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
When the meeting resumed in the sitting room sometime after 8pm, Alice Cashel, a member of Cumann na mBan, arrived to receive orders from MacCurtain in relation to hiring a number of touring cars – ostensibly to drive groups of tourists around Killarney for the Easter weekend. In actual fact these were to be used to transport the arms that were due to be landed in Kerry. Once she had booked the cars she had been told to report back to MacCurtain in order to receive final instructions for Easter Sunday. When Eithne MacSwiney informed MacCurtain that Cashel was present he asked that she wait. Eventually, at around 11pm, Cashel became impatient and insisted on seeing the brigade commander. When Eithne MacSwiney went into the sitting room she was shocked by what she found:
Terry stood on one side of the fireplace, his elbow on the mantelpiece, his head resting on his hand. Tomás stood in a similar attitude on the other side. Facing him, Seán O’Sullivan sat on a sofa near the window, elbows on his knees, his head bowed between his hands. O’Connell sat on an arm-chair, looking as if he had been defending himself; the rather odd look on his face suggested that he was at variance with his three companions; it was a rather smug ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ expression. This vivid impression was registered in the one glance I gave from one to the other of the four. Without any knowledge of what they had been discussing, it was clear to me that something was very seriously wrong. Only some matter of the gravest import could have produced that atmosphere of anxiety, strain and heaviness of mind which was reflected on the faces and attitudes of the three, Terry, Tomás and Seán O’Sullivan; and I felt that ‘Ginger’ O’Connell was the cause of the trouble, whatever it was. I said, ‘Miss Cashel can’t wait any longer. It is after eleven. She wants you to give her her message.’ Tomás spoke: ‘Tell her there is no message.’ I returned and delivered Tomás’ answer. The reaction of Alice Cashel was a great surprise to us. She gasped. ‘No message,’ she repeated. ‘But that’s impossible. There MUST be a message. That is an extraordinary thing to say. There MUST be a message.’ ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘that is what Tomás said’, and my sister added, ‘Why not leave it ‘till tomorrow?’ ‘But that’s just it,’ said Alice. ‘I CAN’T leave it ‘till tomorrow, I MUST have the message tonight. It is an extraordinary situation to be in. I must get an answer tonight.’ ‘You had better go yourself and ask,’ I said, and she went in, to return in a few seconds, looking most upset and completely dumb-founded … She left us in a considerable state of anxiety and bewilderment. We suggested that one of the Volunteers on duty outside the house should see her home, but she considered it safer to go alone. Most of the Volunteers were being watched and followed everywhere.20
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Fred Murray of the Cork City Battalion had been busy delivering copies of MacCurtain’s original mobilisation orders to both the Eyeries and Kenmare Companies. On his way back to Cork by train he discovered that Sir Roger Casement, who had returned to Ireland on board the German submarine U19 in an effort to stop the rebellion, had been arrested and the Aud intercepted. When he arrived back in the city in the early hours of Saturday morning he raced to the Volunteer Hall in order to inform MacCurtain of these developments.21 Aware of the potential for disaster which was now unfolding, MacCurtain immediately decided to go to O’Connell’s hotel and brief him. As he and MacSwiney were about to leave their headquarters, however, James Ryan arrived from Dublin with MacDermott’s latest dispatch, which confirmed that the rebellion would go ahead as planned. Faced with yet another change in plan, MacCurtain clearly felt that he had no other option but to follow standard military procedure by ‘obeying the last order’ and he told Ryan: ‘Tell Seán we’ll blaze away as long as the stuff lasts.’22
The following day, Easter Saturday (22 April), the situation changed again when MacNeill was informed of Casement’s arrest and the interception of the Aud . The chief of staff now had no doubts. Without German support, any armed rebellion was doomed to fail and would inevitably result in heavy loss of life. In order to save the Irish Volunteers from annihilation he immediately issued the following instructions, which cancelled all previous orders for mobilisation on Easter Sunday:
Volunteers completely deceived. All orders for special action are hereby cancelled and on no account will action be taken.
[Signed] Eoin MacNeill
Chief of Staff.23
Later that day he issued a more specific order, copies of which were dispatched to units throughout the country and placed in the following morning’s Sunday Independent :
Owing to the very critical position, all orders given to the Irish Volunteers for tomorrow, Easter Sunday, are hereby rescinded, and no parades, marches or other movements of Irish Volunteers, will take place. Each individual Volunteer will obey this order strictly in every particular.
Chief of Staff.24
In order to ensure that the Volunteers understood that this order was issued by him as Chief of Staff, MacNeill also issued the following authentication note:
The order issued to the Irish Volunteers, printed over my signature in today’s Sunday Independent , is hereby authenticated. Every influence should be used immediately and throughout the day to secure faithful execution of this order, as any failure to obey may result in a very great catastrophe.
Chief of Staff.25
In the meantime Ryan had reported back to MacDermott and informed him that his mission to Cork had been successful, whereupon MacDermott appointed him to h
is personal staff with orders to parade at Liberty Hall the following morning. But at around ten o’clock that night Ryan was summoned to a house on Rathgar Road where he discovered the Volunteer executive in conference:
After some time the door of the meeting room opened and Eoin MacNeill appeared. He asked me if I had carried a dispatch to Cork the previous day and if I knew where to find the leaders there. I answered yes to both questions. Good! Well, I was now to go to Cork again, this time by motor car. It was urgent and I must deliver these dispatches as soon as possible. In his hand he held five or six slips of paper, each in identical terms and signed by him. They were orders cancelling the Sunday manoeuvres. I was to deliver one to Pierce McCann in Tipperary, one to MacCurtain in Cork, one to the OC Tralee, if possible the remainder to officers of any groups of Volunteers I might see on parade on the journey … Eoin MacNeill’s brother, James, was to come with me driving his own car.26
MOBILISATION
Whether the Cork Brigade would mobilise as previously ordered by Mac-Dermott, and face the possibility of an armed conflict with the British army, now depended literally on how soon Ryan could get back to Mac-Curtain. Time was critical because that very afternoon many Volunteers of the Cork Brigade were already beginning to mobilise. Across the city all arms, ammunition and supplies were moved into the Volunteer Hall, which was under armed guard. The first rural Volunteers to mobilise were fifteen men from the Cobh Company commanded by Captain Michael Leahy. This group made their way to the hall on Saturday evening and took over guard duty from the city Volunteers. They were later joined by twenty seven men from the Dungourney Company under the command of Captain Maurice Ahern, and that night all of them slept on the floor of the hall lying on beds made from straw provided by the brigade quartermaster.
Then, as dawn broke on Easter Sunday, Volunteers from all over the county arose, had breakfast, said farewell to their loved ones, and set out for their designated assembly points. In the Volunteer Hall Seán Murphy spent the morning distributing first aid kits and other items of equipment. Speculation was rife about the precise objectives of the ‘Manoeuvres’ upon which they were about to embark but when Volunteer Dan Donovan from C Company saw the first-aid kits being distributed, followed by tins of Oxo cubes, he turned to a comrade and remarked: ‘This looks like the real thing.’27
When all supplies had been issued, 163 Volunteers from the Cork City Battalion, together with those from Cobh and Dungourney, formed up outside their headquarters and, after a final address by MacCurtain, marched off to the Capwell railway station where they boarded a train for Crookstown. MacCurtain had arranged to travel to west Cork by car but just as he was about to leave the Volunteer Hall James Ryan arrived and delivered a copy of McNeill’s latest order.
The brigade commander was now in an impossible position. All over the county his men were marching to their concentration points as ordered. He was also acutely aware that, in the absence of a national uprising, any possible confrontation with Crown forces was guaranteed to fail. The situation was now fraught with danger but when he weighed up his options MacCurtain decided his only possible course of action was to permit the men to concentrate as ordered, and once that was complete he would then order them all to ‘stand down’. His only consolation was that the plan for rebellion had not been disclosed to his unit and this would at least enable him to justify the day’s activity as a ‘training exercise’.
Then, as heavy rain began to fall, MacCurtain, accompanied by Terence MacSwiney and Bob Hales, set off by car for west Cork. His first stop was near Crookstown, where he dispatched orders for the column marching to Macroom to stand down upon arrival. He next moved on to Bweeing in north Cork, where he met T.J. Golden, the commander of the Courtbrack Company, who later recalled that:
Tomás MacCurtain appeared to be in a great hurry. He addressed the whole parade and said that the exercises were cancelled. The men were to return quietly to their homes and keep their arms safely. They may soon be wanted again, he said, and may be called upon in the near future. We were to remain alert and ‘stand to arms’ until further notice.28
MacCurtain then carried on to Inchigeela and stood down the Volunteers concentrated at this location. The officers in charge of the other concentration points had already been told to stand down if no further instructions were forthcoming.
So it was that the Volunteers of the Cork Brigade demobilised and returned home confused, dismayed and soaked to the skin with green dye from their Volunteer hats running down their faces.
According to Seán Murphy ‘between 1100 and 1200 men had been mobilised in County Cork for Easter Sunday’,29 but Florence O’Donoghue provided the following, more detailed information regarding the number of Volunteers who assembled at the eight designated concentration points:
By late afternoon MacCurtain was completely frustrated with what had turned out to be a totally wasteful exercise and he decided to go to Ballingeary in an attempt to evaluate the situation with Seán O’Hegarty, the senior IRB officer in the county. The headlights on his car failed, however, and MacCurtain, MacSwiney and Hales were forced to spend Sunday night at Carrigadrohid instead. At first light on Easter Monday morning they finally set off for Ballingeary and spent the day discussing developments with O’Hegarty, who proved no wiser than they were. Eventually, and with nothing resolved, they began the return journey to Cork a little after six o’clock that evening.
At this point MacCurtain and MacSwiney were completely unaware that any rising had started in Dublin. It was only the officers back in the city, Seán Murphy and Seán O’Sullivan, who had heard a variety of unconfirmed reports and received a note delivered by Mary Perolz from the Dublin Cumman na mBan. Written on the fly-leaf of a pocket notebook the words read: ‘We start at noon today’, and it was signed ‘P.H.P.’31 Unsure what action to take these officers decided their best option was to barricade themselves into the Volunteer Hall. They also posted scouts at several strategic points around the city in order to report the movements of the army and police, and Volunteer Tadhg O’Leary was dispatched on the train to Macroom in an unsuccessful attempt to find their commanding officer and his deputy.
NEGOTIATIONS
When the brigade commander eventually arrived back in Cork at around 9pm on Easter Monday night the first inkling he received that anything was afoot came by way of information received from Volunteer Denis Breen, whom he encountered on the outskirts of the city. When he finally arrived at the Volunteer Hall he was first amazed at the level of activity that was going on, and then became seriously concerned when handed the note from Mary Perolz. While this clearly did not constitute another order it did indicate that at least some Volunteer elements in Dublin were about to embark on military action.
The more MacCurtain thought about the situation, however, the more difficult it appeared. His men had only just returned home from a gruelling day on Easter Sunday, during which the majority had been soaked to the skin and at least one day’s rations had been consumed. The expected German arms had not materialised. He had no effective communications with Dublin. He had no reliable intelligence reports from which to make any deductions. His brigade was now completely dispersed and even if he could manage to mobilise some of them they would provide no opposition whatsoever to the combined firepower of the British army and RIC. A hostile crowd had also gathered in the street outside his headquarters, and with the British army in Victoria Barracks probably preparing to move against him MacCurtain knew he no longer had any room to manoeuvre. In the absence of any clear orders or information from Dublin he decided his best course of action was to concentrate on defending the Volunteer Hall against attack. He later recorded that:
We decided not to leave the hall, come what may. We were convinced that the soldiers would surround us and that we would die there, but we were satisfied – no one could say that we had run away from the fight, and indeed there was no such thought in our minds.32
If nothing else this was at least consistent
with his last instructions from MacNeill. However, not all of his men were satisfied with this decision. Second Lieut. Robaird Langford, C Company, Cork City Battalion, later recalled:
The situation was very tense and strained. The younger officers particularly wanted to fight, and were very resentful of the waiting policy adopted by the leaders. They expressed their views, but the weight of the influence and authority of the older men (as they regarded the brigade officers) was against them.33
In the meantime, and unknown to MacCurtain, the lord mayor of Cork, Councillor T.C. Butterfield had already commenced an initiative to prevent an outbreak of hostilities in the city by contacting Brigadier General W.F.H. Stafford, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Cork. He suggested that before any military attempt be made to capture the Volunteer Hall he (Butterfield) should first be given an opportunity to persuade the Volunteers to hand over their weapons peacefully and thus avoid any casualties or damage to the city. Stafford agreed and appointed his aidede-camp, Captain F.W. Dickie, to take charge of negotiations. Butterfield then called on the Auxiliary Bishop of Cork, Dr Daniel Cohalan, to enlist his help. On Monday night they went to the Volunteer Hall and met Mac-Curtain, who assured them that he had no intention of initiating military action but would defend his position if attacked. Satisfied that violence was not about to break out Butterfield and Cohalan then began a sequence of negotiations in an effort to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
The following morning, Tuesday 25 April, saw an intensification of the fighting in Dublin, but in Cork all remained quiet. Some news of the rebellion, however, was now spreading throughout Cork county, and while some individual company commanders responded and mobilised small numbers, in the absence of any concrete information they too decided to remain in their respective locations and await further orders. For his part, MacCurtain remained fortified within his headquarters awaiting further contact with the lord mayor and the bishop, but none was made. Instead, early on Wednesday morning, he received reports that the British army had deployed artillery on the hill of Gurranebraher and positioned a number of machine guns in the Malt House directly opposite the Volunteer Hall. He then received a visit from the City Coroner, William Murphy, who also asked that no military action be taken until Butterfield and Cohalan returned.
1916 Page 21