Irish Brigade

“ My present design in this sketch is to emphasize the part the Irish brigades in the French army had in the American war. I do not need to recall to mind the historic renown of the Irish Brigade.
Almost every battlefield in Europe during the seventeenth century was flamed by their valor and crimsoned with their blood. In France, in Italy, in Spain and in the Low Countries these exiled soldiers fought with such furious impetuosity that even the bitterest enemies of their race were forced to pay them the reluctant tribute of their admiration. ”

“ The organization of the brigade was entrusted to Thomas Francis Meagher, who, on February 6, 1862, assumed its command as Brigadier General. This gifted and daring soldier and patriot, the Commander of the Irish Brigade, will ever be remembered as a conspicuous figure of his time. In his early manhood, by gift of genius, he had leaped to foremost rank among public men in his native isle. He had pleaded the doctrine of armed resistance to tyranny with an inspired eloquence and had defied the might of his country’s oppressors by participating in an insurrection ”

“ An Irish Regiment has its troubles in time of peace, but when the call to arms was sounding we knew that if they let us we could easily offer them an Irish Brigade for the service. We were more occupied with quality than with numbers. The one bit of publicity we indulged in was to send round our machine-gun trucks through the city streets with the placard, “Don’t join the 69th unless you want to be among the first to go to France.” That was the only kind of men we wanted—not impressionable youth who would volunteer under the stimulus of a brass band or a flood of patriotic oratory. ”

“ In these isolated cases of determined courage, not confined to the English, but displayed equally by the Irish Brigade or by Scottish regiments serving in foreign armies, the true camaraderie of those who serve under the “Union Jack” as soldiers, it may be hoped, will always be found.
The troubles in Ireland were more prolonged and serious, and required a further addition to the army of the 7th “Horse,” the 6th Dragoons, and the 7th Dragoons. The 18th, weeded of the Roman Catholic recruits, was reorganised ”

“ On the 3rd September the 2nd Brigade toiled in from Monchy, in full war-kit, and, tired with the long day’s heat, formed up west of Lagnicourt before dawn, detailed to win, if they could, a thousand yards or so of chewed-up ground. They “went over the top” under a creeping barrage, one gun of which persistently fired short, and—found nothing whatever in front of them save a prodigious number of dead horses, some few corpses, and an intolerable buzzing of flies! ”

“ The broken, wearied troops were too much shaken to meet so fierce a charge of quite fresh men; and hence the Irish counter attack fully succeeded, and the British retired sullenly, beaten. The Allies had lost 21,000 men, killed104 and wounded, against 8000 of their adversaries; but, outnumbered and exhausted as the British were, they accounted for one-third of the men and one-fourth of the officers of the Irish Brigade. ”

“ We next see Irish soldiers fighting abroad. The blood they had shed so freely for the Stuarts at the Boyne, at Athlone, at Aughrim, at Limerick was in vain. The king of France, if he sent armies to Ireland, demanded Irish troops in return. The transports that brought the French regiments over in May, 1690, took back over five thousand officers and men from Ireland, who formed the first Irish Brigade in the service of France. ”

“ These were constantly recruited by fresh arrivals from Ireland, by which means the Irish Brigade was not only kept up to their original strength, in spite of the heavy losses they suffered, in the engagements in which they had taken part, but largely increased its force, new regiments being constantly formed. Naturally, O'Brien's corps, being the only complete regiment in Paris, at the time, was regarded as the headquarters and general meeting place of all the Irish officers there ”

“ The Irish Brigade would receive our well-directed fire steady and firm, and when great gaps were cut through their ranks by the artillery, would reform under the incessant fire, come again, sink down and rise again, trample the dead and wounded under foot and press the stone wall of liquid fire, then recede a few feet 105and come again, like an avalanche into the very jaws of death, until strength and endurance failed, having been forced back by shell and the deadly miniè ball that no human being could withstand. ”

“ Being so recently from Ireland, I could assure him that even his most devoted adherents, there, are of opinion that no rising could be attended with success, unless backed by French arms, and especially by the aid of the Irish Brigade, which has already won such renown for itself, and whose appearance would excite the greatest enthusiasm among all Irishmen. ”

“ The enemy has since felt Irish steel and fallen under Irish bullets. Whatever the future may have in store, the British people will never forget the generous blood of the sister nation, which has been shed on so many hard-fought battlefields since the world-war began."
In this, the second series of The Irish at the Front, the thrilling story is continued. The Irish troops dealt with are all of the New Armies—the Ulster Division, the Irish Division and the Tyneside Irish Brigade. I am as proud of the Ulster regiments as I am of the Nationalist regiments. I do not want to boast of their valour. ”

“ For all this glory and renown the Irish Brigade had to pay a bitter price. Many a home in Ireland was made forlorn and desolate. The roads of the countryside by which the men went off to the war will be lonely and drear for ever to womenfolk, for never again will they be brightened by the returning foot-steps of son or husband.
One of the most grievous losses which the Brigade sustained was the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Lenox-Conyngham of the Connaught Rangers. He came of an Ulster soldier family. ”

“ For centuries the armies of France have had a certain proportion of foreign troops. Readers of Scott will remember the Scottish archers, and there is a regiment in the British army to-day which was at one time a Scottish corps in the service of the Most Christian Kings of France. Almost everyone has heard of the Irish Brigade, a force whose records fill many a bloody and glorious page of European history and whose prowess more than once turned the ebb-tide of defeat into the full flood of victory. It has been computed that almost 500,000 Irishmen died in the French service ”

“ Meagher, disabled from the fall of his horse shot under him, this brigade was ordered to give place to Gen. Caldwell’s.”
Now, I say from personal observation that the Irish brigade was never farther in advance than the position it occupied when it was relieved by the Sixty-first and Sixty-fourth N. Y., that the Irish brigade did not, up to the time it was so relieved, pass over any ground that had been occupied by the enemy and on which they had left any of their battle flags. The battle flags captured by the Sixty-first and Sixty-fourth New York were taken from the sunken road. ”

“ Major-General Hart, who commands the Irish Brigade, is a man of intrepid personal courage—indeed, to his complete contempt for danger the heavy losses among his battalions, and particularly in the Dublin Fusiliers, must be to some extent attributed. ”

“ Behind them were masses of men in blue and white. These were the French supports. Again the British officers laid their canes across the barrels of the muskets, and, as the Brigade came within close range, a murderous volley rolled out. Hundreds of the Irish fell, but the survivors, leaping over the dead, dying, and wounded, never paused for a moment. They closed the wide gaps in their ranks and advanced at a run until they came within bayonet thrust or butt-stroke of the front and right of the English column, which they immediately crushed out of military shape ”

“ They are all most interesting. In every one of them he has something to say in praise of the Catholicity and valour of the Irish Guards. "We have to have Mass in a field," he writes in one letter, "the Irish Guards are nearly all Catholics, and we are at present the strongest battalion in the Guards' Brigade. The men then sing hymns at Mass, and it is fine to hear nearly a thousand men singing out in the open at the top of their voices. You have no idea what a splendid battalion the Irish Guards are! You have Sergeant Mike O'Leary, V.C., with you. ”

“ Another Irish regiment to obtain one of these rare and therefore much coveted recognitions by a Commander of an Army Corps was the Royal Irish Rifles, who were fighting round the village of Neuve Chapelle, to the south, from October 25th to October 27th. "During an attack on the 7th Infantry Brigade," runs an order issued by Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, the Commander of the 2nd Corps, "the enemy came to close quarters with the Royal Irish Rifles, who repulsed them with great gallantry with the bayonet. ”

“ The victory of the Allies would bring this within the range of European statesmanship. The cause of the small nations specially appealed to Ireland. Let her take her share in the war. The British Empire had always been proud of its Irish regiments and their leaders; and he specially appealed to the National Volunteers (after a brief reference to the contests which had become unthinkable) to form an Irish Brigade, or, better still, an Irish Army Corps. Local associations would be maintained as far as possible, and officers of the Volunteers might receive commissions. ”

“ When across the open, bugler, sound the Regimental Call and the Retire.’
“The work is done, but out of 669 men who left the camp, 250 of the Royal Irish had suffered more or less. We did not get home till ten o’clock, wearied and exhausted. The remainder of the brigade acted on our right, and the 44th lost nearly as many in proportion as we did. Our brigade was more than successful, and have received great praise, especially the Royal Irish regiment.”
In so broken and disjointed a combat it is always difficult for the General to select officers and men for special commendation. ”

“ On the 21st October His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught visited them as senior Colonel of the Brigade of Guards, was introduced to all the officers, spoke to most of the N.C.O.’s and the men who had been decorated during the war. The Battalion was formed up in “walking out” order in the streets of the village to receive him. It is alleged by survivors that the sergeants saw to it that never since the Irish Guards had been formed was there such rigorous inspection of “walking out” men before they fell in. ”

“ One is left in the dark as to their countries of origin, but one’s pity goes out to all of them, Annamite, Senegalese, or Algerian, who helped to convey the newly released Irish for eight hours over fifty jolting miles. The Battalion found good billets for themselves, and the Brigade machine-gun company in Hornoy itself, where the inhabitants showed them no small kindness. “Owing to small numbers, officers were in one mess,” says the Diary, and one can see the expansion of that small and shrunken company as the new drafts come in and training picks up again. ”

“ The Sixteenth Irish Division for the purpose of the attack consisted of four brigades, having been strengthened by the addition of the 33rd Brigade from the Eleventh Division. In the attack, the 47th Brigade was upon the right and the 49th upon the left. If some further detail may be permitted in the case of men who were playing so loyal a part at a time when part of Ireland had appeared to be so disaffected, it may be recorded that the Irish line counting from the right consisted of the 6th Royal Irish, the 7th Leinsters, the 7/8th Royal Irish Fusiliers, and the 7th Inniskilling Fusiliers. ”

“ Half an hour in the trenches and all was over. Dug-outs and all were done for. Of the eight officers, four were casualties, two, unhappily, killed, and two severely wounded, of whom one was Batten-Pooll."
For months the Irish Brigade had on their right the renowned Ulster Division. Thus the descendants of the two races in Ireland who for more than two centuries were opposed politically and religiously, and often came to blows under their rival colours of "Orange" and "Green," were now happily fighting side by side in France for the common rights of man. ”

“ When the Battalion took over from the 4th Grenadiers (they could relieve all but two of the posts in daylight, thanks to the formation of the ground) Brigade Headquarters in its turn wanted samples from the German lines where had been recent reliefs. Nos. 1 and 2 Companies of the Battalion accordingly sent patrols unavailingly into No Man’s Land to see [186] if they could catch any one. By the sheer luck of the Irish, an enemy deserter in full uniform must needs come and give himself up to our line in the afternoon. ”

“ While the clubbed muskets of the Brigade beat down the English ranks, that furious war-cry rang even unto the walls of old Tournay. The French regiments of Normandie and Vassieux bravely seconded the Irish charge, and they and other Gallic troops disposed of the Hanoverians. Within ten minutes from the time when the Brigade came in contact with the English column, no British soldiers, except the dead, wounded, and captured, remained on the slope of Fontenoy. Bulkeley’s Irish regiment nearly annihilated the Coldstream Guards and captured their colors. ”

“ In spite of the activity of the English cruisers, constant communication is kept up between Ireland and France, and fortunately I had, a short time before, made the acquaintance of one of your officers, who was over there, in disguise, gathering recruits for the Brigade."
"Yes, there are a good many agents in Ireland engaged in that work. There is no difficulty in obtaining recruits, for there is scarcely a young Irishman who does not long to be with his countrymen, who have won such credit out here, and many abstain from joining only because they do not know how to set about it. ”