The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  “Perhaps,” Humbert said. “Perhaps he has. I think that we will fight this fellow.” He drew out a pocket handkerchief and wiped his large, pale hands.

  But at that moment, the air was split in two by the explosion of a cannon, whose shot came crashing down into the leafy shelter of the orchard.

  Collooney, September 5

  After the rains, as clear and warm a day as you could hope to find in September. Jacket off, he sat perched on the orchard wall like a schoolboy, his feet touching the tips of the tall grasses, dark green and light. The apple balanced on his palm was the globe, ripened by sun and dark earth. Quiet of orchards. Poma. Virgil, Horace, Ovid himself, greater than either of them. Never too busy to take time off for a few lines about apples. Devil the apple they’d ever needed to steal, swaggering around the city of Rome. Just send the bill to my patrons. They all had patrons. And why not? O’Rahilly had them, gentry stranded by the receding waters of Boyne and Shannon. I have mine: silver coins and a glass of brandy.

  Warm sun of early September bathed the orchard. Beneath the trees, the men in their coarse shirts might have been labourers, resting from the work. Wall, leaf, rounded fruit glistened. No wind, the wall containing them. A boy in Kerry, he had gone with his father to hiring fairs. Men put up for auction like heifers or bullocks: strong legs and back, sound of wind. Landless men, no hope of land, they worked for food and shillings. Landless, they walked the harvest roads—Tralee, Killorglin, Kenmare. They stood silent for hire as farmers and graziers walked past them, boisterous in their prosperity, breath heavy with bacon and whiskey, minds clear and calculating. But at work the hired men were like these, in the orchard here, lazy and slow-moving, throats full of gossip and banter. Gallon jugs of porter passed round at midday, porter and the sun’s heat working together like yeast through the afternoon’s work and long into evening. Until dark; nine O’clock or ten in full summer. The cries of nesting birds attended them, corncrake and coot. Free as a bird.

  Images caught by lime, by nets, as birds are caught, winging in from God knew where. Unbidden, they could not be summoned. From old books, from manuscripts of O’Rahilly and O’Sullivan, smeared at the edges for all the care you took of them. Not always. A girl’s sturdy leg, rounded bosom. Harvesting images as the corn is harvested, or birds. Or the wind. In cold winter, Atlantic winds battering the wall, a room foetid with sleeping beasts, the fields of summer, flowers in full blossom. Held in the eye of memory, a flowering branch.

  Geraghty put two hands upon the wall, vaulted upwards to sit beside him. MacCarthy shook flowering branch and Atlantic wind from his mind.

  “ ’Tis well for you that you can sit on a wall eating apples and the King’s dragoons riding down the road after you in full pursuit.”

  MacCarthy bit into the apple. The juices of summer flooded his mouth.

  “Your friend Ferdy O’Donnell has the better part of it,” Geraghty said. “Chieftain of all the fellows back in Killala. ’Tis what I was about myself in Ballina until the word came for me. The back room in Brennan’s I had for myself. I ate bacon every day, while it lasted.”

  “All good things come to an end,” MacCarthy said.

  “Marching along like geese to the black, empty hills of Donegal, with the English soldiers behind us. I have a great mind to get out of all this at night and see can I get back to Ballina on my own.”

  “Why do you not, so?”

  “Ach, did I not bring the Ballina men here? They have great trust in me. Malcolm Elliott thinks that he brought out the Ballina men, but ’twas myself. I was the first there to take the United oath, and the others followed after. There is no good going back to Ballina. The loyalists have it by now.”

  “Then you might as well take your ease on a sunny wall, as I am doing.”

  “I made my confession to Father Murphy, and he says that we are doing the work of Christ, fighting the heretics. He would say the same to you.”

  “I doubt if he has time for the list of sins I would reel out to him. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Judy Conlon standing in the cabin door; through the shift, her legs sketched by the sun of evening. Kate Cooper leaning over him, her dark hair upon his chest. The red-haired gunner in Castlebar High Street, dead eyes staring into his.

  “No, no, Owen. You know yourself that it is a great comfort to be without the stain of sin on your soul.” A great peace, the communion wafer dissolving upon the tongue, the juice of innocence. Lighted tapers in the Tralee chapel, flames upright in the breathless air. Ovid’s language. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.

  “Had you confessed to Mr. Hussey in Killala,” he said, “or to your own priest in Ballina, you would have been given no absolution at all but the wrath of God. They would have told you that we are doing the devil’s work for him.”

  “It was to Father Murphy I went, and he is much a priest as they are. Sure isn’t one absolution as good as another?”

  MacCarthy threw away the apple’s core. Apples and Eves in plenty, but no serpents: a fortunate isle. “It is,” he said. “Your theology is sound.”

  “What counts is the intention,” Geraghty said. “If you have it in mind to marry Judy—”

  “Intentions,” MacCarthy said. “If intentions counted, I would be a second Saint Kieran.”

  “You are a queer man, Owen,” Geraghty said, sliding down from the wall. “But they say that much is forgiven to poets.”

  “I hope they are right,” MacCarthy said.

  Geraghty had left a warm bed in Ballina, snug farm beside the Moy. No absolution would bring those back to him, no haranguing sermons from Murphy. He walked solidly, strong-farmer’s walk, his legs were pillars. Much is forgiven to strong-farmers. Not this time.

  Kneel to confess, head bent. Beneath the sky, as men had knelt by Mass rocks in the penal days. Scarcely a village had not its Mass rock to be pointed out, in shame and shy pride. Small wonder the land had bred priests like Murphy, love of Christ and hatred of the Protestant landlords burning together, flames reaching towards each other. He bellows at us, spalpeens who drift upon his words. The tapers in the Tralee chapel were far different, white and virginal. A church for helots, despised by our masters. In secret, through a secret century, we hugged its secret power, dark mysteries brighter than the sun. Whose sins Thou shalt forgive, they are forgiven him. Even Murphy. A mystery of faith.

  Down the road, beyond the orchard wall, a bald-headed man came riding a heavy workhorse. MacCarthy watched him talk first to MacDonnell, plumed, vainglorious fox hunter, then dismount and walk towards Humbert and the other officers. He passed from sight, hidden by broad branches, globed fruit, clusters of leaves. Things are looking up when middle-aged farmers ride in on their own horses. Solid stock of Sligo, ready to fight for God and Ireland. Sunlight dazzled the topmost branches. No wind. A boy in Kerry, he had poached the lord’s apples, climbing walls with spikes set atop them. Saint Augustine had done it. And never stopped talking about it. Without grace, the mind is bent towards sinful deeds. Sure how was poor little Augustine to know about sin, an African, ignorant, skin and mind darkened by fierce suns.

  From somewhere off to the left, a cannon exploded. Its charge ripped through sunny leaves. Kerry faded. The leaves of Augustine’s book drifted away. The boy who had stolen apples in Tralee shrivelled, drew back within the big-boned man atop the wall. The orchard had become another trap.

  FROM THE MEMOIR OF EVENTS,

  WRITTEN BY MALCOLM ELLIOTT

  IN OCTOBER, 1798

  Because Collooney was the last battle in which I took part, aside of course from the shapeless catastrophe of Ballinamuck, I shall attempt to describe it with care.

  The force which had marched to engage us was under the command of a pugnacious and resolute officer named Vereker. The cavalry whom we had encountered in Tobercurry had brought to him the news of our continued advance, and he well knew that his was the only garrison which stood between ourselves and Ulster. He was determined to deny us such access, and to
check us before we reached the town of Sligo, which was crowded with loyalists who had fled before us. The decision speaks well both for his enterprise and for his promptitude. I speak here, albeit bitterly, with a certain national pride, for Vereker was Irish, a Limerick man, and most of those whom he commanded were members of his own regiment of yeomen.

  He planted himself athwart the road, his left being shielded by the Owenmore River, beside which, at the point which he had chosen, ran a high wall. His right flank reached to the foot of a steep and rocky hill. This placed him in a basin, with his cavalry to the rear, and, in front of his infantry, the field gun which had announced his presence to us. Warfare to Cornwallis and Humbert was a form of chess which they played with bloody fingers, but to Vereker it was a simple game of draughts. We were advancing, and he proposed to stop us in our tracks. And had he only simple citizens like myself to deal with, he might well have done so, for that calling card of his, hurled into the orchard, threw us into a panic. I remember Randall MacDonnell, a man of considerable physical bravery, in a shouting match with twenty or so of the Irish troops, his hat pulled low upon his head and his face red with rage.

  We lay stretched out for a half mile from the orchard, down the road beside a pasture to the outskirts of the village. Bartholemew Teeling, on his handsome bay mare, his sabre drawn from its scabbard, and a squad of mounted French soldiers behind him, rode to rally the Irish troops and bring them forward. Why I speak of them always as troops, I cannot say. Ploughboys led by faction fighters and a few fox hunters would be a more accurate description, but if there is a word which encompasses this, it does not lie within my vocabulary. Indeed, I have a most clear recollection of Owen MacCarthy perched on the wall of the orchard, his long legs dangling, the very type of those yokels who may be found attached like gargoyles to every village bridge. When Teeling rode back, he was alone, having left the French horsemen to deal with the Irish and pummel them forward, should this be necessary.

  During this ten minutes or so, the air was thick with noise, men shouting, the rattle of the French drums, and at least three times the crash of Vereker’s cannon. Humbert, with Sarrizen and Fontaine beside him, moved forward down the road, in plain sight of the enemy, and there was joined by Teeling. They then rode slowly back, and Teeling summoned MacDonnell, O’Dowd, and myself. He dismounted, and ran his hand along the mare’s neck, a long, unhurried hand, like the man himself. Teeling was always for me the most impressive, whether of the French or of the Irish. There was a time when I might have found in him the embodiment of our principles.

  “General Humbert has done me the honour of asking me to lead the Irish for this engagement. He intends that the French should move up along the river, and that the Irish should engage the enemy’s right flank.”

  “What the hell does that mean, engage his flank?” O’Dowd said. “It means that we should get ourselves blown up while the Frenchies sneak along the wall.”

  “Not this time, Mr. O’Dowd. Not this time. The enemy is either a valorous or an inexperienced soldier. He has put himself into a soup bowl. His flank should not be touching that hill, but holding its higher ground. As things stand, he is exposed. We shall go back through the village, circle round the hill, and attack his right.”

  “With that great bloody cannon blowing holes in us.”

  “Not in us. The cannon is formidable and the gunners seemed trained, but the French will have to take the weight of it. When we come within sight of the enemy, don’t concern yourselves about keeping ranks. Those who have muskets are to blaze away, and then everyone forward with whatever they have—pikes, bayonets, scythes. Engage your enemy, hold your ground, and wait for the French.” He looked from one to another of us and smiled. “It seems simple enough.”

  “Well, this is the end of it,” MacDonnell said ruefully, and spat between his feet. “Those bastards in front of us, and the other ones behind.”

  “Not at all,” Teeling said impatiently. “If you will do as I have suggested, the battle is won and the road lies open.”

  I looked behind me at the Irish, who were staring apprehensively. The cannon exploded again, and several of them fell to the ground. I thought at first that they were slain or stunned, but it was fear which had weakened their knees. What did it matter, I thought, if the road lay open?

  For the full half hour that it took us to encircle the hill, we heard but could not see the battle, the rattle of musket fire, the booming cannon. It was clear that many, perhaps most of our men were terrified. Their eyes, when I caught them, were glazed and dull, and some I saw shivering violently, as though it were a winter evening. What carried them foward? Perhaps each man hugged the secret delusion that he alone was frightened. Kilcummin, Crossmolina, Ballycastle, the men of each village walked forward huddled together.

  A half hour may become a long time, with ample provision for a near-infinity of thoughts and perceptions. Thus, I observed that the birds had fallen silent: the sounds of battle claimed and filled the air. There are scores upon scores of hills like Knockbeg—“the little hill,” is its English meaning—rock-strewn, its grass coarse and luxuriant. Far to our left, well out of reach of the battle, lay its twin, but with two squat cabins nestling at its foot. Cattle were pastured in a distant field. A plantation of elm half screened them from view. The noise of battle had transformed each prospect, and had drained the air of all familiar meaning.

  But when we came at last into sight of the enemy, for so I must term these Irishmen from Limerick and Sligo, they seemed as fierce and strange as we must have seemed to them. Their flanks held bravely to their positions, maintaining a brisk fire against the French, who had moved up along the river, using the wall as cover, but then had halted to await our arrival. The musket fire from both sides seemed the barking of angry dogs, and yet I could but wonder at the sturdiness with which they held their ground, for men had fallen and lay lifeless on the ground or else writhed in an agony which none attended. I do not regard myself as a man deficient in courage or spirit, and yet remain most puzzled that men in battle will face dangers which in other circumstances would cause them to flee for their lives. Yet I write this knowing that within a month I shall myself be dead, and were it not for my dear Judith could almost welcome it.

  Our troops now spread out in a rough line at an angle to the loyalist flank. They were silent before a spectacle of which we would all shortly be a part, although for the moment we could gaze upon it as upon a pageant. Many had their eyes upon the cannon, which stood pointed towards the French. It was in truth the sovereign mistress of the battle. Several soldiers attended her, but did so under the instructions of the gunner, who for his task stood stripped to the waist. Its explosions were terrifying and deadly, and a squad of French musketeers, standing clumped together, were blazing away at her to no effect. The French had held their ground so that we could advance together, and yet I would judge, though unskilled in such matters, that the cannon would in any case have held them where they were, and it was discharged and reloaded with a professional skill and speed.

  Teeling, O’Dowd, MacDonnell, and I were together, on a slight rise of ground, and we sat there, watching, for how long a time I cannot say. There was a movement beside me, and turning I saw that Teeling had taken out a pistol, not the cumbersome one which was holstered to his saddle, but a gentleman’s weapon of admirable craftsmanship, its butt of dark, polished wood, and its metal engraved most elegantly. As he set to work loading it, he obtained our assurances that we understood exactly the manner in which our men should be brought into battle.

  Yet clearly, I thought, whether or not they went into the engagement rested with them. I turned again in my saddle. They stood in ragged groups, with those who possessed muskets or other firearms placed in the forefront of each group. Such was the entirety of the discipline which the French sergeants had been able to impose upon them, or which their faction leaders had contrived to maintain. The men of one faction, from my own Ballina as it chanced, had fallen to t
heir knees and were attending the maniacal exhortations of Murphy, our “chaplain,” their eyes raised to the cross which he held above his head. At this distance, only the mercifully unintelligible sound of his voice reached me, rancorous and obsessed, the heavy Gaelic syllables wrenched from his throat by passion. With such men, we had fondly thought to shape a modern nation, these coarse-dressed kernes, kneeling before a zealot in shabby black.

  Teeling had been observing me with a slight amusement, as though he read my thoughts. “We can but attempt it, Mr. Elliott. If all else fails, you may depend upon the French dragoons at their rear to drive them forward.”

  “Like cattle.”

  “Precisely so. Like cattle.” His pistol was now primed and loaded, and he held it in his open palm, as though weighing it. “How else can men be driven to this sorry trade?”

  “And the ranting of that bloodthirsty priest?”

  “It may be helpful. Drums, banners, rant, the edge of a sergeant’s sabre. How else?” He raised his voice then, so that O’Dowd and MacDonnell could hear him. “Follow along as soon as you are able.”