The Orange Society, which swiftly became the Orange Order, held its first Twelfth of July demonstration the following year, 1796. To this day the Order is a powerful political and economic force in Northern Ireland. Also in that year, one of the United Irishmen’s principal leaders, Theobald Wolfe Tone, a Protestant, generally regarded as the father of Irish republicanism, made contact with the Directory in Paris with a view to acquiring arms and soldiers with which to put teeth into the United Irishmen’s doctrines.
