Prologue: the quiet before the storm

When the Second Earl de Grey boarded the train home from Dublin for the final time, at a quarter past eleven on 16 July 1844, the retiring lord-lieutenant of Ireland was exhausted – but relieved. The 43-year-old Union between Great Britain and Ireland – tied together to form the United Kingdom in 1801 – looked safer than it had for decades. Just a year earlier the situation had looked very different. Daniel O’Connell’s Loyal National Repeal Association was at the height of its popularity. Its demand for Repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of an Irish Parliament in Dublin had caught the imagination of the Irish masses. The size of O’Connell’s rallies – dubbed ‘Monster meetings’ by the press – grew larger and larger. In August 1843 at the Hill of Tara, by tradition the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, up to 750,000 people – approximately a tenth of the Irish population – reportedly turned out to hear O’Connell speak. A meeting at Clontarf in October was going to be greater still. However, O’Connell – whose movement had often used the threat of force (though never fully followed through) to achieve its political objectives – had overplayed his hand.

Banners appeared promising the deployment of ‘Repeal Cavalry’ at the meeting. De Grey chose his moment to strike, issuing a proclamation banning the meeting the night before. De Grey called O’Connell’s bluff; the nationalist leader lacked the time to protest the decision using the legal system, forcing him to call off the meeting to avoid imminent violence. British troops steamed into Dublin’s harbour and Ireland’s main nationalist newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, alleged that the troops had been summoned to, ‘cut the people down’ and ‘run riot in the blood of the innocent’. But the more enthusiastic Repealers who ignored O’Connell and turned up at the fields of Clontarf found there was no fight to be had. De Grey, it turned out, had bluffed them too. He had given the troops orders to stay away from Clontarf. Repeal supporters itching for a fight were left milling around with nothing to do.