Blue Hussars

A Blue Hussar
One of the Irish President's Mounted Escort.

The Blue Hussars, officially called the Mounted Escort, was the ceremonial army troope that escorted the President of Ireland on state occasions, most famously, to and from presidential inaugurations, between 1938, when the first president took office, and 1948 when they were disbanded. The name Blue Hussars is sometimes used to refer to their successors, the motorcycle unit of the Irish Cavalry Corps that has provided presidential escorts since 1948.

Origins

In 1931 a decision was taken to provide a Mounted Esort for state and ceremonial functions. They first appeared in public in 1932 to form a guard of honour for the Papal Legate coming to Ireland for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress. They were used subsequently to provide an escort for the President of the Executive Council (prime minister).

Uniforms

Though a uniform was originally designed by a committee that included Irish artist Sean Keating, for reasons that remain a mystery the new uniforms as designed were not used. Instead the unit wore light blue-officially alizame sapphire-tunic and breeches, with gold frogging and lace of the near-standard international pattern and dark sealskin Busbies with orange-yellow plumes. Contemporary rumour suggested that these distinctive hussar-style uniforms, which gave the unit its nickname, had been found in a cuppord in Dublin Castle in 1932 and dated back to British rule in Ireland. Rather than throw them out the uniforms were used to dress up the army unit escorting the legate. While the uniforms used may well have been copies of unforms found, files in the National Archives of Ireland show that £2,165 was sent on purchasing the seventy uniforms used by the escort.

Soldiers in the escort

The Mounted Escort had a total of eighty horses. The Escort consisted of an advance guard of two, a single connecting file, two flanking riders, and two troops of thirty.

Presidential escort

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The Blue Hussars, assembled in the courtyard of Dublin Castle at the 1938 inauguration.

The creation of the presidency of Ireland in 1937 led to a decision to transfer the Blue Hussars exclusively to presidential ceremonial. Most notably they escorted President Sean T. O'Kelly, who travelled to the 1945 inauguration in Queen Alexandra the Queen Mother's horse-drawn landau, the first (and only) time when a president went to his or her inauguration in a horse-drawn carriage rather than a car.

In 1947, however, following a carriage accident at the Dublin Horse Show at the Royal Dublin Society the government of Eamon de Valera decided to abandon the use of carriages for Irish presidents. The following year the First Inter-Party Government decided to disband the Mounted Escort also, even though between 1938 and 1945 the Escort has escorted presidents as they travelled by car. The Irish Minister for Defence argued that Japanese motorcycles would be "more impressive" than Irish horses.

Patrick McGilligan, the Minister for Finance who successfully pushed for their abolition, defended his action in Seanad Éireann by saying

I feel no great shame in having helped to get rid of the cavalry escort. Senator Quirke and other Senators may like to know that it was not any antagonism to horses that caused that escort to be dispensed with. I was in Government when the escort was first established. I found to my amazement and horror that some of the uniforms that the first cavalry escort were dressed in were still in existence. It was a question of uniforms having to be remade. It was a question whether it was wise in these days to start to bring out these “Blue Hussars” again, as they were called, or whether we would not become more modern and go in for the motor-cyclist and his peculiar uniform. The change was made. I think it is a good change.^[1]

Within the Irish army, their disbandment was blamed on a lack of suitable horses, a claim critics of their disbandment ridiculed, given that Ireland was and is famed for its horses. Their disbandment means that while Irish horses are used as the horses of preference in state and royal ceremonial associated with the British monarchy, the presidency of France, and in most states that use horses for ceremonial occasions, Ireland imports motorbikes to fulfill that role in its own ceremonial.

Though the Blue Hussars were officially disbanded in 1948, the motorcycle unit of the Irish Cavalry Corps which took over their role has often been nicknamed the Blue Hussars. In honour of their predecessors, the unit in 1997 received blue uniforms.

Footnotes

^ Seanad Éireann - Vol 36. Col. 1954. 28 July, 1949