Lord Edward FitzGerald

Lord Edward FitzGerald (15 October 1763 – 4 June 1798) was an Irish aristocrat and nationalist. He abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence, and as an Irish Parliamentarian, to embrace the cause of an independent Irish republic. Unable to reconcile with Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy or with the Kingdom's English-appointed administration, he sought inspiration in revolutionary France where, in 1792, he met and befriended Thomas Paine. From 1796 he became a leading proponent within the Society of United Irishmen of a French-assisted insurrection. On the eve of the intended uprising in May 1798, he was fatally wounded in the course of arrest. Early years FitzGerald, the fifth son of the 1st Duke of Leinster and the Lady Emily Lennox (daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond), was born at Carton House, near Dublin, and was a member of the Fitzgerald dynasty. In 1773 his father died and his mother soon afterwards married William Ogilvie, who had been the tutor for him and his siblings. He spent most of his childhood in Frescati House at Blackrock in Dublin where he was tutored by Ogilvie in a manner chiefly directed to the acquisition of knowledge that would fit him for a military career. American War of Independence FitzGerald joined the British Army in 1779 and then became aide-de-camp on the staff of Lord Rawdon in the southern theatre of the American Revolutionary War. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of Eutaw Springs on 8 September 1781, his life being saved by an escaped slave named Tony Small (nicknamed "Faithful Tony", see Black Loyalist). FitzGerald commissioned a portrait of Tony Small by John Roberts in 1786. Lord Edward freed Small and employed him to the end of his life. FitzGerald was evacuated from Charleston, South Carolina in 1782 when the British forces abandoned the city. Webb surmises that the success of the American colonists in fighting against regular troops led him in later years to the conviction that his countrymen in Ireland could cope with them with a similar result. Post-war military career In 1783 FitzGerald visited the West Indies before returning to Ireland, where his brother, the 2nd Duke of Leinster, had procured Edward's election to the Irish Parliament as a Member for Athy, a seat he held until 1790. In Parliament he acted with the small Opposition Irish Patriot Party group led by Henry Grattan, but took no prominent part in debate.