FREEMAN’S JOURNAL 3RD MARCH 1853 (abridged)
It is a curious historical fact that the Irish troops, who principally contributed to save the town of Louvain, in 1635, from the tremendous assault of the great French army under Marshals Chatillon and De Breze, were in that bloody contest marshalled and commanded in Irish. A Latin writer of the seventeenth century, who was conversant with most of the European tongues, tells us that the Irish language
“surpasseth in gravity the Spanish, in elegance the Italian, in colloquial charms the French;
it equals, if it does not surpass the German itself in inspiring terror.”
The Burren and Beyond 