The Year of the French (41 page)

“Will Paris be interested in the names of the peasants who were killed? It will be a long list. Men armed with pikes making four charges into cannon fire.”

“How else would you have had me use them?” Humbert asked, with faint irritation. “Ploughboys without training, with no experience of battle. They soaked up the cannon fire, and then my Frenchmen drove in the flanks. How else?”

Teeling did not answer. He drew a neat cross, small, in the margin of his paper.

“Also,” Humbert said, “have Fontaine draw a map of the battlefield and include that. Tell him to sketch a French soldier on one side of the map, and an Irish patriot with his pike on the other side. That will look very nice. After the blunt, truthful account has been given, it is permissible to contemplate what has happened, and to suggest its importance.”

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked across Lord Claremorris’s sunlit acres towards a plantation of larches. Then he began to dictate again.

“The bravery and resourcefulness of my army, French soldiers who faithfully serve the Republic, Irish patriots eager to shake off the yoke of unendurable oppression, have won a most astonishing victory. A British army has been scattered, and the town which is the pivot of . . .” He turned and raised his eyebrows.

“Of Mayo, General, unless you mean Connaught.”

“Explain that to me again.”

“This county is Mayo, but Mayo is a part of the province of Connaught.”

“. . . which is the pivot of Connaught has fallen into our hands. Other, smaller towns to the west have been seized by local bands of patriots, inspired by our example. A republic has been established, and is governed by a council of patriots. The warmest bonds of affection and respect unite Irish and French. Recruits pour in to us in such numbers that we are at a loss how best to provide for them. In short, we have made a brilliant beginning, and I begin now to understand truly the praise bestowed upon his countrymen by Colonel Theobald Wolfe Tone. Like us, they are children of the Revolution. Whose lands are these?”

“A nobleman named Claremorris. He and Lord Glenthorne are the powerful magnates of East Mayo.”

“Not Mr. Moore?” Humbert asked sharply. “Not the man whom we have made President? I had your assurance—”

“His brother George is a landlord of middling wealth,” Teeling said. “Not a nobleman in your sense of the word, but good enough. It is a respected name.”

“Our man will earn new laurels for it,” Humbert said. “Continue now to write, please. My orders were to effect a landing and then await General Hardy. To secure my position, it was necessary to move inland and strike at Castlebar. Circumstances have been changed by the completeness of my victory there, and by the gratifying uprising of the people of Mayo. I now hold the initiative in this part of the island, and believe that it would be fatal not to pursue my success. I do not know if Hardy has yet set sail or if he has been intercepted by the English squadron. I intend to spend the next three days recruiting the patriot forces and securing information as to the rebellions elsewhere in the island, which will have drawn courage from Castlebar. My forces will be in readiness for General Hardy to take command of them. But if Hardy does not arrive, I intend to move forward.”

The room was silent save for the scratching of Teeling’s pen. “To move forward,” he said.

Humbert ignored him. He had turned back towards the window and Lord Claremorris’s larches.

“The fate of this island will be settled in the next ten days. There are good prospects that courage and audacity will settle it to our advantage, and France will have gained a brave and grateful comrade-in-arms. End the letter in the usual way.”

Teeling put down his pen and looked over the pages of foolscap. “Shall I read it back to you?”

“No, no.” Humbert walked back to the writing table. “Are you surprised that I asked you to write it out for me?”

“I was,” Teeling said drily. “Not now.”

Humbert smiled, and slowly settled his long, heavy body into a chair. “Explain.”

“It is not my place to—”

“No,” Humbert said sharply. “Explain.”

“You are going well beyond the limits of your orders, on the basis of one victory, and the hope that other parts of the country will rise up. You may well wish to keep the other French officers here ignorant of the justification which you are offering to the Ministry of War.”

“All right,” Humbert said. “That is the size of it. And what is your own opinion? You are yourself a French officer. Of a sort.”

“An Irishman,” Teeling said. “Of a sort. Perhaps Tone believes in a general uprising, but I do not. Our organization was shattered months ago. Its strength was in Ulster and in Wexford. In Dublin. Perhaps in the midlands. If there is any serious rising in the next month it will be in the midlands. It is a mob of Irish-speaking peasants that we have recruited here, primitive men cut off from the rest of the island. If Hardy doesn’t land, there is no hope for us.”

“Hardy has not left the French coast,” Humbert said. “You may be certain of that. And he will stay there until it has been made clear and public that he is needed to complete a campaign which I have begun with great success. That old aristocrat down in Dublin, Cornwallis, is not sitting still. He is bringing a large army northwards to meet me. If he finds me, there will be no second Castlebar. But if this island bestirs itself, and if I can avoid him for three weeks, Hardy will be here.”

“Avoid him for three weeks?” Teeling asked incredulously. “On an island this size?”

Humbert shrugged. “It is larger than the Vendée. Much larger. I can avoid him. With luck.”

“And when Hardy lands, if he does land, where will we be?”

Humbert made a curious gesture, closing his fist and then opening it over the table, fingers spread wide.

“May I ask, General, how good our chances are?”

“The odds are against us. Too many things must work properly. Local uprisings, and you are yourself doubtful of these. Hardy’s prompt arrival, and after him Kilmaine. The manner in which Cornwallis disposes of his forces. The chances are that he will be able to scoop us up in the net he will throw out, and put ropes around us. I say only of my plan that it is the best one in the circumstances.”

“Best for the Irish, or for France?”

“For France, of course,” Humbert said. “Best for France. It was you people who came to France for help, you know, yourself and Wolfe Tone and Fitzgerald and the others. We did not seek you out, to seduce you from your loyalty to England. You needed us, to make your disloyalty effective. And here we are. With luck there will be more of us. But we are here in the service of our country, as you serve yours.”

“Your country,” Teeling said. “Not the Revolution.”

“France is the Revolution,” Humbert said, with sudden, unexpected passion. “My victory here will strengthen the Revolution, just as Buonaparte’s victory in Egypt will probably destroy it.”

“What meaning do you think that has for the ploughboys you throw against the English cannon?”

“Ask yourself that. They are your countrymen, not mine.”

“I am asking myself that question,” Teeling said. “It is an ugly one.”

“Yes,” Humbert said gravely. “An ugly question. War devours men. We throw our children to the cannon. It is not a question to ask in the middle of a campaign.”

“I will write out a fair copy of your despatch,” Teeling said. “Will you want a copy?”

“Of course,” Humbert said. “And see that it is sent off by a reliable messenger. The boat should leave on the first tide.”

At the door, Teeling turned. “It is wasteful of men, is it not, General—a frontal attack across open ground, without cover?”

“It was successful,” Humbert said. “This time.”

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

On the day following the battle of Castlebar, I was directed to ride eastwards into Sligo to ascertain the state of the United movement there, and to learn what I could of conditions in Ulster, for Humbert regarded a juncture with what remained of the northern rebels as one of his possibilities. I was accompanied by Owen Ruagh MacCarthy, the schoolmaster. If, as seemed possible, some part of the Sligo road was held by peasants, MacCarthy stood a better chance than would I of explaining matters to them. To speak more plainly upon that point, the roads were no longer safe for anyone markedly “Protestant” in dress, manner, and speech. In the event, we did not encounter this difficulty, although parts of western Sligo have indeed gone into insurrection.

Our journey carried us through Swinford, Charlestown, and Tobercurry, and a most ill-matched pair we must have looked, for MacCarthy jounced along most painfully, although without complaint, remarking at one point that his horse, which had been requisitioned from Lord Claremorris, was clearly worth but four pounds eighteen, a reference to the old penal statute which prohibited Papists from owning horses valued at more than five pounds. He proved, however, a most intelligent and sagacious man, albeit an eccentric one, and I found fresh occasion to deplore the artificial distinctions by which the several classes in society are held separate. He was, all in all, a most excellent companion, barring only his determination to stop at every tavern we passed, thereby disclosing a prodigious head for spirits. At several of these he was known by name as a writer of verses in the old tongue. Concerning the aims and objectives of the United Irishmen he was largely uninformed, although he had read several of our pamphlets. His head was crammed with curious learning and pseudo-learning, but most of it was bounded by the four seas of Ireland, although he had a good knowledge of the classics and had read Goldsmith and Shakespeare.

“My wife,” I told him, “is a great reader of Ossian.”

“Who?”

“The greatest of the poets in Irish,” I answered, surprised. “Ossian. Or perhaps he was Scottish. Mr. James Macpherson has made him celebrated in London.”

“Usheen, is it?” he asked, after a pause. “That fellow.”

When we were first married, Mrs. Elliott had me commit to memory a passage from Macpherson’s eloquent translation, which I now recited for him: “Oh torrents, tumbling down upon fair Caledon, raise up your mighty spirits to murmur to the drowsy Gael. Quake not, oh slumbrous heroes, but sally forth unto the fray.”

“Well now,” MacCarthy said, “that is elegant indeed, and no easy task for the memory. ‘Quake not, oh slumbrous heroes.’ You don’t come upon that sort of thing every day.”

“Does it lack accuracy of sentiment or expression?” I asked him, somewhat nettled by a remark which I considered sardonic.

“Not at all,” he assured me, with an almost excessive politeness. “It is grand stuff entirely. ‘Slumbrous heroes,’ by God. That one is worth remembering. There is a maker of verses in West Cork who would slap down shillings on the counter for the use of that one.”

We had come from great distances to share at last the same road, and yet there was much which held us separate. Ireland, in my judgement, is held in check by oppressive laws and a corrupt parliament, by a government and an aristocracy which make certain of their power by fostering animosities between Protestant and Papist, by the armed might of England’s alien armies. To all this, MacCarthy gave a ready assent, and yet it seemed of no great interest to him.

“My father,” he said, “was what you would call landless, a labourer feeding the two of us as best he could. But his father before him had had a bit of land on Lord Blennerhassett’s estate, outside Tralee. Well, the bad years came when there were two poor harvests, the one after the other, and he couldn’t pay the rent and so was driven off. Now would the United Irishmen prevent that from happening?”

“There are rents in all countries,” I said, “and landlords have debts of their own which must be paid from the rents.”

“When I grew up to be a young man,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard me, “I was teaching school in Macroom and there the Whiteboys started up again. A man named Paddy Lynch was behind it. He was up to all kinds of deviltry. Malachi Duggan of Kilcummin is an altar boy beside Paddy Lynch. When Paddy Lynch was rampaging through West Cork the landlords went slow on the evictions. If there had been Whiteboys in Tralee in my grandfather’s time he’d not have had to end his days on the road.”

“It is only a beginning we are making now,” I said, hearing within my head the emptiness of my words. “We must go one step at a time.”

“My grandfather went one step at a time, until one winter’s night he went to sleep by a ditch and in the morning they found him there, and my father beside him, crying and shivering.” He bit his lips in thought, and then he said, “Sure, there is no one cares about people like my grandfather.”

Swinford had been seized by the insurgents themselves, upon news of the Castlebar victory, and without help or word from the French. The village was verdant with green boughs and trees of liberty in the narrow street. They had taken the local tippling shop, although the proprietor was himself a Papist, and there was much singing and carousing in broad daylight. A corpulent young man of the sort who is foremost in faction fights had declared himself their captain, and exercised an ill-defined authority over them. When they learned from MacCarthy’s boasting that we had been at the battle of Castlebar, they crowded around us for information, plying us with drinks which MacCarthy would not refuse. And it was much the same in Charlestown. In short, the line of march eastwards across Mayo was open, and the villages in friendly hands. But we could learn nothing about Sligo. We were to discover as we proceeded, however, that some of the Sligo villages were in rebel hands and others were held by companies of yeomanry, but many were undeclared and living their lives as if nothing had happened. But the town of Sligo itself, a larger and more formidable town than Castlebar, was held by a strong British force which had been reinforced by troops from Enniskillen, in Ulster. Sligo to the north and Boyle to the south, in Roscommon, were the two anchors of the line by which the British hoped to hold us within Connaught until Cornwallis could move into position. If we were to reach Ulster, we would either have to fight through this line or slip through it.