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1916 Irish Easter Rising.
Hello Everyone, I noticed there was not a thread for the Irish Easter Rising. So I decided I will make one. For thoes of you who do not know about Irelands Revolution.

Leaders:
The leaders were James Connolly, Patrick Pierce, Thomas Clarke, Sean Mac Dermott, Joseph mary Plunkett, Éamon de Valera, and Thomas macDonagh.

James Connolly.
5 June 1868 12 May 1916.
was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics.
Connolly was born in an Irish slum in Edinburgh in 1868. His parents had emigrated to Scotland from Monaghan and settled in the Cowgate, an Irish ghetto where thousands of Irish settled.
He was born in St Patrick’s Roman Catholic parish, which was known as "Little Ireland". His father and grandfathers were labourers. He had an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He then left and worked in labouring jobs. Because of the economic difficulties he was having, like his eldest brother John, he joined the British Army.
He enlisted in the Army at age 14, falsifying his age and giving his name as Reid, as his brother John had done. He served in Ireland with the Army for nearly seven years. It was a very turbulent period in rural Ireland. He would later become involved in the land issue.
It was an influential period in his life. He saw first hand how unjust the system was, and the British Army was there to enforce this. He developed a deep hatred for the British Army that lasted his entire life. When he heard the regiment was being transferred to India, he deserted the army.
Connolly had another reason for not wanting to go to India: a young woman by the name of Lillie Reynolds. Lillie moved to Scotland with James after he left the Army and they married in April 1890. They settled in Edinburgh. There, Connolly began to get involved in the Socialist Movement, but with a young family to support, he needed a way to provide for them.
He briefly established a cobbler’s shop in 1895, but this failed after a few months as his shoe-mending skills were insufficient. He was also strongly active with the socialist movement at the time, and he prioritized this over his own work.
Connolly stood aloof from the leadership of the Irish Volunteers. He considered them too bourgeois and unconcerned with Ireland’s economic independence. In 1916, thinking they were merely posturing and unwilling to take decisive action against Britain, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send the ICA against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection that very year. In order to talk Connolly out of any such rash action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting, the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Easter of that year.
When the Easter Rising occurred on 24 April 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As the Dublin Brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de facto commander-in-chief. Following the surrender, he said to other prisoners: "Don’t worry. Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free." Connolly was not actually held in gaol, but in a room (now called the "Connolly Room") at the State Apartments in Dublin Castle, which had been converted to a first-aid station for troops recovering from the war.[27] He was taken to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from the gaol and then taken to the gaol to be executed. Visited by his wife, and asking about public opinion, he commented, "They will all forget that I am an Irishman."[28] He confessed his sins, said to be his first religious act since marriage.
He was so badly injured from the fighting (a doctor had already said he had no more than a day or two to live, but the execution order was still given) that he was unable to stand before the firing squad. His absolution and last rites were administered by a Capuchin, Father Aloysius. Asked to pray for the soldiers about to shoot him, he said: "I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights."
Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he was tied to a chair and then shot. The executions were not well received, even throughout Britain, and drew unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government was trying to lure into the war in Europe. Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister, ordered that no more executions were to take place; an exception being that of Roger Casement as he had not yet been tried.
Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On 12 May 1916 he was transported by military ambulance to Kilmainham Gaol, carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher, tied to a chair and shot. His body (along with those of the other rebels) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebels deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly’s execution, however, that caused the most controversy. Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for.
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Patrck Pierce.
10 November 1879 3 May 1916.
was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. He was declared "President of the Provisional Government" of the Irish Republic in one of the bulletins issued by the Rising’s leaders, a status that was however disputed by others associated with the rebellion both then and subsequently. Following the collapse of the Rising and the execution of Pearse, along with his brother (Willie Pearse) and fourteen other leaders, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion.
In December 1913, Bulmer Hobson swore Pearse into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB),[14] an organisation dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland and its replacement with an Irish Republic. He was soon co-opted onto the IRB’s Supreme Council by Tom Clarke.[15] Pearse was then one of many people who were members of both the IRB and the Volunteers. When he became the Volunteers’ Director of Military Organisation in 1914[16] he was the highest ranking Volunteer in the IRB membership, and instrumental in the latter’s commandeering of the remaining minority of the Volunteers for the purpose of rebellion. By 1915 he was on the IRB’s Supreme Council, and its secret Military Council, the core group that began planning for a rising while war raged on the European Western Front.
On 1 August 1915, Pearse gave a now-famous graveside oration at the funeral of the Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. It closed with the words:
"""Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God Who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ‘65 and ‘67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and Defenders of the Realm had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.""".
Pearse, given his speaking and writing skills, was chosen by the leading IRB man Tom Clarke to be the spokesman for the Rising. It was Pearse who, in behalf of the IRB shortly before Easter in 1916, issued the orders to all Volunteer units throughout the country for three days of manoeuvres beginning Easter Sunday, which was the signal for a general uprising. When Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Volunteers, learned what was being planned without the promised arms from Germany, he countermanded the orders via newspaper, causing the IRB to issue a last minute order to go through with the plan the following day, greatly limiting the numbers who turned out for the rising.
When the Easter Rising eventually erupted on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, there never was any plan for a military victory in the minds of the leaders. It was Pearse who proclaimed a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office and headquarters of the revolutionaries. After six days fighting, heavy civilian casualties and great destruction of property, Pearse issued the order to surrender along with the remaining leaders.
Pearse and fourteen other leaders, including his brother Willie, were court-martialled and executed by firing squad. Sir Roger Casement, who had tried unsuccessfully to recruit an insurgent force among Irish-born prisoners of war from the Irish Brigade in Germany, was hanged in London the following August. Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh and Pearse himself were the first of the rebels to be executed, on the morning of 3 May 1916. Pearse was 36 years old at the time of his death.
Sir John Maxwell, the General Officer commanding the British forces in Ireland, sent a telegram to H.H. Asquith, then Prime Minister, advising him not to return the bodies of Pádraig and Willie Pearse to their family, saying: "Irish sentimentality will turn these graves into martyrs shrines to which annual processions will be made which would cause constant irritation in this country.
Maxwell also suppressed a letter from Pearse to his mother, and two poems dated 1 May 1916. He submitted copies of them also to Prime Minister Asquith, saying that some of the content was "objectionable."
In addition that document used the term "President of the Provisional Government", not "President of the Republic". A "President of a government" is akin to a prime minister, not a president of a state. Pearse and his colleagues also discussed proclaiming Prince Joachim (the Kaiser’s youngest son) as an Irish constitutional monarch, if the Central Powers won the First World War, which suggests that their ideas for the political future of the country had to await the war’s outcome.
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Thomas Clark.
11 March 1858 3 May 1916.
was an Irish revolutionary leader and arguably the person most responsible for the 1916 Easter Rising. A proponent of violent revolution for most of his life, he spent 15 years in prison. Following his release he organized the Easter Rising, and was executed after it was quashed.
Clarke was born on the Isle of Wight to James Clarke from Carrigallen, Leitrim, and his newly married bride, Mary Palmer from Clogheen Tipperary. His father was a soldier in the British Army and was based there. His father was transferred to South Africa when Thomas was one. The family moved with him. They did not return to Ireland until he was seven. He grew up in Dungannon, County Tyrone.
Dungannon, in the heart of east Tyrone, was a part of the country that had witnessed constant resistance to English interference in Irish affairs from the early modern period. It was a hotbed of paramilitary organization, some of which was agrarian located, other of which was politically motivated. The famine had afflicted that part of Ireland well into the early 1850s, and was very much within living memory during Tom’s youth. This was a stronghold of the United Irishmen in times past, and became a center of Fenianism. DungannonCoalisland was a bastion of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which in 1867, had risen in arms in various parts of Ireland. Clarke was drawn into this type of activity. When he was old enough to join, he became a member of the IRB in Dungannon.
The IRB was a secret oath-bound society committed to ridding Ireland of English rule and establishing an Irish Republic through physical force. In 1878, its national organizer, John Daly, visited Dungannon, and Clarke attended the meeting. He was captivated by Daly, and very soon afterwords was initiated into the IRB by Daly himself. From the late 1870s onward, Clarke was totally committed to the cause of Irish republicanism. Before long, Clarke was playing a central role in local IRB activities.
In 1880, riots erupted in Dungannon between locals and the police. Clarke, armed with a rifle, proceeded to fire at police, and the crowd then proceeded to attack the constabulary. The authorities took this violence very seriously, and Clarke decided to leave the area in fear of his life. Friends of his were emigrating to America, and he decided to join them. He arrived in New York in later that year, at the age of 22. He managed to find work almost immediately as a hotel porter, but more importantly, he made contact with the American arm of the Fenian Movement, Clan na Gael.
Clan na Gael was as significant as the branch in Ireland; they had more freedom in America and could foster republicanism and collect money for the cause. Many of the events of the 1880s were instigated by Clan na Gael. It was Clan na Gael who planned a bombing campaign in England. This followed a series of failed uprisings in Ireland, and marked a change of tactics as the IRB and Clan na Gael decided to strike at the heart of the British Empire, embarking on a campaign designed to put the issue of Ireland at the forefront of British politics.
Clarke was sent back to England to participate in a dynamite campaign, in which bombs were being set off across London in places like the Tower of London and the Underground. The operation was riddled with informers and the police were actually following Clarke as he was engaged in surveillance missions.
The experience of being betrayed by an infiltrator in England when Clarke was on active service for the Fenians in Britain added greatly to his awareness of personal security. It contributed to his desire to be always in the backgrounda shadowy figure, a manipulative figure, involved, but removed. In his later revolution career, he was never directly betrayed by any close associate.
Before he was able to carry out his mission, Clarke was arrested and tried at the Old Bailey in London in May 1883 under the assumed name of Henry Hammond Wilson, a pseudonym he adopted during the course of the dynamiting campaign. He was found guilty under the treason felony act and sentenced to penal servitude for life.
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Sean MacDermott.February 28, 1883 May 12, 1916
Mac Diarmada was born in Corranmore, close to Kiltyclogher in County Leitrim, an area where the landscape was marked by reminders of poverty and oppression.
Surrounding Mac Diarmada in rural Corranmore, north Leitrim, there were signs of Irish history throughout the area. There was an ancient sweat-house, Mass rocks from the penal times and the persecutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, and deserted abodes as an aftermath of the hunger of the 1840s. He was educated by the Irish Christian Brothers. In 1908 he moved to Dublin, by which time he already had a long involvement in several Irish separatist and cultural organizations, including Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Gaelic League. He was soon promoted to the Supreme Council of the IRB and eventually elected secretary.
In 1910 he became manager of the radical newspaper Irish Freedom, which he founded along with Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough. He also became a national organizer for the IRB, and was taken under the wing of veteran Fenian Tom Clarke. Indeed over the year the two became nearly inseparable. Shortly thereafter Mac Diarmada was stricken with polio and forced to walk with a cane.
In November 1913 Mac Diarmada was one of the original members of the Irish Volunteers, and continued to work to bring that organization under IRB control. In May 1915 Mac Diarmada was arrested in Tuam, County Galway, under the Defense of the Realm Act for giving a speech against enlisting into the British Army.
Following his release in September 1915, he joined the secret Military Committee of the IRB, which was responsible for planning the rising. Indeed Mac Diarmada and Clarke were the people most responsible for it.
Due to his disability, Mac Diarmada took little part in the fighting of Easter week, but was stationed at the headquarters in the General Post Office. Following the surrender, he nearly escaped execution by blending in with the large body of prisoners. He was eventually recognized by Daniel Hoey of G Division. Following a court-martial on May 9, Mac Diarmada was executed by firing squad on May 12 at the age of 33. In September 1919 Hoey was shot dead by Michael Collins’s Squad. Likewise, the British Officer Lee-Wilson, who ordered Mac Diarmada to shot, rather than imprisoned, was also killed in Cork on Collins’s order during the Irish War of Independence.
Before his execution, Mac Diarmada wrote, "I feel happiness the like of which I have never experienced. I die that the Irish nation might live!.
Seán MacDermott Street in Dublin is named in his honour. So too is Mac Diarmada rail station in Sligo, and Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada, the Gaelic Athletic Association stadium in Carrick-on-Shannon. Sean MacDermott tower in Ballymun, demolished in 2005, was also named after him. His house in Kiltyclogher is a National Monument.
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Joseph Mary Plunkett21 November 1887 4 May 1916
Was an Irish nationalist, poet, journalist, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising.
Plunkett was born at 26 Upper Fitzwilliam Street in one of Dublin’s most affluent neighborhoods. Both his parents came from wealthy backgrounds, and his father, George Noble Plunkett, had been made a papal count. Despite being born into a life of privilege, young Joe Plunkett did not have an easy childhood.

Plunkett contracted tuberculosis at a young age. This was to be a lifelong burden. His mother was unwilling to believe his health was as bad as it was. He spent part of his youth in the warmer climates of the Mediterranean and north Africa. He was educated at the Catholic University School (CUS) and by the Jesuits at Belvedere College in Dublin and later at Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, where he acquired some military knowledge from the Officers’ Training Corps. Throughout his life, Joseph Plunkett took an active interest in Irish heritage and the Irish language, and also studied Esperanto. Plunkett was one of the founders of the Irish Esperanto League. He joined the Gaelic League and began studying with Thomas MacDonagh, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. The two were both poets with an interest in theater, and both were early members of the Irish Volunteers, joining their provisional committee. Plunkett’s interest in Irish nationalism spread throughout his family, notably to his younger brothers George and John, as well as his father, who allowed his property in Kimmage, south Dublin, to be used as a training camp for young men who wished to escape conscription in England during World War I. Men there were instead trained to fight for Ireland.
Sometime in 1915 Joseph Plunkett joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and soon after was sent to Germany to meet with Roger Casement, who was negotiating with the German government on behalf of Ireland. Casement’s role as emissary was self-appointed, and, as he was not a member of the IRB, that organisation’s leadership wished to have one of their own contact Germany to negotiate German aid for an uprising the following year. He was seeking (but not limiting himself to) a shipment of arms. Casement, on the other hand, spent most of his energies recruiting Irish prisoners of war in Germany to form a brigade to fight instead for Ireland. Some nationalists in Ireland saw this as a fruitless endeavor, and preferred to seek weapons. Plunkett successfully got a promise of a German arms shipment to coincide with the rising.
Plunkett was one of the original members of the IRB Military Committee that was responsible for planning the rising, and it was largely his plan that was followed. As such he may be held partially responsible for the military disaster that ensued, one should realize that in the circumstances any plan was bound to fail.[citation needed] Shortly before the rising was to begin, Plunkett was hospitalized following a turn for the worse in his health. He had an operation on his neck glands days before Easter and had to struggle out of bed to take part in what was to follow. Still bandaged, he took his place in the General Post Office with several other of the rising’s leaders such as Patrick Pearse and Tom Clarke, though his health prevented him from being terribly active. His energetic aide de camp was Michael Collins.
Following the surrender Plunkett was held in Kilmainham Gaol, and faced a court martial. Hours before his execution by firing squad at the age of 28, he was married in the prison chapel to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism, whose sister, Muriel, had years before also converted and married his best friend Thomas MacDonagh, who was also executed for his role in the Easter Rising.
His brothers George Oliver Plunkett and Jack Plunkett joined him in the Easter Rising and later became important IRA men. However his father’s cousin, Horace Plunkett, was a Protestant Unionist who sought to reconcile both sides. Instead, he witnessed his own home burned down by the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War.
The main railway station in Waterford City is named after him as is Joseph Plunkett tower in Ballymun. Plunkett barracks in the Curragh Camp, County Kildare is also named after him.
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Éamon de Valera
14 October 1882 29 August 1975.
On 24 April 1916 the Easter Rising began. De Valera’s forces occupied Boland’s Mill, Grand Canal Street in Dublin, his chief task being to cover the southeastern approaches to the city. After a week of fighting the order came from Patrick Pearse to surrender. De Valera was court-martialled, convicted, and sentenced to death, but the sentence was immediately commuted to penal servitude for life. It has been argued that he was saved by four facts. First, he was one of the last to surrender and he was held in a different prison from other leaders, thus his execution was delayed by practicalities. Second, the US Consulate in Dublin made representations before his trial while the full legal situation (i.e., was he actually a United States citizen and if so, how would the United States react to the execution of one of its citizens?) was clarified. The fact that the UK was trying to bring the USA into the war in Europe at the time made the situation even more delicate, though this did not prevent the execution of Tom Clarke who had been a US citizen since 1905. Third, when Lt-Gen Sir John Maxwell reviewed his case he said "Who is he? I haven’t heard of him before. I wonder would he be likely to make trouble in the future?" On being told that de Valera was unimportant he commuted the court-martial’s death sentence to life imprisonment. De Valera had no Fenian family or personal background and his MI5 file in 1916 was very slim, only detailing his open membership of the Irish Volunteers. Fourth, by the time de Valera was court-martialled on 8 May, political pressure was being brought to bear on Maxwell to halt the executions; Maxwell had already told the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith that only two more were to be executed, Seán Mac Diarmada and James Connolly, although they were court-martialled the day after de Valera. His late trial, representations made by the American Consulate, his lack of Fenian background and political pressure all combined to save his life, though had he been tried a week earlier he would probably have been shot.
De Valera’s supporters and detractors argue about de Valera’s bravery during the Easter Rising. His supporters claim he showed leadership skills and a meticulous ability for planning. His detractors claim he suffered a nervous breakdown during the Rising. According to accounts from 1916 de Valera was seen running about, giving conflicting orders, refusing to sleep and on one occasion, having forgotten the password, almost getting himself shot in the dark by his own men. According to one account, de Valera, on being forced to sleep by one subordinate who promised to sit beside him and wake him if he was needed, suddenly woke up, his eyes "wild", screaming, "Set fire to the railway! Set fire to the railway!" Later in the Ballykinlar internment Camp, one de Valera loyalist approached another internee, a medical doctor, recounted the story, and asked for a medical opinion as to de Valera’s condition. He also threatened to sue the doctor, future Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD) and minister, Dr. Tom O’Higgins, if he ever repeated the story. De Valera’s latest biographer, Anthony J. Jordan, writes of this controversy, "Whatever happened in Boland’s Mills, or any other garrison, does not negate or undermine in any way the extraordinary heroism of Dev and his comrades". After imprisonment in Dartmoor, Maidstone and Lewes prisons, de Valera and his comrades were released under an amnesty in June 1917. On 10 July 1917 he was elected member of the House of Commons for East Clare (the constituency which he represented until 1959) in a by-election caused by the death of the previous incumbent Willie Redmond, brother of the Irish Party Leader John Redmond who had died fighting in World War I. In the 1918 general election he was elected both for that seat and Mayo East. In 1917 he was elected president of Sinn Féin, the party which had been blamed incorrectly for provoking the Easter Rising. This party became the political vehicle through which the survivors of the Easter Rising channelled their republican ethos and objectives. The previous president of Sinn Féin, Arthur Griffith, had championed an Anglo-Irish dual-monarchy based on the Austro-Hungarian model, with independent legislatures for both Ireland and Britain. This solution would, mutatis mutandis, emulate the situation following the Constitution of 1782 under Henry Grattan, until Ireland was legislatively subsumed into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
*I couldent add his Early life because Is far too long because it is mixed with other information. If you want to learn more look at the wikipedia page. Éamon de Valera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia*
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Thomas MacDonagh.
1 February 1878 3 May 1916
was an Irish nationalist, poet, playwright, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising.
MacDonagh was born in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary. He grew up in a household filled with music, poetry and learning and was instilled with a love of both English and Irish culture from a young age.
Both his parents were teachers; who strongly emphasized education. MacDonagh attended Rockwell College. While there MagDonagh aspired to become a priest or brother and spent several years studying for this the vocation, however, after a few years he realized that it wasn’t the life for him, and left.
He had abandoned a vocation for the priesthood, which came with the stigma of being "a spoiled priest". Very soon after, he published his first book of poems, Through the Ivory Gate, in 1902. He moved to Dublin where he joined the Gaelic League, soon establishing strong friendships with such men as Eoin MacNeill and Patrick Pearse.
Though credited as one of the Easter Rising’s seven leaders, MacDonagh was a late addition to that group. He didn’t join the secret Military Council that planned the rising until April 1916, weeks before the rising took place. The reason for his admittance at such a late date is uncertain. Still a relative newcomer to the IRB, men such as Clarke may have been hesitant to elevate him to such a high position too soon, which raises the question as to why he should be admitted at all. His close ties to Pearse and Plunkett may have been the cause, as well as his position as commandant of the Dublin Brigade (though his position as such would later be superseded by James Connolly as commandant-general of the Dublin division). Nevertheless, MacDonagh was a signatory of the Proclamation of the Republic.
During the rising, MacDonagh’s battalion was stationed at the massive complex of Jacob’s Biscuit Factory. On the way to this destination the battalion encountered the veteran Fenian, John MacBride, who on the spot joined the battalion as second-in-command, and in fact took over part of the command throughout Easter Week, although he had had no prior knowledge and was in the area by accident. MacDonagh’s original second in command was Michael O’Hanrahan.
As it was, despite MacDonagh’s rank and the fact that he commanded one of the strongest battalions, they saw little fighting, as the British Army avoided the factory as they established positions in central Dublin. MacDonagh received the order to surrender on April 30, though his entire battalion was fully prepared to continue the engagement. Following the surrender, MacDonagh was court martialled, and executed by firing squad on 3 May 1916, aged thirty-eight.
His widow died of heart failure while swimming in Skerries, Co Dublin on July 9, 1917; his son Donagh MacDonagh became a prominent poet, playwright, songwriter and judge. He died in 1968. In addition, his extended family were spread across the British Isles in the Irish diaspora.
MacDonagh was generally credited with being one of the most gregarious and personable of the rising’s leaders. Geraldine Plunkett Dillon, a sister of Joseph Plunkett gives a contemporary description of him in her book All in the Blood: "As soon as Tomás came into our house everyone was a friend of his. He had a pleasant, intelligent face and was always smiling, and you had the impression that he was always thinking about what you were saying." In Mary Colum’s Life and the Dream, she writes of hearing about the Rising from America, where she was living with her husband, Pádraic Colum, remembering Tomás MacDonagh saying to her: "This country will be one entire slum unless we get into action, in spite of our literary movements and Gaelic Leagues it is going down and down. There is no life or heart left in the country."
A prominent figure in the Dublin literary world, he was commemorated in several poems by W.B. Yeats and in his friend Francis Ledwidge’s Lament for Thomas MacDonagh.
Thomas MacDonagh Tower in Ballymun, Dublin, which was built in the 1960s and demolished in June 2005, was named after him, as was the train station (MacDonagh Station) and shopping centre (MacDonagh Junction) in Kilkenny (as MacDonagh had taught in St Kierans College, Kilkenny City during the early years of his career).
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Planning the Rising.
The Supreme Council of the IRB met on 5 September 1914, a month after the British government had declared war on Germany. At this meeting, they decided to stage a rising before the war ended and to accept whatever help Germany might offer. Responsibility for the planning of the rising was given to Tom Clarke and Seán MacDermott. The Irish Volunteersthe smaller of the two forces resulting from the September 1914 split over support for the British war effort set up a "headquarters staff" that included Patrick Pearse as Director of Military Organisation, Joseph Plunkett as Director of Military Operations and Thomas MacDonagh as Director of Training. Éamonn Ceannt was later added as Director of Communications. In May 1915, Clarke and MacDermott established a Military Committee within the IRB, consisting of Pearse, Plunkett and Ceannt, to draw up plans for a rising. This dual rôle allowed the Committee, to which Clarke and MacDermott added themselves shortly afterward, to promote their own policies and personnel independently of both the Volunteer Executive and the IRB Executivein particular Volunteer Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill, who was opposed to a rising unless popular support was secured by the introduction of conscription or an attempt to suppress the Volunteers or its leaders, and IRB President Denis McCullough, who held similar views. IRB members held officer rank in the Volunteers throughout the country and would take their orders from the Military Committee, not from MacNeill.
Plunkett had travelled to Germany in April 1915 to join Roger Casement. Casement had gone there from the United States the previous year with the support of Clan na Gael leader John Devoy, and after discussions with the German Ambassador in Washington, Count von Bernstorff, to try to recruit an "Irish Brigade" from among Irish prisoners of war and secure German support for Irish independence. Together, Plunkett and Casement presented a plan which involved a German expeditionary force landing on the west coast of Ireland, while a rising in Dublin diverted the British forces so that the Germans, with the help of local Volunteers, could secure the line of the River Shannon.
James Connollyhead of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a group of armed socialist trade union men and womenwas unaware of the IRB′s plans, and threatened to start a rebellion on his own if other parties failed to act. If they had gone it alone, the IRB and the Volunteers would possibly have come to their aid; however, the IRB leaders met with Connolly in January 1916 and convinced him to join forces with them. They agreed to act together the following Easter and made Connolly the sixth member of the Military Committee. Thomas MacDonagh would later become the seventh and final member.

Build Up of Easter Week.
In an effort to thwart informers and, indeed, the Volunteers’ own leadership, Pearse issued orders in early April for three days of "parades and manoeuvres" by the Volunteers for Easter Sunday (which he had the authority to do, as Director of Organization). The idea was that the republicans within the organization (particularly IRB members) would know exactly what this meant, while men such as MacNeill and the British authorities in Dublin Castle would take it at face value. However, MacNeill got wind of what was afoot and threatened to "do everything possible short of phoning Dublin Castle" to prevent the rising.
MacNeill was briefly convinced to go along with some sort of action when Mac Diarmada revealed to him that a shipment of German arms was about to land in County Kerry, planned by the IRB in conjunction with Roger Casement; he was certain that the authorities’ discovery of such a shipment would inevitably lead to suppression of the Volunteers, thus the Volunteers were justified in taking defensive action (including the originally planned maneuvers). Casementdisappointed with the level of support offered by the Germansreturned to Ireland on a German U-boat and was captured upon landing at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay. The arms shipmentaboard the German ship Aud (disguised as a Norwegian fishing trawler) had been scuttled after interception by the Royal Navy, after the local Volunteers had failed to rendezvous with it.
The following day, MacNeill reverted to his original position when he found out that the ship carrying the arms had been scuttled. With the support of other leaders of like mind, notably Bulmer Hobson and The O’Rahilly, he issued a countermand to all Volunteers, canceling all actions for Sunday. This only succeeded in putting the rising off for a day, although it greatly reduced the number of Volunteers who turned out.
British Naval Intelligence had been aware of the arms shipment, Casement’s return and the Easter date for the rising through radio messages between Germany and its embassy in the United States that were intercepted by the Navy and deciphered in Room 40 of the Admiralty. The information was passed to the Under-Secretary for Ireland, Sir Matthew Nathan, on 17 April, but without revealing its source, and Nathan was doubtful about its accuracy. When news reached Dublin of the capture of the Aud and the arrest of Casement, Nathan conferred with the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Wimborne. Nathan proposed to raid Liberty Hall, headquarters of the Citizen Army, and Volunteer properties at Father Matthew Park and at Kimmage, but Wimborne was insisting on wholesale arrests of the leaders. It was decided to postpone action until after Easter Monday, and in the meantime Nathan telegraphed the Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell, in London seeking his approval. By the time Birrell cabled his reply authorising the action, at noon on Monday 24 April 1916, the Rising had already begun.

Easter Monday.
Early on Monday morning, April 24, 1916, roughly 1,200 Volunteers and Citizen Army members took over strongpoints in Dublin city centre. A joint force of about 400 Volunteers and Citizen Army gathered at Liberty Hall under the command of Commandant James Connolly.
The rebel headquarters was located at the General Post Office (GPO) where James Connolly, overall military commander and four other members of the Military Council: Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke, Seán Mac Dermott and Joseph Plunkett were located. After occupying the Post Office, the Volunteers hoisted two republican flags and Pearse read a Proclamation of the Republic.
Elsewhere, rebel forces took up positions at the Four Courts, the centre of the Irish legal establishment, at Jacob′s Biscuit Factory and Boland′s Mill and at the hospital complex at South Dublin Union and the adjoining Distillery at Marrowbone Lane. Another contingent, under Michal Mallin, dug in on St. Stephen’s Green.
However, although it was lightly guarded, Volunteer and Citizen Army forces under Seán Connolly failed to take Dublin Castle, the centre of British rule in Ireland, shooting dead a police sentry and overpowering the soldiers in the guardroom, but failing to press home the attack. The Under-secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, was alerted by the shots and helped close the castle gates. The rebels occupied the Dublin City Hall and adjacent buildings. They also failed to take Trinity College, which was located in the heart of the city centre and which was defended by only a handful of armed, unionist students. At midday a small team of Volunteers and Fianna members attacked the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park and disarmed the guards, with the intent to seize weapons and blow up the building as a signal that the rising had begun. They set explosives but failed to obtain any arms.
In at least two incidents, at Jacobs and Stephens Green, the Volunteers and Citizen Army shot dead civilians who were trying to attack them or dismantle their barricades. Elsewhere, they hit civilians with their rifle butts to drive them off.
The British military were caught totally unprepared by the rebellion and their response of the first day was generally un-coordinated. Two troops of British cavalry, one at the Four Courts, the other on O’Connell Street, sent out to investigate what was happening, took fire and casualties from rebel forces. On Mount Street, a group of reserve volunteer soldiers, stumbled upon the rebel position and four were killed before they reached Beggars Bush barracks.
The only substantial combat of the first day of the Rising took place at the South Dublin Union where a piquet from the Royal Irish Regiment, encountered an outpost of Éamonn Ceannt′s force at the north-western corner of the South Dublin Union. The British troops, after taking some casualties, managed to regroup and launch several assaults on the position before they forced their way inside and the small rebel force in the tin huts at the eastern end of the Union surrendered. However, the Union complex as a whole remained in rebel hands.
Three of the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police were shot dead on the first day of the Rising and their Commissioner pulled them off the streets. Partly as result of the withdrawal of the police, a wave of looting broke out in the city centre, especially in the O’Connell Street area. A total of 425 people were arrested after the Rising for looting.

Tuesday to Saterday.
Lord Wimborne, the Lord Lieutenant, declared martial law on Tuesday evening and handed over civil power to Brigadier-General W. H. M. Lowe. British forces initially put their efforts into securing the approaches to Dublin Castle and isolating the rebel headquarters, which they believed was in Liberty Hall. The British commander, Lowe, worked slowly, unsure of the size of the force he was up against, and with only 1,269 troops in the city when he arrived from the Curragh Camp in the early hours of Tuesday 25 April. City Hall was taken from the rebel unit that had attacked Dublin Castle on Tuesday morning.[49][50]
The rebels had failed to take either of Dublin′s two main train stations or either of its ports, at Dublin Port and Kingstown. As a result, during the following week, the British were able to bring in thousands of reinforcements from England and from their garrisons at the Curragh and Belfast. By the end of the week, British strength stood at over 16,000 men. Their firepower was provided by field artillery summoned from their garrison at Athlone which they positioned on the northside of the city at Phibsborough and at Trinity College, and by the patrol vessel Helga, which sailed up the Liffey, having been summoned from the port at Kingstown. On Wednesday, 26 April, the guns at Trinity College and Helga shelled Liberty Hall, and the Trinity College guns then began firing at rebel positions, first at Boland′s Mill and then in O’Connell Street.
*A British armoured truck, hastily built from the smokeboxes of several steam locomotives at Inchicore railway works*
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Combat
The principal rebel positions at the GPO, the Four Courts, Jacob′s Factory and Boland′s Mill saw little combat. The British surrounded and bombarded them rather than assault them directly. One Volunteer in the GPO recalled, "we did practically no shooting as there was no target". Similarly, the rebel position at St Stephen’s Green, held by the Citizen Army under Michael Mallin, was made untenable after the British placed snipers and machine guns in the Shelbourne Hotel and surrounding buildings. As a result, Mallin′s men retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons building where they remained for the rest of the week. However, where the insurgents dominated the routes by which the British tried to funnel reinforcements into the city, there was fierce fighting.
Reinforcements were sent to Dublin from England, and disembarked at Kingstown on the morning of 26 April. Heavy fighting occurred at the rebel-held positions around the Grand Canal as these troops advanced towards Dublin. The Sherwood Foresters were repeatedly caught in a cross-fire trying to cross the canal at Mount Street. Seventeen Volunteers were able to severely disrupt the British advance, killing or wounding 240 men. Despite there being alternative routes across the canal nearby, General Lowe ordered repeated frontal assaults on the Mount Street position. The British eventually took the position, which had not been reinforced by the nearby rebel garrison at Boland’s Mills, on Thursday [55] but the fighting there inflicted up to two thirds of their casualties for the entire week for a cost of just four dead Volunteers.
The rebel position at the South Dublin Union (site of the present day St. James’s Hospital) and Marrowbone Lane, further west along the canal, also inflicted heavy losses on British troops. The South Dublin Union was a large complex of buildings and there was vicious fighting around and inside the buildings. Cathal Brugha, a rebel officer, distinguished himself in this action and was badly wounded. By the end of the week, the British had taken some of the buildings in the Union, but others remained in rebel hands. British troops also took casualties in unsuccessful frontal assaults on the Marrowbone Lane Distillery.
The third major scene of combat during the week was at North King Street, behind the Four Courts, where the British, on Thursday, tried to take a well-barricaded rebel position. By the time of the rebel headquarter′s surrender, the South Staffordshire Regiment under Colonel Taylor had advanced only 150 yd (140 m) down the street at a cost of 11 dead and 28 wounded. The enraged troops broke into the houses along the street and shot or bayonetted 15 male civilians whom they accused of being rebel fighters.
Elsewhere, at Portobello Barracks, an officer named Bowen Colthurst summarily executed six civilians, including the pacifist nationalist activist, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. These instances of British troops killing Irish civilians would later be highly controversial in Ireland.

Surrender
The headquarters garrison at the GPO, after days of shelling, was forced to abandon their headquarters when fire caused by the shells spread to the GPO. Connolly had been incapacitated by a bullet wound to the ankle and has passed command on to Pearse. The O’Rahilly was killed in a sortie from the GPO. They tunnelled through the walls of the neighbouring buildings in order to evacuate the Post Office without coming under fire and took up a new position in 16 Moore Street. On Saturday 29 April, from this new headquarters, after realizing that they could not break out of this position without further loss of civilian life, Pearse issued an order for all companies to surrender. Pearse surrendered unconditionally to Brigadier-General Lowe. The surrender document read:
"In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at headquarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the commandants of the various districts in the City and County will order their commands to lay down arms."
The GPO was the only major rebel post to be physically taken during the week. The others surrendered only after Pearse’s surrender order, carried by nurse named Elizabeth O’Farrell, reached them. Sporadic fighting therefore continued until Sunday, when word of the surrender was got to the other rebel garrisons. Command of British forces had passed from Lowe to General John Maxwell, who arrived in Dublin just in time to take the surrender. Maxwell was made temporary military governor of Ireland.

The Rising outside Dublin
Ashbourne.
Enniscorthy.
Galway.
Casualties.

Arrests and executions
General Maxwell quickly signalled his intention "to arrest all dangerous Sinn Feiners", including "those who have taken an active part in the movement although not in the present rebellion", reflecting the popular belief that Sinn Féin, a separatist organisation that was neither militant nor republican, was behind the Rising.
A total of 3,430 men and 79 women were arrested, although most were subsequently released. In attempting to arrest members of the Kent family in County Cork on 2 May, a Head Constable was shot dead in a gun battle. Richard Kent was also killed, and Thomas and William Kent were arrested.
In a series of courts martial beginning on 2 May, 90 people were sentenced to death. Fifteen of those (including all seven signatories of the Proclamation) had their sentences confirmed by Maxwell and were executed by firing squad between 3 and 12 May (among them the seriously-wounded Connolly, shot while tied to a chair due to a shattered ankle). Not all of those executed were leaders: Willie Pearse described himself as "a personal attaché to my brother, Patrick Pearse"; John MacBride had not even been aware of the Rising until it began, but had fought against the British in the Boer War fifteen years before; Thomas Kent did not come out at allhe was executed for the killing of a police officer during the raid on his house the week after the Rising. The most prominent leader to escape execution was Éamon de Valera, Commandant of the 3rd Battalion. The president of the courts martial was Charles Blackader.
1,480 men were interned in England and Wales under Regulation 14B of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, many of whom, like Arthur Griffith, had little or nothing to do with the affair. Camps such as Frongoch internment camp became "Universities of Revolution" where future leaders like Michael Collins, Terence McSwiney and J. J. O’Connell began to plan the coming struggle for independence. Sir Roger Casement was tried in London for high treason and hanged at Pentonville Prison on 3 August.

3 May: Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas J. Clarke
4 May: Joseph Plunkett, William Pearse, Edward Daly and Michael O’Hanrahan
5 May: John MacBride
8 May: Eamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin, Sean Heuston and Conn Colbert
12 May: James Connolly and Sean MacDiarmada

Attachment 328162
*British soldiers searching the River Tolka in Dublin for arms and ammunition after the Easter Rising. May 1916*

Attachment 328160
*The burial spot of the Leaders of the Rising, in the old prison yard of Arbour Hill prison. The memorial was designed by G. McNicholl. The Proclamation of 1916 is inscribed on the wall in both Irish and English*

Attachment 328161
*Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin, after the Rising*

Inquiry
A Royal Commission was set up to enquire into the causes of the Rising. It began hearings on 18 May under the chairmanship of Lord Hardinge of Penshurst. The Commission heard evidence from Sir Matthew Nathan, Augustine Birrell, Lord Wimborne, Sir Neville Chamberlain (Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary), General Lovick Friend, Major Ivor Price of Military Intelligence and others. The report, published on 26 June, was critical of the Dublin administration, saying that "Ireland for several years had been administered on the principle that it was safer and more expedient to leave the law in abeyance if collision with any faction of the Irish people could thereby be avoided." Birrell and Nathan had resigned immediately after the Rising. Wimborne had also reluctantly resigned, but was re-appointed, and Chamberlain resigned soon after.

Reaction of the Dublin Public.
At first, many members of the Dublin public were simply bewildered by the outbreak of the Rising. James Stephens, who was in Dublin during the week, thought, "None of these people were prepared for Insurrection. The thing had been sprung on them so suddenly they were unable to take sides".
There was considerable hostility towards the Volunteers in some parts of the city. When occupying positions in the South Dublin Union and Jacob’s factory, the rebels got involved in physical confrontations with civilians trying to prevent them from taking over the buildings. The Volunteers′ shooting and clubbing of civilians made them extremely unpopular in these localities. There was outright hostility to the Volunteers from the "separation women", (so-called because they were paid "Separation Money" by the British government) who had husbands and son fighting in the British Army in World War I, and among unionists. Supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party also felt the rebellion was a betrayal of their party.
Finally, the fact that the Rising had caused a great deal of death and destruction also contributed towards antagonism toward the rebels. After the surrender, the Volunteers were hissed at, pelted with refuse, and denounced as "murderers" and "starvers of the people". Volunteer Robert Holland for example remembered being abused by people he knew as he was being marched into captivity and said the British troops saved them from being manhandled by the crowds.
However, there was not universal hostility towards the defeated insurgents. Some onlookers were cowed rather than hostile and it appeared to the Volunteers that some of those watching in silence were sympathetic. Canadian journalist and writer Frederick Arthur McKenzie wrote that in poorer areas, "there was a vast amount of sympathy with the rebels, particularly after the rebels were defeated." Thomas Johnson, the Labour leader thought there was, "no sign of sympathy for the rebels, but general admiration for their courage and strategy".
The aftermath of the Rising, and in particular the British reaction to it, helped to sway a large section of Irish nationalist opinion away from hostility or ambivalence and towards support for the rebels of Easter 1916. Dublin businessman and Quaker James Douglas, for example, hitherto a Home Ruler, wrote that his political outlook changed radically during the course of the Rising due to the British military occupation of the city and that he became convinced that parliamentary methods would not be sufficient to remove the British presence.

Legacy.
A few months after the Easter Rising, W. B. Yeats commemorated some of the fallen figures of the Irish Republican movement, as well as expressed his torn emotions regarding these events, in the poem Easter, 1916. Some survivors of the Rising went on to become leaders of the independent Irish state and those who died were venerated by many as martyrs. Their graves in the former military prison of Arbour Hill in Dublin became a national monument and the text of the Proclamation was taught in schools. An annual commemoration, in the form of a military parade, was held each year on Easter Sunday, culminating in a huge national celebration on the 50th anniversary in 1966. RTÉ the Irish national broadcaster, as one of its first major undertakings made a series of commemorative programmes for the 1966 anniversary of the Rising. Roibéárd Ó Faracháin, head of programming said, "While still seeking historical truth, the emphasis will be on homage, on salutation".
With the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, government, academics and the media began to revise the country′s militant past, and particularly the Easter Rising. The coalition government of 197377, in particular the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Conor Cruise O’Brien, began to promote the view that the violence of 1916 was essentially no different from the violence then taking place in the streets of Belfast and Derry.
Cruise O’Brien and others asserted that the Rising was doomed to military defeat from the outset, and that it failed to account for the determination of Ulster Unionists to remain in the United Kingdom. "Revisionist" historians began to write of it in terms of a "blood sacrifice".
While the Rising and its leaders continued to be venerated by Irish republicansincluding members and supporters of the Provisional IRA and the modern Sinn Féinwith murals in republican areas of Belfast and other towns celebrating the actions of Pearse and his comrades, and a number of parades held annually in remembrance of the Rising, the Irish government discontinued its annual parade in Dublin in the early 1970s, and in 1976 it took the unprecedented step of proscribing (under the Offences against the State Act) a 1916 commemoration ceremony at the GPO organised by Sinn Féin and the Republican commemoration Committee.
A Labour Party TD, David Thornley, embarrassed the government (of which Labour was a member) by appearing on the platform at the ceremony, along with Máire Comerford, a survivor of the Rising, and Fiona Plunkett, sister of Joseph Plunkett.
With the advent of a Provisional IRA ceasefire and the beginning of what became known as the Peace Process during the 1990s, the official view of the Rising became more positive and in 1996 an 80th anniversary commemoration at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin was attended by the Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael, John Bruton. In 2005, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, announced the government′s intention to resume the military parade past the GPO from Easter 2006, and to form a committee to plan centenary celebrations in 2016. The 90th anniversary was celebrated with military parade in Dublin on Easter Sunday, 2006, attended by the President of Ireland, the Taoiseach and the Lord Mayor of Dublin.
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Thats it. Most of it was information from Wikipedia but non-the-less I put it together.

Best Regards, Pat.

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