October 17th, 1798: Another French attempt to invade Ireland is thwarted on the 12th when vessels which put to sea from Brest with 2,300 men are checked by Rear Admiral John Borlase Warren's warships. On board the Hoche, flagship of French Commodore Jean Baptiste Bompard, is army commander Gen Jean Hardy and Wolfe Tone, the senior emissary of the United Irish movement.
Bompard's 74-gun man-of-war Hoche, eight frigates and a schooner are shadowed from the French coast by the British frigates of Baron Bridport's powerful squadron and brought to battle by Warren's superior force off the coast of Donegal.
Outgunned by the firepower of Warren's Canada, Robust, Foudroyant, Magnanime, Ethallon, Melampus, Amelia and later, the Anson, the French offer stubborn resistance in which they sustain considerable damage and over 200 casualties. Tone, slighted by the Freeman's Journal as "the famous Constitution monger", rejects an offer to escape to France on the swift Biche and fights ably on the Hoche until the dismasted flagship surrenders. Details of this "well fought action", and the subsequent pursuit of the few still seaworthy French frigates, are recorded by an officer on the Canada. He claims a total rout is prevented only by the fall of darkness and the diversion of British ships to blockade and guard trapped French vessels.
Much of the action is visible from the shore and a Letterkenny man observes that "about three o'clock, a sea fight began, and continued with unabated fury to 11, when there was a letter sent from shore near the fight to Letterkenny, mentioning that it was changed to a running fight towards Tory Island. The number of ships is about 16. It is a terrible fight, and every gun heard in Letterkenny, it being market day, cloth and yarn notwithstanding are selling as high as if there was no fight. This instant, it is said, in Derry, that the French are taken. I believe if the French had landed they would have got none to join them." A Castle bulletin issued on the 15th and carried by Hibernian Tele- graph reports that around 60 French soldiers attempted to disembark from a "corvette" until "prevented by the Mt Charles yeomanry . . . the possibility of an invasion is at an end".
Henry Grattan, said to be contemplating a new life in Russia, has his portrait taken down in Trinity College Dublin. He is also disenfranchised by the Dublin Guild of Merchants on the 15th, along with United Irish leaders Napper Tandy, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Henry Jackson, Richard Dillon and Thomas Braughall. Their disgrace is counterpointed by the granting of the Freedom of the Guild to yeomanry captains William Hoare Hume, John Giffard and Cottingham.
Corkman Edward Roche of Trabolgan is driven to publish a notice in the Dublin Evening Post on the 15th repudiating a "species of mock proclamation, signed T. J. Fitzgerald, Sheriff, which was posted in various parts of the county Tipperary, and also sent to Cork for publication". Roche is aggrieved by Fitzgerald's insistence that his brother Edmund headed the Irish rebels who joined Humbert and counters "the court acquitted my brother, and his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant approved of the decision". Admiral Warren writes from the Canada in Lough Swilly on the 16th to inform Chief Secretary Castlereagh of the roundup of damaged French ships in the aftermath of the battle four days earlier. Earl Cavan reports that the Melampus has brought yet another ship to Lough Swilly and it is believed that only two frigates and the schooner have escaped.