The Battle of Tory Island was fought on 12 October 1798 off the northwest coast of County Donegal, then in the Kingdom of Ireland. The battle marked the last attempt by the French Navy to launch an invasion of any part of the British Isles. It ended the last hopes the United Irishmen had of obtaining outside support in their struggle with the British.
About Battle of Tory Island in brief
The Battle of Tory Island was fought on 12 October 1798 off the northwest coast of County Donegal, then in the Kingdom of Ireland. The battle marked the last attempt by the French Navy to launch an invasion of any part of the British Isles. It ended the last hopes the United Irishmen had of obtaining outside support in their struggle with the British. After the action, Wolfe Tone was recognised aboard the captured French flagship and arrested. He was brought ashore by the British at Buncrana, on the Inishowen Peninsula. Tone was later tried for treason, convicted, and committed suicide while in prison in Dublin, hours before he was to be hanged. The following year, Tone and his companions tried again, persuading the government of the Batavian Republic to prepare their own expedition. The expedition was a total disaster with 13,000 men drowned, and over 2,000 French soldiers were killed. During 1797, the Dutch fleet was readied for a second invasion of Ireland, but was defeated by the Royal Navy’s North Sea Fleet in the ensuing Battle of Camperdown. The rest of the French fleet was captured or destroyed in ensuing battles, ending the French occupation of the Republic of Ireland and ending the threat to the British war effort in the North Sea. In 1798, the British and French fleets confronted each other off the coast of Scotland, and the Battle of Cornwallis ended the French attempt to take control of the South Sea. The Battle of St Vincent and the Grenadines was the last major naval battle of the war, with the French losing all but one of their ships and the British capturing four.
The French were forced to retreat to Brest, and only two frigates and a schooner reached safety. British losses in the campaign were minimal, with only one ship, the HMS Dauntless, remaining in the Irish Sea to fight off the Dutch. The British and the French fought a brief battle off the west coast of Ireland in October 1799, but the French were not able to repel the British, and they were eventually forced to withdraw to the port of Bantry Bay. The last action of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 ended the final attempt to land substantial numbers of soldiers in Ireland during the war. French planners considered that a successful invasion ofIreland might act as the ideal platform for a subsequent invasion of Great Britain. Britain’s enemies in continental Europe had long recognised Ireland as a weak point in Britain’s defences. Landing troops there was a popular strategic goal, not only because an invader could expect the support of a large proportion of the native population, but also because at least initially they would face fewer and less reliable troops than elsewhere in the UK. The rhetoric of theFrench Revolution inspired many Irishmen to fight for similar principles of liberty, equality, and brotherhood in their own nation. With these goals in mind, in 1791 Dublin lawyer Wolfe Tone founded the Society of United Irishman. The society was suppressed by British authorities and forced to go underground when war broke out between France and Great Britain in 1793.
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