The Easter Rising - The Birth of the IRA

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The Easter Rising - The Birth of the IRA

After the outbreak of the First World War, the Fenians realized that their time was coming! If an uprising in peacetime, as practice showed, was doomed to failure, then in wartime... When the troops are mostly at the front, a group of desperate guys in the rear has a chance of success...


Leadership of the Uprising

The Fenians prepared carefully. They studied the experience of their predecessors, in whose role they played the participants of the battles on Krasnaya Presnya in 1905 and the Paris Communards. The Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood bet on urban battles, which they considered to be analogous to battles in the mountains, where a small detachment can defend a gorge from large enemy forces until the end of the war. True, they did not take into account that a city is a large set of such "gorges", in which you can always find a detour.




Patrick Pearse is the creator of the Irish Volunteers.

The organizations that became the strike force of the rebels were the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army. Both appeared in 1913. The Irish Volunteers were led by poet and writer Patrick Pearse, and the organization's charter stated: "to ensure the security and support of the rights and privileges of all people in Ireland." All volunteers paid weekly membership fees, which were used to hire teachers and instructors, and rent premises for training. The program included shooting, tactical training, and similar subjects. The most interesting thing is that the organization was official! The volunteers were supposed to become a local militia in the event of a German landing. By August 1914, the organization had 180 members, but in reality there were far fewer fighters. Including because after the start of the war, the volunteers were divided into those who went to the front and those who refused and began to prepare for an uprising.


James Connolly - Marxist and insurgent

The Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was created by socialist and revolutionary James Connolly. Initially, it was a group of volunteers protecting workers' rallies from the police: Connolly himself served in the English army for seven years, after which he deserted and went to work as a laborer, where he became interested in socialism. Since such interests, to put it mildly, were not encouraged by his employer, he flew out of work like a cork from a bottle, but friends found a position for James as secretary of the Dublin Socialist Club. Soon, the active Connolly transformed the club into the Irish Socialist Republican Party - the first Marxist organization in Ireland. The ICA he created became a serious force in terms of protecting workers' protests from the police and hooligans hired by business owners, but real fighters capable of fighting weapons in my hands, there was a little bit there.


Irish Women's Council on the march

The third force in organizing the uprising was such a strange organization as "Cumann na mBan", that is... "The Irish Women's Council". Despite its female composition, the ladies were not engaged in handicrafts and culinary studies, but in combat training: in fact, it was the women's wing of the "Irish Volunteers", but with a high degree of autonomy. After the war began, the ladies supported the wing of the "volunteers" that refused conscription and began to prepare for the uprising. The roles of the women from this women's council in the event of an uprising were traditional: nurses, cooks, couriers, scouts and... snipers (yes, the legends about the "white tights" battalion did not come out of nowhere!).

The Fenians began preparing for the uprising in 1914. Tom Clarke of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sean MacDermott of the Irish Volunteers were appointed as leaders. The following year, MacDermott and Clarke set up a Military Committee to draw up plans for the uprising. The committee's leadership believed that, thanks to London's implementation of unpopular decisions (primarily the call-up to war), the population would soon support any uprising.


Roger Casement revolutionary and diplomat

Of course, the Fenians were not going to start a rebellion without support from abroad. If in 1798 such support was provided by France, then in 1915 they decided to look for it in Germany. In April 1915, committee member Joseph Plunkett went to Germany, where he met with another of the founders of the Irish Volunteers, Roger Casement, a former British diplomat who had joined the Irish revolutionaries. Casement managed to wrest 20 rifles from the German General Staff for the uprising, but he failed to persuade the Germans to create a fully equipped and trained Irish brigade from Irish prisoners.


IGA before the uprising, on a banner: “We are not for the king, we are not for the Kaiser, we are for Ireland!”

A week before the uprising, the rebel headquarters, headed by the "Pope of the Irish Volunteers" Patrick Pearse, announced maneuvers for members of this organization: this way the leadership planned to divert the attention of English spies, but... Apparently, they failed to do this. On April 21, 1916, Keynesment landed from a German submarine in Tarley Bay. And immediately after landing, he was arrested! The ship "Liebau" with weapons on board was also intercepted, despite the extraordinary secrecy: the ship was sailing under the Norwegian flag, the entire crew was made up of Germans who knew Norwegian, and even the ship's log was kept in Norwegian. Perhaps the British intercepted and deciphered radio communications between the German ambassador to the United States and Berlin, or maybe there was an agent in one of the revolutionary organizations (and most likely - both).


Rebels on the roof, with weapons - clearly problems...

The leader of the Volunteers, Owen MacNeill, wavered. MacDermott's arguments about the availability of German aid had persuaded him to support the rebellion, then news of the interception of the ship forced him to abandon his plans. Pearse's orders for the rebellion were met with MacNeill's counter-orders to cancel it. As a result of this confusion, the number of fighters who took part in the rebellion was significantly smaller than the one his leaders had counted on. In fact, it was not all of Ireland that rebelled, but only Dublin.

It must be said that the fears that the English administration would learn of the impending uprising were entirely justified. The English did indeed manage to obtain information about the impending event on April 17. However, the Deputy Minister for Ireland, Sir Matthew Nathan, did not trust the accuracy of this information, so he decided to hold off on active action until the Monday after Easter, April 24.


Rebels on a mission from the Main Post Office

But on April 24, it became clear that 1200 Irish Volunteers and IGA fighters had occupied the Dublin General Post Office, the Four Courts building, Dublin City Hall, the biscuit factory, Boland's Mill and the poorhouse hospital. Michael Mullin's group had dug in at St. Stephen's Green in the city centre. However, the rebels' plans immediately began to fall apart: the attack on Dublin Castle was repelled, Trinity College was defended by Unionist students, and the captured fort in Phoenix Park was found to be empty of weapons. And the situation with weapons was quite sad: rifles - a terrible zoo, starting with the Martini-Henry of 1871, ending with modern "Mausers" and "Enfields", but those who got at least single-shot Martini-Henries were lucky, because many rebels had only revolvers. With popular support, things were also awkward: when local residents tried to dismantle the barricades at the Jacobs biscuit factory and in St. Stephen's Green, the Fenians opened fire on them to kill, after which there was no point in talking about supporting the uprising.


Parade before the start of the uprising

The rebels were lucky: at the start of the uprising, the English administration had no more than 400 fighters at hand. But energetic measures were taken to suppress the uprising! For the first time since the 18th century, "military law" was put into effect in Dublin - any man who found himself in a house from which soldiers were shot could be considered a rebel, and three people were, indeed, shot in the heat of the moment. Troops, machine guns and XNUMX-pounder guns were brought into the city by rail. By Wednesday, an infantry brigade was transferred from England.


A homemade armored car from the Guinness company. The brewers, although Irish, supported the Crown...

At first, the troops suffered heavy losses: the British command used column movements and frontal attacks. But soon they began to practice machine gun fire, sniper warfare and improvised armored cars (the Guinness company built several of them from its beer tankers). The rebels' hopes that the British would not destroy private property also did not come true. The government troops advanced slowly, under the cover of artillery and machine gun fire, methodically driving the rebels out of one building after another. Inside the houses, fierce hand-to-hand fighting broke out here and there.


Defense of the Main Post Office

The General Post Office housed the rebel headquarters, and the British brought up artillery and began shelling the building. Connolly received a bullet in the ankle and handed over command to Pearce. When the shelling caused a fire, the rebels decided to evacuate. They broke through the wall and took up new positions in a nearby house. But it was clear to everyone that further resistance would only lead to more casualties among the city's civilian population. Pearce gave the order to the rebels to capitulate. The last defenders of the Dublin General Post Office surrendered on April 29. One of the last to surrender was the commander of the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, Eamon de Valera, a future star of Irish politics.


Rebel Manifesto

In addition to Dublin, minor skirmishes between the rebels and government troops took place in Ashbourne, where, having received nine contradictory orders from headquarters, the Irish simply dispersed. In County Wexford, a hundred rebels captured the small town of Enniscorthy (it is still not a real city - the population is less than 10 thousand people), where they held out until they received Pearse's order to surrender. Another detachment of rebels gathered in County Galway. It consisted of about 700 people, but only 25 rifles and 300 shotguns, the rest of the Irish were armed with pikes - as in 1798! By April 29, having realized the situation, the detachment dispersed.

The Royal Army lost 116 men killed and 368 wounded in the battles, in addition, 16 policemen were killed and 29 wounded. The rebels lost significantly fewer: 318 Irishmen died along with civilians. 3430 men and 79 women were arrested, most of those arrested were released soon after the defeat of the uprising. But 15 leaders of the uprising were shot (a total of 90 death sentences were handed down, but only 15 were confirmed). American citizen Eamon de Valera was lucky - the English did not want to quarrel with a possible ally in the war over a Fenian.


Streets of Dublin after the uprising

What was the significance of the last rebellion? Well, 1480 people were interned in a camp in Fronchog. This camp became a real university for Irish revolutionaries! Such "fathers of Irish democracy" as Michael Collins, Terence MacSweeney and many other fighters for independence, those who would achieve freedom for Ireland, passed through it. And also... Members of the British Parliament from the nationalist party Sinn Fein left it and created their own, Irish Parliament, which declared the creation of the Irish Republic. And any republic needs an army. And it appeared - the Irish Republican Army...


A modern IRA poster suggests...
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  1. +3
    25 January 2025 08: 15
    The Fenians began preparing for the uprising in 1914.
    Even before the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914, the Irish bought 900 Mauser rifles in Germany and secretly shipped them to Ireland for the anti-British uprising. This movement did not go unnoticed by the Protestants from Ulster, and they also began to arm themselves in response. I wonder if the royal administration in Ireland did not see this and did nothing? We can also add to this the active work of the Irish in the USA, who, together with the German community, carried out anti-British propaganda - the title of a book written by one of the leaders of this uprising alone, What Germany Could Do for Ireland, what is it worth? How could you not notice this?
    1. +4
      25 January 2025 09: 06
      After the outbreak of the First World War, the Fenians realized that their time was coming! If an uprising in peacetime, as practice showed, was doomed to failure, then in wartime... When the troops are mostly at the front, a group of desperate guys in the rear has a chance of success...

      Faced with the paramilitary movement in Ireland, the British created their own paramilitary units, the "black and tans", which carried out acts of intimidation and terror against overt or covert supporters of Irish independence. Incidentally, they did quite well: they were almost exclusively veterans of the First World War, their fighting spirit was strong, and their hatred of Irish "rebels and cowards" (Irish rebels mostly avoided conscription) was very high.
      Pictured below is Black and White on duty in Dublin.
      1. +4
        25 January 2025 10: 04
        About black and white - in continuation of the Irish theme)))
    2. +6
      25 January 2025 09: 24
      Members of the Irish Republican Army, 1920s.
    3. +2
      25 January 2025 10: 09
      I can only assume one thing: the English were so disliked there that they rarely reported to the administration. That's why the information leaked out literally on the eve of the uprising...
  2. +3
    25 January 2025 08: 53
    Despite the suppression, the rebellion and the British response led to greater popular support for Irish independence. In the December 1918 elections, the republican party Sinn Fein won a landslide victory in Ireland. On 21 January 1919, it formed a separatist government, and a new war began, ending on 21 January with Britain's defeat.
    1. +6
      25 January 2025 10: 06
      There is still a lot of interesting stuff there, including the Civil War that began after the victory...
  3. +6
    25 January 2025 10: 42
    Sigmund Freud said: "The Irish are the only ones who cannot be psychoanalyzed."
  4. +4
    25 January 2025 13: 58
    A very interesting topic of the history of the IRA...thanks to the author for the article. hi
  5. 0
    26 January 2025 20: 37
    I wonder if a movie was made about these events?
    And of course, thanks to the author for a concise and at the same time maximally informative article on such a complicated topic.
    1. 0
      27 January 2025 19: 22
      There is a good 1996 film "Michael Collins", with Lyman Nielsen in the leading role, it begins, precisely, with the defeat of the "Easter Rising", but to a greater extent it is about the hero of the next article of the "Irish cycle")))
  6. +1
    27 January 2025 19: 25
    A modern IRA poster suggests...

    The Irish are building a time machine to supply their ancestors with weapons.