A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  One point of view is that no European government had ever created such an elaborate system of relief to deal with a natural disaster. Another is that the British government, hidebound by the free market economic theories of the day, failed the starving by refusing to provide enough direct relief. In later years critics were to point out that, after workhouse debts had been cancelled in 1853, the overall balance of the government’s contribution was only £7 million, and that £69.3 million was expended on the Crimean War between 1854 and 1856. Landlords were able to collect three-quarters of their rents. Some had thrown themselves into providing relief, but the government took no action to restrain the many who took the opportunity to cast the impoverished off their estates. Captain Arthur Kennedy, the Poor Law inspector in Kilrush Union who witnessed evictions in Co. Clare, afterwards recalled:

  I can tell you ... that there were days in that western county when I came back from some scene of eviction so maddened by the sights of hunger and misery I had seen in the day’s work that I felt disposed to take the gun from behind my door and shoot the first landlord I met.

  Evictions soared in 1847 and reached a peak in 1850. The police kept records from 1849, and their figures show that some 50,000 families were permanently dispossessed between 1849 and 1850, accounting for around a quarter of a million people. And this figure does not include the tens of thousands who voluntarily abandoned their holdings to flee the country.

  Between 1845 and 1855 2,100,000 chose to escape from Ireland; of these, 1,500,000 went to the United States. Many of those who survived to make a new life for themselves in America, and, indeed, closer at home across the Irish Sea, would foster a bitter hatred of the British government. These exiles and their descendants would make a potent contribution to the Irish revolutionary cause.

  James Stephens had been present at the Battle of Widow McCormack’s Cabbage Patch, the Young Irelanders’ pathetic attempt at revolution in the summer of 1848. He fled the country to avoid arrest and settled in Paris. Here Stephens mixed with other revolutionary exiles, Italians in particular, and became an eager student of revolutionary strategy.

  In 1856 Stephens returned to Ireland with the intention of reviving the revolutionary movement. Adopting the code name ‘An Seabhac Siubhlach’, meaning ‘The Wandering Hawk’, he set out on foot and met great numbers of sympathisers, many of whom had been in the now defunct Young Ireland movement. With his long hair and clothes bought in Paris, Stephens frequently was mistaken as an actor. After his walk of some three thousand miles, mostly in the south and the west of the country, Stephens became convinced that there was enough potential in the country to make a fresh attempt at rebellion. For the moment, however, Ireland ‘was politically dead ... she had given up the ghost, and was at last, to all intents and purposes, one of England’s reconquered provinces’. Action was needed immediately, he believed:

  The attempt ... should be tried in the very near future if we wanted at all to keep our flag flying; for I was as sure as of my own existence that if another decade was allowed to pass without an endeavour of some kind or another to shake off an unjust yoke, the Irish people would sink into a lethargy from which it would be impossible for any patriot ... to arouse them.

  Arrogant, quarrelsome, egotistical, jealous and boastful, Stephens nevertheless impressed others with his dedication and philosophy. He was convinced that the Irish in America could be persuaded to provide crucial support and that another European war would in time provide Ireland with its opportunity.

  At his lodgings behind Lombard Street in Dublin, on St Patrick’s Day 1858, Stephens founded a secret society dedicated to the establishment of an Independent Democratic Republic of Ireland, later to be known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Stephens applied what he had learned in Paris: to reduce the danger of being exposed by informers, the organisation was divided into cells or ‘circles’ in which no member should be known to any other members except those in their own circles. For all its apparent weakness, the IRB, soon popularly known as the Fenian Brotherhood, would certainly keep the Irish revolutionary tradition alive.

  Episode 189

  ‘THE GREEN FLAG WILL BE FLYING INDEPENDENTLY’

  On 10 November 1861 great numbers gathered in the sleet and rain for a remarkable funeral in Dublin. Terence Bellew McManus of Fermanagh, who had been present at the Battle of Widow McCormack’s Cabbage Patch in 1848, who had been transported as a convicted felon to Van Diemen’s Land, and who had escaped captivity to reach California, had died in poverty in San Francisco. McManus’s body had been disinterred by the Fenian Brotherhood of America, been given a lying-in-state in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and was now being taken to a final resting place in Glasnevin cemetery. Men on horseback, wearing black scarves and armlets and equipped with batons, held back the crowds estimated to total between 20,000 and 30,000. The coffin, held aloft by four pall-bearers, was followed by carriages carrying veterans of the 1848 rebellion (including its leader, William Smith O’Brien, released from captivity), 8,000 members of the National Brotherhood of St Patrick, and men of the Dublin trades, in full regalia, and all marching with military precision, while a band played the ‘Dead March’ from Saul. After the formal funeral oration given by torchlight at the cemetery, the radical priest Father Patrick Lavelle of Partry, Co. Mayo, gave an impassioned impromptu address, frequently interrupted by cheers.

  The funeral was a triumph for James Stephens, the founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Not only had he upstaged moderate nationalists, but he had also successfully defied the authority of the Catholic Church. Archbishop Paul Cullen of Dublin had forbidden the use of formal religious rites and had refused a lying-in-state in the Pro-Cathedral, expecting thereby to downgrade the status of the funeral as a public event.

  McManus’s funeral was propaganda coup for the IRB. This secret oath-bound organisation, pledged to establish an Irish Republic by force of arms, now gathered recruits at dizzying speed, particularly among working men in Dublin and shop assistants, tradesmen, labourers and farmers’ sons in the countryside. It was particularly strong in west Cork, where Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa had incorporated his Phoenix Society in Skibbereen into the national organisation. The movement had many adherents amongst the Irish in British cities. And a vigorous sister organisation led by John O’Mahony in America, the Fenian Brotherhood, led journalists to apply the word ‘Fenians’ to members of the IRB.

  Stephens staked everything on Irish-American support. But the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 upset his plans. In this, the bloodiest conflict of the nineteenth century, Irishmen fought Irishmen. For example, John Mitchel, who had escaped from captivity in Van Diemen’s Land to settle in Knoxville, Tennessee, lost two sons fighting for the Confederates. General Ulysses Grant, who led the Union to victory, was—like Mitchel and many other Civil War officers—of Ulster Presbyterian stock. The right moment to act seemed to be in 1865, when the war came to an end. Great numbers of disbanded soldiers, particularly in the Union armies, were eager to play their part in helping the Irish in the home country to win their freedom.

  At this crucial moment Stephens faltered. He hesitated and alienated others by his dictatorial, quarrelsome approach. Greatly assisted by informers, the government seized the initiative in September 1865. Most of the leaders were arrested, and troops were put on high alert. The only encouraging news was the dramatic rescue of Stephens from prison on 24 November, with the aid of two prison warders and a rope ladder.

  To make matters worse, the Fenian Brotherhood in America was rent in two. One wing, led by Colonel John Roberts, decided on an immediate attack on Canada, the nearest part of the British Empire. In February 1866 Roberts issued a stirring declaration:

  We promise that before the summer sun kisses the hill-tops of Ireland, a ray of hope will gladden every true Irish heart. The green flag will be flying independently to freedom’s breeze.

  On the night of 31 May 1866 a force of 800 American Fenians, calling them
selves the ‘Irish Republican Army’, assembled at Buffalo, crossed the Niagara River and seized Fort Erie on the Canadian shore. They routed a Canadian force at Lime Ridge, but the United States government, enforcing a neutrality agreement, cut them off, and the invasion force withdrew and dispersed. About sixty Fenians were captured. The exploit was commemorated in a song which quickly achieved wide currency:

  Deep in Canadian Woods we’ve met,

  From one bright island flown,

  Great is the land we tread, but yet

  Our hearts are with our own....

  Ireland, boys, Hurrah!

  Ireland, boys, Hurrah!

  We’ll toast old Ireland, dear old Ireland,

  Ireland, boys, Hurrah!

  Meanwhile, during a visit to New York, Stephens was effectively deposed, and was replaced as ‘Head Centre’, or leader, by Colonel Thomas Kelly. Kelly crossed the Atlantic to rally the Fenians for an Irish rebellion.

  Episode 190

  ‘GOD SAVE IRELAND!’

  ’Twas down by the glenside, I met an old woman,

  A plucking young nettles, she ne’er saw me comin’

  I listened a while to the song she was humin’

  Glory O, Glory O, to the bold Fenian men.

  On the evening of 5 March 1867 a proclamation was delivered to the Times newspaper in London:

  THE IRISH PEOPLE TO THE WORLD

  ... History bears testimony to the intensity of our sufferings.... Our war is against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish, who have eaten the verdure of our fields—against the aristocratic leeches who drain alike our blood and theirs. Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause.... Avenge yourselves.…

  Herewith we proclaim the Irish Republic.

  That night the Fenian rising began. It was doomed from the outset. The government had been kept extremely well informed by John Corydon, a man who had infiltrated the highest ranks of the Brotherhood. The movement was crippled by the arrest of key leaders, which left local bands of insurgents confused and without direction. Every attempt over previous weeks to seize arms had been frustrated. In Co. Cork rebels took the coastguard station of Knockadown and captured the police barracks in Ballyknockane, where they derailed the Dublin express. Otherwise all was failure.

  The constabulary dispersed groups of rebels in Drogheda’s Potato Market, at Drumcliff churchyard in Co. Sligo, at Ballyhurst in Co. Tipperary, and repelled attacks on barracks at Ardagh and Kilmallock in Co. Limerick. Dublin produced the largest Fenian turnout. Marching out of the city, several hundred men found themselves confronted at Tallaght by fourteen constables under the command of Sub-Inspector Burke. The Fenians fired about fifty shots, but not one of them found their mark. The police returned the fire, wounding one man, and the insurgents scattered.

  The Irish Constabulary had been able to suppress the Fenian rising without seeking the assistance of the military. Queen Victoria was so pleased that she renamed the force the ‘Royal Irish Constabulary’. Vigorous condemnation of the rising came from within the Catholic hierarchy, most notably from Bishop David Moriarty of Ardfert (Kerry) who called down ‘God’s heaviest curse, his withering, blasting, blighting curse’ upon the militant republicans, whom he characterised as ‘miscreants’, ‘criminals’ and ‘swindlers’, declaring that for their punishment ‘eternity is not long enough nor Hell hot enough’.

  So complete was the failure of the rising that when Erin’s Hope, a 200-ton ship from New York, sailed into Sligo Bay in May 1867, the thirty-eight Irish-American officers on board quickly learned that there was not the slightest hope of support in the locality. Sailing on round the Irish coast the ship was finally arrested by the authorities at Dungarvan, Co. Waterford. In the hold the police found 5,000 modern breech-loading and repeating rifles, three artillery pieces and 1,500,000 rounds of ammunition.

  With the help of informers the government rounded up and convicted great numbers of Fenians. Just as they had done in 1848, those in power showed restraint. Sentences of death were commuted to terms of imprisonment with hard labour. There were, therefore, no martyrs for the cause in Ireland. It was a different matter in England.

  On 11 September 1867 police in Manchester arrested two men who were acting suspiciously in a doorway. One of them was none other than the head of the Fenian Brotherhood, Colonel Thomas Kelly. A week later around thirty Fenians ambushed an unescorted prison van taking Kelly and other convicts to Belle Vue Jail. Inside the van Police Sergeant Brett refused to open the door. A Fenian, Peter Rice, fired his revolver through the grille, mortally wounding the sergeant. A prisoner took the keys from the dying policeman, and Kelly escaped.

  Arrests followed, and five faced trial for their lives. Four were found guilty of murder: William Allen, Philip Larkin, Michael O’Brien and Edward Condon. None had fired the fatal shot, but all openly confessed that they were part of the rescue mission. All made speeches from the dock. Michael O’Brien said: ‘Look to Ireland; see the hundreds of thousands of its people in misery and want. See the virtuous, beautiful and industrious women who only a few years ago—aye and yet—are obliged to look at their children dying for want of food.’ Edward Condon cried out: ‘I have nothing to regret, to retract or take back. I can only say: God Save Ireland!’ As The Times reported, the other prisoners all called out ‘in chorus and with great power: “God Save Ireland!”’

  Condon was given a last-minute reprieve because he was an American citizen. On the morning of 23 November 1867 Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were hanged before an immense crowd in Manchester. It was almost the last public hanging in England. A few days later T. D. Sullivan, opposed though he was to militant republicanism, composed a song echoing Condon’s words, a song which became a kind of national anthem over the next fifty years:

  God save Ireland, said the heroes,

  God save Ireland said they all.

  Whether on the scaffold high,

  Or the battle field we die,

  O, what matter when for Ireland dear we fall.

  The Fenians had their martyrs after all.

  Episode 191

  THE GROWTH OF BELFAST

  At 1.30 p.m. on Tuesday 10 July 1849 the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, members of the Town Council, the principal gentry and merchants of Belfast, and officers and men of the 13th Regiment stepped on board the royal mail steamer Prince of Wales. They had come to open the new channel running from the Garmoyle Pool in Belfast Lough to the quays, which would enable large vessels to come up the Lagan at any state of the tide. Then, at the signal of a ship’s bell, a flotilla of vessels, led by the tug Superb, moved into the centre of the river. A military band played on board the commissioners’ vessel, and then William Pirrie, chairman of the commissioners, made a short speech, poured a libation of champagne into the river ‘as a rite of inauguration’, and named the new cut the Victoria Channel. Then, as the Belfast News-Letter reported,

  Along the whole line of the opposite quay, loud huzzas from a dense multitude of spectators rent the air.... A scarlet flag, inscribed with the words ‘The New Channel Opened’, was then unfurled from the mizzenmast head, amidst the huzzas of her living freight. The booming of cannon announced the completion of the auspicious event, and ‘Rule Britannia’ resounded from the deck.

  The completion of the channel was a vital step in the continuing rapid development of Belfast; and its achievement was all the more remarkable in that it had been carried out during the last great famine in western Europe.

  A month later Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales, having already visited Cork and Dublin, sailed up the new channel to be rapturously received by the citizens of Belfast. They drove up High Street past ‘thousands of gaily-dressed and animated spectators, whose acclamations, as the cortège passed by, rose like the roar of the wind in the forest’. Oil paintings of the queen and Prince Albert adorned the balcony of McGee’s the tailors; ‘Welcome’ was inscribed in immense gold letters over the Northern Bank; and in High S
treet a thirty-two-foot-high triumphal arch had been erected with the words ‘Caed Mille Failthe’ magnificently misspelt in dahlias. The queen viewed an exhibition of the province’s principal industry, ‘from flax in the growth to the splendid damask’, in the White Linen Hall. As she drove through the streets a poor woman ran beside the carriage crying: ‘Och, the Lord love her purty face, for goodness is in her. Look at the way she bows and smiles to everybody—God save your Majesty and the whole of yez—hurra!’ On the Lisburn Road the workhouse children gave three shrill cheers, and after inspecting the new Queen’s College by the Malone turnpike and Mulholland’s mill in York Street the royal party re-embarked as the staff of the Donegall Arms prepared a banquet given by the mayor ‘of the most recherché kind’, including ‘all the delicacies of the season’.

  At this time Belfast was recovering from an epidemic of cholera, which had moved like a dark cloud across the continent as the last embers of the revolutions in central Europe were being extinguished. Over much of Ireland the Famine still raged, but here in the north-east Belfast was well on the way to becoming one of the great trading and manufacturing cities of the western world. A report of 1852 pointed out that Belfast had outstripped Dublin to become the first port in Ireland, not only in value but also in tonnage.