Hello and welcome to the Irish History podcast. My name is Finn DeWar and I am delighted to be sharing what is a very special episode of the show with you. So this podcast brings the series on the 1798 Rebellion to an end, but we have definitely kept the best to last.

So the episode is going to begin where so many shows in this series have started.

That's Dublin in 1798.

While the rebellion in the capital had been put down in brutal fashion, as we have heard in previous episodes, we are about to see as the revolt entered its third week across the island, a major

crisis was unfolding in Dublin as fears grew that the city might yet fall. After this, we're

going to head south to the banks of the Avoca River, where a titanic clash between the rebels

and the British army was looming. Then we're going to return

to the northeast to see how the rebellion, which many thought had finished there, broke out

again, and this tease up an end to the story that is packed with drama. Wolfton the founding

father of Irish republicanism returns to the story as the French launched yet another invasion, and then Ireland witnesses, a reign of terror, that matched what had unfolded in Paris in the early 1790s during the French Revolution. It's really enthralling stuff.

Now, since this is the final episode in this series, you might be wondering what's on the horizon for the show.

Well, supporters of the Irish History podcast over on Patreon and Supercast will have an exclusive series on the Hunger Strikes,

which will hopefully begin over Christmas and that features Dr Brian Hanley,

a professor of history in Trinity College Dublin.

It's an incredible

series that goes into lots of detail about life in Ireland in the lead-up to the famous IRA hunger

strike in 1981. Now next year on the show is looking better than ever, Brian Hanley has recorded

his own series of podcasts on forgotten aspects of the revolutionary era, which I will be sharing

with you as extra episodes. My major priority and focus is going to be a series on the Magdalene

Laundries. I've been working on that since early 2025, and it is without question the most intense

topic I've ever researched, but that should be coming in the spring of 2025. I also have loads of one-off shows planned as well. Now, the most important thing to do is make sure you're subscribed to the show to get all that content as it comes out. Now, this does have the sound of an end-of-year message, but it's actually not. There won't be an episode next week. We'll all need time to catch our breath after what has been a heavy run through the story of the rebellion in 1798. Then I will be back with two final shows to round out the year before Christmas. But now we can head back to the 1790s to finish the story of the largest revolt in Irish history. Additional narrations are by Aidan Crow and Therese Murray.

Additional research is from Stuart Redden

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