However, many members of the ‘Irish Volunteers’ were already ready and willing to take flight and call for an immediate revolution. The most notable among these were Tom Clarke, Sean MacDermott, James Connolly, and significantly, Patrick Pearse. The latter is often heralded as the most prominent figure in the Easter Rising. Pearse was often quick to remind others of the nobility of violent revolution, likening the Irish situation to Christ’s Sacrifice and the virtues of ‘blood sacrifice’. Indeed, he once had written: ‘Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing… there are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them’. Pearse was adamant that a putsch should go ahead sooner rather than later. James Connolly, however, was much less of a radical compared to Pearse, and saw events with superior forethought. Being a follower of ‘hard-headed Marxian internationalist socialism’ he clearly believed that an Irish rebellion would not only ensure Irish independence, but would too influence European opinion so that the potential for establishing Socialist states throughout the continent could become very real. Connolly is recalled to have ‘had a notion that once a stand was made, however brief, in Dublin, the country would turn in a mass against the British government and overthrow it’. Again, the lack of success for the Rebellion cannot be placed with any substantial credibility on innate ideological miscarriages. It was more a question of imprecise coordination (despite Connolly’s obvious intellectual prowess) and poor planning that contributed to its weaknesses. Perhaps Connolly was too overly content with his belief that a small rising would be enough.
By 1916, Britain was embroiled in the First World War, concentrating all her efforts on the German front. Leaders of the ‘Volunteers’ felt that whilst Britain was fighting in a great war, she would be most susceptible to Irish plans of revolution. The First World War was, after all, severely debilitating the resources of the British, who found the war effort extremely mentally and economically draining. It also left Anglo relations at an all time low. The Volunteers thought, prematurely, that this was the right time to take action. Irish Nationalists opened relations with Germany, and by April 1916, they were already in the midst of a plan to distribute arms and weaponry to the Irish. But the plan was foiled, since the British intercepted the arms-stealer, and dashed the hopes of the Nationalists with great effect. The result of such a fiasco was the Easter Rising of 1916 – albeit, a day later than intended, on Monday 24 April. There is no doubt that the twenty-four hour delay, and thereby the lack of substantial arms, contributed to the failure of the rebellion. The Volunteers, in all fairness, should have been more aware of the prowess of British sea surveillance, but their display of ignorance would cost them dearly.
The Easter Rising, on a larger scale, was a non-event. MacNeill wasn’t even aware that it had begun until reports began to circulate from Dublin towards other regions of the country. There was very little Irish support for a revolution, and the members who took part in the rising were quickly dismissed as dissenters hell-bent on causing unwanted trouble. They were even accused of betraying their own people, as many Irish conscripts were, even as they resisted on the streets of Dublin, fighting on the battlefields of Belgium and France for the British. Irish politics, it seemed, had taken a back seat amidst international crisis, which was of more pressing concern.
The rebellion itself resulted in the vast destruction of property as well as lives. The efficiency of the British armed and police forces easily overcame the timid members of the Rebellion (the term ‘timid’ only being applied to their literal lack of manpower), and soon the streets of Dublin were turned into a literal bloodbath. The Rising saw soldiers ransack and obliterate households, assassinate their occupants, and then progressed even further towards the murdering of innocents. It is estimated that four hundred and fifty rebels and civilians were killed or murdered, and about two thousand wounded during the weeks’ siege. It was all over by Saturday 29 April.
The Easter Rising of 1916 certainly was an ‘unrealistic venture, doomed from the start’. The event itself did not boast as much power as it did character. It was virtually impossible that any victory for a ‘minority of a minority’ (R.F Foster) could be achieved, and there was little substantial weight or support behind its efforts. However, with the resultant executions of public figures involved in the rebellion, it soon gained an important reputation within general Irish Nationalism. It certainly had major repercussions for the future of Irish politics, and a general pattern of Nationalism soon began to appear once again in Ireland, and this time arguably more passionately. In this sense, it definitely did not fail, nor was it wholly ‘unrealistic’. It sowed the seeds for future political feuds between the British and Irish.