For narrative purposes I must backtrack a little. While he wooed Grace, Plunkett was deeply involved in the politics of arming the Volunteers for a rebellion still not envisaged by either Roger Casement, an executive of MacNeill’s Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, or its chief officer, MacNeill himself. Both men resented how easy it had been for the Ulster Volunteers to arm to oppose Home Rule, and neither man supported Redmond’s solution to entice the granting of Home Rule by expending Irish lives in the trenches. Both did, however, see the need to improve their military strength against unionist aggression, and the Irish Volunteer Executive had sent Casement to Germany to seek help. The philologist and scholar Kuno Mayer disclosed that John Devoy actually cautioned the Germans about Casement, whom he mistrusted undeservedly. In fact, Joseph McGarrity, one of the most important men in Irish-American circles at this time, said it was a separate group – not Devoy’s Clan na Gael – who arranged Casement’s arms mission. Casement himself sought not only arms but also to create an Irish Brigade from the captured British army POWs who were Irish. The Devoy interference could not have helped his cause, and Casement met with a poor response from both the German diplomats and the POWs.
When it was decided to send Joseph Plunkett to Germany to join Casement, he started to talk of his health requiring another trip abroad. He grew a beard and destroyed various photographs of himself. On his arrival in Berlin, whereas Casement had dealt with politicians and prisoners, Plunkett went to the military authorities and to the German high command. His extraordinary thoroughness was only disclosed in 1991 when papers were acquired by Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Duggan, having lain in German archives since 1915.[1]They were described by the late Fr F. X. Martin as ‘nothing short of sensational’, and, according to Dr Donal McCartney, ‘They show that it was not a question of a group of poets going out with a harebrained scheme.’[2]
The documents fall into three categories:
1. a briefing on the Irish Volunteers, 1915
2. a detailed disposition of British forces in Ireland
3. a survey of coastline and maritime counties of Ireland
Dr McCartney agrees with Fr Martin’s assessment of their importance: ‘Maybe I expected that there was a military plan all along but I feel that this is not the complete outline. Obviously Joe Plunkett, apparently carrying all the details in his head, could not have spelled them out fully.’[3]
To ensure the trustworthiness of any recruits from Germany for the Irish Brigade (a low figure of fifty is mentioned), their bona fides would be established by the password ‘Aisling’ and also by the use of the old circle and sword emblem used on Plunkett’s letters to Grace.
However, the strategic sketch unearthed in 1991 by the German archivists is the most impressive component of the find. It is all there, relayed enthusiastically supposedly from memory to the Germans by Plunkett: the British camps, the garrison towns, the troops, the artillery depots, the batteries of guns, the store depots, the number of infantry, the field howitzers, the forts, the RIC placements, the drop in manpower as British troops were deployed to Europe. Plunkett’s argument, it is believed, was that the Irish Volunteers needed hands-on help to meet their age-old enemy. He gave, it is alleged, all the above from memory and, also from memory, the number and deployment of the Volunteers. To have memorised and relayed such detail would be impressive but almost essential. Had such documentation been found on his person by a British agent, it would almost certainly have been the end for both the messenger and the message. Nevertheless, a grandson of Geraldine Plunkett, Dr John O’Donnell, has in his possession a hollowed-out walking stick belonging to his great-uncle Joseph Plunkett and it is believed this may well have been the hiding place for the aforesaid details. The only way to determine which story is correct would be to ascertain whose handwriting appears on the papers. Either way, Plunkett had to know facts and figures to argue them.
Unfortunately for Irish hopes, the Germans, at this stage, were faced with heavy battles, including the notorious Somme. However, they did not totally reject the request for help. Plunkett went home to relay their promise of captured arms only, then went on to America, to give details there of a planned uprising. Back home again, his health deteriorated once more, but that did not prevent his working with Rory O’Connor on munitions and telegraphy, nor his pursuing of romance with Grace. He had also drawn up an operational plan for the Rising and showed it to an enthusiastic Connolly, who worked with him to improve it. Strategic, strong, Dublin buildings, forming a rough ring around the city centre, would be occupied, and the arms promised from Germany would be landed on the Kerry coast and distributed about the country. The stage was set, but the opening performance was to encounter several hitches. The wonder of it was that a military engagement took place at all.
It was, in fact, an order made in code by the Castle authorities, the Castle Document, that precipitated the Rising. This proposed not only making sweeping arrests of leading Volunteers and of those with non-militant cultural interests, such as Gaelic Leaguers, but also launching raids for arms, occupying the homes of Volunteer leaders and surrounding some buildings, including the archbishop’s palace. A Volunteer undercover man named Smith in Dublin Castle had brought the document to the Volunteers, in stages, as secrecy allowed. Decoded by Plunkett, the translation was printed on a hand press at Larkfield by George Plunkett and Colm Ó Lochlainn.[4]
The British authorities were anxious to wash their hands of any immediate responsibility for the rebellion, but the Castle Document showed their intention to be the first to strike. When the decoded version was published, the Castle denied its authenticity, causing it to be termed a bogus ploy of the insurgents. Grace left an unequivocal testimony to its veracity: ‘Although it was published in Holy Week, it had come from the Castle some time before that. It did come out from the Castle that is quite certain. I know who brought it … Mr Smith was in the Castle.’[5]
There was chaos at Liberty Hall and at St Enda’s; indeed, there was chaos everywhere. The Dublin Castle authorities proposed to arrest about 100 Volunteers. Pearse’s reaction was immediate: it was a case of who would strike the first blow, Castle or Volunteer? It must be the Volunteers. At Liberty Hall, the reasoning was ‘now or never’.
The non-belligerent Chief of Staff of the Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, whose house was amongst those to be isolated by the British, instructed his men to resist arrest, but only defensively. On hearing a rumour that an armed Volunteer confrontation was planned, however, he stated angrily that the raison d’être of his Volunteers was not aggression and agreed to approve mobilisation only on hearing of the awaited German guns which made armed confrontation seem inevitable. The German vessel Aud, however, with its cargo of rifles and machine guns, was cornered by the British HMS Bluebell on 22 April 1916. Its quick-thinking German captain sank the ship – cargo included.[6] Moreover, Roger Casement, who had arrived back in Ireland on a German submarine, had been taken into custody shortly after landing the day before. MacNeill immediately cancelled the mobilisation order.
The Rising was postponed for twenty-four hours, but on Monday, 24 April 1916, north of the Liffey, the GPO and Four Courts were occupied. South of the Liffey it was Bolands Mills, St Stephen’s Green (including the Royal College of Surgeons), Jacob’s factory and the South Dublin Union, with outposts. Dublin Castle and Trinity College were not occupied: this had been intended until the confusion of the counter-order and the loss of the Aud.
It was as jumbled an army as you could find. There were in fact two armies: the Citizen Army under Connolly and the Irish Volunteers under Pearse. This division became blurred, however, and eventually they became known as the Irish Republican Army. The Hibernian Rifles also took part, and the fact that Britain continued to call them all Sinn Féiners (who never had an army at all), or Shinners, added to the mixture. There was also a great discrepancy in their training and their gear: Howth rifles, guns, historic pikes (acquired from Professor Donal Ó Buachalla), DMP and RIC batons, automatics, a Russian rifle from the Aud, even a Carson rifle from the north of Ireland inscribed ‘For God and Ulster’.
As to dress, some wore the stipulated full uniform; others wore a bandolier as the only available indication of their military status. In between these two extremes various compromises were made to achieve a military look. Mostly those involved had paid for their gear from their own very limited resources.
The participants and sympathisers were equally varied: two knights, Casement and Sir Thomas Myles (who assisted at the Howth gunrunning), a knight’s daughter (Louise Gavan Duffy), a countess, two professors, a lecturer, poets, novelists, Éamonn Ceannt (who had played Irish music for Pope Pius X), teachers, an auctioneer, a judge of the circuit court, trade-union leaders, an engineer, an alderman, a surgeon, medical students, a scientist, the head of an old Gaelic clan, printers, actors and actresses from the Abbey, a Protestant woman called Nellie Gifford who used to teach domestic science in rural Ireland, two Swedish sailors on leave who joined in enthusiastically, as well as a mêlée of clerks, carpenters, bricklayers, shop assistants, railwaymen, plumbers, decorators and some unemployed. A veritable conglomeration, but they showed an enthusiasm that soared when they saw the flag symbolising the Irish nation waving above the garrisons they held about the city.
Thomas MacDonagh had bidden a tearful farewell to his wife Muriel. Plunkett sent the gun to Grace at Temple Villas. Emotions ran high as Pearse stood outside the GPO and declared the rebirth of a nation, reading from the statement headed, ‘Poblacht na h-Éireann: The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland.’ The seven names at the bottom of the statement were Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett.
Notes
[1]Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Duggan, ‘1916. Overall Plan: A Concept of Operations’, An Cosantóir, April 1991, pp. 23–29.
[2]Ibid., p. 27.
[3]Ibid., pp. 27–28.
[4]J. Little, TD, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, ‘A 1916 Document’, The Capuchin Annual, 1942, pp. 452–462.
[5]Bureau of Military History: WS 257, file no. S.395.
[6]Extract from logbook of HMS Bluebell for 22 April 1916: ‘9.28 a.m. Closed on S.S. Aud who blew ship up. 9.40 a.m. Vessel Aud sank.’