I have spent pleasanter, but I greatly doubt if I ever knew busier days, than those I passed at the Bishop’s Palace at Killala; and now, as I look upon the event, I cannot help wondering that we could seriously have played out a farce so full of absurdity and nonsense! There was a gross mockery of all the usages of war, which, had it not been for the serious interests at stake, would have been highly amusing.

Whether it was the important functions of civil government, the details of police regulation, the imposition of contributions, the appointment of officers, or the arming of the volunteers, all was done with a pretentious affectation of order that was extremely ludicrous. The very institutions which were laughingly agreed to overnight, as the wine went briskly round, were solemnly ratified in the morning, and, still more strange, apparently believed in by those whose ingenuity devised them; and thus the ‘Irish Directory,’ as we styled the imaginary government, the National Treasury, the Pension Fund, were talked of with all the seriousness of facts! As to the commissariat, to which I was for the time attached, we never ceased writing receipts and acknowledgments for stores and munitions of war, all of which were to be honourably acquitted by the Treasury of the Irish Republic.

No people could have better fallen in with the humour of this delusion than the Irish. They seemed to believe everything, and yet there was a reckless, headlong indifference about them, which appeared to say, that they were equally prepared for any turn fortune might take, and if the worst should happen, they would never reproach us for having misled them. The real truth was—but we only learned it too late—all those who joined us were utterly indifferent to the great cause of Irish independence; their thoughts never rose above a row and a pillage. It was to be a season of sack, plunder, and outrage, but nothing more! That such were the general sentiments of the volunteers, I believe none will dispute. We, however, in our ignorance of the people and their language, interpreted all the harum-scarum wildness we saw as the buoyant temperament of a high-spirited nation, who, after centuries of degradation and ill-usage, saw the dawning of liberty at last.

Had we possessed any real knowledge of the country, we should at once have seen that, of those who joined us, none were men of any influence or station. If, now and then, a man of any name strayed into the camp, he was sure to be one whose misconduct or bad character had driven him from associating with his equals; and, even of the peasantry, our followers were of the very lowest order. Whether General Humbert was the first to notice the fact, I know not; but Charost, I am certain, remarked it, and even thus early predicted the utter failure of the expedition.

I must confess the volunteers were the least imposing of allies. I think I have the whole scene before my eyes this moment, as I saw it each morning in the palace garden.

The inclosure, which, more orchard than garden, occupied a space of a couple of acres, was the headquarters of Colonel Charost; and here, in a pavilion formerly dedicated to hoes, rakes, rolling-stones, and garden-tools, we were now established to the number of fourteen. As the space beneath the roof was barely sufficient for the colonel’s personal use, the officers of his staff occupied convenient spots in the vicinity. My station was under a large damson-tree, the fruit of which afforded me, more than once, the only meal I tasted from early morning till late at night; not, I must say, from any lack of provisions, for the palace abounded with every requisite of the table, but that, such was the pressure of business, we were not able to leave off work even for half an hour during the day.

A subaltern’s guard of grenadiers, divided into small parties, did duty in the garden; and it was striking to mark the contrast between these bronzed and war-worn figures, and the reckless tatterdemalion host around us. Never was seen such a scarecrow set! Wild-looking, ragged wretches, their long lank hair hanging down their necks and shoulders, usually barefooted, and with every sign of starvation in their features; they stood in groups and knots, gesticulating, screaming, hurrahing, and singing, in all the exuberance of a joy that caught some, at least, of its inspiration from whisky.

It was utterly vain to attempt to keep order amongst them; even the effort to make them defile singly through the gate into the garden was soon found impracticable, without the employment of a degree of force that our adviser, Kerrigan, pronounced would be injudicious. Not only the men made their way in, but great numbers of women, and even children also; and there they were, seated around fires, roasting their potatoes in this bivouac fashion, as though they had deserted hearth and home to follow us.

Such was the avidity to get arms—of which the distribution was announced to take place here—that several had scaled the wall in their impatience, and as they were more or less in drink, some disastrous accidents were momentarily occurring, adding the cries and exclamations of suffering to the ruder chorus of joy and revelry that went on unceasingly.

The impression—we soon saw how absurd it was—the impression that we should do nothing that might hurt the national sensibilities, but concede all to the exuberant ardour of a bold people, eager to be led against their enemies, induced us to submit to every imaginable breach of order and discipline.

‘In a day or two, they ‘ll he like your own men; you ‘ll not know them from a battalion of the line. Those fellows will be like a wall under fire.’

Such and such like were the assurances we were listening to all day, and it would have been like treason to the cause to have refused them credence.

Perhaps I might have been longer a believer in this theory, had I not perceived signs of a deceptive character in these our worthy allies; many who, to our faces, wore nothing but looks of gratitude and delight, no sooner mixed with their fellows than their downcast faces and dogged expression betrayed some inward sense of disappointment.

One very general source of dissatisfaction arose from the discovery, that we were not prepared to pay our allies! We had simply come to arm and lead them, to shed our own blood, and pledge our fortunes in their cause; but we certainly had brought no military chest to bribe their patriotism, nor stimulate their nationality; and this I soon saw was a grievous disappointment.

In virtue of this shameful omission on our part, they deemed the only resource was to be made officers, and thus crowds of uneducated, semi-civilised vagabonds were every hour assailing us with their claims to the epaulette. Of the whole number of these, I remember but three who had ever served at all; two were notorious drunkards, and the third a confirmed madman, from a scalp wound he had received when fighting against the Turks. Many, however, boasted high-sounding names, and were, at least so Kerrigan said, men of the first families in the land.

Our general-in-chief saw little of them while at Killala, his principal intercourse being with the bishop and his family; but Colonel Charost soon learned to read their true character, and from that moment conceived the most disastrous issue to our plans. The most trustworthy of them was a certain O’Donnell, who, although not a soldier, was remarked to possess a greater influence over the rabble volunteers than any of the others. He was a young man of the half-squire class, an ardent and sincere patriot, after his fashion; but that fashion, it must be owned, rather partook of the character of class-hatred and religious animosity than the features of a great struggle for national independence. He took a very low estimate of the fighting qualities of his countrymen, and made no secret of declaring it.

‘You would be better without them altogether,’ said he one day to Charost; ‘but if you must have allies, draw them up in line, select one-third of the best, and arm them.’

‘And the rest?’ asked Charost. ‘Shoot them,’ was the answer.

This conversation is on record—indeed, I believe there is yet one witness living to corroborate it.

I have said that we were very hard worked, but I must fain acknowledge that the real amount of business done was very insignificant, so many were the mistakes, misconceptions, and interruptions, not to speak of the time lost by that system of conciliation of which I have already made mention. In our distribution of arms there was little selection practised or possible. The process was a brief one, but it might have been briefer.

Thomas Colooney, of Banmayroo, was called, and not usually being present, the name would be passed on, from post to post, till it swelled into a general shout of Colooney.

‘Tom Colooney, you’re wanted; Tom, run for it, man, there’s a price bid for you! Here’s Mickey, his brother, maybe he ‘ll do as well.’

And so on: all this accompanied by shouts of laughter, and a running fire of jokes, which, being in the vernacular, was lost to us.

At last the real Colooney was found, maybe eating his dinner of potatoes, maybe discussing his poteen with a friend—-sometimes engaged in the domestic duties of washing his shirt or his small-clothes, fitting a new crown to his hat, or a sole to his brogues—whatever his occupation, he was urged forward by his friends and the public, with many a push, drive, and even a kick, into our presence, where, from the turmoil, uproar, and confusion, he appeared to have fought his way by main force, and very often, indeed, this was literally the fact, as his bleeding nose, torn coat, and bare head attested.

‘Thomas Colooney—are you the man?’ asked one of our Irish officers of the staff.

‘Yis, yer honour, I ‘m that same!’

‘You’ve come here, Colooney, to offer yourself as a volunteer in the cause of your country?’

Here a yell of ‘Ireland for ever!’ was always raised by the bystanders, which drowned the reply in its enthusiasm, and the examination went on:—

‘You’ll be true and faithful to that cause till you secure for your country the freedom of America and the happiness of France? Kiss the cross. Are you used to firearms?’

‘Isn’t he?—maybe not! I’ll be bound he knows a musket from a mealy pratie!’

Such and such like were the comments that rang on all sides, so that the modest ‘Yis, sir,’ of the patriot was completely lost.

‘Load that gun, Tom,’ said the officer.

Here Colooney, deeming that so simple a request must necessarily be only a cover for something underhand—a little clever surprise or so—takes up the piece in a very gingerly manner, and examines it all round, noticing that there is nothing, so far as he can discover, unusual nor uncommon about it.

‘Load that gun, I say.’

Sharper and more angrily is the command given this time.

‘Yis, sir, immadiately.’

And now Tom tries the barrel with the ramrod, lest there should be already a charge there—a piece of forethought that is sure to be loudly applauded by the public, not the less so because the impatience of the French officers is making itself manifest in various ways.

At length he rams down the cartridge, and returns the ramrod; which piece of adroitness, if done with a certain air of display and flourish, is unfailingly saluted by another cheer. He now primes and cocks the piece, and assumes a look of what he believes to be most soldierlike severity.

As he stands thus for scrutiny, a rather lively debate gets up as to whether or not Tom bit off the end of the cartridge before he rammed it down. The biters and anti-biters being equally divided, the discussion waxes strong. The French officers, eagerly asking what may be the disputed point, laugh very heartily on hearing it.

‘I’ll lay ye a pint of sperits she won’t go off,’ cries one.

‘Done! for two naggins, if he pulls strong,’ rejoins another.

‘Devil fear the same gun,’ cries a third; ‘she shot Mr. Sloan at fifty paces, and killed him dead.’

‘Tisn’t the same gun—that’s a Frinch one—a bran-new one!’

‘She isn’t.’

‘She is.’

‘No, she isn’t.’

‘Yes, but she is.’ ‘What is’t you say?’ ‘Hould your prate.’

‘Arrah, teach your mother to feed ducks.’

‘Silence in the ranks. Keep silence there. Attention, Colooney!’

‘Yis, sir.’

‘Fire!’

‘What at, sir?’ asks Tom, taking an amateur glance of the company, who look not over satisfied at his scrutiny.

‘Fire in the air!’

Bang goes the piece, and a yell follows the explosion, while cries of ‘Well done, Tom,’ ‘Begorra, if a Protestant got that!’ and so on, greet the performance.

‘Stand by, Colooney!’ and the volunteer falls back to make way for another and similar exhibition, occasionally varied by the humour of the blunders of the new candidate.

As to the Treasury orders, as we somewhat ludicrously styled the cheques upon our imaginary bank, the scenes they led to were still more absurd and complicated. We paid liberally, that is to say in promises, for everything, and our generosity saved us a good deal of time, for it was astonishing how little the owners disputed our solvency when the price was left to themselves. But the rations were indeed the most difficult matter of all; it being impossible to convince our allies of the fact that the compact was one of trust, and the ration was not his own to dispose of in any manner that might seem fit.

‘Sure, if I don’t like to ate it—if I haven’t an appetite for it—if I’d rather have a pint of sperits, or a flannel waistcoat, or a pair of stockings, than a piece of mate, what harm is that to any one?’

This process of reasoning was much harder of answer than is usually supposed, and even when replied to, another difficulty arose in its place. Unaccustomed to flesh diet, when they tasted they could not refrain from it, and the whole week’s rations of beef, amounting to eight pounds, were frequently consumed in the first twenty-four hours.

Such instances of gormandising were by no means unfrequent, and, stranger still, in no one case, so far as I knew, followed by any ill consequences.

The leaders were still more difficult to manage than the people. Without military knowledge or experience of any kind, they presumed to dictate the plan of a campaign to old and distinguished officers like Humbert and Serasin, and when overruled by argument or ridicule, invariably fell back upon their superior knowledge of Ireland and her people, a defence for which, of course, we were quite unprepared, and unable to oppose anything. From these and similar causes it may well be believed that our labours were not light, and yet somehow, with all the vexations and difficulties around us, there was a congenial tone of levity, an easy recklessness, and a careless freedom in the Irish character that suited us well There was but one single point whereupon we were not thoroughly together, and this was religion. They were a nation of most zealous Catholics; and as for us, the revolution had not left the vestige of a belief amongst us.

A reconnaissance in Ballina, meant rather to discover the strength of the garrison than of the place itself, having shown that the royal forces were inconsiderable in number, and mostly militia, General Humbert moved forward, on Sunday morning the 26th, with nine hundred men of our own force, and about three thousand ‘volunteers,’ leaving Colonel Charost and his staff, with two companies of foot, at Killala, to protect the town, and organise the new levies as they were formed.

We saw our companions defile from the town with heavy hearts. The small body of real soldiers seemed even smaller still from being enveloped by that mass of peasants who accompanied them, and who marched on the flanks or in the rear, promiscuously, without discipline or order—a noisy, half-drunken rabble, firing off their muskets at random, and yelling as they went, in savage glee and exultation. Our sole comfort was in the belief, that, when the hour of combat did arrive, they would fight to the very last. Such were the assurances of their own officers, and made so seriously and confidently, that we never thought of mistrusting them.

‘If they be but steady under fire,’ said Charost, ‘a month will make them good soldiers. Ours is an easy drill, and soon learned; but I own,’ he added, ‘they do not give me this impression.’

Such was the reflection of one who watched them as they went past, and with sorrow we saw ourselves concurring in the sentiment.