The so-called Easter Rising began one hundred years ago today led by Padraig Pearse and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Joined by the socialist Irish Citizens Army under James Connolly and scores of militant women of the Cumann na mBan, they seized the General Post Office in Dublin and declared the independence of Ireland from Great Britain. Smaller uprisings took place across Ireland.
The British Army crushed the rebellion in less than a week and about 500 people were killed in the fighting. Pearse, Connolly, and thirteen others were executed after summary courts martial in May. The Commandant of the 3rd Battalion, Eamonn de Valera, survived in large part because of his American birth.
While tactically a defeat, the direct action of Rising led inexorably to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1926 and full independence in 1949.
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