The Flight of the Wild Geese From Ireland

The Treaty of Limerick signed in 1691 brought an				Catholics who were committed to the restoration
end to the Williamite War in Ireland. One of the				of the Stuart dynasty. Up until 1745, Catholic Irish
terms of agreement was the departure of the				gentry were allowed to recruit soldiers for France
Jacobite Army to the Continent under the				in Ireland, but this practice was banned after an
command of Patrick Sarsfield in what was to				Irish detachment from the French Army were
become known as The Flight of the Wild Geese.				used to support a Jacobite Rising in Scotland. This
The term was derived from the practice of				meant that the rank and file soldiers in French
entering the soldiers in the ships’ logs as wild				service were no longer Irish although officers
geese with the intention of masking their				were still recruited in Ireland. However by the end
presence. A fresh influx of recruits began in the				of the eighteenth century even the officers were
early eighteenth century when Roman Catholics				no longer Irish but rather were recruited from
were banned from military and political office in				Franco-Irish families who had settled in France for
Ireland, therefore this wave included Old English.				several generations. At the outbreak of the
Many of the Irish troops who were in Spanish				French Revolution all of the non-Swiss foreign
service returned to Ireland after the 1641				regiments were integrated into the French
Rebellion to fight in the Confederate Wars but				infantry, thus losing their distinctive identity.
following their defeat by Cromwellian forces,				Indeed, many left when Louis XVI was
some 40,000 fled back to the Continent. The				overthrown as their oath of loyalty was to him
French Irish regiments were highly politicised as				rather than to the people of France.
they were constituted with dispossessed Irish