Poet, Madman, Scoundrel Read online

  In December 1796, a French fleet left Brest for Ireland with 14,450 French soldiers and Tone on board. The fleet was scattered by a storm and only a few ships reached Bantry Bay. However, since the soldiers on these ships were unable to disembark, they sailed back to Brest. The mission was a complete failure. When Hoche died unexpectedly, hope of another armada seemed to die with him.

  Tone met General Napoleon Bonaparte in December 1797. In terms of his military plans, Napoleon was actually interested in the Mediterranean, but he strung Tone along as a diversion. However, on 17 June 1798 rebellion broke out in Ireland, catching both Tone and the French unawares. Tone immediately sailed to the fight on board the Hoche. But his ship was intercepted at sea by a British squadron. Following a furious six-hour battle, the Hoche surrendered. When Tone was taken ashore at the obscure town of Buncranna, Co. Donegal, whom should he meet but an old classmate from Trinners. This classmate had unfortunately remained loyal to the Crown and immediately recognised him. We have all had the experience of running into old classmates at the most inopportune times. Tone was promptly arrested and sent to Dublin to be tried as a traitor.

  Technically, because Tone was a French army officer with his own line in fancy French uniforms he should not have been tried for treason. For his trial he wore a blue uniform embroidered with gold and a tricolored cockade hat. His court martial took over an hour to convict him. He offered no defence except to read a declaration to the court. He requested that he be shot rather than hanged. His request was refused. However, Cornwallis, the lord lieutenant,7 being both humane and urbane, considerately waived, in Tone’s case, the subsequent beheading and posting of the head on a prominent spike which was the fate of many hanged for treason at the time.

  Several of Tone’s friends from Trinners tried to get him off by delaying the case, hoping that the passage of time would save him. An injunction was in fact granted to prevent his execution, but by then Tone had slashed his throat and lay dying in gaol. It is unclear whether or not he meant to actually kill himself, or to simply cause a delay, because in those days you weren’t supposed to be hanged if you had a cut throat. As he neared his death, he remarked cryptically, “I am sorry I have been so bad an anatomist.” This could mean that he was either sorry he cut too deep or not deep enough. Understandably, he was suffering from that historic malaise, melancholia. His final words were, “What should I wish to live for?” He had missed his own rebellion.

  His family returned to America, a country they soon learned to enjoy a lot.

  Dis-United Irishmen

  Once the word “united” was used in the title of the revolutionary organisation, it motivated the perverse amongst their ranks to act according to the opposite principle. Think how well they might have done by calling themselves The Disparate Irishmen. James Napper Tandy (1737–1803) brought about one of the inevitable official splits amongst the United Irishmen by seeking French support for his own invasion of Ireland. He was also in Paris when Tone was there. The French Directory8 was happy to confirm the split by recognising two camps. They made Napper Tandy a générale de brigade, despite his lack of any military experience.

  Napper Tandy, who also missed the start of the rebellion in Ireland, sailed to Rutland Island in Donegal on the Anacréon in 1798. He disembarked on one of the remotest parts of the country to deliver a “liberty or death” speech to a few of the local sheep that had gathered around him to see what was happening. He had to get back on board due to a chronic lack of local rebels.

  He sailed from Donegal to Norway and was eventually handed over to the English, who, despite sentencing him to be hanged, in turn handed him back to the French. In 1803 he died in the arms of his mistress, Marie Barriére, leaving her his estate and thereby facilitating a lengthy litigation between her and his son. At last an Irish rebel had succeeded in changing the lives of others for the better: two attorneys.

  Made in France

  Another leading light in the 1798 Rebellion was Lord Edward FitzGerald (1763–1798). FitzGerald had also moved to Paris for the French Revolution, where he shared lodgings with Thomas Paine9 in 1792. He embraced the revolution by changing his name to “le citoyen Edouard FitzGerald” because being called “Lord” just wasn’t the thing. He cut his hair short in the fashion of the French revolutionaries, and married Pamela Sims, who allegedly was the daughter of the Comtesse de Genlis and the French King’s revolutionary cousin, Philippe Égalité, duc d’Orléans.10

  When FitzGerald returned to Ireland after his stay in Paris as a revolutionary skinhead, his radical reputation was such that he featured on jugs in Belfast as “the man of the people”. He rejected the main form of transport, horse riding, as being too aristocratic. He also refused to wear black mourning clothes when the French revolutionaries chopped his father-in-law’s cousin’s head off in January 1793. He learned to play the uilleann pipes, took up step dancing and charmed his way through the pubs of Kildare. The locals adored him. FitzGerald came to be regarded as the most charismatic of the rebels because he was the most charismatic man in Ireland, if not the world, at that time.

  FitzGerald was the fifth son of the Duke of Leinster. His mother was the daughter of the Duke of Richmond. FitzGerald was his mother’s pet. He was educated by his tutor Ogilvie – who later married his mother – in the spirit of the teachings of the radical French philosopher Rousseau.11 During his life, FitzGerald, influenced by his Rousseauian education, transgressed barriers of class, nationality and race, amongst others.

  As a younger son, FitzGerald had to pursue a career in the army. He was commissioned into the Green Howards regiment as a lieutenant. Despite his ideals, he sailed from Cork to South Carolina to fight against the American revolutionaries, arriving in Charleston in June 1781. One of his American prisoners wrote of the experience of being captured by FitzGerald: “[I] never knew so loveable a person, and every man in the army, from the general to the drummer, would cheer at his expression … an idol to all who served him.”

  FitzGerald was badly wounded in September 1781 and left for dead. But he was rescued by Tony Small, a South Carolina slave, and nursed back to health by him. FitzGerald formed a close relationship with Small. They travelled everywhere together and were inseparable until FitzGerald’s death. In 1786 FitzGerald finally resolved to send Small to London to become a hairdresser (let’s not make too many assumptions here), but when the time came for Small to actually board the ship, FitzGerald couldn’t let him go.

  FitzGerald travelled widely in North America and Canada with Small. A hundred and seventy years before the social revolution of the 1960s, he embraced the ideal of “the brotherhood of man”, but without the drugs. He befriended the Native American Indians. He came to believe that the human race was “all one brother” or, as the Indians told him, “all one Indian”. He travelled south from Canada through the American wilderness and down the Mississippi River as far as New Orleans, remarking that Ireland would be too small for him when he got home. Joseph Brant, the Irish-Indian Mohawk leader, inducted FitzGerald into the Seneca nation, one of the six tribes that formed the Iroquois League,12 as a chieftain with the name “Eghnidal”.

  Back at home in Ireland his family was trying to find him a suitable bride, but two of their marriage proposals were thwarted, probably because FitzGerald was a younger son with limited prospects rather than the product of an eccentric education. Disenchanted with European culture, he wrote to his mother: “I really would join the savages …. Savages have all the happiness of life. There would be no … fortune for children; no separations in families; no devilish politics; no fashions, customs, duties or appearances ….” In this we can detect a prototype John Lennon. In a different age, FitzGerald could have become a Beatle.

  He also travelled in the West Indies, England, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain and France. Back in Ireland in 1784, he entered Parliament. But he was quickly bored with talking politics. He rejoined the British Army in Canad
a in 1788 as a major. He was offered the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1790, but to accept he would have had to commit himself to William Pitt, the British prime minister. As he couldn’t swear loyalty to what he considered to be an archaic regime, his army promotions stalled.

  Counter-Revolution

  It is impossible to have a revolution without those you are attempting to overthrow putting up some form of resistance, even for the sake of appearances. What is the point if compliant tyrants just politely agree that they should step down? Such regimes wouldn’t be worth overthrowing. Irish counter-revolutionaries usually have bad reputations just because they were better at their jobs than the revolutionaries themselves. That was hardly their fault.

  Lord Edward FitzGerald fell into the hands of the counter-revolutionary Major Henry Sirr (1764–1841), who was the chief of police. Sirr enjoyed a reputation for being able to appear in two places at the one time. He was an effective and efficient counter-revolutionary and the nemesis of the United Irishmen. He ran a stable of informers and bespoke perjurers, who were also known as witnesses. He learned to speak Irish while stationed in Munster, which was to prove useful in his rebel-busting career in Dublin.

  In 1796 FitzGerald became one of the leading United Irishmen, and the society’s most important military strategist. With the poor judgement or typical bad luck that beset the members of the society, he invited Thomas Reynolds to join the United Irishmen, and quickly promoted him to colonel. When Reynolds promptly betrayed the society, FitzGerald had to go into hiding. But he didn’t flee to America, declining to leave his followers.

  Francis Mangan was an attorney who believed that the law wasn’t bad enough for him on its own: he had to supplement it. For a reward of £1,000, he betrayed FitzGerald’s hiding place. At 7.00 p.m. on 19 May 1798, Sirr, accompanied by an arrest party, burst into an upstairs room at 151 Thomas St, Dublin, where FitzGerald was hiding. FitzGerald killed one of the guards with a dagger before taking a bullet in the shoulder from Sirr’s gun at point-blank range. Wadding, the material wrapped around the musket ball to keep it in place in the gun barrel, embedded itself in the wound, causing septicemia and tetanus. FitzGerald died in extraordinary pain on 4 June in Dublin’s Newgate Prison. In this way, one of the most genuinely fascinating men in the world at that time passed out of life and into Irish history.

  A Poet in a Bomb Factory

  With the death of the charismatic FitzGerald, the United Irishmen hadn’t yet run out of charming revolutionaries for Sirr to chase: they still had Robert Emmet (1778–1803). At school, Emmet studied oratory, fencing, astronomy and music. Surprisingly, this syllabus proved to be a poor preparation for revolution. He entered Trinners where he became a swot, coming top of his class. Worryingly, in 1795 he entered the King’s Inns with the intention of becoming an attorney. But he really wanted to be the Irish George Washington.

  He joined the United Irishmen in 1796, and wrote a poem about Irish independence that was published in the United Irishmen’s newspaper, The Press. His eventual rebellion was so inept that it could qualify as the first-ever student demonstration. It had everything you might expect of a revolution organised by a student of literature, including poetry. He should have been given a million lines – “I must not rebel” – rather than being hanged. The punishment showed a paltry appreciation of student life on the part of the authorities at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

  Emmet became a leading speaker in both debating societies13 at Trinners. As now, students were encouraged not to discuss relevant topics or current affairs at debates. But Emmet had a genius for getting round the rules and became an annoyance to the college authorities. They were so upset with him that they persuaded a former student to return to challenge Emmet to a debate. Debates were judged according to what extent the speaker could keep his head and project a calm demeanour. Emmet lost his head and thus the argument. In short, the former student wiped the floor with Emmet.

  Emmet was then expelled in 1798 for being a member of the proscribed Society of United Irishmen. After the failure of the rebellion that year, he was given the job of writing a report on what had gone wrong. His own later catastrophic rebellion makes this one of the most ironic assignments in the history of employment. In 1800 he was made secretary of a United Irishmen’s delegation to France.

  In Paris, unlike his illustrious predecessors, he became disillusioned with French politics, preferring to hang out with Irish and English visitors. At this time yet another split happened amongst the United Irishmen over the question of the sincerity of the French promise of aid to Ireland.

  Emmet returned to Dublin in 1802. His father died leaving him £2,000,14 which he used to finance his rebellion. He made a practical start. He rented depots around the city for the manufacture of weapons, establishing a bomb factory, a rocket factory and a factory on Thomas St for the production of a special pike15 of his own invention. He wasn’t content to manufacture just any old pikes. He designed a hinged model that could be concealed under a coat. This folded pike could be taken out from under a rebel’s coat at an opportune moment, and instantly opened out to full length for stabbing and lancing purposes – a flick-pike, if you like. While experimenting with weapon design and opening munitions factories seemed a promising start, the more prosaic aspects of revolution were soon neglected because Emmet fell in love and became embroiled in the important task of writing love letters and poems.

  Imagine falling in love while organising a revolution. Only a true poet could achieve this. While visiting a friend from Trinners, Richard Curran, Emmet fell madly in love with his sister Sarah Curran (1782–1808). This was a particularly stupid infatuation, even by Emmet’s standards, because Sarah’s father, who came to despise Emmet because of his relationship with his daughter, was the most effective defender of political rebels in court. Emmet should have known that he was soon going to need the best attorney available.

  Sarah had an unhappy life. When she was ten years old her sister Gertrude fell out the window of their home and died. When Sarah was thirteen, her father threw her mother out – through the door – when she became pregnant with someone else’s child. Sarah was a talented singer, harpist and pianist. Anticipating her father’s hostility, she kept the affair with Emmet hidden, and they only met in secret to sing, recite poetry and play music together.

  Emmet did realise that he needed experienced revolutionaries to support him. Amongst others, he turned to Michael Dwyer (1772–1825). Dwyer was a guerilla leader of considerable talent and experience. He was the antithesis of Emmet in that he was an exceptionally practical rebel without opportunity or inclination to write poetry. He had been fighting five years in the field by the time he met Emmet. He was not impressed but agreed that if Emmet could capture Dublin Castle he would support him. He said of Emmet that if he “had brains to his education, he’d be a fine man”. As it turned out, Dwyer fought on until 1806, three years after Emmet’s rebellion, when he finally surrendered on the agreement that he could go into exile in Australia with his family, where he became a farmer. In 1807 he was arrested on suspicion of sedition and, though acquitted by a jury, he was nevertheless sent to the penal settlement on Norfolk Island at the insistence of Governor William Bligh, one-time Captain Bligh of HMS Bounty.16 This injustice contributed to the second mutiny against Bligh by the New South Wales Corps and Dwyer’s return to his farm in 1809.

  The date was set for Emmet’s rebellion – 23 July 1803. In historical terms, on that day Emmet may have pulled off the most inept rebellion in the history of revolution. The bomb factory on Patrick St blew up by accident on 11 July but, surprisingly, the authorities didn’t think too much of it. They either weren’t prepared for a rebellion led by a poet or Dublin was filled with exploding bomb factories at that time. However, the explosion unnerved Emmet’s co-conspirators. It added to both their stress and whatever insecurities about their leader they were already trying to suppress. To soothe their fears, he
put on his specially made fancy green uniform and regaled his men with tales of his planned achievements. Then he wrote more love letters.

  On the day of the rebellion Emmet planned to deploy his most effective weapon: his rockets. These were guaranteed to shock and awe the authorities into immediate submission. Frustratingly, no one remembered to bring along the fuses for them or, in fact, to even make them, which was a contributing factor to the rocket factory escaping the fate of the bomb factory. The rebels also forgot to collect all the guns they went to such pains to produce and, of course, bombs were in short supply following the explosion in the factory. A prominent aide, who had been sent to purchase supplies, wisely ran off with the funds. Hard men with revolutionary experience, who’d arrived from Kildare, took one look at the flick-pikes, the general student-like disorganisation, the still-smoldering munitions manufacturers, and Emmet in his special green uniform and went home again. Emmet had been expecting 2,000 rebels to turn out on Thomas St, but on the day just 80 turned up, almost all of whom were plastered having gone to the pub to fuel their courage and deal with their stress.

  The rebellion was due to officially get underway at 11.00 a.m. However, the start time had to be brought forward to 9.00 a.m. because of a false alarm, so some of the rebels were late, which actually wasn’t their fault. At 9.00 a.m., Emmet, in his distinctive green uniform, read the proclamation of the provisional government to his eighty drunken men, who weren’t really listening because they were too busy playing with their new flick-pikes. His proclamation commendably called for the lenient treatment of prisoners and the maintenance of order at all times, because this was to be a polite rebellion. His men were too drunk to listen. In fact, they booed him. He had drawn up sophisticated plans on paper, which included blocking streets, rocket attacks, ambushes involving lobbing bombs from different directions, seizing strategic locations, firing actual guns and flick-piking a variety of specific authority figures. All these plans were abandoned, as he was, when most of his men ran down the street in a drunken riot. He attempted a charge on Dublin Castle but this failed miserably when most of his few remaining men wandered back to the pub.