Colonel Charles Carroll had served in Spain, but joined the Chilian army after independence was gained. He was one of the most popular officers in the army, and met with a sad fate. Being sent with too small a detachment against the savage Indians, their commander, Benavides, cut his forces in pieces and murdered all the officers in a most cruel manner. O'Carroll had his tongue cut out and was then butchered.
Lieutenant Colonel Moran, who commanded the Colombian legion at the battle of Ayachucho, probably came out in the legion of General Devereux.
Colonel (afterwards General) O'Leary was first aide-decamp to General Bolivar, the Liberator, and received his last breath. He was nephew to the famous Father Arthur O'Leary. Bolivar employed him on various missions of great trust and says "he acquitted himself with great ability." After the war, General O'Leary was appointed British chargé d'affaires at Bogota, and died in Rome in 1868. General Arthur Sandes, a native of Dublin, was entrusted with an important garrison in Peru on the close of the War of Independence.
Admiral Brown, the distinguished commander and hero of the War of Independence, whose exploits may be ranked, like those of Nelson, "above all Greek, above all Roman fame," was born at Foxford, Co. Mayo, Ireland, on the 22nd of June, 1777. His father emigrated with his family to Pennsylvania. A ship captain who was about to sail from Philadelphia offered to take the intelligent Irish boy with him, and the offer was promptly accepted. During twenty years he seems to have voyaged to many countries; at one time we find him at Archangel. Brown had been in Buenos Ayres just two years when the patriot government offered him command of a squadron to commence hostilities against the Spanish navy, then mistress of all the coasts and waters of South America. On the memorable 8th of March, 1814, Brown sailed out of the port of Buenos Ayres with three ships to commence a campaign, which was destined to destroy the Spanish navy in this part of the waters of the New World. With him went his fellow-countrymen, Captains Seaver and Kearney. Brown's next exploits were against Spanish shipping in the Pacific, and his entirely successful campaign at sea against Brazil, in which he gained the mastery by his wonderful skill, courage, and perseverance, keeping at bay the great naval power of that country (which consisted at one time of fifty war vessels) with his few, small, ill-supplied, and ill-armed craft. After these great exploits Brown spent some months among the wild scenery of Mayo, so dear to him in boyhood, and, returning to Buenos Ayres, devoted himself to the quiet life of a country gentleman. He died surrounded by his family and friends on May 3, 1857, and the day of his funeral was one of national mourning. His widow erected a monument to his memory in the Recoleta cemetery, and in 1872 the municipality of Buenos Ayres granted a site for a public statue on the Pasco Julio, which so often rang with the plaudits of the people as they welcomed this great Irishman returning from victory.
No brighter pages occur in the history of the New World than those which commemorate the gallantry and self-devotion of the Irish soldiers who aided South Americans to throw off the yoke of Spain. In 1819 an Irish Legion of 1729 men arrived under the command of General Devereux, a Wexford landowner, called the Lafayette of South America, to fight in the campaign of General Bolivar. Devereux was distinguished for his great bravery. After the War of Independence he returned to Europe, being commissioned to form a company for mining operations in Colombia, which country had appointed him envoy extraordinary to various European courts.
Colonel Ferguson and Captain Talbot were both Irishmen and among the last survivors of Devereux's Legion. It is computed that one-third of the Irish who came out under General Devereux died in hospital. It was this legion which won the decisive battle of Carabobo, June 26, 1821, going into action 1100 strong and leaving 600 on that hard-fought field.
Among the officers who composed Bolivar's Albion Rifles we find the Irish names of Pigott, Tallon, Peacock, Phelan, O'Connell, McNamara, Fetherstonhaugh, French, Reynolds, Byrne, and Haig, and the medical officer was Dr. O'Reilly. We find mention in General Millar's Memoirs of Dr. Moore, an Irishman, who attended Bolivar in most of his campaigns and was devotedly attached to the person of the Liberator. Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes, Major Maurice Hogan, Lieutenant William Keogh, Captain Laurence McGuire, Lieutenant-Colonel S. Collins also served in the struggle for independence.
The period of independence found a small number of Irish residents in Buenos Ayres, mostly patrician families, such as Dillon, MacMurrough, Murphy, French, O'Gorman, Orr, Butler, O'Shee, who had been exiled or had fled from Ireland and obtained the king of Spain's permission to settle in Spanish America. The descendants of these families are now so intermarried in the country that they have mostly forgotten the language and traditions of their ancestors; but they occupy high positions in political, legal, and commercial circles.
III.—THE PERIOD AFTER THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
A remarkable influx of settlers from Ireland occurred between 1825 and 1830, to work in the saladeros, or salt mines, of the Irish merchants, Brown, Dowdall, and Armstrong. Previous to this a few Irish mechanics and others had come from the United States. In 1813 Bernard Kiernan came from New Brunswick. He seems to have devoted himself to science, as the papers mention his discovery of a comet in the Magellan clouds on March 19, 1830. His son, James Kiernan, became editor of the government paper, Gaceta Mercantil, in 1823, and held this post for twenty years; his death occurred in 1857. There is reason to believe that the first Irishman who landed in Buenos Ayres in the 19th century, exclusive of Beresford's soldiers, was James Coyle, a native of Tyrone, who came in the Agréable in 1807, and died in 1876 at the age of 86.