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The Irish were
among the most attractive candidates. First of all, they were
Catholic. Secondly, their intermittent state of rebellion
against the English had made them proficient in combat. Last
but not least, being England's 'natural enemies' they were
also perceived as Spain's 'natural allies', since 'the enemy
of my enemy is my friend'. The situation was rather more
complicated and at various times the English cooperated in the
exportation of Irish soldiers to Spain, but this
simplification has some validity.
'The
dispossessed Gaelic chiefs and their swordsmen (...) fought
with tenacious loyalty and fanatical zeal in Flanders. After
all, the Dutch enemy were co-religionists of the Ulster
planters, easily seen as affiliated to their English
oppressors, and were actually in alliance with the latter
against Spain in the years 1625-1630' (Stradling 1993: 133).
These religious and ideological elements, however, were absent
in the later wars against the French, Catalans and Portuguese,
in which the Irish behaved for the most part as professional
soldiers and gave a good account of themselves.
The English
Civil War (1642-1651) and its aftermath forced many Irishmen
to leave their native island. It has been estimated that
34,000 Irish soldiers joined the armies of Spain and France
during the years 1641-1654. Concerning the former, most
Irishmen were transported directly to the Peninsula
(18,000-22,500), but a minority (2,000) made their way to
Flanders. For obvious reasons, the aristocracy was
over-represented in this exodus and by the second half of the
seventeenth century, 'some nine-tenths of the dynastic
leadership of traditional Ireland were present in the Spanish
Netherlands or metropolitan Spain, the men serving as
officers, their wives and children as dependents of the crown'
(Stradling 1993: 125). This meant that between fifty and one
hundred families of the old Irish ruling class became
pensioners of Philip IV and his successor Charles II.
The
Netherlands
The story of
the Irish units in the armies of Spain commences in 1585 in
the Netherlands. The Dutch had rebelled against their
Peninsular masters and Elizabeth I sent an army to support
them. Among these men were 1,500 Irishmen recruited by Sir
John Perrot. They were commanded by the Englishman Sir Edward
Stanley who, although a devout Catholic, had fought for
Protestant England against both Irish rebels and Spanish
troops. However, in 1587 the Spaniards bribed Stanley and he
and his men went over to the enemy, to whom they surrendered
the town of Deventure, which they were garrisoning. The unit
became known as the 'Tercio Irlanda' and remained in existence
until 1604 when it was broken down into individual companies.
In 1605, Henry O'Neill (second son of the Earl of Tyrone)
created the 'Tyrone Regiment' which included many of these men
and which remained in existence for the next five years.
Irish troops
were a permanent feature of Spain's Army of Flanders
throughout the seventeenth century and fought first against
the Dutch and then against the French. Between 1587 and 1661,
this force included on average 1,000 Irishmen, although the
numbers fluctuated over the years. Henry estimates that during
this period, 10,000 Irish immigrants reached the Spanish
Netherlands, of whom 6,300 joined the army. The organisation
of the Irish regiments changed frequently and so did the names
of the individual units, which were usually named after their
commander. The Army of Flanders was truly multi-national and
there were periods during which the Walloons and Flemings
recruited among the local population outnumbered the Spanish
soldiers. Germans, Italians, Swiss and Irish were also
represented.
'Beginning
with Stanley's defection to Spain, and progressing in spurts
during the late sixteenth century, emigration of Irishmen for
this purpose (serving in foreign armies) became virtually
continuous. It received a great impetus with the return, by
stages, to a state of general warfare on the continent after
1618. Though isolated groups reached the Baltic States, and
others found service in France, a large majority of these
exiles (at least three quarters of the total) went to serve in
the Army of Flanders after Spain's renewal of war with the
rebel United Provinces (1621). As Catholics, who often came to
the camp with their own embattled, zealous chaplains, and as
men acclimatized by their very nurture to many of the
environmental hardships of campaigning in the Low Countries,
they were highly valued by the field officers of the Spanish
Monarchy. By the beginning of the great war between the two
Catholic powers of Spain and France, which broke out openly in
1635, one authority (Jennings) estimates that as many as seven
thousand Irishmen were enlisted in the forces commanded by
Philip IV's brother, Don Fernando de Austria, governor of the
Spanish Netherlands' (Stradling 1993: 17).
'In the middle
decades of the seventeenth century, transportation of men from
Ireland to fight in Flanders, and later in Spain itself,
became a major aspect of international strategy, with
significant commercial aspects to set beside its military
logic' (Stradling 1993: 25). There was a fairly constant flow
of arrivals, but it is likely that 6,000 of the 7,000 men in
service in 1635 had come to the Netherlands as recently as
1634, as a result of an agreement between Juan de Necolalde
(the Spanish Chargé d'affaires in London) and King Charles I
of England. The Irishmen were organised in four 'Tercios',
under Colonels Owen Roe O'Neill (a nephew of the Earl of
Tyrone), Thomas Preston, Hugh O'Donnell and Patrick
Fitzgerald. They suffered extremely high casualties in the
battles against the French and only a third were still in
service in 1639. It became difficult to recruit replacements
and only 150 fresh Irish volunteers arrived in time for the
campaign of 1640. 'The bravery of the remaining Irish at the
terrible sieges of Arras and Genrep, in 1640-1641, brought
them undying fame' (Stradling 1993: 26).
'For some
years thereafter, the numbers of Irish in the Army of Flanders
were not sufficient to maintain a specific Tercio and the
companies were integrated into other units' (Stradling 1993:
26). From a peak of 7'000 men, the Irish contingent was
reduced to 200 in the years 1636-1646. Casualties in the
battlefield were only one of the reasons for this depletion.
Transfers were another: In 1638, Madrid dispatched two Irish
regiments from the Netherlands to northern Spain, where a
French attack was expected. In 1641, after the siege of Arras,
Colonel Patrick Fitzgerald (or Geraldine) and the survivors of
his unit were sent to Catalonia, where the population (allied
with France) had risen against the King. According to
Stradling, the vast majority of the officers and men serving
in the Spanish Netherlands in the 1620s were transferred to
Spain in the period 1638-1662. Last but not least, the Irish
uprising of 1641 further depleted the ranks of the Army of
Flanders. In the following months, many veterans returned home
to join the insurrection. Owen Roe O'Neill was one of them: He
departed in 1642, became the rebellion's commander-in-chief
and died of illness in 1649 while the war was still in
progress.
The uprisings
in Catalonia and Portugal in 1640 meant that the priority of
the Spanish war effort in the next decades was the Peninsula
itself and not the Low Countries. Madrid continued recruiting
Irishmen but most of them were dispatched directly from
Ireland to the northern ports of Spain and never served in the
Netherlands.
In the winter
of 1645-1646, during the English Civil War, the Irish army led
by Randal MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim, found itself surrounded
by Parliamentary forces in the Kintyre Peninsula (Scotland).
Knowing that they would be massacred if they surrendered,
Antrim escaped to Brussels where he negotiated the transfer of
his force to Spanish service. The final outcome of the
operation is not known with certainty, but 'early in 1647 a
new force of nearly 700 Irishmen appeared in the musters of
the Army of Flanders. This force is consistent with the
hypothetical number of survivors from an original 1'600,
allowing for the losses of campaigning in Scotland, and a
winter under siege in Kintyre, and after the vicissitudes they
had suffered since Antrim had left to seek means to their
rescue. These twelve companies, commanded by John Murphy, were
added to Patrick O'Neill's four to make up a respectable Irish
Tercio of 947 effective' (Stradling 1993: 63). O'Neill
remained in command but was later succeeded by Murphy.
In 1653,
survivors of the rebel army that had fought under Owen Roe
O'Neill in Ireland were hired by Spanish agents and made their
way to the Peninsula's northern ports. In the following year,
Philip IV decided to dispatch 3,000-4,000 of these men to
Flanders. It is not known how many were actually transported
but at least one regiment (750 men under Colonel O'Reilly)
reached its destination.
In 1661, Irish
troops were sent to fight in Portugal and this reduced the
number of Irishmen in the Army of Flanders to around 400, a
level that was maintained until at least 1700. The institution
disappeared in 1714, when Spain ceded the Southern Netherlands
to Austria.
The
Iberian Peninsula
The first
Irish volunteers to reach Spain (several hundred men under
Donal O'Sullivan Bere, Earl of Berehaven) arrived in La Coruña
in 1605, in the aftermath of the Nine Year War (the failed
rebellion against the English which lasted from 1594 to 1603).
Madrid did not need their services on the Peninsula and soon
afterwards transferred them to the Netherlands, where they
joined the Army of Flanders and were placed under the orders
of the Earl of Tyrone. Unable to obtain an independent command
and unwilling to serve under his countryman, O'Sullivan
returned to Spain where he settled.
In the middle
of the seventeenth century, the Spanish Hapsburgs faced a dire
emergency in the Iberian Peninsula. They were faced with
rebellions in both Catalonia and Portugal, and unrest in
Andalusia (1647-1652).
The
insurrection in Catalonia (1640-1659) represented by far the
most serious of these menaces since it endangered the unity of
Spain itself and threatened to divide the country again along
the lines of Castile and Aragon. France had a common border
and could and did intervene in support of the rebels. Spain
answered in kind and launched an invasion of the Guyenne. This
war ended in victory for Madrid but it was close-run.
Considerable numbers of Irish troops (as well as Germans and
Walloons transferred from the Army of Flanders) fought in
these operations alongside the Spanish regulars.
Portugal
had been part of the dominions of the King of Spain since
1580, when Philip II had obtained the Lusitanian crown after
the extinction of the House of Avis. The association between
the two countries was intended as a purely personal union, but
slowly turned into Spanish domination of Portuguese affairs.
Lisbon tolerated this situation for the next sixty years but
in 1640, taking advantage of Spain's predicament in Catalonia,
finally revolted against Philip IV under the leadership of the
Duke of Braganza. The rebellion (known in Portugal as the 'War
of the Restoration') lasted until 1668 and ended in Portugal's
independence from Spain. |
