brought in voluntarily were to be paid for by
drafts on the future Irish Directory. For the
first three days the French commissary of stores
spent his whole time in writing these valuable
documents, but at last he began to treat the
matter as a joke, and the people soon learned
to consider it in that light also. Other promises
were, however, more promptly fulfilled. Chests,
each containing forty fusils, and boxes crammed
with new French uniforms and gaudy helmets,
were unlocked in the castle yard, and the
contents given to the first applicants. About one
thousand peasants were completely clothed;
the next comers received everything but shoes
and stockings; to the last arms only were given
—in all, about five thousand five hundred stand,
according to French reckoning. The muskets
were well made, but the bore was too small
for English bullets; the carbines were especially
good; the swords and pistols were reserved
for the rebel officers.

The country people pressed forward to snatch
these fatal presents, forgetting that an English
army of scarcely fewer than one hundred
thousand men was already marching fast
towards county Mayo. The ragged ploughmen
and bogcutters hardly knew themselves when
dressed washed, and powdered. The French
soldiers watched with droll contempt the avidity
with which the Irish recruits fell on their allowance
of fresh meat. They reported that one Iiish
savage, having been given eight pounds of
beef at once, threw himself on the ground and
gnawed at it like a wild beast till it was all
consumed. Many of the recruits were forced to
join by the menaces of their friends and the dread
of rumoured Orangeman oppression. The bishop
paints quite a Hogarthian picture of the vanity
and ignorance of these raw, hot-blooded levies:

"The coxcombry of the young clowns in their
new dress; the mixture of good humour and
contempt in the countenances of the French,
employed in making puppies of them; the
haste of the undressed to be as fine as their
neighbours, casting away their old clothes long
before it came to their turn to receive the new;
above all, the merry activity of a handsome
young fellow, a marine officer, whose business
it was to consummate the vanity of the recruits
by decorating them with helmets beautifully
edged with spotted brown paper to look like
leopard's skin, a task which he performed
standing on a powder barrel, and making the
helmet fit any skull, even the largest, by thumping
it down with his fists, careless whether it could
ever be taken off again—these were
circumstancesthat would have made you smile,
though you had been just come from seeing your
house in flames. A spectacle not less provoking
to mirth presented itself to your view, if you
followed the new soldiers after they had received
their arms and cartridges, and observed their
manner of using them. It was common with
them to put in their cartridges at the wrong
end; and when they stuck in the passage (as
they often did), the inverted barrel was set to
work against the ground till it was bent and
useless. At first they were trusted with balls,
as well as with powder. But this practice was
not repeated, after it had gone near costing his
life to General Humbert. As he was standing
at an open window in the castle, the general
heard a ball whistle by his ear, discharged by
an awkward recruit in the yard below, whom he
instantly punished with an unmerciful caning."

The young soldiers were especially fond of
shooting the ravens (that, since the civil war,
owing to the number of unburied bodies, had
increased in the devastated parts of Ireland) for
their quills.

The French now required boats at once, to
transport the artillery and stores from their
ships, and carts and horses to bring them from
the shore to the town. High prices were offered,
but the fishermen and carmen did not respond.
The bishop was then applied to; but he said
that he was a new comer, and, moreover, had
no authority, civil or personal, in the town.
Humbert replied that he was the principal
inhabitant, Kirkwood the magistrate having fled
and broken his parole, and he must and should
procure a supply of boats and carts, and that
in twenty-four hours.

Next morning, when neither boat nor car
appeared, Humbert became furious. He poured
forth a torrent of vulgar abuse, roared, stamped,
laid his hand frequently on a scimitar that
battered the ground, presented a pistol at the
bishop's eldest son, and at last told the bishop
himself that he would make him sensible he
was not to be trifled with, for he should punish
his disobedience by sending him instantly to
France. Orders to this effect were given on the
spot to an officer, who delivered the bishop in.
charge to a corporal's guard, only allowing him
time to put on his hat. The inhabitants stared
in silence, as they saw their bishop conducted
on foot through the town. The French soldiers
marched him at a good pace along the road that
led to the ships, and seemed to have received
orders not to answer any of his questions.

Their pretended ferocity was only a ruse de
guerre. Half a mile from town the general sent
an express to call back the bishop, and the
French officers loaded him with apologies for
their hasty but good-natured chief. Humbert
himself received him. on the castle stairs, and
pleaded the necessity of the occasion. The
fishermen and boatmen, alarmed for their good
bishop, had already appeared.

Though the enemy was full of professions,
and took nothing with them but what was
absolutely necessary for the field, they nearly
ruined the poor bishop. They burned thirty
tons of his coal in one month, besides setting
the kitchen chimney several times on fire with
their ragouts. They drove away his nine horses,
and six more belonging to his guests. They
consumed his corn, potatoes, and cattle, before
they touched those of any one else. They
emptied his well-filled cellar and larder in three
days. They carried off his cars, carts, and
waggons so that the worthy prelate computed his
loss in thirty clays only, at six hundred pounds.