#OnThisDay 1798 At the Battle of Tory Island, a naval battle between the French & Royal Navy off the coast of Donegal, Theobald Wolfe Tone was taken prisoner when the French flagship Hoche, he was on board, was captured. While O’Dwyer maintained an insurgency in the Wicklow mountains for the next five years, this was the last major action of the 1798 Rebellion.
#OnThisDay 1920 Dan Breen & Seán Treacy shoot their way out of a British Army raid on the house they were staying at in Drumcondra, killing two British officers (The brother of one of the officers, Smyth from Co. Down was also shot earlier in the war). Breen was shot 4 times &was taken to the Mater hospital. Treacy was not seriously wounded. Professor Carolan, the owner of the house was also shot in the raid and died some weeks later.
#OnThisDay 1899 The Second Anglo-Boer War began. 50,000 Irish would serve there in thirteen infantry regiments & three cavalry units within the British Army. Three hundred Irishmen, like John MacBride, would also fight with the Boers against British Imperialism.
#Ireland #History #SouthAfrica
#OnThisDay 1860 Michael Corcoran, Colonel of the New York 69th Militia, refused to parade his unit during a visit from the Prince of Wales as a protest to British rule in Ireland. Corcoran was removed from his unit, court-marshalled but before the court date he was reinstated to his position when the Civil War erupted. Corcoran went on to have an illustrious war-career.
#OnThisDay 1649 Cromwell’s New Model Army, amid peace negotiations, enter Wexford town, raze it, slaughter the garrison & civilian population. While the orders did not come from Cromwell directly, he did not try to stop them. This is disputed by some historians. While he did not try to stop his men, he believed “they (The Catholics) were made with their blood to answer for the cruelties they had exercised upon diverse poor Protestants”.
The town was in such bad condition that Cromwell and his men had to leave to find Winter quarters elsewhere stating that it was “incommodious to ourselves”.
The Irish at War 