CHAPTER VI
The Austrian Succession—Campaign of 1745—Magnificent Achievement of the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy—Prince Louis’s Adieu to the Heroes
THE famous battle of Fontenoy was fought on the soil of Belgium, in the ancient province of Hainault, within some thirty miles of the memorable plains of Waterloo, on May 11, new style, 1745. France, as we have already noted, championed the cause of Charles of Bavaria, who laid claim to the Austrian throne, while England, Holland, Hanover, and Austria took the side of Maria Theresa, who eventually, owing to the unexpected death of Charles, won the fiercely disputed crown.
The French were besieging Tournay with 18,000 men. A corps of 6,000 guarded the bridges over the Scheldt, on the northern bank of which Marshal Saxe, accompanied by Louis XV and the Dauphin, having with him 45,000 men, including the Irish Brigade, took post, to cover the siege of Tournay, and prevent the march of the allies, English, Dutch, and Germans, under the Duke of Cumberland and Prince Waldeck, to its relief. The duke was a brave soldier, but fierce and cruel as a tiger. History knows him by the well-won title of “the butcher Cumberland.” His business was to raise the siege of Tournay and open a road to Paris. He had under his command 55,000 veteran troops, including the English Household regiments.
The French lines extended from the village of Rhamecroix, behind De Barri’s Wood, on the left, to the village of Fontenoy, in the centre, and from the latter position to the intrenchments of Antoine, on the right. This line of defence was admirably guarded by “fort and flanking battery.” The Irish Brigade—composed that day of the infantry regiments of Clare, Dillon, Bulkeley, Roth, Berwick, and Lally—Fitz-James’s horse being with the French cavalry in advance—was stationed, in reserve, near the wood, supported by the brigades of Normandie and De Vassieux.
Prince Waldeck commanded the allied left, in front of Antoine. Brigadier Ingoldsby commanded the British right, facing the French redoubt at De Barri’s Wood, while Cumberland, chief in command, was with the allied centre, confronting Fontenoy.
The battle opened with a furious cannonade, at 5 o’clock in the morning. After some hours spent in this manner, Ingoldsby attempted to carry the redoubt, but was ignominiously repulsed, and could not be induced to renew the attempt. This refusal subsequently led to his dismissal from the army on a charge of cowardice. Prince Waldeck fared no better at Antoine, being defeated in two attempts to force the lines. The Duke of Cumberland, grown impatient because of repeated failures, loaded the unfortunate commanding officers with imprecations. He took the resolve of beating the French at any cost by a concentrated attack on their left centre, through a gap of about 700 yards, which occurred between the Fontenoy redoubts and the work vainly attacked by Ingoldsby in the edge of the wood of Barri. For this purpose, he formed his reserves and least battered active battalions, including the English guards, several British line regiments, and a large body of picked Hanoverian troops, into three columns, aggregating 16,000 men, preceded and flanked by twenty pieces of cannon, all drawn by hand, to avoid the confusion incident on the killing and wounding of the battery horses. But subsequent developments compelled the Duke to change the original formation to one massive, solid oblong wedge, the British on the right and the Hanoverians on the left. Lord Charles Hay, the boldest soldier in the allied army, drew his sword and led the attacking column. Meanwhile, Cumberland renewed the attack all along the line, in order to cover the advance of his human battering-ram. Thus, the French were pressed hard at every point, but their batteries and battalions replied with spirit, and Antoine held out heroically in spite of all the efforts of Waldeck and his Dutch and Austrian troops against it. These latter were badly cut up by the fire of a French battery planted beyond the Scheldt. Up to this period, about the noon hour, everything had gone favorably for the French.
But the decisive moment had now arrived, and the great Anglo-Hanoverian column received the command—“Forward, march!” “In front of them, as it chanced,” says Mitchel, “were four battalions of the French guards, with two battalions of Swiss on their left and two other French regiments on their right. The French officers seem to have been greatly surprised when they saw the English battery taking up position on the summit of the rising ground. ‘English cannon!’ they cried. ‘Let us go and take them!’ They mounted the slope with their grenadiers, but were astonished to find an army on their front. A heavy discharge, both of artillery and musketry, made them quickly recoil with heavy loss.” On, then, swept the English column, with free and gallant stride, between Fontenoy and De Barri’s wood, whose batteries plowed them from flank to flank at every step. But in the teeth of the artillery, the musketry and the bombshells which rose, circled and fell among them, killing and wounding scores at each explosion; charged by the cavalry of the royal household, and exposed to the iron hail of the French sharpshooters, that blue-and-scarlet wave of battle rolled proudly against the serried ranks of France. Falling by the hundred, they finally got beyond the cross-fire from the redoubts, crossed the slope and penetrated behind the village of Fontenoy—marching straight on the headquarters of the king! The column was quickly in the middle of the picked soldiers of France, tossing them haughtily aside with the ready bayonet, while the cheers of anticipated victory resounded from their ranks far over the bloody field. Marshal Saxe, ill, and pale with rage and vexation, sprang, unarmored, upon his horse, and seemed to think the battle lost, for he ordered the evacuation of Antoine, in order that the bridges across the Scheldt might be covered and the king’s escape assured. At this moment, Count Lally, of the Irish Brigade, rode up to Duke Richelieu, Saxe’s chief aide, and said to him: “We have still four field-pieces in reserve—they should batter the head of that column. The Irish Brigade has not yet been engaged. Order it to fall on the English flank. Let the whole army second it—let us fall on the English like foragers!” Richelieu, who, afterward, allowed the suggestion to appear as if coming from himself, went at once to Saxe and gave him the substance of Lally’s proposal. The king and Dauphin, who were present, approved of it. The order to evacuate Antoine was countermanded, and aides immediately galloped to the rear of the wood of Barri to order up the Irish Brigade, commanded by Lord Clare, and its supporting regiments. These brave men, rendered excited and impatient by the noise of the battle, in which they had not yet been allowed to participate, received the command with loud demonstrations of joy. Their officers immediately led them toward the point of danger.
Meanwhile, the English column, marching and firing steadily—that “infernal, rolling fire,” so characteristic of the British mode of fighting—kept on its terrible course, and crushed every French organization that stood in its path. Had the Dutch and Austrians succeeded in carrying Antoine at this moment, Cumberland must have been victorious and the French army could not have escaped. Already the column, still bleeding at every stride, was within sight of the royal tent. The English officers actually laid their canes along the barrels of the muskets to make the men fire low. Suddenly, the fire from the four reserve French cannon opened on the head of the column, and the foremost files went down. The English guns replied stoutly and the march was renewed. But now there came an ominous sound from the side of De Barri’s wood that made Lord Hay, brave and bold as he was, start, pause, and listen. It swelled above the crash of artillery and the continuous rattle of musketry. “Nearer, clearer, deadlier than before,” that fierce hurrah bursts upon the ear of battle! The English have heard that shout before and remember it to their cost. The crisis of the conflict has come, and the command, by voice and bugle, “Halt! halt!” rang from front to rear of the bleeding column. The ranks were dressed hastily, and the English prepared to meet the advancing enemy with a deadly volley from their front and long right flank. They looked anxiously in the direction of the wood and beheld long lines and bristling columns of men in blue and red—the uniform of the Irish Brigade—coming on at the charging step, with colors flying and “the generals and colonels on horseback among the glittering bayonets.” They did not fire a single shot as they came on. Behind them were masses of men in blue and white. These were the French supports. Again the British officers laid their canes across the barrels of the muskets, and, as the Brigade came within close range, a murderous volley rolled out. Hundreds of the Irish fell, but the survivors, leaping over the dead, dying, and wounded, never paused for a moment. They closed the wide gaps in their ranks and advanced at a run until they came within bayonet thrust or butt-stroke of the front and right of the English column, which they immediately crushed out of military shape; while their fierce war-shout, uttered in the Irish tongue—“Revenge! Remember Limerick and English treachery!” sounded the death-knell of Cumberland’s heroic soldiers. While the clubbed muskets of the Brigade beat down the English ranks, that furious war-cry rang even unto the walls of old Tournay. The French regiments of Normandie and Vassieux bravely seconded the Irish charge, and they and other Gallic troops disposed of the Hanoverians. Within ten minutes from the time when the Brigade came in contact with the English column, no British soldiers, except the dead, wounded, and captured, remained on the slope of Fontenoy. Bulkeley’s Irish regiment nearly annihilated the Coldstream Guards and captured their colors.
This victory saved France from invasion, but it cost the Irish dear. Count Dillon was slain, Lord Clare disabled, while one-third of the officers and one-fourth of the men were killed or wounded. King Louis, next morning, publicly thanked the Irish, made Lally a general, and Lord Clare was, soon afterward, created a marshal of France. England met retribution for her cruelty and faithlessness to Ireland, and King George vehemently cursed the laws which drove the Irish exiles to win glory and vengeance on that bloody day.
The losses in the battle were nearly equal—the French, Swiss, and Irish losing altogether 7,139 men killed, wounded, and missing; while the English, Hanoverians, Dutch, and Austrians acknowledged a total loss of 7,767 men, said by O’Callaghan to be an underestimate. Fontenoy was one of the greatest of French victories, and led, in the same campaign, to numerous other successes. Among the latter may be enumerated the triumph at Melle, the surprise of Ghent, the occupation of Bruges, and the capture of Oudenarde, Dendermonde, Ostend, Nieuport, and Ath.
Several officers of the Irish Brigade went with Prince Charles Edward Stuart to Scotland, when he made his gallant but ill-fated attempt to restore the fallen fortunes of his luckless father, called by the Jacobites James VIII of Scotland and James III of England and Ireland, in 1745-46. The Hanoverian interest called James the “Old” and Charles Edward the “Young” Pretender. The Irish officers formed “Prince Charles’s” chosen bodyguard when he was a fugitive amid the Highlands and Western Isles after Culloden. One of the last great field exploits of the Irish Brigade was its victorious charge at Laffeldt, in Flanders, in 1747, when, for the second time, it humiliated Cumberland, and, in a measure, avenged his base massacre of the gallant Scottish Highland clans, in 1746. The victory of Laffeldt led to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which was favorable to France, in 1748. The Brigade took part in each succeeding war in which France was involved down to the period of the Revolution. Some of its regiments served also in India and America. Under Count Dillon, several Irish battalions distinguished themselves in the dashing, but unsuccessful, attack on the British at Savannah, Ga., in 1779, when the brave Count Pulaski, who led the assault, was killed on the ramparts. By that time, however, the volume of recruits from Ireland had greatly diminished, owing to the gradual relaxation of the penal code, and a majority of the officers and soldiers of the Brigade were, although of Irish blood, French by birth. Some of the officers were French by both birth and blood, and, among them, in 1791, was the great-grandson of St. Ruth. The Brigade, as became it, remained faithful to the last to the Bourbon dynasty. Unfortunately this fidelity led the feeble remnant, under Colonel O’Connell, to take service in the West Indies, beneath the British flag, after the Revolution. In extenuation of their fault, it must be remembered that they were, to a man, monarchists; that the Stuart cause was hopelessly lost, and that both tradition and education made them the inevitable enemies of the new order of things in France. Still, an Irish historian may be pardoned for remarking that it were much better for the fame of the Brigade of Cremona and Fontenoy if its senile heir-at-law had refrained from accepting the pay of the country whose tyranny had driven the original organization into hopeless exile.
But the active career of the bold Brigade terminated in a blaze of glory. The hand of a prince, destined to be a monarch, inscribed its proud epitaph when, in 1792, the Comte de Provence, afterward Louis XVIII, presented to the surviving officers a drapeau d’adieu, or flag of farewell—a gold harp wreathed with shamrocks and fleur-de-lis, on a white ground, with the following touching words:
“Gentlemen: We acknowledge the inappreciable services that France has received from the Irish Brigade in the course of the last hundred years—services that we shall never forget, though under an impossibility of requiting them. Receive this standard as a pledge of our remembrance, a monument of our admiration and our respect, and, in future, generous Irishmen, this shall be the motto of your stainless flag—
“‘1692-1792.’
“Semper et Ubique Fidelis!
(“Ever, and everywhere, faithful.”)
Never did military body receive a nobler discharge from service.
And yet, well might the haughty Bourbon prince so express himself. In defence of his house, there died beneath the golden lilies, in camp and breach and field, nearly 500,000 of Ireland’s daring manhood. It is no wonder that with those heroes departed much of her warlike spirit and springing courage. Her “wild geese,” as she fondly called them, will never fly again to her bosom across the waves that aided their flight to exile and to glory. The cannon of all Europe pealed above their gory graves, on many a stricken field, the soldier’s requiem.
“They fought as they reveled, fast, fiery, and true,
And, tho’ victors, they left on the field not a few;
And they who survived fought and drank as of yore,
But the land of their hearts’ hope they saw nevermore:
For, in far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade,
Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade!”
Its successor in the French army was the Irish Legion, composed in the main of refugees who had participated in the “rebellion” of 1798 and the “rising” of 1803. This fine body of soldiers was organized by Napoleon himself, wore a distinctively Irish uniform of green and gold, and carried French and Irish colors. To it, also, was intrusted an eagle—the only foreign force that was so honored by the greatest of generals. The Legion fought for the Emperor, with splendid fidelity, from 1805 to 1815, participating in most of the great battles of that warlike period.
It was naturally expected that Louis XVIII, on his final restoration to the throne, would revive the old Irish Brigade, so highly praised by him, when Comte de Provence, in 1792, but he was under too many obligations to England, and, in fact, his treaty with that power, after the second exile of Napoleon, made it obligatory on him not to accept an Irish military contingent under any consideration. His acquiescence in this ignoble compact makes more emphatic the venerable adage, “Put not your trust in Princes.”