In the Irish Brigade: A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain by G. A. Henty (online e book reading txt) 📖

shot, and rode. I had many friends among the gentry of the neighbourhood, who would, doubtless, have shown less kindness than they did, had it not been for the neglect with which O'Carroll treated me. His unpopularity was all in my favour.

"However, I have one good reason for being obliged to him, since it was through him that I obtained my commission. He told me that, in his young days, he had been at a French college with the duke. They had been great friends there, and he thought that, in memory of this, de Noailles would procure me a commission."

"I suppose the real fact was, Kennedy, that he was glad to get rid of you altogether?"

"I think that is likely enough. He certainly raised no objection, whatever, to my going abroad, and seemed to think it natural that I should choose the Irish Brigade, here, in preference to the British service. He said something unpleasant about its not being singular that I should be a rebel, when I always associated with rebels, to which I replied that it seemed to me that I could hardly be blamed for that, seeing that my father had been what he called a rebel, and that I had little choice in the matter of my associates; and that if I had been educated at a school in England, instead of by good Father O'Leary, I might have had other sentiments. He replied that my sentiments were nothing to him, one way or the other. He was glad to wash his hands of me altogether; and, at any rate, if I went to France, I could drink the health of King James every day without his being involved in my treason."

"It almost looked as if he wished you to grow up a rebel, Kennedy, or he would hardly have placed you in the charge of a priest. He may have reckoned that if there was another rising, you might join it, and so be taken off his hands, altogether."

"Whatever the reason was, I have certainly cause for satisfaction that he removed me from the care of the farmer's wife, with whom he at first placed me, and arranged with the priest to take charge of me altogether. O'Leary himself had been educated at Saint Omer, and was a splendid fellow. He was very popular on the countryside, and it was owing to my being with him that I was admitted to the houses of the gentry around, whereas, had I remained in the farmhouse in which O'Carroll first placed me, I should only have associated with the sons of other tenants."

"It looked, at any rate, as if he wished to make a gentleman of you, Kennedy."

"Yes, I suppose my father had asked him to do so. At any rate, I was infinitely better off than I should have been if he had taken me in at Kilkargan, for in that case I should have had no associates, whatever. As it was, I scarcely ever exchanged a word with him, until that last meeting. He sent down, by one of his servants, the letter to the Duc de Noailles, and a bag containing money for my outfit here, and for the purchase of a horse, together with a line saying that he had done his duty by me, and had no desire to hear from me in the future. I was inclined to send the money back to him, but Father O'Leary persuaded me not to do so, saying that I must be in a position to buy these things, if I obtained a commission; and that, no doubt, the money had been given me, not for my own sake, but because he felt that he owed it to me, for some service rendered to him by my father."

"It was an ungracious way of doing it," O'Sullivan said, "but, in your circumstances, I should have taken the money had it come from the old one himself. It is, perhaps, as well that it should have been done in such a manner that you may well feel you owe no great gratitude towards such a man."

"And how did you get over here?"

"There was no great difficulty about that. In spite of the activity of the English cruisers, constant communication is kept up between Ireland and France, and fortunately I had, a short time before, made the acquaintance of one of your officers, who was over there, in disguise, gathering recruits for the Brigade."

"Yes, there are a good many agents in Ireland engaged in that work. There is no difficulty in obtaining recruits, for there is scarcely a young Irishman who does not long to be with his countrymen, who have won such credit out here, and many abstain from joining only because they do not know how to set about it. The work of the agents, then, is principally to arrange means for their crossing the channel. It is well that the supply is steadily kept up, for, I can assure you, every battle fought makes very heavy gaps in our ranks; but in spite of that, three fresh regiments have been raised, in the last year, partly by fresh comers from Ireland, and partly by Irish deserters from Marlborough's regiments.

"But I am interrupting your story."

"Well, after leaving Mr. O'Carroll, and making my preparations, I paid a visit to the cottage where the officer was staying, in disguise, and told him that I wanted to cross. He gave instructions as to how to proceed. I was to go to a certain street in Cork, and knock at a certain door. When it was opened, I was to say, 'The sea is calm and the sky is bright'.

"'Then', he said, 'you will be taken in hand, and put on board one of the craft engaged in the work of carrying our recruits across the water. You will be landed at Saint Malo, where there is an agent of the Brigade, who gives instructions to the recruits as to how they are to proceed, supplies them with money enough for the journey, and a man to accompany each party, and act as interpreter on the way.

"I carried out his instructions, crossed the channel in a lugger with thirty young peasants, bound also for Paris, and, on landing at Saint Malo, took my place in the diligence for Paris; having, fortunately, no need for an interpreter. On my presenting my letter to the Marquis de Noailles, he received me with great kindness, and treated me as a guest, until he had obtained me a commission in your regiment.

"Now, when are we likely to go on active service?"

"Soon, I expect," O'Neil said; "but whether we shall be sent to the Peninsula, or to Flanders, no one knows. In fact, it is likely enough that we shall, for the present, remain here; until it is seen how matters go, and where reinforcements will be most required. It is but ten months since we came into garrison, in Paris, and we may therefore expect to be one of the last regiments ordered off.

"For my part, I am in no particular hurry to exchange comfortable quarters, and good living, and such adventures as may fall to the lot of a humble subaltern, for roughing it in the field; where, as has been the case ever since the Brigade was formed, we get a good deal more than our fair share of hard work and fighting."

"I should have thought that you would all have liked that," Desmond said, in some surprise.

"Enough is as good as a feast," the other said; "and when you have done a few weeks' work in trenches, before a town you are besieging; stood knee deep for hours in mud, soaked to the skin with rain, and with the enemy's shot coming through the parapet every half minute or so; you will see that it is not all fun and glory.

"Then, too, you see, we have no particular interest in the quarrels between France and Germany. When we fight, we fight rather for the honour of the Irish Brigade, than for the glory of France. We have a grudge against the Dutch, and fight them as interested parties, seeing that it was by his Dutch troops that William conquered Ireland. As to the English troops, we have no particular enmity against them. Cromwell's business is an old story, and I don't suppose that the English soldier feels any particular love for Queen Anne, or any animosity against us. And after all, we are nearer in blood to them than we are to the Germans, Austrians, or Spaniards, for there are few, even of our oldest families, who have not, many times since the days of Strongbow, intermarried with the English settlers. At any rate, there are still plenty of adherents of King James in England and Scotland. We speak the same language, and form part of the same nation, and I own that I would rather fight against any foreign foe than against them."

"So would I," Desmond said heartily. "Our only point of difference is that we don't agree as to who should be king. We want a Catholic king, and the majority of the English want a Protestant king. We have fought on the subject, and been beaten. Next time, we hope that we may succeed. If the king were to land in England again, I would fight heart and soul in his cause; but whether the French beat the English, in the present war, or the English beat the French, will not, as far as I can see, make much difference to King James; who, Father O'Leary tells me, is, in his opinion, supported here by the French king from no great love for himself, but because, so long as James has adherents in Ireland, Scotland, and England, he is able to play him off against the English Government."

The other young men laughed.

"For heaven's sake, Kennedy, keep such sentiments as these to yourself. It is a matter of faith, in our brigade, that we are fighting in the cause of King James, as against the English usurper. Now that William is dead, and James's daughter on the throne, matters are complicated somewhat; and if the Parliament had settled the succession, after Anne, on her brother, there might have been an end of the quarrel altogether. But now that they have settled it on Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James the 1st, and her descendants, subject to the restriction that they shall be Protestants, the quarrel does not seem likely to be healed."

"This priest of yours must be a dangerous man," O'Sullivan said.

"Not at all. I can assure you, he is devoted to the king; but, as he told me, there is no use in Irishmen always closing their eyes to the true state of things. He says that we must rely upon ourselves, and our loyal friends in Scotland and England, but that he is sure the king will never be placed on his throne by French bayonets. A small auxiliary force may be sent over, but, in all these years, Louis has made no real effort to assist him; and even if, for his own purposes, he sent a great army to England, and placed him on the throne, he would not be able to maintain himself there for a month after the French had withdrawn, for even a rightful king would be hated by the people upon whom he had been forced, by a foreign power, especially a power that had, for centuries, been regarded as their chief enemy. If he had been in earnest, Louis would have sent over a great army, instead of a few thousand men, to Ireland, when such a diversion would have turned the scale in our favour. As he did not do so then, he is not likely to do so in the future. The king is useful to him, here, by keeping up an agitation that must, to some extent, cripple the strength of England; but, were a Stuart on the throne, he would have to listen to the wishes of the majority of his people, and France would gain nothing by placing him there. Moreover, she would lose the services of twenty thousand of her best soldiers, for naturally the exiles would all return home, and what is now the most valuable force in the French service, might then become an equally important one in the service of Britain."

"I am glad that this priest of yours remains quietly in Kilkargan, for, if he were to come here, and expound his views among our regiments, he might cause quite a defection among them. At any rate, Kennedy, I should advise you not to take to propagating his views in the regiment. It would not add to your comfort, or ours, and there are a good many hot-headed men who would take up the idea that you had been infected by O'Carroll's principles."

"It would not be