Some of the foreknowledge of the movements of the United Irishmen was evidently furnished by the informer Reynolds, who, strange to relate, had successfully eluded detection. In making his terms with the Government the traitor had prudently insisted upon his condition, that the channels through which the information came should remain for some time a secret; a stipulation in which his employers were no less interested than himself, as, by wearing still the mask of a friend, he could retain still the confidence of those he was betraying, and whatever victims his first aim had missed might, from the same ambush, be made sure of afterwards. In pursuance of this policy we find him, as he himself admits, paying a friendly visit to Mrs. Bond, two or three days after he had marked her husband for death; and even to Lord Fitzgerald—whose place of concealment at this moment was kept secret, as we shall see, from his own family—Reynolds, under the trust reposed in him, found ready admittance. Lord Edward was at once the head and arm of the seditious movement.
THE UNFORTUNATE LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD
The name of Lord Edward stands out as that of the most conspicuous actor in this lurid history of the Irish Rebellion, as a personage whose birth, talents, energies, and enthusiasm obtained for him an unhappy pre-eminence. The fifth son of the Duke of Leinster, Lord Edward was nobly born by the maternal side, his mother being the daughter of Charles, Duke of Richmond. When Lord Edward was ten years old the Duke of Leinster died, and after a brief widowhood his relict remarried, and removing to France, there Lord Edward commenced his education, which appears to have been hurried and imperfect. Subsequently, after remaining for a short time with the Sussex militia, he obtained a commission in the line, joined the 96th regiment in Ireland; exchanged into the 19th, embarked for America, with which England was then at war, and, landing at Charlestown, was placed under the command of Lord Rawdon (Lord Moira), and afterwards attached to the staff of that spirited commander.
Here the young soldier had an opportunity of witnessing field service for the first time, and in one important branch of the profession—outpost duty—it afforded frequent opportunities of exhibiting tact and address, as well as personal courage. With these qualities Lord Edward was abundantly gifted, and apparently a contempt for danger, carried to rashness. Owing to ill-health Lord Rawdon left Carolina for England, and Lord Edward rejoined his regiment (the 19th), when Greene attacked Stuart at Eutaw Springs, the result of which was a gallant and very doubtful action. Lord Edward, with his accustomed daring, was closely engaged, wounded in the leg, and left upon the field.
In this helpless situation he was found by a poor negro, who carried him off on his back to his hut, and there nursed him most tenderly till he was well enough of his wound to bear removing to Charlestown. The negro was the ‘faithful’ Tony, whom in gratitude for the honest creature’s kindness he now took into his service, and who continued devotedly attached to his noble master to the premature ending of his lordship’s career.
After the surrender of Cornwallis’s army at York Town, Lord Edward joined the staff of General O’Hara at St. Lucia; but, after a few months, he left the West Indies, returned home, and was nominated by his brother, the Duke of Leinster, member for the borough of Athy. Several years passed; his career appears to have been unsettled and undetermined—one while studying professionally at Woolwich, the next visiting Gibraltar and Lisbon, and subsequently the principal cities of Spain. In June 1788 he returned again to America, landed at Halifax, and proceeded to join the 54th regiment, quartered at St. John’s; and held a field officer’s rank in the same corps, in which the celebrated political writer, Cobbett, was then acting as sergeant-major.
Lord Edward appears—according to Moore’s Life and Death—to have been a man of nervous excitability. We find him occasionally enacting ‘Love’s Slave’—and, with all the ardour and inconstancy of Romeo, forgetting Rosalind for Juliet. Had circumstances permitted the chances are that he would have changed his military profession for the calm enjoyments of domestic happiness. But they did not—and hence, probably, ‘an uneasy mind’ sent him a second time across the Atlantic to seek, in savage or primaeval life, employment for an ardent and impassioned spirit, which, under more fortunate circumstances, would have sought domestic and cultivated enjoyments.
The active and careless character of his pursuits may be collected from an extract from one of numerous letters to his mother:—‘I have been out hunting, and like it very much—it makes me un peu sauvage, to be sure. You may guess how eager I am to try if I like the woods in winter as well as in summer. I believe I shall never again be prevailed on to live in a house. I long to teach you all how to make a good spruce bed. Three of the coldest nights we have had yet I slept in the woods with only one blanket, and was just as comfortable as in a room. It was in a party with General Carleton, we went about twenty miles from this to look at a fine tract of land that had been passed over in winter. You may guess how I enjoyed this expedition, being where, in all probability, there had never been but one person before.’
This excursion, no doubt, suggested to Lord Edward his subsequent overland journey direct from Fredericstown to Quebec.
To modern adventurers the exploit would appear a commonplace essay, but at the time the expedition was devised and accomplished, few excepting an Indian or backwoodsman would have voluntarily undergone the real and imaginary hardships of the journey. After a thirty days’ pilgrimage the young adventurer reached Quebec. One incident written to his mother is characteristic: ‘I must tell you a little more of the journey. After making the river we fell in with some savages, and travelled with them to Quebec; they were very kind to us, and said we were “all one brother”—all “one Indian.” They fed us the whole time we were with them. You would have laughed to have seen me carrying an old squaw’s pack, which was so heavy I could hardly waddle under it. However, I was well paid whenever we stopped, for she always gave me the best bits, and most soup, and took as much care of me as if I had been her own son; in short I was quite l’enfant chéri’