CHAPTER 7

 

In the Service of France

 

War-battered dogs are we,

Fighters in every clime;

Fillers of trenches and graves,

Mockers bemocked by time;

War dogs, hungry and grey,

Gnawing a naked bone.

Fighters in every clime,

Every cause but our own.

 

– Emily Lawless, With the Wild Geese

 

 

THE FLIGHT OF THE WILD GEESE

 

      On a cool day in the December of 1691, an Irish Colonel named Patrick Sarsfield arrived in France at the head of twelve thousand veteran Irish soldiers fully armed with their muskets and sabres.  But this was no army of invasion bent on conquest.  Instead, it was a migration of Irish to continental Europe on an unprecedented scale.  As the soldiers disembarked from the French ships that had transported them from Ireland, Sarsfield ordered his officers to muster them to demonstrate that even on foreign soil they remained a disciplined fighting force.

      By the mid-18th century, these soldiers led into exile by Colonel Patrick Sarsfield plus thousands of others who left Ireland to join them in France in the following decades were known in Ireland and throughout Europe as the "Wild Geese".  The first recorded description of them by this name is in an early 18th-century poem by Sean ó Cuinnegáin.  With this image, ó Cuinnegáin evoked the romantic notion that like the migrating geese, the soldiers would one day return to their homeland after a flight to a distant foreign place.  There is another, comparatively prosaic, origin for their name which is offered by some Irish historians.  This explanation for the term refers to the way the many individuals desiring to join the exiled Irish soldiers in France circumvented Irish laws preventing emigration.  Because many of the émigrés going to Europe were joining the armies of England's enemies in order to fight against English oppression in Ireland in this indirect way, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland made it illegal for men with military experience to leave Ireland.  To get around the law, Irish fighting men desiring to join the armies of England's enemies hid in the cargo holds of French merchant ships bound for French and other European ports.  On their manifests, the ships' captains would record these hidden Irishmen as "wild geese".  The ruse worked because the French routinely imported large numbers of such birds from Ireland as delicacies for the nobility.  The French captains and crews were readily willing to play their part in the scheme since it helped to supply capable and enthusiastic fighting men for their armies in their perennial contest with England for supremacy in Europe.  Whatever its origins, the name "Wild Geese" came to be applied to the defeated Irish troops led by Sarsfield who went into exile on that cool December day in 1691 and the many Irishmen who left Ireland by subterfuge over the following decades to join them.

      Patrick Sarsfield and the Wild Geese found themselves in exile not because they rebelled against the kings of England like so many of their forebears.  Ironically, the reason they came to France was became they supported James II, the Catholic King of England who had been deposed in 1688 by the Protestant, William of Orange.  William was supported by the Protestant majority in England who were opposed to the pro-Catholic policies of James II.  To escape capture by William, James II fled to Paris and was welcomed by the king of France, Louis XIV.

      Because William of Orange was the leader of a coalition of nations known as The League of Augsburg allied in a war against France, Louis feared that England would also declare war on France.  To keep the English armies away from European soil, Louis devised a clever strategy.  He persuaded James to go to Ireland with a small French army as a first step to regaining his lost throne by force of arms.  If enough Irish soldiers serving in the English army joined James and he was successful, Louis would have England as an ally.  But even if James was unsuccessful, he would weaken English forces in battle so they could not attack France.

      In March of 1689, James landed at the Irish port of Kinsale with a few French regiments behind him.  Irish Catholics - civilians as well as entire regiments of Irish soldiers in the English army - flocked to his banner, swelling the size of his force.  The joint Irish-French army marched north towards Dublin, clashing with an English army near the Boyne River.  King William's valour during the battle inspired his troops, and the English swept the Irish-French army from the field.

      During the battle when William's victory appeared certain, James panicked and fled to Dublin and eventually to France.  Despite James' cowardice, Patrick Sarsfield organized an orderly retreat from the Boyne.  He led the remnants of the Irish and French forces towards the walled city of Limerick on the western coast.  During the long march, the rearguard was led by Michael Hogan, who had become known as The Galloping Hogan for his extraordinary feats of horsemanship.  Using the traditional Irish tactics of ambush and manoeuvre, he harassed the pursuing columns of English soldiers.  His skirmishers became known as Rapparees, taking their name from the half-pike called a rappaire that they favoured in combat.

      The retreating Irish and French army eventually reached Limerick.  The English army following closely behind laid siege to the city.  The siege dragged on for several months with neither side achieving a breakthrough.  To end the stalemate, William offered terms to the Irish guaranteeing freedom of religion and property ownership for Catholics.  But William also required that all the Irish soldiers who served in the army of James II choose between pledging their loyalty to William or going into perpetual exile.  After consulting with his men, Patrick Sarsfield accepted the terms of peace which became known as the Treaty of Limerick.

      In accordance with the terms of the treaty, the Irish Catholic regiments which had been in the English army prior to enlisting in the cause of James II were forced to choose between exile in France or serving England.  On the day the treaty went into effect, the royal banners of France and England were placed in a field outside Limerick.  The Irish Foot Guards were the first to march out of the city, and without hesitation they marched to the standard of France.  They knew this meant permanent banishment from their homeland, yet they could not submit to William and the ascendancy of the Protestant religion he represented.  By the end of the day, twelve thousand soldiers had decided to accept exile in France rather than serve England.

      A few days after the signing of the Treaty of Limerick, a French fleet which had not heard about the Treaty sailed up the Shannon laden with troops and supplies to reinforce the defenders of Limerick.  Sarsfield honoured the agreement and did not resume the struggle.  He forbade the French to land.  Instead, he used their ships to transport some of his regiments to Europe.  The Irish soldiers who did not sail with these French ships marched to Cork where they embarked for France a few weeks later.  Scarcely a man of them ever set foot in Ireland again.  After the army of Ireland had disbanded, after its best swordsmen were exiled to foreign lands, the English Parliament repudiated the Treaty of Limerick, leaving the oppression of Catholics in place.  Had England abided by its terms, Ireland in the ensuing centuries would have been a far happier place; and new generations of Irish émigrés would not have had to emigrate to Europe to enjoy the freedom denied to them in their homeland.

 

 

THE IRISH BRIGADE

 

      Patrick Sarsfield had been in France before.  Twenty years before his arrival with the Wild Geese in 1691, he had received his initial military training as an officer in the French army's Dillon Regiment, made up entirely of Irish soldiers.  After a large number of Irish soldiers fled to France in 1645 following defeat by Oliver Cromwell's Puritan army, the Regiment had been formed under the command of Edmond Robert Du Wall, whose brother Michael had been appointed general of the "entire foreign army" serving in France during the Thirty Years War.  This unit became known as the Dillon Regiment in 1653 when it was commanded by Viscount Dillon, and it kept that name for the next century and a half.  By the time that Patrick Sarsfield and the Wild Geese arrived in France, the soldiers of Ireland already had a reputation for exceptional courage among the French army.

      The Dillon Regiment was not the only exclusively Irish unit in the French army in 1691.  A year before, in order to repay Louis XIV for the loan of French troops to invade Ireland, James II had sent the Irish Regiments of Viscount Mountcashel and Lord Clare to France after they defected to James' army in Ireland.  Immediately, the regiments of Clare and Mountcashel joined with the Dillon Regiment to become a separate unit of the French army called the Irish Brigade.  To Brigade was sent to Savoy to fight against the League of Augsburg.

      When they arrived in France, the Wild Geese were incorporated into the Irish Brigade, which added new regiments.  This was a measure which satisfied the different, but interrelated, interests of various groups of individuals.  The Brigade gained the military skills and experience of the thousands of Irish soldiers, which made it an even more formidable fighting unit.  Patrick Sarsfield was given the rank of brigadier general by the French and placed in command of the considerably enlarged Brigade.  The Brigade pledged their loyalty to James II and his heirs with the hope that the Stuart family would one day regain the throne of England and end the English oppression of Ireland.  They also gave their allegiance to King Louis XIV of France, who they saw as an ally in their struggle against England and champion of the Catholic faith.

      Besides the military and political motives for incorporating the Wild Geese into the Irish Brigade, there were also considerations regarding the exiled Irish soldiers as individuals.  The Wild Geese had been unexpectedly sent from Ireland.  Joining this band of fellow Irish soldiers on French soil gave them a way to erase the pangs and regret of their sudden, Draconian exile from their homeland.  Since France was an enemy of England, joining the Brigade also allowed them to express their undiminished opposition to England and its harsh exploitative policies in Ireland.  This gave them the prospect of once again meeting English forces on the field of battle to exact revenge for the continuing injustices to their countrymen and women.  Like the Irish émigré soldiers before them, the Wild Geese looked upon their regiments of the Irish Brigade as their new clan and their officers as their new clan leaders.  With the loyalty of the members of the Irish Brigade to one another and their fighting spirit kept burning by the hope of battle against the English, the Brigade became a modern-day example of the mythic fianna, the Celtic oath-bound warrior band.

      Until the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, almost all of the soldiers who came to France in 1691 remained on active duty in the military.  Nominally, the Brigade was in the service of James II, but it fought against the enemies of Louis XIV, whether English or Dutch or German.  In 1697, England and France signed the Treaty of Ryswick, which contained the provision that James no longer maintain his own private army.  Under the terms of this Treaty, the Irish Brigade should have been disbanded.  Louis XIV, however, was reluctant to part with the services of such dependable fighting men.  He ordered the Brigade transferred into the French army, but reduced its size in order to comply with another provision of the Treaty, requiring a reduction in the size of France's standing army.  Despite their wish to continue in the service of France, many of the émigrés of the Irish Brigade were discharged.  Some entered civilian life.  But many others considered themselves professional soldiers and spread out across Europe in a second migration of Wild Geese to join the armies of Austria, Poland and Russia.  None returned to Ireland, where new acts of Parliament had insured that their religion would make them pariahs in their own nation.  But throughout Catholic Europe, they were welcomed as equals and could rise to positions of importance and recognition.

      After the Treaty of Ryswick, the Irish Brigade consisted of the three original regiments, which became fully integrated into the French army.  The integration was in keeping with the role of the Brigade for both the Irish and French.  For the Irish, the existence of the Brigade demonstrated to the English kings and their ministers that many Irish would not passively accept laws designed to destroy their culture.  For the French, the Brigade was a highly effective military unit that could be entrusted with crucial battle missions.  Its officers were properly pedigreed Irish nobles who could keep the occasionally rowdy troops in line.  So the Irish Brigade became an institution in 18th-century France, fighting in over eighty-seven engagements.  It was largely due to the success of the Irish Brigade that the French army was open to creating independent émigré units that would ultimately lead to the formation of the Foreign Legion in the 19th century.

      In 1702, the Irish Brigade earned the respect of the entire French army during the Battle of Cremona in Italy during the War of Spanish Succession.  After the French had occupied the city, Prince Eugène of Savoy launched a surprise night attack to retake it.  In the dark and confusion, the French troops were unable to muster an effective defence.  Eugène's troops poured into the city after capturing the gates of St. Margaret and All Saints.  Before daybreak, most of Cremona was in Eugène's hands.  His soldiers had even captured the French commander, Marshall de Villeroy.  But then the Austrians came upon the soldiers of the Irish Brigade near the Po Gate.

      Awakened by the clamour of shot and rattling sabres, Major Dan O'Mahoney roused his men from their sleep.  Clutching their pistols and their swords, they rushed into the battle wearing only their nightshirts.  O'Mahoney's men formed an unmovable barrier by the Po gate that became a rallying point for the French.  Although the Austrians made repeated assaults on the position, they were repelled.  To Prince Eugène, it seemed as if the half-naked Irishmen shouting and waving sabres were not made of the same blood and bone as other French soldiers.  When enough French and Irish soldiers had gathered at O'Mahoney's rallying point, he counterattacked, recapturing a battery of 24 guns.  By dawn, he swept the Austrians from Cremona.

      Two centuries after the battle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a fanciful poem about the engagement which ended with Marshall de Villeroy asking Major Dan O'Mahoney how the Irish heroes should be rewarded.

 

                                      "Why then," says Dan O'Mahoney, "one favour we entreat.

                                      We were called a little early and our toilet's not complete.

                                      We've no quarrel with the shirt,

                                      But the breeches wouldn't hurt,

                                      For the evening air is chilly in Cremona."

 

In reality, Major O'Mahoney was rewarded not only by permission to don his trousers.  He brought the news of the victory to Louis XIV at the palace of Versailles, insuring that he would receive royal recognition for his part in the battle.

      Most of the Irish soldiers serving in the Brigade had left their wives and lovers in Ireland.  Only several hundred women accompanied the Wild Geese in 1691, and very few Irish wives later joined their husbands.  So eventually many of the Irish soldiers married French women, creating a considerable number of Irish-French families whose descendants would be very active in all areas of French society.  Yet the process of full assimilation into French culture was slow for the members of the Irish Brigade during the 18th century.  They continued to speak the Irish tongue and live by Irish ways within the Brigade, and only the officers interacted with French society outside of it.  Any of their French-born wives who joined them as camp followers were expected to live like Irish women and follow the customs and traditions of their husbands.

      This cultural separation from the mainstream French army enabled the Irish Brigade to largely avoid the decline in efficiency that plagued the military after Louis XV became king in 1715.  For the first half of the 18th century, France had the largest army in Europe, but its troops were poorly trained and had too many officers who owed their rank to patronage rather than personal skill.  In contrast, the Irish controlled their officers' promotions below the rank of general and insisted that all soldiers receive adequate training in military skills.  Emphasis on efficient training and organization enabled the Irish Brigade to win many battles.

      In 1701, France abrogated the Treaty of Ryswick which limited the size of its army.  The Irish Brigade grew from its original three regiments which were named Mountcashel, Clare and Dillon to six regiments of infantry named Clare, Roth, Dillon, Lally, Berwick, Bulkleys after their commanders; and one regiment of cavalry named Fitzjames.  Their numbers were augmented not only by the sons of Irish émigrés born on French soil, but also by fresh recruits who kept coming from Ireland to escape oppression.  The Brigade dispatched official recruiters to Clare and Galway and Cork to secretly spread the message of a life of dignity and adventure under the French flag.  Occasionally, retired officers from the Brigade would return to Ireland to operate clandestine schools which taught military skills to young men to prepare them for service in the French officer corps.  These recruiters and clandestine military educators faced death by hanging if they were discovered by the English overlords.  There are no official figures or reliable documentation on how many Irishmen served in the Brigade during the 18th century.  Estimates based on the number of troops exiled from Ireland in 1691, subsequent émigrés leaving Ireland on their own or enlisted by the recruiters, and male children of these groups joining the Brigade range from 100,000 to 500,000.

      The Battle of Fontenoy in 1744 was the only major engagement where all of the Irish Regiments fought together on the same field.  The French used all of their Irish troops because they knew that an unusually large British force was opposing them.  For the Irish, the battle was a chance to fight the historic foe and avenge the long-standing wrongs.

      On the field of battle, the French were badly outnumbered.  They had the Irish Brigade in reserve under the command of Viscount Clare to counterattack if the French lines broke under an English assault.  At midday, the Coldstream Guards advanced from the English side, firing their muskets with devastating accuracy.  They soon penetrated the centre of the French position to dominate the field.   But then came the order for the Irish Brigade to attack.  With cold visions of vengeance for the broken Treaty of Limerick, they fixed their bayonets and charged, shouting "Remember Limerick and the treachery of the English!"  A short while later, Irish steel and courage turned the tide of battle.  The shattered remnants of the Coldstream Guards staggered back towards the English lines.

      Henry Skrine, the leading English authority on Fontenoy, gave a clear picture of the Irish Brigade's boldness with the comment: "Among French infantry regiments those of the Irish Brigade stood first.  Their desperate valour was a factor of great importance in our disaster."  When the English king, George II, heard the news of his army's defeat because of the Irish, he muttered in despair, "Accursed by the laws which deprive me of such subjects."

      In her poem about Fontenoy, Emily Lawless followed the Clare Regiment during the battle and captured the vision of vengeance which inspired such reckless courage from all of the soldiers of the Irish Brigade.

 

                                      "In this hollow, star-pricked darkness, as in the sun's hot glare,

                                      In sun-tide, in star-tide, we starve for Clare!

                                      Hark, yonder through the darkness on distant rat-tat-tat

                                      The old foe stirs out there, God bless his soul for that!

                                      The old foe musters strongly, he's coming on at last,

                                      And Clare's Brigade may claim its own wherever blows fall fast.

                                      Send us, ye western breezes, our full, our rightful share,

                                      For Faith and Fame and Honour, and the ruined hearths of Clare!

 

If any regiment of the Irish Brigade deserved special recognition for their efforts, it was the Lally Regiment.  It led the counterattack under the command of Colonel Thomas Arthur Lally, the French-born son of an Irish officer named Gerard O'Mullally, who shortened his name to Lally after arriving in France with the Wild Geese.  After the battle, Colonel Lally was presented to Louis XV, who immediately made him a brigadier general.

      By the second half of the 18th century, the Irish Brigade was considered one of the best fighting units of the French army; and its officers were considered among the best as well.  During the Seven Years War, this reputation for superiority led to an unfortunate end for General Lally.  In 1756, because of his well-known hatred for the English, General Lally was chosen over other politically-connected senior officers to lead a French military expedition to India to challenge England's attempt to control the subcontinent.  When he arrived in India, in the French colonial city of Pondicherry, Lally soon came into conflict with the corrupt civil administration and even some military officers who were enriching themselves by pilfering military supplies.  After many travails in trying to fulfil his mission in India, Lally returned to France where he was brought to trial in 1766 on false charges and condemned to death.  Lally was eventually exonerated by his son who exposed widespread corruption and incompetence throughout the French army during the reign of Louis XV.  Not only was Lally's honour and reputation restored, but the Irish Brigade, his former command, was looked to as the model for the rest of the French army.

      When Lally first arrived in Pondicherry, the corrupt administrators and officers offered him a part in their scheme.  Lally angrily refused to join their criminal enterprise, and he told the administrators and officers that he was going to bring charges against them after he completed his mission.  Lally was determined to try to fulfil his mission even though the corrupt officials, with the complicity of Paris bureaucrats, had stolen much of the supplies for the expedition.  Besides weakening the expedition in this way, the officials refused to help Lally obtain maps of the area where he would be leading his troops or local native workers to help transport the expedition's military equipment and remaining supplies.

      Although his expedition was severely weakened, Lally nonetheless set off on a two-hundred mile march along the humid east coast of India to the English-controlled city of Madras, a major trading centre.  Lally's force included his Regiment from the Irish Brigade as well as other regiments of the French army.  By the time Lally's troops arrived at Madras, the English had enough warning to make defensive preparations.  Although critically short of gunpowder and food, Lally laid siege to the city.  But with the arrival of an English relief force, the French withdrew.  After a number of battles and skirmishes with the English in which he was hampered by lack of supplies, Lally retreated to Pondicherry, which was then besieged by the pursuing English troops.  Before long, Lally was forced to surrender to the English.

      Lally's surrender at Pondicherry ended the French attempt to check English ambitions in India.  The expedition led by Lally was a complete failure, and Lally was targeted for blame.  When he returned to France, Lally was accused of conspiring with the English, despite his long record of outstanding service to France.  In a hastily arranged trial, Lally was found guilty of treason and executed  soon after.  Lally had become a scapegoat for the corrupt French officials in India and Paris who had seriously undermined his mission by stealing his supplies and refusing to help him.

      The officials' corruption guaranteeing that Lally's expedition would fail and their role in the false charges brought against Lally would have gone undiscovered except for the determined efforts of Lally's son and his friend, the philosopher and historian, François de Voltaire.  They caused a scandal by exposing the full extent of the corruption and incompetence which had set into the French army.  When King Louis XV learned of the false charges brought by corrupt officials which led to Lally's execution, he exclaimed, "They have assassinated him!"  He ordered a full investigation the corruption and incompetence that he believed not only crippled Lally's expedition to India, but also was a major factor in France's defeat in the Seven Years War resulting in the loss of European and colonial territory.

      The organization, training and military skills of the Irish Brigade were the model for the reforms demanded by King Louis XV when the decay of the French army became evident.  During the next three decades, many Irish officers were promoted to general and assigned to other French units to supervise their reorganization.  Their influence spread through the entire army, shaping the ideas about tactics and training methods followed by future French military leaders such as the Marquis de Lafayette and Napoleon Bonaparte.

      After the Republican revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille in 1789 gained full control of the French government, an extremist wing of the movement instituted the Reign of Terror.  Virtually everyone who had served the deposed King Louis XVI in any capacity was marked for execution on the guillotine.  Yet despite the loyalty of most of the Irish Brigade to the monarchy, they suffered remarkably little during the Reign of Terror.  In fact, the revolutionaries made special efforts to spare members of the Brigade - as exemplified by an episode involving Father Donovan, the Brigade chaplain, shows.  Father Donovan was imprisoned in the Bastille because he continued to offer spiritual counsel to any aristocrats seeking him out even though aristocrats were being hunted down and executed by the Republican extremists.  Father Donovan was placed in a large cell containing many prisoners, including seven other members of the Irish Brigade.

      As Father Donovan and the other prisoners were awaiting their fate, the Committee for Public Safety governing France after the revolutionaries deposed the monarchy issued an order that the lives of any native Irish imprisoned with other monarchists were to be spared in recognition of the Irish Brigade's contributions to French society.  To ensure that only Irish prisoners would go free, the jailers read the Committee's order in the Celtic-Irish language - which naturally came out very garbled.  Nonetheless, Father Donovan, along with the seven other Irish prisoners, were able to figure out what the guards were saying, and thus stepped forward to be freed.

      Although the Committee gave no reasons for its decision to spare any Irish men or women, it was probably motivated by international political considerations.  In 1792, France was at war with England, Spain, Austria and Prussia which had formed an alliance which became known as the First Coalition to restore the monarchy to France.  The new regime of France was encouraging republicans in Ireland who were themselves considering a revolution against the English overlords.  The wholesale slaughter of Irish émigrés in France would undermine republican support for France's Revolution in Ireland and thereby benefit England.

      Immediately after the Revolution, the soldiers of the Irish Brigade faced a conflict between their loyalty to King Louis XVI, who had been their benefactor, and the Republican ideals of equality and democracy.  Because most members of the Irish Brigade believed that their pledge to the King was inviolable, they sided with the monarchist forces still fighting the Republicans from the eastern provinces of France and the German states.  These monarchist forces were too small to mount a major offensive against Republican France and were further hampered by a lack of funding.  In 1792, the monarchist forces were disbanded, including the Irish Brigade, which by then had shrunk to the Regiments of Dillon, Berwick and Walsh.  The final break-up of the Brigade came at a formal ceremony conducted by the Count de Provence, who became King Louis XVIII after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1816.  He presented a banner to the three remaining regiments bearing an Irish Harp and the legend, "Semper et Unique Fidelis - 1692-1792."

      A few of the veterans of the Brigade who had been promoted to general prior to the Revolution sided with the Republicans.  Because of the oppression visited on Ireland by the English aristocrats, they strongly sympathized with the plight of the peasantry and the bourgeoisie in France.  When the extremely radical Committee for Public Safety collapsed in 1794 and was replaced by a five member Directory in 1795, many Irish generals found themselves in positions of great influence under the new government.   Their sudden rise was due not only to their own talents, but to the shortage of experienced officers in France in the wake of executions and emigration during the Reign of Terror.

      The most popular and influential of the Irish generals serving in the army of the Republic was Charles Kilmaine.  He had come to France in 1765 as a student, but saw that he had greater opportunity for adventure as a soldier than as a scholar.  After training as a junior officer in the Irish Brigade, he was part of General Rochambeau's invasion of Georgia and unsuccessful siege of Savannah to support George Washington during the American War of Independence.  During France's military campaigns in northern Italy, he achieved the rank of general.  Because the continued survival of the newly-formed French Republic depended on the success of its soldiers in thwarting the nations who sought to restore the Bourbon monarchy, experienced generals like Kilmaine were extremely influential among the members of the Directory.  His principal rival in determining the shape that the military strategy of France should take was Napoleon Bonaparte, a young general who had achieved great fame for leading a successful campaign against the Austrians in northern Italy.  Both Kilmaine and Bonaparte advocated taking the offensive in the war against England which had begun in 1792.  However, they differed as to which kind of offensive campaign would be most effective.  Kilmaine favoured striking directly against England with a cross-channel invasion.  As an alternative to this, he called for an invasion of Ireland which would stimulate an Irish rebellion against England.  Bonaparte, on the other hand, believed that the best way to force England to sue for peace would be to attack its overseas empire.

      Because both Kilmaine's and Bonaparte's strategies corresponded to the standard military doctrine for French forces established with the reorganization of the army in 1763 emphasizing aggressive operations, the Directory was disposed to approve of offensive strategies.  The Directory opted for Kilmaine's strategy of invading England - and it ordered the formation of the armée d'Angleterre to accomplish this.  Bonaparte was given command of the armée, with Kilmaine appointed as his assistant.  Although Kilmaine's strategy was the one chosen by the Directory and an army was being prepared to execute it, Kilmaine, with the support of other Irish generals, pressed for swifter action against England.  One of the Irish generals who supported Kilmaine was Henri Clarke; Clarke virtually ran the Ministry of War, although his official title was Chief of the Topography and Geography department.

      The continued appeals from their highly-regarded Irish generals persuaded the Directory to send a fifteen-thousand man contingent of the armée d'Angleterre to Ireland in 1796 under the command of General Hoche.  But foul weather prevented a landing, and the soldiers returned to France.  Bonaparte seized the opportunity presented by this failure to convince the Directory that the armée d'Angleterre should invade Egypt.  The Directory agreed and sent a large portion of the troops to Egypt with Bonaparte, where they met with disaster in a battle against British forces.  Kilmaine took command of the portion of the armée d'Angleterre remaining in France, and in 1798 the Directory allowed Kilmaine to make a second attempt at an Irish invasion.  A small unit under General Humbert did land in Ireland, but the main force under the Irish émigré General Hardy was intercepted by British ships in Lough Swilly and captured.

      Although the Irish generals were often not successful in the field of battle during the period of the Directory, their constant seizure of the initiative kept France's enemies off balance.  The First Coalition against France collapsed in 1795, and only England refused to make peace with republican France.  Because England could not be certain where the armies of France would appear next and had to guard the coasts of both its homeland and its far-flung empire, it could not mount an offensive directly against France.  The French military strategy gave the Directory and the republicans of France time to consolidate the sweeping political and social changes initiated by the Revolution.

      The contribution of the Irish Brigade to French society was not limited to its example and success in military affairs.  During the 18th century, the Brigade was like a beacon which attracted Ireland's most talented people.  Denied educational, economic or professional opportunities in their own land by oppressive English rule, many Irish saw the Brigade as offering the chance to pursue their desires in these areas.  The Brigade was always looking for new Irish recruits to maintain its strength when its ranks were reduced from retirements, battle casualties and resignations.  After joining the Brigade for a brief tour of service, many Irish émigrés left for civilian life, where they became bankers, doctors, scholars, and merchants throughout France.  In this way, they and their descendants had an influence on all areas of French society through the generations.

      Because of the Irish Brigade, Irish émigrés had a greater influence on French society than any other in Europe.  This influence was broad and steady - and continues in myriad ways down to today.

 

 

SMUGGLERS AND ADMIRALS

 

      During the 18th century, many Irish émigrés in France were attracted to seafaring as an opportunity to gain great wealth.  Some of these Irish mariners operated merchant ships, carrying goods between France and its colonies.  Trade with other European nations and their colonies, however, was often prohibited by restrictive trade laws and taxes imposed by those nations.  To trade with these closed markets, Irish merchants in France often became smugglers who used fast sloops to outrun foreign naval vessels and land their cargoes in secluded coves.  Other Irish émigrés joined the French navy, which was considered the finest in the world for much of the 18th century.

      One Irish smuggler in France who stands out is Anthony Walsh.  Although he was born in Nantes in the early 18th century, he was very familiar with the rocky coastline of western Ireland from sailing on his father's sloop during smuggling runs when he was a boy.  From these trips, young Anthony Walsh learned the business from the bottom up.  On their voyages to Ireland, the Walsh family usually carried wine, molasses and rum.  Sometimes they also carried a priest trained in France who was returning to Ireland to preach to Catholics in secret.  On the return voyage, they carried Irish wool and butter to France.  With cunning and skilled seamanship, they would avoid British naval vessels patrolling the coastline; and they often dropped anchor in secluded coves in western Ireland.

      Smugglers like the Walshes had become an important aspect of French commercial activity because English Navigation Acts prohibited trade in certain goods in order to protect products from English colonies and manufacturers in England.  For instance, the Acts prohibited the import of French molasses and rum into any English territory to eliminate foreign competition for the molasses and rum from English plantations in the colony of Jamaica.  To protect the supply of wool for the textile manufacturers in England, the Acts prohibited the export of wool from Ireland.  Because of the smuggling enterprises of Walsh and other Irish émigrés, the French were able to buy and sell goods in Irish and English markets that were legally closed to them by the Navigation Acts.  Because of the important benefits of smuggling for their economy, the French regarded smuggling as practically an ordinary import-export business.

      After Anthony Walsh inherited the family business, he expanded it by adding more French products to export.  One new product he began smuggling to Ireland was wines from vineyards owned by other Irish émigrés.  Among these were La Hourange from the Bordeaux vineyard owned by John O'Byrne and Chateau Lagrange from the Bordeaux vineyards of the Brown family.  When Richard Hennessy opened a distillery to make cognac after retiring from the Irish Brigade, Walsh was one of the first smugglers to carry this product to Ireland.  Because of Walsh's activity, the Irish-owned vineyards prospered.  When many Frenchman who owned vineyards saw the success the Irish owners were having, they wanted Walsh to smuggle their wines to the foreign markets.

      In the 1730's, Walsh decided to take his business to a new level by joining the ranks of the French privateers; who by royal approval were permitted to capture merchant vessels of the enemies of France.  After being granted permission by King Louis XV, Walsh sent relatives of his to the town of St. Malo on the Normandy coast to build a brig swift enough to stay out of range of the cannons of an English warship, yet strong enough to carry the arms and crew to capture a merchant vessel.  When this ship he named Duteillay was completed, Walsh sailed the waters around both England and Ireland preying on English merchant ships.

      For France of the 18th century, privateers were a valuable political and commercial asset.  Because the English navy was so large and powerful, the smaller French navy had difficulty protecting its ports and coastline.  To augment the French navy, enterprising privateers like Anthony Walsh intercepted English merchant ships for plunder and deprived England of the goods on board.  In addition, privateers provided a means for taking direct action against the expanding English empire encroaching on French colonies in Canada and India.  Many of the generals, diplomats and councillors to the king felt that diplomatic manoeuvring alone would not halt English expansion and recommended confrontation both on land and on the sea.  During times of peace, privateers could continue to challenge England with minimal political repercussions.

      The successful activity of the Irish émigrés in both smuggling and legitimate shipping to the French colonies encouraged other French merchants and adventurers to enter the trade.  This reduced France's dependence on Dutch and British merchant ships that carried most French exports.  During the Seven Years War from 1756 to 1763, the growing fleet of Irish merchant vessels proved vital to the economic survival of France.  With the defeat of both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean squadrons of the French fleet by the English navy, Britain had achieved overwhelming command of the seas.  After these disasters, with France no longer able to protect its merchant vessels and its major ports blockaded by English warships, overseas trade fell precipitously to about one-sixth of its pre-war level.  Also, the French colonies were cut off from financial and military aid.  During this bleak time for France, only the privateers with their small, swift ships could successfully run the English blockades.  The merchant fleets built by the Irish émigrés like the Walshes and the MacCarthys were instrumental in preventing the complete collapse of trade and communication with France's overseas empire.  During the Seven Years War, many Irish merchants became very wealthy by supplying the sugar and spices that became scarce in France.  The fortunes they made enabled them to enter other fields of business.  The Routledges of Dunkirk were one such merchant family.  They used their wealth acquired by providing scarce goods to France during wartime to establish a banking house in the 1760's which financed many French manufacturing ventures.  In so doing, the Routledge bank played a part in laying the foundations for the Industrial Revolution in France.

      The most influential of the firms engaged in both banking and shipping was Waters & Sons.  It had been operating in Paris since the late 1600's.  During the reign of Louis XIV from 1643 to 1715, costly wars against the League of Augsburg, the War of Spanish Succession and lavish architectural projects like the Palace of Versailles kept the royal coffers low.  The Waters family agreed to finance the King so he could support his armies and continue his extravagant ways.  But they discovered that a monarch can easily repudiate a debt shortly after Louis XV became king in 1715, and the firm entered bankruptcy.  Waters & Sons was not able to recoup from this until they resumed their very profitable smuggling ventures during the Seven Years War.

      Although the Irish émigré shipping firms prospered in 18th-century France, most of the reign of Louis XV - from his accession to the throne in 1715 to the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763 - was a period of general decline in the French navy.  Because service as a naval officer was prestigious, it attracted aristocrats even though they had scant enthusiasm for a life at sea and no interest at all in the day-to-day tasks of a ship's captain.  In addition, there were an insufficient number of ships to patrol French coastal waters while simultaneously protecting France's overseas empire.  French naval vessels were frequently defeated when they faced the better-trained and aggressively-led crews of British men o'war.

      The relatively few Irish émigrés who became naval officers demanded a higher degree of capability from their crews than was common in the French navy at this time.  Like their counterparts in the Irish Brigade, they stressed training and aggressive tactics.  During the War of Austrian Succession, Jean-Baptiste Macnemara achieved one of the few French naval victories of the conflict.  He had been born in Ireland as John MacNemara and was one of the few children to accompany the Wild Geese to France in 1691.  In 1704, he entered the navy as a midshipman, and rose through the ranks.  In 1745, commanding the ship Invincible, he attacked four English warships, putting them all to flight.  For this and his other exploits, he became known as one of the best tacticians in the French navy.

      In 1763, when the French army came under scrutiny in the corruption scandal after the execution of Lally, the navy was also called to task for its poor showing during the past two decades.  The number of ships was increased and the aggressive tactics used by Jean-Baptiste Macnemara were widely studied by midshipmen and officers in an effort to improve their performance in battle.  Although the reforms were not sufficient to allow the French to wrest control of the seas away from the English, better training increased the effectiveness of the fleet.  This was demonstrated during naval engagements in support of the American War for Independence when French ships were frequently able to defeat English men o'war.  In the waters off North America, Jean-Baptiste's nephew Claude matched his uncle's famous exploit by capturing four British privateers and a 28-gun frigate while in command of a ship of the line named Frippone.

      The influence of Irish émigrés and their descendants on the French navy continued into the 19th and 20th centuries.  During the Napoleonic Wars, Armand de MacKau (McCoy) gained fame for his daring exploits at sea as much as for his fiery affair with Napoleon's sister, Elisa.  After the Bourbon Restoration of the monarchy in 1816, he achieved the rank of full Admiral, one of only thirteen French naval officers ever to do so.  Later, he became the Minister of Marine and began to guide the French navy through its difficult transition from sail to steam, which required not only new ship designs, but also a complete change in battle tactics.  In World War I, Commandant O'Byrne conducted a daring submarine raid on the Austro-Hungarian naval base at Pula on the Adriatic coast of Croatia.  Because the Austro-Hungarians feared losing more ships to submarines, they increased their anti-submarine defences and kept their vessels in port for the remainder of the war.

      As with Spain, the maritime activities of numbers of Irish émigrés and their descendants in France benefited their adopted land in diverse ways, from naval prowess to commercial growth.  With their practical abilities, openness to new knowledge and search for adventure and heroic activities, they readily took to seafaring once they realized that it offered a place for them in their adopted country.

 

 

IRISH SCHOLARS

 

      The Penal Laws enacted by England during the early 18th century deprived the Irish of a right to Catholic education by making the operation of an Irish school or university a crime.  But no act of a distant and remote Parliament in London could undo Irish desire for learning.  Many young men and women of Ireland emigrated to France to get an education denied to them in their homeland.  Because employment in law and government was forbidden to them in Ireland, most of them stayed in their adopted land to follow the careers that they had chosen.

      The large majority of Irish going to Europe to receive an education in the early 1700's attended the Irish Colleges which were associated with major universities in Paris, Nantes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen and other cities throughout France.  The largest of these Colleges was in Paris, attached to the University of Paris.  The first Irish students to study in Paris were six seminarians attending the Collège de Montaigu.  They arrived in 1578, sponsored by John Lee, a prosperous merchant of Waterford.  By 1605, there were enough Irish students attending different Colleges at the University of Paris for them to petition the University for an Irish College to be attached to the University's Collège des Lombards.  The petition was refused.  Despite this, Irish students came to Paris in increasing numbers in the early 1600's.

      It wasn't until after the Irish students gained widespread attention for their position in the Jansenist controversy causing strife within the Catholic Church that they were finally permitted to form an Irish College in Paris.   In an incident which became known as l'Affaire des Hibernois, twenty-seven Irish students signed a declaration denouncing Jansenism, a position taken by the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen that the Catholic Church had strayed from St. Augustine's doctrines of the 5th century which had always been claimed to be the foundations of the Church.  In the days when the Catholic Church was still trying to stop the spread of Protestantism, Jansenism was seen as a serious threat by the Church hierarchy, including the Pope, and by the secular rulers, such as Louis XIV in France, who were Catholic and wanted their societies to remain Catholic.  By the 1600's, the Catholic Church no longer emphasized Augustine's doctrine that divine intervention in the form of grace was essential for a person to achieve salvation.  Another fault of the Catholic Church according to Jansen was its neglect of Augustine's idea of predestination, which the Church viewed as resembling the tenet of predestination which was the foundation of the Protestant sect of Calvinism.

      The twenty-seven students signing the declaration were quickly joined by many other Irish students in denouncing Jansenism.  This prompted students and faculty at many other universities in France to take positions in support of or in opposition to Jansenism.  To try to abate the tension between the two sides of the religious conflict, the Academic Council of the University of Paris accused the Irish students of sophomoric insolence for passing judgement on complex and subtle theological matters that even theologians and bishops continued to have differences on.  The Academic Council told the students they would be expelled unless they recanted their denunciation of Jansenism.

      The students refused to recant.  In a measure to avoid expulsion, they appealed the decision of the Academic Council to the Paris City Council.  By this time, the Jansenist controversy had spread beyond the universities to the population and secular authorities, including the King and his ministers.  So the City Council was familiar with the controversy and had an interest in it.  The City Council issued an order that no action was to be taken against the students.  Since the Academic Council could not expel them, it did take the action of appointing four doctors of theology to watch the obstinate Irish students for deviations from Church doctrine in their statements and writings by which the Council might bring charges against them.

      The Jansenist controversy continued to grow, causing disturbance and concern in the Church and in many cities and regions of France.  In 1653, Pope Innocent X tried to put an end to the controversy by issuing a Papal Bull titled Cum Occasione denouncing Jansenism.  With this Bull written by the Pope, the Catholic Church officially took the position the Irish students had taken in 1643.  The controversy had become heated, however, with each side becoming so intransigent that it did not die down for another century.

      In recognition of the Irish students' opposition to the challenge of Jansenism, King Louis XIV granted a new petition to form an Irish College in 1677.  In a royal edict, the King granted the students the right "to live in full possession of the Collège des Lombards and to enjoy all the privileges, rights and exemptions which colleges founded in favour of the native French enjoy".  The Collège des Lombards had gotten its name from the region in Italy which sent priests to study at the College when it was established in 1330.  Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier were students there in the 16th century.  During the 17th century, Irish seminarians made up a large majority of its students.  The Collège des Lombards became known as the Irish College in 1685, a few years after Louis XIV had granted the College to the Irish students.  A decade later, in reaction to the increasingly oppressive policies of the English in Ireland, the Irish College changed its rules to admit lay students.  Recent Acts of the English Parliament prohibited Irish Catholics from establishing universities, and they were denied admission to Protestant universities.

      This change in the student body led to a change in the Colleges' curriculum.  Secular subjects were added.  In a short time, law and medicine replaced theology and other religious studies as the primary fields of study.  In broadening its curriculum, the Irish College soon attracted students from throughout France and other parts of Europe, as well as Ireland.  By 1730, the Irish College of Paris was a truly democratic and basically secular institution.  It drew Irish émigrés with diverse backgrounds from all parts of Europe to pursue studies in many fields.  Irish students attended the College in such numbers that an unknown French satirist was moved to remark, "with hungry looks and minds on whimsies nursed, gaunt troops of Irish through the door burst".  Perhaps he had in mind the off-duty members of the Irish Brigade who attended classes at the  College to learn more about the sciences and the humanities.  The varied student body prompted the College to coin the slogan "the laymen will fight, the ecclesiastics will pray" to support their efforts to raise funds for the school from the French people.

      During the 18th century, the Irish College in Paris and the others founded in Nantes, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Rouen became important centres of Irish society in France.  They were places where émigrés could visit a community where the Irish tongue was spoken and many of the customs of their homeland were maintained.  In addition, some of the scholars teaching at the Irish Colleges wrote books to help Irish émigrés acquire knowledge about their heritage.  While teaching at the Irish College in Paris in 1728, Hugh MacCurtin wrote a widely-used Irish grammar book titled The Elements of the Irish Language.  The Irish College also sponsored the printing of the first English-Irish Dictionary in 1732.  Thirty-five years later the volume was revised and renamed the Irish-English Dictionary.  In 1743, a retired chaplain from the Irish Brigade named Abbè MacGeoghegan write a three-volume History of Ireland while residing at the College.

      The Irish Colleges in Paris and other French cities took the lead in education that reflected the ideas, perspectives and inquisitiveness of the Enlightenment.  The traditional openness of the Irish to different ideas and their investigation of these ideas by inquiry and debate had an affinity with the rationalism and the critical spirit which marked the Enlightenment.  The new scientific studies, political and social philosophies, and the emergence of fields such as economics complemented the interest in medicine, the practical tendency, the conception of community and other long-standing aspects of Irish culture.  The movement of the Enlightenment also appealed to the Irish sense of the inter-connection of intellectual concepts and practical skills.

      Besides the general rule of the Irish Colleges in presenting ideas and subjects of the Enlightenment, there were a number of Irish individuals who are recognized as leading figures of the movement for the originality of their work.  Among them was Richard Cantillon.  For his essay On the Nature of General Commerce published posthumously in 1755, Cantillon was given the title Father of Political Economy.  A banker in Paris, Cantillon and his business partners had each made a fortune by speculating in the shares of the Mississippi Company which had been organized under the direction of John Law to exploit the resources in French territory along the Mississippi River.  In exchange for an exclusive right to these resources from the French government, the Mississippi Company agreed to issue shares in the Company as payment of government debts to bankers and other creditors of the government.  This so severely depleted the finances of the Company that it went bankrupt - but not before Cantillon and the other principal shareholders had sold their shares at a large profit.  Although this venture profited Cantillon, he saw how the monopolistic policies of mercantilism followed by most European nations of the time caused the collapse of the Mississippi Company.  He came to believe that prohibitive tariffs, control of exports, and other means of governmental oversight and control of a nation's economy hampered commerce and the efficient development of colonial resources.  In his essay, Cantillon outlined an economic system in which the state did not interfere with natural economic forces.  Influenced by Cantillon's essay, French economic policy-makers gradually eliminated tariffs and other trade restrictions to bring about economic activity resembling the free-market system of today.

      In the field of medicine, Gerald Fitzgerald's study and treatment of uterine ailments met with indifference from his fellow physicians.  In the late 18th century, medical problems relating to women in particular were considered best left to midwives by all physicians.  Fitzgerald, however, believed that ailments particular to women should not be excluded from the new methods of diagnosis and treatment devised in the 18th century.  Despite the indifference of his colleagues, Fitzgerald persisted with his study and treatment of uterine ailments.  He was a graduate of both the Irish College where he studied liberal arts, and the medical school of the University of Montpelier.  Eventually, however, his treatments for women were adopted, and Fitzgerald was joined in his study of women's medical problems.

      Education for women was another aspect of the Enlightenment in which Irish émigrés were in the forefront.  Accustomed as they were to the general equality between the sexes, Irish émigré women felt they should have the opportunity to get an education even though women in France could not attend universities.  This proscription included the Irish colleges as well.  Women could be educated by private tutors, and at some rare schools operated by nuns, such as the Poor Clare school in Dunkirk and the Visitation schools in several French cities.  To increase the scope of opportunities for women to get a formal education, a few Irish émigré women founded independent schools.  The faculty of these institutions was mostly nuns who had left Ireland after the Banishment Act of 1697 required all Catholic clergy to emigrate.  The largest of these schools for women was in Ypres, run by the Irish Dames of Ypres, an offshoot of the Benedictine order.  It was established by the émigrés Alexia Legge and Mary Ryan in 1682, and enjoyed the sponsorship of the wife of Louis XIV, Mary of Modena.  The school of the Dames of Ypres taught French as well as Irish students and was a model for other educational institutions in France for women.  Although formal education for women was introduced into France in the 17th century from the efforts of Irish women, it wasn't until the 19th century that French universities allowed women to enrol as students.

      The Irish educational institutions in France benefited both the Irish émigrés and French society.  Because education in the sciences, theology, medicine and philosophy was denied the Irish in their homeland during the 18th century, the Irish Colleges in France became primary centres for Irish educational achievement.  The education they provided enabled the Irish to contribute to the Enlightenment in the fields of engineering, medicine and political science.  The Irish Colleges also allowed an Irish university faculty to remain in existence during a time of severe oppression in Ireland.  Many of these faculty members returned to Ireland after the Penal Laws prohibiting Irish education were relaxed in the 1790's to found schools such as St. Patrick's College at Maynooth in 1796.  The Irish Colleges in France continued the Irish tradition of education during a time when Catholic education was prohibited in Ireland and benefited French society by providing educational opportunities to émigrés who became French soldiers, diplomats and merchants.

 

 

PRESIDENT OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC

 

      Of all the Irish émigrés and their descendants, none had more impact on the history of France than Marshall Marie-Edmé-Patrice de MacMahon.  In 1878, he became the first President of the Third Republic of France.  He came from an Irish-French family that could trace its ancestry back to Mahan, the older brother of Brian Boru and founder of the clan.  His grandfather came to France in the 1740's to study medicine at the Irish College in Paris and the medical school at Rheims, where he became a protégé of Jean-Baptiste de Morey, a counsellor of the King.  After de Morey's death in 1748, he married de Morey's widow and changed his name to honour his benefactor, becoming Jean-Baptiste de MacMahon.  His son Maurice, Marshall MacMahon's father, was made a Count by Louis XVIII after the Bourbon restoration in 1816 for his loyalty to the monarchy.

      Patrick MacMahon, as the Marshall preferred to be called, served in the armies of Louis Napoleon, President of the Second French Republic who dissolved the Republic in 1851 by proclaiming himself Emperor.  A few years later, MacMahon distinguished himself in the Crimean War, and eventually he rose to the rank of Marshall.

      At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, MacMahon was placed in command of an army corps stationed in the city of Sedan.  He was given orders from Louis Napoleon to hold Sedan against advancing Prussian forces.  In ordinary circumstances, the commander of an army corps would have free rein to devise his own strategy to accomplish the assigned objective.  But Louis Napoleon, who had by then proclaimed himself Emperor, was in Sedan to lead his army - and he fancied himself a masterful tactician, the equal of his renowned uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte.  Louis Napoleon ordered MacMahon's corps to stand fast around the city, fighting a defensive battle against the advancing Prussian forces.  Despite these orders, MacMahon did not contemplate a static defence of the city.  When he saw his subordinates ordering their troops to dig trenches, he shouted, "What, entrenching!  But I do not intend to shut myself up.  I mean to manoeuvre."

      For MacMahon, manoeuvre and ambush were not only a part of his heritage as a member of an Irish émigré military family, but it was also doctrine taught at the French military academy at St. Cyr.  But before MacMahon could convince Louis Napoleon to change his orders and allow his troops to take the offensive and engage the advancing enemy at its weakest point, the Prussians struck.  From three sides, they bombarded his position using an advanced type of rifled artillery.  In one of the first salvos, MacMahon was severely wounded and turned his command over to his subordinate, General Ducrot.  After a valiant defence and frightful carnage, Sedan fell to the Prussians.  When the Emperor Louis Napoleon was captured by the Prussians, a revolution broke out in Paris deposing him - and the French government collapsed.

      Patrick MacMahon recovered from his wounds, and the people of France regarded him as one of the few heroes of the disastrous war.  When an Assembly was elected to write a new constitution for France, its representatives asked him to be President of a provisional government.  MacMahon accepted the position despite the enormous difficulties he would face as President during this period of political instability.  The vast majority of people, including MacMahon himself, wanted a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.  But a few years before, a violent minority had rioted in the streets of Paris, calling for the formation of a new Republic.  Although the Parisian rioters had been put down by the military, extremist republicans continued to threaten violent insurrection if the monarchy was restored.  MacMahon could maintain internal order in France only by balancing the competing monarchist and republican forces.  He offered compromise to delay militant activists on both sides while the constitutional delegates bickered and feuded.  After the Assembly finally came to an agreement in 1875, the Third Republic of France was born.

      The new government had two bodies, a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate; Deputies were elected by the people, while Senators were appointed by provincial officials.  Both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate would then elect a President for a seven-year term.  The President would appoint a Premier, subject to final approval by only the Chamber of Deputies.  The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate overwhelmingly voted for MacMahon for President.  This system satisfied the republicans while the monarchists felt that a President with wide powers was very close to the concept of a king, and if France should agree to restore the Bourbon monarchy, MacMahon would not hesitate to step aside.  MacMahon's Irish heritage was certainly a key factor in his open support for a Bourbon restoration.  Since arriving in France more than a century and a half before, the Irish had often behaved as if they were in fosterage to the kings of France.  MacMahon himself bore the title Duc de Magenta which had been granted for his battlefield exploits, although it had little meaning in the new Republic.

      The first general elections under the new Constitution were held early in 1876.  The new members elected to the Chamber of Deputies were strongly republican in their political beliefs.  When MacMahon nominated Premiers who were conservative monarchists, the new Chamber of Deputies refused to accept them, as was their right under the new constitution.  They also objected to the expansive powers granted to the President under the terms of the Constitution, which included the right to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and call for a new election.  They feared that MacMahon could easily use his authority as President and his prestige as a battlefield hero to muster enough military support to crown a king with or without their approval.  In 1879, the Chamber of Deputies demanded that MacMahon dismiss a number of monarchist officials he had appointed to government posts.  Rather than risk the political battle that would further polarize the republican and monarchist factions if he refused to comply with the Chamber's demand, MacMahon resigned in disgust.  It was a crushing blow to monarchist aspirations.  The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate never again elected a strong President who would exercise the full authority granted to the office under the Constitution.

      Although MacMahon's Presidency was turbulent, his prestige and influence provided a degree of stability during the critical first years of the Third Republic.  The members of the Chamber of Deputies focused on their dispute with MacMahon rather than on their differences with each other.  Once he left office and the position of President became almost completely ceremonial, the Deputies began four decades of bickering which led to crisis after crisis for the French government.  Nevertheless, they remained committed to the form of democracy embodied in the constitution that Patrick MacMahon helped to implement when he was President of the Third Republic.

      At the time of his resignation in 1879, Patrick MacMahon was seventy-one years old.  He retired to his family chateau at Sully, a 12th-century castle in the Saône Valley which had been enlarged into a country manor.  After his death in 1893, the French people honoured him by naming a major boulevard in Paris after him, the Rue de MacMahon.  The Third Republic of France that it helped guide through its turbulent birth lasted until 1940 when it collapsed after the Nazi invasion of France.

 

      From the time Columbanus founded his monastery in the 6th century until MacMahon served as President of the Third Republic in the 19th century, Irish wanderers have played a part in all areas of French society - from religion to politics, from education to military service, from medicine to commerce.  Even today, at the close of the 20th century, the Irish College in Paris and many monasteries founded by Irish monks are still active.  There is no country in Europe where the wanderers had a more extensive and continuous influence than France.