Chapter IX: Part 9

Clarke's opinion, however, prevailed with Napoleon, and the war, so fatal to him, continued; though without doubt, in his secret soul, he had begun to see the exact and perilous position of the Emperor. Before the startling events of March, 1814, when the allies advanced upon Paris, and before the communications of Joseph had forced the determination of the Assembly, the acute Clarke had advised, very decidedly, the departure of Maria Louisa, who set out at once for Blois. The ostentatious language with which he accompanied this advice failed to deceive any one; but in spite of his efforts it was singularly cold and discouraging.

He commenced his oration by a vivid picture of the conflicting state of parties, and of the state of Paris and its environs; and his enemies accused him not only of exaggerating the dangers which menaced the capital, but of concealing its actual resources; but one fact is evident, Clarke was clearly and honestly of opinion that Paris was indefensible, and that to resist would be to destroy it! It is said that Bonaparte had a contrary opinion, though it was not then publicly avowed.

When once Maria Louisa had left Paris, Clarke, foreseeing its certain capitulation, did not take the necessary measures either to defend it or to check the progress of the allies. For three days he did not open the arsenals to the Parisians, nor would he allow them to transport the cannon from the Hôtel des Invalides, and the Ecole Militaire to the heights about the city; finally he clubbed all the troops of the line about Montmartre. "Posterity," says a recent writer, "will decide if these measures were correct."

Then followed the battle of Paris; Marshal Marmont's return within its walls; the nights of the 30th and 31st of March; the capitulation; the entry of the allies, and the strange enthusiasm with which the vacillating population received them. Napoleon was dethroned by a decree of the Senate, and a Provisional Government was formed; and changing, like many others, in that time of change, to this new government, Clarke sent in his formal adhesion on the 8th of April, about one week after Paris was taken.

On the 4th of the following June he was created, by Louis XVIII., a peer of France.

When Marshal Soult retired from office, King Louis appointed Clarke Minister of War--the same post he had held under the Emperor, who was then maturing plans of new operations in the little isle of Elba.

It was tauntingly said of Clarke that it was his destiny and misfortune to see the affairs of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons go to wreck, while entrusted to his care.

The _Memoirs of St. Helena_ assure us that Clarke, during the events of the Hundred Days, wished to _retake_ service under the Emperor Napoleon! If so, how different was his conduct from the faith that characterized Ney, Cambronne, and Macdonald! A rumour of this, in 1815, led to the immediate departure of Clarke for Ghent, where, at the fugitive court of Louis XVIII., he exercised his functions as Minister of War; and from thence, some time after, he travelled to London, charged with a mission from the king to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.

During the time the allied armies occupied Paris, Clarke had a remarkable interview with the King of Prussia. On this occasion he was accompanied by M. de Bourienne and Marshal Berthier. They remained for some time in the saloon, before his Prussian Majesty appeared from his closet, and when he did so, the embarrassment of his manner, and the cloudy severity of his countenance, was apparent to the three visitors.

"Marshal," said he to Berthier, "I should have preferred receiving you as a peaceful visitor at Berlin; but war has its successes, as well as its reverses. Your troops are brave and ably led; but you cannot oppose numbers, and Europe is armed against the Emperor; patience has its limits. You have passed no little time, marshal, in making war on Germany, and I have great pleasure in saying to you that I shall never forget your conduct, your justice, and moderation in those seasons of misfortune."

Marshal Berthier, who deserved this eulogium, made a suitable reply; after which the King of Prussia turned sternly to the Duc de Feltre, saying,--

"As for _you_, General Clarke, I cannot say the same of your conduct as of the marshal's. The inhabitants of Berlin will long remember your government. You abused victory strangely, and carried to an extreme measures of rigour and vexation. If I have an advice to give you, it is--_never show your face in Prussia_."

"Clarke was so overwhelmed by this reception from a crowned head," says M. de Bourienne, "that Berthier and myself, each taking an arm, were absolutely obliged to support him down the grand stair."

On returning to King Louis, at Ghent, he resumed his duties of Minister for the War Department; and assuredly his task was both a severe and a difficult one.

He had to arrange the disbanding of the Imperial and the re-organization of a Royal army; he had to examine and decide upon the various claims presented by hundreds of soldiers; he had to satisfy the demands of two thousand officers who adhered to the king, and to send them into the interior; he had to classify nine thousand officers of the disbanded army; to arrange for the pay of six thousand others who were _re-formed_--that is, continued on pay, but without being regimented; he had to examine six thousand claims for arrears of pay and pensions, claims that could admit of no delay, and which amounted to forty-six millions of francs; he had to organize the Royal Garde du Corp; to reconstitute the gendarmerie; to provide for the maintenance of the allied armies of occupation; and all this he had to do, amid obstacles, disorders, and complexities without example.

Such was the mighty mass of labour submitted to the care of Clarke; and of this herculean task he nobly and ably acquitted himself in less than two years.

All impartial writers unite in exculpating him from the angry and unjust accusation of peculating with the enormous sums which were required and absorbed by the re-organization of the French army. But he was severely handled by military men for instituting those tribunals styled _Les Cours Prévotales_.

In June, 1815, Clarke was with Louis XVIII. at Arnouville, and while there saved his friend, François Marquis de Lagrange, a lieutenant-general who in 1813 commanded the 3rd Regiment of Gardes d'Honneur, from great danger, if not from death. The marquis had been accused of offering his services to Napoleon, and hastily arrived at Arnouville with his son, on the 30th June. As he was about to wait upon Louis he was assailed by several soldiers, in whose hearts the love of Napoleon was strong. They called him a _traitor_, and tore away his sword, cross, and epaulettes. On becoming aware of these outrages, Clarke sent two influential officers to repress the tumult, and himself led the marquis to Louis XVIII., who appointed him captain of the Black Musketeers.

The zeal which Clarke now employed in the cause of the house of Bourbon was ultimately the means of his downfall. Louis XVIII., who each day conceded more and more to the enemies of his dynasty, after bestowing upon Clarke the bâton of a Marshal of France, displaced him from office, and appointed Gouvin St. Cyr in his room.

We know that after his dismissal all was changed in the department of the Minister of War.

The position in which Clarke found himself during the last years of his stirring, active, and useful life was very painful and humiliating, especially to one of so proud a spirit as his. Some of the more favoured personages who crowded the court of Louis XVIII., could not behold with a favourable eye this foreigner, who had been the War Minister of the great Napoleon, a confidant of his, and his co-operator in a thousand schemes of conquest; on the other hand, his old comrades of the Imperial army affected to see in Clarke a deserter, a transferer of his allegiance, and, indeed, all but a traitor. Those whose base extortions he had repressed in other times now joined their clamours against him, and the Royalists cared not to say a word in his defence.

Thus, at the end of his career, he was unjustly despised alike for his talents and virtues, as for his mistakes and weaknesses--for the good he had done as well as for evil. Clarke now found himself isolated and abandoned, and the conviction of this, together with the coldness with which he was treated, sank deeply into his proud and sensitive heart.

It aggravated an illness which preyed upon him, and he died on the 28th of October, 1818, in his fifty-third year.

Such was the career of the Duc de Feltre, one of the most famous of the Irish exiles.

Clarke was master of many languages. He wrote with ease, with elegance, and with correctness; his style was often brilliant, and he knew thoroughly all that appertained to the details of a war administration. The state of complete disorganization in which he found the French service after March, 1814, proves the admirable tact and skill with which he could bring order out of disorder.

Many of the old Imperialists, his enemies, coarsely accused him of treason and treachery, but Napoleon takes care partly to exculpate him from charges so severe. On being asked at St. Helena if he believed that Clarke had been true to him, the fallen Emperor said, with a sigh--

"True to me--yes, when I was in my strength;" and after a time he added--"I cannot boast of him being more constant to me than Fortune."

This lessens the alleged crime of Clarke, while, at the same time, it lessens his nobility of conduct; though it must be acknowledged that he did not leave Napoleon until he could no longer be of service to him. The Emperor was not easily deceived as to the fidelity of a follower.

From Bourienne we know that, in 1796 and 1797, after all that passed between Napoleon and Clarke, the former still trusted in the latter, and never attempted to interrupt his despatches to the Directory or to the Chevalier de la Croix; and nothing was ever found in them displeasing to the Commander-in-chief.

Two great traits in the character of Clarke were, first, his hatred of all peculation and political knavery; the other was his mania for office, and the despatches and details connected therewith. So poor was he during the earlier years of his career, that Napoleon had to portion one of his daughters; and no instance of profusion or luxury has been cited against him.

Inflated by his patent of nobility, he wished to make his genealogy great and lofty, and one day he believed that he had discovered his descent, by the female side, from the Plantagenets--an idea which exceedingly amused Napoleon, who once said to him in a numerous company, about the time of his projected invasion of Britain,--

"Clarke, you have not yet spoken of your claims to the English throne--you ought _now_ to make them good!"[16]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: _Biographie Universelle_, &c.]

GENERAL KILMAINE,

COMMANDANT OF LOMBARDY AND GENERAL OF THE ARMÉE D'ANGLETERRE.

Charles Jennings Kilmaine, a gallant and celebrated general in the French army, was born in Dublin in the year 1750, and was descended from an ancient Irish family which had always been strongly attached to the Roman Catholic religion, and opposed to the interests of England. So deep was the animosity of his father to the church and government as established in Ireland, that in 1765 he took Charles to France, and there recommended him, when only in his fifteenth year, to enlist as a private hussar in the Regiment de Lauzun, a distinguished cavalry corps of the old French service, raised originally in the departement of the Garonne. He accompanied this corps to America, where he served in the War of Independence under the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette, Grand Provost of the kingdom of France, and was present in most of those battles in which Washington and his generals so signally discomfited the troops of Great Britain. Association with officers of the United States army, added to those impressions made upon him during his youth in Ireland and the teachings of his father, caused Kilmaine to imbibe strongly the sentiments of a revolutionist.

He repeatedly distinguished himself in action; and his colonel, the gallant Biron, after passing him through the more subordinate ranks, appointed him sous-lieutenant of a troop.

On the conclusion of the war, the Irish hussar returned with his regiment to France, full of those ideas of liberty and insurrection which he had seen so signally triumphant in the New World; and nearly all his brother officers had imbibed the same opinions. Thus it was with ill-concealed joy that the young Kilmaine and his comrades, the Hussars de Lauzun, in 1789, saw a Revolution which seemed destined to achieve results like those they had witnessed in America, break forth in old monarchical France.

In 1789 he was appointed captain of his troop, and continued to serve with the hussars, who became so much attached to him, that during the tumults of 1794 he contributed greatly, by his influence, presence and example, to retain under their colours nearly the whole of the regiment, which like the regiment of Royal Germans and the Hussars de Saxe, seemed disposed to desert _en masse_. Thanks to the patriotic zeal displayed by Kilmaine in the cause of his adopted country, the officers of noble family who chose to become emigrants were alone lost to the service; but this proved to him a new source of advancement, and he was soon appointed a _chef d'escadre_, which in the French army is equal to the rank of a general officer, being commander of a division; and about this time he enjoyed the friendship of his countryman, the Comte O'Kelly, who was ambassador of France at Mayence, with an income of 30,000 livres per annum.

As a chef d'escadre Kilmaine served throughout the first campaigns of the Revolution, and under Dumourier and Lafayette commanded a corps of that army which burst into the Netherlands and annexed that territory to republican France.

He fought with remarkable bravery at the great battle of Gemappes, on the 6th November, 1792, and with his hussars repeatedly charged the Austrians, driving them _sabre à la main_ along the road that leads from Mons to Valenciennes; and so pleased was his general, the unfortunate Dumourier, that in the moment of victory he named him colonel; but this nomination was not confirmed by the minister of war. However, he was soon after gratified by a brevet of maréchal de camp, which made him, in rank, second only to a lieutenant-general.

He continued to serve with this army, and to be one of its most active and able officers, during all the sufferings which succeeded the victory at Gemappes. It consisted of forty-eight battalions of infantry, and three thousand two hundred cavalry. In December, by the neglect of the Revolutionary Government, these troops were shirtless, shoeless, starving and in rags; fifteen hundred men deserted; the cavalry of Kilmaine were soon destitute of boots, saddles, carbines, pistols and even sabres; the military chest was empty, and six thousand troop and baggage horses died at Lisle and Tongres, for want of forage. "To such a state," says Dumourier, "was the victorious army of Gemappes reduced after the conquest of Belgia!"

Honourable testimony has been given to the unceasing efforts of Kilmaine to preserve order among his soldiers amid these horrors; and with other staff-officers, he frequently endeavoured by private contribution to make out a day's subsistence for their men, who roved about in bands, robbing the villages around their cantonments at Aix-la-Chapelle, and in revenge many were murdered by the peasants when found straggling alone beyond their out--posts.

After the defection and flight of General Dumourier, Kilmaine adhered to the National Convention, and by that body was appointed a general of division; and now he redoubled his energies to restore order in the army, which by the defection of its leader was almost disbanded; thus, in one month after General Dampierre took command, so ably was he seconded by Kilmaine, the discipline was completely established.

He commanded the advance-guard of Dampierre in the new campaign against the allied powers, on the failure of the congress at Antwerp on the 8th of April, 1793; and his leader bears the highest testimony to the gallantry and noble conduct of Kilmaine, in the "murderous affairs of the 1st and 2nd May;" in which, according to the official report, he had two chargers shot under him.

Six days of incessant skirmishing succeeded, during which Kilmaine never had his boots off, nor returned his sabre once to the scabbard; and he displayed the most reckless valour on the 8th of May, in that battle fought by Dampierre to deliver Condé.

The French were routed with great loss; Dampierre was slain; and on Kilmaine as an active cavalry officer devolved the task of covering the retreat of the infuriated and disorderly army, which fell back from Condé-sur-l'Escaut, which is a barrier town, and was then the nominal lordship of the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien.

On General la Marche succeeding Dampierre, he sent Kilmaine with his division to the great forest of Ardennes, which formed a part of the theatre of war, on the invasion of France by the allies; but he remained there only a short time, and rejoined the main army, which he found in the most critical circumstances.

The fall of Dampierre and the arrestment of Custine acted fatally on the army of the North, which was now reduced to about thirty thousand rank and file, and these remained in a disorderly state, without a proper chief, and without aim or object--its manoeuvres committed to chance or directed by ignorance; for, with the exception of Kilmaine, its leaders were destitute of skill, experience, and energy. Quitting the camp of Cæsar, they returned to their fortified position at Famars, three miles distant from Valenciennes, the approach to which it covered. Here they were attacked on the 23rd of May, driven back, and obliged to abandon the city to its own garrison under General Ferrand; a success which enabled the allies under the Duke of York to lay immediate siege to Condé and to Valenciennes, the two most important barrier towns upon the northern frontier. While the army of the North continued in full retreat towards the Scheldt, the British commander-in-chief briskly attacked Valenciennes, which General Ferrand first laid in ashes, and then delivered up; his garrison, as the reward of their obstinate defence, being permitted to march out by the gate of Cambray, on the 28th of July, with all _the honours of war_. Condé had already fallen on the 10th of the same month.

General Custine, who in the two preceding campaigns had rendered such essential services to the faithless Convention, was meanwhile brought to trial on the charge of corresponding with the enemy, and fell a sacrifice to the malice of his accusers.

It was on the banks of the Scheldt that Kilmaine rejoined the army early in August, with his division from Ardennes; and now his position became almost desperate. In presence of the scaffold erected by the ferocious mutineers for all the vanquished generals, and in a camp where no suspected person dared to assume the precarious office of leader, when pressed upon him, he accepted the bâton provisionally, and in the meantime said to the representatives who were sent from Paris to manage affairs and act as spies upon the army, "that he wished another more skilful than himself should take the great responsibility of leading the troops of the Republic."

His presence for a time appeased the tumults in the army. Though upon the banks of the Scheldt, and having before him both the Duke of York and the Prince of Coburg, Kilmaine, with only twenty-four thousand ill-appointed troops, dared not attempt to attack them; for if he fought and lost the day, he could thereafter assume no position of sufficient strength to prevent the allies from penetrating to Paris and crushing the power of the Convention. After so many levies and enrolments, that body had no longer a battalion to spare, and had around it only the frothy orators of armed clubs, and the refuse of prisons; thus it dared not abandon the capital or retire beyond the Loire, for now the men of Poitou, Bretagne, and La Vendée were in arms under the white banner, and elsewhere the tides of war and politics were setting in against them. At this crisis Mayence had capitulated, after a three months' bombardment. Toulon was under the cannon of the British; the Spaniards had invaded Roussillon; the Austro-Sardinians menaced Provence, the ancient patrimony of the House of Anjou; and on the Alps their troops hung over Dauphine and Vienne; finally, after the revolution of the 31st of May, which had assured the triumph of Robespierre, Lyons, Marseilles, and all the departments of the south, with those of the west, were roused against the pride, power, and oppression of the Convention.

If it was really true that the allied monarchs wished to re-establish the fallen throne of Louis XVI.,--if, as they had so proudly announced in their manifestos, it was to restore order to bleeding and desolated France, and to repress the Republic and its horrors,--they had displayed their standards in the Netherlands, never were circumstances more favourable to them than after the retreat of Kilmaine towards the Scheldt: but the secret measures of wily diplomatists had more influence then, on events, than the arms of the allied kings.

It appears that, in the second campaign, when the allies were masters of Condé and Valenciennes, and saw that the road to Paris was almost open to them, the Austrians wished to take their revenge locally for the cruel deeds of which they had been spectators in the Camp de la Lune; and were more intent upon gratifying this sentiment than advancing into the heart of France.

The Prince of Coburg had shown himself from the first frank, loyal, and gallant; he had promised to Dumourier to concur in his daring project for re-establishing the monarchy, and for that purpose had engaged to form an auxiliary force to aid him, while solemnly renouncing all projects of aggrandizement for the crown of Austria. But for these engagements he had not received from his cabinet either instructions or authority. When Thugut was supreme director of the Austrian affairs, it was to these rash promises of the prince his consent was required; he disapproved of them so strongly, that they were cancelled by the Emperor of Austria, and a congress met at Antwerp, where, in concert with Britain, it was decided that in the result of the war the allies ought to find indemnities for the past, and guarantees for the future peace of Europe.

These were the expressions of the protocol which the members of the congress comprehended without difficulty; but French diplomatists loudly declared that a projected dismemberment of France was clearly announced in its phraseology.

One thing is certain: not a reference was made therein to the House of Bourbon, or to the throne of Louis--that throne of which Dumourier, in concert with the Prince of Coburg, had so boldly promised the restoration in his manifesto of the 5th April; and not a measure was taken for the advantage or safety of the beautiful and unhappy Marie Antoinette, then languishing in prison at Paris, and over whose devoted head hung the blade of the guillotine, and whom a simple menace from her nephew the Emperor, threatening the advance of his armies, might perhaps have saved.

At all events, it seemed sufficiently evident to the jealous and excitable French that the allies were no longer true to the interests of the fallen Bourbons; and equally so that it was not to restore them the Austrians at least made war. It was in _his own name_--not that of Louis XVII., king of France and Navarre--their emperor took possession of those fortified places and provinces which his armies overran; and after he became master of Condé and Valenciennes, he no longer cared to define or form a frontier for those districts of the Netherlands which once he proposed to cede to the Prussians; but which Thugut now wished to preserve to the descendants of Rudolph of Hapsburg.

At the same time the Duke of York, who from his own cabinet had received orders and instructions similar to those given to the Prince of Coburg, in the name of George III., resolved to seize upon Dunkerque, which the English had coveted of old; but he did not wait for the departure of a British fleet prepared for this object. The naval squadron was delayed, and in the meantime the duke deliberated with the Austrian general under the ramparts of Valenciennes, to learn if, before engaging in new sieges, they might not give to the French army a final blow which would deprive Kilmaine of all power of interrupting their combined operations.

This was a very simple question, yet they were fourteen days in coming to a conclusion. Though Valenciennes, as already stated, had capitulated on the 28th of July, it was not until the 8th of August that the Austro-British army was in motion, and its advance guard beheld the camp of Cæsar; this on the very day after Kilmaine had wisely evacuated the fortifications and retreated southwards.

It is said that he fully anticipated the march of the combined armies; and this was sufficiently probable, for we know that the committees of the National Convention had mysterious means of procuring secret intelligence, not only from the cabinets of the allies, but from the staff officers of the German troops!

Kilmaine in retiring only obeyed the dictates of wisdom and necessity, and quitted a position which he could not defend, as his army was reduced by defeat and desertion, mutinous, or as the French style it, _demoralized_.

If the allies had wished to follow and engage him upon the Scarpe or the Somme, a last effort could easily have been made to disperse his troops completely, and then seize upon Paris, where they might have torn the Revolution from its very basis. But such was not the intention of the allied generals. "Their aim on this occasion," says a French writer, "was to profit by our disorders and revolutions to make themselves masters of our places and provinces after assuring themselves of indemnities and guarantees, and to leave the volcano to consume itself, as a Prussian prince said, not long ago: it must be admitted, that never had this policy shown itself more evidently in its shameful nudity!" But the reader must bear in mind that these are the opinions of a Frenchman and a sympathizer with the Convention.

Such was the state of matters when Kilmaine, having abandoned the untenable camp of Cæsar, and fallen back beyond the Scarpe, a navigable river of French Flanders (but still a narrower barrier than the Scheldt) prepared again for retreat, and marched towards the Somme, another river which falls into the British Channel between Crotoy and Sainte Valori. This was his last position--his last asylum; and now the chiefs of the allies, instead of pushing on in pursuit of his retiring bands to complete the triumphs so well begun, faced about, and wheeled off to seize Dunkerque and Quesnay.

It was in autumn that the Royal Duke appeared before the former; and there his troops received a check which proved but the commencement of a long series of disasters; the latter was stormed by the Austrians, and retaken by the French in the following year.

But what must astonish us, even at this epoch of deception and duplicity, political insanity and revenge, is the startling fact that the brave Kilmaine, who had rendered such gallant services to that new and most faithless Republic--he who by a judicious retreat (executed _against_ the advice of the meddling and presumptuous representatives of the people, and in consequence thereof perilled his life) had preserved to shattered France her most important army, was precisely for that reason denounced to the Convention, arrested by its orders, and flung into a loathsome prisons at Paris, where he passed a year; being but too happy, in the obscurity of his dungeon, that he had not perished on the scaffold like the gallant Custine, his predecessor in the command; like his old colonel and protector Biron, and like Houchard, who for the brief period of fifteen days had been his successor, and who, after winning a signal and decided victory over the Duke of York--a victory alike honourable to himself and to the arms of France, expiated by a cruel death the grave fault of having forgotten for a moment the powers of a bullying representative of the people!

Kilmaine only recovered his liberty after the fall of Robespierre; but he still remained for some time in Paris, without military employment, though he eagerly and anxiously sought it. He found himself there at the epoch of the insurrection of the 22nd May, 1795, and with much zeal and valour he seconded General Pichegru in the struggle made by that officer to defend the National Convention against the excited mobs of the Parisian fauxbourgs. Amid a thousand dangers Kilmaine continued to fight for the Convention until the 13th Vendemaire of the year following, actively co-operating with Bonaparte and the revolutionary party.

Being appointed to the command of a division in the army of Italy, he marched with Napoleon across the Alps to the invasion of that country, and shared in the glory of his first victories, and in that brilliant campaign in which the French destroyed two armies, took two hundred and eighty pieces of cannon, and forty-nine stand of colours from the Austrians, who were commanded by the veteran Wurmser, the bravest of all brave men.

At the head of his division Kilmaine fought with remarkable courage at Castiglione delle Stiviere, a fortified town in Lombardy, where, in the beginning of August, 1796, several severe engagements took place between the French and Austrians, which resulted in the discomfiture of the latter. Mantua was the next scene of Kilmaine's achievements; and in July that ancient city, after fifty years of peace, beheld the army of Napoleon before its walls, while all the country on the right bank of the Po was laid under contribution.

The whole direction and charge of the siege of Mantua was committed to Kilmaine by Bonaparte in September, when Wurmser, after being successful against General Massena, was overthrown by Augereau and our Irish soldier, and after a six days' contest shut himself up in the city on the 12th, after which the siege was pressed with great vigour. Twice after this did an Austrian army under Alvinzi attempt its relief, and twice were they baffled by the besiegers; on the last occasion an advancing corps of seven thousand men were compelled to surrender to Bonaparte and Kilmaine within gunshot of the walls, and the position of the aged Wurmser, his garrison, and the Mantuans, became desperate in the extreme.

In an action before Mantua in October, Kilmaine had his horse killed under him, and a rumour was spread through France and Britain that he was killed. Wurmser made several furious sallies, and on one occasion was severely routed by Bonaparte. In the _Courier du Bas Rhin_, we are told that the French repulsed him with the loss of eleven hundred men and five pieces of cannon, and that "their dispositions were made by General Kilmaine, commander of the siege of Mantua." Bonaparte, in his dispatch to the Directory, dated the first day of October, writes thus:--

"On the 20th of September, the enemy advanced towards Castellocio, with a body of horse 12,000 strong. Pursuant to the orders they had received, our advanced posts fell back, but the enemy did not push forward any further. On the 23rd September, they proceeded to Governolo, along the right bank of the Mincio, but were repulsed, after a very brisk cannonade, with the loss of eleven hundred men and five pieces of cannon.

"_Le Général Kilmaine_, who commands the two divisions which press the siege of Mantua, remained on the 29th ultimo in his former position, and was still in hopes that the enemy would attempt a sortie to carry forage into the place; but instead they took up a position before the gate of Pradello, near the Carthusian convent and the chapel of Cerese. The brave General Kilmaine made his arrangements for an attack, and advanced in two columns against these two points; but he had scarcely begun to march when the enemy evacuated their camps, their rear having fired only a few musket-shots at him. The advanced posts of General Vaubois have come up with the Austrian division which defends the Tyrol, and made one hundred and ten prisoners."

In November a series of sanguinary actions were fought between the French and Austrians at Arcola, where the latter were completely overthrown; and there fell Citizen Elliot, a Scotsman, who was one of Bonaparte's principal aides-de-camp. During this time Kilmaine was at Vicenza with three thousand men; all the French cavalry were sent there to be under his orders; and though still commanding the operations against Mantua, he shared in the disastrous battle fought near Vicenza by the aged Alvinzi, who was advancing to raise the siege. Despairing to reach Mantua, the latter fell back upon the Vicenza road, and was routed after a bloody conflict of eight hours' duration.

Early in December, Wurmser led a sortie, sword in hand, against Kilmaine. The Imperialists sallied out of Mantua at seven in the morning, and almost in the dark, under a furious cannonade, which lasted all day; "but General Kilmaine," says Bonaparte, "made him return, as usual, faster than he came out, and took from him two hundred men, one howitzer, and two pieces of cannon. This is his third unsuccessful attempt." So energetic were the measures, and so able the precautions of Kilmaine, that Wurmser, seeing all hope of succour at an end, surrendered, after a long, desperate, and disastrous defence, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 3rd February, 1797, giving up his soldiers as prisoners of war. The following is a translation of Kilmaine's brief letter on this important acquisition:--

"Kilmaine, Général de Division and Commandant of Lombardy, to the Minister of War. Milan, 17 Pluviose (Feb. 5), 1797.

"Citizen Minister--I avail myself of a courier which General Bonaparte sends from Romagna (in order to announce to the Directory the defeat of the Papal troops), to acquaint you with the capture of Mantua, the news of which I received yesterday evening by a courier from Mantua itself. I thought it necessary to announce this circumstance, because General Bonaparte, who is occupied in Romagna annihilating the troops of his Holiness, may probably have been ignorant of this fact when _his_ courier departed. The garrison are our prisoners of war, and are to be sent into Germany in order to be exchanged. I have not yet received the articles of capitulation; but the commander-in-chief will not fail to send them by the first courier.

"Kilmaine."

The capture of Mantua was celebrated in Paris by the firing of cannon and the erection of arches in honour of Bonaparte and the Irish Commandant of Lombardy, and a general joy was diffused through every heart in the city on the fall of what they styled the _Gibraltar_ of Italy; while Bonaparte, loaded with the diamonds of the vanquished Pope, and the spoils of our Lady of Loretto, pushed on to seek fresh conquests and new laurels.

Kilmaine remained for some time in command at Mantua after its capitulation.

During the siege and other events, a revolutionary spirit had pervaded the Venetian States. Peschiera, a fortified town in the province of Verona, and Brescia, a large city in the beautiful plain on the Garza, had been both seized, garrisoned, and republicanized by the French. The people rose in arms, fired by new and absurd ideas of liberty and equality, and frightful scenes of bloodshed ensued when the more loyal and sensible inhabitants resisted these new patriots; but the latter, on being joined by fifteen hundred banditti from Bergamo, pressed the Venetian troops, who were driven out with great slaughter.

On hearing of these things, the politic Kilmaine wrote from Mantua to the French general commanding in Brescia, desiring him "_not_ to interfere in behalf of these insurgents, lest by so doing he might infringe that strict neutrality which the generals of the French Republic were bound to observe."

In April, however, he was compelled, by the violent proceedings of the Italians against the French garrison in Verona, to unite his forces to those of Generals Victor and La Hotze, and march to the succour of General Ballaud, who was there assailed by forty-five thousand men, whose war-cry was _Viva San Marco!_ who had cut to pieces six hundred Frenchmen, taken two thousand more after a four hours' contest, and driven the rest into the castle. From its ramparts Ballaud threatened to lay in ruins the unfortunate city, which had enjoyed profound peace for ages, until Bonaparte arrived on the banks of the Adige, and added it to the new kingdom of Italy.

On the 24th the insurgent Veronese capitulated, for on the approach of Kilmaine the governor, the two proveditori, and the Venetian general Stratico, fled with all their cavalry; on which he took as hostages the bishop, four of the principal nobles of the city, and several cavaliers of distinction, and peace was thus restored for a time. He disarmed all the insurgents, and seized three thousand slaves, whom he marched under an escort to Milan. In every way Kilmaine aided Napoleon most efficiently in these operations which preceded the capture and subjugation of Venice; and thus gave his great leader a thousand causes to admire and appreciate him during those campaigns which were so disastrous to Italy, but so glorious to the arms of France. During his command in Lombardy he settled or compromised the contested question of the free navigation of the Lake of Lugano, in the south of Switzerland, which had occasioned many angry disputes between the jealous Switzers and the aggressive generals of the French army in Italy. By his intervention it was satisfactorily arranged that France should have the open navigation of the lake by boats of any size: but the cantons violated the treaty; on which Napoleon threatened to send a column of his troops among them, if they did not behave more amicably towards their faithful and ancient allies.

At this time General Sir John Acton, the favourite minister of Naples at Milan, was a soldier of fortune, and the intimate friend of Kilmaine. The story of Acton is rather a singular one.

He was the son of a Jacobite gentleman who had emigrated to France and settled at Besançon. An unsuccessful love adventure forced him to leave that city, at the college of which he was studying physic with every prospect of distinction. Repairing to Toulon, he enlisted in a battalion of French marines. From this corps he passed into the Neapolitan service, and distinguished himself at sea against a Barbary corsair; on which he received a commission in the marines of Naples, and rose to the rank of general, Counsellor of State, and Knight of San Gennaro and Saint Stephen. He possessed a high spirit, great courage, good address, and a handsome figure; and he soon became at the Court of Naples what the Prince of Peace was at Madrid--the favourite and lover of the Queen. He died in 1811. Another of Kilmaine's friends was the veteran general O'Cher, a _chef de brigade_, who had been upwards of forty years in the service of Louis XVI. and of the Republic, and held an important command in the army of Italy.

In the _Memoirs_ published by General Count Montholon, and which were written by that faithful officer at St. Helena, we have the following descriptive reference to the Commandant of Lombardy:--

"Kilmaine, being an excellent cavalry officer, had coolness and foresight; he was well fitted to command a corps of observation, detached upon those arduous or delicate commissions which require spirit, discernment, and sound judgment. He rendered important services to the army, of which he was one of the principal generals, notwithstanding the delicacy of his health. He had a great knowledge of the Austrian troops: familiar with their _tactiques_, he did not allow himself to be imposed upon by those rumours which they were in the habit of spreading in the rear of an army, nor to be dismayed by those heads of columns which they were wont to display in every direction, to deceive as to the real strength of their forces. His political opinions were very moderate."

These are the words of a brother soldier, who must have known him well in the land of his adoption.

In the spring of 1798, the French Government was seriously employed in preparations for a descent upon the British Islands; and, in the February of that year, marched to the coast of the Channel forty demi-brigades of infantry, thirty-four regiments of cavalry, two regiments of horse artillery, two regiments of foot artillery, six companies of sappers and pioneers, six battalions of miners and pontooniers. These forces were led by eighteen distinguished generals of division, and forty-seven generals of brigade--the most brave and able in France. Among the former were Charles Kilmaine, Berthier, Marescat, Kleber, Massena, "the son of Rapine;" Macdonald, Ney, Victor, and others whose names were to become famous in future wars as the marshal dukes of the great military empire.

The brave but blustering Jean Baptist Kleber, who had originally been an architect of Strasbourg, commanded the right wing of this _Armée d'Angleterre_, which was to stretch from Calais to the mouth of the Scheldt, while another corps assembled at Flushing.

Kilmaine commanded the centre.

These forces were partly composed of troops returned from Italy, and were all experienced soldiers, the victors of Mantua, Lodi, and Arcola. Headed by bands of music, the _étât-majors_ marched through Paris, displaying black banners, indicative of a war of extermination, and inscribed, "_Descent upon England_--Live the Republic! May Britain perish," &c.

On St. Patrick's day, the 17th of the following month, Kilmaine, O'Cher, Colonel Shee, and all the Irishmen in Paris celebrated their ancient national and religious festival by a grand banquet, at which the notorious Thomas Paine--then a political fugitive--assisted. All the corresponding members of the Irish clubs and malcontent party at home were also present. Many fierce and stirring political toasts were drunk, amid vociferous enthusiasm; and among these--one in particular--"Long live the Irish Republic!" and speeches were made expressive of the rapid progress which republicanism had made in their native country, and of the strong desire of the Catholics and Dissenters to throw off the yoke of England--that yoke which Kilmaine in his boyhood had been taught to abhor and to hate. Napper Tandy, a _general de brigade_, was in the chair; on his left sat Tom Paine, and on his right sat Kilmaine, who, immediately after the banquet, left Paris to rejoin his column of the army on the coast.

Five hundred gunboats were ordered to be prepared, and three hundred sail of transports were collecting at Dunkirk, to be protected from the British fleet by a Dutch squadron then at the mouth of the Scheldt; and all Britain was in arms on hearing of an armament so formidable.

The condition of France was then desperate; assignats were at 6500 livres the louis; she had to maintain a million of men in arms from an empty treasury; the ruffian demagogues and savage soldiers of the Republic, men steeped to the lips in the blood of women and priests, nobles and aristocrats, hardened by the atrocities in La Vendée, and trained to the war in the campaigns of Austria and Italy, occupied every post and place under the unstable government; a rabble of brutal ministers occupied the palaces of the fallen line of St. Louis, armed with sabres and pistols, to which they resorted in every trivial dispute and on every difference of opinion, and while warring against all manner of title and form, appeared on the rostrum in cassocks and stockings of rose-coloured silk, with knots of scarlet ribands in their shoes; and, with that mixture of ferocity and tom-foolery which caused Paris to be characterized as a city of monkeys and tigers, debated on the cut of a coat and the massacre of a city.

In April, Kilmaine repaired to Paris, after having executed, by order of the government, a survey of the coasts of France and Holland, then reduced to a province of the former; and the chief command of this famous Armée d'Angleterre on which the eyes of all Europe were fixed, and the command of which had been given to the noble Dessaix, the hero of Marengo, was now bestowed upon him.

A French writer asserts that this expedition was destined, not for Britain, but for Egypt; and that Kilmaine received the command of it, not so much for his great military skill, as to deceive our ministry; supposing that the name of an Irishman would cause them to believe that the armament was destined for Ireland; and so they named him General in Chief of the Armée d'Angleterre, which never existed at all. Unfortunately for this writer, history affords abundant proof to the contrary. The number of transports was soon increased to a thousand, and all the naval and military resources of Holland were pressed into the French service.

Colonel Shee, Wolfe Tone, Generals Clarke and Kilmaine, were by this time well acquainted with the extent of the military organization of the United Irishmen, and knew that by the close of the preceding year the people were well provided with arms, and knew the use of them. In the beginning of 1797, great quantities were discovered and seized by the British Government, who, in Leinster and Ulster alone, captured 70,630 pikes, with 48,109 muskets. Had the Irish managed their projected rising with the vigour which has ever characterized the Scottish insurrections, we cannot for a moment doubt what would have been the result, had this formidable expedition once landed in Ireland, where no yeomanry were organized; where the militia were not to be depended upon; and where the king's troops, on whom the ministry mainly relied, were so little superior to the French in tact and skill, that Humbert, with less than a thousand men, was able to defeat double that number, and immediately after received into his ranks 250 of the drilled and attested Irish militiamen.

On the 12th April, Kilmaine, with General Bonaparte, had a long audience with the Directory at Paris, reporting on the state of their armaments. The appointment of the former to the chief command relieved Britain of the apprehension that the conqueror of Italy would cross the Channel in person, and great was the disappointment of the malcontents at home.

The duties of Kilmaine were alike harassing and arduous, as he had to superintend the equipment and organization of this vast force, composed of men of all arms and several nations; and he was repeatedly summoned to Paris, even in the middle of the night, by couriers who overtook him in his progresses; thus, though suffering under severe ill health, the Directory once brought him on the spur from Bruges early in July, and again from Brest about the end of the same month.

Citizen d'Arbois, an officer on the staff of Kilmaine, in a letter published in the Parisian papers of the 7th August, 1798, states that his general "is on his return," after having made a tour of the coast, from Port St. Malo to L'Orient; that he was well satisfied with the state of the French ports and armaments, and had enjoyed with delight the magnificent aspect of Brest, in the harbour of which he saw thirty sail of the line, with a fleet of frigates and transports. D'Arbois states that Kilmaine had been surveying Brittany, where all was then peaceful, by the "wise measures" of the constituted authorities. "The eagerness with which our troops, both by sea and land, await the moment when, under the brave Kilmaine, they will engage the English, is the best pledge of our approaching success, and the ruin of our enemies."

It is evident that Citizen d'Arbois had then no thought of fighting in Egypt.

But doubts hovered in the minds of the Directory, if there were none in the hearts of their generals, and long delays ensued. General Hoche, under whom the future Dukes of Rovigo and of Vicenza were serving as private soldiers, and who was the main spring of the projected movement in favour of Ireland, died in September, 1797; and Bonaparte, to whom Kilmaine, Tone, Shee, and others of the Irish patriots turned, had no sympathy with their cause, as all his views were now directed towards a warfare in the East. By the beginning of autumn the Directory began to break up their boasted Armée d'Angleterre, and withdrew their troops to reinforce their columns on the Rhine. Upon this, Kilmaine came anxiously and hastily to Paris to confer with the government and the Minister of Marine concerning the embarkation of the troops and departure of the fleet from Brest; but his questions were waived, or left unanswered, although the division of Bompard, consisting of the _Hoche_ of 74 guns and eighteen frigates, filled with troops under General Hardy, destined for Ireland, remained with their cables hove short, and all ready for sea at a moment's notice.

Of the forces that really sailed for Ireland, and their fate, we need not inform the reader. For a time all Britain supposed they were led by the commander-in-chief in person; and all the press of England and Scotland teemed with blustering or scurrilous remarks on "Paddy Kilmaine and his followers;" but the general never embarked, though he certainly superintended the departure of a body of troops from Rochfort.

"We are assured," says a Brussels print, "that in case the French republicans shall be able to make a successful descent upon Ireland, the Belgic youth will be employed in that country under General Kilmaine, who, being a native of it, will there have the command of the united French and Irish forces." Citizen Macdonagh was to have a high command in the corps of Irish Marines. He held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in France.

By the end of 1798 the army of England and its expedition were alike dissolved, and the Directory wished to give Kilmaine command of the forces assembled for the war in Egypt; but for the present his career finished with the military examination of the coasts of France and Holland.

In 1799 the Directory appointed him generalissimo of the army of Helvetia, as they chose to designate Switzerland; thus reviving the ancient name of the people whom Julius Cæsar conquered. The French troops already occupied Lombardy on one side, and the Rhenish provinces on the other; thus they never doubted their ability to conquer the Swiss and remodel the Helvetic constitution. Kilmaine accepted the command with satisfaction, but his failing health compelled him to give up his bâton to Massena; and with a sorrow which he could not conceal, he saw that army march which penetrated into the heart of the Swiss mountains, and imposed on their hardy inhabitants a constitution in which Bonaparte, under the plausible title of Mediator, secured the co-operation of the valiant descendants of the Helvetii in his further schemes of conquest and ambition.

In a feeble condition Kilmaine returned to Paris, where his domestic sorrows and chagrins added to the poignancy of his bodily sufferings, for his constitution was now completely broken up.

Struck by a deadly malady, he died on the 15th of December, 1799, in the forty-ninth year of his age, at the very moment when the triumphant elevation of Bonaparte was opening up to his comrades a long and brilliant career of military glory. He was interred with all the honours due to his rank and bravery, and a noble monument was erected to his memory.

COUNTS O'REILLY, O'DONNEL,

AND THE IRISH IN SPAIN.

Ireland, says a popular Scottish writer, can boast not only of having transplanted more of her sons to the soil of Spain than either of the sister kingdoms, but of having acquired by the deeds of her exiles a degree of renown to which the others cannot aspire.

True it is, that in every land brave men find a home!

The deeds of the Irish regiments in the Spanish service, during the War of the Succession, like those of the O'Donnels in the war of the Peninsula, and the civil strife of more recent times, would fill volumes. Of the Spanish Lacys I have already given a memoir; and of many other brave Irish soldiers of fortune, who won distinction on the soil or in the service of Spain, I can here give but the names alone.