Easter rising April 1916 Dublin

Eamon De Valera Born in new York, his father was Spanish and his mother was Irish. When his father died his mother brought him up in limerick. He took part in the Easter rising and during it he was commander at Boland's bakery. After the rising he was arrested, but thankfully he avoided the death sentence due to American birth. When he was released from prison he joined the Sinn Fein party. Later he became the president of the Sinn Fein party and became prime minister of Ireland for 16 years straight. He later then died in 1975, aged 92.

Michael Collins Michael Collins was born in October 1890 in County Cork, Ireland and emigrated to London at the age of 15 where he lived in a large Irish community. While in London, Collins joined Sinn Fein and the Gaelic League and in 1909, he became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In 1916, Collins returned to Ireland to take part in the uprising in Dublin. He fought alongside others in the General Post Office but played a relatively minor part. After the uprising he was imprisoned but released soon after. Collins is most famous for his leadership of the republican military campaign against Britain (the War of Independence) through the Irish Republican Army (IRA). On 22 August 1922, he was assassinated by anti-treaty forces in an ambush in County Cork.

Why? Many Irish people believed that the British government undermined the catholic Irish population. This caused a lot of tension between the two countries even in times of hardship such as the potato famine that led to over one million Irish peoples deaths from starvation. Many Irish Catholics were poor farm folk and they blamed this on the British for the lack of help. They soon came to the conclusion that enough was enough and they wanted control. John Redmond was, at the time the leader of the home rule party was seen the one to deliver this. After time he was seen to have failed to deliver this and now people didn’t want home rule, they wanted full independence. This is when the Easter rising began. A large group of non-uniform rebels known as the I.R.B. (Irish republican brotherhood) began to take strongholds such as the general post office but they were highly outnumbered.

Why it failed Irish people did not have the weapons or the amount of people they had anticipated to make Home Rule in Ireland. Therefore, the British were able to go and arrest those involved as they were more powerful. There was little popular support for an Armed Rising in Ireland at the time as a form of Home Rule was due to be given to Ireland . The leaders of the Rising knew it would fail however they believed that the sacrifice would lead to a popular uprising, this succeeded when the British executed the leaders and lead directly to the War of Independence. Despite this, the rebels managed to hold the centre of Dublin for six days. British reinforcements did not arrive until mid-week, and the rebels defended their well-fortified positions with resilience until British artillery forced the surrender of the GPO garrison the following Saturday. By the end of the rising, large parts of the city centre had been devastated by artillery bombardment and fire. Some 1,600 rebels participated in the rising in Dublin. Over 450 people were killed and another 2,600 were wounded. Most of the fatalities, around 250, were civilians. Many had been caught up in the fighting which took place in the densely-populated slums on Dublin's north side. One-hundred and thirty-two soldiers and policemen were killed, while the rebels accounted for only around 64 of the fatalities.

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