rising of 1916

rising of 1916 (Easter Rising). The rising was planned by the military council established in May 1915 by the supreme council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In this inner group Sean MacDermott and Thomas Clarke of the supreme council executive collaborated with Pearse, Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887–1916), Thomas MacDonagh, and Eamon Ceannt (1881–1916), all key figures in the Irish Volunteers. They concealed their plans from the Volunteer commander‐in‐chief, Eoin MacNeill, and to some extent from other members of the IRB. In January 1916 James Connolly, who had been planning independent action by the Irish Citizen Army, was admitted to the conspiracy.

The nature of the military thinking behind the rising remains unclear. The original plan envisaged a general rising, in Dublin and the provinces, with provision for a westward retreat if the capital could not be held. This was undermined by two developments. On 22 April a German steamer, the Aud, carrying rifles and machine guns to arm the provincial insurgents, was captured and scuttled by its captain. The same day MacNeill, who had been temporarily induced to acquiesce in the planned rising, published an order cancelling all Volunteer movements for Sunday 23rd. It was at this point that the leaders, by deciding to rise in Dublin with whatever forces they could still collect, unequivocally abandoned considerations of military feasibility. But well before that point the sketchy nature of their planning suggests that most were driven less by a real hope of victory than by the idea of reviving nationalist militancy through a bold gesture.

The rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April, when about 1,000 Volunteers and just over 200 Citizen Army seized the General Post Office and other sites in Dublin. A proclamation was read in the name of the provisional government of the Irish Republic. Fighting continued until the insurgents surrendered on 29 April. There were supporting actions in Wexford, Galway, and Co. Dublin, and an attempted mobilization in Cork (see maccurtain, thomas). In Dublin 64 insurgents were killed, along with 132 crown forces and about 230 civilians, and extensive use of artillery devastated much of the city centre.

The government's reaction to the insurrection has been widely blamed for converting initial popular hostility to the insurgents into widespread sympathy. The murder of Francis Sheehy Skeffington, and the apparent summary killing of civilians by soldiers during fighting in North King Street, along with widespread arrests and the continuation of martial law, undoubtedly alienated many. Other accounts, however, suggest that the spectacle of nationalists offering a credible military challenge to crown forces had itself been sufficient to win a degree of public approval. Overall the official response was less draconian than poorly judged and unbalanced. Fifteen leaders were executed, along with Sir Roger Casement, arrested after landing in Co. Kerry from a German submarine. Yet other participants, including such key figures as de Valera and Collins, not only survived, but in most cases were free within a matter of months to begin the construction of a new separatist movement.