"Fidelity and valour are their titles to recommendation! Of the former they expect an authentic testimonial from the French nation, as they have never ONCE failed in their duty during a century, and wherever they have fought their valour has been conspicuous in battle.
"Sire, I entreat you to listen to their request; for myself I ask no compensation—for me there is none! The honour of commanding them cannot be repaid. It secures my glory, as to lead them against a foe ensures immediate victory!"
But this spirited and touching letter failed to stay the popular clamour against these military strangers in the sequel.
In July the Assembly decreed that the standards of the Irish, German, and Liegoise infantry should be the tri-colour, inscribed "Discipline and obedience to the law;" but when the princes, Monsieur of France (or Comte de Provence) and Charles Philippe, the Count d'Artois, fled to Coblentz, the formal defection of several Irish officers hastened the destruction of the old brigade of immortal memory; and with it, after the 10th of August, disappeared the ancient Swiss, German, Italian, Scottish, and Catalonian regiments of the monarchy.
During the crumbling of that monarchy, O'Connell, though in secret communication with the princes at Coblentz, lingered in Paris until the close of 1791, when that strange convention was held at Pilnitz between the Emperor Leopold and the Prussian king, who formed a league to invade France and remodel its government. In a letter from Pavia, dated 6th July, the Emperor had already openly avowed his intentions in this new war, and invited all European powers to co-operate with him. At this crisis the French government proposed to place O'Connell at the head of one of their many armies levied to meet this European combination; but the count, despite the earnest recommendations of Carnot and of his friend the celebrated General Dumouriez, declined; and then, unable to withstand the issue of the suspicions which this refusal excited in Paris after the terrible 10th of August, 1792, when the attack of the Tuileries and massacre of the Swiss took place, he secretly left the city, and repairing to the princes, offered to them his sword and fealty at Coblentz; which, being within the Prussian frontier, became the head-quarters of all those emigrants and Prussian troops destined to form the army of the Prince of Conti, who vainly hoped to restore the line of St. Louis to the throne of his forefathers. His chief aid-de-camp was the Comte de Macarthy, an emigrant officer of distinction, a marshal-de-camp of horse in 1791.
O'Connell, relinquishing his higher claims among the crowd of noble applicants for service, accepted the command of a regiment as colonel, and left nothing undone to improve its discipline and efficiency, for his whole energies and enthusiasm were devoted to the reconstitution of the French monarchy.
The first of the French troops to proffer their loyalty, on this occasion, were the Scottish and Irish soldiers of the old Regiment de Berwick. The depôt of this corps was then quartered at the strong town of Givet, on the frontiers of France, under the command of Sir Charles MacCarthy-Lyragh, who immediately marched his men to Coblentz, and joined the battalion. Sir Charles afterwards passed into the British service, when he was made a Colonel and Governor of Senegal, where in 1824 he fought a battle with the Ashantees, by whom he was slain and beheaded. The loyalty of the Irish brigade met with a warm response from the fugitive princes. "This offer," replied Monsieur to the deputation who came to proffer fealty, "will mitigate the sufferings of the king, who will receive from you with pleasure the same mark of fidelity which James II. received from your ancestors. This double epoch ought for ever to furnish a device for the Regiment de Berwick! It will henceforth be seen upon your colours; every faithful subject will there read his duty, and behold the model he ought to imitate."
"The colours of Berwick," added Charles Philippe the Comte d'Artois, "are, and always will be, in the path to honour, and we will march at their head!"[21]
The king perished, and then followed the campaign of 1793, a period most disastrous to the emigrants; but amid all the slaughter and merciless butchery, with which the republicans inspired the war—a war, to maintain which, the fiery zeal of Carnot enrolled no less than fourteen armies, mustering 1,400,000 men—O'Connell led his battalion with honour to himself and to the cause he served, till all hope was lost, and then with others he fled to England in the beginning of 1794.
Among those condemned by Robespierre's tribunal in that year, were two distinguished officers of the Irish brigade—General O'Moran, who defended Dunkirk against the Duke of York; and John O'Donoghue, General de Brigade in the Army of the Rhine.