A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




Thus it was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or
through torpor thus unaccountably base, that actually, on the 30th of
May, not having raised their standard before the 26th, the rebels had
already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford
in its whole southern division--Ross and Duncannon only excepted; of
which the latter was not liable to capture by _coup de main_, and the
other was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northern
division of the county was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style,
and through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of plans.
Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels had taken up
a position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station from which they could
march with advantage upon the town of Gorey, lying seven miles to the
northward. On the 1st of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place
between a mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of Gorey
and a strong detachment from the rebel camp. Many persons at the time
regarded this as the best fought action in the whole war. The two
parties had met about two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain
that, if the yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at
the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most murderous one
to the rebels. As it was, they escaped, though with considerable loss
of honor. Yet even this they were allowed to retrieve within a few
days, in a remarkable way, and with circumstances of still greater
scandal to the military discretion in high quarters than had attended
the movements of General Fawcet in the south.

On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under the command of
Major General Loftus, had assembled at Gorey. The plan was, to march
by two different roads upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; and
this plan was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel army
had put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this counter movement
full and timely information had been given by a farmer at the royal
headquarters; but such was the obstinate infatuation, that no officer
of rank would condescent to give him a hearing. The consequences may
be imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of courage, but
presumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led a division upon one of the
two roads, having no scouts, nor taking any sort of precaution. Suddenly
he found his line of march crossed by the enemy in great strength: he
refused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head; and a great
part of the advanced detachment was slaughtered on the spot, and his
artillery captured. General Loftus, advancing on the parallel road,
heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim
militia to the aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men,
were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who could not
cross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from the
encumbrance of his artillery, had at length reached the scene of action
by a long circuit, he found himself in the following truly ludicrous
position: The rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey,
and possessed themselves of that place; the general had thus lost his
head quarters, without having seen the army whom he had suffered to
slip past him in the dark. He marched back disconsolately to Gorey,
took a look at the rebel posts which now occupied the town in strength,
was saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally retreated
out of the county.

This movement of General Loftus, and the previous one of General Fawcet,
circumstantially illustrate the puerile imbecility with which the royal
cause was then conducted. Both movements foundered in an hour, through
surprises, against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunately
for the government, the affairs of the rebels were managed even worse.
Two sole enterprises were undertaken by them after this, previously
to the closing battle of Vinegar Hill; both being of the very utmost
importance to their interests, and both sure of success if they had
been pushed forward in time. The first was the attack upon Ross,
undertaken on the 29th of May, the day after the capture of Enniscorthy.
Had that attack been pressed forward without delay, there never were
two opinions as to the certainty of its success; and, _having_
succeeded, it would have laid open to the rebels the important counties
of Waterford and Kilkenny. Being delayed until the 5th of June, the
assault was repulsed with prodigious slaughter, The other was the
attack upon Arklow, in the north. On the capture of Gorey, on the night
of June 4, as the immediate consequence of Colonel Walpole's defeat,
had the rebels advanced upon Arklow, they would have found it for
some days totally undefended; the whole garrison having retreated in
panic, early on June 5, to Wicklow. The capture of this important place
would have laid open the whole road to the capital; would probably
have caused a rising in that great city; and, in any event, would have
indefinitely prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions of
government. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination,
however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th, and then advanced
with what seemed the overpowering force of 27,000 men. It is a striking
lesson upon the subject of procrastination, that, precisely on that
morning of June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless. Until then,
the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitants whatsoever.
Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison had been ordered back from Wicklow,
and reënforced by a crack English regiment, (the Durham Fencibles,)
on whom chiefly at this critical hour had devolved the defence, which
was peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, but
brilliant, masterly, and perfectly successful.

This obstinate and fiercely-contested battle of Arklow was indeed, by
general consent, the hinge on which the rebellion turned. Nearly 30,000
men, armed every man of them with pikes, and 5000 with muskets,
supported also by some artillery, sufficiently well served to do
considerable execution at a most important point in the line of defence,
could not be defeated without a very trying struggle. And here, again,
it is worthy of record, that General Needham, who commanded on this
day, would have followed the example of Generals Fawcet and Loftus,
and have ordered a retreat, had he not been determinately opposed by
Colonel Skerret, of the Durham regiment. Such was the imbecility, and
the want of moral courage, on the part of the military leaders; for
it would be unjust to impute any defect in animal courage to the
feeblest of these leaders. General Needham, for example, exposed his
person, without reserve, throughout the whole of this difficult day.
Any amount of cannon shot he could face cheerfully, but not a trying
responsibility.

From the defeat of Arklow, the rebels gradually retired, between the 9th
and the 20th of June, to their main military position of Vinegar Hill,
which lies immediately above the town of Enniscorthy, and had fallen into
their hands, concurrently with that place, on the 28th of May. Here their
whole forces, with the exception of perhaps 6000, who attacked General
Moore (ten and a half years later, the Moore of Corunna) when marching on
the 26th towards Wexford, had been concentrated; and to this point,
therefore, as a focus, had the royal army, 13,000 strong, with a
respectable artillery, under the supreme command of General Lake,
converged in four separate divisions, about the 19th and 20th of June.
The great blow was to be struck on the 21st; and the plan was, that the
royal forces, moving to the assault of the rebel position upon four lines
at right angles to each other, (as if, for instance, from the four
cardinal points to the same centre,) should surround their encampment,
and shut up every avenue to escape. On this plan, the field of battle
would have been one vast slaughter house; for quarter was not granted on
either side. [4] But the quadrille, if it were ever seriously concerted,
was entirely defeated by the failure of General Needham, who did not
present himself with _his_ division until nine o'clock, a full half hour
after the battle was over, and thus earned the, _sobriquet of the late_
[5] _General Needham._ Whether the failure were really in this officer,
or (as was alleged by his apologists) had been already preconcerted in
the inconsistent orders issued to him by General Lake, with the covert
intention, as many believe, of mercifully counteracting his own scheme of
wholesale butchery, to this day remains obscure. The effect of that
delay, in whatever way caused, was for once such as must win every body's
applause. The action had commenced at seven o'clock in the morning; by
half past eight, the whole rebel army was in flight; and, naturally
making for the only point left unguarded, it escaped with no great
slaughter (but leaving behind all its artillery, and a good deal of
valuable plunder) through what was facetiously called ever afterwards
_Needham's Gap_. After this capital rout of Vinegar Hill, the rebel army
day by day mouldered away. A large body, however, of the fiercest and
most desperate continued for some time to make flying marches in all
directions, according to the positions of the king's forces and the
momentary favor of accidents. Once or twice they were brought to action
by Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously enough, once
more they were suffered to escape by the eternal delays of the "late
Needham." At length, however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of
local success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county of Dublin.
Many desperadoes, however, took up their quarters for a long time in the
dwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade of
marauders, but ludicrously designating themselves the Babes in the Wood.
It is an inexplicable fact, that many deserters from the militia
regiments, who had behaved well throughout the campaign, and adhered
faithfully to their colors, now resorted to this confederation of the
woods; from which it cost some trouble to dislodge them. Another party,
in the woods and mountains of Wicklow, were found still more formidable,
and continued to infest the adjacent country through the ensuing winter.
These were not finally ejected from their lairs until after one of their
chiefs had been killed in a night skirmish by a young man defending his
house, and the other chief, weary of his savage life, had surrendered
himself to transportation.

It diffused general satisfaction throughout Ireland, that, on the very
day before the final engagement of Vinegar Hill, Lord Cornwallis made
his entry into Dublin as the new lord lieutenant. A proclamation,
issued early in July, of general amnesty to all who had shed no blood
except on the field of battle, notified to the country the new spirit
of policy which now distinguished the government; and, doubtless, that
one merciful change worked marvels in healing the agitations of the
land. Still it was thought necessary that severe justice should take
its course amongst the most conspicuous leaders or agents in the
insurrection. Martial law still prevailed; and under that law we know,
through a speech of the Duke of Wellington's, how entirely the very
elements of justice are dependent upon individual folly or caprice.
Many of those who had shown the greatest generosity, and with no slight
risk to themselves, were now selected to suffer. Bagenal Harvey, a
Protestant gentleman, who had held the supreme command of the rebel
army for some time with infinite vexation to himself, and taxed with
no one instance of cruelty or excess, was one of those doomed to
execution. He had possessed an estate of nearly three thousand per
annum; and at the same time with him was executed another gentleman,
of more than three times that estate, Cornelius Grogan. Singular it
was, that men of this condition and property, men of feeling and
refinement, should have staked the happiness of their families upon
a contest so forlorn. Some there were, however, and possibly these
gentlemen, who could have explained their motives intelligibly enough:
they had been forced by persecution, and actually baited into the ranks
of the rebels. One picturesque difference in the deaths of these two
gentlemen was remarkable, as contrasted with their previous habits.
Grogan was constitutionally timid; and yet he faced the scaffold and
the trying preparations of the executioner with fortitude. On the other
hand, Bagenal Harvey, who had fought several duels with coolness,
exhibited considerable trepidation in his last moments. Perhaps, in
both, the difference might be due entirely to some physical accident
of health or momentary nervous derangement. [6]

Among the crowd, however, of persons who suffered death at this
disastrous era, there were two that merit a special commemoration for
their virtuous resistance, in disregard of all personal risk, to a
horrid fanaticism of cruelty. One was a butcher, the other a seafaring
man--both rebels. But they must have been truly generous, brave, and
noble-minded men. During the occupation of Wexford by the rebel army,
they were repeatedly the sole opponents, at great personal risk, to
the general massacre then meditated by some few Popish bigots. And,
finally, when all resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they both
demanded resolutely from the chief patron of this atrocious policy
that he should fight themselves, armed in whatever way he might prefer,
and, as they expressed it, "prove himself a man," before he should be
at liberty to sport in this wholesale way with innocent blood.

One painful fact I will state in taking leave of this subject; and
_that_, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain any thing I have
said in disparagement of the government; by which, however, I mean, in
justice, the local administration of Ireland. For, as to the supreme
government in England, that body must be supposed, at the utmost, to have
passively acquiesced in the recommendations of the Irish cabinet, even
when it interfered so far. In particular, the scourgings and
flagellations resorted to in Wexford and Kildare, &c., must have been
originally suggested by minds familiar with the habits of the Irish
aristocracy in the treatment of dependants. Candid Irishmen will admit
that the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in coffee
houses or other menial dependants,--a habit which, in England, would be
met instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery,
--is not yet altogether obsolete in Ireland. [7] Thirty years ago it was
still more prevalent, and presupposed that spirit and temper in the
treatment of menial dependants, out of which, doubtless, arose the
practice of judicial (_i.e._, tentative) flagellations. Meantime, that
fact with which I proposed to close my recollections of this great
tumult, and which seems to be a sufficient guaranty for the very severest
reflections on the spirit of the government, is expressed significantly
in the terms, used habitually by Roman Catholic gentlemen, in prudential
exculpation of themselves, when threatened with inquiry for their conduct
during these times of agitation: "I thank my God that no man can charge
me justly with having saved the life of any Protestant, or his house from
pillage, by my intercession with the rebel chiefs." How! Did men boast of
collusion with violence and the spirit of massacre! What did _that_ mean?
It meant this: Some Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleaded truly, as a
reason for special indulgence to themselves, that any influence which
might belong to them, on the score of religion or of private friendship,
with the rebel authorities, had been used by them on behalf of persecuted
Protestants, either in delivering them altogether, or in softening their
doom. But, to the surprise of every body, this plea was so far from being
entertained favorably by the courts of inquiry, that, on the contrary, an
argument was built upon it, dangerous in the last degree to the pleader.
"You admit, then," it was retorted, "having had this very considerable
influence upon the rebel councils; your influence extended to the saving
of lives; in that case we must suppose you to have been known privately
as their friend and supporter." Thus to have delivered an innocent man
from murder, argued that the deliverer must have been an accomplice of
the murderous party. Readily it may be supposed that few would be
disposed to urge such a vindication, when it became known in what way it
was likely to operate. The government itself had made it perilous to
profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in his
callousness and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to himself on a
path so closely beset with rocks.


FOOTNOTES

[1] "_The only ducal house_."--That is, the only one not royal. There are
four provinces in Ireland--_Ulster, Connaught, Munster,_ which three give
old traditional titles to three personages of the blood royal. Remains
only _Leinster_, which gives the title of duke to the Fitzgeralds.

[2] "_Present French king_."--Viz., in the year 1833.

[3] "_To have pardoned_," &c.--This was written under circumstances of
great hurry; and, were it not for that palliation, would be inexcusably
thoughtless. For, in a double sense, it is doubtful how far the
government _could_ have pardoned Lord Edward. First, in a prudential
sense, was it possible (except in the spirit of a German sentimentalizing
drama) to pardon a conspicuous, and within certain limits a very
influential, officer for publicly avowing opinions tending to treason,
and at war with the constitutional system of the land which fed him and
which claimed his allegiance? Was it possible, in point of prudence or in
point of dignity, to overlook such anti-national sentiments, whilst
neither disavowed nor ever likely to be disavowed? Was this possible,
regard being had to the inevitable effect of such _unearned_ forgiveness
upon the army at large? But secondly, in a merely logical sense of
practical self-consistency, would it have been rational or even
intelligible to pardon a man who probably _would_ not be pardoned; that
is, who must (consenting or not consenting) benefit by the concessions of
the pardon, whilst disowning all reciprocal obligations?

[4] "_For quarter was not granted on either side_."--I repeat, as all
along and necessarily I have repeated, that which orally I was told at
the time, or which subsequently I have read in published accounts. But
the reader is aware by this time of my steadfast conviction, that more
easily might a camel go through the eye of a needle, than a reporter,
fresh from a campaign blazing with partisanship, and that partisanship
representing ancient and hereditary feuds, could by possibility cleanse
himself from the _virus_ of such a prejudice.

[5] The same jest was applied to Mr. Pitt's brother. When first lord of
the Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even 10 or 11, P.M., were
told that his lordship was riding in the park. On this account, partly,
but more pointedly with a malicious reference to the contrast between his
languor and the fiery activity of his father, the first earl, he was
jocularly called, _the late Lord Chatham_.

[6] Perhaps also _not_. Possibly enough there may be no call for any such
_exceptional_ solution; for, after all, there may be nothing to solve--no
_dignus vindice nodus_. As regards the sudden interchange of characters
on the scaffold,--the constitutionally brave man all at once becoming
timid, and the timid man becoming brave,--it must be remembered, that the
particular sort of courage applicable to duelling, when the danger is
much more of a fugitive and momentary order than that which invests a
battle lasting for hours, depends almost entirely upon a man's
_confidence in his own luck_--a peculiarity of mind which exists
altogether apart from native resources of courage, whether moral or
physical: usually this mode of courage is but a transformed expression
for a sanguine temperament. A man who is habitually depressed by a
constitutional taint of despondency may carry into a duel a sublime
principle of calm, self-sacrificing courage, as being possibly utterly
without hope--a courage, therefore, which has to fight with internal
resistance, to which there may be nothing corresponding in a cheerful
temperament.

But there is another and separate agency through which the fear of death
may happen to act as a disturbing force, and most irregularly as viewed
in relation to moral courage and strength of mind. This anomalous force
is the imaginative and shadowy terror with which different minds recoil
from death--not considered as an agony or torment, but considered as a
mystery, and, next after God, as the most infinite of mysteries. In a
brave man this terror may happen to be strong; in a pusillanimous man,
simply through inertness and original feebleness of imagination, may
happen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating
between death as an agony and death as a mystery, not only exists with a
corresponding set of consequences accordingly as one or other prevails,
but is sometimes consciously contemplated and put into the scales of
comparison and counter valuation. For instance, one of the early Csesars
reviewed the case thus: "_Emori nolo; me esse mortuum nihil cestumo_:
From death as the act and process of dying, I revolt; but as to death,
viewed as a permanent state or condition, I don't value it at a straw."
What this particular Caesar detested, and viewed with burning malice, was
death the agony--death the physical torment. As to death the mystery,
want of sensibility to the infinite and the shadowy had disarmed _that_
of its terrors for him. Yet, on the contrary, how many are there who face
the mere physical anguish of dying with stern indifference! But death the
mystery,--death that, not satisfied with changing our objective, may
attack even the roots of our subjective,--_there_ lies the mute,
ineffable, voiceless horror before which all human courage is abashed,
even as all human resistance becomes childish when measuring itself
against gravitation.

[7] "_Not yet altogether obsolete_."--Written in 1833.




CHAPTER X.

FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND REBELLION.


The decisive battle of Vinegar Hill took place at midsummer; and with
that battle terminated the First Rebellion. Two months later, a French
force, not making fully a thousand men, under the command of General
Humbert, landed on the west coast of Ireland, and again roused the
Irish peasantry to insurrection. This latter insurrection, and the
invasion which aroused it, naturally had a peculiar interest for Lord
Westport and myself, who, in our present abode of Westport House, were
living in its local centre.

I, in particular, was led, by hearing on every side the conversation
reverting to the dangers and tragic incidents of the era, separated
from us by not quite two years, to make inquiries of every body who
had personally participated in the commotions. Records there were on
every side, and memorials even in our bed rooms, of this French visit;
for, at one time, they had occupied Westport House in some strength.
The largest town in our neighborhood was Castlebar, distant about
eleven Irish miles. To this it was that the French addressed their
very earliest efforts. Advancing rapidly, and with their usual style
of theatrical confidence, they had obtained at first a degree of success
which was almost surprising to their own insolent vanity, and which,
long afterwards, became a subject of bitter mortification to our own
army. Had there been at this point any energy at all corresponding to
that of the enemy, or commensurate to the intrinsic superiority of our
own troops in steadiness, the French would have been compelled to lay
down their arms. The experience of those days, however, showed how
deficient is the finest composition of an army, unless where its martial
qualities have been developed by practice; and how liable is all
courage, when utterly inexperienced to sudden panics. This gasconading
advance, which would have foundered utterly against a single battalion
of the troops which fought in 1812-13 amongst the Pyrenees, was here
for the moment successful.

The bishop of this see, Dr. Stock, with his whole household, and,
indeed, his whole pastoral charge, became, on this occasion, prisoners
to the enemy. The republican head quarters were fixed for a time in
the episcopal palace; and there it was that General Humbert and his
staff lived in familiar intercourse with the bishop, who thus became
well qualified to record (which he soon afterwards did in an anonymous
pamphlet) the leading circumstances of the French incursion, and the
consequent insurrection in Connaught, as well as the most striking
features in the character and deportment of the republican officers.
Riding over the scene of these transactions daily for some months, in
company with Dr. Peter Browne, the Dean of Ferns, (an illegitimate son
of the late Lord Altamont, and, therefore, half brother to the present,)
whose sacred character had not prevented him from taking that military
part which seemed, in those difficult moments, a duty of elementary
patriotism laid upon all alike, I enjoyed many opportunities for
checking the statements of the bishop. The small body of French troops
which undertook this remote service had been detached in one half
from the army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleon
in his first foreign campaign, viz., the Italian campaign of 1796,
which accomplished the conquest of Northern Italy. Those from Germany
showed, by their looks and their meagre condition, how much they had
suffered; and some of them, in describing their hardships, told their
Irish acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had occurred in
the previous winter of 1797, they had slept in holes made four feet below
the surface of the snow. One officer declared solemnly that he had not
once undressed, further than by taking off his coat, for a period of
twelve months. The private soldiers had all the essential qualities
fitting them for a difficult and trying service: "intelligence, activity,
temperance, patience to a surprising degree, together with the exactest
discipline." This is the statement of their candid and upright enemy.
"Yet," says the bishop, "with all these martial qualities, if you except
the grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye. Their stature, for the
most part, was low, their complexion pale and yellow, their clothes much
the worse for wear: to a superficial observer, they would have appeared
incapable of enduring any hardship. These were the men, however, of whom
it was presently observed, that they could be well content to live on
bread or potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street their
bed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of
heaven." "How vast," says Cicero, "is the revenue of Parsimony!" and, by
a thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is the strength that
descends upon the feeble through Temperance!

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.