Normandie, and several other corps which had already been repulsed and broken in several ineffectual assaults on the impregnable column.* A French authority + informs us that "this last decisive charge was determined upon, in the very crisis of the day, in a conversation, rapid and sharp as lightning, between Richelieu, galloping from rank to rank, and Lally, who was out of patience at the thought that the devoted ardour of the Irish brigade was not to be made use of." He had his wish, and at the moment when the battery opened on the front of the column, the brigade had orders to assail its right flank, and to go in with the bayonet. The English mass was now stationary, but still unshaken, and never doubting to finish the business, but looking wistfully back for the cavalry, and longing for the Dutch. Suddenly four guns opened at short range straight into the head of their column; and at the same moment the Irish regiments plunged into their right flank with bayonets levelled and a hoarse roar that rose above all the din of battle. The words were in an unknown tongue; but if the English had understood it, they would have known that it meant 66 Remember Limerick !" That fierce charge broke the steady ranks, and made the vast column waver and reel. It was seconded by the regiment of Normandie with equal gallantry, while on the other flank the cavalry burst in impetuously, and the four guns in front were ploughing long lanes through the dense ranks. It was too much. The English resisted for a little with stubborn bravery, but at length tumbled into utter confusion and fled from the field, leaving it covered thickly with their own dead and their enemies. They were not pursued far, for, once outside of the lines, their cavalry was enabled to cover their retreat. The allies lost nine thousand men, including two thousand prisoners, and the French five thousand. So the battle of Fontenoy was fought and won.‡ It cost the Irish brigade dear. The gal*The Marquis D'Argenson, minister of Foreign Affairs, was present in the battle, and immediately after wrote a narrative of it, which he addressed to M. de Voltaire, then "Historiographer to the King." He says: "A false corps de reserve was then brought up; it consisted of the same cavalry.which had at first charged ineffectually, the household troops of the king, the carbineers of the French guards, who had not yet been engaged, and a body of Irish troops, which were excellent, especially when opposed to the English and Hanoverians." Biog. Univ. Lally. lant Dillon was killed, with one-fourth of the officers and one-third of the rank and file; but the immediate consequences to France were immense-Tourney at once surrendered; Ghent, Oudenarde, Bruges, Dendermonde, Ostend, were taken in quick succession; and the English and their allies driven back behind the swamps and canals of Holland. None of all the French victories in that age caused in Paris such a tumult of joy and exultation. In England there were lamentation, and wrath, and courts-martial; but not against the Duke of Cumberland, for the King's son could do no wrong. In Ireland, as the news came in, first, of the British defeat, and then, gradually, of the glorious achievements of the brigade and the honours paid to Irish soldiers, a sudden but silent flush of triumph and of hope broke upon the oppressed race; and many a gloomy countenance brightened with a gleam of stern joy, in the thought that the long mourned "Wild-geese would one day return, with freedom and vengeance in the flash of the bayonets of Fontenoy. CHAPTER XI. 1745-1753. Alarm in England.-Expedition of Prince Charles Edward. A Message of Peace to Ireland."Vice-royalty of Chesterfield-Temporary Toleration of the Catholics.-Berkeley. The Scottish Insurrection.-Culloden.- Loyalty" of the Irish. -Lucas and the Patriots.-Debates on the Supplies. Boyle and Malone.-Population of Ireland. THE battle of Fontenoy was an event in the history of Ireland-not only by the the fish troops, and never speaks of them at all in English. But Voltaire always grudges any credit to his histories when he can possibly avoid it. genson himself was well known to be no friend of theirs, and would not have praised them on this ocof all. Indeed, in the same letter to Voltaire this casion if their bravery had not attracted the notice courtier says very emphatically-"The truth, the positive fact, without flattery, is this-the king gained the battle himself." D'Ar The services of the brigade, however, on that great day, were too notorious in the French army to be altogether concealed. The Memoir cited before from the Biographie Universelle says: It is notorious how much the Irish brigade contributed to the victory by bursting at the point of the bayonet into the flank of the terrible English column, while Kichelieu cannonaded it in front." English historians scarce mention the brigade at all on this occasion; but Lord Mahon is a creditable exception. He says Count Saxe "drew together the household troops, the whole reserve, and every other man that could be mustered; but foremost of all were the gallant exiles of the Irish brigade." Voltaire, however, speaking of the troops who charged on the right flank, takes care to say "Les Irlandais les secondent." Isut, perhaps, the best attestation to the services of the brigade was the imprecation on the Penal Code wrung from King George when he was told of the events of that day, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such sub M. de Voltaire, though he gives a long account of this battle, and cannot avoid naming a least the Irish brigade, has not one word of praise for it. This is the more notable, as he had D'Argenson's Memoir before him, who speaks of them as proving themselves excellent troops, especially against thejects!" reflected glory of Irish heroism, but because disaster to England was followed, as usual, by a relaxation of the atrocities inflicted upon Irish Catholics, under the Penal Code. England, indeed, was in profound alarm, and not without cause, for, not only had the campaign in the Netherlands gone so decidedly against her, but, almost immediately after, it became known that preparations were on foot in France for a new invasion on behalf of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender." The prince was now twenty-five years of age. He had been wasting away his youth at Rome, where his father, James III., then resided. In 1742 he was recalled to France, and some hopes were held out of giving him an armed force of French, Scotch, and Irish, to assert his father's rights to the crown of England. For three years he had waited impatiently for his opportunity; but the times were then so busy that nobody thought of him. It was the Cardinal de Tencin, who one day advised him to wait no longer, but go with a few friends to some point in the north of Scotland. "Your presence alone," said the cardinal, "will create for you a party and an army; then France must send you succour." In short, the prince consulted with a few of his friends,chiefly Irish officers; an armed vessel of eighteen guns was placed at his disposal by an Irish merchant of Nantes, named Walsh; a French ship-of-war was ordered to escort him; and on the 12th of June, just one month after Fontenoy, he set sail with only seven attendants upon his adventurous errand. The seven who accompanied him were the Marquis of Tullibardine, brother to the Duke of Athol, Sir Thomas Sheridan, Colonel O'Sullivan ("who was appointed," says Voltaire, Maréchal des Logis of the army not yet in being"), a Scotch officer named MacDonald, an Irish officer named Kelly, and an English one named Strickland. They landed on the bare shore of Moidart, in the Highlands, where the prince was quickly joined by some of the Jacobite clans, the MacDonald, Lochiel, Cameron, and Fraser. The Dukes of Argyle and Queensberry, however, who controlled other powerful cians, kept aloof, and prepared to take the part of the reigning king. King George was at this moment in Hanover; but the lords of his council of regency made the best arrangements possible for resistance in a country so nearly stripped of all its regular troops, and set a price upon the prince's head. In this emergency it was necessary to think of Ireland, as it was considerd certain that the prince must have had agents in that country to stir up its ancient Jaco bite spirit; besides, it was known that the principal chiefs of the enterprise were officers of the Irish brigade, coming flushed from Fontenoy; and the Government thought it was not in the nature of things that there could be tranquillity in Ireland. There must surely be an arrangement either for stirring an insurrection in the island itself, or for sending fighting men to Scotland. On the whole, it was judged needful, in this dangerous crisis of British affairs, to show some indulgence to the Irish; and, accordingly, in the month of September, just as Prince Charles Edward was leading his mountaineers into Edinburgh, an amiable viceroy was sent to Dublin, bearing what might be called a message of peace to Ireland." This was the Earl of Chesterfield, who had a reputation for gallantry, accomplishments, and an easy disposition. What Lord Chesterfield's secret instructions were, we can only judge by the course of his administration. He at once put a stop to the business of priest-hunting, and allowed the Catholic chapels in Dublin and elsewhere to be opened for service. On the 8th of October he met Parliament; and although in his speech on that occasion he recommended the Houses to turn their attention to the laws against Popery and consider whether they needed any amendment, yet this was expressed in a cold and rather equivocal manner, which greatly disgusted the fierce and gloomy bigots of the "Ascendency." He recommended no new penal laws, thinking probably there were quite enough already, and did not even introduce that traditional exhortation to the Houses- to exercise extreme vigilance in putting in force that Penal Code which they already had in such high perfection. He soon made it evident, in short, that active persecution was to be suspended, although that indulgence was contrary to law; and those too zealous magistrates who had earned distinction by active prosecution of Papists under former viceroys found only discouragement and rebuke at the Castle. Chancellors, judges, and sheriffs were made to understand that if they would do the king's business aright this time, they must leave "the common enemy" in peace for the present. But Lord Chesterfield, immediately on coming over, employed many confidential agents, or, in short, spies, to find out what the Catholics were doing, thinking of, and talking about-whether there were any secret meetings-above all, whether there was any apparent diminution in the numbers of young men at fairs and other gatherings; in short, whether there was Is apartment one morning, while he was sipping his chocolate in bed, with the startling intelligence "that the Papists were rising " in Connaught, "Ah!" he said, looking at his watch, "'tis nine o'clock; time for them to rise." There was evidently no dealing with such a viceroy as this, who showed such insensibility to the perils of Protestantism and the evil designs of the dangerous Papists. Indeed, he was seen to distinguish by his peculiar admiration a Papist beauty, Miss Ambrose, whom he declared to be the only "dangerous Papist" he had met in Ireland. any migration to Scotland, or any uneasy him with the fact that his own coachman movement of the people, as if in expecta- was in the habit of going to Mass. tion of something coming.* Nothing of it possible?" cried Chesterfield; "then all this did he find, and, in truth, I will take care the fellow shall not drive nothing of the kind existed. The me there." A courtier burst into his people were perfectly tranquil, not much seeming even to know or to care what was going on in Scotland, enjoying quietly their unwonted exemption from the actual lash of the penal laws, and even repairing to holy wells again without fear of fine and whipping. It is true the lash was still held over them, and they were soon to feel it; true, also, that they were still excluded from all rights and franchises as strictly as ever. Not one penal | law was repealed or altered; but there was at least forbearance towards their worship and their clergy. They might see a venerable priest now walking, in daylight even, from his "registered" parish into another, to perform some rite or service of religion, without fear of informers, of hand-cuffs, and of transportation. Nay, bishops and vicars apostolic could venture to cross the sea, and ordain priests and confirm children, in a quiet way; and it was believed that not even a monk could frighten Lord Chesterfield, who, in fact, had lived for years in France, and re-writes in a kind and paternal manner, exspected a monk quite as much as a rector of the Establishment. Having once satisfied himself that there was no insurrectionary movement in the country, and none likely to be, he was not to be moved from his tolerant course by any complaints or remonstrances. Far from yielding to the feigned alarm of those who solicited him to raise new regiments, he sent four battalions of the soldiers then in Ireland to reinforce the Duke of Cumberland. He discouraged jobs, kept down expenses, took his pleasure, and made himself exceedingly popular in his intercourse with Dublin society; and not having forgotten the precepts which he had given to his son, the old beau (he was now fifty-two) pretended, from habit, to be making love to the wives of men of all parties. When some savage Ascendancy Protestant would come to him with tales of alarm, he usually turned the conversation into a tone of light badinage, which perplexed and baffied the man. One came to seriously put his lordship on his guard by acquainting It was during this period of quietude and comparative relief that the excellent Bishop Berkeley, of Cloyne, wrote a pamphlet, in the form of an address to the Roman Catholics of his diocese of Cloyne. He had evidently feared that the Irish Catholics were secretly engaged in a conspiracy to make an insurrection in aid of the Pretender; and horting them to keep the peace and attend quietly to their own industry, though, indeed, the bishop is evidently at a loss for arguments which he can urge upon this proscribed, disfranchised race, why they should take their lot quietly and be loyal to a Government which does not recognize their existence. In the meanwhile, Prince Charles Edward, with his Highlanders, had won the battle of Prestonpans, near Edinburgh (2nd October), and a few days after that victory arrived a French and a Spanish ship, bringing money and a supply of Irish officers, who, having served in France and Spain, were capable of disciplining his rude troops.* He marched south-westward, took and garrisoned Carlisle, advanced through Lancashire, where a body of three hundred English joined his standard, and thence as far as Derby, within thirty leagues of London. Report, which exaggerates everything, represented his army as amounting to thirty thousand men, and all Lancashire as having declared in his favour. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; the shops were closed for a day or two; and Dutch and Hessian troops were brought ever in a great hurry from the Continent. The Franco-Irish sol *Plowden. This worthy writer, as well as his predecessor, Dr. Curry, is very emphatic in establishing the "loya!" attitude of the Irish people upon this occasion. Dr. Curry takes pains to prove "that no Irish Catholic, lay or clerical, was any way en- diers in the service of France now begaged in the Scottish rebellion of 1715." It is proba- came violently excited and impatient. ble that Sheridan, O'Sullivan, Kelly, and other They imagined that a descent upon Eng French-Irish officers, who fought in Scotland, were * Voltaire. land, in the neighbonrhood of Plymouth, an English force at Falkirk. This was would be quite practicable, as the passage the last of its successes. The Duke of is so short from Calais or Boulogue. The Cumberland was now marching into Scotplan was to cross by night with ten thou-land with a considerable army, and arsand men and some cannon. Once dis-rived in Edinburgh on the 10th of Februembarked, a great part of England would ary. Prince Charles Edward was obliged rise to join them, and they could easily to raise the siege of Stirling Castle. The form a junction with the prince, probably winter was severe, and subsistence was near London. The officers, of whom the scarce. His last resource was now in the most active in this business was Lally, northern Highlands, where there was still demanded, as leader of the expedition, the a force on foot, watching the seaports to Duke de Richelieu, who had fought with receive the supplies which might still be them at Fontenoy. They urged their sent from France; but most of the vsssels point so earnestly that at length permis- destined to that service were captured by sion was granted. But the expedition English cruisers. Three companies of the never took place on anything like the Irish regiment of Fitzjames arrived safescale on which it was projected. M. de ly, and were received by the Highlanders Voltaire, in describing the preparations, with acclamations of joy-the women for once departs from his usual rule so running down to meet them and leading far as to praise an Irishman. He says: the officers' horses by the bridles. Still Lally, who has since then been a lieu- the prince was now hard pressed by the tenant-general, and who died so tragic a English; he retired to Inverness, which death, was the soul of the enterprise. The he made his headquarters; and on the writer of this history, who long worked 23rd of April he learned that the duke, along with him, can affirm that he has steadily advancing through the mounnever seen a man more full of zeal, and tains, had crossed the river Spey, and that there needed nothing to the enter- felt that a decisive battle was now immiprise but possibility. It was impossible nent. On the 27th the two armies were to go to sea in face of the English squad-in presence at Culloden- the prince with rons; and the attempt was regarded in London as absurd."* In fact, only a handful of troops was actually sent; and these troops were not Irish, but Scotch. Lord Drummond, brother of the Duke of Perth, an officer in the French service, set forth in one vessel, by way of the German Sea, and arrived safely at Montrose with three companies of the Royal Ecossais, a Scottish regiment in French service. But before this small reinforcement arrived, the army of the Prince had already retired from the centre of England. It had been diminished and weakened by various causes, the principal of which were jealousies of Highland chiefs against one another, and of lowland lairds against them all, together with a general lack of discipline, and ere long a lack of provisions also. The Jacobite force made the best of its way back to Scotland, and soon after (January 28, 1746), utterly defeated Any attempt of any kind is always regarded in London as absurd; and Voltaire was always too ready to adopt the view of English affairs which the English chose to give. He never wished for the success of the Stuarts; considered the House of Hanover a blessing to England, and did not care for Ireland at all. The reasons why he disliked the Irish were, first, that they were good Catholics, and, next, that the Irish in France were not very modest in asserting their pretensions and demanding recognition of their services. It was Voltaire's correspondent, D'Argenson, when minister, that said once to King Louis, "Those Irish troops give more trouble than all the rest of your majesty's army.' "My enemies say so," answered the king. five thousand men or less, the duke with ten thousand, well supplied with both cavalry and artillery. The English were by this time accustomed to the Highland manner of fighting, which had so intimidated them at first, and with such superiority of numbers and equipments the event could scarcely be doubtful. The prince's small army were totally defeated, with a loss of nine hundred killed and three hundred and twenty prisoners. The prince himself made his way into the mountains, accompanied by his faithful friends, Sheridan and O'Sullivan ; and his adventures, concealments, and ultimate escape, are sufficiently well known. This was the last struggle of the Stuarts, and their cause was now lost utterly and for ever. There were still, from time to time, plots, and even attempts by the Scottish Jacobites to make at least some commencement of a new insurrection, but all in vain. Ever after Jacobitism existed only in songs and toasts, sung and pledged in private society; and many a house in Edinburgh and glen in the Highlands is yet made to ring with those plaintive or warlike lyrics. So long as the prince lived, the health of Prince Charlie was often drunk, or, "The King over the Water;" but he died in Florence in 1788, without legitimate posterity, and the cause of the ancient family sank definitively into the domain of sentimental associations and romantic souvenirs. Almost at the very moment of the battle Marlay's address to the Dublin Grandof Culloden the conciliatory Earl of Ches- Jury, after the suppression of the Scottish terfield was recalled from Ireland. His insurrection. "When posterity read . . . work was done, and done well. "England," that Ireland, where much the greatest part says Plowden, with more than his usual of the inhabitants profess a religion which point and force, "England was out of sometimes has authorized, or at least jusdanger, and Ireland could securely be put tified rebellion, not only preserved peace again under its former régime." After a at home, but contributed to restore it short interregnum, under three lords- amongst his subjects of Great Britain, justices, the Earl of Harrington was ap- will they not believe that the people of pointed lord-lieutenant on the 13th of Ireland were actuated by something more September. than their duty and allegiance? Will they not be convinced that they were animated by a generous sense of gratitude and zeal for their great benefactor, and fully sensible of the happines of being blessed by living under the protection of William," &c. Thus, if Irish Catholics of the present day are willing to plume themselves, as some Catholic writers have done, upon the unshaken loyalty of their ancestors in 1745, there is no doubt that they are fully entitled to all the credit which can come to them from that circumstance. There was certainly no excuse for bringing the Irish back under the unmitigated terrors of the penal laws, on account of any manifestation of turbulence, or of a design "to bring in the Pretender" during | the last insurrection. On this point the a monarch, who, like the glorious King most hostile authorities agree, and, although we do not take credit for the fact as a proof of "loyalty" to the House of Hanover, the fact itself is indisputable. One remarkable witness is worth hearing on this question. In the year 1762, upon a debate in the House of Lords about the expediency of raising five regiments of these Catholics, for the service of the Under Lord Harrington's administration King of Portugal, Doctor Stone (then the debates on money bills formed the chief primate), in answer to some commonplace subject of public interest, and the only field objections against the good faith and on which Irish “patriotism" and the chamloyalty of these people, which were re-pions of English domination tried their vived with virulence on that occasion, declared publicly, in the House of Lords, that "in the year 1747, after that rebellion was entirely suppressed, happening to be in England, he had an opportunity of perusing all the papers of the rebels, and their correspondents, which were seized in the custody of Murray, the Pretender's secretary; and that, after having spent much time and taken great pains in examining them (not without some share of the then common suspicion, that there might be some private understanding and intercourse between them and the Irish Catholics), he could not discover the least trace, hint, or intimation of such intercourse or correspondence in them; or of any of the latter's favouring, abetting, or having been so much as made acquainted with the designs or proceedings of these rebels. And what," he said, "he wondered at most of all was, that in all his researches, he had not met with any passage in any of these papers, from which he could infer that either their Holy Father the Pope, or any of his cardinals, bishops, or other dignitaries of that church, or any of the Irish clergy, had, either, directly or indirectly, encouraged, aided, or approved of, the commencing or carrying on of that rebellion." Another, and still more singular attestation to the same fact is in Chief-Justice strength. It was also becoming a matter more and more important to the English Government, because, notwithstanding the discouragements of trade and the distresses of the country people, Ireland had now a surplus revenue to dispose of, and the patriots naturally supposed this to be fairly applicable to public works within the island. Primate Stone, however, who was now in possession of all the influence of Boulter, and imbued with the same thoroughly British principles, contended that all the surplus revenue of Ireland, as a dependent kingdom, belonged of right to the Crown. The patriot party were led chiefly by two men-Henry Boyle, the Speaker of the House, and the Prime Sergeant, Antony Malone-the former an ambitious and intriguing politician, the latter an eloquent debater and most able constitutional lawyer. Outside of the House the patriotic spirit of the people-that is, the Protestant peoplewas inflamed by the writings of Dr. Charles Lucas, who had now, from petty corporation politics, risen to the height of the great argument of national independence. But it soon appeared that the Irish House of Commons was not yet prepared for the reception of such bold doctrines. Lucas and his writings were made the subject of a resolution in the House of Commons; he was but faintly |