Easter Rising "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace". In early April, Pearse issued orders to the Irish Volunteers for three days of "parades and manoeuvres" beginning on Easter Sunday. He had the authority to do this, as the Volunteers' Director of Organisation. The idea was that IRB members within the organisation would know these were orders to begin the rising, while men such as MacNeill and the British authorities would take it at face value. On 9 April, the German Navy dispatched a ship for County Kerry. Disguised as a Norwegian ship called the "Aud", it was loaded with 20,000 rifles,
John Redmond after 1916 was increasingly eclipsed by ill-health, the rise of Sinn Féin and the growing dominance of Dillon within the Irish Party. June 1917 brought a severe personal blow to Redmond when his brother Willie died in action on the front at the onset of the Battle of Messines offensive in Flanders; his vacant seat in East Clare was then won in July by Éamon de Valera, the most senior surviving commandant of the Easter insurgents. It was one of three by-election gains by Sinn Féin, the small separatist party that had played no part in the Rising, but was