Volume 26, Number 10 · June 14, 1979
The Stains of Ireland
By Denis Donoghue
The Year of the French
by Thomas Flanagan
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 555 pp., $12.95
In Irish history the year of the French is 1798, when the French after several failures succeeded in landing soldiers on the northwest coast of Ireland. On August 22 a force of 1,099 French officers and men landed at Kilcummin strand, five miles west of Killala in Mayo. These men were supposed to be the first troops of a major French invasion. If the winds had been favorable and the French as fully committed to an Irish invasion as the Irish were led to believe, thousands of French soldiers would have joined with Irish rebels and driven the English into the sea.
Review, 3237 words
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