists; it had shown itself ready to make every sacrifice in its power for the maintenance of the Empire, and from the time when Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald passed beyond its walls, it probably did not contain a single man who was really disaffected. … It must be added, that it was becoming evident that the relation between the two countries established by the Constitution of 1782 could not have continued unchanged. … Even with the best dispositions, the Constitution of 1782 involved many and grave probabilities of difference. … Sooner or later the corrupt borough ascendency must have broken down, and it was a grave question what was to succeed it. … An enormous increase of disloyalty and religious animosity had taken place during the last years of the century, and it added immensely to the danger of the democratic Catholic suffrage, which the Act of 1793 had called into existence. This was the strongest argument for hurrying on the Union; but when all due weight is assigned to it, it does not appear to me to have justified the policy of Pitt."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 32 (volume 8).

ALSO IN: _T. D. Ingram, History of the Legislative Union._

R. Hassencamp, History of Ireland, chapter 14.

Marquis Cornwallis, Correspondence, chapters 19-21 (volumes 2-3).

Viscount Castlereagh, Memoirs and Correspondence, volumes 2-3.

IRELAND: A. D. 1801. Pitt's promise of Catholic Emancipation broken by the king.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1801-1806.

IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803. The Emmet insurrection.

"Lord Hardwicke succeeded Lord Cornwallis as viceroy in May [1801]; and for two years, so far as the British public knew, Ireland was undisturbed. The harvest of 1801 was abundant. The island was occupied by a military force of 125,000 men. Distant rumours of disturbances in Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford were faintly audible. Imports and exports increased. The debt increased likewise, but, as it was met by loans and uncontrolled by any public assembly, no one protested, and few were aware of the fact. Landlords and middlemen throve on high rents, and peasants as yet could live. … Early in 1803 the murmurs in the southwest became louder. Visions of a fixed price for potatoes began to shape themselves, and the invasion of 'strangers' ready to take land from which tenants had been ejected was resisted. The magistrates urged the viceroy to obtain and exercise the powers of the Insurrection Act; but the evil was not thought of sufficient magnitude, and their request was refused: Amidst the general calm, the insurrection of Robert Emmett in July broke like a bolt from the blue. A young republican visionary, whose brother had taken an active part in the rebellion, he had inspired a few score comrades with the quixotic hope of rekindling Irish nationality by setting up a factory of pikes in a back street of Dublin. On the eve of St. James's Day, Quigley, one of his associates, who had been sowing vague hopes among the villages of Kildare, brought a mixed crowd into Dublin. When the evening fell, a sky-rocket was fired. Emmett and his little band sallied from Marshalsea Lane into St. James's Street, and distributed pikes to all who would take them. The disorderly mob thus armed proceeded to the debtors' prison, which they attacked, killing the officer who defended it. Emmett urged them on to the Castle. They followed, in a confused column, utterly beyond his power to control. On their war they fell in with the carriage of the Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, dragged him out, and killed him. By this time a few handfuls of troops had been collected. In half an hour two subalterns, with fifty soldiers each, had dispersed the whole gathering. By ten o'clock all was over, with the loss of 20 soldiers and 50 insurgents. Emmett and Russell, another of the leaders who had undertaken the agitation of Down and Antrim, were shortly afterwards taken and executed; Quigley escaped. Such was the last reverberation of the rebellion of 1798, or rather of the revolutionary fervour that led the way to that rebellion, before it had been tainted with religious animosity. Emmett died as Shelley would have died, a martyr and an enthusiast; but he knew little of his countrymen's condition, little of their aspirations, nothing of their needs. He had no successors."

J. H. Bridges, Two Centuries of Irish History, part 3, chapter 2.

"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. … Emmet was determined to see her before he went. He placed his life upon the cast and lost it. … The White Terror which followed upon the failure of Emmet's rising was accompanied by almost all the horrors which marked the hours of repression after the rebellion of '98. … The old devil's dance of spies and informers went merrily forward; the prisons were choked with prisoners."

J. H. McCarthy, Ireland Since the Union, chapters 5-6.

ALSO IN: R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times, volume 3.

J. Wills, History of Ireland in the Lives of Irishmen, volume 6, pages 68-80.

{1784}

IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829. O'Connell and the agitation for Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Union. Catholic disabilities removed.

"There is much reason to believe that almost from the commencement of his career" Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish agitator, "formed one vast scheme of policy which he pursued through life with little deviation, and, it must be added, with little scruple. This scheme was to create and lead a public spirit among the Roman Catholics; to wrest emancipation by this means from the Government; to perpetuate the agitation created for that purpose till the Irish Parliament had been restored; to disendow the Established Church; and thus to open in Ireland a new era, with a separate and independent Parliament and perfect religious equality. It would be difficult to conceive a scheme of policy exhibiting more daring than this. The Roman Catholics had hitherto shown themselves absolutely incompetent to take any decisive part in politics. … O'Connell, however, perceived that it was possible to bring the whole mass of the people into the struggle, and to give them an almost unexampled momentum and unanimity by applying to politics a great power that lay dormant in Ireland—the power of the Catholic priesthood. To make the priests the rulers of the country, and himself the ruler of the priests, was his first great object. … There was a party supported by Keogh, the leader in '93, who recommended what was called 'a dignified silence'—in other words, a complete abstinence from petitioning and agitation. With this party O'Connell successfully grappled. His advice on every occasion was, 'Agitate, agitate, agitate!' and Keogh was so irritated by the defeat that he retired from the society." O'Connell's leadership of the movement for Catholic Emancipation became virtually established about the beginning of 1811. "He avowed himself repeatedly to be an agitator with an 'ulterior object,' and declared that that object was the repeal of the Union. 'Desiring, as I do, the repeal of the Union,' he said in one of his speeches, in 1813, 'I rejoice to see how our enemies promote that great object. … They delay the liberties of the Catholics, but they compensate us most amply because they advance the restoration of Ireland. By leaving one cause of agitation, they have created, and they will embody and give shape and form to, a public mind and a public spirit.' … Nothing can be more untrue than to represent the Repeal agitation as a mere afterthought designed to sustain his flagging popularity. Nor can it be said that the project was first started by him. The deep indignation that the Union had produced in Ireland was fermenting among all classes, and assuming the form, sometimes of a French party, sometimes of a social war, and sometimes of a constitutional agitation. … It would be tedious to follow into minute detail the difficulties and the mistakes that obstructed the Catholic movement, and were finally overcome by the energy or the tact of O'Connell. … Several times the movement was menaced by Government proclamations and prosecutions. Its great difficulty was to bring the public opinion of the whole body of the Roman Catholics actively and habitually into the question. … All preceding movements since the Revolution (except the passing excitement about Wood's halfpence) had been chiefly among the Protestants or among the higher order of the Catholics. The mass of the people had taken no real interest in politics, had felt no real pain at their disabilities, and were politically the willing slaves of their landlords. For the first time, under the influence of O'Connell, the great swell of a really democratic movement was felt. The simplest way of concentrating the new enthusiasm would have been by a system of delegates, but this had been rendered illegal by the Convention Act. On the other hand, the right of petitioning was one of the fundamental privileges of the constitution. By availing himself of this right O'Connell contrived, with the dexterity of a practised lawyer, to violate continually the spirit of the Convention Act, while keeping within the letter of the law. Proclamation after proclamation was launched against his society, but by continually changing its name and its form he generally succeeded in evading the prosecutions of the Government. These early societies, however, all sink into insignificance compared with that great Catholic Association which was formed in 1824. The avowed objects of this society were to promote religious education, to ascertain the numerical strength of the different religions, and to answer the charges against the Roman Catholics embodied in the hostile petitions. It also 'recommended' petitions (unconnected with the society) from every parish, and aggregate meetings in every county. The real object was to form a gigantic system of organisation, ramifying over the entire country, and directed in every parish by the priests, for the purpose of petitioning and in every other way agitating in favour of emancipation. The Catholic Rent [a system of small subscriptions—as small as a penny a month—collected from the poorest contributors, throughout Ireland] was instituted at this time, and it formed at once a powerful instrument of cohesion and a faithful barometer of the popular feeling. … The success of the Catholic Association became every week more striking. The rent rose with an extraordinary rapidity [from £350 a week in October to £700 a week in December, 1824]. The meetings in every county grew more and more enthusiastic, the triumph of priestly influence more and more certain. The Government made a feeble and abortive effort to arrest the storm by threatening both O'Connell and Sheil [Richard Lalor] with prosecution for certain passages in their speeches. … The formation of the Wellington Ministry [Wellington and Peel, 1828] seemed effectually to crush the present hopes of the Catholics, for the stubborn resolution of its leader was as well known as his Tory opinions. Yet this Ministry was destined to terminate the contest by establishing the principle of religious equality. … On the accession of the Wellington Ministry to power the Catholic Association passed a resolution to the effect that they would oppose with their whole energy any Irish member who consented to accept office under it. … {1785} An opportunity for carrying the resolution into effect soon occurred. Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, accepted the office of President of the Board of Trade, and was consequently obliged to go to his constituents for re-election." O'Connell entered the lists against him. "The excitement at this announcement rose at once to fever height. It extended over every part of Ireland, and penetrated every class of society. The whole mass of the Roman Catholics prepared to support him, and the vast system of organisation which he had framed acted effectually in every direction." For the first time, the landlords found that the voting of their tenants could not be controlled. Fitzgerald withdrew from the contest and O'Connell was elected. "Ireland was now on the very verge of revolution. The whole mass of the people had been organised like a regular army, and taught to act with the most perfect unanimity. … The Ministers, feeling further resistance to be hopeless, brought in the Emancipation Bill, confessedly because to withhold it would be to kindle a rebellion that would extend over the length and breadth of the land."

_W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland: O'Connell._

"Peel introduced the Relief Bill on the 5th March [1829]. The king had given to it a reluctant assent. At the last hour, the intrigues of Eldon and the Duke of Cumberland had so far influenced his weak and disingenuous mind that he withdrew his assent to his ministers' policy, on the pretence that he had not expected, and could not sanction, any modification of the Oath of Supremacy. He parted from his ministers with kisses and courtesy, and, for a few hours their resignation was in his hands. But with night his discretion waxed as his courage waned; his ministers were recalled, and their measure proceeded. In its main provisions it was thorough and far-reaching. It admitted the Roman Catholic to Parliament, and to all lay offices under the Crown, except those of Regent, Lord Chancellor, whether of England or of Ireland, and Lord Lieutenant. It repealed the oath of abjuration, it modified the oath of supremacy. … It approximated the Irish to the English county franchise by abolishing the forty-shilling freeholder, and raising the voters' qualifications to £10. All monasteries and institutions of Jesuits were suppressed; and Roman Catholic bishops were forbidden to assume titles of sees already held by bishops of the Church of Ireland. Municipal and other officials were forbidden to wear the insignia of their office at Roman Catholic ceremonies. Lastly, the new Oath of Supremacy was available only for persons thereafter to be elected to Parliament"—which nullified O'Connell's election at Clare. This petty stroke of malice is said to have been introduced in the bill for the gratification of the king. The vote in the Commons on the Bill was 353 against 180, and in the Lords 217 to 112. It received the Royal assent on the 13th of April.

J. A. Hamilton, Life of Daniel O'Connell, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: J. McCarthy, Sir Robert Peel, chapters 2-7.

W. J. Fitzpatrick, Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, with notices of his Life and Times, volume 1, chapters 1-5.

_W. J. Amherst, History of Catholic Emancipation._

W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, volume 1, chapters 16-18 and volume 2, chapters 1-2.

IRELAND: A. D. 1820-1826. Rise of the Ribbon Society.

"Throughout the half-century extending from 1820 to 1870, a secret oath-bound agrarian confederacy, known as the 'Ribbon Society,' was the constant affliction and recurring terror of the landed classes of Ireland. The Vehmgericht itself was not more dreaded. … It is assuredly strange—indeed, almost incredible—that although the existence of this organisation was, in a general way, as well and as widely known as the fact that Queen Victoria reigned, or that Daniel O'Connell was once a living man; although the story of its crimes has thrilled judge and jury, and parliamentary committees have filled ponderous blue-books with evidence of its proceedings, there is to this hour the widest conflict of assertion and conclusion as to what exactly were its real aims, its origin, structure, character, and purpose. … I long ago satisfied myself that the Ribbonism of one period was not the Ribbonism of another; that the version of its aims and character prevalent amongst its own members in one county or district differed widely from that existing elsewhere. In Ulster it professed to be a defensive or retaliatory league against Orangeism. In Munster it was at first a combination against tithe-proctors. In Connaught it was an organisation against rack-renting and evictions. In Leinster it often was mere trade-unionism. … The Ribbon Society seems to have been wholly confined to small farmers, cottiers, labourers, and, in the towns, petty shopkeepers, in whose houses the 'lodges' were held. … Although from the inception, or first appearance, of Ribbonism the Catholic clergy waged a determined war upon it … the society was exclusively Catholic. Under no circumstances would a Protestant be admitted to membership. … The name 'Ribbon Society' was not attached to it until about 1826. It was previously known as 'Liberty Men'; the 'Religious Liberty System'; the 'United Sons of Irish Freedom'; 'Sons of the Shamrock'; and by other names. … It has been said, and probably with some truth, that it has been too much the habit to attribute erroneously to the Ribbon organisation every atrocity committed in the country, every deed of blood apparently arising out of agrarian combination or conspiracy. … But vain is all pretence that the Ribbon Society did not become, whatever the original design or intention of its members may have been, a hideous organisation of outrage and murder. … There was a period when Ribbon outrages had, at all events, a conceivable provocation; but there came a time when they sickened the public conscience by their wantonness. The vengeance of the society was ruthless and terrible. … From 1835 to 1855 the Ribbon organisation was at its greatest strength. … With the emigration of the labouring classes it was carried abroad, to England and to America. At one time the most formidable lodges were in Lancashire."

A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, chapter 4.

IRELAND: A. D. 1831. Establishment of National Schools.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.—IRELAND.

IRELAND: A. D. 1832. Parliamentary Representation increased by the Reform Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1830-1832.

{1786}

IRELAND: A. D. 1840-1841. Discontent with the results of the Union. Condition of the people. O'Connell's revival of agitation for Repeal.

"The Catholics were at length emancipated in 1829; and now, surely, their enemies suggested, they must be contented and grateful for evermore? Perverse must the people be who, having got what they asked, are not satisfied. Let us see. What they asked was to be admitted to their just share, or, at any rate to some share, of the government of their native country, from which they had been excluded for five generations. But on the passing of the Emancipation Act not a single Catholic was admitted to an office of authority, great or small. The door was opened, indeed, but not a soul was permitted to pass in. There were murmurs of discontent, and the class who still enjoyed all the patronage of the State, the Church, the army, the magistracy, and the public service, demanded if there was any use in attempting to conciliate a people so intractable and unreasonable? The Catholic Association, which had won the victory, was rewarded for its public spirit by being dissolved by Act of Parliament. Its leader, who had been elected to the House of Commons, had his election declared void by a phrase imported into the Emancipation Act for this special purpose. The forty-shilling freeholders, whose courage and magnanimity had made the cause irresistible, were immediately deprived of the franchise. By means of a high qualification and an ingeniously complicated system of registry, the electors in twelve counties were reduced from upwards of 100,000 to less than 10,000. Englishmen cannot comprehend our dissatisfaction. … Emancipation was speedily followed by a Reform of the House of Commons. In England a sweeping and salutary change was made both in the franchise, and in the distribution of seats; but Ireland did not obtain either the number of representatives she was demonstrably entitled to by population and resources, or such a reduction of the franchise as had been conceded to England. The Whigs were in power, and Ireland was well-disposed to the party. … But the idea of treating Ireland on perfectly equal terms, and giving her the full advantage of the Union which had been forced on her, did not exist in the mind of a single statesman of that epoch. After Emancipation and Reform, O'Connell had a fierce quarrel with the Whigs, during which he raised the question of Ireland's right to be governed exclusively by her own Parliament. The people responded passionately to his appeal. The party of Protestant Ascendancy had demanded the Repeal of the Union before Emancipation, but that disturbing event altered their policy, and they withheld all aid from O'Connell. After a brief time he abandoned the experiment, to substitute for it an attempt to obtain what was called 'justice to Ireland.' In furtherance of this project he made a compact with the Whigs that the Irish Party under his lead should support them in parliament. The Whigs in return made fairer appointments to judicial and other public employments, restrained jury packing, and established an unsectarian system of public education; but the national question was thrown back for more than a generation. In 1840-1 O'Connell revived the question of Repeal, on the ground that the Union had wholly failed to accomplish the end for which it was said to be designed. Instead of bringing Ireland prosperity, it had brought her ruin. The social condition of the country during the half-century, then drawing to a close was, indeed, without parallel in Europe. The whole population were dependent on agriculture. There were minerals, but none found in what miners call 'paying quantities.' There was no manufacture except linen, and the remnant of a woollen trade, slowly dying out before the pitiless competition of Yorkshire. What the island chiefly produced was food; which was exported to richer countries to enable the cultivator to pay an inordinate rent. Foreign travellers saw with amazement an island possessing all the natural conditions of a great commerce, as bare of commerce as if it lay in some byeway of the world where enterprise had not yet penetrated. … The great proprietors were two or three hundred—the heirs of the Undertakers, for the most part, and Absentees; the mass of the country was owned by a couple of thousand others, who lived in splendour, and even profusion; and for these the peasant ploughed, sowed, tended, and reaped a harvest which he never shared. Rent, in other countries, means the surplus after the farmer has been liberally paid for his skill and labour; in Ireland it meant the whole produce of the soil except a potato-pit. If a farmer strove for more, his master knew how to bring him to speedy submission. He could carry away his implements of trade by the law of distress, or rob him of his sole pursuit in life by the law of eviction. He could, and habitually did, seize the growing crop, the stools and pots in his miserable cabin, the blanket that sheltered his children, the cow that gave them nourishment. There were just and humane landlords, men who performed the duties which their position imposed, and did not exaggerate its rights; but they were a small minority. … Famines were frequent, and every other year destitution killed a crowd of peasants. For a hundred and fifty years before, whoever has described the condition of Ireland—English official, foreign visitor, or Irish patriot—described a famine more or less acute. Sometimes the tortured serfs rose in nocturnal jacquerie against the system; and then a cry of 'rebellion' was raised, and England was assured that these intractable barbarians were again (as the indictment always charged) 'levying war against the King's majesty.' There were indeed causes enough for national disaffection, but of these the poor peasant knew nothing; he was contending for so much miserable food as would save his children from starvation. There were sometimes barbarous agrarian murders—murders of agents and bailiffs chiefly, but occasionally of landlords. It would be shameful to forget that these savage crimes were often the result of savage provocation. … The country was naked of timber, the cabins of the peasantry were squalid and unfurnished. Mr. Carlyle reproves a lazy, thriftless people, who would not perform the simple operation of planting trees; and Mr. Froude frowns upon cottages whose naked walls are never draped by climbing roses or flowering creepers. But how much more eloquent is fact than rhetoric? The Irish landlords made a law that when the tenant planted a tree it became not his own property but his master's; and the established practice of four-fifths of the Irish landlords, when a tenant exhibited such signs of prosperity as a garden, or a white-washed cabin, was to reward his industry by increasing his rent. {1787} Peasants will not plant or make improvements on these conditions, nor, I fancy, would philosophers. … It was sometimes made a boast in those days that rank, property, station, and professional success distinguished the minority in Ireland who were imperialists and Protestants. It was not an amazing phenomenon, that those upon whom the law had bestowed a monopoly of rank, property, and station, for a hundred and fifty years, should have still maintained the advantage a dozen years after Emancipation. It was a subject of scornful reproach that the districts inhabited by Protestants were peaceful and prosperous, while the Catholic districts were often poor and disorderly. There is no doubt of the facts; the contrast certainly existed. But the mystery disappears when one comes to reflect that in Down and Antrim the Squire regarded his tenantry with as much sympathy and confidence as a Squire in Devon or Essex, that their sons were trained to bear arms, and taught from the pulpit and platform that they belonged to a superior race, that all the local employments, paid out of the public purse, were distributed among them, that they had certain well understood rights over their holdings on which no landlord could safely trench, and that they met their masters, from time to time, in the friendly equality of an Orange lodge; while in Tipperary, the farmer was a tenant at will who never saw his landlord except when he followed the hounds across his corn, or frowned at him from the bench; whose rent could be raised, or his tenancy terminated at the pleasure of his master; who, on the smallest complaint, was carried before a bench of magistrates, where he had no expectation, and little chance, of justice; and who wanted the essential stimulus to thrift and industry, the secure enjoyment of his earnings. As a set-off to this long catalogue of discouragements, there were two facts of happy augury. In 1842 half a million of children were receiving education in the National Schools under a system designed to establish religious equality, and administered by Catholic and Protestant Commissioners. And the Teetotal movement was at its height. Thousands were accepting every week a pledge of total abstinence from Father Mathew, a young priest whom the gifts of nature and the accidents of fortune combined to qualify for the mission of a Reformer. … There was the beginning of political reforms also. The Whigs sent a Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary to Ireland who, for the first time since the fall of Limerick, treated the bulk of the nation as the social and political equals of the minority. The minority had been so long accustomed to make and administer the laws, and to occupy the places of authority and distinction, that they regarded the change as a revolt; and Lord Mulgrave and Thomas Drummond as the successors of Tyrconnel and Nugent. In the interval, since Emancipation, a few Catholics were elected to Parliament, two Catholic lawyers were raised to the bench, and smaller appointments distributed among laymen. … The exclusion of Catholics from juries was restrained, and the practice of appointing partisans of too shameful antecedents to public functions was interrupted. … It was under these circumstances that O'Connell for the second time summoned the Irish people to demand a Repeal of the Union."

Sir C. G. Duffy, A Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition, pages 242-275.

ALSO IN: Lord E. Fitzmaurice and J. R. Thursfield, Two Centuries of Irish History, part 4, chapters 1-2.

_R. M. Martin, Ireland before and after the Union._

IRELAND: A. D. 1841-1848. O'Connell's last agitation. His trial, imprisonment and release. His death. The "Young Ireland" Party and its rebellion.

In 1841, O'Connell "left England and went to Ireland, and devoted himself there to the work of organization. A succession of monster meetings were held all over the country, the far-famed one on Tara Hill being, as is credibly asserted, attended by no less than a quarter of a million of people. Over this vast multitude gathered together around him the magic tones of the great orator's voice swept triumphantly; awakening anger, grief, passion, delight, laughter, tears, at its own pleasure. They were astonishing triumphs, but they were dearly bought. The position was, in fact, an impossible one to maintain long. O'Connell had carried the whole mass of the people with him up to the very brink of the precipice, but how to bring them safely and successfully down again was more than even he could accomplish. Resistance he had always steadily denounced, yet every day his own words seemed to be bringing the inevitable moment of collision nearer and nearer. The crisis came on October the 5th. A meeting had been summoned to meet at Clontarf, near Dublin, and on the afternoon of the 4th the Government suddenly came to the resolution of issuing a proclamation forbidding it to assemble. The risk was a formidable one for responsible men to run. Many of the people were already on their way, and only O'Connell's own rapid and vigorous measures in sending out in all directions to intercept them hindered the actual shedding of blood. His prosecution and that of some of his principal adherents was the next important event. By a Dublin jury he was found guilty, sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and conveyed to prison, still earnestly entreating the people to remain quiet, an order which they strictly obeyed. The jury by which he had been condemned was known to be strongly biassed against him, and an appeal had been forwarded against his sentence to the House of Lords. So strong there, too, was the feeling against O'Connell, that little expectation was entertained of its being favourably received. Greatly to its honour, however, the sentence was reversed and he was set free. … The enthusiasm shown at his release was frantic and delirious. None the less those months in Richmond prison proved the death-knell of his power. He was an old man by this time; he was already weakened in health, and that buoyancy which had hitherto carried him over any and every obstacle never again revived. The 'Young Ireland' party, the members of which had in the first instance been his allies and lieutenants, had now formed a distinct section, and upon the vital question of resistance were in fierce hostility to all his most cherished principles. The state of the country, too, preyed visibly upon his mind. By 1846 had begun that succession of disastrous seasons which, by destroying the feeble barrier which stood between the peasant and a cruel death, brought about a national tragedy, the most terrible perhaps with which modern Europe has been confronted. This tragedy, though he did not live to see the whole of it, O'Connell—himself the incarnation of the people—felt acutely. {1788} Deep despondency took hold of him. He retired, to a great degree, from public life, leaving the conduct of his organization in the hands of others. … In 1847 he resolved to leave Ireland, and to end his days in Rome. His last public appearance was in the House of Commons, where an attentive and deeply respectful audience hung upon the faltering and barely articulate accents which fell from his lips. In a few deeply moving words he appealed for aid and sympathy for his suffering countrymen, and left the House. … The camp and council chamber of the 'Young Ireland' party was the editor's room of 'The Nation' newspaper. There it found its inspiration, and there its plans were matured—so far, that is, as they can be said to have been ever matured. For an eminently readable and all things considered a wonderfully impartial account of this movement, the reader cannot do better than consult Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's 'Four Years of Irish History,' which has the immense advantage of being history taken at first hand, written that is by one who himself took a prominent part in the scenes which he describes. The most interesting figure in the party had, however, died before those memorable four years began. Thomas Davis, who was only thirty at the time of his death in 1845, was a man of large gifts, nay, might fairly be called a man of genius. … The whole movement in fact was, in the first instance; a literary quite as much as a political one. Nearly all who took part in it Gavan Duffy, John Mitchell, Meagher, Dillon, Davis himself—were very young men, many fresh from college, all filled with zeal for the cause of liberty and nationality. The graver side of the movement only showed itself when the struggle with O'Connell began. At first no idea of deposing, or even seriously opposing the great leader seems to have been intended. The attempt on O'Connell's part to carry a formal declaration against the employment under any circumstances of physical force was, the origin of that division, and what the younger spirits considered 'truckling to the Whigs' helped to widen the breach. When, too, O'Connell had partially retired into the background, his place was filled by his son, John O'Connell, the 'Head conciliator,' between whom and the 'Young Irelanders' there waged a fierce war, which in the end led to the indignant withdrawal of the latter from the Repeal council. Before matters reached this point, the younger camp had been strengthened by the adhesion of Smith O'Brien, who, though not a man of much intellectual calibre, carried no little weight in Ireland. … Early in January, 1847, O'Connell left on that journey of his which was never completed, and by the middle of May Ireland was suddenly startled by the news that her great leader was dead. The effect of his death was to produce a sudden and immense reaction. A vast revulsion of love and reverence sprang up all over the country; an immense sense of his incomparable services, and with it a vehement anger against all who had opposed him. Upon the 'Young Ireland' party, as was inevitable, the weight of that anger fell chiefly, and from the moment of O'Connell's death whatever claim they had to call themselves a national party vanished utterly. The men 'who killed the Liberator' could never again hope to carry with them the suffrages of any number of their countrymen. This contumely, to a great degree undeserved, naturally reacted upon the subjects of it. The taunt of treachery and ingratitude flung at them wherever they went stung and nettled. In the general reaction of gratitude and affection for O'Connell, his son John succeeded easily to the position of leader. The older members of the Repeal Association thereupon rallied about him, and the split between them and the younger men grew deeper and wider. A wild, impracticable visionary now came to play a part in the movement. A deformed misanthrope, called James Lalor, endowed with a considerable command of vague, passionate rhetoric, began to write incentives to revolt in 'The Nation.' These growing more and more violent were by the editor at length prudently suppressed. The seed, however, had already sown itself in another mind. John Mitchell is described by Mr. Justin McCarthy as 'the one formidable man amongst the rebels of '48; the one man who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was prepared to run any risk to get it.' … To him it was intolerable that any human being should be willing to go further and to dare more in the cause of Ireland than himself, and the result was that after awhile he broke away from his connection with The Nation,' and started a new organ under the name of 'The United Irishmen,' one definitely pledged from the first to the policy of action. From this point matters gathered speedily to a head. Mitchell's newspaper proceeded to fling out challenge after challenge to the Government, calling upon the people to gather and to 'sweep-this island clear of the English name and nation.' For some months these challenges remained unanswered. It was now, however, '48,' and nearly all Europe was in revolution. The necessity of taking some step began to be evident, and a Bill making all written incitement of insurrection felony was hurried through the House of Commons, and almost immediately after Mitchell was arrested. Even then he seems to have believed that the country would rise to liberate him. The country, however, showed no disposition to do anything of the sort. He was tried in Dublin, found guilty, sentenced to fourteen years' transportation, and a few days afterwards put on board a vessel in the harbour and conveyed to Spike Island, whence he was sent to Bermuda, and the following April in a convict vessel to the Cape, and finally to Tasmania. The other 'Young Irelanders,' stung apparently by their own previous inaction, thereupon rushed frantically into rebellion. The leaders—Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others—went about the country holding reviews of 'Confederates,' as they now called themselves, a proceeding which caused the Government to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to issue a warrant for their arrest. A few more gatherings took place in different parts of the country, a few more ineffectual attempts were made to induce the people to rise, one very small collision with the police occurred, and then the whole thing was over. All the leaders in the course of a few days were arrested and Smith O'Brien and Meagher were sentenced to death, a sentence which was speedily changed into transportation. Gavan Duffy was arrested and several times tried, but the jury always disagreed, and in the end his prosecution was abandoned. The 'Young Ireland' movement, however, was dead, and never again revived."

E. Lawless, The Story of Ireland, chapters 55-56.

ALSO IN: _Sir C. G. Duffy, Young Ireland._

_Sir C. G. Duffy, Four Years of Irish History, 1845-1849._

_Sir C. G. Duffy, Thomas Davis: Memoirs of an Irish Patriot, 1840-1846._

{1789}

IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848. The Devon Commission. The Encumbered Estates Act.

In 1843, Mr. Sharman Crawford "succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the 'occupation of land in Ireland.' This Commission, known from its chairman, Lord Devon, as the Devon Commission, marks a great epoch in the Irish land question. The Commissioners, in their Report, brought out strongly the facts that great misery existed in Ireland, and that the cause of the misery was the system of land tenure. The following extract from the Report indicates the general nature of its conclusions: 'A reference to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. Our personal experience and observations during our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of these statements, and we cannot forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain.' And the remedy for the evil is to be found, continues the Report, in 'an increased and improved cultivation of the soil,' to be gained by securing for the tenant' fair remuneration for the outlay of his capital and labour.' No sooner was this Report issued than great numbers of petitions were presented to the House of Lords, and supported by Lord Devon, praying for legislative reform of the land evils; and in June, 1845, a bill was introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Stanley, on behalf of the government of Sir Robert Peel, for 'the purpose of providing compensation to tenants in Ireland, in certain cases, on being dispossessed of their holdings, for such improvements as they may have made during their tenancy.' By the selfish opposition of the Irish landlords this bill was thrown out. Two days after its rejection in the House of Lords Mr. Sharman Crawford brought into the House of Commons a Tenant Right Bill, and met with as little success. In 1846 a government bill was introduced, bearing a strong resemblance to that of Lord Stanley; but the ministry was overthrown, and the bill was dropped. A Liberal ministry under Lord John Russell came into power in July, 1846, and Irish hopes again began to rise. In 1847 the indefatigable Mr. Crawford brought in a bill, whose purpose was to extend the Ulster custom to the whole of Ireland; it was thrown out. A well-meant but in the end unsuccessful attempt to relieve the burdens of embarrassed landlords without redressing the grievances of rack-rented tenants, was made in 1848 by the measure well known as the Encumbered Estates Act. This Act had for its object to restore capital to the land; but with capital it brought in a class of proprietors who lacked the virtues as well as the vices of their predecessors, and were even more oppressive to the tenantry."

E. Thursfield, England and Ireland, chapter 10.

ALSO IN: H. L. Jephson, Notes on Irish Questions, chapter 15.

D. B. King, The Irish Question, chapter 9.

IRELAND: A. D. 1844. The Maynooth Grant.

Towards the close of the session of Parliament in 1844, Sir Robert Peel undertook a measure "dealing with higher education in Ireland. Means were to be found, in some way, for the education of the upper classes of the Irish, and for the more efficient education of candidates for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Some provision already existed for the education of the Irish people. Trinity College, with its considerable endowments, afforded opportunities to wealthy Irish. The National Board, which Stanley had instituted, had under its control 3,153 schools, and 395,000 scholars. But Trinity College retained most of its advantages for the benefit of its Protestant students, and the 395,000 scholars, whom the National Board was educating, did not, after all, include one person in every twenty alive in Ireland. The Roman Catholic, since 1793, had been allowed to graduate at Trinity; but he could hold neither scholarship nor professorship. … Some steps had, indeed, been taken for the education of the Roman Catholic priesthood. In 1795, Fitzwilliam had proposed, and his successor, Camden, had approved, the appropriation of an annual sum of money to a college formed at Maynooth for the education of Roman Catholic priests. The Irish parliament had readily sanctioned the scheme; the payment of the grant had been continued, after the Union, by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and, though the sums voted had been reduced to £9,000 a year in 1808, this amount had been thenceforward regularly allotted to Maynooth. In some respects the grant was actually disadvantageous to the college; it was too small to maintain the institution; it was large enough to discourage voluntary contributions. The surroundings of the college were squalid; its professors were wretchedly paid; it was even impossible to assign to each of the 440 students a separate room; it was dubbed by Macaulay, in a memorable speech, a 'miserable Dotheboys' Hall,' and it was Peel's deliberate opinion that the absolute withdrawal of the grant would be better than the continuance of the niggardly allowance." The Government "asked Parliament to vote a sum of £30,000 to improve the buildings at Maynooth; it proposed that the Board of Works should in future be responsible for keeping them in repair; it suggested that the salaries of professors should be more than doubled; that the position of the students should be improved; that the annual grant should be raised from about £9,000 to about £26,000, and that this sum, instead of being subject to the approval of the legislature once a year, should be placed on the Consolidated Fund. Then arose a series of debates which have no parallel in the history of the British Parliament. … 'The Orangeman raises his howl,' said Macaulay, 'and Exeter Hall sets up its bray, and Mr. MacNeile is horrified to think that a still larger grant is intended for the priests of Baal at the table of Jezebel, and the Protestant operatives of Dublin call for the impeachment of Ministers in exceedingly bad English.' {1790} A few years later a man, who was both a Christian and a gentleman, declared the Irish famine to be a dispensation of Providence in return for the Maynooth grant. … Night after night it rained petitions; 298 petitions against the bill were presented on the 3rd of April, when Peel explained his scheme; 148 on the 8th; 254 on the 9th; 552 on the 10th; 2,262 on the 11th, when the bill was put down for a second reading; 662 on the 14th; 581 on the 15th; 420 on the 16th; 335 on the 17th; 371 on the 18th. The petitions hardly allowed a doubt to remain as to the opinion of the country. Peel, indeed, was again exposed to the full force of the strongest power which any British Minister can encounter. The Mussulman, driven to his last defence, raises the standard of the Prophet, and proclaims a holy war. But the Englishman, if Protestantism be in danger, shouts, 'No Popery!' and creates equal enthusiasm. … Yet, vast as was the storm which the Minister had provoked, the issues which he had directly raised were of the smallest proportions. Hardly anyone ventured to propose that the original vote to Maynooth should be withdrawn. A grant, indeed, which had been sanctioned by George III., which had been fixed by Perceval, which had been voted in an unreformed Parliament, almost without debate, and which had been continued for fifty years, could not be withdrawn. Peel's opponents, therefore, were compelled to argue that there was no harm in sacrificing £9,000 a year to Baal, but that a sacrifice of £26,000 was full of harm. … They debated the second reading of the bill for six nights, the third reading for three nights, and they seized other opportunities for protracting the discussion. Even the Lords forgot their customary habits and sat up till a late hour on three successive evenings to discuss an amendment for inquiring into the class of books used at Maynooth. But this unusual display of zeal proved useless. A majority in both Houses steadily supported the Minister, and zealous Protestants and old-fashioned Tories were unable to defeat a scheme which was proposed by Peel and supported by Russell."

S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 19 (volume 4).

ALSO IN; H. Martineau, History of the Thirty Years' Peace, book 6, chapter 8.

IRELAND: A. D. 1845-1847. The Famine.

"In 1841 the population of Ireland was 8,175,124 souls. By 1845 it had probably reached to nearly nine millions. … To anyone looking beneath the surface the condition of the country was painfully precarious. Nine millions of a population living at best in a light-hearted and hopeful hand-to-mouth contentment, totally dependent on the hazards of one crop, destitute of manufacturing industries, and utterly without reserve or resource to fall back upon in time of reverse; what did all this mean but a state of things critical and alarming in the extreme? Yet no one seemed conscious of danger. The potato crop had been abundant for four or five years, and respite from dearth and distress was comparative happiness and prosperity. Moreover, the temperance movement [of Father Mathew] had come to make the 'good times' still better. Everything looked bright. No one concerned himself to discover how slender and treacherous was the foundation for this general hopefulness and confidence. Yet signs of the coming storm had been given. Partial famine caused by failing harvests had indeed been intermittent in Ireland, and, quite recently, warnings that ought not to have been mistaken or neglected had given notice that the esculent which formed the sole dependence of the peasant millions was subject to some mysterious blight. In 1844 it was stricken in America, but in Ireland the yield was healthy and plentiful as ever. The harvest of 1845 promised to be the richest gathered for many years. Suddenly, in one short month, in one week it might be said, the withering breath of a simoom seemed to sweep the land, blasting all in its path. I myself saw whole tracts of potato growth changed in one night from smiling luxuriance to a shrivelled and blackened waste. A shout of alarm arose. But the buoyant nature of the Celtic peasant did not yet give way. The crop was so profuse that it was expected the healthy portion would reach an average result. Winter revealed the alarming fact that the tubers had rotted in pit and store-house. Nevertheless the farmers, like hapless men who double their stakes to recover losses, made only the more strenuous exertions to till a larger breadth in 1846. Although already feeling the pinch of sore distress, if not actual famine, they worked as if for dear life; they begged and borrowed on any terms the means whereby to crop the land once more. The pawn-offices were choked with the humble finery that had shone at the village dance or the christening feast; the banks and local money-lenders were besieged with appeals for credit. Meals were stinted, backs were bared. Anything, anything to tide over the interval to the harvest of 'Forty-six.' O God, it is a dreadful thought that all this effort was but more surely leading them to ruin! It was this harvest of Forty-six that sealed their doom. Not partially but completely, utterly, hopelessly, it perished. As in the previous year, all promised brightly up to the close of July. Then, suddenly, in a night, whole areas were blighted; and this time, alas! no portion of the crop escaped. A cry of agony and despair went up all over the land. The last desperate stake for life had been played, and all was lost. The doomed people realised but too well what was before them. Last year's premonitory sufferings had exhausted them, and now?—they must die! My native district figures largely in the gloomy record of that dreadful time. I saw the horrible phantasmagoria—would God it were but that!—pass before my eyes. Blank stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the people, contrasting remarkably with the fierce energy put forth a year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that had been their last hope. Nothing could arouse them. You spoke; they answered not. You tried to cheer them; they shook their heads. I never saw so sudden and so terrible a transformation. When first in the autumn of 1845 the partial blight appeared, wise voices were raised in warning to the Government that a frightful catastrophe was at hand; yet even then began that fatal circumlocution and inaptness which it maddens one to think of. It would be utter injustice to deny that the Government made exertions which judged by ordinary emergencies would be prompt and considerable. {1791} But judged by the awful magnitude of the evil then at hand or actually befallen, they were fatally tardy and inadequate. When at length the executive did hurry, the blunders of precipitancy outdid the disasters of excessive deliberation. … In October 1845 the Irish Mansion House Relief Committee implored the Government to call Parliament together and throw open the ports. The Government refused. Again and again the terrible urgency of the case, the magnitude of the disaster at hand, was pressed on the executive. It was the obstinate refusal of Lord John Russell to listen to these remonstrances and entreaties, and the sad verification subsequently of these apprehensions, that implanted in the Irish mind the bitter memories which still occasionally find vent in passionate accusation of 'England.' Not but the Government had many and weighty arguments in behalf of the course they took. … The situation bristled with difficulties. … At first the establishment of public soup-kitchens under local relief committees, subsidised by Government, was relied upon to arrest the famine. I doubt if the world ever saw so huge a demoralisation, so great a degradation, visited upon a once high-spirited and sensitive people. All over the country large iron boilers were set up, in which what was called 'soup' was concocted; later on Indian-meal stirabout was boiled. Around these boilers on the roadside there daily moaned and shrieked and fought and scuffled crowds of gaunt, cadaverous creatures that once had been men and women made in the image of God. The feeding of dogs in a kennel was far more decent and orderly. … I frequently stood and watched the scene till tears blinded me and I almost choked with grief and passion. … The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has been, I believe, generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. … On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall. A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at home—cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people. Of those who remained, some may have grown callous; it is impossible to contest authentic instances of brutal heartlessness here and there. But … the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour. … In the autumn of 1846 relief works were set on foot, the Government having received parliamentary authority to grant baronial loans for such undertakings. There might have been found many ways of applying these funds in reproductive employment, but the modes decided on were draining and road-making. … The result was in every sense deplorable failure. The wretched people were by this time too wasted and emaciated to work. The endeavour to do so under an inclement winter sky only hastened death. They tottered at day-break to the roll-call; vainly tried to wheel the barrow or ply the pick, but fainted away on the 'cutting,' or lay down on the wayside to rise no more. As for the roads on which so much money was wasted, and on which so many lives were sacrificed, hardly any of them were finished. Miles of grass-grown earth works throughout the country now mark their course and commemorate for posterity one of the gigantic blunders of the famine time. The first remarkable sign of the havoc which death was making was the decline, and disappearance of funerals. … Soon, alas! neither coffin nor shroud could be supplied. Daily in the street and on the footway some poor creature lay down as if to sleep, and presently was stiff and stark. In our district it was a common occurrence to find, on opening the front door in early morning, leaning against it, the corpse of some victim who in the night-time had 'rested' in its shelter. We raised a public subscription, and employed two men with horse and cart to go around each day and gather up the dead. One by one they were taken to a great pit at Ardnabrahair Abbey and dropped through the hinged bottom of a 'trap-coffin' into a common grave below. In the remoter rural districts even this rude sepulture was impossible. In the field and by the ditchside the victims lay as they fell, till some charitable hand was found to cover them with the adjacent soil. It was the fever which supervened on the famine that wrought the greatest slaughter and spread the greatest terror. … To come within the reach of this contagion was certain death. Whole families perished unvisited and unassisted. By levelling above their corpses the sheeling in which they died, the neighbours gave them a grave."

A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, chapter 6.

"In July 1847 as many as three millions of persons were actually receiving separate rations. A loan of £8,000,000 was contracted by the Government, expressly to supply such wants, and every step was taken by two successive administrations, Sir Robert Peel's and Lord John Russell's, to alleviate the sufferings of the people. Nor was private benevolence lacking. The Society of Friends, always ready in acts of charity and love, was foremost in the good work. A British Association was formed for the relief of Ireland, including Jones Lloyd (Lord Overstone), Thomas Baring, and Baron Rothschild. A Queen's letter was issued. … Subscriptions were received from almost every quarter of the world. The Queen's letter alone produced £171,533. The British Association collected £263,000; the Society of Friends £43,000; and £168,000 more were entrusted to the Dublin Society of Friends. The Sultan of Turkey sent £1,000. The Queen gave £2,000, and £500 more to the British Ladies' Clothing Fund. Prince Albert gave £500. The National Club collected £17,930. America sent two ships of war, the 'Jamestown' and the 'Macedonian,' full of provisions; and the Irish residents in the United States sent upwards of £200,000 to their relatives, to allow them to emigrate."

L. Levi, History of British Commerce, part 4, chapter 4.

"By the end of 1847 cheap supplies of food began to be brought into the country by the ordinary operation of the laws of supply and demand, at far cheaper rates, owing to an abundant harvest abroad, than if the Government had tried to constitute itself the sole distributor. The potato harvest of 1847, if not bountiful, was at least comparatively good. … By March, 1848, the third and last period of the famine may be said to have terminated. But, though the direct period of distress was over, the economic problems which remained for solution were of overwhelming magnitude. … A million and a half of the people had disappeared. The land was devastated with fever and the diseases which dog the steps of famine. … The waters of the great deep were indeed going down, but the land was seen to be without form and void."

Lord E. Fitzmaurice and J. R. Thursfield, Two Centuries of Irish History, part 4, chapter 4.

{1792}

"The famine and plague of 1846-47 was accompanied, and succeeded, by a wholesale clearance of congested districts and by cruel evictions. The new landlords [who had acquired property under the Encumbered Estates Act], bent on consolidating their property, turned out their tenants by regiments, and in the autumn of 1847 enormous numbers were deported. It is absolutely necessary to bear this strictly in mind, if we would judge of the intense hatred which prevails amongst the Irish in America to Great Britain. The children of many of those who were exiled then have raised themselves to positions of affluence and prosperity in the United States. But they have often heard from their fathers, and some of them may perhaps recall, the circumstances under which they were driven from their old homes in Ireland. … But there is a further and awful memory connected with that time. The people who had been suffering from fever carried the plague with them on board, and the vessels sometimes became floating charnel-houses. During the year 1847, out of 106,000 emigrants who crossed the Atlantic for Canada and New Brunswick, 6,100 perished on the ocean, 4,100 immediately on landing, 5,200 subsequently in the hospitals, and 1,900 in the towns to which they repaired. … Undoubtedly, historical circumstances have … had much to do with the political hatred to Great Britain; but its newly acquired intensity is owing to the still fresh remembrances of what took place after the famine, and to the fact that the wholesale clearances of Irish estates were, to say the least, not discouraged in the writings and speeches of English lawgivers, economists and statesmen."

Sir R. Blennerhassett, Ireland ("Reign of Queen Victoria," edited by T. H. Ward, volume 1, pages 563-565).

"The deaths from fever in the year 1846 were 17,145, in the following year 57,000, to which 27,000 by dysentery must be added."

J. F. Bright, History of England, period 4, page 164.

"Between the years 1847 and 1851 (both inclusive) the almost incredible number of over one million Irish—men, women, and children—were conveyed in emigrant ships to America—a whole population. In 1847, 215,444 emigrated; in 1849, 218,842, and in 1851, 249,721."

H. L. Jephson, Notes on Irish Questions, page 298.

"The population of Ireland by March 30, 1851, at the same ratio of increase as held in England and Wales, would have been 9,018,799—it was 6,552,385. It was the calculation of the Census Commissioners that the deficit, independently of the emigration, represented by the mortality in the five famine years, was 985,366."

T. P. O'Connor, The Parnell Movement, page 125.

IRELAND: A. D. 1846. Defeat of Peel's Coercion Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1846.

IRELAND: A. D. 1848-1852. Tenant organizations. The Ulster Tenant Right. The Tenant League.

"The famine … and the evictions that followed it made the people more discontented than ever with the land system. The Democratic Association, organized about this time, adopted as its rallying cry, 'the land for the people.' … This association, whose aims are said to have been 'largely communistic and revolutionary,' opposed the Irish Alliance, the Nationalist Society organized by Charles Gavan Duffy. … During the years '49 and '50 numerous Tenant Protection Societies were formed throughout the country, the Presbyterians of Ulster taking quite as active a part as the Celtic Catholics of the other provinces. In May, 1850, the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster … resolved, against the protest, it is true, of the more conservative men, to petition Parliament to extend to the rest of Ireland the benefits of rights and securities similar to those of the Ulster custom. … The Ulster tenant right … has occupied an important place in the Irish land question for a long time. … The right differs much on different estates. On no two does it seem to be precisely the same. It is therefore not a right capable of being strictly defined. Nor did it have any legal sanction until the year 1870. The law did not recognize it. One of its chief incidents was that the tenant was entitled to live on his farm from year to year indefinitely on condition of acting properly, and paying his rent, which the landlord might raise from time to time to a reasonable extent, but not so as to extinguish the tenant's interest. In the second place, if the tenant got in debt, and could not pay the rent, or wished for any other reason to leave the holding, he could sell his interest, but the landlord had a right to be consulted, and could object to the purchaser. In the third place, the landlord, if he wanted to take the land for his own purposes, must pay the tenant a fair sum for his tenant-right. In the fourth place, all arrears of rent must be paid before the interest was transferred. These are said to be universal characteristics of every Ulster tenant-right custom. There were often additional restrictions or provisions, usually in limitation of the tenant's right to sell, or of the landlord's right to raise the rent, veto the sale of land, or take it for his own use. There were commonly established usages in reference to fixing a fair rent. Valuators were generally employed, and on their estimates, and not on competition in open market, the rent was fixed. … The Irish Tenant League was organized August 6, 1850, in Dublin. Among the resolutions adopted was one, calling for 'a fair valuation of rent between landlord and tenant in Ireland,' and another, 'that the tenant should not be disturbed in his holding as long as he paid his rent.' The question of arrears received a great deal of attention. The great majority of the tenants of Ireland were in arrears, owing to the successive failures of the crops, and were of course liable to eviction. … The Tenant League was a very popular one and spread throughout the country. There was much agitation, and in the general election in 1852, when the excitement was at its height, fifty-eight Tenant Leaguers were elected to Parliament. The Tenant League members resolved to hold themselves 'independent of and in opposition to all governments which do not make it a part of their policy' to give the tenants a measure of relief such as the League desired. It looked as though the party would hold the balance of power and be able to secure its objects. When however Sadlier and Keogh, two of the most prominent men in the party and men of great influence, accepted positions in the new government, 'bribed by office,' it has always been charged by the Irish, 'to betray the cause to which they had been most solemnly pledged,' the party was broken up without accomplishing its purpose."

D. B. King, The Irish Question, chapters 5 and 9.

ALSO IN: _Sir C. G. Duffy, League of the North and South._

A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, chapter 13.

J. Godkin, The Land War in Ireland, chapter 17.

{1793}

IRELAND: A. D. 1858-1867. The Fenian Movement.

"The Fenian movement differed from nearly all previous movements of the same kind in Ireland, in the fact that it arose and grew into strength without the patronage or the help of any of those who might be called the natural leaders of the people. … Its leaders were not men of high position, or distinguished name, or proved ability. They were not of aristocratic birth; they were not orators; they were not powerful writers. It was not the impulse of the American Civil War that engendered Fenianism; although that war had great influence on the manner in which Fenianism shaped its course. Fenianism had been in existence, in fact, although it had not got its peculiar name, long before the American War created a new race of Irishmen—the Irish-American soldiers—to turn their energies and their military inclination to a new purpose. … The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, in consequence of the 1848 movement, led, as a matter of course, to secret association. Before the trials of the Irish leaders were well over in that year, a secret association was formed by a large number of young Irishmen in cities and towns. … After two or three attempts to arrange for a simultaneous rising had failed, or had ended only in little abortive and isolated ebullitions, the young men became discouraged. Some of the leaders went to France, some to the United States, some actually to England; and the association melted away. … Some years after this, the 'Phœnix' clubs began to be formed in Ireland. They were for the most part associations of the peasant class, and were on that account, perhaps, the more formidable and earnest. … The Phœnix clubs led to some of the ordinary prosecutions and convictions; and that was all. … After the Phœnix associations came the Fenians. 'This is a serious business now,' said a clever English literary man when he heard of the Fenian organisation; 'the Irish have got hold of a good name this time; the Fenians will last.' The Fenians are said to have been the ancient Irish militia. … There was an air of Celtic antiquity and of mystery about the name of Fenian which merited the artistic approval given to it by the impartial English writer whose observation has just been quoted. The Fenian agitation began about 1858, and it came to perfection about the middle of the American Civil War. It was ingeniously arranged on a system by which all authority converged towards one centre [called the Head-Centre], and those farthest away from the seat of direction knew proportionately less and less about the nature of the plans. They had to obey instructions only, and it was hoped that by this means weak or doubtful men would not have it in their power prematurely to reveal, to betray, or to thwart the purposes of their leaders. A convention was held in America, and the Fenian Association was resolved into a regular organised institution. A provisional government was established in the neighbourhood of Union Square, New York, with all the array and the mechanism of an actual working administration. … The Civil War had introduced a new figure to the world's stage. This was the Irish-American soldier. … Many of these men—thousands of them—were as sincerely patriotic in their way as they were simple and brave. It is needless to say that they were fastened on in some instances by adventurers, who fomented the Fenian movement out of the merest and the meanest self-seeking. … Some were making a living out of the organisation—out of that, and apparently nothing else. The contributions given by poor Irish hack-drivers and servant girls, in the sincere belief that they were helping to man the ranks of an Irish army of independence, enabled some of these self-appointed leaders to wear fine clothes and to order expensive dinners. … But in the main it is only fair to say that the Fenian movement in the United States was got up, organised and manned by persons who … were single-hearted, unselfish, and faithfully devoted to their cause. … After a while things went so far that the Fenian leaders in the United States issued an address, announcing that their officers were going to Ireland to raise an army there for the recovery of the country's independence. Of course the Government here were soon quite prepared to receive them; and indeed the authorities easily managed to keep themselves informed by means of spies of all that was going on in Ireland. … Meanwhile the Head Centre of Fenianism in America, James Stephens, who had borne a part in the movement of 1848, arrived in Ireland. He was arrested … [and] committed to Richmond Prison, Dublin, early in November, 1865; but before many days had passed the country was startled by the news that he had contrived to make his escape. The escape was planned with skill and daring. For a time it helped to strengthen the impression on the mind of the Irish peasantry that in Stephens there had at last been found an insurgent leader of adequate courage, craft, and good fortune. Stephens disappeared for a moment from the stage. In the meantime disputes and dissensions had arisen among the Fenians in America. The schism had gone so far as to lead to the setting up of two separate associations. There were of course distracted plans. One party was for an invasion of Canada; another pressed for operations in Ireland itself. The Canadian attempt actually was made. …

See CANADA: A. D. 1866-1871.

Then Stephens came to the front again. It was only for a moment. He had returned to New York, and he now announced that he was determined to strike a blow in Ireland. Before long the impression was spread abroad that he had actually left the States to return to the scene of his proposed insurrection. The American-Irish kept streaming across the Atlantic, even in the stormy winter months, in the firm belief that before the winter had passed away, or at the farthest while the spring was yet young, Stephens would appear in Ireland at the head of an insurgent army. … Stephens did not reappear in Ireland. He made no attempt to keep his warlike promise. He may be said to have disappeared from the history of Fenianism. But the preparations had gone too far to be suddenly stopped. … It was hastily decided that something should be done. One venture was a scheme for the capture of Chester Castle [and the arms it contained]. … The Government were fully informed of the plot in advance; the police were actually on the look-out for the arrival of strangers in Chester, and the enterprise melted away. {1794} In March, 1867, an attempt at a general rising was made in Ireland. It was a total failure; the one thing on which the country had to be congratulated was that it failed so completely and so quickly as to cause little bloodshed. Every influence combined to minimise the waste of life. The snow fell that spring as it had scarcely ever fallen before in the soft, mild climate of Ireland. … It made the gorges of the mountains untenable, and the gorges of the mountains were to be the encampments and the retreats of the Fenian insurgents. The snow fell for many days and nights, and when it ceased falling the insurrectionary movement was over. The insurrection was literally buried in that unlooked-for snow. There were some attacks on police barracks in various places —in Cork, in Kerry, in Limerick, in Tipperary, in Louth; there were some conflicts with the police; there were some shots fired, many captures made, a few lives lost; and then for the time at least all was over. The Fenian attempt thus made had not from the beginning a shadow of hope to excuse it." Some months afterwards a daring rescue of Fenian prisoners at Manchester stirred up a fresh excitement in Fenian circles. A policeman was killed in the affair, and three of the rescuers were hanged for his murder. On the 13th of December, 1867, an attempt was made to blow up the Clerkenwell House of Detention, where two Fenian prisoners were confined. "Six persons were killed on the spot; about six more died from the effects of the injuries they received; some 120 persons were wounded. … It is not necessary to follow out the steps of the Fenian movement any further. There were many isolated attempts; there were many arrests, trials, imprisonments, banishments. The effect of all this, it must be stated as a mere historical fact, was only to increase the intensity of dissatisfaction and discontent among the Irish peasantry. … There were some public men who saw that the time had come when mere repression must no longer be relied upon as a cure for Irish discontent."

J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 53 (volume 4).

ALSO IN: T. P. O'Connor, The Parnell Movement, chapters 7.

G. P. Macdonell, Fenianism, Two Centuries of Irish History, part 5, chapter 4.

IRELAND: A. D. 1868. Parliamentary Reform.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1865-1868.

IRELAND: A. D. 1868-1870. Disestablishment of the Irish Church. Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1868-1870.

IRELAND: A. D. 1870-1894. The land question and the recent land laws.

"The reason for exceptional legislation in Ireland rested chiefly on the essential difference between the landlord and tenant systems in England and in Ireland. In 1845 the Devon Royal Commission reported that the introduction of the English system would be extremely difficult, if not impracticable. The difference, it said, between the English and Irish systems 'consisted in this, that in Ireland the landlord builds neither dwelling-house nor farm offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., into good order before he lets his land. In most cases, whatever is done in the way of building or fencing is done by the tenant; and, in the ordinary language of the country, houses, farm buildings, and even the making of fences are described by the general word "improvements," which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts to a farm without which in England or Scotland no tenant would be found to rent it.' Thirty years later, John Bright summarized the matter by saying that if the land of Ireland were stripped of the improvements made upon it by the labor of the occupier, the face of the country would be 'as bare and naked as an American prairie.' This fundamental difference between the English and Irish land systems has never been fully appreciated in England, where the landlord's expenditure on buildings, fences, drainage, farm roads, etc., and on maintenance absorbs a large part of the rental. Reform of the Irish system began in 1870. Before that time little had been done to protect the Irish tenant except to forbid evictions at night, on Christmas Day, on Good Friday, and the pulling off the roofs of houses until the inmates had been removed. The Land Act of 1870 recognized, in principle, the tenant's property in his improvements by giving him a right to claim compensation if disturbed or evicted. This was not what the tenants wanted, viz., security of tenure. The results of compensation suits by 'disturbed' tenants were uncertain; compensation for improvements was limited in various ways, and the animus of the courts administering the act was distinctly hostile to the tenants. Many works necessary to the existence of tenants on small farms were not improvements in the eyes of the landlord, of the law, or of the judges; it was often impossible to adduce legal evidence of costly works done little by little, and at intervals, representing the savings of labor embodied in drainage, reclamation, or fencing. Buildings and other works of a superior character might be adjudged 'unsuitable' to small farms, and therefore not the subject of any compensation; moreover, it was expressly laid down that the use and enjoyment by the tenant of works effected wholly at his expense were to be accounted compensation to him by the landlord, and that, therefore, by lapse of time, the tenant's improvements became the landlord's property. The act of 1870 tended to make capricious and heartless evictions expensive and therefore less common; but it gave no security of tenure, and left the landlord still at liberty to raise the rent of improving tenants. It left the tenant still in a state of dependence and servility; it gave him no security for his expenditure, for the landlord's right to keep the rent continually rising was freely exercised. Even if the act had been liberally administered, it would have failed to give contentment, satisfy the demands of justice, or encourage the expenditure of capital by tenant farmers. Measure after measure proposed by Irish members for further reforms were rejected by Parliament between 1870 and 1880, and discontent continued to increase. … The Land Law Act of 1881 was based on the Report in 1880 of the Bessborough Royal Commission, but many of the most useful suggestions made were disregarded. This act purported to give the Irish yearly tenants (1) the right to sell their tenancies and improvements; (2) the right to have a 'fair' rent fixed by the land courts at intervals of fifteen years; (3) security of tenure arising from this right to have the rent fixed by the court instead of by the landlord.

{1795}

… No definition of what constituted a fair rent was embodied in the act, but what is known as the Healy clause provided that 'no rent shall be allowed or made payable in respect of improvements made by a tenant or his predecessors.' … When the Irish courts came to interpret it, they held that the term improvements' meant only that interest in his improvements for which the tenant might have obtained compensation under the Land Act of 1870 if he had been disturbed or evicted, and that the time during which the tenant had had the use and enjoyment of his own expenditure was still to be accounted compensation made to him by his landlord, so that by mere lapse of time the tenant's improvements became the landlord's property. … In view of the continually falling prices of agricultural produce and diminishing farm profits, the operation of the land laws has not brought about peace between landlords and tenants. … In 1887 the Cowper Commission reported that the 200,000 rents which had been fixed were too high in consequence of the continued fall in prices. As a result of the report of this commission the fair-rent provisions of the law were extended to leaseholders holding for less than sixty years; but the courts still adhering to their former methods of interpretation, numbers of leaseholders who had made and maintained all the buildings, improvements, and equipments of their farms found themselves either excluded on narrow and technical points, or expressly rented on their own expenditure. In 1891 the fair-rent provisions were further extended to leaseholders holding for more than sixty years by the Redemption of Rent Act, under which long leasehold tenants could compel their landlords either to sell to them, or allow a fair rent to be fixed on their farms. … Concurrently with these attempts to place the relations of landlord and tenant on a peaceful and equitable basis, a system of State loans to enable tenants to buy their farms has been in operation. … It is now proposed to have an inquiry by a select committee of the House of Commons into

(1) the principles adopted in fixing fair rents, particularly with respect to tenants' improvements; (2) the system of purchase and security offered for the loans of public money; (3) the organization and administrative work of the Land Commission

—a department which has cost the country about £100,000 a year since 1881. The popular demand for inquiry and reform comes as much from the Protestant North as from the Catholic South."

_The Nation, February 15, 1894._

IRELAND: A. D. 1873-1879. The Home Rule Movement. Organization of the Land League.

"For some years after the failure of the Fenian insurrection there was no political agitation in Ireland; but in 1873 a new national movement began to make itself felt; this was the Home Rule Movement. It had been gradually formed since 1870 by one or two leading Irishmen, who thought the time was ripe for a new constitutional effort; chief among them was Mr. Isaac Butt, a Protestant, an eminent lawyer, and an earnest politician. The movement spread rapidly, and took a firm hold of the popular mind. After the General Election of 1874, some sixty Irish Members were returned who had stood before their constituencies as Home Rulers. The Home Rule demand is clear and simple enough; it asks for Ireland a separate Government, still allied with the Imperial Government, on the principles which regulate the alliance between the United States of America. The proposed Irish Parliament in College Green would bear just the same relation to the Parliament at Westminster that the Legislature and Senate of every American State bear to the head authority of the Congress in the Capitol at Washington. All that relates to local business it was proposed to delegate to the Irish Assembly; all questions of imperial policy were still to be left to the Imperial Government. There was nothing very startling, very daringly innovating, in the scheme. In most of the dependencies of Great Britain, Home Rule systems of some kind were already established. In Canada, in the Australasian Colonies, the principle might be seen at work upon a large scale; upon a small scale it was to be studied nearer home in the neighbouring Island of Man. … At first the Home Rule Party was not very active. Mr. Butt used to have a regular Home Rule debate once every Session, when he and his followers stated their views, and a division was taken and the Home Rulers were of course defeated. Yet, while the English House of Commons was thus steadily rejecting year after year the demand made for Home Rule by the large majority of the Irish Members, it was affording a strong argument in favour of some system of local Government, by consistently outvoting every proposition brought forward by the bulk of the Irish Members relating to Irish Questions. … Mr. Butt and his followers had proved the force of the desire for some sort of National Government in Ireland, but the strength of the movement they had created now called for stronger leaders. A new man was coming into Irish political life who was destined to be the most remarkable Irish leader since O'Connell. Mr. Charles Stuart Parnell, who entered the House of Commons in 1875 as Member for Meath, was a descendant of the English poet Parnell, and of the two Parnells, father and son, John and Henry, who stood by Grattan to the last in the struggle against the Union. He was a grand-nephew of Sir Henry Parnell, the first Lord Congleton, the advanced Reformer and friend of, Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. He was Protestant, and a member of the Protestant Synod. Mr. Parnell set himself to form a party of Irishmen in the House of Commons who should be absolutely independent of any English political party, and who would go their own way with only the cause of Ireland to influence them. Mr. Parnell had all the qualities that go to make a good political leader, and he succeeded in his purpose. The more advanced men in and out of Parliament began to look up to him as the real representative of the popular voice. In 1878 Mr. Butt died. … The leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party was given to Mr. William Shaw, Member for Cork County, an able, intelligent man, who proved himself in many ways a good leader. In quieter times his authority might have remained unquestioned, but these were unquiet, times. The decorous and demure attitude of the early Home Rule Party was to be changed into a more aggressive action, and Mr. Parnell was the champion of the change. It was soon obvious that he was the real leader recognised by the majority of the Irish Home Rule Members, and by the country behind them. Mr. Parnell and his following have been bitterly denounced for pursuing an obstructive policy. {1796} They are often written about as if they had invented obstruction; as if obstruction of the most audacious kind had never been practised in the House of Commons before Mr. Parnell entered it. It may perhaps be admitted that the Irish Members made more use of obstruction than had been done before their time. … The times undoubtedly were unquiet; the policy which was called in England obstructive and in Ireland active was obviously popular with the vast majority of the Irish people. The Land Question, too, was coming up again, and in a stronger form than ever. Mr. Butt, not very long before his death, had warned the House of Commons that the old land war was going to break out anew, and he was laughed at for his vivid fancy by the English Press and by English public opinion; but he proved a true prophet. Mr. Parnell had carefully studied the condition of the Irish tenant, and he saw that the Land Act of 1870 was not the last word of legislation on his behalf. Mr. Parnell was at first an ardent advocate of what came to be known as the Three F's, fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale. But the Three F's were soon to be put aside in favour of more advanced ideas. Outside Parliament a strenuous and earnest man was preparing to inaugurate the greatest land agitation ever seen in Ireland. Mr. Michael Davitt was the son of an evicted tenant. … When he grew to be a young man he joined the Fenians, and in 1870, on the evidence of an informer, he was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude; seven years later he was let out on ticket-of-leave. In his long imprisonment he had thought deeply upon the political and social condition of Ireland and the best means of improving it; when he came out he had abandoned his dreams of armed rebellion, and he went in for constitutional agitation to reform the Irish land system. The land system needed reforming; the condition of the tenant was only humanly endurable in years of good harvest. The three years from 1876 to 1879 were years of successive bad harvests. … Mr. Davitt had been in America, planning out a land organization, and had returned to Ireland to carry out his plan. Land meetings were held in many parts of Ireland, and in October Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, Mr. Patrick Egan, and Mr. Thomas Brennan founded the Irish National Land League, the most powerful political organization that had been formed in Ireland since the Union. The objects of the Land League were the abolition of the existing landlord system and the introduction of peasant proprietorship."

J. H. McCarthy, Outline of Irish History, chapter 11.

ALSO IN: T. P. O'Connor, The Parnell Movement, chapters 8-10.

_A. V. Dicey, England's Case against Home Rule._

_G. Baden-Powell, editor, The Truth about Home Rule._

IRELAND: A. D. 1880. The breach between the Irish Party and the English Liberals.

"The new Irish party which followed the lead of Mr. Parnell has been often represented by the humourist as a sort of Falstaffian 'ragged regiment.' … From dint of repetition this has come to be almost an article of faith in some quarters. Yet it is curiously without foundation. A large proportion of Mr. Parnell's followers were journalists. … Those who were not journalists in the Irish party were generally what is called well-to-do. … At first there seemed no reason to expect any serious disunion between the Irish members and the Liberal' party. … The Irish vote in England had been given to the Liberal cause. The Liberal speakers and statesmen, without committing themselves to any definite line of policy, had manifested friendly sentiments towards Ireland; and though indeed nothing was said which could be construed into a recognition of the Home Rule claim, still the new Ministry was known to contain men favourable to that claim. The Irish members hoped for much from the new Government; and, on the other hand, the new Government expected to find cordial allies in all sections of the Irish party. The appointment of Mr. Forster to the Irish Secretaryship was regarded by many Irishmen, especially those allied to Mr. Shaw and his following, as a marked sign of the good intentions of the Government towards Ireland. … The Queen's Speech announced that the Peace Preservation Act would not be renewed. This was a very important announcement. Since the Union Ireland had hardly been governed by the ordinary law for a single year. … Now the Government was going to make the bold experiment of trying to rule Ireland without the assistance of coercive and exceptional law. The Queen's Speech, however, contained only one other reference to Ireland, in a promise that a measure would be introduced for the extension of the Irish borough franchise. This was in itself an important promise. … But extension of the borough franchise did not seem, to the Irish members in 1880 the most important form that legislation for Ireland could take just then. The country was greatly depressed by its recent suffering; the number of evictions was beginning to rise enormously. The Irish members thought that the Government should have made some promise to consider the land question, and above all should have done something to stay the alarming increase of evictions. Evictions had increased from 463 families in 1877 to 980 in 1878, to 1,238 in 1879; and they were still on the increase, as was shown at the end of 1880, when it was found that 2,110 families were evicted. An amendment to the Address was at once brought forward by the Irish party, and debated at some length. The Irish party called for some immediate legislation on behalf of the land question. Mr. Forster replied, admitting the necessity for some legislation, but declaring that there would not be time for the introduction of any such measure that session. Then the Irish members asked for some temporary measure to prevent the evictions … ; but the Chief Secretary answered that while the law existed it was necessary to carry it out, and he could only appeal to both sides to be moderate. Matters slowly drifted on in this way for a short time. … Evictions steadily increased, and Mr. O'Connor Power brought in a Bill for the purpose of staying evictions. Then the Government, while refusing to accept the Irish measure, brought in a Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which adopted some of the Irish suggestions. … On Friday, June 25, the second reading of the Bill was moved by Mr. Forster, who denied that it was a concession to the anti-rent agitation, and strongly denounced the outrages which were taking place in Ireland. … This was the point at which difference between the Irish party and the Government first became marked. {1797} The increase of evictions in Ireland, following as it did upon the widespread misery caused by the failure of the harvests and the partial famine, had generated—as famine and hunger have always generated—a certain amount of lawlessness. Evictions were occasionally resisted with violence; here and there outrages were committed upon bailiffs, process-servers, and agents. In different places, too, injuries had been inflicted upon the cattle and horses of landowners and land agents. … There is no need, there should be no attempt, to justify these crimes. But, while condemning all acts of violence, whether upon man or beast, it must be remembered that these acts were committed by ignorant peasants of the lowest class, maddened by hunger, want, and eviction, driven to despair by the sufferings of their wives and children, convinced of the utter hopelessness of redress, and longing for revenge. … The Compensation for Disturbance Bill was carried in the Commons after long debates in which the Irish party strove to make its principles stronger. … It was sent up to the Lords, where it was rejected on Tuesday, August 3, by a majority of 231. The Government answered the appeals of Irish members by refusing to take any steps to make the Lords retract their decision, or to introduce any similar measure that session. From that point the agitation and struggle of the past four years [1880-1884] may be said to date."

J. H. McCarthy, England under Gladstone, 1880-1884, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: T. W. Reid, Life of William Edward Forster, volume 2, chapter 6-7.

IRELAND: A. D. 1881-1882. The Coercion Bill and the Land Act. Arrest of the Irish leaders. Suppression of the Land League. The alleged Kilmainham Treaty, and release of Mr. Parnell and others.

Early in 1881, the Government armed itself with new powers for suppressing the increased lawlessness which showed itself in Ireland, and for resisting the systematic policy of intimidation which the Nationalists appeared to have planned, by the passage of a measure known as the Coercion Bill. This was followed, in April, by the introduction of a Land Bill, intended to redress the most conspicuous Irish grievance by establishing an authoritative tribunal for the determination of rents, and by aiding and facilitating the purchase of small holdings by the peasants. The Land Bill became law in August; but it failed to satisfy the demands of the Land League or to produce a more orderly state of feeling in Ireland. Severe proceedings were then decided upon by the Government. "The Prime Minister, during his visit to Leeds in the first week of October, had used language which could bear only one meaning. The question, he said, had come to be simply this, 'whether law or lawlessness must rule in Ireland;' the Irish people must not be deprived of the means of taking advantage of the Land Act by force or fear of force. He warned the party of disorder that 'the resources of civilisation were not yet exhausted.' A few days later Mr. Gladstone, speaking at the Guildhall, amid enthusiastic cheers, was able to announce that the long-delayed blow had fallen. Mr. Parnell was arrested in Dublin under the Coercion Act, and his arrest was followed by those of Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, Mr. O'Kelly, and other prominent leaders of the agitation. The warnings of the Government had been met at first with derision and defiance, and the earlier arrests were furiously denounced; but the energy and persistence of the Government soon began to make an impression. … A Parthian shot was fired in the issue of a manifesto, purporting to be signed, not only by the 'suspects' in Kilmainham, but also by [Michael] Davitt, … in Portland Prison, which adjured the tenantry to pay no rent whatever until the Government had done penance for its tyranny and released the victims of British despotism. This open incitement to defiance of legal authority and repudiation of legal right was instantly met by the Irish Executive in a resolute spirit. On the 20th of October a proclamation was issued declaring the League to be 'an illegal and criminal association, intent on destroying the obligation of contracts and subverting law,' and announcing that its operations would thenceforward be forcibly suppressed, and those taking part in them held responsible."

Annual Summaries reprinted from The Times, volume 2, page 155.

"In the month of April [1882] Mr. Parnell was released from Kilmainham on parole—urgent business demanding his presence in Paris. This parole the Irish National leader faithfully kept. Whether the sweets of liberty had special charms for Mr. Parnell does not appear; but certain it is that after his return to Kilmainham, the Member for Cork wrote to Captain O'Shea, one of the Irish Members, and indirectly to the Government, intimating that if the question of arrears could be introduced in Parliament by way of relieving the tenants of holdings and lessening greatly the number of evictions in the country for non-payment of rent, and providing the purchase clauses of the Land Bill were discussed, steps might be taken to lessen the number of outrages. The Government had the intimation conveyed to them, in short, which gave to their minds the conviction that Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly, once released, and having in view the reforms indicated to them, would range themselves on the side of law and order in Ireland. Without any contract with the three members the release of Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly was ordered, after they had been confined for a period bordering on three months. Michael Davitt had been released, likewise, and had been elected for Meath; but the seat was declared vacant again, owing to the conditions of his ticket-of-leave not permitting his return. Much has been said, and much has been written with regard to the release of the three Irish M. P.'s. The 'Kilmainham Treaty' has been … a term of scorn addressed to Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues. … As a fact … there was no Kilmainham Treaty. … Mr. Forster [the Secretary for Ireland] resigned because he did not think it right to share the responsibility of the release of Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly. The Government had detained the Queen's subjects in prison without trial for the purpose of preventing crime, not for punishment, Mr. Forster said in vindication. Mr. Forster contended that the unwritten law, as promulgated by them, had worked the ruin and the injury of the Queen's subjects by instructions of one kind and another—biddings carried out to such a degree that no power on earth could have allowed it to continue without becoming a Government not merely in name but in shame. {1798} Mr. Forster would have given the question of the release of the three consideration, if they had pledged themselves not to set their law up against the law of the land, or if Ireland had been quiet, or if there had been an accession of fresh powers on behalf of the Government: but these conditions were wanting. What Mr. Forster desired was an avowal of a change of purpose. He entreated his colleagues 'not to try to buy obedience,' as he termed it, and not to rely on appearances. The Government did rely on the intimation of Mr. Parnell … ; there was no treaty."

W. W. Pimblett, English Political History, 1880-1885, chapter 10.

IRELAND: A. D. 1882. The Phœnix Park murders.

Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary for Ireland, resigned in April, 1882, and was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, brother of the Marquis of Hartington and son of the Duke of Devonshire. Earl Spencer at the same time became Viceroy, in place of Lord Cowper, resigned. "On the night of Friday, May 5th, Earl Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish crossed over to Ireland, and arrived in Dublin on the following day. The official entry was made in the morning, when the reception accorded by the populace to the new officials was described as having been very fairly favourable. Events seemed to have taken an entirely prosperous turn, and it was hoped that at last the long winter of Irish discontent had come to an end. On Sunday morning there spread through the United Kingdom the intelligence that the insane hatred of English rule had been the cause of a crime, even more brutal and unprovoked than any of the numerous outrages that had, during the last three years, sullied the annals of Ireland. It appeared that Lord Frederick Cavendish, having taken the oaths at the Castle, took a car about half-past seven in order to drive to the Viceregal Lodge. On the way he met Mr. Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary, who, though his life had been repeatedly threatened, was walking along, according to his usual custom, without any police escort. Lord Frederick dismissed his car, and walked with him through the Phœnix Park. There, in broad daylight—for it was a fine summer evening—and in the middle of a public recreation ground, crowded with people, they were surrounded and murdered. More than one spectator witnessed what they imagined to be a drunken brawl, saw six men struggling together, and four of them drive off outside a car, painted red, which had been waiting for them the while, the carman sitting still and never turning his head. The bodies of the two officials were first discovered by two shop-boys on bicycles who had previously passed them alive. Lord Frederick Cavendish had six wounds, and Mr. Burke eleven, dealt evidently with daggers used by men of considerable strength. Lord Spencer himself had witnessed the struggle from the windows of the Viceregal Lodge, and thinking that some pickpockets had been at work sent a servant to make inquiries. A reward of £10,000, together with full pardon to anyone who was not one of the actual murderers, was promptly offered, but for many long months the telegrams from Dublin closed with the significant information—'No definite clue in the hands of the police.' All parties in Ireland at once united to express their horror and detestation at this dastardly crime."

Cassell's Illustrated History of England, volume 10, chapter 50.

ALSO IN: Sir C. Russell, The Parnell Commission: Opening Speech, pages 282-291.

IRELAND: A. D. 1884. Enlargement of the Suffrage. Representation of the People Act.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

IRELAND: A. D. 1885-1886. Change of opinion in England. Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill and Irish Land Bill and their defeat.

"All through the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885, the Nationalists' party, led by Mr. Parnell, and including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of English and Scotch members, especially Liberal members, due to their growing sense of the mistakes which Parliament committed in handling Irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. First, they came to feel that the present system was indefensible. Then, while still disliking the notion of an Irish Legislature, they began to think it deserved consideration. Next they admitted, though usually in confidence to one another, that although Home Rule might be a bad solution, it was a probable one, toward which events pointed. Last of all, and not till 1884, they asked themselves whether, after all, it would be a bad solution, provided a workable scheme could be found. But as no workable scheme had been proposed, they still kept their views, perhaps unwisely, to themselves, and although the language held at the general election of 1885 showed a great advance in the direction of favoring Irish self-government, beyond the attitude of 1880, it was still vague and hesitating, and could the more easily remain so because the constituencies had not (strange as it may now seem) realized the supreme importance of the Irish question. Few questions were put to candidates on the subject, for both candidates and electors wished to avoid it. It was disagreeable; it was perplexing; so they agreed to leave it on one side. But when the result of the Irish elections showed, in December, 1885, an overwhelming majority in favor of the Home Rule party, and when they showed, also, that this party held the balance of power in Parliament, no one could longer ignore the urgency of the issue. There took place what chemists call a precipitation of substance held in solution. Public opinion on the Irish question had been in a fluid state. It now began to crystallize, and the advocates and opponents of Irish self-government fell asunder into two masses, which soon solidified. This process was hastened by the fact that Mr. Gladstone's view, the indications of which, given by himself some months before, had been largely overlooked, now became generally understood. … In the spring of 1886 the question could be no longer evaded or postponed. It was necessary to choose between … two courses: the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. … {1799} How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since 1832: how, after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought before the country at the general election, and failed to win approval; how the Liberal party has been rent in twain upon the question; how Mr. Gladstone resigned, and has been succeeded by a Tory Ministry, which the dissentient Liberals, who condemn Home Rule, are now supporting—all this is … well known.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886.

… But the causes of the disaster may not be equally understood. … First, and most obvious, although not most important, was the weight of authority arrayed against the scheme. … The two most eminent leaders of the moderate Liberal, or, as it is often called, Whig, party, Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen, both declared against the bill, and put forth all their oratory and influence against it. At the opposite extremity of the party, Mr. John Bright, the veteran and honored leader of the Radicals, Mr. Chamberlain, the younger and latterly more active and prominent chief of that large section, took up the same position of hostility. Scarcely less important was the attitude of the social magnates of the Liberal party all over the country. … As, at the preceding general election, in December, 1885, the Liberals had obtained a majority of less than a hundred over the Tories, a defection such as this was quite enough to involve their defeat. Probably the name of Mr. Bright alone turned the issue in some twenty constituencies, which might otherwise have cast a Home Rule vote. The mention of this cause, however, throws us back on the further question, Why was there such a weight of authority against the scheme proposed by Mr. Gladstone? How came so many of his former colleagues, friends, supporters, to differ and depart from him on this occasion? Besides some circumstances attending the production of the bill, … which told heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it. The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were due—inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other measures. Some members of the Irish party, apparently with the approval of the rest, had systematically sought to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of Parliament to a dead stop. … There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi of the Sudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. … To many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these men the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would probably contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt. … The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for alarm. … Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth sub-divided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here and there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. … Many people in England assumed that an Irish Parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were Roman Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. … The fact stood out that in Ireland two hostile factions had been contending for the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other. True, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application. The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England, because the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of a large part of the middle class, because it contained the Protestants. … There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. This was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands."

_J. Bryce, Past and Future of the Irish Question (New Princeton Review, January, 1887)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1886. The "Plan of Campaign."

On the 11th of September Mr. Parnell had introduced in the House of Commons a bill to make temporary provision for the relief of suffering tenants in Ireland, and it had been defeated after a sharp debate by a majority of 95. The chief argument for the bill had been that "something must be done to stay evictions during the approaching winter. The rents would be due in November, and the fall in agricultural prices had been so great, that the sale of their whole produce by the tenants would not, it was contended, bring in money enough to enable them to pay in full. … The greatest public interest in the subject was roused by Lord Clanricarde's evictions at Woodford in Galway. … His quarrel with his Woodford tenants was of old standing. {1800} When the Home Rule Bill was before Parliament the National League urged them not to bring matters to a crisis, but their sufferings were too great to be borne, and they set the National League at defiance, and established a Plan of Campaign of their own. Lord Clanricarde would grant them no reduction, and they leagued themselves together, 316 in number, and when the November rent day came round in 1885 they resolved not to pay any rent at all if twenty-five per cent. reduction was refused. This was refused, and they withheld their rent. … The eviction of four of these tenants, in August, 1886, attracted general attention by the long fight the people made for their homes. Each house was besieged and defended like some mediæval city. One stone house, built by a tenant at a cost of £200, got the name of Saunders's fort. It was held by a garrison of 24, who threw boiling water on their assailants, and in one part of the fight threw out among them a hive of bees. … To evict these four men the whole available forces of the Crown in Galway were employed from Thursday the 19th of August to Friday the 27th. Seven hundred policemen and soldiers were present to protect the emergency men who carried out the evictions, and 60 peasants were taken to Galway gaol. It was to meet cases of this kind that, after the rejection of Mr. Parnell's Tenants' Relief Bill, the Plan of Campaign was started. In a speech at Woodford on the 17th of October Mr. John Dillon gave an outline of the scheme on which he thought a tenants' campaign against unjust rents might be started and carried on all over the country. … On the 23rd of October the 'Plan of Campaign' was published in full detail in 'United Ireland.' The first question to be answered, said the 'Plan,' was, How to meet the November demand for rent? On every estate the tenantry were to come together and decide whether to combine or not in resistance to exorbitant rent. When they were assembled, if the priest were not with them, they were to 'appoint an intelligent and sturdy member of their body as chairman, and after consulting, decide by resolution on the amount of abatement they will demand.' A committee of six or more and the chairman were then to be elected, to be called a Managing Committee, to take charge of the half year's rent of each tenant should the landlord refuse it. Everyone present was to pledge himself

(1) To abide by the decision of the majority; (2) To hold no communication with the landlord or his agents, except in presence of the body of the tenantry; (3) To accept no settlement for himself that was not given to every tenant on the estate.

Having thus pledged themselves each to the others they were to go to the rent office in a body on the rent day, or the gale day, as it is called in Ireland, and if the agent refused to see them in a body they were to depute the chairman to act as their spokesman and tender the reduced rent. If the agent refused to accept it, then the money was to be handed to the Managing Committee 'to fight the landlord with.' The fund thus got together was to be employed in supporting tenants who were dispossessed by sale or ejectment. The National League was to guarantee the continuance of the grants if needful after the fund was expended, or as long as the majority of the tenants held out."

P. W. Clayden, England under the Coalition, chapter. 8.

IRELAND: A. D. 1888-1889. The Parnell Commission.

Early in 1887, certain letters appeared in "The Times" newspaper, of London, one of which, printed in facsimile, "implied Mr. Parnell's sanction to the Park murders of 1882." It created a great sensation, and, "after many bitter debates in Parliament, a commission was appointed (1888) consisting of three judges to inquire not only into the authenticity of this and other letters attributed to several persons as their authors, but into the whole course of conduct pursued by many of the Irish Members of Parliament, in reference to the previous agitation in Ireland and their connexion with an extreme faction in America, who tried to intimidate this country by dastardly attempts to blow up our public buildings on several occasions between the years 1884 and 1887. The court sat from the winter months of 1888 until the summer of the following year, and examined dozens of witnesses, including Mr. Parnell and most of the other accused members, as well as dozens of the Irish peasantry who could give evidence as to outrages in their several districts. One of the witnesses, a mean and discarded Dublin journalist named Pigott, turned out to be the forger of the letters; and, having fled from the avenging hand of justice to Madrid, there put an end to his life by means of a revolver. Meantime, the interest in the investigation had flagged, and the report of the Commission, which deeply implicated many of the Irish members as to their connexion with the Fenian Society previous to their entrance to Parliament, on their own acknowledgment, fell rather flat on the public ear, wearied out in reiteration of Irish crime from the introduction of the Land League until the attempt to blow up London Bridge by American filibusters (1886). The unfortunate man Pigott had sold his forged letters to the over credulous Times newspaper at a fabulous price; and even experts in handwriting, so dexterously had they been manipulated, were ready to testify in open court to the genuineness of the letters before the tragic end of their luckless author left not a particle of doubt as to their origin."

R. Johnston, Short History of the Queen's Reign, page 65.

ALSO IN: _Sir C. Russell, The Parnell Commission: Opening Speech for the Defence._

_M. Davitt, Speech in Defence._

IRELAND: A. D. 1889-1891. Political fall and death of Mr. Parnell.

On the 28th of December, 1889, Captain O'Shea, one of the Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament, filed a petition for divorce from his wife on the ground of adultery with Mr. Parnell. The Irish leader tacitly confessed his guilt by making no answer, and in November, 1890, the divorce was granted to Captain O'Shea. In the following June Mr. Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea were married. The stigma which this affair put upon Mr. Parnell caused Mr. Gladstone, on behalf of the English Liberals, to demand his retirement from the leadership of the Home Rule Party. He refused to give way, and was supported in the refusal by a minority of his party. The majority, however, took action to depose him, and the party was torn asunder. A sudden illness ended Mr. Parnell's life on the 6th of October, 1891; but his death failed to restore peace, and the Irish Nationalists are still divided.

IRELAND: A. D. 1893. Passage of the Home Rule Bill by the British House of Commons. Its defeat by the House of Lords.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1892-1893.

----------IRELAND: End--------

{1801}

IRENE, Empress in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 797-802.

IRISH NIGHT, The.

See LONDON: A. D. 1688.

IRMINSUL, The.

See SAXONS: A. D. 772-804.

IRON AGE.

See STONE AGE.

IRON CROSS, Order of the.

A Prussian order of knighthood instituted in 1815 by Frederick William III.

IRON CROWN, The Order of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.

IRON CROWN OF LOMBARDY, The.

See LOMBARDY, THE IRON CROWN OF.

IRON MASK, The Man in the.

"It is known that a masked and unknown prisoner, the object of extraordinary surveillance, died, in 1703, in the Bastille, to which he had been taken from the St. Marguerite Isles in 1698; he had remained about ten years incarcerated in these isles, and traces of him are with certainty found in the fort of Exilles, and at Pignerol, as far back as about 1681. This singular fact, which began to be vaguely bruited a little before the middle of the 18th century, excited immense curiosity after Voltaire had availed himself of it in his 'Siècle de Louis XIV.', wherein he exhibited it in the most touching and tragic light. A thousand conjectures circulated: no great personage had disappeared in Europe about 1680. What interest so powerful had the government of Louis XIV. for concealing this mysterious visage from every human eye? Many explanations more or less plausible, more or less chimerical, have been attempted in regard to the 'man with the iron mask' (an erroneous designation that has prevailed; the mask was not of iron, but of black velvet; it was probably one of those 'loups' so long in use), when, in 1837, the bibliophile Jacob (M. Paul Lacroix) published a very ingenious book on this subject, in which he discussed all the hypotheses, and skilfully commented on all the facts and dates, in order to establish that, in 1680, Fouquet was represented as dead; that he was masked, sequestered anew, and dragged from fortress to fortress till his real death in 1703. It is impossible for us to admit this solution of the problem; the authenticity of the minister Louvois' correspondence with the governor of the prison of Pignerol, on the subject of Fouquet's death, in March, 1680, appears to us incontestable; and did this material proof not exist, we still could not believe in a return of rigor so strange, so barbarous, and so unaccountable on the part of Louis XIV., when all the official documents attest that his resentment had gradually been appeased, and that an old man who asked nothing more than a little free air before dying had ceased to be feared. There are many more presumptions in favor of Baron Heiss' opinion, reproduced by several writers, and, in the last instance, by M. Delort ('Histoire de l'homme au masque de fer'; 1825),—the opinion that the 'man with a mask' was a secretary of the Duke of Mantua, named Mattioli, carried off by order of Louis XIV. in 1679, for having deceived the French government, and having sought to form a coalition of the Italian princes against it. But however striking, in certain respects, may be the resemblances between Mattioli and the 'iron mask,' equally guarded by the governor St. Mars at Pignerol and at Exilles, however grave may be the testimony according to which Mattioli was transferred to the St. Marguerite Isles, the subaltern position of Mattioli, whom Catinat and Louvois, in their letters, characterize as a 'knave' and St. Mars threatens with a cudgel, ill accords, we do not say with the traditions relating to the profound respect shown the prisoner by the keepers, the governor, and even the minister,—these traditions may be contested,—but with the authentic details and documents given by the learned and judicious Father Griffet in regard to the extreme mystery in which the prisoner at the Bastille was enveloped, more than twenty years after the abduction of the obscure Mattioli, in regard to the mask that he never put off, in regard to the precautions taken after his death to annihilate the traces of his sojourn at the Bastille, which explains why nothing was found concerning him after the taking of that fortress. Many minds will always persist in seeking, under this impenetrable mask, a more dangerous secret, a mysterious accusing resemblance; and the most popular opinion, although the most void of an proof, will always doubtless be that suffered to transpire by Voltaire, under cover of his publisher, in the eighth edition of his 'Dictionnaire philosophique' (1771). According to this opinion, the honor of the royal household was involved in the secret, and the unknown victim was an illegitimate son of Anne of Austria. The only private crime of which Louis XIV. was perhaps capable, was a crime inspired by fanaticism for monarchical honor. However this may be, history has no right to pronounce upon what will never emerge from the domain of conjecture."

H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., volume 1, page 40, foot-note.

"The Paris correspondent of the 'Daily Telegraph' records a fact which, if it is correctly reported, goes a long way towards clearing up one of the problems of modern history. A letter to Louvois by Louis XIV., written in cipher, has been long in the archives of the Ministry of War, and has at length been deciphered. In it the King orders Louvois to arrest General de Burlonde for having raised the siege of Conti without permission, to send him to Pignerol, and to conceal his features under a 'loup' or black-velvet mask. The order was executed, and the presumption is therefore violent that the 'Man in the Iron Mask'—it was a black-velvet one with iron springs—was General de Burlonde. The story tallies with the known fact that the prisoner made repeated attempts to communicate his name to soldiers, that he was treated with respect by his military jailors, and that Louis XV., who knew the truth of the whole affair, declared it to be a matter of no importance. The difficulty is to discover the King's motive for such a precaution; but he may have feared discontent among his great officers, or the soldiery."

_The Spectator, October 14, 1893._

The cipher despatch above referred to, and the whole subject of the imprisonment of General de Burlonde, are discussed at length, in the light of official records and correspondence, by M. Émile Burgaud and Commandant Bazeries (the latter of whom discovered the key to the cipher), in a book entitled "Le Masque de Fer: Révélation de la correspondance chiffrée de Louis XIV.," published at Paris in 1893. It seems to leave small doubt that the mysteriously masked prisoner was no other than General de Burlonde.

ALSO IN: G. A. Ellis, True History of the State Prisoner commonly called the Iron Mask.

_E. Lawrence, The Man in the Iron Mask (Harper's Magazine, volume 43, page 98)._

_M. Topin, The Man in the Iron Mask (Cornhill Magazine, volume 21, page 333)._

Quarterly Review, volume 34, page 19.

{1802}

IRONCLAD OATH.

An oath popularly styled the "Ironclad oath" was prescribed by the Congress of the United States, during the War of the Rebellion, in July, 1862, to be taken by every person elected or appointed to any office under the Government of the United States, the President only excepted. He was required to swear that he had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United States"; that he had "voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the National Government"; that he had "neither sought nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States"; that he had "never yielded a voluntary support to any pretended Government within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto."

J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, volume 2, page 88.

IRONSIDES, Cromwell's.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (MAY).

"IRONSIDES, Old."

A name popularly given to the American frigate "Constitution."

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814.

IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY, The.

According to their traditions, the founder of the League or confederacy which united the five nations of the Iroquois—the Mohawks, the Onondagas, the Oneidas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, was Hiawatha, the hero of Iroquois legend.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY.

He was an Onondaga chief, and is supposed to have lived about the middle of the 15th century. "Hiawatha had long beheld with grief the evils which afflicted not only his own nation, but all the other tribes about them, through the continual wars in which they were engaged, and the misgovernment and miseries at home which these wars produced. With much meditation he had elaborated in his mind the scheme of a vast confederation which would ensure universal peace. In the mere plan of a confederation there was nothing new. There are probably few, if any, Indian tribes which have not, at one time or another, been members of a league or confederacy. It may almost be said to be their normal condition. But the plan which Hiawatha had evolved differed from all others in two particulars. The system which he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and its management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the confederation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wished the federation to extend until all the tribes of men should be included in it, and peace should everywhere reign. Such is the positive testimony of the Iroquois themselves: and their statement, as will be seen, is supported by historical evidence. … His conceptions were beyond his time, and beyond ours; but their effect, within a limited sphere, was very great. For more than three centuries the bond which he devised held together the Iroquois nations in perfect amity. It proved, moreover, as he intended, elastic. The territory of the Iroquois, constantly extending as their united strength made itself felt, became the 'Great Asylum' of the Indian tribes. … Among the interminable stories with which the common people [of the Five Nations] beguile their winter nights, the traditions of Atotarho and Hiawatha became intermingled with the legends of their mythology. An accidental similarity, in the Onondaga dialect, between the name of Hiawatha and that of one of their ancient divinities, led to a confusion between the two, which has misled some investigators. This deity bears, in the sonorous Canienga tongue, the name of Taronhiawagon, meaning 'the Holder of the Heavens.' The Jesuit missionaries style him 'the great god of the Iroquois.' Among the Onondagas of the present day, the name is abridged to Taonhiawagi, or Tahiawagi. The confusion between this name and that of Hiawatha (which, in another form, is pronounced Tahionwatha) seems to have begun more than a century ago. … Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his interesting History of Onondaga, makes the name to have been originally Ta-own-ya-wat-ha, and describes the bearer as 'the deity who presides over fisheries and hunting-grounds.' He came down from heaven in a white canoe, and after sundry adventures, which remind one of the labors of Hercules, assumed the name of Hiawatha (signifying, we are told, 'a very wise man'), and dwelt for a time as an ordinary mortal among men, occupied in works of benevolence. Finally, after founding the confederacy and bestowing many prudent counsels upon the people, he returned to the skies by the same conveyance in which he had descended. This legend, or, rather, congeries of intermingled legends, was communicated by Clark to Schoolcraft, when the latter was compiling his 'Notes on the Iroquois.' Mr. Schoolcraft, pleased with the poetical cast of the story, and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, which he chose to entitle 'The Hiawatha Legends,' has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Taronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern literature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind, and companion of the tricksy Paupukkeewis, the boastful Iagoo, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveler, during the middle ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations, had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he would not have made a more preposterous confusion of names and characters than that which has hitherto disguised the genuine personality of the great Onondaga reformer."

H. Hale, editor, The Iroquois Book of Rites (Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature, number 2, pages 21-36).

{1803}

IRREDENTISTS.

"This is the name given to a political organisation formed in 1878, with the avowed object of freeing all Italians from foreign rule, and of reuniting to the Italian kingdom all those portions of the Italy of old which have passed under foreign dominion. The operations of the 'Italia Irredenta' party are chiefly carried on against Austria, in consequence of the retention by that Empire of Trieste and the Southern Tyrol. Until these territories have been relinquished, Italy, or at least a certain part of it, will remain unsatisfied."

_J. S. Jeans, Italy (National Life and Thought, chapter 8)._

ISAAC II. (Comnenus), Emperor in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 1057-1059.

Isaac II. (Angelus), Emperor in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), 1185-1195.

ISABELLA, Queen of Castile (wife of Ferdinand II., King of Aragon), A. D. 1474-1504.

Isabella I., Queen of Spain, 1833-1868.

ISABELLA. The city founded by Columbus on the island of Hispaniola, or Hayti.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1493-1496.

ISANDLANA, The English disaster at (1879).

See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1877-1879.

ISASZEG, Battle of (1849).

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

ISAURIAN DYNASTY, The.

See BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 717-797.

ISAURIANS, The.

The Isaurians were a fierce and savage race of mountaineers, who occupied anciently a district in Asia Minor, between Cilicia and Pamphylia on the south and Phrygia on the north. They were persistently a nation of robbers, living upon the spoils taken from their neighbors, who were never able to punish them justly in their mountain fastnesses. Even the iron hand of the Romans failed to reduce the Isaurians to order, although P. Servilius, in 78 B. C., destroyed most of their strongholds, and Pompey, eleven years later, in his great campaign against the pirates, put an end to the lawless depredations on sea and land of the Cilicians, who had become confederated with the Isaurians. Five centuries afterwards, in the days of the Eastern Empire, the Isaurians were the best soldiers of its army, and even gave an emperor to the throne at Constantinople in the person of Zeno or Zenon.

_E. W. Brooks, The Emperor Zenon and the Isaurians (English Historical Review, April, 1893)._

ISCA.

The name of two towns in Roman Britain, one of which is identified with modern Exeter and the other with Caerleon-on-Usk. The latter was the station of the 2d legion.

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 5.

See EXETER, ORIGIN OF; also, CAERLEON.

ISHMAELIANS, The. See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 908-1171; also, ASSASSINS; and CARMATHIANS.

ISIDORE, The False Decretals of.

See PAPACY: A. D. 829-847.

ISINÆ.

See CAUSENNÆ.

ISLAM.

"The religion founded by Mahomet is called Islam, a word meaning 'the entire surrender of the will to God'; its professors are called Mussulmans—'those who have surrendered themselves,' or 'Believers,' as opposed to the 'Rejectors' of the Divine messengers, who are named 'Kafirs,' or 'Mushrikin,' that is, 'those who associate, are [not?] companions or sharers with the Deity.' Islam is sometimes divided under the two heads of Faith and Practical Religion.

I. Faith (Iman) includes a belief in one God, omnipotent, omniscient, all-merciful, the author of all good; and in Mahomet as his prophet, expressed in the formula 'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the Prophet of God.' It includes, also, a belief in the authority and sufficiency of the Koran, in angels, genii, and the devil, in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, the day of judgment and in God's absolute decree for good and evil.

II. Practical religion (Din) consists of five observances: (1) Recital of the formula of Belief, (2) Prayer with Ablution, (3) Fasting, (4) Almsgiving, (5) the Pilgrimage.

… The standard of Moslem orthodoxy is essentially the Koran and to it primary reference is made; but … some more extended and discriminating code became necessary. The deficiency was supplied by the compilation of the 'Sunnah,' or Traditional Law, which is built upon the sayings and practices of Mahomet, and, in the opinion of the orthodox, is invested with the force of law, and with some of the authority of inspiration. … In cases where both the Koran and the Sunnah afford no exact precept, the 'Rule of Faith' in their dogmatic belief, as well as the decisions of their secular courts, is based upon the teaching of one of the four great Imams, or founders of the orthodox sects, according as one or another of these prevails in any particular country. … The great Sunni sect is divided among the orthodox schools mentioned above, and is so called from its reception of the 'Sunnah,' as having authority concurrent with and supplementary to the Koran. In this respect it differs essentially from the Shias, or partisans of the house of Ali [the nephew of Mahomet and husband of his daughter Fatima] who, adhering to their own traditions, reject the authority of the 'Sunnah.' These two sects, moreover, have certain observances and matters of belief peculiar to themselves, the chief of which is the Shia doctrine, that the sovereign Imamat, or temporal and spiritual lordship over the faithful, was by divine right vested in Ali and in his descendants, through Hasan and Hosein, the children of Fatima, the daughter of the prophet. And thus the Persian Shias add to the formula of belief the confession, 'Ali is the Caliph of God.' In Persia the Shia doctrines prevail, and formerly so intense was sectarian hatred that the Sunni Mahometans paid a higher capitation tax there than the infidels. In Turkey the great majority are Sunni. In India the Shias number about one in twenty. The Shias, who reject this name, and call themselves Adliyah, or the 'Society of the Just,' are subdivided into a great variety of minor sects; but these … are united in asserting that the first three Caliphs, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman were usurpers, who had possessed themselves of the rightful and inalienable inheritance of Ali."

J. W. H. Stobart, Islam and its Founder, chapter 10.

"The twelve Imams, or pontiffs, of the Persian creed, are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. Without arms, or treasures, or subjects, they successively enjoyed the veneration of the people and provoked the jealousy of the reigning caliphs. … The twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title of Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still lives and will appear before the day of judgment."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 50.

ALSO IN: _E. Sell, The Faith of Islam._

S. Lane-Poole, Studies in a Mosque, chapters 3 and 7.

R. D. Osborn, Islam under the Arabs, part 2, chapter 1.

W. C. Taylor, History of Mohammedanism, chapters 5-13.

_R. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism_

T. Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, chapter 3.

See, also, MAHOMETAN CONQUEST.

{1804}

ISLAM, Dar-ul-, and Dar-ul-harb.

See DAR-UL-ISLAM.

ISLAND NUMBER TEN, The capture of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH-APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

ISLE OF FRANCE.

The old French province containing Paris. Also the French name of Mauritius island, taken by England in 1810.

ISLE ROYALE.

See CAPE BRETON: A. D. 1720-1745.

ISLES, Lords of the.

See HEBRIDES: A. D. 1346-1504, and HARLAW, BATTLE OF.

ISLES OF THE BLESSED.

See CANARY ISLANDS.

ISLY, Battle of (1843).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1830-1846.

ISMAIL, Khedive of Egypt, The reign and the fall of.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1840-1869; 1870-1883; and 1875-1882.

Ismail I., Shah of Persia, A. D. 1502-1523.

Ismail II., Shah of Persia, 1576-1577.

ISMAIL, Siege and capture of (1790).

See TURKS: A. D. 1776-1792.

ISMAILEANS, OR ISHMAELIANS.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 908-1171; also, ASSASSINS; and CARMATHIANS.

ISONOMY. ISOTIMY. ISAGORIA.

"The principle underlying democracy is the struggle for a legalised equality which was usually described [by the ancient Greeks] by the expressions Isonomy, or equality of law for all,—Isotimy, or proportionate regard paid to all, —Isagoria, or equal freedom of speech, with special reference to courts of justice and popular assemblies."

G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, part 2, chapter 12.

ISONZO, Battle of the (A. D. 489).

See ROME: A. D. 488-526.

ISOPOLITY.

"Under Sp. Cassius [B. C. 493], Rome concluded a treaty with the Latins, in which the right of isopolity or the 'jus municipi' was conceded to them. The idea of isopolity changed in the course of time, but its essential features in early times were these: between the Romans and Latins and between the Romans and Caerites there existed this arrangement, that any citizen of the one state who wished to settle in the other, might forthwith be able to exercise there the rights of a citizen."

B. G. Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome, lecture 13 (volume 1).

ISRAEL.

See JEWS.

ISRAEL, Lost Ten Tribes of.

See JEWS: THE KINGDOMS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH.

ISSUS, Battle of (B. C. 333).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 334-330.

ISTÆVONES, The.

See GERMANY: AS KNOWN TO TACITUS.

ISTAKR, OR STAKR.

The native name under the later, or Sassanian, Persian empire, of the ancient capital, Persepolis.

G. Rawlinson, Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, chapter 3, footnote.

ISTER, The.

The ancient Greek name of the Danube, below the junction of the Theiss and the Save.

ISTHMIAN GAMES.

See NEMEAN.

----------ISTRIA: Start--------

ISTRIA: Slavonic Occupation of.

See SLAVONIC PEOPLES: SIXTH AND SEVENTH CENTURIES.

ISTRIA: A. D. 1797. Acquisition by Austria.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).

----------ISTRIA: End--------

ISTRIANS, The.

See ILLYRIANS.

ISURIUM.

A Roman town in Britain, which had previously been the chief town of the British tribe of the Brigantes. It is identified with Aldborough, Yorkshire, "where the excavator meets continually with the tessellated floors of the Roman houses."

T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, chapter 5.

ITALI, The.

See ŒNOTRIANS.

ITALIAN WAR, The.

See ROME: B. C. 90-88.

ITALIOTES.

See SICELIOTEB.

----------ITALY: Start--------

[Image: Two maps of Italy, at the beginning of the Seventh Century, and A. D. 1492.]

ITALY: Ancient. Early Italians.

"It was not till the close of the Republic, or rather the beginning of the Empire, that the name of Italy was employed, as we now employ it, to designate the whole Peninsula, from the Alps to the Straits of Messina.

See ROME: B. C. 275.

The term Italia, borrowed from the name of a primæval tribe who occupied the southern portion of the land, was gradually adopted as a generic title in the same obscure manner in which most of the countries of Europe, or (we may say) the Continents of the world, have received their appellations. In the remotest times the name only included Lower Calabria: from these narrow limits it gradually spread upwards, till about the time of the Punic Wars, its northern boundary ascended the little river Rubicon (between Umbria and Cisalpine Gaul), then followed the ridge of the Appennines westward to the source of the Macra, and was carried down the bed of that small stream to the Gulf of Genoa. When we speak of Italy, therefore, in the Roman sense of the word, we must dismiss from our thoughts all that fertile country which was at Rome entitled the provincial district of Gallia Cisalpina, and Liguria."

H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, introduction, section. 2.

"Philological research teaches us to distinguish three primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that which we shall call the Italian. The last is divided into two main branches,—the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the Umbri, Marsi, Volsci and Samnites belong. As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information. {1805} At the southeastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language have been found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks. … With the recognition of … a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content. … The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as reliable tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians; the latter including their southern off-shoots, the Marsians and Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical times. … These examples [philological examples, given in the work, but omitted from this quotation], selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena, suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family, and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek. The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German and the Slavonian are their cousins. … Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects. It is true that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are in some degree known to us. … A conjoint view, however, of the facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian stock. … It may … be regarded as certain that the Italians, like the Indians, migrated into their peninsula from the north. The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central mountain-ridge of Italy, in a direction from north to south, can still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely historical times. Less is known regarding the route which the Latin migration followed. Probably it proceeded in a similar direction along the west coast, long, in all likelihood, before the first Sabellian stocks began to move."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapters 2-3.

See, also, ETRUSCANS; LATIUM; SABINES; SAMNITES; UMBRIANS; MAGNA GRÆCIA; also, ROME: B. C. 343-290, and 339-338.

"In the February number of the 'Civiltà Cattolica,' Padre de Cara pleads for a national effort on the part of Italian archaeologists to solve the question of the origin of their country's civilisation by the systematic exploration and excavation of Pelasgic Italy. … In a series of articles, extending over several years, the learned father has contended for the identity of the Hittites and Proto-Pelasgians on archaeological, etymological, and historical grounds; and he here repeats that, if 'Italic' means Aryan, then it is among the peoples speaking Oscan, Umbrian, Latin, and other dialects of the Indo-European family that the parentage of Italian civilisation must be sought; but that 'Italy' meant in the first place the country of the Hittites (Hethei), and hence of the Pelasgians, and that name and civilisation are alike Pelasgic. Those who hold it to have been Aryan have not only the testimony of Greek and Roman writers against them, but also the facts that there were Pelasgians in Italy whose stone constructions are standing to this day, and that the Etruscan language and culture had no Aryan affinities. The writer further points out that the walls of Pelasgic cities, whether in Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, all resemble each other, and that the origin of Greek civilisation was also Pelasgian. In Greece, as in Italy, the Aryans followed centuries after the Hittite-Pelasgians, and Aryan Greece carried the arts of Pelasgic Greece to perfection. He believes that, of two migratory bands of Hittites, one invaded Greece and the other Italy, about the same time. He also draws attention to the coincidence that it is not very long since Greece, like Italy at the present time, could date its civilisation no further back than 700 or 800 B. C. Schliemann recovered centuries for Greece, but 'Italy still remains imprisoned in the iron circle of the seventh century.' To break it, she must follow Schliemann's plan; and as he had steady faith in the excavation of the Pelasgic cities and cemeteries of Greece, so will like faith and conduct on the part of Italian archaeologists let in light upon this once dark problem."

_Academy, March 31, 1894, page 273._

ITALY: Under the dominion of Rome.

See ROME.

ITALY: Invasions Repelled by Rome.

See ROME: B. C. 390-347, 282-275; PUNIC WARS; CIMBRI AND TEUTONES; ALEMANNI; and RADAGAISUS.

ITALY: A. D. 400-410. Alaric's invasions.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 400-403; and ROME: A. D. 408-410.

ITALY: A. D. 452. Attila's invasion. The origin of Venice.

See HUNS: A. D. 452; and VENICE: A. D. 452.

ITALY: A. D. 476-553. The fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric, and its fall. Recovery of Italy by Justinian.

See ROME: A. D. 455-476, to 535-553.

ITALY: A. D. 539-553. Frank invasions.

See FRANKS: A. D. 539-553.

ITALY: A. D. 554-800. Rule of the Exarchs of Ravenna.

See ROME: A. D. 554-800; and PAPACY: A. D. 728-774.

ITALY: A. D. 568-800. Lombard conquests and kingdom. Rise of the Papal power at Rome. Alliance of the Papacy with the sovereigns of the Franks. Revival of the Roman Empire under Charlemagne.

"Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A. D. 568 [see LOMBARDS: A. D. 568-573, and after] had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the spirit to use them in self-defence. … Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of Ravenna. {1806} The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they it waited his confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the victims of his anger. But as the city became more accustomed in independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet legal [see ROME: A. D. 590-640, and PAPACY: A. D. 728-774], his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished. The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain: the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy.

See ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY.

Liudprand, king of the Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril: placed between a heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II. had already opened communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm. As the crisis becomes more pressing, Gregory III. finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to him in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church. … Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a monarch's full power [see FRANKS: A. D. 511-752]: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an international power, pronounced the deposition of Childric, and gave to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto unknown. … The compact between the chair of Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter himself. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy, receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician [754]. … When on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral part of the Frankish empire [see GERMANY: A. D. 68-800]. … For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it does not appear that he sent thither any official representative; while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the years of his reign to date documents."

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 4.

"Thus, by German hands, the internal ascendancy of the German race in Italy, which had lasted, first under the Goths, and then under the Lombards, for 281 years, was finally broken. A German was still king over Italy, as for ages Germans were still to be. But Roman and native influence reconquered its supremacy in Italy, under the management and leadership of the bishops of Rome. The Lombards, already becoming Italianized, melted into provincial Italians. The Teutonic language disappeared, leaving a number of words to Italian dialects, and a number of names to Italian families. The last king of the Lombards bore an Italian name, Desiderius. The latest of Italian national heroes bears the Bavarian and Lombard name of Garibaldi. But the overthrow of the Lombards, and the gift of provinces and cities to St. Peter had even more eventful results. The alliance between the king of the Franks and the bishop of Rome had become one of the closest kind. … The German king and the Italian pope found themselves together at the head of the modern world of the West. But the fascination of the name of Rome still, as it had done for centuries, held sway over the Teutonic mind. … It was not unnatural that the idea should recommend itself, both to the king and the pope, of reviving in the West, in close connexion with the Roman primacy, that great name which still filled the imagination of the world, and which in Roman judgments, Greek Byzantium had wrongfully stolen away—the name of Cæsar Augustus, the claim to govern the world. There was a longing in the West for the restoration of the name and authority, 'lest,' as the contemporary writers express it, 'the heathen should mock at the Christian if the name of Emperor had ceased among them.' And at this moment, the government at Constantinople was in the hands of a woman, the Empress Irene. Charles's services to the pope were recompensed, and his victorious career of more than thirty years crowned, by the restoration at Rome, in his person, of the Roman empire and the imperial dignity. The same authority which had made him 'patrician,' and consecrated him king, now created him Emperor of the Romans. On Christmas day, 800, when Charles came to pay his devotions before the altar of St. Peter's, Pope Leo III.—without Charles's knowledge or wish, so Charles declared to his biographer, Einhard, and, it may be, prematurely, as regards Charles's own feeling—placed a golden crown on his head, while all the people shouted, 'to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the great and peace-giving Emperor of the Romans, life and victory.' … {1807} Thus a new power arose in Europe, new in reality and in its relations to society, though old in name. It was formally but the carrying on the line of the successors of Augustus and Constantine. But substantially it was something very different. Its authors could little foresee its destinies; but it was to last, in some sort the political centre of the world which was to be, for 1,000 years. And the Roman Church, which had done such great things, which had consecrated the new and mighty kings of the Franks, and had created for the mightiest of them the imperial claim to universal dominion, rose with them to a new attitude in the world. … The coronation of Charles at Rome, in the face of an imperial line at Constantinople, finally determined, though it did not at once accomplish, the separation of East and West, of Greek and Latin Christianity. This separation had long been impending, perhaps, becoming inevitable. … One Roman empire was still the only received theory. But one Roman empire, with its seat in the West, or one Roman empire, governed in partnership by two emperors of East and West, had become impossible in fact. The theory of its unity continued for ages; but whether the true successor of Augustus and Theodosius sat at Constantinople, or somewhere in the West, remained in dispute, till the dispute was ended by the extinction of the Eastern empire by the Turks on May 29, 1453."

R. W. Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 7.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

ITALY: A. D. 685-1014. The founding of the duchy of Tuscany.

See TUSCANY: A. D. 685-1115.

ITALY: A. D. 781. Erected into a separate kingdom by Charlemagne.

In the year 781 Charlemagne erected Italy and Aquitaine into two separate kingdoms, placing his infant sons Pipin and Ludwig on the thrones.

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapter 16.

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 800-1016. Conflict of Greeks, Saracens and Franks.

"The southern provinces [of Italy], which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most part [in the 8th and 9th centuries], to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum—so powerful in war that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne—so liberal in peace that they maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds which the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and tranquillity of a perfect conquest. Their frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo and were entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coasts. … A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands the entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations provoked the resentment and conciliated the union of the two emperors. An offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the Macedonian [of the Byzantine Empire], the first of his race, and Lewis, the great grandson of Charlemagne; and each party Supplied the deficiencies of his associate. … The fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks and by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of four years, the Arabian emir submitted [A. D. 871] to the clemency of Lewis, who commanded in person the operations of the siege. This important conquest had been achieved by the concord of the East and West; but their recent amity was soon embittered by the mutual complaints of jealousy and pride. … Whoever might deserve the honour, the Greek emperors, Basil and his son Leo, secured the advantage of the reduction of Bari. The Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from Mount Garganus to the Bay of Salerno leaves the far greater part of the [modern] kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the Eastern empire. Beyond that line the dukes or republics of Amalfi and Naples, who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in the neighbourhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalfi was enriched by supplying Europe with the produce and manufactures of Asia. But the Lombard princes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, were reluctantly torn from the communion of the Latin world, and too often violated their oaths of servitude and tribute. The city of Bari rose to dignity and wealth as the metropolis of the new theme or province of Lombardy; the title of Patrician, and afterwards the singular name of Catapan, was assigned to the supreme governor. … As long as the sceptre was disputed by the princes of Italy, their efforts were feeble and adverse; and the Greeks resisted or eluded the forces of Germany which descended from the Alps under the imperial standard of the Othos. The first and greatest of those Saxon princes was compelled to relinquish the siege of Bari: the second, after the loss of his stoutest bishops and barons, escaped with honour from the bloody field of Crotona (A. D. 983). On that day the scale of war was turned against the Franks by the valour of the Saracens. … The Caliph of Egypt had transported 40,000 Moslems to the aid of his Christian ally. The successors of Basil amused themselves with the belief that the conquest of Lombardy had been achieved, and was still preserved, by the justice of their laws, the virtues of their ministers, and the gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from anarchy and oppression. A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth into the palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery were dispelled by the easy and rapid success of the Norman adventurers."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 56.

ITALY: A. D. 803-810. Charlemagne's boundary treaties with the Byzantine Emperor. Attempts of Pipin against the Venetians. The founding of Modern Venice.

See VENICE: A. D. 697-810.

ITALY: A. D. 810-961. Spread of Venetian commerce and naval prowess.

See VENICE: A. D. 810-961.

{1808}

ITALY: A. D. 843-951. In the breaking up of Charlemagne's Empire. The founding of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the partition of Charlemagne's Empire among his three grandsons, by the treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, Italy, together with the new kingdom called Lotharingia, or Lorraine, was assigned to the elder, Lothar, who bore the title of Emperor. Lothar, who died in 855, redivided his dominions among three sons, and Lorraine, separated from Italy, was soon dismembered and shared between Germany and France. The Italian kingdom fell to Louis or Ludwig II., who was crowned Emperor, and on his death without issue, A. D. 875, it was seized, together with the imperial title, by the French Carlovingian king, Charles the Bald. Two years afterwards he died, and Italy, together with the imperial crown, was acquired by the last legitimate survivor of the German Carlovingian line, Charles the Fat, who died in 888. "At that memorable era (A. D. 888) the four kingdoms which this prince [Charles the Fat] had united fell asunder: West France, where Odo or Eudes [Duke of Paris, ancestor of the royal line of Capet] then began to reign, was never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Arnulf; Burgundy split up into two principalities, in one of which (Transjurane) Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other (Cisjurune with Provence) submitted to Boso; while Italy was divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli and Guido of Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the latter, and on his speedy death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor by the Pope. Arnulf's [the German king's] descent chased them away and vindicated the claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the anti-German faction at Rome became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy, and afterwards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his fealty to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain title he retained through years of misery and exile, till A. D. 928. None of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy; beyond it they were not so much as recognized. … In A. D. 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom Emperors. After him Hugh of Burgundy and Lothar his son reigned as kings of Italy, if puppets in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called. Rome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic [called variously senator, consul, patrician, and prince of the Romans], who had renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city." Affairs in Italy were at this stage when Otto or Otho, the vigorous and chivalrous German king of the new line, came in 951 to re-establish and reconstitute the Roman Empire of Charlemagne and to make it a lasting entity in European politics—the "Holy Roman Empire" of modern history.

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 6.

See GERMANY: A. D. 936-973.

ALSO IN: F. Guizot, History of Civilization, lecture 24.

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 49.

See, also, ROME: A. D. 903-964; and ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY: A. D. 963.

ITALY: A. D. 900-924. Ravaged by the Hungarians.

"The vicinity of Italy had tempted their early inroads; but from their camp on the Brenta they beheld with some terror the apparent strength and populousness of the new-discovered country. They requested leave to retire; their request was proudly rejected by the Italian king; and the lives of 20,000 Christians paid the forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of the West the royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendour; and the pre-eminence of Rome itself was only derived from the relies of the apostles. The Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames; forty-three churches were consumed; and, after the massacre of the people, they spared about 200 wretches who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a vague exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual excursions from the Alps to the neighbourhood of Rome and Capua, the churches that yet escaped resounded with a fearful litany: 'Oh! save and deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians!' But the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent rolled forward, till it was stopped by the extreme land of Calabria."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 55.

ITALY: A. D. 961-1039. Subjection to Germany.

"Otho I., his son Otho II., and his grandson Otho III., were successively acknowledged emperors and kings of Italy, from 961 to 1002. When this branch of the house of Saxony became extinct, Henry II. of Bavaria, and Conrad the Salic of Franconia, filled the throne from 1004 to 1039. During this period of nearly eighty years, the German emperors twelve times entered Italy at the head of their armies, which they always drew up in the plains of Roncaglia near Placentia; there they held the states of Lombardy, received homage from their Italian feudatories, caused the rents due to be paid, and promulgated laws for the government of Italy. A foreign sovereign, however, almost always absent, known only by his incursions at the head of a barbarous army, could not efficaciously govern a country which he hardly knew, and where his yoke was detested. … The emperors were too happy to acknowledge the local authorities, whatever they were, whenever they could obtain from them their pecuniary dues: sometimes they were dukes or marquises, whose dignities had survived the disasters of various invasions and of civil wars; sometimes the archbishops and bishops of great cities, whom Charlemagne and his successors had frequently invested with duchies and counties escheated to the crown, reckoning that lords elected for life would remain more dependent than hereditary lords; sometimes, finally, they were the magistrates themselves, who, although elected by the people, received from the monarch the title of imperial vicars, and took part with the nobles and prelates in the Plaids (placita), or diets of Roncaglia. After a stay of some months, the emperor returned with his army into Germany; the nobles retired to their castles, the prelates and magistrates to their cities: neither of these last acknowledged a superior authority to their own, nor reckoned on any other force than what they could themselves employ to assert what they called their rights. Opposite interests could not fail to produce collision, and the war was universal."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 1.

{1809}

During the reign of Henry II. (A. D. 1002-1024), against whom a rival king of Italy was set up by the Italians, "there was hardly any recognised government, and the Lombards became more and more accustomed, through necessity, to protect themselves, and to provide for their own internal police. Meanwhile the German nation had become odious to the Italians. The rude soldiery, insolent and addicted to intoxication, were engaged in frequent disputes with the citizens, wherein the latter, as is usual in similar cases, were exposed first to the summary vengeance of the troops, and afterwards to penal chastisement for sedition. In one of these tumults, at the entry of Henry II. in 1004, the city of Pavia was burned to the ground, which inspired its inhabitants with a constant animosity against that emperor. Upon his death, in 1024, the Italians were disposed to break once more their connexion with Germany, which had elected as sovereign Conrad duke of Franconia. They offered their crown to Robert king of France and to William duke of Guienne." But neither of these princes would accept the troublesome diadem; and, in the end, the archbishop of Milan and other Lombard lords "repaired to Constance and tendered the crown to Conrad, which he was already disposed to claim as a sort of dependency upon Germany. It does not appear that either Conrad or his successors were ever regularly elected to reign over Italy; but whether this ceremony took place or not, we may certainly date from that time the subjection of Italy to the Germanic body. It became an unquestionable maxim, that the votes of a few German princes conferred a right to the sovereignty of a country which had never been conquered, and which had never formally recognised this superiority."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 3, part 1 (volume 1).

"The Italian Kingdom of the Karlings, the kingdom which was reunited to Germany under Otto the Great, was … a continuation of the old Lombard kingdom. It consisted of that kingdom, enlarged by the Italian lands which fell off from the Eastern Empire in the eighth century; that is by the Exarchate and the adjoining Pentapolis, and the immediate territory of Rome itself."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 3.

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 1000-1090. Conquests and settlement of the Normans.

"A pilgrimage first took the Normans to Southern Italy, where they were to found a kingdom. Here there were, if I may so speak, three wrecks, three ruins of nations—Lombards in the mountains, Greeks in the ports, Sicilian and African Saracens rambling over the coasts. About the year 1000, some Norman pilgrims assist the inhabitants of Salerno to drive out a party of Arabs, who were holding them to ransom. Being well paid for the service, these Normans attract others of their countrymen hither. A Greek of Bari, named Melo or Meles, takes them into pay to free his city from the Greeks of Byzantium. Next they are settled by the Greek republic of Naples at the fort of Aversa, which lay between that city and her enemies, the Lombards of Capua (A. D. 1026). Finally, the sons of a poor gentleman of the Cotentin, Tancred of Hauteville, seek their fortune here. Tancred had twelve children; seven by the same mother. It was during William's [the Conqueror's] minority, when numbers of the barons endeavoured to withdraw themselves from the Bastard's yoke, that these sons of Tancred's directed their steps towards Italy, where it was said that a simple Norman knight had become count of Aversa. They set off penniless, and defrayed the expenses of their journey by the sword (A. D. 1037?). The Byzantine governor, or Katapan, engaged their services, and led them against the Arabs. But their countrymen beginning to flock to them, they no sooner saw themselves strong enough than they turned against their paymasters, seized Apulia [A. D. 1042], and divided it into twelve countships. This republic of Condottieri held its assemblies at Melphi. The Greeks endeavoured to defend themselves, but fruitlessly. They collected an army of 60,000 Italians; to be routed by the Normans, who amounted to several hundreds of well-armed men. The Byzantines then summoned their enemies, the Germans, to their aid; and the two empires, of the East and West, confederated against the sons of the gentleman of Coutances. The all-powerful emperor, Henry the Black (Henry III.), charged Leo IX., who had been nominated pope by him, and who was a German and kin to the imperial family, to exterminate these brigands. The pope led some Germans and a swarm of Italians against them [1053]; but the latter took to flight at the very beginning of the battle, and left the warlike pontiff in the hands of the enemy. Too wary to ill-treat him, the Normans piously cast themselves at their prisoner's feet, and compelled him to grant them, as a fief of the Church, all that they had taken or might take possession of in Apulia, Calabria, and on the other side of the strait; so that, in spite of himself, the pope became the suzerain of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies (A. D. 1052-1053)."

J. Michelet, History of France, book 4, chapter 2.

The two elder of the sons of Tancred were now dead, and the third son, Humphrey, died not long after. A fourth brother, Robert, surnamed Guiscard, who had lately arrived from Normandy with reinforcements, then established himself (A. D. 1057) with some difficulty in the leadership and succession. "He accomplished the reduction of almost all the country which composes the present kingdom of Naples, and, extinguishing the long dominion of the Beneventine Lombards and of the eastern empire in Italy [see BENEVENTUM, and AMALFI], finally received from Pope Nicholas II. the confirmation of the titles which he had assumed, of duke of Calabria and Apulia [A. D. 1080]. … While Robert Guiscard was perfecting his dominion on the continent, his younger brother Roger engaged in the astonishing design of conquering the large and beautiful island of Sicily from the Saracens with a few Norman volunteers. An air of romantic extravagance breathes over all the enterprises of the Normans in Italy; and, even if we discard the incredible tales which the legends and chronicles of the times have preserved of the valour and corporeal strength of these northern warriors, enough will remain in the authentic results of their expeditions to stagger the reason and warm the imagination with attractive visions of chivalrous achievement. … We are assured that 300 Christian knights were the greatest number which Roger could for many years bring into the field; and that 136 routed a prodigious host of Saracens at the battle of Ceramio. … But the Saracens were embroiled in internal discord, and their island was broken up into numerous petty states; we may, therefore, attribute to their dissensions a great part of the success which the chroniclers of the Normans have assigned to their good swords alone. Roger had, however, embarked in an arduous and laborious undertaking, which it required the unbending perseverance and patient valour of thirty years [A. D. 1060-1090] to accomplish. … At length, all Sicily bowed to his sway; Norman barons were infeuded over its surface; and Roger, with the title of great count, held the island as a fief of his brother's duchy."

G. Proctor, History of Italy, chapter 2, part 2.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 56.

J. W. Barlow, Short History of the Normans in South Europe, chapters 1-7.

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ITALY: A. D. 1056-1122. Beginning of the conflict of the Popes with the Emperors. Hildebrand and Henry IV. The War of Investitures.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122; and GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.

ITALY: A. D. 1056-1152. The rise of the republican cities.

"The war of investitures, which lasted more than sixty years, accomplished the dissolution of every tie between the different members of the kingdom of Italy. Civil wars have at least this advantage,—that they force the rulers of the people to consult the wishes of their subjects, oblige them to gain affections which constitute their strength, and to compensate, by the granting of new privileges, the services which they require. The prelates, nobles, and cities of Italy obeyed, some the emperor, others the pope; not from a blind fear, but from choice, from affection, from conscience, according as the political or religious sentiment was predominant in each. The war was general, but everywhere waged with the national forces. Every city armed its militia, which, headed by the magistrates, attacked the neighbouring nobles or towns of a contrary party. While each city imagined it was fighting either for the pope or the emperor, it was habitually impelled exclusively by its own sentiments: every town considered itself as a whole, as an independent state, which had its own allies and enemies; each citizen felt an ardent patriotism, not for the kingdom of Italy, or for the empire, but for his own city. At the period when either kings or emperors had granted to towns the right of raising fortifications, that of assembling the citizens at the sound of a great bell, to concert together the means of their common defence, had been also conceded. This meeting of all the men of the state capable of bearing arms was called a parliament. It assembled in the great square, and elected annually two consuls, charged with the administration of justice at home, and the command of the army abroad. … The parliament, which named the consuls, appointed also a secret council, called a Consilio di Credenza, to assist the government, composed of a few members taken from each division; besides a grand council of the people, who prepared the decisions to be submitted to the parliament. … As industry had rapidly increased, and had preceded luxury,—as domestic life was sober, and the produce of labour considerable,—wealth had greatly augmented. The citizens allowed themselves no other use of their riches than that of defending or embellishing their country. It was from the year 900 to the year 1200 that the most prodigious works were undertaken and accomplished by the towns of Italy. … These three regenerating centuries gave an impulse to architecture, which soon awakened the other fine arts. The republican spirit which now fermented in every city, and gave to each of them constitutions so wise, magistrates so zealous, and citizens so patriotic, and so capable of great achievements, had found in Italy itself the models which had contributed to its formation. The war of investitures had given wing to this universal spirit of liberty and patriotism in all the municipalities of Lombardy, in Piedmont, Venetia, Romagna, and Tuscany. But there existed already in Italy other free cities. … Venice, … Ravenna, … Genoa, … Pisa, … Rome, Gaëta, Naples, Amalfi, Bari, were either never conquered by the Lombards, or in subjection too short a time to have lost their ancient walls, and the habit of guarding them. These cities served as the refuge of Roman civilization. … Those cities which had accumulated the most wealth, whose walls inclosed the greatest population, attempted, from the first half of the twelfth century, to secure by force of arms the obedience of such of the neighbouring towns as did not appear sufficiently strong to resist them, … to force them in to a perpetual alliance, so as to share their good or evil fortune, and always place their armed force under the standard of the dominant city. … Two great towns in the plains of Lombardy surpassed every other in power and wealth: Milan, which habitually directed the party of the church; and Pavia, which directed that of the empire. Both towns, however, seem to have changed parties during the reigns of Lothario III. and Conrad II., who, from the year 1125 to 1152 placed in opposition the two houses of Guelphs and Ghibelines in Germany. … Among the towns of Piedmont, Turin took the lead, and disputed the authority of the counts of Savoy, who called themselves imperial vicars in that country. … The family of the Veronese marquises, … who from the time of the Lombard kings had to defend the frontier against the Germans, were extinct; and the great cities of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and Mantua, nearly equal in power, maintained their independence. Bologna held the first rank among the towns south of the Po. … Tuscany, which had also had its powerful marquises, saw their family become extinct with the countess Matilda, the contemporary and friend of Gregory VII. Florence had since risen in power, destroyed Fiesole, and … was considered the head of the Tuscan league; and the more so that Pisa at this period thought only of her maritime expeditions. … Such was the state of Italy, when the Germanic diet, assembled at Frankfort in 1152, conferred the crown on Frederick Barbarossa, duke of Swabia, and of the house of Hohenstaufen."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapters 1-2.

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 3.

_W. K. Williams, The Communes of Lombardy (Johns Hopkins University Studies, 9th series, 5-6)._

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 3, part 1 (volume 1).

Europe during the Middle Ages (Lardner's Cabinet Cyclop., volume 1, chapter 1).

See, also, FLORENCE: 12TH CENTURY.

ITALY: A. D. 1063. Birth of Pisan architecture.

See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.

ITALY: A. D. 1077-1102. Countess Matilda's donation to the Holy See.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1077-1102.

{1811}

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 1081-1194. Robert Guiscard's invasions of the Eastern Empire. Union of Sicily with Apulia, and creation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, or Naples.

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