Robert Emmet (4 March, 1778 – 20 September, 1803) was an Irish
nationalist rebel leader. He led an abortive rebellion against British rule in 1803 and was captured, tried and
executed.
Early life
Emmet was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1778. His father served as surgeon to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and to members of the British Royal Family on their visits to Ireland but despite his privileged position in Irish
society Emmet, like many of his contemporaries, was attracted to revolutionary republican politics.
His education at Trinity College, Dublin when he joined the patriotic society, the Society of United Irishmen who had initially campaigned for parliamentary reform and an end
to religious discrimination against Catholics (though Emmet and many United Irishmen were Protestants). However, when the United
Irishmen were banned following the British declaration of war on Revolutionary France
in 1793, the organisation was forced underground and now aimed for full Irish independence, preparing for insurrection with
French aid. Robert Emmet's brother Thomas Addis Emmet was a senior member of the
United Irishmen and had to flee for France to escape prosecution for treason. The
rebellion of 1798 was crushed but Emmet and others sought exile in
France, joining the groups of emigre revolutionaries in Paris.
In 1802 during a brief lull in the Napoleonic Wars Emmet joined an Irish delegation
to Napoleon asking for support. However the delegation returned unsuccessfully.
Statue of Robert Emmet in Dublin, Ireland
1803 rebellion
When European conflict was renewed in May 1803, Emmet returned to Ireland and together with
other revolutionaries such as Thomas Russell and James Hope , prepared to launch a new rebellion. Emmet began to manufacture weapons and explosives
at a number of premises in Dublin and even innovated a folding pike which could be
concealed under a cloak, being fitted with a hinge. Unlike in 1798, the preparations for the uprising were successfully concealed, but a premature explosion
at one of Emmet's arms depots killed a man and forced Emmet to bring forward the date of the rising before the authorities'
suspicions were aroused.
Emmet was unable to secure the help of Michael Dwyer's Wicklow rebels and many Kildare rebels who
had arrived turned back due to the scarcity of firearms they had been promised but the rising went ahead in Dublin on the evening of July 23, 1803. Failing to
seize Dublin Castle, which was lightly defended, the rising amounted to a large-scale riot
in the Thomas Street area. The Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Lord Kilwarden, chief prosecutor of William Orr in 1797, was dragged
from his carriage and hacked to death. Emmet personally witnessed a dragoon being pulled from his horse and piked to death, the sight of which prompted him to call off the rising
to avoid further bloodshed.
Emmet's fate
Emmet fled into hiding but was captured on 25 August, near Harold's cross. He endangered
his life by moving his hiding place from Rathfarnam to Harold's Cross so that he could be near his sweetheart, Sarah Curran. He was tried for treason on 19 September; the Crown
repaired the weaknesses in its case by secretly buying the assistance of Emmet's defense attorney, Leonard Macnally, for £200 and a pension. However his assistant Peter Burrowes could not be bought and
pleaded the case as best he could.
After he had been sentenced Emmet delivered a speech, the Speech from the Dock, which is especially remembered for its
closing sentences and secured his posthumous fame among executed Irish republicans.
However no definitive version was written down by Emmet himself.
- "Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dares now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance
asperse them. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth then and not till then, let my epitaph be
written".
An earlier version of the speech was published in 1818, in a biography on Sarah Curran's father John, emphasizing that Emmet's epitaph would be written on the vindication of his character, and not
specifically when Ireland took its place as a nation. It closed:[1]
- "I am here ready to die. I am not allowed to vindicate my character; no man shall dare to vindicate my character; and when
I am prevented from vindicating myself, let no man dare to calumniate me. Let my character and my motives repose in obscurity and
peace, till other times and other men can do them justice. Then shall my character be vindicated; then may my epitaph be
written."
On 20 September Emmet was executed by hanging and beheading in Thomas Street. The
remains were then secretly buried. The whereabouts of his remains has remained a mystery.[2] It was suspected that it had been buried secretly in the vault of a Dublin
Anglican church. When the vault was inspected in the 1950s a headless corpse that could not
be identified, but which was suspected of being Emmet's, was found. In the 1980s the church was turned into a night club and all
the coffins removed from the vaults. What was done with the mysterious corpse is unknown.
Legacy
Monument to Robert Emmet on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.
Although Emmet's rebellion was a complete failure, he became an heroic figure in Irish history. His speech from the dock is
widely quoted and remembered, especially among Irish nationalists.[2][3][4] Emmet's housekeeper, Anne Devlin, is also remembered in Irish
history for enduring torture without providing information to the authorities.[2]
Robert Emmet wrote a letter from his cell in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin on 1803-09-08. He addressed it to "Miss Sarah Curran, the Priory, Rathfarnham" and handed it to a prison warden, George Dunn, whom he
trusted to deliver it. Dunn betrayed him and gave the letter to the government authorities, an action that nearly cost Sarah
Curran her life. His attempt to hide near Sarah Curran, which cost him his life, and
his parting letter to her made him into a romantic character, which appealed to the
Victorian Era's appetite for sentiment. His story became the subject of stage
melodramas during the 19th century, most notably Dion
Boucicault's hugely inaccurate 1884 play Robert Emmet, inaccuracies including Emmet
and Sarah being portrayed as Roman Catholics, John Philpot Curran being portrayed as a Unionist, and Emmet being
killed onstage by firing squad.
Robert's friend from Trinity College, Thomas Moore, championed his cause by writing
hugely popular ballads about him and Sarah Curran, such as
- "Oh breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade,
- Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid!"
and
- "She is far from the land where her young lover sleeps
- And lovers around her are sighing."
Washington Irving, one of America's greatest early writers, devoted a story (The
Broken Heart) in his magnus opus The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon to the romance between Emmet and Sarah Curran,
citing it as an example of how a broken heart can be fatal.
Robert Emmet's older brother, Thomas Addis Emmet would emigrate to the United
States shortly after Robert's execution and would eventually serve as the New
York State Attorney General. His great-grand-nieces are the prominent American portait painters Lydia Field Emmet, Rosina Sherwood Emmet, Jane Emmet de
Glehn and Ellen Emmet Rand. Robert Emmet's great-great nephew was the American playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood.
Places named after Emmet include Emmetsburg, Iowa.[3] There is a statue of Emmet in front of the under-construction
Academy of Science, in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
See also
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
References
- ^ Phillips, C. Recollections of Curran (1818 Milliken, Dublin)
pp.256-259.
- ^ a b c Sean Murphy
(2003-09-20). Irish Historical Mysteries: The Grave of Robert Emmet.
- ^ a b A Small Town Struggles to Preserve Its Irish Heritage. Irish America Magazine Sept/Oct.
1993.
- ^ Ruán O’Donnell (July 2003). Robert Emmet: enigmatic
revolutionary. Irish Democrat.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
- Irish Historical
Mysteries: The Grave of Robert Emmet
- The (Show?)
Trial of Robert Emmet, by Justice Adrian Hardiman (Supreme Court of Ireland),
History Ireland , Vol. 13 No. 4, July/August 2005
- RTÉ's 'Ireland's
Millennia: People'
- 'Anecdotes of Irish judges':
featuring recollections about Emmet
- Speculation about the
location of Emmet's grave
- Speech Irish
junior minister Dick Roche, TD to the Emmet summer school
- DNA tests to tell if
skull is Emmet's
- Emmet's 'Proclamation of Independence'
- Robert Emmet's Speech from the
dock
- Bronze sculpture of Robert Emmet (1916),
by Jerome Stanley Connor, in Emmet Park, Washington, DC (photos)
- Éamon De Valera unveils statue of
Robert Emmet in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, July 20, 1919
Additional reading
- 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
- Sean McMahon, Robert Emmet
- Sean O 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
- A.T.Q. Stewart, A Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irish Movement
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
