Note 213 — 1814.

The gentle Brennan, about whom an anecdote is told in a previous page, very reluctantly quitted the ramparts. Finding, that to save himself, retreat was inevitable, he turned his back on the fortress, and with a scowl, such only as an Irishman could make, growled out, “Bad luck to the whole ov yees!” With this mild curse, so unusual in a hot-headed, free-spoken Milesian, he scampered down the ladder, escaped without wound or touch, and finally halted, still breathing the anathema, “Bad luck to the whole ov yees!” The incident is only remarkable for its freedom from those horrible epithets and curses so common in Irish execrations. Brennan was applauded for his bravery at the storming by Captain Robert Thomson, and his subsequent exertions and constancy in the restoration of the defences of Antwerp and Ypres, where he had large parties of Hanoverian troops and Dutch peasants under his superintendence, led to his promotion first to lance-corporal and then to corporal.