Nick Maxwell Since 1968 this sculptural masterpiece has honoured ‘all who perished’ on 7 May 1915. Kerry-born Jerome Connor (1874–1943), after a career in Washington DC, was asked in 1925 to create a design recalling the Lusitania tragedy and promoting a vision of world peace. The memorial’s ‘mourning fishermen’ evoke the grief of the local rescuers, while … Read more
Lord Sidmouth, the British home secretary, acknowledged that Irish troops, many of them Catholic, had ‘turned the scale on the 18th of June at Waterloo’. Nevertheless, within a couple of years it became evident that there would be no reward for Irish loyalty, merely a continuation of existing policies: claims for civil rights would be … Read more
Waterloo was, as Wellington described it afterwards, a battle fought ‘in the old style’. It took three days to collect the dead and wounded afterwards. The Anglo-Allied army had close to 3,000 dead (1,419 British), and the Prussians had 1,200 dead. The figure for those wounded was considerably larger, closer to 28%. Over half the … Read more
The Irish poet Edmund Lenthal Swifte published a poem in honour of Waterloo in November 1815 which included the lines: ‘That day!—What grief, what glory, marked that day! Tears dim our triumphs, triumphs dry our tears’. Many songs and ballads published after 1815 took Waterloo as their theme. For example, in a collection of songs … Read more
Forced to abdicate in April 1814, Napoleon spent nine months in exile on Elba studying developments in Europe. In February 1815 he made his escape, returning to France with a small force of 1,000 loyal men. General Ney, one of his former subordinates, set out with a large army to arrest him, promising to bring … Read more