Collapse of the Easter Rising

On the evening of 1 May 1916 the command of the forces in Great Britain announced, in a communiqué from Field Marshal John French, that all the rebels in Dublin had surrendered and that the city was quiet. Rebels in the provinces were laying down their arms before columns of troops. A week after the outbreak of the Easter Rising the fighting in Ireland was over. That same day, at Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, detectives of the Dublin police went through the crowds of detainees and pointed out to the army the leaders who were to be tried by courts martial.

The collapse began on Saturday 29 April. The General Post Office, shelled by artillery for several days, had caught fire, and its garrison moved into houses in nearby Moore Street. In the morning the leaders concluded that further fighting would bring only more casualties among civilians. The nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell carried a request for talks to the British, but Brigadier-General William Lowe would accept only unconditional surrender. In the afternoon Patrick Pearse gave himself up to him. According to most accounts this happened at about 3.30 p.m.; the report of General John Maxwell, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, gives 2 p.m. Pearse signed an order in which, “in order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens”, he called on all units to lay down their arms. The order was countersigned by the wounded James Connolly, and O’Farrell carried it around the city. That same evening the units in the area of Sackville Street and the Four Courts surrendered.

In other parts of the city fighting went on until Sunday 30 April, because the commanders did not at once believe the order. Thomas MacDonagh, who had hardly been attacked at Jacob’s biscuit factory, wanted to negotiate first, but at about 3 p.m., when the army was already preparing to storm the building, he surrendered unconditionally. Also capitulating were Éamonn Ceannt’s men in the South Dublin Union workhouse, Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz in the Royal College of Surgeons building on St Stephen’s Green, and Éamon de Valera’s battalion from the area of Boland’s Mill. According to Maxwell’s report, during the night of 30 April to 1 May isolated snipers were still firing at soldiers from the rooftops, but on 1 May the army and police cleared them from the city and began a systematic house-to-house search for arms and rebels in hiding. That day Maxwell assured the Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell, that the rising had been put down. Birrell then resigned, and informed the House of Commons of this two days later.

Outside Dublin the rising died out just as quickly. In County Galway several hundred poorly armed Volunteers under Liam Mellows, shelled by warships in Galway Bay, had already dispersed on 29 April. Thomas Ashe’s battalion from the northern part of County Dublin, which on 28 April had defeated a police column at Ashbourne, laid down its arms on receiving Pearse’s order. The rebels in Enniscorthy in County Wexford, who had controlled the town since 27 April, held out longest. They did not believe the news of the surrender, so two of their officers went under British escort to Dublin, where Pearse, in Arbour Hill prison, confirmed his order to them. During the night of 30 April to 1 May the Enniscorthy rebels offered to hand over their leaders and arms in exchange for the rank and file being allowed to go home. The British rejected these terms, and on 1 May the unit surrendered unconditionally to a column that had arrived from Wexford.

The collapse of the rising marked the beginning of repression. The British communiqué of 1 May stated that there had been a thousand prisoners in Dublin the previous day. On 30 April 489 of them were taken from Richmond Barracks, and on 1 May they arrived at military detention barracks in the English towns of Knutsford and Stafford. Further transports soon followed. In the following weeks, under martial law, the army arrested more than 3,400 men and just under 80 women throughout Ireland, including many people unconnected with the rising. More than a thousand were released after a few weeks, and about 1,800 were interned without trial in England and Wales, mainly in the Frongoch camp. Counting the casualties of the fighting took a long time. According to the findings of the Glasnevin Trust, at least 485 people were killed during the rising, most of them civilians. The British lost more than 140 soldiers and policemen, and the rebels several dozen men. On 2 May the first courts martial convened at Richmond Barracks, trying the leaders behind closed doors and without defence counsel.