Irishmen in the British, French and
Spanish armies
Above, 'Battle of Fontenoy' 1745, Irish soldiers are seen displaying
captured British standards.
The career of General Ross is remarkable for the light it sheds on
the Irish military tradition and the manner in which the Irish
Diaspora was in some sense framed by it. On the continent, during
the Peninsular War, Ross both fought with and against Irishmen or
men of Irish descent. Prominent in the Spanish Army, allies of the
British, was General O’Donnell. In the long-standing tradition of
the Wild Geese, Napoleon’s army included an Irish Brigade owing to
the outstanding reputation of Irish soldiers in French service, not
least at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, ‘regarded as the greatest
of Irish battle honours’.[1]
At Fontenoy, ‘the
Irish Brigade,
composed of the regiments of Clare, Lally, Dillon, Berwick, Ruth and
Bulkeley, as well as Fitz-James' horse, had joined the French army
after the British tore up the
treaty of
Limerick and effected the
penal laws.
They showed particular bravery in the battle, a sergeant of Bulkeley
capturing an English flag, a colour from the Coldstream Guards,
driving the British army from the field with the battle-cry,
Cuimhnidh ar Luimneach agus ar feall na Sasanach!. Their role in
this battle was commemorated on its 250th anniversary by
the issue of a common design stamp by the Irish and Belgian post
offices. A later battle cry, "Remember Fontenoy!" was used by
69th New York
and the
Irish Brigade
during the
American Civil
War’.[2]
Ian Delahanty of Boston College has detailed how 'I've found that
Irish-American leaders (many of whom went on to serve as officers in
the Union Army) before the Civil War were obsessed with the story of
the Wild Geese and maintaining an Irish military tradition in
America. Recruitment posters or advertisements would include phrases
like "Remember Fontenoy," and I know of at least a couple
of widely-read Irish immigrant newspapers that ran both fictionalized
and non-fiction stories of the Irish Brigade in France. These
papers, like the Boston Pilot and New York Irish-American, were
hugely influential at the time of the Civil War, and they used the
Irish military tradition in America (whether in the Mexican American
War, War of 1812, or especially the Revolution) as a way to rally
Irish immigrants to the Union'. The most famous of these US Civil
War regiments was the New York based 'Fighting 69th' with its battlecry of "Faugh a Ballagh;"
which is the Gaelic for "Clear the Way."
Interestingly, to this very day the Royal Irish Regiment in the
British Army uses the
same battlecry , "Faugh a Ballagh".
As
for
Napoleon’s Irish Brigade, it saw service in the Walcheren campaign in
Holland in 1809 where Robert Ross served with the XXth
Regiment. When the Napoleonic wars concluded with Waterloo part of
the price of defeat was a British insistence that the Irish Brigade
should never be resurrected in the service of France.
Primarily, though, by the early nineteenth century, the degree to
which Irishmen contributed leadership and manpower to the British
Army was truly remarkable. Figures for 1830 show that at a time
when Ireland constituted 32% of the population of the UK, Irishmen
accounted for 42% of the British army – ‘there were more Irishmen
than Englishmen in the British army’.[3]
Irishmen commanded at the very highest levels, not least Lowry Cole
who memorably commanded the 4th Division during the
Peninsular War in which Ross served. And of course the Iron Duke,
Wellington, was an Irishman - and a childhood playmate of Ross.
Above:
The Duke of Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park, Dublin. Note the
similarity to the Ross Monument in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern
Ireland.
For some contemporaries in Britain, the sense of loss when Ross was
killed at a relatively young age at North Point near Baltimore in
1814 was amplified by the reckoning that he was destined to become a
‘second Wellington’. Ross cut his teeth commanding the XXth
Regiment, earning battlefield laurels at Maida in southern Italy in
1806 and later during the ‘Retreat to Corunna’ in 1808 when the XXth
distinguished itself in the rearguard. Among its number were many
Irishmen, including large numbers who were recruited after disease
devastated its ranks during the Walcheren campaign, even though it
had not fired a shot in anger. The so-called ‘Waterloo priest’ was
among their number. And when Ross led his small army against
Washington in 1814, his four regiments were commanded by Irishmen:
Colonels Patterson, Thornton and the Brooke brothers (ancestors of
Viscount Alanbrooke), Francis and Arthur. (There is no evidence
though that Francis Brooke was part of the expedition to the
Chesapeake under General Ross. The 4th Regiment of Foot at
Bladensburg and North Point was commanded by Major Alured Dodsworth
Faunce, whose mother Bridget was the daughter of Mr E. Nugent of
Dublin).
[1]
Harman Murtagh, ‘Irish soldiers abroad, 1600-1800’, in Thomas
Bartlett and Keith Jeffrey eds,
A Military History of Ireland
(Cambridge, 1996), p.299.
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fontenoy
[3]
E.M.Spiers, ‘Army organisation and society in the nineteenth
century’ in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffrey eds, A Military
History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp 335-7.
