Shortly before midnight on May 23, 1798, the road north of Dublin ended and caught fire, and an email coach headed to Belfast.

This is a signal designed to inspire the entire Irish revolution.

At that time, Ireland was a kingdom within the state of Great Britain. The island's three religious factions have long been divided. The families belonging to the Anglican Church in Ireland formed the aristocratic landlords and colonial administrators. The Presbyterian Church is concentrated in the north and has a strong middle class. But as "dissidents" of the Anglican Church, they are second-class citizens.

The majority of the "local" Catholics in the remaining 80% of the population are nearly twenty farmers. For more than a hundred years, they have lived under the criminal law that frees Catholics from the decay of economic and political power.

A new organization, the United Irish Association, was founded in Belfast in the early 1890s, and the chapters spread rapidly to Dublin and across the country. Anyone can join as long as they dream of making Ireland a republic like the United States and France, where the people have distributed and ruled themselves with the monarch.

Catholics and Presbyterians flocked to each other, and even several Anglicans joined. The charismatic Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke's Anglican son, gave up his title and commanded the militias of society.

By 1798, one in four people, many of them equipped with long tin parkas, waiting for the subpoena.

It was the Irish Catholics and Presbyterians who would unite in a truly meaningful way until 1998 when most factions signed the Good Friday Agreement.

As an Irish scholar of study, I think the nationalist movement was symbolized by the revolutionary Theobald Wolfe Tone, whose father was an Anglican businessman whose mother was born and raised a Catholic.

“I am a Protestant,” Tone wrote in his most famous political pamphlet, also “a lover of justice and a stable tyranny.”

Enlightenment ideal

Irish Catholics have suffered from faith since King Henry VIII cut off his country's ties with Roman Catholicism in the 16th century. Their land was confiscated. They couldn't help but their arms. They cannot hold schools or build churches. Although the worst of these laws had been reformed in the late 18th century and a small Catholic middle class emerged, it was still prohibited from performing political duties.

Inspired by the American and French Revolutions, the United Irish wanted to have a secular republic that separates the church from the country. They claim to be the enlightenment principle of the people, freedom and government and believe that citizens have the responsibility to cancel any government that undermines its rights.

Their creed is a secular catechism, usually expressed in the form of a question and answer text:

What do you have in your hands? This is a branch.
What? Free Tree
Where did it grow for the first time? In the United States.
Where does it bloom? In France.
Where do the seeds fall? In Ireland.

These Irish patriots transcend sectarian differences, seeing green as the color of their flag. In this field, they imposed an ancient symbol of Ireland, the harp.

Rebellion

The British began to suspect the uprising and decided to strike first in 1787 to release the brutal suppression. The red-clothed dracos "drag" the dracos, ransacked and burned the house, whipped and executed the suspect immediately.

The Irish still sings today in the folk song "Green Dress":

I met the diaper Tandy and he held me,
He said, "Dear Old Ireland, how can she stand?"
“She is the most painful country you’ve ever seen.
They are hanging men and women wearing green. ”

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l2paslz2ue[/embed]

Most of the United Irish leaders, including Fitzgerald, were arrested or killed in Dragnet. As a result, when the signal finally appears, the burning email coach proved hoarse, not the Rockets.

Like gutter candles, the rebellion was spent in uncoordinated rises in different periods of different parts of the country. France, which was fighting with Britain at that time, had helped too little, too late. By October, the Irish revolution was brutally suppressed.

Historical memory

Even before the conflict ended, the noble Anglican writers, such as Sir Richard Musgrave, used the rebellion as an uprising for disgruntled Catholics. Like the rebels slaughtering government supporters in Wexford County, revenge killing portrays the rebellion as a religious war: Catholics who oppose Protestants.

Cynical English policy further eliminates the Presbyterian Catholic Union. In 1800, the "Action of Alliance" rewarded the Irish Presbyterian Church with full citizenship, not in the Republic of Ireland, but in the Protestant, monarchical British state.

Catholics remain oppressed and impoverished and have not yet faced the most difficult trial: Gorta Mor, potato famine in the 1840s. About one million people, almost all Catholics, died of hunger or disease, and immigrated another 2 million. Ireland's population has dropped by one third.

Since Irish nationalism became synonymous with Catholic liberation, it was mainly Catholics celebrating Manchester United Irish memories. The Finnish was a nationalist brotherhood that he fought for Irish independence in the 1860s, using Manchester United Irish as an inspiration. Their famous ballad, "Rise of the Moon", lamented, "What a glorious pride and sadness / fills the name of ninety-eight!"

Religious State

On Easter in 1916, the Irish Republicans rose again in Dublin and began the revolution, which eventually led to Ireland's independence. Part of their troops, the Citizen Army, raised the old Union Irish flag to the headquarters of the Dublin Liberty Hall.

But when the Irish were given a "free nation", they did not establish the secular republic that Manchester United Irish envisioned. The new country is an absolutely Catholic country.

The new flag of the United States, the Irish tricolor, includes the Catholic green, orange Protestants and white people to represent the peace between them. But this is mainly an empty gesture. Today, only about 4% of the population of the Republic of Ireland are considered Protestant, while another 15% say they have no religious beliefs.

This is mainly because in 1922 the British carved enclaves of six northern counties, inhabited by most Presbyterians and many Anglicans. This political entity, "Northern Ireland", has been unified to Britain. The number of Protestants exceeds Catholics 2 to 1, while ethnic minorities face widespread discrimination.

Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Catholics in Northern Ireland began the movement for equal rights in 1968. But when their civil disobedience was violent, peaceful protests were caught in "trouble", a guerrilla war to get the British away.

Achieve peace

In 1994, the ceasefire was summoned after the two centenary of the rebellion in Ireland in 1798.

To coincide with the anniversary, historian Kevin Whelan published an influential book, The Tree of Freedom, which highlights the Enlightenment Foundation of the 1798 rebellion. Whelan believes that Catholics and Protestants work together to build a secular state based on equal rights.

In 1998, people across the country commemorated the rebellion, despite the sectarian division and troublesome violence.

Nearly 200 years after the Manchester United Irish stands up, the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Although Northern Ireland is still part of Britain today, the treaty ensured the main goal of the 1798 rebellion: equal rights and self-determination for all citizens, without any religious beliefs.