Napoleon S Irish Legion

Drawing heavily on the original documents of the Archives de la guerre, John G. Gallaher has written the first complete account of the storied Irish Legion, which joined with Napoleon to fight England. Following the failed Rebellion of 1798, hundreds of Irishmen fled to the Continent to avoid imprisonment or execution. As part of his planned campaign against England and Ireland in 1803, Napoleon authorized the creation of an Irish Legion to invade Ireland in order to tie down British forces that could otherwise have been used against the main French invasion of England. The promise of returning to Ireland with the French army at their backs brought many recruits to the Legion. The Irish emigrants who enlisted in this special unit of the French army were Irish nationalists who intended to liberate Ireland and create an Irish republic. When the anticipated expedition to Ireland never took place, some of the Irishmen quit the army though the great majority of them remained to fight for Napoleon. Battalions of the Legion encountered the British at Flushing in 1809, fought Wellington in Portugal in 1810-11, and served with distinction at the Battle of Bautzen and in Silesia, where after heavy losses in lesser engagements with the enemy, the Legion was finally destroyed on the banks of the Bober River in 1813. The Legion was reorganized in the winter of 1813-14, but with a dwindling number of Irishmen. With the passage of time the Irish became Bonapartists, and following the Second Restoration in 1815, the surviving remnants of the Irish Legion were disbanded. Until the end, the men of the Legion did not lose their love for Ireland nor their hope that one day they would return to their native land as part of a French military expedition. The Irish veterans of the Napoleonic wars were retired at half pay and most settled in France. They had become French soldiers of the Napoleonic Empire.

The Franco-Irish connection has been maintained since the 17th century and it is often forgotten that the initial contacts between the two countries were largely military. This book, the proceedings of a 2007 conference, represents the latest research on this military connection. Contents: Ã?Â?Ã?Â?amon Ã?Â?Ã?Â? CiosÃ?Â?Ã?¡in (NUIM), Irish soldiers and regiments in the French service before 1690; Pierre Joannon (Irish consul to France), The Irish in France; Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac (SHD), The first wave of Irish Jacobite exiles; Pierre-Louis Coudray (U Angers), Irish soldiers in Angers; Eoghan Ã?Â?Ã?Â? hAannrachÃ?Â?Ã?¡in, Irish soldiers in Les Invalides; Lavinia Greacen, The life and career of General Lally; Clarke de Dromantain (U Bordeaux), Jacobite regiments in the American War of Independence; Georges Martinez, The Irish in the army of the Princes; Hugh Gough (UCD), French military strategy towards Ireland, 1792-1815; Sylvie Kleinman (TCD), The French career of Theobald Wolfe Tone; Nicholas Dunne-Lynch (U Liverpool), The Irish Legion of Napoleon; Janick Julienne (Paris VII), Irish involvement in the Franco-Prussian War; Jerome aan de Wiel (UCC), DeuxiÃ?Â?Ã?Â(c)me bureau operations in Ireland, 1900-5; SiobhÃ?Â?Ã?¡n Pierce (NMI), Irish soldiers in France in WWI; David Murphy (TCD), Irish people in the French Resistance in WWII.

Napoleon's Irish troops and their battles, recounted by one of their officers Napoleon Bonaparte recruited to his causes the fighting men of nations which had suffered at the hands of the enemies of Republican and Imperial France. These soldiers hoped that by aligning themselves with French successes they would see their own aspirations for liberty realised. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was understandable that in Ireland, which had long suffered under the British yoke, there were those who saw the promises of the French Revolution as beacons of hope. The protagonist of this book, Miles Byrne, was one such Irishmen. Indeed, French forces twice landed in Ireland to assist uprisings. Byrne took part in the abortive Irish Rebellion of 1798, as a guerilla fighter in the Wicklow Hills and in the failed Dublin insurrection of 1803 which resulted in his flight to France. There he became an officer in Napoleon's Irish Legion serving in the Low Countries, Spain and at the Battle of Leipzig. His writings, edited by his wife and covering his entire career ran to two large volumes and contained much biographical information about his former comrades. Included in their pages, of course, was much on the subject of the struggle in Ireland itself. This special Leonaur edition has been edited from this larger work and concentrates solely on Byrne and the legion during their service in the Napoleonic Wars fighting for France. Contains illustrations which did not accompany the original text Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

Irish Brigades Abroad examines the complete history of the Irish regiments in France, Spain, Austria and beyond. Covering the period from King James II’s reign of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1685, until the disbandment of the Irish Brigades in France and Spain, this book looks at the origins, formation, recruitment and the exploits of the Irish regiments, including their long years of campaigning from the War of the Grand Alliance in 1688 right through to the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.What emerges is a picture of the old-fashioned virtues of honour, chivalry, integrity and loyalty, of adventure and sacrifice in the name of a greater cause.

This superb and comprehensive book details the foreign units which formed such an important part of Napoleon's forces. It examines each non-French unit in turn, giving an overview of the unit's origins, its organizational and combat history, its uniforms and standards, and details of the unit's eventual fate. Colourful accounts, taken from contemporary reports and memoirs, emphasize the qualities of the unit and throw light on what life was like for many of the foreign soldiers recruited into the Grande Armée. In total more than 100 different foreign units that served in the French Army are investigated in detail in this ambitious publication. Some foreign units fought and flourished throughout the Consulate and Empire, whilst others lasted for just a few months. Covers Polish, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, and other units in the French Army and presents a combat history and details uniforms for each regiment. Napoleon's Mercenaries is the best single-volume study of this aspect of Napoleon s army and a vital reference for every Napoleonic enthusiast. Little can be found on the foreign units that were an integral part of the French army ... For a long time a gap has existed, but now Napoleon s Mercenaries fills this gap. Robert Burnham, Napoleonic Series

A detailed account of the political evolution of republicanism after the partition of Ireland, and its continued importance in the modern Irish state. This book examines historical developments and analyzes republican ideology and the IRA's activities during that period of Irish history.