‘That she desires it,’ he replied, ‘I have no doubt; but that she is able to compel it, I unhesitatingly deny. The belief in England’s superior strength has too long prevailed in this kingdom, but it is now, happily, beginning to disappear. In comparing the two countries, we must exclude from our calculation every thing but physical strength alone, and then the balance will be entirely in favour of Ireland; for I believe it will be readily admitted that she has the greater military population; and in a struggle for liberty, men only are valuable.
‘It is a matter of arithmetical calculation. Ireland can, in the event of a well-organized revolution, turn into the field between seven and eight hundred thousand effective men—an army certainly more numerous than any force England could send against her.’
‘Admitting your calculation to be correct,’ I returned, ‘you are not to deny the superiority of disciplined troops over rebel numbers. An army of fifty thousand men would soon rout your invincible phalanx.’
‘The time has passed, my dear sir,’ he rejoined, ‘when such an exploded notion found credence among mankind. In a barbarous age, when two armies drew up within gun-shot of each other, each serving as an immoveable target for its opponent to fire at, such a belief was natural, because he who possessed a musket had a fearful advantage over the man who had not one. But modern times have a different and more natural mode of warfare; personal prowess now, as in periods of antiquity, is likely to be victorious; and all necessary discipline can be learned in a very few days. A man does not necessarily acquire either superior courage or address from the colour of his coat, and a soldier with a fixed bayonet has no advantage over a fierce peasant with a well-tempered pike. Almost every victory of modern times has been gained by coming to close action, and that mode, to which a well-regulated army is indebted for success, is as available to a determined band of freemen as to any hired troops in Europe.
‘But, as different animals have different modes of attack and defence, an insurgent army has a discipline of its own, recommended by reason, and sanctioned by experience. With walled towns and close garrisons they have nothing to do: the hills of their country serve them as places of retreat; marshes, rivers, and lakes are their best bastions, while defiles afford them opportunities of attack, and woods and valleys serve them as places of ambush.
‘The face of nature solicits the oppressed to regain their freedom; and certainly, no country on the globe has so many invitations to revolt as our own. Scarcely a mile, from one extremity of the island to the other, in which an hostile army could not be successfully harassed, and, if needful, successfully opposed. To this may be added, that an Irish insurgent army would materially differ from a similar one in any kingdom of Europe; for nearly every peasant, and certainly every man above the rank of a peasant, is intimately acquainted with the use of fire-arms. Those near the sea-shore (and those are a large portion) are excellent marksmen; while the inhabitants of mountains, and the neighbourhoods of bogs, lakes and marshes, are expert fowlers. The Wexford insurgents, in the late rebellion, gave a proof of their abilities, and showed that the peasantry of Ireland, when aroused, are nothing inferior to the best disciplined troops in Europe.’
‘I know it,’ interrupted the Exile, ‘for I witnessed their skill in bringing down an enemy, and I must confess that, had they leaders of experience, they were nothing inferior, man for man, to any force that might be brought against them.’
‘There is always a deficiency,’ said I, ‘in some part, that renders every effort of the remainder abortive. Out of a hundred revolts, scarcely one has been successful.’
‘Pardon me,’ said Emmet, ‘if I set you right; for history furnishes us with few instances of failure where a nation has been unanimous. It is giving the enemies of man a new weight, to add to the burden of oppression, by dignifying pigmy insurrections and partial rebellions with the name of open revolt. They should rather be called sanguinary riots, and thus reduced to their proper level: their ghosts might not be summoned from oblivious neglect to scare mankind from an assertion of their rights. Instances of national resuscitation are neither few nor unfrequent. Tyranny was expelled from Rome by the rebellion of the people; and Switzerland and the Netherlands are memorials of successful revolts. In our own day, America has shown us what a few thousand peasants could accomplish when actuated by a love of liberty. Ireland is superior in numbers to any of these, equals them in address and courage, and stimulated by wrongs greater than have been experienced by all these together.
‘Soldiers are but men, and generally the most imbecile of men. Let the people be taught to despise the glare and glitter of polished arms, and the terror they are wont to inspire will be converted into objects of ridicule and contempt.—Happily an opinion prevails in Ireland, that a soldier is an inferior mortal, and that three hundred athletic peasants would be equal to a regiment of a thousand men. I don’t say that this opinion is correct, but it must be admitted that, in case of a rising, it would be of infinite service, as tending to inspire confidence in the insurgents, and contempt for their enemies—two things that materially conduce to victory.