Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Townshend Charles

Author:Townshend, Charles [Townshend, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2006-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

By the time the Fingal battalion secured its dramatic victory, the general rising in which Ashe so fervently believed had proved stillborn. Only his nearest neighbours were really still in business. All week, the Fingal men had expected to join up with the Meath and Louth Volunteers, and it remains unclear why this did not happen. The Louth Volunteers certainly took the field. Dan Hannigan (Donal O’Hannigan) had been given command of the area at the beginning of April with an ambitious task, to ‘knock into shape’ the local units and prepare to keep open communications between Dublin and the west. There was a fair bit of local enthusiasm – personified in the leading spirit of the Dundalk separatists, Paddy Hughes – but as Seán MacEntee said, ‘there was not one of us who knew in a practical way anything about military matters’.20 The new temporary commander was sent in response to a direct request to Seán MacDermott when he delivered the Robert Emmet Commemoration lecture in Dundalk on 16 March. Hannigan, a cooper by trade, was ‘master of everything that a competent regimental sergeant-major should know about the role of the combat infantryman’, had ‘immeasurable energy, physical stamina, and outstanding ability to get things done’. He succeeded in turning ‘our somewhat amorphous corps’ into ‘a cohesive, organic unit within a couple of weeks’.21 There were still glitches in his preparations, though. When he was being briefed by Pearse at St Enda’s, he was introduced to Seán Boylan, who had raised the Dunboyne Company, and was to come under his command. Boylan, however, ‘did not hear from O’Hannigan again until after the rebellion had started, although I expected to do so’. (When mobilization began on Sunday, it came as a ‘complete surprise’ to be told by Seán Tobin from Volunteer HQ that he, Boylan, was also responsible for the mobilization at Tara.)22 On Monday, thinking everything was off, he went with his brother to Fairyhouse races.

Hannigan and MacEntee started mobilization after early Mass in Dundalk on Easter Sunday, ‘cold and squally with passing showers of rain’. Unlike every other Volunteer unit, the Louth battalion did not demobilize in response to MacNeill’s countermand. The Dundalk contingent was over 160 strong when it moved off around 9.30 a.m. towards Ardee. Hannigan left MacEntee in Dundalk to seize some forty rifles which had been held by the local IV executive committee ever since the split; he would have to wait until 7 p.m. when the rebellion was timed to start, before doing this. Hannigan himself planned to pick up the Ardee company together with another collection of Redmondite rifles, before moving on to the (highly symbolic) main mobilization point at Tara. (Hannigan had objected to Pearse that Tara was ‘a very inconvenient place’, but was told that it was ‘allimportant for historical reasons’ – it was the coronation place of the old High Kings of Ireland – and Pearse ‘wanted the proclamation of the republic read there’.) The Drogheda Volunteers were to go direct to Tara, as were those from Kells under Garry Byrne.

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