The day we beat Prince Eugene in Cremona!”
Marshal Villeroy, in May, 1706, allowed himself to be cooped up by the Duke of Marlborough in the village of Ramillies, in Flanders. The French were utterly overwhelmed, and many thousands of prisoners were taken. Lord Clare formed the Brigade into a column of attack and broke through the victorious enemy. The regiment of Clare, in this charge, met the English regiment of Churchill—now the Third Buffs—full tilt, crushed it hopelessly, captured its battle-flags, and served a Scotch regiment, in the Dutch service, which endeavored to support the British, in the same manner. The Brigade then effected its retreat on Ypres, where, in the convent of the Benedictine nuns, it hung up the captured colors—“sole trophies of Ramillies’ fray”—where they have waved, for many a generation, a fitting memento of the faith and fame of the Irish exiles.
In April, 1707, the Brigade next distinguished itself, at the battle of Almanza, in Spain, where it fought in the army of Marshal the Duke of Berwick. The English and Austrians were commanded by Ruvigny—the Williamite Earl of Galway—who signalized himself at Aughrim. The Brigade paid him back that day. It charged with a fury never excelled in any fight. The allies were overthrown, Ruvigny disgraced, and the crown of Spain was placed on the brow of Philip V.
In defeat, as in victory, the bayonets of the Brigade still opened up the road to honor. When the French retreated from Oudenarde, in July, 1708, Marlborough felt the Irish steel, as the gallant fellows hung doggedly behind the retiring French, kept the fierce pursuers at bay, and enabled Vendome to reorganize his beaten army. The battle of Malplaquet, fought September, 1709, was the bloodiest of this most sanguinary war. The French fought with unusual desperation, and the English ranks, led by Marlborough and seconded by Eugene, were decimated. It was an unmitigated slaughter. At length Marshal Villairs, who commanded the French, was wounded and Marshal Boufflers ordered a retreat. Again the Irish Brigade, which fought with its usual courage all through that dreadful day, had the honor of forming the French rearguard, and, although many flags, captured from France, were laid at the feet of the victor, no Irish color graced the trophies of Marlborough, who, with the ill-judged battle of Malplaquet, virtually ended his grand career as a soldier. After that fight the war was feebly waged—France being completely exhausted—until the Peace of Utrecht and Treaty of Rastadt, 1713-14, closed the bloody record.
It would be almost impossible to enumerate the sieges and minor actions in which the Irish Brigade of France participated within the limits of this history. The facts we have given, and are to give, rest on the authority of the French war records, and the testimony of English and other writers, carefully compiled by Matthew O’Conor, in his “Military History of the Irish People,” and by John C. O’Callaghan in his invaluable “History of the Irish Brigades”—works which should ensure for their able and careful authors a literary immortality, and which people of the Irish race should treasure among their most precious heirlooms. It would be equally difficult to follow the career of those Irish soldiers who, at the peace, transferred their swords from France to Spain, because Louis XV, who succeeded his grandfather while yet a child, could not employ them all. In Spain, as in France, their swords were sharpest where the English were their foes, always, it must be admitted, worthy of their steel.
The subjoined statement of the strength of the Irish forces in the French service during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is taken from the authorities already quoted:
From 1690 to 1692, three regiments of foot; 1692 to 1698, thirteen regiments of infantry, three independent companies, two companies of cavalry, and two troops of horse guards; 1698 to 1714, eight regiments of infantry and one regiment of horse; 1714 to 1744, five regiments of infantry and one of cavalry; 1744 to 1762, six regiments of infantry and one of horse; 1762 to 1775, five regiments of infantry; 1775 to 1791—the period of the dissolution of the Brigade—three regiments of foot.
From the fall of Limerick, in 1691, to the French Revolution, according to the most reliable estimate, there fell in the field for France, or otherwise died in her service, 480,000 Irish soldiers. The Brigade was kept recruited by military emigrants, borne from Ireland—chiefly from the province of Munster—by French smugglers, under the romantic and significant title of “Wild Geese”—in poetical allusion to their eastward flight. By this name the Brigade is best remembered among the Irish peasantry.
After the death of Louis XIV, the Irish Brigade had comparatively little wholesale fighting to keep them occupied, until the War of the Austrian Succession, thirty years later. They made many expeditions to the smaller states on the Rhenish frontier, with which France was in a chronic state of war, under the Duke of Berwick. In every combat they served with honor, and always appeared to best advantage where the hail of death fell thickest. At times, like most of their countrymen, they were inclined to wildness, but the first drum-roll or bugle blast found them ready for the fray. On the march to attack Fort Kehl, in 1733, Marshal Berwick—who was killed two years afterward at the siege of Philipsburg—found fault with Dillon’s regiment for some breach of discipline while en route. He sent the colonel with despatches to Louis XV, and, among other matters, in a paternal way—for Berwick loved his Irishmen—called the king’s attention to the indiscreet battalion. The monarch, on reading the document, turned to the Irish officer, and, in the hearing of the whole court, petulantly exclaimed: “My Irish troops cause me more uneasiness than all the rest of my armies!” “Sire,” immediately rejoined the noble Count Dillon—subsequently killed at Fontenoy—“all your Majesty’s enemies make precisely the same complaint.” Louis, pleased with the repartee, smiled, and, like a true Frenchman, wiped out his previous unkindness by complimenting the courage of the Brigade.
The great War of the Austrian Succession inaugurated the fateful campaigns of 1743 and 1745, respectively signalized by the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy. The former was a day of dark disaster to France, and Fontenoy was a mortal blow to British arrogance.