The Prince of Ballybunion and the Irish force were quartered in the fort which, in compliment to them, was called Fort Potato, and where they made themselves as comfortable as circumstances would admit.  The Princes had as much brandy as they liked, and passed their time on the ramparts playing at dice, or pitch-and-toss (with the halfpenny that one of them somehow had) for vast sums of money, for which they gave their notes-of-hand.  The warriors of their legion would stand round delighted; and it was, “Musha, Master Dan, but that’s a good throw!” “Good luck to you, Misther Pat, and throw thirteen this time!” and so forth.  But this sort of inaction could not last long.  They had heard of the treasures amassed in the palace of the Tuileries:  they sighed when they thought of the lack of bullion in their green and beautiful country.  They panted for war!  They formed their plan.

CHAPTER VIII.

The battle of the forts.

On the morning of the 26th October, 1884, as his Majesty Louis Philippe was at breakfast reading the Debats newspaper, and wishing that what the journal said about “Cholera Morbus in the Camp of the Pretender Henri,”—­“Chicken-pox raging in the Forts of the Traitor Bonaparte,”—­might be true, what was his surprise to hear the report of a gun; and at the same instant—­whiz! came an eighty-four-pound ball through the window and took off the head of the faithful Monsieur de Montalivet, who was coming in with a plate of muffins.

“Three francs for the window,” said the monarch; “and the muffins of course spoiled!” and he sat down to breakfast very peevishly.  Ah, King Louis Philippe, that shot cost thee more than a window-pane—­more than a plate of muffins—­it cost thee a fair kingdom and fifty millions of tax-payers.

The shot had been fired from Fort Potato.  “Gracious heavens!” said the commander of the place to the Irish Prince, in a fury, “What has your Highness done?” “Faix,” replied the other, “Donegal and I saw a sparrow on the Tuileries, and we thought we’d have a shot at it, that’s all.”  “Hurroo! look out for squalls,” here cried the intrepid Hibernian; for at this moment one of Paixhans’ shells fell into the counterscarp of the demilune on which they were standing, and sent a ravelin and a couple of embrasures flying about their ears.

Fort Twenty-three, which held out for Louis Philippe, seeing Fort Twenty-four, or Potato, open a fire on the Tuileries, instantly replied by its guns, with which it blazed away at the Bourbonite fort.  On seeing this, Fort Twenty-two, occupied by the Imperialists, began pummelling Twenty-three; Twenty-one began at Twenty-two; and in a quarter of an hour the whole of this vast line of fortification was in a blaze of flame, flashing, roaring, cannonading, rocketing, bombing, in the most tremendous manner.  The world has never perhaps, before or since, heard such an uproar.