Present day visitors to the Picture Gallery in Kilkenny Castle find a very large airy room decorated with a number of Ormonde family portraits. The atmosphere is of quiet contemplation of the works of art. On the 12 October, 1912 there was a very different atmosphere as a large number of people assembled for an … Read more
Niamh O’Sullivan Speaking in the Houses of Parliament in 1886 T.P. O’Connor, one of Parnell’s closest associates, forecast what Ireland would look like under Home Rule. He described ‘a nation of small farmers—one vast universal petite bourgeoisie’. In support of his characterisation he goes on to exhort his listeners to Go to the Royal Academy … Read more
Jim Smyth We’ll fight to the last in the honest old cause,And guard our religion, our freedom and laws.We’ll fight for our country, our king and his crown,And make all the traitors and croppies lie down.As the television documentaries, radio programmes and newspaper features marking the bicentennary of the French revolution rolled on through 1989, … Read more
Dáire Keogh The foundation of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, in 1795 represented a revolution in the history of Irish Catholicism. The penal era was drawing to a close, but the French Revolution and the loss of the continental colleges threatened the supply of priests to Ireland; of 478 seminary places in Europe before the revolution, … Read more
Richard Doherty ‘Aughrim of the slaughter’, fought on 12 July 1691, Irish history’s bloodiest day, is almost the forgotten battle of the war of the kings. Aughrim need never have been fought. That it happened was due to the Frenchman Charles Chalmont, Marquis de Saint-Ruhe, generally referred to as Saint Ruth who assumed the post … Read more