- [Matthew] Dublin, April 24th, 1916, Easter Monday.
Sackville Street resounds with marching boots
as a column of men passed down the major thoroughfare.
Somewhere green military uniforms,
other civilian clothes but all have guns.
Yellow arm bands proclaim them
to be nationalist paramilitaries, the Irish volunteers.
And marching with them are their leaders,
Patrick Pearse and James Connolly.
The volunteers proceed to occupy the General Post Office,
taking it as a headquarters
and stockpiling arms and ammunition there.
Then Pearse reemerges, standing before the building
and reads out a proclamation from the military council.
It informs the people of Dublin
that it armed uprising against British rule
is underway and that this is the first day
of a new nation, the Irish Republic.
As Pearse reads, gunshots ring out across the city.
After years of planning, the Easter Rising has begun.
(soft music)
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Despite the chaotic last minute preparations
Irish nationalists made as they decided
whether or not to go ahead with their planned rebellion
and how divided leadership meant
that not all Irish volunteers were ready
or even willing to take arms against the government,
the military counsel put their plans in motion.
Late in the morning on Easter Monday 1916,
nationalists in Dublin rose up.
After seizing the General Post Office
as their sturdy walled nerve center,
they proceeded to take other strategic
and symbolic structures throughout the Dublin City Center.
And by early afternoon, the Irish volunteers
and the smaller organizations assisting them,
such as the Irish Citizen Army,
had captured St. Stephen's Green, Jacob's Biscuit Factory,
the South Dublin Union, the Northumberland Hotel,
Bolands Mills, and the courthouse known as the Four Courts.
Another group led by Sean Connolly,
not to be confused with the higher ranking James Connolly,
occupied Dublin City Hall,
then as we saw in episode one,
attempted to rush the gates of Dublin Castle.
Connolly raised his gun and killed a policeman
guarding the gates named James O'Brien.
But the brief confrontation between Connolly
and O'Brien meant that the British personnel
inside the castle were able to slam
the gates shut and keep the attackers out.
O'Brien was likely the first death during the rising,
and by a strange twist of fate,
his killer Connolly would fall
to a British sniper's bullet shortly thereafter.
Likely the first fatality among the rebels.
This was not the only sad irony that day.
One of the first British soldiers
the nationalist killed was Lieutenant Gerald Neilan
of the 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers,
an Irishman and a nationalist.
But he was one of the many who had decided
to put aside his political beliefs
regarding Ireland in favor
of serving the British army during the first World War.
But today, that decision ended up
putting him in the crosshairs
of his fellow nationalists who only saw a uniform.
Despite being repulsed at Dublin Castle,
the rebels captured fortifications elsewhere.
A group sees the magazine fort in Phoenix Park,
which they pillaged for weapons
and then partially demolished with explosives.
The blast echoed across the city,
but was not as impressive as the nationalists hoped.
Across Dublin, the volunteers set to work,
turning buildings into strongholds.
They constructed barricades,
stockpiled food and ammunition,
cleared firing lanes, and directed medical stations.
To nullify the British authorities advantage.
in communications and transport,
they cut phone and telegraph lines
and bombed railroad tracks.
All this dynamism among the rebels
was a stark contrast to the lethargy
of Dublin's small largely reservist army garrison.
Two squadrons of cavalry rode
into the city center to investigate reports
of disruption but were forced to quickly retreat.
Most British commanders ordered their soldiers
to stay in their barracks
as they tried to piece together
exactly what was happening.
The sharpest fighting on that first day occurred
outside the South Dublin Union
when a patrol from the British Army's Royal Irish regiment
encountered a volunteers outpost
set up just east of the union workhouse.
After multiple soldiers dropped from rebel gunfire,
the soldiers stormed the nationalist position
and captured it.
Yet, the union complex itself stayed
in the hands of the volunteers.
During the fighting, the soldiers killed a nurse,
despite the fact that she was in uniform
and clearly a non-combatant.
As the sun began to set on the first day,
a strange quiet settled over the streets.
A rebellion was clearly underway,
but the sounds and fury of battle
hadn't yet gripped the city.
It was almost as though Dubliners
had slept through the chaos,
though that would soon change.
While the volunteers had taken many
of their initial objectives,
they hadn't been wholly successful.
No effort had been made to capture
Dublin's twin ports and the train stations
were only briefly under rebel control,
meaning the British government could funnel
in reinforcements at will.
Similarly, no one thought to capture
the telephone exchange and once staff evicted
from the General Post Office repaired the cut lines.
They managed to reestablish communications
with the government.
So as darkness fell, the nationalists steeled themselves.
They'd played their hand
and now had no option but to fight.
The Shelbourne Hotel, April 25th, 1916.
The scrape of hobnail boots echo in the halls,
scuffing up the hotel's carpets.
British soldiers, newly arrived into the city,
usher out the remaining guests
and start arming the hotel like a fortress,
as well as the neighboring United Services Club.
They position sharp shooters
and machine gun teams in windows,
looking down on the detachment
of rebels that have dug in on St. Stephen's Green
and wait for the order to fire.
The crack of British Lee-Enfield rifle split the dawn.
Machine guns rein shots on the Green.
The nationalists, members of the Irish Citizen Army,
return the serve and soon a firefight rages.
Bullets whipping through branches
and into tree trunks in the park
and chewing at the stonework of the hotel facade.
But the British soldiers have the advantage
of height and stone buildings for cover.
They drive the rebels
from their hastily constructed trenches
and groups of Irish citizen army fighters fall back,
dragging their wounded with them.
Though they continue to resist.
and this clash is not the only one
to rip the morning apart.
All across the city, gunfire rises to a crescendo
that eclipses the previous days skirmishing.
It was in these early hours
of Tuesday morning that the British Army Senior Commander
Brigadier-General William Lowe arrived.
After a period of early confusion and inactivity,
Lowe had decided to personally take
a hand in the situation.
He summoned reinforcements from across Ireland
and mainland Britain and planned multiple counter attacks
like the one at St. Stephen's Green.
Lowe also deployed an armored trained
to repair a set of rail tracks
that had been damaged by explosives,
but the rebels engaged it in a furious
two-hour gun battle at a bridge crossing,
forcing the armored behemoth to retreat.
But that victory was short lived for later in the day.
The rebels' fortunes changed in an instant
with a sound that rattled windows throughout the city.
Now, before the rising, rebel leaders had reasoned
that the British army wouldn't be permitted
to use heavy artillery within the city of Dublin.
"A capitalist government," James Connolly said,
"will never destroy property."
However, at this moment,
the British army quickly proved him wrong.
Four artillery pieces, 18 pounders,
the same type used in the trenches
of the Western front open fire in a city full of civilians.
First, they shelled in Irish volunteer position,
thrown up in a residential neighborhood of northwest Dublin.
Stunned by the sudden ferocious barrage,
the nationalists fell back,
shrapnel and debris raining down around them.
In the afternoon, Pearse left the General Post Office again
and walked to nearby Nelson's Pillar,
a Dublin landmark dedicated to the British Admiral.
And there he read an address to the gathering crowd.
"Now was the time," he said.
"Now was the moment that would make
or break not just the rising,
but the fate of the long for Republic.
And he called upon those listening
to rise up in support of the rebellion."
Almost none hated him.
The people of Dublin had not anticipated
the events of the past 24 hours
and most it seemed wanted no part it.
In fact, some were outright hostile.
Civilians harangue the volunteers
and attempted to dismantle their barricades,
resulting in rebel's opening fire
and killing several of them.
At Trinity College, the students armed themselves
to resist the Irish nationalists
and provide a base of operation
for the British when they arrived
and Guinness employees turned their brewery trucks
over to the British Army so it could use them
as makeshift armored vehicles in the coming street fights.
And others took advantage of the chaos
by indulging in a spree of shop looting,
especially in the aptly name Sackville Street.
By the end of Tuesday,
it was clear that there would be no general uprising,
not in Dublin and not anywhere else.
The volunteers were on their own
and with most seeing the end approaching
they decided to fight to the last.
But little did anyone know the worst
for Dublin was yet to come.
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(suspenseful music)