the Sinn Fein leaders and the occupation by the military of all important centres in Dublin. This document was a forgery, but it undoubtedly acted as one of the proximate causes of the outbreak. On the previous day, the i8th, news reached Dublin Castle that a ship had left Germany for Ireland on April 12, accompanied by two German submarines, that it was due to arrive on the 2ist, and that a rising had been planned for Easter eve. On the 22nd the Irish Volunteer announced, under the heading " Headquarters' Bulletin," that arrangements were all but complete for "a very interesting series of manoeuvres at Easter," and that the Dublin programme might well stand as a model for others. But on that very day it was also an- nounced that the German ship " Aud," laden with arms and ammunition, had been captured off the coast of Kerry, and that Sir Roger Casement, who had landed at Banna with two companions from a German submarine in a collapsible boat, had been arrested. 1 The same evening, since all prospect of a successful rising seemed to be at an end, Prof. MacNeill, as chairman of the Council, issued orders countermanding the Easter parades. This action put the authorities, who were fairly accurately informed of what was passing, off their guard; immediate danger was supposed to be at an end; and no orders were given to bring troops into Dublin or to stop the leave of officers. Under the influence of James Connolly, however, the more violent section of the volunteers the Inner Council of which MacNeill was kept in ignorance 2 decided to go on with the movement, owing, it is said, to information having reached them on Sunday night that the headquarters, with stores of explosives and arms, were to be raided on Monday.
When, on the beautiful morning of Easter Monday, the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army paraded in various parts of Dublin, the holiday crowds believed it to be no more
than the usual " P la X- b y " display. They were soon undeceived. The plan of the insurrection included the seizure of buildings and places commanding strategic posi- tions in the city, the Castle, the Four Courts, the Post Office, Stephen's Green, certain factories, and, above all perhaps, Trinity College, which commands the intersection of all the main arteries in College Green. In the first surprise the rebels succeeded in occupying the Post Office in Sackville Street, which gave them the command of the whole telegraph system, 3 the Four Courts, Stephen's Green, and Jacob's biscuit factory. The attack on Trinity College was beaten off by a few cadets of the Officers' Training Corps, assisted by some of the college staff, while the Castle was made safe by the arrival of a small detachment of troops in the early afternoon. The first attack on the Castle had been signalized by the brutal murder of an unarmed policeman, and the same ruthlessness characterized the proceedings of the rebels elsewhere. Everyone in uniform was marked out for death, and among the victims were not only unarmed officers and police, but army doctors, wounded soldiers in hospital uniform, and elderly members of the Vet- erans' Corps returning unarmed from a route march. 4 In Stephen's Green a carter was shot in cold blood for resisting the requisitioning of his cart to add to a barricade. 6
1 He was tried in London for high treason and hanged on Aug. 3.
8 John Devoy, editor of the Gaelic American, asserted that Prof. MacNeill had been kept in ignorance of the projected rising until the evening of Good Friday, that " he was at first shocked, but on hearing of the shipload of arms consented." The rising was counter- manded by MacNeill on receipt of a message from Casement that " all was up." Documents relative to the Sinn Fein Movement (Cmd. 1108), p. 19.
' The situation was saved by the fact that the telephone exchange in Crown Alley, though commanded on all sides by rebel snipers, was not captured by the insurgents. The girl operators displayed great courage (Irish Times May 24 1916).
4 Five were fatally and many seriously wounded by a volley poured into their defenceless ranks, without warning, by Sinn Feiners in ambush in Haddington Road.
6 A volley was deliberately fired at a motor in which a friend of the present writer, with his wife, was about to enter Stephen's Green. The lady was shot through the neck and her husband through the arm. An old man who had run out to warn them was pursued into his house, but what happened to him the writer does not know.
It is not to be supposed that the young idealists who were the nominal leaders of the rebellion all approved of this butchery at the headquarters in the Post Office British officers were held prisoner and treated kindly enough but they had unloosed forces which they were unable to control. As soon as it was clear that the city was at the mercy of the armed rebels the police, who were unarmed, were withdrawn from the streets. The under-world of Dublin seized its opportunity. A seething mob issued from the slums, invaded the main thoroughfares and looted the shops; but for the fact that most of the banks and some of the best shopping centres were commanded by the rifles of Trinity College, the loss and destruction would have been greater than it was. Presently the terror of fire was added to mob violence. How the fire originated is not known; it may well have been the work of irresponsible incendiaries among the looting mob. However this may be, on the night of April 26-7 several fires broke out in this quarter; the fire brigade could not get to work because it was fired on by the rebels; and in the end a considerable part of Sackville Street, including the General Post Office, together with part of the surrounding area, was reduced to ruins.
The rebellion was heralded on the morning of the outbreak by a proclamation " to the people of Ireland," issued in the name of " the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic." After denouncing the long usurpation of the right to govern Ireland by a foreign people, this proclaimed Ireland a sovereign and independent state, adding that " the Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman":
" Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organizations, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory."
The confidence would, perhaps, not have been misplaced had the original plot not miscarried. There were but few troops in Ireland; these were scattered in depots in various parts of the country; and had the unbroken strength of the Irish Volun- teers been available, it is probable that all Dublin would have been occupied by them and the task of putting down the re- bellion rendered tenfold more difficult, if not impossible. As it was, the prompt concentration of such troops as were available 6 enabled the authorities to maintain their position in the city pending the arrival of reinforcements with artillery in sufficient numbers to enable them to surround and isolate the rebel detachments, and so to reduce them without undue destruction of life and property.
The task was one of immense difficulty. The rebel leaders had laid their plans ably enough. Apart from the occupation of strategic positions in the heart of the city itself, they had posted detachments in hastily fortified houses commanding the approaches from the port of Kingstown, while armies of snipers occupied the roofs everywhere. Their failure to cap- ture Trinity College and the Castle, however, seriously affected their plans, and by mid-day on the 25th the military had succeeded in cutting off the rebels on the north side of the Liffey from those on the south by a line of posts established from King's Bridge Station via the Castle to Trinity College. Towards the evening of the 25th the i78th Infantry Brigade be- gan to arrive at Kingstown from England and was at once directed on Dublin. It was during this advance that the military suffered the heaviest casualties. This was especially the case near the bridge over the canal at Lower Mount Street, where the rebels had entrenched themselves in the schools and houses commanding its approach. Ordered to carry this position at all costs, the 7th Battalion Sherwood Foresters attacked it in suc-
6 On the morning of the second day of the rebellion (the 25th) the forces in the Dublin area consisted of some 2,300 men of the Dublin garrison, the Curragh mobile column of 1,500 dismounted cavalrymen, and 840 men of the 25th Irish Reserve Infantry Brigade.
