Everyone knows that you shouldn’t invade Russia in the winter season. It’s also true that you can’t invade Afghanistan at all. The British Empire failed twice, the Soviet Empire failed, and the American Empire had failed but refuses to admit it. I’ll add another military maxim to that. Don’t try to invade the British Isles in sailboats. It hasn’t worked since 1066. The weather will get you if the British Navy doesn’t. There’s a statue in Bantry to the last guy who tried…

… but this is all that is left of the invasion fleet.

Wolfe Tone is credited as one of the founders of the Irish independence movement. Actually Wolfe was his middle name, but is sounds much better for a freedom fighter to be called Wolfe than Theobald, which is what is friends called him. He was born a member of the protestant ruling class in Ireland, but sided with the oppressed catholics. This was during the Napoleonic Wars, so he joined the French military, and persuaded the French to launch an invasion to ‘liberate’ Ireland. I put ‘liberate’ in inverted commas, because the idea that if he defeated the English in Ireland, Napoleon’s army would pack up and go home rather than adding Ireland to his empire is a bit silly. Doublethink is nothing new, though. Countries that were conquered by Napoleon minted coins celebrating Napoleon the Liberator.

In December 1796 Tone was part of a French expedition of 43 ships and 14,000 men that attempted to invade Ireland, landing in Bantry Bay in the bottom left hand corner, you know, the bit where the coastline goes all squiggly. The French fleet was split up by storms. Twelve of the ships were sunk and thousands of the sailors were drowned, mostly due to storms, though the French ship Droits de l’Homme (“Rights of Man”) was wrecked by Royal Naval action. You can draw your own conclusions about the symbolism of that one. Not a single French soldier landed in Ireland other than as a prisoner of war.

Tone was later captured by the British, and committed suicide before he could be executed. It took more than a century before the Irish independence movement he helped to found finally and quite rightly succeeded. Due to arrogance and stupidity on both sides there was far too much suffering and bloodshed along the way.

Yesterday was a very full and fun day. Here are the highlights. A visit to Finn McCool’s Seat…

… exploring Bantry…

… pony trekking…

… stumbling upon a traditional music festival…

… climbing to Lady Bantry’s Lookout…

… and a fine meal in a local bistro featuring local seafood…

… and black pudding balls.