A view of Sackville Street (now O'Connell), Dublin, Ireland and the bridge over the Liffey River framed by a spray of shamrocks. The card was postmarked Dublin, August 30, 1911.
Sackville Street, DublinReverse:Valentine's SeriesKnown throughout the WorldValentine, DublinPrinted in Scotland
"Owing to the very critical position, all orders given to the Irish Volunteers for tomorrow, Easter Sunday, are hereby rescinded, and no parades, marches, or other movements of the Irish Volunteers will take place. Each individual Volunteer will obey this order strictly in every particular."
Notice of Eoin MacNeill, Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, published in the Irish Sunday Independent on Easter Sunday, April 23, 1916. The Irish Volunteers had been formed in November, 1913 in response to the formation of the Unionist Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF, which vowed to resist Irish Home Rule by force. On April 24, 1914, three months before World War I began, the UVF landed 20,000 magazine-fed rifles with bayonets, and two million rounds of ammunition smuggled from Germany into Belfast and nearby ports. Three months later, on July 26, days before the United Kingdom entered the war, the Irish Volunteers, with more limited financial resources than the UVF, managed to land and distribute the better part of 1,500 single shot rifles at Howth near Dublin. Chief of Staff MacNeill had learned on April 20 that Pádraig Pearse, a leader of both the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Volunteers, was planning a rebellion in the coming days. MacNeill was trying to ensure that the Volunteers, who regularly turned out to march, parade, and otherwise demonstrate in Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland, played no part in a rebellion. His published order caused a great deal of confusion, diminished the number of Volunteers who did muster, and no doubt saved lives. It did not dissuade Pearse and others from their course.
Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916 by Peter de Rosa, page 219, copyright © 1990 by Peter de Rosa, publisher: Ballantine Books, publication date: 1992
1916-04-23, 1916, April, Easter, Easter Sunday, Easter Rising, Eoin MacNeill, MacNeill, Irish Volunteers
