Robert Emmet
Here at Division #23, we are proud to claim the great Irish Patriot, Robert Emmet, as our namesake. Below is a brief history of Robert, including his epitaph. (Click the link below for a Robert Emmet home page).
Emmet, Robert (1778-1803), Irish patriot, born in Dublin, younger brother of the noted barrister, Thomas Addis Emmet. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1793 but resigned in 1798 before obtaining a degree rather than submit to questioning by the strongly antinationalist lord chancellor of Ireland, John Fitzgibbon, earl of Clare, who was trying to appraise student support of the United Irishmen, a revolutionary society. In 1800 Emmet went to France and associated himself with the exiled leaders of the United Irishmen. In 1802 he gained assurances of support for Irish independence from Napoleon and the French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Emmet then secretly returned to Ireland. He began organizing an armed rebellion, but his plans miscarried; in July 1803 he headed a force of about 150 men, armed chiefly with pikes, whom he proposed to lead in an attack on Dublin Castle. On the way, the group became unruly and was dispersed by a small body of British troops. Emmet fled into hiding in the Wicklow Mountains; after a few days he went to the home of his fellow patriot John Philpot Curran, whose daughter, Sarah, Emmet loved. He was captured there shortly afterward, convicted of treason, condemned to death, and hanged.
The Irish poet Thomas Moore made Emmet's tragic love affair the subject of two poems, "Oh, Breathe Not His Name" and "She Is Far from the Land Where Her Young Hero Sleeps"; the American writer Washington Irving also used it as the basis for his short story "The Broken Heart."
Epitaph
Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, my tomb remain un-inscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character.