The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  Dublin was the creation of Elliott’s people and Tone’s, Protestant and Anglo-Irish, descendants of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian and Williamite settlers. The river was flanked by the public buildings of that nation of Protestants, the Custom House with its intricacies of design, the heavy, grandiloquent dome of the Four Courts. On the streets running off the river stood the town residences of the Protestant nobility and the houses of the Protestant merchants and solicitors and barristers. Elliott was pledged to the overthrow of their oligarchy, and yet he could not walk through the streets of Dublin unreminded of the extraordinary triumphs of his caste. They had inherited a maze of mean streets huddled about the Castle. By its side they had raised up this lovely and powerful assertion of their pride. “Why then let a soldier drink.” Iago: Iago’s song in Othello. Trust Tone to quote Iago.

  He paused again at the wide bridge leading to Sackville Street, and leaned over the parapet. Below him, boats and barges creaked against their moorings. The wide brown Liffey seemed to be flowing towards him, although he knew it did not, from the distant centre of Ireland, bearing lake water, twigs of distant trees, the stains of black turf. A skein of arteries, roads, rivers, canals, carried the wealth of Ireland to Dublin. There it stuck, a bit of it. The rest was shipped off to England.

  The door in Dorset Street was opened by Oliver Waring, a young Protestant solicitor whom Elliott knew and trusted. In a small room upstairs Patrick O’Halloran, a pamphleteer and physician, and Jack Russell, a farmer from Kildare, were seated at a round table of dark olive wood.

  Elliott looked around the room and smiled. “Is this the Directory?”

  “Part of it,” Waring said. “And you were lucky to find us here. We are moving to the Liberties.”

  Elliott sat down. “Well, you have my letter, I take it. You asked for an organization of some kind in Mayo and now you have it. There are several hundred men under local leaders who say they will come out if the French land. I cannot answer for their zeal, and I am uncertain as to my authority over them.”

  “There is no question but that the French will land,” Waring said. “But there is no way of knowing when it will be, or where, or how many men.”

  “Or why,” Elliott said. “If they had put five thousand men into Wexford or into the north, two months ago, they would have tipped the scale.”

  “But they did not,” O’Halloran said. “Our task now is to wait for them to come, and then to bring out as many men as we can. This has gone too far. We have no choice.”

  “No,” Elliott said. “We have no choice.”

  “Look here,” Waring said. “We have returns from more than twelve counties, and some of them are well organised. In Longford alone—”

  “I know about Longford,” Elliott said. “I spent the night with Hans Dennistoun.”

  “Then he must have told you about Westmeath and Cavan. And we can tell you about Waterford.”

  “Let me instead tell you about East Mayo. There are three or four hundred Whiteboys there who think they are spoiling for a fight. The men who will bring them out are squireens and faction fighters. A few estate agents and stewards. They have some guns they picked up by raiding gentlemen’s houses.”

  “By your orders?” Jack Russell asked.

  “No,” Elliott said. “After the raids, I gave my approval to them. That should give you a sense of how matters stand. A man who served with the Austrians is drilling them at night, but I don’t think he will have them trained in less than a century. The only man who has any authority over the Papist squireens is John Moore of Ballintubber, and Moore is exactly twenty-two. I doubt if anyone can control the Whiteboys.”

  “But they have been sworn,” Russell said.

  “Oh, yes. Every mother’s son of them is now a member of the Society of United Irishmen. What they think that means, God knows.”

  O’Halloran laughed. “You are not the most cheerful of delegates, Mr. Elliott.”

  “I am not. We had a good chance in ‘ninety-six, and a fair one this spring. We have none at all now, unless the French put in a very large force and do most of the fighting.”

  “Are you making a suggestion, Mr. Elliott?” O’Halloran asked.

  “The north is smashed,” Elliott said, “and Wexford is smashed. You are going to get local risings which the British can put down at their leisure. Hundreds, probably thousands of poor bewildered peasants and artisans are going to be blown apart by cannon and strung up from gable ends.”

  O’Halloran rubbed a palm across his eyes. “I have spent nights saying that to myself, Mr. Elliott. I declare to God I have. And I have also told myself that if there is no rising now, there will be none for fifty years. This vile system under which all of us live will be fastened upon us forever and the key cast away into the sea.”

  Elliott turned to Waring. “And you?”

  “I have a more sanguine nature, perhaps. Those local risings could be formidable indeed. If the French make a landing and we do not take advantage of it, we will be worse than fools. And most of the delegates are agreed upon that.”

  “They are at the moment,” Elliott said. “When it comes to the sticking point, will they take up pikes and lead peasants against regular troops?”

  “We know that you will,” O’Halloran said gently. “And we must hope that they will. The Directory here cannot control events. We are ten or so men of no great ability, and no claim to leadership save that we have avoided arrest. We can urge the counties to act. Order them to, if you like, but it comes to the same thing. If there is a rising, it will be a peasant insurrection, and Dublin lawyers and physicians have little power to affect such matters. By the time the French land, we will most likely be in gaol with the other Dublin men.”

  “In gaol or in the Liberties,” Russell said.

  “It is much the same,” O’Halloran said. “They lifted Fitzgerald in the Liberties.”

  “He was stagged,” Waring said. “Stagged and then lifted. Someone sold him to Higgins and Higgins sold him to Cooke at the Castle.”

  “Selling each other like heifers at a fair,” Elliott said in disgust. “How do you know that I won’t sell you? I could turn Mayo over to Dennis Browne and my fortune would be made.”

  “Hardly,” O’Halloran said. “Not at Castle prices. I think Fitzgerald went cheap.”

  “Was there ever a country that deserved liberty less,” Elliott said. “Four men sitting around a table in Dublin. We should be on the stage of a theatre.”

  “An unimpressive spectacle,” O’Halloran said mildly. “But the boulder has been given a shove down the hill and nothing will stop it now. If I could stop it I would not.”

  A short man with deep-set eyes behind spectacles and a wide expressive mouth, he had entered politics as a moderate, a member of the Catholic Committee and author of pamphlets on the penal laws. Now he was implacable.

  “I am no different from yourselves,” Elliott said. “A Dublin solicitor stranded in the wilds of Mayo. A careless landlord and a solicitor without clients.”

  “You lack patrons,” O’Halloran said. “Perhaps Dennis Browne is your man.” He smiled to take the offence from his words.

  “No,” Elliott said. “For whatever good I am, you may depend upon me.”

  “We know that,” O’Halloran said.

  Elliott stood up. “This is the most misfortunate land on the face of the globe. We are like gamblers, and this is the final throw of the dice. Perhaps what’s needed are swaggering playactors like Tone.”

  O’Halloran saw him to the door.

  “I regret, Mr. Elliott, that we did not become better acquainted in your Dublin years.”

  “Do you see any hope in this?” Elliott asked with vehemence. “Any at all?”

  “Oh, yes,” O’Halloran said. “Otherwise I would not be in it. We both know that—a man like myself comes to the Directory by default, so to speak. Fitzgerald is dead. Emmet and MacNevin and Bond are in prison. Some have turned tail. Some have become government
informers. But events have a momentum of their own. The French will land. Parts of the countryside will rise up. And tomorrow night I will be in a hole in the Liberties, listening to some braggart tell me how he can hold the Wicklow hills and waiting for Major Sirr to break down the door.”

  Elliott gave him his harsh, barking laugh, a fox in thicket. “Like a figure in Plutarch,” he said.

  “A clumsy Hibernian counterfeit. I am a fair physician, you know; I have a knack for it. But in my middle years I have discovered my true talent. Do you know what my talent is? Political rhetoric. I discovered it when I was writing those pamphlets. Justice, equality, the rights of man—the words fairly flowed from my pen. ’Tis little I thought then of burning cabins or unarmed men cut down by cannon fire.”

  “It is a common failing these days,” Elliott said. “Words have a splendour for us, and so we send them off into the world to do mischief. It began for me with words. Books, pamphlets, debates.”

  “The words are abroad now,” O’Halloran said. “And battered beyond recognition.”

  “Have you ever been to Mayo?” Elliott asked suddenly.

  “Nor anywhere near it. I am a Limerick man.”

  “It is not a land hospitable to ideas,” Elliott said. “Strong feelings perhaps, but not ideas. The soil isn’t right for them. Perhaps someday I can show it to you.” Unspoken bonds of sympathy drew him to the small, stoical man. Flies, stuck in the amber of ruined hopes.

  “Perhaps,” O’Halloran said. “I have always wanted to see America, but Mayo would do.”

  Before he opened the door they shook hands formally.

  A light rain had begun to fall. A rattle of drums and shrill of fifes drew Elliott to Mountjoy Square. Three companies of an English regiment were on parade, standing at stolid attention as sergeants barked orders at them. Passersby, drawn like Elliott to the spectacle, lined three sides of the square. Elliott stood watching, his hat tilted to one side. A greasy sky covered them, pressing down on the handsome red brick, the scarlet uniforms. A boy, hurrying along the footpath, paused for a moment to admire the scarlet and the music, and then went away, whistling between his teeth: “Oh, the French are on the sea, says the Sean Bhean Bhocht; they’ll be here without delay, says the Sean Bhean Bhocht.” Words. Words set to an errand boy’s tune. Elliott turned away, and walked back towards the river of turf stains and twigs.

  Dublin, August 18

  A LETTER, SIGNED “Jr,” ADDRESSED TO MR. EDWARD COOKE, UNDERSECRETARY, DUBLIN CASTLE

  The Directory moves tomorrow to an address in the Liberties which I do not yet know. I passed today in Dorset Street with O’Halloran and Waring, who despatched letters by messenger to various county delegates. They received several visitors, among them Francis Keough of Carlow and Malcolm Elliott of Mayo.

  Elliott avows that Mayo holds more than a thousand sworn United Irishmen, organised and armed. He is uncertain as to his authority over them, and names John Moore of Ballintubber, the younger brother of George Moore. Of George Moore’s radical sympathies there can be no question, but doubtless he is too sly to involve himself openly, entrusting that to his brother. Elliott is gloomy and half-hearted, but a perverted sense of honour holds him to the enterprise.

  I beg to repeat that a most formidable organization exists throughout the country but most particularly in the midlands. It will rise up at word of a French landing, whether or not the Directory has been arrested. Several on the Directory, O’Halloran among them, are shrewd and able men. They would not scruple at assassination. I am running a most dreadful risk in the service of my country, and my neglect of my own affairs has placed me in most embarrassing circumstances. I must have a hundred pounds in hand by the first to meet the most pressing of my creditors, and I know not where to turn. It is for love of country that I act as I do, as well you know, and I hold in scorn those base informers who for profit betray their friends and associates. I am confident that His Majesty’s ministers will not see me fall into ruin.

  Killala, August 20

  On the night of August 20, the Tyrawley Yeomanry conducted a raid for arms and treasonable material in the town of Killala. They nerved themselves first with several rounds of whiskey, for which they crowded into the Wolf Dog in full uniform, carrying muskets with fixed bayonets. They were not soldiers at all, by training or temperament, and they were frightened. Rumours were everywhere that the Papists were drilling by night with French muskets, and that a massacre was being planned, more hideous than that of 1641, when rebels skewered babies for sport and hurled their bodies into the flames. Dublin had at last sent a regiment to Ballina, but it was an English regiment, with no notion of what Papists were like, or what they were capable of. The tavernkeeper, a Papist, served them with wary affability, his ruddy face bland and smooth, but with deep-set blue eyes moving nervously. Cooper stood treat for the whiskeys, and then mustered them in the street outside Broome’s church.

  “Now then,” he said. “There’s many a poor Papist in Killala who is as loyal as you and me. You have just seen one there in the Wolf Dog, a hard-working publican. They are decent poor buggers who ask nothing better from life than a bit of peace and quiet. I don’t want to hear that they have been mistreated. What we are looking for is rebels against the Crown. There are muskets in some of those cabins and there are pikes in some of them. I want those men brought here, and I want their cabins burned. We will do that by God if we have to turn tonight into Saint John’s Eve, with a bonfire on every hill. You know what Papists are and so do I, and we know what the Papists did in Wexford because they were let thrive. We are like a small fort in the middle of a forest, but by God we are Protestants, and that is what has always made the difference. We stood by the good old cause in Cromwell’s day and we stood by it in King Billy’s day, and God saw us safely through. And every Papist who can see a flame and read its meaning will know that we still stand by the old cause.”

  The yeomanry band, a drum and two fifes, purchased at Cooper’s expense, struck up the “Lillibulero,” and the buoyant, impudent tune beat against the weathered buildings in the narrow street. Cooper rested one hand on the hilt of his dress sword, and drew the other forward and back along the line of his jaw. He was as frightened as any of his men, and yet he saw no other choice. The Papists of Killala would have to learn that the Protestants of the barony were no mere collection of agents and shopkeepers. Glenthorne and the other great landlords could spend their days in England only because men like himself, small landlords like Gibson and harness-makers like Sergeant Tompkins, were willing to stand their land and hold it. Their great-grandfathers had won the land, fighting for it and spilling blood upon it. There were two races in the island, divided by an unending quarrel, and Protestants were outnumbered four to one. But they were favoured by brains, determination, and, apparently, God. But it was a dreadful act to burn a man’s cabin, even in summer. Cooper’s anger mounted against the Papists, who had forced cruelty upon him.

  Tompkins and his squad came first to the cabin of a man named Hogan, a surly, barrel-chested man with a bad reputation as a faction fighter. Tompkins pounded on the door with his fist, and then Andrew Bludsoe, lifting his boot, kicked it open. Tom Robinson lifted his lantern and they rushed in.

  Hogan and his wife were lying in the low bed, and three of their children lay athwart it. Other forms, dimly perceived, lay on the straw at the far side of the room.

  “This is a search in the King’s name,” Tompkins said. “For treasonable material.”

  Hogan’s wife shrieked and one of the children, hearing her, began to wail. Hogan sat up, rubbing sleep from his face.

  “What the hell is this? Who are you?”

  “We are here lawfully, on the King’s business,” Tompkins said.

  “Bob Tompkins?” Hogan said. “Is that you?” He put his feet on the floor.

  “Stay where you are,” Tompkins said.

  Hogan’s wife, who did not understand English, began to weep.

  “Shut up, wom
an,” Hogan said. “And keep that child of yours quiet. Will you get out of here, the lot of you, or will I take after you with a club.”

  Tompkins turned to his men. “Give the place a good search. Search the thatch. That’s where they keep their pikes.”

  “Pikes, is it?” Hogan asked. “I’ll give you pikes.” He lunged to his feet, and one of the yeomen, in terror, squeezed the trigger of his musket. The ball buried itself in the thatch, and the sound echoed with frightening volume. Hogan and the yeomen were shocked into a silence which was broken by the renewed wailing of the child. Its mother grabbed it tight. “Go on,” Hogan growled, sinking back to the bed. “Search away.”

  Because of an old grudge against Malachi Duggan, he had had nothing to do with the Whiteboys or the United Men, but the next day he walked up to Randall MacDonnell’s, and took the oath in the stable yard.

  Tompkins and his men ransacked a dozen other cabins, but they discovered neither pikes nor muskets. The hills to the north and the east glowed with dull orange fires.

  “Those aren’t all cabins,” Tompkins said. “The crops have been set afire.”

  “Serves them well enough,” Bludsoe said. “Croppies lie down.”

  They stood looking at each other, half ashamed that they hadn’t had better luck, half relieved that they had no cause to burn men’s cabins.

  “I know a pike or a musket when I see it,” Robinson said. “But would someone be good enough to tell me what treasonable material means?”

  “Hogan, perhaps,” Tompkins said.

  “Hogan’s wife,” Bludsoe said.

  “Evidence or not,” Robinson said, “I’ll take my oath that Hogan is a rebel. He used be a great one at the faction fights, do you remember?”

  “Don’t be a bloody fool,” Tompkins said. They had found nothing in the cabins but the usual Papist filth and litter, half-naked women with squalling children hanging to their knees, red-faced men shielding their eyes against the lantern’s glare.