Devlin is born in 1780 in Cronebeg, near Aughrim, County Wicklow, the second of four daughters and three sons of Bryan and Winifred (née Byrne) Devlin, who are Catholics engaged in farming. Her father and several relatives are members of the Society of United Irishmen, advocating for Irish independence. Though she and her immediate family do not initially participate in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, they provide shelter and assistance to rebels, and their home is destroyed by Crown forces, while her father is imprisoned until 1801.
After the family moves to Rathfarnham, Dublin, Devln becomes the housekeeper for Robert Emmet in April 1803, providing cover for his Dublin operations planning a nationalist uprising. She actively aids the United Irishmen by arranging meetings, transporting arms, and acting as a messenger to insurgent forces, notably her cousin Michael Dwyer in the Wicklow Mountains. The rebellion carefully orchestrated for July 23, 1803, collapses due to inadequate popular support and confusion among the rebels.
Following the failed uprising, Devlin and her family are arrested. She endures brutal interrogation by Major Henry Charles Sirr and is subjected to half-hanging, solitary confinement, and threats against her family, yet she refuses to reveal any critical information about Emmet or other conspirators. She spends over two years in Kilmainham Gaol and, despite her endurance, her health is permanently affected. She is released in 1806 after sustained lobbying and public outrage over her mistreatment.
After her release, Devlin works as a maid and laundress, initially assisted by the Emmet family and their acquaintances. She marries William Campbell in 1811, though she experiences increasing poverty after his death in 1845. She continues to be remembered for her courage, and her experiences are recorded by historians and contemporaries such as Dr. Richard Robert Madden and Brother Luke Cullen, preserving her memoirs and accounts of her revolutionary involvement.
Devlin dies on September 18, 1851, in Dublin and is interred at Glasnevin Cemetery, later commemorated with a monument and Celtic cross.
Devlin is widely celebrated as Ireland’s first female political prisoner and a symbol of loyalty and courage. A statue in Rathfarnham, annual memorial services in Dublin’s St. Catherine’s Church, and the naming of community centers in her honor (e.g., Anne Devlin Community Centre, 2026) reflect her enduring impact. Her life has inspired literature and film, including Pat Murphy‘s 1984 movie Anne Devlin, which portrays her perspective during the Emmet rebellion. She is credited in James Joyce’s short story “A Mother” as a model for the character Mrs. Kearney.
Anne Devlin’s life embodies courage, steadfast nationalism, and sacrifice. She actively supports Robert Emmet and the United Irishmen, suffers imprisonment without betrayal, and faces lifelong hardship, yet remains commemorated as a heroine of Irish independence.
(Pictured: Anne Devlin statue in Rathfarnham, Dublin)
Born at Hillside Terrace in Howth, County Dublin, on May 5, 1898, Gilmore is the second son of Philip Gilmore, an accountant originally from County Antrim, and Fanny Angus. Despite his father primarily working for Unionist landlords, and being educated at home, George and his brothers Harry and Charlie all turn toward Irish republicanism. By 1916, Gilmore has become a member of Fianna Éireann, the Republican boy scouts, and later a member of the South County Dublin battalion of the Irish Volunteers.
Gilmore fights in the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence and in the Irish Civil War on the Anti-Treaty IRA side. During the civil war he is captured and imprisoned, but manages to escape custody in August 1923, the aftermath of which causes riots as the remaining prisoners are placed in solitary confinement.
Following the end of the civil war, Gilmore serves as the secretary of future TaoiseachSeán Lemass, as well alongside Frank Aiken. During the early 1920s, he, Lemass and Aiken regularly meet with the IRA army council to represent the emerging political leadership of Irish republicanism that coalesces as Fianna Fáil in 1926. The trio regularly sits opposite IRA leaders Frank Ryan, Peadar O’Donnell, and Seán Russell.
In October 1925, Gilmore and Lemass organise the escape of nineteen IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. As part of the jailbreak, Gilmore impersonates a member of Garda Síochána. None of the nineteen escapees are subsequently recaptured, and their escape serves as a major propaganda coup. However, the following month, Gilmore is involved in a riot that takes place on Armistice Day and he is subsequently arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He resists the entire duration; first resisting the arrest and then, once imprisoned, refusing to wear a prison uniform and going on hunger strike. Early in 1928, members of the IRA attack Mountjoy Prison where he is being held and shoot the warden after a story emerges that Gilmore had previously been the victim of a vicious beating by the guards. He is released in 1929 but re-arrested and re-imprisoned almost immediately, resulting in a retaliatory beating by the guards that leaves him unconscious.
Sometime between 1929 and 1930, Gilmore is sent by the IRA to Russia to receive military training and to seek aid.
Gilmore is arrested yet again upon his return to Ireland in April 1931, charged with having resisted arrest ten months previously. In October he tries to escape with the help of his brother Charlie and almost succeeds, using a plot involving mock pistols wrapped in silver to intimidate the guards. In the aftermath of the failed escape, his treatment in Arbour Hill Prison from 1931-32 is abysmal. He once again refuses to wear prison clothing because of his political status and remains naked in a windowless cell from October 1931 until February 1932. In June 1931, of a cache of weapons are discovered near his home at Killakee in the Dublin Mountains, which results in him and his brother Charlie being placed before a military tribunal which sentences him to five years in prison and Charlie to three (in 1932 Fianna Fail comes to power and the brothers are released). Neither recognises the authority of the court, with George stating, “I do not want anybody to think I excuse myself for such a charge as having arms, I am admittedly hostile to British imperialism and international capitalism.”
Gilmore’s fortunes are dramatically altered when Fianna Fáil emerges victorious in the 1932 Irish general election. In the aftermath, Frank Aiken, former Chief of Staff of the IRA and new Minister for Defence goes to see Gilmore on March 9 and on the next day all republican prisoners are released as part of a general amnesty. Thirty thousand supporters greet the prisoners at College Green, Dublin.
Finally out of long-term imprisonment, Gilmore is eager to resume working toward a socialist Ireland. He has supported Peadar O’Donnell’s shortlived socialist republican group Saor Éire from prison, but in the aftermath of its demise, he concludes that the group has spent too much time imagining what it might do if in government, and not enough time considering what the immediate aims of the IRA should be. With his close personal ties to their leadership, Gilmore has a positive view of Fianna Fáil, and at this point in time believes their goals differ little from his own and those of the IRA. Nevertheless, He encourages the IRA to not become too closely associated with Fianna Fáil, fearing the IRA will become a subservient body. He himself has ascended to the IRA’s army council upon his release, and in March 1932 is among representatives of the Army Council that liaises with Éamon de Valera about a possible partnership between the IRA and Fianna Fáil.
On August 14, 1932, Gilmore and fellow Irish republican T. J. Ryan are beaten badly, shot and wounded by plain-clothes members the Garda Síochána (Criminal Investigation Department) in Kilrush, County Clare. This incident is blamed on the police by an official Tribunal of Inquiry report one month later.
In March 1934, Gilmore, alongside Frank Ryan and Peadar O’Donnell, refuse to continue on as members of the IRA executive as part of a deepening rift over the direction of the IRA. Left-wing members of the IRA such as Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell insist that the IRA needs to tie their activity to social agitation in addition to their military aims, but this is a minority viewpoint, with the majority believing the IRA should have a “strictly military” outlook. The rift ultimately spirals into Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell being court-martialed and expelled in April.
In the aftermath, Gilmore works with Roddy Connolly, Nora Connolly O’Brien and Peadar O’Donnell to found the Republican Congress, a left-wing socialist Irish republican group. The group breaks up in 1935 over internal differences. Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell believe that the Republican Congress should be a united front, an alliance of all republican groups in Ireland. Roddy Connolly and other members of the Communist Party of Ireland believe that the Congress should be a vanguard party. A conference is held by the Republican Congress in Rathmines, Dublin, in September 1934 to vote on the issue. Before the vote is taken, Gilmore gives a speech in which he accuses Fianna Fáil of using republicanism as a means to promote Irish capitalism. When the votes are taken on whether the Republican Congress should be a united front or a vanguard party, Gilmore’s united front faction wins. However, supporters of the vanguard party concept such as Roddy Connolly immediately resign from the Congress in protest and walk out on the group. It proves to be a blow that the Congress never recovers from and the group is defunct by 1936. Gilmore makes a last-ditch effort to save the Congress by traveling to the United States to seek funds from Irish American groups but is not successful.
Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Gilmore and O’Donnell become supporters of the International Brigades. Both men travel to Spain personally, during which they are involved in a plane crash and Gilmore’s leg is broken.
Following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Gilmore writes an appeal pleading with the IRA to dump arms until the war in Europe is over and denounces them for flirting with fascism by seeking aid from Germany.
During the 1960s, when the republican movement once again moves to the left, Gilmore and O’Donnell are once again in demand as speakers and as writers in republican publications. In 1966, for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Gilmore releases a pamphlet entitled “Labour and the republican movement” in which he espouses the principles of James Connolly. Additionally, he appeals to young republicans not to repeat the mistake older republicans had made in being too rigid in their views and too short on policy.
Gilmore dies on June 29, 1985, at the age of 87, in a nursing home in Howth, County Dublin.
Maude is born on May 22, 1941, in Casla, County Galway, and reared in the Irish language. Her mother, Máire Nic an Iomaire, is a school teacher, and she receives her primary education from her on a small island off the coast of Rosmuc. Her father, John Maude, is from Cill Bhriocáin township near Rosmuc. She attends secondary school at Coláiste Chroí Mhuire, Spiddal, an all-Irish language school in County Galway. She later credits one of her Irish language teachers there, Sister Ailbhe, as an early influence in cultivating her writing confidence.
Maude begins writing modern literature in Irish in secondary school and develops a rhythm of poetry closely attuned to the rhythms of the Conamara Theas dialect of Connacht Irish, spoken in her native district. Though not conventionally religious, she admits in an interview that she has a deep interest in spirituality and that this has left its mark on her poetry. She is noted as a highly effective reciter of her own verse. Géibheann is the best-known of her poems, and is studied at Leaving Certificate Higher Level Irish in the Republic of Ireland. A posthumous collected edition, Caitlín Maude, Dánta, is published in 1984, Caitlín Maude: file in 1985 in Ireland and Italy, and Coiscéim in 1985.
Maude is widely known as an actress. She acts at the university, at An Taibhdhearc in Galway and the Damer Theatre in Dublin, and is particularly successful in a production of An Triail by Máiréad Ní Ghráda at the Damer Theatre in 1964. She plays the protagonist, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, an unmarried mother who experiences family rejection, a stay in a Magdalene laundry, and ultimately murders her infant child followed by suicide. In 2017, Former Irish Minister For JusticeMáire Geoghegan-Quinn cites this performance as “pathbreaking”: “Caitlín Maude played the role, when nobody talked about the issue and when, as we know, women were still devalued, still caricatured, still incarcerated and disenfranchised if they became mothers out of wedlock.” Maude herself is a playwright and co-authors An Lasair Choille with poet Michael Hartnett.
Maude is very active in the Celtic Revival. She founds An Bonnán Buí, an Irish-speaking social club in the 1970s in Dublin. As a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Gaelgeoir community, she is active in many direct action campaigns by the language revival organization Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta, including the campaign that forces the Irish State to establish a Gaelscoil (Irish-medium primary school) Scoil Santain in the suburb of Tallaght, County Dublin. A second Irish language school, Scoil Chaitlin Maude, opens in Tallaght in 1985 shortly after her death. It begins as a two-room school with 35 children and has grown to a 16 room new building serving 345 children as of 2023.
Maude is also a distinguished sean-nós singer. She makes one album in this genre, Caitlín, released in 1975 on Gael Linn Records and now available as a CD. It contains both traditional songs and a selection of readings of her poetry.
Maude marries Cathal Ó Luain in 1969. They have one child Caomhán, their son.
Maude dies of complications from cancer on June 6, 1982, at the age of 41. She is buried in Bohernabreena graveyard, which overlooks the city from the Wicklow Mountains.
In 2001, a new writers’ centre in Galway is named after her: Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude, Gaillimh.
Since Maude’s death, critics in several languages have continued to study her literary works. Irish writer and The Irish Times columnist Michael Harding cites her as one of a few examples of groundbreaking women to “spin the hurt and wound of their oppression, and weave new loves songs and laments.” Irish Studies professor Sarah McKibben notes that Maude’s innovation in the poem represents an instance of recent Irish writers transgressing “literary, nationalistic, sociolinguistic and gender norms to craft new ways of writing in Irish.”
According to Louis de Paor, “Although no collection of her work was published during her lifetime, Caitlín Maude had a considerable influence on Irish language poetry and poets, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, Micheál Ó hAirtnéide, Tomás Mac Síomóin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. That influence is a measure of the dramatic force of her personality, her exemplary ingenuity and commitment to the language, and her ability as a singer to embody the emotional disturbance at the heart of a song. Her collected poems are relatively slight, including incomplete drafts and fragments, but reveal a poetic voice confident of its own authority, drawing on the spoken language of the Connemara Gaeltacht but rarely on its conventions of oral composition or, indeed, on precedents in Irish poetry in either language. The best of her work is closer to the American poetry of the 1960s in its use of looser forms that follow the rhythms of the spoken word and the sense of the poem as direct utterance without artifice, a technique requiring a high degree of linguistic precision and formal control.”
Maude’s work has also been translated into English and Spanish. Spanish language critic Pura Coloma notes that Maude’s work played a role in preserving Connemaran culture, as she “utilizes her own style to replicate the deep rhythms and tonalities of the regional voice.”
Fiach mac Aodha Ó Broin (anglicised as Feagh or Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne), the son of the chief of the O’Byrnes of the Gabhail Raghnaill, is executed in Farranerin, County Wicklow, on May 8, 1597.
His sept, a minor one, claims descent from the 11th century King of Leinster, Bran Mac Máel Mórda, and is centered at Ballinacor North in Glenmalure, a steep valley in the fastness of the Wicklow Mountains. Their chiefs style themselves as Lords of Ranalagh. The territory of the Gabhail Rabhnaill stretches from Glendalough south to the Forest of Shillelagh in Wexford and west to the borders of present-day County Carlow, an area of some 150,000 acres.
By the time of his death in 1579, O’Byrne’s father, Hugh MacShane O’Byrne, has brought his sept to prominence much to the discomfort of the senior branch of the clan, the Crioch Branagh. The Gabhaill Rabhaill has allied themselves to several leading clans in Leinster and are related by blood and marriage to the Kavanaghs, O’ Tooles, O’Connors and the O’Moores.
O’Byrne makes a name for himself as an enemy of the English. Resenting the greed and cruelty of the Elizabethan adventurers and settlers, he raids their villages and kills them or drives them out. He is appalled at the ruthless cruelty of the seneschals (Stewarts) Thomas Masterson and Sir Henry Harrington and in 1580 goes into open rebellion when Masterson summarily execute many Kavanagh clansmen.
Other clans join with O’Byrne and when James Eustace, 3rd Viscount Baltinglass, angered by the treatment of the CatholicOld English also rebells, O’Byrne joins with him. The English are appalled at this, already Munster is in turmoil as the Earl of Desmond is in rebellion and in the north the O’ Neills are moving also against the English.
An army of 3,000 men is sent into the Wicklow Mountains but O’Byrne and Eustace are waiting for them in Glenmalure. Over 800 English lose their lives at the Battle of Glenmalure and the rest flee back to Dublin. The following year the English offer terms, Eustace refuses and flees to Spain but O’Byrne and the other clan chiefs accept the terms and are pardoned.
In the following years, O’Byrne keeps a low profile. He makes no overt moves against the English, instead of holding them at bay and even giving them hostages.
In 1592, Hugh Roe O’Donnell, with brothers Art and Henry MacShane O’Neill, escapes from Dublin Castle. The breakout has been planned with the help of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and the escapees fled to the safety of Glenmalure. It is a severe winter and Art dies from exposure and is buried in O’Byrne land but O’Byrne is able to transport Hugh Roe and Henry away to safety.
In January 1594, the English decide to move against O’Byrne, claiming that he is involved in treason. The Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir William Russell manages to take Ballinacor but O’Byrne and his wife Rose escape.
The English spend a long time collecting heads and plundering, they spare few. In April, Russell again goes hunting for O’Byrne who once again escapes. His wife, however, is captured and sentenced to be burned to death. The sentence is not carried out.
O’Byrne is once again forced to seek terms which he is granted for renewable 3 monthly terms. He stays quiet until September 1596 when his son successfully attacks a munitions transport and is able to overrun the English garrison that had been placed in Ballinacor.
Lord Deputy Russell spends the next year unsuccessfully scouring the country for O’Byrne. However O’ Byrne’s luck eventually runs out. A traitor in his camp gives information to Russell that O’Byrne will be in Ballinacorr on May 8, 1597. The Lord Deputy is able to surprise him and capture him in a cave. There he is hacked to death and decapitated with his own sword.
The head of O’Bryne is put on a spike at Dublin Castle then later sent to London to Queen Elizabeth. Angry that it would be even sent to England, she disdains to accept the head of such a base “Robin Hood.”
(From: “Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne 1543-1597” by Pádraig Mac Donnchadha, YourIrish.com, http://www.yourirish.com | Pictured: The armorial achievements (coat of arms, crest and motto) recorded by the Chief Herald of Ireland and the Ulster King of Arms as being awarded to Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne)
The assault focuses on the English fort which sits at a bridge on the River Blackwater, marking the border between Counties Tyrone and Armagh. It is built by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, in 1575 as an outpost of English military strength in the heart of Gaelic Ulster, but also to secure the power of the main Irish ally in the region, Hugh O’Neill, Baron of Dungannon. The fort is composed of a square earthwork bawn “twelve score yards in circuit” reinforced by two bulwarks and punctuated with gun loops in its ramparts. In one corner stands a wooden tower, four stories tall, topped with a wooden walkway and a slate-covered building. It is accessed by two doors, one leading out onto the ramparts, another leading to a cellar. Each story has defensive firing loops, also known as spike holes. This tower overlooks a road and bridge across the river. At the other side of the river, on the Tyrone side, is a stone tower. The stone tower controls access to the bridge, as the road runs through it via large wooden doors.
Hugh O’Neill, Lord of Tyrone, is thought an ally of the English Crown and he is supported by the English authorities in Dublin as a counterweight to the power of other native lords in Ulster such as Turlough Lynagh O’Neill. However, encroachment by English authorities on the liberties of the native Irish lords in Ulster during the 1580s and early 1590s causes O’Neill to create an alliance of Irish lords, which look to throw off English rule with the help of Philip II of Spain. From April 1593, O’Neill orchestrates a proxy war against the English using Hugh Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh, and Hugh Roe O’Donnell, Lord of Tyrconnell. They engage the English in the west of Ulster while O’Neill, outwardly still loyal to the Crown, strengthens his power base in Ulster and subdues the Crown’s Irish allies in the north. The Irish lay siege to Enniskillen Castle and defeat an English force sent to relieve it.
O’Neill’s alliance is not limited to Ulster as he is allied to Fiach McHugh O’Byrne in Leinster. He has come under increasing pressure from Lord DeputyWilliam Russell‘s military expeditions into the Wicklow Mountains. In desperation, Fiach McHugh asks that Tyrone offer help or at least raid the northern Pale to draw Russell out of Wicklow. O’Neill requests a meeting with Russell to discuss how to proceed but this is dismissed by the Lord Deputy as a ploy to draw him out of O’Byrne’s lands. Therefore, to help O’Byrne, O’Neill makes his first open move against the Crown.
On the morning of Sunday, February 16, 1595, Art MacBaron O’Neill approaches the fort from the direction of Armagh with 40 men, escorting what appears to be two prisoners. As they cross the bridge one of the English warders notices the match cords of the Irishmen’s matchlock calivers are lit, a sign that they are ready to fire. The English open fire and MacBaron’s men force their way into the stone tower, but the English withdraw to the upper stories and prevent the Irish from taking the tower. Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, 200 Irish soldiers sweep over the earth ramparts and take the bawn. The English soldiers and their families retreat to the wooden tower. Defensive fire from within keeps the Irish back and twice the warders thwart MacBaron’s attempts to burn the position. Fifteen of MacBaron’s men are killed attempting to storm the towers, and eight more later die of their wounds. The stalemate lasts until five o’clock in the evening when MacBaron calls for a ceasefire. He offers the garrison terms for their surrender. The English, led by Edward Cornwall, are critically low on ammunition but still prevaricate until MacBaron threatens to burn the fort to the ground with all in it. The ward’s surrender is agreed and MacBaron guarantees their safe passage to Newry.
The loss of the fort is doubtless a military setback for the Crown, but of more significance is the presence of the Earl of Tyrone in person. According to the English commander, O’Neill arrives after the surrender and is outraged at the losses suffered in taking the fort and is angry that the defenders had not been executed. After the English soldiers and their families leave, O’Neill looks on as the bridge is demolished and the fort’s defence slighted. Up until this point there is no concrete proof that O’Neill was active in the attacks by Maguire and O’Donnell in the west of Ireland. Now there is indisputable proof that the Crown was at war with O’Neill.
(Pictured: The Blackwater Fort at present-day Blackwatertown in County Armagh, built by the Earl of Essex during a foray into Ulster in 1575 and captured and destroyed by the Irish in 1595. This pen and ink sketch measures 22½ by 16½ inches and is dated March 27, 1587.)
Byrne is born on March 20, 1780, at Ballylusk, Monaseed, County Wexford, the eldest son of Patrick Byrne, a middling Catholic farmer, and Mary (née Graham). He joins the United Irishmen in the spring of 1797 and, although only seventeen, becomes one of the organisation’s most active agents in north Wexford.
When rebellion engulfs his home district on May 27, 1798, Byrne assumes command of the local Monaseed corps and rallies them at Fr. John Murphy‘s camp on Carrigrew Hill on June 3. They fight at the rebel victory at Tubberneering on June 4 and the unsuccessful attempt to capture Arklow five days later. After the dispersal of the main rebel camp at Vinegar Hill on June 21, he accompanies Murphy to Kilkenny but begins the retreat to Wexford four days later. Heavily attacked at Scollagh Gap, he is one of a minority of survivors who spurn the proffered amnesty and join the rebel forces in the Wicklow Mountains. He is absent when the main force defeats a cavalry column at Ballyellis on June 30 but protects the wounded who are left in Glenmalure when the rebels launch a foray into the midlands the following week. He takes charge of the Wexfordmen who regain the mountains and fight a series of minor actions in the autumn and winter of 1798 under the militant Wicklow leader Joseph Holt. On November 10, he seizes an opportunity to escape into Dublin, where he works as a timber-yard clerk with his half-brother Edward Kennedy.
Byrne is introduced to Robert Emmet in late 1802 and immediately becomes a prominent figure in his insurrection plot. He is intended to command the many Wexford residents of the city during the planned rising of 1803. On July 23, 1803, he assembles a body of rebels at the city quays, which disperse once news is received that the rising has miscarried. At Emmet’s request, he escapes to Bordeaux in August 1803 and makes his way to Paris to inform Thomas Addis Emmet and William James MacNeven of the failed insurrection. In his Paris diary, the older Emmet recalls passing on “the news brought by the messenger” to Napoleon Bonaparte‘s military advisors.
Byrne enlists in the newly formed Irish Legion in December 1803 as a sub-lieutenant and is promoted to lieutenant in 1804 but only sees garrison duty. The regiment eventually moves to the Low Countries, and is renamed the 3rd Foreign Regiment in 1808, the year he is promoted to captain. He campaigns in Spain until 1812, participating in counterinsurgency against Spanish guerillas. He fights in Napoleon’s last battles and is appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on June 18, 1813. With Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the former Irish Legion, with its undistinguished and somewhat unfortunate history, is disbanded.
Though a supporter of Napoleon during the Hundred Days, Byrne is not involved in his return, yet he is included in an exclusion order from France which he successfully appeals. In November 1816, he swears the oath of loyalty to the now Royal Order of the Legion of Honour and becomes a naturalised French subject by royal decree on August 20, 1817. He becomes a half-pay captain but is recalled for active service in 1828 and serves as a staff officer in the French expeditionary force in Morea in support of Greek independence (1828–1830). His conduct on this campaign leads to his promotion as chef de bataillon (lieutenant-colonel) of the 56th Infantry Regiment in 1830.
After five years of service in garrisons around France, including counterinsurgency duty in Brittany, Byrne retires from the army in 1835. On December 24, 1835, he marries a Scottish woman, Frances “Fanny” Horner, at the British Embassy Chapel in Paris. They live in modest circumstances in various parts of Paris and remain childless. Though it is unclear when he is awarded the Chevalier de St Louis, having initially applied for it unsuccessfully in 1821, this distinction is mentioned in his tomb inscription, under his Legion of Honour. John Mitchel, who visits him regularly in Paris in the late 1850s, recalls Byrne sporting the rosette of the Médaille de Sainte Hélène, awarded in 1857 to surviving veterans of Napoleon’s campaigns.
An early list of Irish Legion officers describes Byrne as an upright and disciplined man, with little formal instruction but aspiring to improve himself. He becomes fully fluent in French but also learns Spanish and his language skills are a useful asset in various campaigns. Because of his suspected Bonapartist leanings, he is under police surveillance for some time after the Bourbon Restoration. He does, however, cultivate a wide social circle in Paris over the years. Various references throughout his writings testify to an inquisitive and cultured mind. He intended publishing a lengthy criticism of Gustave de Beaumont‘s Irlande, sociale, politique et religieuse (1840), claiming that it misrepresented the 1798 rebellion, but he withdraws it after meeting the author, not wishing to prejudice the reception of such an important French work on “the sufferings of Ireland.”
A lifelong nationalist, Byrne acts as Paris correspondent of The Nation in the 1840s and is a well-known figure in the Irish community there. He works in the 1850s on his notably unapologetic and candid Memoirs, an early and significant contribution to the Irish literature of exile. This autobiography is acclaimed by nationalists when published posthumously by his wife in 1863, with a French translation swiftly following in 1864. His detailed testimony of key battles of the 1798 rebellion in the southeast and Emmet’s conspiracy are written with the immediacy of an eyewitness and make them an invaluable contribution to that period of Irish history.
Byrne dies on January 24, 1862, in Paris, and is buried in Montmartre Cemetery. On November 25, 1865, John Martin writes of him: “In truth he was a beautiful example of those natures that never grow old. A finer, nobler, gentler, kindlier, gayer, sunnier nature never was than his, and to the last he had the brightness and quickness and cheeriness of youth”.
Byrne’s engaging and dispassionate Memoirs have ensured his special status among Irish nationalists. Because of his longevity he is the only United Irishman to have been photographed. His wife had sketched him in profile in middle age, and the photograph taken almost three decades later shows the same, strong features though those of a frail, but dignified man of 79 years.
(From: “Byrne, Miles” by Ruan O’Donnell and Sylvie Kleinman, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, last revised August 2024 | Pictured: Photograph of Miles Byrne taken in Paris in 1859)
John James Bernard (J. B.) Malone, an Irish hillwalking enthusiast who popularises the pastime through his television programmes and books, is born on December 13, 1913, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. He is responsible for the establishment of the Wicklow Way as a recognised walking trail, having first proposed it in 1966.
Malone is born to James Bernard Malone and his wife, Agnes (née Kenny), both from Dublin. He is raised mainly in England and completes his secondary education at the Marist Brothers College, Grove Ferry, Kent.
Malone moves to Ireland in 1931 where he finds employment in a builders’ providers firm and an insurance company before joining the Irish Army in 1940. There he becomes a cartographer in the intelligence section. In 1947, having left the army, he goes to work at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs as a draughtsman. He remains employed in the Irish civil service until his retirement in 1979. Also in 1947, he marries Margaret Garry, and they have three children.
Malone starts hillwalking in 1931 when he climbs Montpelier Hill to visit the ruins of the Hell Fire Club. Later, while on leave during his military career, he develops a detailed knowledge of walking routes throughout the hills of County Wicklow. He sits on the Board of An Taisce in Ireland from 1970 to 1974.
Following his retirement from the civil service, Malone is appointed as a field officer with the Long-Distance Walking Routes Committee of Cospóir, the Irish Sports Council. There, he negotiates rights of way with landowners to enable his vision of the Wicklow Way to become a reality. He first proposes a guided walking route through the Wicklow hills in 1966, although he had first raised the idea as early as 1942.
From 1938 to 1975 Malone contributes a regular column to the Evening Herald entitled Over the Hills. Between 1967 and 1968 he writes the column Know your Dublin, illustrated by Liam C. Martin. The column features information on a Dublin landmark and is later compiled into a book published in 1969.
During the 1960s, Malone presents a television documentary series on RTÉ entitled Mountain and Meadow, in which, accompanied by a cameraman, he introduces viewers to a variety of hill walks in Wicklow and surrounding counties. In 1980, he presents a one-hour TV programme on the newly opened Wicklow Way.
From 1950 to 1988, Malone writes several books on hillwalking in the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Mountains.
In 1980, Malone is made an honorary life member of An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association (IYHA), in recognition of his contribution to promoting the Irish countryside.
Following his death in 1989, Malone’s contribution to hillwalking in Ireland is marked by the erection of the J.B. Malone Memorial Stone plaque in his honour on a section of the Wicklow Way overlooking Lough Tay.
In October 2014, on the 25th anniversary of Malone’s death, the South Dublin Libraries hold an exhibition on his life and work.
(Pictured: The John James Bernard Malone memorial, on the Wicklow Way overlooking Lough Tay and Luggala)
Keeping command of a small band, Byrne seizes Goresbridge on June 23 but has to deplore the murder of several prisoners and other atrocities committed by his men in revenge for the torture and executions that had been visited upon the peasantry by the yeomanry and government militia. After further skirmishes he joins Joseph Holt and Michael Dwyer in taking to the Wicklow Mountains to continue a guerrilla resistance.
After Holt accepts transportation to Australia in November, Byrne, assisted by his sister, escapes to Dublin. He recalls of his sister, “If I had not remarked a long scar on her neck, she would not have mentioned anything herself. A yeoman … threatened to cut her throat with his sabre if she did not tell instantly the place in which I was hiding. The cowardly villain, no doubt, would have put his threat in execution had not some of his comrades interfered to prevent him.”
In the winter of 1802-03, Byrne enters into the plans of Robert Emmet and Anne Devlin for a renewed uprising. In his Memoirs he describes a meeting he arranged between Robert Emmet and the Wexford rebel leader Thomas Cloney at Harold’s Cross Green, Dublin, just prior to Emmet’s Rebellion, “I can never forget the impression this meeting made on me at the time – to see two heroic patriots, equally devoted to poor Ireland, discussing the best means of obtaining her freedom.”
In July 1803, the plans unravel when Anne Devlin’s cousin, Michael Dwyer, still holding out in Wicklow, recognises that there are neither the promised arms nor convincing proof of an intended French landing. In the north Thomas Russell and James Hope find no enthusiasm for a renewal of the struggle in what in 1798 are the strongest United Irish and Catholic Defender districts.
In Dublin, with their preparations revealed by an accidental explosion of a rebel arms depot, Emmet proceeds with a plan to seize the centres of government. The rising, for which for Byrne turns out with Emmet and Malachy Delaney in gold-trimmed green uniforms, is broken up after a brief confrontation in Thomas Street.
Two days after the fight in Thomas Street, Byrne meets with the fugitive Emmet and agrees to go to Paris to procure French assistance. But in Paris he finds Napoleon‘s attentions focused elsewhere. The First Consul uses a cessation of hostilities with Britain to pursue a very different venture, the re-enslavement of Haiti.
Byrne is commissioned as a captain in Napoleon’s Irish Legion. But at a time when he is convinced that “all Catholic Ireland” is “ready to rise the moment a rallying point was offered,” the Irish exiles cannot deflect the First Consul from other priorities. Rather than in Ireland, with his diminishing Irish contingent, he is to see action in the Low Countries, Germany and Spain.
Byrne rises to the rank of brigadier general and is awarded the Legion of Honour in 1813. Following the Bourbon Restoration, with fellow legionnaire John Allen, he narrowly avoids deportation as a foreign Bonapartist. An introduction to the Prince de Broglie, then vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, and two audiences with the Minister of War, Marshal Henri Clarke, the Duke of Feltre, contribute to the latter’s decision to quash the deportation order. In August 1817 Byrne is naturalised as a French citizen.
For much of the next decade Byrne finds himself effectively retired on half pay. Returned to active military service in 1828, he distinguishes himself in the French expedition to Morea during the Greek War of Independence. He retires in 1835 with the rank of Chef de Bataillion.
In the 1840s, Byrne is Paris correspondent for The Nation in Dublin, the Young Irelander newspaper that does much to rehabilitate the memory of the United Irishmen.
In his last years Byrne writes his Memoirs, which are an account of his participation in the Irish Rebellion and his time in the Irish Legion of Napoleon. These are first published in three volumes in 1863, but there have been many subsequent reprints. Against the portrayal of 1798 as a series of disjointed, unconnected risings, his memoirs present the United Irishmen as a cohesive revolutionary organisation whose aim of a democratic, secular, republic had captured the allegiance of a great mass of the Irish people.
Byrne dies at his house in the rue Montaigne (now rue Jean Mermoz, 8th arrondissement, near Champs-Élysées), Paris on January 24, 1862, and is buried in Montmartre Cemetery. His grave there is marked by a Celtic Cross, however this headstone appears to be a 1950s replacement for an earlier one.
(Pictured: Miles Byrne (1780-1862), United Irishman. Photograph taken by an unknown photographer in Paris in February 1859. The photograph now resides in Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of the President of Ireland, in Dublin.)
Grey had landed in Ireland with reinforcements from England to put down the rebellion. His strategy is to meet O’Byrne’s threat to the English heartland of Dublin and the Pale by attacking through the highlands to the south of the city. Against the advice of veteran commanders, he chooses to lead his army (around 3,000 strong) through lowland Kildare and into the Wicklow Mountains, with the aim of taking the fastness at Balinacor in the Glenmalure Valley.
While climbing the steep slopes of the valley, the inexperienced English soldiers are ambushed by the Irish who were hiding in the woods. The English are sniped at for a long period of time before their discipline collapses and they turn and flee down the valley. It is at this point that most of their casualties occur, as the Irish leave their cover and fall upon the English with swords, spears, and axes. Hundreds of English soldiers are cut down by the pursuing Irish as they try to escape the field. The remaining English have to fight a rearguard action for several miles until they reach the town of Rathdrum.
Irish sources state that around 800 English soldiers are killed, though the English put their losses at 360 dead. Among those killed is Peter Carew, cousin of his namesake colonist who had made claims to, and won, large tracts of land in southern Ireland. The remainder of the English force retreat to lowland Wicklow and from there to Dublin. However, the following year, when offered terms, most of the Irish soldiers, including O’Byrne, come in and surrender. The exception is Baltinglass, who flees to France.
At the outbreak of the First English Civil War, Ireton joins the Parliamentary army, commanding a cavalry force in the indecisive Battle of Edgehill in October 1642, and at the Battle of Gainsborough in July 1643. In 1643 he meets and befriends Oliver Cromwell, then a colonel in the army of eastern England. Cromwell appoints him deputy governor of the Isle of Ely in 1644, and he fights at the Parliamentary victories in the Battle of Marston Moor (July 1644), and the Battle of Naseby (June 1645). In the summer of 1646, he marries Cromwell’s eldest daughter, Bridget. The marriage brings Ireton’s career into parallel with Cromwell’s.
Although Ireton’s military record is distinguished, he earns his fame in politics. Elected to Parliament in 1645, he looks on while a conflict develops between the Independents in the army and the Presbyterians who control the House of Commons. In 1647 he presents his “Heads of the Proposals,” a constitutional scheme calling for division of political power among army, Parliament, and king and advocating religious tolerance for Anglicans and Puritans. These proposals for a constitutional monarchy are rejected by the king. At the same time, they are attacked by the Levellers, a group that calls for manhood suffrage and an unfettered liberty of conscience in matters of religion.
Ireton then turns against the king. When the Independents in the army triumph over Parliament during the second phase of the Civil War, his “Remonstrance of the Army” provides the ideological foundation for the assault on the monarchy. He helps to bring Charles I to trial and is one of the signatories of the king’s death warrant. From 1649 to 1651 he prosecutes the government’s case against Roman Catholic rebels in Ireland, becoming Lord Deputy of Ireland and acting commander in chief in 1650.
In early June 1650, Ireton mounts a counter-guerrilla expedition into the Wicklow Mountains to secure his lines of supply for the Siege of Waterford in southeast Ireland. Thomas Preston surrenders Waterford after a three-month siege. Ireton then advances to Limerick by October but has to call off the siege due to cold and bad weather. He returns to Limerick in June 1651 and besieges the city for five months until it surrenders in October 1651. At the same time, parliamentarian forces conduct the Siege of Galway, and he rides to inspect the command of Charles Coote, who is blockading that city. The physical strain of his command takes hold, and he falls ill.
After the capture of Limerick, Ireton has dignitaries of Limerick hanged for their defence of the city, including Alderman Thomas Stritch, Bishop Terence O’Brien, and an English Royalist officer, Colonel Fennell. He also wants the Irish commander, Hugh Dubh O’Neill hanged, but Edmund Ludlow cancels the order after Ireton’s death.
Ireton falls ill of the plague that is raging through the town and dies on November 26, 1651. His loss reportedly “struck a great sadness into Cromwell” and he is considered a great loss to the administration. At his funeral in Westminster Abbey, John Watson and others wear new tabards that replace the royal arms with the new arms of the commonwealth.
On January 30, 1661, following the Restoration of the English monarchy of 1660, Charles II has Ireton’s corpse exhumed from Westminster and mutilated in a posthumous execution, along with those of Cromwell and John Bradshaw, in retribution for signing his father’s death warrant. The date is symbolic, being the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I.
(Pictured: Painting of Henry Ireton, circa 1650, National Portrait Gallery: NPG 3301)
