A chara, - The claim that "we haven't a shred of evidence" for the burning of a rebel hospital in New Ross on June 5th, 1798 (Tom Dunne, April 1st) requires a quotation or two from General Thomas Cloney, one of the leaders of the southern army of Wexford at the Battle of Ross.
In his robust and unequivocal condemnation of the burning of Scullabogue barn Cloney states (Personal Narrative, p.44) that it was "excited and promoted by the cowardly ruffians who ran away from Ross battle, and conveyed the intelligence (which was too true) that several wounded men had been burned in a house in Ross by the military". (My italics.).
He gives us the number of men immolated and implies that the (four-storey and slated) building in question was being used as a makeshift hospital (p.218): "Burned by military, at New Ross, wounded men who had taken refuge there during the battle - 78 [men]."
General Cloney also records the number who were burned to death in the deliberate firing of another hospital at Enniscorthy by Government forces: "Burned in the Insurgent Hospital at Enniscorthy by the military and yeomanry, after the defeat at Vinegar Hill - 76 [men]." The historian Edward Hay reported (Insurrection, p.235) on the death of these 76 nameless people as follows: ". . . as the greater part of the houses, which had escaped until the arrival of the army, were still on fire; and the house which had been used as an hospital by the insurgents, and which was set on fire with all the patients in it, continued burning until the next morning, when I saw a part of a corpse hissing in the embers." (My italics.)
General Cloney further records a third similar atrocity after the capitulation of Wexford town: "Murdered in the Hospital of Wexford, by the yeomen and military, after General Lake entered the town, sick and wounded men - 57." This government atrocity was exceptional in that it was done in cold blood, two days after Vinegar Hill and two days after the Wexford Army had pulled out of Wexford town.
These events are a matter of record. There were atrocities on all sides in 1798. However the record shows that far more were committed by the various forces of government than by the forces of the revolution.
Selective and persistent harping only on rebel atrocities lacks balance and is reminiscent of that same old scullaboguery which has always militated (not by accident) against the proper understanding of 1798 in general, through the generation of emotional reaction in place of objective analysis and assessment. Propaganda, in short. - Yours, etc.,
Brian Cleary,
Lower George Street, Wexford.