My two favourite authors re the Easter Rising, War of Independence and Civil War are appearing on a podcast that's just out, focusing on their first book "When The Clock Struck in 1916", with a good mention of Max Caulfield's book "The Easter Rebellion".
It's a long one but worth the listen :
A bit of an overlap with Part 1.
One of the officers in the newly created 21st Lancers who
took part in the "shock action" cavalry charge at Omdurman[1] and
awarded a VC for bravery for trying to rescue the mortally wounded Lt Robert Grenfell
was Lt Raymond de Montmorency[2][3].
Montmorency would be killed during the Boer War leading an
irregular unit he founded, the Montmorency Scouts[4]. In turn, Grenfell’s
brother would earn one of the first VCs of the First World War with the 9th
Lancers[5]. Serving in South Africa at the time as Raymond de Montmorency was
his cousin, Hervey de Montmorency[6], a member of the irregular Rhodesian
Volunteers[7].
Whilst Erskine Childers would be on his yacht Asgard[8]
bringing obsolete black powder 1871 Mausers to Howth, County Dublin in 1914,
Hervey de Montmorency would take part in the smaller, more secretive landing at
Kilcoole in County Wicklow aboard the yacht Chotah[9] owned by Sir Thomas
Myles[10].
The forebear of the aforementioned de Montmorency's, Reymond
Hervey de Montmorency, was one of those advocating for the introduction of
lancers to British service[11], writing an 1820 publication proposing
regulations and training for lancers[12]. During the Napoleonic War and prior
to a name change, de Montmorency had served as Redmond Morres. Captured in
April 1811[13][14], he was apparently able to study the working of Polish or
French Lancers (Uhlans/ Chevau-Légers Lanciers). Napoleon had created nine
lancer regiments in a Decree issued on the 18th June 1811[15]; it is
not clear which unit de Montmorency would have been able to study.
In 1816, four British light dragoon (mounted infantry) regiments
were selected for conversion to lancers with 9th, 12th,
16th and 19th Light Dragoons becoming the 9th, 12th,
16th and 19th Lancers. The 16th Lancers would
arrive in Dublin in April 1816 and be issued their lances shortly afterwards[16].
A century later, on the 24th April 1916, a mixed
group of 5th and 12th Lancers, would be fired on in
Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street)[17]. While the
Dublin Metropolitan Police were unarmed, the Royal Irish Constabulary during
the Rising carried carbines remodelled from Boer war Lee-Enfield and
Lee-Metford rifles, declared obsolete by the War Office in 1904. The carbines
were upgraded to fit the obsolete 1888 pattern bayonet and fired obsolete .303
Mark VI ammunition.
Sent in to contain the Easter Rising was General Sir John
Grenfell Maxwell, a veteran of the Sudan and Boer wars, and relative of the
Grenfell brothers[18]. Amongst the modern technology sent to Dublin and
available to General Maxwell were a number of Rolls-Royce armoured cars armed
with Maxim/Vickers machine guns.
In 1928, shortly after the death of Douglas Haig, lances
would finally be taken out of British front line service. Horses would start to
disappear too, with the 11th Hussars and 12th Lancers
being the first cavalry units to be mechanised with armoured cars[19].
A century later, the British Army retains obsolete names with
units still carrying the designation lancers and undertaking cosplay with
lances[20].
While it seems a good idea to move obsolete military weapons
and ammunition to paramilitary police to give a new lease of life to equipment,
it does raise the question as to why ammunition deemed too uncivilised to use
against your enemies’ soldiers is ok to use against your own civilian
population.
Obsolescence did not cause the mounted infantry/dragoons to
be re-armed and re-named in 1816 (other units would become lancers later and be
renamed too). The British were on the winning side of the Napoleonic wars when
they had no lancers in their order of battle.
Like the London tower block that carried forward the Grenfell
family name, did the British bolt on a capability that made it look like they
were moving forward but actually created more problems than it solved? Not
obsolescent, just unnecessary. Could the British have won their subsequent
battles and campaigns without lancers?
The British Army is currently running a number of projects
to replace some of its aging weapons and it will be interesting to see the
outcomes[21]. The Gimpy has now been in service since 1961; beating the 56
years of service of the Vickers machine gun in the British Army (1912-1968).
[1] National Army Museum. "The 21st Empress of India's
Lancers. A Memento of the Famous Charge at Omdurman Sept 2nd 1898".
https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1968-06-7-1.
[2] Government of Canada. "Raymond de
Montmorency".
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/people-and-stories/raymond-de-montmorency.
[3] VC and GC Association. "Raymond Harvey Lodge Joseph
de Montmorency VC".
https://vcgca.org/our-people/profile/1835/Raymond-Harvey-Lodge-Joseph-de-MONTMORENCY.
[4] Anglo-Boer War.com. "Montmorency's Scouts". https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/south-african-units/montmorencys-scouts.
[5] VC and GC Association. “Francis Octavus Grenfell VC”. https://vcgca.org/our-people/profile/179/Francis-Octavus--GRENFELL.
[6] Grant, Robert. "Hervey Guy Francis Edward de
Montmorency, DSO". https://theauxiliaries.com/men-alphabetical/men-m/montmorency/montmorency.html.
[7] Anglo-Boer War.com. "Rhodesian Volunteers".
https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/south-african-units/rhodesian-volunteers.
[8] National Museum of Ireland. "Asgard: From Gunrunning
to Recent Conservation".
https://www.museum.ie/en-ie/museums/decorative-arts-history/exhibitions/the-asgard.
[9] Martin, F X. The Howth Gun Running".
https://www.rte.ie/documents/news/fx-martin-on-the-howth-gunrunning.pdf.
[10] Grace, Pierce. "Trinity College Dublin
Alumni. Sir Thomas Myles (1857-1937), M.B., B.Ch. (1881)".
https://www.tcd.ie/medicine/alumni/alumni-stories/thomas-myles/.
[11] British Empire website. "Reymond Hervey de
Montmorency".
https://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/9thlancersmontmorency.htm.
[12] de Montmorency, Reymond H. "Proposed Rules and
Regulations for the Exercise and Maneuvers of the Lance".
https://books.google.fr/books?id=bORhAAAAcAAJ&hl=fr&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
[13] Brown, Steve. “Register of British Officer Prisoners Held at Verdun 1804-1813”. https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/Britain/Miscellaneous/c_POWsatVerdun.html.
[14].Barrett, Charles R B. “History of the XIII. Hussars Volume 1 and Volume 2”. https://archive.org/details/histxiiihussars/Vol1HistXIIIHussars/page/143/mode/2up. p. 143.
[15]. Bukhari, Emir and McBride, Angus. “Napoleon’s Dragoons and Lancers”. p. 18.
[16] Graham, Henry. “History of the Sixteenth, the Queen's, Light Dragoons (Lancers), 1759 to 1912”. https://archive.org/details/history16thlancers/page/n101/mode/2up. p. 67-68.
[17] National Library of Ireland 1916 Exhibition. “Casualties. Insurgents, soldiers, and police. Lancers. Killed, Died of Wounds, or Wounded.” https://www.nli.ie/1916/exhibition/en/content/casualties/insurgents/img/0286.jpg. p. 49.
[18] Dictionary of Irish Biography. “Maxwell, Sir John Grenfell”. https://www.dib.ie/biography/maxwell-sir-john-grenfell-a5532.
[19] Upton, Peter. “The Cherrypickers. 11th Hussars (Prince Albert’s Own) 1715 to 1969”.
[20] UK Ministry of Defence. “The
Royal Lancers (Queen Elizabeths' Own)”. https://www.army.mod.uk/learn-and-explore/about-the-army/corps-regiments-and-units/royal-armoured-corps/royal-lancers/.
[21] Army Technology. “UK plan to
withdraw L7A2 machine gun in 2035”. https://www.army-technology.com/news/uk-plan-to-withdraw-l7a2-machine-gun-in-2035/.
This is part 1 of a text put together for a question raised in a course underway on military history re the Boer war and obsolesence. As usual, I have wandered off topic as I follow threads I'm interested in. The topic used the foreword and Chapter 1 of Erskine Childers anti-cavalry book “War and the Arme Blanche” as the starting point. Part 2 is more to the point and will be what I end up handing in.
Following interest in the Polish/French lancers of the
Napoleonic Wars, 4 British light dragoon regiments were selected for conversion
to lancers with 9th, 12th, 16th and 19th Light
Dragoons becoming the 9th, 12th, 16th and 19th
Lancers. The 16th would arrive in Dublin in April 1816 and be issued
their lances shortly afterwards[1].
One hundred years later the phrase “The Lancers are Coming” would
be heard in Dublin on the opening day of the Easter Rising as Irish Volunteers
heading to the General Post Office were caught crossing the street [2].
With a marked change of technology, we have recently seen
that the B1 bombers (aka Lancers) of the USAF are now going from UK shores[3]. Meanwhile,
long after the retirement of lances, there is still an element of lancer
cosplay within the British Army[4], echoing
Childers comment about “the stubborn adherence to tradition that they have not
had the good sense to abandon”[5].
When the 11th Hussars and 12th Lancers
put aside their horses in 1928 to become motorized armoured car regiments, they
did not follow the 1816 (plus 1858 and 1897) pattern of changing names to reflect their
new function but retained their old obsolete names.
Having taken time out from his job at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster to volunteer for service in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War, Erskine Childers would be a key participant in the 1914 gun running operation, bringing obsolete black powder cartridge firing German 1871 Mauser rifles (aka Howth Mausers) to arm the Irish Volunteers. He would be aligned with others awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal who would be working for Irish independence e.g. Sir Roger Casement and Robert Monteith, and those who had been pro-Boer e.g. Arthur Griffith and John MacBride (commissioned a Major by Paul Kruger 2nd October 1899[6]). The Fianna Commando would attack the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park as one of the first actions of the Easter Rising[7]. Boer war veteran Lt Gerald Neilan would be killed leading an element of the 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers into Dublin city centre and Boer war cavalry veteran John Walsh and his brother-in-law William O’Neill would be amongst the 16 non-combatants murdered by soldiers of the South Staffordshire Regiment at North King Street[8].
John MacBride[9],
commander of the Boer 1st Irish Brigade, would stand for election as
an MP, missing out by a small margin. Arthur Lynch, commander of the Boer 2nd
Irish Brigade would be elected MP for Galway North[10]
and arrested on a charge of high treason[11]. The
majority of ordinary Irish soldiers on either side of the Boer conflict would
not have been eligible to vote in UK elections; ditto those who served in WW1,
and in the case of Northern Ireland voting remained out of reach for some of the population/members of the British army until after 1969.
Amongst the first casualties of the Easter Rising shot at
using the obsolete “Howth Mausers” were a mixed group of 5th and 12th
Lancers, fired on in Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) on the 24th
April 1916[12]. While the Dublin
Metropolitan Police were generally unarmed, the Royal Irish Constabulary during
the Rising carried carbines remodelled from Boer war Lee-Enfield and Lee-Metford
rifles, declared obsolete by the War Office in 1904. The carbines were upgraded
to fit the obsolete 1888 pattern bayonet and fired obsolete .303 Mark VI
ammunition.
Eamon Bulfin, referenced by Desmond Ryan in the item re “The
Lancers are Coming”, was a cousin of Boer War veteran General Sir Edward Bulfin[13]. General
Bulfin sold his property in Dublin to James and Eoin MacNeill in February 1916[14].
It was from this property that Eoin MacNeill issued countermanding orders
trying to stop the Easter Rising[15].
Left behind in South Africa having been mortally wounded at Colesberg on 1st
January1900, was another cousin, Farrier Sergeant John Bulfin of the Rimington
Guides[16][17];
formerly no 3157, Corporal Shoeing Smith of the 4th Dragoon Guards,
commemorated on the Boer War Memorial in Uitenhage in South Africa[18].
Eamon Bulfin’s sister Catalina would marry Sean MacBride,
son of Major John MacBride.
[1] Graham, Henry. “History of
the Sixteenth, the Queen's, Light Dragoons (Lancers), 1759 to 1912”. https://archive.org/details/history16thlancers/page/n101/mode/2up.
p. 67-68.
[2] RTE 1916. “The Lancers Are
Coming”. https://1916.rte.ie/relevant-places/smash-the-windows-you-bloody-fools/.
[3] Gardner, Frank. BBC News. “What prompted the US bombers to leave RAF Fairford?”. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck87z09xe82qo.
[4] The Royal Lancers. https://theroyallancers.org/.
[5] Childers, Erskine. “War
and the Arme Blanche”. p. 3.
[6] Jordan, Anthony J. “Boer
War to Easter Rising. The Writings of John MacBride”. p. 15.
[7] O’Neill, Hugo. Bureau of
Military History 1913-21, Witness Statement No 1377. https://www.militaryarchives.ie/uploads/bmh/BMH_WS_1377_IO.pdf.
p.12.
[8] Irish War Memorials. “North
King Street Massacre Memorial #1070”. https://irishwarmemorials.ie/memorial/north-king-street-massacre-memorial-1070/.
[9] Dictionary of Irish
Biography. “John MacBride”. https://www.dib.ie/biography/macbride-john-a5108.
[10] Dictionary of Irish
Biography. “Arthur Lynch”. https://www.dib.ie/biography/lynch-arthur-alfred-a4931.
[11] Hansard. 12
June 1902 vol 109. “Arrest of Mr. Arthur Lynch, M. P.”. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1902/jun/12/arrest-of-mr-arthur-lynch-m-p.
[12] National Library of Ireland 1916 Exhibition. “Casualties.Insurgents, soldiers and police. Lancers. Killed, Died of Wounds, or Wounded.” https://www.nli.ie/1916/exhibition/en/content/casualties/insurgents/img/0286.jpg. p. 49.
[13] Powell, John. “Haig’s
Tower of Strength. General Sir Edward Bulfin. Ireland’s Forgotten General”. p.151-153.
[14] Powell. p. 3.
[15] MacNeill, Eoin. “Countermanding
Order”. https://www.museum.ie/collections/collection/object-45006/.
[16] Stirling, John. “The Colonials
in South Africa 1899-1902”. https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/colonialsinsouth00stiruoft/colonialsinsouth00stiruoft.pdf.p. 150-160.
[17] Royal Armouries. “Underwood
and Underwood Stereoscopic photograph - Remington Scouts enjoying lunch in a
Boer home”. https://images.royalarmouries.org/asset/41155/.
[18] Uitenhage War Memorial. https://artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes_mob.php?bldgid=12520.
One of my background topics of interest is the Danish made Madsen machine gun, bouight by some British colonial units in Africa pre WW1 (under the name Rexer) with later models of Madsens still in use in Brazil today.
A YouTube video with an outline of the workings of the Madsen can be seen here and the gun is covered by Forgotten Weapons and C&R Arsenal.
I was fortunate to meet another Madsen enthusiast at the Vickers Machine Gun Collection and Research Association exhibition at Bisley this weekend (2nd to 5th October 2026). This will prompt a review of material I have already and hopefully prompt more questions and research (I'm just looking again at "Rommel and Caporetto" by John and Eileen Wilks to check on the Germans use of the Madsen in this battle).
One question I have relates to the machine guns that were transported on the Libau/Aud/Castro for the Easter Rising and sent to the bottom of the ocean when Captain Spindler scuttled the ship. The story generally is that there were 10 machine guns in the cargo but nothing published appears to mention the type of gun. The general assumption appears to be that these were Russian M1910 Maxim machine guns.
These are very heavy and bulky weapons that need transportation, training and tools to maintain the gun, load the ammunition belts etc
I can't help but speculate if the guns were Russian Madsens. Several thousand were made by the Russians and would potentially have been in the haul of weapons captured by the Germans in the early part of the war. Germany would press many Madsens into use in what they would term Muskette Battalions and these would feature in the Somme in 1916 and later in Italy. Lack of parts etc would see them eventually being replaced by captured British Lewis guns.
The more man portable, magazine fed Madsens could have been of more useful to the Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising than Maxim M1910s.
At some point I hope an archaelogical dive of the wreck or paperwork from German archives will identify the guns on the Libau/Aud/Castro.
There are a couple of books in the VMGCRA collection that refer to the Madsen.
At the Bisley Exhibition a 1910 book by Captain Applin was on display. Applin references the Madsen in his thoughts on how the British might use machine guns. This book (archive ref no V10785) has been digitized and available to view via the VMGCRA Patreon service.
Also available is a 1942 Small Arms Manual by Lt Col J A Barrow which has a nice chapter on the Madsen (and many othere WW2 weapons). This booklet (archive ref no V10170) has also been digitized and is available via the VMGCRA Patreon service.
