The first of the French troops to proffer their loyalty, on this occasion, were the Scottish and Irish soldiers of the old Regiment de Berwick. The depot of this corps was then quartered at the strong town of Givet, on the frontiers of France, under the command of Sir Charles MacCarthy-Lyragh, who immediately marched his men to Coblentz, and joined the battalion. Sir Charles afterwards passed into the British service, when he was made a Colonel and Governor of Senegal, where in 1824 he fought a battle with the Ashantees, by whom he was slain and beheaded. The loyalty of the Irish brigade met with a warm response from the fugitive princes. "This offer," replied Monsieur to the deputation who came to proffer fealty, "will mitigate the sufferings of the king, who will receive from you with pleasure the same mark of fidelity which James II. received from your ancestors. This double epoch ought for ever to furnish a device for the Regiment de Berwick! It will henceforth be seen upon your colours; every faithful subject will there read his duty, and behold the model he ought to imitate." "The colours of Berwick," added Charles Philippe the Comte d'Artois, "are, and always will be, in the path to honour, and we will march at their head!"[21] The king perished, and then followed the campaign of 1793, a period most disastrous to the emigrants; but amid all the slaughter and merciless butchery, with which the republicans inspired the war--a war, to maintain which, the fiery zeal of Carnot enrolled no less than _fourteen_ armies, mustering 1,400,000 men--O'Connell led his battalion with honour to himself and to the cause he served, till all hope was lost, and then with others he fled to England in the beginning of 1794. Among those condemned by Robespierre's tribunal in that year, were two distinguished officers of the Irish brigade--General O'Moran, who defended Dunkirk against the Duke of York; and John O'Donoghue, General de Brigade in the Army of the Rhine. At the same time were condemned, M. Murdoch, a Scotsman in the service of the Comte de Montmorin; and W. Newton, an English colonel of the Dragoon Regiment de Liberte, and formerly an officer in the Russian service. In reduced circumstances O'Connell reached London, where he resided for a time in comparative obscurity; and where, for many reasons, his residence was far from being a pleasant one. Still, undiscouraged by the aspect of affairs in France, and by the numerous bloody defeats and massacres sustained by the emigrant troops and other supporters of the Bourbons, he took a warm interest in the attempts meditated in 1794; but fresh conflicts seemed only to fire the zeal of the republicans anew, till the French armies, following their victories, drove their enemies across the Meuse and then beyond the Rhine; after which they penetrated into Holland, revolutionized it, and succeeded in detaching Prussia from its alliance with Britain.