Sir, – As the bicentenary of Waterloo (Sunday, June 18th, 1815) bears down upon us, the candidates for matchwinner of this significant historical event (previously confined to Wellington, Blücher and Napoleon) continue to increase in number. There are over 140,00 contenders from the two competing sides and we may expect this debate to be long drawn out, if not as intense as the battle itself.
The great Irish historian Brendan Simms claims that the match was won in midfield in the afternoon and evening by the King’s German Legion under Maj George Baring at La Haye Sainte.
The celebrated diarist in "The Irishman's Diary" (May 30th), Frank McNally, puts in a bid for Cpl James Graham on the right wing at Hougoumont. He comes with the personal recommendation of the Iron Duke himself. Like the porters at Trinity College Dublin on April 24th, 1916, he closed the gates against hostile intruders.
It is good at long last to see some credit for the Irish at Waterloo. The Top Man was, of course, a Dub from TCD and Upper Merrion Street with an ancestral home in Dangan, Co Meath (now much dilapidated). He is presented as an English gent in Sergei Bondarchuk's film of Waterloo (1970) with a classic English disdain for his heroic men as the scum of the earth. Sir William Ponsonby from Imokilly, Co Cork (MP for Bandon Bridge, 1796-1797 and Fethard, Co Tipperary, 1798-1801) is to be seen urging on the North British Dragoons (aka the Scots Greys) with little regard for the English Royal Dragoons and the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons under his charge.
The distinctive Irish presence in the film is of a private who has stolen a pig and hidden it in his knapsack and talks his way out of trouble with characteristic Irish wit. Hence he too is promoted to corporal.
I think that there must have been something like 8,000 to 10,000 Irish troops at Waterloo, that is to say, a third of the British contingent.
I should be grateful if this figure can be confirmed by Irish historians.
I look forward to Frank McNally telling us more about the Irish contribution to the rescue of Europe from Napoleonic tyranny at Waterloo as the great day approaches.
All of Europe indeed remains grateful to the great Irish commander at Waterloo and the brave Irishmen who followed him (as so often in Portugal, Spain and France in 1808-1814) to their death. – Yours, etc,
GERALD MORGAN,
Dublin 2.