1916 Easter Rising
...l the Germans would be defeated. They thought they could wait a few more years, because thousands of Irish would be fighting in the war anyway. They probably wouldn’t even realise what was going on, and most of them didn’t... But some of the Irish did. The members of the IRB for example, of which most members were intellectuals. They were patriots wanting Ireland to be ruled by Irish. And they were willing to do that in any way needed, even by using force. Another Para-military force was the ICA. When the First World War began the British troops in Ireland were needed elsewhere. John Redmond, leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, ensured the British Government he would manage to control Ireland during this period of war. He would do this with his Volunteer force and with the Ulster Volunteers. What they didn’t know is that the IRB was already planning to make a move against the British sometime during the war. They would need arms from Germany and they would need help from other small Irish patriotic organisations. Money was already available coming from Irish-American members. To keep control over Ireland the British used the RIC, which consisted of almost only Irish which were loyal to the British Crown. In Dublin itself, there were about a thousand of them. They were stationed there and unarmed, although enough arms were available if they needed them. They were to know what the IRB were planning, but they didn’t really do a good job in infiltrating them. The British of course also had their own army to be called anytime needed. So if you look at the manpower of the two forces you’ll notice the British were much stronger. And in the quantity of firearms too. The first mission of the IRB to get firearms from the Germans failed. The British Naval Intelligence intercepted the German ship carrying the guns. This happened on Good Friday the 21st of April 1916. Only three days before the Easter Rising. Because the firearms were taken in by the British Navy some Irish rebel leaders backed out, and some of their followers with them. They thought there was no use in the rebellion anymore, because they had to little people and arms against the British. It would be suicide. But about 1,250 Irish didn’t think so and were willing to die for the cause. Others were willing too, but heard the rising was cancelled and didn’t show up. It all became very chaotic. And when the British finally found out the IRB were planning a rising sometime soon, they were too late to stop it at once. On Monday April 24th 1916 at noon the Volunteers and the Citizen Army started their march towards various strong points. This went easy, because the British troops weren’t there yet to stop them. They successfully cut the telephone lines. But they didn’t get to their main goal where a lot of arms were stocked up. By cutting the telephone lines, not only the British couldn’t communicate with each other, the Irish rebels couldn’t either. By Wednesday morning the rebels were outnumbered twenty to one. The British started to bomb and fire at the Irish strong points. On Thursday the British reinforcements arrived and came into action. These were untrained men. And since the Irish rebels didn’t wear any kind of uniform, these untrained soldiers started to fire at ...