True it is, that in every land brave men find a home!
The deeds of the Irish regiments in the Spanish service, during the War of the Succession, like those of the O'Donnels in the war of the Peninsula, and the civil strife of more recent times, would fill volumes. Of the Spanish Lacys I have already given a memoir; and of many other brave Irish soldiers of fortune, who won distinction on the soil or in the service of Spain, I can here give but the names alone.
Owen Roe O'Neil, of Ulster, rose to high rank in the Spanish Imperial service and held an important post in Catalonia. He defended Arras against Louis XIII. in 1640, and when forced to surrender, he did so, says Carte, "upon honourable terms; yet his conduct in the defence was such as gave him great reputation, and procured him extraordinary respect even from the enemy;" and the brave O'Sullivan Bearra of Dunbuy, who fled in the days of James I., became Governor of Corunna under Philip IV.
Lieutenant-General Don Carlos Felix O'Neile (son of the celebrated Sir Neil O'Neile of Ulster, slain at the battle of the Boyne), was Governor of Havannah and favourite of Charles III. of Spain; he died at Madrid in 1791, after attaining the great age of one hundred and ten years.
In 1780, Colonel O'Moore commanded the Royal Walloon Guards of Charles III. In 1799, Field-Marshal Arthur O'Neil was Governor-General of Yucatan under the same monarch, and commanded the flotilla of thirty-one vessels which made an unsuccessful attack on the British settlements in the Bay of Honduras. In the same year, Don Gonzalo O'Farrel was the Spanish ambassador at the Court of Berlin, and in 1808 he was Minister of War for Spain. In 1797, O'Higgins was Viceroy of Peru, under Charles IV., one of whose best generals was the famous Alexander Count O'Reilly.
Don Pedro O'Daly was Governor of Rosas when it was besieged by Gouvion St. Cyr in 1809; and General John O'Donoughue was chief of Cuesta's staff, and one of the few able officers about the person of that indolent and obstinate old hidalgo, whose incapacity nearly caused the ruin of the Spanish affairs at the commencement of the Peninsula war. He died Viceroy of Mexico in 1816.
O'Higgins was Viceroy of Peru under Ferdinand VI. and the third and fourth Charles of Spain. He signalized himself with great bravery in the wars with the Araucanos, a nation on the coast of Chili, who were ultimately subdued by him and subjected to the Spanish rule. John Campbell, a midshipman who escaped from the wreck of the Wager, one of Commodore Anson's squadron which was lost on the large island of Tierra del Fuego, and who arrived, after inconceivable sufferings, at St. Jago de Chili, furnished O'Higgins with various notes and outlines of the coast, and other memoranda concerning the natives, all of which he had ingeniously written on the bark of trees. These observations, which were afterwards printed in England, were of the greatest value to O'Higgins, who was wont to affirm that by the knowledge they gave him of the barbarians under his government, "he owed the foundation of his good fortune to Campbell."
In 1765, he marched against the Araucanos with a battalion of Chilian infantry, and fifteen hundred horse, named Maulinians. He was thrice brought to the ground by having three horses killed under him; but the Araucanos were routed, and the Spanish rule extended over all Peru, of which he died viceroy in the beginning of the present century, after fighting the battles of Rancagua and Talchuana, which secured the independence of Chili.
Few names bear a more prominent place in Spanish history than those of Blake, the Captain-General of the Coronilla, and O'Reilly, a soldier of fortune, who saved the life of Charles III. during the revolt at Madrid, and who re-formed and disciplined anew the once noble army of Spain.