"Remembering the Irishmen who fought with the Duke" Topic

…of Wellington's army

"During the formal procession into the cathedral, one of the youngest soldiers currently serving in an Irish regiment carried the Field Marshal's Baton of the Duke of Wellington, who was born in Ireland.

Ranger Joseph Nixon, 19, was representing the Royal Irish Regiment, the successors of the 27th Inniskilling Regiment of Foot, which fought at Waterloo…"

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Armand

So why the photo of a Scottish regiment?

Same Brigade. Probably no re-enactors or painting of the Irish Regiment

No mention of the fact that Wellington most definitely did not identify as Irish.

By that same token, weren't there Irish soldiers in most of Wellington's regiments.

The 27th Inniskillings and the Royal North British Dragoons were in the same brigade?

There were Irishmen everywhere in Wellington's forces whatever the regiment. Whatever he may have thought about them personally, without them his armies would have been poorly recruited. To the same extent, that applies to Scots as well.

42nd, the 6th Dragoons (Inniskilling) and Scots Greys were in the same Brigade.

The 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot were in Lambert's Infantry Brigade that arrived on the Battlefield that very morning.

Indeed. The question was tending to the rhetorical.

The British army comprised English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Hanoverian troops, these being the kingdoms that had George III as monarch. So it is not especially surprising that there were Irish soldiers, is it?

Where is there any suggestion that Wellington, or even Picton, disliked Irish troops? Picton was notoriously foul-mouthed and may have thought the Connaught Rangers to be 'villains' but he also fully appreciated their fighting qualities. As to the hackneyed idea about Wellington's 'Irishness' – the comment was made a political opponent about him, not by him. He considered himself a subject of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

"Where is there any suggestion that Wellington, or even Picton, disliked Irish troops?"

In the course of the 1830s-40s there was a quantity of correspondence, articles and serialized memoirs in the pages of the United Services Journal, much of it from the pen of William Grattan, late 88th (subsequently brought together in his memoir 'Adventures Of The Connaught Rangers) much of it on the theme of Picton's grudging attitude towards the "Rangers of Connaught" which culminated in their being deprived of the right to bear 'Pyrenees' on their colours, while the fellow battalions in their brigade had been granted that honorary distinction, (apparently on the basis that Picton had not recommended any officer of the 88th for a medal).

Thanks.

Armand

At the risk of sounding immodest, I have written a thesis and three novels (the fourth is at the publisher) about the Inniskillings. While most British regiments of the age, both Foot and Horse, recruited in Ireland, my research showed the 27th was more than 98% Irish. (The 1/27th Armoury Sergeant in 1815 was one such, charming, exception: Francisco Papa, an Italian. I bet he had an interesting life.)
The pictures of the Scots Greys are a disappointment (sigh) but I'd heartily recommend the Inniskilling Regimental Museum in Ennskillen; dedicated, good-hearted people, with a wonderful collection in a great setting.
Go raibh mheile maith agt…Mark

"Conky Arty" never (supposedly) claimed to be Irish. When asked about being born in Ireland his response was was "if an ass is born in a stable, what is it" or words to that effect. Much the same response as as a Mainer replied to New Yorker transplant, who asked since since kids were born in Maine were they now Mainers. The Mainer's reply was "if a cat has kittens in an oven are they muffins?"

Which he never said – that was Daniel O'Connell, mocking the Duke in a Speech.

Wellington's Irish status hinged around the fact he was part of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy not the English/Scots one and the fractious nature of English rule in Ireland.

By birth he was as Irish as he could be. If being born in Dublin to a family who's Irish roots went back around two hundred years doesn't get the job done, I'm missing something.

After his education he made his early way in the World serving in Ireland but not being a fool, living in a period where snobbery was everything, putting distance between his roots and his advancement was something that became a way of life.

Making your way in Georgian society with the advantages you had been born with and any you could later acquire was just what people did.

Well, a British Army officer in India (or one of the Honourable East India Company), whose wife came from the same social caste, might well count among his legitimate children one or more sons who in turn entered the service of the Empire, Raj, or whatever you might call it. How many generations before such a family would, in your view, become "Indian"?

Religion wouldn't be the only consideration.

The comedian Spike Milligan, who had been born to an Irish father and an English mother in India in 1918 and served in the British Army in the Western Desert and Italy, discovered in 1960, after changes to British law relating to Commonwealth-born residents, that he was not automatically entitled to a British passport.

He had always thought he was British, but poorly-drafted legislation now said he was not!

Robert,

That's not quite the same issue and has some additional layers.

If you served in India with "the Company" or after it, in the "Indian Army" in social terms you were always "Indian".

Neither of them gave rank in the British Army and all those Jolly Chaps back home revelled in your lower status. The British "Indian Army" as opposed to the one in operation since independence was something apart in every sense.

Legitimate children in our mythical family would always be British, regardless of this. Even if at some point one of the male line married an Indian woman. How children from such a marriage would be regarded socially, when they returned to Britain is an other matter.

Socially = not good…

Armand

By which logic – and I don't dispute anything in Trajanus' post of 9:28, or in that from arthur1815, though I can't quite reconcile them – Wellesley would be British. Not Irish (4:56).