The Year of the French (73 page)

“Spalpeens and tinkers is what we had at Granard,” Reagan said, as though reading his thoughts. “How could that lot stand up to a real army? I carried my musket in the army of King Louis. Twenty years of it.”

“ ’Tis all one now,” MacCarthy said. He lifted an unopened flask of whiskey and slipped it into the tail pocket of his coat.

“Here now,” Reagan said, startled. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” MacCarthy said. “Away out of this place.”

“We would be safer if we stayed together,” Reagan said. “An armed man and a great strapping lad like yourself.”

MacCarthy walked to the door, and looked out into the empty street. “ ’Tis past noon,” he said. “Time is running out.”

“In the hills,” Reagan said. “If we bide in the hills we will be safe enough.”

MacCarthy caught a note of sudden pleading in his voice. He is an old man. Twenty years with the French and now this. He turned his head to look at him. Reagan had risen from the bench and stood facing MacCarthy, holding the glass in his shaking hand. Alone he would never reach the hills. They would find him in this tavern, drink-stupid, his breeches damp with piss. Perhaps not. He might wander until he found a cabin, swagger in with his pistol cocked, demanding food and drink, boasting of Granard. Dull pity rose in MacCarthy and ebbed away. He shook his head.

Red face flushed, Reagan said, “Very well so. Go off and let yourself be butchered upon the roads. I will be better off on my own. I have been in bad scrapes before.”

“Good luck to you,” MacCarthy said.

“ ’Tis yourself will need the luck,” Reagan said.

The empty cabins frightened him, silence and smouldering thatch. A flat countryside, with low hills about ten miles distant from the village. A dog yelped at him, useless sentinel. Soft, faint rain was falling. A mist, with a pale sun behind it. Beyond the hills lay Cloone and Ballinamuck, the place of the pig.

FROM “YOUTHFUL SERVICE: WITH
CORNWALLIS IN IRELAND,”  BY
MAJOR GENERAL SIR HAROLD WYNDHAM

In the annals of modern warfare the encirclement and destruction of the French army in Ireland is but the briefest of footnotes, and in truth it deserves but scant attention. At the very hour, great events were shaping themselves far off in the Mediterranean, as two great commanders, Nelson and Buonaparte, took each one the measure of the other. In the decade which followed, half the known world was to become a theatre of war, from Egypt to Spain to Russia. Upon the scale of that mighty conflict, our little affair in Ireland was a paltry matter, a scuffle in a pasture.

It did not seem so to me at the time. Carrick was astir that morning with the loveliest and most exciting of spectacles, an army preparing to meet the enemy. The shouts of sergeants echoed from the low grey walls of the sleepy Shannonside town, and gun carriages rumbled down the narrow road. Highlanders, Irish militia and yeomanry, regiments of regulars jostled and banged against each other. But it was the cavalry which won my heart. Down the road they moved, past Otway’s entrance gate, heavy, long-legged men, thighs bulging their breeches. Wisps of music floated towards me through the misty air, shrill fifes and rattling drums.

A keen emotion held me captive. I wanted to run towards them, to cry out something, I knew not what. It was the finest army in the world, and it was moving into battle. I was very young, it must be recalled. Other men of my age were still in university, heads crammed with Horace and Livy. What would they have for memories but fagging and treats shared in draughty rooms? Fife and drum attended us, our colours a scarlet river coursing through a brown countryside, glints of light from steel and silver.

“Worth remembering,” Cornwallis said to me suddenly. “But it isn’t like that at all, you know. Hacking away with those sabres, horses with bellies ripped open. By God, I wouldn’t like to be Monsieur Frenchman this time tomorrow.” Early though it was, he had arisen to see them off, clear-eyed and freshly shaved. “He will never reach Granard, our Monsieur Humbert. He may pass Cloone, but he won’t reach Granard. We’ll be waiting for him. A nasty little battle he can make of it, if he’s angry enough.”

It was a cold morning, with a haze on the stubble fields.

“Why will he fight,” I asked, “if he has no chance of winning?”

“Why?” Cornwallis looked at me over the tops of his spectacles. “Why, for the glory of la belle France, of course. Generals do that. Two parts of being a general is simple childishness. A general must put up a decent fight, get a decent number of his men killed. Then he can surrender with honour. If a shopkeeper conducted his affairs upon such a principle he would go smash. It is high time that you and I had some breakfast, young man.”

But in the avenue he stopped and turned towards me. “The rebels will be the losers from all this. Rebels against the Crown. Much they know of the Crown, the wretched creatures. I watched them in Wexford, going up to the gallows. Great dark eyes. No help for it.”

Peasants stumbling to a gallows. It was indeed a soldier’s duty, but it lacked chivalry and gallantry, which in those days were of great consequence to me. Cornwallis read my expression.

“Chasing French generals and passing in review is only a part of this business, young man. We clean up messes, like scullery maids. We serve as common hangmen. And more often than not we make a poor job of it.”

But his saturnine wisdom could make little impression upon me that morning, for my eyes were dazzled by colour, and my ears filled with martial music. And this I believe he perceived and respected, for we had a most pleasant breakfast with tea for myself and for him his innumerable cups of chocolate.

When we had finished, he called for his writing equipment, and scrawled out a short letter in his impatient hand, which he then sanded and gave to me.

“Now then, Prince Hal,” he said. “I want you to get yourself an escort of cavalry, and take this to General Lake. You will most likely fall upon him this side of Cloone. You may read the letter if you wish. I have informed him that the enemy’s lines forward have been sealed off, and that I am moving to the attack. If he himself finds an earlier opportunity to give battle, he may do so.”

I was of course surprised and flattered that he should have entrusted to me so important an errand, and I attempted to thank him but he waved me quiet with a negligent hand.

“You are carrying a letter for me, that is all. But it will give you a part in your first battle. You want that, do you not? You do, of course. After tomorrow, you will not be the same person. You will know that this is a trade, like any other. But a dangerous trade. Mind yourself.”

His geniality gave me confidence. “It is a trade which has held your interest for a long time, milord.”

He glanced at me sharply, but then smiled. “It has its attractions. Few soldiers ever tire of it. I have read an essay by some scribbler upon this fellow Washington. He was a farmer at heart, it would seem, happiest on his plantation, among his slaves. Stern duty called him into the field. I don’t believe a word of it. Mind you, you will not be seeing a true battle—a handful of French and a rabble of peasants. It will be an ugly business. It is best that you should see it.”

“But if the outcome is certain . . .” I began.

“The Frenchmen are soldiers, of course,” he said, as though he had not heard me. “But the Irish are common rebels. That is the ugly part of it. We must do our best. Needless cruelty serves no purpose.” He seemed to be struggling in his mind with some unvoiced concern. “General Lake has never learned that lesson. He is a blunt, coarse fellow, and a damned poor soldier. I tell you this in confidence.”

“Of course, sir,” I assured him.

“We have had a close shave, I can tell you. If the French had landed in force, if the peasants throughout the country had rallied to them. The Irish must be taught a lesson. London will expect that. We are schoolmasters as well, you see. Scullery maids and hangmen and schoolmasters. The lessons taught by armies are hard ones.”

“We will give them a sound drubbing,” I said in my innocence.

He smiled at me, but it was a distant smile, without humour. “Yes indeed, Mr. Wyndham. We will do just that. We will give them a sound drubbing.” My words, as he echoed them, seemed those of a schoolboy, as doubtless he intended. He measured out another cup of chocolate. He had a service which accompanied him in the field, narrow cups of china, red-glazed, with a design of flowers worked upon the surface.

But his words could cast no chill upon my morning. The task of selecting a cavalry escort and the importance of my errand exalted me, but before I addressed myself to the task, I paused again at the entrance gate to watch the army moving past me out of Carrick. I lack literary skill to suggest the splendour of that morning, or my own excitement. Words are but poor things, dull blocks of wood or iron hammered clumsily into place. What would I not now give to recover that excitement, or the glamour which youth casts upon events. And yet it is all vivid in my mind, the wide grey river, the rolling countryside, the lines of marching men, their music and bright colours. I would not exchange a year of my life for my memory of that morning. The scenes which I was to witness in the next two days sought to stain that memory, a stain of blood moving across the margins of a page. The stain is old and faded now, a dull faint brown, but the picture is vivid and bright. It was the last morning of my youth. Presently, as a huntsman might say, I was to be blooded.

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

Towards evening, we entered the village of Cloone, a mean village straggling up a steep hill, and dominated by its church, a spare building with a spindly steeple. We made camp in the churchyard, although this is perhaps too formal a term, for we were at the point of exhaustion, and sank down gratefully beside the gravestones. I remember the inscription upon one, the florid lettering subdued by rains and weather.
THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE; GO IN PEACE
. French grenadiers or Irish rebels, I doubt if one in fifty of them could read it, and it seemed standing there expressly for my instruction. We had moved by forced march, not pausing for food or rest, along the gloomy length of Lough Allen, and crossed the Shannon at Drumshanbo, where an attempt was made by our rear guard to destroy the bridge. This was, however, prevented by the promptness of Colonel Crauford, and in the skirmish Sarrizen and some sixty of the French were killed or taken prisoner. Between Humbert and Fontaine, who thus became his principal commander, there now existed an extreme hostility, and they barely spoke to each other.

A sombre fatalism had descended upon the French troops, matched perfectly by the bleak and inhospitable land, the scattered farms, the sedge-choked lakes. Yet I again felt closer to them than to the Irish, my own countrymen, in whose faces I could read only exhaustion and bewilderment. One of them, a strong, heavy-shouldered farm lad, still carried the flag of rich green silk. In the windless air, it hung limp from its standard. O’Dowd and his squireens rode together, staring absently upon the dark lake.

To be sure, we believed that we were marching to join our forces with those that had risen up in the midlands, but Longford, although at most thirty miles distant, must have seemed to those fellows more remote than Mayo. In Drumshanbo we heard much talk of the rising, and were even told that a captain of the United Men had been sent out to meet us, but of this man we heard nothing further. We knew only that Crauford was close behind us, and that the main body of the British would be waiting for us somewhere to the south. I believe that in some dim, inchoate fashion the Irish did trust that in the midlands, or if not there then somewhere in Ireland, a mighty force had raised itself up, “the army of the Gael,” and to this shadowy host they had entrusted their salvation.

We did not pause until we reached Cloone, and Humbert rested us there only because we could go no farther. The men spread themselves out from the door of the church to the foot of the grassy hill, stretching out at full length or sitting with hands clasped about their drawn-up knees. They looked at each other or, more covertly, at Humbert, who was tireless, his large dark eyes studying the countryside. Teeling was now his only confidant, and they stood together close to the narrow, unglazed windows of the church. It was very like the church in Ballina, homely and familiar.

THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE; GO IN PEACE
. It was the gravestone of a man named Thomas Ticknell, who had died in 1701 at the prodigious age of eighty-one. He may have crossed over with Cromwell, his head stuffed with cannon fire and the Bible, claimed his acres here, settled in like a colonist amidst red Indians. His people were mine. I read our signatures in gaunt steeple and tombstone text. Inside the church, stone tablets set upon whitewashed walls, I could have found our kinsmen—Harvey, Greene, Atkinson, Benson, Elliott. Fragments of a world, they held me in mute argument. Why have you come here with these murderous pikemen, our ancient enemies, Papists gabbling in Irish? In the weed-choked churchyard, I was reproved by the decencies of my childhood. Steeples like pointing fingers stretched across the island, each one offering assurance that we were bound together, that we had come to stay. I remembered my father, tall and sententious, pacing our pastures as I ran to keep up with him. Biblical phrases, an inheritance of words, laced his language. At Ballina, a gravestone like this one stood above his head.

Such reflexions are proper to my present habitation, a chill grey prison on the far outskirts of Dublin, where I await execution of the sentence which has been passed upon me. But the human mind, capacious and prodigal, can flood memories upon us in a single unbidden moment, rich in sights and odours. I was amidst an alien people, separated from them by race and creed, by the very words upon our lips. And yet in those bright and optimistic Dublin days we had formed ourselves into a Society of United Irishmen, believing that such differences must melt beneath the mild sun of reason.

As though in confirmation of my thoughts, Murphy, their odious priest, rose to address them, tireless as Humbert, dressed like a crow in rusty black. My Irish is so faulty that I could make out but a third of what he said, but he spoke with his face and squat body, his hands clasped to his chest.
Heretic, Protestant, Englishman
, the words were graceless rocks around which the torrents of his speech swirled and eddied. Unforgiving and long-memoried, he might well have been a hunted cleric from Cromwell’s time, exhorting a band of wood-kernes. But his listeners, though respectful, were now too tired to heed him. Beyond them, the French listened with weary contempt.