The aftermath of Waterloo in Ireland: ‘Peace to the World! Plenty to the Poor!’

by igt_admin Posted on June 17, 2015

So declared a celebratory public illumination in Dublin city 10 days after the battle of Waterloo had been fought. It might seem astonishing now to hear that the news of Wellington’s victory over Napoleon took 3 days and 2 hours to reach the London press, 1 but it took even longer to reach Ireland. Eight days after Wellington had routed the French army, the general’s dispatch was finally reproduced in full in the Irish papers. 2

Alongside the relief and joy found across Britain, the Irish papers were additionally pleased because Wellington was an Irishman. To the Freeman’s Journal, he was ‘our truly great and gallant-minded countryman’. 3 Wellington himself did not build a career on his Irishness, preferring the British army to Irish politics. It was Daniel O’Connell who famously said ‘He was born in Ireland; but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.’  4 Naturally, Wellington’s conspicuous absence of Irish patriotism did not dampen the ardour of the Irish public. The Dublin Journal took his victory as further proof that ‘the men of Ireland are instinctively brave – that courage is indigenous to the soil’. Unfortunately, Wellington was rarely in Ireland, since he did not even own an estate in the country. His Irishness was definitely compromised by this so the writer suggested that the Crown grant ‘our Wellington’ the Curragh of Kildare for his own. 5 In this completely over-the-top suggestion, the writer reveals how desperate some were to appropriate Wellington for the Irish nation. The Irishmen who fought and died as ordinary soldiers merited no mention at all.

To celebrate the victory, the population of Dublin enjoyed public illuminations, where lamps were hung in an artistic manner on public buildings or shopfronts. Vivid tableaux were created by placing lamps behind transparencies, illuminating dramatic scenes, mottoes and symbols. College Green in Dublin was transformed by these displays on 28 June. Trinity College, the Post Office and the Bank of Ireland presented a dazzling vision to admiring spectators. The College had the most elaborate display, with a 60 foot (18m) crown surrounded by the King’s arms, a bust of the Prince Regent and the motto ‘British Firmness, the source of Europe’s deliverance’. A ghostly hand holding a scimitar emerged from clouds to break the chains around Europe, with the names of the great generals ‘Wellington’ and ‘Blucher’ in scrolls all around. It all looked ‘magnificently grand’.

In Mr Kertland’s business premises (in 1805 he ran a ‘Fancy Ware-House’) was an illumination of ‘peculiar taste’. A transparency showed the female figures of Justice, Virtue and Humanity ‘darting their spears into the breast of Bonaparte, who with broken swords reeking with blood, is falling among fiends and furies’. This gripping scene excited much admiration. In an adjoining window, a wreath of roses, shamrock and thistle encircled the words ‘Peace to the World! Plenty to the Poor!’. 6 The apocalyptic hyperbole captures the profound relief of a public that had been terrified of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Unfortunately, the victory at Waterloo did not lead to an improvement in daily life in Ireland. Demobilised ex-soldiers and sailors, many with disabling injuries, flooded the labour market just as the government stopped purchasing large amounts of provisions for the armed forces. In Ireland, factories producing linen for the military market laid off workers and prices for agricultural goods dropped steadily. As there was no Poor Law system until 1838, the poorest had to turn to their neighbours, their churches and local charities for support. International peace did not mean full bellies or warm fires for ordinary people.

The grim post-war economic situation did not dim the appreciation of public bodies for the heroic leaders of the victorious British army. Urban areas granted freedom of the city to Waterloo veterans, offering them membership of exclusive city governing bodies. Twenty-six men who had fought at Waterloo were made freemen of Cork city. 7 Even a famous Irish casualty of the battle, Sir William Ponsonby, was posthumously made a freeman. But most illustrious of all, the city of Cork granted its freedom to Field Marshall Blücher of the Prussian army, the man whose forces fortified Wellington’s at a crucial moment.

Like a contemporary politician collecting honorary doctorates, Blücher must have received many civic and national honours after Waterloo. However, the Corporation of Cork did not send him notification of his freedom in the ornate gold box that etiquette dictated. The city worthies might have felt that a costly gift to a German noble with no knowledge of the city would be an expensive waste of time. Other institutions were not so parsimonious when bestowing honours on Waterloo veterans. The Earl of Uxbridge, who commanded the heavy cavalry at Waterloo, had become famous for his reaction to a cannonball in the leg. He exclaimed to the nearby Wellington ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!’, to which the Duke replied ‘By God, sir, so you have!’. (His amputated leg later became a tourist attraction in Waterloo.) When appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1828, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trinity College Dublin, receiving a heavily decorated gold box to mark the occasion.

Box presented by TCD to Uxbridge in 1828
Box presented by TCD to Uxbridge in 1828

Any officer who had fought at Waterloo was judged to have achieved something truly remarkable. There were thousands of men on the battlefield but of those who survived, it was the officers who became famous. John Booth’s multi-edition account of the battle listed ‘the names of the officers employed with their respective ranks and several casualties’ while ordinary soldiers remained anonymous. Being on the battlefield ensured perpetual fame: when James-William Harvey was buried in Cork in 1873, that he was ‘greatly distinguished at Waterloo’ was carefully noted in the burial register. This was an extraordinary note in a register that gives no additional details on anyone else, even local grandees. It is testament to the enduring significance of Waterloo in the public memory.

Excerpt from Burial Register, St. Luke's Church, Douglas.
Excerpt from Burial Register, St. Luke’s Church, Douglas.

Of course, like urban areas all over Britain, Ireland has its fair share of placenames inspired by the famous victory. Cork has a Wellington Road, Place, Bridge, Avenue, Terrace and Square while Dublin boasts Wellington Road, Quay, Place, Street, Bridge and a colossal monument in the Phoenix Park, erected in 1861.

Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park, Dublin
Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park, Dublin

This obelisk, with four bronze plaques cast from cannons captured at Waterloo, was completed 9 years after the Duke’s death, proving the enduring interest of Dublin in Wellington. 8 The battle of Waterloo, led by the most famous Irishman of his era, was remembered in Ireland for decades afterwards.

But public narratives of history change and Irish people are now more ambivalent about the Irishness of the Duke of Wellington. Finally, the lives of ordinary soldiers are to forefront of the popular imagination. Men of humble origins who signed up and fought against Napoleon are described in this TG4 programme with as much zeal as previous generations expended on the officers. The women who followed these men to the battlefield are also part of the story of Waterloo. While Wellington continues to dominate the story of Waterloo, smaller characters in the great historical drama are at last accorded a little space.

  1. Brian Cathcart, The News from Waterloo: the Race to tell Britain of Wellington’s Victory (2015). ↩
  2. The dispatch was carried by both the Belfast Newsletter and the Freeman’s Journal on 26 June 1815. ↩
  3. Freeman’s Journal, 29 June 1815. ↩
  4. http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/a-bit-of-welly-the-iron-duke-s-irishness-1.1546456. See also http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/the-duke-of-wellington-s-drunken-dublin-years-1.2244707 for why Wellington did not say these words ↩
  5. Excerpted in the Freeman’s Journal, 30 June 1815. ↩
  6. Freeman’s Journal, 29 June 1815. ↩
  7. http://www.corkarchives.ie/media/freemen1710-1841.pdf ↩
  8. http://archiseek.com/2010/1861-wellington-monument-phoenix-park-dublin/ ↩
Posted in Britain, Cavalry, Co Cork, Co Dublin, Commemoration, History, Ireland, Place Names, Street Names, Waterloo, Wellington | Comments Off on The aftermath of Waterloo in Ireland: ‘Peace to the World! Plenty to the Poor!’

The Garrison Game? Soccer’s ‘foreign’ image in Irish popular culture

by igt_admin Posted on May 7, 2015

A guest post from David Toms about the ‘garrison game’….

‘Support your own games. Don’t mind the skulker and miserable kind of fellow who says, “There’s no game like Soccer”, “No game like Rugby”- in fact, “No game like the game that is my own”. Be men. The skulking slave spirit has got into our people – that is the reason for slavishly following foreign games and customs. Let us be strongly national – that is not bigotry.’  1

 
‘There is grave danger of a big land-slide towards West Britonism as exemplified by the Jazz-Soccer-Golfstick mentality which is on the increase in this country today.’ 2

Barrackton FC, a Cork team formed near Victoria Barracks, c.1909-1910. Courtesy of Plunkett Carter
Barrackton FC, a Cork team formed near Victoria Barracks, c.1909-1910. Courtesy of Plunkett Carter

The above quotes, taken from local newspapers, are indicative of the attitudes that began to emerge in Ireland regarding just about any ‘foreign’ influence aimed not just at games like soccer, but also increasingly at new, emerging music such as jazz. In the 1920s, when Ireland became independent, Irish people were encouraged by their government and the media to buy Irish goods, eat Irish food, drink Irish beer and be buried in Irish clothes. They were also encouraged to dance to Irish music and play Irish games. Anyone who didn’t engage in these activities was labelled a ‘West Brit’ or a ‘shoneen’, two terms that suggested that someone was pro-British and anti-Irish in their attitudes, tastes, and politics. One sport which confounded these expectations of Irishness in the newly independent state was soccer. But where did this link between association football and the British military, specifically the army, actually come from? How much of it was simple cultural chauvinism, and how much truth was there behind the charge of association football as the garrison game?

 
Soccer was played in Ireland since the late 1870s in Belfast, Dublin and Donegal but also in Westmeath and Cork. The Irish Football Association was founded 1880, the Leinster Football Association in 1892 and the Munster Football Association in 1901. Throughout this early period of the game’s development, both the military and civilians were fundamental agents of its spread. While there was no shortage of military teams emerging from the garrisons of Munster, there was equally no shortage of civilian teams to be found throughout the province. Just a sample of such teams from Cork included: Berwick, Hibernians, Celtic Strollers, Barrackton United, Cathedral Rovers, and many more were all playing in the city and environs from the early 1900s to the beginning of the First World War.

 
In Waterford in the pre-First World War period, among the teams playing were Gracedieu Emmets, Urbs Intacta (from the city’s motto urbs intacta manet), De La Salle, Barrack Street Ramblers, and Tramore Celtic. You’ll notice perhaps the names of Barrackton in Cork and Barrack Street Ramblers in Waterford and certainly these do indicate proximity to barracks, but the young men who played in these sides were local civilians. You’ll notice too that many of the other clubs have Irish names like Celtic, Emmets, or names that denote little more than the areas they are from, or their schools. There is a mixture of Catholics and Church of Ireland to be found amongst these different micro-social networks.

Gracedieu Emmets FC, a Waterford side, c. 1898. Courtesy of Paul Elliott. This club was likely named after Robert Emmet, the Irish revolutionary.
Gracedieu Emmets FC, a Waterford side, c. 1898. Courtesy of Paul Elliott. This club was likely named after Robert Emmet, the Irish revolutionary.

In the two other  places to see soccer emerge in Munster at the time, Tipperary and Limerick, the military influence certainly does appear to be more noticeable. For the civilian clubs that emerged in the various places in Tipperary like Cahir and Clonmel especially, the military connections were strong. One of the major patrons of Cahir Park FC was Colonel Richard Butler Charteris, and a good number of Cahir Park FC players died in the First World War, their names remembered on a championship cup still contested today.

 
These military connections would see the club listed by South Tipperary No. 3 Brigade of the IRA as one of the enemy institutions in the area in 1921. 3 Interestingly, one of the players for Cahir Park, James McNamara, who played soccer before the First World War was also a senior All-Ireland medal winner with Tipperary in 1920, playing in the famous “Bloody Sunday” match in Croke Park – so it was possible to play both garrison and Gaelic games. In Limerick, one of the early important civilian sides, Limerick AFC, founded in 1908, certainly relied on local military sides to provide them with opponents. Yet, their efforts paid off as a promoter of the game: by 1912, more civilian soccer teams began to emerge in the city. In Munster, the growth of soccer reveals a complex relationship between the military and civilian teams.

 
One area where military dominance was obvious was in the committee of the local governing body of the sport, the Munster Football Association, which had been founded in 1901. But the strong military presence on that committee was in fact resented and often a negative for the game’s development among the civilian population. The official control of the game by the military meant that soccer was played on Saturday afternoons, usually between three and four p.m, when many civilians were still at work. In the round up of the 1908/1909 season, “Centre Forward” had noted that, ‘A great obstacle to the games in Cork being attended is the lack of a general half-holiday, and I venture to predict that when that drawback is eliminated the attendance at local Soccer matches will far exceed that of past seasons.’

 
It was noted in the soccer column of “Centre-Half” that because the Saturday half-holiday wasn’t universal it meant that many of the civilian teams in Cork could not put out full sides on a Saturday afternoon as many were ‘perhaps, out of town or detained at business.’ The same issue was noted again in 1909 and 1910 when it was acknowledged that ‘with the near approach to Xmas [sic] the local civilian clubs find it difficult to field representative elevens. Many of their prominent players being engaged up to a late hour on Saturdays.’ 4 Given that the city had witnessed a major lockout in 1909 of workers who had attempted to organise themselves into unions, those with work were no doubt keen to hold on to it.

 
With so many players and organisers in the military, winter-time furlough (a break for soldiers for the months of December and January) also played a significant role in the shape of the season and was the root cause of the cluttered pre-Christmas calendar of fixtures. So, in some years football could halt for close on two months, taking much of the steam out of the leagues and competitions, particularly for the civilian sides. All of this led to supreme dissatisfaction amongst civilian clubs, many of whom simply opted out of the Munster FA’s structures and organised games in their own time.  But like everywhere else in Ireland, the First World War would slow the progress of the game among civilians.

A Free State Army soccer team from Waterford c. 1926. Courtesy of Paul Elliott.
A Free State Army soccer team from Waterford c. 1926. Courtesy of Paul Elliott.

After 1922, soccer, controlled in the new 26-county state by the Football Association of the Irish Free State (FAIFS), emerged as one of the most popular sports of the interwar period in Ireland. Based in Dublin, the new FAIFS watched as the game grew and spread around the country, with teams including Fordson FC based in the Ford factory in Cork, Waterford FC and Limerick FC joining more well-known Dublin sides like Bohemians, Shelbourne, St. James Gate and Jacob’s in the new Free State League. Cork saw the re-founding of the Munster FA in 1922. A new Waterford and District Football League was formed in 1924 and the Limerick District Football Association was formed in the same year.

 

That this happened after the garrisons had seen their personnel change from British soldiers to Free State soldiers, suggests that the greater legacy, with a longer lasting impact, of the pre-First World War soccer players was not those who manned the garrisons in their towns, but those who played in the streets and fields around them, under their street names. The so-called ‘garrison game’ was strongest once the British garrison that had introduced it was gone.

Crowds watch Cork City FC train at Turner's Cross, c. 1936
Crowds watch Cork City FC train at Turner’s Cross, c. 1936. Courtesy of Plunkett Carter.

David Toms is an occasional lecturer and former tutor in the School of History at University College Cork. His book, Soccer in Munster: A Social History, 1877-1937, is forthcoming in May from Cork University Press. He blogs regularly for The Dustbin of History and on his own blog. He tweets as @daithitoms

  1. Nenagh Guardian, January 14 1928. ↩
  2. Nenagh Guardian, July 14 1928. ↩
  3. Military Archives, Dublin, A/0745 South Tipperary Brigade No. 3 Brigade Report, November 1921; Other institutions listed as enemies in the same document included the golf clubs of Tipperary, Clonmel, and Cahir. On McNamara see Paul Buckley, Cameos of a Century, (Cahir, 2010), p 9. ↩
  4. Cork Sportsman, October 17 1908; May 22 1909; December 17 1910. ↩
Posted in Barracks, Co Cork, Co Dublin, Co Limerick, Co Waterford, Football, Gaelic Games, Golf, History, Ireland, Irish Army, Military, Music, Soccer, Sport, Street Names, Urban, World War I | Comments Off on The Garrison Game? Soccer’s ‘foreign’ image in Irish popular culture

‘D’ for deserter

by igt_admin Posted on January 27, 2015

Flogging (see my last post) wasn’t the only way that the nineteenth-century army left permanent marks upon soldiers bodies. It is shocking to today’s sensibilities, but miscreant soldiers were branded. Or, to be technical, forcibly tattooed. Men had been branded with a hot iron in the seventeenth century, as this artifact from the reign of Charles I shows.

Hand Brand, 1642-49
Hand Brand, 1642-49

Source

But by the nineteenth century, the hot iron had been abandoned. A new device was created to mark the soldiers’ skin with ink, or even gunpowder. The photo below shows an example from the mid nineteenth century. The large, blunt points hint at the pain it caused as a spring mechanism forced these points into the skin. Regimental doctors described the practice as ‘cupping’.1

Branding tool, 1810-50Source

A soldier could also be marked with the letters ‘BC’ meaning ‘bad character’, if he was found to have deserted with premeditation. So why were soldiers’ bodies marked in this way? Until 1829, any soldier could be branded but after this year it was a punishment reserved for deserters. A man who deserted his regiment could, upon conviction by a court-martial, be branded with a ‘D’. In the mid 1840s, over two-thirds of those convicted of desertion were branded. Between 1855 and 1869, between 1,000 and 2,000 men were branded annually. 2

Supporters of the practice claimed that this was not actually a punishment, but a means for the army to prevent fraud. A portion of men were serial enlisters who joined up, then quickly deserted time after time. In the 1860s, it was argued that since flogging for desertion was no longer permitted, it was impossible to tell during a medical examination if a man was a deserter or a genuine fresh recruit. 3 Without the marks of the lash on his back, a man could reenlist as many times as he liked. Desertion was rife among young men and new recruits. 4 Unfortunately for those who changed their mind after enlisting, they had signed over their bodies to the state and escape was difficult. Where evading capture was easy, such as in battalions stationed in North America, desertion was ‘continuous, substantial and seemingly unstaunchable.’ 5

Some shades of political opinion were revolted by the practice of branding. It implied that free men, volunteer soldiers, were akin to cattle. 6 It also echoed practices of slave ownership, where human chattels were marked with an owner’s brand. Yet public opinion was not particularly exercised by the issue of branding, compared to its opposition to flogging. Of course, branding was also strongly associated with criminality. Until 1789, a convicted criminal could be branded on the thumb with ‘T’ for theft, ‘F’ for felon or ‘M’ for murder. 7 While the parallels between criminal and military punishment outraged public opinion in the case of flogging, branding did not arouse the same feelings. Politicians expressed surprise that branding even existed, suggesting that awareness of it was relatively low. 8 Being a shorter and necessarily quieter punishment than flogging, civilians were unlikely to hear the cries of soldiers being marked.  It may be that the earlier cessation of branding in a criminal context meant that it quickly fell from public knowledge. However, flogging endured as a criminal punishment until the early 1830s, 9 which may explain greater public revulsion to it as a military punishment in the nineteenth century. Branding was finally abolished in 1879, just before flogging in 1881.

Posted in Barracks, Britain, Court Martial, Flogging, History, Ireland, Military, Punishment, Slavery, Tattoo | Comments Off on ‘D’ for deserter