The revolutionary Lord
Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798)
By Aengus O Snodaigh
Alone of his class, this cosmopolitan aristocrat made the journey
from idealist reformer to violent republican revolutionary. That
in itself made him stand out. When to this uniqueness is added
unselfishness of motive, reckless courage and singular charm, it
is little wonder that Lord Edward Fitzgerald emerged as a leading
figure in the pantheon of heroes of 1798.
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was born in London on 15 October 1763, the
twelfth of the 18 children of the first Duke of Leinster and his
wife Emily Lennox, sister of the third Duke of Richmond. After
the birth the family returned to Kildare, but their main
residence was their summerhouse, Frescati in Blackrock, County
Dublin. The family were Ireland's largest landholder, and it was
the Duke who had Leinster House built as his Dublin residence
when parliament was sitting.
Emily Lennox sought out Rousseau in 1767 as a tutor for her
children, but he was not available. She instead settled on
William Ogilvie, but instructed him to teach the children
according to Rousseau's teachings.
In the autumn of 1773 the Duke died and six weeks later the
Duchess scandalised her family by marrying her children's tutor.
She later bore him two children. The whole family set off to
France in August 1774.
Lord Edward's upbringing made him a cosmopolitan figure, at ease
with French as much as English and imbued with enlightened ideas.
At 16 he began studying at a military academy before a
lieutenant's commission in the British army's 96th Regiment of
Foot was bought for him.
Young Edward, 18 years old, was eager for adventure and he
transferred into the 19th Regiment of Foot which was embarking
for the American war early in 1781. Edward saw action against the
colonists in South Carolina before being badly wounded on the
battlefield of Eutaw Springs. A poor black slave named Tony Small
saved his life. In gratitude he took Tony into his service as
personal assistant.
Upon his return to Ireland in 1783 Edward Fitzgerald became MP in
the Irish House of Commons for the borough of Athy. For three
years the recuperating Edward enjoyed life to the full, drinking,
gambling and cavorting while on leave from the army. But,
disappointed in love (his prospective fiancée's parents turned
him down), he entered the Royal Military College, Woolwich and in
1788 joined his regiment, the 54th, in Nova Scotia and was
stationed in New Brunswick, Halifax, Quebec, and Montreal.
In Nova Scotia he saw a society that was self-sufficient,
self-governing and uncorrupted by wealth and social
stratification. In a letter he says: ``the equality of everybody
and of their manner of life I like very much. There are no
gentlemen, everybody is on a footing, provided he works, and
wants nothing. Every man is exactly what he can make himself, or
has made himself by industry''.
When in 1789 he travelled from Frederickstown to Quebec, with
Tony and another officer, camping with the Iroquois, he was
attracted to the Native American way of life, seeing it as more
natural and egalitarian than that of the `civilised' world he
came from. He saw that theirs was a system of interdependence
rather than hierarchy. Their life was to Edward an idyllic way of
life, a utopian dream, which would be worth pursuing for Ireland.
While living with them he was made a chieftain of the Seneca
nation, one of the six Iroquois nation.
The publication of the Rights of Man in 1791 made a great
impression on him, transforming him from a follower of Rousseau
to a disciple of Paine and from a radical to a republican. In
October 1792 he visited Paris, where he not only met Paine but
lodged with him. In Paris he joined the Jacobin Club, of which
the Sheares brothers were also members.
In November 1792, at a republican banquet in White's Hotel in
Paris for British and Irish residents, also attended by Thomas
Paine, he joined in toasting the progress of liberty and the
Revolution and drinking to ``the people of Ireland, and may
Government profit by the example of France, and reform prevent
revolution'' and along with other young noblemen present, he
renounced his title. As a result he was cashiered from the
British army.
Shortly before leaving for Dublin in November 1792 Edward
discussed with Thomas Paine the possibility of French support for
40,000 Volunteers to be financed and kept in the field for three
months, believing that that was enough to liberate Ireland. To
confirm this the French sent Lieutenant Colonel Eleazer Oswald on
a fact-finding mission before the end of 1793.
In February 1793 the English government declared war on the
revolutionary regime in France. From then on, seeking or calling
for support from the French regime for revolutionary activity in
Ireland was treasonous activity. The government moved against
groups suspected of sympathising with the French, among them the
Society of the United Irishmen, which was banned.
In December 1792, he married Pamela Sims who shared her husband's
radical views and took an active part in revolutionary work.
Returning to Dublin with his bride, Edward denounced the
government for prohibiting a meeting of radical volunteers and
spoke and voted against both the Arms Bill and the Insurrection
Bill. He became friendly with Arthur O'Connor, and joined the
United Irishmen, recruiting for the cause in Kildare around 1795.
His background, his ideological position and military experience
made him a vital asset and he became Commander in Chief of the
United Irish army soon afterwards.
By breaking many of the conventions associated with the
Ascendancy he drew attention to himself and to the revolutionary
ideas he espoused. He adopted the French republican style of
dressing and of cropped hair long before it became the vogue
among the radicals of Ireland.
Lord Edward moved to a house in Kildare town, which was to become
a focus for much United Irish activity. He quickly made his
radicalism known locally, rejecting coal in favour of turf and
beginning to learn the Irish language, Irish jigs and the more
formal dances when there were enough couples.
In May 1796 he travelled to Hamburg. There O'Connor joined him
before secretly meeting General Hoche to make plans for an
invasion of Ireland. Full preparations for an expedition were
made though the date was to be confirmed.
Back in Ireland, Fitzgerald and O'Connor prepared for the
expected French expedition. When it finally arrived, in Bantry
Bay at the end of December 1796, both the time and the place of
its arrival caught the United Irishmen (and Dublin Castle)
entirely by surprise. Storms prevented the expedition from
landing, but all over the country there were reports from United
Irish representatives of floods of recruits and a fever of
expectation.
The arrest and imprisonment of his friend O'Connor early in 1797
pushed Fitzgerald to the forefront of the planning for an armed
insurrection. At the 1797 election he gave up his Parliamentary
seat for County Kildare. Edward explained to his constituents
that a seat in such a tool of biased authority was inconsistent
with his principles.
Through informers such as MacNally and Samuel Turner, and by
observation of his movements, the Castle soon had plenty of
evidence of Fitzgerald's militant republicanism. In fact, Lord
Edward himself in early 1797 recruited to the cause Thomas
Reynolds. At 26 Reynolds became a colonel of the United Irish
forces in Kildare, but the lure of money led him to turn
informer.
Through informers the British were beginning to gather an
in-depth knowledge of the movement. The United Irishmen remained
undecided, waiting in hope, though some including Fitzgerald
wished for an immediate rising. They agreed to wait on the French
and O'Connor left Ireland for London, en route for France but he
was arrested on 28 February and held in Margate Jail. O'Connor's
arrest was a disaster for Lord Edward but he persevered.
He drew up detailed plans based on the figures provided from the
various areas to the National Executive meeting of 28 February
1798 - 110,000 in Ulster, 100,000 in Munster, 45,000 in the
Dublin area. Foolishly, he entrusted a copy of this paper to
Reynolds, who made immediate contact with his Dublin Castle
handlers.
Reynolds found out that the next meeting of the Leinster
provincial committee was to be at Oliver Bond's house in Dublin
on 12 March. In the ensuing British army raid there and elsewhere
16 leading members were captured. Fitzgerald remained at liberty.
Warrants for his arrest were issued, and Frescati was raided and
searched, as was Leinster House, whence Fitzgerald, alerted by
the faithful Tony, escaped across the stable yard.
As the raiding party led by Sherriff Oliver Carleton went to
search the pregnant Pamela's bedroom, where she was convalescing
from an illness, they spotted her desperately feeding sheets of
paper from a drawer into the fire. Among the papers was a plan
for the capture of Dublin.
Despite being Ireland's most wanted man with a price on his head,
Lord Edward was not duanted and continued his work, though not as
openly as before. A public proclamation offered a reward of
£1,000. Edward Cooke was sent to fully recruit Reynolds as an
informant. ``You must get him to come forward; stop at nothing -
£100,000 - anything.'' This colossal figure, then as now, was
later negoitiated down to £5,000 and another £1,000 a year for
life.
Edward's daring life on the run during this period made him a
legend, the charismatic chief who alone could unite the
demoralised movement and yet lead it to victory. Rumours of his
appearences throughout the country were rife, though in the main
he remained in Dublin. He travelled in many guises and his
biographer Thomas Moore described many of his escapades while on
the run.
As time passed he became bolder. Dressed as a woman he visited
Pamela at her lodging in Denzille Street: ``the surprise ...
brought on a premature confinement, and her second daughter,
Lucy, was born.''
Despite such pressing family matters he continued his military
plans for the rising and continued reconnoitering the areas
himself:
``It appears that he rode, attended by Neilson, to reconnoitre the
line of advance, on the Kildare side, to Dublin, - the route
marked out on one of the papers found upon him when he was
arrested - and it was on this occasion that he was, for some
time, stopped and questioned, by the patrol at Palmerston. Being
well disguised, and representing himself to be a doctor on his
way to a dying patient, his companion and he were suffered to
proceed on their way.''
With the government as much as declaring war on the United
Irishmen by proclaiming martial law for the whole of Ireland on
30 March a new Directory emerged with Lord Edward, the Sheares
brothers and Samuel Neilson to the fore. By 23 April General
Lake, now commander-in-chief, had full authority to replicate his
terror in Ulster throughout Ireland.
When Lord Edward received a message from Paris on 17 May that the
French would not arrive until August. An emergency meeting of the
Leinster Directorate that day selected 23 May as the date of a
rising.
The informer Francis Magan learned Lord Edward's whereabouts and
informed the Castle authorities. Two days later, on 19 May, while
preparing to go to Kildare to lead the United Irish forces, he
was surprised in a house in Thomas Street by Major Swan, Captain
Ryan and Major Sirr. Fitzgerald fought ferociously against
capture with his special zigzag dagger, slashing Swan and
disembowelling Ryan (who died later of his wounds) until shot
twice in the shoulder by Sirr. He was taken under heavy escort to
Dublin Castle, where the Surgeon General dressed his wound. The
magistrates then removed him to Newgate Gaol.
The wound to Fitzgerald's shoulder, from which the two pistol
balls had not been removed, had become infected in the unusually
hot summer weather and septicaemia set in. The Surgeon General
dithered about an operation until it was too late. It has been
suggested that this was because the administration would rather
see him dead than have a show-trial which could enflame the
population.
From 2 June a young Dublin surgeon, Armstrong Garnett, recorded
everything in his diary. On hearing a United Irishman Clinch
being hanged by the Yeomanry beneath his window Edward is
recorded as becoming agitated and saying ``God look down on those
who suffer! God preserve me and have mercy on me and on those
that act with me''.
Fearing that the end was near Garnett broke the government bar on
passing messages to the Fitzgerald family regarding Edward's
health. A fellow United Irishman and prisoner, Mathew Dowling,
also sent word out to Lord Henry Fitzgerald: ``Lord Edward is most
dangerously ill - in fact dying.... we'll watch over him as well
as is in our power''.
3 June saw Lord Clare relent and allow his brother and aunt to
visit him. Edward recognised his brother and aunt despite his
condition, but he was still rambling. They left after an hour
hoping to be able to return in the morning. It was not to be.
At 2am on the morning of 4 June, Garnett records: ``After a
violent struggle that commenced soon after twelve o'clock, this
ill-fated young man has just drawn his last breath. - 4 June
1798.'' Lord Edward Fitzgerald was 35 when he died.
Lady Louisa immediately set about arranging the burial of his
body in the crypt of St Werburgh's Church not far from the jail.
Lord Henry left the country in a rage, writing to Lord Camden
saying that by its refusal to operate that the government had
``murdered my brother as much as if you put a pistol to his
head''.
Without his leadership or that of any other senior figures
(Samuel Neilson was arrested on the eve of the rising, the
Sheares brothers were captured on 21May), the rising went ahead
as planned on 23 May, two hundred years ago this week. Without
central direction, however, the scheme for a co-ordinated
national effort, beginning with the seizure of Dublin, fell
apart.
Pamela was to become a pauper after the Irish parliament seized
the estate and her annuity. His family gave her a meagre
allowance until she settled in Hamburg and remarried. Tony Small,
his black companion, died shortly afterwards in London.
Thomas Reynolds, lived on his £1,000 a year pension and he died
in Paris in 1836 aged 65.
Francis Magan lived on at 20 Usher's Island in Dublin. At the
time of his death in 1843 he was worth £14,000 (£12,000 of which
was payment for his treachery).
The ideological leap from being a member of the Ascendancy to
embracing the teachings of the American and French Revolutions
and the ideals of the United Irishmen, his position as
Commander-in-Chief and the circumstances of his arrest and death
set Lord Edward Fitzgerald out from many of his contemporaries in
the movement for praise and reverence for years after. He was
truly revolutionary and died trying to better the lot of the
common man and woman.
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