An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir October 2019 www.dfmagazine.ie 26 | During Easter Week 1916 Michael Taaffe, a medi- cal student, was part of the small garrison that defended Trinity College from insurgent attack. Half a century later he wrote down his memo- ries of those turbulent days. 'I had a nightmare vision of a last stand at the Library windows, ammunition spent, while a horde of rebels with fixed bayonets swept in line across the Fellows' Garden.' This extract from a book by Dr Rory Sweetman explores how close Taaffe's nightmare came to being realised. What would have happened had Michael Mallin shouted 'Left wheel! CHARGE!' once his Citizen Army column reached Trinity's front gate at midday on Easter Monday? Or had members of Eamon de Valera's 3rd Battalion rushed past the sole porter at the Lincoln Place Gate, or dropped down silently from the Loop Line bridge behind the Officer Training Corps (OTC) headquarters, un- seen and unheard by its corporal's guard? Or simply entered Trin- ity's grounds by climbing over the northern wall, as multitudes of students were wont to do when patronising the Queen's Theatre in Great Brunswick Street? Or taken advantage of the railings on the southern side of College, described by an acute observer as 'by no means unscalable'? Who would have stopped them? A handful of porters armed with pikes? Four young cadets wielding empty rifles? Once the shooting began on 24 April, the military and police fled Dublin's streets for their respective barracks, the latter emerging occasionally to collar an unsuspecting looter. Trinity was largely empty, its students on vacation, so the first armed group to arrive in force would almost certainly have won the day, especially after taking control of the OTC armoury. Even after the alarm was raised, gates secured, and armed sentries posted, Trinity was still not safe from invasion. Merely waving an academic gown at the porter was sufficient to secure admission to College on Tuesday, while those students who entreated Ernie O'Malley to help defend the university from 'those damn Sinn Féiners' on Monday afternoon did not know their man – before the week was out O'Malley would be sniping at the Crown forces. Either he or one of Walter Starkie's 'Sinn Féin friends' in College could have expedited a rebel incursion, provid- ing the 'kindly traitor' whose possible existence so concerned Elsie Mahaffy, the Provost's elder daughter. For that matter, the rebels needed only to capture John Joly, Trinity's well-known professor of geology, on one of his incau- tious spying expeditions to their strongholds, to have secured a key to one of the several side gates to College. Had the rebels gained entrance to Trinity, its defenders had few illusions about the likely outcome. According to Gerald Fitzgibbon, 'they could have had [the College] for the asking up to two o'clock on Mon- day, and at very small cost up to two o'clock on Tuesday.' Lt James Glen agreed that 'it is very doubtful whether, with the small number of defenders, a really determined attack in the dark could have been successfully resisted.' Once secure in occupation, the rebels would have done just as Trinity's defenders did: relocate the contents of the armoury, fortify the front quadrangles, and prepare for a siege. As in other rebel strongholds, this would have involved a considerable amount of damage: smashing windows, boring holes in internal walls, using books to construct barricades, throwing furniture downstairs to block access. However, this destruction would have paled in comparison to the likely effect of the British response. Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell had privately warned Prime Min- ister Asquith that artillery would be necessary in order to reduce Crown casualties when retaking the city. On his arrival in Dublin, General Maxwell made this threat public, declaring in his first proclamation as military governor that 'if necessary, I shall not Anzacs and the Rising Defending Trinity College Dublin, Easter 1916 R o R y S w e e t m a n Defending Trinity College Dublin, Easter 1916 Defending Trinity College Dublin, Easter 1916 R o R y S w e e t m a n Little has been written on Trinity College's role in Easter Week 1916 as a 'loyal nucleus' dividing the insurgents and providing an effective counterweight to rebel headquarters in the GPO. The college is usually mentioned in the context of the rebels' alleged failure to attempt its capture, and its co-option as a barracks in the later stages of the rebellion. This book reveals how five New Zealanders, acting as the core of a small squad of colonial troops, provided a vital shield to protect Trinity from capture. Had the college fallen to the surprise attack launched on it by the rebels at midnight on Easter Monday, its 324th year may well have been its last; nothing less than heavy and prolonged artillery fire would have sufficed to defeat the occupiers. Letters written home by the Kiwi soldiers give fresh insight into important aspects of the insurrection and help to answer questions left unasked in previous studies: how close did Trinity come to being a central battleground in the Rising? How and why did it escape this grisly fate? And – not least – what might have happened but for the timely intervention of the colonial troops? Defending Trinity College Dublin, Easter 1916 puts this neglected episode into an imperial context, with Dublin as a theatre of battle in a global war. Dr Rory Sweetman is a Kildare-born New Zealander who holds history degrees from Trinity College Dublin and Cambridge University. He has published extensively on aspects of the Irish abroad and is the author of Bishop in the dock: the sedition trial of James Liston in New Zealand (Dublin, 2007), which won the Sir Keith Sinclair Prize for History. www.fourcourtspress.ie This cover, designed by Liam Furlong, incorporates a still image from a 1916 newsreel, which shows a newsboy on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, reproduced here courtesy of the Imperial War Museum. The author on his graduation day (10 December 1981), with Trinity's campanile and West Front building in the background. Victory parade, Dublin (1919) BY DR RORY SWEETMAN'

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