Irish rebellion of 1798
| Irish Rebellion of 1798 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Atlantic Revolutions and the French Revolutionary Wars | |||||||
Battle of Vinegar Hill by William Sadler Kelvin II (1880) "Charge of the 5th Dragoon Guards on the insurgents – a recreant yeoman having deserted to them in uniform is being cut down" | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
|
United Irishmen Defenders France | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
William Aylmer Myles Byrne Thomas Cloney Bagenal Harvey Henry Joy McCracken Henry Munro Fr. John Murphy Fr. Michael Murphy Fr. Philip Roche Jean Humbert Jean Bompart |
Charles Cornwallis Ralph Abercromby Gerard Lake George Nugent John Warren | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
|
50,000 United Irishmen 4,100 French regulars 10 French Navy ships[1] |
40,000 militia 30,000 British regulars ~25,000 yeomanry ~1,000 Hessians | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
|
10,000[2]–50,000[3] estimated combatant and civilian deaths 3,500 French captured 7 French ships captured |
500–2,000 military deaths[4] c. 1,000 loyalist civilian deaths[5] | ||||||
During the Irish rebellion of 1798 (or United Irishmen Rebellion), Irish people rebelled against the rule of the Kingdom of Ireland. The rebellion lasted four months, from 24 May to 24 September 1798, but was eventually defeated.
The Irish suffered much greater losses than the British. On the Irish side, between 10,000 - 50,000 Irish people died. On the English side, between 500 and 2,000 did.
Participants
The United Irishmen
A secret society called the United Irishmen (led by Wolfe Tone) were the main driving force in the rebellion. They were influenced by revolutions taking place in America and France around the time.
Republican France
The rebellion was aided by Republican France, which was anti-Catholic at the time. However, most Irish people were Catholics. Even though the British government was also anti-Catholic, most Irish Catholics thought the Crown was the lesser of two evils. For these reasons, the rebellion never gained much traction.
References
- ↑ The 1798 Irish Rebellion (BBC).
- ↑ 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
- ↑ Thomas Pakenham, p. 392 The Year of Liberty (1969) ISBN 0-586-03709-8
- ↑ Bartlett, p. 100
- ↑ Richard Musgrave (1801). Memoirs of the different rebellions in Ireland (see Appendices)