’The first thing my father did, the day we came home, was to draw up a memorial to the Lord-Lieutenant, desiring to have a court-martial held on the sergeant who, by haranguing the populace, had raised the mob at Longford; his next care was to walk through the village, to examine what damage had been done by the rebels, and to order that repairs of all his tenants’ houses should be made at his expense.  A few days after our return, Government ordered that the arms of the Edgeworth Town infantry should be forwarded by the commanding-officer at Longford.  Through the whole of their hard week’s trial the corps had, without any exception, behaved perfectly well.  It was perhaps more difficult to honest and brave men passively to bear such a trial than any to which they could have been exposed in action.

’When the arms for the corps arrived, my father, in delivering them to the men, thanked them publicly for their conduct, assuring them that he would remember it whenever he should have opportunities of serving them, collectively or individually.  In long-after years, as occasions arose, each who continued to deserve it found in him a friend, and felt that he more than fulfilled his promise. . . .  Before we quit this subject, it may be useful to record that the French generals who headed this invasion declared they had been completely deceived as to the state of Ireland.  They had expected to find the people in open rebellion, or at least, in their own phrase, organised for insurrection; but to their dismay they found only ragamuffins, as they called them, who, in joining their standard, did them infinitely more harm than good.  It is a pity that the lower Irish could not hear the contemptuous manner in which the French, both officers and soldiers, spoke of them and of their country.  The generals described the stratagems which had been practised upon them by their good allies—­the same rebels frequently returning with different tones and new stories, to obtain double and treble provisions of arms, ammunition, and uniforms—­selling the ammunition for whisky, and running away at the first fire in the day of battle.  The French, detesting and despising those by whom they had been thus cheated, pillaged, and deserted, called them beggars, rascals, and savages.  They cursed also without scruple their own Directory for sending them, after they had, as they boasted, conquered the world, to be at last beaten on an Irish bog.  Officers and soldiers joined in swearing that they would never return to a country where they could find neither bread, wine, nor discipline, and where the people lived on roots, whisky, and lying.’