Ireland unarmed will attain just as much freedom as it is convenient for England to give her; Ireland armed will attain ultimately just as much freedom as she wants.
—Patrick Pearse
The three large Irish paramilitary groups in 1913 and 1914 had differing ideas of Ireland’s future, but their short-term military goals were the same: they all sought legitimacy in military, social, and political realms. Working in ascending order of importance, this meant the formation of a genuine military force that gave credibility to political action while fulfilling sociocultural expectations deeply rooted within the target populations. These organizations achieved different levels of military maturity and sophistication.
If the purpose of these organizations was more political, then their efforts to arm were too. As Ronan Fanning has said, the unionists in the north had little to fear from the army or even Liberal Party governments forcing home rule upon them.1 With the creation of the UVF, however, home rule could only be implemented in the north by using force. The UVF was not a military threat to the government but a political check on it. Thus, the rifle, as Ben Novick noted, took on a symbolic nature.2 This chapter examines the efforts of the three paramilitary groups to arm before the War for Independence.3
The Threat of Home Rule
By the early 1900s, physical-force politics had lost much political and social acceptability in Ireland. As mentioned in the previous chapter, home rule led the nationalist cause, while republicanism seemed dormant. Therefore, since only the Ulstermen, aged republicans, and the out-of-touch American Irish were willing to use the gun in Irish politics, they were on the fringes of Irish political thought.4 Although not widely popular, physical-force groups reformed to reverse advances of home rulers.
In 1905, new blood entered the IRB and began to reestablish the forty-seven-year-old organization as a force in Irish politics. Bulmer Hobson came to the fore, as did men such as Denis McCullough and Sean MacDermott. In 1907, Thomas Clarke returned from exile in America.5 Although he was not a young man, Clarke’s return signaled a changing of the guard in the IRB leadership, if not a complete overhaul of the group.6 The same year, the combining of Cumann na nGaedheal and the Dungannon Clubs created Sinn Féin. Although this party eventually gained power, as David Fitzpatrick has noted, “‘Sinn Féin’ generated ridicule rather than admiration or fear.”7
Understandably, the successive introduction of home rule bills caused adverse reactions, becoming increasingly more militant, among unionists. By the turn of the new century, unionist resistance to home rule went through a process of “Ulsterisation,” coinciding with the largest concentration of unionists, leading to what Fanning has called a revolution.8 This resistance began with episodic training coinciding with the introduction of different home rule bills. Thus, when William Gladstone introduced a home rule bill in 1886, there were incidents of illegal drilling and again seven years later when Gladstone introduced the second home rule bill, which narrowly passed the House of Commons before its defeat in the House of Lords.9 The Liberals made home rule a formal part of their agenda in 1910, which pushed the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland to call for enrollment of men to resist home rule,10 but the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) leadership did not take the threat seriously. Worse yet, the virtual elimination of the Lords’ veto in 1911 demonstrated the ancillary power the home rule MPs wielded.11 By mid-1911, the RIC found that unionists were importing arms and training more seriously.12
The Commons passed the third home rule bill on 11 April 1912, and while the Lords soundly rejected it, unionists could no longer risk its eventual passage.13 The RIC began to report in July 1912 that rumors about resistance were rampant and that unionists had increased their efforts to arm. This admission was a significant breakthrough since, after denying it for several years, the police leadership was finally on record recognizing the unionist threat.14 County Inspector J. E. Holmes reported that unionists had collected almost £250,000 for arms and ammunition and identified a fundamental dilemma for any group trying to arm: one could either purchase the very best-quality weapons at the highest prices and arm fewer men, or one could one get higher numbers of lower-grade rifles at lower prices and arm more.15 Also, if one purchased many different types and calibers, ammunition supply would become nightmarish.
Table 2.1. Unionist Firearms Dealers
| Name | Location | Weapon |
|---|---|---|
| W. Kavanagh | 12 Dame St., Jamestown, Dublin | Rifles |
| L. Keegan | Upper Ormond Quay, Smithfield, Dublin | Rifles |
| J. G. Parks & | Sons The Coombe, Dublin | Rifles |
| Henshaw & Co. | Christ Church Place, Jamestown, Dublin | Rifles |
| J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. | 15 Grape St., London | Rifles |
| Midland Gun Co. | Liverpool | Rifles |
| James Murray | 25–27 Cawnpore St., Belfast | Pistols |
| Newton, McGill & Co. | 13–15 City Rd., London | Pistols |
| Messrs. Adgey & Murphy, Pawnbrokers | 97 Peters Hill, Belfast | Pistols |
| Hunter & Sons | 62 Royal Ave., Belfast | Rifles |
| W. D. Ryall (Gunsmith) | Belfast | Rifles |
| Holloway & Naughton | Birmingham | Rifles |
| Midland Gun Co. | Birmingham | Rifles |
| Birmingham Small Arms Co. (BSA) | Birmingham | Rifles |
| Moritz Magnus der Jüngere | Düsternstrasse 46/50, Hamburg | Rifles |
| Waffen Munition und Militär-Effekten | 54 Neuerwall, Hamburg | Rifles |
| William Grah | 8 Impasse Jonkeu, Liège | Rifles |
Sources: D. C. Lee to Secretary State for War, 3 November 1911, TNA CO 904/28/2 (Part 1)/304; Sgt. Maurice Ahern, DMP, to Supt. G Div., DMP, “Importation of Arms into Dublin from the U.S.A.,” min. no. 9219/3277/S, 15 November 1911, TNA CO 904/28/2 (Part 1)/306–11; RIC Office, “Alleged Purchase of Arms at Garvagh,” 5 December 1911, TNA CO 904/28/1/43; “Importation of Arms,” City of Belfast, RIC Detective Dept., 9 November 1912, TNA CO 904/28/2 (Part 1)/258–9.
Note: Bruno “Benny” Spiro (1875–1936), was Jewish and continued as an arms dealer until arrested by the Gestapo in 1936. Imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, he supposedly committed suicide. Moritz Magnus Jr.’s company closed in 1939, and he died in Auschwitz in 1942. Holocaust Victims Assets Litigation (Swiss Banks), Zurich, Claims Resolution Tribunal case no. CV96–4849, claim no. 402244/WT, 18 December 2008, 3/6, and claim no. 216441/AA, 15 September 2003, respectively.
The UVF officially formed in January 1913 and grew to be the best-organized, best-equipped, and best-funded of any of the militant groups in Ireland. The Liberals reintroduced the third home rule bill in 1913; the Lords again rejected it. The UVF continued to arm and train, while the government and police leaders persisted in their statements that the unionists did not intend violence.16
Meanwhile, the RIC did its best to track arms. The Orange Hall in Portadown was supposed to have two hundred rifles, while the Orange Master of nearby Lurgan, W. J. Allen, was also rumored to have arms in his house. The government received legal opinions that these weapons were illegal because they were meant for illicit purposes, but this did not provide sufficient political capital for action.17
In July 1913, the police tried to answer how many weapons the UVF and associated unionist groups had but were unable to come up with exact numbers. The RIC was rightly confident that the unionists had not yet conducted large-scale arms importation and noted that the members of the growing UVF expected to receive weapons when it became necessary. In October, Deputy Inspector-General (D/IG) William Arthur O’Connell estimated that the unionists received some 357 rifles in the last week of September alone; shipments came regularly, and the supply from Belgium appeared inexhaustible.18 Timothy Bowman and Charles Townshend have suggested that the UVF was formed to gain greater control over unionist forces.19
Belfast RIC commissioner Thomas J. Smith believed there would be no open rebellion. Smith stated that the UVF would bring Ulster into a “state of lawlessness and violence . . . as to amount to anarchy.”20 His not considering this to be “rebellion” coincided with contemporary theory, which argued “real” guerrilla warfare could not occur in industrialized societies.21
By mid-1913, the RIC reported the widespread belief in the north that the army would refuse to enforce home rule. Even the king expressed fear of this. That regular, retired, former, and reserve officers were helping to train the UVF did not help appearances.22 In Novem-ber 1913, nationalists upped the ante by creating their volunteer force in Dublin, while on 5 December 1913, the police finally got a royal proclamation prohibiting arms importation.
As it prepared to reintroduce the home rule bill in 1914, the cabinet was sufficiently concerned that it sent Maj. Gen. Sir Nevil Macready to Belfast to assume command of any army forces needed to support the authorities.23 On 20 March 1914, officers of the cavalry brigade at the Curragh Military Camp, County Kildare, threatened disobedience of any order that might be given to move against the UVF.24 While these issues were variously significant, the problem for the UVF was that it did not have enough rifles. Its smuggling had to expand.
Arming Ulster
Early in its development, the UVF established an arms committee under the leadership of Sir James Craig, Sir Edward Carson, and, eventually, the quartermaster general (QMG) of the UVF, Wilfred B. Spender. The committee chose artillery militia major F. H. Crawford to run the smuggling operation, and it could hardly have found a better man for the job. Crawford was a staunch unionist, an experienced military ordnance officer, and a former ship’s engineer who was already smuggling arms.25
The relatively small trickle of arms coming in was insufficient for the UVF’s need. Moreover, most of these guns were outdated.26 Even counting the twenty thousand rifles from its one massive smuggling operation, the UVF had fewer than sixty thousand with membership of up to one hundred thousand. If just a quarter of those enrolled were willing to fight, only 60 percent of that number would be armed. Additionally, ammunition was a problem; it had insufficient ammunition to sustain anything resembling a modern battle.27
The UVF’s leaders understood the challenges and planned a smuggling operation code-named Lion. They planned to go to Germany, purchase arms, buy a ship, and then bring the weapons to Ulster.28 In February 1914, Crawford met in Germany with an arms dealer named Bruno Spiro and bought twenty-thousand Austrian Mannlicher Model 1904 rifles and German Model “Commission” 1888 rifles.29 Although the Commission rifles and Mannlichers were considerably more expensive than others, the Ulsterman felt they were “in every way equal to our own British Army rifles.”30 Here Crawford showed his limitations; both rifles were one or two generations behind.
Crawford “borrowed” Capt. A. Agnew of the Antrim Iron Ore Steamship Company to help him. After searching, they bought SS Fanny in Bergen for £2,000.31 Crawford also convinced its captain, a Norwegian named Marthien Falke, and the crew to stay with it.32 In March 1914, they loaded the arms on the barges Karl Keihn and Pernau and steamed down the Elbe, then north up the Kiel Canal. The Fanny, sailing under Falke, rendezvoused with the barges off the northeast coast of Langeland and transferred the cargo at sea. Crawford changed the Fanny’s name to the Bethia for his youngest daughter.33
The Bethia/Fanny slipped out of Danish waters, stopped briefly at Great Yarmouth, where Crawford renamed her the Doreen after his middle daughter, steamed to the Bristol Channel, and rendezvoused with SS Balmarino off Lundy Island. The arms committee also purchased the single-deck coaler SS Clyde Valley for £4,500, which rendezvoused with the Doreen/Bethia/Fanny off Holyhead, where the smugglers transferred some of the arms bound for Larne.34
Crawford renamed the Clyde Valley the Mountjoy II in commemoration of the ship that relieved the 1688 Siege of Derry, to give the UVF a morale boost. While Carson sent another small steamship, the Roma, to take a shipment to Belfast, the motor-launch Innis Murray took one hundred tons of rifles to Donaghadee. The Clyde Valley / Mountjoy II arrived at Larne around 2230 hours on 25 April 1914. The smugglers had trouble with the skipper of the Innis Murray, who was a nationalist, which Crawford wryly called “a bit of bad management,” but the man complied when threatened.35
Table 2.2. Firearms for the Ulster Volunteer Force
| Weapon | Caliber |
|---|---|
| Martini-Henry | .450 |
| Lee-Metford | .303R |
| Vetterli-Vitali Model 1888 | 10.4×47mmR |
| Mannlicher Model 1904 | 7.92×57mm |
| Mauser Model 1870/87 | 10.35×47mm |
| German Model “Commission” 1888 | 8×57mm I |
| Mauser Model 1893/1895 | 7.92×57mm |
| Steyr Model 1904 | 7.92×57mm |
| SMLE Mk. III | .303 |
Table 2.3. Vessels Used by UVF Arms Smuggling Operations
| Ship | Built | Launched | Fate | Length | Tonnage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SS Balmarino | Ailsa Shipbuilding | 1 Oct. 1898 | Scrapped 11 Feb. 1957 | 161 ft. | 445 grt |
| SS Clyde Valley | McIlwaine, Lewis & Co., Belfast | 1886 | Scrapped 1974 | 174 ft. | 460 grt |
| SS Pernau | Neptun Werft A. G., Rostock, Germany | 1901 | Torpedoed 17 Oct. 1916 | 291 ft. | 2,381 grt |
| SS Thistle | D. & W. Henderson, Glasgow | 29 May 1884 | Scrapped 1929 | 231 ft. | 921 grt |
Sources: For the Balmarino: Shipping Times, http://www.shippingtimes.co.uk/index.asp, accessed 4 November 2011. For the Clyde Valley: http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1334443. For the Pernau: www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?164581. For the Thistle: http://www.clydeships.co.uk/view.php?ref=9587#v.
The UVF mobilized for its only actual military operation, taking and holding most of the routes to the various landing sites before the ships arrived. The Ulster Volunteers moved into Larne around 2000 hours on Friday, 24 April 1914. On seeing the influx of men, district inspector Col. W. S. Moore, RIC, and some of his men went toward the harbor. Moore found the UVF with wooden staffs, which, he said, were “rather larger than our own truncheons,” and asked to speak with the man in charge. He eventually met with Maj. R. C. A. McCalmot, MP, who said he had orders from the commander of the UFV “‘to block the roads leading to the harbour against everyone and particularly police and Customs Officers.’”36 By the time Moore had arrived, the Ulster Volunteers had already detained the Customs and Excise department’s officers there. Outnumbered, the various officials could only watch as a darkened vessel came into the harbor, tied up, and off-loaded its cargo. The UVF leaders were courteous and allowed the scheduled relief of the Customs man on the pier at midnight, while the Mountjoy II unloaded unhindered.37 Soon thereafter, and for the next five hours, a steady stream of 229 motor vehicles drove down to the harbor, loaded packages, and drove away. The Ulster Volunteers also transferred cargo to SS Roma, which then sailed to Belfast, while the Mountjoy II continued to Bangor.38
Around the same time, three thousand Ulster Volunteers mobilized in and around Belfast, bringing scores of various types of motor vehicles in preparation for the operations there. SS Balmarino arrived and berthed at Jetty No. 2 around 2300 hours. Since the jetty was overflowing with Ulster Volunteers, the senior Customs officer, Methuselah Jones, asked the UVF officer-in-charge to let him board but could find no one to reveal the cargo. At one point, Jones got one of the hatches open but saw only coal and understood this was a decoy.39
The Roma arrived at Belfast Harbor around 0415 hours on Saturday and tied up at the jetty at Workman and Clark’s North Yard, some distance from the Balmarino. Customs officials A. H. Fitzsimons and J. Clark rowed over and looked at the bales on the pier. When they saw some rifles, they ordered the men to cease unloading and were ignored, so Fitzsimons tried to open a parcel, but the captain stopped him. There was nothing the Customs officials could do safely, and the crew finished unloading at 0530 hours the next day.40
Late on Friday, RIC deputy inspector (DI) John Shankey, Sgt. Joseph Orr, and the local Customs officer, Robert Smith, walked to Donaghadee Harbor together but were prevented from accessing the pier. By about 0200 hours on Saturday, 25 April, Lord Dunleath arrived with three hundred Ulster Volunteers with wooden staffs.41 Around 0600 hours, the Innis Murray arrived from Larne and unloaded its cargo into twenty-nine motor vehicles of various types.42
Finally, at Bangor, RIC sergeant George Philipps saw some four hundred Ulster Volunteers arriving in the town by train on the evening on Friday. Around midnight, they cordoned off the harbor and permitted neither the police nor Customs to approach. About four hours later, the Mountjoy II entered the port and berthed at the pier. The Ulster Volunteers started off-loading and putting the packages into a dozen motor vehicles that took them to various makeshift armories in nearby houses.43 The UVF had executed an outstanding, complex operation using multiple locations, scores of vehicles, and thousands of men.
The fears of home rule becoming law were realized soon after that. A second reintroduction of the third home rule bill on 25 May passed the Commons with an unbeatable seventy-seven votes, due to the Parliament Act of 1911. Thus, the bill passed without the Lords’ consent. This passage did nothing to calm tensions in Ulster and, with the arrival of large amounts of rifles, Undersecretary James B. Dougherty and the other naysayers were proved wrong: the Ulstermen were a threat. Finally, Customs received authority to seize weapons.
In one instance, Customs’ actions are preserved. On 8 July 1914, for an undisclosed reason, the Customs officials in Londonderry searched a furniture van belonging to the cabinetmaking company of Messrs. Millar & Beatty. Finding a false wall with arms inside, they impounded rifles and more than twenty-seven thousand rounds of ammunition and sent them to the RIC Depot at Dublin’s Phoenix Park.44 The Ulster Volunteers at St. Johnston, County Donegal, mobilized to stop the train but missed it. When asked about their determination and willingness to use force, a woman name Smyth, in whose pub many of them had breakfasted, said, “‘There were men left here this morning who never expected to return alive.’”45 The arms arrived safely in Dublin, but this minor incident frightened the government there out of its complacency.
The Ulstermen did not stop there. Messrs. Caldwell & Robinson of Castle Street, Londonderry, solicitors for Millar & Beatty, contacted Customs to release the arms but were informed they were in Dublin. In November 1914, with the world war just three months old, Caldwell & Robinson contacted the government to release the arms, but the viceroy decided not to return arms confiscated under the December arms proclamation. Then, to exploit a legal loophole, Caldwell & Robinson replied that the seizure was illegal since it occurred on private property.46 Not willing to give up without a fight, Sir Matthew Nathan had the Irish Command of the British army examine among the seized weapons 108 Lee-Enfield rifles and the ammunition, which were suitable for military service.47 The undersecretary’s office told Caldwell & Robinson that the army took the munitions for the war. Unfazed, the solicitors asked for reimbursement. Dublin Castle responded that it was a military matter and that they should apply to the army.48 There are no indications of whether Caldwell & Robinson applied for or received reimbursement,49 but this episode, and many like it, demonstrate the government was serious about interdicting unionist arms.
On 18 September 1914, the home rule bill received royal assent but was postponed for the duration of the conflict; thus, the constitutionalists achieved a hollow victory. In World War I, tens of thousands of Irishmen fell, Protestant alongside Catholic; for each unionist who gave all, it became harder politically to grant home rule without partition. Each home ruler who fell only weakened that movement.50
“A Poor Man’s Movement”: The Irish Volunteers, 1913–1914
To protect their interests from what appeared a clear unionist threat but also inspired by it as well, various nationalist groups and individuals came together to form the Irish Volunteers in late 1913. After more than a year of provocative actions by the Ulstermen with little visible response from the Irish government or police, Eoin MacNeill wrote “The North Began,” spelling out his ideas about an appropriate nationalist response. These consisted of forming a nationalist volunteer army to counter them. The article led to meetings and rallies, which eventually brought about the new organization. The group contained a wide range of political thought across the nationalist spectrum.51
While the nationalist arms landings at Howth and Kilcoole in the summer of 1914 were only about one-twentieth the scale of Operation Lion, they provided a boost to the movement psychologically and politically. Indeed, Fearghal McGarry has remarked that “for some Volunteers, Howth marked the beginning of the revolution.” Joost Augusteijn has echoed this, noting that recruiting increased dramatically after these episodes.52 Although researchers acknowledge its importance, the operation has mostly become an adjunct to the Rising or surpassed by the personalities who participated.
The London Committee
The leaders of the Irish Volunteers knew they had to arm and begin training soon if they were to achieve the military and political credibility they sought.53 There were several seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the two most important being the 1913 ban on arms importation and an overall lack of funds within the movement. Thus, the only realistic means of arming was smuggling, which led directly to the other challenge, money.
Michael O’Rahilly, who subsequently became Irish Volunteer director of arms, wanted the organization to purchase rifles so individual members could buy them.54 As participant, Darrell Figgis later said that their “supreme difficulty” was that it “was a poor man’s movement. The rich did not smile on us, nor were the wealthy kind. . . . It made a woeful difference—a difference that antiquity has not robbed of its sting.”55 Therefore, the difficulty was getting sufficient funds together to purchase the initial stock.
In the early spring of 1914, the ruling Provisional Committee created an arms subcommittee consisting of MacNeill, O’Rahilly, Sir Roger Casement, and Bulmer Hobson.56 Casement called a meeting at the London home of historian Alice Stopford Green on May 1914. This group, called the London Committee consisted of Green, Mary Spring Rice, Capt. George F. Berkeley, Casement, and Erskine and Molly Childers;57 O’Rahilly may also have been present, and other upper-class Anglo-Irish people joined later.58 During the initial meeting, the committee appointed Green the chair and treasurer, Molly Childers the secretary, and Casement the intermediary between the London and Dublin leaders.59 This group was critical because it became the primary financial backer of the scheme, donating £1,523 19s 3d,60 which formed the basis of the Howth purchase. Green personally provided nearly half of the money. The London Cumann na mBan, or Irish Women’s Council, a sister organization to the Irish Volunteers, repaid her through monthly installments from its members.61 O’Rahilly eventually secured $5,000 from Clan na Gael in America,62 but the funds arrived too late to be part of the Howth operation. Childers would sail to Howth and Connor O’Brien would sail to Kilcoole, County Wicklow.63 The next step was to secure the arms.
Casement, Childers, and Darrell Figgis examined rifles in London and Liège but found the “toys were pretty but too expensive.”64 From Liège, Figgis and Childers went to Hamburg, where they met the Magnus brothers, Moritz and his younger brother Michael. It soon became clear the Magnus brothers were not going to sell arms to them. Figgis and Childers then discovered the reason was that the German government, apparently embarrassed by the UVF’s purchases, was concerned about giving Britain a casus belli and warned all arms dealers in Germany not to sell any more weapons to anyone from Ireland. Then Figgis said the arms were for Mexico’s revolution. The objections removed by plausible deniability, they bought the guns and signed with false names.65
Table 2.4. Irish Volunteers Rifle Dealers, 1914
| Name | Location |
|---|---|
| W. Kavanagh | 12 Dame St., Jamestown, Dublin |
| Moritz Magnus der Jüngere | Düsternstrasse 46/50, Hamburg |
The rifles were Model 1871 Mausers, single-shot, bolt-action, 11mm black-powder rifles used by the German army after 1872 and, being several generations old, were woefully outdated. They also purchased forty-five thousand rounds of ammunition. Hobson felt that Figgis “got excellent value for the £1,500,” which demonstrates his inexperience.66 With the fifteen hundred weapons purchased, the smuggling plan went into action.
Voyages of the Asgard and the Kelpie
Childers set sail in his yacht the Asgard on 3 July for the first rendezvous with O’Brien at Cowes.67 O’Brien had sailed from Foynes at the Shannon Estuary on 29 June, arriving at Cowes on 4 July.68 Asgard did not arrive until the twelfth, due to poor weather. O’Brien, after waiting nearly a week, left Cowes on the tenth arriving off the Belgian coast on the morning of the twelfth.69 Coming alongside the German tug Gladiator late in the afternoon, they loaded six hundred rifles and twenty thousand rounds of ammunition aboard. As the Kelpie set sail, the Asgard came up and took the remainder of the arms.70
Due to O’Brien’s indiscretions,71 the Volunteers’ leadership had a Dublin barrister and home ruler, J. C. Meredith, arrange for Sir Thomas Myles, a prominent Protestant physician with strong home rule views, to bring the Kelpie’s cargo to County Wicklow on his yacht the Chotah. The Kelpie’s voyage was mostly uneventful, and it rendezvoused with the Chotah off St. Tudwal’s Island and transferred the arms without incident.72 O’Brien made for Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), County Dublin, as decoy for the Asgard’s arrival later that day (26 July), but the Kelpie rode high in the water and clearly carried nothing.73
Knowing that these few rifles could not satisfy the Irish Volunteers’ hunger for arms, Hobson claimed that landing them in a “sufficiently spectacular manner” would help with funds and recruiting.74 A column of massed companies of Irish Volunteers started for Howth late, marched the seven and a half miles from Fairview to Howth at a breakneck pace, and arrived as the Asgard appeared. In preparation for the landing at Howth, Hobson had sent Cathal Brugha and twenty other IRB men to offload the nine hundred rifles and “deal with” any police on the scene. He also had two taxis standing by to carry the ammunition; Hobson did not trust the untrained Irish Volunteers with live ammunition, so he had the Fianna Éireann, the republican boy scouts, waiting to manage it.75 Trusting the Fianna was wise because the republican scouts had more training and better discipline. The companies shouldered their empty new rifles and marched away.
As the column of Volunteers reached Rahenny, it found the road blocked by eighty policemen and one hundred soldiers. Believing the authorities had not authorized the use of force, Hobson, who was in the lead, decided to confront the force. While he expected some attempt to seize the arms at the pier, he knew disarming a large body of men was something else altogether. Any such attempt would maximize exposure for the Volunteers’ first act of defiance.76
The one hundred soldiers of the Second Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, under Capt. Hugh Cobden, formed across the road, with eighty men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). Assistant Commissioner William Vessey Harrel was in front. As Hobson approached from the head of the halted column, Harrel said the Volunteers were importing arms illegally and ordered the policemen to seize the rifles. About half obeyed, and a fight ensued. The scuffle was short and vicious, with the policemen armed with batons and Volunteers with empty rifles; luckily for the police, the Volunteers had no bayonets. When the policemen pulled back, Hobson told Harrel that if they tried to disarm them again, he would not be able to prevent the Volunteers from loading their rifles with the ammunition he had kept with the column.77
Harrel then recognized “the impossibility of taking rifles from nine hundred men with eighty reluctant policemen,” and Cobden said he did not have sufficient men to get the rifles, “even by firing.” As they were talking, Figgis and Tomás MacDonagh came up and began to argue with Harrel so distractingly that Hobson was able to return to the column and ordered the companies to fall out and scatter, in order from the rear to the front of the column. By the time the lead company was alone, a DMP sergeant interrupted the argument to point it out to Harrel, who, although indignant, told the Borderers and police to return their barracks in Dublin.78 The police captured nineteen rifles from individual Volunteers but damaged them in the process.79
Kilcoole, County Wicklow, Saturday, 1 August 1914
Among the Irish Volunteers involved in bringing the arms at Kilcoole were many who became famous later, including Sean MacDermott, Eamon de Valera, Sean T. O’Kelly, and Liam Mellows. Cmdt. Sean Fitzgibbon commanded the off-loading, and Mellows directed the land transportation to Dublin. The Volunteers bicycled the almost twenty miles from Dublin, cut the telecommunications lines, and guarded the primary approaches, detaining two RIC constables in the process. The Volunteers knew the landing site was too shallow for the Chotah, so they used a fishing boat called the Nugget to ferry the cargo to the beach.80
Under Fitzgibbon’s direction, in a torrential downpour, the combined groups of IRB men, Volunteers, and some Fianna off-loaded the cargo into various vehicles. By 0500, the shipment was ashore, and the Volunteers marched into Kilcoole and loaded the final weapons into waiting motor vehicles, which started for Dublin.81 Howth was the last such action before the start of the world war. The beginning of the war caused rifts in the Irish Volunteers, forcing a separation in the organization.
Table 2.5. Vessels Used in the Howth Operation
| Ship | Type | Launched | Length | Displacement | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asgard | Ketch | 1905 | 51 ft. | 28 tons | Built by Colin Archer of Norway; on display in Dublin |
| Chota | Cutter-rigged, engine-powered | 1891 | 60 ft. | 48 tons | Built by S. Dewdney & Sons, Brixham |
| Gladiator | Tug | — | ca. 25 ft. | — | From Hamburg |
| Kelpie | Ketch (converted cutter) | 1871 | 29 ft. | 26 tons | Wrecked 1921 or 1922 |
| Nugget | Motor fishing boat | — | 35 ft. | — | — |
Source: “The Extraordinary Story of the Asgard and the Howth Gunrunning, 100 Years On,” RTÉ, 27 July 2014, https://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0725/633075-the-extraordinary-story-of-the-asgard/; “Mysteries of Asgard’s Irish Gun-Running Flotilla,” Afloat, 15 October 2016, https://afloat.ie/blogs/sailing-saturday-with-wm-nixon/item/34021-mysteries-of-asgard-s-irish-gun-running-flotilla.
The National (Home Rule) Volunteers, 1914–1917
Early in the formation of the Irish Volunteers, John Redmond, the head of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), inserted his party into the leadership of the Volunteers. As head of the largest nationalist organization, Redmond argued that he should have some say in the Volunteers. With a threat of fragmentation of the amalgamated or-ganization, the leadership acquiesced.82 With the outbreak of war, Redmond and the IPP supported the war effort, and after unilaterally pledging the Irish Volunteers’ support, the republicans of the group walked out. The remaining majority, some eighty thousand, renamed their group the National Volunteers.83 As the largest nationalist volunteer organization, Redmond’s Volunteers were also the main effort in the arms arena for most of the Great War. Because the National Volunteers was a loyal organization and Redmond and the IPP were critical to British prime minister Herbert H. Asquith’s coalition and war effort, there was little reason to deny his Volunteers access to weapons not needed by the army. Nationalist arms importation entered a new phase of uneasy cooperation.
When the National Volunteers headquarters, primarily under Laurence J. Kettle, tried to work within the law, the connection with Redmond permitted application for the multiple legal permits and permissions to purchase weapons and import them to Ireland. Governmental administrative systems, however, overwhelmed by the war, created unintentional blockages. The Irish government, Customs and Excise, and the British army, all with a say in the purchase and importation of arms, still mistrusted the National Volunteers. Navigating these bureaucracies was the greatest difficulty of the postsplit arming operations.
On 24 November 1914, the DMP impounded forty-eight obsolete Martini-Metford .303 rifles at North Wall quay in Dublin.84 Kettle wasted no time writing directly to Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell, mentioning Redmond’s name and saying the rifles could “scarcely” be suitable for military purposes. The undersecretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, deflected this, responding that the matter was in the hands of the military.85 Four days later, several officials met to decide how to proceed. As Ben Novick rightly points out, this was an honest attempt to work with the National Volunteers,86 and although objecting to the group in principle, the individuals were not deliberately trying to obstruct it.
Table 2.6. National Volunteers Firearms Dealers, 1914–1917
| Name | Location | Matériel |
|---|---|---|
| W. Kavanagh | 12 Dame St., Jamestown, Dublin | Rifles |
| Isaac Hollis & Son, Gun Manufacturer | Birmingham | Rifles |
| Messrs. Henry Andrews & Co | Woolwich | Rifles |
| Henry Trulock Harriss | St. James’s, London | Rifles |
| Charles Riggs | Bishopsgate, London | Rifles |
| Moritz Magnus der Jüngere | Düsternstrasse 46/50, Hamburg | Rifles |
Table 2.7. Firearms for the National Volunteers, 1914–1917
| Weapon | Caliber |
|---|---|
| Mauser Model 1871 | 11.15×60mmR |
| SMLE Mk. III | .303 |
| Martini-Metford | .303 |
A few days later, D/ig O’Connell received a report from Detective-Superintendent J. Daniel of the Birmingham Constabulary stating that a local gun manufacturer had received an order for fifty unspecified Martini .303 rifles.87 Redmond wrote to Birrell with the details and said, “I trust you will see that these guns are not interfered with,”88 putting Birrell on notice not to harass his organization. Military authorities examined the second shipment, found it of no military value, and permitted its delivery to National Volunteer headquarters on Parnell Square. Nathan recommended that Kettle contact him for clearance to avoid similar problems in the future.89
This point should have been the end of the problems, but on 10 December 1914, the DMP impounded twenty-five Martini-Metford rifles and bayonets addressed to “Mr John E. Redmond, M.P., 44 Parnell Square,” from the London and North Western Railway Company’s boat at the North Wall quay. Brig. Gen. Richard M. Greenfield, an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Lovick Bransby Friend at the Irish Command, said the military did not need these rifles, so Nathan ordered the shipment returned and police not to interfere with two other shipments.90
This incident did not, however, release the initial forty-eight Martini-Metfords or another fifty Long Lee-Enfield Mark Is seized earlier, about which Redmond complained in a letter to Birrell on 8 December. Kettle asked Nathan to release the weapons because they were obsolete.91 On 18 December 1914, General Friend informed Nathan that the forty-eight Martini-Metfords were not suitable for military service. Nathan ordered their release. The next day, he told Kettle he would release the Martini-Metfords but that the military needed the fifty Long Lee-Enfield Mark Is. The post delivered the Martini-Metfords the following Monday.92
A system worked itself out for National Volunteers arms importation. Kettle wrote the chief commissioner of the DMP and Maj. Ivon Price on 7 January 1914, asking for a permit to import then thousand rounds of Mark VI .303 ammunition, explicitly stating that he did “not wish to purchase them until I have the necessary authority for bringing them in.” Due to the nature of the ammunition, this request went to Birrell. In a handwritten note on the accompanying minute, Nathan told the chief secretary that this was “practice ammunition but of course could be used for fighting purposes.” He continued saying they could not stop this however much he wanted.93 This point was an important one: this ammunition had actual military value, but the government was not going to stop the sale and importation for political reasons. A week later, the general staff of the Irish Command assumed responsibility to coordinate between the DMP, the British government, and any other agencies as required.94 While Dublin Castle, the seat of the British government in Ireland, officials, the police, and the army were apprehensive about the arming of a private force, they did not try to stop it directly. The bureaucratic process was the only factor in the delays, but these were neither malicious nor intentional.95
In March 1915, General Friend wrote to Nathan explaining that it was “undesirable from a military point of view to allow the further importation of arms and ammunition into Ireland” because authorities could not be certain who might get them. Nathan replied that the cabinet felt it was not “in the present circumstances advisable” to halt this importation.96 At the same time, this setup was mutually beneficial: it provided a count of National Volunteers’ weapons. In October 1915, the railway in London refused to accept a consignment of one hundred Martini-Metfords, presumably due to war transportation priorities. Redmond asked Nathan to intervene, so Nathan wrote to officials to get the transportation, saying that the National Volunteers acted as a counterbalance to the republicans.97 Although home rule was the most popular political force in Ireland, it was not unassailable. When the RIC, on 7 February 1916, seized four Italian rifles at Ballinrobe Railway Station in County Mayo for lack of necessary permits,98 Peter Foy, head of the National Volunteers in the village of Cong, said that the police had “trumped a very good card for the Sinn Fein Party in Mayo by their drastic action.”99 Although the government needed to support the home rulers, albeit grudgingly, it still had to take care not to appear to be too close. The rifles were released.100
National Volunteers’ rifles were an excellent source for the republicans; National Volunteers had taken weapons from the Irish Volunteers in October 1914, so the republican Volunteers showed no qualms about taking theirs. In 1914 and 1915, the Irish Volunteers took several shipments of rifles going through Dublin, either to National Volunteers headquarters on Parnell Square or elsewhere. Multiple Volunteers described incidents occurring in late 1914 and the first part of 1915, where they just went into the various railway storehouses at North Wall, held up the watchmen, and took the rifles. The National Volunteers lost several hundred weapons; in at least two instances, republicans took at least one hundred rifles apiece.101 Further, Nathan had put Colonel Moore on notice in November 1914 that he would not tolerate lax security. Combined with the administrative issues already mentioned, only Redmond’s influence kept the rifles coming. Friend uncharitably wondered if Moore was selling National Volunteer arms to the republicans.102 While the thefts raised suspicions because they could have been staged, no evidence has surfaced to support this.
During the Rising, several National Volunteers units mobilized to assist the government, and some units loaned their weapons to British authorities. The government still did not trust them or return their weapons. After the Rising, the National Volunteers’ administrative carelessness, combined with the defection of some few of its units to the republicans, and the proposed and eventual amalgamation of the National Volunteers with the Irish Volunteers in 1917, prompted the lord lieutenant, or viceroy of Ireland, to order police and the army to seize them in mid-August 1917.103 Although Colonel Moore protested this invasion, the government’s concern was justified: the feared amalgamation between the nationalists occurred in November 1917.104
Irish (Republican) Volunteers, 1914–1918
The republicans retained the name Irish Volunteers but were mostly unarmed at the time of the separation from the National Volunteers in late 1914. Due to this separation and their radical politics, the Irish Volunteers could not arm openly, and, with the war in Europe, smuggling like Howth would be nearly impossible. Thus, in 1915, when the IRB’s secret Military Council decided to conduct a rebellion before the end of the war, it sent Joseph Mary Plunkett to Berlin to get German assistance. While in Germany, Plunkett also met and worked with Roger Casement, who had been there since late 1914 and then returned to Ireland in June 1915. Through Clan na Gael, the IRB formally asked for German assistance. The Germans agreed to send arms if the republicans could have harbor pilots ready for the landing, but they could not send troops.105 When Casement found out about the plan and, believing a rising to be suicidal without German troops, he sent Irish American messenger John McGoey to Ireland to call it off. On 29 March 1916, Casement’s contact at the General Staff in Berlin, Capt. Rudolf Nadolny, “reproached” him with “extraordinary discourtesy” for sending McGoey and told him that if he did not do as instructed, they would receive nothing and that “the blame for the non-delivery of the guns was wholly mine.”106
Table 2.8. Arms Possessed by Volunteer Forces, December 1914
| Name of force | Lee-Enfield & other recent English patterns | Mauser | Italian | Others | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ulster Volunteers (30 Nov. 1914) | 29,356 | 17,597 | 5,511 | 2,702 | 55,166 |
| National Volunteers (10 Dec. 1914) | 2,082 | 1,891 | 4,264 | 710 | 8,947 |
| Irish (republican) Volunteers (10 Dec. 1914) | 1,835 | 242 | 97 | 99 | 2,273 |
| Totals | 33,273 | 19,730 | 9,872 | 3,511 | 66,386 |
Source: “Summary of Arms in Possession of Volunteer Forces in Ireland,” December 1914, TNA CO 904/29/2 (pt. 1)/190.
Ultimately, the Germans risked sending Casement back to Ireland via U-boat, which arrived off the coast of Kerry around noon on Good Friday, 21 April. Casement, Robert Montheith, and Cpl. D. J. Bailey capsized their landing boat in rough seas, and they unceremoniously sloshed ashore at Tralee, County Kerry, whereupon the RIC immediately captured Casement and Bailey.107
The ship with the arms, the Aud, sailed from Lübeck on 9 April 1916 with a German navy crew of sixteen under Lt. Karl Spindler.108 There were twenty thousand captured Russian Model 1891 Mosin-Nagant rifles, ten machine guns, and five million rounds of ammunition in its hold. They expected to land sometime before Holy Saturday, 22 April, but arrived without incident late on Holy Thursday, 20 April.
Table 2.9. Vessels Used by the Irish Volunteers, 1916
| Ship | Launched | Length | Displacement | Notes | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aud | 1911 | 220 ft. | 1,062 tons | Named the Libau after capture by the Germans as SS Castro of the Wilsons & North Eastern Railway Shipping Co. | Scuttled |
| U-19 | 10 Oct. 1912 | 64 ft. | 650 tons | Under Lt. R. Weisbach | Surrendered 24 Nov. 1918; destroyed |
| U-20 | 18 Dec. 1912 | 64 ft. | 650 tons | Under Lt. W. Schwieger | Ran aground and destroyed, Nov. 1916 |
Table 2.10. Firearms for the Irish Volunteers, 1916
| Weapon | Caliber | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mauser Model 1871 | 11.15×60mmR | “Howth Rifles” |
| Mosin-Nagant Model 1891 | 7.62×54mmR | Not delivered |
| SMLE Mk. III | .303 | |
| Martini-Metford | .303 |
The same day, Tadg Brosnan, captain of the Castlegregory Company, asked sixteen-year-old Volunteer Murt O’Leary, son of one of the local pilots who frequently worked alongside him, to pilot a 150-ton ship carrying arms to Fenit’s Pier in Tralee Bay. Although the youth was to report in the afternoon on Holy Saturday for final instructions, he received no further information.109
When he returned home that evening, O’Leary saw a three-thousand-ton, two-masted ship in the harbor. He watched the mysterious ship until he went to sleep around midnight.110 On Good Friday morning, 21 April 1916, O’Leary saw the ship was “deep in the water as if laden.” At 1500, two destroyers came, fired a shot across the Aud’s bow, and she followed them. Thirty-two years later, O’Leary said that if they had only signaled, any “pilot would have taken her to Fenit Pier without question.”111 One can only imagine the heart-wrenching feelings the smugglers experienced on recognizing the failure, but they had never received the communication plan.112 The Irish Volunteers did not get their shipment of captured Russian rifles, but that did not stop the Easter Rising.
Assessing and Comparing Three Major Arms Smuggling Operations
The three operations had similarities and differences. In part, the similarities result from the reality that there were just a few ways to import large amounts of munitions and that each operation served as example to those that followed. Dissimilarities came from organizational and situational differences, such as in leadership experience or that the UVF and Howth operations occurred during peacetime.
Each operation had sufficient sea transportation; the UVF had multiple ships and many types involved in their operation, which could have caused complications. The Howth (and Kilcoole) operations had just a few vessels but sufficient for their needs. Due to the two primaries being sailing vessels, the actions were more held hostage to weather and possible mishap, but this did not harm the operations. The Aud being a disguised, captured Allied ship helped in its movement, but placing the weapons all in one vessel posed a considerable risk to the entire enterprise that hurt the Irish Volunteers in 1916.
Land transportation for the first two operations was also good. The Ulstermen had probably the best preparation, with dozens of motor vehicles awaiting arms, while the Howth and Kilcoole operations were a good second. In truth, Kilcoole was better than Howth regarding land transportation. Once the approaches were secure, there was virtually no threat, and, except for a single temporary vehicle breakdown, there were no mishaps. One may question the value and propriety of the decision to march the weapons from Howth to Dublin, but it was a deliberate decision nonetheless. Hobson could have obtained the requisite vehicles had he chosen a different method. With the Aud, however, Townshend has noted, there was no effective plan in place to land the arms at Tralee. The sum of their planning was to have an unreliable youth pilot the ship to the pier and have Volunteers off-load the vessel. There were, apparently, only basic plans to receive the arms.113
One could argue that the Aud operation was the best deal of the three concerning arms for the price; the Irish Volunteers were getting modern weapons at the cost of a rebellion they were going to undertake anyway. The UVF got the next best deal since the arms were still usable for current conflict and they had sufficient funds. The 1914 Irish Volunteers got the worst deal. Overpriced and old, the rifles were heavy, first-generation bolt-action weapons that used low-velocity black-powder cartridges. While lethal, they were not a good deal. As a morale boost, however, the weapons were invaluable.
Although planning sometimes left a little to be desired, the execution of these plans was successful. Each segment of each plan proceeded with little trouble. Although nerves got the better of some participants, the ships arrived on time in each instance. For the UVF and the Howth operations in 1914, this remained true. With the Aud in 1916, disaster eventually struck but not due to execution by the individuals; each did as instructed. Disaster came through timing (the Aud arrived early) and through communications (the Clan did not relay the signals).
Operation Lion was the best planned of the three because it left the least to happenstance. Planning for the Howth and Kilcoole landings was sufficient but depended more on certain individuals than was warranted, while, the London Committee was really outside the regular group. The planning for the Aud was only as good as the sharing of the plan. Without the ability to share the idea to the critical points of failure, such as O’Leary, the plan, such as it existed, was worthless.
Communications in the Ulster plan were good; Crawford communicated with the UVF leadership without difficulty, as did the 1914 Howth plotters. The failures of the Aud operation were due almost exclusively to poor communications, which came to issues of personnel.
The UVF chose its personnel well; they had the right experience, temperament, and motivation to carry out the necessary duties and tasks. The same holds with the Howth operation too, with the apparent exception of Connor O’Brien, who was too excitable for conspiracy. The Howth operation also had another remarkable factor in this realm: the concentration and leadership of upper-class, Anglo-Irish Protestants. Mo Moulton said that it was “liberal Anglo-Irish London” that gave the entire enterprise its start.114 These liberals understood the need for rifles and obtained them. Further, their participation exemplifies that this was not intended as a sectarian movement.
No less remarkable was the role of women in this scheme. O’Rahilly once introduced Mary Spring Rice to Colonel Moore as the “‘young woman who originated the whole operation.’”115 It was her idea from the beginning, and she saw it through to the end.116 Green’s house was not just a meeting place for the London plotters; she organized the operation and collected and managed the funds. Molly Childers, although partly disabled, also participated in the plan and its execution. As time went on, women either stepped aside or were pushed out. One cannot help but note the republican cause was the worse for this.
The Aud operation suffered from the participation, however, tangential, of Roger Casement. Casement biographer Brian Inglis said that had he returned to Ireland before going to Germany, Casement would have realized how out of touch he was politically.117 This factor also demonstrates the consistent arrogance of the various republican movements in Ireland since Wolfe Tone—that they believed they alone spoke for most of Ireland’s people, while their consistent failures showed that they did not.
In each operation, security was tight; very little slipped out. That said, Lion and Howth had good operational security in addition to command and control. With both, the men executing the missions had authority to act or sufficient ability to communicate with those who did.118 Howth was more collaborative—people seemed willing to cooperate—where with the Aud, there were too many groups involved: the IRB, Clan na Gael, the Irish Volunteers, the Imperial German Navy, and the German Foreign Ministry. Thus, for security’s sake, no one had active command.
While the 1916 operation was a failure, the UVF and Howth operations succeeded. Lion delivered thirty-five thousand rifles to the UVF, which was significant, but still did not satisfy their need. Likewise, although the Howth rifles were large and unwieldy, the Irish Volunteers received them excitedly. In both operations, complete success did not arm any more than a fraction of the two organizations. Only the Aud carried sufficient weapons for the force it intended to arm.
Hobson’s idea of a daylight landing was foolhardy militarily, although from a political viewpoint, it was spectacularly successful. This political statement was lost on the government, but to the average Irish person, it was clear. That was the point: the military value of the rifles was second to the image of armed nationalist volunteers. As Joost Augusteijn noted, the confrontation with the police and the Bachelor’s Walk incident dramatically increased the movement’s popularity.119 Although the nationalists did not intend violence, the entire episode was still a boon to recruiting, and the spectacle was greater than the type of rifle. The start of the Great War made this the last such statement for a time. While one cannot speak in absolutes, the Irish Volunteers certainly thought it worthwhile. Having a “Howth rifle” was a point of pride for the better part of the next decade, and that is all that mattered in the end.
There is still the issue of why the government “allowed” these incidents to happen. There is no evidence that the government approved of efforts, or helped, to arm the Ulstermen.120 The Customs, coastguard, and police did their best against these landings but were outnumbered. This point is not the whole truth since Lion was a culmination, not the beginning, of arming. Undersecretary Dougherty bore much responsibility, and perhaps this is where the reality of politics came into play. Historian Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon is not the first to suggest that Dougherty deliberately downplayed the importance of schemes of the UVF and its true intentions. His position was not for unionist reasons, for although Dougherty was an Ulsterman and a former Presbyterian minister, he was an ardent home ruler. Actual violence from the UVF would probably have blocked passage of home rule. Perhaps he felt that if the UVF was allowed to arm without real incident, the tense political situation would not degrade and home rule would pass. In some respects, that is what happened, although events later modified this course. The government suffered embarrassments. The Ulster Volunteers simply outmaneuvered the Castle, police, and other agencies.121 At Howth, Harrel wanted to avoid this, but his actions were not only ill considered, they were also illegal, and he was rightly sacked.122
After this, the National Volunteers turned to legal means, where the UVF used mostly illegal methods. Another similarity between these operations was that neither group established networks; neither developed a mature system. There were also some significant differences between the UVF and the 1914 Irish Volunteers in this area. One was their internal organization. The former had existed for more than a year when it began planning Operation Lion, while the latter was still organizing when the landings occurred. This was partly due to the impetus Lion’s success gave the Irish Volunteers.
All of this leads to an assessment of the quality of the operations themselves. While the Ulstermen had a higher number and percentage of their members involved, a more complex and well-executed plan, and a cargo almost twenty times the size, the Irish Volunteers still succeeded in other ways. The Irish Volunteers brought in more arms in its first attempt than the UVF did in its entire first year. With Howth being the former’s first action as an organization, it was in many ways more impressive.
The 1916 Easter Rising and Aftermath
At Easter 1916, the republicans started their ill-fated rebellion. The republicans overestimated the appeal of their republican message.123 Their misreading of internal politics does not, however, give the republicans credit for having any understanding of the situation in Ireland. They did not necessarily expect military victory after the Aud’s capture but believed a grand, symbolic, and sacrificial gesture would awaken the Irish people. This concept is naive on this side of two world wars and other horrors since, but it was a message to Irishmen of that era. The idea was all-encompassing, even if the planning was lacking, and transformed the Rising from a futile, bloody, local, cultural, and political tableau into a genuine World War I battle.124 Further, this was a plan for the future, even if they would not live to see it.
The Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army struck in what became a six-day rebellion.125 The Rising was poorly planned, prepared, and executed. Confined almost exclusively to Dublin, there was a woeful lack of manpower and a dramatic shortage of weapons. On Easter Monday, after a weekend of failures, the rebels took various strongpoints throughout the city and captured as much matériel as they could.126
The fighting was fierce but doomed without significant support. The rebels surrendered on Saturday, 29 April. About 130 of the leaders were tried, virtually all were convicted, eighty-four sentenced to death, and fifteen were shot. The remaining rebel prisoners, some two thousand, were deported to various prisons in Britain. The aftermath of the rebellion and the British handling of it changed the direction of the Irish struggle for independence. Michael Laffan argued that the British did not overreact, that this legend has grown in the telling, but that the punishments were either too harsh or not harsh enough, both spurring the rebels on while failing to deter.127 The executions turned the dead rebel leaders into martyrs, while the unnecessarily harsh treatment of the people by the British army began to convert them into rebels.
There are legends that the planning for the War of Independence began when the rebels, concentrated mostly into Frongoch Camp in Wales, established “Rebel University” by conducting lectures. From this, the story goes, came the new leaders and strategy for the coming war. How the new guerrilla strategy of circa 1919 came about is less clear.128 Regardless of the provenance, noncooperation, guerrilla attacks, and replacement of the government were insufficient to defeat the British government and military power.129 By exploiting Britain’s imperial overreach and by stretching the army in Ireland thin, the republicans hoped to disable its ability to move and strike. This concept was their method to frustrate governance in Ireland; the means would be guerrilla warfare, which would create both instability and dissonance while simultaneously building the republican elements of sovereign power in a slow process of replacing those of the British in Ireland.
In the intervening years, the British were not idle in Ireland. As early as May 1916, the cabinet looked for ways of solving the unexpected and urgent nationalist problem and turned to immediate implementation of home rule as one possibility.130 To show good faith, it began releasing interned rebels starting in December 1916. The government could not abandon the unionists to home rule, so permanent partition was the probable outcome.131 In the spring of 1917, newly installed prime minister Lloyd George offered Redmond home rule for twenty-six counties immediately, but Redmond did not want to provide any justification, or accept responsibility, for the separation of the remaining six northern counties.132
Lloyd George’s first attempt to find an Irish solution was during the midsummer 1917 Irish Convention, where the major political groups met. Although invited, Sinn Féin did not attend. All that the convention achieved was to guarantee the northern unionists that they would not be forced to join a home rule Ireland, which also tacitly acknowledged their special status133
In March 1918, Germany conducted its final offensive of the war, the Spring Offensive, along much of the western front. Designed to take advantage of an influx of troops returning from the eastern front, along with new offensive tactics, Germany wanted to strike before the newly arrived American forces became fully operational. Driving the Allies back some thirty-five miles, the staggering losses in men and ground caused near panic in the British government. Fearing that the army needed vast numbers of replacements, the cabinet chose to use conscription in Ireland, which it had not enforced until then. This decision in 1918 proved hugely unpopular within almost every segment of the Irish population.
These actions and missteps by the government increased popular support for the republican cause. When released, the rebels interned after the Rising took over Sinn Féin. The failures of the Home Rule Settlement, the Irish Convention, the Conscription Crisis, and the German Plot gave Sinn Féin greater notoriety while also destroying the IPP.134 The reformed Sinn Féin contested seats in the general election in December 1918 and took 73 of the 103 Irish seats and 48 percent of the vote.135
With such a powerful bloc and a clear statement from the people, the new MPs opened the Dáil Éireann in Dublin. Foster has claimed that the “Dáil represented the IRA rather than the Sinn Féin movement,” suggesting that this body would be more militant than what had been seen in the past. This issue is interesting because English noted that the IRA did not trust the Dáil or look to it for legitimacy of its actions, while Townshend said that Sinn Féin was the de facto physical-force republican movement.136