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Updated: May 15, 2025
We should certainly have been piked if it had not been for Neal." Neal lifted the wounded boy over the churchyard wall and knelt beside him on the grass. "Where are you hit?" he said. "It's my leg, the calf of my leg, but it's no that bad, I could get along a bit, yet." The English infantry opened a furious fire on M'Cracken's pikemen, who stood around the cannon they captured.
Hardly had the plans for the attack on Antrim been perfected, when the secrets of the conspirators were revealed to General Nugent, who commanded the British troops in the North, and the defeat of the insurgents was thus secured. M'Cracken's forces marched to the attack on Antrim with great regularity, chorusing the "Marseillaise Hymn" as they charged through the town.
Look as if you were happy whatever you feel, and when all's said and done you ought to be happy. Whatever the end of it may be we'll get our bellies full of fighting to-day, and what has life got to give a man better than that?" After breakfast Donald Ward led his party along the road up which M'Cracken's force must march to reach Antrim. At about noon he met the advance guard of United Irishmen.
But between the infantry and M'Cracken's men was a body of cavalry, sitting in shelter behind the wall which surrounded the church. These would cut the musketeers to pieces. The pikemen must face them first. The horsemen wheeled from their shelter and charged. The long pikes were lowered, steadied, held in bristling line.
They attacked M'Cracken's pike-men once more, and this time victoriously. Shaken by the fire of the soldiers behind the wall, disheartened by the appearance of the enemy in their rear, these men, who had fought so well, could fight no more.
But the orators of M'Cracken's day spoke seriously, with a sense of responsibility, because all of them Flood, Grattan, and the rest spoke to armed men, who might at any time draw swords to give effect to the speaker's words. M'Cracken spoke to men with swords already drawn and muskets loaded. Therefore, he had some right to be eloquent, and his hearers had some right to cheer.
Henry Monro rode in every day from Lisburn. Meeting after meeting was held in M'Cracken's house in Rosemary Lane, in Bigger's house in the High Street, in Felix Matier's shattered inn, or in Peggy Barclay's. Robert Simms, the general of the northern United Irishmen, resigned his position.
"Listen," he said. From the Belfast Road, along which the United Irishmen had marched in the morning, came the sound of drums. Through the smoke it was possible to discern dimly that a large body of troops was approaching the town. There could be no doubt as to who they were. No reinforcements for M'Cracken's army could be looked for from the south. Neal grasped the meaning of what he saw.
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