Pub: 1993, Southern Illinois University Press, 281 pages, 5 maps, Cost: £37.50

Napoleon’s Irish Legions is the first book exclusively dedicated to the Irish soldiers serving in Napoleon’s army. Gallaher begins by unravelling the historical events surrounding the 1691 Treaty of Limerick, which led Irishmen to serve with the catholic armies of Spain and France, rather than with the Protestant army of England. These voluntary exiles, driven from their own shores by discriminatory laws, were known collectively as The Wild Geese. Some were to see action against British Redcoats, most notably at the Battle of Fontenoy. There, in 1745, Dillon’s Irish Regiment in the service of France drove back the English right flank.

Gallaher goes on to explore the French interests which lay beneath this attempt to exploit the Irish cause to their own advantage. Although the Irish Brigade of the French Army was finally disbanded in 1791 (in the wake of the French Revolution) Napoleon was always interested in recruits to swell the ranks of his vast army and the Irish exiles in France did not go unnoticed by him. Subsequent events bore a marked similarity to the previous French flirtation with the Scottish Jacobites under Bonnie Prince Charlie. The collapse of various French invasion plans resulted in the Irish mounting an unsupported, and ultimately doomed, rebellion in 1798.

After this, Irish exiles kicked their heels in France until Napoleon raised a new Irish Legion in 1803. Many joined up, seduced by Napoleon’s promise of a French invasion of Ireland in 1805. The carrot of French support for various wars of liberation was a regular feature of Napoleon’s sleight-of-hand politics -- the Poles were similarly gulled!. Nonetheless the Irish pinned their hopes on Napoleon: there were no other options.

Bitter in-house feuding between rival factions among the Irish exiles soon undermined French confidence in them. Consequently, while Napoleon was busy with the 1805 & 1806 campaigns, his Irish Legion was relegated to dull garrison duties -- only enlivened by duels between its officers! After the cancellation of the French 1805 invasion plans, the Irish Legion lost its raison d’etre. While its banner (issued in 1804) still bore the proud boast “L’independance d’Irlande”, by 1809 it had metamorphosed into the 3rd Foreign Regiment (Irish). Although the officers were still largely Irish, the ranks, as early as 1807, were filled largely by Polish soldiers.

A detachment, described as the 2nd Battalion, was sent to Spain in 1809 under Murat. The 1st Battalion seemed destined to languish in quiet backwaters on garrison duty, but chance resulted in their posting to Walcheren - just in time for the British expeditionary landings in 1809 at the same place. There the Irish performed well under trying circumstances against a numerically superior English force.

The detachment in Spain remained there on active service until returning to France in 1812. By the time the Regiment was reunited, the proportion of Irish nationals was only 6.4%. Having been spared the disastrous 1812 campaign in Russia, the 3rd Foreign Regiment (Irish) was deployed in the field for the 1813 campaign season. This was to be the Regiment’s last gasp: practically annihilated fighting in Silesia, they were officially disbanded on the 28 September 1815.

Gallaher’s study of Napoleon’s Irish Legion is an academic work, concerned more, but not eclusively with, with the politics of Irishmen in the service of France than with their battles. Although not to everybody’s taste, it nonetheless offers a fasci-nating insight into the motivation of one of Napoleon’s foreign regiments.

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