The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  Uncertain of his Irish, a language towards which he felt a faint contempt, he chose his words with care, and he sought to measure their effect in the eyes of his parishioners. The church was as crowded as it was on any other Sunday, the men on one side of the aisle and the women on the other. It was the men towards whom he looked. Many, most of them perhaps, would go back to their cabins, but others would go to the French encampment. He could almost tell which were which. There were men who sat staring at the flagstone floor, or at some point to the left or right of him, shamefaced.

  “Your souls would be blackened,” he repeated, believing the awful words. The white lamb’s wool of the soul, lamb’s wool softer than cloud, smeared and sullied by black thumbprints.

  “I must speak briefly of a most painful matter. Mr. Murphy, the curate of this parish, has gone to the French encampment. I have relieved Mr. Murphy of his priestly duties and will send to our bishop an account of his conduct. You may depend upon it that his lordship will deal harshly with this misfortunate man. Never believe that you are free to judge between his advice to you and mine. The judgement of the Church in these matters is clear beyond question, and our bishops have spoken with a single voice.”

  Fit shepherd for a barbarous flock, Hussey thought of Murphy in a spasm of sudden disgust, coarse round red face and neck sun-seamed like a farmer’s, his coat snuff-stained and his breath rank with stale whiskey. Small wonder that the world scorns us, an island of cowherds and fanatics. But the spasm faded, died, and he was shamed by his feelings. He spoke more gently to those who heard him, the words floating across a space wider than that marked by the flagstones, carried to them from the trim pasturelands of the pale, from the cloisters of Saint-Omer.

  “Go back now to your homes, and stay safely within them. Remember the words of our Saviour that he who lives by the sword will perish by it. Remember the duty which you owe to our Lord and to the King and to your own families, who will have need of the husband and the father, and the strong sons as well, in the harvest. I ask you to join with me now in prayer that peace will return quickly to our nation, and without the shedding of innocent blood. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

  He made the sign of the cross, turned back towards the altar, knelt, and prayed swiftly and softly. At the close, he offered, almost in a whisper, a prayer in English, a language which, he suspected, was more suited to His ears.

  After Mass, he stood on the steps of the chapel, nodding and speaking briefly to the communicants as they came out into the sunlight. This was not his custom. He was known to his parish as an austere and forbidding man, his manners and his speech formal and almost alien. But this morning they nodded in return, returned his smiles and his small talk, sensing that he was trying, in his stiff and awkward way, to plead and argue with them at a deeper level than that of word or gesture. But his words had been baffling even to those who had not the slightest intention of joining the French. The King was called King George and his head was stamped upon the coins. This ended their knowledge of him.

  Hussey walked down the street to his house, a thin solemn figure in his cassock, his hands clasped behind his back. In all the barony, Thomas Treacy was the only man to whom he could talk as to an equal, a gentleman with manners and a balanced view of affairs. Who in his right mind would choose a country with a Protestant ascendancy, and yet order and stability were the first requirements of any society. King George was not a person to him, he was scarcely even a face upon a shilling. He was an emblem of order. Embarrassing that the emblem was Protestant, indeed distasteful, but at least he still had a head, unlike poor Louis.

  Ballina, August 24

  Colonel Sir Thomas Chapman, the Englishman who commanded the troops in Ballina, was in an embarrassing position. He was outnumbered, but not so vastly outnumbered as to make the evacuation of the town his only course of action. The Prince of Wales’s Fencibles and the detachment of carbineers were the only troops upon which he could rely, however. The rest were companies of native yeomanry who had flocked into the town and who seemed to differ from the other Irish only as to the side which they had chosen. And Ballina was crowded with refugees, howling against all logic for both protection and vengeance, safety and vigorous retaliation. They were ready to believe that every Papist in Mayo was a rebel, which for all he knew was the truth. There was much to be said for falling back upon Castlebar, which was garrisoned in strength. But at worst he could delay the French here at the Moy, and with a bit of luck might throw them back upon Killala.

  Early in the afternoon he had some luck of a different kind. A man named Walsh rode into town and was arrested; he was carrying a paper, signed by one B. Teeling, which declared him to be a captain in the army of the Irish Republic. Chapman held a court-martial in the open air, before the townspeople, and Walsh was sentenced to death. He was a peasant, but not of the poorest sort, for he wore a shirt of good linen. Chapman had him hanged from the crane which jutted from a wall of the market house. He was hanged in full military style, with mustered troops and muffled drums. This for a time diverted the Protestant mob. Chapman briefly surveyed, and with equal distaste, the hanged Papist and the mob of Irish Protestants. Then his thoughts returned northwards, towards the invisible French.

  At last he decided that there was nothing for it but to fight, and he moved out his troops at nightfall, placing the fencibles in the van. They encountered Sarrizen’s French about one mile north of the town. The fighting was brisk but brief, for his men fell back before the bayonet charge of the French. He ordered them to retreat towards the town and regroup, and noted with perplexity that the French, by not pressing their advantage, were allowing him to accomplish this manoeuvre. Then the peasant rebels emerged to fall upon his flank, shrieking like demons, firing off their muskets, and stabbing with their pikes.

  Chapman discovered within minutes that he was in command not of a beaten force, but of men lost to shame and in headlong flight. Screaming themselves, they ran back towards the town, pursued by an immense mob of jabbering peasants, with the French bringing up the rear. Chapman rode through the narrow streets of Ballina, beating at his men with the flat of his sword, cursing them, urging them to turn and fight. But they ran heedless through the streets, and then made off across the fields towards Foxford. Stories that he had heard of the ’Forty-five gave him images, regulars thrown into panic by whooping, half-naked Highlanders. That, joined to cool French veterans in bayonet charge, might daunt anyone. And yet the sight of British troops scampering off into the safety of night was humiliating. In his despair, the thought of allowing himself to be captured drifted through his mind. By the French, of course, not the Irish. But that would not have been possible, for the Irish were first into the town.

  Why should there have been so many of them, a sea moving in darkness? Then common sense returned to him, and, with a sigh and a shrug, he rode after his men.

  The battle of Ballina had been fought, a small affair when measured against the ballads which were to be written about it. In the town, the Irish gathered around the hanged body of Walsh, a Crossmolina farmer who was known to many of them. It was a sight startling in its unexpectedness, and minutes passed before anyone thought to cut him down. Humbert rode quickly into town, his swift, alert eyes studying the streets, the Irish mob, the hanging man, the buildings.

  Dublin Castle, August 24

  Charles, Marquis Cornwallis, both Viceroy of Ireland and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s forces in that realm, presided over a council of state. He was a large-bodied man of sixty, looking more a country gentleman than a soldier, mild-eyed, a broad face with humorous mouth.

  “But gentlemen,” he said easily, “the facts, so far as they have come to us, are merely that a small force of French have landed in the wilds of Mayo.”

  “More will be coming,” Sir John Denham said. He was a short, choleric baronet from Roscommon. “We can be certain of that. For years they have been counting on the treason which has s
pread throughout this island, and they have made their plans.”

  “I am less certain of that,” Cornwallis said. “It seems to me that the Irish project has long been the orphan child of the Directory. In any event, we have a full squadron cruising off the northwest shores. These fellows have managed to slip past us, but the others won’t. What say you, Mr. Cooke?”

  “They chose an unlikely place to land,” Cooke said. “We do know that there is disaffection in Mayo, but it is not at all well organised. Agrarian outrage, and on a small scale at that. Most of it in a single barony. Tyrawley, as it happens. Where they landed. Dennis Browne has been complaining for weeks about stirring there. He has written for troops.”

  “Yes,” Cornwallis said. “Well, he has them now. Wrong uniform, perhaps.” He eased his gouty foot onto a chair. “I do wish we knew the name of the French commander.”

  “May God help the decent poor loyalists of Mayo,” Denham said. “While we sit here talking, they stand naked before the fury of Papist mobs.”

  “It is my intention,” Cornwallis told him, his voice frigid, “to meet the French forces and to defeat them, to subdue all rebels who have taken up arms, and to restore order to this kingdom. I am an old campaigner and I know my trade.”

  “I never intended to suggest otherwise, my lord.”

  “No doubt.”

  General Lake leaned confidently forward, across the wide table of polished walnut. “My lord, these first reports may be mistaken. It may in fact be a considerable force. Even so, it can come nowhere close to the number of men that we have under arms in this kingdom. If I receive your instructions, I will move at once against Mayo, and nip this in the bud, before their position is consolidated, before the rebels have a chance to rouse themselves up.”

  Cornwallis listened with a show of politeness which concealed his irritation. Lake had served under him in North America, and had proved himself an able commander. But in Ireland! Lake had been Commander-in-Chief under Camden when the Wexford rising broke out. It was his policy of whippings, torturing, and burnings which, in Cornwallis’s judgement, had goaded the Wexford peasants to their frenzy. Bad soldiering, that. Inhumane as well, of course.

  “I count myself fortunate, Lake, to have a soldier of your experience at my side.”

  “I think I know these people, sir, and I know the way they fight. That gives me an advantage, of course.”

  “Of course it does, General. Now then, the one thing which we must avoid is a battle which the French stand a chance of winning. The native Irish would be inflamed beyond control by the news of such a victory. With your knowledge of the people, would you not agree with that?”

  “Indeed I would, sir. The skirmishes which they won in Wexford, before I took to the field, worked upon them like strong whiskey.”

  “And so our plan of campaign is a simple one. General Trench commands the forces eastwards of the French landing. On the western coast, in Galway, is General Hutchinson. I would like you, sir, to go to Galway and take over his command.”

  Lake began to rise. “With your permission, sir, I will set out this night.”

  Cornwallis drew out his watch. “Good God, man. It is nearly eleven. Get yourself a good night’s sleep, and set out refreshed in the morning.”

  “Now this is too much!” Denham said. “I must make my protest. I am an Irishman, as you are not, and I am a member of Ireland’s Parliament. This is my country. There will be Frenchmen and murderous peasants on the loose while General Lake is getting himself a night’s sleep.”

  “In a moment, Sir John. In a moment. By now, Lake, the enemy will most certainly have taken Ballina. From Ballina, he will move south to Foxford, unless he has orders to wait for reinforcements. Keep him contained. If he has fewer than four or five thousand men, that will be no problem. The great prize for him, of course, would be Castlebar, but he will have more sense than to attempt it. Keep him contained, but don’t attack unless you find a chance too good to miss. And while you are about that task, the main body of our forces will be moving towards Mayo.”

  “The main body?” Lake asked, in quick hurt. “And who will command those forces?”

  “I will.”

  “You, my lord?”

  “I was a soldier not so very long ago. I think I remember the art.”

  “Of course, my lord. I did not mean to suggest—”

  Cornwallis held up his hand, and turned towards Denham. “Yes, sir. You are an Irishman, with a country and a House of Commons and a House of Lords and a Custom House and close to a hundred thousand Irishmen in your yeomanry and your militia. But the insurrections which broke out this spring in several of your counties were at last put down not by Irish but by English troops. In many of your corps of militia, the disaffection is so widespread that the officers dare not turn their backs upon their men. The pretensions and airs of your so-called Parliament are too numerous for me to list, but in the brief months that I have spent in this country, they have driven me almost to distraction. And now, sir, you propose to tell me how to fight a war. I will not have it.”

  Denham flushed, and he pressed his hands against the table’s edge, as if to rise. “The men you malign, sir, are the Englishmen who have held this island for you since the days of Elizabeth.”

  “English now, are you? Irish or English as it suits your purpose. Irish when you don’t need us, and English when you do. You people can’t make up your minds what you are. At the moment, you do not hold this land. I do.”

  “By God, when I report your words to Parliament—”

  “They will do nothing. Some of them have been bought outright, and would sit there smiling if they were called a pack of nanny goats. Some have been driven hysterical by their terror of rebellion. Some few are honest men, but they will know you, and will believe that you have heard what you deserve to hear. Now, sir, I shall follow my advice to General Lake and get some sleep.”

  Cornwallis stood alone by the window, looking down into the Castle Yard. Absurd that England, in the midst of a war against a European power, should have to expend her men and her efforts upon this wretched bog. First the risings in Wexford and Antrim, and now this. It would be difficult to say who was worst, the jabbering peasantry, the treacherous United Irishmen, the blustering Protestant landlords. Certainly the landlords were the most comical, avowing themselves British in their thick-tongued brogues.

  Clearly something was wrong, or the problem would not have persisted for six hundred years. The readiest solution was union. Pitt wanted it. Sweep away that appalling little parliament, and make Ireland one country with England. The same laws, the same army. Pitt wanted it. This rebellion might make it possible. Fear would shake the landlords free of their patriotic delusions, and they could then be herded into their parliament to vote for its extinction. The unfrightened could always be bribed. Money or a meaningless title. Lord FitzBog. Sir Terrence O’Spud. Many a Connaught landlord was doubtless quaking in his boots at this moment, and with good reason. And yet the farther you moved away from Dublin, the more vivid grew the sense of something alien. And what must Mayo be like, farthest away of all, names on a map, Killala, Ballina, Castlebar? But a religious war, at this time in the world’s history, Catholic against Protestant! More to it than that, of course, Protestant landlords and a Catholic peasantry. A war against property, it came to that. One thing was certain. The island could not be allowed to go its own way. A glance at the globe proved that.

  What must it be like to be stranded in a far corner with a few thousand men and a rabble of Irish-speaking peasants? Perhaps the Frenchman enjoyed it. The French were fond of wild escapades and picturesque scenery.

  Ballina, August 25

  A great moon had risen on the Moy, where the rebels were encamped on the demesne of the Big Lord. It was like a fairday at night, with men in constant motion and heavy supply wagons lumbering in from Killala. Men were gathered there who had never seen each other before. They had come from the remote hamlets of Erris and the i
mpoverished farms beside Lough Conn. All of the firelocks had been passed out, and now they were being issued pikes hammered upon the Ballina anvils. Most were men who had never taken the oath of the United Irishmen, had never heard of it, and would not have understood its words or their meaning. They knew that Killala and Ballina had fallen, that Westport in one direction and Swinford in another were in rebel hands, and that a great mass of the Irish were making ready to march upon Foxford.

  Shortly after the fall of Ballina, the house of the Big Lord and the house of a landlord named Fortescue were plundered. Malachi Duggan led his followers and a mob of others to Glenthorne Castle. It was deserted. Hendricks, the house steward, had ridden in to Ballina to join the rebels and the servants had fled. For a time they stood silent before the steps sweeping up to the central block, ornamented on either side by the stone image of a couched, wide-mouthed lion. Then Duggan climbed the stairs and kicked open the doors.

  At first they wandered, aimless and curious, down the corridors, peering through opened doors at rooms which hung in a delicate suspension of time. Dusted and polished by the castle’s small army of housemaids, they held the elusive personality of the old Lord. Their hangings, carpets, and furnishings were as unimaginable to the staring peasants as the ocean’s floor, or a jungle, vine-entangled and noisy with bright-plumaged birds. The peasants were seized by a conviction that they had committed something far graver than trespass, far graver indeed than armed rebellion. They had stepped from one globe to another, vast and luminous.

  Then Duggan, with a roar, swung the hook of his pike into a wall hanging, a painting on watered silk, and ripped it to the floor.

  They found Creighton at last, in his office, seated behind his desk, hands folded upon its surface, and square spectacles pushed up on his broad, balding forehead. He sat quietly, as though frozen, staring at them, and they at him. He did not move until one of the peasants, by accident, knocked against the table upon which lay spread out his model of the estate, to the peasant a meaningless sprawl with bits of mirror glass scattered across it. “No, no,” Creighton said, and rose up from his desk, walking around it to the middle of the room. “I meant,” he said, stopped, and then began again, “I meant—” Duggan drove his pike savagely into his chest, and then twisted it, tearing upwards. Creighton fell against his model, and his blood spurted upon it, rivers of bright blood flowed down brown-tinted mountains of papier-mâché. “My Jesus, mercy,” Donal Hennessey said. For a moment, Duggan shared his horror, then he twisted Creighton’s body, and pulled out the pike. Creighton fell to the floor.