Qualla: Young Ireland rebellion

Young Ireland rebellion: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Citizen, from 14 January 1854 to 19 August 1854, Public domain. It became known as the Battle of Widow McCormack's Cabbage Patch, which sounds like a joke. The casualties were two rebels and the cause of Irish nationalism for a generation. On 29 July 1848, at Farranrory near the village of Ballingarry in South Tipperary, William Smith O'Brien and his Young Ireland followers cornered a unit of the Irish Constabulary inside the farmhouse of a widow named Margaret McCormack, whose five children were inside as hostages. A few hours of gunfire later the rebellion was over. From this small, sad, half-comic disaster grew the Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood -- and ultimately, decades later, the 1916 Rising and an independent Irish state.

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Image: The Citizen, from 14 January 1854 to 19 August 1854 | Public domain

Young Ireland rebellion: The Springtime of Peoples

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. 1848 was the year of revolutions across Europe. King Louis Philippe fell to the February Revolution in Paris and the Second Republic was proclaimed. From Berlin to Vienna to Rome to Prague to Budapest, absolutist governments were temporarily replaced by liberal administrations. S...

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Image: Public domain

Young Ireland rebellion: Slievenamon to Farranrory

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 16 July 1848, William Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and Michael Doheny gathered 50,000 people on the slopes of Slievenamon in County Tipperary. From 23 to 29 July, O'Brien, Meagher, and John Blake Dillon travelled from County Wexford through Kilkenny into Tipperary, raising the stan...

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Image: Public domain

Young Ireland rebellion: Through the Window

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Margaret McCormack, the owner of the house and the mother of the children, demanded to be let in. The police refused. She found O'Brien outside and asked him what was to become of her children and her house. O'Brien went with her up to the parlour window and spoke through it to t...

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Image: Public domain

Young Ireland rebellion: Transportation and the Fenian Future

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Leech, Public domain. John Mitchel, the most committed revolutionary among the Young Irelanders, had already been arrested earlier in 1848 and convicted on the purpose-built charge of treason-felony. He was transported first to Bermuda to work on the Royal Naval Dockyard, then to Van Diemen's Land (pr...

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Image: John Leech | Public domain