was disbanded, though many of its officers and men were reformed into new regiments. Having been merged into the original Irish Brigade these units served the French well until the French Revolution. Other Irishmen – such as Peter Lacy – proceeded to enter the Austrian service on an individual basis. The Irish Brigade became one of the elite units of the French Army. While increasingly diluted by French and foreign recruits from elsewhere in Europe, its Irish-born officers and men often aspired to return to aid Ireland and regain their ancestral lands, as some did during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Irish regiments participated in most of the major land battles fought by the French between 1690 and 1789, particularly Steenkirk (1692), Neerwinden (1693), Marsaglia (1693), Blenheim (1704), Almansa (1707), Malplaquet (1709), Fontenoy (1745), Battle of Lauffeld (1747); and Rossbach (1757). Units of the Irish Brigade took part in the rising of 1715 and the rising of 1745. For the latter, a composite battalion of infantry ("Irish Picquets") comprising detachments from each of the regiments of the Irish Brigade, plus one cavalry regiment, Fitzjames' horse, was sent to Scotland and landed with Richard Warren at Stonehaven in October 1745. This trained and disciplined force saw action at the second Battle of Falkirk (where they cemented the victory by driving off the Hanoverians causing the clans to waver) and Culloden, alongside the regiment of Royal Scots (Royal Ecossais) which had been raised the year before in French service. As serving soldiers of the French King the Irish Picquets were able to formally surrender as a unit after Culloden with a promise of honourable treatment and were not subjected to the reprisals suffered by the Highland clansmen. Many other exiled Jacobites in the French army were captured en route to Scotland in late 1745 and early 1746, including Charles Radcliffe, 5th Earl of Derwentwater, a captain in Dillon's regiment who was executed in London in 1746. In the interim, however, the Brigade found itself briefly opposed to its Spanish counterpart in the War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1718–20, as France was allied to the Jacobites' British Hanoverian rivals. As a result, it was Spain who assisted the Highland Jacobites in their rising that ended in the Battle of Glen Shiel in 1719. The 1716 Anglo-French alliance had effectively secured the Hanoverian succession in Ireland and Britain. Despite the alliance France continued