On this day in 1916, revolutionary Irish Republicans initiated the Easter Rising, proclaiming an Irish Republic independent of British rule and battling with the British Army for six days. Sixteen Rising leaders were executed.

The rebellion was a collaboration of multiple militant Irish organizations, including the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), and Cumann na mBan, and an Irish women's paramilitary force. Notable leaders include schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse and socialist James Connolly, who served as head of the ICA.

Together, this coalition seized strategically important buildings in Dublin. Britain responded militarily, sending thousands of troops and artillery to clash with the Irish revolutionaries.

The resistance lasted six days before surrendering to the better equipped British Army, and artillery shelling and street fighting left many parts of Dublin in ruin. 3,500 people were captured, 1,800 of them sent to internment camps. 485 people were killed, and more than 2,600 were wounded. Pearse and Connolly, along with 14 others, were executed for their role in the rebellion.

The Rising was the first armed conflict of a revolutionary period of unrest that began in the early 20th century. In the "Proclamation of the Irish Republic", the revolutionaries linked their cause to centuries of struggle:

"We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people.

In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations."

"Come Out, Ye Black And Tans!" - Irish Rebel Song :trouble:

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