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"At this crisis the
missionary conceived the idea of getting these unfortunate Highlanders
embodied as a Catholic corps in His Majesty's service, with his young
Chief, Macdonell of Glengarry, for their Colonel. Having procured a
meeting of the Catholics at Fort Augustus, in February, 1794, a loyal
address was drawn up to the King, offering to raise a Catholic corps,
under the command of the young Chieftain, who, together with John
Fletcher, Esq.. of Dunans, proceeded as a deputation to London with the
address, which was most graciously received by the King. The
manufacturers of Glasgow furnished them with the most ample and
honorable testimonials of the good conduct of the Highlanders during the
time they had been at their works, and strongly recommended that they
should be employed in the service of their country. A Letter of Service
was accordingly issued to raise the first Glengarry Fencible Regiment as
a Catholic corps, being the first that was raised as such since the
Reformation.
The missionary, although
contrary to the then existing law, was gazetted as Chaplain of the
regiment. Four or five regiments which had been raised in Scotland,
having refused to extend their services to England, and having mutinied
when they were ordered to march, the Glengarry Fencibles, by the
persuasion of their Chaplain. offered to extend their services to any
part of Great Britain or Ireland, or even to the islands of Jersey or
Guernsey. This offer was very acceptable to the Government, since it
formed a precedent to all Fencible Corps that were raised after this
period. The regiment, having been embodied in June, 1795, soon
afterwards embarked for Guernsey, and remained there until the summer of
1798.
"Sir Sidney Smith having
taken possession of the small island of St. Marcou, in the mouth of
Cherbourg Harbor. the Glengarries offered to garrison that post, but the
capture of that gallant officer and of the much lamented Captain Wright,
who was first tortured and then put to death in a French prison because
he would not take a commission in the French navy, prevented the
enterprise from taking place.
In the summer of 1798 the
rebellion broke out in Ireland, and the Glengarry regiment was ordered
to that country. Landing at Ballenack, they marched from thence to
Waterford, and from Water- fore to New Ross the same day. At the former
place a trifling circumstance occurred which afforded no small surprise
to some and no slight ridicule to others, while at the same time it
showed the simplicity of the Highlanders and their ignorance of the ways
of the world. The soldiers who received billet money on their entrance
in the town returned it on their being ordered to march the same evening
to New Ross for the purpose of reinforcing Gen. Johnson, who was
surrounded, and, in a manner, besieged by the rebels.
"The next day Gen.
Johnson attacked and dislodged the rebels from Laggan Hill, who, after a
very faint resistance, retreated to Vinegar Hill. The Chaplain, upon
this and all other occasions, accompanied the regiment to the field with
the view of preventing the men from plundering or committing any act of
cruelty upon the country people. The command of the town of New Ross
devolved on Col. Macdonell, and the Chaplain found the jail and court
house crowded with wounded rebels, whose lives had been spared, but who
had been totally neglected. Their wounds had never been dressed, nor any
sustenance been given to them since the day of the battle. Col.
Macdonell, on being informed of their miserable condition. ordered the
surgeon of his regiment to attend them, and every possible relief was
offered to the wretched sufferers. From New Ross the regiment was
ordered to Kilkenny, and from thence to Hackett's Town, in the County of
Wicklow, to reduce a body of rebels and deserters, who had taken
possession of the the neighboring mountains. under the command of the
rebel chiefs, Holt and Dwyer.
"The village of Hackett's
Town had been entirely consumed to ashes, partly by the insurgents and
partly by the military. Deprived of this shelter, the troops were
compelled to live under tents the greater part of the winter, and the
Chaplain considered it his duty to share their privations and
sufferings.
"Colonel Macdonell, who
now commanded the Brigade, which consisted of the Glengarries, two
companies of the Eighty-Ninth Regiment of Foot, two companies of Lord
Darlington's Fencible Cavalry and several companies of the Yeomanry,
finding that the rebels made a practice of descending from the mountains
in the night time to the hamlets in the valleys for the purpose of
plunder, adopted a plan of getting the troops under arms about midnight
and marching them from the camp in two divisions without fife or drum.
One division was ordered to gain the summits of the mountains, the other
to scour the inhabited parts of the country; so that the rebels, in
attempting to regain their footsteps, found themselves entrapped between
two fires. The Chaplain never failed to accompany one or the other of
these divisions, and was the means of saving the lives of, and
preserving for legal trial, many prisoners, whom the yeomanry would, but
for his interference, have put to immediate death.
The Catholic chapels in
many of those parts had been turned into stables for the yeomanry
cavalry, but the Chaplain, when he came, caused them to he cleaned out
and restored to their proper use. He also invited the terrified
inhabitants and clergy to resume their accustomed worship, and labored
not in vain to restore tranquility and peace to the people, pursuading
them that if they behaved quietly and peacefully the Government would
protect Catholics as well as Protestants, and impressing upon their
minds that the Government having entrusted arms to the hands of the
Glengarry Highlanders, who were Roman Catholics, was a proof that it was
not inimical to them on account of their religion. These exhortations,
together with the restoration of divine service in the chapels, the
Strict discipline enforced by Colonel Macdonell, and the repression of
the licentiousness of the yeomanry, served in a great measure to restore
confidence to the people, to allay feelings of dissatisfaction and to
extinguish the embers of rebellion wherever the Glengarry Regiment
served. "The
Highlanders, whom the rebels called 'the Devil's Bloodhounds,' both on
account of their dress and their habit of climbing and traversing the
mountains, had greatly the advantage of the insurgents in every
recountre, so much so that in a few months their force was- reduced from
a thousand to a few scores. Holt, seeing his numbers so fast
diminishing, surrendered to Lord Powerscourt, and was transported to
Botany Bay. Dwyer, after almost his whole party had been killed or
taken, was at length surprised in a house with his few remaining
followers by a party of the Glengarries. Here he defended himself and
killed some of his pursuers, till the house being set on fire, he was
shot while endeavoring to make his escape, stark naked, through the
flames. "The
Marquess Cornwallis, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, commander of the
forces, was so well pleased with the services of the Glengarry Fencibles
that he advised the Government to have the regiment augmented. In
furtherance of this plan, the Chaplain was despatched to London with
recommendations from every General under whose command the corps had
served in Guernsey or in Ireland, to procure the proposed augmentation
and to settle on the terms. Previous to his departure front the measure
of a legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland had been
brought into the Irish Parliament and miscarried. The Catholic Bishops
and Catholic nobles of Ireland having assembled in Dublin to discuss
this subject, came to a determination favorable to the views of
Government, and communicated their sentiments to the Chaplain,
authorizing him to impart them to the Ministry. The Chaplain did so
accordingly in his first interview with the Right Honourable Henry
Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, but that statesman considered the
Chaplain's information incorrect, and insinuated that the intention of
the Irish Catholic dignitaries and nobility was quite contrary to what
was stated. "He
also privately informed Sir John Cox Hippesley, who accompanied the
Chaplain to the Secretary of State's office, that by a despatch received
through that day's mail from Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary of State
for Ireland, he was informed that the purpose of the meeting of the
Catholics was to counteract the measures of the Government. This the
Chaplain took the liberty to deny, and offered to prove his assertion to
the satisfaction of Mr. Dundas by being allowed time to refer to the
Catholic meeting at Dublin. He accordingly wrote to Colonel Macdonell,
whom he had left in that city, and received by return of Post an answer
from Viscount Kenmare, contradicting in toto the assertions of Viscount
Castlereagh. On this occasion the Government papers indulged in severe
reflections upon the conduct of the Irish Catholics. The Chaplain
requested that they should be contradicted, which was done very
reluctantly and not until he had threatened to have the truth published
in the Opposition papers. The correspondence on that subject is now in
his possession. The
proposed augmentation, however, did not take place. The views of
government were altered, and instead of augmenting the Fencible Corps,
they gave commissions in the regiments of the line to those officers of
the Fencibles who could bring a certain number of volunteers with them.
"The Glengarry Fencibles were afterwards
employed in the mountains and other parts of Conomaragh, where some of
the most desperate rebels had taken refuge, and where the embers of
rebellion continued longest unextinguished. The Chaplain was their
constant attendant down to the year 1802, when at the short peace of
Amiens, the whole of the Scotch Fencibles were disbanded."I have
obtained a list of the officers of this regiment from an army list of
1798. The regiment was stationed at Kilkenny at the time. It will be
observed that Colonel Macdonald is named as Colonel, Glengarry being in
charge of the Brigade.
Taken as a whole, the names seem to be
somewhat Scotch, and to savor, as did those of the men, of the clan
whose suaicheantas was the heather
1 may mention that this is but one of the
twenty-six Scottish regiments, almost all Highland, enumerated in the
army list of 1798, though a young essayist has gravely assured us that
the finer qualities and instincts of the men of that and previous
generations had been dwarfed by long subjection to despotism of their
chiefs, and that even their physique had degenerated under oppression.
and that it required years and another climate and changed surroundings
to counteract the stunting influences of centuries. |
