Page 259 - Demo

Chapter Seven 259
to by the cognomen ‘The Wild Geese,’ because at one time all the members had taken light from Ireland. So successful did this powerful force of Irishmen become, a force whose cour- age and bravery while ighting in the ranks of the French army had stunned and defeated her enemies (most notably the English) on Continental battleields, and so incensed did England become with these successes that her Government passed a law making it death for any Irishman to join the French army; and death also for any Irishman in the French army ever to set foot in Ireland.
Yet, despite the passing of this law, recruiting continued as before, and many legitimate trading ships, along with countless smuggling vessels that plied their trade between Europe and the long, lonely, western coast of Ireland, bringing their illicit cargoes of wines, silks and other contraband, nearly always carried as their return cargoes more recruits for the Wild Geese. It is recorded that several of the ships’ logs showed their cargoes as “wild geese”, an approved export. As we now know, the name stuck and the men of the Irish Brigade became known as the Wild Geese, and as already stated, while the original meaning of the term was applied to those who left Ireland to serve in European armies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, eventually it took on a wider meaning and was applied to all those Irish who had established themselves in Europe. More latterly, some have applied the term to all who became part of the Irish diaspora.
In the service of France, and with the battle cry: ‘Cuimnidh ar Luimneach is ar Fheilll na Sasanach’-‘Remember Limerick and Saxon Peridy,’the Brigade won distinction and fame on many battleields. Apparently, the watchwords and the words of command in the “Brigade” were always given in Irish, and any oicer who did not know the language before he entered the service found himself of necessity compelled to learn it.
They won, amongst many others, laurels at Steinkirk, in the Southern Netherlands, a region that comprised most of modern Belgium; Blenheim in Bavaria, and Landen in Bel- gium, where in 1693, the great Patrick Sarsield fell, with the sorrowful expression of regret on his lips that it was not for Ireland his blood now spilled. But it is probably at Fontenoy, Spireback and Cremona that they created the legend and gained the fame and status that still garlands them.
At Spireback, when it was almost certain that the French army would be routed, a brave and almost suicidal charge by Nugent’s Irish cavalry regiment turned the tide of battle and won victory for the French. It is a historical fact that at Cremona, Italy, in 1702, Prince Eugene, at the head of his formidable Austrian army successfully entered the town by night