"NINETY-EIGHT."
[Sidenote: 1798--Irish Catholic disabilities]
England was not concerned merely with the successes of France upon the
Continent, with the French power of resisting invasion and preserving
its capital and its constitution. The time was at hand when England
was to take the French Republic into consideration as a more active
enemy, whose enmity might take effect and be a very serious menace at
her own doors. The breath of the French Revolution was to Great
Britain like that of a sudden storm which sweeps round some stately
mansion and finds out all its weak places and shatters some of its
outlying buildings, although it cannot unroof its firmest towers or
disturb its foundations. The weakest spot in Great Britain, and indeed
we might almost say in the whole British Empire, was the kingdom of
Ireland. Ireland had for long been in a state of what might almost be
called chronic rebellion against the rule of England. England's
enemies had always been regarded as Ireland's friends by the Irishmen
who claimed especially to represent the national aspirations of their
country. This is a fact which cannot be made too clear to the minds of
Englishmen even at the present day, for the simple reason that no one
who is capable of forming a rational idea on the subject can doubt that
where a government is persistently hated that government must have done
much to deserve the hate.
It is not necessary here to undertake a survey of the many grievances
of which Ireland complained under the rule of Great Britain. One
grievance which was especially felt during the reign of George the
Third came from the persistent refusal of the Hanoverian Sovereign to
listen {307} to any proposals for the relief of the Roman Catholics
from the civil and religious disabilities under which they suffered.
The Catholics constituted five-sixths of the whole population of
Ireland, and up to the time of the War of Independence in America no
Catholic in Great Britain or Ireland could sit in Parliament, or vote
for the election of a member of Parliament, or act as a barrister or
solicitor, or sit on a bench of magistrates or on a grand jury, or hold
land, or obtain legal security for a loan. No doubt the state of the
penal laws as they then existed was mitigated when compared with that
which had prevailed but a short time before, when an ordinary Catholic
had hardly any right to do more than live in Ireland, and a Catholic
priest had not even a legal right to live there. But up to the time
when the growing principles of liberty manifested themselves in the
overthrow of the feudal system in France the Catholics in Great Britain
and Ireland were practically excluded from any approach to civil or
religious liberty. Ireland had a Parliament, but it was a Parliament
of Protestants, elected by Protestants, and it was in fact a mere
department of the King's Administration. The American War of
Independence suddenly awakened wild hopes in the breasts of all
oppressed nationalities, and the Irish Catholic population was among
the first to be quickened by the new life and the new hope. The
national idea was not, however, at first for a separation from England.
Ireland was then for the most part under the leadership of Henry
Grattan, a patriot, statesman, and orator--an orator whom Charles James
Fox described as the "Irish Demosthenes," and whom Byron glorified as
"with all that Demosthenes wanted endued, and his rival and victor in
all he possessed."
Grattan's purpose was not separation from England or the setting up of
an independent republic. An Ireland enjoying religious equality for
all denominations and possessing a Parliament thoroughly independent of
that sitting at Westminster would have satisfied all his patriotic
ambition. In fact, what Grattan would have desired for Ireland is
exactly such a system as is now possessed by one {308} of the provinces
of Canada or Australia. When the alliance between France and
independent America began to threaten Great Britain, and the English
Government practically acknowledged its inability to provide for the
defence of Ireland, Henry Grattan, with other Irish patriots of equal
sincerity, and some of them of even higher social rank, started the
Irish Volunteer movement, to be a bulwark of the country in case of
foreign invasion. When the Irish patriots found themselves at the head
of an army of disciplined volunteers they naturally claimed that the
country which was able to defend herself should be allowed also an
independent Parliament with which to make her domestic laws. They
obtained their end, at least for the moment, and at least to all
outward appearance, and Grattan was enabled to declare that for the
first time he addressed a free Parliament in Ireland and to invoke the
spirit of Swift to rejoice over the event. Catholic emancipation,
however, had not yet been secured, although Grattan and those who
worked with him did their best to carry it through the Parliament in
Dublin. The obstinacy of King George still prevailed against every
effort made by the more enlightened of his ministers. Pitt was in his
brain and heart a friend of Catholic emancipation, but he had at last
given way to the King's angry and bitter protests and complaints, and
had made up his mind never again to trouble his Sovereign with futile
recommendations. It so happened that a new Viceroy sent over to
Ireland in 1794, Earl Fitzwilliam, became impressed with a sense of the
justice of the claims for Catholic emancipation, and therefore gave
spontaneous and honorable encouragement o the hopes of the Irish
leaders. The result was that after three months' tenure of office he
was suddenly recalled, and the expectations of the Irish leaders and
the Irish people were cruelly disappointed.
From that moment it must have been clear to any keen observer in
Ireland that the influence of Grattan and his friends could no longer
control the action of Irish nationalists in general, and that the
policy of Grattan would no longer satisfy the popular demands of
Ireland. Short {309} as had been the Irish independent Parliament's
term of existence, it had been long enough to satisfy most Irishmen
that the control of the King's accepted advisers was almost as absolute
in Dublin as in Westminster. To the younger and more ardent spirits
among the Irish nationalists the setting up of a nominally independent
Irish Parliament had always seemed but a poor achievement when compared
with the change which their national ambition longed for and which the
conditions of the hour to all appearance conspired to render
attainable. These young men were now filled with all the passion of
the French Revolution; they had always longed for the creation of an
independent Ireland; they insisted that Grattan's compromise had
already proved a failure, and in France, the enemy of England, they
found their new hopes for the emancipation of Ireland.
[Sidenote: 1791--The United Irishmen]
There were among the Irish rebels, as they were soon to declare
themselves, many men of great abilities and of the purest patriotic
purpose. Among the very foremost of these were Theobald Wolfe Tone and
Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Both these men, like all the other leaders of
the movement that followed, were Protestants, as Grattan was. Wolfe
Tone was a young man of great capacity and promise, who began his
public career as secretary to an association formed for the purpose of
effecting the relief of the Roman Catholics from the civil and
religious disabilities which oppressed them. This society, after
awhile, was named the Association of United Irishmen. The United
Irishmen were at that time only united for the purpose of obtaining
Catholic Emancipation. The association, as we shall soon see, when it
failed of its first object became united for other and sterner
purposes. Wolfe Tone was a young man of a brilliant Byronic sort of
nature. There was much in his character and temperament which often
recalls to the mind of the reader the generous impulse, the chivalric
ardor, and the impetuous eccentricity of Byron. Tone, as a youth, was
a careless student, or, indeed, to put it more distinctly, he only
studied the subjects he cared about and was in the habit of neglecting
his {310} collegiate tasks until the hour arrived when it became
absolutely necessary that he should master them enough at least to pass
muster for each emergency. He was a keen and close student of any
subject which had genuine interest for him, but such subjects were
seldom those which had anything to do with his academical career. He
studied law after a fashion in one of the London Inns of Court, and he
was called to the Bar in due course; but he had no inclination whatever
for the business of an advocate, and his mind was soon drawn away from
the pursuit of a legal career. He had a taste for literature and a
longing for travel and military adventure in especial, and for a time
he lived a pleasant, free and easy, Bohemian sort of life, if we may
use the term Bohemian in describing days that existed long before Henri
Murger had given the word its modern application.
[Sidenote: 1763-89--Theobald Wolfe Tone]
One of the many odd, original ideas which floated like bubbles across
Wolfe Tone's fancy was a scheme for founding a sort of military colony
in some island in the South Seas, to act as a check upon the designs
and enterprises of Spain against the British Empire. Tone took his
idea so seriously that he wrote to William Pitt, the Prime Minister,
describing and explaining his project and asking for Government help in
order to make it a reality. As will be easily understood, Pitt took no
notice of the proposal, having probably a good many more suggestions
made to him every day as to the best defences of England than he could
possibly consider in a week. It is somewhat curious, however, to find
that Wolfe Tone should at one period of his life have formed the idea
of helping England to defend herself against her enemies. Some
historians have gone so far as to opine that if Pitt could have seen
his way to take Tone's proposition seriously, and to patronize the
young man, the world might never have heard of the insurrection of
"Ninety-Eight." But no one who gives any fair consideration to the
whole career and character of Tone can have any doubt that Tone's
passionate patriotism would have made him the champion of his own
country, no matter what prospects the patronage of an {311} English
minister might have offered to his ambition. At the time when Tone was
scheming out his project for the island in the South Seas the leaders
in the national movement in Ireland still believed that the just claims
of their people were destined to receive satisfaction from the wisdom
and justice of the English Sovereign. When it became apparent that
Catholic Emancipation was not to be obtained through George the Third
and through Pitt, then Wolfe Tone made up his mind that there was no
hope for Ireland but in absolute independence, and that that
independence was only to be won by the help of Napoleon Bonaparte and
of France. In the mean time Tone had taken a step which brilliant,
gifted, generous, and impecunious young men usually take at the opening
of their career--he had made a sudden marriage. Matilda Witherington
was only sixteen when Tone persuaded her to accept him as her husband
and to share his perilous career. Romance itself hardly contains any
story of a marriage more imprudent and yet more richly rewarded by
love. Tone adored his young wife and she adored him. Love came in at
their door and, though poverty entered there too, love never flew out
at the window. The whole story of Wolfe Tone's public career may be
read in the letters which, during their various periods of long
separation, no difficulties and no dangers ever prevented him from
writing to his wife. When he made up his mind to consecrate himself to
the national cause of Ireland, and, if necessary, to die for it, he set
forth his purpose to his wife, and she never tried to dissuade him from
it. It is told of her that at one critical period of his fortunes she
concealed from him the fact that she expected to become a mother, lest
the knowledge might chill his patriotic enthusiasm or make him unhappy
in his enterprise.
Tone went out to America and got into council with the representative
of the French Republic there; then he returned to Europe, and he
entered into communication with Carnot and with Napoleon Bonaparte. To
these and to others he imparted his plans for a naval and military
expedition from France to approach the coast of Ireland, to {312} land
troops there, and to make the beginning of a great Irish rebellion,
which must distract the attention and exhaust the resources of England
and place her at the feet of all-conquering France. Tone felt certain
that if an adequate number of French troops were landed on the western
or southern shore of Ireland the whole mass of the population there
would rally to the side of the invaders, and England would have to let
Ireland go or waste herself in a hopeless struggle. Tone insisted in
all his arguments and expositions that Ireland must be free and
independent, and that no idea of conquering and annexing her must enter
into the minds of the French statesmen and soldiers. Napoleon and
Carnot approved of Tone's schemes as a whole, but Tone could not help
seeing that Napoleon cared nothing whatever about the independence or
prosperity of Ireland, and only took up with the whole scheme as a
convenient project for the embarrassment and the distraction of
England. Tone received a commission in the army of the French
Republic, and became the soul and the inspiration of the policy which
at fitful moments, when his mind was not otherwise employed, Napoleon
was inclined to carry out on the Irish shores.
[Sidenote: 1763-98--Lord Edward Fitzgerald]
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was a son of the great ducal house of Leinster.
He was born in the same year as Wolfe Tone; he was to die in the same
year. It was his evil fortune to have to fight for the cause of King
George against the uprising of the patriotic colonists of North
America. He afterwards became filled with the ideas of the French
Revolution, and got into trouble more than once by expressing his
sentiments too freely while yet he wore the uniform of the British
army. In Paris he became acquainted with Thomas Paine and was greatly
taken with the theories and charmed with the ways of the revolutionary
thinker, and in the company of Paine and congenial associates he took
part in Republican celebrations which became talked of in England and
led to his dismissal from the army. Lord Edward Fitzgerald had a
strong love of adventure and exploration, and had contrived to combine
with his military career in the New {313} World a number of episodes
almost any one of which might have supplied the materials for a
romance. He was a man of a thoroughly lovable nature, gallant,
high-spirited, generous. Like Wolfe Tone, he had made a romantic
marriage. His wife was the famous Pamela, the beautiful girl who was
ward to Madame de Genlis, and commonly believed to be the daughter of
the Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalité. Louis Philippe, afterwards King
of France, was one of the witnesses at the marriage ceremony. Lord
Edward was perfectly happy with his young and beautiful wife until the
political events came on which gave the sudden and tragic turn to his
life. He was a member of the Irish Parliament for many years, and had
on several occasions supported the policy which was advocated by
Grattan. He too, however, soon made up his mind, as Wolfe Tone had
done, that there was nothing to be expected from the Sovereign and his
ministers, and he became an active member of the Society of United
Irishmen when that association ceased to be a constitutional body and
set its heart on armed rebellion. Lord Edward went over to France and
worked hard there for the purpose of obtaining armed assistance for the
Irish cause, but he returned to Ireland to work up the rebellious
movement there while Tone remained in France to influence as well as he
could the policy of Napoleon and Carnot.
Among the other distinguished Irishmen who worked at home or in
France--sometimes at home and sometimes in France--to promote the
rebellion were Arthur O'Connor and Thomas Addis Emmet. Arthur O'Connor
came of a great Irish family; Thomas Addis Emmet, after the failure of
the rebellious movement, escaped to the United States and made a great
position for himself as an advocate in New York. A younger brother of
Thomas Emmet also took part in the organization of "Ninety-Eight," but
the fate of Robert Emmet will have a place to itself in this chapter of
our history.
One fact has to be mentioned, and must be kept constantly in mind when
we are studying the grim story of "Ninety-Eight." Every step taken by
the rebel leaders {314} was almost instantly made known to the English
Government. The spy, the hired informer, was then, as he has always
been, in the very thick of the Irish national movement. Some of the
informers in "Ninety-Eight" were of a different class from that of the
ordinary police spy; and it has been made quite certain by subsequent
discoveries that Wolfe Tone and Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Connor and the
Emmets were in the closest friendly association with men whom they
believed to be as genuine Irish patriots as themselves, but who were
all the time in the pay of Pitt, and were keeping him well informed of
every plan and project and movement of their leaders. As political
morals were then and are perhaps even now, it would be absurd to find
fault with Pitt because he made use of the services of spies and
informers to get at the plans of a number of men who proposed to invite
a foreign enemy of England to invade the Irish shores, and were doing
all they could to secure by armed rebellion the independence of
Ireland. The wonder that will now occur to every reasonable mind is
that the Irish leaders should have failed to guess that whatever money
would do would be done by the English Government, as it would have been
done by any other Government under similar conditions, to get at a
knowledge of their designs and to counteract them. At all events, it
is quite certain that while Tone and Fitzgerald and their comrades were
playing their gallant, desperate game, the British Minister was quietly
looking over their shoulders and studying their cards.
[Sidenote: 1797--A French fleet in Bantry Bay]
Napoleon Bonaparte, meanwhile, seems to have been but half-hearted
about the scheme for the invasion of Ireland. He had many other
schemes in his mind, some of which probably appeared more easy of
accomplishment, and at all events promised a more immediate result than
the proposed flank attack on the power of England. It is certain that
Wolfe Tone had long intervals of depression and despondency, against
which it needed all the buoyancy of his temperament to sustain him. At
last a naval expedition was resolved on and despatched. In the late
December of 1796 a small French fleet, with about 14,000 troops {315}
on board, under the command of General Hoche, made for the southwestern
shores of Ireland. Tone was on board one of the war vessels in his
capacity as a French officer serving under General Hoche. The weather
proved utterly unfavorable to the expedition. The war vessels were
constantly parting company. The admiral's vessel, together with
several others, was lost to sight on the very first night, and the
heart of Tone grew sick as he saw that with every fresh outburst of the
tempest the chances even of effecting a landing grew less and less.
Most of the vessels entered Bantry Bay and lay helplessly at anchor
there, but there was no landing. Tone's despondency and powerless rage
as he foresaw the failure of his project might have been still deeper
if he could have known how utterly unprepared the authorities of Dublin
Castle were for any sort of invasion. Tone had observed already, as
the expedition made its way from Brest, that they had not seen a single
English vessel of war anywhere on the sea or around the Irish coasts.
But he could have had no idea of the manner in which the British
Government had intrusted the keeping of the island to the protection of
the winds and of the fates. A letter written from Dublin by Elizabeth
Moira Hastings, widow of the first Earl of Moira, throws a curious
light on the state of things which existed among the governing
authorities at the time of the invasion, and amazingly illustrates the
odd rumors and wild conjectures which were floating about at the time.
Writing to a friend in a different part of Ireland on January 19, 1797,
Lady Moira says:
"Our escape has been miraculous: the French fleet left Brest . . .
mistook the Durseys for Mizen Head, and therefore did not make their
entrance into Bantry Bay till the 24th, on which very day the storm
arose and prevented the greater part of their fleet getting into the
Bay, driving the greatest part of them out to sea. You will observe
that it was on the 19th Lord Malmesbury had orders to quit Paris. He
undoubtedly had purchased intelligence at a high price, being duped in
that inquiry by the manoeuvres of the Directory, and gave false
information {316} to England. Had the French landed on the 18th or
19th, which they might have done, had they not mistaken the Durseys, we
should have had the French now governing in this metropolis. All agree
that there never was an expedition so completely planned, and in some
points so curiously furnished--the most beautiful ladies of easy virtue
from Paris were collected and made a part of the freight. Hoche's
mistress accompanied him, and his carriage was on board 'La Ville
d'Orient,' taken by the 'Druid.' The hussars taken on board that
vessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the
unfortunate Lewis--they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed with
gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel, on which they whet
their knives, to whet their swords with. It is reported that Hoche and
Reilly (one of the admirals) are gone off to America with seven hundred
thousand pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay the
troops. Others think the vessel has sunk, for neither of these
personages or the frigate 'La Fraternité,' which they were on board,
has been seen since they quitted Brest by any of the French vessels.
What a fortunate person Mr. Pitt is! and what a benefit is good luck to
its possessor! The troops are all marching back to their old quarters;
Cork and its environs indignant at Government for leaving them again to
the entire care of Providence. . . . It is a general belief among all
parties that the French will revisit Ireland, and at no distant
period--probably the next dark nights. If the storms now prevented
them they have learned how possible the attempt is, and how can such a
coast be guarded? There has been much show of spirit and loyalty, and
yet I thank God they did not land!"
The words of Wolfe Tone, taken from his journal, may be accepted as the
epitaph of the first French expedition. "It was hard," says Tone,
"after having forced my way thus far, to be obliged to turn back; but
it is my fate, and I must submit. . . . Well, England has not had such
an escape since the Spanish Armada; and that expedition, like ours, was
defeated by the weather; the elements fight against us, and courage is
of no avail."
{317}
[Sidenote: 1797--The French and Dutch to aid Ireland]
The French did return, as Lady Moira had predicted. They returned more
than once, but there was a long interval between the first and the
second visitation, and there were negotiations between the French and
the Dutch Republic--the Batavian Republic, as it was called--which had
been forming an alliance with France. Neither the French Republic nor
the Batavian felt any particular interest in the Irish movement, or
cared very much whether Ireland obtained her national independence or
had to live without it. France, of course, was willing to make use of
Ireland as a vantage-ground from which to harass Great Britain, and the
Batavian Republic, which had for some time been lapsing out of European
notice, was eager to distinguish herself and to play a conspicuous
political part once again. The idea at first was that Holland should
furnish the naval expedition and France contribute the troops--5000
Frenchmen, under the command of General Hoche, who were to land in
Ireland and form the centre and rallying point for the United Irishmen.
The Batavian Republic, however, did not seem anxious to give all the
military glory of the affair to France, and some excuses were made on
the ground that the discipline of the Dutch navy was somewhat too
severe for the soldiers of France to put up with. General Hoche seems
to have acted with great disinterestedness and moderation under trying
conditions. He saw that the Dutch were anxious to make a name for
themselves once more, and he feared that if he were to press for the
embarkation of the French soldiers it might lead to the abandonment of
the whole expedition. Longing as he was for the chance to distinguish
himself in any attack upon England, he controlled his eagerness and
consented that the Dutch should have the undertaking all to themselves.
Poor Wolfe Tone had to wait and look on all this time, eating his own
heart, according to the Homeric phrase. He has left us in his journal
a description of his feelings as he saw the days go by without any
movement being made to harass the English enemy, and of his own
emotions when what might have seemed the heaven-sent chance of the
mutiny at the {318} Nore broke out in the English fleet and no
advantage could be taken of it to forward the chances of the expedition
from the Texel. For now again the skies and the winds had come to the
defence of England, and the Dutch fleet was kept to its anchorage in
its own waters. Various plans of warfare were schemed out by the
Batavian Republic, with the hope of putting the English naval
authorities on a wrong scent, but all these schemes were suddenly
defeated by the orders given to the Dutch admiral to put to sea at
once. He did put to sea, and was encountered by Admiral Duncan, and
the result was the great victory of Camperdown, won by the English over
the Dutch after splendid fighting on both sides. Admiral Duncan
thereby became Lord Camperdown and the Batavian Republic dropped all
ideas of a naval expedition against England. Meanwhile the gallant
General Hoche had died, and Wolfe Tone lost a true friend, with whom,
from the beginning of their acquaintance, he had been in thorough
sympathy.
[Sidenote: 1798--The brink of an Irish rebellion]
All this time the condition of things in Ireland was becoming
desperate. After the appearance of the fleet in Bantry Bay, and the
hopes which it created on the one side and the alarms on the other, the
ruling powers in Dublin Castle, and indeed at Westminster, had no other
idea but that of crushing out the rebellious spirit of the Irish people
by Coercion Acts and by military law. The national sentiment of
Ireland counted for nothing with them. It may be safely laid down as
an axiom in political history that the men who are not able to take
account of the force of what they would call a mere national sentiment
in public affairs are not and never can be fit to carry on the great
work of government. Ireland was overrun by militia regiments, sent
over from England and Scotland, who had no sympathy whatever with the
Irish people, and regarded them simply as revolted slaves to be
scourged back into submission or shot down if they persevered in
refusing to submit. Other forces representing law and order were found
in the yeomanry, who were chiefly Orangemen and officered by Orangemen,
and who regarded the Catholic peasantry as their born enemies. A state
of tumult raged {319} through the greater part of the unhappy island,
and there cannot be the slightest doubt that the floggings, hangings,
and shootings inflicted by the militia and by the yeomen were in many
cases done not so much in punishment as in anticipation of rebellious
movements on the part of the Catholics. In the mean time preparations
were unquestionably going on in many Irish counties, more especially in
Ulster, for an outbreak of rebellion. The organization of United
Irishmen was adding to its numbers of sworn-in members every day, and
the making of pikes was a busy manufacture all over many of the
counties. Grattan and some of his friends made many efforts in the
Irish House of Commons to induce the Government to devise some means
for the pacification of Ireland other than Coercion Acts, the scourge,
the bullet, and the gallows. Finding their efforts wholly in vain,
Grattan, Arthur O'Connor, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his brother, and
many other men of high character and position withdrew from the Dublin
Parliament altogether, and left to the Government the whole
responsibility for the results of its policy. It is always to be
regretted that a man like Grattan should ever recede from his position
as a constitutional patriot in the assembly where alone his counsels
can have any practical weight; but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur
O'Connor the same is not to be said, for these men and many of their
friends had made up their minds that the time had come when only in
armed rebellion there remained any hope for Ireland. In the English
Parliament some efforts were made by Charles James Fox and by Whitbread
to obtain an inquiry into the real cause of the troubles in Ireland,
but the attempts were ineffectual, and the authorities at Dublin Castle
were allowed to carry out their own peculiar policy without control or
check of any kind.
Once again the fates were suddenly unpropitious to the Irish national
movement. The force which was intended for Ireland was suddenly
ordered to form a part of the expedition which Bonaparte was leading
against Egypt. Thereupon the chiefs of the United Irishmen began to
see {320} that there was not much hope to be founded on any help to
come from France, and it was decided that Ireland should enter into
open armed rebellion under the command of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It
was confidently believed that all but a small number of the Irish
counties would rise to arms at once under such leadership, and the
Irish leaders little knew how completely the Government was supplied
with the knowledge of all the Irish national plans and movements.
Indeed, there seems only too much reason to believe that the policy of
Pitt had long been to force the Irish into premature rebellion by the
persistent application of the system of coercion, represented by what
were called "free quarters"--in other words, the billeting of soldiers
indiscriminately among the houses of the peasantry, thereby leaving the
wives and daughters of Irish Catholics at the mercy of a hostile
soldiery--by the burning of houses, the shooting down of almost
defenceless crowds, and the flogging and hanging of men and women.
Certain it is that many of the British officers high in command
protested loudly against such a policy, and that some of them
positively refused to carry it out, and preferred to incur any rebuke
rather than be the instruments of such indiscriminate oppression. Pitt
and the authorities at Dublin Castle probably reasoned with themselves
that since the rebellion was certain to come it was better to press it
on prematurely, so that it might be easily crushed, rather than leave
it to take its own time and put its plans into execution when they
should have arrived at a formidable maturity.
[Sidenote: 1798--Father John Murphy and Miles Byrne]
The rebellion broke out in the early part of 1798. It had some
brilliant temporary successes in Wexford County and in other counties.
In one part of Wexford the movement was literally forced upon the
people by the outrageous conduct of the militia and the yeomanry. One
of the local Irish priests, Father John Murphy, had used all his
efforts up to the last in the cause of order, and had been most
energetic in persuading the people to give up their pikes and other
weapons to the local authorities. After the people had surrendered
their arms the scourging, {321} shooting, and hanging went on just the
same as before, and Father John Murphy and numbers of his parishioners
were forced to take refuge in the woods. Then for the first time
Father Murphy became a rebel. More than that, he became all at once an
insurgent general. He put himself at the head of the despairing
peasantry, and he suddenly developed a decided talent for the work of
an insurgent chief. His people were armed for the most part only with
pitchforks and with spades. Their pikes had nearly all been
surrendered; only some few of the farming class had guns; and there
was, of course, no sort of heavy artillery. Father Murphy showed his
people how to barricade with carts the road through which a body of
cavalry were expected to pass, and at the right moment, just when the
cavalry found themselves unexpectedly obstructed, the insurgents
suddenly attacked them with pitchforks and spades, won a complete
victory, and utterly routed their opponents. By this success the
rebels became possessed of a considerable number of carbines, and were
put in heart for further enterprises. Father John Murphy won several
other victories, and for the hour was master of a large part of
Wexford. One of those who took service under him was a young man,
Miles Byrne, scarcely eighteen years of age, who afterwards rose to
high distinction in the French army under Napoleon, and maintained his
position and repute under the Restoration, and might have been seen up
to the year 1863, a white-headed, white-bearded veteran, sunning
himself in the gardens of the Tuileries. Father Murphy, however, was
not able long to hold out. The want of weapons, the want of money and
of all other resources, and no doubt the want of military experience,
put him and his men at a hopeless disadvantage, and he was defeated in
the end, and was executed in the early summer of 1798.
While the rebellion lasted there were, no doubt, many excesses on both
sides. The rebels sometimes could not be prevented by their leaders
from fearful retaliations on those at whose hands they had seen their
kindred suffer. The gallant Miles Byrne himself has told us in his
memoirs {322} how in certain instances he found it impossible to check
the rage of his followers until their fury had found some satisfaction
in what they believed to be the wild justice of revenge. No one,
however, who has studied the history of the times even as it is told by
loyalist narrators will feel surprised that the policy which had forced
on the outbreak of the rebellion should have driven the rebels into
retaliation on the few occasions when they had the upper hand and found
their enemies at their mercy. It has never been denied that the
excesses committed by the rebels were but the spasmodic outbreaks of
the passion of retaliation, and that the Irish leaders everywhere did
all they could to keep their followers within the bounds of legitimate
warfare. It is not necessary to follow out in detail the story of the
rebellion. With no material help from abroad there could have been but
one end to it, and the end soon came. A peasantry armed with pikes
could hardly hold their own for very long even against the militia
imported from Great Britain, the Orange yeomanry, and the Hessian
troops hired from Germany, to say nothing of the regular English
soldiers, who were armed and trained to war. Even the militiamen and
the yeomanry had better weapons than the pikemen who followed their
Irish leaders to the death. Before the rebellion was wholly crushed
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was dead. The plans arranged by the leaders of
the movement had appointed a certain day for the rising to begin; the
outbreak in Wexford, as has already been shown, was entirely
unpremeditated, and merely forced on by events; and, as might have been
expected, the plans were betrayed to the authorities of Dublin Castle.
Some of the leaders were instantly arrested, and Lord Edward had to fly
and conceal himself. His hiding-place was soon discovered, and he was
arrested in Thomas Street, Dublin, on May 19, 1798. Lord Edward at
first refused to surrender, and fought desperately for his life. He
wounded some of his assailants, and received himself a bullet in his
body. He was then carried to prison, where he died sixteen days after.
"Fitly might the stranger lingering here," as Byron says of another
hero, {323} "pray for that gallant spirit's bright repose." Even
George the Third himself might have felt some regret for the state of
laws which had turned Edward Fitzgerald into an enemy.
[Sidenote: 1798--Ireland invaded by General Humbert]
Suddenly another attempt to help Ireland and harass England was made
from the French side of the English Channel. Bonaparte was away on his
Egyptian expedition, and the Directory in his absence did not wish to
forego all idea of sending a force to Ireland, but were evidently not
very strong on the subject and did not seem quite to know how to set
about such a business. For awhile they kept two or three small bodies
of troops ready at certain ports within easy reach of the English
shores, and a number of vessels at each port waiting for sudden orders.
General Humbert, an adventurous soldier of fortune, who had courage
enough but not much wisdom, grew impatient at the long delay of the
Directory, and thought he could not do better to force the hand of the
Directory than to start an expedition himself. Accordingly he took
command of a force of about a thousand men in number which had been
placed at his disposal for an undefined date, and with three or four
ships to convey his men he made for the Irish shores. He landed at
Killala Bay, in the province of Connaught, and he made his way inland
as far as the county of Longford. The Irish peasantry rallied round
him in considerable numbers, and were received by him as part of the
army and invested with the French uniform. He began his march with a
sudden and complete victory over a body of English troops considerably
outnumbering his own force, but whom he managed cleverly to surprise,
and among whom a regular panic seems to have set in. Humbert's scheme
was, however, hopeless. The part of the country through which he was
marching was thinly populated, and large bodies of English troops,
under experienced commanders, were approaching him from all sides. By
the time he had reached the county of Longford he found himself faced,
or indeed all but surrounded, by the royal troops under the command of
Lord Cornwallis. There was nothing for Humbert but to {324} surrender,
and he and his French followers were treated as prisoners of war after
a final and brilliant fight and sent back to France. The Irish
insurgents who had fought under his leadership dispersed and fled after
the surrender, well knowing that they would not be included in its
terms and treated as prisoners of war, and they were pursued by the
royal troops and most of them were killed. Matthew Tone, a brother of
Wolfe Tone, was one of those who had fought under Humbert. He was made
prisoner, taken to Dublin, and executed there within a few days. Thus
ended the second expedition from France for the relief of Ireland.
Wolfe Tone meanwhile was waiting in France, hoping against hope. He
had as yet known nothing of the fortunes and failure of Humbert's
expedition. Some extracts from a letter written to his wife about this
time have a melancholy interest.
"Touching money matters, I have not yet received a sou, and last night
I was obliged to give my last five guineas to my countrymen here. I
can shift better than they can. I hope to receive a month's pay
to-day, but it will not be possible to remit you any part of it; you
must therefore carry on the war as best you can for three or four
months, and before that is out we will see further. . . . I am
mortified at not being able to send you a remittance, but you know it
is not my fault.
"We embark about 3000 men, with 13 pieces of artillery, and I judge
about 20,000 stand of arms. We are enough, I trust, to do the
business, if we arrive safe.
"With regard to myself, I have had every reason to be satisfied; I
stand fair with the General and my _camarades_; I am in excellent
health and spirits; I have great confidence in the success of our
enterprise; and, come what may, at least I will do what is right. The
time is so short that I must finish this; I will, if possible, write to
you again, but if we should unexpectedly sail my next will be, I hope,
from Ireland."
[Sidenote: 1798--The capture of Wolfe Tone]
The embarking to which Tone referred was that of an expedition which
the Directory had at last resolved to {325} despatch from Brest for the
Irish shore. By a somewhat touching coincidence Tone found himself on
board a war-vessel called the "Hoche," which was under the command of
the admiral of the little fleet. This expedition consisted of one sail
of the line and eight frigates, with 3000 French soldiers. It sailed
on September 30, 1798; but the destinies were against it, as they had
been against its predecessors, and contrary winds compelled the admiral
to make a wide sweep out of what would otherwise have been its natural
course. It was not until October 10 that the little fleet, then
reduced to four vessels--the others had been scattered--reached the
shore of Lough Swilly, on the northwest coast of Ireland, and was there
encountered by a fleet of six English sail of the line and two
frigates. The admiral of the French fleet saw that there was no chance
whatever of his fighting his way through such an opposition, and he
made up his mind to offer the best resistance he could for the honor of
the French flag. He promptly gave signals for the lighter vessels,
which would have been of little practical service in such a struggle,
to make the safest retreat they could, and with his own vessel resolved
rather perhaps to do and die than to do or die. A boat came from one
of the frigates to take his final instructions, and he and all the
French officers, naval and military, who were on board the "Hoche"
strongly urged Wolfe Tone to go to the frigate in the boat and thus
save his life. They pointed out to him that if they were captured they
must be treated as prisoners of war, but that no mercy would be shown
to him, a subject of King George, taken in French uniform. Wolfe Tone
peremptorily declined to accept the General's advice. It should never
be said of him, he declared, that he saved his life and left Frenchmen
to fight and die in the cause of his country. A fierce naval battle
took place, and the French admiral fought until he was overpowered, and
had no course left to him but to surrender. The French officers who
had survived the fight were all taken to Letterkenny, Tone among the
number. Tone was in French uniform, and might have passed unrecognized
as a French officer but that {326} an Ulster magnate, Sir George Hill,
who had known him in earlier days, became at once aware of his
identity, and addressed him by name. Tone calmly and civilly replied
to the greeting, and courteously asked after the health of the wife of
his discoverer. Then all was over so far as Tone was concerned. He
was conveyed to Dublin and tried by court-martial as a rebel and a
traitor to George the Third. He defended himself in a speech of
remarkable eloquence--that is, if he can be said to have defended
himself when his whole speech was a frank avowal of his purpose to
fight for the independence of Ireland. He declared that he thoroughly
understood the consequences of his failure, and was prepared to abide
by them. "Washington," he said, "succeeded, and Kosciusko failed;" and
he only insisted that in his case, as in that of Kosciusko, failure
brought with it no dishonor. The one sole appeal which he made was
that he might be allowed to die a soldier's death--that he might be
shot and not hanged. Tone was found guilty, of course; there was no
choice left to the court-martial on that question, and his appeal as to
the mode of his death was refused by the Lord-Lieutenant. John Philpot
Curran, the great advocate, made a motion in the King's Bench to the
effect that Tone should be removed from the custody of the
Provost-Marshal and tried before a civil tribunal, on the ground that
Tone was not in the English army, and that, as the civil courts were
sitting, there was no warrant for the interference of martial law. The
Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, a man whose public spirit and whose
devotion to law and justice would have done honor to any bench, ruled
in favor of Curran's appeal, and ordered that Tone be removed from the
custody of the Provost-Marshal. When the Provost-Marshal declined to
obey the order the Chief Justice directed that the Provost-Marshal be
taken into custody, and that he, along with Tone, be brought before the
Court. The decision came too late so far as Tone was concerned.
Bather than endure the ignominy of a public execution by the gallows,
which he believed to be awaiting him, he had found means to open a vein
in his throat. {327} "You see I am but a poor anatomist," he said with
a quiet smile to the surgeon who was brought to his bedside. He
lingered in a half-unconscious state for a few days and then died. His
death was the closing event of the Irish insurrection of 1798.
[Sidenote: 1778-1803--Robert Emmet]
There was, however, a sort of afterbirth of the struggle of
"Ninety-Eight" in the attempt hazarded by Robert Emmet, to which we
have already made anticipatory allusion. Robert Emmet, the brother of
Thomas Addis Emmet, was a young Irishman of great abilities and of
generous, unselfish, imprudent enthusiasm. He could not bring himself
to believe that the hopes of Irish independence were buried even in the
graves of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Wolfe Tone. He had no trust
whatever in any assistance to be given from France, but he set himself
to organize a movement which should be Irish only and should find its
whole organization and its battle-field on the soil of Ireland. He
found numbers of brave and ardent young men to assist him, and he
planned out another rising, which was to begin with a seizure of Dublin
Castle and a holding of the capital as a centre and a citadel of the
new movement for Irish independence. Emmet's passion for national
independence had been strengthened by the passing of the Act of Union.
The Act of Union had long been a project in the mind of Pitt, and
indeed it was the opinion of many observers then, and of some
historical students from that time to the present, that Pitt had forced
on the Irish rebellion in order to give an excuse for the absolute
extinction of the Irish Parliament and the centralization of the system
of government in the Parliament sitting at Westminster. It is, at all
events, quite certain that Pitt accomplished his scheme for a
legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland by a wholesale
system of bribery, the bribery taking the form of peerages, of
high-salaried appointments, of liberal pensions, and even of sums of
ready money. All that was really national in the Irish Parliament
fought to the last against Pitt's Act of Union, but the Act was
carried, and it came into operation on January 1, 1801. The Act itself
and the methods by which {328} it was passed only gave to Robert Emmet
a fresh stimulus to prepare his plans for the independence of Ireland.
We need not follow in detail the story of these plans and the attempt
to put them into execution. Robert Emmet's projects were, no doubt,
all well known to the authorities of Dublin Castle before any attempt
could be made to carry them out. In any case their chances of success
seem to have depended very much upon the simultaneous action of a great
number of persons in a great number of different places, and the
history of every secret revolutionary movement tells us of the almost
insuperable difficulty there is in getting all the actors of such a
drama to appear upon the stage at the same moment and at the right
moment. Emmet's plan broke down, and it ended not even in a general
rising of the nationalists of Dublin, but in a mere street riot, the
most sad and shocking event in which was the murder of the Lord Chief
Justice, Lord Kilwarden. While Emmet, in another part of the city, was
vainly striving to retrieve the disorder into which the excesses of
some of his followers had broken up the plan of attack, Lord
Kilwarden's carriage was stopped by a body of undisciplined and
infuriated rioters, and one man thrust a pike into Kilwarden's body.
Emmet himself came too late upon the scene to rescue the Chief Justice,
and from that moment he gave up all hope of anything like orderly
action on the part of the insurgents, and indeed his whole effort was
to get his followers to disperse and to stop any rising in the adjacent
counties. Kilwarden died soon after he had received his wound, but not
before he had uttered the noble injunction that no man should suffer
for his death without full and lawful trial. Seldom has even the
assassin's hand stricken a worse blow than that which killed Lord
Kilwarden. In an age when corrupt judges and partial judges were not
uncommon, Kilwarden was upright, honorable and just. The fiercest
nationalist of the day lamented his death. He had again and again
stood before the Crown officials and interposed the shield of law
between them and the victims whom they strove by any process to bring
to death. Emmet made his way into Wicklow with {329} the main purpose
of stopping the intended outbreak of insurrection there, as he saw now
that no such attempts could, under the conditions, end in anything but
useless bloodshed. His friends urged him to make his escape to France,
and he might easily have escaped but that he went back to Dublin with
the hope of seeing once again Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of
the great advocate, with whom he was devotedly in love. He was
recognized, arrested, and sent to trial before Lord Norbury, a judge
who bore a very different sort of reputation from that which honored
Lord Kilwarden. Emmet made a brilliant and touching speech, not in
defence of himself against the charge of trying to create a rebellion,
for he avowed his purpose and glorified it, but in vindication of his
cause and in utter denial of the accusation commonly brought against
him that he intended to make his country the subject of France.
[Sidenote: 1803--The execution of Robert Emmet] He was found guilty,
sentenced to death, and executed on the morning after his trial.
Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, who was a college friend of Emmet's, has
embalmed his memory in three beautiful songs, "She is far from the land
where her young hero sleeps," she being of course Sarah Curran, to whom
Emmet addressed his last written words; "Oh, breathe not his name," and
"When he who adores thee," an appeal to Ireland to remember him who had
at least "the pride of thus dying for thee." Washington Irving, the
American author, devoted a touching essay, called "The Broken Heart,"
to the story of Robert Emmet and his blighted passion. The lovers of
romance may be somewhat disconcerted to hear that Sarah Curran married
after her young hero's death; but she remained single many years, and
there is no reason to suppose that she ever forgot or disclaimed her
affection for Robert Emmet. Wolfe Tone's wife married again some
sixteen years after the husband of her youth had passed away. Her
grave is to be seen in a cemetery close to Washington, in the United
States, the land in which Wolfe Tone's widow passed all the later years
of her life.
With the failure and the death of Robert Emmet closed the last
rebellious rising in Ireland which belongs to the {330} history of the
Georges. Pitt's Act of Union is still in force, but it would be idle
to say that it is anything more than in force. The union between
England and Scotland, to which Pitt's supporters so often triumphantly
appealed, was made under conditions and on terms totally different from
those which had to do with the union between England and Ireland.
{331}