At the same time were condemned, M. Murdoch, a Scotsman in the service of the Comte de Montmorin; and W. Newton, an English colonel of the Dragoon Regiment de Liberté, and formerly an officer in the Russian service.
In reduced circumstances O'Connell reached London, where he resided for a time in comparative obscurity; and where, for many reasons, his residence was far from being a pleasant one. Still, undiscouraged by the aspect of affairs in France, and by the numerous bloody defeats and massacres sustained by the emigrant troops and other supporters of the Bourbons, he took a warm interest in the attempts meditated in 1794; but fresh conflicts seemed only to fire the zeal of the republicans anew, till the French armies, following their victories, drove their enemies across the Meuse and then beyond the Rhine; after which they penetrated into Holland, revolutionized it, and succeeded in detaching Prussia from its alliance with Britain.
At this epoch O'Connell laid before William Pitt the plan of a new campaign, which so pleased that minister, that he made the count, then in his fifty-second year, an offer of military service under the British government. This he at once accepted, and proposed to form a new brigade to be named the Irish, and to be raised principally from remnants of the regiments of Clare, Lally, Dillon, Berwick, &c., emigrant officers, and men who represented the old brigade of King James; but here O'Connell's religion, which was strictly Catholic, prevented him, in those days of intolerance, prior to the Emancipation Act, attaining in the British service a higher rank than Colonel; and this rank he held till the day of his death.
The brigade consisted of six battalions, each of the strength usual on a war establishment; but O'Connell had the mortification to find himself gazetted by the Horse Guards Colonel of the fourth regiment instead of the first, to which he was justly entitled, by his previous position and general military character.
His commission was dated 1st October, 1794.[22]
The list of colonels was as follows:—
1st Regiment—the Duke of Fitzjames.
2nd Regiment—Anthony, Count Walsh de Serrant.