The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

Author:Thomas Flanagan [Flanagan, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Literary, Fiction, historical, War & Military
ISBN: 9781590176863
Google: b7ZJsIsRAYcC
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 2012-11-14T16:30:14+00:00

13

FROM THE DIARY OF SEAN MACKENNA

September, 1798. One of the armies left Castlebar by night, and the next morning the other one entered. I stood by the window in the front room over the shop and watched the English ride in, large reckless men they were on their heavy horses. They rode down the street at the full gallop, with their long sabres held level with their heads, ready to swing downwards. And on our street there was still enough to claim their blades. Most of the killing had been done at the bridge and in the streets leading to the green. But I saw them smashing down doors and dragging men out, and why they did not smash down this door I cannot imagine, nor why I was not hauled away to be thrashed or made a show of, as others were, though guiltless of wrongdoing.

It was but a fulfillment of what I had known would happen as I watched the Frenchmen and our own fellows move out the night before. The poor fellows had a stricken look, many of them, and who is to blame them, carried off at night, with rain beginning to fall, and no word given as to their destination. There are some of those fellows who don’t know that the world is round, and for all they knew, they were being marched off to the edge of it. The degree of ignorance in which the men of Nephin live their sunless lives is not to be believed.

And yet they were off for a morning saunter when measured against the distance which the Frenchmen had travelled. We never knew them, for none could speak English. When I saw them mustered and ready to march out of Castlebar, they might have been creatures carried here from the moon. They had not our look at all, with their sallow faces and dark, liquid eyes. But they joked together, as our fellows did, and scuffled, and they had the same look of fear behind the joking. No doubt they too had come from farms, and once were more at home with spades than with bayonets. What France is like I cannot imagine, although I have read a few of the French tales and romances that have been put into English. But it cannot be like Ireland. All of the countries of the world are different from each other. It would be interesting to know what they think of Ireland. They can have formed no high opinion of it, poor creatures—dragged from bog to bog to grey wet town, with the country people staring at them as though they were freaks on exhibition.

But they are soldiers now, whatever they were once. They have been trained to bellow and gore like bulls, and to walk docile as cows to their own slaughter. A most curious way to live, and it is frightening to reflect how easily men can be schooled to accept it. But the songs all have it that such a life is easy and free.

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