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‘Nineteen Duel Dick’ from Galway
By Peter Berresford Ellis
The fact that Ireland has produced some great eccentrics and fascinating characters needs no argument from me.
Next May will be the 260th anniversary of the Battle of Fontenoy, one of the most spectacular defeats for the English army and achieved at the hands of the seven regiments of the Irish Brigade of the French army. They sent the British Brigade of Guards retreating from the field with their battle cry of “Remember Limerick and English Perfidy!”
Members of the Irish Literary Society have been invited by the people of nearby Tournai to commemorate the event.
However, it was in remembering details of the battle that I started thinking about the Irishmen who took part in it, about whom I read in my youth. Men like Morty Óg O’Sullivan of Dunboy on the Beara, who returned to Ireland to meet his death after trying to claim back his confiscated lands.
Rather than a hero, he was turned into a villain in the novel `The Two Chiefs of Dunboy’ (London, 1889) by J.A. Froude, the arch-historian of English empire. Poor Morty Óg is turned into a dispossessed chieftain who earns his living by whiskey smuggling. As Oscar Wilde wrote in his review of the novel: “Mr Froude admits the martyrdom of Ireland, but regrets that the martyrdom was not completely carried out…”
Then there was Risteard Ó Ciardubhain (Richard Kirwan), who was known as both `Risteard buidhe a claidheamh’ (Yellow [haired] Richard of the Sword) and `Nineteen-duel Dick’, who fought in Dillon’s Regiment of the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy.
He was a big man in more ways than one, standing 6 feet 4 inches in height, a target for every enemy soldier as he took command of Dillon’s Regiment in its charge against the English lines (its colonel, Chevalier James Dillon, was killed, the lieutenant-colonel was wounded, two captains were also killed and five other captains wounded).
In that bloody charge, Dillon’s Regiment sustained one of the highest mortality rates of the Irish regiments with three officers and 51 sergeants and other ranks killed, and 11 officers and 70 others wounded.
Yet Dick Kirwan survived and led the remnants of Dillon’s to victory. King Louis XV was so impressed that he presented Kirwan with a watch set with diamonds and pearls.
Kirwan was the son of Patrick Kirwan of Cregg Castle, of Galway, with a lineage claimed to go back to Eremon, son of Milesius, himself. They became one of the 14 Tribes of Galway.
Richard Kirwan was born on June 6, 1708, and his mother was Mary Martin (b. 1683) of Dangan, Galway. He was the eldest of three brothers, the second of whom, George, was killed in a duel in France.
Prohibited from an education in his own country, Richard and his brothers were sent to France to attend the Irish College in Paris.
As soon as he graduated from his studies, Richard took a commission in Arthur Dillon’s Regiment. Arthur Dillon of Mayo, who had been commander-in-chief of the French Army of the Rhine, had retired from active military service in 1730. He died in 1733. His son James had become colonel of Dillon’s Regiment, a regiment of infantry.
Richard soon made a name for himself as a swordsman and his fame as a duellist, a man not to insult lightly, spread throughout France. He became a friend of Charles O’Brien, 6th Viscount Clare, a descendant of the O’Brien Kings of Thomond, and commander of the Irish Brigade. Another friend was Field Marshal Comte Maurice de Saxe, commander-in-chief of the French army.
After Fontenoy, May 11, 1745, in which the English lost 7,000 men, George II recalled his armies from Europe. The English had been personally commanded by William August, Duke of Cumberland, son of George II.
Perhaps it was his defeat at Fontenoy and the fact that he had to retreat ignominiously under cover of night that caused Cumberland to deal so harshly with the Scots after Culloden. Arriving back in England, he was given command of the army to stop the army of Prince Charles Stuart, a mere 150 miles away at Derby, from reaching London.
By 1746, Cumberland had driven them back to Scotland and slaughtered them by artillery fire on Culloden Moor. His treatment of the Scottish civilians afterwards earned him the name `Butcher’ Cumberland. The English named a flower after him, `Sweet William’, which the Scots renamed `Stinking Billy’.
But it was Fontenoy that seized the Irish imagination as news arrived of the role of the Irish Brigade spread. They had lost 277 officers and men killed in the battle and 396 were wounded. Songs about Fontenoy were popular fare during the next hundred years. GAA teams were named after the battle.
Richard Kirwan was but one of the many heroes. He continued on as an officer in Dillon’s Regiment for a further six years, but he was becoming too notorious for his duels and not even the patronage of Lord Clare, Count de Saxe and even King Louis could protect him. He was compelled to leave the Irish Brigade in 1751.
He promptly joined the Irish regiments in the service of Austria and was a friend of Field Marshall Maximilian Ulysses von Browne of Limerick, now holding the highest rank in the army of Empress Maria Theresa. When Browne died of his wounds after the Battle of Prague in 1757, Dick Kirwan decided to return to Ireland. He did so in 1759.
On his arrival back in Galway a song in Irish was composed in his honour, hailing him as `The Champion of France’.
He married Maria, daughter of Nicholas Birmingham of Garrencoil (now Barberfort) Galway, who was related to Lord Athenry.
His eldest son Martin, born in 1761, followed the family tradition and was sent to the Irish College at Louvain and joined the Irish Brigade, but returned to Ireland when the Brigade was disbanded in 1791 after the French Revolution.
Richard Kirwan — `Nineteen-duel Dick’ — died at Woodfield, Co. Galway in March, 1779. The Irish historian. Richard Hayes, says of him: “Charitable and of a serene and amiable disposition, innumerable stories of his military prowess at home and abroad were long told after his death.”
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