Flight of The Wild Geese - Austrian Service

Austrian Service

Throughout this period, there were also substantial numbers of Irish officers and men in the armies of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, many of whom were based in Prague. The most famous of these was Peter Lacy, a Field Marshal in the Imperial Russian Army, whose son Franz Moritz Graf von Lacy excelled in the Austrian service. General Maximilian Ulysses Graf von Browne, the Austrian commanding officer in the Battle of Lobositz, was also of Irish descent. Recruitment for Austrian service was especially associated with the midlands of Ireland and with the Taaffe O'Neillan and O'Rourke gentry families. However, Count Alexander O'Nelly (O'Neill) came from Ulster. He commanded the 42nd Bohemian Infantry Regiment 1734-1743. Much earlier, in 1634, during the Thirty Years' War, Irish officers led by Walter Deveraux assassinated general Albrecht von Wallenstein on the orders of the Emperor. In the 19th century, further Irish officers served in the Habsburg Empire, so Laval Graf Nugent von Westmeath and Maximilian Graf O’Donnell von Tyrconnell, who saved the life of Emperor Franz Joseph I during an assassination attempt. Gottfried von Banfield finally became the most successful Austro-Hungarian naval aeroplane pilot in the First World War.