The Easter Rising was an armed insurrection by the separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood in late April, 1916, launched with the goal of creating an independent republic of Ireland separate from the United Kingdom. Most of the fighting took place in Dublin, where 1,250 Irish Volunteers under the command of men such as Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Tom Clarke proclaimed the "Irish Republic". However, 16,000 British Army troops and 1,000 Royal Irish Constabulary policemen were dispatched to crush the uprising, and the heavily-armed British troops prevented the Irish rebels from receiving weapons from the German Empire. The Irish rebels agreed to an unconditional surrender on 29 April, and the British arrested 3,500 people, including random Catholic civilians who had not taken part in the uprising. 1,800 Irishmen and Irishwomen were sent to internment camps; the uprising left 66 Irish rebels dead (plus 16 executed), 143 British soldiers and policemen dead and 397 wounded, and 260 civilians dead and 2,217 wounded; over half of the people killed during the uprising were civilians, many of them killed during Britain's shelling of the inner city of Dublin. The uprising inspired physical force Irish republicanism against the UK, and the brutality shown by the British towards the Irish would lead to increased support for Irish nationalist parties such as Sinn Fein and more militancy among Irish Catholics, leading to the Irish War of Independence three years later.
Background[]
The outbreak of World War I occurred at a critical moment in Irish history, as Britain prepared to grant the country Home Rule. In 1914, the British Parliament had passed a bill giving Ireland an elected assembly with limited powers. Welcomed by most Irish Catholics, it was opposed by Ulster Protestants, who armed a militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), to resist it. The Catholic responded by forming the Irish Volunteers. When Britain entered World War I, a political truce was agreed with Ireland. Home Rule was enacted but deferred until the end of the war. The UVF became the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British Army. Many Irish Catholics also joined the British Army, with most forming part of the 16th (Irish) Division.
History[]
World War I divided opinion in Catholic Ireland. A majority of people supported John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the Westminster parliament, who called for the Irish to back the British war effort in return for Home Rule, which granted limited independence. A minority rejected Redmond's stance, seeing the war as an opportunity to shake off British rule completely.
The Irish Volunteer militia reflected the split, with a minority of its members advocating that it reject Redmond's proposal and prepare for a future rebellion. In addition to the anti-Redmond Volunteers, radical nationalist organizations included the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), with Patrick Pearse as its main spokesman, and the trade union-based Irish Citizen Army, led by the socialist James Connolly. There was broad agreement among them that a rising should be attempted but disagreement about its aims. The IRB felt that a "glorious failure" would serve the cause, but others, such as the Irish Volunteers' chief of staff Eoin MacNeill, wanted German support for a fight to defeat the British.
German backing[]
Roger Casement, a former British diplomat and critic of colonialism, became the Irish nationalists' key link with the Germans. Casement failed to find recruits for a rebel brigade among Irish soldiers in German prisoner-of-war camps, nor would Germany send forces to invade Ireland. The Germans did, however, promise to ship arms to the Irish rebels. In January 1916, IRB leaders and Connolly agreed to stage an uprising on Easter Sunday, 23 April. The IRB had taken over key positions in the Volunteers, but did not control the organization. Their plan depended on drawing the mass of Volunteers into the rebellion, since their own followers numbered only a few thousand, chiefly in Dublin. MacNeill was induced to issue the Volunteers with orders for a nationwide uprising.
As it happened, all the plans went awry. The promised arms shipment from Germany arrived at the Kerry coast on the steamer SMS Aud on 20 April but there were no Volunteers to unload it. Trapped by the Royal Navy, the Aud was scuttled to avoid capture. Casement landed in Ireland from a German submarine and was instantly arrested (the British hanged him as a traitor the following August). Faced with a potential fiasco, MacNeill revoked the order for an uprising. Pearse, Connolly, and their colleagues, however, decided to go ahead.
The uprising[]
On Easter Monday, a day later than planned, about 1,600 armed rebels seized control of key buildings in Dublin. Standing on the steps of the General Post Office, which the rebels had taken as their headquarters, Pearse read out a proclamation on behalf of "the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic." Dubliners reacted with initial bemusement, followed by a wave of looting as police withdrew from the streets. In the rest of Ireland, there were isolated uprisings, but most Volunteers followed MacNeill's order to stay at home. The British response was delayed by a lack of troops in the area. Few of the soldiers garrisoning Dublin had ammunition for their rifles. On 26 April, troop reinforcements arrived from England. Soldiers of the Sherwood Foresters, marching into the city from the port of Kingstown, came under fire from rebels at Mount Street Bridge on the Grand Canal. Ordered to make repeated frontal assaults across the bridge, the British soldiers suffered 240 casualties.
Failure and the firing squad[]
Further British losses occurred when rebel positions were attacked by infnatry, but mostly the British relied on artillery, shelling buildings held by the rebels until they became untenable. Driven from the burning General Post Office building on 29 April, Pearse ordered a surrender. The fighting ceased the following day. As the rebels had conspired with Britain's enemies in time of war, harsh retribution was inevitable. Martial law was imposed under General John Maxwell, and 15 Irish nationalists were executed in early May. Among those who faced the firing squad were Pearse and James Connolly. The executions outraged the Irish Catholics and won wider public support for Irish republicanism than had ever existed before.
The British were not so insensitive to the need for reconciliation. Almost 1,500 nationalists sent to internment camps following the uprising were released at the end of the year. Most death sentences were commuted, with those spared including the American-born future Irish leader Eamon de Valera. The alienation of Irish Catholic opinion would nonetheless prove ffatal to the continuance of British rule in Ireland.
Aftermath[]
Sinn Fein emerged as a unifying organization for Irish nationalists. In the general election held after the war, Sinn Fein achieved a landslide victory in Catholic areas and set up a parliament in Dublin. Sinn Fein's military arm, the Irish Republican Army, fought an independence war against Britain masterminded by Michael Collins. In 1922, the Irish Free State was founded, while Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland remained part of the UK.
The contribution that many Irish Catholics had made to the war effort was forgotten. In Northern Ireland, the service of Protestant soldiers at the Somme was contrasted with Catholic rebels who had "stabbed Britain in the back." The prejudice still lingered on a century later.
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