Irish Free State Offensive - Aftermath

Aftermath

The Free State offensive of July–August 1922 all but ended the Anti-Treaty side's chances of winning the war. The Republicans failed, with the exception of a brief stand around Killmallock, to resist the advance of Free State troops anywhere in the country. While some of this can be put down to the Free State's advantages in arms and equipment, the Republican leadership under Liam Lynch also failed to devise any coherent military strategy, allowing their positions to be picked off one by one. On top of this, most of the Republican fighters showed little appetite for the civil war, generally retreating before National Army attacks rather than putting up determined resistance. In part, this shows a lack of discipline and training for conventional warfare, but there was also a general reluctance on both sides to fight against former comrades from the War of Independence.

The Free State Government's victories in the major towns inaugurated a period of inconclusive guerrilla warfare. Anti-Treaty IRA units held out in areas such as the western part of counties Cork and Kerry in the south, county Wexford in the east and counties Sligo and Mayo in the west. Sporadic fighting also took place around Dundalk, where Frank Aiken and the Fourth Northern Division of the Irish Republican Army were based. Aiken originally wanted to stay neutral, but was arrested by Free State troops along with 400 of his men on 16 July 1922. They subsequently broke out of prison in Dundalk and temporarily re-took the town in a guerrilla raid.

Nowhere, however, did the Republicans manage to re-take any territory lost on the first two months of fighting. Moreover, with the exception of county Kerry and a few other localities, the anti-treaty guerrilla campaign failed to gather momentum and by 1923, was largely reduced to small scale attacks and acts of sabotage.

It took eight months of intermittent guerrilla warfare after the fall of Cork before the war was brought to an end, with victory for the Free State government. In April 1923, Liam Lynch was killed. His successor as anti-Treaty commander, Frank Aiken, called a ceasefire on 30 April and a month later, ordered his men to "dump arms" and go home.

The intervening period was marked by the death of leaders formerly allied in the cause of Irish independence. Commander-in-Chief Michael Collins was killed in an ambush by anti-treaty republicans at Béal na mBláth, near his home in County Cork, on 22 August 1922. Arthur Griffith, the Free State president died of a brain haemorrhage ten days before. The Free State government was subsequently led by William Cosgrave and the Free State Army by General Richard Mulcahy. On the Republican side, leaders such as Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Joe McKelvey, Robert Erskine Childers and Liam Lynch lost their lives in the guerrilla phase of the war.

This phase of the war, much more than the conventional phase, developed into a vicious cycle of revenge killings and reprisals as the Republicans assassinated pro-treaty politicians and the Free State responded with the execution of Republican prisoners. (See Executions during the Irish Civil War).