by Tom Anderson
The problem for Britain was that news of the rebellion did not reach London until it had already exploded out of any ability to be contained. Naturally rumours also amplified the often sketchy reports. Before long men were seriously telling the ailing Marquess of Rockingham that Dublin had been entirely burnt to the ground. Confused reports inevitably led to anti-Catholic riots in London.
The British government was in a quandary. By the time it became clear that the USE rebellion was too serious to ignore, the rebels already held much of Ulster and Leinster, including most of the island’s east coast. The old British strategy of working with the Protestant Ascendancy and raising local militias could not succeed, partly because it was clear the Protestants could not longer be trusted, and partly because the main Protestant lands were already under USE control. Reports of the burning of churches of all denominations by the more radical wing of the USE served to inflame political passions in London. It was intolerable that Britain could allow French ideas to run riot over Ireland. Something had to be done, but what?
Rockingham’s government had been considering an invasion of northwest France since 1796, and when the tide of war turned against Austria, preparations were stepped up so that the invasion could be launched in time to relieve the pressure on Austria before it was too late. Robespierre’s paranoia of a British invasion had not been entirely unjustified. Now, though, Britain could hardly send those troops to France and ignore the rebels in Ireland, but sending a big part of the army over the Irish Sea would inevitably end up delaying the operation against France – possibly fatally for the anti-republican alliance, given Austria’s rapidly deteriorating situation.
It was not an easy decision, but in the end Rockingham’s mind was made up by reports coming out of Galway. One of the relatively few Irish parliamentarians who had not been present at the Battle of Dublin – and thus remained in the land of the living – was Richard Wesley, the second Earl of Mornington.[195] The Earl had fought in Bengal against Burmese-Arakan and in Haidarabad against Mysore, before returning to Ireland in 1793 on the death of his father and assuming the Earldom. Wesley was a hard-headed Anglican and ultra-reactionary, who nonetheless grudgingly accepted for purely pragmatic reasons that Catholics should have equal rights. He fiercely rejected anything that smacked of French republicanism, though, even if the USE had not prominently listed his name on their ever-growing list of planned chirurgien patients.
Wesley is widely credited with diffusing the situation in Limerick, always the city that had been most resentful under Protestant rule, and whose Catholic population was ready to take advantage of the USE in order to rise up, even if they did not agree with the rebels’ aims. Wesley donned his old East India Company colonel’s uniform and ordered the British garrison to stand down and come out of their fortified buildings, then successfully bribed the city’s innkeepers into providing a week-long ‘celebration’ with cheap drink. By the end of it, the British soldiers and the Protestant and Catholic townspeople were, if not quite old friends, close enough when faced with a common foe. Wesley used similar tactics elsewhere and by the end of the year was effectively king of Munster, also providing a rallying point for the people of Galway. The half of Ireland not occupied by the USE looked to one of their last surviving Parliamentarians for leadership, and Wesley had already proved himself to be more than the usual corrupt old landowners who had dominated the Dublin Parliament before going up in smoke.
He was also a soldier, and a soldier of India no less, used to the idea that Whitehall ever sending British regulars to a trouble spot in time to make a difference would be helpful but rather unlikely. Therefore, and in direct violation of the British Bill of Rights (which banned Catholics from owning firearms), Wesley raised an army from the strange, ramshackle realm he effectively ruled, using members of his own family as lieutenants. The British regulars already there, cut off from orders, were used as the core of his force and assigned to train new recruits. Often, both the Catholic and Protestant Irish grew to equally despise their British taskmasters, and shared hatred is always only one step away from comradeship. Perhaps Wesley even planned it that way.
So it was that when the USE went on the offensive again in early 1799, Wesley successfully held them back at Roscommon and the historically important Kilkenny, where Prince Frederick had defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie. He requested assistance from London, and Rockingham decided he could spare three regiments from the planned invasion of France – whose implementation had become unavoidable due to the impending Austrian collapse. As the Seigneur Offensive left Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Lowestoft, then, those Royal Navy ships which remained were transporting those three regiments (the 23rd, the Royal Welch Fusiliers; the 58th (West Essex) Regiment of Foot,[196] and the 79th (New York) Regiment of Foot). Ironically, no loyalist Irish units abroad could be spared as they were all assigned to either the West Indies or the Maltese garrison at that time.
The Welsh, Essexmen and New Yorkers all landed at Limerick in March 1799 after a particularly choppy crossing, just as Prince Frederick had almost exactly fifty years earlier. By that point, Wesley’s forces were confident enough with their string of victories and fighting retreats against the USE that they were able to view the pale, seasick redcoats with an air of superiority and contempt. Yet they were soon grateful enough for their arrival. The British and Americans had also brought food supplies, desperately needed given Wesley’s strategy of not living off the land in order to gain the favour of the people who lived there—effectively a prototypical version of the later guerre de tonnere strategy. The new troops had also brought artillery companies. Most of the Royal Irish Artillery, based in Dublin, had been captured by the USE when they took the city, and though the USE had few trained artillerymen to use the guns, Wesley’s army had formerly had little choice but to retreat whenever they were confronted by artillery they could not reply to.
Wesley’s army met the USE’s fighters in their first truly decisive engagement near Carlow in May. They were both heterogenous forces, and both had some men in red uniforms (the USE’s former soldiers had kept theirs) and some in civilian clothes. Therefore, they both adopted the old Civil War-era measure of wearing some brightly coloured token to identify them to their friends: the USE used an orange ribbon and Wesley’s army a blue. The use by the USE of orange illustrates the Protestant majority that affected their thinking and traditions without them even realising it. This was also reflected in the rebels’ flag, based on the French Bloody Flag but in orange rather than red and with an inverted Leinster harp rather than a fleur-de-lys.
The USE forces fought hard, but Wesley’s new superiority in artillery was telling. The loyalist forces were not, perhaps, as effective as they might have been, however. The British and American colonels of the three new regiments were all sceptical about treating Wesley – a former East India colonel, not even a ‘proper’ one – as their general, and failed to respond to orders quite as rapidly as they might have. This perhaps contributed to the fact that a large part of the USE army was able to make a successful retreat under O’Neill. Still, the battle was remembered for the poetic way that the Royal Welch’s grenadier company marched stolidly into the face of withering USE fire, flanked by Wesley’s Irishmen, to the strains of ‘British Grenadiers’.[197]
Though the Battle of Carlow was not as great a victory for the loyalists as it could have been, it effectively ended the USE’s winning streak and their increasingly uncertain supporters began to melt back into the woodwork as Wesley took Kildare and the West Essex, supported by Irish recruits under Wesley’s younger brother George, secured Wicklow. In doing so they bypassed a small USE army in the south of Leinster, which congregated on Wexford and then dissolved in panic from the news from the north, some of its members eventually escaping to France or the UPSA.
The USE’s armies regrouped to defend Dublin, which was bloodily fought over throughout September as Wesley laid siege. In the end, the city’s walls were successfully escalade
d by the New Yorkers, as is told in Robert Tekakwitha’s epic True Liberty, with so many good men being shot down from their ladders by USE sharpshooters. Yet the New Yorkers did it, and one of their number – a certain James Roosevelt – had his revenge by gunning down General O’Neill with his Ferguson rifle.[198] This feat already made him something of a household name, but, of course, there would be even greater things in store for the young man.
Wesley’s army was initially consumed by the usual rapine fervour for looting and burning that flows freely when an army finally takes a fiercely defended city. After all, even his Irish troops were mostly recruited from distant Munster and Connaught and might not always have shared a sense of comradeship with the people of Dublin. Nonetheless they sobered when they saw the burned-out wreck that was all that remained of the Irish Parliament. Some men even swore that the horrible roast-pork smell of burnt human flesh clung to it forever.
The final defeat of the USE did not come until Christmas, though Belfast was the last city they truly fought to defend. Wesley’s army was not so restrained this time and angry reports of rape and murder against the locals circulated throughout Britain and Ireland. Russell took poison rather than fall into British hands and face executed for treason, naturally—and perhaps intentionally—creating a legend that he had survived to escape and/or would return in Ireland’s hour of need. Many men of the USE escaped or faded back into Irish society as a whole. Being ‘accused of Equalitarian leanings’ was for time a witch-hunt accusation in Ireland, levelled against many inoffensive men and women against whom their accuser had a grudge.
The situation in Ireland did not stabilise for a long time. Whitehall, busy with the war with France, did not have much time to consider what to do next, and full order and communications were not restored until mid-1800. By that point, of course, Wesley was firmly ensconced in an informal position of power, and he had his own ideas about the island’s future course…
Chapter #35: The Empire Spreads Her Wings
“In 1751, we won our independence as the Empire. In 1788, we won the right to elect our own representatives to our own Parliament. But it was in 1796 that North America, her own house put in order, first began to reach out to the world…”
– introduction to a North American school history textbook, 1892
*
From: “A History of North America” by Dr Paul Daycliffe (William and Mary, 1964)—
In reaction to the mob attacks on the British and American ministers in Paris, on September 2nd, 1795, the British House of Commons voted 385 to 164 in favour of a declaration of war against Revolutionary France. This was matched in November 14th by a vote of 46-9 in the Continental Parliament, which was particularly outraged by the treatment of Thomas Jefferson, and this swung over many Constitutionalists who would otherwise have sympathised with the motives of the Revolution.
Almost immediately thereafter, commentators in both countries began to consider by what mode the war against France would take. The Admiralty and Horse Guards had, of course, made considerable plans for a future war with France, as this seemed to be a rather predictable occurrence every two decades or so during the Age of Supremacy. However, such plans revolved around the geopolitical situation remaining more or less as it had been since the First War of Supremacy. British Continental policy was largely aimed at attacking France via continental proxies such as Austria or Prussia, paid off with British funds and backed by British-controlled Hanover and British-influenced Brunswick. The main thrust of Britain’s own war effort would be outside Europe, taking more colonies from France (with the assistance of the Empire of North America) and undermining French influence in independent states such as Ayutthaya.
These plans all went up in smoke when the Burke Strategy, as it was later called, was implemented in 1795. Against the views of opportunists, who initially included the Prime Minister Lord Rockingham himself, Parliament voted not to take advantage of the French Revolution in order to sweep up French colonies around the world, but on the contrary to make sure as many of them as possible stayed French and declared loyalty to the Dauphin, now King Louis XVII in British eyes. This ideologically-based rather than opportunistic approach shocked the British public establishment and reflected the brief but intense feeling of outrage that the attacks on Jefferson and Grenville had caused. The French Republic was too dangerous to allow to exist, even if it had led to the downfall of Britain’s old enemy, the Bourbon monarchy. “Better the devil you know than the Jacobin you also know all too well,” as the Marquess of Bute[199] said in his famously mangled quote.
The new war plan resulted in much head-scratching at the Admiralty and Horse Guards, and not merely from the crusty oldtimers who were unable to contemplate an alliance with any kind of French on principle. Britain’s war strategies had always been primarily naval, and various mutinies and Leo Bone’s trick at Toulon meant that Revolutionary France was unlikely to attempt a naval invasion of Britain or any major sea operations at all. Additionally, with the Royal French Navy loyal to the Dauphin (Louis XVII), the combined forces easily had enough ships to blockade all the French ports and sweep the seas for any Revolutionary ships that did get out. This overwhelming superiority was, paradoxically, met with a sense of depression from the Royal Navy, whose captains disliked the prospect of a war filled with dull blockade and convoy duty and with little chance of taking prizes.
The British Army, on the other hand, faced the opposite problem. It had always been small by continental standards and rarely fought alone, always backed up by big forces from allies among the German states –which ones were allies and which were enemies changed regularly in the ‘stately quadrille’. The Army was professional enough but lacked the European armies’ experience of fighting on modern battlefields – it was more used to lending a regiment or two to a skirmish in America, India or elsewhere, participating with local forces. And given the Armée républicaine françaises’s gradually increasing successes in the war with Austria, it looked as though the British Army would eventually have to send forces to assist the Austrians or even (as the war wore on) to prevent Hanover and the current allied German states from falling to French invasion.
The solution was to increase recruitment, which always caused headaches at Horse Guards. The British people remained violently opposed to the idea of a large standing army: memories of Cromwell’s military coup ran deep. The creation of any standing army, except by the express consent of Parliament, was specifically forbidden in the British Constitution. Even considering the current situation, Horse Guards had to tread very carefully in a call for increased recruitment. It was true that the country was ripe to give up a larger number of suitable recruits than the past, though. Britain’s Army had always recruited a disproportionate number of down-on-their-luck commoners, including petty criminals, and the burgeoning Industrial Revolution was producing plenty of those—as people moved from the countryside to the industrialising cities to find jobs and often found poverty and starvation instead. Also, the Navy’s lack of need for recruitment above peace levels meant that the Naval press-gangs were not operating, freeing up more men of the right age for army service instead. The recruiting sergeants spun tales of rich plunder to be had in the Germanies, and the young men signed up, apparently not wondering why that if those sergeants had seen such plunder, they remained sergeants.
Yet the numbers raised still did not come close to Horse Guards’ estimates for a force required to defend Hanover and support Austria. Reports of both Boulanger’s new tactics and the superiority of French artillery (both in the Gribeauval system and the Cugnot steam tractors) were at first exaggerated in Britain, and Horse Guards generally considered that the only immediate response would be to try to achieve numerical superiority over any French army faced in the field. Given the vastness of Boulanger’s conscript armies, this seemed futile, but of course instituting conscription in Britain would be seen as utter madness and would doubtless lead to the Government falling.
The
refore, Horse Guards turned to rather unorthodox solutions. The organisation, originally very old-fashioned (even compared to the Navy) had been severely purged by King Frederick Iafter the Second Glorious Revolution to weed out anyone who might 1) disagree with his right to the throne and 2) have the influence to raise an army to support that disagreement. An unintended consequence of this was that Horse Guards had become far more open to new ideas, particularly since Frederick had introduced a number of loyal American military veterans to positions of power. Even after Frederick’s reign, this had continued, particularly since there were now a reasonable number of American regiments on the lists contributing worthy officers.
The Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at that point was Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Viscount Amherst.[200] Although a Kentish Man born and bred, he had served for most of his career in North America, fighting the French in the Third War of Supremacy under Wolfe, and had served as military governor of the Lake Michigan region immediately after the war.[201] Amherst’s own detailed notes and explorations of the region were used extensively by the Michigan Commission, the body which planted what would become the Susan-Mary Penal Colony some years after Amherst’s death. Amherst was considered ‘more than half a Jonathon’ by some of the more fossilised parts of the Army bureaucracy (even though he himself was in his eighties), and had overseen several appointments of senior American officers to Horse Guards posts.