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30
MUNSTER
had an army in Ireland, put it beyond dispute that
Grouchy, even with what he had, could have set on
foot a movement that would have driven English
out of Ireland at least for a time: and Well-
power
ington himself has told how great a part in breaking
down the power of France, from those conflicts in the
Peninsula on to the climax of Waterloo, was borne
by the unemancipated Catholic Irish peasants, who
formed the very bone and sinew of the British line.
It may
well be that all was for the best in the
best possible of worlds: that it was best that Ireland,
instead of freeing herself with the help of Republican
France, should help greatly to deliver Europe from
the menace of Imperial France and hand it over to
the tender mercies of the Holy
Alliance. Yet it needs
the faith of Voltaire's philosopher to believe that any-
thing
could have been worse for Ireland than the his-
toric evolution which she was actually fated to undergo.
Beyond Bantry is Glengarriff, of which Thackeray
wrote that "such a bay, were it lying upon English
shores, would be a world's wonder". I have only
seen it off the deck of a steamer, away in a smother
of cloud; but everyone confirms Thackeray. Castle-
town Beare, farther west on the north shore of Bantry
Bay, I have seen, and the Castle of Dunboy, where
was the seat of the O'Sullivan Beare, lord of this
region, from which after the rout at Kinsale he and