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chief commander, had, according to the military CHAP. institutions of the French republicans, risen from the ranks to the dignity of a general officer, had rendered himself conspicuous in fighting against the insurgents of La Vendée, and had been second in command to general Hoche in the abortive expedition to the bay of Bantry. So illiterate as to be scarcely able to write his own name, he was yet an excellent officer; of a fierce demeanour, the effect of art, to extort quick obedience by terror; in the full vigour of life, prompt in decision, and quick in execution. The garrison of Killala, only fifty in number, yeomen and fencibles of the Prince of Wales's regiment, fled, after a vain attempt to oppose the entrance of the French vanguard, leaving two of their party dead, and twentyone prisoners, among whom were their officers. To compensate as far as possible, by the vigour of his operations for the smallness of his force, appears to have been an object with the French commander. A detachment, advancing on the following day toward Ballina, seven miles to the south of Killala, defeated the picket-guards, and took possession of that town on the night of the twenty-fourth, the garrison of which retired to Foxford, ten miles farther to the south. In the defeat of the pickets, the Reverend George Fortescue, nephew to lord Clermont, and rector of Ballina, who had volunteered, was slain.

Though the military arrangements of the viceroy Battle of could not yet be completed, a force more than suf- August 27,

1798

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CHAP. ficient in appearance was quickly assembled to the point of attack. With great expedition general Hutchinson arrived from Galway on the twenty-fifth at Castlebar, where he was joined in the following night by general Lake, the chief commander in the west. The habits of disorder, inveterate in the troops, could not possibly in two months have been eradicated by Cornwallis. Of this the army here assembled furnished full proof in the whole of their conduct. The gun of a soldier, by accident or design, exploded from a window. A cry was raised that a shot had been fired at the Longford militia, and a tumult was excited which threatened the town with conflagration and massacre, with great difficulty prevented by the extraordinary exertions of Hutchinson and other officers. Intelligence soon after arrived of the enemy's approach, and the army was drawn to an advantageous position between the town and the advancing French, who appeared at the distance of two miles from Castlebar, at seven o'clock in the morning of the twenty-seventh.

With design to attack this post as soon as possible, before the assemblage of more troops at that point, Humbert had moved from Ballina, in the morning of the twenty-sixth, with the greater part of his army, resolved to atchieve his utmost for the excitement of rebellion by an early and deep impression. Instead of the road through Foxford, where general Taylor was posted to observe his motions, he chose a way through the mountains, deemed impracticable to an army, and thence unsuspected. He could bring no

other

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other artillery than two small curricle-guns. The CHAP. carriage of one was broken by the asperity of the road, and the repairing of it caused much delay in the march. His force consisted of eight hundred French, fatigued and sleepless, and about a thousand Irish peasants, who had joined his standard, useless in battle. To him was opposed an army, fresh and vigorous, advantageously posted, with a well-served train of fourteen cannons. The number of this army has been variously stated, from six thousand to eleven hundred: the lowest computation, consistent at all with probability, amounts to two thousand three hundred; but I believe it to have exceeded at least three thousand,

At a sight so formidable, the French leaders concluded that immediate surrendry must be their fate, especially when they perceived the destructive effects of the artillery, managed by captain Shortall, which caused their troops to recoil. Determined, however, on exertion while hope remained, they ordered their men to file to the right and left, to advance in small bodies, under cover of the smoke, and to assail the foe in flank, Seized with a strange panic, the royal army shrank from the assault, broke on all sides, and fled through the town, in extreme confusion, on the road to Tuam, leaving their artillery and ammunition to the enemy, To rally them all attempts were fruitless, Their flight was continued to Tuam, which they reached on the night of that day, thirty-eight English miles from the field of battle, and was renewed, after a short refreshment, toward

Hh 4

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CHAP. toward Athlone, where an officer of carbineers, with sixty of his men, arrived at one o'clock on Tuesday the twenty-eighth, having performed a march of eighty English miles in twenty-seven hours. Where their course would have terminated we are left to conjecture, if it had not been stopped by the arrival of the viceroy at the latter town. Such was the behaviour of troops, enervated by the licence of tyrannizing over defenceless people, when once brought to face a regular and determined foe: Yet even with these would Hutchinson, I am assured, have conquered, as he was fully possessed of the confidence of them and of the people, knew the nature of the ground, and had formed an effective plan, if he had not been superseded by the arrival of Lake. The latter had accepted a command in Ireland which the excellent Abercrombie had before resigned as unworthy of a soldier: the former has since been the worthy successor of the same Abercrombie in Egypt, in the command of an army gloriously triumphant; and has, as an acknowledgement of his merit, been honoured by his sovereign with the title of lord Hutchinson of Alexandria. In the disgraceful engagement at Castlebar, the loss of the French in killed and wounded, though not satisfactorily stated, is said to have been greater than that of our troops, of whom fifty-three were returned as killed, thirtyfour wounded, and two hundred and seventy-nine prisoners or missing. Of the privates missing, the greater part were afterwards found to have deserted to the enemy. Among the lost of the French were seventeen,

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seventeen, who in too eager a pursuit were slaughter- CHAP. ed by lord Roden's cavalry. These are said to have been previously made prisoners, and retaliation was threatened by the French commander.

Cornwallis

The marquis Cornwallis had, notwithstanding the Motions of smallness of the invading force, been so sensible of the danger, as to have instantly determined to march in person against the foe. On the twenty-sixth of August he arrived with his army at Philips-town, and on the succeeding day at Kilbeggan, having advanced fifty-six English miles, in two days, by the grand canal. Receiving here, very early in the next morning, intelligence of the defeat at Castlebar, he hasted to Athlone, where he was positively informed by many who had fled from the field of battle, that the French had pursued the army of general Lake to Tuam, driven it thence, and seized that post. If such a pursuit had been practicable to the French, after their exhausting march to Castlebar, even this extraordinary report might have been true, since Lake had judged his disorderly troops unsafe at Tuam, and a retreat expedient nearer to Athlone. Even on this town, eighty English miles from the French army, which never moved farther in that line than Castlebar, an attack was apprehended, and pickets and patroles were advanced far on the roads to Tuam and Ballinasloe. From these facts a judicious reader, acquainted with the state in which Ireland then was, where multitudes were prepared to rise in rebellion as soon as they should see any force in a probable condition to support them, may doubtless be

of