HISTORY OF IRELAND



To the 9th century AD


Beaker folk and Celts: 2000 BC - AD 400

Neolithic Ireland, forming part of the megalithic tradition of the Atlantic coastal regions, can boast one of the most spectacular examples of a passage grave at Newgrange - dating from about 2500 BC.

The most significant arrivals in the centuries soon after Newgrange are the Beaker folk. And at some time after 500 BC the Celts arrive - providing Ireland with its lasting character. Thereafter neither immigrants nor invaders cross the Irish Sea in large numbers. The Romans, in particular, decline the challenge. Celtic chieftains are free to establish their own hierarchies. But the greatest influence on early Irish history is perhaps that of a single visitor from England - St Patrick.

Christianity in Ireland: 5th - 6th century AD

The most telling images of early Christianity in Ireland are the beehive cells on the inhospitable rock of Skellig Michael, off the coast of Kerry. In these, from the 5th century, Celtic monks live in an ascetic tradition which relates back to the first Desert fathers in Egypt. Cold, rather than heat, is here their local penance.

Missionary efforts in Ireland during the 5th century - including those of St Patrick - give the Christian religion a firmer footing. By the 6th century the time is ripe for the founding of the great Irish monasteries (powerful establishments, as opposed to the cluster of hermits' cells on Skellig Michael) from which Celtic Christianity exerts its far-flung influence.

Charismatic leaders, founding monasteries and being remembered as saints, are a feature of 6th-century Ireland. The first is St Finnian, who establishes the monastery of Clonard in Meath. Then there is St Ciaran, the father-figure of Clonmacnois on the Shannon, and St Brendan, the founder of Clonfert in Galway. Pre-eminent among them is St Columba, responsible for two foundations on the mainland - at Derry and Durrow - before setting sail (Christ-like with twelve companions) to take the faith to Scotland.

In 563 he and his party make their base on the island of Iona, from which offshoots are later established as far afield as Lindisfarne (known for this reason as Holy Island) off the coast of Northumberland.

By the end of the 6th century Irish monks are carrying their Celtic version of Christianity even further afield. In 590 St Columban sets sail for France (again with twelve companions), where he founds a monastery at Luxeuil. But by now Celtic Christianity is controversial. In 603 he is criticized by a synod of French bishops for keeping Easter according to the Celtic rather than the Roman rite.

He moves to Switzerland (where one of his companions, St Gall, settles as a hermit in the place now named after him), and then on into Italy. By the time of his death in 615 Columban has founded another famous monastery, at Bobbio - the extreme outpost, under the pope's own nose, of Celtic Christianity.

Illuminated manuscripts: 7th - 11th century AD

Irish monks of the 7th and 8th century create illuminated manuscripts which are among the greatest treasures of Celtic and early Christian art. The beautiful calligraphy (the scribes sometimes add complaints in the margin about their difficult working conditions) usually provides the text of the four Gospels. The earliest is the Book of Durrow, from about 650. Others include the Lindisfarne Gospels (c.700) and the Book of Kells (c.800).

The glory of these manuscripts (in addition to their wonderfully inventive images of the evangelists) is the intricate decoration, with the famous 'carpet pages' formed of interlacing patterns - reminiscent of the complex linear designs in Celtic metalwork.

In the late 8th century many illuminated manuscripts are commissioned by Charlemagne, who values them both as holy objects and as his own personal art gallery. When the imperial court is on the move (which is most of the time), part of the emperor's baggage train is a wagon full of precious manscripts.

Legend adds that after his death Charlemagne is buried in a sitting position, clothed in rich robes and holding a sceptre. On his lap is an illuminated manuscript.

The scribes writing the texts of the manuscripts, and the illuminators adding the decorative lettering and the illustrations, do so in the workshops of Europe's monasteries - though probably not all the men employed are monks. The example of Charlemagne's patronage is followed by his immediate successors and by later rulers in medieval Europe, in particular by the emperors of the Charlemagne.

The Carolingian and Ottonian manuscripts are usually gospels or other holy texts, but the secular world intrudes more than previously. A frontispiece often now shows the imperial patron on his throne, in a manner previously reserved for Jesus or one of the evangelists.

The early medieval interest in illuminated manuscripts means that the portable art of the period is confined within precious volumes. A single spread of text, with ornament and illustration, is sometimes visible today in museum displays. But for the most part these images are locked away on the rare-book shelves of libraries.

This seclusion has preserved them in better condition than other art of the same period, but it has also had the effect of making this a somewhat invisible chapter in the story of European painting. The artists begin to achieve a higher profile, from the 13th century, with Ottonian dynasty.

9th - 11th century


The Vikings and the British Isles: 9th - 10th century AD

The coasts of the British isles are now dotted with monasteries, not yet rich by the standards of medieval monasticism but with sufficient wealth to attract Viking marauders. One of the most famous islands, Iona, is raided three times in a decade (in 795, 802 and 805). Even monasteries which seem secure, pleasantly sited on inland rivers, fall victim to Viking longships rowing upstream. But gradually, during the 9th century, the raiders settle.

Soon all the Scottish islands and the Isle of Man are in Viking hands, and the intruders are even seizing territory on the mainland of both Britain and Ireland. In 838 Norwegians capture Dublin and establish a Norse kingdom in Ireland. From 865 the Danes settle in eastern England.

At this time the territory securely in the hands of the Scots and picts extends only from the great rift of Loch Ness down to the firths of Clyde and Forth. North of this central region, the Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands, together with much of the mainland, are in the hands of Vikings from Norway. In the southwest the border region of Strathclyde is often under threat from the Norwegian Vikings of Dublin. In the southeast Lothian is another border region. Until recently part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, it is exposed to the Danish vikings, whose capital city is York.

But at least by now, in the mid-9th century, there is a recognizable Scottish kingdom.

Norwegians in Ireland: 9th - 11th century AD

During the 9th century the Norse kings of Dublin are in constant warfare with Irish kings. They suffer several reverses. But in the early 10th century the trend seems to be going in favour of the Vikings. They capture important strongholds at the mouths of Ireland's main rivers. Waterford falls to them in 914, Limerick in 920. Cork is at various times occupied by Vikings, and Wexford is founded as a Norse settlement.

The Irish persistently fight back - most notably under the leadership of Brian Boru.

Brian Boru and the Vikings: AD 976-1014

Brian, known as Boru from his birthplace by the river Shannon, is the son of a small local ruler. His family gain power through their successful attacks on the Vikings. In 964 Brian's elder brother asserts his dominance over the local Irish potentates, the royal dynasty of Munster. Taking their famous stronghold, the rock of Cashel, he becomes accepted as king of Munster and as leader of resistance to the Vikings in southern Ireland. Brian succeeds him in both roles in 976.

Brian Boru successfully drives the Vikings from the Shannon. In 1002 he is accepted as high king of all Ireland. His final confrontation with the Norsemen follows a plot set in motion in 1013.

In 1013 the Norse king of Dublin spends Christmas in the Orkneys with another Viking ruler - the local earl. They hatch a scheme. The earl of the Orkneys will bring a fleet and army to Dublin, before Easter, to assist the Norse king in overwhelming the king of all Ireland, Brian Boru.

The engagement takes place, and at the appointed season. On April 23, 1014, Brian Boru confronts the Norse army at Clontarf, on the coast just east of Dublin. He is now seventy-three, so he only directs the battle. His son, Murchad, leads the men in the field and dies fighting (as does the earl of the Orkneys). After twelve hours the Norsemen are defeated. But a Viking chieftain, fleeing the battlefield, comes across Brian Boru in his tent and kills him.

The Irish victory at Clontarf puts an end to any serious Norse threat to the whole of Ireland. But it does not remove the Vikings from their coastal strongholds of Dublin and Waterford. And, with both Brian Boru and his son casualties of the battle, it leaves the Irish themselves in a disordered state.

This remains the case for more than a century until a stronger group of Vikings, of Norman descent, arrive on the Irish coast in 1169.

12th - 15th century


Norman incursions: AD 1169-1170

Norman adventurers from south Wales, hungry for land, invade Ireland in 1169 and seize Wexford from the Vikings. Many of them are vassals of the earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow. A request to him for help, from a dispossessed Irish ruler in Leinster, provides the occasion to cross the sea in force.

In 1170 Strongbow himself lands and captures Waterford. Before the end of the year the Normans are in Dublin, which has been the capital of a Viking kingdom for the past three centuries. But the Irish, rid of one powerful set of intruders, have merely acquired another. The success of the Normans is followed, in 1171, by the arrival of their king.

Henry II in Ireland: AD 1171-1172

Henry II lands in Ireland in October 1171 with a large army. His immediate purpose is to ensure that the Norman adventurers, who have conquered much of the east of the island during the previous year, submit their gains to him rather than establishing independent kingdoms.

It is possible that Henry also claims a more idealistic purpose. A contemporary chronicler, Giraldus Cambrensis (a cousin of several of the Norman adventurers from south Wales), writes that in about 1155 the pope granted Henry authority over Ireland so that he could reform the Irish church. The pope, appropriately, is Adrian IV - the only Englishman to have held the see of Rome.

The story of the papal grant of Ireland to the English king may well be a subsequent attempt to justify the invasion, but nearly all the great lords of the island, Irish as well as Norman, do homage to Henry - without force or compulsion - when he holds court in Dublin and elsewhere. This suggests that they recognize some lawful basis for his presence.

Henry spends only seven months in Ireland. During that time he sets up a feudal system of government for the island, just as his Norman ancestor William had done in the previous century after the invasion of England.

The authority of the English crown in Ireland is formally established, but it is little more than nominal. The more important reality on the ground is that there are now powerful Norman families in Ireland, with large holdings of land, who consider the island their rightful home.

Rivalry and warfare is inevitable between these families and the indigenous Gaelic (or Celtic) chieftains. But with the passage of time the two groups mingle and intermarry, weakening the link between the settlers and their origins in Anglo-Norman England. These first settlers become known as the Anglo-Irish (also sometimes called the Old English), by contrast with later immigrants who retain a close link with England.

English government: AD 1210-1300

In 1210 Ireland receives its second visit from an English monarch. John comes to Dublin and attempts to set up a permanent government structure on English lines. Dublin acquires during the 13th century its own exchequer and chancery. At the end of the century, in 1297, the first Irish parliament is summoned. In the manner of England's recent Model parliament, knights from the shires and common clergy are included in addition to noblemen, bishops and abbots. In a parliament three years later there are also representatives from the towns.

But English rule remains fragile, as is shown by the Celtic uprising of 1315.

Edward Bruce king of Ireland: AD 1315-1318

The great Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314 prompts hopes of a similar Celtic success against the English in Ireland. Chieftains in northern Ireland offer the Irish crown to Edward Bruce, younger brother of Robert the bruce. Such a scheme appeals to Robert (now King Robert I of Scotland), perhaps on two grounds - certainly on the basis that it will further harass the English, and possibly because he hopes that a potential rival, his brother, will find a kingdom of his own outside Scotland.

With an army of some 6000 Scots, Edward Bruce lands in Ireland in 1315.

All the Irish and a considerable number of Anglo-Irish rally to his cause. Early successes include the capture of the castle at Carrickfergus, where he makes his base. In 1316 Edward is crowned king at Dundalk - well on the way south towards the English capital in Dublin.

During 1317 his elder brother Robert arrives with reinforcements from Scotland. The Bruces campaign successfully through the west and south of Ireland. But they fail to capture Dublin. The uprising ends in 1318 when Edward Bruce is killed in a battle near Dundalk.

The three great earls: 14th - 15th century AD

The long-term result of the Celtic campaign of 1315-18 is a strengthening of three great Anglo-irish families. The English crown creates three earldoms in response to the Irish unrest. One branch of the FitzGerald family is granted the earldom of Kildare in 1316; another FitzGerald line is given the earldom of Desmond in 1329; and a member of the Butler family becomes earl of Ormonde in 1328.

By the 15th century the earls of Kildare, Desmond and Ormonde control between them almost the whole of southern Ireland. The exception is the area immediately round Dublin, known as the pale, where English rule prevails under the lord deputy, a representative of the king.

However, since the post of lord deputy is frequently held by one of the three great earls (most often Kildare), the influence of the Anglo-irish is paramount in Dublin almost as much as elsewhere in southern Ireland.

By contrast in Ulster, where the uprising of 1315 began, the old Celtic traditions remain strong. The province is an almost permanent battleground between two great dynasties, the O'Neills and the O'Donnells, both descended from Ireland's first historical king, Niall of the nine hostages.

16th - 17th century


Tudor settlement: AD 1494-1601

A significant attempt to establish English control in Ireland is made by Henry vii in 1494. He dismisses the earl of Kildare from his post as lord deputy, and sends Sir Edward Poynings in his place with a full contingent of English administrators.

Poynings summons a parliament at Drogheda in December 1494. This passes much legislation to assert English supremacy, including even the reenactment of a statute of 1366 forbidding marriage between English colonists and the Irish. But its two most significant measures relate to the Irish parliament.

These acts, subsequently known as the Statutes of Drogheda (or more informally as Poyning's Law), remain in force until 1782. For nearly three centuries they limit any form of Irish independence.

The first decree states that no Irish parliament may be summoned without prior notice to the Pale in England, and that no legislation passed by an Irish parliament is valid unless submitted to the Pale. The second declares that all laws passsed by parliament in England apply also to Ireland. The extent to which these statutes have any meaning depends on the size of the very variable Irish parliament around Dublin. But they are securely in place.

The attempt to impose English authority more firmly on Ireland is given new impetus by Henry VIII in the 1530s. After he has declared himself head of the church in England, with the Privy council of 1534, it is natural to take the same step in Ireland - particularly as the English king is as yet known only as the 'lord' of Ireland, implying that the supposed grant of the island to Act of supremacy by the pope makes him in a sense the vassal of Rome.

Both anomalies are amended. The Irish parliament passes an Privy council in 1536, following it with another measure in 1541 recognizing Henry as king of Ireland.

The Tudor intention is also to transform the Irish chieftains into hereditary peers on the English system, with a right to sit in the parliament in Dublin. An early example is the granting of the earldom of Tyrone, in 1542, to Conn O'Neill. But the precariousness of any such settlement is revealed when Conn's son, Shane, leads an armed rebellion early in the reign of Elizabeth I.

The last years of Elizabeth's reign are troubled by the far more serious uprising, between 1594 and 1603, of Conn O'Neill's great-grandson Hugh in alliance with other Henry ii. Hugh's main ally in the rebellion is the chief of the O'Donnells.

Flight of the earls: AD 1607

The rebellion of O'Neill and O'Donnell collapses in 1603, but they are allowed to keep their hereditary lands in Ulster. O'Donnell is even created earl of Tyrconnell, to match O'Neill's earldom of Tyrone. But the two Celtic and Catholic earls find life intolerable in an Ireland organized along Anglo-Saxon and Protestant lines. Their ancient lands are divided now into counties, and are garrisoned by English troops.

Tyrconnell engages in secret negotiations with Spain, of which word reaches the English court in 1607. Shortly afterwards Tyrconnell and Tyrone surprise everyone by secretly embarking on a ship, with their families and other clan leaders, and sailing to France.

This event, subsequently known as the flight of the earls, is a disaster for Ulster. The English, legitimately accusing the earls of treason, declare their massive territories in northern Ireland to be forfeit. They amount to the six counties then known as Donegal, Coleraine, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh and Cavan.

Ulster, until this time the most Catholic and Celtic region of Ireland, begins now to be transformed into a Protestant stronghold as the English set about the process of plantation. It is not their first attempt at this form of settlement in Ireland, nor will it be the last. But it proves the most lasting in its effect.

The plantation of Ireland: AD 1586-1641

Plantation in its modern sense means transforming a natural landscape by the planting of trees. In the 16th and 17th century it is also used of transforming a political landscape. In this sense it is settlers who are planted, in a deliberate act of colonization.

The Anglo-norman settlement of Ireland, in the 12th century, follows the medieval pattern of conquest followed by the grant of feudal territories. The Tudor approach, by contrast, relates to new forms of centralized government. Bureaucrats now work out systems for planting settlers, down to the smallest detail.

The first major opportunity for plantation occurs in 1583, after the failure of a rebellion led by the earl of Desmond. The forfeiture of his lands, and those of his followers, puts about half a million acres of fertile land in Munster at the disposal of the English government. Moreover it is relatively unoccupied, because so many peasants have died of famine in the disturbances.

By 1586 the details are in place. Parcels of land are offered for rent to English gentlemen (referred to as 'undertakers'), who are given precise instructions as to the number and size of farms into which their property is to be divided for subletting. All tenants are to be English by birth.

There are many distinguished English gentlemen among those to whom land is granted (among them Walter Raleigh), but the tenants have barely settled on their farms in Munster before they abandon them, in 1595, in the face of the next Irish uprising. Led by the earl of Tyrone, this rebellion leads eventually to his departure from Ireland in 1607, in the Flight of the earls. Almost the whole of Ulster now becomes forfeit to the English government.

The details for the plantation are again very precisely worked out. This time there is an inverse balance between political reliablity and rent paid.

Some farms are to be occupied by English or Scottish settlers who accept on oath the supremacy of the English king; others are offered only to people of English or Scottish birth, but may be sublet to the Irish; a third class of farm is for Irish only. The annual rents for the three groups are in the ratio 1, 1.5 and 2.

The properties are taken up less enthusiastically than the government hopes, so the entire county of Coleraine is offered to the city of London at a discount. The main town, Derry, becomes Londonderry.

Gradually, during the following years, religious unrest in Scotland brings Scottish settlers and their Presbyterian ministers over the Irish Sea. Ulster acquires a mixed population very different from the rest of Ireland.

Even so there is enough Catholic resistance in Ulster for another rebellion to break out in 1641. This is a time when the tension between Charles I and parliament is approaching crisis in England. The Irish rebellion becomes entangled in the wider struggle. It ends with yet another attempt at plantation, even more schematic than its predecessors.

Ireland and the Commonwealth: AD 1649-1660

In response to the Irish rebellion of 1641, parliament in London passes early in 1642 a Preposterous bill. It declares that at least 2.5 million acres of Irish land will be forfeited because of the actions of the rebels. On this assumption the bill proposes to raise £1 million to send an army to Ireland, the loan to be repaid later with the acres.

During the next seven years the military situation in Ireland is immensely complex. The Catholic rebels, and troops sent in their support by the pope, are at first opposed to the government of the Protestant English king. Later, choosing the lesser of two evils, they find themselves supporting the royalist cause of Charles I against the more radically Protestant parliament.

The upshot is that by the time of the execution of Charles I, in 1649, Ireland is the stronghold of royalist resistance. Parliament, recognizing this region as the prime source of danger, sends its best man to bring the situation under control. Oliver Cromwell arrives in Dublin in August 1649 as lord lieutenant and commander in chief.

An important body of royalist troops is sheltering in the fortified town of Drogheda. Cromwell takes the town in September, killing the entire garrison together with selected civilians and any priests he can find - a total of about 2800 people. Wexford suffers a similarly violent fate a month later.

With these examples in mind, several towns surrender without resistance. But others hold out. When Cromwell leaves Ireland in May 1650 (recalled to meet a new danger in Scotland), the parliamentary cause is still far from secure in Ireland. Cromwell entrusts the campaign to his son-in-law, Henry Ireton.

It is a further two years before the whole of Ireland is under control, but by 1653 the situation is calm enough for the next attempt at plantation to begin. The proposed method has an air of megalomaniac fantasy. It begins with the assumption that any Irish who have not helped the parliamentary cause are by definition guilty and should lose their property, if not their life.

A judicial process is established to identify the guilty, distinguishing them from a body of people who can be called the innocent Irish. The innocent are to be allotted land in one quarter of the island - the western province of Connaught. The rest of Ireland is to be an exclusively English zone. Land within it will be distributed to the parliamentary army, in payment for their services, and to other 'adventurers' who have contributed funds under the terms of the Act of 1642.

During 1654 and 1655 much effort is expended in trying to force the innocent Irish to move into Connaught, with deportation to Barbados and even hanging used in some cases as a punishment for refusal.

Relatively few Irish move to Connaught, but land is nevertheless appropriated elsewhere throughout Ireland and given to parliamentarians. By 1658 all the claims of both soldiers and adventurers have been met. Two thirds of all Irish land is now owned or occupied by the English.

The Restoration complicates matters yet again. Charles II wants to redress the injustice done to Irish Catholics without incurring the hostility of English Protestants. The Act of Explanation, in 1665, requires a third of all land acquired during the Commonwealth to be surrended as some measure of compensation. Catholic hopes are raised even higher under Charles's successor, James II, only to be dashed again.

James II and Tyrconnell: AD 1686-1690

James ii's appointment of Roman Catholics to high office, which causes such dismay in England, is correspondingly popular in Ireland. The main beneficiary is the earl of Tyrconnell, who is given command of the army in 1686 and becomes lord deputy of Ireland a year later. Under his rule Protestants begin to be purged from the army, the administration and the judiciary, to be replaced with Catholics.

When James ii flees from England to France in 1688, Tyrconnell continues to rule Ireland in his name rather than that of William III. The island therefore seems the natural place for James ii to begin the attempt to regain his throne.

James II in Ireland: AD 1689-1690

With active encouragement from Louis XIV, James ii sails from France in March 1689 with a small army of about 1200 men. They land in Kinsale and march to Dublin, where James is acknowledged king by an enthusiastic gathering of Irish Catholics - eagerly expecting now to recover the lands appropriated over the past century by English Protestants.

In April James moves north to take control of Ulster, where the Protestant settlement is strongest. But he meets very effective passive resistance. The Protestant strongholds of Londonderry and Enniskillen close their gates. Both survive long sieges during the summer of 1689.

In June 1689 an English army arrives in northern Ireland. For the rest of that year there is wary and inconclusive skirmishing, but in 1690 the stakes are increased. Both sides build up their troops and their provisions. In March a contribution for James ii comes from Louis XIV, in the form of 7000 French veterans. In June William iii, the new king of England, at last arrives in person.

On 11 July the rivals confront each other across the river Boyne. William has the larger army (about 35,000 men to 21,000) and he adopts bolder tactics, but his victory in itself is not conclusive since the Irish army survives to fight another day. What proves politically decisive is the immediate flight of James ii back to France.

The Irish Catholics continue to fight for another full year, hoping still to win the two concessions which would answer their grievances - security in possession of their estates and toleration for the Catholic religion.

The terms of the treaty of Limerick, ending the war in October 1691, seem vaguely promising - and like all vague promises in treaties, they are later disregarded by the victors. But one specific option has an immediate effect. There is a clause offering transport to France for anyone in the Irish army. Several thousand seize this opportunity. They and their descendants (collectively known in Ireland as the 'wild geese') provide Irish regiments within the French army throughout the 18th century.

William returns to England in September 1690. Ireland is now secure enough, and James ii sufficiently weakened, for him to turn his attention once again to the continent - to confront his main enemy Louis XIV, on the broader canvas of the War of the Grand Alliance.

For the summer campaign of 1691 William iii is back in action in Flanders, the cockpit separating Holland from France. It is a measure of the interconnection of this European war that the continuing conflict in Ireland, this same summer, is fought between a Dutch general (Godard van Ginkel) on behalf of William iii and a French one (the marquis de Saint-Ruth) for James ii.

18th century


The Protestant Ascendancy: 18th century AD

The Protestants of Ireland, triumphant in the aftermath of the battle of the Boyne, soon take steps to procure lasting advantages over their Catholic enemies. Confiscation reduces Catholic property from the already low figure of 22% of Ireland to a mere 14%. Moreover an act of 1704 prevents Catholics from buying land. And existing estates have to be divided between all the sons of a Catholic family, thus gradually reducing them to smallholdings.

Meanwhile penal laws severely restrict Catholic liberties in other fields. It becomes illegal for a Catholic to sit in the Dublin parliament, to hold public office, to keep a school, even to own a decent horse (one worth more than £5).

In spite of the advantages thus secured for Ireland's Protestants, they too find cause for resentment during the 18th century. Increasingly the Protestant Ascendancy means the ascendancy of English Protestants. The best posts, in church or government, are given to newcomers from the other side of the Irish Sea. Irish commerce suffers harmful tariffs and restrictions. Scotland, now in Political union with England, enjoys free trade; by contrast the Irish market is controlled from Westminster (which forbids, for example, the export of Irish wool).

The Irish find much to sympathize with in the complaints of the American colonies. Irish demands become vociferous in the years after the American revolution.

Anglo-Irish tensions: AD 1778-1785

Considerable concessions have been made to the Irish before the end of the war against the American colonists, and as a direct result of the conflict. By 1778 many of the British troops normally maintained in Ireland are overseas in America. In that year France enters the war against Britain. It is clear that Ireland is dangerously exposed both to internal unrest and to invasion. The Protestants enlist enthusiastically as volunteers. Soon they outnumber the regular British forces in the island.

This accidental circumstance gives unprecedented weight to the political demands coming from Dublin (on topics such as free trade and the power of the Irish parliament), which in normal times receive scant attention in Westminster.

Between 1778 and 1782 much legislation is passed to reduce Irish grievances. Most of the restraints on Irish trade are removed. The ancient and repressive Poynings' law is modified almost out of existence. Irish judges are given the same tenure of office as their English colleagues. And some of the restrictions on Roman Catholics are eased (particularly in relation to the Ownership of land).

In 1785 Pitt attempts to carry this process further, but his bill to merge Ireland in a full commercial union with Britain and the colonies does not pass. He fails to find a compromise to satisfy the objections of British traders and the demands of the Irish. And Irish demands are anyway about to escalate, as a result of the French Revolution.

United and disunited Irishmen: AD 1791-1795

The heady achievements of the early years of the French Revolution prompt similar excitement in Ireland. In 1791 Wolfe Tone and others establish in Belfast (with a subsequent branch in Dublin) the Society of United Irishmen. The society's aim is to demand Catholic emancipation, but also to involve Irish Protestants in a joint campaign for political reform - extending even to universal male suffrage.

By 1793, when Britain is again at War with france, Pitt is eager to have the support of the predominantly Catholic population of Ireland. He passes in 1793 the Catholic Relief Act. It is a cause which happens also to have his strong personal support.

Under the new act Catholics have the franchise on the same terms as Protestants; they are no longer barred from most government offices; they are admitted to Trinity College, Dublin's only university at this time. In 1795 Pitt goes further, founding the seminary of Maynooth to educate Catholic priests (the college at Douai having been closed by the anti-clerical policies of the French Revolution).

But by this time the political situation in Ireland has become much more radical. A section of the United Irishmen has been transformed by Wolfe Tone into a secret society aiming for a free Ireland. In 1795 a secret Protestant group, the Orange Society, is formed to resist Irish nationalism (see the Orange Order). The island's turbulent future is taking shape.

Irish rebels: AD 1796-1798

In 1796 Wolfe Tone travels to Paris to persuade the Directory that it only needs the spark of a French invasion to ignite an Irish uprising against their English oppressors. His argument convinces. In December of that year Tone sails home in the company of 14,000 French soldiers commanded by Lazare Hoche. But a storm disperses the fleet off southwest Ireland and no troops are landed.

Tone is still abroad, in 1798, when his revolutionary colleagues in Ireland succeed in launching an armed rebellion which gives the British government considerable trouble. British troops are defeated in several engagements in the Wexford region.

It is Wolfe Tone's misfortune that calm has already been restored by the British when he arrives on the coast of Donegal, in September, with a French force of 3000 men. Captured and taken to Dublin, he makes a stirring speech at his trial about the need for an Irish war of liberation. Two days later he cuts his throat to cheat the British gallows. Ireland has the first of her many revolutionary heroes.

The events of 1798 convince Pitt that the Irish problem requires precisely the opposite solution from the one advocated by Wolfe Tone. Instead of a separate and independent Ireland, he sees the answer in full-scale union between Ireland and Britain.

19th century


Act of Union: AD 1800

The Act of Union of 1800, effective from 1 January 1801, brings into existence a political entity called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (though almost invariably referred to by most of its inhabitants as Britain).

Pitt only succeeds in forcing this measure through the parliaments of Westminster and Dublin by a great deal of the political jobbery characteristic of the time. His motive is not just a cynical wish to bring the Irish to heel. He has a genuine concern for the plight of the Catholics in Ireland. And he believes that emancipation will be easier if Catholics are a minority in a United Kingdom rather than the vast majority in the kingdom of Ireland.

The act abolishes the parliament in Dublin, providing instead for Ireland to be represented at Westminster by four bishops and twenty-eight peers in the house of lords and by 100 elected members in the house of commons.

The result pleases no one. Ireland's political classes, members of the Protestant ascendancy, have played leading roles in their own parliament. Now they are small fry in the larger English establishment. Yet the change also means that they spend less time in Ireland. Dublin declines in glamour and prosperity. Estates in Ireland become subject to the neglect and decay associated with absentee landlords.

The Catholics have the most to resent at the way things turn out. The ruling Protestant minority has naturally been opposed to the abolition of the Dublin parliament. Pitt sidetracks their opposition by well-placed bribes and by winning the support of the Catholic majority. This he achieves by a pledge which he fully intends to honour - the promise of Catholic emancipation, giving the community full equality of rights with the Anglo-Irish Protestants.

But Pitt has failed to allow for passionate opposition to his plan on the part of George III, who considers any relief for Catholics a betrayal of his coronation oath to defend the Anglican church. (The extreme of popular opinion on the issue has been demonstrated twenty years earlier in the Gordon Riots.)

The Act of Union is passed without any element of Catholic emancipation, and Pitt resigns in February 1801 when it becomes obvious that the king's opposition makes it impossible for a subsequent bill to redress the omission. (George III concludes his case by lapsing into his second Bout of insanity, which he later blames on this crisis; when he recovers, a month later, Pitt promises not to raise the Catholic issue again during the king's reign).

Pitt is out of office for only three years, until the king recalls him in 1804 to continue the war against Napoleon. But the damage done in Ireland is longer lasting.

The determination to break the union becomes the central theme of Irish politics during the 19th century. It surfaces almost immediately in the uprising led by Robert Emmet in 1803. The event has been conceived at a high level, including even a meeting between Emmet and Napoleon in Paris in 1802, but chaotic planning reduces it to a fiasco in which Emmet marches on Dublin with only about 100 men. Nevertheless he is still revered today as a romantic rebel, largely because his capture and execution results from his trying to stay near his fiancée Sarah Curran.

After this shaky start, the repeal of the union emerges as a movement of lasting significance during the 1820s under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell.

Daniel O'connell and Catholic emancipation: AD 1823-1829

The issue of Catholic emancipation is brought back on to the agenda by a brilliant use of grassroots politics. Daniel O'Connell, an experienced campaigner who first achieves prominence in 1800 for his speeches in Dublin against the Act of union, organizes from 1823 a network of Catholic associations throughout Ireland. Their purpose is to demand an end to discrimination. The campaign is unmistakably an expression of popular will, being funded only by the members' subscriptions of a penny a month.

There is considerable sympathy in England for this cause and several bills for Catholic relief are put forward - only to be rejected in the house of lords.

In 1828 O'Connell raises the stakes. Even though his religion prevents his sitting in parliament in Westminster, he contests a by-election for the county of Clare. The election has been arranged so that Vesey Fitzgerald, invited by the duke of Wellington to join his cabinet as president of the board of trade, can be hurried into parliament. Sensationally, O'Connell wins the seat. The result puts Catholic Ireland in an uproar.

Wellington, the prime minister, and Robert Peel, his home secretary, have both been strongly opposed to any concessions to the Catholics. But in the circumstances they persuade George IV (equally disinclined) that something must be done.

The Emancipation Act is passed in 1829, removing nearly all the barriers against Catholics holding public office. The crucial clause, in the immediate context, is the one dropping the requirement for members of parliament to deny on oath the spiritual authority of the pope. O'Connell takes his seat.

He soon becomes the leader of the Irish members and works towards the achievement of his main aim - the repeal of the Union of 1800. But for the moment, as he himself recognizes, this cause takes second place to the frenzy now gripping Westminster in the battle for and against parliamentary reform.

The Nation and monster meetings: AD 1842-1844

During the 1830s, with a reforming Whig administration in Westminster, O'Connell bides his time on the Irish issue. But by the end of the decade, with no sign of progresss, he loses patience. In 1840 he resumes active agitation in Ireland for repeal of the Act of Union, and soon he receives vigorous support from a couple of Irish patriots in their twenties.

In 1842 Charles Duffy and Thomas Davis found a weekly newspaper, the Nation, as the voice of a movement which becomes known as Young Ireland. Together the Young Ireland leaders and O'Connell pioneer a peaceful form of popular protest. They organize mass demonstrations which become known as 'monster meetings'.

These take place without violence in many places throughout Ireland, but one planned for October 1843 alarms the British government by the sheer scale of its ambition. The stated intention is to persuade a million Irish to convene near Dublin at Clontarf, a place of powerful symbolism as the site of Brian boru's great victory over the Vikings.

Robert Peel, the prime minister, decides that the meeting should be banned. Troops and cannon are sent to Clontarf to maintain order. O'Connell, to the dismay of his younger colleagues, takes the statesmanlike decision to call off the event. But the government fails to respond in the same spirit. O'Connell and others are tried, convicted and imprisoned for seditious conspiracy.

The conviction is overturned in the house of lords and the men are released in 1844. But the incident has created a rift between O'Connell and his more radical colleagues in the Young Ireland movement.

They propose now to engage in more aggressive forms of agitation. But in 1845 a harsher reality intervenes. The failure of the potato crop focuses the minds of all Irish politicians on just one eminently practical and urgent cause - famine relief.

Famine and emigration: AD 1845-1851

Since the 17th century Irish peasants have come to rely increasingly for their staple diet on a single crop, reliable, high-yielding and ideally suited to their small patches of land - The potato. But in 1845 a previously unknown blight, phytophthora infestans, destroys the potatoes. The crops are no better in 1846 or 1847. The result is a crisis which becomes known as the Great Famine.

There are two immediate results of this disaster. One is political - the rapid repeal of the protective Corn laws, keeping grain prices in Britain artificially high, which have been the subject of passionate debate for years. The other is human. Starving families grasp at the chance of a new life in America.

The Irish become the first and the largest group of Europe's dispossessed to cross the Atlantic in a great wave of Emigration. Their contribution in their new homeland will be considerable, though the ties with Ireland will always remain strong. But they leave an Ireland sadly depleted by the suffering of 1845-7.

In 1845 the population of the island is about 8.5 million. By 1851 it has fallen to nearer 6.5 million. Of these missing 2 million, it is calculated that about half are direct victims of the famine and half are emigrants to America.

Fenians and Irish Republican Brotherhood: AD 1858-1867

The hunger of 1845-7 takes the edge off political agitation against British rule, but Europe's year of revolution in 1848 is too stimulating an event to go entirely unobserved in Ireland. There is an insurrection in August, involving members of the Young ireland movement, but it is easily suppressed by the government. Some of the rebels are transported as convicts to Tasmania. Others escape to America.

Among those who cross the Atlantic is John O'Mahony, who begins the American tradition of support for the Irish republican cause. In 1858 he founds the Fenians, a secret militant organization echoing in its name the Fianna - the warrior band of the legendary Celtic hero Finn McCool.

At the same time a branch is founded in Ireland by James Stephens, whose Irish Fenians call themselves the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Of the two it is the American organization which is the more active, even taking 600 men across the Niagara in 1866 in an ill-fated attack on British Canada. In Ireland a Fenian uprising is widely expected during 1867, and various ineffectual attempts are put down by the authorities. Nevertheless there are explosions, violent deaths and executions as Fenians try to spring their arrested colleagues from police custody.

By the end of the 1860s, partly in response to these disruptive tactics, the mood has swung once more in favour of mainstream political activity in the cause of Home Rule.

Butt and Parnell: AD 1870-1886

The two leaders in the 1870s of a new legitimate campaign to break the union are members of Ireland's Protestant ruling class. Isaac Butt has been in his youth a passionate Unionist and, as a successful Dublin lawyer, a leading opponent of Daniel O'Connell.

But during the famine of 1845-7 Butt is shocked by the failure of the British government to take effective action, and by the tendency of many Protestant landlords to profit from the appalling situation (by seizing the opportunity to subdivide smallholdings for a greater combined rent). He comes to believe that the situation can only be resolved if Ireland's parliament is restored.

With this change of heart, Butt immediately becomes a powerful and committed advocate in his new cause. In 1848 he defends the Young Ireland rebels charged with treason for their part in the abortive insurrection of that year. In the second half of the 1860s he often undertakes the defence of arrested Fenians. But his own inclination is for legitimate politics.

Since 1852 he has been, with one interval, an Irish member of parliament at Westminster. In 1870, putting the Home Rule issue at the head of his personal political agenda, he founds the Home Rule association.

During the 1870s the Home Rule cause, led in the house of commons by Isaac Butt, can count on the support of more than fifty members of parliament. Its programme is limited to Irish autonomy in internal affairs, with no demand as yet for the rupture of the union itself.

This soon changes after a much more dynamic figure, Charles Stewart Parnell, is elected member for Meath in 1875. He rapidly takes over from Butt the leadership of the Home Rule party and introduces a more vigorously disruptive policy. This includes active obstruction of parliamentary business at Westminster (to the extent that as many as thirty-six Irish members are at various times suspended) and the fomenting of rural unrest in Ireland.

In 1879 the Irish Land league is founded by Michael Davitt, recently released from a gaol sentence for sending firearms to Ireland for the use of the Fenians. The league's purpose is to promote insurrection among Irish smallholders (the predicament of Captain Boycott is an early result). Parnell becomes president of the league, but he disowns terrorism - in particular the murder in Phoenix Park in 1882 of the new Irish chief secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his under-secretary.

By 1885 Gladstone is converted to Home Rule for Ireland, partly from a sense of the justice of the cause and partly because the activities of the Irish lobby are making government impossible.

Gladstone and Parnell stand together on the Home Rule bill which Gladstone brings to parliament in 1886. But the issue is deeply unpopular with the English upper classes. It splits Gladsone's Liberal party just as the Corn laws divided the Conservatives forty years earlier. Liberals in favour of the Union (calling themselves Liberal Unionists, and the origin of the subsequent Unionist party) join with the Conservatives to defeat the government.

Gladstone resigns and devotes himself in the following years to campaigning for the Home Rule cause. He does so in a continuing partnership with Parnell - until scandal intervenes.

Parnell and Kitty O'Shea: AD 1889-1891

There have been rumours for some time in political circles about a relationship between Parnell and Kitty O'Shea, the wife of one of his parliamentary colleagues, Captain William O'Shea. But the broader public is astonished when O'Shea, in December 1889, files a petition for divorce and names Parnell as the 'corespondent'. Astonishment turns to moral indignation when the charge is not even contested. Judgement is given in court in 1890 against Parnell and Mrs O'Shea. In the following year they marry.

Nonconformists in England are outraged at the adultery. Catholics in Ireland are offended at the remarriage.

The nonconformist reaction convinces Gladstone that he can no longer afford to be associated with Parnell, while loss of Catholic support erodes much (but by no means all) of Parnell's political base in Ireland. When he dies in 1891, four months after his marriage, his reputation may be tarnished but he is mourned in Dublin as a great Irish hero.

Gladstone soldiers on alone. In 1892, in extreme old age, he forms his fourth administration. The following year his sheer persistence gets a Home Rule bill through the house of commons - only to have it thrown out by a massive majority in the House of lords. The intransigence of the lords eventually proves self-defeating. But Gladstone dies (in 1898) before this final victory.

The Irish way: AD 1893-1904

In 1893, the year of the rejection by the lords of Gladstone's second Home Rule bill, a new direction is taken in Ireland. At first it is only a small step. The scholar and author Douglas Hyde combines with other like-minded patriots to found the Gaelic League.

Their aim is to preserve, and indeed recover, the use of Gaelic as Ireland's spoken language. The influence of Dublin, and the pressure of English as the only language in which a career can be made, has increasingly confined the indigenous Celtic language to the western areas of Ireland. The league sets about reversing the decline by means of language classes, magazines, summer schools and poetry festivals (see Language and nationalism).

These activities evoke a warm response, particularly among middle-class Irish families in the towns. The number of branches increases from fifty-eight in 1898 to 600 (with a membership of about 100,000) in 1906. The league sees itself essentially as a non-political organisation, but as elsewhere in the 19th century language and nationalism are intimately linked.

An Irish national consciousness has already been fostered in the previous decade. In 1884 the archbishop of Cashel helps to found the Gaelic Athletic Association, to replace tennis and cricket ('and other foreign and fantastic sports') with home-grown games such as Hurling. During the 1890s the same impulse extends to literature and theatre.

In 1892 an Irish Literary Society is founded in Dublin, with W.B. Yeats as its first president. In 1897 Yeats and Lady Gregory join forces to establish an Irish Literary Theatre. This evolves by 1903 into the Irish National Theatre Society, and from 1904 it has its home in the Abbey Theatre.

Meanwhile similar steps are being taken on the political front, though there is no love lost between the two sides. The centenary of the Uprising of 1798 focuses minds once more on Irish independence. A nationalist newspaper, the United Irishman, begins publication in 1899. Its editorials pour scorn on the 'no politics' stance of the Gaelic League, with its 'singing and lute-playing, mystic prose and thrice mystic poetry'.

From 1901 the editor of the United Irishman is Arthur Griffith, who launches in the following year a new political organization. Calling itself Cumann na nGaedheal (Society of the Gaels), it promotes two main policies: passive resistance, in the form of non-payment of taxes; and, as a practical gesture of separatism, the proposal that Irish members elected to Westminster should decline to sit there and should instead convene as a council in Ireland.

Griffith calls this policy Sinn fein (Gaelic for 'we ourselves' or 'ourselves alone', a phrase in idiomatic use to suggest united action). For the moment it has little practical effect. But the slogan wins resonance in 20th-century Ireland.

To 1922


Pressure and concessions: AD 1898-1910

By the end of the century there is so much political discontent in Ireland, with nationalists returned to Westminster for virtually all the constituencies outside Ulster, that the Conservative government - committed as it is to preserving the union - judges that the time has come for concessions. The Local Government Act of 1898 takes a small compromise step towards Home Rule by establishing elected councils to deal with local affairs.

The considerably more significant Land Purchase Act of 1903 ends, almost at a stroke, the long-standing grievances of smallholders victimized by often absentee landlords. The landlords are given inducements to sell their estates to a land commission, which then transforms the tenants' rents into payments towards eventual purchase.

Such measures improve the situation without lessening the hunger for Home Rule, and in 1900 the Home Rule activists much improve their own political position. After the Parnell divorce case the party has split into two warring sections. Now, under the leadership of John Redmond, they agree to sink their differences. As a united faction at Westminster they aim to exert pressure as soon as they find themselves holding the balance of power.

They are nothing more than a minority party during the Conservative administration up to 1906, and again after the Liberal landslide of that year. But their chance comes in 1910, when Asquith needs their support if he is to carry through his radical assault on the house of lords.

In both the elections of 1910 the Liberal government wins only enough seats to govern with Labour and Irish nationalist support. The price of this support on the Irish part is a commitment to bring before parliament another Home Rule bill.

The passage of the Parliament act in 1911 means that the lords, where the Conservative majority has consistently blocked Home Rule bills in the past, can now do no greater harm than delay the measure by two years. The new Irish bill is discussed and planned during 1911 in a mood of justifiable optimism among nationalists. But their opponents take them by surprise.

Ulster volunteers and Irish volunteers: AD 1911-1914

Orangemen, the most Protestant region of Ireland since the 17th century, is where the union with Britain has its most passionate supporters. And from 1910 the Unionist members of parliament have a brilliant and ruthless leader in the person of Edward Carson.

In September 1911, when it is known that a Home Rule bill is in the pipeline (but six months before it is placed before parliament), Carson gives warning of what is to come when he addresses a crowd of 50,000 Ireland and Unionists outside Belfast. He tells them that the morning after Home Rule is granted to Ireland, they must be ready to administer and defend their own 'Protestant Province of Orangemen'.

That winter Orangemen is full of Protestants drilling (a licence to drill can be acquired from any Justice of the Peace, as long as the intention is to defend the United Kingdom's constitution). In the following spring Carson, with at his side the new leader of the Conservative party, Andrew Bonar Law, reviews another gathering of Orangemen volunteers outside Belfast. It shows every sign of being a military parade.

100,000 men march in columns past a saluting base above which flies a gigantic union jack. This event is held on 9 April 1912, two days before Asquith's Home Rule bill is presented to the house of commons.

The final gesture of unionist solidarity during 1912 is the Solemn League and Covenant, a document in the militant Ulster which is signed from September 28 in the Belfast town hall. Hundreds of yards of desks enable more than 500 people to sign simultaneously. Eventually almost half a million men and women do so, committing themselves to disobey any future Home Rule government.

Finally, in January 1913, with the Home Rule bill now making its way through the house of commons, the unionists take an openly military stance. They decide to raise an Orangemen Volunteer Force of 100,000 men aged between seventeen and sixty-five. Dummy wooden rifles now appear in the drill parades held in Orange halls.

These developments prompt a similar response on the nationalist side. In November 1913 a body calling itself the Irish National Volunteers is formed in Dublin and begins its own programme of recruitment and drilling. Six months later it too claims 100,000 members.

By now the wooden rifles are giving way to real ones. In April 1914 Carson's organization succeeds in landing at Larne more than 24,000 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition purchased in Germany. In July a much smaller shipment of arms, also from Germany, comes ashore in Howth for the Irish volunteers (resulting on this occasion in a clash with the military, on the Dublin quays, and several civilian casualties).

The prospect of civil disorder is made worse by evidence that the British government will be powerless to cope with it. There is much discussion whether the British army should be ordered to quell Protestant resistance in Orangemen, and if so whether the order would be obeyed. In 1914 a commanding officer foolishly asks the cavalry regiment stationed on the Curragh in Dublin whether they would accept such an order or prefer to be dismissed from the army. The officers reply they would choose dismissal.

The so-called Curragh mutiny suggests that little can prevent the Ireland from wrecking Home Rule. But greater issues postpone the crisis. Two days after the contraband weapons are landed in Dublin for the Irish volunteers, Austria declares war on Serbia.

Patriotism and plots: AD 1914

The immediate effect of Britain's entry into World War I, on 4 August 1914, is two-edged. On the surface it defuses the recent tensions over independence. But there is a minority in Ireland which refuses to postpone the struggle. The new crisis has the effect of driving their activities underground.

In Westminster the leader of the Home Rule faction, John Redmond, immediately suggests that the Irish and Ulster volunteers should collaborate in defending Ireland's coasts, enabling British troops to be withdrawn for the war effort. In subsequent weeks he goes further, urging Ireland's gallant young men to play a full role in Britain's effort 'in defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and right'.

In making these patriotic commitments, Redmond knows that the onset of war has delivered him the prize of Home Rule for most of Ireland. He has an agreement with Asquith that a Home Rule Act will be passed (excluding, for the moment at least, Ulster). An accompanying act will at the same time delay implementation for a year or until the end of the war, whichever is shorter.

Both acts receive the royal assent, on September 18, though only after Carson and the entire Conservative opposition have walked out of the chamber of the house of commons in protest.

The people of Ireland respond to Redmond's show of support for Britain. As many as 200,000 young men, an extremely high proportion of the population, eventually volunteer for service in the British army. But among a hard-line minority the crisis of Britain's war suggests other possibilities.

Some thirteen thousand members of the Irish national volunteers (or about 8% of the total) reject Redmond's alliance with Britain, committing themselves to an uninterrupted struggle for independence. Becoming known as the Irish Volunteers, or sometimes Sinn fein Volunteers, they join forces with the tiny but militant Irish republican brotherhood.

The I.R.B. and Casement: AD 1914-1916

In August 1914, within days of the outbreak of the European war, the council of the secret Irish republican brotherhood resolves to plan an armed uprising against a Britain distracted by the conflict. It is to be hatched by a small group working within the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, whose leaders are to remain unaware of it.

At the same time a separate scheme is evolving abroad, thanks to the activities of Roger Casement - a retired member of the British consular service who is passionately committed to Irish independence. Casement is a leading figure in the group which organizes the shipment of Arms to howth in July 1914. In that same month he sails to America to procure more weapons.

Casement is in America when war breaks out. With leading Fenians in New York he develops a bold new plan. Casement will travel to Germany to enlist German support for Irish independence and to attempt a more hare-brained scheme - to persuade Irish prisoners of war to change sides and to invade Ireland, armed with German weapons.

The Germans respond to this idea. By December 1914 they are able to assemble 2000 Irish prisoners on whom Casement can practise his powers of persuasion. But after several visits to the prison camp he has enlisted only one soldier to his cause, Sergeant Thomas Quinlisk, a man whom even Casement, in his diary, describes as something of a rogue.

Casement's mission, already bordering on farce, soon turns into tragedy. While his own efforts are failing, Fenian leaders in America persuade the Germans to send a shipment of arms to Ireland in the spring of 1916. Casement discovers that they are intended for an immediate uprising. Considering this a disastrous policy, he decides to return to Ireland to urge caution.

20,000 rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition travel in a German ship to be landed in the bay of Tralee. Casement makes the journey in a submarine. Both the arms and Casement himself meet disaster during the course of April 21.

The German ship is intercepted by the British navy and is escorted into Queenstown, where the captain succeeds in scuttling the vessel with all its cargo. Casement, ferried by collapsible dinghy from the submarine, lands on a beach in county Kerry. Hiding in some brambles, after an exhausting walk inland, he is spotted by a local constable and is found to have a German railway ticket in his pocket. He is arrested, and is subsequently hanged for treason.

April 21 in this year is Good Friday. The detail is significant. The uprising planned by the secret caucus within the Irish Volunteers is scheduled for Easter.

The Easter Rising: AD 1916

The prime mover of the Easter Rising is an eccentric poet, Patrick Pearse, who combines considerable skill in plotting the event with a mystical belief in the value of shed blood (his response to the heavy casualties in the Flanders trenches is that 'the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields').

The other leading figure, once the day comes, is the journalist James Connolly, a republican activist who is only let into the plot when his own separate plans for an armed uprising seem likely to wreck Pearse's scenario.

Pearse's romantic streak ensures that the plot goes ahead even after everything conspires against it. The gesture and the spilt blood will be at least as important as short-term victory (and indeed, in terms of myth-making in support of a cause, this proves to be the case).

The first disaster is the failure of a long process of deception by which Pearse has persuaded the official leader of the Irish Volunteers, the more pacific Eoin MacNeill, that treacherous British plans make an uprising inevitable. MacNeill orders all the volunteers to mobilize. But on Easter Saturday, just before the uprising is due to begin, he discovers that he has been deceived. He sends out the order to stand down.

The next blow for Pearce is the news, arriving at the same time, that his Consignment of arms is at the bottom of the sea. As a result his force on Easter Monday is some 1500 ill-equpped men. But Pearse's mystical belief in the regenerative power of spilt blood means that there is no question of cancelling the plan. When Connolly is assembling his men early on Easter Monday, a friend asks him whether there is any realistic chance of success. 'None whatever', he replies.

Nevertheless, the first step is easy. Armed volunteers are a familiar sight in Dublin. Pearse and Connolly calmly march their men along O'Connell Street, the main thoroughfare. Other groups are deploying elsewhere in the city.

Pearse and Connolly take their men into the General Post Office, with its great classical portico. There is no resistance, in a functioning civilian building, and soon Pearse reappears under the portico to read a proclamation from the 'provisional government' announcing the establishment of the Irish republic - in token of which a new green, white and orange flag is already fluttering above.

About twenty other buildings at strategic points around the city have been occupied at the same time. But since the average Dubliner is either bemused or downright hostile to these unexpected events, there is nothing the revolutionaries can do except wait to be attacked.

They do not have to wait long. The British soon deploy troops and artillery. By Friday the Post Office is largely destroyed and is ablaze. On Saturday afternoon Pearse appears on the steps to hand his sword to the British commander. The order to surrender is circulated to the various republican outposts.

In several it is very ill received. Some have seen no action, others have done gallant service. British reinforcements, arriving on the Wednesday, have met spirited resistance from buildings under the command of Eamon de Valera, whose men inflict casualties of more than 200 dead and wounded.

The rebel casualties are not high (64 dead in the week, compared to more than 220 civilians caught in crossfire and shelling), but the shock of the event radically alters the mood in Ireland - as do the court martials and executions which follow. For ten days, from May 3, there are a succession of men in front of firing squads, among them Pearse and Connolly. More than 1500 people are given prison sentences, including a life sentence for Eoin MacNeill who made strenuous efforts to prevent the rebellion.

The Easter Rising provides Irish republicanism with a new generation of martyrs. The rebels have been generally referred to as Sinn feiners. As Pearse predicted, their blood gives a mighty boost to Sinn Fein.

The emergence of Sinn Fein: AD 1916-1919

In the aftermath of the events of 1916 more people than ever in Ireland are convinced that independence from Britain is the only way forward. At this stage the majority still puts faith in the the constitutional methods advocated by John Redmond's Nationalist Home Rule party. The violent approach of the Sinn Feiners, as seen in the Easter Rising, has as yet relatively little support.

This changes over the next few years, largely because of the inability of the British government to provide any new initiatives as the World War drags on and thus delays - it seems endlessly - the fulfilment of the Home rule act passed in 1914.

Asquith and lloyd george make efforts in the right direction. Consultations are undertaken, conventions are organized, and the prisoners serving gaol sentences for the events of Easter 1916 are released in two waves (December 1916, June 1917).

But the mood of impatience in Ireland grows. Sinn Fein candidates begin to win some sensational by-election victories, and the party acquires an energetic new leader. Eamon de Valera, released from prison in June 1917, is elected to head Sinn Fein, replacing its founder Arthur griffith.

Unrest increases in the spring of 1918 when the British government, desperately short of men on the western front, attempts to impose conscription on Ireland. Protests follow, and a heavy-handed response by the Dublin authorities aggravates the situation. The viceroy, claiming evidence of a treasonable plot between Sinn Fein and the Germans, arrests seventy-three Sinn Fein leaders, including Griffith and de Valera, during the course of one night in May.

No one believes in the German plot, and when evidence is produced it relates almost entirely to the already well- known Events of 1914-16. The resulting mood in Ireland is expressed in no uncertain terms in the general election of December 1918.

Sinn Fein polls more than twice as many votes as the Nationalist party, and wins all but six of the seats previously held by the Nationalists. De Valera defeats the Nationalist leader (now John Dillon, after Redmond's death), and a new leading light of the republican movement, Michael Collins, is returned for West Cork.

The Sinn Fein members have no intention of taking their seats at Westminster. Instead, they assemble in the Dublin Mansion House in January 1919 as the Dáil Eireann (Assembly of Eire). Officers are elected: Griffith for Home Affairs, Collins for Finance, de Valera as President. De Valera is once again in gaol in Britain; this is as yet a national assembly only in name. But two years of violence will change that.

The Troubles: AD 1919-1921

From January 1919 to July 1921 Ireland is racked by the first of the two periods known colloquially as the Troubles. The events are more formally known as the War of Independence (in Ireland) and the Anglo-Irish War (in Britain).

The Volunteers, or armed supporters of Sinn Fein, are secretly informed at the end of January that they are now the army of Ireland, fighting on behalf of the newly established Dáil eireann, and that as such they are morally justified in killing enemies of the state - namely British policemen and soldiers. The war of independence is not declared, but in the minds of the combatants of one side it has begun. The Volunteers begin to call themselves the Irish Republican Army, or IRA.

It is inevitably a guerrilla war, and in the way of such wars the violence rapidly escalates. The authorities, confronted by terrorist acts, take drastic reprisals which are then seen as justifying the next retaliation.

The ruthlessly talented leader on the republican side of the war is Michael Collins, who is influential at every level. He is a leading member of the Dáil (a body declared illegal by Britain in September 1919), as well as being the most powerful figure within both the public Irish Republican Army and the secret Irish republican brotherhood. It is he who authorizes the assassination of targeted enemies. It is he who goes secretly to England in January 1919 and springs de Valera from Lincoln gaol with a duplicate key.

The situation in Ireland is even more ugly from June 1920. When the Royal Irish Constabulary becomes depleted by the high number of Irish resignations, the British government ships in half-trained replacements from England. Their violent behaviour makes them notorious in Irish history under their nickname of the Black and Tans (the name of a hunt in Munster, applied to the newcomers because in the rush to send them into action they are issued with a motley blend of black police and khaki military uniforms).

Ambushes, reprisals, explosions and arson (British auxiliaries burn much of the centre of Cork in December 1920) become everyday events - to a mounting crescendo of outrage both in Britain and abroad.

Stumbling towards a settlement: AD 1920-1922

In 1920 Lloyd George secures the passage of a Government of Ireland Act which puts a new spin on the proposal passed into Law in 1914. The partition of Ireland is to be accepted as a necessary compromise, but both southern Ireland (twenty-six counties) and northern Ireland (the six counties of northeast Ulster) are now to have their own parliaments with limited devolved powers. Each parliament is to send twenty members to a joint Council of Ireland, which may at any time merge the two without requiring further legislation from Westminster.

The proposal meets neither Nationalist wishes for a united Ireland, nor the Unionist desire to remain an undifferentiated part of the United Kingdom. But both sides decide to take part in the elections held in May 1921.

In southern Ireland the old Nationalist party, under John dillon, refrains from opposing Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein therefore wins 124 of the 128 seats (the other four being reserved for the strongly Unionist Trinity College in Dublin). These 124 Sinn Feiners now assemble as a reconstituted Dáil. However this is not the southern parliament provided for in Lloyd George's act, and the IRA continues to commit terrorist acts in Sinn Fein's republican cause.

In northern Ireland forty Unionists and twelve Nationalists are elected. Although the Unionists object in principle to this parliament, it is formally opened by George V (with a powerful speech urging reconciliation) in June 1921.

With this much achieved, Lloyd George offers a truce to the Sinn Fein leader, Eamon de Valera, and invites him to London with a view to working out a treaty.

The truce comes into effect on 11 July 1921. Violence in southern Ireland immediately ceases. De Valera sends representatives, led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, to the peace talks in London. They agree to terms which fall short of the nationalist demand for a united Ireland, but which nevertheless offer independence to the twenty-six counties. As the Irish Free State they are to have Dominion status, in the formula pioneered by Canada. Republican sensibilities are assuaged by owing allegiance to the British crown only as head of 'the British Commonwealth of Nations'.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty is ratified by the British parliament in December 1921, but it immediately runs into problems in Ireland. De Valera repudiates it, arguing that his envoys have agreed to terms beyond their brief. In January, after a bitter debate in the Dáil, Griffith and Collins carry the motion for their treaty by a narrow margin of 64 votes to 57. De Valera immediately resigns as president of the Dáil. Griffith is elected in his place.

In Northern ireland the new parliament is now functioning, and there has been talk of accommodation of some kind with the south. But civil war south of the border and sectarian riots in the north soon put an end to that. For the rest of the century, from 1922, the Republic of ireland and Northern ireland go their separate ways.
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