The Harpers again. Strum Strum and be hang'd! - Wolfe Tone

On my arrival here, Major Chester informed me that his orders from your Lordship, in consequence, as I presume, of the directions of Government, were that I should be put in irons. I take it for granted those orders were issued in ignorance of the rank I have the honour to hold in the armies of the French Republic... I do protest, in the most precise and strongest manner, against the indignity intended against the honour of the French army in my person; and I claim the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war, agreeably to my rank and situation in an army not less to be respected in all points than any other which exists in Europe. From the situation your Lordship holds under your Government, I must presume you have discretionary power to act according to circumstances, and I cannot for a moment doubt but what I have now explained to your Lordship will induce you to give immediate orders that the honour of the French army be respected in my person; and of course I shall suffer no coercion other than in common with the rest of my brave comrades whom the fortune of war has for the moment deprived of their Liberty.

The insurrection has commenced formally in several counties of Leinster, more especially Kildare and Wexford... At Carlow, 400 Irish, it is said, were killed; at Castledermot 50. In return in the Co. Wexford, where appears to be their principal force, they have defeated a party of 600 English, killed 300 men and the commandant, Colonel Walpole, and taken 5 pieces of cannon; this victory, small as it is, will give the people courage and shew them that a red coat is no more invincible then a grey one... From the blood of every one of the martyrs of the liberty of Ireland will spring, I hope, thousands to revenge their fall.

If such men lose, in the issue, their property, they are themselves alone to blame. By deserting the first and most sacred of duties, the duty to their country, they have incurred a wilful forfeiture; by disdaining to occupy the station they might have held among the people and which the people would have been glad to see them fill, they left a vacancy to be seized by those who had more courage, more sense and more honesty; and not only so, but by this base and interested desertion they furnished their enemies with every argument of justice, policy and interest to enforce the system of confiscation... The best that can be said in palliation of the conduct of the English party is that they are content to sacrifice the liberty and independence of their country to the pleasure of revenge and their own personal security. They see Ireland only in their rent rolls, their places, their patronage and their pensions.