The Campaigns and History of the Royal Irish Regiment from 1684 to 1902

This history of the war services of the Royal Irish regiment has been written at the request of the officers of that very distinguished corps. When I accepted the task, I knew that I had undertaken a delightful but difficult piece of work, for it is no easy matter to do justice to the achievements of a regiment which has fought in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in America, and in Australasia. After serving with credit in William III.’s war in Ireland, the Royal Irish won undying laurels in the Siege of Namur in 1695. They formed part of the British contingent in the army commanded by Marlborough in the Low Countries and in Germany, and fought, not only at the great battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, but in the long series of desperate but now forgotten sieges by which fortress after fortress was wrested from the French. A detachment took part in the defence of Gibraltar in 1727: the whole regiment was involved in the disasters of the campaign of 1745: the flank companies encountered foemen worthy of their steel at Lexington and Bunker’s Hill. In the first phase of the great war with France the Royal Irish were in the Mediterranean: they served in the defence of Toulon; they helped Nelson and Moore to expel the French from Corsica, and they were sent to the mainland of Italy where for some months they established themselves firmly at Piombino, a port on the Tuscan coast. A few years later they fought under Abercromby in Egypt, but then their good luck changed, for they were ordered to the West Indies, where they remained till the end of the Napoleonic war.

In 1840, the outbreak of the first war with China re-opened the gates of the Temple of Janus to the XVIIIth; and during the last sixty years almost every decade has seen the regiment employed on active service, for after the Chinese war came the second war in Burma; the Crimea; the Indian Mutiny; the New Zealand war; the second Afghan war; the campaign of Tel-el-Kebir; the Nile expedition; campaigns on the north-west frontier of India; and the war with the Dutch republics in South Africa.


The Historical Committee had hoped that Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley would have written a preface to the history of the regiment, with which throughout his military career he has been associated closely. In Burma he won his spurs leading a charge of infantry among whom were many of the Royal Irish; as an acting Engineer at the siege of Sebastopol he frequently supervised the operations of the regiment in the trenches; in the Tel-el-Kebir campaign and the Nile expedition the Royal Irish formed part of the troops under his command; and for the last thirteen years he has been their Colonel-in-Chief. Ill health unfortunately has prevented Lord Wolseley from writing at any length, but in a letter to the Chairman of the Committee, he expressed his admiration for the regiment in the following words:—

“Hampton Court Palace, Middlesex,

19th June 1910.