Cathal Brugha

Extract from RIA Dictonary of Irish Biography by James Quinn

Brugha strongly declined membership of the delegation selected to negotiate with the British government in September 1921, preferring to remain unknown should the talks fail and fighting recommence. While the negotiations proceeded, de Valera attempted to bring republican hardliners such as Brugha and Austin Stack (qv) around to his concept of ‘external association’ with the British commonwealth, which Brugha was grudgingly prepared to tolerate. He strongly opposed the treaty and spoke passionately against it in the dáil (7 January 1922). He claimed that the treaty was ‘national suicide’ since it meant surrendering the independent republic declared in 1916 and ratified in 1919. ...

After the dáil approved the treaty, Brugha was replaced as minister for defence by Mulcahy. In March 1922 he became a vice-president of the anti-treaty Cumann na Poblachta, and in these months often restrained extreme republicans. At the anti-treaty IRA conference of 26–7 March he opposed proposals to stage an immediate military coup and to attack British soldiers who had not yet evacuated, but he later argued at a public meeting in Navan in April that the army was bound by its oath to the republic and was justified in temporarily assuming the functions of government. He took no part in negotiating the electoral pact of 20 May, claiming that by this stage he was ‘sick of politics’, and wished only to see both sides unite and mount an expedition to defend embattled northern nationalists. On 16 June he was elected TD for Waterford–Tipperary East, coming third in a five-seat constituency. When the shelling of the Four Courts started the civil war (28 June), he reported for duty to the Hammam hotel in Upper O'Connell Street, which with the Gresham and Granville hotels had been taken over by anti-treatyites. The hotels soon came under heavy fire and by 5 July were untenable. Most of the defenders surrendered, but Brugha fought on. With the Granville ablaze, he charged into the street that now bears his name, firing a pistol, and was shot in the thigh and seriously wounded. He died 7 July 1922 in the Mater hospital, Dublin, and was buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin cemetery.