Easter Tuesday

British forces initially put their efforts into securing the approaches to Dublin Castle and isolating the rebel headquarters, which they believed was in Liberty Hall. The British commander, Brigadier-General W. H. M. Lowe, worked slowly, unsure of the size of the force he was up against, and with only 1,269 troops in the city when he arrived from the Curragh Camp in the early hours of Tuesday 25 April. City Hall was taken on Tuesday morning. The rebel position at St Stephen's Green, held by the Citizen Army under Michael Mallin, was made untenable after the British placed snipers and machine guns in the Shelbourne Hotel and surrounding buildings. As a result, Mallin's men retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons building. British firepower was provided by field artillery summoned from their garrison at Athlone which they positioned on the northside of the city at Phibsborough and at Trinity College, and by the patrol vessel Helga, which sailed upriver from Kingstown. Lord Wimborne, the Lord Lieutenant, declared martial law on Tuesday evening.

At Ashbourne, County Meath, the North County Dublin Volunteers (also known as the Fingal Volunteers), led by Thomas Ashe and his second in command Richard Mulcahy, attacked the RIC barracks. Reinforcements came from Slane and after a five-hour battle, the Volunteers captured over 90 prisoners. There were 8–10 RIC deaths and two Volunteer fatalities, John Crennigan and Thomas Rafferty. The action pre-figured the guerrilla tactics of the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. Elsewhere in the east, Seán MacEntee and County Louth Volunteers killed a policeman and a prison guard. In County Wexford, the Volunteers took over Enniscorthy from Tuesday until Friday, before symbolically surrendering to the British Army at Vinegar Hill – site of a famous battle during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Easter Monday

At four minutes past noon on Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, a sudden hush fell over the O’Connell Street. From the steps of the General Post Office Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Republic.

When Pearse finished, the beaming Connolly took his hand and shook it vigorously. A few ragged cheers hung in the air, but the poet, Stephen McKenna, who listened to Pearse read these words, recorded later that he felt sad for him, for the response from the crowd was chilling. There were no wild hurrahs, no scenes reminiscent of the excitement which had gripped the French mob before they stormed the Bastille. The Irish simply listened and shrugged their shoulders, or sniggered a little, and then glanced round to see if the police were coming.

Nearby young insurgents were posting copies of the Proclamation, or handing them round among the crowd. One copy, weighted down with stones, was placed on the ground at the foot of Nelson Pillar so that everybody could read it.

Slowly the crowd broke up. Some strolled across to the Pillar, where they idly read the Proclamation; others just stood and stared up at the unfamiliar flags (the green flag on the left at the corner of Princes Street and the Tricolor on the right at the corner of Henry Street) from the roof of the G.P.O. Quite a few, bored with the whole affair, simply turned and wandered away.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday - The Lord is Risen. The Lord is Risen, indeed!

The loss of the arms was a huge blow to the Council as was the news that Sir Roger Casement, an Englishman who had been instrumental in securing the arms, had been captured at Banna Strand. MacNeill ordered the Volunteers not to 'move' on Sunday and the Council's plans were thrown into disarray. A conference between Pearse, Plunkett, and Dermot Lynch was called, but Connolly, Clarke and Ceannt, couldn't be reached so the meeting was adjourned, and they all met at Liberty Hall at 8 a.m. They met on the morning of Easter Sunday, at Liberty Hall in Dublin, to discuss their next step. The mood of that meeting was somber - with the loss of the arms all chance of victory seemed to have vanished.

All members of the Military Council were at the 2nd meeting, it lasted till 1 am Easter Sunday. Despite the huge setback the Council leaders decided to carry on. The Rising was now given the 'go-ahead' for the next day - Easter Monday, but could only feasibly (due to the lack of weapons) take place in Dublin. Smaller Risings were still scheduled for Galway and Wexford, however. Pearse ordered the troops for action at noon.

On Easter Sunday, Mrs. Pearse asked her son Padraig to write a poem for her as if she was speaking. Padraig Pearse wrote the poem just hours before his death and it is about the "Brothers Pearse".

MOTHER

I do not grudge them;

Lord, I do not grudge

My two strong sons that I have seen go out

To break their strength and die, they and a few,

In bloody protest for a glorious thing,

They shall be spoken of amoung their people,

The generation shall remember them,

And call them Blessed:

But I will speak their names to my own heart

In the long nights;

The little names that were familiar once

Round my dead hearth.

Lord, thou art hard on mothers;

We suffer in their coming and their going;

And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary

Of the long sorrow - And yet I have my joy;

My sons were faithful, and they fought.

Holy Saturday

In Dublin during Holy Week, when Eoin MacNeill got word of the Rising, MacDiarmada with other leaders did their best to persuade MacNeill to agree it it. Late on Holy Saturday night MacDiarmada got word of MacNeill's Countermanding Order appearing in the "Sunday Independent" (Note*** MacNeill did not agree with the Rising and knew that the practice maneuvers of the Irish Volunteers planned for Easter Sunday was a cover for an uprising. He sent messengers all over Ireland to tell the Volunteers to do nothing on Easter Sunday, and he published a cancellation notice in the Sunday Independent, with this action he effectively doomed the uprising to failure***)

In Holy Week 1916, Murt O'Leary was approached by three men from Tralee - Sheehy, Stack and Cahill - at Spillane's pub in Castlegregory (now Fitzgerald's). They told Murt that they were expecting just a handful of guns to come into Fenit on the Aud and asked him to pilot the boat into Fenit.

On Holy Thursday evening Murt saw the Aud coming up from the west. She seemed to be weighted down but wasn't flying a flag for a pilot to pilot her into Fenit, so he didn't take much notice of her.

On Good Friday morning he saw a British patrol boat boarding her. The Captain of the Aud had false papers showing she was a Norwegian commercial ship, so the British went off feeling all was in order. A British destroyer came up from the west on Saturday morning and fired a shot across the bow of the ship and gave orders to follow her down to Queenstown harbour. All that happened before anyone in Tralee became aware of events. They read about it in the newspapers two days later.

The boat would come in to the north of Inishtooskert on Holy Saturday night. Security was so tight on that day that they said they would bring a lamp and a green jersey later though these items never arrived. If the Aud appeared during the day he would wear a green jersey and if by night he would flash the lamp.

Good Friday

Good Friday is the holiest of holidays on the Christian calendar. This day over 2 millenia ago, Jesus called the Christ, came down to earth and at the apporximate age of thirty-three paid the ultimate price for our sins by dying on the cross for the sins of all mankind. While He died for all the sins of mankind, He paid a higher price than the death on the cross. The ultimate price was not the death on the cross, but when God the Father turned His back on His Son because He saw my sins and yours on His Son and He, God the Father, cannot look on sin. This came to light for me many years after I became a Christian and turned my life over to Him as I pondered the Scripture "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" God the Father forsook God the Son; that above all else must have torn at the heart of Jesus.

Let us take a look at the Easter Rising of 1916 on Good Friday:

In the early hours of 21 April 1916, Good Friday - three days before the rising began, a German U-boat landed on Banna Strand dropping off Roger Casement, Daniel Julian Bailey, and Robert Monteith. Roger Caement was discovered and arrested on charges of treason, sabotage, and espionage against the Crown. He was taken straight to the Tower of London where he was imprisoned, but not before he was able to send word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance.

Michael Collins had sent a car to pick up the "Casement Brigade". However, on the way they drove off the road into the River Laune, where they drowned.

Austin Stack will not go into a Police station and ask. (Probably due to the fact that the police were an arm of the British Administration.)

Arthur Hamilton Norway

Arthur Hamilton Norway, head of the Irish Post Office, being a diligent public servant, had letters to write, even though it was a bank holiday. While his wife sat sewing in the Royal Hibernian Hotel on Dawson Street, where the family lived, and their son Nevil went for a ride on his motorbike, he dropped in to his office at the GPO to collect some papers. He was just sitting down at his desk when the phone rang and Sir Matthew Nathan, Under-Secretary of the Irish administration, asked him to go immediately to Dublin Castle.

John Dillon

1851 - August 4, 1927

With the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914 Dillon accepted Redmond’s decision to follow Britain’s support of the Allied war effort, but he abstained from recruiting for the Irish divisions. The 1916 Rising took the Irish Party by surprise. He intervened with David Lloyd George to halt the 90 sentences of execution pronounced by "field court-martial" (in camera without defence or jury) under martial law by General Maxwell after he declared the rebellion “treason in time of war”.

Dillon insisted that if they went ahead they would "fill the whole country" with the same type of radicals, as opposed to imprisonment. This, he said would leave the radicals with as many supporters as could "fit in a single gaol cell". He attacked the Government in the House of Commons and declared that the rebels were "wrong", but had fought "a clean fight". His intervention resulted in a halt to the executions after the fifteenth, though it was apparent how unbridgeable the chasm in Anglo-Irish relations had become following the Rising. The secret manner of the trials and executions had changed public opinion into sympathy for the rebels.