Robert Emmet Leads an Armed Outbreak

Robert Emmet (4 March 1778 – 20 September 1803) was an Irish Republican, orator and rebel leader.

Following the suppression of the United Irish uprising in 1798, he sought to organize a renewed attempt to overthrow the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, and to establish a nationally representative government.

Emmet entertained, but ultimately abandoned, hopes of immediate French assistance and of coordination with radical militants in Great Britain.

In Ireland, many of the surviving veterans of ‘98 hesitated to lend their support, and his rising in Dublin in 1803 proved abortive.

Emmet’s Proclamation of the Provisional Government to the People of Ireland, his Speech from the Dock, and his “sacrificial” end on the gallows inspired later generations of Irish republicans.

Patrick Pearse, who in 1916 was again to proclaim a provisional government in Dublin, declared Emmet’s attempt “not a failure, but a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish Nationality”.