Wolfe Tone

Irish rebel leader

• Born: June 20, 1763
• Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
• Died: November 19, 1798
• Place of death: Dublin, Ireland

Impulsive, charismatic, intense, and dynamic, Tone personified the intoxicating atmosphere of the 1790’s in Europe and worked with total dedication to establish an independent and liberal Irish Republic. His strength of personality and intellectual abilities set him apart from most of the United Irish leaders, and the circumstances of his martyrdom have transformed him into an iconographic figure for Irish nationalists of all shades of opinion.

Early Life

Wolfe Tone was born at 44 Stafford Street (since renamed Wolfe Tone Street) in north Dublin, in what was then a largely lower-middle-class neighborhood. His father, Peter Tone, was a coach and carriage maker, and his mother was Margaret Lambert. The family was Protestant and had five children; Wolfe was baptized at St. Mary’s Anglican Church. However, his early life was anything but religious.

Wolfe Tone was a wild youth, spending a lot of time in carousing, drinking, womanizing, and frequenting taverns into the early hours. As with many young men of that time, he was quick to take offense and could quite readily resort to violence over any slight; thus, he was involved in violent altercations. To keep him out of trouble, he was sent to County Galway to tutor the two sons of the parliamentarian Colonel Richard Martin. However, he engaged in an affair with Martin’s wife, Elizabeth Vesey, and reputedly fathered a child by her.

He was admitted on scholarship into Trinity College, Dublin, to study for the Irish bar but made indifferent progress, finally graduating in 1786. He fell in love with sixteen-year-old Matilda Witherington and, over the objections of both families, the couple ran off and were married. Despite this inauspicious start, the marriage proved solid. Wolfe Tone had moderated his alcohol consumption and the couple had two sons, William Theobald Wolfe Tone (1791-1828), who later served in the French and American armed forces and wrote a biography of his father, and Francis Rawdon Tone. Finishing his legal studies in London at the Middle Temple in 1789, Wolfe Tone returned to Dublin.

Life’s Work

Wolfe Tone’s interest strayed from the law to politics. There were at first few signs of the radicalism that would become his hallmark. He tried to persuade the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, into supporting government funding for a proposed Pacific island colony that Tone envisioned establishing. Some scholars believe that it was Pitt’s rather nonchalant rejection of the project that embittered Tone against England—though this seems to overstate the power of personal slight. What is certain is that Tone absorbed the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, and the tangible achievements of the American and the French Revolutions.

By 1791, Tone had become committed to liberal and nationalist ideas, including Catholic emancipation, religious freedom, and self-government. He broke with the parliamentary reform movement of Henry Grattan and Henry Flood, convinced that working within the English system under the British crown was futile and that democratic objectives could be secured only in an independent, republican Ireland. He first articulated these views in Catholics: An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland (1791), a 54-page work that catapulted him into prominence. Along with James Napper Tandy, Thomas Russell, Simon Butler, and Samuel McTier, Tone formed the Society of United Irishmen, first in Belfast (October 14, 1791) and then in Dublin (November 9, 1791). Working to bridge the gap between Catholics and Protestants to forge a common front to achieve Irish freedom, Tone became chief secretary for the Catholic Committee from 1792 to 1793. Though his efforts were instrumental in securing the passage of Hobart’s Catholic Relief Act in 1793 and he was lauded for his energy and efforts by committee colleagues, he was dissatisfied with the limited scope of the law’s reforms.

Tone became increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of reform and more influenced by the extreme revolutionary republicanism that had assumed control in France. The arrest and suicide of the French agent William Jackson on April 30, 1794, led to revelations that Tone was involved in a conspiracy to assist a proposed French invasion of Ireland. Though the United Irish were outlawed, Tone was allowed to sail into exile to the United States in May of 1795. He remained less than a year; by February, 1796, he was in Paris trying to generate support from the French government to mount an invasion of Ireland.

In December, 1796, Tone, now an officer in the French army, accompanied an expeditionary force of some fifteen thousand troops under the command of General Louis Lazare Hoche. For several days (December 22-27, 1796) the French fleet was sequestered in Bantry Bay, County Cork, unable to effect a landing because of horrendous weather conditions, and was forced to turn back. Tone’s schemes for making a second attempt suffered a severe setback with Hoche’s death in September of 1797. General Napoleon I, who inherited the project, preferred to direct his efforts to an invasion of Egypt, and consequently the French government committed few resources to an Irish campaign. In addition to receiving much-reduced support, Tone basically had to start from the beginning, and the timetable for invasion was substantially delayed.

When the 1798 Irish Rebellion broke out in Ireland during the late spring, Tone was still trying to put together a substantial invading force and was unable to embark from France until the autumn, long after the uprisings had been suppressed and after failed attempts by French General Jean Joseph Humbert and by Tone’s colleague Napper Tandy. A fleet sailing out of the port of Brest under command of Admiral Bompart transported Tone and three thousand French troops to Lough Swilly off the coast of County Donegal, where they battled with British ships on October 12, 1798. The British defeated the French and Tone was ultimately captured, imprisoned at Newgate Gaol in Dublin, and court-martialed on charges of treason. Eloquently defending himself and taking the opportunity to propagandize his cause, Tone was nonetheless sentenced to death by hanging. He made the request that, as an officer in the French army, he be granted execution by firing squad. When it appeared that his request had been denied (though unbeknownst to him the judge had in fact ordered a stay of execution to consider the matter), Tone cut his own throat with a penknife on November 12. He lingered for a week before dying of his wounds on November 19, 1798.

Significance

Wolfe Tone’s unquenchable idealism and his unswerving commitment to his principles provided him a legendary aura that no other Irish revolutionary figure was capable of exceeding. He has become the indispensable prop upon which the movements of the Young Irelanders, the Fenian Brotherhood, Patrick Pearse, James Conolly, and the various incarnations of the Irish Republican Army have looked to for inspiration and support.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Thomas, ed. Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Compiled and arranged by William Theobald Wolfe Tone. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1999. An expanded edition of the original two-volume biography published in 1826 by Tone’s son.

Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. A comprehensive history, from King Louis XIV’s accession to the throne in 1774 to Napoleon’s assumption of power in 1802. Includes a chronology of events and an essay examining the historiography of the French Revolution.

Elliott, Marianne. Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989. An updated, scholarly study of later biographies of Tone, in which the author makes a real attempt to humanize her subject and to strip away the layers of adulation and hero worship that have accumulated over the centuries.

Killen, John. The Decade of the United Irishmen: Contemporary Accounts, 1791-1801. Belfast, Ireland: Blackstaff Press, 1998. A collection of contemporary sources in which Tone and his writings play a particularly important part.

Moody, T. W., and F. X. Martin. The Course of Irish History. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1984. Intended to be more a general history. In this work, Tone is accorded great significance in the forming of Irish Republican thinking.

Pakenham, Thomas. The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798. New York: Random House, 1997. The most complete and readable study of the rebellion, with ample illustrative material.

Smyth, Jim, ed. Revolution, Counterrevolution, and Union: Ireland in the 1790’s. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Sets into perspective the atmosphere and ethos of the decade as well as Tone’s role.

Tone, Theobald Wolfe. The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763-98. Edited by T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell, and C. J. Woods. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A three-volume comprehensive collection of Tone’s writings. Includes bibliographical references.