Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 35
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Severance of Ireland.
The great pitched battle having now been decided on the ground chosen by the invaders, for reasons already stated, their advance could begin. A strong detachment at once crossed the water to occupy Queenstown, which place gave its victorious Allies a jubilant welcome, and illuminated at night, from the summit of the hill to the quays, notwithstanding that the glass of every window had been shivered to fragments by the vibration of the cannonade. Meanwhile, the main body worked round by land and bridges, and after leaving outposts at Mallow Junction to secure the important trunk line of railway to Dublin, entered Cork, whose inhabitants welcomed them with open arms. But time was valuable—it was necessary to keep striking while the iron was hot; so making the Cork and Queenstown district his base of operations, La Roche pushed on by forced marches, and reached Dublin with his advance guard on the fourth day after the battle. Here the fugitive remnant of the British troops had thought of a rally, in the hope of reinforcements; but the news of the great defeat had so paralysed the Home Administration, that none were forthcoming; and the next piece of news which enlivened the London papers, was the capitulation of Dublin on the 18th of October, or rather, its declaration for the enemy. There was nothing now to stop the march of the Allies northward; and in a very short time the last chance of retaining the Union in any form or degree was taken away by the defection of Ulster; the majority in that province having come to see that their best course would be to make terms with the future Central Government of Ireland, the more especially as resistance, unsupported by England, would be worse than useless. The work of the invasion was now complete; on the last day of the month the American-Irish Declaration of Severance was despatched for the digestion of the British Cabinet, together with the other terms of peace, which included a heavy war indemnity, to be divided equally among the Allies.
Lord Humnoddie resigned, with all his colleagues, but no one could be found to form a Cabinet at this juncture; so the affairs of the country were managed for the moment by revolutionary mass meetings, which hurriedly delegated their authority to a Committee of Public Safety. First and foremost, peace was concluded, the costs were paid, and Ireland abandoned. It was a great blow to the pride of the dominant party in England; their only consolation was that matters might have been very much worse. After all, the battle had taken place in Ireland, not England; Great Britain was still intact, and perhaps her position among nations might not permanently suffer. France herself had borne a heavier disaster only a generation ago, and, instead of being crushed, had risen from it into a more solid national life.
Still it was not pleasant to reflect that what should have been conceded with a good grace, binding the two islands together in a more genuine union than had ever existed between them before, was now taken away by force; that through clinging stolidly to an insensate prejudice, half a kingdom had gone to the foreigner; for the incorporation of Ireland as one of the United States was hardly less than that, although, it is true, the foreigner in this case was one of kindred race, language, and political genius.