Above : Painting Of Robert Emmet

Emmet felt that, after the Patrick Street explosion, he must act quickly if he were to act at all. The evening of Saturday, July 23rd, was fixed for the rising. About nine o’clock Emmet, with some of his trusty lieutenants and followed by about a hundred men, of whom many had pikes, but very few firearms, sallied out into Thomas Street. Their young leader, waving his sword, called on the people to follow him and strike a blow for liberty. Great numbers of persons were in the street, enjoying the fresh air of the summer evening. Most of them merely stared. Those who listened and followed were chiefly loungers and vagabonds, ready enough for plunder, but little suited for any enterprise attack 0f The honourable warfare. Emmet realised that to attempt an lead them to Castle was impossible, and he proposed to the crowd to reinforcement in Wicklow mountains, where they might await. But the city roughs had no mind to go to the Wicklow not go; they would not obey any orders. They murdered an unfortunate riding by; they dragged Chief him and his nephew.

For a couple of hours the street remained in the hands of the mob. Then a force of a few hundred soldiers came and dispersed the people. About twenty soldiers are said to have been killed, and perhaps fifty insurgents. In other parts of the city those who were to have aided Emmet waited in vain his message to join him with their followers. Finally they learned or inferred a failure and dispersed, to conceal themselves as best they could.

Numbers of persons were arrested, but Emmet himself was not captured for a long time. It is probable that he might have made his escape from the country, had not his affection for Sarah Curran, the lady to whom he was engaged, induced him to linger in the neighbourhood of Dublin to see and bid her farewell. He was traced finally to a house at Harold’s Cross, just outside the city, and was there arrested on August 25th.

Below : Execution Of Robert Emmet

He was tried at Green Street Court by a special Commission, and was ” defended ” by a wretch named Leonard MacNally, a spy, as was afterwards discovered, in the pay of the Government. But, in any case, a defence, however skilful, would have been of little use ; the facts were too well known and too easily proved. In a speech, the touching eloquence of which has made it justly famous, Emmet explained the principles on which he had acted, the hopes which had inspired him, the goal at which he aimed. The darkness of the autumn evening had already fallen when the judge pronounced on the prisoner the sentence of death. At midnight he was escorted back to prison, and about noon next day (September 20th) he was hanged on a scaffold erected close to St. Catherine’s Church in Thomas Street. He was only twenty-five years of age at the time of his death. Of the nineteen persons tried for participation in the insurrection, seventeen were executed.

Robert Emmet achieved no material gain for his country; rather the contrary, for severe Coercion Acts were the immediate consequence of his abortive rebellion. Nevertheless, in the hearts of the men and women of Ireland his name has remained enshrined, more intimately, and with deeper love than that of many who gave long lives of strenuous, self-sacrificing, faithful service to her cause. Around him is the halo which rarely anywhere, but most rarely, perhaps, amongst peoples whose national history has been predominantly one of defeat, is denied to youth made eternal by death, joined to lofty patriotism, and ending in tragic failure.