The Government continued to fear the enemy within and increased the power of sedition laws to break and stifle individuals and societies that appeared to be supporting pro-French Republican views. The failure of this and other invasion plans brought the British only a short-term reprieve.

Reconstruction of soldiers during the Napoleonic wars But nothing went right for the French - the weather was so violent that no troops could be put ashore - and by the first week of January 1797 the French invasion fleet, battered and dispersed, crept back to Brest. The plan was to land, ignite the country in rebellion against the Protestant English overlords, seize the port of Cork and be in Dublin within the fortnight. Wolfe Tone promised popular support if the French invaded and, in late December 1796, a French invasion fleet of around 50 ships carrying 15,000 veteran troops set sail from Brest for Bantry Bay in south-west Ireland. Wolfe Tone and Hoche met and their aspirations coincided. In 1796 he was in France seeking aid and promoting the invasion of Ireland by a French army of liberation. A member of the Society of United Irishman Wolfe Tone was a Protestant who by the mid 1790s was convinced that change could come only through violent insurrection. Important to the French was the Irish patriot Theobald Wolfe Tone. During 1796 the most successful and charismatic of France's revolutionary soldiers - General Hoche - started to hatch a grand and complex plan for the co-ordinated invasion of England, Wales and Ireland.

The napoleonic wars