Clare men at Waterloo

While Quin village mostly got on with life at a local level, it was greatly influenced by Ireland being part of the United Kingdom until 1922. England did not hesitate to call on Irishmen when its own shores were threatened. This was especially true during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century and the defining battle of Waterloo in June 1815.

Waterloo was the most important European battle fought up to that point in the nineteenth century. With the defeat of the French, it ended the ambitions of the First Republic and its forces under Napoleon Bonaparte. Dublin born Arthur Wesley, Duke of Wellington, led the English armies as part of the Seventh Coalition forces. He was one of thousands of Irish present. They included many men from county Clare.

Irish in Military Service

The precedent for Irish men fighting in foreign armies goes back a long way.  In October 1691, for example, when the Jacobites under Sarsfield surrendered in Limerick, the English allowed those who choose to do so, to leave Ireland. This Flight of the Wild Geese saw 14,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians depart the country. Many of these soldiers went on to serve in national armies across Europe. In France, the exiles primarily joined the Irish Brigade.  Earlier in the same century, Irishmen had left the country after the defeat at Kinsale in 1601 and again post 1641 after the failed rebellion. The Wild Geese émigrés consolidated the idea of able-bodied Irishmen moving to foreign lands to fight for overseas armies.

Following the failed United Irishman rising of 1798, another wave of soldiers left Ireland (mostly from the insurrectionist counties of Mayo, Wexford and Dublin). This led to the formation of La Légion Irlandaise (The Irish Legion) in the French army in 1803. Its initial aim was to prepare for another French-led invasion of Ireland assisted by Irish officers. The founder of the Irish regiment was Dubliner Bernard McSheedy.  Ennis native James Blackwell who rose to the rank of Chef de Bataillon (Lt. Col. Infantry) was possibly its greatest champion. Myles Byrnes, whose memoir is amongst the best on the 1798 rising, also was at the time the current chef de battalion.

The regiment was active in 1815 but because of duties elsewhere was not at Waterloo. Consequently, there were not so many Irishmen in French uniform in the field at Waterloo. The same cannot be said of Irishmen in British garb. 

 Up to the 1790’s the Irish were not permitted to bear arms. While Irishmen were fighting abroad for generations and were greatly respected for their steadfastness and valour they were not yet trusted to join the British army or become proficient in the use of arms. Until the late eighteenth century, it suited the British government to have a steady flow of Irish emigrants going abroad for managed army careers. This reduced the risk of restless young men, often unemployed, creating trouble at home. The Clare Militia was created under the Militia Act of 1793 in response to the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War to become a reserve force for the regular army. Its formation initially met with significant local opposition. In time it was used to subdue local insurrections including the United Irishmen movement.  

The British government realized that a significant resource was being flitted away by not utilising Irish soldiers. Irishmen were sometimes ending up in armies opposed to England, with many Irish excelling in military service. The English government finally began to recruit Irishmen to its army in 1793 for service in Ireland and abroad.

This recruitment programme was hugely successful, to the extent that by 1845 more then 40% of the British Army was Irish, while Ireland constituted less than 15% of the total population of the then United Kingdom.

Waterloo

‘The mangled bodies of men and horses, broken gun-carriages, caps, helmets, cuirasses, arms, drums, harness, accoutrements, pieces of battered uniforms, knapsacks, letters, and cards, that were strewed abundantly in all directions, and the crops levelled by the trampling of infantry and cavalry in the strife, plainly marked the extent of the field, and gave undeniable evidence of the fury of the conflict that had raged there.’

                                    Henry Ross-Lewin

Ever since the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the foundation of the French Republic, Europe had grown uneasy with this new political force. Led by the brilliant and ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte France attempted to extend its influence. For example, France provided an invasion force to Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen, only for the French fleet to be beaten back by severe weather off the coast of Cork at Christmas 1796. 

Waterloo was the culmination of the Napoleonic Wars in what was known as the Peninsular War. There were nine Infantry regiments and four Cavalry units with formal Irish affiliations active in the British army at the time. These included the Connaught Rangers, Prince of Wales’ Tipperary Regiment, Prince Regent’s County of Dublin Regiment and the (King’s Irish) Hussars cavalry. Of these, three Irish units were used in the Waterloo campaign – one infantry division, the 1st Battalion, 27th (Inniskilling) and two cavalries, the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons and the 18th (King’s Irish) Hussars. 

Peter Molloy in his ‘Ireland and the Waterloo campaign of 1815’, clearly indicated that even in regiments without overtly Irish links, there were still significant numbers of Irishmen in their ranks. To demonstrate this, he reviewed at random two regular English regiments present at Waterloo, with the following findings: 

Table 1. 0. Irish Waterloo campaign veterans

 Source: Peter Molloy, ‘Ireland and the Waterloo campaign of 1815’, MA Thesis,   Maynooth 2012

Extrapolating these figures suggests that Irishmen may have made up a third of the regular ranks of the English army at this time. Molloy further determined that 49% of these Irish soldiers had no previous profession (mostly labourers), supporting the belief that joining the British army was one of economic necessity for the Irish.

One of three of Wellington’s Irish generals in the field was from Clare. This was Major General Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur of Kilrush. The general’s 4th British Cavalry Brigade covered the withdrawal of Wellington’s heavy cavalry at Waterloo after an ill-fated charge. When the overall cavalry commander, Lord Uxbridge, was wounded and had to leave the field, Vandeleur took his place for the remainder of the campaign, for which he received the gratitude of Parliament. 

There were significant numbers of Junior Irish officers at regimental level in the Waterloo campaign. Captain Henry (Harry) Ross-Lewin of Ross Hill, Kiladysert whose memoirs form an important source of information on the Peninsular War noted the presence within his battalion of the 32nd Foot of at least four other Irish officers. These included his younger brother Thomas, who was a lieutenant, as well as a trio of captains, Jacques Boyse, Thomas Cassan and Edward Whitty. In what Ross-Lewin remembered as a ‘rather singular’ occurrence, all three Irish captains died as a result of wounds received during the same engagement, at the battle of Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815.  

Finally, looking at the ranks of the regular conscripts in the two chosen regiments, we can identify six soldiers from Clare, any of whom could have been from the Quin area:

Irish Waterloo campaign veterans 

3rd Battalion Royal Scots, 1st Foot: 

1st Battalion, 32nd of Foot:

Source: Peter Molloy, ‘Ireland and the Waterloo campaign of 1815’, MA Thesis,     Maynooth 2012 

Waterloo was a truly gruesome battle. Muskets, cannon, bayonets, lances and swords left men with horrific wounds. Medical care was basic, with damaged limbs being amputated without sedatives. Many would die later of infection. The Allied forces suffered 17,000 dead and wounded, while the French counted 25,000 dead and wounded. 

In his book A Bloody Day – The Irish at Waterloo, Lieut. Col Dan Harvey who had long studied the Waterloo campaign, estimated that 8,500 of the Duke of Wellington’s 28,000 British soldiers, including Wellington himself, or 30 per cent of the total, were Irish. Based on a casualty rate of 25 per cent it can be ascertained that at least 2,000 Irishmen were killed or wounded at Waterloo.

In Ireland, the Peninsular War is largely forgotten. Clare still has remnants of Napoleonic times with gun batteries, Martello towers and gun enclosures along the coast. Barrack Street in Ennis is a reminder of those Clare men who enlisted locally, with another garrison quarters in Clarecastle. However, there has been little effort to date to learn more about the Clare men who fought and died on that infamous day in Belgium. 

When Waterloo was over, the Irish soldiers who had survived unscathed were marshalled into new battalions and moved on to new military fronts. Many of these army regulars had been cajoled (‘the king’s shilling’) or indeed forced to enlist in the British army, for a service period of from 30 years to life. For them poverty ensured there was little point in returning home. They marched off to their next engagement.

Two good things did come from Waterloo. First, in recognition of Irish bravery on the battlefield, Arthur Wesley, now British Prime Minister, granted Catholics the right to vote in Ireland. This led to Daniel O’ Connell’s famous Clare election victory as the first Roman Catholic member of the British Parliament in 1829.   

Also, following the Allied victory and the final defeat of Napoleon, the UK government issued a medal to every soldier who had been a part of the Waterloo campaign, inscribed with the name of the recipient. For the first time, the government recognized the common soldier’s huge contribution to society. The issuing of the medal led to the creation of the Waterloo Medal Roll, written from lists assembled by the regiments who fought in the Waterloo campaign. There are hundreds of Clare names within its pages.

M. Houlihan.