Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

was approaching the French shores; and ere that year had closed, Jennings, or Kilmaine, died the 15th of December. Had he lived, a brilliant career, we may be confident, awaited him, under the future ruler of his adopted country. The praise of the first of modern captains-for so the world will still consider Napoleon, notwithstanding Colonel Mitchell's depreciation, in his Life of Wallenstein, and his last work, the "Fall of Napoleon"-sufficiently establishes our countryman's military value. There are some fixed and settled reputations not easily shaken; nor is it very discreet or modest in men of infinitely subordinate fame to attempt it; as Lord Chesterfield, we may repeat, says of those who would now maintain that Homer and Virgil were no poets, "they come too late with their discovery."

Another eminent military name associated with Ireland, comes now under our cognisance, and will, we are confident, justify the details its bearer's achieve

The assassin here alluded to was the Corsican, Aréna, joined in a conspiracy with other republicans against Bonaparte, as a renegade to the cause. This attempt, as well as that by the Infernal Machine of the royalists, occurred in 1800, and greatly added to Bonaparte's popularity, as the destined victim to the cause of order and good rule.

* The Colonel confidently asserts Napoleon's "insignificance of talents;" and represents the mighty conqueror as "the weak and vain toy of fortune," at page 273 of his Biography of Wallenstein, whose words on the danger or absurdity of running counter to rationally and generally adopted opinions, we will repeat to this presumptuous appreciator of one of the greatestwould we could add, best-of men!

"Du wilst die Macht,

Die ruhig, sicher thronende erschüttern,
Die in verjährt geheiligtem Besitz,
In der Gewohnheit festgegründet ruht,

Die an der Völker frommen Kinderglauben,

Mit tausend Zähen Wurzeln sich befestigt."

Wallenstein's Tod-Vierter Auftritt Erster Aufzug.

ments so abundantly furnish. Intense and universal, it appears from the French Journals, has been the sensation produced by the recent death of MARSHAL BUGEAUD, whom the leaders of these organs of public opinion represent, to use their emphatic language, as the impersonation, the model of genuine patriotism, soldierly honor, and private worth. "We have to deplore," said the President of the Legislative Assembly, in accents of deepest feeling, "an immense loss in the person of Marshal Bugeaud, at once a great citizen and a great warrior. "Le plus grand homme de guerre après Napoléon, de notre époque." On proceeding again to the election of the deputation required, agreeably to custom, to assist at the funeral obsequies, he added, that all members were equally free to join in the solemn homage-" And we will all go," was the simultaneous acclamation. Accordingly, every honor that a grateful sense of eminent national services could suggest, or personal affection inspire, has been paid to his remains and memory. The body was laid out in all the pomp of military decoration or state; and thousands of those whom he had led to victory, proclaimed in audible lamentations the loss to themselves of their father-their cherished commander-and to their country, still tremulous in the balance of its destiny, of its firmest pillar.

This well-earned tribute to the distinguished soldier's memory has been re-echoed on nearly every side, and will, no doubt, be more explicitly unfolded, and become the theme of a corresponding biography. Meanwhile, our chief purpose in its more limited sphere, is to establish the claim of Ireland to a share in the being, and, if not a direct, a reflective or colla

teral participation in the renown of this eminent personage, as the son of our countrywoman, and, in the maternal line, to which many celebrated men have, with fond preference, ascribed their inborn talents, of exclusive Irish descent and connexion. Honored as we have been, for full sixty years, with the acquaintance of this branch of the Marshal's family, we have more than once been induced to consign to print, a fact of which we may be proud, and which cannot, under present circumstances, be of unseasonable, nor, we trust, of unacceptable reproduction.

The Marshal's father, Jean Ambroise Bugeand, Marquis de la Piconnerie, chief of one of the most ancient families of the old province of Perigord, (now in part, La Dordogne,) the birth-place of Montaigne, of Fénélon, and many other distinguished persons, married in 1771, Frances Sutton, daughter of Mr. Thomas Sutton, Comte de Clonard, a native of the county Wexford, where, before he removed to France, all his numerous children were born, and where his ancestors had for centuries held rank and possessions that placed them in the first line of its gentry. Despoiled by the inflictions of the penal code against Catholics, the contracted inheritance of Mr. Sutton induced him to seek refuge in France, where, like most young Catholics, forbidden the advantages of adequate tuition in his native soil, he had been educated

"Victus abit, longeque ignotis exulat oris

Multum gemens ignominiam plagasque superbi
Victoris."-Virgil, Georg. iii., 225.

There, too, his birth and merit soon attracted the royal favour, which, in its exercise, procured him the

[blocks in formation]

title of Count de Clonard, derived from an ancestral property in his native county. His wife, Miss Masterson, whom we well remember as a most amiable old lady, was of equally honorable lineage in the same district; and from their union sprung three sons, with a like number of daughters, one of whom became wife of Andrew French, Esq., of London. Their son, lately deceased, an advocate at the English bar, was an accomplished classical scholar, and translated a portion of Fénélon's Telemachus into Latin, of which the style received the marked approbation of Lord Brougham. Another Miss Sutton, (or De Clonard,) married Daniel M'Carthy, Esq., of Bordeaux, one of the most eminent merchants of that city, where we have seen him preside, with dignity and talent, over the commercial courts, for several years. This gentleman and his excellent spouse are now worthily represented by their descendants, whose eulogy is thus sufficiently expressed. The family are of the M'Carthy-Reagh branch of that ancient stock, and of the same lineage with the distinguished family of Toulouse. The two eldest sons entered the Irish Brigade, where we recollect the senior as Colonel, and his brother as Major. The youngest, appointed to the command of the Astrolabe, one of the accompanying vessels of La Peyrouse, in his fatal exploratory circumnavigation, perished with that regretted officer in 1788, when all trace was lost of the expedition, until accidentally discovered above twenty years ago by our countryman, Captain Dillon, whom we heard relate the circumstances, and who received in consequence a considerable pension from the French government. The Naval explorator left no family nor did the Major.

The Count de Clonard's eldest son, John, a Colonel in General Conway's Irish brigade, married Miss Crosbie of Kilkenny, a lady beloved and esteemed by a very extensive circle in the highest class of Parisian society, but since 1833, his widow.-Of their surviving offspring, the son Charles has attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, under the auspices of Marshal Bugeaud, his cousin. His elder and younger brothers died within these few years, but his two sisters survive and have families of children. The elder, Anne-Elise is the wife of William Mac-Guckin, Esq., an Irish gentleman of Ulster, created Baron de Slane, by Charles X., who has devoted himself to Oriental studies, and was a favourite pupil of the late profoundly learned Sylvestre de Sacy. He has, with other works, published a translation of the “Dwan d'Amrolkais," and life of that Arabian poet, by the writer of the "Kilab al Aiyan," or Arabic Plutarch, as also contributed several papers to the British Oriental Translation Society, on his return from the East, where he had collected various rare volumes. The second daughter of John, Count de Clonard, is the accomplished wife of our fellow-townsman, Robert Francis Macleod, Esq., now residing in France.

The Marshal had two elder brothers, Patrick and Ambrose, who obtained commissions in the Irish Brigade, under their uncles, with whom they emigrated, and entered the English service, assuming their maternal name of Sutton; but the brigades having been disbanded, and the peace of Amiens, offering a more settled order of things, these gentlemen returned in 1802 to their native home, as so many other emigrants

« AnteriorContinuar »