Brigade as a national force, and after several memoirs of distinguished Irish officers deceased, more especially Field Marshal Count Peter Lacy, shows the hostility, as war with France approached, of the local "ascendancy" in Ireland to the Catholics, and to recruiting for the Brigade; and from the appointment, after the declaration of war between France and England in 1756, of Lieutenant-General Count Lally to command for France in the East Indies, continues his history till his most unjust execution at Paris in 1766, &c.; next, inclusive of the extensive naval and military plans by France for the invasion of Ireland in 1759, details the services of the Brigade on the Continent till the Peace of 1763; and terminates with an instance of the liberal feeling arising about that period in England as to a relaxation of the Penal Code in Ireland, and the consequent attempts made by George III. and the English cabinet for that purpose, though frustrated by the unrelenting "ascendancy" of sectarian and agrarian oppressors there. The 10th book, having shown the generally high opinion of the Irish as soldiers on the Continent, with a corresponding regret in England at their legal exclusion from her service, notices the death, in 1765, of James III., at Rome, and the long-enduring loyalty towards the Stuarts in England, as well as among the Irish; after a reference to the Brigade in Corsica in 1768-9, and elsewhere, adverts to the growing quarrel between England and her North American colonies since 1763, and to partial experiments she had made since 1757, and with satisfactory results, to recruit from Catholics in Ireland, and to the growing indispensability of such recruits, for the approaching contest in America, occasioning those of their faith to be officially acknowledged as subjects through an Oath of Allegiance to that effect; next mentions the birth of Daniel O'Connell in 1775, from its occurrence amidst various family and local circumstances relating to the Brigade; then refers to the avowed necessity in Parliament for recruiting against America in Ireland, with the parliamentary admission of Irish Catholics to hold landed property subsequent to the surrender of General Burgoyne, and the consequent dissatisfaction of France at this legislation, as calculated to undermine her military interest in Ireland; and, after an account of the services of Walsh's, Berwick's, and Dillon's corps with the French in Africa, the West Indies, and North America, during the war against England from 1778 to 1783, and a survey of the several events tending to the dissolution of Irish corps in France, or the prosperity of Ireland after 1782, the virtual extinction of the Stuarts by the death of Prince Charles, in 1788, the ensuing Revolution of 1789 in France and its effects upon the Brigade in 1791, ends the work, with notices of the 2 last eminent officers of that force deceased on the Continent, or General O'Connell in 1833, and the Count de Nugent in 1859.

Such, exclusive of the numerous military events to be found under the

years in which they occurred, is a general synopsis of the subject here treated of, at an expense of more than 25 years' research and labour; often, from the difficulties of obtaining information, and other causes, attended by a painful despair of the task undertaken being ever completed, in a manner at all worthy of a portion of history, so "blending the rays of modern days with glories of the past," or honourable in itself, and interesting in its antecedents.

In anticipation of any superficial criticism of this work as too Jacobite, it may be observed here, that the work is so Jacobite, as a history of Jacobites. The Irish Catholics were Jacobites, or haters of the Williamite Revolution; and could not feel otherwise towards it, as the representative to them of foreign military invasion, landed confiscation, and breach of treaty by Penal Laws, to degrade them religiously, and pauperize them collectively; to which were added festivals and monuments to gall the feelings of the fallen, contrary to even the old maxim of Pagan morality, that, though it was lawful to raise a trophy for success, it should be of perishable materials, and be unlawful to repair it, as tending to keep alive bitter recollections, or a desire of revenge. In noticing the sad condition of the older Irish, or "children of the soil," as Catholics, or Jacobites, after the success of the Revolution, Lord Macaulay observes-" To them every festival, instituted by the state, was a day of mourning, and every public trophy, set up by the state, was a memorial of shame. We" in England "have never known, and can but faintly conceive, the feelings of a nation, doomed to see constantly, in all public places, the monuments of its subjugation. Such monuments everywhere met the eye of the Irish Roman Catholics. In front of the Senate House of their country, they saw the statue of their conqueror. If they entered, they saw the walls tapestried with the defeats of their fathers." Elsewhere, moreover, they were insulted yearly by several armed public processions, to commemorate the same events, with Orange colours, tunes, &c., too frequently attended with insolence and outrage involving a destruction of property and life, yet perpetrated with perfect impunity! Even in England, which was the gainer, by the way, at the expense of both Scotland and Ireland, by both revolutions in opposition to the Crown, or that under Oliver Cromwell, as well as that under William of Orange, the latter revolution and its results, however "glorious," were long the sources of very extensive dissatisfaction. The great leading journal of England, the Times, alluding, July 12th, 1862, to the Revolution of 1688, and its consequences for half a century, remarks— "As for the earlier Princes of the House of Hanover, the nation never could be induced to entertain any cordial feeling towards them, and, indeed, we do not know why it should. Faction, instead of being extinguished by our glorious Revolution, became more rife, and more rampant, than ever. A system of Parliamentary corruption was organized, which

might lead a political purist to regret the days of naked and unblushing tyranny. We had our panics, our assassination-plots, our rebellions, our vast military expenditure, our bitter feuds between High and Low Church. Whoever looks back upon that period might form very plausible reasons for believing, that England was ruined by her glorious Revolution." If this view could be taken of the "glorious Revolution" in England, which profited so much by it, how could that revolution be anything but detested in Ireland by the mass of the population, who, in addition to the oppressive laws directed, through the Revolution, against them, as regards religion and property, were pronounced, from the judicial bench, to exist, as Papists, merely by a connivance of the ruling powers; and were even not admitted, until considerably within the reign of George III., or 1774, to the privilege of taking an Oath of Allegiance as subjects! It was consequently not till then that the House of Hanover could claim allegiance from a people, legally incapacitated or excluded from making any pledge of the kind. Under such circumstances, the Irish Brigades were necessarily Jacobites, and have accordingly been written of by their historian only as Jacobites. Happily, the Irishman can now serve, and has long been entitled to serve, as well as the Englishman, and the Scotchman, beneath the standard of their common Sovereign; so that, in this respect, there is as much reason for satisfaction with the present state of things, as for regret at the past.

*

In conclusion, the author, for favours connected with the execution of his task, has to express his specially grateful acknowledgments to the kindness of several friends, now all, alas, no more!

"Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold, ear of death?"-GRAY.

To the late Daniel O'Connell, he is indebted for getting him an admission to the State Paper Office, London, in 1841, when such a privilege was rare, compared with what it has since become; to his son, the late John

• Lord Macaulay, writing October 24th, 1850, to the author, expresses himself more favourably of the Irish, than of the English, Jacobites. "To a considerable extent," he says, "our views coincide. I admit that the Irish Jacobites were not, like the English Jacobites, the defenders of arbitrary power. The cause of James presented itself, no doubt, to the Roman Catholics of Munster, as the cause of civil and spiritual liberty. Nevertheless, I think, that the dearest interests of the human race were staked on the success of the English in that struggle; and that, though the victory of William produced much evil, far greater evil would have been produced by the victory of James." This work, however, is merely connected with the "much evil" admitted to have been "produced" by that "victory;" of which "evil," so great a portion was the existence, for so long a period, of Irish Brigades in the service of France, &c.

O'Connell, who had contemplated writing a History of the Irish Brigades in France, he is also obliged for some useful French MSS. on that subject, procured at Paris; to the late Sir William Betham, Ulster King at Arms, for an introduction to M. de la Ponce, and consequently obtaining from that gentleman the use of his extensive collections on Irish families and officers in France; to the late eminent Irish scholars, Dr. Jonu O'Donovan and Professor Eugene O'Curry, for such particulars as were needed on the Celtic portion of his work; and, "though last, not least," to the late Rev. J. H. Todd, of Trinity College, (the great promoter and cultivator of his country's literature,) for access to various sources of information, in manuscript and print, indispensable for the biographical notices of the leading officers of the Irish Brigades. The author, too, is thankful for the facilities at all times afforded to his researches, in the valuable libraries of Trinity College, Royal Irish Academy, and Royal Dublin Society. He now has only to hope, that the result of his long labour and anxiety, abroad and at home, or at London and Paris, as weli as in his native city, may prove to be something, that posterity will "not willingly let die.".

1, UPPER RUTLAND STREET, DUBLIN,

January 15th, 1869.

J. C. O'C.