Flight of the Wild Geese
However, in 1585, motivated by religious factors and bribes offered by the Spaniards,[citation needed] Stanley defected to the Spanish side with the regiment.
In 1598 Diego Brochero de Anaya wrote to the Spanish King Philip III: that every year Your Highness should order to recruit in Ireland some Irish soldiers, who are people tough and strong, and nor the cold weather or bad food could kill them easily as they would with the Spanish, as in their island, which is much colder than this one, they are almost naked, they sleep on the floor and eat oats bread, meat and water, without drinking any wine.
They hoped to get Spanish help in order to restart their rebellion in Ireland,[4] but King Philip III of Spain did not want a resumption of war with England and refused their request.
[5] A fresh source of recruits came in the early 17th century, when Roman Catholics were banned from military and political office in Ireland.
As a result, the Irish units in the Spanish service began attracting Catholic Old English officers such as Thomas Preston and Garret Barry.
[11] 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.
[12] Sarsfield sailed to France on 22 December 1691, leading 19,000 of his countrymen and countrywomen to enter the French service in the first phase of the military denuding of Ireland.
In a poem two centuries later, W. B. Yeats would mourn: Was it for this the Wild Geese spread A grey wing on every tide… Sarsfield's Irish army was regrouped and equipped in their red coats, symbolizing their allegiance to the Stuart king.
The authorities in Ireland saw this as preferable to the potentially disruptive effects of having large numbers of unemployed young men of military age in the country.
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.
Although the remaining Irish regiments: Dillon's, Berwick's and Walsh's, lost their distinctive red uniforms and separate status, they were still known informally by their traditional titles.
[15] The unit was dressed in emerald-green uniforms faced with gold and received their regimental colour of a gold harp in each corner on a green background inscribed with "Le Premier Consul aux Irlandos Uni" ("The First Consul to United Ireland") and on the obverse; "Liberte des Conscience/Independence d'Irlande" ("Freedom of Conscience/Independence to Ireland").
[16] Many officers from the ancien régime Irish Brigade also joined the unit, where it gained distinction in the Walcheren Expedition in the Low Countries and during the Peninsular War, in particular during the Siege of Astorga (1812) where an Irish detachment of elite voltigeurs formed the "forlorn hope" and led the assault battalion, comprising the 47th Regiment of the Line, which stormed through the breach, taking cover all night under heavy fire inside the city's walls.
The last significant action involving the unit was during the siege of Antwerp in 1814, when the Irish Legion defended the city for three months against an Anglo-Prussian force which had landed in the Low Countries to defeat Napoleon.
Throughout this period, there were also substantial numbers of Irish officers and men in the armies or service of European powers, including the Austrian Habsburg Empire.
One such example was Peter Lacy, a field marshal in the Imperial Russian Army, whose son Franz excelled in the Austrian service.
[22] Recruitment for Austrian service included areas of the midlands of Ireland, and members of the Taaffe, O'Neill and Wallis families served with Austria.
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 1609, Arthur Chichester, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, deported 1,300 former rebel Irish soldiers from Ulster to serve in the Protestant Swedish Army.
In practical terms, this meant that recruiting within Ireland itself effectively ceased and Irishmen seeking employment in foreign armies had to make their own way to the Continent.
At the time of the Franco-Prussian War a volunteer Irish medical unit, the Franco-Irish Ambulance Brigade, was serving with the French Army.
