Kevin Myers is guilty of woeful historical inaccuracies, writes Humbert School founder John Cooney
The Humbert Summer School has conferred its "Dunce of the Silly Season Award" on Kevin Myers for an exceptional piece of mind-boggling baloney in his Irishman's Diary last Thursday, in which he exhibited extraordinary ignorance of not only French revolutionary history, but also of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
The award-citation, appropriately embossed in funereal black, notes that Myers's mentors at UCD, the late Robert Dudley Edwards and Desmond Williams, are weeping in their graves at his misuse of history in the churlish pursuit of an unworthy vendetta against summer schools, notably the Humbert.
In a catalogue of historical whoppers perpetrated by Myers in his breathlessly bile prose, the citation also wonders what General Humbert, 1767-1823, ever did to upset the tranquillity of poor Kevin. Clearly, his fevered mind was distraught by his morbid meditations on the effects of the guillotine on a brass-neck such as his own.
He need not worry: he has shot himself in both feet.
Before correcting Myers's many woeful historical inaccuracies, the citation highlights his deficient comprehension of the geography of Ireland. "The Humbert School appreciates that the intrepid scribe from Leicester has recently set foot outside of the Pale to take up residence in a Carlow chateau," the citation says. But he must venture further afield if he is to discover that Humbert never met "the bog-peasants" of Connemara: it was in Co Mayo, not Galway, that he landed in August 1798.
After assuring Myers that for 18 years the Humbert School has paid serious scholarly attention to the Vosgien's remarkable life, the citation dismisses his phantom charge that the one thing the Humbert School never does is discuss "the brutalaity (sic) of General Humbert himself".
As the founder-director of the Humbert School, I resent Myers's offensive and contemptible suggestion that it might be "just a little sick" to organise a school in honour of a man whom he mistakenly classifies as a mass-murderer.
His caricaturing of Humbert's military conduct in both the Vendée and Connemara (i.e. Mayo!) is devoid of familiarity with the historical sources which are amply documented in archives at Vincennes, and on which his two biographers, Jacques Baeyens and Marie-Louise Jacotey amply drew on.
If bould Kevin is unable to read these sources in the vernacular, he might consult English speaking authorities such as Prof Marianne Elliott's book, Partners in Revolution, and my two booklets, Humbert's Expedition - a Lost Cause? and Humbert - A French General in Rebel Ireland, 1798, both published by the Humbert School.
In three short sentences, Myers peddled pulp fiction in the guise of historical fact. Humbert, he wrote, "despised Catholics". Not so. The wrong man. He surely confuses Humbert with Theobald Wolfe Tone, who was anti-papist and anti-clerical. As was testified by Killala's Anglican Bishop, Joseph Stock, Humbert prevented sectarian outrage in moonlight Mayo, unlike General Lake's needless butchering of Catholics at Ballinamuck and General Trench's merciless savagery in Killala, which horrified the molly-coddled Protestant loyalists.
While a true believer in the French Revolution's idea of laicité, and a champion of its ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, Humbert, in the Vendée and Mayo, respected the faith in which he was nurtured as a boy in Remiremont with its connections with the Celtic missionary, Saint Columbanus. Like his mentor, the illustrious General Lazare Hoche, Humbert treated clergymen with courtesy. Humbert died a Catholic and was given the solemn rites of Mother Church by a priest at his funeral in New Orleans.
Humbert, Myers pontificates, "despised peasants". This is misinformed bunkum. Born a peasant, and a rabbit salesman before enlisting, Humbert encouraged his class to appreciate the new social opportunities provided by the Revolution. Humbert witnessed the abject state of the Mayo peasantry as being like France in the middle ages.
Most far-fetched of all is Myers's claim that Humbert's "campaign against the Catholic peasantry of the Vendée was a pioneering exercise in genocide in Europe". While it is tempting to reduce the complexities of the Vendée to a form of ethnic cleansing, as rash revisionists try, the reality is that it was a civil war between the republicans who were committed to the legacy of 1789 and the Vendéens who wished to remain attached to the lost Bourbon era of Crown and Altar.
Although Humbert was an important soldier in the Vendée, his commanding officer, General Hoche, was the important military personage. Hoche's policy was one of conciliation, not coercion. This outlook was shared by Humbert when he replaced the blood-thirsty Vachot. Humbert, unarmed and alone, risked his life by acting as a peace envoy with enemy leaders.
Kevin forgets that the Vendéen guerrillas were supplied by arms from the Court of King James, which unscrupulously incited atrocities, not unlike England's role in fomenting civil war in Ireland. Fierce messy.
To discuss the details, I invite Kevin to next year's Humbert School. I shall supply him with a reading list. He has a lot of homework to do to make the grade.