Irish Civil War
1922–1923 conflict between factions of the IRA / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Irish Civil War (Irish: Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann; 28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923)[5] was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Empire.
| Irish Civil War | |||||||||
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| Part of the Irish revolutionary period | |||||||||
.jpg) National Army soldiers armed with Lewis machine guns aboard a troop transport in the Civil War | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
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Military support:  United Kingdom |
 Anti-Treaty IRA(anti-Treaty forces) | ||||||||
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| Units involved | |||||||||
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| Strength | |||||||||
| c. 15,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| c. 800–900 Irish National Army killed[1] | |||||||||
| Civilians: Unknown, estimates vary; c. 300–400 dead.[4] | |||||||||
The civil war was waged between the Provisional Government of Ireland and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Provisional Government (which became the Free State in December 1922) supported the terms of the treaty, while the anti-treaty opposition saw it as a betrayal of the Irish Republic which had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising of 1916. Many of those who fought on both sides in the conflict had been members of the IRA during the War of Independence.
The Civil War was won by the pro-treaty Free State forces, who benefited from substantial quantities of weapons provided by the British Government. The conflict may have claimed more lives than the War of Independence that preceded it, and left Irish society divided and embittered for generations. Today, two of the main political parties in the Republic of Ireland, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, are direct descendants of the opposing sides of the war.[6]