1916 (45 page)

Without wishing to dispute the issue, according to Diarmuid Lynch Joseph Plunkett
was
a member of the IRB as was Pearse. In such flexible times, membership of the IRB may sometimes have been confused with being sworn into the conspiracy to take part in the Rising. Without disputing every detail of the statement, Dr McGee’s general thesis has validity. The leadership and participants in the 1916 Rising represented a much broader tradition in Irish society, one which encompassed devout members of the Catholic church, other Christian churches and the Jewish faith. Paradoxically, there were strong Catholics who were also members of the IRB and believed that they had been automatically excommunicated, cut off from the church and living in a state of mortal sin.

In January 1916 Michael Collins had returned from London to work full-time for the revolution. He was a regular visitor to the Plunkett house at Larkfield. Tommy Dillon, husband of Geraldine Plunkett, was employed as a bomb-maker. He was helped by Rory O’Connor. The house was a virtual headquarters for the revolutionaries who came and went without being noticed.

Mimi Plunkett, another sister, twice went to the USA in 1916, carrying information on the forthcoming uprising. She met John Devoy in February and told him that the date of the Rising was Easter Sunday. That was to be conveyed to the German authorities, together with a request for the despatch of German officers to help in the Rising and a landing of arms not earlier than Easter Saturday. Devoy sent news to Berlin that the arms could be landed between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday. Mimi was sent straight back to New York. She carried a message that the Germans were to be told that the arms had to be landed before the night of Easter Sunday, 23 April. She succeeded in doing so.
⁴²

In the spring of 1916 Count Plunkett was invited by the British authorities to become a director of the National Gallery as well as of the National Museum, provided he and his family stayed away from politics. This would have been the realisation of a lifelong ambition, but the count politely refused. He was instead made another offer. He was sworn into the IRB by his son, Joe, in March 1916. It was, to say the least, something of a
contradiction for a papal count to have become a member of a revolutionary oath-bound society. Why did Joe Plunkett take this unusual step?

Geraldine Plunkett Dillon wrote in her memoir that Casement had sent reports from Germany that the British were trying to influence the Holy See to act against the Irish revolutionary nationalist movement. That would result in either a direct papal condemnation of Irish radical separatists or an instruction from Rome to the Irish hierarchy to condemn ‘as unjustifiable any political action in Ireland which was taken without the authorisation of the Irish party’. Minds were further concentrated on 31 March 1916 when the press carried reports that the British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, was visiting Rome.
⁴³
He was received by Pope Benedict XV on 1 April. Cardinal Gasquet’s diary records that Asquith also met Cardinal Sévin on that day, and that the prime minister was ‘entirely in favour of continuing the English mission to the Holy See’.
⁴⁴
Sir Henry
Howard’s presence in Rome was a continuing source of concern to Irish nationalists in the city.

Those developments, together with the warnings from Casement, caused great anxiety in revolutionary circles in Dublin. Joe Plunkett, in response, gave his father orders to go
post haste
to Bern and thence to Rome. His mission was two-fold. First, Plunkett had his father memo-rise a letter to Casement which he was to send to Berlin while
en route
.
It repeated the message that Mimi Plunkett had taken to Devoy in New York, advising Casement not to allow German arms to be landed before Easter Sunday. There was again a request to have German officers sent to take part in the Rising. Joe Plunkett and the IRB also wanted a submarine sent to Dublin Bay. The second part of the count’s mission was to proceed from Bern to Rome for an audience with Pope Benedict XV. His son had obliged him to memorise the contents of a letter in French to be written upon arrival in Rome and delivered to the pope.
⁴⁵
(The text of this letter is given in an appendix to this paper)

The count set out from Ireland about 29 March 1916.
⁴⁶
He arrived in Bern about 5 April and sent a letter to Casement in Berlin via the German legation. It gave the date of the Rising as Easter Sunday, sought a large consignment of arms to be landed in Tralee Bay not later than dawn on Easter Monday, said it was imperative to send German officers, and requested a German submarine for ‘Dublin harbour’. It ended: ‘The time is very short but is necessarily so for we must act of our own choice and delays are dangerous.’
⁴⁷
It was signed ‘a friend of James Malcolm’ (Joseph Plunkett’s alias) and, at the top, it had the word
Aisling
,
his authenticating word. The letter gave Easter Sunday as the date of the Rising, called for arms and German officers and a submarine in Dublin Bay. The letter delivered to Casement the following day in Berlin was an exact copy of the one carried by Mimi to New York. Casement mistakenly thought that it was Joe, rather than his father, who was in Bern.
⁴⁸
His reply confirmed that 20,000 rifles and 10 machine guns were being sent. The request for a submarine and officers had been turned down. Count Plunkett was only told about the sending of the arms. He was not informed by the German legation about the refusal of the other requests. Replying to Casement on 11 April, Count Plunkett pressed Casement on the sending of German officers and the submarine:

The effect of the presence of German officers and of a German submarine (which otherwise might not seem too important) in Irish waters assisting us would be very great. I may add that the Supreme Council of the Irish Volunteers desire to associate Germany in this marked way with the liberation of Ireland.

He added: ‘If I could I would discuss with you many matters which are difficult for both of us.’ He said he had ‘to leave Berne today for Rome’, 11 April.
⁴⁹

There was a marked contrast between Plunkett’s two assignments. In Bern, he told the Germans, through Casement, of the willingness of the Irish to become belligerents in the war. He had to keep that side of his mission secret from Pope Benedict XV, who was intent on trying to bring about peace and an end to the hostilities.

What were the diplomatic objectives of Count Plunkett’s mission to the Holy See? Firstly, he was seeking to prevent a papal
démarche
condemning the Rising. As a corollary, he wanted to ensure that the Irish hierarchy would not receive a directive to speak out against any such action. Any intervention from the Vatican in Irish politics in April 1916 – direct or indirect – would have been most unwelcome to the leaders of the Rising. That position united leaders who were agnostics, anti-clerics and Marxists with those who were devout and orthodox Catholics. Hard-line revolutionaries of any persuasion did not want any interference by the Vatican in Irish politics at that juncture.

Secondly, the count was to explain to the pope the theological justification for an uprising and the Catholic ideas and values on which it was based. Being confident enough to announce to Benedict XV the actual
date of the Rising was a sign that the Irish revolutionaries wished to place their trust in him. They felt confident that the news would not leak to hostile sources.

Thirdly, the count was to seek a papal blessing for those about to go ‘out’. That was of significance. Irish Volunteers taking part in the Rising had sworn an oath to the organisation. Yet they were to undermine the authority of their leader, Eoin MacNeill, by refusing to obey his countermanding order. Members of the IRB, moreover, were in an oath-bound society, which brought with it a penalty of automatic excommunication. Did that place a number of the participants in a state of mortal sin? The answer was almost certainly yes, or so many believed. It might be too much, however, to expect a papal blessing for those about to strike.

This view may be too heavily influenced by hindsight. Very few people would have known about the count’s visit to Bern, and still fewer about his journey to meet the pope. The former had to do with Casement and German engagement. That would have had to be the subject of some discussion with an inner circle of conspirators. The primary purpose of his mission to the Holy See might have been covered by a story that he was on a pilgrimage to the Vatican. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this exercise. Benedict XV was known as a pope of peace. Since the outbreak of war he had protested against inhuman methods of warfare and tried to alleviate suffering. The Vatican opened a bureau for reuniting soldiers with their families. Switzerland was persuaded to receive soldiers from both sides suffering from tuberculosis. The pope had pursued a policy of strict neutrality from the outset of the war. The unresolved ‘Roman question’ left the Holy See in an ambiguous and legal limbo within the Italian state, then at war on the side of the British. There were persistent accusations from the belligerent countries that the Vatican’s neutral stance was in fact very one-sided.
⁵⁰
In particular there were repeated suggestions that the pope was pro-German. Against that background, it would have been most imprudent for the head of the neutral Vatican to hold extensive talks with an emissary whose primary mission was to ensure that German arms and men were landed in Ireland in time for use in a military venture. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope had no prior warning of what the count intended to raise with him. It was a routine private audience, nothing more and nothing less. Even the count, naïve as he most certainly proved to be, must have been sufficiently knowledgeable about the policy of Vatican neutrality to keep any details about German involvement from him.

Plunkett, however, intended to tell the head of a neutral Vatican that rebellion was about to break out in British territory and to give the date of the event as Easter Sunday. Had that become known in London it most certainly would have compromised the Vatican’s neutral stance. The Holy See was known to have a large number of actively pro-British members of the curia. Setting the issue of the Vatican’s neutrality to one side, was it wise to give the pope the actual date of the Rising? That information might either be deliberately leaked to the British or slip out inadvertently and then fall into the hands of the ‘enemy’.

Count Plunkett, who certainly was naïve in the realm of Vatican diplomacy, knew Italy and France very well. I have found no evidence to show that Eoin MacNeill was consulted at any time in the planning of his twin mission to Bern and to the Holy See. He was deliberately kept in the dark because of his opposition to the Rising. Joe Plunkett, and others, usurped the authority of the chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers. Their objective was to make doubly sure that the message sent through New York for the German government would also be sent again from Bern.

Plunkett left Bern no earlier than the late afternoon of 11 April, probably arriving in Rome on the 12th or 13th. Dr aan de Wiel, who has searched the archives of the Holy See, has not located an official Vatican minute detailing what was said when the count and the pope met. There is, however, a relatively full account of the audience in Geraldine Plunkett Dillon’s memoirs. Based on her conversations with her father many years after the event, it reveals that the two men spoke in French. Plunkett told the pope of the plans for an insurrection and requested a papal blessing for the participants: ‘Pa told me that the pope sent them his blessing while the tears of sympathy poured down his face and he said
“Les pauvres hommes, les pauvres hommes.”
’
⁵¹
Dr aan de Wiel’s account states that the pope listened carefully, appeared worried and, having become convinced of the inevitability of the Rising, blessed the rebels. Dr aan de Wiel also found a copy of a letter in Plunkett’s handwriting in the archives of the Vatican. It, too, was in French. In it the date of the uprising was clearly stated:
‘l’insurrection doit commencer le soir de jour de Pâque prochain’
.
⁵²
The text set out the theological justification for rebellion and spoke of the Irish being forced to stage an uprising. Plunkett advised the pope that home rule would only be introduced together with an amending bill that would meet the demands of the unionist minority. Irish-Americans had promised a consignment of arms, and aid had also been pledged by the Germans. Eoin MacNeill was given full credit for having authorised and sanctioned
Count Plunkett’s mission: the letter stated that the count had been sent as a delegate on behalf of the
‘Président et du Conseil Suprême des Volontaires d’Irlande (troupes nationaux), M. le Président (le prof. Jean MacNeill) m’a donné un document adressé a Votre Sainteté, que les exigeances de l’état present m’ont oblige de laisser en Irlande’
.
Count Plunkett had handwritten the text and signed it:
‘Le comte Georges Plunkett’
.
⁵³

But did MacNeill know about the mission and authorise the use of his name in a letter to the pope? ‘One can hardly imagine devout Catholics such as Pearse, a daily communicant, and Count Plunkett misleading Benedict XV,’ concludes Dr aan de Wiel.
⁵⁴
I am not so certain. Nothing was going to be left to chance by the IRB radicals. There was too much at stake.

Count Plunkett broke his silence on the details of his papal audience in 1933. MacNeill took the opportunity to clarify his position and answer the question posed above. Count Plunkett’s statement appeared in the
Irish Press
on the same day that Éamon de Valera, now the president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, was in Rome to be received in audience by Pius XI. The paper’s front-page headline on 26 May ran across seven columns, and read: ‘A pope who blessed the men of Easter Week’. Another headline ran: ‘Count Plunkett makes moving disclosure’. The story spoke of ‘one of the most stirring disclosures ever given to the Irish people. It is that when the Easter Week Rising was decided upon, the executive of the Irish Volunteers, acting as the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, sent the count as envoy to the pope – then Benedict XV.’ It continued: