Easter rising

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THE EASTER RISING

The background

The Dublin rising of 1916 was a very surprising and dramatic occurrence. The men and women of the "Irish Volunteers" and of the "Irish Citizen Army" who took part in the rising had long been regarded by the British authorities as so unrepresentative of the Irish people that there seemed no need to take them seriously. It was judged better to treat them as a joke than risk turning them into minor Irish martyrs by prosecuting or disarming them. Basically, until about 12 o'clock on Easter Monday it seemed to the outside world that there was not the remotest possibility of them changing anything.
Moreover, Southern Ireland seemed at this moment, more than at any other in her history, loyal to the British Crown. The British government was in fact in the process of passing Home Rule for all Ireland, in spite of strong opposition from Ulster. But to the most nationalist Irishmen this seemed unimportant, and so a few weeks after the First World War broke out, Home Rule for all Ireland was passed into law. An "Amending Bill" to accommodate Ulster's fears was also projected, but this seemed unimportant, too.

The organisers

However, in Ireland there was a different and extreme tradition of patriotism, which regarded home rule as a sell-out. This tradition was still embodied in Dublin by an old Fenian and Republican, Tom Clarke, who had spent 15 years in jail for trying to set on bomb explosions in British cities. At the time he owned a tobacconist's shop and was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was revived thanks to the help of Sean McDermott, a young nationalist from Ulster.
So, after the outbreak of World War 1, the leaders of this group met in order to discuss what the IRB should do during the war. According to the old Fenian axiom that "England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity", it was decided to rise in arms against the British government before the war was over. Others present at the meeting included Patrick Pearse, the poet increasingly obsessed with the need for a blood sacrifice, and James Connolly, a former trade union organiser and socialist republican who had formed a workers' Irish Citizen Army.

The O'Donovan Rossa funeral

These conspirators organised in 1915 a great public event on the occasion of the funeral of the old Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, who had died in America where he'd been exiled for forty years. Although latterly he had been a supporter of Redmond's Home Rule movement, his revolutionary past lent itself to exploitation by the new conspirators. The funeral was a triumph for their propaganda. Few people at that time thought that these new men were planning to use extremist methods in the near future and had organised such occasion to condition public opinion towards them. The funeral was the effective proof of the Irish Volunteers' ability to organise when secretly directed by the councils of the IRB.
It was Connolly's impatience for a rising that finally brought Pearse and the secret group in the Volunteers to agree to rise in arms at Easter 1916.

The plans

The general plan for the rising in Dublin was to take over strategic strong-points in Dublin centre and approach routes into the city including railway stations. The headquarters were to be the General Post Office in O'Connell street.
But there was another vital part of the plan, on which the possibility of extending the Rising to other parts of the country depended. A consignment of arms was on its way by sea to Ireland from Germany. Arriving at the same time in a German submarine was Sir Roger Casement. Anyway Casement was deeply disillusioned with German help, and hoped to reach the leaders and warn them that if they were relying only on these arms, they should not go ahead with the rising.

The first troubles

When Casement landed he was immediately arrested. His arrest touched off a series of dramatic events. The secret group planning the rising was already in some trouble, and paying a price for keeping the plans so secret. One of the people they had to keep in the dark was Eoin MacNeill, the official leader of the Irish Volunteers and co-founder of the Gaelic League. When he found out that the plans were the prelude to an armed rebellion against the government, he decided he would do anything to stop it. Then he was informed that a government attempt to disarm the Volunteers was in the air, and so he agreed reluctantly that the Rising should go ahead. But news came that Casement had been arrested and that the German ship had been intercepted, and MacNeill decided to place an advertisement on the Sunday Independent announcing that the "manoeuvres" planned for that day were cancelled.
When the Dublin Castle heard that some sort of rising was being planned and that arms were on their way from Germany to help it, a decision was taken to disarm the rebels and arrest the leaders. But after Casement's arrest it seemed impossible that the rising could go ahead, and this impression was confirmed by MacNeill's announcement on the Sunday Independent. Any action was postponed until the following day.

The Easter Monday

However, the few Volunteers and Citizen Army men that the leaders had been able to summon were on their way early to their rallying-points. Among those men were Michael O'Rahilly, who had been one of the founders of the Volunteers, and Tom Clarke. One group of Fenian-minded Irishmen who had been living in Britain had returned to Ireland in the belief that a rising might be imminent. They were about 50, and were under the command of George Plunkett, whose brother had helped to plan the rising. At Liberty Hall all the officers, including Pearse and Connolly, were assembled with their men, together with members of the Youth Organisation, the Fianna, and the women's organisation. The main body of men marched from Liberty Hall to the GPO. There, the Irish Republic was proclaimed.
Others vantage-points had been taken over at Jacob's Biscuit Factory and at St Stephen Green. Anyway, in the centre of Dublin the main event had been not military at all but civilian: looting. Rebels were in command of several strong-points in the centre of Dublin, but were sitting there apparently quite unchallenged. They only numbered about 1,000, but of course the authorities didn't know that.
There were just under 2,500 British troops based in Dublin and, of these, many, on such a sunny Bank Holiday, had gone to the races. So, only 400 men were available when the rebels attacked the Dublin Castle. British reinforcements had arrived at Kingstown Harbour, and now set off for Dublin in two columns. One column managed to join the cordon already drawn round the rebels in the city centre. The other column ran into small outposts of the rebel strong-point at Boland's Mill, placed in few houses where there were only 17 men. Suddenly two men opened fire on the British soldiers from a window. The rebels' fire was so good and accurate that the British imagined themselves to be confronting with 2 or 3 hundreds men instead of 17! What made progress difficult were also the barricades that had been put up everywhere, made up mainly of household goods.

The rest of the week

On the whole, the main rebel garrisons remained for the greater part of the week in a state of alert inactivity. No rebel was killed inside the GPO during the whole week. Much of the rebels' time was spent in listening to rumours. There were rumours, for instance, that the rest of the country was rising to support Dublin, though all that happened elsewhere was simply actions against the Royal Irish Constabulary. The most important military action of the week was the slow tightening of the British cordon round the rebels, which caused much damage to the centre of the city.
By Friday evening the GPO was uncontrollably on fire. The end was at hand. That same evening Pearse, Connolly and Clarke had evacuated the building. One part managed to cross safely to the other side of the street. Connolly was carried on a stretcher because he had been hit by a bullet in the ankle where gangrene had set in. The rest of the GPO garrison went out headed by O'Rahilly, but he was soon hit.
Towards evening on the Saturday, words began to go round that Pearse had surrendered. He had finally gone out after receiving a note from the commander of the British forces in Dublin. The, he was driven to Kilmainham gaol. In some garrisons the news of Pearse's surrender caused dismay, but they reluctantly surrendered. The leader of the garrison at Boland's Mill was Eamon De Valera. They were addressed by Sean McDermott who forecast that he and the other leaders would be executed but urged the others "to carry on the struggle".

The epilogue

Known leaders and trouble-makers were separated from the rest. The rising had been unpopular, but rebels can't be dismissed easily as madmen. Nothing like this had happened in Ireland for over 100 years. Irish rebels had held the British army at bay for nearly a week, and though many British soldiers were Irish, it was Irish rebels who were the heroes. People began to turn their attention to the rebels, and to feel some pride in them.
However, the immediate question was what would be done with those who had to be tried by the martial courts. Three days after the surrender three leaders had been shot: Tom Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, and Patrick Pearse. Willie Pearse for executed simply for being Pearse's brother. With him were shot Joseph Plunkett and other two people. Of the 77 death sentences passed, most were to be commuted, but 7 had already been carried out. The Irish Home Rule party condemned the Rising as well as the executions, and stressed that any more executions would affect the future loyalty of Irish people. On 8 May there were four more executions. On 12 May Sean MacDermott was shot; and, last of all, though no-one knew that, James Connolly. He was short because he could not stand on his wounded ankle in a chair.
The newspapers and the public called it the "Sinn Feinn" rebellion, because so little was known about the real leaders and their motives, that identification with Sinn Fein was the only available explanation.
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