Early Life
Wall belonged to a family settled in Killmallock, County Limerick. Richard "Ricardo" Wall y Devreaux was born at Nantes to a family of Irish Jacobite refugees who had supported the Catholic James II, King of England. He was baptized two days later in the Church of Saint Nicolas, in very bad circumstances. His father, Matthew "Matías" Wall of Killmallock, Co. Limerick, an old officer in the army of James II (Regiment Fitz-James), was absent. They lived then in the "Pit of the well of the silver" under the shelter of some relative, probably Gilbert Wall.
Nothing is known about his first years. Around 1710, he was received as a page of the Bavarian Princess and Duchess d´Étampes on her own right, Marie Anne de Bourbon-Condé, whose father was Henry III Jules de Bourbon, prince de Condé. In 1716, he left France and entered the Spanish service thanks to a letter of recommendation for the royal minister, cardinal Alberoni.
The letter was signed by the 38-year-old Dowager Duchess of Vendôme, Marie Anne de Bourbon-Condé, known now as Marie Anne de Bourbon by her marriage to the great grandson of Henry IV, named Louis Joseph de Bourbon.
Had her husband Louis-Joseph not died in 1712, and had the new king of Spain Felipe V died by then, as well as his first son Luis Fernando, then Louis Joseph could have been – because of his descent from a legitimation made by Henry IV on Louis-Joseph "royal descent" ancestor, albeit being born out of wedlock from Madame d’Estrées – an acceptable candidate for the diplomats of the European powers involved in the Spanish Succession War.
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