Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/197

Rh a general in the French army, Ward was arrested in October 1793, with all the British subjects, as a hostage for Toulon. Robert Plumer Ward, the author of "Tremaine," relates a singular story of his being arrested by mistake for General Ward. Plumer Ward had gone to Barèges for rheumatism, and had been visiting at various country houses. He was arrested, he says, "for having the same name and the same coloured waistcoat as another Ward, guilty of treason, was ordered without trial to Paris to be guillotined, and only escaped by their catching the real traitor. I was, however, banished the Republic merely for my name's sake." It is not easy to reconcile this story with the fact that Thomas was at least twenty years older than Robert, and that Englishmen were not banished but detained. Ward was condemned for the pretended prison plot at the Carmelites, and was executed on the 23rd July 1794. His servant, John Malone, born at Limerick in 1765, shared his fate. Five days more, and Robespierre's fall would have saved them. General James Ferdinand O'Moran had been guillotined four months previously. He was a native of Elphin, Ireland, and was fifty-six years of age. He was arrested in his camp at Cassel in Flanders, on a charge of designing to betray the army to the enemy. It was alleged that he had refused to advance on Furnes, pleading that the Austrians were in superior force, whereas he knew