14 November 1798: A "chain of telegraphic communications" is to be constructed "along the different heights" of the disturbed Wicklow mountains. The Courier reports on the 9th that Morley Saunders and three officers of the 89th regiment are engaged in preliminary surveying near Stratford-on-Slaney and were recently obliged to skirmish bloodlessly with the "knights of the pike".
The outcome of a minor Anglo-American dispute regarding United Irish prisoners is made public by the Belfast Newsletter on the 9th. It asserts that "the state prisoners in the several jails of Ireland have received notice that they could not be allowed to go to any part of the United States". This greatly complicates the workings of the Kilmainham pact under which self-exile in America was offered to leading republicans who assent to forgo trial. Eighteen less fortunate rebels are sentenced to death at Naas assizes.
A major source of instability is removed on the 10th when Joseph Holt, the "infamously celebrated" rebel leader, surrenders to Lord Powerscourt at Enniskerry. Command of the now disparate factions devolves on secondary officers such as Michael Dwyer, Michael Dalton, James Hughes and Andrew Hackett. An angered Marquis Buckingham speculates that Holt will join Garret Byrne, Edward Fitzgerald and William Aylmer in their "pleasant transportation" to England. The unwritten terms granted to Holt actually stipulate his exile for life in New South Wales.
Tone is brought before a Royal Barracks court martial at the same time presided over by Maj Gen Loftus. Described to Lord Grenville as "the cleverest man amongst the United Irishmen", Tone is charged with "bearing arms against his King and Country and assuming a command in an enemy's army . . . and acting in open resistance to his Majesty's forces". The circumstances of Tone's capture on the Hoche leaves John Philpot Curran little scope to defend his client and a strategy of questioning the competency of a military tribunal to try the case is adopted. In the interim Tone is content to read a statement to the court.
Contravening undertakings to eschew "inflammatory" sentiments, Tone vindicates his actions as a patriotic mission "to tread in the glorious paths chalked out by the example of Washington in America, and Kosciusko in Poland. In such arduous and critical pursuits, success was the criterion of merit and fame; it was his lot to fail, and he was resigned to his fate". When requesting to be shot as a soldier rather than hanged as a traitor, Tone points out that "the French army did not feel it contrary to the dignity of the etiquette of arms" to concede this favour to emigre royalists who invaded Quiberon Bay in British uniforms in 1795.
At around eight o'clock on the 12th the staff of the Provost Marshalsea in the Royal Barracks discover that Tone is half-dead. He apparently "endeavoured to avoid the sentence of public execution by an attempt to take away his own life; he was found . . . exhausted by loss of blood, his windpipe completely cut across, and the veins of his neck slightly wounded by a pen knife, which was found in his hand. The order for his execution by hanging had been issued, the front of Newgate was the place appointed, and everything was prepared for his reception at the awful spot". Whether Tone really attempted suicide or sought only to delay his scheduled execution until a meaningful appeal could be lodged is a matter of debate.