In the engaging 'Norman thugs' thread elsewhere, AR remarks in one context that many people would have had relatives fighting 'on the other side.'

This reminds me of a Belgian friend telling me of WW2 and having a brother as an active full time resistance fighter in the forests and another brother fighting with the Germans on the Russian front - unenforced. He said at first, post war family reunions were tense but got better later. He gave a wan smile to my questioning and said that being insular it was difficult for me to understand continentals.

Are there many recorded instances of 'divided houses?' If so was there reconciliation afterwards?

Tostig Godwinson fighting against his brothers at Stamford Bridge. As Tostig got killed and all his brothers died at Sandlake there were no difficult family reunions though.

Tim

There is Henry II, with his sons and wife in open revolt on more than one occasion. And, at times, the sons fighting against each other as well. There is often much criticism of John's later revolt against Richard when King, but he really had done nothing that Richard himself hadn't done against his own father. Being the youngest of a large family, you could possibly say that revolt was something John learnt from the cradle.

They did all reconcile eventually, to an extent anyway. As much as that argumentative family could ever be reconciled. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for though P, probably not.

The Civil War in Ireland after partition was a particularly bitter one which split families down the middle quite often. I was born into a generation already one removed from the one in which the splits developed and the wounds were often still raw, even then.

A family I know had one guy (Free Stater) who as a government soldier raided and arrested an IRA group containing his other brother. He even volunteered for firing squad duty when the younger brother was to be executed, though was refused by his superiors. In the end the younger brother's sentence was commuted to imprisonment and he was released about five years later. That kind of thing can put a severe damper on subsequent family get-togethers.

Similar to the Civil War in Ireland, the Finnish Civil War of 1918 was also bitter. In one case a tailor from Tampere was a White while his son was a Red. After the Whites won the conflict the tailor (as part of the new ruling elite) adopted his granddaughter as his own daughter citing his son's (the girl's father) time with the Red Guard as one reason why he was unfit to raise the child. The authorities agreed!

The 1960 novel 'The Uprising' by Vaino Linna draws heavily on real stories from the Finnish Civil War.

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He even volunteered for firing squad duty when the younger brother was to be executed,

I find this a very shocking statement, Nordmann. Personally I think he must have had psychiatric problems - how could you volunteer to execute one of your parents' children, no matter how devoted to a cause you were?

I presume that during the New Zealand Wars of the late 19th century there would have been planty of women who married into tribes at war with their birth ones, and I guess that would be the case in any tribal society. Not only were there Maori fighting for the crown as well as against it, but many of these skirmishes were little more than revenge attacks from one Maori iwi on another and part of on-going warfare. It was all pretty messy.

Psychiatric problems is a bit strong Caro.

I find the story sad, I think it is a very good indication of how deeply civil divides are felt, not only to a nation as a whole and the smaller community. But right down to the very heart of the family unit, so much so that members would act in ways toward each other, that under normal circumstances, wouldn't even be considered.

While it may be a frequent aspect of power struggles throughout history to find members of what could be loosely termed familes belonging to the "upper echelons" divided in terms of political allegiance, it could be argued that the equivalent divisions when they arise amongst the so-called "lower ranks" of society are not only more important historically when examined for their cause and progress, but also even at times more principled, at least if by "principled" one means motivated by loftier notions than personal or short-term advantage over others. Whereas a common feature within the former class is a motive relating to holding and securing a share of power at the highest level on the part of individuals, it is a more common feature within the latter class to find a motive related to committment to a "cause" or an ideal which - for those involved - can transcend society's normal rules and mores, including family ties, however politically or historically justified this departure from normal etiquette and behaviour might later have proven to be when retrospectively assessed.

If one takes the Irish example I stated above then the situation whereby one sibling could contemplate killing another in the context of a society deeply riven by a political separation of views which has become irreconcilable for all those concerned is not that difficult to understand, either at the personal, human level, or indeed at the idealistic level - which after all is how both parties were judging their own and the others' actions at the time. In Ireland's case the "cause" was very much one which could be described as "in-your-face" for all concerned. Partition of the island had left in its wake a huge swathe of people who to different degrees had already sacrificed much in their struggle towards a separate ideal entirely. Partition was an option belatedly imposed on the situation which none of the combatants had seriously considered beforehand. The division quickly arose therefore over how next to proceed in which two opposing views prevailed and, since the cause of the division was one which could only grow the longer it remained, accelerated therefore also the descent into bitter and bloody rivalry on both sides.

The extraordinary stresses this situation places not only on society in general but the individuals within it cannot be underestimated. While it is tempting in retrospect to dismiss the horrendous effects as evidences of "madness" or "psychiatric abnormality" a more sensible starting point for evaluation is to measure and assess the reactions of most others within that society at the time which we can see from the record were registered in response to these incidents. If, as in the case above, this reaction was typified by descriptions of such situations as being "tragic though despicable" (as opposed to simply despicable), then this is evidence of a malady that is understood by everyone to have affected all of society itself, not excluding themselves and, given this context, that certain individuals' actions, even of the most obscene form in terms of abadonment of civil norms, are understandable within it. Since a whole population cannot be described as suffering from psychiatric problems simultaneously, and since such aberrations from civil norms abounded at the time within that society, then a more intelligently framed reference is required to fully understand what happened.

What's more, the same terms of reference can then be applied, almost without adjustment, to other internecine conflicts in other times and places in order to surmise much of those conflicts' origins and conduct which the historical record may not provide or which in fact verifies when it does. Vizzer's example of the Finnish Civil War as a parallel is therefore very apt indeed. The political causes might vary but the impact they have on society can be remarkably similar. Psychology might indeed play a valuable role in analysing this cross-social trend, but not psychiatry.

Vizzer's example seems to me not just understandable in a war situation but in other times and places. It's not uncommon in family conflicts for someone to assume that whatever the other person has done in the past must be in some way immoral or illegal or wrong, even if under different circumstances they would be perfectly acceptable. And for the law or government to support them.

Killing your brother on the wrong side in warfare is quite understandable (people get in the way, or you may feel they will kill you if you're in close contact), but executing them isn't. And I don't think often happens. There's plenty of other people who can carry out such an action, so even if it seemed your duty it wouldn't be difficult to abrogate it to someone else presumably equally eager to act according to his ideals and principles. Australians in wartime wouldn't execute any of their own deserters, on the grounds they were volunteers. Would that example you gave have happened with any regularity, even in the riven times of Ireland then?

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Killing your brother on the wrong side in warfare is quite understandable (people get in the way, or you may feel they will kill you if you're in close contact), but executing them isn't.

What's not to understand? Of course it must be a very extreme example of what can happen when siblings adopt murderous attitudes to each other, but why exactly is it not understandable? The infrequency of an occurrence does not inhibit comprehension of it surely.

In this case the animosity between both was great and the older brother had already been involved in an ambush conducted most likely by a group involving the younger brother and in which some of his colleagues were killed. He himself was lucky to have survived it. His volunteering to be his brother's executioner may have been heartfelt or it may indeed have been made on the understanding that it would be refused (which it indeed was) and therefore done simply to make a point. My own point was that it was this point of his which had indeed been made regardless of whether that was the original intention or not, and that it was one well absorbed by subsequent generations within that family.

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The infrequency of an occurrence does not inhibit comprehension of it surely.

I don't quite agree with this statement in general - mothers sometimes throw their babies off cliffs and that is barely comprehensible (well, it isn't to me at all without assuming they have a mental illness), but people committing suicide for financial reasons, which seems equally wasteful and unnecessary, isn't, because it is so common. It's the same with very unusual acts of heroism - they are not really understandable to ordinary people outside the situation and without the character to do them. But even if executing your brother was more common, it would still not be comprehensible to me, I think. Though in my first post I did nearly say something like 'unless they really hated each other earlier', and you mention animosity.

And you can make a point if you can be certain it will be refused, which means it isn't really a definite action at all. (Like me offering to help my friend with her garden, when I know perfectly well she will say no. It's not a genuine offer, really.)

Presumably their parents were on one side or the other, and one child has chosen/been put in the situation to go against the family loyalties. (Unless the marriage was one between the two factions.)

If one was making a film of this circumstance, then I can imagine a brother saying something along the lines of , 'If one of us must do this then I would rather it was me. He will understand.' Sounds a mawquish sort of film situation once you imagine writing the dialogue for it - several scenarios here, aren't there?

Caro, in political differences in a family, perhaps parents are often to blame. And the politics of grown up families is often beyond parents' understanding. grief for a lost son whatever his persuasion might cut across...... fim scenario again.



I'll go to my room.

You start with a false comparison, Caro. Had it been between mothers throwing their babies off cliffs for no apparent reason and mothers who jettison their offspring into the brine for financial reasons then you would equally have had to cede two different levels of comprehension. However I would suggest both are rare events, so that one is better understood by you obviously shows that comprehensibility is not based on frequency but on how well informed you are of the motive concerned. By attributing the behaviour of the brother who was prepared to be executioner of his sibling to a psychiatric disorder then you simply admit that you do not understand the motive or simply cannot conceive of one which does not amount to being psychiatrically disordered.

I do not understand what "You can make a point if you can be certain it will be refused" actually means. And who said anything about certainty anyway? Or indeed that he would not have carried it out had it not been refused? If you know the answer to this you know more than anyone else familiar with the occasion, even him. Impugning his honesty and liking it to your mendacious offer to help someone cut their grass seems a little presumptious, I suggest.

Their parents were appalled at both their actions and never forgave either, so I am not sure what these "family loyalties" that you refer to might have had to with it one way or the other. One could say that both sons abandoned family loyalties, or one could equally posit that both sons saw their actions as being patriotic, which would have been defined in that family as an abiding principle and therefore loyalty to it was indeed a form of family loyalty.

Also, pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions could not have existed much prior to the Treaty itself, so I think you can safely rule out the possibility that their parents' marriage was one between members of either.

You also did not, as I suggested, take into account the prevailing contemporary view on the part of others towards this incident, one which mirrored many more in the intensity of animosity between close family relations at this time. It is far less judgmental and trite than your own - which either infers a greater tolerance and understanding of psychiatric illness or a greater comprehension of the actual nature of internecine conflict on their part than on yours. I imagine their opinion provides evidence of both, though the latter would have been the overriding reason behind it being both informed and compassionate.

You know a lot more about this than I do, though it is interesting to me that the parents themselves didn't seem to understand it either, if they were appalled and unforgiving. They don't seem to have had the prevailing contemporary view you talk about.

Of course he would have had to carry it out if they had said 'Yes', just as I would complete my offer if it were taken up. It's not mendacious in that sense, just in the knowledge of what the response will be, which seemed to be what you suggested was likely to this young man's offer.

But anyway what I originally said was how shocking this offer was, and it is, whatever the justification or reasons or community feelings are. There are families torn apart in wartime like this; it doesn't make it less horrifying and horrible to hear of the children of a family fighting against each other and prepared to deliberately kill each other.

It was meant to be an example of just how shocking things can get in these situations. I am glad that I at least managed to convey this much to you, even if your hypothesising reveals that you do not really understand how the circumstances that prevailed brought it to pass.

I could relate even more horrific instances of similar ilk from the same years but I think for now I'll settle for having got the "shocking" bit across.

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There are families torn apart in wartime like this; it doesn't make it less horrifying and horrible to hear of the children of a family fighting against each other and prepared to deliberately kill each other.

Which is why I started the thread. It happened in the American civil war and most others, I guess. Of course it is frequent when property and power are at stake but taking sides in loyalty to a cause is another matter. I continue to be dismayed by hearing of families split beyond reconciliation for reasons that are often unclear. Whether it is rooted in parential raising or other factors one rarely gets told. Political difference often come into it.

nordmann wrote:

If one takes the Irish example I stated above then the situation whereby one sibling could contemplate killing another in the context of a society deeply riven by a political separation of views which has become irreconcilable for all those concerned is not that difficult to understand, either at the personal, human level, or indeed at the idealistic level - which after all is how both parties were judging their own and the others' actions at the time. In Ireland's case the "cause" was very much one which could be described as "in-your-face" for all concerned.

As has been mentioned in the Tumbleweed Suite, the Dublin government has marked the centenary of the Easter Rising (albeit a calendar month and week day early). By all accounts it was a relatively balanced and inclusive affair in comparison to the 50th anniversary events of 1966. One aspect of this balance has been the recognition that Irish people fought and died on both sides during the rising. And stories have indeed emerged of individual families divided by the conflict.

One such were the Neilan brothers Gerald and Arthur. The older brother Gerald was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who was killed by a sniper on Easter Monday 24th April the first day of the rising. He was shot on Usher's Quay outside the Mendicity Institution on the south side of the River Liffey which was one of the buildings seized by the rebels. His younger brother Arthur was among the 1st battalion Irish Volunteers who had taken over another building, the Four Courts only 400 yards away across the river on the north side. Arthur survived the rising and the later civil war and died in the 1940s.

All schools in the Irish Republic were issued, in 1966, with a framed copy of the proclamation of independence as posted around Dublin lamp posts on the morning of the Easter Rising. Around the facsimile were positioned photographs of the seven signatories. A measure of how deep rooted and divisive enmities had subsequently become during the later Civil War a teacher in my school had later, and obviously with the approval of the headmaster, replaced two of the signatories' images - James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett - with pictures of Pope John XXIII and John F. Kennedy, which as you can imagine led to some strange assumptions on the part of later students regarding the true course of Irish history. As if the official fantasy wasn't weird enough at the time!

Connolly's expurgation from the record even I could understand at the time. His socialist views had in the interim made him a mascot of the Irish Marxist organisation and their fellow travellers, all of whom at the time had been excommunicated by Catholic church decree. It was not healthy to be seen to idolise Connolly too much at the time, and in certain professions - such as teaching - it was certainly deemed advisable by many in receipt of a pay-packet to be seen to actively detest the memory of the man.

Plunkett took me many more years to figure out, and it was a chance encounter in a Dublin bar with an old Orangeman that finally provided me with the answer. Plunkett's father's cousin was Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett who had worked tirelessly throughout his life trying to reconcile nationalists and unionists, as well as being the pioneer behind the Cooperative Society of Ireland which had done so much to ensure a guaranteed income for members of the agricultural industry throughout Ireland. In the years up to the establishment of the Free State he found himself the target of the Black and Tans, who regarded the country's creameries (the Co-Op's greatest successes) as little more than IRA meeting places and him, by default, therefore their national quartermaster. Then, after the Free State was established, the IRA burnt down the family house in Foxrock, Dublin, seeing him as a traitor because he had accepted a seat in the new Senate, appointed by a partitionist government. Northern Unionists saw him as little better as he had accepted the same position, marking him out in their eyes as a colluder with their foe. Plunkett, dispirited, moved to Weybridge in England, from where he continued to promote cooperatives throughout the then empire - South African cooperatives being largely his doing and which even today are the backbone of that country's agricultural trade.

In the meantime Joseph Plunkett's brother George had gone a very different route. An anti-treaty IRA leader he had in fact become more rabid in his hatred of all things British as time went on, culminating in his being one of the signatories in 1939 of the IRA's "declaration of war" against the United Kingdom with the aim of "liberating" the state of Northern Ireland. The resulting S-Plan bombing campaign led to his arrest and detention by the Free State. The Catholic Church, by now very much the power behind the throne in the south and probably the true originators of the neutrality policy adopted by the Free State and which the IRA had so blatantly violated, wasted no time in excommunicating Plunkett (he had converted to Catholicism upon marriage) and other such detainees at the time. Not to waste a golden opportunity as had presented itself the church went one better and finally denounced the whole Plunkett family's contribution to Irish politics as that of opportunistic Protestant leeches. Joseph, by extension, could not avoid being included in the same tar-brush smear.

Which led, as my Orangeman friend could tell me, to a rather strange state of affairs around the Shankill Road and other Unionist strongholds in the North in the post-war years, who found themselves even up to the 1960s being in a position of citing the fate of the Plunketts and their reputation at the hands of the Free State Catholic establishment as a warning to any Northern Protestant who thought they could even contemplate being given a fair chance in any so-called "united" Ireland. Horace had been forced into exile, George had been twisted into declaring war on "his own" and Joseph had been dropped as a symbol of national martyrdom at the first opportunity. It must be the only occasion when Orangemen found themselves rallying to the cause of Republicans, but in truth if you look at bibliographies of works outlining the biographies of either Horace or Joseph in the period a majority of them emanated from Northern Unionist publishing sources. Southern authors approached the topic at their peril.

And as my drinking buddy could tell me, a part of this was defending Joseph against accusations of homosexuality (for which there is absolutely no documented evidence) but which also were doing the rounds at the time. In 1966 a teacher at my school at least wasn't taking any chances. JP was replaced by JFK.

Thanks for that illuminating perspective nordmann. The story of the 1966 cut-and-paste 'copy' of the independence proclamation is both alarming and hilarious in equal measure. It's that kind of detail from an insider's recollection which is simply invaluable in contemporary history. If for nothing else it does indeed show that for Protestant Irish to embrace the nationalist cause (and certainly to embrace republican nationalism) could indeed be a double-edged sword and a literally thankless task to boot.

Staying with the Easter Rising and with divided families. There is another story of the Corr family from Belfast. The 2 sisters Elizabeth and Nell had joined Cumman na mBan (the women's Irish Voluteers) and travelled to Dublin for the Easter weekend of 1916 and met several of the leading lights of the conspiracy at Liberty Hall. They were sent with messages for co-conspirators in Ulster and left Dublin on a train north on Easter Monday morning just before it all kicked off.

You can read Elizabeth's statement here written 32 years later:

http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0179.pdf#page=2

(The third page of the statement doesn't seem to have been scanned on for some reason.)

Full of amusing anecdote it also reads very much like a jolly hockey sticks girls' adventure. And the Corrs were well educated middle-class women who could indeed afford the time and space to prepare to take part in a romantic nationalist uprising. In the statement Elizabeth mentions a brother Harry who was also an Irish Volunteer. She also had 2 other brothers however. One of them Charles joined the Canadian army and saw action during the First World War while a third brother George was in the Australian infantry. George died in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.

You can see pictures of Elizabeth, Nell and George on this BBC page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35862231

A good looking family. What the BBC story doesn't mention though is that the Corrs too were Protestant.

I heard this on Sunday: 1916: A letter from Ireland
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074vx8y

The correspondence paints a unique portrait of Irish people coming to terms with monumental events but, at the same time, getting on with everyday life. This isn't the Ireland of 1916 as seen through the history books - it's the Ireland of 1916 seen through the writings of the people as they lived it.

It's always instructive to remember that world-changing events can also be a bluddy nuisance to many.

Going way back to 1836, Jose Gregorio Esparza was volunteer in the Texan Army in the Alamo. After the Alamo fell, Esparza was the only one of the defenders to receive a Christian burial as his brother, Francisco, was an officer in the Mexican Army.




Letters from James and Alexander Campbell, recent immigrants to the United States, who joined opposite sides in the Civil War and ended up in a battle just a few yards from each other.



Campbell Brothers

It was well for Queen Marie of Romania that Romania entered the First World War on the side of Britain, for her Romanian patriotism co-existed with an equal fervor for her native Romania. She wrote to her cousin King George V: 'I can only tell you dear George that I held firm as only a born Englishwoman can.'   

A reputed early example of relatives on opposite sides is recorded by Tacitus in his description of the Second Battle of Cremona, AD69, during the Year of the Four Emperors:

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An event which made the slaughter more dreadful was the death of a father at the hands of his son.  I record the incident and the names on the authority of Vipstanus Messalla.  A recruit to the Rapacious Legion [Legio XXI Rapax], one Julius Mansuetus from Spain, had left a young lad at home. Soon after, the boy came of age, and having been called up by Galba for service in the Seventh [Legio VII Gemina], chanced to encounter his father in this battle and wounded him seriously. As he was searching the prostrate and semi-conscious figure, father and son recognized each other. Embracing the dying man, the son prayed in words choked by sobs that his father's spirit would be appeased and not bear him ill-will as a parricide: the act was not a personal one, and one single soldier was merely an infinitesimal fraction of the forces engaged in the civil war. With these words, he took up the body, dug a grave, and discharged the last duty to his father.