persecution, that the Irish remained so long faithful to the
Jacobite cause.

It was not, indeed, until 1774 that the Catholics in Ireland were
admitted to qualify themselves as subjects of the crown, and not
until the following year that they were permitted to enlist in the
army. Irish regiments had enlisted in France, previous to the
Convention of Limerick; but it was the Irish army that defended
that town, and, having been defeated, passed over to France, that
raised the Irish Brigade to the position of an important factor in
the French army, which it held for nearly a hundred years, bearing
a prominent part in every siege and battle in Flanders, Germany,
Italy, and Spain. A long succession of French marshals and
generals have testified to the extraordinary bravery of these
troops, and to their good conduct under all circumstances. Not
only in France did Irishmen play a prominent part in military
matters, but they were conspicuous in every continental army, and
their descendants are still to be found bearing honoured names
throughout Europe.

Happily, those days are past, and for over a hundred years the
courage and military capacity of Irishmen have been employed in
the service of Great Britain. For records of the doings of some of
the regiments of the Irish Brigade, during the years 1706-1710, I
am indebted to the painstaking account of the Irish Brigade in the
service of France, by J. C. O'Callaghan; while the accounts of the
war in Spain are drawn from the official report, given in Boyer's
Annals of the Reign of Queen Anne, which contains a mine of
information of the military and civil events of the time.