31/05/2026
The Irish men pressed/recruited into the Prussian Army in 1799
The Irish men pressed/recruited into the Prussian Army in 1799
I am sharing this with you today as there is a 1798 event at Crook Graveyard in Waterford, a stones throw away from New Geneva Barracks - a notorious place that held over 1,000 men in the months following the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland.
I'll be sharing this story today if you want to come along but if you can't, back in February 2025, a man named Daniel Shalloe called to see me at my home here in northwest Wexford. He was trying to track down a family relation of his named Mathew Kearney, who had ended up in Germany following the 1798 Rising in Ireland.
Over the coming months Daniel has led a team of researchers (including Colum O'Rourke in Wicklow) who have gone through hundreds of documents in both German and Irish archives in a bid to find this person. In doing so, they have uncovered a whole new chapter of Irish history and put a lot of flesh on the bones of stories.
Daniel kept in touch with me over the weeks and months, sending pages and pages of material that he has transcribed and made sense of. I can’t share it all, but with his permission, I want to share this story.
This story resonates with me this morning as later today because later today, I'll be visiting the old barracks which houses these men – who came from every corner of Ireland – from Derry to Wexford, and from Antrim to Cork.
However, one story centers on the 8th of September 1799 when 316 of these Irish men set sail from the barracks for the city of Emden, on the coast of Germany. They were part of a deal struck between the British and Prussian leadership in a bid return some favours and get these 'rebellious men' off the island. In the spring of 1799, a Captain Schouler arrived at New Geneva and hand-picked the finest of the young Irish men for the Prussian army. In the records that Daniel uncovered, we also learn that around 80 women travelled with them – and likely some children, too.
The men, I’d say, had limited options and the promise of a bit of food, pay, and clothes on their backs was probably enough to sway them. They never returned to Ireland from what we can see, and died right across Europe. The detail Daniel has shared is amazing – charting the men’s journey from their arrival in Emden, and how they were kitted out straight away, and sent straight into military life.
One story that really struck me was that of a Mayo man named Thomas Coultry, his wife Catherine Bourschel, and their little baby. They sailed on this day, the 8th of September and arrived around the 23rd. Just six weeks later, on the 13th of November, Catherine died, leaving Thomas alone with their one-year-old child.
Daniel writes: "Recognising that Thomas could not march with a small child, the city authorities took her into care and placed her in a local poorhouse. The next time we hear of Thomas is in a letter he wrote from Gross Glogau (now called Głogów, in Poland – about 750 km from Emden) on the 26th of March, 1800. He reported that after a difficult march, he had arrived and been assigned to a battalion. On the 2nd of June, his commanding officer wrote again, asking about the child. The city officials replied that Catherine was doing well, was in safe hands, and was already walking and beginning to talk. After that, there is no further trace of Thomas or little Catherine in any publicly available online records."
I don’t know about you, but that story would break your heart. We don’t know if he ever returned for his daughter. We don’t know if he lived into old age or died on some battlefield in Europe. We will probably never know.
What we do know is that this Mayo man, his wife, and their child ended up far from home – away from their families, their country, and everything familiar to them. Their DNA could still well be in German, we will never know.
And all I can say is. this is just one of the stories from that shipload of Irish men and women who left Waterford in 227 years ago.
Text: Michael Fortune
Credit: Daniel Shalloe/Colum O’Rourke
