Home : Armed Forces : Private Warriors :

Self-Interest And Public Interest Conflicted

In the years between 1989 and 1994, the big-three American automobile companies (with combined annual sales of well over two hundred billion dollars) contributed about two million dollars to congressional-election campaigns. The ten largest American gas and oil companies, with an even greater chunk of the nation’s gross domestic product, gave contributions totaling seven million dollars. The nation’s trial lawyers, meanwhile, contributed nearly thirty-one million dollars.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that vast economic self-interest must be at stake here. After all, as Charles Keating—formerly head of a major savings and loan bank and now in a federal prison—reportedly said when asked if his contributions to congressional PACs had bought him influence, “I certainly hope so.”

The American legal system is uniquely well designed to benefit lawyers, which is why they want to keep it as it is. We have the “American rule,” where each side pays its own legal costs regardless of outcome. Almost everywhere else the loser pays, so only strong cases are initiated. Punitive damages—in effect a civil fine, but one paid to the plaintiff (and his lawyers) instead of the public treasury—are rare elsewhere. So are contingency fees. All of this, of course, is great for the legal profession and goes a long way toward explaining why this country has more lawyers—and more lawsuits—than any other.

But the lawyers have a problem in promoting the status quo. It is one of the peculiarities of democracy, it seems, that one cannot straightforwardly admit self-interest when seeking to influence legislation. Instead, self-interest, however obvious, must always be cloaked in the mantle of the public good, however specious. My personal favorite example of this took place in 1970, when cable television first was coming to New York City. Owners of the city’s movie theaters, horrified by the threat of having to compete with cable, went on a one-day strike and each theater emblazoned its marquee with the slogan “Save Free TV.”

One of the trial lawyers’ main arguments for the status quo, therefore, is that the vast number of lawsuits from which they profit perform a vital public service, forcing doctors, manufacturers, and others to be more careful than they otherwise might. They argue that many malpractice suits make for less malpractice, that product liability suits produce safer products. Private lawsuits, the lawyers maintain, police the public marketplace by going after bad guys, so the government doesn’t have to.

This is an assertion that would be difficult to demonstrate, to say the least. But it is also a very curious one when you consider that most of that thirty-one million dollars in political contributions went to stalwart advocates of big government. Policing the marketplace, after all, has long been considered a quintessential function of government (not the private sector), in the same category as maintaining national defense and domestic tranquility.

The reason is simple enough. When these matters have been in private hands, self-interest and the public interest inevitably conflicted. The private armies of the Middle Ages all too often turned into bands of brigands or rebels. In this century, during the rise of the labor movement, private police forces were often hard to distinguish from goon squads.

Mercenaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came from many regions to fight other people's wars for revenge, money, and adventure. The Irish looked for any cause that opposed England, the Hessians fought so their princes could add to their wealth, and the French Foreign Legion sought to fulfill the daring reputations and myths of legionnaires of the past.

Irishmen continued to serve the French as well as every other country that opposed England. Wild Geese advanced in rank in the regular armies of other countries. Irishman George Brown achieved the rank of marshal while eleven of his countrymen advanced to the rank of general in the Austrian army. Another Irishman, Francis Maurice Lacy, earned the rank of field marshal in the army of the Russian czar. Nineteenth-century poet Emily Lawless later characterized these wandering soldiers of fortune as "Fighters in every clime - Every cause but their own."

The first significant group of Irish mercenaries to arrive in North America joined Louis Montcalm and his French army to oppose the British in the French and Indian War. Part of the Irish Brigade, containing many descendants of the original Wild Geese, fought with Montcalm in their unsuccessful defense of Quebec in September 1759.

While the Irish mercenaries assisted France against the British and their allied American colonists in the French and Indian War, they readily joined the Americans when they rebelled against the British. Irishmen served at every level in the newly formed U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Some served to earn citizenship in the new country; others continued their forefathers' tradition of fighting the English wherever and whenever, and still others fought for the small wages in the newly formed American military.

Conflict between England and France dominated events in Europe as well as in India and North America during most of the eighteenth century. Spain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Switzerland, Ireland, and the Netherlands allied with first one side and then another in this long period of warfare.

While these various alliances created multinational armies, mercenaries also filled the ranks of the principals. During the eighteenth century soldiers of fortune accounted for half of the English, a third of the French, two-thirds of the Prussian, and a quarter of the Spanish armies. These soldiers of fortune included high-ranking officers as well as ordinary troopers.

Armies met on the field of battle with hired soldiers led by mercenary officers from a multitude of countries. The only common language was that of combat. On occasion, regular soldiers of one country fought their fellow countrymen when one was serving his own flag and another was in the employment of a current enemy, who might very well also have been a former ally.

The Swiss and Irish dominated the mercenary ranks in the latter part of the seventeenth century, many of them joining the Prussian army of Frederick the Great. They served the Prussian general beside hired mercenaries from other countries and under hired officers, many of whom held the army's most senior positions. They received most of their wages in gold that Frederick got from his English ally, but there was no doubt who was in charge of the Prussians. The mercenaries knew they were serving a man who, when he first assumed command of Prussia's army on the death of his father in 1740, announced, "In this kingdom, I am the only person to exercise authority." Over the next quarter century, the hired soldiers as well as the rest of Europe found Frederick to be one of the most able and influential commanders of his age.

When Frederick went home to Prussia in 1763 at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, his foreign mercenaries either returned to their native countries or sought employment as soldiers elsewhere. The sheer numbers of mercenaries, who came from the nearly three hundred different regions and principalities that composed the Germanic states, caused the princes who controlled these states to realize they had a great income-producing commodity. By creating regiments of veterans from Frederick's army and young men coming of age in the provinces, they could hire out these units at profitable rates. The export of these units would not only provide a steady income but also reduce the number of subjects who would have to be supported at home.

Most members of the numerous German state units had little choice about becoming soldiers because they were drafted. German leaders did not limit forced induction to their own citizens; they also conscripted anyone living or even passing through their states.

A relative, albeit temporary, peace did not readily provide employment opportunities for the German regiments, but a developing revolution in North America soon did. When the American colonists made a stand against the British at the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the English thought their army in North America would quickly quell the rebellion. A shocking battle that killed 226 British soldiers, including many officers, and wounded an additional eight hundred troops at Boston's Bunker Hill on June 16 convinced King George that he would need more help to end the uprising.

King George initially turned to his old ally, the queen of Russia. Catherine the Great considered renting her army to Britain, but finally suggested that the English might do better to attempt a peaceful settlement and sent an official reply turning down King George's request to employ her soldiers.

Catherine's formal note also expressed her reservations at using mercenaries to fight the wars of other monarchs. She wrote, "I am just beginning to enjoy peace and Your Majesty knows that my empire has need of repose. There is an impropriety in employing so considerable a body in another hemisphere, under a power almost unknown to it and almost removed in contact with its sovereign. Moreover, I should not be able to prevent myself from reflecting on the consequences which would result for our digniry, for that of the two monarchies and the two nations, from this junction of our forces, simply to calm a rebellion which is not supported by any foreign power."

Catherine's morally superior message omitted the true reason for her refusal – lack of economic necessity. At the time, her majesty and her country were financially well off and, all rhetoric aside, she simply did not need the income produced by risking a good part of her army in foreign combat halfway around the world.

While Catherine might not have needed English gold, other monarchs in Europe were more receptive to the idea. Many German states had veteran regiments sitting idle and costing their princes maintenance money. The German princes in charge of their states needed additional revenue to finance their excesses. One reportedly was charged with the care of seventy-four children and desperately needed new sources of income to maintain his lifestyle.

The soldiers themselves, while considered mercenaries because their services were being paid for and they were fighting for a cause that was not theirs, received little of George's sterling. Their pay was minimal, barely exceeding the cost of their food and supplies. Also, as an organized army with permanent officers, they generally were not permitted to participate in the looting and pillaging usually considered a privilege of soldiers of fortune.

During the extended American Revolution, seventeen Irishmen rose to the level of general or admiral in service to the United States. John Barry, born in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1745, rose from cabin boy to admiral in the U.S. Navy and commanded the frigate Alliance against the British fleet in the Revolution's last naval battle.

In addition to individuals who joined the Revolution, regiments of the Irish Brigade still in the employment of France arrived in America to fight the English. The Dillon Regiment, led by its namesake Col. Arthur Dillon, initially sailed to the West Indies to defend French possessions there. In the fall of 1779 about fifteen hundred Irish members of the Dillon Regiment joined other French and American units in the unsuccessful attack against the British at Savannah, Georgia. The Dillon Regiment, reinforced by the Walsh and Berwick Regiments of the Irish Brigade, later assisted in continued French operations against the British in the West Indies.

While many Irish immigrants remained in the United States after the War of Independence, the Irish Brigade regiments returned to France. After nearly a century of faithful service to the crown, they were finally disbanded when the French successfully concluded their own revolution in 1792.

top of page

back a page