Hall, his eyes blinking furiously, added, ‘It’s perfectly quiet not only in Dublin but throughout Ireland.’
Casement sank back in his low-legged chair. ‘Thank God.’
‘But I thought—’ Thomson began.
‘I have explained already, I returned to Ireland to prevent a rising.’
‘Oh?’ Hall made it sound as if this were news to him.
‘We had a terrible fight, the German Foreign Office and I, and I won the day. I would not let them come here. I refused to hand over my fifty boys to the hangman.’
‘Hangman,’ Thomson chuckled. ‘A trifle romantic, old chap. Whoever mentioned hanging?’
Just after 10 a.m., at a large detached house in Ballsbridge, The O’Rahilly’s wife, Nancie, shook him awake. Only the night before he had returned after driving hundreds of miles in the west, spreading MacNeill’s cancellation. It had convinced him of the futility of a rising. Some Volunteer sections, as in Limerick, had about enough ammunition for a duck-shoot.
‘Desmond is downstairs, says it’s urgent.’
The O’Rahilly went down, stroking the pouches under his eyes, tidying his chestnut hair.
Desmond Fitzgerald said at once: ‘Michael, the rising is to begin at twelve.’
‘But—’ Pulling himself up, The O’Rahilly glanced at his watch. ‘I left the car at my sister’s place. I’ll have to walk over and pick it up.’
‘So you are going to try and stop it?’
A wry smile passed over The O’Rahilly’s face. ‘If they are set on a rising, nothing on earth will stop them. I’ll just get into my uniform. Go tell MacNeill what’s happening.’
Nancy had a premonition of what lay ahead. As he emerged from his study, she whispered, ‘Michael, O Michael.’
Having dressed, he kissed his eldest boy who was absorbed in his stamp collection. Then he folded in his arms his wife of seventeen unblemished years.
‘Send the older lads to MacNeill’s place,’ he said, ‘they’ll be safer there.’
In mid-morning, Stack received a visit in Tralee Jail from Father Joe Breen and John P. O’Donnell.
They managed to whisper to him, ‘On MacNeill’s personal authority, the rising is off.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Stack said, crossing himself.
*
In the Department of Taxation at Crosfield, Palmerstown, County Dublin, a senior tax official had been ordered to put the squeeze on the Headmaster of St Enda’s, Rathfarnam. Some sort of obscure revolutionary, he was told.
On an official form headed ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ and in his own big sloping hand, he wrote: ‘24 April 1916. Dear Sir, I am advised to destrain you for all taxes due which are not paid by 29 inst. Yours faithfully, H. Harrison.’
Nathan passed through the Castle’s Upper Gate at 10 o’clock to be saluted by PC James O’Brien. It was a day off for civil servants but the Constable was used to Nathan being first in and last out.
At the Viceroy’s Lodge, the staff were making last-minute preparations for His Excellency’s trip to Belfast. Servants were packing vast trunks under the direction of Lady Alice.
Wimborne was in the study that looked out over razored lawns and flame-shaped cypresses to the huge obelisk of the Wellington Monument. He was going over the Address he was to give at Drogheda where he intended breaking his journey. With baroque gestures, he practised in front of a mirror.
Things were more chaotic in Liberty Hall. Most of the Citizen Army had slept there overnight. Corridors and spare rooms were crammed with haversacks and equipment. Bicycles were strewn everywhere.
The Military Council met in Connolly’s room to put final touches to their plans. Reports were already coming in of a sketchy turn-out. They hoped that the country would rise in sympathy, but this was less likely because of confused orders and the loss of the arms boat. Victory, never more than the barest possibility, was out of the question. Their only aim now was defensive: they would seize key buildings and hold them as long as they could, hopefully longer than any Irish rebels had managed before.
Scouts, some women, most of them lads, had been sent out to report on troop movements. Fortunately, there were none. They at least had the advantage of surprise.
The Military Council looked, for the last time as a team, at the map of Dublin. The city was shaped like an ellipse, ringed by two so-called circular roads and two canals, the Royal to the north, the Grand to the south. Bisecting it was the River Liffey, running from west to east into Dublin Bay.
Plunkett pointed to their chief positions in a ring around the city. Two were north of the river: the GPO which was Headquarters, and the Four Courts or Justice Buildings. Four posts were to the south of the Liffey: the South Dublin Union, Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, Stephen’s Green and Boland’s Bakery.
‘Priority No 1, gentlemen,’ said Plunkett in a hoarse, pained voice. ‘We must cover the main British military Barracks which are sited at the four corners of the city. This is particularly necessary at the beginning to allow Headquarters to dig in at the GPO in O’Connell Street.’
At 11 a.m., Nathan was joined in his office by Major Price. In a buoyant mood, they started on their list of trouble-makers.
‘Clarke’ – Price began with the Castle’s favourite adversary – ‘McDermott, Connolly, MacNeill, Hobson and so on.’
Soon there were sixty rebels on the list.
‘I can’t wait to get my hands on them,’ Price confessed.
With midday approaching, the four city battalions were forming across the city. Of the leaders, few had ever heard a shot fired in battle. Some of their men were not sure whether there were to be three days of manoeuvres or not. Hardly anyone knew that this was a rising.
Edward Daly was Commandant of the First Battalion. He was slight, upright, pale-faced, with a small moustache more suited to an older man, for he was only twenty-five. His command was the Four Courts and the area west of the GPO. In his district was the gigantic Royal Barracks, that would have daunted a force twenty times the size of the one he had.
His men assembled in a hall at Blackhall Place. They numbered 120; he was banking on 350.
His words were brief and to the point.
‘Men, listen to me, and afterwards no applause. Today at noon, an Irish Republic will be declared. I look to every man to do his duty. The Volunteers are now part of the Irish Republican Army. In less than an hour we may be in action.’
Most were delighted, some were so shocked they started muttering that they wanted to see a priest. A few drifted away, saying, ‘What would my mom say?’ ‘I’ll have to tell my wife and kids about this.’
South of Daly’s position, on the quays across the Liffey, was the Mendicity Institute. Once it was the most fashionable building in Dublin; now beggars came to it daily for meals. The dozen men in Daly’s D Company had orders to take it over. In charge was Sean Heuston, a twenty-five-year-old Limerick man of dark features and few words. Connolly had asked him to hold the Mendicity for a few hours. They were to stop the British moving east till the rebels were dug in at the Four Courts and the GPO.
The main body of the Second Battalion, 150 men, armed with rifles, pickaxes and sledge-hammers, met in a shop near Stephen’s Green.
In his ebullient way, Thomas MacDonagh said, ‘This, my dear lads, is the task before us: to hold the mighty, the impregnable fortress of Jacob’s, manufactory of the most delicious biscuits in the world.
‘I have been all over it with James Connolly. It has two tall towers from which we shall have views of Dublin worth a shilling a look. We’ll be able to see spectacular Dublin Castle to the north and Portobello Barracks to the south.
‘And if that were not delight enough, we shall be able to supply other battalions with tons of cream puffs and chocolate biscuits.’
The Third Battalion was led by the much dourer Eamon de Valera. His job was to defend the eastern approaches to the city. British reinforcements were bound to come some time along the road from the Harb
our at Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire). He also had to defend the last two miles of railway from Kingstown to Dublin, including Westland Row Station and the railway workshops. If that were not enough, he was to hold bridges over the canal and Boland’s Bakery on Grand Canal Street.
To cover the enormous ground, he needed over 500 men. In the event, the companies from Kingstown and Blackrock who knew best the route the British soldiers would take from the harbour, did not muster. He was left with only 130.
Not a single woman appeared to help with the Red Cross or the commissariat. That was de Valera’s own fault. He had put them off by his insistence that women were not to carry arms.
Seeing the size of the task ahead and the poverty of his forces, a terrible fear gripped his heart.
*
Eamonn Kent of the Fourth Battalion had an equally monumental task. He was to take over the South Dublin Union, a kind of small town of poor and elderly on fifty acres, with lodgings, kitchens and nursing facilities for over three thousand inmates. It was close to Kingsbridge Station in the west, the terminus for reinforcements that would soon be streaming in from British camps at the Curragh and Athlone. It was also adjacent to Richmond Barracks and the British military HQ in the Royal Hospital.
Kent had already established outposts in James’s Street, Marrowbone Lane and put Con Colbert, a drill instructor and leading light in the Scout movement, in charge of Watkin’s Brewery. Then he went to Emerald Square near Dolphin’s Barn where the Fourth was due to muster.
Of 1,000 men on the roll, only 130 appeared.
‘Men,’ he said, with the brevity they were accustomed to, ‘this is the real thing.’
The Fifth Battalion, led by Thomas Ashe, was to operate outside the city in the North County Dublin. They and the second section of MacDonagh’s Battalion were the Post Office’s only defences on the north of the city, leaving Headquarters in the GPO very vulnerable.
The rest of the rebels had been assembling at Liberty Hall since 10 o’clock.
At 11.45 a.m., William Oman sounded the bugle and 200 of the Citizen Army army fell in. Poorly equipped, untidily dressed, they were eager but ill-disciplined.
Tommy Keenan, a Boy Scout, was clutching his bag of food; he was twelve years old but looked younger. Others as small were checking items which their mothers had packed for them, from water bottles to bootlaces. Sewn inside their coats were field dressings. Some lads had turned up because they had no money to go anywhere else.
Inside, of the leaders, only Pearse, Connolly and Plunkett were left. Their one aim was not to disgrace Ireland. The success they were seeking was moral not military. They solemnly shook hands and walked out into the sun.
The Citizen Army divided into three. The section leaders had strict orders from Connolly not to shoot unarmed men. Since the DMP went unarmed, this meant they were not to shoot policemen.
Pat Fox, a widower, went up to Sergeant Robbins. He was holding his only child, aged sixteen, by the hand. The lad was wearing his father’s uniform, and it was too big for him. He also had his father’s rifle.
‘Frank,’ Pat said, ‘I’m too old for this. This here is me lad. Take him with you, please and rear him for me?’
‘Sure.’ Robbins was on the point of leaving with Mallin’s crowd for the Green. ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Jimmy, sir.’
‘Right y’are, Jimmy.’
Jimmy called out, ‘Goodbye, Da.’
Sean Connolly, soon to head for the Castle, shook hands with a friend, saying, only half-jokingly, ‘I’ll be dead within the hour.’
William Partridge whispered to Bill O’Brien, ‘Bob Monteith told me Casement thinks the rising should be called off.’
Partridge then joined the main body of the Citizen Army, numbering about 100. Mallin marched them to Stephen’s Green. He took Jimmy Fox under his protection. He had planned to take the Shelbourne Hotel from where he would have been able to control the whole area. But not enough turned up. He put Jimmy with a squad digging trenches in the Green.
Back at the Hall, a second contingent of twenty-five, including nine women, were ready to leave for the Castle under Sean Connolly. His orders were not to take it, for it was a Red Cross Hospital, but to seal it up so its troops could not attack the GPO. James Connolly gave Helena Moloney a revolver before she marched off to the usual children’s catcalls: ‘There go the toy-soldiers.’
Some of the Castle contingent under Michael King had orders to seize the Telephone Exchange in Crown Alley. Others were to cut the wires from the Castle through the manhole in Dame Street in front of Lower Castle Yard.
The last group of the Citizen Army, with about seventy Volunteers, stayed outside the Hall. These made up the Headquarters Battalion. Pearse and Connolly now reviewed them.
Moving along the line, Connolly glanced anxiously at his own fifteen-year-old Roddy, his only son, as he stood to attention.
The one woman on parade was Connolly’s sturdy no-nonsense secretary Winifred Carney. Bright sunshine filled the Square, shadowed only by the Loop Line railway bridge. Gulls squawked and soared on still wings above the malt-brown yeast-smelling Liffey.
Some of the Citizen Army had not been able to afford the dark-green uniform. They managed to give themselves a military air by putting a bandolier over the right shoulder and wearing a soft-brimmed hat. Some of them carried two rifles, the single-shot 1870 Mausers brought into Howth. Some had shotguns that had murdered many a crow. Some had pikes. A few had seven-pound sledge-hammers stolen from places of work like the docks.
Connolly was cheered when he told them that from now on there was no Irish Citizen Army and no Volunteers. They were the Irish Republican Army.
When Bill O’Brien repeated to Connolly what Partridge had said, he whispered back, ‘We are going out to be slaughtered.’
‘Is there no hope at all?’
‘None whatever.’
Arthur Hamilton Norway, Secretary of the Post Office, had had a leisurely morning. After breakfasting in his Dawson Street hotel with his wife and his student son, Nevil, he went on to his club in O’Connell Street where he read the newspapers.
He was now in his elegant office in the GPO, handling a sword. The year before, he had lost his elder soldier son, Fred, near Armentières. He kept the boy’s sword and colt automatic and a few souvenirs sent on by his regiment in his office safe. Two days before, Nevil had cleaned and oiled the Colt for him and charged the magazine with four extra clips. ‘Keep it on you, Dad,’ he said. ‘These are dangerous times.’
In the last few months, from their hotel window they had witnessed Sinn Feiners parading and singing German war songs. Norway thought that Nathan listened far too much to Dillon, who sympathized with the rebels. In Nathan’s last report there was a reference to the IRB being ‘probably dormant’. Had he lived in the city centre and not in the peace of Phoenix Park, he might have thought differently.
Norway put the sword back in the safe and began a letter. At 11.50 a.m., there was a call from the Under-Secretary.
‘Would you mind coming round?… Yes, now. Urgent matter to attend to.’
Norway locked the safe and his office door. In the lobby, he handed his keys to the porter with, ‘I’ll be back in half an hour or so.’
As he went towards the exit, he felt very proud of this place, whose centenary renovations had been completed only six weeks ago. It had been a shambles when he took over. He glanced about him, admiring the large glass dome in the roof and the elaborate plaster-work, the mosaic floor, the counters all of red teak, the bright brass fittings.
He stepped out through the beautiful white pillars of the portico into the sunlight. His stroll to the Castle was brief and pleasant. Not a breath of wind ruffled the Liffey. Dame Street was a picture of peace.
No sooner was he in Nathan’s office than he confirmed that the prisoner taken in Tralee had been identified as Casement.
‘When he passed through here on Saturday night en route for London, there wa
s no attempt to rescue him. There are rebels in the city, Norway, but they are a spent force.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it.’ Norway sounded sceptical.
‘Naturally, we have the usual 400 soldiers on picket duty. Should be enough for the holiday, you think?’ Norway nodded. ‘Still, must act against the chief trouble-makers and soon.’
‘Indeed, sir.’ Norway’s enthusiasm showed.
‘That’s why I asked you over. Need your help to restrict postal services to regions where the arrests will be made.’
Norway demurred. ‘In a matter like this, sir, I would need written authorization.’
‘Then, my dear fellow, you shall have it. Use my secretary’s office. Write out whatever you think appropriate and I will sign it.’
The HQ Battalion was about to march off when The O’Rahilly drove up in his green dust-covered touring car. Pearse had not seen him since Good Friday when they had had their angry confrontation.
Seeing how young some of the soldiers were, The O’Rahilly looked on Pearse with something like loathing. And what were they going to use for bullets, rosary beads? But this was not the time for an open clash.
He jumped out of his car, saying, ‘I’ve helped wind up the clock. Might as well hear it strike.’
Pearse took him by the hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply.
The O’Rahilly said, ‘I trained these men. How can I let them fight without me?’
With the help of willing hands, The O’Rahilly started piling equipment into his car: spare rifles and ammunition; home-made bombs, many of them made out of tobacco tins, lengths of old pipe and tea canisters.
Just when Pearse was cheering up, his young and unhealthy-looking sister, Mary Brigid, appeared. She went up close to the Commander-in-Chief and said, in a thin but carrying voice, ‘Will you come home, Pat, and leave all this foolishness?’
Connolly saved the situation by ordering his men, ‘Form into fours.’
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