View source for Irish Rebellion of 1798

{{Short description|Part of the French Revolutionary Wars}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2019}}
{{Use Hiberno-English|date=January 2022}}
{{Infobox military conflict
| conflict          = Irish Rebellion of 1798
| partof            = the [[Atlantic Revolutions]] and the [[French Revolutionary Wars]]
| image             = Vinhill.gif
| image_size        = 300px
| caption           = [[Battle of Vinegar Hill]] by [[William Sadler Kelvin II]] (1880)  "Charge of the [[5th Dragoon Guards]] on the insurgents – a recreant [[yeomanry|yeoman]] having deserted to them in uniform is being cut down"
| date              = {{nowrap|24 May – 12 October 1798}} <br />(4 months and 18 days)
| place             = Ireland
| result            = British victory
* [[Acts of Union 1800|Abolition of the Irish Parliament]] and creation of the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]] in 1801
* Attempt to renew the insurrection with a [[Irish Rebellion of 1803|rising in Dublin in 1803]]
* Guerrilla activity in counties [[County Antrim|Antrim]] until 1800,  [[County Wicklow|Wicklow]] until 1803, [[County Wexford|Wexford]] and [[County Kilkenny|Kilkenny]] until 1804.
| combatant1        = {{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Irish Republic (1798)|Irish Republic]]
* {{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Society of United Irishmen|United Irishmen]]
* {{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Defenders (Ireland)|Defenders]]
----{{flagicon|First French Republic}} [[First French Republic|French Republic]]
| combatant2        = {{flagicon|Kingdom of Great Britain}} [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Great Britain]]
* {{flagicon|Kingdom of Ireland}} [[Kingdom of Ireland]]
| commander1        = {{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[William Aylmer]]<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Myles Byrne]]<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Thomas Cloney]]<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Bagenal Harvey]]{{executed}}<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Henry Joy McCracken]]{{executed}}<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Theobald Wolfe Tone|Wolfe Tone]] [[Suicide|'''X''']]<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Henry Munro (United Irishman)|Henry Munro]]{{executed}}<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}}  [[John Murphy (priest)|Fr. John Murphy]]{{executed}}<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Michael Murphy (priest)|Fr. Michael Murphy]]{{KIA}}<br />{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Philip Roche|Fr. Philip Roche]] {{executed}}<br/>{{Flagicon image|Green harp flag of Ireland.svg}} [[Mogue Kearns|Fr. Mogue Kearns]]<br />{{flagicon|French First Republic}} [[Jean Joseph Amable Humbert|Jean Humbert]]<br>{{flagicon|French First Republic}} [[Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart|Jean Bompart]]
| commander2        = {{flagicon|Kingdom of Great Britain}} [[Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis|Charles Cornwallis]]<br>{{flagicon|Kingdom of Great Britain}} [[Ralph Abercromby]]<br>{{flagicon|Kingdom of Great Britain}} [[Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake|Gerard Lake]]<br>{{flagicon|Kingdom of Great Britain}} [[Sir George Nugent, 1st Baronet|George Nugent]]<br>{{flagicon|Kingdom of Great Britain}} [[John Borlase Warren|John Warren]]
| strength1         = {{resize|95%|50,000 United Irishmen<br />4,100 French [[French Revolutionary Army|regulars]]<br />10 [[French Navy]] ships<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/irish_reb_01.shtml The 1798 Irish Rebellion] (BBC).</ref>}}
| strength2         = {{resize|95%|30,000 British [[History of the British Army|regulars]]<br />~25,000 [[yeomanry]]<br />~1,000 [[Hessian (soldier)|Hessians]] <br />40,000 [[Irish Army (1661-1801)|Irish loyalists]]}}
| casualties1       = {{resize|95%|10,000<ref>Thomas Bartlett, ''Clemency and Compensation, the treatment of defeated rebels and suffering loyalists after the 1798 rebellion, in Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union, Ireland in the 1790s'', Jim Smyth ed, Cambridge, 2000, p. 100</ref>–50,000<ref name="thomas1969">[[Thomas Pakenham (historian)|Thomas Pakenham]], p. 392 ''The Year of Liberty'' (1969) {{ISBN|0-586-03709-8}}</ref> estimated combatant and civilian deaths<br />3,500 French captured<br />7 French ships captured}}
| casualties2       = {{resize|95%|500–2,000 military deaths<ref>Bartlett, p. 100</ref><br />{{circa}} 1,000 [[Loyalism|loyalist]] civilian deaths<ref>Richard Musgrave (1801). ''Memoirs of the different rebellions in Ireland'' (see Appendices)</ref>}}
| campaignbox       = {{Campaignbox Irish Rebellion of 1798}}
{{Campaignbox French Revolutionary Wars}}
}}

The '''Irish Rebellion of 1798''' ({{langx|ga|Éirí Amach 1798}}; [[Ulster Scots dialect|Ulster-Scots]]: ''The Turn out'',<ref>{{Cite web |last=Patterson |first=William Hugh |date=1880 |title=Glossary of Words in the Counties of Antrim and Down |url=http://www.ulsterscotsacademy.com/texts/historical-abstracts/1800-1899/pattersons-glossary/t.php |access-date=2024-10-29 |website=www.ulsterscotsacademy.com}}</ref> ''The Hurries'',<ref>{{Cite web |last=Patterson |first=William Hugh |date=1880 |title=Glossary of Words in the Counties of Antrim and Down |url=http://www.ulsterscotsacademy.com/texts/historical-abstracts/1800-1899/pattersons-glossary/h.php |access-date=2020-11-04 |website=www.ulsterscotsacademy.com}}</ref> 1798 Rebellion<ref>{{Cite book |title=Revolution, counter-revolution, and union: Ireland in the 1790s |date=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-66109-6 |editor-last=Smyth |editor-first=Jim |location=Cambridge; New York}}</ref>) was a popular insurrection against the [[British Crown]] in what was then the separate, but subordinate, [[Kingdom of Ireland]]. The main organising force was the [[Society of United Irishmen]]. First formed in [[Belfast]] by [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterians]] opposed to the landed [[Protestant Ascendancy|Anglican establishment]], the Society, despairing of reform, sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's [[Catholic]] majority. The grievances of a [[rack-rent]]ed tenantry drove recruitment.

While assistance was being sought from the [[French First Republic|French Republic]] and from democratic militants in Britain,  martial-law seizures and arrests forced the conspirators into the open. Beginning in late May 1798, there were a series of uncoordinated risings: in the counties of [[County Carlow|Carlow]] and [[County Wexford|Wexford]] in the southeast where the rebels met with some success; in the north around Belfast in counties [[County Antrim|Antrim]] and [[County Down|Down]]; and closer to the capital, [[Dublin]], in counties [[County Meath|Meath]] and [[County Kildare|Kildare]].

In late August, after the rebels had been reduced to pockets of guerrilla resistance, the French landed an [[Expeditionary warfare|expeditionary force]] in the west, in [[County Mayo]]. Unable to effect a conjunction with a significant rebel force, they surrendered on 9 September. In the last open-field engagement of the rebellion, the local men they had rallied on their arrival were routed at [[Battle of Killala|Killala]] on 23 September. On 12 October, a second French expedition was defeated in a [[Battle of Tory Island|naval action]] off the coast of [[County Donegal]] leading to the capture of the United Irish leader [[Wolfe Tone]].

In the wake of the rebellion, [[Acts of Union 1800]] abolished the [[Parliament of Ireland|Irish legislature]] and brought Ireland under the crown of a [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] through the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament at Westminster]]. The centenary of the rebellion in 1898 saw its legacy disputed by [[Irish nationalism|nationalists]] who wished to restore a legislature in Dublin, by [[Irish republicanism|republicans]] who invoked the name of Tone in the cause of complete separation and independence, and by [[Unionism in Ireland|unionists]] opposed to all measures of Irish self-government. Renewed in a bicentenary year that coincided with the [[Good Friday Agreement]] in 1998, the debate over the interpretation and significance of "1798" continues.

== Background ==

=== The Volunteer movement ===
In the last decades of the 18th century, the [[The Crown|British Crown]] in Ireland faced growing demands for constitutional reform. The [[Protestant Ascendancy]] had relaxed the [[Penal laws (Ireland)|Penal Laws]] by which, in the wake of the [[Williamite War in Ireland|Jacobite defeat in 1691]], it had sought to break the power, and reduce the influence, both of  the [[Catholic Church in Ireland|Catholic church]] and of the remaining Catholic [[gentry]].<ref name="Cullen-1986">{{Cite journal |last=Cullen |first=Louis |date=1986 |title=Catholics under the Penal Laws |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30070812 |journal=Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr |volume=1 |pages=23–36 [27–35] |doi=10.3828/eci.1986.4 |jstor=30070812 |s2cid=150607757 |issn=0790-7915|url-access=subscription }}</ref> However, the landed Anglican interest continued to monopolise the Irish Parliament, occupying both the [[Irish House of Lords|House of Lords]] and, through the system of [[Rotten and pocket boroughs|pocket boroughs]], half of the  [[Irish House of Commons|Commons]].<ref name="Kennedy-1992">{{Cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=Denis |date=1992 |title=The Irish Opposition, Parliamentary Reform and Public Opinion, 1793–1794 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30070925 |journal=Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr |volume=7 |pages=95–114 [96–97] |doi=10.3828/eci.1992.7 |issn=0790-7915 |jstor=30070925 |s2cid=256154966|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The interests of the Crown were meanwhile secured by a [[Dublin Castle administration|Viceregal administration]] accountable, not to the legislature in Dublin, but to the King and his ministers in London (and which also having boroughs in its pocket reduced to a third the number of Commons seats open to electoral contest).<ref name="Kennedy-1992" /> Additionally, the British parliament presumed the right to itself to legislate for Ireland, a prerogative it had exercised to restrict rival Irish trade and commerce.<ref name="Gill & Macmillan">{{cite book |last1=Bardon |first1=Jonathan |title=A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes |date=2008 |publisher=Gill & Macmillan |isbn=978-0717146499 |location=Dublin |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|286–288}}

The [[American Revolutionary War|revolt of the North American colonies]] presented a challenge. War with the colonists and with their French allies drew down the Crown's regular forces in Ireland. In their absence [[Irish Volunteers (18th century)|Volunteer companies]] were formed, ostensibly for home defence, but soon, like their kinsmen in the colonies, debating and asserting "constitutional rights".<ref name="Smyth-2000">"''Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union''" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) Ed. Jim Smyth {{ISBN|0-521-66109-9}}, p. 113.</ref> In 1782, with the Volunteers drilling and parading in support of the otherwise beleaguered [[Irish Patriot Party|Patriot opposition]] in the Irish Parliament, Westminster repealed its [[Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719]].<ref name="Costin">{{cite book |title=The Law and Working of the Constitution: Documents 1660–1914 |publisher=A. & C. Black |year=1952 |editor1=Costin, W. C. |volume=I (1660–1783) |location=London |page=147 |editor2=Watson, J. Steven}}</ref><ref name="Cassell's Chronology">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Hywel |url=https://archive.org/details/cassellschronolo0000will/page/334 |title=Cassell's Chronology of World History |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |year=2005 |isbn=0-304-35730-8 |location=London |pages=[https://archive.org/details/cassellschronolo0000will/page/334 334–335]}}</ref>

Volunteers, especially in the north where [[Presbyterian Church in Ireland|Presbyterians]] and other [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Protestant Dissenters]] had flocked to their ranks, immediately sought to build upon this [[Constitution of 1782|grant of legislative independence]] by agitating for the abolition of the pocket boroughs and an extension of the franchise but the question of whether, and on what terms, parliamentary reform should embrace [[Catholic emancipation]] split the movement.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Stewart |first=A. T. Q. |title=A Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irishmen |publisher=Faber and Faber |year=1993 |isbn=0571154867 |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|pages=49–50}}<ref name="Bardon-2005">Bardon, Jonathan (2005), ''A History of Ulster'', Belfast: The Black Staff Press. {{ISBN|0-85640-764-X}}</ref>{{rp|pages=214–217}} The ''[[Ancien Régime]]'' survived: the [[Anglican Communion|Anglican]] aristocracy remained entrenched under the patronage of a government that continued to take its direction from London.<ref>Coquelin, Olivier (2007) [https://hal.science/hal-02387112/document "Grattan's Parliament (1782–1800): Myth and Reality. Political Ideology in Ireland"]: ''From the Enlightenment to the Present'', Olivier Coquelin; Patrick Galliou; Thierry Robin, Nov 2007, Brest, France. pp. 42–52 [48]. ffhal-02387112f</ref>

=== Formation of the United Irishmen ===
{{Main|Society of United Irishmen}}
The disappointment was felt keenly in [[Belfast]], a growing commercial centre which, as a borough owned of the [[George Chichester, 2nd Marquess of Donegall|Marquess of Donegall]], had no elected representation. In October 1791, amidst public celebration of the [[French Revolution]], a group of Volunteer veterans invited an address from [[Wolfe Tone]], a Protestant secretary to Dublin's [[Catholic Committee (Ireland)|Catholic Committee]].<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VD4IAAAAQAAJ&q=Life+of+Theobald+Wolfe+Tone |title=Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, vol. I |publisher=Gales and Seaton |year=1826 |editor=William Theobald Wolfe Tone |location=Washington D.C. |pages=141}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=English |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=59mOVEg80PYC |title=Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland |date=2007 |publisher=Pan Books |isbn=978-0330427593 |pages=96–98 |language=en}}</ref> Acknowledging his ''Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland,''<ref>{{Cite book |author=Theobald Wolfe Tone |url=https://celt.ucc.ie//published/E790002/index.html |title=An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland |publisher=H. Joy & Co. |year=1791 |location=Belfast}}</ref> in which Tone had argued that they could not enjoy liberty until banded together with Catholics against the "boobies and blockheads" of the Ascendancy, and styling themselves at his suggestion the [[Society of United Irishmen]],<ref name="Bartlett-2010">{{Cite book |last=Bartlett |first=Thomas |title=Ireland, a History |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=9780521197205}}</ref>{{rp|207}} the meeting resolved:

<blockquote>[that] the weight of English influence in the government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland; [and] that the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed, is by complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Altholz |first=Josef L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zsnwc3fadxAC |title=Selected Documents in Irish History |publisher=M E Sharpe |year=2000 |isbn=0415127769 |location=New York |pages=70}}</ref></blockquote>

The same resolution was carried by Tone's friends in Dublin where, reflecting a larger, more diverse, middle class, the Society united from the outset Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter.<ref name="Durey-1994">{{Cite journal |last=Durey |first=Michael |date=1994 |title=The Dublin Society of United Irishmen and the Politics of the Carey-Drennan Dispute, 1792–1794 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2640053 |journal=The Historical Journal |volume=37 |issue=1 |pages=89–111 [96–100] |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00014710 |issn=0018-246X |jstor=2640053 |s2cid=143976314|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== The Catholic Convention ===
With the support and participation of United Irishmen,<ref name="Smyth-1998">{{Cite book |last=Smyth |first=Jim |title=The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century |publisher=Macmillan Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-333-73256-4 |location=London |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|74–76}} in December 1792 the [[Catholic Committee (Ireland)|Catholic Committee]] convened a national Catholic Convention. Elected on a broad, head-of-household, franchise, the "Back Lane Parliament" was a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the [[Irish House of Lords|Irish Lords]] and [[Irish House of Commons|Commons.]]<ref name="Woods-2003">{{Cite journal |last=Woods |first=C. J. |date=2003 |title=The Personnel of the Catholic Convention, 1792–3 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25484204 |journal=Archivium Hibernicum |volume=57 |pages=26–76 [26–27] |doi=10.2307/25484204 |issn=0044-8745 |jstor=25484204|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Anticipating war with the [[French First Republic|new French Republic]], [[George III]] received a delegation from the convention (including Tone) at [[Windsor Castle|Windsor]], and the British government pressed the Irish Parliament to match Westminster's [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791]].<ref name="Gill & Macmillan"/>{{rp|296}} This relieved Catholics of most of their remaining civil disabilities and, where (in the counties) Common's seats were contested, allowed those meeting the property qualification to vote. For Parliament itself the [[Oath of Supremacy]] was retained so that it remained exclusively Protestant.<ref>Patrick Weston Joyce (1910) An Installment on Emancipation [http://www.libraryireland.com/JoyceHistory/Instalment.php (1790–1793)] p. 867. www.libraryireland.com</ref>

For a measure that could have little appreciable impact on the conduct of government, the price for overriding Ascendancy opposition was the dissolution of the Catholic Committee,<ref name="Lee23">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Tone, Theobald Wolfe|volume=57|page=23}}</ref> a new government militia that conscripted Catholic and Protestant by [[Drawing lots (decision making)|lot]],<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|209}} and a Convention Act that effectively outlawed extra-parliamentary opposition.<ref>{{cite book |last=Connolly |first=S. J. |title=Oxford Companion to Irish History |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-19-923483-7 |page=611}}</ref> When it was clear that these were not terms acceptable to the United Irishmen (who had been seeking to revive and remodel the Volunteers along the lines of the revolutionary [[National Guard (France)|French "National Guard"]])<ref>{{Cite book |last=Blackstock |first=Allan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vkayx77nQLQC |title=Double Traitors?: The Belfast Volunteers and Yeomen, 1778–1828 |date=2000 |publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation |isbn=978-0-9539604-1-5 |location=Belfast |pages=11–12 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Garnham |first=Neal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lB1vsTaIKC4C |title=The Militia in Eighteenth-century Ireland: In Defence of the Protestant Interest |date=2012 |publisher=Boydell Press |isbn=978-1-84383-724-4 |pages=152 |language=en}}</ref> the government moved to suppress the Society. In May 1794, following the revelation of meetings between a French emissary, [[William Jackson (journalist)|William Jackson]], and United leaders including Tone and [[Archibald Hamilton Rowan]], the Society was proscribed.<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|211}}

== Mobilisation ==
[[File:A new and complete Map of the kingdom of Ireland, drawn from all the surveys and improvements which have hitherto been made ... - btv1b53029317m.jpg|thumb|left|Provinces of Ireland]]

=== New System of Organisation ===
A year later, in May 1795, a meeting of United delegates from Belfast and the surrounding market towns responded to the growing repression by endorsing a new, and it was hoped more resistant, "system of organisation". Local societies were to split so as to remain within a range of 7 to 35 members, and through baronial and county delegate committees, to build toward a provincial, and, once three of [[Provinces of Ireland|Ireland's four provinces]] had organised, a national, directory.<ref name="Curtin-1993">Curtin, Nancy J. (1993), "United Irish organisation in Ulster, 1795–8", in D. Dickson, D. Keogh and K. Whelan, ''The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion,'' Dublin: Lilliput Press, {{ISBN|0946640955}}, pp. 209–222.</ref>

It was with this New System that the Society spread rapidly across Ulster and, eventually, from Dublin (where the abandonment of open proceedings had been resisted){{sfn|Stewart|1995|p=20}} out into the midlands and the south. As it did so, [[William Drennan]]'s [[Test of the Society of United Irishmen|"test" or pledge]], calling for "a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion",<ref>{{Cite book |title=Belfast politics: or, A collection of the debates, resolutions, and other proceedings of that town in the years 1792, and 1793 |publisher=H. Joy & Co. |year=1794 |editor=William Bruce and Henry Joy |location=Belfast |pages=145}}</ref> was administered to [[artisan]]s, [[Journeyman|journeymen]] and shopkeepers, many of whom had maintained their own [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobin]] clubs,<ref name="McSkimin-1906">{{Cite book |last=McSkimin |first=Samuel |title=Annals of Ulster: from 1790 to 1798 |publisher=Jmes Cleeland, William Mullan & Son |year=1906 |location=Belfast |pages=14–15}}</ref> and to tenant farmers and their market-town allies who had organised against the Protestant [[gentry]] in secret fraternities.<ref name="Elliott-1993" />{{rp|227–228}}

=== United Irish–Defender alliance ===
In rural Ireland, there was a "varied, energetic and complex structure of agrarian 'secret societies'", commonly referred to as [[Whiteboys|Whiteboyism]], after groups that had emerged mid-century in the south.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Foster |first=R. F. |title=Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 |publisher=Allen Lane, Penguin |year=1988 |isbn=9780713990102 |location=London |pages=222–223}}</ref> In the north, it had included the [[Hearts of Oak (Ireland)|Oakboys,]] Presbyterian led but admitting Catholics,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Magennis |first=Eoin F. |date=1998 |title=A 'Presbyterian Insurrection'? Reconsidering the Hearts of Oak Disturbances of July 1763 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30008257 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=31 |issue=122 |pages=165–187 |issn=0021-1214}}</ref> who in 1763 had threatened to pursue fleeing Anglican rectors and tithe proctors into the [[Derry|city of Derry.]]<ref>Donnelly, James S. Jr. (1981). "Hearts of Oak, Hearts of Steel." ''Studia Hibernica'' 21: 7–73.</ref> There had also been the [[Hearts of Steel]]: protesting land speculation and evictions, in 1770 they had entered Belfast, besieged the barracks, and sprung one of their number from prison.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dungan |first=Myles |url= |title=Land Is All That Matters: The Struggle That Shaped Irish History |date=2024 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-80110-816-4 |location=London |pages=93-95 |language=en}}</ref> By the 1790s, borrowing, like the United Irish societies (and, from 1795, their nemesis the [[Orange Order|Orange Institution)]], from the lodge structure and ceremonial of [[freemasonry]],<ref name="CJYJs2">{{Cite journal |last=Rudland |first=David |date=1998 |title=1798 and Freemasonry |url=https://www.historyireland.com/1798-and-freemasonry/ |journal=United Irishmen |volume=6 |issue=4}}</ref><ref>Smyth, J, (1993), "Freemasonry and the United Irishmen",  in David Dickson, Daire Keogh and Kevin Whelan eds., ''The United Irishmen, Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion'', pp. 167–174, Dublin, Lilliput, {{ISBN|0946640955}}</ref> this semi-insurrectionary phenomenon had regenerated as the largely but—with some latter-day adjustments to their oaths—not exclusively Catholic, [[Defenders (Ireland)|Defenders]].<ref name="Curtin-1985">{{Cite journal |last=Curtin |first=Nancy J. |date=1985 |title=The Transformation of the Society of United Irishmen into a Mass-Based Revolutionary Organisation, 1794–6 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30008756 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=24 |issue=96 |pages=463–492 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400034477 |jstor=30008756 |s2cid=148429477 |issn=0021-1214|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|467–477}}

Originating as "fleets" of young men who contended with Protestant [[Peep o' Day Boys]] for the control of tenancies and employment in the linen-producing region of north Armagh,<ref name="Furlong-1991">Furlong, Nicholas (1991) ''Fr. John Murphy of Boolavogue 1753–98,'' Dublin, p. 146, {{ISBN|0-906602-18-1}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=McEvoy |first=Brendan |date=1987 |title=The Peep of Day Boys and Defenders in the County Armagh (concluded) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29745261 |journal=Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=60–127 |doi=10.2307/29745261 |jstor=29745261 |issn=0488-0196|url-access=subscription }}</ref> the Defenders organised across the southern counties of Ulster and into the Irish midlands. Already in 1788, their oath-taking had been condemned in a pastoral by the [[Richard O'Reilly|Catholic Primate Archbishop of Armagh]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McEvoy |first=Brendan |date=1970 |title=Father James Quigley: Priest of Armagh and United Irishman |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29740772 |journal=Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=247–268 [253–254] |doi=10.2307/29740772 |issn=0488-0196 |jstor=29740772|url-access=subscription }}</ref> As the United Irishmen began to reach out the Defenders, they were similarly sanctioned. With cautions against the "fascinating illusions" of French principles, in 1794 Catholics taking the [[Test of the Society of United Irishmen|United test]] were threatened with [[excommunication]].<ref name="Kennedy-1984">{{cite journal |last1=Kennedy |first1=W. Benjamin |date=December 1984 |title=Catholics in Ireland and the French Revolution |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44210866 |journal=Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia |volume=84 |issue=3/4 |page=222 |jstor=44210866 |access-date=20 January 2021}}</ref>

Encountering a political outlook more [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] than [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobin]],<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Morley |first=Vincent |date=2007 |title=The Continuity of Disaffection in Eighteenth-Century Ireland |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30071497 |journal=Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr |volume=22 |pages=189–205 |doi=10.3828/eci.2007.12 |issn=0790-7915 |jstor=30071497|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=W. Benjamin |date=1974 |title=Catholics in Ireland and the French Revolution |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44210866 |journal=Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia |volume=85 |issue=3/4 |pages=221–229 |jstor=44210866 |issn=0002-7790}}</ref> and speaking freely to the grievances of tithes, taxes and rents,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McEvoy |first=Brendan |date=1960 |title=The United Irishmen in Co. Tyrone |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29740719 |journal=Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=1–32 [19] |doi=10.2307/29740719 |issn=0488-0196 |jstor=29740719|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Bardon-2005"/>{{rp|pages=229–230}} United agents sought to convince Defenders of something they had only "vaguely" considered, namely the need to separate Ireland from England and to secure its "real as well as nominal independence".<ref name="Elliott-1993">Elliott, Marianne (1993), "The Defenders in Ulster",  in David Dickson, Daire Keogh and Kevin Whelan eds., ''The United Irishment, Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion'', (pp. 222–233), Dublin, Lilliput, {{ISBN|0-946640-95-5}}</ref>{{rp|483, 486}} As the promise of reform receded, and as [[French Revolutionary Wars|French victories]] built hopes of military assistance, [[Catholic emancipation]] and parliamentary reform became a demand for [[universal manhood suffrage]] (every man a citizen),<ref>R.B. McDowell (ed.) (1942), "Select documents{{snd}}II: United Irish plans of parliamentary reform, 1793" in ''Irish Historical Society'', iii, no. 9 (March), pp. 40–41; Douglas to Mehean, 24 January 1794 (Public Records Office, Home Office, 100/51/98–100); cited in Cronin (1985) p. 465</ref><ref name="McDowell-1944">{{Cite book |last=McDowell |first=R. B. |url= |title=Irish Public Opinion 1750–1800 |publisher=Faber and Faber |year=1944 |edition= |location=London |pages=197–198 |language=English}}</ref> and hopes for accountable government were increasingly represented by the call for an [[Irish Republic (1798)|Irish republic]]—terms that clearly anticipated a violent break with the Crown.<ref name="Curtin-1985" />

=== Preparation ===
[[File:United irishmen 1.jpg|right|thumb|The leadership of the [[United Irishmen]]]]
Beginning with an obligation of each society to drill a company, and of three companies to form a battalion, the New System of Organisation was adapted to military preparation.<ref name="Curtin-1993" /><ref>Graham, Thomas (1993), "A Union of Power: the United Irish Organisation 1795–1798",  in David Dickson, Daire Keogh and Kevin Whelan eds., ''The United Irishmen, Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion'', (pp. 243–255), Dublin, Lilliput, {{ISBN|0946640955}}, pp. 246–247</ref> With only [[Ulster]] and [[Leinster]] organised, the leadership remained split between the two provincial directories. In June 1797, they met together in Dublin to consider the demands for an immediate rising from the northerners who, reeling from martial-law seizures and arrests, feared the opportunity to strike was passing. The meeting broke up in disarray, with many of the Ulster delegates fleeing abroad.<ref name="Bew-2011a">{{Cite book |last=Bew |first=John |title=Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War and Tyranny |publisher=Quercus |year=2011 |isbn=978-0857381866 |location=London |pages=96–98}}</ref> The authorities were sufficiently satisfied with the severity of their countermeasures in Ulster that in August they restored civil law in the province.<ref name="Kee-1976">{{Cite book |last=Kee |first=Robert |title=The Most Distressful Country, The Green Flag, Volume 1 |publisher=Quartet Books |year=1976 |isbn=070433089X |location=London |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|88}}

The initiative passed to the Leinster directory which had recruited two radically disaffected members of the Patriot opposition: [[Lord Edward FitzGerald]], who brought with him experience of the American war, and [[Arthur O'Connor (United Irishman)|Arthur O'Connor]] (later, undistinguished, as an officer of [[Napoleon]]'s [[Irish Legion]]). In August 1797, their military refinement of the New System retained a measure of democratic practice. [[Irish Townland|Townland]] societies of 12 men, mustered as platoons, chose their own sergeants; ten sergeants commissioned a company captain, and ten captains—a combined command of 1,200 men—elected a regimental colonel. The directory intervened only at the level the county adjutant-general, the colonels advancing a shortlist of names for their selection <ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Whelan |first=Kevin |title=The Mighty Wave: the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford |publisher=Four Courts Press |year=1996 |isbn=1851822542 |editor-last=Keogh |editor-first=Daire |location=Dublin |pages=9-36 |chapter=Reinterpreting the 1798 Rebellion in County Wexford |editor-last2=Fulong |editor-first2=Nicholas}}</ref>{{rp|15}}.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book |last=Graham |first=Thomas |title=The Mighty Wave: the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford |publisher=Four Courts Press |year=1996 |isbn=1851822542 |editor-last=Keogh |editor-first=Daire |location=Dublin |pages=65-78 |chapter=Dublin in 1798: The Key to the Planned Insurrection |editor-last2=Furlong |editor-first2=Nicholas}}</ref>{{rp|66-67}} Under this "military constitution",<ref name=":210">{{Cite book |last=Graham |first=Thomas |title=The Mighty Wave: the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford |publisher=Four Courts Press |year=1996 |isbn=1851822542 |editor-last=Keogh |editor-first=Daire |location=Dublin |pages=65-78 |chapter=Dublin in 1798: The Key to the Planned Insurrection |editor-last2=Furlong |editor-first2=Nicholas}}</ref>{{rp|66}} the movement strengthened in existing strongholds such as Dublin, [[County Kildare]] and [[County Meath]], and broke new ground in the midlands and the south-east.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fagan |first=Patrick |year=1998 |title=Infiltration of Dublin Freemason Lodges by United Irishmen and Other Republican Groups |journal=Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr |volume=13 |pages=65–85 |doi=10.3828/eci.1998.7 |jstor=30064326 |s2cid=256149995}}</ref><ref name="Graham-1993a">Graham, Thomas. (1993), "'An Union of Power'? The United Irish organisation, 1795–1798", in D. Dickson, D. Keogh and K. Whelan, ''The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion,'' Dublin: Lilliput Press, {{ISBN|0946640955}}, pp. 244–255.</ref>

In February 1798, a return prepared by Fitzgerald computed the number of United Irishmen, nationwide, at 269,896 but there were doubts as to the number who would heed call to arms and whether they could muster more than simple [[Pike pole|pikes]] (over the previous year the authorities had seized 70,630 of these compared to just 4,183 [[blunderbuss]]es and 225 [[musket]] barrels).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baines |first=Edward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vi7lkwlB5QEC&pg=PA225 |title=History of the Wars of the French Revolution ..., Volume 1 |publisher=Longman, Herst, Bees, Orme & Brown |year=1817 |location=London |pages=225}}</ref> While the movement had withstood the government's countermeasures, and seditious propaganda and preparation continued, there was hesitation to act without the certainty of French arms and assistance.<ref name="Graham-1993a" />

== Soliciting French, and British-Jacobin, alliances ==

===Hoche's expedition December 1796 {{anchor|Bantry}}===
{{main|French expedition to Ireland (1796)}}

[[File:Irish-Invasion-Gillray.jpeg|thumb|In ''End of the Irish Invasion–or–the Destruction of the French Armada'' (1797), [[James Gillray]] caricatured the failure of Hoche's expedition.|left]]
In 1795, from American exile Tone had travelled to Paris where he sought to convince the [[French Directory]] that Ireland was the key to breaking Britain's maritime stranglehold. His "memorials" on the situation in Ireland came to the attention of Director [[Lazare Carnot]], and by May, [[Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke|General Henri Clarke]], the Irish-descendant head of the War Ministry's ''Bureau Topographique'', had drafted an invasion plan. In June, Carnot offered General [[Lazare Hoche]] command of an Irish expedition that would secure "the safety of France for centuries to come."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Elliott |first=Marianne |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hxISHyhgrCIC |title=Wolfe Tone |date=2012 |publisher=Liverpool University Press |isbn=978-1-84631-807-8 |pages=280–287 |language=en}}</ref>

Originally, it was to have been accompanied by two diversionary raids on England: one against [[Newcastle upon Tyne|Newcastle]], the other against [[Bristol]]. In the event, because of pressing demands in Italy, the forty thousand men called for could not be mustered.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Association |first=Waterloo |date=2018-07-26 |title=The Last Invasion of Britain 1797 |url=https://www.waterlooassociation.org.uk/2018/07/26/the-last-invasion-of-britain/ |access-date=2024-04-01 |website=The Waterloo Association |language=en-US}}</ref>

Under Hoche, a force of 15,000 veteran troops was assembled at [[Brest, France|Brest]]. Sailing on 16 December, accompanied by Tone, the French arrived off the coast of Ireland at [[Bantry Bay]] on 22 December 1796. Unremitting storms prevented a landing. Tone remarked that "England [...] had its luckiest escape since the [[Spanish Armada|Armada]]".<ref name="Moody-1763">''The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763–98, Volume Two: America, France and Bantry Bay – August 1795 to December 1796'' (Journal entry 26 December 1796) – eds. T W Moody, R B MacDowell and C J Woods, Clarendon Press (US) {{ISBN|0-19-822383-8}}</ref> The fleet returned home and the army intended to spearhead the invasion of Ireland was split up and sent, along with a growing [[Irish Legion]], to fight in other theatres of the [[French Revolutionary Wars]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Come |first=Donald R. |date=1952 |title=French Threat to British Shores, 1793–1798 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1982368 |journal=Military Affairs |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=174–188 |doi=10.2307/1982368 |jstor=1982368 |issn=0026-3931|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Bantry Bay had nonetheless made real the prospect of French intervention, and United societies flooded with new members.<ref name="Bardon-2005"/>{{rp|pages=229–230}} There were increasing reports of Defenders and United Irishmen "marauding" for weapons, and openly parading.<ref name="Kee-1976" />{{rp|86}} In May 1797, Yeomanry, which in the north had begun recruiting entire [[Orange Order|Orange lodges]],<ref name="Elliott-2000b">{{Cite book |last=Elliott |first=Marianne |title=The Catholics of Ulster, a History |publisher=Allen Lane |year=2000 |isbn=0713994649 |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|245–246}} charged gatherings near [[Cootehill]] in [[Cavan]] killing eleven,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=MacDonald |first=Brian |date=2002 |title=Monaghan in the Age of Revolution |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27699471 |journal=Clogher Record |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=(751–780) 770 |doi=10.2307/27699471 |issn=0412-8079 |jstor=27699471|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and in Dundalk killing fourteen.<ref name="Kee-1976" />{{rp|83}}

=== Naval mutinies ===
In advance of Hoche's expedition, Tone told Carnot that there were 80,000 Irishmen in the [[Royal Navy]] and prepared an address calling on them to steer their ships into the ports of Ireland, "now an independent nation". When, months later in April and May 1797, [[Spithead and Nore mutinies|mutinies broke out at Spithead and Nore]], the British authorities (who estimated the actual number of Irish in the fleet as 11,000, or 11 percent of the total)<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Gill |first=Conrad |url=https://ia601906.us.archive.org/21/items/navalmutiniesof00gill/navalmutiniesof00gill.pdf |title=The Naval Mutinies of 1797 |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1913 |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|330 n.1}} were quick to see the hand of the United Irish and their radical allies .<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dugan |first1=James |title=The Great Mutiny |date=1965 |publisher=the Trinity Press |isbn=978-7070012751 |location=London |pages=420–425}}</ref>

The Irish republicans were reportedly behind the resolution of the Nore mutineers to hand the fleet over to the French "as the only government that understands the Rights of Man".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cole |first1=G. D. H. |title=The Common People, 1746–1938 |last2=Postgate |first2=Raymond |date=1945 |publisher=Methuen & Co. Ltd. |edition=2nd |location=London |page=162}}</ref> Much was made of Valentine Joyce, a leader at Spithead, described by [[Edmund Burke]] as a "seditious Belfast clubist".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Manwaring |first1=George |title=The Floating Republic: An Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 |last2=Dobree |first2=Bonamy |date=1935 |publisher=Geoffrey Bles |location=London |page=101}}</ref> Yet no evidence was brought forth of United Irish sympathisers aboard ship being directed by agents of the Society.<ref name="Roger-2003">Roger, N.A.M.(2003), "Mutiny or subversion? Spithead and the Nore", in Thomas Bartlett et al. (eds.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=F41nAAAAMAAJ ''1798: A Bicentenary Perspective'', Dublin], Four Courts Press, {{ISBN|1851824308}}, pp. 549–564.</ref>  It was only after the mutinies that leaders in Ireland began to address compatriots in the fleet, and it was in terms, replicating Tone's purely patriotic appeal,<ref name=":1" />{{rp|331-334}} that displayed no interest in, or understanding of, their on-board predicament and grievances.<ref name="Featherstone">{{cite journal |last1=Featherstone |first1=David |date=2013 |title='We will have equality and liberty in Ireland': The Contested Geographies of Irish Democratic Political Cultures in the 1790s |journal=Historical Geography |volume=41 |pages=128}}</ref>

The mutinies had paralysed the British navy, but the [[Batavian Republic|Batavian]] fleet that the French had prepared for their forces at [[Texel]] was again opposed by the weather. In October 1797, after Tone and the troops he was to accompany to Ireland had been disembarked, the fleet sought to reach the French naval base at Brest and was destroyed by the Royal Navy at the [[Battle of Camperdown]].<ref name="Pakenham 19922">{{cite book |last=Pakenham |first=Thomas |url=https://archive.org/details/yearoflibertyhis0000pake_v8o4/mode/2up?view=theater |title=The Year of Liberty – The History of the Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 |publisher=Phoenix |year=1992 |isbn=1-85799-050-1 |edition=Phoenix Paperback |location=London |author-link=Thomas Pakenham (historian) |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{rp|42–45}} <ref>{{Cite web |title=French Expeditions to Ireland 1796–1798 |url=https://www.frenchempire.net/articles/ireland/ |access-date=2023-11-16 |website=www.frenchempire.net}}</ref>

=== The First Consul ===
In Paris, Tone recognised the rising star of [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] but he found the conqueror of Italy incurious about the Irish situation being in need of a war of conquest, not of liberation, to pay his army.<ref name="Fahey-2015">{{Cite news |last=Fahey |first=Denis |date=21 September 2015 |title=An Irishman's Diary on Napoleon and the Irish |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-on-napoleon-and-the-irish-1.2357328 |access-date=2023-12-20 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref> In February 1798, British spies did report that the [[French Consulate|First Consul]] was preparing a fleet in the Channel ports ready for the embarkation of up to 50,000 men, but the preparations were soon reversed. Bonaparte deemed both the military and naval forces assembled inadequate to the task.<ref name="Pakenham 19922" />{{rp|31}}

In later exile, the [[Emperor of the French|dethroned emperor]] was to claim that he might have made an attempt on Ireland (instead of sailing in May 1798 for Egypt) had he had confidence in Tone and the other United Irish agents appearing in Paris. He describes them as divided in opinion and constantly quarrelling.<ref name="Fahey-2015" />

=== British co-conspiracy ===
These agents from Ireland included [[James Coigly]]. A Catholic priest who had been active in bringing Defenders into the movement in Ulster,<ref name="Keogh22">{{cite journal |last1=Keogh |first1=Dáire |date=1998 |title=An Unfortunate Man |url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/an-unfortunate-man/ |journal=18th–19th – Century History |volume=6 |issue=2 |access-date=10 November 2020}}</ref> Coigly sought to persuade both French Directory and the leadership in Ireland of a larger project. Beginning in 1796, United Irish agents had helped build networks of United Englishmen and [[Society of the United Scotsmen|United Scotsmen]], societies whose proceedings, oath-taking, and advocacy of physical force "mirrored that of their Irish inspirators".<ref name="Davis United Englishmen2">{{cite ODNB|last1=Davis|first1=Michael|title=United Englishmen|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-95956|year=2008|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/95956|access-date=10 November 2020}}</ref> Describing himself as an emissary of the United Irish executive, assisted by a tide of refugees from Ulster,<ref name="McFarland-1994">McFarland, E. W. (1994), ''Ireland and Scotland in the Age of Revolution''. Edinburgh University Press. {{ISBN|978-0748605392}}</ref>{{rp|143–144}} and tapping into protest against the [[Combination acts|Combination Acts]] and wartime food shortages,<ref name="Elliott3">{{cite journal |last1=Elliott |first1=Marianne |date=May 1977 |title=The 'Despard Plot' Reconsidered |journal=Past & Present |issue=1 |pages=46–61 |doi=10.1093/past/75.1.46}}</ref> Coigly worked from [[Manchester]] to spread the United system across the manufacturing districts of northern England.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Michael |title=The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest |via=Wiley Online Library |publisher=The International Encyclopaedia of Revolution and Protest |year=2009 |isbn=978-1405198073 |pages=1–2 |chapter=United Englishmen/ United Britons |doi=10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1500 |access-date=9 November 2020 |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1500}}</ref><ref name="Booth2">{{cite journal |last1=Booth |first1=Alan |date=1986 |title=The united Englishmen and Radical Politics in the Industrial North West of England, 1795–1803 |journal=International Review of Social History |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=271–297 |doi=10.1017/S0020859000008221 |jstor=44582816 |doi-access=free}}</ref> In London, he conferred with Irishmen prominent in the city's federation of democratic clubs, the [[London Corresponding Society]]. With these he drew together delegates from Scotland and the provinces who, as "United Britons", resolved "to overthrow the present Government, and to join the French as soon as they made a landing in England".<ref name="Keogh22"/>

In July 1797, the resolution of the United Britons was discussed by the leadership in Dublin and Belfast. Although addressed to the prospect of a French invasion, the suggestion that "England, Scotland and Ireland are all one people acting for one common cause", encouraged militants to believe that liberty could be won even if "the French should never come here".<ref name="McFarland-1994" />{{rp|184–185}}<ref name="Keogh22"/>

== The risings ==
{{See also|Society of United Irishmen#1798 Rebellion}}

=== Eve-of-rebellion arrests ===
In early 1798, a series of violent attacks on magistrates in [[County Tipperary]], [[County Kildare]] and [[County Offaly|King's County]] alarmed the authorities. They were also aware that there was now a faction of the United Irish leadership, led by Fitzgerald and O'Connor, who felt "sufficiently well organised and equipped" to begin an insurgency without French assistance.<ref name="Pakenham 1992">{{cite book |last=Pakenham |first=Thomas |url=https://archive.org/details/yearoflibertyhis0000pake_v8o4/mode/2up?view=theater |title=The Year of Liberty – The History of the Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 |publisher=Phoenix |year=1992 |isbn=1-85799-050-1 |edition=Phoenix Paperback |location=London |author-link=Thomas Pakenham (historian) |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{rp|34–39}} [[Lord Lieutenant of Ireland|The Viceroy]], [[John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden|Lord Camden]], came under increasing pressure from hardline Irish MPs, led by Speaker [[John Foster, 1st Baron Oriel|John Foster]], to crack down on the growing disorder in the south and midlands and arrest the Dublin leadership.<ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|42}}

Camden hesitated, partly as he feared a crackdown would itself provoke an insurrection: the British [[Home Secretary]] [[William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland|Lord Portland]] agreed, describing the proposals as "dangerous and inconvenient".<ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|42}} The situation changed when an informer, Thomas Reynolds, produced Fitzgerald's report on manpower with its suggestion that over a quarter of a million men across [[Ulster]], [[Leinster]] and [[Munster]] were preparing to join the "revolutionary army". The Irish government learned from Reynolds that a meeting of the Leinster Provincial Committee and Directory had been set for 10 March in the Dublin house of wool merchant [[Oliver Bond]], where a motion for an immediate rising would be tabled. Camden decided to act, explaining to London that he risked having the Irish Parliament turn against him.<ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|45}}

On the 10th, In March 1798, almost the entire committee were seized, along with two directors, the comparative moderates (those who, in the absence of the French, had counselled delay) [[William James MacNeven]] and [[Thomas Addis Emmet]], together with all their papers. Meanwhile in England, O'Connor had been arrested alongside Coigly. Having been found in possession of a further address to the French Directory, Coigly was hanged, and the United network he had helped build in Britain was broken up by [[internment]].<ref name="Keogh 1998">{{cite journal |last1=Keogh |first1=Daire |date=Summer 1998 |title=An Unfortunate Man |url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/an-unfortunate-man/ |journal=18th–19th Century History |volume=5 |issue=2 |access-date=21 November 2020}}</ref> In Dublin, Fitzgerald went into hiding.<ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|45–46}}

The Irish government imposed [[martial law]] on 30 March, although civil courts continued sitting. Overall command of the army was transferred from [[Ralph Abercromby]] to [[Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake|Gerard Lake]] who turned his attention to Leinster and Munster where from Ulster his troops' reputation for public floggings, half-hanging, pitch-capping and other interrogative refinements preceded him.<ref>{{Cite ODNB|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15900|title=Lake, Gerard, first Viscount Lake of Delhi (1744–1808)|last=Bennell|first=Anthony S.|date=2004|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/15900|access-date=15 July 2020}}</ref><ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|57–58}}

=== The Call from Dublin ===
Faced with the breaking-up of their entire system, Fitzgerald, joined by [[Samuel Neilson]] (publisher in Belfast of the Society paper ''[[Northern Star (newspaper of the Society of United Irishmen)|Northern Star]],'' recently released from [[Kilmainham Gaol|Kilmainham Prison]]), and by [[Sheares brothers|John and Henry Sheares]], resolved on a general uprising for 23 May.<ref name="Cullen-1993">Cullen, Louis. (1993), "The internal politics of the United Irishmen", in D. Dickson, D. Keogh and K. Whelan eds., ''The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion,'' Dublin: Lilliput Press, {{ISBN|0-946640-95-5}}, (pp. 176–196) pp. 95–96</ref> There was no immediate promise of assistance from France (on the 19th a [[French campaign in Egypt and Syria|French expeditionary force]] had set sail, under Napoleon, but for Egypt, not Ireland).<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|220}} The United army in Dublin was to seize strategic points in the city, while the armies in the surrounding counties would throw up a cordon and advance into its centre. As soon as these developments were signalled by halting mail coaches from the capital, the rest of the country was to rise.<ref name="Graham-1993b">Graham, Thomas (1993), "A Union of Power: the United Irish Organisation 1795–1798",  in David Dickson, Daire Keogh and Kevin Whelan eds., ''The United Irishment, Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion'', (pp. 243–255), Dublin, Lilliput, {{ISBN|0946640955}}, pp. 250–253</ref>

On the appointed day, the rising in the city was aborted. Fitzgerald had been mortally wounded on the 19th, the [[Sheares brothers]] were betrayed the 21st, and on the morning of the 23rd, Neilson, who had been critical to the planning, was seized.<ref name="Graham-1993b"/> Armed with last minute intelligence, a large force of military occupied the rebels' intended assembly points, persuading those who had turned out to dump weapons and disperse. The plan to intercept the mail coaches miscarried, with only the Munster-bound coach halted at [[Johnstown, County Kildare]], near [[Naas]]. The organisation in the outer districts of the city nonetheless rose as planned and were swiftly followed by the surrounding counties.<ref>Graham, Thomas (1996), "Dublin in 1798: The Key to the Planned Insurrection" in ''The mighty wave : the 1798 rebellion in Wexford,'' Dáire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong (eds), pp. 65–78), Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Four Courts Press, {{ISBN|1851822534}}</ref>

=== Leinster ===
{{See also|Wexford Rebellion}}
[[File:Pikeman,_Wexford.jpg|left|thumb|"Pikeman" statue in [[Wexford Town]]]]
The first [[Battles of Irish rebellion 1798|clashes]] of the rebellion took place just after dawn on 24 May in [[County Kildare]]. After the Munster mail coach was attacked on its approach to Naas on the night of the 23rd, as 1,000 to 3,000 men approached the town. Their pikes could not prevail against [[grapeshot]] and steady musket fire. A garrison of less than 200 routed the rebels, with a small cavalry detachment cutting down over a hundred as they fled.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Naas – Kildare Local History  |url=https://kildarelocalhistory.ie/a-brief-history-of-co-kildare/1798-rebellion/rebellion-towns-villages/naas/ |access-date=2023-10-27 |website=kildarelocalhistory.ie}}</ref>

Success did attend a smaller rebel force, commanded by [[John Esmonde (United Irishman)|John Esmonde]], a Protestant physician who had deserted from the Yeomanry, later that day at [[Battle of Prosperous|Prosperous]]. The town was not to be re-occupied until after a rebel [[Battle of Ovidstown|defeat at Ovidstown]] on 19 June, but a succession of rebel reversals further afield, including defeats at [[Battle of Carlow|Carlow]] (25 May) and of a larger host at the [[Battle of Tara Hill|Hill of Tara]] in [[County Meath]] (May 26) persuaded many of the Kildare insurgents that their cause was lost.<ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|124}}

Rebels were to remain longest in the field in south-east, in Wexford and in the [[Wicklow Mountains|Mountains of Wicklow]]. It is commonly suggested that the trigger for the rising in Wexford was the arrival on 26 May of the notorious North Cork Militia.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hay |first=Edward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hkkTAAAAYAAJ |title=History of the Insurrection of the County of Wexford, A.D. 1798 |publisher=John Stockdale |year=1803 |location=Dublin |pages=57}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Ó hÓgartaigh |first=Margaret |title=Edward Hay: Historian of 1798 |publisher=The History Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1845889920 |location=Dublin |pages=40–41}}</ref> On 27 May, underestimating the hill-top position and resolve of a rebel party hastily assembled under a local priest, [[John Murphy (priest)|John Murphy]]<ref name="Swords-1997">Swords, L. (1997) ''Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter: The Clergy and 1798'', Columbia Press, p. 176</ref> (who only months before had led his congregation in taking an oath of loyalty to the King)<ref>{{Citation |last=Furlong |first=Nicholas |title=Murphy, John |date=2009 |work=Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/murphy-john-a6081 |access-date=2025-11-08 |publisher=Royal Irish Academy |doi=10.3318/dib.006081.v1|doi-access=free }}</ref> a force of the militia and yeomanry was cut down outside the town of [[Battle of Oulart Hill|Oulart]]. The insurgents then swept south through [[Wexford Town]] where they released, and gave command to, the local United Irish leader, a Protestant barrister, [[Bagenal Harvey]].
[[File:Battle of Oulart Hill.jpg|thumb|United Irishmen charge at [[Battle of Oulart Hill|Oulart Hill]], 27 May 1798]]

On 5 June, Bagenel, leading a force of 3,000, failed in an attempt to storm [[Battle of New Ross (1798)|New Ross]] whose capture might have opened the way to the large bodies of Defenders known to exist in Kilkenny and Waterford.<ref name="Kee-1976" />{{rp|44}} During and after the battle, government forces systematically killed captured and wounded rebels. On news of the defeat, rebels in the rear killed up to 200 loyalist prisoners (men, women and children): the notorious [[Scullabogue Barn massacre]].<ref name="gahan">Gahan, D. (1996)  [http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-scullabogue-massacre-1798/ "The Scullabogue Massacre, 1798"], ''History Ireland'', v4:3</ref>

Meanwhile, attempts to break northward and open a road through Wicklow toward Dublin were checked 1 June at [[Battle of Bunclody|Bunclody]] and, despite the deployment of guns captured by Murphy's division in an [[Battle of Tubberneering|ambush at Tubberneering]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hay |first=Edward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=od49AAAAcAAJ |title=History of the Insurrection of the County of Wexford, A. D. 1798: Including an Account of Transactions Preceding that Event, with an Appendix |publisher=John Stockdale |year=1803 |location=Dublin |pages=147 |language=en}}</ref> at  [[Battle of Arklow|Arklow]] on 9 June. The rebels fell back toward the south, meeting the survivors of New Ross and forming a camp of  16,000 on [[Battle of Vinegar Hill|Vinegar Hill]] outside the town of [[Enniscorthy]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gahan |first=Daniel |date=2013 |title=The Military Strategy of the Wexford United Irishmen in 1798 |url=https://www.historyireland.com/the-military-strategy-of-the-wexford-united-irishmen-in-1798/ |access-date=2023-11-26 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> There, on 21 June, they were surrounded, bombarded and routed by a force of 13,000 under General Lake.<ref name="ODNB2">{{cite ODNB|id=15900|first=Anthony S.|last=Bennell|title=Lake, Gerard, first Viscount Lake of Delhi (1744–1808)}}</ref>

[[File:Arklowflag.svg|thumb|The rebel flag at Arklow, 9 June 1798|left|200x200px]]
The remnants of the "Republic of Wexford" established a base in Killaughrim Woods, in the north of the county, under [[James Corcoran]]. Others sought action elsewhere. On 24 June, 8,000 men converged in two columns led by Father Murphy and by [[Myles Byrne]] on [[Castlecomer]] in [[County Kilkenny]] where it was hoped the area's militant colliers would join them. Unprepared, the miners did not tip the balance and at the end of the day both garrison and rebels retreated from the burning town.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Battle of Castlecomer |url=https://castlecomer.ie/history/the-battle-of-castlecomer/ |access-date=2023-11-07 |website=Castlecomer |language=en-GB}}</ref> Byrne led his men into the Wicklow Mountains where [[Joseph Holt (rebel)|Joseph Holt]] and [[Michael Dwyer]] commanded a [[Guerrilla warfare|guerrilla]] resistance.<ref name="Webb-1878b">{{Cite web |title=Myles Byrne – Irish Biography |url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/MylesByrne.php |access-date=2021-03-22 |website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref> On 28 June, after being routed on Kilcomney Hill near [[Goresbridge]],<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-06-27 |title=A History of the Co. Wicklow Regt. of Militia Part 1 |url=https://heritage.wicklowheritage.org/places/county_wicklow_historical_societies/wicklow_historical_society/1990_wicklow_historical_society_journal/a_history_of_the_co_wicklow_regt_of_militia_part_1 |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=County Wicklow Heritage |language=en}}</ref> Murphy's men passed into Kildare. There, after the priest was captured, they joined rebels withdrawn under [[William Aylmer]] into the [[Bog of Allen]]. After a number of bruising engagements, the "Wexford croppies" moved into Meath making a last stand at Knightstown bog on 14 July.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Wexford Croppies' Graves In Meath |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/wexford-croppies-graves-in-meath-1.137942 |access-date=2023-10-27 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref> A few hundred survivors returned to Kildare where at [[Sallins]] they surrendered on the 21st.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Surrender – Kildare Local History . ie |url=https://kildarelocalhistory.ie/a-brief-history-of-co-kildare/1798-rebellion/rebellion-towns-villages/surrender/ |access-date=2023-10-29 |website=kildarelocalhistory.ie}}</ref>

All but their leaders benefited from an amnesty intended by the new [[Lord Lieutenant of Ireland|Lord Lieutenant]], [[Charles Cornwallis]] to flush out remaining resistance. The law was pushed through the Irish Parliament by the Chancellor, [[John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare|Lord Clare]]. A staunch defender of the Ascendancy, Clare was determined to separate Catholics from the greater enemy, "Godless Jacobinism."<ref name="Pakenham 1992" />{{rp|44}}

=== Ulster ===
[[File:Battle of Ballynahinch by Thomas Robinson.jpg|thumb| [[Battle of Ballynahinch]], 12–13 June 1798|281x281px]]
In the north, there had been no response to the call from Dublin. On 29 May, following news of the fighting in Leinster, county delegates meeting in Armagh, voted out the hesitant Ulster directory and resolved that if the adjutant generals of Antrim and Down could not agree a general plan of insurrection, they would return to their occupations and "deceive the people no more". In response, [[Robert Simms (United Irishmen)|Robert Simms]], who refused to consider action in the absence of the French, resigned his command in Antrim. Amidst charges of betrayal by aristocrats, cowards and traitors, his colonels turned to the young [[Henry Joy McCracken]]. Fearful that the "hope of a union with the south" was otherwise lost, McCracken proclaimed the First Year of Liberty on 6 June.<ref name="Stewart-1995">[[ATQ Stewart|Stewart, A.T.Q.]] (1995), ''The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down'' Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1995,{{ISBN|9780856405587}}.</ref>{{rp|60–67}}

On 7 June, there were local musters across the county, and west of the [[River Bann|Bann]] at [[Maghera]].<ref name="McEvoy-1969">{{Cite journal |last=McEvoy |first=Brendan |date=1969 |title=The United Irishmen in Co. Tyrone |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29740753 |journal=Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=(37–65), 52 |doi=10.2307/29740753 |issn=0488-0196 |jstor=29740753|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The green flag was raised in [[Ballymena]], and there were attacks on [[Larne]], [[Glenarm]], [[Carrickfergus]], [[Toomebridge]] and [[Ballymoney]].<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|222}} But by the following morning, before any coordination had been possible, those who turned out had begun to dump arms and disperse on news of McCracken defeat. Leading a body of four to six thousand, their commander had failed, with heavy losses, to seize [[Battle of Antrim|Antrim Town]].<ref name="McCracken-2022">{{Cite book |last=McCracken |first=Stephen |title=The Battle of Antrim – Antrim's Story in 1798 |publisher=Springfarm Publishing |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-9162576-2-7 |edition=2nd Updated |location=Northern Ireland |language=English}}</ref>

From the point of view of the military, the insurrection in County Antrim ended on 9 June with the surrender of Ballymena (under an amnesty that spared it the fate of [[Randalstown]], [[Templepatrick]] and Ballymoney—all set ablaze). A diminishing band under McCracken dispersed when, on the 14th, they received news of the decisive defeat of the Army of the Republic in County Down.<ref name="Stewart-1995" />{{rp|161–162}}

Plans for a simultaneous rising in Down on the 7th had been disrupted by the arrest of the county's adjutant general,  [[William Steel Dickson|William Steele Dickson]], and all his colonels. But beginning on the 9th younger officers took the initiative. An [[Battle of Saintfield|ambush outside Saintfield]], an attack upon [[Newtownards]], and the seizure of guns from a ship in [[Bangor, County Down|Bangor]] harbour, persuaded [[Sir George Nugent, 1st Baronet|General Nugent]] to concentrate his forces for a counteroffensive in Belfast. The republic in north Down, which extended down the [[Ards Peninsula|Ards peninsula]] to [[Portaferry]] from which the rebels, under naval fire, were repulsed on the 11th,<ref name="Stewart-1995" />{{rp|190–192}} lasted but three days. Nugent moved on the 12th, and by the morning of the 13th had routed the main rebel conjunction under Dickson's successor, a young Lisburn draper, [[Henry Munro (United Irishman)|Henry Monro]], outside [[Ballynahinch, County Down|Ballynahinch]].<ref name="Stewart-1995" />{{rp|179–224}}

Stories of Catholic desertion at the [[Battle of Ballynahinch]] were common,<ref name="Elliott-2000a">{{Cite book |last=Elliott |first=Marianne |title=The Catholics of Ulster: A History |publisher=Allen Lane |year=2000 |isbn=0713994649 |pages=254–256}}</ref> although a more sympathetic account has [[Defenders (Ireland)|Defenders]] decamping only after Munro rejected their proposal for a night attack on the riotous soldiery in the town as taking an "ungenerous advantage".<ref name="Proudfoot-1997">Proudfoot L. (ed.) ''Down History and Society'' (Dublin 1997) chapter by Nancy Curtin at p. 289. {{ISBN|0-906602-80-7}}</ref> These were denied by [[James Hope (Ireland)|James Hope]] who had been one of the principal United emissaries to the Defenders. He insisted that Defenders had not appeared among the rebels in separate ranks, and that the body that deserted Munro on the eve of battle had been "the [[Killinchy]] people ... and they were Dissenters".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Madden |first=Richard Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/antrimdownin98li00madd_0 |title=Antrim and Down in '98: the lives of Henry Joy M'Cracken, James Hope, William Putnam M'Cabe, Rev. James Porter, Henry Munro |publisher=Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd. ... |year=1860 |location=London |pages=240}}</ref>

Historian [[Marianne Elliott (historian)|Marianne Elliott]] notes that, in Down, Catholics had a formal parity in the United organisation. Prior to the final arrests, they accounted for three of the county's six colonels. As they dominated only in the southern third of the county this, she suggests, did not reflect a practice of separate Catholic divisions.<ref name="Elliott-2000a" />

=== Munster ===
In the southwest, in [[Munster]], there were just two confrontations in the field: on 19 June near [[Clonakilty]] in [[West Cork]], the "[[Battle of the Big Cross]]"<ref name="Murphy-1998">{{Cite news |last=Murphy |first=John |date=24 May 1998 |title=We still fear to speak of all the ghosts of '98 |pages=15 |work=Sunday Independent}}</ref> and, after the principal action was over, on 23 July, at Carrickmoclear hill, an outcrop of Slievenamon near [[Ninemilehouse]] in [[County Tipperary]], where an informant led 600 men into trap set by the yeomanry.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Fitzgerald |first=John |date=2024 |title=Uprising on Slievenamon |url=https://kilkennyobserver.ie/uprising-on-slievenamon/ |access-date=2025-06-06 |website=Kilkenny Observer |language=en-GB}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Power |first=Patrick |date=1993 |title=Tipperary Courtmartials – 1798 to 1801 |url=https://tipperarystudies.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/18.-Tipperary-Courtmartials-1798-to-1801.pdf |journal=Tipperary Historical Journal |pages=134–147}}</ref> The province had been subject to pacification ten years before: a martial-law regime suppressed a semi-insurrectionary [[Rightboys|Rightboy]] agrarian resistance movement.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Donnelly |first1=James S |last2=Donnelly |first2=James J |date=1977–1978 |title=The Rightboy Movement 1785–8 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20496124 |journal=Studia Hibernica |issue=17/18 |pages=120–202 |jstor=20496124 |access-date=22 November 2020}}</ref> Following the French appearance off Bantry in December 1796, the exercise was repeated. With a license to "treat the people with as much harshness as possible", troops of the line, militia, yeomanry and fencibles, were garrisoned across the region recovering arms, arresting large numbers of United suspects, and dragooning young men into militia service.<ref name="Dickson-2003">Dickson, David (2003), "Smoke without fire? Munster and the 1798 rebellion", in Thomas Bartlett et al. (eds.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=F41nAAAAMAAJ ''1798: A Bicentenary Perspective'', Dublin], Four Courts Press, {{ISBN|1851824308}}, (pp. 147–173), pp. 168–171.</ref>

In May 1797, the entire committee of the relatively strong United organisation that the [[Sheares brothers]] had built in Cork City<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20071026083838/http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/shamsquire/sheares.htm Notes on Conway; accessed Oct 2009]}}</ref> were arrested. In April 1798, the authorities broke up what remained.<ref name="Dickson-2003" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Woods |first=C. J. |date=2009 |title=Sheares, Henry {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/sheares-henry-a8013 |access-date=2023-10-27 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref>

The confrontation on 19 June was between a column of Westmeath Militia and a force of 300-400 lightly armed local peasantry, who, according to one account, appealed to the militia men to join their party and were instead met with fire.<ref name="COR">{{cite web |title=The Battle of the Big Cross where one hundred Irish died |url=https://failteromhat.com/southernstar/page17.php |access-date=2 September 2021 |website=failteromhat.com |publisher=Southern Star}}</ref> The [[Clonakilty]] Catholics were afterwards admonished in their chapel by the town's Protestant vicar for being so "foolish" as "to think that ... country farmers and labourers [could] set up as politicians, reformers, and law makers".<ref name="Murphy-1998"/>

== French epilogue ==
{{See also|Cornwallis in Ireland}}
[[File:Castlebar Races WynneC.jpg|thumb|[[Battle of Castlebar|"Races of Castlebar"]], 27 August |left]]
[[Connacht]], in the far west, the poorest of the Irish provinces, was drawn into the rebellion only by the arrival on 22 August of the French. About 1,000 French soldiers under [[General Humbert]] landed at [[Kilcummin, County Mayo]].<ref>{{cite web |title=In Humbert's Footsteps – 1798 & the Year of the French |url=https://www.mayo.ie/library/local-history/historical-events/in-humberts-footsteps |access-date=10 December 2022 |work=Mayo County Library |publisher=Mayo County Council |quote=On 22 August 1798, a French expedition of 1,000 men under the leadership of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert (b. 1767) landed at Kilcummin, north of Killala}}</ref> Joined by up to 5,000 hastily assembled "uncombed, ragged" and shoeless peasants,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mayo County Council |title=General Humbert |url=https://www.mayo.ie/discover/history-heritage/great-battles-conflicts/general-humbert |access-date=2023-11-11 |website=MayoCoCo |language=en}}</ref> they had some initial success. In what would later become known as the "Races of Castlebar" they set to flight a militia force of 6,000 under [[Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake|Lake]].<ref name="Beiner-2007">[[Guy Beiner]], ''Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory'' (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007)</ref>

In the wake of the victory, Humbert proclaimed the [[Irish Republic (1798)|Irish Republic]] with the French-educated [[John Moore (Irish politician)|John Moore]] as president of the government of Connacht. But unable to make timely contact with a new rising sparked in [[County Longford]] and [[County Meath]], after a token engagement with British forces of some 26,000 at [[Battle of Ballinamuck|Ballinamuck]], in County Longford, Humbert surrendered on 8 September, along with 500 Irish under [[Bartholomew Teeling]].

What was recalled in the [[Irish language|Irish-speaking]] region as {{lang|ga|Bliain na bhFrancach}} (the year of the French),<ref name="Beiner-2007" /> concluded with slaughter of some 2000 poorly-armed insurgents outside Killala on the 23rd. They had been led by a scion of Mayo's surviving Catholic gentry, James Joseph MacDonnell.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Woods |first=C. J. |date=2009 |title=MacDonnell, James Joseph {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/macdonnell-james-joseph-a5185 |access-date=2023-01-23 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> Terror ensued with  [[High Sheriff of Mayo|Mayo's High Sheriff]], [[Denis Browne (politician)|Denis Browne]] (the future  [[Marquess of Sligo]]) earning the nickname ''Donnchadh an Rópa'' (Denis the Rope).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Quinn |first=James |date=2009 |title=Browne, Denis {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/browne-denis-a1021#:~:text=Browne%20served%20as%20an%20officer,returned%20for%20Castlebar%20in%201797). |access-date=2023-11-11 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref>
[[File:WarrensAction1798Ireland.jpg|thumb|[[Battle of Tory Island]], 12 October 1798, painted by [[Nicholas Pocock]]]]
To Tone's dismay, the [[French Directory]] concluded from Humbert's account of his misadventure that the Irish were to be compared with the devoutly Catholic peasantry they had battled at home in the [[Vendee peasant rising|Vendée]]. He had to rebuff the suggestion that, rather than a secular republic, he consider a restoration of the [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] Pretender, [[Henry Benedict Stuart]], as Henry IX, [[Monarchy of Ireland|King of the Irish]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Pittock |first=Murray GH |date=2006 |title=Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521030274}}</ref>{{rp|210}}

On 12 October, Tone was aboard a second French expedition, carrying a force of 3,000 men, that was intercepted off the coast of [[County Donegal]], the [[Battle of Tory Island]]. Taken captive, Tone regretted nothing done "to raise three million of my countrymen to the ranks of citizen," and lamented only those "atrocities committed on both sides" during his exile.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harwood |first=Philip |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rAcwAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA235 |title=History of the Irish Rebellion |publisher=Chapman & Elcoate |year=1844 |location=London |pages=235}}</ref> On the eve of execution, he cut his own throat.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=O'Donnell |first=Patrick |date=1997 |title=Wolfe Tone's death: Suicide or assassination?: Commandant Patrick O'Donnell (Ret'd.) |url=http://link.springer.com/10.1007/BF02939781 |journal=Irish Journal of Medical Science |language=en |volume=166 |issue=1 |pages=57–59 |doi=10.1007/BF02939781 |pmid=9057437 |s2cid=35311754 |issn=0021-1265|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

== Human toll ==

=== Casualties ===
In what was to be the most widely read account of the rebellion since its centenary, ''The Year of Liberty'' (1969),<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pakenham |first=Thomas |title=The Year of Liberty. The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 |publisher=Hodder and Stoughton |year=1969 |isbn=9780340106402 |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|54}} [[Thomas Pakenham (historian)|Thomas Pakenham]] (overlooking 1741, the [[Irish Famine (1740–1741)|famine "year of slaughter"]]) wrote:<ref name="Dunne-1998a">{{Cite journal |last=Dunne |first=Tom |date=1998 |editor-last=Curtin |editor-first=Nancy J. |editor2-last=Stewart |editor2-first=A. T. Q. |editor3-last=Whelan |editor3-first=Kevin |editor4-last=Keogh |editor4-first=D. |editor5-last=Furlong |editor5-first=N. |editor6-last=Gahan |editor6-first=Daniel |editor7-last=Pakenham |editor7-first=Thomas |editor8-last=Dickson |editor8-first=Charles |editor9-last=Myers |editor9-first=S. W. |title=Review Article: 1798 and the United Irishmen |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29735889 |journal=The Irish Review (1986–) |issue=22 |pages=54–66 |doi=10.2307/29735889 |issn=0790-7850 |jstor=29735889|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

<blockquote>The rebellion of 1798 is the most violent and tragic event in Irish history between the [[Jacobite Wars|Jacobite wars]] and the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine]]. In the space of a few weeks, 30,000 – peasants armed with pikes and pitchforks, defenceless women and children – were cut down, shot, or blown like chaff as they charged up to the mouth of the canon.</blockquote>

Thirty thousand is mid range between what had been the contemporary estimates (of which just 2,000 were thought to be Crown forces and 1,000 loyalist civilians).<ref>Richard Musgrave "''Memoirs of the different rebellions in Ireland''" (1801) (see Appendices)</ref> Recent studies suggest a lower figure. A demographic study of County Wexford, the rebellion's principal theatre, indicates 6,000 killed. From this, historian [[Thomas Bartlett (historian)|Thomas Bartlett]], concludes "a death toll of 10,000 for the entire island would seem to be in order". Others suspect that the widespread fear of repression led relatives to hide their losses.<ref>[[Marianne Elliott (historian)|Marianne Elliott]], "''Rebellion, a Television history of 1798''" (RTÉ 1998)</ref> It is not clear how many of those killed died in combat.

=== Rebel outrages ===
[[File:MAXWELL(1845) p162 Massacre at Scullabogue.jpg|thumb|Massacre at Scullabogue, illustrated by [[George Cruikshank]]]]
County Wexford was the only area which saw widespread rebel atrocities. Of these the most notorious were the [[Scullabogue Barn massacre|killings at Scullabogue]] and on [[Wexford bridge]]. After the rebel defeat at [[New Ross]], on June 5 between one<ref>''A personal narrative of Those Transactions in the County Wexford, in which the Author was engaged, during the awful period of 1798'' – Thomas Cloney et al. (James Mullen Pub. Dublin 1832), p. 220</ref> to two hundred<ref>Lydon, James F. The making of Ireland: from ancient times to the present, p. 274, Routledge</ref> loyalist hostages, men, women and children, were packed into a barn at [[Scullabogue Barn massacre|Scullabogue]] that was set alight.<ref name="Dunne2">Dunne, Tom. ''Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798''. The Lilliput Press, 2004; {{ISBN|978-1-84351-039-0}}</ref> [[Bagenal Harvey]] resigned his rebel command in protest.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kleinman |first=Sylvie |date=2009 |title=Harvey, Beauchamp Bagenal {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/harvey-beauchamp-bagenal-a3846 |access-date=2023-10-28 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref>  In [[Wexford|Wexford town]] on 20 June, after a United Irish "Committee of Public Safety" had been swept aside,<ref>Ó hÓgartaigh, Margaret (2010). ''Edward Hay: Historian of 1798''. Dublin: The History Press. p. 44. {{ISBN|978-1-84588-992-0}}</ref> seventy loyalist prisoners were marched to the bridge over the [[River Slaney]] and [[Pike (weapon)|piked]] to death.<ref name="Lydon2742">Lydon, James F. ''The making of Ireland: from ancient times to the present'', p. 274</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Musgrave |first1=Sir Richard |url=https://archive.org/details/memoirsdifferen00musggoog |title=Memoirs of the different rebellions in Ireland |date=1802 |publisher=R. Marchbank, and sold by J. Archer |edition=3rd |location=Dublin |page=[https://archive.org/details/memoirsdifferen00musggoog/page/n35 17] |access-date=8 September 2015}}</ref> There were a small number of Catholics among the loyalists killed, and of Protestants among the rebels present.<ref>Gahan, D. [http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-scullabogue-massacre-1798/ "The Scullabogue Massacre, 1798"], ''History Ireland'', v. 4 (1996), 3</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gahan |first=Daniel J. |date=1998 |title=New Ross, Scullabogue and the 1798 Rebellion in Southwestern Wexford |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25520035 |journal=The Past: The Organ of the Uí Cinsealaigh Historical Society |issue=21 |pages=3–33 |issn=2009-2040 |jstor=25520035}}</ref> But for government propagandists, the sectarian nature of the outrages was unquestioned.<ref name="Swords-1997" />

=== Military atrocities ===
[[File:Hanging.gif|left|thumb|[[Half-hanging]] of suspected [[United Irishmen]] by government troops.]]

Accounts of rebel outrages against loyalist civilians circulated widely. These helped secure defections from the republican cause.<ref name="Kee-1976" />{{rp|130-131}}They also deflected criticism of the military counter terror that had come from otherwise loyal, establishment, figures. [[Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings|Lord Moira]] (the future [[Governor-General of India]]) collated evidence of crimes and abuses by the Crown's forces which he sought to present to the King.<ref name="Webb-1878a2">{{Cite web |last=Webb |first=Alfred |date=1878 |title=Dr. Whitley Stokes – Irish Biography |url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/DrWhitleyStokes.php |access-date=2021-12-30 |website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref>

In February 1798, the British [[commander-in-chief]] General Sir [[Ralph Abercromby]] publicly rebuked his predecessor, [[Henry Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton|Henry Luttrell, Lord Carhampton]], for bequeathing an army "in a state of licentiousness, which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pakenham |first=Thomas |title=The Year of Liberty, The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 |publisher=Times Books, Random House |year=1998 |isbn=0812930886 |location=New York |page=24}}</ref> But, finding his efforts to restore military discipline and the supremacy of the civil power unsupported by Dublin Castle,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Woods |first=C. J. |date=2009 |title=Abercromby, Sir Ralph {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/abercromby-sir-ralph-a0009 |access-date=2024-03-03 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> he resigned in April. He was replaced by General [[Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake|Gerrard Lake]].<ref>{{Cite ODNB|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15900|title=Lake, Gerard, first Viscount Lake of Delhi (1744–1808)|last=Bennell|first=Anthony S.|date=2004|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/15900|access-date=15 July 2020}}</ref>

With Lake issuing an order to take no prisoners, during the rebellion summary justice was carried into the field.<ref name="ODNB22">{{cite ODNB|id=15900|first=Anthony S.|last=Bennell|title=Lake, Gerard, first Viscount Lake of Delhi (1744–1808)}}</ref> Captured and wounded rebels were killed, sometimes on a large scale,<ref>Stock, Joseph. [[iarchive:anarrativewhatp00stocgoog|''A Narrative of what passed at Killala, in the County of Mayo, and the parts adjacent, during the French invasion in the summer of 1798.'']] Dublin & London, 1800</ref> as were camp followers ("the bulk of the dead at Vinegar Hill").<ref name=":2" />{{rp|28}} 

An officer, who has pursued the last of the Wexford fugitives into Meath, reported that in the rebellion "the kings troops never gave quarter . . . hundreds and thousands of wretches were butchered while unarmed on their knees begging for mercy".<ref name="Kee-1976" />{{rp|123}} After accepting their surrender near [[The Curragh|Curragh]], on 27 May Crown forces killed up to 500 Kildare rebels – the [[Gibbet Rath executions]].<ref name="Furlong-1991" /> A further 200 (Wolfe Tone's brother Matthew among them) were executed after Humbert's surrender at [[Battle of Ballinamuck|Ballinamuck]] on 9 September.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2013-04-08 |title=Ballinamuck Visitor Centre |language=en-US |work=Longford Tourism |url=http://www.longfordtourism.ie/heritage/visitor-centres/ballinamuck-visitor-centre/ |url-status=dead |access-date=2017-08-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180828134311/http://www.longfordtourism.ie/heritage/visitor-centres/ballinamuck-visitor-centre/ |archive-date=28 August 2018}}</ref>

Civilians in theatres of operation were brutally interrogated and murdered, their houses burned. In county Wexford the military engaged in mass rape and sexual assault of female civilians.<ref>MacLaren, Archibald, ''A Minute Description of the Battles of Gorey, Arklow and Vinegar Hill; together with the movements of the army through the Wicklow mountains'', National Library of Ireland, and in Charles Dickson, ''The Wexford Rising in 1798: Its Cause and Course'', pp. 239–49 (Tralee 1955) {{ISBN|0-09-477250-9}}</ref> Cornwallis, who commanded the response to Humbert's arrival, was moved to threaten his "licentious" soldiery (among whom he counted his Catholic militia the most "ferocious and cruel")<ref name="Kee-1976" />{{rp|105}} with summary execution.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lecky |first=William Edward Hartpole |url= |title=A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century: Volume 5 |publisher=Nabu Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1148440866 |location=Charlestown, SC |pages=53 |language=en}}</ref> During and after the rebellion, using their local knowledge the loyalist [[Yeomanry]] engaged in their own reprisals. "Pardoned" rebels were a particular target.<ref name="Smyth-2000"/>

== Women in the rebellion ==
{{See also|Society of United Irishmen#Belfast and Dublin debates}}

The United Irishmen and the Defenders were male fraternities. There is little record for the Defenders, but for United Irishmen it is clear that women nonetheless played an active role in the movement.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Keogh |first1=Dáire |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pqRnAAAAMAAJ |title=The Women of 1798 |last2=Furlong |first2=Nicholas |date=1998 |publisher=Four Courts Press |isbn=978-1-85182-358-1 |language=en}}</ref> By 1797 the [[Dublin Castle administration|Castle]] informer Francis Higgins was reporting that "women are equally sworn with men"<ref>NAI, Dublin, ''Rebellion Papers'', 620/18/14. Francis Higgins, 29 January 1797.</ref>  suggesting that some of the women, assuming risks for the United Irish cause, were taking places beside men in an increasingly clandestine organisation. It is in a person named Mrs. Risk, that [[Richard Robert Madden|R.R. Madden]], one of the earliest historians of the United Irishmen, summarises their various activities: carrying intelligence, hiding weapons, running safe houses.<ref>{{cite book |last=Madden |first=Richard |url=https://archive.org/stream/s1unitedirishmen01madduoft/s1unitedirishmen01madduoft_djvu.txt |title=The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times |publisher=J. Madden & Company |year=1843 |pages=31}}</ref>

In the risings, women came forward in many capacities, some, as celebrated in later ballads (''Betsy Gray''<ref>{{Cite web |title=Irish Music, Song and Ballad Lyrics for: Darling Betsy Grey |url=https://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/irish-songs-ballads-lyrics/darling_betsy_grey.htm |access-date=2023-12-03 |website=www.traditionalmusic.co.uk}}</ref> and ''Brave Moll Doyle, the Heroine of New Ross''),<ref>{{Cite web |title=Folk & Traditional Song Lyrics - Molly Doyle, the Heroine of Ross |url=https://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/folk-song-lyrics/Molly_Doyle_the_Heroine_of_Ross.htm |access-date=2023-12-03 |website=www.traditionalmusic.co.uk}}</ref> as combatants. At [[Battle of Ballynahinch|Ballynahinch]], where legend has [[Betsy Gray]] mounted with a green flag upon white horse, the father of the future [[William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin|Lord Kelvin]] reported seeing women remain on the field and perform deeds as "valiant as the men".<ref name="Mourne Observer">{{cite web |title=Betsey Gray or Hearts of Down Other Stories and Pictures of '98. as collected by and published in The "Mourne Observer" |url=http://lisburn.com/books/betsey_gray/appendix-1.htm |access-date=6 November 2020 |website=Lisburn.com}}</ref> At Vinegar Hill, British officers remarked on "female rebels more vehement than the men", and on the "many women [who] fought with fury".<ref name="O'Connor-2003">{{Cite journal |last=O'Connor |first=Catherine |date=2003 |title=The Experience of Women in the Rebellion of 1798 in Wexford |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25520079 |journal=The Past: The Organ of the Uí Cinsealaigh Historical Society |issue=24 |pages=(95–106) 96 |jstor=25520079 |issn=2009-2040}}</ref> The rebel leader [[Thomas Cloney]] claimed that he would have carried [[Battle of New Ross (1798)|the day at New Ross]] had one tenth of his men had had the "warlike" quality of Molly Doyle of Castlebro.<ref name="O'Connor-2003" />

Women suffered greatly in the counterinsurgency.  Abduction and rape were common. Women who "in their hundreds, who crisscrossed the country, seeking help for, or news of, their menfolk", were particularly vulnerable.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Durey |first=Michael |date=2006 |title=Abduction and Rape in Ireland in the Era of the 1798 Rebellion |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30071276 |journal=Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr |volume=21 |pages=27–47 |doi=10.3828/eci.2006.5 |issn=0790-7915 |jstor=30071276|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

== Aftermath ==

=== Last resistance ===
On 1 July 1798 in Belfast, the birthplace of the United Irish movement, it was reported that no man appeared in the street without wearing the [[Red coat (military uniform)|red coat]] of the Yeomanry.<ref name="Blackstock2">Blackstock, Alan: ''A Forgotten Army: The Irish Yeomanry''. History Ireland, Vol 4. 1996</ref> As he enlisted former radicals into his [[Portglenone]] Yeomanry, Anglican clergyman Edward Hudson claimed that "the brotherhood of affection [between Catholic and Protestant] is over".<ref name="Blackstock2" /> However, the widespread return in the winter 1799–1800 of flogging, arms raids and assassinations to rural east Ulster suggests that in Presbyterian districts the spirit of rebellion was not yet extinguished.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Patterson |first=James G. |url=https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/9781847791528/9781847791528.00008.xml |title=The second wave: Active resistance, 1799–1800 |date=2013-07-19 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-84779-152-8 |language=en-US |doi=}}</ref> The holdouts had organised in Defender cells from whose oaths references to religion had been notably dropped.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Patterson |first=James G. |title=In the Wake of the Great Rebellion: Republicanism, Agrarianism and Banditry in Ireland after 1798 |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0719076930 |location=Manchester |pages=38–44}}</ref>

The execution in February 1800 of one of these irreconcilables, [[Roddy McCorley]] "at [[Toome|the bridge of Toome]]", enters into [[Irish republicanism|Irish republican]] martyrology through a ballad written in the 1890s by [[Ethna Carbery|Ethna Carberry]].<ref name="Beiner2017">Guy Beiner, "'The Enigma of "Roddy McCorley Goes to Die': Forgetting and Remembering a Local Rebel Hero in Ulster" in ''Rhythms of the Revolt: European Traditions and Memories of Social Conflict in Oral Culture'', edited by Éva Guillorel, David Hopkin and William G. Pooley (Routledge, 2017), pp. 327-57.</ref> At the time, it was the name of McCorley's captain, Thomas Archer, that captivated the public imagination. His execution in [[Ballymena]] in March 1800 (with his body left hanging in a cage ''in terrorem'' for several months), and of fifteen of his confederates, marked the final end of the insurgency in Antrim.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Maume |first=Patrick |date=2009 |title=Archer, Thomas {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/archer-thomas-a0203 |access-date=2022-03-05 |website=www.dib.ie}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Beiner |first=Guy |title=The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-3-319-31387-0 |editor-last1=Dillane |editor-first1=Fionnuala |pages=77–97 |chapter=Severed Heads and Floggings: The Undermining of Oblivion in Ulster in the Aftermath of 1798 |series=New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-31388-7_5 |editor-last2=McAreavey |editor-first2=Naomi |editor-last3=Pine |editor-first3=Emilie |editor3-link=Emilie Pine |author-link=Guy Beiner}}</ref>
[[File:Guerilla warfare Wexford.jpg|thumb|right|{{center|James Corcoran group vanquished, February 1804}} ]]
In the south-east, in [[County Wicklow]], the United Irish General, [[Joseph Holt (rebel)|Joseph Holt]], fought on until his negotiated surrender in Autumn 1798. It was not until December 1803, following the construction of a military road into the [[Wicklow Mountains]] and the failure of [[Robert Emmet|Emmet]]'s rising in Dublin, that the last organised rebel forces under Captain [[Michael Dwyer]] capitulated. Small pockets of rebel resistance had also survived within Wexford and the last rebel group under [[James Corcoran]] was not vanquished until his death in February 1804.<ref>O'Donnell, Ruan (1999), ''Aftermath: Post-Rebellion Insurgency in Wicklow, 1799-1803,'' Dublin: Irish Academic Press,{{ISBN|0-7165-2638-7}}</ref>

In the west, after [[Battle of Ballinamuck|Battles of Ballinamuck]] and [[Battle of Killala|Killala]], remnants of the "Republic of Connacht" had held out for some months in the hills of [[Erris]] and [[Tirawley|Tyrawley]] in [[County Mayo]] and in [[Connemara]] in [[County Galway]]<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I2LqGAIj8VQC&dq=killala+23+september&pg=PA7 |title=Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory |publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press |year=2007 |isbn=9780299218249}}</ref> from where James MacDonnell, vanquished at [[Battle of Killala|Killala]], escaped to France.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Woods |first=C. J. |date=2009 |title=MacDonnell, James Joseph {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/macdonnell-james-joseph-a5185 |access-date=2023-11-12 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref>

=== Fate of the United Irish and rebel leadership ===
Taken prisoner, those who had commanded rebels in the field faced court martial and execution. This was the fate of [[Bagenal Harvey]], Fr. [[Philip Roche]], and five others hanged on [[Wexford Bridge]]; [[John Esmonde (United Irishman)|John Esmonde]] hanged in Sallins with his coat reversed to indicate that he was a Yeomanry deserter; [[Watty Graham]] whose head was paraded through Maghera; [[Henry Joy McCracken]] hanged before the Market House in Belfast; Fr [[John Murphy (priest)|John Murphy]], stripped, flogged, hanged, decapitated, his corpse burnt in a barrel of tar and his [[Head on a spike|head impaled on a spike]] in [[Tullow]];<ref>{{Cite book |last=Furlong |first=Nicholas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1pdnAAAAMAAJ |title=Fr. John Murphy of Boolavogue: 1753-1798 |date=1991 |publisher=Geography Publications |isbn=978-0-906602-18-8 |pages=162 |language=en}}</ref> [[Henry Munro (United Irishman)|Henry Munro]] whose piked head was displayed on the Market House in [[Lisburn]]; and [[Bartholomew Teeling]], whose body was committed to a mass grave for rebels at [[Croppies' Acre]], Dublin.<ref name="DIB">{{cite web |last=Woods |first=C.J. |date=October 2009 |title=Teeling, Bartholomew |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/teeling-bartholomew-a8484 |access-date=6 November 2021 |work=[[Dictionary of Irish Biography]]}}</ref>

The [[Sheares brothers]] had been [[hanged, drawn and quartered]] in Dublin in July. Once confident that the rebellion had been contained, Cornwallis, and his [[Chief Secretary for Ireland|Chief Secretary]], [[Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh|Lord Castlereagh]], resisted pressure from the Irish Parliament to proceed against the other directory leaders held as state prisoners.<ref name="Bew-2011a" />{{rp|122–123}} Under terms negotiated by [[Thomas Addis Emmet]], [[William James MacNeven]], and [[Arthur O'Connor (United Irishman)|Arthur O'Connor]], and confident that government informers had left little to disclose, the prisoners promised to give a full account of their activities to a secret House of Commons committee in return for exile, into which they were released in 1802.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Dawson |first=Ken |date=2017-02-02 |title=Disunited Irishmen - what happened when plotters of 1798 fell out |language=en-GB |work=BelfastTelegraph.co.uk |url=https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/disunited-irishmen-what-happened-when-plotters-of-1798-fell-out/35416264.html |access-date=2023-11-10 |issn=0307-1235}}</ref><ref name="Parkhill-2003">{{Cite journal |last=Parkhill |first=Trevor |date=2003 |title=The Wild Geese of 1798: Emigrés of the Rebellion |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25746923 |journal=Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=118–135 |issn=0488-0196 |jstor=25746923}}</ref>

[[Michael Dwyer]] negotiated his surrender in December 1803 on terms that permitted him, and all his party, to be transported to [[New South Wales]], Australia, as unsentenced exiles.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-06-27 |title=Michael Dwyer 1772 -1825 |url=https://heritage.wicklowheritage.org/people/michael_dwyer_1772_-1825 |access-date=2023-11-10 |website=County Wicklow Heritage |language=en}}</ref> Reprieved by [[Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis|Cornwallis]], in 1799 [[John Moore (Irish politician)|John Moore]], Humbert's President of Connacht, was also to have been transported, but he died in custody.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Malloy |first=Shiela |date=2009 |title=Moore, John {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/moore-john-a5938 |access-date=2023-11-10 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref>

=== Rebel ministers and priests ===
[[File:MAXWELL(1845) p225 Father Murphy and the Heretics.jpg|thumb|Father [[John Murphy (priest)|John Murphy]]]]
In Ulster, some twenty Presbyterian ministers and probationers were implicated in the insurrectionary movement.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Stewart |first=A.T.Q. |date=1998 |title=1798 in the North |url=https://www.historyireland.com/1798-in-the-north/ |access-date=2023-11-11 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> Two were executed. Others were allowed American exile, including [[William Steel Dickson|William Steele Dickson]]<ref name="Parkhill-2003" /> and, notwithstanding that he had led the rebels at Newtownards, the young probationer [[David Bailie Warden]].<ref name="Courtney">{{cite book |last1=Courtney |first1=Roger |title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition |date=2013 |publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation |isbn=9781909556065 |location=Belfast |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|133-134}} Reacting to what he identified as "the democratic party in the [[Synod of Ulster|[Presbyterian] synod]], most of whom, if not engaged in the Rebellion, were deeply infected with its principles", Castlereagh moved to condition the size and payment to ministers of the synod's Crown grant (''[[Regium Donum|regium donum]]'') upon professions and proofs of loyalty.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Colles |first=Ramsay |date=1919 |title=The History of Ulster |url=https://electricscotland.com/history/ulster/vol4chap20.htm |access-date=2023-11-30 |website=electricscotland.com}}</ref>

In the spirit of reaction, between 1798 and 1800 at least 69 Catholic chapels were destroyed or damaged, mostly in south Leinster.<ref name="Smyth-1998" />{{rp|180}} It was not, however, the policy of the government to target the Catholic church. With Cornwallis and Castlereagh, [[British Prime Minister]], [[William Pitt the Younger|William Pitt]], was persuaded that, while the Catholic peasantry had been roused, the source of the rebellion had been [[Jacobinism]], and not [[Jacobitism]].<ref name="Bew-2009" />

The Catholic bishops had been almost totally united in their condemnation of disaffection,<ref name="Geoghegan-2000" />{{rp|245–246}} and voiced no criticism of government policy of "the bayonet, the gibbet, and the lash".<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|225}} The ten or so priests involved in the fighting in County Wexford,<ref name="de Val-1997">{{Cite journal |last=de Vál |first=Séamas S. |date=1997 |title=Priests of 'Ninety-Eight' |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25520024 |journal=The Past: The Organ of the Uí Cinsealaigh Historical Society |issue=20 |pages=(3–52) 3 |issn=2009-2040 |jstor=25520024}}</ref> were rejected by their bishop, James Caufield of [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns|Ferns]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Keogh |first=Dáire |date=2009 |title=Caulfield, James {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/caulfield-james-a1566#:~:text=Caulfield,%20James%20(c.,of%20Caesar%20Colclough%20(qv). |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> as "the very faeces of the church",<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|225}}  and, indeed, none at the time was accredited to a parish.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Whelan |first=Kevin |title=Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter: the Clergy and 1798 |publisher=Columba Press |year=1997 |isbn=9781856072090 |editor-last=Swords |editor-first=Liam |location=Dublin |pages=65-85 |chapter=The Wexford Priests in 1798}}</ref> Two were killed, and four, including Roche and Murphy, were executed.<ref name="de Val-1997" /> Two priests were also sent to the gallows in Mayo.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fr. Andrew Conroy |url=https://www.ouririshheritage.org/content/archive/people/101_mayo_people/religion/fr_andrew_conroy |access-date=2023-11-11 |website=Our Irish Heritage |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=McCabe |first=Desmond |date=2009 |title=Sweeney, Manus {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/sweeney-manus-a8401 |access-date=2023-11-11 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> Their bishop, [[Dominic Bellew|Dominic Bellew of Killala]] had served as president of the "committee of public safety" in [[Ballina, County Mayo|Ballina]] but he satisfied [[Dublin Castle administration|Dublin Castle]] that his sole purpose had been to prevent rebel outrages.<ref name="Geoghegan-2000" />{{rp|246}}

Pitt's plans, conceived in advance of the rebellion, for a legislative union had included a final act of Catholic emancipation.<ref name="Bew-2011b">{{Cite book |last=Bew |first=John |title=Castlereagh, From Enlightenment to Tyranny |publisher=Quercus Publishing Plc |year=2011 |isbn=9780857381866 |pages=126–127}}</ref><ref name="Geoghegan-2000" />{{rp|243–244}} It was only after he had resigned in the face of opposition from the [[George III|King]] and court party,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kelly |first=James |year=1987 |title=The Origins of the Act of Union: An Examination of Unionist Opinion in Britain and Ireland, 1650–1800 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=25 |issue=99 |pages=236–263–85 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400026614 |jstor=30008541 |s2cid=159653339}}</ref> that additional measures were thought necessary to secure the loyalty of the Catholic clergy. The government that had since 1795 endowed the [[St Patrick's College, Maynooth|Catholic seminary at Maynooth]], now proposed that, in return for future episcopal appointments in Ireland being subject to Crown approval, that its graduates enjoy their own regium donum—that like Presbyterian ministers, priests receive a government stipend. But this too proved too much for the king, and Cornwallis was obliged to withdraw the offer.<ref name="Geoghegan-2000">{{Cite journal |last=Geoghegan |first=Patrick M. |date=2000 |title=The Catholics and the Union |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679381 |journal=Transactions of the Royal Historical Society |volume=10 |pages=243–258 |doi=10.1017/S0080440100000128 |jstor=3679381 |s2cid=153949973 |issn=0080-4401|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|246}}

=== The Union ===
In August 1800, the Irish Parliament (induced by extensive favours and emoluments) agreed to abolish itself.<ref name="Geoghegan-1999" /> Under the [[Act of Union 1800|Acts of Union]], Irish representation, purged of many of the [[Rotten and pocket boroughs|pocket boroughs]] but still narrow and exclusively Protestant,<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Union with Ireland, 1800 {{!}} History of Parliament Online |url=https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/periods/hanoverians/union-ireland-1800 |access-date=2023-11-09 |website=www.historyofparliamentonline.org}}</ref> was transferred to Westminster, now styled as the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]].<ref name="Geoghegan-1999">Geoghegan, Patrick M.(1999) ''The Irish Act of Union: A Study in High Politics, 1798-1801.'' Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. {{ISBN|978-0716527725}}</ref>

In seeking to rally support for a renewal of the rebellion in 1803, Robert Emmet argued that if Ireland had cause in 1798, it had only been compounded by subjecting Ireland to "a foreign parliament" in which "seven-eights of the population have no right to send a member of their body to represent them" and in which the "other eight part" are "the tools and taskmasters, acting for the cruel English government and their [[Protestant Ascendancy|Irish Ascendancy]]--a monster still worse, if possible than foreign tyranny".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Geohegan |first=Patrick |title=Robert Emmet |publisher=Gill & Macmillan |year=2002 |isbn=0717133877 |location=Dublin |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|220-221}} Yet at the time, there was no popular protest. This may have reflected the demoralisation that followed the rebellion's crushing defeat, but for the Irish Parliament there was little nostalgia.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kelly |first=James |date=2000 |title=Popular Politics in Ireland and the Act of Union |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679382 |journal=Transactions of the Royal Historical Society |volume=10 |pages=259–287 |doi=10.1017/S008044010000013X |jstor=3679382 |s2cid=154746765 |issn=0080-4401|url-access=subscription }}</ref> From exile in [[Hamburg]], [[Archibald Hamilton Rowan]] predicted that, in depriving the [[Anglo-Irish people|Anglo-Irish]] lords of their "corrupt assembly", the union would itself see "the wreck of the old Ascendancy".<ref>{{cite book |author=Fergus Whelan |title=God-Provoking Democrat: The Remarkable Life of Archibald Hamilton Rowan |publisher=New Island Books |year=2014 |isbn=978-1848404601 |location=Stillorgan, Dublin |page=201}}</ref> (In opposing the union, this was the express fear of the Speaker of the [[Irish House of Commons]], [[John Foster, 1st Baron Oriel|John Foster]]).<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|231}}

=== Emmet's rebellion ===
{{Main|Irish Rebellion of 1803}}

Emmet and his co-conspirators worked to re-establish the United Irish organisation on strictly military lines, but otherwise planning for a republican rising relied on broadly the same strategy as in '98. Hopes of outside assistance were abandoned in 1802 when, what Emmett acknowledged as a "similar attempt in England" (the "[[Despard Plot]]") was crushed,<ref name=":0" />{{rp|157, 288}} and when French forces under Humbert were assigned by Napoleon, not to the liberation of Ireland, but to the [[Saint-Domingue expedition|re-enslavement of Haiti]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=French Expeditions to Ireland 1796 - 1798 |url=https://www.frenchempire.net/articles/ireland/ |access-date=2023-11-09 |website=www.frenchempire.net}}</ref> Through a series of mishaps and missteps an attempt in July 1803 to seize Dublin Castle and other key points in the capital, misfired, and rebels in Kildare dispersed.<ref name="O'Donnell-2021">{{Cite web |last=O'Donnell |first=Ruan |date=2021 |title=The Rising of 1803 in Dublin |url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-rising-of-1803-in-dublin/ |access-date=2021-11-30 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> Without promised firearms, [[Michael Dwyer]] refused to lead his men down from the Wicklow Mountains.<ref name="History Ireland-2013">{{Cite web |date=2013-02-22 |title=Michael Dwyer of Imaal |url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/michael-dwyer-of-imaal/ |access-date=2021-11-30 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> In Ulster, despite being represented by the original Society's two most successful organisers in the north, [[Thomas Russell (rebel)|Thomas Russell]] and [[James Hope (Ireland)|James Hope]], the republic proclaimed by Emmet rallied neither former United men nor Defenders.<ref name="Quinn-2003">{{Cite web |last=Quinn |first=James |date=2003 |title=The dog that didn't bark": the North and 1803 |url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-dog-that-didnt-bark-the-north-and-1803/ |access-date=2021-03-07 |website=History Ireland}}</ref>

Many of those arrested or taken prisoner in '98 were transported to penal colonies of [[New South Wales]]. In March 1804, when news reached them of Emmet's rising, [[Castle Hill convict rebellion|several hundred convicts mutinied]] in the hope of capturing ships for a return to Ireland.<ref name="whitaker">{{cite web |author=Whitaker, Anne-Maree |year=2009 |title=Castle Hill convict rebellion 1804 |url=http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/castle_hill_convict_rebellion_1804 |access-date=3 January 2017 |work=[[Dictionary of Sydney]]}}</ref> They were routed in an encounter loyalists celebrated as the [[Castle Hill convict rebellion|Second Battle of Vinegar Hill]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Silver |first=Lynette Ramsay |title=The Battle of Vinegar Hill: Australia's Irish Rebellion, 1804 |publisher=Doubleday |year=1989 |isbn=0868243264 |location=Sydney, New South Wales}}</ref>

== Contested commemoration ==
{{See also|Society of United Irishmen#Disputed legacy}}

=== O'Connell and Young Ireland ===
In 1801, Sir [[Sir Richard Musgrave, 1st Baronet, of Tourin|Richard Musgrave]]'s ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Evc9AAAAcAAJ Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland]'' presented the first "seminal history" of rebellion.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Musgrave: Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland |url=https://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/digital-book-collection/digital-books-by-subject/history-of-ireland/musgrave-memoirs-of-the-d/#:~:text=His%20Memoirs%20of%20the%20various,by%20eliminating%20the%20Protestant%20population. |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=www.askaboutireland.ie}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Biography - Musgrave, Sir Richard (1757-1818) - Waterford County Museum |url=https://www.waterfordmuseum.ie/exhibit/web/Display/article/282/Musgrave_Sir_Richard_17571818.html;jsessionid=28A2956AC297608496C8393223D2E3D1 |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=www.waterfordmuseum.ie}}</ref> "Violently anti-Catholic", it devoted just 12 pages to events in Ulster, compared to 600 on the rebellion in Leinster.<ref name="Bartlett-2010"/>{{rp|228}} Notwithstanding the loyalty of the Catholic Church, the Ascendancy was determined to paint the rebellion as a "Popish" conspiracy.<ref name="Bew-2009">{{Citation |last=Bew |first=Paul |title=The Union Between Britain and Ireland: One People? |date=2009 |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199561261.003.0002 |work=Ireland |pages=49–86 |access-date=2023-11-30 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199561261.003.0002|isbn=978-0-19-956126-1 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Gibney |first=John |date=2013 |title=Sir Richard Musgrave, 1746–1818: ultra-Protestant ideologue |url=https://www.historyireland.com/sir-richard-musgrave-1746-1818-ultra-protestant-ideologue/ |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> Daniel O'Connell who, enrolled in a yeomanry corps, had sat out the rebellion in his native [[County Kerry]],<ref name="Woods-2006">{{cite journal |last1=Woods |first1=C.J. |year=2006 |title=Historical Revision: Was O'Connell a United Irishman? |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=35 |issue=138 |page=179 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400004879 |jstor=20547427 |s2cid=163825007}}</ref> retorted that the United Irishmen had been the dupes, not of Catholics intent on driving Protestants from Ireland, but of a government seeking a pretext for abolishing the Irish Parliament.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Woods |first1=J.C. |date=2006 |title=Historical revision: was O'Connell a United Irishman? |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=35 |issue=138 |pages=173–174 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400004879 |jstor=20547427 |s2cid=163825007}}</ref> Neither in the mass mobilisation he led for [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829|Catholic emancipation]] nor, in the years to the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine]], for [[Repeal Association|repeal of the union]], did O'Connell invoke the spirit of "'98".<ref name="Woods-2006" />

In 1831, [[Thomas Moore]], who, citing the need to engage with the Presbyterian north, refused a parliamentary nomination from O'Connell's a [[Repeal Association]],<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings">{{cite book |last1=Moore |first1=Thomas |title=Political and Historical Writings on Irish and British Affairs by Thomas Moore, Introduced by Brendan Clifford |date=1993 |publisher=Athol Books |isbn=0-85034-067-5 |location=Belfast |pages=132, 152–153}}</ref>{{rp|233}} presented his ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_z8qAAAAYAAJ Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald]'' as a "justification of the men of '98 – the ''ultimi Romanorum'' of our country".<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|248}} His perspective was broadly shared by the [[Young Ireland]]ers who, on the principle of physical force, broke with O'Connell in 1846. The journalism of, the protestant Young Irelanders [[Thomas Davis (Young Irelander)|Thomas Davis]] in ''[[The Nation (Irish newspaper)|The Nation]],'' and [[John Mitchel]] in the ''[[United Irishman]]'', accorded 1798 an honoured place in a nationalist narrative.<ref>Ryder, S. (2001) "Young Ireland and the 1798 Rebellion" in: Geary, Laurence (eds.). ''Rebellion and Remembrance in Modern Ireland''. Dublin : Four Courts Press.</ref>  [[Richard Robert Madden|R. R. Madden]]'s eleven-volume ''The United Irishmen, their lives and times'' (1842-1860) advanced the same political rehabilitation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Boyd |first=Andrew |date=2005 |title=The Life and Times of R. R. Madden |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29742754 |journal=Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=133–154 |doi=10.2307/29742754 |issn=0488-0196|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== Centenary 1898 ===
In pilgrimages to Wolfe Tone's graveside at [[Bodenstown Graveyard|Bodenstown, County Kildare]], first held in 1873,<ref>{{cite web |date=27 April 2015 |title=Pilgrimages to Tone's grave at Bodenstown, 1873–1922: time, place, popularity |url=https://www.historyireland.com/featured-archive-post/pilgrimages-to-tones-grave-at-bodenstown-1873-1922-time-place-popularity/ |publisher=}}</ref> a new generation of [[Irish republicans]] claimed the legacy of the rebellion. But in the sectarian polarisation that marked consideration of the [[Government of Ireland Bill 1886|1886]] and [[Government of Ireland Bill 1893|1893 Home Rule bills]], narrower interpretations prevailed.<ref name="Collins3">{{cite book |last1=Collins |first1=Peter |title=Who Fears to Speak of '98: Commemoration and the Continuing Impact of the United Irishmen |date=2004 |publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation |location=Belfast |page=43}}</ref> "Despite the enthusiastic republicanism expressed by so many of the early organisers" (among them veterans of physical-force [[Fenian|Fenianism)]],<ref name="Johnson-1994">{{Cite journal |last=Johnson |first=Nuala C. |date=1994 |title=Sculpting Heroic Histories: Celebrating the Centenary of the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/622447 |journal=Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=78–93 |doi=10.2307/622447 |jstor=622447 |bibcode=1994TrIBG..19...78J |issn=0020-2754|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|84}} the Centenary celebrations in Dublin bore "the stamp" of constitutional nationalism, O'Connell's home-rule successors. The public were assured that the United Irishmen had been established to secure Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, and had only taken up arms, and the cause of a republic, once the obstinacy of the Ascendancy had closed all constitutional paths.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Paseta |first=Senia |date=1998 |title=1798 in 1898: The Politics of Commemoration |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29735888 |journal=The Irish Review (1986-) |issue=22 |pages=(46–53) 48–49 |doi=10.2307/29735888 |issn=0790-7850 |jstor=29735888|url-access=subscription }}</ref> 

Finding Protestants loath to acknowledge their connection to those she saw as having sealed Tone's union of creeds on "the battle field and scaffold", [[Alice Milligan]] had to confine her commemorative displays in Belfast to Catholic districts.<ref name="McNulty">{{cite journal |last1=McNulty |first1=Eugene |date=2008 |title=The Place of Memory: Alice Milligan, Ardrigh, and the 1898 Centenary |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40344295 |journal=Irish University Review |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=203–2321 |jstor=40344295 |access-date=24 January 2021}}</ref> A processive outing to the grave of [[Betsy Gray]], heroine of the [[Battle of Ballynahinch]], ended in a fracas and the destruction of her memorial stone.<ref name="Collins3"/> Unionists willing to recall the turnout under McCracken and Munro, insisted that had their forefathers been offered a Union under the British constitution as it later developed there would have been "no rebellion".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shaw |first=James J. |url=http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/ulsterscots/usep_pdf/Final%20History%20Texts/J.%20J.%20Shaw,%20Mr.%20Gladstones%20two%20Irish%20policies%201868%20and%201886.%20A%20letter%20to%20an%20Ulster%20Liberal%20elector%20(London,%201888).pdf |title=Mr. Gladstone's Two Irish Policies: 1868–1886 |publisher=Marcus Ward |year=1888 |location=London |pages=0–11}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Owens |first=Gary |date=1999 |title=Editor's Introduction: The 1798 Rebellion and the Irish Republican Tradition |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/41/article/666934 |journal=Éire-Ireland |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |doi=10.1353/eir.1999.0000 |s2cid=159879325 |issn=1550-5162|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The centenary year saw the fifth and sixth editions of Fr. Patrick Kavanagh's [https://books.google.com/books?id=SgwwAAAAMAAJ ''A'' ''Popular History of the Insurrection of 1798''] (1874). Kavanagh's did not, as has been suggested, depict the rebellion as "a purely Catholic affair",<ref>Robinson, Kenneth, (2005). "Commentary", Thomas Ledlie Birch, ''A Letter from an Irish Emigrant'' (1799) Belfast: Athol Books, p. 141, {{ISBN|0850341108}}</ref> but neither did he see cause to profile the republicanism of the United directories.<ref name="Johnson-1994" />{{rp|88}} Later Wexford historians were to criticise him for advancing "the concept of the priest leader . . .  to a degree which did not exist in contemporary accounts",<ref>Cullen, L M (1987) "The 1798 rebellion in Wexford: United Irishmen organisation, membership, leadership" in K. Whelan and W Nolan eds., ''Wexford: History and Society'', Dublin: Geography Publications, (pp. 248-295), p. 290. {{ISBN|9780906602065}}</ref> and for remaining silent on the hierarchy's condemnation of those of their priests who did take to the field.<ref name=":2" />{{rp|32}}

=== Sesquicentennial 1948 ===
In 1948, attempting, post-[[Partition of Ireland|partition]], to organise Protestant participation in a commemoration of the 150th anniversary, writer [[Denis Ireland]], and trade unionists [[Victor Halley]] and [[Jack Macgougan|Jack MacGougan]], were denied permission to rally in Belfast's city centre. Instead, it was from nationalist west Belfast, that they led a procession to McArt's Fort,<ref name="Courtney" />{{rp|332, 347}} the site overlooking the town where in June 1795 [[Wolfe Tone]] and members of the [[Society of United Irishmen|United Irish]] northern executive took an oath "never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, vol. 1 |publisher=Gales and Seaton |year=1826 |editor=William Theobald Wolfe Tone |location=Washington D.C. |pages=127}}</ref>

In the south, in ''[[Éire]]'', the sesquicentennial of the rebellion was background to the consideration and passage of [[the Republic of Ireland Act 1948]], which came into effect on 18 April 1949, Easter Monday,<ref>{{cite Irish legislation|name=The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 (Commencement) Order 1949|year=1949|number=27|type=si}}</ref> the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the 1916 [[Easter Rising]].

In 1960, the accidental discovery of the remains of [[John Moore (Irish politician)|John Moore]] occasioned a state funeral in [[Castlebar]]. President [[Éamon de Valera]] (veteran of 1916), together with the  ambassadors of France and ([[Francoist Spain|Francoist]]) Spain, honoured Moore as both "Ireland's first president" and (with greater poetic license)<ref>Thomas More's descendants had all died out by 1807, with no link to Ireland; see http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Descendants_John.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200927132212/https://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Descendants_John.pdf|date=27 September 2020}}</ref> "a descendant of [the Catholic martyr] [[Thomas More|St Thomas More]]".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gillespie |first=Tom |date=2022-12-17 |title=John Moore, first president of Connaught |url=https://www.con-telegraph.ie/2022/12/17/john-moore-first-president-of-connaught/ |access-date=2023-11-10 |website=Connaught Telegraph |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Bicentennial 1998 ===
[[File:Tree_of_Liberty,_Maynooth.jpg|thumb|[[Liberty Tree#Other trees|Tree of Liberty]] monument in [[Maynooth]], noting the influence of the American and French Revolutions]]
The 1998 bicentenary coincided with the [[Good Friday Agreement|Good Friday, Belfast Agreement]] and with the hopes entertained for reconciliation after thirty years in [[Northern Ireland]] of political violence. Writing in the against the background of the [[The Troubles|Troubles]], the Ulster historian [[A. T. Q. Stewart]] had argued that the United Irish strategy had been a "failure": the course of the rebellion had demonstrated that "sectarian strife was a much stronger tradition than unity".<ref>{{Cite book |last=A. T. Q. |first=Stewart |title=The Narrow Ground, The Roots of Conflict in Ulster |publisher=Faber and Faber |year=1977 |isbn=9780571154852 |location=London |publication-date=1977 |pages=110}}</ref> But in the bicentenary year, scholarship reverted to a more "romantic, celebratory style of history writing". There was criticism not only of Kavanagh's "faith and fatherland" interpretation of the rebellion,<ref name=":2102">{{Cite book |last=Kinsella |first=Anna |title=The Mighty Wave: the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford |publisher=Four Courts Press |year=1996 |isbn=1851822542 |editor-last=Keogh |editor-first=Daire |location=Dublin |pages=139-155 |chapter=1798 Claimed for Catholics: Father Kavanagh, Fenians and the Centenary Celebrations |editor-last2=Furlong |editor-first2=Nicholas}}</ref>{{rp|54}} but also, with its heavy reliance on the available loyalist sources, of [[Thomas Pakenham (historian)|Thomas Pakenham]]'s celebrated ''The Year of Liberty'' (1969),<ref name="McBride-1999">{{Cite journal |last=McBride |first=Ian |date=1999 |editor-last=Keogh |editor-first=Dáire |editor2-last=Furlong |editor2-first=Nicholas |editor3-last=Gahan |editor3-first=Daniel |editor4-last=Weber |editor4-first=Paul |editor5-last=Wilson |editor5-first=David A. |editor6-last=Blackstock |editor6-first=Allan |title=Reclaiming the Rebellion: 1798 in 1998 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30007150 |journal=Irish Historical Studies |volume=31 |issue=123 |pages=(395–410) 399 |doi=10.1017/S0021121400014231 |issn=0021-1214 |jstor=30007150 |s2cid=146881848|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Dunne-1998b">{{Cite journal |last=Dunne |first=Tom |date=1998 |editor-last=Curtin |editor-first=Nancy J. |editor2-last=Stewart |editor2-first=A. T. Q. |editor3-last=Whelan |editor3-first=Kevin |editor4-last=Keogh |editor4-first=D. |editor5-last=Furlong |editor5-first=N. |editor6-last=Gahan |editor6-first=Daniel |editor7-last=Pakenham |editor7-first=Thomas |editor8-last=Dickson |editor8-first=Charles |editor9-last=Myers |editor9-first=S. W. |title=Review Article: 1798 and the United Irishmen |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29735889 |journal=The Irish Review (1986-) |issue=22 |pages=54–66 |doi=10.2307/29735889 |issn=0790-7850 |jstor=29735889|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and of its thesis that the rebellion was essentially a peasant revolt.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Broich |first=Ulrich |url= |title=Reactions to Revolutions: The 1790s and Their Aftermath |date=2007 |publisher=LIT Verlag Münster |isbn=978-3-8258-7427-8 |pages= |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|35}} The official commemorations again emphasised the United Irishmen's' non-sectarian, [[Age of Enlightenment|enlightened]], French and American-inspired, democratic ideals,<ref name="McBride-1999" /> with historians noting that the societies were organised and rose in the east, in Ireland's "the most economically advanced, outward looking, anglophone areas".<ref name=":3" />{{rp|36}}

In [[Republic of Ireland|the Republic]], the government described itself as having

<blockquote>... set out to avoid what we identified as a flaw in the commemorations of 1898, 1938 and 1948. That is the excessive emphasis on the Catholic Nationalist version of the rebellion which saw 1798 only as a crusade for faith and fatherland. Inevitably, that partisan approach alienated many others, including the descendants of the Ulster United Irishmen who had been so much to the forefront in the 1790s.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mr S. Brennan |first=Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach |date=1998-12-09 |title=Bicentenary of 1798: Statements. – Seanad Éireann (21st Seanad) – Wednesday, 9 Dec 1998 – Houses of the Oireachtas |url=https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/1998-12-09/12 |access-date=2023-11-03 |website=www.oireachtas.ie |language=en-ie}}</ref></blockquote>

Contrary to what it characterised as the "sectarian and narrow-minded folklore" of the rebellion, ''[[The Irish Times]]'' noted that even in Wexford, typically associated with fighting priests, Protestants had played a leading role. Executed alongside [[Bagenal Harvey]] on Wexford Bridge, [[Matthew Keogh]], the United governor of Wexford town, had also been a member of the established [[Church of Ireland]]. So had four of the eight members of the town's committee and all three United colonels for the baronies of [[Forth (County Wexford barony)|Forth]] and [[Bargy]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Comerford |first=Patrick |date=10 January 1998 |title=1798: The Lost Leaders |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/1798-the-lost-leaders-1.123119 |access-date=2023-11-12 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref> How, asked the popular historian Kevin Whelan, can we explain the risings occurring in "the Anglophone rich east coast strip from Antrim to Wexford" without an explicit recognition of the "mass politicisation" of the 1790s. If sectarianism was the key, why not in Armagh; if agrarian conditions, why not in poorest counties of the Atlantic coastline or in Tipperary, the centre of peasant unrest.<ref name=":2" />{{rp|33-34}}   

Not all historians contributed in the spirit of the official commemorations. There were those who continued to argue that "the central sectarian component of popular politics and culture in the 1790s" remained regardless of "the United Irishmen's ideological and organisational presence".<ref name="Donnelly-2001" /> As an expression of Presbyterian radicalism, the republicanism of the movement could, in any case, be seen as a "continuation of the war against [[popery]] by other means".<ref>{{Cite book |last=McBride |first=Ian |url= |title=Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century |date=1998 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-820642-2 |pages=13 |language=en}}</ref> In the south-east, there was still scholarship supporting [[Louis Cullen]]'s thesis that the rebellion "was a local sectarian civil war between Catholic and Protestant gentry and large tenant farmers".<ref name="Donnelly-2001">Donnelly Jr., James (2001). "[http://edepositireland.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/93186/Geary,%20Laurence%20M%20-%20%20(3).pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Sectarianism in 1798 and in Catholic nationalist memory]" in Laurence M. Geary, ed., ''Rebellion and remembrance in modern Ireland,'' (pp. 15-37) pp. 16, 37''.'' Dublin: Four Courts Press. {{ISBN|1-85182-586-X}}</ref><ref>See also McBride, Ian (2009), ''Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Dublin: Gill Books'', pp. 409-413, {{ISBN|9780717116270}}; and English, Richard (2006), ''Irish Freedom'', ''The History of Nationalism in Ireland,'' London: Pan Books, pp. 91-95. {{ISBN|9780330427593}}</ref>

=== 1798 in the Ulster-Scots retelling ===
Under the Belfast Agreement, the bicentennial year saw the creation of the [[Ulster-Scots Agency|''Ulster Scots Agency'']] (''Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch'')'',''<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gardner |first=Peter R |date=2018 |title=Ethnicity monopoly: Ulster-Scots ethnicity-building and institutional hegemony in Northern Ireland |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0791603518780821 |journal=Irish Journal of Sociology |language=en |volume=26 |issue=2 |pages=139–161 |doi=10.1177/0791603518780821 |hdl=2164/10290 |s2cid=56120274 |issn=0791-6035|hdl-access=free |url-access=subscription }}</ref> which has advanced its own reclamation of 1798. Its publications, including materials for schools,<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/fs/doc/teaching-resources/liberty-teacher-booklet-1.pdf |title=Climb the Liberty Tree: an Exploration of the Role of Ulster Scots in theUnited Irishmen's Rebellion of 1798. |publisher=Ulster Scots Agency |year=2012}}</ref> portray the [[Ulster Scots people|Ulster Scots]] (broadly the Presbyterians of Ulster) as having been, while not their equal as the victims of the Ascendancy, in advance of Catholics in the demand for change.<ref name="Gardner-2017">{{Cite book |last=Gardner |first=Peter Robert |url=https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/0423f792-1c5c-4458-9bad-07cb0cedc035/content |title=Ethnicising Ulster's Protestants: Tolerance, Peoplehood, and Class in Ulster-Scots Ethnopedagogy |publisher=Ph.D dissertation, Cambridge University |year=2017}}</ref>{{rp|107}} The rebellion in Ulster is described as "a struggle for fairness, equal rights, and democracy" ["to right some things we thought wrong"];<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hume |first=David |title="To right somethings we thought wrong" The Spirit of 1798 and Presbyterian radicalism in Ulster |publisher=Ulster Society |year=1998 |isbn=1872076394 |location=Lurgan}}</ref> in which the militancy of the United Irishmen reflects the character of "a people prepared to agitate when faced with discrimination and unfairness".<ref>Ulster-Scots Agency (2006). [http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/weans/teachers/teachers_guides.html What Makes an Ulster-Scot?: Factors Contributing to Tradition: A Guide for Teachers]</ref><ref name="Gardner-2017" />{{rp|107}}

Enlightenment ideas are acknowledged, but they are those of the [[Scottish Enlightenment]]. Through the moral philosophy of an Ulsterman, [[Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)|Francis Hutcheson]],<ref name="Andrews-2022">{{Cite web |last=Andrews |first=Johnny |date=2022 |title=Francis Hutcheson Should Be A Guide To Any Unionist Conversation |url=https://hutcheson.institute/francis-hutcheson-should-be-a-guide-to-any-unionist-conversation |access-date=2023-11-06 |website=Francis Hutcheson Institute}}</ref> these draw on the [[Covenanters|covenanting tradition]] of Presbyterian resistance to royal and [[Episcopal polity|episcopal]] imposition.<ref name="McCausland-2023">{{cite speech |last=McCausland |first=Nelson |title=The Scottish Enlightenment in Ulster |date=2023 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrnNjWYDKtE |access-date=2023-11-06 |place=Linen Hall Library, Belfast |language=en |via=YouTube}}.</ref> Flowing through various channels, they stiffen the resolve of the American patriots (with the "[[Scotch-Irish Americans|Scotch-Irish"]] prominent in their ranks).<ref>Webb, James. (2009). ''Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America''. Edinburgh: Mainstream</ref><ref>McCarthy, Karen F. (2011). ''The Other Irish: The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America''. New York: Sterling</ref> Once affirmed, first by [[United States Declaration of Independence|American independence]] and then by the French [[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen|Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen]], they return to Ulster in the liberal-patriotic resolutions of the Volunteers and of the United Irishmen.<ref name="Andrews-2022" /><ref name="McCausland-2023" />

It is a story (frequently citing Stewart) sceptical of the promised unity of creeds. The risings in Leinster are described as having "the paraphernalia of Roman Catholicism ... more in evidence than the symbolism of the United Irishmen". With Catholics enrolled in the militia, it is also proposed that the union of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter was "more closely realised in the forces of the crown".<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://www.ulster-scots.com/uploads/91262880996.PDF |title=1798 an' a' that: radicalism, revolt and realignment |publisher=Ulster Scots Community Network |year=2017 |location=Belfast |pages=13, 18}}</ref>

The result is an interpretation of the rebellion which remains Protestant-centric without restricting itself to the traditional unionist celebration of British loyalties and identity. Recalled in this manner, sociologist Peter Gardner suggests that the Rebellion of 1798 advances an "ethnicising of Ulster Protestants". They are reimagined as a "disenfranchised and indignant" community "outside of the bounds of colonial power in Ireland", rather than, as they appear in the traditional Irish nationalist historiography, "its custodians".<ref name="Gardner-2017" />{{rp|109–110}}

Broadly the same interpretation was advanced by the education committee of the [[Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland]] with a bi-centenary programme that included re-enactments of the [[Battle of Antrim|battles of Antrim]] and [[Battle of Ballynahinch|Ballynahinch]]. While acknowledging that "members of the [Orange] institution in 1798 supported the forces of the Crown and in many instances whole lodges joined the yeomanry", the institution, nonetheless, commemorates 1798 "because of the elements of shared history, social justice and `disaffection'."<ref>{{Cite news |last=De Breadun |first=Deaglan |date=5 December 1997 |title=Orange Order plans to re-enact battles of 1798 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/orange-order-plans-to-re-enact-battles-of-1798-1.134006 |access-date=2023-11-26 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref>

=== Memorials ===
[[File:1798 Memorial in Dunlavin.jpg|thumb|Memorial in [[Dunlavin]], [[County Wicklow]]]]

In the Republic of Ireland there are at least 85 public [[List of monuments and memorials to the Irish Rebellion of 1798|monuments and memorials]] acknowledging the patriot dead of 1798, including the national [[Garden of Remembrance (Dublin)|Garden of Remembrance]] in Dublin.<ref>{{Cite web |title=1798 Rebellion war memorial sites in Ireland |url=http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials?warId=21 |access-date=2020-06-17 |website=www.irishwarmemorials.ie}}</ref>  In Northern Ireland, the [[Down District Council|Down District]] 1798 Bicentennial Committee installed informational plaques to mark the battles of Saintfield<ref>{{Cite web |title=Geograph:: Battle of Saintfield plaque, Saintfield © Albert Bridge |url=https://www.geograph.ie/photo/1440921 |access-date=2023-11-04 |website=www.geograph.ie |language=en}}</ref> and Ballynahinch.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Geograph:: Battle of Ballynahinch plaque,... © Albert Bridge cc-by-sa/2.0 |url=https://www.geograph.ie/photo/4936230 |access-date=2023-11-04 |website=www.geograph.ie |language=en}}</ref> In 1900, a large monument commemorating those "who suffered for the parts they took in the memorable insurrection in 1798" was erected over the grave of [[Michael Dwyer]] in the [[Waverley Cemetery]], [[Sydney]], Australia.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Irish Dead of the 1798 Revolution {{!}} Monument Australia |url=https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/government/dissent/display/23713-irish-dead-of-the-1798-revolution |access-date=2023-11-08 |website=monumentaustralia.org.au}}</ref>

== List of major engagements ==
[[File:Battle of Three Rocks.jpg|thumb|[[Battle of Three Rocks]], 30 May 1798]]
[[File:MAXWELL(1845) p145 Battle of Ross.jpg|thumb|[[Battle of New Ross (1798)|Battle of New Ross]], 5 June 1798|left]]

{|class="wikitable sortable"
|-
!Date
!Location
!Battle
!Result
|-
| rowspan="2" |24 May
|[[Ballymore Eustace]], [[County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Ballymore-Eustace]]
| rowspan="2" |United Irishmen repulsed
|-
|[[Naas]], [[County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Naas]]
|-
|24–28 May
|[[Rathangan, County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Rathangan]]
|United Irish victory, rebels repulsed 28 May
|-
| rowspan="3" |24 May
|[[Prosperous, County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Prosperous]]
|United Irish victory
|-
|[[Old Kilcullen]], [[County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Kilcullen|Battle of Old Kilcullen]]
|United Irish defeat Cavalry force and advance on Kilcullen
|-
|[[Kilcullen]], [[County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Kilcullen]]
|British victory
|-
| rowspan="3" |25 May
|[[Carnew]], [[County Wicklow]]
|[[Carnew massacre]]
|British execute 38 prisoners
|-
|[[Dunlavin]], [[County Wicklow]]
|[[Massacre of Dunlavin Green|Dunlavin Green massacre]]
|British execute 36 prisoners
|-
|[[Carlow]], [[County Carlow]]
|[[Battle of Carlow]]
|British victory, rising in Carlow crushed
|-
| rowspan="2" |26 May
|The Harrow, [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of the Harrow]]
|United Irish victory
|-
|[[Hill of Tara]], [[County Meath]]
|[[Battle of Tara Hill]]
|British victory, Rising in Meath defeated
|-
|27 May
|[[Oulart]], [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Oulart Hill]]
| rowspan="2" |United Irish victory
|-
|28 May
|[[Enniscorthy]], [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Enniscorthy]]
|-
|29 May
|[[Curragh]], [[County Kildare]]
|[[Gibbet Rath massacre]]
|British execute 300–500 rebels
|-
| rowspan="2" |30 May
|[[Newtownmountkennedy]], [[County Wicklow]]
|[[Battle of Newtownmountkennedy]]
|British victory
|-
|Forth Mountain, [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Three Rocks]]
|United Irish victory, Wexford taken
|-
|1 June
|[[Bunclody]], [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Bunclody]]
|British victory
|-
|4 June
|Tuberneering, [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Tuberneering]]
|United Irish victory, British counter-attack repulsed
|-
| rowspan="2" |5 June
|[[New Ross]], [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of New Ross (1798)|Battle of New Ross]]
|British victory
|-
|Scullabogue, [[County Wexford]]
|[[Scullabogue Barn massacre|Scullabogue massacre]]
|Irish rebels kill 100–200 loyalists
|-
|7 June
|[[Antrim, County Antrim|Antrim]], [[County Antrim]]
|[[Battle of Antrim]]
| rowspan="2" |United Irishmen repulsed
|-
| rowspan="2" |9 June
|[[Arklow]], [[County Wicklow]]
|[[Battle of Arklow]]
|-
|[[Saintfield]], [[County Down]]
|[[Battle of Saintfield]]
|United Irish victory
|-
|12–13 June
|[[Ballynahinch, County Down]]
|[[Battle of Ballynahinch]]
| rowspan="5" |British victory
|-
| rowspan="2" |19 June
|[[Shannonvale, County Cork]]
|[[Battle of the Big Cross]]<ref>{{cite web|title=southern star|url=http://www.failteromhat.com/southernstar/page17.php}}</ref>
|-
|near [[Kilcock]], [[County Kildare]]
|[[Battle of Ovidstown]]
|-
|20 June
|[[Foulkesmill]], [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Foulksmills]]
|-
|21 June
|[[Enniscorthy]], [[County Wexford]]
|[[Battle of Vinegar Hill]]
|-
|23 June
|Carrigmoclear Hill near [[Grangemockler]], [[County Tipperary]]<!-- Unclear if this was a real battle -->
|[[Battle of Carrigmoclear]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://lingaunvalley.ie/location/carrigmoclear-hill/|title=Carrigmoclear Hill|access-date=6 June 2025|website=LINGAUN VALLEY}}</ref>{{better|date=November 2025}}<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://carrigmoclear.weebly.com/|title=Carrigmoclear 1798|access-date=6 June 2025|website=Weebly}}</ref>{{better|date=November 2025}}
|British victory
|-
|30 June
|near [[Carnew]], [[County Wicklow]]
|[[Battle of Ballyellis]]
|United Irish victory
|-
|11 July
|Leinster Bridge, [[Clonard, County Meath]]
|[[Battle of Clonard]]
|British Victory
|-
|25 July
|[[Rathcroghan]], [[County Roscommon]]
|[[Battle of Rathcroghan]]
|United Irish victory
|-
|27 August
|[[Castlebar]], [[County Mayo]]
|[[Battle of Castlebar]]
| rowspan="2" |United Irish/French victory
|-
|5 September
|[[Collooney]], [[County Sligo]]
|[[Battle of Collooney]]
|-
|8 September
|[[Ballinamuck]], [[County Longford]]
|[[Battle of Ballinamuck]]
| rowspan="3" |British victory
|-
|23 September
|[[Killala]], [[County Mayo]]
|[[Battle of Killala]]
|-
|12 October
|near [[Tory Island]], [[County Donegal]]
|[[Battle of Tory Island]]
|}

== See also ==
* [[Atlantic Revolutions]]
* [[Battles during the Irish Rebellion of 1798|Battles during the 1798 rebellion]]
* [[Castle Hill convict rebellion]] in Sydney, Australia
* [[French Revolutionary Wars]]
* [[Irish issue in British politics]]
* [[List of Irish rebellions]]
* [[List of monuments and memorials to the Irish Rebellion of 1798]]
* [[Society of United Irishmen]]
* [[United Irish Uprising in Newfoundland]]
* [[Wars of national liberation]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
* {{cite book |last1=Kennedy |first1=Liam |author-link=Liam Kennedy (historian) |title=[[Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish?]] |date=2016 |publisher=Irish Academic Press |location=Dublin |isbn=9781785370472 |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last=Stewart |first=A. T. Q. |title=The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down |date=1995 |publisher=Blackstaff |isbn=978-0856405587 |location=Belfast}}

== Further reading ==
* {{cite book |last1=anonymous |title=[[s:Who fears to speak of '98|Who fears to speak of '98]] |date=1922 |publisher=Cumann Cuimheachain National '98 Commemoration Association |location=Dublin}}
* Bartlett, Thomas, Kevin Dawson, [[Daire Keogh]], ''Rebellion'', Dublin 1998
* {{cite book|last=Beiner|first=Guy|date=2007|title=''Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory''  |url= https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3846.htm|location=Madison|publisher= University of Wisconsin Press |isbn=9780299218249}}
* {{cite book|last=Beiner|first=Guy|date=2018|title=''Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography''  |url= https://global.oup.com/academic/product/forgetful-remembrance-9780198749356?|location=Oxford |publisher= Oxford University Press |isbn=9780198749356}}
* {{cite book |last1=Burrowes |first1=Peter |author1-link=Peter Burrowes |title=[[s:An address to the Roman Catholics of Ireland : on the conduct they should pursue at the present crisis, on the subject of an union|An address to the Roman Catholics of Ireland : on the conduct they should pursue at the present crisis]] |date=1799 |location=Dublin |language=English}}
* Dickson, C.  ''The Wexford Rising in 1798: its causes and course'' (1955).
* David Dickson, [[Daire Keogh]] & Kevin Whelan, eds. ''The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion'' (Dublin, The Lilliput Press, 1993)
* Ehrman, John. ''The Younger Pitt: vol 3: The Consuming Struggle'' (1996) pp 158–196
* [[Elliott, Marianne]]. ''Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France'' (Yale UP, 1982)
* Hayes-McCoy, G.A.  "''Irish Battles''" (1969)
* Ingham, George R. ''Irish Rebel, American Patriot: William James Macneven, 1763–1841'', Seattle, WA: Amazon Books, 2015.
* McDowell,  R. B. ''Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 1760–1801'' (1991) pp 595–651.
* Pakenham, T. ''The Year of Liberty'' (London 1969) reprinted in 1998.
* Rose, J. Holland. ''William Pitt and the Great War'' (1911) pp 339–364  [https://archive.org/details/cu31924028005803 online]
* Smyth, James. ''The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the late 18th century''. (Macmillan, 1992).
* [[Todd, Janet M.]] ''Rebel daughters: Ireland in conflict 1798'' (Viking, 2003).
* Whelan, Kevin. ''The Tree of Liberty: Radicals, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity, 1760–1830''. (Cork University Press, 1996).
* {{cite book |last1=Winter |first1=John Pratt (attrib.) |title=[[s:An address to the thinking independent part of the community: on the present alarming state of public affairs|An address to the thinking independent part of the community: on the present alarming state of public affairs]] |date=1797 |location=Dublin |edition=1st |language=English}}
* Zimmermann, Georges Denis. ''Songs of Irish rebellion: Irish political street ballads and rebel songs, 1780–1900'' (Four Courts Press, 2002).

=== In the arts ===
* ''Liberty or Death'' – by British author David Cook (2014). A novella about the rebellion.
* ''The Year of the French'' – Thomas Flanagan, 1979. An historical novel about the events in County Mayo.
* ''[[Glenarvon]]'' (1816) – a novel by [[Lady Caroline Lamb]] set during the Rebellion, combining elements of the [[roman à clef]], the [[Gothic Novel]], and the [[Historical Novel]].

== External links ==
{{Commons}}
* [http://www.1798centre.ie/ National 1798 Centre] – Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford *
* [https://archives-en.centreculturelirlandais.com/digitized-collections/online-exhibitions/heritage/1798-the-year-of-the-french The Year of the French online exhibition] – CCI, Paris
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/irish_reb_01.shtml The 1798 Irish Rebellion] – ''[[BBC History]]''
* [http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/clare_1798_rebellion.htm The 1798 Rebellion in County Clare] – Clare library
* [http://www.struggle.ws/rbr/rbr4_1798.html The 1798 Rebellion] – Irish anarchist analysis
* [http://www.joseph-holt.org General Joseph Holt of the 1798 Rebellion in Wicklow]
* [http://www.crsbooks.net/fugitive/ Fugitive Warfare – 1798 in North Kildare]
* [http://dublin1798.com Map of Dublin 1798]
* {{cite AV media |title=The Irish Rebellion of 1798 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001fwb9 |work=In Our Time |people=[[Melvyn Bragg]], Ian McBride, Catriona Kennedy, Liam Chambers |date=8 December 2022 |publisher=[[BBC Radio 4]]}}

{{Sequence
| prev = [[French campaign in Egypt and Syria]]
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| next = [[Quasi-War]]
}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Irish Rebellion Of 1798}}
[[Category:Irish Rebellion of 1798| ]]
[[Category:1798 in Ireland|Rebellion]]
[[Category:18th-century rebellions]]
[[Category:Anglo-French wars]]
[[Category:French Directory]]
[[Category:Henry Benedict Stuart]]
[[Category:Ireland–United Kingdom military relations]]
[[Category:Irish republicanism]]
[[Category:Political violence in the Kingdom of Ireland|Rebellion of 1798]]
[[Category:Rebellions against the British Empire]]
[[Category:Rebellions in Ireland|1798]]
[[Category:Wars involving Great Britain]]
[[Category:Wars involving Ireland]]