Denis Taaffe or Dennis Taafe (bapt. 1759, Clogher, County Louth; d. 1813, Dublin) was an Irish political writer and historian also known under the pseudonym Julius Vindex, and a veteran of the 1798 Rebellion. He wrote extensively against the notion of England having had a civilising mission in Ireland. Citing David Hume's History of England (1754–62) as a case in point, Taaffe argued that British writers on Irish affairs had generally "brandished the pen of defamation with a mind no less hostile than that of the warrior yielding the sword in battle"(Impartial history, i, p. iv).