troops, sailed from Brest for Bantry Bay. No human power could have
prevented their landing; and had they done so, they could have
marched to Cork and seized the town without any difficulty; the United
Irishmen would have risen, and the whole country might have been
theirs. But the same power which saved England from the Armada of
Catholic Spain 200 years before now shielded her from the invasion of
republican France. Storms and fogs wrought havoc throughout the French
fleet. In less than a month from the time of their starting, Wolfe
Tone and the shattered remains of the invading force were back at
Brest, without having succeeded in landing a single man on the Irish
shore.

Had this projected invasion taken place fifty years before, amongst
the French troops would have been the Irish brigade, who were always
yearning for the opportunity of making an attack on their native land.
But half a century had caused strange changes; the Irish brigade had
fallen with the collapse of the French monarchy; and some of the few
survivors were now actually serving under King George III.

It was a remarkable fact that no one in the neighbourhood of Bantry
showed the slightest sympathy with the Frenchmen. The few resident
gentry, the moment the danger was evident, called together the
yeomanry and organized their tenantry to oppose the foe--though the
utmost they could have done would have been to delay the progress
of the invaders for a little at the cost of their own lives; and the
peasantry did all in their power to support their efforts.

If it is possible to analyse the state of political feeling at
this time, we may say that first there was a very limited number of
thoughtful men who saw that after the Acts of 1782 and 1793 either