Irish Rebellion of 1798: Encyclopedia II - Irish Rebellion of 1798 - Government Crackdown and Counter Revolution

Irish Rebellion of 1798 - Government Crackdown and Counter Revolution

The shaken Establishment responed by launching a campaign of repression and coercion using tactics that included house burnings, torture, pitchcapping and murder, particularly in Ulster as it was the one area of Ireland where large numbers of Catholics and Protestants, (mainly Presbyterians) had effected common cause.

However, sectarianism was quickly recognised as a usefully divisive tool against the United Irishmen in the classic "divide and rule" method of colonial governance and officially encouraged by the Government. For example, Brigadier-General C.E. Knox wrote to General Lake (who was responsible for Ulster):"I hope to increase the animosity between Orangemen and United Irishmen. Upon that animosity depends the safety of the centre counties of the North." The Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John Fitzgibbon also wrote in a letter to the Privy Council in June 1798; "In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish".

Loyalists all over Ireland had already organised themselves in support of the Government, supplying recruits and vital local intelligence through the foundation of the Orange Order in 1795. The opposition of the Catholic Church in Ireland to the expected rebellion had been secured by the establishment of Maynooth College in the same year and it was, barring a few individual exceptions, firmly on the side of the Crown throughout the entire period of the rebellion.

Intelligence from informers also swept up much of the United Irish leadership in raids in Dublin in March 1798. A preemptive rising in March in Cahir, county Tipperary broke out in response, but was quickly crushed.Martial law was consequently imposed over much of the country, the unrelenting brutality of which put the United Irish organisation under severe pressure to act before it was too late. By May 1798 Lord Edward FitzGerald and most other leaders of the Dublin rebellion were arrested and the rump United Irish leadership finally decided to launch the rising without French aid, fixing the date of the rising for May 23rd.

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