The 1916 Easter Rising was launched by the IRB, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army. It had a dramatic impact in achieving Irish independence: Arthur Griffith continued his "doctrinaire commitment" to terror bombings as IRB policy. Though support for the insurgents was small, the execution of fifteen people by firing squad, the imprisonment or internment of hundreds more, and the imposition of martial law caused a profound shift in public opinion towards the republican cause in Ireland. It allowed the surviving rising leader Éamon de Valera to win a majority for the anti-occupation Sinn Féin party in the 1918 general election, which became the defining moment of the physical force doctrine.