“Officers who could raise units were offered loot, plantations and glory by the Venezuelan government. For the ordinary soldiers, the promise of a parcel of fertile land with which to begin a new life in the New World was enough.”

By Tim Fanning

BETWEEN 1817 AND 1820 thousands of Irish men, women and children embarked from ports in Britain and Ireland on a hazardous journey across the Atlantic Ocean. They were emigrants escaping unemployment, poverty and starvation like the millions who would follow in their wake during the 1840s and 1850s. But rather than sailing for the eastern sea ports of North America, these Irish emigrants were sailing south, towards Venezuela, to fight in the South American wars of independence. They were responding to a call for volunteers from Simón Bolívar, the great political and military leader of South American independence.

For 15  years, beginning in 1810, revolutionary armies led by the middle-class criollo (those born in Latin America of Spanish descent) fought the Spanish across South America. The cradle of the revolution in the north of the continent was Venezuela. But by 1817, having been forced to retreat to the banks of the River Orinoco in the south of Venezuela by the arrival of a 10,000-strong army from Spain, Bolívar and the Venezuelan government were desperate for skilled troops.

In Ireland, the end of the Napoleonic Wars had brought about an economic slump and high unemployment as thousands of demobbed soldiers began flooding home. And so Bolívar’s agent, Luis López Méndez, began a recruitment campaign to enlist officers and troops to the cause of Venezuelan independence. Veterans of the Irish rebellion of 1798 and the wars in Europe offered their services. Officers who could raise units were offered loot, plantations and glory by the Venezuelan government. For the ordinary soldiers, the promise of a parcel of fertile land with which to begin a new life in the New World was enough.

One recruiter’s handbill, which was passed around the alehouses of Dublin, boldly promised that volunteers would receive free passage to Venezuela with daily rations consisting of a pound of beef or pork, a pound of bread, a pound-and-a-half of potatoes and a noggin of whiskey, oatmeal and butter during the voyage, along with a 60-dollar bonus upon arriving. Once in the Americas, each soldier was also supposedly entitled to slightly better pay than a British redcoat, as well as “a proportionate share of Land, Captures and Prize Money.” Plus, upon discharge following five years of service, all would be granted 200 acres of land and 80 dollars with which to purchase agricultural implements, along with leave to sell the land with free passage home if desired.

This utopian image of Venezuela was enough to dizzy the senses of Irish emigrants who were barely scratching out a living at home. But the reality was quite different. Those who survived the ocean-crossing on filthy, overcrowded and, often, barely-seaworthy ships arrived on Margarita Island off the northern coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea. With barely enough to eat and fresh water in short supply, hundreds died from tropical diseases such as yellow fever.

More than half of the foreign volunteers who enlisted in Bolívar’s army were Irish. Many Irish served in what became known as the British Legion, and were incorrectly referred to as ingleses (English) by the Venezuelans. However, two unmistakeably Irish units also served in Venezuela and neighbouring Colombia: the Hibernian Regiment and the Irish Legion. Both were led by Irish officers, respectively Thomas Eyre from County Galway and John Devereux from County Wexford.

There was significant rivalry between the Hibernian Regiment and the Irish Legion, a consequence of the feud between their commanding officers. At one stage, Eyre challenged Devereux to a duel. Devereux refused. This led Colonel Michael Rafter, an officer who fought with Eyre in the Caribbean, to remark: ‘… this was a great triumph to the Hibernians, whose numbers rapidly increased in consequence; but the temporary success of Eyre was counterbalanced by a most weighty consideration: – the uniform of his regiment was excessively plain, while D’Evereux’s lancers strutted about the streets of Dublin blazing in all the splendours of plumed helmets, burnished sabres, and richly laced jackets , and the clicking of their spurs, and the tinkling of their chains, sounded the death knell to the pride of the mortified Hibernians, who never failed to [reveal] their envy when they happened to come in contact with the well-dressed brother Patriots.’

Eyre’s Hibernian Regiment fought under the command of a Scottish charlatan called Gregor MacGregor, whose actions in the Caribbean were quickly disavowed by Bolívar. Having dislodged the Spanish from Portobello in present-day Panama, MacGregor and his officers fell idle, getting drunk on looted liquor. When the Spanish retook Portobello, MacGregor jumped out of a window to escape, leaving his men behind. Regrouping in Haiti, MacGregor and the Hibernian Regiment launched an assault on Riohacha in October 1819.

About 200 men, including volunteers belonging to the Hibernian Regiment, managed to take the town, but, once again, excessive consumption of alcohol combined with the impact of tropical disease and MacGregor’s increasing paranoia, led to disaster. Fearful of a Spanish attack, MacGregor once again abandoned his fellow officers and men. Under fire from the Spanish, the remaining members of the Hibernian Regiment retreated to the fort in Riohacha. Their resistance ended when a stray bullet hit a box of ammunition, killing Eyre and his comrades. Of the 66 officers, 169 enlisted men, 15 women and four children who had sailed from Haiti to Riohacha, Rafter estimated that only 23 officers, 47 enlisted men, one woman and two children survived.

Six months later, the Irish Legion also came to grief after an assault on Riohacha. In the absence of Devereux, who was too busy selling commissions in Ireland, a County Kildare veteran of the 1798 Rising, William Aylmer, led the Irish Legion to the Caribbean. Arriving on Margarita Island at the end of 1819, the Irish soldiers were horrified by what they found. Soldiers who had fought on the Venezuelan mainland and been withdrawn to the island were dying in their dozens, either yellow fever or of their untreated wounds. There were also the danger of attack from the islanders. Two officers had been found murdered, stripped naked and with their heads cut off.

Some respite came when Bolívar ordered the Irish Legion to take part in an 800-man assault on Riohacha under the command of Colonel Mariano Montilla. The initial invasion was successful and Montilla ordered his men south to link up patriot forces in the rest of Colombia. Their route took the troops through the territory of the Guajiro, who were fighting for the Spanish. The Guajiro, who knew every inch of the dense forest, repeatedly attacked Montilla’s men. Fearful of being surrounded, Montilla ordered his men back to Riohacha. The Irish legionaries, thoroughly disheartened by the conditions and disillusioned by the failure of the Venezuelans to honour their promises, promptly mutinied.

But there were officers who remained and helped win the independence of the South American republics we know today. They included Daniel Florence O’Leary and Francis Burdett O’Connor, both from County Cork, who served with distinction in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and who both rose to the rank of general.

There were also those Irish officers, NCOs and soldiers who fought under the banner of the British Legion and marched with Bolívar on his famous crossing of the Andes, playing a decisive role in the liberation of Colombia from Spanish rule. Without their efforts, this seismic moment in the wars of independence might have been very different.

Tim Fanning is a Dublin-based writer and historian. His most recent book, ‘Paisanos: The Irish and the Liberation of Latin America’, is published by Notre Dame Press.