The Year of the French (37 page)

It is a wonder to me that events so prodigious should be taking place, and yet find me calmly recording them in this journal, as though I were writing of the weather, or making record of a birth or of a neighbour’s death. For a century or more there has been fine talk by the poets, of France sending to us a great army for our deliverance, but I doubt whether in our hearts we believed that this would happen. Certainly I for one did not. What care about us need the French have, save that in the old days we would send them our young men to be blown apart and destroyed in their wars and thus spare the lives of their own young French boys? And if the French have indeed now sent an army here it is for their own purposes surely, and not from kindness nor from a desire to oblige our poets.

What in the name of God is this army of the Gael, of which there is now much talk? Last night in the tavern Con Horgan the farrier was making great boasts that the army of the Gael had risen up and would drive all before it, with the French trotting after them to do odd jobs and cook snails. Where has it come from, this army of the Gael, that has hidden itself for so many years? It is a crowd of Whiteboys and faction fighters, and it is to some great faction fight that they believe they are heading, but these lads here in Castlebar with their cavalry and their dark cannon have no thought of faction fights. I did not point this out to Con Horgan, a bellicose man with hands on him like rocks, and who was far gone in drink, but the truth should be plain enough to any man with common sense. He was swelled up with vainglory, as though he had himself met and vanquished a regiment of militia, and the men who were drinking with him share this delusion, clapping him on the back and calling for more whiskey. And yet true it is that Ballina was captured, miserable village that it is.

But soon enough all of Castlebar will have the opportunity to judge these matters, for it is in Castlebar that the great battle will be fought. Why else was the army of England brought here from Galway? And I for one could wish myself to be hundreds of miles from here, and Brid with me and little Timothy. At any time in the last twelve years I could have gone to Henry Rodgers, the Protestant carpenter, and for ten shillings he would have made stout shutters for the window of the shop and for the two windows above. I would by preference be in my native city of Cork, a centre of civilisation and polite learning, far removed from cannon and from soldiers shouting at each other as though the whole of the town were a tavern. But then if I had never come to this Godforsaken place to teach I would never have had this profitable shop, nor met my dear Brid, and there would be no Timothy, who is a great happiness to us both.

FROM THE
MEMOIR OF EVENTS
,
WRITTEN BY MALCOLM ELLIOT
IN OCTOBER, 1798

I am told that the battle of Castlebar has attracted much interest and curiosity not only in this country and in England, but on the Continent, where exaggeraed accounts of it are current. That it was an extraordinary event is certain, although, as will shortly become evident, I am no judge of such matters. Several most civil British officers have visited me in this place, and have asked for my account of the battle, and I have described it to them, much as I shall do in this memoir, but it must be remembered that my entire military career spanned a bare month or so, and that my ignorance of the craft of battle remains large. If it were a fox hunt, I could describe all that happened with energy and precision, and perhaps there are indeed resemblances between the two, but battles, if I may judge by this one, are spread across a landscape and all seems confusion, save perhaps to the two commanders.

Ballina, as I can now perceive, was a mere rout, and reflected little credit upon our arms, save for the clever manner in which Humbert made use of the Rosserk road. That town, which holds so large a meaning for me because it is my own, was a mere way station, and ill defended. The true prize, but also the source of our greatest immediate peril, was Castlebar, where General Hutchinson had moved the Connaught army at first news of the French landing. That army was known to be a large one, and although composed in part of Irish militia, it had a backbone of English soldiers. Accordingly, Sarrizen and Fontaine argued eloquently, and for me persuasively, that it must at all costs be avoided. Until the arrival of the second and larger fleet of invasion, so they argued, we should limit ourselves to holding and securing our coastal and river position. Or, as an alternative to this, we might strike eastwards, towards Donegal, although this would bring us against General Trench’s garrison at Sligo. Humbert, however, would hear none of this, shaking his head impatiently, and drumming his wide, soft fingers on the tabletop.

Now, at once, he said, we should knock the Castlebar army off balance, and make ourselves the masters of Connaught. We were badly outnumbered, it was true, but would be in a far worse situation if the English were given time to move up reinforcements from the south. And this argument, too, I found persuasive. Warfare, or at any rate this war, seemed to be composed of unpleasant dilemmas. But I suspected that he had an additional reason. He wanted a showy triumph, with which to impress the Irish, and still more to impress Paris. Sarrizen, indeed, came close to accusing him of this. Poor Sarrizen was like a cat on a hot griddle, second-in-command to a general who was playing his own hidden game. And Bartholemew Teeling was far from happy, for it was his concern from the first that the French should not use the Irish rebels as pawns in their own game. In this matter he was most punctilious, although his position was difficult, for he held the rank of colonel in the French army. And yet, despite his unhappiness, he agreed with Humbert as to the importance of attacking Castlebar without delay, and however great the risks. Throughout the campaign, almost to its close, Humbert and Teeling were in at least a tacit accord upon most matters, with Sarrizen and Fontaine being more often than not in opposition, although they carried out their orders most ably.

We Irish officers, O’Dowd, MacDonnell, Blake of Barraclough, Bellew, and a few others, were admitted to these counsels of war as a necessary courtesy. But there was, to begin with, a problem of language, for French was known only to myself and to John Moore, who at Humbert’s insistence had been given a most curious and unmilitary position as delegate to the army from the Society of United Irishmen. But even had we all understood French, there was little that we could have added to these deliberations, because of our inexperience. This, of course, did not prevent O’Dowd and MacDonnell from swaggering out into the Irish camp as though they had helped to make great decisions. But I do not wish to make sport of them, for they were to prove most valiant and accepted every throw of the dice without complaint.

From military histories and memoirs, one readily gains the impression that generals form their battle plans after poring over maps for long, studious hours. If Humbert is typical, nothing could be farther from the case. He seemed to be everywhere, moving quickly but without the appearance of haste. Our Irish encampment must surely have astonished him, with its whiskey plundered from the taverns of Ballina, and its noise and wild music. But he smiled, clapped men on the back, several times took long pulls at jugs which were thrust towards him, and all the time kept up a rapid fire of instructions to Teeling and Sarrizen. What view he held of his allies we were presently to discover, but at any event he had no reason to query the sympathies of the Mayo peasantry. Thus, sometime after midnight there was an extraordinary sight. Down from the hill of Ardnaree, on the far side of the river, came a host of men carrying green branches. They were the men of Coolcarney and Attymass, who had heard of the victory at Ballina and had decided to join the rebellion, as one might join friends upon a holiday.

And yet it was no holiday. Castlebar has always been the gateway to Mayo, for hills rise up on either side of it, an easy position to defend, a treacherous one to attack. Bloody battles were fought over it in the seventeenth century. The road, or what passes for a road in Connaught, runs southwards from Ballina to Foxford, to the east of Lough Conn, and then, below the lake, runs in a southeasterly direction from Bellavary into Castlebar. Some men who came into us from Foxford told us that that town was still heavily defended, the garrison having been augmented by the troops who had fled from Ballina. They were unskilled at estimating numbers, but in Teeling’s best judgement they were talking of about two thousand men. We would have to fight our way past these before ever we came face to face with the main English force.

Humbert had put aside the maps he brought with him, and instead drew one of his own, adding to it or modifying it as each crumb of information came to him. He carried it folded in his pocket, and from time to time would take it out and study it, crouched on his haunches at a campfire.

I cannot remember who brought the men from Nephin to him, but it was their arrival which determined the manner in which the battle of Castlebar was fought. I remember them standing before him, ten or twelve of them, with Teeling and Owen MacCarthy acting as interpreters. They came from a town called Coolagh, which like all of Nephin lies to the west of Lough Conn. When Humbert heard this, he put down his pencil. How did they get here, he asked, and I answered him before MacCarthy could. They followed a goat path, it was no better than that, which took them northwards, to Crossmolina above the lake, and then came by the Crossmolina road into Ballina. What did we mean by a goat path, he asked, and how far did it run? It took O’Dowd, MacDonnell, and myself, racking our memories, to answer that question, although we were all Mayo men. And when we had finished, he made us question the peasants closely.

The one passable road between Ballina and Castlebar is the one which I have just described, to the east of Lough Conn. The country which stretches westwards of the lake is wild even for Mayo. It is a land of mountains, dark lakes, and moorland wastes, uninhabited save by wretches who rip a miserable existence from its arable acres, or tend scrawny herds and flocks upon its melancholy slopes.

And yet there was known to be a path through it, beaten down in places by feet and hooves, in others a stubborn and treacherous morass. Southwards from Crossmolina it runs past bogs and lakes, along the slopes of hills, and then begins to rise steadily and steeply through the glens of the Nephin range, trailing through the lost villages of Coolagh and Laherdane, running then over the humped crests of mountains, dropping at last into a rocky and precipitous defile called Barnageragh. Beyond Barnageragh it levels out, and then runs for two miles, straight into Castlebar.

Humbert heard us all out, interrupting us with questions, and then turned on his heels and walked away. Teeling watched him as he stood by himself, looking down into a dying fire. “Ballina is my home,” I said. “I was born here. But I have never travelled that path. A cart couldn’t move along that path; horses would stumble on it.” Teeling nodded and shrugged his shoulders, his eyes still upon Humbert. When Humbert returned, he walked towards Sarrizen and Fontaine, but paused in front of us and said, “Tell the Irish officers that we will march south from Ballina tomorrow afternoon.” “Which road?” Humbert answered in a surprised voice. “There is only one good road into Castlebar. Through Foxford. The British know that. They are already taking up their positions.” “But in fact we will be going through the back door, will we not, General Humbert?” “It is a path for goats,” Humbert said. “That is close to my old trade. Goat skins and rabbit skins.” He struck Teeling lightly on the shoulder. “You cannot take artillery along that path,” Teeling said. “We can try,” Humbert said, and then walked away from us to join his French officers.

It has been said that sometime during the night a Ballina loyalist brought information to the British force in Foxford that we would be advancing upon that town the following day. It is certain that Foxford sent such a message to Castlebar, and followed it with a second.

We left at four O’clock, and I joined our column just at its point of departure, for I had spent some time at home with my wife. By my best calculations, we brought forward to the battle seven hundred French and eight hundred Irish. The remainder of our forces were left behind as garrisons in Killala and Ballina. A hundred of the French mounted dragoons were in the van, followed by the French foot soldiers and then the Irish. We marched along the Foxford road until the first cool of evening fell upon us, and then Humbert halted the column, wheeled it around, and pointed it towards Crossmolina.

It was in Crossmolina that his intentions became clear to his soldiers and to our own men. The French were accustomed to sudden and confusing orders, and in any event they had no notion of the route which was proposed for us. With the Irish it was far otherwise, and the stir of their incredulity was so strong it could be felt. MacDonnell, O’Dowd, and Blake rode up to protest and because they did not speak French they poured out their protests to Teeling and myself. Humbert sat staring at them impassively until they had finished, then, before we could translate, he spoke to Teeling, his voice loud, and his tone harsh and vehement.