Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald 1763-1798 Paperback – 30 April 1998

great book ..a recommended read

well written, good read

Was Lord Edward schizophrenic? Stella Tillyard who has accomplished an immense and careful appreciation of all the sources is still clearly ambivalent in her opinion. On the one hand there is the mother adoring aristocrat of gentility and sensibility who feels loving kinship with his many sisters and brothers and later his wife and children. On the other is a man who endorsed the French Terror which lopped off the heads of thousands of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and wives. This is the same character who whilst deploring his aristocratic lineage, made use of it to undermine the established government for the betterment of all humanity in Ireland. His battle plans and tactics for the intended violent revolution, which he conspired to launch in the hope of French support, were guaranteed to cause massive and serious casualties to his own side whose main attacking and defensive weapon was a pike against musket and cannon. These schemes, we are led to believe, were perfected whilst he was digging in the many gardens he cultivated wherever he happened to be residing at the time. Fortunately for the United Irishmen only very limited clashes occurred and those mainly after his death. Steeped in the Rousseauesque education propounded by his mother, whilst visiting North America with the army, involved in a skirmish and wounded, his life was saved by Tony Small an escaped Negro slave. Small represented the ultimate in repression so Fitzgerald took him from slavery and made him his lifetime servant. To his credit he also made him his friend and companion. Together they were to encounter the native American Indians who Fitzgerald then saw as epitomising Rousseau's "natural man." On his return to Europe, Lord Edward brought back with him the Republican ideas of communal property and much else besides. Fitzgerald would never accept the French had entirely abandoned their interest in Irish revolution and helped to formulate plans which inevitably would have led to thousands of needless deaths. Captured eventually, through betrayal and killing one of his antagonists in the process, he was imprisoned. Death by execution should have been inevitable, but the authorities instead allowed him to die slowly and agonisingly from septicaemia by leaving untreated and unremoved two musket balls in his shoulder. He was 35 years old. Tillyard's prose is often as dry as dust. She describes Fitzgerald's activities in such a way the man becomes an irritation and you wish he hadn't written so many letters to his mother. However, when the author describes Fitzgerald's return to Ireland to ferment rebellion against the British Crown, leading to the banning of the United Irishmen's Organisation, the narrative comes to life. Tillyard's description of how to create underground opposition through the suppression of same is truly excellent. As a model, it is still pertinent today.

This important book about the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Irish nationalist and revolutionary in the time of the French revolution, sheds much light on the origins of the Irish Home Rule movement. This was far more than just a movement of Catholics who wanted to throw off Protestant rule. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was not a Catholic, and his motives for joining the Irish revolutionary movement were republican, egalitarian and deeply influenced by the Enlightenment and radical movements in France. This unlikely martyr, son of a duke, struck a blow for Irish freedom and is remembered as a hero who transcended his birth and class. A truly fascinating and significant book.

Good communication from seller. Book arrived as described.