Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic

Audience

Certainly, Pearse and his compatriots envisioned that their broader audience would include not only the British but also the world public. However, the proclamation's actual audience was targeted in its Gaelic title: “Poblacht na hÉireann.” The people of Ireland were expected to read copies of the proclamation and join in the Easter Rising. But it said everything that a group of intellectuals would even consider putting the title of the document in Gaelic; they knew little, if anything, about their audience. From the beginning, the Irish populace rejected them. Like Casement's prisoners of war in Germany, the vast majority considered the insurgents to be traitors of the worst sort. As evidence, when the insurgents laid down their arms on April 30 and walked out of the GPO, they were spat upon and jeered at by surrounding crowds as British soldiers escorted them to jail. On the first day, the garrison near Boland's Flour Mill, commanded by Éamon De Valera, had fired on the unsuspecting and unarmed troops of the Georgius Rex Home Defence Force, a corps of proud old men in frumpy uniforms, many of them British military veterans, whom Dubliners had nicknamed the “Gorgeous Wrecks.” Several of the Georgius Rex men were killed; the violence of the public reaction to the incident took the insurgents by surprise—and was probably instrumental in their harsh reception thereafter.