October 3rd, 1798: Attacks on prominent yeomen continue in Kildare; Athy's officer, Thomas Rawson, is burned out of his Glasealy home by a large raiding party who also level the Manders home killing several occupants.
The human cost of the crushing of the Connaught Republic, however, is incalculable. One Sligo writer estimates that 3,000 rebels "lay dead in the attack" on Ballina before which the advancing army had "burnt all houses where pikes were found, or property plundered from loyal subjects". A Ballina source claims that "above 1,000" rebels were killed "between this place and Foxford". The bodies of Mathew Tone and Bartholomew Teeling, United Irishmen in the French army, are thrown into Dublin's "croppy hole" outside the Royal Barracks after execution at Arbour Hill.
Judge Day, on the Munster circuit, is shocked by the "sudden ebullition of treason" in Kerry in which three yeomen are "butchered in the dead of night" at Castleisland barracks. Contrary to published reports it appears that their corps went "the day before to the races of Tralee & imprudently left to those unfortunate men the charge of all the arms & ammunition which they lost with their lives". In the North, Carrickfergus, under curfew, has returned to peace.
Bishop Caulfield of Ferns writes to Archbishop Troy on the 26th to enquire if there has been an "answer in favour of Revd James Dixon, an innocent man indeed". Dixon awaits transportation overseas from Waterford on the mistaken assumption that he was one of the Dixons implicated in the execution of loyalist prisoners in Wexford.
"Scottish martyr" Thomas Muir, who escaped from New South Wales with American aid and competes with Wolfe Tone for French resources in Paris, is reputedly in contact with Samuel Turner in Hamburg. A self-declared "sincere convert" writes from Hamburg to James Richardson on the 27th offering other details of the growing republican community in the German free port. Turner, an important double agent from Newry, is "continually with the French resident and the notorious William Duckett".
Cork assizes close with the capital sentencing of 16 United Irishmen, among them Denis Casey, a baker who plotted to kill High Sheriff Robert Harding. Thousands await trial and large numbers are seized every day. Twenty-three men are arrested in New Ross on the 25th. French soldiers captured in Killala and Ballina are well treated on their trip from Castlebar to Dublin via Athlone. The Ainwinter Cavalry parole the six French officers in the towns visited en route to Dublin and accommodate them in inns. The 51 French soldiers are sent to the Pidgeon House on the 28th while their officers enjoy the comforts of Corbett's Hotel, Capel Street. Their Irish allies fare better than before and it is reported that "a considerable number of the rebels . . . spared at Killala on suing for mercy and delivering up their arms are . . . guarded down to the water side in order to their being transported from this country".
The Freeman's Journal claims on October 2nd that Wicklow rebels were driven off with loss on approaching the county town. The paper queries: "When rebellion is thus callous to the most unexampled mercy and forbearance that ever distinguished power, it cannot be surprising if that forbearance should at length be exhausted, and a severity succeed proportioned to the indulgence which has been so signally held forth to the abettors of a most unnatural, inhuman and unprovoked rebellion."