‘Slowly the resistance retrogressed back from some semi-open fighting’, as O’Malley put it, ‘to disintegrated guerilla war in which smaller and smaller columns and groups took part.’ The question became how effectively the columns could operate in the changed environment. As Florrie O’Donoghue succinctly noted, they faced two serious disadvantages they had not faced in the previous fight. ‘The majority of the people were no longer with them, and their opponents had an intimate and detailed knowledge of their personnel.’161 Either would be damaging to the prospects of sustained guerrilla action; both together were really fatal. O’Donoghue might have added a third difficulty – the Church had become openly hostile. Given the republicans’ need to commandeer supplies and strike levies to provide funds, the likelihood of any improvement in public support was slender. An appreciation sent to O’Malley on 29 July by the IRA Adjutant General, Con Moloney, showed the scale of the problem. Although 1st Western Division area, for instance, was ‘well organised and a tremendous amount of work has been done there’, it was ‘very hard to do anything effective there as the people generally are hostile and convey intelligence to the enemy’. The 3rd Southern Division area was frankly ‘hopeless’ – columns had been disbanded because ‘the men got dissatisfied and would not destroy roads, nor would they fight Free Staters, nor would they go against the priests etc.’162
In guerrilla warfare it is such factors, rather than armaments or supplies, that are the key elements. There is little sign that many, if indeed any, of the local republican leaders recognized this. They were handicapped by their own belief in the Provisional Government’s lack of legitimacy, and persuaded themselves that the people would come to share their view of them as usurpers and British stooges. Even allowing for this, though, they did little to assess the situation systematically and take appropriate action. If anything the reverse process occurred, and they reverted to the kind of fragmentation that Mao would later castigate as ‘guerrillaism’. Noting that in Dublin 1 ‘we cannot bring the war home to them very effectively’, as ‘there are not sufficient funds on hand to even maintain a strong column or a strong ASU’, O’Malley added that in Dublin 2 ‘Petty jealousy, insubordination and organised opposition have prevented columns … from doing anything active.’ The total effective strength of 1st Eastern Division – 250 men (‘which may be overestimating’) – meant that ‘even if it concentrated its available strength round the Curragh district’, it ‘would not be even able to obstruct the roads there’. Generally, the arrest of senior officers has ‘played havoc with areas in the Command’. There was a complete lack of communication between the three divisions of Western Command. Lynch, fuming about the inactivity of 3rd Western, asked ‘Are all rifles in 3rd Western manned? … I cannot make out what they are doing.’ If they had surplus rifles these should be sent to 2nd Western. ‘You must press that all rifles are manned.’ Enemy garrisons were no bigger than forty to eighty men, so ‘if all our forces on active service are properly organised into columns and well led they should be able to make things very hot for the enemy.’
The one guerrilla advantage retained by the republicans was their ability to exploit difficult terrain – Deasy noted that ‘with a very small force we were more than holding our own’ in the North Tipperary mountains, but the surrounding area was ‘dormant’. Serious reverses like the loss of strategic centres could be mitigated by topography. Even though Free State forces captured Tubbercurry in Sligo, for instance, they never managed to get much further west. Despite repeated sweeps, Frank Carty was able to maintain his power base west of the Ox Mountains. In December his force was said to be in control of the whole area from Ballina to Ballisodare. Such success certainly provided evidence of the resilience of the republicans, and also of the failings of the Free State commanders; but it reflected above all the strategic marginality, if not irrelevance, of the remote uplands.
O’Malley’s instructions to his sprawling command (enlarged in late July when Lynch casually threw in ‘1st Midland Div, that is any Brigades or Units you can have worked up’) were ambitious enough. ‘Similar … methods to those adopted against the British must be enforced’ – but they must be ‘much more vigorous’, he wrote in late July. The IRA focus on obstruction of communications during the civil war has often been cited as evidence of its military weakness, but O’Malley clearly identified it from the outset as ‘the work of paramount importance’. ‘Half-hearted destruction will not do. Obstructions must be thorough and snipers must make the work of removing obstructions costly.’ The point of this was to hamper enemy movements and make it easier for IRA intelligence to track them; ‘tactical as well as strategical destruction’ should mean that ‘a sniper or a small ambush group could inflict casualties and thus make the enemy more wary in advancing.’ Enemy posts would become isolated and IRA columns could combine to attack them individually.163 All this was fine as long as both local units and columns were functioning effectively. But they were not, and the stream of strategic directions looked increasingly like the orders Hitler would issue to imaginary units in his last days in his bunker.
O’Malley’s generalship has come in for sharp criticism. ‘The rules and regulations he tried to impose, the manoeuvres he learned from his British and French military manuals, were utterly useless … He had never even been to several of the key areas under his command. The orders he sent were often impractical; they took little or no account of the conditions of the men charged to carry them out.’164 Certainly O’Malley seems to have lost the close contact with his command that he had maintained in the previous fight. From September until his arrest in November, he lived in some style in the house of Sheila Humphreys – 36 Ailesbury Road, in the ‘leisurely, respectable and imperial’ Dublin suburb between Donnybrook and Ballsbridge. It was a well-established safe house: Batt O’Connor had built a secret room there during the Anglo-Irish war. (For that very reason, of course, it was known to the National Army commanders as well.) There were servants and a tennis court where he played in the evenings to keep fit. Until the raiding party arrived on 4 November, and he was captured in a dramatic shoot-out, he could hardly have been further away from ‘the war’. This was not altogether as agreeable for him as it can be made to sound; he chafed at the inactivity, but seems to have believed it forced on him by his position.
O’Malley at least grasped the need for some larger framework for military action. But when he asked for ‘an outline of GHQ Military National policy’, Lynch rather testily replied, ‘is it necessary to state that our National policy is to maintain the established Republic?’, adding, ‘as you are already aware, we have no notion of setting up a Government.’ Though ‘our military policy must be Guerilla tactics,’ in the 1st Southern area ‘we are convinced of our future success in open country’ – this area ‘can more effectively wage war by holding certain fronts’ (at least, ‘for some time’).165 Lynch and his staff seem to have taken a less realistic view of public attitudes than the Volunteer commanders the previous year. His deputy Con Moloney predicted in late September that ‘when they settle down to the inconvenience caused by Rail and Road destruction’, the country people would ‘improve Nationally’. Part of the reason why they did not may lie with the republican forces themselves. When it was decided in late August to issue all IRA units with a free paper under the old title An tOglaċ, third among the four principal objectives (after raising the ‘Moral standard of the Army’, and making its outlook ‘more idealistic than at present’) was ‘to inculcate virile Republican principles’. The fourth, worryingly, was ‘to discourage Intemperance and needless interference with civilian population’.166
The fundamental point was that ‘generalship’ in any conventional sense was not what was needed. What was needed was organizational impetus, of the kind previously supplied by Collins. Collins himself probably did not shine as a ‘general’ in that sense, and neither did Mulcahy, though even his opponents respected Mulcahy’s dedication to duty. But they had always had a c
lear-eyed view of what could and what needed to be done. They had understood – as the British had not – the nature of the war they were directing. It was at this level that the real failings of Lynch’s generalship lay. His strategy was informed by his fundamental assumption that guerrilla warfare could work, as it had against the British, because the Provisional Government was, in effect, itself British. It could be worn down and discouraged by the cost of fighting, and persuaded to give up. But this basic analysis was wrong. The Provisional Government had nowhere to go: it was fighting for survival.
As, of course, was the Republic – except that it did not seem to recognize the urgency of its situation. Even allowing for its strategic misconception, the republican campaign was oddly inert. Lynch’s strategy rested on the defence of the ‘Munster republic’ as a kind of demonstration that the Republic could survive. There was no intention of trying to reconstruct the republican civil administration there, and for many the term was no more than gestural. In Cork itself, for six weeks something like a republican governmental apparatus could be seen. But it was a military government, with Liam Lynch as military governor. Lynch’s primary concern was to impose discipline on the Volunteers themselves, and he brought in strong measures to curb irregular requisitioning – which often verged on looting. Nothing was to be commandeered without a form signed by the Cork No. 1 Brigade quartermaster. Motor vehicles across the whole of 1st Southern Division area had to carry permits, to be shown at all checkpoints, partly to control the unauthorized seizure of vehicles.167 Liquor controls, including the closure of pubs at 10 p.m. and the punishment of publicans who went on serving drunks, were enforced by the republican police, while press censorship was carried out by a publicity department led by Erskine Childers.
Republican control of Cork has been described as ‘visible, but shallow’. The IRA succeeded in raising considerable funds – some £100,000 – by annexing the customs revenue of the port. The Inland Revenue office was occupied in mid-July, and the district tax inspector was arrested while trying to leave the country, and ordered to report to IRA headquarters daily. But commerce, already depressed, was further damaged as suppliers refused to send goods to Cork. In an attempt to keep economic life going, shopkeepers who tried to shut up shop were ordered to carry on trading – even without stock. Like most military governments, the Cork republicans found that there were strict limits to their capacity to stimulate the economy.
‘IT IS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST THAT ORDER SHOULD BE RESTORED’
The government’s campaign was better conceived – though not much. On the face of things, the best organizational talent in the former republican army was available for it: Collins and Mulcahy themselves above all, but also Béaslaí, O’Hegarty, O’Sullivan and O’Duffy – all practical men, not têtes exaltées. The most obviously qualified military men, O’Connell and Dalton, were quickly reinforced by others with direct Great War experience, who had so far been on the fringes of the IRA high command – men such as the Irish-American John T. Prout, a US infantry officer who had served in France before becoming an intelligence officer in the Tipperary Brigade.
On 1 July 1922 Collins announced that the Ministry for Defence was moving into Portobello barracks, and he would take over as C-in-C. Two days later the government authorized recruitment of up to 20,000 temporary troops, on top of the 15,000 regulars. On 7 July it issued a ‘Call to Arms’ envisaging a six-month enlistment at 10 shillings a week into a reserve. (O’Duffy shortly returned this to the £1 a week originally envisaged.) A War Council was set up on 12 July headed by Collins as C-in-C and Mulcahy as both chief of staff and minister for defence. The creation of five regional commands, under MacEoin (Western), O’Duffy (South-Western), Dalton (Eastern), Prout (South-Eastern) and O’Connell (Curragh), made it possible – at least in principle – to develop a strategic plan of campaign. Dalton took up Mulcahy’s long-running effort to create a military culture that echoed the rules of soldierly behaviour set by regular armies elsewhere. The easygoing familiarity of the revolutionary forces would be out of place in the new order – he insisted that seniors be addressed as ‘Sir’ rather than (as was normal) by name, and that ‘horseplay’ (where Collins had presumably set a bad example) must stop. In the adjustment of ranks on 15 November, while the traditional Volunteer rank of commandant was preserved, more conventional titles like colonel, major general and lieutenant general appeared.
The regional commands took some time to pull together. O’Duffy denounced the men of the South-Western Command at Limerick as ‘a disorganised indisciplined and cowardly crowd. Arms were handed over wholesale to the enemy, sentries were drunk at their posts, and when a whole garrison was put into the clink owing to insubordination etc, the garrison sent to replace them often turned out to be worse.’ One group of 300 reinforcements were ‘absolutely worthless’, 200 of them having never handled a rifle before.168 No doubt he exaggerated for effect, but the new army was certainly beset by the same problems that had eaten away at the IRA during the Truce, indiscipline and disorganization – even outright mutiny. These weaknesses were now, in part, symptoms of an underlying lack of motivation. (In Limerick, Michael Brennan said, ‘I don’t see how serious fighting can take place here, our men have nothing against the other lads.’) Before O’Duffy took over command of the south-west, the local commanders had defied a GHQ injunction not to agree a truce with the republicans.
Western Command, a large and incoherent area, was instructed that ‘the general policy is to prevent enemy troops evacuating barracks in possession of rifles and ammunition and reverting to guerilla warfare.’ This was unrealistic, even if the National forces had been much stronger than they were. After the guerrilla phase began, the new National Army faced the classic counter-insurgency problem of how to extend its control outside the urban centres. Small posts would require much bigger numbers than were available, and in any case were undesirable from a military viewpoint. As Mulcahy said, ‘We are simply going to break up what we have of an army if we leave it any longer in small posts and do not give it proper military training.’ He complained to MacEoin in October that he could not ‘sense that there is any solid administration or organisation … pressing back the forces of disorder there … The people of the area feel that no impression is being made on the situation.’169 Reorganization was an urgent necessity.
Eventually, the steady transfusion of British weapons guaranteed that, even with erratic organization, the National Army’s fighting capacity would increase. By the end of August, it had received nine 18-pounder field guns, 27,000 rifles, 246 Lewis guns, five Vickers guns and 8,496 grenades. In mid-July the army’s strength reached some 15,000 men, and in late August the government raised its authorized strength to 35,000. Numbers remained uncertain for some time, though, thanks to the ingrained laxity of reporting. Mulcahy told Collins early in August that while 14,127 regular troops had been enrolled, the total forces reported by units amounted to only 12,270. Seán MacEoin ‘admits that there are more than 1000 additional men in his area that he cannot at present indicate the distribution of’.
Collins became, in effect, a kind of generalissimo, combining military and political supremacy. Griffith had no desire, or capacity, to dispute the day-to-day conduct of government with him, and while Mulcahy had greater administrative capacity he sensibly deferred to Collins as a strategist and thinker. Collins, relying on his personal ascendancy, did less than he might have done to equip the nascent Free State with what it most needed, a symbolic political objective to match and neutralize the invocation of the Republic as the symbol of independence. When he suggested that the government should issue ‘a sort of Official Instruction to me … appointing me to act by special order of the Government as Commander-in-Chief during the period of hostilities’, he also set out the basis of a political programme for the war (‘A statement which could be directed to the Army by me as an Order of the Day’). ‘It should be pointed out that in the present fighting the men we have lost have died for
… the People’s right to live and be governed in the way they themselves choose.’ This was ‘the same principle we fought the British for’. The army was fighting against ‘mere brigandage’ or ‘opposition to the People’s will’, and for ‘the revival of the Nation’.170
Collins was well aware that the negative side of this policy needed to be played down. Speaking of the failed negotiations with the ‘reckless and wrecking opposition’, he declared, ‘we must maintain for [the people] the position of freedom they had secured.’ He urged that the ‘revival and restoration of order cannot in any way be regarded as a step backwards, nor a repressive, nor a reactionary step’. Yet it certainly could, and would be. Would it be enough to insist that it was ‘a clear step forward’? His own political philosophy was still half formed; he has been depicted both as a would-be dictator and as an instinctive democrat.171 As with the Republic itself, everyone can construct their own Michael Collins. When Horace Plunkett, a man of some experience, met him in the summer of 1922, he judged him ‘simple yet cunning’. A recent biographer, who finds him ‘thoroughly, even desperately, sincere’, but ‘a babe in arms’ in political terms, suggests that he had never been so unsure of himself as during the split.172 There were ‘bound to be contradictions and paradoxes’ in his ‘multifaceted personality’, while his seeming inertia at the crucial time was due to ill-health. Certainly there was an odd contrast between the prolixity of his style in 1922 and the laconic clarity of his earlier writing.
The Republic- The Fight for Irish Independence Page 56