Kitabı oku: «Secret Service Under Pitt», sayfa 21

Lawless had seen Lord Edward constantly during the period of his concealment; but Armstrong knew nothing of the chieftain's movements, and, of course, had no hand in his betrayal, though some infer to the contrary from a passing remark made by Mr. Froude.⁷⁰⁸ But he qualified for his pension by a general vigilance and activity in support of that red system and policy which John Sheares's proclamation brands. Armstrong having been questioned by Curran as to three peasants which he had taken prisoners in '98, he replied: 'We were going up Blackmore Hill, under Sir James Duff; there was a party of rebels there. We met three men with green cockades. One we shot, another we hanged, and the third we flogged and made a guide of.'⁷⁰⁹

The murder of a little child by a yeoman named Woolagan excited, even in those days, a feeling of abhorrence, and Plowden, in his 'History of Ireland,' notices Woolagan's acquittal by the court-martial which tried him, but does not cite the evidence. This we find in the 'Dublin Magazine' for October 1798. There it will be seen that the murderer threw the onus on the general orders issued by Captain Armstrong. Phillips and Curran, who have written of that man, do not appear to have read this trial. The crime was proved and not denied, yet Woolagan was acquitted. But the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, condemned the verdict, and disqualified the president of the court-martial, Lord Enniskillen, from again presiding in that capacity.

Captain Armstrong, though hot-tempered, was capable of generous acts, and his redeeming points must not be ignored. He was a bad hater, a good laugher. Affable to all, he frequently went out of his way to be civil; and with him sweet words had more than their proverbial value. In days when landlordism reigned with iron sceptre, he showed indulgence to his tenantry; but when giving leases, or using his influence with higher lords of the soil for that end, he cunningly got his own life inserted as a beneficial interest to the tenants. Thus in the hot-bed of Ribbonism he gloried to the end in a sort of charmed life. He survived until April 20, 1858, when he died at Clara, in the King's County, after having drawn from Dublin Castle 500l. a year, or about 29,464l. Castlereagh, who had urged him to his work, recommended him for a pension, and predeceased him by nearly forty years, might have deemed this sum excessive had he lived to see it paid.

Seeking to disarm prejudice and cultivate rural friendship, Armstrong maintained cordial relations with the peasantry. He would enter their cabins, sit with rude hosts, and converse with their wives on various domestic points solely of interest to themselves. We must suppose that, consistently with his later utterance, their children attracted from him no moving manifestation of regard. His long life had one decided advantage. It is stated that he lived down every political enemy and contemporary, becoming in the end downright popular. His face, familiar from childhood even to old men, became at last endeared to early memories, and his neighbour, Captain Fuller, who attended his funeral, testifies to the almost incredible fact that he saw some well-known Ribbonmen, who were present, weep, and horny hands upraised which, in the hot blood of youth, had dispensed 'the wild justice of revenge.'⁷¹⁰

APPENDIX

LORD DOWNSHIRE'S MYSTERIOUS VISITOR

(Vide p. 8, ante.)

The following is a résumé of some earlier evidence which had convinced me that the informer whose name Mr. Froude says is still wrapped in mystery⁷¹¹ could be only Samuel Turner, LL.D., barrister-at-law.

Speaking of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Mr. Froude says: 'His meeting with Hoche on the Swiss frontier was known only to very few persons. Hoche himself had not revealed it even to Tone.'

But Turner knew a vast deal about the arrangements with Hoche. An intercepted letter addressed by Reinhard, the French Minister at Hamburg, to De la Croix, and written on July 12, 1797, may be found in the 'Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh,' and assigned by mistake to the year 1798. In this letter Reinhard tells De la Croix that he sent Turner to General Hoche. From Hoche⁷¹² himself Turner most likely learned of the secret interview between Lord Edward and the French general.

But what proof have we that Lord Downshire's muffled visitor had had himself an interview with Hoche?

Mr. Froude at some pages distant from the part where he refers to Lord Edward's meeting with Hoche, when recurring to Downshire's visitor, whose identity was 'kept a secret even from the Cabinet,' states, from knowledge acquired after reading the spy's secret letters, 'He had actually conferred with Hoche and De la Croix.'

The intercepted letter in the 'Castlereagh Papers' refers at much length to the proceedings of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, MacNevin, and Turner; but Turner in this letter is called Furnes. The general index to that work states⁷¹³ that Furnes is an alias for Samuel Turner; and further he is described as 'an Irish rebel.' Had the noble editor supposed that Turner was a spy in the pay of the Crown, this letter would doubtless have been suppressed in common with others which Dr. Madden misses. Lord Londonderry brought out his brother's correspondence in 1848, during the 'Young Ireland' agitation, and was careful to let few secrets appear.

'He had accompanied the Northern delegacy to Dublin,' proceeds Mr. Froude, 'and had been present at the discussion of the propriety of an immediate insurrection.'

John Hughes, of Belfast, an officer in the Society of the United Irishmen, was arrested immediately after Turner opened communication with Downshire, and while in gaol turned King's evidence. From the sworn testimony of John Hughes we learn that, in June 1797, he was summoned by Lowry and Teeling to attend a meeting in Dublin of delegates from the different provinces of Ireland, in order to receive a return of the strength of the United Irishmen. Whilst he was in Dublin, in June 1797, Teeling invited him to meet some friends at his lodgings, including Tony McCann of Dundalk, Mr.⁷¹⁴ Samuel Turner, John and Patrick Byrne, Lowry, Dr. MacNevin, and others.⁷¹⁵ The leaders differed as to the expediency of an immediate rising. 'He met the above mentioned persons at several other times in Dublin, in June 1797.'⁷¹⁶

'The Northern delegate had been present at the discussion of the propriety of an immediate insurrection. The cowardice or the prudence of the Dublin faction had disgusted him,' writes Mr. Froude.

The Northern leader who was disgusted with the prudence of the Papist conspirators in Dublin must have been Turner. In the 'Castlereagh Papers' is a letter of Reinhard, the French Minister, stating, on the authority of Turner, 'that it was of dilatoriness and indecision several members of the Committee were accused; that the Northern province, feeling its oppression and its strength, was impatient to break forth.'⁷¹⁷

Reinhard adds, what will surprise many regarding Lord Edward: 'Macnevin and Lord Fitzgerald are of the moderate party. Furness [Turner] is for a speedy explosion, and it is some imprudences into which his ardent character hurried him that obliged him to leave the country, whereas the conduct of Macnevin has been circumspect.'⁷¹⁸

Among the men whom Hughes swears he met in June 1797, with the Northern delegates in Dublin, were Turner, Teeling, MacCann, John Byrne [Union Lodge, Dundalk], Dr. Macnevin, Colonel Plunket,⁷¹⁹ and Andrew Comyn of Galway. These men – Turner excepted – were all Roman Catholics; so were John Keogh, Braughall, MacCormick, and other influential Dublin leaders – whose names do not appear. Tone was abroad. Downshire's visitor speaks of the men he met in Dublin as 'Papists' whose prudence and cowardice disgusted him, and he came to the conclusion that the two parties could not amalgamate.

Mr. Froude, again describing Downshire's visitor, writes: 'He had seen Talleyrand and talked with him at length on the condition of Ireland.'

The 'Castlereagh Papers' contain a remarkable letter, headed 'Secret Intelligence,' and describing very fully an interview with Talleyrand in reference to an invasion of Ireland. On the third page of his letter the spy writes: 'Enclosure containing the cyphers I sent to the Marquis of Downshire.'⁷²⁰

To this letter I must again return.

Mr. Froude states that Downshire's visitor had discovered one of the objects of the Papists to be a seizure of property, and had determined to separate himself from the conspiracy.

Turner belonged to a family of Cromwellian settlers. This we learn from Prendergast's 'Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,' p. 417. The letter (quoted above), printed in the Castlereagh Papers, and acknowledging to have spied for Lord Downshire, mentions that the writer's 'most particular friends' were men 'who feared in a Revolution the loss of their property, especially such as held their estates by grants of Oliver Cromwell.'⁷²¹

Mr. Froude says that when the mysterious visitor threw back his disguise Downshire recognised in him the son of a gentleman of good fortune in the North of Ireland. Lord Downshire is part proprietor of Newry, where Turner lived, and Hill Street, Newry, is named after the Downshires, just as Turner's Hill, Newry, is called after the Turners.⁷²²

It may be added that Jacob Turner, of Turner Hill, in the county of Armagh, esquire, by his will, dated April 27, 1803, acquits and discharges his son 'Samuel from a judgment debt obtained by me against him for 1,500l.'⁷²³

'"The person" had been a member of the Ulster Revolutionary Committee,' writes Mr. Froude. This Turner admittedly was.

'He had fled with others,' he tells Lord Downshire when describing how he came to leave Ireland and settle at Hamburg.

James Hope, in his narrative supplied to Dr. Madden in 1846, when noticing Turner, writes, 'He fled and settled in Hamburg, where he was entrusted by the Directory with carrying on the correspondence between the Irish and French Executives.'⁷²⁴

Mr. Froude says that the mysterious man was intimate with all the United Irish refugees at Hamburg, received instructions from the Home Office to open a correspondence with rebel leaders, and had the entrée to the house of Lady Edward Fitzgerald.

No wonder that Lord Downshire's friend should command these exceptional facilities for spying when we know, on the authority of James Hope, a veteran rebel of Ulster, that Samuel Turner was the accredited agent at Hamburg of the 'United Irishmen.'⁷²⁵

Mr. Froude tells us that he revealed such evidence of his power to be useful – at Hamburg – that Pitt was extremely anxious to secure his help.

As Turner is shown by Hope to have been the authorised agent of the 'United Irishmen' at Hamburg, the reason becomes clear why Pitt was so anxious to secure a man who had access at that place to all the secrets of his party.

'An arrangement was concluded,' writes Mr. Froude. 'He continued at Hamburg, as Lady Edward's guest and most trusted friend, saw every one who came to her house, kept watch over her letter-bag, was admitted to close and secret conversations upon the prospect of French interference in Ireland with Reinhard,⁷²⁶ the Minister of the Directory there, and he regularly kept Lord Downshire informed of everything which would enable Pitt to watch the conspiracy.'

The first volume of Castlereagh should here be opened. At pp. 277-286 will be found three intercepted letters, addressed by Reinhard at Hamburg to De la Croix, revealing minute particulars regarding the United Irish envoys, and bearing testimony to the zealous help rendered to the conspiracy by Turner.

'I showed Reinhard Lowry's letter,' quotes Mr. Froude.

Turner and Lowry were old allies in Ireland, and had no secrets between them. The sworn information of John Hughes mentions that he saw Lowry, Turner, and Teeling engaged on a committee for conducting the defence of United Irishmen at the Antrim and Down Assizes in February, 1797.

Mr. Froude tells us that the spy who hurried to London and sought Lord Downshire was able to describe an important letter which was on the point of going over from Barclay Teeling in France to Arthur O'Connor.⁷²⁷ Great confidence must have been reposed by Teeling in the man who could tell all this; and such confidence could be earned only by old intimacy and association. What proof is there that early intimacy existed in Ireland between Barclay Teeling and Samuel Turner?

The correspondence of Major Sirr, the Fouché of Dublin, with minor spies, is preserved in Trinity College, Dublin. These papers contain an information in which Dr. Conlan of Dundalk denounces, as deep in the conspiracy, Samuel Turner, Barclay Teeling, Lowry, and Byrne. He describes some hair-breadth escapes of Barclay Teeling, Turner, and Lowry, and how they spent one night in a barn near Dundalk. Conlan had been a United Irishman, who finally brought to the gibbet his cousin Hoey and Marmion⁷²⁸ of Dundalk.

After the betrayer had hurried from Hamburg to London to sell his secrets to Pitt, and then as suddenly disappeared, 'he wrote to Lord Downshire,' observes Mr. Froude, 'saying that he had returned to his old quarters, for fear he might be falling into a trap.'

In fact, as Mr. Froude shows, he was in mortal terror of the assassin's knife. Conlan's sworn information, describing the previous doings of Teeling and Turner in Ireland, mentions how Teeling, Corcoran, and Byrne had a password for putting informers out of the way. Whenever one was detected he was sent to some United Irishman with the password, 'Do you know Ormond Steel?' 'But,' adds Conlan – laying 'the flattering unction to his soul' – 'there never was occasion for this.'⁷²⁹ Turner's treachery was of enormous magnitude, and most momentous in its results. Once a man of indomitable courage, conscience made him an arrant coward in the end.

'I feared,' writes the betrayer to Lord Downshire, 'lest Government might not choose to ratify our contract, and, being in their power, would give me my choice either to come forward as evidence or suffer martyrdom myself. Having no taste for an exit of this kind, I set out and arrived here safe.'⁷³⁰

His dread of 'Ormond Steel' is further proved by Portland's words in reply to the Viceroy Camden, who vainly begged that he might come over to Dublin – 'he is convinced he would go to utter destruction.'⁷³¹

Speaking of Napper Tandy, Mr. Froude says of the veiled informer that he 'had been naturally intimate with the other Irish refugees.'⁷³²

Tandy, in the chapter devoted to him, tells how he and three other Irish refugees had been invited at Hamburg by 'T.' to sup, and were betrayed. Watty Cox, a sound authority on such points, broadly states in the 'Irish Magazine' for January 1809, p. 34, that Tandy and his comrades were 'betrayed by Turner.'

'He had come to England to sell his knowledge to Pitt,' says Mr. Froude.

It will be seen that the price paid to Samuel Turner is officially reported in Dublin Castle. For centuries it had been the custom for England to charge her Pension List on the Irish Establishment. Irish spies and informers are generally of a low type. Reynolds – perhaps the most important of them – could not spell, as his letters, placed in our hands by Sir W. Cope, show. The same remark applies to the correspondence of other informers printed by Dr. Madden. The letters of Mr. Froude's spy are those of an educated man, and show that he corresponded and conversed in French. Samuel Turner was well qualified for all this and more, having graduated in the University of Dublin.⁷³³

These are but a few of the reasons which satisfied me that the betrayer described by Mr. Froude was Samuel Turner. I arrived at my conclusions slowly – according as certain facts, 'far between,' presented themselves in the field of research. But the reader, if he cares to trace the career of this man, and does not object to meet a repetition or two, will find an array of circumstantial evidence amounting to moral demonstration. It may be added that documental proof finally came to crown these researches.

GENERAL NAPPER TANDY

(See chap. viii. ante.)

The late Mr. Allingham, of Ballyshannon – father of William Allingham the poet – in one of his last letters, dated April 25, 1866, recalls a strange incident. 'Should you treat of the stirring period of 1798,' he writes, 'perhaps the following little fact may be acceptable. Some forty years ago I chanced to be on a visit at the hospitable residence of the late N. Foster, Esq., in the Rosses;⁷³⁴ he told me of J. Napper Tandy having put in to the Rosses, in the year 1798, with a French ship of war, the "Anacréon," and how he at once hoisted an Irish flag emblazoned with the words "Erin go Bragh." Tandy was then a general in the French service. He had with him, for distribution, a sheaf of proclamations, addressed to the Irish nation; they had been printed in France, and he left several copies at Mr. Foster's. I got Miss Grace Foster to take an exact copy of the strange document, and which now I send you.

'The French General Rey also had a grandiloquent proclamation with him, beginning "The soldiers of the Great Nation have landed on your coast, well supplied with arms and ammunition of all kinds, with artillery worked by those who have spread terror amongst the ranks of the best troops in Europe, headed by French officers; they come to break your fetters, and restore you to the blessings of liberty. James Napper Tandy is at their head; he has sworn to lead them on to victory or die. Brave Irishmen! the friends of liberty have left their native soil to assist you in re-conquering [sic] your rights; they will brave all dangers, and glory at the sublime idea of cementing your happiness with their blood."⁷³⁵

'Napper Tandy had a large number of saddles and cavalry appointments on board the French ship of war, but he could not procure any horses in the Rosses. So Mrs. Foster said to him, "I fear, General, you will not be able to put the saddle on the right horse!" N. Tandy asked Mr. Foster: "What news?" to which Foster replied that a part of the French troops had landed at Killala, and, after winning the battle of Castlebar, had been finally compelled, near Longford, to capitulate to Lord Cornwallis. Napper Tandy seemed to doubt this intelligence, and proceeded to take forcible possession of the Rutland post-office, which was kept by Mr. Foster's sister. He opened the newspapers, and, to his dismay, found that all was over with the expedition. His descent on Rutland took place September 16, 1798. Tandy, when embarking from the Island for France, wrote an official letter, signed and sealed, with a view to exonerate Foster from blame for not having despatched his mail-bags. Tandy testified that, being in temporary want of accommodation, he was obliged to put "citizen Foster under requisition," and place sentinels around the island. He and his officers paid for everything they took, including two pigs and a cow. General Rey, when leaving, removed a gold ring from his finger and presented it to Mrs. Foster, as a token of fraternity. Tandy not only discharged every obligation, but discharged a cannon as a farewell note. Foster was a staunch loyalist, and ere the "Anacréon" was under way he despatched two expresses, one to Letterkenny, in hopes that the Lough Swilly fleet would intercept them. This was not so easy, for Tandy told Foster they had met several English cruisers en route, but had outsailed them all. The "Anacréon" was equally successful on its return voyage, captured two English ships near the Orkneys, after a stiff engagement, and at last landed Tandy and his A.D.C.s in Norway.'

A copy of Tandy's letter, deliberately penned when leaving Rutland, appears in the appendix to Musgrave's 'Rebellion,' and seems not quite consistent with the statement in the Castlereagh Papers that he got so drunk on the island he had to be carried to the ship.⁷³⁶ But his grief was so poignant on finding his dearest hopes frustrated that it would not be unnatural, in days when hard drinking was the fashion, if the amateur French general had recourse to eau-de-vie. How he was arrested on neutral territory, contrary to the law of nations, subjected to cruel suffering, and sentenced to death, a previous chapter tells.

Fuller inquiry into the career of this quondam merchant of Dublin finds it curiously interwoven with the history of Europe and his fate influential in its affairs. In 1793 Holland was the scene of disaster to the Duke of York; and his second campaign to that country in 1799 ended in a disadvantageous capitulation. Previously he had sent General Don into the interior of Holland to foment among the natives an insurrection against French rule. Don was seized as a spy and threatened with death for seeking to corrupt an enemy which England had failed to conquer in the field.⁷³⁷ He was, however, safely restored during the negotiations of 1799, and Plowden makes the statement, as one generally believed, that in the Helder convention there was a secret article for restoring to liberty Tandy and Blackwell, in return for the delivery of Don, who, by the laws of war, had incurred the penalty of death. The Paris journals of October 1799 said that the Duke's capitulation contains some private articles which his Royal Highness did not wish to submit to the consideration of the coffee-houses in London.

Prolonged delay attended the liberation of Tandy. Brune bitterly complained of it in the Council of Five Hundred; and then it was that Buonaparte branded, as an attack upon the rights of nations and a crime against humanity, the surrender, by Hamburg to England, of Tandy, Blackwell, Morres, and Corbet.

The painful details already given as regards the severity of their imprisonment it is pleasant to relieve by some notice of the conduct of one official who, superior in gentlemanly instinct to others of higher rank, treated Tandy and his companions with a courteous consideration most acceptable to men whose hearts ached from recent persecution. This letter – unknown to Mr. Ross, the editor of the 'Cornwallis Papers' – was addressed, we believe, to a near kinsman of that writer.

To Mr. Ross, the King's Messenger

'Dublin: November 18, 1799 —in prison.

'Sir, – We find ourselves at a loss to know how we best can express our acknowledgments for the very polite, gentlemanly, and philosophic manner in which you have uniformly behaved towards us, ever since the period of our first getting under your care at Sheerness, during our subsequent stay in London, upon the whole of our journey through England, and until our arrival here; a conduct the peculiar inheritance of a man of sense, education, and honour; and which, upon all occasions in life, must leave with the feeling mind a pleasing and everlasting impression.

'All that we, sir, on our parts, can offer (and request your acceptance of as a just tribute to your merit) is our sincerest wishes for your happiness and future welfare – and to all of our fellow-citizens whom the casualties of the day may hereafter chance to place in similar circumstances with us, we wish from our hearts the superior good fortune of falling into the hands of an officer who, knowing his duty like Mr. Ross, like him also executes it in a manner that honours humanity – an idea, that, with us, while drawing a comparison between such-like conduct as we now speak of, and that which we but very recently experienced in a foreign country, restores to its pristine, but nearly lost worth, in our minds, the invaluable weight of social law, and of all generous and liberal-minded converse betwixt man and man.'

The following signatures are affixed:

'James Napper Tandy.

Colonel Blackwell.

Harvey M. Morres.

George Peters.'

The interest which continued to attach to Tandy's memory long after his death, even in quarters not likely to evince sympathy, is curiously shown in the following extract from a letter addressed in 1846 by Robert Shaw Worthington, B.L., to O'Connell, soliciting his patronage with the Whig Government: 'My Liberal opinions I inherit from my father, who, strange as it may appear, was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1795.⁷³⁸ His liberal opinions did not serve him in those days; he was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, and in the year 1809, at a private dinner-party at the house of Mr. Farrell, Blackhall Street, my father proposed the memory of Napper Tandy.⁷³⁹ One of the company (the perfidious name was Fanning) reported the circumstance next day at the Castle; my father received a letter from the Chief Secretary (the present Duke of Wellington) calling upon him to disprove the charge; but, being unable to do so, he was dismissed from his office of Dublin Police Magistrate, the salary of which was 500l. per annum.'⁷⁴⁰