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Mr Cowen's tenure as Taoiseach coincided with one of the most difficult periods in the country's modern history, as financial crisis gripped all of Europe. With the recession dominating the landscape, the Cowen Government still passed a number of important and progressive pieces of legislation, including the 20 Year Strategy for the Irish Language. At major political cost, this Government also made massive adjustments to the public finances, ensuring the long term viability of the country.

On 22nd January 2011, Mr Cowen announced he was stepping down as leader in advance of the 2011 election.

On the 26th January 2011, Micheál Martin was formally selected by the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party as the eighth leader of Fianna Fáil. Following defeat for the Party in the 2011 General Election, Mr Martin was returned to Dáil Éireann as Leader of the Opposition. Since his election as Leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin has introduced a number of significant internal reforms designed to empower ordinary members. He continues to lead the development of the party's policy platform, re-establishing Fianna Fáil's Republican vision for the future of the country.

In May 2014, Fianna Fáil became the largest party in the country at Local Government following nationwide elections.

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Mr Cowen's tenure as Taoiseach coincided with one of the most difficult periods in the country's modern history, as financial crisis gripped all of Europe. With the recession dominating the landscape, the Cowen Government still passed a number of important and progressive pieces of legislation, including the 20 Year Strategy for the Irish Language.

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Irish general election, 1923 - Wikipedia

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The Irish general election of 1923 was held on 27 August 1923. The newly elected members of the 4th Dáil assembled at Leinster House on 19 September when the new President of the Executive Council and Executive Council of the Irish Free State were appointed.

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michael collins assassination - Google Search

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Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early 20th century Irish struggle for independence. He was Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 until his assassination in August ...

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The Irish War of Independence ( Irish: Cogadh na Saoirse)[4] or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and its paramilitary forces the Auxiliaries and Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). It was part of the Irish revolutionary period.

In April 1916, Irish republicans launched the Easter Rising against British rule and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Although it was defeated after a week of fighting, the Rising and the British response led to greater popular support for Irish independence. In the December 1918 election, republican party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in Ireland. On 21 January 1919 they formed a breakaway government ( Dáil Éireann) and declared Irish independence. That day, two RIC officers were killed in the Soloheadbeg ambush by IRA volunteers acting on their own initiative. The conflict developed gradually. For most of 1919, IRA activity involved capturing weaponry and freeing republican prisoners, while the Dáil set about building a state. In September, the British government outlawed the Dáil throughout Ireland, Sinn Féin was proclaimed (outlawed) in County Cork and the conflict intensified. The IRA began ambushing RIC and British Army patrols, attacking their barracks and forcing isolated barracks to be abandoned. The British government bolstered the RIC with recruits from Britain-the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries-who became notorious for ill-discipline and reprisal attacks on civilians,[6] some of which were authorised by the British government.[7] Thus the conflict is sometimes called the "Black and Tan War".[8] The conflict also involved civil disobedience, notably the refusal of Irish railwaymen to transport British forces or military supplies.

In mid-1920, republicans won control of most county councils, and British authority collapsed in most of the south and west, forcing the British government to introduce emergency powers. About 300 people had been killed by late 1920, but the conflict escalated in November. On Bloody Sunday in Dublin, 21 November 1920, fourteen British intelligence operatives were assassinated; then the RIC fired on the crowd at a Gaelic football match, killing fourteen civilians and wounding sixty-five. A week later, the IRA killed seventeen Auxiliaries in the Kilmichael Ambush in County Cork. In December, the British authorities declared martial law in much of southern Ireland, and the centre of Cork city was burnt out by British forces in reprisal for an ambush. Violence continued to escalate over the next seven months; 1,000 people were killed and 4,500 republicans were interned. Much of the fighting took place in Munster (particularly County Cork), Dublin and Belfast, which together saw over 75 percent of the conflict deaths.[9]

The conflict in north-east Ulster had a sectarian aspect (see The Troubles in Ulster (1920-1922)). While the Catholic minority there mostly backed Irish independence, the Protestant majority were mostly unionist/ loyalist. A mainly Protestant special constabulary was formed, and loyalist paramilitaries were active. They attacked Catholics in reprisal for IRA actions, and in Belfast a sectarian conflict raged in which almost 500 were killed, most of them Catholics.[10] In May 1921, Ireland was partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act, which created Northern Ireland.

A ceasefire began on 11 July 1921. The post-ceasefire talks led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921. This ended British rule in most of Ireland and, after a ten-month transitional period overseen by the Provisional Government, the Irish Free State was created as a self-governing Dominion on 6 December 1922. Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom. After the ceasefire, violence in Belfast and fighting in border areas of Northern Ireland continued, and the IRA launched the failed Northern Offensive in May 1922. In June 1922, disagreement among republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty led to the eleven-month Irish Civil War. The Irish Free State awarded 62,868 medals for service during the War of Independence, of which 15,224 were issued to IRA fighters of the flying columns.[11]

The war of independence in Ireland ended with a truce on 11 July 1921. The conflict had reached a stalemate. Talks that had looked promising the previous year had petered out in December when Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Lloyd George insisted that the IRA first surrender their arms. Fresh talks, after the Prime Minister had come under pressure from H. H. Asquith and the Liberal opposition, the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress, resumed in the spring and resulted in the truce. From the point of view of the British government, it appeared as if the IRA's guerrilla campaign would continue indefinitely, with spiralling costs in British casualties and in money. More importantly, the British government was facing severe criticism at home and abroad for the actions of British forces in Ireland. On 6 June 1921, the British made their first conciliatory gesture, calling off the policy of house burnings as reprisals. On the other side, IRA leaders, and in particular Collins, felt that the IRA as it was then organised could not continue indefinitely. It had been hard pressed by the deployment of more regular British soldiers to Ireland and by the lack of arms and ammunition.

The initial breakthrough that led to the truce was credited to three people: King George V, Prime Minister of South Africa General Jan Smuts and David Lloyd George. The King, who had made his unhappiness at the behaviour of the Black and Tans in Ireland well known to his government, was dissatisfied with the official speech prepared for him for the opening of the new Parliament of Northern Ireland, created as a result of the partition of Ireland. Smuts, a close friend of the King, suggested to him that the opportunity should be used to make an appeal for conciliation in Ireland. The King asked him to draft his ideas on paper. Smuts prepared this draft and gave copies to the King and to Lloyd George. Lloyd George then invited Smuts to attend a British cabinet meeting consultations on the "interesting" proposals Lloyd George had received, without either man informing the Cabinet that Smuts had been their author. Faced with the endorsement of them by Smuts, the King and Lloyd George, the ministers reluctantly agreed to the King's planned "reconciliation in Ireland" speech.

The speech, when delivered in Belfast on 22 June, was universally well received. It called on "all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and to forget, and to join in making for the land they love a new era of peace, contentment, and good will".[101]

On 24 June 1921, the British coalition government's cabinet decided to propose talks with the leader of Sinn Féin. Coalition Liberals and Unionists agreed that an offer to negotiate would strengthen the government's position if Sinn Féin refused. Austen Chamberlain, the new leader of the Unionist Party, said that "the King's Speech ought to be followed up as a last attempt at peace before we go the full lengths of martial law".[102] Seizing the momentum, Lloyd George wrote to Éamon de Valera as "the chosen leader of the great majority in Southern Ireland" on 24 June, suggesting a conference.[103] Sinn Féin responded by agreeing to talks. De Valera and Lloyd George ultimately agreed to a truce that was intended to end the fighting and lay the ground for detailed negotiations. Its terms were signed on 9 July and came into effect on 11 July. Negotiations on a settlement, however, were delayed for some months as the British government insisted that the IRA first decommission its weapons, but this demand was eventually dropped. It was agreed that British troops would remain confined to their barracks.

Most IRA officers on the ground interpreted the truce merely as a temporary respite and continued recruiting and training volunteers. Nor did attacks on the RIC or British Army cease altogether. Between December 1921 and February of the next year, there were 80 recorded attacks by the IRA on the soon-to-be disbanded RIC, leaving 12 dead.[104] On 18 February 1922, Ernie O'Malley's IRA unit raided the RIC barracks at Clonmel, taking 40 policemen prisoner and seizing over 600 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.[105] In April 1922, in the Dunmanway killings, an IRA party in Cork killed 10 local suspected Protestant informers in retaliation for the shooting of one of their men. Those killed were named in captured British files as informers before the truce signed the previous July.[106] Over 100 Protestant families fled the area after the killings.[citation needed ]

Ultimately, the peace talks led to the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty (6 December 1921), which was then ratified in triplicate: by Dáil Éireann on 7 January 1922 (so giving it legal legitimacy under the governmental system of the Irish Republic), by the House of Commons of Southern Ireland in January 1922 (so giving it constitutional legitimacy according to British theory of who was the legal government in Ireland), and by both Houses of the British parliament.[107][108]

The Treaty allowed Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, to opt out of the Free State if it wished, which it duly did on 8 December 1922 under the procedures laid down. As agreed, an Irish Boundary Commission was then created to decide on the precise location of the border of the Free State and Northern Ireland.[109] The republican negotiators understood that the commission would redraw the border according to local nationalist or unionist majorities. Since the 1920 local elections in Ireland had resulted in outright nationalist majorities in County Fermanagh, County Tyrone, the City of Derry and in many district electoral divisions of County Armagh and County Londonderry (all north and west of the "interim" border), this might well have left Northern Ireland unviable. However, the Commission chose to leave the border unchanged; as a trade-off, the money owed to Britain by the Free State under the Treaty was cancelled (see Partition of Ireland).[110]

A new system of government was created for the new Irish Free State, though for the first year two governments co-existed; an Dáil Ministry headed by President Griffith, and a Provisional Government nominally answerable to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and appointed by the Lord Lieutenant.[111]

Most of the Irish independence movement's leaders were willing to accept this compromise, at least for the time being, though many militant republicans were not. A majority[citation needed ] of the pre-Truce IRA who had fought in the War of Independence, led by Liam Lynch, refused to accept the Treaty and in March 1922 repudiated the authority of the Dáil and the new Free State government, which it accused of betraying the ideal of the Irish Republic. It also broke the Oath of Allegiance to the Irish Republic which the Dáil had instated on 20 August 1919.[112] The anti-Treaty IRA were supported by the former president of the Republic, Éamon de Valera, and ministers Cathal Brugha and Austin Stack.[113]

The funeral of Michael Collins
St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, August 1922

While the violence in the North was still raging, the South of Ireland was preoccupied with the split in the Dáil and in the IRA over the Treaty. In April 1922, an executive of IRA officers repudiated the Treaty and the authority of the Provisional Government which had been set up to administer it. These republicans held that the Dáil did not have the right to disestablish the Irish Republic. A hardline group of anti-Treaty IRA men occupied several public buildings in Dublin in an effort to bring down the Treaty and restart the war with the British. There were a number of armed confrontations between pro and anti-Treaty troops before matters came to a head in late June 1922.[108] Desperate to get the new Irish Free State off the ground and under British pressure, Collins attacked the anti-Treaty militants in Dublin, causing fighting to break out around the country.[108]

The subsequent Irish Civil War lasted until mid-1923 and cost the lives of many of the leaders of the independence movement, notably the head of the Provisional Government Michael Collins, ex-minister Cathal Brugha, and anti-Treaty republicans Harry Boland, Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Liam Lynch and many others: total casualties have never been determined but were perhaps higher than those in the earlier fighting against the British. President Arthur Griffith also died of a cerebral haemorrhage during the conflict.[114]

Following the deaths of Griffith and Collins, W. T. Cosgrave became head of government. On 6 December 1922, following the coming into legal existence of the Irish Free State, W. T. Cosgrave became President of the Executive Council, the first internationally recognised head of an independent Irish government.[citation needed ]

The civil war ended in mid-1923 in defeat for the anti-Treaty side.[115]

Conflict deaths in Belfast 1920-1922.

The conflict in the north-east had a sectarian aspect. While Ireland as a whole had an Irish nationalist and Catholic majority, Unionists and Protestants were a majority in the north-east, largely due to 17th century British colonization. These Ulster Unionists wanted to maintain ties to Britain and did not want to be part of an independent Ireland. They had threatened to oppose Irish home rule with violence. The British government proposed to solve this by partitioning Ireland on roughly political and religious lines, creating two self-governing territories of the UK: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Irish nationalists opposed this, most of them supporting the all-island Irish Republic.

The IRA carried out attacks on British forces in the north-east, but was less active than in the south. Protestant loyalists attacked the Catholic community in reprisal. There were outbreaks of sectarian violence from June 1920 to June 1922, influenced by political and military events. Most of it was in the city of Belfast, which saw "savage and unprecedented" communal violence between Protestants and Catholics.[116] In the Belfast violence, Hibernians were more involved on the Catholic/nationalist side than the IRA,[117] while groups such as the Ulster Volunteers were involved on the Protestant/loyalist side. There was rioting, gun battles and bombings. Almost 1,000 homes and businesses were destroyed and people were expelled from workplaces and mixed neighbourhoods. More than 500 were killed[118] and more than 10,000 became refugees, most of them Catholics.[119] The British Army was deployed and the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) was formed to help the regular police. The USC was almost wholly Protestant and some of its members carried out reprisal attacks on Catholics.[120] Conflict continued in Northern Ireland after the July 1921 truce; both communal violence in Belfast and guerrilla conflict in rural border areas.[121]

Irish nationalists argued that the violence around Belfast was a pogrom against Catholics/nationalists, as Catholics were a quarter of the city's population but made up two-thirds of those killed, suffered 80% of the property destruction and made up 80% of refugees.[118] Historian Alan Parkinson says the term 'pogrom' is misleading, as the violence was not all one-sided nor co-ordinated.[122] The Irish government estimated that 50,000 left Northern Ireland permanently due to violence and intimidation.[123]

While the IRA was less active in the north-east than in the south, Ulster unionists saw themselves as besieged by Irish republicans. The January and June 1920 local elections saw Irish nationalists and republicans win control of many northern urban councils, as well as Tyrone and Fermanagh county councils. Derry City had its first Irish nationalist and Catholic mayor.[124]

Fighting broke out in Derry on 18 June 1920 and lasted a week. Catholic homes were attacked in the mainly Protestant Waterside, and Catholics fled by boat across the Foyle while coming under fire. In the Cityside, Loyalists fired from the Fountain neighbourhood into Catholic streets, while the IRA occupied St Columb's College and returned fire. At least fourteen Catholics and five Protestants were killed in the violence.[125] Eventually, 1,500 British troops were deployed in Derry and imposed a curfew.[126]

On 17 July, British Colonel Gerald Smyth was assassinated by the IRA in Cork. He had told police officers to shoot civilians who did not immediately obey orders.[127] Smyth came from Banbridge, County Down. Loyalists retaliated by attacking many Catholic homes and businesses in Banbridge and expelling Catholics from their jobs, forcing many to flee the town.[128] There were similar attacks in nearby Dromore.[129]

On 21 July, loyalists drove 8,000 "disloyal" co-workers from their jobs in the Belfast shipyards, all of them either Catholics or Protestant labour activists. Some were viciously attacked.[130] This was partly in response to recent IRA actions and partly because of competition over jobs due to high unemployment. It was fuelled by rhetoric from Unionist politicians. In his Twelfth of July speech, Edward Carson had called for loyalists to take matters into their own hands, and had linked republicanism with socialism and the Catholic Church.[131] The expulsions sparked fierce sectarian rioting in Belfast, and British troops fired machine-guns to disperse rioters. Eleven Catholics and eight Protestants were killed and hundreds wounded.[130] Catholic workers were soon driven out of all major Belfast factories. In response, the Dáil approved the 'Belfast Boycott' of Unionist-owned businesses and banks in the city. It was enforced by the IRA, who halted trains and lorries and destroyed goods.[132]

On 22 August, the IRA assassinated RIC Inspector Oswald Swanzy as he left church in Lisburn. Swanzy had been implicated in the killing of Cork Mayor Tomás Mac Curtain. In revenge, loyalists burned and looted hundreds of Catholic businesses and homes in Lisburn, forcing many Catholics to flee (see the Burnings in Lisburn). As a result, Lisburn was the first town to recruit special constables. After some of them were charged with rioting, their colleagues threatened to resign, and they were not prosecuted.[133]

In September, Unionist leader James Craig wrote to the British government demanding that a special constabulary be recruited from the ranks of the Ulster Volunteers. He warned, "Loyalist leaders now feel the situation is so desperate that unless the Government will take immediate action, it may be advisable for them to see what steps can be taken towards a system of organised reprisals against the rebels". The USC was formed in October and, in the words of historian Michael Hopkinson, "amounted to an officially approved UVF".

After a lull in violence in the North, the conflict there intensified again in spring 1921. In February, as reprisal for the shooting of a Special Constable, USC and UVF men burned ten Catholic homes and a priest's house in Rosslea, County Fermanagh.[135] The following month, the IRA attacked the homes of sixteen Special Constables in the Rosslea district, killing three and wounding others.[136]

The Act of Partition came into force on 3 May 1921.[137] That month, James Craig secretly met Éamon de Valera in Dublin. They discussed the possibility of a truce in Ulster and an amnesty for prisoners. Craig proposed a compromise of limited independence for the South and autonomy for the North within the UK. The talks came to nothing and violence in the North continued. Elections to the Northern parliament were held on 24 May, in which Unionists won most seats. Its parliament first met on 7 June and formed a devolved government, headed by Craig. Republican and nationalist members refused to attend. King George V addressed the ceremonial opening of the Northern parliament on 22 June.[137] The next day, a train carrying the king's armed escort, the 10th Royal Hussars, was derailed by an IRA bomb at Adavoyle, County Armagh. Five soldiers and a train guard were killed, as were fifty horses. A civilian bystander was also shot dead by British soldiers.[139]

Loyalists condemned the truce as a 'sell-out' to republicans.[140] On 10 July, a day before the ceasefire was to begin, police launched a raid against republicans in west Belfast. The IRA ambushed them on Raglan Street, killing an officer. This sparked a day of violence known as Belfast's Bloody Sunday. Protestant loyalists attacked Catholic enclaves in west Belfast, burning homes and businesses. This led to sectarian clashes between Protestants and Catholics, and gun battles between police and nationalists. The USC allegedly drove through Catholic enclaves firing indiscriminately.[141] Twenty people were killed or fatally wounded (including twelve Catholics and six Protestants) before the truce began at noon on 11 July.[142] After the truce came into effect on 11 July, the USC was demobilized (July - November 1921). The void left by the demobilized USC was filled by loyalist vigilante groups and a revived UVF.[143]

There were further outbreaks of violence in Belfast after the truce. Twenty people were killed in street fighting and assassinations from 29 August to 1 September 1921 and another thirty were killed from 21 to 25 November. Loyalists had by this time taken to throwing bombs randomly into Catholic streets and the IRA responded by bombing trams carrying Protestant workmen.[144]

Despite the Dáil's acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in January 1922, which confirmed the future existence of Northern Ireland, there were clashes between the IRA and British forces along the new border from early 1922. In part, this reflected Collins' view that the Treaty was a "stepping stone", rather than a final settlement. That month, Collins became head of the new Irish Provisional Government and the Irish National Army was founded, though the IRA continued to exist.[145]

In January 1922, members of the Monaghan Gaelic football team were arrested by Northern police on their way to a match in Derry. Among them were IRA volunteers with plans to free IRA prisoners from Derry prison. In response, on the night of 7-8 February, IRA units crossed the border and captured almost fifty Special Constables and prominent loyalists in Fermanagh and Tyrone. They were to be held as hostages for the Monaghan prisoners. Several IRA volunteers were also captured during the raids.[146] This operation had been approved by Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy, Frank Aiken and Eoin O'Duffy.[147] The Northern Ireland authorities responded by sealing-off many cross-border roads.[148]

In February and March 1922, violence in the North reached levels that had not been seen before. Between 11 February and 31 March, 51 Catholics were killed with 115 wounded, with 32 Protestants killed and 86 wounded.[149] On 11 February, IRA volunteers stopped a group of armed Special Constables at Clones railway station, County Monaghan. The USC unit was travelling by train from Belfast to Enniskillen (both in Northern Ireland), but the Provisional Government was unaware that British forces would be crossing through its territory. The IRA called on the Specials to surrender for questioning, but one of them shot dead an IRA sergeant. This sparked a firefight in which four Specials were killed and several wounded. Five others were captured.[150] The incident threatened to set off a major confrontation between North and South, and the British government temporarily suspended the withdrawal of British troops from the South. The Border Commission was set up to mediate in any future border disputes, but achieved very little.[151]

These incidents provoked retaliation attacks by loyalists against Catholics in Belfast, sparking further sectarian clashes. In the three days after the Clones incident, more than 30 people were killed in the city, including four Catholic children and two women who were killed by a loyalist grenade on Weaver Street.[151]

On 18 March, Northern police raided IRA headquarters in Belfast, seizing weapons and lists of IRA volunteers. The Provisional Government condemned this as a breach of the truce.[152] Over the next two weeks, the IRA raided several police barracks in the North, killed several officers and captured fifteen.[152][153]

On 24 March, six Catholics were shot dead by Special Constables who broke into the home of the McMahon family. This was in revenge for the IRA killing of two policemen.[154] A week later, six more Catholics were killed by Specials in another revenge attack, known as the Arnon Street massacre.[155]

Winston Churchill had arranged a meeting between Collins and James Craig on 21 January and the southern boycott of Belfast goods was lifted but then re-imposed after several weeks. The two leaders had further meetings, but despite a joint declaration that "peace is declared" on 30 March, violence continued.

In May 1922 the IRA launched a Northern Offensive, secretly backed by Collins, head of the Irish Provisional Government. By this time, the IRA was split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty, but both pro and anti-Treaty units were involved. Some weaponry sent by the British to arm the National Army were in fact given to IRA units and their weapons sent to the North. However, the offensive was a failure. An IRA Belfast Brigade report in late May concluded that continuing the offensive was "futile and foolish" and would "place the Catholic population at the mercy of the Specials".

On 22 May, after the assassination of West Belfast Unionist MP William Twaddell, the Northern government introduced internment and 350 IRA men were arrested in Belfast, crippling its organisation there. The biggest clash of the IRA offensive was the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek, which ended with British troops using artillery to dislodge around 100 IRA volunteers from the border villages of Pettigo and Belleek, killing three volunteers. This was the last major confrontation between the IRA and British forces during the revolutionary period. The cycle of sectarian violence in Belfast continued. In May, 75 people were killed in Belfast and another 30 in June. Several thousand Catholics fled the violence and sought refuge in Glasgow and Dublin.[161] On 17 June, in revenge for the killing of two Catholics by Specials, Frank Aiken's IRA unit shot dead six Protestant civilians in Altnaveigh, south Armagh. Three Specials were also ambushed and killed.[162]

Collins held Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, MP for North Down, responsible for the attacks on Catholics in the North and may have been behind his assassination in June 1922, though who ordered the shooting is unproven. The event helped to trigger the Irish Civil War. Winston Churchill insisted after the killing that Collins take action against the Anti-Treaty IRA, whom he assumed to be responsible. The outbreak of civil war in the south ended the violence in the North, as the war demoralised the northern IRA and diverted the organisation from the issue of partition. The Irish Free State quietly ended Collins' policy of covert armed action in Northern Ireland.

The violence in the North was over by late 1922.[165]

Ballykinlar internment camp was the first mass internment camp in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence holding almost 2,000 men.[166] Ballykinlar gained a reputation for brutality: three prisoners were shot dead and five died from maltreatment.[167] At HM Prison Crumlin Road in Belfast, Cork County Gaol (see 1920 Cork hunger strike) and Mountjoy jail in Dublin some of the political prisoners went on hunger strike. In 1920 two Irish republicans died as a result of hunger strikes - Michael Fitzgerald d. 17 October 1920 and Joe Murphy d. 25 October 1920.[168]

Conditions during internment were not always good - during the 1920s, the vessel HMS Argenta was moored in Belfast Lough and used as a prison ship for the holding of Irish republicans by the British government after Bloody Sunday. Cloistered below decks in cages which held 50 internees, the prisoners were forced to use broken toilets which overflowed frequently into their communal area. Deprived of tables, the already weakened men ate off the floor, frequently succumbing to disease and illness as a result. There were several hunger strikes on the Argenta, including a major strike involving upwards of 150 men in the winter of 1923.[169]

In recent decades, attention has been drawn to the IRA's shooting of civilian informers in the south. Several historians, notably Peter Hart have alleged that those killed in this manner were often simply considered "enemies" rather than being proven informers. Especially vulnerable, it is argued, were Protestants, ex-soldiers and tramps. "It was not merely (or even mainly) a matter of espionage, spies and spy hunters, it was a civil war between and within communities".[170] The notion that sectarianism was a factor in a majority of killings has been criticised, with opposing historians contending that Protestant victims were killed for their resistance to republican goals rather than their religious beliefs.[171][88]

Victims' bodies were often disfigured and left with notes that alleged espionage, claimed responsibility and/or discouraged similar deception.[171] Their hair forcefully removed, women were more often disfigured than killed, instead marked as supposed traitors.[171]

The symbol of the Republic:
The Irish tricolour which dated back to the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848

A symbol of British rule:
The standard of the Lord Lieutenant, using the union flag created under the Act of Union 1800

Another feature of the war was the use of propaganda by both sides.[172]

The British government also collected material on the liaison between Sinn Féin and Soviet Russia, in an unsuccessful attempt to portray Sinn Féin as a crypto-communist movement.[173]

The Catholic Church hierarchy was critical of the violence of both sides, but especially that of the IRA, continuing a long tradition of condemning militant republicanism. The Bishop of Kilmore, Patrick Finnegan, said: "Any war... to be just and lawful must be backed by a well grounded hope of success. What hope of success have you against the mighty forces of the British Empire? None... none whatever and if it unlawful as it is, every life taken in pursuance of it is murder."[174] Thomas Gilmartin, the Archbishop of Tuam, issued a letter saying that IRA men who took part in ambushes "have broken the truce of God, they have incurred the guilt of murder".[175] However, in May 1921, Pope Benedict XV dismayed the British government when he issued a letter that exhorted the "English as well as Irish to calmly consider . . . some means of mutual agreement", as they had been pushing for a condemnation of the rebellion.[176] They declared that his comments "put HMG (His Majesty's Government) and the Irish murder gang on a footing of equality".[176]

Desmond FitzGerald and Erskine Childers were active in producing the Irish Bulletin, which detailed government atrocities which Irish and British newspapers were unwilling or unable to cover. It was printed secretly and distributed throughout Ireland, and to international press agencies and US, European and sympathetic British politicians.

While the military war made most of Ireland ungovernable from early 1920, it did not actually remove British forces from any part. But the success of Sinn Féin's propaganda campaign reduced the option of the British government to deepen the conflict; it worried in particular about the effect on British relations with the US, where groups like the American Committee for Relief in Ireland had so many eminent members. The British cabinet had not sought the war that had developed since 1919. By 1921 one of its members, Winston Churchill, reflected:

What was the alternative? It was to plunge one small corner of the empire into an iron repression, which could not be carried out without an admixture of murder and counter-murder.... Only national self-preservation could have excused such a policy, and no reasonable man could allege that self-preservation was involved.[177]

According to The Dead of the Irish Revolution, 2,346 people were killed or died as a result of the conflict. This counts a small number of deaths before and after the war, from 1917 until the signing of the Treaty at the end of 1921. Of those killed, 919 were civilians, 523 were police personnel, 413 were British military personnel, and 491 were IRA volunteers[3] (although another source gives 550 IRA dead). About 44% of these British military deaths were by misadventure (such as accidental shooting) and suicide while on active service, as were 10% of police losses and 14% of IRA losses.[178] About 36% of police personnel who died were born outside Ireland.[178]

At least 557 people were killed in political violence in what became Northern Ireland between July 1920 and July 1922. Many of these deaths took place after the truce that ended fighting in the rest of Ireland. Of these deaths, between 303 and 340 were Catholic civilians, between 172 and 196 were Protestant civilians, 82 were police personnel (38 RIC and 44 USC), and 35 were IRA volunteers. Most of the violence took place in Belfast: at least 452 people were killed there - 267 Catholics and 185 Protestants.[179]

By October 1921 the British Army in Ireland numbered 57,000 men, along with 14,200 RIC police and some 2,600 auxiliaries and Black and Tans. The long-planned evacuation from dozens of barracks in what the army called "Southern Ireland" started on 12 January 1922, following the ratification of the Treaty and took nearly a year, organised by General Nevil Macready. It was a huge logistical operation, but within the month Dublin Castle and Beggars Bush Barracks were transferred to the Provisional Government. The RIC last paraded on 4 April and was formally disbanded on 31 August. By the end of May the remaining forces were concentrated in Dublin, Cork and Kildare. Tensions that led to the Irish Civil War were evident by then and evacuation was suspended. By November about 6,600 soldiers remained in Dublin at 17 locations. Finally on 17 December 1922 The Royal Barracks (now housing collections of the National Museum of Ireland) was transferred to General Richard Mulcahy and the garrison embarked at Dublin Port that evening.[180]

In May 1922 the British Government with the agreement of the Irish Provisional Government established a commission chaired by Lord Shaw of Dunfermline to examine compensation claims for material damage caused between 21 January 1919 and 11 July 1921.[181] The Irish Free State's Damage To Property (Compensation) Act, 1923 provided that only the Shaw Commission, and not the Criminal Injury Acts, could be used to claim compensation.[182] Originally, the British government paid claims from unionists and the Irish government those from nationalists; claims from "neutral" parties were shared.[183] After the 1925 collapse of the Irish Boundary Commission, the UK, Free State and Northern Ireland governments negotiated revisions to the 1921 Treaty; the Free State stopped contributing to the servicing of the UK national debt, but took over full responsibility for compensation for war damage, with the fund increased by 10% in 1926.[184] The Compensation (Ireland) Commission worked until March 1926, processing thousands of claims.[183]

Constance Markievicz was a member of the Irish Citizen Army and fought in the Easter Rising. In 1919 she was appointed Minister for Labour in the Government of the Irish Republic

Although most of the fighting was carried out by men, women played a substantial supporting role in the Irish War of Independence. Before the Easter Rising of 1916, many Irish nationalist women were brought together through organisations fighting for women's suffrage, such as the Irish Women's Franchise League.[185] The republican socialist Irish Citizen Army promoted gender equality and many of these women-including Constance Markiewicz, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, and Kathleen Lynn-joined the group.[186] In 1914, the all-female paramilitary group Cumann na mBan was launched as an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers. During the Easter Rising, some women participated in fighting and carried messages between Irish Volunteer posts while being shot at by British troops.[187] After the rebel defeat, Éamon de Valera opposed the participation of women in combat and they were limited to supporting roles.[188]

During the conflict, women hid IRA volunteers being sought by the British, nursed wounded volunteers, and gathered money to help republican prisoners and their families. Cumann na mBan engaged in undercover work to set back the British war effort. They smuggled guns, ammunition, and money to the IRA; Kathleen Clarke smuggled gold worth £2,000 from Limerick to Dublin for Collins.[189] Because they sheltered wanted men, many women were subject to raids on their homes by British police and soldiers, with acts of sexual violence sometimes being reported but not confirmed.[188] It is estimated that there were between 3,000 and 9,000 members of Cumann na mBan during the war, and in 1921 there were 800 branches throughout the island. It is estimated that fewer than 50 women were imprisoned by the British during the war.[189]

A memorial called the Garden of Remembrance was erected in Dublin in 1966, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. The date of signing of the truce is commemorated by the National Day of Commemoration, when all those Irish men and women who fought in wars in specific armies (e.g., the Irish unit(s) fighting in the British Army in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme) are commemorated.

The last survivor of the conflict, Dan Keating (of the IRA), died in October 2007 at the age of 105.[190]

1926 - Irish Destiny, silent film

1929 - The Informer, part-talkie film

1935 - The Informer, John Ford film

1936 - The Dawn, Irish film (also called Dawn Over Ireland)

1936 - Ourselves Alone, British film

1936 - Beloved Enemy, American drama film

1937 - The Plough and the Stars, John Ford film

1959 - Shake Hands with the Devil, feature film

1975 - Days of Hope, 1916: Joining Up

1988 - The Dawning, film, based on Jennifer Johnston's The Old Jest

1989 - The Shadow of Béalnabláth (1989) RTÉ TV Documentary by Colm Connolly about the life and death of Michael Collins.

1991 - The Treaty

1996 - Michael Collins, feature film

1999 - The Last September (film)

2001 - Rebel Heart, BBC miniseries. The theme music of the same name was composed by Sharon Corr.

2002 - An Deichniúr Dearmadta (The Forgotten Ten) a TG4 TV Documentary

2006 - The Wind That Shakes the Barley, feature film

2014 - A Nightingale Falling, film

2019 - Resistance, five-part RTÉ miniseries

Bartlett, Robert (1997). A Military History of Ireland. Penguin. ISBN 0140154094.

Comerford, Richard (2003), Ireland: Inventing the Nation, Hodder

English, Richard (2003), Armed Struggle, a History of the IRA, MacMillan, ISBN 0-19-516605-1

Hopkinson, Michael (2004), Green against Green, the Irish Civil War, Gill & Macmillan

Lowe, W.J. (2002), 'The War against the RIC, 1919-21', Eire-Ireland, vol. 37

O'Donoghue, Florrie (May 1963), 'Guerilla Warfare in Ireland 1919-1921', An Cosantóir, vol. XXII

Thorne, Kathleen (2016), Echoes of Their Footsteps, The Quest for Irish Freedom 1913-1922, Volume I, Newberg: Generation Organization

Since the 1870s, Irish nationalists in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) had been demanding home rule, or self-government, from Britain, while not ruling out eventual complete independence. Fringe organisations, such as Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin, instead argued for some form of immediate Irish independence, but they were in a small minority.[12]

The demand for home rule was eventually granted by the British government in 1912,[13] immediately prompting a prolonged crisis within the United Kingdom as Ulster unionists formed an armed organisation - the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) - to resist this measure of devolution, at least in territory they could control. In turn, nationalists formed their own paramilitary organisation, the Irish Volunteers.[14]

The British parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act 1914, known as the Home Rule Act, on 18 September 1914 with an amending bill for the partition of Ireland introduced by Ulster Unionist MPs, but the act's implementation was immediately postponed by the Suspensory Act 1914 due to the outbreak of the First World War in the previous month.[15] The majority of nationalists followed their IPP leaders and John Redmond's call to support Britain and the Allied war effort in Irish regiments of the New British Army, the intention being to ensure the commencement of home rule after the war.[16] However, a significant minority of the Irish Volunteers opposed Ireland's involvement in the war. The Volunteer movement split, a majority leaving to form the National Volunteers under Redmond. The remaining Irish Volunteers, under Eoin MacNeill, held that they would maintain their organisation until home rule had been granted. Within this Volunteer movement, another faction, led by the separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood, began to prepare for a revolt against British rule in Ireland.[17]

The plan for revolt was realised in the Easter Rising of 1916, in which the Volunteers launched an insurrection whose aim was to end British rule. The insurgents issued the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, proclaiming Ireland's independence as a republic.[18] The Rising, in which over four hundred people died,[19] was almost exclusively confined to Dublin and was put down within a week, but the British response, executing the leaders of the insurrection and arresting thousands of nationalist activists, galvanised support for the separatist Sinn Féin[20] - the party which the republicans first adopted and then took over as well as followers from Countess Markievicz, who was second-in-command of the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising.[21] By now, support for the British war effort was waning, and Irish public opinion was shocked and outraged by some of the actions committed by British troops, particularly the murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and the imposition of wartime martial law.[22]

In April 1918, the British cabinet, in the face of the crisis caused by the German spring offensive, attempted with a dual policy to simultaneously link the enactment of conscription into Ireland with the implementation of home rule, as outlined in the report of the Irish Convention of 8 April 1918. This further alienated Irish nationalists and produced mass demonstrations during the Conscription Crisis of 1918.[23] In the 1918 general election Irish voters showed their disapproval of British policy by giving Sinn Féin 70% (73 seats out of 105,) of Irish seats, 25 of those being uncontested.[24] Sinn Féin won 91% of the seats outside of Ulster on 46.9% of votes cast but was in a minority in Ulster, where unionists were in a majority. Sinn Féin pledged not to sit in the UK Parliament at Westminster, but rather to set up an Irish parliament.[25] This parliament, known as the First Dáil, and its ministry, called the Aireacht, consisting only of Sinn Féin members, met at the Mansion House on 21 January 1919. The Dáil reaffirmed the 1916 proclamation with the Irish Declaration of Independence,[26] and issued a Message to the Free Nations of the World, which stated that there was an "existing state of war, between Ireland and England". The Irish Volunteers were reconstituted as the " Irish Republican Army" or IRA.[27] The IRA was perceived by some members of Dáil Éireann to have a mandate to wage war on the British Dublin Castle administration.[citation needed ]

The heart of British power in Ireland was the Dublin Castle administration, often known to the Irish as "the Castle". The head of the Castle administration was the lord lieutenant, to whom a chief secretary was responsible, leading-in the words of the British historian Peter Cottrell-to an "administration renowned for its incompetence and inefficiency".> Ireland was divided into three military districts. During the war, two British divisions, the 5th and the 6th, were based in Ireland with their respective headquarters in the Curragh and Cork. By July 1921 there were 50,000 British troops based in Ireland; by contrast there were 14,000 soldiers in metropolitan Britain. While the British Army had historically been heavily dependent on Irish recruitment, concern over divided loyalties led to the redeployment from 1919 of all regular Irish regiments to garrisons outside Ireland itself.[30]

The two main police forces in Ireland were the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Of the 17,000 policemen in Ireland, 513 were killed by the IRA between 1919 and 1921 while 682 were wounded. Of the RIC's senior officers, 60% were Irish Protestants and the rest Catholic, while 70% of the rank and file of the RIC were Irish Catholic with the rest Protestant. The RIC was trained for police work, not war, and was woefully ill-prepared to take on counter-insurgency duties. Until March 1920, London regarded the unrest in Ireland as primarily an issue for the police and did not regard it as a war. The purpose of the Army was to back up the police. In the course of the war, about a quarter of Ireland was put under martial law, mostly in Munster; in the rest of the country British authority was not deemed sufficiently threatened to warrant it. The British created two paramilitary police forces to supplement the work of the RIC, recruited mostly from World War I veterans, namely the Temporary Constables (better known as the " Black and Tans") and the Temporary Cadets or Auxiliary Division (known as the "Auxies").

On 25 November 1913, the Irish Volunteers were formed by Eoin MacNeill in response to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) that had been founded earlier in the year to fight against home rule. Also in 1913, the Irish Citizen Army was founded by the trade unionists and socialists James Larkin and James Connolly following a series of violent incidents between trade unionists and the Dublin police in the Dublin lock-out. In June 1914, Nationalist leader John Redmond forced the Volunteers to give his nominees a majority on the ruling committee. When, in September 1914, Redmond encouraged the Volunteers to enlist in the British Army, a faction led by Eoin MacNeill broke with the Redmondites, who became known as the National Volunteers, rather than fight for Britain in the war. Many of the National Volunteers did enlist, and the majority of the men in the 16th (Irish) Division of the British Army had formerly served in the National Volunteers. The Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army launched the Easter Rising against British rule in 1916, when an Irish Republic was proclaimed. Thereafter they became known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Between 1919 and 1921 the IRA claimed to have a total strength of 70,000, but only about 3,000 were actively engaged in fighting against the Crown. The IRA distrusted those Irishmen who had fought in the British Army during the First World War, but there were exceptions, such as Emmet Dalton, Tom Barry and Martin Doyle. The basic structure of the IRA was the flying column which could number between 20 and 100 men. Finally, Michael Collins created the " Squad"-gunmen responsible to himself who were assigned special duties such as the assassination of policemen and suspected informers within the IRA.

The years between the Easter Rising of 1916 and the beginning of the War of Independence in 1919 were not bloodless. Thomas Ashe, one of the Volunteer leaders imprisoned for his role in the 1916 rebellion, died on hunger strike, after attempted force-feeding in 1917. In 1918, during disturbances arising out of the anti-conscription campaign, six civilians died in confrontations with the police and British Army and more than 1,000 people were arrested. There were also raids for arms by the Volunteers,[39] at least one shooting of a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) policeman and the burning of an RIC barracks in Kerry.[40] The attacks brought a British military presence from the summer of 1918, which only briefly quelled the violence, and an increase in police raids.[41] However, there was as yet no co-ordinated armed campaign against British forces or RIC. In County Cork, four rifles were seized from the Eyeries barracks in March 1918 and men from the barracks were beaten that August.[41] In early July 1918, Volunteers ambushed two RIC men who had been stationed to stop a feis being held on the road between Ballingeary and Ballyvourney in the first armed attack on the RIC since the Easter Rising - one was shot in the neck, the other beaten, and police carbines and ammunition were seized.[41][42] Patrols in Bantry and Ballyvourney were badly beaten in September and October. In November 1918, Armistice Day was marked by severe rioting in Dublin that left over 100 British soldiers injured.[43]

Police wanted poster for Dan Breen, one of those involved in the Soloheadbeg Ambush in 1919.

While it was not clear in the beginning of 1919 that the Dáil ever intended to gain independence by military means, and war was not explicitly threatened in Sinn Féin's 1918 manifesto,[44] an incident occurred on 21 January 1919, the same day as the First Dáil convened. The Soloheadbeg Ambush, in County Tipperary, was led by Seán Treacy, Séumas Robinson, Seán Hogan and Dan Breen acting on their own initiative. The IRA attacked and shot two RIC officers, Constables James McDonnell and Patrick O'Connell,[45] who were escorting explosives. Breen later recalled:

...we took the action deliberately, having thought over the matter and talked it over between us. Treacy had stated to me that the only way of starting a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces. The only regret that we had following the ambush was that there were only two policemen in it, instead of the six we had expected.[46]

This is widely regarded as the beginning of the War of Independence.[47] The British government declared South Tipperary a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act two days later.[48] The war was not formally declared by the Dáil, and it ran its course parallel to the Dáil's political life. On 10 April 1919 the Dáil was told:

As regards the Republican prisoners, we must always remember that this country is at war with England and so we must in a sense regard them as necessary casualties in the great fight.[49]

In January 1921, two years after the war had started, the Dáil debated "whether it was feasible to accept formally a state of war that was being thrust on them, or not", and decided not to declare war.[50] Then on 11 March, Dáil Éireann President Éamon de Valera called for acceptance of a "state of war with England". The Dail voted unanimously to empower him to declare war whenever he saw fit, but he did not formally do so.[51]

Volunteers began to attack British government property, carry out raids for arms and funds and target and kill prominent members of the British administration. The first was Resident Magistrate John C. Milling, who was shot dead in Westport, County Mayo, for having sent Volunteers to prison for unlawful assembly and drilling. They mimicked the successful tactics of the Boers' fast violent raids without uniform. Although some republican leaders, notably Éamon de Valera, favoured classic conventional warfare to legitimise the new republic in the eyes of the world, the more practically experienced Collins and the broader IRA leadership opposed these tactics as they had led to the military débacle of 1916. Others, notably Arthur Griffith, preferred a campaign of civil disobedience rather than armed struggle.[53]

During the early part of the conflict, roughly from 1919 to the middle of 1920, there was a relatively limited amount of violence. Much of the nationalist campaign involved popular mobilisation and the creation of a republican "state within a state" in opposition to British rule. British journalist Robert Lynd wrote in The Daily News in July 1920 that:

{{Blockquote|So far as the mass of people are concerned, the policy of the day is not active but a passive policy. Their policy is not so much to attack the Government as to ignore it and to build up a new government by its side.

The IRA's main target throughout the conflict was the mainly Irish Catholic Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the British government's armed police force in Ireland, outside Dublin. Its members and barracks (especially the more isolated ones) were vulnerable, and they were a source of much-needed arms. The RIC numbered 9,700 men stationed in 1,500 barracks throughout Ireland.

A policy of ostracism of RIC men was announced by the Dáil on 11 April 1919. This proved successful in demoralising the force as the war went on, as people turned their faces from a force increasingly compromised by association with British government repression. The rate of resignation went up and recruitment in Ireland dropped off dramatically. Often, the RIC were reduced to buying food at gunpoint, as shops and other businesses refused to deal with them. Some RIC men co-operated with the IRA through fear or sympathy, supplying the organisation with valuable information. By contrast with the effectiveness of the widespread public boycott of the police, the military actions carried out by the IRA against the RIC at this time were relatively limited. In 1919, 11 RIC men and 4 Dublin Metropolitan Police G Division detectives were killed and another 20 RIC wounded.

Other aspects of mass participation in the conflict included strikes by organised workers, in opposition to the British presence in Ireland. In Limerick in April 1919, a general strike was called by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. Special permits, to be issued by the RIC, would now be required to enter the city. The Trades Council's special Strike Committee controlled the city for fourteen days in an episode that is known as the Limerick Soviet.[58]

Similarly, in May 1920, Dublin dockers refused to handle any war matériel and were soon joined by the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, who banned railway drivers from carrying members of the British forces. Blackleg train drivers were brought over from England, after drivers refused to carry British troops. The strike badly hampered British troop movements until December 1920, when it was called off.[59] The British government managed to bring the situation to an end, when they threatened to withhold grants from the railway companies, which would have meant that workers would no longer have been paid. Attacks by the IRA also steadily increased, and by early 1920, they were attacking isolated RIC stations in rural areas, causing them to be abandoned as the police retreated to the larger towns.

In early April 1920, 400 abandoned RIC barracks were burned to the ground to prevent them being used again, along with almost one hundred income tax offices. The RIC withdrew from much of the countryside, leaving it in the hands of the IRA.[61] In June-July 1920, assizes failed all across the south and west of Ireland; trials by jury could not be held because jurors would not attend. The collapse of the court system demoralised the RIC and many police resigned or retired. The Irish Republican Police (IRP) was founded between April and June 1920, under the authority of Dáil Éireann and the former IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Brugha to replace the RIC and to enforce the ruling of the Dáil Courts, set up under the Irish Republic. By 1920, the IRP had a presence in 21 of Ireland's 32 counties.[62] The Dáil Courts were generally socially conservative, despite their revolutionary origins, and halted the attempts of some landless farmers at redistribution of land from wealthier landowners to poorer farmers.

The Inland Revenue ceased to operate in most of Ireland. People were instead encouraged to subscribe to Collins' "National Loan", set up to raise funds for the young government and its army.[64] By the end of the year the loan had reached £358,000. It eventually reached £380,000. An even larger amount, totalling over $5 million, was raised in the United States by Irish Americans and sent to Ireland to finance the Republic. Rates were still paid to local councils but nine out of eleven of these were controlled by Sinn Féin, who naturally refused to pass them on to the British government. By mid-1920, the Irish Republic was a reality in the lives of many people, enforcing its own law, maintaining its own armed forces and collecting its own taxes. The British Liberal journal, The Nation, wrote in August 1920 that "the central fact of the present situation in Ireland is that the Irish Republic exists".

The British forces, in trying to re-assert their control over the country, often resorted to arbitrary reprisals against republican activists and the civilian population. An unofficial government policy of reprisals began in September 1919 in Fermoy, County Cork, when 200 British soldiers looted and burned the main businesses of the town, after one of their number - a soldier of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry who was the first British Army death in the campaign - had been killed in an armed raid by the local IRA[65] on a church parade the day before (7 September). The ambushers were a unit of the No. 2 Cork Brigade, under the command of Liam Lynch, who wounded four of the other soldiers and disarmed the rest before fleeing in their cars. The local coroner's inquest refused to return a murder verdict over the soldier and local businessmen who had sat on the jury were targeted in the reprisal.[66]

Arthur Griffith estimated that in the first 18 months of the conflict, British forces carried out 38,720 raids on private homes, arrested 4,982 suspects, committed 1,604 armed assaults, carried out 102 indiscriminate shootings and burnings in towns and villages, and killed 77 people including women and children.[67] In March 1920, Tomás Mac Curtain, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, was shot dead in front of his wife at his home, by men with blackened faces who were seen returning to the local police barracks. The jury at the inquest into his death returned a verdict of wilful murder against David Lloyd George (the British Prime Minister) and District Inspector Swanzy, among others. Swanzy was later tracked down and killed in Lisburn, County Antrim. This pattern of killings and reprisals escalated in the second half of 1920 and in 1921.[68]

Collins was a driving force behind the independence movement. Nominally the Minister of Finance in the Republic's government and IRA Director of Intelligence, he was involved in providing funds and arms to the IRA units and in the selection of officers. Collins' charisma and organisational capability galvanised many who came in contact with him. He established what proved an effective network of spies among sympathetic members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police's G Division and other important branches of the British administration. The G Division men were a relatively small political division active in subverting the republican movement. They were detested by the IRA as often they were used to identify volunteers, who would have been unknown to British soldiers or the later Black and Tans. Collins set up the "Squad", a group of men whose sole duty was to seek out and kill "G-men" and other British spies and agents. Collins' Squad began killing RIC intelligence officers in July 1919.[69] Many G-men were offered a chance to resign or leave Ireland by the IRA. One spy who escaped with his life was F. Digby Hardy, who was exposed by Arthur Griffith before an "IRA" meeting, which in fact consisted of Irish and foreign journalists, and then advised to take the next boat out of Dublin.[70]

The Chief of Staff of the IRA was Richard Mulcahy, who was responsible for organising and directing IRA units around the country. In theory, both Collins and Mulcahy were responsible to Cathal Brugha, the Dáil's Minister of Defence, but, in practice, Brugha had only a supervisory role, recommending or objecting to specific actions. A great deal also depended on IRA leaders in local areas (such as Liam Lynch, Tom Barry, Seán Moylan, Seán Mac Eoin and Ernie O'Malley) who organised guerrilla activity, largely on their own initiative. For most of the conflict, IRA activity was concentrated in Munster and Dublin, with only isolated active IRA units elsewhere, such as in County Roscommon, north County Longford and western County Mayo.

While the paper membership of the IRA, carried over from the Irish Volunteers, was over 100,000 men, Collins estimated that only 15,000 were active in the IRA during the war, with about 3,000 on active service at any time. There were also support organisations Cumann na mBan (the IRA women's group) and Fianna Éireann (youth movement), who carried weapons and intelligence for IRA men and secured food and lodgings for them. The IRA benefitted from the widespread help given to them by the general Irish population, who generally refused to pass information to the RIC and the British military and who often provided " safe houses" and provisions to IRA units "on the run".

Much of the IRA's popularity arose from the excessive reaction of the British forces to IRA activity. When Éamon de Valera returned from the United States, he demanded in the Dáil that the IRA desist from the ambushes and assassinations, which were allowing the British to portray it as a terrorist group and to take on the British forces with conventional military methods. The proposal was immediately dismissed.

A group of "Black and Tans" and Auxiliaries in Dublin, April 1921

The British increased the use of force; reluctant to deploy the regular British Army into the country in greater numbers, they set up two auxiliary police units to reinforce the RIC. The first of these, quickly nicknamed as the Black and Tans, were seven thousand strong and mainly ex-British soldiers demobilised after World War I. Deployed to Ireland in March 1920, most came from English and Scottish cities. While officially they were part of the RIC, in reality they were a paramilitary force. After their deployment in March 1920, they rapidly gained a reputation for drunkenness and poor discipline. The wartime experience of most Black and Tans did not suit them for police duties and their violent behavior antagonised many previously neutral civilians.[72]

In response to and retaliation for IRA actions, in the summer of 1920, the Tans burned and sacked numerous small towns throughout Ireland, including Balbriggan,[73] Trim,[74] Templemore[75] and others.

In July 1920, another quasi-military police body, the Auxiliaries, consisting of 2,215 former British army officers, arrived in Ireland. The Auxiliaries had a reputation just as bad as the Tans for their mistreatment of the civilian population but tended to be more effective and more willing to take on the IRA. The policy of reprisals, which involved public denunciation or denial and private approval, was famously satirised by Lord Hugh Cecil when he said: "It seems to be agreed that there is no such thing as reprisals but they are having a good effect."[76]

On 9 August 1920, the British Parliament passed the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act. It replaced the trial by jury by courts-martial by regulation for those areas where IRA activity was prevalent.[77]

On 10 December 1920, martial law was proclaimed in Counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary in Munster; in January 1921 martial law was extended to the rest of Munster in Counties Clare and Waterford, as well as counties Kilkenny and Wexford in Leinster.

It also suspended all coroners' courts because of the large number of warrants served on members of the British forces and replaced them with "military courts of enquiry". The powers of military courts-martial were extended to cover the whole population and were empowered to use the death penalty and internment without trial; Government payments to local governments in Sinn Féin hands were suspended. This act has been interpreted by historians as a choice by Prime Minister David Lloyd George to put down the rebellion in Ireland rather than negotiate with the republican leadership. As a result, violence escalated steadily from that summer and sharply after November 1920 until July 1921. It was in this period that a mutiny broke out among the Connaught Rangers, stationed in India. Two were killed whilst trying to storm an armoury and one was later executed.[81]

A number of events dramatically escalated the conflict in late 1920. First the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison in London in October, while two other IRA prisoners on hunger strike, Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald, died in Cork Jail.

Sunday, 21 November 1920, was a day of dramatic bloodshed in Dublin that became known as Bloody Sunday. In the early morning, Collins' Squad attempted to wipe out leading British intelligence operatives in the capital, in particular the Cairo Gang, killing 16 men (including two cadets, one alleged informer, and one possible case of mistaken identity) and wounding five others. The attacks took place at different places (hotels and lodgings) in Dublin.[82]

In response, RIC men drove in trucks into Croke Park (Dublin's GAA football and hurling ground) during a football match, shooting into the crowd. Fourteen civilians were killed, including one of the players, Michael Hogan, and a further 65 people were wounded.[83] Later that day two republican prisoners, Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy and an unassociated friend, Conor Clune who had been arrested with them, were killed in Dublin Castle. The official account was that the three men were shot "while trying to escape", which was rejected by Irish nationalists, who were certain the men had been tortured and then murdered.[84]

On 28 November 1920, one week later, the West Cork unit of the IRA, under Tom Barry, ambushed a patrol of Auxiliaries at Kilmichael, County Cork, killing all but one of the 18-man patrol.

These actions marked a significant escalation of the conflict. In response, the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary - all in the province of Munster - were put under martial law on 10 December under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act; this was followed on 5 January in the rest of Munster and in counties Kilkenny and Wexford in the province of Leinster. Shortly afterwards, in January 1921, "official reprisals" were sanctioned by the British and they began with the burning of seven houses in Midleton, County Cork. Questioned in the House of Commons in June 1921, Attorney-General for Ireland Denis Henry stated that he was informed by Commander-in-Chief Nevil Macready that 191 houses were destroyed in official reprisals in the area under martial law since January of that year.[85] In December 1920 Macready informed the Cabinet of the British Government that Military Governors in the martial law areas had been authorized to conduct reprisals.

On 11 December, the centre of Cork City was burnt out by the Black and Tans, who then shot at firefighters trying to tackle the blaze, in reprisal for an IRA ambush in the city on 11 December 1920 which killed one Auxiliary and wounded eleven.[87] In May of that year, the IRA began a campaign of big house burnings which totaled 26 in Cork alone.[88]

Attempts at a truce in December 1920 were scuppered by Hamar Greenwood, who insisted on a surrender of IRA weapons first.[89]

During the following eight months until the Truce of July 1921, there was a spiralling of the death toll in the conflict, with 1,000 people including the RIC police, army, IRA volunteers and civilians, being killed in the months between January and July 1921 alone.[90] This represents about 70% of the total casualties for the entire three-year conflict. In addition, 4,500 IRA personnel (or suspected sympathisers) were interned in this time.[91] In the middle of this violence, de Valera (as President of Dáil Éireann) acknowledged the state of war with Britain in March 1921.[92]

Between 1 November 1920 and 7 June 1921 twenty-four men were executed by the British.[93] The first IRA volunteer to be executed was Kevin Barry, one of The Forgotten Ten who were buried in unmarked graves in unconsecrated ground inside Mountjoy Prison until 2001.[94] On 1 February, the first execution under martial law of an IRA man took place: Cornelius Murphy, of Millstreet in County Cork, was shot in Cork City. On 28 February, six more were executed, again in Cork.

On 19 March 1921, Tom Barry's 100-strong West Cork IRA unit fought an action against 1,200 British troops - the Crossbarry Ambush. Barry's men narrowly avoided being trapped by converging British columns and inflicted between ten and thirty killed on the British side. Just two days later, on 21 March, the Kerry IRA attacked a train at the Headford junction near Killarney. Twenty British soldiers were killed or injured, as well as two IRA men and three civilians. Most of the actions in the war were on a smaller scale than this, but the IRA did have other significant victories in ambushes, for example at Millstreet in Cork and at Scramogue in Roscommon, also in March 1921 and at Tourmakeady and Carowkennedy in Mayo in May and June. Equally common, however, were failed ambushes, the worst of which, for example at Mourneabbey,[95] Upton and Clonmult in Cork in February 1921, saw six, three, and twelve IRA men killed respectively and more captured. The IRA in Mayo suffered a comparable reverse at Kilmeena, while the Leitrim flying column was almost wiped out at Selton Hill. Fears of informers after such failed ambushes often led to a spate of IRA shootings of informers, real and imagined.

The biggest single loss for the IRA, however, came in Dublin. On 25 May 1921, several hundred IRA men from the Dublin Brigade occupied and burned the Custom House (the centre of local government in Ireland) in Dublin city centre. Symbolically, this was intended to show that British rule in Ireland was untenable. However, from a military point of view, it was a heavy defeat in which five IRA men were killed and over eighty captured.[96] This showed the IRA was not well enough equipped or trained to take on British forces in a conventional manner. However, it did not, as is sometimes claimed, cripple the IRA in Dublin. The Dublin Brigade carried out 107 attacks in the city in May and 93 in June, showing a falloff in activity, but not a dramatic one. However, by July 1921, most IRA units were chronically short of both weapons and ammunition, with over 3,000 prisoners interned.[97] Also, for all their effectiveness at guerrilla warfare, they had, as Richard Mulcahy recalled, "as yet not been able to drive the enemy out of anything but a fairly good sized police barracks".[98]

Still, many military historians have concluded that the IRA fought a largely successful and lethal guerrilla war, which forced the British government to conclude that the IRA could not be defeated militarily.[99] The failure of the British efforts to put down the guerrillas was illustrated by the events of "Black Whitsun" on 13-15 May 1921. A general election for the Parliament of Southern Ireland was held on 13 May. Sinn Féin won 124 of the new parliament's 128 seats unopposed, but its elected members refused to take their seats. Under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Parliament of Southern Ireland was therefore dissolved, and executive and legislative authority over Southern Ireland was effectively transferred to the Lord Lieutenant (assisted by Crown appointees). Over the next two days (14-15 May), the IRA killed fifteen policemen. These events marked the complete failure of the British Coalition Government's Irish policy-both the failure to enforce a settlement without negotiating with Sinn Féin and a failure to defeat the IRA.

By the time of the truce, however, many republican leaders, including Collins, were convinced that if the war went on for much longer, there was a chance that the IRA campaign as it was then organised could be brought to a standstill. Because of this, plans were drawn up to "bring the war to England".[citation needed ] The IRA did take the campaign to the streets of Glasgow.[100] It was decided that key economic targets, such as the Liverpool docks, would be bombed. The units charged with these missions would more easily evade capture because England was not under, and British public opinion was unlikely to accept, martial law. These plans were abandoned because of the truce.

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The Irish War of Independence ( Irish: Cogadh na Saoirse)[4] or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and its paramilitary forces the Auxiliaries and Ulster Special Constabulary (USC).

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Saturday, April 29th

06.36hrs - Complete carnage on North King Street. Shortly after dawn this morning roughly 50 South Staffordshires made a charge at Reilly's Fort. The Langan's position had been abandoned by rebels a couple of hours earlier. Many were mown down as they ran at the building. Fire erupted from several directions. The road is littered with bodies. Reilly's is still holding out but the position is under increasing pressure. Snipers dominate every piece of open ground in the area.

06.40hrs - Moore Street is quiet but movement on the street means certain death. Earlier on, Commandant McLoughlin's plan was outlined to the Headquarters staff. They are now preparing a diversionary attack against the enemy barricade sealing the exit to Great Britain Street. As this attack progresses, their main body is set to make a break for the Four Courts.

The rebels are securely placed along the eastern terrace of houses as far as Sackville Lane, and their expanded front line will render any British counter-attack costly. Should they move into Moore Street against the Republicans they will have to deal with fire from their front and side. Time is running out for the insurgents, however. Just minutes ago McLoughlin asked for volunteers for a do or die assault on the barricade. His request highlighted just how polarised his men's morale has become. Some are barely able to stand, such is their exhaustion, and are in no condition to mount such an attack. Others, however, still seem to want to take the fight to the enemy. Their dusty and worn faces show few illusions about surviving the morning.

06.52hrs - Plans are being prepared by 3rd Battalion in Boland's Bakery for a breakout - the destination unknown as yet.

06.53hrs - In The South Dublin Union the Volunteers are re-supplied, rested and regrouped. News from the city is scarce. The position waits.

06.55hrs - As does the nearby distillery. Morale here is at its zenith. A ceilidh is being planned for tomorrow night to celebrate the garrison's success.

06.57hrs - The Four Courts is holding firm.

06.58hrs - As is the College of Surgeons, but its garrison is starving.

06.58hrs - Sniper fire has just cracked out inside Stephen's Green.

07.00hrs - Boland's Mills is under sniper fire. There is no love lost here between both sides. Yesterday the Volunteers buried Patrick Whelan. The 23-year-old from Ringsend was shot in the eye on Wednesday. Unable to get a direct shot at the burial party British snipers tried to kill them instead with ricochets, aiming their guns at the surrounding walls.

08.00hrs - Horrific scenes in Moore Street. A family has been machine gunned. Just moments after they fled from the burning building that threatened to engulf them, they fell victim to the rapacious gunner. They had moved out into the street slowly and apprehensively. Their heads were crouched as the father's arm stretched out in front, waving a home-made white flag. Their petrified eyes darted frantically between the rubble in their way, the source of the shooting, and the buildings facing them which offered sanctuary. As they reached half way across a burst caught them. It is a dreadful scene.

Anyone who witnessed it turned away in utter disgust. It happened close to the building being used by the rebels as their Headquarters.

Increasing reports are coming in of numerous civilian casualties in the area, one of whom was a teenage girl shot accidentally by a rebel kicking in the door of a nearby cottage.

09.06hrs - A short time ago a broadside of rifle fire flew from Reilly's Fort into North King Street, and cut into another infantry attack on the junction to its front. The attack was driven back.

Father Matthew Hall is thronged with wounded. The building stinks and echoes to their many groans. Medics are struggling to cope. They move among the wounded, their feet slipping on the festering blood on its floors.

09.36hrs - North King Street is a death zone. It has been impossible to tend to the wounded men on these streets. Even the shadows are being fired at. The air is thick with smoke, and desolation.

09.40hrs - Scenes of extraordinary bravery are being witnessed in Dublin's shattered streets. The fire brigade have been out all week, often working under fire from both sides. Scores, if not hundreds, of civilians have been saved by these unsung heroes.

As Sackville Street smoulders they have their work cut out. Many of the men who form its ranks have brothers, sisters, friends and cousins fighting in both British and Republican uniforms. Unexploded shells present a terrible threat, as do clusters of the rebels' home-made canister bombs.

09.50hrs - Terrible tragedy in Dublin's Docks. A woman has been shot on Ringsend Drawbridge in front of her three children. It is unclear where the shot came from but Beggars Bush Barracks is the most likely source at present. The nearby rebels in the mills building are helpless to render aid. Any movement will draw fire from the same source. Her children are crying and pulling at her, clearly unable to take this in.

10.00hrs - 'Reilly's Fort' fell under constant attack since the South Staffordshires gained ground on North King Street. The decision was made to evacuate the position. The front door was opened and the British soldiers trained the sights of their guns in its direction expecting an outpouring of Volunteers. An order to charge was heard. Unexpectedly then, Volunteers started jumping from the side windows and racing towards Church Street. The enemy had been duped. A machine gun quickly traversed and let rip, but it was too late - the Volunteers had made it. The soldiers then gave chase, but when they reached the top of Church Street; the Volunteers on the roof of the Bridewell fired with everything they had, forcing the pursuers to rush for shelter. A section of the South Staffordshires raced to occupy the vacant Reilly's Fort, but once inside they found themselves trapped. The Bridewell and Monk's Bakery positions had them in their gun-sights - any attempt to leave was met with a heavy barrage of rifle fire.

12.00hrs - In Jacob's factory word has come down from the towers that British soldiers are moving into Saint Patrick's park in force; and that civilians are being evacuated from the homes in the surrounding neighbourhood. Rumours have spread that the area is to be flattened so that the artillery can get a direct shot at the 2nd Battalion headquarters.

12.00hrs - White flag in Moore Street. A short time ago a nurse was seen leaving the rebel HQ of 16 Moore Street. She was fired at initially until it became visible to the gunners that she was carrying a white flag. She has since approached the British barricade.

13.00hrs - Rebels preparing their last stand. The South Staffordshires have launched another attack against the barricade at the junction of North Brunswick Street and Upper Church Street, but were forced back yet again. The wounded and dead are strewn across the junction. In nearby Church Street the battle has ebbed and flowed with ever increasing ferocity. At least two Volunteers have just been killed in Church Street as they counter-attacked with their comrades. The machine gun and rifle fire seems never ending. The Volunteers are now turning Moore's Coachworks into a fortress. It may be the last line of the defence.

14.10hrs - The Shelbourne Hotel, where carnage was unleashed from the fourth floor as dawn broke last Tuesday, now looks over a deathly quiet Stephen's Green. Foraging parties have been sent out again from the College of Surgeons into the nearby streets to search for food. They are returning with meagre supplies and with rumours of capitulation. The entire city seems strangely silent, after the week-long cacophony of violence.

14.30hrs - Surrender negotiations in Moore Street. Just moments ago Nurse Elizabeth Farrell (it is believed at present that she hails from City Quay in Dublin) approached the barricade with Commandant Pearse. Pearse appears to be involved in an acrimonious discussion with Brigadier General Lowe, who is accompanied by a young officer, possibly his son John. They've just moved in the direction of Sackville Street, presumably for better cover, and appear to be negotiating terms of surrender.

15.30hrs - It's officially a Republican surrender. Commandant Pearse has been driven away to an unknown location. Meanwhile Nurse Farrell has returned to Moore Street with instructions.

Commandant James Connolly, as per instructions, has been carried on a stretcher by four of his men. As he is handed over the barricade there is silence. His leg is strapped up but he appears to be in agony. Everywhere there is silence. Infantrymen sit about, their bayonets still fixed to their weapons, smoking and resting.

At the barricade both sets of enemies eye one another up, but say nothing. Connolly has been manhandled over the barrier with great respect from his new captors. Courage is a thing respected by fighting men regardless of uniform, and the steadfast bravery displayed by this man is undeniable.

On Moore Street things are deathly still.

19.00hrs - 1st Battalion surrenders at Four Courts. Nurse O'Farrell has delivered the surrender document to Commandant Daly at the Four Courts. Daly ordered all men manning positions and barricades to return to the Four Courts, but appears unable to contact his men on North Brunswick Street. Addressing those in the courts he informed them of the order to surrender. They were stunned - surrender has never crossed their minds. They argued that they could hold out for a month. Daly, however, was adamant that they obey their orders. Word was then sent to the men on the Bridewell roof to return to the Four Courts and prepare to surrender, but the men refused and continued to fire at the British soldiers in the North King Street area. Another order was then dispatched to them. They reluctantly complied. The men of 1st Battalion then marched out of the Four Courts building and began handing their weapons through the railings to the waiting Dublin Fusiliers, who looked exhausted but tremendously relieved.

19.10hrs - Ceasefire in North Brunswick Street. A short time ago a pair of priests managed to arrange a ceasefire. Apparently the Volunteers there wish for official confirmation of surrender from their headquarters. Lines of demarcation have been set up. Recently, two British officers wandered across the line, and were met with several dozen gun-barrels. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

19.45 - Rebels form up to surrender in Sackville Street. A report from the area a short time ago.

"The filthy, exhausted, but intensely proud Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army men finally formed into two lines on the eastern side of the tramlines between Findlater Place and Cathedral Street. Behind them was the block of buildings that housed the Gresham Hotel. To both their front and rear stood a cordon of British infantrymen.

Another command rang out from Commandant McLoughlin: 'Front line five paces forward, rear line two paces back, and deposit arms!' The subsequent clatter of the last rifle hitting the ground signalled to the hundreds now gathering in the area that the battle for Dublin City was all but over. The rear rank then stepped back. Many among them still attempted to goad their adversaries at this point, by pushing their backs up until they were touching the bayonets of the troops standing behind them. As they approached closer and closer with every step the pointing bayonets of the men now eyeing them with malevolence, they advanced until their chests began to place pressure on the sharp steel. The tension mounted while in the distance, rifle fire continued to echo sporadically.

General Lowe suddenly ran angrily towards McLoughlin as he bellowed, 'Who the hell gave you the authority to give orders here? I told you to leave your bloody arms in Moore Street. I'll have you damn well shot!'

McLoughlin looked back with contempt. He then drew his sword from his scabbard, before thrusting it to the ground next to the general's immaculately polished boots. Lowe glared back at him."

20.00hrs - In Jacob's its garrison has been on high alert all day. Due to the noticeable lull in firing from further in to the city the men were called to man their defensive positions. An imminent attack was expected. Many inside feel their time is at hand.

20.40hrs - The surrendered GPO/Moore Street garrison is now being detained in the grounds of the Rotunda Hospital. They are exhausted, hungry and cold. Their treatment at the hands of their captors varies from rough to indifferent, with occasional kindness.

The odd crack of gunshot still reports from the city as it waits on the next moves of these momentous events to be played out. Tomorrow will tell.
When The Clock Struck in 1916 - Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising by Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly, is published by the Collins Press, at €17.99.

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An Easter Rising timeline: Saturday, April 29th, 1916

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The seventh in a daily series of reportage-style pieces by the authors of When The Clock Struck in 1916 - Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising

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An Easter Rising timeline: Friday, April 28th, 1916

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The sixth in a daily series of reportage-style pieces by the authors of When The Clock Struck in 1916 – Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising

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08.40hrs - The sound of overnight digging in Fairbrother's Field at the back of the South Dublin Union has revealed scores of slit trenches. British soldiers from mixed battalions have now opened fire on the Marrowbone Lane Distillery from its west. The Republican sharpshooters are returning fire.

An attack in force to clear the rebels from this thorn in the British side seems to be building.

10.00hrs - Apparently Commandant McDonagh has received word that the Volunteers of the 3rd Battalion holding Westland Row train station are hard pressed. Accordingly it appears that a sortie by bicycle from Jacob's factory has been organised to relieve the pressure and deliver much needed ammunition. Twenty men have just sped away towards Stephen's Green on bicycles; each man carrying a rifle and revolver.

10.35 hrs - Marrowbone Lane Distillery under infantry attack. An attack in force has just been repulsed from the western flank of Marrowbone Lane Distillery. Earlier this morning several platoons assaulted the position from its west. There was heavy firing as covering fire was laid down to cover the assault. The covering fire seemed to serve its purpose, as the rebels struggled to reply in kind. When the troops reached the outer wall of the distillery, however, they were met with a barrage of home-made bombs which were hurled over the wall. Forced to retreat momentarily they then came under fire from the distillery windows, eventually being forced back. The attack has since been called off.

10.30hrs - The bicycle patrol from Jacob's to Westland Row has been met with a hail of lead from the Staffordshire battalions positioned around Merrion Square. They are retreating under fire. Westland Row's detachment of rebels will have to seek support from elsewhere.

10.45hrs - The bicycle patrol has made Stephen's Green on their way back to Jacob's. A machine gun has opened up. One man has been hit - his comrades have come to a halt, firing back at the source of fire. Their comrades from the Citizen Army in the Royal College of Surgeons are also firing in support. The noise in the green once again is deafening.

11.35hrs - British artillery blasting Sackville Street. British 18-pound field artillery is blasting the block of buildings between Lower Abbey Street and Eden Quay with both high explosive and shrapnel shells. The noise is deafening. Machine gun and rifle fire is constant. To set foot on open ground is to invite a bullet.

11.45hrs - A report just in from the Boland's Bakery / Mills area. Several British probing attacks have been repulsed along the railway line by Volunteers under the command of Captain Joe O'Connor. The South Staffordshire Regiment has relieved the Sherwood Foresters and their snipers are making the Volunteers' lives very difficult. An assault on the railway workshops was repulsed when rebels launched a desperate bayonet charge. Artillery has also been used in the area.

13.15hrs - Unrelenting sniper fire is being aimed at the Four Courts. A Vickers gun has been placed on the roof of Jervis Street Hospital. Its sights are being trained on the huge dome on the roof to the deafening background noise of increasingly intense shellfire. The British appear to be planning something big, but for now information is scant.

15.02hrs - Assault repulsed in Sackville Street - huge casualties. A short time ago, an assault was attempted from Lower Abbey Street into Sackville Street by the Ulster Composite Battalion. It has ended in failure. The entire block between Lower Abbey Street and Eden Quay is ablaze. The infantrymen emerged from the burning street, and attempted to cross Sackville Street through a burning section of barricade. It appears that their enemies allowed them to traverse the barricade, holding their fire until they were within full view before unleashing a torrent of fire, which then drove the infantrymen back to the narrow point at the barricade, desperate to seek cover. At this point the rebels might as well have been shooting fish in a barrel. The Ulstermen were desperate to escape, but were decimated.

16.35hrs - Close quarter combat in the South Dublin Union. Just a short time ago the headquarters of 4th Battalion Irish Volunteers came under a sustained attack by elements from the Sherwood Foresters' and Royal Irish Regiment. The claustrophobic courtyards surrounding the Nurses' Home, where the rebels have set up their HQ, are in complete chaos. The attacking troops have gone to ground, unable to penetrate their enemies' fortified building. Machine gun fire is belching from the Royal Hospital in support of the attack, but it looks like it might not be enough to dislodge the tenacious Volunteers.

16.42hrs - Capel St Bridge stormed by Sherwood Foresters - rebel forces cut in two. For the Sherwood Foresters in Dublin city, necessity has become the mother of invention. It appears that the lessons learned from the slaughter at Mount Street Bridge yesterday have not been wasted on their sister battalion, the 2/6th. Sensing a deluge of enemy fire from the Four Courts two armoured cars were brought forward. Having been assembled in Inchicore Railway Works by coach-building teams, these improvised armoured vehicles can each fit 19 men and transport them in relative safety. As the assault across the bridge progressed each vehicle was loaded with infantry. They then leapfrogged from position to position, clearing buildings which stood in their way, before they were followed by infantrymen on foot, who then came under ferocious fire from the Courts. Machine guns now fire incessantly in the area. Many civilians have been turfed out of their homes by the infantrymen, who are taking no chances when securing the buildings they seek to occupy.

18.40hrs - The destruction of Sackville Street is under way. Buildings are being blown to pieces. The destruction seems almost systematic. The brief shrieks of incoming shells are followed by ear-shattering bursts, flying metal, concrete and glass.

20.06hrs - Capel Street has been secured. It is under British control. A wedge has been driven between the Volunteer Headquarters in the GPO, and their 1st Battalion in the Four Courts.

20.25hrs - Rebel leader James Connolly now a casualty. The Commandant General of the Republican forces has been wounded, possibly more than once, but details are sketchy. Buildings in imminent danger of collapse.

Alerted by a runner to the recent British capture of Capel Street, the rebel commander was supervising the positioning of some Volunteer sections in Abbey Street and Princes Street. It is here, in the latter, that he was wounded. As he crawled towards the sanctuary of his HQ, some men rushed to his aid and carried him inside the building. According to a source inside he is being treated by a captured British Army doctor, and appears to be in good spirits.

Meanwhile Sackville Street is being pulverised. Rebels will soon need to evacuate the Imperial Hotel and Clery's Department Store as the entire block appears in imminent danger of collapsing.

21.10hrs - Dramatic rescue of trapped lancers. As soon as the Sherwood Foresters had secured Capel Street a mission was launched to rescue the beleaguered lancers who had been trapped in the Medical Mission next to the Four Courts since Easter Monday. An armoured truck, fresh from having transported troops across Capel Street Bridge under fierce fire, lumbered its way through Charles Street backed up by supporting fire from an accompanying platoon. The truck came under a deluge of fire, but succeeded in its mission. Surrounding rebels subjected the vehicle to a hailstorm of bullets.

21.50hrs - Dublin's heart is being torn out in Sackville Street. Hoytes Oil Works opposite the GPO has caught fire. It now resembles a blast furnace. Oil drums are exploding, sending many others flying through the air. These in turn are blowing up as they land or while still airborne, spraying the surrounding buildings with more of the scorching fluid. The seemingly insatiable fires on Lower Sackville Street have now begun to spread as far as North Earl Street and are threatening to completely engulf the Imperial Hotel. The back of the building is burning fiercely and its hard-pressed rebel occupants will soon be forced to evacuate.

22.30hrs - The net is closing in. As midnight approaches the Volunteers from Kelly's Fort have retreated from the ruins of their vantage point overlooking O'Connell Bridge, and together with rebels from some of the surrounding smaller outposts, including those on Henry Street, are filtering into the GPO. As they hurry inside, they are being greeted with scenes of panic and chaos.

Their headquarters is under a sustained artillery assault and is now in serious peril. Volunteers all around them are rushing to its huge basement carrying home-made canister bombs, seeking shelter from the rain of sparks and oily flames now cascading through the numerous holes in its roof. Luckily for all inside the wind recently picked up and changed direction, averting a potential disaster and allowing a brief collective sigh of relief from the torrential shower of burning embers.

This relief has been short-lived, however, as just across the road the end beckons for their positions in Clery's and the Imperial Hotel. The interiors of both buildings are burning with such intense heat that the pavement outside is being showered with molten glass.

This will be a long and exhausting night, no respite will be allowed as the machine guns blaze relentlessly away and the artillery lends its deafening support. The net is closing in.

When The Clock Struck in 1916 - Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising by Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly, is published by the Collins Press, at €17.99.

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An Easter Rising timeline: Thursday, April 27th, 1916

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The fifth in a daily series of reportage-style pieces by the authors of When The Clock Struck in 1916 - Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising

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Augustine Birrell was in London for a Cabinet meeting at Easter having left Dublin for the holiday period. No military arrangements were put in place by the War Office after they learned of Casement 's arrest and in Dublin, just 400 troops were in a state of "immediate readiness".

Elsewhere, at Dublin Castle, the guard consisted of just six soldiers. Many were on holiday weekend leave, or planned to attend the races in Fairyhouse, Co Meath. The Proclamation was printed that day on the printing press in Liberty Hall with Tom Clarke and Countess Markievicz still fuming that MacNeill, had ruined the insurrection.

The failure to land the German arms, along with MacNeill's countermand, had devastated what was left of the Irish Volunteers, leaving them dispirited and confused. At noon on Easter Monday operations began, in reduced numbers.

In Dublin, the combined forces of the Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army amounted to just 3,000 and the number of Irish Volunteers in the country as a whole was no more than 12,000. As it turned out, apart from small numbers in parts of counties Wexford and Galway, the Irish Volunteers obeyed MacNeill's countermand.

The rebels' strategy was to occupy a number of defensible sites in Dublin and hold out until there was a general insurrection by the Irish Volunteers throughout the country. Pearse, Connolly, Mac Diarmada and Plunkett led the Irish Volunteers from Liberty Hall to the General Post Office in Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street).

Elsewhere, Commandant Ceannt led the 4th Battalion to the South Dublin Union, and Commandant MacDonagh led the 2nd Battalion to Jacob's biscuit factory (now the national archives). Crucially, the rebels failed to capture the undefended centre of the administration at Dublin Castle.

Witness Helena Molony described Abbey actor Sean Connolly's attempt to take the Castle as she followed with other Irish Citizen Army women. "It was at the castle the first shot was fired. I, with my girls, followed Sean Connolly and his party. We went right up to the Castle gate, up the narrow street. Just then a police sergeant came out, and seeing our determination he thought it was a parade, and that it would probably be going up Ship Street. When Connolly went to go past him, the sergeant put out his arm, and Connolly shot him dead. When the military guard saw that it was serious, he pulled the gates to."

The rebels lost their chance to storm the Castle because of indecision and hesitation, and Molony recalled: "On the flash, the gates were closed." Arthur Hamilton Norway, head of the Irish Post Office, who had just arrived at the Castle shortly before described the atmosphere. "At the foot of the staircase I found all of the messengers huddled together in a frightened crowd. They had seen the policeman at the gate shot through the heart. They were badly shaken."

The first casualty had been an unarmed constable, 45-year-old James O'Brien. Sean Connolly was himself killed shortly afterwards, as the ICA held City Hall for less than 24 hours. Trinity College, in the heart of the city, the Bank of Ireland on College Green, and the Shelbourne Hotel were other notable bastions the rebels didn't secure.

Despite this failure, on the north side of the city the Four Courts were seized under the command of Ned Daly while Sean Heuston took the Mendicity Institute on the south side. St Stephen's Green and the College of Surgeons were occupied by the Citizen Army under Commandant Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz while Eamon de Valera was in charge at Boland's Mill and this detachment also covered Mouth Street Bridge, and Beggar's Bush. Barricades were erected around the city which led to clashes with civilians who, rightfully, objected to their vehicles and belongings being seized.

One elderly man was killed trying to reclaim his lorry near the Shelbourne Hotel. The writer James Stephens, watching near the Shelbourne, heard one bystander proclaim: "The Sinn Feiners have sized the city."

At Fairyhouse, Ernest Jordison, managing director of the British Petroleum Company learned of "great commotion in the reserved grandstand" and "rumours of terrible happenings at Dublin".

Back at the GPO, Pearse proclaimed the establishment of the Republic to ambivalent Dubliners. Pearse began: "Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom..."

The Argentine-born republican Eamon Bulfin was given the job of hoisting one of two flags on the roof of the GPO. It was green with a golden harp and the words "Irish Republic". "The thing I remember most about hoisting it is that I had some kind of hazy idea that the flag should be rolled up in some kind of a ball, so that when it was hauled up, it would break out," he said.

By the afternoon, however, the city centre was under rebel control as shops close, looting began and transport services ground to a halt. With considerable hostility from the Irish public towards the Volunteers, James Stephens reckoned: "None of these people were prepared for Insurrection. The thing had been sprung on them so suddenly they were unable to take sides."

Three of the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police were shot dead on the first day of the Rising and their commissioner pulled them off the streets. Michael Mallin's ICA brigade dug in around Stephen's Green, and Countess Markievicz paraded the streets in full uniform. But If these Volunteers were feeling bold, things would soon turn.

During a rainswept night, the Brits arrived. Government troops slipped into the Shelbourne Hotel, unnoticed and unopposed by the rebels giving them a key vantage point of Mallin's entrenched ICA forces below. The initial British reaction to the Rising was one of Bank Holiday immersed disregard, but when the military commander General Lowe did act, it was decisive.
Tuesday, April 25

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Augustine Birrell was in London for a Cabinet meeting at Easter having left Dublin for the holiday period. No military arrangements were put in place by the War Office after they learned of Casement 's arrest and in Dublin, just 400 troops were in a state of "immediate readiness".

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Saturday, April 29th

06.36hrs - Complete carnage on North King Street. Shortly after dawn this morning roughly 50 South Staffordshires made a charge at Reilly's Fort. The Langan's position had been abandoned by rebels a couple of hours earlier. Many were mown down as they ran at the building. Fire erupted from several directions. The road is littered with bodies. Reilly's is still holding out but the position is under increasing pressure. Snipers dominate every piece of open ground in the area.

06.40hrs - Moore Street is quiet but movement on the street means certain death. Earlier on, Commandant McLoughlin's plan was outlined to the Headquarters staff. They are now preparing a diversionary attack against the enemy barricade sealing the exit to Great Britain Street. As this attack progresses, their main body is set to make a break for the Four Courts.

The rebels are securely placed along the eastern terrace of houses as far as Sackville Lane, and their expanded front line will render any British counter-attack costly. Should they move into Moore Street against the Republicans they will have to deal with fire from their front and side. Time is running out for the insurgents, however. Just minutes ago McLoughlin asked for volunteers for a do or die assault on the barricade. His request highlighted just how polarised his men's morale has become. Some are barely able to stand, such is their exhaustion, and are in no condition to mount such an attack. Others, however, still seem to want to take the fight to the enemy. Their dusty and worn faces show few illusions about surviving the morning.

06.52hrs - Plans are being prepared by 3rd Battalion in Boland's Bakery for a breakout - the destination unknown as yet.

06.53hrs - In The South Dublin Union the Volunteers are re-supplied, rested and regrouped. News from the city is scarce. The position waits.

06.55hrs - As does the nearby distillery. Morale here is at its zenith. A ceilidh is being planned for tomorrow night to celebrate the garrison's success.

06.57hrs - The Four Courts is holding firm.

06.58hrs - As is the College of Surgeons, but its garrison is starving.

06.58hrs - Sniper fire has just cracked out inside Stephen's Green.

07.00hrs - Boland's Mills is under sniper fire. There is no love lost here between both sides. Yesterday the Volunteers buried Patrick Whelan. The 23-year-old from Ringsend was shot in the eye on Wednesday. Unable to get a direct shot at the burial party British snipers tried to kill them instead with ricochets, aiming their guns at the surrounding walls.

08.00hrs - Horrific scenes in Moore Street. A family has been machine gunned. Just moments after they fled from the burning building that threatened to engulf them, they fell victim to the rapacious gunner. They had moved out into the street slowly and apprehensively. Their heads were crouched as the father's arm stretched out in front, waving a home-made white flag. Their petrified eyes darted frantically between the rubble in their way, the source of the shooting, and the buildings facing them which offered sanctuary. As they reached half way across a burst caught them. It is a dreadful scene.

Anyone who witnessed it turned away in utter disgust. It happened close to the building being used by the rebels as their Headquarters.

Increasing reports are coming in of numerous civilian casualties in the area, one of whom was a teenage girl shot accidentally by a rebel kicking in the door of a nearby cottage.

09.06hrs - A short time ago a broadside of rifle fire flew from Reilly's Fort into North King Street, and cut into another infantry attack on the junction to its front. The attack was driven back.

Father Matthew Hall is thronged with wounded. The building stinks and echoes to their many groans. Medics are struggling to cope. They move among the wounded, their feet slipping on the festering blood on its floors.

09.36hrs - North King Street is a death zone. It has been impossible to tend to the wounded men on these streets. Even the shadows are being fired at. The air is thick with smoke, and desolation.

09.40hrs - Scenes of extraordinary bravery are being witnessed in Dublin's shattered streets. The fire brigade have been out all week, often working under fire from both sides. Scores, if not hundreds, of civilians have been saved by these unsung heroes.

As Sackville Street smoulders they have their work cut out. Many of the men who form its ranks have brothers, sisters, friends and cousins fighting in both British and Republican uniforms. Unexploded shells present a terrible threat, as do clusters of the rebels' home-made canister bombs.

09.50hrs - Terrible tragedy in Dublin's Docks. A woman has been shot on Ringsend Drawbridge in front of her three children. It is unclear where the shot came from but Beggars Bush Barracks is the most likely source at present. The nearby rebels in the mills building are helpless to render aid. Any movement will draw fire from the same source. Her children are crying and pulling at her, clearly unable to take this in.

10.00hrs - 'Reilly's Fort' fell under constant attack since the South Staffordshires gained ground on North King Street. The decision was made to evacuate the position. The front door was opened and the British soldiers trained the sights of their guns in its direction expecting an outpouring of Volunteers. An order to charge was heard. Unexpectedly then, Volunteers started jumping from the side windows and racing towards Church Street. The enemy had been duped. A machine gun quickly traversed and let rip, but it was too late - the Volunteers had made it. The soldiers then gave chase, but when they reached the top of Church Street; the Volunteers on the roof of the Bridewell fired with everything they had, forcing the pursuers to rush for shelter. A section of the South Staffordshires raced to occupy the vacant Reilly's Fort, but once inside they found themselves trapped. The Bridewell and Monk's Bakery positions had them in their gun-sights - any attempt to leave was met with a heavy barrage of rifle fire.

12.00hrs - In Jacob's factory word has come down from the towers that British soldiers are moving into Saint Patrick's park in force; and that civilians are being evacuated from the homes in the surrounding neighbourhood. Rumours have spread that the area is to be flattened so that the artillery can get a direct shot at the 2nd Battalion headquarters.

12.00hrs - White flag in Moore Street. A short time ago a nurse was seen leaving the rebel HQ of 16 Moore Street. She was fired at initially until it became visible to the gunners that she was carrying a white flag. She has since approached the British barricade.

13.00hrs - Rebels preparing their last stand. The South Staffordshires have launched another attack against the barricade at the junction of North Brunswick Street and Upper Church Street, but were forced back yet again. The wounded and dead are strewn across the junction. In nearby Church Street the battle has ebbed and flowed with ever increasing ferocity. At least two Volunteers have just been killed in Church Street as they counter-attacked with their comrades. The machine gun and rifle fire seems never ending. The Volunteers are now turning Moore's Coachworks into a fortress. It may be the last line of the defence.

14.10hrs - The Shelbourne Hotel, where carnage was unleashed from the fourth floor as dawn broke last Tuesday, now looks over a deathly quiet Stephen's Green. Foraging parties have been sent out again from the College of Surgeons into the nearby streets to search for food. They are returning with meagre supplies and with rumours of capitulation. The entire city seems strangely silent, after the week-long cacophony of violence.

14.30hrs - Surrender negotiations in Moore Street. Just moments ago Nurse Elizabeth Farrell (it is believed at present that she hails from City Quay in Dublin) approached the barricade with Commandant Pearse. Pearse appears to be involved in an acrimonious discussion with Brigadier General Lowe, who is accompanied by a young officer, possibly his son John. They've just moved in the direction of Sackville Street, presumably for better cover, and appear to be negotiating terms of surrender.

15.30hrs - It's officially a Republican surrender. Commandant Pearse has been driven away to an unknown location. Meanwhile Nurse Farrell has returned to Moore Street with instructions.

Commandant James Connolly, as per instructions, has been carried on a stretcher by four of his men. As he is handed over the barricade there is silence. His leg is strapped up but he appears to be in agony. Everywhere there is silence. Infantrymen sit about, their bayonets still fixed to their weapons, smoking and resting.

At the barricade both sets of enemies eye one another up, but say nothing. Connolly has been manhandled over the barrier with great respect from his new captors. Courage is a thing respected by fighting men regardless of uniform, and the steadfast bravery displayed by this man is undeniable.

On Moore Street things are deathly still.

19.00hrs - 1st Battalion surrenders at Four Courts. Nurse O'Farrell has delivered the surrender document to Commandant Daly at the Four Courts. Daly ordered all men manning positions and barricades to return to the Four Courts, but appears unable to contact his men on North Brunswick Street. Addressing those in the courts he informed them of the order to surrender. They were stunned - surrender has never crossed their minds. They argued that they could hold out for a month. Daly, however, was adamant that they obey their orders. Word was then sent to the men on the Bridewell roof to return to the Four Courts and prepare to surrender, but the men refused and continued to fire at the British soldiers in the North King Street area. Another order was then dispatched to them. They reluctantly complied. The men of 1st Battalion then marched out of the Four Courts building and began handing their weapons through the railings to the waiting Dublin Fusiliers, who looked exhausted but tremendously relieved.

19.10hrs - Ceasefire in North Brunswick Street. A short time ago a pair of priests managed to arrange a ceasefire. Apparently the Volunteers there wish for official confirmation of surrender from their headquarters. Lines of demarcation have been set up. Recently, two British officers wandered across the line, and were met with several dozen gun-barrels. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

19.45 - Rebels form up to surrender in Sackville Street. A report from the area a short time ago.

"The filthy, exhausted, but intensely proud Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army men finally formed into two lines on the eastern side of the tramlines between Findlater Place and Cathedral Street. Behind them was the block of buildings that housed the Gresham Hotel. To both their front and rear stood a cordon of British infantrymen.

Another command rang out from Commandant McLoughlin: 'Front line five paces forward, rear line two paces back, and deposit arms!' The subsequent clatter of the last rifle hitting the ground signalled to the hundreds now gathering in the area that the battle for Dublin City was all but over. The rear rank then stepped back. Many among them still attempted to goad their adversaries at this point, by pushing their backs up until they were touching the bayonets of the troops standing behind them. As they approached closer and closer with every step the pointing bayonets of the men now eyeing them with malevolence, they advanced until their chests began to place pressure on the sharp steel. The tension mounted while in the distance, rifle fire continued to echo sporadically.

General Lowe suddenly ran angrily towards McLoughlin as he bellowed, 'Who the hell gave you the authority to give orders here? I told you to leave your bloody arms in Moore Street. I'll have you damn well shot!'

McLoughlin looked back with contempt. He then drew his sword from his scabbard, before thrusting it to the ground next to the general's immaculately polished boots. Lowe glared back at him."

20.00hrs - In Jacob's its garrison has been on high alert all day. Due to the noticeable lull in firing from further in to the city the men were called to man their defensive positions. An imminent attack was expected. Many inside feel their time is at hand.

20.40hrs - The surrendered GPO/Moore Street garrison is now being detained in the grounds of the Rotunda Hospital. They are exhausted, hungry and cold. Their treatment at the hands of their captors varies from rough to indifferent, with occasional kindness.

The odd crack of gunshot still reports from the city as it waits on the next moves of these momentous events to be played out. Tomorrow will tell.
When The Clock Struck in 1916 - Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising by Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly, is published by the Collins Press, at €17.99.

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An Easter Rising timeline: Saturday, April 29th, 1916

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The seventh in a daily series of reportage-style pieces by the authors of When The Clock Struck in 1916 - Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising

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National Library of Ireland - 1916 Exhibition

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Introduction Outline of Irish History Those that set the stage The Seven Signatories of the Proclamation Roger Casement The Rising Main sites of activity The Surrender The Executed Casualties Aftermath

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This month's 'From the Archives' document is arguably one of the most important pre-independence documents extant in University College Dublin Archives. It was the document that split the Irish Volunteers, Ireland's largest ever paramilitary force, one hundred years ago on 24 September 1914. However, it is a document that has been overshadowed by a much better-known statement of policy, made by John Redmond MP at Woodenbridge in county Wicklow on 20 September 1914. Redmond's Woodenbridge speech catalysed the split of the Irish Volunteers by calling upon Irishmen to go 'wherever the firing line extends in defence of right, freedom, and religion in this war.' However, it is a fact of history - often forgotten - that John Redmond's Woodenbridge speech did not split the Irish Volunteers. Redmond had embarked on a series of solo runs during the summer and autumn of 1914 which caused consternation and outright anger among his party colleagues as well as the provisional committee of the Irish Volunteers. In this regard, Redmond's new departure at Woodenbridge was no bolt out of the blue, not least because he had stated publically in the House of Commons on Friday 18 September 1914 that he would go to Ireland and announce a new policy for the Irish Volunteers as he did at Woodenbridge. Woodenbridge was, however, the last straw for the original membership of the provisional committee of the Irish Volunteers. Redmond's speech was made on a Sunday. By the Thursday, the founder of the volunteer force had resolved to make a stand and split the movement. He would ultimately secure the support of only seven percent of a 170,000 strong force. However, despite this numerical difference, MacNeill was only at the beginning of his involvement in the politics of separatism at this point.

Redmond's formal relationship with the Irish Volunteers stretched back to May/June 1914 when he had delivered an ultimatum to the provisional committee that they must accept twenty-five nominees of Redmond's choosing onto the already twenty-five strong committee. Redmond had justified his move by claiming that the provisional committee had a predominance of Dublin-based members and that he wished for the movement to become more nationally representative. However, Redmond's clear intent, now that the volunteer movement had surpassed 100,000 members acting in defence of Home Rule but operating outside the control of the Irish Parliamentary Party, was to seize power in the organisation. The proof of this can be found in the fact that, fully ten of Redmond twenty-five 'all-Ireland' nominees were also Dublin residents whereas two more were Irish Party MPs, based in London for much of the year. Given that Irish party sympathisers such as Tom Kettle were already members of MacNeill's twenty-five man provisional committee, Redmond now created for himself an in-built majority on the provisional committee of the organisation. MacNeill and his associates were greatly put out by the way in which Redmond had wrested control of the force in June of 1914.

Tension and discord were never far below the surface in the months that followed. Back in May, in the early days of the leadership crisis, MacNeill had written to the Irish party MP, Stephen Gwynn, admitting that, in light of Redmond's actions, 'All this poison of suspicion will have to be purged out, ... my instinct tells me that action based on apprehensions and suspicion contains the germ of a rapidly consuming disease.' The degree to which this disunity festered in the leadership of the volunteers can be seen from August's 'From the Archives' post were it was shown that Redmondites and republicans sent out rival gun running missions to Europe in an attempt to secure arms for the Irish Volunteers during July and August of 1914. Ultimately, the advanced nationalists centring on Roger Casement and Erskine Childers were successful while Tom Kettle, as Redmond's emissary, took until late-August to deliver his consignments of rifles: long after the republicans had scored their major propaganda victory at Howth on 26 July.

The more immediate origins of the Woodenbridge split can be traced back to 3 August, the day before Britain declared war on Germany, when Redmond promised parliament that the Irish Volunteers would defend the coastline of Ireland from foreign invasion thus freeing up imperial troops for service on the Continent. This was done without consulting the provisional committee of the Irish Volunteers and, incidentally, without seeking the advice of Redmond's closest party colleagues either. At this point, MacNeill and his associates were angered but not, as yet, prepared to split the movement. Redmond's announcement had been popular, especially in British political circles and MacNeill had been convinced by Redmond not to scupper the political momentum by disrupting the outward appearance of unity. Redmond wrote to MacNeill immediately after making his pledge of the Irish Volunteers in the House of Commons on 3 August, informing MacNeill that '[o]ur position has been improved enormously by the foreign complications. Do not let us by our folly and temper destroy the situation'. Despite serious misgivings at Redmond's new departure, MacNeill was convinced to hold his tongue for the time being.

Throughout August and September 1914, the War Office and members of the British General Staff pressured Redmond to extend his pledge of the Irish Volunteers to a call for them to fight overseas. British military strategists deemed an invasion of Ireland extremely unlikely but they urgently needed troops to augment the ranks of the British Expeditionary Force then already engaged on the battlefields of Europe. Redmond held out, awaiting further concessions on Home Rule. The progress of the 1912 Home Rule Bill through parliament had been arrested by the outbreak of the war. On 18 September 1914, the bill finally became law, being placed on the Statute Book as the Government of Ireland Act 1914 alongside an amending act which suspended its implementation for the duration of the war and pending satisfactory resolution to the Ulster question. Satisfied that his life's work had been achieved - albeit on paper and not in fact - Redmond immediately informed the House of Commons that he would journey to Ireland and exhort the volunteers to fight in Europe. This he did two days later at Woodenbridge, county Wicklow.

MacNeill's response to Redmond's Woodenbridge speech is a fascinating document. It was written with vitriol and immense energy. In contrast to Redmond's speech at Woodenbridge, the statement of 24 September is a collaborative document, having been signed by MacNeill and nineteen other members of the original provisional committee of the volunteers. The signatories note that Roger Casement would also have put his name to the document had he not been in America at the time.

The signatories of the document wrote with the confidence that they fully understood the founding principles of their movement. They were resolute in their belief that Redmond had deviated from the core values of the organisation and thus had lost any right to control a force that had been handed over to him only in the interests of unity and with the cautious assent of its founders earlier in the summer of 1914.

In discussing the 'recent outrages in Dublin' towards the end of the document, MacNeill was referring to the Bachelors' Walk Killings of 26 July, underlining the deep animosity towards the British military felt among a section of Dublin's citizenry. This can be seen to have contributed in no small way to the utter disapproval of the signatories of any policy that called for cooperation with the military and the war effort after four unarmed civilians had been killed and thirty-seven injured in Dublin just days before the formal outbreak of the war in Europe.

MacNeill's statement is uncompromising on the issues of Irish self-government and partition. Whereas Redmond had conceded ground both on partition and the timeframe for the opening of an Irish parliament, it is interesting that MacNeill asserts that none of the achievements of Nationalist Ireland would have come about without the Irish Volunteers.

As stated previously, MacNeill's faction, despite precipitating the split and retaining the title of 'Irish' Volunteers - Redmond's breakaway force took the title 'National Volunteers' - was not successful in attracting the majority of the rank and file of the movement. In the weeks following the publication of this statement, units and individual volunteers nationwide made up their minds about how they would side on the issue. Ultimately, 158,300 volunteers sided with Redmond whereas a mere 12,300 sided with MacNeill. What is often forgotten is that Cumann na mBan also split on the same issue, with the majority of women also taking the Redmondite position. However, Redmond's volunteers faded out during 1915 - perhaps owing to the declining popularity of the war after large scale losses at Gallip0li and the Battle of Loos. On the question of enlistment, one source from within the leadership of the National Volunteers states that Redmond's force was also not overly successful as a British Army recruitment channel and that only 25,000 National Volunteers (one sixth of the force) had actually joined the British Army by February 1917.

Finally, before leaving this month's document, it should be noted that the list of twenty signatories is something of a who's who of the later Irish revolution. All the signatories were known names - both in Dublin Castle and in advanced nationalist circles - in 1914. However, many of them drifted into relative obscurity after this point. Notable among these is Michael J Judge, who had been a prominent volunteer from the establishment of the movement and had made headlines when he was injured with a bayonet in clashes with police and military at Clontarf as freshly armed volunteers returned to Dublin following the Howth gun-running of 26 July 1914. Between the split and the Rising, Judge appears to have ceased to be involved with the Irish Volunteers and his memory has largely been lost to history. However, among these now largely forgotten figures are also names that have entered the pantheon of Irish nationalist memory. Among the names here are five of the seven Easter Proclamation signatories; O'Rahilly, the highest ranking combat casualty of the Rising; Con Colbert, another of the executed; Piaras Beaslai, the celebrated military propagandist of the War of Independence; and even Liam Mellows, one of the leaders of the Four Courts Garrison during the Irish Civil War. Underlining the nature of that later conflict, Mellows and MacNeill found themselves on opposite sides of a bitter and, for Mellows, ultimately fatal divide.

Alongside the still-birth of the Government of Ireland Act and Irish participation in the First World War, the split in the Irish Volunteers was one of the formative events of the year 1914 in Ireland. Combined, these events would define a decade of Irish political life and martial conflict. In the shadow of the well-known Woodenbridge speech, MacNeill's illuminating response should not be overlooked. Up until the Easter Proclamation, it is arguably the clearest statement of principle from that nationalist minority which ultimately won a retrospective mandate and justification at the polls in the 1918 general election. Underlining the fracturable nature of Irish politics, even those who united in signing the document in opposition to Redmond would not stay united for long. MacNeill would clash with the rebels in advance of the rising and with Mellows in 1922. Until it was split, the brief existence of the Irish Volunteers can thus be seen as a remarkable moment of concord in the history of nationalist Ireland.

Conor Mulvagh
School of History and Archives
University College Dublin
September 2014
Statement to the Irish Volunteers, 24 September 1914

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Statement to the Irish Volunteers, 24 September 1914 - History Hub

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This month's 'From the Archives' document is arguably one of the most important pre-independence documents extant in University College Dublin Archives. It was the document that split the Irish Volunteers, Ireland's largest ever paramilitary force, one hundred years ago on 24 September 1914.

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Padraig Pearse speech over O'Donovan Rossa's grave

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Padraig Pearse speech over O'Donovan Rossa's grave

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Oration of P. H. Pearse over the Grave of O'Donovan "Rossa"

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From 'A History of Ireland' by Eleanor Hull

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Padraig Pearse and the Irish republican brotherhood

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Padraig Pearse and the Irish republican brotherhood

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The Irish Volunteers and Pearse's American Tour

In 1912 Pearse set up his own newspaper An Barr Buadh ('The Trumpet of Victory'). Although still concerned with cultural and educational issues, much of his writing for the paper showed his growing interest in Irish politics. In November 1913 he was among the founders of the Irish Volunteers, set up to "secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland". Although Pearse had been a politically moderate Home Rule supporter for most of his life, he came increasingly under the influence of members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret organisation devoted to achieving an independent Irish Republic by military means.

To ease his financial difficulties and raise funds for St Enda's, Pearse embarked on a fundraising lecture tour of the United States in 1914. Before his departure he was sworn into the IRB. While in America, he mixed with Irish American republicans. The experience had a profound effect on him and radicalised his political views. By the time he returned to Ireland he was firmly committed to revolutionary politics.

"There has been nothing like this movement in Ireland in our time. The whole country is organising and drilling and clamouring for arms... The spirit of the country is splendid and if God only inspires us with the right thing to say and do so as to keep the movement straight, ... we shall have made history."

- Letter from Patrick Pearse to James Reidy, New York, June 14, 1914.

"Beside the grave he stood, impressive and austere in green, with slow and intense delivery, and as he cried aloud upon the fools he threw back his head sharply and the expression seemed to vivify the speech which ended calmly and proudly. He walked home alone, and sat in his study: at last he had spoken the just word he sought to immortalise a man less great than himself."

- Desmond Ryan, Remembering Sion.

O'Donovan Rossa Funeral Oration

The funeral of the old Fenian, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, provided the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) with a great propaganda opportunity. Long an exile in the United States because of his extremist political beliefs, O'Donovan Rossa's funeral took place in Glasnevin Cemetery on August 1, 1915 and was one of the biggest ever seen in Dublin.

Pearse was given the task of delivering the graveside oration by Thomas Clarke, one of the leaders of the IRB. Clarke advised him to "go as far as you can. Make it hot as hell, throw all discretion to the winds". Pearse's ability as a writer, his oratorical skills and emotionally stirring delivery of the Oration assured his position as one of the key figures in any forthcoming insurrection.

"And I say to my people's masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware
of the risen people,
Who shall take what you would not give."

- Patrick Pearse "The Rebel", 1916.

Preparations

As Head of Military Organization for the Irish Volunteers and a member of both the Supreme and Military Council of the IRB, Pearse was now firmly part of the radical faction in both organisations and was involved in secret plans for open rebellion in Dublin. St Enda's was frequently used for clandestine meetings.

Despite a remarkable range of duties and responsibilities, he still managed a substantial literary output. Much of his fictional work from this time foreshadowed coming events, with an emphasis on self-sacrifice and death. He produced no less than five political pamphlets in the first three months of 1916. Expecting that he would be unlikely to survive the coming insurrection, he envisaged these pamphlets as his political testament to future generations.

The Wayfarer

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon will reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Or some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns of Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

The 1916 Rising

"The men have fought with wonderful courage and gaiety, and whatever happens to us, the name of Dublin will be splendid in history for ever. Willie and I hope you are not fretting, and send you all our love."
- Patrick Pearse to his mother, 26 April 1916

Patrick Pearse assumed the role of Commander-in-Chief and President of the Irish Republic on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 when an open rebellion was launched against British rule in Ireland. Following the seizure of the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin, Pearse read aloud the Proclamation which established an Irish Republic. Pearse was one of the principal authors of this document and it reflected many of his ideals for an independent Ireland.

Pearse was based in the GPO for much of Easter Week, assisted by his brother William. He spent much of the week writing propaganda and raising morale. The superior force of the British Army eventually overwhelmed the rebels and by Friday evening the GPO had to be abandoned. The Pearse brothers were among the last to leave before it became engulfed in flames.

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The Irish Volunteers and Pearse's American Tour In 1912 Pearse set up his own newspaper An Barr Buadh ('The Trumpet of Victory'). Although still concerned with cultural and educational issues, much of his writing for the paper showed his growing interest in Irish politics.

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WW1 and the suspension of home rule

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Tomorrow it will be 100 years to the day that the leader of Irish nationalism John Redmond effectively committed Ireland to the first World War in a dramatic speech to the House of Commons.

In a classic illustration of the fickleness of political fortune the speech was widely regarded as a political masterstroke. Yet for most of the century that followed the conventional view in Ireland was that Redmond had betrayed his country.

Now that the State is prepared to officially commemorate the Irish men who fought and died in that war, maybe Redmond's contribution to the creation of an independent and democratic Ireland can properly be acknowledged.

In a plethora of television programmes and newspaper articles that have appeared over the past few months in the build-up to the centenary of the outbreak of war, the importance of the bitter political battle over the future of Ireland that split the United Kingdom has usually been glossed over. By the summer of 1914 the Home Rule crisis threatened not only to bring down the Liberal government led by Herbert Asquith, but to spark civil war in the UK. One of the reasons Germany decided on war was the belief that the UK would be too divided to honour its commitment to France or Belgian.

In Britain the danger posed by the Home Rule crisis meant that Asquith's government didn't focus on the threat of war until more than a month after heir to the Austrian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. King George V was so worried about the danger of civil war in Ireland and political chaos in the UK that he invited the leaders of Irish nationalism and unionism to a conference in Buckingham Palace on July 21st, 1914, to resolve differences.

Redmond cheered An illustration of how high feelings were running

was when Redmond and deputy leader John Dillon passed Wellington Barracks in Chelsea on their way to Buckingham Palace on July 22nd a number of Irish Guards "enthusiastically cheered them", according to reports. The guards were subsequently reprimanded publicly by their Colonel who regretted "that soldiers in uniform should give way to a political demonstration."

Just a few weeks later the guards would fight at Mons in the opening battle of the first World War. At the Buckingham Palace conference world war seemed the farthest thing from anybody's mind. Instead, those present argued about the possible temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties from Home Rule as if nothing could be more important.

"We sat again for an hour and a half discussing maps and figures and always getting back to that most damnable creation of the perverted ingenuity of man - the County of Tyrone," recorded Asquith on July 22nd. He went on to say: "I have rarely felt more hopeless in any practical affair: an impasse with unspeakable consequences upon a matter which to English eyes seems inconceivably small and to Irish eyes immeasurably big. Isn't it a real tragedy."

When the conference failed and war became inevitable it was greeted as a blessed relief from the intractable problem of Home Rule. "The one bright spot was the settlement of the Irish strife . . . God moves in mysterious ways," wrote Asquith on August 3rd. It was on that day that British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey made his famous speech to the Commons committing the UK to France's aid and Belgian neutrality. Redmond made a dramatic intervention after Grey's speech to say the government could withdraw all its troops from Ireland and that the Irish and Ulster volunteers would defend the country from invasion. The speech electrified the Commons and Redmond was applauded. Asquith recorded that after Grey's remarkable speech "Redmond cut in very effectively" while unionist leader Edward Carson grumbled that Redmond's speech was "calculated to humbug and deceive".

Redmond's objective was to get the Home Rule Bill on the statute book. His speech ensured it happened a little over a month later although operation of the Act was suspended for the duration of the war.

The Conservatives and unionists were furious. Their leader Andrew Bonar Law, after delivering a savage attack on Asquith, staged an unprecedented protest and led his party out of the Commons rather than witness passage of the Bill. "I have formally introduced the Bill by bringing it up from the Bar. The whole House rose and cheered wildly: for it was the end of the Home Rule controversy and a really historic moment," noted Asquith.

In the belief he had achieved his life's work, Redmond went a step further and in a speech at Woodenbridge, Co Wicklow, pledged the support of the Volunteers for the war effort. Belief that involvement in the war would result in a united Ireland with its own parliament was a strong motivating factor in Redmond's call to arms, but it was not the only one.

Triumph turned to ashes Like many middle-class Irish nationalists, he was outraged at

atrocities perpetrated by the German army on the Catholic people of Belgium early in the war. Redmond believed that, by defending the right of a small nation like Belgium to exist against the power of Prussian totalitarianism, Irish soldiers would vindicate their own country's right to freedom.

Redmond's political life appeared to have culminated in triumph in September 1914, but it quickly turned to ashes as the war dragged on and Irish nationalism took a different turn in 1916. Shortly before he died in 1918 Redmond said: "Do not give your heart to Ireland, for if you do you will die of a broken heart." Yet for all that, his achievement was to make Irish independence in some form irreversible and that the democracy prevailed over darker forces owes not a little to his legacy.

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One hundred years since John Redmond committed Ireland to the first World War

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Tomorrow it will be 100 years to the day that the leader of Irish nationalism John Redmond effectively committed Ireland to the first World War in a dramatic speech to the House of Commons. In a classic illustration of the fickleness of political fortune the speech was widely regarded as a political masterstroke.

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One hundred years ago, in spring 1914, the idea of an imminent world war was far from the minds of Ulster people. The focus was much closer to home. Most of the northern province was effectively an armed camp on the verge of civil war by an insurrection against the British government; the aim, paradoxically enough, was to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Ulster's widespread unionist and Protestant population, most densely found in Belfast and the neighbouring counties of Antrim and Down, was solemnly pledged and steadfastly organised to resist the government's policy of home rule for Ireland. The fearful prospect united Protestant unionists across the social spectrum, from captains of industry and commerce to landowners and farmers, and from working class to upper class. Their strong sense of "Britishness" felt threatened by the rise of political and cultural nationalism, the power of the Catholic church in Ireland and the economic impact of home rule on manufacturing and trade.

Under the leadership of Sir James Craig - "the hatchet-faced heir to a distillery", as historian Richard Killeen describes him, and "the very epitome of the new Ulster plutocrat"- and Sir Edward Carson, the ferocious Dublin lawyer, notorious for his role in the Oscar Wilde case, unionist opposition found dramatic expression in the mass signing of the Solemn League and Covenant in September 1912 (some men even used their own blood), and in the organisation of huge rallies and demonstrations. These were theatrical affairs, with speeches of impassioned resistance invoking deeply-embedded fears of plots and betrayal.

As Carson said, "Ulster sees in Irish nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and pandering to superstition."

A highly effective propaganda campaign was also initiated. Large numbers of colourful picture postcards were produced, showing unionist resistance to home rule and an embattled determination to remain British: in one example, a stout-legged bulldog, occupying the entire province of Ulster, squares up to a distinctly mangy-looking cur, representing "home rule territory", with the slogan "Shall we from the Union sever, by the God that made us NEVER".

Characteristically defiant and pugnacious, the cards were designed as pictorial propaganda to mobilise unionist sentiment in Ulster and gain support in Britain for the unionist cause. More to the point, a people's militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed in January 1913, to resist home rule by force of arms if necessary. Ironically, the militaristic organisation and activities of the UVF in 1913 also inspired the formation of the nationalist Irish Volunteers and the socialist Irish Citizen Army, both inaugurated in Dublin in November 1913.

By early 1914, the dreams and political ambitions of generations of Irish nationalists were soon to be realised as the Third Home Rule Bill neared the end of its stormy passage through the House of Commons. This heavily contested parliamentary legislation had been introduced by the prime minister Herbert Asquith two years earlier, on April 11th, 1912, coincidentally the day after Titanic sailed from Belfast.

It had been delivered because the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), led by John Redmond, held the balance of power in the Commons, and home rule was the price of Irish support for Asquith's Liberal government against the Conservative and Unionist opposition. With the proposed future Irish Parliament invested with modest devolved powers - not unlike today's Northern Ireland Assembly - Ireland would remain within the British Empire under the expected constitutional leadership of John Redmond as the Irish Prime Minister. In a major concession to Ulster unionists an exclusion opt-out for a period of six years was offered, but rejected by Carson who regarded it merely as "a stay of execution".

Meanwhile other important figures were watching. The German Kaiser was known to be interested in the Ulster crisis, and the unionists had already sent out exploratory feelers in that direction, with Craig even floating the notion that Germany would be favoured over "the rule of John Redmond, Patrick Ford and the Molly Maguires".

Historian ATQ Stewart notes that tongues were set wagging in August 1913 when Carson met the Kaiser at a lunch party in Homburg. Apparently the German emperor confided that he would have liked to go to Ireland, but his grandmother, Queen Victoria, had not let him. He added, with a smile: "perhaps she thought I wanted to take the little place". "I think, sir, you are well out of it," Carson replied, to laughter.

But when the Kaiser asked about Ulster, Carson changed the subject. Stewart adds that a month after the Kaiser's meeting with Carson, the German strategist General von Bernhardt wrote an article for the Berlin Post entitled "Ireland, England and Germany" in which he declared that "it is not without interest to know that if it ever comes to war with England, Germany will have allies in the enemy's camp, who in given circumstances are resolved to bargain, and at any rate will constitute a grave anxiety for England, and perhaps tie fast a portion of the English troops."

According to Stewart, the strangest episode of all was the visit, on the very eve of the war, which the Counsellor at the German Embassy in London, Richard von Kühlmann, was alleged to have made to Belfast, on July 12th, 1914. It was rumoured that he had visited Ulster incognito to see how things were for himself. After the war, Kühlmann denied ever having been in Ireland in his life.

The Ulster crisis intensified when the UVF was equipped with 25,000 German rifles after an unhindered gun-running operation to land weapons and ammunition at the Ulster ports of Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee on April 24th and 25th, 1914. "I am glad that the North has 'begun'," Patrick Pearse wrote. "I am glad that the Orangemen have armed, for it is a goodly thing to see arms in Irish hands . . . I should like to see any and everybody of Irish citizens armed. We must accustom ourselves to the thoughts of arms, to the sight of arms, to the use of arms."

A month earlier, on March 20th, the "Curragh mutiny" had revealed the unwillingness of British army officers to move against Ulster. With the meeting of an Ulster Provisional Government in Belfast on July 10th, 1914, the armed defiance of a separatist Ulster was now the greatest political and constitutional crisis any British government had faced for more than 200 years. Ulster militarisation - with its drilling, public reviews and threats of violent resistance - was firmly in the driving seat of democratic politics, and it was seen to be working.

In desperation, a conference to address the whole Irish and Ulster problem was held at Buckingham Palace from July 21st to 24th, but failed to agree on the terms of Ulster's exclusion from home rule.

By the very last days of July 1914, it seemed certain that war would break out in Ulster. Stewart says that the UVF was completely ready for the coup d'etat and waited only for Carson to telegraph "go ahead" or "hold back in the meantime". On July 29th, Craig wrote to him: "you may take it that immediately you signify by the pre-arranged code that we are to go ahead, everything prepared will be carries out to the letter unless in the meantime you suggest any modification. All difficulties have been overcome and we are in a very strong position."

Detailed arrangements had been made for women and children to be evacuated to England and Scotland before hostilities broke out, for anticipated casualties once the fighting did begin, and even for a new currency for the rebel government.

Yet unfolding events in Europe were at last eclipsing the internal domestic problems of Britain and Ireland. Foreign affairs and the threats posed by continental mobilisation took centre stage. Winston Churchill recalled that "the parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe."

Following the assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by pro-Serb nationalists in Sarajevo on June 28th, Austria-Hungary, with the backing of Germany, declared war on Serbia on July 28th. With frightening speed, the final countdown to the first World War began.

On August 1st, Germany declared war on Russia which supported Serbia. On August 2nd, Germany invaded Luxembourg and the next day invaded Belgium in order to mount an attack on France, simultaneously declaring war on France. It was the invasion of Belgium that triggered Britain's declaration of war on Germany, following a disregarded ultimatum, on August 4th, 1914.

"On that sunny August bank holiday weekend when the world fell to pieces," writes Stewart, "Carson and other members of the Opposition were the guests of Sir Edward Goulding at Wargrave, overlooking the Thames. There Captain Spender came to seek him . . . on the urging of his friends in the Committee of Imperial Defence, to get a decision on the future of the UVF. Carson at once stated that 'a large body of Ulster Volunteers will be willing and ready to give their services for Home Defence and many will be willing and ready to serve anywhere they are required'."

The next day, Redmond declared that "if it is allowed to us, in comradeship with our brethren of the north, we will ourselves defend the coasts of our country".

A few days later, Kitchener, the new war minister, sent for Carson and Craig, asking them "surely you are not going to hold out for Tyrone and Fermanagh?" A needled Carson responded, "you're a damned clever fellow telling me what I ought to be doing". Yet the two unionist leaders, following another meeting with Kitchener, offered him 35,000 volunteers. Stewart relates that, on leaving the War Office, Craig - now a chief recruiting officer for the Ulster area - took a taxi to Moss Brothers, a firm which had previously supplied UVF equipment, and ordered 10,000 complete uniforms. By the time Carson announced in Belfast that an Ulster Division would be formed from the UVF, many young men, impatient with waiting, had already enlisted.

During the second week of the war, on September 18th, 1914, the Third Home Rule Bill was finally enacted in Parliament. But it was also suspended for the duration of the war, with the intractable opposition of Ulster still unresolved.

"It is impossible for us to recreate the midsummer of 1914 as contemporaries saw it," writes Richard Killeen. "We know that they stood at the volcano's edge. The war . . . transformed everything." It certainly brought an unexpected unity, of sorts, to Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists, who threw in their lot with the British forces in defence of Belgium and other small nations. Redmond and Carson pledged support to the war effort. Thousands of volunteers, unionist and nationalist, north and south, joined the colours and served on land and sea and in the air.

In Ireland there had been a long tradition of British army service and now additional battalions of Irish infantry were formed into divisions of Kitchener's New Army. In the north, UVF members formed the backbone of the 36th (Ulster) Division, while National Volunteers from across Ireland, including nationalists in Ulster, joined the 16th (Irish) Division. Both divisions were to serve with great distinction and sacrifice at the Somme and other Western Front battles, including Messines in 1917, where the 16th and 36th fought side by side with each other. By the war's end, over 30,000 soldiers from Ireland had lost their lives.

Totally unforeseen in 1914, the Great War, of which the 1916 Rising was an integral part, led to political oblivion for John Redmond's constitutional nationalist party and a revolutionary change in the whole course of Irish history. Ultimately, the first World War got Carson off a sharp political hook, and at the same time resulted in the skewering of Redmond's home rule ambitions.

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One hundred years ago, in spring 1914, the idea of an imminent world war was far from the minds of Ulster people. The focus was much closer to home. Most of the northern province was effectively an armed camp on the verge of civil war by an insurrection against the British government; the aim, paradoxically enough, was to remain part of the United Kingdom.

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The original Ulster Volunteers were formed by Edward Carson and James Craig as Unionist militias in the tensions surrounding the potential success of the third Irish Home Rule Bill. At the start of 1912, Unionists and members of the Orange Order started drilling and on 9 April (Easter Tuesday) Carson and Consevative Bonar Law reviewed 100,000 Ulster Volunteers marching in columns. On 28 September, 237,368 men signed the Ulster Covenant pledged to "using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland", with the support of 234,046 women.

On 13 January 1913, the Ulster Volunteer Force was formally established by the Ulster Unionist Council. Recruitment was to be limited to 100,000 men aged from 17 to 65 who had signed the Covenant, under the charge of Lieutenant-General Sir George Richardson KCB.

During this time, the Unionists enjoyed the wholehearted support of the British Conservative party, even when threatening rebellion against the British government. On 23 September 1913, the 500 delegates of the Ulster Unionist Council met to discuss the practicalities of setting up a provisional government for Ulster.

Carson and Craig, supported by some British Conservative politicians, threatened to establish a Provisional government in Ulste should the province be included in any Home Rule settlement. The Curragh incident in March 1914 showed that it would be difficult to use the British army to enforce home rule from Dublin. In April 1914, 20,000 German rifles with 3,000,000 rounds were landed at Larne, with the authorities blockaded by the UVF. Not surprisingly these developments had already led to the formation of the Irish Volunteers in Dublin on 25 November 1913 by southern nationalists, in order to safeguard the granting of Home Rule.

The Irish Home Rule Act 1914 was eventually passed despite the objections of the House of Lords whose power of veto had been abolished under the Parliament act 1911. While Carson had hoped to have the whole of Ulster excluded, he felt a good case could be made for the "six plantation counties." The home rule issue was temporarily suspended by the outbreak of WW1 and Ireland's involvement in it. Many UVF men enlisted, mostly with the 36. Ulster Division of the New army. Others joined Irish Regiments of the UK's 10th and 16th Irish Division. By the summer of 1916, only the Ulster and 16th divisions remained, the 10th amalgamated into both following severe losses in the Battle of Gallipoli. Both of the remaining divisions suffered heavy casualties in July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, to be largely wiped out in 1918 during the German Spring Offensive.

Although many UVF officers left to join the British Army during the war, the unionist leadership wanted to preserve the UVF as a viable force, aware that the issue of Home Rule and partition would be revisited when the war ended. There were also fears of a German naval raid on Ulster and so the UVF was recast as a home defence force. World War I ended in November 1918. On 1 May 1919, the UVF was 'demobilized' when Richardson stood-down as its General Officer Commanding. In Richardson's last orders to the UVF, he stated: "Existing conditions call for the demobilisation of the Ulster Volunteers. The Force was organised to protect the interests of the Province of Ulster, at a time when trouble threatened. The success of the organisation speaks for itself, as a page of history, in the records of Ulster that will never fade."

The Irish War Of Independence began in January 1919. It was fought between Irish Republican army (the army of the self-declared Irish Republic) and the forces of the United Kingdom (which included the British Army, Royal Irish Constabulary and the "Black & Tans"). The Government of Ireland Act 1920 provided Home Rule for Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, giving Northern Ireland the option of Irish unity or Irish partition. The Unionist dominated Parliament of Northern Ireland chose to remain a part of the UK. As a response to IRA attacks within Ulster, the Ulster Unionist Council officially revived the UVF on 25 June 1920. In early July, the UUC appointed Lieutenant Colonel Wilfrid Spender as the UVF's Officer Commanding. At the same time, announcements were printed in unionist newspapers calling on all former UVF members to report for duty.

However, this call met with limited success; for example, each Belfast battallion held little more than 100 men each and they were left mostly unarmed. The UVF's revival also met with little backing from unionists in Great Britain.

During the conflict, loyalists set-up small independent "vigilance groups" in many parts of Ulster. Most of these groups would patrol with the intention of reporting anything untoward to the RIC. Some of them, however, were armed with UVF rifles from 1914. There were also a number of small loyalist paramilitaries. The most notable of these was the Ulster Imperial Guards, who may have overreached the UVF in terms of membership. Historian Peter hart wrote the following of these groups:Also occasionally targeted

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The original Ulster Volunteers were formed by Edward Carson and James Craig as Unionist militias in the tensions surrounding the potential success of the third Irish Home Rule Bill. At the start of 1912, Unionists and members of the Orange Order started drilling and on 9 April (Easter Tuesday) Carson and Consevative Bonar Law reviewed 100,000 Ulster Volunteers marching in columns.

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Formation of the Volunteers

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Foundation of the Volunteers | Defence Forces History | Info Centre | Defence Forces

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The Irish Volunteers, Óglaigh na hÉireann, were founded on 25 November 1913 at a public meeting held in the Rotunda Rink in Dublin. The founders included The O'Rahilly, a member of the governing body of the Gaelic League, Eoin Mac Néill, Professor of Early and Mediaeval Irish History at University College Dublin, and Patrick Pearse, another prominent member of the Gaelic League.

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Home Rule Bill of 1912 | Irish Revolution

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Home Rule Bill of 1912, from 'The Irish Revolution and how it came about', by William O'Brien, 1923

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In January 1910, H H Asquith - Prime Minister since 1908 - was forced to call an election because of an impasse with the House of Lords over the 1909 People's Budget.

John Redmond, the new leader of the Irish Party, demanded that home rule be included in the Liberal election programme.

Balance of power

Following the election Redmond held the balance of power with 70 MPs.

After another election in December 1910, the House of Lords finally lost its absolute right of veto over Bills from the Commons in August 1911.

The Conservatives, however, had fought the most recent election on the basis of opposition to home rule in Ireland.

Opposition

Opposition to home rule was also strong in the North of Ireland, where a majority of the population was Protestant mainly as a result of the settlement policies of previous centuries.

Their leader was the charismatic barrister and Dublin MP, Sir Edward Carson. The Ulster Unionist Council, meanwhile, drew up plans to establish its own government should the UK government persist with plans for home rule.

On 11 April 1912 Asquith introduced his home rule Bill, the Liberal Party's third since 1886.

Limited self-government

This Bill offered only limited self-government and asserted the supreme authority of the UK Parliament "over all persons, matters, and things in Ireland".

Redmond, nevertheless, was willing to accept it, unlike Sinn Féin (another Irish nationalist party) and the Conservatives, for different reasons. The latter opposed it so fiercely that its third reading was not carried until January 1913.

A fortnight later the Government of Ireland Bill was voted down in the House of Lords.

Two year wait

There then followed a two-year wait while revolution fermented in Ulster and the First World War loomed in Europe.

Attempts at a negotiated settlement with the Ulster Volunteers - a Unionist militia opposed to home rule - failed, while the declaration of war between the UK and Germany in August 1914 meant that the third home rule Bill was effectively in limbo.

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In January 1910, H H Asquith - Prime Minister since 1908 - was forced to call an election because of an impasse with the House of Lords over the 1909 People's Budget. John Redmond, the new leader of the Irish Party, demanded that home rule be included in the Liberal election programme.

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Basic outline of timelin

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The run-up to the Rising May 1912
A Home Rule Bill is passed, allowing Ireland to partly govern itself. But King George V delays making it law, after protests in Britain and Ulster.

September 1913
The Ulster Volunteer Force is formed, to resist Home Rule.

November 1913
Eoin MacNeill forms the Irish Volunteers to defend Home Rule. James Connolly founds the Irish Citizen Army

April 1914
Ulster Volunteers import 35,000 German rifles for a revolt if Home Rule is passed.

July 1914
Irish Volunteers do likewise, importing 900 old German rifles off the Asgard at Howth in support of Home Rule.

August 1914
The first World War begins, as the British Empire declares war on Germany. Home Rule is suspended a month later. The Irish Republican Brotherhood secretly infiltrates the Irish Volunteers for a future Rising. The Volunteers land 600 rifles at Kilcoole, Co Wicklow.

May 1915
In May, an Irish Republican Brotherhood Military Committee, led by Thomas Clarke and Sean MacDiarmada begins to plan a rebellion. They recruit Padraig Pearse as a figurehead. Joseph Plunkett also joins. Later, James Connolly, Eamonn Kent and Thomas McDonagh bring the leaders to seven.

August 1915
Padraig Pearse tells a huge crowd at the funeral of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa that "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace".

September 1915
The Irish Volunteers split, and 170,000 form the National Volunteers under John Redmond, who urges them to join British army

Good Friday, 1916
The British navy captures the Aud, a German cargo ship carrying 20,000 rifles, machine guns and ammunition destined for the rebels. Sir Roger Casement is arrested and later hanged for treason.

Easter Saturday, April 22nd, 1916
Eoin MacNeill learns of plans for the next day's Rising. Knowing it's doomed without the German guns, he orders Volunteers to stay at home. Most do.

Easter Sunday, April 23rd, 1916
Clarke and Connolly insist the Rising goes ahead the next day, Easter Monday.

The Rising, DAY 1 Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916

11.00: About 1,250 members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army assemble across Dublin.

11.30-12.30: Rebels occupy Jacob's factory, the Four Courts, St Stephen's Green, the South Dublin Union (now St James's Hospital), and Jameson Distillery. Volunteers also occupy the Mendicity Institute, and Boland's Mills and Bakery, plus 25 Northumberland Road and Clanwilliam House

12.00: Volunteers seize weapons from the Magazine Fort in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

12.20: Rebels march into the GPO, and establish the headquarters of the Rising. The tricolour is flown from the roof.

12.45: Pearse reads out a proclamation declaring Ireland a Republic on behalf of the 'Provisional Government'. It is met with general bemusement. Thousands of Dubliners have relatives fighting for the British in Europe, and most oppose the Rising. Some actually stone the rebels.

13.22: With many British soldiers at the Irish Grand National in Fairyhouse, Dublin Castle lies almost empty, but the rebels there hesitate, occupying City Hall instead.

13.38: British lancers are ambushed at the Four Courts. The British cavalry charges down Sackville Street - now O'Connell Street - towards the GPO but are repulsed.

16.45: The elderly, unarmed Veteran Defence Force march into a rebel ambush on Northumberland Road.

The Rising, DAY 2: Tuesday, April 25th, 1916

05.30: British troops at the Shelbourne Hotel and nearby machine-gun rebels at Stephen's Green, who fall back to the Royal College of Surgeons.

11.20: Irish Volunteers repulse British infantry from the South Dublin Union. Terrified patients, including the mentally ill, are caught in the crossfire. Wounded 25 times, Volunteer Cathal Brugha fights on, helped by future taoiseach WT Cosgrave.

19.50: Dublin Fusiliers, Irishmen fighting in the British Army, capture the Mail & Express building on Cork Hill, but 23 die on nearby Parliament Street in an ambush. Rebels there retreat across the Liffey

20.00: A British gunboat sails into Grand Canal Dock and fires at Boland's Mills and Bakery.

21.40: Rebels occupy the Imperial and Metropole Hotels near the GPO, plus parts of Henry Street. Martial law declared by British.

The Rising, DAY 3: Wednesday, April 26th, 1916

06.20: British reinforcements arrive at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire)

09.00: Food supplies in Dublin run low. A British gunboat, the Helga, shells rebels at Liberty Hall. It is later captured by the British

09.36: British troops in the Gresham Hotel fire on the GPO. Street turning to rubble under artillery fire.

12.40: Rebels at 25 Northumberland Road, the Schoolhouse and Clanwilliam House ambush Sherwood Foresters. All told, fewer than 20 rebels claim 234 British casualties around Mount Street Bridge

13.45: Dublin Fusiliers capture the Mendicity Institute and lay siege to the Four Courts.

The Rising, DAY 4: Thursday, April 27th, 1916

11.35: British continue to pound Sackville Street with artillery, capture Capel Street Bridge and attack Four Courts and South Dublin Union.

20.25: Rebel leader James Connolly is wounded on Middle Abbey Street, and is treated in the GPO by a captured British Army doctor. Hoytes Oil Works explodes, burning down several buildings.

22.30: Rebels on O'Connell Bridge and Henry Street retreat into the GPO.

The Rising, DAY 5: Friday, April 28th, 1916

07.55: Burnt-out cars, trams, dead horses, and human corpses litter Dublin's streets.

Continuous artillery barrage on Sackville Street.

11.18: Rebels continue to hold out in Boland's Bakery, the College of Surgeons, Jacob's, the South Dublin Union and the Four Courts.

The GPO and Sackville Street are in flames.

18.15: Part of the GPO roof collapses. Rebels later evacuate the Metropole Hotel and GPO and set up headquarters on Moore Street, under intense onslaught.

Capt Michael Collins and 15-year-old Capt Michael McLoughlin lead rebels to fire at the British near the Rotunda.

The Rising, DAY 6: Saturday, April 29th, 1916

12.00: Rebel HQ in Moore Street sends out a white flag to British barricade.

14.30: Padraig Pearse signs unconditional surrender to British Brigadier General Lowe.

19.00: Cmdt Daly at Four Courts reluctantly surrenders, as per Pearse's orders.

19.45: Rebels march to Sackville Street to surrender. The Rising, Day 7: Sunday, April 30th, 1916

10.00: Cmdt De Valera receives Pearse's surrender order at Boland's Mills and eventually surrenders, as do rebels on Stephen's Green and Jacob's.

15.40: Rebels at the South Dublin Union reluctantly lay down weapons.

16.30: Rebels captured near the GPO and Four Courts are marched to Inchicore, and jeered at by Dubliners.

18.03: Vice-Cmdt O'Connor at Boland's Bakery surrenders.

The Rising is over
1,350 people lie dead or wounded. A total of 3,430 men and 79 women are arrested by the British.

THE EXECUTIONS
May 3rd-12th, 1916
Fifteen of the Rising's leaders are executed at Kilmainham Gaol. Public opinion begins to soften towards the rebels.

The years afterwards
1918: Sinn Féin win an election landslide. First World War ends.
1919: The First Dáil proclaims a republic. The Irish Republican Army, organised by Minister for Finance and IRB president Michael Collins, begins the Irish War of Independence (or Anglo-Irish War). Collins becomes the most wanted man in Europe. In June, De Valera leaves for 18-month trip to America.
1920: The British parliament passes Government of Ireland Act, creating a six-county Northern Ireland.
1921: Ceasefire in War of Independence. De Valera sends Collins to sign Anglo-Irish Treaty, but then refuses to ratify it, proposing Document No 2 instead. Sinn Féin splits.
1922: As the Irish Free State takes shape, the Irish Civil War begins, as the anti-Treaty IRA occupy the Four Courts. They surrender in Dublin after a week of fighting.
Michael Collins, now commander-in-chief of the Irish Army and chairman of the Provisional Government, is assassinated in Beal na Blath, Co Cork, that August.
1923: The Irish Free State, now led by WT Cosgrave, wins the Civil War.
1926: De Valera forms Fianna Fáil. They take the Oath of Allegiance to the King, enter the Dáil in 1927 and take power in 1932.

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A blow-by-blow guide to the Easter Rising

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The run-up to the Rising May 1912 A Home Rule Bill is passed, allowing Ireland to partly govern itself. But King George V delays making it law, after protests in Britain and Ulster. September 1913 The Ulster Volunteer Force is formed, to resist Home Rule.

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The lead up to the Easter rising

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The leaders and organisers of the Easter Rising. Photo: National Library of Ireland, EPH F339

by Mark Duncan

On 11 May 1916, speaking in the House of Commons shortly after the Easter Rising and with the execution of its leaders still ongoing, John Dillon, a leading Irish Parliamentary Party MP voiced his admiration, if not approval, of those who took had taken part in the insurrection. To cries of 'Shame!' in the grand chamber, Dillon told his fellow MPs that he was 'proud' of these men, who, despite being 'foolish' and 'misled' had nevertheless 'fought a clean fight, and they fought with superb bravery and skill, and no act of savagery or act against the usual customs of war'. Dillon's viewpoint was neither popular nor widely shared and in the days and weeks following the Dublin disturbances the rebels found themselves more pilloried and pitied than applauded and praised.

But who were these rebels and what events had led them to taking the action they had? The answer to the first part of this question is more straightforward than the second. While the principal organisers of the rebellion were the seven men who put their names to the Proclamation read by Patrick Pearse in front of the GPO on Easter Monday, the rank and file of insurgents were drawn from the memberships of several separate organisations: the Irish Volunteers, founded in November 1913 as a response to the prior formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force to defend rights of Ireland, and which, by the time war broke out, had come to function as a means of applying extra-parliamentary pressure towards the securing of Home Rule for Ireland; the Irish Citizen Army led by James Connolly founded to defend striking workers during 1913 Lockout in Dublin; the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), part of the Fenian movement, whose roots lay in the mid-19th century and whose previous efforts at uprising, in 1848 and 1867, had ended in dismal failure. These organisations acted not alone, but with the important assistance of a network of smaller organisations such as Na Fianna Éireann and Cumann na mBan, the latter a women's milita founded in parallel to the male only Volunteers.

In strictly numerical terms, the Irish Volunteers were the most significant contributors to the Rising: the Volunteer movement had split following the outbreak of the First World War and the pledging of John Redmond's support for the British war effort. Of the 10,000 men, about 8% of the movement at its full strength, who remained with the faction led by UCD Professor Eoin MacNeill (who would oppose the Rising on the grounds that it lacked any possibility of success), approximately 1,300 participated in the event of Easter week, with the James Connolly-led Irish Citizen Army contributing a few hundred more. The real orchestrators of the Rising, however, were the IRB - or at least the inner circle of that organisation that comprised its Military Council. Within this group, Thomas Clarke was undoubtedly the key operator. A committed Fenian, Clarke had spent fifteen years in British jails in the 1880s and 90s for possession of explosives before emigrating to the United States where he found work with the Gaelic American, the newspaper of the Clan na Gael leader John Devoy. He returned to Ireland in 1907, opening up a tobacconist shop on Dublin's Parnell Street, from where he led the revitalisation of an organisation that had, for decades, been weakened by internal dissension and inactivity.

The First World War & Ireland's Opportunity

It was the veteran Clarke, aided by the youthful Sean Mac Diarmada, who drove the planning and preparations for the insurrection. Buoyed by the enthusiasm for militaristic organisation and drilling that accompanied the Home Rule crisis of 1912-14, their opportunity to strike finally came with the outbreak of European War in August 1914. It wasn't just that England's wartime difficulty was, as Fenian creed had it, Ireland's opportunity. It was also that the war precipitated a split in the Volunteer movement, the loss of the dominant Redmondite faction leaving a much smaller but much more ideologically coherent and determined group in its wake. It was over this group, still under the leadership of Professor Eoin MacNeill, that the IRB began to assert greater control: they were prominently placed on its revamped executive and, over a matter of months, they came to occupy positions of power and influence - Patrick Pearse became Director of Military Organisation, Bulmer Hobson became Quartermaster General, Joseph Plunkett became Director of Military Operations, Éamonn Ceannt, Director of Communications, while Thomas MacDonagh became Director of Training.

By mid-August 1914 the Supreme Council of the IRB had already decided, in principle, to revolt before the war was brought to a close. It was also at the instigation of the IRB's Thomas Clarke that a meeting was held Gaelic League's library on 9 September 1914, attended by all seven future signatories of the Proclamation. In attendance too was Seán T. O'Kelly, who, a decade later, would reveal the substance of what transpired: 'At that meeting', he then disclosed, 'it was decided that a Rising should take place in Ireland, if the German army invaded Ireland; secondly if England attempted to enforce conscription on Ireland; and thirdly if the war were coming to an end and the Rising had not already taken place, we should rise in revolt, declare war on England and when the conference was held to settle the terms of peace, we should claim to be represented as a belligerent nation.'

As it turned out, had the war ended as early as many expected, the opportunity to act as intended would have been missed. The IRB's plans - and their reputation - were effectively saved by the prolongation of the war, which gave them the time they clearly required to organise and arm. For plotting revolution was not envisaged as simply a home-grown operation: it required support from abroad and Germany, Britain's wartime enemy, was targeted as a potential ally in the revolutionary enterprise shortly after European hostilities erupted. Following contacts with German authorities in New York through Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the IRB, and in an attempt to forge an effective alliance, Roger Casement, a former British Consul and honoured human rights campaigner turned Irish nationalist, travelled to Berlin in November 1914. Casement secured muted German support for Irish independence but little more: his plans to raise an Irish brigade from German-held Irish prisoners of war met with little enthusiasm as did efforts to win German military assistance for an armed rebellion in Ireland. Casement's lack of success saw him joined in Berlin by Joseph Plunkett in April 1915 and together they put together a 32-page plan, known as the 'Ireland Report', which set out a military strategy for rebellion that included the seizure of Dublin, a German naval invasion to land 12,000 troops and 40,000 rifles in Limerick, from where they could be distributed, igniting a country-wide revolt.

For all that it may have exaggerated both the Irish Volunteers' state of preparedness and their capacity to deliver on its objectives, the plan clearly points to a revolutionary cohort that were intent on more than mere blood sacrifice. It suggests that their ambitions for a rebellion went beyond simply delivering a doomed enterprise which might serve to rouse and inspire a dormant people. Here was a military strategy that took account of the circumstances of war in the challenge it presented to Britain's political and military hold on Ireland, albeit it was one the Germans were little inclined to support because they either had reservations over the credentials of its authors or they questioned the practicality of the naval operation upon which it was premised. The German rebuff did not amount to wholesale rejection of the principle of supporting separatist action. Plunkett returned to Ireland (leaving a dejected Casement behind) in June 1915 without any concrete pledge of German support, but with a tacit commitment to help should a credible plan be devised and a date fixed upon.

The Military Council and IRB Military Planning

This was enough to focus minds of a small, secretive group within the IRB, which set about examining possible locations for landing arms and dates for insurrection. This was the Military Council (originally called Military Committee) which, on the initiative of Thomas Clarke, had been established in May 1915 to take responsibility for planning a Rising. Initially, this Council comprised only three men who also held senior positions in the Irish Volunteers - Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Éamonn Ceannt - but it expanded to five - with the addition of Seán Mac Diarmada and Clarke - in late 1915, and then to six when James Connolly, abandoning plans for a separate ICA revolt, joined in January 1916. A seventh member, Thomas MacDonagh, an IRB-man who commanded the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, was co-opted to the Military Council at the beginning of April 1916, a mere matter of weeks before the insurrection commenced.

The work of the Military Council was shrouded in secrecy - necessarily so. This approach was not solely determined by a fear that plans might be disclosed to the authorities in Dublin Castle by leaks or through informants. This was certainly a consideration (and a reasonable one), yet the plotters were also fearful of alerting moderates within their own ranks, conscious that support for the idea of armed insurrection in any circumstance was far from universal among the Irish Volunteers or even, for that matter, within the IRB. For Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff the Irish Volunteers - and for many of that movement's members - the idea of an insurrection that was unprovoked or lacking in any prospect of success was anathema. Military force was justifiable only if the conditions demanded it - like for instance, if the British government took steps to introduce conscription to Ireland or disarm the Volunteers. Within the IRB, meanwhile, there was acceptance of the principle of rebellion, but no consensus on the circumstances that might render it justifiable. Bulmer Hobson, a senior IRB figure of longstanding, was at one with MacNeill in believing that the Volunteers needed to be readied for a fight, but they should fight only if compelled to do so - and then, Hobson believed, they should adopt a guerrilla style strategy rather than one premised on the occupation of buildings which invited an enemy assault.

Neither MacNeill nor Hobson nor the IRB Supreme Council were kept in the loop, however. The Military Council managed to prepare the ground for rebellion unbeknownst to those around them. They did so, for the most part, by a mixture of concealment, cunning and lies. Using key IRB men within the Irish Volunteer movement, they worked on conditioning minds for the insurrection to come: instruction was delivered on practical aspects of military strategy such as street-fighting and the erection of barricades, while exercises were undertaken that simulated real-life battle situations. What's more, notwithstanding the secrecy at the heart of it, this was being done in full view of the authorities who, throughout 1915, not only observed the improved organisation of the Irish Volunteers and its increased membership; in keeping a watching eye on the movement of the principals of the advanced nationalist movement they were also fully aware that insurrection was likely if, for instance, moves were made to introduce such unpopular measures as conscription. It is possible that the very openness of the armed displays and the military drills bred complacency on the part of the British authorities, for as one observer, the writer Katharine Tynan later reflected, 'how could anyone believe in the seriousness of a conspiracy that so flaunted itself'.

There was no more obvious flaunting of Fenian intent than the demonstration that took place in the wake of the death of the Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, who died in New York in June 1915. His body was returned to Ireland for burial in a ceremony that was orchestrated by Thomas Clarke to showcase the strength of the Irish Volunteers while at the same time identifying it with the Fenian tradition. This it did in spectacular fashion. Contingents of Irish Volunteers were brought to Dublin from across the country where they were joined by representatives of a broad swathe of nationalist organisations - the Irish Citizen Army, Sinn Féin, Cumann na mBan, the GAA and even, indeed, the unarmed National Volunteers. The huge crowds which lined the route to Glasnevin Cemetery made for an impressive spectacle which culminated in a famous oration by Patrick Pearse in which he paid homage to the 'dead generations' of men who fought for Irish freedom and trumpeted a vision of Ireland that would be 'not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well'. The spoken words of Pearse found an echo in the written word of Thomas MacDonagh. In an article entitled 'The Irish Volunteers in 1915', published in a souvenir brochure produced for the funeral, MacDonagh, a dramatist and academic, offered more than mere intimations of the rebellion to come. The Irish Volunteer knew only 'one duty - to Ireland', he declared, adding that the 'ideal of his country free... leads him now to battle, to sacrifice and to victory'.

READ: Full text of Pearse's speech at the graveside of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

The battle that MacDonagh both anticipated and encouraged would require guns, of course. But by January 1916 the Irish Volunteers only possessed a measly 3,730 rifles, shotguns and revolvers. The IRB Military Council, using John Devoy and the German contacts of the New York-based Clan na Gael, organised to land thousands more in a plan that was effectively a scaled down version of that prepared by Casement and Plunkett the previous year. In the revised plan, as with the original, Dublin would provide the operational focus: as the historian Charles Townsend has observed, the 'minds of the little committee were plainly mezmerised by the physical and symbolic weight of their city', even if strategically and symbolically significant sites such as Dublin Castle and Trinity College Dublin were to be left untouched. Nevertheless, a mobilisation in Dublin was intended to inspire the provinces to rise in support, aided by the landing of large cargo of arms from Germany on Ireland's west coast.

The date the conspirators fixed upon for the rebellion was Easter Sunday 1916, when, on Pearse's command, all Irish Volunteers were ordered to gather at assembly points throughout the country for three days of field manoeuvres. The decision on timing was a straightforward one: as similar large-scale mobilisations had occurred in Easter 1915 and again on St. Patrick's Day 1916, it was felt that a similar-sized mobilisation, particularly one so publicly advertised, would do nothing to arouse the suspicions of either the authorities or their less revolutionary-minded comrades. Secrecy were therefore maintained and right up until to the final days neither Eoin MacNeill as head of the Irish Volunteer nor Denis McCullough as head of the Supreme Council of the IRB was aware that the scheduled manoeuvres for Easter were designed as cover for staging an armed insurrection.

As it happened, of course, the insurrection that took place in Ireland in April 1916 was not that originally planned. It was a much scaled down version of that which had been originally envisaged. That's because, as historian Joe Lee has put it, the Rising 'went off half-cock'. The unravelling of the insurgents' plans occurred as the countdown to the insurrection entered its final days. When, on the Thursday of Easter week, Bulmer Hobson caught wind of the impending insurrection, he informed MacNeill who confronted Patrick Pearse. On being told that plans were set and irreversible, MacNeill was convinced to stand back and not obstruct the Rising, his position further swayed by a forged 'Castle document' which purported to detail plans by the authorities to suppress the Volunteers and arrest nationalist leaders. But having been swayed one way, MacNeill soon swayed back again. His reversal was a response to the news of Roger Casement's arrest in Kerry and the British interception of the Aud, the German ship carrying 20,000 rifles off the Kerry coast - it was enough to convince him that the planned enterprise would be an act of 'madness' and doomed to failure. He articulated his opposition at a highly charged meeting on Easter Saturday night and the following morning his countermanding order cancelling the scheduled Easter Sunday manoeuvres was published in the Sunday Independent. MacNeill's countermand threw the envisaged insurgency into chaos. In the confusion of the conflicting orders and in knowledge of the news of Casement's arrest and the Aud 's interception in from Kerry, the conspirators met at Liberty Hall and decided to salvage something from the wreckage of their plans. The Rising would go ahead - but on the following day. However, the insurrection of Easter Monday was not that planned for Easter Sunday. It was not the same Rising deferred by a day. It was different in scale and geography and its likely outcome was more pre-determined.

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On 11 May 1916, speaking in the House of Commons shortly after the Easter Rising and with the execution of its leaders still ongoing, John Dillon, a leading Irish Parliamentary Party MP voiced his admiration, if not approval, of those who took had taken part in the insurrection. To cries of 'Shame!'