The Defenders emerged around Forkhill in the early 1790s, and were responsible in 1791 for an attack on the family of the local schoolmaster, Alexander Berkley, which was so savage as to be remembered with horror and indignation for over hundred years, both in the village and (although the Berkley attack was not provoked by sectarian motives) more widely across the Orange community. Belmont, a military barracks, was set up in the parish in 1795, and a Forkhill Yeomanry in 1796; and a clash with United Irishmen in May 1797 along with the torching of Forkhill Lodge was followed by a policy of military terror which locally undermined the planned 1798 rising to the point of paralysis.