Easter Rising

During Easter Week 1916 Irish republicans seized key buildings in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic before British forces crushed the rising.

Overview

On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army occupied the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin, where Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. British troops with artillery forced a surrender after six days of fighting that killed hundreds, many of them civilians. The rising initially had limited public support, but the execution of its leaders, including Pearse and James Connolly, turned opinion sharply. Sinn Fein won a landslide in the 1918 general election, and the rising became the founding event of modern Irish republicanism and a prelude to the War of Independence.