Theobald Wolfe Tone

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Theobald Wolfe Tone

Theobald Wolfe Tone , usually just called Wolfe Tone (born June 20, 1763 in Dublin ; † November 19, 1798 ibid), was a lawyer and a radical leader of the Irish independence movement and its 1798 rebellion . In 1791 he founded the Society of United Irishmen .

Beginnings

Theobald was the eldest son of Peter Tone, a carriage manufacturer, and worked as a tutor. He had a relationship with his employer's wife. In 1786 he kidnapped 16-year-old Matilda Witherington, who became his wife. Because he had no chance of becoming an officer after that, he studied law and was a lawyer in Dublin from 1789.

Politician

Since his proposal to found a military colony in the South Seas ( Hawaii ) was not taken up by William Pitt the Younger , he went into politics. Soon the Whigs became aware of him and his font " A Northern Wig " is said to have had a circulation of over 10,000. In this pamphlet he pointed to the contradictions between representatives of parliamentary reform and the recognition of Catholics such as Henry Flood and Henry Grattan and the fighters for an independent Ireland.

Society of United Irishmen

In October 1791 Tone founded the Society of United Irishmen ( Society of the United Irishmen ) together with Thomas Russell (1767-1803), James Napper Tandy , Archibald Hamilton Rowan and others . With this he strove, who was himself a Protestant , to unite Irish Catholics and Protestants in common struggle.

He turned against Charlemont and Grattan, who was oriented towards Edmund Burke , advocated the ideals of the French Revolution and oriented himself towards Georges Danton and Thomas Paine .

Little by little, radicals like John Keogh of Dublin became more influential in the Society of the United Irishmen. In the spring of 1792, Wolfe Tone became the full-time secretary of the Catholic Committee as a Protestant as a further sign of his non-denominational orientation. He supported the influence of the French Jacobins on the newly formed St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, and fueled hopes of a French invasion. When secret papers were discovered by the government, some United Irishmen leaders (Reynolds and Hamilton Rowan ) fled and the association collapsed for some time. Due to good contacts with the ruling party, Wolfe Tone was able to emigrate to the USA in 1795 . After a stay in Philadelphia he wrote to Thomas Russell that he hated the American people because they were not democratic enough and valued a "high-flying aristocrat" like George Washington . In general, he rejected the money nobility even more than the nobility of birth.

Despite his agreements with the British government demanding political abstinence from him for permission to emigrate, he went to Paris with Reynolds, Rowan and Napper Tandy to persuade the French government to invade Ireland. There he spoke to De La Croix and Carnot in 1796 , who were impressed by his energy. He proposed an attack on Bristol and wrote several memoranda about it. In it he explained something about the Irish situation and promised a general Irish uprising if a French invading army arrives. The Directory had information from Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor that confirmed Tone's assessments and was preparing an expeditionary force under Louis Lazare Hoche . On December 15, 1796, 43 ships with around 14,000 men set sail in Brest . But the company failed just like a Franco-Dutch one. They didn't even land in Ireland. Napoléon Bonaparte did not support the Irish uprising of 1798, but set out for Egypt . But Wolfe Tone was able to get the Directory to send a small force under General François Louis Humbert, which landed in Killala Bay and achieved some successes in Connacht before being beaten by Charles Cornwallis . Wolfe Tones brother Matthew was captured and hanged. A second operation by Napper Tandy failed on the Donegal coast , and in a third operation by Admiral Jean-Baptiste Bompard with 3,000 men under General Jean Hardÿ , Wolfe Tone was captured in 1798 because he did not accept an offer to flee. Before the court martial in Dublin he declared that he was a French officer and that he should therefore not be hanged. Since he was still doomed he committed with a pocket knife suicide . Theobald Wolfe Tone is buried in Bodenstown , County Kildare's cemetery.

He stands out among the Irish revolutionaries for his realistic judgment, quick decision-making ability and great courage. His diaries provide an interesting picture of Paris at the time of the Directory. They were published by his son William Theobald Wolfe Tone (1791-1828), who emigrated to Waterloo in the USA after serving in Napoleon's army, where he died on October 10, 1828 in New York.

Afterlife

Statue of Tone in Dublin

The republican movement , such as organizations such as Sinn Féin or the IRA , reveres Wolfe Tone as one of its founders, and he is also an important symbol for Irish republicanism, which embodies the unity of members of different denominations in the struggle for independence and unity in Ireland. Every year on the last Sunday in June, the Bodenstown Commemoration takes place in Bodenstown , a series of (separate) rallies and commemorative events by left and republican organizations, in which several thousand people take part. For many of the participating groups, the commemoration is the opportunity to announce programmatic statements or the political agenda for the coming year.

Named after Wolfe Tone include the folk band The Wolfe Tones and the Wolfe Tone Society , an important Marxist intellectual group within the Republican movement in the 1960s , as well as the most important bridge over the Corrib in Galway .

literature

  • Th. Bartlett (Ed.): Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone. 1998
  • L. Chambers: Rebellion in Kildare 1790-1803.
  • M. Deane (Ed.): Theobald Wolfe Tone and Divers Hands. 1998
  • J. Killen (Ed.): The Decade of the United Irishmen. Contemporary Accounts 1791–1801. 1997

Web links