23rd May, 1798: The capture of the much-sought fugitive, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, inflicts another crippling blow to United Irish military preparations. Fitzgerald, its main strategist, shows something of his resolve when trapped on May 19th in Murphy's of Thomas Street by Major Sirr, Captain Ryan, and Justice Swan.
On sighting Swan, Fitzgerald leaped to his feet and "gave him a stab in the side, under the left arm and breast". The injured man shot his quarry with a double-barrelled pistol, yet "Lord Edward made a strong effort and rushing on Ryan, gave him three desperate wounds on the breast and the belly. . . Lord Edward, when he saw Major Sirr, grinned, and made an effort to get at him. The major immediately fired and lodged several lugs in his shoulder."
Ryan is mortally wounded and the gravely-ill Fitzgerald lodged in Dublin Castle. Martial law is declared in the capital and all efforts to preserve a semblance of normality are abandoned.
Lord Castlereagh informs William Wickham on the 20th that the arrest "has produced a considerable effect on the rebels within the metropolis; their adherents in the country, although in some districts inclined to a desperate effort, are in many subdued, and are delivering up their pikes in great quantities."
Pressure mounts within the United Irish organisation to rise before its leadership structure in Dublin and arms stores elsewhere are decimated.
Information gleaned by increasingly brutal and frequent interrogations quickly snowballs into a comprehensive picture of the conspiracy but state terror steels the most determined to retaliate. The beleaguered rebel families of south Wicklow eagerly await "orders to begin".
Another breakthrough is secured by the Government on the 21st when disaffected barristers Henry and John Sheares are seized on the word of CaptLieut John Warneford Armstrong, of the King's County Militia. They are revealed to have been intriguing with the military forces at Lehaunstown Camp.
The Freeman's Journal states on the 22nd that "on searching one of them, there was found upon him papers of a most dangerous tendency, containing a kind of proclamation, addressed to the people, exciting them to rise, and to shed the blood of tyrants".
A rump rebel leadership in Dublin under the influence of Samuel Neilson reluctantly fixes May 23rd as the date of the rising. Hurriedly dispatched emissaries alert their followers to the basic plan of an internal city revolt supported by reinforcements from adjacent parts of counties Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Meath.
This is to be seconded in the outlying counties of Leinster and throughout Munster and Ulster by a wave of diversionary attacks.
Dublin's Chief Magistrates are warned on the 22nd that "the disaffected in the city and neighbourhood of Dublin have been daring enough to form a plan for the purpose of possessing themselves, in the course of the present week, of the metropolis, and of the seizing of the Executive Government" but precise details are not obtained until two hours before the rising begins.
This notice is sufficient to stymie the strategy of the city insurgents on the night of the 23rd but thousands of their comrades take the field in Leinster and begin the Rebellion.