Emmet’s military technology

Robert Emmet’s interest in the use of sophisticated ordnance perplexed many United Irish contemporaries, not least Wexford hero Thomas Cloney, who deemed them a waste of resources. Cloney’s point was […]

“The dog that didn’t bark”: the North and 1803

In 1803 the North was very much the dog that didn’t bark. Robert Emmet’s verdict on the Dublin insurrection—‘there was failure in all: plan, preparation and men’—applied to an even […]

“A more general and rooted spirit of disaffection”: the 1803 rising in Kildare

In the aftermath of the 1803 rebellion Robert Emmet frankly admitted that ‘To change the day was impossible for I expected the counties to act, and feared to lose the […]

Anne Devlin: the heroine as laundress?

Anne Devlin’s gravestone in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, tells us that she was ‘the faithful servant’ of Robert Emmet, but that otherwise she lived ‘in obscurity and poverty’, dying in September […]