The Year of the French (34 page)

By the time O’Dowd arrived, our headquarters were well established in poor Broome’s commodious residence. Broome and his wife, together with their servants and several guests, were relegated to the second floor, but this was ample for their needs, as it contained six rooms, including the large one which faced the street and which Broome used as a library. During the time of Humbert’s occupation of the house, its residents were entirely secure from harm. I am informed that such was not the case after the army moved forward from Killala, and I keenly regret such perils as Mr. Broome may have endured. He is a most humane and estimable gentleman, although knowing nothing about Ireland.

Of General Humbert my opinion was to change and modify itself constantly during the time of my service with him. This much is certain, that he was a man of most remarkable ability, seemingly bold and reckless, but in fact a calculator. There is no need for me to laud his military prowess, for the British generals who encountered him, including General Taylor and especially Lord Cornwallis, have been generous in their praise, and indeed the campaign upon which he led us is said to have had few parallels. And yet I do not believe that we ever knew more than a portion of his mind. Certainly we Irish did not, and I believe this also to be true of his French subordinates. It seemed from my conversations with them, and especially with Colonel Sarrizen, that they were bound to him by duty and by a professional admiration for his skills, rather than by trust or affection. But then trust was in short supply among the French officers, although this did not impair their efficiency. There was a touch of the playactor in him, which would explain why he and Tone got on so well. He could exhibit cheerfulness and high spirits at one moment, and the next fall into a savage rage. This perhaps was changeability, but perhaps the cheerfulness and the rage were but shows, behind which dwelt the unknowable man. This may be true of all commanders.

Late that first night, the prisoners were transferred to the market house, where they were to remain under guard for the duration of the campaign, their numbers being augmented with each passing day, and the air became more and more noxious as men were crowded in upon each other. They lived in terror, being persuaded that they were destined to be butchered by the Papists, and their defenceless families as well. Indeed, in the final days, a small number of them were brutally slaughtered, but by that time our army was far distant from Mayo, and Ferdy O’Donnell, who commanded the small garrison left behind, had despite his courage an imperfect control upon those insurgents. For Captain Cooper the imprisonment was unendurable. He had the intelligence to know that massacre was not imminent, and endeavoured to reassure his men, but for the first weeks, I am told, he remained in a black, towering rage, and would sit upon the floor gnawing at his fingernails and knuckles. I did not visit him, for reasons of delicacy, but MacDonnell had no such scruples. The interview was a painful one, for the two had in earlier years been cronies, but now MacDonnell did not hesitate to mock him in his misfortune. His mind was made no easier by the actions of his wife. Mrs. Cooper, a bold, handsome woman, decisive in speech and manner, made two visits to our headquarters to demand his release, thereby arousing the admiration of the officers but serving no other purpose.

Killala remained a centre of the insurrection even after our army had moved forward, being garrisoned, as I have said, by a body of Irish troops under the nominal command of Ferdy O’Donnell. Of what transpired there I have no first-hand knowledge and the stories which have been made current in recent weeks have upon them the mark of infuriated loyalists, anxious to represent themselves as the victims of Papist savagery. No one, not even among these loyalists, questions the humanity and generosity of O’Donnell himself, but I can well believe that the task of maintaining order was beyond his abilities. The rebellion drew to itself not only those willing to fight in the field, but a large mob of fellows whose only thoughts were for plunder and for vengeance against their Protestant fellow countrymen. I can well believe that without O’Donnell’s firmness and popularity among the people, Mayo would have been stained by crimes such as those which have brought Wexford under an eternal disgrace.

At the outset, I had doubts that even Humbert could maintain order, but in this I was happily mistaken. The fellows who poured into Killala had but the haziest notion of our enterprise and its objectives, and many of them were bold and reckless fellows, Whiteboys and faction fighters. These were encouraged by the events of the first hours, for of course it was necessary to make requisitions upon the countryside for supplies and horses. It may well have seemed to them that this signalled a more general assault upon property. Like the peasants of most countries, they held literally to the idea of revolution, even though they had never heard the word itself. Tyrants were to be brought low, and stripped of their possessions, and their lives were held in no high account. But Humbert’s discipline, and the flat of his sergeants’ sabres, made short work of that notion. It is unfortunately the case that the houses of certain landlords were pillaged and set afire, both in Killala and along our line of march, but these were the works either of mobs or of bands such as those of Malachi Duggan, over which we maintained an imperfect authority. And yet taken as a whole, the conduct of the Irish forces was most creditable, as the more generous of our foes have avowed.

Just now I have read over these pages of notes, and am appalled by their falseness to my true recollections of the first days. The facts are there, without colouring or extenuation, and set down in as flat a language as I can command. But in truth what I best recall is great confusion, both in the streets of Killala and in my own feelings. Foreign troops had landed and an insurrection was being set into motion in which I had my part to play, as I did not for a moment question. And yet these were in truth my only certainties. The streets were crowded with men remote and alien to my own troubled feelings. They spoke in French and in Irish, languages of which I possess a serviceable knowledge, but not a true intimacy, and the words, familiar but foreign, were like the sounds of distant waves. Then too the French officers and their men knew what they were about, but I did not, and I was chilled by the confidence with which they shouted orders at each other. For them, it was certain, this town in Mayo was but a conquered village which may as well have been in Africa or the Caribbean. More than by the French, however, I was chilled by my own countrymen, separated from me by language, by passions which I did not share, emotions which I had no wish to express. The market house was filled with men with names like Elliott, Protestants like myself and English by blood, and I was walking the streets with their captors. Papists armed with pikes filled the streets of Killala, and I was one with them. Deeper than politics, deeper than thought, my blood stirred in sluggish protest against my belief and my actions.

The first battle of the campaign was for Ballina, my own town, which lies on the Moy, seven miles to the south of Killala. It was garrisoned by the Prince of Wales’s Fencibles, some six hundred, under the command of Colonel Chapman, augmented by a detachment of carbineers and several companies of yeomen. The choice which lay before Chapman was of accepting battle or retreating southwards to Foxford, thereby abandoning a considerable stretch of Mayo to his enemy yet preserving his force intact should a later attempt be made upon Castlebar. Humbert gave him the better part of two days to decide, for it was late on the twenty-fourth that he sent us forward, six hundred of the French under Sarrizen, and five hundred Irish, including MacDonnell’s and O’Dowd’s men, who moved through the Glenthorne estate along the old Rosserk road. MacDonnell rode at the head of the Irish, but it was Teeling who gave the orders.

I should perhaps have more vivid memories of my first military engagement, but I do not. And yet the march was sufficiently romantic. The Rosserk road is little better than a narrow, treacherous path which runs past cabins of Lord Glenthorne’s tenants and issues onto the Ballina road about a mile north of the town. We moved in darkness, and the tenants first of one, then of another cabin came outside and lighted hay and straw to show us our way. Women came from the cabins to bring us bread and bowls of milk. From that night forth, the path was called
bother-na-sop
, the road of straw. But I was possessed by a sense of the matter-of-factness of these extraordinary happenings. Men had to be organised, and formed up in lines, and they jested and grumbled, but with a white-hot wire of excitement running just beneath the surface, for like me they were moving towards their first battle, in which some would be killed in all likelihood. Yet this sense of the ordinary existed most curiously within me beside a strong feeling of unreality which had been with me from the moment that the rider brought me news of the French landing. I moved through a dream in which the landscape was known, the faces recognised.

Bother-na-sop
.

Killala, August 24

On the Sunday morning of the night march upon Ballina, Mr. Hussey knelt before the altar, turned then to face his congregation, and folded his hands beneath his chasuble. Conscious of the occasion and its needs, he spoke slowly and vehemently.

“My dear people, an anxious and a dreadful time has come upon us. In the past month, it has been my sad duty to speak to you of acts of violence, beyond question committed by men of this parish. Such acts, although certainly they are black with sin, have had at least the human explanation that life in our barony is hard, and that some few of our landlords have acted in a manner which some might term un-Christian. But today I speak to you of a far greater danger to the souls of each one of you.”

He was a frail, fastidious man, the son and brother of prosperous middlemen in County Meath. His previous parish of Bective in that county had been as much delight as duty, and his memory lingered upon the rich green pasturelands of the Boyne valley, the ruined Bective abbey, the graceful bridge across the river. Mayo was a place of exile, endured without pleasure or complaint.

“Several months ago, as you well know, large numbers of misguided men in the east and in the north took up arms against the King. Their rebellion has been broken by the King’s powerful army. But now, as the embers of that rebellion are being stamped out by the soldiers’ heavy boots, Frenchmen have landed on our strand, and seek to lure you away from your homes, your families, your little farms. These Frenchmen come from the nation which murdered its king and queen and many thousands of innocent people, which has become the persecutor of all religions but in particular of our own Holy Church. These infidels and murderers now ask you to go into rebellion, that you may be slaughtered. And it grieves me to say that certain Irishmen who have banded together with them will ask the same of you. My words are not mine alone. I declare to you the words of our Church, as they have been given to us by our bishops. To take arms from the Frenchmen or to help them in any way would be a mortal sin by which your souls would be blackened.”

Uncertain of his Irish, a language towards which he felt a faint contempt, he chose his words with care, and he sought to measure their effect in the eyes of his parishioners. The church was as crowded as it was on any other Sunday, the men on one side of the aisle and the women on the other. It was the men towards whom he looked. Many, most of them perhaps, would go back to their cabins, but others would go to the French encampment. He could almost tell which were which. There were men who sat staring at the flagstone floor, or at some point to the left or right of him, shamefaced.

“Your souls would be blackened,” he repeated, believing the awful words. The white lamb’s wool of the soul, lamb’s wool softer than cloud, smeared and sullied by black thumbprints.

“I must speak briefly of a most painful matter. Mr. Murphy, the curate of this parish, has gone to the French encampment. I have relieved Mr. Murphy of his priestly duties and will send to our bishop an account of his conduct. You may depend upon it that his lordship will deal harshly with this misfortunate man. Never believe that you are free to judge between his advice to you and mine. The judgement of the Church in these matters is clear beyond question, and our bishops have spoken with a single voice.”

Fit shepherd for a barbarous flock, Hussey thought of Murphy in a spasm of sudden disgust, coarse round red face and neck sun-seamed like a farmer’s, his coat snuff-stained and his breath rank with stale whiskey. Small wonder that the world scorns us, an island of cowherds and fanatics. But the spasm faded, died, and he was shamed by his feelings. He spoke more gently to those who heard him, the words floating across a space wider than that marked by the flagstones, carried to them from the trim pasturelands of the pale, from the cloisters of Saint-Omer.

“Go back now to your homes, and stay safely within them. Remember the words of our Saviour that he who lives by the sword will perish by it. Remember the duty which you owe to our Lord and to the King and to your own families, who will have need of the husband and the father, and the strong sons as well, in the harvest. I ask you to join with me now in prayer that peace will return quickly to our nation, and without the shedding of innocent blood. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

He made the sign of the cross, turned back towards the altar, knelt, and prayed swiftly and softly. At the close, he offered, almost in a whisper, a prayer in English, a language which, he suspected, was more suited to His ears.

After Mass, he stood on the steps of the chapel, nodding and speaking briefly to the communicants as they came out into the sunlight. This was not his custom. He was known to his parish as an austere and forbidding man, his manners and his speech formal and almost alien. But this morning they nodded in return, returned his smiles and his small talk, sensing that he was trying, in his stiff and awkward way, to plead and argue with them at a deeper level than that of word or gesture. But his words had been baffling even to those who had not the slightest intention of joining the French. The King was called King George and his head was stamped upon the coins. This ended their knowledge of him.