The Irish Citizen Army also became involved in the battle, having supported the anti-Treaty IRA in the O'Connell Street area. The fighting began with an assault by Provisional Government forces on the Four Courts building, and ended in a decisive victory for the Provisional Government.
Background
On 14 April 1922 about 200 Anti-Treaty IRA militants, with Rory O'Connor as their spokesman, occupied the Four Courts in Dublin, resulting in a tense stand-off.[2] They wanted to spark a new armed confrontation with the British, which they hoped would bring down the Anglo-Irish Treaty, unite the two factions of the IRA against their former common enemy and restart the fight to create an all-Ireland Irish Republic. At the time the British Army still had thousands of soldiers concentrated in Dublin, awaiting evacuation.
Winston Churchill and the British cabinet had been applying pressure on the Provisional Government to dislodge the rebels in the Four Courts, as they considered their presence a violation of the Treaty. Such pressure fell heaviest on Michael Collins, President of the Provisional Government Cabinet and effective head of the regular National Army. Collins, a chief IRA strategist during the War of Independence from Britain, had resisted giving open battle to the anti-Treaty militants since they had first occupied Four Courts the preceding April. His colleagues in the Provisional Government Cabinet, including Arthur Griffith, agreed that Collins must mount decisive military action against them.[3][4][5]
In June 1922 the Provisional Government engaged in intense negotiations with the British Cabinet over a draft Constitution that sought to avert the impending civil war. They particularly sought to remove the requirement of an oath to the British Crown by all members of the Dublin government, a key point of contention with anti-Treaty partisans. However, the conservative British Cabinet refused to cooperate.[3][6] The pro-treaty element of Sinn Féin won the elections on 16 June.
Following the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson in London on 22 June 1922 and the arrest by Four Courts troops of Free State Army Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. J.J. O'Connell, British pressure on the Provisional Government intensified. The British now threatened to invade and re-occupy all of Ireland. On 27 June the Provisional Government Cabinet agreed on an ultimatum to the Four Courts garrison to evacuate or face immediate military action.[7][8]
Churchill offered a loan of British artillery for use by the National Army, along with 200 shells from their store of 10,000 at Kilmainham, three miles away. It is possible that some British special troops were also covertly loaned.[9] Two 18-pounder field guns were placed on Bridge St. and Winetavern St., across the River Liffey from the Four Courts complex. After an ultimatum was delivered to the anti-Treaty garrison on the night of 27 June / early hours of 28 June, the National Army commenced the bombardment of Four Courts.[10]
No authoritative record exists regarding the order to commence bombardment—when it was issued, by whom, where, etc. Historians have tended to attribute the order to Collins, but some biographers[who?] dispute this. Anti-Treaty survivors alleged that they were preparing for an 8:00a.m. evacuation when the bombardment began at 4:00a.m.[4][5]
Assault on the Four Courts
The Four Courts, seen from its eastern side.
Inside the building were 12 members of the Irish Republican Army Executive, including Chief-of-Staff Joe McKelvey, Director of Engineering Rory O'Connor, Quartermaster General Liam Mellows and Director of Operations Ernie O'Malley. The garrison consisted of roughly 180 men drawn from the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the IRA's 1st Dublin Brigade, commanded by Commandant Paddy O'Brien, armed for the most part only with small arms (rifles, five Thompson submachine guns and two Lewis light machine guns) apart from one captured armoured car, which they named "The Mutineer". The members of the IRA Army Executive were the political leaders of the garrison, but served as common soldiers under the command of O'Brien. The Anti-Treaty side fortified the Four Courts to some extent, planting mines around the complex and barricading the doors and windows, but their leadership ordered them not to fire first, in order to retain the moral high ground, and so the Free State troops were allowed to surround the Four Courts.[11]
After the first day's bombardment proved ineffective, the British gave the Free State two more 18-pounder cannon and proffered 60-pounder howitzers along with an offer to bomb the Four Courts from the air. Collins turned down the latter two offers because of the risk of causing heavy civilian casualties.[12] On the 29th, Free State troops stormed the eastern wing of the Four Courts, losing three killed and 14 wounded and taking 33 prisoners. The republicans' armoured car, "The Mutineer", was disabled and abandoned by its crew. Early the next day O'Brien was injured by shrapnel and O'Malley took over military command in the Four Courts. By this time the shelling had caused the Four Courts to catch fire. In addition, orders arrived from Oscar Traynor, the anti-treaty IRA commander in Dublin, for the Four Courts garrison to surrender, as he could not reach their position to help them. O'Malley ruled this order invalid, as the Four Courts was a GHQ operation.[13] However, in view of the rapidly deteriorating situation, at 3:30p.m. on 30 June, O'Malley surrendered the Four Courts to Brig. Gen. Paddy Daly of the Free State's Dublin Guard unit. Three of the republican garrison had died in the siege.[14]
An explosion at the Four Courts during the bombings.
Public Record Office explosion
Several hours before the surrender, at either 11:30 or 2:15 the Irish Public Record Office (PRO) block located in the western block of the Four Courts, which had been used as an ammunition store by the Four Courts garrison, was the centre of a huge explosion, destroying Irish state records going back to the Norman conquest.[15] Forty advancing Free State troops were badly injured.[11] Assigning blame for the explosion remains controversial. It was alleged by the National Army Headquarters that the Anti-treaty forces deliberately booby-trapped the PRO to kill advancing Free State troops. Tim Healy, a government supporter, later claimed that the explosion was the result of land mines laid before the surrender, which exploded after the surrender.[16] However, a study[which?] of the battle concluded that the explosion was caused by fires ignited by the shelling of the Four Courts, which eventually reached two truck loads of gelignite in the munitions factory. A towering mushroom cloud rose 200 feet over the Four Courts.[11] Calton Younger identified three explosions: "two beneath the Records Office at about 2.15 [pm] and another at the back of the building at about 5 o'clock".[17]
At this stage in the battle troops on each side still had a sense of kinship with the other, as most of them had fought together in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. By appealing to friends on the Free State side, several anti-Treaty leaders among the Four Courts garrison, notably Ernie O'Malley and Seán Lemass, escaped from captivity to continue the fight.[18]
Guests of the Edinburgh Hotel on O'Connell St. make their way from the hotel on 5 July 1922.
Despite the Free State force's success in taking the Four Courts, fighting continued in Dublin until 5 July. On the 29th anti-Treaty IRA units from the Dublin Brigade led by Oscar Traynor had occupied O'Connell Street, part of Parnell Square, York Street and some of other locations to try to distract Free State attention from their attack on the Four Courts. Not all the IRA units in the capital were prepared to fight against the new Irish government, however, and their numbers were probably about 500 throughout the city. Their numbers were supplemented by about 150 Citizen Army men and women who brought with them arms and ammunition dumped since the insurrection of Easter 1916.[20]
The republicans occupied the northeastern part of O'Connell St., with their strong point at "the block", a group of buildings that the Anti-Treatyites had connected by tunneling through the walls. They had also taken over the adjoining Gresham, Crown, Granville and Hammam hotels. Their only position on the western side of the street was in the YMCA building. Additionally, they had an outpost south of the Liffey at the Swan Pub on Aungier St. Oscar Traynor apparently hoped to receive reinforcements from the rest of the country, but only Anti-Treaty units in Belfast and Tipperary replied and both of them arrived too late to take part in the fighting.[11]
The Provisional Government troops, commanded by Gen. Tom Ennis, started by clearing out the outlying anti-treaty garrisons, which was accomplished by 1 July. They then drew a tighter cordon around O'Connell St. Artillery was used to drive the Anti-Treaty fighters out of positions on Parnell St. and Gardiner St., which gave the Free State troops a clear field of fire down O'Connell St.
The republican outpost in the YMCA was eliminated when Free State troops tunnelled underneath it and detonated a bomb. Traynor's men in "the block" held out until artillery was brought up, under the cover of armored cars, to bombard them at point-blank range. Incendiary bombs were also planted in the buildings. Traynor and most of his force (70 men and 30 women) made their escape when the buildings they were occupying caught fire. They mingled with civilian crowds and made their way to Blessington.
Left behind was Republican leader Cathal Brugha and a rear guard of 15 men, who stayed behind in the Hammam Hotel after Traynor and most other IRA men had left. At 5:00p.m. on 5 July, when the fires made the hotel untenable, Brugha ordered his men to surrender. He, however, stayed behind, only to emerge from the building alone, armed with a revolver. He was shot in the thigh by Free State troops and died later from blood loss. There were some further sporadic incidents of fighting around the city as Free State troops dispersed anti-treaty IRA groups.
Cathal Brugha was the last casualty in the battle for Dublin, which had cost the lives of at least 80 people (15 anti-Treaty IRA Volunteers, 29 National Army soldiers, one British Royal Air Force serviceman and 35 civilians) and over 280 wounded. In addition, the Free State took over 450 Republican prisoners.[1] The high civilian casualties were doubtless the result of the use of heavy weapons, especially artillery, in a densely populated urban area.[citation needed]
Cathal Brugha, Anti-Treaty leader killed during the fighting on Dublin's O'Connell St.
Aftermath
When the fighting in Dublin died down, the Free State government was left firmly in control of the Irish capital and the anti-treaty forces dispersed around the country. Round-ups after the fighting resulted in more Republican prisoners and the death of prominent anti-Treaty activist Harry Boland who was shot dead in Skerries, County Dublin on 31 July.
Oscar Traynor, Ernie O'Malley and the other anti-Treaty fighters who had escaped the fighting in Dublin regrouped in Blessington, around 30km south-west of the city. An anti-Treaty IRA force from County Tipperary had arrived there but too late to participate in the Dublin fighting. Instead, this force headed south and took a string of towns, including Enniscorthy and Carlow, but quickly abandoned them when faced with superior Free State forces.[21] Most of the Republicans then retreated further south again to the so-called Munster Republic, territory south-west of a line running from Limerick to Waterford. This in turn was taken by the Free State in an offensive from July to August 1922.
Four of the Republican leaders captured in the Four Courts, Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett, were later executed by the government in reprisal for the Anti-Treaty side's killing of TD (member of Parliament) Seán Hales. (See Executions during the Irish Civil War.) The street where Cathal Brugha was killed was later renamed Cathal Brugha Street in his honour.
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary paramilitary organisation. The ancestor of many groups also known as the Irish Republican Army, and distinguished from them as the "Old IRA", it was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916. In 1919, the Irish Republic that had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising was formally established by an elected assembly, and the Irish Volunteers were recognised by Dáil Éireann as its legitimate army. Thereafter, the IRA waged a guerrilla campaign against the British occupation of Ireland in the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence.
The Irish Civil War was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Empire.
Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th century struggle for Irish independence. During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a government minister of the self-declared Irish Republic. He was then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 and commander-in-chief of the National Army from July until his death in an ambush in August 1922, during the Civil War.
The Irish War of Independence or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and its paramilitary forces the Auxiliaries and Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). It was part of the Irish revolutionary period.
Cathal Brugha was an Irish republican politician who served as Minister for Defence from 1919 to 1922, Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in January 1919, the first president of Dáil Éireann from January 1919 to April 1919 and Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army from 1917 to 1918. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1922.
Events from the year 1922 in Ireland.
William Fanaghan Lynch was an Irish Republican Army officer during the Irish War of Independence of 1919–1921. During much of the Irish Civil War, he was chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army. On 10 April 1923, Lynch was killed whilst trying to escape an encirclement by Free State troops in south Tipperary.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) of 1922–1969, an anti-Treaty sub-group of the original Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), fought against the British-backed Irish Free State in the Irish Civil War, and its successors up to 1969, when the IRA split again into the Provisional IRA and Official IRA. The original Irish Republican Army fought a guerrilla war against British rule in Ireland in the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, the IRA in the 26 counties that were to become the Irish Free State split between supporters and opponents of the Treaty. The anti-Treatyites, sometimes referred to by Free State forces as "Irregulars", continued to use the name "Irish Republican Army" (IRA) or in Irish Óglaigh na hÉireann, as did the organisation in Northern Ireland which originally supported the pro-Treaty side. Óglaigh na hÉireann was also adopted as the name of the pro-Treaty National Army, and remains the official legal title of the Irish Defence Forces.
Diarmuid O'Hegarty was an Irish revolutionary and civil servant. He was a member of the Irish Volunteer executive, IRA Director of Communications and Director of Organisation. O’Hegarty was an extremely self-effacing man whom Frank Pakenham called the "civil servant of the revolution".
Roderick O'Connor was an Irish republican revolutionary. He was Director of Engineering for the IRA in the Irish War of Independence. O'Connor opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and was chairman of the republican military council that became the Anti-Treaty IRA in March 1922. He was the main spokesman for the republican side in the lead-up to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June of that year. On 30 June, O'Connor was taken prisoner at the conclusion of the attack by Free State forces on the Four Courts in Dublin. On 8 December 1922, he was executed along with three other senior members of the IRA Four Courts garrison. All four men were executed without trial or courts martial.
Liam Deasy was an Irish Republican Army officer who fought in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In the latter conflict, he was second-in-command of the Anti-Treaty forces for a period in late 1922 and early 1923.
The Irish Republican Army was a guerrilla army that fought the Irish War of Independence against Britain from 1919 to 1921. It saw itself as the legitimate army of the Irish Republic declared in 1919. The Anglo-Irish Treaty, which ended this conflict, was a compromise which abolished the Irish Republic, but created the self-governing Irish Free State, within the British Empire. The IRA was deeply split over whether to accept the Treaty. Some accepted, whereas some rejected not only the Treaty but also the civilian authorities who had accepted it. This attitude eventually led to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in late June 1922 between pro- and anti-Treaty factions.
The Irish Free State offensive of July–September 1922 was the decisive military stroke of the Irish Civil War. It was carried out by the National Army of the newly created Irish Free State against anti-treaty strongholds in the south and southwest of Ireland.
The executions during the Irish Civil War took place during the guerrilla phase of the Irish Civil War. This phase of the war was bitter, and both sides, the government forces of the Irish Free State and the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) insurgents, used executions and terror in what developed into a cycle of atrocities. From November 1922, the Free State government embarked on a policy of executing Republican prisoners in order to bring the war to an end. Many of those killed had previously been allies, and in some cases close friends, of those who ordered their deaths in the civil war. In addition, government troops summarily executed prisoners in the field on several occasions. The executions of prisoners left a lasting legacy of bitterness in Irish politics.
This is a timeline of the Irish Civil War, which took place between June 1922 and May 1923. It followed the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Richard Barrett, commonly called Dick Barrett, was a prominent Irish Republican Army officer who fought in the War of Independence and on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. He was assistant quartermaster-general of the IRA with the rank of commandant. During the Civil War he was captured by Free State forces at the Four Courts on 30 June 1922 and later executed unlawfully on 8 December 1922.
Griffith Barracks is a former military barracks on the South Circular Road, Dublin, Ireland.
James Emmet Dalton MC was an Irish soldier and film producer. He served in the British Army in the First World War, reaching the rank of captain. However, on his return to Ireland he became one of the senior figures in the Dublin Brigade of the guerrilla Irish Republican Army which fought against British rule in Ireland.
The National Army, sometimes unofficially referred to as the Free State army or the Regulars, was the army of the Irish Free State from January 1922 until October 1924. Its role in this period was defined by its service in the Irish Civil War, in defence of the institutions established by the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Michael Collins was the army's first commander-in-chief until his death in August 1922.
Ryan, Meda (2012). The Real chief, Liam Lynch. Mercier Press. ISBN978-1-85635-992-4.
Sigerson, S M (2013). The Assassination of Michael Collins: What Happened at Béal na mBláth?. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN978-1-4937-8471-4.
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