Fitzgerald, Lord Edward

Related Category: British and Irish History: Biographies

1763–98, Irish revolutionary; son of James Fitzgerald, 20th earl of Kildare and 1st duke of Leinster. After an early career in the army and the Irish House of Commons, Lord Edward, attracted by the French Revolution, went (1792) to Paris and was expelled from the British army for his avowed republicanism. Returning home, he joined the United Irishmen, whom he pledged to assist as commander in chief of their rebel army. In 1796 he went to Basel to negotiate French aid for the planned Irish uprising. On the eve of the rebellion of 1798 he was betrayed by an informer and arrested; he died of wounds sustained at his arrest.

See biography by T. Moore (1831); S. Tillyard, Citizen Lord (1998).