that precipitated the rising, is perhaps best told in the words of the
Royal Commission:--
On the 19th of April a special meeting of the Dublin Corporation
was held at the Mansion House to discuss the police rate. Alderman
Thomas Kelly, in the course of a speech attacking Mr. Justice Kenny
(who had alluded at the opening of his Commission to the state of
disorder in Dublin and had urged military action), made a statement
to the effect that he had received that morning from the editor of
_New Ireland_ a circular which he would read. It was from a man
named Little, _New Ireland_ Office, 13, Fleet Street, Dublin, April
16, 1916, and ran:--
"The following precautionary measures have been sanctioned by the
Irish Office on the recommendation of the General Officer
Commanding the Forces in Ireland. All preparations will be made to
put these measures in force immediately on receipt of an Order
issued from the Chief Secretary's Office, Dublin Castle, and signed
by the Under Secretary and the General Officer Commanding the
Forces in Ireland. First, the following persons to be placed under
arrest:--All members of the Sinn Fein National Council, the Central
Executive Irish Sinn Fein Volunteers, General Council Irish Sinn
Fein Volunteers, County Board Irish Sinn Fein Volunteers, Executive
Committee National Volunteers, Coisde Gnota Committee Gaelic
League. See List A 3 and 4 and supplementary list A 2.... Dublin
Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary Forces in Dublin
City will be confined to barracks under the direction of the
Competent Military Authority. An order will be issued to
inhabitants of city to remain in their houses until such time as
the Competent Military Authority may otherwise direct or permit.
Pickets chosen from units of Territorial Forces will be placed at
all points marked on maps 3 and 4. Accompanying mounted patrols
will continuously visit all points and report every hour. The
following premises will be occupied by adequate forces, and all
necessary measures used without need of reference to headquarters;
after which followed a list.
"Alderman Kelly, in continuing, said that the document was
evidently genuine, and that he had done a public service in drawing
attention to it, in order to prevent these military operations
being carried on in a city which he declared was under God the most
peaceable in Europe.
"This document was an entire fabrication. Copies of it found since
the outbreak are shown by identification of type to have been
printed at Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Citizen Army. It
is not known who was the author of this invention, or whether Mr.
Little was in any way responsible for it. Many copies of this
forged document were printed and distributed, and it was widely
considered by the people to be genuine, and no doubt led to the
belief by the members of the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army that
they would shortly be disarmed. This undoubtedly became one of the
proximate causes of the outbreak."
All Thursday seems to have been devoted principally to the bringing in
of reinforcements, which, by this time, were pouring in from England.
Instead of using them for isolated attacks on the different strongholds,
they appear to have been concentrated as an ever-narrowing cordon around
the central position of the rebels at the Post Office.
Hence, by Thursday evening the tables had been completely turned upon
the rebels, and instead of dominating the city, the city on every side
hemmed them in; and the Law Courts, the College of Surgeons, Jacobs's
biscuit factory and Boland's bakery, though amply supplied with food and
ammunition, had been all practically isolated one from another--in the
last-named place the rebels forced the bakers, at the point of the
bayonet, to continue making bread.
The military were also in possession of Brunswick Street, and portions
of Talbot Street and North Earl Street, while from D'Olier Street a
fusillade swept O'Connell Bridge, and from T.C.D. a 9-pounder began to
batter down Kelly's corner house and send shells along Bachelors' Walk.
Everybody now expected the collapse of the rebels, who were being
captured on all sides, and crowds of British pressmen, with special
facilities for the edification of neutral countries, began to arrive.
Certainly never had journalists ever had such a finale to send flashing
along the wires; for a cordon of soldiers completely encircled the city
on every side, and grew gradually tighter and tighter around the Post
Office, the heart of the rebel position. From all sides shells now began
to drop into Sackville Street, and we knew that it was the beginning of
the end.
That end was in every way as dramatic as the beginning--a melodrama
worthy of the Lyceum at its best--and for thirty hours, as the
artillery thundered, the sky was one huge blaze of flame, which, at one
time, threatened to engulf the whole northern centre of the city in a
sea of fire.
Driven from Kelly's corner, which commanded the left entrance to
Sackville Street, the insurgents still held Hopkins's corner on the
other side, and on this the artillery next concentrated not only high
explosive shells but incendiary bombs as well, and the whole place
became a mass of blazing ruins, the flames leaping across Lower Abbey
Street like a prairie fire.
Whether this was intentional or inevitable, one thing was certain, and
that was that nothing could stand up against it--it meant utter
annihilation as far as human lives were concerned, absolute ruination as
far as material property.
That strong measures had been found necessary, however, had been proved
by the appointment of a military dictator in General Sir John Maxwell,
with plenary powers, and the announcement of Mr. Asquith in the House
that the situation had still serious features, and that there seemed to
be indications of the movement spreading to other parts of the country,
especially the West.
Yet one thing must have been particularly pleasing to announce, and that
was the total isolation of the movement as a political campaign, both
Sir Edward Carson and Mr. John Redmond disclaiming all responsibility,
while in Drogheda the National Volunteers, according to a telegram from
the Viceroy, actually turned out to assist the military.
This background of peace only served to intensify the catastrophe which
became known as the Sack of Sackville Street, and it is probable that
only the gap made by the fire which occurred on Tuesday afternoon at
Lawrence's bazaar saved the northern portion of the city.
It was under cover of the blazing buildings that the troops advanced
upon the central position of the Sinn Feiners, one of the pickets being
inside Clery's while the embers beneath his feet were still red, as I
was told: but it was not until Saturday morning that the actual final
shelling and capture of the place was begun.
For this purpose only light shells, happily, were used, and some
incendiary bombs, which soon set fire to the roof of the beautiful
historic landmark.
It was expected that at least a thousand of the rebels were entrapped,
but it was later found out that during the week they had made a complete
tunnel right back as far as Arnot's Stores, blasting their way with the
aid of dynamite, in the use of which they seem to have been coached by a
Berlin expert, who was afterwards captured.
The last struggles of the rebels have been variously described, but they
seem rather early to have made an attempt in force to evacuate the
building from the back, and some hundred and fifty are described as
taking part in the stampede, which was turned into a rout by the machine
guns of the military.
A single shell which exploded right in the barricade in front of the
Coliseum building, which faces a side street, had the effect not only of
closing it by the wreckage of the two corner buildings, but also of
burying one of the rebel leaders.
Everyone then expected that the place would be taken at the point of the
bayonet and a terrible hand-to-hand struggle ensue, as the troops would
thrust the despairing rebels back into the fortress, which was rapidly
turning into a furnace, when suddenly the order was given to cease fire,
and for fully three hours there was a mysterious silence.
Had the place been taken, had the men surrendered, or was it only a
truce, as one rumour had it, in order to enable the city to get in
foodstuffs?--for the food problem had by this time become most acute in
several of the isolated districts.
It proved to be an armistice, during which terms of formal surrender
were concluded with the insurgent leaders, and a short while after four,
Sackville Street beheld the sight of all that were left of them, the
gallant but misguided six hundred, marching into captivity.
"It is a sight I shall never forget," said one eye-witness who beheld
the surrender from a window in the Gresham Hotel. "That thin, short line
of no more than a hundred men at most, some in the green uniform of the
Volunteers, some in the plainer equipment of Larkin's Citizen Army, some
looking like ordinary civilians, some again mere lads of fifteen, not a
few wounded and bandaged, the whole melancholy procession threading its
way through long lines of khaki soldiers--but downhearted? No; and as
they passed, I heard just for a couple of seconds the subdued strains of
that scaffold-song of many an Irishman before them--'God save
Ireland'--waft up to me.
"Roughs, dockers, labourers, shop-assistants--all kinds and conditions
of men, even the lowest class in the city--yet all exactly the same in
the look of defiance which will haunt me to my dying day.
"Whatever they were, these men were no cowards--and even the soldiers
admitted this readily; they had shown courage of the finest type, worthy
of a nobler cause; and had they been man for man at the front and
accomplished what they had accomplished in the face of such odds, the
whole Empire would have been proud of them--the whole world ringing with
their praise; for, as a soldier prisoner afterwards said, 'Not even the
hell of Loos or Neuve Chapelle was like the hell of those last hours in
the General Post Office.'
"Instead of that, they were doomed to the double stigma of failure in
accomplishment and futility in aim--but every Irish heart went out to
them, for all that, for were they not our own flesh and blood after all?
"At either end a lad carried an improvised white flag of truce--at their
head, Pearse in full uniform, with sword across one arm in regular
surrender fashion. For a moment the young British officer in command
seemed perplexed at the solemnity of the procession and at the
correctness and courtesy of the rebel leader; and he hesitatingly
accepted the sword from his hands.
"The next moment the spell was broken: the man was a captive criminal,
and with two officers, each with a loaded revolver pointing at his head,
the chief and his gallant band disappeared from my view."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
SURRENDER--COLLAPSE
Late on that fateful Saturday evening upon which the Post Office fell,
the Royal Irish Constabulary were posting in all parts of the country
the following note signed by Commander P. H. Pearse.
"In order to prevent further slaughter," it ran, "of unarmed people, and
in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and
hopelessly outnumbered, members of the Provisional Government present at
headquarters have agreed to unconditional surrender, and the commanders
of all units of the Republican forces will order their followers to lay
down their arms."
Yet so confident were the rebels of success in some of the besieged
fortresses that they positively refused to believe that their commanders
had given in: moreover, the difficulty of obtaining access to some of
the insurgents also tended to prolong the conflict, especially in the
more outlying districts, and so the struggle went on.
In some cases the rebels, expecting no mercy, preferred to die fighting,
and it was only by the interference of the clergy that further
destruction and desolation was avoided.
Jacobs's factory, for example--second only to Guinness's Brewery in
size, and occupied at first by some 1,500 rebels, who had taken
possession while the workers were on holiday--put up a strenuous fight,
and though it was by now surrounded by the military, the men, firmly
protected and encouraged by the feeling that headquarters depended upon
them, refused all offers to surrender.
Several priests had previously made the attempt to influence them, but
had been quietly and courteously refused, and only succeeded eventually
about 4 p.m. on Sunday, when the Volunteers finally evacuated the
premises.
The majority of the exits had by Sunday become occupied by the military,
who had gradually turned the place into a death-trap, and from this the
rebels were saved by a somewhat picturesque climax.
A well-known Carmelite monk from Whitefriars Street suddenly made his
way through the crowd of spectators and signalled to the insurgents,
whereupon one of the sandbagged windows was dismantled and, amid a
universal cheer from the crowd, the venerable peacemaker was hoisted up
into the fortress.
A short while later his efforts were seen to have succeeded, for the
garrison surrendered.
At the Four Courts a priest was likewise instrumental in bringing about
the surrender.
The place had been strongly barricaded and provisioned, and would, no
doubt, have suffered the same fate as the Post Office had the struggle
continued, but for this intervention and the desire on the part of the
authorities no doubt to save the Record Office at all costs. Such a loss
would, of course, have been far more serious than that of the G.P.O.,
for in some cases all kinds of documents had been used for the purposes
of defence, at one particular spot a whole barricade having been
constructed of wills alone.
Father Columbus, O.S.F.C., who was at the time attending to the wounded
and dying, saw a girl waving a large white sheet from the building, and
we immediately proceeded to inform the military authorities, who were
still pounding away at the building with maxims, of the intention of the
insurgents to surrender.
An officer was dispatched, and to him Commander Daly, of the Republican
Army, rendered unconditional surrender on behalf of the besieged.
Another dramatic surrender on Sunday was that of the College of
Surgeons, where the rebels had been making a stout resistance, under the
personal command of the celebrated Countess Markievicz.
The green flag which had floated there throughout the week in spite of
shot and shell was suddenly lowered, and one of the rebels was seen to
climb on the parapet and tie a white scarf, quaintly enough, on to the
arm of the central statue, which stood out against the skyline, instead
of the flagstaff.
A few seconds later this formal announcement of surrender was followed
by the order to "cease fire," and a detachment of soldiers was sent to
that side of Stephen's Green.
As they approached, the Countess, who was dressed in a complete outfit
of the green uniform of the Irish Volunteers, including green boots and
green cock's feathers, something like those on the Italian bersaglieri,
emerged from the central doorway. She was closely followed by an
attendant carrying a white flag and some sixty to eighty of the
defenders.
Solemnly they advanced towards the English officer, and then the
Countess, taking off her bandolier and sword, was seen to kiss them
reverently and hand them over in the most touching manner--not a little
to the perplexity of the young officer.
Dr. Myles Keogh, who, in company with others, acted so bravely in
rescuing the wounded, tells of the actual incident of the surrender of
De Valera, near Ringsend. Dr. Keogh was on Sunday returning at one
o'clock from Glasnevin Cemetery on a hearse, which, under the Red Cross,
had left a number of dead for burial, and when opposite Sir Patrick
Dun's Hospital a voice hailed him. Two men had come out of the Poor Law
Dispensary opposite, in which the Sinn Feiners were installed. So
covered with dust were they that he thought both were in khaki. One was
a military cadet who had been captured by the Sinn Feiners, the other
was the Sinn Fein leader De Valera. "Hullo!" cried De Valera. "Who are
you?" replied Dr. Keogh. The response was, "I am De Valera," from one,
and from the other it was: "I am a prisoner for the past five days. They
want to surrender." Dr. Keogh replied that Sir Arthur Ball, who was in
the hospital, would make arrangements. Then the military came up, and
after some preliminaries the Sinn Feiners were marched out of the
dispensary and conveyed to Lower Mount Street. The hopelessness of the
Sinn Feiners was exemplified in some remarks dropped by De Valera.
"Shoot me," he said, "if you will, but arrange for my men." Then he
added, walking up and down: "If only the people had come out with knives
and forks."
I saw Dr. Keogh immediately after this, and he told me that De Valera
had complained bitterly that the "English" had continuously violated the
white flag and Red Cross, but we could testify to the falsity of this by
our own experience, the whole staff having time after time complained
that shots appeared to go right across the hospital--and, in point of
fact, the right wing of "Elpis" Hospital is simply peppered with
bullets--in fact, the wounded Tommies "sunning" themselves on the
hospital roof of Dun's had been deliberately fired at till they went
down, though I must admit that in this case the Sinn Feiners could
hardly have been able to make the distinction required of them. A short
while later I saw the professor himself--a tall man, hatless and in the
green uniform of the Volunteers--pass along Mount Street with a lad with
a white flag, going to point out the positions of the snipers from the
factory.
For a moment the soldiers thought he was about to "betray" his pals to
save his own life, and, I was glad to notice, instinctively looked with
contempt upon him; but the truth of the general order having gone out to
surrender soon became known, and as the line of captives marched by the
soldiers for the first time got a real look at these men who had, so to
speak, staggered the Empire.
Weak, poor, ragged--some cripples; one, his whole face a mass of
bandages--I never saw a more reckless or determined body of men in my
life, and they contrasted strangely with the placid demeanour of their
conquerors. Each marched with a certain lightness of tread--greybeards
who no doubt remembered the days of the Famine and boys born since the
Boer War; and as they stood there, their hands aloft, between the lines
of khaki, not one face flinched. Here and there, however, one could see
the older men shaking hands with the younger, muttering, "It isn't the
first time we've suffered. But it's all for dear old Ireland," or
wishing each other good-bye. That was pathetic to a degree that, I know
for a fact, moved some of the English officers themselves.
Suddenly a car came dashing up at full speed. Some turned their heads
instinctively, and as they did so noticed that in addition to four khaki
uniforms there were two green figures with eyes bandaged.
In an instant the captives had recognized their leaders, themselves also
going--God only knew to what punishment, and at once such a cheer went
up that the whole street echoed again.
It only needed "God save Ireland" to have completed the drama, but they
knew they would be stopped if they began, and, instead, one of them
cried out "Are we downhearted?" and immediately every voice, clear and
resonant, answered in one ringing "No!"
"If it had not been for the women and children, we should be fighting
you still," was the reply of one Sinn Feiner to a soldier; and when
asked why they were fighting, another man answered, "We have our orders
as well as you--we're both soldiers and fight when our country demands";
while yet a third ventured defiantly, "You've won this time, but next
time when you're fighting, our children will win."
Dramatic was no word for the situation, and as I gazed at them
there--now no more than a dread convict roll--I pictured the wretched
tenements from which most must have come--the worst slums in Europe, by
common consent of all Commissions--and asked myself the question what
chance or reason they had ever had in life to love either their country
or the Empire; and then the picture of the long years of penal
servitude, such as John Mitchel had endured for Ireland, arose before my
mind, but I consoled myself with the thought, "At least England will
understand what caused these men to turn despairingly to revolution,"
and the words of Mr. Asquith consoled me as I thought of the terrible
wholesale vengeance a Prussian officer would take--for had he not said
that England had sent the General in whose discretion she had more
complete confidence than any other?--but I stopped thinking: it was all
too sad: after all, England was surely not going to treat them like the
Huns would.
I heard one young Lancashire Tommy say: "The poor beggars! They only
obeyed the word of command, and they fought like heroes," but he was cut
short by an English officer with an Oxford drawl: "Damn sympathizing
with the swine! I'd shoot all these Irish rebels down like rats--every
one of them--if I had my way."
The words struck me forcibly at the time, for I knew that it only needed
this to make martyrs of every one of them.
"England has learnt how fatal that mistake has been," I replied. "We're
surely not going to set Ireland back a hundred years by such a pogrom as
followed '98...."
Meanwhile, though in Dublin we knew very little, the movement in the
provinces had long since been crushed: indeed, it never appears to have
had much chance of success.
It was said that some delay or interruption in the sending of the signal
message was the cause. Others say that the South had orders to await the
landing of arms from the German cruiser which brought over Sir Roger
Casement, and which was sunk on April 21st--which seems the more
probable.
This news, however, seems, for mysterious reasons, to have been kept
from the general public, for it was not till the Monday evening, at
10.23, that this announcement was made, and, reaching Ireland on the
morrow of the announcement of the triumph of the Republic in the
capital, must have shown the waverers that the rising was bound to end
in a fiasco--a fact which they possibly realized better than the men in
Dublin, who to the very end seem to have expected something to turn up.
It was generally expected that Cork would rise _en masse_, for the Sinn
Feiners had been organizing the city and county for upwards of three
years--in most cases the gradually increasing forces being drilled by
ex-soldiers privately, so that when they eventually appeared publicly
on parade and in full uniform, marching through the streets in a body
four deep, with rifles on their shoulders, everyone realized that the
movement had amply justified itself.
Every Sunday, public parades showed a growing strength that at times
alarmed the authorities to no little degree.
The mass demonstration at Limerick about a year ago still further
revealed their strength, and from that moment to the fateful Easter week
the organization, already considerable in point of numbers, perfected
itself by the addition of ammunition, uniforms, equipment, and financial
aid.
Everybody expected that there would be some sort of ructions between the
Volunteers and the military on last St. Patrick's Day, when it was
announced that the Sinn Feiners would parade fully armed and with a real
maxim gun, but luckily nothing happened.
The next crisis was seen to approach in Holy Week, when large numbers of
strangers were noticed to be arriving daily from every part of the
country and putting up at lodging-houses.
The strangers were next noticed to be paying continual visits to the
Sinn Fein headquarters in Shears Street, extensive premises that were
once a hospital.