5th BATTALION 60th FOOT (RIFLES) COMMAND

This blister pack contains four unpainted figures. The figures are supplied unpainted and unbased. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1798), also known as the United Irishmen Rebellion (Irish: Éirí Amach na nÉireannach Aontaithe), was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against British rule in the Kingdom of Ireland. The United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions, were the main organising force behind the rebellion. On 22 August, nearly two months after the main uprisings had been defeated, about 1,000 French soldiers under General Humbert ( model available from my shop) landed in the north-west of the country, at Kilcummin in County Mayo. Joined by up to 5,000 local rebels, they had some initial success, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the British at the Castlebar (also known as the Castlebar races to commemorate the speed of the retreat) and setting up a short-lived “Republic of Connaught”. This sparked some supportive risings in Longford and Westmeath which were quickly defeated, and the main force was defeated at the battle of Ballinamuck, in County Longford, on 8 September 1798. The French troops who surrendered were repatriated to France in exchange for British prisoners of war, but hundreds of the captured Irish rebels were executed. This episode of the 1798 Rebellion became a major event in the heritage and collective memory of the West of Ireland and was commonly known in Irish as Bliain na bhFrancach and in English as “The Year of the French” On 12 October 1798, a larger French force consisting of 3,000 men, and including Wolfe Tone himself, attempted to land in County Donegal near Lough Swilly. They were intercepted by a larger Royal Navy squadron, and finally surrendered after a three hour battle without ever landing in Ireland. Wolfe Tone was tried by court-martial in Dublin and found guilty. He asked for death by firing squad, but when this was refused, Tone cheated the hangman by slitting his own throat in prison on 12 November, and died a week later.
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states. Marked by French revolutionary fervour and military innovations, the campaigns saw the French Revolutionary Armies defeat a number of opposing coalitions and expand French control to the Low Countries, Italy, and the Rhineland. The wars involved enormous numbers of soldiers, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription.
The French Revolutionary Wars are usually divided between those of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the Second Coalition (1798–1801), although France was at war with Great Britain continuously from 1793 to 1802. Hostilities ceased with the Treaty of Amiens 1802, but conflict soon began again with the Napoleonic Wars.