Provincia de Phitsanulok

the insurrection of Easter 1916 , sometimes called the “ bloody Easter ”, is an significant event of the Histoire Irish, and belonged to the collective memory of the Irishmen (see the revolutionary song The Foggy Dew ). It is the rebellion of people against the British occupant, even if the facts were confined at the town of Dublin and were not relayed in the remainder of the Ireland.

Historical context

The 1800, the Parliament of Dublin vote the Act of Union ( Act off Union ) with the Great Britain, which involves its suppression and the displacement of the seat of its representatives with London, and creates a zone of free trade between the two countries. This situation is not unanimously accepted since the July 23rd 1803 a rising taken along by Robert Emmet against the British domination, attacks the castle of Dublin.

During the 19th century, the population, weakened by poverty, will undergo terrible famines: of 1845 with 1847 harvests of potatoes are lost, certain sources advance the figure of almost a million died and two million emigrants. These difficulties will reinforce a feeling anti-British, already strongly anchored in the population. 1848 sees a first rebellion of the movement Jeune Ireland , carried out by W. Smith O' Brien, and ten years later (March 17th 1858), it is the foundation, simultaneously with Dublin and New York, of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.), a revolutionary and terrorist organization of which the goal is the preparation of a general rising in Ireland.

The foundation of the Home Rule League intervenes, as for it, in 1873, its goal is to obtain an internal autonomy within the the United Kingdom. This project, which has the support of the British liberals (ministries of William Ewart Gladstone and Herbert Henry Asquith) but meets the hostility of the conservatives, is presented three times to the refused Parliament (1886, 1893 and 1912) and by three times. Only a quibble of the Parliament Act of 1911 validates it and constrained the king George V to ratify it, in September 1914, its installation being pushed back at the end of the First World War which has been just declared. 1913 had seen the creation of two antagonistic militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force savagely opposite with the project, and that of the Irish Volunteers which, on the contrary was given the responsability to defend it. James Connolly, chief of the Irish Ploughing Party and the trade union leaders republican also founds on their side the Irish Citizen Army to protect the participants from the great strikes of 1913.

Preparation of the insurrection

As of August 1914, the IRB decides to form a military committee in order to prepare an action of scale before the end of the war. The IRB placed its partisans within the Irish Volunteers, the principal nationalist militia whose chief, Eoin Mac Neil, tries monnayer his support with the war with the British government against the Home Rule. They engage with this last an internal struggle for the preparation of an insurrection. January 16th, 1916 the supreme council of Irish Republican Brotherhood, in agreement with ICA decides to prepare a general insurrection. According to an agreement negotiated by Sir Roger Breaking, Lord Protestant sympathizer of the republican cause, the weapons coming from Germany must arrive for Easter. Learning the transaction, Eoin Mac Neil finally decides to support the insurrection. The April 20th, the German cargo liner “Aud”, conveying twenty thousand rifles, is hailed by a British patrol craft; the captain scuttles the boat and constitutes himself captive with the unit of the crew. Contradictory orders are then sent to the nationalist partisans, certain chiefs like Mac Neil, wishing to cancel the operation, others like Pearse wishing its release. The latter is then pushed back Easter Day to Monday and the insurrectionists fewer and are less better armed than envisaged.

Insurrection

The Easter Monday April 24th, 120 members of the Irish Citizen Army and 700 of the Irish Volunteers Force ravel in O' Connell Street in Dublin. Suddenly, it is the rush and the occupation of the central Poste, as well as various strategic buildings, such Mendicity Institute and the Furnace Courts (Law courts), the Jacobs cookie factory, the Boland mills and the station of Westland Row. The chiefs of this action are: Patrick Pearse, Michael Hakes, James Connolly, Tom Clarke, Sean MacDiarmada, Eamon de Valera and Joseph Plunkett; Constance Markievicz directs the female brigade of the ICA. Weapons are catch with the British army. The women, on their side, pile up vivres and drugs. In accordance with the worked out program, Patrick Pearse proclaims the Irish République in front of a médusée and not very enthusiastic crowd. Some actions take place in provincial towns, but one is far from a general insurrection, as that had been considered, the insurrectionists indeed are still seen as of the traitors by most of the population whereas many Irish still fights in France. During all the afternoon, the attacks of the British army are systematically pushed back and several barracks are even attacked by the volunteers . Plunderers benefit from chaos to put at bag the stores around the post office, they are dislodged by it by the insurrectionists. However the British preserved the control of the telephone, which enables them to alert the units stationed with Curragh, Belfast, Athlone and Templemore, which will converge towards Dublin. The following day, Tuesday April 25th, whereas the insurrectionists broadcast the proclamation of the Republic, the British counter-attack undeniable military successes obtain, and the first reinforcements arrive of province.

After five days of violent one engagements, the insurrectionists are driven back in a desperate plight; the April 29th Patrick Pearse, president of the provisional government, issue the stop of the engagements and manage to convince some irreducible, taken along by Tom Clarke, that the insurrection is a failure. The unconditional surrender is signed the same day.

Assessment of the combat and repression

At the end six days of engagements, one counts approximately 400 dead (318 civilians and from 60 to 80 insurgent) and 2.614 wounded (2 217 civilians). When Pearse signs rendering, there remain approximately 1.300 volunteers and 220 members of L `Irish Citizen Army. The repression of the British will be relentless: 3.430 men and 79 women are stopped in Dublin and one arrives at the figure of 5.000 people if one enters those continued in England and with the Wales. The leaders are judged by courses martial which pronounce 90 capital punishments, there will be about fifteen executions to the Prison of Kilmainham, including seven members of the provisional government. Patrick Pearse is shot the May 3rd. James Connolly, several times wounded during the insurrection, is torn off from its bed of hospital, is posed on a chair and is carried out the May 12th. Roger Casement, which was used as intermediary between the insurrection and Kaiser, is hung. Eamon de Valera escapes the capital punishment, because of its American nationality. Repression without understanding since personalities such Arthur Griffith or Eoin Mac Neill were worried, whereas they did not take part in the events. In August, under the pressure of the US president Woodrow Wilson, new ally of the United Kingdom in the First World War, a first wave of release of republican prisoners takes place, one second will follow in December. The last prisoners are released in 1917.

Consequences

Incontestably, the insurrection of Easter 1916 was a failure, as well on the military level as on the political plan. Rising was not general, Dublin was the principal place of the events, and if the insurrectionists profited from the effect of surprised the first day, the counter-offensive of the British army modified gives it, the more so as the control of the telephone allowed general alarm, and the intervention of the reinforcements. On the political plan, repression eliminated what the republican camp counted thinkers and activists. However, the brutality of repression involved a wave of sympathy towards the Sinn Féin, reversing the opinion whereas the appropriateness of the insurrection had been strongly disputed. Many literary interpretations and policies were given to this adventure, but it is before all the failure of the Home Rule. It is all the difference between autonomy and independence. This Monday was the first step towards the Irish Republic and the war of independence, but also towards the conflict in Ulster.

In 1966, at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the insurrection, the statue of the admiral Nelson, posed on a column of forty meters, in O' Connell street with Dublin, is destroyed by a bomb.

Sources

Alain Decaux, It was the XXe century volume 1, bloody Easter in Dublin , Perrin, 1999
Pierre Joannon, Histoire of Ireland and the Irishmen , GLM (Perrin), Paris, 2006.

Be-X-old: Велікоднаепаўстаньне

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