Omnibus – Two Tuam men served France well

WHOEVER thought up the nickname The Wild Geese for the Irish soldiers who took ship for the Continent after the Treaty of Limerick would have done well as a modern marketing guru. Itâ€â„¢s a brand that has lasted for centuries, a romantic tag that glossed over the misery that exile brought to many who embarked on it. What must it have been like for an ordinary soldier, very probably an Irish speaker with a few words of English, to land in a strange country where the language was even more incomprehensible than that of the crowd they were fighting at home? The answer was to stick together and form regiments under the officers who had led them in the Irish war. The soldiers who survived the various campaigns, or some at least, made a success of their new lives. One of the most famous of their children was Marie-Louise Oâ€â„¢Murphy, mistress of Louis XV, whose deliciously naughty portrait was painted by Boucher.[private] Itâ€â„¢s fairly well known around here that one of the Wild Geese was a Lally from Tullinadaly, Tuam. A crude stone monument commemorates the family in a field just beside the N17 near Gardenfield School. One of those Lallys was a prominent soldier in the French army, who had success in the European theatre of war and contributed greatly when the French snatched victory from the jaws of defeat at Fontenoy in 1745. He was later appointed Governor of French India but was defeated by the British at Pondicherry and was unjustly condemned to death on his return to France. He was beheaded on the Place de Greve in Paris in 1766. This man of Tuam descent features in an exhibition in the National Museum at Collins Barracks, Dublin which opened in January. It is titled â€Å“1689-2012, The Irish and France:â€Ë†Three Centuries of military relationsâ€Â and forms part of Irelandâ€â„¢s 2013 EU Presidency Cultural Programme. Unusually for an exhibition in an Irish museum, the main displays are in French (with translations into English and Irish on stands). This is because it was assembled by the Musée de lâ€â„¢Armée in Paris â€â€ the French Army Museum. The displays include material from the Irish regiments that fought for France in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In the 20th century there were of course the Irish regiments in the British Army in World War I, but also in World War II Irish were involved, at a less formal level. The most famous example is Samuel Beckett, who was a member of the Resistance. Then there was Mary Whelan, a nurse born in Gort in 1912, who was married to a Frenchman and served in various theatres of World War II. To bring the exhibition right up to date, there are photographs of French and Irish soldiers on the EUFOR mission in Chad. But, youâ€â„¢ve been patient, who was the second Tuam man to serve France well?â€Ë†Just as with Lally, calling him a Tuam man is stretching it a bit, but Charles Edward Jennings would, like Lally, qualify to play soccer for Ireland. His father, Dr Theobald Jennings, was born in Ironpool, Kilconly. He left Ireland in 1738 and settled with his wife in the town of Tonnay-Charente in south-western France, near La Rochelle. When she became pregnant she made the long trip back to Dublin to have her son born in his native land. Charles Edward was born in 1751, and was brought back to France by his father, aged ten. At 14 he joined the French cadets and began a brilliant military career which took in action in Senegal, the American War of Independence, and later in Europe. Service in America, and his experiences as a young Catholic boy in Ireland, made him a republican, although this did not prevent him from taking â€Å“de Kilmaineâ€Â as a title of nobility. (Kilmaine was part of the ancestral holdings of the Jennings, a subset of the Burkes.) He established his republican credentials and commanded troops in the Revolutionary wars, when the other European powers sought to otherthrow the new régime in France. Jennings was said to be the only officer Napoleon ever really trusted, and was known in France as â€Å“Le courageux Kilmaineâ€Â â€â€ brave Kilmaine. Napoleon named him as commander of the Armée dâ€â„¢Angleterre â€â€ the army that was to invade England. His greatest disappointment was when the army was disbanded and the invasion called off, but he lived to command the Army of Switzerland, and died in 1799. â€â€ David Burke [/private]