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pened to be a political or courtier Bishop, his record would, perhaps, have been suppressed; and at any rate it would have been colored by prejudice. As it was, I believe it to have been the perfectly honest testimony of an honest man; and, considering the minute circumstantiality of its delineations, I do not believe that, throughout the whole revolutionary war, any one document was made public which throws so much light on the quality and composition of the French Republican armies. On this consideration I shall extract a few passages from the Bishop's personal sketches; a thing which I should not have done but for two reasons; first, that the original pamphlet is now forgotten, though so well worthy of preservation; secondly, that my own information from the Hon. DB, and from the Dean of F

who both rode with his Majesty's cavalry during that service, and personally witnessed many of the most important scenes in that local insurrection of Connaught, as well as in the furious and more national insurrection which had terminated in effect at Vinegar Hill, enabled me to check the Bishop's statements. It was upon the very estates of these gentlemen, or of their nearest relatives, that the French had planted their garrisons; and the Deanery of F was not above six miles from Enniscorthy, close to which was the encampment of Vinegar Hill: so that both enjoyed unexampled opportunities for observing the most circumstantial features in each field of these two local wars.

The Commander-in-chief of the French armament is thus delineated by the Bishop:

Humbert, the leader of this singular body of men, was himself as extraordinary a personage as any in his army. Of a good height and shape, in the full vigor of life, prompt to decide, quick in execution, apparently

master of his art, you could not refuse him the praise of a good officer, while his physiognomy forbade you to like him as a man. His eye, which was small and sleepy, (the effect, perhaps, of much watching,) cast a sidelong glance of insidiousness and even of cruelty; it was the eye of a cat preparing to spring upon her prey. His education and manners were indicative of a person sprung from the lower orders of society, though he knew how to assume, when it was convenient, the deportment of a gentleman. For learning, he had scarcely enough to enable him to write his name. His passions were furious; and all his behavior seemed roughness and insolence. him, however, seemed to roughness was the result of art, being assumed with the view of extorting by terror a ready compliance with his commands. Of this truth the Bishop himself was one of the first who had occasion to be made sensible.'

marked with the character of A narrower observation of discover that much of this

The particular occasion here alluded to by the Bishop, arose out of the first attempts to effect the disembarkation of the military stores and equipments from the French shipping, as also to forward them when landed. The case was one of extreme urgency; and proportionate allowance must be made for the French General. Every moment might bring the British cruisers in sight-two important expeditions had already been baffled in that way—and the absolute certainty, known to all parties alike, that delay, under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin, that upon a difference of ten or fifteen minutes, this way or that, might happen to hinge the whole issue of the expedition; this consciousness, I say, gave, unavoidably to every demur at this critical moment, the color of treachery. Neither boats, nor carts, nor horses, could be obtained; the owners most imprudently

and selfishly retiring from that service. Such being the extremity, the French General made the Bishop responsible for the execution of his orders: the Bishop had really no means to enforce his commission, and failed. Upon this General Humbert threatened to send his Lordship, together with his whole family, prisoners of war to France, and assumed the air of a man violently provoked. Here came the crisis for determining the Bishop's weight amongst his immediate flock, and his hold upon their affections. One great Bishop, not far off, would, on such a trial, have been exultingly consigned to his fate: that I well know; for Lord W. and I, merely as his visiters, were attacked so fiercely with stones, that we were obliged to forbear going out, unless in broad daylight. Luckily the Bishop of Killala had shown himself a Christian pastor, and now he reaped the fruits of his goodness. The public selfishness gave way, when the danger of the Bishop was made known. The boats, the carts, the horses, were now liberally brought in from their lurking places; the artillery and stores were landed; and the drivers of the carts, &c. were paid in drafts upon the Irish Directory, which (if it were an aerial coin) served at least to mark an unwillingness in the enemy to adopt violent modes of hostility, and ultimately became available in the very character assigned to them by the French General; not, indeed, as drafts upon the Rebel, but as claims upon the equity of the English Government.

The officer left in command at Killala, when the presence of the Commander-in-chief was required elsewhere, bore the name of Charost. He was a lieutenant-colonel, aged forty-five years, the son of a Parisian watchmaker. Having been sent over at an early age, to the unhappy island of St. Domingo, with a view to some connections there by which he hoped to profit, he had been fortunate

enough to marry a young woman, who brought him a plantation for her dowry, which was reputed to have yielded him a revenue of £2000 sterling per annum. But this, of course, all went to wreck in one day, upon that mad decree of the French Convention, which proclaimed liberty, without distinction, without restrictions, and without gradations, to the unprepared and ferocious negroes. Even his wife and daughter would have perished simultaneously with his property, but for English protection, which delivered them from the black sabre, and transferred them to Jamaica. There, however, though safe, they were, as respected Colonel Charost, unavoidably captives; and his eyes would fill,' says the Bishop, ' when he told the family that he had not seen these dear relatives for six years past, nor even had tidings of them for the last three years.' On his return to France, finding that to have been a watchmaker's son was no longer a bar to the honors of the military profession, he had entered the army, and had risen by merit to the rank which he now held. He had a plain, good understanding. He seemed careless or doubtful of revealed religion; but said that he believed in God; was inclined to think that there must be a future state; and was very sure, that, while he lived in this world, it was his duty to do all the good to his fellow-creatures that he could. Yet what he did not exhibit in his own conduct he appeared to respect in others; for he took care that no noise nor disturbance should be made in the castle (i. e. the Bishop's palace) on Sundays, while the family, and many Protestants from the town, were assembled in the library at their devotions.

Boudet, the next in command, was a captain of foot, twenty-eight years old. His father, he said, was still living, though sixty-seven years old when he was born. His height was six feet two inches. In person, complexion,

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and gravity, he was no inadequate representation of the Knight of La Mancha, whose example he followed in a recital of his own prowess and wonderful exploits, delivered in measured language, and an imposing seriousness of aspect.' The Bishop represents him as vain and irritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Another officer was Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively and animated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering, a l'outrance. 'He was hardy,' says the Bishop, and patient to admiration of labor and want of rest.' And of this last quality the following wonderful illustration is given: A continued watching of five days and nights together, when the rebels were growing desperate for prey and mischief, did not appear to sink his spirits in the smallest degree.' This particular sort of strength has nothing in common with strength of muscle: I shall have occasion to notice it again in some remarks, which I may venture to style important, on the secret of happiness, so far as it depends upon physical means. The power of supporting long vigils is connected closely with diet. A few great truths on that subject, little known to men in general, are capable of making a revolution in human welfare. For it is undeniable that a sane state of the animal nature is the negative condition of happiness: that is to say, such a condition being present, happiness will not follow as the inevitable result; but, in the absence of such a condition, it is inevitable that there will be no happiness.

Contrasting with the known and well-established rapacity of the French army in all its ranks, (not excepting those who have the decoration of the Legion of Honor,) the severe honesty of these particular officers, we must come to the conclusion that they had been selected for their tried qualities of abstinence and self-control.

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