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Updated: June 26, 2025
Fired with the ambition of capturing the rebel party with his own forces, and winning for himself a deathless fame, Sub-Inspector Trant marched out in hot haste from Callan, at the head of forty-six policemen, and directed his steps towards Ballingarry, where it was known to him that O'Brien was still stopping.
The following are the words of the obituary notice which appeared in the Kilkenny Moderator on or about the 19th of August, 1848: "Poor James Stephens, who followed Smith O'Brien to the field, has died of the wound which he received at Ballingarry whilst acting as aide-de-camp to the insurgent leader. Mr.
On the news of the outbreak in Tipperary, O'Donnell, Doyle and Daniel Harnett raised the country around Abbeyfeale, cut off the mails and pitched an insurgent camp outside the town where the Abbeyfeale men waited for O'Gorman, who was elsewhere in the county, to take command. Before his arrival the news of the collapse at Ballingarry arrived and the Abbeyfeale Camp broke up.
On Friday, O'Brien and his followers returned to Ballingarry, where they held a council on the prospects of the movement. It was clear that the case was a desperate one, that the chance of successful resistance was inevitably lost, and that nothing now awaited them should they persist in their enterprise but ruin and death.
Amongst the witnesses brought forward by the crown was John O'Donnell, a comfortable farmer, who resided near Ballingarry. "I won't be sworn," he said on coming on the table, "or give evidence under any circumstances. You may bring me out and put a file of soldiers before me, and plant twenty bullets in my breast, but while I have a heart there I will never swear for you."
On July 26th, O'Brien and his party first visited the village of Ballingarry, where he was joined by M'Manus, Doheny, Devin Reilly, and other prominent members of the Confederation. They took a survey of the village and its neighbourhood; addressed the crowd from the piers of the chapel gate, and slept in the house of one of the village shopkeepers.
Sedition also is bad; but in Ireland, in late years, it has not been deep-seated as may have been noted at Ballingarry and other places, where endeavour was made to bring sedition to its proof. And as for the idleness of Ireland's people, I am inclined to think they will work under the same compulsion and same persuasion which produce work in other countries.
After night-fall we descended, and slept at a farmer's house at the southern base of the mountain, where we were most kindly entertained and sedulously guarded. We there heard of the Ballingarry disaster. Next morning we once more ascended Slievenamon, where we endeavoured to dissipate the heavy hours and the still heavier consciousness at our own hearts by firing at a mark.
We have already seen what Meagher did when the guage of battle was thrown down, and when "the day all hearts to weigh" was imagined to have arrived, we have seen how he accompanied O'Brien in his expedition from Wexford to Kilkenny, and thence to Tipperary; and how on the morning of July 29th, 1848, he left O'Brien at Ballingarry, little dreaming of the tragedy which was to make that day memorable, and expecting to be able to bring reinforcements to his leader from other quarters before the crisis came.
Over the surging waves of the excitement and agitation that convulsed the country during the period which ended with the affray at Ballingarry, and through the haze which time has cast over the attempted revolution of '48, his figure looms up in bold proportions, suggestive of mental capacity, fortitude of soul, and tenacity of purpose.
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