1798 was to be the First Year of Irish Liberty in the new Irish revolutionary calendar. For a few short weeks the United Irishmen, inspired by France, set up an Irish Republic in parts of Ireland. But the dream on Independence soon collapsed into the nightmare of sectarian civil war. In the North, the rebels were mainly Presbyterian, in the South mainly Catholic. Most Protestants of the established church stayed loyal to the British Crown. The failure of the United Irishmen to unite the country plunged Ireland into a bloodbath. The lines were drawn between Catholic Nationalists and protestant loyalists that have haunted Ireland for two centuries.
This abridged and illustrated version of Thomas Pakenham's classic history of 1798 is published to mark the bicentenary of that tragic year.