believed to the point of heated debate – until Brugha came up with an American inspired oath – that they owed allegiance solely to their own executive. Basically they did not trust the Dáil for fear that in certain circumstances it might abandon the republic.12
In the meantime, however, despite a show of bravado in the Dáil – ‘let those [English?] people know that if they are sincere, that’s fine, but if they are not, the Irish Volunteers are here and ready if needed’13 – Mulcahy, in a way which was different to how he had partnered Collins after May 1918, was not ambivalent on the current moderate stance championed by Brugha and de Valera. For example, although he cautiously kept it to himself,14 he disapproved of the Soloheadbeg incident because it upstaged the inaugural Dáil session in the press coverage.15
Moreover, probably in his capacity as AMD, he became involved in some of the placatory propaganda exercises encouraged by the Dáil. For instance, in early April 1919, at the behest of de Valera, he travelled to Limerick to help monitor a tense labour strike, which had been called after the city was proclaimed a military area in response to a fatal skirmish between the Volunteers and the RIC16 and, on 3 May 1919, he accompanied the American delegation of Frank P. Walsh, head of the National War Labour Board, ex-Governor Edward F. Dunne of Illinois and Michael J. Ryan of Philadelphia, who, having failed to make an impression at the Irish Race Convention at the Paris Peace Conference, came to Ireland in order to familiarise themselves with events. Their report on ‘outrages and violence committed by the officers and representatives of the English Government in Ireland’ was later forwarded to Robert Lansing, the American Secretary of State.17
At any rate, once the authorities declared the Dáil an illegal organisation on 10 September 1919, followed by the banning of Sinn Féin two months later,18 extremism quickly supplanted moderation. An indication of that change was the number of TDs who turned up at Trinity College during the late autumn of 1919 in order to assist in the first of many failed assassination attempts on Lord Lieutenant French. MacCurtain, Ó Murthuile, J.J. Walsh, Diarmuid O’Hegarty and Béaslaí being present, the joke among the Volunteers was that Dáil Éireann was there.19
Mulcahy similarly moved with the times. On 7 September, he had been in the difficult position of trying to slow down the pace of hostilities by, for example, giving permission to the Volunteers to attack some of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry on the condition that there would be no casualties!20 At roughly the same time, he warned South Tipperary’s activists that no means of identification should be found on their person in case of capture or death. This was because such identification might provide the evidence which the British were seeking in order to link the Dáil to the growing number of atrocities: ‘There must not even be a laundry mark on your clothing to identify you.’21 The idea was the following: ‘part of the function of G.H.Q. staff at the time was without dampening down the will to resist aggression, to keep any aggression or activity at a level that it could be regarded as the taking of forceful initiative on our part.’22
But, after 10 September, Mulcahy’s job was no longer to restrict such activities. Rather, he was to allow them to proceed in a coordinated fashion so that they would become more effective. The intention was that brigade commandants would submit monthly reports of their activities and that plans would be submitted to GHQ for sanction.23 For example, Cork No. 1 Brigade was refused permission for a particular action in its own area lest that would jeopardise the chances of a successful attack on Lord French.24 However, the clearest indication of the change in Mulcahy’s role was his part in the founding of The Squad on 19 September 1919. The Squad, which was initially formed to eliminate spies and informers, was intended to be an elite corps. It had the sanction of the Dáil and would take its orders directly from Collins. If Collins was unavailable, then either Mulcahy or McKee would take his place.25
Two months later, Terence MacSwiney came to Mulcahy and earnestly sought permission for Cork to partake in a 1916-type rising.26 Mulcahy’s reply was that Cork might be better employed if it struck simultaneously at a number of RIC barracks. Hence, battalion commandants from three different areas in Cork were given one month to ready their men for an attack on one barracks in each of their own hinterlands. All three attacks were planned to happen within two weeks of each other and the men were to avoid taking life if at all possible. On 2 January 1920, Carrigtohill barracks was stormed, followed in due course by Kilmurray and Inchigeela. In turn, these successes led on to the decision that henceforward Collins would organise intelligence and Mulcahy would take charge of general activities. (Some over-lapping did occur.) Accordingly, during the ensuing three months, Mulcahy conducted an overview of the country in order to ascertain what other districts could follow Cork’s example.27
As a consequence, the RIC was forced to abandon small remote barracks and to take up fortified residence in the largest. Together with the ostracising of the force by the people under the leadership of Sinn Féin, Mulcahy’s campaign proved very successful in bringing an end to the era when, to coin a phrase, the RIC was the eyes and the ears of British intelligence in Ireland. This was dramatically illustrated on 3 April 1920. On that day, the Volunteers were able in one clean stroke to incinerate more than 300 evacuated RIC barracks. Some days later, thirty income tax offices and a further ninety-five evacuated barracks were put to the torch.28 GHQ’s objective would seem to have been to make 1920 the year of the concerted campaign. That attitude was very noticeable in one of the despatches for the month of May: ‘Success depends on foresight, and careful observation and planning and the offensive of thought and planning must be increasingly kept-up.’29 In a similar vein, An tÓglach criticised poor leadership and shoddy organisation, both of which, it was claimed, existed in quite a lot of battalions throughout the country.30
It is incongruous, therefore, that, at the very moment when control was most in demand, GHQ itself was experiencing difficulties coping with the sheer pace of the struggle. In particular, Mulcahy felt challenged to devise other workable variations on the Carrigtohill tactic. For instance, at a meeting between GHQ and the commanders of the Munster brigades on 1 August 1920, he, with Brugha’s backing, put forward another politicised plan. This plan requested officers to use ‘general ambushing as the principal form of attack against the enemy, but in all cases the enemy should be first of all called upon to surrender’. In addition, the enemy was to be confined to quarters by a series of manned circles around its bases. He suggested radii of two miles, four miles, etc. But both of these suggestions were rejected outright, the former because surprise was considered a great asset against a better trained and better equipped force and the latter because there were simply not enough arms and ammunition to operate it.31
In the end, it was the Volunteers’ own local initiatives which prevailed, leaving Mulcahy with the image of being out of touch with provincial realities. There was a modicum of truth to that image. Without doubt the members of GHQ rarely, if ever, visited the outlying troops, least of all for inspection purposes.32 Furthermore, the breadth of their knowledge might have been limited: ‘[Knowing] little or nothing about training and operations, their strong points were organisation and administration.’33 Likewise, their principal methodology, especially that of Mulcahy, was to amass information and to send either exhortative or censorial despatches down the line, leaving, for example, the Munster Volunteers to regularly complain of their own feelings of isolation and of the necessity of travelling to Dublin in order to personally intercede on some issue, usually concerning the deficiency of arms and ammunition or the allocation of same.34
Apart from these types of complaints, however, Mulcahy never lost his reputation for hard work: ‘he was all business’.35 Also, he was noted for a depth of self-control and forethought: ‘I always felt that the C.S. could not be flurried or rushed. He had a quiet strength that was impressive. He had thought out each area in his mind. He could summarise a brigade quickly.’ And he had acquired an aloof self-confidence: ‘He was always calmer than Cathal Brugha, less taut and more impersonal. His lean jaw seemed to prevent emotion; his eyes seemed to avoid it. One always felt a quiet insistence, a tinge of something that was no human warmth, but there was always confidence.’36 But, more importantly, in particular after January 1920, a month when he, along with Collins and Oscar Traynor, planned
