Hoche’s sympathies were naturally with the Irish, and his hatred of England, as evidenced by his letters, amounted to passionate folly. La Vendée was at last tranquil, and Hoche proposed to employ part of his great army of 100,000 men in an invasion of Ireland. On December 16 a fleet of seventeen battleships, twenty frigates and brigs, and seven transports, under Vice-Admiral Morard de Galles, sailed from Brest with Hoche and some 16,000 troops. The expedition was a failure, though not owing to active British naval operations. Hoche and the Admiral lost touch with their fleet. Ships were wrecked, and the armament was scattered, but Rear-Admiral Bouvet actually reached Bantry Bay with a number of ships and 7,000 troops. But the weather was bad, and though urged to disembark the soldiers by General Grouchy, the senior military officer, he eventually put back to Brest. Hoche arrived in Bantry Bay to find his fleet already gone, and could only follow it. Had he actually landed, even with only 7,000 men, in smouldering Ireland, there is no predicting where his victorious career would have ended. The Protestant militia of Ireland were utterly worthless against the fine French troops, as was proved a year later. [Illustration: _A. Rischgitz._ GENERAL LAZARE HOCHE (1768-1797). Organized the great invasion of Ireland in 1797, to which the attack on Fishguard was subsidiary. Perhaps the greatest of the soldiers of the Revolution, after Napoleon. _From the portrait by Ary Scheffer at Versailles._] One of Hoche’s subordinate designs in this great expedition was to land subsidiary and distracting detachments in England itself. Unhappily for his fame, he allowed himself to be led by his bitter hatred of England into very discreditable methods. He proposed to form columns of military delinquents and released convicts which should lay waste and terrorize the enemy’s country. Such a scheme had been devised by the Committee of Public Safety; but it is a blot upon the fair fame both of Carnot, over whose signature the plan appears, and of Hoche. Two regiments were eventually formed out of these disreputable elements. They were called the 1st and 2nd Legions of Franks; but the criminal regiment was called, if not named, the ‘Black Legion.’ The whole design was distinctly foolish, despite its specious air of cunning. The men of whom the legions were composed were scarcely likely to risk hardships and death for the sake of the Government that had imprisoned them, and it is tolerably clear that their capacity for mischief must have been greatly lessened by their ignorance of the English language. Open brigandage they might commit, but it could only be in large bodies which could easily be hunted down. In fact, if there were not evidence to the contrary, one might conclude that the French Government only wished to be rid of these criminal elements.