THE LAST JACOBITE MOVEMENT—THE IRISH SOLDIERS ABROAD—FRENCH EXPEDITION
UNDER THUROT, OR O'FARRELL.
The mention of the Scottish insurrection of 1745 brings naturally with
it another reference to the history of the Irish soldiers in the
military service of France. This year was in truth the most eventful in
the annals of that celebrated legion, for while it was the year of
Fontenoy and victory on the one hand, it was on the other the year of
Culloden and defeat.
The decisive battle of Fontenoy, in which the Franco-Irish troops bore
so decisive a part, was fought on the 11th of May, 1745. The French
army, commanded by Saxe, and accompanied by King Louis, leaving 18,000
men to besiege Namur, and 6,000 to guard the Scheldt, took a position
between that river and the allies, having their centre at the village
of Fontenoy. The British and Dutch, under the King's favourite son, the
Duke of Cumberland, were 55,000 strong; the French 45,000. After a hard
day's fighting, victory seemed to declare so clearly against France,
that King Louis, who was present, prepared for flight. At this moment
Marshal Saxe ordered a final charge by the seven Irish regiments under
Counts Dillon and Thomond. The tide was turned, beyond expectation, to
the cry of "Remember Limerick!" France was delivered, England checked,
and Holland reduced from a first to a second-rate power upon that
memorable day. But the victory was dearly bought. One-fourth of all the
Irish officers, including Count Dillon, were killed, and one-third of
all the men. The whole number slain on the side of France was set down
at 7,000 by English accounts, while they admitted for themselves alone,
4,000 British and 3,300 Hanoverians and Dutch. "Foremost of all," says
the just-minded Lord Mahon, "were the gallant brigade of Irish exiles."
It was this defeat of his favourite son which wrung from King George
II. the oft-quoted malediction on the laws which deprived him of such
subjects.
The expedition of Prince Charles Edward was undertaken and conducted by
Irish aid, quite as much as by French or Scottish. The chief parties to
it, besides the old Marquis of Tullibardine and the young Duke of
Perth, were the Waterses, father and son, Irish bankers at Paris, who
advanced one hundred and eighty thousand livres between them; Walsh, an
Irish merchant at Nantz, who put a privateer of eighteen guns into the
venture; Sir Thomas Geraldine, the Pretender's agent at Paris; Sir
Thomas Sheridan, the prince's preceptor, who, with Colonels O'Sullivan
and Lynch, Captain O'Neil, and other officers of the brigade, formed
the staff, on which Sir John McDonald, a Scottish officer in the
Spanish service, was also placed. Fathers Kelly and O'Brien volunteered
in the expedition. On the 22nd of June, 1745, with seven friends, the
prince embarked in Walsh's vessel, the Doutelle, at St. Nazaire, on the
Loire, and on the 19th of July, landed on the northern coast of
Scotland, near Moidart. The Scottish chiefs, little consulted or
considered beforehand, came slowly and dubiously to the landing-place.
Under their patriarchal control there were still in the kingdom about a
hundred thousand men, and about one-twelfth of the Scottish population.
Clanronald, Cameron of Lochiel, the Laird of McLeod, and a few others,
having arrived, the royal standard was unfurled on the 19th of August
at Glenfinin, where that evening twelve hundred men—the entire army so
far—were formed into camp, under the orders of O'Sullivan. From that
day until the day of Culloden, O'Sullivan seems to have manoeuvred the
prince's forces. At Perth, at Edinburgh, at Preston, at Manchester, at
Culloden, he took command in the field, or in garrison; and even after
the sad result, he adhered to his sovereign's son with an honourable
fidelity which defied despair.
Charles, on his part, placed full confidence in his Irish officers. In
his proclamation after the battle of Preston, he declared it was not
his intention to enforce on the people of England, Scotland, or
Ireland, "a religion they disliked." In a subsequent paper, he asks,
"Have you found reason to love and cherish your governors as the
fathers of the people of Great Britain and Ireland? Has a family upon
whom a faction unlawfully bestowed the diadem of a rightful prince,
retained a due sense of so great a trust and favour?" These and his
other proclamations betrayed an Irish pen; probably Sir Thomas
Sheridan's. One of Charles's English adherents, Lord Elcho, who kept a
journal of the campaign, notes, complainingly, the Irish influence
under which he acted. "The prince and his old governor, Sir Thomas
Sheridan," are especially objected to, and the "Irish favourites" are
censured in a body. While at Edinburgh, a French ship, containing some
arms, supplies, and "Irish officers," arrived; at the same time efforts
were made to recruit for the prince in Ireland; but the agents being
taken in some cases, the channel narrowly watched, and the people not
very eager to join the service, few recruits were obtained.
The Irish in France, as if to cover the inaction of their countrymen at
home, strained every nerve. The Waterses and O'Brien of Paris were
liberal bankers to the expedition. Into their hands James "exhausted
his treasury" to support his gallant son. At Fontainebleau, on the 23rd
of October, Colonel O'Brien, on the part of the prince, and the Marquis
D'Argeusson for Louis XV., formed a treaty of "friendship and
alliance," one of the clauses of which was, that certain Irish
regiments, and other French troops, should be sent to sustain the
expedition. Under Lord John Drummond a thousand men were shipped from
Dunkirk, and arrived at Montrose in the Highlands about the time
Charles had penetrated as far south as Manchester. The officers, with
the prince, here refused to advance on London with so small a force; a
retreat was decided on; the sturdy defence of Carlisle, and victory of
Falkirk, checked the pursuit; but the overwhelming force of the Duke of
Cumberland compelled them to evacuate Edinburgh, Perth, and
Glasgow—operations which consumed February, March, and the first half
of April, 1746.
The next plan of operations seems to have been to concentrate in the
western Highlands, with Inverness for head-quarters. The town Charles
easily got, but Fort-George, a powerful fortress, built upon the site
of the castle where Macbeth was said to have murdered Duncan, commanded
the Loch. Stapleton and his Irish, captured it, however, as well as the
neighbouring Fort-Augustus. Joined by some Highlanders, they next
attempted Fort-William, the last fortress of King George in the north,
but on the 3rd of April were recalled to the main body.
To cover Inverness, his head-quarters, Charles resolved to give battle.
The ground chosen, flanked by the river Nairn, was spotted with marsh
and very irregular; it was called Culloden, and was selected by
O'Sullivan. Brigadier Stapleton and Colonel Kerr reported against it as
a field of battle; but Charles adopted O'Sullivan's opinion of its
fitness for Highland warfare. When the preparations for battle began,
"many voices exclaimed, 'We'll give Cumberland another Fontenoy!'" The
Jacobites were placed in position by O'Sullivan, "at once their
adjutant and quarter-master-general," and, as the burghers of Preston
thought, "a very likely fellow." He formed two lines, the great clans
being in the first, the Ogilvies, Gordons, and Murrays; the French and
Irish in the second. Four pieces of cannon flanked each wing, and four
occupied the centre. Lord George Murray commanded the right wing, Lord
John Drummond the left, and Brigadier Stapleton the reserve. They
mustered in all less than five thousand men. The British formed in
three lines, ten thousand strong, with two guns between every second
regiment of the first and second line. The action commenced about noon
of April 16th, and before evening half the troops of Prince Charles lay
dead on the field, and the rest were hopelessly broken. The retreat was
pell-mell, except where "a troop of the Irish pickets, by a spirited
fire, checked the pursuit, which a body of dragoons commenced after the
Macdonalds, and Lord Lewis Gordon's regiments did similar service."
Stapleton conducted the French and Irish remnant to Inverness, and
obtained for them by capitulation "fair quarter and honourable
treatment."
The unhappy prince remained on the field almost to the last. "It
required," says Mr. Chambers, "all the eloquence, and, indeed, all the
active exertion, of O'Sullivan to make Charles quit the field. A cornet
in his service, when questioned on this subject at the point of death,
declared he saw O'Sullivan, after using entreaties in vain, turn the
head of the prince's horse and drag him away."
From that night forth, O'Sullivan, O'Neil, and a poor sedan carrier of
Edinburgh, called Burke, accompanied him in all his wanderings and
adventures among the Scottish islands. At Long Island they were obliged
to part company, the prince proceeding alone with Miss Flora McDonald.
He had not long left, when a French cutter hove in sight and took off
O'Sullivan, intending to touch at another point, and take in the prince
and O'Neil. The same night she was blown off the coast, and the prince,
after many other adventures, was finally taken off at Badenoch, on the
15th of September, 1746, by the L'Heureux, a French armed vessel, in
which Captain Sheridan (son of Sir Thomas), Mr. O'Beirne, a lieutenant
in the French army, "and two other gentlemen," had adventured in search
of him. Poor O'Neil, in seeking to rejoin his master, was taken
prisoner, carried to London, and is lost from the record. O'Sullivan
reached France safely, where, with Stapleton, Lynch, and the Irish and
Scotch officers, he was welcomed and honoured of all brave men.
Such was the last struggle of the Stuarts. For years after, the popular
imagination in both countries clung fondly to Prince Charles. But the
cause was dead. As if to bury it for ever, Charles, in despair, grew
dissipated and desponding. In 1755, "the British Jacobites" sent
Colonel McNamara, as their agent, to induce him to put away his
mistress, Miss Walsingham, a demand with which he haughtily refused to
comply. In 1766, when James III. died at Avignon, the French king and
the Pope refused to acknowledge the prince by the title of Charles III.
When the latter died, in 1788, at Rome, Cardinal York contented himself
with having a medal struck, with the inscription "Henricus IX., Anglae
Rex." He was the last of the Stuarts.
Notwithstanding the utter defeat of the Scottish expedition, and the
scatterment of the surviving companies of the brigade on all sorts of
service from Canada to India, there were many of the exiled Irish in
France, who did not yet despair of a national insurrection against the
house of Hanover. In the year 1759, an imposing expedition was fitted
out at Brest under Admiral Conflaus, and another at Dunkirk, under
Commodore Thurot, whose real name was O'Farrell. The former, soon after
putting to sea, was encountered at Quiberon by the English under Hawke,
and completely defeated; but the latter entered the British channel
unopposed, and proceeded to the appointed _rendezvous_. While cruising
in search of Conflaus, the autumnal equinox drove the intrepid Thurot
into the Northern ocean, and compelled him to winter among the frozen
friths of Norway and the Orkneys. One of his five frigates returned to
France, another was never heard of, but with the remaining three he
emerged from the Scottish Islands, and entered Lough Foyle early in
1760. He did not, however, attempt a landing at Derry, but appeared
suddenly before Carrickfergus, on the 21st of February, and demanded
its surrender. Placing himself at the head of his marines and sailors,
he attacked the town, which, after a brave resistance by the
commandant, Colonel Jennings, he took by assault. Here, for the first
time, this earlier Paul Jones heard of the defeat of his admiral; after
levying contributions on the rich burgesses and proprietors of
Carrickfergus and Belfast, he again put to sea. His ships, battered by
the wintry storms which they had undergone in northern latitudes, fell
in near the Isle of Man with three English frigates, just out of port,
under Commodore Elliott. A gallant action ensued, in which Thurot, or
O'Farrell, and three hundred of his men were killed. The survivors
struck to the victors, and the French ships were towed in a sinking
state, into the port of Ramsey.
The life thus lost in the joint service of France and Ireland, was a
life illustrative of the Irish refugee class among whom he became a
leader. Left an orphan in childhood, O'Farrell, though of a good
family, had been bred in France in so menial a condition that he first
visited England as a domestic servant. From that condition he rose to
be a dexterous and successful captain in the contraband trade, so
extensive in those times. In this capacity he visited almost every port
of either channel, acquiring that accurate knowledge which, added to
his admitted bravery and capacity, placed him at length at the head of
a French squadron. "Throughout the expedition," says Lord Mahon, "the
honour and humanity of this brave adventurer are warmly acknowledged by
his enemies." "He fought his ship," according to the same author,
"until the hold was almost filled with water, and the deck covered with
dead bodies."