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THOMAS MACDONAGH. IRISH REVOLUTIONARY. EXECUTED 1916.

Thomas MacDonagh was one of the seven signatories of the Irish Proclamation.

MacDonagh was court-martialled, and executed by firing squad on 3 May 1916, aged thirty-eight.

A prominent figure in the Dublin literary world, he was commemorated in several poems by W.B. Yeats and in his friend Francis Ledwidge’s Lament for Thomas MacDonagh. In a poem rich with allegory – the Dark Cow is an 18th-century symbol of Ireland, for instance – the doomed Ledwidge wrote:

‘He shall not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky where he is lain,
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain…

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor
And pastures poor with greedy weeds,
Perhaps he’ll hear her low at morn,
Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.

Ledwidge himself would die a year later, blown to pieces in Ypres, ironically while fighting for the British Empire.

Brief summery of Thomas MacDonagh during the 1916 Easer Rising.
From the Wiki

During the rising, MacDonagh’s battalion was stationed at the massive complex of Jacob’s Biscuit Factory. On the way to this destination the battalion encountered the veteran Fenian, John MacBride, who on the spot joined the battalion as second-in-command, and in fact took over part of the command throughout Easter Week, although he had had no prior knowledge and was in the area by accident. MacDonagh’s original second in command was Michael O’Hanrahan.^[6]

As it was, despite MacDonagh’s rank and the fact that he commanded one of the strongest battalions, they saw little fighting, as the British Army avoided the factory as they established positions in central Dublin. MacDonagh received the order to surrender on 30 April, though his entire battalion was fully prepared to continue the engagement.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE EASTER RISING

In 1916, in a rebellion known as the Easter Rising, a small group of uniformed and organized but poorly armed Irish patriots took on the might of the British Empire and sought to end 800 years of subjugation and oppression.
 Although totally outnumbered, for twelve extraordinary days in May 1916, they fought the British army to a standstill until finally forced to surrender as prisoners of war. 
Most were promptly executed without mercy and with their executions the Irish people, who initially had rejected them as hopeless dreamers and troublemakers, were so outraged by these brutal murders that they rose in huge numbers against the British and eventually succeeded, after years of armed struggle and massive help from the Irish diaspora in America, in ejecting the British and declaring independence.