Whether their danger on the Green dawned upon them in time I cannot say, but when they saw themselves dominated by the great roof of the Shelbourne Hotel—about half an hour after the seizure of the open square for a camp—a rush was made for the hotel, which luckily had just been captured in the nick of time by a few of the military, who immediately began to fire on the rebels below, at the same time guarding the doors. A short while afterwards the main body of new Sinn Fein arrivals were noticed to make their way, instead, to the Royal College of Surgeons at the opposite end, which became one of their most stoutly defended strongholds under the famous Countess Markievicz.
Two further mistakes of the most vital importance were made in the rebels' plan for the capture of Dublin, however, which were eventually to be the deciding factor of the whole situation, and to which more than anything they must be said to owe the sudden collapse of their movement as well in the capital as in the provinces. The first was the omission to capture the telephone system after securing the telegraphs so completely.
This meant not only that the military authorities could still keep in touch with the few troops that still remained in Ireland, but it meant that the authorities at the Castle were able to get into touch with London.
One can hardly imagine the chaos that would have ensued if, for example, a delay of a couple of days had had to intervene between the occurrence of the rising and communication with London—which might have been quite possible, since they held the wireless stations as well as the cables, and German submarines were supposed to be watching the mail boats.
The other great mistake was to allow Trinity College, which was the strategic key to Dublin City, to fall into the hands of a few of the Officers' Training Corps, who must be given the credit of saving the capital from total capture and Grafton Street from pillage.
For as long as this was held by soldiers all the internal lines of communication of the rebels were blocked and they themselves threatened on all sides.
Otherwise the republicans had complete control of the city: the police were confined to barracks, civilians were on all sides at the mercy of a perfectly organized and armed body of revolutionaries all in touch with a headquarter staff, and the military, somewhere beyond the outskirts of the city, were—nobody knew exactly where, and the whole population on all sides hushed in expectation of the inevitable battle.
For it had ceased to be a mere riot: it had become a revolution.