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The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1798; Ulster-Scots: The Hurries) was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen. First formed in Belfast by Presbyterians opposed to the landed Anglican establishment, the Society, despairing of reform, sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's Catholic majority. The grievances of a rack-rented tenantry drove recruitment. While assistance was being sought from the French Republic and from democratic militants in Britain, martial-law seizures and arrests forced the conspirators into the open. Beginning in late May 1798, there were a series of uncoordinated risings: in the counties of Carlow and Wexford in the southeast where the rebels met with some success; in the north around Belfast in counties Antrim and Down; and closer to the capital, Dublin, in counties Meath and Kildare. In late August, after the rebels had been reduced to pockets of guerrilla resistance, the French landed an expeditionary force in the west, in County Mayo. Unable to effect a conjunction with a significant rebel force, they surrendered on 9 September. In the last open-field engagement of the rebellion, the local men they had rallied on their arrival were routed at Killala on 23 September. On 12 October, a second French expedition was defeated in a naval action off the coast of County Donegal leading to the capture of the United Irish leader Wolfe Tone. In the wake of the rebellion, Acts of Union abolished the Irish legislature and brought Ireland under the crown of a United Kingdom through the Parliament at Westminster. The centenary of the rebellion in 1898 saw its legacy disputed by unionists, by nationalists who wished to see an Irish parliament restored in Dublin, and by republicans who invoked the name of Tone in the cause of complete separation and independence. Renewed in a bicentenary year that coincided with the 1998 Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement, the debate over the interpretation and significance of "1798" continues. Background The Volunteer movement In the last decades of the 18th century, the British Crown in Ireland faced growing demands for constitutional reform. The Protestant Ascendancy had relaxed the Penal Laws by which it had sought, in the wake of the Jacobite defeat in 1691, to restrict both the influence of the Catholic church and the political and economic power of the remaining Catholic gentry. But the landed Anglican interest continued to monopolise the Irish Parliament, occupying both the House of Lords and, through the system of pocket boroughs, half of the Commons. The interests of the Crown were meanwhile secured by a Viceregal administration accountable, not to the legislature in Dublin, but to the King and his ministers in London (and which also having boroughs in its pocket reduced to a third the number of Commons seats open to electoral contest). Additionally, the British parliament presumed the right to itself to legislate for Ireland, a prerogative it had exercised to restrict rival Irish trade and commerce.: 286–288  The revolt of the North American colonies presented a challenge. The Crown's war with the colonists and their French allies consumed much of its Irish military establishment's resources, and "Volunteer" militias were formed to take over the army's home defence role: however their members gradually began to emulate their emigrant kin in America by asserting "constitutional rights". In 1782, with the Volunteers now drilling and parading in support of the otherwise beleaguered Patriot opposition in the Irish Parliament, Westminster repealed its Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719. Volunteers, especially in the north where Presbyterians and other Protestant Dissenters had flocked to their ranks, immediately sought to build upon this grant of "legislative independence" by agitating for the abolition of the pocket boroughs and an extension of the franchise. But the question of whether, and on what terms, parliamentary reform should embrace Catholic emancipation split the movement".: 49–50 : 214–217  The Ancien Régime survived: the Anglican aristocracy remained entrenched under the patronage of a government that continued to take its direction from London. Formation of the United Irishmen The disappointment was felt keenly in Belfast, a growing commercial centre which, as a borough owned of the Marquess of Donegall, had no elected representation. In October 1791, amidst public celebration of the French Revolution, a group of Volunteer veterans invited an address from Wolfe Tone, a Protestant secretary to Dublin's Catholic Committee. Acknowledging his Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, in which Tone had argued that they could not enjoy liberty until banded together with Catholics against the "boobies and blockheads" of the Ascendancy, and styling themselves at his suggestion the Society of United Irishmen,: 207  the meeting resolved:[that] the weight of English influence in the government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland; [and] that the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed, is by complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament.The same resolution was carried by Tone's friends in Dublin where, reflecting a larger, more diverse, middle class, the Society united from the outset Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter. The Catholic Convention With the support and participation of United Irishmen,: 74–76  in December 1792 the Catholic Committee convened a national Catholic Convention. Elected on a broad, head-of-household, franchise, the "Back Lane Parliament" was a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Irish Lords and Commons. Anticipating war with the new French Republic, George III received a delegation from the convention (including Tone) at Windsor, and the British government pressed the Irish Parliament to match Westminster's 1791 Catholic Relief Act.: 296  This relieved Catholics of most of their remaining civil disabilities and, where (in the counties) Common's seats were contested, allowed those meeting the property qualification to vote. For Parliament itself the Oath of Supremacy was retained so that it remained exclusively Protestant. For a measure that could have little appreciable impact on the conduct of government, the price for overriding Ascendancy opposition was the dissolution of the Catholic Committee, a new Catholic-recruiting government militia,: 209  and a Convention Act that effectively outlawed extra-parliamentary opposition. When it was clear that these were not terms acceptable to the United Irishmen (who had been seeking to revive and remodel the Volunteers along the lines of the revolutionary French "National Guard") the government moved to suppress the Society. In M.... Discover the Tom Betsy James Keogh popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Tom Betsy James Keogh books.