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Cork's Civil War scar
The Battle for Cork tells the full story of the battle for Cork city, showing all the chaos, bravery, and misery of one of the largest engagements of the Irish Civil War and the final defeat of republican Cork.
John Borgonovo Battle for Cork: July-August 1922. (Military History of the Irish Civil War Series), The Mercier Press, 2011.
By the sixth week of the Irish Civil War, all eyes turned to Cork, as republican forces were increasingly pushed back into their Munster stronghold. At 2 a.m. Tuesday 8 August, Emmet Dalton and 450 National Army soldiers landed at Passage West, in one of the most famous surprise attacks in Irish military history.
This daring amphibious assault knocked the famed Cork IRA onto its heels, but it fought back stubbornly and three more days of fighting in the Passage West, Rochestown and Douglas areas were required for the Free State forces to secure the city. This loss forced the IRA to fall back on its War of Independence guerrilla tactics and set the stage for Michael Collins' final fatal visit to his home county.
For the first time, The Battle for Cork tells the full story of the battle for Cork city, showing all the chaos, bravery, and misery of one of the largest engagements of the Irish Civil War and the final defeat of republican Cork.
Author Information Dr John Borgonovo is a historian and is currently a lecturer in University College Cork. The author of Spies, Informers, and the Anti-Sinn Fein Society: The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1920–1921, he has written extensively on the Irish revolution in Cork city.