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1. Moving Towards War, 1916–18
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Notes
1 Ironically, Patrick Pearse’s play, The Singer, written in autumn 1915, foretold this ‘quietness’ in the country:
‘ Cuimin: We’ve no one to lead us.
Colm: Didn’t you elect me your captain?
Cuimin: We did; but not to bid us rise out when the whole country is quiet. ’ Patrick Pearse, Collected Works of Patrick H. Pearse: Plays, Stories, and Poems (5th edn) (1922).
2 Letter from Margaret Ashton, 16 July 1916. NLI 20 MS II, 016, Bryce Papers 1915/16 (i).
3 C. P. Curran, ‘Griffith, MacNeill and Pearse’, Studies: the Irish Quarterly Review (Spring 1966).
4 Cyril Falls, ‘Maxwell, 1916, and Britain at war’, in F. X. Martin, OSA (ed. ), Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916 (London, 1967), p. 203 et seq.
5 Major-General Sir S. Hare, KCMG, CB, ‘Martial law from the soldier’s point of view’,
Army Quarterly, vol. 7 (October 1923 and January 1924).
6 One prayer-card for the executed leaders read: ‘O Gentlest Heart of Jesus, have mercy on the souls of thy servants, our Irish heroes; bring them from the shadows of exile to the bright home of Heaven, where, we trust, Thou and Thy Blessed Mother have woven for them a crown of unending bliss’. TCD MS 2074, ‘Prayer cards for the repose of the souls of the following Irishmen who were executed by English law, 1916’.
7 PRO C. O. 904/102, January 1917.
8 Risteard Mulcahy, My Father the General: Richard Mulcahy and the Military History of the Revolution (Dublin, 2009), p. 35.
9 Michael Laffan, ‘The unification of Sinn Fé in in 1917’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 17 (1971).
10 Florence O’Donoghue, ‘The reorganisation of the Volunteers’, Capuchin Annual, vol. 34 (1967).
11 There is no agreement on the total number of Irish men who served in the British army and navy in the First World War. There appears to be a consensus on the figure of 210, 000, of whom at least 35, 000 died, although the figure on the National War Memorial is 49, 400.
12 Charles Townshend, ‘The Irish Republican Army and the development of guerrilla warfare, 1916–1921’, English Historical Review, vol. 94 (1979).
13 Calton Younger, Ireland’s Civil War (New York, 1969), p. 93.
14 Tom Bowden, ‘The Irish underground and the War of Independence 1919–1921’,
Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 8, no. 2 (1973).
15 Risteard Mulcahy, ‘The development of the IrishVolunteers, 1916–1922’, An Cosantó ir, vol. 40 (February 1980). The paper was read to the Irish Historical Society on 9 November 1978.
16 Ulick O’Connor, Michael Collins and the Troubles (New York, 1996), p. 127.
17 Richard Mulcahy, notes on Piaras Bé aslaí ’s Michael Collins, vol. I, p. 56. Mulcahy Papers, UCD.
18 Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins, The Man Who Made Ireland. (London 1992), p. 209.
19 See J. M. Nankivell and S. Loch, Ireland in Turmoil (London, 1922).
20 É amon Broy, Witness Statements 1280, 1284, 1285.
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21 Letter from Richard Mulcahy to Broy, Mulcahy papers, P/7b/184.
22 Patrick J. Twohig, Blood on the Flag (Ballincollig, 1996), p. 155.
23 John McGuigan, ‘Michael Collins on file? ’, History Ireland, vol. 19, no. 4 (July/August 2011).
24 Fearghal McGarry, ‘Keeping an eye on the usual suspects: Dublin Castle’s “Personality Files”, 1899–1921’, History Ireland, vol. 14, no. 6 (November/December 2006).
25 Seá n MacAodh, ‘IRA wipe out “G” Division’, An Phoblacht, 6 September 2001.
26 Since Collins’s time, there has been historical, military and legal debate on ‘targeted killings’. See Samuel Issacharoff and Richard H. Pildes, ‘Targeted warfare: individuating enemy responsibility’, New York University Law Review, no. 1521 (2013); John Borgonovo, ‘Revolutionary violence and Irish historiography’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 38, no. 150 (1996).
27 Maryann Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish Free State (Blackrock, 1992), p. 53.
28 PRO C. O. 904/177/1.
29 Michael Collins, The Path to Freedom (ed. T. P. Coogan) (Cork, 1996 [1922]), pp 69–
70. At first the ‘Squad’ numbered only four but was later expanded to include some twenty men. There is some confusion over the O/C. Some claim that it was Paddy Daly (O’Daly) from the start, whereas others claim that Mick McDonnell first led the Squad until medical issues forced him to emigrate to the US. See Donal O’Kelly, ‘The Dublin scene’, in D. Nolan (ed. ), With the IRA in the Fight for Freedom (Tralee, 1946). See also PRO C. O. 904/109 (3), Inspector General’s Monthly Report,
September 1919.
30 Maurice Walsh, The News from Ireland: Foreign Correspondents and the Irish Revolution
(Dublin, 2008), p. 70.
31 A. D. Harvey, ‘Who were the Auxiliaries? ’, The Historical Journal, vol. 35, no. 3 (1992).
32 Martin Petter, ‘“Temporary gentlemen” in the aftermath of the Great War: rank, status and the ex-officer problem’, The Historical Journal, vol. 37, no. 1 (March 1994).
33 D. Leeson, ‘Imperial Stormtroopers: British paramilitaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921’, unpublished Ph. D thesis, McMaster University (2003); ‘The “scum of London’s underworld”? British recruits for the Royal Irish Constabulary, 1920–1921’, Contemporary British History, vol. 17, no. 1 (Spring 2003).
34 ‘This day, 25 March, Feast of the Annunciation, 1920, marked the arrival of the first Black and Tan in Limerick, en route to Newcastle West. To the late Christopher O’Sullivan, a local journalist/editor/proprietor of the old Limerick Echo, goes the credit of having given the new police force their colourful name, due to their manner of dress: a black tunic, as worn by the Royal Irish Constabulary, and khaki or tan trousers of the British soldier’, The Limerick Leader, 25 March 1980. See Richard Bennett, The Black and Tans (London, 1964; 2001); David Leeson, The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921 (Oxford, 2012).
35 Letter from Collins to Donal Hales, 13 August 1920.
36 Daily News, 18 October 1920.
37 Kathleen Napoli McKenna, ‘The Irish Bulletin’, Capuchin Annual (1970).
38 William Sheehan, British Voices of the Irish War of Independence (Doughcloyne, 2007), pp 13–17.
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39 Eoin Neeson, The Life and Death of Michael Collins (Cork, 1968), p. 42.
40 Diary of Thomas Jones, Lloyd George’s personal secretary, 31 May 1920.
41 Dublin GHQ recognised that a ‘war zone’ existed in counties Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and especially Cork. Other than some activities under Seá n MacEoin in County Longford, those were the areas in which most fighting occurred. Charles Townsend, ‘The Irish Republican Army and the development of guerrilla warfare, 1916–1921’, English Historical Review, vol. 94 (1979), quoting the Richard Mulcahy papers.
42 Martha Kearns, ‘Mary (98) recalls her vigil the day Kevin Barry was hanged’, Irish Independent, 13 October 2001.
43 Art Mac Eoin, ‘Terence MacSwiney’, An Phoblacht, 25 October 2001.
44 The Times, 29 October 1920; New York Times, 28 October 1920; Irish Bulletin, 28 October 1920. Seá n MacAodh, ‘Terence MacSwiney’, An Phoblacht, 25 October 2001.
45 Manchester Guardian, 10 October 1920.
46 Irish Worker, 14 March 1914.
47 See Denis Gwynn, The History of Partition, 1912–1925 (Dublin, 1950).
48 Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins, The Man Who Made Ireland. (London 1992), p. 67. 49 Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow (London, 1995), p. 215 et seq. 50 Ibid., p. 65.
51 Collins was involved in all aspects of the war throughout the country, though he did not visit those other commands often. For example, when the Cork No. 3 Brigade was formed at Caheragh, Drimoleague, on 16 August 1919, Collins presided at the meeting, but that was the last time he visited that particular brigade until mid-1921.
52 Frank Thornton, Witness Statement 615.
53 Commanders in the field mostly disagreed. They thought that the IRA was ‘winning’ and would soon have a military victory. See Liam Deasy, Brother Against Brother (Cork, 1998), p. 11 et seq.; Ernie O’Malley, The Singing Flame (Dublin, 1978), p. 13.
54 Rex Taylor, Michael Collins (London, 1970), p. 110.
55 T. Ryle Dwyer, Michael Collins and the Treaty (Dublin, 1981), p. 31.
56 Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland. Government and Resistance since 1848
(Oxford, 1983), p. 359.
57 Frank Pakenham (Lord Longford), Peace by Ordeal (London, 1935; 1972), p. 77.
58 Calton Younger, Ireland’s Civil War, p. 162.
59 Pakenham details at length the correspondence between de Valera and Lloyd George leading up to the Treaty negotiations. He takes pains to note that there were two separate ‘debates’ entangled in the correspondence: (1) whether England had any right to restrict Ireland’s form of government and (2) on what basis could a conference be held in light of the first issue. He opines that discussion on the first issue favoured Ireland while that on the second issue favoured England. He further points out that in de Valera’s eyes the position of a Republic ‘had been preserved’, but the British position was clearly that Ireland would remain a member of the Empire. He concludes: ‘On abstract rights De Valera had secured an agreeable academic triumph. On the question of status at the Conference he had, formally at least, held his own. But in the race to secure opinion favourable to the settlements that they respectively contemplated, De Valera was still waiting for the pistol while Lloyd George was half- way home. ’ Packenham, Peace by Ordeal, pp 77–9. For a contrasting view to Pakenham’s, see Desmond FitzGerald, ‘Mr Pakenham on the Anglo-Irish Treaty’, Studies: The Irish Jesuit Quarterly Review, vol. 24 (1935). FitzGerald contends that de Valera’s correspondence with Lloyd George was coloured by his need to placate Cathal Brugha (and to a lesser extent Austin Stack), who was ‘a convinced irreconcilable’ to whom the truce was only a period to re-arm. As a result, in de Valera’s correspondence ‘it will be seen that the word “Republic” is never used, while nothing is said that directly implies a readiness to accept the Crown’. FitzGerald asserts that ‘Mr Pakenham has failed to understand the situation at the time. This is probably due to the fact that documents were not available to him. Indeed, there is no documentation of that time. ’ FitzGerald concludes: ‘Mr Pakenham’s book reveals much that was not known to the public, and it is a valuable contribution to the history of our time. But the author omits vital facts and wrongly interprets others. In the absence of documents this may have been more or less inevitable. There are questions to which no answer perhaps can be given … His narrative, however, is eminently readable. ’
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60 Neeson, The Life and Death of Michael Collins, p. 50.
61 Pakenham, Peace by Ordeal, p. 266.
62 Batt O’Connor, With Michael Collins in the Fight for Independence (London, 1929), p. 171.
63 Terence de Vere White, Kevin O’Higgins (London and Tralee, 1948; 1986), p. 69.
1. Moving Towards War, 1916–18
There must be a hidden and malevolent influence somewhere in the government of Ireland, whether in the War Cabinet or the Castle, determined that Ireland shall not have peace in freedom and that there shall be no reconciliation between the British and Irish peoples.
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