style="font-size:15px;"> While both sides of the Treaty divide moved further from agreement in the first six months of 1922, the anti-Treaty IRA was itself splintering with the decisive breach occurring at a hastily convened army convention on 18 June, called to discuss the progress of talks on the proposed army unification agreement. The urgency was explained by the executive’s anxiety that Liam Lynch ‘had agreed to certain proposals which, if accepted, would have given complete control of the army to the Free State government’.87 Mellows delivered a ‘very depressing speech which showed clearly that there was a very big split in the executive’ between a largely Cork-based group, including Lynch, Liam Deasy and Sean Moylan, and the Dublin-based faction that rejected Lynch’s proposals, centred around Rory O’Connor and Ernie O’Malley.88 The executive rejected Lynch’s proposal to allow the Free State to appoint the chief of staff of a unified army by a majority of fourteen votes to four. To counter the proposals, the West Cork flying column leader Tom Barry proposed a motion that an ultimatum be given to Britain to withdraw all its forces from Ireland within seventy-two hours of a given date. Barry’s proposal was designed to quash Lynch’s attempt to unify the army, which the militants perceived as an acceptance of the Treaty. Republican officer Sean MacBride believed that Barry ‘hardly realised to the full extent the meaning or importance of the proposals under discussion’ and Mellows and O’Connor ‘saw the huge mistake it had been for Barry to bring forward such a proposal to a convention; but who, at the same time, understood that this was the best, or rather the only policy, that could be consistently followed by us’.89 ‘Everybody was depressed and solemn’, MacBride recalled, but ‘it was far better to break off quits from those who were prepared to compromise on such a vital question, that of control of the army, and of the working of the Treaty’.
Barry’s motion was defeated, but upon Lynch’s compromise motion being proposed, the rump of hard-line republican officers stormed out of the meeting and reconvened in the Four Courts. Lynch and the other Munster officers who had supported the unity resolution were now excluded by the militant faction from even entering the Four Courts, with the latter ostensibly setting themselves up as a separate entity, electing Belfast republican Joe McKelvey as their chief of staff – there were now two rival IRA leaderships. Republican Todd Andrews initially pledged his allegiance to the Four Courts Executive but was disgusted with the turn of events, believing Barry’s motion to be ‘the daftest proposal yet conceived by a floundering executive, but to so many of the youthful, immature delegates it did not seem so lunatic’. ‘The Four Courts Garrison had amputated their most powerful limb, effectively isolating themselves in the last bastion of the Republic.’90 Mellows remained outwardly hopeful despite the split, however, and Sighle Bean Uí Dhonnchadha recalled that a week before the attack on the Four Courts by the Free State, which began the Civil War, he ‘seemed to be in an unusually cheerful mood. Outlining to me how the two sides hoped to sink their differences through united action on the North.’91
‘The end of sentimentality’
Following a series of incidents between the pro- and anti-Treaty Forces in the capital that saw both sides take rival officers prisoner, the National Army commenced the shelling of the Four Courts garrison in the early hours of 28 June.92 On the morning of the attack, Rory O’Connor issued a communique redolent of the language that would be employed by the IRA throughout the conflict, ‘the boys are glorious, and will fight for the Republic to the end. How long will our misguided former comrades outside attack those who stand for Ireland alone?’93 The Free State Army besieging the Four Courts were ‘mercenaries wearing Irish uniforms paid, equipped, and armed by England, and acting under England’s orders’, who were ‘attacking our brothers of the Irish Republican Army who defend the living Republic, and will defend it to the death’.94 A proclamation signed on behalf of Mellows and the IRA Executive was issued on the first day of the attack:
Fellow Citizens of the Irish Republic the fateful hour has come. At the dictation of our hereditary enemy our rightful cause is being treacherously assailed by recreant Irishmen. The crash of bombs and the boom of artillery reverberates in the supreme test of the nation’s destiny.
Gallant soldiers of the Irish Republic stand vigorously firm in its defence and worthily uphold their noblest traditions. The sacred spirits of the Illustrious Dead are with us in this great struggle, ‘Death before Dishonour’ being an unchanging principle of our national faith as it was of theirs, still inspires us to emulate their glorious effort.
We, therefore appeal to all citizens who have withstood unflinchingly the operations of the enemy during the last six years to rally to the support of the Republic and recognise that the resistance now being offered is but the continuance of the struggle which was suspended by the Truce with the British. We especially appeal to our former comrades of the Irish Republic to return to that allegiance and thus guard the nation’s honour from the infamous stigma that her sons aided her foes in retaining their hateful domination over her.
Confident of victory and of maintaining Ireland’s independence this appeal is issued by the Army Executive on behalf of the Irish Republican Army.95
Reflecting on the bombardment many years later, Sean MacBride ruefully recalled, ‘we were never a large enough garrison to have held such a building, nor did we expect to have to hold it’.96 Surrounded, out-gunned and out-numbered, detached from their Dublin comrades at Barry’s Hotel, and from the coterie of senior republican officers under Liam Lynch based in the Clarence Hotel, the Four Courts garrison was in a hopeless position. As the shells rained down in the early hours of 28 June, Rory O’Connor recited the refrain to his men, ‘How can man die better than facing fearful odds.’97 As the hours passed, stores of explosives caught fire, the roof began collapsing, fires broke out, the sewers flooded and the munitions block became an inferno. A hastily attempted sortie by the Dublin brigade of the IRA under Oscar Traynor met stiff resistance from Free State Forces. Ernie O’Malley recalled, ‘our nerves were getting taut, perhaps with strain, I felt emotional surges in myself and a desire to cry at times’.98 On the third day of the assault, the inevitable decision to surrender was supported by Joe McKelvey and Rory O’Connor, with Mellows alone holding out, ‘the Republic is being attacked here’, he told O’Malley, ‘we must stand or fall by it, if we surrender now, we have deserted it’.99 The decision to surrender was taken out of the hands of the garrison leadership, however, through a direct order from Oscar Traynor:
I have gone into the whole situation re your position, and have studied the same very carefully, and I have come to the following conclusion: To help me carry on the fight outside you must surrender forthwith. I would be unable to fight my way through to you even at terrible sacrifice. I am expecting re-enforcements at any moment. If the Republic is to be saved your surrender is a necessity. As Senior Officer outside I take it that I am entitled to order you to make a move which places me in a better military position. The order must be carried out without discussion. I take full responsibility.100
Mellows ignored the direct command from Traynor to the end and refused to even discuss it with his fellow officers. After conferring with O’Connor and other leaders, however, Ernie O’Malley took command of the garrison and surrendered unconditionally. ‘How hateful the green uniforms seemed now’, he recalled as he marched his garrison along the Dublin Quays to Jameson’s Distillery.101 The surrender deeply affected Mellows but for O’Connor, the symbolism of the battle, rather than strategic or tactical concerns, was paramount. As O’Malley later reflected, ‘the fight to him had been a symbol of resistance. He had built a dream in his mind and the dream was there; failure did not count and he evidently did not sense defeat.’102
Interned in Mountjoy Jail, Mellows was to languish in confinement as the stand-off between the National Army and the IRA descended into a squalid campaign of attrition with atrocities committed by both sides in an intermittent struggle that was to last until April 1923. The dispersed anti-Treaty forces under Liam Lynch fought localised campaigns in Munster, Connacht and parts of Leinster and Ulster. As the fighting escalated, Cahir Davitt, who was appointed Circuit Judge of the Dáil Courts in 1920, was charged in August with
