“Not at all.  I can assure you, he is devoted to the king; but, as he told me, there is no use in Irishmen always closing their eyes to the true state of things.  He says that we must rely upon ourselves, and our loyal friends in Scotland and England, but that he is sure the king will never be placed on his throne by French bayonets.  A small auxiliary force may be sent over, but, in all these years, Louis has made no real effort to assist him; and even if, for his own purposes, he sent a great army to England, and placed him on the throne, he would not be able to maintain himself there for a month after the French had withdrawn, for even a rightful king would be hated by the people upon whom he had been forced, by a foreign power, especially a power that had, for centuries, been regarded as their chief enemy.  If he had been in earnest, Louis would have sent over a great army, instead of a few thousand men, to Ireland, when such a diversion would have turned the scale in our favour.  As he did not do so then, he is not likely to do so in the future.  The king is useful to him, here, by keeping up an agitation that must, to some extent, cripple the strength of England; but, were a Stuart on the throne, he would have to listen to the wishes of the majority of his people, and France would gain nothing by placing him there.  Moreover, she would lose the services of twenty thousand of her best soldiers, for naturally the exiles would all return home, and what is now the most valuable force in the French service, might then become an equally important one in the service of Britain.”

“I am glad that this priest of yours remains quietly in Kilkargan, for, if he were to come here, and expound his views among our regiments, he might cause quite a defection among them.  At any rate, Kennedy, I should advise you not to take to propagating his views in the regiment.  It would not add to your comfort, or ours, and there are a good many hot-headed men who would take up the idea that you had been infected by O’Carroll’s principles.”

“It would not be well for anyone to say as much to my face,” Desmond said.  “Father O’Leary is loyal to the backbone, although he has his own ideas as to the hopelessness of our obtaining any efficient help from Louis.  He thinks that it will be far better to trust to our friends at home, and that, even did Louis carry out his promises, it would in the long run harm rather than benefit King James.”

“I am not saying that his view may not be correct, Kennedy.  I am only saying that the view would be a very unpopular one, among the Brigade.  We are fighting for France because we believe that France, in turn, will aid in placing our rightful king on the throne, and if we once entertained the notion that Louis was deceiving us, that he had no intention of helping us, and that, if he did place James on the throne, he would alienate all his sympathizers at home, we should ask ourselves of what use was it, spending our blood in fighting the battles of France.”