d issue,
with a kind of notoriety and importance necessary at the outset of an
undertaking like ours; and truly never was an expedition more loaded
with this species of missive than ours--whole cart-loads of printed
papers, decrees, placards, and such like, followed us. If our object had
been to drive out the English by big type and a flaming letterpress, we
could not have gone more vigorously to work. Fifty thousand broadsheet
announcements of Irish independence were backed by as many proud
declarations of victory, some dated from Limerick, Cashel, or Dublin
itself.

Here, a great placard gave the details of the new Provincial Government
of Western Ireland, with the name of the 'Prefect' a blank. There was
another, containing the police regulations for the 'arrondissements' of
Connaught, 'et ses dependances.' Every imaginable step of conquest
and occupation was anticipated and provided for in these wise and
considerate protocols, from the 'enthusiastic welcome of the French on
the western coast' to the hour of 'General Humbert's triumphal entry
into Dublin!' Nor was it prose alone, but even poetry did service in
our cause. Songs, not, I own, conspicuous for any great metrical beauty,
commemorated our battles and our bravery; so that we entered upon the
campaign as deeply pledged to victory as any force I ever heard or read
of in history.

Neal, who was, I believe, originally a schoolmaster, had great
confidence in this arsenal of 'black and white,' and soon persuaded
General Humbert that a bold face and a loud tongue would do more in
Ireland than in any country under heaven; and, indeed, if his own career
might be called a success, the theory deserved some consideration.
A great part of our afternoon was then spent in distributing these
documents to the people, not one in a hundred of whom could read, but
who treasured the placards with a reverence nothing diminished by
their ignorance. Emissaries, too, were appointed to post them up in
conspicuous places through the country, on the doors of the chapels,
at the smiths' forges, at cross-roads--everywhere, in short, where they
might attract notice. The most important and business-like of all these,
however, was one headed 'Arms!'--'Arms!' and which went on to say that
no man who wished to lift his hand for old Ireland need do so without
a weapon, and that a general distribution of guns, swords, and bayonets
would take place at noon the following day at the Palace of Ki