An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March 2016 www.dfmagazine.ie 20 | of 1916 by MICHAEL BARRY O n Easter Monday morning 1916, some 1,500 Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army members fanned out across Dublin, armed with an eclectic range of weapons. Joseph Plunkett had visited Germany with Roger Case- ment to seek German military support. The Germans, not willing to risk dispatching troops, sent a disguised steamer, the Aud, laden with 20,000 Mosin-Nagant rifles (captured from the Russian army). Just before the planned rising the ship was intercepted off the southwest coast and scuttled by its crew. What would have happened had these excel- lent rifles been available to the Volunteers is one of the great 'what ifs' of Irish history. Instead, in addition to a miscellany of rifles and shot- guns, the main weapons available to the insurgents on that fateful Monday were the 1,500 Mauser 71s procured from a German arms dealer and landed in Howth and Kilcoole in 1914. These big, heavy, bolt-action rifles were revolutionary when first issued to the Prussian army in 1872. While still in good condition in 1916, their Achilles Heel was that they were single-shot; firing at around four rounds per minute as opposed to the 15 rounds that the opposing British army Lee Enfield could achieve. Also in the mix was the single-shot Martini-Henry, stan- dard issue to the RIC and very much a weapon of empire, having been used in imperial adventures such as Sudan and Rorke's Drift. With an assortment of weapons requiring different bullets, the provision of rifle ammunition was a logistical nightmare for the Volunteers. Shotguns were also in evidence, as these were readily available. However, they were good for close-quarter fight- ing, not for the long-distance sniping that comprised most of the action in 1916. There was a miscellany of side arms: revolvers and automatics. Patrick Pearse carried a 7.65mm FN Browning automatic, which was relatively small and easily concealed (most likely why one had been used by Gavrilo Princep to assassinate the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo). A prized weapon was the Mauser 'Broomhandle' C96, a semi-automatic pistol with a detachable stock. One was used effectively by Lieutenant Michael Malone at 25 Northumberland Road in repelling waves of attacking British soldiers. In the South Dublin Union, Cathal Brugha valiantly held off superior British forces from a barricade on the landing of the Nurses' Home with his Mauser C96, and Countess Markievicz famously kissed her C96 before hand- ing it to a British officer during the surrender at the Royal College of Surgeons. The wheels of Volunteer industry had also been busy. Improvised bayonets for shotguns had been run up (to add to the arsenal of French sword-type rifle bayonets). Primi- tive pike-heads had also been prepared, giving resonances of the 1798 Rebellion. Improvised bombs, many comprising cans filled with gelignite and shrapnel, were made in such places as Count Plunkett's premises at Larkfield in Kimmage and the basement of Liberty Hall. (One Volunteer later noted that these were 'so unreliable that after the first day I decided that they would be much more dangerous, if they did explode, to our men than to the enemy'.) While the rising came as a shock to the British, they responded quickly and the troops who were rushed to Dublin had the advantage of a stand- ing army, being well equipped to fight a war; albeit a conventional field war, rather than one against an enemy ensconced in city buildings. The weapon the troops grabbed from the racks as they left their barracks was the short-magazine Lee En- field Mk III. Firing .303 bullets from a 10-shot magazine, this was the service rifle of WW I. Officers were issued with the Webley .455 calibre, six-shot revolver. The British also used the Lewis machine gun. Relatively light, this air-

• Cover