Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

  But their leaders had done one big thing for Ireland. In view of that, death was not important.

  Before Father Aloysius reached the consecration of the Mass, before the city stirred beneath the first slanting crocus-coloured rays of morning, the executed were driven in a lorry, with Pearse’s boots sticking through the tarpaulin at the back, to Arbour Hill.

  They were tossed without priest or prayer into Maxwell’s pit and covered with Maxwell’s quicklime.

  MacNeill had been shaken by the three disciplined volleys from across the river.

  He guessed what had happened even before he heard the lorry arrive and sounds of spades and slapping earth in the prison yard.

  ‘Agnus Dei.…’

  ‘Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant them eternal rest.’

  Since seeing Tom, Kattie Clarke had held on to her body where his child was lodged. Wrapped round with grief like a rope, she remembered nothing of the journey back to Ship Street Barracks. Life and death filled her mind and heart. She was aware of nothing but sharp steel piercing her husband’s body and hers and their child’s.

  She came to with a start when there was a bang on the store room door and her name was called. A policeman said, ‘You are being released.’ His voice was gruff because the force could not forgive the murder of their colleague, James O’Brien, at the Castle Gate on the first day of the rebellion.

  Kattie was glad to get out of that cold place. She grabbed her few belongings, hugged the other girls goodbye and left with ‘Good Luck’ ringing in her ears.

  In the Yard, an officer said, ‘It’s still only 6 a.m. and there’s a curfew on, so you’ll need this.’

  It was a paper signed by the Commissioner: ‘Please pass Mrs Clarke, of 10 Richmond Avenue, North Strand, through the streets of the City and the Dublin Metropolitan Police Area.’

  As if in answer to her unspoken question, a policeman said, ‘No, there is no car for you. You bloody walk.’

  The gate was unlocked. She passed over the faint bloodstain on the cobbles, where PC O’Brien had fallen and began the journey home. The loneliness of the smoky streets echoed the loneliness of her widow’s heart.

  In a blasted O’Connell Street, a burly policeman asked for her pass. She handed it over in a daze.

  ‘Very good, ma’am,’ he said kindly. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t go near that’ – he jerked his thumb towards the Parnell Monument – ‘the soldiers there are a bit lively.’

  Kattie stepped over the rubble at the corner of what was once North Earl Street, feeling the heat of the bricks through the soles of her shoes. For the rest of the journey she saw and spoke to no one.

  Once home, she who, like Tom, never drank, headed for the cabinet where liquor was kept for medicinal purposes. She poured herself a big glass of port, thinking that would be enough to knock her out for the day.

  She awoke within the hour, retching, aware that her miseries were real and not a bad dream, and that Tom, her brave indomitable Tom, was dead.

  At her home in Ranelagh, Muriel MacDonagh had given the children breakfast when she glanced at the paper.

  In the stop-press, she saw that her husband and two comrades had been executed at dawn.

  With a madly thumping heart, she grabbed the children and clung to them frenziedly.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mommy?’ Donagh said, the strength of her embrace beginning to hurt.

  Half an hour later, at 9.30 a.m., Father Aloysius returned to the jail to ask for MacDonagh’s rosary. To his surprise, it was there together with his own brass crucifix on which Pearse, in gratitude perhaps, had scratched his initials, ‘P MacP’.

  The friar protested to the authorities that he had not been allowed to minister the last rites.

  That puzzled the Commandant. ‘But we sent a car for you so you could do just that.’

  Father Aloysius explained that, according to Catholic teaching, Catholics about to be executed cannot be anointed but they have a right to be anointed after they are dead.

  ‘After?’

  ‘Yes, Major, in case the soul has not left the body.’

  ‘I see,’ the Commandant said. ‘You have to remember, Padre, that we are new to this game.’

  He agreed that a priest could attend any future executions. That sounded ominous but the friar was pleased to have got his point across.

  He went on to the Convent to return the rosary to Sister Francesca. She shuddered to see that bullets had snapped it and six beads were missing. They knelt together and said the De Profundis.’

  The priest walked from there to MacDonagh’s place. He realized at once that Muriel already knew. As the children clung uncomprehendingly to her, he pressed his hands on their heads in a silent blessing.

  ‘Father Almighty, in Your mercy, look after these poor fatherless little mites.’

  Taking Muriel aside, he repeated what an officer had told him.

  ‘He said, my dear, “They all died well, but MacDonagh died like a prince.” ’

  The priest’s last call was to St Enda’s. In the study, Pearse’s accounts were still open on the desk. He told Mrs Pearse how bravely her son had died and that he had left farewell messages with the Governor.

  Seeing how apprehensive she was about Willie, he said, ‘They surely wouldn’t execute two boys in one family.’

  She shook her head. ‘I believe they will put Willie to death, too, Father.’ She tried to be brave. ‘I can’t imagine him living without Pat, anyway. They were inseparable, you see. It was lovely to see the way they bade good-night to each other every night.’

  Her tears were flowing freely now.

  ‘No, no, Willie would never be happy living without Pat.’

  In London, Redmond issued a statement to the Press which showed how out of touch he was.

  He denounced ‘this wicked move’ of men who ‘have tried to make Ireland the cat’s paw of Germany. Germany plotted it, Germany organized it, Germany paid for it.’ The men who were Germany’s agents ‘remained in the safe remoteness of America’s cities’ while ‘misguided and insane young men in Ireland had risked, and some of them had lost, their lives in an insane anti-patriotic movement.’

  For the rest, Ireland held firm to the choice she had made and which thousands of her soldiers had sealed with their blood. The rebels were traitors to the cause of Home Rule.

  The Prime Minister was worried enough to send his secretary, Bonham Carter, to Sir John French at the War Office.

  ‘Mr Asquith is perturbed, General, by the drastic action of shooting so many rebel leaders.’

  ‘Is three so many?’

  ‘He wishes, especially, to be consulted before any death-sentence is passed on a woman, say, the Countess Markievicz.’

  ‘Understood. Bad press, what? Like when the Germans shot Nurse Cavell.’

  That was only part of it. If women had the right to be shot, they might also claim the right to vote.

  James Connolly’s family had passed a couple of apprehensive days at Bill O’Brien’s house. Roddy had just been released from Richmond Barracks in view of his youth, but they had no news of their father. The girls decided that Ina, the least known, should go and enquire.

  At the Castle Gate, she whispered to the guard, ‘I’ve come to see my father, Mr Connolly.’

  The name was not liked in that place but the Constable let her in.

  A nurse said, ‘Yes, your father is with us. He’s still very weak from loss of blood.’

  She directed Ina to the hospital wing. An officer was seated behind a desk. He wrote all details in a book, including the family’s current address.

  ‘May I see him, please?’

  ‘Sorry, miss. But I’ll let him know you called. And be sure you’ll get a letter when he’s allowed visitors.’

  A few yards away, restored to his splendid office, Nathan was opening a coded telegram. Birrell informed him with respect that the PM also was asking for his resignation.

  Nathan had bee
n expecting it but it was bitter, all the same. He immediately complied.

  Dear Mr Asquith,

  The attempt to keep order in Ireland during the war has failed and you will probably consider that I can no longer be usefully employed here. In acquiescing readily in this decision I would like to express my deep regret that I have not been able better to serve His Majesty’s government at this critical time and also my thanks for the kindness which you have always shown me.

  He was ready to accept all blame. He even went to the Viceregal Lodge and expressed regret to Wimborne at the scale of his errors. It hurt that this man whom he had judged a fool had been right when he was wrong.

  The perfect civil servant, he began to clear his desk. He made arrangements to recruit a thousand more constables to watch vulnerable buildings and dispose of the dead, many of whom were still unburied. He recommended for awards men who had acted bravely, especially those in Norway’s department.

  A thoroughly decent man, he acted decently to the end.

  Kattie Clarke had just dropped off into a fitful sleep when the doorbell rang. It was two of her sisters, Madge and Laura. Seeing them, she broke down.

  ‘My beloved Tom’s been shot.’

  They fell on her neck and hugged her, explaining breathlessly how hard it was to get transport from Limerick. Uncle John was ill in bed but he sent his best wishes.

  They talked about Tom and agreed that it was a relief that their brother Ned, too, would be shot and not have to rot in jail like Tom in years gone by.

  They knelt and prayed for strength to see them through the terrible ordeal ahead.

  That afternoon, Redmond had a meeting with Asquith in his room behind the Speaker’s Chair in the Commons.

  ‘I beg you, Prime Minister,’ he said, ‘to avoid wholesale executions. They would destroy our last hopes of keeping Ireland loyal to the Empire.’

  ‘I assure you,’ Asquith replied, ‘that I have given the War Office orders to go slowly on this.’

  ‘If I may make a plea on behalf of one person in particular.’ The Prime Minister inclined his ear. ‘Mr John MacNeill. I cannot believe he is behind this rebellion. Far too good and sound a man.’

  A shaken PM promised to do his best. He was expecting his dear colleague, Augustine Birrell.

  At 3 p.m., he came.

  ‘I know it has to be, my dear old friend,’ Asquith said, ‘but this is the most painful moment of my political life. I receive your resignation with’ – he stretched out his arms – ‘infinite regret.’

  Birrell, normally composed, was in a daze. He hardly heard what the PM said, merely saw him at the window, with tears running down his cheek, jingling coins in his pocket.

  Time to face the Commons. Asquith, still damp-eyed, entered the Chamber. Birrell was never noted for his tidiness but, in his rumpled suit and without his usual bounce, he seemed somehow old and broken.

  Laurence Ginnell immediately howled, ‘The statement he’s going to make isn’t worth that.’

  The snap of his finger went round the Chamber like the snap of a neck.

  Asquith stood, his face a pillar-box red against the white of his hair.

  ‘Firstly, I have to tell the House of a telegram from Military HQ in Ireland. This morning at dawn, there took place the execution, after trial and sentence, of the three chief signatories of the rebellion.’

  There were cheers in the House but not from Irishmen. And Larry Ginnell bellowed, ‘Huns, Huns, Huns!’

  When there was a lull in the day’s business, Birrell rose from his seat behind the Treasury Bench.

  Ginnell had no mercy. He so heckled him that the Speaker had to demand, ‘Order. Or-der. Let the Right Honourable Gentleman speak.’

  ‘Sure, give him a chance,’ Ginnell agreed, gleefully, relaxing. ‘We’ve got rid of him at last.’

  Birrell was far from his usual fluent, funny self. ‘I rise to make a short – a very short—’

  Ginnell jumped in with, ‘The shorter the better.’

  Thrown by the interruption, Birrell was hesitant, repetitious, his mind still clouded by events which, he admitted, he had not foreseen. Since the war, his prime concern was to give to Germany a picture of unbroken unanimity. He had no choice but to skate on thin ice. To arrest and disarm Sinn Feiners would have made trouble inevitable; it would have come sooner and bloodier, that is all.

  The ‘disturbance’, it was no more, would be put down with courage, also with humanity to the rank and file, who had been duped by their leaders.

  ‘When yesterday morning I drove down from Phoenix Park through all the familiar streets of Dublin and viewed the smoking ruins of a great part of Sackville Street, one ray of comfort was graciously permitted to reach my heart, and that was that this was no Irish rebellion, that Irish soldiers are still earning for themselves glory in all the fields of war, that evidence is already forthcoming that over these ashes hands may be shaken and much may be done.’

  After a sympathetic silence, Asquith spoke briefly of his ten years’ close association with Birrell. In the whole of his public life, he had never felt a personal loss so keenly.

  John Redmond was next. All members fixed their gaze on him, on the whitening waxy hair, the white eyebrows and moustache, the heavy lids, the down-turned mouth. Had Home Rule been put into effect as originally planned, this man would now have been head of the Irish Administration.

  He, too, was magnanimous. He, an Irishman, and Birrell, an Englishman, whatever their differences, had been of one heart and mind over Ireland.

  He, too, would not speak of rebellion, only of ‘the incident’ which had broken his heart and led to the Chief Secretary’s resignation.

  ‘I sorrow and grieve at the severance. I have been for several years closely associated with him, and so have my colleagues, and we all believe that during his tenure of office, he has been animated by a single-minded devotion to what he regarded as the highest interests of the country that he went to govern. We believe that he grew to love Ireland and that he has honestly done his best for her interests.’

  Birrell had been in charge. But he, too, had incurred some share of the blame since he had often advised Birrell that there was no chance of an outbreak.

  The Chief Secretary, he went on, had done much for Ireland, particularly in the creation of the National University and education generally.

  ‘I can assure him that he takes with him into retirement the respect, the goodwill and the affection of large masses of the Irish people.’

  Redmond feared that Asquith was now leaving decisions to a soldier. If a politician of Birrell’s calibre had failed to understand Ireland, what chance had Maxwell? He intimated that the United States, whose support in the war Britain wanted, would not take kindly to bloody reprisals.

  Having expressed his hope that the rising might even forward ‘the future complete and absolute unity of this Empire’, he ended with a warning.

  ‘I beg of the Government, having put down this outbreak with firmness, to take only such action as will leave the least rankling bitterness in the minds of the Irish people, both in Ireland and elsewhere throughout the world.’

  The Commons stirred as the long lean figure of Sir Edward Carson rose.

  Birrell knew that in the years ahead historians would ask who was most responsible for the rebellion. Was it Pearse, or Clarke, or Connolly?

  In his mind it was Carson.

  Was it not Carson who first stirred up bitterness in Ireland? Who said he would put a bayonet through a Bill passed by the King, the Lords and Commons of England? Whose arming of the Ulster Volunteers made it impossible to disarm the southern Volunteers, thus allowing a dangerous situation to fester? Was it not Carson’s belligerence that had brought on Asquith’s case of Ulsteritis and made him defer Home Rule so that the Irish in the south finally lost confidence in British justice and made rebellion inevitable?

  Birrell waited to hear what this man with bowels of iron would say now.

  Carson had rece
ntly been deluged with letters from people with thoughts not unlike Birrell’s. He was accused of being the first rebel, of endangering the Empire with revolutionary talk and posturings. He dismissed such nonsense, telling himself that the Dublin rising had proved once and for all the difference between a loyal Ulster and the rest of Ireland.

  Still, caution was called for.

  Many in the Commons that day expected from Carson, if not a gloating speech, at least a trenchant I-told-you-so. He surprised everyone. He spoke kindly of Birrell whom, admittedly, he had totally opposed on the matter of Ireland.

  ‘I do not think that anybody who has ever had any friendship with, or any knowledge of the Right Honourable Gentleman, will fail to express regret that his career in Ireland, so well-intentioned, however you might disagree with it, has terminated in such unfortunate circumstances.

  ‘I can assure him that many of us on this side, and many of his bitterest opponents in Ireland, will recognize that this misfortune has come upon the country, and has come upon his career rather through his desire to preserve that common front to our enemies abroad than from any dereliction of duty on his part.’

  The Irish conspiracy had to be repelled with courage and determination yet, as a Dubliner, Carson knew only too well the history of the separatist movement in his native land.

  ‘It would be a mistake,’ he went on, ‘to suppose that any true Irishman calls for vengeance.’

  Even Larry Ginnell sat up, rubbing his ears.

  ‘It will be a matter requiring the greatest wisdom and the greatest coolness, may I say, in dealing with these men, and all I can say to the Executive is, whatever is done, let it be done not in a moment of temporary excitement but with due deliberation in regard both to the past and to the future.’

  In the late afternoon, Fathers Augustine and Albert went to a house on Dublin’s North Circular Road where many high-ranking officers were billeted. They asked if there were to be any more executions the next day.