CHAPTER 11

 

Eastern and Central Europe

 

"I see none more competent..."

 

– The Empress Maria Theresa when speaking of Francis de Lacy.

 

 

ON TO THE EAST

 

      While most of the Irish émigrés of the 17th and 18th centuries found new homes in the Catholic nations of western Europe, a few journeyed to the eastern nations of Europe.  Some of them were professional soldiers discharged from service in France or Spain when the dwindling finances of monarchs could no longer support a large standing army.  But other Irish émigrés chose to wander eastward for no reason other than their desire to explore different lands.  They were individuals who had abandoned the romantic notion that they would some day be part of a French or Spanish army sent to free Ireland.  Without this hope, it made little difference to them where they settled as long as the country tolerated their Catholic faith.

      The inhabitants of Austria, Hungary and even distant Russia had some familiarity with Irish people and culture.  During the Middle Ages, Irish monks had settled in these lands; and their deeds became part of the local history and folklore of central and eastern Europe.  In 17th-century Vienna, Irish émigrés could visit the monastery founded in the mid 1100's by the Irish monk, Gille-na-Maemh, which came under the control of Austrian Benedictines shortly after the death of its founder.  Any of the émigrés hardy enough to travel to far-off Kiev would hear from local historians about the Irish monks of that city who made a dangerous escape to Christian Poland when they refused to submit to the Mongol invaders during the 13th century.

      The aristocracy of central and eastern Europe welcomed the new wave of Irish émigrés because they brought with them military, technical and agricultural skills sorely needed in these lands.  A considerable number of the educated nobility recognized that lingering medieval customs and ideas were preventing their countries from prospering.  In wars with neighbouring countries, inferior armaments, inadequate logistics and outdated tactics were often disastrous for the armies of Austria, Hungary and Russia.  Many armies relied on poorly-trained rural conscripts who were viewed as little more than cannon fodder by generals who had achieved their rank only because they were aristocrats and not for their personal skill.  Because of their training and combat experience in the better-trained and better-equipped armies of western Europe, the Irish émigrés were quickly entrusted with positions of high command in the military.  The Irish also brought with them technical knowledge in banking, medicine, and engineering.  Their agricultural knowledge proved particularly valuable when rapidly increasing populations led to food shortages in Austria and Hungary during the 18th century.  Most of the crops were grown on feudal-like manors that could not produce sufficient surplus to feed the people living in the cities.  Like the medieval Celtic monks, the influence that the Irish had on the nations of central and eastern Europe stemmed from their ability to teach their skills to others.

      As they had proved in other countries, the Irish émigrés in central and eastern Europe possessed a favourable combination of intellectual capabilities and practical skills which could help solve problems.  As imaginative, relevant and effective as the activities of Irish émigrés may have seemed to the people of eastern European countries, the Irish were just acting in ways they always had throughout their long heritage stretching back to the Celts of the Iron Age.  This Celtic heritage enabled the Irish to act thoughtfully and effectively in new circumstances.  This heritage was formed by adapting to new situations as the prehistoric Celtic clans ranged over Western Europe, simultaneously imposing their own ways on other peoples they came into contact with and, in turn, assimilating new ways, until they eventually prospered on the remote island of Ireland.

      In general, the farther east the Irish émigrés went into Europe, the narrower their effects were on the nations and cultures they became active in.  There are three major reasons for this.  The first is that by the 18th century when the émigrés arrived in this reason and became involved in local affairs, the cultures and nations were much more defined than those of western Europe - France and Spain in particular.  Not only were the cultures and nations of central and eastern Europe more defined, but they had absorbed as a part of their definition Mongol and Byzantine influences.  These influences were quite foreign to the fundamentals of the cultures and nations of western Europe, which were in many respects Celtic.

      The second reason the influences of the émigrés were relatively limited is that a smaller number of Irish emigrated to these areas.  Those who did were guided by a sense of adventure, a wish to fill a role or gain a status which was already being filled by other émigrés in the countries of western Europe, or a desire for a chance to regain wealth they had lost in the changing economic circumstances of western Europe.

      The third reason the Irish émigrés had a relatively limited influence in central and eastern Europe was that the activity of the small number who did go there was concentrated in a few areas.  The small number stood out, and the most able among them were enlisted by the rulers of different countries to help solve social, political, or military problems they faced.  As a result, many of the rest of the small number of Irish would follow into these areas and thus did not find their way into a broader range of fields as the Irish had in other countries of Europe.  Whereas in Spain, Portugal, and France (and in later times in the United States and Australia), the Irish became involved in - and often became leaders in - areas as diverse as education, religion, commerce, military affairs, agriculture, and diplomacy, in central and eastern Europe, their activities were mostly concentrated in military affairs and statecraft.  It was in these areas that the central and eastern European rulers found the services of the Irish most valuable.  As important or crucial as it was, the Irish émigré influence in these areas was limited because their activity was focused on a particular pressing problem facing a ruler.

      With their small number, their involvement in only a few activities and no successive groups of émigrés following them, the Irish émigrés of central and eastern Europe did not have the wide and continuous influence of the émigrés in other parts of Europe.  However, the role of the Irish in dealing with the immediate problems was usually effective and in some cases crucial.  It was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire which the émigrés played their most important role in central and eastern Europe.  They also played distinctive roles in Russia.  But they did not venture into the lands that are the modern nations of Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria or Greece.  During most of the early modern era, these lands were controlled by the Ottoman Turks who had built a Moslem Empire which the Irish believed offered little opportunity for Christians.  Because the freedom to practise their Catholic religion was so important to the Irish émigrés, they chose to settle in lands where they knew it would be accepted.

 

 

PETER DE LACY AND CZAR PETER OF RUSSIA

 

      At the close of the 17th century, most Europeans considered Russia a land of medieval barbarism.  Its feudal social structures had changed little for centuries.  Serfs were tied to the land they tilled, and nobles were despots.  To govern effectively, the Czar had to rely on the goodwill of the nobles and the continuing support of his personal regiment of bodyguards, the Strieltsy.  The science and technology transforming Europe during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment had only a small effect on Russia.  All foreign ideas and viewpoints were shunned as the work of the devil, as potential threats to the existing social order ordained by God.

      When Peter Romanov became Czar at the close of the 17th century, he resolved to use his power and authority to lift Russian society out of its medieval lethargy.  He overcame the resistance of the Russian nobles to foreign ideas, and he was so effective in modernizing Russia that he is remembered as Peter the Great.  He began by ordering his nobles to trim their shaggy hair, shave their long beards and wear western-style jackets and breeches.  The nobles grumbled, but obeyed.  When Peter decided to travel abroad, it caused a scandal among the conservative nobles of Russia.  But travel he did, learning as much as he could about the science and technology in Germany, Holland and England.  During his journeys, he enticed a number of European scientists, artisans and military leaders to join the small group of foreigners who lived in Russia under his protection.  Peter hoped to use their knowledge and skills to revamp Russian society.

      In 1698, while in Poland to see the Polish monarch, King Augustus II, about the alliance they had formed to wage war against Sweden, Peter met a Polish army officer of Irish origin named Peter de Lacy.  Czar Peter and de Lacy struck up an immediate friendship based on their mutual enthusiasm for carousing through the night in seedy taverns and houses of prostitution.  Czar Peter also saw that de Lacy had military experience and skills that he might be able to make use of in his plans for modernizing Russia.

      Emigrating from Ireland in 1691, as one of the Wild Geese, de Lacy saw service in the Irish Brigade of France.  Being discharged in the reduction of French forces after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1698, de Lacy went eastward because the Polish Count de Croy, who de Lacy had met in France, had told him that the King of Poland would welcome experienced Irish officers in his army.  When he arrived in Poland, de Lacy was given an officer's commission with the rank of major.

      When Peter the Great continued his tour of Europe by travelling to Vienna, de Lacy secured leave from the Polish army to join the Czar's entourage.  While Czar Peter was preparing to visit Venice, a messenger from Moscow brought news that the regiment of troops that was his personal bodyguard, the Strieltsy, were plotting to crown Peter's son Alexis as Czar of Russia.  This plot stemmed from the resistance to change among the conservative nobility.  As he hurriedly prepared to return to Russia, Peter persuaded de Lacy to join him.  De Lacy agreed, and Peter made him a major in the Russian army.

      When Czar Peter arrived in Moscow, he found that the Strieltsy had been arrested by army forces led by a Russian noble named Schien who was loyal to him.  To strike fear into the hearts of the nobles who had secretly supported the Strieltsy plotters, Czar Peter personally tortured and executed many of the members of his former bodyguard in a public square near the Kremlin.  Peter invited de Lacy, as well as some of the other foreigners who had returned with him to Russia, to take part in the hangings and beheadings.  But when Peter held out an executioner's sword for de Lacy, de Lacy declined it.  The Czar did not press it on him, but kept the sword and went back to his grisly work.

      In the days following this harsh introduction to Russia society, Peter de Lacy received his assignment from Peter the Great.  Along with other European officers recruited by Peter, de Lacy was to train the Russian army in the techniques of European warfare, which included rapid loading and firing of muskets, and hand-to-hand combat with bayonets.  But de Lacy ran up against the inertia of centuries of Russian military custom requiring the use of sword and cavalry instead of shot and cannon.  He encountered resistance from many Russian officers who believed that foot soldiers were ignorant brutes capable only of overwhelming an enemy by their sheer numbers.  Their traditional tactics called for launching wave after wave of soldiers at the enemy.  If the attacking units found themselves outnumbered, or if they sustained heavy casualties, they usually broke and ran.  The inertia of the Russian military leaders was so ingrained that even with the active support of the Czar, de Lacy was able to train only one battalion of soldiers in modern tactics.  This battalion - called the Grand Musketeers - was formed particularly for de Lacy to command and composed only of Russian nobles.  These nobles later became officers of other units after serving under de Lacy, thereby gradually extending the influence of his training methods throughout the Russian army.   Because of the battlefield successes of the Grand Musketeers in the war against Sweden, in 1708 de Lacy was placed in command of the Siberian Regiment of Infantry.  At the Battle of Poltava, the Siberian Regiment distinguished itself by repelling the main Swedish attack.

      In 1700, Russia and its Polish ally declared war on Sweden in what came to be known as The Great Northern War.  King Charles XII of Sweden proved to be a masterful tactician, and the war went badly for Russia.  With a smaller army, Charles defeated the Russians and their Polish allies at every encounter.  The Czar's poorly-trained and ill-equipped army could not prevail against the iron discipline and the rifled muskets of the Swedes.  By the spring of 1709, Charles had advanced deeply into the Ukraine and was confronting a Russian army near the fortress-city of Poltava, a strategically important point on the main road between Kiev and Moscow.  Although the Swedes were heavily outnumbered, they were relying on the usual tactic of an artillery barrage followed by a bayonet charge to cause panic among the poorly-trained Russian soldiers.  But one of the regiments facing the Swedes at the point they chose for their main attack was de Lacy's Siberian Regiment.  He ordered his troops to hold their fire until he gave the command.  During the Swedish artillery barrage, de Lacy's troops stood firm.  When the cannon fire stopped and the Swedes were charging towards the Russian lines with bayonets bristling, the Siberian Regiment held their fire.  Only when the Swedes were almost at the Russian line did de Lacy order his men to shoot.  The concentrated musket fire from de Lacy's regiment caused such heavy Swedish losses that the entire Swedish attack foundered.  A Russian counter-attack defeated the Swedish army, and Charles XII fled the battle, never to threaten Russian lands again.

      In recognition of Peter de Lacy's services, the Czar made him a general and a count.  Because he had been so successful at Poltava and now had a noble title, other officers in the Russian army took a greater interest in the European methods of training and tactics that he was introducing.  For the next two decades, the Russian army retrained and rearmed, largely under de Lacy's direction.  He taught both officers and enlisted men the fundamentals of European warfare of the day.  In 1736, he was promoted to Field Marshall.

      The few Irish émigrés who came to Russia after de Lacy also followed military careers.  They include Count John O'Rourke in the army of Catherine the Great and his nephew, Major General Joseph O'Rourke, who led Russian troops against Napoleon.  Peter de Lacy, however, was the Irish émigré with the most renown in Russian history and culture. Despite his prominence and his rank, he never became fully at ease with Russian society.  Its customs seemed too foreign, its traditions seemed too alien from his Irish heritage.  When his son, Francis, was old enough, he sent the lad to Austria to become a cadet in an army regiment.  Since Francis stayed in Austria and Peter had no other sons, future generations of the de Lacy family were Austrian.  The internal structural changes in the military that Peter de Lacy helped to set in motion continued to influence Russian training and tactics throughout the 18th century.

 

 

THE IRISH GENERALS OF AUSTRIA

 

      Russia was not the only eastern European country whose military forces were outdated.  Austria's defeat in 1735 in its war with the Ottoman Empire had exposed Austria's weaknesses in facing an army employing modern tactics and equipped with modern arms.  Although smaller than armies in previous centuries, the modernized armies of the 1700's were composed largely of professional soldiers, and they were thus more effective fighting forces.  Conscription was used only in times of national emergencies.  Logistics had also become an important factor for a modernized army so that troops in the field would not have to depend on scavenging the countryside for food.

      Austria's humiliating defeat by the Ottoman Empire offered opportunities for advancement into the high ranks of its army for a number of Irish émigrés familiar with the latest developments in military administration, strategy and tactics, and logistics.  The modernization these Irish generals effected for the Austrian army proved its worth in Austria's war against France, Spain, Prussia and Bavaria, called the War of Austrian Succession.

      The war began shortly after a young and beautiful woman inherited the throne of the Austrian Empire in 1740.  The new Empress was Maria Theresa von Hapsburg - the heiress of an imperial dynasty founded almost five centuries before when the Swiss Count Rudolph von Hapsburg was elected as the Holy Roman Emperor in 1273.  There were many in Austria who felt that Maria Theresa was not capable of governing the Empire because of her inexperience and because she was a woman.  Her cousin, Prince Charles Albert of Bavaria, immediately challenged her right to wear the crown.  He was supported by France, Spain and Prussia, all of which saw the conflict between Charles Albert and Maria Theresa as an opportunity to destroy Austrian military and political power in central Europe.  This led to the War of Austrian Succession, which lasted eight long and bitter years.

      The War started when King Frederick of Prussia invaded Austrian territory.  The King thought it would be easy to conquer Austria now that it was led by the twenty-three year old Maria Theresa who, Frederick believed, was surrounded by feeble and impotent ministers.  In December of 1740, he sent an army of thirty thousand battle veterans into Silesia, an Austrian province bordering Prussian territory.  He was certain that his army would shatter all resistance and would soon be marching through the streets of Vienna.

      But Maria Theresa was far more capable of governing Austria than any of her enemies supposed.  When Austria was invaded, her first act was to seek the advice of her ministers and generals to decide how to deal with the Prussian threat.  She knew that her Empire was in disarray because of bureaucratic abuses during the reign of her father.  The army's actual strength was far less than the 100,000 claimed by its generals, and army pay was more than two years in arrears.  Many of the Empress's advisors suggested the cautious route of political compromise as the solution to the threat facing Austria.  But a small group of Irish émigré generals and colonels urged defiance to Prussia and any other nation that sought to invade Austria to annex its territory or topple its monarchy.

      Maria Theresa heeded the advice of her Irish military experts, not only because they believed they could achieve victory against Prussia and its allies, but also because their past service to Austria merited confidence in them.  This group included men like Field Marshall Oliver Wallis, whose grandfather, Oliver Walsh, came to Austria in 1666 and changed his name to Wallis to make it easier for German-speaking people to pronounce.  For three generations there had been a general Wallis leading the troops of the Austrian army.  Another was General MacDonnell, whose father had led Prince Eugene's attack on Cremona in 1701 and personally captured the French commander, Marshal Villeroy.  The most ardent advocate of resistance to Prussia was Maximillian Browne.

      At the age of thirty-five, Browne was one of the youngest field marshalls in the Austrian army.  He strongly supported Maria Theresa's desire to keep her throne and protect her empire from foreign incursions.  His father had received a colonel's commission in Austria after he was discharged from the Irish Brigade of France due to its reduction in size in 1698.  Maximillian was born in 1705, and at the age of five his parents sent him to stay with relatives in Limerick so he would not lose his connection to his Irish heritage.  But his mother, who was a Fitzgerald of the Desmond branch, soon regretted her decision to send her son to live amid the strife in Ireland created by the newly enacted Penal Laws.  After a short time, the Brownes recalled Maximillian and sent him to live with his uncle George Browne, a Colonel of Hungarian infantry.  Young Maximillian Browne quickly discovered that his uncle George was a highly respected officer who was the author of drill books and the military code of justice used by the Hungarian army.  He watched his uncle transform the unseasoned Hungarian troops into an effective fighting force.  To follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle, Maximillian resolved to pursue a military career.

      In 1725, Browne returned to Austria and received a Colonel's commission in the Austrian army.  He was given this high rank in recognition of the administrative training he had received as a cadet in his uncle's Hungarian regiment.  This administrative background made Browne stand out even among the other Irish officers of the Austrian army.  At the time, the Austrian army sorely needed officers with administrative skills to help the army modernize its organization.  Given command of a regiment, Browne soon proved his leadership and organizational abilities by revising training methods and devising an efficient logistical support system for his regiment.

      Austria's war with the Ottoman Empire in 1735 gave Browne the opportunity to demonstrate the proficiency of his regiment.  Twenty years before, the Austrian army under the leadership of Prince Eugene defeated the Ottoman Turks at Peterswarden and the siege of Belgrade.  Upon the defeat of the Turks, Austria was able to annex a good deal of territory belonging to Hungary and Serbia that had long been under Turkish rule.  The second war grew out of the Turkish ambition to reclaim the disputed lands.  In this second conflict, because of its neglect of training and logistics, the Austrian army met with defeat after defeat at the hands of the Turks.  One of the few positive signs offering hope for the future in the disastrous conflict for Austria was the performance of the regiment commanded by Maximillian Browne.  Although it was unable to turn the tide of battles it fought in, the good account it gave of itself demonstrated the effectiveness of Browne's training in manoeuvring and modern fighting methods.  Based on the outstanding performance of his regiment, Browne was given the rank of general and put in charge of several regiments.  The war with the Turks ended, however, before the new methods Browne brought to the Austrian army could be put to the test.  But even after the war, Browne continued with his modernization programme by establishing a training routine for the entire army.

      In December of 1740 when the Prussians invaded the Austrian province of Silesia at the start of the War of Austrian Succession, Browne - who was by then Field Marshall Maximillian von Browne - entreated the Empress Maria Theresa to let him lead an army of his modernized forces to challenge the enemy advance.  The Empress readily consented.  Because the Austrian army had shrunk in size during the 1730's and few troops were stationed in Silesia, Browne could muster a force of only 6,000 troops to meet a Prussian army five times this size.  He knew that if his small army confronted the Prussians directly, they would be quickly overwhelmed.  So Browne relied upon the traditional Irish tactics of ambush and manoeuvre he had learned from his father and uncle.  Throughout early 1741, the Austrians raided and withdrew to delay the Prussian advance.

      During the Silesian campaign, Browne introduced the new tactic of regiments of highly mobile troops, which later became known as light infantry.  These regiments were composed of infantrymen armed only with muskets, without the artillery, engineers or supply trains that normally accompanied infantry regiments.  They took up positions on the flanks and ahead of a regular infantry column.  Their purpose was to hold off advancing enemy forces until the larger main body of troops was able to shift from marching in a column to the line formation for battle, an involved and time-consuming process during which the main body was vulnerable.  Browne's light infantry regiment was composed of Croatian sharpshooters who could slow down the approach of an enemy.  After running into them in January and February of 1741 during his advance across Silesia, Frederick II of Prussia said they were the most dangerous opposition he had to face.  Despite Browne's innovative tactics, he was unable to prevent the advance of Frederick's much larger army.

      While Browne was defending Austrian territory in Silesia, Maria Theresa was assembling and equipping a force strong enough to try to drive the Prussian forces out of Austria.  She would have led this force into battle herself except that German society prohibited women from taking part in warfare.  When she spoke of her desire to fight alongside her soldiers, only her Irish generals and colonels offered her encouragement.  For them, the image of Maria Theresa riding at the head of her army touched mythic chords from their Celtic-Irish heritage which revered female military leaders like Queen Maev and Queen Boudica.  But other advisors to the Empress feared that Maria Theresa would loose the support of many of her conservative subjects if she strayed so far outside the bounds of female behaviour dictated by traditional Germanic culture.  So when her army marched north to engage the Prussians, she remained in Vienna.

      In April of 1741, while Browne was still in Silesia, the Austrian army that Maria Theresa assembled met the Prussians on the field of Mollwitz on the border of Silesia and Austria.  Although the Prussians carried the day, they took so many casualties that their advance into Austria was halted.  Over the next few years, Austria unsuccessfully attempted to drive the Prussians out of Silesia.  At the same time that Austria was fighting the Prussians, France had seized the Austrian-controlled province of Alsace, thereby threatening invasion across the north-west border of Austria.  This threat from France was not eliminated until 1744 when England became Austria's ally and the two nations mounted a joint counter-offensive in Alsace.  Although the province was not recaptured, France was prevented from occupying any additional Austrian territory.  After the war dragged on for four more years with neither side gaining a decisive victory, the belligerents agreed to a peace conference in Dresden in 1748.  Maria Theresa sent Maximillian Browne to this conference as the Austrian representative because his military exploits and his unswerving support of her right to rule the nation had made him one of her most trusted advisors.  In order to secure a peace, he was forced to cede the economically important province of Silesia to Prussia and to grant independence to several smaller Austrian territories in Italy.  Although Austria lost land, Maria Theresa gained her objective when she was confirmed as Empress of Austria as part of the peace settlement.

      During the ensuing period of peace, Austrian generals taught their troops to protect regular infantry columns with light infantry regiments.  Prior to this time in European armies, the tactic of ambush and manoeuvre was used only at the discretion of a regimental commander whose unit was operating independently from the main force.  There were no regiments specializing in the tactic.  As word of the success of the Austrian light infantry spread, this type of specialized regiment was added to the armies of other nations.  By the close of the 18th century, virtually every army in Europe was using light infantry units as skirmishers and flankers.

      The War of Austrian Succession also led to the establishment of the military academy of Wiener Neustadt.  During the long years of the war, Maria Theresa's armies relied heavily on the leadership talents of émigré military officers from Ireland, France and other nations.  Once peace was made, she resolved to create an officer corps that was modern, efficient and made up of native-born Austrians.  In 1752, she ordered the construction of a military academy to train Austrian cadets.

      The academy was located in a citadel built during medieval times to keep watch for attacks from Mongols who had overrun neighbouring Hungary.  Many of its first instructors were Irish who were skilled veterans of the Austrian army.  In 1771, it became known as the Theresian Academy to honour its founder, a name it still bears.  To remind the young cadets of the heritage of honour and service they were expected to live up to, a series of portraits of Austria's prominent generals was hung in the Academy's great hall.  Out of thirty-seven faces looking down on the students, ten were men who were born in Ireland or who were descendants of Irish émigrés.  The Irish influence of Austrian military affairs became part of army tradition and culture, affecting to some degree every cadet who passed through the Academy.

      In 1756, Austria became engulfed in the Seven Years War which broke out across Europe.  The conflict grew out of the territorial ambitions of the major European nations in both Europe and the Americas.  The former Austrian province of Silesia remained in the hands of Frederick II of Prussia, and he made no secret of his ambition to annex even more of Austria.  When he learned that Maria Theresa was planning to form military alliances with France and Russia to both safeguard Austrian territory from Prussian aggression and to possibly regain Silesia, Frederick simultaneously attacked both Russia and Austria before this coalition against him could be formed.

      Once again, Maria Theresa relied upon her Irish generals to defend her Empire.  In one of the first battles of the war near Prague, Field Marshall Browne was mortally wounded when a cannonball crushed the bones of his leg.  Theresa appointed Browne's cousin by marriage, Count Francis de Lacy, to replace Browne at the command of her armies on the Prussian front.

      Francis de Lacy had shown the same outstanding, dependable military capabilities as Browne.  De Lacy had a reputation for stressing the value of an efficient supply for the units under his command so that the soldiers could concentrate on training and fighting instead of foraging for food.  Because the officer corps of the day was still largely composed of aristocrats with little practical experience in supply or commerce, he often found himself teaching them matters ranging from overall logistic plans to negotiating prices with farmers.

      During the Seven Years War, de Lacy did not have the military resources to drive Prussian forces out of Silesia.  With parts of the Austrian army occupied in other areas, he did not have enough troops.  Furthermore, although Austria had made considerable progress in equipping its troops with the latest armaments such as rifled musket, its weaponry was still not equal to that of the Prussians.  Handicapped as he was, de Lacy was able to reach only a stalemate with the Prussians.  Considering the disadvantages he had in this conflict, it required remarkable military skill for him to achieve this deadlock.  Recognizing this, in commenting on de Lacy's achievement, Empress Maria Theresa wrote in a letter to her Chancellor, "I see no one more competent than de Lacy".  When the War ended, the Queen made him President of the Council of War.  In this position as head of the Austrian army, de Lacy continued to direct the gradual, costly process of modernizing the Austrian army's equipment, supply system and organization.

      The part played by Irish émigrés in the military and political affairs of Austria during the 18th century was important to Austria's survival and development as a nation.  As a central European empire, the country was surrounded on all sides by nations who were potential enemies.  Austria's military setbacks in the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War had exposed the weaknesses of the Austrian army.  Austria had lost portions of its territory and had to negotiate for peace from the weaker position.  Irish émigré military leaders played important roles in saving Austria from total defeat.  Although Austria had suffered setbacks, the Austrian monarchy was still in place and Austria was still a whole, independent nation.  Austria had learned that a modernized army was fundamental in offering any hope of protecting its borders against the potentially hostile nations surrounding it.  In the years after these two wars, Irish military leaders - de Lacy and others such as General Laval Nugent and General William O'Kelly - took the lead in improving training, logistics, armaments, and organization of the Austrian army so that Austria could effectively defend itself when attacked by another nation.  From 1690 until the mid 19th century, Irish émigrés and their descendants played central roles in the wars of Austria and the evolution of the Austrian army.

 

 

AGRICULTURE AND THE IRISH IN CENTRAL EUROPE

 

      In the 18th century in Austria, Hungary and Russia, food production still depended on serfs working small plots of land owned by nobles who were entitled to a large portion of the crop.  Surplus crops were ordinarily meagre, however, because the farming tools used by the serfs were primitive, and it was the rare serf who had a horse or ox for ploughing.  The serfs were ignorant of the practices of crop rotation or fertilization to keep the soil from being depleted.  Instead, they planted the same cereal crops of wheat and sorghum year after year.  Despite the arduous, thankless life of the serfs in toiling to produce meagre harvests, they could not engage in any other kinds of employment or move to a more fertile location without permission from the local noble.  But a noble would hardly ever give such permission.  Rather, with the surplus crops they sold in the markets being their main source of revenue, the nobles continually demanded higher production from their serfs.

      In Austria, this farming system, antiquated as it was, managed to supply the population with enough food until there was a sudden increase early in the reign of Maria Theresa, about 1745.  (The reasons for this increase in population are unknown to this day.)  Since the serfs could not grow enough food for this increased population, a food crisis came upon Austria.  The crisis touched the people of the country as well as the cities.  Many serfs families grew so large that they could not even feed themselves.  Out of desperation, whether they had the permission from their noble or not, legions of serfs abandoned their plots of land to make their way to the cities to try to find work.  In Vienna, Linz, Prague or one of the other cities of the Austrian Empire, they lived under wretched conditions, and few found work.  Not only were the uprooted serfs alarmed over the possibility of starvation, but they were faced with sharply rising food prices.

      Austria's food crisis had a serious effect on the nation's military when the Seven Years War began in 1756.  After a full day's drill, no matter how hot or cold the weather, soldiers could expect only a bowl of thin soup.  They were often weakened from hunger when they went to battle with enemy forces.  Many deserted just to look for food.

      Faced with growing discontent in all parts of Austrian society, Maria Theresa directed her Chancellor Wenzel Kaunitz to seek a solution to the problem of low food production.  She had appointed him Chancellor in 1753, and he had capably administered her government.  She picked him for this task over her other advisors because he had a keen interest in agriculture and recognized that food production was essential to maintaining social harmony in Austria.  Kaunitz belonged to a number of agricultural societies recently formed among the landed gentry to experiment with crop rotation and cultivation of plants from foreign lands.  Since agriculture had become a gentleman's hobby in Austria as well as other parts of Europe, many other landowners also belonged to the agricultural societies.  Kaunitz was particularly struck by the ideas of Viscount Nicholas Taaffe, an elderly Irish émigré prominent in both military and agricultural circles.

      Taaffe had been interested in farming all his life.  His father, Francis, had been a gentleman farmer on his lands in County Sligo before emigrating to Austria in the 1680's.  When the English Parliament passed an act forbidding Catholics from owning land, Francis was faced with a choice between continued prosperity if he converted to the Anglican faith and poverty if he remained true to his traditional religion.  To escape this dilemma, Francis found a Protestant willing to buy his land and he left Ireland for Europe, where he wandered for a time before settling in Austria.  He offered his services to the Austrian army, fought against the Ottoman Turks, and rose to the rank of general for his role in the relief of Vienna in 1683.  But his main interest remained farming.  With the funds from the sale of his Sligo estates, he purchased a manor in Silesia where he supervised the planting and cultivation of crops whenever he had time away from his duties to the army and the court in Vienna.  Like his father, Nicholas pursued a military career - rising to the rank of general - while actively supervising the farming of his lands whenever his military duties would permit.  Seeing that disease often struck the cereal crops that were planted year after year on the same ground, Nicholas wondered if the potato, the staple of his family's homeland that his father had grown before coming to Austria, would flourish in Silesian soil.  At the close of the 1730's, he obtained some seed potatoes and instructed the peasants in potato cultivation - how to slice the seed potato to preserve the eye, how to shape a mound of soil around the base of the plant, and how to protect the plant's leaves from insects.  At the end of the summer, these methods yielded an abundance of potatoes.

      Taaffe's success did not bring an immediate end to the problem of food production in Austria.  New ideas in farming spread only by the slow method of word-of-mouth, and were implemented only spottily and haphazardly.  Besides, the start of the War of Austrian Succession interfered with any progress Austria might have made in food production.  When the War ended, some of the landowners belonging to agricultural societies became interested in potato cultivation, including Field Marshall Oliver Wallis, an Irish émigré also involved in farming who followed Taaffe's lead by planting potatoes in the fields of his estates.  So when Austrian food production could not keep up with the growing population in the 1750's, both Taaffe and Wallis began to work closely with Chancellor Kaunitz to inform farmers about their success in potato farming.

      Taaffe and Wallis also joined with Kaunitz in advocating fundamental reform in the agricultural practices in the Austrian Empire.  Following their advice, the government passed regulations to control the type of crops planted and to create market incentives for farmers to produce a surplus.  The agricultural societies were used to educate other farmers in the most advanced farming techniques.  Peasants and landlords alike were taught the value of crop rotation, fields left fallow for a season, and efficient pest control.  The programme was successfully implemented, but it took decades before the inefficient practices of a serf-based agricultural system were replaced with more modern farming methods throughout Austria.  Year by year, food production increased until the spectre of famine was lifted from the Austrian Empire.

      In the second half of the 18th century, Nicholas Taaffe's success in convincing Austrian farmers to raise potatoes had an effect that went far beyond alleviating the Austrian food shortage.  As the Austrian army increasingly relied on potatoes for its rations, other nations began to see the benefits of using the cheaply-produced and long-lasting potatoes as one of the staples in the diet of soldiers.  By 1777, the War of Bavarian Succession - fought between Austria and Prussia to prevent the Austrian Emperor from inheriting the crown of Bavaria - was popularly called "The Potato War" because the troops of both sides depended so heavily on potatoes for their rations.  By the Napoleonic era, the potato was an important to the French soldiers marching across Europe as their muskets and bayonets.

      In Austria, Taaffe, Wallis and other Irish émigrés played an important role in implementing changes in farming methods during the 18th century.  They demonstrated that the soil could produce a much greater quantity of food.  But even more vital were their efforts to educate farmers.  Replenishing the soil with fertilizer, rotating crops, and cultivating larger plots was the core of their message.  Because of their prominent social position in the court of the Austrian Emperors, they became the primary agricultural advisors.  Irish émigré landowners, statesmen and soldiers in Austria influenced the government and farmers to meet the need for food for the growing population, thus helping Austria move into the modern age.

 

        

THE MYSTERY OF PRINCE RUDOLPH'S DEATH

 

      In 1969, an elderly man named Edward Taaffe, who was known to his friends as "Yaxi", died in Dublin.  He was a direct descendant of the same Nicholas Taaffe who helped to lead Austria out of its food crises in the 18th century.  Although Yaxi was born near Vienna and inherited the Austrian title of Count, he had emigrated to Ireland in 1938 when Germany annexed Austria.  Because of the Taaffe family's connections to the Hapsburg rulers of Austria, Yaxi's death rekindled a controversy concerning the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria in 1889.  Yaxi's grandfather, also named Edward, had been Prime Minister of the Austro-Hungarian  Empire from 1879 to 1893.  Many people believed that the Prime Minister had passed down to his grandson secret documents which contained information about Prince Rudolph's death.

      Rudolph was the first-born son of Franz Joseph, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late 19th century.  To his father's dismay, Rudolph seemed more interested in gambling, drinking, and carousing with artists and anarchists than in the responsibilities of a Crown Prince.  Although libertine behaviour was characteristic of the Austrian royalty at the time, Emperor Franz Joseph considered his son's behaviour disgraceful, and barred him from any role in public affairs.  In 1881, Franz Joseph insisted that Rudolph marry the Belgian Princess Stephanie in the hope that they would produce a child better suited to become a monarch.  Rudolph assented, but he found his new bride priggish and continued a number of affairs with women of the royal court.

      Rudolph fell in love with one of his paramours, the Baroness Marie Vetsera.  In 1889, he asked his father for permission to divorce Princess Stephanie.  Franz Joseph postponed responding to his son's request while he considered the political consequences.  If Rudolph divorced Stephanie, he would be ineligible for the crown and Rudolph's cousin, Franz Ferdinand, would become the Crown Prince of Austria.  The Emperor consulted with his Prime Minister, Count Edward Taaffe, who strongly advised against granting a divorce.  Although Taaffe believed that Franz Ferdinand would be a more suitable Crown Prince than Rudolph, he was concerned that liberals seeking to limit the power of the Emperor would use a divorce scandal to discredit the Emperor and his family.

      Taaffe had earned the confidence of the Emperor for his years of devoted service to Austria.  In 1867, as Deputy Minister President, he was one of the principal architects of the agreement with Hungary that created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.  This organized the Empire into a confederation, with Austria and Hungary as separate states that recognized the same monarch - Emperor Franz Joseph.  The people of Austria and Hungary could elect their own legislators and decide most internal matters for themselves.  But the arrangement left nationalist groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissatisfied.  As minorities, the Czechs, Croats, Serbs and Slovaks did not believe they were adequately represented in the legislators and clamoured for as much autonomy from the Hapsburg Emperor as the Hungarians enjoyed.  Nihilists, anarchists, and communists added to the political ferment in the Empire with their radical agendas.

      After he became Prime Minister in 1879, Taaffe negotiated a compromise with Czech nationalists.  The Czech language would be given equal footing with German in Bohemia; a Czech university was founded; and more positions in the government were promised to the Czechs.  The other nationalities within the Empire responded by asking for similar concessions.  Throughout the 1880's, Taaffe continued negotiating with the dissident ethnic groups, hoping to achieve internal political stability for the Austro-Hungarian Empire while avoiding any incidents - such as a divorce in the royal family - that could ignite rebellion.

      Although Taaffe knew that the conservative nobility, clergy and middle-class merchants of the Empire were already concerned that Rudolph was unfit to wear the crown, he advised the Emperor against granting Rudolph a divorce because the scandal would create misgivings about the Emperor and his family, and potentially alienate the Christian Socialists, the most important Austrian political party.  These conservatives supporting the Emperor were termed the "Iron Ring", and Taaffe believed that the political stability of the Empire depended on their continued support.  It was largely due to Taaffe's influence that Franz Joseph refused to grant Rudolph a divorce.  But the problem of Prince Rudolph's outrageous behaviour, which was making him unsuitable to wear the crown, remained unsolved.

      The dilemma was unexpected resolved in June of 1889, when Rudolph took Maria Vetsera to his hunting lodge at Mayerling so they could enjoy each other's company in seclusion.  The next day, both Crown Prince Rudolph and the Baroness Maria Vetsera were found dead from gunshot wounds.  Rumours of intrigue and assassination swept through Austria.  Publicly, the Emperor declared that Rudolph had shot his lover and then killed himself.  But privately, he instructed Count Taaffe to conduct a discreet investigation to answer questions that arose about the death of his son.

      A few months later, Count Taaffe finished his report and delivered it to the Emperor.  Franz Joseph read it and returned it to Taaffe with the order that it was to be kept secret.  Taaffe was to safeguard the report, and it was to be passed down to the eldest son in each generation of Taaffe's descendants for perpetual safekeeping.  Yaxi Taaffe was the last male descendant of the line and should have had these documents in his possession, but they were not found after his death in 1969.  Some historians speculated that the documents were destroyed in 1916 when a fire ravaged the Taaffe estate in Ellischau, Austria.  Because of several letters from Catholic bishops to Edward Taaffe referring to the documents, other historians believed that the papers were entrusted to the Vatican, sealed forever in its archives.  Because these documents were not found after Yaxi Taaffe's death and because of the steadfast refusal of the Vatican to reveal if they have any Taaffe's archives in their possession, the truth of the Mayerling affair will probably always be a mystery.  But it did reveal the amount of trust and power that the Emperor placed in his Prime Minister, Edward Taaffe.

      After Prince Rudolph's death, Edward Taaffe prevented the scandal surrounding the Prince's death from damaging the monarchy by granting additional concessions to ethnic minorities in the Empire.  His policy of striking a balance between the liberals who desired to dismantle the Empire and the conservatives who desired to stifle all political reforms kept the Austro-Hungarian Empire intact.  Despite Taaffe's keen negotiating skills, however, he could engineer no permanent solutions for the Empire's ethnic and political rivalries.  Taaffe retired in 1893.  A little more than two decades after Taaffe's death in 1895 at his estate at Ellischau, the patchwork Austro-Hungarian Empire broke apart from internal social and economic stresses intensified by World War I.

      Edward Taaffe was one of Franz Joseph's most trusted officials.  This exemplifies the role of Irish émigrés or their descendants in Austrian society.  Because of their small number, their roles in crises of Austrian society - whether military threat, a food shortage or a scandal involving the monarchy - the contribution of Irish émigrés and their descendants to Austrian society and history is especially evident.