THE ‘FLAG’ AT YPRES
BY R. BARRY O’BRIEN
There is a ‘legend’ of a ‘blue flag’ said to have been carried or captured by the Irish Brigade at the battle of Ramillies, and which was subsequently deposited in the Irish convent at Ypres. This is a sceptical age. People do not believe unless they see; and I wished to submit this ‘blue flag’ to the test of ocular demonstration. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1907, I paid a visit to the old Flemish town, now so familiar to us all in its misfortunes. I was hospitably received by the kind and cheerful nuns who answered all my questions about the flag and the convent with alacrity. ‘Can I see the flag?’—‘Certainly.’ And the ‘flag’ was sent for. It turned out not to be a blue flag at all. Blue was only part of a flag which, it would seem, had been originally blue, red, and yellow. An aged Irish nun described the flag as she had first seen it.
‘It was attached to a stick, and I remember reading on a slip of paper which was on the flag “Remerciements Refuged at Ypres, 170....” The flag consisted of three parts—blue with a harp, red with three lions, and yellow. The red and yellow parts were accidentally destroyed, and all that remains is the blue, as you see it, with a harp; and we have also preserved one of the lions. The story that has come down to us is that it was left here after the battle of Ramillies I think, but whether it was the flag of the Irish Brigade, or an English flag captured by them at the battle, I do not know.’
The flag, of course—blue with a harp, red with three lions, and yellow—suggests the royal standard of England, with a difference. At the time of the battle of Ramillies, the royal standard, or ‘King’s Colour,’ consisted of four quarterings: the first and fourth quarters were subdivided, the three lions of England being in one half, the lion of Scotland in the other. The fleurs-de-lis were in the second quarter; the Irish harp was in the third.[5] But this (the Ypres) flag had, when the nun saw it, only three quarters—blue with harp, red with three lions, and yellow; the rest had then been apparently destroyed.
At the famous battle of 1706, the Irish Brigade was posted in the village of Ramillies. They fought with characteristic valour, giving way only when the French were beaten in another part of the field. The Brigade was commanded by Lord Clare, who was mortally wounded in the fight. Charles Forman writes, in a letter published in 1735:—
‘At Ramillies we see Clare’s regiment shining with trophies and covered with laurels even in the midst of a discomfited routed army. They had to do with a regiment which, I assure you, was neither Dutch nor German, and their courage precipitated them so far in pursuit of their enemy that they found themselves engaged at last in the throng of our army, where they braved their fate with incredible resolution. If you are desirous to know what regiment it was they engaged that day, the colours in the cloister of the Irish nuns at Ypres, which I thought had been taken by another Irish regiment, will satisfy your curiosity.’[6]
Mr. Matthew O’Conor, in his ‘Military Memoirs of the Irish Nation,’ says:—
‘Lord Clare ... cut his way through the enemy’s battalions, bearing down their infantry with matchless intrepidity. In the heroic effort to save his corps he was mortally wounded, and many of his best officers were killed. His Lieutenant, Colonel Murrough O’Brien, on this occasion evinced heroism worthy of the name of O’Brien. Assuming the command, and leading on his men with fixed bayonets, he bore down and broke through the enemy’s ranks, took two pair of colours from the enemy, and joined the rere of the French retreat on the heights of St. Andre.’
Forman does not state to what regiment the colours belonged. O’Callaghan, in his ‘History of the Irish Brigade,’ quotes him as saying: ‘I could be much more particular in relating this action, but some reasons oblige me, in prudence, to say no more of it.’
O’Conor says that the colours belonged to a celebrated English regiment. O’Callaghan is more precise. He says:—
‘According to Captain Peter Drake, of Drakerath, County of Meath (who was at the battle with Villeroy’s army, in De Couriere’s regiment), Lord Clare engaged with a Scotch regiment in the Dutch service, between whom there was a great slaughter; that nobleman having lost 289 private centinels, 22 commissioned officers, and 14 sergeants; yet they not only saved their colours, but gained a pair from the enemy. This Scotch regiment in the Dutch service was, by my French account, “almost entirely destroyed”; and, by the same account, Clare’s engaged with equal honour the “English Regiment of Churchill,” or that of the Duke of Marlborough’s brother, Lieutenant-General Charles Churchill, and then commanded by its Colonel’s son, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Churchill. This fine corps, at present the 3rd Regiment of Foot, or the Buffs, signalized itself very much in the action with another, or Lord Mordaunt’s, “by driving three French regiments into a morass, where most of them were either destroyed or taken prisoners.” But the “Régiment Anglois de Churchill,” according to the French narrative, fared very differently in encountering the Regiment of Clare, by which its colours were captured, as well as those of the “Régiment Hollandois,” or “Scotch regiment in the Dutch service.”’
The question may, or may not, be problematical, but it seems to me that what I saw in the convent at Ypres was a remnant of one of the flags captured, according to the authorities I have quoted, by the Irish Brigade at the battle of Ramillies; and that flag was, apparently, the ‘King’s Colour’ which reproduces the royal standard.