IN FOREIGN FIELDS Jn the musty registers of thousands of towns and ·villiages all over Western Europe O•!le finJds cryptic and tantalizing traces of the pa51.sing of the Irish. It is difficult for us to reach 1beyond the faded Hlegible names to the men of .flesh and 1blood 1who joked around .the campfires of Don Juan or who :strode the dusty roads of France in search of a living denied to them in itheir own land. \In the parish register of B:agnac, a little town not far from Toulouse .in the South of France, I ·found under the date, October 1659., the record of th~ lburia1l of two Irish soldieis ·('4Hir:andais"), .B. Koery (Carey(?), 1and lH. Callan. Who were they'? No one Cain tell-now. vVhat brought them there? Perhaps we miay be allowed .a gues.s. In .the half...century ·Since the 1 co~lapse of the old Gae:k civilization in 1.603, iand ·especially in the decade ,since Crom1we1:'.s smash- ;ing of the unstable Oonfederation, tens of thousands of Iri:3hmen had ibeen forced abroad either by ,military measures, or !hy the insecurity of 1:and-tenure and grinding misery which forowed 1a cent:ury of war and ".plantation". rln the two years following the ter~ible defoat of 1S,cariffhol:is (1651), more than thirty thousand soldiers-a.bout the same number .fus in the who~.e Cy-0mwellian army -1Wel'e ''enoou~ag€d" rto 1go abroad, a staggering figu:re when it i.::; r.ememoered that the total population had been reduced ·to at)out half a million · *~ Some bedame vn gnants, others rw andering scholars (like the fanvms Do{~ega1mnn. Nktl IO'G1aran, trained in the old..12stah:ished meJical i3chool of the O'Duinns~eLbhes at KEmacrenan, who b2c:ime p1~ofess:or of medicine ·in the Univer·si ty of Toulouse 'Shortly before our two 1soldiers arrived in that town). \But mDst foHowed the on:." trade they knew-that 10Lthe figl1ting man. Of these. some offered their se~·vires to the :highei:;t bidder, ·as was the unromantic ibut practical way of mercenaries of the time, 'hut the mnjority entrns'ted their liveG to the fatal ar.d fickle Ch:tr~es· Stuart. In France. the courage and fighting :abi1lity iof the Irish regirnents ])ecame Ch:1 r1es' chief bargaining p-0we!" iand financial .support. In il655, iFrance .a1:ied herself with Charles' bittier enemy, C~:orr:. 1well, ·in the war against Spain, so that iChar1les was fo.~~eed to :seek refuge .behind the 1Span"ish lines in .FHlnders. To ensure llis :welcome he ·re':suaded fou~ .crack Irish regiments to change their allegiance~ and in one case even to hetray the fortress they '.heM (St. Gerlfrin) 1to their new allies. * However, many remained faithful to their 331.
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