Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a dangerous place. Religious strife and unstable politics saw war stretch across the centre of the continent for long periods of time. Amidst that chaos Irishmen, exiled from their homeland by the re-conquest of the island by Elizabethan England emerged as a powerful force. From before the Flight of the Earls in 1607, through the Flight of the Wild Geese after the Fall of Limerick in 1691 and until the British placed a ban on Irishmen travelling to join foreign armies in the middle of the eighteenth century, Irishmen fought for Austria, Spain, Poland, Russia, France and England. In this selection of biographies, George B. Clark offers us an overview of the wars they fought in, the battles that they turned, won or lost and the profiles and attitudes of the men who created the myth of the fighting Irish.