ABSTRACT
Connaught, with few “Big Houses” of Ascendancy (Anglo-Irish Protestant) landowners and a large population of their Irish-speaking and poverty-stricken Catholic tenants, was considered Ireland’s Wild West, violent and openly rebellious in 1798, when French soldiers landed and proclaimed the Connaught Republic; thousands of peasants joined them against British troops. During the Famine poverty and the primitive state of roads would make Connaught particularly vulnerable; over 400,000 people were lost to hunger, typhus, or emigration.
