Six days of the Irish Republic Part 5

Accordingly, while on our way to pick up a body I went with one of the stretcher-bearers and a priest and a parson to warn them to keep indoors.

One poor fellow we brought in, shot through the breast, was apparently a civilian, but on examination we found on him a curious doc.u.ment, undoubtedly proving him a Sinn Feiner.

The story of this doc.u.ment, which was perhaps the final decisive factor that precipitated the rising, is perhaps best told in the words of the Royal Commission:--

On the 19th of April a special meeting of the Dublin Corporation was held at the Mansion House to discuss the police rate. Alderman Thomas Kelly, in the course of a speech attacking Mr. Justice Kenny (who had alluded at the opening of his Commission to the state of disorder in Dublin and had urged military action), made a statement to the effect that he had received that morning from the editor of _New Ireland_ a circular which he would read. It was from a man named Little, _New Ireland_ Office, 13, Fleet Street, Dublin, April 16, 1916, and ran:--

"The following precautionary measures have been sanctioned by the Irish Office on the recommendation of the General Officer Commanding the Forces in Ireland. All preparations will be made to put these measures in force immediately on receipt of an Order issued from the Chief Secretary's Office, Dublin Castle, and signed by the Under Secretary and the General Officer Commanding the Forces in Ireland. First, the following persons to be placed under arrest:--All members of the Sinn Fein National Council, the Central Executive Irish Sinn Fein Volunteers, General Council Irish Sinn Fein Volunteers, County Board Irish Sinn Fein Volunteers, Executive Committee National Volunteers, Coisde Gnota Committee Gaelic League. See List A 3 and 4 and supplementary list A 2.... Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary Forces in Dublin City will be confined to barracks under the direction of the Competent Military Authority. An order will be issued to inhabitants of city to remain in their houses until such time as the Competent Military Authority may otherwise direct or permit.

Pickets chosen from units of Territorial Forces will be placed at all points marked on maps 3 and 4. Accompanying mounted patrols will continuously visit all points and report every hour. The following premises will be occupied by adequate forces, and all necessary measures used without need of reference to headquarters; after which followed a list.

"Alderman Kelly, in continuing, said that the doc.u.ment was evidently genuine, and that he had done a public service in drawing attention to it, in order to prevent these military operations being carried on in a city which he declared was under G.o.d the most peaceable in Europe.

"This doc.u.ment was an entire fabrication. Copies of it found since the outbreak are shown by identification of type to have been printed at Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Citizen Army. It is not known who was the author of this invention, or whether Mr.

Little was in any way responsible for it. Many copies of this forged doc.u.ment were printed and distributed, and it was widely considered by the people to be genuine, and no doubt led to the belief by the members of the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army that they would shortly be disarmed. This undoubtedly became one of the proximate causes of the outbreak."

All Thursday seems to have been devoted princ.i.p.ally to the bringing in of reinforcements, which, by this time, were pouring in from England.

Instead of using them for isolated attacks on the different strongholds, they appear to have been concentrated as an ever-narrowing cordon around the central position of the rebels at the Post Office.

Hence, by Thursday evening the tables had been completely turned upon the rebels, and instead of dominating the city, the city on every side hemmed them in; and the Law Courts, the College of Surgeons, Jacobs's biscuit factory and Boland's bakery, though amply supplied with food and ammunition, had been all practically isolated one from another--in the last-named place the rebels forced the bakers, at the point of the bayonet, to continue making bread.

The military were also in possession of Brunswick Street, and portions of Talbot Street and North Earl Street, while from D'Olier Street a fusillade swept O'Connell Bridge, and from T.C.D. a 9-pounder began to batter down Kelly's corner house and send sh.e.l.ls along Bachelors' Walk.

Everybody now expected the collapse of the rebels, who were being captured on all sides, and crowds of British pressmen, with special facilities for the edification of neutral countries, began to arrive.

Certainly never had journalists ever had such a finale to send flashing along the wires; for a cordon of soldiers completely encircled the city on every side, and grew gradually tighter and tighter around the Post Office, the heart of the rebel position. From all sides sh.e.l.ls now began to drop into Sackville Street, and we knew that it was the beginning of the end.

That end was in every way as dramatic as the beginning--a melodrama worthy of the Lyceum at its best--and for thirty hours, as the artillery thundered, the sky was one huge blaze of flame, which, at one time, threatened to engulf the whole northern centre of the city in a sea of fire.

Driven from Kelly's corner, which commanded the left entrance to Sackville Street, the insurgents still held Hopkins's corner on the other side, and on this the artillery next concentrated not only high explosive sh.e.l.ls but incendiary bombs as well, and the whole place became a ma.s.s of blazing ruins, the flames leaping across Lower Abbey Street like a prairie fire.

Whether this was intentional or inevitable, one thing was certain, and that was that nothing could stand up against it--it meant utter annihilation as far as human lives were concerned, absolute ruination as far as material property.

That strong measures had been found necessary, however, had been proved by the appointment of a military dictator in General Sir John Maxwell, with plenary powers, and the announcement of Mr. Asquith in the House that the situation had still serious features, and that there seemed to be indications of the movement spreading to other parts of the country, especially the West.

Yet one thing must have been particularly pleasing to announce, and that was the total isolation of the movement as a political campaign, both Sir Edward Carson and Mr. John Redmond disclaiming all responsibility, while in Drogheda the National Volunteers, according to a telegram from the Viceroy, actually turned out to a.s.sist the military.

This background of peace only served to intensify the catastrophe which became known as the Sack of Sackville Street, and it is probable that only the gap made by the fire which occurred on Tuesday afternoon at Lawrence's bazaar saved the northern portion of the city.

It was under cover of the blazing buildings that the troops advanced upon the central position of the Sinn Feiners, one of the pickets being inside Clery's while the embers beneath his feet were still red, as I was told: but it was not until Sat.u.r.day morning that the actual final sh.e.l.ling and capture of the place was begun.

For this purpose only light sh.e.l.ls, happily, were used, and some incendiary bombs, which soon set fire to the roof of the beautiful historic landmark.

It was expected that at least a thousand of the rebels were entrapped, but it was later found out that during the week they had made a complete tunnel right back as far as Arnot's Stores, blasting their way with the aid of dynamite, in the use of which they seem to have been coached by a Berlin expert, who was afterwards captured.

The last struggles of the rebels have been variously described, but they seem rather early to have made an attempt in force to evacuate the building from the back, and some hundred and fifty are described as taking part in the stampede, which was turned into a rout by the machine guns of the military.

A single sh.e.l.l which exploded right in the barricade in front of the Coliseum building, which faces a side street, had the effect not only of closing it by the wreckage of the two corner buildings, but also of burying one of the rebel leaders.

Everyone then expected that the place would be taken at the point of the bayonet and a terrible hand-to-hand struggle ensue, as the troops would thrust the despairing rebels back into the fortress, which was rapidly turning into a furnace, when suddenly the order was given to cease fire, and for fully three hours there was a mysterious silence.

Had the place been taken, had the men surrendered, or was it only a truce, as one rumour had it, in order to enable the city to get in foodstuffs?--for the food problem had by this time become most acute in several of the isolated districts.

It proved to be an armistice, during which terms of formal surrender were concluded with the insurgent leaders, and a short while after four, Sackville Street beheld the sight of all that were left of them, the gallant but misguided six hundred, marching into captivity.

"It is a sight I shall never forget," said one eye-witness who beheld the surrender from a window in the Gresham Hotel. "That thin, short line of no more than a hundred men at most, some in the green uniform of the Volunteers, some in the plainer equipment of Larkin's Citizen Army, some looking like ordinary civilians, some again mere lads of fifteen, not a few wounded and bandaged, the whole melancholy procession threading its way through long lines of khaki soldiers--but downhearted? No; and as they pa.s.sed, I heard just for a couple of seconds the subdued strains of that scaffold-song of many an Irishman before them--'G.o.d save Ireland'--waft up to me.

"Roughs, dockers, labourers, shop-a.s.sistants--all kinds and conditions of men, even the lowest cla.s.s in the city--yet all exactly the same in the look of defiance which will haunt me to my dying day.

"Whatever they were, these men were no cowards--and even the soldiers admitted this readily; they had shown courage of the finest type, worthy of a n.o.bler cause; and had they been man for man at the front and accomplished what they had accomplished in the face of such odds, the whole Empire would have been proud of them--the whole world ringing with their praise; for, as a soldier prisoner afterwards said, 'Not even the h.e.l.l of Loos or Neuve Chapelle was like the h.e.l.l of those last hours in the General Post Office.'

"Instead of that, they were doomed to the double stigma of failure in accomplishment and futility in aim--but every Irish heart went out to them, for all that, for were they not our own flesh and blood after all?

"At either end a lad carried an improvised white flag of truce--at their head, Pea.r.s.e in full uniform, with sword across one arm in regular surrender fashion. For a moment the young British officer in command seemed perplexed at the solemnity of the procession and at the correctness and courtesy of the rebel leader; and he hesitatingly accepted the sword from his hands.

"The next moment the spell was broken: the man was a captive criminal, and with two officers, each with a loaded revolver pointing at his head, the chief and his gallant band disappeared from my view."

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

SURRENDER--COLLAPSE

Late on that fateful Sat.u.r.day evening upon which the Post Office fell, the Royal Irish Constabulary were posting in all parts of the country the following note signed by Commander P. H. Pea.r.s.e.

"In order to prevent further slaughter," it ran, "of unarmed people, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, members of the Provisional Government present at headquarters have agreed to unconditional surrender, and the commanders of all units of the Republican forces will order their followers to lay down their arms."

Yet so confident were the rebels of success in some of the besieged fortresses that they positively refused to believe that their commanders had given in: moreover, the difficulty of obtaining access to some of the insurgents also tended to prolong the conflict, especially in the more outlying districts, and so the struggle went on.

In some cases the rebels, expecting no mercy, preferred to die fighting, and it was only by the interference of the clergy that further destruction and desolation was avoided.

Jacobs's factory, for example--second only to Guinness's Brewery in size, and occupied at first by some 1,500 rebels, who had taken possession while the workers were on holiday--put up a strenuous fight, and though it was by now surrounded by the military, the men, firmly protected and encouraged by the feeling that headquarters depended upon them, refused all offers to surrender.

Several priests had previously made the attempt to influence them, but had been quietly and courteously refused, and only succeeded eventually about 4 p.m. on Sunday, when the Volunteers finally evacuated the premises.

The majority of the exits had by Sunday become occupied by the military, who had gradually turned the place into a death-trap, and from this the rebels were saved by a somewhat picturesque climax.

A well-known Carmelite monk from Whitefriars Street suddenly made his way through the crowd of spectators and signalled to the insurgents, whereupon one of the sandbagged windows was dismantled and, amid a universal cheer from the crowd, the venerable peacemaker was hoisted up into the fortress.

A short while later his efforts were seen to have succeeded, for the garrison surrendered.

At the Four Courts a priest was likewise instrumental in bringing about the surrender.

The place had been strongly barricaded and provisioned, and would, no doubt, have suffered the same fate as the Post Office had the struggle continued, but for this intervention and the desire on the part of the authorities no doubt to save the Record Office at all costs. Such a loss would, of course, have been far more serious than that of the G.P.O., for in some cases all kinds of doc.u.ments had been used for the purposes of defence, at one particular spot a whole barricade having been constructed of wills alone.