Irish Rebellion

Irish Rebellion, (1798), an uprising that owed its origins to the Society of United Irishmen, which was inspired by the American and French revolutions and established in 1791, first in Belfast and then in Dublin. The membership of both societies was middle-class, but Presbyterians predominated in the Belfast society while the Dublin society was made up of Catholics and Protestants. The societies’ main objectives were parliamentary reform (based on universal male suffrage and complete Catholic emancipation) and the elimination of British rule in Ireland.

During 1795 an alliance between predominantly Presbyterian radicals and discontented sections of the working class radicalized the Society of United Irishmen along secret, nonsectarian, and military lines. Agrarian discontent was rife, and many of the Irish peasantry who had formed secret societies of their own joined the new society. A large French expedition sailed for Ireland in 1796 under the command of Gen. Lazare Hoche, together with the radical Irishman Theobold Wolfe Tone, who had gone to France at the beginning of the year to obtain help for the United Irishmen. Storms scattered the fleet, and, though some ships reached Bantry Bay, no troops were landed.

The British government, threatened by internal conspiracy and foreign invasion, displayed a coercive determination, passing an Insurrection Act in 1796 and suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. During 1797 Gen. Gerard (afterward 1st Viscount) Lake confiscated private arms in the north and suppressed the Northern Star, a lively radical newspaper published in Belfast. In the early months of 1798 the tension greatly increased: the United Irishmen were preparing for rebellion, and the government was desperately trying to break their organization. The government managed to arrest a number of the radical leaders in the spring, but in May the rising broke out. Only in eastern Ulster and Wexford was the rising widespread. The rebels in the north were defeated at Antrim and Ballinahinch. In Wexford, where the rebellion assumed a nakedly sectarian form among the Catholic rank and file, many Irish Protestants were killed and others forced to flee, sowing an enduring legacy of sectarian animosity that was compounded by the brutality with which the British put down the rebellion. The Wexford rebels defeated the government troops in some engagements but failed to take New Ross and Arklow. By the middle of June, large forces of government troops under General Lake were concentrated in Wexford, and the rebels were defeated at Vinegar Hill (June 21, 1798). The rebellion was almost over when a small French force landed near Killala; it won a victory at Castlebar but was soon surrounded and captured. A large number of the Irish rebels were transported to the penal colonies of Australia.

The chief effect of the rebellion was Prime Minister William Pitt’s Act of Union, which abolished the Irish Parliament, Ireland being henceforth represented in the British Parliament at Westminster.