The confusion amongst the executive of the United Irishmen and its rash decision to rise without French aid destroyed any chance of momentum for a Rising. Reliance on a chosen few destroyed the movement with the arrests of the Sheares brothers and Lord Edward in May so close to the appointed date. Its was never intended that Irish peasants would fight pitched battles against a disciplined well armed military, but often they had been forced into a contest.
In all of the clashes except a few, large quantities of rebels were defeated by small numbers of the military. Their only hope had been in French aid. If they had risen in a truly national rebellion in 1797 they would have caused the military no end of distress but even then complete victory was improbable without outside aid considering the proximity of Britain, and it is improbable that Britainn would have allowed Ireland exist under French protection right on her doorstep.
The disasterous short-lived rebellion of Robert Emmett in 1803 finally ended all the hopes and aspirations of those men who had formed the Society of United Irishmen and a devastated Ireland limped onwards to the 19th century. The nationalist ideal and the belief in separation from Britain however did not disappear and the men of '98 became martyrs to the cause and inspired new generations of Irish men and women to seek independence for Ireland.
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