Soloheadbeg is a small townland

Townland

A townland or bally is a small geographical division of land used in Ireland. The townland system is of Gaelic origin—most townlands are believed to pre-date the Norman invasion and most have names derived from the Irish language...

, some two miles outside Tipperary Town, near Limerick Junction

Limerick Junction

Limerick Junction is an important railway station in South Tipperary, Ireland which was originally named "Tipperary Junction". Tipperary town is about two miles away to the south-east. Limerick Junction, with a cluster of pleasantly presented railway cottages and a pub, is a small hamlet...

 railway station.

The place is steeped in Irish history, for it was here that King Mahon of Thomond and his brother Brian Ború

Brian Boru

Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig, , , was an Irish king who ended the domination of the High Kingship of Ireland by the Uí Néill. Building on the achievements of his father, Cennétig mac Lorcain, and especially his elder brother, Mathgamain, Brian first made himself King of Munster, then subjugated...

 defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Solohead in 968

968

Year 968 was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.- Europe :* The Battle near Silistra occurs in the spring near the Bulgarian town of Silistra, but most probably on the modern territory of Romania.- Religion :* The Archbishopric of Magdeburg is founded.* The first Polish...

. It was also a stopping point by Dónal Cam O'Sullivan Bere, during his epic march from Dunboy Castle

Dunboy Castle

Dunboy Castle was a stronghold of the O'Sullivan Bere, a Gaelic clan leader and 'Chief of Dunboy'. The castle is located on the Beara Peninsula in south-west Ireland near the town of Castletownbere and was built to guard and defend the harbour of Berehaven...

 in west Cork to O'Rourke's Castle in Leitrim in 1603.

Soloheadbeg Ambush

Background and preparation

In the Irish general election of December 1918, Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...

 won a landslide victory, gaining 73 out of 105 seats (25 of these unopposed) in the British Parliament. However, in its election manifesto

Sinn Féin Manifesto 1918

Sinn Féin Manifesto for the December 1918 electionFollowing its reform in 1917, the Sinn Féin party campaigned against conscription in Ireland...

 the party had vowed to set up a separate government in Ireland rather than join in the British Parliament. At a meeting in Dublin

First Dáil

The First Dáil was Dáil Éireann as it convened from 1919–1921. In 1919 candidates who had been elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled as a unicameral, revolutionary parliament called "Dáil Éireann"...

 on 21 January 1919, Sinn Féin established an independent parliament called Dáil Éireann and declared independence

Declaration of Independence (Ireland)

The Declaration of Independence was a document adopted by Dáil Éireann, the revolutionary parliament of the Irish Republic, at its first meeting in the Mansion House, Dublin, on 21 January 1919. It followed from the Sinn Féin election manifesto of December 1918...

 from the United Kingdom.

On that same day, an ambush was carried out by Irish Volunteers

Irish Volunteers

The Irish Volunteers was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland"...

 Seán Treacy

Seán Treacy (Irish Republican)

Seán Treacy was one of the leaders of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. He helped to start the conflict in 1919 and was killed in a shootout with British troops in Talbot Street, Dublin during an aborted British Secret Service...

, Dan Breen

Dan Breen

Daniel "Dan" Breen was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In later years, he was a Fianna Fáil politician.-Background:...

, Seán Hogan

Seán Hogan

Seán Hogan was one of the leaders of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence.-Soloheadbeg:...

, Séamus Robinson, Tadhg Crowe, Paddy McCormack, Paddy O'Dwyer, Michael Ryan and Seán O'Meara (the latter two being cycle scouts). Robinson (who participated in the Easter Rising

Easter Rising

The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...

) was the organiser and Treacy (a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood

Irish Republican Brotherhood

The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century...

 since 1911) was the logistics expert.

Dáil Éireann and Sinn Féin had not been informed or consulted about the attack beforehand.

Attack

They attacked two Royal Irish Constables

Royal Irish Constabulary

The armed Royal Irish Constabulary was Ireland's major police force for most of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police controlled the capital, and the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police...

, James McDonnell and Patrick O’Connell, who were guarding two workmen transporting explosive gelignite

Gelignite

Gelignite, also known as blasting gelatin or simply jelly, is an explosive material consisting of collodion-cotton dissolved in either nitroglycerine or nitroglycol and mixed with wood pulp and saltpetre .It was invented in 1875 by Alfred Nobel, who had earlier invented dynamite...

 to a quarry. The two constables were shot dead almost immediately. Dan Breen said of the ambush:

...we took the action deliberately, having thought over the matter and talked it over between us. Treacy had stated to me that the only way of starting a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces ... The only regret that we had following the ambush was that there were only two policemen in it, instead of the six we had expected...

Aftermath

This is widely regarded as the beginning of the Irish War of Independence

Irish War of Independence

The Irish War of Independence , Anglo-Irish War, Black and Tan War, or Tan War was a guerrilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed...

, and the men acted on their own initiative to try to start a war. The British government declared South Tipperary a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act two days later.

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".

A monument was erected at the site of the ambush, and each year a ceremony of remembrance is held there.

Footnotes and References

Notes
Sources

• Richard Abbot’s “Police Casualties in Ireland (1919-1922)” (Pages 30–32) (ISBN 1856353141)