ages
to and from the staff to the various shopkeepers and tradesmen of the
town, numbers of whom now flocked around us with expressions of welcome
and rejoicing.

CHAPTER XXI. OUR ALLIES

I have spent pleasanter, but I greatly doubt if I ever knew busier days,
than those I passed at the Bishop's Palace at Killala; and now, as I
look upon the event, I cannot help wondering that we could seriously
have played out a farce so full of absurdity and nonsense! There was a
gross mockery of all the usages of war, which, had it not been for the
serious interests at stake, would have been highly amusing.

Whether it was the important functions of civil government, the details
of police regulation, the imposition of contributions, the appointment
of officers, or the arming of the volunteers, all was done with a
pretentious affectation of order that was extremely ludicrous. The very
institutions which were laughingly agreed to overnight, as the wine went
briskly round, were solemnly ratified in the morning, and, still more
strange, apparently believed in by those whose ingenuity devised them;
and thus the 'Irish Directory,' as we styled the imaginary government,
the National Treasury, the Pension Fund, were talked of with all the
seriousness of facts! As to the commissariat, to which I was for the
time attached, we never ceased writing receipts and acknowledgments
for stores and munitions of war, all of which were to be honourably
acquitted by the Treasury of the Irish Republic.

No people could have better fallen in with the humour of this delusion
than the Irish. They seemed to believe everything, and yet there was a
reckless, headlong indifference about them, which appeared to say, that
they were equally prepared for any turn fortune might take, and if the
worst should happen, they would never reproach us for having misled
them. The real truth was--but we only learned it too late--all those
who joined us were utterly indifferent to the great cause of Irish
independence; their thoughts never rose above a row and a pillage. It
was to be a season of sack, plunder, and outrage, but nothing more! That
such were the general sentiments of the volunteers, I believe none will
dispute. We, however, in our ignorance of the people and their language,
interpreted all the harum-scarum wildness we saw as the buoyant
temperament of a high-spirited nation, who, after centuries of
degradation and ill-usage, saw the dawning of liberty at