"The Wild Geese who fought the British for Napoleon in Spain" Topic

"The story of the Irish military diaspora, affectionately called the Wild Geese and lauded by the Aisling poets, is a long and sad one. The Wild Geese were forced to leave Ireland following failed rebellions and religious discrimination at home. This tradition dates back to the 16th century when Irish regiments were formed in Spain.

The largest exodus occurred in 1691 when the 14,000-strong Irish Jacobite army, supporters of the Catholic Stuart king, withdrew to France following defeat in the Williamite War. The French formed the different Irish regiments into an Irish brigade, as it was intended that they would land in Ireland within the year. They never did and instead went on to fight for France. The Irish Brigade went on to serve France for 100 years. They earned their reputation as first-class soldiers and were one of the best units in the French army…"

link

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Aha! This is why the name, 'Wild Geese':
(source):
link

Why the term Wild Geese?
Many Irish, especially those who had fought in the rebellion, also chose to flee to continental Europe. France was one of the most favored destinations for the Irish, because it was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Once there, they frequently entered military service. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Catholic French were sympathetic to the Irish cause and they often smuggled luxury commodities to the Emerald Isle, in exchange for high-quality Irish wool and Irish military recruits. The recruits, who were equally prized, were customarily referred to in the ships' cargo logs as wild geese in order to mask the illicit recruitment; the name stuck and the military exiles came to be popularly known as 'Wild Geese'.

again the myth of the so-called Irish Legion

The soldiers of Napoleon's Irish Legion are perhaps the most forgotten of the Wild Geese.

especially when most of them had nothing to do with Ireland but rather Warsaw, the Vistula and Kościuszko's homeland!

a forgotten and true Irish unit were the Irish companies of Régiment de l'Ile-de-France having certainly more Irish than the whole Irish Legion and its reduced nucleus of exiled

I've read that the term "Wild Geese" refers to original flight of the Irish Earls in 1607 to France. They flew south, like Geese in the Winter.

"referred to in the ships' cargo logs as wild geese in order to mask the illicit recruitment"

This sounds like 'folk etymology' (sort of). Apart from it not quite ringing true, IMHO, recruiting for foreign service in Ireland was not prohibited till after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, when a composite battalion of Irish troops in French service had formed part of the Bourbon military assistance to C.E.Stuart.

By that date, both the 'Flight of the Earls' in 1607 and the withdrawal of Sarsfield and the Irish Jacobite army to France in 1691, had already provided suitable candidates for the origin of the name. ' (géanna in Gaelic,) although it seems there are few references either in Gaelic or English before it became popular among nationalist circles during the mid-C19th. There is a reference from 1726 to 'those persons commonly called wild geese.'

The prohibition post-1745, followed by the increasing recruitment of Irishmen for British service, meant that fewer and fewer native-born Irish were available for service with France, whose Irish regiments became Irish in name only.

This website has some interesting snippets of informationhttp://indigo.ie/~wildgees/index.htm

See also: The Wild Geese
James H. Murphy
The Irish Review (Cork)
No. 16, Defining Borders: Colony, City, Region (Autumn – Winter, 1994), pp. 23-28 (6 pages)
Published By: Cork University Press
DOI: 10.2307/29735753
jstor.org/stable/29735753

Always good to learn something new.

Don't forget the useful booklet in Spanish from the Ministerio de Defensa. Secretaría General Técnica
PRESENCIA IRLANDESA EN LA MILICIA ESPAÑOLA Nº1 PDF link

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

I wonder how many Irish were in the Dillon Regiment in the American Revolution?

It would seem at best officers of Irish descent, French in all but name.

Interestingly, the 'Marines' assigned to John Paul Jones' Bon Homme Richard were a detachment from the Irish infantry regiment Walsh and were uniformed in red, as were all the Irish regiments in the French army.

As late as 1790 there were still three 'Irish' regiments in the French army, among the 23 foreign regiments.

The old Irish Brigade consisted of at least the regiments of Dillon, Lally, Walsh, Berwick, Bulkely, and Clare.

Napoleon commented about the Irish Legion, later renamed the 3d Etranger, that is was 'this Irish regiment we recruit in German. The core of the regiment, however, was always Irish 'that would and could fight.' After Napoleon's first abdication it refused to turn in its eagle, either destroying it themselves or hiding it.

John Gallaher's Napoleon's Irish Legion is currently the definitive study on the unit.

link

Echoes of 'The Children of Lir' in the name too.

Thanks Kevin!.

Amicalement
Armand

Osprey has a nice book on them. Good primer to start research.

I'm with Kevin on this one – John Gallaher's book is very good.

He also wrote on on Vandamme. It is entitled Napoleon's Enfant Terrible.

link