Irish rebellion of 1803

Leaders

Robert Emmet (4 March 1778 - 20 September 1803) was the leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1803. Son of a doctor, he grew up in relatively comfortable circumstances. As a child, he was influenced by his revolutionary older brother Thomas Addis Emmet and his brother's friend Theobald Wolfe Tone.He started at Trinity College, Dublin in October 1793 at the age of fifteen and there became involved in the College Historical Society as an Irish nationalist. He eventually joined and became secretary of the College's United Irish Society, a Irish republican organization that launched the Irish Rebellion of 1798. In the aftermath of that rebellion, a warrant was issued for his arrest and he fled to the continent. He there attempted to secure military aid from Revolutionary France for a second rebellion. Unsuccessful, he returned to Ireland in October of 1802.

Thomas Russell (21 November 1767 - 21 October 1803), born in Dromahane, County Cork to an Anglican family, he joined the British army in 1783 and served in India. He returned to Ireland in 1786 and commenced studies in science, philosophy and politics. in July 1790 he met Theobald Wolfe Tone in the visitor's gallery in the Irish House of Commons and they became firm friends. In 1796, Russell published an ambitious and far-sighted document, Letter to the People of Ireland, which laid out his vision of social and economic reform for the Irish nation. In addition to his stance on religious freedom, he had made clear his anti-slavery views, in the Northern Star on 17 March 1792 whose editorial comment took a less generous view by agreeing with Russell but pointing out the immediate necessity to liberate three million slaves in Ireland.

James Hope (25 August 1764 - 1847)