In Our Time - The Irish Rebellion of 1798

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind rebellion in Ireland in 1798, the people behind the rebellion and the impact over the next few years and after. Amid wider unrest, the United Irishmen set the rebellion on its way, inspired by the French and American revolutionaries and their pursuit of liberty. When it broke out in May the United Irishmen had an estimated two hundred thousand members, Catholic and Protestant, and the prospect of a French invasion fleet to back them. Crucially for the prospects of success, some of those members were British spies who exposed the plans and the military were largely ready - though not in Wexford where the scale of rebellion was much greater. The fighting was initially fierce and brutal and marked with sectarianism but had largely been suppressed by the time the French arrived in August to declare a short-lived republic. The consequences of the rebellion were to be far reaching, not least in the passing of Acts of Union in 1800.The image above is of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763 - 1798), prominent member of the United IrishmenWith Ian McBride Foster Professor of Irish History at Hertford College, University of OxfordCatriona Kennedy Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of YorkAnd Liam Chambers Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in History at Mary Immaculate College, LimerickProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the program. Hello, in 1798 in Ireland, the momentum behind rebellion was so great that it was a question of when it would happen, not if. The United Irishmen, led by Protestants and Catholics,

had an estimated 200,000 members, and the support of the French invasion fleets. Crucially, though, some of those members were British spies who exposed the plans, and the French arrived too late, and when rebellion broke out, it was fierce, brutal, but brief, though its consequences were immense. With Middard discussed the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Ian McBride, Foster Professor of Irish History at Hartford College, University of Oxford,

Katrina Kennedy, senior lecturer in modern history at the University of York, and Liam Chambers, head of department and staff, senior lecturer in history at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. Liam, the 18th century had been seen by some as relatively peaceful when compared with the one before. Can you tell us why? Yeah, so Ireland and the 18th century in many ways is a very stable century compared to the 17th century, which was a century of bloodshed, violence, a century of conflict. But I think that behind that stability

lay a lot of instabilities, a lot of uncertainties, a lot of tensions that threatened to bubble over all the time throughout the course of the 18th century. And probably the most fundamental of those was a tension between the Catholic community in Ireland and the Protestant community in Ireland. So over the course of the previous two centuries, land and power had transferred from Catholics to the hands of Protestants. And this was copper-fastened really by events in the late 17th century, especially the revolution of 1688.

So this precipitates a war in Ireland between 1689. and 1691, and this confirms the dominant position of the Protestant community in Ireland, which guarantees a kind of security and stability, but creates other kinds of problems. So to confirm its security, the Protestant community in Ireland, which has a dominance in land and in politics,

it then passes a series of penal laws, targeting Irish Catholics, discriminating against them, in particular to try and make sure that the Catholic elite couldn't, launch a kind of counter-revolution against what would later be called the Protestant descendants in Ireland. So it targets Catholic land ownership, such as it was, but it also targets the Catholic Church, Catholic education, Catholic ability to participate in politics, Catholic ability to bear arms, which is probably not very surprising. And Catholics in their

turn, they look abroad for hope. They look to the possibility of James the who had been toppled in 1688, returning from exile in France to lead an invasion of Ireland, to overturn the land settlements of the 17th century and bring Catholics to political power. And when he dies in the early 18th century, they look to the possibility of his son, James III, leading an invasion of Ireland.

Could you give the list of some idea of the relative sizes of the Catholics and non-Catholics? Yeah, yeah. So the Protestant population is about 20, The Catholic population is about 80%. At the start of the 18th century, the population of Ireland is maybe 2.4 million, or thereabouts it rises to about 5 million

by the end of the 18th century. So Protestants are 20% of the population, but they own by the 1770s 95% of the land in Ireland. They also control the levers of political power. The Irish Parliament from the 1690s onward is a Protestant parliament. Only Protestants can sit in Parliament. Only Protestants can vote eventually in elections such as they happened in the 18th century.

But there are tensions as well within the Protestant community in Ireland, especially between the dominant Church of Ireland community, who really are the elite community in Ireland, and the Presbyterian community who are numerous, of course, in East Ulster, in particular, many of them of Scottish descent. And Presbyterians resent the fact that they feel that they are discriminated against as well. some of the penal laws apply to them. They can't have the same role

in local government, for example, that the Church of Ireland community can. So if you like, there's almost like a three-tiered society with a Church of Ireland elite, with Presbyterians somewhere below them and with Catholics below them again. So it creates this very tense situation. Does this very tense

situation burst out into violence at any time over that period? That's the surprising thing in a way that it actually doesn't. There's no major rebellion over the course of the 18th century until 1798. There's always the possibility of Jacobite unrest in Ireland, but when rising's happened in England and Scotland in 1715 and 1745,

Ireland remains quiescent. Why is that? I think it's mainly because Catholics simply don't have the means to organise armed resistance over the course of the 18th century. I think that explains the stability, if you like, the kind of stability in the surface of 18th century Ireland. Thanks very much. Ian McBride.

there were the American revolution, let's call it that, the fight against the British, the English, particularly in America, and the French Revolution. Can you not sketch out for us some of the main impacts they had on Irish political society? Yeah, these are two great external shocks that really shake up the superficially calm world that Liam's been describing. The first thing that they do, I think, is they transform the Irish political imagination. So within the Protestant political world, there had been a patriot movement, a so-called patriot movement, campaigning for greater constitutional and commercial freedom from London from the Westminster Parliament.

Those patriots saw the American colonies as occupying an analogous situation to the Irish Parliament. Among the patriots there was a radical fringe. They were people who read John Locke's two treatises of government, which was now acquiring its status as a great foundational work for Whig thinkers, progressive thinkers. They thought of themselves as Republicans in a curious 18th century sort of way. They were admirers of the ancient republics of Greece and Rome. But they believed that the British constitution and the British Empire were superior,

that they were a unique combination of Protestantism, liberty and commercial success. And the American Revolution began to change that. because it was seen in Ireland as a kind of civil war, and it was very divisive. Irish Protestants didn't know whether to take the side of the rebellious Americans or the government. And of course it produced a republic, which made them think that perhaps the British Constitution wasn't the high point of human political evolution after all. So that's America.

Then 1789 comes the outbreak of revolution in Paris. and this is a great utopian political experiment that mesmerises the Irish. I mean, the Irish people of all religious backgrounds. It's seen as sweeping away centuries of superstition and priestcraft, another very 18th century term, tyranny, and so on. And it catches the mood of reformers,

particularly in Belfast. So in 1791, there's a spectacular celebration of the fall of the Bastille held in Belfast and it's from that demonstration that evolves the Society of United Irishmen. What were they? They were as well

the first society in Belfast was a group of Presbyterian merchants and manufacturers and it's important to say that Belfast at this time was growing in confidence, growing economically and growing in its political ambitions and was full of itself

Belfast thought it could reshape the island of Ireland at its own image saw itself as very much leading a national movement. A second society followed quickly in Dublin, composed mostly of Protestant lawyers, doctors, joined by Catholic, middle class Catholics also. So that's the starting point for the movement. When you did achieve what could be called effective power? It achieved some political influence. It panicked the government in London, which in combination, of course, with the outbreak of war with France, it panicked the government in London

so that constitutional channels of protest were closed down in 1793, 1794, and the movement then went underground. It terrorised landlords and magistrates, particularly in Ulster, from about 1795 onwards. I mean, it paralysed the administration of local government and local justice, especially in Ulster. and it's certainly immobilised government in Ireland. I think you could say that.

I mean, it planned to achieve power with the help of a French invasion, but the details of that particular juncture always remained quite vague. Katrina Kennedy, Wolftown stands out in these early years. What was his background, and what impact did he have?

Theobald Wolftonne is born into a Church of Ireland family that's comfortable but not particularly wealthy. And he's a teenager at the time of the American War. And one of the impacts of the American War on Ireland, of course, is that it involves the removal of troops that have been stationed in Ireland, who were then sent to fight the war in America. And to fill their place, there arises the Irish volunteer movement, which is an armed patriot force that is pressing for greater.

legislative and economic independence from Britain. So this is all ongoing during his teenage years, and he often plays truant from school to go and watch these military reviews of troops in the parks in Dublin. And he's absolutely enthralled by that military pump and spectacle. And if there is a light motif running through his life and career, it's that spirit of military adventure, that desire to be a soldier. But his father blocks that ambition and refuses to let him join the British Army.

So he goes to Trinity College Dublin, like many of his class and religion. And then goes to London to pursue a legal career. And while he's there, he makes his first foray into politics, which is with this scheme to establish a military colony in the Sandwich Islands, which is present day, Hawaii. to boost British military power in that region. He hand delivers the proposal to William Pitt at Downing Street, has no response to this. And he says at that moment that he was so enraged by Pitt's indifference that he vowed that he would one day make him sorry for rejecting him in this way.

So when he returns then to Dublin from London, though, it's shortly before the French Revolution. and then he gets swept up very much in the political excitement that follows from that. How are united with the United Irishman? What were their goals? In the early years, their goals are broadly parliamentary reform and the non-sectarian vision of a union of Catholics, Protestants and dissenters. So the essential insight which, you know, tone has had and he really presses, is that as long as Catholics and dissenters in particular, the Presbyterians are divided,

that the British government will be able to continuously play the different religious communities off against each other. So any hope of greater independence or autonomy for Ireland is impossible. But they're divided on other issues. They're not quite sure if they want to establish an Irish Republic on the lines of the French Republic, whether they want radical parliamentary reform, universal male suffrage. They do end up adopting that.

But initially they're quite a broad coalition of members of the professional classes, wealthier merchants. So in their early years, they're really trying to shape public opinion to spread their non-sectarian message. And they do that quite effectively through print publications like the Northern Star newspaper in Belfast. So that's when they become sort of force. Wolfton at the head?

I mean, he's not, in many ways, Wolfton is very instrumental in the foundation of the United Irishmen, helping to shape their initial vision. But in their first few years, he's actually much more involved with the Catholic Committee and lobbying for Catholic emancipation

through that. That's another separate organisation. So he's not that involved in the early years of the United Irish movement. Thank you. Liam, Liam Chambers, before we move on to the French, landing,

attempting to land, sorry, can you just give a list as an update as to where we are at this time? Yeah, so I suppose the crucial thing is that picking up

from where Katrina left off and what Ian had commented on, the United Irish men are fairly legal during the first years of their existence. They're a very important lobbying force,

a propaganda outfit, but they're relatively small scale, and they're centered in Belfast and also in Dublin, but they're pushed underground.

in 1794, and this is as a result of war breaking out between Britain and France, and that war transforms Ireland in the 1790s, because suddenly these people like Theobald Wolftonne, who had been enthused by the French Revolution, are even more suspicious than they had been early in the 1790s. So the United Irish men are prescribed in 1794, and what happens is this small-scale outfit re-emerge through 1795, 1796, and especially 1797, as a mass-based revolutionary organisation. They whipped up to a big size very quickly, didn't they? They did, but at its height possibly 200,000 sworn members, yeah, and at this point they're committed to the goal of a separate Irish Republic. So some United Irishmen may have been separatists in the early

1790s, but most of them certainly were not. But by 1795, 1796, many of them become convinced that the only future for Ireland is a separate Irish Republic because the King of Reforms Katrina mentioned, parliamentary reform, Catholic relief or Catholic emancipation even had effectively been blocked off. So they're looking to the French now for support for a rebellion in Ireland. And Seabald-Wulf-Tone, he has contacts with the French agent in 1794, 1795. So in 1795 he's more or less told he needs to leave the country. And he goes into exile. He goes to the United States. He hates it in the United States. He doesn't settle there at all.

And he decides in early 1796 he'll go to Paris to assist with efforts to persuade the French to invade Ireland. Now, he's not the only United Irish agent in Paris. He doesn't single-handedly negotiate French assistance, but he's crucial in persuading the French, along with Edward Luhens and others, to invade Ireland. And the French decide to launch a massive invasion of Ireland in the winter of 1796.

And they put it ahead of it, I really experienced French military commander, Lezar Osh, so this is a sign of their determination. It set sail from Northern France in December 1796, more than 40 ships, more than 14,000 soldiers on board. So this is a very determined effort. The ships head for Ireland, but they're defeated, not by the Royal Navy, who don't intercept them,

they're defeated by the weather. Some of the ships arrive off the south coast of Ireland at Bantry Bay in County Cork, but many are blown off course. Theobald Wolf-Tone is now commissioned French officer. He's on board one of the ships. He writes in his diaries about being on board. He comments at one point that he's so close to the shore

that he could have tossed a biscuit onto County Cork, onto the land. But the wind doesn't give up and the rest of the fleet doesn't arrive. And Tone and the others are forced to return to France. Tone comments, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but that the English have had their greatest discreet. since the Spanish Armada. And it was a close run thing. For government supporters in Ireland

and for the British, this is the fright of their lives. It illustrates the weakness of Ireland's position. It illustrates it was wide open to invasion. And I think there's general agreement that had the French landed, they probably would have taken cork, they probably would have taken limerick. So they may not have won in the end, but a major front would have been opened up in the war in Ireland. And also it's worth saying, too,

that for the United Irish, men, this was a disappointment, but actually it was a very positive thing too. They had been trying to explain to their allies at home that the French would support them. And, you know, this was difficult to believe. Here were the French turning up in massive number. Surely they'd be back again. So there's massive recruitment into the United Irishmen after the Bantry Bay expedition. Ian, you know, right. So we were near 1798 where it happened. Were the particular actions that started that? Yes, and perhaps a

particular process really, which is the adoption of a policy of terror by the British armed forces in Ireland. And it's very difficult to understand at this time exactly how insurgency and counter-insurgency are interacting and which one is

fueling the other. So Leames described the panic in London at a narrowly missed French invasion. There's also panic at the fact that there's multiple forms of popular disaffection manifesting themselves in the Irish countryside. Some of them influenced by the United Irishmen and by French ideas. Some of them influenced by Catholic organisations with a smattering of French ideas

and sometimes more traditional Catholic motifs as well. But there's a real sense that the traditional means of governing Ireland's local Protestant magistrates backed up with the occasional foray from troops, that that's not working anymore. and increasingly British administrators based at Dublin Castle are frank in their correspondence that the only way to face

this problem in Ireland is a policy of systematic terror and that means house burning widespread house burning it means flogging very vicious widespread flogging sexual violence against women where troops are billeted

on houses and it's concentrated in Ulster and one of the things that I think we haven't emphasised enough so far is this distinctive Presbyterian subculture in the North East which was seen as the real storm centre of republican activity in Ireland. So in 1797 the dragooning of Ulster takes place. So it means that it's this process of belating of free quarters on the civilian population

and of departing from legal structures, legal restraints in order to terrorise the local population. It takes place under General Lake. And at the beginning of the next year, he becomes the commander-in-chief for Ireland as a whole

and this military machine begins to move from the north where these abuses have already been very widely publicised. It begins to move to southern counties including Wexford. Godana Kennedy, rebellion broke out in May, so we're into it now. In what way was the timing right? Was it wrong? How did they get on? Was it a good time to do it?

No, it's probably the short answer. It wasn't a great time. And the critical factor here. At the beginning it is supposed to be a United Irish rebellion, but really by the time it starts in May, the United Irish leadership in Ulster has been brought to its knees by the dragooning of Ulster. the imprisonment of key leaders a month, a few months before the rising begins. The Leinster United Irish leadership of the

Eastern Province of Ireland has also been arrested. So they've lost their key military commander, the person who was going to be commander-in-chief of the United Irish forces. So really that kind of military expertise that might have given the rebellion some shape has been lost.

So it's going to be much more chaotic and uncoordinated, insurrection. than it might have otherwise been. And of course, one of the issues here is that they have been waiting for the French. The French have been prevaricating about whether they're going to send another expedition, when they're going to send it. Napoleon Bonaparte is a key figure here. Wolfton has been meeting with him and trying to persuade him to send another expedition. But of course, he now has a site set on invading Egypt and is less interested in Ireland.

So ideally they would have coordinated the right. with the French, another French expedition, but as it is, they can't wait any longer because the movement is about to be completely brought to its knees. And if they don't rise now, they will have no hope of success. And then we have a rather unexpected for people like myself, anyway, move suddenly to Wexford. Suddenly Wexford became, becomes the centre of the action.

Why is that, Liam? That's partly a result of the plan that Katrina mentioned. So the heart of the rising fails, the attempt to take Dublin. That fails completely. But the counties around Dublin and North Leinster, they rise up pretty dramatically in the 24th of May. It pretty much exactly is planned. And places like Kildare, Wicklow, Meath, County Dublin's self, Carlo, they're all up in arms. Some of those rebels succeed in hold down territory.

Some surrender. Some are massacred. But then suddenly two days into the rebellion, rising breaks out in Wexford, which is just to the south. The old traditional view was that Wexford is this spontaneous rebellion. It happens in reaction to state repression, the kind of repression that Ian was talking about. But I think now we realise that the United Irish men were quite well organised, especially in North Wexford, and it's United Irish leaders who are at the heart of the rebellion there.

And the rebellion just seems to take off there. British forces there are taken completely off guard. And it takes on a momentum of its own. So the rebels quickly occupy the entire county. They take Enisgorthian Central Wexford, which is the key strategic point. And then they take Wexford Town, which is the administrative centre. And having done that, they declare the Wexford Republic. They establish rudimentary forms of government with both Catholic and Protestant leaders.

And Wexford has a significant Protestant population, which has all kinds of consequences, which we'd probably come to. But the problem for the Wexford rebel army is that they realise that things have gone badly wrong elsewhere. and they're forced to make a decision between holding the territory they have, in which case they're going to be picked off, and moving out of the country to try and link up with whatever rebels are still in arms elsewhere, especially to the north. So they try to do this, and when they try to break out in early June at Arklo and at New Ross, they're pushed back, they're defeated.

So suddenly the rebellion loses a bit of momentum. They fall back to Enoscarthy, and the Great Stand happens at Vinegar Hill. and the Battle of Vinegar Hill, which happens on the 21st of June 1798, is the key battle of the rebellion. Now, rebellion's going on for a month, and the rebellion actually keeps going for a full further month until mid-July. Ian, Ian McGrime, that seems a very tenacious and almost successful rebellion widespread.

Where did that come from? I think partly there is a surprise factor. United Irish organisation in Wexford was relatively late, and so it hadn't featured on the radar screen of the authoritative, at Dublin Castle. And historians are divided over how far the organisation in Wexford, how substantial it was. But there is another distinctive thing about Wexford that Liam has mentioned already, and that's the large Protestant community in the north of the county.

Ireland as a whole, of course, was shaped by colonisation. Wexford was shaped by colonisation in a very distinctive way that you don't find outside. Ulster. In the north of the county it has large Protestant communities and there is Protestant advantage or Catholic disadvantage all the way down the social ladder. The topography

of towns in Wexford like Innescorthy, which Liam mentioned, resemble northern towns so that the Irish poor live in distinct quarters and so on. In that area too, plantation had been relatively

recent by Irish standards which means the 1620s and many Catholic landowners hadn't lost their estates until Cromwell, so 1650. So there's a combustible mix that explains some of the sectarian tinge that the rebellion takes on in that county.

It collapses in a series of massacres of Protestant prisoners, the best known of which are most infamous, of which was at Scullabogne-Barrn, At that stage, morale has collapsed, and what happens there, which attracts the focus of so many later commentators, is really the product of an experiment in Republican government falling apart rather than any kind of planned operation. It's very separate from what's happening in the north because there are two smaller scale battles that take place in County's Antrim and County Down. but up there the movement, the United Irish movement, has been decapitated

and it's the second or third rank leaders who are bringing out the people and those battles are quickly crushed. Katrina, so we have rebellion there. What are the British doing? Are they systematically suppressing it, or are they spontaneously, as it were, things turn up and they go in firefight?

No, they're sending in troops, both troops that have been raised in Ireland, So these are militia regiments for home defence that have been raised from 1793, as well as yeomanry corps, which are more closely associated with the Protestant community and are seen to be overly closely associated with the Orange Order as well. So they're seen as a more sectarian institution. There's some doubt about the capacities of the militia. They're under suspicion because the rank and file is predominantly Catholic. but they perform actually pretty effectively against the rebels in 1798,

and they're joined by militia regiments and fensible regiments from Britain, as well as regular British troops. But once they've kind of defeated the rebels in the field, again they continue with this counterinsurgency campaign that has the same sort of brutality as what Ian was describing in Ulster in 1797. and when Cornwallis is appointed commander-in-chief of the Irish Armed Forces in 1798, he's shocked by the indiscipline of the military in Ireland and tries to quickly get that under control,

tries to stop some of the depredations that they're perpetrating against innocent civilians at this stage. Can I come back to you, Liam. Is there any sense which the French come back? There is a sense. Can you tell us about it? Yes. Yes. So the United Irish men redouble their efforts to persuade the French. Look, you've tried once. You surely should try again.

The French are very reluctant to do this. They want to see clear evidence that they could support a successful rebellion in Ireland. So when the rebellion does break out in May 1798, it gives United Irish agents in Paris the opportunity to try and explain. Rebellion has now broken out. It's time for you to come and back us properly once again. But of course the French are caught unawares and they're really not able to send the number of troops that are necessary

and anyway their attention is elsewhere now, particularly in Egypt, which Katrina has mentioned already. So the French arrive. They arrive too late. They arrive in the wrong place. They arrive with two few troops. So a thousand troops under the command of Jean-Murberra arrive at Killalabay, which is a north county conuct,

definitely not a United Irish stronghold. on the 22nd of August 1798. Now, they make the best of it. They rally local people who join the cause. They attack Castle Bar, where they defeat government forces in this rout at Castle Bar. They declare an Irish Republic.

They appoint John Moore as president of the provisional government of Connacht. So they set up rudimentary republican structures. But, of course, they're faced with a similar problem to the United Irishmen elsewhere, which is, should they stay in whole territory or should they march out and they march out, they decide to head for Dublin to cause maximum panic

and they must know that they have no chance of success and they're stopped at Balnamoc, which is in County Longford in the centre of Ireland where they're defeated on the 8th of September. The French are taken prisoners of war and many of them are exchanged later as prisoners of war. The Irish who had joined them, many of those are strung up on the nearest tree

and, you know, come back to Katrina's point about High Ireland is pacified. There's a sort of double policy going on. One of leniency in some respects, Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, wants to encourage United Irish rebels to surrender. But where necessary, as he perceives it,

he uses extreme violence and brutality. The kind of terror that Ian was talking about extends into the rebellion to pacify the country. Ian, Henry McGrind, what impact did the rebellion have on the Catholic population? Katrina has mentioned severe repression. Contridden,

during the rebellion and after it indeed, and one manifestation of that was chapel burning. So there are 33 Catholic chapels or churches burned in County Wexford. At the same time, as Katrina also pointed out, the armed forces in Ireland, about three quarters of them consist of Irish recruits, many of whom are Catholic.

So there's some kind of constraint on that Protestant reaction. The most influential Catholic in Ireland, at this point is probably John Thomas Troy, the Archbishop of Dublin, who issues a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, in which he says, look at what's happening in France, look at what's happening in Rome. Pius X's been exiled by this stage. Look at what's happening in the low countries.

There you will see what French rule looks like. It's tyranny, it's despotism. In Ireland, on the other hand, your patience, in the face of persecution has begun to bear fruit because all of this time the British have been making concessions to Irish Catholics,

partly because they want that untapped resource of manpower presented by the Irish Catholic population. And Troy is a very interesting figure because he saw everything in European terms. He had been trained in Rome where he spent 21 years. He'd been in the low countries.

He was consecrated in Brussels. The Brussels nuncio had oversight of the Irish Catholic Church. He travelled in France where there were 400 students and masters in Irish colleges. All of those colleges which had kept the Irish Church alive during the penal era were shut down by the French Republic and by the armies of the French Republic. So Troy is a very key figure because he helped steer the Catholics through the next phase of Irish politics, which is the union that Pitt thinks is the answer to the variety of problems he faces in Ireland

and he wants to keep open the possibility that Catholic emancipation, which at this point now means getting Catholics into Parliament, that that could be part of the union settlement. Katrina, how did it affect the Protestants at first this rebellion? Well, in many ways it seems to confirm, I suppose, what has been a long-standing fear

of Irish Protestants that the Catholic population is waiting to destroy them and waiting to rise up and reclaim their lands and restore Catholicism as the dominant faith in Ireland. And that interpretation of the rebellion is nurtured through accounts and histories that are published shortly after, in particular, Sir Richard Mudd's Graves' memoirs of the different rebellions in Ireland, and that explicitly links what happened in 1798

to earlier Catholic rebellions in the 17th century, so the 1641 rebellion, which is really burned into the Protestant psyche as a period in which Protestants had been ruthlessly massacred in Catholic uprising. And that would have been commemorated throughout the 18th century in Protestant churches. So that sense that this is part of an,

a cycle of violence and persecution on the part of the Catholic population is one interpretation of the rebellion that emerges, that it's a popish plot, and Catholics therefore can't be trusted. It's a little bit more complex, though, if we look to Ulster and the legacy that it has there, where it's much more ambivalent, of course, because it's seen as something that has pitted Protestant against Protestant. So the rebellion there tends to be talked of in much more hush tones. There's a much more complex legacy that it leaves. And for even those who were involved in the United Irishmen, they try to draw a line on it without completely leaving behind their kind of liberal sympathies. But after 1801, you know, those liberal reformist sympathies are going to be focused on reform within the United Kingdom rather than an independent Ireland.

Liam, what connection do you find between the rebellion and the year-so-late of the active union? Yeah, so I think the relationship is that the rebellion is a cause of the active union. It's not the only cause. And actually, it might even be better thought of as a catalyst. The rebellion provides the opportunity to pass an active union, to push an active union through the Irish Parliament in particular. So William Pitt in the 1780s was already thinking that, The solution to the naughty problem of the Anglo-Irish relationship was really to get rid of the Irish Parliament, abolish it, and have Irish MPs go and sit in the Westminster Parliament.

Was it not great opposition to that? There was huge opposition to that. Irish Protestants were implacably opposed to this because they just won what they called legislative independence for the Irish Parliament in 1782, and they had no intention whatsoever of giving it up. So they firmly resist any suggestion of this in the mid-1780s. What the 1798 rebellion proves is that the Kingdom of Ireland could not defend itself properly and that Protestant security was better guaranteed within a larger political entity, that Protestants were better off as a majority within a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland rather than a minority within the Kingdom of Ireland. Now, having said that, in late 1798, months after the rebellion into early 179,

the majority of MPs in the Irish Parliament are still opposed to an active union. So William Pitt, Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, and crucially, the Chief Secretary in Dublin Castle, Robert Stuart, Vicon Castle, Raye, a later British Foreign Minister. They set about persuading MPs by various means to vote in favour of a union in 1800 and it comes into force on 1 January. 1801 when the popular aviation of Ireland wakes up to find itself in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ian McBride, what we speak out for commemoration about this? Well, each generation picks out aspects of great events like the 98 rebellion that will suit its own ideological needs, I think, and that express their own basic assumptions and values. In the 19th century, Ireland was democratising.

It was experiencing religious renewal, both among Protestants, in the form of evangelicalism, and on the Catholic side with the devotional revolution and the rise of the institutional power of the Catholic Church. And memories of the United Irishmen tended to reflect those realities. So there's a cult of the United Irishmen emerging by the 1840s. there's a cult of Wolf Tone, above all, which is launched by his memoirs. They appear in 1828 and they're republished again. So by 1898, the strange thing is that the whole spectrum of nationalist opinion in Ireland, which is mostly wedded to constitutional, peaceful forms of affecting political change,

is commemorating the rebellion as a positive act. It's also seen slightly bizarrely as an act that expressed the bond between the Irish Catholic and his priest. And this is precisely what Wolf Tohn imagined would be broken when he started off the whole United Irish journey. Tone's hope was probably overly optimistic. There's so much more structural disadvantage operating in Irish society, and it's maintained in a modified form under the active union because the Protestant descendancy,

the old gang that Tone had targeted, managed to survive the active union with a few wounds, but largely intact. Katana, we're towards the end now. Which of the longer-term legacies would you highlight? Clearly, a key legacy is the foundation of the tradition of Republican nationalism. So for later generations of Republican nationalists, the United Irishmen are heroised

and are seen as very much the originators of a particular physical force version of Irish nationalism. But of course you can also trace other institutions in Irish society like the Orange Order is founded in 1795. So you can trace that back to the 1790s. But other movements in Ireland, other political movements, Irish feminists might note that one of the first Irish feminists, Mary Ann McCracken, like other women in this revolutionary moment, is thinking about the rights of women as well as the rights of men. The Irish Labour movement identifies perhaps in a bit of a stretch some kind of some of their ideals as having been expressed by the United Irishman. But clearly it's an influence that runs through the 20th century. And if we think about right up to the present, two of the major political parties in Ireland, Sinn Féin and Féinofoeil, make an annual pilgrimage to Wolfton's grave in Bowdoin's town, County Culdare. And I think that kind of frathing of 1798 with political symbolism was really evident in 1998 with the bicentenary of the rebellion.

and of course that coincided with the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland and with the Good Friday Agreement. And the official commemoration that year really emphasised the United Irishman's non-sectarian vision, its pluralistic politics. Controversially at times, some felt that they glossed over the more divisive sectarian elements of the rebellion. But there were also a sense in which, I suppose, it was expressing the Irish Republic's sense of itself in the 1990s as a modern, international, outward-looking nation.

So stressing those connections with the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Thank you very much, Katrina Kennedy, Liam Chambers and Ian McBride, and our studio engineer Emma Hath. Next week, Rosebud, it's Orson-Wills, Citizen Kane. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra. time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What would you like if said you didn't say? Start with you, Katrina. Well, I was, listeners might be interested in what happened to Wolf-Tome because I don't think we ever gave the ending of his story. And of course, he does make another attempt

to join a French expedition to Ireland in October 1798, so shortly after the one that landed in Mayo. And I think it's quite interesting in some ways. So he arrives there. He's finally achieved his dream of being a soldier. So he's a brigadier general in the French Republican army, wearing the uniform, the blue uniform of the French Republic. But when they engaged in a naval battle with the British Navy and are defeated. So Wolftonne at that point is captured.

But I think it speaks in some ways to the intimacy of the Protestant ascendancy that the person who recognises him is a General Hill is a fellow classmate of tones from Trinity College Dublin and there's lots of little episodes like that actually through the rebellion where people

who would have been in the same social circles find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide. So Wolfton is arrested. He is court-martialed and found guilty of treason. And he asks if he can be shot as a soldier rather than hung.

They refuse that request. And then he slits his own throat and dies in quite considerable agony because of that. But says, I'm a bad anatomist after all. So, I mean, he retained a sense of humour. There is a sort of theory, isn't there, that a tone deliberately botched his suicide because he was hoping for some kind of prisoner exchange

and that, you know, he might survive, he might escape hanging but survive for long enough to be swapped. But I don't really know how much evidence there is for that. Yeah, I think one thing we didn't quite emphasize, perhaps, is just the sheer scale of violence during 1798. So we didn't actually attempt to come up with a figure for the number of dead. And at the lower end, the lowest estimation is usually 10,000. which seems very low to me.

A recent estimate suggests 25,000 rebel dead, although a tiny number of armed forces of the government dead, maybe 600 or something a little larger than that. But let's say it's 25,000 to 30,000 dead. More people die during the rebellion of 1798 than die in the 1916 rising, the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, and the Northern Irish troubles combined. So, I mean, that gives you a sense of just the scale and the impact,

the violence must have had at a very, very individual and local community level. So for everybody who dies, there were tens of thousands of others, obviously had been injured as well. So it must have had a traumatic impact. Well, a few things that we didn't talk about at all or very much. First of all, the Orange Order, we mentioned. it's one of the legacies, certainly, of the 1790s, founded 1795. I think it's the oldest political institution in Ireland.

You know, it's still going. And it emerges from sectarian clashes in County Armagh, where it takes on a sort of territorial quality. You know, it parades and asserts its dominance in County Armagh. In the 19th century, as Belfast industrialises, the Orange Order gets sucked into the city along with the wider rural population and the same kind of territorial instinct

is demonstrated in the back streets of working class industrial Belfast. So there's a part of the legacy. We didn't touch on the Irish language. It's interesting that, you know, Wexford, which is on the eastern side of Ireland and therefore we think of as more English-speaking, was still in transition from the Irish language to the English.

And that affects the sources that we write our history on. Because, of course, there aren't Irish language sources, or rather they're oral sources that have been written down later. And so we underestimate, I think, the extent to which traditional Irish notions survived alongside the newer French ideas that were pushed by the United Irishmen. Liam? Yeah, I think you can see a little of that as well in the defenders. Now, Ian did mention the defenders or alluded to the defenders earlier on, but we haven't said much about them. And they emerge out of sectarian clashes in County Armagh in the 1780s between the defenders, Catholic defenders and Protestant people, dayboys, who are the origin point for the Orange Order in 1795. But what's fascinating about the defenders is they spread all over the north of the island, take in thousands of members. members, they're organised into lodges, so they're quite sophisticated in that sense. They do seem to adopt some Masonic imagery. They adopt older forms of agrarian protest and organisation. But when the French Revolution comes along in 1789, they quickly adopt the language of the French Revolution to some extent as well, the language of the Rights of Man. And they mailed all these things together into this unique sort of radical amalgam in the early 1790s. And they go on to

the backbone of the United Irish men as they become a mass-based revolutionary organisation. So they're a fascinating group. And I think historians used to think that really here are a bunch of illiterate peasants who really didn't have a sophisticated political outlook at all, but the work

of people like Marian Elliott showed that actually these people are grappling with sophisticated political ideals and actually they're interacting with the French earlier than the United Irish men are, so they're really important and influential, I think. Was anything along the line, did

the English regret not being brutally enough? I think they probably regret at the fact that the rebellion got completely out of hand and sucked lots of military power into Ireland for much longer than from their perspective should have been the case. But I think the problem is they're fighting a continental war

that's demanding massive resources. Therefore, they simply can't deploy more troops in Ireland than they already do. So that's the explanation for creating a militia that Katrina mentioned in 1793, which is largely Catholic in its rank and file, and there's much resistance to its rise. It's raising in 1793, 1794. There are riots all over Ireland against them,

the raising of the militia, because it's done by ballot in local communities frequently. And then the creation of the yeomanry, which is a largely Protestant force as well. So the British government in Ireland are trying to patch together enough military power to maintain the status quo. I don't think they could have deployed much more than they did. One thing I'm neglected and I shouldn't have done is the influence of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Yes, well, Ian, I mean, mentioned that already with Archbishop Troy and, you know, obviously for the Roman Catholic hierarchy, they have opposed what they call the French disease, this revolutionary ideology since its inception because of the French

Republic's brutal assault on the Catholic Church their campaign of de-Christianisation in France, the shutting down of the religious orders. So, I mean, they are counselling their flocks not to have anything to do with the United Irishmen in the lead-up to the rebellion. They're excommunicating those

who have sworn, taken the United Irish oath. So it's interesting. I mean, even they're doing that through this period, even though the rebels in Wexford are clearly, in many ways, very devout. and are seeing themselves partly as fighting for the Catholic faith, they also don't seem to mind the fact that they have been excommunicated, or that they are being threatened with excommunications.

So, yeah, the Catholic hierarchy certainly is not supportive of the United Irishmen or the rebels. And they, I mean, there is a tradition of Catholics fighting for Catholicism and still ignoring what their priests tell them. You know, one appalling fact really is that the Catholic hierarchy says nothing about the severe repression that's used in Ireland in 1798. It just keeps silent about it. And one of the other legacies of that decade is Maynooth College, a training seminary for Irish Catholic priests outside Dublin. And it's established to compensate for the fact that the Irish colleges on the United States.

continent have been shut down. And there's a sense in which Troy and the Catholic bishops value that more than emancipation, I think, particularly because they make sure that they will control the Catholic Church in Ireland, that they avoid some kind of compromise with the British state that would involve a form of supervision. So they emerge in some ways quite strong from the penal era and from the 18th century because they're outside the interference of. any state, which is quite unusual

for a European Catholic Church. There is the fact that a number, a small number of Catholic priests participate in the rebellion, in fact, lead the rebellion. Going back to Alder Till in Wexford, where the rebellion breaks out in Wexford, you know, Father John Murphy from Bull

of Vogue is one of the key figures at the inception of the rebellion there. Now, there are maybe only 70 priests who were implicated in the rebellion out of maybe 1,500 Catholic clergy. So the number involved in the rebellion is very, very small. But in the 19th century, the idea of the priest leading the rebellion becomes a motif in the way history is written. So a kind of a Catholic version of 1798

emerges with the priest at its heart. But back in 1798, this did create a problem for the bishops because speaking up for them might have meant being tired with the same brush, and they were very concerned that they not be implicated in any way in even tacit support for the rebellion. And I think Ian puts his finger on it. This greater European struggle is the key. The Irish bishops and the British government have a common enemy in the French Revolution and that underlies what's

happening in Ireland as well, I think. In contrast, the Presbyterian ministers are up to their necks in the rebellion. Three of them are executed, 20 of them are exiled to the United States, 18 of them are in prison. One of them is a state prisoner

kept in the Hebrides in Scotland. I mean, and there's a sign of what a strange kind of Irish Republican rebellion this was when Presbyterian clergyman played such a large part in leading it. The one other thing I might mention is that this stuff doesn't disappear and we probably didn't mention that

so that there is another United Irish Rebellion in 1803 led by Robert Emmett who's an 18 year old in 1798, he's only 23 years old in 1803. Now it's essentially a skirmish in Dublin but it could have turned out very differently. So the United

Irishmen attempt to regroup and they attempt to go again, particularly because the war keeps going. There is a gap in the war but then the war begins again. So the legacy of the United Irish men in the short term actually is more impactful than we sometimes remember. I think we

have some advice from the producer. Does anybody like tea or coffee? Oh, that's it. That's it. Tea, coffee. I'm okay actually, thank you. I will have a cup of tea if there's one. A cup of tea, Melbourne. Tea, please. Two teas. Tea please.

Great. Thank you. Oh, go on then, I'll have a tea. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Hello, I'm Anita Arndndon, and I'm hosting this year's BBC Reith Lectures, which are on the subject of freedom. The lectures are inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous Four Freedom Speech, and this year we have not one, but four speakers. We look forward to a world founded upon four essential.

freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear. A quartet of speakers examine what freedom means today, beginning with the best-selling author Chim Amanda Ngozi Adichie. Freedom of speech is, I think, essential to being human. You can hear all the lectures on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Just search for The Reith Lectures. Thank you.