Kyan, Esmond (c.1750–1798), United Irish commander and landowner, was born probably in Co. Wexford, fourth son of Howard Kyan (d. 1804) of Mount Howard, near Ferns, Co. Wexford, and of Ballymurtagh and Mount Pleasant, Co. Wicklow. His father, a catholic landowner, was also director (1766–1804) of the Hibernian Mining Co. It seems that he was commissioned as an officer in a British artillery unit during the 1770s and saw combat in Europe. He resided after retirement at Monamolin, near Oulart, in Co. Wexford, in the 1780s and 1790s. Wounded in a duel with a debtor c.1790, he lost his right arm and wore a prosthesis. Supposedly launched on a radical course in disgust at the conservative parliamentary aspirations of his father, he participated in the reform campaign of the Wexford Catholic Committee from the summer of 1792. It is likely he was one of the founding members of the Gorey, Co. Wexford, branch of the United Irishmen, established in December 1792. Real republican enthusiasm is suggested by stories that he propagated libertarian ideas among the small farmers of his neighbourhood, and by his decision, directly before the rising of 1798, to marry the daughter of a Wexford farmer; the Kyans were regarded as one of the most eminent catholic gentry families in Wexford and Wicklow.
Owing to Kyan's veteran status he was one of six leaders accorded the rank of colonel, and during the rising was nominally in charge of a regiment of 1,200 rebels. Taken prisoner some time between 27 May 1798, the first day of the rising in Wexford, and the battle of Tuberneering on 4 June, he was held with one hundred others (though it is doubtful his identity could have been concealed) in the lower rooms of the market house in Gorey. Liberated by a rebel group under Miles Byrne (qv), he rapidly inspected two or three captured cannon at the main rebel camp on Gorey Hill. Grapeshot from his artillery precipitated the retirement of a strong force under Gen. Loftus then approaching the battlefield. Kyan and John Hay (d.1798), a former Austrian army officer, now urged progress towards Arklow, but in the confusion over rebel military authority they were overruled; the rebel delay at this juncture has been deemed one of the fatal blunders of the campaign. Kyan was, however, implicated in the decision on 8 June 1798 again to postpone attacking the town, when a note to him, purporting to come from known republican sympathisers in the Antrim militia stationed in Arklow, asked for time to desert before battle should commence. During the assault on 9 June Kyan briefly let captured British gunners fire the rebel cannon under supervision until, realising that they were deliberately missing the targets, he and Dick Monk took over the guns, pulled them into a better location, and promptly knocked over the British ammunition cart, then hit a British gun, killing thirteen gunners in the explosion. His endeavours were halted when raking British shot splintered his artificial limb, damaging the stump, though he yelled defiantly to the insurgents: ‘My loose timbers are flying, God bless the mark . . . now for the right arm of the British line’ (Furlong, 115).
Several days after the rebel defeat at Arklow, he was obliged to make for Wexford to seek medical aid. He was too incapacitated to play much part in the rebel leadership in the last few weeks of the rising. Getting into Wexford on 20 June, he intervened to prevent the hanging on Wexford bridge of Richard Newtown, JP, and other loyalists, telling the rebel company that victorious crown forces would exact full revenge for the cold-blooded murder of protestants. He accompanied the main rebel force on 21 June, marching north to the Wicklow mountains. About 10 July he turned up at the rebel camp at Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow, but insisted on returning quickly to the outskirts of Wexford, certain of safe refuge during convalescence. He was probably too ill to stand greater rigours by then. On 20 July, within a day of reaching Wexford, he was captured, put through a summary trial, and executed. As rebel commander (possibly for a time in overall command), he had been popular and humane, earning respect for his ‘brilliant courage’ (Byrne, 133) under fire.