Militarily, the Rising was an utter failure. Teachers may find the Student Worksheets 1-2 in the Unit 5: Junior Cycle Project Pack useful for this section of the module. Considering what transpired, the events of Easter week seemed to be the consummation of Patrick Pearse's rhetoric: an epic blood-sacrifice given on the altar of Irish nationalism which would one day inspire the next generation to wage a full blown national war of liberation. "a crowd-sourced collection of letters written around the time of the Easter Rising" -- website. One of its major problems was that the IRB had few troops of its own. Pearse, its Director of Military Organisation, argued that this smaller body would be much more militarily valuable than the large, unwieldly and loosely held together organisation it had split from. Physically one of the most imposing buildings in the capital, it seemed to provide the perfect theatrical stage for the bloody drama about to be unleashed. However one veteran, Liam Ó Briain, was convinced its leaders had originally planned a national rebellion. The council was made up of seven members – Tom Clarke, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Éamonn Ceannt. A History of Ireland. MacNeill thought that the IRB Military Council would regroup and work out an alternative strategy for some future date. The GPO was chosen to be the central headquarters. MacDiarmada and union leader James Connolly were great organisers and powerful speakers, while Pearse, MacDonagh, Ceannt and Plunkett  knew far more about Irish language and culture than they did about fighting.Nevertheless, despite their lack of military expertise, these seven idealists conceived a plan to take on the might of the British Empire and win idependence for Ireland. Sean McDermott, who planned the Easter Rising © Three groups, each with their own motives, participated in the Easter Rising. The 1916 Rising was the most serious revolt to British rule in Ireland in over a century. Responsibility for the planning of the rising was given to Tom Clarke and Seán MacDermott. of the class, re-introduce the events leading up to the Easter Rising. Easter Rising – how rebels planned to overthrow British rule The Easter Rising of 1916 was organised by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). ), 'The GAA and Revolution in Ireland: 1913-1923' published by the Collins Press, Conor McGregor v Dustin Poirier: UFC 257 weigh in, 'It says a lot about your priorities' - Varadkar responds to Pearse Doherty after bringing up 'leak' controversy again, Wedding with 400 guests discovered at north London school, UFC 257: Conor McGregor's mental edge to prove too much for Poirier, Abu Dhabi Championship leaderboard: Rory McIlroy makes strong start on day three, Teen due to appear in court over serious assault of woman (48) in Dublin, Taoiseach calls on Chinese premier to lift Irish beef ban, Dublin 17: Older homeowners hold firm until vaccine roll-out. So far so apparently logical, except that this original plan for the Easter Sunday rebellion (which assumed the rebels could rely on a far larger force then those actually mobilised) was inherently flawed. You may be hearing lots about it in the media at the moment since next year will be the 100th anniversary of the Rising, and huge events are being planned all around Dublin (where the vast majority of the fighting occurred) to mark the occasion. It took place in the capital city, Dublin. What were the original intentions of the Rising's leaders before Eoin MacNeill's fateful intervention on the eve of the rebellion? At this meeting, they decided to stage an uprising before the war ended and to secure help from Germany. The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca) was a rebellion in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916.The Rising was started by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and set up an Irish Republic.It was the most important uprising in Ireland since the Irish Rebellion of 1798.. Ó Briain also claimed that the Dublin rebels were never intended to be left cooped up in the city, surrounded and overwhelmed. In the end, the rebels were beaten. They believed they could still muster enough men in Dublin to get the Rising started and then Volunteers across the rest of the country would join in later once they realised what was happening.The conflicting orders meant that although, some Irish Volunteers took part, most did not and consequently what should have been a national uprising was instead mainly confined to Dublin. The Easter Rising of 1916 was organised by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He had a lifelong fascination with military tactics and history. However there was intense disagreement among the Irish Volunteers' leaders as to how the force should be utilised. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was a … The Easter Rising was virtually confined to Dublin. Sections. By April 1916, the Council would consist of all seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation. The Irish Republican Brotherhood took advantage of World War I (1914-1918) to plan the Easter rising, which pushed for Ireland’s full independence. It is currently unnamed. It began on April 24, 1916, which was the day after Easter that year, and lasted five days. They thought that if they secured sufficient strongholds, and won the support of the Irish people, the British would unable to stop them, especially as it was already engaged in a full-scale war abroad. We know nothing about the reasoning for selecting the positions which were to be occupied and they were far too isolated from one another to provide mutual communication and reinforcement. The project will reach Galway with a launch in NUIG on 16-November 2015. Irish Volunteers membership card. It would have had little chance of success even if the arms had become available, but without those arms it had virtually no chance at all. Irish Volunteers officers at a training camp in summer, 1915. Yet it was only natural that the leaders of 1916 looked to Dublin, given that the Volunteers there were the strongest and most organised. Picture: Irish Military Archives. Roger Casement, the son of a British army officer but a committed Irish nationalist, was sent to Germany to secure as many arms as possible.The German government agreed to send a consignment of 25,000 rifles on board a ship called the Aud. Special Section of Old ‘A’ Company, 4th Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers, top row: Sean Treacy, Padraig O Broinn, Gabriel Murray, Brian McCormack, Seán O Broinn and Henry S Murray. New York, 1961. p. 406) The rising was not supported by public opinion in Ireland. The Easter Rising was a rebellion against British rule in Ireland. This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager. The Irish Volunteers Plan. The leaders of the Irish Volunteers such as Eoin MacNeill and the O’Rahilly took a very pragmatic approach and believed a rebellion should only take place if they could procure enough armaments and if they had a realistic chance of success, or if the British Authorities started to crack down on nationalists by arresting leaders or banning the Volunteers from marching. Given the clandestine nature of the Rising's final planning, the Council left no written record of their deliberations and historians have therefore been forced to conjecture the objectives of their strategy. This proved virtually impossible and the British were able infiltrate some of the organisations involved and glean at least some idea of what was going on. The Easter Rising signaled the start of the republican revolution in Ireland. It represented an unprecedented explosion of violence for a society that had been remarkably peaceful since the bloodletting of the 1798 rebellion. It set sail on 9th April with the intention of unloading the arms on the coast in Kerry in time for the Easter Rising. (Edmund Curtis. Was it orchestrated as a localised revolt or was Dublin the planned centrepiece of a national insurrection? Both organisations contained men prepared to fight for the cause but co-ordinating them was to prove quite a challenge.There was also the problem of the leaders of these different groups providing a united front. They were supported by other smaller groups inclu… British soldiers at a barricade in Dublin during the Easter Rising. The inside of a membership card for The Irish Volunteers. They were aware that there had been numerous failed rebellions before but they thought that this time could be different because Britain was pre-occupied with the war in Europe against Germany.They adhered to the principle that England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity.Their plan was to seize key buildings in Dublin and throughout the rest of the country and declare an Irish Republic before the British had time to react. The Supreme Council of the IRB met on 5 September 1914, just over a month after the British government had declared war on Germany. Within days, they were facing more than  18,000 heavily armed British troops. Thomas Clarke chaired the proceedings which decided to use the opportunity the Great War presented to mount a rebellion against British rule. This story map will contain geotagged images of historical sites and examples of public commemoration in order to tell the story of the 1916 Easter Rising. Desperate to preserve maximum secrecy, Clarke disbanded the larger advisory committee and formed an IRB Military Council in the spring of 1915 to confine preparations to a small, trusted cohort. Pearse said during his military trial that had the plan gone ahead he believed that "an Irish Republic would not only be proclaimed but "enthroned" also". var vglnk={key:'4e369ef70926117d806db0a61ab6db37'};(function(d,t){var s=d.createElement(t);s.type='text/javascript';s.async=!0;s.src='//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js';var r=d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];r.parentNode.insertBefore(s,r)}(document,'script')), Easter Rising – how rebels planned to overthrow British rule, Take a look inside this incredible minibus converted into a mini home, Take a look inside this traditional Irish coastal cottage, US President Joe Biden could be coming to Ireland in the summer, Irish Garda challenged to dance competition by Swiss police, Take a look inside this blissful 300-year-old cottage in Donegal. For Ireland’s republican minority “England’s difficulty” proved “Ireland’s opportunity.” Three organisations were centrally involved in the Easter Rising: the radical faction of the Irish Volunteers that split from the main body when Redmond supported enlistment in the British army; the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) secret society, also known as the Fenians; and the Irish Citizen Army, a socialist militia established by militant trade-unionists during the 1913 Lockout. Yet this reading of history is based on the distortion caused by the events that ensued rather than what may originally have been intended. Dr Richard McElligott lectures in Modern Irish History in UCD. The garden, established in 1966 on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, is dedicated to those who lost their lives fighting for Irish independence, not just in the Eastern Rising of 1916, but in a number of other famous uprisings from 1798-1921. Was 1916 meant to be a simple blood-sacrifice or a viable hammer blow to British control in Ireland? The Proclamation of the Irish Republic was read out in front of Dublin's General Post Office on April 24th, 1916 by Patrick Pearse. As detailed elsewhere in this magazine, Pearse and the Military Council sought desperately to secure large quantities of modern military grade weapons and explosives from Germany to give the Volunteers at least a fighting chance. The Irish Volunteers, the smaller of the two forces resulting from the September 1914 split over s… As you go through the full text, be sure to note the passage referring to the "gallant allies in Europe", which in the eyes of the British marked Pearse and his co-revolutionaries as working together with the German Empire. It was adversely affected due to failure of a plan involving Germany. Pearse may have dreamt of martyrdom, but there is little evidence that the other members of the Military Council shared his enthusiasm for death. 24 April 1916 The rising begins on Easter … Perfect on a topical display wall. Yet, the Volunteers increasingly came under the influence of its more radical IRB members. Users will be able to explore your narrative, engaging actively with the story of the Easter Rising to reach their own conclusions about the event. Easter Rising Way is a pedestrian staircase that runs along 53rd Avenue, from 65th Place to 64th Street in west Queens. The rising was also originally intended to occur across Ireland, but the secrecy of the planning and confused communications meant nearly all the action occurred in the city of Dublin. Decides to (a) Maintain armed and trained military Volunteer Force, (b) To resist partition, (c) To end British Rule in Ireland, (d) To resist the enlistment of Irishmen into the British Army. Photo: Military Archives. Yet this perception of 1916 is coloured by how events subsequently transpired rather than what may have initially been planned or desired. When the Volunteers acrimoniously split later that month, the IRB looked to the faction that remained loyal to MacNeill to provide the army for this rebellion. On Easter Saturday, the day before the Rising was due to begin, he sent his officers across the country to tell every unit of the Volunteers that they had been deceived and that the “planned operation” had been cancelled. It is known in New York as a “step street”. Men like Pearse and MacDiarmada, however, took a more idealistic view and were prepared to contemplate offering themselves as martyrs in an attempt to inspire the Irish people towards fighting for independence.By early 1916, the plans for the Rising were taking shape but there was still the major problem that the rebels lacked firepower, certainly the kind of firepower that could defeat the British army – one of the most powerful military forces in the world at that time. Bettmann / Getty Images The genesis of the 1916 Rising can be traced to a conference organised among Irish separatists which took place on 9 September 1914 in Dublin. Lesson plans and document packs from 3 schools, the fruits of a 2014 workshop for teachers, are available to download. This might have been enough for MacNeill to support a rebellion but he soon discovered that it was a forgery, created by members of the Council, possibly Plunkett and MacDiarmada, to persuade him to back the Rising.As it turned out, it had the opposite effect. After all, the Rising launched on Easter Monday was, by necessity, a different animal from that which had originally been envisioned. The Easter 1916 rising provided a “blood sacrifice” for an Ireland that had becomeap;athetic. The Easter Rising 1916. This website and its content is subject to our Terms and Conditions. Here it is performed by the Wolfe Tones. However we know the Military Council sought to work from Plunkett's plan. If it then proved opportune, an independence struggle could be launched through a combined strategy of guerrilla warfare and mass public resistance. Its seven members were Tom Clarke, Éamonn Ceannt, James Connolly, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett and Patrick Pearse. The Military Council anticipated his opposition and knew they could not proceed with a credible rebellion without the support of the Volunteers under MacNeill’s command.This led to creation of the infamous ‘Castle document’ purporting to reveal that the British authorties in Dublin Castle were planning to clamp down on all nationalist activity. He believed that 150 Dublin-based companies; 'small, compact, perfectly disciplined, and determinedly separatist would be ready to act with tremendous effect if war brings us the moment' and if supplied with adequate weapons the Dublin men 'would rise tomorrow if we gave the word'. Share your map as a Story Map Tour Most of the soldiers for the planned rising were members of the Irish Volunteer Force. They drew inspiration from the trench warfare of the Western Front which continually demonstrated the superiority of holding a defensive position. Each episode tells the story of one of the signatories of the proclamation, starting with Tom Clarke, the father of the Rising, moving through James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett, Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas McDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt and Patrick Pearse. Meanwhile, the Military Council continued with its preparations and had to contend with difficult communication problems. 1916 The Easter Rising is a major 7 part historical documentary series telling the stories behind the 7 signatories of the 1916 Easter Proclamation. The Council calculated that although the rebels would be small in number at the outset, they would quickly be joined by thousands of recruits from all across Ireland once the flame of revolution had been ignited. Both Plunkett and Pearse concluded that the reason so many previous Irish rebellions had failed was that their conspirators had never comprehended the vital strategic importance of the capital. The Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood was responsible for planning the Easter Rising. Responsibility for the planning of the rising was given to Tom Clarke and Sean Mac Dermott. The separatist conference in September 1914 had established an advisory military committee which asked Joseph Plunkett to draft an embryonic plan for a potential insurrection in Dublin. Convention held on 25 October 1914. After all, the Rising launched on Easter Monday was, by necessity, a different animal from that which had originally been envisioned. For MacNeill and JJ O'Connell (its Chief of Inspection), the Irish Volunteers were essentially a defensive rather than a revolutionary force which should only be utilised to resist the possible introduction of conscription in Ireland by means of engaging in a guerrilla campaign against British forces there. The article 1. The intended rebellion would also have involved at least three times as many Volunteers as those who were eventually mustered. Jan 13, 2016 - These great timeline display cards will let children place the key events of the Easter 1916 Rising in chronological order. Connolly held out hope that a revolt in Dublin would spark a national revolution. MacNeill was furious when he discovered that the document was a forgery and withdrew all his support. The loss of arms was a massive blow to the rebel cause. Bottom Row: Gerald Murray, Fred Schweppe, Pat Mason, Ed McNamara, Louis McDermott and Denis R Dunne. Left to right: Terence MacSwiney, Richard Mulcahy, Michael O’Buachalla, John Brennan, JJ O’Connell, Peter Paul Galligan, Mick Spillane, Dick Fitzgerald, Gardner and Mick Cremen. It appeared the River Shannon was envisioned to act as a bulwark behind which Volunteers from Ulster and provincial Leinster could withdraw. The Germans didn’t support the … While the GPO was seized, other key buildings such as Trinity College and Dublin Castle, the very centre of British rule in Ireland, were seemingly omitted from the original plans. That meant it had to rely on other organisations such as the Irish Volunteer Force and the Irish Citizen Army. It was an underground organisation and the Easter Rising had to be kept secret until the very last moment when they were ready to strike. It seems to have been when one considers that the usually dispassionate James Connolly would later hail Plunkett 'a brilliant military man'. The British capture of a shipment of German arms on 21st April 1916 greatly reduced its scale outside the capital. Most of those who claim to have seen the original plan for the aborted Easter Sunday rebellion asserted that it did not extend outside the capital. Yet it remains impossible to verify Ó Briain's claims. The Council faced considerable difficulties in staging a rebellion. It also appears that the Military Council had chosen its positions with the extremely naive assumption that the British would not respond by using their key advantage: artillery. The Council hoped to arm its troops with weapons smuggled in from Germany. In this view they were both heavily influenced by their study of Robert Emmet's failed uprising of 1803 and at odds with the successful, and largely rural, war the IRA would fight from 1919. Contains 2230+ letters. The Irish government has again been criticized for its lack of planning for the centenary of the 1916 Rising – this time by its own expert committee set up to commemorate the Easter rebellion. 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