William Smith O'Brien

William Smith O'Brien was an Irish republican who, in the course of Ireland's Great Famine, had been converted to the cause of national independence while sitting as a unionist member of the United Kingdom Parliament. Returning from revolutionary Paris with the first Irish tricolour, in 1848 he attempted an armed rebellion. With fellow "Young Irelanders" he was convicted of sedition and transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Pardoned, in 1856 he returned to Ireland, where he published an unrepentant memoir and, through Ossianic Society, promoted the study and revival of the Irish language.