The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  For such it was, and at last we got the truth from him. The rebels had been slain or put to flight, and the British were drawn across the roads in a tight, heavy knot. The defeat had been utter. At least a thousand men, making full allowance for his hyperbole, lay dead in the fields outside Granard. “They fought like wild wolves,” he told Teeling, “and with bursting hearts.” “They have been smashed,” Teeling said in French to Humbert. “These are survivors.” Humbert, who must have understood as much, nodded but continued to stare at the Granard man.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Randall MacDonnell said to me. “Did you hear him? We are as good as dead. Did you hear that man? There will be no way out of this place.”

  But I could find nothing to say to him, and we stood silently together until Teeling joined us. By the faint starlight I could make out his long pale face, but his voice startled me, calm and harsh.

  “It will end tomorrow,” he said. “We will move out in the morning, but they will be upon us before noon. General Humbert proposes to take us into Ballinamuck, a village that this local fellow knows of. There is a good hill there and a bog to protect our flank. It will not be much of a battle.”

  “Fight, is it?” MacDonnell asked, indignation fighting with fear. “What good will that do?”

  “If we remain in good order we can put up a fight for an hour or two. That will end matters.”

  “Sure an hour’s fight will have us all killed,” MacDonnell said. “And what sense is there in that? ’Tis a few men with white flags that we should send out, and surrender now, before we are blown apart by their bloody cannon.”

  “It will be more difficult to surrender than you believe. For us, that is. It will be a different matter for the French.”

  “They wouldn’t murder us in cold blood,” MacDonnell said.

  “Murder?” Teeling asked, as though weighing the word. “It is not called murder, Mr. MacDonnell. We are rebels in arms against the Crown. The British are not obliged to give us quarter. I doubt if they will wish to.”

  There was a long pause before MacDonnell replied in a low, spiritless voice. “I call it murder.”

  “And so do I. So does Mr. Elliott here. General Humbert would not. He gave no quarter to the peasants in the Vendée. We are not protected by the rules of war.”

  “The rules of war permit the slaughter of unarmed men?” I asked. “Men who have surrendered? Yes, I would indeed call that murder.” I am astonished now that we should have spoken so calmly of our own deaths, and yet we did. The human disposition to argue against calamity is relentless.

  “My God,” MacDonnell said. “Oh, my Jesus.” Whether as prayer or curse I could not tell.

  But as we spoke together, all about us was commotion. The Irish, dragging themselves wearily awake, grasped but slowly, through ripples of rumour and talk, that no help awaited us to the south. Fear grappled them then, like iron chains, made more terrible by the darkness and confusion. I joined the Ballina men, to explain to them as best I could what had happened, but my words were wasted upon them. They had come so devoutly to believe that an army of the Gael awaited them that nothing would persuade them to the contrary. Yet at the same time they accepted that some catastrophe had occurred in the south. It was useless to reason with them, and after a time I walked away.

  Humbert stood facing the south, his arms clasped behind his back. I could not read his face. Nothing had served his purpose. The country had not risen up, the fleet from France had not arrived, the Dublin road was blocked. Spread out all around him were the men whom he had led and dragged across Ireland, foreign and remote as Laplanders. He was thinking, perhaps, that at last he had been trapped. He was trapped. Not an army of two thousand men, but one commander, so great is the vanity of generals. In a village called Cloone, an ugly name on a map. As I stood watching him, he suddenly shrugged and straightened his shoulders.

  He saw me watching him and stepped towards me. “Your Irish down here were useless,” he said, in a grating, angry voice. “Worse than useless. They have dragged me down into this dark bog. They will deserve what happens to them.”

  “They trusted in us,” I said. “And already they have begun to pay. They were killed in their hundreds at Granard.”

  “They will be killed in their hundreds out there,” he said, waving his arm towards the dark south. “I once wondered why the English had such contempt for the Irish. Now I understand.”

  He jerked his head towards the men invisible on the slopes below us. “You wanted to make a revolution with those. You are a fool.” He turned then and walked away from me.

  Towards morning, with the first streaky light, we were assembled to march, but only with difficulty. The French troops had no stomach for battle, and the sergeants were compelled to thwack them with sabres. As for the Irish, bewilderment had settled so deeply upon them that they moved as they were bid, but slowly, as though not fully awakened. We were no longer an army, so much was clear even to my unpractised eye, but we went through the motions of an army, squaring ourselves off into columns. MacDonnell had managed somehow to recover his spirits, or at least his style, for he behaved as though saddled for a morning’s hunt, bantering with the men and cajoling them with coarse pleasantries. Vanity and recklessness had brought him out with us, a roaring horseman with a foolish plume stuck in his hat, but he was now to prove his merits. I watched him with a mild envy. For myself, I had before this lost confidence in our enterprise, and awaited with dull heart its predestined end.

  In the dawn hours before we set forth, other men from the Granard fighting joined us, men who had moved northwards because no other path lay open to them, or else men who had believed the rumours that we were advancing with a powerful host. More than half of them still carried pikes or weapons of some sort, and these Teeling formed up into a company. Their familiarity with the countryside seemed but to make more intense their bewilderment and fear. And also, about an hour before we left Cloone, we were joined by Owen MacCarthy, the Killala schoolmaster, who had deserted from us outside Manor Hamilton.

  More even than the rest of us, he appeared exhausted, his eyes, beneath the mat of red hair, sunk into their sockets. He stood irresolute upon the path which led down the hill, and then walked towards my own Ballina men, with one of whom, Michael Geraghty, he had struck up a friendship.

  Randall MacDonnell leaned down from his saddle and shouted to him. “Owen MacCarthy! You were lonely for our company.”

  MacCarthy looked over towards him. “There is no way out of here. I have been within a mile of Mohill, and the road is thick with British soldiers.”

  Teeling walked over to him and said, “Speak in English. Where else have you been?”

  “I began in Drumlish. It has been burned and a man killed in his shop. Then I walked towards Mohill, but when I caught sight of the soldiers I turned off onto this road. I spent part of the night in a cave, hugging my knees with my clasped hands.”

  “You would have been wise had you stayed in the cave.”

  “Sure I am not a fox or badger. I had a bottle with me, and when it was done I set forth into the darkness. The English have covered the entire world. They burned Drumlish, the great brutes. Would you not think that men hurrying to a battle had no time to burn a village.”

  “They are in no hurry,” Teeling said. “They have the day before them.”

  At exactly six, by my father’s heavy gold watch, we began our march, two long, straggling columns. Humbert, mounted, lingered on the hill, holding a spyglass to his eye. Perhaps he could see the first of the English moving in their southerly direction from Mohill.

  As we marched out, I turned round to look at the church. Prim and disdainful, it held itself aloof from our tumult. It was so like the Ballina church that they might have been built from the same set of plans. And again my memory stirred within me. Spare, undecorated, it stood guard over Thomas Ticknell, Cromwell’s slumbering trooper.

  17

  FROM “YOUTHFUL SERVICE: WITH
r />   CORNWALLIS IN IRELAND,” BY

  MAJOR GENERAL SIR HAROLD WYNDHAM

  I set out with my small escort, feeling myself a most important personage to be carrying the order for battle, and riding, if only for an hour, at the head of a body of horse. I was now making my own jingle and flash of scarlet, like the dragoons whom I had envied. Cornwallis must have derived amusement from the spectacle which I presented, for the colour of war had long since been bleached from his thoughts, and it remained for him only a duty to be scrupulously performed.

  The countryside, after we had left behind us the pleasant river, was somewhat sombre in appearance, farmlands divided and redivided by rocky walls, yellowing fields, low hills. But the morning itself was splendid, and the air as fine a tonic as claret. Birds, starlings and rooks, were surprising in their numbers, breaking suddenly from trees like bursts of grapeshot. Far from the road, down narrow lanes, stood the cabins of the natives. I saw no one stirring near them, and it was most curious to see them washed clear of their usual swarms of shouting children. It was in truth a silent scene, save for the thud of our hooves, and bird cries, the abrupt whir of wings.

  It was only when we drew near to Mohill, which stands midway between Carrick and Cloone, that we began to encounter the burned cabins. The village itself had been left untouched, so far as I could judge, but the outlying cabins had been fired, and the stench from those which stood near the road carried to us. It seemed a poor way to begin a battle, and I turned to observe its effect upon my escort, but their stolid faces told me nothing.

  A mile beyond the village we encountered a most unexpected sight, a body of some fifty French prisoners marching along under guard in the direction of Carrick. The officer in command, a Captain Millett as it proved, rode up to greet me. He explained that this was the rear guard of Humbert’s army, captured by Crauford as they attempted to destroy the bridge over the Shannon at Drumshanbo.

  “Did you help capture them?” I asked.

  But he laughed and said, “I am only a poor officer of militia. Crauford commands dragoons. He caught one of their generals, with a droll French name.” He scratched his chin. “Can you speak any French? Give a shout and ask their general’s name.”

  I called out to the prisoners, and several of them answered, “Sarrizen.”

  “Saracen, that’s it. Like a bloody Turk. The Saracen’s Head, like the signpost on the tavern.”

  “Is he not with them?”

  “He is with Billy Lake, and bloody glad to be with him. Ten minutes after Crauford fell upon him he was riding up and down with his hat stuck on the end of his sword in token of surrender. And this lot are bloody glad to be walking down a country road, swinging their arms in the sunlight. I wouldn’t like to be on the sharp end of Crauford’s sabre.”

  They did not seem either glad or sorry, but only exhausted. I thought of the extraordinary march they had made, from Mayo into Longford. A few were swarthy southerners, but most could have exchanged coats with Millett’s men. The difference lay in their eyes, round and dark with fatigue.

  “Where is Lake?” I asked. “I have orders for him from Lord Cornwallis.”

  Millett stroked the neck of his horse. “You had best move quickly then, or you won’t be in for the kill. Crauford has been keeping a grip on the Frenchman’s tail, and now Lake has moved to close the gap. Infantry, cannon, the lot.”

  “But where should I go?” I was beginning to see that battles are less tidy than a morning room in Carrick.

  “Towards Cloone. Keep to this road and don’t turn at the cross. You should be able to see all of them from there; the town is on a hill. The enemy camped there last night. In the churchyard.” He looked towards one of his soldiers, a gangling boy who stood leaning on his musket. “Do you know what the savages did? They pulled up the bones from the graves.”

  “What?” I asked. The grotesque words leaped at me from nowhere.

  “The natives. The rebels. They used the bones of the dead for firewood. There are bones scattered across the churchyard, between the stones.”

  An ugly incoherent image sought to shape itself in my mind.

  “Savages,” Millett said. “Do you have another word for them? Damme if I do.”

  I did not reply. Like animals in their den, I thought, the earth strewn with bones.

  “That is my quarrel with this lot,” he said, nodding towards the French. “Putting muskets in the hands of those savages. I trust I am as tolerant as the next man, but I draw the line when it comes to savages. I was in Wexford. I saw what happened to the poor Protestants there.”

  “What will happen to them now?” I asked, nodding toward the French, as he had done.

  “These lads? They’ll be exchanged. Back they go to la belle France. They won’t be eager to visit this damned place again.”

  “No,” I said. The air was cool, despite the autumn sun.

  “I have all day to get them to Carrick,” he said, “but you’d best not waste any time.”

  “No,” I said. “I have never seen a battle.”

  “No more have I,” he said. “But I can live without the sight. Not that it will be much of a battle. According to Sarrizen, they are about ready to drop from fatigue.”

  From beyond the hill, faint and fragile, came a sound like furniture being pulled across the floor of a distant room. We looked at each other.

  “Yes,” he said. “That could be the artillery.” He half raised his hand and then lowered it. “Good luck to you, Mr. Wyndham.”

  “And to you as well.”

  “None needed here,” he said. “I shall be snug in Carrick, watching these lads eat their frogs.”

  I never saw Millett again. His company was one of those which took part in the final operation in Killala and along the Belmullet road, earning there an unenviable reputation for severity towards the inhabitants. When I had gained the rise of the road I turned round to wave to him, but he did not see me.

  Cloone, as he had told me, stands upon a high hill. As we rode towards it, the bursts of sound grew more frequent, and even my unpractised ear could now recognise it as cannon fire.

  Although Lake had moved forward, Cloone was held by a regiment. The churchyard was crowded with uniformed men. I had to dismount to make my way past them to the church, where a knot of officers stood facing south. I attempted to introduce myself and explain my errand, but they paid not the slightest attention. One of the officers, a major, held a brass spyglass to his eye.

  In the very far distance, great masses of men were spread out in a manner which made no sense to me at all. Some were in motion, clumps of horsemen and infantry moving forward in straggling lines. A dense, solid body of men stood motionless on the slopes of a hill. The cannon looked no larger than slivers of black wood. As I stared at them they spoke again. Smoke hung about them. To the left of the hill, distant from it by a mile, lay clumped together the cabins of a village, like children’s toys. The cannon spoke again, and before the noise had quite died away a body of horsemen rode towards the hill. Beyond hill and village, red bog stretched away towards the horizon.

  One of the officers was a young man of my own age, with a smooth, pale face and features delicate as a girl’s. I seized him by the arm and asked him what was happening. He turned towards me impatiently, his eyes so full of the scene that he scarce saw me. But I kept my grip upon his arm and repeated the question. I think that when he understood me at last he welcomed the chance to display his superior knowledge.

  “That’s Humbert down there,” he said, pointing to the base of the hill. “He contrived to seize the hill before we forced him to turn and fight us. A few minutes ago he shifted his main strength to the eastern slope so that he could meet our cavalry.” The cannon spoke again, this time a more ragged sound. “That will be the last barrage, unless we want to blow off Crauford’s head.”

  “Then those are Crauford’s dragoons?” I asked.

  “Crauford’s or Lord Roden’s. Who can tell at this distance?”<
br />
  Now a body of our infantry also moved forward towards the hill, at a kind of slow trot, on a line at right angles to the village.

  “And the rebels? Where are they?”

  “Why, with Humbert, I should think. Down there, perhaps, holding the road that leads from the hill to the village. I believe that General Lake is in the village. He rode off in that direction.”

  “Rebels perched upon a slope,” the major said without lowering his glass. “Lake must think he’s back in Wexford. At Vinegar Hill.”

  “I wonder if this one will take him as long,” my lieutenant said, and the major laughed.

  “He should have more confidence now,” the major said. “Since then he has won the races at Castlebar.”

  “Perhaps Lord Cornwallis has confidence in him,” I said. “I am carrying his despatch.”

  The major turned towards me. “Who the devil are you?”

  “Lord Cornwallis’s aide,” I said, feeling unaccountably prim. “I am carrying a despatch for General Lake. Requesting him to engage the enemy.”

  “Are you indeed? Lake has anticipated his orders. Today will not be a second Castlebar. Cornwallis doesn’t lose battles. The cavalry he sent up from Carrick are behind those hills, holding the Granard road.”

  “Perhaps I should ride down into the village,” I said.

  “By all means, young man. It is safe enough from all that I can tell. Matters will be settled between the hill and the bog.”

  “What is the name of the village?” I asked.

  He paused for a moment, screwing his eyes half shut. “Damme if I know. Does anyone know what it’s called? The Irish must know. That is a Longford regiment over there,” he said, pointing with his glass.

  A battle fought upon British soil, and we did not then know what name to give it. Ballinamuck. Years later, in India, I asked an Irish officer serving with the company what the word meant. He was insulted by the suggestion that he might understand the language.

  “He lost one battle,” I said.