#OnThisDay 1798 Major General Sir James Duff & his Dublin Militia killed over 350 unarmed United Irishmen at Gibbeth Rath in the Curragh. The rebels had previously received amnesty from General Dundas & were waiting for him to take their surrender the next day. One of Duff’s captain’s wrote later about it;
“My troops did not leave my hero unavenged – 500 rebels bleaching on the Curragh of Kildare—that Curragh over which my sweet innocent girls walked with me last Summer, that Curragh was strewed with the vile carcasses of popish rebels and the accursed town of Kildare has been reduced to a heap of ashes by our hands.”
The Irish at War 