The document read outside the General Post Office in Sackville Street, opening "Irishmen and Irishwomen" (1916)
The Proclamation of the Irish Republic, read by Patrick Pearse on 24 April 1916.
History · The 20th century
The Easter Rising
24–29 April 1916
Irish republican insurrection in Dublin, and the turning point towards independence
An armed insurrection launched in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 by the Irish Volunteers and James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army, organised in secret by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Some 1,200 rebels seized buildings across the city, with the General Post Office in Sackville Street as headquarters, where Patrick Pearse read a proclamation of an Irish Republic. A German arms shipment had been intercepted and Eoin MacNeill had countermanded the mobilisation, so the rising was confined to the capital; after six days of shelling and street fighting it surrendered. The execution of fifteen leaders at Kilmainham Gaol transformed public opinion and, within three years, produced a Sinn Féin landslide and a war of independence.
How to spot them
- ▸A proclamation read on the steps of a post office on a Monday in April 1916
- ▸Seven signatories, all of whom are shot within weeks
- ▸A countermanding order in the newspapers that confines a national rising to one city
- ▸A knight of the realm landed from a German submarine at Banna Strand and hanged at Pentonville
- ▸A poem with the refrain about a terrible beauty
What happened
The seizure of the General Post Office as rebel headquarters, later shelled into a shell (1916)
The GPO in what is now O'Connell Street; the building was gutted by fire.
A former British consular official landed from a U-boat at Banna Strand, County Kerry, and hanged that August (1916)
Sir Roger Casement, whose arms ship the Aud was scuttled off Cork.
A wounded commandant carried out on a stretcher and shot while tied to a chair, 12 May 1916 (1916)
James Connolly, founder of the Irish Citizen Army, the last of the leaders executed.
A countermanding order published in the Sunday Independent, which cut the turnout to a fraction (1916)
Eoin MacNeill's order, issued when he learned the Volunteers were to be used for insurrection.
Yeats's poem of September 1916 with the refrain about a terrible beauty (1916)
Easter, 1916, naming MacDonagh, MacBride, Connolly and Pearse.
A gunboat, the Helga, shelling the city centre from the Liffey (1916)
The Helga bombarded Liberty Hall and the Sackville Street area during the fighting.
Quick-fire facts
- •The rising began at about noon on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and the surrender came on Saturday 29 April
- •The seven signatories of the Proclamation were Thomas Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh, Éamonn Ceannt and Joseph Plunkett; all were executed
- •Fifteen men were executed in Dublin in May 1916, most of them at Kilmainham Gaol; Casement was hanged in London in August
- •Around 485 people were killed, a majority of them civilians
- •Éamon de Valera, who commanded at Boland's Mill, had his sentence commuted and went on to lead the state for decades
- •Constance Markievicz, second in command at St Stephen's Green, was reprieved and in 1918 became the first woman elected to the House of Commons, though she did not take her seat
- •The rebels' proclamation addressed Irishmen and Irishwomen and promised equal rights and equal opportunities to all citizens
- •Martial law and the executions swung opinion behind Sinn Féin, which won 73 seats in the 1918 general election
- •The centenary in 2016 was marked by a state commemoration at the GPO
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Charles Townshend — Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion
- Fearghal McGarry — The Rising: Ireland, Easter 1916