French Toast – Frank McNally on a weekend of drama in Mayo

In a year when RTÉ's best home-produced drama output has been at meetings of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee, a rare re-run of the 1982 series The Year of the French on Saturday felt doubly nostalgic.

Unseen for decades because of rights complications, the six-part saga was edited down to a two-hour special screening in Ballina, to mark the 225th anniversary of the events that inspired it.

The editing meant some unavoidable jumps in story line, such as when the Franco-Irish triumph of the “Castlebar Races” is followed immediately by despondency and a sense of siege.

But the series had aged surprisingly well, with the possible exception of a sex-scene in which, as was standard in 1980s Ireland, the participants kept their clothes on in bed.

Blowing a Gaskin – Frank McNally on gasconades, gasúns, and Ireland’s Bay of Naples

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In the long run – Alison Healy on the bizarre Olympic marathon of 1904

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Valour invalidated – Frank McNally on a mysterious Irish anti-hero: the “Great Gaiscí”

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Frank McNally on royal typos, Tennyson’s Tories, and the mystery of ‘Operation Sonnet’

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Other things haven’t changed much, since 1982 or even 1798. In a scene where members of Mayo’s Catholic gentry attempt to recruit a militant tenant leader to the cause of liberty, he wonders cynically what freedom they can win that – as landlords and lawyers – they don’t have already.

When they mention plans to overthrow the government in Dublin, he responds with genuine puzzlement: “What’s Dublin to a Mayoman?”

This year also marks the bicentenary of the death of the actual chief protagonist in the Year of the French, General Jean Joseph Humbert (1767–1823), who landed with about 1,000 troops at Kilcummin, near Killala, on August 22nd, 1798.

A mere diversion in Napoleon’s greater game, Humbert’s tiny force did remarkably well for a fortnight, winning victories at Castlebar and Collooney and establishing a Republic of Connacht before being overwhelmed by a vastly bigger British army in Longford.

The enduring fame of the Kilcummin landing is attested to by several plaques there, including one commemorating an 1898 visit from Maud Gonne, which reads as if she carved it herself: “I came here today to stand on this historic spot in order to commemorate the landing of my countrymen here one hundred years ago.”

The plaque build-up has not yet reached the stage where it should worry dentists, but it’s heading that way. There was yet another added on Sunday morning, this time from the local Gráinne Uaile Sub Aqua club.

The event, which included military manoeuvres by local history re-enactors in period uniform and by a group of actual French naval recruits, passed off peacefully. Then again, the weekend’s violence was all scheduled for Sunday afternoon, when the French and their Irish pikemen allies faced off against the English in central Ballina.

Shots were fired, pikemen sprawled on wet streets, and there was some viciously good-humoured hand-to-hand fighting. The re-enactors were in most respects faithful to historic detail, although I heard one rebel taunt a Redcoat with the result – then just in – of the Women’s World Cup final, in which Spain beat England.

As international tensions rose beneath him, US president Joe Biden looked on benignly from a mural on the town square. A bit confusingly for tourists, the latest Year of the French commemoration saw the town bedecked with American flags, left over from the Biden visit in April.

But Mayo did not need US intervention here. The Ballina reenactment was based loosely on the Battle of Castlebar, and so ended with the Redcoats on the run, while promising “We’ll meet again”.

As historian Ruan O’Donnell told us in a lecture later, the English were in general “no match” for the French revolutionary armies back then.

Humbert made the most of his small force by unorthodox tactics including night marches, surprise changes of direction, and a new, more mobile kind of warfare, until massively outnumbered at the end.

Although he survived Ireland – the British treated the French as fellow gentlemen, reserving most of their vengeance for the natives – Humbert’s military career did not subsequently thrive.

He was too much of a republican for Napoleon’s taste. A rumoured affair with Pauline Bonaparte – married sister of the emperor – probably didn’t help. He later emigrated to New Orleans and fought against Britain there too before spending the last years of his life as a schoolteacher.

The focus of the 225th anniversary commemorations now moves to 1798′s sombre denouement, at Ballinamuck. A four-day festival is planned there, from September 7th to 10th (see battleofballinamuck.ie), including a large-scale re-enactment with more than 200 uniformed participants.

The result of the mock battle should be a foregone conclusion. But in the pubs of Ballina on Sunday night, among the grizzled veteran re-enactors of Enniscorthy and elsewhere, there was growing optimism that this time, it might end differently.