Nor was the condition of the congregants encouraging—they were weak, thin-limbed, dazed. “The truth,” said Meagher, was “cold and nakedness, hunger and disease, to the last extremity.” He saw no future Irish warriors in this chapel; they were the kneeling dead. It should have been obvious that a people mortally weakened by hunger could not be moved to anything but a prayer and an extended hand begging for crumbs. Famine was supposed to be the motivation for revolt. Instead, it was the undoing of it.
