Lord Edward FitzGerald

Lord Edward FitzGerald was an Irish aristocrat and revolutionary proponent of Irish independence from Britain. He abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence, and as an Irish Parliamentarian, to embrace the cause in Ireland of Catholic-Protestant reconciliation and of a sovereign republic. Unable to reconcile with Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy or with the Kingdom's English-appointed administration, he sought inspiration in the American Revolution and in revolutionary France where, in 1792, he met and befriended Thomas Paine. From 1796 he became a leading proponent within the Society of United Irishmen of a French-assisted insurrection. On the eve of the intended uprising in May 1798, he was fatally wounded in the course of arrest.