The strategy, as before, was to solicit a French invasion and to coordinate, if possible, with radical conspirators in Great Britain. To this end, in December 1798 William Putnam McCabe (son of the co-founder in Belfast of the first United Irish society, Thomas McCabe) set out for France, stopping first in London to renew contact with the network of English Jacobins, the United Britons. But as there had been in the preparation of the earlier rebellion, there was to be a growing rift between those who believed that Ireland had to be part of a larger French-assisted scheme, and those convinced that significant French aid would be forthcoming only to defend an independence already won.
