No. V.
DESCENT OF THE FRENCH IN SOUTH WALES, UNDER GENERAL TATE.
[See p. [199].]
We have found some curious particulars respecting Tate's descent in the Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the unfortunate and misguided Irish gentlemen who were engaged in the Rebellion 1796, and who, being taken on his return to Ireland with a French expedition, was condemned and executed there. The author, for whom we entertain much compassion, seems to have been a gallant light-hearted Irishman, his head full of scraps of plays, and his heart in a high fever on account of the supposed wrongs which his country had sustained at the hands of Great Britain. His hatred, indeed, had arisen to a pitch which seems to have surprised himself, as appears from the conclusion of the following extracts, which prove that nothing less than the total destruction of Bristol was expected from Tate and his merry-men, who had been industriously picked out as the greatest reprobates of the French army.
We have that sort of opinion of Citizen Wolfe Tone, which leads us to think he would have wept heartily had he been to witness the havoc of which he seems ambitious to be an instrument. The violence of his expressions only shows how civil war and political fury can deform and warp the moral feelings. But we should have liked to have seen Pat's countenance when he learned that the Bande Noire had laid down their arms to a handful of Welsh militia, backed by the appearance of a body of market women, with red cloaks, (such was the fact,) whom they took for the head of a supporting column. Even these attempts at pillage, in which they were supposed so dexterous, were foiled by the exertions of the sons of Owen Glendower. The only blood spilt was that of a French straggler, surprised by a Welsh farmer in the act of storming his hen-roost. The bold Briton knocked the assailant on the head with his flail, and, not knowing whom he had slain, buried him in the dunghill, until he learned by the report of the country that he had slain a French invader, when he was much astonished and delighted with his own valour. Such was the event of the invasion; Mr. Tone will tell us what was expected.
Nov. 1st and 2d, 1796, (Brest.)
Colonel Shee tells me that General Quantin has been dispatched from Flushing with 2000 of the greatest reprobates in the French army, to land in England, and do as much mischief as possible, and that we have 3000 of the same stamp, whom we are also to disgorge on the English coast....
Nov. 24th and 25th.
Colonel Tate, an American officer, has offered his services, and the general has given him the rank of chef-de-brigade, and 1050 men of the Legion Noire, in order to go on a bucaneering party into England. Excepting some little errors in the locality, which, after all, may seem errors to me from my own ignorance, the instructions are incomparably well drawn; they are done, or at least corrected, by the general himself; and if Tate be a dashing fellow, with military talents, he may play the devil in England before he is caught. His object is Liverpool; and I have some reason to think the scheme has resulted from a conversation I had a few days since with Colonel Shee, wherein I told him that, if we were once settled in Ireland, I thought we might make a piratical visit in that quarter; and, in fact, I wish it was we that should have the credit and profit of it. I should like, for example, to pay a visit to Liverpool myself, with some of the gentlemen from Ormond Quay, though I must say the citizens of the Legion Noire are very little behind my countrymen either in appearance or morality, which last has been prodigiously cultivated by three or four campaigns in Bretagne and La Vendée. A thousand of these desperadoes, in their black jackets, will edify John Bull exceedingly, if they get safe into Lancashire.
Nov. 26th.