On this Bastille Day let us cheer “Vive la France”. All hail our nearest EU neighbour and good friend throughout history, in good times and bad.
Our refuge for many Irish political “sinners” and exiles such as James Joyce (for some of the time), Samuel Beckett (most of the time) and Oscar Wilde (a short time).
Our ties are myriad but, more recently, were best represented by probably the greatest Frenchman of the 20th century – as seen in France – Charles de Gaulle.
His Irish ancestry meant much to him, so that when he resigned as France’s president in 1969 he took a six-week break here.
RM Block
He explained: “It was a kind of instinct which brought me to Ireland. Perhaps it was because of the Irish blood which flows in my veins – for we always come back to our origins – but also because it was Ireland.”
De Gaulle was a descendent of the McCartans of Kinelarty, Co Down who, their lands confiscated by the Cromwellians, fled for France with other leading Irish families and after Patrick McCartan was hanged and beheaded at Carrickfergus, Co Antrim in 1653.
Famously, de Gaulle was no fan of the English and twice vetoed Britain’s (and Ireland’s) attempts to join the then European Economic Community, later the EU.
Churchill once said de Gaulle “hates England and has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him everywhere”.
De Gaulle was not the only French president to have had Irish ancestry. So too had Patrice de MacMahon, president of France from 1873 to 1879. He was descended from Mahon, son of Muirchertach Ua Briain, High King of Ireland and great-grandson of Brian Boru.
They also lost lands – in Clare – during the Cromwellian confiscations, after which a branch of the family moved to Limerick. They supported the deposed King James who lost at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and the MacMahons subsequently headed for the safety of France too.
There, they were very much a military family and, in recognition of his own military services, Patrice MacMahon was appointed Marshall of France and awarded the title of Duke of Magenta.
In May 1873, he was elected President of France’s Third Republic by the National Assembly, with just one vote cast against him. He died in 1893.
France, from Latin “Francia”.
