158 THE IRISH PEOPLE. 



fire from a French battery of eiglitpounders, and 

 from the French infantry. But at a sign from Grattan 

 they gave a cheer, and made so overwhelming a 

 charge on the 9fch regiment, and some hundreds of 

 the Imperial Guards, that they lifted some of them 

 from the ground in the shock, and bore them back 

 some paces in the air, and drove them all from the 

 village with universal loss." 



These Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Galway, and Ros- 

 common men were not picked men, for E. Bulwer- 

 Lytton says that at that period " two-thirds of the 

 British army were Irish, and the lowest of them, 

 the dregs of the Irish populace. What a reflec- 

 tion ! "* Well, the reflection that a person must 

 make is that the dregs of Irishmen who twice, at 

 least, saved " the allied armies," and drove the 

 French out of Spain, must not have been " five feet 

 two high, pot-bellied, 'and bow-legged." I am sure 

 the French heroes of a hundred fights must have 

 had a different opinion driven in on them, and the 

 countrymen of de Quatrefages would not admit that 

 the men who were opposed to the 87th and 88th, 

 that is, their 8th, 9th, 2nd, 4th, and 36th regiments 

 and their Guards, would " leave the way " for men 

 of inferior form and strength. I have not given 

 these two illustrations of " the form " of Connacht- 

 * England and]the English. Vol. I., p. 87. 



