21 March 2012: Tactics and Strategies

As I discussed in the last post, both sides had to adopt fairly different tactics and strategies because of various advantages or disadvantages they had based on the number of troops, supplies and munitions available to them. The Republicans had more troops and a greater tactical advantage based on controlled land but lacked a defined command structure. Regardless of how many troops they had or how much better the land they controlled was, no organization among the rank and file would prove to be a major weakness of the Republicans. As mentioned in the last post, the Republicans were forced to adopt a defensive strategy throughout the war because of a lack of offensive capability in the form of artillery. Even though the Republicans had a numerical advantage at first, this advantage was quickly dissolved because of the charismatic leaders of the Free State Army, Michael Collins and his commanders. Collins was able to secure men and munitions as well as officers from Britain. Since both sides had established themselves and made what they were fighting for known, it was only a matter of time before fighting broke out.

While it would seem the the Free State Army had superiority because they controlled Dublin, this did not stop the Republicans from attacking many other important Irish cities. The Republicans controlled Cork, Limerick and Waterford but were not equipped to hold out in a traditional military style against the better trained and equipped Free State Army. The leader of the Republicans, Liam Lynch, hoped the Republicans could simply hold the cities they already controlled long enough to renegotiate a treaty with Britain. This did not happen as planned though because the Free State Army took the cities controlled by the Republicans fairly easily in August of 1922. Michael Collins and the other leaders of the Free State Army planned a nationwide offensive to take many of the key cities that the Republicans controlled. He sent forces to attack Limerick in the west, Waterford in the south-east, Cork and Kerry in the south and Mayo in the west, as evidenced by the map. Limerick and Waterford were wrestled from Republican control on July 20 while Cork was taken on August 10 and Mayo was taken sometime after that. The Republicans were ill-equipped for this type of concentrated and organized attack and did not put up much resistance. 

Since the Republicans knew they could not match the military might of the Free State Army, Lynch ordered a new style of fighting; guerrilla warfare. This style is quite unique in that the various groups of soldiers would wait for the opportune moment and strike the enemy when they were most vulnerable. This strategy was fairly successful at first but the Republicans could not sustain this type of conflict because of the toll it took on the soldiers. From a Republican standpoint, it was successful because a group of men managed to kill Michael Collins in an ambush in August of 1922. This left the Free State Army in the hands of General Richard Mulcahy. It seemed as if the Free State Army might collapse because of the death of both the military leader, Collins, and the government leader, W. T. Cosgrave, who had died of a brain hemorrhage just 10 days before Collins was killed. However, the death of Collins increased the bitterness and fury of the members of the Free State. As time progressed, the Republicans could not sustain the guerrilla tactics they were employing and suffered heavy losses, both to fighting and to the harsh winter that had set in. Eventually, they resorted to sabotage and destruction of public infrastructure. This downward spiral of the Republicans led to atrocities and executions against the Free State Army, which I will discuss in greater detail next week.