“The St. Patrick’s were actually just one of a long list of Gaelic regiments to serve in other countries’ armies over the centuries.”

ON SEPT. 21, 1846, General Zachery Taylor‘s American Army of Occupation stormed the Mexican city of Monterrey. For three days, 6,000 American soldiers and Texas Rangers fought a series of bloody street battles for control of the town.

Among the thousands of Mexican army troops defending Monterrey were 175 soldiers who seemed conspicuously out of place on the town’s ramparts and barricades. It wasn’t their powder blue and yellow jackets and soft caps that stood out, but rather their pink sunburned skin and ginger hair. And unlike their Spanish-speaking comrades, these soldiers spoke English, albeit with a thick brogue. Their comrades called them Los Colorados or “the red ones,” but officially they were known as El Batallón de San Patricio or the St. Patrick’s Battalion.

The outfit was founded by Irish immigrants, many of whom had actually enlisted to fight in the U.S. Army. As their adopted homeland prepared for war with the overwhelmingly Catholic Mexican Republic, they deserted in droves and backed the Papists. The battalion, which included both infantry and artillerymen, was also home to volunteers straight from the old country, Irish immigrants from Canada and even a number of runaway slaves.

Although Monterrey eventually fell to the Americans, the St. Pats fought tenaciously, pouring a heavy fire into the advancing enemy while withstanding a series of bayonet charges.

It was a 29-year old Galway-born deserter from the 5^th U.S. Infantry Regiment named Jon Riley who commanded the group. He later claimed that anti-Irish bigotry in the United States compelled him to defect. Once in Mexico, Riley was given an officer’s commission and placed in command of a detachment of his countrymen.

After their solid performance at Monterrey, the St. Pats went on to fight in the battles of Buena Vista, where they supposedly acquitted themselves admirably, and later Churubusco. The unit was eventually routed at the gates of the capital along with the rest of the Mexican army. Eventually, 72 Irish deserters (including Riley) were captured by the Americans and tried for treason. While Jon and several of his compatriots were spared the noose because they joined the Mexican army before the war broke out, more than 50 defectors were put to death. Thirty were hanged in one mass execution on Sept. 10, 1847 at Chapultepec. One of those condemned had lost both of his legs in the fighting but despite his crippling woulds was pulled from his hospital bed and carried to the gallows.

Riley was briefly imprisoned and later died in Veracruz of alcoholism, (although that claim is disputed). Largely forgotten by American history, the St. Pats commander is celebrated in both Ireland and Mexico to this day. Statues of him stand in his birthplace of Clifden as well as the Mexican capital.

While an army of Irishmen fighting on the dusty plains of the Rio Grande seems like one of history’s quirky aberrations, the St. Patrick’s were actually just one of a long list of Gaelic regiments to serve in other countries’ armies over the centuries. In fact, instances of men from the Emerald Isle travelling abroad to take part in foreign wars was so common between the 17^th and 19^th centuries, the Irish had a name for these émigré soldiers. They called them the Wild Geese.

In honour of St. Patrick’s Day this year, MHN is taking a look at some other of these ‘ex-Pat’ soldiers.

Spain’s Irish Armies

One of the first Irish foreign legions left home in the early 1580s as part of an English effort to support the Dutch in its 80-year rebellion against Spain. The Crown was keen to keep Ireland’s best warriors busy in Europe, lest they foment rebellion at home. Somehow en route, the predominately Catholic force pledged its allegiance to the Spanish king and spent the next four years fighting against both the English and the Dutch. For the next 200 years, Spain would employ Irish volunteers for wars in both Europe and the Americas. These included the Irlanda Regiment (est. 1698), the Ultonia Regiment (est. 1709), the Hibernia Regiment, and the Dublin Dragoons (1701). Irish units would even fight for Spain during the Napoleonic Wars.

King Louis’ Irish Brigade

For pledging support to the Jacobite cause in 1690, France’s King Louis XIV demanded Ireland send volunteers to help bolster his own massive army. Five regiments were raised under the command of Justin McCarthy (aka Viscount Mountcashel). The unit became known as the Irish Brigade and would serve in the French army for the next hundred years. The regiments saw action in the War of Spanish Succession, the War of Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War as well as the French intervention in the American War of Independence. Later, an army of exiles would form Napoleon’s Irish Legion for the abortive 1803 invasion and liberation of the Emerald Isle. That army would end up fighting for Bonaparte in Spain in 1808, the Netherlands in 1809, the 1813 German campaign, and the Siege of Antwerp in 1814. It was disbanded after the emperor’s abdication.

Italy, Poland, Russia and Others

Irish volunteers would fight for an array of other military powers throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Consider Peter Lacy of Limerick who served as a general for Peter the Great and took part in 31 military campaigns before his death in 1751. Andreas O’Reilly, born in 1742 in Ballinlough, eventually rose to the rank of General of the Cavalry in the Austrian army and would do battle for the Habsburg Monarchy in five wars spanning half a century. Then there were 1,300 Irish soldiers sent by the English to help Sweden fight the Poles in 1609. The force defected en masse to Catholic Poland where they would continue to serve until the end of the Muscovite War (1609 to 1618). Speaking of Ireland’s Catholic holy warriors, let’s not forget Myles William Patrick O’Reilly and his 900-man Irish contingent to the army of the Papal States in the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence. Lesser known are the men of the 1^st Venezuelan Rifles, an all-Irish outfit that took part in that country’s 1811 to 1823 war with Spain. 

Irish-American Armies

The green and orange would also figure prominently in the wars for the Red, White and Blue. Irish immigrants were major contributors to the American War of Independence. There was Edward Stack of County Kerry, the commander of marines attached to John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary War. Also James McHenry, an Irish-born surgeon with the Continental Army. He would later sign the U.S. Constitution and become President Washington’s war secretary. Fort McHenry in Baltimore was named in his honour. America’s original navy was established in part thanks to the efforts of Commodore John Barry, a sailor from Wexford.

Not all Irishmen in America were Patriots. At least two units of loyalist volunteers served the Tory cause: The 105^th Regiment of Foot (also known as the Volunteers of Ireland) and the Roman Catholic Volunteers.

The Irish were also front and center in the American Civil War. As this very site reported in 2013, More than 150,000 troops in the Union army hailed from Ireland. Units such as the 37^th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment and the 90^th Illinois Volunteers were comprised of recent arrivals from the Emerald Isle, as were the troops and officers of the famous 69^th Infantry Regiment of New York, also known as the Irish Brigade. Interestingly enough, this outfit was almost entirely wiped out at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862 when it went up against a Confederate unit made up of Irish-born southerners. In fact, immediately after the war, Irish regiments from both the North and the South joined forces to invade Canada as part of a movement to topple the British Empire. It was known as the Fenian Raids. 

POST SCRIPT: In the Service of Great Britain

Whole volumes have been written about Irish contributions to British military history. And while space and time prevent us from further exploring the subject here (we’ll save that for another St. Patrick’s Day), suffice it to say, during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, it’s estimated that as many as a third of the soldiers and sailors in the service of the Crown hailed from Ireland. And while many of the rank-and-file were forced into uniform by the press gang or their own desperation, others were proud to take up the sword for Great Britain. In fact, many would become some of the U.K.’s most illustrious military heroes. Consider: Arthur Wellesley, better known as the Duke of Wellington who was born in Dublin or Field Marshall Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener who came from County Kerry. 

SOURCES
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Mexican-AmericanWar/p/Biography-Of-John-Riley.htm
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Mexican-AmericanWar/p/Biography-Of-John-Riley.htm
http://www.irishineurope.com/about/research/irish-military-spain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_regiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Brigade_(US)
http://www.aohflorida.org/irish-role-in-american-independence/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_military_diaspora
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Wild_Geese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Battalion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Legion
http://www.sligoheritage.com/archirishsoldiersamericanwarhistory.htm