On this day in 1794, William Bulkeley from Clonmel, who served the Royalist cause during the French Revolution, was sentenced to death by the revolutionary government during the 'Reign of Terror' and guillotined the same day.
William Bulkeley was born in Clonmel on 7 December 1768. He joined Walsh’s Regiment of the Irish Brigade of the French Royal Army in 1785 when he was 19. His uncle Richard Butler had been a colonel of that corps. By 1790, he was a lieutenant and married to Celeste-Marie de la Cartrie, a wealthy widow. However, soon after the Revolution broke out, he resigned from the army and retired to his wife’s chateau at La Roche-sur-Yon in western France.
By the spring of 1793, a pro-Royalist and Catholic insurrection broke out in the province of La Vendee, where La Roche-sur-Yon was situated. Bulkeley joined this counter revolution and was appointed Commandant of his own district.
However, by the end of the year the royalists were defeated and Bulkeley and his wife, who fought at his side, were captured. They were sentenced to death by the Angers military tribunal and William Bulkeley was guillotined on 2 January 1794. Madame Bulkeley’s execution was postponed as she was pregnant. She would later be released.
Describing the execution of Bulkeley in a letter to the Mayor of Paris, the Mayor of Angers said Bulkeley “was a man of splendid physique of six feet whose head was too large [for the guillotine]; it is now in the sack.” Dr. Richard Hayes, historian and T.D said of Bulkeley: ‘while of gentle disposition, he was a gallant soldier.’
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France, Part II, Dr. Richard Hayes, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 31, No. 122 (Jun., 1942), p.237.
