Kitabı oku: «Secret Service Under Pitt», sayfa 23

A TARDY AMENDE TO LORD CAMDEN. – THE FRENCH IN IRELAND

Lord Camden, the Irish Viceroy in 1798, has been often styled a dull man; but he seems to have had his wits about him, as will presently appear.

I find, by a remarkable letter of this Lord Lieutenant, written two months previous to General Lake's retreat from Castlebar, that he saw the weak points of the somewhat overrated warrior who afterwards got a peerage for beating the Mahrattas. It may be said that the defeat at Castlebar was due to panic among the troops, but all accounts agree that Lake and Hutchinson had been out-manœuvred by Humbert.

'I remain in the opinion I originally held,' writes Lord Camden at a time anterior to the arrival of the French, 'that General Lake is not fit for the command in these difficult times, and have written to Pitt in the most serious and impressive manner I am able to make him master of the actual danger of the country. It is unfortunate that he should have lost the advantage of General Lake's services where he was really well placed, and have brought him to one which is above his capacity. He has no arrangement, is easily led, and no authority.'⁷⁷⁵

Passing reference has been made to the arrival at Killala, on August 22, 1798, of a small French force under Humbert; and some notice of the sequel is due. Humbert had started from Rochelle solely on his own responsibility. General Lord Hutchinson held Castlebar with 5,200 men; but Lake, as the senior officer, assumed the command. Lake arrived at dark with a large reinforcement, and next morning was surprised to see the French troops rise from a defile hitherto regarded as impassable, General Taylor having been previously sent forward to cut off their approach by road. Although the French were jaded after a forced march of fifteen hours, they advanced with much vivacity, and attacked the King's troops, who had posted themselves on a steep hill-side with nine pieces of cannon. 'They advanced in excellent style – with great rapidity as sharp-shooters,' Cooke writes.⁷⁷⁶ Lake's line wavered, a retreat was sounded, the flight of the infantry was most disorderly, and Sir Jonah Barrington compares it to that of a mob. Lord Jocelyn's Light Dragoons (he was taken prisoner soon after by Humbert) ran like so many 'Tam O'Shanters' to Tuam, a distance of forty miles, followed by such of the French as could get horses for the chase. All the artillery, with five pair of colours, fell into the hands of the French. This disgraceful panic is remembered as 'The Races of Castlebar.'⁷⁷⁷

Such conduct, unlike their position, was indefensible; for Lake's men, different from the enemy, had been refreshed by a good night's rest. The French had left 200 men to garrison Killala, and Humbert's soldiers, when in action, did not exceed 800, according to the statement of Lake's secretary.⁷⁷⁸ But it has been often said that the French, in making so successful an attack, must have been supported by vast numbers of native insurgents. Again Cooke writes, on the authority of Lake's secretary, 'he saw no peasantry.'⁷⁷⁹

Mr. Vereker, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Limerick Militia, got a peerage for having repulsed the French at Coloony, and the motto on his arms is simply the name of that place. Lord Carleton records, in his autograph, on the margin of a book, some curious facts: —

'The skirmish at Coloony,' he writes, 'began and ended in a blunder. Vereker (who knew nothing of the rapid march of thirty-five Irish miles which the French had made from Castlebar) supposed he was attacking only their vanguard; and Humbert, equally ignorant of Vereker's force, mistook the troops which attacked him for the vanguard of a larger body, and altered his plan of marching to Sligo, which must have surrendered at his approach. When Lake, with his division, arrived at Coloony next morning, he found eighteen Frenchmen, dangerously wounded, who were left behind by their army.'

The strangest part of the story is that Vereker in this attack acted on his own responsibility, and contrary to the instructions he had received from Lake. This brief campaign was marked by a series of wonderful misapprehensions. French accounts say that Humbert, seeing the strength of the British line at Castlebar, thought of retiring to Ballina, and to cover the retreat ordered General Sarrazin to make a feigned attack, which, being mistaken by Lake for an attempt to turn his flank, produced the panic, where upon Sarrazin, changing his plan, and without Humbert's orders, charged the enemy and sent them flying. But here Humbert's triumph stopped. Meanwhile, as Lord Carleton in another note states, 'The Hompesch Dragoons were of infinite service, being chiefly Hungarians, and hanging close on the enemies' rear; the (common) Irish, deceived by their dress and foreign language, took them for the French, and came to join them in great numbers, but were immediately cut down, and their pockets rifled by their supposed friends.'

Again, as Lord Carleton notes, the French mistaking, by its picturesque dress, a Highland regiment for guerilla troops, sought to fraternise with them, and greatly to their cost.

It has been repeatedly stated, and is generally believed, that Lord Camden was recalled in order to make way for the milder policy of Lord Cornwallis; but it is a fact now worth recording, though somewhat late, that the appointment of Cornwallis was directly due to Camden himself.

Camden continues: —

'I return to the opinion I had entertained before, that the Lord Lieutenant ought to be a military man. The whole government of the country is now military, and the power of the chief governor is almost merged in that of the general commanding the troops. I have suggested the propriety of sending over Lord Cornwallis, whose name, with some good officers under him, will have great weight; and I have told Pitt that which I really feel, that without the best military assistance I conceive the country to be in the most imminent danger, and that my services cannot be useful to the King.'⁷⁸⁰

Mr. Froude quotes from a letter of Camden's 'The insurgents will be annihilated.'⁷⁸¹ But his tone to Pelham is widely different. He writes: —

'Unless Great Britain pours an immense force into Ireland the country is lost… I cannot suffer my character and my peace of mind to be trifled with.'⁷⁸²

Pitt acted on Camden's counsel and appointed Lord Cornwallis. Camden confides to Elliot: —

'If I relinquish my situation, as I do now, merely for the public good at the risque of a false construction, it becomes doubly necessary that I should receive some mark of confidence that it may not be supposed I am recalled from any opinion on the part of the ministers that I have not acted as became me.'⁷⁸³

And in a letter of the same date to Pelham, Camden says he is the servant of the public, and ready himself 'to act in Ireland, or elsewhere, in whatever manner I might be the most usefully employed.'

Camden's counsel was followed, that the Viceroy of Ireland – in such times – ought to be a military man. Lord Cornwallis, the new chief governor, went down to Connaught at the head of 20,000 troops, and Humbert surrendered. On September 8, 1798, after a fortnight's progress through the country, 96 officers and 748 French rank and file became prisoners of war; and, according to Gordon, 500 peasant auxiliaries were put to the sword. Several sympathisers, chiefly local gentry, were hanged; including, as Lord Carleton notes, Messrs. Blake, French, and O'Dowd. Thus ended Humbert's quixotic enterprise; but the previous expedition to Bantry Bay, in 1796, was very formidable; and England had not had such an escape since the Spanish Armada. In this connection Lord Carleton has another word to say; and I do not feel warranted in omitting what serves to explain some things hitherto a puzzle. Few believed that Hoche's expedition of 1796 could have escaped the vigilance and vengeance of the English fleet which had long been watching it off Brest.

'Admiral Kingsmill (a most excellent naval officer), who commanded in Cork Harbour, was one of these sceptics. He thought it impossible so large a fleet could have escaped the vigilance of all his cruisers. Kingsmill had no intelligence of it, and repeatedly said, if the French fleet was in Bantry he would suffer his head to be chopped off on his own quarter-deck. Had not the French, when they first made the land, mistaken the Durseys for Three-Castle-Head, by which they missed their port, and were several hours beating back again, they would have got so far up the bay as to have been able to effect their purpose. It is much to be lamented that an officer of high rank in the British navy, Keith Elphinstone (afterwards Lord Keith), returning from India in the 'Monarch' of 74 guns, and putting by accident into Crookhaven at the very time the two French ships and frigates were in Bantry Bay, could not be prevailed upon to put himself at the head of the ships then in Cork Harbour – the 'Powerful' of 74 guns, and three stout frigates – and block up the bay till Lord Bridport's fleet could arrive. "It was not his business." He got all the stores Kingsmill could send him, and sailed off to England. I assert this fact as positively true. – H. C.'

The signature of Lord Chief Justice Carleton is affixed to all the Government proclamations of the time. His peculiar knowledge was largely derived as a member of the Irish Privy Council, and from his relations with Cork, of which he was a native.

It was not 'the Shan Van Voght' who first announced, as the old ballad has it, that 'the French were on the sea.' The news came from Darrynane Abbey, where the waves roll in unbroken from Labrador. Daniel O'Connell's people have been accused of treasonable leanings – but unfairly. Old Maurice Connell, or O'Connell, chieftain of Darrynane, made money through 'smuggling,' but he was no rebel. Opening that scantily explored mine – the Pelham MSS. – I find Maurice Connell announcing to an under-strapper of the Government, who reports it to Pelham, that a French fleet is in Bantry Bay, and he calls it 'most melancholy intelligence.' The letter is dated 'Darrynane, December 20, 1796.' 'I give you this early information,' writes Maurice from his mountain crag, 'in order that every proper measure should be pursued on an event soe very alarming.'⁷⁸⁴

This timely information had the start by two days of Mr. Richard White's, who notoriously received his peerage in acknowledgment of a message of similar tenor. We learn from the old pamphlet of Edward Morgan, that 'A servant of his (White's) brought the first despatch to General Dalrymple, in Cork, of the arrival of the French, on the night of Thursday, December 22, who was but four hours going forty-two miles, Irish, on a single horse.'⁷⁸⁵ The above is culled from Lord Carleton's copy, and it is added in his autograph, 'Mr. White, for his services on this occasion, which were very meritorious, was created Lord Bantry.'

Communication with London proved so slow in those days that reward was justly due to those who sought to mend a state of things now hard to realise. The King's messenger, when autumnal or wintry winds prevailed, had often to wait three or four weeks ere the boat could sail from Dublin to Holyhead; and on one occasion in the seventeenth century Dublin Castle was three months without letters from London.⁷⁸⁶ Even on terra firma a snail's pace too often marked the progress of great officials who ought to have set a better example. Carew, when going from Dublin to London, lost five days in accomplishing the 'run' between Holyhead and Chester. When the winds proved propitious, and the King's messenger was an active man, he was able to deliver in Dublin in one week the despatch from Whitehall.

JOHN POLLOCK

(See p. 178, ante.)

John Pollock, Clerk of the Crown for Leinster, who, according to the 'Cornwallis Papers,' 'managed' the counsel and attorney of the United Irishmen, deserves a note, especially as he is one of the men regarding whom the industrious editor of that work found it impossible to ascertain particulars. His services, which, Cooke says, 'ought to be thought of,' were rewarded in 1800 by the Deputy Clerkship of the Pleas of the Exchequer. Gross abuse defiled this post; but until 1816 the iniquity was not brought before Parliament. On April 29 Mr. Leslie Foster declared that 'Mr. Pollock drew 10,000l. out of the profits, and on which he ought to pay the salaries of the other clerks; but, instead of this, he pocketed the whole of the money, leaving them to raise the fees upon the suitors on no other authority than their own assumptions!' In 1803 Pollock's emoluments from this office did not exceed 3,000l. a year. Mr. Attorney-General Saurin impeached him in nine distinct charges, and as a result he was deposed.⁷⁸⁷

Pollock's name constantly appears in that curious manuscript known as the 'S.S. Money Book,' one of the last payments to him being on January 10, 1799, for 1,137l. 10s. The frequent payments to 'John Pollock for J. W.' suggested to me that the gold which he disbursed was usually for persons connected with the law, and with this clue I am able to trace and make clear various ciphers which Dr. Madden was unable to explain when publishing a copy of the Secret Account just named. For instance, we find: '1799 – 16 Feb. J. Pollock for J. W. – £150 – G. M. £50.' Again, on May 3 following: 'J. Pollock for G. M. I. – £50.' And on June 5 and August 3, '£150 to G. M. I.' Who is 'G. M.' and 'G. M. I.'?

George McIntagart is described in 1798 as an attorney-at-law. Benjamin P. Binns, in an autobiographical sketch, speaks of this man as his step-father. It was George McIntagart who, when Mayor of Drogheda in 1798, dressed up Orangemen in French uniforms, and sent them through the country to entrap simple peasants. He then flogged them until, they revealed whatever they knew. The future Duke of Wellington, writing to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on March 17, 1809, observes: 'Will you have Mr. McIntagart appointed to be Collector of Drogheda?'⁷⁸⁸

'February 24, 1798. Mr. Pollock for J. W. H.' appears on record. Turning to the list of attorneys in that year, the name of 'J. Wright Heatly' is found. Dr. Madden also prints, 'August 23. Major Sirr for W. A. H., £68 5s. 0d.,' but offers no conjecture as to the owner of these initials. He must be the man described by Plowden who, after an interview with the Irish Privy Council, was equipped at the expense of Dublin Castle with a showy rebel uniform, including a cocked hat and feathers, and sent on a mission to Belfast to seduce and to betray. An orderly dragoon repaired with instructions to General Sir Charles Ross, who commanded in Belfast, that Houlton was a confidential agent and not to be molested. Houlton, however, having started in a chaise and four, arrived at Belfast in advance of the orderly, and the result was that, when in the act of declaiming treason at a tavern, he was arrested by the local authorities, paraded in his uniform round the town, and sent back a prisoner to Dublin.⁷⁸⁹ The Belfast papers of the day give his name as William Ainslie Houlton, and he is clearly identical with the W. A. H. of Mr. Cooke's cipher. It would be endless to pursue this subject. Meanwhile, those who care to follow the various ciphers in the 'S.S. Money Book,' and to know the circumstances under which each item is penned, can obtain full information from the present writer.

Pollock in his new sinecure did not cease to gratify the instincts which made him so efficient in 1798. A letter from him is found in the 'Wellington Correspondence,' dated January 12, 1809, directing attention to McNevin's 'Pieces of Irish History,' then recently published in New York. Pollock assures the future subjugator of Napoleon that, from information he received, this book is the precursor of a French invasion of Ireland. 'If you have Cox,'⁷⁹⁰ he adds '(who keeps a small bookshop in Anglesea Street), he can let you into the whole object of sending this book to Ireland at this time; and further, if you have not Cox, believe me that no sum of money at all within reason would be misapplied in riveting him to the Government. I have spoken of this man before to Sir Edward Littlehales and to Sir Charles Saxton. He is the most able, and, if not secured, by far the most formidable man that I know of in Ireland.'⁷⁹¹ This letter, from the niche assigned to it in the 'Wellington Correspondence,' calls for a distinct notice of Cox, whose name occurs so frequently in the foregoing sheets.

WALTER COX ⁷⁹²

(See p. 71, ante.)

Mr. O'Donoghue, in 'Irish Humourists,' states of Cox and his rebel sheet, the 'Union Star,' which openly urged assassination: 'While the moderate organs of the United Irishmen – the 'Press' and the 'Northern Star' – were being suppressed and their editors persecuted and imprisoned, Watty Cox and his sheet were left severely alone.' I am sure the author will allow me, in the interests of history, to set this point right. The Pelham MSS. contain the following letter from Cooke: – 'This day I suppressed the "Union Star." Cox offered [Justice] Bell to disclose the author, and to tell what he knew to Government on condition of pardon. I accepted the terms and have seen him. He was sole author, printer, and publisher. He composed the "Star" at different printing houses with types of different printers and struck them off by a small bellows press of his own. He says he continued the publication more from vanity than mischief; says that he has been for some time against continuing the scheme of separation from England because he thought it could not succeed … thinks it will if there be any invasion. Lord Edward F. [sic] and O'Connor have been often with him; they knew of his writing the "Star." Cox pronounced Lord Edward "weak but very zealous"; O'Connor has abilities and is an enthusiast, but he thinks they want system.' Much more follows, and Cooke adds, 'he [Cox] is a clever man and deep.'⁷⁹³

The viceroy, Camden, writing two days later, says: 'He [Cox] seems able to give much important information;'⁷⁹⁴ but Camden assumes this merely on the strength of the fact mentioned in Cooke's letter, and Cox does not seem to have compromised his friends by any actual disclosure. Arthur O'Connor, addressing Dr. Madden in 1842, declared that Cox remained always faithful to him, and also to Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Whatever changes may have taken place in his conduct, it was not until after Lord Edward's death and O'Connor's exile. While there was a chance of success, he was one of the staunchest men in Ireland to their cause. Had O'Connor – a person of great vanity – dreamt that Cox called him an enthusiast, and Lord Edward weak, his praise might perhaps have been modified.

In 1803, when Dublin Castle was dismayed by the outbreak of Emmet's rebellion within shadow of its walls, I find addressed to Cox the copy of a letter from Under-Secretary Marsden requesting him to call upon him, and 'nobody would be the wiser.' Cox replies in writing to the effect that he did not care how public their communications should be; and certainly at this time he cannot be called 'a spy,' if indeed he ever was.

The Viceroy Hardwicke wrote, soon after, an official vindication of his conduct; and he mentions incidentally that it had been meditated to place Cox under arrest as a dangerous democrat. His 'Irish Magazine' is a marvellous medley, and contains, intermingled with some rubbish, a good deal of valuable matter useful for future reference. Having been put in the pillory more than once for his writings, and finally been sentenced to pay a fine of 300l., and enter into security himself for one thousand, with two others of 500l. each, to keep in good behaviour for seven years, as well as suffer one year's confinement in Newgate, Cox at last consented, on receiving a pension of 100l. a year, to expatriate himself to America. This Lord Mulgrave stopped in 1835, and the death of Cox occurred soon after.⁷⁹⁵