37 Facts About Wolfe Tone

Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone, was a revolutionary exponent of Irish independence and is an iconic figure in Irish republicanism.

When, in the early summer of 1798, it broke into open rebellion, Wolfe Tone was in exile soliciting assistance from the French Republic.

Wolfe Tone's father, Peter Tone, was a prosperous coach-maker who had a farm near Sallins, County Kildare and adhered to the established Anglican church.

Madden, converted to her husband's church only when Wolfe Tone was already eight years old.

In 1783, Wolfe Tone found work as a tutor to Anthony and Robert, younger half-brothers of Richard Martin, a Patriot member of the Irish Parliament for Jamestown, County Leitrim.

Wolfe Tone fell in love with Martin's well-connected wife, Elizabeth Vesey.

Wolfe Tone studied law at Trinity College Dublin, where Kilwarden remembered him as a "sparkling conversationalist and rising talent".

Wolfe Tone was active in the College Historical Society, which had a record for honing oratory skills and preparing members for a life in politics.

Wolfe Tone found Russell equally critical of the proceedings in the chamber below.

Wolfe Tone later described the encounter with Russell as "one of the most fortunate" in his life.

Wolfe Tone was himself suspicious of the Catholic priests and hostile to what he saw as "Papal tyranny".

Wolfe Tone replaced Richard Burke, the son of Edmund Burke to whose critical Reflections on the Revolution in France, Paine's Rights of Man had been a response.

Wolfe Tone protested, but only by way of endorsing a connection to England where it did not involve the "gross corruption in the legislature" and the "sacrifice of [Ireland's] interests to England".

Wolfe Tone had drawn up a memorandum for Jackson testifying to the readiness of the country to rise, the Presbyterians being "steady republicans, devoted to liberty" and the Catholics "ready for any change because no change can make them worse".

Wolfe Tone remained in Ireland until after the trial of Jackson but was advised by Kilwarden that to avoid prosecution he should leave.

Wolfe Tone's sympathies were with the Democratic-Republican opposition that was beginning to form around Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Wolfe Tone bought a farm near Princeton, New Jersey, an area made desirable by the attraction of "a college and some good society", and thought to spend the approaching winter writing a history of the Catholic Committee.

Wolfe Tone was not aware of it at the time, but his picture of Ireland as primed for liberation was being reinforced by the still more enthusiastic reports from two new United militants, formerly in the ranks of Grattan parliamentary opposition, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor.

Wolfe Tone had already recorded his resolve never to be an "accessory to subjecting my country to the control of France merely to get rid of England".

Back in Paris, Wolfe Tone recognised the rising star of Napoleon Bonaparte, but was unable to deflect the conqueror of Italy from his grander vision of still greater conquests in the East.

Six days before, Wolfe Tone had embarked with Admiral Jean-Baptiste-Francois Bompart and General Jean Hardy in command of a force of about 3,000 men.

Wolfe Tone is buried in the family plot in Bodenstown, County Kildare, near his birthplace at Sallins, and his grave is in the care of the National Graves Association.

Wolfe Tone is recorded as telling the French that a revolution in Ireland "was not to be made for the people of property".

Wolfe Tone did not abandon Whig constitutionalism, so long as the talk was of reform.

Wolfe Tone recommended that the French on landing, and a provisional convention that would then be called, offer not only resident landowners but to the absentee lords in England, security for their estates.

Wolfe Tone ventured no more than relief from that "pest on agriculture", the tithes levied on top of rents by the landlord's established church.

In general, Wolfe Tone appears to have followed the resolve of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen to "attend those things in which we all agree, [and] to exclude those in which we differ", and consequently to avoid directly engaging questions of economic inequality.

Four years later when, believing that "the people of Ireland were in general very ignorant", General Clarke asked whether "we might choose a king", Wolfe Tone's response was notably pragmatic.

The only person with the least chance of fulfilling such a role, in Wolfe Tone's view, was Lord Moira.

Wolfe Tone thought it "absurd" to suggest, as Clarke had done in his instructions to Hoche, that a member of the House of Stuart could be found who would be agreeable to all parties.

Tensions surrounding Wolfe Tone's legacy were evident in the 1934 Bodenstown commemorations.

Wolfe Tone was a naturalised French citizen on 4 May 1812.

Wolfe Tone was at the battles of Lowenberg, Goldberg, Dresden, Bauthen, Muhlberg, and Aachen.

Wolfe Tone died on 11 October 1828 at the age of 37, survived by his only child, his daughter Grace Georgina.

Matilda Wolfe Tone returned to the United States, where in 1816 she married Thomas Wilson, a Scottish businessman and advocate who had taken care of Wolfe Tone's financial affairs after the death of her husband.

Wolfe Tone died in 1849, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1998, Wolfe Tone, played by the actor Adrian Dunbar, was the protagonist in an RTE four-part television movie, The Officer From France.