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Postcard view of Stephens Green, Dublin, Ireland. During the Easter Rising of April, 1916, rebel forces entrenched in and held the Green under the command of Countess Constance Gore-Booth Markievicz, Irish Wife of a Polish count, and a member of the Irish Citizens Army, a militia formed by James Connolly and Jack White, to protect trade union members in the aftermath of the seven-month long Dublin Lock-out of 1913.
A priest blessing an Irish ensign. A Susini tobacco / cigarette card.
The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara, Mesopotamia, where a British Indian army was surrounded and besieged by Turkish forces from the end of 1915 until the British surrender on April 29, 1915. Photograph from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
Indian soldiers unload a wagon. The caption on the back refers to the soldiers helping the Allies by 'unloading their baggage,' but Indian soldiers fought on their own. © American Press Assciation
Beneath the crown of England, Britannia with her shield and Neptune's trident sits, flanked by the flag of the United Kingdom, and the Royal Standard. Behind her, illuminated by the British crown, is a map of the world with the British Empire in pink: Canada and Newfoundland, the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa and British East Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
"It appeared that everything claimed on the previous day was true, and that the City of Dublin was entirely in the hands of the Volunteers. They had taken and sacked Jacob's Biscuit Factory, and had converted it into a fort which they held. They had the Post Office, and were [building] baricades around it ten feet high with sandbags, cases, wire entanglements. They had pushed out all the windows and sandbagged them to half their height, while cart-loads of food, vegetables and ammunition were going in continually. They had dug trenches and were laying siege to one of the city barracks." ((1), more)
"The real Battle of Dublin began on Wednesday morning, April 26th, the third day of the Rebellion. British troops had been arriving hourly in great numbers during the preceding night and a naval gunboat, the Helga, had pushed up the Liffey River, opposite the custom House, ready to co-operate with the infantry forces. A circle of steel now encompassed the rebels." ((2), more)
"Is it not an additional horror that on the very day when we hear that men of the Dublin Fusiliers have been killed by Irishmen in the streets of Dublin, we receive the news of how the men of the 16th Division—our own Irish Brigade, and of the same Dublin Fusiliers—had dashed forward and by their unconquerable bravery retaken the trenches that the Germans had won at Hulluch? Was there ever such a picture of the tragedy which a small section of Irish faction had so often inflicted on the fairest hopes and the bravest deeds of Ireland?As to the final result. I do not believe that this wicked and insane movement will achieve its ends. The German plot has failed. The majority of the people of Ireland retain their calmness, fortitude and unity. They abhor this attack on their interests, their rights, their hopes, their principles. Home Rule has not been destroyed; it remains indestructible." ((3), more)
"From the roof of the College of Surgeons, the Countess Markievicz watched Dublin burning. 'Think of it,' she said to Chriss Caffrey. 'That's not Rome burning—but Dublin!'A short distance away Professor O'Briain sat awestruck, and then commented, 'Lord, we are destroying the city.'From Killeney Hill, nine miles away, people could pick out Nelson atop his pillar.In a cellar near the docks where he and several other 'suspects' had been incarcerated by the military, Sean O'Casey laid down his volume of Keats and gazed at the scarlet stain spreading across the sky. One of the men playing cards followed his gaze for a moment and then said, 'Christ help them now!'" ((4), more)
"Dawn, in fact, had lighted on a scene of destruction and desolation paralleled up to that time only by the ruined towns and cities of Northern France. To those familiar with newspaper photographs, Dublin overnight had become a second Ypres. Here rose up the same sliced, skeleton buildings, here spread the same acres of flattened and obscene rubble. Directly opposite the G.P.O. stood bare, blackened walls, smoke still wreathing around them. It was no longer possible to see as far as O'Connell Bridge. Now and then yet another wall would fall with a stupendous crash, shooting up a fresh shower of burning fragments and clouds of billowing smoke. Debris was scattered halfway across the street; steel girders hung twisted and blackened. The heat still remained and a heavy smell of burning cloth hung in the air." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from his account of the second day of the Irish Easter Rising, Tuesday, April 25, 1915, by Irish poet and novelist James Stephens who was in Dublin throughout the insurrection. He went to work assuming the rebellion was over. One focus of his chapter for the day is 'rumour.' Rumor had it that Germans had landed weapons, which they had tried to do, and that German troops and Irish-American troops under German officers had landed, which they had not. Rumor had it that 8,000 British troops had landed, and indeed units were being moved from elsewhere in Ireland and from England to Dublin. There were no papers from the outside world. Many people on the streets were more sympathetic to the soldiers and horses than to the rebels. At St. Stephens Green, dead horses and rebels lay on the street and in the park. A wounded rebel could not safely be moved as British snipers were positioned in the Shelbourne Hotel overlooking the Green. The day was 'succeeded by a beautiful night, gusty with winds, and packed with sailing clouds and stars.' With some visitors, Stephens listened late into the night to the sounds of rifle and machine gun fire.
The Insurrection in Dublin by James Stephens, page 22, copyright © 1978, 1992 Colin Smythe Ltd., publisher: Colin Smythe, publication date: 1992
(2) Writing of the third day of the Irish Easter Rising, Wednesday, April 26, 1915, Irish poet and novelist James Stephens tried to determine where citizens stood on support for or opposition to the rebels. 'Men met and talked volubly, but they said nothing that indicated a personal desire or belief.' Women were more forthcoming and 'actively and visciously hostile to the rising.' (The Insurrection in Dublin, pp. 35 and 36.) Fighting went on at Mount Street Bridge, Ringsend, and the Canal that encircles Dublin. The gunboat Helga shelled Liberty Hall, home to the Irish Citizen Army. Buildings along Sackville Street were bombarded and machine-gunned. Realizing the rebels could move from one building to the next, and that the British would find each ruin empty and turn to destroying the next, Stephens realized that Sackville Street, Dublin's main street and site of the rebels' headquarters at the General Post Office, 'was doomed.'
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 246, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(3) End of an address by John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and Member of the United Kingdom's Parliament representing Waterford City, Ireland. Redmond was reacting to the Easter Rising still being fought in Dublin by rebels who wanted independence for Ireland, and not Home Rule — the resurrection of an Irish Parliament and limited self-government — sought by the Irish Parliamentary Party. Even as the insurrection in Dublin was being crushed by British troops, Redmond's day was passing. He died in March, 1918 with World War I still in progress. In the general election of 1918, the IPP took only 6 seats of 105 from Ireland. On April 27, 1916, an Irish brigade drove German troops from craters at the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and held their position against a German gas and infantry counter-attack two days later.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, p. 118, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(4)
The Easter Rebellion by Max Caulfield, pp. 299, 300, copyright © 1963 by Max Caulfield, publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, publication date: 1963
(5) Dublin, Ireland, Ypres, General Post Office (G.P.O.), shelled by British artillery and the gunboat Helga on the Liffey River. The Easter Rising
The Easter Rebellion by Max Caulfield, page 304, copyright © 1963 by Max Caulfield, publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, publication date: 1963
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