January 31st, 1798: The massive Dublin city and county yeomanry manoeuvres of the 28th are hailed by the Freeman's Journal, which reports "they mustered very strong. The Lawyers and Rotunda Division exercised, and fired remarkably well in Merrion Square, and the Attornies in Leinster-place." Notable feats of horsemanship are also displayed in the Phoenix Park by Capt John Beresford's junior's troop of the County Dublin Cavalry.
It is announced on the 30th that the huge army camp at Loughlinstown "is shortly to be surrounded with outworks, and placed in a position of defence in the manner of other camps". While it seems prudent to engineer earthworks and entrenchments around the reserve forces, the decision indicates that a change in strategic thinking has occurred.
Until now the troops have been massed with a view to deterring or repelling a French invasion on the east coast but it appears that they are assuming the additional roles of a static garrison or city outpost. It must be speculated that this precaution is partly in response to the steady rise in United Irish strength in Leinster.
Earl Charlemont's liberal "hero" Earl Moira writes to him from Donnington, England, on the 31st to clarify the rationale of his denunciations of Ireland's security policy in London's House of Lords.
Having expressed suspicions that his letter may well elicit "scrutiny . . . exercised with little delicacy" at the post office, Moira explains that his intentions are to "give the outline of a system of despotism, the existence of which was not credited [in England] from newspaper authority" in the hope "that the ministers, shamed by the recital, would have prescribed another course for Lord Camden".
He argues that "conciliatory measures" are needed to lessen the immediate threat of internal upheaval and must be adopted before the anticipated French invasion under the rumoured leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Moira, a propertied peer, is aware of the violent antipathy in which persons of his class are held by French republicans and, also perhaps, that his services as commander of the Irish Brigade during the American War of Independence are remembered in Paris.
Intelligence available to William Grenville, however, confirms that, once victorious, the French intend to transport Moira "pour avoir porte les armes contre deux peuples combattatants pour la libert e" (for having borne arms against two peoples fighting for liberty).
Also slated for deportation is the unsuspecting British whig leader and alleged "faux patriot" Charles James Fox.
Grenville's spy has also ascertained that the French will "never . . . make peace with a King of England, but with an English republic. A former plan was to make England, Scotland and Ireland a federative republic. By an improved resolution, they are to be transformed in three distinct, separate and independent republics."
The proposed Irish Directory is reportedly to be composed of the exiled fugitives Napper Tandy and Archibald Hamilton Rowan and the deeply suspected former MPs, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor.
The mention of Rowan is significant as he spent a year in France from April 1794 on escaping from Dublin's Newgate prison. His continental experiences, however, are believed to have lessened his revolutionary ardour and prompted his migration to America.