1798, a French fleet numbering nine ships holding 3,000 troops set sail from Brest. Again disaster struck. The French invasion force was intercepted by a British fleet commanded by Sir John Warren off the Donegal coast on 12 October. Bitter fighting ensued, lasting some ten hours, the result of which was an overwhelming British victory. Without the loss of a single ship, Sir John Warren captured seven ships and about 2,500 French troops. Among those captured was Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had travelled under the nom de guerre ‘Adjutant General Smith’. In view of these events, the British government was determined to forestall any further invasion and occupation of Ireland. To this effect, garrisons were increased and fortifications strengthened throughout the county with an emphasis on strategic locations.
In 1803 Napoleon began assembling his invasion force in north-eastern France. Napoleon’s Irish Legion, Legion Irlandaise, was formed in November of that year in Morlaix, Brittany. The Irish Legion (as it was to evolve, the forerunner of the French Foreign Legion) was created with a view to concurrent landings in Ireland and England, when a locally recruited force in Ireland would take up arms on its arrival. This would open up a second front, a simultaneous point of attack in a co-ordinated offensive on Britain Any unrest caused by Robert Emmet’s Rising of 1803 was short-lived, largely confined to Dublin, and did not ignite the hoped-for insurrection. This was not to dampen the on-going planning and preparations of the Legion, and throughout early 1804 it continued to recruit, train, and prepare. However, in August 1805, the British naval victory by Admiral Nelson’s fleet over that of the French at Trafalgar, where more than 30 per cent of Nelson’s sailors were Irish, removed the possibility of invasion. Napoleon turned his army eastwards and marched them towards Austria. Victories over the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz in December 1805 and the Prussians at Jena in 1806 saw him continue to hold sway on the continent. If Napoleon could not invade Britain he could blockade her; after all, it was an island and supplies could be prevented from arriving if they were stopped from being exported in the first place at their ports of origin. Napoleon attempted to extend his influence over England’s trading partners and to effect a blockade that would cut off her supplies. However, while many countries approved of his values for self-determination, interfering with their trade was another matter and seen as taking a step too far. In any event, the Spanish requested assistance from Britain. Following the French invasion and occupation of Spain in May 1808, the Spanish authorities appealed to Britain for ‘aid to rescue them from this flagrant usurpation of Bonaparte’. On receipt of this appeal it was decided that a force being assembled in Cork under Wellesley to assist the defence of the Spanish colonies in South America would go instead to Portugal, thus starting a campaign that became known as ‘the Peninsular War’. Of the force that was placed under his command, the following units assembled in Cork and were quartered on the outskirts of the city: 1st Battalion 5th Foot, 1st Battalion 40th Foot, 1st Battalion 91st Foot, 1st Battalion 9th Foot, 5th Battalion 60th Foot, 4 Companies 95th Foot, 1st Battalion 38th Foot, 1st Battalion 71st Foot, and 4th Royal Veterans’ Battalion.
On his arrival in Cork, Wellington lost little time in sending dispatches to Viscount Castlereagh, the Secretary of State; to Lieutenant General Floyd, commanding at Cork; and to Lieutenant Cheeseman, RN, Resident Agent of Transport, Cork. These dispatches concerned the equipping and transportation of 444 officers, 552 sergeants, 227 drummers, 9,505 rank and file and 215 horses, which were to embark from ‘Cove’ under his command. The force embarked on 13 July 1808 and set sail for Portugal.
The Peninsular War (1807-1814) stands as one of the longest campaigns in British military history. Irish participation was pivotal. Ireland provided Wellington with a large proportion of his infantry, which played an important part in the persistent, painstaking pushing of the French from the Iberian Peninsula of Portugal and Spain, then up into southern France. Two Irish cavalry squadrons fought in the Peninsular War but their participation was far less than the infantry. Wellington’s Irish Battalions consisted of three battalions of the 27th Foot (Inniskillings), and a battalion from each of the 83rd Foot, 87th Foot (Prince of Wales’s Own Irish), 88th Foot (Connaught Rangers), and a brief appearance from the 89th Foot (The Princess Victoria’s). In addition to these seven Irish infantry battalions continually present in the Peninsula, the non-Irish regiments had an average 35 per cent of Irishmen. The national composition of a battalion varied from year to year, according to casualties, recruitment, and transfers, so there was between 8 and 50 per cent Irish varying throughout the overall duration of the war. The 57th Foot (West Middlesex) had 34 per cent native Irish in 1809, many of whom had been recruited in the London area. The 29th Foot (Worcestershire) had 19 per cent in 1809. rising to 37 per cent in 1811. The 28th Foot (North Gloucestershire) had 40 per cent, a figure reputedly shared by the Royal Artillery. The 94th Foot (The Scots’ Brigade) at one point contained the highest percentage of Irish, just over 51 per cent. ‘Elite’ light infantry battalions, the 43rd (Monmouthshire), the 52nd (Oxfordshire), and the 95th (Rifles), had about 25 per cent Irish. Most recruits came from the Catholic population.
‘The Inniskillings’ or the 27th Inniskillings were one of the strongest units in the British army during the Napoleonic period and one of the very few from 1812 on to have three battalions simultaneously in the Peninsula, mustering 4,078 men in 1810. The 3rd Battalion was the most heavily engaged, spending 64 complete months in that theatre. The 27th is also one of the oldest regiments, raised in 1689 during the Williamite Wars for the defence of the town of Enniskillen, and was originally known as Tiffin’s Inniskilling Regiment, named after its first Colonel, Zachariah Tiffin. In 1751, the regiment became the 27th Foot and served in the Seven Years War (1756-63) in North America and the West Indies. It formed part of the British force in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1801, and in 1806 the First Battalion of the 27th fought at Maida, and with the second and third Battalions formed part of the Peninsula army, gaining battle honours at Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Orkey, and Toulouse. The 3rd Battalion was the first of the three battalions to enter the Peninsular War in November 1808, the 1st Battalion entering in November 1812 and the 2nd Battalion a month later. The 1st Battalion, with a composition from 27 counties of origin throughout Ireland, went on to fight at Waterloo under the command of Major John Hare (6th Division, 10th Brigade). At half past six in the evening, the French, capturing the farmhouse strong-point of La Haye Sainte (‘The Holy Hedge’), brought up field horse artillery and shredded the Anglo-Allied line at a range of less than 300 metres. Deployed in square at the junction of the Ohain and the Brussels-Charleroi crossroads, the 1st Battalion 27th Foot, 747 strong at daybreak, sustained 493 casualties or 66 per cent, reportedly the highest of any battalion.
The forces which Wellington led in Portugal and Spain and up into southern France between 1808 and 1814 achieved a consistent record of victory perhaps unmatched in the history of the British army. Put together, the Irish regiments and the Irish in non-Irish regiments made up some 40 per cent of this volunteer army, a remarkable figure given the bloodshed of the recent unrest of the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland and to a far lesser extent that of 1803. The size of the Irish contingent was out of proportion to Ireland’s share of the United Kingdom’s total population, especially as most Irish troops were drawn from Ireland’s Catholic population. Officers of Irish birth or strong Irish connections, which may have been as great as one third of the officer corps, came mainly from Ireland’s Anglican community of much less than one million, or about seven per cent of the population, but Catholic officers were appearing in increasing numbers.
Why did such recruits become available? Provoked by the American and French Revolutions, the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1782 abolished many restrictions on Catholics and began to bring them into the mainstream of British and Irish life. The 1793 Act in Ireland had amongst its supporters the Member of Parliament for Trim, County Meath, Arthur Wellesley, aged 24, later 1st Duke of Wellington. This act changed Ireland dramatically by enfranchising Catholics and giving them the heretofore denied access to the professions and to higher education. It also allowed Catholics once again to bear arms and to enter the armed forces legitimately, resulting in vast numbers swelling the rank and file, and so was a major factor in providing troops for the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It was not simple altruism or the need to reduce dissatisfaction in the wake of the French Revolution that motivated the Protestant Parliament in Dublin to restore the right to bear arms, but the pressing need to employ the well-established
