but encountering contrary winds, Admiral Bompard arrived off the entrance to Lough Swilly on 10 Oct. Before he could land the troops a powerful English squadron, under Sir John Borlase, hove in sight. The brunt of the action was borne by the Hoche, and Tone, who had refused to escape in La Biche, commanded one of the batteries. After a determined resistance of four hours the Hoche struck, and two days later Tone and the rest of the prisoners were landed and marched to Letterkenny. On landing he was recognised by Sir George Hill, and, being placed in irons, was sent to Dublin, where he was confined in the provost's prison. On 10 Nov. he was brought before a court-martial, presided over by General Loftus. He made no attempt to deny the charge of treason preferred against him, but he pleaded his rights as a French officer. He had prepared a statement setting forth his object in trying to subvert the government of Ireland; but the court, deeming it calculated to inflame the public mind, allowed him to read only portions of it. He requested that he might be awarded a soldier's death and spared the ignominy of the gallows. To this end he put in his brevet of chef de brigade in the French army. His bearing during the trial was modest and manly. He was condemned to be executed within forty-eight hours, and, being taken back to prison, he wrote to the directory, commending his wife and family to the care of the republic; to his wife, bidding her a tender farewell; and to his father, declining a visit from him. His request to be shot was refused by Lord Cornwallis. Strenuous efforts were made by Curran to remove his cause to the civil courts. On the morning of the day appointed for the execution application was made in his behalf for an immediate writ of habeas corpus, and his application was granted by Lord Kilwarden. But the military officials, pleading the orders of Lord Cornwallis, refused to obey the writ, and the chief justice at once ordered them into custody. It was then that it was discovered that Tone had taken his fate in his own hands, having on the previous evening cut his throat with a penknife he had secreted about him. All that it remained for the chief justice to do was to issue an order for the suspension of the execution. The wound, though dangerous, had not proved immediately fatal. It had been dressed, but only, it is asserted, to prolong life till the hour appointed for the execution. After lingering for more than a week in great agony, Tone expired on 19 Nov. His remains, together with his sword and uniform, were given up to his relatives, and two days afterwards he was quietly buried in Bodenstown churchyard. A monument, erected by Thomas Osborne Davis [q. v.] in 1843, was chipped away by his admirers, and had to be replaced by a more substantial one, surrounded by ironwork.
His brother Matthew was taken prisoner at Ballinamuck and hanged at Arbour Hill, Dublin, 29 Sept. 1798.
Tone's widow survived him many years. On the motion of Lucien Bonaparte, the conseil des cinq-cents made her a small grant, and she continued to live at Chaillot, near Paris, till the downfall of the first empire. In September 1816 she married a Mr, Wilson, an old and highly esteemed friend of Tone, and, after a visit to Scotland, emigrated to America. She survived her second husband twenty-two years, dying at Georgetown on 18 March 1849, aged 81.
Wolfe Tone's 'Journals' (which begin properly in October 1791, but are of most interest during the period of his residence in France) supply us with a vivid picture of the man. At the same time it must not be forgotten that these journals were written expressly for the amusement of his wife and his friend Thomas Russell, neither of whom was likely to be misled into treating them too seriously. For Tone was a humourist as well as a rebel. Otherwise one might easily be induced, like the Duke of Argyll (see a very able but extremely hostile criticism in the Nineteenth Century, May and June 1890), into regarding him as an unprincipled adventurer of a very common type, whose only redeeming quality was that he was devoid of cant. That he had a weakness for good liquor and bad language is patent; but at bottom he was a sober, modest, brave man, whose proper sphere of action was the army, and whom circumstances rather than predilection turned into a rebel. He has no claim to rank as a statesman. His object was the complete separation of Ireland from England with the assistance of France, and the establishment of Ireland as an independent kingdom or republic. 'I, for one,' he wrote in the thick of the preparations for the invasion, 'will never be accessory to subjugating my country to the control of France merely to get rid of that of England.' After the suppression of the rebellion and the rise of O'Connell and constitutional agitation, his schemes as well as himself fell into disrepute; but when later on the ideas of the Young Ireland party gained the upper hand, he was elevated into the position of a national hero and his methods applauded as the only ones likely to succeed.
There are two portraits of Tone. One,
