Initiating insurgencies abroad: French plans to ‘chouannise’ Britain and Ireland, 1793–1798

Abstract

Secret French plans to launch guerrilla-style raids on the British Isles devised in the spring of 1796 were referred to as ‘chouanneries’. The name and concept behind these small-war operations were modelled on the irregular tactics used by the Chouan rebels in the Vendée, which the French state army had brutally quashed, but some wished to transfer into their institutional practice. Part of France's ongoing military strategy in the war against Britain, which included fomenting insurrection in Ireland, these irregular operations were to be manned partially by pardoned deserters and released convicts and prisoners of war. Of these, only Tate's brief invasion of Wales in 1797 was realised, but the surviving plans provide insightful historical lessons into an Anglophobic mindset shared by a small network of practitioners and policy deciders on the effectiveness of such shock and awe tactics. Largely motivated by the desire to take revenge for Britain's support of counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée, these plans could more aptly be referred to as counter-‘chouanneries’.

Keywords::

• Chouannerie
• counter-chouannerie
• 1798 Rebellion in Ireland
• Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798)
• French Revolutionary wars
• French military strategy against Britain
• liberation
• prisoners of war
• propaganda, demonisation of enemy
• psychological warfare
• terrorism
• guerrilla tactics

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Alan Forrest for his helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

^1. See Stuart Jones, The Last Invasion of Britain and Rose, ‘The French at Fishguard’. Numbers vary, but the safest estimate is that Tate had c.1220 men, though his initial orders refer to 1050: [Hoche], Instructions to Tate, v. Hoche's original has never been located in French archives.

^2. Service historique de la Défense, Vincennes [henceforth SHD] SHD/Army/17y^d 12 Gp: William Tate (personal file).

^3. [Tone], Writings, 2: 370.

^4. As a brigade colonel, then promoted adjutant-general in October 1796, under the pseudonym James Smith: SHD/Army 17y^d 14 Gp and Kleinman, ‘Brave de plus’ . Tone was a founding member of the Society of United Irishmen, set up in Belfast and Dublin in 1791, initially to reform domestic politics though some had more militant views. Banned in 1794, they reformed and expanded as a clandestine revolutionary body, were the main interface with France and organisers of the rebellion in May–June 1798.

^5. I am grateful to Dr Paul Rich for this information.

^6. Gastey, ‘L'étonnante aventure’.

^7. The most thorough study of the Franco-Irish strategic alliance remains Elliott, Partners in Revolution; for the chouannerie plans, see 77–134.

^8. See contribution by Alan Forrest elsewhere in this issue.

^9. [Hoche], Instructions to Tate, iv, and following sentence, 12 & 8; Jones, Last Invasion, 62–5. The terms ‘Great Britain’ or ‘British’ rarely, if ever, appear in French contemporary sources consulted for this article; I have literally translated their use of ‘England’ and ‘English’ to designate the state France was at war with, except when the purely geographical term (e.g. mainland Britain) is more relevant.

^10. Tone, Writings, 2: 399, my emphasis. For the strategic role of military linguists, see Kleinman, ‘Translation, the French Language and the United Irishmen’, summarised in ‘Amidst Clamour and Confusion’.

^11. Tone, Writings, 2: 399.

^12. Hoche to the Directory, 28 April 1796, in Guillon, La France et l'Irlande, 89. For CIA tactics, see Heuser, ‘Covert Action’.

^13. See also García Hernán et al., Irlanda y la Monarquía hispánica.

^14. ‘Needs and means to diminish the forces of England’ Colonel Edmund O'Reilly to Choiseul, 7 October 1767, cited in Beresford, ‘Ireland in French Strategy’, 286. Beresford discusses both strategy and political motivation behind various plans, many commissioned from, or proposed by Irish officers serving in France. However, until the 1790s Irish disaffection did not significantly encompass separatism.

^15. Beresford. ‘Ireland in French Strategy’, 420, and following, 424, citing [Patrick?] Wall's memorandum of 4 March 1780, SHD/A/M&R 1418, 281–305. Many of these plans were collated in 1796 by General Henri Clarke and read with interest by both Hoche in 1796, then Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797–8 and 1804–5: e.g. Archives nationales de France [henceforth AN] AN/AF III 186^b/857–60 and AF/IV 1671.

^16. Restrictions on Catholics bearing arms had been lifted by 1794, but minimal numbers chose the French over the British army.

^17. Hamilton to Washington, ‘Answers…’ May 2 1793, emphasis as per original: in Hamilton, ‘Hamilton to Washington’.

^18. SHD/Army/11B¹, Directory to Hoche, 19 June 1796.

^19. Archives diplomatiques de France [henceforth AD], AD/CPA/584, fols.214–217^v, Coquebert to [Pierre-Henri-Hélène-Marie Tondu, called] Lebrun, Paris, 18 December 1792, and following.

^20. Elliott, Partners, 20–1, 125, and following.

^21. AD/CPA/587, 9^r-^v, Lebrun to Lt. Colonel André MacDonagh, 1 March 1793, my emphasis.

^22. AD/CPA/587, 9^r-^v, Madgett to Lebrun, 13 March 1793, fol. 20^r, and 46^r. Secret expenditure records confirm that sums were allocated on April 26 1793 for the translation of placards addressed to the ‘brave English seamen’: AN/AF/II, 7^r. See also AD/CPA/588, 480–1, undated but c. late May 1794, ‘Address to the people of Ireland by citizen Madgett Head of the Translation Bureau before the Committee of Public Safety… the purpose of which is to waken the hatred of the Irish against their eternal English oppressor’. The true extent of the role of Irish agitators in France, namely one Wiliam Duckett (also a translator/propagandist), in the British sailor's mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, April-May 1797, merits a dedicated study: see e.g. AD/Personnel/1/25 [Duckett].

^23. AD/Personnel 1/65, 58^v, Sullivan to Minister for External Relations Delacroix, 30 October 1795. Sullivan served as a captain and bilingual adc under Humbert in Ireland and took part in haranguing locals to join.

^24. The three main plans, undated but catalogued with material related to plans for the Irish expedition circa April to June 1796 in SHD/Army/11B¹ are attributed to generals La Barollière, Carnot (a serving Director, i.e. member of the executive government), and Humbert, see notes 30, 31, and 32. See also Come, ‘French Threats to British Shores’.

^25. Tone, Writings, 2: 70–1, and following.

^26. Ibid., 2: 138, and following, 72.

^27. Elliott, Partners, 85–7.

^28. As note 20: 2 April 1796, 140, and following; emphasis as per original.

^29. AN/AF IV/1671, 65^r-67^v, ‘Memorandum to General Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke on the encouragement of chouannerie in Ireland, 4 April 1796’ [in English], reprinted in Tone, Writings, 2: 144–5, and following, 174.

^30. Hoche to the Committee of Public Safety, 1 October 1793, in Guillon, France and Ireland, 73.

^31. Gauthier, a naval official, in Debrière, 1793–1805, 1: 30.

^32. Directory to Hoche, 18 April 1796 in Debidour, Recueil, 2: 176–7.

^33. SHD/Army: Jacques Marguerite Pilotte de la Barollière (1746–1827): GDI 7Y^d 33; 11B¹, ‘Note for Clarcke’, also in Débrière, 1793–1805, 1: 64–6, and following.

^34. SHD/Army/11B¹: [Carnot], ‘Instruction [sic] to establish chouannerie in England’, also in Savary. Guerre des Vendéens, 6: 333–7ff. My thanks to Alan Forrest for his insights on this section.

^35. Sun Tzu was first translated into a European language by Amiot, Art militaire des Chinois, which includes ‘Les Treize articles sur l'art militaire, ouvrage composé en chinois par Suntse...’

^36. As note 31.

^37. SHD/Army/11B¹; Jean-Joseph Humbert (1767–1823) personal file: 482 GB 84^d 2e série; Ideas to establish a chouannerie in Ireland’ [Idées pour établir une chouannerie en Irlande] in Debrière, 1793–1805, 1: 61–4, and following.

^38. Directory to General Beurnonville, 18 April 1796, in Debidour, Recueil, 176, outlining the plans to assemble foreign deserters in Atlantic ports as ‘free corps’, i.e. irregulars; we note the ambiguity as in French ‘franc’ can mean free, or Frankish (but also frank as in English).

^39. Humbert. ‘Ideas’ as note 32, and following.

^40. As note 31.

^41. Tone, Writings, 2: 397, 371, and following.

^42. House of Commons, Report, 9. Conditions of detention in France were under investigation by Britain, and a [bilingual] cartel for pow exchanges and detention standards was agreed in London on 13 September, 1798: SHD/Marine FF¹/33/V1.

^43. Jones, Last Invasion, 63, 205–11. This is reminiscent of Che Guevara's lack of intelligence on rural Bolivia which led him to miscalculate his moves there two centuries later.

^44. Hoche to the Directory 9 June 1796, in Guillon. France and Ireland, 90.

^45. [Hoche], Instructions to Tate, i.

^46. Bonaparte to the Directory, 23 February 1798, in Bonaparte, Correspondance, 3: nr.2419, 644.

^47. Jones, Last Invasion, 278. All were exchanged, even the Irishmen, as part of the ongoing Franco-British talks.

^48. AN/AF/III/ 186^b/858/62^r, Tate to Clarke, 27 July 1796.

^49. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 200.

^50. Hoche to Directory 28 April 1796, in Guillon, France and Ireland, 88, emphasis as per original.

^51. ‘Note for Clarcke’, in Débrière, 1793–1805, 1: 65.

^52. Elliott, Partners, 86.

^53. Debrière, 1793–1805, 1: 61, 66.

^54. James, Warrior Race, 256.

^55. Tone, Writings, 2: 399; Heuser, Evolution of Strategy, 388.

^56. General Thomas Knox to the Earl of Abercorn, 21 March 1797, cited in Bartlett, ‘Defence, Counter-Insurgency and Rebellion’, 270.