An Irishwoman’s Diary: John Patrick Leonard, an Irish republican in 19th-century France

John Patrick Leonard was born on Spike Island in Cork Harbour on October 22nd, 1814. His father William, a mechanic, died when John Patrick was four. His uncles sent Leonard to study in Boulogne-sur-Mer at the age of 14. He later returned to France as a medical student, became a naturalised French citizen and remained until his death at age 75.

For the last half of the 19th century, Leonard was "the central, unavoidable character in Franco-Irish relations," says the French historian Janick Julienne, author of An Irishman in Paris; John Patrick Leonard, at the heart of Franco-Irish Relations (1814-1889).

Leonard dropped out of medical school, probably for lack of money. His medical experience would nonetheless prove useful, when the Irish ambulance he organised plied the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian war.

As an English teacher, Leonard was, according to his supervisors’ evaluations, a disorderly, pleasure-seeking spendthrift. Marriage to Irishwoman Barbara O’Kearney and the birth of two children calmed him, and he became a respectable Paris professor.

Leonard was an enthusiastic supporter of the February 1848 revolution that overthrew King Louis-Philippe. He led an Irish delegation to the Paris town hall, where the poet Alphonse de Lamartine declared the Second Republic.

Thomas Francis Meagher, the leader of the Young Irelanders in the failed rebellion of 1848, recorded that Leonard gave the first Irish tricolour to Lamartine.

From 1848, France became a refuge for Irish nationalists of all stripes, including John O’Leary, the Fenian who was condemned to live in exile until 1871. O’Leary was one of Leonard’s closest friends.

As founder of the United Irish Club, Leonard helped Irishmen find lodging, employment, and even military training in the French National Guard or Foreign Legion.

Leonard supplemented his salary by giving private English lessons, which provided an introduction to the aristocracy.

He also wrote for Irish newspapers, particularly the Nation and the Cork Examiner.

Under the Second Empire (1852-1870), Irish nationalists in Paris were regarded with a mixture of fascination and fear. A lithograph by Honoré Daumier shows a Frenchman checking by candlelight “to make sure there aren’t any Fenians under his bed”.

Emperor Napoleon III saw the Irish presence as a card in his dealings with Britain.

The Irish haunted the cafes of the Latin Quarter, rubbing shoulders with students and professors, the poets Baudelaire and Verlaine. In the 1880s, they were more likely to be found in the right bank triangle formed by the rue de Rivoli, the Champs-Élysées and the Opera.

Leonard received revolutionaries and parliamentarians with equal bonhomie, introducing them to French journalists and politicians. “They all frequented the same cafes and restaurants, and they all shared Leonard as a contact,” Julienne says.

“Especially in the late 1870s, Paris was a safe, comfortable place for Fenians, advocates of Home Rule and Land Leaguers to meet each other. Leonard was like a fish in water. He knew all of them. Above all, he wanted independence for Ireland, with the help of France.”

It is unusual in France for a convinced republican to befriend nobles and high-ranking clergy, as Leonard did.

Julienne believes Leonard first met Marshal Patrice de McMahon, who was governor general of Algeria and later president of France, when Leonard led an Irish delegation that gave McMahon an engraved sword.

With McMahon, Leonard launched a short-lived colony of more than 100 Irishmen in French Algeria.

“When you read what Leonard wrote about McMahon in his articles, he worshipped him,” Julienne says. “It was incredibly obsequious.”

Leonard presided over the “Old Irish” association, comprised of aristocratic descendents of the Jacobite Wild Geese, organising their annual St Patrick’s Day dinner at the prestigious Grand Véfour restaurant.

Leonard also established a friendship with the zealous bishop of Orléans, Msgr Félix Dupanloup. He translated Dupanloup’s sermons for distribution in Ireland and collected aid for poor Irish people.

By the 1880s, the French grew so wary of the Irish that visiting parliamentarians, including Charles Stewart Parnell, were kept under police surveillance. In 1885, the ageing Fenian leader James Stephen was expelled. The Franco-Irish network constructed so painstakingly by Leonard over four decades ended with his death in 1889.

I asked Julienne who today would be the equivalent of Leonard. “Since I was a student, I’ve heard about Pierre Joannon, the Irish Consul General,” she said. “He writes books about Ireland. He knows everyone in political and academic circles. (Indeed, Joannon co-organised the seminar at the Irish College where I met Julienne.) You sense that Joannon has a passion to do things for Ireland in France, as John Patrick Leonard did.”