Robert Emmet
Robert Emmet ( Irish Roibeard Emmet or Roibeard Eiméad , born March 4, 1778 in Dublin , † September 20, 1803 ibid) was an Irish rebel leader and republican nationalist . In 1803 he led an unsuccessful rebellion against British rule, was captured and executed. The fighter against the forced union with England was nicknamed The Darling od Eirin (also the title of a folk song that honors him).
Emmet was born in Dublin into a wealthy Protestant family. His father was a doctor to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and to members of the British royal family on their trips to Ireland.
Emmet attended Trinity College in Dublin but dropped out when he joined the patriotic United Irishmen . After the Irish Rebellion of 1798 under Theobald Wolfe Tone was bloodily suppressed in May of the same year, Emmet sought exile in France , where he joined revolutionary groups in Paris .
In 1802, during a brief lull in the Napoleonic War , Emmet came across an Irish delegation who wanted to ask Napoleon for help. The request for help was unsuccessful as Napoleon signed a peace treaty with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland .
When the European conflict broke out again in May 1803, Emmet and other revolutionaries returned to Ireland to lead a rebellion there. The uprising began prematurely and ill-organized on July 23, 1803 in Dublin with an unsuccessful attempt to capture Dublin Castle . In the riots that followed, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland was murdered. Emmet fled and tried to hide, but was captured near Harold's Cross on August 25th. On September 19, he was convicted of treason. After the verdict was announced, Emmet gave another address - also known as the “ Speech from the Dock ”.
Abstract:
“Don't let anyone write my epitaph, because no one who knows my motives would dare to justify them now. […] When my country has taken its place among the nations of the earth, then, and only then, will my person be justified. Then my tombstone can be inscribed. I'm done."
One day later, on September 20, the sentence was carried out. Emmet was taken from Kilmainham Gaol Prison to the place of his execution, opposite St. Catherine's Church on Thomas Street. He was asked twice by the hangman if he was ready and answered "no" both times. Before he could answer a third time, Emmet was hanged. But the judgment was not yet fulfilled. Like his fifteen co-conspirators, he was taken down and additionally beheaded. The executioner Thomas Galvin held his head out to the crowd and said: "This is the head of the traitor Robert Emmet."
Where the remains of Emmet were buried is still unclear. Numerous hypotheses about his final resting place have been put forward over the past 200 years, but none of them have ultimately been proven.
Literature (all in English)
- Marianne Elliott: Robert Emmet: The Making of a Legend
- Hugh Gough, David Dickson (Eds.): Ireland and the French Revolution
- Patrick Geoghegan: Robert Emmet: A Life . Gill and Macmillan, ISBN 0-7171-3387-7
- Seán McMahon: Robert Emmet
- Seán Ó Bradaigh: Bold Robert Emmet 1778-1803
- Ruan O'Donnell: Robert Emmet and the Rebellion of 1798
- Ruan O'Donnell: Robert Emmet and the Rising of 1803
- Ruan O'Donnell: Remember Emmet: Images of the Life and legacy of Robert Emmet
- Jim Smyth: The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century
- ATQ Stewart: A Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irish Movement
Web links
- Robert Emmet: The Speech from the Dock. (No longer available online.) In: Kelly Webworks. Archived from the original on March 16, 2015 (English, the complete speech by Emmet from the dock).
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Krüger: Charles Robert Maturin. In: Melmoth the Wanderer. Paperback edition shortened by Michael Krüger. Licensed edition, Wilhelm Heyne, Munich 1971, pp. 346-350, here: p. 347.
- ↑ Michael Krüger (1971), p. 347.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Emmet, Robert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Eiméad, Roibeard; Emmet, Roibeard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Irish rebel leader and nationalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 4, 1778 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dublin |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 20, 1803 |
| Place of death | Dublin |