behind, if necessary, after
rendering them useless by removing the bolts.[66] The Government had
vetoed Paget's plan of removing the stores from Omagh and Armagh,
because their real object was to increase the garrisons at those places;
but, as they had no scruple about moving the much larger supply from the
Victoria Barracks through the most intensely Orange quarter of Belfast,
it could hardly be wondered at if such an order, under the
circumstances, was held to give colour to the idea that Ministers wished
to provoke violent opposition to the troops. Not less inconsistent with
the original pretext was the despatch of a battalion to Newry and
Dundalk. At the latter place there was already a brigade of artillery,
with eighteen guns, which would prove a tough nut for "evil-disposed
persons" to crack; and although both towns would be important points to
hold with an army making war on Ulster, they were both in Nationalist
territory where there could be no fear of raids by Unionists. Yet the
urgency was considered so great at the War Office to occupy these places
in strength not later than the 20th that two cruisers were ordered to
Kingstown to take the troops to Dundalk by sea, if there should be
difficulty about land transport.

Whatever may have been the actual design of Mr. Churchill and Colonel
Seely, who appear to have practically taken the whole management of the
affair into their own hands, the dispositions must have suggested to
anyone with elementary knowledge of military matters that nothing less
than an overpowering attack on Belfast was in contemplation. The
transfer of the troops from Victoria Barracks, where they would have
been useful to support the civil power in case of rioting, to Holywood,
where they would be less serviceable for that purpose but where they
would be in rapid communication by water with the garrison of
Carrickfergus on the opposite shore of the Lough; the ordering of H.M.S.
_Pathfinder_ and _Attentive_ to Belfast Lough, where they were to arrive
"at daybreak on Saturday the 21st instant" with instructions to support
the soldiers if necessary "by guns and search-lights from the
ships[67]"; the secret and rapid garrisoning of strategic points on all
the railways leading to Belfast,--all this pointed, not to the
safeguarding of stores of army boots and rifles, but to operations of an
offensive campaign.

It was in this light that the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland himself
interpreted his in