The Irish Free State and the National Army, 1922-24

This account of the National Army during the Irish civil war tells its story from the divides created in the Republican movement by the Anglo-Irish Treaty to the development of a new military organisation capable of upholding the Treaty provisions and facilitating the establishment of a new state.

The National Army is largely overlooked in modern studies of both the Irish Defence Forces and the IRA. Its brief two-year existence helped lay the foundation of a new Irish state, but its broader ...