page_title: Irish Free State offensive
section_title: Fall of Limerick
hierarchical_section_title: Irish Free State offensive / Fall of Limerick
caption_attribution_description: English: National Army troops at the South Western Front during the Irish Civil War. We've discovered (mostly through all of your efforts here on Flickr) that some of our W.D. Hogan collection dates are not as secure as we thought, so thanks to sbreathnach for giving us a location for this one at the Ordnance Barracks, Mulgrave Street, Limerick and a date of Friday 21st or Saturday 22nd July 1922! Date: Friday 21 or Saturday, 22 July 1922 NLI Ref.: HOG123
context_page_description: The Irish Free State offensive of July–September 1922 was the decisive military stroke of the Irish Civil War. It was carried out by the National Army of the newly created Irish Free State against anti-treaty strongholds in the south and southwest of Ireland.
  At the beginning of the Civil War in June 1922, the Irish Free State government, composed of the leadership faction who had accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty, held the capital city of Dublin, where its armed forces were concentrated and some other areas of the midlands and north. The new National Army was composed of those units of the Irish Republican Army loyal to them, plus recent recruits, but was, at the start of the war, still relatively small and poorly armed.
  Much of the rest of the country, particularly the south and west, was outside of its control and in the hands of the anti-Treaty elements of the IRA, who did not accept the legitimacy of the new state and who asserted that the Irish Republic, created in 1919, was the continuing legitimate all-island state.
context_section_description: In Limerick, the outbreak of the war saw the city already occupied by both pro and anti-treaty factions. The anti-treaty IRA, largely composed of Liam Forde's Mid-Limerick Brigade and commanded by Liam Lynch, held four military barracks and most of the town. The Free State forces in the city consisted of the pro-Treaty First Western Division of the IRA under Michael Brennan and the Fourth Southern Division under Commandant General Donochadh O'Hannigan. They held the Customs House, the Jail, the Courthouse, Williams Street RIC Barracks, and Cruises Hotel. They also held the Athlunkard bridge located outside of Limerick which provided a secure means of bringing reinforcements.
  Fighting broke out between them on 11 July 1922, when the first Free State reinforcements arrived from Dublin. At 7 p.m. on 11 July, the National Army opened fire on the Republican garrison holding the Ordnance Barracks. Liam Lynch left Limerick when the fighting broke out and transferred his headquarters to Clonmel.
  On 17 July, General Eoin O'Duffy arrived with 150 Free State reinforcements including a Whippet Rolls Royce armoured car, 2 Lancia armoured cars, 4 trucks with 400 rifles, 10 Lewis machine guns, 400 grenades, ammunition and an 18-pounder cannon. The 18-pounder field gun was used on 19 July to batter the Strand Barracks, which was under the command of captain Connie McNamara, into surrender.
  After three days of street fighting, after midnight on 21 July, the Republicans set the Artillery (also called the ordnance barracks), castle barracks and New Barracks on fire and evacuated Limerick city. Despite the intensive street fighting in Limerick, the casualties of the combatants were relatively light; 19 bodies were left in the city morgue, twelve of whom were civilians and seven Free State soldiers. Another 87 were wounded. The Republican dead were reported in the press as thirty killed but they admitted only five. Limerick Prison, designed to hold 120 people, contained 800 prisoners by November. Following the fall of Limerick the anti treaty forces retreated through Patrickswell towards Kilmallock. There, in the Kilmallock-Bruff-Bruree triangle, would be seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
caption: Troops in Limerick during July 1922
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