Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/228

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208
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

woman who in male dress had acted as a gunner during the siege. When asked how she could fight against her country, she replied that she was defending the country. Strange destiny for an English officer to pass unscathed while fighting under his own flag, and to perish in a stand for Moderate Liberalism, as we should now call it, in France!

If at Lyons one brother sacrificed his life to save the other, at Angers there were two brothers of Irish extraction, one of whom betrayed the other. One was executed by the Jacobins, while the other was put on trial, after Robespierre's fall, as a Terrorist. How long the O'Sullivans had been in France I cannot ascertain. A Daniel O'Sullivan, who taught fencing, and in 1766 published a treatise on it, may have been the grandfather of the two men of whom I am about to speak. He, too, may have been the O'Sullivan who was quarter-master with the Young Pretender in 1745, and, according to "Ascanius, or the Young Adventurer" (London, 1812), was very chicken-hearted in embarking on a French cutter and leaving the Prince to his fate. O'Hanlon, however, speaks highly of O'Sullivan's bravery and ability, and says Charles Edward passed at one time for his son.

Charles O'Sullivan, collector of stamp duties at St. Georges sur Loire, took part in the Vendée rising, and terrible to say, was given up by his brother, John Baptist, for the latter, when himself