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The Easter Rising 1916
On 24 April 1916, Patrick Pearse stood outside the
General Post Office in Dublin and read a proclamation announcing the
establishment of an Irish republic under a provisional government. Among the
seven signatories of the proclamation was James Connolly, head of the
para-military Irish Citizen Army, who had earlier led a successful occupation
of the building. Elsewhere in Dublin, armed men had taken over key points such
as the Four Courts, the College of Surgeons overlooking St Stephen's Green, and
Boland's Mills. It was Easter Monday, and there were few people in the centre
of Dublin to witness the rising. Many army officers had gone to the Fairyhouse
races.
Almost all the revolutionary leaders were members of
the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood. The outbreak of war had persuaded them
that in England's difficulties lay Ireland's opportunity. As earlier rebels had
looked to France for help, they now turned to Germany, which promised to send
arms. In addition to the small Irish Citizen Army, formed in 1913 to defend
workers against police harassment, there were thousands of Irish Volunteers, a
body formed in response to the Ulster Volunteer Force. Like the UVF, the
Volunteers carried out a successful gun-running exploit, landing arms at Howth,
near Dublin, a few days before war was declared.
The Volunteers had been infiltrated by members of the IRB,
which had secretly fixed Easter Sunday as the date for the rising. The
Volunteers' leader, Eoin MacNeill, only discovered the plan on 20 April. Two
days later, he learned that a German ship bringing arms had been scuttled.
Realising that a rising was doomed to failure, he cancelled all Volunteer
manoeuvres. Despite this setback, and knowing that their forces would be
limited to a modest number of Dublin Volunteers as well as the ICA, Pearse and
Connolly decided that a rising must take place, if only as a 'blood sacrifice'
to arouse the Irish people. |