o'clock! No intimation of what further destination was intended—all we could tell our friends, if we had been given time to have seen them, was that we were to go on board ship in a few hours, but whether for Botany Bay, Siberia, or to be scuttled and sunk, was alike unknown to us. On this occasion our astonishment was beyond description: some of us really thought it might have been a piece of fun practised upon us by the gaoler—a kind of cruelty not unfrequent in these dreary abodes of safe custody. I was at this period confined to my bed by an intermittent fever, and having often experienced the most unexampled roughness from Gregg (the gaoler), I really imagined he was making an experiment upon my life. I was not able to write, but I immediately dictated the following letter to Lord Cornwallis:

6

6

"MY LORD-I have received a message this moment from Mr. Cooke, through our gaoler, stating that I am to be removed to a ship tomorrow morning at six o'clock. I am astonished at this notice, so en'tirely contradictory to the faith of government solemnly pledged; for though I wish to go abroad, yet I would desire to settle (as was agreed upon) the place of exile, and the accommodations on board. It must occur to your lordship that, at any rate, two or three days must be necessary to prepare for an eternal adieu to my native country, my wife ‘and children. I thought the treatment I had received for the last seven years from government might have satiated any revenge, without this 'additional piece of severity, and this additional breach of a solemn engagement. In the meantime, I request your lordship will have the goodness to state whether this order is authorised or not.

"New Prison, March 18th, 1799.'

“I am, my lord, &c.,

"SAMUEL NEILSON.

"This letter was sent to the Castle late that night, and the prisoners were sent on board ship the next morning!”

The unknown place of their destination turned out to be FORT GEORGE, in Inverness-shire, where they arrived on the 14th of April, 1799. And there they remained through that year, and the next, and the next-treated, as appears from their frequent acknowledgments of the behaviour of the governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart, with all the leniency and respect that could mitigate so abominable a breach of faith, but closely confined, completely secluded from all intercourse with the world but what passed under the eye of their military gaolers, and to all appearance utterly forgotten by the government of" utmost liberality and good faith." Neilson writes-" As to us deportés, I see no disposition to recollect us; we are put, like old debts, in the back of the book." Not till the last day of May, 1802, did the government take notice of their existence. On the 30th of the June following, they sailed for Hamburg.

The subsequent fortunes of this little band of exiles do not belong to our history. Most of those whom the preceding pages have made individually known to the reader eventually settled in America, and formed (in New York especially) a little community of "United Irishmen"-neither of the agitating nor conspiring sort. They kept up a kindly intercourse among themselves; the intermarriages of the children superadded domestic

affinity to the "brotherhood of affection and identity of interests" which had combined the fathers in political union; and by their virtues in private life, no less than by the consistency of their public principles, they vindicated their own and their country's good fame.*

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FRENCH COME AT LAST

MUCK

KILLALA, CASTLEBAR, AND BALLINAGENERAL TONE ON BOARD-LOUGH SWILLY- THE FIRST AND LAST OF THE UNITED IRISHMEN -CONCLUSION.

THE Rebellion has come and gone-yet we have heard nothing of General TONE and the Armée d'Angleterre. It seems to have been a fatality in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, that precisely where there was the most of industrious, calculating, and pains-taking preparation, action was most tardy and ineffectual. In the first week of the insurrection, just when foreign aid was most needed and would have been most useful, the flower of the Armée d'Angleterre was afloat in Toulon waters, under sailing orders for Egypt; and only a disorganised remnant was left. In the very heat and height of the war-when the presence, at the right place and time, of a few thousand, or a few hundred, well-equipped and well-officered soldiers of the Republic might have turned the trembling balance-the French Directory were voting the adjournment of the whole business to a more convenient season. On the 20th of June, the day before the decisive battle of Vinegar Hill, Tone went to visit General Kilmaine, the Commander-in-Chief of the remnant of the army of England. The general told him "he was much afraid the government would do nothing;" and read a letter he had that morning received from the Minister of Marine, stating that" in consequence of the great superiority of the naval force of the enemy, and difficulty of escaping from any of the ports during the fine season, the Directory were determined to adjourn the measure until a more favourable occasion." Poor Tone" lost his temper at this, and told him that if the affair was adjourned, it was lost: the present crisis must be seized, or it would be too late." Kilmaine answered," he saw all that; but

* Dr. Madden (Second Series, vol. ii., p. 191 et seq.) gives a goodly catalogue of United Irishmen, and sons of United Irishmen, who have risen to stations of trust and honour in the American Republic. It may interest the reader to learn that Emmet had a long and successful career at the bar, and in 1812 received the appointment of Attorney-General of the state of New York. He died in 1827, and a monument is erected to his memory in Broadway. Macneven obtained high repute as a practising physician and professor in the medical schools of New York, where he resided till his death, in July, 1841. Neilson was less fortunate than his friends and compatriots. A six-years' imprisonment (the interval of a few weeks excepted) had completely broken his constitution; he died at Poughkeepsy, a small town on the river Hudson, in August, 1803. His letters to his family, from Fort George, give a very pleasing impression of his affectionateness, good sense, good principles, and cheerful religious wisdom. Arthur O'Connor is, we believe, still living, in France.

what could he do?" He could, in truth, do nothing; and the Directory could do nothing: the best of their men and ships were gone to Egypt, the arsenals were empty, the treasury was empty. The twelfth hour had already struck, when, stimulated by each successive arrival of news from Ireland of battles, massacres, and military executions, the Directory at last determined to prepare for making a beginning. By the end of June the rebellion was over-in the beginning of July, Tone was called to Paris to consult with the ministers of the War and Navy departments on the organisation of a new expedition.Ӡ

The plan of this new expedion was to dispatch from several ports such small armaments as could be got ready on short notice, in the hope of feeding the expiring rebellion and distracting the attention of the enemy, until an opportunity should arise for landing the main body under General Kilmaine. General HUMBERT, with about a thousand men, was stationed for this purpose at Rochelle, and General HARDY, with three thousand, at Brest: the army of reserve, under Kilmaine, numbered nine thousand. The requisite preparations, however, in the exhausted state of the French finances, went on slowly and with difficulty. The rate at which the armament proceeded in the ports of France bore no proportion to that at which the Irish government was disarming and crushing the insurgents. Even the daily arrival of crowds of indignant refugees, who, "when they saw the slowness of the French preparations, exclaimed that they wanted nothing but arms; and that if the government would only land them again on the coast, the people themselves, without any aid, would suffice to reconquer their liberty," could not effectually hasten the languid movements of the pauperised Directory.

While matters were in this state, General Humbert—a daring, dashing, forlorn-hope kind of soldier, who had received his military education under Hoche in the war of La Vendée, and accompanied his master in the Bantry-Bay expedition of 1796-a man excellently fitted to carry through a bold coup de main, though not gifted with the skill and science requisite for an extended and prolonged plan of operations-impatient of the interminable delays of his government, and fired by the reports of the Irish refugees, determined to begin at once on his own responsibility, leaving the Directory to second or desert him as they thought proper. Towards the middle of August, he called together some of the magistrates and merchants of Rochelle-forced them to advance him a small sum of money and other necessaries, on military requisition-and, with a thousand men (some accounts say eleven hundred), a thousand spare muskets, a few pieces of light artillery, and a few frigates and transports, hurried out to sea. He was accompanied by three Irishmen-Matthew Tone (a brother of Theobald Wolfe Tone), Bartholomew Teeling, and one Sullivan. On the 22nd of August, Humbert anchored in the Bay of KILLALA, on the northern coast of Connaught, and instantly landed a party of grenadiers with orders to storm the town. In two hours the French general was quietly established in head-quarters at the Episcopal Palace. †

"Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone," vol. ii., p. 324. † Ibid, p. 338.

The Bishop of Killala at this time was Dr. Stock, an amiable and liberal-minded prelate. His "Narrative of what passed at Killala, in the county of Mayo, and the parts adjacent, during the French Invasion in the summer of 1798," is one of the most

It was a bold enterprise, this of conquering Ireland from the British Crown with only a thousand men-bold to the verge of madness; yet its beginnings were wonderfully propitious, and afford matter for curious specurious and entertaining pieces of history which the events of the year produced. It is a pleasant, gossiping-it must also be confessed, a somewhat twaddling-account of the scenes and events of the invasion, as they presented themselves to the perceptions of a good-hearted, comfortable Protestant bishop.

The bishop bears the highest testimony, again and again (Barrington says, at the expense of his own prospects of translation), to the good conduct and moderation of the French general and troops. They seem to have behaved admirably, from first to last. It was some little time before our right reverend chronicler could quite divest himself of the apprehension that these uninvited occupants of his episcopal mansion were a sort of ogres or cannibals; but the evidences of civilised humanity were too unmistakable to be permanently resisted, and, long before the free-quarters of the invaders were at an end they made a very pleasant, though costly, family party. The Bishop feelingly laments that his visitors had "no religion;" but it was something in their favour, that they "most religiously observed" their promise to treat him and his with "respectful attention, and to take nothing for the troops but what was absolutely necessary for their support." The republican Atheists seem to have had considerably more of the religion which consists in keeping promises than their orthodox enemies. The very first prisoner they took, a yeomanry captain of the name of Kirkwood, was allowed to go and visit his sick wife, and broke his parole. If they had no religion themselves, they respected the religion of others; they burned no chapels, and took care to keep the precincts of the castle quiet on Sunday mornings. The Bishop says that they maintained "excellent discipline constantly;" carried away "not a single particular of private property;" observed "scrupulous delicacy" towards the women of his household; and were always ready "to assist in little menial offices in and about the house whereever they were wanted." His only very serious grievance was a most inordinate consumption of coals:-" of his kitchen grate so incessant use was made, from early morning even to midnight, that the chimney was on fire more than once, and in the middle of summer above thirty ton of coals lasted only one month." It is satisfactory to learn that, in the midst of all the good man's troubles, "his health and appetite seemed to be improved, nor did he ever in his life sleep better." On the whole, we may pronounce the Bishop fortunate in having French enemies at free-quarters in his castle, rather than British Protestant friends.

Equally generous was the behaviour of the French troops towards the Protestant inhabitants of the town. Their position necessitated a system of military requisition, but they neither practised nor tolerated indiscriminate plunder. The great difficulty was with their Irish recruits, whose propensity to pillage and bloodshed they had much trouble in restraining: still, the restraint was exercised, and with effect. Charost, the officer whom Humbert left in Killala with a garrison of two hundred men, while he prosecuted his enterprise in the interior, distributed aims and ammunition freely to all who desired them for self-defence, "without distinction of religion or party," and "under no other condition than a promise of restoring them when he should call for them." To the end he continued to warn his recruits, that "if ever he caught them preparing to spoil and murder Protestants, he and his officers would side with the Protestants against them to the very last extremity." With the aid of the inhabitants, Charost instituted a sort of local elective government, which was very efficient, for the protection of life and property. In fact, towards the close of this most moderate and merciful invasion, when the passions of the peasantry were inflamed by the expected arrival of the victorious royal troops, the position of the French officers in the castle and town was virtually that of an armed police and magistracy, entrusted with the protection of Protestant life and property. The Bishop says, "As long as the two hundred French soldiers were suffered to remain for the defence of Killala, the Protestant inhabitants felt themselves perfectly secure." At length they "parted, not without tears, from their friends and protectors." Things went not so well with the people of Killala when the king's troops came back to protect them.

It is pleasant to be able to say that the exemplary conduct of this little band of invaders was appreciated by the British government. The three French officers who commanded the garrison were, on the Bishop's report of their behaviour, liberated and sent home without exchange. The Directory, however, "could not avail themselves of so polite

culation. These thousand French soldiers, of the very best France hadintelligent, temperate, patient of fatigue, daringly brave, perfectly equipped, inured to the most exact and rigid discipline, half of them fresh from service with Napoleon and the army of Italy-if they could only have been got over there six weeks before, or if, when there, they had been efficiently seconded by reinforcements from home, it seems not violently improbable that our History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 might have had a different ending.

On the morning of the 23rd, Humbert marched with a party of his troops to Ballina, a small town a few miles southward. The garrison fled, after a feeble attempt at resistance. Humbert left a small party in possession of the place, and returned to Killala. These first successes told powerfully on the temper of the peasantry. They flocked in by hundreds to join the invaders and receive arms and uniforms; about a thousand were completely equipped and clothed. Thus reinforced, Humbert prepared to act on a larger scale. On the 26th, leaving two hundred men and some officers to defend Killala, he marched with the main body of his army (eight hundred Frenchmen, and above a thousand raw native recruits) to attack CASTLEBAR, the county town; whose garrison, at all times considerable, was now augmented to a force of six thousand men, well provided with artillery, under the command of General Lake. A fatiguing march of fifteen hours, through rough and difficult mountain passes, where their cannon (two light pieces) had to be dragged along by the hands of the peasantry, brought the invaders, early on the morning of the 27th, within view of the British troops, strongly posted between them and the town.

In the engagement of the 27th of August, the army "formidable to every one but the enemy" fully justified its well-established reputation. It was easy work whipping peasants and cutting down stragglers-but there was no standing the charge of those terrible grenadiers who had been at Lodi. In half an hour the whole of the British troops were routed. The retreat was conducted with more regard to self-preservation than to military discipline. It was " like that of a mob," says Barrington; heavy

an offer, because their officers at Killala had only done their duty, and no more than what any Frenchman would have done in the same situation."

The Bishop's description of Killala in the hands of French, like Hay's account of Wexford under the rebel government, is of great interest, as affording a kind of proximate indication of the results which would have followed the success of the United Irishmen's plans. So far as the experiment was allowed to proceed, there does not appear reason to believe that the condition of the Irish people, or the morality of their government, would have been materially deteriorated by a revolution. Notwithstanding all the disorders and alarms incident to popular commotion and foreign invasion, the towns of Killala and Wexford had no ground for rejoicing in the victory of the British troops and the restored ascendency of the law and constitution.

One result of accepting French aid developed itself at Killala, which would probably, in the event of a successful invasion on a large scale, have occasioned serious mischief, and greatly embarrassed the popular leaders. The Irish peasantry and the French soldiers could not at all understand one another on the subject of religion. The Bishop informs us that "it astonished the French officers to hear the recruits, when they offered their services, declare that they were come to take arms for France and the Blessed Virgin.' The Frenchmen said "they had just driven Mr. Pope out of Italy, and did not expect to find him again so suddenly in Ireland." Had a revolution been effected by the help of these very anti-Catholic allies, this antagonism would have placed formidable difficulties in the way of a cordial and permanent amity between the two nations.