which the Defenders, although they were the stronger party and made the attack, were utterly routed.  In the evening, the victors agreed to form themselves into a society which should bear the name of William of Orange.  There had previously been some societies called by that name; but this was the foundation of the Orange Society of the present day.  The oath which at first was taken by every member of the society was to defend the king and his heirs so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendancy. (This conditional form of oath of allegiance has long since been abolished.) It was industriously circulated by the United Irishmen that the actual words of the oath were:  “I will be true to the King and Government and I will exterminate as far as I am able the Catholics of Ireland.”  There is no evidence, however, that any words of the kind ever formed part of an oath prescribed by the Orange Society; and those who make the statement now must be aware that they are repeating a calumny.

After this time, the quarrel gradually tended more and more to become a religious one; the Peep of Day Boys becoming merged in the Orange Society, and the Protestants slowly withdrawing from the United Irish Society; on the other hand, the Defenders ultimately coalesced with the United Irishmen and thus, by an illogical combination of inconsistent forces, formed the party which brought about the terrible rebellion.

The close of the year 1796 was one of the most critical moments in the history of England.  On the continent the power of republican France under the genius of Napoleon and his generals was sweeping all before it.  England was in a state of bankruptcy, and almost as completely isolated as she had been in the time of Elizabeth.  Wolfe Tone and his Irish plotters saw their opportunity as clearly as their predecessors had in the times of Edward Bruce and Philip II.  They laid a statement of the condition of Ireland before the French Government which, though as full of exaggerations as most things in Irish history, was sufficiently based on fact to lead the French Government to believe that if a French force were landed in Ireland, the Irishmen in the British Army and Navy would mutiny, the Yeomen would join the French, and the whole of the North of Ireland would rise in rebellion.

Accordingly a French fleet of forty-three sail, carrying about 15,000 troops, sailed from Brest for Bantry Bay.  No human power could have prevented their landing; and had they done so, they could have marched to Cork and seized the town without any difficulty; the United Irishmen would have risen, and the whole country might have been theirs.  But the same power which saved England from the Armada of Catholic Spain 200 years before now shielded her from the invasion of republican France.  Storms and fogs wrought havoc throughout the French fleet.  In less than a month from the time of their starting, Wolfe Tone and the shattered remains of the invading force were back at Brest, without having succeeded in landing a single man on the Irish shore.