have overruled their decision. Perhaps the Cabinet believed England to
be the objective of Bonaparte and the fleet at Brest; but, thanks to the
rapid growth of the Volunteer Movement, England was well prepared to
meet an invading force and to quell the efforts of the malcontent
Societies. In Ireland the outlook was far more gloomy. After the
resignation of Abercromby, Camden and the officials of Dublin Castle
were in a state of panic. Pitt did well finally to send over Cornwallis;
but that step came too late to influence the struggle in Leinster. In
truth the saving facts of the situation were the treachery of informers
at Dublin and the diversion of the efforts of Bonaparte towards the
East. The former event enabled Camden to crush the rising in Dublin; the
latter left thousands of brave Irishmen a prey to the false hopes which
the French leaders had designedly fostered, Barras having led Wolfe Tone
to believe that France would fight on for the freedom of Ireland. The
influence of Bonaparte told more and more against an expedition to her
shores; but the Irish patriots were left in the dark, for their rising
would serve to distract the energies of England, while Bonaparte won
glory in the East. To save appearances, the French Government sent three
small expeditions in August to October; but they merely prolonged the
agony of a dying cause, and led that deeply wronged people to ask what
might not have happened if the promises showered on Wolfe Tone had been
made good.

It is recorded of William of Orange, shortly before his intended landing
in England, that, on hearing of the march of Louis XIV's formidable army
into the Palatinate, he serenely smiled at his rival's miscalculation.
Louis sated his troops with plunder and lost a crown for James II.
Similarly we may imagine the mental exultation of Pitt on hearing that
Bonaparte had gone the way of Alexander the Great and Mark Antony.
Camden and he knew full well that Ireland was the danger spot of the
British Empire, and that the half of the Toulon force could overthrow
the Protestant ascendancy. Some sense of the magnitude of the blunder
haunted Napoleon at St. Helena; for he confessed to Las Casas: "If,
instead of the expedition to Egypt, I had undertaken that against
Ireland, what could England have done now?" In a career, illumined by
flashes of genius, but wrecked by strange errors, the miscalculation of
the spring of 1798 was not the least fatal. For of all parts of