[4] While increasingly diluted by French and foreign recruits from elsewhere in Europe, its Irish-born officers and men often aspired to return to aid Ireland and regain their ancestral lands, as some did during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

As serving soldiers of the French King the Irish Picquets were able to formally surrender as a unit after Culloden with a promise of honourable treatment and were not subjected to the reprisals suffered by the Highland clansmen.

[6] Many other exiled Jacobites in the French army were captured en route to Scotland in late 1745 and early 1746, including Charles Radcliffe, 5th Earl of Derwentwater, a captain in Dillon's regiment who was executed in London in 1746.

In the interim, however, the Brigade found itself briefly opposed to its Spanish counterpart in the War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1718–20, as France was allied to the Jacobites' Hanoverian rivals.

After its early years however the Brigade increasingly became a professional force made up of Irish soldiers who enlisted for reasons of family tradition or in search of opportunities denied them at home, rather than for directly political motives.

In 1729 a confidential treaty between the French and British governments made provision for the engagement of 750 Irish recruits provided that this activity remained unpublicized.

Individual recruiters for the Irish Brigade were hanged if caught and during the Seven Years' War all British subjects in French service were declared traitors by Parliament and liable to execution if taken prisoner.

Irishmen serving in the British Army and taken prisoner during the French wars might find themselves being encouraged to literally change their coats and enlist in the Brigade.

[17] The use of Saint George's Cross on all the Brigade's flags reflected their acceptance of the central importance of James III's claim to the Crown of England.

Fitzjames's cavalry regiment standard had a French design of a yellow field with a central radiant sun surmounted by a ribbon with the motto: Nec Pluribus Impar, [Not Unequal to Many].

Modern research by Eoghan Ó hAnnracháin claims that it is very doubtful if the regiments would also have been chanting in Irish, a language unknown to probably a majority of the brigade at the time.

[22] Others strongly dispute this, as over the course of 100 years new recruits were brought into the brigade mostly from the Irish-speaking regions of West Munster, the homeland of, among others the O'Connell family of Derrynane House.

Seamus MacManus shows in his book The Story of The Irish Race (1921): "In truth, it was not the "Wild Geese" who forgot the tongue of the Gael or let it perish.

We are told that the watchwords and the words of command in the "Brigade" were always in Irish and that officers who did not know the language before they entered the service found themselves of necessity compelled to learn it.

Receive this Standard as a pledge of our remembrance, a monument of our admiration, and our respect, and in future, generous Irishmen, this shall be the motto of your spotless flag: 1692–1792, Semper et ubique Fidelis.

In 1792 some elements of the Brigade, who had rallied to the émigré Royalist forces, were presented with a "farewell banner" bearing the device of an Irish Harp embroidered with shamrocks and fleurs-de-lis.

Of the two senior Dillon officers who remained in the French Revolutionary Army, Theobald was killed by his soldiers when in retreat in 1792 and Arthur was executed in 1794 during The Terror.

By 1794 some officers felt that the Government of the French First Republic had become too anti-Catholic, and joined the Catholic Irish Brigade organized by William Pitt the Younger.