Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/173

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PRISONERS.
153

family of Kilmaine, Mayo. When eleven years old he accompanied his father to France, was brought up a soldier, and made a good cavalry officer. He served under Lafayette in America, and afterwards in Senegal. He was enraptured with the Revolution, and distinguished himself at Jemappes. In June 1793 he was at the head of the vanguard in Flanders, and was anxious for a command in chief, but the Convention commissaries, while acknowledging that he was brave and dashing, deemed it imprudent to give him a higher post. "He is a foreigner; he is Irish; republicanism does not easily penetrate such skulls." Dubois-Dubay, however, recommended him for the command in Vendée, as the only general on whose ability and energy he could rely. But instead of promotion came eighteen months' imprisonment for falling back before the enemy, his wife Susan being also incarcerated till July 1795. Kilmaine afterwards served in Italy, commanded the "armée de l'Angleterre," which should have invaded us in 1798, and died in 1800, having not long previously been divorced. His rapacity was notorious.

Denis de Vitré, an Englishman by birth, Canadian on the paternal and English on the maternal side, was a prisoner for at least some hours, though I have not found the conclusion of his history. His father was the Denis de Vitré who was believed to have piloted the English fleet up the St. Lawrence