Background
Wolfe Tone was born in Ireland on June 20, 1763. He the son of Peter Tone, a Dublin coachmaker. His grandfather was a small farmer in county Kildare, and his mother was the daughter of a captain in the merchant service.
Wolfe Tone was born in Ireland on June 20, 1763. He the son of Peter Tone, a Dublin coachmaker. His grandfather was a small farmer in county Kildare, and his mother was the daughter of a captain in the merchant service.
Though entered as a student at Trinity College, Dublin, Tone gave little attention to study, his inclination being for a military career; but after eloping with Matilda Witherington, a girl of sixteen, he took his degree in 1786, and read law in London at the Middle Temple and afterwards in Dublin, being called to the Irish bar in 1789.
By 1794 he and his United Irishmen friends began to seek armed aid from Revolutionary France to help overthrow English rule. After an initial effort failed, Tone went to the United States and obtained letters of introduction from the French minister at Philadelphia to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris. In February 1796 Tone arrived in the French capital, presented his plan for a French invasion of Ireland, and was favourably received. The Directory then appointed one of the most brilliant young French generals, Lazare Hoche, to command the expedition and made Tone an adjutant in the French army.
On December 16, 1796, Tone sailed from Brest with 43 ships and nearly 14, 000 men. But the ships were badly handled and, after reaching the coast of west Cork and Kerry, were dispersed by a storm. Tone again brought an Irish invasion plan to Paris in October 1797, but the principal French military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, took little interest. When insurrection broke out in Ireland in May 1798, Tone could only obtain enough French forces to make small raids on different parts of the Irish coast. In September he entered Lough Swilly, Donegal, with 3, 000 men and was captured there.
On November 10 at his trial in Dublin he defiantly proclaimed his undying hostility to England and his desire “in fair and open war to produce the separation of the two countries. ” Early in the morning of November 12, the day he was to be hanged, he cut his throat with a penknife and died seven days later.
In Dublin in 1792 he organized a Roman Catholic convention of elected delegates that forced Parliament to pass the Catholic Relief Act of 1793. Tone himself, however, was anticlerical and hoped for a general revolt against religious creeds in Ireland as a sequel to the attainment of Irish political freedom.
He was inspired by the French Revolution, which he described as "the morning star of liberty in Ireland. "
With the encouragement of his bosom friend Thomas Russell, he became convinced that the key to the regeneration of Ireland was a genuinely representative parliament cleansed of British corruption.
His persuasive, pragmatic diplomacy convinced the anglophobic French Directory to support an invasion of Ireland.
He was a member of Society of the United Irishmen.
He married Matilda Witherington and had a son William.