At the beginning of the Civil War in June 1922, the Irish Free State government, composed of the leadership faction who had accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty, held the capital city of Dublin, where its armed forces were concentrated and some other areas of the midlands and north.

This situation was rapidly brought to an end in July and August 1922, when the commander-in-chief of the Free State forces, Michael Collins, launched the offensive.

The civil war started in Dublin, with a week of street fighting from 28 June to 5 July 1922 in which the Free State's forces secured the Irish capital from anti-Treaty IRA troops who had occupied several public buildings.

With Dublin in pro-treaty hands, the conflict spread throughout the country, with anti-Treaty forces holding Cork, Limerick and Waterford as part of the self-styled "Munster Republic".

However, the Anti-Treaty side were not equipped to wage conventional war, lacking artillery and armoured units, both of which the Free State obtained from the British.

This meant that Liam Lynch, the Chief of Staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA, hoped to act purely on the defensive, holding the "Munster Republic" long enough to prevent the foundation of the Free State and forcing the re-negotiation of the Treaty.

[4] The leaders of the Free State government, Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, also felt that a rapid victory was essential from their point of view.

To secure the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland (Collins' ultimate aim) the government would have to demonstrate its viability by suppressing what, from its point of view, was an illegal insurrection and its control all of its sovereign territory.

Despite the intensive street fighting in Limerick, the casualties of the combatants were relatively light; 19 bodies were left in the city morgue, twelve of whom were civilians and seven Free State soldiers.

The Free State troops under Eoin O'Duffy encountered more tenacious resistance in the countryside around Kilmallock, south of Limerick city, when they tried to advance into republican held Munster.

Murphy (a former British Army officer and O'Duffy's second in command) took the town of Bruff, but his poorly motivated troops lost it again the following day and 76 of them surrendered to the Republicans.

Ships disembarked about 2,000 well equipped Free State troops into the heart of the "Munster Republic" and caused the rapid collapse of the Republican position in this province.

Paddy Daly and the Dublin Guard landed at Fenit in County Kerry on 2 August and fought their way into Tralee at the cost of 9 killed and 35 wounded.

The Free State forces rapidly occupied the towns in the county but the Republican units in Kerry survived more or less intact and would fight a determined guerrilla campaign for the remainder of the war.

[19] There was some heavy fighting at Rochestown and Douglas in which at least ten Free State and 7 Republican fighters were killed and at least 60 men on both sides were wounded,[20] before the outnumbered and outgunned anti-treaty IRA retreated into the city.

However, they did not try to continue the fighting Cork itself, partly in order to spare the civilian population, but instead burned Charles Barracks, near Kinsale, which they had been occupying, and dispersed into the countryside.

[21] The Free State landings in Munster coincided with an attempt by anti-Treaty guerrillas to isolate Dublin by destroying all the road and rail bridges leading into the city.

In leaving Fermoy, he issued an order to troops under his command to stop trying to hold fixed positions and to form flying columns to pursue guerrilla warfare.

While some of this can be put down to the Free State's advantages in arms and equipment, the Republican leadership under Liam Lynch also failed to devise any coherent military strategy, allowing their positions to be picked off one by one.

On top of this, most of the Republican fighters showed little appetite for the civil war, generally retreating before National Army attacks rather than putting up determined resistance.

In part, this shows a lack of discipline and training for conventional warfare, but there was also a general reluctance on both sides to fight against former comrades from the War of Independence.

Moreover, with the exception of county Kerry and a few other localities, the anti-treaty guerrilla campaign failed to gather momentum and by 1923, was largely reduced to small scale attacks and acts of sabotage.