The strategy was challenged on the nationalist side. As the militants saw it, contingents of republican Irish Volunteers and Connolly's Citizen Army ensured that while Irishmen, at Redmond's urging, were sacrificing themselves for the sake of Belgium, Britain could be seen on the streets of Dublin in Easter 1916 suppressing an Irish strike for freedom. In the aftermath of the Rising and in the course of a national campaign against military conscription, the IPP‘s credibility was exhausted.