A subaltern’s guard of grenadiers, divided into small parties, did duty in the garden; and it was striking to mark the contrast between these bronzed and war-worn figures, and the reckless tatterdemalion host around us. Never was seen such a scarecrow set! Wild-looking, ragged wretches, their long lank hair hanging down their necks and shoulders, usually barefooted, and with every sign of starvation in their features; they stood in groups and knots, gesticulating, screaming, hurrahing, and singing, in all the exuberance of a joy that caught some, at least, of its inspiration from whisky.
It was utterly vain to attempt to keep order amongst them; even the effort to make them defile singly through the gate into the garden was soon found impracticable, without the employment of a degree of force that our adviser, Kerrigan, pronounced would be injudicious. Not only the men made their way in, but great numbers of women, and even children also; and there they were, seated around fires, roasting their potatoes in this bivouac fashion, as though they had deserted hearth and home to follow us.
Such was the avidity to get arms—of which the distribution was announced to take place here—that several had scaled the wall in their impatience, and as they were more or less in drink, some disastrous accidents were momentarily occurring, adding the cries and exclamations of suffering to the ruder chorus of joy and revelry that went on unceasingly.
The impression—we soon saw how absurd it was—the impression that we should do nothing that might hurt the national sensibilities, but concede all to the exuberant ardour of a bold people, eager to be led against their enemies, induced us to submit to every imaginable breach of order and discipline.
‘In a day or two, they ‘ll he like your own men; you ‘ll not know them from a battalion of the line. Those fellows will be like a wall under fire.’
Such and such like were the assurances we were listening to all day, and it would have been like treason to the cause to have refused them credence.
Perhaps I might have been longer a believer in this theory, had I not perceived signs of a deceptive character in these our worthy allies; many who, to our faces, wore nothing but looks of gratitude and delight, no sooner mixed with their fellows than their downcast faces and dogged expression betrayed some inward sense of disappointment.
One very general source of dissatisfaction arose from the discovery, that we were not prepared to pay our allies! We had simply come to arm and lead them, to shed our own blood, and pledge our fortunes in their cause; but we certainly had brought no military chest to bribe their patriotism, nor stimulate their nationality; and this I soon saw was a grievous disappointment.
In virtue of this shameful omission on our part, they deemed the only resource was to be made officers, and thus crowds of uneducated, semi-civilised vagabonds were every hour assailing us with their claims to the epaulette. Of the whole number of these, I remember but three who had ever served at all; two were notorious drunkards, and the third a confirmed madman, from a scalp wound he had received when fighting against the Turks. Many, however, boasted high-sounding names, and were, at least so Kerrigan said, men of the first families in the land.
Our general-in-chief saw little of them while at Killala, his principal intercourse being with the bishop and his family; but Colonel Charost soon learned to read their true character, and from that moment conceived the most disastrous issue to our plans. The most trustworthy of them was a certain O’Donnell, who, although not a soldier, was remarked to possess a greater influence over the rabble volunteers than any of the others. He was a young man of the half-squire class, an ardent and sincere patriot, after his fashion; but that fashion, it must be owned, rather partook of the character of class-hatred and religious animosity than the features of a great struggle for national independence. He took a very low estimate of the fighting qualities of his countrymen, and made no secret of declaring it.