Women of 'Ninety-Eight

by Mrs. Thomas Concannon

“The report of Lucien Buonaparte was still delayed for some time. He had some papers to collect to prove my father’s services. Carnot was in banishment; Hoche was dead; poor Kilmaine, who ever since my father’s death had expressed a warm interest in our fate, was dying. In the ravings of fever he would insist on putting horses to his carriage, and driving with us to the Directory and council of five hundred, to reproach them with their delays in providing for the widow and children of Tone. General Simon ... gave the necessary attestations. The permission of the Directory was obtained; but Lucien, in order to produce a greater effect, still delayed till the period of his own Presidency....

“On the 9th of Brumaire, only nine days before the revolution which put an end to the Directory and placed his brother at the head of affairs, Lucien, then president of the council of five hundred, pronounced at length a beautiful speech, which may be called the funeral oration of my father. At the close of which a committee was immediately appointed, to report on the subject of a pension and permanent provision for the widow and family of General Tone.”

We will interrupt William Tone’s narrative, for a moment, in order to reproduce, in part, Lucien Buonaparte’s oration, and to show the reverence the name of Tone inspired in France, and the enthusiasm the lofty spirit and heroism, the conjugal and maternal devotion of Matilda aroused in generous Gallic breasts.

“Representatives of the People,—I rise to call your attention to the widow and children of a man whose memory is dear and venerable to Ireland and to France—the Adjutant-General Theobald Wolfe Tone, founder of the United Irish Society, who, betrayed and taken in the expedition to Ireland, perished in Dublin, murdered by the illegal sentence of a court-martial.

“Wolfe Tone only breathed for the liberty of his country. After attempting every means to break the chains of British oppression at home, he was invited by our Government to France, where from the beginning of the fifth year of the Republic, he bore arms under our colours. His talent and his courage announced him as the future Washington of Ireland; his arm, whilst assisting in our battles, was preparing to fight for his own country....

“It is precisely one year ago to the very day of the month that a court-martial was assembled in Dublin to try a general officer in the service of our Republic. Let us examine the papers of that day.” [Here the orator read the account of the trial and defence of General Tone. He then resumed.]

“You have heard the last word of this illustrious martyr of liberty. What could I add to them? You see him, dressed in your own uniform, in the presence of this murderous tribunal, in the midst of this awe-struck and affected assembly. You hear him exclaim: ‘After such sacrifices in the cause of liberty it is no great effort, at this day, to add the sacrifice of my life. I have courted poverty; I have left a beloved wife unprotected, and children whom I adored, fatherless.’ Pardon him, if he forgot, in those last moments that you were to be the fathers and protectors of his Matilda and his children.

“Sentenced amidst the tears and groans of his country, Wolfe Tone would not leave to her tyrants the satisfaction of seeing him expire by a death which the prejudices of the world call ignominious.... The day will yet, doubtless, come, when, in that same city of Dublin, and on the spot where the satellites of Britain were rearing that scaffold where they expected to wreak their vengeance on Theobald the free people of Ireland will erect a trophy to his memory, and celebrate, yearly, on the anniversary of his trial, the festival of their union, around his funeral monument. For the first time this anniversary is now celebrated within these walls. Shade of a hero! I offer to thee, in our name, the homage of our deep, of our universal emotion.

“A few words more—on the widow of Theobald, on his children. Calamity would have overwhelmed a weaker soul. The death of her husband was not the only one she had to deplore. His brother was condemned to the same fate, and perished on the scaffold.

“If the services of Tone were not sufficient of themselves to rouse your feelings, I might mention the independent spirit and firmness of that noble woman, who, on the tomb of her husband and of his brother, mingles with her sighs aspirations for the deliverance of Ireland. I would attempt to give you an idea of that Irish spirit which is blended in her countenance with the expression of her grief. Such were those women of Sparta, who on the return of their countrymen from battle when, with anxious looks, they ran over the ranks, and missed amongst them their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed: ‘He died for his country; he died for the republic.’”