The Foreign Legion must have borne the brunt of the fighting.  The fourth battalion was cut to pieces at Woerth, Gravelotte, and Sedan; the fifth battalion was reduced from 3,000 to some 300; the sixth battalion retook Orleans, was compelled to abandon it, and covered itself with glory at Le Mans and elsewhere; and the seventh was interned with Bourbaki in Switzerland until the end of the war.

Although I often heard from him afterwards, the last time I met Edmond O’Donovan, if I remember rightly, was in a North Lancashire town, in which John O’Connor Power had been lecturing the same night.  I forget exactly who else of the “boys” were there—­I think William Hogan was one—­but there were some choice spirits, and we made just such an Irish night of it as Finigan describes they had when he and O’Donovan fought in the Foreign Legion.

Edmond O’Donovan was the son of the famous Irish scholar and antiquary, John O’Donovan, the translator from the Gaelic—­with O’Curry and Petrie—­of that great Irish history, “The Annals of the Four Masters,” and other manuscripts.  The elder O’Donovan had made the acquaintance of Sir Thomas Larcom, when both were young men together on the staff of the Ordnance Survey.  John O’Donovan appointed his friend Larcom to be guardian of his children in case of his death.

It was Larcom’s duty, as an official of the Government, to hunt down the Fenians, both native and foreign, so that he had undertaken a serious and perplexing charge.  For O’Donovan’s elder sons were strong Nationalists and Fenians; so that, on the death of his old friend, Larcom was like an old hen having charge of a brood of ducklings who could not be kept from the troubled waters of Fenianism.  There is no doubt that Larcom’s influence kept them from or saved them from a lot of trouble.  The O’Donovans were an accomplished family, the one I knew best, besides Edmond, being Richard, who has held a responsible mercantile position for some years, and who furnished me with much valuable information about his father, when Thomas Flannery—­one of our best Gaelic scholars—­was writing a life of Dr. John O’Donovan for my “Irish Library” series.

Besides being thoroughly acquainted with several languages, Edmond O’Donovan had an excellent scientific training, which was brought into requisition in connection with the projected Fenian military movements in Ireland.  While a thorough classical scholar, the poems he liked best were the songs of Thomas Davis and the Young Irelanders.  He was slender of figure and had a handsome oval face.  In speaking, whether in private or before an audience, he had an animated and expressive manner, with a good deal of gesture, such as a Frenchman or Italian would use.  I have heard him singing songs like “Clare’s Dragoons” with much fire and fervour, throwing his whole soul into it in a way I can never forget.

In 1877-1878 he was a special correspondent in the Russo-Turkish war with the Turkish army, and he sent home powerful and graphic accounts of every battle and siege.