Flight of The Wild Geese - French Service

French Service

From the mid-17th century or so, France overtook Spain as the destination for Catholic Irishmen seeking a military career. The principal reason for this was that France was an ascendant power, rapidly expanding its armed forces, whereas Spain was a power in decline.

France recruited many foreign soldiers; Germans, Italians, Walloons and Swiss. André Corvisier, the authority on French military archives, estimates that foreigners accounted for around 12% of all French troops in peacetime and 20% of troops during warfare. In common with the other foreign troops the Irish regiments were paid more than their French counterparts. Both Irish and Swiss regiments in French service wore red uniforms, though this had no connection with the redcoats of the British army.

The crucial turning point came during the Williamite War in Ireland (1688–91), when Louis XIV gave military and financial aid to the Irish Jacobites. In 1690, in return for 6,000 French troops that were shipped to Ireland, Louis demanded 6,000 Irish recruits for use in the Nine Years War against the Dutch. Five regiments, led by Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel formed the nucleus of the French Irish Brigade. A year later, after the Irish Jacobites under Patrick Sarsfield surrendered at the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, they were allowed to leave Ireland for service in the French Army. Sarsfield's "exodus" included 14,000 soldiers and 10,000 women and children. This is popularly known in Ireland as the Flight of the Wild Geese.

The main difference between the Irish Brigade and the Wild Geese was that the Brigade was already formed up and serving in France by 1691, but the Wild Geese comprised a disparate group of individuals with similar aims that served in the armies of several countries, not just France. In time the distinctions became blurred, as Irish recruits joining the Irish Brigade in the 1700s were sometimes known as Wild Geese.

In 1718-20 the Wild Geese in the French service found themselves allied with their arch-enemy Hanoverian Britain during the War of the Quadruple Alliance.

Up until 1745, Catholic Irish gentry were allowed to recruit soldiers for France in Ireland. The authorities in Ireland saw this as preferable to the potentially disruptive effects of having large numbers of unemployed young Catholic men of military age in the country. However, after a composite Irish detachment from the French Army (drawn from each of the regiments comprising the Irish Brigade and designated as "Irish Picquets") was used to support the Jacobite Rising of 1745 in Scotland, the British realised the dangers of this policy and banned recruitment for foreign armies in Ireland. After this point, the rank and file of the Irish units in French service were increasingly non-Irish although the officers continued to be recruited from Ireland.

During the Seven Years' War efforts were made to find recruits from among Irish prisoners of war or deserters from the British Army. Otherwise, recruitment was limited to a trickle of Irish volunteers who were able to make their own way to France, or from the sons of former members of the Irish Brigade who had remained in France. During the Seven Years War the Irish Regiments in French service were: Bulkeley, Clare, Dillon, Rooth, Berwich and Lally. Additionally, there was a regiment of cavalry, Fitz James. By the end of the 18th century even the officers of the Irish Regiments were drawn from Franco-Irish families who had settled in France for several generations. While often French in all but name, such families proudly retained their Irish heritages.

Following the outbreak of the French Revolution the Irish Brigade ceased to exist as a separate entity on 21 July 1791 when the 12 non-Swiss foreign regiments then in existence were integrated into the line infantry of the French Army, losing their distinctive status, titles and uniforms. Many left the service in 1792 when Louis XVI was deposed, as their oath of loyalty was to him and not to the French people. Napoleon Bonaparte subsequently raised a small Irish unit composed of veterans of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This "Irish Legion" was primarily composed of Cavalry units. Count Paul Francois O'Neill, the French 5th Comte de Tyrone and his two sons, Jacques and Francois, all joined the Legion for four years.