The Irish Civil War

1922-1923: The war that followed independence, fought between people who had fought the previous one together.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in December 1921 and put to the Dáil, which ratified it on 7 January 1922 by sixty four votes to fifty seven. Seven votes. De Valera and the deputies who opposed it walked out, and the side that had fought the War of Independence as one movement split in two.

The sticking point is usually given as the oath of allegiance to the crown rather than partition, which was already a fact on the ground. Arthur Griffith took over as president of the Dáil and Michael Collins headed the Provisional Government from 16 January.

In April about two hundred anti-Treaty IRA men under Rory O'Connor occupied the Four Courts in Dublin. They sat there for ten weeks while the country waited. On 28 June the Provisional Government shelled the building with artillery borrowed from the departing British, and that is normally taken as the start of the war.

It was short and it was bitter. Griffith died in August. Collins was killed on 22 August in an ambush at Béal na Bláth in his own county of Cork, aged thirty one. In September the Dáil gave military courts the power to pass death sentences, and the Free State began executing prisoners, including men who had been comrades a year earlier. De Valera's side ordered its fighters to dump arms in May 1923.

The Irish for it says more than the English does. Alongside Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann you will hear Cogadh na gCarad, the war of the friends.