The Armed Forces
Summary of
chapter. The armed forces of Ireland, like those of the United
Kingdom as a whole came under the Crown, but was paid for by Parliament. When
Ireland had an independent Parliament certain units were designated the Irish
Army and were a charge in peacetime on the Irish Parliament. After the Union all
were charged on the same Parliament but the organisation did not immediately
change. Gradually, the various Offices concerned with military affairs were
amalgamated.
(i) History of
the Armed Forces
(ii) The Military Offices
(iii) The Regular Army
(iv)Militia
and Yeomanry
(v) The Royal Navy
*******************************************************************************************************
(i) History
of the Armed Forces
The Irish army
originated in the Middle Ages when the Irish
Government began to maintain a small body of cavalry and archers. In 1535 in a
time of peace this amounted to 380 horsemen and 160 footmen. Under Elizabeth I
the number came to 2,000. Strafford under Charles I raised an army of 6,000
men. Charles II raised the establishment to 7,000. The Stuart kings did not
need all those troops to govern Ireland. Most of
these troops left Ireland after the
battle of Aughrim and were replaced by the Protestant volunteer regiments from
the north of Ireland who had
joined William. The two Irish armies existed side by side and fought each other
for the next twenty years. A hundred years after Aughrim the Irish Brigade in
the French army joined the British Army.
Regiments were mostly
raised as they were needed, and disbanded as soon as the need for them ceased.
Exceptions were the sovereign's (or Lord Lieutenant's bodyguard), and the
garrisons of castles. In England, after the
Restoration in 1660 King Charles II began the custom of maintaining standing
regiments. William III used Irish, Scottish, and English regiments
indiscriminately so there was really only one royal army.
An army was a charge on
the country in which it was raised, so for fiscal reasons there had to be three
separate armies, one English, one Scottish, and one
Irish. As regiments were moved around the British
Isles and the colonies and garrisons abroad regardless of
origin, it came about that all regiments of horse, foot, and guns, stationed in
Ireland were called
the Irish army. As the Irish, unlike the English, had no strong objections to a
royal standing army, the king was able to station regiments
in Ireland, and so maintain an army about 50% larger than it would otherwise
have been. From about 1770 onwards there were objections from the 'patriots' to
the size of the army. All recruits to the army in the eighteenth century were
supposed to be Protestants but no inquisition was made regarding the recruits’
religion from mid-century onwards. Difficulties arose only when church parades
became customary. [Top]
(ii) The Military Offices
The part of the army in Ireland was under
its own Commander-in-Chief, who was subject to the Lord Lieutenant if any
operations in Ireland were to be
undertaken. The Irish army had its own Adjutant
General, Paymaster General, and Quartermaster General. Until the Act of Union
there was a separate Royal Irish Artillery, and a separate
Engineers-in-Ireland. Towards the end of the century the Irish Army, like the
Irish Parliament, liked to stress its separateness, and ignored instructions
from the Commander-in-Chief of the Army in England unless these
were issued in the king's name. The
Irish Commander-in-Chief and Irish Adjutant General issued their own
instructions.
The non-operational
affairs of the Irish army were directed by the Lord Lieutenant through three
Military Offices under the supervision of the Military Under-secretary. As
noted elsewhere the Military Under-secretary was actually the Secretary at War.
These offices were the Ordnance Board, the Barrack Board, and the Military
Department. By the Act of Union the largely fictitious division of the army was
abolished, but the structure of command was virtually unchanged. From 1793
until 1815 these three Offices did an enormous volume of work.
For military operations
the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland was placed
formally under the Commander-in-Chief in Whitehall, and the
Irish Offices under the corresponding British ones, but little was changed. The
Royal Irish Artillery and the Irish Engineers ceased to exist, the units just
being counted as part of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. There never
was a separate Irish navy, or nominal distinction between ships on the Irish
station and those elsewhere.
The Board of Ordnance or
commissioners for ordnance, at the Irish Ordnance Office, was responsible for
procuring all military supplies except food and forage. It employed very few
people, the equipment being manufactured and supplied by private firms. The
Board would for example ask gun-makers to tender for the supply of parts of the
Land pattern or Tower musket, to be delivered to His Majesty's castle at
Dublin or other
designated spot. During the War Athlone was made the great central depôt for Ireland. When a
regiment needed supplies, for example, when a new issue of muskets was to be
made, tenders were invited from local gunsmiths to assemble the guns from parts
supplied from stores. (Until well into the nineteenth century this always
involved considerable use of a file.) Besides guns there were stores of iron
and copper goods, tents, ropes, harness, wheels, carts, and so on (Houlding).
The Barrack Board, after
1799 the Board of Works, but the old name long persisted, was responsible for
providing barracks for troops. By the word barracks could be meant small wooden
huts, but more usually it meant large buildings of masonry or brick. From the
1740's onward Ireland had been
well supplied with barracks, but the quality of them was often poor. The actual
building was done by local contractors under the direction of officers of the
Engineers. During the War the Barrack Board provided accommodation for 90,000
men but the buildings were so designed that they could be sold off after the
war for such uses as warehousing. Great fortifications were built around the
coasts and along the Shannon. The
Martello towers are the most famous but not the most impressive of these.
The Military Department
was responsible for the movement of troops both within the island and between Britain and Ireland. Within Ireland, units were
shifted each year from Dublin to the
provincial towns, and then out into small detached units along the coast. This
latter was to assist the Customs and Excise Boards in their efforts against
smuggling and illicit distillation. The dispersal of the troops was notorious
for its ill effects on discipline. On the other hand Dublin had one of
the largest garrisons in the Empire, and large-scale manoeuvres with horse,
foot, and guns, were possible there as nowhere else in the British
Isles. In a garrison town the Town Major was responsible for
the allocation of accommodation, and for the
discipline of the troops in general. In 1798 the only effective police force
was that under the direction of Major Sirr, the Town Major. As he was aiding
the civil power he was under the direction of the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and
sheriffs of Dublin.
There was no separate
Irish Admiralty. After the Act of Union, as before it, the office of Lord High
Admiral of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland was
discharged by commissioners popularly known as the Lords of the Admiralty. In
the nineteenth century a naval officer of flag rank was always stationed in
Dublin. [Top]
(iii) The Regular Army
The Commander-in-Chief
was responsible for directing all purely military affairs, and his office
paralleled that of the Commander-in-Chief in Scotland. He was
always subject to the Lord Lieutenant even if martial law was in force. The
offices of Paymaster General and Quartermaster General require no further
description. To obtain supplies the Quartermaster General placed advertisements
in local newspapers asking for tenders for the supply of food, firewood, coal,
and forage to the local garrisons.
The Adjutant General and his staff were
responsible for drill and discipline. By the end of the eighteenth century
training in the Irish army had reached a high standard under the then Adjutant
General, Sir David Dundas. His Irish Drill Regulations of 1789 were adopted for
the whole army in 1792 and were used to train all regiments up to the battle of
Waterloo.
Wellington's victories
were all built round the steadiness of the regiments spread out in line of
battle. (Sir Ralph Abercromby's famous criticism of the army in Ireland was made
when the well-drilled troops were overseas, and the half-trained recruits were
further demoralised by being dispersed in aid of the civil power.) The Drill
Regulations of 1789 replaced those of Humphrey Bland of 1727 which in turn
replaced those of the Earl of Orrery which were then about fifty years old.
Both these were private collections compiled by Irishmen.
The army was divided
into various regiments of cavalry like guards and dragoons, the Royal
Artillery, the Engineers or Sappers, and the infantry. The artillery was used
either to make breaches in the walls of cities, or to pound regiments of infantry
in the field. The cavalry was launched only when the lines of infantry had been
partially shattered as no cavalry charge could break a well-drilled line of
infantry. The Engineers or Sappers were used in siege works both as attackers
and defenders. The infantry, armed with a muzzle-loading musket to which a
bayonet could be attached, formed the principal arm in every army.
The infantry were
divided into numbered regiments of the line, each numbering several hundred
men. Some regiments, like the Scottish Highland regiments, habitually recruited
in particular localities. But most
regiments just recruited locally, wherever they happened to be stationed.
Regiments that were stationed in Ireland for any
length of time became virtually Irish as far as the rank-and-file were
concerned. (Officers purchased their commissions.) This was particularly true
of regiments, which had spent a long time in the unhealthy West Indies and were
sent to Ireland to make up
their strength. In the nineteenth century the regiments of the line were
numbered from one to about one hundred. Regiments of the line, or line of
battle, formed the regular army, and were distinguished from the militia
regiments. Some regiments had official names, and
nicknames as well. The 87th regiment that was raised in the west of Ireland was called
the Prince of Wales's Own regiment. Its nickname was the Faughs, from its
regimental motto, Fag an
ballach Get out of my way. The 88th
was the Connaught Rangers, the Devil's Own. (The Royal Munster Fusiliers and
the Royal Dublin Fusiliers were East India Company regiments and were not
incorporated into the regular army until the second half of the century.)
From 1793 onwards
Catholics could freely join regiments in Ireland and hold any
rank up to that of colonel, or even a general if he was not on the staff of the
Commander-in-Chief. But in practice no gentleman in the nineteenth century was
asked to state his religion. Protestant soldiers were paraded to church on
Sundays, but Catholic soldiers were allowed to go to Mass privately if they
wished. Various circulars were issued from the Adjutant General's office in
Dublin, and even
from the Commander-in-Chief in London, making this
plain. (Legally, these rules applied only within Ireland, but in
practice they were applied everywhere both in the army and navy.) In addition
the wearing of any Orange badges or insignia on the uniform
was forbidden. Though originally orange favours indicated support for the House
of Orange, after 1793 the colour was associated with those who opposed further
concessions to Catholics. (Obviously, after 1798 no attempt was made to wear
green badges, the symbol of revolution.) This does not mean that army
commanders like the Duke of York or the Duke of Wellington favoured furthered concessions
to the Catholics; they were unwilling to see the army dragged into a political
quarrel. Most Irish officers, including Wellington, were
Protestants. One explanation for the low recruitment among Irish Catholics of
officer rank was the poor quality of Irish Catholic education. On the other
hand many Catholics may just have changed their religion when they purchased a
commission.
There was no
conscription, so the army relied on a system of bounties for new recruits.
Increasingly the army relied on persuading militiamen to transfer to the line
regiments. So long as an Irishman stayed in the militia his wife and children
were provided for but this provision ceased when they transferred.
Wellington was rather
disgusted at the readiness with which they transferred, but did not prevent
them. When a regiment was going abroad it took with it five or six women chosen
by ballot from among the wives of the enlisted men to act as cooks and
washerwomen. These were added to the strength of the regiment and were allowed
to ride on the carts carrying the regimental pots. Other wives (and camp
followers) followed as best they could or stayed at home and tried to support
themselves (Bamfield).
Military officers
normally had to purchase their commissions from an existing
holders, commissions being regarded as a property that could be bought
and sold. There was a Military Agency Office that dealt with purchases and
exchanges of commissions. When the commission was purchased the Military Office
had to issue a new commission to act as an officer in the king's forces.
Commissions almost without exception were reserved for gentlemen. The newly
commissioned officer was expected to instruct himself in his duties by
purchasing a manual but boys could be sent to schools which gave a general
instruction in matters an officer needed to know, fencing for example, and
horse-riding.
The army was popular in Ireland and it was
said that during the War virtually every family had a member in the army, the
navy, the militia, the yeomanry, or the revenue service. Up to 1815 Ireland was a hive
of military activities, with many people engaged in the building of barracks or
fortifications or in supplying contracts especially of provisions to the army
and navy.
In 1922 the regiments
with Irish connections were disbanded except those connected with Northern
Ireland and the Irish Guards. Irishmen from
both parts of Ireland continued to
serve in all ranks and all branches of the armed forces. Nor did the Irish Free
State despite its neutrality in the Second World War impose a
ban on enlistment in foreign armies. [Top]
(iv) The Militia and
Yeomanry
At the beginning of the
nineteenth century the militia in Ireland was in a
healthy state. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Government was
rather distrustful of the militia especially after the revolt of the American
colonies. But it was reorganised by the Militia Acts of 1778 and 1793 and it
was the militia regiments that put down the disturbances in 1798.
The militia was a local
defence body, much more ancient than the army, for it dated from the Middle
Ages. It was re-organised under Charles II and made a national body in 1778,
though no Irish militia was at that date raised because of lack of funds.
Defence for the nearly bankrupt country was supplied by Volunteer companies.
Originally it was raised in the counties, was under the control of the
County
Governors, was a
charge on the county cess, and the regiments were given county names. The
Governors controlled the militia in the name of the king, not of Parliament.
But the Militia Acts made it a national militia and organised it more like the
regular army, though the regiments were strictly county regiments.
Its arms were supplied
by the Board of Ordnance, and included some pieces of field artillery. It was
organised, armed and drilled exactly like the regular army. In times of peace
only a skeleton staff was retained in the county
regiments, but when the Lord Lieutenant called out the militia the ranks had to
be filled up by recruiting. In England, service in
the militia was regarded as a public duty and lists of men eligible for service
were maintained from which a sufficient number was drawn by ballot. In Ireland the parish
officers were ordered to draw up militia lists but the ballot was unpopular so
the Irish Government was allowed to offer bounties to recruits even if this
conflicted directly with recruitment for the army. Eventually balloting had to
be resorted to again, and in the nineteenth century the counties were warned
more than once to keep their militia lists up to date. The Government issued
commissions to suitable gentlemen in the counties.
The militia served only
within its own country, the Irish militia in Ireland and the
British militia in Britain. Regiments
could volunteer to serve in the other country. By the Militia Interchange Act
(1811) such transfers could be made compulsory.
A great expansion of the
militia took place after the outbreak of war with France in 1793. The
authorised strength of the Irish militia was set at 21,660 by the Militia Act
of 1795, but that number could be varied. Supply for 26,634 was voted in 1798.
. Recruitment of Catholics was on the same basis as in the regular army. The
law required that militiamen should served for some
time after peace was signed, so when the Peace of Amiens was signed in 1801 the
militia was not immediately dispersed. The Government in Westminster soon ordered
that the strength of the militias should be built up again. It thus came about
that some Irish militia regiments were under arms and away from their families
for nearly twenty years when they were finally disbanded in 1815 (MacAnally).
After 1815 the regiments
were placed on a peace-footing and the enlisted men were sent home. The
Government hoped that most of the officers would leave the service voluntarily,
so that the establishment could be reduced to a more normal size. This did not
happen so various Acts were passed successively reducing the establishment. The
organisation and the militia lists were retained but the regiments were never
called together even for training up to 1850. (After 1850 the militia was
re-organised, and became in effect reserve battalions for the line regiments,
and served in all major campaigns overseas up to 1918.)
The yeomanry were
volunteer companies who lived at home and served only in their own districts,
normally as far as the first baronies in the neighbouring counties. As late as
the 1740's the guilds in the towns could be called on for local defence. During
the American War of Independence numerous Volunteer companies sprang up, though
the legal basis for them was unclear. The Irish Government, after its
experience with the volunteer companies that had virtually taken control of Ireland when it was
denuded of regular troops by the War, disliked them. William Pitt however in England decided that
volunteer companies could be safely recruited from among the strong farmers or
yeomanry of England, hence the
name. Ireland had
relatively few yeomen farmers, but gentlemen in the counties and in the
professions demanded to be allowed to form volunteer companies. They began to
assemble themselves in 1796 though the Irish Yeomanry Act was not passed until
1797. The yeomanry companies were strictly under the control of the
Commander-in-Chief and the Adjutant General and were subject to full military
discipline. The Government totally refused to allow self-appointed Volunteer
companies such as sprang up in 1782. Cavalry was preferred but infantry
companies were accepted. They could volunteer to serve outside their own
districts at Government expense.
The yeomanry always had
a bad name among Catholic nationalists, and the Irish Government too was at
times suspicious of it. On its formation, and for many years afterwards, many
extreme Protestants regarded it as their personal defence against 'papist
rebels', and some even expressed wishes to be allowed to exterminate them. It
is true of course that whatever were the origins of the disturbances in 1798,
and these were varied, it did in places degenerate into a fight between
Catholic rebels and the Protestant population represented by the yeomanry. The
Irish Government under Cornwallis preferred to overlook atrocities and
irregularities on either side, and only a few of the more noteworthy leaders
were prosecuted. An Indemnity Act was passed to cover crimes or irregularities
committed by members of the armed forces in 1798, but this did not mean that
the Government had forgotten them. Some yeomanry companies tried at first to
exclude Catholics, but others admitted them. The gentlemen attached to the bar
in Dublin formed the
most famous, if hardly the most effective, of the volunteer companies, the
Lawyers' Corps. Catholic lawyers like Daniel O’Connell and Purcell O’Gorman,
afterwards Secretary of the Catholic Association, belonged to this company and
patrolled the streets in 1803.
Those who belonged to
volunteer companies were excused from serving in the militia, so the option was
a popular one. Training and discipline
were supposed to be the same as in the militia. Companies could volunteer to
serve outside their counties, but never seem to have been joined into
regiments. For internal security they, and the militia, proved very effective.
Much has been made of a single instance at Castlebar when they broke, but they
had been posted too far in advance against very experienced French troops.
Almost without exception the other units fought hard and well even against the
French regulars. The rebels in 1798 usually underestimated them and rushed at
them en masse and were cut down in their hundreds.
In 1808 there were 3,212
yeomanry sergeants, 964 drummers, 7,234 cavalry, and 49,612 infantry. The
companies were called after their own areas and served in those areas. In
county
Meath, the Earl of
Fingall, a Catholic nobleman, was captain of the Skreen cavalry, one of the
seven cavalry companies in the county. He was also a captain in the
Dunshaughlin infantry.
In the post-War period
the Government tried to reduce the numbers of the yeomanry. In 1828 there were
still 13,440 yeomen in the companies in Ulster, 3,513 in Leinster, 1,507 in
Munster, and 1,393
in Connaught. The Government always refused
offers of assistance from the yeomanry even during the worst periods of civil
disturbances, and reminded the county authorities of the Act of 1802 that
restricted the calling out of the yeomanry to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Besides the yeomanry
there were some fencible companies. These were volunteer companies recruited from
among particular groups or trades like boatmen. (In England the word was
also used to describe certain temporary regiments in the army, usually Scottish
militia regiments not recruited on a county basis.) [Top]
(v) The Royal Navy
There never was any
distinction made between a British and an Irish navy. The Admiralty in Britain appointed
admirals to commands in Ireland as elsewhere
in the world. The same Lords of the Admiralty appointed captains to ships.
Although officers in the army purchased their commissions and taught themselves
officers in the navy were apprenticed when still boys as midshipmen to captains
who taught them what they needed to know to pass an examination before being
accepted as officers. A boy's family had therefore to find a captain willing to
undertake the duty. Irishmen could be appointed even to the most senior ranks.
For the rest of the crew
the Royal Navy relied on volunteers and on the pressgang. Irishmen volunteered
as freely for the navy as they did for the army. No bounties were paid to
recruits in wartime as the navy had powers to press men into its service. It
had indeed been proposed in Ireland in the
eighteenth century that lists of eligible men should be kept the same as
militia lists but this was rejected because it would prevent men in the
designated categories from moving around to find work. In Ireland, 'men used
to the sea or worked in navigable waters' even inland waters were liable to
impressment. Among these were included turfboatmen, fishermen, lightermen,
sandbargemen, ferrymen, pilots, and pleasureboat operators. Those in these
categories had to supply one experienced man in ten,
or two if landsmen were included. If volunteers were not forthcoming the
captain was empowered to impress even married men. Landsmen could not be
legally impressed, and had to be released on the order of a magistrate.
Up until the battle of
Trafalgar there was an ever-present danger of a French invasion. The navy
concentrated its efforts on a close blockade of the French ports. In 1796 during the storms of mid-winter a
large French fleet succeeded in evading the blockade, but the same storms that
dispersed the Royal Navy also dispersed the French fleet. The French fleet had
in any case to try to land the troops in some remote spot before a superior
British force could come upon it. When the French commander reached Ireland it became
clear to him that stories told by the United Irishmen about the readiness of
the Irish for revolt were false, and that if he landed his troops he would
never be able to take them off again. French privateers and between 1812 and
1815 American privateers proved a greater problem. Irish trade, not only with Britain, but also
with the Baltic, and the Americas, had to be
kept going.
