Lord Edward Fitzgerald
Lord Edward Fitzgerald ( Irish An Tiarna Éadbhard Mac Gearailt ; born October 15, 1763 in Carton House , Maynooth , County Kildare , Ireland ; † June 4, 1798 in Dublin , Ireland) was an Irish nobleman and politician who was part of the Irish Rebellion by 1798 was killed.
Life
Childhood and youth
Edward Fitzgerald was born in Carton House, near Dublin, in 1763, the fifth son of James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster . As the son of a duke , he used the courtesy address Lord . His mother was Lady Emily Lennox, the daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond . When his father died in 1773, his mother married the tutor William Ogilvie, who looked after Lord Edward's education and prepared him for his military career.
Fitzgerald joined the British Army in 1779 and became an adjutant on Lord Rawdon's staff in the American War of Independence . Fitzgerald was seriously wounded while participating in the Battle of Eutaw Springs on September 8, 1781, and was evacuated from Charleston in 1782 when the British withdrew their troops from the city.
From 1783 to 1790 Lord Edward Fitzgerald held a seat in the Parliament of Ireland as MP for the town of Athy in County Kildare , which his brother, William FitzGerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster , had granted him. In parliament he took the side of the opposition Irish Patriot Party led by Henry Grattan , but without taking particular part in the debates.
From the spring of 1786 Fitzgerald attended the Royal Military Academy Woolwich and was assigned in 1787 with the rank of major to the 54th Regiment in the Canadian province of New Brunswick .
In April 1789, Fitzgerald hiked from Fredericton to Quebec in 26 days using only a compass , a distance of around 280 kilometers, some of which led through Indian lands. In doing so, he discovered a route that was shorter than the previously used routes. Another expedition took him down the Mississippi to New Orleans . On the way there, he lived with Mohawk Indians near Detroit for a while , and they accepted him into their tribe.
Entry into politics
With the protection of his brother, Lord Edward Fitzgerald held again a seat in the Parliament of Ireland from 1790 to 1798 , this time for County Kildare. This time, however, he was more committed to political work, which is why he also rejected the offer of British Prime Minister William Pitt to take command of an expedition to Cádiz . Fitzgerald developed a close relationship with his cousin Charles James Fox , Richard Sheridan and other leading Whigs , the liberal politicians of the time who were in opposition to the Conservative Tories ruled by William Pitt .
His network with the Whigs, in connection with his experiences in the struggle of the Americans for their independence, led to Fitzgerald's sympathy for the contents of the French Revolution , which he got to know when he visited Thomas Paine in Paris in October 1792 and the debates there in The convention. His published statements, in which he advocated the swift abolition of inherited titles and feudal class differences, led to his expulsion from the British Army.
In Paris, Lord Edward Fitzgerald met his wife Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms († 1831), whom he married on December 27, 1792 in Tournai , and with whom he returned to Ireland in 1793.
By the time Fitzgerald took his seat in the Irish Parliament again in 1793, the influence of the revolutionary Society of United Irishmen had grown in Ireland , but had largely been driven underground by the outbreak of war between Great Britain and France. With his fresh impressions from the convent in Paris, he quickly sided with her, but did not join her until 1796. At that point it was already clear that the United Irishmen's goal could only be the establishment of an independent Irish Republic.
Preparing for the 1798 rebellion
When Theobald Wolfe Tone was staying in May 1796 in Paris to promote an uprising in Ireland for French support, traveled Fitzgerald to Hamburg , to meet with the authorities responsible for the Hanseatic cities representative of the Board , Karl Friedrich Reinhard to negotiate. The government in London was informed about Fitzgerald's activities in Hamburg through informers. Nevertheless, his negotiations led to the failed attempt by the French on December 22, 1796 to land a 15,000-strong armada under General Lazare Hoche in Bantry Bay, Ireland.
In September 1797, the British government was also informed by spy services that Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the conspiratorial circles of the United Irishmen, who set up a military organization in which he himself held the post of colonel of the regiment in Kildare. In discussions among the United Irishmen's ranks, Fitzgerald was one of those who preferred a quick strike at the English rather than waiting for help from revolutionary France.
When a number of United Irishmen leaders were arrested by the British in a first arrest operation on March 12, 1798, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was able to escape because he had been warned beforehand. Moreover, the government initially hesitated before the public effect of an arrest of Noble Fitzgerald. However, when on March 30, 1798 the law of war was declared over Ireland, and the United Irishmen found themselves forced to carry out their plans without French help, his social position made him one of the most important leaders of the United Irishmen who were still at large . On May 9, 1798, Dublin offered a reward of £ 1,000 for the capture of Fitzgerald, who had been in hiding since March 12.
The beginning of the uprising had meanwhile been set for May 23, 1798 and Lord Edward Fitzgerald was waiting for that day in his hiding place in a house on Thomas Street, Dublin. However, his whereabouts were revealed so that he was overpowered by a British military unit on May 18, 1798. In a brief scuffle, Fitzgerald stabbed one officer and fatally wounded a second, but was also shot himself in the shoulder. After a brief detention at Dublin Castle , he was transferred to Newgate Prison, where he died on June 4, 1798 as a result of his injury.
He did not live to see the beginning of the rebellion. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was buried in the graveyard of St. Werburgh's Church in Dublin.
literature
- Robert Brendan McDowell: The Protestant nation (1775-1800) . In: Theodore W. Moody, Francis Xavier Martin (Eds.): The course of Irish history . Mercier Press, Cork 1987, ISBN 0-85342-715-1 , pp. 232-247.
- Martin Wallace: Famous Irish Lives . The Appletree Press, Belfast 1991, ISBN 0-86281-275-5 .
- Daniel J. Gahan: Rebellion! Ireland in 1798. The O'Brien Press, Dublin 1997, ISBN 0-86278-548-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ McDowell: The Protestant nation (1775-1800) . P. 244.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fitzgerald, Lord Edward |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mac Gearailt, To Tiarna Éadbhard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Irish nobleman and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 15, 1763 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Carton House , County Kildare , Ireland |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 4, 1798 |
| Place of death | Dublin , Ireland |