DUST OF THE PAST

Taranaki Daily News, 17 June 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

DUST OF THE PAST

MOMENTOUS DAYS

(By

“Historicus.”)

“On Monday night, the 20th\of June 1791, about eleven o’clock, there is many a hackney coach, and glass coach, still rumbling, or at rest, on the streets of Paris. But of all glass coaches, we recommend this to thee, O Reader, which stands drawn up in the Rue de I’Echelle —as if waiting for a fare.” Tirus wrote Carlyle in his “French Revolution.” Louis the Sixteenth had, at last, made up his wavering mind to escape from Paris. For weeks plans had been nearing maturity. But the brains behind the escape had reckoned without Louis. From the first he threw everything out of joint. Punctuality was not his virtue. Marie Antoinette, too, added her part to the failure of the enterprise. Mde Campan had, in fact, been kept in a constant state of alarm by the many arrangements regarding dress and jewels which the Queen thought necessary to make. No Queen could stir without new clothes. And the whims of women and Queens must be humoured. No reason for surprise, then, that the wardrobe woman penetrated the whole scheme. Even then it might have been successful had Louis been other than what he was. “The Night of Spurs,” Carlyle names it, found blunder succeeding blunder, until Louis finally settled matters by putting his head out of the window for postmaster Drouet to recognise. Poor phlegmatic man, and poorer Queen, fate had decreed against them. Great was the triumph at the capture of the royal prize, although probably Napoleon was right in saying “that the National Assembley never committed so great an error as in bringing back the King from Varennes.” A fugitive and powerless he was hastening to the frontier. Clearly, they should have facilitated his escape, avoided the infamy of a regicide government, and attained their great object—a Republican institution.

The United States Government were busily settling the slave question with the Southern States, when a “mysterious” vessel known as the “290” slid down the Mersey and put out to sea. Away from the shore, her commander donned the full Confederate uniform, the Confederate flag was hoisted, and the career of the “Alabama” had commenced. For nearly two years she terrorised American commerce, until, on June 19, 1864, she met the U.S.A. ship “Kearsage” of Cherbourg. Then, inside an hour, her roving days were over. Of the Confederate privateers, the Alabama was by far the most famous. It was the fortune of this vessel to be the occasion of a new rule in the Law of Nations. A storm of controversy was aroused that very nearly threw us into war with the Northern Government. Rather justly they complained that the “Alabama” was practically an English vessel, built by English builders in an English dockyard. As a matter of fact what was practically a fleet of war vessels was being prepared in British yards for the Southern Government. Feeling at the time was rather in favour of the Confederates, and the “Alabama” just added the necessary touch of romance to make her popular. Really her methods were not quite “cricket.” She decoyed her victims within reach under the British flag, and then captured her under the Confederate banner. During her life she captured nearly seventy Northern vessels, preying upon merchant vessels solely. Looking at it from a correct point of view, her career was glorious but not grand. She, however, made it apparent that international law could not remain as it was, and, under the Treaty of Washington, Great Britain • asknowledged the international character of the dispute. Arbitration decided against Britain, and, besides adding a hew rule to the Law of Nations, the cruinser Alabama cost the nation well over three millions, and, incidentally, contributed in no small measure to the fall of Mr. Gladstone’s Government. # &

On June 21, 1798, Lord Lake broke the rebellion of the Irish Catholic peasants and priests at the battle of Vinegar Hill, a gentle, isolated elevation, less than 400 feet high, which' rises across the river Slahey from Enniscorthy, a market town in the south-east of Ireland. Vinegar Hill covers Enniscorthy Bridge, on which roads converge from Wexford, from Dublin through Arklqw and from Waterford and Munster. Father John Murphy—the priest who had lit the beacons and called out the peasantry to mount their scythe blades as pikes and establish the Republic of Ireland—had chosen Vinegar Hill as <the insurgents’ camp and headquarters. The camp was established in May with 5,000 pikemen and some musketeers based oh it, and with a jubilant rabble of hangers-on and women to make every day a fair day there with music, dancing, eating and drinking. By June Father John led nearly 30,000 men, with some 5,000 muskets and a few cannon, fighting chiefly under their parish priests. England, apprehending a French attack on her own coasts, delayed in sending troops, and the wild recklessness of the pikemen was bearing down the Irish militia on whom the Dublin Government had to rely. In June, however, 13,000 fully armed troops, largely regulars, were mustered, under General Lake, a veteran English commander who had fought under Cornwallis in America and was to make history, in India. On June 20 his columns converged on Vinegar Hill. At daybreak next day they carried Enniscorthy Bridge and assailed the insurgents concentrated there. The battle, in which Catholic pikemen faced the inexorable advance of the King’s Guards and linesmen and in which Catholic militia from Munster, fighting against the insurrection, charged and carried the rebel guns, Was in its valour a redeeming feature of a shameful and pitiful civil war. After the battle Lake refused to show clemency to the rebel leaders and went further than many Englishmen could approve in the executions he ordered. On the other side the valour with which Vinegar Hill was defended cannot wipe out the shame of what had happened there daily for three weeks when each morning there had been a gaol delivery of half-a-dozen Protestant prisoners, all of whom were piked to death.

June 23, 18G0, may be looked upon as a great day in the history of the volunteer movement. On this day Queen Victoria reviewed 18,450 volunteers in Hyde Park. The movement was, of course, not new. Volunteers were enrolled in England as far back as 1778 for the American war. In 1803 King George reviewed London volunteers in Hyde Park. In consequence, however, of the fear of a French invasion, the formation of Volunteer Corps of riflemen commenced under the auspices of the Government in 1859, and by the end of the year many thousands were enrolled. An old gentleman, aged 80, who had been present as an officer in the 1803 review, paraded as a private before Queen Victoria. Such was the spirit of the movement, although humorists of the period grasped it as new material for their witticisms.