# data[].attributes.body
2.9 Explain how the experience of women in Irish society changed during the twentieth century
2.10 Examine how one sporting, cultural or social movement impacted on Irish life

# data[].attributes.body
3.7 Appreciate change in the field of the arts and science, with particular reference to the significance of the Renaissance
3.11 Explore the contribution of technological developments and innovation to historical change

# data[].attributes.body
2.4 Examine the rise and impact of nationalism and unionism in  Ireland, including key events between 1911 and 1923.
2.8 Describe the impact of war on the lives of Irish people, referring to either World War One or World War Two.

# data[].attributes.body
3.9 Examine life in one fascist or one communist country in the twentieth century
3.10 Explore the significance of genocide, including the causes, course and consequences of the Holocaust

# data[].attributes.body
3.6 Explore life and death in medieval times
3.14 Illustrate patterns of change across different time periods in a chosen theme relating to life and society (such as, Crime and punishment; Food and drink; Work and leisure; Fashion and appearance or Health and medicine)

# data[].attributes.body
3.4: Discuss the general causes and course of World War One or World War Two and the immediate and long-term impact of the war on people and nations
3.12 Evaluate the role of a movement or organisation, such as the European Union or United Nations in promoting international cooperation, justice and human rights

# data[].attributes.body
2.3 Explore how the physical force tradition impacted on Irish politics, with particular reference to a pre-twentieth century example of a rebellion.
1.7 Develop historical judgements based on evidence about personalities, issues and events in the past, showing awareness of historical significance.

# data[].attributes.body
Topic:

# data[].attributes.body
Group task: Choose a topic within your allocated Learning Outcomes.
(5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.body
Topic: Leonardo da Vinci - Was he a typical Renaissance man?

# data[].attributes.body
Topic: Irish Civil War

# data[].attributes.body
Topic: Life in Nazi Germany

# data[].attributes.body
Topic: The Medieval Period

# data[].attributes.body
Topic:

# data[].attributes.body
Topic: 1798 Rebellion

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Add materials to the Padlet that you could use as prompts/stimulus to enhance student talk in the classroom. For example articles, photographs, links to a repository, videos etc.
(10 minutes)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Leonardo was born in 1452, apparently in a Tuscan village called Anchiano, not far from Vinci, and died in France in 1519. He may be best known as an artist but he was also an engineer, thinker and inventor.

"Even talking about Leonardo as an artist and Leonardo as an engineer has little sense if we try to think like a Renaissance man, because everything was so much connected at that time," says Claudio Giorgione, curator at the Leonardo da Vinci National Science and Technology Museum in Milan.

Leonardo's most famous paintings include the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, while his drawings such as Vitruvian Man - showcasing the proportions of the human body - have become instantly recognisable.

As copies of Leonardo's notes and journals, such as the astonishing 12-volume Codex Atlanticus, became widely disseminated, appreciation of his observations, theories, and sketches of anatomy and contraptions also became famous. These included ideas that would only become a reality hundreds of years later, such as flying machines - although Giorgione warns against embracing hindsight and seeing Leonardo as a visionary.

Perhaps surprisingly Leonardo wrote his diaries in the mirror image of normal script, although quite why remains something of a mystery.

Where did he cut his teeth?

As the illegitimate son of a well-to-do and rising notary - someone involved in drawing up and witnessing legal documents - Leonardo was not able to follow in his father's footsteps, but the boy's artistic talents were spotted and an apprenticeship was sought in Florence.

As a teenager Leonardo trained in the workshop of the famous Renaissance artist Andrea del Verrocchio where all sorts of activities were on the go from drawing and painting to sculpture and metalwork - including making armour. While still training with Verrocchio, it is thought that Leonardo could have been involved in making the huge gilded copper ball that sits on top of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore - he was certainly on the scene when it was hoisted into place in 1471 and made sketches of the lifting devices used.

"The artist engineer is a known figure in Renaissance Italy," says Prof Martin Kemp, a world-leading expert on Leonardo from the University of Oxford. In 1472 Leonardo was registered as a painter his own right, although he continued to collaborate with Verrochio.

Did Leonardo see himself as painter or engineer?

A bit of both. He was certainly good with a brush: among his commissions, in the late 1470s, Leonardo was asked to paint an altarpiece for a civic palace and was later commissioned by a group of monks to paint a scene of the Adoration of the Magi.

But he had an eye for opportunities. Hoping to work for Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, in the early 1480s Leonardo moved to Milan and wrote a letter boasting of his prowess as a military engineer, including such lines as "Should the need arise, I will make cannon, mortar and light ordnance of very beautiful and functional design that are quite out of the ordinary." His abilities as a painter come bottom of the letter in a throwaway line. "He was certainly pitching himself as an engineer," says Kemp. While it is not clear if the letter swung it, Leonardo was later to be found working at the Duke's court.

Was the mix of artist and scientist unique?

Certainly not - many artists would also have been architects or engineers. But Leonardo was unusual in being not just a jack of all trades, but a master of several. "The versatility as such would not have been altogether surprising," says Kemp. "[But] I think the range and skill across the board would have surprised people enormously and he had a lot of accomplishments, including as a musician."

And his talents, and studies, went further into maths, Latin and beyond. "He also went into what we would now call science, ie more theoretical, more experimental, more exploratory areas," says Kemp. And while other artists might have been probing some aspects of anatomy - muscles, bones, tendons - Leonardo took the study to a new level.

"At one point he draws the network of nerves in the shoulder and upper torso called the brachial plexus and he says on one of his diagrams this is as necessary for a good draughtsman as is the conjugation of Latin words for the good grammarian."

But as Giorgione points out, Leonardo's myriad talents were underpinned by a supreme skill: his drawing. "Leonardo was not the only one to draw machines and to do scientific drawings, many other engineers did that, and very often the object of the representation is the same, but what Leonardo did better than others is to make a revolution of the technical drawing," he says.

So what was his goal?

"By the late 1480s, his aim was to understand how nature works - which is rather a big ambition - but he was looking at a fundamental set of mathematical laws, including optics and including the actions of the human body - and he saw that as a unified enterprise," says Kemp.

That might explain why many of his ideas for machines were rooted in nature - for example his idea of a flying machine changed over time as he began to look at the way birds fly, an approach we now call biomimicry.

"If he looked at plants he looked at branching and came up with a law for the branching of plants which he then equates to the branching of rivers and the branching of blood vessels," says Kemp. "So it is a continuous spectrum of analogous things he was looking at in nature." Giorgione adds that Leonardo was hoping to unify painting, architecture and engineering with thinking and writing.

"But that was not easy because the world of the mechanical arts and the world of the liberal arts, so the arts of thinking, were separated at that time," he says.

Did he ever turn his drawings into tools and machines?

It wasn't all just pen-and-paper musings. "There is evidence that he had tested the wings for his flying machine to see how much lift he could get," says Kemp, adding that in a collection of Leonardo's writings known as the Codex Leicester - owned by Bill Gates and about to go on show at the British Library - there is evidence that he had specially designed tanks constructed so that he could explore various aspects of fluid dynamics.

He also made a glass model of part of the heart to explore its function. The use of experimental apparatus at such a time, Kemp adds, is extraordinary. "He was emphasising all the time you must rely upon experience, not just book learning, you need hands-on experimental knowledge," says Kemp.

Was he always right with his new scientific theories?

His thoughts were, at times, spot on: not least he pushed back against the idea that fossils unearthed on mountains were the result of a great, biblical flood. He also made discoveries about how blood moves through blood vessels and the role of valves. But he did not realise that the blood circulates. "He was not always right and that is good because it makes him a human and not a superhuman," says Giorgione.

Galileo ran into trouble with authorities - did Leonardo have such difficulties?

Not exactly. In 1476 he was charged with sodomy - but a lack of evidence meant nothing came of the anonymous accusations. In terms of his work, he also seemed to avoid trouble - not least because he didn't actually publish his notes and, as Giorgione points out, detailed observations of the world, such as those made by Leonardo, are only a part of what would later become the scientific method.

Kemp adds that when Leonardo was in Rome in his 50s working on concave mirrors for starting fires, he fell out with his German mirror makers who denounced him for his work on anatomy - which led to some frustrations in his anatomy work.

What is Leonardo's legacy?

The question of Leonardo's legacy, says Kemp, is something of a red herring. "It is a bit like asking what did the Romans do for us, it is essentially a self-centred question," he says. "You can appreciate the enormous quality of what he did without necessarily saying 'this is only worth looking at if he had an influence'."

However, Kemp says the idea that Leonardo was known only for his paintings is a simplification, as his writings and drawings were transcribed and available to scholars, albeit a small number, throughout the centuries, suggesting they could have inspired others. Giorgione agrees noting a device sketched by Leonardo for rotating meat on a spit by using currents in the air and a small turbine - decades after he sketched his idea, a rather similar gadget turns up in an illustration of machines by another Italian engineer, Vittorio Zonca.

Why is he generally just called Leonardo, isn't that a bit familiar?

There are a couple of reasons we get chummy when talking about Leo. As Giorgione points out, part of the reason is that we tend to talk about cultural icons by their first name - for example the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, whose full name was Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, is commonly just referred to as Dante. Galileo Galilei is also known by his first name. But there is another reason - Leonardo doesn't have a "proper" surname in the modern sense as it simple refers to the area he and his family came from. "In Italian it doesn't work to say 'da Vinci'," says Giorgione.

What next?

If you fancy finding out more about Leonardo, why not visit one of the many exhibitions that are running in this quincentenary year?

7 June - 8 September: Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion at the the British Library, London. Explore pages from some of Leonardo's notebooks: the Codex Leicester, the Codex Arundel and the Codex Forster.

24 May - 13 October: Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace. With more than 200 drawings by Leonardo, this offers the chance to see his take on everything from architecture to the human body.

Until 14 July: Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo at the Strozzi Palace in Florence. Find out more about Leonardo's master as well as Verrochio's most famous pupil.

Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, France where Leonardo spent his last years and died is hosting a of events throughout 2019.

Until 13 October: Leonardo da Vinci Parade, National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. See machine models based on sketches by Leonardo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who was Leonardo da Vinci and what can we learn from him?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As Europe prepares to mark the 500th anniversary of his death, we look at his achievements in art, science - and even flight

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sentenced to death: the Civil War executions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1922, the National Army, with the permission of the Dáil, began executing captured anti-Treaty forces without trial. It was a policy that saw the new state abandon the rule of law, as Seán Enright explains

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
HOLOCAUST survivor Tomi Reichental told of his horrific childhood experience under the Nazi regime when he spoke to a large audience of sixth year students in St Mary’s College last week.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Donegal Friary is in Donegal town, on the water's edge at the entrance of the harbor. The O'Donnell clan built the Friary in 1474 with support from the Franciscan order. An explosion devasted the friary in 1601.

Donegal Friary is often called Donegal Abbey or Rossnowlagh Medieval Friary.

O'Donnell clan & the Franciscan Friary

The O'Donnell dynasty was a powerful and ancient Irish family in the kingdom of Tír Conaill, present-day Donegal. They built several castles to defend their lands, including the impressive Donegal castle constructed in 1474.

The mother of Hugh Roe O'Donnell, Lady Nuala O'Connor, heard of a meeting by the Franciscans in Galway. She traveled to Ross Errilly Friary and interrupted the meeting to plead in establishing a settlement in the Kingdom of Tír Conaill. At first, they rejected her plea so firing back she said

Have I made this long and painful journey only to meet with a refusal? Beware of God's wrath! For to Him, I will appeal, that He may charge you with all the souls whom your delay may cause to perish.

Without refusal, the Franciscan's agreed and sent a group to follow Lady O'Connor back to Tír Conaill.

After the new Franciscan's arrived in Donegal the King agreed to the construction of the friary in 1474, the same year construction of Donegal Castle started. Work began immediately with the approval of its location, on the banks where the River Esk meets Donegal Bay.

The friary was of typical Franciscan design. A church built by the south wall, a garden in the middle and conventional buildings to the north. The Friary had a covered walkway called a Cloister and local legend says a tunnel existed between the friary and castle. No physical evidence of a tunnel has ever been discovered.

The importance of Donegal friary

The Medieval friary of Donegal played an important role within the community and the O'Donnell's would use the location for important meetings. Political treaties between the O'Donnell clan and the O'Connors were signed at the Friary in 1539.

Donegal Friary was also the final resting place for family members and respected allies such as Cú Chonnacht Maguire (lord of Fermanagh). When Nuala O'Connor died in 1493 she was interred below the altar of the Church at the friary. The remains of Hugh Roe O'Donnell were buried within the grounds of the friary after his death in 1505.

With support from the O'Donnell's, a powerful and wealthy clan, the friary and surrounding area flourished with activity.

By the mid-16th century, the English established the Crown of Ireland and introduced the Tudor plantations. For most of the 16th Century, the friary at Donegal went untouched, protected by the O'Donnell's and the gallowglass mercenaries from Scotland.

The fall of the Donegal Friary

When Hugh Roe O'Donnell was only aged 15, English forces kidnapped him and jailed him at Dublin Castle in 1587. A year later English forces entered the friary. They plundered its valuables, caused damage to the site, and killed Thady O'Boyle, an Abbott at the friary.

Hugh Roe O'Donnell escaped Dublin castle for the second time in 1592. Assisted by his father-in-law, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, he escaped to the Wicklow mountains. O'Donnell made his way back to Donegal, expelled the English forces from the friary and allowed the Franciscans to return.

By 1596, the Donegal friary was one of few religious buildings in Ireland that weren't defeated by the English. A superior from the friary appealed to King Philip II of Spain for financial aid to assist with much-needed repairs. Three years later the King of Spain sent an ambassador with gifts and to visit the friary.

The destruction of the friary

On the morning of September 20th, 1601, an explosion rocked the friary. Badly damaged it required much-needed repairs. However, plans to repair the site was terminated after the O'Donnell's and O'Neill's fled Ireland during Flight of The Earls in 1607. Without Irish leadership in Donegal, the Franciscans left the friary and settled on banks of the River Drowes. From here they compiled some of the Annals of the Four Masters.

Donegal Castle and the friary was handed over to Sir Basil Brooke, an English Captain operating in Ulster during the Nine Years War. Brooke repaired the castle using whatever materials he could salvage from the friary.

Without protection from Irish chieftains and harassment from English forces, the Franciscan community left the area by 1740. This was now becoming the end of the golden age in Ireland, a life of abbeys, monasteries, and friaries. Scholars salvaged old Gaelic manuscripts and created a beautifully decorated medieval bible known as The Annuals of the Four Masters.

Last updated .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The history of Donegal Friary in Dongeal Town - History of Ireland

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Donegal Friary was founded in 1474 on shore of Donegal Bay. Built by the O'Donnell Clan it was destroyed in an explosion in 1601.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1933-39

In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews by religious definition lived in Germany. Over half of these individuals, approximately 304,000 Jews, emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship, leaving only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the eve of World War II.

In the years between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi regime had brought radical and daunting social, economic, and communal change to the German Jewish community. Six years of Nazi-sponsored legislation had marginalized and disenfranchised Germany's Jewish citizenry and had expelled Jews from the professions and from commercial life. By early 1939, only about 16 percent of Jewish breadwinners had steady employment of any kind. Thousands of Jews remained interned in concentration camps following the mass arrests in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) in November 1938.

World War II

Yet the most drastic changes for the German Jewish community came with World War II in Europe. In the early war years, the newly transformed Reich Association of Jews in Germany ( Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland), led by prominent Jewish theologian Leo Baeck but subject to the demands of Nazi German authorities, worked to organize further Jewish emigration, to support Jewish schools and self-help organizations, and to help the German Jewish community contend with an ever-growing mass of discriminatory legislation.

Following the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, the government imposed new restrictions on Jews remaining in Germany. One of the first wartime ordinances imposed a strict curfew on Jewish individuals and prohibited Jews from entering designated areas in many German cities. Once a general food rationing began, Jews received reduced rations; further decrees limited the time periods in which Jews could purchase food and other supplies and restricted access to certain stores, with the result that Jewish households often faced shortages of the most basic essentials.

German authorities also demanded that Jews relinquish property "essential to the war effort" such as radios, cameras, bicycles, electrical appliances, and other valuables, to local officials. In September 1941, a decree prohibited Jews from using public transportation. In the same month came the notorious edict requiring Jews over the age of six to wear the yellow Jewish Star (Magen David) on their outermost garment. While ghettos were generally not established in Germany, strict residence regulations forced Jews to live in designated areas of German cities, concentrating them in "Jewish houses" (" Judenhäuser"). German authorities issued ordinances requiring Jews fit for work to perform compulsory forced labor.

In early 1943, as German authorities implemented the last major deportations of German Jews to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz, German justice authorities enacted a mass of laws and ordinances legitimizing the Reich's seizure of their remaining property and regulating its distribution among the German population. The persecution of Jews by legal decree ended with a July 1943 ordinance removing Jews entirely from the protection of German law and placing them under the direct jurisdiction of the Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauuptamt-RSHA).

Deportations

The first deportations of Jews from the Reich-Jews from areas recently annexed by Germany-began in October 1939 as part of the Nisko, or Lublin, Plan. This deportation strategy envisioned a Jewish "reservation" in the Lublin District of the Government General (that part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to the Reich). Adolf Eichmann, the German RSHA official who would later organize the deportation of so many of Europe's Jewish communities to ghettos and killing centers, coordinated the transfer of some 3,500 Jews from Moravia in the former Czechoslovakia, from Katowice (then Kattowitz) in German-annexed Silesia, and from the Austrian capital, Vienna, to Nisko on the San River. Although problems with the deportation effort and a change in German policy put an end to these deportations, Eichmann's superiors in the RSHA were sufficiently satisfied with his initiative to ensure that he would play a role in future deportation proceedings.

In addition, RSHA officials coordinated the deportation of approximately 100,000 Jews from German-annexed Polish territory (the so-called province of Danzig-West Prussia, District Wartheland, and East Upper Silesia) into the Government General in the autumn and winter of 1939-1940. In October 1940, Gauleiter Josef Bürckel ordered the expulsion of nearly 7,000 Jews from Baden and the Saarpfalz in southwestern Germany to areas of unoccupied France in a second deportation of German Jews. French authorities quickly absorbed most of these German Jews in the Gurs internment camp in the Pyrenees of southwestern France.

Upon Hitler's authorization, German authorities began systematic deportations of Jews from Germany in October 1941, even before the SS and police established killing centers ("extermination camps") in German-controlled Poland. Pursuant to the Eleventh Decree of Germany's Reich Citizenship Law (November 1941), German Jews "deported to the East" suffered automatic confiscation of their property upon crossing the Reich frontier.

Between October and December 1941, German authorities deported around 42,000 Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich-including Austria and the annexed Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia-virtually all to ghettos in Lodz, Minsk, Kovno (Kaunas, Kovne), and Riga. German Jews sent to Lodz in 1941 and to Warsaw, the Izbica and Piaski transit ghettos and other locations in the Generalgouvernement in the first half of 1942 numbered among those deported together with Polish Jews to the killing centers of Chelmno (Kulmhof), Treblinka, and Belzec.

German authorities deported more than 50,000 Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich to ghettos in the Baltic states and Belorussia (today Belarus) between early November 1941 and late October 1942. There the SS and police shot the overwhelming majority of them. After selecting a small minority to survive temporarily for exploitation as forced laborers, the SS and police interned them in special German sections of the Baltic and Belorussian ghettos, segregated from those few local Jews whose survival the SS and police had permitted, generally to exploit special occupational skills.

Such "German ghettos" within a larger ghetto framework existed notably in Riga and in Minsk. SS and police officials killed most of these German Jews when they liquidated the ghettos in 1943. After late October 1942, the German authorities deported the majority of Jews remaining in Germany directly to the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau or to Theresienstadt.

German regulations initially exempted German Jewish war veterans and elderly persons over the age of sixty-five, as well as Jews living in mixed marriages ("privileged marriages") with German "Aryans" and the offspring of those marriages from anti-Jewish measures, including deportations. In the end, German officials deported disabled and highly decorated Jewish war veterans as well as elderly or prominent Jews from so-called Greater German Reich and the German-occupied Netherlands to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto near Prague. Although the SS used the ghetto as a showcase to portray the fiction of "humane" treatment of Jews, Theresienstadt in actuality represented a way station for most Jews en route to their deportation "to the east." The SS and police routinely relocated Jews from Theresienstadt, including German Jews, to killing centers and killing sites in German-occupied Poland, Belorussia, and the Baltic States. More than 30,000 died in the Theresienstadt ghetto itself, mostly from starvation, illness, or maltreatment.

In May 1943, Nazi German authorities reported that the Reich was judenrein ("free of Jews"). By this time, mass deportations had left fewer than 20,000 Jews in Germany. Some survived because they were married to non-Jews or because race laws classified them as Mischlinge (of mixed ancestry, or part Jewish) and were thus temporarily exempt from deportation. Others, called "U-Boats" or "submarines," lived in hiding and evaded arrest and deportation, often with the aid of non-Jewish Germans who sympathized with their plight.

In all, the Germans and their collaborators killed between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews in the Holocaust, including most of those Jews deported out of Germany.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939-1945

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By September 1939, over half of German Jews had emigrated. WWII would accelerate the persecution, deportation, and later, mass murder, of the remainder of Germany's Jews.

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created.
(5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Leonardo da Vinci may be best remembered as an artist, with his enigmatic "Mona Lisa" and his fresco "The Last Supper" ranking among the world's most famous paintings. But, going by the numbers, art may be the least of his contributions to the world: He has only 22 paintings on display around the world and a few hundred other personal drawings. Instead this true-to-form Renaissance man, who lived at the height of the Italian Renaissance -the late 15th and early 16th centuries when art and architecture flourished-excelled at a whopping number of subjects, from architecture to science to mathematics to engineering.

His notebooks are filled with original scientific observations, speculations, and hypotheses, most of which would be born out and supported by independent researchers in the coming centuries. He sketched designs for countless engines and machines, many of which would later make an actual appearance in the world. The seeds of Western science and technology, which germinated and flowered in the scientific revolution, were planted in the Italian Renaissance, and no one sowed more of those seeds than Leonardo.

Here is a peek into some of the genius's notebooks, showcasing his forward-thinking insights, observations, and discoveries.

(Why Leonardo da Vinci's brilliance endures, 500 years after his death.)

Mathematician

Obsessed with geometry, Leonardo made measurements in nature, seeking connections and patterns, and expressing them mathematically. He was especially fascinated by the proportions of the human body. Based on Roman architect Vitruvius's work, Leonardo's pen-and-ink "Vitruvius Man" (ca 1487), depicting a male figure in two superimposed positions with extended arms and legs within a circle and a square, explores the geometry of perfect proportions.

Leonardo sums up in backward-written text on the drawing how every part of the body is mathematically in proportion with the others: "Four fingers equal one palm; four palms equal one foot; ... 24 palms equal one man." This drawing also conveys Leonardo's belief that the workings of the human body are analogous to the workings of the universe. "Man is the model of the world," he wrote.

Leonardo also was familiar with the golden mean, a mathematical ratio that creates aesthetically pleasing compositions. Defined by a length-to-width ratio of 1:1.618... (a number designated by the Greek letter phi), it is associated with "divine proportion." In his unfinished "St. Jerome," for example, the figure of the ascetic is framed exactly by the superimposed golden rectangle. He also imbued the portraits of young women, including the "Mona Lisa," with elements of the mathematics of aesthetics.

(See where Leonardo da Vinci still walks the streets.)

Architect

Drawings and plans for buildings fill Leonardo's notebooks. He was fascinated by the problem of architectural aesthetics (as related to proportion) as well as the acoustics of church buildings.

He was determined to discover a structural combination that enabled the preacher's voice to reach the most distant corner of the building. He invented the teatro da predicare -a lecture hall in the shape of an amphitheater.

He was officially appointed premier architect (and artist and mechanic) to the King Francis I of France in 1515. He designed military fortifications that took into account the increased use of artillery, creating sloped walls with a broadened base to prevent undermining by continuous bombardment.

In 1502 Ottoman ruler Sultan Bayezid II requested designs for a bridge, and Leonardo submitted a plan. The bridge had to span more than 900 feet across the Golden Horn at Istanbul, with an arch high enough for ships to pass beneath. Thinking Leonardo's bridge was not technically feasible, the Sultan turned down his submission, but modern architects proved the Sultan wrong in 2001, when they used da Vinci's design to construct his bridge over a highway in Norway.

(What a 23-year excavation into the life of Leonardo da Vinci revealed.)

Naturalist

In the early 1490s, Leonardo twice headed north into the Italian Alps. There he jotted down observations and made sketches. Plants, animals, and, as always, birds were carefully described and recorded. These treks resulted in some remarkable drawings of thunderstorms that accurately depict the direction and force of the downdrafts known as wind shear.

He also examined fossils and land formations, and he made some of the first modern scientific speculations about geology and natural history. His drawings of cliffs show clearly the strata from different geological epochs. And most dramatically, he speculated about a much older origin for the Earth than the conventional view.

Leonardo's fascination with nature took a deliberate and organized turn toward careful research and observation in the late 1400s, when he was living in Milan. He began a notebook devoted almost exclusively to a single line of scientific inquiry: optics, or the behavior of light. Careful and neat throughout, the drawings are meticulous, and they incorporate his knowledge of geometry. These are tantamount to modern lab books.

(Leonardo da Vinci transformed mapping from art to science.)

Inventor

Many say there are few modern inventions that weren't inspired by Leonardo, including the parachute, the mirror-grinding machine, a pair of scissors, portable bridges, the mitre lock (still used on canals), and the spring drive (mostly used in toys). Some say he even designed the first robot.

He's probably most recognized in the field of flight, long before the concept of a practical flying machine became reality. The genius produced over 35,000 words and 500 sketches on flying machines, along with birds in flight-birds, he wrote, are flying machines.

Anatomist

Leonardo recorded his studies of human anatomy in drawings and accompanying notes that revealed details never before described. Two human dissections proved particularly significant. The first on an old man described atherosclerosis-hardening resulting from plaque formation on a blood vessel's interior walls-and arterial obstruction, a diagnosis of heart disease made hundreds of years before physicians recognized the symptoms. Around the same time, Leonardo performed an autopsy on a child and found the same vessels to be clear of obstruction and the vessel walls supple, a sign of the body before the ravages of age set in.

In Leonardo's drawings, he also found a way to show features from as many as eight different angles, in cross section and in multiple cutaway views that peel back layers of muscle and tissue to reveal the levels of structure.

It was the human eye, though, that especially fascinated Leonardo, and he studied its structure, its connections to other organs, and its precise operation. In order to understand the eye, Leonardo devised a technique to carry out dissections by immersing the eye in egg white and hard-boiling it in order to make it firmer and easier to handle. Debunking the prevailing view of the eye as an organ that sends out invisible rays, he proposed that the eye is a receptive organ that "sees" by means of reflected light.

(The Renaissance 'Prince of Painters' made a big impact in his short life.)

Portions of this work have previously appeared in Leonardo da Vinci. Copyright © 2019 Bulent Atalay and Keith Wamsley. Compilation copyright ©National Geographic Partners, LLC.
To learn more, check out Leonardo da Vinci. Available wherever books and magazines are sold.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The enigma of Leonardo da Vinci, the original renaissance man

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Packed with intricate sketches and detailed notes, Leonardo's personal diaries reveal his countless passions-from the structures of human anatomy to the possibilities of human flight.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Civil War which raged on this island from 1922-1923 was a dreadful human tragedy for so many Irish families. It left many damaging legacies, which for succeeding generations remained taboo, leaving the wounds of the war between former comrades open for decades.

In these centenary years, we are challenged to display courage and honesty as we seek to speak the fullness of the experience of the period, and in recognising that no single side had the monopoly of either atrocity or virtue.

The Civil War, though short, was bloody. It cost the lives of many, some well-known public figures, others lesser-known but not forgotten. Both sides to the conflict carried out brutal acts: anti-Treaty forces killed a TD and several other pro-Treaty politicians, and burned many homes of senators and Free State supporters, while the government executed anti-Treaty prisoners, officially and unofficially. At least 81 were officially executed in several jails and barracks, including seven in the Curragh on December 19th, 1922, all young men in their teens and 20s. Precise figures for the dead and wounded are contested, but recent research suggests a death toll of 1,500-2,000.

We must recognise the atrocities of the Civil War for what they were, on both sides: cruel, vicious and at times informed by vengeance

We must recognise the atrocities of the Civil War for what they were, on both sides: cruel, vicious and at times informed by vengeance. We should also recognise that there were elements within the different forces who were simply out of control. Some civilian losses were inflicted in a way that had little to do with republicanism or any emancipatory version of nationalism. The cover of the war was used by some for the settling of vendettas based on land, hunger and greed. It must also be acknowledged that in some cases the opportunity was taken for a sectarian identification of targets.

Emigration and poverty

The aftermath of the 1920s saw many other lives so damaged that recovery was impossible, leading to forced emigration or poverty at home.

This is painful for many of us to remember. The Civil War divided my own father's family, all of whom served in the War of Independence in Co Clare and Co Cork. My uncle Peter, with whom I would spend a significant amount of my childhood, went on to serve in the National Army from 1922 to 1925 at Renmore Barracks.

My father, John, would meanwhile spend most of the year 1923 as an internee in what was known to the prisoners as Tintown, in the Curragh camp. The diaries of Joseph Campbell offer revealing vignettes of what life was like for those in the camps, providing vivid notes of personal conversations and imaginative reflections on the psychological effects of incarceration.

As with most civil wars, the internecine conflict left a bitter legacy. The violence that was unleashed in the Civil War (and in the wider independence struggle) established violence, in all its manifestations, as an acceptable means of control and coercion within the state. Violence was also an inherited legacy of empire. Given how Ireland and its leaders had experienced the iron fist of empire as a tool in statehood and state management, violence and the infliction of humiliation would become an unsurprising feature of the State and its institutions. It was unleashed in various forms, particularly as it impacted on women, minorities and those from the poorest social classes, with varying gradations of violence and exclusion affecting people from all backgrounds.

The pension files record my father's long and exhausting battle for a small pension, which was eventually granted in 1956, eight years before his death and almost 22 years after his first application, in 1935.

While these events may be hard for us to remember, it is crucial we realise that any amnesia will not help us. Our concern for the truth must not, however, collapse into shallow point-scoring. Comparing atrocities is futile and amoral. An act of commemoration requires more.

Given how Ireland and its leaders had experienced the iron fist of empire as a tool in statehood and state management, violence and the infliction of humiliation would become an unsurprising feature of the State and its institutions

We have the opportunity to develop a clearer understanding of what factually occurred and the different versions of context. We need to acknowledge that different, informed perspectives on the same events can and do exist. The acceptance of this fact can release us from the pressure of finding, or subscribing to, any singular, unifying narrative of the past.

Through the Machnamh 100 series, I have sought to provide a forum for such discussions. Each of the seminars is available on the RTÉ Player, with the fifth of the six seminars available from May 26th, while a book bringing together the contents of the first three seminars is also now available.

I would urge such discussions to take place across the country, in our communities, schools and universities. Over the last decade we have seen a flourishing in local history groups as well as the publication of excellent pieces of scholarship which have made up many gaps. We now see surfaced accounts of women's role in all of the different events in 1916 and long before. We also have access to the various records which we can view and consider.

Ethical remembering is about putting ourselves in the shoes of the other and allowing for the existence of different narratives, narratives which we can put alongside one another to give a full picture of all that happened. We have an opportunity to look at our history in its fullness, its sorrow and its lost possibilities that might be recovered, an opportunity to learn of the lived experiences of those previously neglected and even excluded - the "history from below".

We have in the past experienced lost opportunities for reconciliation from our violent struggle for independence and what followed it, but we now have an opportunity to seek true, lasting reconciliation and to build a bright, emancipatory future for all of us, with our diverse histories and memories respectfully taken into account. In doing so, we may work together towards that to which we all might be united - sharing ideas of sustaining our planet, of delivering a new symmetry of ecology and society, a shared future that offers hope and capacity rather than a ransacking of old hatreds and bitterness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Michael D Higgins: An opportunity for ethical remembering

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Civil War which raged on this island from 1922-1923 was a dreadful human tragedy for so many Irish families. It left many damaging legacies, which for succeeding generations remained taboo, leaving the wounds of the war between former comrades open for decades.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Holocaust Survivor Recalls Life At Auschwitz And Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps | Forces TV

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 myths about the Middle Ages that everyone believes - Stephanie Honchell Smith

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
They believed that the Germans were and therefore the "Master Race".

Most other races were categorised as slave races, but some groups were labelled ' ' or sub-human. The Slavs of Eastern Europe, "gypsies" (such as or ) and Jews were regarded as such.

The Nazis believed that all other groups were inferior to the Aryans and they were a threat to the purity of the superior "Master Race", particularly the "subhumans".

Many Nazi scientists believed in and selective breeding.

They believed that people with disabilities or social problems were degenerates whose genes needed to be eliminated from the human bloodline.

The Nazi policy of eugenics was carried out forcibly, with over 400,000 people against their will and more than 70,000 murdered, or " ".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nazi racial ideas and policie - Life for the Jewish community and minorities in Nazi Germany - CCEA - GCSE History Revision - CCEA - BBC Bitesize

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
They believed that the Germans were and therefore the "Master Race". Most other races were categorised as slave races, but some groups were labelled ' ' or sub-human. The Slavs of Eastern Europe, "gypsies" (such as or ) and Jews were regarded as such.

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Based on the materials, choose one talk strategy from the Resource Booklet or a strategy you have used before that you think will enhance student talk. Add your choice to the Padlet.
Group task: Discuss your ideas.
(10 minutes)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo da Vinci

# data[].attributes.body
Watch from 45 minutes

# data[].attributes.body
Group task: Based on the resources that you have collated, create an enquiry question that will be the focus of student talk in your class.

Look for common concepts.

Do the questions elicit critical thinking?

Choose one question or create a new one.

(5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Artist & Inventor | Mini Bio | BIO

# data[].attributes.body
Emmet Dalton felt the cause that had inspired him to fight in the British Army was the right one, and that the Easter Rising never had any hope of success as a military operation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On hearing of the outbreak of a rebellion in Dublin in 1916 Emmet Dalton says that he and his fellow soldiers, "Were surpised, annoyed and we thought that it was madness."

Emmet Dalton was in Kilworth Camp, Cork, when he heard about the uprising in Dublin. Cathal O'Shannon asks him what were his feelings on hearing the news.

Emmet Dalton says that he had no sympathy for the Irish rebels. He felt the cause that had inspired him to fight in the British Army was the right one, and that the Easter Rising never had any hope of success as a military operation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On hearing of the outbreak of a rebellion in Dublin in 1916 Emmet Dalton says that he and his fellow soldiers, "Were surpised, annoyed and we thought that it was madness." Emmet Dalton was in Kilworth Camp, Cork, when he heard about the uprising in Dublin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Turmoil, crisis and the creation of a state, from Magna Carta to the horrors of the Black Death.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The impact of the 1798 rebellion, an example of the physical force tradition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA's opinions and beliefs.

The last entry of Friar John Clyn, from the The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, Volume 3, published by William Carrigan.

During the latter part of 1348 and the beginning of the next, the great and universal pestilence, known as the Black Death, raged through Ireland. John Clyn, the Annalist, a Friar of St. Francis' Abbey, Kilkenny, who was an eye-witness of the ravages of this plague and most probably one of its victims, has left us, in his Annals, the following eloquent description of the havoc it wrought:

That pestilence deprived of human inhabitant villages and cities, and castles and towns, so that there was scarcely found a man to dwell therein; the pestilence was so contagious that whosoever touched the sick or the dead was immediately infected and died; and the penitent and the confessor were carried together to the grave; through fear and dread men scarcely dared to perform the offices of piety and pity in visiting the sick and burying the dead; many died of boils and abscesses, and pustules on their shins or under the armpits; others died frantic with the pain in their head, and others spitting up blood. That year was beyond measure abundant and fruitful, however sickly and deadly. Up to Christmas twenty-five friars had died in the Franciscan Convent of Drogheda, and twenty-three in the Convent of the same Order in Dublin. The pestilence was rife in Kilkenny, in Lent, for from Christmas Day to the 6th day in March, eight Friars Preachers died of it. Scarcely one alone ever died in a house. Commonly husband, wife, children, and servants went the one way, the way of death.
And I, Brother John Clyn, of the Order of Friars Minors, and of the Convent of Kilkenny, wrote in this book those notable things, which happened in my time, which I saw with my own eyes, or which I leaned from persons worthy of credit. And lest things worthy of remembrance should perish with time, and fall away from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing these many evils, and the whole world lying as it were in the wicked one, among the dead, waiting for death til it come, as I have truly heard and examined, so have I reduced these things to writing. And lest the writing should perish with the writer, and the work fail together with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, if haply any man survive, and any race of Adam escape this pestilence and continue the work which I have commenced.

Friar John Clyn ends his Annals abruptly at the 17th June, 1349, when probably, the plague, as he expected, struck the pen from his fingers.

Carrigan, William. The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory. Vol. 3, Sealy, Bryers & Walker, 1905.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Last Entry of Friar John Clyn | TOTA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"During the latter part of 1348 and the beginning of the next, the great and universal pestilence, known as the Black Death, raged through Ireland. John Clyn, the Annalist, a...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Friar John Clynn – Kilkenny Archaeological Society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Boolavogue (feat. The Band of an Garda Síochána)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Year : Painted by Vinci in 1474
Size : 38.2 x 36.7 cm
Current Location : The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

2. Mona Lisa

Year : Painted by Vinci in 1503-1507
Size : 77 × 53 cm
Current Location : The Musée du Louvre, Paris.

3. The Adoration of the Magi

Year : Painted by Vinci in 1481-82
Size : 246 x 243 cm
Current Location : The Uffizi, Florence
Yellow ochre and brown ink are used on panel

4. Lady with an Ermine

Year : Painted by Vinci in 1483-90
Size : 53.4 x 39.3 cm
Current Location : Czartoryski Museum, Cracow

5. Madonna Litta

Year : Painted by Vinci in 1490-91
Size : 42 x 33 cm
Current Location : The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

6. The Last Supper

Year : Painted by Vinci in 1498
Size : 460 x 880 cm
Current Location : The Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Refectory), Milan

7. The Virgin of the Rocks

Year : Painted by Vinci in 1503-06
Size : 189.5 x 120 cm
Current Location : The National Gallery, London

Tag : Top 10 Famous Paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci, Most Popular Paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1. Ginevra de' Benci Year : Painted by Vinci in 1474 Size : 38.2 x 36.7 cm Current Location : The National Gallery of Art, Washington,...

# data[].attributes.body
Emmet Dalton outlines his reasons for joining up and describes the initial reaction of his father to seeing his son in a British Army uniform.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Emmet Dalton outlines his reasons for joining up and describes the initial reaction of his father to seeing his son in a British Army uniform.

Emmet Dalton talks about how he came to join the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Cathal O'Shannon asks Dalton did he feel he was joining to fight for Britain, Ireland or little Belgium? Dalton replies, "For all three but primarily I felt I was fighting for Ireland."

Emmet Dalton was only seventeen and felt a sense of adventure in joing up. He also describes the reaction of his father when he arrived home wearing a British Army uniform.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Emmet Dalton outlines his reasons for joining up and describes the initial reaction of his father to seeing his son in a British Army uniform. Emmet Dalton talks about how he came to join the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Cathal O'Shannon asks Dalton did he feel he was joining to fight for Britain, Ireland or little Belgium?

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The opening section of the Bayeux Tapestry

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Irish Civil War war memorial sites in Ireland

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Listing of memorial sites for Irish Civil War in Ireland

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1. Turn & Talk- Are you a renaissance person?
2. Talk Moves - What techniques did Leonardo use in his art?
3. Think - Pair - Share - Was Leonardo just an artist?
4. Jigsaw - reveal an image of the Mona Lisa to prompt discussion
4. Walking debate
5. Socratic circles
6. Hot Seating
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dáil Éireann debate - Friday, 17 Nov 1922

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
MILITARY EXECUTIONS. Dáil Éireann debate - Friday, 17 Nov 1922

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1. Think pair share
2. Concentric Circles
3. Walking debate
4. Group research and present
5.
6.
Group vote: 1

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1.Expert Group
2. Mock Trial
3. Design your own feudal system
4. Walking debate
5. Hot-seating
6. Reporting- Black Death
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1. Socratic Circle Process
2. Jigsaw
3. Book Mark
4. Think-Pair-Share
5. Debate
6. Hot Seating
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.body
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.body
1. Can you guess who said this quote -'Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master'. Discuss in pairs.

2.  Is social media a new renaissance for us or is it the reverse discuss.
3.  What was life like in Renaissance Italy?
4.  What changes took place in art and science ?
5. Who paid for these artists & why did invest?
6. Can you see any direct influences of Leonardo on modern life today?
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dáil Éireann debate - Tuesday, 28 Nov 1922

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
DAIL IN COMMITTEE. - ARMY. Dáil Éireann debate - Tuesday, 28 Nov 1922

# data[].attributes.body
1.  To what extent were the Nuremburg laws impactful on the Jewish people in Germany from 1935 - 1945?
2.  How do we know life was difficult for the Jewish community in Nazi Germany?
3. What is the historical significance of the holocaust? and how does this impact us today?
4.  Why do think so many Germans lets the holocaust happen?
5.
6.
Group vote: 4

# data[].attributes.body
1. Are people right to be so negative about the Middle Ages?
2. Life in Britain in the Fourteenth Century was 'nasty, brutish and short.
3.  Does feudalism still exist?
4. What links can be made between the Black Death and the Covid pandemic?
5.
6.
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1.
2.
3.

4.

5.
6.
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.body
1. Argue why the 1798 rebellion is important to Irish History
2. Discuss what influenced the 1798 rebellion
3. Explain the Consequences of the 1798 rebellion
4. Explain three causes of the 1798 rebellion
5. Argue why the rebellion was isolated to one area of the nation
6.
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Civil War Executions

Included in the M ilitary Service Pensions Collection are files relating to seventy-two (72) individuals executed during the Civil War as a result of their service with the anti-Treaty forces. Files for a further two individuals - Michael Grealy (to the listing below . These executions have been excluded as the Military Service Registration Board (MSRB) judged, that at the time of the events leading to and at the time of their execution, neither were engaged in active service nor were they members of one of the organisations covered by the legislation. DP1835) and Luke Burke ( DP903) - who were also executed during the period are not included

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Included in the M ilitary Service Pensions Collection are files relating to seventy-two (72) individuals executed during the Civil War as a result of their service with the anti-Treaty forces. Files for a further two individuals - Michael Grealy (to the listing below .

# data[].attributes.body
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Group vote:

# data[].attributes.body
Emmet Dalton and WWI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An American in the Irish Civil War
Researched, complied & edited by Rodney G. Dalton

The birth of the Irish Free State coincided with the Irish Civil War, a conflict between two forces who supported and opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. At that time, two factions emerged in Ireland, with the pro treaty forces led by the interim Prime Minister and de facto commander of the rebel forces, Michael Collins, and the 'irregulars', the anti treaty forces led by Eamon De Valera. The first task the Irish Free State faced was to win the Civil War, and in doing this, they recruited a large military and slowly gained the upper hand in the conflict. 75% of the people voted the pro treaty government into power (at the time, known as the pro treaty Sinn Fein). Historians have criticized the argument that the nation wanted a Free State government, pointing out that the voters were left with the choice of war with the British Empire or peace. The Irish people were war-weary and voted for an end to conflict, not an endorsement of the Irish Free State; de Valera ignored those popular wishes and launched a poorly organized civil war that had little popular support and less military success. Michael Collins, the effective head of the new government, built an army from the pro-treaty remnants of the IRA, plus new recruits; and he was funded and supplied by the British government. Collins was ambushed and killed by anti-treaty elements near his home in August, 1922, a move that shocked the country. Even without Collins' leadership, the Irish army speedily destroyed the insurgency.
Major General Emmett Dalton
Considering that Emmet Dalton was a Secretary to the Senate, played such a prominent role in the IRA during the Anglo-Irish War, commanded the artillery that attacked the Four Courts, broke the back of the 'Minister Republic' and was with Collins when he was killed at Bal na Blth it is astonishing that so little information about his life seems to have survived. His name crops up again and again in accounts of Ireland's revolution, yet a casual search of the internet turns up very little. He left no published memoirs and except for a series of interviews for RTE, no biography of Emmet Dalton has yet been written.

Born in the USA on Friday 4 March 1898, James Emmet Dalton grew up at 8 Upper St Columbus Road, Drumcondra, a solidly middle-class Catholic suburb of Dublin, and was educated by the Christian Brothers at their school in North Richmond Street. The OConnell School still survives and has an extensive museum commemorating its former students; however, neither Dalton nor Brendan Finucane - the youngest wing commander in the RAF during World War II - receives a mention.

Dalton's father was a third-generation Irish-American Republican who had returned to Ireland in 1900 and his family's political activism probably explains why Emmet joined the Dublin Volunteers at their inaugural meeting in 1913, at the tender age of 15, and was actively involved in smuggling arms by the time he was 16. His younger brother Charlie also joined, and went on to become a member of Collins' inner circle.

Much to the chagrin of his father, in 1915 Dalton answered Redmond's call to arms, joining the British Army as a temporary 2nd lieutenant in the 7th Service (Dublin Pals) Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers (RDF) at 17. By 1916, he was attached to the 9th Battalion, RDF, 48th Infantry Brigade, 16th Irish Division under Major-General W.R. Hickie. Most of the officers and men in this Division were Redmondite Home-Rulers and, like Dalton, were horrified by the news of the Easter Rising.

It was while serving with the 9th 'Dubs' that Dalton befriended an old acquaintance of his father, Lieutenant Tom Kettle MP, the 36-year-old Nationalist MP, for East Tyrone and Professor of Economics at University College Dublin. It was Kettle who had famously declared that Irishmen should fight not for England, but for small nations, a sentiment that Dalton seemed to fully endorse. Kettle hoped that, with the wisdom which is sown in tears and blood, this tragedy of Europe [World War I] may be and must be the prologue to the two reconciliations of which all statesmen have dreamed, the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland, and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great Britain.

By the summer of 1916, the 16th Irish Division was fully embroiled in the bloody battle of the Somme. On 9 September, RDF attacked the Germans near the village of Ginchy, and Kettle, then acting as OC of B Company, was shot and killed within sight of Dalton. The fighting around Ginchy was bloody and along with Kettle, over 4,314 Irishmen became casualties; 1,167 of them were never to see Ireland again. It was also a battle where heroism went hand in hand with sacrifice. Dalton was among those recognized for their courage and was awarded the Military Cross.

For the rest of his life, Dalton was known as Ginchy. According to his Military Cross citation, he led forward to their final objective companies which had lost their officers. Later, whilst consolidating his position, he found himself with one sergeant, confronted by 21 of the enemy, including an officer, who surrendered when he attacked them. Later that year, King George V presented him with his medal at Buckingham Palace. In many respects, it was typical of the courage he demonstrated throughout this military career, and such was his pride in the award, that on occasion, he even wore the ribbon on his NA uniform. By 1917 Dalton had returned to his old battalion, 7 RDF, 30th Brigade, 10th Irish Division in Palestine, where he first commanded a rifle company, and then became OC of a sniping school. By 1918, what was left of the 7th RDF and redeployed to the Western Front. Speculation that he once served on the staff of Sir Henry Wilson is unfounded, as is the unsubstantiated innuendo that he was a British spy and shot Collins.

Like thousands of other Irish soldiers, he returned to Ireland after the war. While Dalton was away at the wars, his brother Charlie was an active Volunteer who became a member of Collins' Squad, his hand-picked team of guerrilla-fighters, and was one of the participants in the Bloody Sunday killing of 21 November 1920. Some say that Charlie used the German pistol his brother had given him as a souvenir, but this is unclear.

It was probably inevitable, given Charlie's connections and his military experience, that Emmett Dalton rejoined the Volunteers on leaving the army. As a disillusioned Redmondite, he probably felt that after the 19I8 General Election, the IRA best-represented the will of the Irish people. He had fought for Ireland during World War I and once said that he had no difficulty fighting for Ireland with the British or fighting for Ireland against the British.

Regardless of his personal beliefs, Dalton developed a close friendship with Collins and in an interview screened by RTE on the day he died in 1978 said, I loved him. I use no other word. I loved him as a man loves another man, with pure love.

When Sean MacEoin was captured in March 1921, it was Dalton who led the attempt to rescue him from Mount Joy Gaol. Dressed in his old uniform and leading members of Collins' Squad, he had devised a plan that was typically daring and involved a stolen armored car, British Army uniforms and a lot of luck. Dalton and Joe Leonard, dressed as British officers, managed to bluff their way into the Governor's office on the pretence of moving MacEoin to another prison, before they were rumbled and shooting broke out near the prison gate. Although the rescue attempt failed, Dalton managed to extract his raiding party intact.

After fighting at Rochestown and Douglas, Cork fell to Dalton on the 9th, making a Saorstat victory almost inevitable. In fact, Dalton complained bitterly that the war could have been brought to a close in September 1922, if troops had also attacked overland from Dublin at the same time.

On 12 August, the now Major-General Dalton was appointeed General Officer Commanding, Southern Command. He announced that it was his avowed aim to restore normality to the city and helped establish a temporary police force until the Garda arrived on 16 September. In late August, Collins was in Co. Cork, ostensibly on an inspection tour but also attempting to make contact with leading Republicans to end the war. According to Coogan's biography of Collins, Dalton had been central to this peace process and acted as an intermediary.

When Collins was warned that it was not safe for him to drive around the county, he told local NA commander Joe Sweeney that, whatever happens, my fellow countrymen won't kill me. When the IRA ambushed Collins' convoy on 22 August, Dalton had shouted, Drive like hell, but Collins contradicted him. Dalton attributed Collins' death to his lack of combat experience: if Mick had ever been in a scrap he would have learned to stay down.

To this day no one really knows what happened at Bal na Blth, but it was obvious that Collins' death affected Dalton. When he returned from his honeymoon in September 1922, his heart was no longer in the fight. He objected to the execution of captured Irregulars and resigned his commission in December to work briefly as the Secretary to the Senate. In a military career that had spanned eight years, he had become a retired major-general at 24 on a pension of 117 per annum.

Despite being an accomplished soldier, Dalton had always been interested in the cinema, and by the late 1920s was working as a film producer who gained some trans-Atlantic success. In the late 1950s, he helped establish the Irish Ardmore Studios, where the films The Blue Max, The Spy who Came in from the Cold and The Lion in Winter were filmed.

After 1922, Dalton never held a military appointment again, even though Lord Mountbatten offered him the command of an Irish special operations unit in World War II. Dalton declined, preferring to follow the sport of kings - horseracing - and produce his movies. On his 80th birthday, 4 March 1978, Emmet Dalton died in Dublin, barely commemorated by the State he did so much to create.
Misc. Photos

An armored car like the one in Michael Collins convoy

The day Michael Collins was buried - Major General Emmett Dalton second from right

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An American in the Irish Civil War Researched, complied & edited by Rodney G. Dalton The birth of the Irish Free State coincided with the Irish Civil War, a conflict between two forces who supported and opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

# data[].attributes.body
Vice President Mike Pence, Mrs Nancy Pence-Fritsch and Leo Varadkar, An Taoiseach are shown the service records of Pence's grandfather, Richard Michael Cawley, who served with distinction in the Irish Defence Forces during the Civil War, at Farmleigh House on September 3, 2019 in Dublin, Ireland.

# data[].attributes.body
A shell exploding at the Four Courts building in Dublin during the Irish Civil War, June - July 1922. IRA members inside the building were being bombarded by Irish Army Free State troops.

# data[].attributes.body
Individual task: Explore the materials your group created and choose a strategy to enhance student talk in your classroom. (5 minutes)

# data[].attributes.headline
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.subject
Step 4: Possible strategies to enhance student talk

# data[].attributes.body
1. Socratic Circle
2.Talk Moves
3. Socratic Circle
4. Walking Debate
5. Talk Moves
6. Jigsaw
Group vote: Socratic Circle

# data[].attributes.body
1. Executions without trial, was the Free State any better than an Ireland under British rule?

2. Is ethical remembering possible?

3. Was the execution of Erskine Childers justified?

4. Why are the men of the Civil War largely forgotten in comparison to the men of 1916?

5. Were the Civil War executions war crimes?

6. How do we choose who to commemorate?

Group vote: Why are the men of the Civil War largely forgotten in comparison to the men of 1916?