42 <strong>Essential</strong> <strong>Histories</strong> • <strong>The</strong> <strong>Anglo</strong>-<strong>Irish</strong> <strong>War</strong> Although fewer than 64 rebels had been killed or wounded during the Rising, and only 15 out of the 112 sentenced to death were actually executed, the British had effectively decapitated the IRA Volunteers' command structure. Redmond's death in March 1918 hastened the decline of the IPP whilst Sinn Féin's aggressive propaganda campaign combined with the British preoccupation with the First World <strong>War</strong> allowed a new generation of hard-liners to step forward into the vacuum that had been left. <strong>The</strong> new men - De Valera, Collins, Brugha, Mulcahy, Boland and their ilk - were veterans of 1916 who shared a ruthless determination to end British rule by any means necessary. On 12 July 1917 the <strong>Irish</strong> Independent prophetically warned that their attempts to win independence would merely bring 'dire misfortune and untold horrors, and ruin and devastation, and the demon of civil strife'. <strong>The</strong>re were close personal links and shared membership between Sinn Féin and the IRA; however, the IRB infiltration of the IRA was more or less total and in reality it was never fully under the control of the Dáil, despite what De Valera may have claimed. Cathal Brugha may have become Minister of Defence in April 1919, but it was soon obvious that the real power behind the IRA was the 'Big Fellow', Michael Collins, who was a senior member of the IRB. In fact, the independence of the IRA from the Dáil was what sowed the seeds for civil war in <strong>1922</strong>. All that, however, was in the future and the rebels released from Frongoch and elsewhere in 1917 were faced with that classic question, 'if you were to do it again how would you do it differently?' When the Armistice effectively ended the First World <strong>War</strong> on 11 November 1918 the IRA realized that any hope of aid from Germany had passed. In many ways, German defeat was not such a great blow to the Republican movement; after all they had armed both Unionists and Nationalists and had singularly failed to support the IRA during the 1916 rebellion. Consequently, the IRA decided to bide its time, lend support to Sinn Féin and concentrate on identifying other sources of weapons. <strong>The</strong> British were convinced that Sinn Féin was behind the 1916 rising and that the 'Shinners' were preparing to go again. In an attempt to pre-empt this action they arrested most of Sinn Féin's leadership as the result of a largely fictitious German plot in 1918. <strong>The</strong> crux of the alleged 'German Plot' was that Sinn Féin and the Germans were conspiring to start a second 'Easter Rising' in Ireland. <strong>The</strong> police and army failed to catch the IRA's key players, which allowed these militants to shape the Nationalist agenda. Between 1916 and the winter of 1918 the IRA concentrated on stealing much-needed arms and ammunition from the British, and teaching its members how to use them. This policy was driven by a serious lack of modern military weapons, and the IRA had to rely upon shotguns, hunting rifles and handguns commandeered from farmers and private households. <strong>The</strong>se weapons were well suited to close-quarter assassinations, but neither conveyed the correct martial image nor were suitable for engaging in combat with the Crown's forces. <strong>The</strong> IRA knew that the numerous sparsely manned RIC barracks scattered across rural Ireland 'at some crossroads', according to the infamous David Neligan, presented them with a possible source of weapons, but it would be January 1920 before they felt confident enough to conduct a systematic campaign against them. Of course, the end of the war meant that not only were there hundreds of thousands of British soldiers demobilizing but also there were literally millions of surplus firearms sluicing around the UK and the rest of Europe. Guns, however, cost money, and although it was expressly forbidden by the IRA some Volunteers carried out armed robberies to obtain funds for the cause, whilst Collins (Minister for Finance) organized a Republican loan that raised over £370,000 in Ireland alone. <strong>The</strong> Dáil insisted that the loan was purely voluntary, although Michael Collins as Commander in Chief of the <strong>Irish</strong> National Army in <strong>1922</strong>. (Courtesy of National Library of Ireland, Photographic Archive)
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