NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE AND HOLLAND—THE THREE EXPEDITIONS NEGOTIATED
BY TONE AND LEWINES.
The close of the year 1795 saw France under the government of the
Directory, with Carnot in the cabinet, and Pichegru, Jourdain, Moreau,
Hoche, and Buonaparte at the head of its armies. This government, with
some change of persons, lasted from October, 1795, to November, '99,
when it was supplanted by the Consular Revolution. Within the compass
of those four years lie the negotiations which were carried on and the
three great expeditions which were fitted out by France and Holland, at
the instance of the United Irishmen.
On the 1st of February, 1796, Tone, who had sailed from Belfast the
previous June, arrived at Havre from New York, possessed of a hundred
guineas and some useful letters of introduction. One of these letters,
written in cipher, was from the French Minister at Philadelphia to the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles Lacroix; another was to the
American Minister in France, Mr. Monroe, afterwards President of the
United States, by whom he was most kindly received, and wisely advised,
on reaching Paris. Lacroix received him courteously, and referred him
to a subordinate called Madgett, but after nearly three months wasted
in interviews and explanations, Tone, by the advice of Monroe,
presented himself at the Luxembourg Palace, and demanded audience of
the "Organizer of Victory." Carnot also listened to him attentively,
asked and obtained his true name, and gave him another _rendezvous_. He
was next introduced to Clarke (afterwards Duc de Feltre), Secretary at
War, the son of an Irishman, whom he found wholly ignorant of Ireland;
and finally, on the 12th of July, General Hoche, in the most frank and
winning manner, introduced himself. At first the Directory proposed
sending to Ireland no more than 5,000 men, while Tone pleaded for
20,000; but when Hoche accepted the command, he assured Tone he would
go "in sufficient force." The "pacificator of La Vendee," as the young
general was called—he was only thirty-two,—won at once the heart of the
enthusiastic founder of the United Irishmen, and the latter seems to
have made an equally favourable impression. He was at once presented
with the commission of a _chef de brigade_ of infantry—a rank answering
to that of colonel with us—and was placed as adjutant on the general's
staff. Hoche was all ardour and anxiety; Carnot cheered him on by
expressing his belief that it would be "a most brilliant operation;"
and certainly Tone was not the man to damp such expectations, or allow
them to evaporate in mere complimentary assurances.
During the autumn months the expedition was busily being fitted out at
Brest, and the general head-quarters were at Rennes. The Directory, to
satisfy themselves that all was as represented by Tone, had sent an
agent of their own to Ireland, by whom a meeting was arranged on the
Swiss frontier between Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Conor, Dr.
McNevin, and Hoche. From this meeting—the secret of which he kept to
himself—the young general returned in the highest spirits, and was
kinder than ever to his adjutant. At length, early in December, all was
ready, and on the 16th the Brest fleet stood out to sea; 17 sail of the
line, 13 frigates, and 13 smaller ships, carrying 15,000 picked troops,
the _élite_ of "the Army of the Ocean," and abundance of artillery and
munitions of war. Tone was in the _Indomptable_, 80 guns, commanded by
a Canadian, named Bedout; Hoche and the Admiral in the frigate
_Fraternité_; Grouchy, so memorable for the part he played then and
afterwards, was second in command. On the third morning, after groping
about and losing each other in Atlantic fog, one-half the fleet (with
the fatal exception of the _Fraternité_) found themselves close in with
the coast of Kerry. They entered Bantry Bay, and came to anchor, ten
ships of war, and "a long line of dark hulls resting on the green
water." Three or four days they lay dormant and idle, waiting for the
General and Admiral; Bouvet, the Vice-Admiral, was opposed to moving in
the absence of his chief; Grouchy was irresolute and nervous; but at
length, on Christmas day, the council of war decided in favour of
debarkation. The landing was to take place next morning; 6,500 veterans
were prepared to step ashore at daylight, but without their artillery,
their military chest, and their general. Two hours beyond midnight Tone
was roused from sleep by the wind, which he found blowing half a gale.
Pacing the gallery of the _Indomptable_ till day dawned, he felt it
rising louder and angrier, every hour. The next day it was almost a
hurricane, and the Vice-Admiral's frigate, running under the quarter of
the great 80-gun ship, ordered them to slip anchor and stand out to
sea. The whole fleet was soon driven off the Irish coast; that part of
it, in which Grouchy and Tone were embarked, made its entrance into
Brest on New Year's day; the ship which carried Hoche and the Admiral,
only arrived at La Rochelle on the 15th. The Directory and the General,
so far from being discouraged by this failure, consoled themselves by
the demonstration they had made, of the possibility of a great fleet
passing to and fro, in British waters, for nearly a month, without
encountering a single British vessel of war. Not so the Irish
negotiator; on him, light-hearted and daring as he was, the
disappointment fell with crushing weight; but he magnanimously carried
Grouchy's report to Paris, and did his utmost to defend the unlucky
general from a cabal which had been formed against him.
While Tone was reluctantly following his new chief to the Meuse and the
Rhine—with a promise that the Irish expedition was delayed, not
abandoned—another, and no less fortunate negotiator, was raising up a
new ally for the same cause, in an unexpected quarter. The Batavian
republic, which had risen in the steps of Pichegru's victorious army,
in 1794, was now eager to imitate the example of France. With a
powerful fleet, and an unemployed army, its chiefs were quite ready to
listen to any proposal which would restore the maritime ascendancy of
Holland, and bring back to the recollection of Europe the memory of the
puissant Dutch republic. In this state of affairs, the new agent of the
Irish Directory, Edward John Lewines, a Dublin attorney, a man of great
ability and energy, addressed himself to the Batavian government. He
had been sent abroad with very general powers, to treat with Holland,
Spain, France, or any other government at war with England, for a loan
of half a million sterling, and a sufficient auxiliary force to aid the
insurrection. During two months' stay at Hamburg, the habitual route in
those days from the British ports to the continent, he had placed
himself in communication with the Spanish agent there, and had, in
forty days, received an encouraging answer from Madrid. On his way,
probably to Spain, to follow up that fair prospect, he reached the
Netherlands, and rapidly discovering the state of feeling in the Dutch,
or as it was then called, the _Batavian_ republic, he addressed himself
to the Directors, who consulted Hoche, by whom in turn Tone was
consulted. Tone had a high opinion of Lewines, and at once proceeded
with him to the Hague, where they were joined, according to agreement,
by Hoche. The Dutch Committee of Foreign Affairs, the
Commander-in-Chief, General Dandaels, and the Admiral, De Winter,
entered heartily into the project. There were in the Texel 16 ships of
the line and 10 frigates, victualled for three months, with 15,000 men
and 80 field guns on board. The only serious difficulty in the way was
removed by the disinterestedness of Hoche; the French Foreign Minister
having demanded that 5,000 French troops should be of the expedition,
and that Hoche should command in chief; the latter, to conciliate
Dandaels and the Dutch, undertook to withdraw the proposal, and
gracefully yielded his own pretensions. All then was settled: Tone was
to accompany Dandaels with the same rank he had in the Brest
expedition, and Lewines to return, and remain, as "Minister-resident"
at Paris. On the 8th of July, Tone was on board the flagship, the
_Vryheid_, 74 guns, in the Texel, and "only waiting for a wind," to
lead another navy to the aid of his compatriots.
But the winds, "the only unsubsidized allies of England," were
strangely adverse. A week, two, three, four, five, passed heavily away,
without affording a single day in which that mighty fleet could make an
offing. Sometimes for an hour or two it shifted to the desired point,
the sails were unclewed and the anchors shortened, but then, as if to
torture the impatient exiles on board, it veered back again and settled
steadily in the fatal south-west. At length, at the end of August, the
provisions being nearly consumed, and the weather still unfavourable,
the Dutch Directory resolved to land the troops and postpone the
expedition. De Winter, as is known, subsequently found an opportunity
to work out, and attack Lord Duncan, by whom he was badly beaten. Thus
ended Irish hopes of aid from Holland. The indomitable Tone rejoined
his chief on the Rhine, where, to his infinite regret, Hoche died the
following month—September 18th, 1797—of a rapid consumption,
accelerated by cold and carelessness. "Hoche," said Napoleon to Barry
O'Meara at Saint Helena, "was one of the first generals France ever
produced. He was brave, intelligent, abounding in talent, decisive and
penetrating. Had he landed in Ireland, he would have succeeded. He was
accustomed to civil war, had pacified La Vendee, and was well adapted
for Ireland. He had a fine, handsome figure, a good address, was
prepossessing and intriguing." The loss of such a patron, who felt
himself, according to Tone's account, especially bound to follow up the
object of separating Ireland from England, was a calamity greater and
more irreparable than the detention of one fleet or the dispersion of
the other.
The third expedition, in promoting which Tone and Lewines bore the
principal part, was decided upon by the French Directory, immediately
after the conclusion of peace with Austria, in October, 1797. The
decree for the formation of "the Army of England," named Buonaparte
Commander-in-Chief, with Desaix as his second. Buonaparte consulted
Clarke as to who he most confided in among the numerous Irish refugees
then in Paris—there were some twenty or thirty, all more or less known,
and more or less in communication with the Directory—and Clarke
answered at once, "Tone, of course." Tone, with Lewines, the one in a
military, the other in an ambassadorial capacity, had frequent
interviews with the young conqueror of Italy, whom they usually found
silent and absorbed, always attentive, sometimes asking sudden
questions betraying great want of knowledge of the British Islands, and
occasionally, though rarely, breaking out into irresistible invectives
against Jacobinism and the English system, both of which he so
cordially detested. Every assurance was given by the General, by the
Directors, by Merlin du Douai, Barras, and Talleyrand especially, that
the expedition against England would never be abandoned. Tone, in high
spirits as usual, joined the division under the command of his
countryman, General Kilmaine, and took up his quarters at Havre, where
he had landed without knowing a soul in France two years before.
The winter wore away in busy preparations at Havre, at Brest, and at La
Rochelle,—and, which seemed mysterious to the Irish exiles—at Toulon.
All the resources of France, now without an enemy on the Continent,
were put forth in these preparations. But it soon appeared they were
not put forth for Ireland. On the 20th of May, 1798—within three days
of the outbreak in Dublin, Wexford, and Kildare—Buonaparte sailed with
the _elite_ of all that expedition for Alexandria, and "the Army of
England" became, in reality, "the Army of Egypt."
The bitterness, the despondency, and desperation which seized on the
Irish leaders in France, and on the rank and file of the United
Irishmen at home, on receiving this intelligence are sufficiently
illustrated in the subsequent attempts under Humbert and Bompart, and
the partial, ineffectual risings in Leinster, Ulster, and Connaught,
during the summer and autumn of 1798. After all their high hopes from
France and her allies, this was what it had come to at last! A few
frigates, with three or four thousand men, were all that could be
spared for the succour of a kingdom more populous than Egypt and Syria
combined; the granary of England, and the key of her Atlantic position.
It might have been some comfort to the family of Tone to have read,
thirty years afterwards, in their American asylum, or for the aged
Lewines to have read in the Parisian retreat in which he died, the
memorable confession of Napoleon at Saint Helena: "If instead of the
expedition to Egypt, I had undertaken that to Ireland, what," he asked,
"could England do now? On such chances," he mournfully added, "depend
the destinies of empires!"