Irish rebellion of 1803

In the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion a number of younger United Irishmen were still at liberty, but in communication with state prisoners held at Fort George in Scotland, worked to re-establish their organisation on strictly military lines.[2] But as there had been in the preparation of the earlier rebellion, there was to be a growing rift between those who believed that Ireland had to be part of a larger French-assisted scheme, and those convinced that significant French aid would be forthcoming only to defend an independence already won.[4] Through foreign minister Talleyrand, they presented Napoleon with a memorial that assured him that the Union with Great Britain, imposed in the wake of the rebellion, had "in no way eased the discontent of Ireland", and that the country would rise at the first news of a French landing.The government arrested, and February 1803 executed, the alleged ringleaders of a United conspiracy (the "Despard Plot”) to assassinate of the King, seize the Tower of London and spark a rising in the northern mill towns.[2] In the proclamation he was to issue on the day of the rising in Dublin, Emmet felt it necessary to offer the assurance that the defeat of this "similar attempt in England" had neither "retarded" not "accelerated" republican preparations in Ireland.[8] After his return to Dublin in October 1802, Emmet assembled a cadres of what, in the old society, had been mid-level activists, including, in addition to McCabe, William Dowdall, Michael Quigley, Malachy Delaney, James Hope and Nicholas Stafford.Recalling Henry Joy McCracken's caution that "the rich always betray the poor", in his Labour in Irish History (1910) James Connolly credits this to Emmet's reliance upon workers (and consequently on an organisation that was "more distinctly democratic"—even if more military in structure—than original United movement).[23] Her evidence, however, is entirely circumstantial,[24] and appears to rely chiefly on Pitt's reputed cynicism with regard 1798 rebellion, which he anticipated as an occasion to further secure England's western flank through a legislative union.Hope informed Madden that Russell had said:[25]: 79 This conspiracy is the work of the enemy, we are now in its vortex—if we can swim ashore let it not be through innocent blood; if the people are true to themselves, we have an overwhelming force; if otherwise, we fall and our lives will be a sufficient sacrifice.[28]: 486 The implication is that Marsden saw to it that the émigré United Irish were fed a "false picture of feeling around the country" in order to promote a rebellion that would strengthen the hand of Orange leaders in their "conflict of political attrition" with the potentially conciliatory British government.[34] On the morning of 23 July 1803, emissaries from Kildare taken to view the Thomas Street depot in Dublin were impressed, not by the folding pikes, the grenades or rockets, but by the lack of serviceable firearms.[14] In Kildare, a county which despite having been "up" in 1798 was spared by a locally negotiated amnesty from the "white terror" that followed, there had been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men willing to act in support of a Dublin coup d'état.Shortly after his return from exile in March 1803, Michael Quigly,[36] one of the Kildare leaders who had surrendered in July 1798, visited known United Irish veterans in Naas, Sallins, Rathcoffey, Prosperous, Timahoe and elsewhere and, according to the reports of local magistrates, was enthusiastically received.Sir Fenton Aylmer, a prominent local landowner, noted that "the peasantry of the County Kildare, in general, are determined to rise when they hear of a French invasion and join the enemy".[37] Without news either of the French or of developments in Dublin, on the evening of the 23rd about one hundred rebels gathered on the main street in Maynooth under the leadership of Owen Lyons, a shoemaker, Carter Connolly, a schoolteacher, and Thomas Kereghan, a farmer and Grand Canal boatman, all wearing green uniforms.Led by Emmet, armed rebels would enter the main gate of the lightly defended castle disguised in fine-liveried carriages as an aristocratic party, and Byrne, leading Wicklow and Wexford men, would force the Ship Street entrance.Instead of the hundreds expected, at the depot they were greeted by just 80 men,[14] and they learned that the approaching carriages had been abandoned in Bridgefoot Street after Henry Howley, in command, shot a soldier in a brawl.[43] To avoid what he now viewed as a useless shedding of blood, Emmet stood down sizeable rebel groups straddling the main suburban roads by pre-arranged signal, a solitary rocket.[49] As Emmet approached Rathfarnham, his confederates Patrick McCabe, Owen Kirwan, Thomas Keogh and possibly[50] Peter Finnerty were still in command of a total of at least 400 men in different parts of the city.At midnight, three hours after the beginning of the action, the authorities, slow to acknowledge that the disorders amounted to armed rebellion, finally mobilised the military and drove the remaining rebels from the streets.The winter 1799–1800 had seen widespread return of flogging, arms raids and assassinations to rural east Ulster, proving that a will to resist had continued among a substantial element of the region's population.Sixteen were executed (with the body of the United Irishman, Thomas Archer, left to hang in an iron cage in terrorem for several months); 16 were flogged and transported; 23 were forced into exile, and 10 were condemned to serve in the army or the fleet.[73] Poorly armed, and with their leader Philip Cunningham seized under a flag of truce,[74] the main body of insurgents were routed in an encounter loyalists, recalling the defeat of the Wexford rebels in 1798, celebrated as the Second Battle of Vinegar Hill.Lord Castlereagh, author of the Union that was supposed to address the challenges of Irish governance, advised them that "the best thing would be to go into no detail whatever upon the case [against Emmet] to keep the subject clearly standing on its own narrow base of a contemptible insurrection without means or respectable leaders".[80] Daniel O'Connell who led the struggle for Catholic Emancipation and for repeal of the Union in the decades that followed, denied all connection to the United Irish rebellions, roundly condemning the resort to "physical force".