“There have been a number of women’s brigades that have served in wartime. Here are a few of them.”
IT WAS 100 years ago this week that a coalition of armed republican factions seized the city of Dublin and proclaimed Ireland’s independence from Great Britain.
The disturbance, which began on April 24, 1916, would go down in history as the Easter Rising.
Four four days, 12,000 insurgents from the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Armyoccupied the capital as soldiers and local police battled to regain control. The two rebel armies were joined by a third outfit — an all-female paramilitary unit known as theCumann na mBan or the “Irish Woman’s Council”.
Formed in 1914 to “advance the cause of Irish liberty,” the 10,000-strong resistance movement trained young women volunteers with pistols and rifles in preparation for an armed confrontation with the British Empire.
Sixty of its members served as nurses, messengers and even snipers during the 100-hour rebellion. One of the group’s leaders, a 47-year-old Anglo-Irish aristocrat namedConstance Georgine Markievicz, famoulsy gunned down an unarmed city constable as fighting raged throughout the city. Dozens of Cumann na mBan soldiers were captured in the final hours of the disturbance, which was brutally crushed by British soldiers on April 28; all but 12 were released before the end of May.
Read the Remainder at Military History Now