support for the Irish cause). There was also talk of an Irish-American brigade and of a Chartist diversion in England With Duffy's arrest, it was left to Smith O'Brien to confront the reality of the Confederates' domestic isolation. Having with Meagher and John Dillon gathered a small group of both landowners and tenants, on 23 July Smith O'Brien raised the standard or revolt in Kilkenny. This was a tricolour he and Meagher had brought back from France, its colours (green for Catholics, orange for Protestants) intended to symbolise the United Irish republican ideal. As Smith O'Brien proceeded into Tipperary he was greeted by curious crowds, but found himself in command of only a few hundred ill-clad largely unarmed men. They scattered after their first skirmish with the constabulary, derisively referred to by The Times of London as "Battle of Widow McCormack's Cabbage Patch". Conviction In Smith O'Brien's subsequent trial, the jury found him guilty of high treason. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency were signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England. In Dublin on 5 June 1849, the sentences of Smith O'Brien and his confederates Meagher, Terence MacManus and Patrick O'Donoghue were commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania in present-day Australia). Smith O'Brien attempted to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania, but was betrayed by Ellis, the captain of the schooner hired for the escape. He was sent to Port Arthur where he met up with John Mitchel, who had been transported before the rebellion. The cottages which Smith O'Brien lived in on Maria Island and Port Arthur have been preserved in their 19th century state as memorials. Having emigrated to the United States, Ellis was tried by another Young Irelanders leader, Terence MacManus, at a lynch court in San Francisco for the betrayal of Smith O'Brien. He was freed for lack of evidence. In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, Smith O'Brien was released on the condition he never return to the United Kingdom. He settled in Brussels. In May 1856, he was granted an unconditional pardon and returned to Ireland that July. He contributed to the Nation newspaper, and published the two-volume Principles of Government, or Meditations in Exile in 1856. But despite the efforts of George Henry Moore to recruit him as a leader of the Independent Irish Party, Smith O'Brien played no