But this was not enough to bring peace. Sinn Fein’s final burst of apocalyptic radicalism vented itself not on the British, but on their former comrades who had accepted the compromise. The resulting civil war within the Republic claimed more lives than the fight against the British. Taking the two wars together, the Irish death toll rose to levels comparable, in proportional terms, to that other great disaster of Britain’s retreat from empire, India’s partition in 1947.
