1 May 664 AD: Solar Eclipse seen in Ireland on this day. This was probably witnessed in central and northern Ireland as it was also recorded over northern England too.


Darkness on the Kalends of May at the ninth hour

Chronicum Scotorum

By working backwards from our times to then astronomers are able to accurately fix the time on that day that the eclipse was at its deepest - 16.50 hours.

Such an event would have startled and bewildered the people of that time. To them it would have been seen as an evil portent. And indeed so it proved to be as late that Summer the Plague struck in Ireland and devastated the Country.

30 April 1916: The Rising in Dublin fizzled out on this day.

Sniping had continued overnight as the Rising came to an end. The captured insurgents who were held outside the Rotunda over the night were marched off to Richmond Barracks, Inchicore. Here they were screened and questioned by detectives of the DMP ‘G’ Division under military supervision.

In his Prison Cell Padraig Pearse wrote out a brief note reiterating his instructions of the previous day that was forwarded on to the Republican Garrisons that still held out:

In order to prevent further slaughter of the civil population and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, the members of the Provisional Government present at headquarters have decided on an unconditional surrender, and commandants or officers commanding districts will order their commands to lay down arms.

P.H. Pearse. Dublin 30th April 1916.

　

This brought about the surrender of the various outlying Insurgent positions as orders were brought to them to lay down their arms.

 

By last light that day the Rising was effectively over.

29 April 1608: The entry into Rome of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconell on this day. After an epic journey by land and sea that started at Rathmullan on the banks of Lough Swilly in County Donegal, the Earl of Tyrone Aodh O’Neill and the Earl of Tyrconell Ruairi O’Donnell along with their entourage of about 100 followers reached  the City of Rome.

Porta del Populo was the name of the gate by which they entered the city. They went on after that through the principal streets of Rome in great splendour. They did not rest until they reached the great church of San Pietro in Vaticano. They put up their horses there, and entered the church. They worshipped, and went around, as if on a pilgrimage, the seven privileged altars of great merit which are in the church. Afterwards they proceeded to a splendid palace, which his Holiness the Pope had set apart for them in the Borgo Vecchio and in the Borgo Santo Spirito.

The Flight of the Earls by Tadhg Ó Cianáin

　

They had fled Ireland in fear of their lives as they believed that the English planned to eliminate them. With their flight the old Gaelic Order that had lasted over a thousand years and more finally collapsed. Most of their lands were confiscated and redistributed to those who were loyal to the Crown.

They never saw Ireland again for within a year Ruairi O’Donnell was dead of the fever, and Aodh O’Neill died at an advanced age in the Holy City in 1616. Their remains are still interred in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio on the hill of Janiculum, the traditional site of the Martydom of Saint Peter.

28 April 1916: The Insurrection continued in Dublin on this day.

General Sir John Maxwell arrived by boat from England. He came with orders to crush the Rising by whatever means were necessary. He was previously the GOC Egypt and a veteran of Britain’s Colonial Wars. He had recently suppressed a revolt of the Senussi People in Western Desert. He issued a Proclamation:


The most vigorous measures will be taken by me to stop the loss of life and damage to property which certain misguided persons are causing in their armed resistance to the law. If necessary I shall not hesitate to destroy any buildings within any area occupied by the rebels and I warn all persons within the area specified below, and now surrounded by HM troops, forthwith to leave such area.

By Friday morning much of the GPO was on fire and sections of the roof were collapsing. It was obvious to the men inside that they would have to evacuate the building sooner or later. One plan being considered was to tunnel through to the adjoining buildings and join up with the Four Courts garrison. However, this was not possible because of the worsening military situation. The British now had most of the streets around the GPO well covered with snipers and machine guns.

At around 8 pm Padraig Pearse decided to evacuate the GPO, which was aflame and under constant bombardment. He decided to try to escape via Henry Street and establish a new headquarters somewhere near there. The narrow streets around Henry Street and Moore Street were filled with smoke from the burning buildings. There was a great deal of confusion. In addition, nobody was quite sure exactly what the exact locations of the British Army were. Several groups of garrison tried to make their way down Henry Street but came under heavy fire. One of the casualties was The O’Rahilly who had come to Liberty Hall on Easter Monday to join the Rising even though he had initially tried to stop it going ahead.

Elizabeth O'Farrell, had been one of only three women (all members of Cumann na mBan) left in the GPO after Pearse had ordered the others to leave that morning. She recalled

We left in three sections, I being in the last. Commandant Pearse was the last to leave the building. He went round to see that no one was left behind. We immediately preceded him, bullets raining from all quarters as we rushed to Moore Lane.

Eventually Pearse, Connolly, Plunkett, Clarke and MacDermott halted in a house at Moore Street, number 16, where they planed to make their way through back streets to the Four Courts for a last stand.

However the British were not much the wiser of their opponents movements and continued to attack the GPO even after it was evacuated.

British troops killed up to a dozen innocent civilians on North King St in heavy fighting. At least some of these were killed in cold blood. But here only a handful of fighters remained and the British effectively controlled the area by nightfall.

In the north of County Dublin a Volunteer column under Thomas Ashe [above ] ambushed a convoy of RIC men. A running battle between members of the RIC and the insurgents took place, lasting five hours. The police casualties were heavy: the Meath County and District Inspectors, two sergeants and four constables were killed, and 16 constables wounded. Ashbourne barracks was captured but Volunteers Thomas Rafferty and John Crennigan lost their lives.

 

 

27 April 1953: Maud Gonne McBride died on this day in Dublin City. She was born in England in 1866 and was the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne of the 17th Lancers and his wife Edith Frith Gonne. Maud’s mother Edith died from tuberculosis when she was 4 years old, and from then on she and her sister Kathleen were mostly reared by governesses. When she was 16 her father was posted to Ireland and the family settled in Kildare.

Following the death of her father, she divided her time between France and Ireland. During this time she met and fell in love with the right wing politician and journalist Lucien Millevoye. She soon became his mistress. They had two children, one of whom died a child. The relationship ended and Maud returned to Ireland. Here she became the centre of attention of WB Yeats but she spurned his proposals of marraige. How intimate they became is a mysterey though.

　

After the Boer war she married Major John McBride (who had fought with the Boers against the British) and with whom she had a son - Sean McBride, who later was to be an IRA Chief of Staff and then a Cabinet Minister in the Irish Cabinet Minister. They soon split and Maud threw herself into working to secure Ireland’s Freedom from British rule. At 6 foot tall, with masses of auburn hair and fiery eyes, she was considered majestically beautiful and would spend her life fighting tirelessly for the cause of Irish Independence.

She fought evicitions and helped in organizing committes to feed the poorer children of Dublin. Maud was in France during the Easter Rising of April 1916. Her former husband was one of the leaders, and was executed for his involvement. Maud returned to Ireland in 1917, started to use her husband’s name and insisted on wearing black for many years.

Following her release Maud continued her public life. During the War of Independence she was instrumental in publicizing atrocities carried out by the English forces. She worked for the White Cross supplying financial relief to the families of victims of violence.

She was against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, but as a loyal supporter of Arthur Griffith, who supported the treaty, she remained uncharacteristically quiet on the subject. Following his death in 1922, her position hardened, particularly as she disliked William Cosgrave’s Free State government.

As Civil War broke out in 1922, she founded the Women’s Prisoners’ Defence league with Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Charlotte Despard “for the help, comfort and release of” Republican prisoners. The organization of “mothers” as Maud called them, was banned a year later. The group also introduced the lily as a symbol of the Rising of Easter 1916. The lily is still used today to remember the rebellion and those that died.

In the years that followed the Civil War, Maud continued to support the Republican side and maintained her efforts on behalf of political prisoners. She did not stop her agitation until Eamon De Valera began to release prisoners on his accession to power in 1932.

In 1938 she published her autobiography A Servant of the Queen, a vivid account of her life until her marriage. She outlived all her old friends and comrades and, in her old age, described herself as “a prisoner of old age, waiting for release”. She died on the 27th of April 1953, aged 87, and is buried in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetary in Dublin.

http://www.glasnevintrust.ie/visit-glasnevin/interactive-map/maud-gonne-macbride/

26 April 1916: Field guns from Trinity College and the gunboat Helga on the River Liffey bombarded the Irish Citizen’s Army HQ at Liberty Hall and demolished it. Buildings in O’Connell St were also targeted and destroyed. The upper floor of the GPO was evacuated as the men there came under sustained attack from British snipers and guns.

Wednesday, April 26th, 9.30 a.m. - While we were dressing a terrific bombardment with field guns began - the first we had heard - and gave me cold shivers. The sound seemed to come from the direction of the G.P.O., and we concluded they were bombarding it. It went on for a quarter of an hour - awful! big guns and machine-guns - and then ceased, but we hear they were bombarding Liberty Hall, the headquarters of Larkin and the strikers two years ago, and always a nest of sedition. It is now crammed with Sinn Feiners. The guns were on H.M.S. Helga, that came up the river and smashed it from within about three hundred yards. It made me feel quite sick.

　

Mary Louisa Hamilton Norway The Sinn Fein Rebellion as I saw it

The Battle of Mount Street Bridge: British soldiers from the Sherwood Foresters regiment came under fire from a handful of Republican positions as they approach the Bridge there as they made their way up Northumberland Rd. Despite repeated attempts they were driven back sustaining over 200 casualties.

They were raw troops just off the boat from England. While the Officers and men showed great bravery they were tactically naïve and constantly launched full frontal attacks that cut down scores of them at a time. The defenders of the Bridge put up an equally heroic resistance against overwhelming odds and managed to hold their positions.

Eventually the British troops took Clanwilliam House by storm. Three of the twelve defenders were killed. The Insurgents were men drawn from the garrison at Boland’s Mill under the orders of Commandant Eamon De Valera.

　

British forces entered O’Connell St. and took up positions to cover the GPO and suppress the garrison within. A concentrated fire was opened on the GHQ of the Rising and the effects began to tell.

I was looking on O' Connell Bridge and Sackville Street, and the house facing me was Kelly's - a red-brick fishing tackle shop, one half of which was on the Quay and the other half in Sackville Street. This house was being bombarded.

I counted the report of six different machine guns, which played on it. Rifles innumerable and from every sort of place were potting its windows, and at intervals of about half a minute the shells from a heavy gun lobbed in through its windows or thumped mightily against its walls.

For three hours that bombardment continued, and the walls stood in a cloud of red dust and smoke. Rifle and machine gun bullets pattered over every inch of it, and unfailingly the heavy gun pounded its shells through the windows."

James Stephens The Insurrection in Dublin

　

25 April 1915: Irish regiments of the British Army took part in the landings at Gallipoli on this day. They were part of an Expeditionary Force sent to seize the straits of the Dardanelles from the Ottoman Empire that if successful would allow free passage to the Allied navies through the straits and onto Constantinople, the capital of Turkey at that time.

However by the time the assaults were launched all surprise had been lost and the Turks were ready to repel any attempt to seize the Gallipoli peninsula. Irish troops of the 29th Division participated in the landings at Helles Beach on the southern tip of Gallipoli.

Troops of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Royal Munster Fusiliers of the 29th Division took part in the landings at Gallipoli. Embarking from the steamer the River Clyde [above] hundreds of Irishmen were lost in the attempt to get ashore in the face of devastating fire from the Turkish defenders.

The British 29th Division had orders to land at the southern tip of the Dardanelles peninsula, at Cape Helles. The landing place named V Beach in the plan of operations was where the Irish were to come ashore. It proved to be an extremely unsuitable landing place. It was covered by Turkish positions in the village of Sedd-el-Bahr and more importantly by the fort of the same name. There were defensive positions with machine gun emplacements and snipers could decimate troops landing from the sea. The British plan of attack was first a naval bombardment of the Turkish positions around Sedd-el-Bahr, followed by a landing of troops. The naval bombardment failed to destroy the Turkish defences before the troops landed.

The night before the attack on the 25th of April, none of the men could sleep on board the Clyde through fear and apprehension. Cocoa was issued all round. At 0500 hours, the navy began their bombardment of the Turkish positions around the village of Sedd-el-Bahr. Before the Dublins and Munsters approached the beaches, their Brigade Commander addressed his men saying, ‘Fusiliers, our brigade has the honour of the first to land.’

At 06.25, the naval bombardment stopped and the skipper of the Clyde, Commander Unwin, ran her aground on the beach just under the ancient Fort at Sedd-el-Bahr. The section of the beach assigned to the Dublin and Munster Fusiliers was called 'V' Beach.


The SS River Clyde was a 4,000 ton converted collier. On the bows were fitted eleven machine guns. Sally ports had been cut in the hull to allow the men to embark via gangways. The ship held 2,000 men; the 1st Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers plus two companies of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Hampshire Regiment (from the 88th Brigade) and one company of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

The tows containing amongst others the Dubliners had gone in at 6 am. All appeared lifeless following the bombardment. As the boats were about to land, the Ottoman defenders opened up, laying down a withering fire. The guns in the fort and castle of Sedd el Bahr enfiladed the beach, slaughtering the men in the boats. As they came down the gangways they continued to be mown down. A few made it ashore and sought shelter under a sand bank at the edge of the beach where they remained, pinned down. Out of the 700 men who went in, only 300 survived, many of whom were wounded.

The River Clyde followed closely behind the tows. To connect the collier to the shore, a steam hopper, the Argyll, was to beach ahead of it, providing a bridge. However, the Argyll ended up broadside to the beach, out of touch with the River Clyde. The captain of the River Clyde, Commander Edward Unwin, led men outside to manhandle three lighters (transport boats) into place and so a bridge was formed. Two companies of Munsters emerged from the sally ports and tried to reach the shore but were cut to pieces, suffering 70% casualties. Around 9 am another company made an attempt which also failed.

A third attempt to get ashore from the River Clyde by a company of Hampshires who were likewise killed. The leader of the main force, Brigadier General Napier made an attempt to lead his force ashore and was also killed. Finally, at 10.21 am, General Hamilton, who had been watching the landing from the HMS Queen Elizabeth instructed Hunter-Weston to land the main force at W Beach. The 1,000 men remaining aboard the River Clyde waited until nightfall before making another attempt to land.

Tim Buckley, a Munster Fusilier from Macroom in Co. Cork, described the utter panic the men suffered in those few moments waiting to get down the gangway onto the cover of the barge pontoons. He wrote,

When my turn came I was wiser than my comrades. The moment I stood on the gangway, I jumped over the rope and on to the pontoon. Two more did the same, and I was already flat on the bridge. Those two chaps were at each side of me, but not for long, as the shrapnel was bursting all around. I was talking to the chap on my left when I saw a lump of lead enter his temple. I turned to the chap on my right, his name was Fitzgerald from Cork, but soon he was over the border. The one piece of shrapnel had done the job for two of them.



Some 115,000 men from the then United Kingdom of Britain & Ireland and from the Commonwealth countries Australia and New Zealand (ANZAC)were killed or wounded in the Gallipoli campaign. Many thousands of Irish born and the sons of those who emigrated also served in the ANZAC forces who fought on the beaches that day and in the rest of the campaign.While it is difficult to pinpoint exact numbers it would appear about 4,000 of those who died were men who were originally from Ireland, with perhaps another 10 or 12,000 wounded.

The campaign was to sputter on until January 1915 when the Allies withdrew under cover of darkness leaving the field to the Turks.