Irish Rebellion of 1798 - Legacy

Legacy

The 1798 rebellion was possibly the most concentrated outbreak of violence in Irish history, and resulted in thousands of deaths over the course of three months. Contemporary estimates put the death toll from 20,000 (Dublin Castle) to as many as 50,000 of which 2,000 were military and 1,000 loyalist civilians.

Some modern research argues that these figures may be too high. Firstly, a list of British soldiers killed, compiled for a fund to aid the families of dead soldiers, listed just 530 names. Secondly, professor Louis Cullen, through an examination of depletion of the population in County Wexford between 1798 and 1820, put the fatal casualties in that county at 6,000. Historian Thomas Bartlett therefore argues, "a death toll of 10,000 for the entire island would seem to be in order". However other modern historians believe that the death toll may be even higher than contemporary estimates suggest as the widespread fear of repression among relatives of slain rebels led to mass concealment of casualties.

The post-rebellion repression meant few spoke or wrote of the events from rebel perspectives, and as a result almost all initial accounts of the rebellion were written from the loyalist perspective. In many, the role of Catholicism in the rebellion was greatly exaggerated, but ironically this distortion later suited the aims of the Catholic Church in Ireland, allowing it to claim a leadership role in Irish nationalism during the 19th century. The reality that it actively sided with the British during the rising was ignored and the role of the few Catholic priests who took part in the rising, such as Fr. John Murphy, was overemphasised. The secular Enlightenment ideology of the mostly Protestant United Irish leadership was deliberately obscured.

By the centenary of the Rebellion in 1898, conservative Irish nationalists and the Catholic Church would both claim that the United Irishmen had been fighting for "Faith and Fatherland", and this version of events is still, to some extent, the lasting popular memory of the rebellion. A series of popular "98 Clubs" were formed.

At the bi-centenary in 1998, the non-sectarian and democratic ideals of the Rebellion were emphasised in official commemorations, reflecting the desire for reconciliation at the time of the Good Friday Agreement which was hoped would end "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland.