Patrick Sarsfield, 1st Earl of Lucan

Patrick Sarsfield, 1st Earl of Lucan (born c.1655 – 21 August 1693) was an Irish soldier and leading figure in the Jacobite army during the 1689 to 1691 Williamite War in Ireland.

Born into a wealthy Catholic family, Sarsfield joined a regiment recruited by James Scott, Duke of Monmouth for the 1672 to 1674 Third Anglo-Dutch War, a subsidiary of the Franco-Dutch War. After England made peace, his regiment served in the French Rhineland campaign, and when the war ended in 1678, he returned to England. Following the so-called Popish Plot, Catholics were barred from the English military, and for the next few years Sarsfield led a precarious life on the fringes of London society.

When the Catholic James II came to the throne in 1685, Sarsfield served as a volunteer during Monmouth's Rebellion and was commissioned into the Royal Army. A colonel by the time of the Glorious Revolution in November 1688, he remained loyal to James and followed him into exile in France. Sarsfield returned to Ireland in March 1689 as a senior commander in the Jacobite army and was elected to the short-lived Patriot Parliament.

As leader of the "War Party", by late 1690 he largely controlled Jacobite military strategy and was given the title Earl of Lucan. Their position became hopeless after Aughrim in July, and Sarsfield helped negotiate the 1691 Treaty of Limerick ending the war. It included an agreement under which thousands of Irish soldiers went into exile in France, later known as the "Flight of the Wild Geese". Many served in the Nine Years' War, including Sarsfield who was killed at the Battle of Landen in 1693.

While contemporaries universally acknowledged his courage, opinions of his judgement and intelligence were mixed. Nevertheless, his reputation and death meant in the 19th and early 20th centuries he was widely commemorated in Ireland and among the international Irish diaspora as a military hero.