SNIPPET: Nicholas FURLONG is a Wexford scholar and descendant of a man who traded in his farming equipment for a firearm in 1798. His paternal great-great-grandfather, also named Nicholas FURLONG, left his rented farm,his wife, teenage children, and home in Rathaspeck to fight as an insurgent under the elected United Irish commander-in-chief, Bagenal HARVEY. Five days later Nicholas FURLONG was killed at the seize of Ross. At the Battle of New Ross, Beauchamp Bagenal HARVEY, on horseback, and his men greatly outnumbered the English (20,000 to 2,000), yet they ultimately lost. FURLONG was but one of the 30,000 men killed in a war in which the stakes were of world consequence, of far greater importance perhaps than the insurgents realized. At stake was the victory or destruction of England and the victory or destruction of revolutionary France, and in Ireland, it meant the victory of an equally impressive ideal, the concept of a brotherhood of the Irish as Irish instead of the sectarian tribalism's of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. It meant total independence for the Irish and for Ireland or, conversely, overthrow and emasculation. Such perceptions fueled the war and in a humiliated, exploited, robbed and mutilated Ireland, and now with the ringing tones of Thomas PAINE's (one of America's founding fathers for equality and religious freedom) "Rights of Man" in every available ear, the resort to arms by ordinary people became contagious. It was an easy matter to nourish the soil of revolt. The reason that Ireland was so hotly contested is because it was of great strategic importance to both the English and the French. Suddenly Ireland was no longer a pleasant island of indigenous culture and ancient language on the fringe of the known Western World. It was a secure and rich outpost situated on the direct seat route to North America, hundreds of miles farther out in the Atlantic than the home ports of England or France. Whoever controlled Ireland controlled the North Atlantic. The author wondered why did his FURLONG antecedent obtained a weapon of death and marched from a settled civilian life to war. Was it to get back lands from which CROMWELL had expelled his grandparents? Was he a convinced United Irishman? Was he an admirer of the gentle Protestant United Irish landlord, Cornelius GROGAN of Johnstown Castle? Was he a victim of the economic catastrophe that had devastated Wexford farming in 1797? The private family account that had been handed down tells of the rage of the "innocent" local men at the retreating Wexford troops, who set fire the thatched houses on their escape route and shot civilians on sight. For that, we were told, the menfolk in fury marched. However, on the discovery and publication of Loyalist Elizabeth RICHARDS' diaries and the Jane ADAMS dairies, it was clear that there was an active-service United Irish unit with three named officers of captain rank in the parish. Per the author, Patrick FURLONG, the teenage son of the killed insurgent, Nicholas of Rathaspeck, became head of the family and chief breadwinner. He married a neighbor's daughter almost immediately, and in 1800 their first son, Nicholas, was born. Today their descendants survive, and hopefully continue to prosper in a wide swath that extends from the parish of their antecedents in Wexford across the world to Perth in western Australia and Vancouver, on the north Pacific coast of Canada. The author also identifies that his maternal grandfather, John KINSELLA, was born in Co. Wexford in 1845, within a couple miles of Bunclody. He was reared among survivors, witnesses and participants of that battle. On June 1, 1798, Bunclody (or Newtownbarry, as it was known then) was the site of a remarkable feat of arms for the untrained Irish insurgents. The occupying English forces were driven out and joyful celebrations ensued, but when the Crown forces, under the command of Col. Henry L'ESTRANGE, discovered that they were not being pursued, they halted, turned their cannon around, and from the hill road raked the packed town square and main street. The losses among the insurgents numbered in the hundreds; the wounded among the fighting men and civilians alike. In the mountain-rimmed countryside, this completely unprecedented massacre, in which capture and recapture in an effulgence of blood and fire occurred on the one day, scarred the memory of minds of all participants and witnesses. Not one solitary word of the event or related business was passed on by his KINSELLA grandfather; down to his death in the early part of the 20th century, the topic was strictly taboo in his presence. Not one iota of information could be extracted from his eldest surviving daughter, Lena, who lived to the age of 93. This terrible silence about this period reflects "the horrible blank in folk memory," Life, work, survival with head down and shut mouth were the order of the day when the patriots were worsted in the game and when eviction at a landlord's whim thrived even up to the 1880s. The 1798 Rebellion introduced total and vicious war to Ireland to such a degree that, in the major areas of conflict, the memory, the legends, and the private family accounts still sear the consciousness, and the descendants of the revolutionaries regard them with affection and pride. Worsted in the game, certainly, but what a performance by a proud and humiliated people! In that year intellectual, enterprising heroes, Protestant and Catholic alike, joined in this fresh, liberating dream for human rights and self-respect. Were it not for 1798, with its bravery, accomplishment and awfulness, such inspirational giants as Edward ROCHE, Beauchamp Bagenal HARVEY, Henry Joy McCRACKEN, Michael DWYER, Frt. John MURPHY, Thomas CLONE, Matthew FURLONG, Cornelius GROGAN, John KELLY of Killanne, Fr. Philip ROCHE, Miles BYRNE, and others would never have entered the state of Irish, European, and world history from rustic obscurity. The very same may be said of the women. It was the widows, the mothers, and the sisters who saved Ireland after defiance was reduced to debacle. The farms,the businesses and the bread-on-the table demands stimulated their courageous contributions when normal life's battles had to be resumed. -- Excerpts, "The World of Hibernia" magazine/Summer 1998