On this day, 1796 – Wolfe Tone arrives in France

IN FEBRUARY 1796, the founder of the United Irishmen, Theobald Wolfe Tone, arrived in France to organise support for an expedition to Ireland.

The Reverend William Jackson, an emissary of the new French republican government, was arrested after his arrival in Ireland in April 1794 to meet with the United Irish leaders. He had been betrayed by an informer and his arrest caused confusion in the organisation. Many of the leaders, including Tone and Archibald Hamilton Rowan, fearing arrest as a result of information passed to the authorities, were forced to leave the country.

In May 1795, ten days after Jackson’s death (he committed suicide in the dock at Green Street courthouse just before sentence was passed), and as the government began to suppress the United Irishmen, driving it underground, Tone and his family sailed from Belfast for America.

On arrival in Philadelphia he reported to the French Government’s minister there on the growing strength of the United Irishmen in Ireland. He obtained letters of introduction from the French minister to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris.

In January 1796, Tone set sail from America to France to enlist the support of Napoleon for an expedition to Ireland. He arrived in Le Havre in early February and met with Lazare Carnot, the Minister for War, but as the governing French Directory had many other preoccupations, his efforts to persuade them to mount an expedition to Ireland initially met with little success.

Almost despairing of receiving French aid, Tone wrote in his diary “I am utterly ignorant whether there is any design to attempt the expedition or not; I put it twice to Carnot and could extract no answer. My belief is that, as yet, there is no one step taken in the business and that, in fact, the expedition will not be undertaken.”

It wasn’t until he was joined in Paris by Arthur O’Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald the following June that any real progress was made regarding French aid.

Impressed with O’Connor’s detailed report on the situation in Ireland, the French Government finally agreed to send an expedition. The Directory appointed General Hoche to lead an expedition and Tone was made an adjutant general in the French Army. Detailed planing for Hoche’s expedition, which would sail for Ireland the following December with Tone on board, began in earnest during the following weeks.

Theobald Wolfe Tone arrived in France to organise aid for a rising in Ireland on 1 February 1796, 220 years ago this week.