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The 'Easter Rising' (Irish: ''Éirí Amach na Cásca'') was a rebellion staged in Ireland in Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was an attempt by militant Irish republicans to win independence from Britain by force of arms. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798.
Largely organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising lasted from Easter Monday April 24 to April 30, 1916. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by school teacher and barrister Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly, seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic independent of Britain. There were some actions in other parts of Ireland, but they were minor and, except at Ashbourne, County Meath, unsuccessful.
The Rising was suppressed after six days of fighting, and its leaders were court-martialled and executed, but it succeeded in bringing physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics. Less than three years later, in January, 1919, survivors of the Rising convened the First Dáil and established the Irish Republic.

Contents

Background: Parliamentary politics v. physical force

Planning the Rising

The Rising

The outbreak of the Rising

British reinforcements arrive

The Rising outside Dublin

Casualties

Aftermath

Legacy of the Rising

Socialism and the Easter Rising

See also

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Background: Parliamentary politics v. physical force

Since the Act of Union (1800) that joined Ireland and Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, opposition to the union had taken two forms: parliamentary politics and physical force. Daniel O’Connell, who founded the Repeal Association in 1840, pursued repeal of the Act in the British House of Commons and through mass meetings. The Young Ireland movement, initially formed to support the repeal movement, broke with O’Connell in 1846 on the issue of physical force, and its leaders, William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher and John Blake Dillon, led the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) staged another revolt in 1867. Though defeated, the IRB continued as a secret, oath-bound society. The Home Rule League and Charles Stuart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party succeeded in having a large number of members elected to Westminster where, through the tactic of obstructionism and by virtue of holding the balance of power, they succeeded in having three Home Rule bills introduced. The First Home Rule Bill of 1886 was defeated in the House of Commons. The Second Home Rule Bill of 1893 was passed by the Commons but rejected by the House of Lords. The Third Home Rule Bill of 1912 was again rejected by the Lords, but under the new Parliament Act (passed by H. H. Asquith with the support of IPP leader John Redmond) would become law after two years. Ulster Unionists, led by Sir Edward Carson, were violently opposed to home rule, and formed the Ulster Volunteer Force on 13 January 1913. This led to the formation of the Irish Volunteers, a force dedicated to defending home rule, on 11 November 1913. The Home Rule Act received Royal Assent on 18 September 1914, but ‘temporarily excluded’ the six north eastern counties of Ireland, where the unionists were in a majority, and was suspended until after the World War, which had broken out a month previously. Meanwhile, the IRB, reorganised by Thomas Clarke, a former prisoner, and Seán McDermott, continued to plan, not for limited home rule under the British Crown, but for an independent Irish republic.

Planning the Rising

While the Easter Rising was for the most part carried out by the Irish Volunteers, it was planned by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Supreme Council of the IRB met and, under the old dictum that "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity", decided to take action sometime before the conclusion of the war. To this end, the IRB's treasurer, Tom Clarke formed a Military Council to plan the rising, initially consisting of Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, and Joseph Plunkett, with himself and Seán Mac Diarmada added shortly thereafter. All of these were members of both the IRB, and (with the exception of Clarke) the Irish Volunteers. Since its inception in 1913, they had gradually commandeered the Volunteers, and had fellow IRB members elevated to officer rank whenever possible; hence by 1916 a large proportion of the Volunteer leadership were devoted republicans in favor of physical force. A notable exception was the founder and Chief-of-Staff Eoin MacNeill, who planned to use the Volunteers as a bargaining tool with Britain following World War I, and was opposed to any rebellion that stood little chance of success. MacNeill approved of a rebellion only if the British attempted to impose conscription on Ireland for the World War or if they launched a campaign of repression against Irish nationalist movements. In such a case he believed that an armed rebellion would have mass support and a reasonable chance of success. MacNeill's view was supported even by some within the IRB, including Bulmer Hobson. Nevertheless, the advocates of physical force within the IRB hoped either to win him over to their side (through deceit if necessary) or bypass his command altogether. They were ultimately unsuccessful with either plan.
The plan encountered its first major hurdle when James Connolly, head of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a group of armed socialist trade union men and women, completely unaware of the IRB's plans, threatened to initiate a rebellion on their own if other parties refused to act. As the ICA was barely 200 strong, any action they might take would result in a fiasco, and spoil the chance of a potentially successful rising by the Volunteers. Thus the IRB leaders met with Connolly in January 1916 and convinced him to join forces with them. They agreed to act together the following Easter, and made Connolly the sixth member of the Military Committee (Thomas MacDonagh would later become the seventh and final member).
In an effort to thwart informers, and, indeed, the Volunteers' own leadership, early in April Pearse issued orders for three days of "parades and manoeuvres" by the Volunteers for Easter Sunday (which he had the authority to do, as Director of Organization). The idea was that the true republicans within the organization (particularly IRB members) would know exactly what this meant, while men such as MacNeill and the British authorities in Dublin Castle would take it at face value. However, MacNeill got wind of what was afoot and threatened to "do everything possible short of phoning Dublin Castle" to prevent the rising. Although he was briefly convinced to go along with some sort of action when Mac Diarmada revealed to him that a shipment of German arms was about to land in County Kerry, planned by the IRB in conjunction with Sir Roger Casement (who ironically had just landed in Ireland in an effort to ''stop'' the rising), the following day MacNeill reverted to his original position when he found out that the ship carrying the arms had been scuttled. With the support of other leaders of like mind, notably Bulmer Hobson and The O'Rahilly, he issued a countermand to all Volunteers, cancelling all actions for Sunday. This only succeeded in putting the rising off for a day, although it greatly reduced the number of men who turned out.

The Rising

The outbreak of the Rising

The original plan, largely devised by Plunkett (and apparently very similar to a plan worked out independently by Connolly), was to seize strategic buildings throughout Dublin in order to cordon off the city, and resist the inevitable counter-attack by the British army. If successful, the plan would have left the rebels holding a compact area of central Dublin, roughly bounded by the canals and the circular roads. However, this strategy would have required more men than the 1,250 or so who were actually mobilized on Easter Monday. As a result, the rebels left several key points within the city, notably Dublin Castle and Trinity College, in British hands, meaning that their own forces were separated from each other. This in effect doomed the rebel positions to be isolated and taken one after the other. In the west of the country, local units were intended to try to hold the west bank of the river Shannon for as long as possible. However, without adequate numbers, arms or military expertise on the Volunteers' part, this was never a realistic prospect. Overall, the insurgents' hope was that the British would concede Irish self-government rather than divert resources from the Western Front to try to contain a rebellion in their rear.
The Volunteers' Dublin division had been organized into 4 battalions, each under a commandant who the IRB made sure were loyal to them. A makeshift 5th battalion was put together from parts of the others, and with the aid of the ICA. This was the battalion of the headquarters at the General Post Office, and included the President and Commander-in-Chief, Pearse, the commander of the Dublin division, Connolly, as well as Clarke, Mac Diarmada, Plunkett, and a then-obscure young captain named Michael Collins. Connolly asked Eamon Bulfin to hoist two flags up on the flag poles on either end of the GPO roof. The tricolour was hoisted at the right corner of Henry Street while a green flag with the inscription 'Irish Republic' was hoisted at the left corner at Princess Street. A short time later, Pearse read the Proclamation of the Republic outside the GPO.
A small team of volunteers attacked the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park in an effort to obtain weapons and create a large explosion to signal the start of the rising. Meanwhile the 1st battalion under Commandant Ned Daly seized the Four Courts and areas to the northwest; the 2nd battalion under Thomas MacDonagh established itself at Jacob's Biscuit Factory, south of the city center; in the east Commandant Éamon de Valera commanded the 3rd battalion at Boland's Bakery; and Ceannt's 4th battalion took the workhouse known as the South Dublin Union to the southwest. Members of the ICA under Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz also commandeered St. Stephen's Green. An ICA unit under Seán Connolly made a half-hearted attack on Dublin Castle, not knowing that it was defended by only a handful of troops. After shooting dead an unarmed police sentry and taking several casualties themselves from sniper fire, the group occupied the adjacent Dublin City Hall. Seán Connolly was the first rebel casualty of the week, being killed outside Dublin Castle. Other volunteers also occupied 25 Northumberland Road and Clanwilliam House.
The breakdown of law and order that accompanied the rebellion was marked by widespread looting, as Dublin's slum population ransacked the city's shops. Ideological tensions came to the fore when a Volunteer officer gave an order to shoot looters, only to be angrily countermanded by James Connolly.
As Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order prevented nearly all areas outside of Dublin from rising, the command of the great majority of active rebels fell under Connolly, who some say had the best tactical mind of the group. After being badly wounded, Connolly was still able to command by having himself moved around on a bed. (Although he had optimistically insisted that a capitalist government would never use artillery against their own property, it took the British less than 48 hours to prove him wrong.) The British commander, Brigadier-General Lowe, worked slowly, unsure of how many he was up against, and with only 1,200 troops in the city at the outset. Lord Wimborne, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, declared martial law and the British forces put their efforts into securing the approaches to Dublin Castle and isolating the rebel headquarters at the GPO. Their main firepower was provided by the gunboat ''Helga'' and field artillery summoned from their garrison at Athlone which they positioned on the northside of the city at Prussia Street, Phibsborough and the Cabra road. These guns shelled large parts of the city throughout the week and burned much of it down. (The first building shelled was Liberty Hall, which ironically had been abandoned since the beginning of the Rising.) So inaccurate was much of the fire that British units, believing that they were being shelled by rebel guns--of which the insurgents had none--returned fire against their own artillery. Interestingly the ''Helga's guns had to stop firing as the elevation necessary to fire over the railway bridge meant that her shells were endangering the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, (''Helga'' was later bought by the Government of the Irish Free State, and was the first ship in its Navy Irish Times article - 1916 - "Helga's roles after Rising").

British reinforcements arrive

Reinforcements were rushed to Dublin from England, along with a new commander, General John Maxwell. Outnumbering the rebels with approximately 16,000 British troops and 1,000 armed Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) (the Volunteers were estimated at about 1,000 and the ICA at under 250), they bypassed many of the defences and isolated others to the extent that by the end of the week the only order they were able to receive was the order to surrender. The headquarters itself saw little real action. The heaviest fighting occurred at the rebel-held positions around the Grand Canal, which the British seemed to think they had to take to bring up troops who had landed in Dún Laoghaire port. The rebels held only a few of the bridges across the canal and the British might have availed themselves of any of the others and isolated the positions. Due to this failure of intelligence, the Sherwood Foresters regiment were repeatedly caught in a cross-fire trying to cross the canal at Mount Street. Here a mere seventeen volunteers were able to severely disrupt the British advance, killing or wounding 240 men. The rebel position at the South Dublin Union (site of the present day St James' Hospital), further west along the canal, also inflicted heavy losses on British troops trying to advance towards Dublin Castle. Cathal Brugha, a rebel officer, distinguished himself in this action and was badly wounded. Shell fire and shortage of ammunition eventually forced the rebels to abandon these positions before the end of the week. The rebel position at St Stephen's Green, held by the Citizen Army under Michael Mallin, was made untenable after the British placed snipers and machine guns in the surrounding buildings. As a result, Mallin's men retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons building, where they held out until they received orders to surrender.
Many of the insurgents, who could have been deployed along the canals or elsewhere where British troops were vulnerable to ambush, were instead ensconced in large buildings such as the GPO, the Four Courts and Boland's Mill, where they could achieve little. The rebel garrison at the GPO barricaded themselves within the post office and were soon shelled from afar, unable to return effective fire, until they were forced to abandon their headquarters when their position became untenable. The GPO garrison then hacked through the walls of the neighbouring buildings in order to evacuate the Post Office without coming under fire and took up a new position in Moore Street. On Saturday April 29 from this new headquarters, after realizing that all that could be achieved was further loss of life, Pearse issued an order for all companies to surrender.

The Rising outside Dublin

Irish Volunteer units turned out for the Rising in several places outside of Dublin, but due to Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order, most of them returned home without fighting. In addition, due to the interception of the German arms aboard the ''Aud'', the provincial Volunteer units were very poorly armed.
In the north, several Volunteer companies were mobilised in County Tyrone and 132 men on the Falls Road in Belfast.
In the west Liam Mellows led 600-700 Volunteers in abortive attacks on several Police stations, at Oranmore and Clarinbridge in County Galway. There was also a skirmish at Carnmore in which two RIC men were killed. However his men were very badly armed, with only 25 rifles and 300 shotguns, many of them being equipped only with pikes. Towards the end of the week, Mellows' followers were increasingly poorly-fed and heard that large British reinforcements were being sent westwards. In addition, the British warship, the HMS ''Gloucester'' arrived in Galway Bay and shelled the fields around Athenry where the rebels were based. On April 29, the Volunteers, judging the situation to be hopeless, dispersed from the town of Athenry. Many of these Volunteers were arrested in the period following the rising, while others, including Mellows had to go "on the run" to escape. By the time British reinforcements arrived in the west, the rising there had already disintegrated.
In the east, Seán MacEntee and County Louth Volunteers killed a policeman and a prison guard. In county Wexford, the Volunteers took over Enniscorthy from Tuesday until Friday, before symbolically surrendering to the British Army at Vinegar Hill – site of a famous battle during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Around 1,000 Volunteers mustered in Cork, under Thomas MacCurtain on Easter Sunday, but they dispersed after receiving several contradictory orders from the Volunteer leadership in Dublin. Only at Ashbourne, County Meath was there real fighting. There, the North County Dublin Volunteers under Thomas Ashe ambushed an RIC police patrol, killing 8 and wounding 15, in an action that pre-figured the guerrilla tactics of the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence 1919-1921.

Casualties

The British Army reported casualties of 116 dead, 368 wounded and 9 missing. 16 policemen died and 29 were wounded. Irish casualties were 318 dead and 2,217 wounded. The Volunteers and ICA recorded 64 killed in action, but otherwise Irish casualties were not divided into rebels and civilians.^[1]

Aftermath

General Maxwell quickly signalled his intention “to arrest all dangerous Sinn Feiners,” including “those who have taken an active part in the movement although not in the present rebellion,”^[2] reflecting the popular belief that Sinn Féin, a separatist organisation that was neither militant nor republican, was behind the Rising. A total of 3,430 men and 79 women were arrested, although most were subsequently released. In attempting to arrest members of the Kent family in County Cork on 2 May, a Head Constable was shot dead in a gun battle. Richard Kent was also killed, and Thomas and William Kent were arrested. In a series of courts martial beginning on 2 May ninety people were sentenced to death. Fifteen of those (including all seven signatories of the Proclamation) had their sentences confirmed by Maxwell and were executed by firing squad between 3 May and 12 May (among them the seriously-wounded Connolly, shot while tied to a chair because he was too weak to stand). Not all of those executed were leaders: Willie Pearse described himself as "a personal attaché to my brother, Patrick Pearse"; John MacBride had not even been aware of the Rising until it began, but had fought against the British in the Boer War fifteen years before; Thomas Kent did not come out at all — he was executed for the killing of a police officer during the raid on his house the week after the Rising. The most prominent leader to escape execution was Eamon de Valera, Commandant of the 3rd Battalion. 1,480 men were interned in England and Wales under Regulation 14B of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, many of whom, like Arthur Griffith, had little or nothing to do with the affair. Camps such as Frongoch internment camp became “Universities of Revolution” where future leaders like Michael Collins, Terence McSwiney and J. J. O’Connell began to plan the coming struggle for independence.^[3] Roger Casement was tried in London for high treason and hanged at Pentonville Prison on 3 August.
Most historians would agree that the decision to shoot the rebels backfired on the British authorities. However, from the authorities' point of view, given the circumstances of the time and the nature of the offences, it is difficult to see that there was any other appropriate punishment. Britain was fighting a war on an unprecedented scale, a war in which many thousands of Irish volunteers in the British forces had already lost their lives. Armed rebellion, in time of war and in league with the enemy, was always going to attract the most severe penalties.
Public opinion in Ireland was initially opposed to the Rising. Prisoners were jeered after the surrender, and executions were demanded in motions passed in some Irish local authorities and by many newspapers, including the ''Irish Independent'' and ''The Irish Times''.1916 Easter Rising - Newspaper archive — ''from the BBC History website'' However, the number and swiftness of the executions, combined with the arrests and deportations and the destruction of the centre of Dublin by the artillery, led to a surge of support for the rebels, and freed internees returning from England received a hero’s welcome on their arrival in Ireland. A meeting called by Count Plunkett on 19 April 1917 led to the formation of a broad political movement under the banner of Sinn Féin^[4] which was formalised at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis of 25 October 1917. The general elections to the British Parliament on 14 December 1918 resulted in a landslide victory for Sinn Féin, whose MPs gathered in Dublin on 21 January 1919 to form Dáil Éireann and adopt the Declaration of Independence.

Legacy of the Rising

Although historians generally date Irish independence (for the 26 counties) either from 1 April 1922 (the date of the transfer of executive power under the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed between Irish delegates and the British government after the Irish War of Independence) or 6 December 1922 (the date of the transfer of legislative power to the Irish Free State), the Easter Rising was the first blow in the struggle that culminated in the Treaty, and therefore the first step on the road to that Independence. As survivors of the Rising went on to become leaders of the nation, those who died were venerated as martyrs, their grave in Arbour Hill military prison in Dublin became a national monument and the text of the Proclamation was taught in schools. An annual commemoration, in the form of a military parade, was held each year on Easter Sunday, culminating in a huge national celebration on the 50th anniversary in 1966.^[5]
With the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, government, academics and the media began to reassess the country’s militant past, and particularly the Easter Rising. The Easter parade was discontinued after 1970. The coalition government of 1973 – 1977, in particular the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Conor Cruise O'Brien, began to promote the view that the violence of 1916 was essentially no different to the violence then taking place in the streets of Belfast and Derry. Critics of the Rising pointed to the fact that the Rising was seen as having been doomed to military defeat from the outset, and to have been understood as such by at least some of its leaders. Such critics saw in it elements of a "blood sacrifice" in line with some of Pearse's writings. Though the violent precursor to Irish statehood, it had done nothing to reassure Irish unionists nor alleviate the demand to partition Ulster. Others, however, pointed out that the Rising had not originally been planned with failure in mind, and that the outcome in military terms might have been very different if the weapons from the Aud had arrived safely and if MacNeill's countermanding order had not been issued. Supporters also contended that Ireland had been left with no other way of attaining a greater independence beyond the home rule provisions of 1914 other than by an armed rebellion.

The Rising and its leaders were indeed venerated by Irish republicans, including members and supporters of the Provisional IRA and Provisional Sinn Féin. Murals in republican areas of Belfast and other towns celebrated the actions of Pearse and his comrades. In 1976 the Irish government took the unprecedented step of proscribing (under the Offences against the State Act) a 1916 commemoration ceremony at the GPO organised by Provisional Sinn Féin and the Republican commemoration Committee.^[6] A Labour Party TD, David Thornley, embarrassed the government (of which Labour was a member) by appearing on the platform at the ceremony, along with Máire Comerford, a survivor of the Rising, and Fiona Plunkett, sister of Joseph Plunkett.^[7]
On 21 October 2005 the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, announced the government’s intention to resume the military parade past the GPO from Easter 2006, and to form a committee to plan centenary celebrations in 2016.^[8]

Socialism and the Easter Rising

The Easter Rising has sometimes been described as the first socialist revolution in Europe. Whether or not such a statement is true is debatable. Of the leaders, only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause (he was a former official of the American IWW and General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union at the time of his execution). Although the others nominally accepted the notion of a socialist state in order to convince Connolly to join them, their dedication to this concept is highly questionable at best. Political and cultural revolutions were much more important in their minds than economic revolution. Connolly clearly was skeptical of his colleagues' sincerity on the subject, and was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic. Furthermore, Eamon de Valera, the prominent surviving leader of the rising and a dominant figure in Irish politics for nearly half a century, could hardly be described as Socialist. Four years later, the Soviet Union would be the first and only country to recognise the Irish Republic, later abolished under the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly, rounded on communists who had derided the Easter Rising for involving bourgeois elements. He contended that communists would have to unite with other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order, a point he went on to prove the following year during the Russian Revolution.

See also

★ Easter, 1916, a poem by William Butler Yeats

★ Ballymun flats

Notes

1. Foy and Barton, ''The Easter Rising'', page 325
2. Townshend, ''Easter 1916'', page 273
3. ''The Green Dragon'' No 4, Autumn 1997
4. J. Bowyer Bell, ''The Secret Army: The IRA'', page 27
5. RTÉ: 1966 News Items Relating to the 1916 Easter Rising Commemorations
6. Irish Times, 22 April 1976
7. Irish times, 26 April 1976
8. Irish Times, 220October 2005

Bibliography

★ Max Caulfield, ''The Easter Rebellion, Dublin 1916'' ISBN 1-57098-042-X

★ Tim Pat Coogan, ''1916: The Easter Rising'' ISBN 0-304-35902-5

★ Michael Foy and Brian Barton, ''The Easter Rising'' ISBN 0-7509-2616-3

★ C Desmond Greaves ''The Life and Times of James Connolly''

★ Robert Kee, ''The Green Flag'' ISBN 0-14-029165-2

★ F.X. Martin (ed.), ''Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising, Dublin 1916''

★ Dorothy Macardle, ''The Irish Republic''

★ F.S.L. Lyons, ''Ireland Since the Famine'' ISBN 0-00-633200-5

★ John A. Murphy, ''Ireland In the Twentieth Century''

★ Edward Purdon, ''The 1916 Rising''

★ Charles Townshend, ''Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion''

★ '' The Memoirs of John M. Regan, a Catholic Officer in the RIC and RUC, 1909–48'', Joost Augusteijn, editor, Witnessed Rising, ISBN 978-1-84682-069-4.

★ J Bowyer Bell, ''The Secret Army: The IRA'' ISBN 1-85371-813-0

★ Conor Kostick & Lorcan Collins, ''The Easter Rising, A Guide to Dublin in 1916'' ISBN 0-86278-638-X

External links

★ The 1916 Rising - an Online Exhibition. National Library of Ireland

★ Essay on the Rising, by Garret FitzGerald

★ Special 90th Anniversary supplement from ''The Irish Times''

★ Easter Rising 50th Anniversary audio & video footage from RTÉ (Irish public television)

★ Easter Rising site and walking tour of 1916 Dublin

★ News articles and letters to the editor in "The Age", 27 April 1916

★ Press comments 1916-1996