From The Wild Geese to The Irish Brigade

by Charlie Laverty and Liam Murphy, Irish Brigade Association

(Liam Murphy is also a NYS AOH District 4 History Councilmen)

“War-battered dogs are we, Fighters in every clime; Fillers of trench and grave, Mockers bemocked by time.  War-dogs hungry and gray, Gnawing a naked bone, Fighters in every clime – Every cause but our own.” --Emily Lawless

The final act of the War of the Two Kings in Ireland was a stand-off at Limerick in 1691. The Irish Army (supporting James II) was besieged in Limerick and couldn’t break out. The besieging Allied army (supporting the usurper, William of Orange) couldn’t break in. The Irish commander, Patrick Sarsfield, and his Allied counterpart, to prevent needless loss of life in a contest neither thought he could win, agreed upon a treaty to end the war. In return for the guarantee of the civil and religious liberties of the Irish people, Sarsfield would cease resistance. Members of the Irish Army, who wished to carry on under Sarsfield, would leave Ireland and enter the service of Louis XIV, King of France. The Treaty was signed on 3 October; the “Treaty Stone” on which it was signed is today a public monument in Limerick city. Shortly after the signing, a French expedition sailed up the Shannon. Suddenly Sarsfield had the upper hand, but, believing that they had negotiated a better deal for his people than a resumption of the war could yield, and believing that his word was his bond, Sarsfield signaled the French not to land, but, instead, to prepare to receive over 90% of the Irish Army, to sail to France adhering to the terms of the signed Treaty. This departure has been known to history as “The Flight of the Wild Geese.” Since that time, Irishmen who leave Ireland to seek military experience in the armies of England’s enemies or potential enemies, have been known as “Wild Geese.” 

The Treaty of Limerick was sent to London. While acceptable to William, Parliament tore up the Treaty and enacted the Penal Laws, which removed all civil and religious liberties from the Irish people.  This led to over three centuries of additional Irish oppression at British hands.  Men of Sarsfield’s Irish Army became an Irish Brigade in the service of France, the fame of which would long survive its century of service, “Semper et ubique Fidelis.” Sarsfield would be mortally wounded in battle and die lamenting that his victory and his sacrifice had not been “for Ireland.” The numerous Irish regiments in the service of France were to leave their mark on the pages of history.  One particularly notable deed being the decisive charge by the Irish Brigade at the Battle of Fontenoy, 11 May 1745, where the Irish battle cry was “Cuimnidh ar Luimneach agus ar Feall na Sasanach” (Remember Limerick and the English treachery). 

The oppression and denial of opportunity to Irish Catholics and Dissenters (Presbyterians) under the Penal Laws in English-occupied Ireland resulted in significant Irish emigration to the New World throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. The Irish-born in America were second in number only to the native-born Americans (many of whom were Irish) in the ranks of Washington’s Continental Army. Emigration, caused by British tyranny and oppression, and aggravated by the failures of the 1798 and 1848 Risings, was turned into a human flood by An Gorta Mór - The Great Hunger – The Irish Holocaust.  The raw scars of which remain in the Irish and American-Irish cultural memory.

The 69th Regiment of New York came into being (as Militia: 1849 / 1851 / consolidated 1858) for the purpose of providing military training to Irish exiles to prepare for the future liberation of their homeland.  The great mass of Irish “Famine immigrants” were to provide large numbers of combatants to both sides in the American Civil War (1861-1865). After the exemplary performance of the 69th New York State Militia at Bull Run (First Manassas), Thomas Francis Meagher, inspired by the example of the famous Irish Brigade in the service of France, undertook to raise an Irish Brigade for the United States Army of the Potomac.  This would come to be called the First Regiment or the “Fighting 69th” New York Volunteer Infantry.  Like the 88th NY VI (the Second Regiment of the Irish Brigade, which also trained at Fort Schuyler in New York), a Fenian regiment, regarding the American Civil War as the training precursor to their participation in the eventual liberation of Ireland. The 69th Pennsylvania - Irish Volunteers, the “Rock of Erin” upon which “Pickett’s Charge” broke on the third day at Gettysburg, also inspired in part by Fenians of the 69th New York, was intended by some of its members to be part of that Irish Brigade.  The 63rd New York was made part of the Irish Brigade, and the 28th Massachusetts and the 116th Pennsylvania eventually were as well. 

At President Lincoln's personal request Brigadier General Michael Corcoran, the Fenian leader who had commanded the 69th NYSM at Bull Run (and was taken prisoner, see https://www.nyaoh.com/nys-aoh-history-journal/monarchy-is-ridiculous), raised a second Irish Brigade, the Irish Legion, the cornerstone of which was the 69th New York National Guard. The Irish Brigade in the American Civil War, in four years of great sacrifice, exceeded the fame even of earlier Irish Brigades. The lineage of all three New York “69th” Regiments of the American Civil War resides today with the 69th Regiment of New York, which provides the military escort for the Irish societies parading in New York City on Saint Patrick’s Day.

In the 20th century, the 69th (temporarily, 1917-1963, redesignated the 165th US Infantry) again answered our country’s call.  In France in the First World War (particularly in the crossing of the River Ourcq under Colonel “Wild Bill” Donovan).  As part of General Douglas MacArthur’s 42nd “Rainbow” Division, and in the Pacific Theater in the Second World War, seeing action as part of the 27th “New York” Division on Makin Island, Saipan and Okinawa (where the US Marines paid them the ultimate compliment saying that they fought so well they should be called the “165th Marines”). In the Cold War the 69th was prepared to deploy as infantry, in the event of a major European conflict.  In the aftermath of the 1990/91 Gulf War, the 69th transitioned to Antiaircraft Artillery (1993/96), and then to Mechanized Infantry.

The 21st century was less than a year old when the 69th responded to the attack of 9/11/2001.  The Regiment offered its armory as the place where families of the victims of 9/11 could come for information and assistance. They later provided security at West Point and other places before being selected to deploy (via training in Texas and in the California desert) to Iraq under Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Slack in 2004-2005, as part of the 256th Brigade Combat Team (the “Tiger Brigade” - “Les Tigres Louisianais”), the US Army’s “TASK FORCE WOLFHOUND,” engaged in Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

“In far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade,

lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade.” -Thomas Davis