Year of the French 1798

jonniebgood1

Come on folks, back on topic.
Reason for the French sending support for an irish uprising is given in 'Divided kingdom' S. Connolly (2008)

Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O’Connor travelled to Hamburg, where they
too pressed the Irish case in talks with French representatives. Circumstances
favoured both missions. Britain’s role in promoting the bloody insurrections by
the conservative peasantry of the west of France that had erupted in 1793 had
been bitterly resented. Carnot, along with Lazare Hoche, France’s leading general,
saw in the proposal for an Irish expedition an opportunity to pay the enemy
back in kind. There were numerous delays and false starts, as the government
sought to balance competing strategic priorities. But on 16 December a fleet
of some fifty ships left Brest, carrying 14,450 troops and over 40,000 stand of
arms. It was an expedition on a scale that recalled the great Spanish seaborne
offensives, against both Ireland and Great Britain, of the 1580s and 1590s.
And the outcome, despite two centuries of progress in techniques of navigation
and seamanship, was no more successful. Storms carried a number of vessels,
including Hoche’s flagship, away from the main fleet. The remainder, thirty-six
ships, arrived off Bantry Bay, on the coast of County Cork, on 22 December, but
continued bad weather made it impossible for the troops they carried to attempt
a landing. Pg.471

Note: this was in reference to the december 1896 fleet. It suggests that the motive was merely to support and spread revolution rather than an invasion to gain control of territory. When Humbert landed in connaught he had difficulty communicating with locals but still managed to get support.

Humbert was able to find enough local notables to create a provisional government headed by John Moore, son of a local Catholic merchant and landowner. However he and his officers were taken aback by the indiscipline and lack of political awareness of the common Irish who joined their army. pg 482

Fratton Fred

CD,

Rather than look at the background of the key players in the 1798 rebellion, why not look further afield.

Around that time monarchies were falling left right and centre, in Italy the Papal States were overrun, the Doge stood down and the Austrians forced to accept terms from the French. In the Netherlands there was revolution and a coup d'etat.

Closer to home there was the society of the friends of the people in both England and Scotland, as well as the London Corresponding society.

Reform was rife through out europe and maybe the united Irishmen were not simply a group of disenfranchised Irishmen looking to rid Ireland of a empirical overlord, but part of a much bigger european wide movement for reform.

I don't think any thread on this period of history is complete without a mention of Thomas Paine and his writings, especially "the rights of man".

MarchDub

The influence of the French and American revolutions amongst the UI is well known and well established - that's not remote or unknown information. FitzGerald was in the British Army that went to quell the American Revolution and was actaully wounded in battle at Eutaw Springs. But he became very influenced with the ideas that the Americans were fighting for and later regretted being on the British side - 'I fought against freedom' he lamented. FitzGerald was actually thrown out of the British army for openly expressing 'democratic' opinions against inherited titles.

FitzGerald was particularly influenced by the writings of Thomas Paine and became friends with him and stayed with Paine while in Paris. Paine's Common Sense was widely distributed in Ireland at the time.

CDfm

My own view on 1798 is that it was waiting to happen as a result of local conditions and was not nesscessarily a part of a wider European Movement, no matter what the views of the United Irishmen leaders were.

How many copies of Thomas Paine were in Ireland and who read them ?

On the French and the United Irishmen. Well for a start, the French ended up in the wrong place & if they had been looking for a result similar to Yorktown they needed more local support and should have been in Wexford.

So who to blame for its failure - the Anglo Irish Ascendency Revolutionaries or the French ???


Wellington was of the view in 1830 that the English attitude would be harmful to the Kingdom so subsequent events over the next 100 years or so were very predictable when they did happen. So the British government learned nothing.

If you roll it along 50 years the local situation was the famine which affected and you see that the Anglo Irish Ascendency saw the people of Ireland as no better than slaves or livestock.There is consistancy there.


Go forward a hundred years to the Centenary of 1798 , 1898 was not just important for the formation of Portsmouth Football Club but also the Irish Revival etc.

How much influence did 1798 County Antrim and further on the famine have on the loyalists and their heritage in carving their niche out. Is it too far a stretch to say the dispossessed Scots took a stand for themselves, their own welfare and their traditions date from 1798 too.

MarchDub

CDfm wrote: »

My own view on 1798 is that it was waiting to happen as a result of local conditions and was not nesscessarily a part of a wider European Movement, no matter what the views of the United Irishmen leaders were.

Yes absolutely I agree - it was going to happen. The local conditions were the reason that it was going to happen. The method of armed rebellion was something that was influenced by the success elsewhere of armed rebellion overthrowing oppression.

The Constitutional method of parliamentary reform had failed in so many ways to deliver - except when the British were under great pressure as in the American Revolutionary War when they finally threw out Ponyings Law in Ireland because of a fear of unrest in Ireland- that is the way the UI saw it. That Ireland got little from the Constitutional method - and Catholic rights were still being denied even with the repeal of Poynings Law.

MarchDub

I should also add that the repeal of Poynings Law in 1783 was much regretted by the British and was one of the stated reasons for the abolition of the Irish Parliament in 1800.

In his statement in 1799 announcing his intention to eliminate the Dublin Parliament Pitt laid stress on the regret he had over the Act in 1783 that gave 'full legislative freedom' to the Irish. So in fact the UI had good sense to be wary of how the constitutional ways were conducted and how Irish interests were not considered.

MarchDub

Edit: posted twice for some reason.

jonniebgood1

Apologies for harping on about the same point- I was interested in the motives behind France becoming involved. In 'a popular history of Ireland. volume II' the author Thomas D'Arcy McGee states in regard of the french landings that

These ships had on board 1,000 men, with arms for 1,000 more, under command of General Humbert, who had taken on himself, in the state of anarchy which then prevailed in France, to sail from La Rochelle with this handful of men, in aid of the insurrection.

pg. 356

The same theme is dealt with again

The disorganization of all government in France in the latter half of '98, was illustrated not only by Humbert's unauthorized adventure, but by a still weaker demonstration under General Reay and Napper Tandy, about the same time.

pg 358

This again suggests the French support was quite random as opposed to anything more sinister.

Fratton Fred

Did the French not put out a general offer of assistance to anyone trying to overthrow their existing regime? Sort of a universal workers unite type declaration?

CDfm

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

This again suggests the French support was quite random as opposed to anything more sinister.

I don't think sinister is something the French could have been accused of in 1798 .

Neither is competant .

Well dressed , maybe .....

Nhead

Before 1798 there were connections between France and Ireland, particularly in terms of education (as Irish priests were trained abroad prior to the opening of St. Patricks, Maynooth. The Irish college is well worth a visit if you are in Paris it has a lovely chapel and library.

There is a bit of history here:
http://www.centreculturelirlandais.com/modules/movie/scenes/home/index.php?fuseAction=historique&FUSEBOX_LANG=2

There was also links to the French military:

http://www.irishineurope.com/about/research/irish-regiments-france

Dr. Tom 'O Connor and Prof. Marian Lyons have a book called From Strangers to Citizens on the Irish in Europe from 1600-1800.

jonniebgood1

CDfm wrote: »

On the French and the United Irishmen. Well for a start, the French ended up in the wrong place & if they had been looking for a result similar to Yorktown they needed more local support and should have been in Wexford.

You are correct regarding competence- they were a few months to late for wexford.

HellsAngel

CDfm wrote: »

My own view on 1798 is that it was waiting to happen as a result of local conditions and was not nesscessarily a part of a wider European Movement, no matter what the views of the United Irishmen leaders were.

How many copies of Thomas Paine were in Ireland and who read them ?

I'm afraid I'd differ with you there CDfm, of course doemstic factors were a huge factor, but the success of the French and American revolutions were very much in the minds of not just the Irish people but also continent wide. Thomas Paine's outstanding writings did influence the UI leaders, Tone, McCracken etc, particuliarily The Rights of Man.

On the French and the United Irishmen. Well for a start, the French ended up in the wrong place & if they had been looking for a result similar to Yorktown they needed more local support and should have been in Wexford.

Interesting comparison of an Irish Yorktown !!!! If only .

Still communications and organisation weren't up to a lot back then. Like I pointed out, Wellington almost lost Waterloo not knowing the Prussians were going to turn up.

MarchDub

HellsAngel wrote: »

the success of the French and American revolutions were very much in the minds of not just the Irish people but also continent wide. Thomas Paine's outstanding writings did influence the UI leaders, Tone, McCracken etc, particuliarily The Rights of Man.


.

Yes, there's no doubt that the American and French revolutions impacted events in Ireland and shifted the emphasis away from what was regarded as the failed constitutional methods.

James Napper Tandy remarked on hearing about the American Revolution: 'When America revolted against the tyranny of Great Britain, my heart rejoiced within me'.

slowburner

CDfm wrote: »

I don't think sinister is something the French could have been accused of in 1798 .

Neither is competant .

Well dressed , maybe .....

I couldn't resist posting this in relation to the post above . From J.Jones. Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements which took place between his Majesty's Forces and the Insurgents, During the IRISH REBELLION, in 1798: (sic)

MarchDub

But no one was as well dressed as Lord Edward FitzGerald - green was adopted as the colour of revolution and he had a special uniform made of green jacket and green 'breeches' with a scarlet braiding on the jacket symbolizing revolution - 'a dramatic green cape hung from his shoulders' according to his biographer Stella Tillyard.

slowburner

Such a pity there are no photographs from the period.
This raises an interesting point - did the colour of the rebels 'uniforms' confer any advantage in the same way as may have happened with the Boers? The rebels preferred green while the yeomanry wore emblazoned red.

MarchDub

slowburner wrote: »

Such a pity there are no photographs from the period..

Yes...

slowburner wrote: »

This raises an interesting point - did the colour of the rebels 'uniforms' confer any advantage in the same way as may have happened with the Boers? The rebels preferred green while the yeomanry wore emblazoned red.

This is one of the stated reasons for the adoption of green as the colour of the revolution - because it acted as a camouflage for the rebels. Prior to that blue was the colour most associated with Ireland, as in St Patrick's blue. The Harp on a blue background still remains a symbol of Ireland.

CDfm

William Orr - the presbyterian antrim farmer famously wore a green necktie to his execution in 1797.

I was looking for a reference and came accross a collection of trials/speeches from the dock for the 1798 leaders

http://www.archive.org/details/speechesfromdock00sull

I still am not convinced that the ordinary insurgent was greatly inflienced by events abroad and in the colonies.

slowburner

CDfm wrote: »

William Orr - the presbyterian antrim farmer famously wore a green necktie to his execution in 1797.

I was looking for a reference and came accross a collection of trials/speeches from the dock for the 1798 leaders

http://www.archive.org/details/speechesfromdock00sull

I still am not convinced that the ordinary insurgent was greatly inflienced by events abroad and in the colonies.

Certainly, reading the accounts contemporary with 1798, this is the picture painted. But then again, accounts from 'his majesty's' side seem to outnumber the United Irish accounts 10 to 1.
Any references I have come across, while openly prejudiced, seem consistent in their assertions that the actions of the United Irishmen's forebears (the White boys etc. Taylor. 1829 cited by CDfm above) were motivated purely by money - or rather a refusal to part with it.

Cracking link btw

jonniebgood1

A timeline of the 1798 events show how widespread the uprising was.
http://www.1798centre.ie/events.htm

pavb2

I think CDFM & Hellsangel are both right the UI were idealogical, influenced by Paine etc but this was far removed from the Irish at large who simply wanted to improve their terrible conditions.Another point particularly out west not sure about Wexford or any where else but the ideas of Paine would have to be oral as majority of folks spoke Irish with little English

In other words their goal was the same, rebellion to overthrow the British but for different reasons.

Interesting, brings it up again what was the French motivation?

MarchDub

CDfm wrote: »

How many copies of Thomas Paine were in Ireland and who read them ?

It wasn't just through books that these ideas became known. Paine's writings were a regular feature in the newspaper of the day The Freeman's Journal. This was one of the ways that these democratic ideas were broadcast - as well as news of the success of the American and French revolutions.

The news - and success - of the American revolution would also have been widely known as that was the reason why the British had to pull their army out of Ireland - and the Volunteers and militia were formed in their place.

CDfm

I am going to lower the tone a bit -but what of the civilians and killings and such.

HISTORY OF THE REBELLION IN IRELAND IN THE YEAR 1789. The following is a copy of what is called a calendar of the protestant prisoners in Wexford when in possession of the Rebels. The original, composed by a kind of judicial body, not improperly denominated the Bloody Committee, which, on the 20th of June, sat in the gaol, is deposited in the Library of the University of Dublin. (This Book was written in 1801).

http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ire/wexford/xmisc/1798-prisoners.txt

Ok, so Father Murphy from Boulavogue was mighty annoyed at his church being burned down another priest Father Corrin behaved differently.

. During the Irish occupation of Wexford, a fellow named Dixon on the rebel side, the captain of a small coasting vessel, who had never taken any part in the real fighting, collecting a rabble and plying them with whiskey, broke open the jail where numbers of the Protestant gentry and others were confined, and in spite of the expostulations of the more respectable leaders, brought a number of them to the bridge and after a mock trial began to kill them one by one. Thirty-six had been murdered, and another batch were brought out, when a young priest, father Corrin, rushed in at the risk of his life and commanded the executioners to their knees. Down they knelt instinctively, when in a loud voice he dictated a prayer which they repeated after him—that God might show to them the same mercy that they were about to show the prisoners; which so awed and terrified them that they immediately stopped the executions. Forty years afterwards, Captain Kellett of Clonard, one of the Protestant gentlemen he had saved, followed, with sorrow and reverence, the remains of that good priest to the grave.

http://www.libraryireland.com/JoyceHistory/1798.php

Here is a file from the National Archive with original documents from the United Irishmen leaders

http://www.nationalarchives.ie/PDF/1798.pdf

CDfm

slowburner wrote: »

Certainly, reading the accounts contemporary with 1798, this is the picture painted. But then again, accounts from 'his majesty's' side seem to outnumber the United Irish accounts 10 to 1.
Any references I have come across, while openly prejudiced, seem consistent in their assertions that the actions of the United Irishmen's forebears (the White boys etc. Taylor. 1829 cited by CDfm above) were motivated purely by money - or rather a refusal to part with it.

Cracking link btw

This is our boy George Taylor , if I am not mistaken.



http://www.jstor.org/pss/25520039

pavb2 wrote: »

I think CDFM & Hellsangel are both right the UI were idealogical, influenced by Paine etc but this was far removed from the Irish at large who simply wanted to improve their terrible conditions.

In other words their goal was the same, rebellion to overthrow the British but for different reasons.

Interesting, brings it up again what was the French motivation?

Thanks , I dont know if I am right, it does not connect for me.

And yes. The French.

Judgement Day

CDfm wrote: »

This is our boy George Taylor , if I am not mistaken.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/25520039

Taylor's account of the rebellion while biased was firsthand and he came close to death on two occasions, at Gorey and later at Wexford Bridge, so he wouldn't have been an impartial observer. I have recently reset Taylor's book and it's already to go in the near future and I'm sure that all you '98 enthusiasts will want to buy a copy.

slowburner

CDfm wrote: »

I am going to lower the tone a bit -but what of the civilians and killings and such.




Ok, so Father Murphy from Boulavogue was mighty annoyed at his church being burned down another priest Father Corrin behaved differently.




Here is a file from the National Archive with original documents from the United Irishmen leaders

http://www.nationalarchives.ie/PDF/1798.pdf

I'm going underground now to read all this cracking stuff.
That calender surfaced in " A Narrative of the Sufferings and Escape of Charles Jackson, late resident at Wexford, in Ireland..." pp 82-89. 4th ed. 1802 - I glanced through it this afternoon. Is this the 1801 book you mention CD?

It is striking to see how many of the names on that list are still extant in the county. I rented a house for a year, way back, from a farmer in Wexford whose unusual name appears in the list and which I have never seen anywhere else - I'm pretty sure he was the last of his line.

Here's two questions now that CD has lowered the tone . (For me at any rate, it's the tale of the man or woman on the ground that brings history alive.)
The insurgents could move fast, incredibly fast.
Retreat from Vinegar Hill was on the 21st of June.
They won a battle at Goresbridge, Co.Kilkenny on the 23rd and had taken Castlecomer on the 24th.
Could modern day elite forces achieve so much on foot, I doubt it?
Second question. What was it about the pike that seemed to strike fear into the hearts of the king's regiments? Was it that cavalry was rendered ineffective by these long weapons?

slowburner

Of civilians and killings and such.
There is an incredibly poignant account of Harvey (I think) who was about to be hanged on Wexford bridge. I'll verify all this if needs be.
The witness (it may have been Taylor ) records how Harvey was a fairly dashing sort of character. As his last request he asked that he be allowed to die with his waistcoat and overcoat on because he only had a commoners shirt underneath. The wish was granted and he was hanged for fifteen minutes. Taylor (if it was he) didn't watch this execution - he'd had enough. Harvey had been captured at a cave on the Saltee islands.

CDfm

I havent seen that book in a while.

Quite a read.

When you get away from the whole United Irishman thing there is a whole different 1798.

The infamous North Cork Militia

Two developments had pitched Wexford over the edge and into full-scale rebellion. The first of these was the campaign of terror unleashed - particularly to the north of the county from mid-May 1798 onwards. Reports of half-hangings, floggings, pitch-cappings and house-burnings conducted principally by the North Cork Militia, under the direction of loyalist magistrates, inflamed that part of County Wexford that bordered on Wicklow, and induced panic everywhere. On 26th May came stunning news of the summary execution of some 34 suspected United Irishmen at Dunlavin, in south Wicklow; and there was a further report that at Carnew, across the border in Wexford, 35 prisoners had been summarily executed. Fevered rumours of extirpation now appeared to have substance. In terror, the peasantry - United Irishmen or not - prepared to resist.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/irish_reb_01.shtml

So if this was what they were like pre-rebellion , what were they like later ?

Pitch caping was like being scalped with boiling tar and while I have seen references to rape by the yeomen I have seen none by the insurgents. So I am wondering if there is biased reporting.

CDfm

Here is a nice genteel piece on the North Cork Militia and on the personalities.

« start... Chapter XXXVI. ...continued

« Atrocities of 1798 | Contents | Index | Lord Edward Fitzgerald »

I shall now give the account of another historian. Plowden writes thus: "These military savages [the yeomanry corps—it will be remembered what Lord Moira said of them in Parliament] were permitted, both by magistrates and officers, in open day, to seize every man they wished or chose to suspect as a Croppy, and drag him to the guardhouse, where they constantly kept a supply of coarse linen caps, besmeared inside with pitch; and when the pitch was well heated, they forced the cap on his head; and sometimes the melted pitch, running into the eyes of the unfortunate victim, superadded blindness to his other tortures. They generally detained him till the pitch had so cooled, that the cap could not be detached from the head without carrying with it the hair and blistered skin; they then turned him adrift, disfigured, often blind, and writhing with pain. They enjoyed with loud bursts of laughter the fiendlike sport—the agonies of their victim. At other times, they rubbed moistened gunpowder into the hair, in the form of a cross, and set fire to it; and not unfrequently sheared off the ears and nose of the unfortunate Croppy." Plowden then details the atrocities of a sergeant of the Cork Militia, who was called Tom the Devil. He concludes: "It would be uncandid to detail only instances of the brutality of the lower orders, whilst evidence is forthcoming of persons of fortune and education being still more brutalized by its deleterious spirit."
He then mentions an instance, on the authority of both an eyewitness and the victim, in which Lord Kingsborough, Mr. Beresford, and an officer whose name he did not know, tortured two respectable Dublin tradesmen, one named John Fleming, a ferryman, the other Francis Gough, a coachmaker. The nobleman superintended the flagellation of Gough, and at every stroke insulted him with taunts and inquiries how he liked it. The unfortunate man was confined to his bed in consequence, for six months after the infliction. On Whit-Sunday, 1798, these men were again tortured with pitchcaps by the gentlemen. Other instances might be added, but these will suffice to show the feeling which actuated the rulers who permitted, and the men who perpetrated, these deeds of blood. "With difficulty," says Mr. Plowden, "does the mind yield reluctant consent to such debasement of the human species. The spirit which degrades it to that abandonment is of no ordinary depravity. The same spirit of Orangeism moved the colonel in Dublin, and his sergeant at Wexford. The effect of that spirit can only be faintly illustrated by facts. Those have been verified to the author by the spectator and the sufferer."[2]
[I]From a letter of Lady Napier's, never intended for publication, and above all suspicion of any sympathy with the lower order of Irish, it will be seen how the tenantry of the Duke of Leinster were driven to revolt. It is dated Castletown, 27th June, 1798, and addressed to the Duke of Richmond. "The cruel hardships put on his tenants preferably to all others, has driven them to despair, and they join the insurgents, saying: 'It is better to die with a pike in my hand, than be shot like a dog at my work, or to see my children faint for want of food before my eyes.' "[/I]
Sir Ralph Abercrombie was appointed to command the army in Ireland, in 1797; but he threw up his charge, disgusted with atrocities which he could not control, and which he was too humane even to appear to sanction.[3] He declared the army to be in a state of licentiousness, which made it formidable to every one but the enemy. General Lake, a fitting instrument for any cruelty, was appointed to take his place; and Lord Castlereagh informs us that "measures were taken by Government to cause a premature explosion." It would have been more Christian in the first place, and more politic in the second place, if Government had taken measures to prevent any explosion at all.[4]


http://www.libraryireland.com/HistoryIreland/Yeomanry.php

There are shades of Francis Sheehy Skeffington here and how his murder caused a big change in public opinion to 1916.