easter [Music] 1916 At noon Dublin Ireland explodes in gunfire as a mly band of Irish rebels takes on the world's biggest empire They begin by hijacking a post office Many of the people of Dublin during the rising viewed it as the expression of a gang of crazy people I don't think there was any consensus view among the revolutionaries themselves as to what they hoped to achieve Outnumbered and outar armed the rebels would be crushed by British forces within days And what was intended to be the opening act of the Irish Revolution became a humiliating failure But history would tell a different story The rebels would be honored as heroes Their actions would inspire thousands to join the revolutionary cause and set Ireland on a rocky road to [Music] independence On May 1st 1916 a poet named Patrick Pierce wrote a letter to his mother from his cell in a Dublin jail We are ready to die and we shall die cheerfully and proudly Personally I do not hope or even desire to live You must not grieve for all this We have preserved Ireland's honor and our own Pierce would be dead two days later It was a strange ending for a scholar and poet who had once committed his life to peace In the last week of his life Pierce had led one of the most destructive revolts in Irish history the Easter Rising His ambitious goal to bring England's 800year rule over Ireland to an end Ireland had been colonized by its neighbor England in the late 12th century Over the years British occupiers had stripped the Irish of their land suppressed their Catholic religion and silenced their native language England had not given to the Irish an equal share in the growing riches of Great Britain The political system in Britain was unresponsive to the mass majority of Irish people who are poor and Catholic and um hardly educated or lightly educated with very few opportunities for any kind of social or economic advancement With nothing left to lose some Irish turned to rebel activity in hopes of taking back their country through force But not Patrick Pierce at least not at first Pierce was a part-time writer and full-time teacher who had opened a school to teach Irish language and literature to children But Pierce came to realize that Irish culture and traditions could never be restored while the British were still in power Pierce said there's one thing worse than bloodshed and that's slavery And he suggested that that's precisely what uh continued uh linkage with England meant was continued bondage to slavery Pierce joined a radical rebel group called the Irish Republican Brotherhood or IRB The IRB was holding meetings in a Dublin tobacco shop secretly plotting [Music] revolution The IRB's leader was Thomas Clark an ex-convict with terrorist ties who'd served 15 years in a London prison for a bombing campaign Clark had returned to Ireland bent on insurrection If you looked at Thomas Clark you would have thought geez that just didn't seem like the most imposing guy in the world But he did have an eye for talent and figuring out who was susceptible to Republican ideas and who could serve the movement Clark needed a leader someone less controversial than himself to head up a revolt against England His unlikely choice Patrick Pierce Pierce He was a romantic and an idealist and it was kind of a dreamy individual until he met Tom Clark And somehow Clark figured out that this was the guy that he needed to go out and inspire the troops and Pierce rose to the occasion and became a national figure We pledged to Ireland our love and we pledged to British rule in Ireland our hate I hold it a Christian thing to hate evil to hate untruth to hate oppression and hating them to strive to overthrow them Ireland unfree shall never be at peace Pier seemed to light a fire in people Somehow his words changed the way that they understood things that they talked about a new sense of affirmation and identity as an Irish person Pierce vowed to free Ireland or die trying In 1915 he and Clark began to plan for an armed uprising against the British They would need at least 100,000 troops to seize control of Dublin's main buildings and key positions in the Irish countryside They'd strike down British forces along their path inspiring a nationwide revolt and finally declare independence for the people of Ireland If only it were that easy When Pierce and Clark surveyed their comrades they met the wide eyes of improbable fighters Many of the men Pierce included had never fired a gun in their lives Among them Joseph Plunkett a fellow poet and a literary editor He wrote poems about God nature and love for his fiance Grace Thomas Mcdana another poet and professor who went from teaching Jane Austin to joining the rebel movement Aean Dealera an Americanborn math teacher with political aspirations And Pierce's little brother Willie It's been called the poets's rebellion And it is remarkable how many of the the leaders of the 1916 rising were in fact uh teachers and writers uh and intellectuals If they were going to fight they would need help Pierce and his men enlisted a military leader named James Connelly who had honed his fighting skills while in service to the British Army Conniey's second in command was a bloodthirsty aristocrat named Countis Constance Marovich It's a very unlikely group of revolutionaries putting it mildly But Thomas Clark and the young men that he's gathered around him in that tobacco shop begin to organize to lead the country or inspire the country into an insurrection We love freedom and desire it To us it is more desirable than anything in the world If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight You cannot conquer Ireland You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom But public support was hard to find While many Irish liked the idea of independence a majority was holding out hope for a nonviolent solution with England Few supported an insurrection and almost none supported the increasingly aggressive strategy offered by Pierce They had good reason Britain was the most powerful empire in the world It had conquered land on nearly every continent and included over 400 million people Ireland had attempted rebellion before and was bitterly defeated But in 1916 Pierce saw an opportunity England was embroiled in the First World War which had begun two years earlier I think the old adage England's difficulty islands opportunity captures the whole spirit of what energized the movement Pierce felt that with the carnage that was taking place on the Western Front at the time that Britain simply couldn't afford uh transporting troops to suppress a rebellion in Ireland With the World War rapidly depleting England's weapons and troops Pierce ordered his men to strike soon while British defenses were down Clark agreed and they set a date Easter Sunday The rising would begin right in the center of town at the Dublin General Post Office The post office is a very large building Uh it's a very imposing granite structure etc And it has a kind of symbolic significance on Okonnell Street which is the main thorough affair of downtown Dublin And Pierce was very conscious of the symbolism at all But before they could strike the rebels needed cash and guns fast They turned to the United States Millions of Irish had fled to a better life in America Many had prospered there and their families donated thousands of dollars to the rebel cause but weapons were harder to come by There were deep disagreements about how to find arms and to what degree the Irish Republican movement should align itself with the enemies of Britain This led of course to the celebrated case of Roger Caseasement Roger Caseasement was a British knight who had defected to the rebel cause Caseasement turned to the one country he could count on to support a revolt against the British England's arch enemy in the war Germany Casement secretly negotiated with the Germans for a shipment of 20,000 weapons and artillery to aid the Irish rebels The arms were set to arrive on Ireland's west coast before Easter But just days before the planned revolt as Roger Caseasement was on his way back to Ireland aboard a German submarine British military authorities broke into German lines of communication and discovered the weapons plot The British arrested Caseasement after he landed on Irish shores No German arms would ever reach the rebels The British were quickly catching on to the rebel plan Their wiretaps also revealed that the first target would be the Dublin General Post Office British intelligence had parts of the thing understood but the timing and everything they didn't understand And really in many ways the plan was so bizarre that you know if you're a British general you're sitting there going "Well let's see They're going to take over a post office Okay You know of all the buildings of downtown Dublin the post office why not attack the military barracks back at rebel headquarters news of Caseasement's capture the nearing deadline and the shortage of guns threw the rebel plan into chaos And it would get worse The day before the planned attack amidst mounting confusion rumors emerged that The Rising was called off The rebels decided well we're not going to allow it to be cancelceled We're going to hold it after all But they didn't have the communication means to notify the entire country With rumors swirling troops in the Irish countryside believed the rising was canled But undeterred Pierce called his Dublin men to arms In spite of everything with only a fraction of their rebel army they vowed to proceed just one day behind schedule what amongst these individuals creates this sense of urgency I think that when you've committed yourself to an action an action in which you're contemplating not only killing people but dying that you got to go remember the purpose of the action is to lead to the ultimate overthrow of Great Britain Once they've made that commitment there's like a way that they can't turn back At noon on Monday April 24th 1916 while most Dubliners were enjoying the annual fairy house horse race Patrick Pierce and just 1,500 men carrying crude and outdated arms set out to end Britain's rule over Ireland So they went ahead and had their rising on the Monday in the full expectation that u they would catch the British by surprise They did They caught themselves by surprise a little bit too because they very easily captured the general post office and they run up thericcolored Irish flag and Pierce steps out of the buildings of the general post office with Connelly and Clark and the others behind him and reads uh the proclamation of the declaration of the Irish Republic 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 Pierce's troops spread out to Dublin's other main buildings They were getting their rebel footing but were still an unlikely crew One of the rebels leading his men to their post hijacked a local tram He collected fairs from all 54 of his troops and paid the conductor with a thank you and exact [Music] change Meanwhile the public was trying to figure out what was going on So were the British Thinking the rising was called off many British officers were at the horse race when they heard explosive gunfire They scrambled to respond Countis Marovich the aristocrat was stationed at St Steven's Green a Dublin park Hearing about trench warfare from the front lines of World War I she and her men dug trenches a plan whose flaw was quickly learned when British snipers from neighboring buildings reigned bullets on the rebel troops Military historians can find plenty of examples of ineptitude and of poor planning on both the British and the rebel side during Easter week What's fairly clear is that however disorganized both sides were at the very beginning of the conflict by the end of the week by Thursday and Friday British military superiority and determination were overwhelming British gunships responded in force From the banks of Dublin's River LFY they targeted the city center bombing rebel positions occupied buildings and taking out civilians and power lines in their wake Dublin was under siege Gunbolts came up the LFY and relatively indiscriminately bombed the locations of rebel control As a consequence the some of the worst pictures of urban destruction uh in the center of a of a European capital came from Dublin in [Music] 1916 They were probably outnumbered 8 10 to1 They were hoping for the best but they were prepared to die They absolutely were prepared to die [Music] By Saturday the rebels were overpowered Pierce actually observes a civilian getting killed And it it dawns on him that you know it's not worth doing anymore They weren't going anywhere You know they were trapped Just 5 days after they began Pierce ordered his men to surrender By that point many of the leading figures had been wounded but also lines of communication had been broken They were largely surrounded outgunned and what PICE was principally interested in with doing at the end of Easter week was in trying to preserve some formal dignity to the events that had happened His surrender was orchestrated to give dignity to his military army When authorities seized Pierce's gun they found it had not been fired since The Rising began He spent most of the rising in the General Post Office telling ancient Irish tales and Irish history to the men I'm sure it was a deep inspiration to them but uh it's a very odd activity We have his gun and we know it was never fired during the event He was willing to do the blood sacrifice but he wasn't willing to kill people apparently himself For all their talk of fighting and dying for Ireland Pierce and his men had somehow survived while the bodies of the wounded and dead lay around them Thousands were injured 450 were dead [Music] Dublin was destroyed The air was polluted with the smell of burning buildings and horses killed in the action One thing the Irish people and the English could finally agree on was their hatred for the rebels Many of the people of Dublin viewed The Rising itself as a disastrous irresponsible form of military adventurism And as a consequence for a while it seemed as in fact that that the rising had done a great deal of harm to the nationalist cause The rebels were marched through the streets on their way to Kilmain jail Dubliners turned out to protest against them throwing rotten fruit spitting at them and kicking them while Irish women served tea and cakes to the British troops An editorial in the Irish Times newspaper called for swift and severe punishment That's what the rebels would get and it would change everything The British began by executing the rebel leaders In his final hours Pierce wrote letters to his mother and brother Pierce was first to be executed along with Thomas Clark and Thomas Mcdana May 3rd 1916 Pierce's little brother Willie would never receive the letter Though only a foot soldier in the rising he would be punished for his family name He was executed May 4th 1916 Joseph Plunkett married his fiance Grace in a jail house ceremony the night before his execution Also on May 4th James Connelly the military leader had been gravely wounded in the fighting He had to be strapped to a chair barely alive so he could be shot with the proper pump and circumstance on May 12th 1916 It was a colossal colossal mistake on Britain's part They managed to ruin it on themselves by moving ahead and executing 15 of them Um and summarily one day after another But if they had dumped them into prison these men would have been objects of contempt and pity Instead they became heroes The executions were a harsher punishment than the Irish had imagined or wanted Adding to their shock were the stories coming from Kilman jail of the rebels final hours and bravery in the face of death The manner in which they were tried and executed uh generated a great deal of public outrage at at the conduct of of British military forces Countis Marovich kissed her revolver before handing it over to British forces spared execution because she was a woman She is said to have remarked "I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me." I think by the time they reached the 15th death it was beginning to dawn on the British that this was a very counterproductive exercise Facing growing public outcry the British halted the executions Aean Dealera the former math teacher was spared He and other rebels were sent to prison The interesting thing about their jail experience was that a new generation of Irish Republicans emerged in that jail and through the study of the Irish language the playing of Gaelic games etc organized the IRB uh with a new leadership that came right out back into Ireland ready to go all over again Upon his release from jail a year later Dealer was exalted to hero status He found that the Irish once a difficult population to unite were finally coming together in their resolve for freedom One of the things that happened is that the revolutionary and military struggle had begun to be mythologized This gets back to the central question about the 1916 rising is is it an event in military history or is it an event in intellectual cultural uh history riding a wave of popular support Deera helped lead Ireland into a full-scale war of independence against Britain in 1919 The war ended 2 years later with a partial victory for Ireland Its southern counties won independence but six mostly Protestant counties in Northern Ireland remained under British rule and became home to fierce guerilla violence for the next several decades Many of Pierce's original disciples formed the radical Irish Republican Army and fought on behalf of Catholics in the North And the sad tragedy of 1916 is that it institutionalized the use of violence and it made the gun a permanent fixture in Irish politics right down to the present day Irish writer Shaun Fallon wrote about Ireland after 1916 The Easter Rising was a complete failure which left large parts of Dublin in ruins Yet without it Ireland might never have been free of English rule The leaders alive had very few supporters even among the Irish patriots Dead they became and have remained their country's heroes It was a great historical paradox and one that to this day the British have perhaps never understood Had they understood it it is conceivable that the British might still have an empire [Music] [Music]