The memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald

Preface

The Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald^ by Thomas Moore, which are now again offered to the public, were first pubHshed sixty-six years ago. They tell the story of one who, in the nobility of his birth, the moving incidents of his early manhood, the great historic scenes in which, almost without the exercise of his will, he found himself engaged — in his marriage, and more especially in his death — supplies the biographer with a narrative which, while true in every particular, exhibits all the features usually assigned to romance. Indeed, it is because of its truth that the tale is so wonderfully romantic. Deduct one particle of that priceless element from the context — add but one fragment of falsehood — and it becomes like any other of those myriad inventions with which our literature is perhaps too abundantly supplied. For let the reader consider for a moment the facts. Lord Edward Fitzgerald belonged, both by his father and his mother, to great ducal families. Adopting the military profession, he is present, while yet a youth of seventeen, and

b vi LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

receives his first wound and first distinction, in the last engagement ever fought by England in the great war against American independence. Then, after an interval spent with his family in the gay circles of Dublin and London, he again crosses the Atlantic to join the British army in Canada; sojourns among the early Irish settlers by the rivers and great lakes ; journeys almost alone through untracked forests — making his way on one occasion for one hundred and seventy-five miles guided by the compass alone, from Frederickstown to Quebec, across primeval woods which only the moose-deer and the Indian had ever penetrated. Fascinated by the wild Indian life, he spends weeks in the wigwams of the red men as a brother, and is elected a chief of one of the six nations. After eighteen months spent in the prosecution of these adventures and his military duties, he leaves Canada by way of the great lakes and the Ohio, and — sometimes in the canoes of the Indians, sometimes in the rude rivercraft of that early day — follows the whole course of the Mississippi down to its mouth at New Orleans. Back again in Europe, he takes his place beside Grattan in the Irish House of Commons, at the same time and under similar conditions as to birth and military rank, as Arthur Wellesley, whose fate was destined to be so different. Naturally moving in the

PREFACE vii

highest political circles, while in England he is introduced to Pitt by his uncle the Duke of Richmond, then one of Pitt's ministers, and is offered the command of a projected expedition against Cadiz — which does not come off because of the young soldier's refusal to accept the implied and then usual condition of political subserviency. The cousin of Fox and friend of Sheridan, with both these statesmen he is on terms of affectionate intimacy. Crossing over to France while the revolution was at its height, he is present at the stormy scenes of the French Convention. He lives with Thomas Paine, Burke's great opponent and the expounder of the * Rights of Man.' Carried away by the enthusiasm of the time, he renounces his title, and the English Government deprives him of his military rank. He marries the daughter of Philippe Egalite, whilom Duke of Orleans, just before that renegade prince falls a victim to the Revolution he had accepted. He takes his young bride with him to Ireland, and again resumes his part there in her final parliamentary struggle. And at last, when it had become clear that Pitt meant to destroy the independence of his native land. Lord Edward Fitzgerald joins the United Irishmen at the time of their most desperate fortune, and when, by armed resistance alone, they could hope to retain their freedom. That great confederacy despatches him to France h viii LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

to negotiate with the renowned Republican general Hoche, for an armed expedition to Ireland — such as Pitt had thrice already organised against the shores of France. After this comes treachery, collapse, and an heroic death. With such a record, engraven on the adamantine tablets of truth itself, what need is there to resort to the factitious embellishments of fiction ?

This book was written of the man whose name in Ireland is still — a century after his death — the most popular and beloved of all the men of '98 j probably the most popular, and, except O'Connell, the best known, of any Irishman whatever.^ The writer of it is himself renowned, not only as the national poet of Ireland, but as one admirably skilled in the art of the biographer. He wrote within a generation of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's death, and most of his materials were supplied by some of Lord Edward's then surviving relatives. The style is clear, restrained, and simple, with here and there that touch of eloquence, which would come naturally from such a writer, on such a theme. I have often

1 As an instance of this I may mention the following anecdote, related to me by a well-known Irish author. Taking his son, a schoolboy, recently to spend his vacation in Ireland, and arriving at Kingsbridge Station in Dublin, he hired a car, telling the man to drive round to the places best worth seeing in the city. Five minutes later, finding that the driver had stopped before a dingy old brick house in a back street, he asked him — 'Well, what's this? Where are we now?" — 'Sure, sir," says the man, pointing up with his whip, ' this is Mr. Murphy's house, where Lofd Edzvard was took ! '

PREFACE ix

asked myself why, with all these advantages to its credit, this work of Moore's should remain, comparatively, so little known. Thinking the matter over, it has seemed that the writer, quite unnecessarily, placed some obstacles in his own way, which might easily be removed; and this is one of the things I have attempted in the present issue. Thus, the Memoirs were published originally in two volumes which proceeded from the first page to the last without any break whatever; so that times, places, and incidents succeed each other in it, without any warning to the reader, or separation in the text. This defect I have endeavoured to obviate by that natural division into chapters, which, while affording the mind a needful resting-place, allows the subject to be distributed into distinct and coherent parts. Otherwise, the effect becomes something like that of the breathless lady in one of Dickens's novels, who runs on 'right off the reel,' without the interposition of a comma, or a pause, to the end of her discourse. This alteration is, of course, one of form, merely ; but in one or two instances I have deviated a little further from the author's arrangement, without however, as I hope, diminishing in any way the value of his matter, or interfering with the work in any essential particular. Venturing to assume that the whole

X LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

interest of the narrative centres — as Moore puts it by his title — in the * Life and Death ' of him who, in every sense of the word, may be called its hero, all the correspondence which took place among the various members of his family, subsequent to his deaths I have placed, along with other letters not bearing upon the immediate subject of the Memoirs, in the Appendix ; finding room for these by the omission of the numerous and very lengthy documents introduced by the author, with reference to the stupid Bill of Attainder (afterwards reversed) : a subject which cannot now be of interest to any mortal. In this way, it is hoped, the tragedy passes to its conclusion without any disturbing element ; nor is the virile defence made by our national poet, towards its conclusion, of the right of the oppressed to resist tyranny by force of arms, an unworthy close to a noble story.

Passing now to material for the compilation of which the editor is alone responsible, it must be remembered that many facts, especially those connected with the final betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the network of treachery by which he was surrounded at an earlier date, were not known when Moore wrote his life. Since the appearance of the last edition of the book in 1833 the persistent investigations pursued by the late Dr, Madden have, in his

PREFACE xi

Lives of the Untied Irishmen^ thrown public light on many dark secrets connected with '98, which the Government intended to have remained for ever buried; while a whole series of the most startling revelations, not known to Madden, have come to us in the works of the late Mr. W. J. Fitzpatrick — Secret Service under Pitt) The Sham Squire^ etc. Wherever any such occur, or other point arises, tending to the elucidation of the narrative, I have indicated them by notes, either at the bottom of the page or the close of the chapter. Especially have I thought it necessary to do this with reference to the chapters in which the capture of Lord Edward, and his negotiations abroad with General Hoche and the agents of the French Directory, are described ; as the discovery, made by the late Mr. W. J. Fitzpatrick, of the circumstances surrounding Lord Edward's betrayal, and the name of the wretch who accomplished it, were wholly unknown to Moore, or even to Madden; as were also all the facts connected with the ' friend of Lord Downshire,' — that undetected traitor who succeeded, without awakening in Lord Edward's mind the least suspicion of his foul dealing, in supplying Pitt with a record of all the most secret thoughts, words, and actions of the rebel leaders. Also, as throwing some further light on the proceedings of the Irish Government, and on the kind of agents xii LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

employed by Pitt and his abettors in their nefarious scheme for the destruction of Ireland's independence, I have thought it not irrelevant to introduce at the end of the Memoirs some further particulars of that great Government conspiracy. Again, the fate of Lord Edward's young widow, and the treatment she received at the hands of his family, after his death, are almost wholly ignored in Moore's narrative, probably because he wrote at a time when she was still living ; perhaps, too, because he did not like to ruffle the feelings of the noble relatives of the dead patriot. In any case, neither cause now exists for any undue reticence ; and I have thought that a few pages devoted to the unhappy fate of the beautiful Pamela would be not out of place in a record of that of her gallant husband. With these explanations, for which I have to crave the reader's indulgence, I leave in his hands this faithful record of the life and death of one of Ireland's most faithful sons.

MARTIN MACDERMOTT.

Chapter I Page

The Geraldines— First Duke of Leinster— Lord Edwai-d fifth son — Education — Enters militia under his uncle, the Duke of Richmond — Joins the army — Sails for America with his regiment, i

Chapter II

American War— Landing of Lord Edward with his regiment at Charleston — Seasonable succour — Ordered to the relief of Fort Ninety-Six — Gallant action of Lord Edward — Wounded at the battle of Eutaw Springs— Insensible on the field — Rescued by Tony : ever afterwards his faithful negro attendant — General Sir John Doyle's testimony — Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Lafayette, . . . . 14

Chapter XIII

Visit to his uncle, the Duke of Richmond — Introduction to Pitt — Offered the command of a secret expedition against Cadiz — Accepts — It falls through — Becomes associated with Fox and Sheridan— Attends the Irish Parliament, . . 119

Chapter XIV

The French Revolution in 1792 — Lord Edward in Paris — Lodges with Thomas Paine— Declared Republicanism— Jemmapes — Publicly discards his title — Dismissed from the army— Fox defends him in the House of Commons —

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

Pamela — Lord Edward's marriage — Documents — Returns

to London — And to Dublin — Note, 126

Chapter XVI

Lord Edward Fitzgerald in the Irish Parliament — The Volunteers— Lord Edward before the bar of the House — Sudden change of Government policy after the Republican victoiy of Jemmapes— Again reversed when France suffered defeat— Coercion Acts — Lord Edward one of Grattan's small minority in opposing them, 161

CHAPTER XVn

Home life in Ireland — Lord Edward's letters to his mother,

1793-94 171

Chapter XVIII

Lord Edward's home life — Letters to his mother, the Duchess of Leinster, continued — Contrast between the peacefulness of his present existence and the stormy career on which he is about to embark, 183

Chapter XIX

' The United Irishmen '—Driven to desperation by the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam— Change in their constitution — Become secret and militant— Lord Edward joins them — Rencontre with some English officers — Negotiations between the United Irishmen and the French Director)^— Theobald Wolfe Tone, 197

Chapter XX

The Insurrection Act — Lord Edward's declaration in the Irish Parliament — His secret embassy to the French Directory — At Hamburg — The projected expedition — A dangerous travelling companion — Hoche and Wolfe Tone — Arrival of part of the French fleet in Bantry Bay — Failure of the expedition— Leaders of United Irishmen attempt to obtain relief from Parliament, 212 xvi LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

Chapter XXI Page

Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and martial law — The eloquence of Grattan ineffectual — United Irishmen appoint an accredited agent to the French Government — Lord Edward despatched to London to confer secretly with French agent — One hundred thousand Ulstermen in the ranks of the United Irishmen — A new expedition fitted out at the Texel — The French fleet destroyed off Camperdown — Author's personal reminiscences — Robert Emmet, . 226

CHAPTER XXH

Plan of the North for an immediate rising — Favoured by Lord Edward Fitzgerald — Declined by the revolutionary leaders in Dubhn —Consequences of their vacillation — Tone's opinion — Northern fervour begins to cool — Causes — Large numbers uninfluenced— Military committee — Arrest of Arthur O'Connor and Quigley — The Press newspaper seized by Government — Treachery — Thomas Reynolds, the informer — His revelations — Arrest of Bond, and others— Lord Edward eludes pursuit, 239

CHAPTER XXni

Lady Sarah Napier's Journal, March 5th to March 29th, 1798, 254

CHAPTER XXIV

Lord Edward in hiding — Reynolds the informer — His depositions— How Lord Edward came to know him — Interviews with Lord Edward while in concealment — Duly reported to the Castle— Address of the Leinster Committee to the United Irishmen 268

CHAPTER XXV

Lord Edward's place of concealment — Secret meeting with his wife and child — The faithful old servant — Lord Edward's indifference to danger — His gaiety — The Leinster family — The Irish Government offer to connive at his escape — Lord Clare and Mr, Ogilvie — Lord Edward refuses — The Portobello retreat menaced— Removed to Murphy's in Thomas Street — Government panic — Proclamation — Sir Ralph Abercrombie and Lord Carhampton —Prospects of French assistance— Hoche dead— Bonapaite indifferent, . . 278 i

t

CONTENTS xvii

CHAPTER XXVI

PAGE

A fortnight at Murphy's — Second visit to Pamela — Result — At Cormick's and Moore's, in Thomas Street, till the beginning of May — Lord Ekiward's rashness — Hughes's evidence — French assistance despaired of— Resolution to take the field unaided — Motives which determined Lord Edward's decision — Messagejrqra agent in Paris — The people goaded to madness by the Government— End of May fixed as date for the rising — Gaining over the militia— Plan of proposed operations, 294

CHAPTER XXVH

Lord Edward returns to Portobello — His unguarded conduct there — Betrayal of the Sheareses — _^iooo reward offered — Date for rising fixed — Reconnaissance by Lord Edward and Neilson — Narrow escape — Frequent change of place — Night conflict — At Murphy's house again — His uniform — He is betrayed and captured — Desperate resistance — Wounded — Carried to the Castle — News taken to Lady Edward — Effect on the populace — Note to Chapter, containing recent revelations 302

CHAPTER XXVni

The close of Lord Edward's life — Correspondence between members of the family — Lady Louisa ConoUy — Colonel Napier — Lady Sarah Napier — Letters of the Duke of Portland to Mr. Ogilvie — From the Duke of Richmond to the san* — The Duke of Portland declines to grant Lord Henry permission to visit his brother — Further letters from Lady Louisa Conolly — Details of capture and imprisonment, etc. etc. — Disturbed state of the country — Camps of the rebels, 321

CHAPTER XXIX

Lord Henry's grief— Wishes to remain with Lord Edward in prison — Refused admittance — Strangers allowed to visit him — Incident — Lord Edward's will —Royal sympathy— Letter to Lord Henry Fitzgerald from the Duke of Richmond — Pleas for delaying a trial — Letter from Fox — Lord Henry's notes— Lord Chancellor's heartless refusal — Kind note from a fellow-prisoner, 338 xviii LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

CHAPTER XXX

PAGE

The closing scene — Lady Louisa ConoUy's letter — Cruelty of the Government— Lord Henry Fitzgerald's letter to the Earl of Camden — Arrangements for the funeral — Hamilton's portraits of Lord Edward — A letter from his mother, . 350

CHAPTER XXXI

The character of Lord Edward Fitzgerald— As drawn by friends and foes — Summary of it by the author — What his servants thought of him — The faithful Tony soon follows his master — Lord Edward's religious opinions — The right to resistance— Author's statement of the case of Ireland in 1798 — The probabilities of success— Foreign assistance— If justifiable ? — Lord Edward's capacity and attainments — Military theories — In advance of his day, .... 363

ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS BY THE EDITOR

I. After-history of Pamela, 389

II. Samuel Turner, THE Hamburg SPY, .... 406

III. Lord Edv^^ard Fitzgerald's betrayer and other

INFORMERS 424

IV. Nicholas Murphy's narrative, 430

V. Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his family, . . 437

VL Pitt's agents IN '98. 'The Step-Ladder,' . . . 440

Appendix

Explanatory Note by the Editor, . . . . ♦ . 447

A. Further Correspondence, 448

B. Military ' Memorandum ' left by Lord Edward

Fitzgerald 479

c. John Philpot Curran on the effects of the union, 482

THE MEMOIRS OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

THE MEMOIRS OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD

Chapter I

The Geraldines — First Duke of Leinster — Lord Edward fifth son— Education— Enters Militia under his uncle, the Duke of Richmond — Joins the army — Sails for America with his regiment.

There is, perhaps, no name in the ranks of the Irish peerage that has been so frequently and prominently connected with the political destinies of Ireland as that of the illustrious race to which the subject of the following Memoir belonged ; nor would it be too much to say that, in the annals of the Geraldines alone, — in the immediate consequences of the first landing of Maurice Fitzgerald in 1170, — the fierce struggles, through so many centuries, of the Desmonds and Kildares, by turns instruments and rebels to the cause of English ascendancy, — and, lastly, in the awful events connected with the death of Lord Edw^ard Fitzgerald in 1798, — a complete history of the fatal policy of

A

England towards Ireland, through a lapse of more than six centuries, may be found epitomised and illustrated.

With the fate, indeed, of one of his gallant ancestors in the reign of Henry viii., the story of Lord Edward himself affords but too many strong points of resemblance. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, the son of the ninth Earl of Kildare, a youth described as being of the most amiable disposition and manners, but inheriting all his father's hatred to English domination, broke out, at length, into open rebellion, and after scattering, for some time, dismay among the loyal inhabitants of the Pale, was defeated, made prisoner, and, on the 2nd of February 1535, beheaded at Tyburn;^ — for the second time,^ but unfortunately not the last, bringing attainder on the princely blood of the Fitzgeralds, by a rash, no doubt, and miscalculating, but still noble thirst after national independence.

When Ireland, after the long sleep of exhaustion and

1 His five uncles, too, shared his fate. ' Three of these gentlemen,' says Holinshed, ' were known to have crossed their nephew Thomas, to their power, in his rebellion, and therefore were not occasioned to misdoubt any danger. But such as in those days were enemies to their House incensed the King sore against it, persuading him that he should never conquer Ireland so long as any Geraldines breathed in the country."

2 The first Irish parliamentary attainder to be found in the Statute Book is that of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, in the reign of Henry vii., 'for treason, in company with one O'Connor, besieging the Castle of Dublin.'

degradation to which a code of tyranny unexampled in history had doomed her, was again beginning to exhibit some stirrings of national spirit, again was the noble name of Fitzgerald found foremost among her defenders; and the Memorial addressed by the first Duke of Leinster to George 11., denouncing the political Primate, Stone, as a ' greedy churchman, investing himself with temporal power, and affecting to be a second Wolsey in the State,' marks another of those chapters of Irish history in which all the characteristic features of her misgovernment are brought together in their most compendious shape. This honest Remonstrance concludes with the following words : —

Your Majesty's interest in the hearts of your loyal subjects is likely to be affected by these arbitrary measures ; as few care to represent their country in Parliament, where a junta of two or three men disconcert every measure taken for the good of the subject, or the cause of common liberty. Your Memorialist has nothing to ask of your Majesty, neither place, civil or military, neither employment nor preferment for himself or his friends ; and begs leave to add that nothing but his duty to your Majesty, and his natural hatred to such detestable monopoly, could have induced your Memorialist to this presumption.

Of this public-spirited nobleman, who, in the year 1747, married Emilia Mary, daughter of Charles, Duke of Richmond, the subject of these pages. Lord Edward

Fitzgerald, was the fifth son, being born on the 15th of October 1763.^ In the year 1773, the Duke of Leinster died, and not long after. Lord Edward's mother became the wife of William Ogilvie, Esq., a gentleman of an ancient family in Scotland, the representative of the first holder of that name, of the baronies of Miltoun and Achoynanie.

Soon after their marriage, Mr. Ogilvie and the Duchess of Leinster removed, with the greater part of her Grace's family, to France j and the Duke of Richmond having lent them his house at Aubigny,^ they resided for some time at that ancient seat. The care of the little Edward's education, which had, before their departure from Ireland, been entrusted to a private tutor of the name of Lynch, was now taken by Mr. Ogilvie into his own hands ; and, as the youth was, from the first, intended for the military profession, to the studies connected with that pursuit his preceptor principally directed his attention. Luckily, the tastes of the young learner coincided with the destiny marked out for him ; and, in all that related to the science of Military Construction, — the laying-out of camps, fortification, etc. — he was early a student and proficient.

The following extract from a letter addressed by him to his mother during her absence at Paris will show

1 [For ancestry of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, see note at end of chapter.— Ed,] 2 See same note.

what pleasure he took, at that boyish age, in preparing

himself for the profession he was destined to : —

I have been very busy : I am now erecting a beautiful fortification in the Orangery, and am quite delighted with it. I wish you could see it ; for I know you would think it very pretty. When it is finished, I intend to put the cannons of both our ships upon it, and to fire away. What is the pleasantest of all, I laid it out all myself. I have now tired you pretty well by my boastings ; but you know I have always rather a good opinion of whatever I do.

The future politician breaks out in this letter as well

as the soldier : —

I was delighted (he adds) to see by the last Courier that Lord North had been so attacked in the House of Commons, and that the Opposition carried off everything. I think he cannot hold out much longer.

In the year 1779, the whole family left Aubigny for England, where, soon after, the young Edward made his first experiment of a military life in the Sussex militia, of v/hich his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, was colonel. It was not long before he became a special favourite with the Duke; and the knowledge he had acquired abroad in the art of castrametation, had now, young as he was, an opportunity of displaying itself. An encampment being about to be formed for the regiment, and those entrusted with the task of pitching the tents having proved themselves wholly ignorant of the matter, Lord Edward, with the permission of his uncle, undertook to be their instructor, and performed his part in this extemporaneous architecture with so much adroitness as to excite general surprise. The following is his own account of the circumstance, in a letter to the Duchess, dated from Berner Camp : —

I have taken the first opportunity of giving you an account of your sweet, dear boy ; and that my letter may go down the better I write it without lines. It began pretty straight and even, but I am afraid you will soon have a zigzag line. I am, however, sure you will not perceive it, your eye will have got so accustomed to the zigzag walks of Stoke.^ Our camp is very pleasant, though the ground is rough and bad ; but when we have dressed it a little, it will be very beautiful. The Duke of Richmond has been very busy, and has stayed out all day with us ever since we came to camp. He altered the ground, which was quite wrongly marked out, and saw himself that it was right. Before he let the men pitch, he left the pitching of his own company to me, and I was not one inch wrong. I like what I have seen as yet of my profession very much.

Pleased, however, as he was with this preliminary step in soldiership, it was not likely long to satisfy the ambition of a youth who, as appears from all his letters, was burning with impatience to be employed on some of those fields of active service which the hostile rela-

1 [The seat of Lord George Lennox, where the Duchess was then staying. The writer himself became not long afterwards familiar with the ' zig-zag walks of Stoke,' and with one at least of the fair cousins who adorned them, — Ed.]

i78o] LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD 7

tions of England had now opened in almost every quarter of the world. A lieutenancy was accordingly procured for him in the 96th regiment of foot ; and in in the autumn of 1780 he joined his regiment in Ireland, uncertain, as yet, and, of course, anxious as to its ultimate destination. From Youghall he thus writes to his mother, who was then residing in Kildare Street, Dublin :—

We arrived here on Saturday, after a very wet march from five in the morning till four in the afternoon. I should have written to you then had I been able ; but I had so much to do the minute I had got dry things, in looking out for lodgings, in seeing the men settled, and getting my baggage, that I may say I have not been off foot till this moment. I am not, however, the least tired, though I marched every step of the way, and almost every day's journey after Carlow was twenty miles over rugged mountains. This is a very pleasant quarter.

I am lodged with Captain Giles, and like him better every day. I hope I shall be in the transport with him. We have not yet heard anything about the transport, nor of our destination. There are orders for three more regiments to prepare to go with us, and one of cavalry ; which makes me think it cannot be to Gibraltar, and this I am very glad of.

There is to be a great assembly here to-night, and the misses are all in a great hurry to show themselves off to the officers. I have a great many civilities from the people here — not from the misses — but gentlemen of the town, especially from both the Uniacks ; and the youngest.

whom you saw, offered me his house, and has insisted on providing me with garden-stuff of all sorts from his country-house when we are to sail.

In a letter to Mr. Ogilvie, a few days later (November 9), he says : —

I received your kind letter yesterday ; it gave me a great deal of pleasure, and particularly so when I found that your sentiments so perfectly agreed with mine. But indeed whatever mine are, as well as anything I have ever acquired, are mostly owing to your affection for me, both in forming my principles and helping my understanding ; for which the only return I can make is my love for you ; and that I am sure you are perfectly convinced of. I shall certainly follow your advice, and stick as close as possible to Captain Giles, for I find him grow more friendly, if possible, to me every day, as well as more anxious to improve me as an officer.