Part 17

The Irish were the fighting race now if ever. Without hope of outside assistance, facing a foe ever reinforced from a stronger, richer, more fully organized country, nothing but their stubborn character and their fighting genius kept them in the field. And century out and century in, they stayed, holding back the foreign foe four hundred years. It is worthy of note that it was the Norman English, racial cousins, as it were, of the Norsemen, who first wrought at the English conquest of Ireland. When some of these were seated in Irish places of pride, when a Butler was made Earl of Ormond and a Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, it was soon seen that they were merging rapidly in the Irish mass, becoming, as it was said, "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Many were the individual heroic efforts to strike down the English power. Here and there small Irish chiefs accepted the English rule, offsetting the Norman Irish families who at times were "loyal" and at times "rebel." The state of war became continuous and internecine, but three-fourths of Ireland remained unconquered. The idea of a united Ireland against England had, however, been lost except in a few exalted and a few desperate breasts. A gleam of hope came in 1316, when, two years after the great defeat of England by the Scotch under Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, Edward, the victor-king's brother, came at the invitation of the northern Irish to Ireland with 6,000 Scots, landing near Carrickfergus. He was proclaimed king of Ireland by the Irish who joined him. Battle after battle was won by the allies. Edward was a brilliant soldier, lacking, however, the prudence of his great brother, Robert. The story of his two years of fighting, ravaging, and slaying, is hard at this distance to reconcile with intelligible strategy. In the end, in 1318, the gallant Scot fell in battle near Dundalk, losing at the same time two-thirds of his army. For two years Scot and Irish had fought victoriously side by side. That is the fact of moment that comes out of this dark period.

The following century, like that which had gone before, was full of fighting. In 1399, on Richard II.'s second visit to Ireland, he met fierce opposition from the Irish septs. MacMorrough, fighting, harassing the king's army from the shelter of the Wicklow woods, fairly drove the king to Dublin. The sanguinary "Wars of the Roses"--that thirty years' struggle for the crown of England between the royal houses of York and Lancaster, 1455 to 1485--gave Ireland a long opportunity, which, however, she was too weak to turn to advantage; but fighting between Irish and English went on just the same, now in one province, now in another.

In the reign of Henry VIII. a revolt against England started within the Pale itself, when Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, known as Silken Thomas, went before the Council in Dublin and publicly renounced his allegiance. He took the field--a brave, striking figure--in protest against the king's bad faith in dealing with his father, the Earl of Kildare. At one time it looked as if the rebellion (it was the first real Irish rebellion) would prosper. Lord Thomas made combinations with Irish chieftains in the north and west, and was victor in several engagements. He finally surrendered with assurances of pardon, but, as in many similar cases, was treacherously sent a prisoner to London, where he was executed.

Queen Mary's reign was one of comparative quiet in Ireland. Her policy towards the Catholics was held to be of good augury for Ireland. The English garrison was reduced with impunity to 500 foot and a few horse: but another and darker day came with Elizabeth. Her coming to the throne, together with her fanatic devotion to the Reformation and an equal hatred of the old religion and all who clung to it, ushered in for Ireland two and a half centuries of almost unbroken misfortune. You cannot make people over. Some may take their opinions with their interest; others prefer to die rather than surrender theirs, and glory in the sacrifice. The proclamations of Elizabeth had no persuasion in them for the Irish. Her proscriptions were only another English sword at Ireland's throat. The disdain of the Irish maddened her. During her long reign one campaign after another was launched against them. Always fresh soldier hordes came pouring in under able commanders and marched forth from the Pale, generally to return shattered and worn down by constant harrying, sometimes utterly defeated with great slaughter. So of Henry Sidney's campaign, and so of the ill-fated Essex. Ulster, the stronghold of the O'Neills and the O'Donnells, remained unconquered down to the last years of Elizabeth's reign, although most of the greater battles were fought there. In Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and "Red" Hugh O'Donnell, prince of Tyrconnell, Ireland had two really great soldiers on her side. The bravery, generalship, prudence, and strategy of O'Neill were worthy of all praise, and Red Hugh fell little short of his great compatriot. In battle after battle for twenty years they defeated the English with slaughter. Ireland, if more and more devastated by campaigns and forays, became the grave of tens of thousands of English soldiers and scores of high reputations. Writing from Cork, the Earl of Essex, after a disastrous march through Leinster and Munster, says:

"I am confined in Cork ... but still I have been unsuccessful; my undertakings have been attended with misfortune.... The Irish are stronger and handle their arms with more skill than our people; they differ from us also in point of discipline. They likewise avoid pitched battles where order must be observed, and prefer skirmishes and petty warfare ... and are obstinately opposed to the English government."

They did not like attacking or defending fortified places, he also believed. It was only his experience. The campaigns of Shane O'Neill, a bold but ill-balanced warrior, were full of such attacks, but one potent cause for Irish reluctance to make sieges a strong point of their strategy was that the strongest fortresses were on the sea. An inexhaustible, powerful enemy who held the sea was not in the end to be denied on sea or land, but the Irish in stubborn despair or supreme indifference to fate fought on. Religious rancor was added to racial hate. Most of the English settlers, or "garrison," as they came to be called, had become Protestants at the royal order. Ruin perched upon Ireland's hills and made a wilderness of her fertile valleys. The Irish chieftains with their faithful followers moved from place to place in woods and hollows of the hills. English colonists were settled on confiscated lands, and were harried by those who had been driven from their homes. It was war among graves. At last O'Neill made composition with the government when all was lost in the field, but the passionate Irish resolve never to submit still stalked like a ghost, as if it could not perish.

When Elizabeth died it was thought that better things were coming to Ireland with James I., the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. Nothing of the kind. That curiously minded creature at once made an ingenuous proclamation:

"Whereas his Majesty was informed that his subjects of Ireland had been deceived by a false report that his Majesty was disposed to allow them liberty of conscience and the free choice of religion, now, etc." Fresh "transplanting" of English and Scotch settlers on the lands of the Irish was the gist of his answer to the "false reports." So again the war of surprise, ambush, raid, and foray went on in a hundred places at once, but the result was that the English power was even more firmly seated than before.

In the time of Charles I. there were terrible slaughters both of Protestants and Catholics. Patriotism and loyalty as moving causes had disappeared, but religion fiercely took their place. With Cromwell, the religious persecution took on an apocalyptic note of massacre, but the Irish were still showing that they were there with arms in their hands. The names of Owen Roe O'Neill and his splendid victory, in 1646, at Benburb over the English and Scotch, where he slew more than 3,000 men, and of another Hugh O'Neill, who made such a brilliant defense at Clonmel against Cromwell, shine brightly out of the darkness. But Ireland, parcelled out among the victors, was always the weaker after every campaign. Waves of war swept over her. She became mixed up in the rivalries of the English royal families, religion playing the most important part in the differences. It had armed Henry and Elizabeth, James and Charles against her. It gave edge to Cromwell's sword, and it led her into a great effort on behalf of James II. When William of Orange crossed the Boyne, all that followed for a century was symbolized. Athlone, Aughrim, Limerick, all places of great and fierce contests, were decided against her. French support of a kind had James, but not enough. Bravery and enthusiasm may win battles, but they do not carry through great campaigns. Once again God marched with the heaviest, best-fed, best-armed battalions. The great Tyrone dying in exile at Rome, Red Hugh O'Donnell perishing in Spain in the early days of the seventeenth century, were to prefigure the fighting and dying of half a million Irish warriors on continental soil for a hundred years after the fall of Limerick as the seventeenth century neared its close.

During that period the scattered bands of the Rapparees, half patriots, half robbers, hiding in mountain fastnesses, dispersing, reassembling, descending on the English estates for rapine or the killing of "objectionables," represented the only armed resistance of the Irish. It was generally futile although picturesque.

After the close of the Revolutionary War in America, Ireland received a new stimulation. The success of the patriots of the Irish parliament under Grattan, backed as they were by 100,000 volunteers and 130 pieces of cannon, in freeing Irish industry and commerce from their trammels, evoked the utmost malignity in England. Ireland almost at once sprang to prosperity, but it was destined to be short lived. A great conspiracy, which did not at first show above the surface, was set on foot to destroy the Irish parliament. This is not the place to follow the sinister machinations of the English, save to note that they forced both the Presbyterians and the Catholics of the north into preparations for revolt. The Society of United Irishmen was formed, and drew many of the brightest and most cultivated men in Ireland into its councils. It numbered over 70,000 adherents in Ulster alone. The government was alarmed, and began a systematic persecution of the peasantry all over Ireland. English regiments were put at "free quarters," that is, they forced themselves under order into the houses and cabins of the people with demands for bed and board. The hapless people were driven to fury. Brutal murders and barbarous tortures of men and women by the soldiers, savage revenges by the peasantry, and every form of violent crime all at once prevailed in the lately peaceful valleys. Prosecutions of United Irishmen and executions were many. It was all done deliberately to provoke revolt. In 1798 the revolt came. In the greater part of Ulster and Munster the uprising failed, but a great insurrection of the peasantry of Wexford shocked the country. Poorly armed, utterly undisciplined, without munitions of war, but 40,000 strong, they literally flung themselves pike in hand on the English regiments, sweeping everything before them for a time. Father John Murphy, a priest and patriot, was one of their leaders, but Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey was soon their commander-in-chief. At one time the "rebels" dominated the entire county save for a fort in the harbor and a small town or two, but it was natural that the commissariat should soon be in difficulties and their ammunition give out. The British general, Lake, with an army of 20,000 men and a moving column of 13,000, attacked the rebels on Vinegar Hill, and although the fight was heroic and bloody while it lasted, it was soon over and the British army was victorious. The rest was retreat, dispersal, and widespread cruelties and burnings and a long succession of murders. The "Boys of Wexford" funder great difficulties had given a great account of themselves. Dark as was that page of history, it has been a glowing lamp to Irish disaffection ever since. It is the soul of the effort that counts, and the disasters do not discredit '98 in Irish eyes.

Voltaire, in his Century of Louis XIV., made his reflection on the Irish soldier out of his limited knowledge of the Williamite war in Ireland. He says, "The Irish, whom we have seen such good soldiers in France and Spain, have always fought poorly at home"! They had not fought poorly at home. It took four hundred years of English effort to complete, merely on its face, the conquest of Ireland, and all of that long sweep of the sword of Time was a time of battle. The Irish were fought with every appliance of war, backed by the riches of a prospering, strongly organized country, and impelled persistently by the greed of land and love of mastery; but there was not a mountain pass in Ireland, not a square mile of plain, not a river-ford, scarce a hill that had not been piled high with English dead in that four hundred years at the hands of the Irish wielders of sword and spear and pike.

The Irish had not made their environment or their natures, and no power on earth could change them. Over greater England had swept the Romans, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Angles, the Norsemen, and the Normans. All found lodgment and all went to the making of England. Well, one might say, it had been for Ireland if she had developed that assimilating power which made her successive conquerors in process of time the feeders of her greatness, but the Irish would not and could not. Instead, they developed the pride of race that no momentary defeat could down. They became inured to battle and dreamt of battle when the peace of an hour was given them. When the four kings of Ireland were feasted in Dublin by King Richard II. of England, an English chronicler remarked, "Never were men of ruder manners"; but neither the silken array and golden glitter of Richard's peripatetic court nor the brave display of his thousand knights and thirty thousand archers filled them with longing for the one or fear of the other. They went back to their Irish hills and plains and fastnesses as obstinately Irish as ever.

They fought well at home, if unfortunately, the wonder being that they continued to fight. The heavens and the earth seemed combined against them.

II.--THE FIGHTING RACE ABROAD.

We next see Irish soldiers fighting abroad. The blood they had shed so freely for the Stuarts at the Boyne, at Athlone, at Aughrim, at Limerick was in vain. The king of France, if he sent armies to Ireland, demanded Irish troops in return. The transports that brought the French regiments over in May, 1690, took back over five thousand officers and men from Ireland, who formed the first Irish Brigade in the service of France. This, remember, was before the battle of the Boyne. The men were formed on their arrival in France into three regiments, those of Mountcashel, O'Brien, and Dillon, named after their commanders, and were sent to Savoy. The French aid to James in Ireland helped best in giving confidence to the raw Irish levies, but it was more than offset by the German troops brought over by William. The weakness, indecision, or worse, of James before Derry, his chicken-hearted failure to overwhelm Schomberg when he lay at his mercy before the arrival of William, ruined his chances. Remember that the Irish army, if defeated at the Boyne, was not broken, and was strong enough, when pursued by William, to repulse him with 500 killed and 1,000 wounded and to compel him to raise the siege of Limerick. The dash and skill of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, backed by Irish desperation, won the day. The French troops sailed home after William's retreat. In the next year's campaign occurred the crowning disasters of the war, but in any other country or with any other people than the English the terms of capitulation at Limerick, which were formulated by Ginkel and showed a soldier's respect for a brave and still powerful foe, would have ushered in an era of peace.

The Irish soldiers' distrust of the conquerors was shown in the fact that, since the stipulations allowed the free departure of the garrison with honors of war, 19,059 officers and men took service with France, and sailed in October, 1691, on the French fleet, which by the irony of fate had arrived in the Shannon too late, on the very day after the signing of the treaty of Limerick. Never in the whole course of the history of nations has more hideous treachery been shown than in the immediate breaking of that treaty; and dearly has England paid for it ever since, although, for the hundred years that followed, Ireland sank to the very depths under the penal laws, with her trade ruined, her lands stolen, her religion persecuted, and all education and enlightenment forbidden by abominable, drastic laws.

If, as has been computed, 450,000 Irish fought and died in the service of France between 1690 and 1745, a further 30,000 are to be added down to 1793. A French writer estimates the whole Irish contingent at 750,000, but, for a roster of seekers of glory from an impoverished people, the more reasonable half-million should surely suffice.

Long would be the story to follow the fighting fortunes of the Irish Brigades. Officered by Irish gentlemen and drilled to perfection, they soon came to hold in the French service the esteem that later was given to Irish regiments in the service of England. King Louis welcomed them heartily and paid them a higher wage than his native soldiers. No duty was too arduous or too dangerous for the Irish Brigades. Seldom were they left to rust in idleness. Europe was a caldron of wars of high ambitions.

The Irish regiments fought through the war in Flanders. At Landen, July 29, 1693, the French under the duke of Luxembourg defeated the English under William III. with a slaughter of 10,473 men, losing 8,000 men themselves. In the retreat, Ginkel, William's general in the Irish campaign, was almost drowned in the river Greete. The Irish Royal Regiment of Footguards, that of Dorrington, was the first corps to break through the English intrenchments, its gallant leader, Colonel Barrett, falling as he headed the charge. Here also was stricken Lieutenant-Colonel Nugent of Sheldon's Irish Regiment. Here also fell--saddest loss of all--Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, brave, resourceful, a true unfaltering-soldier and lover of his country. The legend of his life blood flowing before his eyes and his utterance, "Would it had been shed for Ireland", may and should be true, although he lived three days after the battle. Would, indeed, it had been shed for Ireland--after such a day!

It was in 1703 that the celebrated defence of Cremona lifted Irish renown to great heights throughout Europe. There were but 600 Irish troopers all told in that long day's work, and from the break of day till nightfall they held at bay Prince Eugene's army of 10,000 men. The two battalions of Bourke and Dillon were surprised at early morn to learn that the Austrians--and there were Irish officers among them--were in the town. Major O'Mahony and his men ran from their beds to the gates, and neither the foes without nor the foes within could make them budge. Terribly they suffered under concentrated attacks, but a withering fire from the Irish met every assault. It was nightfall before relief came, and then the sons of Ireland who had held Cremona for the French were acclaimed by all, but of their 600 they had lost nearly 350. Small wonder that the honor list that day was long. In Bourke's battalion the specially distinguished were Captains Wauchop, Plunkett, Donnellan, MacAuliffe, Carrin, Power, Nugent, and Ivers; in Dillon's, Major O'Mahony, Captains Dillon, Lynch, MacDonough, and Magee, and Lieutenants Dillon and Gibbon, John Bourke and Thomas Dillon. Major O'Mahony was sent to Paris to carry the news of the victory to the king, who presented him with a purse of 1,000 louis d'or, a pension of 1,000 livres, and the brevet of colonel.

So the history proceeds, the Irish regiments lost in the array of the French forces, but showing here and there a glint of charging bayonets, captured trenches, and gushes of Irish blood. In 1703 the brigade regiments fought in Italy and Germany under the Duc de Vendome. We hear of the regiments of Berwick, Bourke, Dillon, Galmoy, and Fitzgerald vigorously engaged. In Germany the story is of Sheldon's Horse and two battalions of the regiments of Dorrington and Clare. At the first battle of Blenheim, September 20, 1703, the regiment of Clare lost one of its colors, rallied, charged with the bayonet and recovered it, taking two colors from the enemy. This was a French victory. Not so the great battle of Blenheim, August, 1704, when Marlborough and Prince Eugene severely defeated the French and Bavarians. Three Irish battalions shared in the disaster. In 1705 at Cassano in Italy an Irish regiment, finding itself badly galled by artillery fire from the opposite bank of the Adda, declared they could stand it no longer, and thereupon jumped in, swam the river, and captured the battery. In 1705 Colonel O'Mahony of Cremona fame distinguished himself in Spain. In the next year at the battle of Ramillies, in which Marlborough with the Dutch defeated the French under Villeroi, Lord Clare's regiment captured the colors of the English Churchill regiment and of the Scottish regiment in the Dutch service. In the same year and the next, the Irish Brigade fought many battles in Spain. One cannot pursue the details of the engagements. Regiments ever decimated were ever recruited by the "Wild Geese" from Ireland--the adventurous Catholic youth of the country who sought congenial outlet for their love of adventure and glory. Many Irish also joined the French army after deserting from the English forces in Flanders.

It was, however, at Fontenoy, May 11, 1745, that the Irish Brigade rendered their most signal service to France. The English under the Duke of Cumberland, son of George II., with 55,000 men including a large German and Dutch auxiliary, met the French under Marshal Saxe, and in the presence of the French king Louis XV., near Tournai in Belgium. Saxe had 40,000 men in action and 24,000 around Tournai, which town was the objective of the English advance. Among the troops on the field were the six Irish regiments of Clare, Dillon, Bulkeley, Roth, Berwick, and Lally, all under Charles O'Brien, Viscount Clare, afterwards Marshal Thomond of France. After fierce cannonading on both sides and a check to the allies on their right and left, a great column of English veterans advanced on the French centre, breaking through with sheer force. They had thus reached high ground when some cannonading halted them. It was at this moment of gravest peril to the French that the Irish regiments with unshotted guns charged headlong up the slope on their ancient enemies, crying, "Remember Limerick and British Faith!" The great English column, already roughly handled by the cannon, broke and fled in wild disorder before that irresistible onslaught, and France had won a priceless victory, but the six Irish regiments lost one-third of their gallant men by a single volley as they followed their steel into the English lines.

When Charles Edward, the Stuart Pretender, landed in Scotland in 1745, he was followed by a small French force, including 500 Irishmen from the Brigade. Colonel John O'Sullivan was much relied on by the prince in his extraordinary campaign. Sir Thomas Sheridan also distinguished himself. There were 475 Irish at the battle of Culloden, that foredoomed defeat of the Stuart cause, and two days later a score of Irish officers were among those who surrendered at Inverness.

In Spain at the beginning of the 18th century there were hundreds of Irish officers in the military service, and eight Irish regiments. Among the officers were thirteen Kellys, thirteen Burkes, and four Sheas. It seemed that Ireland had soldiers for the world. Don Patricio, Don Miguel, Don Carlos, Don Tadeo took the place of Patrick, Michael, Charles, and Thadeus. O'Hart gives a list of sixty descendants of the "Wild Geese" in places of honor in Spain. General Prim was a descendant of the Princes of Inisnage in Kilkenny. An O'Donnell was Duke of Tetuan and field marshal of Spain. Ambrose O'Higgins, born in county Meath, Ireland, was the foremost Spanish soldier in Chile and Peru; Admiral Patricio Lynch was one of its most distinguished sailors; and James McKenna its greatest military engineer. The son of O'Higgins was foremost among those who fought for Chilean independence and gained it, and one of his ablest lieutenants was Colonel Charles Patrick O'Madden of Maryland.

In Austria the Irish soldiers were particularly welcome. They count forty-one field-marshals, major-generals, generals of cavalry, and masters of ordnance of Irish birth in the Austrian service. O'Callaghan relates that on March 17, 1766, His Excellency Count Mahony (son of the O'Mahony of Cremona), ambassador from Spain to the court of Vienna, gave a grand entertainment in honor of St. Patrick, to which he invited all persons of condition who were of Irish descent. Among many others, there were present Count Lacy, President of the Council at War, the generals O'Donnell, McGuire, O'Kelly, Browne, Plunkett, and MacElligot, four chiefs of the Grand Cross, two governors, several knights military, six staff officers, and four privy councillors, with the principal officers of State. All wore Patrick's crosses in honor of the Irish nation, as did the whole court that day. Emperor Francis I. said: "The more Irish officers in the Austrian service the better; bravery will not be wanting; our troops will always be well disciplined." The Austrian O'Reillys and Taaffes were famous. It was the dragoon regiment of Count O'Reilly that by a splendid charge saved the remnant of the Austrian army at Austerlitz.

In the American war of the Revolution, General Charles Geoghegan of the Irish Brigade made the campaigns of Rochambeau and Lafayette. He received the order of the Cincinnati from Washington and was ever proud of it. Lieutenant General O'Moran also served in America. He was afterwards executed in the French Revolution, for the "Brigade" remained royalist to the end. General Arthur Dillon, who served in the Brigade, was also guillotined in 1794, crying, "Vive le roi!" At the foot of the scaffold a woman, probably Mme. Hébert, also condemned, stood beside him. The executioner told her to mount the steps. "Oh, Monsieur Dillon," she said, "pray go first." "Anything to oblige a lady," he answered gaily, and so faced his God.

Lord Macaulay, commenting upon these things and deploring the policies that brought them about, says with great significance: