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CHAPTER 3

Committed

Rebellion and Reorientation, 1916–17

Shortly after noon on bank holiday Monday, 24 April 1916, James Connolly ordered a contingent of about 150 men, composed principally of Joseph Plunkett’s Kimmage group and a section of the Irish Citizen Army, to forcibly enter the GPO. Then, outside and in front of a nonplussed group of onlookers, Pádraig Pearse read aloud from a document which proclaimed the existence forthwith of an ‘Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State’. At the same time, other groups positioned themselves in a number of strategically important locations throughout the city, principally at the Four Courts (the First Battalion under Ned Daly), Jacob’s Biscuit Factory (most of the Second Battalion under Thomas MacDonagh), Boland’s Mills (the Third Battalion under Eamon de Valera) and the South Dublin Union Workhouse (the Fourth Battalion under Éamonn Ceannt).1

Plunkett’s and Connolly’s shared aspiration2 was that those positions, once fortified, would defensively hold out for as long as possible.3 Therefore, by the time of Pearse’s order of unconditional surrender at 3.45 pm on Saturday, 29 April, the ensuing amount of physical destruction was immense. So also were the number of injuries and deaths, namely two and a half thousand of the former and over five hundred of the latter, the most prominent of which were those fifteen insurgents who were executed by firing squad during the period, 3–12 May.4

For his part, on Easter Monday, after he, Paddy Grant and Tom Maxwell had cut the telegraph and telephone lines at Howth, Mulcahy was meant to proceed back into the city and join up with some of his ‘C’ Company colleagues at the GPO. However, by then the city had been encircled by the military. This effectively meant that a day was wasted wandering around in north county Dublin before he and his two fellow travellers fortuitously bumped into Thomas Ashe and the Fingal Brigade. Ashe immediately appointed Mulcahy as his second in command.5 Then, during the next two days, following upon Connolly’s order to divert enemy attention away from the city, Ashe, Mulcahy and their 45-man column, all mounted on bicycles, made as much of a nuisance of themselves as possible by raiding Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks and disrupting communication lines. But it was not until Friday morning that they saw serious action for the first time, when they initiated a guerrilla-like attack on Ashbourne’s RIC barracks in County Meath, resulting in the deaths of eight RIC officers and two Volunteers.6

Mulcahy came to the fore during that unrelenting, five-and-a-half-hour struggle: ‘it was soon apparent to everyone that his was the mind necessary to plan and direct operations; cool, clear-minded and practical, and with a personality and tact that enabled him virtually to control the situation without in any way undermining Ashe’s prestige as the commander.’7 Equally, he displayed a range of field officer leadership skills, some of which were the direct result of MacDonagh’s training courses, e.g. using the lie of the land to one’s best advantage; deploying outflanking movements; moving about in order to organise and give confidence to his men; and undermining the morale of the enemy: ‘I could hear Mulcahy’s voice in the intermittent fire. “Will you surrender [?] By … [sic] if you don’t we will give you a dog’s death”.’8

Understandably, then, two days later, after such a successful engagement, Ashe, Mulcahy and the depleted Fingal Brigade were most reluctant to give up their arms without first ascertaining the bona fides of Pearse’s surrender order. On that account, with RIC Sergeant Reilly being held hostage by way of security9 and a safe passage guaranteed, Mulcahy was appointed by Ashe to personally get the news from Pearse, who at that stage was incarcerated in Arbour Hill prison.10 On Mulcahy’s return, Ashe addressed the men, emphasising that ‘We came out under Pearse as soldiers and it is our duty to surrender on his orders.’11

Approximately 1,800 Volunteers obeyed their superior officers in the same manner as Mulcahy and the Fingal Brigade did. But a nationwide sweep of what the authorities considered were Sinn Féin sympathisers added significantly to the overall figure of men and women arrested. For example, during the period 1 May–3 July, 3,226 men and women, who hailed principally from the metropolitan area and the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Galway and Wexford, were inspected in the vast parade ground of Richmond barracks and were then either retained therein or were dispersed variously to Kilmainham jail, the Royal Showgrounds, Ship Street Barracks, Arbour Hill or to the hospital wing of Dublin Castle. (Women were initially confined in Ship Street but were moved to Kilmainham later.)

By the end of the process, 171 individuals were tried, ninety death sentences were passed and fifteen were carried out, all according to the tenets of active service Field General Court Martial (in camera and without legal representation and sworn statements) according to the extensive emergency powers of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), 25 November 1914. In addition, 1,867 others, having been deported in cattle boats from the North Wall, were held captive in a number of English prisons, especially the prisons of Knutsford, Lewis, Pentonville, Reading and Stafford, along with the detention centre of Frongoch in north Wales.

As well as a lack of food, water and opportunities for proper sleep, the unusually hot weather for that time of year caused generalised fatigue and disorientation among the detainees in Richmond Barracks. Furthermore, given the bandaged, dusty and dishevelled state of many of the detainees, as well as the crush of humanity, the military authorities, proceeding with urgency, found it difficult to do their job properly, other than by the general cooperation of their charges, the active assistance of certain soldiers, the evidence of the ‘G’ division detectives and the happenstance of Volunteer livery and paper evidence. For instance, one person the authorities were interested in finding was Mulcahy. However, as luck would have it, the RIC driver who brought him to see Pearse at Arbour Hill made a search but failed to identify him. Also, the ‘G’ men, who made up the plain-clothed detective section of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) were far less able to cope by the time it came to assessing those who, like the Fingal Brigade, were among the last to arrive.12

Eventually, on 2 May, Mulcahy and 307 other detainees were moved on to cattle boats destined for Knutsford Prison.13 At least the cover of night gave them the benefit of avoiding the hostile attention of the soldiers’ wives living close to Richmond Barracks.14 All the same, should others have observed them, the likelihood is that they would not have approved, because, while some parts of the city were enthusiastic, most were not, regarding the insurrection as an ‘insane and criminal’ act.15 However, the executions would dramatically change everything within a fortnight: ‘They [the leaders] believed in Ireland. They believed that she would never prosper under British rule … they fought with magnificent courage … it is necessary to point out their virtues because it is those and their ideals that non-rebel Irishmen are remembering today.’16

Even so, in the meantime, on the way to Knutsford, which was a military prison situated about fourteen miles south of Manchester in Cheshire, Mulcahy was much more optimistic than his fellow travellers were: ‘I am as happy as the day is long – everything is working out grand’, by which remark he meant that ‘By sending us to prison they have made heroes of us.’17 He would spend more than six weeks there, the first three weeks of which were passed in solitary confinement. But, more than that, Knutsford was a demanding environment due to the fact that the prison authorities armed those who were already imprisoned there, i.e. soldiers who had been found guilty of misdemeanours such as being drunk or overstaying their leave, and authorised them to guard the Irish, a role they seemingly took cruel delight in.18

Then, on 17 June, he was moved on to Frongoch. In that facility, where captured German soldiers had originally been confined, there were two camps, north and south. Both camps ultimately housed a maximum of 1,863 men, but by the time he arrived, 17 June, the south camp, otherwise known as the distillery from its previous existence, where the poorer living conditions prevailed, had already reached its quota of 1,100 prisoners; so he joined approximately 200 internees in the north camp, rising to about 700 before being steadily reduced when men were either freed or sent to the south camp. After a while, all of the internees were recognised as prisoners of war and were duly allowed to organise their own affairs, which they had already begun to do along military lines.19

On 11 July, after the Military Staff – about thirteen men under the command of J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell – had been sent to Reading Jail, Mulcahy, internee number 344, was promoted to the rank of captain and was put in charge of ‘D’ Company.20 As such, probably soon afterwards, he became one of the north camp’s fifteen orderly officers, who implemented the daily schedules of the huts: ‘Their duties began at reveille when they saw all the men on parade for count, supervised the fatigues for the day; and saw that their men were present on time; and generally kept things going.’21

On occasion, they pleaded a case on behalf of their charges. For example, on 4 October, in a thirteen-page letter, Mulcahy, along with four others, sought the legal advice of Tim Healy in order to properly fight the case of some men who refused to clean out the soldiers’ ash pit.22 A month later, he and all the other hut leaders were court-martialled for insubordination due to their collective refusal to respond to roll call. On this occasion the roll call was used to try to track down those who, having resided in England, Scotland or Wales before the Rebellion, were eligible for conscription. Gavan Duffy was engaged as defence counsel. Even so, Mulcahy’s request to speak out was allowed by the court and, after some humour, he was complimented for the cogency of his defence. Nonetheless, along with everyone else, he was found guilty.23 However, the sentence was nominal.24

And so, upon arriving in Frongoch, his comrades knew that Mulcahy had played a decisive role in one of the significant successes of the Rebellion, an event later referred to in the lore of the period as the Battle of Ashbourne.25 For that reason, he was ‘held in high esteem’.26 Also, ‘He appeared to be a man of intelligence above the average, a clear thinker and with an abundance of energy … He was always cool, calm and collected.’27 Obviously, therefore, after his steady promotion up through the Volunteer ranks, his self-assured performance at Ashbourne and his willingness to both represent and discipline more than fifty men, he had started to overcome his earlier self-consciousness.

Arguably another reason for Mulcahy’s newfound enterprise was the fact that he had been accepted into Collins’ West Cork/London coterie, which is not to say that he was party to the roughhousing which Collins enjoyed. I sat with you at the same meeting in Frongoch when you organised it [the IRB] and when I came out of Frongoch I was invited by you and by Mick Collins and I would not go. I know you are one of the people who started the whole damn thing in Frongoch. Moreover, Collins, then developing a reputation as a calculating agitator and troublemaker, was determined to go further:28 ‘He established what he called a “Supreme Council” which, of course, was only supreme in Frongoch.’29

In later years Mulcahy expressed his opinions on those developments. For instance, ostensibly in his testy critique of Béaslaí’s life of Collins – ‘[an] ill-informed and distorted picture Béaslaí seems to have of Frongoch conditions and control’ – he claimed that he had no involvement with Collins’ IRB group: ‘I was apparently always accepted as an IRB man but was never “involved”.’ Also, it is noticeable that his defence of Collins happened to suit his own argument that he was neutral:

I have no recollection of any group that made itself assertive or critical in any way of the camp controller or general camp organisation or activities. Collins was no doubt a very important centre of such a group or companionship as such. Based on a West Cork and an IRB centre, a distinctive group or part of his grouping would be the internees who were liable for conscription and some of their immediate friends, but in addition, he was very consciously pulling the threads of the IRB men together with a view to the situation which would develop politically and organisationally when all the prisoners were back at home and political life was beginning again in Ireland.30

Yet, at a camp debate, Mulcahy might have achieved notoriety for one of his own actions when he allegedly made the following statement:

Freedom will never come about without a revolution, but I fear Irish people are too soft for that. To have real revolution, you must have bloody fierce men, who do not care a scrap for death or bloodshed. A revolution is not a job for children or for saints or scholars. In the course of revolution, any man, woman or child who is not with you is against you. Shoot them and be damned to them.31

Not surprisingly, perhaps, given that the political ground rules had changed diametrically by the time of publication (1958), he was very annoyed by the extreme impression thus created of him, maybe harkening back to 8 December 1922, when McKelvey, Barrett, Mellows and O’Connor were executed without due process.32

But the likelihood is that the Ó Maoileóin brothers were correct for the following two inter-related reasons. While being cooped up together with little to do but to discuss their own fate and that of their country, many internees became radicalised or, in Mulcahy’s case, more radicalised, to such an extent that Frongoch subsequently achieved mythical status as ‘the University of the Irish revolution’.33 And, especially during the years, 1916–18, the very years when he came under the spell of the then unpolished Collins, Mulcahy tried to overcome his natural self-consciousness by pretentious show: ‘I was shocked by Mulcahy’s deliberate, cold-blooded blasphemy. I attributed it to weakness of character, a desire to appear tough and ruthless. Maybe it was a pose adopted to impress the country boys.’34

In the meantime, during the previous May, Gregory Murphy, who had avoided arrest, and Diarmuid O’Hegarty, who had been released in error, both IRB men, who were in touch with Frongoch by means of what was humorously called ‘the Irish Republican post office service’35 or bribery system, began contacting those who were available and were still interested in Volunteering. Then, on Monday, 7 August 1916, the first small provisional committee of the post-Rebellion Volunteers was held on the fringes of the Gaelic League Oireachtas (national festival or conference, held annually) in the Minerva Hotel, Parnell Square. Cathal Brugha, then still hospitalised from the wounds he suffered while acting as second-in-command to Éamonn Ceannt at the South Dublin Poor Law Union premises, St James’ Street, was given the honour of being named chairman in absentia.36 (Upon his release a month later, he was also honoured by having subsequent meetings conducted for his convenience at his home in Rathmines.37) Next, in October, about fifty delegates attended at Fleming’s Hotel, Gardiner Place, at Brugha’s request and with him presiding, for what was later referred to as the First Provisional Convention of the post-Rebellion Volunteers. A skeleton executive was elected and a top tier of officers, consisting of one from Dublin City (Brugha) and one from each of the four provinces, was created to hold office for a year or less depending on circumstances. Also, arrangements were made to form units nationwide.38

At the same time as those events were progressing, Murphy and O’Hegarty became involved in the reorganisation of the IRB as well, in that they, along with Séamus O’Doherty, Martin Conlon, Peadar Kearney, Luke Kennedy, Patrick McCartan and Seán Ó Murthuile resolved, as in the case of the Volunteer reorganisational process, to avail of the cover of the Oireachtas in order to put a provisional structure together. However, the weakness of their starting position would seem to have had a strong bearing upon their core decisions. They decided to commence a fresh campaign of enlistment by allocating a particular district to each person. Additionally, they chose not to form an SC, a decision which may conceivably have been in deference to Collins’ council in Frongoch. And they even operated without the services of a treasurer, creating instead a two-man executive of O’Doherty as president and Ó Murthuile as secretary.39

As soon as he was able, Mulcahy became involved in those two restructuring developments, Volunteering and the IRB. For instance, in mid-January 1917, having arrived back home on Christmas Eve as one of the last batch of internees to be liberated from Frongoch and having stayed for a while with his family in Ennis,40 he was elected Officer Commanding (OC) at a stand-around meeting of not more than twenty members of his old company in North Great George’s Street, possibly number 35, the headquarters of Na Fianna Éireann, the republican youth movement. Then, a couple of weeks later, he became OC of the Dublin brigade.41

As such, during February, at a prearranged meeting in the Exchange Hotel in Parliament Street, he, along with Collins, Lynch and Martin Conlon, informed Patrick Colgan that, during the period of internment, a Volunteer group had been formed to the north of the county by the labour organiser, Archie Heron, something which they ‘did not look too kindly on’ and something which, by implication, they intended to change because ‘it had been decided to organise the Volunteers under similar [IRB?] conditions and control as existed before the Rebellion’.42

And, probably in early March, more than likely at Barry’s Hotel (though Fleming’s Hotel was also mentioned), Mulcahy attended the second provisional convention of the Volunteers. The other names prominently associated with this so-called National Convention, even though a mere twenty to thirty attended, were Brugha, president (also Eamon Duggan, for part of the meeting); Liam Clarke, secretary; Collins, Staines, Stack, Seán McGarry, Seán Boylan, Alec McCabe, Liam Lynch, one of the Brennans from Clare, Cathal O’Shannon and Dick Walsh (Cork).43 Its two most important recommendations were that a national convention would be tentatively pencilled in for six months hence and that, because enforced conscription might result from the then worsening position of the British army on the Western front, the Volunteers’ much depleted stock of arms should be replenished as a matter of urgency.44

Soon afterwards, however on St Patrick’s Day, Mulcahy, having lost his job in the post office,45 began an extended tour of south Munster collecting money for the Gaelic League. He commenced his peregrinations in County Cork and ended them at the Oireachtas in the Municipal Buildings, Waterford City, on Tuesday evening, 7 August.46 The impression given in his recollections is that nothing else of significance happened during that four and a half month period, other than a visit to Bromyard, Herefordshire, on 9 June to act as best man at Terence MacSwiney’s wedding.47

Yet, he invariably conducted Volunteer business too. Two important pieces of interlinked evidence from Patrick Colgan’s statement to the Bureau of Military History (BMH) appear to corroborate that opinion, but only if it is the case that Mulcahy, visited Dublin during the tour. And, because this was not an outlandish possibility in the circumstances of his membership of Collins’ group in Frongoch and of his increased Volunteer/IRB responsibilities subsequently, Colgan’s extracts are worth quoting.

The first is:

Finally [during February 1917] I was asked to organise North Kildare. I undertook to do so. Within a few months … When I had completed the job I reported to Mick Collins. I was again called to Dublin. I met Collins, Mulcahy, Bob Price, Lynch and D. [Diarmuid] O’Hegarty. I was instructed to proceed with the formation of a Battalion Staff. I called a meeting [to that end] for Prosperous in May, 1917.

And the second is:

Sometime later [after May 1917] at a meeting of the Leinster Council, IRB, held in Gardiner Street, Dublin, the question of reorganising the Volunteers was discussed. It was decided that whilst the organising and recruiting would continue, no staffs were to be appointed until the sentenced prisoners were released [on 17 June]. At this meeting amongst those I recall as being present were Mick Collins, Martin Conlon, who presided, Seán Murphy, Secretary, Diarmuid Lynch, Diarmuid [O’]Hegarty, Dick Mulcahy, Seán Boylan (Meath) and Christy Byrne (Wicklow) [sic].48

But Colgan’s extracts are valuable for another reason. They provide circumstantial evidence of the machinations of Collins and his new IRB during the period, January–August. However, the extent of the intrigue is revealed more fully in the following events. On 19 February, Collins replaced the overworked Joe McGrath as secretary of the amalgamated Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependents’ Fund (INA&VDF); in the process, he met and so impressed Kathleen Clarke, widow of Tom, that she recognised in him the way forward for the IRB and gave him a copy of Tom’s invaluable list of reliable IRB contacts.49 Next, Collins and his Frongoch circles were formally assimilated into the home-based IRB. Once again, Murphy and O’Hegarty were centrally involved. By sheer persistence and downright bullying during a number of meetings, they, ‘a crowd of usurpers’ according to the old guard, managed to defeat those Dublin members who ‘did not like Collins’.50 Then, by July, a revised constitution had been drafted by Ashe, Lynch and Con Collins, with Lynch and Michael Collins adding significant revisions afterwards.51 (A more permanent SC and a full executive were established as well.52) That constitution contained a number of changes which had the potential to cause trouble in the long term.53

But, in the short term, the most important change was the fact that the gradualist policy of the 1873 constitution, whereby force could be embarked upon only with the consent of ‘a majority of the Irish people’ (see Appendix 1), was rendered null and void, thereby presaging a return to the status quo ante of Stephens’ more orthodox revolutionary blueprint of 1858,54 especially the clause whereby the president of the IRB was ipso facto the president of the putative Irish Republic (see Appendix 2). Merely four days later, behind the scenes at the Oireachtas, the first steps were taken to implement the proactive blueprint. Diarmuid Lynch informed the assembled Brothers that the SC intended to gain control of the Volunteers.55 Almost immediately afterwards, Collins, Mulcahy, Lynch, McGarry, Ashe, O’Hegarty and Staines, along with de Valera and Brugha, decided that the first, full, post-rebellion Volunteer convention would be held at the tail end of the forthcoming Sinn Féin conference which was already scheduled for the Mansion House in October.56

In the interim, Ashe, then president of the IRB, died in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital during the evening of Tuesday, 25 September. He died from pneumonia brought on by the malfunction of forcible feeding after he, along with close on seventy other prisoners, went on hunger strike for the attainment of political status.57 The immediate reaction within the wide nationalist community was one of profound shock and anger at the tragic and controversial loss of such a young, talented, active and popular member. Collins felt the loss greatly: ‘poor Tom Ashe … but a day of reckoning will come’.58 Certain it was, therefore, from the IRB’s point of view, that Ashe would be honoured in the spectacular fashion of the O’Donovan Rossa obsequies. But Collins’ thinking went beyond the usual Fenian considerations of homage, effrontery and promotion. More so, just as he had done since his arrival in Frongoch, he wanted to use the occasion to disempower domestic competitors and, in the process, to strengthen the bond within his own revolutionary group. De Valera, in this instance, was his principal target.

The pattern of de Valera’s activities during the period of mourning, 26–30 September, is illustrative of that. On the Wednesday he paid his respects at the hospital in the company of W.T. Cosgrave, Joe McGuinness and Lawrence Ginnell.59 On the following day, along with a larger number of prominent nationalists, he turned up to witness the proceedings of the first day of the deceased’s inquest and later, during the evening, he, ‘in his capacity as Commandant of the Irish Volunteers’, commanded a company of Volunteers as they marched at the head of an enormous procession to the Pro Cathedral.60 Then, after the requiem mass on the morrow, when the corpse was being brought to the City Hall in order to complete the period of mourning there, he attended in his capacity as a politician, not as a Volunteer.61

And that, it would seem, was the last part he played. Certainly, on the Sunday, at the climax of the event, he was conspicuous in his absence. Instead, he attended a rally in O’Connell Square, Ennis, where he addressed a large crowd protesting over the mistreatment of prisoners and where, significantly, the Cork Examiner reporter heard him saying rather hollowly that ‘Not in any other place on the globe but in Ennis would he have been that day, but he came there because his place was beside the living to carry on the cause for which Tom Ashe died.’62

Of course, de Valera might not have been comfortable with the idea of moving the corpse to the City Hall. Even so, a more valid reason for the change in de Valera’s behaviour can be found in the following commentary on an incident which, by deduction, occurred after the body was moved to the Pro Cathedral on Thursday evening:

At the end of one meeting, some people from the new Brotherhood notified us [J.J. Ó Ceallaigh (Sceilg) and other members of a Sinn Féin funeral committee] that Michael Collins would be giving the Thomas Ashe graveside oration. Everyone was greatly surprised … In Irish[?] … That’s not possible … There was a long discussion, and it was agreed finally that we would just have a short speech … Cathal Brugha [in comparison?] would have given a [more?] lively speech whether in Irish or English … But neither Cathal nor any of his friends [de Valera, for example?] were expecting anything like that. That was not the case [however] for the false IRB.63

So, just as he went directly against de Valera’s wishes by running Joe McGuinness in the South Longford by-election in early May,64 Collins perceived de Valera as a competitor who had to be outmanoeuvred. And de Valera, for his part, given both his politico–military stature and his significant involvement in the arrangements thus far, must have been so offended that he felt unable to witness Collins’ speech.

Mulcahy was deeply involved in those machinations. For example, at the time of Ashe’s death, he became secretary of the Wolfe Tone Memorial Association (WTMA).65 Now, from an insider’s perspective, namely from the perspective of Patrick McCartan, the WTMA was little more than ‘a cover name for the Executive of the I.R.B’66 whenever the need arose to stage a prestige funeral, to organise the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown or to collect funds for the construction of nationalistic monuments.67 However, in this instance, Mulcahy was not a member of the executive because, other than Ashe, its other two members were Diarmuid Lynch and Seán Ó Murthuile, treasurer and secretary respectively.68 Nonetheless, in order to adequately discharge the requirements of the office of secretary of the WTMA, specifically the paperwork associated with the IRB’s involvement in Ashe’s funeral, he had to have been a prominent Brother, which is synonymous with saying that he was a non-executive member of the SC which had been formed two months previously.

But, similar to the proactive Harry Boland,69 Mulcahy became deeply involved in other ways as well. For example, as acting OC of the Dublin Brigade, he gave permission to Joseph Lawless to form a guard of honour of uniformed Fingal men at Ashe’s bedside during the first night and later devised and implemented a rota system to cope with similar demands coming from the four city brigades.70 But, much more audaciously, on the Friday, he took charge of the Volunteer guard of honour, this being the guard of honour which was assigned the unenviable task of gaining access to the City Hall, a building which was then heavily guarded due to being situated adjacent to Dublin Castle: ‘Mulcahy and Volunteer Guard enter City Hall’.71

Cosgrave’s account is a clear indication of just how tense the atmosphere was:

Representations having been made to me [as Sinn Fein member of Dublin corporation] that the coffin containing Thomas Ashe should lie in state in the City Hall, I directed the Secretary to the Finance Committee [of] Dublin Corporation, to hold a meeting for the purpose of granting the necessary permission to occupy the City Hall. There were soldiers on guard outside and inside the City Hall. At the meeting of the Committee it was suggested that the Lord Mayor [Lawrence O’Neill] should approach the authorities to facilitate the lying-in-state. The Lord Mayor met with a blank refusal. Meantime the cortege with volunteer guard was on its way.72

Besides, Collins had already prepared for the worst. Armed IRB men in civilian clothes were strategically positioned near and within the building73 and other IRB men were at the ready as backup in Parnell Square lest the British army should make a move and bloodshed should ensue.74 At any rate, in the absence of Chief Secretary Duke and in deference to the advice of Edmund Eyre, the city treasurer, who had been approached by Cosgrave, General Bryan Mahon decided to take the line of least resistance by withdrawing his men apace.75 Mulcahy and his men then safely entered the main hall of the building and the body, draped in the tricolour, was placed on a specially prefabricated platform in front of the statue of Daniel O’Connell, where Seán McGarry, on the point of replacing Ashe as president of the IRB, gave a brief eulogy.76

By implication, therefore, Mulcahy must have been at the head of the extended cortege as it slowly wound its way through the packed centre of the city on the Sunday. But he was definitely at the graveside when Collins delivered his ‘exceedingly brief’ speech in Irish and English, i.e. immediately after a triple volley and last post had been sounded: ‘There will be no oration. Nothing remains to be said, for the volley which has been fired is the only speech it is proper to make above the grave of a dead Fenian.’77 Clearly that was another potentially dangerous moment, should, for example, there have been an attempt made to arrest the members of the firing party. But Mulcahy was ready: ‘Richard Mulcahy … carefully demobilised the Dublin Brigade within the grounds of Glasnevin cemetery.’78

Accordingly, the responsibilities which Mulcahy undertook throughout the period of the Ashe funeral were impressively handled, especially on the Friday and on the Sunday. On Friday, like at Ashbourne during Easter 1916, he displayed an amount of nerve, especially in the City Hall, where he was in the firing line should matters have got out of hand. And on Sunday, at Glasnevin, he was so well organised that he had his men readied to slip away quickly in a controlled fashion.

Yet, Peter Hart claimed that he was deliberately kept in the dark by Collins, to the point that he was actually surprised when Collins stood up to speak.79 This is most unlikely because, upon replacing de Valera at the head of the guard of honour, he had the bones of two days to ponder both the reasons for and the consequences of that decision; in which case, as Hart also implies, Mulcahy’s preoccupation at the close of the ceremony was that an overly inflammatory speech would provoke an unwelcome response from the authorities and, thereby, make it harder for his men to get away unchallenged.

Consequently, overall, the sort of activities which Mulcahy became involved in throughout 1917 – namely his role in reorganising the IRB during the spring; becoming a member of its SC during the summer; reinvigorating the Volunteers during the same period; rising to the prestigious position of secretary of the IRB’s mouthpiece, the WTMA, in the autumn; guaranteeing that Ashe’s penultimate resting place would be in the very heartland of imperial Dublin; and securing a high level of discipline from his men during the five-hour funeral procession – all bear witness to his growing self-confidence and assertiveness; to his excellent organisational skills; but, most importantly, to the increasing centrality of active republicanism in his life. Furthermore, the brevity of Collins’ speech would not have bothered him at all. If anything, most especially when he already knew that the IRB intended in no uncertain terms to put its stamp upon Volunteering during the next few months, he would have been impressed that Collins made reference to just one ideology: Fenianism.