1916 (29 page)

While there appears to be some conflict between the accounts given by Murphy and Florence O’Donoghue in relation to exactly how many weapons the Cork Brigade possessed at this time, it is nonetheless clear that not all Volunteers were armed with firearms. Less than 200 men had good quality rifles. The bulk of the remainder were armed with an assortment of old shotguns and revolvers, and at least 100 Volunteers were armed only with pikes. These statistics indicate the real military capability of the Cork Brigade at this time.
⁷

However, unknown to both MacCurtain and the Volunteers’ Chief of Staff, Eoin MacNeill, the shipment of German weapons was part of a plan for the establishment of an independent Irish Republic that was already at an advanced stage. Immediately after the outbreak of the First World War the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) decided that an armed rebellion should be mounted in Ireland before the end of the conflict. That decision was copper-fastened in May 1915 when, with the British army locked in stalemate on the western front, a secret IRB Military Council was established comprising Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Éamonn Ceannt.
⁸

This small group immediately began working on a plan for rebellion which envisaged mobilisation on Easter Sunday 1916 of over 10,000 Irish Volunteers, armed by Germany and augmented by a German expeditionary force. The Dublin Brigade of Volunteers would seize the General Post Office in Dublin and other strategic buildings and establish a series of
outposts in the suburbs. Volunteer units throughout the country would establish a line along the river Shannon in order to cover the landing of the German arms shipment and, once the new weapons had been distributed, the Volunteers and their German allies would then advance on Dublin capturing or destroying Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks along the way. The essential elements of this outline plan were basically sound. In fact it might well have stood some chance of success if the Volunteers nationally had been adequately trained and properly prepared; if Volunteer brigades when mobilised were in possession of clear military orders and specific objectives; if an adequate quantity of arms and equipment had been supplied: and if an integrated all-arms German expeditionary force had actually materialised.
⁹

But none of this happened. The Military Council was so obsessed with secrecy that the essential elements of the plan, and its real objectives, were not communicated to the personnel upon whom the success of the operation would ultimately depend – the brigade commanders – until it was far too late. At brigade level, therefore, no military briefings for an armed uprising were held; no mission was analysed in that context; no offensive courses of action were developed; no contingencies were planned; no reserve was identified; no best and worst case scenarios were either identified, developed or ‘war-gamed’; and no higher commander’s intent or planning guidance was communicated.

Instead, a small group of people, with virtually no military experience between them, developed an outline plan for rebellion, kept it shrouded in secrecy until literally the very last minute, and then expected the entire Volunteer movement to follow them into what would effectively have amounted to a military coup. It was never going to work and the longer the operational units in the country were kept in the dark the worse the eventual outcome was destined to be.

C
ONFLICTING ORDERS

As the date for the planned rebellion grew closer it finally became necessary to inform the brigade commanders of the Military Council’s true intentions. On Monday 17 April, Brigid Foley, a member of Dublin Cumann na mBan, was tasked by Seán MacDermott with delivering a sealed dispatch to the brigade commander in Cork.
¹⁰
While the specific contents of this dispatch remain unknown, it is reasonable to conclude that it contained new information which expanded the role the Cork Brigade would be expected to play during the ‘Easter Manoeuvres’. Seán Murphy clearly recalled that upon reading the dispatch MacCurtain became so concerned that he decided to send Eithne MacSwiney to Dublin on Wednesday in order to meet with Thomas Clarke, James Connolly and MacDermott, and to arrange a meeting between them and Terence MacSwiney who was prepared to travel to Dublin the following day.
¹¹
If possible she was also to meet with Eoin MacNeill and give him the same message. She left Cork on the 12.45pm train on Wednesday 19 April, the same day that the ‘Castle document’ was put into circulation in Dublin.
¹²

Purporting to have been drafted by the British authorities in Dublin Castle, this document outlined detailed instructions for suppression of the Volunteer movement, and was received with outrage by the leadership, including its more moderate members such as MacNeill. In reality the document had been forged by members of the Military Council in order to encourage the Volunteer movement to support the rebellion – and initially it achieved its objective. Following a meeting of the Volunteer Executive Council that same day MacNeill sent the following order to all brigade commanders, including MacCurtain:

2 Dawson Street, Dublin
April 19 1916
A plan on the part of the Government for the suppression and disarming of the Irish Volunteers has become known. The date of putting it into operation depends only on Government orders to be given.

In the event of definite information not reaching you from headquarters, you will be on the look out for any attempt to put this plan into operation. Should you be satisfied that such action is imminent you will be prepared with defensive measures.

Your object will be to preserve the arms and the organisation of the Irish Volunteers, and the measures taken by you will be directed to that purpose.

In general you will arrange that your men defend themselves and each other in small groups, so placed that they may best be able to hold out.

Each group must be supplied with sufficient supplies of food or be certain of access to such supplies.

This order is to be passed on to your subordinate officers and to officers of neighbouring commands.

[Signed] Eoin MacNeill, Chief of Staff.
¹³

This was the scenario that awaited Eithne MacSwiney when she alighted from the train at Kingsbridge station, although initially she had no idea what was going on. MacDermott was at the station to meet her:

He did not speak to me, but let me know he had seen me. We travelled on the same tram to O’Connell Bridge, but sat at different ends of the tram and, on alighting, Seán told me to go to Tom Clarke’s shop in Parnell Square at 7pm that evening. At the shop, at the hour, I saw Mrs Tom Clarke. She showed me a copy of the ‘Castle Document’ that was causing such excitement at the time. She told me to go to Ballybough – their home – and there, for the first and last time, I saw Tom Clarke. I gave him the message I had brought. ‘Impossible’, he said, ‘altogether impossible. He must not come to Dublin. Everyone is being watched closely; the first attempt to board a train and he would be arrested; everyone must remain at his post.’
¹⁴

When the meeting with Clarke was finished Eithne MacSwiney sent a telegram to MacCurtain informing him of the outcome. She then proceeded to Volunteer headquarters at Dawson Street where Bulmer Hobson, the quartermaster general, told her that the chief of staff would be available to see her brother if he came to Dublin the following day. Mac-Curtain quickly decided, however, there was little point risking his deputy and decided to keep him in Cork where events were now beginning to conspire against him.

In the meantime Brigid Foley arrived in Cork with yet another dispatch from MacDermott and the following morning MacNeill’s order of 19 April was also received by the brigade commander. The situation was now very confused. MacCurtain’s own orders for the Easter ‘Manoeuvres’ had already been issued on 9 April and were now at variance with Mac-Dermott’s dispatches and MacNeill’s latest instruction. In short, MacCurtain had been planning for manoeuvres designed to provide security for an arms landing, he was then ordered to prepare for offensive operations, and he now found himself instructed to only take defensive measures.

At national level the Military Council’s plan was also beginning to unravel. The previous weekend they deemed it necessary to inform two senior Volunteer officers, Commandant J.J. O’Connell, the chief of inspection, and Seán Fitzgibbon, the director of recruiting, that a supply of arms was then en route to Ireland on board the
Aud
, a German vessel disguised as a Norwegian trawler. Both men were assured that MacNeill was fully briefed on this development and they were then tasked with specific duties in relation to the operation. Due to his previous involvement in landing
German arms at Kilcoole in August 1914 Fitzgibbon was ordered to travel to the south west and liaise with the commanding officers of the Kerry and Limerick Brigades, while O’Connell was ordered to take charge of operations in Leinster.
¹⁵

Fitzgibbon duly set off for Kerry and Limerick but O’Connell had doubts as to the authenticity of his orders, and on Thursday night, 20 April, he went to Volunteer headquarters in order to verify them. There he met with Bulmer Hobson. The quartermaster general had earlier attended an IRB meeting and became alarmed when one Volunteer informed him that he had received orders to sabotage a railway line on Easter Sunday. When O’Connell told him of his orders, both men realised there was something seriously wrong. They immediately drove to MacNeill’s home at Woodtown Park in Rathfarnham and informed their chief of staff of what they knew.

Furious at having been deceived, and convinced now that an armed rebellion was indeed planned for Easter Sunday, MacNeill, Hobson and O’Connell went directly to confront Pearse at St Enda’s College. When Pearse admitted the truth MacNeill declared that, short of informing the British authorities in Dublin Castle, he would do everything in his power to stop the rebellion. To this end, in the early hours of Friday morning (21 April), he drafted the following order for O’Connell in respect of the Volunteers in Munster:

Commandant O’Connell will go to Cork by the first available train today. He will instruct Commandant MacCurtain, or, in his absence, will select an officer to accompany him to Kerry. Commandant O’Connell will immediately take chief command of the Irish Volunteers, and will be in complete control over all Volunteers in Munster. Any orders issued by Commandant Pearse, or any person heretofore are hereby cancelled or recalled, and only the orders issued by Commandant O’Connell and under his authority will have force. Commandant O’Connell will have full powers to appoint officers of any rank, to supersede officers of any rank, and to delegate his own authority or any part of it to any person in respect of the Irish Volunteers in Munster.
[Signed] Eoin MacNeill
Chief of Staff

PS Officers in Munster will report to Commandant O’Connell as required by him on the subject of any special orders they have received and any arrangements made or to be made by them as a consequence.

Chief of Staff.
¹⁶

MacNeill also issued a ‘General Order’ to all Volunteer units re-affirming his instructions, issued in the wake of the ‘Castle document’, to take only defensive measures in the event of an attack or an attempted disarmament by Crown forces. He was adamant that this order would:

take the place of any orders that may have been issued in a different sense. All orders of a special character issued by Commandant Pearse, or by any other person heretofore, with regard to military movements of a definite kind, are hereby recalled or cancelled, and in future all special orders will be issued by me or by my successor as Chief of Staff.
¹⁷

Later that morning, however, as O’Connell was making his way to Cork, Pearse and MacDermott called to MacNeill’s home and argued that, with the German arms shipment already en route to Ireland, it was now too late to stop the rebellion. After much debate the chief of staff was eventually prevailed upon to countermand his own previous order. Once this was decided MacDermott immediately contacted Volunteer James Ryan and tasked him to take a dispatch to Cork that evening. Ryan later recalled that:

I was only too glad to get busy at something; and I was told to report at his [MacDermott’s] office in D’Olier Street during the afternoon and prepare to travel on the night train to Cork. When I arrived at the office he asked me if I was armed and I said yes. He then handed me a dispatch which was to be delivered to Tomás MacCurtain in Cork. He said that it was a very important message and that I should prevent it falling into hostile hands even at the cost of my life. This looked serious and I began to think that ‘another ordinary parade’ on Sunday might definitely be counted out.
¹⁸

In Cork, MacCurtain had been informed that O’Connell was on his way to the city and arranged to meet his train at Mallow station. When he got there, however, the train had already passed through. Returning by road MacCurtain found O’Connell at Terence MacSwiney’s home at Grand View Terrace on the Victoria Road; Seán O’Sullivan, the officer commanding the Cork City Battalion, was also present. O’Connell brought all of them up to date on events in Dublin and confirmed MacNeill’s order in relation to defensive measures. The meeting went on for a long time and around 7pm they took a break for something to eat. Eithne MacSwiney had prepared the meal with her sister Mary, and later left this impression of the men’s demeanour as they ate their food:

Though they endeavoured to speak lightly and make jokes, the feeling of gloom and depression predominated. This was in marked contrast to the spirit of buoyant gaiety in which Terry had worked during the previous months.
¹⁹