Saturday, 23rd July 1803: the date fixed by Robert Emmet to overthrow English rule in Dublin. The day began badly: at 10 a.m., in a College Green warehouse, the Dublin leaders advised him to call off the rebellion. An hour later, Emmet met the leaders from Co Kildare in the White Bull Inn in Thomas Street.

They demanded to see the arms. Emmet took them to a depot and showed them great numbers of pikes, grenades, rockets and his specially-designed exploding hollowed-out beams. They were not impressed. Where were the firearms? They left and turned back other Kildare insurgents on the road to Dublin.

Emmet was quite unable to take advantage of the gross incompetence of the authorities. General Henry Fox, the Commander-in-Chief, refused to take seriously several disturbing reports brought to him. Desperately, Emmet attempted to raise more money to buy firearms: £500 was delivered at five in the afternoon but the man entrusted with the money absconded. Emmet was only able to buy six additional blunderbusses.

Men intent on joining the rebellion gathered around the Marshalsea Lane depot. There were few enough of them and most of the 240 loaves of bread Emmet had ordered were never eaten. As the men waited they fell to carousing in the local taverns. Then one of the conspirators accidentally mixed fuses that had been prepared with those which had not. It proved impossible to distinguish them. Emmet’s combat rockets – his key weapons – were now useless.

Emmet’s plan was to drive six carriages – decked out to look as if they were on official business and manned by rebels armed with blunderbusses – through the gates of Dublin Castle, seize the viceroy and other officers of the state, and set up a provisional government of an Irish Republic.

Ned Conlon duly hired six hackney coaches with their drivers but, as they were approaching Thomas Street, they were stopped by a soldier. Conlon panicked, shot the soldier and the terrified drivers rushed off, taking their coaches with them.

Emmet had expected at least 2,000 men. By eight o’clock there were only 80 rebels, most of whom, as one later admitted, had been in the Yellow Bottle tavern… 'drinking and smoking, in the highest spirits, cracking jokes, and bantering one another, as if the business they were about to enter on was a party of pleasure.'

Pikes were taken out in bundles from the Thomas Street depot, but there were only 18 blunderbusses, four muskets and one sword, which Emmet carried himself.

As one rebel leader recalled: 'Emmet, Malachy, one or two others, and myself, put on our green uniform, trimmed with gold lace, and selected our arms. The insurgents, who had all day been well plied with whiskey, began to prepare for commencing an attack upon the castle; and when all was ready, Emmet made an animated address to the conspirators. At eight o’clock precisely we sallied out of the depôt, and when we arrived in Thomas-street, the insurgents gave three deafening cheers.'

'The consternation excited by our presence defies description. Every avenue emptied its curious hundreds, and almost every window exhibited half-a-dozen inquisitive heads, while peaceable shopkeepers ran to their doors, and beheld with amazement a lawless band of armed insurgents…but when the rocket ascended…those who, a few minutes before, seemed to look on with vacant wonder, now assumed a face of horror, and fled with precipitation.

‘To the castle!’ cried our enthusiastic leader, drawing his sword…but when we reached the market-house, our adherents had wonderfully diminished, there being not more than twenty insurgents with us.'

Emmet then stopped to address the people: 'Turn out my boys, now is your time for liberty! Liberty, my boys – now turn out!'

Firing his pistol in the air he made a last attempt to rally support. Then, realising the cause was lost, he told his men to disperse.

When Emmet reached his home in Rathfarnham on Dublin’s outskirts, his housekeeper, Anne Devlin, called out: 'Who’s there?'

'It’s me, Anne'

'Oh, bad welcome to you. Is the world lost by you, you cowards that you are, to lead the people to destruction, and then to leave them?'

'Don’t blame me, the fault is not mine,' said Emmet

Meanwhile, as night closed in, the fighting continued in the streets of Dublin, degenerating into a drunken riot. A coach carrying Lord Kilwarden, his daughter, and his nephew, the Reverend Richard Wolfe, tried to make its way through the mob: 'It’s me, Kilwarden, the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.'

Whereupon an insurgent shouted: 'You’re the very man I want' and drove his pike into Kilwarden, mortally wounding him. His daughter was taken to safety but the Reverend Wolfe was hacked to death. It was an ignominious and inglorious end to Robert Emmet’s rebellion.