The Easter Rising lasted just seven anarchic days yet it is marked as one of the most tumultuous and significant events in Irish history.
Sixteen men associated with leading this revolution were executed within weeks. Hundreds were killed and thousands more arrested and interned at jails in England and Wales.
The Rising left iconic buildings in Dublin’s city centre razed to the ground with British rule in Ireland in a state of irreconcilable civil and political chaos.Read more...
The Irish Volunteers’ chief of staff, Eoin MacNeill, cancels rebel manoeuvres that are planned as a cover for the beginning of the Rising and there is deep confusion about what is to happen after the covert IRB plans. The British may have been aware that something was about to kick off, yet no action was taken.Read more...
There had been a troika of catastrophes for the Rising leaders — Casement’s arrest, the Castle Document, and the countermand.
But the momentum of plans for the 1916 Rising and passionate leadership of the seven signatories would ensure that, after eight centuries of British rule, the Crown was about to encounter its latest Irish resistance — if only as a symbolic gesture.Read more...
Witness accounts tell of a city unhinged by wild rumour and propaganda as British troops finally arrive in force in a bid to quell the Rising. An arrest in Rathmines leads to one of the most unsettling events of Easter week.Read more...
Vicious and bloody firefights flare in the suburbs as the British military encounter fierce rebel resistance. Eyewitnesses recall the horror of Mount Street as the body count rises. Read more...
After the adrenaline-fired scenes of Wednesday with the Dublin sky illuminated by the flames of Sackville Street, in the cold light of day Thursday morning presented a bloody and bitter picture for the rebels. Read more...
The rebels had withstood another night of bombardment. But now with little food or ammunition, and with the death toll rising, Padraig Pearse was facing the biggest decision of his career. Read more...
The rebels had withstood another night of bombardment. But now with little food or ammunition, and with the death toll rising, Padraig Pearse was facing the biggest decision of his career. Read more...
The executions of the Rising leaders would turn opinion against the post-rebellion prosecutions by the British while a re-evaluation of the men behind the insurrection — poets, teachers, musicians and political leaders — would also cement this new wave of anti-British sentiment.Read more...
The Bureau of Military History was established in January 1947 by Rising survivor Oscar Traynor, then Minister for Defence. Its aim was to record the experiences of those who played an active part in the Rising, or were affected by it.
In March 2003, the Irish Government released to the public these official witness statements from the Easter Rising. These were first-hand accounts which shed new light on the dramatic events of Easter week, 1916.
Statements and material was taken from members of the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Sinn Fein, the Citizen Army and relatives of those in no way associated with these organizations.Read more...
Dublin in ruins after the insurrection (Image courtesy of Kilmainham Gaol)
Irish Volunteers on training manoeuvres in the Galtee Mountains, Munster pre-Rising (Image courtesy of Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks)
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The NLI’s 1916 personalities and perspectives online exhibition.
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