The Russian connection is the least-told chapter of the Wild Geese story, and it is remarkable for that reason alone.
Peter Lacy was born in County Limerick in 1678. He went to France with the Wild Geese in 1691, served in the Irish Brigade, and then made the unusual decision to seek service with the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, who was engaged in modernising his military along Western European lines and was hungry for experienced officers from the western tradition. Lacy arrived in Russia around 1700 and spent the next fifty years in Russian service.
He fought in the Great Northern War, the war in which Russia decisively defeated Sweden and established itself as a major European power. He fought in the War of the Polish Succession and the Russo-Turkish Wars. He was promoted to Field Marshal — the highest military rank in the Russian army — by the Empress Anna in 1736. He spent the last decades of his life as Governor-General of Livonia, administering a vast territory with the administrative competence that was, apparently, a Limerick inheritance.
His son, Franz, would serve in Austria and reach the same rank in the Habsburg service. The Lacy family, in two generations, had produced Field Marshals for three separate European powers, having started as landless exiles from a county in Munster where their Catholic faith had become a legal liability.
Russia, Austria, France, Spain. The Wild Geese went where they were needed and rose as far as talent could carry them, which was very far indeed.
