Robert Emmet is one of the best known but least understoof figures in Irish history. As the premier popular hero of the nineteenth century, his dramatic speech from the dock challenged successors to vindicate his deeds by ensuring that Ireland took it's place 'amongst the nations of the Earth'. This Rising of 1803, of which Emmet was the main strategist, was the first attempt of the republican United Irishmen to sever the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland by armed force and was regarded with the upmost seriousness in Dublin and London. 

Emmet, arrested on 25 August 1803 and executed on 20 September, passed immediately into the ranks of Irish republican heroes. His stoicism, idealism and revolutionary acumen were all admired by contemporaries, even if the appealing lyrics of Thomas Moore represented him as a romantic figure. Emmet's stirring speech from the dock, however, ensured his iconic status with the physical force tradition whose leaders acknowledged his in 1867 during the Fenian Rising and, more importantly, during the Rising of Easter 1916. For this reason Emmet's name will be associated with the final resolution of the National Question in Ireland which the current Peace Process may yet address. 

This is the second book in Ruan O'Donnell's contextualised two-volume biography draws on significant new research to re-evaluate Robert Emmet's revolutionary career and legacy.