April 24, 1916—A mistake-filled operation even before it started, Ireland’s Easter Rising should have ended the same way that the Fenian uprising and other rebellions had in the past—with the cause of independence no further advanced than before.
Instead, the British government, in a war against a German foe it regularly accused of ruthlessness, resorted to such a brutal crackdown that Irish opinion turned decisively from Home Rule to a separate republic.
In the years following Patrick Pearse’s Easter Monday declaration of the republic in front of an astonished, even amused, noontime crowd at Dublin’s General Post Office, patriotic myth-making obscured how much went wrong before and during the uprising by the ragtag band of rebels.
The long litany of errors can be fairly quickly gleaned from reading Tim Pat Coogan’s Eamon De Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland, Terry Golway’s For the Cause of Liberty: A Thousand Years of Ireland’s Heroes, and David Fitzpatrick’s essay in A Military History of Ireland, edited by Thomas Barrett and Keith Jeffrey:* Sir Roger Casement, on a mission to secure arms from Germany, was captured when he stepped ashore from a submarine, just days before the planned revolt.
* The captain of the German boat carrying the arms shipment, the Aud, ordered the boat scuttled after it was intercepted by the British Navy, depriving the rebels of crucial arms and ammunition.
* Austin Stack, who was supposed to handle the arms landing, rushed to the barracks where Casement was supposed to be—only to get arrested himself.
* Eoin MacNeill, commanding the Irish Volunteers, issued an order calling off all maneuvers after learning of Casement’s capture—assuring that, when Patrick Pearse and other rebel leaders decided to go ahead with their plans anyway, they would only have 130 men to guard the approaches to the city rather than the 500 originally envisioned and needed. His countermanding of the uprising order also meant that the rebellion would be confined to central Dublin rather than spread across the country.
* British intelligence had intercepted telegrams between the rebels’ American fundraiser, John Devoy, the German Embassy in Washington, and Berlin, so they knew something was afoot.
* James Connolly, leading the Irish Citizen Army, was so hellbent on staging his own rebellion while the British remained at war with Germany that Pearse and his compatriots in the Irish Republican Brotherhood went along with the idea, figuring that the British would crack down on them anyway before their operations began.
* Connolly, a Marxist, argued—insanely—that Britain’s commitment to capitalism was so total that it would never fire on property in Dublin.
* The chief strategist for the rebels, poet Joseph Mary Plunkett, was fascinated by military history, but had no practical experience whatsoever with tactics or strategy. Moreover, he was in no physical shape to lead anything at the time, having undergone an operation for glandular tuberculosis only days before the uprising. In fact, the only rebel leader with any military experience at all was Connolly.
* The rebels never had a plan for taking Dublin Castle, Britain’s nerve center in the city.
* By establishing headquarters in the General Post Office, the rebels all but guaranteed collateral damage to surrounding civilians, shops, and housing—and a furious reaction by the populace when it became involved in the crossfire.
* Pearse led the rebellion not just with a country divided over independence, but at that point willing to wait for Home Rule.
The combined republican force of a little less than 1,800 stood no chance against the British 20,000. When the smoke cleared and Pearse surrendered five days later, 64 rebels had been killed in action versus 103 killed and 357 wounded for the British. Worse off were the civilians caught in the middle, as 300 ended up dead, hundreds more wounded, and central Dublin a wreck. (The photo accompanying this blog post shows the devastation at the GPO, the rebels’ headquarters.)
Predictably given the carnage that resulted, the civilians initially turned on the rebels who had instigated the rebellion. As the captured rebels were marched off to jail, onlookers jeered “Shoot the traitors!” and “Mad dogs!”
And then the British, ignoring the warning by Irish Parliamentary Party Leader John Redmond that mass executions “might be disastrous in the extreme,” proceeded to do just that. After martial law was declared, more than a hundred rebels were condemned to death.
Executions began on May 3 and included two or three at a time, usually in grisly or arbitrary fashion. Willy Pearse’s principal offense was that he was Patrick’s brother. The TB-ridden Plunkett was married only minutes before he died. Polio-lamed Sean MacDiarmida was given no reprieve. Connolly, his leg shattered in the fighting, had to be carried on a stretcher and propped up in a chair to face the firing squad.
By this time, nine days later, Irish public opinion had swerved so decisively against the British that Prime Minister Herbert Asquith ordered an end to the executions. Not, however, before the occupying forces made two final mistakes. They decided only to imprison a former London clerk who had served as Plunkett’s aide-de-camp.
In another instance, they pondered the choice between executing Connolly and another prisoner. Sir John Maxwell, commander of British forces, asked Judge Evelyn Wylie about the latter, “Is he someone important?”
“No,” Wylie answered. “He is a schoolmaster who was taken at Boland’s Mill.”
Reprieves were granted to the former clerk and former schoolmaster, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera. They became the Crown’s most implacable enemies in Ireland in the years ahead—and, in the end, tragically, their own as well.
Instead, the British government, in a war against a German foe it regularly accused of ruthlessness, resorted to such a brutal crackdown that Irish opinion turned decisively from Home Rule to a separate republic.
In the years following Patrick Pearse’s Easter Monday declaration of the republic in front of an astonished, even amused, noontime crowd at Dublin’s General Post Office, patriotic myth-making obscured how much went wrong before and during the uprising by the ragtag band of rebels.
The long litany of errors can be fairly quickly gleaned from reading Tim Pat Coogan’s Eamon De Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland, Terry Golway’s For the Cause of Liberty: A Thousand Years of Ireland’s Heroes, and David Fitzpatrick’s essay in A Military History of Ireland, edited by Thomas Barrett and Keith Jeffrey:* Sir Roger Casement, on a mission to secure arms from Germany, was captured when he stepped ashore from a submarine, just days before the planned revolt.
* The captain of the German boat carrying the arms shipment, the Aud, ordered the boat scuttled after it was intercepted by the British Navy, depriving the rebels of crucial arms and ammunition.
* Austin Stack, who was supposed to handle the arms landing, rushed to the barracks where Casement was supposed to be—only to get arrested himself.
* Eoin MacNeill, commanding the Irish Volunteers, issued an order calling off all maneuvers after learning of Casement’s capture—assuring that, when Patrick Pearse and other rebel leaders decided to go ahead with their plans anyway, they would only have 130 men to guard the approaches to the city rather than the 500 originally envisioned and needed. His countermanding of the uprising order also meant that the rebellion would be confined to central Dublin rather than spread across the country.
* British intelligence had intercepted telegrams between the rebels’ American fundraiser, John Devoy, the German Embassy in Washington, and Berlin, so they knew something was afoot.
* James Connolly, leading the Irish Citizen Army, was so hellbent on staging his own rebellion while the British remained at war with Germany that Pearse and his compatriots in the Irish Republican Brotherhood went along with the idea, figuring that the British would crack down on them anyway before their operations began.
* Connolly, a Marxist, argued—insanely—that Britain’s commitment to capitalism was so total that it would never fire on property in Dublin.
* The chief strategist for the rebels, poet Joseph Mary Plunkett, was fascinated by military history, but had no practical experience whatsoever with tactics or strategy. Moreover, he was in no physical shape to lead anything at the time, having undergone an operation for glandular tuberculosis only days before the uprising. In fact, the only rebel leader with any military experience at all was Connolly.
* The rebels never had a plan for taking Dublin Castle, Britain’s nerve center in the city.
* By establishing headquarters in the General Post Office, the rebels all but guaranteed collateral damage to surrounding civilians, shops, and housing—and a furious reaction by the populace when it became involved in the crossfire.
* Pearse led the rebellion not just with a country divided over independence, but at that point willing to wait for Home Rule.
The combined republican force of a little less than 1,800 stood no chance against the British 20,000. When the smoke cleared and Pearse surrendered five days later, 64 rebels had been killed in action versus 103 killed and 357 wounded for the British. Worse off were the civilians caught in the middle, as 300 ended up dead, hundreds more wounded, and central Dublin a wreck. (The photo accompanying this blog post shows the devastation at the GPO, the rebels’ headquarters.)
Predictably given the carnage that resulted, the civilians initially turned on the rebels who had instigated the rebellion. As the captured rebels were marched off to jail, onlookers jeered “Shoot the traitors!” and “Mad dogs!”
And then the British, ignoring the warning by Irish Parliamentary Party Leader John Redmond that mass executions “might be disastrous in the extreme,” proceeded to do just that. After martial law was declared, more than a hundred rebels were condemned to death.
Executions began on May 3 and included two or three at a time, usually in grisly or arbitrary fashion. Willy Pearse’s principal offense was that he was Patrick’s brother. The TB-ridden Plunkett was married only minutes before he died. Polio-lamed Sean MacDiarmida was given no reprieve. Connolly, his leg shattered in the fighting, had to be carried on a stretcher and propped up in a chair to face the firing squad.
By this time, nine days later, Irish public opinion had swerved so decisively against the British that Prime Minister Herbert Asquith ordered an end to the executions. Not, however, before the occupying forces made two final mistakes. They decided only to imprison a former London clerk who had served as Plunkett’s aide-de-camp.
In another instance, they pondered the choice between executing Connolly and another prisoner. Sir John Maxwell, commander of British forces, asked Judge Evelyn Wylie about the latter, “Is he someone important?”
“No,” Wylie answered. “He is a schoolmaster who was taken at Boland’s Mill.”
Reprieves were granted to the former clerk and former schoolmaster, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera. They became the Crown’s most implacable enemies in Ireland in the years ahead—and, in the end, tragically, their own as well.
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