Irish War of Independence the UK, Free State and Northern Ireland governments negotiated revisions to the 1921 treaty; the Free State stopped contributing to the servicing of the UK national debt, but took over full responsibility for compensation for war damage, with the fund increased by 10% in 1926. The "Compensation (Ireland) Commission" worked until March 1926, processing thousands of claims. Although largely overshadowed by the men that took part in the conflict, women played a substantial role in the Irish War of Independence. Prior to the Easter Rising of 1916, many Nationalist women were brought together through organizations that fought for women’s suffrage
Easter, 1916 figures who eventually led the uprising. The deaths of these revolutionary figures at the hands of the British, however, were as much a shock to Yeats as they were to ordinary Irish people at the time, who did not expect the events to take such a bad turn so soon. Yeats was working through his feelings about the revolutionary movement in this poem, and the insistent refrain that "a terrible beauty is born" turned out to be prescient, as the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising by the British had the opposite effect to that intended. The killings