Irish Rebellion of 1798: Encyclopedia II - Irish Rebellion of 1798 - Aftermath

Irish Rebellion of 1798 - Aftermath

Pockets of rebel resistance remained in Wexford with the last rebel group under James Corocoran, veterans of the battle of New Ross, not being defeated until February 1804. Wicklow experienced a form of fugitive warfare in the years after 1798 but the failure of Robert Emmet's rebellion in 1803 finally convinced the last organised rebel forces under Michael Dwyer to a negotiated surrender a few months later.

The 1798 rebellion was probably the most concentrated outbreak of violence in Irish history and resulted in the deaths of c. 30,000 people over the course of just three months. Research into casualty figures suggests that a maximum of 1,500 troops and 1,000 civilians died at the hands of the rebels and that the remainder were killed by Government troops and loyalist militias. While atrocities were committed on both sides, the great majority were committed by the government forces but the rebel killings of Protestants in Wexford were given much greater emphasis in the following years, with some loyalists arguing that the rebellion was a sectarian Catholic plot to massacre Protestants - a repeat of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.

The Act of Union on January 1st 1801 which took away the measure of autonomy granted to Ireland's Protestant minority was largely in response to the rebellion and the feeling that the rebellion was provoked as much by the brutish misrule of the Ascendancy as by the efforts of the revolutionaries.

Religious, if not economic, discrimination against the Catholic majority was gradually abolished after the Act of Union but not before widespread radical mobilisation of the Catholic population under Daniel O'Connell. Discontent at grievances and resentment persisted but resistance to British rule for the next 50 years manifested itself along sectarian lines as in the Tithe War of 1831-36.

Presbyterian radicalism was effectively tamed and reconciled to British rule by their inclusion in a new Protestant Ascendancy, as opposed to a mere Anglican one. The resulting effect was that Irish politics in the 19th century was steered away from the unifying vision of the United Irishmen, encouraged by Unionists, Dublin Castle, and exploited by politicians such as Daniel O’Connell, towards a sectarian model which has largely endured to the present day.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Aftermath", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki