The Irish Rebellion of 1803

The Irish Rebellion of 1803 was a failed upheaval attempt by Robert Emmet and the Society of United Irishmen, which sought to overthrow the British rule over the island of Ireland.

Introduction

One uninitiated to Irish history might only be acquainted with one or two of the numerous upheavals which bubbled up in Ireland since the Normand occupation of the island to the independence in 1921 with the partition of Northern Ireland (remaining within the United Kingdom) and the Republic of Ireland proper—or simply Ireland, as the Constitution reads since 1937 and as it is named in European treaties.

If somebody without prior knowledge were to be talking about an Irish revolution, they might talk about the 1916 Easter Rising, the arguably akin to a civil war Troubles in Northern Ireland, or even the 1798 Irish rebellion led by the well-known Theobald Wolfe Tone. But who knows about the 1803 rebellion?

There is a reason to that. This rebellion failed to take hold and spark a true rebellion to revive the inflaming spirit of 1798, stubbed out by the passing of the Act of Union in 1801 which united the Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Materially speaking, the rebellion had barely any impacts: but this upheaval will have consequences on the religious divide of the island.

In order to carry this task through, I will first refresh the mind of my dear readers by talking about the 1798 Irish rebellion; then, we will discuss the 1803 rebellion proper; finally, I will talk about the consequences this upheaval has had on the history of the Emerald isle.

The 1789 Irish Rebellion: How a So-Called Wolf Tones Almost Managed to Spark Out a True Revolution

We are used today to see the Irish conundrum through a prism of religious sectarianism—and this affirmation is not entirely wrong. It is true that the reason for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and the division of Ireland into two entities is due to a division of the island between Protestants in the industrialised North, and the Catholics in the rest of the island. It is also true that this sectarianism was and is still at the root of the civil troubles of the post-war Ireland, whether we discuss The Troubles of the 1960s-1990s, or the reinvigoration of the reunification debate in the last years due to a progressive increase of the numbers of Catholics in the North, as well as Brexit.

But this religious division has not always been at the root of societal unease in the Irish society. In fact, the Irish rebellion of 1798 was led mostly by Protestants in the North. They thought to implement a laïc Republic, free of religious sectarianism, in which the undeniably Catholic majority would cohabit with a Protestant minority in the North, united in the common objective to mimic the French and American struggle for an independence under a popular Constitution. Something which pushed the Protestant elite to kindle troubles throughout the Island could be the lack of representation of Belfast and its surroundings due to the common practice of pocket boroughs. Wolf Tone thought the British could only be shooed away if the Irish united as one common group: hence the name of the organisation, the Society of United Irishmen.

Although Wolf Tone was a charismatic leader and well able to lead troops to battle, the Irish rebellion of 1798 proved to be a failure. The plan was to flare up a revolution all throughout the island, then to be joined by a French regiment, at a moment when France and the European continent were fighting against each other. The French regiment at first failed to arrive, prompting Wolf Tone to rebel nonetheless: despite some pockets of rebellion, it went nowhere, and when the French landed in County Mayo, it soon surrendered. A short-lived revolution, but not without consequences for the latter history of Ireland, soon to be made an integral part of the United Kingdom.

The 1803 Irish Rebellion: How Robert Emmet Failed to Live Up to Wolf's Tone Upheaval

In 1801 was passed the [Act of Union] both in Westminster and the Irish Parliament. This Act and this Union, as said previously, sought to unite the Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain, to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This supposed the abolishment of the Irish Parliament, which prompted that latter to reject the Act. After an extensive use of corruption and vote-buying from the British Government, the Irish Parliament eventually voted favourably the text, henceforth making Ireland just a part of the wider United Kingdom.

This passing of such a far-reaching piece of legislation, associated with the suspension of the habeas corpus following the 1798 rebellion, rather quieted down the situation on the island. Between 1798 and 1803, although they were not great, conditions improved due to the slight decrease in hostilities between the United Kingdom and the French Empire. In that regard, according to W.E. Vaughan, the years following the 1798 rebellion could have seemed a bit boring. But just like the law of Lavoisier, which states that matter never disappears, a revolution cannot just vanish into thin air without leaving marks and influences behind.

The Society of United Irishmen did not disappear: some pockets were still present over the island as well as in Britain, trying to make use of other sources of social unrest to spark out another rebellion. And this is where we are getting with our revolution.

Robert Emmet had been expelled from the Trinity College in 1798 due to his activities in the Society of United Irishmen, younger brother of Thomas Addis Emmet who had been a very proactive member of the Society. After unsuccessfully trying to restart troubles on the island, he escaped indictment and flew to the Continent for safety.

Returning in Ireland for family reasons in 1802, Emmet soon began seeking to reunite the Society with former rebels who had found refuge in Dublin. The goal was to seize key points all throughout Dublin with the help of those men, in order to take control of the city, declare an autonomous government, and begin a wider revolution on the island. Emmet said he was in connection with other leaders of nineteen counties to spread the revolution, although this commitment from those leaders might not have been as strong as he hoped to. All of that would be topped up with a French involvement in the like of 1798 - preferably successful, this time. It should be noted that Emmet as well as the Society of United Irishmen saw the Bonaparte regime as a potentially untrustful ally, which could drop anchor not as a friend but as a conqueror. His goal was therefore to spark out a revolution powerful enough to be placed on an equal footing with an ultimately indispensable French force.

Unfortunately for Emmet, his original plans had to be scaled down as well as accelerated. This got prompted by an explosion in one of the house the Society rented to store material and gunpowder, which attracted the police and led to the arrest of some members. The plan would, instead of targeting five locations throughout Dublin, focus on one place: Dublin Castle, the place where the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland resided. But due to the acceleration and the scaling-down of the original plan, multiple mistakes began to show up:

“The man who was to turn the fuses and rammers for the beams forgot them and went off to Kildare to bring men, and did not return till the very day… The person who had the managment of the depot mixed, by accident, the slow matches that were prepared with what were not, and all labour went for nothing. The fuses for the grenades he had also laid by, where he forgot them, and could not find them in the crowd.”

Seeing this catastrophe unfurling, the men coming from County Kildare, which were supposed to come help Emmet and his men, returned to their homes to avoid what appeared to be a failed endeavour. Other contradicting messages resulted in a combined force of 80 men instead of 2000. The taking of Dublin Castle, rather unsurprisingly, went terribly wrong for Emmet: both his slipshod makeshift organisation, and a better-thought-out organisation from the authorities—alerted by the above mentioned explosion as well as an encounter of one of Emmet's men carrying a barrel of ammunition—, made his plan fall short of his original expectations, leaving 30 dead and a whole other lot to be convicted. Emmet himself got hanged on the 21th of October 1803, almost four months after the failed upheaval.

The Under-Discussed Legacy of Robert Emmet

It would be easy to infer from this complete failure of a revolution that it would have no impact on the following unrest on the island. But this is in fact not true. Although the material consequences have been extremely limited, his legacy influenced both Protestants and Catholics, previously united under the Society of United Irishmen.

For starters, this failed rebellion meant the end of the Society, with its leaders escaping to France. A part of the former Society decided to follow Emmet´s big brother to America. The other part of the Society formed an Irish legion in the French army, later disbanded after the 1815 Bourbon Restoration.

For what is concerning Catholics and the Catholic population, the failed rebellion will have a lesser impact than that of 1798: although it served as a popular reminder that a revolution is possible, and will feed the view of France as a liberating power, the unrest in the following year will take a different form, different from that of the Society of United Irishmen. Most of the further complaints would bear on rent, religious discrimination, or even the price of the tithe, but will not advocate for the overthrowing of British supremacy over the island. This resignation might have been fed partly by the failure of Emmet's rebellion, but did not prevent the population from fantasising over French liberation.

Although the 1803 rebellion did not have favourable consequences on the Irish independentist movement, it did have sensible consequences on the view that the Protestants in the North had on Irish independence. Indeed, whilst before the Protestants in the North were leading independentists, as it was seen in the 1798 rebellion led by Wolf Tone, they soon changed their mind. It should be noted that it did not mean the complete end of Protestant involvement in the Irish cause: but whilst it was a very popular movement in 1798, it soon boiled down to a few scattered rebel Protestants, the others turning at best indifferent towards the movement. That change is due to two different movements:

- First of all, the Dragooning of Ulster of 1797, as well as the harsh repression following 1798 traumatised many in the North; had 1803 got some results, or even had achieved everything it sought to do, the Protestants in the North would maybe have regained some enthusiasm and determination for the cause. But this would not happen, due to the complete failure of Emmet's endeavour.

- Secondly, the increase of Catholic aggressiveness on different topics, first merely financial, and then more constitutional, changed the mind of Protestants; even more so after electoral reform and the passing of acts of Catholic emancipation, which threatened the position of power of Protestants related to Catholics. Restoring the pre-1801 Irish Parliament alongside electoral reform in order to remove northern rotten boroughs was one thing; a completely independent Parliament in a completely independent Ireland was another thing. The grounds on which the Protestants got opposed so vigorously to the 1801 Act of Union soon proved to be not as important and dangerous as an independent Ireland in which they would be a potentially endangered minority. Again, had the rebellion gone somewhere, due to the fact that it was organised by the Society of United Irishmen, maybe would the Protestants have thought about joining the rebellion: but the failure of that latter, the disbandment of the Society, and the progressive but total reorganisation of the anti-British sentiment around the Catholics, led the Protestants to reconsider their position and go from opposing the Act of Union to supporting it, in fear of those they once saw as their allies in a struggle against London.