Easter 1916

Easter Monday this year marks the centenary of what’s come to be known as the Easter Rising in Ireland, the last of a string of rebellions against British rule and the one that led to the beginning of Irish independence.

(Irish independence, BTW, is still a work in progress.)

Technically, it won’t be 100 years on until 24 April, but the event was inextricably linked with Eastertide, so I’m writing about it today.

The Rising itself was what some of my friends might call a bit of a cluster fuck—on both sides of the barricades. First of all, you can’t get two Irishmen to agree on much of anything, and when you expand the two out to a few score, a few hundred or a few thousand the problem increases by an order of magnitude. Ever since the Act of Union in 1800, which abolished an independent Irish parliament, half of the struggle against Mother England was between different factions of Irish over what the goals were and then how to achieve them. (If you know anything about the Second World War, think all the flavors of resistance organizations in France; then multiply it by 110 years.)

By the outbreak of World War I, many of the anti-British parties literally weren’t speaking to one another. Moreover, they couldn’t agree on how to respond to the threat of Imperial Germany—actually, they couldn’t even agree on whether there was a threat from Imperial Germany. Many of them thought that if they showed themselves to be good sports and rallied to the British imperial cause, they’d be rewarded with the long-promised independence.

Others followed the mantra, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.”

And there was difficulty indeed after a year and a half in the mud of Belgium and Northern France, and one year after the disaster at Gallipoli. By 1916 these meat grinders had consumed so many men that Britain was brought to introduce conscription for the first time, including men from Ireland.

More than 250,000 Irish volunteers fought for Britain between 1914 and 1918. The idea that they could be forced to do this was infuriating on many levels to people who’d heretofore been neutral or positive about the war, even as it seemed only one’s duty to many others. Internal conflicts flared up throughout Ireland about how to respond. Even those who agreed that insurrection was appropriate disagreed on how and when it should be launched.

As the time came for implementing conscription, the Irish Volunteers (considered by many to be radical) and the Irish Citizen Army (socialists and even more radical) were so at odds with one another that the Volunteers sent out the call to arms in code in an attempt to pull off the rising without the Citizen Army either joining or interfering with it.

Seriously—can you imagine?

Actually, here’s what you have to imagine: a couple thousand (at most) civilians—think your average whack-job militia-posse-comitatus types, some of whom may have had some military drill training—almost none with actual experience firing weapons at other men, who have never foregathered more than maybe a hundred at a time, because all their activities have had to be in secret. They’re pinning their hopes on substantial support (arms, money, supplies) from Germany, which would have to send said support through waters pretty much held by the Royal Navy. And on Britain being too occupied with the sinkhole in the Western Front to respond in force. And on the overall population of Ireland rising up with them (with even less military experience and no weapons).

And they expected to win the battle(s) and sustain the victory moving forward. Meaning, they expected Britain to acknowledge defeat and let the island at its back become independent. And allied to Germany.

Well—very gallant, very high-minded. Very crackbrained and very costly.

On the other side, the Brits suffered from their own dysfunction. They had intelligence around the shipment of arms (small arms) to various rebel groups, but didn’t act on it. It wasn’t until the Volunteers seized the General Post Office in Dublin (the only city where they achieved any sort of success), proclaimed the Irish Republic and settled in that the British Took Measures. By which I mean, within a few days they had more than 16,000 soldiers in Dublin (against fewer than 1300 Irish irregulars) and were lobbing heavy artillery shells into the center of the city, which was largely destroyed.

Here’s the thing, dear reader: in a fight where both sides have their heads up their butts, the side with the preponderance of resources is, generally speaking, going to win. Because they can afford to lose more soldiers and time than the other side. And this is what happened in Ireland.

Of the 500 or so killed between 24 April and 29 April, (when the Volunteers surrendered), most were civilians; most of whom were victims of the bombardment. Thirty percent of the casualties were British soldiers. (It’s interesting to me that one of the costlier engagements for them was an attempt by the Sherwood Foresters to cross the canal at Mount Street; there were other ways for them to get to their destination but their commander ordered repeated frontal assaults right there. Where there was a perfect crossfire. Seventeen Volunteers cost the Foresters 240 casualties, killed and wounded. But I digress.)

It was after the surrender that things got weird. The uprising had not been popular among the Irish, either before or during the event. As they were being marched off to Kilmainham Gaol, many of them had to be defended from mobs by the British soldiers. But the heavy-handed response, starting with the shelling of Dublin, accomplished what the schoolteachers, civil servants, bakers and poets couldn’t.

The Brits executed by firing squad 15 of the leaders in a matter of days. One, Joseph Connelly, was hauled to his death in a chair because his ankle had been shattered in the fighting and he couldn’t stand up. From being vilified as idiots and scum, the 15 became martyrs.

The British arrested more than 3000 suspected of “supporting” the insurrection; 1500 were imprisoned in Britain without trial. (Many of them had not only had nothing to do with the rising, they’d been opposed to it.) Martial law was declared throughout Ireland and not lifted until autumn.

So in the course of winning the battle, the Brits lost the war—or as close as dammit. The Irish Free State—26 of the 32 counties—was created by treaty in 1922 and became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

I do not view this event through rose-colored glasses. I happen to agree with the goals of the men and women of Easter Monday, even if I do think they were criminally naïve in their execution. I also understand that there was no way the Brits were not going to crush the rebellion by any means necessary. And the preponderance of resources combined with the willingness to use them is very hard to argue successfully with.

So—celebrate the centenary, lift a pint, sing a rebel song. But do remember that one man’s martyr is another man’s jihadist, and consider what lessons we might learn from Easter 1916.