The revolutionary fervour of
1798 did not in any case disappear altogether in the years following
the failure of the revolts. There were uprisings in Galway and
even by unemployed Protestant yeomanry in County Wexford itself.
But there was a definitive end to the United Irishmen movement with
the failure of Robert Emmet's uprising in 1803.
Emmet (1778-1803) had been a
been a member of the society and was enthused with its revolutionary
doctrines. Such a man was unlikely to accept the Act of Union,
and Emmet began to create an organisation which would seize power and
set up an Irish Republic. But his planned rising was hopelessly
bungled. First there was an explosion at an arms dump
which gave away his intentions a week before the planned revolt, and
then the authorities seized all of the conspirators' pamphlets as they
come off the presses. Emmet hoped to recruit 2,000 men for an
uprising in Dublin; in the event he had just ninety with which to
seize Dublin Castle.
On their way to the castle,
Emmet's adherents seized the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in his
coach, piked him to death and began to riot in the streets.
Needless to say, this tiny band of revolutionaries never got anywhere
near the castle and Emmet, by now thoroughly disillusioned by his
follower's indiscipline, went into hiding. Weeks later, he was
arrested, tried and condemned to death.
Like many Irish republican
martyrs, Robert Emmet was far more powerful in death than in
life. This is mainly because of the statement he made on the
scaffold:
Let no man write my
epitaph... When my country takes her place among the nations of the
earth, then, and not till then let my epitaph be written.
