Maurice Tiernay, Soldier of Fortune

‘Not so, Merochamp; I ‘ll be on horseback to-morrow or the day after at furthest; and if I never were to take the field again, there are others, yourself amongst the number, well able to supply my place: but as to Tiernay – what says he?’

‘Make it duty, sir, and I shall go, or remain here with an easy conscience,’ said I.

‘Then duty be it, boy,’ said he; ‘and Merochamp will tell you everything, for all this discussion has wearied me much, and I cannot endure more talking.’

‘Sit down here,’ said the aide-de-camp, pointing to a seat at his side, ‘and five minutes will suffice.’

He opened a large map of Ireland before us on the table, and running his finger along the coast-line of the western side, stopped abruptly at the bay of Lough Swilly.

‘There,’ said he, ‘that is the spot. There, too, should have been our own landing! The whole population of the north will be with them – not such allies as these fellows, but men accustomed to the use of arms, able and willing to take the field. They say that five thousand men could hold the passes of those mountains against thirty.’

‘Who says this?’ said I, for I own it that I had grown marvellously sceptical as to testimony.

‘Napper Tandy, who is a general of division, and one of the leaders of this force’; and he went on: ‘The utmost we can do will be to hold these towns to the westward till they join us. We may stretch away thus far,’ and he moved his finger towards the direction of Leitrim, but no farther. ‘You will have to communicate with them; to explain what we have done, where we are, and how we are. Conceal nothing – let them hear fairly that this patriot force is worth nothing, and that even to garrison the towns we take they are useless. Tell them, too, the sad mistake we made by attempting to organise what never can be disciplined, and let them not arm a population, as we have done, to commit rapine and plunder.’

Two letters were already written – one addressed to Rey, the other to Napper Tandy. These I was ordered to destroy if I should happen to become a prisoner; and with the map of Ireland, pen-marked in various directions, by which I might trace my route, and a few lines to Colonel Charost, whom I was to see on passing at Killala, I was dismissed.’ When I approached the bedside to take leave of the general he was sound asleep. The excitement of talking having passed away, he was pale as death, and his lips totally colourless. Poor fellow, he was exhausted-looking and weary, and I could not help thinking, as I looked on him, that he was no bad emblem of the cause he had embarked in!

I was to take my troop-horse as far as Killala, after which I was to proceed either on foot, or by such modes of conveyance as I could find, keeping as nigh the coast as possible, and acquainting myself, so far as I might do, with the temper and disposition of the people as I went. It was a great aid to my sinking courage to know that there really was an Army of the North, and to feel myself accredited to hold intercourse with the generals commanding it.

Such was my exultation at this happy discovery, that I was dying to burst in amongst my comrades with the tidings, and proclaim, at the same time, my own high mission. Merochamp had strictly enjoined my speedy departure without the slightest intimation to any, whither I was going, or with what object.

A very small cloak-bag held all my effects, and with this slung at my saddle I rode out of the town just as the church clock was striking twelve. It was a calm, starlight night, and once a short distance from the town, as noiseless and still as possible; a gossoon, one of the numerous scouts we employed in conveying letters or bringing intelligence, trotted along on foot beside me to show the way, for there was a rumour that some of the Royalist cavalry still loitered about the passes to capture our despatch bearers, or make prisoners of any stragglers from the army.

These gossoons, picked up by chance, and selected for no other qualification than because they were keen-eyed and swift of foot, were the most faithful and most worthy creatures we met with. In no instance were they ever known to desert to the enemy, and, stranger still, they were never seen to mix in the debauchery and excesses so common to all the volunteers of the rebel camp. Their intelligence was considerable, and to such a pitch had emulation stimulated them in the service, that there was no danger they would not incur in their peculiar duties.

My companion on the present occasion was a little fellow of about thirteen years of age, and small and slight even for that; we knew him as ‘Peter,’ but whether he had any other name, or what, I was ignorant. He was wounded by a sabre-cut across the hand, which nearly severed the fingers from it, at the bridge of Castlebar, but, with a strip of linen bound round it, now he trotted along as happy and careless as if nothing ailed him.

I questioned him as we went, and learned that his father had been a herd in the service of a certain Sir Roger Palmer, and his mother a dairymaid in the same house, but as the patriots had sacked and burned the ‘Castle,’ of course they were now upon the world. He was a good deal shocked at my asking what part his father took on the occasion of the attack, but for a very different reason than that which I suspected.

‘For the cause, of course!’ replied he, almost indignantly; ‘why wouldn’t he stand up for ould Ireland!’

‘And your mother – what did she do?’

He hung down his head, and made no answer till I repeated the question.

‘Faix,’ said he slowly and sadly, ‘she went and towld the young ladies what was goin’ to be done, and if it hadn’t been that the “boys” caught Tim Haynes, the groom, going off to Foxford with a letter, we’d have had the dragoons down upon us in no time! They hanged Tim, but they let the young ladies away, and my mother with them, and off they all went to Dublin.’

‘And where’s your father now?’ I asked.

‘He was drowned in the bay of Killala four days ago. He went with a party of others to take oatmeal from a sloop that was wrecked in the bay, and an English cruiser came in at the time and fired on them; at the second discharge the wreck and all upon it went down!’

He told all these things without any touch of sorrow in voice or manner. They seemed to be the ordinary chances of war, and so he took them. He had three brothers and a sister; of the former, two were missing, the third was a scout; and the girl – she was but nine years old – was waiting on a canteen, and mighty handy, he said, for she knew a little French already, and understood the soldiers when they asked for a goutte, or wanted du feu for their pipes.

Such, then, was the credit side of the account with Fortune, and, strange enough, the boy seemed satisfied with it; and although a few days had made him an orphan and houseless, he appeared to feel that the great things in store for his country were an ample recompense for all. Was this, then, patriotism? Was it possible that one, untaught and unlettered as he was, could think national freedom cheap at such a cost? If I thought so for a moment, a very little further inquiry undeceived me. Religious rancour, party feuds, the hate of the Saxon – a blind, ill-directed, unthinking hate – were the motives which actuated him. A terrible retribution for something upon somebody, an awful wiping out of old scores, a reversal of the lot of rich and poor, were the main incentives to his actions, and he was satisfied to stand by at the drawing of this great lottery, even without holding a ticket in it!

It was almost the first moment of calm reflective thought I had enjoyed, as I rode along thus in the quiet stillness of the night, and I own that my heart began to misgive me as to the great benefits of our expedition. I will not conceal the fact, that I had been disappointed in every expectation I had formed of Ireland.

The bleak and barren hills of Mayo, the dreary tracts of mountain and morass, were about as unworthy representatives of the boasted beauty and fertility, as were the half-clad wretches who flocked around us of that warlike people of whom we had heard so much. Where were the chivalrous chieftains with their clans behind them? Where the thousands gathering around a national standard? Where that high-souled patriotism, content to risk fortune, station – all, in the conflict for national independence? A rabble led on by a few reckless debauchees, and two or three disreputable or degraded priests, were our only allies; and even these refused to be guided by our councils, or swayed by our authority. I half suspected Serasin was right when he said – ‘Let the Directory send thirty thousand men and make it a French province, but let us not fight an enemy to give the victory to the sans-culottes.’

As we neared the pass of Barnageeragh, I turned one last look on the town of Castlebar, around which, at little intervals of space, the watch-fires of our pickets were blazing; all the rest of the place was in darkness.

It was a strange and a thrilling thought to think that there, hundreds of miles from their home, without one link that could connect them to it, lay a little army in the midst of an enemy’s country, calm, self-possessed, and determined. How many, thought I, are destined to leave it? How many will bring back to our dear France the memory of this unhappy struggle?

CHAPTER XXV. A PASSING VISIT TO KILLALA

I found a very pleasant party assembled around the bishop’s breakfast-table at Killala. The bishop and his family were all there, with Charost and his staff, and some three or four other officers from Ballina. Nothing could be less constrained, more easy, or more agreeable, than the tone of intimacy which in a few days had grown up between them. A cordial good feeling seemed to prevail on every subject, and even the reserve which might be thought natural on the momentous events then happening was exchanged for a most candid and frank discussion of all that was going forward, which, I must own, astonished as much as it gratified me.

The march on Castlebar, the choice of the mountain-road, ‘which led past the position occupied by the Royalists, the attack and capture of the artillery, had all to be related by me for the edification of such as were not conversant with French; and I could observe that however discomfited by the conduct of the militia, they fully relied on the regiments of the line and the artillery. It was amusing, too, to see with what pleasure they listened to all our disparagement of the Irish volunteers.

Every instance we gave of insubordination or disobedience delighted them, while our own blundering attempts to manage the people, the absurd mistakes we fell into, and the endless misconceptions of their character and habits, actually convulsed them with laughter.

‘Of course,’ said the bishop to us, ‘you are prepared to hear that there is no love lost between you, and that they are to the full as dissatisfied with you as you are dissatisfied with them?’

‘Why, what can they complain of?’ asked Charost, smiling; ‘we gave them the place of honour in the very last engagement!’

‘Very true, you did so, and they reaped all the profit of the situation. Monsieur Tiernay had just told the havoc that grape and round shot scattered amongst the poor creatures. However, it is not of this they complain – it is their miserable fare, the raw potatoes, their beds in open fields and highways, while the French, they say, eat of the best and sleep in blankets; they do not understand this inequality, and perhaps it is somewhat hard to comprehend.’

‘Patriotism ought to be proud of such little sacrifices,’ said Charost, with an easy laugh; ‘besides, it is only a passing endurance: a month hence, less, perhaps, will see us dividing the spoils, and revelling in the conquest of Irish independence.’

‘You think so, colonel?’ asked the bishop, half slyly.

‘Parbleu! to be sure I do – and you?’

‘I’m just as sanguine,’ said the bishop, ‘and fancy that, about a month hence, we shall be talking of all these things as matters of history; and while sorrowing over some of the unavoidable calamities of the event, preserving a grateful memory of some who came as enemies but left us warm friends.’

‘If such is to be the turn of fortune,’ said Charost, with more seriousness than before, ‘I can only say that the kindly feelings will not be one-sided.’

And now the conversation became an animated discussion on the chances of success or failure. Each party supported his opinion ably and eagerly, and with a degree of freedom that was not a little singular to the bystanders. At last, when Charost was fairly answered by the bishop on every point, he asked —

‘But what say you to the Army of the North?’

‘Simply, that I do not believe in such a force,’ rejoined the bishop.

‘Not believe it – not believe on what General Humbert relies at this moment, and to which that officer yonder is an accredited messenger! When I tell you that a most distinguished Irishman, Napper Tandy – ’

‘Napper Tandy!’ repeated the bishop, with a good-humoured smile; ‘the name is quite enough to relieve one of any fears, if they ever felt them. I am not sufficiently acquainted with your language to give him the epithet he deserves, but if you can conceive an empty, conceited man, as ignorant of war as of politics, rushing into a revolution for the sake of a green uniform, and ready to convulse a kingdom that he may be called a major-general, only enthusiastic in his personal vanity, and wanting even in that heroic daring which occasionally dignifies weak capacities – such is Napper Tandy.’

‘What in soldier-phrase we call a “Blague,”’ said Charost, laughing; ‘I’m sorry for it.’

What turn the conversation was about to take I cannot guess, when it was suddenly interrupted by one of the bishop’s servants rushing into the room, with a face bloodless from terror. He made his way up to where the bishop sat, and whispered a few words in his ear.

‘And how is the wind blowing, Andrew?’ asked the bishop, in a voice that all his self-command could not completely steady.

‘From the north, or the north-west, and mighty strong, too, my lord,’ said the man, who trembled in every limb.

The affrighted aspect of the messenger, the excited expression of the bishop’s face, and the question as to the ‘wind,’ at once suggested to me the idea that a French fleet had arrived in the bay, and that the awful tidings were neither more nor less than the announcement of our reinforcement.

‘From the north-west,’ repeated the bishop; ‘then, with God’s blessing, we may be spared.’ And so saying, he arose from the table, and with an effort that showed that the strength to do so had only just returned to him.

‘Colonel Charost, a word with you!’ said he, leading the way into an adjoining room.

‘What is it? – what has happened? – what can it be?’ was asked by each in turn. And now groups gathered at the windows, which all looked into the court of the building, now crowded with people, soldiers, servants, and country-folk gazing earnestly towards the roof of the castle.

‘What’s the matter, Terry?’ asked one of the bishop’s sons, as he threw open the window.

‘Tis the chimbley on fire, Master Robert,’ said the man; ‘the kitchen chimbley, wid those divils of Frinch!’

I cannot describe the burst of laughter that followed the explanation.

So much terror for so small a catastrophe was inconceivable; and whether we thought of Andrew’s horrified face, or the worthy bishop’s pious thanksgiving as to the direction of the wind, we could scarcely refrain from another outbreak of mirth. Colonel Charost made his appearance at the instant, and although his step was hurried, and his look severe, there was nothing of agitation or alarm on his features.

‘Turn out the guard, Truchet, without arms,’ said he. ‘Come with me, Tiernay – an awkward business enough,’ whispered he, as he led me along. ‘These follows have set fire to the kitchen chimney, and we have three hundred barrels of gunpowder in the cave!’ Nothing could be more easy and unaffected than the way he spoke this; and I actually stared at him, to see if his coldness was a mere pretence, but far from it – every gesture and every word showed the most perfect self-possession, with a prompt readiness for action.

When we reached the court, the bustle and confusion had reached its highest, for, as the wind lulled, large masses of inky smoke hung, like a canopy, overhead, through which a forked flame darted at intervals, with that peculiar furnacelike roar that accompanies a jet of fire in confined places. At times, too, as the soot ignited, great showers of bright sparks floated upwards, and afterwards fell, like a fiery rain, on every side. The country-people, who had flocked in from the neighbourhood, were entirely occupied with these signs, and only intent upon saving the remainder of the house, which they believed in great peril, totally unaware of the greater and more imminent danger close beside them.

Already they had placed ladders against the walls, and, with ropes and buckets, were preparing to ascend, when Truchet marched in with his company, in fatigue-jackets, twenty sappers with shovels accompanying them.

‘Clear the courtyard, now,’ said Charost, ‘and leave this matter to us.’

The order was obeyed somewhat reluctantly, it is true, and at last we stood the sole occupants of the spot, the bishop being the only civilian present, he having refused to quit the spot, unless compelled by force.

The powder was stored in a long shed adjoining the stables, and originally used as a shelter for farming tools and utensils. A few tarpaulins we had carried with us from the ships were spread over the barrels, and on this now some sparks of fire had fallen, as the burning soot had been carried in by an eddy of wind.

The first order was, to deluge the tarpaulins with water; and while this was being done, the sappers were ordered to dig trenches in the garden, to receive the barrels. Every man knew the terrible peril so near him; each felt that at any instant a frightful death might overtake him, and yet every detail of the duty was carried on with the coldest unconcern; and when at last the time came to carry away the barrels, on a species of hand-barrow, the fellows stepped in time, as if on the march, and moved in measure, a degree of indifference, which, to judge from the good bishop’s countenance, evidently inspired as many anxieties for their spiritual welfare as it suggested astonishment and admiration for their courage.

He himself, it must be owned, displayed no sign of trepidation, and in the few words he spoke, or the hints he dropped, exhibited every quality of a brave man.

At moments the peril seemed very imminent indeed. Some timber having caught fire, slender fragments of burning wood fell in masses, covering the men as they went, and falling on the barrels, whence the soldiers brushed them off with cool indifference. The dense, thick smoke, too, obscuring every object a few paces distant, added to the confusion, and occasionally bringing the going and returning parties into collision, a loud shout, or cry, would ensue; and it is difficult to conceive how such a sound thrilled through the heart at such a time. I own that more than once I felt a choking fulness in the throat, as I heard a sudden yell, it seemed so like a signal for destruction. In removing one of the last barrels from the hand-barrow, it slipped, and, falling to the ground, the hoops gave way, it burst open, and the powder fell out on every side. The moment was critical, for the wind was baffling, now wafting the sparks clear away, now whirling them in eddies around us. It was then that an old sergeant of grenadiers threw off his upper coat and spread it over the broken cask, while, with all the composure of a man about to rest himself, he lay down on it, while his comrades went to fetch water. Of course his peril was no greater than that of every one around him, but there was an air of quick determination in his act which showed the training of an old soldier. At length the labour was ended, the last barrel was committed to the earth, and the men, formed into line, were ordered to wheel and march. Never shall I forget the bishop’s face as they moved past. The undersized and youthful look of our soldiers had acquired for them a kind of depreciating estimate in comparison with the more mature and manly stature of the British soldier, to whom, indeed, they offered a strong contrast on parade; but now, as they were seen in a moment of arduous duty, surrounded by danger, the steadiness and courage, the prompt obedience to every command, the alacrity of their movements and the fearless intrepidity with which they performed every act, impressed the worthy bishop so forcibly, that he muttered half aloud, ‘Thank Heaven there are so few of them!’

Colonel Charost resisted steadily the bishop’s proffer to afford the men some refreshment; he would not even admit of an extra allowance of brandy to their messes. ‘If we become too liberal for slight services, we shall never be able to reward real ones,’ was his answer; and the bishop was reduced to the expedient of commemorating what he could not reward. This, indeed, he did with the most unqualified praise, relating in the drawing-room all that he had witnessed, and lauding French valour and heroism to the very highest.

The better to conceal my route, and to avoid the chances of being tracked, I sailed that evening in a fishing-boat for Killybegs, a small harbour on the coast of Donegal, having previously exchanged my uniform for the dress of a sailor, so that if apprehended I should pretend to be an Ostend or Antwerp seaman, washed overboard in a gale at sea. Fortunately for me I was not called on to perform this part, for as my nautical experiences were of the very slightest, I should have made a deplorable attempt at the impersonation. Assuredly the fishermen of the smack would not have been among the number of the ‘imposed upon,’ for a more sea-sick wretch never masqueraded in a blue jacket.

My only clue, when I touched land, was a certain Father Doogan, who lived at the foot of the Bluerock Mountains, about fifteen miles from the coast, and to whom I brought a few lines from one of the Irish officers, a certain Bourke of Ballina. The road led in this direction, and so little intercourse had the shore folk with the interior, that it was with difficulty any one could be found to act as a guide thither. At last an old fellow was discovered, who used to travel these mountains formerly with smuggled tobacco and tea; and although, from the discontinuance of the smuggling trade, and increased age, he had for some years abandoned the line of business, a liberal offer of payment induced him to accompany me as guide.

It was not without great misgivings that I looked at the very old and almost decrepit creature who was to be my companion through a solitary mountain region.

The few stairs he had to mount in the little inn where I put up seemed a sore trial to his strength and chest; but he assured me that, once out of the smoke of the town, and with his foot on the ‘short grass of the sheep-patch,’ he’d be like a four-year-old; and his neighbour having corroborated the assertion, I was fain to believe him.

Determined, however, to make his excursion subservient to profit in his old vocation, he provided himself with some pounds of tobacco and a little parcel of silk handkerchiefs, to dispose of amongst the country-people, with which, and a little bag of meal slung at his back, and a walking-stick in his hand, he presented himself at my door just as the day was breaking.

‘We ‘ll have a wet day I fear, Jerry,’ said I, looking out.

‘Not a bit of it,’ replied he. ‘Tis the spring-tides makes it cloudy there beyant; but when the sun gets up it will be a fine mornin’; but I ‘m thinkin’ ye ‘re strange in them parts’; and this he said with a keen, sharp glance under his eyes.

‘Donegal is new to me, I confess,’ said I guardedly.

‘Yes, and the rest of Ireland, too,’ said he, with a roguish leer. ‘But come along, we ‘ve a good step before us;’ and with these words he led the way down the stairs, holding the balustrade as he went, and exhibiting every sign of age and weakness. Once in the street, however, he stepped out more freely, and, before we got clear of the town, walked at a fair pace, and, to all seeming, with perfect ease.

CHAPTER XXVI. A REMNANT OF ‘FONTENOY’