April 21, 1916 (Good Friday)—Betrayed by informers, Sir Roger Casement is arrested in Kerry after coming ashore from a German U-boat. An arms shipment from Germany is seized as is a shipment of gold. Casement is executed in August.
April 24, 1916 (Easter Monday)—Despite certain failure (because of the loss of the German weapons) the Irish Volunteers seize the General Post Office and other strong points in Dublin. The British easily put down the Rising and execute the leaders. “A terrible beauty is born!” (Yeats)
December 14, 1918—Sinn Fein (“We Ourselves”) wins the first postwar election. Its members refuse to attend meetings of the British parliament and form their own republican parliament in Dublin, the Dáil Éireann. De Valera becomes president.
1919–1921—Anglo-Irish War. Hit-and-run tactics keep the British army at bay. Michael Collins becomes de facto head of the Irish guerrilla war.
1921—General McCready, the British commander, advises London that the war cannot be won. Collins realizes that he is running low on arms and that popular support for the bloody war is ebbing. Truce is proclaimed in June. Negotiations begin in July.
December 6, 1921—Collins—maneuvered into being a delegate to the peace conference by De Valera, who does not want to be responsible for compromise—signs the treaty establishing the Irish Free State (and by his own admission his own death warrant) as the best deal Ireland can get under the circumstances. De Valera and a diehard minority of the Dáil reject the treaty.
June 16, 1922—Pro-treaty forces win a majority in elections to the Ddil. Antitreaty forces seize strong points in Dublin and other cities.
June 28, 1922—Under pressure from Britain, Collins’s new National Army shells the Four Courts building, on the Liffey, where the leadership of the anti-treaty forces (now called the Irish Republican Army by themselves and the Irregulars by the Free State) have been holed up. Civil War begins.
July 28, 1922—Fall of Limerick and Waterford to Free State armies.
August 12, 1922—Arthur Griffith, nominal chief of state, dies and is replaced by Collins, who is now both head of the Free State and commander of the army. Emmet Dalton captures Cork in a single day’s battle.
August 22, 1922—Collins, perhaps on a peace mission to Cork, is killed at Bealnablath, near his home in Cork. Civil War rages for another year.
May 13, 1923—“Cease fire” and end of Civil War.