Our situation was anything but promising. The rumours that reached us (and we had no other or more accurate information than rumours) told that an army of thirty thousand men, under the command of Lord Cornwallis, was in march against us; that all the insurrectionary movements of the south were completely repressed; that the spirit of the Irish was crushed, and their confidence broken, either by defeat or internal treachery. In a word, that the expedition had already failed, and the sooner we had the means of leaving the land of our disasters the better. Such were the universal feelings of all my comrades; but Humbert, who had often told us that we were only here to prepare the way for another and more formidable mission, now pretended to think that we were progressing most favourably towards a perfect success. Perhaps he firmly believed all this, or perhaps he thought that the pretence would give more dignity to the finale of an exploit which he already saw was nearly played out. I know not which is the true explanation, and am half disposed to think that he was actuated as much by one impulse as the other. ‘The Army of the North’ was the talisman, which we now heard of for the first time, to repair all our disasters, and ensure complete victory. ‘The Army of the North,’ whose strength varied from twenty to twenty-five, and sometimes reached even thirty thousand men, and was commanded by a distinguished Irish general, was now the centre to which all our hopes turned. Whether it had already landed, and where, of what it consisted, and how officered, not one of us knew anything; but by dint of daily repetition and discussion we had come to believe in its existence as certainly as though we had seen it under arms. The credulous lent their convictions without any trouble to themselves whatever; the more sceptical studied the map, and fancied twenty different places in which they might have disembarked; and thus the Army of the North grew to be a substance and reality, as undoubted as the scenes before our eyes. Never was such a ready solution of all difficulties discovered as this same Army of the North. Were we to be beaten by Cornwallis, it was only a momentary check, for the Army of the North would come up within a few days and turn the whole tide of war. If our Irish allies grew insubordinate or disorderly, a little patience and the Army of the North would settle all that. Every movement projected was fancied to be in concert with this redoubted corps, and at last every trooper that rode in from Killala or Ballina was questioned as to whether his despatches did not come from the Army of the North.