General John Maxwell

Now, we turn to the British Administration during the Easter Rising of 1916.

Maxwell, himself, did not come in on the rising until it just about over and Pearse had surrendered.

He is best known for his role in the suppression and controversial handling of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. After it broke out on 24 April 1916, Martial law was declared for the city and county of Dublin by the Lord Lieutenant Lord Wimborne, to allow court trial of persons breaching the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), passed 8 August 1914 and to deal with such occurrences as the Rising.

Maxwell arrived in Ireland on Friday 28 April as "military governor" with "plenary powers" under Martial law. He set about dealing with the rebellion under his understanding of Martial law, namely the will of the commander, which means absence of law. During the week 2-9 May, Maxwell was in sole charge of trials and sentences by "field general court martial", which was trial without defence or jury and in camera. He had 3,400 people arrested, 183 civilians tried, 90 of whom were sentenced to death. Fifteen were shot between 3 and 12 May.

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and the government were all at once terribly alarmed at the speed and secrecy of events before intervening to stop more executions. In particular great embarrassment ensued due to the failure of applying DORA regulations of general court martial with a full court of thirteen members, a professional judge, legal advocate and held in public, which could have prevented some executions.

Maxwell admitted in a report to Asquith in June that the impression that the leaders were murdered in cold blood without trial had resulted in a ‘revulsion of feeling‘ that had set in, in favour of the rebels, and was the result of the confusion between applying DORA as opposed to Martial law (which Maxwell actually pressed for himself from the beginning).

Although Asquith promised on two occasions to publish the court martial proceedings, they were held suppressed by the British government until the 1990s.

Maxwell was in 1916 assigned to be General Officer Commanding-in-Chief for Northern Command at York. He was promoted in June 1919 to full general and retired in 1922.