[680] Hoche's expedition was scattered by adverse winds. How the Walcheren came to grief was partly due to fever, which decimated the troops. A long report from Dr. Renny appears in the sixth volume of the Castlereagh Correspondence, and, on reading it now, one cannot doubt that the 'antiphlogistic' treatment then employed thinned the ranks more effectively than Napoleon's shells. Antimony and calomel, blister and blood-letting, did their work.
[681] Castlereagh, ii. 226.
[682] Castlereagh, ii. 15.
[683] The Pentlands opposed the United Irishmen. Henry Pentland served as sheriff of Drogheda in 1799, with George MacIntagart as mayor. MacIntagart was the man who dressed up spies in French uniforms to entrap credulous peasants.
[684] F. Thorpe Porter, police magistrate, to W. J. F., January 1862.
CHAPTER XX
THOMAS REYNOLDS: SPY, AND BRITISH CONSUL
No greater contrast could be found to the idiosyncrasy of Magan than that of Thomas Reynolds. If the former was shy, shrinking, and unobtrusive, Reynolds had indomitable audace, a fondness for display and luxury, a love of society, and an effrontery which no rebuff could disconcert. After several arrests had been made, and when a suspicion of infidelity rested on him for the first time, Neilson, a powerful man, meeting him unarmed at night, grasped him by the throat, and, presenting a pistol, exclaimed, 'What should I do to the villain who has sought my confidence to betray me?' Reynolds, with perfect sang froid, replied, 'You should shoot him through the heart!' Neilson, struck by the reply, changed his purpose and suffered Reynolds to go.
Fourteen delegates from Leinster, as they sat in council at Bond's, had been arrested on Reynolds's information, and the sickening fact is told by Dr. Madden that some days after the arrests he paid a visit of condolence to Mrs. Bond, and caressed the babe she held in her arms.