Lord Edward Fitzgerald, born 15th October 1763, “Fifth son and 12th child of James, The first Duke of Leinster and Mother Emily Lennox, Daughter of the Duke of Desmond”. Born in London, he was brought to Ireland as a youngster to the still impressive Carton House in Kildare and then to Frascati House in Blackrock where the Frascati shopping centre now stands.
Fitzgerald joined the 96th regiment with a commission in 1778. He wanted to see action in America and so bought a lieutenancy in the 19th regiment of foot (the Green Howards). He went to South Carolina with “thirty officers, thirty sergeants and 672 men and landed in Charleston in June 1781”.
In America Fitzgerald served as aide de camp to the British Commander. It was a blazing hot summer in the swamps where he fought General Greene and indeed he brought prisoners back to Charleston. In September 1871 a tough and fierce battle was fought at Eutaw Springs with 550 men on the American side killed and on Edwards side 690. Fitzgerald was wounded and left for dead until he was rescued by a South Carolina slave Tony Small who Fitzgerald adopted and kept with him for the rest of his life showing his first leanings towards egalitarianism and the “brotherhood of man”.
He believed in the “brotherhood of man with his daughter later claiming “ my father got his republican ideas in America” where he travelled widely in 1788-9. He held a cosmopolitan life travelling across Spain and Portugal and living in Paris at the height of the French Revolution. He was elected MP for Kildare in 1790 and then embarked on a love affair with the wife of dramatist Richard Sheridan who died of consumption.
He went to Paris in 1792 having already associated himself with United Irishmen and he had a keen eye for what was happening in revolutionary France. It was on this trip to Paris that he declared himself a republican calling himself “le citoyen Edouard Fitzgerald: I do not like to be Lord Edward”.
Unusually for the time he cropped his hair and relinquished his title and so the army cashiered him in Nov 1792. He had a long running affair with a French mistress but married Pamela Sims who was connected to French royalty and had three children by her. He was increasingly radical about Irish politics and “he repudiated the Irish establishment into which he had been born”. The couple moved out of Leinster House and moved to Kildare town. He learned Irish, played handball and became the most glamorous of the United Irishmen “planning insurrection till it became maturity.”
He used his base in Kildare to launch his revolutionary ideas away from the Capital but close enough to keep his finger on the pulse. “Between 1796-98 the United Irish organization was reorganised as an underground revolutionary movement with Fitzgerald becoming one of its recognised leaders”. He travelled to the continent to engage French support for his plans meanwhile his family afraid of treason closed down any political mutterings they otherwise would have had.
“Fitzgerald invited a tenant on the Leinster estate, Thomas Reynolds, to join the United Irishmen in November 1797 and then promoted him Colonel in the Kildare organization”. Reynolds betrayed them in March 1798 and Edward was forced into hiding in Dublin with Dublin Castle posting a £1000 bounty for his arrest.
He was planning for the insurrection to take place on 23rd May 1798 but the bounty caught him as catholic barrister Francis Magon claimed the reward giving him away to “spy master Francis Higgins”. Led by Major Sirr Fitzgerald was set upon in his hiding place in the Liberties where he fiercely resisted arrest. He killed one man but was “shot by Sirr in the shoulder at point blank range”. “ He was taken to Dublin Castle and then jailed in Newgate. Edward Fitzgerald died of septicaemia and tetanus from his wounds on the 4th June 1798. He was buried in the crypt of St. Werburghs under the shadow of Dublin Castle.
