the news reached those who remained in Dublin that the Habeas Corpus Act
had been suspended, and that a warrant was on its way to Ireland for the
arrest of Smith O'Brien. The choice left was to fight, to become
fugitives, or to surrender. Dillon, M'Gee, Reilly, P.J. Smyth and
Meagher decided hurriedly on the first course. They rejected the
proposal to begin the fight in Dublin, as they believed it would be
hopeless with the resources at their disposal to contend against a
disciplined garrison of 11,000 men in a city a large proportion of whose
population was hostile. Kilkenny was regarded as a stronghold of the
Confederation, and Dillon suggested it should be the objective. Dillon
and Meagher quitted Dublin to seek O'Brien; Reilly and Smyth started for
Tipperary, and M'Gee for Scotland where it was hoped the Glasgow Irish
could be induced to rise, seize some of the Clyde steamers and effect a
landing in Sligo or Mayo which might rouse Connacht and western Ulster
to the assistance of the South.

Dillon and Meagher left Dublin on the night of the 22nd of July by the
mailcoach for Enniscorthy. Neither had the slightest hope of a
successful insurrection, but they felt that honour and its future
survival demanded that a nation must reply to the command of a foreign
power to gag its mouth and throw down its arms by drawing the sword.
They found Smith O'Brien at Enniscorthy and he joined in their views.
Father Parle and the people of Enniscorthy undertook to defend O'Brien
by force of arms if any attempt were made to arrest him there, and
agreed that if he went into Kilkenny and Tipperary and succeeded in
arousing those counties Wexford would take up arms. O'Brien and his
colleagues moved towards Kilkenny through Graiguenamanagh where the
people received them with enthusiasm, and they arrived in what they
hoped to make again the provisional capital of Ireland in the evening of
the 23rd of July.