"Clarke, you have not yet spoken of your claims to the English throne—you ought now to make them good!"[16]
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Biographie Universelle, &c.
COMMANDANT OF LOMBARDY AND GENERAL OF THE ARMÉE D'ANGLETERRE.
Charles Jennings Kilmaine, a gallant and celebrated general in the French army, was born in Dublin in the year 1750, and was descended from an ancient Irish family which had always been strongly attached to the Roman Catholic religion, and opposed to the interests of England. So deep was the animosity of his father to the church and government as established in Ireland, that in 1765 he took Charles to France, and there recommended him, when only in his fifteenth year, to enlist as a private hussar in the Regiment de Lauzun, a distinguished cavalry corps of the old French service, raised originally in the departement of the Garonne. He accompanied this corps to America, where he served in the War of Independence under the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette, Grand Provost of the kingdom of France, and was present in most of those battles in which Washington and his generals so signally discomfited the troops of Great Britain. Association with officers of the United States army, added to those impressions made upon him during his youth in Ireland and the teachings of his father, caused Kilmaine to imbibe strongly the sentiments of a revolutionist.
He repeatedly distinguished himself in action; and his colonel, the gallant Biron, after passing him through the more subordinate ranks, appointed him sous-lieutenant of a troop.
On the conclusion of the war, the Irish hussar returned with his regiment to France, full of those ideas of liberty and insurrection which he had seen so signally triumphant in the New World; and nearly all his brother officers had imbibed the same opinions. Thus it was with ill-concealed joy that the young Kilmaine and his comrades, the Hussars de Lauzun, in 1789, saw a Revolution which seemed destined to achieve results like those they had witnessed in America, break forth in old monarchical France.