‘One of the Most Interesting Chapters’: The Role of Co. Wexford in the Easter Rising of 1916

The Full Story?

When Seán Doyle donated some items concerning the Easter Rising to the National Museum, he did so, as he explained in a letter, because he felt that “the interesting part played by Wexford has been not hitherto adequately represented.” He was writing in 1934 and it seems that his efforts made little headway as, eighty-one years later, another Doyle thought it necessary to offer “a gentle rebuke” to those historians “who promote the view that the 1916 Rising was confined to Dublin” at the expense of Co. Wexford and the overlooked “significant event” of its own during that momentous week.[1]

Postcard celebrating three leaders of the Rising in Co. Wexford (Source: https://heritage.wicklowheritage.org/topics/wicklow_1916-_1923/wicklow-1916-commemoration-programme/wicklow_life_collections_1916/comdt_peter_paul_galligan/postcard_of_3_enniscorthy_volunteers)

‘Significant’ may be too strong a word. Nonetheless, while it is true that the county had nothing compared to the slaughter on Mount Street, the naval bombardment from the Liffey or the final holdout in the General Post Office (GPO), it does provide an alternative version of the Rising, or how Easter Week could have gone.

Certainly, at least one journalist, writing in the Irish Times at the end of April 1916, barely before the dust had settled and the embers cooled, believed that “when the full story of the rising at Enniscorthy comes to be written it will provide one of the most interesting chapters of the ill-fated rebellion of the Sinn Feiners.” While information was sketchy, it appeared that, at the start of Easter Week, the Irish Volunteers involved had not acted immediately, instead waiting for news of their compatriots in Dublin. When it was confirmed that the city was in rebel hands, the Wexford men swung into action, first seizing the business establishments of Enniscorthy, along with its railway station.

Scarawalsh Bridge, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford

Whether to blow up the town bridge was debated but declined. Instead:

They then attempted to blow up the bridge at Scarawalsh, which crosses the River Slaney on the main road between Wexford and Enniscorthy. Before doing so they behaved with cruelty to the old and respected blacksmith, named Carton, who, with his family, live in a house close to the bridge. Carton and his family were ordered to leave the house, and had to wander about homeless for two days and two nights.

The Cartons were not the only ones inconvenienced. Factory workers on the train out of Wexford had been held up at Enniscorthy Station and forced to walk back along the railway line. And a class war seemed to have been waged as well as a national one: “While the revolution lasted employers were held up by their own workpeople.” Such societal reversals was something that the Men of Property, in the aftermath, were taking rather personally:

The greatest indignation prevails amongst the business people of the town and district, and the hope is expressed on all sides that the rebels will be hunted out to a man…There is a general feeling that, if the spirit of revolution is not ruthlessly stamped out, the trade and business of Enniscorthy will be ruined.

For a failure the Rising had been, in Enniscorthy and elsewhere in the country, and it was the Volunteers who were now at the mercy of others. One hundred and thirty-three suspects had already been rounded up by the authorities in Co. Wexford alone, with more to come. That these prisoners were being sent abroad by steamer to an unknown destination showed how seriously the Powers-That-Be took this latest threat.[2]

Irish Volunteers being arrested outside the Athenaeum, Enniscorthy, on the 1st May 1916 (Source: https://www.ucc.ie/en/theirishrevolution/collections/the-story-of-1916/chapter-4-the-uprising-itself/the-rising-in-enniscorthy/)

By the time the Royal Commission met a month later, on the 27^th May 1916, at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, to investigate the recent rebellion, three hundred and seventy-five altogether had been arrested in Co. Wexford. Out of these, three hundred and nineteen were transported to Dublin for later deportation, with fifty-two discharged and a pair taken to hospital. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), meanwhile, had seized a total of:

• 45 rifles
• 66 shotguns
• 8 pistols
• 6 revolvers
• 1 bomb
• 21 ½ stone of blasting powder
• 667 rounds of sporting ammunition
• 4,067 rounds of rifle and revolver ammunition
• A quantity of gelignite and other explosives

“A regular arsenal,” exclaimed Lord Hardinge as Chairman.[3]

Laying the Plans

W.J. Brennan-Whitmore

As Lord Hardinge grasped, the Volunteers in Wexford had been in complete earnest. So was the rebel leadership, which had had big plans for them. Given its position on the south-west coast of Ireland, the county was to serve two important tasks in the course of the Rising. Firstly, as explained by W.J. Brennan-Whitmore, they were to keep the line of communications open between the Irish Volunteer GHQ in Dublin and their units all the way to Cork. The second was more complicated, concerning Waterford city, “the really black spot” in Brennan-Whitmore’s (and the GHQ’s) view and a potential Achilles’ heel for their insurrection.

With its harbour, Waterford provided a natural entry point into Ireland, from which disembarking enemy reinforcements could quickly penetrate into the heartlands. Seizing the city outright did not seem feasible, considering the pro-Redmondite and anti-Republican sentiments there, so the next best counter-measure would be one of containment, with Volunteer guards positioned to the north of Waterford, and more on its western and eastern flanks.

Liam Mellows

Brennan-Whitmore was one of the two GHQ operatives sent to explain to the Wexford Volunteers their part in all this. Along with Liam Mellows, he met the officers at the house of one of them in the town of Enniscorthy, sometime before Easter Week. “None of those present were told of any specific date for a rising,” Brennan-Whitmore, “but all were cautioned of the very confidential nature of the discussions; nor was anything committed to writing for obvious reasons.”

As soon as orders were received from Dublin, the Wexford men would mobilise at Enniscorthy, so chosen for its central position in the county:

Here there was to be a redistribution of arms, necessitated by the fact that while some of the corps were reasonably well armed, considering the circumstances, others were very poorly armed. A commissariat was to be set up for the provisioning of the men in the field. As soon as this task was done the local police barracks was to be invested. Every effort was to be made to achieve a quick surrender and the arms and ammunition taken at once and distributed to the corps. Meanwhile small detachments were to be sent at once to take the police barracks in outlying localities.

Once all this was done, the rebels would divide into two brigades. One was to go to Rosslare, another coastal village, in order to deny a British landing there. Since GHQ was well aware of how short of munitions the Volunteers were in general, “they were not to attempt a fight to the finish, but to retire when no longer able to maintain their positions effectively and to continue to harass the enemy in his progress inland,” as Brennan-Whitmore put it.

Irish Volunteers

The second brigade was to attempt a similar role at Waterford, specifically at New Ross, north of the city, allowing them to guard against British advances via the River Barrow. Again, these men were not expected to make a last stand if things went wrong; in such an event, they would fall back to regroup at Enniscorthy and possibly try again, this time going through neighbouring Co. Wicklow and into Kildare in order to threaten the Curragh. But, whatever happened, “it was repeatedly emphasised that anything like a prolonged fight was to be avoided at all cost, and manoeuvre and harassing tactics mainly resorted to.”

It was all very ambitious and Brennan-Whitmore had his doubts as to how realistic any of it could be, considering the untrained state of the Volunteers and their paucity in weapons. As it turned out, the Wexford men never had a chance to put theory into practice, and almost lost out on having any role at all, thanks to circumstances beyond their control – the story of the Rising in a nutshell.[4]

‘An Air of Indecision’

When it finally occurred, Easter Week became less the execution of finely-honed strategies and more an exercise in improvisation.

J.J. O’Connell, in the uniform of the Free State army during the Irish Civil War

The first sign of trouble that Peter Paul Galligan saw was when Captain J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell appeared in Enniscorthy on the Good Friday of Holy Week, the 21^st April 1916. Galligan, as Vice-Commandant of the Enniscorthy Volunteer Battalion, was by then aware of the Rising planned in three days’ time, on Easter Sunday, a fact he had learnt from Seamus Doyle, the Battalion Adjutant. If Galligan had been surprised at this revelation, alarmed at its short notice or resentful at being informed by a colleague rather than from a superior, he gave no hint of it when it came to writing his reminiscences. A lecture the month before, in March, given by a visiting Patrick Pearse on Robert Emmet might have been a clue in itself: after all, what else was that ill-fated patriot known for besides rebellion?[5]

Patrick Pearse

Doyle himself was aware of the incipient insurrection through his contacts in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), though he did not know the date until Pearse told him via a code he had left with him after the Robert Emmet talk. On the morning of Holy Thursday, Doyle received a message from Pearse ostensibly asking about some books available ‘on the 23^rd July next. Remember 3 months earlier.’ By the dating of the 23^rd July, and the ‘3 months earlier’ remark, Pearse was informing the other man that the day of action was to be the 23^rd April, Easter Sunday.[6]

What was less clear was everything else. At a staff meeting attended by Galligan, Doyle and another officer, O’Connell, according to Galligan’s recollection:

…told us that he had been appointed by the Vol. Executive to take charge of Wicklow, Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny areas, but that he refused to take over the command and would take no part in the forthcoming rising and, further, that it would be our own responsibility whatever action we took.

If O’Connell gave a reason for this startling information, Galligan did not record it. He then left Enniscorthy and that was the end of his involvement as far as the Rising was concerned. Which is perhaps just as well; all he had accomplished in his short time was disarray:

As a result of O’Connell’s action we were left without instructions and could take no further action and on Easter Sunday there was an air of indecision prevailing amongst the officers owing to this lack of instruction.[7]

Seamus Doyle

Doyle was to tell the story a little differently, leaving out O’Connell for the most part, and instead it was a motorcyclist who arrived from Kilkenny “to state that as a result of the directive from GHQ that day they [the Volunteers] were not ‘rising’.” Doyle was sent by the other officers to Wexford town to discuss with their counterparts there, but “since they were also very confused about what to do,” that did not help matters.[8]

Coming to a Decision

Both Galligan and Doyle undertook journeys to Dublin to find out the facts for themselves. That they went separately and alone shows how ad hoc everything was becoming. Also indicative was that Doyle, when arriving at the Volunteer Headquarters on Dawson Street, did not bother asking Eoin MacNeill for clarification, despite the Chief of Staff being present. Instead he proceeded to the offices of the Irish Freedom newspaper in D’Olier Street to meet Seán Mac Diarmada, as one IRB initiate to another – Doyle clearly knew where the true power behind the revolution lay, or at least thought he did.

Seán Mac Diarmada

“He told me that MacNeill had consented to the Rising taking place on Easter Sunday,” in two days’ time. With this cleared up, “I travelled back to Enniscorthy that evening satisfied that everything was going well and sent this information around the other officers.”[9]

For his part, Galligan was told on the Sunday in Dublin by some acquaintances that the Rising was off for the foreseeable future. MacNeill’s countermanding order in the Irish Independent that same day confirmed it – or seemed to, as Galligan stayed in the area long enough to learn the next day that the big event was on after all.

Dublin was otherwise quiet and outwardly normal save for an overturned tramcar and a dead horse in O’Connell Street which Galligan passed on his way to the GPO. In the rebel base of operations, he reported to Pearse, along with Joe Plunkett and James Connolly. After some discussion amongst themselves, they assigned him back to his command in Enniscorthy. There, he and the rest of the Volunteers were:

…to hold the railway line to prevent [British] troops from coming through from Wexford as [Connolly] expected that they would be landed there. He said to reserve our ammunition and not to waste it on attacking barracks or such like. He instructed that I be supplied with a good bicycle.[10]

Peter Paul Galligan in a Volunteer uniform

Galligan cycled home on Easter Wednesday, the 26^th April, in time to give direction to an otherwise floundering battalion. The certainty of action that Doyle had brought back with him from his own trip evaporated with the publication of MacNeill’s countermanding order on the Sunday. Two contradictory messages from Pearse, the first cancelling the Rising, the next confirming it, only drove various Wexford officers to declare over the next three days their intent to do nothing. With Galligan’s return, however, came direct orders from Connolly and the rest of General Headquarters – and that finally settled the question.

“It was decided by all to start operations on Thursday morning,” Doyle recalled.[11]

Takeover

While reviewing the recent events, Mr Montague Shearman caught what looked like a discrepancy on the part of County Inspector Sharpe, one of the RIC officials testifying to the Royal Commission. The membership of the rebel movement in Wexford, Sharpe had stated, numbered at the time of the insurrection three hundred and twenty-five.

Shearman: You say there were about 325 in the county, and that 600 men turned out?

Sharpe: Yes, two hundred of them armed.

Shearman: That is about double the estimated number?

Sharpe: Oh, yes, but they terrorised the whole of the inhabitants into joining them.[12]

Numbers are notoriously hard for historical sources to agree upon, and personal intentions prone to contesting interpretations. Galligan put the strength of the Enniscorthy Battalion, when it was done mobilising on Thursday morning at 2 am, to about a hundred Volunteers, while Doyle had it at a hundred and fifty, at least in terms of who was armed and reliable. But both men, in their respective accounts, agreed that no one needed to be coerced; if anything, there was too much motivation and not too little.

“Large numbers were presenting themselves to join us and the feeding of these men was one of our biggest problems,” wrote Galligan, while Doyle remembered being “besieged by men wanting to join. They became a problem to feed and billet.”[13]

Irish Volunteers

Another point of contention in the sources is how the Volunteers solved the aforementioned problem. County Inspector Sharpe’s report for the month of April has it that the rebels, after entering Enniscorthy, “commandeered provisions, motor cars, arms, Ammunition, etc. indiscriminately paying for nothing.” Galligan did not deny the taking of supplies from the town shops but that, as a mitigating factor:

A receipt was given in all cases for articles commandeered. It was admitted in all cases afterwards that there was no undue commandeering and no one was victimised on account of his political leaning.[14]

Another rebel officer, James Cullen, wrote in his own reminiscences of how “during the Rising the houses of nearly all the loyalists were visited by parties of Volunteers,” so the ‘no victimisation’ might not be entirely accurate. It should also be noted that Carton the blacksmith who was allegedly – according to a contemporary Irish Times report – cruelly evicted from his house near the bridge, along with his family, is not mentioned in either Volunteer or police accounts, casting the validity of that less-than-edifying episode into question.[15]

The only other ripple in the water was the small RIC force in Enniscorthy, centred in the police barracks, and consisting of six constables, a sergeant and a District Inspector. Grossly outnumbered, the policemen chose discretion as the better part of valour and withdrew to the safety of their barracks.[16]

RIC barracks on Abbey Street, Enniscorthy – building on the left (Source: https://wexfordcivilwararchaeology.com/2021/04/10/wexfords-civil-war-a-gazetteer-of-the-damaged-r-i-c-barracks-and-civic-buildings/)

Showing Fight

For one of them, however, the experience of Easter Thursday must have been harrowing enough, as described by a Volunteer:

At seven o’clock, Constable Grace was seen in Court St. Volunteer Mick Cahill was on duty at Mitchell’s corner, saw him crossing the road and fired at him, and only Grace took shelter in Pat Begley’s door in the corner, he would have got him. Constable Grace then made a run for the barracks…He was fired on again from the top of Castle Hill. There were a couple of Volunteers in the Convent of Msrcy [sic] field and, when he was just going into the barracks, one of them shot him in the leg. He was later brought to the hospital.[17]

A different version was provided by Father Patrick Murphy, a priest sympathetic to the uprising, in which Grace was hit and wounded while in bed, lying close to a window, rather than outside and actively participating. Another Volunteer, Thomas Sinnott, suggested that such violence was incidental rather than intentional; his commanding officer having previously told his charges “the police were not to be shot or fired at unless they themselves showed fight. He said it was against the British, we were,” and that Constable Grace had only been shot after opening fire first.

RIC policemen (Source: https://irishconstabulary.com/ric-equipment-carried-in-the-early-1900s-t3043.html)

After holing up in their barracks, the remaining RIC garrison continued to be a thorn in the side of the rebels, who had to risk coming under fire when crossing the town bridge. Otherwise, the fighting in Enniscorthy was negligible, as Sinnott later explained in his interview before the Military Pensions Board:

Q: Was Thursday the only day in which there was any firing in this Period?

A: I think that would be right. There would be an occasional shot.

Q: There was no fighting or an attempt to fight?

A: No. The general opinion was, if it lasted, that the RIC would have to surrender. They were without food, tobacco, etc. – we left them the water supply though we could have cut it off.

Q: Your orders were not to attack but to defend? You were really making every effort to confine attack to the military, and regard the police as a police force, but if they attempted to use force –?

A: We would also use force.[18]

Force proved unnecessary since the RIC stayed in their stronghold until the end. No effort was made by the Volunteers to storm the building and perhaps they did not need to; for practical purposes, the Crown police force had ceased to be relevant in Enniscorthy – and, so it seemed, British governance in general.

The Republic of Enniscorthy

After the months of planning, almost undone by the agonising uncertainty in the eleventh hour, the takeover of Enniscorthy had proved startlingly straightforward: the Volunteers simply marched into the town and made it their own. “The Tricolour was hoisted on Headquarters with due ceremony, a Guard of Honour under Paul Galligan,” Doyle recalled. He, meanwhile, “issued a proclamation, proclaimed the Republic, and calling on the people to support it and defend” – whether he was consciously following the model set by Pearse outside the GPO on the Monday is unstated.

The Athenæum on Castle Street, Enniscorthy, headquarters of the Irish Volunteers during the Rising (Source: https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/building-of-the-month/the-athenaeum-castle-street-enniscorthy-td-enniscorthy-county-wexford/)

Using the Athenaeum clubhouse as their aforementioned headquarters, the officers present delegated duties, although who was doing precisely what depends on who one asks. In Doyle’s telling:

Bob Brennan took over the command. He was the senior Brigade officer. I was appointed Adjutant. Paul Galligan was appointed operations officer. Bob Brennan also acted as quartermaster. Pat Kegan looked after the armaments and Michael de Lacey looked after supplies. Phil Murphy tool charge of recruits and R.F. King was in charge of scouting operations.[19]

Galligan has Doyle as the overall O/C instead of Brennan, though he did describe the latter as “one of the driving forces during the period” [as in, the War of Independence afterwards]. Seán Etchingham was in charge of recruits, not Phil Murphy, and Michael de Lacey’s use lay in his typewriter, typing up the various orders that were to be issued. “All of our officers and most of the men were in uniform,” Galligan added. County Inspector Sharpe would later pooh-pooh the rebels as “all ne’er no wells” who had joined only having “failed in everything else” but it is clear the Enniscorthy Volunteers took their role as soldiers of the newly-found Republic very seriously; accordingly, law and order was upheld in the town by the placing of guards on the banks, along with the confiscation of keys to all pubs.[20]

“During the four days of Republican rule not a single person was under the influence of drink,” Father Murphy noted approvingly.[21]

Enniscorthy market square (today)

Which was all very well, but there was still the rest of the county, and the country, to consider. Efforts were made to rouse the Volunteer units elsewhere in Co. Wexford, resulting in a mixed bag, as Galligan outlined:

A mobilisation order to mobilise his company was sent to Sean Kennedy at New Ross. He failed to do this and a second order was sent to him. Kennedy’s father met the man who carried the orders and told him that if he did not leave the town he would shoot him. New Ross never officially mobilised, but as far as I can remember a number of men reported to Enniscorthy. Ferns mobilised and sent in a full quota of men, small, of course. Wexford [town] also sent in some men.[22]

Regarding Wexford town, however, Thomas Doyle (no relation to Seamus, it seems) had nothing but scorn. Two men had been sent there on bicycles earlier in the week, on Easter Wednesday. The RIC were ready and waiting to arrest the pair as soon as they arrived. Worse almost followed. “All the loyalists turned out, which was nearly everyone in Wexford, to lynch them. Only for the police, they would have stormed the barracks,” he wrote. “We really only got one man from the Wexford Battalion. That was Wexford town for you in Easter Week!”[23]

Still, the Volunteers had enough men out in arms to attempt the primary strategy assigned to them by GHQ: the sabotage and harassment of enemy reinforcements. ‘Attempt’ proved the operative word: a mission to blow up a bridge on the railway line below Wexford town was foiled when the Volunteers so assigned were surprised by the RIC, with the loss of two taken prisoner. Another failure was the search for a trainload of ammunition from Waterford that the Volunteers heard – through friendly railway workers – was due for Arklow; despite looking through all stations between Wexford and Arklow, nothing of the sort was found. The Volunteers found smaller tasks more manageable, such as felling trees to block certain roads, and removing the railway line at various points through their control of Enniscorthy station.[24]

British soldiers guarding a train in Ireland, 1920 (Source: https://www.rte.ie/history/munitions-strike/2020/0415/1130693-the-1920-munitions-strike-an-unusual-kind-of-strike/

The Rebels of Today

The Rising was to last in Co. Wexford for four days altogether, from the belated start on Easter Thursday to its end on Monday, the 1^st May 1916. A contemporary report attributed its ceasing and deceasing to a 15-pounder gun, dubbed ‘Enniscorthy Emily’, that the British military were apparently able to transport, via an armoured train, close enough to Enniscorthy to be in range of Vinegar Hill, site of the famed 1798 battle. There, the Volunteers had gathered “with the intention probably of emulating the deeds of their ancestors, but the rebels of to-day are of different stuff,” wrote the Irish Times:

A hurried council of war was held, but the deliberations were brought to an abrupt conclusion when a well planted shell which the gunner of ‘Enniscorthy Emily’ discharged at the hill. The shell, which, it is stated, was a blank one, landed plump amongst the rebels, and exploded with a prodigious and terrifying noise. When the rebels recovered somewhat from the terror-inspiring sound, they hoisted white flags all over the hill, as many as forty flags being counted, and about 200 of the ‘brave’ insurgents bolted for the hills. The others laid down their arms unconditionally, and the military have ever since been busily engaged in rounding up the stragglers.

Robert Brennan in later years

“So began and ended the ‘war’ in the Enniscorthy district,” the newspaper concluded with a sniff and a sneer.[25]

Needless to say, at least one croppy was not going to lie down and take this. When it was time to pen his own version of events, Robert Brennan made a point of singling out “the fantastic account of this affair published at the time in the Irish Times and, later, repeated in every book I have seen on the Enniscorthy Rising,” determined as he was to set the record straight:

It is stated that the British advanced from Wexford under cover of an armoured train which had been christened “Enniscorthy Emily”, that the rebels, outfought in the town, retreated to Vinegar Hill where they finally surrendered. The fact was that the British did not enter the town until twelve hours subsequent to our decision to give up and that we never even heard of “Enniscorthy Emily”[26]

The truth was more prosaic: the Volunteers disbanded after it had been made clear to them that their insurrection was already over, without a single shot needed by either side. Peace moves had been tried before by Father McHenry, the administrator of the Enniscorthy Catholic parish – first, to the besieged policemen in their barracks on the 28^th April (Day Two), and then a second try the day after, this time to Seamus Doyle. On both occasions, the would-be peacemaker failed: the RIC garrison refused Father McHenry’s call to surrender, and his argument that the rebel cause was a hopeless one “made no impression on me” as Doyle described.[27]

Vinegar Hill, Co. Wexford (Source: https://www.tuatha.ie/vinegar-hill/

Well Satisfied?

What did make an impression was the news on Saturday morning of British forces moving towards them from Arklow. Galligan took personal charge of an advance guard of Volunteers posted in Ferns, the strategy being to delay the enemy there long enough for the rest to be ready in Enniscorthy. The RIC had vacated their barracks in Fens, allowing the rebels to occupy it, and to barricade the roads leading in and out of the town unmolested.[28]

Seán Etchingham

What came next was not the British attack but something quite unexpected: two RIC officials, a District Inspector and a sergeant, who had come under a flag of truce, bringing with them from Dublin a copy of Pearse’s order to surrender. Doyle had heard about this before, from a delegation of businessmen who had, like Father McHenry, been trying to broker a truce. The Enniscorthy O/C had not believed it then and did not believe it now, at least, not entirely. After consulting with the British commander in Wexford, Colonel French, it was agreed for Doyle and another officer, Seán Etchingham, to travel to Dublin under safe pass.

Once in the capital, the pair were escorted to Arbour Hill Prison, where Pearse was in his cell, lying on a mattress with his greatcoat as a blanket. “He rose quickly when the door was opened and came forward to meet us and shook hands with us,” Doyle wrote of their encounter. “He appeared to be physically exhausted but spiritually exultant.” Nonetheless, Pearse confirmed the surrender order, writing it out in a piece of paper upon Doyle’s request. He did not even know Wexford had been ‘out’, such was the speed of events and the Volunteers’ own tardiness, but he did not seem too dispirited, giving Doyle “the impression he was well satisfied with what had happened.”

The Wexford officers brought the written order back with them to Enniscorthy, allowing the rest, when called together, to see it for themselves. “The order was received with mixed opinions but finally it was decided to obey the order,” Doyle remembered. “We called in all our outposts and sentries and I read the order to the garrison. This was about midnight [on Sunday].” By 4 pm on Monday, the 1^st May, Colonel French entered Enniscorthy with his soldiers and accepted the surrender. If Wexford had entered the Rising late, it at least could claim the distinction of being the last to leave.[29]

The leaders of the Wexford Rising (Front row: Séamus Rafter, Robert Brennan, Séamus Doyle, Seán Etchingham. Back row: Una Brennan, Michael de Lacy, Eileen Hegarty)

A month later, County Inspector Sharpe was pleased to report to his superiors that “the County is at present peaceable except Enn. [Enniscorthy] District and a small portion of the Gorey District which adjoins Enn.” Seditious sentiments seemed limited to “the relatives and associates of the rebels”; in the other areas, Sharpe estimated that three-quarters of the people were hostile to the recent upheaval. “There are rumours of another rising at Whitsuntide but there is no indications [sic] in the County that it will take place.”[30]

Máire Comerford

Even those committed to carrying on the struggle against British rule could not have disagreed with this self-confident appraisal. When Máire Comerford tried rousing a crowd in Main Street, Gorey, with what she had heard about North King Street in Dublin (where fifteen men had been shot or bayoneted to death by Crown forces) at least one listener was outraged – at Comerford for criticising British troops rather than at the massacre. The rest of her audience rapidly dispersed, the shock of such disloyal talk evidently too much for them. Come the same time the following year, in 1917, and Wexford did not even bother with a commemoration for the Rising. Comerford only learnt about the one in Dublin from reading about it in the newspapers – when the ceremony was already over.[31]

Still, it was too soon for the British state to be relaxing its guard quite yet. “Hide the arms,” Pearse had whispered to Doyle and Etchingham in his prison cell when the wardens were out of earshot. “They will be wanted later.” Some Wexford Volunteers chose to do just that, like Thomas Sinnott and the two rifles he buried before his arrest for his part in the Rising. “They were afterwards resurrected,” as he put it.[32]

See also:

Dysfunction Junction: The Rising That Wasn’t in Co. Kerry, April 1916

Still Waters Running Deep: The Tragedy at Ballykissane Pier, April 1916

Defeat From The Jaws of Victory: The Easter Rising in Co. Louth, 1916 (Part I)

Victory From The Jaws of Defeat: The Easter Rising in Co. Louth, 1916 (Part II)

References

[1] Gannon, Darragh. Proclaiming a Republic: Ireland, 1916 and the National Collection (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2016), p. 265 ; Doyle, Eamon, ‘Wexford 1916’, History Ireland, published in Issue 6 (November/December 2015) Letters, Volume 23

[2] Irish Times, 29/04/1916

[3] Ibid, 29/05/1916

[4] Brennan-Whitmore, W.J. Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2013), pp. 22-4

[5] Galligan, Peter Paul (BMH / WS 170), pp. 7-8

[6] Doyle, Seamus (BMH / WS 315), pp. 7-8

[7] Galligan, pp. 7-8

[8] Doyle, Seamus, pp. 8-9

[9] Ibid, pp. 9-10

[10] Galligan, p. 8

[11] Doyle, Seamus, pp. 10-2

[12] Irish Times, 29/05/1916

[13] Galligan, pp., 9-10 ; Doyle, Seamus, p. 12

[14] Police reports from Dublin Castle records (National Library of Ireland – NLI), POS 8540 ; Galligan, p. 10

[15] Cullen, James (BMH / WS 1343), p. 6 ; Irish Times, 29/04/1916 (Carton’s eviction)

[16] Irish Times, 29/05/1916 (makeup of police force)

[17] Doyle, Thomas (BMH / WS 1041), p. 22

[18] Murphy, Patrick (BMH / WS 1216), p. 4 ; Military Service Pensions Collection, ‘Sinnott, Thomas D.’ (WMSP34REF24701), pp. 24-5

[19] Doyle, Seamus, pp. 12-13

[20] Galligan, pp. 10, 12 ; Irish Times, 29/05/1916

[21] Murphy, p. 4

[22] Galligan, p. 11

[23] Doyle, Thomas, p. 20

[24] Galligan, pp. 10-1

[25] Irish Times, 29/04/1916

[26] Brennan, Robert (BMH / WS 779 – Part I), p. 147

[27] Irish Times, 29/05/1916 ; Doyle, Seamus, p. 13

[28] Galligan, p. 12

[29] Doyle, pp. 14-6

[30] NLI, POS 8541

[31] Comerford, Máire (ed. by Dully, Hilary) On Dangerous Ground: A Memoir of the Irish Revolution (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2021), pp. 60, 64-5

[32] Doyle, p. 15 ; Sinnott, p. 26

Bibliography

Newspaper

Irish Times

Books

Brennan-Whitmore, W.J. Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2013)

Comerford, Máire (ed. by Dully, Hilary) On Dangerous Ground: A Memoir of the Irish Revolution (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2021)

Gannon, Darragh. Proclaiming a Republic: Ireland, 1916 and the National Collection (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2016)

Bureau of Military History Statements

Brennan, Robert, WS 779

Cullen, James, WS 1343

Doyle, Seamus, WS 315

Doyle, Thomas, WS 1041

Galligan, Peter Paul, WS 170

Murphy, Patrick, WS 1216

Military Service Pensions Collection

Sinnott, Thomas D., WMSP34REF24701

Magazine

Doyle, Eamon, ‘Wexford 1916’, History Ireland, published in Issue 6 (November/December 2015) Letters, Volume 23

National Library of Ireland Collection

Police Report from Dublin Castle Records

If the Germans Came: Germany’s Connection and Influence on the Easter Rising of 1916

Once a Traitor

Kaiser Wilhelm II

It was hard work, being Military Governor of Cork on behalf of His Imperial Majesty, the Kaiser, enough for the Baron von Kartoffel to offer his wife, Anna, “a hundred thousand apologies and regrets” for not writing to her sooner. All the same, he felt he could congratulate himself at the end of his first week in Ireland, sometime in 1918, on a job well done – so far.[1]

Shocked by the slum conditions he beheld in Cork, the Baron wasted no time in remedying this appalling social blight: the inmates of the local lunatic asylum were discreetly gassed to death – painlessly so, he assured his darling wife – during the night and their bodies cremated at dawn. With this clean sweep done, the slum population was escorted by soldiers into the now-empty and freshly-cleaned asylum for their new, improved abode. There, they would be taught to contribute to society: the women as housewives, with trades for the men, all under the firm but fair supervision of their new Teutonic overlords.

“No drink will be procurable,” Baron von Kartoffel told Anna:

…and the people will be virtual prisoners until they become useful members of the community. The incurably bad cases and the aged persons are a problem, but – there is always the lethal chamber to fall back on.[2]

Either that or exile. The latter was now the fate of the Sinn Feiners, those Irishmen who had helped facilitate German mastery over the island. A delegation from the Sinn Féin party – the name, von Kartoffel believed, being Irish for ‘Up with Germany’ – had come to their new Military Governor in the drawing-room of the mansion chosen for his residence. Though a serious man, as befitting the representative of a Kultur renowned for efficiency, keeping a straight face while listening to the speeches delivered to him, one after another, some in English and others in Irish, proved a challenge for the Baron.

“The chief thing that struck me was the assurance of the fellows,” he related to Anna. “They seemed to think – such was their assurance – that they would be invited to form a sort of council or governing body – a medium, in short, for the lavish expenditure of German gold.”

Quite the contrary. Von Kartoffel watched the dropping jaws of these wretches as he informed them that he had no particular desire or need of their assistance. For those services already rendered, the Sinn Feiners were to be shipped over to the Fatherland and from there to the Baltic shores, where small holdings had been allotted to them for their new lives.

“I have the honour to wish you a safe journey,” the Baron finished, “and, before we part, I call for three cheers for the Kaiser. Hoch!”

So much for gratitude but, as von Kartoffel assured his wife:

My Anna, we could do nothing else with these men. “Once a traitor, always a traitor.” We could never have trusted them. They would have been no more loyal to us than they were to England or, I would rather say, to their own countrymen.

Still, the otherwise implacable viceroy of the new regime in Cork had to spare some pity for the hapless Sinn Feiners, if only a shred: “They little know what is before them.”[3]

German army soldiers

Good Policy?

Obviously, there was no German Military Governor in Cork in 1918, no Baron von Kartoffel gassing inconvenient asylum residents or dispatching Fifth Columnists to a miserable exile. Ireland finished the year as much a part of the United Kingdom as it had been at the start of the Great War, a war by which Germany, far from emerging as the conquering victor, had been ruined.

Mary Carbery

The above is a work of fiction of the speculative, what-if kind, “a flight of fancy” in the words of the Irish Times. Those assuming that its author (anonymous at the time, later revealed to be the writer Mary Carbery) was inspired by the 1916 Proclamation’s reference to the rebels’ ‘gallant allies in Europe’ would be mistaken. Although not published until 1917, as The Germans in Cork, the text had been serialised earlier, in 1916, under the title If the Germans Came, with one review appearing in the Irish Times on the 25^th March 1916, almost exactly a month before the Easter Rising began.

Even then, the affinity of some in Ireland for Britain’s current enemy was noted by the newspaper, which hoped that the work would be educational as well as entertaining:

The first thing of which this article should convince the foolish minority in Ireland is that, if Germany should capture Ireland, she would keep it, use it, and drain it for Germany, and for Germany alone. Ireland would be one of the richest prizes of a German conquest.

In case the author, and the reviewer, were not making themselves clear:

Many delusions have led Irishmen astray in the course of history, and some of them have been noble and romantic delusions. The delusion that the Germans would establish a Sinn Fein Government in Ireland is as crass as it is anti-Irish; it has no redeeming quality.[4]

Some thought otherwise. To Joseph Mary Plunkett and Patrick Pearse, such a course of action, far from delusional, “would obviously be good policy.” What’s more, the new, independent Ireland was to be headed by a German prince, specifically Prince Joachim of Prussia, the sixth and youngest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who Plunkett had met the year before, in 1915. While this might strike current readers as a touch outlandish – “the idea of a republican monarchy is by contemporary standards a contradiction in terms” as historian Ronan McGreevy puts it – a German monarch over Ireland would have allowed for certain advantages, as explained by Desmond Fitzgerald, who had been privy to this conversation between Plunkett and Pearse in the General Post Office (GPO) during the Easter Week of 1916.

Prince Joachim of Prussia, the King of Ireland who never was

‘The Best Interest of the Country’

Other than ensuring a political bond with the ascendant power in Europe, there were the cultural considerations as well:

It would mean that a movement for de-anglicisation would flow from the head of state downwards, for what was English would be foreign to the head of the state. Such a ruler would necessarily favour the Irish language, for it would be impossible to make the country German-speaking, while it would be against his own interests to foster English.

Desmond Fitzgerald

To Fitzgerald, this exchange was but one of his experiences from the Easter Rising that he recorded for posterity, later published posthumously in the Irish Times in April 1966 (Fitzgerald having died in 1947). Nonetheless, it was the part that drew the most attention, prompting a response from Ernest Blythe. “Two or three people have told me that they were rather startled” by what Fitzgerald had revealed, Blythe wrote in a letter of his own to the newspaper. For his own part, “although I had known nothing about how the leaders talked in the General Post Office,” Blythe was unsurprised by Fitzgerald’s anecdote, as he had been part of quite a similar conversation in January 1915.

Having just been appointed by the Irish Volunteers Executive to be one of its three full-time organisers, Blythe was attending a briefing conference, along with the other two, Liam Mellows and Ginger O’Connell. Pearse and Plunkett were in attendance, as were Thomas MacDonagh and Bulmer Hobson, on behalf of the Executive. Pearse had to leave sometime in the afternoon and so was not there when Plunkett took the discussion in an unexpected direction – unexpected to Blythe, in any case, but perhaps not one that would have surprised Pearse:

Plunkett threw out the suggestion that in certain circumstances the best interest of the country would be served by making a German Catholic prince king of Ireland.

Patrick Pearse, Kingmaker of Ireland?

“No objection was offered to the idea by any of those present” – to the contrary, the idea was obviously a familiar one to the other headquarters’ staff in attendance. The arguments made for this were similar to what Fitzgerald would later hear in the GPO: any foreign sovereign would find it in his best interests to promote Irish as the language of his court, and by extension the country, German being impractical in the long run and English by then damaged goods.

As a dedicated Gaelic Leaguer, who “had recently spent a year labouring in the Gaeltacht”, Blythe found this proposal an appealing one, though not anything more than “a bit of a pleasant theorising.” By the time he picked up a copy of the Irish Times more than half a century later, he had mostly forgotten it, until Fitzgerald’s printed reminiscences prompted Blythe to not only remember that day, but to consider its discourse in a new light:

Desmond Fitzgerald’s disclosure…inclines me to think that in putting the idea of an Irish kingdom before a group of newly-appointed organisers in January, 1915, Joseph Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh were aiming to have us prepared to pass the word down the line should the occasion arise.

After all:

If the idea had not been often discussed and generally approved between January, 1915, and Easter Week, 1916, it is hardly likely that it would have arisen in conversation between Desmond Fitzgerald and any of the leaders in the Post Office.[5]

Ernest Blythe

As there was no German-headed kingdom in Ireland any more than a Baron von Kartoffel, this speculation on Blythe’s part will have to remain no more than just that. Certainly, none of the Rising’s leaders left documents referring to anything of the sort. But evidence does exist that points to German aid being more integral to the Easter Rising than commonly thought today. While the story of the Aud and its ill-fated venture to ship rifles over in time for Easter Week is well-known, less so is the assumption of some of the rebels, or at least a select few, that German troops would be coming as well.

Tom Clarke

Tom Clarke was among those believing so; at least five thousand of them, he told Patrick McCartan when the latter came to Dublin from Monaghan on Holy Thursday. With less than a week to go before the big event, and with foreign reinforcements supposedly on their way, Clarke “was all enthusiastic about how thorough the Germans were and that they would do things in a big way,” McCartan later recalled. Meanwhile, Donal O’Hannigan, the Volunteer organiser assigned to Dundalk, was to liberate German prisoners from their internment camp in Oldcastle while leading his Volunteers through Meath to Dublin. Some of the freed men would be artillery specialists, so Pearse had told O’Hannigan as part of his instructions for Easter Week, and as the rebels were expecting artillery pieces from Germany, such men should come in handy for using them.[6]

The Irish Brigade

John Devoy

Clarke at least had known from the start that German intervention was on the agenda, having been informed by his fellow Fenian, John Devoy, of a meeting Clan-na-Gael had had in New York with the German ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, and several of his embassy staff. War between Germany and Britain had just begun (which would date the meeting to August 1914 or shortly after) and, with some in Ireland aiming to turn the latter’s difficulty into their country’s opportunity, the rebels-to-be sought from Germany what they otherwise lacked, namely arms and capable officers.

“We wanted no money. We needed military help only,” Devoy wrote in his memoirs about what he and the other Irishmen told the Germans. “This was stated with clearness and emphasis.”

Count von Bernstorff, German Ambassador t the United States

Though von Bernstorff gave his Irish guests no assurances, whatever he passed on to his government was received warmly enough, for Clan-na-Gael soon sent another of its own, John Kenny, to Berlin, via Switzerland and then Naples, for the purposes of receiving a special passport from the German embassy for the final step to Berlin. After delivering a message from Clan-na-Gael to no less an illustrious figure than Prince von Beulow, a former German chancellor, Kenny passed through Dublin on the way back to America, where he updated Clarke on this new alliance for the Irish cause.[7]

The idea that the insurrection in Ireland would be accompanied by outside help was thus present early on. The entente begun in New York was sealed more officially with the formation of the Irish Brigade in Germany, consisting of Irish POWs from the British Army, and supplied by the German Imperial Government. Despite the Irish Brigade being a joint venture, that it was an Irish one first and foremost was emphasised at the start of the Treaty outlining everyone’s rights and duties.

Members of the Irish Brigade posing in uniform

“The object of the Irish Brigade shall be to fight solely in the cause of Ireland, and under no circumstances shall it be employed or directed to any German end,” went Article 2. Furthermore, all food and equipment provided by the host country would be “free gifts to aid the cause of Irish independence” (Article 4); otherwise, Brigade members were purely volunteers, with “no pay or monetary reward of any kind to be given.” The distinction between ‘gift’ and ‘reward’ was not dwelt upon, nor how the defeat, or at least inconveniencing, of Germany’s current enemy could amount to anything other than a ‘German end’.

Contorted logic and mental gymnastics aside, Article 6 had the clearest expression of what the Irish and German parties hoped to achieve together:

The Imperial German Government undertakes, in certain circumstances, to send the Irish Brigade to Ireland with efficient military support and with an ample supply of arms and ammunition to equip the Irish National Volunteers in Ireland.

As for these ‘certain circumstances’:

In the event of a German naval victory affording the means of reaching the coast of Ireland, the Imperial German Government pledges itself to dispatch the Irish Brigade and a supporting body of German officers and men in German transports, to attempt a landing on the Irish coast.

Should all of this go according to plan (Article 10):

In the event of the Irish Brigade landing in Ireland, and military operations in the country resulting in the overthrow of British Authority and the erection of a native Irish Government, the Imperial German Government will give the Irish Government so established its fullest moral support, and both by public recognition and by general goodwill will contribute with all sincerity to the establishment of an independent government in Ireland.[8]

The nature of this native Irish Government, such as whether as a monarchy or not, would presumably be worked out post-victory. Otherwise, the details as presented above match what Devoy had been hoping for when he first approached von Bernstorff and what Clarke was eagerly anticipating in the days leading up to the Rising.

Baron Wilhelm von Stumm

The Treaty was signed on the 28^th December 1914. Earlier in the year, Roger Casement – sent from Ireland on the budding uprising’s behalf – had discussed the state of the British war machine with Baron Wilhelm von Stumm. When the subject of the enemy fleet came up, the Director of the Political Department at the German Foreign Office could only laugh, dismissing it as “a laughing stock.” Though the Royal Navy would prove in the course of the conflict to be anything but a joke, the odds of a maritime assault being launched against British territory – in this case, Ireland – was clearly seen then as credible enough.[9]

Intention of Goodwill

Joseph Mary Plunkett

By January 1915, only a month after the Treaty’s signing, Casement would be scribbling in his diary of his dillusionment and how he had “practically abandoned the idea of the Irish Brigade.” But then, Casement was a highly-strung individual at the best of times; Devoy lamented how “very emotional and as trustful as a child” he was, whose tendency to act unilaterally, instead of consulting with the rest of his Irish colleagues, “created many difficulties and embarrassments for us.” When Joseph Plunkett met Casement later in Germany, in mid-1915, the latter still believed, as he stressed to the former, that the Irish Volunteers were “utterly incapable of putting up a fight and that a German invasion force was their only hope,” according to Plunkett’s sister, Geraldine.[10]

Geraldine Plunkett

Obviously, the rest of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) leadership did not consider themselves so dependent on foreign assistance; their uprising was to go ahead with or without it. “The Military Council had never, from the start, made their plans on a German invasion,” Geraldine related, “and Casement’s obsessions about it never seemed reasonable.” Which is not to say the IRB forgot the idea or abandoned their hopes for it, as Clarke’s effusions to McCartan or Pearse’s instructions to O’Hannigan show. As for Plunkett, he presumably had Casement’s words in mind when he drew up a rough draft for an armed campaign, titled ‘Rough Survey and Remarks on Coastline and Maritime Counties of Ireland’.[11]

As the name suggests, the likelihood of a naval landing was part of the considerations, with various counties rated on the promise of their coastlines:

• “Dublin – Good landing outside Dublin Bay on the south side between Kingstown and Bray at Killiney Bay.”
• “Kerry – “Very fine harbours and islands.”
• “Cork – There are many good harbours around the coast.”
• “Galway – Strategically Galway is an important point to an invader who had any control of the Sea.”
• “Mayo – The coastline is very similar to that of Galway with numerous excellent bays, harbours and inlets.”

The last two areas warranted a detailed analysis of their own:

A German force landed anywhere on the coast of Galway or Mayo accompanied by Evidence of its intention of Goodwill to Ireland would find the whole countryside well disposed in spirit and often actively helpful.

After all, “Killala Bay [Co. Mayo] has already served the purpose of a friendly invader who came with the avowed intention of expelling the British and erecting an Irish Republic.” Drawing upon this historical precedence, when General Humbert arrived for the 1798 Rebellion, Plunkett ventured to speculate:

Could a force of, say, 12,000 men be landed in the west of Ireland to day [sic], bringing with them an ample supply of arms and ammunition it is certain their success would be much more remarkable than that of the French General…A successful military landing in Ireland would have political consequences of the first magnitude abroad; and if the force landed were sufficiently strong to seize, say, Athlone and the line of the Shannon, the task of expelling it and overcoming a joint force of [sic – missing word?] with armed Irish and invaders would tax the military and moral resources of great Britain to the utmost.[12]

Roger Casement

A heady possibility, indeed, and it is perhaps unsurprising that, even as enthusiasm in Germany waned, Irish hopes remained high. “If 100,000 rifles and artillery officers and artillery men could be landed, there was no doubt of our ability to defeat the British forces,” Devoy told Casement by telegram in March 1916. Limerick was his suggestion for a landing site. By then, unbeknownst to those in Dublin or New York, the German Imperial Government had practically washed their hands of the matter, only consenting, at the start of April, with rebellion less than a month away, to send a single steamer’s worth of weapons to Tralee Bay in time for Easter Week – but even then on condition of the Irish Volunteers being committed to battle already.

“The utter callousness & indifference here – only seeking bloodshed in Ireland,” Casement raged in his diary.[13]

Maybe it was just as well nothing came of the whole venture. Casement had already witnessed for himself the aftermath of a German army’s attentions while travelling through Belgium along the Meuse River in November 1914. Some villages he passed had been almost entirely destroyed, with “burnt and shattered frameworks of roofless and wall-less houses alone marking the site.” While shocked at this “national agony”, he preferred to lay the blame on either the Belgians themselves for refusing German access to their country or on Britain for its vain offer of support to Belgium.[14]

The Belgian city of Leuven in the aftermath of German reprisals, 1914

It did not seem to occur to Casement – or to Devoy, Plunkett or Pearse, for that matter – that what Germany could inflict on one country could be repeated on their own, or that a German victory might result for Ireland not so much a Prince Joachim as a Baron von Kartoffel.

References

[1] The Germans in Cork: Being the Letters of His Excellency the Baron von Kartoffel (Military Governor of Cork in the Year 1918) and Others (Dublin: The Talbot Press Limited [1917]), p. 1

[2] Ibid, p. 8

[3] Ibid, pp. 3-5

[4] Irish Times, 25/03/1916, 21/07/1917

[5] McGreevy, Ronan, ‘A Prussian solution to an Irish problem – An Irishman’s Diary on Prince Joachim and the 1916 Rising’, Irish Times, 19/07/2020 ; Ibid, 15/04/1966 (Blythe’s reply) ; For information on Mary Carbery, see Fischer, Joachim, ‘A Future Ireland under German Rule: Dystopias as Propaganda during World War I’, Utopian Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, Irish Utopian (2007), published by Penn State University Press, pp. 346-7

[6] McCartan, Patrick (BMH / WS 766), p. 49 ; O’Hannigan, Donal (BMH / WS 161), pp. 11-2

[7] Devoy, John. Recollections of an Irish Rebel: A Personal Narrative by John Devoy (New York: Chas. P. Young company, 1929), p. 403

[8] Casement, Roger (edited by Mitchell, Angus) One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement, 1914-1916 (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2016), pp. 250-2

[9] Ibid, p. 57

[10] Ibid, p. 142 ; Devoy, p. 406 ; Dillon, Geraldine (BMH / WS 358), p. 12

[11] Dillon, p. 13

[12] National Library of Ireland (NLI), Roger Casement Papers, MS 13,085/5/3, ‘Rough Survey and Remarks on Coastline and Maritime Counties of Ireland’

[13] Casement, pp. 185-6, 221-2

[14] Ibid, pp. 60, 63-4

Bibliography

Books

Casement, Roger (edited by Mitchell, Angus) One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement, 1914-1916 (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2016)

Devoy, John. Recollections of an Irish Rebel: A Personal Narrative by John Devoy (New York: Chas. P. Young company, 1929)

The Germans in Cork: Being the Letters of His Excellency the Baron von Kartoffel (Military Governor of Cork in the Year 1918) and Others (Dublin: The Talbot Press Limited [1917])

Newspaper

Irish Times

 Article

Fischer, Joachim, ‘A Future Ireland under German Rule: Dystopias as Propaganda during World War I’, Utopian Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, Irish Utopian (2007), published by Penn State University Press

Bureau of Military History Statements

Dillon, Geraldine, WS 358

McCartan, Patrick, WS 766

O’Hannigan, Donal, WS 161

National Library of Ireland

Roger Casement Papers

Victory From The Jaws of Defeat: The Easter Rising in Co. Louth, 1916 (Part II)

A continuation of: Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: The Easter Rising in Co. Louth, 1916 (Part I)

Ground to a Halt

Seán MacEntee arrived at Dublin in the evening of Easter Sunday, the 23^rd April 1916, as a man on a mission to verify orders he and the rest of the Irish Volunteers in Co. Louth had abruptly received earlier that day. Signed by their Chief of Staff, Eoin MacNeill, the message was brief, to the point and devastating:[1]

Volunteers completely deceived.

All orders for Sunday cancelled.[2]

Handwritten orders by Eoin MacNeill

Though MacNeill did not quite spell it out, his words – however opaque to an outsider – could mean only one thing for those in the know: the Rising to free Ireland, an event months in the making, was over before it had even begun. Even more awkward was how the Louth Volunteers were already on the move, marching as an army from Dundalk towards Tara. From there, they were to cooperate with fellow Volunteers from Meath, Wicklow and Finglas in blockading British counter-attacks on Dublin, the lynchpin to the insurrection. All of this had been meticulously laid out over a week before by Patrick Pearse to Donal O’Hannigan, the rebel operative assigned to command in Louth.[3]

Donal O’Hannigan

O’Hannigan had braved the threat of arrest and imprisonment in the days leading up to Easter Week and was willing to risk further as he led his subordinates on their first steps on the road to Tara, and so it is understandable that his first reaction to learning of MacNeill’s eleventh-hour intervention was disbelief: the cancellation order could not possibly be genuine. Until confirmed by Pearse and the rest of Headquarters in Dublin, he would refuse to accept its validity.[4]

“O’Hannigan stated that he was not taking orders from MacNeill, that P.H. Pearse was his Commanding Officer,” according to one witness. “I remember distinctly O’Hannigan using those words.”[5]

When O’Hannigan took four of his most trusted officers, including MacEntee, aside from the rest of the Volunteers and informed them of this development, they agreed with his decision. Another man, Joe Birrell, was sent ahead on a motorcycle to Dublin with a written dispatch for Pearse, while the other Volunteers continued on foot to Slane. Zero hour came and went at 7 pm but O’Hannigan, paralysed by indecision, gave no orders to proceed beyond Slane.

Irish Volunteers on the march

Until Birrell returned with updates, there was nothing to be done save continue with the pretence that this was all just a routine march, with no seditious intent beneath the surface – which fooled at least the sixty or so onlookers from the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) detailed to shadow them. When O’Hannigan asked the RIC District Inspector in charge to withdraw his men to the other side of the river, while he kept his at the other northern end of Slane, the Inspector obliged.

With no sign of Birrell, nor of the other two couriers sent later on bicycles, O’Hannigan called another meeting, this time with all his officers. MacEntee agreed to be the next to venture out to Dublin, answering his commandant’s call for a pair of eyes to assess how things stood in the capital. If possible, MacEntee was to contact the rebel leadership in Liberty Hall and ask directly for clarification.

It was by then raining heavily, but MacEntee set off all the same by bicycle to Drogheda to catch the train from there. O’Hannigan waited in Slane until 3 am and then led his army back the way it had come. There was little else to do besides walk and wait.[6]

A Trip to Dublin

Seán MacEntee

The abnormal thing about the whole situation, MacEntee thought, was how normal everything was. In Slane, the Volunteers had acted as an occupying force, some placing pickets on all roads in and out, with the rest either mustered in the village square or by the bridge, opposite the RIC who seemed more bothered by the pouring rain than the blatantly provocative behaviour before them. If Dublin was up in arms in rebellion as originally intended, then surely the police would be treating things more seriously. Was the message from MacNeill authentic then?

Unless the RIC was waiting for reinforcements…?

On the other hand, the scouts sent out for miles along the roads were reporting no such thing.

On the other other hand, why had Birrell not returned?

As MacEntee later told it:

We could think of no satisfactory explanation for his absence – for, strangely enough, the most reasonable one and the real one, a motor break-down, escaped us. We could only imagine he had been taken prisoner.[7]

Dublin presented a similarly contradictory picture when MacEntee stepped off the train that Sunday evening, seeing streets that were empty save for a few people going about their business. Monday morning was busier but that was to be expected on a public holiday and with races at Fairyhouse to enjoy.

Dublin, circa 1900

It was only when MacEntee reached Liberty Hall that there were signs of something amiss at the heart of an otherwise placid city:

Alertness and animation marked the entrance to the famous Labour Headquarters. People were continuously passing in and out. All who went in, however, and all who came out were challenged by the sentries at the doorways…Though it was then only about half-past seven, the building was thronged.

Once he gave the password, MacEntee was taken through the corridors, past men – and the occasional woman – who were similarly in a hurry to get somewhere, into the office of the Workers’ Republic. It was as pressed for space as the rest of the building, with stacks of newspapers on the floor and the walls covered by posters, cartoons and other memorabilia like an exhibition of the Labour movement. MacEntee was left by himself to stare at the displays like a tourist in an art gallery when James Connolly entered.[8]

Liberty Hall, Dublin

The two recognised each other at once from their time together in Belfast, which made explaining his presence easier for MacEntee. Connolly listened in thoughtful silence, before telling him only to wait for Pearse to see him. MacEntee dutifully did so, his one indulgence a catnap while sitting on the stairway by the main landing, until the bustle of human activity all around proved too much and woke him up.

New Old Orders

Éamonn Ceannt

It was sometime after half nine when Connolly reappeared, this time in the company of Thomas MacDonagh, but MacEntee could barely get a word out before MacDonagh was called elsewhere. Éamonn Ceannt joined them a minute later and MacEntee resumed his story until he was again cut short, this time by Piaras Beasley needing to talk to MacDonagh and Ceannt. MacEntee moved aside to give them privacy:

By this time, there were about nine or ten people present, grouped about the room in little changing circles of threes and fours. Connolly had gone out, and MacDonagh, Beasley and Ceannt were the only others there that I knew, even by appearance. There was much talk and much gaiety.

MacDonagh and Ceannt in particular were having a jolly time in each other’s company, teasing and laughing; in contrast to Pearse when he entered, moving into a backroom with a slow, solemn sense of purpose which impressed MacEntee. When MacEntee was summoned, he found Pearse standing beside a table with Connolly.

James Connolly

As before, MacEntee was heard out in silence, broken by the occasional ‘humph’ by Connolly – MacEntee could never determine if that meant approval or not – and a few questions from Pearse on the state of the Louth Volunteers. Seemingly satisfied by the answers, Pearse asked his caller to wait in the other room. MacEntee passed the time by chatting with MacDonagh:

“I suppose you know”, he went on, “there’s to be a secret session (of the English Parliament, he meant) next Tuesday. They’ll declare for peace then. And the country will be lost without a blow.” “Will it be that – or conscription?” I asked. “No”, he replied, “peace – -”.

Patrick Pearse

At that point, MacEntee was called in again, breaking off the conversation, but MacDonagh’s point – however reliable his grasp of current affairs – was clear: If England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity, then that window was rapidly closing. Perhaps this sense of urgency was why Pearse got straight to the point: MacEntee was to return to Louth and tell Commandant O’Hannigan to continue on as before.

“We strike at noon,” Pearse said.

MacEntee did not argue otherwise or ask about the countermand from MacNeill; that the Rising was back on was all he needed to know. As he headed out of Liberty Hall, with a revolver given by Pearse and in fresh change of clothes, he passed MacDonagh, engaged in some errand of his own. Someone else threw MacDonagh a question which MacEntee did not catch, but he heard the reply well enough: “Oh, quite alright, but the boys are turning up very slowly.”[9]

Cause of Death

But turned up they did, at least some. MacEntee was among those who endeavoured to make up for lost time, enough for him to face a court-martial five weeks later on the charges of insurgency and murder. Seated with him in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, on the 9^th June, as his co-defendants were Frank Martin, Denis Leahy and James Sally, with T.M. Healy, MP and veteran of the Irish political scene, and Henry Hanna, KC, as their counsel. The four prisoners pleaded not guilty to the charges read out before the British military court:

• Engaging in armed rebellion against the King.
• The murder of Constable Charles McGee in Castlebellingham.
• The attempted murder of Lieutenant Robert Dunville of the Grenadier Guards.

Richmond Barracks, Dublin

The aforementioned Lieutenant Dunville was present to testify about his experiences on Easter Monday: he was en route from Belfast to Kingstown (modern day Dún Laoghaire), when he and his chauffeur, Edward O’Brien, drove into Castlebellingham at about ten minutes to 7 pm. Blocking their way was a large group of men carrying weapons, some being revolvers and automatic pistols, others carbines and ordinary rifles. It was a rifle that one of the accused in the dock, Leahy, pointed at Dunville, and then MacEntee appeared brandishing a pistol.

More annoyed than afraid, Dunville demanded to know what this was all about and to let him pass – he had a boat to catch at Kingstown, after all. When MacEntee told him to stay civil, Dunville retorted he would be as civil as he was treated. With that said, Dunville and O’Brien were made to stand with three other captives, all policemen, by the railings on the roadside. There were a number of other motorcars on the scene, out of which another man got out and:

…aimed a long rifle at him [Dunville]. He heard a report, and somebody at his right hand side shouted, and he found that he himself had been shot; that the bullet passed through his breast from left to right. He saw a rifle still pointed at him after he was hit. After that he fell.

The prosecutor, Major E.G. Kimber, now moved to cross-examine the witness.

Kimber: Did you see anyone else that you recognised but MacEntee?

Dunville: I saw Leahy and Martin.

Kimber: Did you notice who was in command of the rebel party?

Dunville: It seemed to be MacEntee.

It was noted from previous testimony that the late Constable McGee, for whose murder the four defendants were on trial, seemed to have been shot before Dunville. On this point, the President of the Court, Major-General Cheylesmore, asked his own questions.

Robert Dunville

Cheylesmore: Can you tell us how many shots were fired before you were shot yourself?

Dunville: Two.

Cheylesmore: Are you quite sure that McGee was wounded before you were?

Dunville: Yes. I heard the shot, but I did not see McGee fall.

Cheylesmore: Before you were shot, were any of the accused in front of you?

Dunville: MacEntee was in front of me.

Cheylesmore: The other men had gone down the road?

Dunville: Yes, they had moved away.

Cheylesmore: Then MacEntee was practically the only man left when you were shot?

Dunville: Yes.

Cheylesmore: You don’t know who fired the shot?

Dunville: I don’t.

Cheylesmore: Were you wounded by a rifle or revolver bullet?

Dunville: I don’t know. It was a very small hole.

Cheylesmore: But it went right through your body?

Dunville: Yes.

Cheylesmore: Could you recognise the man who was pointing the long rifle at you?

Dunville: I could.

Cheylesmore: Is he one of the accused?

Dunville: No.

Edward O’Brien spoke next on the stand to corroborate his employer’s statement that Leahy had pointed a rifle and MacEntee a pistol at Dunville. But he did not think it was any of the four defendants who fired the shots that wounded Dunville or killed McGee. The Constable’s death – so testified Dr Patrick O’Hagan as the Coroner – was due to shock and haemorrhage, caused by four bullet-wounds: two in his left arm and two in the body, while Dunville had two altogether in the chest, the one on the left side apparently being the point of entry.[10]

Putting the Record Straight

The service of Dundalk men in Easter Week presents merits peculiarly their own when compared with that of other areas outside Dublin city and county.[11]

(John McCoy, Member of the Military Pensions Advisory Committee, April 1947)

History had not been particularly generous to Louth’s contribution in the Rising, to MacEntee’s chagrin. It was not so much that the historians of his day were intentionally side-lining the county, more that they simply did not have much to work on. Motivated by “impression that the misadventure at Castlebellingham was the beginning and end of Louth’s participation in Easter Week,” MacEntee sat down in 1966 to compose his memoirs in the “hope that this first-hand story of what actually did happen will put the record straight.”[12]

Which may have been easier written than done, for there was a good deal of uncertainty over what had occurred in Castlebellingham, even by those who were present, as shown by Dunville’s and O’Brien’s testimonies – not to mention the conflicting reminiscences from certain Volunteers, composed, like MacEntee’s, decades afterwards. All Frank Martin – one of MacEntee’s co-defendants in May 1916 – could report for his Bureau of Military History Statement in 1949 was that “some shots were fired. Const. McGee was killed and Lieut. Dunville got a slight wound on the arm.”

And this was from a man who had been as close to the scene as anyone, having been ordered by MacEntee to watch Dunville, McGee and the two other RIC men held at gunpoint when the Volunteers took over the main street in Castlebellingham. Despite later being on trial for his life as a consequence, the biggest impression made on Martin were the “antics” of “Lieut. Dunville [who] was jeering and abusing us.”[13]

Another participant, Edward Bailey, similarly recalled Dunville’s salty attitude: “He was not very nice about his treatment.” But Bailey was equally clueless about the Big Question of the day: “Some shots were fired and Const. McGee fell on the road, mortally wounded. I did not see the actual shooting. I saw McGee lying on the road after I heard the shooting.”[14]

Donal O’Hannigan, as overall commander of the Louth rebels, believed he knew more, not as a witness, but from a subsequent report he received:

It appears that when the officer [Dunville] was approached by McEntee [alternative spelling] he…ran behind the RIC men and made attempts as if to draw a gun from his pocket. On seeing this one of my men fired at him. At that moment the RIC man unfortunately moved into the line of fire and the bullet passed through the RIC man and wounded Lt. Dunville. Lieut. Dunville was found to be armed with a revolver.[15]

There is more than a whiff of passing-the-buck here, with responsibility – clunkily and rather obviously – passed on to Dunville’s shoulders for resisting and even on the victim by getting in the way. And despite MacEntee’s avowed determination to rescue Louth’s Rising deeds from the confusion and obscurity they had been cast, due to “the brief and garbled reports which were permitted to appear at the time”, he was candid enough to admit that, as far as Easter Monday in Castlebellingham was concerned, he had little definite to offer posterity.[16]

‘Unfortunate and Damaging’

It is ironic that an Irish-speaking constable from the remote island of Inishbofin in County Donegal should become the first Royal Irish Constabulary victim of the Rising in County Louth, and indeed in the whole of Ireland.[17]

(Madge O’Boyle, historian and grandniece of Charles McGee)

Or maybe it was less honesty and more embarrassment. The death of Constable McGee – entirely unnecessary, it seems – was a public relations disaster for the Rising locally, particularly after the initial inquest in May 1916 brought in a verdict of murder. Though James McGuill attributed this harsh judgement on the fact that the jurors tended to have relatives serving in the British Army and thus inclined against the rebels from the start, he also acknowledged that the late McGee “was evidently very popular with all who knew him.”

McGuill’s ownership of a garage in Dundalk allowed him to assist his fellow Louth Volunteers with transportation. He left active service to his brothers, who were also enrolled, and so he remained in town during Easter Week. There, McGuill heard the news about McGee, and experienced first-hand the “unfortunate and damaging effect on public opinion in the town of Dundalk and the district” his shooting had, with “the effect of turning sympathisers away from us and gave the people opposed to us the opportunity to cast ridicule on the early fruits of our efforts at Insurrection.”

Market Square, Dundalk

Dundalk was a cauldron of clashing emotions and conflicting ideologies: there was the personal popularity of the landowner Sir Henry Bellingham, whose two sons in the British Army in France were role-models for other young men in Louth to enlist. John Redmond also enjoyed a standing as the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and mover behind Home Rule, which now looked imperilled thanks to the rebels, or so Redmond’s followers claimed:

We were referred to as pro Germans and as men who were trying to stab John E. Redmond in the back, and by our actions blasted all hopes of the implementation of the Home Rule Bill then held up in a state of abeyance.

If this was mainstream opinion, then resisting this consensus were men like Thomas Hearty, a former Fenian, who McGuill saw on Easter Thursday, returning to Dundalk from Dunboyne, Co. Meath. The Louth Volunteers had reached it, though Commandant O’Hannigan ordered Hearty back on account of his advanced age and the poor state of the horse pulling his hackney carriage. Though denied his chance at glory with the rest of the Louth contingent and their Meath comrades, the two groups having joined up as planned, Hearty had at least witnessed a tricolour fluttering over the marching ranks.

It was a moving sight, the emotion of which Hearty was keen to impart to McGuill: “He seemed in great form and spoke enthusiastically of our armed men marching across the country carrying our National flag.” Undeterred by the odds against them, Hearty “stressed his pride in the fact that the flag of the Republic flew so many days even though he feared it was fated to go down against much superior forces.”[18]

Irish Volunteers

Castlebellingham

However magnificent it seemed to Hearty, the impression MacEntee had of the Louth Volunteers when he rejoined them later that Monday at Lurgen Green was not an encouraging one. The rain had left the men wet and bedraggled, as if footsore and uncertain were not enough, and the route they were marching back to Dundalk on was a muddy mess. Perhaps that was why MacEntee – travelling in a motorcar he had hijacked at a roadside pub – was able to overtake them before the Volunteers completely quit the field.

O’Hannigan accepted without question MacEntee’s message from Pearse: ‘Carry out the original instructions. We strike at noon.’ Noon had come and gone, four hours ago, but later was better than never. The two RIC constables on their trail were captured and disarmed without trouble – a good start, at least – even if MacEntee had had to be unambiguous about what he would do if compliance was not given.

Coercion continued to be the strategy of choice for the Volunteers as they entered Castlebellingham, now moving in a fifteen-strong flotilla of cars pilfered from motorists returning from the races in Fairyhouse. This ‘by any means necessary’ attitude continued as the men dismounted and stole – or commandeered or whatever – from the shops along the main road that dominated an otherwise unremarkable village. The pair of RIC men who came to investigate the disturbance were disarmed and placed under guard, alongside their two captured colleagues from Lurgan Green, by the railings of the grass plot in the village centre, next to the road.

Castlebellingham, Main Street, County Louth

The first flicker of resistance came from a fifth curious policeman who appeared on the scene, this being Constable McGee:

…a tall, fine looking fellow, of rather a tougher spirit than his comrades, and he refused to obey when I ordered him to dismount [from his bicycle], and it was only under pressure from the other police that he complied.

Another stone on the revolutionary road presented itself in the form of the owner of a car which drove in just as the Volunteers finished loading their procured supplies: a British Army officer, MacEntee guessed him from his gold-braided uniform. In every account of that day, Lieutenant Dunville was undaunted and even pugnacious towards the men who had unexpectedly forced him from his journey at gunpoint, and here, in MacEntee’s, he is no different:

The occupant…was exceedingly angry at being held up and refused to get out of his car, whereupon there arose something of an altercation between him and the men, in which some rough words passed.

MacEntee says nothing about any verbal exchange between himself and the Lieutenant, as in the latter’s court-martial testimony, but their two accounts otherwise match: Dunville stood his ground in the face of overwhelming odds until finally joining the rest of the prisoners, as did his chauffeur O’Brien, by the railings.

It was time to go, Commandant O’Hannigan ordered. With his eye on the captives, MacEntee:

…then backed towards my own car which…was the last of the fifteen. I had just turned to enter it, had mounted the foot-board and was stepping inside the car, when a shot rang out. I jumped out at once and looked towards the prisoners. The lieutenant was standing quite steady and upright, two policemen were running across the road, while of the other policeman and of the chauffeur there was no sign. I thought that, like the others, they too had run away. At the sound of the shot, the cars had stopped. I ran to the leading car and told [O’]Hannigan that some person had fired on the prisoners.

When MacEntee said that he did not know if anyone had been hit, O’Hannigan instructed him to get back to his transport and continue. As MacEntee looked back from his moving car, at the rear of the convoy, he saw Dunville, who:

…had been standing very bravely and steadily up to this but, as I looked at him now, I saw him tremble and sway and slink to the ground. I realised then, for the first time, that he had been wounded.

Charles McGee

Doubling-back to check on the Lieutenant was not a feasible option, not with the journey to Tara and then Dublin still to do. Instead, leaving the wounded man to the care of whatever doctor was in the village seemed reasonable enough, and MacEntee satisfied himself that he had done the best he could. Of the second victim, “tall, fine looking” McGee, he had seen no sign, and it was not until five weeks later, at his court-martial in Richmond Barracks, that he learned that the constable had been killed, apparently from the same shot that wounded Dunville.[19]

A Fellow Countryman

This, of course, is from MacEntee’s memoir, written two years later, so stated at its start, when the author was in Gloucester Gaol in the summer of 1918 (though how much was edited between then and publication in 1966 is another question).[20] At the court-martial in May 1916, with life and death on the line, MacEntee was more circumspect, leaving it to the solicitors T.M. Healy and Henry Hanna to build up as much of a defence as they could. With their clients ‘caught in the act’, there was little the two legal eagles could do, though Healy’s argument that the British Government was in a sense as complicit in the rebellion as its participants due to prior permissiveness has a certain ingenuity.

Evidence against MacEntee included incriminating documents found in a police search of his Dundalk lodgings. The testimony to this effect by RIC Sergeant Christopher Sheridan allowed Healy to put his cross-examining skills to use:

T.M. Healy

Healy: Was there a government in Ireland while all this was going on? Were the police in Dundalk?

Sheridan: Yes.

Healy: Did your authorities allow a number of young men, under the eyes of the police and the Government, to join an organisation which you now say is pro-German and illegal?

Sheridan: Yes.

Healy: Therefore, whatever my clients did, they did it with the idea that the Government was, at all events, tolerating them?

Sheridan: That seems to have been Mr [Augustine] Birrell’s [Chief Secretary for Ireland] business.

Healy: Did you allow all these young men to be brigaded, drilled, organised, armed and pro-Germanised without taking any steps to stop it?

Sheridan: We did not interfere.

Healy: But Mr Birrell and the Government did, and now they are being tried for their lives. Did the Government allow these Volunteers to get arms and ammunition, and military instructions, in Dundalk, for the last two years without interference?

Sheridan: I am not in a position to express an opinion on that.

Healy: Did you ever caution them?

Sheridan: No.

Healy: Did you ever tell them they were taking a course that might lead to trouble?

Sheridan: No.

MacEntee limited his part to reading out to the court a prepared statement, in which he carefully downplayed his role in Castlebellingham, while leaving the specifics vague:

In obedience to the order of his commander, he stopped the constable, and searched him. He took an envelope, which he brought to his commander. The constable received no abuse from him, and he lamented his death; the constable was his fellow countryman, discharging his duty.

As for the charge of murder against him, “he was not a murderer and the term was loathsome to him.”

Witnesses for the defence were a mixed bag. While Thomas Alexander testified as to MacEntee’s good conduct and character, in doing so he also inadvertently confirmed the other man’s presence and involvement when Alexander was waylaid at Dromiksey while driving back from Fairyhouse to his home in Belfast. If not for MacEntee and the control he exercised, Alexander said on the stand, the thirty men pointing revolvers at him might not have behaved as well as they did. Another witness, a chauffeur named Dickson, had sat next to MacEntee in the car the rebels had commandeered at Lurgan Green. With him were five other Volunteers, one of whom had, at Castlebellingham, fired his rifle at the captives lined up by the railings.

Irish Volunteers

He got first blood, Dickson heard the rifleman say.[21]

Paddy McHugh

The good news for MacEntee, at least, is that none of the witnesses linked him to the shooting. If it had been done by the rifleman, then MacEntee was in the clear, since he had been carrying a pistol that day. Instead, the finger of suspicion pointed at someone not present at the court-martial: Paddy McHugh, a person of interest even before the Rising ended, a fact that dawned on MacEntee as he sat through his trial, so he told the Military Pensions Advisory Committee in June 1945, twenty-nine years later:

Advisory Committee Referee: How do you know that he was wanted for murder from Easter Monday night?

MacEntee: Because I happened to be charged with murder too and I know on the evidence which was given at the trial that they were looking for the other man, McHugh.

Referee: Was there any reference made to McHugh at your trial?

MacEntee: I think there was. Yes, there was, because it was definitely established that I hadn’t fired any shots, that was definitely established, and that the police were searching for the other man and had been looking for him.

Referee: There was not a specific reference made to him?

MacEntee: Not to him by name, but –

Referee: Could you say whether or not you formed the opinion at the time at the reference was to McHugh?

MacEntee: Yes.

Referee: You did?

MacEntee: Yes.

Referee: At the time?

MacEntee: At least it was to the man who was alleged to have fired the shot and he was the man alleged to have fired that.[22]

The man in question was to deny this in his Statement to the Bureau of Military History (BMH) in 1952, though McHugh did not repudiate that he had indeed been holding a rifle and using it to cover the prisoners from where he was standing on the running board of his car. The rest of the Volunteers were withdrawing, and MacEntee’s back turned, when Dunville:

…whom I had covered made a move that appeared to me as if he was attempting to draw a gun. I immediately called on him to put up his hands. He did not obey. I called no more but fired, and, to my amazement, the RIC man at the other end of the line of prisoners fell. Another shot then rang out and I called out to cease fire.

Judging by that common point with O’Hanigan’s version, it is probable that it was McHugh’s report O’Hannigan had read from. The difference between the two accounts is that, in O’Hannigan’s, McGee stepped between Dunville and the gunman (unnamed by O’Hannigan), and was hit by the bullet that then wounded Dunville, while in McHugh’s:

What happened has never been fully explained. The RIC man who fell on the road was killed by a charge of buckshot fired from a shotgun and the staff officer who fell to the ground as we were leaving the village was shot through the lung by .303 bullet… The man who fired from the shotgun has never admitted the mistake or the accident or whatever his motive was and so it will now probably remain forever his secret.

Two other men that day, RIC Sergeant Kiernan and a publican, Byrne, were to swear under oath at the initial inquest, in May 1916, that it was McHugh who fired the fatal shot at McGee. Since both knew McHugh personally, as McHugh conceded in his BMH Statement, their testimony carries some weight. However, Byrne also mentioned how McGee had been standing at the end of the line of prisoners furthest from McHugh, making a deliberate aim by McHugh implausible – why not shoot the target closest to him, if so?

Byrne was not aware of a shotgun being used, as McHugh claimed, and the only other gun he heard being fired at the time besides McHugh’s was a pistol at the wheel of Dunville’s car in order to disable it. The Coroner at the court-martial was unable to determine if McGee’s mortal wound came from a shotgun or rifle; however, if Dickson heard correctly, then the rifleman in his car was responsible – which would implicate McHugh the most.[23]

Maybe.

Possibly.

Sent into Action

Driving though Dunleer and then Collon and Slane at night, MacEntee became separated from the main force when the fourth car from the end took a wrong turn and ran into a deep gully, trapping itself and blocking the others. Not wanting to risk another accident in the dark, the stranded Volunteers camped for the night before doubling back at the crack of dawn in order to find where the rest had gone.[24]

They would have done better to stay put, for Commandant O’Hannigan, noticing his missing rearguard, sent two men to locate them. The pair returned to report that they had found only a single car, abandoned in a gully. Assuming – or hoping – that the absent others would make their own way to Tara, O’Hannigan ordered the remaining nine or ten cars to the ancient royal hill, arriving there on Tuesday morning and finding no one else, neither their MIA Louth compatriots or the Meath Volunteers who were supposed to join them. Taking the main Dublin-Navan road did not offer much encouragement either, for O’Hannigan could see, through the field glasses he had brought with him, British troops at Dunboyne Bridge ahead.

An empty country mansion, Tyrrelstown House, offered shelter and a place to consider their next move. Scouts were able to confirm the strength of the challenge awaiting them: with a hundred and fifty soldiers near Dunboyne, the enemy far exceeded the Volunteers, even with the addition of the sixteen-strong Dunboyne company which had disbanded on the Sunday like so many other units across Ireland, as per MacNeill’s countermand, but now eager to make up for lost time.

Irish Volunteers

It was a chance they were never to get, for one of the scouts, sent out to Dublin on a bicycle, returned on Tuesday night. He had made it to the General Post Office (GPO) and brought back a dispatch, signed by Commandant-General James Connolly:

To Comdt. O’Hannigan, commandeer transport and move your men to Dublin where they will be rested and armed before being sent into action.

Thomas Ashe

Fulfilling such a bold extortion did not seem remotely possible, as the Volunteers officers agreed when called together in Tyrrelstown House to discuss Connolly’s latest order. Another scout had been turned back at Cabra Bridge by a British picket before he could reach Dublin, which confirmed what they must have suspected: the enemy had made a cordon around the capital, through which there would be no way, not with their paltry numbers. Contact made with Thomas Ashe of the Fingal Brigade only gave false hope, for by the time O’Hannigan set out to meet him in Turvey on Sunday morning, Ashe had surrendered, as had – though O’Hannigan was oblivious to this – the rest of the rebel leadership in Dublin.[25]

The Dispensation of Providence

“It was not by their volition that theirs was a bloodless campaign – that was the dispensation of Providence,” so MacEntee finished his narrative of the Louth Volunteers in Easter Week, “but if the opportunity had been afforded to them – they would have proved themselves as gallant as any that ever fought in the nation’s cause.”[26]

Exactly what else they could have done remained a sensitive point, even thirty years later, when O’Hannigan and McHugh defended their honour and that of their comrades before the Military Service Pensions Board in July 1945. What irked McHugh in particular was a statement made by the Board, that ‘after Wednesday night, all possibility of cooperation with the main Volunteer forces had admittedly passed’, which made it sound as if Easter Week had essentially ended for them on the Wednesday.

“That is a rather high-handed assumption,” McHugh said:

Board Referee: But the possibility has passed?

McHugh: Not on Wednesday.

Referee: After Wednesday.

O’Hannigan: As a matter of fact, why did we remain under arms?

McHugh: The possibility had not passed on Wednesday.

Referee: After Wednesday?

McHugh: Even after Wednesday.

Referee: What possibility of contact was there?

McHugh: If we had been able to contact the main road or men to guide us into the city of Dublin, we could have got into some position. The possibility could not have passed until we couldn’t have got into the city of Dublin.

Board member McCoy: Is that your view, Mr O’Hannigan?

O’Hannigan: It is. We tried to get to the Fingal Brigade. Our unit wasn’t strong enough. There was a few rifles that I should have got and they went to Donabate instead.

Referee: As long as you kept your men under arms, you were ready and anxious to cooperate with any body of Volunteers who were fighting against the British?

O’Hannigan: Correct.

Referee: And that is beyond doubt. I think that is quite reasonable and I don’t think that has ever been in doubt.

McHugh: That is the position. I haven’t been given enough credit for it.

Referee: Has that ever been in doubt, Mr McCoy, that as long as these men remained under arms, they were ready and willing to cooperate with any Volunteers who were in insurrection against the British enemy?

McCoy: Well, rightly or wrongly, I had a sort of an idea in the beginning that they had orders to go to Tyrrelstown House and go no further.[27]

Tyrrelstown House, Dublin 15

Hamstrung

Au contraire, the Dundalk contingent, as per the plans laid out by Pearse, were to enter the outskirts of the capital from the north. From there, they would thwart British advances into the centre, while keeping an escape route open if needs be for the Dublin rebels. As much with else that had gone wrong on Easter Week, the failure to accomplish either task could be traced to the very start:

McCoy: Is it a fact that the trouble you had with cars, delays caused on the road and countermanding orders and all that, was responsible for your delay to such a time as the [British] reinforcements got into the park?

McHugh: Yes, we lost forty-eight hours.

McCoy: You lost a couple of days and that upset your timetable?

McHugh: Yes.

McCoy: By the time you arrived at the point in your journey the military had gone into Dublin on that road?

O’Hannigan: Yes.

McCoy: If you had been there forty-eight hours earlier, you could have intercepted them?

Liam Mellows

O’Hannigan: Yes. We could have got the [British] artillery but then if it had not been for the countermanding order, we would have had three hundred and thirty-seven men, whereas we had only a small number. Had we been in position with the number of men we had from the areas, we certainly would have got the artillery that was used in Dublin without any difficulty whatever. I had access to all the plans for all Ireland before I went to Cork [sic?]. I spent days going over the plans in St Enda’s with [Liam] Mellows and the others so that I would know the position we would be in all the time.

McCoy: Were you in touch with Pearse from Thursday morning onwards?

O’Hannigan: Not from the Thursday of Easter Week.

McCoy: Were you in touch with any of the leaders from Thursday?

O’Hannigan: Only with [Thomas] Ashe. We were cut off completely.[28]

Joy and Sorrow

In a bad case of crossed wires, the GPO garrison had apparently been expecting the appearance of their Dundalk comrades, almost until the final hour, if Connolly’s Order of the Day on Friday is anything to go by:

Dundalk has sent two hundred men to march upon Dublin, and in other parts of the North our forces are active and growing.

MacEntee was among the audience as this was read out to the GPO; despite all the mishaps and misfortunes, he had persevered and succeeding in slipping past British lines and then to the rebel headquarters. Galway, Wicklow, Wexford, Cork and Kerry were also reputed to be giving their all in the field of battle. As was the enemy – no question as to that – whose renewed bombardment succeeded in setting fire to the roof of the GPO, forcing the defenders out onto the streets.

Two things would stick in MacEntee’s mind during that flight to safety: the pale face of a woman by a window and another Volunteer dropping to his knee as MacEntee dashed by. He would pass that same man, outstretched on the pavement, as the rebel remnant marched towards captivity, the order to surrender having finally been given. The uniform on the corpse, MacEntee noted, was tattered and torn, with the upturned face white beneath flecks of dried blood.[29]

British soldiers leading rebel prisoners away in Dublin

Elsewhere in Ireland, another body was being transported through Lurgan to the deceased’s native Inishbofin Island, Co. Donegal. RIC Sergeant J.J. McConnell apologised to the passengers of the car carrying the coffin; he was merely following the ‘Secret and Confidential’ orders issued to his barracks on Easter Saturday to stop and search all vehicles due to the uprising that was supposed to break out the next day. Initially bemused by these seemingly unnecessary instructions, Sergeant McConnell saw even less reason for them as the week went by, for nothing was amiss save for the absence of any newspapers or mail.

Though the wildest of rumours filled the news vacuum, McConnell remained unfazed until he asked about the identity of the coffin’s occupant. The sergeant was informed that not only had he been a colleague, the constable:

…was cycling with a dispatch to Castlebellingham, unarmed and alone when he was held up and shot by a party of Sinn Feiners, as they were then known. Then I knew something momentous had happened and I was no longer amused.[30]

McGuill and his fellow ‘Sinn Feiners’ who had remained in Dundalk were similarly struck, albeit for a very different reason. “The news of the Surrender in Dublin came to us on Saturday and was received in Dundalk with mixed feelings,” McGuill recalled, “feelings of joy and jubilation by our opponents and by feelings of sorrow and disappointment by us.”[31]

“Thus our Easter Week was ended,” MacEntee dolefully concluded in his memoirs.[32]

O’Connell Street in ruins after the Rising

But, of course, it hadn’t, for Easter Week had set in motion feelings that fused into a movement that would sweep aside its foes – and, in time, some of its followers as well. Less than two years afterwards, in February 1918, MacEntee was touring Co. Donegal, campaigning alongside Éamon de Valera as part of the general election. Four hundred supporters greeted the pair in Letterkenny before escorting them in a torchlight procession to their lodgings in town. From Letterkenny, MacEntee and de Valera travelled across Donegal, addressing large and enthusiastic crowds who waved tricolours in a mass echo of the flag the Irish Volunteers had marched under on the Rising.

No more would a foreign power govern their country, MacEntee declared, for the day of England’s difficulty and Ireland’s opportunity was upon them. Turn away from England, he urged the crowds, and do nothing except for Ireland.

It was not the first step in what was to be a long and distinguished career for MacEntee – Easter Week could claim to be that start, for without the Rising, there would have been nothing and almost certainly a very different future for Ireland. But not everyone would have a future, a fact MacEntee was evidently aware of, for he took time out of his busy electioneering tour to visit Inishbofin and pay his condolences to the family of Constable McGee.[33]

References

[1] MacEntee, Seán. Episode at Easter (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son Ltd., 1966), p. 82

[2] Ibid, p. 69

[3] O’Hannigan, Donal (BMH / WS 161), p. 11

[4] Ibid, pp. 20-1

[5] Greene, Arthur (BMH / WS 238), p. 5

[6] O’Hannigan, pp. 21-2

[7] MacEntee, pp. 74-5

[8] Ibid, pp. 82-5

[9] Ibid, pp. 28-33

[10] Dundalk Democrat, 17/06/1916

[11] Military Service Pensions Collection, ‘McHugh, Patrick’ (MSP34REF12512), p. 149

[12] MacEntee, p. 8

[13] Martin, Frank (BMH / WS 236), p. 4

[14] Bailey, Edward (BMH / WS 233), p. 4

[15] O’Hannigan, Donal (BMH / WS 161), p. 25

[16] MacEntee, p. 8

[17] O’Boyle, Madge. The Life and Times of Constable Charles McGee: The First RIC Casualty and the 1916 Rising in County Louth (Louth County Council, 2016), p. i

[18] McGuill, James (BMH / WS 353), pp. 17-9

[19] MacEntee, pp.107-12

[20] Ibid, p. 11

[21] Irish Times, 12/06/1916

[22] ‘McHugh,’ Military Service Pensions Collection, pp. 98-9

[23] McHugh, Patrick (BMH / WS 677), pp. 22-3 ; inquest testimony outlined in Dundalk Democrat, 06/05/1916

[24] MacEntee, pp. 113, 115-7

[25] O’Hannigan, pp. 25-29

[26] MacEntee, p. 176

[27] ‘McHugh’, Military Service Pensions Collection, pp. 141, 143-4

[28] Ibid, p. 148

[29] MacEntee, pp. 149-50, 154-5, 160-1, 164

[30] McConnell, J.J. (BMH / WS 509), pp. 4-5

[31] McGuill, p. 19

[32] MacEntee, p. 169

[33] O’Boyle, pp. 339-40

Bibliography

Books

MacEntee, Seán. Episode at Easter (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son Ltd., 1966)

O’Boyle, Madge. The Life and Times of Constable Charles McGee: The First RIC Casualty and the 1916 Rising in County Louth (Louth County Council, 2016)

Newspapers

Dundalk Democrat

Irish Times

Bureau of Military History Statements

Bailey, Edward, WS 233

Greene, Arthur, WS 238

Martin, Frank, WS 236

McConnell, J.J., WS 509

McGuill, James, WS 353

McHugh, Patrick, WS 677

O’Hannigan, Donal, WS 161

Military Service Pensions Collection

‘McHugh, Patrick’, MSP34REF12512

Defeat From The Jaws of Victory: The Easter Rising in Co. Louth, 1916 (Part I)

The Killing

Blood had been shed in Co. Louth, and while the loss of a single life was slight compared to the toll elsewhere in the country – specifically Dublin, where many of the streets lay in broken ruins – Constable Charles McGee’s death was deserving enough of an inquiry, held on the 4^th May 1916, in the Louth Infirmary.

The first witness, Sarah Connoughton, testified as to how, on the Easter Monday of the 24^th April, ten days earlier, she had seen a band of men drive into her village of Castlebellingham in a convoy of eight motorcars. As she did not get a clear look at their faces, she could not say who they were and the only noteworthy thing about them, besides their guns, were the dark trench-coats they wore.

Castlebellingham, Main Street, County Louth

This was not the first such oddity of the day; earlier, another group, likewise armed despite their civilian dress, advanced on foot through the village in the direction of Dundalk. Someone remarked that these strangers hailed from Belfast but that was the only thing Connoughton could tell.

When two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) came to investigate these newcomers in cars, Sergeant Kiernan and Constable Donovan were held up, searched and then placed against some railings. As the RIC recruited on height, the policemen towered over their captors but, staring down the barrels of revolvers, they had no choice but to comply. A few minutes later, a third policeman appeared on his bicycle.

“Don’t go down there or you’ll be shot,” Connoughton warned Constable McGee.

Policemen of the Royal Irish Constabulary

Nothing that dramatic happened quite yet, as the armed party at first just held up the constable as they had done with the other two, with one man taking the time to remove some papers from McGee’s pocket. When a man in an officer’s uniform of the British Army drove up, he too was made to stand against the railings, his chauffeur as well, in what was becoming a small collection of prisoners.

As not much else was happening, a crowd had gathered in the street, until the abrupt sounds of three gunshots and a whistle blast caused the onlookers to scatter. Connoughton’s first thought was that the revolvers were being used to puncture the tyres of the car belonging to the British officer, until she heard someone say: “Run, they’re going to shoot.”

Connoughton was in the process of doing just that when she heard both another shot and Constable McGee say: “Oh, my arm”:

I saw him catch his arm at the same time. He staggered across the road and I went towards him. There was blood streaming from his coat, and I said, “Oh, God, are you shot?”

McGee had been. He collapsed face-down, and Connoughton rushed to find help. Three of the men from the armed party were watching as she returned with a doctor but did nothing to help or hinder as McGee was taken inside and later to a hospital, where the constable died.

Connoughton’s testimony was enough to earn the respect of Mr McGahan, the Justice of the Peace presiding over the inquiry:

McGahan: I think, Miss Connoughton, you behaved very charitably and very bravely on this occasion.

Juror: The jury thoroughly endorse your remarks.

Connoughton: I only did my duty.

Old Louth Infirmary, the site of the inquest into Charles McGee’s death

The Killer

The second witness on the stand, Patrick Byrne, was able to fill in some of the details, such as the identity of one of the shooters: Paddy McHugh had been covering the captives with a rifle from the footboard of one of the cars, a Ford, from a distance of about seven or eight yards. Byrne even provided a description of McHugh:

He was a man of 5 ft. 7 or 8 inches in height and of slight build; he was inclined to be dark; he wore a brown, soft hat, and a long greyish overcoat.

Byrne had watched as the British officer and his driver were added to the line-up by the railings, with the latter next to McGee, who stood the furthest from McHugh on the far end. One of the others tried disabling the officer’s car by twice firing his pistol at the front wheel. As for what happened then, Byrne believed – “I am of the opinion,” as he put it – that it was McHugh, his rifle held up against his shoulder, who fired:

I heard the report of the shot and saw Constable McGee place his two hands on his breast and reel round. The chauffeur caught him and prevented him from falling.

Byrne admitted to not seeing a discharge from the rifle but, considering how it had fired at the same time as McGee’s shocked reaction, the theory of McHugh as the killer was a logical assumption. At that point, Byrne ran into the safety of a nearby shop. He had seen enough to conclude to the court that the shooting:

…was done without any provocation whatever. I saw the whole occurrence and it was deliberately done.

Charles McGee

As for the shots at the car-tyres, Byrne did not think it likely that they could have been the ones to hit McGee. Somewhat contradicting himself, Byrne continued, “in my opinion McHugh could not have taken deliberate aim at McGee,” considering how, if he had meant to shoot a captive, he would have chosen one closest to him, while McGee had been the furthest away.

One of the policemen held up that day, Acting Sergeant Kiernan, was unable to provide much more on the stand, only that the ‘Sinn Feiners’ had meant business to judge from the instructions he had heard their commander – a man unknown to Kiernan – give them: “See that your rifles are properly loaded, men, and be read to obey me when I give the order.”

After checking their weapons as ordered, the men began returning to their seats in the cars, apparently making ready to depart. It was then that Kieran heard shots, though he did not see from whom. He and Donovan ran into a public-house as the crowd shouted at them to get away, and it was only some time afterwards that Kiernan learnt that McGee had been wounded – mortally, as it turned out.

“We were all unarmed and there was no resistance offered by anybody,” Kiernan told the inquiry as he finished his version of events. After consulting with each other, the jury returned its verdict: that Charles McGee had died of shock and haemorrhage from gunshots inflicted by some person or persons unknown.

‘Failing to Ascertain’

If McGee’s death had indeed been unintentional, then his was not the first case of firearm mishaps that day. Earlier that Monday, Seán MacEntee had been overseeing a picket of Volunteers on a country road. Having marched all night, through rain and wind, with only the barest amount of food, the men were keen to ease their burdens and so were stopping all traffic that came their way and then seizing the transport for themselves.

Irish Volunteers

When one traveller refused the demands to step down from his pony-pulled cart, MacEntee drew a pistol from his pocket. The other man raised his whip to strike, prompting a step back from MacEntee, at which point he reflexively squeezed the trigger, wounding the cart-driver in the arm.

When composing his version of events, almost four decades later in 1954, MacEntee still cringed to recall how:

The safety catch of the pistol had been put to the firing position, and I had not known it – a fact which I offer as an explanation and not as an excuse. My negligence, in failing to ascertain whether the catch was at the firing position or not, and perhaps, the hastiness with which I presented the weapon were certainly blameworthy.

Seán MacEntee

Then it was MacEntee’s turn to be on the receiving end of another’s carelessness, when a bullet whistled past his head and those of several others from a Volunteer who had mishandled his rifle. To further add to the chaos, one of those assigned to sentry duty hurriedly returned to warn of another group which was advancing on them from the direction of Dundalk.

Judging these to be RIC from their blue jackets, the uniform of the Crown custodians, the Volunteers readied themselves for their first engagement in the name of Irish freedom. They had already captured a number of policemen who had been tailing them since their departure from Slane but that had been accomplished by the threat of force without having to exert actual violence.

Some distance still remained between the two bodies when the newcomers halted, waited and then, evidently deciding that prudence was the better part of valour, retreated back the way they had come. MacEntee later learnt that the ‘police’ he and his comrades had been about to fire on were actually fishermen on their way to Annagasson when rumours of the odd happenings piqued their interest, albeit briefly. It was an apt enough example of the confusion and uncertainty that characterised Louth during the Easter Week of 1916.[2]

Ups and Downs

Paddy Hughes

Though MacEntee had had a hunch that something big was in the works, his initial assumption when Paddy Hughes (not to be confused with Paddy McHugh, the alleged killer of Constable McGee) interrupted his duties at Dundalk Electricity Works, on the Holy Thursday of 1916, to break the news of an imminent uprising, was that Hughes was pulling his leg. Hughes insisted that he was not; besides, his demeanour – “eyes glittered with excitement, though his voice was quite cool and steady,” as MacEntee recalled – was convincing enough.

Orders had come up from Dublin: they and the rest of the Dundalk Volunteers were to muster, fully packed, and then march on Tara, come the night of Easter Sunday in three days’ time. Which did not leave a lot of time but then, MacEntee had been preparing for just this occasion ever since the Belfast native arrived in Dundalk, at the turn of 1914. The Irish Volunteers had been founded in Dublin in November 1913 and MacEntee moved quickly to ensure that his adopted town was not left behind by the new national movement.

In Dundalk Town Hall, it was agreed to set up a local company, with MacEntee as one of its founding committee members. Things were progressing smoothly…until disaster struck in August 1914, when the majority of Volunteers left to side with John Redmond, whose esteem was high in Dundalk, leaving the rest at a loss of what to do.

It was not until early 1915 that MacEntee was approached by Hughes, who MacEntee had befriended after his arrival. It was time, Hughes said, to restart the Irish Volunteers in Dundalk, except this time allied with Eoin MacNeill, Patrick Pearse and the rest of the central committee who had resisted Redmond’s control. Which was perfect for MacEntee and he went on to serve as Adjutant to the reborn Dundalk Company. Weapons were scarce, as the Redmondites had claimed most of the old stock, but the hundred or so men made do with what they had, training on sports grounds when not drilling in the John Boyle O’Reilly Hall on Clanbrassil Street.

The John Boyle O’Reilly Hall on Clanbrassil Street, Dundalk (modern day)

It was to this base of operations that MacEntee came that Thursday night, finding it already filled with fellow Volunteers, as well as a sense of excitement and anticipation in the air. Everywhere was activity: drills on whatever floor space was available, armourers’ working at a bench in the corner and knots of men from all over Louth engaged in deep conversation. Among them was Donal O’Hannigan, a recent addition from Dublin – sent by none other than Patrick Pearse – and Paddy Hughes:

Busier than any, his great big round face beaming as he moved from group to group, helping and cheering all…For years he had dreamed of such a night as this, while men had scoffed at him and mocked at him and called him mad. But he held on, and his dream had come true. On Sunday he would march to fight for the cause for which, all his life, he had laboured. Was it any wonder his heart was light?[3]

The same could have been said for MacEntee and the rest in the hall who now found themselves as players in the greatest drama of their lives, however sudden this casting-call had been. MacEntee had only been informed on the eleventh hour, and that was not untypical. Another member of the Dundalk Volunteer Committee, Patrick Duffy, only had an inkling when Hughes, upon meeting him in the street less than a week before Easter, informed him of plans for a parade on the Sunday, after which the Volunteers would be marched to Ashbourne, Co. Meath, and join others there.

Few other details were forthcoming from Hughes, and Duffy was lucky to get what little he did. Most of the other committee members, Duffy believed, were kept entirely in the dark as to the true purpose behind the Easter event. The same went for the rank-and-file, who “would have resisted attack or attempts to conscript them, but did not contemplate aggressive action.”[4]

Irish Volunteers

The Insider

Not so much was Donal O’Hannigan, who “ranked as Commandant and was described as a training officer,” remembered McHugh. To McHugh, O’Hannigan’s presence alone was a point of pride:

His allocation, I understood from Paddy Hughes, was at Hughes’ request to General Headquarters for a man with military knowledge to guide and advise the officers of Dundalk Battalion. This act of GHQ clearly shows that the 1916 Rising was not an impromptu affair, but a planned and organised affair, applying to all Ireland.[5]

Not only that, O’Hannigan personally had been helping with the script for rebellion long before coming to Louth. Even a game of football could be weaponised, such as when one of the players, one Sunday morning in Phoenix Park, carelessly kicked the ball over a barbed-wire fence and into the Magazine Fort. Watching the British soldier on duty allowing the player in to retrieve the ball, O’Hannigan began thinking of ways to exploit this chink in military security.

The Magazine Fort, Dublin

Both his underground superiors, Tom Clarke and Seán Mac Diarmada, were intrigued when O’Hannigan passed on his discovery, and assigned him to further study. From then, every match in the park would see the ball ‘accidently’ kicked over into the Fort, with sentries invariably abandoning their posts to return it, unwittingly giving O’Hannigan the germ of a plan for capturing the base, if and when the time came.[6]

None worked harder than he in laying the groundwork for this. Ever since his induction into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), he had made the acquaintance of other rising stars in the secret society – such as Liam Mellows, Con Colbert and Seán Heuston – as well as gaining the trust of the leadership, enough for him to witness a meeting of minds between two future architects of the Easter Rising:[7]

James Connolly

[James] Connolly held that in the event of a revolution and if the English used artillery against the rebels that it would be the equivalent to recognition that they were fighting the armed forces of another country and that other nations would recognise us accordingly. On the other hand, if they only used rifles and other small arms, they could claim they were only dealing with a riot.

[Tom] Clarke maintained that no matter what they used – even poison gas – it would make no difference, as all the nations at that time were too interested in looking after their own affairs and skins to take any interest in us.[8]

Donal O’Hannigan

Military matters had long been of interest to the IRB. The Wolfe Tone Clubs, formed in 1910-1, provided cover for lectures or talks, in which some aspect of soldiering would be the subject, though O’Hannigan was to rate this clandestine recruitment drive a failure – one only met the same people at every event, he complained.

Promising better returns were the Irish Volunteers, who O’Hannigan joined in accordance with IRB instructions to its initiates. In between parades with the rest of his Dublin battalion, O’Hannigan found himself selected for special training classes reserved for officers. His IRB credentials already made him an insider, as shown when Clarke confided in him that the reason for his unit’s march to Howth, on the 26^th July 1914, was to retrieve the shipment of rifles there.

Another gun-running mission in Kilcoole, on the 2^nd August 1914, was likewise a success. O’Hannigan and his IRB brethren had been purchasing firearms since 1912, but Howth and Kilcoole were orders of magnitude far exceeding the odd revolver here and there as before. In a reflection of this growing confidence, Mac Diarmada tasked O’Hannigan, a week after Kilcoole, with a tour of the Irish Volunteers from Kildare to Cork, which he covered by bicycle before returning to report to Headquarters in Dublin.

Volunteer Cycle Corps

“I found all centres very active and keen, but all were short of arms” – a warning that, whatever the successes of before, the brewing revolution had yet to match the ‘weapons gap’ with the enemy.[9]

The Grand Plan

Still, the following year of 1915 saw morale remain steady amongst the Irish Volunteers, training having been intensified and munitions stockpiles reinforced by a steady stream of consignments. O’Hannigan continued to travel on behalf of the Volunteers, as well as the IRB, setting up cells of the secret fraternity wherever he could. He had by now abandoned all social and sporting life – or any life outside the cause – and, at the start of April 1916, he received instructions from Clarke and Mac Diarmada, in the former’s shop on Parnell Street, to drop his employment at the Guinness Brewery as well.

Tom Clarke (left) and Seán Mac Diarmada

Something was planned for Easter Week, Clarke revealed. O’Hannigan would play his part by taking command of the Louth-Meath-South Armagh-South Down and South Monaghan districts. This was a formidably large area to be responsible for, though O’Hannigan was not one to shirk duty, showing reluctance only in leaving paid work, particularly if there was no guarantee of success (he was to compromise by using his fourteen days’ annual leave).

As Dundalk offered the most Volunteers in the designated areas, with 270 men out of the combined 1,337 – “this has stuck in my memory through the years since” – that town was to be used as O’Hannigan’s starting point. For guidance, Clarke provided a list of IRB personnel in Dundalk, names O’Hannigan already was familiar with, having been the one to swear them in at the start. Though O’Hannigan guessed that a proper Rising was what the IRB ultimately had in mind, Clarke gave no further insight, only that he was to visit Dundalk that weekend to familiarise himself with his intended headquarters.

This O’Hannigan did on the Saturday, two weeks before Easter, and wasted no time in contacting Paddy Hughes, who introduced him in turn to MacEntee and a number of other officers. A Sunday parade by the Irish Volunteers through Dundalk, followed by field exercises under O’Hannigan’s direction, allowed him to assess the overall quality available to him.

The Court House, Dundalk

Upon his quick return to Dublin on Monday, O’Hannigan first went to see Clarke in his shop, and then to St Edna’s School, where its headmaster, Patrick Pearse, was to give further instructions to him and Séan Boylan, the commander for Co. Meath. After introducing his guests to each other, Pearse outlined their respective roles:

I was to mobilise the Volunteers from the area at Tara in Meath on Sunday (Easter) at 7 pm. On completion of mobilisation I was to read the proclamation of the Irish Republic and then march via Dunshaughlin on Blanchardstown where we would contact Sean Boylen [sic] and the Dunboyne men. We were to seize the railway at Blanchardstown and cut the line to prevent the English artillery coming from Athlone.

The Fingal Bn. [5^th Bn. Dublin Brigade] were to contact us on our left flank and the Kildare men were to come in on our right flank. The Wicklow and South Co. Dublin area was to be on the right of them again. In this way we would form a ring around the city.

Dublin would thus be shielded from British counter-attacks from the countryside. In addition, the rebels could keep open supply-lines into the city, as well as – in the worst case scenario – escapes routes.

That was not all: While en route through Meath, O’Hannigan was to liberate German POWs held in Oldcastle, some of whom were artillery specialists who would man the ordnance – either captured from the enemy garrison in Athlone or delivered as part of the anticipated aid from Germany – which should help balance the weapons imparity. As for Boylan, his priority was to hold Blanchardstown until O’Hannigan could arrive, upon which the latter would take charge of the units making up the ‘ring’ while maintaining hourly contact with Pearse in central Dublin.[10]

Patrick Pearse in the uniform of a Volunteer

Step by Step

Éamonn Ceannt

All of which was far more elaborate than what had been previously envisioned. With time of the essence, O’Hannigan was to return to Dundalk that evening to ensure the IRB cells in Louth were sufficiently prepared. This took the better part of the week and it was not until Friday that he could report back to Dublin, this time in Éamonn Ceannt’s house.

Previously, he had been consulting his IRB superiors in ones and twos; gathered now was the conspiracy at almost full strength: Clarke as the chair, flanked at the table by Pearse and Mac Diarmada, with Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh also present, along with Cathal Brugha by the door and another participant who O’Hannigan believed, when recounting for posterity, to be James Connolly.

They listened as O’Hannigan made his report, the news visibly pleasing them, and he was rewarded with his command of the assigned area confirmed. Perhaps emboldened by this show of faith, O’Hannigan – now Commandant O’Hannigan – made the observation that the Hill of Tara would not be an ideal choice for a military starting-point, but Pearse insisted – beginning the blow for national liberty at Ireland’s historic royal capital was too good an act of symbolism to overlook.

Artistic depiction of the various 1916 leaders

There was little else to say, only a reminder of 7 pm on Easter Sunday being zero hour, and a warning that nothing be attempted prior to that. O’Hannigan was also to avoid arrest at all cost, which the man in question thought a tall order and said as much. After mulling over the likely scenarios:

Clarke said I could use my own discretion as regards shooting, but on no account to be arrested. All were in very good spirits and laughing and talking with each other. I was now very satisfied and as I left again Ceannt came to the gate with me and as we shook hands he said “Don’t let yourself be arrested or you will never forgive yourself.”

Which was easier said than done. O’Hannigan had not even left Dublin before spotting a police detective tracking him at Amiens Street (now Connolly) Station. O’Hannigan was able to lose him, only to find more RIC men waiting as his train pulled into Dundalk on the Saturday evening, the 15^th April, one week away from Easter. For now, the enemy were content to do nothing more than observe. All the same, O’Hannigan, remembering the dos and don’ts allowed to him, issued a blunt warning while addressing the Volunteers’ parade that evening:

I said that I believed that an attempt would be made at the end of the meeting to arrest me. I said “I have an automatic and a Colt revolver here and 13 rounds of ammunition, and 13 RIC [there were twenty policemen present] will die before I am arrested and then perhaps not either”.

This bold statement gave the Volunteers great heart as it was the first time anyone had spoken to them in that manner. I also wanted to let the police and the people know what the position was in case there was any shooting.

No arrest was attempted then, nor afterwards as O’Hannigan went about his business in Dundalk and elsewhere around Co. Louth. Instructions were dispatched for a general mobilisation of the Irish Volunteers on Easter Sunday, though O’Hannigan – an IRB operative through and through – kept the ultimate goal to himself. Ash Wednesday, on the 19^th April, saw a dry run for the Dundalk members, even if not many knew for what, as the men were marched outside town to practise offensive and defensive manoeuvres.

Irish Volunteers

Parallel to the grand plan ran smaller ones: the former comrades who had left during the split of August 1914 still remained in the form of the National Volunteers, with the guns they had taken with them stored in Ardee town. Phil McMahon, the officer in charge of the Irish Volunteers there, assured O’Hannigan that these would be seized in time for their own ends.

Eoin O’Duffy

Meanwhile, Eoin O’Duffy of Monaghan sent word of a large amount of explosives that he was willing to give to his comrades in Louth. Despite efforts to retrieve this, however, the material never arrived, though this was a small stone on an otherwise smooth road. Besides, the promised shipment of German aid was on its way, as Clarke and Mac Diarmada told O’Hannigan when he reported to them in Dublin on the 20^th April, the last Thursday before all hell was due to break loose.[11]

O’Hanigan shared in their confidence. When Paddy McHugh told him that, while he was willing to fight for Ireland, there was the paucity of weapons to consider, O’Hannigan replied: “That will be alright. We’ll get them.”[12]

Moving Out

A true conspirator, O’Hannigan showed his hand to the Louth men only one card at a time. After the Volunteers as a whole had been informed of a routine parade set for the end of the week, on Easter Sunday, he took the officers aside, including Hughes and MacEntee, and broke the real plans to them: There would be nothing routine about that day; instead, it was to be the blow for Irish liberty:

I gave out the necessary instructions, informing them the Rising was starting at 7 pm, on Sunday evening. I also gave them our plan as far as the mobilisation at Tara. All information given to them was secret and not to be conveyed to the men or any other person outside themselves.

By Saturday evening, O’Hannigan had updated the remaining IRB members in Louth about the insurrection-to-come. Slowly, surely, the Rubicon was being crossed.

Still, however small the steps being taken, an event of such magnitude could not help but  create ripples; the number of Volunteers attending Confession on Saturday evening, and then Mass in the morning, alone roused official suspicion. RIC surveillance increased, with no less than eight policemen posted outside where O’Hannigan stayed on Saturday. Otherwise, the guardians of the status quo made no moves to intervene – at the rate they were leaving things, it would be too late by the time they realised what was being plotted beneath their noses.

RIC policemen taking it easy

The explosives from Monaghan had still not materialised, so O’Hannigan focused on a chance closer to home: the rifles stored in Ardee by their rivals, the National Volunteers. Seizing them would require precise timing. As per strict orders from GHQ, nothing could be attempted before 7 pm, the appointed time for the Rising, when the rebels would need them the most.

Rather than delay, the Volunteers would set off for Tara as planned, while McMahon seized the rifles in Ardee and then deliver them to a waiting MacEntee in Dundalk. Then MacEntee was to catch up with the rest of the army, via a car laden with the goods, along with any news worth forwarding, for a friendly worker in the Dundalk telephone exchange had agreed to keep MacEntee abreast of any developments elsewhere in Ireland while he could.

Plaque for the John Boyle O’Reilly Hall on Clanbrassil Street, Dundalk

The Volunteers began to gather in Dundalk Square on Sunday morning at 9 am, with around a hundred and sixty standing to attention by half past, each man carrying three days’ worth of rations as instructed and holding whatever arms they had. Judging the iron to be hot, Commandant O’Hannigan gave the order to march in the direction of Ardee, their first stop on the trek to Tara, and where the appropriated rifles were hopefully waiting. Three miles out of Dundalk, McMahon met them on the road to inform O’Hannigan of the bad news: the rifles were staying where they were. Too many RIC watchers on the scene, McMahon explained.[13]

This left the army with “twelve bore shotguns, a few small arms amongst 200 men,” according to McHugh. Bayonets had been made by bolting blades from garden shears or hedge-clippers to the gun-barrels. With this martial pittance the Louth Volunteers intended to confront the might of the British Empire.[14]

Irish Volunteers

The Heist

Which would not do at all. O’Hannigan decided on a calculated risk: he and McMahon would drive into Ardee, while a detachment of fifty Volunteers would advance on foot to the town’s northern entrance. The rest of the army would continue on as before, under the command of Paddy Hughes.

Once in Ardee, McMahon took O’Hannigan to the chemist’s shop where the National Volunteers kept their coveted munitions. The four RIC constables outside did nothing as O’Hannigan rapped on the door. He entered as soon as it opened, with the air of a man who had every right to be where he was and to do what he was doing:

I asked the lady who had opened it if the rifles were still here and she said “yes”. I said I wanted to get them away as the “Sinn Feiners” were after them. She said “Thank God I have not slept since you left them here”. We found the rifles in a room in the house and McMahon and carried them to the hall and placed them against the wall.

The constables maintained their lack of reaction as O’Hannigan stepped outside to blow three blasts on his whistle, the signal for the fifty Irish Volunteers coming in from the north to make their appearance After all forty-eight Lee Enfield rifles had been removed from the chemist’s and in the hands of the Volunteers, O’Hannigan and McMahon got back in their car and drove next to where the ammunition was.

Ardee, Co. Louth (today)

Once again, a simple act of deception was sufficient:

Previous to this I had arranged with McMahon to have one of his men go to this house and to tell the people there that he had left the Irish Volunteers and had joined the Redmond [National] Volunteers and that the Irish Volunteers were after the ammunition and that it should be taken away and stored somewhere where the Irish Volunteers could not find it.

As before, this worked perfectly, the caretakers even assisting O’Hannigan and McMahon, upon their arrival, with the removal of the three boxes, each holding a thousand rounds. O’Hannigan had seized the pride of his rivals, equipped his men with what they needed most, and without as much as the threat of force, in keeping with GHQ’s directives.[15]

1871 Mauser Rifle, of the type commonly used by the Irish Volunteers

Although not present himself, MacEntee would recall this coup, and the exultation from it, in giddy, almost romantic terms:

Those rifles had long been a source of secret heart-burning to us. Every time a man handled his old single-shot, short-range shotgun, he thought of those beautiful Lee-Metfords, firing their five shots and sighted up to two thousand yards. Many times we had discussed the advisability of seizing them and, had we not been certain that when they were wanted in earnest they could be easily got, we would have taken them many months before. But the project was always deferred to a more propitious moment.[16]

That moment had now come – and not one too soon, considering the urgent need for weapons. But there was also the taste of sweet revenge. Back in 1915, when twenty or thirty men had met in Dundalk Town Hall with the intent of re-establishing the Irish Volunteers following the Split, the attendees found the building surrounded by rowdies from the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), a fraternity allied to the IPP and with a strong presence in Dundalk.

Belt-buckle with the initials AOH (Ancient Order of Hibernians)

Upon being refused entrance, the Hibernians tried to force their way in with sticks and clubs, prompting the defenders to smash furniture for makeshift cudgels to wield in response. The battle spilled out onto the street and was only broken up by the arrival of the RIC; even then, those leaving the Town Hall at the end of their resumed meeting had risked being set upon by AOH gangs lurking in the area.[17]

Stopping at Ardee

Inside Ardee, the Dundalk men were joined by their local comrades and some arrivals from Dunleer, swelling the army to about two hundred and thirty. Refreshments were in order, and so O’Hannigan arranged for tea and food to be purchased and brought out. While the men ate and rested their feet, the sergeant of the RIC detail, who were watching at a discreet distance, asked O’Hannigan for a quiet word. When he obliged:

The Sergeant told me that the telephones were going strong and that reinforcements were converging on Ardee from several points. He wanted to know if we were going back to Dundalk or going forward. Apparently his main concern was to get us out of Ardee and his district before there was a clash.

Even if most of the Volunteers had by now guessed the true ambition behind their manoeuvres, keeping the enemy in the dark for as long as possible would be useful. They were going for a lengthy trek and then back to Dundalk, O’Hannigan assured the sergeant, who was relieved to hear this, even agreeing to the request for more refreshments to be prepared for when the Volunteers came back through Ardee – which, of course, O’Hannigan had no intention of doing.

The only way now was forward.[18]

Irish Volunteers

Placated the sergeant may have been, the RIC continued to shadow the column out of Ardee and towards Slane. “The progress now was slowing as our untrained men were tiring,” remembered Paddy McHugh. McHugh had been previously entrusted with delivering messages by O’Hannigan, and thus knew more than most, but he could see the effects of keeping the others in the dark beginning to show around him.  “It would be untrue to say that there was no grumbling as the rank and file of the men did not know where our main objective lay.”[19]

Even worse consequences of conspiracy were soon revealed. McHugh had never joined the IRB, “having a holy horror of secret societies.” It was an aversion he would consider fully justified in the years to come: “Truly, secret societies only breed traitors and informers.”[20]

Which is a matter of opinion, perhaps, but keeping one hand ignorant of the other’s doings – the strategy the Easter Rising was built on – would certainly prove to have repercussions no less unfortunate.

The Volunteers had not yet reached Slane when MacEntee caught up with them in a motorcar at around 2:45 pm. As instructed, he was bringing news on the general situation in Ireland, though the message was not one even insiders like O’Hannigan and McHugh could have foreseen. By the authority of Eoin MacNeill, Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, all activities, such as the one they were currently performing, were to be ceased at once and the men to return home until further notice. The Rising had just been cancelled.[21]

To be continued in: Victory From The Jaws of Defeat: The Easter Rising in Co. Louth, 1916 (Part II)

References

[1] Dundalk Democrat, 06/05/1916

[2] MacEntee, Seán (BMH / WS 1052), pp. 51-3

[3] Ibid, pp. 2-5

[4] Duffy, Patrick (BMH / WS 237), p. 6

[5] McHugh, Patrick (BMH / WS 677), p. 11

[6] O’Hannigan, Donal (BMH / WS 161), pp. 7-8

[7] Ibid, pp. 2-3

[8] Ibid, p. 9

[9] Ibid, pp. 3-6

[10] Ibid, pp. 8-12

[11] Ibid, pp. 12-15

[12] McHugh, p. 12

[13] O’Hannigan, pp. 16-18

[14] McHugh, p. 13

[15] O’Hannigan, pp. 18-20

[16] MacEntee, p. 8

[17] McHugh, pp. 9-10

[18] O’Hannigan, pp. 20-1

[19] McHugh, p. 15

[20] Ibid, pp. 11-2

[21] O’Hannigan, p. 21

Bibliography

Newspaper

Dundalk Democrat

Bureau of Military History Statements

Duffy, Patrick, WS 237

MacEntee, Seán, WS 1052

McHugh, Patrick, WS 677

O’Hannigan, Donal, WS 161

Out of the Shadows: Rory O’Connor in the Easter Rising and After, 1916-9 (Part I)

A Close Shave

Something was up – Lieutenant Laurence Nugent knew that at least. After all, his superior officer, Captain T.J. Cullen, had received word, in the lead-up to the Easter Week of 1916, to ready their men in preparation for a freight of rifles that was said to be on its way to Ireland.

Nugent and Cullen were in something of an odd position. When the Irish Volunteers split almost two years previously, in September 1914, both had elected to go with the majority and form the National Volunteers. But, though training continued as before, the old spark was lost. Members began dropping out of the ranks, never to return.

A parade of the National Volunteers, with John Redmond (left, holding flag)

When Éamonn Ceannt addressed a Dublin parade of the National Volunteers in August 1915 on behalf of the rival Irish Volunteers, both Cullen and Nugent were receptive to a possible change to their stupefying pace. There was the chance of a shipment of guns and ammunition into the country, Ceannt confided, too large for his organisation to handle alone. Would the National Volunteers be interested in taking part in any action – and probably soon – for the freedom of Ireland?

Éamonn Ceannt

Every man present agreed and, from then on, the National Volunteers in Dublin could train with a goal in mind. But, by the end of the week before that of Easter 1916, news filtered down that the promised rifles were not coming after all. Orders for an uprising were cancelled, and that appeared to be that.

Nugent was on his way to work on Easter Tuesday when he chanced upon a group of women and children watching from the top of a street leading to St Stephen’s Green, where a man – so Nugent was told – lay dead inside the park railings. Nugent pressed forward to see for himself and was ordered back by the British soldiers who were occupying the Shelbourne Hotel, opposite the park. Bullets were whining through the air, and Nugent tried warning the onlookers about the danger, but they paid him no attention, seeming more curious than concerned about the battle unfolding in their city.

Nugent seems to have been equally blasé in his own way, for he continued on to his shop at 9 Lower Baggot Street. When Captain Cullen came in with another man who was – incongruously enough – carrying half a ham and some mutton, Nugent sent them upstairs, out of sight from his customers, for he recognised Cullen’s companion as Rory O’Connor, a leading figure in the Irish Volunteers.

“That was a close shave,” said Cullen, taking off O’Connor’s hat. As Nugent examined the hat, he found it had been holed through on either side. Looking at its owner, he saw a burnt break in O’Connor’s thick black hair, made by, say, a passing bullet.[1]

Roderic Ignatius Patrick O’Connor

Rory O’Connor

In the years to come, O’Connor was to leave a striking impression on many who had known him. “He was a smallish, very dark man, dark skin, blue jaws,” remembered Geraldine Dillon (née Plunkett), “he had to shave twice a day and had such a deep voice that it seemed to slow his speech, yet he had great charm.” This charisma worked itself on her brothers, George and Jack, both of whom followed him unquestioningly.[2]

Another Plunkett sibling on close terms with O’Connor was Joseph. For someone like O’Connor, looking to strike a blow for Irish freedom, this connection meant a lot, for Joseph Plunkett sat on the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). The family property at Larkfield, Co. Dublin, became the base for the growing number of young Irishmen united in their desire to overthrow British rule in Ireland.

As part of this, O’Connor worked with George and Jack on their brother’s staff, along with Michael Collins – another rising star in the revolutionary underground – and Tommy Dillon, Geraldine’s future husband. O’Connor was put in charge of engineering, a role which suited his talents.[3]

He had worked on the engineering staff of the then Midland Great Western Railway in Ireland, before emigrating to Canada in 1910. There, he had been employed in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and afterwards the Canadian Northern Railway. During this time, he was responsible for the laying of some 1,500 miles of railroad, according to the estimations of his brother, Norbert.

Canadian Northern Railway under construction

In 1915, O’Connor returned to Ireland. His closeness to the Plunketts was such that Norbert believed he had come back “at the request of Joseph Plunkett.”[4]

Making Contacts

John Redmond

Having said that, there is not much to indicate that O’Connor even knew Joseph Plunkett at that stage. Also, his motive for returning seems to have been not for any brewing rebellion but instead to fight for King and Country in the Great War – an odd desire for a budding Fenian. Inspiration came from John Redmond’s call for Irishmen to enlist in order to secure favourable terms for Home Rule, though O’Connor did not intend to go quite as far as joining the British Army, preferring instead a different military that was on the same side. He told Dillon:

…that he was responding to Redmond’s call and that a Colonel…had promised to get him a comission [sic] in the Engineering Corp of the Canadian army. I told him to take his time and explained the situation to him. I brought him out to Larkfield and he soon gave up on the idea of joining the British forces.[5]

O’Connor and Dillon had known each before as school chums at Clongowes Wood. They met again when Dillon came to study in Dublin in 1905, and O’Connor, recognising a kindred spirit, introduced him to the Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League, a grassroots movement for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP).[6]

Both joined the committee, as did Patrick J. Little, a future government minister, who accredited O’Connor with being one of the driving forces in a “remarkably clever and interesting” body of young men, consisting mostly of students and professionals, who wanted a voice in how their country should be run.

Joe Devlin

Young Ireland proved a touch too radical for the IPP grandees, one of whom, Joe Devlin, tried to persuade them, sometime in 1905 or 1906, to take a less strident approach. He failed, but the divergent opinions on board the committee proved too fractious and the group broke up in 1915, while O’Connor was still working in Canada.

Shortly after his homecoming, and diverted from his original idea of enlisting, O’Connor went into business with Dillon, setting up together the Larkfield Chemical Company, the intent being to produce aspirins. From the outset, they ran into difficulties with the authorities, against which they hired their old Young Ireland colleague, Little, as a solicitor. As Little described:

We floated the company, in spite of a refusal to allow us to do so, under a regulation of D.O.R.A (Defence of the Realm Act). On the legal advice of my brother, Edward, I found that D.O.R.A. did not prevail over an Act of Parliament and proceeded to float our company.

Complications continued when machinery purchased from Glasgow arrived defective. The offending suppliers were taken to court and the suit settled for £2,000.[7]

Tommy Dillon (centre), with Rory O’Connor (right) and an unidentified third man (left)

In any case, O’Connor and Dillon, with the assistance of the Plunketts, on whose property in Larkfield they worked, had become more interested in fermenting rebellion than curing headaches, having learnt of the IRB plans for an armed uprising. At one war council, O’Connor said to those present: “Do you realise what this effort is going to cost in blood? But, if you decide on fighting, I am with you.”

At least, that is what he later told Nugent. It is unlikely, however, he would have been inducted into such a conspiracy if the others were not already certain of his commitment. Previous rebellions had been thwarted in no small part by their carelessness with information. This time, the Military Council would hide its secrets well – perhaps a little too much so.[8]

The Castle Document

Among O’Connor’s responsibilities was the printing of the ‘Castle Document’ with the assistance of George Plunkett. The Military Council, including its de facto leader Tom Clarke, had met previously at Larkfield, in the bedroom of the sickly Joseph, to discuss the document, purportedly smuggled out of Dublin Castle by a sympathetic clerk, which detailed the authorities’ plans to move against the Irish Volunteers as well as a number of other suspect bodies in Ireland.

Colm Ó Lochlainn

Its credibility would be a matter of controversy. Geraldine was sure it was genuine, but Colm Ó Lochlainn, its original printer before O’Connor and George took over, assumed it a forgery on account of it being in Joseph’s handwriting. Regardless of authenticity, printing the piece proved boring work. O’Connor and George sung together to get through the tedium, even resorting to God Save the King as well as the more expected fare such as The Croppy Boy and I Tread the Ground That Felons Tread. When halfway done, one of them knocked the ink over with an elbow and the work had to be started all over again.

More problems arose. When the finished product was sent out to the newspapers, none would accept it as real. Instead, O’Connor brought a copy to the New Ireland, a weekly newspaper with modest circulation, whose proprietor and editor was none other than Little. After acquiring it in February 1916, Little had assured O’Connor that he would publish anything if it served the cause of Ireland. He was as good as his word, though it was only when the ‘Castle Document’ was read out at the Dublin Corporation meeting on the 19^th April 1916 that it finally achieved some proper publicity.

The Castle Document

The intent behind it had been two-fold, as Geraldine explained:  “Make the Castle hesitate to do the things they were accused of planning, and make the public realise what was planned whether there was a Rising or not.”[9]

Last Minute Plans

Eoin MacNeill

‘Whether or not’ would become a pressing issue when, after months of preparation, the Irish Volunteers were confronted by the one thing the conspirators had failed to account for: dissension in their own ranks. Suspicious of the activities of the IRB, to which he was not affiliated, Eoin MacNeill, as Chief of Staff, had abruptly countermanded the parade for Easter Sunday that was to provide cover for the Rising, effectively putting the insurrection on hold.

If the IRB had assumed MacNeill would be a compliant figurehead, then they gravely misjudged him. Faced with this unexpected setback, Geraldine assumed that the event would be postponed for a week, possibly longer, until the swirl of rumours obscuring everything had been cleared. She had her own investment in it – she and Dillon were due to be married on Easter Sunday in a double wedding with Joseph and his own fiancé, Grace Gifford.

Joseph Plunkett

Geraldine and Dillon visited Joseph on Saturday in the Metropole Hotel on Sackville (now O’Connell) Street, where he had checked in the day before, his luggage carried by Michael Collins as his aide-de-camp. Using his suite as a temporary base of operations, Joseph met with a succession of people until he could spare an hour for his sister and brother-in-law-to-be.

Joseph’s instructions to Dillon were to go to the Imperial Hotel on the same street and wait for news. In the event of activity, Dillon was to take over the chemical factory in Larkfield and set to work alongside O’Connor in making munitions. That is, if anything happened – Joseph was as unsure on that point as anyone since MacNeill’s intervention had thrown everything and everyone into disarray.[10]

Joseph had no time to get married, but Geraldine and Dillon still could. With the Rising due either Sunday or Monday, at least as far as Geraldine understood, she insisted the ceremony be on the earlier date – with the world about to be upturned, she knew she had to carpe diem. Besides, she had had enough of living with her harridan of a mother and grasped at any chance to escape the suffocating confines of her family life.

The wedding was held accordingly in Rathmines Church, attended by George and Jack, both in the green uniform of the Irish Volunteers, with O’Connor, in civilian clothes, acting as best man. His duties included the ejection, helped by the Plunkett brothers, of two police detectives who tried to intrude.

Afterwards, the newly-weds cycled to the Imperial Hotel as per instruction. O’Connor came with the news that MacNeill’s countermand had been published in the Sunday Independent, making it definite. As far as O’Connor could say, the Rising was definitely off for the rest of Sunday but Monday remained an open question. Still, the new Mr and Mrs Dillon should remain on the alert, at least from noon the next day.

Site of the former Imperial Hotel, Sackville Street, Dublin

If anything was to happen, O’Connor told them, it would be then.

Easter Monday

The couple were seated by their open second-storey window, looking out on to Sackville Street when the big question was finally answered by the column of uniformed Irish Volunteers marching towards the General Post Office (GPO), where they halted. As the Imperial Hotel stood directly opposite the GPO, the couple had a front-row view of the men wheeling left and continuing into the post office. Geraldine caught sight of Joseph, with Collins beside him, and a number of the other leaders, such as Patrick Pearse and Seán Mac Diarmada.

General Post Office, Dublin

There was a bang and Geraldine saw someone being carried away on a stretcher. When O’Connor came by their room shortly afterwards, he explained that one of the Irish Volunteers had slipped when entering the GPO, setting off the bomb in his hand.

Other than that, the long-gestating Rising was unfolding smoothly enough. With the GPO established as their headquarters, Volunteers began bringing in supplies and smashing windows with rifle-butts to make room for barricades. Geraldine asked O’Connor to tell Joseph to let her help, but when he returned to the Hotel at 6 pm, the answer he brought back was ‘no’. The GPO was too crowded, O’Connor explained.

Geraldine Plunkett

Instead, Joseph’s instructions were for her and Dillon to return to Larkfield with O’Connor and, if possible, manufacture some more explosives (Geraldine had already beheld the prowess of a Larkfield-made bomb when one was used to mangle an empty tramcar on Sackville Street for use in a barricade). To avoid British patrols on the way, it was agreed for O’Connor to take a different route to Geraldine and Dillon. He would try to reach his father’s residence in Monkstown, while the other two headed to Rathmines where the Plunketts owned another house, and the next day they would reconvene in Larkfield.

Night was falling and the street lights flickered on to guide the newly-weds as they cycled over O’Connell Bridge, encountering almost no one else along the way. The streets were devoid of people, whether civilians or military, and Geraldine could take satisfaction at least that the Rising, after all the effort and trouble to bring about, had taken everyone, the authorities especially, completely by surprise.

Tommy Dillon

At Larkfield, the trio reunited as planned on Tuesday morning. O’Connor had first checked in at the GPO, and assured Geraldine and Dillon that Joseph was well. As the assigned chemical expert on the Plunkett staff, Dillon began making production plans as per Joseph’s orders, but O’Connor stopped him, saying that the situation had moved past that.

The Rising, it seemed, was not going as smoothly as hoped.

When Dillon wondered if it would be any use going to the GPO, O’Connor again demurred, repeating Joseph’s line that the building was packed enough as it was. For want of anything else to do, O’Connor decided he would take messages in and out of the GPO and other parts of the city, a risky endeavour considering the fighting that was about to be waged. It was while doing this that O’Connor, after narrowly avoiding a bullet to the head, met Cullen, who took him to Nugent’s shop in Baggot Street.[11]

Something to Do

There, O’Connor did not mince words. “He told us the whole position and it was hopeless,” Nugent remembered.

As O’Connor explained, much of their ammunition had already been spent and the remainder would not last for more than a few days. Joseph Plunkett was confident that their ‘gallant allies in Europe’ would come to their rescue, having been to Germany beforehand and heard the promises of a military landing, but no one else in the GPO was putting much stock in this possibility.

Sir James Gallagher

O’Connor begged the two National Volunteers to do everything in their power to effect a ceasefire of some kind. The duo were as good as their word, as they gathered a small delegation of fellow officers to call on the Lord Mayor, Sir James Gallagher, on the Wednesday. With Cullen and Nugent were Major James Crean, the head of the National Volunteers, the Hon. Fitzroy Hemphill and Creed Meredith. None of these three were aware of Cullen and Nugent’s contacts with O’Connor or the Irish Volunteers.

Unfortunately, Gallagher proved less than helpful:

Our reception was anything but dignified. Both the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress gave us terrible abuse. Both expressed the hope that not a rebel would escape.

One by one we tried to reason with him that it was for the purpose of stopping the fight that we wished to intervene. He had been to the Castle and had consulted with the Army Authorities already.

After a long debate he said he would mention the matter. But he would not recommend any cessation of hostilities until the rebels were wiped out.

With this not-very-encouraging promise obtained from the Lord Mayor, for what it was worth, Nugent and Cullen left the other three to next try John T. Donovan, the MP for West Wicklow and, more importantly, the Secretary of the National Volunteers. Through him, the pair hoped to induce John Redmond to exert his influence in Westminster for a truce. They were no more successful here:

Donovan was also very hostile and said that a telegram had been sent to him by Mr Redmond ordering him to call out the National Volunteers to assist the British Military. The telegram had not been delivered and that was why he did not act. He could not act on a ‘phone message. We were sorry for this as we would have answered the call and used the arms and ammunition on our own way.

With little to show for their efforts, Cullen and Nugent returned to O’Connor, who had been mulling over options after talking with Pearse in the GPO. He asked the pair to contact the Dublin Fusiliers, one of the British regiments tasked with putting down the Rising, and offer £2 a man to defect, as per Pearse’s instructions.

Royal Dublin Fusiliers

Neither Cullen nor Nugent bothered asking O’Connor if he even had that sort of money – as the Fusiliers were based in Kilmainham, which was firmly in enemy hands, they had no chance of reaching them anyway. When Cullen offered the services of whatever National Volunteers he could muster, O’Connor declined.

“Send them home. We have no arms for them now,” he said, adding a trifle optimistically: “We will want them again.”[12]

The End and the Start

O’Connor spent the rest of that fateful week passing messages in and out of the GPO – when he could. He was able to pass through British cordons by showing a letter to his father, a solicitor to the Land Commission, from Augustine Birrell, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, but even this proof of official connections had its limits, such as on the Thursday, when he found himself under fire while en route to the GPO and was forced to turn back.

Irish rebels (of the ICA?) take aim on a rooftop

The nonstop rattle of machine-guns had by then permeated the city, intercut by the boom of artillery. On Saturday, news filtered out that the rebel leaders had surrendered, cutting short the fight for Irish freedom. Those Volunteers who had not managed to slip away were held overnight on the wet grass of the Rotunda Gardens under searchlights and the curses of their British captors.

Still at large, O’Connor made further use of his father, getting him to write a letter to Dublin Castle, begging for intervention for George and Jack. Even if there was little chance of Joseph being spared execution, there might be hope for his brothers. He was on his way to deliver the letter when a bullet from a sniper, still holding out in the Royal College of Surgeons, ricocheted off a metal box on the corner of Grafton Street. O’Connor had had a close call before, but this time he was not so lucky, being hit in the leg.

Left to right: George Plunkett, Rory O’Connor and Jack Plunkett

So stricken, O’Connor was admitted to Mercer’s Hospital under an assumed name. Nonetheless, some of the nurses guessed he was one of the rebels on account of the holy medal in his pocket, a gift from Fiona Plunkett, Joseph’s sister, with whom he had an off-and-on relationship. Concerned that the nurses – who made plain their views on the Rising by telling O’Connor that he ought to be shot – would give away the identity of his patient, the doctor had him moved to a nursing home in Leeson Street.

He stayed there for three weeks until his brother Norbett found him. Another visitor while he was recuperating was Cullen, to whom O’Connor had sent word through one of the friendlier nurses. There was much for them to talk about, after all.[13]

As Nugent put it:

For Rory O’Connor, Capt. T.J. Cullen, myself and the men who had already started organising again, the war was still on. Rory mentioned that it did not stop at any time, and while he and those who were prepared to work with him did so it would continue to carry on in various ways.[14]

“All changed, changed utterly,” wrote Y.B. Yeats on the Rising but, for O’Connor, it was merely business as usual.

Sackville (now O’Connell) Street in ruins after the Rising

Transience

O’Connor had never been particularly important before the Rising, instead serving as an aide to those who were, such as Joseph Plunkett. But now, as one of the few leaders of the Irish Volunteers alive and at liberty, he was ideally placed to help shape events. For, though the Rising had been a military disaster, its aftermath provided a crop of opportunities to be harvested.

Patrick Little was one of his allies in this venture. If before Little had been dipping his toe in radical politics, now he threw himself in wholeheartedly, having had his offices in Eustace Street, where he did his work as a solicitor, trashed by British soldiers during Easter Week. When a rifle was found on the premises, the soldiers dragged out the son of the caretaker into the narrow lane at the back of the building, where they shot him.

H.H. Asquith

The boy had been with the Irish Volunteers but, confused by the contradictory orders over mobilisation, he had decided to stay at home with his family. When H. H. Asquith visited Dublin three weeks after the Rising, Little made sure to avoid contact as the Prime Minister passed by Eustace Street.[15]

As editor of New Ireland, Little had a platform to use, and in O’Connor he had a teacher in the new way of thinking. The two would lunch together in Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street, and Little attributed much of the content of his writings from that time to these conversations. Not only Little but the country as a whole was revaluating its stance on the National Question. When the pair travelled together to South Longford for the by-election in May 1917, even they were taken aback by the fervour of the crowds who responded at the sight of a tricolour with hearty cheers of “Up the Republic!”

The former site of Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street, Dublin

“This was a time when public opinion was very confused and in a very transient condition,” Little remembered. “Many Unionists were prepared to accept Home Rule, and moderate national opinion, which represented the majority of people – and included the former supporters of Redmond – were becoming strongly Republican.”[16]

Sinn Féin Rising

Among the beneficiaries of this shifting mood was Arthur Griffith. The ‘Sinn Féin Rebellion’, the British state had called the Rising but, in truth, Griffith and his talking-shop of a group had had naught to do with it. Which did not stop Sinn Féin from basking in the appropriated glow of Easter Week when the public mood turned in its favour. Nor was Griffith in any particular hurry to correct the misnaming. Nationalist Ireland had been dominated for years by the IPP but now, as trust in Redmond and his Home Rule agenda plummeted, Sinn Féin was poised to step in with a promise of its own.

“As Ireland became pro-insurrection she became Sinn Féin, without knowing what Sinn Féin was,” was how one contemporary described the phenomenon, “except that it stood generally for Irish independence in the old complete way, the way in which the Irish Party had not stood for it.”[17]

Opportunity presented itself in North Roscommon at the start of the new year, when the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) died in January 1917, and Count George Plunkett was the Sinn Féin selection for the resulting by-election. If the Rising had been a family affair for the Plunketts, then so was the subsequent political movement, as the Count was the father of Joseph Plunkett, and O’Connor, serving as the candidate’s unofficial aide, was his son-in-law in a way, given his romantic involvement with Fiona Plunkett.

When Nugent arrived in Roscommon, he found the contested consistency gripped in the chill of winter, and a threadbare campaign. The local Sinn Féin circles had not even been aware he was coming, so poor was the communication between them and Dublin. Nugent had been sent by O’Connor to help with the canvassing, but the only thing O’Connor had given him was advice, and that amounted to no more than ‘do what you think is right’.

Neither he nor Nugent had any experience in electioneering, or in public speaking in the case of the latter, but the handful of Sinn Féin activists who greeted him at Dromod Station, Co. Leitrim, just outside Roscommon, insisted he speak after Mass the next morning, the opening day of the campaign. Despite his doubts, as he stood in one foot of snow on the platform, Nugent did not feel he could refuse.

Nugent was set to speak at Rooskey, Co. Roscommon, after Thomas Smyth, the Irish Party MP for Leitrim South. The two foes were driven to the church by the local priest, Father Lavin, who was keen to stay on friendly terms with both sides. After being introduced by Lavin in the church, Smyth delivered his pience, only to be received in stony silence by the congregation. Nugent then rose without waiting for an invitation and mounted the steps to the chancel for his turn.

The Election of the Snows

Afterwards, Nugent would not be able to remember what he said, only that, according to others who were present, they were “very strong things”. When Smyth tried to interrupt, he was quickly shushed. Nugent could read the writing on the wall: “As far as the election in this district was concerned, the Count had won there that first Sunday morning of the campaign.”

Things went even worse for Smyth later that day. He was so angry that he refused to let Nugent come with him and Father Lavan in the car to Slatta Chapel, where the two representatives were due to appear next.

“Smith [sic] could have saved himself the journey,” Nugent gloated, as the MP’s vehicle became stuck in the snow, forcing him and the priest to walk to Slatta Chapel, which Nugent had already reached by horse and trap. “My meeting was over before he arrived and it was most enthusiastic.”

Rubbing salt further into the wound, when Smyth finally had the chance to address the crowd, he was barred from doing so.[18]

Margaret Pearse

The times, they were a-changing, a point underlined when the votes from polling day were counted in the Roscommon Courthouse. Nugent drove back to Dublin, reaching his house in Dundrum to find it full of Sinn Féin supporters, including Margaret and Margaret Mary Pearse, the mother and sister respectively of the 1916 martyr. Though Margaret Pearse said she would be content with a win by as much as a single vote, even she found Nugent’s announcement of a landslide victory by Count Plunkett hard to take in.

When news of the result and its scale was published in the evening papers, the country understood that a great statement had been made – what that message was, however, would take some deciphering.[19]

Different Ideas

“When people say that this was not a Republican election, they say wrong,” Nugent would later write. “The principles of the men of Easter Week were shouted from every platform. From the crowds attending these meetings came the cries of ‘Up Dublin’.”[20]

Count Plunkett

That he felt the need to clarify the issue was a sign in itself. It was not even clear if Count Plunkett intended to take his newly-won seat at Westminster, as some wanted, or if he would abstain on Republican principles, as per his declaration. And so O’Connor, acting as Plunkett’s unofficial director of operations, dispatched Nugent back to Roscommon to gauge local opinion on the question.

He returned with the answer that the electorate was not only fully in agreement with its MP but would return him with an even greater majority in the event of another election. When the Count confirmed that he would indeed not be taking his seat, there was, according to Nugent, “consternation in the ranks of Sinn Féin.”[21]

It was clear that, despite their points of ideological overlap, there was at least as many differences between Sinn Féin and the burgeoning Republican movement, embodied in the Irish Volunteers, the IRB and behind-the-scenes operatives like O’Connor. “Rory O’Connor and the people working with him had different ideas from the Sinn Féin party,” was how Nugent put it.[22]

‘Politicians’, a term loaded with contempt in the mouths of Nugent and other Republicans, included their Sinn Féin partners as much as the Redmondite old guard:

The politicians were different from the Volunteers. They saw no hope of recovery on Republican lines. They were preparing to go back to their old political policy of action. Passive resistance was their programme.[23]

When Count Plunkett announced at a rally in Ballaghaderreen, Co. Roscommon, that the Irish Volunteers would be reformed and organised, this was exactly in line with O’Connor’s agenda, which most certainly did not include ‘passive resistance’. For there was a new battle to be waged, one not limited to Dublin and a few other scattered districts as Easter Week had been.

It would be nationwide.

It would be a Rising worthy of the name.

O’Connor’s statement on Easter Tuesday – “Send them home. We shall want them again” – now took on a different, more prophetic, meaning.

“But the politicians were troublesome,” Nugent noted with a sigh. “They did not countenance another fight.”[24]

Which Ticket?

However annoying politicians might be, politics was not something that could be ignored. O’Connor had by then appointed himself secretary to Count Plunkett who, having scored his major win in North Roscommon, did not seem inclined to do anything with it. O’Connor would have to enter the Plunkett family residence in 26 Upper Fitzwilliam Street early enough to find all the mail dealing with the new movement before the absent-minded Count could put the letters in his pocket and forget about them.[25]

26 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin

As Ireland reassessed where it stood on the National Question, Sinn Féin was undergoing some restructuring of its own. After the North Roscommon by-election, Griffith increased the Executive with a few extra faces but, otherwise, “no one seemed to know what to do,” recalled Michael Lennon, one of the new Executive members. “Sinn Féin had three or four hundred pounds in the bank but organisation there was none.”

Arthur Griffith

Lennon was uncomfortably aware that Count Plunkett and his Republican-minded followers were forming a party of their own, one with which “it was difficult to work in harmony. Many of these then Republicans treated Mr Griffith with unconcealed contempt and aversion.” Griffith may have had name recognition, being “probably the best-known man out of gaol,” but what his opponents lacked in numbers, they made up for in pushiness.

A meeting held in the Mansion House, dubbed the ‘Plunkett Convention’, on the 19^th April 1917, was meant to unite the radicals of Ireland. Instead, it resulted in an undignified scramble between Giffith’s and Plunkett’s followers, one which Lennon cringed to remember:

The scene was most discouraging, and I think the delegates who had come from the country were rather disappointed at the obvious division among prominent people in Dublin.

After the Convention had ended, Griffith withdrew to his offices at 6 Harcourt Street. He was sitting in the front drawing-room with Lennon and a few other confidantes when:

Suddenly the door was thrown open and a man of splendid physique entered, followed by a frail figure. It was Michael Collins, accompanied by Rory O’Connor. This was the first time I ever saw the former. His entrance was characteristic of his manner at that period.

Looking around, rather truculently, his eyes rested on Mr Griffith, and he asked in a loud voice: “I want to know what ticket is this Longford election being fought on.”

Michael Collins

Griffith appeared rather more interested in the cigarette he was smoking. The by-election in South Longford was the second such contest of the year, one in which Sinn Féin and Plunkett’s faction were eager to replicate the success of North Roscommon – on whose terms, however, had yet to be decided.

“If you don’t fight the election on the Republican ticket you will alienate all the young men,” Collins thundered to the room. By ‘young men’, he meant the Irish Volunteers. Even if not meant as a threat, it was hard not to take it as one.

‘A Great Silent Worker’

To Lennon, this was the first time he had heard the Republic being pushed as official policy, a sign of how divergent he and the others in Sinn Féin were from Collins, O’Connor and the other ‘young men’. The discussion – or argument, rather – warred on until, tiring of it, Collins and O’Connor withdrew to count the donations from the convention, the question put aside but most certainly not forgotten.[26]

It was noticeable that Collins had been doing the talking while O’Connor remained silent; ‘fragile’, perhaps, but no less of a presence – or influence. “Rory O’Connor was not a politician or a parade man,” so Nugent described him. “He was a great silent worker and, consequently, he was not as well known to the rank and file of the army as were most of the other leaders.”[27]

That the Plunkett Convention had happened at all was due to O’Connor. Dillon believed he had taken on the role of its secretary because no one else was doing it The invitation to the event, issued in the name of Count Plunkett, had been met with many a hostile reception, at least according to the Freeman’s Journal. Which was unsurprising, this being the organ of the IPP, but O’Connor would read almost every daily edition, specifically looking for the names of the one or two members in the various county or district councils who did not condemn the invitation, even when the rest voted to reject it.

To each of these dissenters, O’Connor would dispatch a letter, saying:

I see by the paper that you are the only person in ____ who represents the true opinions of the people and therefore send you a card of invitation to the convention.

“In this way,” Dillon described, “a very large attendance at the [Plunkett] Convention from all over the country was secured and tickets left over were given to Dublin supporters, so that when the day came the Round Room was full.”

For his part, Dillon had drawn up the agenda, with a number of resolutions to be passed. He did this at O’Connor’s request since Count Plunkett, after signing his name to the invites, assumed that all he had to do was address the attendees and leave it at that. Without O’Connor intervening with a workable agenda, the event might still have been an embarrassing flop. Instead, the Plunkett Convention was the first large-scale meeting in a movement that would upheave the political status quo.[28]

And yet, despite all his work, O’Connor “never appeared on the scene. He was almost unknown,” according to Nugent, which was apparently the way he liked it. Even with the culmination of Sinn Fein’s political ascent, the Dáil Éireann, Geraldine Dillon knew of her friend’s involvement only as the one who escorted her and Fiona Plunkett to its inauguration, on the 21^st January 1919, at the Mansion House.[29]

The first Dáil session, January 1919

On that same day, two policemen were shot dead at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary, in the opening volley of what would become variously known as the War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish War or the Tan War; throughout which, O’Connor was to remain in the shadows, an obscure figure to the wider public despite the leading role he played.

When a reporter from the Derry Journal met O’Connor in April 1922, finding him to be a “serious, ascetic and somewhat cadaverous-looking man”, it was noted that, despite his involvement in the Republican movement since 1916, no one had heard of him until the recent Treaty split.[30]

To be continued in: Out of the Bastille: Rory O’Connor and the War of Independence, 1918-1921 (Part II)

References

[1] Nugent, Laurence (BMH / WS 907), pp. 15-8, 30-1

[2] Plunkett Dillon, Geraldine (edited by O Brolchain, Honor) In the Blood: A Memoir of the Plunkett family, the 1916 Rising, and the War of Independence (Dublin: A. & A. Farmar Ltd, 2012), p. 311

[3] Ibid, pp. 195, 199-200

[4] O’Connor, Norbert (BMH / WS 527), p. 2

[5] University College Dublin Archives, Éamon de Valera Papers, P/150/576

[6] Ibid

[7] Little, Patrick J. (BMH / WS 1769), pp. 5-6, 8

[8] Nugent, p. 43

[9] Plunkett Dillon, pp. 210-3 ; Little, p. 11

[10] Plunkett Dillon, pp. 214-5

[11] Ibid, pp. 219-22, 224-6

[12] Nugent, pp. 32-3

[13] Ibid, p. 50 ; Plunkett Dillon, pp. 226, 228 ; Little, pp. 14-5

[14] Nugent, p. 51

[15] Little, p. 21

[16] Ibid, pp. 16, 52, 54

[17] O’Hegarty, P.S., The Victory of Sinn Féin (Dublin: University College Dublin, 2015), p. 5

[18] Nugent, pp. 70-1

[19] Ibid, p. 79

[20] Ibid, p. 75

[21] Ibid, p. 80

[22] Ibid, p. 67

[23] Ibid, p. 68

[24] Ibid, pp. 69, 80

[25] P/150/576

[26] Lennon, Michael, ‘Looking Backward. Glimpses into Later History’, J.J. O’Connell Papers, National Library of Ireland (NLI) MS 22,117(1)

[27] Nugent, p. 43

[28] P/150/575

[29] Nugnet, p. 92 ; Plunkett Dillon, p. 268

[30] Derry Journal, 17/04/1922

Bibliography

Bureau of Military History Statements

Little, Patrick J., WS 1769

Nugent, Laurence, WS 907

O’Connor, Norbert, WS 527

Books

O’Hegarty, P.S., The Victory of Sinn Féin (Dublin: University College Dublin, 2015)

Plunkett Dillon, Geraldine (edited by O Brolchain, Honor) In the Blood: A Memoir of the Plunkett family, the 1916 Rising, and the War of Independence (Dublin: A. & A. Farmar Ltd, 2012)

Newspaper

Derry Journal

National Library of Ireland Collection

J.J. O’Connell Papers

University College Dublin Archives

Éamon de Valera Papers

Still Waters Running Deep: The Tragedy at Ballykissane Pier, April 1916

Journey in the Dark

The struggle had been a hard one but at last the three men, Colm Ó Lochlainn, Denis Daly and Sam Windrim, could claim a victory – something otherwise in short supply – when they reached the mountain pass of Bealach Óisín. This was despite the plaintive protests of their car, with its hissing, spluttering engine, which had forced the trio to get out and push the floundering vehicle over the last few yards. For a long while afterwards, all they could do was slump over the bonnet, utterly exhausted, but on the brink of escape from Co. Kerry.

Bealach Óisín, Co. Kerry

As it was now dark, the three men slept as best they could, huddled together in the rear seat. Though they did not know it yet, Ó Lochlainn and Daly were all that remained of a five-strong team who had left Dublin the day before, on Good Friday 1916, as part of the opening moves in a national upheaval set to happen the following week at Easter.

Joseph Plunkett

Not that Ó Lochlainn knew much about it. Despite his place on the Irish Volunteers Executive, and his rank as captain on the staff of Joseph Plunkett, their Director of Intelligence, he had only been told the day before, Holy Thursday, when Plunkett briefed Ó Lochlainn about an operation he was to undertake in Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry, involving a wireless station near there to be dismantled and removed elsewhere.

Even then, Ó Lochlainn was ignorant as to the whys, until another high-ranking figure in the Irish Volunteers, J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell, stopped by later that Thursday at Ó Lochlainn’s house in Dublin, seeking to have some gaps in his own knowledge filled:

I told Ginger where I was going and he informed me he was off the following morning to take charge of the Volunteers of the Kilkenny and Carlow districts. He told me that a rising had been planned to start on Easter Sunday…but at that time he knew very little about what was going to take place, and wanted to know if I knew anything to confirm the rumours in circulation.[1]

Ó Lochlainn did not. Daly knew more, albeit only a little, from attending a series of strategy meetings with Seán Mac Diarmada, Michael Collins, Con Keating and Dan Sheehan:

As I understood it at the time, the main purpose of our mission was to enable wireless contact to be made with a German arms ship (I don’t think name of vessel was mentioned), which was expected at Fenlit on Easter Sunday.

The second objective was apparently to misdirect any Royal Navy warships off the South-West coast, via the wireless messages from the pilfered equipment, away from Tralee Bay where the German vessel in question would land. However “I cannot, from personal knowledge, confirm or deny, that there was such an intention,” Daly later wrote. “It is possible, but I do not recollect any discussion on the matter.”

Years might pass but much about the event that had changed Ireland irrevocably would remain obscured in ignorance, even to its participants.

Seán Mac Diarmada

Daly guessed that if anyone in the team had the dummy codes to send, it would have been Keating, a Kerryman who was to be their wireless operator. He and Daly were selected for the group, along with Ó Lochlainn and Sheehan, who had previously lived in London, where he helped procure rifles to be smuggled over to Ireland. Another conspirator, Joseph O’Rourke, was intended to go as the fifth man but Mac Diarmada decided at the last minute to keep him in Dublin to help coordinate the upcoming revolt and sent Charles Monahan, a Belfast native, in his place.[2]

Who was in charge is uncertain, as both Ó Lochlainn and Daly claimed command in their respective accounts. The two men met for the first time on the Friday morning at the Ballast Office, Westmoreland Street, where they were introduced to each other by Michael Collins, who then handed them their train tickets for the journey.

Ó Lochlainn had come on a bicycle, which he left behind with Collins. When Ó Lochlainn later asked for its return, Collins told him that his bicycle had ended up in a barricade on Abbey Street during Easter Week.[3]

Michael Collins (and bicycle)

Entering the Kingdom

The team headed down to Killarney by train, with Ó Lochlainn and Daly in one carriage, and Keating, Sheehan and Monahan on another, in order to throw off suspicion. Code words for their arrival had been prepared in advance – “Are you John?” “Yes, William sent me” – but they seemed so obvious that it was agreed not to bother with them.

As it turned out, there were only two cars waiting at Killarney Station – a Maxwell and a Briscoe – and both with Limerick plates, which rendered any code words unnecessary. Keating got into one, while the other four men, for appearance’s sake, walked into town until reaching the College, at which point the cars picked them up.[4]

Killarney Station, Co. Kerry

That is, at least, according to Ó Lochlainn’s version. In Daly’s, the group first had lunch in a pub in Killarney, before going to a road junction outside town at the appointed time:

The cars were there. Both cars were the property of Tommy McInerney of Limerick. He drove himself and the other was driven by a driver of whose name I do not remember. We had never met either man before.[5]

The second wheelman, Sam Windrim, had been drafted in at the last minute when domestic circumstances made it impossible for the intended driver, John Quilty, to participate. Both McInerney and Quilty were Limerick Volunteers but Windrim was a newcomer and so it was deemed necessary for the other two to first take him to the privacy of an upstairs office in Limerick and swear him to secrecy.[6]

Denis Daly

Again, Ó Lochlainn and Daly stayed together in the Maxwell, the remaining three in the Briscoe. The former group were driven ahead by Windrim, with the others at their tail, staying close enough to see each other’s lights. “It was never intended that we should separate,” remembered Daly.[7]

Ó Lochlainn watched the hedgerows and stone walls of the Kerry landscape pass by, while the sky deepened into twilight and then night. He also kept a close eye on the Briscoe to the rear, though not closely enough, because, after three miles out of Killorglin town, he realised that he could no longer see the headlights. The other car was gone.

They doubled back to search, straining their eyes through the gloom, to no avail. They stopped and waited, hoping that it was just a case of engine trouble or a flat tyre, and that their comrades would reappear at any moment but, as an hour passed, that no longer seemed feasible. Deciding that their mission took precedence, Ó Lochlainn, Daly and Windrim pressed on to Cahersiveen, only to be stopped on the road by a whistle-blast from ahead.

Two figures stepped into the headlights, showing themselves to be a sergeant and a constable in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Ó Lochlainn instinctively reached for the revolver he had borrowed from Plunkett.

Two RIC constables

Escape from Kerry

“Will we shoot?” asked Daly.

“No,” Ó Lochlainn replied. “I let someone else start the war. Talk will do for these fellows.”

Ó Lochlainn’s instincts proved correct. The three passengers explained that they were medical students to the RIC pair, who proceeded to give the car the briefest of searches. When they found a box and a bag, the explanation that the first held boots and the other clothes was enough to dissuade the policemen from peering inside.

In truth, the trio were equally ignorant of the contents, and it was only after the RIC men waved them through that they had a look for themselves. What they found was enough to startle Ó Lochlainn:

Oh! sergeant; that box contained two jemmies, a keyhole saw and a few other trinkets. The bag held an assorted collection of electrical appliances, two hatches and a heavy hammer.

Had the police been more thorough, the ‘medical students’ would have had a hard time explaining why their profession required these particular items. As it were:

Over the edge went the lot, owners having no further use for same. The job was off – a few words let drop by the sergeant had let out that a platoon of soldiers had come…and that all police units were on patrol.[8]

Ó Lochlainn and Daly agreed that the only thing to do was leave Kerry, since neither of them had the necessary technical knowledge to dismantle and rearrange the wireless set as intended. That responsibility would have lain with Keating and possibly Sheehan, and they were MIA with Monahan. Given the agitated state of the authorities, it was surmised that the second car had been stopped back in Killorglin and its occupants arrested.[9]

The Briscoe car used by the team

The only route out of the Kingdom ran through the narrow pass at Bealach Óisín, and to there they went, or at least tried to, for both the hilly terrain and their car fought them every inch of the way. For an hour they struggled uphill in the dark, much to the perturbation of their vehicle:

She was slipping and spitting and racing and faltering and stumbling and once she got one hind wheel into a gull and nearly turned over, and then we pushed and heaved and slipped and swore and called on the Lord and groaned and grunted until we arrived at last where the story begins.[10]

But, for them, it was the end. The car almost made it to Killarny, before breaking down for good. Ó Lochlainn and Daly left Windrim with his defeated Maxwell, and walked to the train station in time to catch the morning ride back to Dublin. While changing carriages at Mallow, Co. Cork, they received word that there had been arrests made in Kerry.[11]

Wrong Turn

But not of Keating, Sheehan or Monahan. Ó Lochlainn only learnt of their fate a month later when he chanced upon a newspaper article. It had been reported earlier, on the Easter Monday of the 24^th April but, given the brief attention the story received in the Irish Times, a reader could be forgiven for overlooking it:[12]

THREE MEN DROWNED IN KERRY – MOTOR CAR JUMPS INTO A RIVER

Three men, whose names are unknown, were drowned in the River Laune, near Killorglin, Thursday night. They were motoring towards Tralee and, taking the wrong turn, the car went over the quay wall, and the three men were drowned. The chauffeur escaped. Two of the bodies were recovered last evening.[13]

That the newspaper incorrectly dated the incident to Thursday and not the Friday shows how little was known at the time. John Quilty, in whose car the drowned men had been, heard that McInerney, the driver and sole survivor, had lost his way and asked for directions from a young girl on the roadside.

“First turn on your right,” she said, the direction leading an oblivious McInerney, driving almost blindly in the dark, down a cul-de-sac to Ballykissane Pier, over which they plunged.

Ballykissane Pier, Co. Kerry

Sheehan and Monahan went down with the Briscoe, but, as McInerney later told Quilty, he and Keating managed to pull free and swam together in the cold waters, shouting for help until a light appeared to guide them to shore.

Con Keating

Keating never made it, suddenly disappearing beneath the surface with a cry of “Jesus, Mary and Joseph”. McInerney pressed on until he reached dry land, where he was assisted by Patrick Begley, a schoolteacher who, as luck would finally have it, possessed enough Fenian feeling to hide McInerney’s gun before the RIC could find it on him.[14]

Supplied with a policeman’s uniform in place of his wet clothes, McInerney fenced with the questions posed to him, insisting to the RIC that he knew nothing about the other men and had only been hired to drive them to Cahersiveen. When Windrim – after seeing Ó Lochlainn and Daly off out of Kerry – and Quilty, whose number plate was on the salvaged Briscoe, were picked up in turn by the authorities, they too kept schtum, insisting on only the most innocent of motives for all involved.[15]

Coming to a Halt

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the newspapers, a second report concerning a most unusual occurrence in Kerry was published by the Press Bureau on that same day of Easter Monday:

The Secretary of the Admiralty announces – During the period between p.m. April 20 and p.m. April 21 an attempt to land arms and ammunition in Ireland was made by a vessel under the guise of a neutral merchant ship, but in reality a German auxiliary…The auxiliary sank and a number of prisoners was made.[16]

It was but one mishap that slowly but surely unravelled the plans for the Rising.

Captain Jeremiah O’Connell had assembled ten Kerrymen from his Cahersiveen Company on Easter Sunday, the most he could find on short notice. As it was he who had dispatched Keating to Dublin to answer a request for a man trained as a wireless operator, he was more in the loop than most.

Irish Volunteers

He had also been told to find a pilot for the boat that was to escort their German visitors to shore when they arrived, at which point O’Connell would lead his squad to Tralee by bicycle and capture the barracks, railway station and post office. The Cahersiveen Volunteers were on their way to do just that when, upon reaching Killorglin, they learnt of the tragedy at Ballykissane. The earthly remains of their fellow Kerryman, Keating, was already lying in the courthouse.

Eoin MacNeill

Continuing on to Tralee, they next discovered that things had gone from bad to worse: not only had the German vessel been captured but fresh orders from Eoin MacNeill, their Chief of Staff, had come through to call off the whole venture, with the would-be rebels ordered back to their homes. There was nothing left for O’Connell and his subordinates to do but just that.[17]

As it happened, even if the five men had succeeded in obtaining the wireless radios, the mission of the German ship – the Aud – could still have only ended in defeat. Messages transmitted to New York were to have been received by sympathetic Irish-Americans and then forwarded to the German embassy to ensure that the Aud appeared off the Kerry coast at the assigned time and with knowledge of the signals to give and receive from the shore.

For Want of a Nail…

Tom Clarke

Such an intervention from a friendly power could tip the odds decisively in favour of the Rising. When Patrick McCartan, whose role was to help facilitate these trans-Atlantic communications, met one of his co-conspirators, Tom Clarke, in Dublin, he found that:

Tom was enthusiastic about the prospect. He said there were at least 5,000 Germans coming and he was all enthusiastic about how thorough the Germans were and that they would do things in a big way, so that I left him for the first train next morning as enthusiastic as himself.

As it turned out, the rebels had severely overestimated their ‘gallant allies in Europe’. No one seemed to have realised that the Aud, already on course for Ireland:

…had no wireless. They acted on the assumption that the Germans were so thorough and perfect in all their arrangements that there would have been a means of communicating with the Aud.[18]

The result was that the ship arrived on the Thursday, the 20^th April, three days earlier than the expected Sunday, with no one present to receive them with signals or pilot-boats. The crew waited in the waters of Tralee Bay for twenty hours before passing warships in the Royal Navy grew suspicious and intercepted the Aud as it tried to escape to the high seas.

Its cargo of 20,000 rifles fell short of the 5,000 soldiers Clarke had been anticipating but the loss was still sufficient enough for MacNeill – already skittish about their chances – to conclude that insurgency was no longer practical. With that decision came the cancellation orders that Jeremiah O’Connell and other Irish Volunteers all over the country received in time to stop them in their tracks on Easter Sunday.

Though the Rising would go ahead the next day regardless, it did so in a piecemeal manner, limited to the capital and a handful of other areas, and did not last the week.[19]

Small wonder, then, that when Frank Henderson, one of the participants-to-be in Easter Week, was reading the evening papers about the mishaps in Kerry, he had the sinking feeling “that we were going to have a repetition of all the previous insurrections.”[20]

Rarely had a wrong turn led to so many woes.

Plaques in commemoration of the tragedy at Ballykissane

The Living and the Dead

There was a slightly eerie postscript to the episode. Alf Monahan had been in Galway during the Easter Rising, one of the few areas that did see action. When the rebels decided on the Saturday that further resistance was useless, Monahan accompanied Liam Mellows and Frank Hynes, the Galway commander and a company captain respectively, in going on the run, through the Galway wilderness and into Clare, where they were sheltered by the local Volunteers in a tiny, hillside cottage.

Charles Monahan

When provided with newspapers, the trio were able to catch up with events, from the heavy fighting in Dublin to the executions afterwards, including the drowning in Kerry. As only two names – Keating and Sheehan – were given, Alf Monahn did not know at first that the third victim was his brother, Charles.[21]

They stayed in the cottage until Mellows left for America on the orders of the new revolutionary leadership, after which Hynes was taken to Tipperary. When Monahan’s turn came near Christmas, he believed that the car that drove him away to safety was the same vehicle in which his brother had drowned eight months ago, with even the same chauffeur at the wheel, Tommy McInerney.

In this, Alf was mistaken, for it was the Maxwell car he was in, while Charles had taken his last ride that fateful night in the Briscoe. All the same, it must have made for an uncomfortable journey.[22]

Belfast wall memorial to Kerry in 1916, including a depiction of Charles Monahan and a poem about him

See also: Dysfunction Junction: The Rising That Wasn’t in Co. Kerry, April 1916

References

[1] Ó Lochlainn, Colm (BMH / WS 751), pp. 2-3

[2] Daly, Denis (BMH / WS 110), p. 3 ; Furlong, Joseph (BMH / WS 335) p. 4 ; O’Rourke, Joseph (BMH / WS 1244), pp. 9-10

[3] Ó Lochlainn, p. 3

[4] Ó Lochlainn, pp. 3-4

[5] Daly, p. 3

[6] Quilty, John J. (BMH / WS 516), pp. 4-5

[7] Daly, p. 3

[8] Ó Lochlainn, pp. 4-5

[9] Daly, p. 4

[10] Ó Lochlainn, pp. 5-6

[11] Daly, p. 4

[12] Ó Lochlainn, p.6

[13] Irish Times, 24/04/1916

[14] Quilty, pp. 6-7 ; Cregan, Mairin (BMH / WS 416), p. 6

[15] Quilty, pp. 8, 10-2

[16] Irish Times, 29/04/1916

[17] O’Connell, Jeremiah (BMH / WS 998), pp. 3-5

[18] McCartan, Patrick (BMH / WS 766), p. 48

[19] Henderson, Ruaidhri (BMH / WS 1686), p. 6

[20] Henderson, Frank (BMH / WS 249), pp. 27-8

[21] Monahan, Alf (BMH / WS 298), pp. 38-40

[22] Ibid, p. 45

Bibliography

Bureau of Military Statements

Cregan, Mairin, WS 416

Daly, Denis, WS 110

Furlong, Joseph, WS 335

Henderson, Frank, WS 249

Henderson, Ruaidhri, WS 1686

Quilty, John J., WS 516

McCartan, Patrick, WS 766

Monahan, Alf, WS 298

O’Connell, Jeremiah, WS 998

Ó Lochlainn, Colm, WS 751

O’Rourke, Joseph, WS 1244

Newspaper

Irish Times

Dysfunction Junction: The Rising That Wasn’t in Co. Kerry, April 1916

‘Richard Morton’

It was just another morning for Constable Bernard Reilly as he waited out his shift at Ardfert Station, Co. Kerry, on the 21^st April 1916, Good Friday, when a man came by to report a boat seen down by Banna Strand. Reilly passed this on to his superior, Sergeant Tom Hearne, who went to investigate with Constable Robert Larke.

All three were members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force tasked with upholding law and order throughout Ireland – British law and order, that is. It was a centuries-old state of affairs that some, unbeknown to Reilly and his colleagues, were planning to change and soon – within the next few days, in fact.

RIC Barracks, Ardfert, Co. Kerry

Hearne and Larkin returned to the station at 11 am with a horse and cart, on top of which was a boat. As well as the abandoned vessel, the two RIC men had found on the beach three Mauser pistols, some ammunition, two or three signalling lamps and several maps, including one of the locality. Talk about town was of three strangers seen walking inland from the direction of Banna Strand, presumably having come in off the boat in question.

Sergeant Hearne sent a report via the Ardfert post office to the RIC headquarters in Tralee and then took Larke and Reilly to search for the rumoured trio. After fruitlessly knocking on the doors of houses in the vicinity, Hearne, accompanied by Reilly, decided to give McKenna’s Fort a try. While the sergeant treated himself to a smoke outside, Reilly entered the Fort, if that was not too grand a name for the overgrown, long-abandoned rath.

McKenna’s Fort, Ardfert, Co. Kerry

As he did so:

…a man approached me from the shrubbery. He was a tall gentleman. He looked foreign to me and not generally the type one meets in a street. There was nothing unusual about his clothes. He wore a beard and had more or less an aristocratic appearance.

This regal-looking individual introduced himself as Richard Morton, a writer from England who was in Kerry researching for a book he was writing on St Brendan the Navigator, a local celebrity from antiquity. As he spoke, Morton fiddled with a sword-stick, drawing the blade in and out, while glancing over his shoulder as if looking for someone.

So that there would be no misunderstanding, Reilly advised the other man to refrain from unsheathing his weapon or else he would shoot with his own. Actually, the rifle Reilly carried was unloaded but there was no need for the twitchy visitor to know otherwise.

‘Richard Morton’

When Sergeant Hearne appeared, Morton repeated his story to him. Not wholly convinced by this, Hearne asked him if he could come with them to the station, to which the self-proclaimed Englishman agreed. He had probably guessed he had little in the way of choice on the matter.

The two policemen and their surprise acquaintance walked to the public road, about seventy-five yards from the fort, where they came across a boy called Martin Collins, who was driving a pony and trap. Commandeering a ride, if temporarily, Reilly put Morton on the trap and, sitting firmly beside him, rode off, with Hearne and Collins waiting behind.

Reilly took him to a farmhouse where lived Mary Gorman, who had first spotted the three mystery men leaving from Banna Strand while she milked the cows. After Gorman identified Morton as one of the trio, Reilly returned with him to where Hearne and Collins were waiting.

Mary Gorman and Martin Collins at the trial of Casement in London, May 1916

The RIC men gave the pony and trap back to the boy, who, his curiosity piqued, followed the small group of Hearne, Reilly and Morton as they walked the mile back to Ardfert Station. It was by then midday. Collins handed a slip of paper to Reilly, which their new friend had dropped. Written on it was part of a code – useless in itself, but something which would later serve as evidence in a trial that resulted in the sentence of death for ‘Richard Morton’ or, rather, Sir Roger Casement.[1]

Germany Calling

For Casement, it was a strangely anticlimactic end to an adventure that had promised so much at the start. “At last in Berlin! The journey done – the effort perhaps only begun!” he wrote in his diary in October 1914. “Shall I succeed? Will they see the great cause aright and understand all it may mean to them, no less to Ireland?”[2]

Berlin, 1914

The answer, initially, was ‘yes’; his new allies did indeed see the worth of the mission Casement brought before them. A succession of German officials listened sympathetically as he spoke of his dreams of enlisting their nation’s help in securing the freedom of his own, though their sanguinity could give even him pause. When Casement warned Baron Wilheim von Stumm that Britain had the means to prolong its current war with Germany for years, the Director of the Political Department at the Foreign Office laughed.

“What can she do to us?” von Stumm replied. “Her fleet is become a laughing stock.”[3]

By April 1916, almost two years later, Casement was straining to escape his host country. “My last day in Berlin! Thank God!” Even a possible fate at the end of an English noose did nothing to deter him. “Oh! To see the misted hills of Kerry and the coast and to tread the fair strand of Tralee!”[4]

Roger Casement at leisure

He had already been informed, on the 30^th March, about the planned uprising in Ireland. As the Germans initially declined to provide any weapons or men to help, Casement could foretell only disaster. “I said I could guarantee no revolution and that I sincerely hoped there would be none!”[5]

The next day, he was wheezing in bed, struck down by a lung congestion, but no less committed to returning, if only to put a stop to this rebellion-in-the-works. That the Germans had at last consented to provide help, in the form of a steamer loaded with weapons for Tralee Bay, on Easter Monday, but only on condition of the Irish rebels being out in the field already on the Sunday, was enough to send Casement into a rage: “The utter callousness & indifference here – only seeking bloodshed in Ireland.”[6]

The only thing left for him to do was board the submarine provided for him and put Baron von Stumm’s lofty dismissal of the Royal Navy to the test.

Casement in the tower of the German U-boat, with crew

Casement was not looking forward to the journey – twelve days, he reckoned, inside a stinking, suffocating confinement – but it would be worth it once he reached his homeland. He had been assured they would make it in time but Casement nursed his doubts: “My first fear is that we shall never land – but be kept off the shore until the ‘rebellion’ breaks out.”[7]

And that was the last line in his diary, though there was still much to happen. Too much, and also too little.

Homecoming

Accompanying Casement on his return home were Captain Robert Monteith and Sergeant Daniel Bailey. The former had come to Germany to assist Casement with setting up the ‘Irish Brigade’, made up of Irish POWs, while the latter was one of these said recruits, before the project was set aside as a failure.

The Germany Navy had at least rowed back on its original demands for an Irish rebellion to have broken out the day before the weapons shipment landed. Instead, a vessel was now set to arrive between Holy Thursday, the 20^th April, and Easter Sunday, the 23^rd, the window of four days being regarded by the German planners as sufficient to account for the vagaries of weather. As the insurrection was timed for the Sunday, according to the missives from the revolutionary leadership in Dublin, the haul of 20,000 rifles should arrive in time for the rebels to be thus equipped for when they set forth.

As he listened to these arrangements being laid out at the Admiralty in Berlin, Monteith was dismayed at what he considered to be a pitifully inadequate donation of weapons, and said as much. It was brutally clear, however, that that was all the Irish cause could expect from its ‘gallant allies’. At least a bedridden Casement was elated when Monteith brought the news to him – any development was better than none at this point.[8]

Nonetheless, the three Irishmen found much to brood over as the U-boat took them over the northern tip of Britain and down the Irish west coast. They had been away for so long that they knew little about how things stood in their country. Nor could they be sure about the Aud – the steamer carrying the rifles – arriving in time, if at all, and whether the rebellion Casement dreaded would happen regardless.

When the U-boat passed the mouth of the Shannon, on the evening of the 20^th April, the trio watched from the conning tower, peering into the starless night for the pilot boat that was due to guide them but its twin green lights – the prearranged signal – never materialised.

Other lights came and went but never the ones they so desperately sought. Neither did the Aud appear, though the Irishmen had spotted it earlier in the day. Finally, the submarine captain announced that they could wait no longer and set the course for full speed towards Tralee Bay. As the three Irishmen prepared to disembark, Monteith loaded his pistol, and then tried teaching Casement how to use his.

“It is quite possible we may either kill or be killed,” Monteith warned but Casement had never handled a gun before and, besides, he appeared too sick to be of any use in a fight. Monteith suggested some sleep but, what with all the worry, that was also unlikely to happen.

Casement (second from the left) onboard the German submarine, with Bailey (left) and Beverley (third from right)

Instead, they gloomily discussed their odds. While they had evaded British patrol ships, Casement did not think the German steamer would be so lucky. Other than the loss of the much-needed weaponry, such a find, Casement feared, would almost certainly put the authorities on their guard.

Further talk was curtailed by a German officer telling them that it was time to go ashore. When Monteith saw the size of the boat that was to carry them, he had the presence of mind to request three lifebelts. Casement sat in the stern, Monteith the bow, and Bailey in between as the boat was lowered onto the lazily rolling waves. Its duty done, the submarine receded into the dark, leaving the three companions to face the unknown.[9]

Hunting for Help

As the captain had refused them a motor, lest the sound betray the German presence – concern for the Irishmen was not so forthcoming – the tiny crew had to make do with rowing. Somehow they avoided drowning, though just about. A landlubber at heart, Monteith pushed his oar too deeply and went overboard, head first, before Bailey hauled him back.

The boat Casement, Monteith and Beverley took to Banna Strand (now in the Imperial War Museum, London

When they were close enough to shore, Monteith jumped out, standing up to his waist in the water while Bailey unloaded, first their equipment and then Casement, who was practically an invalid by then. Monteith tried scuttling the boat but the wood was too hard for his knife, the only tool he had at hand, and so he abandoned the task.

But the wretched tub was not yet finished with me. As I was about to leave, a wave struck it, and drove it sideways on top of my right foot. This wrenched my ankle, adding a little to my general discomfort. I scrambled away, and went up to the beach.

All three men were stretched out on the sand, soaked to the skin, bereft of sleep and food save for the little they could keep down during the past few days of seasickness. Casement looked the worst, being barely conscious, and Monteith had to make him move about so as to restore some semblance of circulation to his limbs.

Banna Strand, Co. Kerry

With dawn fast approaching, the trio knew they had to act. Given the perilous state of Casement’s health, it was decided to leave him in hiding while the other two walked into Tralee, their plan from there being to procure a motorcar for Dublin. So as to not stand out when reaching civilisation, they buried their Mauser pistols, ammunition belts, field glasses and the rest of the equipment, save their overcoats, in the beach.

Striking inland, they stumbled into some bogland, as if they were not damp enough already. Sunrise gave them some comfort, as well as a better view, and, coming to firmer land, they found a ruined old castle which they had been considering as the best place to leave Casement. Seeing it in the cold light of day, however, the group were forced to rethink that plan – Monteith did not think the castle large enough to hide a cat – and so it was agreed to keep going and find a better site.

Irish bogland

As they passed a farmhouse on the road:

Looking over the wall, we saw a young girl, her hair tousled and untidy, blinking at the sun and leaning on a half door. She saw us, and stared in a manner that showed it was unusual for strangers to pass along that road so early in the morning.

Considering their bedraggled state, it was hardly surprising that they would attract attention, from Mary Gorman or anyone, at any time of the day. The trio were more careful when a cart rumbled their way on the road. Crossing the fence to the side, they hid among the bushes until the cart passed, its two passengers seemingly none the wiser.

Half an hour later, they had a second bit of good fortune when finding the remnants of an ancient hill-fort, thick with shrubbery. That seemed an opportune place to leave Casement, better than the previous choice in any case, and so the other two pressed on while their comrade recuperated as best he could.[10]

Tralee

Following the shore road, Monteith and Bailey were able to cover the eight miles to Tralee in good time. Carefully avoiding the RIC station at Ardfert – whose occupants would soon be paying a visit to Casement in McKenna’s Fort – they saw no one except a surly farmer, who did not bother to return their greeting, and then a sole policeman, who took one look at the pair before continuing on his way. The two men breathed a sigh of relief at this timely piece of official negligence.

It was 7 am on Good Friday morning when they reached Tralee. There were some people about but no shops open, save for a few newsagents. Both Monteith and Bailey were so ignorant of the area that they decided their only chance lay in finding someone who wore a tricolour or, failing that, a newsagent that sold the more radical papers in the hope that their sympathies were as republican as their stock.

Tralee, Co. Kerry (1905?)

They had no such luck until coming across a hairdresser’s saloon, with posters outside of The Irish Volunteer and The Worker’s Republic, exactly the sort of titles they were seeking. The saloon was not open but the neighbouring door was and so the pair took the chance of accepting the invite of a shave from the man standing there:

We entered and found ourselves in a news agent’s shop, which was lighted by the doorway only as the shutters were not yet off the windows. The proprietor, whose name was [George] Spicer, informed me that he worked both the news agent’s and hair dressing shops, and that his son would be down in a minute to shave me.

Having gone too far to back away now, Monteith asked Spicer for the name and address of whoever led the Irish Volunteers around there, adding that he and his companion were on important business concerning them. As proof of his urgency, he pointed to their wet clothes.

After thinking it over, Spicer called his son down and told him to go fetch Austin Stack, the commander in question. All Monteith and Bailey could do in the meantime was wait: “We were counting the minutes as we thought of poor Casement away out in the old fort, wet, cold and hungry, waiting for a car that never came.”

When Stack arrived, he was accompanied by his aide, Con Collins, who had met Monteith before and was able to vouch for him to his commandant. Monteith gave them the basic details of Casement’s plight, including his need to go to Dublin and get in touch with the leadership of the Irish Volunteers there. Stack promptly dispatched a man to find a motor car for that purpose.

When Monteith asked after the German ship with the arms, Stack replied that his orders were that the vessel in question was not due to reach Tralee Bay until Easter Sunday, in two days’ time:

He had no information of the ship being already in the bay. I urged that he send a pilot out at once and told him what the ship carried. I told him there was no artillery coming, neither officers nor artillery men. Stack made no comment beyond saying that as far as his orders went, the ship was not to come in until Sunday night.[11]

In fact, there had been talk of a strange vessel sighted off Fenit Point on the previous day, Thursday, leading to a trusted Volunteer, William Mullins, being sent there to investigate. After talking to a few locals, Mullins returned to Tralee to report his belief that the rumours had been entirely spurious.[12]

The Aud, the German ship carrying the rifles

The Larger Project

And now these two outsiders had appeared out of nowhere to tell Stack that his orders from Dublin were wrong. That they were there at all put him in an awkward position, threatening as they did, with their mere presence and unsolicited updates, the plans for the Rising in Kerry.

For Stack, the event had been a long time in the making, ever since he was summoned to Dublin, sometime in late 1915 or early 1916, for an interview with Patrick Pearse, on the grounds of the latter’s school of St Enda’s. Accompanying Stack was Alf Cotton, a Belfast native who had been sent to Kerry by their mutual superiors to help Stack lay the groundwork for….something.

St Enda’s School, Dublin

That something was revealed by Pearse to be a full-scale insurrection of the Irish Volunteers throughout the country, timed for the Easter Week of 1916. A series of parades would provide cover for the different units to muster, after which they would act on their respective instructions.

Those for the Tralee Company were more elaborate than most. Besides the usual targets – such as the RIC barracks, the post office and the train station – the Kerry Volunteers were to greet a ship carrying German arms at Fenit Pier and then help with the logistics of transporting the cargo, via commandeered trains, along the west of Ireland, where the Volunteer companies on the route would take their share.

Irish Volunteers

Concerned about the difficulties the vessel in question would face, from the dangers of fog or storm, to running the blockade of British warships, Cotton suggested alternatives, such as landing the supplies in smaller amounts at different points, or even the use of Zeppelins to bypass the Royal Navy altogether, but Pearse insisted that the arrangements had already been set in motion.

Patrick Pearse

Pearse also stressed the need for absolute secrecy. Information was to be limited to a select few, only when necessary, and never more than needed. Previous rebellions had floundered from a fatal leakage of intelligence, a negligence which Pearse was determined would not be repeated this time.

“Secrecy was to be preserved up to the very last minute,” as Cotton described. “Much depended on the element of surprise both for our local activities and for the larger project.”[13]

Pearse reinforced these instructions on a visit to Tralee, three or four weeks before Easter Week. In particular, Stack was to keep his men on a tight leash, at least until Easter Sunday, the designated date, lest any premature deed tip their hand to the British authorities.[14]

‘The Game is Up’

This was something Stack kept at the forefront of his mind during those hectic hours, when he struggled to fulfil the duties bestowed on him by Pearse, while juggling with the sudden demands thrust on him by Monteith and Beverley. As his widow put it:

Austin was blamed by some for not trying to organise a rescue of Sir Roger Casement and I know he felt very sore about it, but he always said his orders were definite that no shot should be fired before the start of general hostilities on Easter Sunday and he knew well that any fracas that might take place in Tralee would frustrate all the plans made for the Rising.[15]

But first Stack made an attempt to retrieve Casement from where the newcomers said they left him. When the car Stack requested pulled up outside, he and Collins got in, along with Bailey, while Monteith stayed behind. As a guide, however, Bailey left something to be desired, ignorant as he was of the locality, with only the information that Casement was “somewhere on Banna Strand” to offer.

Which was better than nothing. Stack recruited Maurice Moriarty, a Tralee Volunteer, to put his profession as a chauffeur to use in driving him, Collins and Bailey to Banna Strand, taking care to avoid the police base at Ardfert. When they came across a horse and cart, managed by two RIC men from the opposite direction, Stack asked Bailey if the boat on top was his.

When Bailey replied that it was the same, Stack could only exclaim: “Oh, God, lads, the game is up.”

RIC men with Casement’s boat from Banna Strand

Worse, there were about twenty policemen posted about Banna Strand, obviously on the lookout. Finding Casement suddenly became the least of their concerns. “The game is up,” Stack repeated, according to Moriarty. “What are we going to do now?”

As a RIC officer, Sergeant Daniel Croly, came their way, it was quickly agreed inside the car that they would pose as innocent sightseers. It was then that one of their tyres burst, prompting the startled sergeant to accuse them of firing a gun at him. The police were clearly on edge, though how much the authorities knew was yet uncertain.

Bluffing and Brazening

When Croly had calmed down:

He then got curious and demanded an explanation of our presence on the Strand. I [Moriarty] told him my passengers were visitors on holiday, they wished to travel along the sea coast, and that I was under the impression it was possible to get to Ballyheigue by following the beach.

The sergeant did not seem wholly convinced by this but left them alone long enough for the four men to change their tyre and drive away to Lawlor’s Cross. Croly followed them there on a bicycle and continued his questioning, such as whether they had heard anything about a boat landing that morning.

When Stack replied that he did not, Croly continued: “Yes, we got the boat and we got our man, too.”

When the policeman next asked what he would do if put under arrest, Stack threatened to make a fight of it. After some more verbal toing-and-froing, Croly finally searched the car and, finding nothing of note, let them go. Even that was not the last the Volunteers saw of the sergeant, for when they drove on to Ballyheigue – to go anywhere else would have only incited more suspicion – and called into a pub:

After we were there some time I [Moriarty] saw Sergeant [Croly] going into the Post Office. I called Stack’s attention to this and Stack said, “Yes, I saw him. I suppose he is ‘phoning all over Ireland. We are done now.”

Stack’s gloom seemed justified when they travelled on to Causeway village, to be confronted by an RIC patrol on the alert for their car. Collins was searched when he got out and taken away to the barracks when a Webley revolver was found on him.

Webley revolver, of the type used in 1916

Stack made a tougher show of it, admitting that he had a loaded automatic, along with spare ammunition and some documents, but that, when asked if he had the paperwork for the gun: “No Irishman needs a certificate these days to carry firearms.”

When the sergeant in charge weakly admitted this was the case, Stack boldly went to the barracks, gun still in hand, and came out a few minutes later with Collins. Stack had brazened his way and that of his comrades out of trouble but it was clear now that the risks of keeping Bailey, a stranger to the area, around for any longer were too great. After they drove out of Causeway, they stopped at Ballymacaurin village to leave Bailey at the house of a Volunteer.

Con Collins

The remaining three returned to Tralee, their journey done, with Stack warning the others to deny anything if asked. As Moriarty left to park the car, he noticed an increased RIC presence on the streets. He had just finished dinner at home when another policeman came to ask about his passengers that day. Moriarty stuck to his script and insisted that the others had merely been tourists.[16]

Austin Stack

Stack and Collins were likewise questioned together at the former’s house by a constable, with Stack waxing indignant at how their trip that morning had been ruined by intrusive peelers. After sharing a light meal, Collins left to see a friend in town, while Stack went to the Rink, a hall rented by the Irish Volunteers for their activities.

Stack had previously called a meeting for there, ostensibly to organise a parade, set to be held on the Sunday, in two days’ time. In reality, the event was intended only as an excuse for the Volunteers to muster, just before the Rising was due to begin, a motive Stack had been keeping to himself. True to his instructions for absolute secrecy until the last possible moment, he continued the charade as he sat down to work out the details of the phoney parade with the other officers in attendance.

Irish Volunteers

The session was almost concluded when Collins’ friend in town, Michael O’Flynn, came in to take Stack aside. O’Flynn told him that he had been with Collins when the RIC came to arrest the latter, and he was now passing on the other man’s request for Stack to see him in the station. Stack agreed to do so and returned to the meeting, when another piece of bad fortune arrived, courtesy of a Volunteer who had come from Ardfert on a bicycle:

I saw this scout immediately and the news that he had for me was to the effect that the Ardfert police had brought to the barracks, as a prisoner, a tall bearded man. At once I knew that this was Sir Roger Casement.

When Stack broke this news to the others in the Rink, the immediate response was a call to attempt a rescue. It was not something Stack could allow, given his orders – as he now revealed – to keep everyone quiet until the appointed time on Sunday. After dissuading the rest from taking any rash action, Stack next arranged for two couriers to be sent to inform Dublin of the developments, from Casement’s arrest to the premature arrival of the German ship.

The latter was a particular problem in Stack’s mind:

I had the view that it would be almost impossible for the vessel to escape on account of the capture of Sir Roger Casement, as the English were now certain to be keeping a sharp look-out everywhere about that part of the coast.[17]

The two messengers knew exactly where to go when they reached Dublin. Eoin MacNeill may have been Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers but the true power of the forthcoming revolution had gathered inside Liberty Hall.

James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke and several others listened as one of the Kerrymen, William Mullins, delivered his report about Casement’s arrest and how, according to Casement, there would be arms coming from Germany but no soldiers. Mullins knew nothing about any uprising, though he must have suspected something upon seeing about sixty or seventy men in a room inside Liberty Hall, busily preparing gun cartridges.

Armed men standing to attention outside Liberty Hall, Dublin

If his listeners were fazed at the news, they did not show it. “There will be no change in the original plans,” Pearse told Mullins to pass on back to Kerry.[18]

Surprises

Stack, meanwhile, had gone to the RIC barracks as requested, where he asked to speak to Collins. The constable on duty excused himself after asking the visitor to remain in the room, and there an unsuspecting Stack was waiting when, a few minutes later, the constable returned with several of his colleagues to put him under arrest.[19]

It is unlikely that the police were aware of how effectively their capture of Stack had decapitated the Kerry Volunteers, the vast majority of whom were only dimly aware, at best, that anything was in the works. “Apart from rumours and whisperings of things to happen,” remembered Peter Browne, captain of the Scartaglin Company, “the average Volunteer had no official inkling of anything big coming off.”

The man best positioned to take over from Stack was Alf Cotton, the Volunteer organiser from Belfast, but he was nowhere to be found. Browne believed he had returned to his home city earlier in the year, apparently to take care of his sick mother. Cotton would be accused of being intentionally absent by Paddy Cahill, who, despite being next in line as battalion adjutant, knew only a little more than the rank-and-file.

Irish Volunteers

When Browne interviewed him as part of a history project, “Paddy Cahill told me that he had no knowledge of the major plans for Kerry when Stack was arrested.” While Cahill knew there were weapons being shipped in, he had believed, like Stack, that they would not be due until Easter Sunday.

“It later transpired that the sinking of the Aud had completely upset the plans locally and nationally,” Browne wrote. “What the plans for this were never came to light.”

It says much about the confusion surrounding the Easter Week of 1916, even years later, that when Browne suggested he write up his version of events, Cahill replied that he had done so already and sent it to Stack’s widow for the book she was writing about her husband. Browne asked Winifred Stack about it, shortly after Cahill’s death, only to be told that she had not received any such information from him.[20]

Hiding Out

Monteith was better informed than most in Kerry; he, at least, knew there was supposed to be a Rising. But, in other respects, he was as woefully ignorant as any.

Eoin MacNeill

When the two messengers went to Dublin, Monteith assumed they were making for Eoin MacNeill as Chief of Staff. It never occurred to him that the couriers would go instead to Liberty Hall and bypass the chain of command as he knew it. Nor did his Kerry compatriots make any effort to bring him up to date.

He was a man groping in the dark, as he later described it, a fact that continued to rankle by the time he put pen to paper for his memoirs: “These men with me knew that my life was not worth a moment’s purchase, yet they did not enlighten me.”

By Friday night, Monteith had learnt from the evening papers about the arrests of Stack and Collins, along with the discovery of the boat by which he and the other two had left the U-boat. “It was a peculiar report to read of one’s own adventures,” he mused.

With little else to do until the big event on Sunday, Monteith laid low in a friendly house. That the Volunteers had thought to post an armed guard inside was of some comfort, though otherwise the news on Saturday morning was hardly reassuring: British soldiers had come into Tralee by train, while armed RIC men stalked the streets of the town.

British army patrol

Several times, an enemy patrol would pass by the house, with Monteith watching anxiously from behind a window curtain until they had gone. When he finally ventured out, on Saturday night, it was in a workman’s garb, complete with a greasy cap over his head and chimney soot on his face.[21]

“If the police stop us or try to arrest you,” said one of the Kerrymen to their charge, “we will open fire.”

He meant it as a reassurance, but Monteith was unimpressed. He had not made it thus far without appreciating the virtue of caution, after all. “I am the officer. I have more authority,” he replied tartly. “There is to be no firing.”[22]

Assuming Command

Robert Monteith

Around a dozen other men were waiting for them at the Rink, standing to attention and under the command of Paddy Cahill. At least, Monteith assumed Cahill was in charge, until the Kerryman told him that the authority was now his. Orders had come in to that effect, said Cahill, though he was coy when asked on whose authority. Monteith tried to talk himself out of it, arguing that he knew nothing about Tralee, either the area or its men, but Cahill was adamant.

Finally, Monteith gave in and assumed responsibility, however flabbergasting he found it. “Here was an amazing situation,” he wrote in his memoirs. “An officer, my senior, ordering me to take command, while he reverted to the ranks.”

At least he had his experience as an officer in the British Army to fall back on. Unfortunately, as he talked to his new subordinates in the Rink, it was apparent that the rest of the Irish Volunteers had not had the same level of training. Neither did they know much about what was to be done besides a vague notion of seizing the military barracks, RIC station, telegraph office and train station, before marching to the coastal village of Fenit and unloading the promised German arms from there. Any further details had been known only by Stack, and he was gone.

And then there was the issue of numbers. Monteith estimated he would have three hundred men at his disposal, of which only two-thirds were armed. Word was that reinforcements would join them from Dingle but no one could confirm this. Against them would be five hundred British soldiers and about two hundred policemen, and now with the advantage of surprise lost.

“I knew I had a full day’s work ahead of me,” Monteith recalled laconically.[23]

British soldiers at a checkpoint

Easter Sunday

Monteith sent the officers home for the night while he stayed in the Rink and brooded on what to do. Holy Saturday passed into Easter Sunday, the day set for the Rising, and Monteith received word that at least one of the companies outside Tralee – he spared naming the unit in question for posterity – would not be making the rendezvous with destiny, the Volunteers having decided among themselves that, in light of the absence of German assistance, there was little point in continuing.

Not so doleful, Monteith yet had hope, however slim, in the arms-ship reaching them. To that end, he sent out scouts to Fenit Point, where the vessel was to come – if at all – and another in a car to Killarney in the hope of coordinating with the Irish Volunteers there should the arms arrive and, if so, with the aim of opening the way to their comrades in Limerick. “The Limerick men, I had been told, were to hold the line of the Shannon, what section I did not know, nor for what reason.”

And these questions were to remain unknown, for the messenger to Killarney never returned. The Fenit scouts did, to report the presence of two Royal Navy warships in the bay. So much for the German vessel then, for there was no hope now of it breaking through.

James Connolly

At least the two messengers had reached their destination of Dublin, as shown by the return of a verbal message from James Connolly, to the effect that everything was alright and to continue as planned. What these plans were, however, remained sketchy, a situation his Kerry subordinates were of little help in remedying, often seeming to regard him with suspicion, to judge from their evasive, distinctly unhelpful responses to his queries.[24]

In that regard, Monteith was not imagining things. “Cahill did not trust Monteith as he or none of us knew anything about him,” remembered one of the men at the time.[25]

‘The Most Wonderful Part’

A glimmer of hope came with the only-half-expected Dingle contingent, at about 11 am, whose Volunteers had walked the thirty to forty miles to Tralee. Next were the Ballymacelligott men, adding their forty numbers to the Dingle hundred and twenty, while women from Cumann na mBan joined them to prepare some breakfast. Monteith now had about three hundred and twenty men to his command, although only two hundred were armed, either with a rifle or revolver.

Irish Volunteers

Still, despite his professional misgivings, Monteith could not help but be touched by the display:

The most wonderful part of the whole thing, and perhaps the most tragic as I saw it, were boys of fourteen to seventeen years of age, marching in without as much as a walking stick with which to defend themselves, but all in the sure and certain hope of gaining a glorious victory over the usurping English.

Monteith told the Dingle captain to send out his charges with money to purchase supplies, enough for two days, and then be back at the Rink for 1.30 pm, half an hour before they would begin the Rising that would shake an empire. When Monteith asked if they were ready, the Dingle man replied: “Yes, in more ways than one, they have all been to the altar.”

It had started raining by the time a stranger, his face obscured by his collar upturned against the downpour, arrived at the Rink. When Monteith got a better look, he recognised him as Patrick Whelan, an acquaintance of his from their time together in the Limerick Volunteers. Monteith was eager to ascertain how things stood in Limerick but Whelan – after his surprise at seeing Monteith, thinking him still in Germany – brought word that abruptly rendered their plans irrelevant: all operations were to be cancelled. The Rising was over before it had even begun.

“Here was a pretty mix-up,” as Monteith put it, with masterly understatement.[26]

The countermanding order that cancelled the Rising, as published in the ‘Irish Independent’

The End of Easter Week

After all the drama and tension of the past few days, Easter Monday was oddly quiet. By the evening, word of fighting in distant Dublin had begun to circulate, galvanising some of the Kerry Volunteers into mobilising that night, at the Rink again. Even then, caution ruled and most of the attendees were dismissed, with only twenty remaining to guard the hall for the night and to receive the scouts who were bringing messengers from the other units around Kerry.

With no one aware of the situation or sufficiently placed, after the loss of Stack and Cotton, to know what to do, all the men could do was wait…and wait.

“Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passed off quietly,” remembered Peter Browne. “The Rink was full of Volunteers at all times and wild rumours were afloat about Dublin and other places. On Friday there were rumours of a surrender in Dublin.”

These defeatist reports were initially dismissed but, later in the day:

They were confirmed at Volunteer headquarters on Friday night. A meeting was arranged between the local British military officers and some Tralee citizens, including the clergy, which was attended by Volunteer representatives who agreed, in order to avoid arrests, to surrender all arms and ammunition to the military on or before Saturday.

At least the Kerry Volunteers, when this requirement was announced to them on parade on Friday night, could take some measure of defiance in denying the enemy the use of their weapons as the men grabbed hammers or sledges to smash the barrels of their guns. Browne was an exception as he instead smuggled his rifle out of the Rink beneath his coat. Four years passed before he could finally put it to use, in 1920, during an attack on a RIC barracks.[27]

RIC Barracks

‘One Great Tragedy’

But, for now, it looked as if the movement was beaten. If the Kerry Volunteers had assumed that rolling over in submission would be the end of it, they were rudely disabused the following week, when it was reported, on the 11^th May:

A Tralee message says that wholesale arrests of prominent members of the Sinn Fein organisation were effected throughout Kerry on Tuesday [9^th May]. In Tralee, cavalry, infantry, and police turned out and halted opposite each house where arrests were made. Excitement ran high, but there was no disturbance.[28]

Such coordination by the RIC and British military showed that the authorities were taking no chances. When William Mullins saw a woman curse some prisoners being led away by British soldiers, he grabbed the Union Jack from her hands and tore it to pieces. He was arrested the next day, and taken to join the other detainees in Tralee Jail.[29]

British soldiers in Ireland, with civilians

By then, Stack and Collins had already been removed from the gaol. Since his confinement there on Easter Saturday, Stack had remained out of the loop, save when two friends visited him on Monday to inform him of the cancellation order, leaving Stack to assume that that was the end of their venture.

He was still oblivious when he and Collins were ordered out of their cells on Easter Wednesday, marched to the train under heavy escort and transferred to Cork, and then Queenstown (now Cobh), before taken by steamer to Spike Island. The next three weeks were spent in the purgatory of solitary confinement, ignorant of the world beyond until, on the 13^th May, the pair were transported to Dublin.

British soldiers marching prisoners from the Rising through Dublin

While en route, their train stopped in Cork. The previously empty carriage they were held in was soon filled with prisoners from the Cork Volunteers. From them, Stack and Collins were able to learn of how rapidly the revolution had moved in their absence:

We were told of the Rising which had taken place in Dublin, Galway and Wexford, and which lasted until the following Sunday, and of the trials and executions…The burning of the GPO and other buildings in O’Connell St., Dublin, and many other details were discussed by our companions and ourselves.

To Stack, his head spinning at these revelations, “the whole thing at the moment seemed to be one great tragedy.”

Failure and/or Success

Terence MacSwiney

More prisoners from Kerry and Limerick were added on board when the train paused at Mallow. Upon arrival in the capital – or what was left of it – they were marched en masse to Richmond Barracks, When locked in for the night, Stack and Collins found themselves in distinguished company, in the form of Arthur Griffith, Terence MacSwiney and Pierce McCann, and about thirty others, all crammed in a room meant for twelve, lacking blankets and with only the floorboards to sleep on.

Though conditions remained wretched and the rations no better, Stack was able to converse with MacSwiney, an old friend and the commander of the similarly ill-fated Cork attempt:

We compared notes as to the Insurrection which had taken place, and from the news which had begun to come to us from our visitors, we began to have hope that the people of the country had had the spirit of Nationality re-awakened in them.[30]

Such revived patriotism was on full display on the 31^st August 1917, fifteen months after the Rising, at Caherciveen, where five hundred Kerry Volunteers assembled to welcome Stack, now a freed man, his life sentence having been revoked as part of the general amnesty. After a parade through the streets, the Volunteers drew up before a platform in the town square, from which a number of speakers, Stack among them, spoke to mark the forming of the local Sinn Féin Club, one of many which had been springing up all over Kerry and the rest of the country. The Caherciveen one alone could boast of two hundred members inducted on its opening day.

Sinn Féin postcard, 1917/8

Stack had earlier attended, on the 28^th July 1917, the Listowel Feis, as part of the promotion of the Irish tongue. After a lengthy address by Count Plunkett, whose son had been among those executed after the Rising, Stack next took the stage, appearing almost bashful before the crowd.

“Women and men of North Kerry, I can’t account for the fact that I am here today,” he began:

Or that I should be welcomed by you because, personally, I know I have done nothing to merit your kind reception. The little I had got to do in the matter of 1916 was, shall I say, somewhat of a failure.

This self-deprecation was met with cries of “It was a success!” When Stack continued, stating that he was no orator, nor intended to ever become one, a voice from the crowd suggested something better – “You’re a fighter!” – to general applause from an appreciative audience.[31]

Hard Facts

Austin Stack

Regardless of what others said, Stack held no illusions as to whether the Rising in Kerry had been a success. Nor was he inclined to spare himself reproach. “I tried to keep it a one-man job,” he bemoaned in private, “and it was too much.”[32]

Stack had kept the plans so secret that his subordinates had been left floundering in his absence. His importance was singled out by County Inspector Hill, when testifying, on the 27^th May 1916, to the Royal Commission, set up to investigate the disturbances of the month before:

Austin Stack was in charge of everything, and when he was arrested the Irish Volunteers who were assembled in Tralee became nervous. Those of them who were from the country districts gradually left for home.

This lack of coordination came under particular scrutiny by Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, one of the three members of the Commission, when he reviewed the checkmating of the Aud. Intercepted by British warships, the German vessel had been scuttled by its crew, who had then been taken into captivity.

Sir Mackenzie Chalmers: The German ship intended to land at Tralee?

Hill: Yes, by force.

Chalmers: There was not much preparation to receive it? Only two men in a motor car?

Hill: There was a large number in Tralee. My idea is that the ship came in a day or two too soon. She was unpunctual.

Another person of interest, Robert Monteith, was noted to be still at large.[33]

After the countermanding order had arrived at the Rink, Monteith decided that, since there was no further use for him with no Rising, the only thing he could do was run. The RIC were still on the lookout for the third man off the submarine, after all, and a strange face like his would be easy to pick out.

As a cover for his escape, it was arranged for him to leave after dark, amidst the Ballymacelligott Company while pretending to be just another local man. True to the secrecy that had characterised, and hamstrung, the Kerry Volunteers, only the Ballymacelligott captain and two others knew of Monteith’s identity.

These pair were put on either side of him as the company marched out of the Rink. A gas lamp lit up the area outside, allowing the police posted outside a good look at the departing Volunteers but the pace of the step, coupled with a downpour, allowed Monteith to escape undetected, hidden in plain sight.[34]

From there, Monteith fled, first to Limerick and then Liverpool, before finally reaching sanctuary in New York. He remained active in his country’s cause, via the Irish-American lobby, and later penned a memoir which captured the Rising-that-was-not in Kerry, in all its confusion.

“If there be readers who think I have been harsh, or unfair, or unduly severe,” he wrote in the preface, “I am sorry; but, I have to deal with men and hard facts.”[35]

Roger Casement Memorial, Banna Strand, Co, Kerry

References

[1] Reilly, Bernard (BMH / WS 349), pp. 2-6

[2] Casement, Roger (edited by Mitchell, Angus) One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement, 1914-1916 (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2016), p. 41

[3] Ibid, p. 57

[4] Ibid, p. 232

[5] Ibid, p. 199

[6] Ibid, pp. 201, 221-2

[7] Ibid, p. 233

[8] Monteith, Robert. Casement’s Last Adventure (Chicago: Privately published, 1932), pp. 134-5

[9] Ibid, pp. 146-50

[10] Ibid, pp. 150-9

[11] Ibid, pp. 159-63

[12] Mullins, William (BMH / WS 123), p. 3

[13] Cotton, Alfred (BMH / WS 184), pp. 9-12

[14] Stack, Winifred (BMH / WS 214), p. 3

[15] Ibid, pp. 3-4

[16] Moriarty, Maurice (BMH / WS 117), pp. 2-4

[17] Stack, pp. 5-6

[18] Mullins, pp. 4-5

[19] Stack, p. 7

[20] Browne, Peter (BMH / WS 1110), pp. 4-5, 7-8

[21] Monteith, pp. 164-6

[22] Doyle, Michael (BMH / WS 1038), p. 6

[23] Monteith, pp. 166-7

[24] Ibid, pp. 171-2

[25] McEllistrim, Thomas (BMH / WS 275), p. 4

[26] Monteith, pp. 170-4

[27] Browne, pp. 8-9

[28] Irish Times, 11/05/1916

[29] Mullins, p. 4

[30] Stack, pp. 10-11

[31] Kerryman, 04/08/1917

[32] Lynch, Eamon (BMH / WS 17), p. 5

[33] Irish Times, 29/05/1916

[34] Monteith, pp. 175-6

[35] Ibid, p. xiv

Bibliography

Bureau of Military Statements

Browne, Peter, WS 1110

Cotton, Alfred, WS 184

Doyle, Michael, WS 1038

Lynch, Eamon, WS 17

McEllistrim, Thomas, WS 275

Moriarty, Maurice, WS 117

Mullins, William, WS 123

Reilly, Bernard, WS 349

Stack, Winifred, WS 214

Newspapers

Irish Times

Kerryman

Books

Casement, Roger (edited by Mitchell, Angus) One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement, 1914-1916 (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2016)

Monteith, Robert. Casement’s Last Adventure (Chicago: Privately printed, 1932)

Rebel Runaway: Liam Mellows in the Aftermath of the Easter Rising, 1916 (Part III)

A continuation from: Rebel Captain: Liam Mellows and the Easter Rising in Galway, 1916 (Part II)

A Black Outlook

For Liam Mellows, failure on Easter Week 1916 was not an option. While Galway had had a late start on the Tuesday, the Irish Volunteers there having dispersed the day before due to the confusion over orders, reports that their compatriots in Dublin had gone ahead in rebellion spurred them into doing their part after all.

After some skirmishes with the police, Mellows had led his forces away from the impending British counter-attack, taking shelter in Limepark House. It was no more than a temporary respite, for the Volunteers fully intended to continue the struggle – that is, until the arrival of a pair of priests on Friday evening, bringing word that Dublin had surrendered – erroneously so, but close enough, given the battered state of the city – forced the Galway officers to face the unpalatable reality that their localised insurrection stood alone.[1]

Officers in the Galway Volunteers

After months of preparation, the Rising in Galway had barely last five days. For Alf Monahan, one of Mellows’ right-hand men, the disappointment was made all the more crushing by how he had dared to believe:

Although we had not any hopes of doing anything big when we went out…our hopes began to brighten during the week when we heard the guns booming in Galway Bay, and the rumours of Dublin were heartening too – up to Friday night. Certainly the outlook appeared black on Saturday morning.

It seemed too much like history repeating itself, with the future balefully uncertain. “England had won again and no one knew what was in store,” Monahan lamented. He and Mellows urged for them to fight on, but the other officers had already made up their minds. All that was left to do was break the news to the rest of the men.[2]

A whistle-blast summoned the Volunteers to the front of Limepark House, where Mellows and Father Thomas Fahy were waiting on the front step. With Mellows standing silently by, the clergyman addressed the assembled ranks, informing them that their position was hopeless.

Instead of a fruitless sacrifice, he continued, they should instead disband and wait for a better time in which to offer the country their services.[3]

Irish Volunteers, standing to attention

Confronted with such bald words, the Volunteers took heed and prepared to return to their homes. But not Mellows, who had decided to survive as best he could on the run. Joining him in this venture were Monahan and another of his leading officers, Frank Hynes from Athenry.

Mellows bore the rest of his short-lived army no ill will, shaking the hands of the men in turn as he bade them farewell. “We were very brónach [sad] in parting with the leaders who had been with us, training and advising us for the Rising,” remembered one man:

We knew that neither Mellows nor Monahan did not like to give the order to disband and I am sure they knew that the men would have followed them to the bitter end, but as the priests who had come there, had advised against further bloodshed and as Mellows and Monahan considered themselves responsible for all our lives, had to make a decision which they hated to do.[4]

When Mellows, Monahan and Hynes were left alone outside a now deserted Limepark House, there was nothing left to do but set off southwards. They made for an unusual little band – a Wexford man reared in Dublin (Mellows), a Belfast native (Monahan) and a local (Hynes), now cast out into wilds of Galway, trusting in nothing but luck, country charity and their own wits.

Spreading Out of Nothing

Liam Mellows

Help came in a number of sympathetic houses along the way. The first of such boltholes was the Howley farm, owned by a friend of Mellows’ whose son, Peter Howley, had only just left Limepark like the rest of the Irish Volunteers. Howley Senior chatted with Mellows as the trio were served refreshments. Only hours had passed since the close of the Rising, and Mellows was left unsure on what to do next, until Peter advised for him and his two companions to proceed to the Corless house and remain there until he picked them up at nightfall.

This was agreed on, and Mellows, Hynes and Monahan took their leave of the Howleys at around 7 am, on the Saturday morning. From then on, it would be essential to remain one step ahead of the inevitable pursuit by the authorities.[5]

The brothers Patsy and Martin Corless, a pair of elderly bachelors who lived together, quickly made the group welcome with food, as well as providing the runaways the chance for some desperately needed sleep. This they did for a full fourteen hours while Patsy made arrangements for another home, that of William Blanche. Peter Howley failed to appear but, as there was no time to delay, the three moved on regardless.

They were warmly greeted by Mr and Mrs Blanche. The former in particular could relate to their plight, being a fellow Volunteer despite his advanced years and thus vulnerable to arrest himself without distinction as to whether or not he had been part of the Rising. As well as refuge, the Blanche house provided the chance for Mellows to overhear some flattering talk, as Monahan remembered:

A girl visitor called to see Mrs Blanche and she was bursting with news and the three rebels in the bedroom had the pleasure of hearing this young lady’s first-hand information about Liam Mellowes [alternative spelling], what he had done and what he intended to do in the future.

It is marvellous how quickly rumours grow out of nothing and spread all over the country. This young lady told Mrs Blanche that Liam Mellowes was escaping out of the country disguised as a girl. “You know,” she added, “Mellowes is very goodlooking.”

It was only with effort that the three men stifled their laughter.

Less gratifying was what was overheard from another caller who castigated Mellows as a coward and a troublemaker. The temptation for Mellows to appear before him like a ghost at a feast was almost irresistible.[6]

Imperial Response

Their foes, meanwhile, were not idle. Peter Howley was about to leave for the Corless’ house as planned, when he found his own surrounded by about sixty British soldiers and policemen from the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Peter was arrested, along with two of his brothers, their roles in the Volunteers making them obvious suspects.

RIC constables

The Crown forces brought the Howley boys along with them as they drove on in a small fleet of twelve armoured cars towards Limepark House. Seeing that the building was surrounded by thick shrubbery, making it an ideal place to defend, the soldiers and RIC men marched the three brothers ahead as human shields while they advanced in battle formation, firing off a few shots before they found the house to be empty.

All that was left was were discarded items such as pikes, bandoliers, detonators and bombs, as well as supplies of bacon, beef and eggs, which were eagerly consumed by the hungry men.  Pieces of linotype metal were also found, apparently to be melted down for more bullets. That so much was abandoned at Limepark spoke at the haste in which the previous occupants had vacated.

Limepark House today

Searching further, the patrol spotted two men over in a field. When called to halt, one of the pair ran, earning himself a few shots in his direction, while the other stayed rooted to the ground. He was, upon further inspection, merely a farmer who had been going about his business.

The RIC-military squad retired to their barracks with their prisoners. The Howley brothers were transferred to the military barracks in Galway town but revealed nothing about their recent guests, who were unaware of the close call they had had.

A more fruitful discovery for the RIC was of their five colleagues who had been taken prisoner during the week. Constables Manning, Malone, Walsh, Donovan and McDermott had walked all the way from Limepark to Kilcolgan village, but were less than useful in what they could tell, explaining that they had been guarded by strangers in a dark room, after being marched for miles and consequently losing all sense of direction. Recognising any of their captors would be out of the question. They had escaped, the five explained, when their guards had neglected to watch them, allowing them to creep away.[7]

This last point would have been a relief to the Irish Volunteers. One of Mellows’ arguments to Father Fahy against disbanding was that the POWs would be able to identify his men. Fahy had consulted with the RIC captives, who agreed to give no such information in return for freedom. The policemen had evidently been true to their word.[8]

The British authorities were, for the moment, largely ignorant about the whereabouts of Mellows or even that the uprising was already over. As far as it knew, the insurgents remained at large as a cohesive force. “It was estimated that the strength of the Volunteers, who had retired in a south-westerly direction, was about 500,” reported the Connacht Tribune.[9]

Rumours that some of the remaining rebels had retreated to Island Eddy, a few miles off the Galway coast, prompted a search there. When British soldiers were investigating the island, the rising tide caught them by surprise, submerging their boats and trapping them in caves. Disaster was averted when a fishing smack saw their distress signals and sent a boat to rescue the fifty men from drowning. It was not the most dignified of moments in military history.[10]

Island Eddy

Windy Hill

The day after resting at the Blanches’, Mellows, Monahan and Hynes were taken by William Blanche to an old cattle-shed on Corr na Gaithe, or ‘Windy Hill’, owned by William Hood. It was an apt name as its occupants quickly discovered but they bravely strove to get used to it, as they tried to with the rain dripping through the inadequately thatched roof or the mice who scurried in their multitudes from the frequently damp straw, over the sleeping men at night. Lighting a fire for warmth, and risking the smoke being visible for miles around, was out of the question, as was leaving the shed, even to stretch their legs.[11]

Some small relief was provided by the intrepid Blanche. On the run himself, he would hide in the furze during the day before venturing up the windy hill at night to provide the other three with whatever food he could get. Sometimes it would be a jam-jar of boiled cabbage, and on other occasions the meal was nothing but potatoes, but something was better than nothing, and the diners wolfed down whatever came, knowing that they would have to wait until the following night for anything else.

Not so obliging was the owner of the shed. Hood had not been informed beforehand about his new guests and received a shock upon discovering them. Nervous that they would be found by the authorities on his property and drag him into their troubles, Hood would visit every evening to warn of an imminent search by soldiers or policemen, only to return the next morning to find his guests inconveniently still present.

As Hynes recalled, in words laced with contempt even years later: “A few suggestions he made to us gave us to understand that if he could get us out of his shed he didn’t care what happened to us and he had not the courage to inform on us.”[12]

Galway mountains

Such warnings were not entirely the products of a frustrated host. Blanche came one night with word of an approaching RIC patrol, but that it would be better to stay put until more was known. As foretold, a police squad appeared at the foot of the hill, but the flooded footpath from the rain before kept them at bay like a moat.

“Peelers are like cats,” Blanche said sagely, “they don’t like to wet their feet.”[13]

Moving Out

The three fugitives could not rely on rain and luck indefinitely, particularly not in lodgings as loathsome as that cattle-shed. After four days, they agreed it was time to move. They stopped by the Blanche house, where Mrs Blanche fed and housed them for the night before giving them a haversack full of food for the road ahead.

Mellows had told them of an uncle he had in Scariff, Co. Clare, and with no other plan in mind, the trio struck south in that direction. They kept walking until reaching a wide river, being lucky enough to find the only bridge for miles. Eschewing roads and open spaces, they entered some woods where they had another bit of good fortune in chancing on a stream which provided the chance of a wash, the first for a fortnight.

The rest of the day was spent pouring over the map Mellows had brought for the best way to Scariff. They had finished the last of the bread in Mrs Blanche’s haversack and, after reciting the rosary in Irish, the trio took the plunge and started out across some highlands.

Liam Mellows (right) with friend

Night fell and the men found themselves tripping over roots and potholes. Mellows had an electric torch but that was soon broken and useless. A road was chanced upon but the men were unable to decide if it was one of the routes marked on their map. Seeing some cottages along the road, Monahan decided to inquire for directions.

The owner of the first house offered to walk the travellers in the right direction. When Mellows told him who they were and why they were on the road at night in the first place, the man said in a thick Clare accent: “Oh, holy smoke, sure your lives aren’t worth a thraneen. The soldiers are searching the country everywhere and if they come across you, they’ll shoot you.”

As it turned out, their cheerful guide led the three runaways to the wrong path. A generous soul, Hynes was to interpret this as deliberate in case they were caught while exposed on the public road.

After the Clare man had left them, the trio reached a crossroads and saw in the dark the shape of something lurking nearby. Mellows whipped out his revolver and crept over but soon returned, exasperated.

“Damnit,” he said, “it is only an old ass.”

“Well,” quipped Monahan, “he can be thankful for once in his life for being an ass instead of a peeler.”[14]

‘Many are Cold…’

Leaving the crossroads, they trudged uphill, through the drizzle. Weak with hunger after finishing the last of Mrs Blanche’s bread, they resorted to dragging themselves up on their hands and knees, stopping to rest between two big square rocks, the only shelter in sight. By then, they were so exhausted that they fell asleep on the ground, waking two hours later, sore all over their bodies.

“How do you feel?” Mellows asked.

“Rotten,” Hynes replied. “I am shivering with cold.”

Mellows could at least see the funny side. “Remember,” he said, parodying Matthew 22:14, “many are cold but few are frozen.”

Hynes coyly refrained from recording in his later account where he had told Mellows to go, only that it was not a cold place.

Clare mountains

At least the rain had cleared by the time morning broke. Studying the map, they found that their path was leading them away from their destination of Scariff. The one they wanted was three miles away, a daunting distance for weary men on empty stomachs.

Rummaging through his bag for any spare crumbs, Hynes found nothing more than a sole potato. Even that was better than nothing but, as he divided it three-ways, the traitorous vegetable revealed itself to be rotten in its core.

Hynes had had enough.

“Come on, lads,” he called to the other two, desperation turning into bravado. “I’m going to get breakfast if I were to shoot my way to it.”

Striking out, they came across salvation in the form of a farmhouse by the road. Venturing ahead, Hynes peered through the open door to a sight both exquisite and close to unbearable:

The table was laid for breakfast and I feasted my eyes on a most beautiful home-made cake about 15″ in diameter and 12″ high. I had to exercise all my will power to refrain the savage desire to go and grab that cake and hop it.

Instead, he asked the young woman by the hearth-fire for a cup of tea for him and his companions. She immediately went to work at providing some old-fashioned country hospitality, which included considerably more than tea:

That cake that I mentioned was a feed for six men, but by the time that we had devoured two blue duck eggs each and our share of the cake I doubt if there was enough left to give the man of the house his breakfast, who by the way came in as we were eating, and the only thing that troubled him was that we would kill ourselves eating.[15]

The travellers offered payment for the food, but the woman stoutly rebuffed them. “What did ye get but a cup of tea?” she said.

When it was time to go, the couple waved their guests off, wishing them godspeed. The man of the house had given them directions to Scariff, showing not the least bit of curiosity when asked for a short cut across the mountains, despite the impracticalities of such rough terrain.

“But he was a Clareman, and Claremen never wonder at anything,” explained Monahan.

Leaving the road, the fugitives made their way into some bogland. Heavy with food, they decided to sleep out the heat of the day and continue on after dark. After finding a patch of dry ground, on which they made impromptu bedding out of heather, Mellows, Monahan and Hynes fell soundly asleep.

The sensation of something soft and wet on his face awoke Monahan. He found himself staring into the mournful brown eyes of the pointer dog that was working its tongue on him. Sitting up, Monahan saw that Hynes was on his knees, saying his prayers with his hand ominously tucked in the pocket of his overcoat.[16]

The Royal Commission

As he reviewed the state of West Galway in May for his monthly report, County Inspector Rutledge noted how the public mood in Galway town, Gort and Tuam was “sullen and unsatisfactory”. That things were not worse were due to, in the RIC Inspector’s professional opinion, the imposition of martial law, backed by the thousand soldiers camped in Cranmore.

British soldiers posing in Dublin with a captured republican flag

As far as Rutledge was concerned, he and his employers in Dublin Castle had had a lucky escape:

It is pretty plain now that the rebellion was precipitated and if it had been deferred until later when all was ready it would not have been confined to the Districts of Galway and Gort but would have embraced the whole County and we could not have held it.

His counterpart for East Galway, County Inspector Clayton, was not quite so alarmist. Nonetheless, he also reported on the “disturbed and unsettled” conditions, particularly around Athenry, which he attributed to the rebel leaders having so far avoided arrest.[17]

Both inspectors attended the Royal Commission on the 27^th May, inside the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin, as the British state ponderously tried to make sense of what had happened. A succession of RIC officials spoke before a panel of Westminster-appointed worthies, headed by Lord Hardinge as chairman, testifying to the state of the country in the lead-up to the rebellion.

Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin

When the attention turned to Galway, one of the few counties where fighting had occurred, ‘William Mellowes’ was given a star role as Rutledge described how he had arrived in March 1915, setting up headquarters in Athenry, an area long troubled by agrarian unrest and thus ideal recruiting ground for Mellows and the secret society he represented.

Lord Hardinge

There had been such a sect in Galway since 1882, Rutledge explained, though he neglected to give the name of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Instead, the most common term used throughout the Commission was ‘Sinn Féin’, with its participants as ‘Sinn Féiners’, albeit more to describe a general attitude than any specific organisation.

Lord Hardinge: Do you think the fear of conscription had much effect in increasing the ranks of the Sinn Féiners?

Rutledge: I think so, amongst the ordinary village boys.

Lord Hardinge: Shirkers?

Rutledge: Shirkers. They won’t fight for England.

Father Fahy, who convinced the Volunteers to quit

The attitude of the clergy during Easter Week presented a notable dichotomy for the Commission to consider. Clayton drew attention to how a considerable number of priests had lent assistance to the ‘Sinn Feiners’. And yet it was a priest – Clayton was unsure as to his name – who ended the insurrection when he persuaded the rebels to disband, though not before he had had a contest of wills with an intransigent Mellows.

Lord Hardinge: What happened to Mellows?

Clayton: He is on the run.[18]

‘The Elusive Mellows’

And on the run he remained, his exploits rapidly elevating him into a folk hero. Even the Connacht Tribune, which had dismissed the Rising as German-inspired folly, could not help but revel in the drama with the headline: THE ELUSIVE MELLOWS – HOW HE HAS OUTMANOEUVRED THE AUTHORITIES – STORIES THAT READ LIKE A ROMANCE.

“Romance, comedy and tragedy are strangely blended in the stories of the Rising in County Galway,” continued the newspaper:

Whether it be that Captain Mellows and the last of his army got beyond the cordon, I know not. Stories here are in abundance, but it is difficult to trace them to their sources.

I heard, for instance, that Mellows had a particularly fast motor vehicle, which he used to effect, and which has since been captured; that he escaped to Connemara in a turf boat; that the police are looking for a honeymoon couple, the bride being no other than one of the most daring of the leaders; that the insurgents escaped over the mountains, got out to sea by the Shannon, and were now on their way to the States; and a thousand other yarns of a similar flimsy texture.[19]

As it turned out, the article would prove to be remarkably prescient on a number of points. Perhaps not about the honeymooners or the boat trip to Connemara, but Mellows would indeed go about in feminine guise as part of his flight out of the country to the New World.

Others were not so fortunate. Michael Kelly was part of the Clarinbridge Company of the Galway Volunteers, and as such had been present at the abortive assaults on the RIC barracks at Clarinbridge and then Oranmore. While marching out of Moyode Castle with the rearguard, he had happened upon two priests cycling in the same direction, desperate to talk to Mellows.

Moyode Castle

Kelly sat on a windowsill inside Limepark House, listening in as Fathers Fahy and O’Farrell did their best to persuade Mellows and the other officers to give up in the face of insurmountable odds. When the orders were finally delivered to the assembled ranks to scatter, Kelly had been among those who quietly slipped back home.[20]

Unfree

The hopes that that would be the end of it were dashed when, four days later on the 3^rd May, Kelly was arrested at his house and taken to the nearby RIC barracks. A day later, he was moved to Galway Jail and forced to share a packed cell with his former comrades-in-arms. After ten more days of this, the prisoners were marched through Galway, jeered at by onlookers, to the station, and then taken by train to Dublin.

Prisoners from the Rising being marched by British soldiers through the ruins of Dublin

In contrast to Galway, the prisoners received a jollier reception from the Dublin crowd. Not that it made a difference, as they were taken to Richmond Barracks, where they were again forced into overcrowded cells, sometimes twenty-four of them to a room. Three or four days later, they were put on a cattle-boat, the subsequent journey being a fraught one for some, as they feared they would be sunk by a German U-boat. Other prisoners made the best of their plight, singing and dancing to while away the time.

Upon arriving in Glasgow, they were separated into two batches. Kelly was in the one to be lodged in Perth Jail, along with some Wexford men from their own failed Rising. As they arrived in Perth Railway Station, a crowd there “thought we were deserters from the British Army and boohed us.”

The prisoners were undaunted: “We returned the boohs with a vengeance.”

Kelly remained in Perth for two months until he was moved to Frongoch Camp, and then again to Wormwood Scrubs, where he was startled at the amount of information the authorities had on him:

They knew every move I made for the twelve months previous to the Rising. They knew all about the dances I attended, the girls I was friendly with, and that I carried a gun in Galway on the St. Patrick’s Day Parade 1916.

They asked me did I know what I was going to do when I was called out on Easter Week. I answered that I did, and that I was looking for the freedom of my country as any decent man would do in an unfree country.”

Kelly was fortunate in that he was released at the end of August and could return to Ireland. Others continued to languish in their respective gaols, unsure as to what the future held for them.[21]

Prisoners at Frongoch Camp

Found in Clare

Elsewhere, in Clare, Michael Maloney set out one morning in May in order to search for a filly of his that had jumped out of its paddock the evening before and escaped into the Knockjames Mountains. Accompanied by his greyhound, Maloney had travelled a good distance into the highlands when he spotted his filly in the distance. As he headed towards it, he came across three men kneeling on the grass as if in prayer.

When Maloney bade them a good day, one of the strangers rose to his feet and returned the greeting in a Dublin voice. Despite the incongruous accent, Maloney sensed that the troika were refugees from Galway where the Rising had broken out on the previous month. He assured them that, as an Irish Volunteer, he was one of them. The Dubliner asked if he knew a Seán McNamara of Crusheen, to which Maloney replied yes, he was his superior officer.

With that, Mellows was able to relax, as were the other two, Monahan and Hynes. Maloney directed them to an old hut nearby, where he brought them food. Leaving his guests there, Maloney went to McNamara with his discovery. Unlike in Galway, the Clare Volunteers had not been out during Easter Week, deterred by the contradictory orders and the confusion they had engendered, but their companies had not fallen apart afterwards either. They continued to meet and drill, taking care to do so in remote locations, away from the prying eyes of the RIC.

Irish Volunteers

McNamara was able to collect some money from his subordinates. He contacted Father Crowe, a sympathetic priest, who also raised funds from amongst his fellow clergymen. These amounts were handed to Maloney who brought them up to lamsters in the mountains.

Also of financial assistance was Michael Colivert, the leader of the Limerick Volunteers and a notable IRB figure. While passing through Clare, he was alerted to the presence of Mellows and company. Colivert arranged to meet McNamara at the train station the following day, where he told him to come to Limerick if he received a telegram later that evening.

When the telegram came, McNamara duly went to the city, to be handed an envelope with £100 worth of notes inside, a gift from the renowned Daly family (Ned Daly being one of the executed 1916 leaders, while his sister Kathleen was Tom Clarke’s wife). Despite the failure of the Rising, the harsh consequences of which was still being felt, the tightly-knit network of republicans and ardent nationalists, and the support it could offer, remained intact throughout the country.[22]

IRB leaders, left to right – John Daly, Tom Clarke (who married Daly’s niece) and Seán Mac Diarmada

Idling Away

The money was duly passed on to the three runaways. Not that they had an immediate need of it, stuck as they were in their mountain hut, and so it was forwarded to Hynes’ wife in Athenry, along with a message for her to take to Dublin to let their friends know they were alive. Due to the military presence throughout the country, Maloney offered to act as a courier to Galway, travelling there under the guise of attending a cattle-fair that he knew was on in Athenry.

This cover story was not enough to deter the British soldiers at Gort Station from stopping Maloney, who had to think quickly, as Hynes described:

After asking his name and a few other questions they ordered him to take off his books. “Look here, mate,” he said to the officer, “I take off them boots every night and put them on every day and that’s quite enough for me. If you want to pinch them you will have to take them off yourself.”

While the Tommies were occupied in pulling off his footwear, presumably for any dispatches surreptitiously stored on the soles, Maloney helped himself to a smoke on his pipe, burning away the slip of paper hidden there. It had been a close call, as Hynes knew: “If they found that note, they would be down on top of us before anyone could warn us.”[23]

Maloney continued on to Athenry and delivered the message to Mrs Hynes verbally instead. He took care to sign the registry at the hotel he stayed in with a false name.

For five months, Mellows, Monahan and Hynes remained on the mountainside. While a lengthy stay, it was not an unpleasant one; indeed, Monahan was to remember it in almost idyllic terms: “The three of us were never lonely or silent; we always had a lot to discuss and argue about.”

Liam Mellows (second from the right) with friends, including Alf Monahan (far right)

Topics included the nature around them, which for the city-slickers Mellows and Monahan was a novelty, and the what-might-have-beens of Irish history, as well as the possible things-to-come for their own time. The trio enjoyed a rich fantasy life, from the names they would bestow on the battleships and regiments soon to be at their disposal, to the self-deprecating predictions Mellows made for when they would be old and grey. He would be in a workhouse, he told the others, and relying on them to bring him tobacco in between their jobs as street-sweepers.

“Of course, this was all good fun,” Monahan wrote later, a sadder but wiser man. “None of us ever thought at that time that those who fought for the Republic would ever want – much less end their days in the Workhouse.”[24]

‘The Most Perfect Nun in Appearance’

When news from Dublin came in October that the remaining leadership of the Irish Volunteers wished for Mellows to go to the United States, it was treated as an intrusion rather than a deliverance, with its subject resisting as best he could. “Liam was always more anxious about his pals than about himself,” said Hynes.

Eamon Corbett

He had already declined an earlier offer in July. The places booked on the American-bound ship were instead given to Pat Callanan and Eamon Corbett. Both men had served under Mellows in Galway during Easter Week and were similarly hiding out, in their case in Co. Kilkenny. When asked, they agreed to go, and succeeded in reaching sanctuary in the United States.[25]

Mellows tried again to pass on the opportunity to someone else. He suggested Hynes but the other man refused. In any case, the orders were definite: Mellows had to go.

Maloney was able to acquire a bottle of brown hair dye for Mellows, the substance turning his distinctly fair locks a pleasing auburn. Combined with the matching suit Maloney had also procured, Mellows “looked quite the dude,” as Monahan admiringly recalled. When Maloney came by with a motor car, Monahan and Hynes waved Mellows off from the doorway of the bothan, both feeling very lonely now that their friend and commander had gone.[26]

Instructions were for McNamara to meet Mellows at Kearney’s Castle and take him to Father Crowe’s house in Rosliven, near Ennis. The priest was expecting the pair when they arrived at night and had managed to procure two nuns’ habits for Mellows and a woman who was to accompany him. Mellows had gone in clerical camouflage before as a priest. A nun would be a similar choice of disguise, if a step more audacious given the discrepancy in sex.

McNamara had left before the two ‘sisters’ departed from Father Crowe’s house the next morning, and so missed the chance to see Mellows in his habit. It was left to the churchman to fill him in, when the pair were chatting about the whole story a week or so afterwards:

[Father Crowe] said that on the morning after Mellows’ arrival in Rosliven, he was saying Mass in his house and [the door] was being answered by [the] housekeeper. The door of the oratory opened, “and, God forgive me, as I knew it was Liam and his lady friend nothing could prevent me from turning round to see what Liam looked like.”

Mellows had been, in Father Crowe’s eyes, “the most perfect nun in appearance that I ever saw.”[27]

The veil Mellows wore as part of his disguise as a nun, now in the National Museum of Ireland

Going to America

Mellows later recounted his westward adventures to a friend, Mary Flannery Woods, whose Dublin home he would often use as a hideaway in the tumultuous years to come. Driven from Scariff to Cork, he was then taken by boat to Waterford. Poor weather held him back by three weeks until he could reach Liverpool. Finding a ship bound for New York from Plymouth, he signed on as a stoker, “a job for which he was physically unfit,” according to Woods, as he would soon discover.

The awkward absence of union papers necessary for sailor work was sidestepped when Mellows got the man responsible for the crew’s papers drunk on whiskey while they were sharing a train-carriage to Plymouth. When the other man passed out, Mellows threw the bag containing the forms out of the window. With the mysterious disappearance of everyone’s paperwork, the ship had no choice but to sail out regardless.

Other obstacles appeared – and prevailed over. Mellows had given his name as ‘O’Ryan’ when first signing on board, only to forget it when he gave another. When asked about this discrepancy, Mellows ‘explained’ how the second name was the Irish version of O’Ryan. Mellows laughed heartily as he recounted the dodge to Woods.

Stoking was not for the faint of heart or weak in form, involving as it did the constant shovelling of coal into a raging furnace. So intense was the heat that the sweat-soaked men were forced to strip to the skin. Mellows would sometimes be so exhausted at the end of a shift that he fell asleep before washing, a negligence that resulted in the dirt and perspiration hardening all over him. Removing the layer was “like tearing off one’s skin”, as he described it to Woods, who could only regard her friend with sympathy:

Liam must have suffered terribly on that voyage. Knowing nothing about stokering and afraid to being discovered, he feverishly watched the others working in this inferno, copying their behaviour, using nautical terms, swaggering, spitting even, a habit he detested in anyone.

At least one co-worker was not deceived, and tore a huge shovel out of the hands of an undersized Mellows before showing the landlubber how it should be done, throwing in some choice and salty words as he did so. Despite the toil and embarrassment, Mellows would regard the whole experience, even the worst of it, with fondness: “Affectionately he spoke of the rough kindness and great-heartedness of this man for all his swearing.”[28]

Stokers at work

When the steamer reached New York, Mellows had one final trick to play, the last of many since the start of the journey. As he walked with the rest of his shipmates along the waterfront, they entered a pub where a fight was in progress.

“Come on, boys, let us get into this,” Mellows shouted, grabbing a chair as if for a weapon. He rushed through the bar until reaching a backdoor, whereupon he slipped out, shaking off the rest of the crew for good.[29]

Thus ended his inglorious, if necessary, career at sea, as well as an Odyssey which had begun in April from the collapse of the Galway Rising and ended in a sidestepped brawl in New York. His exile in the Land of the Free was about to begin, throughout which he would endeavour to play his part in the war for Irish liberty. Kathleen Ni Houlihan was not going to liberate herself, after all.

New York, ca. 1900

‘The Most Capable Man’

Having accepted the offer to go to America in place of Mellows, Callanan and Corbett had arrived in Liverpool, where they attached themselves to the small circle of fellow fugitives from Ireland. After five weeks, a vacancy for a sailor opened, and it was agreed upon by the group that it was to go to their most wanted member, Donal O’Hannigan. A few days later and another two such jobs opened, allowing Callanan and Corbett to sign on as coal passers on a ship bound for Philadelphia.

The journey took nineteen days across the Atlantic, made particularly tense by the threat of German submarine. As the ship approached the mouth of the Delaware, orders were given to extinguish all lights on board to make it a less visible target. After the crew went ashore in Philadelphia, the two Irishmen slipped away and travelled to New York, where they stayed with O’Hannigan, who had arrived before them.

Cunning, silence and exile had enabled the fugitives to survive. Now they were in neutral territory where a support system of like-minded expats and revolutionary brothers-in-arms awaited them in the form of Clan na Gael, an Irish-American society with a Fenian pedigree and republican aims.

Five Fenians – John Devoy, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Charles Underwood O’Connell, Henry Mulleda and John McClure – posing for an 1871 photo in America

To make their introductions, Callanan and Corbett visited the offices of the Gaelic American newspaper and met its editor, John Devoy. A leading member of Clan na Gael. Devoy was informed by his guests that Mellows was still in Ireland but due to join them soon. Satisfied, Devoy gave the pair some money, and they then waited for a week before Corbett moved to California, leaving Callanan in New York with O’Hannigan. Hearing no further news about Mellows, Callanan grew concerned – until he was awoken one December morning by someone nudging him in bed.

John Devoy

It was none other than Mellows at long last. When the reunited friends went down to the Gaelic American building – seemingly a rite of passage by now for the Irish exiles – Devoy, Callanan remembered, “was very pleased with Mellows and said he was the most capable man who had so far arrived in America.” Devoy would act as Mellows’ mentor, employer and, in time, bitter rival.[30]

December also saw the arrival in Dublin of a hundred and forty-six Galway men on the 23^rd, who had been released the day before from Frongoch Camp. They were joined the next morning by the remaining three hundred inmates, upon which the former prisoners marched from the North Wall, along the quays, watched by the assembled crowds who cheered at the sight of them.

The men themselves were more subdued. Many looked pale and haggard after sustaining for months on a diet of porridge, leavened only by gifts of food from home. In addition to malnutrition, Frongoch had been stricken for the past three weeks by an influenza-like epidemic, the effects of which were still evident on some of its victims, while the temperature in their cells had varied from chillingly cold or sweltering hot, without a happy medium. Having survived such hardships, the newly-freed returnees kept their silence as they reached the city centre, save for a cheer when passing by the General Post Office.[31]

To be continued in: Rebel Exile: Intrigue and Factions with Liam Mellows in the United States of America, 1916-8 (Part IV)

References

[1] Kelly, Michael (BMH / WS 1564) pp. 9-10

[2] Monahan, Alfred (BMH / WS 298), p. 27

[3] Newell, Martin (BMH / WS 1562), p. 15

[4] Molloy, Brian (BMH / WS 345), p. 14

[5] Howley. Peter (BMH / WS 1379), p. 13

[6] Monahan, pp. 26-8

[7] Howley, p. 14 ; Connacht Tribune, 06/05/1916

[8] Monahan, p. 25

[9] Connacht Tribune, 06/05/1916

[10] Ibid, 20/05/1916

[11] Monahan, p. 28

[12] Hynes, Frank (BMH / WS 446), p. 20

[13] Monahan, p. 28

[14] Hynes, pp. 20-1

[15] Ibid, pp. 22-4

[16] Monahan, pp. 35-6

[17] Police reports from Dublin Castle records (National Library of Ireland), POS 8541

[18] Irish Times, 29/05/1916

[19] Connacht Tribune, 20/05/1916

[20] Kelly, pp. 6-7, 10-1

[21] Ibid, pp. 11-2

[22] McNamara, Seán (BMH / WS 1047), pp. 10-13

[23] Hynes, pp. 28-9

[24] Monahan, pp. 41-3

[25] Hynes, p. 28 ; Fogarty, Michael (BMH / WS 673), p. 9

[26] Monahan, p. 45

[27] Ibid, pp. 13-4

[28] Woods, Mary Flannery (BMH / WS 624), pp. 19-21

[29] Czira, Sidney (BMH / WS 909), p. 35

[30] Callanan, Patrick (BMH / WS 405), pp. 4-6

[31] Connacht Tribune, 30/12/1916

Bibliography

Newspapers

Connacht Tribune

Irish Times

Bureau of Military History Statements

Callanan, Patrick, WS 405

Czira, Sidney, WS 900

Fogarty, Michael, WS 673

Howley, Peter, WS 1379

Hynes, Frank, WS 446

Kelly, Michael, WS 1564

McNamara, Seán, WS 1047

Molloy, Brian, WS 345

Monahan, Alf, WS 298

Newell, Martin, WS 1562

Woods, Mary Flannery, WS 624

National Library of Ireland Collection

Police Report from Dublin Castle Records

Rebel Captain: Liam Mellows and the Easter Rising in Galway, 1916 (Part II)

A continuation from: Rebel Scout: Liam Mellows and His Revolutionary Rise, 1911-6 (Part I)

Captain Liam Mellows – in Galway – fresh from his escape is in the field with his men.

(James Connolly, in a dispatch during the fighting in Dublin, issued on the 28^th April 1916)[1]

Preparations

Even in the absence of Liam Mellows, confined to England for the foreseeable future, the Irish Volunteers in Galway continued preparing for their upcoming insurrection. Plans had been announced at a convention for the Volunteers in Limerick on Palm Sunday, the 16^th April 1916, when a hurling match gave the perfect cover for the delegates from the Galway, Limerick, Tipperary and Clare Volunteers to attend.

After a lengthy lecture on military tactics to put the attendees in the right mood, the Galway representatives were taken aside to a room where a map of Ireland was laid out over a table with various positions marked on it. There, it was revealed that the long-gestating Rising, the one they had been building towards all this time, was set to take place a week from then on Easter Sunday.[2]

Officers in the Irish Volunteers

Meanwhile, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was none the wiser. The Volunteers planned on keeping it that way, right up to the moment they would march in force up to the police barracks and seize them. For that, the RIC would have no one to blame but itself. Its sergeants and constables had spent the past few months idly watching the Volunteers parade and drill in their company units, rehearsing for a revolution in plain sight without a policeman lifting a finger to interfere.

They would continue to do nothing until it was too late, until the Rising was already in unstoppable motion, until Ireland stood free of foreign rule and Saxon exploitation.

It would be child’s play.[3]

And then things grew…confusing.

Plots within Plans

Patrick Pearse

Larry Lardner, the O/C of the Irish Volunteers in Galway, had reason to feel uneasy. Sometime in 1915, he had met with  a visiting Patrick Pearse while Mellows was indisposed in Arbour Hill Prison. Pearse’s purpose in Galway was to break the news about the decision to stage a rebellion. The details had yet to be formalised but would be passed on in due course to Lardner. The two had even agreed on a coded message, ‘collect the premiums’, chosen due to Lardner’s job as an insurance agent.

On Holy Monday, the 17^th April, Eamon Corbett, the Vice-Commandant of the Galway Volunteers (and a future TD for the county), was dispatched to Dublin to attend a high-level meeting in St Edna’s School, which Pearse ran. Corbett returned with the orders for a countrywide uprising, to commence in six days’ time on Easter Sunday, the 22^nd April. Even the precise point of 7 pm had been worked out.

Eoin MacNeill

But, despite the seemingly straightforward nature of this plan, the code phrase for Lardner to ‘collect the premiums’ had not been included, leaving him unsure. His qualms were further heightened when a contradictory order arrived the following day, on the 18^th April, calling off any such rebellion. As this had been signed by Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, it was not something that could be dismissed.

Unsure on how to proceed, the Galway officers held a meeting of their own in the house of a sympathetic priest, Father Harry Feeney, at Clarinbridge. The decision was made for Lardner to head to Dublin himself and get a definite answer out of MacNeill and Pearse. Arriving in the capital on Holy Thursday, the 20^th April, Lardner failed to find either man, instead obtaining an interview with the next best thing: Bulmer Hobson, the Secretary of the Irish Volunteers Executive.

Doubts and Decisions

Bulmer Hobson

Already suspecting a divergence of opinion among the leaders of the movement, Lardner tried to ascertain from Bulmer what was going on. Bulmer’s advice him not to accept any orders that had not been approved by MacNeill. Which was straightforward enough – except that, by the time Larder returned to Galway, another dispatch was already there and waiting for him. It was from Pearse, telling him at last to ‘collect the premiums’ next Sunday on Easter Week, the 23^rd April, at 7 pm.

The use of the code appeared conclusive – until the following day, on Good Friday, the 21^st April, saw the appearance of yet another missive, this time from MacNeill, again calling for the Volunteers to stand down and do nothing.[4]

With Lardner paralysed by doubt, the other Galway officers approached his lieutenant, Frank Hynes, to lead them instead. Being no man’s fool, Hynes was instantly wary:

I had been ignored up to this as regards meetings of the council. I said “why do you come to me at the eleventh hour. What about Larry?” They said Larry was funking it.

Unwilling to commit himself quite yet, Hynes first went to see Lardner, finding the Brigade O/C on the verge of despair, pulled this way and that by the conflicting demands. Even consulting the Dublin headquarters had only exasperated things, Lardner complained.

After listening to his tirade, Hynes asked him point blank if he would follow the rest of the men should they marched out to fight on Easter Sunday.

“Oh, I’ll go out alright,” Lardner said.

Hynes was reassured. His commander would not be funking it, after all. But the pair of them were still not precisely clear what ‘it’ was supposed to be.[5]

Stop Press

James Connolly

Mellows, meanwhile, had made good his flight from England, returning to Ireland with the assistance of Nora Connolly and his brother Barney, the latter left in his place in Leeks with no one the wiser. Despite the drama and daring of the escape, the only newspaper to show interest was the Workers’ Republic – unsurprisingly so, considering how its editor was James Connolly, Nora’s father, who had sent his daughter on the rescue mission in the first place:

STOP PRESS. – RESCUE OF LIAM MELLOWS

We are at liberty to announce that Liam Mellows, the energetic Organiser of the Irish Volunteers who was recently deported to England, has been rescued, and is now safe back in Ireland.

Although this rescue took place more than a week ago the British Authorities have resolutely refused to publish the fact up to the present.[6]

Returning to Dublin gave Mellows the chance to catch up with friends, including Con Colbert, and they stayed up the whole night together singing rebel songs and having pillow-fights.[7]

On Holy Monday, the 17^th April, Éamonn Ceannt – who would soon command the Irish Volunteers in defending the South Dublin Union – suggested to his wife, Áine, that they take their 10-year-old son, Ronan, for a trip to St Edna’s. As the school was closed for the holidays, it would be quiet enough. Besides, he had no intention of remaining where he could be found and arrested anytime by the authorities.

Éamonn Ceannt, with Áine (front)

That morning was a glorious one, with the birds singing on the branches of fruit trees in full blossom. Áine saw a smiling young man in clerical garb approach them from an avenue of trees. The ‘priest’ clasped her hand and then shook young Ronan’s.

“An aithnigheann tú é [did you recognise me]?” Mellows asked the child.

“Aithnighin [I did],” replied Ronan, who had been well-schooled in Irish.

Patrick and Willie Pearse soon joined them in the garden, along with their sister Margaret and their mother. A pleasant meal was then had, the talk ranging from books to music, with not a word said about the fight they all knew was coming.

Afterwards, Áine and her son were sent to wait in the front grounds while the men talked. When Éamonn rejoined them, it was to give his wife her instructions. It was then that Áine realised that the visit had been intended as much for business as pleasure. She was to accompany Mellow’s mother, Sarah, to St Edna’s under the cover of night for her to say goodbye to her son before he set off for Galway the following day, on the 18^th April.

St Edna’s School

Áine and Sarah arrived at the school at about 9:30 pm, having changed trams four or five times on the way as a precaution. The building was in complete darkness, with not a light dared lit, as the two women were allowed in. Sarah found her way in the dark to the backroom where Liam was while Áine sat and waited in the pitch-black hall. Mother and son would not see each other again for the next five years.[8]

Road to Galway

W.J. Brennan-Whitmore

While moving through the country, Mellows took the opportunity to pass on instructions from Dublin to the Irish Volunteer companies he met. In a detour, he informed the Wexford men of their assigned role to keep the line of communications open between the capital and Munster. Secrecy was paramount: “None of those present were told of any specific date for a rising, but all were cautioned of the very confidential nature of the discussions.”

So recalled W.J Brennan-Whitmore, another visitor from Dublin, in his memoirs. It was late at night by the time the meeting was over and Brennan-Whitmore began the trek back to the big city, where he would command the defence of the Imperial Hotel on Sackville (now O’Connell) Street. Mellows walked him to the bridge over the Slaney at the town of Scarawalsh.

Scarawalsh Bridge, Co. Wexford

“It was a beautiful night, calm and still, with a full moon riding high in the cloudless heavens,” Brennan-Whitmore remembered:

We were sitting chatting on the parapet of the bridge when the cathedral clock struck the witching hour of midnight. We decided to call it a day, shook hands and parted, he to travel to the west to take up his own command there, I to travel to Dublin. It was destined to be the last time we ever met.[9]

From there, Mellows travelled in a north-westerly direction until he reached Co. Westmeath. As in Wexford, he passed on to the waiting Volunteers their instructions, these being to blow up strategic sites such as the bridge at Shannonbridge, Co. Offaly, before advancing westwards to connect with their Galway comrades.[10]

While in Westmeath, Mellows took the opportunity to stop by the house of an acquaintance, Father Casey. Mellows had changed his usual disguise of a clergyman to that of a beggar, complete with dark dye for his distinctive fair hair. Father Casey had a nagging feeling that he knew this stranger asking for alms at his door, but it was not until his visitor had left that realisation hit him. Casey ran to the gate but Mellows was already out of sight.[11]

Return to Galway

Eamon Corbett

Later, on the afternoon of Spy Wednesday, the 19^th April, the Manning family in Mullagh, Co. Galway, were visited by Eamon Corbett to tell them that Mellows would be coming to stay the night with them. Corbett had arrived on foot, his motorcar having broken down, and he was given a bicycle to ride on instead.

When Mellows arrived, he was again dressed as a priest, with some greasepaint over his face, and riding on the back of a motorcycle driven by a friend from Dublin. The friend did not stay for long, leaving Mellows to the hospitality of the Mannings.

The 27-seven-year old son of the family, Michael, had seen Mellows before when the latter arrived in Mullagh in May of 1915 to inspect the Volunteers there, of which Michael was a member. Mellows spent five or six days training the men in various forms of night attack. He had planned to return later in the summer but was imprisoned instead until November.

Mellows regaled the Mannings with a lively account of his flight from Britain, chuckling at how a dockhand in Belfast had fallen on his knees to ask for a blessing, obliging Mellows to mutter something appropriately Latin-sounding. He brushed off concerns of the RIC recognising him in Galway, saying he had passed by several police barracks already without arousing suspicion.

RIC constables before a barracks

He said nothing to the family about what he intended to do now that he was back in Galway, but the fully-loaded pistol he placed under his pillow at night and the book on military history he was carrying along with his green uniform shirt – the only luggage he had – must have given them some clue.

Liam Mellows

He did confide to Michael and his brother about the plans set for Easter Sunday. A notice to the press about a parade in Gort on the day was to be the signal for a general mobilisation of the Galway Volunteers. They would then march from Gort to Portumna, where they would be supplied with rifles sent up the Shannon from Kerry, where a German vessel was due to land with the weapons. It was a complicated plan, but Mellows was sure that their European partners would pull through for them.

Despite his cavalier attitude towards being recognised, Mellows was careful to remain indoors the following morning. He sent Michael to Loughrea with a note for Joseph O’Flaherty to alert him of his intention to spend the night there, preferably at his house. As O’Flaherty was an old Fenian and well-known to Mellows, he was delighted to oblige and sent Michael back with a message to that affect.

At the Manning household, Mellows swapped his priestly garb for an ordinary suit, given to him by Michael’s brother. As he left for Loughrea, he took an ash stick under his arm as if on his way to the cattle-fair that was occurring there the following day, Good Friday, the 21^st April.

Cattle fair in town

Michael attended the fair as part of his instructions to deliver a parcel to Mellows with his shirt and book inside. After buying and selling some cattle, Michael came to O’Flaherty’s house as arranged, found Mellows in bed and handed over the parcel.[12]

Back in Galway

Tom Clarke

Other preparations were being made for Mellows’ return. On Maundy Thursday, the 20^th April, Bridget Walsh, a schoolteacher who acted as a courier for the Volunteers, was sent to Dublin to bring back a message for him. She called in at the tobacco shop owned by Tom Clarke on Great Britain [now Parnell] Street.

Besides Clarke, Walsh met a number of leading figures in the revolutionary movement, such as Seán Mac Diarmada, Michael O’Hanrahan and Lardner, who was also visiting Dublin as part of his quest to find out what was going on. Larder told her that the rebellion in the works was now cancelled, throwing in some caustic remarks towards Eoin MacNeill and his incessant meddling.

After handing Clarke a couple of dispatches from Galway, Walsh received in return a package for Mellows. She assumed it contained a gun or ammunition, or perhaps both, and was only told later that it held the rest of Mellow’s uniform besides the shirt he was carrying.[13]

75 Great Britain Street, the tobacco shop owned by Tom Clarke

Meanwhile, back in Galway, Mellows was escorted from Loughrea by three Volunteers from the Clarinbridge Company, one of them being Patrick Walsh, Bridget’s brother. Each of the trio took turns to carry their guest on the backs of their bicycles until they reached the village of Killeenen, where Mellows was to remain at the home of Mrs Walsh, another schoolteacher and Bridget’s mother.

It was an appropriate choice of lodgings since the local battalion also used it as its headquarters. Mrs Walsh would be remembered as “a grand type of Irishwoman…She and her family were heart and soul with the Volunteers.” Her friendship with her guest was a strong one. “She adored Mellows and he held her on the highest esteem,” said one Volunteer.

For the next few nights, Volunteers were posted with revolvers on the roads leading to Walsh’s house, their instructions being to bar any suspicious-looking strangers. Until Easter Monday, when the need for secrecy could finally be cast aside, Mellows was careful to only venture out in disguise.[14]

Irish Volunteers with a tricolour

The Mullagh Company held a hurling match on Easter Sunday, the 23^rd April, as instructed by headquarters in Athenry, in order to provide cover for an address by Mellows. As before, Mellows went dressed as a priest, complete with black hair dye. When he passed one of the Volunteers, Laurence Garvey, on the road, he went as far as to ask if he recognised him. Despite Mellows having stayed at the Garvey family house while on inspection tours, Garvey replied in the negative.

When Garvey recalled Mellows’ address to the Mullagh Company, it was notable, in hindsight, in what was not said, as Garvey was sure that nowhere was anything about an insurrection mentioned. Mellows stayed until 3 pm when he left on a bicycle, accompanied by Eamon Corbett, with his audience none the wiser.[15]

Easter Sunday

Playing it by ear, Larder and Hynes allowed the Volunteers to muster as originally planned. Without telling the Athenry Company anything else, Hynes informed them they were having a parade on the morning of Easter Sunday, before attending Holy Communion as a group. Similar orders were sent out to the other companies in Galway.

Well-trained by now, the men turned out in force as ordered, many wearing bandoliers and haversacks, although only Lardner had a uniform. Having paraded, the company was starting towards the church when a bulletin came through. It was from MacNeill, and it read: No action to be taken today. Volunteers completely deceived.

Eoin MacNeill’s countermanding order, as published

After a hurried meeting by the company officers, it was agreed to issue dispatches of their own about this abrupt change of plans. There was to be no Rising after all. With that sorted, Hynes went to work the following Monday, thinking that everything had at last been settled.

Larry Lardner

He was wrong. Returning to his home for dinner, Hynes received word that he was to go to the hall used by the Volunteers. “When I went down Larry was there and his face was a placard in which trouble could be read easily,” Hynes recalled.

Lardner handed Hynes the latest written directive, this time from Pearse: Going out today at noon; issue your orders. Which could only mean one thing – the uprising was back on.

Missed Chances

At a loss for what to do, the two men ratified all the companies they could. Upon been told that Mellows was back in Galway and now staying in Killeeneen – it says much about the general state of disarray that Hynes did not seem to be aware of this already – the pair sent a message to him, asking him for instructions. His reply was that they should not do anything until he came over.

By now, everyone had heard about the fighting in Dublin. The RIC had also been caught wrong-footed but they recovered more quickly than the Volunteers. In Athenry, policemen in outlying outposts were withdrawn and concentrated in houses adjacent to the barracks, making the building too daunting to attack.[16]

The Old Barracks restaurant, Athenry, the site of the former RIC barracks

One of the leading organisers for the Galway Volunteers, Alf Monaghan, was to lament the opportunities squandered in the confusion, for the RIC:

…had apparently not suspected anything, and if the original plans had been carried out, it is probable that all the barracks in the county could have been taken without a fight. In Athenry alone all the police, except one man in the barracks were at Benediction on Sunday night, and most of them went for a stroll afterwards.

So sudden had the reversal in policy been, according to Monahan, that “it is recorded that one Company actually received the countermanding order as they took up a position around the local RIC Barracks on Sunday night.”[17]

RIC policemen, armed with rifles

In Athenry, the only thing left for the Volunteers to do was prepare themselves in case of attack, with about a dozen of them staying in Hynes’ house on Monday night. Next morning, Lardner and Hynes made the decision to move the company towards Oranmore and unite with Mellows there. Then they would leave it to him to figure out what was what.[18]

Gathering Pace

Elsewhere in the Galway, Easter Sunday had been equally anticlimactic for the Irish Volunteers. In Clarinbridge, the Volunteers attended Mass in Roveagh village, as instructed, breakfasting afterwards on the church grounds, the food cooked by women in Cumann na mBan who were accompanying their male comrades. Mellows was present, as was Father Harry Feeney, Patrick ‘the Hare’ Callanan and Corbett as the company captain.

Cumann na mBan women

After several hours of waiting around, Corbett finally dismissed the men at 3 pm, telling them nothing more than not to stray far from their homes in readiness of any further mobilisations. At least one of his listeners did not take these instructions too seriously, for Martin Newell set off the next morning to Tawin village, twelve miles from his home in Clarenbridge, to purchase some seaweed.

Newell was on his way back when he met ‘the Hare’ Callanan, the Brigade Chief of Scouts, who was cycling rapidly towards him. Callanan leapt off his bike to tell Newell to hurry on to Killeeneen, for their Dublin compatriots were already in open revolt even as they spoke.[19]

Father Feeney

It was at about 2 pm on Easter Monday, the 24^th April, when it was Mellows’ turn to learn how behind in the times he was. Father Feeney rushed to the Walsh household with the news that the Dublin Volunteers had been out since noon. Galvanised, Mellows instantly sent out dispatches to as many companies in Galway as he could, ordering them to mobilise and prepare to play their part.[20]

One of the messengers sent out was Michael Kelly. He was called over to the Walsh house, where Mellows had gathered Corbett, Father Feeney and several others. Mellows asked him if he knew the area around Peterswell. When the other man replied that he did, Mellows gave him a message to take to the Ballycahan Company. Another man, Patrick Kelly (no relation), was to accompany him, each with a revolver and orders to resist should the RIC attempt to detain them.

The two men did as they were ordered, and received assurances that the Ballycahan men would be standing by. They returned to the Walsh home, only to find that Mellows and the others had already left for Clarinbridge.[21]

‘Mid Cannon Boom and the Roar of Gun

When Newell reached Killeeneen, as instructed by Callanan, he was sent by Corbett to tell the rest of the sixty-strong Clarinbridge Company to come fully armed. All the Volunteers assembled as ordered that night, with Mrs Walsh sacrificing her family’s breakfast to feed the men for supper.

At 8 am on the Tuesday, the 25^th April, the Company lined up outside the Walsh house, poised on the brink of no return. Corbett performed a rousing song, with the chorus of:

Then forward for the hour has come.

To free our fettered sireland’

‘Mid cannon boom and roar of gun

We’ll fight for God and Ireland.[22]

And, with that, the men began the four mile march towards their first target of Clarinbridge. Bridget Walsh watched them as they took their leave of her mother’s house, and could not help but notice how only a few had firearms in the form of shotguns, with the rest carrying pitchforks as a primitive substitute, while uniforms were limited to a handful such as Mellows and Corbett.[23]

Irish Volunteers on the march

At least Newell was able to retrieve some stored ammunition from Killeeneen School. As he described:

We continued through the demesne and arrived at the convent gate, Clarenbridge [old spelling], where we halted and given right turn. Mellows, standing at the right-hand side of the company, addressed us. He asked for twelve Volunteers to step out. Practically the whole company stepped forward.

Spoilt for choice, Mellows picked a dozen men to act as the vanguard as the company entered the village and laid siege to the RIC barracks there. First blood was shed when a policeman was caught outside and shot when he reached for his revolver. As the Volunteers were in a merciful mood, and the county not yet embittered by years of conflict, the wounded constable was removed to the convent for medical treatment.

The attack on the barracks was interrupted when the parish priest, Father Tully, came to remonstrate with Mellows, urging him to cease and desist. Mellows refused unless the RIC men surrendered and asked Tully to convey this to the barracks. The priest did so, but the policemen inside declined and the attack resumed.[24]

Site of the former Clarinbridge Barracks, with plagque commemorating the attack next to the door

Clarinbridge

Michael and Patrick Kelly followed in their wake, meeting other Volunteers posted as sentries a mile outside the village, from where they heard the sounds of gunfire. “The attack was still going on when we arrived,” Michael remembered. “The whole company was there, all firing at the barracks at a range of about fifty yards.”

There was a barricade on the Oranmore Road made of Mineral water boxes, with Volunteers behind the barricades to prevent reinforcements from reaching the barracks. All the approaches to the village were barricaded and all traffic held up. About midday or 1 p.m. the attack was called off.

“Mellows was in full charge,” Michael stressed. Other than the constable at the start, it had been a bloodless battle: “No Volunteer was wounded. There was no RIC man wounded inside Clarenbridge barracks during the attack.”

Seeing how they were only wasting time and bullets, Mellows ordered the barricades to be taken down. The Volunteers departed for Oranmore village, where they met up with two more companies, the Oranmore and Maree ones, who had already made an unsuccessful attempt on the RIC there. As with Clarinbridge, the police garrison were holed up inside the barracks, with the exception of their sergeant, trapped in another building in the village.

Oranmore, Co. Galway, today

Mellows decided to continue the assault despite receiving news of police reinforcements on the way to Oranmore by train. He sent for Michael Kelly and Michael Cummins, assigning the former to the station to see if the enemy had arrived yet and, if so, in what strength. As for Kelly:

He sent me to the forge near the Sergeant’s house with a section of about six men with instructions not to allow the Sergeant to leave his house. The Sergeant made no attempt to leave his own house.[25]

The Connacht Tribune gave the officer in question a slightly more heroic role – unsurprisingly, given how it was Sergeant Healy who told the newspaper the story. Healy had been one of the two policemen out on patrol that morning, leaving four constables behind in the barracks.

When Healy saw the two companies of Volunteers advancing towards Oranmore, he was careful to take a circuitous route along the sea coast to avoid detection while returning to the village (the other RIC man, Constable MacDermott, being not so cautious, was taken prisoner). By the time Healy arrived, the Volunteers were already there, with his four subordinates fortified within their barracks.

RIC constables

Lacking any other options, Healy retreated to the house of Constable Smyth, opposite the barracks. He watched as about thirty-five Volunteers rushed the barracks, only to be driven back by rifle-shots from inside.

As the Connacht Tribune reported:

Immediately Sergeant Healy had got with the shelter of Constable Smyth’s house, he sent orders across to the men in the barracks as to how they were to act and communications were sent to Galway for reinforcements.

Half an hour later, one of the assailants came to Smyth’s door and demanded the surrender of everyone inside. When Mrs Smyth insisted that there was no one else present, the men grew menacing. Healy warned the messenger at the door to go or he would fire.

Instead, the Volunteers began battering at the door until Healy shot through the panels, forcing them to flee down the street. They did not return, contenting themselves instead with taking potshots at the barracks.[26]

Flight

Cummins, meanwhile, had ridden his bicycle to the station and found that enemy reinforcements had already pulled in, one of whom missing a shot at Cummins as he peddled rapidly away to warn the others. Michael Kelly later numbered the RIC to around forty. More precisely, the Connacht Tribune put the Crown relief force down to twenty-two – ten policemen under the overall command of the County Inspector, and ten soldiers from the Connaught Rangers, including their captain.

Together, they marched at a smart pace towards Oranmore, scattering the villagers who had been drawn outside their homes by the novelty of a siege. An attempt by the Volunteers to disable a bridge on the way was abandoned, the discarded crowbars testifying to the speed of their flight.

Clarinbridge today

Upon nearing the barracks, the mixed police-military force came briefly under fire by shotguns and rifles from the turn of the road leading to Athenry. This rebel rearguard then departed from Oranmore with the rest of their compatriots in commandeered motorcars.

“The whole random affair appears to have been over in less time than it takes to write it,” sniffed the Connacht Tribune.

According to Newell, Mellows:

…was the last to leave and took cover at the gable of Reilly’s public-house until the RIC arrived in the village from the station and, when they were about to enter the RIC barrack, he opened fire on them with, I think, an automatic pistol from a distance of 25 yards.

In Kelly’s version, he, Cummins and a few others had remained behind with their leader after Mellows had ordered the rest of the three companies to withdraw towards Athenry. The soldiers and policemen took cover beside the houses on either side of the road and did not retaliate, waiting instead for their assailants to leave.

Though bullet had whizzed perilously close to the County Inspector’s head, no harm was done, the only police loss being the missing MacDermott, believed (accurately) to have been captured. Not wishing to linger lest the rebels return with their superior numbers, Sergeant Healy and his remaining four constables left Oranmore by train with their rescuers after first stripping anything of value from the barracks.[27]

Carnmore

It was dark by the time the three Volunteer companies arrived at the Agricultural School, about a mile out of Athenry. Close as it was to a railway line by which further British forces could arrive, the School was not an ideal stop but, for want of anywhere else, Mellows decided to make it his temporary headquarters. The companies from Athenry, Craughwell, Newcastle, Derrydonnell and Cussane trickled in throughout the night, with the Castlegar and Claregalway men arriving in the Wednesday morning of the 26^th April.[28]

The last two had been fetched by Callanan. After being dispatched by Mellows on Monday evening, he had been in a whirlwind of activity, successfully rousing the Volunteers in Castlegar and Claregalway, as well as those in Maree and Oranmore. Galway City was a failure, however, as Callanan was unable to get in touch with anyone from the Volunteers there. As for the Moycollen Company, its captain promised Callanan that he would mobilise his men and also pass on word to the Spiddal Company. He failed to do either, but Callanan had other things to worry about by then.

Irish Volunteers stand to attention

Callanan returned in time to find Mellows and the Clarinbridge Company marching towards Oranmore. Mellows assigned him to go back and bring the Claregalway and Castlegar men to join him in Oranmore. By the time Callanan and the two companies arrived, the Crown relief force was already present and holding the bridge, blocking any attempt to follow in the wake of Mellows’ group.

Luckily, Callanan was able to learn that the main force was in the Agricultural School. As it was too late to journey to Athenry, he billeted his men in nearby Carnmore. Having first posted watchmen on the village outskirts, Callanan settled in for the night until awoken by gunshots.

The sentries had opened fire on a convoy of six or seven cars coming from the direction of Galway City. The vehicles pulled up by the road and their RIC occupants exchanged shots with the Volunteers sheltering behind stone walls.

Irish Volunteers with rifles

Meanwhile, Callanan was hastily assembling the rest of his men, before they beat a hasty retreat out of Carnmore. The police did not pursue, instead driving forlornly back to Galway City with the corpse of Constable Patrick Whelan, a bloody hole in the side of his head, the 34-year-old native of Kilkenny being the sole fatality of Galway’s Easter Rising.[29]

The Agricultural School

A second shootout with the RIC occurred later on Wednesday morning when the sentries posted in a hut on the Agricultural School grounds were surprised to see a group of seven policemen advancing up the road with rifles primed. Alerted to the threat, Hynes set out with six others. They opened fire on the RIC who withdrew back towards Athenry, returning shots as they did so.

Hynes, Lardner and the rest of the Athenry Company had reunited with Mellows the night before at the School. When composing his story for posterity years later, Hynes would feel an acute need to address the question he was sure lurked in the heads of his readers:

Anyone reading this account would be inclined to think that we were acting in a rather cowardly manner – why did we not attack the barrack at Athenry? Why did we keep retreating, etc, etc?

The explanation he gave was that while the Volunteers numbered between five and six hundred, they had only fifty full service rifles between them, with the rest of the army having to make do with shotguns, inferior .22 rifles and a dozen pikes. Ammunition was equally scarce, and some men were not armed at all. Bombs had been made, but these were so useless that Hynes doubted they would injure a man even if they exploded in his hand.[30]

Alf Monahan took an equally sceptical view on their chances: “Over 500 men assembled at the [Agricultural School], but a great part of them had no firearms of any sort. In fact, there were only 35 rifles and 350 shotguns, all told.”

Charles Monahan

As for the plan to land three thousand German rifles in Co. Kerry, to be moved by rail and distributed all along the line to Galway to the eagerly waiting Volunteers, that lay in tatters, ruined by a fatal combination of the gun-running ship being unable to unload, the arrest of Roger Casement and the accidental drowning in Kerry of the three Volunteers (one of whom, Charles, was Alf’s brother) who were to distract the Royal Navy with fake radio signals.

Despite this grievous setback and the equally worrying paucity of weapons, morale remained high. “All were in the best of humour and full of pluck,” remembered Monahan.[31]

Some of the men present had not even been in the Irish Volunteers before but were showing their willingness to contribute, whether for the national cause or more acrimonious reasons. Bridget Walsh described how a pair of Connemara men offered their services on the grounds that: “If you are going sticking peelers [policemen] we are with you.”[32]

Moyode Castle

Lardner was present as Brigade O/C but Mellows was undoubtedly the one in command. At a council of war, it was suggested by the officers present that their small army be divided into columns with which to wage a guerrilla war, but this was unanimously rejected. Instead, the decision was made to move on to Moyode Castle, five miles away.

As they left the Agricultural School, Mellows confided to Callanan his determination to never yield, not while there was still a scrap of hope. Help was likely to arrive soon, he added, with the Volunteers of Limerick and Clare sure to rally to their aid.[33]

Practically empty save for a single caretaker, Moyode Castle posed no difficulty in capturing. It was, in Monahan’s view, “not a good place to put in a state of defence, as there were large windows all around it.” Still, it was at least roomier than the School had been, allowing for the various companies to be allocated their own quarters. They had by then collected five RIC prisoners, who were kept under watch.[34]

Moyode Castle

The next morning, on the Thursday of the 27^th April, Mellows drove out with several others on a reconnaissance mission, calling on a number of houses to inquire after any enemy movements. Upon nearing the New Inn RIC Barracks, Mellows decided to risk further investigation. They found it had been evacuated except for two women, who told Mellows that they were the only ones there. When Mellows said he would give the building a search all the same, one of the women, visibly nervous, admitted that her husband, the barracks sergeant, was there after all, being ill in bed upstairs.

According to Stephen Jordan, one of the other Volunteers present (and another TD-to-be), “Mellows then requested her to go to the room and tell her husband that he wanted to ask him some questions, and to tell him not to be anxious as no harm would come to him.”

Jordan accompanied his leader into the bedroom, where Mellows questioned the sergeant about the size of the former garrison and where they would have left for. The stricken policeman replied that they had received an order to go to Loughrea and the rest had departed before daybreak, taking everything of value with them.

“The Sergeant seemed very relieved on account of Mellows’ gentlemanly manner,” remembered Jordan. “We returned to Moyode without further incident.”[35]

Fight

An incident was had, however, later that day, when Mellows assigned Jordan to lead a foraging party. They went to a farm at Rahard and were loading two carts with potatoes – with or without the owner’s permission was left unstated in Jordan’s later account – when a body of policemen pedalled into range on bicycles. Both sides reached for their weapons and opened fire, the sounds enough to reach Moyode Castle and prompt a rescue party of two or three carloads of Volunteers to drive out immediately.

RIC constables with rifles and bicycles

By the time these reinforcements, headed by Mellows, arrived on the scene, the RIC had fallen back. After Jordan delivered a brief summary of what had transpired, Mellows gathered the men back into their cars and set off in pursuit of the police, who retreated further as fast as they could, reaching the safety of Athenry before the Volunteers could overtake them.[36]

Not so easily vanquished was the booming of artillery from the direction of Galway Bay as a British battleship, the HMS Gloucester, tried unsuccessfully to fix a target on the rebel base. The sounds were heard as far as the Castle throughout Wednesday to Friday, with the Volunteers deciding that this was from a duel between the Royal Navy and German submarines. Regardless of how their ‘gallant allies in Europe’ had failed in delivering the much-missed rifles, the Galway men could still entertain the hope that they were not fighting alone.

HMS Gloucester

“The Moyode garrison was well equipped with rumour,” Monahan recalled dryly, but there was nothing known for sure about what was happening in Dublin or the rest of the country.[37]

Other than during the potato-hunting foray, there were no sightings of any police or soldiers, though that did not prevent talk of an imminent attack. Even years afterwards, that such gossip came about at all still grated on Hynes:

We will give the bearers of these false rumours the charity of our silence, but one in particular who was responsible for most of them was a very prominent republican and a member of the I.R.B. up to Easter Week. This man did his best to get us to give up and go home and have sense. He brought one particular rumour that five or six hundred soldiers were marching on us from Ballinasloe.

A meeting of the officers was called on the strength of this particular warning. Much to Hynes’ shame, one or two of those present were sufficiently unnerved to openly consider the naysayer’s advice to quit and return home, so disgusting Mellows that he handed over command to Lardner, who probably wanted the responsibility least of all.

Group photograph of Galway Volunteer officers, including Frank Hynes and Stephen Jordan (standing first and second to the left), and Larry Lardner (standing, far right)

An hour was enough for Mellows to calm down and resume authority. He made his way through the castle, talking to the men and answering any entreaties as to the situation. They could hold out for a month, he told them, by moving south to the Clare Hills.

Flight

This was too much for some. When Monahan addressed the Volunteers on Thursday night, offering anyone with second thoughts the chance to leave, about two hundred – roughly a third of the force – decided to do so. They first gave up their weapons, overcoats and anything else of use to those staying, though some of these waverers returned the following day.[38]

By then, the Volunteers had been stirred into action when a scout returned with the news of nine hundred British troops on the march towards the Castle. Unlike previous reports, this one was broadly accurate, as anyone with a copy of the Connacht Tribune would have read of how:

We regret to say that we at last (for good or ill) now approaching the conditions of a regular trial of military strength as between the Crown forces and what, we suppose, may be described as the Insurgents.

Information was vague, admitted the newspaper; indeed, it wildly overestimated the rebels to be two thousand-strong. More certain was of the aim of the British State: “It was known last [Friday] night that the authorities intended to take the initiative.” Royal Navy marines had landed in Galway Bay, their strategy seeming to be to join the rest of the military in catching the said insurgents with a pincer-move.[39]

British soldiers

There was no question inside Moyode Castle of allowing this to happen, and the debate arose again as to whether it would be better to disband or retreat in good order. The latter was decided on, and Mellows arranged the companies in marching order. Never afraid to risk himself, he took charge of the Athenry Company, alongside Corbett and Hynes, which was assigned to be the rearguard, where fighting was most likely to break out should the British forces catch up with them.

The Volunteers marched along by-roads to the east of Craughwell, making it to Monksfield by nightfall. The plan was to reach Co. Clare and obtain enough help from the Volunteers there to fight their way to Limerick, where further reinforcements hopefully awaited.[40]

Amongst the rearguard, Michael Kelly saw that they were being tailed by two men on bicycles. All he could make of them was that they were dressed in black. Kelly ordered the other men to take cover while he called on the strangers to halt. The pair were riding so fast that they sped straight into the midst of the Volunteers before they could stop.

Up close, Kelly could see that they were priests. When the two asked to see Mellows, a suspicious Kelly questioned them closely, learning that their names were Father Fahy and Father O’Farrell. He was not certain but he thought he caught something from them about Dublin.[41]

Turbulent Priests

Father Fahy

Father Thomas Fahy first met Mellows when the latter arrived in Galway, early in 1915. When Fahy, then a professor at Ballinasloe College, had asked Mellows if the Irish Volunteers really intended to fight, he was taken aback at the assurance that they did indeed. With the coming of Easter Week in 1916, the priest saw the truth of those words for himself.

Father Fahy was at home near Athenry when he heard of the Volunteers taking up arms, just as Mellows had promised. Eager to play his part, albeit in a spiritual capacity, Fahy visited the gathered men in Moyode Castle every day to hear their confessions. While doing so, he took the opportunity to talk with Father Feeney, who was accompanying the Volunteers as an impromptu chaplain.

Feeney had asked him to go to Galway City to find out the views of their Church superiors. While Fahy was not able to meet Bishop O’Dea, other priests assured him that His Grace fully approved of Feeney’s aid to the rebels.

It was while in Galway City that Father Fahy heard that the Volunteers had suddenly departed from the Castle in favour of the abandoned country house of Limepark. Joining Father O’Farrell, they cycled towards the new base to catch up with his martial congregation.[42]

The priests were taken to Limepark, where the officers heard what they had to say. Mellows was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. He had fallen asleep and so missed Father Fahy breaking some startling news. “They had definite information that Dublin had given in and that the soldiers in Galway were aware of our movement and were marching to meet us,” Hynes described.[43]

Kelly, who was sitting on a windowsill and listening in, would recall much the same thing: “I heard one of the priests telling all the officers assembled about the surrender in Dublin.”[44]

Patrick Pearse delivering the unconditional surrender

In this, the two witnesses were either misremembering or the priests had been confused, for the Dublin rebels would not formally concede until later that day, on Saturday afternoon. Whatever the truth, the already tenuous situation for the Galway men suddenly felt desperate.

The only thing left for the Volunteers to do, Fahy urged, was to acknowledge the inevitable and disperse while they still could. Monahan stoutly insisted that they continue to resist. The others were not so sure. Unwilling to voice his own doubts, Hynes equivocated, saying that they should wake Mellows and hear what he had to say.

Hard Decisions

Liam Mellows in uniform

After Mellows had had Father Fahy repeat the latest developments to him, he apologised for having been asleep. But, he said, he had brought the men out to fight, not flee. Even if he was to disband them, what then? They would be shot down like rabbits without a chance to defend themselves.

As for him, he would hand over his command to whoever wanted it. He was going to catch up on three days’ worth of sleep until the British arrived, and then he would battle it out with them to the last.[45]

Listening to this, Hynes knew that Mellows meant every word. Father Fahy tried a different tack, suggesting that the rest of the Volunteers should have the chance to discuss their options. Mellows argued that this was not necessary, for he had already put the question of continued resistance to the men in Moyode Castle, and every one of them had agreed to persevere. Fahy pressed on, asking if the rest of the officers who were not present could be consulted. After some hesitation, Mellows gave in and agreed to this.

At the subsequent meeting, Father Fahy outlined the situation to the fourteen officers present. Mellows continued to hold that it would be better to fight it out as their lives were forfeit anyway, considering how the five RIC captives of theirs would be able to identify everyone. When asked about this, the prisoners agreed to give no such information upon release, a promise they were to uphold.

At the end, the officers voted to disband, the only dissenters being Mellows and the faithful Monahan. For an alternative, Monahan urged for the Volunteers to take to the open country and pursue guerrilla tactics, as suggested before, but nobody seemed to be listening at that particular point.

Departures

When Father Fahy asked for this to be relayed to the men, Mellows excused himself, unwilling to ask a single man to leave after bringing them this far. And so the priest took on the task instead when the men had assembled outside Limepark House. Galway had done well but since they now stood alone, he told them, there was no point in carrying on. Better for them to return to their homes quietly and prepare for another day.

“Mellows did not address the men,” Father Fahy later wrote. “He was very depressed; the news from Dublin had upset him greatly.”[46]

Limepark House, now in ruins

Despite his own low spirits, Mellows did his best to console the others, many of whom were weeping openly. Those who offered to stay with Mellows were turned down. Things would blow over, he assured them. When one man noticed how Mellows lacked a coat and offered his own, Mellows accepted it only with reluctance.

Hynes was among the last Mellows approached to say farewell. Hynes told him he was staying with him, inwardly hoping the other man would not order him away like he had done with the others.

Instead, Mellows took his hand between both of his and said: “God bless you.”

Soon, the only ones remaining were Mellows, Hynes and Monahan. They were about to re-enter the old house when Mellows announced that it would be preferable to make a running fight of it rather than remain inside to be cornered. The other two agreed, as they probably would have to anything their leader suggested, and so the three of them set out together, towards an uncertain future.[47]

To be continued in: Rebel Runaway: Liam Mellows in the Aftermath of the Easter Rising, 1916 (Part III)

References

[1] Martin, Eamon (BMH / WS 591) p. 18

[2] Fogarty, Michael (BMH / WS 673), pp. 5-6

[3] Hynes, Frank (BMH / WS 446), pp. 10-11

[4] Monahan, Alf (BMH / WS 298), pp. 13-16

[5] Hynes, p. 11

[6] Workers’ Republic, 22/04/1916

[7] Fahy, Anna (BMH / WS 202), p. 2

[8] Ceann, Áine (BMH / WS 264), pp. 20-1

[9] Brennan-Whitmore, W.J. Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2013), pp. 22-4

[10] Malone, Tomas (BMH / WS 845), pp. 6, 8

[11] Malone, Bridget (BMH / WS 617), p. 3

[12] Manning, Michael (BMH / WS 1164), pp. 3-7

[13] Malone, Bridget, pp. 3-4, 8

[14] Newell, Martin (BMH / WS 1562), pp. 8-9

[15] Garvey, Laurence (BMH / WS 1062), p. 5

[16] Hynes, pp. 11-13

[17] Monahan, pp. 16-17

[18] Hynes, p. 13

[19] Newell, pp. 8-9

[20] Callanan, Patrick (BMH / WS 347), p. 8

[21] Kelly, Michael (BMH / WS 2875), pp. 5-6

[22] Newell, pp. 9-10

[23] Malone, Bridget, p.5

[24] Newell, pp. 10-11

[25] Kelly, pp. 6-7

[26] Connacht Tribune, 29/04/1916

[27] Ibid ; Kelly, pp. 7-8 ; Newell, p. 8

[28] Kelly, p. 8

[29] Callanan, pp. 9-10 ; CT, 29/04/1916

[30] Hynes, pp. 13-14

[31] Monahan, pp. 17, 19

[32] Malone, Bridget, pp. 5-6

[33] Callanan, p. 10

[34] Hynes, p. 14 ; Monahan, p. 21 ; Kelly, p. 8

[35] Jordan, Stephen (BMH / WS 346), p. 6

[36] Ibid, p. 7

[37] Monahan, pp. 21-22

[38] Hynes, pp. 14-15 ; Kelly, p. 9

[39] Hynes, p. 15 ; CT, 29/04/1916

[40] Hynes, p. 15

[41] Kelly, p. 10

[42] Fahy, Thomas (BMH / WS 383), pp. 2-3

[43] Hynes, pp. 15-6

[44] Kelly, pp. 10-1

[45] Hynes, Thomas, p. 16

[46] Fahy, pp. 4-5 ; Monahan, pp. 24-5 ; Kelly, p. 11

[47] Hynes, p. 17 ; Barrett, James (BMH / WS 343), p. 5

Bibliography

Book

Brennan-Whitmore, W.J. Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2013)

Bureau of Military History Statements

Barrett, James, WS 343

Callanan, Patrick, WS 347

Ceannt, Áine, WS 264

Fahy, Anna, WS 202

Fahy, Thomas, WS 383

Fogarty, Michael, WS 673

Garvey, Laurence, WS 1062

Hynes, Frank, WS 446

Jordan, Stephen, WS 346

Kelly, Michael, WS 2875

Malone, Tomas, WS 845

Manning, Michael, WS 1164

Martin, Eamon, WS 591

Monahan, Alf, WS 298

Newell, Martin, WS 1562

Newspapers

Connacht Tribune

Workers’ Republic

Rebel Scout: Liam Mellows and His Revolutionary Rise, 1911-6 (Part I)

Coming to Galway

Liam Mellows

In April 1915, the Irish Volunteers of Athenry, Co. Galway, assembled at their local train station to meet the senior officer being sent from Dublin to help organise them for a week. As the newcomer stepped on the platform, the company captain, Frank Hynes, could not help but feel disappointed, for the small, bespectacled youth fell short of what he had been expecting. This Liam Mellows appeared to be a clever lad at least, but what possible use could he be in a scrap?

The rest of the company, arrayed in parade-ground ranks, did not appear to be any more impressed. “Now, men, I was sent down to get you to do a bit of hard work,” Mellows told them, “so I want you to be prepared for a week of very hard work.”

If he caught sight of any of the poorly suppressed smirks, he gave no sign. At least the men were able to restrain themselves until the pipsqueak was out of earshot before collapsing into peals of laughter. Hard work, indeed!

Mellows began that evening with a marching exercise for the Athenry company. After a mile out on the road, with some of them were thinking it was time to turn back, Mellows instead doubled the pace. Hynes was at the front with Mellows and Larry Lardner, the commander of the Galway Brigade. Lardner was the first of the three officers to show the strain, with Hynes managing a little better while Mellows remained entirely unruffled as he pressed them on mercilessly.

Irish Volunteers

Three-quarters of a mile later and Mellows told the struggling Lardner beside him to order a quick march. Lardner could barely breathe, let alone speak, leaving it to Hynes instead to wheeze out the command. When the three looked back, they found they had lost half their company, the stragglers left strewn along the route in exhausted heaps.

“By the time the week was up we had a fair good idea of what hard work meant,” Hynes recalled dryly. At the end of the assigned period, Mellows wrote to his superiors in Dublin for an extension of another week, which grew into a full-time appointment.[1]

The Plot Thickens

Others were similarly struck. Another Volunteer in Galway recalled how Mellows:

…was very boyish-looking and full of enthusiasm for his work. He impressed us tremendously by his determination and, looking at his slight figure and boyish appearance, we wondered where all his determination came from.[2]

Mellows had his reasons for pushing himself and others so vigorously. Early in March 1916, almost a year after his arrival in the county, he told Alf Monahan to impress upon the Galway men that any attempt by the authorities to confiscate their weapons was to be resisted. Like Mellows, Monahan was a sworn initiate in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the oath-bound secret society dedicated to Irish freedom, and so privy to matters that the ordinary Volunteer was not.

A Belfast native, Monahan was fresh out of prison when the IRB dispatched him to Galway to assist Mellows. “From this it will be seen that G.H.Q. had reasons for having Galway very specially organised and equipped for the coming Rising,” Monahan later explained. When news came of the plan for a countrywide insurrection, set for the Easter Week of 1916, it was of no surprise to either him or Mellows.[3]

Irish Volunteers

Soon after arriving in Galway, Mellows went about recruiting in the eastern fringe of the county, resulting in a few new Volunteers but not enough to form a company. Despite this setback, he remained “always cheerful and happy,” according to Laurence Garvey, in whose family house Mellows stayed, saying the Rosary with his hosts every night before retiring to bed.

What Volunteers there were, Garvey included, drilled twice weekly, with Mellows often in attendance. Mellows also provided the ammunition for target practice, the costs defrayed by a weekly donation from the other men.

It was not all seriousness. For one summer week in 1915, Mellows camped in a field with a bell-tent, spending the days on his inspections and training regimes. Afterwards, in the evenings when his work was done, he invited Garvey and a few others to join him while he played the violin and they danced a few sets with local girls.

It was a change from the usual military routine, being “just a week’s holiday at Liam’s invitation and very enjoyable,” as Garvey recalled.[4]

Liam Mellows at the wheel of a car, with friends, including Harry Boland (centre back)

Optimism and Comradeship

Mellows had the knack for charming people. Another acquaintance who fell under the spell of the quiet, steely power that Mellows possessed, even at a tender age, was Robert Brennan. Like Mellows, he would be in the thick of things during the 1916 Rising, in Wexford in Brennan’s case. Five years earlier, on a Sunday in 1911, he and his wife were making their way to Mass in Summerhill, Co. Wexford, when they came across a troop of youths, their green uniforms denoting them as Na Fianna Éireann, the Fenian answer to the Boy Scouts.

Fianna Éireann on the march

At the head of the column was a lad with strikingly fair hair. Upon being introduced, Brennan found his hand inside an unusually strong grasp and himself staring into the blue eyes of Mellows, eyes that were “full of good humour, enthusiasm, optimism and comradeship.”[5]

The Brennans’ house soon became the training centre for the Fianna, with Mellows staying with the couple almost every time he was in Wexford. Robert soon saw the two sides to his young friend: “On the parade ground Liam was a stern, rigid disciplinarian. He drove the boys hard. Off duty he was a light-hearted harum-scarum practical joker and he was an inveterate prankster.”

Robert Brennan

Despite being an IRB insider for some years, Brennan was sceptical as to whether all this martial posturing would amount to anything but Mellows was adamant. They would get their chance, Mellows assured him, when Britain and Germany were at war. Brennan was not entirely convinced, but such optimism was infectious all the same.

Mellows would return the favour by hosting the Brennans whenever they visited Dublin. He lived with his parents and siblings in a small but comfortable house on Mountshannon Road, near Dolphin’s Barn. On the walls inside were photographs of Liam’s father from his days in the British Army.

It was a career William Mellows had intended for his eldest son, enrolling him in the Hibernian Military Academy with that end in mind. He was taken aback when Liam told him that he would fight only for Ireland but made his peace with Liam’s decision.

Sarah Mellows, on the other hand, declared to Brennan that, being a Wexford woman with the spirit of 1798 in her veins, she could hardly be anything else but a rebel. It was not hard to see which parent Liam took after.

The Mellows family house at 21 Mountshannon Road, Dublin

Family Matters

Despite the political polar opposites under the same roof, family life was a warm one. Brennan remembered Liam tramping in with the heavy hobnailed boots he always wore and giving them a lively and light-hearted account of the day’s work with his Fianna scouts. After tea, Liam and his siblings, Barney – who would also become deeply involved in the revolution – Fred and the sole sister Jenny would play together as a quartette on the piano and strings, taking care to keep to Irish tunes in the spirit of Douglas Hyde’s ‘de-Anglicising’ mission.

Liam’s father had by then settled into an attitude of “puzzled but tolerant”, in Brennan’s words. An insight into the intergenerational dynamics came when Brennan came to Dublin shortly after the war with Germany that Liam had predicted began. Liam and his father met him at Harcourt Street Station. As they were leaving, a battalion of soldiers in the uniforms of the British Army marched by.

British soldiers in Dublin

“Now don’t you see?” said Mellows Senior.

“Yes, of course I do,” Liam snapped, before reigning in his temper and turning to Brennan with a grin. “Father thinks the Volunteers do not put on as good a show as the British.”

“You know well they don’t,” insisted William. “They haven’t the precision, the order, the bearing or anything else. Look at the way these fellows walk.”

“Wait till you see the way they’ll run,” Liam said with an affectionate pat on his father’s shoulder. The older man turned to Brennan as if entrusting him with the task of talking some sense into his cocksure progeny.

“Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the British soldiers,” William said gravely.

“He’s afraid we are going to beat them,” Mellows said to Brennan with another grin.[6]

Na Fianna Éireann

At least one acquaintance believed that Mellows had more in common with his paterfamilias than an argumentative nature. According to Alfred White: “In many traits Liam resembled his father; both of them had a rock-like uprightness, a serious minded, unflinching adherence to fundamental loyalties.”[7]

White had the opportunity to observe Mellows at work. Na Fianna Éireann was organised along military lines, with groups of boys being in troops (or sluagh) and districts divided into battalions. Mellows was captain of the Dolphin Barn-Inchicore Battalion, with White doubling as his lieutenant and assistant general secretary.

Fianna Éireann Scouts

The Fianna provided an exciting world for the young. White fondly recalled the pipers, the drills, the manoeuvres and marches, some being twelve miles out and twelve miles back – little wonder, then, that Mellows could later outpace the Athenry men. Mellows displayed a natural rapport with the younger boys, with the gift of imparting his own enthusiasm onto them. When White asked one what they liked most about Mellows, he replied that they liked the way he said ‘Ireland’.

Countess Markievicz

The Fianna already had plenty of mentors: Countess Markievicz and her attempts to introduce some high culture with paintings on the walls of the Fianna clubhouses and donations of first-edition books from her personal library; Patrick Pearse, who showed the boys the death-mask of Robert Emmet and the sword of Lord Edward Fitzgerald during visits to his St Edna’s School; Bulmer Hobson in his book-lined cottage where he tried to impart some political economic theory (of all things).[8]

More successfully, Bulmer also took the opportunity on behalf of the IRB to recruit among the boys. By 1912, he was successful enough to form a special IRB cell or ‘Circle’ within Na Fianna Éireann. Known as the ‘John Mitchel Circle’ after the 19^th century Young Irelander, the group was headed by the future 1916 martyr Con Colbert, and into which Mellows was sworn during Easter 1912.

Con Colbert

The John Mitchel Circle was also the one Fianna officers in the IRB would attend if visiting from the country. This gave the group a disproportionate amount of influence among the Scouts, especially when it would meet to agree on which policies would be ‘decided’ at any forthcoming Fianna conferences.

From this privileged position, Mellows was becoming intimate with the workings of a secret society and the power it could exercise over other organisations so long as the host bodies remained oblivious. In later years, he would profess himself shocked at learning of the extent the IRB had manipulated others but, at the start, he was a willing disciple.[9]

On the Road

Liam Mellows

In May 1913, Mellows left Dublin on his bicycle to work as a roving organiser, both for Fianna Éireann and, more surreptitiously, the IRB. One of his recruits into the latter, Seán O’Neill, recalled being sworn in by Mellows on a quiet county road outside his home town of Tuam, Co. Galway. There, O’Neill raised his right hand and repeated the words of the oath as Mellows recited them to him. O’Neill would remember his initiator in glowing terms:

This kilted lad, with his saffron-flowing shawl over his shoulders, Tara brooch, green kilts, long stockings and shoes, arrived, and brought with him a ray of sunshine into our somewhat dull and drab town of that period. His name was Liam Mellows – a man who helped in no small way to change the course of history.

When one looks back and visualises the scene, the colour and beauty of such an attired lad on the stage – one wonders if it is possible that he is really dead![10]

In the space of six months, it was said that Mellows had managed to cover almost every city, town and hamlet in the country. When White saw Mellows again later in 1913, he found his friend “deeply bronzed, strong and hearty looking.”[11]

Mellows had returned to Dublin at the right time, for the Irish Volunteers were formed in November 1913, and Na Fianna Éireann was now not the only militant nationalist body in the country. Given their shared outlook, that only with a firm hand and a gun at the ready could the rights of Ireland be respected, it was a natural progression for Scout leaders like Mellows to join as officers and instructors for the new army, with Fianna halls used to drill the Volunteers.[12]

The compatibility of the two groups were further displayed when they helped coordinate together the twin gun-running events in 1914, both of which saw Mellows play prominent roles. At Howth, on the 26^th July, the Fianna stood to attention at the mouth of the pier while the Irish Volunteers unloaded boxes of rifles and ammunition from a yacht and placed them on a trek cart. All went smoothly as the boys and men marched back towards Dublin until confronted by British soldiers.

Fianna Éireann  and Irish Volunteers transport weapons from Howth, July 1914

As a scuffle broke out between those at the front ranks of the opposing sides, some of the Volunteers wanted to break open the boxes and take out the guns but were ordered back by Con Colbert and Mellows, the officers in command of the Fianna. The two men gave the command for ‘about turn’ to the Scouts by the cart, who – in contrast to the panicking Volunteers – faithfully executed the manoeuvre and made good their escape, with the precious consignment, in the confusion.[13]

A week later, Mellows was present at the second such operation, this time in the seaside town of Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow. The Fianna boys were assigned to scout out the area and keep watch for any signs of police. Seated in a sidecar of a motorbike, Mellows would examine the maps before him in the dark with the aid of an electric torch before directing the boys to which routes to take.

The Mauser Model 1871, of the type transported into Howth and Kilcoole

Disaster seemed imminent when the charabanc carrying some of the consignment broke down while passing through Sunnybank, Little Bray, forcing its passengers to hide the weapons in a nearby house whose owner was friendly with the charabanc’s driver. Mellows went on ahead in the motorbike to St Edna’s. Alerted to this setback, the Volunteers waiting in the school grounds drove off to Little Bray to rescue the stranded munitions.[14]

Police Watch

Bulmer Hobson

His IRB contacts, along with the willingness to brave danger and a natural aptitude for hard work, ensured that Mellow’s rise in the Irish Volunteers was a swift one. When Liam Gogán, the initial Executive Secretary, proved inadequate for the role, Bulmer Hobson arranged for him to be replaced with Mellows, who proved far more satisfactory.

Mellows continued in that capacity, working in the Dublin offices of the Provisional Committee in Brunswick Street, alongside his younger brother Barney. This lasted until the autumn of 1914, when he took to the road again as an itinerant organiser, this time for the Irish Volunteers.[15]

Unsurprisingly, Mellows soon came to the interest of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). A police report, sometime in 1915, noted that he had come to Co. Westmeath in December 1914 to advise the Volunteers in Drumraney on drill and discipline, while urging them not to fight for any country other than their own. He had remained in Westmeath until mid-January and reappeared three months later in Galway where, according to a local constable, “there was a very marked bitter feeling against recruiting” for the British Army since his arrival. Mellows would make subsequent visits to Dublin, Waterford and Limerick.[16]

Tom Clarke

Such occasions allowed him to network with other leading figures in the budding revolution. While in Dublin, on the 10^th June 1915, he was observed by police surveillance inside a tobacco shop at 75 Great Britain (now Parnell) Street. For half an hour, he talked with its proprietor, a certain Tom Clarke, along with Con Colbert, Éamonn Ceannt and Piaras Béaslaí. Later that day, as if to squeeze in as much contact as possible, Mellows was seen in the company of Hobson at the Volunteer headquarters.[17]

But Athenry remained his base of operations. There, Mellows would spend so many nights in Hynes’ house that the spare bedroom became known as ‘Liam’s room’. Even that was no sure refuge from prying eyes, but Mellows had become wise to the ways of his pursuers. One evening, the two RIC men assigned to watch Mellows waited outside until 2 am, when they finally realised they had been tricked, their quarry having sneaked out through the back with his bicycle to continue on his way.[18]

A Meeting in Tuam

The RIC were more forthright on the 16^th May 1915 in Tuam where, for some days before, posters and handbills had been advertising a rally, calling for ‘Irish Irishmen’ not to show cowardice by neglecting to join the Irish Volunteers.

“The organisers of the public meeting were the local supports of the McNeillite Volunteers,” the Connacht Tribune wrote, referring to the recent split between the National Volunteers, with their support for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and the more independent Irish Volunteers under the leadership of Eoin MacNeill, with whom Mellows had remained. Despite its IPP sympathies, the Tribune complimented the aforementioned ‘McNeillites’ on how they had “executed themselves enthusiastically in the work.”

Market Square, Tuam, Co. Galway

The publicity had worked perhaps a little too well, for it had allowed the local IPP branch to arrange for a meeting of its own on the same day and at an earlier hour, drawing off potential audience members for itself. Still, it was a respectably sized crowd of a few hundred who gathered in Tuam square to listen to the first speaker, Seán Mac Diarmada, visiting from Dublin, with Mellows by his side, waiting for his turn.

“In the course of [Mac Diarmada’s] address,” reported the Tribune:

…he alluded to many points of the Volunteer movement…References to Ireland’s participation in the present war as distinct from England’s contribution, were made by the speaker, who criticised the Government’s attitude on the Home Rule and Ulster questions, and England’s misgovernment of Ireland in the past.

It was at the part where he said “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” that the watching RIC moved in, pushing through the crowd. At the fore was the District Inspector (DI), who mounted the platform and took the errant speaker by the arm, placing him under arrest.

“What for?” asked Mac Diarmada.

“Under the DORA,” replied the DI, referring to the Defence of the Realm Act.

“Let go of my arm, I’ll go with you,” Mac Diarmada replied.

Destroying the Evidence

Seán Mac Diarmada

Satisfied, the DI released Mac Diarmada and turned to where another policeman was picking up the piles of leaflets on the platform. Those near the stage heard Mellows whisper “don’t fire” as Mac Diarmada’s hand fluttered over the discreet bulge in his hip pocket. Thinking better of it, Mac Diarmada instead made a swift left turn while Mellows did a right one, the former covertly passing his revolver into the latter’s waiting hand.

When Mac Diarmada had been taken by the RIC about twenty yards, he stopped to say that he wanted a quick word with Mellows, who was delivering a distinctly tamer speech, restraining himself to a call for the Volunteers to reorganise. A policeman appeared at the platform to escort Mellows to where Mac Diarmada and the other constables were waiting.

According to John D. Costello, one of the Volunteers on guard by the platform that day:

The two distinguished patriots had a hurried conversation, during which a note-book containing the names of all western IRB Centres passed unnoticed from Seán to Liam. Seán then went with his escort to the barracks.

Mellows later went to the barracks to see his friend. According to Costello, Mellows was able to snatch up an anti-recruitment leaflet Mac Diarmada had hidden on himself and throw it into the fire the prisoner was sitting in front of under the guise of lighting a match, with the policemen nearby being none the wiser.[19]

This story, good as it is, assumes the RIC – slightly implausibly – would have been careless enough not to search Mac Diarmada beforehand. The anecdote evidently did the rounds, for it also appears in White’s biography of his friend: “Liam claimed an interview with him in the barracks and, by means of some sleight of hand, and a pipe which obstinately refused to get lit, got possession of or destroyed all his papers.”[20]

RIC members

In any case, the loss of such incriminating evidence was not enough to spare Mac Diarmada a six months’ prison sentence. Two months later, it was Mellows’ turn to fall victim to the DORA, when he was ordered to leave the country within seven days for an English town of his choosing or else face imprisonment.[21]

An Athenry Return

Described by the Connacht Tribune as the “local drill instructor, captain and organiser of the Volunteers,” Mellows defiantly stood his ground and served four months in Arbour Hill, Dublin. After his release in late November, he was welcomed back to Athenry by ten companies of Irish Volunteers, numbering seven hundred men, with a crowd of onlookers adding up to a total of a thousand attendees.

Athenry, Co. Galway

The Volunteers lined up at the station, armed with an odd mix of rifles and pikes, as Mellows disembarked, a free man at last. Headed by the Galway Pipers’ Band, they marched through Athenry, stoically enduring the ankle-deep mud in the streets. Upon reaching the town centre, the crowd drew up on three sides of a platform and listened as a succession of speakers took the stage.

When it was Mellows’ turn, the applause and volleys of greeting shots did not abate for five minutes. It was not an ovation that Mellows was egotistical enough to believe was for him alone, he told his audience. No, it was the cause he served. If the short time he spent as a prisoner was all Ireland could expect, then it would not be receiving much. In the meantime, Mellows urged them to continue their drill and prepare for whatever may come their way.

(Whatever, indeed…)

Irish Volunteers on parade

The meeting was marred only when the journalist from the Connacht Tribune, standing besides the platform, was told to cease his note-taking, perhaps on the suspicion that he was a police spy. When he refused, three or four pairs of hands tried to grab his notebook from him. “They did not succeed, however, in getting the book,” he wrote later with a touch of professional pride.[22]

Patrick Pearse

But the real story had already happened and behind closed doors. During Mellows’ absence in jail, Patrick Pearse had visited Galway to confer with Larry Lardner, informing him that a countrywide uprising was to take place, although the date had yet to be fixed. When Pearse asked if the Volunteers would be able to hold position at the Suck River, near Ballinsloe, he was disappointed to hear from Lardner that this was unlikely due to the poor equipment at hand. All the same, Lardner assured Pearse that the Galway men would do their best at whatever was asked and whenever.[23]

Preparations

When not on the road, thwarting incompetent policemen or serving time, Mellows was occupied with his training regime, both physically and mentally, for the Galway Volunteers. As part of this, he would deliver lectures on the ideals and aims of the movement, along with practical tips such as the importance of cover, whether to hide from view or as protection against gunfire. Even a stone no larger than a fist could be utilised.

“Get your head behind it,” he advised his audience, “it may save your life.”[24]

On another occasion, he marched the Athenry Company to the village of Clarinbridge, six miles from Athenry. There, they joined up with several other units of Irish Volunteers. After some manoeuvres in a field, just as the men thought it was time to finish, Mellows divided them into two groups. One was assigned to ‘defend’ Clarinbridge and the other to ‘attack’.

Clarinbridge, Co, Galway, today

As one of the defenders, Mellows collected half-barrels, shop shutters, horse and donkey carts, and anything else not nailed down, using them to construct barricades across the streets. After an hour of this mock siege, Mellows finally dismissed the enervated men, allowing the Athenry ones to begin their six mile trek back home.

They were so drained that it was next to impossible for them to keep step in formation on the following day. That is, until they heard Mellows singing a marching song from the rear of their group.

“Up to this every man had his head down and dragging his legs,” Hynes recalled. “As soon as they heard Liam’s voice all heads went up and every man picked up the step and forgot he was weary before.”[25]

Irish Volunteers stand to attention, Co. Sligo

Shams

These mock battles did not escape notice, with a withering notice in the Connacht Tribune in March 1916 stating that:

I understand that the Sinn Feiners are going to have a sham battle one of these nights. All the “shams” are expected to turn up in full uniform, not forgetting the “bugle” which appears to be the only weapon of warfare they possess.[26]

Such sarcasm was perhaps not unwarranted. The Irish Volunteers – the ‘Sinn Feiners’ in question – were a minority compared to the National Volunteers. With the former bereft of political patronage and the finances that came with it, these differences were painfully apparent when the two militias were among those civic bodies parading for St Patrick’s Day in March 1916.

Inclining towards grey and khaki, the National Volunteers to a man bore modern rifles with fixed bayonets. Preferring a dull green in the uniforms, the Irish Volunteers were forced to carry fowling pieces when rifles were lacking and even freshly-forged pikes as if in re-enactment of 1798.

“The presence of large bodies of civilians, half attired and wholly armed as soldiers,” noted the Connaught Tribune, was no longer new, even if the novelty had not yet worn off.[27]

Advertisement for uniforms, showing the spread of the Volunteer movement

If the newspaper did not take either Volunteer faction entirely seriously, there was one segment of Galway City who did, enough at least to dislike them – the wives of men serving in the British Army. These women gave the parading Irish Volunteers “a very rough reception” at the St Patrick’s Day parade, recalled John Broderick, in whose father’s house Mellows occasionally slept when not at Hynes’.

Shortly afterwards, Mellows fell afoul of the DORA for the second time, when he was again ordered to leave the country within seven days. This time, there was no option of remaining in Ireland, even in jail, as he would be forcibly deported if he did not agree to leave.

He was served the notice at the Brodericks’ house in front of John. John later visited Mellows in the RIC barracks where the latter was taken after refusing to comply. He sat beside Mellows and, when he rose to leave, he found that the other man had slipped a revolver into his pocket.[28]

Nora Connolly

Nora Connolly

Shortly before the Easter Week of 1916, Nora, James Connolly’s daughter, was busy in Belfast gathering cigarettes to send down to the Irish Volunteers in Dublin. When she arrived home, late in the afternoon, she found Barney Mellows there, the boy having taken an early train from Dublin. He carried a note from her father: Barney will tell you what we want. We have every confidence in you.

Barney explained that his elder brother was due to be deported that night. In response, her father had tasked her with bringing Liam back in time for the planned uprising. This was a tall order, especially as no one knew where in England Liam was being sent – at most, they had the suggestion of his father’s birthplace of Leek, Staffordshire – but Nora was determined to rise to the challenge.[29]

Mellows had long been friendly with the family, having met the Connolly daughters through Na Fianna Éireann. While the family was living in Belfast, Nora would travel down to Dublin for a week or two, partly to keep in touch with the burgeoning national movement there and also as a relief from the hostility of a predominately Unionist city. Mellows would take her to Amiens Street Station, where a friend of his would sign her ticket and save her from having to spend more money to stay longer.[30]

James Connolly

Her sister, Ina, became secretary of the Belfast sluagh of the Fianna, and would praise Mellow’s gifts as a storyteller and prankster. While her father would meet through the Scouts a number of youths who would later be his comrades-in-arms during the Rising, such as Colbert and Seán Heuston, it was Mellows in particular, according to Ina, who “became firmly attached to my father and family.”[31]

The Search Begins

The trust her father had placed in Nora would have to make do in place of a plan, of which there was none. As she later put it: “They would leave it to my own good sense. They were not hampering me with any plan.”

All Nora had instead was Barney’s help, the list of helpful addresses he had brought with him, as written out by Mac Diarmada (as Secretary of the IRB Supreme Council, he was ideally placed to know who to turn to in Britain), and the promised arrival of someone who had the information as to where Liam had been sent.

Helena Molony

At 9 pm, the person in question knocked at the Connolly residence, this being Helena Molony, the republican socialist and feminist. Unfortunately, she did not know Liam’s location either. It was decided that Nora and Barney would make a start at least by going to Birmingham, to where the required information could be forwarded.

As Nora was too well known in Belfast for her liking, Molony drew upon her thespian experience and disguised her as a much older woman with the use of stage makeup. Next came the rudiments of a strategy: Nora would take the first boat to Glasgow, and Barney would follow on a later one.

Glasgow

When the pair reunited in Glasgow, they made their way to the first of the safe-houses. The girl of the family there knew Mac Diarmada well enough to recognise his handwriting, so she accepted the two strangers at her door at once. Nora could not recall their names by the time she recounted the story but the family were the Eakins on Cathcart Road, and the girl was most likely Maggie Eakin.

Nora and Barney decided to go to Edinburgh next instead of Birmingham directly in case they were being followed. Their cover-story was that they were brother and sister, both being teachers from Scotland who were en route to the Shakespearean Festival – Molony’s penchant for theatre having rubbed off on them – at Stratford-on-Avon.

They went to Edinburgh but a train stoppage delayed them from proceeding immediately to Carlisle. In the middle of the night, Barney awoke Nora in the hotel where they were staying to ensure she was safe, there having been a Zeppelin raid she had managed to sleep through.

Zeppeln

The next morning, the two were able to take the train to Carlisle and then to Birmingham, where they contacted the owner of the latest safe-house on their itinerary, hoping that he had something to tell them. But:

He had no word. It was to him that Helena Molony told us they would send word about Liam’s deportation. We hung on for several days, and no word came. We were nearly demented. We were afraid we were getting ourselves recognised in the town, but what could we do? We were nearly in despair when, finally, word came that Liam had gone to Leek.

The original guess had been proven correct. Now armed with the long-sought information, the duo took a train to Crewe and then hired a taxi – due to the lack of Sunday trains – to Leek. Determined to leave the minimal of trails, Nora took up speaking duties with the driver due to her accent being less obviously Irish than Barney’s, and asked him to drop them off a distance from their destination rather than taking them directly to the house.

Flight

After asking someone for directions, they were finally at the right address:

We knocked on the door. An old man opened the door. We said we wanted to see Liam Mellows, and finally he let us in. Liam had just arrived about half an hour, or so, before.

Barney Mellows

There was little time for reunions, the plan being for the brothers to swap clothes before Liam departed with Nora, leaving Barney behind in his place. Deportees were confined to a designated area rather than locked up in prison, to be kept under continuous watch, and it was hoped that Barney could fool any surveillance, at least until he thought it opportune to head back to Ireland as well.[32]

Nora took Liam back the way she came, retracing her journey to Crewe and then to Glasgow. The Eakin family were delighted at the success of the mission, as was Patrick McCormack, a member of the IRB Supreme Council with the responsibility for the Scottish Circles.

McCormack received word from Maggie Eakin of the fugitives’ arrival at Cathcart Road. When he joined them, they discussed the best way to get Liam across to Belfast that night. Maggie suggested the aid of Father Courtney, an émigré from Co. Kerry. When he was brought over in turn, the priest was happy to offer one of his suits.

When the trousers proved too long – Father Courtney was over six feet in height – the padre ‘borrowed’ a spare from a clerical colleague who was closer to Liam’s diminutive stature, the complete costume allowing Liam to pass off reasonably well as a man of the cloth. Courtney even gave Liam an old breviary with instructions on how and when to read it, joking that Liam was his first ordination.[33]

With half an hour to spare before the boat back to Belfast was due, Nora and Liam took the train to Greenock, taking care all the while to sit in different parts of the carriage so as in not to appear to be together. Liam’s priestly disguise was convincing enough for some fellow passengers to apologise for any coarse language they had used in his presence.

The deference continued in Belfast, where even uniformed policemen saluted him, and he back to them, as he walked along the street, keeping separate from Nora once more as she feared she was too recognisable for them to take a train or taxi. The two adhered to a complicated leap-frogging method, each taking turns to go on ahead before slowing down to allow the other to overtake.[34]

Denis McCullough

Finally they arrived at the Connolly house at the top of the Falls Road. Nora sent a postcard to Dublin for James Connolly in Liberty Hall. It read: Everything grand. We’re back home. Peter. A postcard was unlikely to attract much notice from the censors, and she knew her father would understand the coded message from ‘Peter’, her nom de guerre.

As for Mellows, it was agreed for Denis McCullough, the most senior IRB member at hand in Belfast, to drive him down to Dublin that night. There was little time left, for an uprising was due to start, one in which Mellows was set to play a leading role.[35]

To be continued in: Rebel Captain: Liam Mellows and the Easter Rising in Galway, 1916 (Part II)

References

[1] Hynes, Frank (BMH / WS 446), pp. 6-7

[2] Newell, Martin (BMH / WS 1562), p. 7

[3] Monahan, Alf (BMH / WS 298), pp. 12-3

[4] Garvey, Laurence (BMH / WS 1062), pp. 4-5

[5] Brennan, Robert. Allegiance (Dublin: Browne and Noble Limited, 1950), pp. 26-7

[6] Ibid, pp. 27-8

[7] White, Alfred (BMH / WS 1207), p. 2

[8] Ibid, pp. 5-6

[9] Hobson, Bulmer. Ireland Yesterday and Tomorrow (Tralee: Anvil Books Limited, 1968), pp. 17-8 ; Martin, Eamon (BMH / WS 591), p. 11 ; for more information on Mellows’ attitudes to the IRB post-1916, see Robbins. Frank. Under the Starry Plough: Recollections of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin: The Academy Press, 1977), pp. 174-5

[10] O’Neill, Seán (BMH / WS 1219), pp. 12, 18

[11] Martin, p. 6 ; White, p. 8

[12] White, p. 9

[13] Kavanagh, Seamus (BMH / WS 1670), pp. 12-4

[14] O’Kelly, Seán T. (BMH / WS 1765), p. 139 ; Holohan, Garry (BMH / WS 328), p. 44 ; MacCarthy, Thomas (BMH / WS 307), p. 9

[15] Hobson, Bulmer (BMH / WS 87) pp. 3-4

[16] National Library of Ireland, MS 31,654(3)

[17] Crowley, John; Ó Drisceoil, Donal; Murphy, Mike (eds.) Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Togher, Co. Cork: Cork University Press, 2017), p. 238

[18] Hynes, pp. 7,10

[19] Connacht Tribune, 22/05/1915 ; Costello, John D. (BMH / WS 1330), pp. 4-5

[20] White, p. 10

[21] Ibid

[22] Connacht Tribune, 17/07/1915, 20/11/1915

[23] Monahan, p. 13 ; Callanan, Patrick (BMH / WS 347), p. 7

[24] Kearns, Daniel (BMH / WS 1124), p. 3

[25] Ibid, pp. 7-8

[26] Connacht Tribune, 18/03/1916

[27] Ibid, 25/03/1916

[28] Broderick, John (BMH / WS 344), p. 3 ; Irish Times, 26, 28/03/1916

[29] Connolly O’Brien, Nora (BMH / WS 286), pp. 9-10

[30] Ibid, pp. 6-7

[31] Heron, Ina (BMH / WS 919), pp. 76, 89-90

[32] Connolly O’Brien, pp. 10-14

[33] McCormack, Patrick (BMH / WS 339), pp. 8-9

[34] Connolly O’Brien, pp. 14-15

[35] MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980), p. 199

Bibliography

Books

Brennan, Robert. Allegiance (Dublin: Browne and Noble Limited, 1950)

Crowley, John; Ó Drisceoil, Donal; Murphy, Mike (eds.) Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Togher, Co. Cork: Cork University Press, 2017)

Hobson, Bulmer. Ireland Yesterday and Tomorrow (Tralee: Anvil Books Limited, 1968)

MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980)

Robbins, Frank. Under the Starry Plough: Recollections of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin: The Academy Press, 1977)

Bureau of Military History Statements

Broderick, John, WS 344

Callanan, Patrick, WS 347

Connolly O’Brien, Nora, WS 286

Costello, John D., WS 1330

Garvey, Laurence, WS 1062

Heron, Ina, WS 919

Hobson, Bulmer, WS 87

Holohan, Garry, WS 328

Hynes, Frank, WS 446

Kavangh, Seamus, WS 1670

Kearns, Daniel, WS 1124

MacCarthy, Thomas, WS 307

Martin, Eamon, WS 591

McCormack, Patrick, WS 339

Monahan, Alf, WS 298

Newell, Martin, WS 1562

O’Kelly, Seán T., WS 1765

O’Neill, Seán, WS 1219

White, Alfred, WS 1207

Newspapers

Connacht Tribune

Irish Times

National Library of Ireland

MS 31,654(3)