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England's Distress: Postcard map of England and Ireland with the restricted zone Germany proclaimed around the islands, showing the ships destroyed by submarine in the 12 months beginning February 1, 1917.
Illustration of Dublin, Ireland looking west along the River Liffey and showing the positions held by the Irish rebels. North of the Liffey, the General Post Office, headquarters of the rebellion, and Liberty Hall, from which the rebels had started on April 24, are in flames, bombarded by British forces. South of the River, forces led by Countess Markiewicz held St. Stephen's Green under fire from soldiers in the Shelbourne Hotel. Kilmainham Goal, where the captured rebels would be held, and where their leaders would be executed, is in the distance.
Headstone of an unknown soldier of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Delville Wood Cemetery. Union of South Africa troops began the assault at Delville Wood on July 15, 1916. It was finally taken in September. On the headstone is superimposed the poem 'To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God' by Lieutenant Tom Kettle of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, killed in action on September 9, 1916 at Guillemont, France, in the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave. © 2013 John M. Shea
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.
"Owing to the very critical position, all orders given to the Irish Volunteers for tomorrow, Easter Sunday, are hereby rescinded, and no parades, marches, or other movements of the Irish Volunteers will take place.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." ((1), more)
"Around me as I walked the rumour of war and death was in the air. Continually and from every direction rifles were crackling and rolling; sometimes there was only one shot, again it would be a roll of firing crested with single, short explosions, and sinking again to whip-like snaps and whip-like echoes; then for a moment silence, and then again the guns leaped in the air.The rumour of positions, bridges, public places, railway stations, Government offices, having been seized was persistent, and was not denied by any voice." ((2), more)
"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." ((3), 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." ((4), 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." ((5), more)
(1) 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
(2) Irish poet and novelist James Stephens was in Dublin throughout the Easter Rising, the failed insurrection against British rule by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Volunteers in April 1916 Easter week. Lacking the weapons that were being smuggled from Germany on a ship intercepted by the British fleet and sunk by her German crew, Eoin MacNeill, Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, tried to prevent any insurrection by publishing a newspaper notice on Easter Sunday. Other Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood moved forward on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a quiet bank holiday. Mustering at points throughout Dublin at 10:00 AM, the rebels by early afternoon had seized the General Post Office (GPO) and entrenched in St. Stephen's Green. At 12:25 PM, Patrick Pearse, addressing 'Irishmen and Irishwomen', proclaimed the establishment of the Irish Republic, reading a proclamation signed by Thomas Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas Macdonagh, Pearse himself, Eamonn Céannt, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett. With the GPO as its headquarters in central Dublin, the rebels also held Liberty Hall, Boland's Bakery to the east, Jacob's Biscuit Factory near St. Stephen's Green to the south, and the South Dublin Union to the west.
The Insurrection in Dublin by James Stephens, page 14, copyright © 1978, 1992 Colin Smythe Ltd., publisher: Colin Smythe, publication date: 1992
(3) 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
(4) 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
(5) 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
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