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"
Date 24 May – 12 October 1798 (4 months and 18 days) Location Ireland Result Suppression by Crown forces Abolition of the Irish Parliament and creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 Attempt to renew the insurrection with a rising in Dublin in 1803 Guerilla activity in counties Antrim until 1800, Wicklow until 1803 and Wexford until 1804.
Belligerents
United Irishmen Defenders  France	Great Britain  Ireland
Commanders and leaders
Theobald Wolfe Tone   Henry Joy McCracken   William Aylmer   Anthony Perry   Bagenal Harvey   Henry Munro   John Murphy   Jean Humbert   Jean Bompart	John Pratt Charles Cornwallis Ralph Abercromby Gerard Lake George Nugent William Pitt John Warren Robert Stewart
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]

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1798; Ulster-Scots: The Hurries^[6]) was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen. First formed in Belfast by Presbyterians opposed to the landed Anglican establishment, the Society, despairing of reform, sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's Catholic majority. The grievances of a rack-rented tenantry drove recruitment.

While assistance was being sought from the French Republic and from democratic militants in Britain, martial-law seizures and arrests forced the conspirators into the open. Beginning in late May 1798, there were a series of uncoordinated risings: in the counties of Carlow and Wexford in the southeast where the rebels met with some success; in the north around Belfast in counties Antrim and Down; and closer to the capital, Dublin, in counties Meath and Kildare.

In late August, after the rebels had been reduced to pockets of guerrilla resistance, the French landed an expeditionary force in the west, in County Mayo. Unable to effect a conjunction with a significant rebel force, they surrendered on 9 September. In the last open-field engagement of the rebellion, the local men they had rallied on their arrival were routed at Killala on 23 September. On 12 October, a second French expedition was defeated in a naval action off the coast of County Donegal leading to the capture of the United Irish leader Wolfe Tone.

In the wake of the rebellion, Acts of Union abolished the Irish legislature and brought Ireland under the crown of a United Kingdom through the Parliament at Westminster. The centenary of the rebellion in 1898 saw its legacy disputed by nationalists who wished to restore a legislature in Dublin, by republicans who invoked the name of Tone in the cause of complete separation and independence, and by unionists opposed to all measures of Irish self-government. Renewed in a bicentenary year that coincided with the 1998 Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement, the debate over the interpretation and significance of "1798" continues.