page_title: Soloheadbeg ambush
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Soloheadbeg ambush / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Dan Breen police notice
context_page_description: The Soloheadbeg ambush took place on 21 January 1919, when members of the Irish Volunteers ambushed Royal Irish Constabulary officers who were escorting a consignment of gelignite explosives at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. Two RIC officers were killed and their weapons and the explosives were seized. The Volunteers acted on their own initiative and had not sought authorisation for their action. As it happened on the same day that the revolutionary Irish parliament first met and declared Ireland's independence, it is often seen as the first engagement of the Irish War of Independence.
context_section_description: The ambush would later be seen as the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. The British government declared South Tipperary a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act two days later. There was strong condemnation from the Catholic Church in Ireland. The parish priest of Tipperary Town called the dead officers "martyrs to duty".
  A meeting of the Executive of the Irish Volunteers took place shortly thereafter. On 31 January, An t-Óglach (the official publication of the Irish Volunteers) stated that the formation of Dáil Éireann "justifies Irish Volunteers in treating the armed forces of the enemy – whether soldiers or policemen – exactly as a National Army would treat the members of an invading army".
  In February 1919 at a Brigade meeting in Nodstown Tipperary, Brigade officers drafted a proclamation (signed by Seamus Robinson as O/C) ordering all British military and police forces out of South Tipperary and, if they stayed they would be held to have "forfeited their lives".  GHQ refused to sanction the proclamation and demanded it not be publicly displayed. Despite this it was still posted in several places in Tipperary.
  In order to avoid capture, Breen, Treacy, Hogan and the other participants were forced to stay on the move for the following months, often hiding in the barns and attics of sympathisers.
caption: A wanted poster for Dan Breen.
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