CHAP. III.] FRENCH EFFORTS IN IRELAND.

63

apparent tranquillity, there was deep disaffection among the lower orders; and that it was only the fear of consequences which kept them from breaking out into rebellion. It needs indeed only to glance at the chronicles of the time to perceive that, while the newspapers were boasting of the results of the Union, as shown already in an improvement of manufactures and commerce, which would place the Irish high among the nations, the misery of the peasantry was such as to dismay the passing traveller, and the violence of the miserable such as to terrify those who saw the glance and heard the voice in which the threats were conveyed.

From the time of the Peace of Amiens, men who had fled to France after the last rebellion began to drop back into French Ireland; and there seems every reason to believe that tampering. Napoleon made use of them to excite a civil war, and afforded them aid in the attempt. An unusual number of Frenchmen was observed to have business in Ireland towards the close of 1802. They were sprinkled all over the island; and wherever they were, symptoms were observed of a secret understanding among the peasantry; and night meetings in the wilds became more frequent. An odd circumstance caught the attention of the government about the same time.1 The French relatives of a gentleman who died in Ireland during the war, desiring to have an attestation of the fact, sent documents to a party concerned, with instructions to authenticate them before the commercial agent of the French government in Dublin, M. Fauvelet. The reply was that, after the most careful search, no such person was to be found; and yet M. Fauvelet was corresponding with his government in his official capacity, and dating his letters from Dublin at the time. Moreover, a letter from M. Talleyrand to Fauvelet was intercepted, desiring him to obtain, from the officers of Customs and others whom he could converse with in his commercial character, answers to a set of enclosed queries, about the military and naval forces then present; and also " to procure a plan of the ports, with the soundings and moorings, and to state the draught of water, and the wind best suited for ingress and egress." The date of this letter was November 17th, 1802.

2

By the close of the year, the country was agitated by rumors of a descent upon Limerick; and on the renewal of the war with France, it was felt that now, as before, Ireland was the way by which the enemy might best hope to humble England. Mr. Addington had probably no more cordial well-wisher than Napoleon; not only on account of his general feebleness, but because he was understood to remain in office as an anti-Catholic Minister as a Minister who made loyalty almost impossible to 1 Annual Register, 1802, p. 196.

2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. p. 164.

64

THE EMMETT CONSPIRACY.

[Book L a vast majority of the Irish people. Napoleon himself however had alienated the Irish Catholics, as has been said, from the French alliance. The projected rebellion of 1803 was protestant and republican; and hence its inevitable failure. Disaffected as were millions of the Irish people, few of them put any trust in the French-Irish leaders who proposed to direct the prevalent discontent, or cared for a republican form of government. Hence the impotent character of the catastrophe, in comparison with the amount of political discontent.

The Emmetts.

During the short peace of Amiens, some of the educated Irish, among whom was Curran, went to Paris, full of sympathy for the French republicans, and expecting to witness there such a state of things as they desired to see established in Ireland. Curran, for one, was grieved to the heart at what he saw. "Never was there a scene," he wrote to his son in October, 1802,1 "that could furnish more to the weeping or the grinning philosopher; they might well agree that human affairs were a sad joke. I see it everywhere, and in everything." Some few young men, however, were either not so disabused, or they hoped that they could manage things better in Ireland. Among these was one who is believed to have been admitted to consultation with Napoleon himself. The Court physician at Dublin, Dr. Emmett, who was now just dead, had had two sons, who were both implicated in the rebellion of 1798. Thomas, the elder, escaped the gallows, and was now in America. Robert was under age, and was not pursued; and it was he who now saw Napoleon, and became the head of the new conspiracy. By his father's death he obtained 20007. or 30007., which he devoted to his political purpose. His papers show that a rising was organized throughout Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare, as well as in remoter districts; and that he had reason to rely on a very extensive support. The same papers show that he was aware at times, to the full extent, of the risk he ran; and this indicates a fault in his honor which impairs the sympathy that would otherwise be commanded by the lot of one so young, so benevolent, and so ardent, cast into such times. He clandestinely obtained the affections of Curran's youngest daughter; and deservedly therefore suffered under a restless misery of mind of which the records are very touching.2 He thanks God for having given him a sanguine disposition; declares that to this he runs from reflection; and hopes that if he is to sink into the pit beneath his feet, it will be while he is gazing upwards at the vision of his hopes. He seems to have been so absorbed in his visions of a Platonic republic as never to have thought of the wretchedness to others that he might be 1 Life of Curran, ii. p. 206. 2 Annual Register, 1803, p. 303.

Plot.

CHAP. III.]

ITS LEADERS AND PROGRESS.

65

creating; never to have had a moment's remorse for renewing the horrors of the preceding insurrection; never even to have considered that it was a grave offence to break up the order and security of social life, without being amply prepared to substitute something which might compensate for its temporary loss. But if he did not suffer as he ought from the pangs of conscience, he had not the peace of the calmly devoted; and it was a mistake to endeavor, as some do to this day, to make a hero of him, and to speak of him as noble. As he slept on his mattress in the depot where his pikes and gunpowder were stored, he was as much of a tool as they; and the deep compassion with which we regard such a picture of Robert Emmett can have in it little mixture of respect. He never breathed to Miss Curran a hint of his purposes; 1 and it was on the eve of the outbreak that he obtained her vows. The other leaders were a fanatic, Other leadnamed Russel, an old half-pay officer, who was expecting the Millennium, and desired to have a share in bringing it on; and an agitator, named Quigley, who came over from France with a full purse. Emmett agitated in Dublin; Russel in the North; and Quigley in Kildare. An outlaw, named Dwyer, who, with a band of desperate men, infested the Wicklow mountains, promised his aid to Emmett, when the enterprise should be fairly begun. When he should see the green flag floating over Dublin Castle, he would bring his men down from their mountains, and overawe the city. It was at Christmas, 1802, that Emmett came over from France; and the swearing in of the conspirators presently began. Some of the subordinates broke their oath, and gave information to the police as early as February; but the authorities were perplexed by the frequent changes in the plans of the conspirators, and were at last unprepared. — Lord Hardwicke thought that more mischief would be done by alarming the country than by letting a contemptible plot, as he considered this, come to a head. He satisfied himself that the North would not stir: 2 he believed, with Lord Redesdale, that the discontented in Limerick, though formidable as banditti, were of no account as rebels: he caused a force of soldiery to be sent into Kildare, to keep order there; and he trusted to the strength of the Dublin garrison for the safety of the capital. This might be all very well; but some incidents occurred before the outbreak which should have suggested immediate vigilance.

On the 14th of July, the anniversary of the French revolution, the orderly citizens of Dublin were surprised, Symptoms and rather alarmed, by the strength of demonstration

on the part of the populace.

1 Edinburgh Review, xxxiii. 291.

VOL. I.

5

The bonfires were very numerous

2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. p. 207.

66

THE RISING.

1

[BOOK L and very large; and a rabble rout, such as seldom came forth into the daylight of the principal streets, danced and sang and drank round them. These were too fair a specimen of poor Emmett's forces. - On the 16th, an explosion in the midst of the city made the windows rattle, and many hearts quake. The gunpowder in Emmett's depot in Patrick Street had blown up. The police found pikes, and preparations for the manufacture of gunpowder. The conspirators believed that they had misled the police about how such things happened to be there; and they were confirmed in their hope by the quiescence of the government; and especially by the Viceroy remaining at his Lodge in the Park, guarded only by a sergeant and twelve men, and by the absence from town of almost every considerable member of the government. Still, it was necessary to expedite the rising; or Emmett thought so. The French agents begged for delay, thinking the prospect desperate; but Emmett pointed out that the militia would soon be embodied; and the haymakers and reapers now thronging into the neighborhood of Dublin, would be gone home. He did not consider that these country forces had no common interest with him. They cared for their religion, and he was Protestant. He wanted a republic; and they knew and cared nothing about such things. They might be ready for uproar; but by no means for achieving a political revolution. One circumstance which determined the moment of rising was, that the Eve of St. James fell on a Saturday, this year. On the Eve of St. James, the people dress the graves in the church of St. James with flowers and green. Numbers would be abroad for this purpose; and numbers more because it was market-day, when wages were paid and spent. On that Saturday, the 23d of July, the outbreak was to begin.

Outbreak.

It began; and within an hour, Emmett was a horror-struck fugitive. In the evening, the inhabitants of St. James's Street saw some men distributing pikes among the peasantry who thronged the streets.2 The residents put up their shutters, and barred their doors. If any messenger went to the barracks, half a mile off, where there were 4000 soldiers, no soldier or police appeared. Presently, at dusk, some horsemen galloped through the principal streets; and the mob grew violent. A manufacturer, named Clarke, who employed many operatives, addressed the people on meeting them in his evening ride; but they would not listen to him; so he hastened to the Castle, to give the alarm. On returning, one of his own men brought him down from his horse by a shot, which was severe but not mortal. At this moment a rocket was sent up, and a cannon fired; and at the signal, Emmett and his Central Committee came forth from the 1 Hansard, i. p. 740. 2 Annual Register, 1803, p. 504.

MURDER OF LORD KILWARDEN.

67

CHAP. III.] depot. The leader drew his sword, and put himself at the head of the rioters, to go and take the Castle. But they would not go to the Castle, nor where they must meet the soldiery. They shot Colonel Brown, who was going to his post, cried out for plunder, mobbed the whisky shops, and proved themselves so ungovernable that Emmett and his comrades left them, and had no resource but to hide themselves among the Wicklow mountains. The rioters shot a corporal on guard at the debtor's prison, and a dragoon who was carrying a message, and an outpost of infantry, which they surprised. One more murder they committed before

they were put down.

warden.

At about ten o'clock, they seemed at last willing to do what their leaders had required of them at first to attack the Castle. They formed in a column, and had passed from St. James's Street into Thomas Street, when the attention of some of them was attracted by the rapid driving of a carriage in their rear. Some knew the carriage to be that of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord KilLord Kilwarden the best of the Irish judges mild as he was upright. He was old; and he appears to have been so far shaken by the horrors of the preceding rebellion as to have been in constant fear of his life for the intervening five years. Till lately, he had never spent a night out of Dublin during all that time. Of late, he had gone out to his country-seat, nearly four miles from Dublin, from the Saturday till Monday; and this he had done to-day. In the evening, reports arrived that an army of rebels was attacking Dublin. If he had remained quiet, all would have been well with him; but his only thought was to take refuge in Dublin. He desired his daughter, and his nephew, a clergyman, to go with him. There were two ways to the Castle, after reaching the city. If he had gone by the barracks, he would have been safe; but he decided for the shorter and more populous way by St. James's and Thomas Streets; and thus he drove into the very midst of the danger, while the inhabitants of the other route heard nothing of the riot till the next morning. When the carriage entered St. James's Street at one end, the mob were leaving it at the other. They turned back, and seized upon the carriage. The Chief Justice declared his name, and begged for mercy; but the savages said they must kill the two gentlemen, sparing the lady. They dragged all three from the carriage, made a way through the whole length of their column for the frantic daughter to escape, and thrust their pikes through and through the bodies of the old man and his nephew, fighting with one another for precedence in the act. Miss Wolfe ran through the streets in the dark till she found herself at the Castle, where her appearance told the tale, frightfully enough. The military quickened their movements, and by half-past ten