John MacBride

Infobox Military Person
name= "John MacBride"
born=birth date|1865|5|7|df=yes
died=death date and age|1916|5|5|1865|5|7|df=yes
placeofbirth= Westport, County Mayo, Ireland
placeofdeath= Kilmainham Jail, Dublin City, Ireland


caption=
nickname=
allegiance= Irish Transvaal Brigade
Irish Volunteers
serviceyears= 1913 - 1916
rank= Major
second-in-command (4th battalion)
commands= 4th Battalion
unit=
battles= Second Boer War
Easter Rising
awards=
laterwork=

Major John MacBride (sometimes mistranscribed as McBride) (7 May 1865 – 5 May 1916) was an Irish republican executed for his leading role in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Early life

John MacBride was born at The Quay, Westport, County Mayo, Ireland to Patrick MacBride, a shopkeeper and trader, and the former Honoria Gill, who survived her son. [ [http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdf/9.4.pdf John MacBride] . The National Library of Ireland. Retrieved on 23 September, 2007.] He was educated at the Christian Brothers' School, Westport and at St. Malachy's College, Belfast. He worked for a period in a drapery shop in Castlerea, County Roscommon. He had studied medicine, but gave it up and began working with a chemist firm in Dublin.

He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and was associated with Michael Cusack in the early days of the Gaelic Athletic Association. He also joined the Celtic Literary Society through which he came to know Arthur Griffith who was to remain a friend and influence throughout his life. Beginning in 1893, MacBride was termed a "dangerous nationalist" by the British government. In 1896 he went to the United States on behalf of the IRB. On his return he emigrated to South Africa.

Participation in the Second Boer War

He took part in the Second Boer War, where he raised the Irish Transvaal Brigade. Despite being known as MacBride's Brigade its first commander was in fact an Irish-American, Colonel John Blake, an ex-US Cavalry Officer. The Brigade was given official recognition by the Boer Government, the commissions of the Brigade's officers were signed by State Secretary FW Reitz. He was commissioned with the rank of major in the Boer army and given Boer citizenship.

The 500 Irish and Irish-Americans fought the British. Often these Irish commandos were fighting opposite such Irish regiments as the Dublin Fusiliers and the Inniskillings. From the hills around the besieged town of Ladysmith to the plains of the Orange Free State, MacBride's Brigade first looked after the Boers' great Long Tom gun, then fought in the Battle of Colenso and later held the rearguard, harassing Lord Roberts' cavalry as the Boer army retreated. However, a larger number of Irish fought for the British against the Boers.

By May 1900 the Irish commandos had split, not unexpectedly, into two Irish Transvaal Brigades. Distractions were also caused by the arrival in the Irish camp of an Irish-American Ambulance corps as well as by the news that Irish nationalist leader Michael Davitt had arrived in the Boer capital. Meanwhile, back home Irish pro-Boer fever, whipped up by Arthur Griffith and Maud Gonne in what was the most popular and most violent of the European pro-Boer movements, proved to be a 'dry run' for 1916.

Marriage to Maud Gonne

After the war he travelled to Paris. In 1903, he married the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, who he had met in 1900 and through whom he had met W. B. Yeats. The following year their son Sean MacBride was born. After the marriage failed amid accusations of domestic violence he returned to Dublin. Gonne separated from MacBride, but never remarried.

The Easter Rising

MacBride, unlike the other leaders of the Easter rising in Dublin in 1916, was not a member of the Irish Volunteers, and happened to find himself in the midst of the Rising without notice, but he offered his services to Thomas MacDonagh and was appointed second-in-command at the Jacob's factory. MacBride, after a court martial under the Defence of The Realms Acts, was shot by British troops in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin.

, two days before his fifty-first birthday. Facing the British firing squad, he refused to be blindfolded, saying "I have looked down the muzzles of too many guns in the South African war to fear death and now please carry out your sentence." He is now buried in Arbour Hill Cemetery (Dublin).

Yeats, who had hated MacBride during his life largely because of Yeats' unrequited love for Maud Gonne and who had heard negative reports of MacBride's treatment of Gonne in their marriage, gave him the following ambivalent eulogy in his poem "Easter, 1916"::"This other man I had dreamed":"A drunken, vain-glorious lout.":"He had done most bitter wrong":"To some who are near my heart,":"Yet I number him in the song;":"He, too, has resigned his part":"In the casual comedy;":"He, too, has been changed in his turn,":"Transformed utterly:":"A terrible beauty is born."

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