tematically in the south and west, long after the survi vors of Limerick had fired their last shot. Smugglers from the Channel Islands, in their light coasting craft, ran in disguised priests and other contraband goods, and carried away many a tall fellow, food for powder, and candidate for glory. Severe laws were enacted against recruiting, and those taken in the fact were summarily executed. In Queen Anne's reign, there is mention of two or three such executions. Still this perilous trade was prosecuted by the smugglers with unwearied energy. Recruits were usually booked as "wild geese a name which came to be synonymous with soldier, in those troubled times. Many a popular ballad recorded the parting of the "wild geese" from their native shore, and their achievements abroad. In those days, ballads took the place of the broadsheets and newspapers, and foreign politics were recited and sung at fair and market, in allegories which only the initiated could comprehend. Like Pythagoras, the itinerant songster spoke in hints and proverbs, making his audience "see, as through a glass, darkly." In the war of the succession, the chief glory of the brigade was the defence of Cremona, and their share in the battles of Blenheim and Ramillies. On the latter field, O'Brien, Lord Clare, fell mortally wounded, leaving after him a son to conquer, at Fontenoy. Riva surrendered to Dillon, and Alsira to O'Mahony. On the field of Almanza, 13th March, 1707, (a date British historians duly "overlook,") the French and Irish killed three thousand of the Anglo-Dutch forces, and took ten thousand prisoners and one hundred and twenty stands of colors. This battle compelled Queen Anne to dismiss Marlborough, and accept the humiliating peace of Utrecht. But the hottest and proudest day the brigade ever saw was a May day, in the year of our Lord 1745. The French army, commanded by Saxe, and accompanied by King Louis, leaving eighteen thousand men to besiege Namur, and six thousand to guard the Scheldt, took a position between that river and the British, having their centre at the village of Fontenoy. The British and Dutch under King George's son, the Duke of Cumberland, were fifty-five thousand strong; the French forty-five thousand. After a hard day's fighting, victory seemed to declare against France, and King Louis, who was present, prepared for flight. At this moment, Marshal Saxe ordered a final charge, by the seven Irish regiments, under O'Brien, Count Thomond. The tide was turned again to the cry of "Remember Limerick.” France was delivered, England humbled, and Holland reduced from a first to a second-rate power upon that day, partly by Irish hearts and hands. With utter self-devotion, they flung themselves on the enemy. They smote them like a torrent, but on the conquered ground their blood was shed like rain. One fourth of all the officers (including Dillon) were killed, and one third of all the men. Until Waterloo, Fontenoy stood unequalled in military history. But the brave brigade never recovered its lost blood upon that field. To the last, the remnant kept their colors and their character. In Germany with Saxe, in the East with Lally, in Canada with Montcalm, the last of that heroic brotherhood fought till they died. Their favorite chiefs all fell on the field: McCarthy, Sarsfield, the two O'Briens, and the two Dillons, died in battle, and all victorious against England. The last of the Bourbons gave the last of the brigade a flag with this motto: "1692-1792. Semper et Ubique Fidelis." When, in 1745, the news of the battle of Fontenoy reached King George, he exclaimed, in the bitterness of his disappointment, "Cursed be the laws that deprived me of such subjects!" Singular confession! The penal laws were found, after a trial of a hundred and fifty years, to have served no purpose of state policy! They had exiled, but not extinguished, the faithful Irish race! By the camp fires of Fonteroy the discovery was made. The British might run and read, but the end was not yet. The reformation had done its work in England, if not in Ireland; and those who had raised the spirit of persecution were unable, of themselves, to conjure it down! CHAPTER VI. THE JACOBITES AND THE IRISH CATHOLICS. THE STUARTS CONSULTED AT ROME ON THE APPOINTMENT OF IRISH BISHOPS. — THE RAPPAREES. THE WANDERING MINSTRELS AND "NEWSMEN." KING JAMES II. died at St. Germain's, in 1701, and was buried at the English Benedictines' church. Louis immediately acknowledged his son, under the title of James III., by which name he received not only the French court, but also those faithful refugees, chiefly Scotch and Irish, who still clung to his family. Although, at the time of his birth, the enemies of his father pretended to doubt his legitimacy, the loyalists, or, as they are better known, "the Jacobites," in both Ireland and Britain, extended to him the allegiance due to the lawful sovereign.* During the entire reign of Anne, the partisans of the old dynasty were active and sanguine, and it was not till the establishment of the present succession that they began to conceal their opinions, or ceased to conspire for their success. The result of the Scotch rising of that year disheartened no true Jacobite. The battles of Killiecrankie, under Dundee, and Sheriffmuir, under Mar, were both victories. Dundee's death, and the military incapacity of James himself, who arrived in January, 1716, in Aberdeen, in time to spoil his last chance, were supposed fully to account for the failure of that attempt. Hence the rumored Spanish expedition of 1719, and Bishop Atterbury's plot, in 1722, filled the hearts of the party with sanguine expectations, destined not to be fulfilled, nor yet to be extinguished. In 1702, there were rumors of a Jacobite rising in Munster; and upon the evidence of "three worthless fellows," Major Geoffery Keating and three respectable citizens of Limerick were arrested, and sent to Dublin with a troop of dragoons. "They were remitted back to Limerick, tried at the assizes, and honorably acquitted." *Ferrar's History of Limerick, p. 125. Like rumors were rife concerning Galway and other places, at several periods, but there seems to have been no good foundation for any of them. In.1743, when such a rumor prevailed, a privy councillor proposed that a massacre of the Irish Catholics should be made, on the ground that, by the rising of 1641, that community had put themselves out of the pale of civilization, and ought to be destroyed.* James III. and his son were most anxious to keep up their party in Ireland. The officers of the brigade were much courted by them, and the new commissions came chiefly through their hands. The popes, adopting a similar policy, constantly consulted James on the appointment of the Irish bishops. For fifty years after the treaty of Limerick, no mitre was conferred without the concurrence of the Stuarts. Thus the Irish on the continent, as well clerics as soldiers, were kept in close connection with the old dynasty. The population remaining at home, after the open violation of the treaty, began to look with eagerness for the return of a Catholic sovereign, who, it was hoped, would be made wise by adversity, and would do them justice. Although a dull and sullen silence reigned over the greater part of the island, the minds of men were far from settled. In the mountainous districts, as the Mourne, the Wicklow and Carlow Highlands, and the mountains of Tipperary and Kerry, there still remained bands of the old guerillas of 1688, known as "Rapparees" men generally the descendants of good families, whose estates had suffered confiscation, and who had nothing further to fear from outlawry. Even in this wild life, they usually retained the bearing of well-born men, and often exercised a chivalrous protectorate over the poor and the injured. In a state of imperfect intercourse and police, they had a thousand opportunities for displays of tact and courage; and if half the traditions of 1824. More's Captain Rock, p. 140. Longman's 5th edition, London, + Pope Benedict XIV., about the year 1757, discontinued this usage. them are true, they displayed many qualities worthy of the highest admiration. The first Rapparees, by King James's reports, had made their mark on the open field before they took to the hills. "One O'Connor," a Kildare Rapparee, "with sixty men on horseback, and as many on foot, surprised two companies of grenadiers, whom they cut to pieces, then went to Phillipstown, where they killed one hundred and twenty dragoons, burned the town, and carred away a great booty of horse."* This was in midwinter, 1691. Another "Rapparee," Anthony O'Carroll, surnamed "the Tall," took and held, during 1690 and 1691, the castle and town of Neuagh, and when obliged to vacate it, brought with him five hundred men, in good order, to Limerick. William's chaplain and historiographer confesses, frankly enough, the activity of the Rapparees. "They are not to be kept in their own province, [Connaught,] but can both keep us out, and also come among us whenever they have a mind to it!" Among the best remembered of the successors of these gallant guerillas are O'Keefe and Callaghan, in Munster; Higgins, Grace, and the galloping O'Hogan, in the western and midland counties; O'Dempsey and Kavanagh, ("the White Sergeant,") in Leinster. These were all men of some military experience, and of ancient family, who are not to be confounded with the leaders of the agrarian societies formed about the middle of the century. The malice of party has endeavored to stigmatize them as cutthroats and highwaymen, but the contemporaneous facts entitle the Irish Rapparees to rank with the guerillas of Spain and the gallant outlaws of every defeated nationality; with Wallace and Tell, and Scanderberg and Marion, they are entitled to stand; on the same ground, and in the same light of impartial history. Besides the brigade, the clergy, the peasantry, and the Rapparees, there was another body of Jacobites not to be *King James's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 433. |