On Easter Monday morning, April 24, 1916, hundreds of men and women arrived at Liberty Hall, Dublin, many by bicycle, ready to fight for their independence from England. They came from the Irish Volunteers and from the Irish Citizen Army, militias that had been organized in case of a civil war against the Ulster Volunteers over the issue of Home Rule.
Hundreds (700 to 1600 depending on whom you believe) weren't enough. The leaders of the Rising had a well-thought-out plan, and it called for 5000 to rise in Dublin alone, enough to hold the city until the rest of Ireland rose too.
There weren't enough weapons either. Sir Roger Casement, a human rights activist and poet (that's a recurring theme here) had arranged for a shipment of arms from Germany, but it was intercepted off the coast of Ireland on April 21 and Casement was arrested.
The seven men who signed the Proclamation of the Republic (Forógra na Poblachta) were not members of a mass of revolutionaries whose talents thrust them to the front as central figures in an onrushing, unstoppable wave. They were not people who happened to epitomize the revolution and therefore led it. They were people who created the Rising, who deliberately brought together its elements and who deliberately sparked it after everything had gone wrong and its failure -- and their own deaths -- were certain. They could have disbanded their troops on Easter Monday after they knew the shipment of guns was intercepted; after they knew the leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had published an order not to rise; and after they saw that only a fraction of their forces turned out.
But they did not.
Life springs from death and from the graves of dead patriot men and women spring living nations…
--James Connolly
They announced the plan of action to the iirregular-looking troops mustered in front of Liberty Hall and invited objectors to leave; and at noon, they began, taking over the General Post Office (the City’s telegraph office), St Stephen's Green, South Dublin Union, The Four Courts, Boland's Mill, and other areas.
Padraig Pearse read the Proclamation aloud on the steps of the General Post Office. I read somewhere that there was an eerie uncomprehending silence from the small crowd.
The General Post Office, Easter week, 1916
It’s a beautiful document, unsurprisingly because three of the writers were poets and one was a polemicist.
....We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people....
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irish woman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provision Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people....
Sounds kind of familiar...But note the guarantee of women's suffrage (there were women combatants, doctors, nurses and dispatch carriers in all but one of the rebel strongholds during the Rising itself) and the non-discrimination pledge. And if the nationalist goals of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the socialist vision of James Connolly's Citizen Army weren't exactly aligned -- well, they both wanted England out of Ireland.
(Here's a great cartoon on their differences).
Thomas Clarke, who was 58, and his pupil Sean MacDiarmada, 34, represented the Old Guard of the uprisings of the 1880s and a link with the long history of Irish resistance to British rule. Clarke had served 15 years in a British prison because of his involvement in the 1880 uprising. MacDiarmada was a diligent student of Clarke’s revolutionary theories, one of which was that Ireland should rise whenever England was occupied with other problems -- such as World War I. He was the only fulltime insurrectionist, and had spent three years traveling around the country, speaking at Sinn Fein and Irish Republican Brotherhood gatherings, and gathering likely recruits.
The three poets, Padraig Pearse, Thomas McDonough, and Joseph Plunkett, together with Eamon Ceannt (who was a musician), were members of Ireland’s young intellectual class, fiercely dedicated to restoring Irish literature, language and culture – its identity as a nation and finally its political independence as well. Their educated elders had largely abandoned these in favor of an English-based culture. Inspired by the nationalist movements throughout Europe and by Wilsonian ideals of self-determination, and horrified by conditions in the Dublin slums, the nationalists worked to bring about a revival of Ireland’s sense of its uniqueness. They were part of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and three were part of its militia unit, the Irish Volunteers. The Commander of the Volunteers, John MacNeil, was firmly opposed to any uprising, particularly while the Great War was underway. Pearse, MacDarmada, and Ceannt drilled and smuggled guns behind MacNeil’s back and hoped that when the time came the Volunteers would ignore MacNeil and rise.
Alone among the seven members of the Provisional Government, James Connolly represented the most destitute and desperate Irish; the poor of the Dublin slums. He was born in Scotland of Irish parents, served in the British military, and lived several years in New York. As head of Dublin's Transport Union and a committed socialist, he had for years published blistering attacks on the English institutions, concentrating on the system of absentee landlordism which had contributed so much to the Great Hunger in 1848. By 1916 it was entrenched in the cities as well, and the Dublin slums were considered the worst in Europe.
For the Irish poor, the war posed another threat; the possibility that as England ran out of domestic cannon fodder, it would begin conscripting the Irish as well as recruiting them.
British Army recruiting poster, Dublin, 1916
In 1913, Connolly became commander of the Citizen Army, an offspring of the Transport Union. He saw its possibilities as a revolutionary force and began organizing it accordingly; buying weapons, drilling the pro-Republic men in secret, studying revolutionary methods, and even having uniforms made. Connolly was meditating plans for a rising of the Citizen Army alone when the IRB learned of his plans and contacted him. From that point, they worked together.
Most Irish leaders had set aside their agitation for Home Rule for the duration of the war, hoping to get it as a reward for helping England in its hour of need. English language propaganda of the time portrayed Germany as a barbaric, bloodthirsty country which was laying waste Belgium, a small Catholic country (Germany had a lot of Catholics too, of course).
But none of the seven leaders had any interest in fighting England’s wars for it. To them, World War I was a struggle between two great colonial powers over more colonies – each other’s. What better time for a colony to gain its freedom?
On April 24, using the plan developed by Plunkett and Connolly, the Volunteers and the Citizen Army occupied the GPO, St. Stephen’s Green, and other key points around the city and cut most of the communication lines. But they were spread very thin.
When they took over the GPO and the civilians saw their weapons, one man wrote:
A wild scamper was made for the door. Civil servants jumped the counter and ran, some of them not even waiting to procure hat or overcoat.
At a poorhouse on the quays, Mendacity (!?) Institution, a 25-year-old Volunteer, John Heuston, was detailed to hold the position for two hours so that other battalions could get to their assigned areas. He held it for three days with a handful of teenagers and some reinforcements against a vastly superior force. Heuston Train Station is named in his honor.
At Mount Street Bridge, a/k/a the Irish Thermopylae, 17 men held the bridge on April 26 against a column of the first British reinforcements until they ran out of ammunition, at a cost of 216 British to four Irish casualties (dead or wounded).
On the same day, a British gunboat shelled Liberty Hall, the Transport Union's headquarters. It was a munitions factory and a printing office during the preparations for the Rising, but there were no rebels stationed in it. The sole occupant, Peter Ennis, an elderly caretaker, ran for his life, bullets flying around him. A reporter wrote:
...I hold my breath in awe as I watch his mad career. Will he escape?..."My God!" I exclaim as a bullet raises a spark right at his toe. A hundred yards in nine seconds -- a record! Nonsense, this man does the distance in five...
Michael Mallin, a commandant, and Countess Markievicz, a lieutenant and a sharpshooter in the Citizen Army, held St. Stephen's Green until they had to evacuate to the College of Surgeons, where they held out until April 30, exchanging fire with British soldiers in the Shelbourne Hotel. Both buildings are on the Green. The story is that twice a day, the combatants suspended hostilities while the parkkeeper emerged from his cottage to feed the ducks. Given that citizens persisted in trying to buy stamps at the GPO throughout the hostilities, it's easy to believe.
The 1300 British soldiers in Dublin managed to get word to London. The Risers had been unable to secure the train stations or the ports, so the British were able to increase their numbers to 16,000. The British counterattacked under the command of General William Lowe, using troops and heavy artillery. The young English soldiers were trained for trench warfare, not hand to hand street fighting, but within six days their superior numbers prevailed.
About 700 people were killed, including British and Irish combatants and many civilians. By April 28, the seven signers of the Proclamation were all still alive and five were in the General Post Office, where Pearse issued manifestos and staff produced a newspaper. James Connolly was seriously wounded twice and could not walk, but remained active, directing fire. Pearse wrote:
If I were to mention names of individuals, my list would be a long one. I will name only that of Commandant-General James Connolly, commanding the Dublin Division. He lies wounded, but is still the guiding brain of our resistance
The British eventually set fire to the GPO with ill-aimed but heavy artillery fire, and the rebels retreated to a nearby house. In case of defeat, they had planned to retreat to the countryside and wage guerrilla war from there. But Pearse, as Provisional President, decided to surrender instead because of the potential for many more deaths of both civilians and troops. By April 30 all the rebels throughout the city had formally surrendered, although many had to be persuaded by communications from Pearse. General John Maxwell arrived from London to take over command from General Lowe just in time for the surrenders.
Liberty Hall,Dublin, 1916. Headquarters of the Transport Union and the first building to be leveled by British artillery in 1916.
The fighting was over. The executions were about to begin.
NEXT WEEK: PART II.