Between Two Hells

In December 1921, five months after a truce between the IRA and British Crown Forces, Sinn Fein negotiators signed a compromise treaty with representatives of the British government. It created the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion within the British empire, for the twenty-six counties of southern Ireland. Its terms generated turmoil within the republican movement and the country and in June 1922 Ireland collapsed into a cruel civil war, ripping Sinn Fein, the IRA and its female wing Cumann na mBan, local communities and families asunder. While the body count suggests it was far…