IRISHMEN IN THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

IF

BY DOM PATRICK NOLAN, O.S.B.

F Irishmen have never succeeded in building up a great and permanent State in their own country, they have, none the less, contributed powerfully to the building up of the States of the foreigner. They have sent forth their missionaries and statesmen to most of the countries of Europe and beyond, to evangelize and diplomatize, and Irish soldiers have spent their blood only too freely Fighting in every clime

Every cause but their own.

It is not, perhaps, generally known that Irishmen played a prominent part on the Imperial side in the great religious war waged in Germany in the sixteenth century-the Thirty Years' War. Scott has immortalized, in the character of Captain Dalgetty, at least one of his countrymen, who fought on the Swedish and Protestant side, but no Irish writer has done as much for the Butlers and Devereux and other Irish soldiers who fought with distinction in defence of the Empire, the Church, and the cause of true religion and liberty.

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I have before me a little duodecimo volume in Latin entitled Itinerarium R. D. Thomae Carve, Tripperariensis, Sacellani majoris in Legione strenuissimi Domini Colonelli D. Walteri Deveroux. . . Cum Historia. .. Butleri, Gordon, Lesly et aliorum,' etc., in other words : An account of the travels in Germany of a 'Tripperaryman (as he calls himself), who was chaplain in the regiment of Colonel Walter Devereux, an Irish officer in the Imperial service in the Thirty Years' War. As the book, which was printed at Mainz in 1639, is a very rare and expensive one (it fetched £20 10s. at a recent sale), we think our

readers will be glad to have some account of the Irish actors in the great drama, by an Irish priest who was, himself, an eye-witness of the events he describes. And first of all a few words about our author. Thomas Carve, as Harris's Ware tells us, was born (c. 1590) at Mobernan, Co. Tipperary; was educated at Oxford, and became a secular priest, and in his early years chaplain to the Irish, English and Scotch Catholic troops in Germany, which was the occasion of his visiting many parts of that country. At the close of the Thirty Years' War he composed other historical works, among them his Lyra Hibernica, in which he gives us a sketch of the early history of Ireland, and the annals of Ireland, and of Europe from 1148 to 1650. The first edition of this latter work, which was printed at Sulzbach in 1666, was dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand III, and the second edition to Pope Alexander VII, our author thus paying homage to State and Church, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Church. The second edition brings the annals down to the year 1666, and concludes with the statement that it was happily finished on the 15th August, 1665, 'in the most noble and most famous city of Vienna on the Danube' ('in nobilissima famosissimaque Viennensi Civitate ad Danubium sita'). This work was adversely criticized by Bruodin, a Clareman and a member of the Irish Franciscan community of Prague, as also by Maloney, another Clareman of the same convent. Carue was made an Apostolic Notary and a Vicar-Choral of the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, in which city he died, in 1664, in his seventy-fourth year.

His name would indicate that he was one of the SeanGall, and he seems to have been imbued with the

imperialistic and somewhat anti-Irish prejudices of so many of the Anglo-Irish, as witness the fulsome dedication of his work to that great enemy of Irish nationality, James Butler, Earl, and subsequently Duke, of Ormonde. The

1 Carue, or Carew.

an Irish secular priest of Prague, calls him 'Carue, alias Corrain.'

His contemporary and opponent, Edmund Granna,

Butlers, he says, were not only renowned in Ireland, but their fame had spread to the uttermost parts of Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Bohemia. Hence he dedicates his work to the head of the family, and, in a striking passage, apologizes for its style, on the plea that it was not written in his study, but on the tented battlefield,ubi rauca tuba solenne suum taradandara insonat, ubi tympana bellum perstrepentia negotiorum calamum infestant, ubi saeva tormentorum bellicorum tonitrua horrendum immugiunt, ubi fatalis plumbeorum globulorum grando chartam circumvolat et cum affectu scribendi vitam prope excutiunt.' This dedication is dated from Fridberg, in Wetteravia' (? Wetterau), 1639, and is followed by an address to the reader in the same strain. He asks the benevolent reader not to take it amiss that the book is not dedicated to him, for to whom, but to a Butler, could he inscribe the deeds of a Butler—cui Butleriana facinora, quam Butlero?' and he has been an eye-witness of all that he relates, or has got his facts from eye-witnesses. Death, he continues, has been busy among the great ones of late. The Church has lost Gregory III; the Empire Ferdinand II; Spain, Philip III; France, Brother Joseph, the Capuchin adviser [of Richelieu]; the Catholic armies have lost Tilly and Pappenheim, the Scipios of their age; the heretic army has lost Gustavus Adolphus, and he, Carve, mourns the loss (which grieves him the most of all) of my excellent Butler, with whom I had spent very many happy days in the most confidential intimacy; by whom I was always most sweetly regarded as a brother and venerated as a father,' and it is to vindicate the memory of his friends that he has written this work.

In the opening chapter he gives a brief history of the German Emperors down to Ferdinand II, in whose reign the Thirty Years' War broke out, of which Carue was a spectator for nearly ten years, and of which he wishes to leave to posterity an authentic history. In the following two chapters he recounts the invasion of Germany by

Gustavus Adolphus, and in the fourth chapter his own journey from Ireland, via Britain, into Germany. The chapter opens with a brief allusion to the ancient history of Ireland, and retails, after the fashion of the medieval chroniclers, the prodigies, natural and supernatural, of the country; and it contains an allusion to Ulster barbarity, which brought down upon our author severe criticism and castigation.

He proceeded to Waterford, a populous city, noted for the Catholic fervour of its people, and fertile in men of great learning and sanctity. Thence to Passage, where one can live sumptuously on six asses a day,' and there he took ship for England, arriving first at Mimertum (? Milford) and then at Bristol, whence by Redenam (? Reading) to London, where he visited St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and a great tower surrounded by water (? Tower of London) where he saw rare wild beasts meandering about-three lions, two leopards (or panthers -pardos), and an Indian cat equal in size to a dog of our country.' From London he went to Gravesend, where all passengers are examined theologically, and have to acknowledge upon oath that the King of England is head of the English Church, but a Catholic can easily find a substitute who takes the oath, and from whom he can buy a certificate to that effect; and our author seems not to question the morality of such a proceeding. Having shown such a certificate, he boarded another ship at Gravesend, which, owing to contrary winds, took twenty-four days to get to Hamburg, whence he proceeded to Lübeck. There he had to wait two weeks before he could sail to Gedanium, a port in Poland, which we take to be Danzig, where he stayed with the Dominican Fathers, and thence he proceeded to Turroniam' (? Thorn), a three days' journey, and to Posnania (Posen), staying in both places with the hospitable Dominican Fathers. Thirty-four days later he arranged with carriers in Posen, who agreed to take him along to Vratislava (? Breslau), but as soon as they reached the Silesian borders they went on a spree, and invited

him to do likewise, telling him that the letters of safe conduct he had got from the Senate of Posen were only Jesuit frauds and no longer valid.

What was he to do in a hostile country, surrounded by the Saxon and Swedish heretic armies, to whom the carriers threatened to betray him? It seemed best to him to dissimulate for that night, and next day he went to the local prefect, who bound over the carriers to take him safely to Breslau. Many were the suspicions of various parties on the way that he was not a merchant, as he pretended to be, but a priest, and when he was cross-questioned at the gates of Breslau as to his status, nationality and the object of his journey, and when he had shown his passport stating that he was a merchant, they asked what merchandise he dealt in, to which he replied Haleces (a costly fish product of some sort). While his passport was being brought to the governor, he himself was taken to the market-place to unload his wares, and when he wanted to pay off his carriers they asked for treble the fare, with a threat to betray him if he refused.

At Breslau he again stayed at the Dominican convent, where he found only three Fathers, who were carrying on a miserable existence, five of their confrères having already died of starvation. The town was garrisoned by a Saxon (heretic) army, but the Lieutenant-Colonel, who professed the Catholic religion, gave our author a safe conduct to 'Ola,' four miles from Breslau. This we take to be Oels, in Silesia, where there was a Schotten-kloster, one of the many Irish Benedictine houses in the German Empire, but our author does not allude to it. The town was occupied by an imperial garrison, whose loyal chief, Colonel Rostock, sent a boat across for Carve, and had him admitted into the city late at night. After a rest of some days he proceeded with a safe conduct of soldiers through Silesia to Nyssa' (? Niesse) to General Wangler, and ten days later to the general's son, who was in winter quarters in Bohemia, and with whom he found one Olfeldt, a Danish colonel of cavalry, and a loyal imperialist, but too