Easter Week 1916

A Brief History and Tribute
To the Beginning of the End of English Rule in Ireland

By Eric Rosenbloom


After decades of frustrated attempts to wrest home rule from the English Parliament, after seven centuries of impoverishment, servitude, and murder by the successive rulers and governments from England, it was more than clear in the early 1900s that only another armed rebellion held the hope of at last liberating Ireland.

Theobald Wolfe Tone of 1798, Robert Emmet and Anne Devlin of 1803, John Mitchel of 1848, James Stephens of 1867 — these were just some of the spirits of earlier uprisings to unite Irish men and women against colonial rule and sectarian division. At the same time, the Irish language and culture were being increasingly revived: the heroic tales of Cúchullain and Finn Mac Cool, Queen Maeve and Gráinne O’Malley, the traditions of monastic learning and law, the romance of the storyteller and the harpist. So too the struggle for the rights of farmers, women, and wage workers against social and economic injustices had continued to grow.

When home rule — not actual independence, but at least an Irish parliament (with very limited powers) — seemed to be coming within reach yet again, an Ulster Volunteer Force was formed as a paramilitary army, armed and trained with the acquiescence of the English, to prevent even that. To counter them, and backed by the revived sense of an Irish nation, the Irish Volunteers was created in 1913, and in 1914 a women’s auxiliary, Cumann na mBan, to defend home rule, Irish unity, and ultimately independence, “without distinction of creed, class or politics”. In contrast to the Unionist force in Ulster, Republican Volunteer activity was fiercely suppressed. Cumann na mBan arose out of the Daughters of Ireland, Inghinidhe na hÉireann, which had been founded by Maud Gonne in 1900 to, at first, oppose recruitment of Irish children into the English army. Very limited home rule was at last enacted in 1914, and even that with the poison pill of excluding several, if not all, of the counties of Ulster. It would have taken effect September 17, 1915, but was suspended for the great war against Germany and Austria. Most of the Volunteers joined England’s fight, with cofounder and Irish Republican Brotherhood leader Bulmer Hobson’s acquiescence; many refused and remained under the command of history professor Eoin MacNeill.

Meanwhile, in the Irish Republican Brotherhood — the IRB, a secret society founded by James Stephens in 1858 and sworn to insurrection as necessary to attain true independence — tobacconist Thomas Clarke formed a secret Military Committee to plan an uprising while England was occupied with the great war. When exiled IRB leader Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa died in New York in 1915, Clarke had his body brought home to publicize the cause and galvanize support. Teacher Thomas MacDonagh organized the funeral procession and graveside rally, where Pádraig Pearse, MacDonagh’s headmaster at St Enda’s School, delivered a tide-turning oration:

“… I propose to you that, here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa. … We of the Irish volunteers and you others who are associated with us in today’s task and duty are bound together and must stand together henceforth in brotherly union for the achievement of the freedom of Ireland. And we know only one definition of freedom: it is Tone’s definition, it is Mitchel’s definition, it is Rossa’s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name or definition than their name and their definition.

“… This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and with all restraint but I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression; and, hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today.

“Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death: and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have left us our Fenian dead, and, while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

The IRB had already placed its members in positions of influence in most of the many nationalist cultural, athletic, and political groups. Labor leader James Connolly was himself rather openly planning an uprising, so he was brought into the IRB Military Committee. His Irish Citizen Army of both women and men, created in 1913 as well to defend workers on strike or lockout, and committed to establishing a republic in response to England’s new war, joined the remainder of the Volunteers. The date was set: Easter Sunday, April 23, 1916: An Éirí Amach na Cásca.



Eoin MacNeill, nominal head of the Volunteers, was reluctant but was persuaded by the promise of German arms and even officers, arranged with the help of Clan na Gael in the US. IRB leader Bulmer Hobson, on the other hand, was kidnapped by the Military Committee to keep him from undercutting their plans. (Neither MacNeill nor Hobson was a member of the secret Military Committee.) On Good Friday, the German arms shipment had not been met in time by the Irish (who did not know that the ship could not have received the change of plan to delay its landing until Sunday night, when the Easter moon would not be detriment) and was instead found by the English and scuttled by the captain. On Saturday, MacNeill demobilized the mustering Volunteers and then published his stand-down order in the Sunday newspapers. The IRB Military Committee voted to reissue the order for the next day, realizing that the uprising would now be limited mostly to Dublin — and with far fewer men and women than needed — but hoping that more would follow (during the rising, members of Cumann na mBan travelled to points around the country to remobilize the Volunteers). Besides the important symbolism of Easter and the fact that many soldiers and officers were on holiday, there was an urgency to act before their increasingly likely arrests — especially after MacNeill’s publication — made it impossible. They also needed to act before the end of the war (which they could not know would go on for another two-and-a-half years), intending that Ireland’s claim of nationhood would be represented at the peace conference. On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the Irish Citizen Army, the Irish Volunteers, the Fianna Éireann boy and girl scouts, and Cumann na mBan collected their arms and marched to positions.

The General Post Office (GPO) was established as the seat of the provisional government. James Connolly was the commander. Most of the other positions were to protect the GPO from advancing troops. Pádraig Pearse read out the proclamation of the Irish Republic on the porch and it was sent around the world by telegraph. It was signed by the seven members of the IRB Military Committee acting as the provisional government. Beginning on Wednesday, the GPO, along with much of the area around it, was subjected to bombardment from the English warship Helga in the Liffey river and other heavy guns. Writer James Stephens wrote at the time, “The finest part of our city has been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes.”

City Hall was surrendered Monday night, after commander Seán Connolly, an actor, singer, athlete, and enthusiast for the Irish language, was killed while raising the flag of the Irish Republic. The Mendicity Institution was surrendered on Wednesday.

Outside of Dublin, a Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in county Meath was successfully attacked, Enniscorthy and part of county Wexford were secured, and in county Galway, under the command of Liam Mellows, along with several other actions the agricultural station at Athenry was captured and held.

Fire forced the evacuation of the GPO on Friday evening. On Saturday, April 29, 1916, the five members of the provisional government that were in the GPO sent Cumann na mBan member and labor activist Elizabeth O’Farrell across the lines with an offer of surrender signed by Pearse:

“Believing that the glorious stand which has been made by the soldiers of Irish freedom during the past five days in Dublin has been sufficient to gain recognition of Irelandʼs national claim at an international peace conference, and desirous of preventing further slaughter of the civil population, and to save the lives of as many as possible of our followers, the Members of the Provisional Government here present have agreed by a majority to open negotiations with the English commander.”

O’Farrell accompanied Pearse for the official surrender and then set about delivering the final order signed by Pearse, James Connolly, and Thomas MacDonagh to the rest of the rebels. Fighting continued into Sunday, April 30. At the end, 112 rebels were sentenced to death. More than 3,000 nationalists were arrested and most of them transported to prison camps in Britain. The courtmartials were conducted in secret without defense counsel. Eoin MacNeill was among those sentenced to penal servitude for life; Bulmer Hobson went into hiding.

Besides the formally executed, the dead numbered some 64 rebels, 132 English soldiers and police, and about 230 civilians. More than three times those numbers were injured.


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“If freedom is to come to Ireland — as I believe it is — then the Easter Insurrection was the only thing that could have happened.”

—James Stephens, The Insurrection in Dublin, May 8, 1916

Even before the uprising ended, sentiment was shifting broadly against the English, even among the Irish Parliamentary Party in London. On Tuesday evening, suffragist, pacifist, and writer Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, had been arrested while organizing citizens to protect businesses from looting. After witnessing and protesting the murder of a Labour politician Richard O’Carroll and the beating and murder of 17-year-old James Coade by an English officer, he and two journalists who had also been arrested were themselves murdered in the Portobello barracks. (The English officer responsible was later found guilty but insane, and after 18 months in an asylum was retired to Canada on full pension.) On Friday, English troops, blocked from reaching the GPO by the republicans based at the Four Courts, and suffering heavy casualties, had rampaged through the houses of North King Street and murdered 15 civilian men.

The executions by firing squad, starting quickly after the end of the uprising and continuing for 10 days, were increasingly seen as brutal. All of those killed in Dublin were buried in quicklime in a mass grave behind Arbour Hill Prison. The grave had been prepared to hold 100 bodies. After 15 republicans were killed, the executions in Ireland were halted. Roger Casement, who had helped to organize the German arms shipments, was hanged in London on August 3. Returning to heroes’ welcomes, most prisoners were released by the end of the year, the rest of them in June the next year, many of them having already been elected to Parliament. But with continued martial law, attempts to silence priests, attempted conscription, and continuing abuses against the people — unionist and nationalist alike — the newly republican Sinn Féin party, under the leadership of Éamon de Valéra — commander at Boland’s Bakery during the uprising and sentenced to death commuted to life imprisonment — with much of its leadership in prison and its meetings and newspapers banned, swept the December 1918 parliamentary election. Instead of going to Westminster, they convened the first Irish parliament and declared independence on January 21, 1919, with reaffirmation of the 1916 Proclamation. Despite, or rather because of, escalated English violence against nationalists, Sinn Féin went on to sweep the local elections in January 1920 and the county and district council elections in June 1920.

The cascade of events let loose by the heroes of 1916 thus flowed onward: a brutal war for independence, a brutal civil war of the U.K.-supported provisional Free State government against the Republic, de Valéra creating a new Republican party to work within the Free State toward greater independence, abolishing much of England’s symbolic and political power in Ireland in 1932, adopting a new (albeit in many ways regressive) constitution in 1937, and exit from the English Commonwealth and establishment of the Republic on Easter Monday 1949 — though as yet disunited from the six northeastern counties (and still speaking primarily English).


The Martyrs of 1916

Patrick Pearse, writer, headmaster, executed May 3, 1916

“We have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, and handed on a tradition to the future.” (speech from the dock)

Thomas Clarke, tobacconist, republican activist, executed May 3, 1916

“I and my fellow-signatories believe we have struck the first successful blow for Freedom. The next blow, which we have no doubt Ireland will strike, will win through. In this belief we die happy.” (final message)

Thomas MacDonagh, poet, teacher, executed May 3, 1916

“The Proclamation of the Irish Republic has been adduced in evidence against me as one of the Signatories. I adhere to every statement in the Proclamation. You think it already a dead and buried letter, but it lives, it lives. From minds alight with Ireland’s vivid intellect it sprang; in hearts aflame with Ireland’s mighty love it was conceived. Such documents do not die. … Take me away, and let my blood bedew the sacred soil of Ireland. I die in the certainty that once more the seed will fructify.” (speech from the dock)

Joseph Plunkett, poet, journalist, executed May 4, 1916

Edward (Ned) Daly, chemist, republican activist, executed May 4, 1916

William (Willie) Pearse, sculptor, actor, executed May 4, 1916

Michael O’Hanrahan, proofreader, writer, executed May 4, 1916

John MacBride, chemist, water bailiff, executed May 5, 1916

Éamonn Ceannt, accountant, musician, executed May 8, 1916

“Ireland has shown she is a Nation. This generation can claim to have raised sons as brave as any that went before. And in the years to come Ireland will honour those, who risked all for her honour at Easter in 1916.” (letter from jail)

“My Dearest wife Aine, Not wife but widow before these lines reach you. I am here without hope of this world and without fear, calmly awaiting the end. … My poor little sweetheart of – how many – years ago. Ever my comforter, God comfort you now. What can I say? I die a noble death, for Ireland’s freedom. Men and women will vie with one another to shake your dear hand. Be proud of me as I am and ever was of you. … You will be – you are, the wife of one of the Leaders of the Revolution. Sweeter still you are my little child, my dearest pet, my sweetheart of the hawthorn hedges and Summer’s eves. I remember all and I banish all that I may be strong and die bravely. I have one hour to live, then God’s judgment and, through his infinite mercy, a place near your poor Grannie and my mother and father and Jem and all the fine old Irish Catholics who went through the scourge of similar misfortune from this Vale of Tears into the Promised Land. Bíodh misneach agat a stóiriní mo chroidhe. Tóg do cheann agus bíodh foighne agat go bhfeicfimid a cheile arís i bhFlaithis De – tusa, mise agus Rónán beag bocht.” (last letter)

Michael Mallin, silk weaver, social activist, executed May 8, 1916

Con (Cornelius) Colbert, scout leader, executed May 8, 1916

Seán Heuston, railway clerk, executed May 8, 1916

Thomas Kent, nationalist, executed May 9, 1916 (in Cork)

Seán MacDiarmada, republican activist, executed May 12, 1916

“I, Seán MacDiarmada, before paying the penalty of death for my love of Ireland, and abhorrence of her slavery, desire to make known to all my fellow-countrymen that I die, as I have lived, bearing no malice to any man, and in perfect peace with Almighty God. The principles for which I give my life are so sacred that I now walk to my death in the most calm and collected manner. I meet death for Ireland’s cause as I have worked for the same cause all my life.” (final statement)

James Connolly, labor activist, executed May 12, 1916

“The conquest of Ireland had meant the social and political servitude of the Irish masses, and therefore the re-conquest of Ireland must mean the social as well as the political independence from servitude of every man, woman and child in Ireland.” (The Re-conquest of Ireland, 1915)

“In these days of doubt, despair, and resurgent hope we fling our banner to the breeze, the flag of our fathers, the symbol of our national redemption, the sunburst shining over an Ireland re-born.” (Workers’ Republic, April 8, 1916)

“We went out to break the connection between this country and the British Empire, and to establish an Irish Republic. We believed that the call we then issued to the people of Ireland, was a nobler call, in a holier cause, than any call issued to them during this war, having any connection with the war. We succeeded in proving that Irishmen are ready to die endeavouring to win for Ireland those national rights, which the British Government bas been asking them to die to win for Belgium. As long as that remains the case, the cause of Irish Freedom is safe.

“Believing that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence, in any one generation of Irishmen, of even a respectable minority, ready to die to affirm that truth, makes that Government forever a usurpation and a crime against human progress.

“I personally thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irish men and boys, and hundreds of Irish women and girls were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest it with their lives, if need be.” (final statement)

Roger Casement, diplomat, humanitarian activist, poet, executed August 3, 1916 (in London)

“Loyalty is a sentiment, not a law. It rests on Love, not on restraint. The government of Ireland by England rests on restraint and not on law; and, since it demands no love, it can evoke no loyalty. …

“We are told that if Irishmen go by the thousand to die not for Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand on the deserts of Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of Gallipoli, they are winning self-government for Ireland. But if they dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to dream even that freedom can be won only at home by men resolved to fight for it there, then they are traitors to their country, and their dream and their deaths alike are phases of a dishonourable fantasy.

“… In Ireland alone in this 20th century is loyalty held to be a crime. If loyalty be something less than love and more than law, then we have had enough of such loyalty for Ireland or Irishmen. Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong, where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labors — and even while they beg, to see these things inexorably withdrawn from them — then surely it is a braver, a saner, and a truer thing to be a rebel in act and deed, against such circumstances as this than to tamely accept it as the natural lot of men.” (speech from the dock)


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(Markievicz was welcomed home on June 21, most other prisoners on June 18, 1917.)


Constance Markiewicz, January 3, 1922, Dáil debate on Free State Treaty:

“I say that the new Ireland was born in Easter Week, 1916, that Ireland is not struggling to be born. I say that the Irish language has begun to grow, that we are pushing it in the schools, and I don’t see that giving up our rights, that going into the English Empire is going to help. … But there is the other stony road that leads to ultimate freedom and the regeneration of Ireland; the road that so many of our heroes walked and I, for one will stand on the road with Terence MacSwiney and Kevin Barry and the men of Easter Week. I know the brave soldiers of Ireland will stand there, and I stand humbly behind them, men who have given themselves for Ireland, and I will devote to it the same amount that is left to me of energy and life; and I stand here to-day to make the last protest, for we only speak but once, and to ask you read most carefully, not to take everything for granted, and to realise above all that you strive for one thing, your allegiance to the men who have fought and died. But look at the results. Look at what we gain. We gained more in those few years of fighting than we gained by parliamentary agitation since the days of O’Connell. O’Connell said that Ireland’s freedom was not worth a drop of blood. Now I say that Ireland’s freedom is worth blood, and worth my blood, and I will willingly give it for it, and I appeal to the men of the Dáil to stand true. They ought to stand true and remember what God has put into your hearts and not to be led astray by phantasmagoria. Stand true to Ireland, stand true to your oaths, and put a little trust in God.”


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PROCLAMATION OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC

“IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. …

“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State. And we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

“The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority in the past. …

“We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.”



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Pádraig Pearse, March 9, 1914, Commemoration of Robert Emmet, New York:

“We who speak here to-night are the voice of one of the ancient indestructible things of the world. We are the voice of an idea which is older than any empire and will outlast every empire. We and ours, the inheritors of that idea, have been at age-long war with one of the most powerful empires that have ever been built up upon the earth; and that empire will pass before we pass. We are older than England and we are stronger than England. In every generation we have renewed the struggle, and so it shall be unto the end. …

“It is easy to imagine how the spirit of Irish patriotism called to the gallant and adventurous spirit of Tone or moved the wrathful spirit of Mitchel. In them deep called unto deep: heroic effort claimed the heroic man. But consider how the call was made to a spirit of different, yet not less noble mould; and how it was answered. In Emmet it called to a dreamer and he awoke a man of action; it called to a student and a recluse and he stood forth a leader of men; it called to one who loved the ways of peace and he became a revolutionary. …

“It is more than a hundred years since these things were suffered; and they were suffered in vain if nothing of the spirit of Emmet and Anne Devlin survives in the young men and young women of Ireland. Does anything of that spirit survive? … To the grey-haired men whom I see on this platform, John Devoy and Richard Burke, I bring, then, this message from Ireland that their seed-sowing of forty years ago has not been without its harvest, that there are young men and little boys in Ireland to-day who remember what they taught and who, with God’s blessing, will one day take — or make an opportunity of putting their teaching into practice.”


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Pádraig Pearse, May 1, 1916, letter to his mother:

“… I was brought in here on Saturday evening and later all the men with us in Moore St. were brought here. Those in the other parts of the City have, I understand, been taken to other barracks and prisons. All here are safe and well. Willie and all the St. Enda’s boys are here. I have not seen them since Saturday, but I believe they are all well and that they are not now in any danger. Our hope and belief is that the Government will spare the lives of all our followers, but we do not expect that they will spare the lives of the leaders. We are ready to die and we shall die cheerfully and proudly. Personally I do not hope or even desire to live, but I do hope and desire and believe that the lives of all our followers will be saved including the lives dear to you and me (my own excepted) and this will be a great consolation to me when dying.

“You must not grieve for all this. We have preserved Ireland’s honour and our own. Our deeds of last week are the most splendid in Ireland’s history. People will say hard things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations. You too will be blessed because you were my mother.”

(This letter was kept by the English, not only in recognition of the propaganda power of its poignancy, but also because Pearse had added a postscript that provided the legal justification for execution under the charge of treason: “P.S. I understand that the German expedition which I was counting on actually set sail but was defeated by the British.”)


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AT THE END

The songs that I sing
Should have told you an Easter story
Of a long sweet Spring
With its gold and its feasts and its glory.

But the haste of the years
Had rushed to the fall of our sorrow,
To the waste of our tears,
The hush and the pall of our morrow.

—Thomas MacDonagh


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Fornocht a chonac thú,
a áille na háille,
is dhallas mo shúil
ar eagla go stánfainn.

Chualas do cheol,
a bhinne na binne,
is dhúnas mo chluas
ar eagla go gclisfinn.

Bhlaiseas do bhéal
a mhilse na milse,
is chruas mo chroí
ar eagla mo mhillte.

Dhallas mo shúil,
is mo chluas do dhúnas;
Chruas mo chroí,
is mo mhian do mhúchas.

Thugas mo chúl
ar an aisling do chumas,
is ar an ród seo romham
m’aghaidh a thugas.

Thugas mo ghnúis
ar an ród seo romham,
ar an ngníomh a chím,
is ar an mbás a gheobhad.

 

Naked I saw thee,
O beauty of beauty.
And I blinded my eyes
For fear I should fail.

I heard thy music,
O melody of melody,
And I closed my ears
For fear I should falter.

I tasted thy mouth,
Sweetness of sweetness,
And I hardened my heart
For fear of my slaying.

I blinded my eyes.
And I closed my ears,
I hardened my heart
And I smothered my desire.

I turned my back
On the vision I had shaped
And to this road before me
I turned my face.

I have turned my face
To this road before me,
To the deed that I see
And the death I shall die.


—Pádraig Pearse, “Renunciation”


See also: The Fool” and “The Rebel


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Roger Casement


Ní bheidh a leithéidi arís ann.


1916” (a poem)


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Seachtar na Cásca (2010) agus Seachtar Anaithnid (2013), Abú Media
Thomas Clarke
James Connolly
Joseph Plunkett
Thomas MacDonagh
Seán MacDiarmada
Éamonn Ceannt
Pádraig Pearse
  Con Colbert
Michael Mallin
John MacBride
Seán Heuston
Michael O’Hanrahan
Willie Pearse
Ned Daly

Ó Pheann an Phiarsaigh (“From the Pen of Pearse” – Yellow Asylum Films, 2010)
Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (Dearcán Media, 2016)
Seven Women (Tile Films, 2016)
Cumann na mBan: Mna na Réabhlóide (“Women of the Revolution” – Genefile, 2015)
Guns-and-Chiffon (Paradox Pictures, 2003)
Kathleen Lynn: Dochtúir Réabhlóideach (Loopline Film, 2011)
Life Before the Rising (RTÉ, 2016)
Children of the Revolution (Strike Films, 2016)
Áille an Uafáis (“A Terrible Beauty”, Tile Films, 2013)
A Terrible Beauty: Culture & Revolution in Ireland (RTÉ, 2016)
Frongoch: Coláiste na Réabhlóide (Midas Productions, 2007)


The Irish Rebellion of 1916: A Brief History of the Revolt and Its Suppression. John F. Boyle. London: Constable & Company: 1916.

The Irish Rebellion of 1916 and Its Martyrs: Erin’s Tragic Easter. Padric Colum, Maurice Joy, James Reidy, Sidney Gifford, Rev. T. Gavan Duffy, Mary M. Colum, Mary J. Ryan, and Seumas O’Brien. Edited by Maurice Joy. New York: Devin-Adair: 1916.

The Irish Rebellion of 1916, or, The Unbroken Tradition. Nora Connolly. New York: Boni and Liveright: 1918

History of the Sinn Féin Movement and the Irish Rebellion of 1916. Francis P. Jones. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons: 1917.

Irish Girl Rebel Tells of Dublin Fighting. Joyce Kilmer. The New York Times, August 20, 1916.

The Irish Revolution and How It Came About. William O’Brien. Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts: 1923.

The Insurrection in Dublin. James Stephens. New York: Macmillan: 1916.

Sinn Féin Rebellion Handbook: Easter, 1916. Compiled by the Weekly Irish Times, Dublin: 1917.

A History of the Irish Rebellion of 1916. Warren B. Wells and N. Marlowe. New York: Frederick A. Stokes: 1917.

The Irish Republic: A Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish Conflict and the Partitioning of Ireland, with a Detailed Account of the Period 1916–1923. Dorothy Macardle. 1937 & 1938 (Victor Gollancz), 1951 (Irish Press).