was this policy of compromise and delay that opened the door to the radical nationalist minority who had gathered before the war in the Sinn Fein movement. On Monday 24 April 1916, Dublin was laid waste by rifle and artillery fire as extreme Irish nationalists launched a suicidal assault on British power.23 It took a week of bitter fighting to quell the rebellion. London’s embarrassment was compounded by the brutal repression meted out by army commanders on the spot. Though the uprising was crushed, the result, as the insurgents had hoped, was a strategic disaster for British rule. At a stroke
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