Francis Patrick O'Neillan

His family had fared badly under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation and lost most of their lands and property. Therefore, being a Catholic and a Jacobite he, like many other Irishmen at that time, sought scope for his ambition in a foreign military career. Having proved his nobility[9] he first entered the Imperial Army of Austria as an officer in 1701. In 1708 he was a Captain (Hauptmann) in the 47th (Harrach) Infantry Regiment which was fighting in Italy under the command of Colonel Commandant (Titular Obrist) George Browne.In December 1709 Browne was granted the proprietorship of a newly-formed infantry regiment in Pavia, Italy and in 1711 he appointed O’Neillan his Lieutenant Colonel (Obristleutnant).

Although the Regiment Browne distinguished itself in the war that was being waged by the Imperialists in Spain it was, nevertheless, disbanded in Catalonia later in 1711, its personnel being sent back to the Hereditary Lands for reconstitution. After a great deal of anxious petitioning Browne embarked for Italy in December 1715 for his installation as Colonel Proprietor (Obrist Inhaber) of the former regiment of General Johann von Wellenstein which was stationed in Transylvania at that time. This was the 57th Galician Regiment which in 1716 and 1717 was in the thick of the fighting in Prince Eugene of Savoy’s Turkish campaigns.

O’Neillan, meanwhile, was employed at Mantua, in Lombardy, Italy (which at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire and, therefore, under Habsburg rule). Then, on April 1713 he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel (Obristleutnant) of the Regiment Alexander Wurttemberg which regiment was relocated to Hungary the following year.

In 1716 O’Neillan fought with distinction at the Battle of Peterwardein, where the Turks were routed, and at Temesvar (Timisoara) where, after a five-week siege which lasted from August to October 1716, Prince Eugene of Savoy captured the last Turkish stronghold in Hungary and won for the Austrians the fertile Banat of Temesvar. O’Neylan subsequently took command of the Regiment Arenberg and on 31 May, 1717 was promoted to the rank of Colonel (Obrist) of that regiment. It was in this capacity that he participated in the Battle of Belgrad. Differences with the Duke of Arenberg, however, lead to his transfer in 1723 and to his appointment as Colonel Commandant (Titular Obrist) of Browne’s 57th infantry regiment. Then, shortly before the declaration of war in 1733, he was appointed Commander of the Citadel of Mantua. He received another promotion, to the rank of Major General (Obrist Feldwachtmeister), on 11 November that year.

After many years of illness his uncle and mentor, Count George Browne, died in Pavia, Italy on 10 October, 1729. Fourteen months later, on 15 January 1731, the ownership of the 57th Regiment was officially his. In the Spring of 1734 Field Marshal Count Florimund Mercy assembled 50,000 men at Mantua to reclaim all that had been lost the previous year when the Austrians had been driven from Italy by the Franco-Spanish forces. Mercy expressed great satisfaction that O’Neillan had been assigned to serve with him in the field “for he is” he wrote, “an officer with good experience in the war. Poor health, however, prevented O’Neillan from participating in the campaign and Mercy’s army was halted on June 29th by a powerful enemy force at Parma. Four costly Austrian attacks failed to carry the position and early on the 30th the Imperial Army relinquished the field, Mercy having been killed in battle.

With O’Neillan’s death in Mantua on 3 October, 1734 the Regiment Browne lost its last Irish commander (General Baron Adam von Thungen assumed its command the following December). His death was reported as follows:

“THE DEATH OF BARON D’ONEYLAN. In the year 1734, on the night of 2nd October, going into 3rd October, at around three in the morning, in the palace of the Marquis Bevilacqua in the piazza San Pietro, died General d’Oneylan, colonel of an imperial regiment, after a long and painful illness of gout and other afflictions. The subsequent evening he was privately interred in Sant Agnese, the church of the Agostinians. Thereafter, on the morning of the 5th, a solemn funeral was conducted, with a lighted catafalque and military honours, under the boom of artillery fire.

To commemorate the place where he rests, a memorial stone of black marble was later placed on a column of the church bearing the following epitaph:

Here lies Francis, from the family of the Barons ONeilane, who was a colonel and general in the imperial army. The general lamentation that followed his death was that, as a soldier, as well as in all aspects of his life, he acted honorably. Dysert, in the County of Clare in Ireland provided him with his birthplace, Mantova in Lombardy with a tomb. He died on the 4th of October, on the very same day on which he was born, in the year 1734 of the Christian era, in the 63rd year of his life and in his 33rd year of military service. His most disconsolate wife placed this sepulchral slab to the memory of a most distinguished man, a testimony to her love and sorrow