The Week in 1916 When the Tricolour Flew Over Enniscorthy

The town of Enniscorthy was taken over for a week by the local units of the Irish Volunteers. Although much less bloody than the celebrated events of 1798, or of the Rising in Dublin, in which almost 500 people were killed, the Wexford rebellion of 1916 does provide a fascinating look at reactions to the insurrection in provincial Ireland.

Unlike the rest of County Wexford, which was dominated politically by the Irish Parliamentary Party and it auxiliary the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Enniscorthy, was the nucleus of separatist activists. There was a strong Irish Republican Brotherhood presence in the town and in the local Volunteers.

Wexford also had a strong labour movement and 1911 had seen a bitter strike at the foundry in Wexford town in which a worker was killed by the police.

By 1913, there were over 100 sworn-in IRB members in Enniscorthy and when the Irish Volunteers was formed in 1913, they, like other IRB circles where the organisation had a presence, joined and took over the organisation from the inside.

Thomas MacDonagh, the Volunteers’ Director of Training, sent Paul Galligan, a Cavan native and IRB man since 1911, from Dublin to the south-eastern town, to sort out the mess, and as Galligan himself put it, “to take charge of advanced training”.

MacDonagh, as a member of the IRB’s military council which was secretly planning a rising, knew that armed action was looming and Enniscorthy was a very strategic military location, commanding the railway route to Dublin from the ports at Rosslare and Waterford.

In Enniscorthy, Galligan, who was known to the police, lived under the alias “O‘Reilly”, and was set up with a job in Bolger’s drapery establishment. In the evenings he intensively trained 26 local Volunteer officers, at their hall named “Antwerp” in Enniscorthy.

In March 1916, Patrick Pearse visited Enniscorthy for the commemoration of Robert Emmet, the Republican leader hanged for his rising of 1803. In public, in the Athenium theatre, Pearse delivered what Paul Galligan remembered as an, “impressive lecture” on Emmet.

In private, Pearse told local Volunteer officers such as Seamus Doyle that the orders for an armed uprising would come soon. In the second week of April, the police seized a motor car in College Green, central Dublin, which contained a quantity of shot-guns, revolvers and ammunition, all of which were destined for County Wexford. The two occupants of the car were Irish Volunteers from Ferns.

On Again, Off Again

The Easter Rising very nearly did not happen. Eoin MacNeill, the titular head of the Volunteers, had been kept in the dark by the IRB-dominated Military Committee and when informed of the plans for insurrection, on Easter Sunday 1916, tried to call it off.

The Volunteer officers in Enniscorthy were, understandably, at a loss. To try to find out what was happening, Paul Galligan travelled to Dublin late on Easter Saturday night. On Sunday, he read MacNeill’s order cancelling “manoeuvres” and assumed the Rising was off. But the following day, at a house in Dalkey, in south County Dublin he learned of the events in the city centre.

He went to O’Connell Street to try to find out in person what was going on and what was expected of the Enniscorthy Volunteers. “Connolly said to me that they had enough men in Dublin and that it would be better to join my unit in Wexford. After a talk with Pearse and Plunkett in which I could hear the word ‘mountains’ being used, Connolly instructed me to go back to Wexford as quickly as I could to mobilise the Enniscorthy Battalion and to hold the railway line to prevent troops coming through from Wexford as he expected they would be landed there. He said to reserve our ammunition and not to waste it attacking barracks or such like.”

It was 2 am on Tuesday morning. Connolly told him to get something to eat – Desmond Fitzgerald gave him tea and two buns – and a “good bicycle”, which Gearoid O’Sullivan took from the GPO storehouse.

It was 2 am on Tuesday morning. Connolly told him to get something to eat – Desmond Fitzgerald gave him tea and two buns – and a “good bicycle”, which Gearoid O’Sullivan took from the GPO storehouse.

At first light, “I started straight away for Enniscorthy. It was just breaking day as I left the GPO…When I got to the Parnell monument, I looked back and I noticed that there were two flags flying from masts on the front of the GPO…a green flag and the tricolour of today”.

Galligan was more fortunate than many provincial Volunteer officers in that he had received clear and realistic orders from the head of what was now calling itself the Army of the Irish Republic – get back to Enniscorthy and cut the railway line to prevent the British from bringing reinforcements to Dublin.

The Rising In Enniscorthy

Galligan’s subsequent 200km cycle took him on a wide detour to avoid British troops, via the North Circular Road, Mulhuddart and Maynooth and through County Carlow. It was late on Wednesday evening before he reached Enniscorthy.

In Enniscorthy itself, the local Volunteers under Seamus Doyle had received an order from Pearse on Monday afternoon, telling them, “we start at noon today, obey your orders”. Since it was not at all clear what these orders were, Doyle consulted with Sean Sinnott, the Brigade commander in Wexford town who told him, “in consequence of the conflicting orders he would not have anything to do with the matter”. Back in Enniscorthy on Tuesday, Doyle found a few Volunteers waiting at the ammunition dump, unsure of what to do.

In the early hours of Thursday, around 100-200 Volunteers took over the town hall and the castle and surrounded the RIC barracks in the town, to which they cut off the supply of gas and water. The insurgents’ armament was meagre though – only 20 rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Many carried only pikes, which, effective enough in 1798, would have been useless in an encounter with either armed police or British troops in 1916.

Whereas in Dublin, the rebels were initially highly unpopular with the general public, in Enniscorthy the reaction to the Rising seems to have been largely positive. According to Seamus Doyle, “Feeling in the town was generally friendly towards us, excepting the families of some British Army soldiers”.

Even two of the local priests – Fr. Coad and Fr. Murphy – were anxious to join the Enniscorthy volunteers, but were persuaded otherwise and left after blessing the men.
Part of the reason for the Wexford rebels’ popularity may have been that the rebellion in Enniscorthy was, in stark contrast to Dublin, nearly bloodless. There was a brief exchange of shots between the Volunteers and the RIC, in which two civilians and an RIC constable were wounded, but the rebels never tried to assault the barracks – they had in any case been ordered not to waste their limited ammunition by doing so.

Another factor was that the Volunteers made great efforts to present themselves as responsible soldiers and representatives of an Irish government. The Athenaeum theatre was made the Republicans’ headquarters, over which they flew the green, white and orange tricolour. All the public houses in the town were closed down and as Father Patrick Murphy, a priest who publicly blessed the rebels, recalled, “during the four days of Republican rule, not a single person was under the influence of drink”. The railway station was taken over and a train to Arklow was stopped and commandeered.

Paul Galligan was officer in charge of field operations and commanded a guard of honour as the Republican flag was raised. Seamus Doyle issued the Proclamation of the Republic, “calling on the people to support and defend it.”

By Saturday morning, up to 1,000 insurgents had been mobilised. News had reached the Volunteers, via some railway workers, that the British garrison in Arklow were preparing an assault. Galligan set up an outpost at Ferns, with 40-50 men, who took over the R.I.C. barracks, (which had been vacated by the police) and the national school. Roads were blocked and advanced posts of scouts were established. A telegraph discovered in Ferns barracks stated that “enormous force would be required to suppress it” (the rebellion).

The British Response

On Saturday, the RIC County Inspector reported, “the rebels are concentrated at Enniscorthy and are stated to be entrenching themselves there, the Police are still holding out (presumably in the Police Barracks). The approaches to Enniscorthy within a radius of three miles of the town were blocked with felled trees and in one case by a telegraph pole which has been brought down. The damage to the Barrow Bridge on the Dublin and South Eastern Railway is now reported not to be serious.”

Meanwhile, the British War Office sent a telegraph to Lieutenant-Colonel G.A. French, a retired British Army Officer who lived about two miles outside Wexford in Newbay, instructing him to take over the command of the British Forces in Wexford and advising that reinforcements were on their way from Waterford along with an armoured train with a field gun.

Patrick Pearse had in fact already surrendered on Friday afternoon on behalf of the Republican forces in Dublin, “to prevent the further slaughter of the civilian population and in the hope of saving our followers, now hopelessly surrounded and outnumbered”.

The British assembled a column under French of 1,000 men, 2 field guns and a 4.7 inch naval gun at Wexford town, “with a view to engaging the rebels at Enniscorthy”. The poorly armed Volunteers could not have taken on a force with this kind of firepower in a pitched battle. Perhaps fortunately for all concerned, they did not try to.

The Surrender

By Sunday morning, there had still not been any sight in Enniscorthy or Ferns of the British Arklow garrison or the mobile column from Cobh that had landed at Wexford town. Later that afternoon, one of the Volunteers’ cycle patrols returned to the outpost at Ferns and told Paul Galligan that an RIC District Inspector and Sergeant had arrived under a flag of truce with a copy of Pearse’s surrender order.

Galligan was sceptical but inspected Pearse’s surrender order which was addressed to the O/C Enniscorthy Volunteers and sent the policemen to Enniscorthy under armed escort.

At first, Seamus Doyle and his officers in Enniscorthy refused to believe the surrender order. He and Sean Etchingham of Gorey applied to Colonel French for permission to travel to Dublin and see Pearse in person.

Despite the misgivings of the local RIC, who wanted the pair arrested, French put them in a military car and had them driven to Arbour Hill prison in Dublin where Pearse was being kept.

Pearse looked, “physically exhausted but spiritually exulted. He told us that the Dublin Brigade had done splendidly – five days and nights of continuous fighting…Etchingham asked him, ‘Why did you surrender?’, Pearse answered, ‘because they were shooting women and children in the streets. I saw them myself’.”

Pearse had not been aware of the Rising in Enniscorthy but agreed to sign a written order to the Wexford Volunteers confirming the surrender that Doyle and Etchingham brought back to Enniscorthy.

Doyle and Etchingham returned to Enniscorthy on Monday, 31st April. Paul Galligan, still in Ferns, received a dispatch from Enniscorthy confirming the surrender order and telling him to return to the town.

Some of the Volunteers in Enniscorthy, such as James Cullen, took to the hills in the hope of starting a campaign of guerrilla warfare, but after a few days decided to come back down and “face the music”. Those who remained formally surrendered to Colonel French and were taken to captivity in Dublin. If French had indeed promised to let the rebels “walk out of town”, he was unable to deliver on his commitment.

It might have seemed, during the Republican occupation of Enniscorthy that everyone in the town was on their side, but after the Rising it became clear that this was not so. Some 200 of the Volunteers’ various political opponents in Enniscorthy, who had lain low during the rebellion, “National Volunteers, Hibernians, and Unionists”, helped the RIC to patrol the town. As one Republican, Maire Fitzgerald, bitterly recalled, “the rats all came out of their holes to welcome the British soldiers”.

Rival nationalists did not actually come to blows in Wexford in 1916, but Home Rulers did take up arms under British command and help to round up republicans.

Due mainly to the destruction of roads and rail lines, the estimated damage to property in the Enniscorthy Rising came to £3,000.

The final word should be left to the County Wexford RIC who reported that, “Although the majority of people did not approve of the rebellion and were anxious that law and order should be maintained, they were unwilling to see any of the rebels punished and their punishment excited considerable sympathy.”

This article is a shorter version of John Dorney’s piece on The Irish Story. Please visit it for footnotes and references.