DOMHNAIGH -- On December 1, 1901, Fenian Thomas Clarke Luby died in New York. Luby was born in Dublin in 1821. He was the son of a Church of Ireland minister and graduate of Trinity College. His first political experience was in the Young Ireland movement. After the failed rising in 1848, he and James Fintan Lawlor attempted further agitation in Dublin, and he was arrested and imprisoned for a short time. In 1858, he helped James Stephens found the Irish Republican Brotherhood, writing the oath that members would later swear to secretly. In '63, Stephens sent Luby to the United States to raise money but he had little success. Back in Ireland, he became co-editor of The Irish People, a Fenian paper founded by Stephens. He was among many Fenians arrested in a preemptive strike by the British in '65; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Luby was among the many Fenians released and deported in '71 (Devoy and Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa were also in this group). He traveled first to Belgium and then to America. In the United States. Luby joined Clan na Gael but opposed both Devoy's New Departure and the Land League. He was a supporter of Rossa's Skirmishing Fund, which ran the dynamite campaign against England. Luby worked as a journalist during his years in New York. He also published a book on the life of O'Connell and another on famous Irish figures from history. On December 1, 1901, the old revolutionary, who had been a Young Irelander, Fenian, and member of Clan na Gael, died in New York.

CÉADAOIN -- On December 4, 1887, Maria Winifred (Winnie) Carney, trade unionist and revolutionary, was born at Fisher's Hill, Bangor, Co. Down. Her father, Alfred, was a protestant, and her mother, Sarah (Cassidy) was a catholic. Winnie was reared as a catholic. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to Belfast, and her parents separated. Winnie went to Hughe's Commercial Academy and graduated as a shorthand typist. At this same time, she was becoming involved in the Gaelic League as well as the socialist and suffragist movements. In 1912 she became the secretary for the Irish Textile Workers Union in Belfast. Winnie met James Connolly as a result of her involvement with the 1913 lockout in Dublin. Winnie then became deeply involved in the republican movement. She was present at the founding of the Cumann na mBan in Dublin in 1914 and joined Connolly's Citizen Army, becoming his personal secretary. On the day of the Easter Rising, she was the only woman in the group that seized the GPO "with a typewriter in one hand and a Webley [revolver] in the other," it was said. Though other women arrived later, all of them except Winnie were evacuated before the final day. Patrick Pearse attempted to get her to leave, but she refused to leave Connolly's side. She stayed until the end, tending to Connolly and other wounded men. Following the surrender, she spent eight months interned in Mountjoy and Aylesbury prisons, finally being released in December. After her release, she was appointed president of the Cumann na mBan branch in Belfast and was imprisoned again for a short time in 1918. She ran for a seat in parliament that year but was easily defeated by the large unionist majority in her region. During the War of Independence, she was Belfast's secretary of the Irish Republican Prisoners' Dependents Fund. Winnie opposed the treaty and was again jailed for a time in 1922. Winifred continued to work for Socialist causes during her later life. She married a protestant socialist, George McBride, in 1928. In her mid-50s, perhaps affected by her time in various prisons, her health began to deteriorate. Winifred died on November 21, 1943, in Belfast and was buried in the Milltown cemetery. Though she is little known or remembered today, she was one of the unsung heroines of the republican movement and the Easter Rising.

Read more about Winnie Carney HERE.

AOINE -- In the early morning hours of December 6, 1921, representatives of the Irish government appointed by President Eamon de Valera and those negotiating for the Crown signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, ending the Irish War of Independence against Great Britain.

(Above, right: Michael Collins signature (in Irish) on the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Immediately after he signed it, he commented to a member of the British negotiating team that he had just signed his own death warrant. He would die at the hands of his former comrades in the IRA within the coming year.)

It was then, and remains, one of the most debated moments in Irish history. The British negotiating team, led by Winston Churchill and Prime Minister Lloyd George, was composed of old masters at the game of politics. Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins led the Irish team; they were brave and intelligent, but had nowhere near the political acumen of the British side.De Valera, a shrewd, experienced politician, may have been the only man in all of Ireland who might have matched them, but he refused to join the negotiations. With less reluctance about forcing their political opponents to negotiate "with a gun to their heads" than they appear to have developed recently, the British gave the Irish an ultimatum on the evening of Dec. 5: Sign the treaty as is, or face military annihilation in three days. (See quote below.) The treaty Collins and Griffith had signed contained several clauses that de Valera and his supporters would reject. Chief among them was the treaty's partition of the country and its requirement that Irish officials must swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown. The cabinet split 4 to 3 in favor of the treaty, and in January, the full Dáil Eireann accepted the treaty 64-57. The stage was set for the brutal Irish Civil War, and the seeds of the tragic political mistake known as Northern Ireland were sown. Ever since, Irish historians have debated how events might have turned differently. Was Collins right to accept anything less than full Irish independence? Were the British bluffing? Did the world's -- especially America's -- revulsion at the atrocities of the Black and Tans make impossible the threat of Lloyd George's threatened siege of the Irish population? Would further resistance by the Irish have resulted in the dreamed-of 32-county republic, or might it have resulted in a continued 32-county colony? We will never know and will always wonder.

• Read more about the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

The executioner of King Louis XVI shows the head of the King of France to the crowd. The king -- and Tipperary native William Bulkely -- were only two of the thousands of victims of the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror."

SATHAIRN -- On December 7, 1768, William Bulkely, an officer in the Irish Brigade of France, was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary. In 1785, the young Bulkely went to France. His uncle, Richard Butler, who had been a colonel in the Irish Brigade, used his influence to retain a spot for William in Walsh's regiment. William later married a well-to-do French widow. Like most of the Irish soldiers in France, Bulkely opposed the French Revolution and left the army when the republicans seized power. In 1793, he took part in the royalist insurrection, commanding the district of La Roche, near his wife's estate. He led an attack on the rebels at Les Sables, but the attack failed. Bulkely continued to fight for the royalist cause through 1793, and finally he and his wife were captured by the republicans and taken to Angers. While fighting the republicans, Bulkely's men had captured a number of prisoners, and many of the royalists -- including his wife -- had urged him to shoot them, but Bulkely refused. Now a captive, Bulkely would not be so lucky. He was quickly tried by a military tribunal and condemned to death. On January 2, 1794, 25-year-old William Bulkely suffered the same fate as a number of other former officers of the brigade that shed much blood in the service of France: he was taken to the guillotine and bled for France one last time, another victim of the Revolution's bloody "Reign of Terror."

• Read Encyclopedia.com story about The French Revolution's 'Reign of Terror.'

VOICES

'Here are the alternative letters which I have prepared, one enclosing the Articles of Agreement reached by His Majesty's Government and yourselves, the other saying that Sinn Fein representatives refuse the Oath of Allegiance and refuse to come within the Empire. If I send this letter, it is war - and war within three days. Which letter am I to send?'
        -- British Prime Minister Lloyd George to the Irish negotiating team on the evening of December 5, 1921

'Our Holy Mother Guillotine is busy at work. Within the last three days she has shaved 11 priests, a general and a man (William Bulkely) of splendid physique of 6 feet, whose head was too large for the guillotine; it is now in the sack.'
        -- The mayor of Angers, France, January 1794

December - Nollaig

BIRTHS

?, 1820 - Dion Boucicault (Playwright and actor - Dublin)
2, 1736 - Richard Montgomery (General in US continental army - Raphoe, Co. Donegal.)
3, 1852 – George Noble Plunkett (Father of Easter Rising martyr Joseph Mary Plunkett & first abstention MP.)
4, 1831 - Robert Horatio George Minty (Bvt. Major General in Union Army in U.S. Civil War, Westport, Co. Mayo.)
4, 1887 - Winifred Carney (Trade unionist, revolutionary - Bangor, Co. Down.)
5, 1841 - Marcus Daly (Mine owner, "the copper king" - Derrylea Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan)
6, 1886 - Alfred Joyce Kilmer, journalist, poet and World War I soldier in the 165th Inf. (69th NY) (New Brunswick, NJ)
7, 1768 - William Bulkely (Officer in the Irish Brigade of France - Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.)

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

1, 1848 - Seventy-two Irish immigrants fleeing the famine are suffocated in the hold of "The Londonderry" in Derry Harbor.
1, 1901 - Thomas Clarke Luby, Fenian, dies in New York.
2, 1980 - Three nuns and a female Catholic lay missioner are raped and killed by the Salvadoran National Guard. (Three of the four women were of Irish ancestry.)
2, 1865 - The Fenian senate deposes founder John O'Mahoney as president, replacing him with William Roberts.
3-8 1792 – Meeting of the “Back Lane Parliament” Catholic Convention.
4, 1649 – Publication in Cork of the first newspaper in Ireland: Irish Monthly Mercury.
4, 1882 - John Curran, Dublin magistrate, opens a special inquiry into the Phoenix Park murders, in which Parnell is falsely accused.
5, 1920 The burned and mutilated bodies of Volunteers Pat and Henry Loughnane, murdered by the Auxiliaries, are found in a pond at Owenbristy near Ardrahan, Co. Galway.
5, 1921 – The Irish committee negotiating the Anglo-Irish treaty is told to accept the terms or face "immediate and terrible war" by Lloyd George.
6, 1820 - Spanish Gen. Diego O'Reilly defeated by Peruvian revolutionaries.
6, 1876 - Jack McCall was convicted for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and sentenced to hang.
6, 1921 - Signing of Anglo-Irish Treaty.
7, 1688 - The Apprentice Boys of Derry close the gates against King James' troops.
7, 1972 - "Special position" of Catholic Church removed from Irish constitution.