THE gloom, which was at this date fast settling down over Ireland in general, was accentuated at Edgeworthstown by fresh trouble. Mrs. Edgeworth was visibly failing. After her return from Clifton she began to be ill, and it soon became clear that her life could not be much further prolonged. In a letter written about this date, her step-daughter, after quoting a gay little quatrain of hers about some dyes that the children were concocting, adds–"But though my mother makes epigrams, she is far from well." So kaleidoscopic is the succession of these "mothers" of Miss Edgeworth, that emotion tends to dry up under it, and even the most patient of biographers wearies a little before the duty of chronicling their various arrivals and exits. It was in November 1797 that Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth died, and, while the following year was still young, we already perceive preludings pointing to the arrival of another–it is a relief to be able to assert the last wife positively of Mr. Edgeworth! An illustrated edition of The Parent's Assistant was being projected by the publishers, and Miss Beaufort (the daughter of a rector in a neighbouring county) had requested to be allowed to undertake the illustrations. The matter entailed [Page 69] interviews with Mr. Edgeworth, and the interviews led to–their inevitable result! For once the devoted Maria seems to have shown some little dismay over these precipitate proceedings. She held back, and could not immediately be cordial. Soon, however, we find her writing to Miss Beaufort, and in a tone, moreover, the dutifulness of which would to most of us have appeared to be rather beyond what the occasion required.
As had by this time become his habit, Mr. Edgeworth not only married in a somewhat singular fashion, but he selected a particularly singular time and place in which to get married. The country was now rocking in the very throes of rebellion. The marriage took place in Dublin, and the bride's experiences upon her progress from there to Edgeworthstown were more exciting evidently than pleasant. Few people, she tells us, were to be seen along the roads, a fact hardly to be wondered at, considering that at an inn called "The Nineteen Mile House," where they were delayed for a while, a woman, whom they found alone in the kitchen, came up to them and whispered, "The boys (the rebels) are hid in the potato furrows beyond." Mr. Edgeworth, we hear, was rather startled at this intelligence, but took no notice. "A little further on," Mrs. Edgeworth continues, "I saw something very odd on the side of the road before us." "What is that?" "Look to the other side. Don't look at it !" cried Mr. Edgeworth. After they had passed, he told her that it was a car turned up, between the shafts of which a man was hung, murdered by the rebels.
In spite of these and similarly pleasing incidents, [Page 70] they arrived safe and sound at Edgeworthstown, where they found the family perfectly calm as regards their safety, although in a flutter of excitement over the arrival of the hitherto almost unknown stepmother.
Nothing, perhaps, strikes outsiders more forcibly than the light-hearted fashion in which the peril of situations such as these is apt to be treated by the people most concerned, a fact which those who have passed through similar, if milder, ordeals in later years in Ireland, will be able to bear out from their own experience. Maria Edgeworth's letters, written at this date, positively brim over with jests, both as regards the situation at large, and her own share in it.–"All that I crave for my own part," she exclaims in one of them, "is that if I am to have my throat cut, it may not be by a man with his face blackened with charcoal ! I shall look at every person that comes here very closely to see if there be any marks of charcoal upon their visages. Old wrinkled offenders I should suppose would never be able to wash out their stains; but in others a very clean face will, in my mind, be a strong symptom of guilt–clean hands proof positive, and clean nails ought to hang a man."
In another letter, written to her cousin Sophy about a month after her father's marriage, the following picture of absolute domestic tranquillity occurs:–"So little change has been made in the way of living, that you would feel as if you were going on with your usual occupations and conversation amongst us. We laugh and talk, and enjoy the good of every day, which is more than sufficient. How long this may last we cannot tell. I am going on in the old way, writing stories. I cannot be a captain of dragoons, [Page 71] and sitting with my hands before me would not make any of us one degree safer . . . . I have finished a volume of wee-wee stories, about the size of the Purple Jar, all about Rosamund. Simple Susan went to Foxhall a few days ago for Lady Ann to carry to England. My father has made our little rooms so nice for us; they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh, rebels ! oh, French! spare them ! We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves."
The word "French" in this letter introduces us to what was by far the most exciting public event with which Maria Edgeworth was ever destined to be connected. Not many historic incidents are less tempting to dwell upon as a whole than is the Irish Rebellion of 1798. It had been so long foreseen, and so completely had the commonest precautions to avert it been neglected, as to give colour to the suspicion that it had been actually desired by those in authority at the time in Ireland. When, moreover, the long expected happened, and the rising broke out, it is difficult to say upon which side the weight of condemnation for sheer brutality, or wanton cruelty, deserves to press most heavily. From its first beginnings–from the picketings and the half hangings in the north; from the pitch-cappings and floggings in the Ridinghouse of Beresford; afterwards through the whole of the proceedings of the rebels in Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare–the hideous business of the burning of the barracks at Prosperous, the daily massacres of prisoners on Vinegar Hill, the horrors of the barn of Scullabog, and of the bridge of Wexford,–these followed in their turn by a series of executions, one at least admittedly [Page 72] unjust, several dictated by personal malice or the merest caprices of panic–the whole scene positively reeks with horror, a horror which hardly a gleam of humanity arises to temper. One episode indeed to some extent redeems the distasteful story. Unfortunately the heroes of that episode were neither Irish heroes, nor yet English ones. Few historical occurrences are more striking, and at the same time less familiar to even fairly well read students of history, than is this descent upon Ireland in the year 1798 of a mere handful of French soldiery, led by a group of officers of that indomitable type which it is the pride and glory of the French Revolution to have brought to the front.
A more visibly hopeless attempt than this probably never was imagined, yet rarely has any expedition so ludicrously ill provided gone nearer to success than it did. The entire incident is so unique as to be worth a moment's dwelling on, the more so since it has a direct connection with the subject of this little book, it having been Maria Edgeworth's singular fortune–mounted upon her faithful "Dapple," that remarkable war-horse !–to have assisted at the last scene of this ill-starred, but most gallant of adventures.
Before glancing for a moment at the larger incidents of the time, it will be better first to follow the adventures of the Edgeworth family, as we find them given in their own letters. Those letters are so graphic that, although not new, they ought not, I think, to be entirely omitted. The first part of the tale is told by Maria, in a letter to Mrs. Ruxton, a letter sent off evidently in hot haste, to relieve the latter's mind. It is dated from the inn at Longford, where the [Page 73] family had temporarily taken refuge, after clinging to their home to the last moment–in fact until the rebels were reported to be in sight.
"Sept. 6, '98.
"MY DEAREST AUNT,–We are all safe and well, and have had two most fortunate escapes from rebels, and from the explosion of an ammunition cart. Yesterday we heard, about ten o'clock in the morning, that a large body of rebels, armed with pikes, were within a few miles of Edgeworthstown. My father's yeomanry were at this moment gone to Longford for their arms, which Government had delayed sending. We were ordered to decamp, each with a small bundle; the two chaises full, and my mother and Aunt Charlotte on horseback. We were all ready to move, when the report was contradicted; only twenty or thirty men, it was now said, were in arms, and my father hoped we might still hold fast to our dear home.
"Two officers and six dragoons happened at this moment to be on their way through Edgeworthstown, escorting an ammunition cart from Mullingar to Longford: they promised to take us under their protection, and the officer came up to the door to say he was ready. My father most fortunately detained us; they set out without us. Half an hour afterwards, as we were quietly sitting in the portico, we heard–as we thought close to us–the report of a pistol, or a clap of thunder, which shook the house. The officer soon afterwards returned, almost speechless; he could hardly explain what had happened. The ammunition cart, containing nearly three barrels of gunpowder, packed in tin cases, took fire and burst, half way on the road to Longford. The man who drove the cart was blown to atoms–nothing of him could be found; two of the horses were killed, others were blown to pieces, and their limbs scattered to a distance; the head and body of a man were found a hundred and twenty yards from the spot. Mr. Murray was the name of the officer I am speaking of: he had with him a Mr. Rochfort and a Mr. Nugent. Mr. Rochfort was thrown from his horse, one side of his face was [Page 74] terribly burnt, and stuck over with gunpowder. He was carried into a cabin, and they thought he would die, but they now say he will recover. The carriage has been sent to take him to Longford. I have not time or room, my dear aunt, to dilate, or tell you half I have to say. If we had gone with this ammunition, we must have been killed.
"An hour or two afterwards, however, we were obliged to fly from Edgeworthstown. The rebel pikemen, three hundred in number, actually were within a mile of the town. My mother, Aunt Charlotte, and I rode; we passed the trunk of a dead man, bloody limbs of horses, and two dead horses, by the help of men who pulled on our steeds; all safely lodged now in Mrs. Fallon's inn."
Mrs. Edgeworth here takes up the tale:
"Before we had reached the place where the cart had been blown up, Mr. Edgeworth suddenly recollected that he had left on the table in his study a list of the yeomanry corps, which he feared might endanger the poor fellows and their families if it fell into the hands of the rebels. He galloped back for it–it was at the hazard of his life–but the rebels had not yet appeared. He burned the paper, and rejoined us safely.
"The landlady of the inn at Longford did all she could to make us comfortable, and we were squeezed into the already crowded house. Mrs. Billamore, our excellent housekeeper, we had left behind for the return of the carriage, which had taken Mr. Rochfort to Longford. But it was detained, and she did not reach us till the next morning, when we learned from her that the rebels had not come up to the house. They had halted at the gate, but were prevented from entering by a man whom she did not remember to have ever seen; but he was grateful to her for having lent money to his wife when she was in great distress, and we now, at our utmost need, owed our safety and that of the house to his gratitude. We were surprised to find that this was thought by some to be a suspicious circumstance, and that it showed Mr. Edgeworth to be a favourer of the rebels! An express arrived at night to [Page 75] say the French were close to Longford; Mr. Edgeworth undertook to defend the gaol, which commanded the road by which the enemy must pass, where they could be detained till the King's troops came up. He was supplied with men and ammunition, and watched all night; but in the morning news came that the French had turned in a different direction, and gone to Granard, about seven miles off."
A few words will bring the larger incidents of the time up to this point. The landing-place which the invaders had chosen for their descent was Killala, a small town upon the coast of Mayo, at that time the seat of a Protestant bishopric, one which has since then been merged into the larger diocese of Tuam. By far the best account of the whole affair is to be found, not in any of the official records of the time, but in a small and rather scarce book–Narrative of what passed at Killala during the French Invasion, by an Eye-witness. The eye-witness was the bishop himself, Dr. Stock, a prelate whose energy and courage shone out with great distinction under so new and entirely unlooked for a variation of the ordinary episcopal functions.
The whole account of the relations between him and his captors reads like a series of scenes out of some brilliant little comedy, or tragi-comedy, and ought to be found irresistible upon the stage, could we by any means conceive of anything relating to Irish history finding favour there. So little expectation of invasion was there at the time that, when three strange vessels were observed to enter the bay, two of the bishop's sons rowed out in a small boat to ascertain who the strangers were. They were detained, of course, and the embarkation was accomplished without the [Page 76] slightest difficulty. The few yeomen and fencibles who chanced to be in Killala were put to flight, and before evening the new masters of the place had established themselves, without molestation, in the Castle of Killala, at that time the residence of Bishop Stock, his wife, and their eleven children.
As the only person in the neighbourhood who was well acquainted with French, it fell to the lot of the bishop to have to act as interpreter between the foreign invaders and their native adherents, who came swarming into Killala from all the country round about. Happily for the defenceless Protestants, if wild and ignorant to the last degree, the latter showed not a symptom of that ferocity which has left so black a stain upon the rising in Wexford and other parts of the east of Ireland. There had been no ill-usage in this case to sting the people to fury, and the whole account of their behaviour reads less like that of violent and determined rebels, than like the behaviour of a crowd of astonished and excited children. They danced with delight when they received their new uniforms, as well as the rifles which had been provided for them, the latter of which they at once proceeded to fire off in all directions, and at everything–especially the crows. On one occasion the bishop mentions that a bullet actually struck the hat of the French officer in command, who happened to be speaking to him at the moment!
But this portion of the story, although tempting to dilate upon, must be left half told, seeing that the only part of the invaders' proceedings with which this book has any proper connection was enacted in quite another direction. [Page 77]
Upon the first news of the French descent, the troops in Connaught had been ordered by Lord Cornwallis to concentrate at Castlebar. The officer in command was General Lake, whose reputation for inhumanity as regards the early part of the rising is so black that it is difficult to resist a feeling of satisfaction in the fact that it was upon him that the subsequent disgrace mainly fell. He had arrived at Castlebar only the very evening before the attack, thereby superseding Major-General Hamilton, who had previously been in command. The regular road from Killala to Castlebar lies through the village of Foxford, and a force of some twelve hundred men under General Taylor had been sent to hold this against the invaders. At three o'clock on the morning of the 27th of August there arrived a messenger to inform the general that the French were advancing, not by the usual road, but along a rude hilly track, a track so rough that the few guns they possessed had to be dragged over the rocks by the peasants. But for this accidental warning the garrison would almost certainly have been surprised in their beds, and the panic which followed would in that case have been comparatively excusable. As it was, General Lake had time to draw out his forces, and to dispose them in an excellent position above Castlebar, flanked by a marsh and a small lake. The entire force under his orders amounted to over four thousand men, nearly half of which seems to have been employed in this manner. They consisted chiefly of yeomanry and militia, but there were also a certain number of regular troops and a strong body of artillery. Under these circumstances, it was naturally regarded as incredible that so mere a handful as the invaders were known [Page 78] to be, would venture to assail a position held by a foe more than twice their number, and fresh after a night's rest. In so calculating, General Lake and his staff underrated the spirit of the men to whom the 1796-1797 campaign in Italy was still a very recent experience. Undismayed by the numbers opposed to them, and despite the fact of their having been already nearly fifteen hours on foot, the French came steadily up the hill, in the face of a fire which scattered their untrained assistants right and left. The top reached, they rushed upon the defenders with level bayonets. The artillery stood to their guns, Lord Roden's cavalry behaved well, but the rest of the troops seem hardly to have attempted to make a stand. Within a few minutes the whole force was flying in wild confusion towards the town. Through the streets of Castlebar they were driven before the French bayonets, and out into the country beyond, over which they continued to stream, flinging their weapons away from them in all directions in their headlong haste.
It was, as will be seen from this brief account, less a defeat than a simple rout, or, as it has always been called in Ireland, a race–the Race of Castlebar. The whole incident is fortunately almost without a parallel, for even supposing the conduct of the troops to have been due to mere panic, that of General Lake himself still remains inexplicable. He had seen the foe with his own eyes, consequently must have known approximately what their numbers were. In spite of this, upon his arrival at Tuam, thirty miles away, he informed the inhabitants that the French were in pursuit, and that they must make the best terms they could for themselves. A similarly alarmist report [Page 79] reached Lord Cornwallis, as the despatches of the day clearly show. That night, or early the next day, General Lake left Tuam, and pushed on towards Athlone, collecting the demoralised remains of his force as he went. The activity displayed upon this occasion seems to have been most remarkable, some of the men who had fled from Castlebar having never ceased running all that night, and having reached Athlone, it is said, within the twenty-eight hours! 1
What lends an element almost of comedy to the whole affair is that the originators of this panic never made the slightest attempt to pursue! The French remained quietly at Castlebar, satisfied, and very naturally satisfied, with what they had already achieved. Here they stayed, recruiting themselves, and seeking for reinforcements for about ten days. Meanwhile fresh troops had been hurried over from England. Lord Cornwallis, the commander-in-chief, had himself advanced as far as Hollymount, having under him a force of not less than twenty thousand men. Finding themselves in danger of being surrounded, the invaders at length left Castlebar, and started towards Sligo, apparently with a wild idea of making a détour, and so descending upon Dublin. Had they reached the country a couple of months sooner, and while the rising at Wexford was still absorbing all the energies of the military, it is hard [Page 80] to say what might not have happened. As it was, the rising had been by this time effectually crushed. A reaction of terror had spread over the whole east of Ireland. The hour for success was over, and after one sharp brush with Colonel Vereker at Collooney, near Sligo, there was nothing before the invaders but an honourable surrender.
This took place upon the 8th of September at Ballinamuck, a little village upon the borders of Longford and Roscommon. At this euphoniously named place, the French found Lord Cornwallis posted with his entire force. Although augmented by some two hundred of their own number, whom they had previously left at Killala, the invaders still barely amounted to eight hundred and forty men. Eight hundred and forty against twenty thousand is rather long odds, even for heroes! They capitulated accordingly, stipulating only for fair terms. These were conceded, and in their case were strictly adhered to, although their wretched adherents were mercilessly cut down, or, when captured, hung without ceremony. A dramatic touch is lent to the end of the affair by one detail more. The French officers, released upon their parole, seem to have ridden back to Dublin with the members of Lord Cornwallis's staff. The rank and file, packed into a string of turf-boats, were sent there by means of the canal. I have seen an account by an eye-witness, in one of the Dublin newspapers of that day, which graphically describes their being slowly towed along, singing or shouting the "Marseillaise" at the tops of their voices, as they floated through the bogs.
So ended this extraordinary little incident, hardly [Page 81] a gratifying one from the military point of view, but at least what is called "instructive." Years afterwards, at St. Helena, Napoleon is said to have dwelt with especial emphasis upon the error he had committed in not having made a descent upon Ireland one of the main points of his campaign against England. Had he done so, and had fortune favoured him, it would be bold to assert that his success, so far as Ireland was concerned, might not have been complete. Seeing what was achieved by the utterly inadequate force which did land, it would require more than an ordinary amount of national vanity to deny that, given a sufficient one, led by Napoleon himself, or one of the best of his subordinates, the entire island might have been overrun. It is true that at worst this could only have been temporary, seeing that Ireland, like every other newly acquired French possession, would have had to be surrendered at the end of the war. That event, however, was still fifteen years off, and in the meantime the effect, especially as regards the loss of prestige, would have been enormous. Happily the peril was averted, as other and not less grave perils have been averted from England both before and since. The fates were kind, just as they had been kind thirteen months previously, when for some six weeks the Channel seemed to be well-nigh defenceless, the crew of every man-of-war having recently been in mutiny, while a hostile fleet with thirteen thousand troops on board, lay at the Texel, waiting to embark. Only the winds–far from inconstant–stood firm to their allegiance, remaining throughout those six weeks at the one point from which it was impossible then for any enemy to reach [Page 82] these shores. "Those ancient and unsubsidised allies of England," as Sydney Smith calls them, "allies upon which English ministers depend as much for saving kingdoms as washerwomen do for drying clothes"–the winds–were faithful, and, while they continued steadily at the same point, the perilous moment passed!
This dash into the wider arena of history has taken longer, however, than it ought to have done. It is time to return to our Edgeworth family, whom we left shut up in their inn, and counting the hours till they could escape, alike from rebels and defenders, back to their beloved home, and to its pursuits. As often happens in such cases, the dangers incurred from the zeal of the local loyalist seem to have been much the most formidable of the perils of the hour. Mrs. Edgeworth in her Memoir gives a lively description of the narrow escape sustained by her husband from the misplaced zeal of his Longford townsfolk:–
"We were all at the windows of a room in the inn looking into the street, when we saw people running, throwing up their hats, and huzzaing. A dragoon had just arrived with the news that General Lake's army had come up with the French and the rebels, and completely defeated them at a place called Ballinamuck, near Granard. But we soon saw a man in a sergeant's uniform haranguing the mob, not in honour of General Lake's victory, but against Mr. Edgeworth. The landlady was terrified; she said that Mr. Edgeworth was accused of having made signals to the French from the gaol, and she thought the mob would pull down her house."
This imaginary illumination is explained to have meant nothing more formidable than two farthing [Page 83] candles; by the light of which Mr. Edgeworth, who was in charge of the gaol, had been reading the newspaper late the preceding night. These farthing candles the over-strained fancy of the townspeople had construed into signals to the enemy! The excitement seems to have been at first appeased by seeing Mr. Edgeworth arrive at his inn, accompanied by an officer in uniform. Later in the evening, this officer, Major Eustace, having incautiously changed his clothes, both narrowly escaped being murdered on the very door-step:–
"Mr. Edgeworth went after dinner with Major Eustace to the barrack. Some time after dinner dreadful yells were heard in the street, the mob had attacked them on their return from the barrack, Major Eustace being in coloured clothes, they did not recognise him as an officer. They had struck Mr. Edgeworth with a brickbat in the neck, and as they were now just in front of the inn, collaring the Major, Mr. Edgeworth cried out in a loud voice, 'Major Eustace is in danger.' Several officers who were at dinner in the inn, hearing the words through the open window, rushed out sword in hand, dispersed the crowd in a moment, and all the danger was over."
This seems to have been the last of the family perils. We have only one other extract bearing upon the situation, namely the following picture from Miss Edgeworth's pen of the historic battlefield of Ballinamuck, to which–mounted upon the trusty "Dapple"–she rode in company with her father and Mrs. Edgeworth. The letter is to her cousin Sophy Ruxton:–
"Enclosed I send you a little sketch, which I traced from [Page 84] one my mother drew for her father, of the situation of the field of battle at Ballinamuck; it is about four miles from the hills. My father, mother, and I rode to look at the camp. Perhaps you recollect a pretty turn in the road, where there is a little stream with a three-arched bridge ? In the fields which rise in a gentle slope on the right hand side of this stream about sixty bell tents were pitched, the arms all ranged on the grass; before the tents, poles with little streamers flying here and here, groups of men leading their horses to water, others filling kettles and black pots, some cooking under the hedges; the various uniforms looked pretty; Highlanders gathering blackberries. My father took us to the tent of Lord Seymour, who is an old friend of his; he breakfasted here to-day, and his plain English civility, and quiet good sense, was a fine contrast to the mob, etc. Dapple, your old acquaintance, did not like all the sights at the camp quite as well as I did."
It all sounds remarkably pleasant, and not at all unlike the report of some unusually successful picnic! That there was another side to the matter–that the country had narrowly escaped from a most formidable peril; that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deluded peasants were at that moment paying for their folly and ignorance with their lives, and the destruction of their homes–all this seems hardly to cast a shade over the picture. The latest record which Miss Edgeworth has left behind her of this year of terror, massacre, and invasion refers to the family cats! –
"I forgot to tell you of a remarkable event in the history of our return; all the cats, even those who properly belong to the stable, and who had never been admitted to the honours of sitting in the kitchen, all crowded round Kitty with congratulatory faces, crawling up her gown, insisting upon caressing and being caressed when she re-appeared in the [Page 85] lower regions. Mr. Gilpin's slander against cats as selfish, unfeeling animals, is thus refuted by stubborn facts."
In this manner–with the cheerful return of the family to their customary occupations, and amid the rejoicings of the cats–the grim tale of the year 1798 comes to an end !
1 For further contemporary accounts, see The Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 402 to 410; also An Impartial Relation of the Military Operations in consequence of the Landing of the French Troops, by an Officer under Lord Cornwallis; Notice Historique sur la Descente des Francais, par L. O. Fontaine (Adjutant-General to General Humbert); also Saunders's Newsletter and Faulkner's Journal of that date.
