Northern men not to stir until they saw the rising in the capital succeed. Friends in Belfast, veterans of the struggle, cautioned Russell and Hope that there was no appetite for a further rising. This Russell himself confirmed when on the day of the rising in Dublin, and on the day following when still uncertain of its outcome, he attempted to raise the United Irish standard in Down. The few men who gathered to hear him in the north of the county protested that without the French, they would all hang "like dogs." Moving south into the heart of what had been Defender country, Russell, dressed in his green uniform, was greeted on a hill near Downpatrick by just three individuals, and of these one responded to Russell's promise of French arms with the suggestion (echoing Emmet) that Ireland might as well be an English colony, as a French one. Desperate to recruit support, in Annadorn and Loughlinisland Russell is said to have played on anti-Orange sentiments, but with equally little effect. On the night of the 23rd, suspect parties were sighted in different parts of Antrim: "numbers of people" moving towards Ballymena; "400-500 men at exercise" near Larne; men "at drill" in Carnmoney. But there was no engagement. Absent news of some initial success, and the arms they had been promised, Michael Dwyer was reluctant to lead his men down from the Wicklow Mountains. It was reported that a signal rocket had been fired in Limerick, but the subsequent lack of activity suggested that no one was primed for its appearance. General Payne, the commander in Limerick, understood that large numbers in the southwest had been sworn to support the rebellion. But their "General", David Fitzgerald, and four of his lieutenants had sailed for France. In his absence, Fitzgerald's father appears to have played much the same role as McGucken in the north, in counselling delay. Aftermath Emmet reached Rathfarnham an hour before midnight with a party of 16. When he heard that Wicklow men were still planning to rise, he issued a countermanding order to prevent needless violence. Instead, all else lost, he asked Myles Byrne to proceed to Paris to do all that he might, even now, to encourage an invasion. Emmet was captured on 25 August, near Harold's Cross. He endangered his life by moving his hiding place from Rathfarnham to Harold's Cross so that he