Full story
The famous and important Irish historical figure Wolfe Tone was born Theobald
Wolfe Tone on 20th June 1763. His place in Irish history can scarcely be
overstated as he is regarded as the father of modern Irish republicanism.
He was born in Dublin to a Protestant family and attended Trinity
College, qualifying as a barrister at the age of 26, practicing in London. He
soon turned his attention to Irish politics and wrote an essay attacking the
ruling administration which became popular among the liberal ‘Whigs’ of the
time. At the time the French Revolution had had a profound effect on not just
French but on world politics. Ireland was no exception with the ideals of that
revolution fuelling a desire for separation from English rule.
Whig
stalwarts such as Henry Grattan however, wanted Catholic emancipation without
breaking the tie to England. Tone was adamant that the Irish people should be
governed by an Irish parliament and, although he was an Anglican he proposed
co-operation among the various religions as a means to make progress on the
issue of separation from England. In 1791 Wolfe Tone founded the Society of the
United Irishmen, together with Napper Tandy and Thomas Russell. The moderate
aims of this society (parliamentary reform) soon became overtaken with the
desire for full independence from England and especially once Tones view of the
necessity for armed insurrection took prominence. It was at this point that the
difference between Henry Grattan and his pursuit of parliamentary reform without
democratic consequence and Wolfe Tone’s view of revolutionary democracy came
into stark relief.
The English authorities were quick to realise the
threat and sought to promote religious intolerance and sectarianism, thus
dividing the Catholics and Presbyterians who otherwise were of the same Irish
stock. The newly formed Orange Order was also a useful tool used by the English
in stoking religious discord. By 1794 and after much political manoeuvring it
became clear to Wolfe Tone that no political party would fully get behind their
movement and they began to lobby for French military support in the form of an
invasion.
Communications between the United Irishmen and the French were
betrayed when the go-between, an English clergyman named William Jackson, was
arrested and charged with treason. Given that England and France had been a war
since 1793 any collaboration between the United Irishmen and the French would
certainly have greatly alarmed the parliament in London. The organisation was
effectively broken up by the English with several of the leaders fleeing the
country. Wolfe Tone was able to use his connections to negotiate passage from
the country and he duly emigrated to America, arriving in May, 1795. He had
first stopped in Belfast however, and made what became known as the ‘Cavehill
compact’ with Russell and McCracken, swearing:
‘Never to desist in our
efforts until we subvert the authority of England over our country and asserted
our independence’.
He lived in Pennsylvania until 1796 but disliked the
new American revolution, declaring that the birth class system of England had
been replaced by one decided by wealth in the US. He travelled to Paris with
Tandy to try to persuade the French to invade Ireland. He provided the necessary
intelligence to the French who were impressed with his proposal. The result was
an armada led by Louis Lazare Hoche consisting of 43 vessels under sail and
14,000 men. Much to Tone’s disgust the French could not land off Bantry Bay due
to severe weather and eventually returned to France. A further attempt at
invasion by a Dutch expedition in 1797 also fell foul of the weather with Tone
returning to Paris only to find that his greatest French ally, Hoche, had died
of consumption.
Records of the time showed that membership of the United
Irishmen numbered 280,000 volunteers, or about 5% of the entire population. Had
the French force under Hoche been able to land at Bantry, and been joined by a
popular native uprising, then the country would surely have been liberated from
English rule.
By the winter of 1797/98, with hopes of a renewed French
attempt fading, the United Irishmen were forced to adopt a go-it-alone military
strategy focused on Dublin. Their organisation was strengthened in and around
the capital and it also expanded in south Leinster. The planned insurrection was
to have been a three-phased affair: the seizure of strategic positions within
Dublin city co-ordinated with the establishment of a crescent of positions
outside in north County Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow. The engagement of
government forces in the counties beyond was designed to prevent reinforcement.
Disaster struck on 12th March 1798 with the arrest of most of the
Leinster leadership. Further arrests on the very eve of the rising in May
effectively decapitated the movement. The seizure of Dublin from within was
aborted as the rebels waited for orders that never came.
United Irishmen
positions outside the city succumbed one by one with only Wexford showing any
success. A fortnight later (7-9 June), despite the mauling at the hands of
Lake’s forces the year before, the United Irishmen of Antrim and Down managed to
rise up but they too were quickly defeated.
The Wexford insurgents met
with a string of early successes but were ultimately prevented from spreading
the insurrection beyond their own county by defeats at New Ross (5 June) and
Arklow (9 June). Massive government forces began to move in for the decisive
military showdown at Vinegar Hill, outside Enniscorthy (21 June). Although the
insurgents suffered defeat, the bulk of their forces escaped encirclement and
carried on the struggle for another month, one group in the Wicklow mountains
and the other in a ‘long march’ into the midlands before being worn down and
forced to surrender.
A month later (22 August) over a thousand French
troops under General Humbert landed at Killala, County Mayo, but it was too
little too late. Despite some initial successes, including a spectacular victory
at Castlebar, Humbert and the United Irishmen who flocked to his standard were
defeated at Ballinamuck, County Longford on 8th October.
The 1798
Uprising was a military catastrophe. The French and Irish forces were severely
out-gunned in the field and in one battle 2,000 revolutionaries faced 30,000
English regulars. The captured French were shipped home, but the Irish were all
executed after their surrender. It is estimated that 30,000 Irishmen were killed
in fighting that terrible summer, many of the victims were peasants who faced
cannon with pitchforks, and a great number of these were women.
Tone
himself had sailed in a French raid at Donegal in October 1798 but here too his
hopes were dashed. He was captured and taken to Dublin and court-marshalled. He
requested that he be afforded the death of a soldier, to be shot, rather than
hanged. His request denied he died in Provost’s Prison in Dublin of a neck wound
in November 1798 at the age of 35 years. History records his death as being a
suicide but there remains some doubt.
The defeat of the United Irishmen
signalled the end of Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland as the Act of Union of
1800 abolished the powerless parliament in College Green and moved all authority
back to the parliament in London.
Some United Irishmen welcomed this
development as the first step on the road to parliamentary reform as did many of
the Catholic peasantry who envisaged their election in the English parliament.
Daniel O’Connell secured Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by which time the context
of separation from England had changed from being a wholly national issue to
being a Catholic issue. The great famine of 1845 to 1849 destroyed the
countryside and for those who survived and did not emigrate left a lasting
legacy of hatred of English rule.
Wolfe Tone is remembered by republican
groups as the father of their cause. When examining the timeline to Irish
freedom it is certainly easy to view him as the political ancestor of O’Connell,
the Young Irelanders, Parnell and Davitt, Pearse and Connolly, Collins and
DeValera, on the ultimate path to independence.