his pickets, and the Canadians, taking the movement for flight, came briskly on.  As soon as they were clear of cover, O’Neill, firing a volley, gave orders for a charge.  At it they went with a cheer, and the whole Canadian line gave way.  They ran as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving some fifty killed and wounded.  After chasing them for two miles, O’Neill halted his men and brought them back to Fort Erie, where they intrenched.  The Canadians did not stop until they reached Colburne, eighteen miles away.  The Fenian loss was twenty-five.  In the night O’Neill learned that no help was coming from the United States’ side, while news reached him that a force of 5,000 Canadian and British regulars was advancing on Fort Erie.  Accordingly, at 2 a.m. on June 3, he surrendered to the United States forces with 400 of his men, who were detained for a few days on the U.S.S. Michigan and then let go.  The balance of his force, about 250 men, escaped in groups across the river.  There was another little victorious skirmish with the Canadians lower down under Captain Spear, who also slipped back over the border unpursued.  What fighting took place was workmanlike and creditable.

There was a flicker of Irish fighting spirit in the Boer War.  Many thousands, no doubt, were in the English army of 250,000 men brought against the 30,000 Boers, but there was a small “Irish Brigade” that fought on the Boer side, and was notably engaged at Spion Kop, where the English were driven so sweepingly from their position by desperate charges.

In the War of 1870, between France and Prussia, the good wishes of the Irish went with France, for the sake of the old friendship, largely helped, no doubt, by the fact that at the summit of army command was Marshal MacMahon, a descendant of a warrior of the old Irish Brigade.  His service in Algiers; his skill and daring in the Crimean War before Sebastopol, where he led the division which stormed the Malakoff; his victories in the Italian War of 1859 against Austria, including the great battle of Magenta, all made him a striking, romantic figure.  He failed in 1870 against the Prussians at Worth, and was made prisoner with his army at Sedan, but he suppressed the Commune after the war and was President of France from 1873 to 1879.  The device by which 300 Irishmen took part on the French side in the war with Germany has a grim humor.  They went as aides in an ambulance corps fitted out in Dublin by subscription, but, once on French soil, enlisted in the army.  “Maybe we can kill as well as we can cure,” said one of them.  The Compagnie irlandaise, as it was called, did creditable work, and was in the last combat with the Prussians at Montbellard.  Their captain, M.W.  Kirwan, was offered a Cross of the Legion of Honor, but for some reason declined it.  Dr. Constantine J. McGuire, who won the decoration for bravery before Paris during the siege of the Commune, did, however, accept it, receiving the cross from the hands of Marshal MacMahon, and, hale and hearty, wears the red ribbon on occasion in New York today.