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Applying the Karenina principle to Ireland’s fight for freedom
There’s nothing like the great Russian novel for giving you pause for thought in a most expansive way. Take for example, the Anna Karenina principle, which derives from the opening lines of Leo Tolstoy’s novel of the same name: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ In other words, a family must be successful in every one of the criteria necessary to be happy; for example, finances, parenting, living conditions, or mental wellbeing. Failure in just one of these, leads to unhappiness. The same principle applies to uprisings; they can only succeed where every possible deficiency has been avoided, otherwise they are doomed to failure. In Irish history, a key failure was apparent in two unsuccessful revolts, the 1798 Rebellion and the 1916 Rising, and that was a failure to get support. Both rebellions failed to get timely and adequate nationwide support as well as support from countries sympathetic to their cause.
Traditionally, Irish revolutionary nationalists have looked to England’s enemies for aid, but when it came to them liaising with these enemies to organise ships full of soldiers and men to help overthrow our age-old occupiers, the best laid plans always floundered. Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell’s Spanish backup failed at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, resulting in the Flight of the Earls and the subsequent plantation of Ulster. Wolfe Tone failed to land enough French aid to support the 1798 Rebellion, resulting in defeat and the end of self-governance in Ireland with the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. Roger Casement failed in getting enough German aid for the 1916 Rising, resulting in a failed rebellion, but one that started the beginning of the end of British rule in Ireland. Tone did not learn from O’Neill and O’Donnell; Casement did not learn from Tone.
A wry observer in late eighteenth-century Dublin might have described the porticoed building across the green from Trinity College as a naval gazing hall of mirrors, a platform for empty rhetoric or, a monument to beautifully enunciated hyperbole. From 1782 to 1800, it was also known as Grattan’s Parliament. But only members of the wealthy, land-owning Ascendancy class could join this club, a rule that did not sit well with poorer Protestants, Catholics, and Presbyterians in a country where the Penal Laws[1] legalised bigotry.
Astoundingly, many of those gentlemen who put aside their hunting paraphernalia to play at being parliamentarians on College Green, considered themselves to be ‘radical’, meaning that they were selectively inspired by the American Revolution. Known as the ‘patriot’ group in Grattan’s Parliament, these ‘radicals’ were not pushing for breakaway independence; they had no intention of planning a revolution themselves. Indeed, in 1784, Grattan described groups who did challenge the age-old status quo as: ‘the armed beggary of the nation.’ These ‘gentry nationalists’ then, did not represent the excluded and marginalised three-quarters of the Irish population.
Notwithstanding, the ‘patriot’ group did have two major successes; the amendment of Poynings’ Law, and the repeal of the Declaratory Act. Poynings’ Law, which effectively neutered the Irish parliament, was enacted in 1494-95 as a response to Irish support for two Yorkist pretenders to the English throne; Lambert Simnel in 1487 and Perkin Warbeck in 1491. Simnel and Warbeck had put the frighteners on the English crown and this law would prevent any future Irish parliament from giving official recognition to a pretender. The Declaratory Act of 1720 gave the British Parliament the right to legislate for Ireland. The repeal meant that Grattan’s Parliament could now create laws in Dublin, but these still had to be rubberstamped by London. This half measure was like giving someone permission to do something, and then using your power to prevent them from doing that thing; far from ideal.
It would seem to the pragmatic onlooker that Grattan’s Parliament was a sort of Regency romp completely at odds with the concerns of your average Irish peasant, servant, wheelwright, innkeeper, seamstress or street vendor. Grattan and his chums would have been more at home in the Pump Room at Bath when they weren’t busy expostulating on behalf of the most elitist bubble on the island of Ireland. Imagine, if you will, People Before Profit meeting in the K-Club to discuss the housing crisis; a ridiculous scenario, you will agree. Grattan’s Parliament was an impotent institution, and Roy Foster’s description of its brand of nationalism is not generous. ‘Patriot’ nationalism remained exclusive: the rule of an enlightened elite, rather than the broadening of national interests that was so important to the self-image of the American Revolution.’[2] But of course, we must not forget that those ‘august’ American revolutionaries ignored the rights of their own citizens who were black and enslaved, female or indigenous, so, not so broad after all then.
The new democracy that emerged from the bloodshed of the French Revolution and the resulting Terror also spurred on Irish radicals. Alarmingly, in 1791, the newly installed French government even offered military assistance to any group who wanted to overthrow their own monarchy, a worrying development for the British crown. A fearful Britain responded by giving more rights to Catholics in the hope of calming the storm of the French Revolution.
The Catholic Committee in Ireland became radicalised in 1791 to get as much as it could in this new pro-Catholic climate. Its organising secretary, Theobald Wolfe Tone, would go on to establish the United Irishmen in Belfast in October 1791, populated by mainly middleclass, pro-Enlightenment Protestants, Anglicans and Presbyterians. They had two goals - uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter in Ireland into a single movement, and reforming the Irish parliament. This is where we can locate the origins of the 1798 Rebellion. One hundred and fifteen years later, the 1916 Proclamation would also guarantee ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and opportunities.’
Supporting French Republicanism was regarded as treasonous by the British. Dublin Castle, the seat of government in Ireland, kept a wary eye on the United Irishmen, especially after the outbreak of war between Britain and France in February 1793. The discovery of secret talks between Wolfe Tone and the French government led to the suppression of the United Irishmen in May 1794. But like similar societies throughout the following century, it re-constituted itself as a secret, oath-bound, organisation dedicated to the pursuit of an independent Ireland.
After initially failing to receive armed aid from Revolutionary France, Wolfe Tone went to the United States and obtained letters of introduction from the French minister at Philadelphia to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris. In 1796, Tone went to France with his invasion plan, looking for help, and sailed home from Brest with an incredible 43 ships and 14,000 men. The ships were badly handled though, and maddeningly, after reaching the coast of west Cork and Kerry, the fleet was scattered by a storm, and no troops were landed. After this, Dublin Castle stepped up its war against the United Irishmen. Tone would return to Paris with another invasion plan in 1797, but the then General Napoleon Bonaparte, took little interest, obviously preoccupied with his Italian Campaign.
By the spring of 1798, it appeared that Dublin Castle had successfully prevented the United Irishmen's capacity for insurrection. Many of its leaders were in prison, its organisation had become erratic, and the possibility of French assistance seemed like wishful thinking. But the rebellion would go ahead on the night of May 23rd / 24th, as planned. The initial outbreak was confined to a ring of counties surrounding Dublin, intended merely as supporting acts to the main event in the capital. However, with Dublin’s failure to rise, rebellion in these surrounding counties was unsuccessful and the rebels were subdued by government forces. But Wexford was still up for a fight.
Under the command of Father Murphy of Boolavogue, the Wexford insurgents stormed Enniscorthy, and the next day the rebel army marched on Wexford town. With news of success at Enniscorthy, the town was abandoned by its defenders. This was the highpoint of the rebellion in the south-east. The rebels fell back to re-group on the venerable Vinegar Hill where on June 21st they were defeated. Wexford commanders - all Protestants - had their heads cut off and stuck on spikes outside the courthouse in Wexford town. Father John Murphy was similarly executed.
For a fleeting moment in late August, it looked like the rebellion might flare up again with the arrival of a French force under the command of General Humbert in Mayo. Humbert was victorious at Castlebar, but then his campaign waned. On September 8th, the vastly outnumbered Humbert surrendered in County Longford. That same month Tone arrived from France with 3,000 men, only to be captured at Lough Swilly in Donegal. This second attempt in 1798 was a case of too little too late.
Tried and found guilty of treason, early in the morning of November 12th, before his appointment with the hangman’s noose, Tone cut his throat and died seven days later. The rebellion was over. To compound the defeat, Ireland lost its parliament in Dublin with the Act of Union in 1800 and would now be governed directly from Westminster. But the desire for self-rule would never go away.
Eighty-seven years later, Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), was the first Irish MP to succeed in getting anyone at Westminster to even consider the possibility of Home Rule for Ireland. In 1885, he won the support of the Liberal Party leader Gladstone. Two Home Rule bills failed in 1886 and 1893, and with Parnell’s premature death in 1891 and the retirement of Gladstone in 1894, the fight for Home Rule was weakening. But by 1912 Irish MPs held the balance of power at Westminster. The third Home Rule Bill was introduced, and when it seemed certain to become law, the unionist leaders, James Craig and Edward Carson, swung into action organising Covenant Day on September 28th, 1912. In a charged atmosphere, 470,000 men and women signed ‘Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant’ pledging to maintain the union with the United Kingdom.
To compound the seriousness of Unionist intent, in December 1912, the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed, determined to use physical force to resist an all-Ireland government based in Dublin. By mid-1914, 90,000 men had enlisted in the UVF. Unionist leaders organised the purchase in Germany of 25,000 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition and successfully brought most of them ashore at Larne on the night of 24-25th April 1914. The outbreak of World War 1 stuck a large spanner in the works. The Home Rule bill became law on 28th September 1914, but its operation was suspended during the conflict which was expected to be over by 1915. The Irish Parliamentary Party leader, John Redmond, anxious to remain in the good books at Westminster and not to lose the hard-won Home Rule, urged his followers to enlist in the British Army, and thousands did so.
At the outbreak of World War 1, Clan na Gael, a secret Irish republican society based in America, would provide the main channel of communication between Ireland and Germany. Already on August 24th,1914, its leader, that old Fenian John Devoy had met the German ambassador in New York, mooting the possibility for an Irish rising and requesting military support. Like his predecessor Wolfe Tone consorting with France, Roger Casement would be the central figure in developing the rebels` relations with Germany.
In tandem with the parliamentary struggles for Home Rule, several new and important political initiatives also occurred that would eventually pave the way for the 1916 Rising. These included the founding of Sinn Féin, the rejuvenation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) originally founded in 1858, and developments in the fledging labour movement. The establishment of Sinn Féin was likely a response to disillusionment with the Irish Parliament Party. Many regarded its leaders as privileged and out of touch with the poverty of the urban and rural poor. The Irish Parliamentary Party seemed to be afflicted by the same syndrome experienced by Grattan’s Parliament in the late eighteenth century.
The most ‘dynamic force’ though behind the 1916 Rising was the revived Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) – an underground, separatist, revolutionary movement, established in 1858. It played a similar role to the United Irishmen in the 1798 Rebellion, in that it planned and directed the 1916 Rising. Its Military Council would eventually comprise the seven signatories of the Proclamation of Independence - Thomas Clarke, Sean MacDermott, Patrick Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly, and Thomas MacDonagh. In response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Irish Volunteer Force was formed on 25th November 1913; it would be infiltrated by the IRB who hoped to use it in a future rising. Determined to arm the Irish Volunteers, the IRB would successfully land 1,000 rifles at Howth in July 1914. Just one year earlier in 1913, Dublin workers had established the Irish Citizen Army at the height of the Dublin Lockout to protect strikers from baton wielding police.
Ulster Unionism and its armed Ulster Volunteer Force had support from the highest echelons of the British administration - the Conservative Party, King George V, and the British army officer class. In 1914, in what became known as the ‘Curragh Mutiny,’ British officers threatened to resign their commissions if they were ordered to suppress the armed UVF’s resistance to Home Rule. This episode left Irish nationalists in no doubt about their position.
The Irish Volunteer Force had recruited 180,000 men by mid-1914, but then formally split over whether its volunteers should enlist in British Forces and fight in World War l. Its more extreme rump of 11,000 strongly opposed enlisting. But agreement across the board was never possible because some Irish Volunteer Force leaders, in particular Eoin MacNeill, rejected a wartime rising on grounds of principle or, if you like, fair play. However, its Military Council did form an alliance with the Irish Citizen Army.
Preparations gathered momentum throughout 1915. The plan was to instigate an insurrection in Dublin; to be supported by munitions, and hopefully troops from Germany, which were to be landed on the coast of County Kerry. The date eventually set for the rising was Easter Monday, April 23rd. Their revolutionary intentions were to be masked behind publicly advertised and apparently routine manoeuvres arranged for that day.
On April 19th, Irish Volunteer Force commandants were given details of the plan for insurrection. When Eoin MacNeill received confirmation of their true intentions on April 21st, he issued countermand orders cancelling the now publicised manoeuvres for Easter Sunday, by placing a note to this effect in that morning’s edition of the Sunday Independent, because by then news had reached Dublin that the ship transporting German arms to Ireland had been captured on April 21st. The Military Council members met in emergency session on Sunday morning, April 23rd and they decided to go ahead with the rising the next day.
Roger Casement was in the US when the war began and at once submitted a plan to German officials there, outlining how Britain’s power could be broken by exploiting unrest in its vulnerable possessions, especially Ireland. He was attracted by the potential of an Irish-German alliance as a means of securing full Irish independence. The Berlin government suggested that he travel to Germany for negotiations. In November 1914, the German government agreed to Casement’s plan to form an Irish Brigade comprised of Irish prisoners of war held captive in Germany; but recruitment to it was poor. Most of the prisoners were politically moderate and regarded Casement as a traitor.
Once a date for the Rising had been set, the German government agreed to ship 25,000 rifles and one million rounds of ammunition to Ireland. Its ultimate hope was to divert some British troops from the Western Front. The consignment was despatched aboard the ‘Aud’ on April 9th. But Casement considered its size to be wholly inadequate, and consequently believed that a rising was doomed to failure. He persuaded the German authorities to transport him to Ireland by submarine, supposedly to rendezvous with the ‘Aud’ and supervise the landing of the arms. His true intention was to prevent an insurrection.
The whole enterprise ended in fiasco. Owing to navigational error, the arms ship failed to appear at its agreed rendezvous point. Due to inept planning by the rebel leadership, local volunteers had not been expecting it to arrive when it did. In any case, British intelligence had intercepted messages between the insurrectionists and the German Embassy in New York and was anticipating its arrival. On April 21st, the Royal Navy captured the arms ship and Casement was arrested. Just like Wolfe Tone, he would be tried, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be hanged. Unlike Tone, he would keep his appointment with the hangman’s noose, an ignominious end for a knight of the realm.
The rebels’ failure to receive the arms had a major impact on the Rising (even though Casement thought the amount inadequate). Had they arrived safely, MacNeill would probably have supported the Rising around the country, increasing its impact. Mainly because of MacNeill’s countermand, the fighting of the Easter Rising, unlike the 1798 Rebellion, was virtually confined to Dublin. On Easter Monday the Volunteers, along with the Irish Citizen Army, assembled at various prearranged meeting points in Dublin to occupy strategic buildings in the inner-city area and immediately set about making them defensible. The GPO was the nerve centre and headquarters of the rebellion.
When the Rising began the authorities had just 400 troops to confront roughly 1,000 rebels. Reinforcements were speedily drafted into the capital and by Friday April 28th, about 1,600 rebels were facing 18-20,000 soldiers. From Thursday the GPO was entirely cut off from other rebel garrisons. Next day it came under a ferocious artillery attack from the battleship Helga, which also devastated much of central Dublin. The insurgent leaders were forced to evacuate the GPO, and eventually accept the only terms on offer – unconditional surrender. Their decision was then made known to and accepted sometimes reluctantly, by all the rebel garrisons still fighting.
Between 10,000 and 25,000 rebels, and around 600 soldiers had been killed in the 1798 Rebellion. The 1916 Rising cost 450 persons killed, 2,614 injured, and 9 missing, almost all in Dublin. While the 1798 Rebellion was followed by more than a century of failed revolts, famine, mass emigration and agrarian unrest, the 1916 Rising lost the battle but won the war, heralding as it did, the realisation of independence just five years later.
K is for the Karenina principle, where the failure of one component results in the failure of the entire exercise, in this case, the failure to coordinate overseas military aid and nationwide support. K is for key component, and for the 1798 and 1916 rebellions this key component was seeking help from Britain’s enemies, but never getting enough, or at the right time to make a difference.
Footnotes:
[1] While ostensibly their aim was to eradicate Catholicism in Ireland, the laws against religious worship were largely ignored from 1716 because they were logistically to operate. It was easier to enforce the laws that banned Catholics from parliament, from holding any government office, from entering the legal profession and from holding commissions in the army or navy unless you took ‘the oaths of allegiance and abhorrence and make the declaration against transubstantiation in open court between nine and twelve in the forenoon, and said fact shall be recorded, before he shall be admitted to practice.’
[2] Foster R.F., Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988)
These are good websites:
http://www.1916rising.com/index.html
http://www.easter1916.net/
http://www.timelines.tv/index.php?t=2&e=9
Traditionally, Irish revolutionary nationalists have looked to England’s enemies for aid, but when it came to them liaising with these enemies to organise ships full of soldiers and men to help overthrow our age-old occupiers, the best laid plans always floundered. Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell’s Spanish backup failed at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, resulting in the Flight of the Earls and the subsequent plantation of Ulster. Wolfe Tone failed to land enough French aid to support the 1798 Rebellion, resulting in defeat and the end of self-governance in Ireland with the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. Roger Casement failed in getting enough German aid for the 1916 Rising, resulting in a failed rebellion, but one that started the beginning of the end of British rule in Ireland. Tone did not learn from O’Neill and O’Donnell; Casement did not learn from Tone.
A wry observer in late eighteenth-century Dublin might have described the porticoed building across the green from Trinity College as a naval gazing hall of mirrors, a platform for empty rhetoric or, a monument to beautifully enunciated hyperbole. From 1782 to 1800, it was also known as Grattan’s Parliament. But only members of the wealthy, land-owning Ascendancy class could join this club, a rule that did not sit well with poorer Protestants, Catholics, and Presbyterians in a country where the Penal Laws[1] legalised bigotry.
Astoundingly, many of those gentlemen who put aside their hunting paraphernalia to play at being parliamentarians on College Green, considered themselves to be ‘radical’, meaning that they were selectively inspired by the American Revolution. Known as the ‘patriot’ group in Grattan’s Parliament, these ‘radicals’ were not pushing for breakaway independence; they had no intention of planning a revolution themselves. Indeed, in 1784, Grattan described groups who did challenge the age-old status quo as: ‘the armed beggary of the nation.’ These ‘gentry nationalists’ then, did not represent the excluded and marginalised three-quarters of the Irish population.
Notwithstanding, the ‘patriot’ group did have two major successes; the amendment of Poynings’ Law, and the repeal of the Declaratory Act. Poynings’ Law, which effectively neutered the Irish parliament, was enacted in 1494-95 as a response to Irish support for two Yorkist pretenders to the English throne; Lambert Simnel in 1487 and Perkin Warbeck in 1491. Simnel and Warbeck had put the frighteners on the English crown and this law would prevent any future Irish parliament from giving official recognition to a pretender. The Declaratory Act of 1720 gave the British Parliament the right to legislate for Ireland. The repeal meant that Grattan’s Parliament could now create laws in Dublin, but these still had to be rubberstamped by London. This half measure was like giving someone permission to do something, and then using your power to prevent them from doing that thing; far from ideal.
It would seem to the pragmatic onlooker that Grattan’s Parliament was a sort of Regency romp completely at odds with the concerns of your average Irish peasant, servant, wheelwright, innkeeper, seamstress or street vendor. Grattan and his chums would have been more at home in the Pump Room at Bath when they weren’t busy expostulating on behalf of the most elitist bubble on the island of Ireland. Imagine, if you will, People Before Profit meeting in the K-Club to discuss the housing crisis; a ridiculous scenario, you will agree. Grattan’s Parliament was an impotent institution, and Roy Foster’s description of its brand of nationalism is not generous. ‘Patriot’ nationalism remained exclusive: the rule of an enlightened elite, rather than the broadening of national interests that was so important to the self-image of the American Revolution.’[2] But of course, we must not forget that those ‘august’ American revolutionaries ignored the rights of their own citizens who were black and enslaved, female or indigenous, so, not so broad after all then.
The new democracy that emerged from the bloodshed of the French Revolution and the resulting Terror also spurred on Irish radicals. Alarmingly, in 1791, the newly installed French government even offered military assistance to any group who wanted to overthrow their own monarchy, a worrying development for the British crown. A fearful Britain responded by giving more rights to Catholics in the hope of calming the storm of the French Revolution.
The Catholic Committee in Ireland became radicalised in 1791 to get as much as it could in this new pro-Catholic climate. Its organising secretary, Theobald Wolfe Tone, would go on to establish the United Irishmen in Belfast in October 1791, populated by mainly middleclass, pro-Enlightenment Protestants, Anglicans and Presbyterians. They had two goals - uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter in Ireland into a single movement, and reforming the Irish parliament. This is where we can locate the origins of the 1798 Rebellion. One hundred and fifteen years later, the 1916 Proclamation would also guarantee ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and opportunities.’
Supporting French Republicanism was regarded as treasonous by the British. Dublin Castle, the seat of government in Ireland, kept a wary eye on the United Irishmen, especially after the outbreak of war between Britain and France in February 1793. The discovery of secret talks between Wolfe Tone and the French government led to the suppression of the United Irishmen in May 1794. But like similar societies throughout the following century, it re-constituted itself as a secret, oath-bound, organisation dedicated to the pursuit of an independent Ireland.
After initially failing to receive armed aid from Revolutionary France, Wolfe Tone went to the United States and obtained letters of introduction from the French minister at Philadelphia to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris. In 1796, Tone went to France with his invasion plan, looking for help, and sailed home from Brest with an incredible 43 ships and 14,000 men. The ships were badly handled though, and maddeningly, after reaching the coast of west Cork and Kerry, the fleet was scattered by a storm, and no troops were landed. After this, Dublin Castle stepped up its war against the United Irishmen. Tone would return to Paris with another invasion plan in 1797, but the then General Napoleon Bonaparte, took little interest, obviously preoccupied with his Italian Campaign.
By the spring of 1798, it appeared that Dublin Castle had successfully prevented the United Irishmen's capacity for insurrection. Many of its leaders were in prison, its organisation had become erratic, and the possibility of French assistance seemed like wishful thinking. But the rebellion would go ahead on the night of May 23rd / 24th, as planned. The initial outbreak was confined to a ring of counties surrounding Dublin, intended merely as supporting acts to the main event in the capital. However, with Dublin’s failure to rise, rebellion in these surrounding counties was unsuccessful and the rebels were subdued by government forces. But Wexford was still up for a fight.
Under the command of Father Murphy of Boolavogue, the Wexford insurgents stormed Enniscorthy, and the next day the rebel army marched on Wexford town. With news of success at Enniscorthy, the town was abandoned by its defenders. This was the highpoint of the rebellion in the south-east. The rebels fell back to re-group on the venerable Vinegar Hill where on June 21st they were defeated. Wexford commanders - all Protestants - had their heads cut off and stuck on spikes outside the courthouse in Wexford town. Father John Murphy was similarly executed.
For a fleeting moment in late August, it looked like the rebellion might flare up again with the arrival of a French force under the command of General Humbert in Mayo. Humbert was victorious at Castlebar, but then his campaign waned. On September 8th, the vastly outnumbered Humbert surrendered in County Longford. That same month Tone arrived from France with 3,000 men, only to be captured at Lough Swilly in Donegal. This second attempt in 1798 was a case of too little too late.
Tried and found guilty of treason, early in the morning of November 12th, before his appointment with the hangman’s noose, Tone cut his throat and died seven days later. The rebellion was over. To compound the defeat, Ireland lost its parliament in Dublin with the Act of Union in 1800 and would now be governed directly from Westminster. But the desire for self-rule would never go away.
Eighty-seven years later, Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), was the first Irish MP to succeed in getting anyone at Westminster to even consider the possibility of Home Rule for Ireland. In 1885, he won the support of the Liberal Party leader Gladstone. Two Home Rule bills failed in 1886 and 1893, and with Parnell’s premature death in 1891 and the retirement of Gladstone in 1894, the fight for Home Rule was weakening. But by 1912 Irish MPs held the balance of power at Westminster. The third Home Rule Bill was introduced, and when it seemed certain to become law, the unionist leaders, James Craig and Edward Carson, swung into action organising Covenant Day on September 28th, 1912. In a charged atmosphere, 470,000 men and women signed ‘Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant’ pledging to maintain the union with the United Kingdom.
To compound the seriousness of Unionist intent, in December 1912, the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed, determined to use physical force to resist an all-Ireland government based in Dublin. By mid-1914, 90,000 men had enlisted in the UVF. Unionist leaders organised the purchase in Germany of 25,000 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition and successfully brought most of them ashore at Larne on the night of 24-25th April 1914. The outbreak of World War 1 stuck a large spanner in the works. The Home Rule bill became law on 28th September 1914, but its operation was suspended during the conflict which was expected to be over by 1915. The Irish Parliamentary Party leader, John Redmond, anxious to remain in the good books at Westminster and not to lose the hard-won Home Rule, urged his followers to enlist in the British Army, and thousands did so.
At the outbreak of World War 1, Clan na Gael, a secret Irish republican society based in America, would provide the main channel of communication between Ireland and Germany. Already on August 24th,1914, its leader, that old Fenian John Devoy had met the German ambassador in New York, mooting the possibility for an Irish rising and requesting military support. Like his predecessor Wolfe Tone consorting with France, Roger Casement would be the central figure in developing the rebels` relations with Germany.
In tandem with the parliamentary struggles for Home Rule, several new and important political initiatives also occurred that would eventually pave the way for the 1916 Rising. These included the founding of Sinn Féin, the rejuvenation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) originally founded in 1858, and developments in the fledging labour movement. The establishment of Sinn Féin was likely a response to disillusionment with the Irish Parliament Party. Many regarded its leaders as privileged and out of touch with the poverty of the urban and rural poor. The Irish Parliamentary Party seemed to be afflicted by the same syndrome experienced by Grattan’s Parliament in the late eighteenth century.
The most ‘dynamic force’ though behind the 1916 Rising was the revived Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) – an underground, separatist, revolutionary movement, established in 1858. It played a similar role to the United Irishmen in the 1798 Rebellion, in that it planned and directed the 1916 Rising. Its Military Council would eventually comprise the seven signatories of the Proclamation of Independence - Thomas Clarke, Sean MacDermott, Patrick Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly, and Thomas MacDonagh. In response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Irish Volunteer Force was formed on 25th November 1913; it would be infiltrated by the IRB who hoped to use it in a future rising. Determined to arm the Irish Volunteers, the IRB would successfully land 1,000 rifles at Howth in July 1914. Just one year earlier in 1913, Dublin workers had established the Irish Citizen Army at the height of the Dublin Lockout to protect strikers from baton wielding police.
Ulster Unionism and its armed Ulster Volunteer Force had support from the highest echelons of the British administration - the Conservative Party, King George V, and the British army officer class. In 1914, in what became known as the ‘Curragh Mutiny,’ British officers threatened to resign their commissions if they were ordered to suppress the armed UVF’s resistance to Home Rule. This episode left Irish nationalists in no doubt about their position.
The Irish Volunteer Force had recruited 180,000 men by mid-1914, but then formally split over whether its volunteers should enlist in British Forces and fight in World War l. Its more extreme rump of 11,000 strongly opposed enlisting. But agreement across the board was never possible because some Irish Volunteer Force leaders, in particular Eoin MacNeill, rejected a wartime rising on grounds of principle or, if you like, fair play. However, its Military Council did form an alliance with the Irish Citizen Army.
Preparations gathered momentum throughout 1915. The plan was to instigate an insurrection in Dublin; to be supported by munitions, and hopefully troops from Germany, which were to be landed on the coast of County Kerry. The date eventually set for the rising was Easter Monday, April 23rd. Their revolutionary intentions were to be masked behind publicly advertised and apparently routine manoeuvres arranged for that day.
On April 19th, Irish Volunteer Force commandants were given details of the plan for insurrection. When Eoin MacNeill received confirmation of their true intentions on April 21st, he issued countermand orders cancelling the now publicised manoeuvres for Easter Sunday, by placing a note to this effect in that morning’s edition of the Sunday Independent, because by then news had reached Dublin that the ship transporting German arms to Ireland had been captured on April 21st. The Military Council members met in emergency session on Sunday morning, April 23rd and they decided to go ahead with the rising the next day.
Roger Casement was in the US when the war began and at once submitted a plan to German officials there, outlining how Britain’s power could be broken by exploiting unrest in its vulnerable possessions, especially Ireland. He was attracted by the potential of an Irish-German alliance as a means of securing full Irish independence. The Berlin government suggested that he travel to Germany for negotiations. In November 1914, the German government agreed to Casement’s plan to form an Irish Brigade comprised of Irish prisoners of war held captive in Germany; but recruitment to it was poor. Most of the prisoners were politically moderate and regarded Casement as a traitor.
Once a date for the Rising had been set, the German government agreed to ship 25,000 rifles and one million rounds of ammunition to Ireland. Its ultimate hope was to divert some British troops from the Western Front. The consignment was despatched aboard the ‘Aud’ on April 9th. But Casement considered its size to be wholly inadequate, and consequently believed that a rising was doomed to failure. He persuaded the German authorities to transport him to Ireland by submarine, supposedly to rendezvous with the ‘Aud’ and supervise the landing of the arms. His true intention was to prevent an insurrection.
The whole enterprise ended in fiasco. Owing to navigational error, the arms ship failed to appear at its agreed rendezvous point. Due to inept planning by the rebel leadership, local volunteers had not been expecting it to arrive when it did. In any case, British intelligence had intercepted messages between the insurrectionists and the German Embassy in New York and was anticipating its arrival. On April 21st, the Royal Navy captured the arms ship and Casement was arrested. Just like Wolfe Tone, he would be tried, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be hanged. Unlike Tone, he would keep his appointment with the hangman’s noose, an ignominious end for a knight of the realm.
The rebels’ failure to receive the arms had a major impact on the Rising (even though Casement thought the amount inadequate). Had they arrived safely, MacNeill would probably have supported the Rising around the country, increasing its impact. Mainly because of MacNeill’s countermand, the fighting of the Easter Rising, unlike the 1798 Rebellion, was virtually confined to Dublin. On Easter Monday the Volunteers, along with the Irish Citizen Army, assembled at various prearranged meeting points in Dublin to occupy strategic buildings in the inner-city area and immediately set about making them defensible. The GPO was the nerve centre and headquarters of the rebellion.
When the Rising began the authorities had just 400 troops to confront roughly 1,000 rebels. Reinforcements were speedily drafted into the capital and by Friday April 28th, about 1,600 rebels were facing 18-20,000 soldiers. From Thursday the GPO was entirely cut off from other rebel garrisons. Next day it came under a ferocious artillery attack from the battleship Helga, which also devastated much of central Dublin. The insurgent leaders were forced to evacuate the GPO, and eventually accept the only terms on offer – unconditional surrender. Their decision was then made known to and accepted sometimes reluctantly, by all the rebel garrisons still fighting.
Between 10,000 and 25,000 rebels, and around 600 soldiers had been killed in the 1798 Rebellion. The 1916 Rising cost 450 persons killed, 2,614 injured, and 9 missing, almost all in Dublin. While the 1798 Rebellion was followed by more than a century of failed revolts, famine, mass emigration and agrarian unrest, the 1916 Rising lost the battle but won the war, heralding as it did, the realisation of independence just five years later.
K is for the Karenina principle, where the failure of one component results in the failure of the entire exercise, in this case, the failure to coordinate overseas military aid and nationwide support. K is for key component, and for the 1798 and 1916 rebellions this key component was seeking help from Britain’s enemies, but never getting enough, or at the right time to make a difference.
Footnotes:
[1] While ostensibly their aim was to eradicate Catholicism in Ireland, the laws against religious worship were largely ignored from 1716 because they were logistically to operate. It was easier to enforce the laws that banned Catholics from parliament, from holding any government office, from entering the legal profession and from holding commissions in the army or navy unless you took ‘the oaths of allegiance and abhorrence and make the declaration against transubstantiation in open court between nine and twelve in the forenoon, and said fact shall be recorded, before he shall be admitted to practice.’
[2] Foster R.F., Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988)
These are good websites:
http://www.1916rising.com/index.html
http://www.easter1916.net/
http://www.timelines.tv/index.php?t=2&e=9
