#OTD in 1803 – In opposition to the Act of Union, Robert Emmet leads an armed outbreak that is easily suppressed.

23/07/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

Born in Dublin in 1778 into a fairly-well-to-do Protestant family, Robert Emmet was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. With high ideals of fraternity and equality, Robert, like his elder brother Thomas, became involved with the United Irishmen – an organisation formed in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, James Tandy, and Thomas Russell to achieve Roman Catholic […]

#OTD in 1791 – Demonstrations are held in Dublin, Belfast and elsewhere to commemorate the fall of the Bastille in 1789.

14/07/2023.Reading time 8 minutes.

What is that in your hand?It is a branch.Of what?Of the tree of liberty.Where did it first grow?In America.Where does it bloom?In France.Where did the seeds fall?In Ireland. –Catechism of the United Irishmen. To Edmund Burke, the French revolutionaries were “the swinish multitude”, and his Reflections on the Revolution in France set in motion one of the […]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Battle of Ballyellis.

30/06/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

In what was a relatively small skirmish compared to the mayhem of previous weeks of the 1798 Rebellion, Irish rebels win a small victory against English troops at Ballyellis, Co Wexford. It would be the last Irish victory in the most violent Irish rebellion in modern history. At least 10,000 died in a campaign that […]