Risteárd Buidhe Kirwan

Risteárd Buidhe Kirwan (1708–1779) was an Irish soldier and duellist.

Biography

Kirwan was a son of Patrick Kirwan of Cregg and Mary Martin of Dangan. Both towns are in County Galway, and his parents were members of the Tribes of Galway. He was an uncle of the scientist Richard Kirwan, and a cousin of Richard Martin MP, founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

He travelled to France for his education. He joined the regiment of Dillon of the Irish Brigade. He became famed as a swordsman and duellist, and for his stature, which measured six feet four inches in height. Among his closest acquaintances were Lord Clare and Maurice de Saxe. He participated in the Battle of Fontenoy (1745).

His became notorious because of his duelling, and was obliged to leave France. He joined the Austrian service. He retired in 1751 and returned to Ireland. He married Maria Birmingham, a relative of Baron Athenry, and had issue. He was nicknamed Risteárd Buidhe a' chlaidhimh (swarthy Richard of the sword) and Nineteen-duel Dick.[1]

A watch presented to him by Louis XV, set with diamonds and pearls, was in the possession of the Kirwan family as of 1949.

gollark: The sum of roots thing? That doesn't tell you the roots, though.
gollark: And I can clearly tell in some domains when someone is better at something than me, even if I don't know exactly how.
gollark: The halting problem is that no Turing machine can tell if arbitrary Turing machines will halt though? No complexity hierarchy involved except theoretical oracle things.
gollark: Regardless of whether you think they are impossible or not, IQ tests and similar things are, as far as I know, correlated with stuff like educational attainment and income.
gollark: I can barely visualise things but not in detail. I also have really good memory for random facts but not life events, and excellent short term verbal memory but awful picture/number memory. Which is odd since those are meant to be correlated.

See also

References
  1. Ellis, Peter Berresford. "'Nineteen Duel Dick' from Galway". Irish News UK. Archived from the original on 29 September 2012.


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