The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “I should know that.”

  “It’ll be out anyway, soon enough now.” He shook his head. “You remember you asked about arms?”

  “Yes.”

  “They came today. Actually, this man Sir Roger Casement has been negotiating for us in Germany for more than a year. Strange isn’t it, an English public servant, knighted, yet sympathetic to Ireland as well? We asked for troops. They wouldn’t give them. But twenty thousand rifles and a million rounds of ammunition were to be landed with Casement in Kerry today. They came, too. But something went wrong. The ship was intercepted. Casement’s arrested.”

  “I heard something might happen this weekend.”

  “Perhaps it will. Say nothing of what I’ve told you. But keep going down to Liberty Hall. If there’s more to hear, you’ll hear it there. Don’t be seen with me now. Good night.”

  The next three days had been strange indeed. Half the time, nobody seemed to know what was going on. But gradually she began to understand. The rising had been planned. The IRB was behind it. They’d even sent out orders to the Irish Volunteers, all over the country, to rise on Easter Sunday. They hadn’t even told Mac Neill, who was supposed to be in charge. With the arms from Casement lost, Mac Neill countermanded the order. But Tom Clarke, the deadly tobacconist, and Pearse and the other IRB men wanted to go ahead anyway. They started sending Cumann na mBan girls off with new orders for a rising on Monday instead. Each time Caitlin arrived at Liberty Hall, she found more confusion than she had before. But on Sunday, Willy was there.

  “Be here tomorrow morning,” he told her firmly. “There’ll be plenty for you to do.”

  That proved to be an understatement. The Easter Rising was a strange business, but it was certainly a week to be remembered. For a start, there was the question of numbers.

  It was clear to her from the moment she arrived at Liberty Hall that the order and counter-order of the weekend had taken a heavy toll. Most of the Volunteers, especially outside Dublin, had believed that the rising was cancelled. Only about fourteen hundred of the Irish Volunteers were at the quay, together with about another two hundred of the trade union ICA. She saw Rita among them. It seemed that the leaders had a plan, though. It was interesting to see how several of the men directing affairs now were obviously members of the secretive IRB. The poetic Pearse and the gaunt tobacconist Tom Clarke were among them. James Connolly of the union was taking a leading role, also. Though not one of the leaders, she could see from the way that he bustled about that Willy O’Byrne had their confidence.

  Despite their modest numbers, the plan was to take control of a number of strategic points in the city. The General Post Office on Sackville Street, opposite Nelson’s pillar, would be the headquarters. Then there would be garrisons in the Four Courts a short way upstream, the Castle and City Hall, Jacobs Biscuit Factory to the south; another industrial building, Boland’s Mills, in the southeast, by the Grand Canal docks; and several other places. People were being chosen for each location.

  Just for a moment, she asked herself what she was doing there. The enterprise seemed hasty and almost sure to fail. Even now, she guessed that the British forces in Dublin probably outnumbered theirs by three to one. But as she caught sight of Rita’s excited face, and the faces of other young women she knew, she chided herself. If they are ready to fight for Ireland, then so should I be, she thought. She wondered where she should be posted. Somebody pointed to her and said that as she was such a good marksman, she ought to be a sniper. There was some hesitation. Then Willy appeared. She saw him converse briefly with some of the leading men, pointing to her. Then he came over.

  “Did you come here on your bicycle?’

  “I did. Why?”

  “Go home quickly.” Her face must have registered dismay, because he laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you every chance to get killed. But I want you to come back here dressed as if you were going to an art lecture, or to the Abbey. You may be more use like that. I need you to look like,” he grinned, “a young countess.”

  “I’m not giving up my Webley.”

  “Hide it somewhere, that’s all.”

  She was back in half an hour. When he saw her, Willy nodded approval. When she asked him what he wanted her to do, he just said: “You’ll see.”

  The detachments started marching out at eleven o’clock. She watched them go down the street. As it was the Easter holiday, there were quite a few people strolling about. They’d seen the Volunteers march about before, so they evidently supposed this was some sort of Easter parade. Nobody took more than the most cursory notice.

  An hour later, to the public’s great astonishment, Pearse the orator came out in front of the General Post Office and proclaimed an Irish Republic.

  A week to be remembered. It was not long before she understood the reason why Willy had asked her to change her clothes. Within a day, there were cordons and barricades all over the centre of the city. The GPO and the Four Courts particularly were under heavy fire. There were snipers on the rooftops. More and more British troops were coming into the city to cordon off the whole centre. Later in the week, a gunboat came up the Liffey and started pounding the rebel positions. And the most useful task she could perform was to carry messages, without incurring suspicion.

  If she had any talent for acting, she realised, now was the time to use it. She did rather well. To her surprise, she found that she could get in and out of the GPO. The women were running both a kitchen and a field hospital there. By taking a careful route, she could get to the Four Courts. Though it got harder as the days went by, she was able to cross the Liffey and get to St. Stephen’s Green, where the women had another field hospital set up, to City Hall and points beyond. She was proud to find that in most of the garrisons, the women were soon relieving the men as snipers. When she was sent down to the Jacobs factory, she found Rita in high good humour. “They threw me out, so I’ve occupied them,” she announced. “And before we leave, we’ll eat all their biscuits!” Only at Boland’s Mills did she find that there were no women. The commander there was a tall, bony-faced Irish American in his early thirties with a strange Spanish name: de Valera. He told her frankly, “I won’t have women under my command.”

  “You think we’ll run away?” Caitlin demanded.

  “Not at all.” He laughed. “The women are too brave. They take so many risks I can’t control them.” He wrote a message on a scrap of paper and asked her to take it to the GPO. “What will you do with the message if the soldiers take you?” he asked.

  “Eat it,” she answered simply.

  But the soldiers never did take her. The snipers nearly shot her a score of times. Indeed, since the Dubliners could never resist the urge to have a peek to see what was going on, she saw many of them hit by snipers or stray bullets. But she became adept at knowing where the dangerous corners and crossings were. Her genius lay in her ability to bicycle up to a group of English soldiers and ask for their help in getting through. She always had an excuse. She had to see her art professor, go to the theatre to collect a play script, visit her great aunt. Once she carefully loosened her bicycle chain and begged the soldiers to help her get it back on. Sometimes, of course, they refused to let her through, and she had to find a detour to come at her objective some other way. But often as not, they took the pretty, well-spoken girl with the expensive clothes and the flashing green eyes for a harmless young aristocrat, and let her pass with a warning that she’d better take care.

  Nor were the soldiers so foolish to do so. After all, the Volunteers were barricaded in their occupied buildings. Some of their women were insisting they were nurses, when they weren’t sniping from the windows; but they were nearly all in uniform of one sort or another. And above all, most of the people of Dublin had not only been taken by surprise by the rising, they wanted nothing to do with it.

  Caitlin heard their comments frequently. What was the point of all this fuss, it was asked, when independence had already been promised? Shopkeepers a
nd businessmen were not pleased at the damage done to the city, especially after the gunboat started pounding the rebel positions. “Sackville Street,” a grocer complained to her, “is being turned into a ruin. And who will pay for all this? We shall. You can be sure of it.” More than once, going through the Liberties in the latter part of the week, she heard furious complaints from Catholic mothers, because the disruption had delayed the pay packets they got from their sons in the British army.

  Yet somehow this lack of sympathy made Caitlin admire the rising even more. The gesture, the bravery—and who knew, if Willy was right, the necessity of it—were to be admired. The people in the buildings, surrounded by ever more British troops, were her countrymen and her friends. She wished she could talk to Willy O’Byrne about it. But she hadn’t seen him since Monday. She believed he had gone to the Four Courts.

  On Monday night, she had slept at the GPO. On Tuesday night, she had returned to sleep at her home, and found an urgent note from Sheridan Smith demanding to know where she was. At dawn the next day, she dropped a reply through his letter box telling him that she was well and busy with her studies, and that she’d come to see him in a few days. He mightn’t believe it, but at least she’d replied, and he’d know she was alive. She spent the next night at the biscuit factory with Rita. By Thursday, it was becoming clear that the GPO couldn’t hold out much longer. Some of the women there were sent to their homes. On Friday morning, much of the area was in flames, and a fire broke out in the building.

  For Caitlin, the rising ended at noon on Friday. She had been up all the night before and gone home to rest. Entering the house in Fitzwilliam Square, she had experienced a sense that something was amiss. The maid had given her a strange look. Then, turning, she had realised that Sheridan Smith was standing between her and the door. He was looking very grave.

  “You will not be going out again,” he said quietly. “If necessary, Caitlin, I will prevent you.”

  She said nothing, but started up the stairs to her room. The door was open. On the floor, she saw the suitcase into which she had thrust her green uniform on Monday. The case was empty now.

  “I have burned it,” Sheridan said. “Your mother, by the way, is on her way home.”

  Still she made no reply. There wasn’t much point. She had to sleep anyway. She made to close the door, but Sheridan shook his head. “I shall keep you in my sight,” he said, not unkindly. She sat down on the bed, and then smiled to herself.

  “You must give me a moment’s privacy Uncle Sherry,” she said.

  She needed to hide her revolver.

  By the time she awoke, it was clear that there was nothing left for her to do. The GPO could no longer be held. Its gallant defenders, including Pearse, had to abandon it. By Sunday, the last of the Volunteer garrisons had surrendered.

  It was on Sunday morning that the soldiers came to Fitzwilliam Square. They went from door to door. They announced that they were checking every house for “Sinn Feiners.” Caitlin had already noticed this confusion on the part of the British troops, and even the British newspapers. Perhaps, hearing the IRB men referred to as Fenians—which derived from the army of Irish legend—they supposed this to be the same as Griffith’s nonviolent nationalist movement, Sinn Fein, which hadn’t joined the rising at all. It was typical, she thought, that the British authorities should even have misunderstood who their enemy was.

  Sheridan Smith, anticipating a visitation of this kind, had decided it was better for them both to remain in the house; and she had to admit, he handled the situation very well. His own well-known respectability was a help, no doubt. There were no “Sinn Feiners” in the house, he assured them, only his great niece, a student, and he himself, who was staying in the house until the girl’s mother returned from abroad. He encouraged them to search thoroughly, all the same. They only had the most cursory glance around and politely left. They did not find her Webley.

  Meanwhile, the tough British General, Maxwell, who had been sent to sort the place out, was moving swiftly to court-martial the leaders of the rising. By midweek, Sheridan told her: “I believe about a hundred and eighty men are selected, and one woman, Countess Markievicz.” The trials went swiftly. The next day, he came to the house looking grim.

  “I have sad news. Did you know an employee of mine, Willy O’Byrne? I had guessed he was mixed up in this when he didn’t appear, but it seems he must have been further in than I thought. Anyway, he was one of those court-martialled today.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid he’s to be shot.”

  The fools! The fools! She might have echoed it then. But it was during the coming months that she really came to think it.

  One couldn’t say that, by the standards of the day, the British had been harsh. Indeed, they had probably been kinder than any other country would have been. But they had not been clever.

  Before the garrisons surrendered, several of them made the women leave. Most of these, after being questioned by the British officers they encountered, were told to go home. The truth was, the British hardly knew what to do with them. Seventy-nine women were arrested. Seventy-three of these, also, were soon released. Caitlin was glad to hear that Rita was one of those set free. A handful were held in Kilmainham, then sent to the Mountjoy prison, then deported to serve time in England. Only Countess Markievicz, who had made such play with her revolver and encouraged others to do the same, was sentenced to be shot.

  Nearly three and a half thousand men were taken. Almost fifteen hundred were released. The rest were interned in England, except for the hundred and eighty-six selected for court-martial. Of these, eighty-eight, including de Valera, were sentenced to the firing squad.

  And most of the sentences were not carried out. The Countess was interned, because she was a woman. De Valera got off, perhaps because he was deemed an American citizen. All but fifteen of the sentences were also commuted to life sentences—including, Caitlin was delighted to discover, that of Willy O’Byrne. Under amnesty, most of these were also to be freed within a year or so.

  But the fifteen men shot served their cause better than they could have imagined. Pearse, the poetic soul, greatly loved. He’d led the men into the GPO and proclaimed a republic. He had to know he’d be shot. But his little brother? Singled out, so far as anyone could see, just for being a brother. Joseph Plunkett, dying of sickness anyway, married his sweetheart hours before the firing squad, and became a figure of romance. James Connolly, the union man: he’d been so badly wounded already that they tied him to a chair to shoot him. For ten days these executions went on, and by the end, few though they were, nobody saw any justice in it.

  And public sentiment began to turn. When one of the heroes of the rising went on a hunger strike the next year, the prison men managed to kill him during force feeding. It was not meant to happen. But it did.

  By late 1917, the moderates of the Sinn Fein organisation, whom the British mistook for the Fenians, and the more militant nationalists came together to form a political party, and chose de Valera to be their leader. “We want an Irish Republic,” they frankly declared, “and we’ll contest seats in local and parliamentary elections.” The next year, the British government arrested all its leaders.

  And then, locked in its desperate struggle with Germany, and hungry for troops, instead of thanking Ireland for her many volunteers, the British government suddenly threatened the Irish with conscription. “You see,” Willy O’Byrne and others like him could say, “the British make agreements, but they cannot be trusted.”

  The fools: even Sheridan Smith said it now. “If the British wanted to prove that the men of the rising were right,” he remarked, “they could hardly have set about it better.” As the Great War reached its end in 1918, a General Election was called. Redmond’s old party had only six seats. The Unionists, meaning Protestant Ulster really, had twenty-six. The new Sinn Fein amalgam had seventy-three. “The world has changed,” Sheridan Smith concluded. “Changed utterly.”

  But it had
changed even more than people had expected. For having been elected, all the Irish Members of Parliament, with the exception of the Unionist and Redmond’s handful of men, did what they thought was the only logical thing to do for men with their beliefs. Not only did they refuse to take their seats in the British Parliament at Westminster, they went one better than that. They set up their own Assembly of Ireland, the Dail Eireann, in Dublin. “We are the true government of Ireland now, they said.” By the spring, they had constituted ministries headed by Griffith, Countess Markievicz, Count Plunkett, Mac Neill, of the former Volunteers, Collins, a vigorous young IRB man, and others. De Valera was President. “We are a republic,” they said. “We refuse to recognise English rule any longer.” And so, in the spring of 1919, Ireland was in the strange state of having a British government, with rules, regulations, and administrators at Dublin Castle, and a second, shadow state, far more popular, claiming legitimacy even if it lacked the power to impose itself. The moral and political victory, as far as the Sinn Fein members were concerned, was already theirs. It was up to England to recognise the fact. Nobody quite knew what to do.

  It had changed for Caitlin, too, in an unexpected way. When her mother had returned to Dublin after the rising in 1916, she had seemed quite content to stay there. Whether, in the event, she would have done better to spend her winters in France, one could never know for certain. But when a huge influenza epidemic spread across Europe just after the ending of the Great War, she succumbed to it. In the spring of 1919, Countess Caitlin Birne suddenly found herself twenty years old, soon to be twenty-one, and a rich young woman. She resolved, very sensibly, to do nothing at all and complete her studies.

  She had not seen Willy O’Byrne for a long time. She was quite surprised, in the summer, to receive a message that he would like to call for her one Saturday and take her out for the day.

  She knew a little of his activities. After he had returned from jail, she had not seen him, but Sheridan Smith had told her: “He no longer works for me. He has gone into partnership with Father MacGowan’s brother, that runs the bookshop.” He paused. “Part of his business, I believe, is to go to America to collect funds for political purposes. “And he gave her a wry smile. “He gets some of his funds, I believe, from the hands of my own Madden relations.”