Note 417 — Chapter XIII · THOMAS COLLINS. PHILLIPS THE SACERDOTAL SPY

In December 1796 Tone accompanied the French fleet to Bantry Bay. Mr. Froude and other historians think that it was Grouchy who failed to attempt a landing. 'Then, as twenty years later, on another occasion, no less critical,' he writes, meaning Waterloo, 'Grouchy was the good genius of the British Empire' (iii. 205). In point of fact, Grouchy was not at Bantry. M. Guillon, in France et Irlande, written with full access to the papers of the French Admiralty, makes it clear that Bouvet, and not Grouchy, was the man who ought to have been named.