Four Green Fields: Trollheart's History of Ireland

[Trollheart]

Henry Grattan (1746  - 1820)

One of the greatest advocates on Ireland's side during the latter half of the eighteenth century, Grattan, though a Protestant, supported Ireland's right to self-governance, though he still believed it should always pay homage to the English king. Under Poynings Law (1494) no legislation could be passed in Ireland until it had gained the approval of the English Privy Council, and in fact laws could be passed pertaining to Ireland by the English government without any involvement of the Irish Parliament, making it entirely dependent on, and subservient to, the Crown. Grattan intended to have this ancient law abolished, so that Irish matters could be decided by Irishmen, or at least, Anglo-Irish, as Catholics - what you would have to call the true Irish - were still banned from holding any public office by the Penal Laws still in force, and that most definitely included sitting in Parliament. Grattan was a patriot, born in Dublin and having studied at Trinity College, and quickly rising to the leadership of the Irish Patriot Party, which stood in strong opposition to what was known as the Castle Party, those hardline Protestants who wished England to retain total control over Irish legislation and fought any efforts to the contrary.

Grattan took his seat in the Irish Parliament in 1775. A year later, England was having serious trouble with another, younger colony, and events in Ireland began to take something of a back seat, less important now than bringing the upstart America to heel. Partly as a response to this, and also using the absence of British troops as a springboard to further their own political agenda, the Volunteers were formed.

The Volunteers

When British troops were sent to the colony to fight in what would become the American War of Independence, wealthy landowners feared for their own safety and that of their property, worrying about who and what would fill the power vacuum which opened up. I guess it's easiest to equate the Volunteers with the British Home Guard that ostensibly protected Britain from Nazi invasion during the Second World War. They were held in contempt by the regular army, who deemed them as barely fit for service and ensured they were given the crappiest and most menial jobs they could be given; their commitment was questioned, as was their courage. They were basically militias of Protestant (obviously: at this point the Penal Laws still forbade Catholics to carry arms, and while the secret societies already discussed may have got around that, there could be no official sanction for arming Catholics) who feared Spanish or French invasion of Ireland, believing that England's traditional enemies might take advantage of the bulk of His Majesty's forces being abroad. There were however some Catholics and Presbyterians admitted after the Catholic Relief Act of 1778.

With the British victory over the Spanish in 1780 the fears of invasion dissipated, and the Volunteers turned to political aims, intending to gain concessions for Ireland, such as free trade with Britain, and with their power growing the British government acceded to their demands. The chapters in Ulster seem to have been the most militant, calling for Irish legislative independence (while of course remaining loyal to the king) and between pressure from them and Grattan (no I haven't forgotten who I'm writing about) what was known as the Constitution of 1782 came to be, and the largely autonomous parliament that ruled - for a few short years - was known as Grattan's Parliament.

Grattan's Parliament

While it would take another 150 years before Ireland would gain her total independence, the Constitution of 1782 was the first major step in freeing her from the bondage of the English Crown. Since Norman times the Irish Parliament had acted only under the sufferance of the monarch, effectively an arm of the English government. Therefore no laws could be passed there without the approval of the king or queen, which meant of course no laws the English government did not agree with. Grattan was, however, loyal to the Crown and wished to preserve the connection with England, just not be at its whim. He was also for Catholic emancipation, which as you can imagine did not go down well across the water. Or indeed in Ireland, at least with the landed classes, who had made their money off the backs of poor Catholics, either as servants (virtual slaves with few if any rights) or by possessing their land for themselves. Equal rights for Catholics was most assuredly not on the Protestant agenda!

Nevertheless, when the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1791 was passed in the British Parliament, Grattan managed to get an Irish version passed only two years later, which eased pressure on Irish Catholics, allowing them into some public offices and to be educated, but the king's stubborn refusal to even countenance the freedom of his Catholic subjects would explode in violence and uproar seven years later.

[Trollheart]

Rebellion! Ireland fights back

Having seen the success the French had had in 1789, Irish Catholics banded together with Presbyterians from Ulster to form a society they called the United Irishmen, to try to force reform and fair treatment for all. The recent American War of Independence, and the triumph of George Washington's fledgling colony over the might of the British Empire, was also fresh in their minds. Having sent a declaration to the French people on the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille which read "As Irishmen, We too have a country, and we hold it very dear—so dear... that we wish all Civil and Religious Intolerance annihilated in this land," the Irish were honoured in turn by the Revolution on Bastille Day the following year with the French National Assembly hailing the soldiers of the new republic as "the advance guard of the world".


William Drennan (1754 - 1820)

The man who proposed the United Irishmen was a physician, a poet and a radical democrat. Born a Presbyterian in Belfast, he moved to Dublin in 1789 and got involved first with the Volunteers, and then helped create the United Irishmen, seeing Britain's embarrassing defeat by the Americans as the perfect time to force Ireland's agenda. He suggested the society as a "benevolent conspiracy, a plot for the people" and contended its true aim would be "Real independence to Ireland and Republicanism." The United Irishmen would push for total emancipation for Catholics and proper representation for all peoples in the Parliament.

When he was arrested in May 1793 however, accused of sedition and consorting with French spies, though acquitted and having called all Irish men to stand to arms, he seems to have been abandoned by his fellows, and moved to Scotland, and while there worried that the course the French Revolution was taking, as Catholicism - indeed, all religions - were being trodden on and denounced by the Assembly, might turn Irish people (especially Catholics, known to be always devout to their religion) from these possible allies. The bloody and often indiscriminate violence that followed the coup d'etat didn't seem to give him such a problem.


Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763 - 1798)

Known forever after in Irish history only as Wolfe Tone, he would go on to be one of the great heroes of, and martyrs to Irish independence. Although a Protestant (and an Anglican at that) he was forward-thinking enough and had enough patriotic fervour to reach across the sectarian divide and suggest that all Irish people, of all faiths and religions work together for the true independence of Ireland. He abhorred Grattan's acceptance of the Constitution of 1782, believing it was a compromise, and his insistence on Ireland remaining tied to the Crown. Wolfe Tone proposed full and free autonomy for his native land, and to this end helped create the United Irishmen with William Drennan.

Despairing, however, of any chance of acceptance by the Irish Parliament, which was still controlled by Protestants, Tone set his sights on France, and when the Reverend William Jackson, an Irish priest who had been exiled to France, arrived to scope out Ireland as a possible invasion target from which to harry the English, Tone received him enthusiastically, telling him Ireland was ripe for revolution. Unfortunately, the bishop was betrayed and, having been arrested for treason, killed himself by taking poison and collapsing during his trial. Before fleeing to America, Tone met with other United Irishmen and together they swore "never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country, and asserted our independence." Tone spent only a year in America, thoroughly disenchanted with the place before making his way to France, where he requested a French invasion of Ireland. There too he recorded his philosophy of independence for his native country, words which would later appear on his tomb: "Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of no property"

The invasion was agreed, and he accompanied an expedition at the close of 1796 which was sent to support the coming Irish revolution, but weather off Bantry Bay made it impossible for the French vessels to land, and they were forced to return home. He tried again - with both the French and the Dutch (Batavia) - and finally managed to land in Ireland in September of 1798, but his fleet was defeated by the British, he was taken prisoner, put on trial, and committed suicide rather than wait for an answer to his request that he be shot.

The bloody massacres in Paris of 1792 added fuel to a panicky fire among Protestants that should Catholics gain power they would act in a similar manner, savagely taking retribution on their oppressors. However the French Republic's move away from the respect for and authority of the Pope alienated them from the Irish Catholics, who deplored the capture of Pius VI under Napoleon, his imprisonment and later death. On the one hand, you'd have to imagine that George III, traditionally an enemy of Rome since Henry VIII's time, might have welcomed the news of the old pope's death, but on the other, he certainly didn't like the idea of the new French Republic extending their revolution to Italy and claiming it, too, a republic. So the last thing he wanted was an Irish revolution to go with it.

But that's exactly what he got.

[Trollheart]

Prelude to the Rising: The Battle of the Diamond and the formation of the Orange Order

With tensions between Protestants and Catholics as high as ever, feelings running high at the rise of the United Irishmen and their potential threat to the Ascendancy power, the two secret societies, the Peep o' Day Boys and the Defenders arranged to meet at the Diamond, a small crossroads halfway between Loughgall and Portadown in Armagh. Despite the efforts of four Protestant landowners and three Catholic priests to broker a truce or peace treaty, the two factions met on September 21 1795 and prepared for battle. It appears from contemporary accounts that in fact the peace deal had been struck, but that it was Defenders not from Armagh but from Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth, who had come for the fight and were disappointed to see there would be none, who kicked it all off.

The Peep o' Day Boys, heading home, were accosted by a force of about 300 Defenders and turned to engage them. Though outnumbered, the Protestants had the high ground, and were better skilled with weapons, resulting in their taking no casualties in the short brutal battle while accounts vary of the losses taken by the Catholics, from thirty to forty-eight. Clearly, the Peep o' Day Boys won the Battle of the Diamond decisively. After the battle, glorying in their victory, the Peep o' Day Boys founded the Orange Order, with the declaration of defending "the king and his heirs so long as he or they support the Protestant Ascendancy." Pretty much immediately afterwards they took their revenge on Catholics, burning houses, attacking homes and perpetrating what have gone down in history as "the Armagh outrages".

This was part of a concerted effort on the part of the Orangemen to drive "from this quarter of the country the entire (sic) of its Roman Catholics population", from where the oft-used phrase originated, that appeared on signposts around the county and warned Catholics they had two choices: "To Hell or Connaught" (Connaught or Connacht being one of the other provinces of Ireland, part of what is now the Republic, where the likes of Galway and other western towns are) - essentially kicking them out of Ulster and over the border. Their intimidatory tactics worked, and within a month over 7,000 Catholics had been forced to leave Armagh. The Governor,  Lord Gosford remarked of what was pretty little less than a pogrom: "It is no secret that a persecution is now raging in this country ... the only crime is ... profession of the Roman Catholic faith. Lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges ... and the sentence they have denounced ... is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment."

This process would, you may be surprised to hear, be repeated almost two hundred years later, when in the 1970s Catholics would be forced from Ulster in the face of growing Protestant oppression and would seek refuge here in the south.

Maith an Chailin!* A Woman's place is in the fight - the women also rise

(*Literally, good girl!)

Nobody would venture to suggest that Ireland was ever a hotbed of suffrage, and it's hard to name one Irish advocate for women's rights, but then that does come with the proviso that up until 1923 we were not a sovereign nation and would have to go along with what was decided in Britain. Nevertheless, like the women of France during the French Revolution, and despite attempts by revisionist historians to write them out and ignore them, women did fight in and support the rebellion of 1798. Not all of them physically fought, but many offered shelter or encouragement or whatever they could to the rebels, and here I'd like to look at some of those names which have triumphed above the efforts of male chroniclers to pretend all an Irish woman was good for was making babies or homes, or as it was disparagingly put at the time, that they could only be "maids or madonnas." Yeah.

Mary Ann McCracken (1770 - 1866)

Sister of Henry Joy McCracken, one of the founders of the United Irishmen, she provided shelter for her brother and his comrades after their defeat at the Battle of Antrim (SPOILER ALERT! Now come on: you didn't really think the rebellion was going to succeed, did you? What about 1916?) and brought them food and supplies as they hid in the hills. She was preparing their escape by sea when her brother was recognised by soldiers, and he and his compatriots arrested. After his execution, she took care of his illegitimate daughter, as nobody else in the family would recognise her.

She was a reformer, social campaigner and later an abolitionist, working to better the lives of Belfast's children, setting up schools and orphanages and engaging teachers to educate the children. She helped form, and was chair of, the Ladies Committee of the Belfast Charitable Society from 1832 - 1855, inspecting homes to which children from the orphanage and poorhouse had been sent to ensure their safety and suitability. She led the Womens Abolition Committee in Belfast, tirelessly campaigning for an end to slavery, and was aghast when the cause was so quickly dropped after the rebellion, but even at the ripe of age of 88 she haunted the Belfast docks, handing out anti-slavery pamphlets to those boarding ships headed to America.

Mary Shackleton Leadbetter* (1728 - 1826)

In contrast to Bridget Dolan, of whom we will hear soon, she was a total pacifist, involved with the Society of Friends, a Quaker organisation, which was her faith, but she experienced first-hand the brutality of the English forces after the defeat of the rebels in 1798. She was a diarist, and writes of yeomanry "from whose bosom pity seems banished" and soldiers who occupied her village of Ballitore, torturing and flogging the people, till a force of 300 rebels took the town, taking revenge on the oppressors before being themselves routed by a returning English force. Mary herself was almost killed by a soldier, and saw the town doctor, a man who she "believed had never raised his hand to injure any one" be killed "unarmed and alone". When the village was burned, Mary fled with the rest of the survivors.

* May be Leadbeater, as this is how it's spelled in some accounts

Elizabeth Pim

Another Quaker, she did not take part in the rebellion and seems to be one of the few who did not take sides, seeing the brutality of it from both factions. On May 24 she watched the rebels approach the town and battle with the British, and when the latter were withdrawn the next day it seems to have been a shock to the villagers, many of whom accompanied them as they left, presumably for protection. Two days later, as the rebels took the town, she saw the garrison which had been left behind surrender but be butchered by the Irishmen, priests and teachers among them.

By May 28 the British forces had retaken the village, having been only dissuaded from levelling it with cannon by the discovery that there were Quakers living there, with whom they had no quarrel. Showing there was after all little difference between the two sides, the British soldiers then began to plunder the village and celebrate their victory.

Elizabeth Richards

On the other side of the fence you have this lady, a devout Anglican, a wealthy landowner (or I should say, married to one, as women did not have the right to own property at this time, no matter their faith or standing, and depended entirely on their husbands in that regard, and in the eyes of the law) and a staunch supporter of the Crown, who hated the United Irishmen and their cause, and worried what would happen to her should their rebellion succeed. A very brave woman, she refused to follow the example of her contemporaries in converting, even though she was of the very clear conviction that it might cost her her life.

Assured by a Catholic priest that no massacre was intended (though as we have seen, slaughter on a smaller scale, village by village or town by town did occur; whether that was planned or just the result of frustrations, long-pent-up hatred and the euphoria of victory is uncertain) she nevertheless referred to the Catholics as "savages" and had full confidence in the power of the Protestant soldiers to defeat them. Perhaps naive in her arrogance, she refused to countenance rumours - which were true - of Orangemen killing and raping as they came; maybe this description would not or could not fit into her overall view of her countrymen as saviours and patriots. She wore, under duress and only to preserve her life, the Irish colours but trampled on them when she had a chance, tried to convince rebels to give up their struggle and submit to the authority of the Crown, but for all that, she made no move against the rebels, fuming instead in impotent anger as she waited to be delivered.

Mary Moore (1776 or 1777 - 1844)

But here was one woman who was a true patriot. Both she and her father were United Irishmen, and she would courier messages from Lord Edward Fitzgerald to other rebels by the ruse of pretending to be injured and having to go to the doctor, even going so far as have her arm bandaged up and her clothes bloody. When the rebellion failed, Lord Edward was staying with Mary, masquerading as her French tutor, and when news came to them that the house was to be raided she managed to move Lord Edward to the house of another trusted rebel, Francis Magan.

Well... not quite. Magan turned out to be yet another informer, and sold her out, pretending he knew nothing about it the next day when he called to ask why Lord Edward had not arrived. The previous night, as she had tried to move him to Magan's, they had been intercepted by Major Sirr (no, really) but His Lordship had legged it and Mary had him hidden at the house of another sympathiser. When their own house was raided later that day Mary ran to tell the rebels, who were meeting nearby, to be on their guard, and as she returned she was attacked by a British soldier, who cut her with his bayonet. He was shot by an Irish sniper for his troubles.

In the evening the house of Thomas Murphy was raided and Lord Edward taken prisoner. He died in June, succumbing in prison to the wounds he had sustained during his arrest. Mary's father was arrested the next month, imprisoned for a year and looked likely to be transported, until Mary bribed the prison doctor to rule he was insane, and he was released. Interviewed in 1842, Mary averred that Magan had to be the informer, as he was the only other one who knew where they had been going: even Lord Edward was kept in the dark. Mary died of an unspecified illness in 1844, remembered as a true Irish patriot.

Elizabeth  "Betsy" Gray ( c. 1778 - 1798)

Remembered in song and poem, little is actually known of the life of one of the true Irish heroines of the rebellion, but it is known that she was a Presbyterian, fought riding a horse alongside her brother and lover, holding the (or an) Irish flag, and was killed at the Battle of Ballynahinch shortly after the two men were cut down, pleading for the life of their sister with British soldiers (the hated Yeomen, who seem to equate to the Black-and-Tans of the early twentieth century) who had no intention of sparing her because she was a woman. Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps because it was not opportune for them to do so) they did not rape Betsy - who was said to be beautiful - but cut off her sword hand and then shot her through the head.

Later the wife of one of the "Yeos" was seen wearing her earrings and her green petticoat, which ostracised them from the Catholics in their divided community.

[Trollheart]

Red, White and... Green? The influence of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence on the Irish Rising

I noted elsewhere in this article that had Catholics been granted the same rights as Protestants in Ireland, there would have been little appetite for any sort of rebellion. Overall, Irish people didn't seem to have a problem with being ruled by an English king, just one who oppressed them on the grounds of their religion. So up until about now, the mid to late eighteenth century, I see no moves towards gaining independence for Ireland. But with the French Revolution seeming, on the face of it, so successful, and with the breaking away of the American colonies from the iron and unfair grip of the king, to say nothing of the Polish Constitution passed in 1791, it must have looked to the United Irishmen as if Ireland had a chance. England had been weakened by its war with America (both in manpower and, more importantly, in its reputation as one of the superpowers of the eighteenth century) and the French, initially at least, were fellow Catholics.

I'm sure it wasn't that glib or simple that the Irish just thought, sure why not, let's give it a go, but the time must have seemed opportune to press their cause. In other ways, it might have been the worst possible time. Fuming at his defeat in America, worried over the expanding reach of the new French Republic, which had just taken Rome and captured the Pope, King George III might have been in no mood to take shit from a load of piss-poor Catholics and assorted what he would have considered traitors. While it's unlikely he was spoiling for a fight, you could make the argument that he might have relished the chance to bolster back up his reputation, take out his frustration at being kicked out of America, and ready too to show the French they weren't going to have it all their own way, that Britain was still, despite what they might have heard, a force to be reckoned with.

Of course, I could equally be talking complete bollocks. I'm no historian and these conclusions or guesses are not based on anything other than my own reading of the situation, which may be way off. Maybe the Irish just decided they'd had enough with being ruled by kings and queens. They'd tried unsuccessfully for centuries to sponsor the rise of a Catholic monarch to the English throne, and even when their prayers were answered, he was still a bastard to them. So it's possible they said, Catholic or Protestant king? You know what? We'll have none of the above. And decided it was time to be their own masters.

His Majesty, of course, had other ideas on that score.


Land of Spies and Snitches: Turncoats and Traitors of the Rising

Not every Irishman was dedicated to the overthrow of British rule over Ireland, it would seem, and as in so many instances down through our history, there was a line of people willing to sell out their comrades for either amnesty, money or both; people who betrayed Ireland at a time when, had it not been for their cowardice and treachery, we might have had a chance of winning our independence, something we would now have to wait a further 150 years for.

According to Brendan O' Cathaoir, writing in The Irish Times in 2004, Irishmen were not the best at keeping secrets in the first place, and while there were plenty ready to sell them out, some of their own talk may have sealed the fate of many. The idea of a quiet Irishman in a pub - particularly a fired-up, oppressed, English-hating would-be rebel, is hard to imagine, if such a creature existed. So some of the secret plans of the United Irishmen were doubtless loudly proclaimed in drinking establishments, boasted of, used as threats and forecasts of things to come, and surely reached the ears of those who should not have heard of such things.

All of that notwithstanding though, let's look at some of the people who were instrumental in thwarting the first real attempt by Ireland to throw off her shackles and free her people.


Leonard McNally (1752 - 1820)

Probably not fair to call him a supergrass, as that referred more to a turncoat, someone captured for committing crime (usually of a paramilitary kind) and who turned informer for money. Supergrass was an expansion on the term grass, which has two proposed origins, one being that it comes from grasshopper, which is said to be Cockney rhyming slang for copper (though I've never heard of anyone using that term) and the other refers to the traditional snake in the grass, denoting a traitor. Whichever story is true, while McNally may not have been a supergrass he certainly was a grass, a spy who worked for the British government and betrayed his comrades in the United Irishmen.

A barrister by trade, McNally took it one step further, collaborating with the prosecution while ostensibly conducting the prisoner's defence, to ensure a conviction. It does appear though that he didn't join the United Irishmen intending to betray them (from all accounts and as far as I can gather) but was spooked by the betrayal of Reverend Jackson as he and Wolfe Tone discussed a French invasion of Ireland. He obviously found it profitable then to use his position in the organisation, of which he was a founder member, to pass secrets back to the British and ensure the coming rebellion failed. There's no record of his having been pressured or threatened to do this, so whether he had intended to become a spy or it just happened, he's still a bastard and his name reviled here in Ireland.

Seems he was never caught, either. His treachery (or patriotism I guess, depending on which side of the conflict you're on) only came to light after his death.


Edward John Newell (1771 - 1798)

Possibly the worst and most prolific informer who did more to turn in rebels during and after the rebellion, Newell started out of course as a member of the United Irishmen, though originally he had tried to hold down various jobs, the longest being as a painter and glazier, his naturally fractious nature leading to his parting with his employer after two years. He did spend nearly a year at sea, but in the eighteenth century that could be almost just one voyage, so it's no great indication that he took to the life of a sailor.

It's not clear whether he joined the United Irishmen in order to inform on them, whether he felt pushed into it by circumstances or whether he just changed loyalties, but he became an invaluable spy for Dublin Castle. His preferred method seemed to be to accompany a squad of soldiers through villages and towns (suitably disguised) and point out rebels, who would later be arrested. He boasted in his autobiography, rather provocatively titled The Life and Confessions of Newell, the Informer, that he had sent 227 men into the tender mercies of the British government, for which he says he was paid £2,000.

Unlike McNally though he did not survive the rebellion, being assassinated (it is said, and only expected too) by the United Irishmen as he made plans to escape by sea to America. Bones found on the beach at Ballyholme in Bangor, Co, Down in 1828 were said to be his, indicating he may have drowned - or more likely, been drowned or thrown into the sea there.

There were even female traitors and spies...


Bridget Dolan (1777 - )

Perhaps the quintessential Irish tomboy, Bridget mixed with boys and learned to ride, a skill which would stand her in good stead when it came to taking part in the rebellion, which she did, riding on raiding trips and possibly reconnaissance ones too. In the rebellion, women were used as couriers, nurses, to carry supplies and carry messages and information to the men. Bridget was different. At Kilballyowen she took part in the ambush of a military supply convoy, setting the baggage car on fire. She later turned traitor though, selling out her comrades to the English and bearing witness against them in their trials after the rebellion was crushed (what? I told you that already).

Samuel Turner (1765 - 1807)

Appropriately named indeed! With aliases such as "Richardson" and "Fumes" he betrayed the United Irishmen, having been captured as part of their executive just prior to the rising, and was paid afterwards a pension from the British government. He it was who passed the information to the British that Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor were meeting in Hamburg to secure support for the rebellion.  It's said he died in a duel in the Isle of Man. He is however another one whose treachery was never uncovered while he lived, and he enjoyed the reputation of an Irish patriot, even sharing the company of later freedom fighter Daniel O'Connell.

Francis Higgins

One of four editors of supposedly nationalist newspapers and journals which paid obeisance to Dublin Castle and in addition informed on the Irish rebels, Higgins ran the so-called Freeman's Journal, and was in fact a kind of handler or spymaster, controlling, among others, Francis Magan, who as we saw betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald. He was known as "the sham squire", due to his actions in securing a bride through the agency of forged documents which portrayed him falsely as a wealthy landowner, his wife fleeing in the wake of the discovery of his treachery, and her father taking an action against him which landed him in jail. After a further fraud returned him behind bars Higgins fell in with the owner of a pub and gambling den, Charles Reilly,  from whom he assumed ownership of both it and Reilly's wife until her death, after which he turned the pub into a brothel.

In perhaps an attempt to go a bit more legitimate (and in so doing increase his rather low standing in Irish society) Higgins next got into the clothing trade, then became a barrister and finally had a chance to buy a share in, and then buy outright the newspaper mentioned above, The Freeman's Journal. He made most of his profit from contracts received from the British government, and was happy to work for them, employing a network of spies which grew to a complement of seven at its height. In 1801 he received an annual pension from the government of £300 a year but died a year later.

Thomas Reynolds (1771 - )

Born a Catholic, he originally support the Catholic Convention of 1792, but later became more cautious and converted to Protestantism. He married a sister of Theobald Wolfe Tone's wife, and joined the United Irishmen, ironically at the invitation of the man he was to betray, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, becoming its treasurer and given the rank of colonel. According to his own statement, when he realised how violent the rebellion was to be, he turned against them and informed Dublin Castle where the ruling council known as the Directory (surely as a nod to the same assemblage in France) could be found, leading to their arrest.

Having retired to his castle in Kilkea, he was more than surprised, as a government agent, to find it attacked and destroyed by British forces. In his biography Life of Thomas Reynolds, 1839, his son recounts the destruction of the castle: "It has been my father's lot since then to witness the ravages of war in the peninsula, where Spanish, French, Portuguese and English, with their German auxiliaries, men trained to rapine, alternately plundered and devastated the country; but in all that disorder of which he was an eye-witness for six years, he has frequently assured me that he never saw such cold-blooded, wanton, useless destruction as was committed [by the King's troops] at Kilkea and the surrounding country."

After repeated attempts to kill him, he eventually sought the protection of Dublin Castle, declaring himself firmly on the side of the British, was given lodging there and gave evidence against his former comrades. He later left Ireland and went to Lisbon, Iceland and eventually died in Paris in 1836 at the age of 65.

[Trollheart]

Are you ready, Lord Edward? Uh-huh. Thomas? Yeah! Oliver? Okay.

Well all right, fellas.... LET'S GO!!!!


The Irish Rebellion, 1798

"England had its luckiest escape since the Spanish Armada" - Theobald Wolfe Tone, The Writing of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763-1798 Volume II: America, France and Bantry Bay: August 1795 to December 1796 (December 26 1796)

With the failure of the French invasion of 1796 and his own return to exile, Wolfe Tone attempted to persuade the French general, Napoleon Bonaparte (who had yet to rise to the throne of France as its emperor) to invade Ireland, but he really wasn't that interested. Napoleon, a product of the Revolution, cared little for the sectarian politics of Ireland and knew less about the country itself (though the idea of sticking it to England surely must have tickled him). Although born and baptised as a Catholic in Italy, he had no time for religion, other than using it to increase his power, and until the Concordat between France and Pope Pius VII in 1801 France technically had no state religion, Indeed, ten years after the signing Napoleon would invade Italy and take the pope hostage. In a chilling both reverse and future echo, French children at the time were taught to love not the Church but Napoleon (Henry VIII may not have gone quite this far but the implication was clear - that he was the Church and the Church was him, and Hitler of course ensured all members of the Nazi party swore a personal oath to him, not to Germany, though this wasn't exactly a religious one), and later emancipated all faiths during his reign.

Despite that fact that it had been a failed effort, when reports came to the British government of Wolfe Tone's approach to Napoleon it caused unease, and the rising tensions in Ireland only added to that, as magistrates in several counties were attacked. Ireland seemed to be heading for an uprising, and was not about to wait for French assistance that might not arrive. The Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Camden, was pressured to take action and arrest the leaders of the unrest, by hardline Irish MPs who had no idea what the strength of feeling was back in Ireland. Camden feared provoking the would-be rebels, but when it became clear the size of the force assembling he had no choice and moved to arrest some of the leaders. As expected and feared, this only whetted the appetite of the United Irishmen for rebellion, especially as their main leader had escaped.


Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763 - 1798)

Son of the first Duke of Leinster, Fitzgerald was a British Army officer who distinguished himself against the Americans in the War of Independence, but after spending time in France during the Revolution - where he publicly renounced his own title -  he became enamoured of the Irish cause for freedom. Elected to the parliament in 1790 he sided with Grattan's Patriot Party, and in 1796 travelled to Hamburg with Arthur O'Connor to try to open a dialogue with the French and gain their support for the planned uprising, much as Wolfe Tone was doing at the same time. The Duke of York warned his wife that Fitzgerald's plans were known to them, and he had better step back, but he ignored such advice, leading to the abortive attempt at invasion at the end of the year.

Fitzgerald was betrayed on multiple fronts, first by Samuel Turner, who advised London of his dealings in Hamburg, and later by Leonard McNally, treachery that led to his almost being captured, and finally by Francis Magan, which did lead to his being arrested. His fellow Protestants however were willing to save him, allow him to escape to England and avoid the fate of a traitor, (most likely to spare the Ascendancy's blushes at one of their own having thrown in his lot with the Irishmen) but Fitzgerald refused to abandon his comrades, and accordingly was taken, as related in the stories above of both McNallly and Mary Moore.

Although apparently he was entreated to go quietly, having been taken sick in bed (out of which he leaped  when he heard the soldiers at the door) he attacked the men who came to arrest him, and was only subdued when Major Sirr shot him in the shoulder. As his wound does not seem to have been treated during his incarceration it worsened and eventually he died of his wounds on June 4 1798, at the height of the rebellion.

After his death, his sister made this eulogy of her brother: "Irishmen, Countrymen, it is Edward FitzGerald's sister who addresses you: it is a woman but that woman is his sister: she would therefore die for you as he did. I don't mean to remind you of what he did for you. 'Twas no more than his duty. Without ambition he resigned every blessing this world could afford to be of use to you, to his Countrymen whom he loved better than himself, but in this he did no more than his duty; he was a Paddy and no more; he desired no other title than this."


Arthur O'Connor (1763 - 1852)
(Yes, another of history's little quirks: two major leaders of the rebellion, born in the same year)

Born into a family of divided loyalties, O'Connor, a Protestant, had five brothers, three of which shared his republican sentiments (fuelled, again, by the French Revolution) while the other two were fiercely Unionist. His sister, Anne, forbidden by the family to marry the Catholic man she loved, killed herself. A Member of Parliament from 1790, he joined the United Irishmen in 1796 and with Fitzgerald sought French support for an invasion of Ireland. He later served as a general in Napoleon's army, and retired to France, having been banished from Ireland.


Thomas Addis Emmet (1764 - 1827)

A lawyer by trade, Emmet joined the United Irishmen in 1795, becoming its secretary that year and being raised to the Executive two years later. Unlike Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who believed the rising should press on with or without them, Emmet favoured waiting for French aid  but was taken by the British around the same time as His Lordship. You'd have to believe one of the main reasons for the failure of the rising must have been a dearth of leaders and commanders; they all seem to have been arrested before the damn thing got going!

Emmet was imprisoned until 1801 when he was visited by his brother Robert, who also tried to get the French to invade, but his efforts too were futile. Thomas Emmet emigrated to the USA where he became a successful lawyer, eventually rising to the position of Attorney General for the state of New York.

Oliver Bond (1760 - 1798)

The son of a dissenting minister, Bond was born in Donegal and from early in his career added his voice to those loudly demanding parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and when this road was blocked by the intransigence of the British Crown, he joined the United Irishmen. In defiance of the House of Lords, he continued to promote Irish independence and opposition to a new war with revolutionary France in which England was engaging, and for his pains was imprisoned for six months. A member of the executive of the United Irishmen, meetings usually took place in his house and it was there that the famous declaration was made and signed by all members: "We will pay no attention to any measure which the Parliament of this kingdom may adopt, to divert the public mind from the grand object we have in view; as nothing short of the entire and complete regeneration of our country can satisfy us."

He was with the fourteen other members of the council when the house was raided on the morning of March 12 and taken prisoner. Four months later, with the rising over and put down, he was convicted and sentenced to hang, this sentence commuted through the intercession of the remaining members of the United Irishmen, but it was all in vain: he died in prison less than five weeks later.

William James McNeven (1763 - 1841)

A physician and chemist, he too was part of the Catholic Convention but unlike Thomas Reynolds he did not withdraw, taking the harder line and joining the United Irishmen and became a contemporary of Wolfe Tone, Fitzgerald and O'Connor, helping to lay the groundwork for the proposed French invasion of Ireland. When that, and the subsequent rebellion failed, he was taken with the other leaders and imprisoned, first in Ireland and later in Scotland. Released in 1802, he joined Wolfe Tone in Paris, fighting for the French, but seeing there was to be no possibility of an invasion he left to go to America, where he held many important academic posts and is affectionately known as "the father of American chemistry". He died in 1841 in New York.



Samuel Neilson (1761 - 1803)

Originally a member of the Ulster Volunteers, it seems the idea behind the United Irishmen came from Neilson, who suggested it to Henry Joy McCracken, and so he is seen as one of the founders. Though the newspaper he launched, the mouthpiece of the organisation, the Northern Star, took all his money and made him a target for libel (for which he was imprisoned twice) he did not give up and pressed for rebellion once released from prison. He was not on the side of those who wished to wait for the French to step into the fray, and was one of only two (the other being Lord Edward) who avoided arrest the morning Thomas Reynolds turned the leadership in.

Deciding he couldn't do it on his own, Neilson set out to spring Lord Edward but unfortunately his time at Newgate told against him, as he was recognised by one of the jailer as he cased the joint, dragged in and imprisoned himself. After sharing the same fate as McNevin in the wake of the failure of the rising - imprisoned in Kilmainham and then Scotland - he made his way to the Netherlands but then also followed in  McNevin's footsteps to the USA, where he died of yellow fever in 1803.


Henry Joy McCracken (1767 - 1798)

Founder member of the United Irishmen, we've already heard about the efforts of his sister Mary Ann during the rebellion, and that of six children they were the only two to have Irish/Catholic sympathies. Born into a relatively wealthy Presbyterian family (his father was a shipowner and the family made their fortune in linen, also founding the Belfast News Letter, which is still in publication today) he worked with Presbyterian tenant farmers, tradesmen and labourers, and carried messages and information between Belfast and Dublin. Arrested in 1796 he was freed a year later due to serious illness.

He attempted to lead a rising in the north, but ran into apathy, fear and resistance, and a dogged determination not to go ahead without French support. His attempt to seize Antrim Town with a force of 4,000 - 6,000 men failed miserably and he went on the run with about fifty other survivors, but was captured at Carrickfergus as he waited to board a ship, and incarcerated in the jail there. Refusing to turn in his comrades he was hanged on July 17 1798, his body was released into the care of his sister Mary Ann. His last words were that he had done his duty. Perhaps the best eulogy to him was written years later by his friend James "Jemmy" Hope, in his memoir, United Irishman: The Autobiography of James Hope:  "When all our leaders deserted us, Henry Joy McCracken stood alone faithful to the last. He led the forlorn hope of the cause ..."

[Trollheart]

Thomas Palliser Russell (1767 - 1803)
(Yep, here we go again: born in the same year as McCracken, though he outlived him by a few years)

Another founding member of the United Irishmen, Russell was an Anglican and actually spent time in the British Army in India when younger, distinguishing himself by rescuing his commanding officer, but a meeting with Wolfe Tone (who described it as "the most fortunate of my life") led to the setting up of the United Irishmen, and after spending some time as a magistrate in Dungannon, appalled by the attitudes against Catholics, he resigned and committed himself to the cause for Irish independence and Catholic emancipation. He was no admirer of Henry Grattan, believing him weak and ineffectual, and denouncing him as "declaiming, and grinning, and chattering at the abuses of that ministry, which but for him would not now exist".

In June 1795 he was among the gathering at Cave Hill where, prior to Wolfe Tone's enforced exile, the United Irishmen made their pledge to the cause of Irish freedom, and the next year published A Letter to the People of Ireland, in which he took to task the inequalities of class in Ireland, the greedy aristocracy, and the urgent need for change in the country. He believed in a fairer, more equal government and the rights of the ordinary man and woman - he was a great supporter of suffrage for women - and was so opposed to slavery that he would refuse to even take sugar until the practice of slavery was abolished in the West Indies. He travelled widely throughout the North, recruiting for the United Irishmen, and became known to the government and their spies both there and back in Dublin.

Arrested in September of 1796 while in Belfast, he was in prison when the rising took place (and failed) and having served four years, when released he plotted with Robert Emmet, younger brother of Thomas, the details of a further rising, which also failed. Almost seven years to the day, he was again captured after the failure of the second rebellion, but this time there would be no escape for him. As he listened to the verdict being read against him for the crime of high treason, he expressed surprise "to see gentlemen on the jury (looking at the grand jury box) who had often expressed and advocated political opinions similar to those on which he acted, and for which he had forfeited his life, for the sentiments publicly delivered by them, had assisted to influence his conduct". Found guilty, he was hanged and beheaded.


James "Jemmy" Hope (1764 - 1847)

A Presbyterian, Hope was greatly influenced by the Hearts of Steel while living in Antrim, and joined the Volunteers, where he met both Henry Joy McCracken and Samuel Neilson. He lamented the secret nature of the United Irishmen, even though he later joined them, believing that the organisation should be upfront and overt about its opposition to the ruling government, prophesying that "oaths will never bind rogues". Of course he was right, as we've seen from the long list of traitors above. Nevertheless he was elected to the executive in Ulster and organised the northern branch of the society, counting only Thomas Emmet, Thomas Russell, Neilson and McCracken as those who truly understood the causes of social disorder and conflict. He said of Belfast that it relied on a system built on three types: those whose industry produced the necessaries of life, those who circulated them, and those whose subsistence depended on fictitious claims and capital, and lived and acted as if men and cattle were created solely for their use and benefit.

In the spring of 1796 Neilson sent him south to organise the workers in Dublin, which he did, returning to Ulster to whip up support for the coming rising. In one week he travelled 700 miles, a hell of a distance in those times of non-mechanised transport and poor roads. During the Armagh Disturbances he attempted to reconcile the Peep o' Day Boys with the Defenders, but when the rising came he fought well, later refusing amnesty as he believed to have done so would have been "not only a recantation of one's principles but a tacit acquiescence in the justice of the punishment which had been inflicted on thousands of my unfortunate associates".

He again answered the call in 1803, when Robert Emmet tried another rising, which was equally brutally put down, and was one of the few to survive not only the 1798 rising but also the 1803 one, dying at the age of 83 in Belfast in 1847.

Thomas McCabe (1739 - 1820)

An industrialist and rabid abolitionist, McCabe was born a Presbyterian in Belfast and vehemently opposed the setting up of a Belfast-based slave trading company, thundering "May God eternally damn the soul of the man who subscribes the first guinea!" He also prevented  a slave-owner setting up his shipping business in the city. Wolfe Tone was impressed, and named him "the Irish Slave". Having read the man's pamphlet Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, McCabe invited Wolfe Tone to Belfast, where he set up the northern branch of the United Irishmen.

Though he was too old to fight in the rising, at 59 years old, the meeting to attack Antrim was held in Thomas's house, and his son, William, acted as the bodyguard for Lord Edward Fitzgerald before the rebel peer was arrested, later escaping to France. Having taken no provable active part in the rebellion, Thomas was not arrested and he died at age 80. Two of his five children were named after rebel leaders, Henry Joy McCabe and Robert Emmet McCabe.

William Putnam McCabe (1776 - 1821)

Third son of Thomas, he joined the United Irishmen and helped Jemmy Hope rally support for the coming rebellion. He was a master of disguise, at one point fooling a judge into believing he was a British Army officer and releasing convicted Defenders into his custody. This talent for disguise came in handy when, with Lord Edward Fitzgerald when he was arrested, he was able to mimic a Scottish accent and plead innocence, thus being set free. He went on to fight in Kildare and Mayo, before fleeing the country in the wake of the failure of the rising. First he settled in Wales (where he married) and later France, where he established a cotton mill which served as a gathering place for Irish rebels preparing for Robert Emmet's 1803 rising.

With the failure of this rebellion too, and the decisive victory by Nelson at Trafalgar ending any hope of French help, McCabe accepted that there would be no more risings and sued for clemency with the British government. He was allowed entry to England and Scotland, but not his homeland. His end is a little pathetic, as it all seems to hinge on payment of a debt to, of all people, Arthur O'Connor. In an attempt to service this debt, McCabe returned to Ireland - illegally - and was seized and re-deported, this time to Portugal. He tried again, this time he was arrested and imprisoned, which weakened his health. Commenting on the excuse the Irishman pled for breaking his banishment, the Home Secretary remarked '"It might be true that Mr McCabe never went to any part of England or Ireland except upon business of his own; but it was very extraordinary that, in whatever part of the king's dominions his own business brought him, some public disturbance was sure to take place".

Whether McCabe actually came back to Ireland to try to get his money back from O'Connor, or whether it was subterfuge, cover for other, more rebellious purposes, was never proven. William Putnam McCabe died in Paris, one year after his father's passing, half his age.

[Trollheart]

Ulster Rises First: Sectarian Slaughter and the Dragooning of Ulster

While the British leadership in Dublin had feared declaring martial law initially, the commander of the forces in Ulster had no such problem.

General Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake (1744 - 1808)

Originally Governor of Limerick, Lake was promoted to command of the forces in Ulster, where he set about brutally dealing with the nascent rising there. He believed in his own maxim - "Nothing but terror will keep them in order" - and made good on his boast, ordering that anyone not in the service of the Crown relinquish any weapons they had, and had the leadership of the Belfast United Irishmen arrested and executed. He let loose the feared and hated Yeomanry - the "Yeos" - who burned houses, raped and tortured, flogged and hanged people, often without trial, or without evidence at a trial. Only Catholic and other dissenters were targeted, and some of the Yeos were in fact of the Orange Order.

His savagery knew no bounds, and was "untroubled by legal restraints or by his troops' actions" as he essentially harrowed the north, in a wave of violence and repression which became known to history as "the dragooning of Ulster". One particular punishment his men used was called "pitch-capping", a process by which a thick piece of paper soaked in pitch (tar) was stuck to someone's forehead and set alight. They also practiced "shearing", in which a victim's earlobes were cut off, for some reason.

General Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was appointed to command of Ireland, tried to restore order, horrified at the butchery his predecessor had wrought on the country, but found himself blocked by Dublin Castle, who were still shaken by the almost-invasion by France which had only been prevented due to the Irish weather, and they gave their tacit approval and endorsement to Lake's inhuman methods. Abercromby, disgusted, returned to England, leaving Lake to it. Rather ironically, and extremely unfortunately for the Irish, Lake was chosen as his replacement. He now had complete control over the island, and lost no time in bringing his barbaric methods of suppression south.

Critics warned that his brutal treatment of the Irish would force their hand into rebellion, not stay it. They were right.

[Trollheart]

Éirí Amach! The 1798 Irish Rebellion: Rise up fellow Irishmen!

We've seen, mostly through the stories of the lives of the men and women who led or were influential in the coming rebellion, how things came to a head, and with the imposition of martial law on Ireland in March, following the arrest of most of the leadership of the United Irishmen, the rising began. It was of course doomed from the start. Much has been made of the inexperience and even the courage of some of the officers leading regiments, and while Ireland had never had as such any sort of proper army and still suffered from internal divisions within the society - some, like Emmet and McNevin wishing to wait for the faint hope of French help - the British had been putting down rebellions and uprisings for centuries. They were superbly trained for it, had an innate dislike of the Catholic Irish, and spared no effort to brutally suppress what they saw as treason against their monarch.

As in so much of history, Ireland was fucked from the beginning.

On the face of it, for an Irish rising the plan was not too bad. It was, as usual, scumbag traitors who ballsed the whole thing up. The original idea was to, unsurprisingly, take Dublin and hold it, with the counties around rising in support and thereby blocking any chance of the capital being relieved from outside. In one way, it made sense: go for the centre of power right away and essentially decapitate the snake. Osama had the same idea, only he nearly succeeded whereas the Irish were betrayed. And the one major flaw with the plan was that if you attack the centre of power and fail to take it, you're then facing the might of the enemy, on his "home" turf, as it were, like trying to take a castle and finding yourself surrounded by its defenders. Dublin hit back hard at the rebels, sending overwhelming forces to the intended assembly points, arresting the leaders before they even had a chance to lead, and putting the fear of God into the Irish, so that those who could quickly dispersed, even throwing their weapons in the rivers so as not to be arrested.

In essence, the rising was over before it got a chance to start.

Or was it?

Dublin rose as planned, and fighting was fierce, spreading quickly throughout Leinster, with the heaviest fighting (and losses) taking place in Kildare, Meath and Carlow. One of the major turning points of the short-lived rising though was southeast of Dublin, in the county of Wexford. For whatever reason, this smaller county had not been seen as significant by the British, and so they were more than surprised when not only did it rise, but produced the most successful battles of the rebellion, one of which has gone down in Irish folklore.

After the capture and torture of Anthony Perry, a senior United Irishman, other leaders were arrested and executed. With this news, and the intelligence of further atrocities committed in nearby Wicklow, the United Irishmen attacked, their first major engagement something less than a battle, as forty rebels faced twenty militia at the village of The Harrow, killing their commanding officer and putting the rest to flight. The official report:

"On arrival in Ferns, Lieut. Smith and a party was ordered towards Scarawalsh, where the murders were committed, to see if this information was true, and Lieut. Bookey with another Party rode towards the Harrow, where he met a large party of Insurgents armed with Pikes and some Arms. The Lieut. rode before the Party, and ordered the rebels to surrender, and deliver up their Arms, on which they discharged a volley at the Party, accompanied with a shower of stones, some of which brought Lieut. Bookey from his horse, as also John Donovan, a private in the Corps. The party after firing a few shots, finding themselves overpowered by the Rebels, retreated to Ferns, where they remained 'till day break, melancholy spectators of the devastation committed by the Rebels. The information of the Murders at Scarawalsh found to be true."

The next major engagement was at Oulart Hill, where this time the odds were very firmly again on the side of the Irish, but much more so: about 110 militia faced over 4,000 angry Irishmen. There could only be one outcome. Finding the massive force of their enemy occupying the high ground and, perhaps proving the English had learned little since the days of Andrew Moray and William Wallace, they advanced to meet them and were cut down almost to the last man. News of the great victory spread throughout the county, and soon rebel forces controlled Enniscorthy, Gorey and Wexford Town itself. Finding his troops penned in at Wexford, the commander of the fort at Duncannon, General Fawcett, led 200 men to bolster the garrison there. Heavy artillery was to follow.

Duped into thinking the road ahead was safe, the slower force bringing the big guns was attacked in an ambush at the Three Rocks, in Forth Mountain, and all but wiped out. Their guns were seized, now in the hands of the rebels, and the survivors left to rendezvous with Fawcett, who realised his guns were now likely to be used against him, and headed back to the fort, leaving Wexford's commander, General Maxwell, to come out hunting for him, and also run into an ambush from which he barely escaped. Finally realising how desperate his situation had become, Maxwell sued for peace while in reality using the sending of the envoys as a chance to have his men slip away quietly, and like true English bastards they took thier revenge on the locals, burning, raping and murdering as they made their way to Duncannon.

However, the rebels had achieved an astonishing victory, much more than those in the capital had managed, and the county of Wexford was almost entirely in rebel hands.

Firmly established now, the Irish set up a French-inspired Committee of Public Safety, and divided their forces, half to head to Dublin and half to New Ross. The latter encountered stiff resistance and were soundly defeated at the Battle of New Ross, despite outnumbering the English about five to one. But they had cannon, and the Irish were mostly just armed with pikes, not to mention that the attack had been anticipated and prepared for, the defences around the city strengthened and ready to withstand any attack. Despite the attempts of the Irish leader, Bagenal Harvey, to negotiate the town's surrender, his emissary was shot down under a flag of truce, and the enraged Irish charged. Perhaps this was intended, a ruse to make them lose their heads and throw caution to the wind. If so, it worked.

In true Irish fashion, the rebels drove a herd of cattle through the gates, and when the British cavalry charged they were driven back. Fierce and savage street-fighting ensued, in which the rebels took heavy losses but managed to secure most of the town. Unfortunately, their lack of ammunition proved their undoing, and when reinforcements arrived they had nothing to face them with other than pikes. After a pitched battle they were finally driven out of New Ross and the British re-assumed control of it.

And then the massacres began.

I'm of course Irish, so will generally side with my historic countrymen, and lord knows the English had a reputation, well deserved, for brutality and inhuman treatment of prisoners, but it would be unfair and revisionist to ignore the part played by the Irish in the slaughter that followed. I'm not going to attempt to excuse or explain it, as I don't think there's every any excuse for what is without question cold-blooded murder (well, hot-blooded, but you know what I mean). I think the belief that one side is always a) right and b) honourable in any war or conflict is a fallacy; we all have it in us to be brutal, or to quote Nick Cave, people ain't no good. Perhaps to take that further, the wisdom of those merry minstrels, Slipknot, might suffice: people=shit. Everyone likes to think they would never do that, never could do that, but for every Nazi prisoner tortured or every American soldier mistreated by the Japanese you can bet there are equal atrocities committed on the other side. Nobody is immune to the madness of war, and good guys do not necessarily wear white, or indeed, black.

Or in this case, green.


In the town of New Ross, days of murder ensued, with both captured and trapped rebels and ordinary citizens - some of whom were Protestant - killed. Many burned alive. In fact it was said that more rebels were killed after the battle than during it.  In retaliation, Scullabogue happened.

A small farm and outbuilding outside of the town, Scullabogue had been used by the rebels as a staging post, and all those believed to be enemies or potential spies rounded up and locked in a barn there. These included women, and indeed children. When news of the defeat at New Ross was brought by those escaping the battle, passions were inflamed, and thoughts of revenge bubbled over into violence. Although the guards drove the rebels back twice (Irishmen fighting Irishmen, how odd :rolleyes:) they eventually bowed to pressure and allowed some of the prisoners to be shot, however that wasn't enough and the barn was torched, those trying to flee shot, stabbed, beaten to death or forced back into the flames. All but two of the prisoners perished. The event horrified General Thomas Cloney, who reported "The wretches who burned Scullabogue Barn did not at least profane the sacred name of justice by alleging that they were offering her a propitiatory sacrifice. The highly criminal and atrocious immolation of the victims at Scullabogue was, by no means, premeditated by the guard left in charge of the prisoners; it was excited and promoted by the cowardly ruffians who ran away from the Ross battle, and conveyed the intelligence (which was too true) that several wounded men had been burned in a house in Ross by the military."

With New Ross now again in English hands, General John Moore marched to meet the rebels who had escaped, with a force of about 1,500 men, intending to join up with the maniacal Lake and his contingent and trap the Irish in a pincer movement. Lake was delayed though and so Moore took on the rebel force at Foulkesmill by himself. Though facing nearly four times his own number, and though the Irish had the high ground, Moore rallied his men as they attempted to break in panic, and, reformed and resolute, they charged the Irish positions, raining cannon fire down on them and driving them off. This action served to reopen the road to Wexford, which had been in rebel hands since the city had fallen.

Spectacularly bad luck and poor planning attended the Battle of Bunclody, where rebels forced their way with captured artillery into the small garrison town, forcing the retreat of the British, leaving some few Yeos trapped there. As the Irish celebrated, the garrison turned back around and launched a surprise attack against the town, which the rebels had failed to fortify (probably too drunk) and thus they were driven out and the battle lost.

The Battle of Arklow followed, as the Irish tried to spread the rebellion beyond Wexford, but were repulsed by Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, though they did manage to destroy one of the British cannon with captured guns. Their exultation was short-lived though, as Needham's artillery replied forcefully, and the rebels fell back. Attempts to pursue and kill them largely failed though, and by the time they melted away into the night they were unaware that Needham's garrison were almost out of ammunition, as were they.

The end was looming for the rebels, but before they were defeated they again took loyalist prisoners, this time bringing them to Wexford Bridge where they were piked to death, and their bodies thrown into the river. A massive force of nearly 18,000 British soldiers poured into Wexford under the command of the dreaded General Lake, and the United Irishmen gathered to meet them and make their last stand at Vinegar Hill. It was indeed to leave a sour taste in Irish mouths, as it was the turning point, and the end, of the rebellion in Wexford.

With few firearms and most only bearing pikes, and with women and children sheltering with them, the Irishmen had no chance against the well-drilled, efficient and deadly British Army, furnished with all the latest weapons and the know-how to use them, as well as artillery which could bombard the Irish from a distance. Each time they were hit the Irish would retreat into an ever-tightening circle as the British moved their artillery closer and continued to shell them. Things were desperate. Meanwhile, in Enniscorthy, just down the road, the defenders were doing much better, pushing back General Johnson's light infantry division and holding the town. However when Johnson brought in heavy cavalry they could not stand, and were eventually driven out, though they managed to hold the strategically important Slaney Bridge.

As the rebels on Vinegar Hill were routed, more atrocities ensued, wounded being burned to death, women raped, the usual horror brought about by the victors in any battle if they're fired up enough and there's sufficient hatred for the enemy. Driven out of Wexford, the survivors spread beyond the county to carry on what remained of the rising in guerilla raids.

[Trollheart]

And over the border...

Although Ulster's fighting capabilities had been hobbled, even decapitated by Lake's marauding forces prior to the start of the rising, Henry Joy McCracken and Jemmy Hope remained at large and Antrim, focus of all the unrest even when the majority of the country had been at peace, exploded as a centre of the rebellion. Having taken control of the United Irishmen as their Ulster leaders dithered, waiting for help from France, McCracken led the rising, intending to take the government outposts in the county and then move on Antrim Town itself. Then, using artillery captured from Antrim Town, he would lead the rebels in a march to Belfast, in conjunction with the rebels from County Down.

Things went to plan initially, with Larne, Ballymena, Portadown and Randalstown all captured, but on the march to Antrim Town old enmities resurfaced between the Presbyterians and the Catholic Defenders, and many deserted, leaving McCracken with a much smaller force than he had envisaged taking the town with. The resultant delay gave the garrison time to request reinforcements from Belfast, and though again they were outnumbered (only about 200) they also possessed the artillery which eventually proved the rebels' undoing. Overall they did quite well, and were pushing the British back, but the arrival of a barrage of shells from the newly-arrived reinforcements from Belfast took them by surprise and demoralised them, causing many more to desert and flee. In the face of now overwhelming odds, McCracken and Hope had no choice but to follow them.

In County Down, meanwhile, a force of 1,000 rebels attacked the house of the McKee family, known to be British informers and sympathisers, burned the place to the ground and killed everyone. In response the British sent a somewhat inadequate force of about 300 men to meet them, straight into an ambush. Rather interestingly, where the rudimentary weapons of the rebels had proved a hindrance to them in previous battles, at the Battle of Saintfield, as this skirmish was known, the British (at least, these ones) seemed unfamiliar with the pike, and were not trained to fight against such weapons, being more comfortable shooting muskets and firing artillery, and using swords. Though the artillery was used, to decent effect, all it managed to do was buy the British time to escape.

The next battle though would be a real one, and crucial.


The Battle of Ballynahinch was doomed from the outset. Commanded by a man who had no military training at all, Henry Munro, who had only taken over control of the rebels when their true leader was arrested, and who refused to attack under cover of night because he believed it dishonourable (!), the United Irishmen were pounded into submission by British artillery - those who didn't slink off at the naivete of their commander, that is. The next morning, Munro's reticence proved fatal as the British attacked again, this time driving the Irish into full retreat, which they happily turned into a slaughter.

Betsy Gray, of whom we have spoken already, was killed at the Battle of Ballynahinch, and Munro, having trusted - and paid - a local farmer to hide him, was betrayed and then for good effect hanged outside his own house.

For the first and only time in Irish history Catholics and other dissenters had banded together against a common enemy, but the failure of the rebellion, coupled with lingering distrust on both sides which could not be banished, and fanned by the atrocities committed on both sides, meant it would be the last. From here on, Catholics would ply their own path against the repressive British Protestant government, and would receive no further help from Presbyterians or other dissenters.

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, UNION, After several unsuccessful attempts, behold at last Frenchmen arrived amongst you... Union, Liberty, the Irish Republic! Such is our shout. Let us march. Our hearts are devoted to you; our glory is in your happiness. - General Jean Humbert, August 1978, on landing in Killala.

As Lake was replaced by Lord Cornwallis as commander of Ireland, the long-awaited French help finally arrived. Way too late. Landing at Killala Bay in County Mayo, General Humbert, who had also commanded the ill-fated 1796 attempt at landing in Bantry Bay, brought 3,000 men ashore and was met by Lake, who engaged them at the Battle of Castlebar (not surprisingly, at Castlebar). News of the French landing had given hope to the mostly-beaten United Irishmen, and those who could made their way to Mayo to support the invasion, hoping for a resurgence of the crushed rising. As Humbert and his Irish allies marched towards the town of Castlebar, the British, believing the invaders had only one way to approach, trained their guns on the main Ballina Road. But locals had advised Humbert of an alternative route, and though the British believed it impassable, the rebel force negotiated it and took them by surprise with their guns facing the other way.

The British forces, many of them Yeomanry, used to fighting ill-disciplined and untrained Irish rebels with little idea of tactics or strategy, were outmanoeuvred and unnerved by the French, who knew how to fight a campaign and how to take a town. When Humbert launched a ferocious bayonet charge the gunners panicked and ran, some of the British even defecting to the joint Irish/French side and fighting alongside them. The British are said to have run so fast and so far - although hardly even pursued - that the event became known in Ireland as "The Castlebar Races". Having thoroughly routed the foe, the Irish rebels declared the Republic of Connaught, a self-contained client state of the French Republic, but like the Republic of Wexford, it would not last long.

Twelve days, in fact. On September 8, a huge force of 10,000 under Cornwallis met Humbert at Ballinamuck (no, really) and this time the superior numbers told. Cornwallis had about 26,000 men to the combined Irish and French strength of just over 2,000, and having crossed the Shannon in the hopes of joining up with rumoured pockets of resistance having sprung up again in Westmeath and Longford - these minor rebellions quickly crushed - Humbert decided to make his stand at Ballinamuck. Lake was closing in behind him, and he knew he was in a desperate situation.

Though there was a force of 3,000 waiting at sea to land once he had achieved his objective, Humbert had come to Ireland on the strength of intelligence that said the country was in revolt, and that the Irish would join him in freeing the country. By the time he had arrived of course, the rising was all but over, and the Irish defeated and on the run, so he was more or less fighting a rearguard action instead of spearheading an invasion. Realising his cause was now doomed, Humbert surrendered after a short fight, and the proposed invasion by France of Ireland, like the Irish rising, was over.

[Trollheart]

Before I close out what has turned out to be a much longer article than expected, there is one further aspect of the 1798 rising I want to investigate. I think it may very well be a unique one.

Holy Warriors: Ireland's Rebel Battle Priests

I know English lords were often made bishops and archbishops and led armies, and of course the Pope and his various cardinals too, but more back in the early part of the millennium; however I have never, up to this, heard of bog (almost literally) standard priests not only fighting but leading men into battle, and yet when I look at the list of commanders of the rebels it's littered with Father this and Father that. So I'd like now to look at these, and see what led to such men of the cloth taking up arms and standing up for their country, actually fighting alongside the men of their flock rather than just praying for them. Most, of course, would also die in Ireland's cause for freedom.


Father John Murphy (1753 - 1798)

Perhaps the most famous of the "rebel priests", his name preserved in the old Irish ballad "Boolavogue", Fr. Murphy was a native of Ferns parish in Wexford, where almost all of the priests who took part in the rebellion would come from. Like all Catholic priests at the time, he was subject to the Penal Laws holding sway in Ireland, which forbade priests studying or being trained there, seminaries outlawed, and so he had completed his education in Spain.
Returning to Ireland in 1785 he was given the curacy of Kilcomuc, more usually known as Boolavogue, under the parish priesthood of Fr. Patrick Cogley. Fr. Murphy's family was already involved with the United Irishmen, two of his brothers being in the society, but his bishop, James Caulfield, was a supporter of the Crown and against the idea of rebellion. Nonetheless, Murphy preached from the pulpit to his congregation that they were "better to die courageously in the fields than be butchered in their houses." He was not exaggerating, as General Lake's Yeomen swept through Leinster, killing, raping and burning as they went.

As Catholics, and not just Catholics but the leaders of the religion, the priests had a double dilemma on their hands. First, the obvious one: a priest was expected to be peaceful and promote the cause of peace and brotherhood and harmony (though this is hard to do when the enemy is slaughtering and burning all around you, and seems determined to wipe you out) and not supposed to take part in any sort of armed conflict. Secondly, and perhaps more worryingly for them, the Irish rebellion was founded on the notion, hope or promise of support from France. Since the Revolution, the leaders of France's new republic were staunchly anti-religion, especially anti-Catholic, so if the French were to invade and "save" Ireland, where would the role of the priests be? Might not even those who had fought for the very freedom they would now have attained find themselves exiled, or worse - guests of Madame la Guillotine?

Nevertheless, they fought, and while he wavered between loyalty, both to his bishop and the English king, news of the massacre at Dunlavin and the insistence of his parishioners that he protect them and fight for Ireland made Fr. Murphy's mind up, and he led an attack at the Harrow, killing two British officers and routing the small force. This led to the burning of many houses in his parish, including his own church at Boolavogue. Murphy's small victory and subsequent success at Oulart Hill are immortalised in the ballad of the same name:

Then Father Murphy, from old Kilcormack,
Spurred up the rocks with a warning cry;
"Arm! Arm!" he cried, "For I've come to lead you,
For Ireland's freedom we fight or die."
He led us on against the coming soldiers,
And the cowardly Yeomen we put to flight;
'Twas at the Harrow the boys of Wexford
Showed Booky's Regiment how men could fight."

(Booky refers to Lieutenant Thomas Bookey, one of the two officers of the Camolin Cavalry killed at The Harrow)

Fr. Murphy's defeat and death at Vinegar Hill is also commemorated in the song.
 
"At Vinegar Hill, o'er the pleasant Slaney,
Our heroes vainly stood back to back,
And the Yeos at Tullow took Father Murphy
And burned his body upon the rack.
God grant you glory, brave Father Murphy
And open heaven to all your men;
The cause that called you may call tomorro
In another fight for the Green again."

Murphy did indeed win a major victory at Oulart Hill, as already described, all but wiping out Lieutenant Foote's command. As they marched to take Enniscorthy, Murphy's regiment was reinforced by one led by another priest, and indeed another Murphy, Father Michael. They forced the retreat of the garrison there, and marched in triumph on to Wexford town, which they also took, but as we have seen, were unable to keep, Here they were joined by another priest, Father Mogue Kearns as they later marched to Vinegar Hill, preparatory to attacking Gorey. This was, of course, to be their last stand.

On the run from the defeat at Vinegar Hill and the later Battle of Kilcumey Hill, Fr. Murphy and his friend and bodyguard James Gallagher were captured by British forces and taken to Tullow in County Carlow, where they were tried, found guilty of treason and executed. Their deaths were not quick and they were not merciful. Both men were stripped, flogged, half-hanged several times (Gallagher first, as he was exhorted to identify the priest with whom he travelled, but refused, dying on the gallows) and Father Murphy, as both a Catholic priest and therefore mortal enemy of the British, and a rebel, was decapitated after hanging, his body put into a barrel of tar and burned and his head stuck on a spike.
 
Father Philip Roche

Another priest from the Boolavogue parish, his brother was involved in the attack at The Harrow, and seems to have been less (or more) than the traditional image of a priest; big and burly, given to great tempers and able to fight with ferocity, and given to drinking, he seems - despite his vocation - to have been the kind of man who would respond quickly and eagerly to the call to defend Ireland, and indeed it appears that he joined the United Irishmen before the rebellion began, again much to the disgust and disapproval of his bishop. He seems to have had the equivalent of a problem holding down a job, being moved from Gorey to Bantry, finally ending up in Poulpeasty in Wexford. As soon as the rising began he deserted his post and joined in the fighting.

He took part in the battle for Enniscorthy and was at Vinegar Hill, and secured safe passage for one "Mrs. M", declaring that her house and that of her neighbour were not to be touched, by his order. He used the power of faith to motivate his troops, giving them religious scapulars and telling the men that they would be under God's protection by wearing them. He was given command of the rebels after the Battle of New Ross when Bagenal Harvey, the previous commander, resigned, apparently in disgust at the atrocities perpetrated by rebels at Scullabogue. Father Roche was given the rank of general. This did not go down well with the Protestants who had joined the rebels, unsurprisingly.

Father (now General) Roche sent word to the parish of Horeswood that if their parish priest there, one Father James Doyle, did not join them then Roche's forces would attack the town. He appears to have been something of an uncompromising leader, and you have to wonder if he had missed his calling. Doyle had no choice but to comply, but kept the letter which he used in his trial later to attain acquittal for himself and his men. Roche, meanwhile, despite the misgivings of Thomas Clooney and other Protestants in the ranks, proved to be more than an able commander, proved in fact to be something of a military genius, holding off the British forces by a kind of Beau Geste subterfuge while his men escaped, and later, after the defeat at Vinegar Hill, as the other leaders considered suing for terms to surrender Wexford Town, Roche would have no part of it.

His error though was to believe that General Lake would afford him favourable terms, or deal with him at all, and while Father John Murphy declared they should fight to the last - and every man agreed and stood with him - Roche travelled alone to Wexford. He was quickly disabused of his notions of a noble surrender and thoroughly abused as, entering the town he was recognised and pulled from his horse, kicked and beaten, dragged through the streets and finally imprisoned. When visited there by General Sir John Moore, he advised his adversary that his estimate of the numbers of the rebels was way off - Moore estimated about 5,000 to 6,000 but Roche told him there was three times that number, which there were.

Roche gained for himself in his lifetime as a rebel a reputation not only for battle cunning and planning but for mercy, often saving Protestants from the more vocal and violent factions of his own forces. This unfortunately did him no good when, after being tried and found guilty (duh) of treason, he, along with nine other rebels, was hanged at, and from, Wexford Bridge.

A strange dilemma shows itself in the above clemency shown by Father Roche, illustrated best in the example of the brothers Robinson who, taken by the rebels from their parish of Kilgeny for no other reason than that they were Protestants, and also both quite old and therefore both harmless and mostly unable to defend themselves, were rescued by Roche and given letters guaranteeing their safety. Sent home with these, they were later accused of collusion and treachery by the British for having accepted the pardon of the rebel general. Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

[Trollheart]

Father Michael Murphy (1767 - 1798)

So far as I can make out, he was no relation to the previous Father John Murphy (although he had a brother named John) - Murphy has always been a very common name in Ireland, perhaps as common as Smith in England. Sent to complete his education in Bordeaux in France, Father Michael was trapped when the French Revolution broke out, and imprisoned until he and his fellow students could be repatriated to Ireland, all Catholic priests under an order of expulsion by the new republican government. Perhaps oddly, though treated with disdain by the French (and the president of his college having been guillotined) Murphy nevertheless espoused the revolutionary ideas of his erstwhile captors on his return to Ireland, and while lodging in a house owned by a member of the United Irishmen, became enamoured of their cause and joined up himself.

Although he does not appear to have been present at the incident at The Harrow, he did meet up with Father John Murphy and the rest of the rebels that morning and marched with them to Oulart and then on to Gorey after their success there, leaving his namesake to head to Vinegar Hill. He later found that the house of his old landlord, John Kenny, had been burned, along with others in the village, by the Yeos, and Kenny himself shot. He encountered the forces of Colonel Walpole at Carraig Rua (Red Rock) and dealt them a terrific defeat, leading to the death of the colonel himself. After taking Gorey Town, Father Michael was among those who were - every one - opposed to Father Philip Roche's intention to seek surrender terms from Lake in Wexford Town. Well, we've read how that turned out, haven't we?

Father Murphy then launched an attack on Arklow, and was killed while leading the charge. After his forces had been utterly defeated, his body was thrown headless into a burning house, General Lord Norris remarking caustically that his body might as well go where his soul had already gone. His intact head and the remains of his body were later recovered by his sister and interred in the family plot.

Father Mogue Kearns (d. 1798)

One thing that seems common to all these "rebel priests" or "warrior priests" or "battle priests", or whatever you want to call them - and it's hardly surprising - is that they were all big, bluff strong men. Makes sense really: the kind of man, even priest, likely to take up arms in defence of his country was hardly going to be a local weed. Fighting men, strong men, men quick to anger and essentially it appears all men who could be described as "bears", but obviously intelligent too (stupid men did not make it through basic training in the Church), and with a strong sense of pride and loyalty to Ireland.

Kearns was also sent to France for his education and got caught up in the French Revolution - literally in his case. Attacked by supporters of Robespierre he was actually hanged from a lamppost, but the story goes that his body was so big, heavy and powerful that it actually bent the lamppost, making it sag towards the ground and so placing his feet back on the ground. When an Irish physician saw what had happened, he had him cut down and resuscitated.

So Mogue Kearns had already had a brush with death in the cause of a revolution, albeit on the wrong side of the conflict, before he returned to Ireland and joined the United Irishmen.

While serving as a curate in the parish of Balyna, he attempted to rouse the people and have them take to the field in defence of Ireland, but his parish priest dissuaded them, had Kearns dismissed and he returned to Wexford, where he took up residence in Enniscorthy. Another trait common among some, but not all, of the rebel priests, Mogue Kearns was a hard drinker and got into many fights. After Enniscorthy was captured by the rebels he sat on the committee alongside Fathers Philip Roche and John Murphy, presiding over some of the meetings. He was renowned for his bravery, going into battle often armed only with a heavy riding whip, however this hot-headedness and impulsive behaviour was to have tragic consequences for him.

During the Battle of Bunclody he rejected advice from one of his commanders, who believed they should send a detachment to secure the Carlow Road and so cut off a possible retreat by the garrison holding the town, sneering "Tell all those you have any control over to fear nothing as long as they see this whip in my hand!" As his subordinate had warned, the garrison, retreating from the attack, ran into another force coming to strengthen them, and the two then turned to face the surprised rebels, driving them out of the town. They lost over a hundred men in the rout, in addition to losing the town. Morale took a dive.

While Father John Murphy took his men to Vinegar Hill and eventual defeat, Kearns went to Enniscorthy, where, when the commander was wounded he had to take over, but receiving a severe arm wound was forced to withdraw, carried by his men as they made their way back towards Wexford. Left to recuperate at the house of a friend he returned three weeks later, though his arm had far from healed, leading a contingent of men. Saying he would rather die on his feet with a weapon in his hand than be taken cowering in a house, he rejoined the fight, and after taking part in many skirmishes he was apprehended in Edenderry and hanged.

Father Thomas Clinch

A man with rebellion in his bloodline, Father Thomas's grandfather had fought at the Battle of the Boyne, so the hatred of the English was strong there, as if their repression of Catholics had not been enough. Yet another boisterous drunkard, Father Thomas was pretty much a priest in name only, having been dismissed from his pastoral duties by the bishop after serving in several different towns. He joined the rising and, like many of the other priests who fought with the rebels, he had brothers in the United Irishmen too, though whether they were also priests I don't know. He certainly distinguished himself in battle, stories of his riding a large white horse and leading troops into battle common.

He too seemed to have some sympathy for Protestant civilians, and guaranteed safe harbour for Mrs. Heydon, who took refuge in the house of the postmaster of Enniscorthy, Henry Gill. She was the wife of the Reverend Heydon, the harmless Protestant vicar who was killed by rebels as already discussed, and the Catholics did not trust her, but his brother having  been a tenant of the late Reverend's wife, Father Thomas vouched for her and demanded she be treated kindly. He was another who died at Vinegar Hill, or slightly beyond it, having been keeping a rearguard action so as to secure the escape of as many of the routed rebels as possible.

He engaged in a duel with Lord Roden, commander of the troop known as the "Foxhunters". Roden had spotted his conspicuous white horse and his massive figure - both of which were hard to miss - and rode after him, receiving a wound in his neck but being saved by one of his own men who came up from behind and shot Father Thomas, who fell from his horse. His men carried him away but he died on the way to Enniscorthy.

Father John Redmond

His story was markedly different to his brother priests, in that the parish of which he was curate was overseen by a man who was generally seen as one of the most liberal of landlords, the Earl of Mount Norris, who was so tolerant of Catholics that he even dined with the priests, and assured the Lord Viceroy of Wexford's peaceful nature. Like the earl, Father John was completely at odds with the other rebel priests, even going so far as to refuse the sacrament of Holy Communion to anyone in the United Irishmen, or hear their Confession. Given that he lived under such an agreeable landlord, you can understand that. Again, unlike the other priests, whom we've seen were almost all rowdy, prone to fighting and fond of drink - and usually censured by the bishop - there was nothing but praise for Father John, a model priest.

So how did he become a rebel? Let's find out.

Universally despised by the other priests who had joined the rebellion, he was, due to his devotion to Mount Norris, seen as a loyalist, and was in fact called "the Orange Priest", surely the greatest slur you could aim at a Catholic priest (and not a very nice thing any Orangeman would like to hear either!) and he was constantly in fear of his life during the rising, seen as a traitor by his own people. When the house at Camolin Park was raided for weapons by the rebels, he pleaded with them not to destroy it, and managed to convince them to leave it standing. All for nothing though. When the earl heard word that Father Redmond had been present at the raid he concluded that the priest was in on it, and ordered him to report to him in Gorey to explain himself. When Redmond obeyed, he was seized as he entered the town, kicked and punched and dragged along the ground, and thrown in jail. He must have wished he had rebelled like all the other priests!

While he was languishing in prison, a troop of Yeos who had been in the defeat at Ballyellis rushed the jail, dragged him out, held a quick mock trial and sentenced him to be hanged as a traitor, which was carried out summarily. His one-time benefactor, Mount Norris, believing (without a shred of evidence, but who needed that?) that he faced a traitor, shot Redmond as he hung on the gibbet. Perhaps, in the aftermath of the rising, it might have seemed to the earl prudent to distance himself from these Catholics of whom he had once been such a friend, lest he be seen as a traitor himself.

[Trollheart]

Epilogue: One nation, indivisible, under an English God - The Act of Union

The rising of 1798 probably marks the only time Catholics and Protestants would join common cause; after its failure Protestants would look to not only the atrocities perpetrated by the "papists" (ignoring of course those carried out on their own side, and vice versa) and see the often treacherous behaviour of Catholics as proving they could not be trusted. From here on in, the word sectarian would be forever engraved into the long and bloody history of Ireland, culminating in the rather bland-sounding Troubles, which would last well into the second half of the twentieth century and ensure Ireland was, and remains to this day, deeply divided along lines of religion and belief.

In the wake of the Rebellion, and with support growing for Catholic emancipation, to say nothing of the renewed fear of further invasion from France, William Pitt, Prime Minister of Great Britain, decided that military suppression alone was never going to quell the tensions in Ireland, and to that effect he proposed the Act of Union, which would unite the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland, and merge the Irish Parliament with the British one. This measure met, not surprisingly, with stiff resistance from the Irish Parliament (almost all of whom were, after all, Protestants and had no interest in equal rights for Catholics and worried their own power would diminish) but a combination of bribes, coercion and promises allowed the Act to scrape through on a 158 - 115 vote when brought before the House again in 1800. On January 1 1801 it became law, and the Irish Parliament was abolished.

What this meant for Ireland we will see in the next chapter, but one thing was certain: while the cause of Irish independence may have been defeated it was not dead, and would rise again only a few years into the new century to threaten the British establishment again, even though it would take another century and more before we would finally be free. Before that, Ireland would be devastated by a harrowing famine that would rob her of the flower of her youth, either to death or emigration, an even greater divide would develop between north and south - a divide which would never really be healed - and, against all expectations, Irishmen would serve the king as the entire world burned under the threat of a new horror: not just a war, but a world war.

[Trollheart]

Chapter XI: Under the English Heel II:
Rising and Falling: Emancipation, Starvation and Emigration

Just a quick note, in case anyone wonders why the subtitle for this, and subsequent chapters? Well, up to now it's certainly been a case of Ireland having been under the English heel for over seven hundred years, but for all that, nominally we remained a free country, or at least a separate country. The first king to proclaim himself King of Ireland as well as England was Henry VIII, this claim ratified by the Crown of Ireland Act passed by the Irish Parliament in 1541, but prior to that the monarch had always been in control of the Lordship of Ireland. Even when incorporated as the Kingdom of Ireland, we had our own laws, our own Parliament, our own identity. From the start of the nineteenth century till well into the twentieth, we were part of the United Kingdom, subservient to the King or Queen of England, and so it must have felt like that boot was pressing down even harder on our necks. This, therefore, would be seen as the second, and closer phase of that oppression, thus the title.

Anyway, on we go. One of the things known now around the world which only came into being after the 1801 Act of Union was the recognised symbol of the British empire, the Union Jack (or to be more precise, Union Flag: it's technically only known as the Union Jack when flown at sea, though this seems to have been ignored or forgotten, or done away with altogether) as the crosses of England (St. George), Scotland (St. Andrew) and now Ireland (St. Patrick) were intermingled in the flag of the new United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland, usually known as just the United Kingdom. I would personally question why a red X was chosen as being representative of the Irish, as we have always been associated with the colour green, but then, the English were hardly going to have what would be seen as a Catholic nationalist symbol on their precious flag, now were they?

Under the provisions of the Act of Union, several major changes were instigated, the most far-reaching of course being the dissolution of the Irish Parliament. Whereas members previously reported to Dublin Castle, now they were summoned to Westminster to sit in the joint UK Parliament. As well as this, the Irish Army was absorbed into the British Army and the Church of Ireland was merged with the Church of England (though perhaps oddly, the Church of Scotland was allowed to remain as it was, perhaps because it was already a strongly Protestant nation).

The Prime Minister at the time, William Pitt the Younger, had managed to get the Act passed on the basis of, among other inducements, the promise of Catholic emancipation, where Catholics would be again allowed to sit in Parliament, but the king, George III, was against this, believing such a concession would violate the oath he had taken at his coronation, and so in protest at being blocked by the Crown Pitt had to resign. Therefore only months after he had pushed the Act through, Pitt was gone and a new Prime Minister led the government. The chances of Catholics being looked on fairly was lost.

And yet, even with this loss, Catholics in Ireland were broadly in favour of union. Seems odd today, but I guess when you remember that they had no say in the politics of their own country, that it was their "own" (Protestant) Parliament in Dublin which had levelled the cruel Penal Laws at them, that the whole institution of Dublin Castle was seen as corrupt and self-serving, and that joining with England might afford them some measure of royal protection, maybe not so odd. In the end, it mattered little, as it often does, to the ordinary man, who got oppressed just as much by the new government as he had by the old, and still had to struggle to make his living. There was no improvement in his working or living conditions, he still had basically no rights, and to quote Roger Daltrey, it really was a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

I personally find it odd to discover that many Protestants were against Union. I would have thought the idea of being joined to the land of their forefathers would have appealed, but no. It seems Protestants believed that London would go easier on Catholics than had Dublin, and they were right. Of course, their real fears were rooted in the need to give up their power; decisions that had been up to now made by the Protestant Parliament in Dublin would henceforth be made in London, leaving them with little actual say in the running of the country. One Protestant who was very much in favour of, and doggedly determined to realise the passing of the Act of Union was the Earl of Clare.


John Fitzgibbon, 1st Earl of Clare (1748 - 1802)

His father had been born a Catholic but like some Irishmen had taken the oath to the king and converted to Anglicanism, principally to be able to pursue a career as a lawyer (and presumably to assure his son of a decent life in society) and like many lawyers he scraped a living and barely got by. Like hell. He made a pile, as would his son, who was appointed Attorney General in 1783 and then Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, moving through the ranks of the peerage until he attained the earldom of Clare in 1795. A fierce rival of Henry Grattan, he utterly opposed any rights for Catholics and only supported the 1793 Irish Catholic Relief Act because as a member of the government he was expected to, and did not fancy going against the party line. However he strongly supported the Act of Union, essentially breaking with the hardline Protestants with whom he had been in line up to then, and made an impassioned speech almost a year before the Act was passed into law:

"I hope and feel as becomes a true Irishman, for the dignity and independence of my country, and therefore I would elevate her to her proper station, in the rank of civilised nations. I wish to advance her from the degraded post of mercenary province, to the proud station of an integral and governing member of the greatest empire in the world."

Fitzgibbons's contention was that without the Act of Union, Irish Catholics would rise up and overthrow their masters. Why this was believed I don't know, as he was speaking only a few short years after it had been quite clearly proven the Irish, while they might mostly have the stomach and heart for such a rebellion, had no real means of achieving it. Perhaps the Protestants, remembering the victories the United Irishmen had won, and the atrocities committed by them, or even thinking back to the time of Cromwell, looked at each other in fear and doubt and asked, what if? So a combination really of scaremongering (not hard to achieve with the dread spectre of 1798 hovering over them) and bullying, along with the old standard, enlightened self-interest, convinced the Protestants that union was the way to go.

It seems to have been Fitzgibbon who put the idea in the king's head that granting any sort of relief or concessions to Catholics would violate his oath. King George III was not known to be an astute or clever man - he did, after all, suffer mental illness later in his life - but once an idea was planted in his head he stuck to it, without questioning its merit. So it was with the purported breaking of his oath. He would not be convinced otherwise by Pitt, which led to the resignation of the Prime Minister and the passing of the Act without any concessions to Catholics.

In this respect it could probably argued that, were his name better known and recognised in history, the Earl of Clare might indeed have gone down in Irish history as a man deserving of almost as much hatred as Oliver Cromwell, being the one who almost single-handedly prevented the relaxation of laws against Catholics and allowed them to be pulled into union with Britain under circumstances they had not expected. In other words, he was the broker of the reneging on the promise of Catholic emancipation, even if it was the word of His Majesty that stopped it in its tracks. As we would say here, a real fucking cunt.

The Rising Redux - Ireland Tries Again

A mere two years after Ireland had been forcibly joined to England to form the United Kingdom, Irish nationalists were again trying to secure its freedom. No doubt seeing the failure of the 1798 rising as something to build on and improve rather than something to discourage them from further attempts, the Irish would again seek the aid of the French in their bid to overthrow their oppressors, and again this aid would fail to come through. Realising the fears of Protestants, and allowing eerie truth to ring in the stentorian warnings of John Fitzgibbon prior to unification, Catholic Irish freedom fighters would show the Ascendancy that they were not in any way giving up the struggle, and this would continue to be the case through the next two centuries. Ironically, freedom for Ireland would eventually be won not through force of arms but by negotiation and a sense of inevitability, with the backdrop of the horror of the war to end all wars giving new perspective, but it would still take over another hundred years.



Robert Emmet (1778 - 1803)

The architect of the first rising of the nineteenth century would be Robert Emmet, brother to Thomas, who had fought in the 1798 rebellion, and a contemporary of Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the martyrs of the rising. Robert and Thomas's family were Protestants, members of the Ascendancy, and very financially comfortable, their father the physician to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He though became interested in the cause of American independence, and from there that of Irish freedom, and his sons carried his beliefs into - eventually tragic but historical - action, both fighting for their country and against their religion and king. The founder of the United Irishmen, William Drennan, also visited the Emmet house, so it must have been seen as a hotbed of Catholic revolt.

With the defeat of the 1798 rising, and the exile of his elder brother, Robert and William Putnam McCabe set about re-establishing the United Irishmen, this time under a strictly military footing, whereas before it had been a secret political society. Mere months after the end of the rising McCabe set out for France, to try to convince Napoleon to come to the aid of the Irish against the English, and Emmet joined him there in 1802. However they chose their time badly. France had already given aid to Ireland in the abortive 1798 rising, to its cost, and Napoleon was busy with other matters, like the wars which came to bear his name. So he said "Non, merci" and sent the Irish on their way.

One thing Emmet and McCabe did here, which I haven't seen any reference to being attempted in the previous rising, was to reach out to English Jacobins, left-wing radicals who followed and espoused the principles of the French Revolution, and in particular the United Britons. It seems odd to me that the United Irishmen did not, as surely gaining support in the lair of the enemy would have helped their cause. And we know they travelled, to France anyway, in the hopes of securing allies there, so why not call in to see if they could rally the support of the United Britons? Were they around at that time?

Hmm. Quite strange. Seems they were formed around 1796 so should have been in some sort of shape for the rising, but maybe the rebels didn't want to appeal to Englishmen for help? Or maybe they didn't know of them. Whatever the reason, Robert Emmet and William McCabe did, and they tried to enlist their help. Unfortunately, as I've said before and will be chagrined but right to say again and again and again, Irish risings were always doomed. Robert Emmet's is a particular case of poor planning, cowardice, misunderstandings, bad timing and bad luck, and really, in another world it would have been quite funny. Almost.

The first problem Emmet and McCabe ran into was with their intended allies in the United Britons (sometimes also called United Englishmen). As usual, there was a traitor in the camp, this time a man called Thomas Wright, but what his role, if indeed any, in the thwarting of the rebellion was I have no idea, nor whether he communicated information to London about the United Britons. Either way though, the Englishmen were arrested and Edward Despard, who had travelled to make the alliance, executed. This afforded Emmet a much frostier reception when he arrived in 1803 to lay plans and talk strategy. It seemed his enemies were either dispersed or no longer interested in fighting for Ireland.

Before we go any further, let's look into this Despard character.


Edward Despard (1751 - 1803)

As I research the history of Irish opposition to the English occupation of our shores, it's been surprising to me how many of the most rebellious and hardline fighters have come from the Protestant class. Far from being just disgruntled Catholics trying to gain their rights and those of their countrymen, important figures in the first rising came from, as we saw, the aristocracy and the Ascendancy, Lord Edward Fitzgerald being the most prominent, but here too we find Robert and Thomas Emmet's father, as well as both his sons, coming from a Protestant (and wealthy) background, yet taking up the cause for Irish independence. Another such was Edward Despard, born into wealth and privilege in County Laois and who in fact served in the American War of Independence, fighting alongside the legendary Admiral Nelson (not yet an admiral of course at that time), and was a member of the British Army for over twenty years. Not only was he a Protestant but also descended from Huguenots, and so you would think would have had reason to hate Catholics, at least historically, given their persecution and exile by Louis XIV.

The very opposite of a racist, he ensured land he oversaw in the Bay of Honduras in 1789 was equally available to black or white, rich or poor, man or woman. His even-handedness upset the local Baymen - loggers who kept slaves - whose protests were instrumental in having Despard recalled to London in 1790, dire warnings of a revolt among the slaves and recently-freed men convincing the British government that Despard was better back home than making waves abroad. Despard brought with him his black wife, to the scandal of London, though his position ensured it was not discussed openly or condemned. Perhaps strangely, perhaps not, it was in fact his own family who later denied the marriage, refusing to accept that Catherine had been married to their son. This may have had something to do with his fall from grace, in allying himself to the Irish cause, or it might have been an attempt to clean up, as they saw it, and as far as could be done, the family name.

Despard's troubles followed him home, not only in the shape of the general - if restrained - disapproval of his marriage, but in lawsuits lodged by the Baymen against him for "unfair practices". These landed him in a debtor's prison for two years, where he passed the time reading. For those who have never read Dickens, a debtors' prison, though certainly a prison, was not as harsh in terms of punishment as the likes of Newgate; though nothing was provided, unlike regular prisons, all could be purchased and if you had enough money you could be quite comfortable there. There was no treadmill, no rule prohibiting conversation among prisoners, no chains etc. What caught Despard's interest most was Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man, and it set him thinking about the injustices across the water, in Ireland.

On his release he had to take refuge in revolutionary France, where his ideas about freedom hardened, and when he got back to Britain he joined the London Corresponding Society, a debating club, of all things, which was dedicated to reforming the British Parliament. The Seditious Meetings Act and the Treasons Act (1795) both made gatherings discussing or contemplating "seditious behaviour" a crime, one of treason, and Despard was arrested after a riot in Charing Cross, though later released. His luck ran out when he met Fr. James Coigly, arrived from Manchester. Coigly was a prominent figure in the United Irishmen, and had come to try to rally support for the uprising the next year. With Coigly he was arrested on the way back from France; Coigly was hanged and Despard was imprisoned for three years.

On his release, Despard again teamed up with agitators and United Irishmen in preparation for another rising, and an alleged plot to kill the king. He was arrested and tried for high treason in 1802. It was little more than a show trial, with hardly any evidence produced but the inevitable guilty verdict reached. Despite pleas for mercy from his wife and even from such a heroic figure as Nelson, and due to the fear that Britain was on the verge of its own rebellion, Despard and his compatriots were executed on February 21 1803.

[Trollheart]

Back we go to Robert Emmet then. Unlike some of his contemporaries a few years earlier, he is said not to have relied upon French assistance for the rising, but it all went to hell in a handbasket anyway. Honestly, if it wasn't so serious it would be hilarious, and one thing it certainly was, was typically Irish.

The rising - which hardly deserves the name, lasting less than a day - was beset by problems from the very start. To be fair to Emmet, he and his people do seem to have learned from 1798, and in addition to the standard pikes (some of which could fold up to be concealed under cloaks) he had grenades, rockets and exploding wooden beams. He had no artillery, of course, but at least, weapons-wise, he was a little better prepared than his brother's crew five years previous. Unfortunately, everything that could go wrong, did.

An accidental explosion at one of his concealed arms depots led to the date of the rising being brought forward before the caches could be discovered, and so on July 23 1803 the rising was to begin. Quite cleverly, or at least astutely, Emmet had proclaimed that the coming rising was not a sectarian one: "We are not against property – we war against no religious sect – we war not against past opinions or prejudices – we war against English dominion."

In this he hoped to show this was not a case of Catholics rising against and fighting Protestants, but Irishmen resisting the occupying English overlords. He gave assurances that there would be no revenge reprisals against loyalists, no outrages or attacks. It was a canny thing to say, and should have helped secure if not support at least no resistance from sides which up to now had always been opposed and which lived in mutual distrust and fear of each other. In effect, what he was saying was "look lads, all that burning down houses, killing Protestants, atrocities - it's all so eighteenth century. This is a new age, and we don't hold with that kind of stuff. If you're not with us, that's cool, that's cool. Just don't be against us, and there'll be no trouble. You want to join us, magic, very welcome. Just don't get in our way. Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone, deal?"

Fine words, and fine sentiments. Probably might have even worked. But again, the twin spectres of bad planning and the demon drink scuppered any chance Emmet's rising had of being successful.

A large contingent of men, led by a former leader of the 1798 rising, Michael Quigly, arrived at Emmet's weapons depots with what has variously been reported as hundreds or even thousands of men, eager to take up arms and fight for their country. The problem was that Emmet had not counted on such a large number turning up, and he hadn't nearly enough weapons to supply them all. Shrugging, disgruntled and probably disparaging his lack of quartermaster skills, the Kildare men turned and headed home. Later that evening they would put into effect a half-hearted attempt at supporting the rising on their own, but this would flounder on the news that Dublin had failed to come through, and they quickly surrendered.

The plan, as before, had been to take Dublin Castle, the seat of power of the British government in Ireland. Being in the heart of the capital, this was only lightly defended, and Emmet planned to take it by stealth, using fine carriages to present the illusion of gentlemen on their way to a meeting to gain entry. The carriages though never arrived, due to a dispute between the commander and the local garrison, in which a soldier was shot. With no way into the Castle now, and a mere eighty men when he should have had about two thousand, Emmet now learned that his rockets and grenades were useless - some mix-up with the fuses, technical bods, you know how it is - and thought it best to try to call things off.

Unfortunately by now the thing had a life of its own, given impetus by the sight of his men completely pissed and reeling through the streets, firing at anything that moved, or indeed didn't. Lamp posts were shot at, and we all know what a threat to Irish independence they were! Trying to make the best of what was rapidly becoming the least impressive rising in the less than impressive history of Ireland's attempts to break her chains, Emmet drew his sword, turned to his - by now almost completely drunk - men and shouted "Now is your time for liberty!" He might as well have shouted "Time, gentlemen, please!" for all the notice they took of him.

To darken the comedy a little, and bring things back to reality, let's not forget that people did die in this truly ineffectual attempt at rebellion, which you have to imagine might only have succeeded due to the British being too helpless with laughter at the incompetence of the drunken Catholics to do anything. The Lord Chief Justice, Arthur Wolfe, Viscount Kilwarden, had the bad luck to ride down the street as the intoxicated Irishmen rampaged through Dublin, looking for a target. He was dragged from his carriage and hacked to death, while a single soldier was also pulled off his horse and met a similar end. Drunken soldiers then tried to force passers-by at Ballsbridge to fight for their country, but everyone ignored them.

By midnight, the military had finally got their shit together and hauled themselves out onto the street, where the rebels were easily dispersed, probably heading for any late-night drinking establishment that would let them in. Dejected, Emmet returned home to a brow-beating from his housekeeper for his failure and for abandoning his men (not that you could blame him really. It had all gone spectacularly tits-up).

In Antrim, hotbed of resistance in 1797/1798 and scene of the "Dragooning of Ulster", nobody gave a shit. It was, in the end, way way too soon. The lessons of 1798 had been learned and were still raw wounds; nobody expected a rising to succeed, and nobody cared. One of the organisers of the attempted northern resistance, Thomas Russel, saw the grand total of three people turn out to hear him speak, and one opined that being subservient to the French would be as bad as being under the English boot. Nowhere in the country, with the small exception of some lacklustre action, as already mentioned, in Kildare, did the nationalist fervour catch. People were, in general, probably tired or risings that went nowhere, and also fearful of the dreadful reprisals for which the British had become infamous. You're all right, they said: we're grand thanks. In that fatalistic attitude typical of the Irish, they probably said "English occupation? Ah, sure, it will do."

Perhaps strangely (certainly strange to me), given that the rising had failed so utterly and so comically, Emmet still seemed to think that the French would be interested, and sent one of his commanders off to see if Napoleon fancied popping over and saving them from the English? It's recorded that the emperor's laughter could be heard as far as... well, no, it isn't, but suffice to say Napoleon had enough trouble on his hands without taking on Ireland too. Had the Irish managed to take Ireland for him, defeat the English and give him a base he could use, well, there could be merit in that. But send an invasion force into a country still completely controlled by his enemies? Step into the lion's den naked and weaponless? Sacre bleu! Formidable! Or something.

Emmet was, of course, quickly captured, though he did himself no favours by switching his hiding place in order to get his leg over, visiting his girlfriend, Sarah Curran. Our old friend Leonard McNally, (remember him? Renowned traitor who helped do for the 1798 rising?) got involved in the trial and sealed the young leader's fate. Sentenced to hang, Emmet made his last speech from the dock, one that, despite the almost bumbling ineptitude of his attempted rising, has gone down in Irish republican history.

"Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance, asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain un-inscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done."

And so ended the second major attempt at an uprising in Ireland. Well, not quite. I mean, you couldn't call this a rising could you? It achieved nothing - other than the, no doubt unintended and certainly impossible to capitalise upon, death of the Lord Chief Justice (who had, paradoxically, been instrumental in saving the life of Wolfe Tone after the 1798 rebellion) - and was if anything further evidence, if any were needed, of the lack of organisation, commitment and discipline of the Irish Catholics, and even later champion of Catholic emancipation, Daniel O'Connell, denounced Emmet as "an instigator of bloodshed, undeserving of any compassion." Padraig Pearse, calling Ireland to arms over a hundred years later in the final Rising, would have a different take. He would describe Emmet's paltry rising as being "not a failure, but a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish nationality." Right.

Really oddly, the news of the rising penetrated as far away as New South Wales, where the exiled Irish heard about it a year after it had failed (though were probably unaware of the result) and tried to sail home to join up and fight for the country of their birth. Needless to say, they never made it out of Australia.

Dublin Castle was quick to hush the whole incident up. After all, they had had no idea at all of the plot being hatched in their back garden, so to speak, and had the carriages actually turned up as planned, the centre of British power in Ireland could, theoretically, have been taken. Eighty men (some possible sober) could easily hold such a fortified building (it is a castle, after all) so maybe they realised, red-faced, not only how close they had come to being actually overrun but also how easy it had been for the scheme to unfold without their knowledge or any intelligence of it whatever making it back to them. You kind of have to wonder, though, what happened to the network of traitors and spies spoken of in the chapter on the 1798 rebellion? This was only five years later, and as we've seen, McNally at least was still alive and squealing. How is it that this so-called network was unable to infiltrate Emmet's United Irishmen and get word back to the Brits? Maybe Emmet, aware of or at least suspicious of the spies, made sure none of them got near him. I suppose we have to remember that many of these spies' identities were only uncovered after the rising.

Even so, it was a catastrophic failure of intelligence on behalf of the English. I mean, imagine for instance a bunch of ISIS terrorists discussing taking the White House or the Capitol Building while based in an apartment block just off Pennsylvania Avenue. Not likely, right? And it should not have been likely here either, which led impetus to the British government to cover up the whole thing and hope it went away. It also gave them licence, however, to turn the spotlight back on the "unruly Catholics", ignoring the fact of course that Emmet was a Protestant, as was Russell, and Jemmy Hope, another organiser in the north, was a Presbyterian.

I suppose you can at least say that Emmet's heart was in the right place, and luckily for him, remained so. Although said to have been sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering, any account I can turn up speaks of his being hanged and then beheaded, which means then that he avoided that most humiliating, terrifying and agonising of deaths traditionally reserved by the Crown for traitors, the ultimate deterrent, and also the ultimate ugly spectator draw. Who wants to watch a man hang when you can see him go through so much more? Perhaps by now the meaning of hanging, drawing and quartering had taken on a different meaning, perhaps the accounts I read were wrong, or perhaps the method of his death was commuted at the last, maybe in fear of unnecessarily stoking new hatreds among the Catholics. Anyway, it seems Robert Emmet was buried in an unmarked grave, until some years later when his remains were spirited to the family plot.

Personal Thoughts on Robert Emmet

Look, I'm not going to denigrate a patriot and an Irish hero - I even spoke to one of his descendants on another forum - but let's be brutally honest: we're dealing with a well-intentioned gobshite here, aren't we? Someone whose heart may have been in the fight but whose brain certainly could not have been. Firstly, why did he have to organise the so-called rising for when he did? I get he was pushed by the explosion at the armoury but even so, why did it have to be 1803, a mere five years after the Irish had been thrashed into submission with very little effort on behalf of the British? How could he have believed the country was again spoiling for a fight (without copious amounts of alcohol)? How could be not have understood that those who died in 1798 did so more or less in vain; that they achieved nothing at the time and failed utterly to rouse the country into rebellion, the only real bastion of the rising being Wexford? Why did he think the time was now? Why did he go looking for help from the French, and then, finding his requests turned down, go ahead anyway?

Even allowing for the fact that, against all the signs, he decided to proceed, how did he so badly miscalculate the ratio of guns to men? Could he really have interested that many more people than he had expected, and so had no weapons for them? And if he did, how could he not see that going ahead with the plan, left with less than a hundred of the two thousand men he had expected, was suicide and pointless? Even allowing all that, why couldn't he keep his men - the few he had - out of the fucking pub? Everyone knows the worst place you can bring an Irishman is the local, and don't expect to get any work out of him if he finds his way in there. Even given all of that, finding his men virtually drunk off their asses, why did he not call the whole damn thing off? But no. He had to go ahead didn't he, making his crazy, all but suicidal and certainly symbolic gesture, and he paid for it with his life.

What has remained of Robert Emmet is a legend, built upon by successive attempts by Irish leaders to throw off the chains of oppression, and pointed to as a perfect example of the ultimate sacrifice, when in my opinion what it should be pointed to as a perfect example of is ho0w not to start an uprising! But Ireland loves her tragic heroes, and our history, and even our legend, is hardly replete with victories against our enemies, so we take refuge in the "nobility of sacrifice" and the "struggle for independence", and so Emmet has become a folk hero, perhaps undeservedly. It's sort of odd that he sounds like someone who was being used as a pawn, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Napoleon could not have given le merde single, the other leaders of the United Irishmen desperately advised him to call off the rising that morning but he would have none of it. So nobody seems to have been pulling his strings, leading him into a hopeless act of pointless rebellion. He walked into the fire himself, and burned in it.

His ineptitude and naivete has not stopped him becoming a hero though of course. Shelley was one of his biggest supporters, and one of the ones who helped create the myth that today surrounds him, and there are statues of him in Dublin, Washington and San Francisco. He has been depicted in story, song, on stage and screen, and has towns, counties, schools and parks named after him. He's of course gone down in Irish history as one of the men whose sacrifice and refusal to bow down (or lay proper plans) led eventually to the freedom of Ireland, and I wouldn't dream of trying to take that from him. At least he gave it a go, which in his place I can't say I would have done.

There's an Irish saying: God loves a trier, and Emmet certainly was one of those. Unfortunately, trying by itself isn't enough. You also need to have a strategy, and in fairness he had, but he didn't seem then to have any sort of contingency plan for what to do if one part of his - at the time - relatively well-thought-out plan fell apart. Essentially, it was like an engine which, no matter how well-made it may be, fails as soon as one part stops working. Section by section and module by module his plan began to fall apart, but rather than take note of that and try to readjust and adapt his strategy, he continued on with a bastardised version of the original plan, and so he was doomed to fail.

Ironically, though it would take another century and more before Ireland finally was free, the long-awaited and prayed for emancipation of Catholics was less than a quarter of a century down the road, and would be achieved, in the main, without the need to resort to risings, rebellions or violent struggle of any kind.

[Trollheart]

The Rights of (Catholic Irish) Man: Moves Towards Acceptance and Recognition

We've heard how much of an underclass Irish Catholics had become from the time Henry VIII established the Church of England and became an implacable enemy of the Pope, and more specifically from James II's plantation of Ulster with Protestants, and the rise of the Ascendancy. For almost three hundred years now, Catholics had struggled to gain recognition and representation, rights and standing in their own country, and had been more or less laughed at and reviled. Taking up arms had not forced the British government to capitulate, and in fact they had little to no intention of doing so, as their own population looked to them to keep the "papist menace" at bay, none more so than the ruling classes of Ulster, who, though in power, felt like a man on a rickety raft in the ocean as the sharks swarm around him, closing in. Ulster Protestants were more than aware that they still made up the minority in  Ireland, and beyond the border to the south was teeming with Catholics, all just itching to do them in while they slept. They must be kept down, brutalised, deprived of their rights, and given no chance to assert any sort of authority or raise their voices in government circles. It was their paramount mission.

To the northeast, though, too, another arch-enemy of the papacy watched developments with disbelieving and angry eyes, as the first Catholic Relief Act, called the Papists Act,  was passed in 1778. Scotland had occasionally been an ally with Ireland against England, and, too, had sided with France against the auld enemy, but Scotland was very much a Protestant country. It was here that John Calvin had begun preaching his version of Protestantism, very much opposed to the idea of Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, deposing Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant monarch. Presbyterianism was big here too, and there were few Catholics. But for all that, even more than Northern Ireland today, Scotland rang with the cry of "No Popery!"

So when the Papists Act allowed, under certain conditions, Catholics to join the army and own land, Scottish jaws slavered with rage, Scottish eyes bulged with hatred, and Scottish people rose in unison against this betrayal of their religious tenets. The fear was that although the Act applied at the time only to England, it was expected to be visited on Scotland too, and they weren't having that! In response, a minor riot broke out on October 18 1778 in Glasgow, where the house of a family of Catholics who were celebrating mass was attacked, the windows smashed, the occupants chased out and the house taken over. Hey, sounds like those "Old Firm" matches between Celtic and Rangers to me!  It wasn't exactly a Scottish kristallnacht, but it was telling that no law enforcement intervened, and the riot was only broken up when the rioters got bored and staggered off home. It was the first such riot, and really more a small display of the prevailing public feeling than an actual riot.

But a real one was on the horizon.

The Protestant Association

Created to combat the spread of the Catholic menace, the Protestant Association was basically a group of religious figures and politicians who fanned the flames of resentment against the papists, and scare-mongered for all they were worth. The Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SPCK)  lobbied for the repeal of the Act, and tried to pressure the influential synod of Lothian and Tweedale, but Principal Robertson of Edinburgh University, where the synod was held, refused to be pushed, declaring that the SPOCK, sorry, SPCK was not going to force them to "deprive any person of his inheritance or subject them to civil penalties for conscience's sake". Frustrated, and afraid they would miss their chance to lobby parliament, which was soon to reconvene, the SPCK pulled in the support of the Committee for the Protestant Interest, also known as the Society of Friends of the Protestant Interest, to increase pressure on the synods, and later these two organisations merged to become the new Protestant Association.

With much distribution of inflammatory (and mostly inaccurate where not plain untrue) pamphlets, meetings and plenty of screaming and warnings, the Protestant Association quickly succeeded in its aim of turning the people of Scotland against the native Catholics, painting them as heretics and traitors who did not deserve any sort of tolerance, much less that shown in the Papist Acts. It was all but a call to holy war, and it spread like wildfire across Scotland. Town and borough councils quickly fell into line, petitions were organised and garnered thousands of signatures, and very soon a deep, entrenched resistance to any relief for Catholics rose right across the country. Some of the newspaper columns and pamphlets read disturbingly like something you might expect to see in a German newspaper around 1936.

"Have no dealings with them [Catholics]; neither buy from them nor sell them anything; neither borrow nor lend with them; give them no visits, nor receive any from them."

"Let them [those against Popery] make lists of those within their bounds, containing their names, callings and places of abode, and publish it, that all men may know them."

"Let each parish make a solemn resolution to drop all intercourse with papists, particularly bearing in mind that they will not in the future employ papists in any business whatsoever."

"And that whosoever within their bounds acts contrary to this resolution shall be reputed a papist, and dealt with accordingly."

Well, that's nice and clear isn't it? Sieg Heil, Jimmy, pass the jackboots! If you think senators and congressmen being intimidated by Qanon and Trump supporters is new, then listen to this extract from the account by Principal Robertson, denouncing the Protestant Association in the General Church of Scotland: "I have been held out to an enraged mob, as the victim who next deserves to be sacrificed. My family has been disquieted; my house has been attacked; I have been threatened with pistols and daggers. I have been warned that I was watched in my going out and my coming home; the time has been set beyond which I was not to live, and for several weeks not a day passed on which I did not receive incendiary letters."

One assumes that's a metaphor, not that he was receiving actual bombs, but hey, put nothing past these guys. They were pissed, pissed as only those who hate and despise any dissenting voice can be pissed. They believed Robertson a Catholic-lover, and were more than likely ready to surround his house chanting "Hang Robertson! Hang Robertson!"

Yet for all the unrest and hateful rhetoric coming out of Glasgow, it was Scotland's capital city that provided the first real spark for a full scale riot. Accusations of a house newly built being used as a Catholic chapel in defiance of the law in 1777 led to a fever of anti-papist sentiment which started as vague and random intimidation of Catholics on the streets of Edinburgh and which exploded into a full out attack on the home at the heart of their (imaginary) grievance, that of Father Hay, on January 30. Windows were broken and assistance refused from the Lord Provost, who even turned back offers of help from other quarters, giving tacit approval to the attacks.

And that was all the crowd, who swiftly became a mob of rioters, wanted to see.

February 2 saw the wholesale destruction of Catholic properties, their owners forced to flee, the authorities nowhere to be seen. The rioters returned the next day, declaring their intention to "compleat (sic) the destruction of every Catholic in the place, and of all others who had in any respect appeared favourable to their Bill." Finally realising they could delay no longer, the city magistrates called in the army, and the enraged mob, trying to burn the home of their hated enemy Robertson, were turned back by an armed presence. With soldiers on the streets, the rioters drifted away, but they had achieved their objective. On February 6 it was announced that "the fears that had prompted such devastation had been justified" and the Relief Act was now "totally laid aside." There would be no tolerance for Catholics, and the Protestants had won the day.

That was it for Edinburgh, as it was fun to terrorise unarmed Catholics (remember, the original Penal Laws forbade them owning or carrying weapons), scaring women and children, but the rioters were not about to go up against their own military, and while some, or many, of these men's sympathies may have lain with the agitators, unlike today, they had sworn an oath to the King and would do their duty, regardless of personal opinion or affiliation. If not, they would likely have been court-martialled. But down the road in Glasgow...

Robert Bagnall was the most prosperous Catholic in the city, so naturally became the target for the anger of the mob that stormed through Glasgow on February 9. His crime, apparently, had been that he had "not been very moderate in his language or behaviour", and his shop and house were burned while he and his family fled, sheltered by sympathetic Protestant friends. Once again, the authorities turned a very blind eye and nobody was prosecuted or arrested for the attacks. The government was humiliated to have been forced by the pressure of rowdy mobs and special interest groups to have to repeal the Papists Act, and voices within Parliament warned that what had happened in Scotland, and with no retribution whatever, in fact total success, could and most probably would be replicated over the border in England.

They were right.