Paul Malpas

I live in a really beautiful part of Ireland, in Boyle in north County Roscommon.  Our house is so close to the Boyle River that from a distance it looks as though the river runs through our front room and in fact it often tries to do.  Down the river a few hundred yards, the waters spill out into historic Loch Ce, a lake of christian pilgrimage for a thousand years.  The Premonstratensian, Augustinian and Franciscan monks all built abbeys on its shores and islands following on from St. Columcille’s monks who built a monastery on Church Island and a church at Drum on the river, at the side of our house in the 7th century.  The lake is six miles long and 4 miles wide and dotted so they say with as many islands as there are counties in Ireland.

Sail to the northern end of the lake and take the road through the village of Corrigeenroe (Little Red Rock) and you are taken along the eastern side of Lough Arrow which is just over the Sligo border.  You are in the ancient Barony of Tirreril, the Land of the McDonaghs, an ancient royal clan that owed allegiance to the McDermots, who were the royal chieftains of this area since the 10th century.  In Tirreril lived the O’Higgins family, a highly thought of family with big estates and a history going back to the O’Neills in the 6th century.  The O’Higgins were liked by all the local big-wigs, the McDermots, the O’Rourkes, the O’Garas and the McDonaghs for their poetry and their intellect.

It was here in 1720, on the shores of Lough Arrow, Ambrose O’Higgins was born in much reduced circumstances because of the Cromwellian persecution and later Jacobite/Williamite upheaval.  It was the time of the Penal Laws, when Catholics were disarmed, stripped of land and reduced to the level of servants.  They were disenfranchised, forbidden to marry Protestants,  join the Army or receive a decent education.  It was a time when most gifted and doughty men left Ireland and filled the ranks of the military and civil service in all the countries in Europe.  They called it the Flight of the Wild Geese.

The O’Higgins family became tenant farmers for the Rowley family in Meath after their land was eventually all taken off them.  In about 1750, aged 30, Ambrose took the plunge and ended up in Cadiz in Spain where he worked for the powerful Irish/Spanish merchant family of Butler.  After some few years in Cadiz, Ambrose decided to seek his fortune in South America.  He worked in Venezuela, Peru and Argentina before getting his big chance.  He worked out a route from Mendoza, in western Argentina, over the Andes into Chile, thus joining up two Spanish colonies that previously had had little contact for most of the year other than by sailing round the Horn.  This route worked and for the first time ever the two colonies could remain in contact all year long.  By now he was enlisted in the Spanish Imperial Service and besides developing this route, he was asked to stay in Chile by the Spanish authorities and join the Army, which he did and sucessfully put down an Indian uprising, humanely and not cruelly, for which he was thanked by both sides and eventually he was upgraded to the position of Governor of Concepcion in 1786.

In 1788 king Charles III of Spain made him Baron of Ballinar for his services to the colonies.  He soon became leader of the Spanish Army and eventually Governor of Chile.  He entered on a programme of road building and rebuilding of ancient towns.  For this service the new king Charles IV made him the Marquis of Osomo in 1796 at the age of 76 and appointed him Viceroy of Peru, the land of which covered present day Peru, Chile, Bolivia, north west Argentina and western Brazil.  It was the most powerful position in Spanish America and he died suddenly from overwork in 1801 at the age of 81.

In 1777 Ambrose at the age of 57 fell in love with an 18 year old girl, Isabel Riquelme, of a powerful mixed race family.  In accordance with society’s rules at the time, he was not allowed to marry her at the risk of losing his hard won position but in 1778 Isabel bore him a son, Bernardo.  Ambrose never met this boy and never ever recognised him but he provided the money to bring him up and pay for his education in London.  It was here, at the age of 18, influenced by South American independence seeking  politicos, did Bernardo start to put his thoughts together towards an independent Chile, free of Spanish rule.  After a short time in Spain he returned to Chile in 1802 and started farming a large piece of land willed to him by his father.  In 1806 he entered the Chilean Parliament.

The Independence thinkers were helped considerably by events in Europe, Napoleon of France took control of Spain in 1808 and whilst he was involved in his European campaigns the Spanish/Chilean ruling class formed their own government, ruling the couintry in the name of Napoleon’s captive king, Ferdinand VII and Bernardo was elected deputy in the first National Congress of Chile in 1811.

After Napoleon started to lose his power in Spain after Wellington and Nelson had given him a bloody nose, the Spanish imperial forces invaded Chile to regain control of the country  but Bernardo defeated them at Linares.  In October of that year he effectively took command of the Chilean Army and defeated the Spanish forces again at El Roble with the famous cry of “Lads!  Live with honour, or die with glory!  He who is brave follow me”  However at a later battle at Rancagua, the Chilean forces were soundly beaten and Bernardo was lucky to escape with his life, scurrying into Argentina.  He returned to Chile in 1817 and defeated the royalist forces at Chacabuco.  Bernardo became Supreme Director of the newly independent Chile in 1818.  He founded the Chilean Navy but after five years with the cost of arming the new country it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy only saved by a £1 million pound loan from England but by then he had run foul of the country’s opposition party and in 1823 at the age opf 45 he was deposed.

He left Chile, never to return, in a British naval vessel intending on returning to Ireland but he met up with Simon Bolivar in Peru and joined him in his successful fight for independence and then went into retirement for the next 20 years.  By 1842 the tide of public opinion had turned towards him in Chile and he was invited back and given back his old rank of Captain General of the Army but on his journey back he suffered a heart attack and was buried in Lima in Peru.

His remains were exhumed in 1869 and brought back to Chile and he lay in a marble coffin in Santiago whilst it was decided where he should be buried.  He had wanted Concepcion but the Chilean people wanted Santiago.  It was not until General Pinochet finally put him down in 1974 in Santiago was the argument decided.  Wherever you go today in Chile, Bernardo’s name shouts out from street names and statues, districts and docks.  He is their Deliverer.

Not bad for two men from Tirreril whose countryside was bypassed by the 20th century.  Even today there isn’t much change from the countryside Ambrose knew.  It is a quaint, quiet backwater but full of more history than most parts of Ireland.  So this evening as you settle by your fire in your favourite armchair, lift your glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon or even better, Carmenere, because without these two boys you might not now feel so smug.  Do not forget that the South American vines saved the European wine industry in the late 19th century when an outbreak of phylloxera nearly killed every vine on the Continent.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ambrose and Bernard!