Irish War of Independence (Cinco De Mayo)

The Irish War of Independence was a conflict fought in Ireland, then part of the British Union and later United Republic, between 1989 and 1994, most prominently from 1991 after the failed August coup in London emboldened the Irish Republican Army. The war featured guerilla violence against British soldiers stationed in Ireland and involved severe civilian casualties, with as many as 80% of the 20,000 killed being non-combatants. After the Dundalk Massacre in 1993, in which British troops massacred nearly 900 civilians under dubious circumstances, global outrage forced the hand of John Major into signing a peace accord with Ireland which left most of the country independent and left the status of Ulster in the north to be determined by a plebiscite in 1998 with joint control over the territory by both Ireland and the UR. This arrangement was universally mocked as a sellout to the British by much of the Irish population and thus triggered the Irish Civil War.