War with France
When war broke out between Britain and Revolutionary France in the spring of 1793 there was no immediate threat of French invasion. Britain relied on the Royal Navy for defence and planned a series of sorties against the French forces in mainland Europe. But the picture started to change in 1796. French military successes and British military frustrations started to alter the balance of power and the British Government began to repair and reinforce coastal defenses and to raise, train and equip a huge force of volunteers.
'...the British Government began to repair and reinforce coastal defenses and to raise, train and equip a huge force of volunteers.'
During 1796 the most successful and charismatic of France's revolutionary soldiers - General Hoche - started to hatch a grand and complex plan for the co-ordinated invasion of England, Wales and Ireland. Important to the French was the Irish patriot Theobald Wolfe Tone. A member of the Society of United Irishman Wolfe Tone was a Protestant who by the mid 1790s was convinced that change could come only through violent insurrection. In 1796 he was in France seeking aid and promoting the invasion of Ireland by a French army of liberation.
Wolfe Tone and Hoche met and their aspirations coincided. Wolfe Tone promised popular support if the French invaded and, in late December 1796, a French invasion fleet of around 50 ships carrying 15,000 veteran troops set sail from Brest for Bantry Bay in south-west Ireland. The plan was to land, ignite the country in rebellion against the Protestant English overlords, seize the port of Cork and be in Dublin within the fortnight. But nothing went right for the French - the weather was so violent that no troops could be put ashore - and by the first week of January 1797 the French invasion fleet, battered and dispersed, crept back to Brest.
Published: 2001-10-01
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