A History of Theobold Wolfe Tone in Ireland
Posted: Monday, October 06, 2008
by Russell Shortt
Exploring Ireland
Theobold Wolfe Tone, born in Dublin, the son of a Protestant coach-builder, studied law at Trinity College Dublin and qualified as a barrister from King's Inns at the age of 26 and attended the Inns of Court in London. A member of the prominent Protestant Ascendancy, Tone was heavily influenced by the radicalism of the American and French revolutionaries. Tone argued that the only way to counteract British influence in Irish affairs was by parliamentary reform and that the only way to achieve this was if Irish Catholics and the Protestant radicals united in a reform programme that included Catholic emancipation. Tone's views greatly impressed the Belfast Liberals and it was in Belfast that Tone helped set up the Society of the United Irishmen, the original purpose of the society was the formation of a political union between Catholics and Protestants with a view to achieving parliamentary reform. However, when it became evident that this was unattainable through constitutional reform, the majority of members conspired to adopt an Irish Republic by armed rebellion. They began to organise themselves along military lines and began making soundings to revolutionary France for help. Tone arrived in Paris in February 1796 and succeeded in persuading the French to despatch an expedition under the leadership of General Hoche. A fleet carrying a force of 14,000 men set sail from Brest in December 1796 just as the winter storms set in, the expedition became scattered, the ships that made it into Bantry Bay failed to make a landing and returned to France. Tone served for some months in the French army under Hoche, In June 1797 he took part in the preparations of a Dutch expedition to Ireland which was to be supported by the French. However, the fleet was detained in port for several weeks due to unfavourable weather, Tone returned to Paris to discover Hoche had died. Napolean Bonaparte was much less eager then Hoche to dispatch a large fleet to Ireland. All he granted was a small number of ships to descend simultaneously on different parts of the Irish coast and perform raid type attacks. Three managed to make landings but all met with catastrophic circumstances, the Hoche on which Tone was onboard encountered an English squadron on Lough Swilly, he was captured when the Hoche surrendered. On 10 November 1798 he was sentenced to be hanged but before the sentence was carried out, he committed suicide.
This Article has been viewed 305 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.