1798, the Year of the French

Theobald Wolfe Tone in Paris 1796-1798

Tone’s journals, displayed in these exhibition cases, are vivid and detailed. ‘In sight of Paris at last! Huzza! Huzza!’ he wrote in his diary on 12 February 1796. He had arrived at Le Havre ten days earlier under the alias of an American merchant, James Smith. Tone jokingly referred to himself as a ‘minister plenipotentiary planning a revolution', which could not succeed then without France’s support.

He conducted his clandestine mission with pluck, lobbying political and military decision makers and navigating the corridors of French power. Tone had a functional ability in French and arrived with letters of introduction and louis d’or valued at £100 pounds silver. Just six months later, on 22 July, he was commissioned as chef de brigade in the French infantry, as the Directory had made official plans to launch an expedition to Ireland, under General Lazare Hoche in June. They also manufactured green flags with an uncrowned harp, which he had described. He left Paris for the last time in July 1798, with his family settled there.

Despite Hoche’s failure to land at Bantry Bay in December 1796, Tone's first months in Paris negotiating daily life in the republic’s capital were often lonely but proved inspirational to later generations. His good humour, as expressed in his widely-read diaries, even helped relieve Joseph Mary Plunkett’s anxiety, as he crossed the Swiss border into Germany in 1915 to meet Roger Casement in Berlin, on their own perilous mission in the lead up to the 1916 Rising.

A Portrait of Theobald Wolfe Tone
The United Irishmen their lives and times... with numerous original portraits... Second series / Madden, R. R.- London: J. Madden, 1842.- vol. i.
Bibliothèque patrimoniale, Centre Culturel Irlandais.
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The Campaign through French Eyes

Dispatches from Humbert to France gave buoyant details of his total rout of the enemy at Castlebar, praised the bravery and talents of several French officers, and expressed the conviction that this victory would increase the numbers of local men rallying to him. The French had been assured by exiles in Paris that the United Irishmen were actively mobilised, but Humbert found they were not organised in Mayo.

Humbert requested reinforcements from France and planned to head to Roscommon, where he heard ‘the insurrection has warm partisans. After crossing the Shannon, he planned to join forces with insurgents in the north, to march on Dublin, and lead a ‘decisive battle.’ On 23 September, as a prisoner of war on parole, he wrote from England that he had succumbed to a superior force commanded by Lord Cornwallis.

Three of Humbert’s officers wrote accounts of the Irish expedition. As participants and eyewitnesses ‘in the theatre of events’, Adjutant General Jean Sarrazin, Adjutant Commander Louis-Octave Fontaine and Captain Jean-Louis Jobit provide many invaluable insights on military matters, and local conditions. They were shocked by the abject misery of the Catholic Mayo peasantry, the likes of which they had never seen.

Back in Paris, on 26 November, Sarrazin apparently presented the flag of the Scottish Fraser’s Fencibles as a trophy to the Directory, seized at Castlebar. It has never been located but may have been destroyed in the great fire of flags in the courtyard of Invalides in March 1814, as the enemy approached the environs of Paris.

Campaign through Irish Eyes

It was predicted that a successful French invasion would see churches defiled and looted and clergymen slaughtered. However, writing to his wife on 28 September, 1798, with details of the campaign in Co. Mayo, John Dawson 1st Earl of Portarlington and Colonel of Queen’s County Militia stated ‘the situation of the country and towns I have passed through is most deplorable—the corn left in the ground, and the houses of loyal men plundered and wrecked, and what the rebels have spared the army has destroyed.[...] we have the utmost difficulty in curbing their licentiousness.’

Dawson went on to note that in Killala ‘the rebels made no effectual resistance, and we easily got possession of the town, but under such circumstances as would have shocked you to see, and it was difficult to prevent the soldiers from putting everyone to death, the innocent as well as the guilty.’ He painted a picture of a brutal British army terrorising and destroying the county.

One of the most important Irish eyewitness accounts of the French landing in Killala is Bishop Stock’s account, published first in 1800. Stock was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Killala. On 22 August, when the French arrived in Killala, Stock, who had fluent French, met with General Humbert, and chose to become a prisoner rather than accept Humbert’s offer to participate on the rebel side. Stock’s narrative corroborates Dawson’s. His account shows the French were more disciplined than the Crown forces who he stated, ‘were incomparably superior to the Irish traitors in dexterity at stealing.’

Volume I of the first printed edition of Memoirs of Miles Byrne, chef de bataillon in the service of France..., edited by his widow (Fanny Byrne) / Byrne, Miles - Paris - New-York: Bossange, 1863. - 3 vol.

Open to an engraving of Byrne.

Bibliothèque patrimoniale, Centre Culturel Irlandais.

Miles Byrne (1780–1862) was a United Irishman and later a French army officer, from Ballylusk, Monaseed, Co. Wexford. He participated in the 1798 Rebellion in counties Wexford, Wicklow, and Kilkenny. He later teamed up with Robert Emmet and gathered forces for the rebellion of 1803. He fled to France where he enlisted in the Irish Brigade.

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The Legacy in Irish Tradition

The legacy of the 1798 rebellion exerted a profound influence in Irish history, culture, and politics. Though the Act of Union came into force on 1 January 1801, a further rebellion led by Robert Emmet in 1803 cemented a romantic legacy of Irish revolution.

The connection with France and that fraternal bond formed part of the Irish republican ideal. The first decades of the 19th century were dominated by the movement for Catholic Emancipation, but the subsequent movement, seeking to repeal the Act of Union, was a catalyst for young people who idealised Tone and Emmet such as Thomas Davis, poet, and editor of The Nation newspaper.

The Great Irish Famine (1845-51) killed over one million people and pushed millions more into emigration, forming a global diaspora determined to oppose English occupation. Younger members of the Repeal Movement known as Young Ireland staged their own uprising in 1848. During their sojourn in Paris, following the failed rebellion, John O’Mahony and James Stephens, set their plans for the most enduring Irish nationalist and republican movement, the Fenians.

Fenian poet John Casey wrote the still popular ballad The Rising of the Moon extolling the virtues of 1798. Another popular folk song, Roddy McCorley, praised the eponymous Presbyterian County Antrim outlaw for his beauty, bravery in battle, and death by hanging.

By 1898, the virtues of the rebels were extolled by Irish nationalists in centenary celebrations. In his last pamphlet, published just before the 1916 Rising, Padraig Pearse named Tone as one of the four evangelists of Irish republicanism.

Robert Emmet

From Trinity College Dublin Digital Collections with the kind permission of "The Board of Trinity College Dublin".