On the 225th anniversary of the 1798 rebellion, common sense should dictate the way we view the death of Ireland’s greatest patriot
The mission was unsuccessful, yet he organised three more missions through the rebellion of 1798. In August that year 1,000 French troops landed in Co Mayo under Gen Jean-Joseph Humbert, rekindling a rebellion thought quashed in July. Though defeated two weeks later, this Hiberno-French force scored four significant victories, an indication of what might have been had Napoleon listened to Tone and concentrated his energies on Ireland.
His legal team, led by John Philpot Curran, fought from 11am that day to have him released to civil court. Chief Justice Kilwarden agreed. A writ of habeas corpus was issued but refused by Tone’s jailer, Maj William Sandys. A second writ was issued – only on this occasion it was revealed that Tone had “attempted suicide”, using a razor blade on his windpipe, at 4am the night before.
The man whose co-ordination of four seaborne French invasions of Ireland – judged by his fellow Irishman the duke of Wellington to be an “achievement of genius” – could not escape Tone’s biographer Marianne Elliott called his suicide a “godsend” – the Catholic Church railed against the “cut-throat Tone” for two centuries, besmirching the Catholic-rights activist as a morally repugnant coward. Irish historians bought it, quoting fake or nonexistent letters that the government-controlled press deemed authentic.
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