The Wild Geese
" I am Brian Boy Magee - my father was Eoghan Ban -
I was wakened from my happy dreams by the shouts of my startled clan;
A i saw through the leaping glare that marked where our homestead stood,
My mother swing by her hair - and my brothers lie in their blood. "
I was wakened from my happy dreams by the shouts of my startled clan;
A i saw through the leaping glare that marked where our homestead stood,
My mother swing by her hair - and my brothers lie in their blood. "
With The Wild Geese
War-battered dogs are we,
Fighters in every clime;
Fillers of trench and of grave,
Mockers bemocked by time,
War dogs hungry and grey,
Gnawing a naked bone,
Fighters in every clime -
Every cause but our own.
Emily Lawless
"The
bright as contrasted with the dark side of the national story " O' Callaghan calls his own record
of the Irish Brigades in the service of France. " Ormuzd abroad to compensate for the Ahriman at home " Lecky too, affirms that it is in the continental Catholic countries, where the Irish exiles and their children had risen to posts of the highest dignity and power, and not amid the " outcasts and pariahs " in the motherland, " the real history of Irish Catholics during the first half of the 18th century is to be found. "
Ireland herself has never taken this view of the question. Again and again she has caught the names of her exiled children. Marshals of France like Lord Clare, Prime Ministers of Spain like Don Ricardo Wall, creators of victorious armies like Count Peter Lacy in Russia, mighty war Lords like Field Marshal Brown, in Austria; founders of Empire like Count Lally in India, leaders of European diplomacy like Tyrconnell, O' Mahony, Lawless and de Lacy. Remember their names. So their titles, loud sounding, came to her, borne on the trumpet music of the world's applause. But Ireland had a name of her own for them. Ransacking all nature for its most desolate image to figure forth her thought of them, its most desolate cry to render the wailing music made in her eyes by their last farewell, she called them ' na Geana Fiadhaine ' The Wild Geese.
Ireland herself has never taken this view of the question. Again and again she has caught the names of her exiled children. Marshals of France like Lord Clare, Prime Ministers of Spain like Don Ricardo Wall, creators of victorious armies like Count Peter Lacy in Russia, mighty war Lords like Field Marshal Brown, in Austria; founders of Empire like Count Lally in India, leaders of European diplomacy like Tyrconnell, O' Mahony, Lawless and de Lacy. Remember their names. So their titles, loud sounding, came to her, borne on the trumpet music of the world's applause. But Ireland had a name of her own for them. Ransacking all nature for its most desolate image to figure forth her thought of them, its most desolate cry to render the wailing music made in her eyes by their last farewell, she called them ' na Geana Fiadhaine ' The Wild Geese.
" She said: ' Not mine, not mine that fame
Far over sea, far over land
They won it yonder, sword in hand. "
Far over sea, far over land
They won it yonder, sword in hand. "
Not hers in truth that fame. Hardly one of them - Field Marshal, diplomat, prime minister, empire-builder, was able to do for her the slightest service, or even to win for her the sympathy ( much less the active help ) of the nations to which they had given their all in life and in death. To Ireland and to those who look at history through her eyes, the story of ' The Wild Geese ' is a tragedy - stately and stirring, and noble if you will, in its grandiose
setting and majestic movement - but almost unredeemed, and the essence of that tragedy is, like the poignant and vain regret for the life blood of Sarsfield spilled at Landen, " that this was ont for Ireland. " Only one service the Wild Geese did for their own country. Always the hope remained with her that one day they would return, and avenge her wrongs on her iniquitous oppressor. And that hope gave her courage to endure. Eighteenth century Irish Poetry is bouyant with it:
setting and majestic movement - but almost unredeemed, and the essence of that tragedy is, like the poignant and vain regret for the life blood of Sarsfield spilled at Landen, " that this was ont for Ireland. " Only one service the Wild Geese did for their own country. Always the hope remained with her that one day they would return, and avenge her wrongs on her iniquitous oppressor. And that hope gave her courage to endure. Eighteenth century Irish Poetry is bouyant with it:
The Wild Geese shall return, and we'll welcome them home
So active, so armed, so flighty,
A flock was ne'er known to this island to come
Since the days of Prince Fionn the mighty.
They will waste and destroy,
Overturn and o'erthrow,
They'll accomplish and whate'er may in man be!
Just heaven they will bring
Devastation and woe
On the hosts of the tyrannous Seaghan Buidhe. "
So active, so armed, so flighty,
A flock was ne'er known to this island to come
Since the days of Prince Fionn the mighty.
They will waste and destroy,
Overturn and o'erthrow,
They'll accomplish and whate'er may in man be!
Just heaven they will bring
Devastation and woe
On the hosts of the tyrannous Seaghan Buidhe. "
Surely
, of all Ireland's sorrows, none was greater than seeing her boys go forth from her, year after
year, to serve as cannon fodder for foreign princes - their departure as fixed a moment in the sorrowful calendar of her seasons, as the annual flight of the wild geese, when even the stubble had withered from her wintry fields.
Mrs Morgan John O' Connell gives us, in ' The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade ', a lively picture of such a departure from the coast of Kerry about the year 1761. The fleet little smuggling clipper that recently slipped into Derrynane harbour, had unloaded its wines, teas, tobaccos, brandies, its velvets and silks for the ladies, its gilt mirrors for their parlours, and has taken on its return cargo, contraband Irish wool. But another portion of its cargo, more precious, equally contraband - remains to be shipped. " Of the productions of Ireland, the wool and the men, rendered equally incapable by law of becoming the great sources of wealth they might have been at home, were in request for the manufactories and the armies of France." The skipper would be ill-satisfied with his run if he were not bearing back with him to France, a number of cleaned limbed, gallant Irish lads to fill the ranks of The Brigade. Here they come : O' Connells, MacCarthies, O' Sullivans, O' Donoghues, sons of the noblest families of the South; and as their barque wieghs anchor, they hear a voice raised in a sorrowful song of farewell that might be the voice of Ireland herself. It is Maire Ni Dhuibh, mother of one of these young ' Wild Geese ' ( of him destined afterwards to make history as Count Daniel O' Connell ), " Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade in French Service. " and kins-woman of all the others, who is standing there by the shore singing to a poignant old Gaelic strain, her lament for the passing of all this youth from Irish soild.
The O' Connell correspondence - thanks to Mrs Morgan John O'Connell - enables us to follow in some detail the further fortunes of the young emigrants. We will suppose that the smuggling craft, built for speed and lightness, has skimmed safely through the rocks and shallows of the Smuggler's Sound, outraced the Revenue Cutter in open seas, and made in safety its destined port. If she had a recruiting officer of the Brigade on board, he would take the more mature of his young recruits straight to his regiment. The other little boys, sons of wealthier households, were boarded for a time, at their families expense, with some retiredofficer of the Brigade, who made a regular business of keeping a sort of preparatory scholl for the lads of this class, taught them languages, and rudiments of a military education and saw that they attended classes for the rest. And so the years passed, until the boy was old enough to be enrolled as a subaltern in the regiment of his choice.
Mrs Morgan John O' Connell gives us, in ' The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade ', a lively picture of such a departure from the coast of Kerry about the year 1761. The fleet little smuggling clipper that recently slipped into Derrynane harbour, had unloaded its wines, teas, tobaccos, brandies, its velvets and silks for the ladies, its gilt mirrors for their parlours, and has taken on its return cargo, contraband Irish wool. But another portion of its cargo, more precious, equally contraband - remains to be shipped. " Of the productions of Ireland, the wool and the men, rendered equally incapable by law of becoming the great sources of wealth they might have been at home, were in request for the manufactories and the armies of France." The skipper would be ill-satisfied with his run if he were not bearing back with him to France, a number of cleaned limbed, gallant Irish lads to fill the ranks of The Brigade. Here they come : O' Connells, MacCarthies, O' Sullivans, O' Donoghues, sons of the noblest families of the South; and as their barque wieghs anchor, they hear a voice raised in a sorrowful song of farewell that might be the voice of Ireland herself. It is Maire Ni Dhuibh, mother of one of these young ' Wild Geese ' ( of him destined afterwards to make history as Count Daniel O' Connell ), " Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade in French Service. " and kins-woman of all the others, who is standing there by the shore singing to a poignant old Gaelic strain, her lament for the passing of all this youth from Irish soild.
The O' Connell correspondence - thanks to Mrs Morgan John O'Connell - enables us to follow in some detail the further fortunes of the young emigrants. We will suppose that the smuggling craft, built for speed and lightness, has skimmed safely through the rocks and shallows of the Smuggler's Sound, outraced the Revenue Cutter in open seas, and made in safety its destined port. If she had a recruiting officer of the Brigade on board, he would take the more mature of his young recruits straight to his regiment. The other little boys, sons of wealthier households, were boarded for a time, at their families expense, with some retiredofficer of the Brigade, who made a regular business of keeping a sort of preparatory scholl for the lads of this class, taught them languages, and rudiments of a military education and saw that they attended classes for the rest. And so the years passed, until the boy was old enough to be enrolled as a subaltern in the regiment of his choice.
Some
well authenticated figures will give us an idea of the enormous drainage on Irish man power
during this period. L' Abbe MacGeoghegan, the historian, himself a Chaplain of the Irish Brigade in French Service, established as a result of researches made at the French War Office, that no less than 450,000 Irishmen died for France in the half-century between the Fall of Limericl ( 1691 ) and the year of Fontenoy ( 1745 ) Cardinal Manning states that another half-million shed their blood for her during the half century that followed until the dissolution of the Brigade. Figures for those Irishmen that followed Patrick Sarsfield to Rrance tend to vary in number, anything between twelve and twenty thosand. But by the date of the Peace of Utrecht ( 1713 ) less than a quarter of them remained alive. The five-and-a-half thousand fighting men who had been sent to France, before King Louis would conscent to depatch a single soldier to Ireland, had been almost wiped out in the famous campaigns against the Vaudois.
Though French Kings in court and in battlefield, and French Generals in their despatches, were lavish enough in their praises of the Irish, French historians from Voltaire downward have failed to do our countrymen justice. You might read through a library of them without suspecting all that France owes to Ireland. " Mes braves Irlandais " King Louis called them to Major O' Mahony, when the latter had been chosen to bear to Versailles the news of the Irish defence of Cremona ( 1702 ) of which he himself was the hero. After the victory of Marsaglia, Catinat writes enthusiastically of the ' surprising things ' done by the Irish Dragoons, who broke the famous bayonet charge of the Savoyards and drove them from the field. Marshal Vendome eulogised Irish heroism after many a combat. From the field of Cassano he praised their ' exemplary valour and intrepidity ' and affirmed that they formed a band
" Whose zeal and devotion might be relied upon in the most difficult emergencies of War. " he had long before appraised Irish valour at Barcelona and Chevalier de Bellerive, writing in 1710, records the Marshal's particular esteem for this warlike nation, at whose head he had delivered so many combats and gained so many victories " and his confession of surprise at ' the terrible enterprises ' the Irish had achieved in his presence. . . .
Though French Kings in court and in battlefield, and French Generals in their despatches, were lavish enough in their praises of the Irish, French historians from Voltaire downward have failed to do our countrymen justice. You might read through a library of them without suspecting all that France owes to Ireland. " Mes braves Irlandais " King Louis called them to Major O' Mahony, when the latter had been chosen to bear to Versailles the news of the Irish defence of Cremona ( 1702 ) of which he himself was the hero. After the victory of Marsaglia, Catinat writes enthusiastically of the ' surprising things ' done by the Irish Dragoons, who broke the famous bayonet charge of the Savoyards and drove them from the field. Marshal Vendome eulogised Irish heroism after many a combat. From the field of Cassano he praised their ' exemplary valour and intrepidity ' and affirmed that they formed a band
" Whose zeal and devotion might be relied upon in the most difficult emergencies of War. " he had long before appraised Irish valour at Barcelona and Chevalier de Bellerive, writing in 1710, records the Marshal's particular esteem for this warlike nation, at whose head he had delivered so many combats and gained so many victories " and his confession of surprise at ' the terrible enterprises ' the Irish had achieved in his presence. . . .
