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#OnThisDay 1798 At the Battle of Vinegar Hill, the United Irishmen rebels were defeated by the Crown forces. The UI camp was surrounded and pounded by Crown artillery. Although several massed pike charges were formed, they could not break the Crown’s lines. Eventually after some hours of fighting and having run out of gun powder the United Irishmen began to run.
Nearly a thousand were killed & though two large rebel columns escaped (through Needham’s Gap- The General who was too slow to close the ring around the rebels), this loss changed the Rebellion as the UI were less likely to face Crown armies in the field. The United Irishmen moved to large raids and guerrilla type warfare. It spelled the end of the Rebellion in Wexford as it had been fought heretofore.
In Enniscorthy, United Irishmen positions were also overran. Claims of rape, murder, reprisals, house burnings etc by the Crown forces were very common.

#OnThisDay 1650 The Confederate Army of Ulster was annihilated by Cromwell’s New Model Army at the Battle of Scarrifholis in Donegal during the War of the Three Kingdoms. In a political move to prevent infighting among the Irish leaders, Bishop Heber MacMahon replaced the recently deceased & extremely capable Eoghan Rua O’Neill, despite having no military training.
Lord Coote commanded the Parliamentarians comprised of Protestant settlers.

MacMahon initially camped on the higher ground which would have been difficult for the Parliamentarians to dislodge (or he could have simply disengaged if he thought the outcome would not have been in his favour) but showing his ineptitude he marched his army down the hill. His skirmishers out front of his massed infantry engaged the enemy but were pushed back into the main body. Panic spread as the mass could not be deployed properly. The Parliamentarians surrounds MacMahons men in two flanking movements and killed thousands of them.
The vast majority of the death were on the battlefield and not in the rout afterwards which is very unusual in this types of battle at this time.

#OnThisDay 1925 Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated soldiers in the US Army was born in Texas to parents of Irish descent. Murphy was awarded every medal for valour including the Medal of Honor for singlehandedly holding off a German Company during the Second World War.

#OnThisDay 1921 Colonel Commandant (Brigadier General on his grave stone) Thomas Stanton Lambert was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Athlone as he & his wife and another officer and his wife were returning from a party at Killinure House. The IRA hoped to abduct him & ransom him back to the British in return for IRA prisoners but fatally wounded him and the other officer’s wife in the affray.

#OnThisDay 1763 Theobald Wolfe Tone, leader of the 1798 Rebellion was born in Dublin. The Father of Irish Republicanism, Tone wanted “To unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the common name of Irishmen in order to break the connection with England”. Wolfe Tone, a Protestant and a  trained lawyer, was the leader of the United Irishmen in the 1798 Rebellion.