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CHAPTER III

1781-1783

The American War-Opinions concerning it-Lord Edward
at Charleston-Active Service-Dangerous Escapade-
Wounded at Eutaw Springs-Tony-Early Popularity-
St. Lucia-Back in Ireland.

THE

'HE end of the last century was a time when opinion moved rapidly. In the year 1798 the Duke of Norfolk, in proposing Mr. Fox's health at a great dinner of the Whig Club, mentioned in connection with his name that of another great man, Washington. "That man," he said, "established the liberties of his countrymen. I leave it to you, gentlemen, to make the application."

It is true that, in consequence of this speech, together with a toast which followed it, variously reported as "Our Sovereign-the People," or "The People-our Sovereign," the Duke was dismissed from the Lord Lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire; but that such a speech should have been received with applause at an immense representative meeting is none the less a significant sign of the times.

In the very month that the Duke's speech was made, the cousin of Fox, Lord Edward FitzGerald,

lay dying of the wounds he had received in the cause of what he loyally believed to be the "liberties of his countrymen." Seventeen years earlier he had been wounded in another struggle, when fighting under the British flag in vindication of the rights of England over her colonies. At that later hour the comparison of the two objects for which his blood had been shed would seem to have been present with him; and when a visitor, some military official of the Government with whom he had been acquainted in Charleston, reminded him of those old days, he replied-was it with a sense of a debt wiped out?-that it had been in a different cause that he had been wounded then ; since at that time he had been fighting against liberty, now for it.

But whatever may have been the case in after-lifeand his was not a nature to be troubled by morbid remorse for a wrong ignorantly done-it is certain that no scruples as to the justice of the quarrel in which he was to be engaged were likely to disturb the conscience of the eighteen-year-old boy, or to interfere with his satisfaction in finding himself at last at the seat of war.

It was true that his cousin Charles James Fox was not only, with the rest of his party, bitterly opposed to the struggle, but that, with the irresponsibility of a statesman who considered himself at the time virtually and indefinitely excluded from all participation in practical politics, he was in the habit of using language which has been described as that of a passion

ate partisan of the insurgents. "If America should be at our feet," he wrote after some British victory, "which God forbid!" His uncle the Duke of Richmond, too, had expressed his opinion-thus indicating his view of the men by whom the war was carried on that Parliament in its present temper would be prepared to establish a despotism in England itself; and neither in society nor in the House did the Whig party make any secret of the goodwill they bore to the cause of the revolted colonies, some of the more extreme among them going so far as to make the reverses suffered by the British forces matter of open rejoicing.

But to hold a theoretical opinion is one thing, to allow it to influence practical action quite another, and it is to be questioned whether the views entertained by his party and accepted by himself as to the injustice of the war would have had a more deterrent effect upon the average country gentleman in the choice of the army as a profession for one son than would have been exercised by the prevailing scepticism of the eighteenth century upon his intention of educating the other with a view to the family living. The one was a matter of theory, the other of practice, and it is astonishing to what an extent it is possible to keep the two in all honesty apart.

Lord Edward's temperament, too, was essentially that of a soldier; to obey without question or hesitation was a soldier's duty; and especially when

the duty enjoined upon him lay in the direction of active service he was not likely to examine overcuriously into the abstract right and wrong of the principle upon which the war was based. On the contrary, when the differences of opinion prevailing in England on the subject were forced upon his attention, as, through his connection with the party in opposition, must often have been the case, he would dismiss them from his mind as wholly irrelevant to the more important question of personal duty; reflecting, if he gave any thought at all to the matter, that whatever might have been the original rights of the quarrel, it was clearly the business of every soldier, since England had engaged in the conflict, to do his best that she should come out of it victorious.

That she was not likely to do so was, by this time, except to the eyes of a boy of eighteen, plain. The eventual issue of the struggle was practically decided. Ever since the beginning of 1781 reverses had persistently followed the British arms; while, with the assistance of France, success was declaring itself more and more emphatically on the side of America. By October of the same year the war was terminated by the surrender of the British forces under the command of Lord Cornwallis, and the colonies were free.

At the time when Lord Edward landed with his regiment, four months earlier, no apprehension of so speedy a conclusion to hostilities was entertained.

Lord Rawdon, however, in command at Charleston, was so hard pressed that the officer in charge of the newly arrived regiments, instead of taking them to join the forces under Cornwallis, as had been originally intended, placed them at once at his disposal, with the result of some temporary successes to the British arms.

To Lord Edward personally the change of plan was attended with favourable consequences. Having distinguished himself before long by the display of unusual readiness and skill in covering a retreat on the part of his regiment, the performance made so advantageous an impression at headquarters that young FitzGerald FitzGerald was in consequence-other and more irrelevant circumstances being possibly taken into account-placed as aide-de-camp on Lord Rawdon's staff, a position which afforded him the opportunity of serving his apprenticeship to active service under the eye of a general well adapted to instruct him in the craft.

The fact that details of a personal nature are, at this period of his life, peculiarly scarce may account for the exaggerated importance which has been attached to a boyish escapade of which, brilliant and reckless though it may have been, many other lads with an equally adventurous spirit would have been capable. It is true that an interest not otherwise belonging to it may be lent to the incident by the later history of the hero; for the exploit was distinguished by precisely that rash and heedless

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