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| Dunlavin Green executions | |
|---|---|
| Location | Dunlavin, County Wicklow, Ireland |
| Date | 26 May 1798 |
Attack type | Firing squad |
| Deaths | 36 |
| Injured | 3 |
| Perpetrator | Irish Yeomanry |
The Dunlavin Green executions was summary execution of 36 suspected United Irishmen rebels in County Wicklow, Ireland by the Irish Yeomanry shortly after the outbreak of the rebellion of 1798. There are several accounts of the events, recorded at differing times and differing in detail.
Beginning in 1796, the British government had begun raising yeomanry forces in Ireland. These forces, composed of both Catholics and Protestants, were raised to help defend against a possible French invasion of Ireland and to aid in the policing of the country. The United Irishmen had long threatened a rebellion in Ireland, which finally occurred in late May 1798. [1] Major uprisings of the rebellion only occurred in Ulster, Wicklow and Wexford, a county in the province of Leinster. [2] For several months prior to May 1798, Wicklow and many other areas of the country had been subject to martial law which had been imposed in an effort to prevent the long threatened rebellion. [3]
The campaign against the United Irishmen extended the military itself as some corps of yeomanry and militia, especially those with Catholic members, were suspected as United Irishmen infiltrators who had joined to get training and arms. Several days after the outbreak of the rebellion, the yeomanry and militia at Dunlavin were called out on parade and informed by their commanding officer that he had information on the identities of those in the corps who were affiliated with the United Irishmen among them. The officer did not actually have such information, but twenty-eight men fell for his bluff and came forward in hopes of receiving clemency. [3]
The twenty-eight who came forward were immediately arrested and imprisoned, several of them being subjected to flogging in an effort to extract information about the plans and organization of the United Irishmen. [4] [5] [6] Those who were outed as affiliates of the United Irishmen were imprisoned in the Market House of Dunlavin, while their officers decided what to do with them. [3]
The following day, Captain William Ryves of the Rathsallagh yeomanry had his horse shot from under him by rebels while on patrol. Ryves rode to Dunlavin the next day and brought eight suspected rebels imprisoned by his corps with him. There he met with Captain Saunders of the Saunders-grove yeomanry. [3] It was decided that their prisoners, a total of 36 men, should be summarily executed. On 26 May, Market Day, the 36 were taken to the green, lined up and shot in front of the townspeople, including, in some cases, their own families. [3]
The firing squad returned to the Market House where others were flogged or hanged. Before the bodies of the shot men were removed, soldiers' wives looted them of valuables; one wounded man protested but he was finished off by a soldier. The bodies were either removed for burial by their families or interred in a common grave ("large pit") at Tournant cemetery. One man survived, despite grievous wounds, and lived to "an advanced age". Two more men, either hanging or about to be, were saved by the intervention of a "respectable Protestant" and escaped. [3]
One loyalist account details the events leading up to the execution differently. [7]
According to this account, Captain Ryves, a yeomanry commander at Dunlavin, received word that a large number of rebels were set to attack Dunlavin and he observed that many Protestant houses had been set on fire in the surrounding countryside. Under the circumstances, he expected that the rebels' intention was a pogrom of Protestants and loyalists in the town and its environs. A foray by the troops into the countryside failed and the garrison's officers were aware that they were outnumbered by the prisoners held in the Market House. [7]
The executions appear to have been motivated by simple revenge and intimidation, rather than fear of the prisoners and the ongoing rebellion. Though the public exhibition may have been designed to intimidate and discourage rebels in the immediate area from taking to the field, news of the executions, as well as those at Carnew spread rapidly and played a part in the rapid mobilization of rebels in northern County Wexford over the next few days. [3]
The story of Dunlavin Green was quickly commemorated in the famous ballad "Dunlavin Green", which tells the story from the view of a sympathetic local eyewitness. [3] In 1998, a commemorative stone was installed in St Nicholas of Myra Roman Catholic church, adjacent to the green. [ citation needed ]
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen. First formed in Belfast by Presbyterians opposed to the landed Anglican establishment, the Society, despairing of reform, sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's Catholic majority. The grievances of a rack-rented tenantry drove recruitment.
The Scullabogue massacre was an atrocity committed in Scullabogue, near Newbawn, County Wexford, Ireland on 5 June 1798, during the 1798 rebellion. A guarding party of rebels massacred up to 200 noncombatant men, women and children, most of whom were Protestant, who were held prisoner in a barn which was then set alight. The massacre was a reaction to reports of atrocities committed by government forces during the Battle of New Ross. Those killed were prisoners loyal to the British crown and it is the only instance during the rebellion where the rebels killed women and children. A participant in the rebellion, General Thomas Cloney, put the death count at 100.
The Battle of Prosperous was a military engagement between British Crown forces and United Irishmen rebels during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in the town of Prosperous, County Kildare. Prosperous was founded by Sir Robert Brooke in 1780 as a village for processing cotton produced in the Americas. When a rebellion spearheaded by the United Irishmen broke out against British rule in Ireland, rebel forces led by John Esmonde made plans to capture Prosperous. Esmonde had 200 rebels under his command, while Prosperous was garrisoned by elements of the Royal Cork City Militia under the command of Captain Richard Swayne reinforced by detachments of a Welsh mounted fencible regiment, the Ancient British Regiment of Fencible Cavalry Dragoons, numbering 150 men in all.
The Battle of Ballymore-Eustace was one of the events in the United Irish rebellion of 1798. It took place on 24 May 1798 after the stationing of the 9th Dragoons, and members of the Tyrone, Antrim and Armagh Militias at Ballymore in County Kildare near the Kildare-Wicklow border on 10 May. The town had been recently garrisoned by almost 200 soldiers and militia who had been sent to repress sedition in the area. The troops had been dispersed in billets among the populace as per counter-insurgency practice of "free-quarters" where responsibility for the provisioning and sheltering of militia was foisted onto the populace. During this time a quantity of arms were surrendered and letters of protection issued.
The Battle of Oulart Hill took place on 27 May 1798 when a rebel gathering of between 4,000 and 5,000 annihilated a detachment of 110 militia sent from Wexford town to stamp out the spreading rebellion in County Wexford.
The Carnew executions refer to the summary execution of 28 prisoners being held as suspected United Irishmen by yeomanry troops from the Carnew garrison stationed in the barracks of Carnew Castle, County Wicklow, Ireland on 25 May 1798.
The Battle of Ballyellis on 30 June 1798 was a clash during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, between a surviving column of the dispersed Wexford rebel army and pursuing British forces which resulted in a victory for the rebels.
Croppy was a nickname given to United Irishmen rebels during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule in Ireland.
Anthony Perry, known as the "screeching general" was one of the most important leaders of the United Irish Wexford rebels during the 1798 rebellion.
The history of Ireland from 1691–1800 was marked by the dominance of the Protestant Ascendancy. These were Anglo-Irish families of the Anglican Church of Ireland, whose English ancestors had settled Ireland in the wake of its conquest by England and colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, and had taken control of most of the land. Many were absentee landlords based in England, but others lived full-time in Ireland and increasingly identified as Irish.. During this time, Ireland was nominally an autonomous Kingdom with its own Parliament; in actuality it was a client state controlled by the King of Great Britain and supervised by his cabinet in London. The great majority of its population, Roman Catholics, were excluded from power and land ownership under the penal laws. The second-largest group, the Presbyterians in Ulster, owned land and businesses but could not vote and had no political power. The period begins with the defeat of the Catholic Jacobites in the Williamite War in Ireland in 1691 and ends with the Acts of Union 1800, which formally annexed Ireland in a United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 and dissolved the Irish Parliament.
Michael Dwyer was an insurgent captain in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, leading the United Irish forces in battles in Wexford and Wicklow., Following the defeat and dispersal of the rebel hosts, in July 1798 Dwyer withdrew into the Wicklow Mountains, and to his native Glen of Imaal, where he sustained a guerrilla campaign against British Crown forces.
Dunlavin is a village in County Wicklow, Ireland, situated about 50 kilometres (31 mi) south-west of Dublin. It is centred on the junction of the R412 and R756 regional roads. It was founded around the end of the 17th century and became a prominent town in the area for a time.
John Murphy was an Irish Roman Catholic priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns, who is mainly remembered for his central role in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in County Wexford, which is sometimes known as the Wexford Rebellion. He led the rebels to one of their initial victories over a government militia at Oulart Hill, and in the following weeks became one of the rebellion's main leaders.
MylesByrne was an insurgent leader in Wexford in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and a fighter in the continued guerrilla struggle against British Crown forces in the Wicklow Hills until 1802. In 1803 collaborated closely with Robert Emmet in plans for a renewed insurrection in Dublin. After these misfired, he took a commission in Napoleon’s Irish Legion, seeing action in the Low Countries, Spain and at the Battle of Leipzig. Under the Bourbon Restoration he was deployed to Greece, and retired as a chef de bataillon. In his later years, he was the Paris correspondent for the Young Irelander paper The Nation, and dictated his memoirs. In these, he advanced the image of the United Irishmen as a cohesive revolutionary organisation dedicated to the achievement of a national democratic government.
Events from the year 1798 in Ireland.
Carnew is a village in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is the most southerly town in Wicklow situated just a mile from the border with County Wexford. For historical reasons it has often been described as "a Protestant enclave".
The Battle of the Harrow took place on 26 May 1798 and was the first clash of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in County Wexford. It was fought between government forces and United Irishmen insurgents under the leadership of a local priest, John Murphy who had mobilized following reports of atrocities by the yeomanry during the rebellion led by the United Irishmen revolutionary organisation.
Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey was a barrister and a commander of the United Irishmen in the Battle of New Ross during the 1798 Rebellion.
The Wexford Rebellion refers to the events of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in County Wexford. From 27 May until 21 June 1798, Society of United Irishmen rebels revolted against British rule in the county, engaging in multiple confrontations with Crown forces. The most successful and destructive rising in all the counties of Ireland, United Irishmen rebels experienced a number of early successes in the county despite being seen as a relatively loyal county by the Dublin Castle administration due to a series of military victories. However, the tide soon turned against the United Irishmen in Wexford as Crown forces poured into the region, engaging in a brutal counterinsurgency which indiscriminately targeted suspected rebels and eventually suppressed all rebel activities in the county.
Dunlavin Green is an Irish ballad referring to the Dunlavin Green executions in 1798 of 36 suspected rebels.
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| In popular culture | ||