Lost cause
Constantine FITZGIBBON
The Year of Liberty Thomas Pakenham (Hodder and Stoughton 63s) The great Irish rebellion of 1798 was, like all Anglo-Irish crises, an affair of immense complexity. Because of their own political history, and perhaps even because of their traditional fondness for team sports, the English tend to think there are two sides to every question. A nation closely knit since Tudor times which rapidly evolved a two-party system, the English at home divide on economic, social and other matters and usually both 'sides' of the question are presented. In Ireland this is totally untrue. There is either only one side to the question (which for centuries was usually : how to get the English out) or else the question is a polygon. It was in 1798. .1k is in Northern Ireland today.
Ireland then was a technically indepen- dent kingdom, with its own parliament elected solely by the Protestant minority, who also owned almost all the land and other property—a sort of permanent and rooted garrison, not dissimilar in some respects to the Junkers who once ruled an essentially Slav peasantry in East Prussia. This ruling class was proud and resented interference in Irish affairs from London, but always hastened to London for military assistance when threatened by the majority —which was the Roman Catholic peasants, an embittered class well aware that they had been disinherited by the conquerors over the centuries. This ruling class was brutal, even by eighteenth century stand- ards, and the concept of the genocide of the 'mere Irish', put forward in Elizabethan times and put into practice as best he could by Oliver Cromwell. lingered on. And a third class was emerging, the bourgeoisie, who in this decade of revolution looked towards France and America in their wish to overthrow feudal privilege and indeed British rule: their leader was Wolfe Tone. It was their aim to unite with the peasantry (the United Irishmen) and by sheer weight of numbers, and with French help, over- whelm the ascendancy and the British.
In the wings was the magnificent French army and its invasion fleet, together with what was then a rather shabby and ill- disciplined British army. Communications between the United Irishmen and the French were very bad and slow, between Dublin Castle and London rather better. Two French invasion attempts failed, being almost entirely unsupported by the Irish : the Irish rebellion (or more accurately rebellions, for counties revolted spasmodi- cally for months) was quite unsupported by the French. Some of the British troops, in particular the semi-trained Irish terri- torial forces, were almost as ill-trained and as ill-officered as the hordes of pike-carry- ing peasants whom they met in battle. It became a jacquerie, and Mr Pakenham estimate i that there were 30,000 dead before Ireland relapsed into the quiet of the graveyard, the Act of Union, to await a new generation to fight the same battle again.
Thomas Pakenham disentangles this fantastically complicated episode of history with immense skill. Irish historians have pointed out a number of minor errors of fact : in a book of this length, on such a subject and with such a wide perspective these are negligible. If his prose style is sober, at times to the point of monotony, this is scarcely a fault when dealing with so heady, indeed historically so alcoholic, a panorama. It is a fine, masterly and absorbing book. It is also one that is, alas!, sadly topical. The nations of Europe run remarkably, and tragically, true to form.
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