Kilcummin, on the north Mayo coast near Killala, was the scene of an event on August 22nd, 1798, which dramatically altered the course of the Rebellion. After several false starts, Gen Jean Amable Humbert arrived from France, at the head of 1,109 troops, to revive the fortunes of the embattled United Irishmen.
This last invasion of Ireland gave rise to the popular and enduring description of 1798 as "the year of the French". For a brief period it seemed that foreign intervention would pave the way for the Irish Republic. Indeed, in early September 1798, Connaught had the distinction of hosting the first such provisional administration in this country, headed by President John Moore of Moore Hall, Lough Carra.
The rapid seizure of Killala, on August 23rd, 1798, followed several unsuccessful French attempts to supply troops and arms to Wolfe Tone's followers for two years - stymied by British seapower and bad weather.
The closest call came in December 1796, when part of Gen Hoche's army reached Bantry Bay unopposed - but turned back without disembarking. Another sizeable expedition was cut short by the Royal Navy at Camper
down in October 1797, when Admiral Duncan defeated a FrancoDutch armada bound for Ireland.
These costly disappointments obliged the French to reconsider the best means of striking at British assets and by March 1798 they were gearing up for a major campaign in Egypt. This mitigated against the dispatch of another large army to Ireland, particularly as ships and finance were in short supply.
Napoleon's army left for Egypt as planned on May 19th, 1798, just four days before the United Irishmen caught the Directory, Tone and almost everyone else off guard by rising without French aid. The impressive performance of the ill-equipped Irish insurgents revived French interest in the Atlantic theatre.
Humbert sailed from Rochelle on August 6th with part of Gen Jean Hardy's "l'armee d'Irlande". The remainder was trapped in Brest and Dunkirk by unfavourable winds.
With an army of 35,000 men and a major fleet committed to North Africa, the projected role of the French in Ireland was a smaller one than that entrusted to Hoche in 1796.
Rather than marching in irresistible force from one end of Ireland to the other, Hardy was instructed to land a small corps in Donegal or on some other stretch of the north western coast. This was to form the nucleus of a Franco-Irish republican army equipped with muskets, munitions and uniforms stowed for the purpose in large quantities.
Tone, isolated and ill-informed in Paris, optimistically assured the Directory that thousands would rally to the French. The effective strength of the United Irishmen, battered by a series of hard defeats and abortive risings, was unknown.
A provisional government was to be created by the French to maintain public order in the liberated zone. This would also provide logistic support to the fighters as they advanced to inspire popular uprisings across the country.
The scope of the plan invalidated loyalist accusations that the invasion was a reprise of the tragicomic raid by the French Black Legion on Fishguard in Wales. In February 1797, 600 convicts and desperadoes had been loosed on British soil under Irish-American Col William Tate but did little more than wreak localised mayhem before capitulating.
Ireland in August 1798 was a potentially much more volatile sector where everything depended on the response of the disaffected inhabitants who had lacked an opportunity to rise en masse.
The spark intended to ignite the revolutionary potential of Ireland was conveyed to Mayo on August 22nd, 1798, by Citizen Savary, commodore in the post-aristocratic French navy.
Savary's four ships carried Humbert and 1,000 soldiers, mostly infantry, who reached Irish shores undetected. They arrived, nonetheless, at an awkward moment when the Rebellion had been all but smothered by the dual strategy of military might and a generous amnesty.
Only in the mountains of Wicklow were insurgents capable of immediate and significant acts of aggression. Even so, the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, was aware that an early French success against the forces of the crown would jeopardise the image of government ascendancy and possibly unhinge the peace enforced with great loss of life in the provinces.
In practice the French presence did not excite an overwhelming challenge to Dublin Castle. It did, however, unleash a highly unpredictable chain of events which threw up a number of critical scenarios.
Fearing encirclement in Killala and Ballina, captured with little trouble, Humbert moved inland and on the 27th inflicted a serious reverse on the larger army of Gen Lake at Castlebar. This reinforced Cornwallis' determination to deny the French a morale boosting second major victory and informed the extreme caution displayed by him when preparing a decisive counter-attack.
Humbert's tactical boldness in the face of overwhelmingly negative odds was by no means suicidal. The failure of Hardy's main force to appear reduced his options to withdrawal, surrender or a thrust towards the capital in the hope of raising dormant United Irish strength en route.
Urgency was lent to the project by the correct assumption that the weakness of his forces was known to Dublin Castle. Crucially, Humbert had supreme confidence in the fighting ability of his soldiers, who, man for man, were more than a match for any units available to Cornwallis.
Humbert fielded soldiers who had delivered Napoleon's victories in Italy in 1797 and bore the scars of combat on their faces and bodies. Many, himself included, were veterans of the brutal Vendean campaign where, ironically, they had assumed the role of counter-insurgents in a French civil war.
Well equipped, highly organised and tactically innovative, the French were led by officers trained in the art of warfare and promoted on the principles of merit.
Defending the territory and interests of the new French Republic, furthermore, had given its soldiers at least a veneer of ideological encouragement fully applicable to the Irish venture. For once they were exporting the revolution to a county where a distinct majority welcomed the development. In this regard they were affirmed by United Irishmen Matthew Tone, brother of Wolfe Tone, and by Bartholomew Teeling of Lisburn, both of whom held commissions in the expedition.
The response of the Irish people to the landings was disappointing. Roughly 600 joined in Killala and 3,000 more rallied in Castlebar, on the back of the resounding success on the 27th. Many were irresolute, opportunistic, and quickly dropped out but a hard core of at least 1,000 fleshed out French battle lines and fought with courage and ability at Ballina, Collooney, Ballinamuck and Killala.
Connaught was the most untypical region in Ireland in 1798 being overwhelmingly Catholic, impoverished and strongly Irish speaking. It was the weakest link in the United Irish organisation but contained highly motivated elements, not least thousands of refugees from sectarian persecution in mid-Ulster.
It is notable that not one captive loyalist or yeoman suffered death at the hands of the "men of the west".
This remarkable discipline cannot be wholly attributable to the controlling influence of the French. Paradoxically, the comparative serenity of the west before the invasion may well have lessened popular appetite for the armed struggle, particularly given their knowledge of the hammer blows dealt to the risen sectors of the north-east and south-east during the early summer.
The campaign initiated by Humbert did not end in the defeat of the main Franco-Irish column at Ballinamuck, Longford, on September 8th. Insurgents in Westmeath, Leitrim and elsewhere turned out in great numbers and new life was breathed into the activities of the mountain fighters of Wicklow and north Wexford. The gambit failed.
Mopping up operations in Mayo and Sligo crushed the provisional republic and exacted a heavy toll of its supporters.
Captured Frenchmen were treated as prisoners of war but uniforms offered no protection to Matthew Tone and Teeling, whose bodies were tossed into the "Croppy Hole" outside Dublin's Royal Barracks.