The Year of Liberty

Thomas Pakenham reconstructs the Irish Rebellion of 1798 from the organisation of the Society of United Irishmen to the outbreaks of violence in Leinster, Ulster and Connacht. The movement’s republican programme drew inspiration from the American and French revolutions, but government infiltration, arrests and coercive disarmament weakened its leadership before the planned rising began. Pakenham follows the collapse of the Dublin conspiracy, the large popular rebellion in Wexford and the separate northern risings, showing how local grievances, religious divisions and revolutionary politics combined in different ways.

The narrative centres on figures such as Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward FitzGerald, William Pitt, Charles Cornwallis and the French general Jean Joseph Amable Humbert. It traces battles, reprisals, massacres and the French landing at Killala, which produced the brief victory at Castlebar before the expedition was defeated. Drawing on official reports, correspondence, newspapers and popular verse, Pakenham presents the rebellion as a national crisis whose suppression accelerated the political course towards the Act of Union.