How Did The Irish Rebellion Fail

Another contributing factor that suggests that poor leadership was the main reason for the failure of the rising was due to the fact that the rebels had no internal support- the IRB failed to gain the support from the rest of Ireland that they required for support. There were few supporters as it was, most of which were from Dublin, this meaning that there was no support from the remainder of Ireland, either due to them listening to Macneill or the fact they didn’t actually know about it. The rebels required a large force of men in order to have any chance success. The difficulty facing the leaders of the rebellion was how to organise a mass up rise without giving away the secrecy, as in previous rising such as 1798. The military council decided

The plan did not exactly run smoothly. The original date of the Rising was changed from Easter Sunday to Easter Monday after last minute hesitations by the military council, resulting in a commotion of conflicting orders. This postponement of the Rising was MacNeill’s response to the failed arms shipment. He sent new orders across Ireland to inform Volunteer units that the rebellion was postponed and had a coded message published in the Dublin Sunday Independent. This caused confusion amongst many of the volunteers and some even failed to get the messages at all, turning up on Easter Sunday only to find that no rebellion was taking place. Some thought that it had been cancelled altogether. One would-be rebel later recalled his confusion, “There were orders cancelling the Sunday manoeuvres...so I gathered the Rising was not to be” . He was not alone in his confusion, for it was replicated across Dublin and indeed across Ireland. Thomas Clarke was angered by MacNeill’s actions and reportedly said, “MacNeill has ruined everything- all our plans. I feel like going away to cry” . Furthermore, before the Rising Pearce expressed his frustration at another strategic problem, “the ammunition landed is useless. It consists of

We can see that poor organisation was overall very important in bringing about the failure of the 1916 Easter Rising amongst other factors. The failure of the Aud to land arms was also critical in bringing about the Rising’s failure however it has to be considered whether the Rising actually had a chance of defeating the might of the British Empire in the first place. There is evidence to suggest that the rebel leaders intended to die as martyrs however it is clear that this intention was not shared amongst them all and was mainly emphasised by Pearce himself. Furthermore, it can be seen that perhaps the Rising was a strategic victory in terms of the support it brought to the republican movement although the extents of this falls in to doubt when looking conscription. Such a view is furthered by historian Richard English who believes that, “the executions helped to achieve what the rebellion itself had not- an intensification of nationalist feeling... they produced sympathy for that rebel cause which they were supposed to undermine” . As an analyst of political violence who shows no clear allegiance towards the rebels’ cause, his view is more reliable than Barry’s. The quotes show that many of the rebels knew they couldn’t win militarily, but knew the executions would increase support for their cause. The series of