24 April in military history: Easter Rising begins, 1916

24 April 1916 · 110 years ago

A countermanded rising

The rising was prepared by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret revolutionary organization, together with the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army; the Proclamation of the Republic names all three, and so does the National Army Museum.¹

The rebels expected a German ship bringing arms. On 22 April 1916 it became public that the ship had been captured and that Sir Roger Casement had been arrested. On that news Eoin MacNeill, the Volunteers' chief of staff, signed an order canceling the Easter Sunday arrangements throughout Ireland.²

Easter Monday

The rising began a day later. At noon on Easter Monday, 24 April, Volunteers and Citizen Army men seized the General Post Office in Sackville Street, and at the same time the Four Courts, Jacob's factory and other buildings across the city.³

There the leaders proclaimed an Irish Republic. The printed Proclamation, signed by seven men for the Provisional Government, declared "the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State".⁴

Lancers at Nelson's Pillar

Soon after the seizure a troop of Lancers rode down Sackville Street toward the Post Office. A volley from the building stopped them near Nelson's Pillar and left dead horses in the street, as both Michael Dempsey, a Post Office telegraphist who watched from outside, and Desmond Ryan, a Volunteer inside, recalled.⁵

There were few troops in Dublin that day. The army called for a column from the Curragh camp in County Kildare, and more troops came later from England. Martial law was soon declared across Ireland.⁶

Surrender and the dead

Reinforcements and artillery pressed the rebels back until only the Post Office area remained in their hands. On 29 April Patrick Pearse surrendered unconditionally, after six days of fighting.⁷

How many people died was long uncertain. In 2015 researchers at Glasnevin Cemetery put the number of dead at 485, more than half of them civilians. A 2020 study of all the dead of the Irish revolution, by Eunan O'Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin, counts just over 500 deaths in 1916.⁸

Executions and a change of mood

Sixteen leaders of the rising were executed, among them the seven men who had signed the Proclamation.⁹ › Battle of Dublin, 1922

The rising had little public support when it began; the executions helped turn opinion in Ireland toward the republicans.¹⁰

Tank against tank, 1918

On the morning of 24 April 1918 the Germans attacked the British line at Villers-Bretonneux and Cachy with thirteen A7V tanks in three groups. Villers-Bretonneux fell.¹¹

Three British tanks came out of the Bois l'Abbé to hold the line near Cachy: one male, armed with two six-pounder guns and machine guns, and two females with machine guns only. There they met German tanks, the first time in history that tank fought tank. The two females were soon hit and put out of action.¹²

The male tank hit the leading German tank, and its crew abandoned it. By the following dawn Villers-Bretonneux had been retaken, with Australian troops among the first into the town.¹³