'For Faith and Fame and Honour':
The Irish Brigade in the Service of France
Part 1 of 5: The Worst Place in the World
By Joe Gannon
Hark! Yonder through the darkness one distant rat-tat-tat!
The old foe stirs out there, God bless his soul for that!
The old foe musters strongly, he’s coming on at last,
And Clare’s Brigade may claim its own wherever blows fall fast.
Send us, ye western breezes, our full, our rightful share,
For Faith, and Fame, and Honour, and the ruined hearths of Clare
-- "Fontenoy 1745" By Emily Lawless
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The Battle of Fontenoy 1828
- Horace Vernet
King Louis congratulating
the Brigade after Fontenoy. Click on image to see a larger view. |
On the
afternoon of May
11th, 1745 near the town of Fontenoy in what is today the country of
Belgium, 16,000 of the finest soldiers in the British and Hanoverian
armies stepped off
behind their commander, the Duke of Cumberland, to assault the center
of the French army of Louis XV. Several assaults against other sections
of the line by the British and their Dutch allies had already failed.
The day appeared lost, but Cumberland, like Robert E. Lee 118 years
later at Gettysburg, rolled the dice on a bold massed advance against
the enemy center.
Moving forward courageously through a withering
fire, Cumberland's men
soon reached the French position and appeared ready to sweep the center
of the line away. His audacious gamble was on the verge of success. At
this climactic juncture, the French sent in their last reserves in a
furious attempt to save the day. As Frenchmen attacked them from the
left
'Cumhnigh ar Luimneach agus ar feall na
Sassanach!'
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and front, the British observed another formation advancing on their
right flank in uniforms as red as their own. They came forward with
bagpipes and fifes playing the Jacobite anthem, "The White Cockade,"
and voices raised in a battle cry in one of the most ancient languages
of Europe: "Cuimhnigidh ar Luimneach agus ar feall na Sassanach!!"
(Remember Limerick and Saxon treachery!)
These red-coated soldiers were mostly Irishmen and
Frenchmen of Irish
ancestry. This was the Irish Brigade in the Service of France, and they
were about to exact a measure of retribution against the forces of the
nation they saw as the oppressors of their people. Never stopping to
fire, they crashed into the British right flank. It was the close-in
fighting at which the Irish were said to excel, with bayonet, clubbed
musket or simply bare hands. A French historian said that in 10
minutes it was over, the British driven off. But who were these
Irishmen fighting in a French army while wearing the
same colors as the British, and why were they there?
 |
From an engraving by Jean
Sorieul
Uniforms
of the Irish Brigade of France. Red coats were worn throughout the
Brigade's history, signifying their support for the Stuart claim to the
English crown. |
In the history of Ireland, the hundred-year period after the broken
Treaty of Limerick in 1691 was a dismal era for the vast
majority of the population. With the imposition of the Penal Laws
in the aftermath of Williamite War, it was said that the worst place in
the world to be an Irishman -- if one were also
a Catholic -- was Ireland itself.
If there was one institution in the world which
the Irish could look to
during that "dark age" for affirmation that the Irish were the equals
of other nationalities in Europe, it was the Irish Brigade in the
Service of France. In addition to giving many Irishmen an outlet for
their talents at a time when there was virtually none in the land of
their birth, the Brigade provided hope to those destitute masses back
in
Ireland. As long as it existed, there remained the possibility
that one day the flags of Dillon's regiment and the rest might fly in
Dublin and the Irish would "have our own again." Though today many in
Ireland
still know the name and accomplishments of the Irish Brigade, there
seem to be very few in the Irish Diaspora familiar with their legacy.
That is
unfortunate, as the hope they gave the Irish played an important role
in sustaining them as a people then.
 |
Viscount Mountcashel,
Justin McCarthy
|
The origins of the Brigade lie in a trade of French
soldiers for Irish made in 1690. France's King Louis XIV knew it was in
his interests to assist the Catholic King James II of England in his
struggle for the crown with William of Orange, then being contested in
Ireland. Louis thus agreed to send 6,000 of his well-trained French
regulars to James in Ireland, but he was in dire need of men in his own
struggle with William on the continent. In return, Louis received
slightly over 5,000 raw Irish recruits under the command of Viscount
Mountcashel, Justin McCarthy. Ireland got the best of the trade in
1690, but it would be a wonderful bargain for France in the years to
come.
These Irish troops were eventually organized into
three
regiments, known by the names of the colonels commanding:
Mountcashel's; O'Brien's, commanded by Daniel O'Brien; and Dillon's,
commanded by Arthur Dillon. While the names of the various Irish
regiments in France would change over the next century with changes in
command, Dillon's regiment would remain at least nominally under the
command of a Dillon for its entire 100 years of service, and thus
retain that name for a full century.
After the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691,
perhaps as
many as 19,000 more Irish troops followed Patrick Sarsfield into exile
on the continent. This event would come to be known in Irish history as
the "Flight of The Wild Geese." While Mountcashel's three regiments
remained in the French army, these new troops were organized into an
army under the control of King James.
Given that William of Orange was then the nemesis
of both Louis and
James, the effect of this split allegiance was slight in the field. It
did have one long-term effect, however. The Brigade would wear red
coats for the next 100 years as a sign of this fealty to the
Gaelic house of Stuart, and to that family's claim to the English and
Scottish thrones.
More Irish followed Sarsfield's men, bringing
the total number in this embryonic Irish Brigade to perhaps 30,000. The
stifling nature of the anti-Catholic Penal Laws that would shortly
descend on Ireland following the breaking of the
Treaty of Limerick (the origin of the Brigade's battle cry later at
Fontenoy) would ensure that the Brigade would remain supplied with the
cream of Ireland's sons for generations to come.
 |
National Museum of Ireland
The flag of Dillon's
Regiment, Irish Brigade of France. |
The Irish fought well for the French for the rest of
the war against William of Orange, at battles such as Landen in 1693,
where Patrick Sarsfield was mortally wounded, and whose final word were
reputed to have been
"Would it were for Ireland." At Marsaglia, their counterattack
on Prince Eugene was credited with winning the battle. But in 1698,
after war with William was concluded by the Treaty of Ryswick, most of
the Irish regiments in France were disbanded by Louis XIV.
It was a hard period for those Irish officers and
men who were put out
of the French army. They had been branded traitors by the English, and
thus
could not return to Ireland. Some traveled to other European nations
and offered their services, some turned to robbery, becoming highwaymen
in the French countryside.
But the peace that had come to Europe was very
short-lived. By 1701,
Europe was at war again. King Charles II of Spain died, and Louis XIV
pressed the cause of Philip of Anjou for the Spanish crown, while the
Austrians countered that Archduke Charles of Hapsburg, son of
Emperor Leopold I, was the legitimate heir. Backed by England, Holland,
and Prussia, the Austrians were soon at war with France, and Louis
XIV had need of his stalwart Irishmen again.
Part 2: 'Who Stood the Victors Crowned"
Related Resources:
Bibliography:
- Bartlett, Thomas and Jeffery, Keith, Eds.: A
Military History of Ireland, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Bredin, A.E.C.: A
History of the Irish Soldier, Century Books, 1987
- Hayes, Richard, Biographical Dictionary of
Irishmen in France, M.H. Gill and Son, LTD., 1949.
- Hayes, Richard.: "Irish Casualties in the
French Military
Service" The Irish Sword: Journal of the Military History Society of
Ireland Volume I, No. 3, 1951-52, pp. 198-201.
- Hayes, Richard: "Irish Swordsmen of France," M.
H. Gill and Sons, Ltd., 1934.
- Hayes, Richard: "Old Irish Links with France,"
M. H. Gill and Sons, LTD., 1940.
- Hennessy, Maurice: The
Wild Geese: The Irish Soldier in Exile," The Devin-Adair Co.,
1973.
- Lawless, Emily, With
The Wild Geese," W. Isbister & Co. Ltd., 1902.
- McLaughlin, Mark, "The
Wild Geese: the Irish Brigades of France and Spain," Osprey
Publishing Ltd., 1980.
- Mullen, Thomas J., "The Ranks of Death,
Unpublished manuscript.
- Murphy, John A., "Justin MacCarthy, Lord
Mountcashel," Royal Eóghancht Society Publications, 1999.
- Murphy, W.S., "The Irish Brigade at the Siege
of Savannah,
1779," The Georgia Historical Society Quarterly Volume XXXVIII, No. 4,
December 1954, pp 307-321.
- O'Callaghan, John, "History
of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France," R&T
Washbourne, Ltd., 1890.
- O'Connell, Mary Anne Bianconi, "The
Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade: Count O'Connell and Old Irish Life
at Home and Abroad 1745-1833," K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co.,"
1892.
- The O'Doneven, Lt. Col.: "Coote and Lally: Two
Irish Personalities at War," The Irish Sword: Journal of the Military History
Society of Ireland, Volume VII, No. 28, 1966,
pp. 231-233.
- Petrie, Sir Charles, "The Irish Brigade at
Fontenoy," The
Irish Sword: Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland,
Volume
I, No. 3, 1951-52, pp 166-172.
More on The Wild Geese in
Europe's Wars
This feature was edited by
Liam Murphy and Gerry
Regan.
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