as one of the most critical moments in the
history of England. On the continent the power of republican France
under the genius of Napoleon and his generals was sweeping all before
it. England was in a state of bankruptcy, and almost as completely
isolated as she had been in the time of Elizabeth. Wolfe Tone and his
Irish plotters saw their opportunity as clearly as their predecessors
had in the times of Edward Bruce and Philip II. They laid a statement
of the condition of Ireland before the French Government which,
though as full of exaggerations as most things in Irish history, was
sufficiently based on fact to lead the French Government to believe
that if a French force were landed in Ireland, the Irishmen in the
British Army and Navy would mutiny, the Yeomen would join the French,
and the whole of the North of Ireland would rise in rebellion.

Accordingly a French fleet of forty-three sail, carrying about 15,000
troops, sailed from Brest for Bantry Bay. No human power could have
prevented their landing; and had they done so, they could have
marched to Cork and seized the town without any difficulty; the United
Irishmen would have risen, and the whole country might have been
theirs. But the same power which saved England from the Armada of
Catholic Spain 200 years before now shielded her from the invasion of
republican France. Storms and fogs wrought havoc throughout the French
fleet. In less than a month from the time of their starting, Wolfe
Tone and the shattered remains of the invading force were back at
Brest, without having succeeded in landing a single man on the Irish
shore.

Had this projected invasion taken place fifty years before, amongst
the French troops would have been the Irish brigade, who were always
yearning for the opportunity of making an attack on their native land.
But half a century had caused strange changes; the Irish brigade had
fallen with the collapse of the French monarchy; and some of the few
survivors were now actually serving under King George III.

It was a remarkable fact that no one in the neighbourhood of Bantry
showed the slightest sympathy with the Frenchmen. The few resident
gentry, the moment the danger was evident, called together the
yeomanry and organized their tenantry to oppose the foe--though the
utmost they could have done would have been to delay the progress
of the invaders for a little at the cost of their own lives; and the
peasantry did all in their power to sup