The Year of the French (38 page)

“Tell them that the British generals agree with them. They have disposed their troops and artillery and prepared their entrenchments to face an enemy advancing upon them due south along the Foxford road. But we will disappoint the British. We will make a forced march along the far shore of this great lake, and sometime tomorrow morning we will fall upon their flank. I know that it is very bad country, but we will cross it, whether we slip or slide or scramble like goats. I am a good general and I have won battles and campaigns. If they will follow my orders, I will lead them. But it is their country, not mine. If they don’t want to fight for it, let them go home. Before they leave, they are to stack their muskets. The muskets are the property of the French Republic, which was born in pain and defended with blood.”

It is my opinion that they grasped the meaning of his manner and tone more firmly than they did Teeling’s translation, for all its fluency. The authority which an able commander exerts is mysterious. Is it some accretion from the battles he has fought, or is it some personal power, with him from the first, by virtue of which he was able to win those battles? I know that it exists, for it was present in this buyer of skins, speaking to wild squireens and peasants in a language which they did not understand. It is an ambiguous and dangerous power, as I now have reason to know, a lion watchful in the forest, but it can carry men beyond their capacities, can plunge them into dangers which any man of sense would avoid.

The Irish captains rode up and down the lines, talking to their men. My Irish is faulty and I did not grasp all of what they said, but it seemed to me a fair paraphrase of Humbert’s words, cast in a homely idiom. The men, of whom many had at first been angry or frightened, grew quiet and thoughtful, or so, at least, it appeared to me. They moved me to wonder at the passions which draw men into battle, risking their lives for a wisp of cloth, a fragment of song, a flattering or a cajoling speech. Certainly it was not a risk run for the sentiments set forth in the proclamations which Teeling had brought with him, resounding affirmations of the principles of the Society of United Irishmen and of the Revolution in France. “By God,” Corny O’Dowd said, jerking his head towards the French grenadiers, “Those lads over there know how to fight and they have worked wonders. They have cleared all the yeomen and all the militia out of their own country, and cut off their King’s head and stuck it up on a spike outside his palace.” He was wearing the blue uniform of a French officer, but his own coarse breeches, and heavy boots to which still clung the muck of his farm. “And it was that lad over there who showed them how to do it. He is the most famous of the French generals, and they have sent him over here to lead us. We bet them at Killala and we bet them at Ballina and we will beat them at Castlebar, if we keep our minds to our tasks. Wasn’t it always promised that the French would come over to us with men and with weapons? You know your history, and if you do not you can ask the schoolmaster.” MacCarthy gave him a brief smile, half friendly and half sardonic, but said nothing. He carried neither musket nor pike, nor the pistol which had been issued to each of the Irish captains. He was the sort of fellow who can be found on any market day, propped against the gable of a shop, thumbs hitched into the band of his breeches.

It says much for Humbert that he moved us out of Crossmolina without further murmur or protest, not even from those Nephin men who knew part of the route. And Humbert himself acted as if it did not greatly matter, one way or the other, talking easily and quietly with Sarrizen and Fontaine, and several times laughing.

The people of Crossmolina watched us leave, standing quiet and observant beside their cabins.

Castlebar, August 26

By midnight, when Lake arrived in the drab, mean town, shops squatting on the square, courthouse, barracks, market house, and gaol, he already knew that Hutchinson had moved the Connaught forces. A messenger had reached him on the road, outside Claremorris. He climbed out of the carriage and walked up and down beside it, to stretch his cramped legs, a large, imposing man who did justice to his scarlet uniform. Hutchinson was waiting for him, to explain the order in which he had disposed his troops and the instructions which he had given his officers.

“All in good time,” Lake said, in a fair imitation of Cornwallis’s manner. “All in good time.”

There was a most singular atmosphere, turbulent and yet watchful. Castlebar was dense with army wagons; soldiers jostled each other in the narrow streets. But the shops and taverns were dark and silent.

“Do we know what he is doing?”

“He marched out of Ballina late this afternoon. About seven hundred of his French, and a like number of rebels. I have reinforced General Taylor at Foxford, and we have been waiting now for word from him.”

“Taylor will never hold him,” Lake said. “He will be upon us in the morning.”

“He will indeed,” Hutchinson said. “He seems prompt and energetic. His name is Humbert, it seems.”

“His name doesn’t matter,” Lake said. “The names keep changing. Lose a battle and they put you to the guillotine. A bloody minded people.”

“I have begun to move out our people,” Hutchinson said. “They will be in position before dawn. We are in a very strong defensive position here.”

Lake nodded and looked around him. “I want the latest intelligence from Foxford. By God, this is an ugly place. The people here are all rebels, I take it?”

“I have no reason to believe that,” Hutchinson said stiffly. He was an Irishman, the son of the Provost of Trinity. “The people seem quiet enough.”

“Do they indeed? I’ve seen towns like this in Ulster and I’ve seen them in Wexford. You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. But give them one chance, Hutchinson. Turn your back on them just once.”

They walked together into the barracks yard, where the other officers had gathered to greet him. He recognised Lord Ormonde, who commanded the Kilkennys, Lord Roden of the cavalry, Lord Granard of the Longfords. Militia regiments. Loyal enough, no doubt, but clumsy and inexperienced. Grant, the Highlander. That was more like it: the Highlanders were the real lads. Good luck that Crauford wasn’t here. Cornwallis’s pet Highlander, a violent, witty man, but inclined to steal every show with his cavalry flash.

Torches lit the crowded barracks yard.

“Well now, gentlemen. Well now. What is our strength, General Hutchinson?”

“Something better than seven thousand men,” Hutchinson said. “Regulars and militia.”

“And spoiling for a fight, I’ll wager, eh Lord Ormonde?”

“They are, General Lake. If you mean the Kilkennys.”

“Yes. Of course they didn’t look too well a few months ago when they had their own county to defend. Things were a sorry mess down there before I took command.”

“General,” Grant said. “Isn’t it peculiar that we have had no further word from General Taylor at Foxford?”

“Most peculiar indeed, Colonel Grant. I am looking into that. A most sensible question.”

Just at dawn, Lake and his officers rode out to inspect the positions. The town was cupped by low hills, with shadowy mountains to the left. Hutchinson had chosen to hold Sion Hill, a mile outside the town. The troops were to be drawn up in three lines, protected on either flank by a lake. The cavalry would hold between the first and second lines. The artillery was placed at the north end of the hill, covering either side of the road. Lighter guns were placed at the bridge into town, and in the town itself.

Lake rode slowly over the terrain, but he could find no fault with Hutchinson’s dispositions. He could hear bird song and marching feet, shrilling fifes and the rattle of drums. It would be a clear, warm morning. He turned in his saddle.

“Does this put you back in the Highlands, Grant?”

Grant shrugged and spat. Lake laughed. A textbook battle. But he would share the credit with Hutchinson. A tidy battlefield.

Crossmolina to Castlebar, August 26–27

Dark moors and pools of dark water. The back of beyond. Two miles past Addergoole they were given an hour’s rest, but MacCarthy could not sleep. He walked past men with their heads resting on drawn-up knees. They had reason enough to sleep, some of them. The French general had left behind him in Crossmolina all his artillery except the light curricle guns, and peasants had been yoked to these like beasts of burden. Shoulders bent, they had stumbled and staggered in the darkness, with the French sergeants bellowing at them incomprehensible oaths. What else had there ever been but men who looked like these, like himself, straggling across bogs, or through forests, with mists writhing about their legs? Our poetry, the celebrations of defeats, chieftains cut down in battle, lonely stands by fords and mountain passes, retreats. There would be no song for those who sat exhausted, chests heaving, after doing work that horses and donkeys had refused.

Moorland and rocky glen, by day the bright pale sky would stretch across their emptiness, the landscape of banishment. Here, westwards of the Shannon, the Irish chieftains had been scattered after Cromwell’s triumph. Here, into Connaught, the dispossessed Gaelic landowners had journeyed afoot or by cart, the “retainers” driving their herds with hazel wands. But not the peasants, hewers of wood and drawers of water. These had crept back from bogside, from slopes of rocky hill, to serve their new masters. They served newer masters now, Teeling and Elliott and Moore with their florid proclamations of fraternity and equality, this indecipherable French general, all frowns one moment and all smiles the next. Years before, MacCarthy had stood in the square of Macroom to watch the hanging of Paddy Lynch, the Whiteboy Captain, short barrel of a man, murderous and always smiling. This was a path which Lynch might have chosen, over the humps of hills, through stony defiles. A masterless people save for men like Lynch, a peasant like themselves, ignorant and brutal.

These men in loose frieze, long-lipped, black hair or red hanging loose, were held in a loop of history’s long coils. Hands hardened by the plough clutched musket or pike. Ignorant and uncomprehending, they scrambled up hills, walked or half ran beside starlit waters. When colonels and chieftains had been scraped away, these men were left.

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

The day, which all who have passed comment upon these events describe as a most extraordinary one, opened at six in the morning, when our force, after its arduous march across that wretched country, emerged upon rising ground, facing the British who held Sion Hill, some thousand yards distant from us. An hour earlier, they had been brought word of our approach, and they had set to work redressing their lines, a task which they had not yet completed. Humbert stood for a time in contemplation of the scene before him, as though viewing men placed on parade for his inspection, and then moved us forward to the shelter of a hill called Slievenagark. We were still outside the range of the British guns.

He then ordered the Irish, under O’Dowd and Teeling, to charge the guns. Accordingly we moved forward in a mass, receiving, at a distance of about fifty yards, a wall of musket fire. The Irish charged and routed the infantry who stood lined to protect the cannon, but then the cannon, which until then had been silent, commenced bellowing explosions which battered wide holes in our ranks. Our losses were heavy, although at the time I had no thought of that, for the world seemed to have dissolved in smoke and a terrifying noise. While this action had been taking place, however, Humbert had been moving forward the rest of his forces in files, using hedges as his cover, and then assembling them in a formation which flanked the English. We were ordered then to charge again, and we did, if only because we could think of nothing else to do. The grenadiers had moved behind us, and pressed us forward.

I can claim no distinction for myself. I remember firing my pistol at a gunner, and I remember cutting down at men with my sword. It was my task, I knew, to encourage our men, but when I opened my mouth it was dry and stiff. But I saw O’Dowd shouting, his hat in his hand, beating it across men’s backs and shoving them forward. What I best remember are the noises, musket fire and screams. Their cavalry was left with no room in which to manoeuvre, for the Longford militia stumbled backward upon them, and then the Irish with their pikes fell upon them, slashing and hooking murderously at horse and rider alike.

And yet what won the battle was the flight of the enemy, as much as it was our charges upon them. When O’Dowd’s men scaled their side of the hill, they ran past guns which had already been deserted. The Kilkennys and the Prince of Wales’s Fencibles, it is said, were the first to buckle, and as they fled backward, they threw into panic the line behind them. The Frasers held, and fought their ground with resolute bravery, swinging their muskets like clubs. But the rest of that army, which so greatly outnumbered us, turned and fled. Humbert later confessed that he had not expected it. By throwing away the first wave of Irish as a sacrifice to draw the artillery, and then attacking from the flank, he had calculated upon a victory, but the manner of our triumph was without precedent.

I can describe but I cannot explain what is now called a most ignominious defeat for British arms, the battle of Castlebar, or, as it is derisively termed, “the Castlebar races.” Humbert’s night march down through Barnageragh had much to do with it, of course, for it forced the British into a new and awkward plan of defence, hastily chosen and ill considered. Perhaps Lake erred in taking command upon a field to which he had but recently arrived, but I do not believe that Hutchinson or any other officer would have fared better. Save, perhaps, Humbert himself. All of us, even the Irish-speaking peasants from Nephin, had come to share Humbert’s confidence in his own abilities. It was a mysterious elixir, and we had all drunk of it. Dropped upon an alien and savage coast, commanding men whose language he could not understand, he moved and gave his orders as one persuaded that success was casual and inevitable. In the two months that have passed since then I have become far more cynical upon that point, but on the morning of the Castlebar battle, I risked my life upon his nod, as did the others. The British officers with whom I have spoken dismiss almost entirely the rebel attack, and attribute our victory to Humbert’s seasoned infantry and his grenadiers. Our Irish, they say, were but a mob flung forward to create a diversion. But upon that point I am less certain. It was a mob flung forward by history, and had, perhaps, its terrifying aspect.