A common problem endemic to micro-histories is that they often offer very good social histories of their subjects yet fail to connect with broader historical themes and issues. John G. Gallaher’s Napoleon’s Irish Legion is such a history. Gallaher offers an excellent and interesting account of the Irish Legion from its formation in 1803 until its disbanding in September 1815. This book does not adequately address the broader questions about Napoleon’s army during the time period or why other national groups offered to fight for Napoleon. Gallaher provides us with no sure way of measuring how important his subject is. His book tells us more than we might possibly want to know about this particular military unit for a lengthy period of time, yet tells us very little about Napoleon’s broader army or for that matter the history of Ireland during this period. Gallaher begins with the formation of the Irish Legion. Although Irish soldiers have been fighting in the armies of the various French kings for more than a century when the Irish Legion was formed in 1803, the Revolutionary governments of the early 1790s abolished all foreign regiments. This changed, however, in 1803 when Napoleon formed the Irish Legion, in order to participate in a planned invasion of the British Isles. The Irish compatriots readily enlisted in the unit under the allure of fighting for their homeland’s independence. Thus though the enlistment of Irish soldiers was not in itself a new idea, the Irish Legion itself was. Many of the soldiers were upper class Irish Catholics who were prevented by Britain’s extensive anti-Catholic laws from attaining political or military position commensurate with their economic and social status. They were on the whole well-educated and 55% of the men were in their thirties. [1] However, of these soldiers, only 45% were fluent in French, a figure that could perhaps explain for the continuous friction between the unit and the French army in general, although Gallaher does not draw any connections between the two. [2]
However the entire raison d’être for the Irish Legion rapidly dissipated with the French defeat at Trafalgar in October 1805 and the revival of the Third Coalition. [3] Yet despite this the Legion was not disbanded. Nevertheless, it was not until June 1806 that the Legion was utilized in any military capacity. They were sent to guard the main approach to the Scheldt River in the Netherlands until 1808, when most of the soldiers were sent to Spain to participate in anti-guerilla activity. While Gallaher notes that many of the Irish soldiers and officers did not enjoy fighting the Spanish guerillas because of the obvious parallels with their own previous activities in Ireland in 1798, he also points out that they made a crucial distinction between the two: whereas the British occupiers of Ireland were persecuting the Irish because of their predominant Catholicism, this was not the case in Spain. [4]
