Over the last 400 years, Irish soldiers played an important role in wars throughout Europe. A new exhibition brings the names of those who fought for Habsburg Austria to vivid life, writes Arminta Wallace

The Wild Geese. It is, when you think about it, a peculiarly romantic name to attach to a generation of emigrants; especially when many of those who flew were, in fact, career soldiers of the most pragmatic kind.

But then, when we think of the Wild Geese, we tend to think of those young Irish noblemen who, in the face of religious and political persecution at home, fled to Catholic France and Spain in the 17th and 18th centuries.

What is less well known is the story of those who offered their military expertise to Habsburg Austria instead; now, however, an intriguing exhibition at the National Museum in Collins Barracks brings their names to vivid life.

And what names: John Sigismund Maguire, governor of Carinthia; Thomas Baron von Brady, governor of Albania. "Because of its multicultural nature, it was easier for a young foreigner to make progress in the Habsburg empire than in France or Spain," explains the exhibition's curator, Michael Kenny. "I read somewhere that in order to be a successful career soldier in the Austro-Hungarian military you had to have a reasonable grasp of 11 languages." One of which, on any given day, might well have been Irish; for though they were relatively few in number, the Irish who went to Austria made quite an impact.

During the period covered by the exhibition - roughly, the 300-year stretch from the Thirty Years' War to the collapse of the Habsburg empire in 1918 - Austria was constantly embroiled in one vicious altercation or another, so there was no shortage of work. According to the exhibition's catalogue, more than 100 Irishmen were directly involved in these wars as field marshals, generals or admirals. "It was nothing unusual for whole nations to be swapped in war games at this time," says Michael Kenny. "People often woke up to find themselves in a different country."

A number of names crop up again and again as, in subsequent generations, families turned into dynasties. The Taaffes are a case in point. The most famous is probably Count Taaffe von Carlingford, who became prime minister of Austria in 1873 and who - if an anecdote told about him in a book of essays on Austro-Irish links through the centuries, published by the Vienna School of International Studies, is to be believed - possessed a nice line in dry humour.

The story goes that on a balmy autumn evening in 1880 Taaffe went for a post-prandial stroll along the Graben, the elegant mall which runs through the centre of Vienna, with the chief of the metropolitan police.

In the course of the conversation, Taaffe commented on the absence of the high-class courtesans for which the area's coffee-houses had always been noted, to which the police chief replied that his men had banished them - but had experienced great difficulty in differentiating the ladies of the night from respectable Viennese hausfraus. "Maybe you and the police have such difficulty," Taaffe observed tartly, "but the rest of us manage it perfectly well."

A century earlier, Sligo-born Count Francis Taaffe, Earl of Carlingford, had cut a spectacular dash of his own at the 1683 Siege of Vienna, when he led the cavalry charge which captured the battle standard of the Turkish commander Kara Mustafa, changing the course of the battle and - arguably - the course of European history. Michael Kenny indicates a 17th-century suit of armour, complete with graceful, beautifully tooled helmet. "Of course we can't match particular uniforms to particular people - but it's easy to imagine Taaffe chasing after the Ottomans in headgear just like that."

Though elegant and beautifully finished, both the armour and the military uniforms seem awfully - well, small. "Oh, yes, people were a lot smaller in those days. It's very noticeable with military uniforms." Nevertheless, when the pikeman's outfit arrived from the military museum in Vienna, it proved to be slightly too tall for its display cabinet. "That's the way with exhibitions - even military ones," says Kenny, with a smile and a shrug worthy of the most pragmatic wild goose. "We had to behead him."

It must be said, however, that the unfussy modernity of the Collins Barracks displays combine with the sombre beauty of the building to give this exhibition an appealing poignancy. Medals, portraits, maps and memorabilia all tell their tales - and offer the occasional telling detail.

"Irish clannishness crops up again and again," says Kenny. "See this guy? Marshal Maximilian Ulysses Browne, from Limerick, died at the Siege of Prague in 1757. And here is Marshal Lacy, also from Limerick, who went via Austria to Russia and served under Peter the Great. Lacy gave his son to Browne - you know the sort of thing, make a man of him and so forth."

The son, Franz Moritz Count Lacy, duly became president of the Imperial War Council. Then there was Laval Count Nugent, born in Ballinacarrow, Co Westmeath in 1777. He was sent to a military academy in Vienna as a child. At the age of 71 he was still fighting - against King Victor Emmanuel in Italy.

"A lot of these names - Nugents, Dillons, Taaffes - have the ring of middle Ireland," says Michael Kenny. "I'm from Westmeath, and I recognise them as typical midland families. There was a Nugent in Trieste whose sons fought in Czech regiments. One of them was a major supporter of the Croats.

And that's what makes history fascinating for me: that guys from Westmeath, from townlands that I know, ended up fighting for the cause of Croatian independence."

The Wild Geese in Austria: Irish Soldiers and Civilians in the Habsburg Service 1618-1918 is at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, until summer 2003