Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

134 THE EASTER RISING AND AFTERMATH
4 A German submarine will be required in Dublin Harbour. The
time is very short, but it is necessarily so; for we must act of
our own choice and delays are dangerous. 41
However, the insurrection suffered a fatal blow when the Germans,
doubting the ability of the IRB to mount any serious military
challenge to the British, merely sent a small arms shipment, no
troops and no submarine. The ship baring the arms, the Aud, was
intercepted and found to contain Casement who, on hearing of the
plans for the rising, had travelled to Ireland to try and prevent it.
The insurrection was dealt another blow when Eoin MacNeill, on
discovering the plans for rebellion, issued a countermanding order
on the eve of the insurrection.
The impact of the Easter Rising in nationalist Ireland
The rising itself was quickly suppressed, with British forces in
England swiftly and effectively transferred across the Irish Sea.
After the surrender of the rebel forces the British military
authorities, under General Sir John Maxwell, court martialled and
executed fourteen of the insurrection’s leaders, including Pearse,
Connolly, Clarke, Plunkett, Ceannt and MacDonagh; Casement was
executed in August 1916. The combination of the executions and
the introduction of martial law throughout Ireland contributed to a
deterioration in the Irish Party’s position. Joseph Devlin, in a
memorandum to his colleagues, warned that house searching and
arrests, in districts where no disturbance had taken place, were
greatly and needlessly embittering the country. They had already
resulted in the arrest of many Irish Party supporters, carried out in
the most provocative manner, accompanied by undignified and
insulting circumstances which infuriated the men arrested and
their friends and relations. Released prisoners from England had
been arriving in Dublin, giving sensational accounts of illtreatment,
shockingly bad food, and indignities to which the
prisoners were being subjected. There was also the circulation of
rumours concerning secret shootings and murders by the British
military which, without any question of inquiry or investigation,
had ‘inflamed things to a horrible extent…it is persistently stated
that a large number of prisoners were secretly massacred’. 42
Following the rising the Irish Party’s political fortunes declined
dramatically. However, Richard Mulcahy, later an Irish Republican
Army commander in the Anglo-Irish War, did not believe that it
was the post-rising executions which dramatically altered the
nationalist community’s opinion in favour of the rebels. Instead, he