The Year of the French (77 page)

Bartholemew Teeling and Malcolm Elliott I saw for but a minute: they were taken to Lake for questioning. Elliott was an insignificant fellow, with a coarse, disagreeable face, but Teeling, I must confess, was an impressive being, tall and self-contained and bearing himself almost with dignity. I thought the less of him for that. These two were educated men with some pretensions to breeding, and to them and men like them must fall the full responsibility for the calamity which had befallen their country. But for them, the peasants killed by Crauford’s dragoons or battered to death upon the bogs might have lived out their lives upon the friendly acres of their native Mayo.

Between our own lads and the French private soldiers a rough-and-ready goodwill quickly established itself, for both knew that the danger had passed, and the French knew that nothing now awaited them more arduous than a choppy voyage home. And they were united in their attitude towards the rebels, for whom the French too had come to entertain a large contempt, as for unwashed savages. And yet for my own part I pitied them as they stood huddled together, forlorn and terrified. It became the chivalrous fashion in the weeks which followed to praise Humbert’s audacity and skill, his soldierly conduct of a desperate enterprise, but it would have been better for all, and not least for the rebels, had he been smashed at Killala as his men were wading ashore. For he surely had come to his predestined conclusion, but he had dragged with him the simple peasants who heeded his exhortations, seduced by the trumpery banner which he brought to them.

The banner of course survived the battle, for such trifles are immortal. It was discovered on the bog by a soldier who sold it to an officer in Longford’s regiment for five shillings and it was carried into Ballinamuck and then to Carrick, where it excited some derisory interest. It was a large square of good green silk with a gilt harp embroidered upon it. There was much bantering speculation as to which regiment best deserved it as a trophy to hang among more worthy ones and by a general agreement it was offered to Crauford’s dragoons, but he laughingly refused it. In the end it passed into the keeping of Dennis Browne of Mayo, and for aught I know may still be stored away somewhere in Westport House.

I returned to Carrick with General Lake’s staff, the general riding boot by boot with Humbert, who was silent. He was a grumpy, sad-faced creature, heavy-jowled, and the skin beneath his pouchy eyes was the colour of hay. We left behind the prisoners, both French and rebel, to be brought forward the next day. As we rode out of the village and past the field one of the bands of the Irish militia, drums and flutes, struck up the “Lillabullero,” and Lake turned round in his saddle to wave to them. I had not before this heard that spirited song of Protestant triumph, older than the Boyne, an impudent, rollicking tune which seemed to swagger through the village. “Well done, brave Irish lads!” he called to them, and in answer the drums rattled more loudly and the flutes shrilled more merrily.

Ballinamuck, September 10

Two days after the battle, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the learned and eccentric squire of Edgeworthstown, rode to the battlefield in an open carriage, accompanied by his daughter Maria, who was later to gain celebrity as the authoress of
Castle Rackrent
. He was an angular, nervous man, a collection of wheels, springs, and coils across which skin had been stretched. He was dressed carelessly, his cravat loosely knotted and his hat perched on the back of his head of sandy, close-cropped hair. Maria’s gown of flowered muslin and the shawl across her narrow shoulders suggested an afternoon’s drive to a neighbouring estate. Down the village street of Ballinamuck they rode, looking neither to left nor right, and out upon the narrow road towards Shanmullah Hill, where the Irish had made their first stand.

Tents had been pitched upon the pastureland, and far-off figures moved among the bordering thickets. “Who are they?” he asked, in a rasping, high-pitched voice. “What are those people about?”

Maria too was near-sighted, but the motions of the distant figures, as she studied them, grew familiar. “Berrying,” she said decisively. “Those must be blackberry thickets.”

“Are they indeed? A fine task for soldiers.” He drummed his long fingers upon his kneecaps. “A county gone to ruin, houses burned, men slit from belly to gullet at their own doors. And now they turn to berry picking.”

“It would be foolish indeed to let the berries waste upon their bushes.”

It was a splendid day. Fields, pastures, hill lay beneath a warm sky of intense blue, flecked with clouds the exact colour of angelica. The bell-shaped tents lent an air of carnival. As they drove nearer, she saw that the soldiers were using their tall helmets to hold the berries. Beyond them, the reddish bog stretched towards the horizon of low hills. But her father pointed to the hill which lay near them.

“That is Shanmullah,” he said. “The French turned here and made their stand. Climb a hill is the first thing a soldier thinks to do. Cornwallis’s troops swarmed around them. A cheap sort of victory, but doubtless we shall hear it described as a great triumph.”

“What matter?” Maria said. “The rebellion is ended. We must be thankful for that.”

“Waste,” Edgeworth said. “Waste and mismanagement for years. I have sought by all means at my disposal to improve matters. I have spoken upon the floor of the Commons, I have published pamphlets, I have conducted a voluminous correspondence with men of learning and influence. No one heeded me.”

“Would that they had, Father,” Maria said. “You are the cleverest man in the kingdom.”

“Not the cleverest,” Edgeworth said. “Many are more clever. But I am the most thoughtful, the most thorough. No one heeded me. I have explained and explained at length how the children of the Irish might be educated into habits of thrift and sobriety. I have explained how this island might be transformed into a flowering garden through the reclamation of the bogs. Arthur Young himself has praised me. You have read his letters.”

It was all true, she knew. She acted as his secretary. In the long evenings he dictated to her, pacing up and down in the drawing room, pausing from time to time to consult the tables of statistics which lay spread upon the long table. The dry voice, cogwheels with an engine, spun out facts, evidences, proofs, arguments, theories. Each pamphlet addressed a problem, wasteland, education, the reform of Parliament, the suppression of local superstitions, the excise, imports and exports, a more efficient system of canals. They would go out by post to English savants, learned societies, amateurs of political economy. Letters would come to Edgeworthstown in reply, flattering and deferential, “an astonishing wealth of convincing and detailed evidence,” “a trenchant mind brought to bear upon the manifold problems of an ill-governed island,” “a true apostle of science and rationality.” Nothing happened. All waste.

At the first line of tents he halted, and shouted to three soldiers crouched about a pot hung over a low fire. One of the men looked up and answered, but he could not understand the words. “What?” he shouted again, and the man repeated his reply, but now with a faint, derisive smile.

“What did he say, child? What did he say?”

“I doubt if he has English, Father. They are Highlanders.”

“Highlanders!” Edgeworth echoed. “Highland Scots. Set a savage to catch a savage. Wild bare-bottomed clansmen in their first sets of trousers. I will have a seizure of the heart before this month is out and you can lay the blame before Lord Cornwallis.”

He folded his long arms across his chest and sat waiting. Presently, from the far row of tents, a young officer rode out towards the village and paused by their carriage.

“Are these your ruffians?” Edgeworth asked.

The officer looked over at the three grinning Highlanders and then back to Edgeworth. “They are, sir. They are indeed. My ruffians. My name is Sinclair, sir.”

“I am Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown. I am a Member of Parliament and of the board of magistrates for this county.”

“An honour.” Sinclair touched his hand to his hat.

“The devil take your honour. It is your commanding officer I am looking for.”

“That would be Colonel Grant. He rode in to Carrick this morning. Perhaps I can help you.”

“Perhaps,” Edgeworth said doubtfully. “My bailiff is a man named Hugh Laffan. He was seized up as a United Irishman and his cabin burned down around the heads of his wife and his children. He is no more a United Irishman than either of us. I want him found and I want him delivered over to me as quickly as possible.”

“You won’t find him here,” Sinclair said, puzzled. “This is a battlefield. Or it was.”

“I have been to Granard,” Edgeworth said. “He is not there. The officer in command suggested that I try you people. I have no time to ride back and forth across the countryside.”

Sinclair shook his head. “We had only the prisoners who were taken after the battle. They are being held in Carrick. You won’t find your man with that lot. If I were you, I should try Mullingar and Longford.”

Edgeworth turned to Maria. “Do you hear that? A man is taken up at his own door, and he may be anywhere. Longford, Mullingar, Carrick. And half a county burned down.” He turned back to Sinclair. “The rebels burn the houses of the gentry and you burn the cabins. Between one lot of you and the other you have sought to reduce the county to a smouldering ruin.”

“I am sorry for that,” Sinclair said. “It is what happens in a time of rebellion.”

“You are sorry for it. That is pleasant news to hear. How would you like it if I took a torch to your own shabby mountain and then told you that I was sorry.”

“I come from no shabby mountain,” Sinclair said stiffly. “My father is a minister of God in Edinburgh.”

“Do you hear that, Maria? Mark it well. Edinburgh, the Athens of the North. And their clergymen produce cubs who go about ravaging the countryside of Ireland.”

Sinclair was becoming dimly aware that he had entered upon a conversation for which he was unprepared. “I have never before heard of you, sir, until you just now gave me your name—”

“Then you are an ignorant young man, and not simply a vicious one.”

“Mr. Edgeworth, complaints as to the conduct of His Majesty’s forces should be taken to Lord Cornwallis. It ill becomes you to give a tongue-lashing to a lieutenant who has never to his knowledge set eyes upon your estate. No cabins have been burned by this regiment, I can assure you.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” Edgeworth said testily. “I ask your pardon in that case. What has happened in this county is a disgrace to our common humanity and it has disturbed me greatly.”

“I can understand that, sir. I took part in the battle here and it was a messy business. War is an ugly business, I am discovering. To speak plainly, I believe that I have not selected a calling suited to my nature.”

Edgeworth peered at him closely and then nodded. “I spoke too sharply, Mr. Sinclair. It is a failing of mine. I acknowledge that. I am a just man, I trust.”

“Were many taken prisoner here?” Maria asked suddenly.

Sinclair took a long time in answering her. “Very few,” he said at last. “About eighty.” He shifted in his saddle. “About eighty natives. Close to nine hundred of the French.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. She was a sharp-featured young woman, and she sat stiff and erect in the carriage.

Sinclair stretched out his arm and pointed. “The rebels fell back, past that hill—”

“Yes, yes,” Edgeworth said. “Shanmullah Hill. Things have names, Mr. Sinclair, even in this country.”

“They fell back from there to the bog.”

“And there they surrendered?” Maria asked. She leaned forward now, and her near-sighted brown eyes studied him closely.

She anticipates my reply, Sinclair thought. He wished himself far away from Ballinamuck, far away from Ireland. The three Highlanders were watching them, uncomprehending.

“They were rebels,” he said. “They were in arms against the sovereign.”

“They were indeed,” Edgeworth said. “That is the definition of a rebel.”

“And there they surrendered?” she asked again.

Sinclair took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “Their surrender was not accepted. They were cut down. I—we—cut them down.”

Maria clambered to her feet, a small, graceless woman, and stretched her neck forward, towards the bog.

“I cannot see that far,” she said. “I cannot see.”

“Oh, my dear God,” Edgeworth said softly.

“It is as well that you cannot, Miss Edgeworth. Their bodies are scattered across the bog, beyond the hedges.”

Edgeworth took off his spectacles and held them poised in the air. “You killed them all? You took the Frenchmen prisoners but you killed the rebels?”

“Not all. Most were killed upon the bog, but some were hanged in the village. They drew lots for it. The short straws were hanged. And seventy of them were taken to Carrick. I have been sick to nausea for two days, but I helped to kill them. I took those fellows there out to the bog.”

Maria was still standing, motionless in the carriage. Her father said, “They have been lying there for two days, like the carcasses of sheep.”

“They died rebels,” Sinclair said doggedly, his eyes upon his horse’s neck. “They died with pikes in their hands. They were a murderous crew, you know.”

“
They
were,” Maria said, with contemptuous irony. “
They
were murderous.”

Edgeworth’s eyes, which had been alert and quick-moving, held bewilderment and shock. “I will not believe this,” he said. “I will not believe that Lord Cornwallis gave such an order.”

“General Lake’s order,” Sinclair said. “General Lake was commander in the field.”

“An island cursed by God,” Edgeworth said. The brisk, grating voice was half strangled.

“Talk to Lake,” Sinclair shouted in torment. “Talk to Cornwallis. What good is there in talking to me?” The Highlanders were standing now, attentive to alien words, moving their eyes from Sinclair to Edgeworth and then back again.

“They are to be an example, are they?” Edgeworth asked. “A warning to rebels. They are an example that we are as barbarous as any pikeman from Mayo or Wexford.”