break out until Liam Lynch IRA Chief of Staff arrived and defused the situation. In May 1922, Barry along with Rory O'Connor and Ernie O'Malley seized a convoy of arms intended for the new Free State police force and drove it to the anti-Treaty IRA headquarter in the Four Courts in Dublin. On 28 June 1922, the Irish Civil War formally broke out between Pro- and Anti-treaty factions when Free State forces opened fire on the Four Courts. Barry was in Cork at the time, but made his way to Dublin when the fighting started. He was captured while trying to get into the Four Courts and was imprisoned by the Irish Free State in Mountjoy Gaol after the Battle of Dublin in July 1922. Barry had voiced the opinion that, at the start of the civil war, while the Republican side was stronger, it should have taken over Dublin and the major cities and forced a new confrontation with the British. In September of that year, however, he escaped from an internment camp at Gormanston in County Meath and travelled south, to take command of the anti-Treaty IRA Second Southern Division. Barry returned to his previous role of guerrilla commander, leading a column of around 200 men based in West Cork. In mid-December 1922, he led his men in the capture of a string of towns across the province of Munster, including Carrick on Suir, and towns in Kilkenny, namely Thomastown and Mullinavat, killing two Irish National Army soldiers and taking prisoner the Free State garrisons there, amounting to over 110 men, and seizing their arms. However, due to a shortage of men and equipment, he was unable to hold these places, evacuating them before National Army reinforcements arrived. Withdrawing to the rugged country on the Cork/Kerry border, his column and Kerry IRA units (a total of about 65 men) mounted an assault on Millstreet early in 1923, failing to take the town, but killing two Free State soldiers and taking 39 prisoner. However, as 1923 went on, Barry found his column increasingly weakened by casualties and arrests. By February 1923, Barry increasingly argued with Liam Lynch, the Republican commander in chief, that the war should be brought to an end, as there was no hope of victory. Barry proposed to a meeting of the IRA Executive on 23–26 March that a ceasefire should be called, but he was