The Nationalists.

CHAPTER 1

Surrender!

The word hung in the air like a weapon, dripping with venom.

The very thought was shocking. Days of fighting reduced to this. Tony McAnthony looked at the broken faces around him. He could see pride and courage, but he could also see defeat. And huge bitter disappointment.

Some fighters lay unmoving. They'd given their lives for their vision of a free Ireland. Shattered glass, and broken chairs and debris lay everywhere. Some had been hammered into rough wooden barricades and shooting vantage points. Papers were scattered along the marble floor; post office documents, stamps, food coupons, ration cards.

Days earlier, McAnthony had watched from the roof of the General Post Office, as several of the Rising leaders had broadcast the Proclamation to the world. Radio was still in its infancy, but the hope was that the broadcast would reach the ears of those who mattered in America.

McAnthony pondered his own fate. Would the British accept that he had been a non-combatant? He'd disobeyed his editor at the Times - Conor Sweeney - a good man, but a man with a limited viewpoint. Sweeney had a tendency to take a pro-British view and his views on rebel groups were prejudiced and naturally jaundiced. Perhaps that stemmed from Sweeney's Protestantism background. Tony wasn't sure.

He knew he was lucky to be alive. The Rising had been particularly strong in Dublin, unlike 1798, which failed when Wexford and parts of the North had rebelled but Dublin hadn't risen. This time things were different. Key buildings had been seized in Dublin: Jacob's Biscuit Factory, Clanwilliam House, which dominated Northumberland Street, Boland's Mill, the South Dublin Union and St Stephen's Green, and Dublin Castle. The GPO itself had been taken at the start of the week.

Wexford had again risen to the challenge and in Enniscorthy the rebels held out longer than their Dublin comrades.

The British had been caught with their pants down. Many of their officers had been at the races out in Fairyhouse, and with many people in a holiday mood for the Easter break, nobody had been expecting a Rising.

It had been the perfect time to strike!

The signs had been in the air for weeks. Military manoeuvres around the Castle. Irishmen and women parading with weapons on open display. The Castle men hadn't tried to disarm them, fearing bloodshed, but plans were afoot for a massive round up. Still they had waited too late. A secret council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had planned the Rising with such secrecy that even Eoin MacNeill had been caught unawares. MacNeill was commander of the Volunteers, three thousand of whom were Dubliners including the two hundred strong Citizen Army, and the Volunteers probably numbered thirteen thousand on a countrywide basis.

Roger Casement had been sent on a secret mission to Germany to secure arms for the Rising, but due to a series of mishaps he had been arrested on his return and a Norwegian ship - The Aud - which had been carrying a shipment of arms was sunk.

Learning this MacNeill published a notice on Easter Sunday in the Irish Independent forbidding Volunteer movements, but the movement behind the Rising was unstoppable. Though forced to postpone for a day, the orders for the Rising went ahead for Easter Monday. And though confusion reigned in some parts of the country, MacNeill's notice had lulled the British into thinking there was no rush in rounding up armed Volunteers. The British too couldn't go rushing in where angels feared to tread. They needed to avoid alienating both nationalists and unionists up the north who were volunteering for military duty abroad, and the raging war in Europe. Talk of conscription was high on the political agenda, and a hotly debated topic - both north and south.

McAnthony had linked up with the rebels when they had gathered that bright Monday morning at Liberty Hall. A rumour had reached him at the office, which had sent him scurrying from the office, and on a flat run up the quays towards Liberty Hall. He had spoken to a Cork gent who had queried his motives: "You want to join us - why?"