A final expedition he made via Detroit and Michilimackinack to New Orleans, seems to have confirmed his Indian predilections, and led to his adoption into the Bear Tribe,—an honour upon which Lord Edward prided himself no little. From New Orleans he embarked for England, and for the three years succeeding his career was passed in England and Ireland without important occurrences to mark them, beyond the outbreak of the great French Revolution, that prodigious social and political upheaval which turned the heads of Europe. This terrible cataclysm intoxicated the Irish sympathisers, who, valorous for liberty, were blind to its excesses. This bouleversement fascinated the imaginations of the men who aspired to copy its progressive developments, and to leave their record heroically impressed upon Irish history; the Emmett brothers, Wolf Tone, the brothers Sheares, Lord Edward himself, and many other enthusiasts—the guiding spirits of the Irish insurrection—drew their inspirations from the Gallic font. They were friends and developed into fellow-conspirators. For instance, take the names last mentioned. Henry and John Sheares were brothers, and sons of a banker in Cork. They had received a liberal education, and both had been called to the Irish bar. Travelling, during the wildest period of the French Revolution, they became residents in Paris while the reign of terror was at its height, and, as it has been stated, witnessed the horrible scenes enacted daily under the tyranny of Robespierre, with an apathy from which accomplished and civilised gentlemen should have recoiled. The fearless manner in which their political opinions were promulgated exposed them to the suspicions of the Executive, and shortly before the Irish conspiracy broke out,—thanks to the revelations on the part of the traitor-informer, which at one swoop cut off the entire corps of directing spirits—they were arrested and confined.
Lord Edward, more practical than his philosophic friends, had notoriously learned to act while they were ‘philosophising;’ he too had been educated in the school of the French Revolution, with the arch leading spirit of which violent movement he had connected himself by family ties. When France declared herself a republic in 1792, and the Duke of Orleans—‘the enigma of the revolution,’ as Lamartine pronounces him—had voted for the death of the king, his kinsman, possibly realising a similar fate overhung his own head, Lord Edward was too enthusiastic to lose such a spectacle of moral and political excitement, and hastened over to Paris without communicating his intentions even to the Duchess, and to that fatal visit, as his biographer Moore avers, his subsequent misfortunes must be traced. His wild and hasty attachment to French principles—for he became almost a personage of the French Revolution, and is mentioned in Lamartine’s History—his introduction to Madame de Sillery (de Genlis), gouvernante to the Orleans children, his falling desperately in love with the notoriously bewitching and spirituelle ‘Pamela,’ natural daughter of the Egalité Duke of Orleans by the lady gouvernante already mentioned, are matters of history. Pamela, on all accounts, was sufficiently fascinating to account for so romantic an attachment, and Lord Edward was in himself a perfect hero of romance, and was made all the more interesting, even in France, by this tender episode. After this union his dismissal from the British army, his return to Ireland with his bride, the surpassingly charming Frenchwoman, are merely personal details. Had not Lord Edward been steeped in the practical development of the Irish rebellion, his political career would have subsided in favour of that domestic felicity of which he sent his mother the following artless and sympathetic picture:—
‘My little place is much improved by a few things I have done, and by all my planting; by the bye, I doubt if I told you of my flower garden,—I got a great deal from Frescati. I have been at Kildare since Pam’s lying-in, and it looked delightful, though all the leaves were off the trees, but so comfortable and snug. I think I shall pass a delightful winter there. I have got two fine large clumps of turf, which look both comfortable and pretty. I have paled in my little flower-garden before my hall door with a lath paling like the cottage, and stuck it full of roses, sweetbriar, honeysuckles, and Spanish broom. I have got all my beds ready for my flowers; so you may guess how I long to be down to plant them. The little fellow will be a great addition to the party. I think when I am down there with Pam and child of a blustering evening, with a good turf fire and a pleasant book, coming in after seeing my poultry put up, my garden settled, flower beds and plants covered for fear of frost,—the place looking comfortable and taken care of, I shall be as happy as possible; and sure I am I shall regret nothing but not being nearer my dearest mother, and her not being of our party. It is indeed a drawback, and a great one, our not being more together. Dear Malvern! how pleasant we were there; you can’t think how this time of year puts me in mind of it. Love always. Your affectionate son, E. F.’
Moore significantly comments: ‘In reading these simple and, to an almost feminine degree, fond letters, it is impossible not to feel how strange and touching is the contrast between those pictures of a happy home which they so unaffectedly exhibit, and that dark and troubled sea of conspiracy and revolt into which the amiable writer of them so soon afterwards plunged; nor can we easily bring ourselves to believe that the joyous tenant of this little Lodge, the happy husband and father, dividing the day between his child and his flowers, could be the same man who, but a year or two after, placed himself at the head of the rebel myriads, negotiated on the frontiers of France for an alliance against England, and but seldom laid down his head on his pillow at night without a prospect of being summoned thence to the scaffold or the field.’
At the crisis of the conspiracy the hopes of the disaffected almost centred in this individual, who has left a memory behind which commands the admiration of many—the pity, I believe, of all. His earlier history we have already sketched, and the more painful duty of describing its hurried and unhappy close now devolves upon us. Meanwhile Lord Edward, as a military leader, devoted himself to arming and disciplining the people whose grievances he was preparing to redress by force.
Whether the high estimation in which his military character was held by the United Irishmen was justly merited or not, is a question that can never be determined. He had many essential qualities to command popular respect, and fit him to become a revolutionary leader—high birth, family influence, singleness of purpose, devotion not to be mistaken, and courage beyond a doubt. But he seems to have been a self-willed and most imprudent man, and, if his biography may be credited, the last person upon earth to whose absolute direction a nation’s fate, and the fortunes of a mighty and complicated movement, should have been entrusted.
It was perfectly notorious to the Government that Lord Edward was deeply implicated in the conspiracy; that he was the life and spirit of the plot, the hope of the revolutionists, and the selected leader of the intended insurrection. When the arrest at Bond’s, due to Reynolds’s treacherous disclosures, had fallen like the stroke of a thunderbolt upon the Union, and paralysed the boldest, it was whispered in that gloomy hour that Lord Edward had escaped abroad, and therefore the cause was not altogether desperate. That he had not been found at the secret meeting of the Leinster committee was a heavy disappointment to the Executive. It was true that, in the seizure of the delegates, the conspiracy had received a stunning blow, but it was ‘scotched, not killed.’ Lord Edward was at liberty, and consequently the masterspirit was abroad. On the score of humanity, of policy, or both, it had been hinted by the Irish Government that his escape would be connived at, and the ports left open, if he would secretly quit the kingdom. Mr. Ogilvie, Lord Edward’s foster-father, hastened to Dublin, and interviewed Lord Clare; the Lord Chancellor expressed himself with the most friendly warmth on the subject, counselling Lord Edward’s stepfather: ‘For God’s sake get this young man out of the country; the ports shall be thrown open to you, and no hindrance whatever offered.’
The offer was conveyed to Lord Edward, and rejected by him; no course remained but to apprehend him if possible, and thus deprive the hydra of its head. Among others, he was afterwards denounced by proclamation dated the nth of May, and £1000 offered for such secret information as might lead to his arrest.
On quitting Leinster House, the first place where Lord Edward sought concealment was the domicile of a widow lady situated on the banks of the canal. Thither, three nights after the surprise of the Leinster committee, he was conveyed in disguise, and there he remained a month undiscovered, although, with an imprudence not pardonable in a leader on whose safety a mighty movement hinged, he too frequently exposed himself to detection. For the feelings of the lover-husband, that would induce him to risk everything to visit an idolised wife and the children, even a callous heart would find or frame an apology. As Moore relates: ‘Her ladyship had immediately, on the disappearance of Lord Edward, removed from the Duke of Leinster’s to a house in Denzel Street, taking with her an attached female servant and the negro Tony, her husband’s favourite. The two latter believed, as did most people, that their master had fled to France, and it was therefore with no small surprise that the maidservant saw, in going into her lady’s room late in the evening, his lordship and Lady Edward sitting together by the light of the fire. The youngest child had, at his desire, been brought down out of its bed for him to see it, and both he and Lady Edward were, as the maid thought, in tears.’ Circumstanced as he was, unnecessary exposure was unpardonable. His person might be considered a sort of public property, and yet we find him walking most nights along the banks of the canal, jumping in and out of boats to amuse a child he had made his companion, and afterwards by sheer recklessness falsifying the incognito of an assumed name.
How Lord Edward could have evaded detection so long appears astonishing. An enormous reward was offered for his detection, and, as the plot became further unfolded, the alarm of the Government for its own existence superseded every other thought, and all considerations of mercy were lost in their fears. At the period, therefore, where we are now arrived, the search after his lordship was, by the emissaries of authority, pursued with as much eagerness as political zeal, urged by fear and revenge, could inspire.