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Irish Civil War

The Irish Civil War (Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann; 28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923) was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Empire.

The civil war was waged between the Provisional Government of Ireland and the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) (IRA) over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Provisional Government (which became the Free State in December 1922) supported the terms of the treaty, while the anti-Treaty opposition saw it as a betrayal of the Irish Republic that had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising of 1916. Many of the combatants had fought together against the British in the Irish Republican Army (1919–1922) during the War of Independence, and had divided after that conflict ended and the treaty negotiations began.

The Civil War was won by the pro-treaty National Army, who first secured Dublin by early July, then went on the offensive against the anti-Treaty strongholds of the south and west, especially the 'Munster Republic', successfully capturing all urban centres by late August. The guerrilla phase of the Irish Civil War lasted another 10 months, before the IRA leadership issued a "dump arms" order to all units, effectively ending the conflict. The National Army benefited from substantial quantities of weapons provided by the British government, particularly artillery and armoured cars.

The conflict left Irish society divided and embittered for generations. Today, the three largest political parties in the Republic of Ireland, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Sinn Féin are direct descendants of the opposing sides of the war; Fine Gael from the supporters of the pro-Treaty side, Fianna Fáil the party formed from the bulk of the anti-Treaty side by Éamon de Valera, and Sinn Féin, descended from the rump anti-Treaty and irredentist republican party left behind by De Valera's supporters.

The treaty and its consequences
The Anglo-Irish Treaty was agreed upon to end the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence between the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The treaty provided for a self-governing Irish state, having its own army and police. The Treaty also allowed Northern Ireland (the six north-eastern counties – Fermanagh, Antrim, Tyrone, Londonderry, Armagh and Down – where collectively the majority population was of the Protestant religion) to opt out of the new state and return to the United Kingdom – which it did immediately. With the Partition of Ireland a two-year period of communal conflict took place within the newly formed Northern Ireland. See: The Troubles in Northern Ireland (1920–1922). Rather than creating the independent republic for which nationalists had fought, the Irish Free State would be a dominion of the British Empire with the British monarch as head of state, in the same manner as Canada and Australia. The British suggested dominion status in secret correspondence even before treaty negotiations began, but Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera rejected the dominion. The treaty also stipulated that members of the new Irish Oireachtas (parliament) would have to take the following "Oath of Allegiance": "I… do solemnly swear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the Irish Free State as by law established, and that I will be faithful to His Majesty King George V, his heirs and successors by law in virtue of the common citizenship of Ireland with Great Britain and her adherence to and membership of the group of nations forming the British Commonwealth of nations."

This oath was highly objectionable to many Irish Republicans. Furthermore, the partition of Ireland, which had already been decided by the Westminster parliament in the Government of Ireland Act 1920, was effectively confirmed in the Anglo-Irish treaty. The most contentious areas of the Treaty for the IRA were the disestablishment of the Irish Republic declared in 1919, the abandonment of the First Dáil, the status of the Irish Free State as a dominion in the British Commonwealth and the British retention of the strategic Treaty Ports on Ireland's south western and north western coasts which were to remain occupied by the Royal Navy. All these issues were the cause of a split in the IRA and ultimately civil war.

Michael Collins, the Irish finance minister and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) president, argued in the Dáil Éireann that the treaty gave "not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire and develop, but the freedom to achieve freedom". However, those against the treaty believed that it would never deliver full Irish independence.

Split in the Nationalist movement
The split over the Treaty was deeply personal. Many on both sides had been close friends and comrades during the War of Independence. This made their disagreement all the more bitter. On 6 January 1922, at the Mansion House, Dublin, Austin Stack, Home Affairs minister, showed president de Valera the evening news announcing the signing of the Treaty: de Valera merely glanced at it; when Eamonn Duggan, part of the returning Irish delegation, handed him an envelope confirming it, he pushed it aside. De Valera had held secret discussions with UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George from 14 to 21 July in London. Collins, also part of the delegation, supposed (with others) that these discussions confirmed the earlier correspondence, i.e. no British acceptance of a Republic. De Valera, Stack and Defence minister Cathal Brugha had then all refused to join the delegation to London. Collins wrote that his inclusion as a plenipotentiary was "a trap" of de Valera's which he was forewarned of, argued against, but walked into anyway, "as a soldier obeying his commanding officer." Arthur Griffith, the delegation chairman, had made a similar comment about obeying orders to de Valera himself. Mutual suspicion and confusion pertained; the delegation was unclear about the cabinet's instructions and individually became burdened to the point of breakdown. Collins expected the blame for the compromise within the Treaty and wrote: "Early this morning I signed my death warrant." Notwithstanding this, he was frustrated and at times emotional when de Valera and others refused to support the Treaty and friendships died.

Dáil Éireann (the parliament of the Irish Republic) narrowly passed the Anglo-Irish Treaty by 64 votes to 57 on 7 January 1922. Following the Treaty's ratification, in accordance with article 17 of the Treaty, the British-recognised Provisional Government of the Irish Free State was established. Its authority under the Treaty was to provide a "provisional arrangement for the administration of Southern Ireland during the interval" before the establishment of the Irish Free State. In accordance with the Treaty, the British Government transferred "the powers and machinery requisite for the discharge of its duties". Before the British Government transferred such powers, the members of the Provisional Government each "signified in writing [their] acceptance of [the Treaty]".

Upon the Treaty's ratification, de Valera resigned as President of the Republic and failed to be re-elected by an even closer vote of 60–58. He challenged the right of the Dáil to approve the treaty, saying that its members were breaking their oath to the Irish Republic. Meanwhile, he continued to promote a compromise whereby the new Irish Free State would be in "external association" with the British Commonwealth rather than be a member of it (the inclusion of republics within the Commonwealth of Nations was not formally implemented until 1949).

In early March, de Valera formed the Cumann na Poblachta ('Republican Association') party while remaining a member of Sinn Féin, and commenced a speaking tour of the more republican province of Munster on 17 March 1922. During the tour he made controversial speeches at Carrick on Suir, Lismore, Dungarvan and Waterford, saying at one point, "If the Treaty were accepted, the fight for freedom would still go on, and the Irish people, instead of fighting foreign soldiers, will have to fight the Irish soldiers of an Irish government set up by Irishmen." At Thurles several days later he repeated this imagery, and added that the IRA "would have to wade through the blood of the soldiers of the Irish Government, and perhaps through that of some members of the Irish Government to get their freedom."

In a letter to the Irish Independent on 23 March, de Valera accepted the accuracy of their report of his comment about "wading" through blood, but deplored that the newspaper had published it.

More seriously, many Irish Republican Army (IRA) officers were also against the treaty, and in March 1922 an ad hoc Army Convention repudiated the authority of the Dáil to accept the treaty. In contrast, the Minister of Defence, Richard Mulcahy, stated in the Dáil on 28 April that conditions in Dublin had prevented a Convention from being held, but that delegates had been selected and voted by ballot to accept the Oath. The anti-Treaty IRA formed their own "Army Executive", which they declared to be the real government of the country, despite the result of the 1921 general election. On 26 April Mulcahy summarised alleged illegal activities by many IRA men over the previous three months, whom he described as 'seceding volunteers', including hundreds of robberies. Yet this fragmenting army was the only police force on the ground following the disintegration of the Irish Republican Police and the disbanding of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).

By putting ten questions to Mulcahy on 28 April, Seán MacEntee argued that the Army Executive had acted continuously on its own to create a republic since 1917, had an unaltered constitution, had never fallen under the control of the Dáil, and that "the only body competent to dissolve the Volunteer Executive was a duly convened convention of the Irish Republican Army" – not the Dáil. By accepting the treaty in January and abandoning the republic, the Dáil majority had effectively deserted the Army Executive. In his reply, Mulcahy rejected this interpretation. Then, in a debate on defence, MacEntee suggested that supporting the Army Executive "even if it meant the scrapping of the Treaty and terrible and immediate war with England, would be better than the civil war which we are beginning at present apparently". MacEntee's supporters added that the many robberies complained of by Mulcahy on 26 April were caused by the lack of payment and provision by the Dáil to the volunteers.

Occupation of the Four Courts
On 14 April 1922, 200 Anti-Treaty IRA militants, with Rory O'Connor as their spokesman, occupied the Four Courts and several other buildings in central Dublin, resulting in a tense stand-off. These anti-treaty Republicans wanted to spark a new armed confrontation with the British, which they hoped would unite the two factions of the IRA against their common enemy. However, for those who were determined to make the Free State into a viable, self-governing Irish state, this was an act of rebellion that would have to be put down by them rather than the British.

Arthur Griffith was in favour of using force against these men immediately, but Michael Collins, who wanted at all costs to avoid civil war, left the Four Courts garrison alone until late June 1922. By this point, the Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party had secured a large majority in the general election, along with other parties that supported the Treaty. Collins was also coming under continuing pressure from London to assert his government's authority in Dublin.

Delay until the June election
Collins established an "army re-unification committee" to re-unite the IRA and organised an election pact with de Valera's anti-treaty political followers to campaign jointly in the Free State's first election in 1922 and form a coalition government afterwards. He also tried to reach a compromise with anti-treaty IRA leaders by agreeing to a republican-type constitution (with no mention of the British monarchy) for the new state. IRA leaders such as Liam Lynch were prepared to accept this compromise. However, the proposal for a republican constitution was vetoed by the British as being contrary to the terms of the treaty and they threatened military intervention in the Free State unless the treaty were fully implemented. Collins reluctantly agreed. This completely undermined the electoral pact between the pro- and anti-treaty factions, who went into the Irish general election on 18 June 1922 as hostile parties, both calling themselves Sinn Féin.

The Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party won the election with 239,193 votes to 133,864 for Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin. A further 247,226 people voted for other parties, most of whom supported the Treaty. Labour's 132,570 votes were ambiguous with regard to the Treaty. According to Hopkinson, "Irish labour and union leaders, while generally pro-Treaty, made little attempt to lead opinion during the Treaty conflict, casting themselves rather as attempted peacemakers." The election showed that a majority of the Irish electorate accepted the treaty and the foundation of the Irish Free State, but de Valera, his political followers and most of the IRA continued to oppose the treaty. De Valera is quoted as saying, "the majority have no right to do wrong".

Meanwhile, under the leadership of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, the pro-treaty Provisional Government set about establishing the Irish Free State, and organised the National Army – to replace the IRA – and a new police force. However, since it was envisaged that the new army would be built around the IRA, Anti-Treaty IRA units were allowed to take over British barracks and take their arms. In practice, this meant that by the summer of 1922, the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland controlled only Dublin and some other areas like County Longford where the IRA units supported the treaty. Fighting ultimately broke out when the Provisional Government tried to assert its authority over well-armed and intransigent Anti-Treaty IRA units around the country – particularly a hardliner group in Dublin.

Assassination of Field Marshal Wilson
Field Marshal Henry Hughes Wilson, a prominent security adviser to the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Craig, was shot dead by IRA men on his own doorstep in London on 22 June 1922, with no responsibility for the act being publicly claimed by any IRA authority. Winston Churchill assumed that the Anti-Treaty IRA were responsible for the shooting and warned Collins that he would use British troops to attack the Four Courts unless the Provisional Government took action. In fact, the British cabinet actually resolved to attack the Four Courts themselves on 25 June, in an operation that would have involved tanks, howitzers and aeroplanes. However, on the advice of General Nevil Macready, who commanded the British garrison in Dublin, the plan was cancelled at the last minute. Macready's argument was that British involvement would have united Irish Nationalist opinion against the treaty, and instead Collins was given a last chance to clear the Four Courts himself.

Fighting in Dublin
On 26 June anti-treaty forces occupying the Four Courts kidnapped JJ "Ginger" O'Connell, a general in the National Army, in retaliation for the arrest of Leo Henderson. Collins, after giving the Four Courts garrison a final (and according to Ernie O'Malley, only) ultimatum to leave the building on 27 June, decided to end the stand-off by bombarding the Four Courts garrison into surrender. The government then appointed Collins as Commander-in-Chief of the National Army. This attack was not the opening shot of the war, as skirmishes had taken place between pro- and anti-treaty IRA factions throughout the country when the British were handing over the barracks. However, this represented the 'point of no return', when all-out war was effectively declared and the Civil War officially began.

Collins ordered Mulcahy to accept a British offer of two 18-pounder field artillery for use by the new army of the Free State, though General Macready gave just 200 shells of the 10,000 he had in store at Richmond barracks in Inchicore. The anti-treaty forces in the Four Courts, who possessed only small arms, surrendered after three days of bombardment and the storming of the building by Provisional Government troops (28–30 June 1922). Shortly before the surrender, a massive explosion destroyed the western wing of the complex, including the Irish Public Record Office (PRO), injuring many advancing Free State soldiers and destroying the records. Government supporters alleged that the building had been deliberately mined. Historians dispute whether the PRO was intentionally destroyed by mines laid by the Republicans on their evacuation, or whether the explosions occurred when their ammunition store was accidentally ignited by the bombardment. Coogan, however, asserts that two lorry-loads of gelignite was exploded in the PRO, leaving priceless manuscripts floating over the city for several hours afterward.

Pitched battles continued in Dublin until 5 July. IRA units from the Dublin Brigade, led by Oscar Traynor, occupied O'Connell Street – provoking a week's more street fighting and costing another 65 killed and 280 wounded. Among the dead was Republican leader Cathal Brugha, who made his last stand after exiting the Granville Hotel. In addition, the Free State took over 500 Republican prisoners. The civilian casualties are estimated to have numbered well over 250. When the fighting in Dublin died down, the Free State government was left firmly in control of the Irish capital and the anti-treaty forces dispersed around the country, mainly to the south and west.

The opposing forces
The outbreak of the Civil War forced pro- and anti-treaty supporters to choose sides. Supporters of the treaty came to be known as "pro-treaty" or Free State Army, legally the National Army, and were often called "Staters" by their opponents. The latter called themselves Republicans and were also known as "anti-treaty" forces or "Irregulars", a term preferred by the Free State side.

The Anti-Treaty IRA claimed that it was defending the Irish Republic declared in 1916 during the Easter Rising, confirmed by the First Dáil and invalidly set aside by those who accepted the compromise of the Free State. Éamon de Valera stated that he would serve as an ordinary IRA volunteer and left the leadership of the anti-treaty Republicans to Liam Lynch, the IRA Chief of Staff. De Valera, though the Republican President as of October 1922, had little control over military operations. The campaign was directed by Liam Lynch until he was killed on 10 April 1923, and then by Frank Aiken from 20 April 1923.

The Civil War split the IRA. When the Civil War broke out, the Anti-Treaty IRA (concentrated in the south and west) outnumbered pro-Free State forces by roughly 12,000 men to 8,000. Moreover, the anti-treaty ranks included many of the IRA's most experienced guerrilla fighters. The paper strength of the IRA in early 1922 was over 72,000 men, but most of them were recruited during the truce with the British and fought in neither the War of Independence nor the Civil War. According to Richard Mulcahy's estimate, the Anti-Treaty IRA at the beginning of the war had 6,780 rifles and 12,900 men.

However, the IRA lacked an effective command structure, a clear strategy and sufficient arms. As well as rifles they had a handful of machine guns and many of their fighters were armed only with shotguns or handguns. They also took a small number of armoured cars from British troops as they were evacuating the country. Finally, they had no artillery of any kind. As a result, they were forced to adopt a defensive stance throughout the war.

By contrast, the Free State government managed to expand its forces dramatically after the start of the war. Collins and his commanders were able to build up an army that could overwhelm their opponents in the field. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, armoured cars, machine guns, small arms and ammunition were of much help to pro-Treaty forces. The British delivered for instance, over 27,000 rifles, 250 machine guns and eight 18-pounder artillery pieces to the pro-treaty forces between the outbreak of the Civil War and September 1922. The National Army amounted to 14,000 men by August 1922, was 38,000 strong by the end of 1922, and by the end of the war had grown to 55,000 men and 3,500 officers, far in excess of what the Irish state would need to maintain in peacetime.

Like the Anti-Treaty IRA, the Free State's National Army was initially rooted in the IRA that fought against the British. Collins' most ruthless officers and men were recruited from the Dublin Active Service Unit (the elite unit of the IRA's Dublin Brigade) and from Collins' Intelligence Department and assassination unit, The Squad. In the new National Army, they were known as the Dublin Guard. Towards the end of the war, they were implicated in some notorious atrocities against anti-treaty guerrillas in County Kerry. Up to the outbreak of Civil War, it had been agreed that only men with service in the IRA could be recruited into the National Army. However, once the war began, all such restrictions were lifted. A 'National Call to Arms' issued on 7 July for recruitment on a six-month basis brought in thousands of new recruits. Many of the new army's recruits were veterans of the British Army in World War I, where they had served in disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army. Many others were raw recruits without any military experience. The fact that at least 50% of the other ranks had no military experience in turn led to ill-discipline becoming a major problem.

A major problem for the National Army was a shortage of experienced officers. At least 20% of its officers had previously served as officers in the British Army, while 50% of the rank-and-file of the National Army had served in the British Army in World War I. Former British Army officers were also recruited for their technical expertise. A number of the senior Free State commanders, such as Emmet Dalton, John T. Prout and W. R. E. Murphy, had seen service as officers in World War I, Dalton and Murphy in the British Army and Prout in the US Army. The Republicans made much use of this fact in their propaganda – claiming that the Free State was only a proxy force for Britain itself. However, the majority of Free State soldiers were raw recruits without military experience, either in World War I or the Irish War of Independence. There were also a significant number of former members of the British Armed Forces on the Republican side, including such senior figures as Tom Barry, David Robinson and Erskine Childers.

Free State takes major towns
With Dublin in pro-treaty hands, conflict spread throughout the country. The war started with the anti-treaty forces holding Cork, Limerick and Waterford as part of a self-styled Munster Republic. However, since the anti-treaty side were not equipped to wage conventional war, Lynch was unable to take advantage of the Republicans' initial advantage in numbers and territory held. He hoped simply to hold the Munster Republic long enough to force Britain to renegotiate the treaty.

The large towns in Ireland were all relatively easily taken by the Free State in August 1922. Collins, Richard Mulcahy and Eoin O'Duffy planned a nationwide Free State offensive, dispatching columns overland to take Limerick in the west and Waterford in the south-east and seaborne forces to take counties Cork and Kerry in the south and Mayo in the west. In the south, landings occurred at Union Hall in Cork and Fenit, the port of Tralee, in Kerry. Limerick fell on 20 July, Waterford on the same day and Cork city on 10 August after a Free State force landed by sea at Passage West. Another seaborne expedition to Mayo in the west secured government control over that part of the country. While in some places the Republicans had put up determined resistance, nowhere were they able to defeat regular forces armed with artillery and armour. The only real conventional battle during the Free State offensive, the Battle of Killmallock, was fought when Free State troops advanced south from Limerick.

Guerrilla war
Government victories in the major towns inaugurated a period of guerrilla warfare. After the fall of Cork, Lynch ordered IRA units to disperse and form flying columns as they had when fighting the British. They held out in areas such as the western part of counties Cork and Kerry in the south, county Wexford in the east and counties Sligo and Mayo in the west. Sporadic fighting also took place around Dundalk, where Frank Aiken and the Fourth Northern Division of the Irish Republican Army were based, and Dublin, where small-scale but regular attacks were mounted on Free State troops.

August and September 1922 saw widespread attacks on Free State forces in the territories that they had occupied in the July–August offensive, inflicting heavy casualties on them. Collins was killed in an ambush by anti-treaty Republicans at Béal na Bláth, near his home in County Cork, in August 1922. Collins' death increased the bitterness of the Free State leadership towards the Republicans and probably contributed to the subsequent descent of the conflict into a cycle of atrocities and reprisals. Arthur Griffith, the Free State president, had also died of a brain haemorrhage ten days before, leaving the government in the hands of W.T. Cosgrave and the Free State army under the command of General Richard Mulcahy. For a brief period, with rising casualties among its troops and its two principal leaders dead, it looked as if the Free State might collapse. However, as winter set in, the Republicans found it increasingly difficult to sustain their campaign, and casualty rates among National Army troops dropped rapidly. For instance, in County Sligo, 54 people died in the conflict, of whom all but eight had been killed by the end of September.

In the autumn and winter of 1922, Free State forces broke up many of the larger Republican guerrilla units – in Sligo, Meath and Connemara in the west, for example, and in much of Dublin city. Elsewhere, anti-treaty units were forced by lack of supplies and safe-houses to disperse into smaller groups, typically of nine to ten men. Despite these successes for the National Army, it took eight more months of intermittent warfare before the war was brought to an end.

By late 1922 and early 1923, the anti-treaty guerrilla campaign had been reduced largely to acts of sabotage and destruction of public infrastructure such as roads and railways. It was also in this period that the Anti-Treaty IRA began burning the homes of Free State Senators and of many of the Anglo-Irish landed class.

In October 1922, de Valera and the anti-treaty Teachtaí Dála (TDs) set up their own "Republican government" in opposition to the Free State. However, by then the anti-treaty side held no significant territory and de Valera's government had no authority over the population.

Atrocities and executions
On 27 September 1922, three months after the outbreak of war, the Free State's Provisional Government put before the Dáil an Army Emergency Powers Resolution proposing to extend the legislation for setting up military tribunals, transferring some of the Free State's judicial powers over Irish citizens accused of anti-government activities to the Army Council. The legislation, commonly referred to as the "Public Safety Bill", set up and empowered military tribunals to impose life imprisonment, as well as the death penalty, for 'aiding or abetting attacks' on state forces, possession of arms and ammunition or explosive 'without the proper authority' and 'looting destruction or arson'.

The final phase of the Civil War degenerated into a series of atrocities that left a lasting legacy of bitterness in Irish politics. The Free State began executing Republican prisoners on 17 November 1922, when five IRA men were shot by firing squad. They were followed on 24 November by the execution of acclaimed author and treaty negotiator Erskine Childers. In all, out of around 12,000 Republican prisoners taken in the conflict, 81 were officially executed by the Free State.

The Anti-Treaty IRA in reprisal assassinated TD Seán Hales on 7 December 1922. The next day four prominent Republicans held since the first week of the war — Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey — were executed in revenge for the killing of Hales. In addition, Free State troops, particularly in County Kerry, where the guerrilla campaign was most bitter, began the summary execution of captured anti-treaty fighters. The most notorious example of this occurred at Ballyseedy, where nine Republican prisoners were tied to a landmine, which was detonated, killing eight and only leaving one, Stephen Fuller, who was blown clear by the blast, to escape.

The number of "unauthorised" executions of Republican prisoners during the war has been put as high as 153. Among the Republican reprisals were the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins's father and W. T. Cosgrave's uncle in February 1923.

The IRA were unable to maintain an effective guerrilla campaign, given the gradual loss of support. The Catholic Church also supported the Free State, deeming it the lawful government of the country, denouncing the IRA and refusing to administer the Sacraments to anti-treaty fighters. On 10 October 1922, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland issued a formal statement, describing the anti-treaty campaign as:

"[A] system of murder and assassination of the National forces without any legitimate authority... the guerrilla warfare now being carried on [by] the Irregulars is without moral sanction and therefore the killing of National soldiers is murder before God, the seizing of public and private property is robbery, the breaking of roads, bridges and railways is criminal. All who in contravention of this teaching, participate in such crimes are guilty of grievous sins and may not be absolved in Confession nor admitted to the Holy Communion if they persist in such evil courses."

The Church's support for the Free State aroused bitter hostility among some republicans. Although the Catholic Church in independent Ireland has often been seen as a triumphalist Church, a recent study has found that it felt deeply insecure after these events.

End of the war
By early 1923, the offensive capability of the IRA had been seriously eroded and when, in February 1923, the Republican leader Liam Deasy was captured by Free State forces, he called on the republicans to end their campaign and reach an accommodation with the Free State. The State's executions of anti-treaty prisoners, 34 of whom were shot in January 1923, also took its toll on the Republicans' morale.

In addition, the National Army's operations in the field were slowly but steadily breaking up the remaining Republican concentrations.

March and April 1923 saw this progressive dismemberment of the Republican forces continue with the capture and sometimes killing of guerrilla columns. A National Army report of 11 April stated, "Events of the last few days point to the beginning of the end as a far as the irregular campaign is concerned".

As the conflict petered out into a de facto victory for the pro-treaty side, de Valera asked the IRA leadership to call a ceasefire, but they refused. The Anti-Treaty IRA executive met on 26 March in County Waterford to discuss the war's future. Tom Barry proposed a motion to end the war, but it was defeated by 6 votes to 5. Éamon de Valera was allowed to attend, after some debate, but was given no voting rights.

Lynch, the Republican leader, was killed in a skirmish in the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Tipperary on 10 April. The National Army had extracted information from Republican prisoners in Dublin that the IRA Executive was in the area and as well as killing Lynch, they also captured senior anti-treaty IRA officers Dan Breen, Todd Andrews, Seán Gaynor and Frank Barrett in the operation.

It is often suggested by historians including Professor Michael Laffan of University College Dublin, that the death of Lynch allowed the more pragmatic Frank Aiken, who took over as IRA Chief of Staff, to call a halt to what seemed a futile struggle. Aiken's accession to IRA leadership was followed on 30 April by the declaration of a suspension of military activities; on 24 May 1923, he issued a ceasefire order to IRA volunteers. They were to dump arms rather than surrender them or continue a fight that they were incapable of winning.

Aftermath of the ceasefire
Éamon de Valera supported the order, issuing a statement to Anti-Treaty fighters on 24 May:

"Soldiers of the Republic. Legion of the Rearguard: The Republic can no longer be defended successfully by your arms. Further sacrifice of life would now be in vain and the continuance of the struggle in arms unwise in the national interest and prejudicial to the future of our cause. Military victory must be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed the Republic."

The Free State government had started peace negotiations in early May, which broke down. The High Court of Justice in Ireland ruled on 31 July 1923 that a state of war no longer existed, and consequently the internment of Republicans, permitted under common law only in wartime, was now illegal. Without a formal peace, holding 13,000 prisoners and worried that fighting could break out again at any time, the government enacted two Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Acts on 1 and 3 August 1923, to permit continued internment and other measures. Thousands of Anti-Treaty IRA members (including de Valera on 15 August) were arrested by the Free State forces in the weeks and months after the end of the war, when they had dumped their arms and returned home.

A general election was held on 27 August 1923, which Cumann na nGaedheal, the pro-Free State party, won with about 40% of the first-preference vote. The Republicans, represented by Sinn Féin, won about 27% of the vote. Many of their candidates and supporters were still imprisoned before, during and after the election.

In October 1923, around 8,000 of the 12,000 Republican prisoners in Free State gaols went on a hunger strike. The strike lasted for 41 days and met little success (among those who died were Denny Barry, Joseph Whitty and Andy O'Sullivan) see: 1923 Irish Hunger Strikes. However, most of the women prisoners were released shortly thereafter and the hunger strike helped concentrate the Republican movement on the prisoners and their associated organisations. In July, de Valera had recognised the Republican political interests lay with the prisoners and went so far as to say:

"The whole future of our cause and of the nation depends in my opinion upon the spirit of the prisoners in the camps and in the jails. You are the repositories of the NATIONAL FAITH AND WILL"

Attacks on former Unionists
Although the cause of the Civil War was the Treaty, as the war developed the anti-treaty forces sought to identify their actions with the traditional Republican cause of the "men of no property" and the result was that large Anglo-Irish landowners and some less well-off Southern Unionists were attacked. A total of 192 "stately homes" of the old landed class and of Free State politicians were destroyed by anti-treaty forces during the war.

The stated reason for such attacks was that some landowners had become Free State senators. In October 1922, a deputation of Southern Unionists met W. T. Cosgrave to offer their support to the Free State and some of them had received positions in the State's Upper house or Senate. Among the prominent senators whose homes were attacked were: Palmerstown House near Naas, which belonged to the Earl of Mayo, Moore Hall in Mayo, Horace Plunkett (who had helped to establish the rural co-operative schemes), and Senator Henry Guinness (which was unsuccessful). Also burned was Marlfield House in Clonmel, the home of Senator John Philip Bagwell, with its extensive library of historical documents. Bagwell was kidnapped and held in the Dublin Mountains, but later released when reprisals were threatened.

However, in addition to their allegiance to the Free State, there were also other factors behind Republican animosity towards the old landed class. Many, but not all of these people, had supported the Crown forces during the War of Independence. This support was often largely moral, but sometimes it took the form of actively assisting the British in the conflict. Such attacks should have ended with the Truce of 11 July 1921, but they continued after the truce and escalated during the Civil War. In July 1922, Con Moloney, the IRA Adjutant General, ordered that unionist property should be seized to accommodate their men. The "worst spell" of attacks on former unionist property came in the early months of 1923, 37 "big houses" being burnt in January and February alone.

Though the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 allowed tenants to buy land from their landlords, some small farmers, particularly in Mayo and Galway, simply occupied land belonging to political opponents during this period when the RIC had ceased to function. In 1919, senior Sinn Féin officials were sufficiently concerned at this unilateral action that they instituted Arbitration Courts to adjudicate disputes. Sometimes these attacks had sectarian overtones, although most IRA men made no distinction between Catholic and Protestant supporters of the Irish government.

The IRA burnt an orphanage housing Protestant boys near Clifden, County Galway in June 1922, on the ground that it was "pro-British". The 60 orphans were taken to Devonport on board a Royal Navy destroyer.

Controversy continues to this day about the extent of intimidation of Protestants at this time. Many left Ireland during and after the Civil War. Dr Andy Bielenberg of UCC considers that about 41,000 who were not linked to the former British administration left Southern Ireland (which became the Irish Free State) between 1919 and 1923. He has found that a "high-water mark" of this 41,000 left between 1921 and 1923. In all, from 1911 to 1926, the Protestant population of the 26 counties fell from some 10.4% of the total population to 7.4%.

Foreign support
The Civil War attracted international attention which led to various groups expressing support and opposition to the anti-treaty side. The Communist Party of Great Britain in its journal The Communist wrote "The proletarians of the IRA have the future of Ireland in their hands. If the Irish Labour Party would only dare! A mass movement of the Irish workers in alliance with the IRA could establish a Workers' Republic now". They were also supported by the Communist International (Comintern) which on 3 January 1923 passed a resolution stating it "sends fraternal greetings to the struggling Irish national revolutionaries and feels assured that they will soon tread the only path that leads to real freedom – the path of Communism. The CI will assist all efforts to organise the struggle to combat this terror and to help the Irish workers and peasants to victory."

The majority of Irish-Americans supported the treaty, including those in Clann na Gael and Friends of Irish Freedom. However anti-treaty republicans had control of what was left of Clann na Gael and the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic so they supported the anti-treaty side during the war.

Casualties
The Civil War, though short, was bloody. It cost the lives of many public figures, including Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith and Liam Lynch. Both sides carried out brutal acts—the anti-treaty forces killed a TD and several other pro-Treaty politicians and burned many homes of senators and Free State supporters; while the government executed anti-treaty prisoners, officially and unofficially. The 2023 Irish Civil War Fatalities Project, a University College Cork research project funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, has calculated that the pro-treaty forces suffered 637 fatalities from all causes. Both the project and the Republican roll of honour, compiled in the 1920s, calculate that 426 anti-Treaty IRA Volunteers were killed between January 1922 and April 1924. It has, however, been suggested that the anti-treaty forces' true death toll was higher. For total combatant and civilian deaths, figures of 1,426 in the Free State and 1,485 for the island of Ireland have been calculated by the 2023 project. A 2012 county-by-county study suggested a death toll of just under 2,000. In the decades following the Civil War, exaggerated casualty figures as high as 4,000 were suggested, though these numbers are generally accepted to be too high.

The Garda Síochána (new police force) was not involved in the war, which meant that it was well placed to develop into an unarmed and politically neutral police service after the war. It had been disarmed by the Government in order to win public confidence in June–September 1922 and in December 1922, the IRA issued a General Order not to fire on the Civil Guard. The Criminal Investigation Department, or CID, a 350-strong, armed, plain-clothed Police Corps that had been established during the conflict for the purposes of counter-insurgency, was disbanded in October 1923, shortly after the conflict's end.

Economic costs
The economic costs of the war were also high. As their forces abandoned their fixed positions in July–August 1922, the Republicans burned many of the administrative buildings and businesses that they had been occupying. In addition, their subsequent guerrilla campaign caused much destruction, and the economy of the Free State suffered a hard blow in the earliest days of its existence, as a result. The material damage caused by the war to property in the Free State has been estimated to be in the region of £50 million in 1922. This is equivalent to about £2.1 billion, or €2.4 billion worth of damage in 2022 values.

Particularly damaging to the Free State's economy was the systematic destruction of railway infrastructure and roads by the Republicans. In addition, the cost to the Free State of waging the war came to another £17 million (£718m or €883m in 2022 values). By September 1923, Deputy Hogan estimated the cost at £50 million. The new State ended 1923 with a budget deficit of over £4 million (£168m or €196m in 2022 values). This weakened financial situation meant that the new state could not pay its share of Imperial debt under the treaty. This adversely affected the boundary negotiations in 1924–25, in which the Free State government acquiesced that border with Northern Ireland would remain unchanged in exchange for forgiveness of the Imperial debt. Further, the state undertook to pay for damage caused to property between the truce of July 1921 and the end of the Civil War; W. T. Cosgrave told the Dáil:

"Every Deputy in this House is aware of the complaint which has been made that the measure of compensation for post-Truce damage compares unfavourably with the awards for damage suffered pre-Truce."

Political results
The fact that the Irish Civil War was fought between Irish Nationalist factions meant that the sporadic conflict in Northern Ireland ended. Collins and Sir James Craig signed an agreement to end it on 30 March 1922, but, despite this, Collins covertly supplied arms to the Northern IRA until a week before his death in August 1922. Because of the Irish Civil War, Northern Ireland was able to consolidate its existence and the partition of Ireland was confirmed for the foreseeable future. The continuing war also confirmed the northern Unionists' existing stance against the ethos of all shades of nationalism. This might have led to open hostilities between North and South had the Irish Civil War not broken out. Indeed, the Ulster Special Constabulary (the "B-Specials") that had been established in 1920 (on the foundation of Northern Ireland) was expanded in 1922 rather than being demobilised.

In the event, it was only well after their defeat in the Civil War that anti-treaty Irish Republicans seriously considered whether to take armed action against British rule in Northern Ireland (the first serious suggestion to do this came in the late 1930s). The northern units of the IRA largely supported the Free State side in the Civil War because of Collins's policies, and over 500 of them joined the new Free State's National Army.

The cost of the war and the budget deficit it caused was a difficulty for the new Free State and affected the Boundary Commission negotiations of 1925, which were to determine the border with Northern Ireland. The Free State agreed to waive its claim to predominantly Nationalist areas in Northern Ireland and in return its agreed share of the Imperial debt under the 1921 Treaty was not paid.

In 1926, having failed to persuade the majority of the Anti-Treaty IRA or the anti-treaty party of Sinn Féin to accept the new status quo as a basis for an evolving Republic, a large faction led by de Valera and Aiken left to resume constitutional politics and to found the Fianna Fáil party. Whereas Fianna Fáil was to become the dominant party in Irish politics, Sinn Féin became a small, isolated political party. The IRA, then much more numerous and influential than Sinn Féin, remained associated with Fianna Fáil (though not directly) until banned by de Valera in 1935.

In 1927, Fianna Fáil members took the Oath of Allegiance and entered the Dáil, effectively recognising the legitimacy of the Free State. The Free State was already moving towards independence by this point. Under the Statute of Westminster 1931, the British Parliament gave up its right to legislate for members of the British Commonwealth. When elected to power in 1932, Fianna Fáil under de Valera set about dismantling what they considered to be objectionable features of the treaty, abolishing the Oath of Allegiance, removing the power of the Office of Governor General (British representative in Ireland) and abolishing the Senate, which was dominated by former Unionists and pro-treaty Nationalists. In 1937, they passed a new constitution, which made a President the head of state, did not mention any allegiance to the British monarch, and which included a territorial claim to Northern Ireland. The following year, Britain returned without conditions the seaports that it had kept under the terms of the treaty. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the state was able to demonstrate its independence by remaining neutral throughout the war, although Dublin did to some extent tacitly support the Allies. Finally, in 1948, a coalition government, containing elements of both sides in the Civil War (pro-treaty Fine Gael and anti-treaty Clann na Poblachta) left the British Commonwealth and described the state as a republic in The Republic of Ireland Act 1948. By the 1950s, the issues over which the Civil War had been fought were largely settled.

Legacy and memory
As with most civil wars, the internecine conflict left a bitter legacy, which continues to influence Irish politics to this day. The two largest political parties in the republic through most of its history (except for the 2011 and 2020 general elections) were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the descendants respectively of the anti-treaty and pro-treaty forces of 1922. Until the 1970s, almost all of Ireland's prominent politicians were veterans of the Civil War, a fact which poisoned the relationship between Ireland's two biggest parties. Examples of Civil War veterans include: Republicans Éamon de Valera, Frank Aiken, Todd Andrews and Seán Lemass; and Free State supporters W. T. Cosgrave, Richard Mulcahy and Kevin O'Higgins.

Moreover, many of these men's sons and daughters also became politicians, meaning that the personal wounds of the civil war were felt over three generations. In the 1930s, after Fianna Fáil took power for the first time, it looked possible for a while that the Civil War might break out again between the IRA and the pro-Free State Blueshirts. Fortunately, this crisis was averted, and by the 1950s violence was no longer prominent in politics in the Republic of Ireland. However, the breakaway IRA continued (and continues in various forms) to exist. It was not until 1948 that the IRA renounced military attacks on the forces of the southern Irish state when it became the Republic of Ireland. After this point, the organisation dedicated itself primarily to the end of British rule in Northern Ireland. The IRA Army Council still makes claim to be the legitimate Provisional Government of the Irish Republic declared in 1916 and annulled by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.

Fictional accounts
According to Edward Quinn, the play "Juno and the Paycock" by Seán O'Casey is a tragicomedy that criticises the civil war and the foolishness that led to it. Irish writer James Stephens says the play's theme is an "orchestrated hymn against all poverty and hate."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Irish Civil War


text:
Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a retired series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were used in the Windows line of operating systems. While IE has been discontinued on most Windows editions, it remains supported on certain editions of Windows, such as Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC. Starting in 1995, it was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads or in-service packs and included in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Microsoft spent over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people involved in the project by 1999. New feature development for the browser was discontinued in 2016 and ended support on June 15, 2022 for Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC), in favor of its successor, Microsoft Edge.

Internet Explorer was once the most widely used web browser, attaining a peak of 95% usage share by 2003. It has since fallen out of general use after retirement. This came after Microsoft used bundling to win the first browser war against Netscape, which was the dominant browser in the 1990s. Its usage share has since declined with the launches of Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008) and with the growing popularity of mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS that do not support Internet Explorer. Microsoft Edge, IE's successor, first overtook Internet Explorer in terms of market share in November 2019. Versions of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also been produced, including an Xbox 360 version called Internet Explorer for Xbox and for platforms Microsoft no longer supports: Internet Explorer for Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX), and an embedded OEM version called Pocket Internet Explorer, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile, made for Windows CE, Windows Phone, and, previously, based on Internet Explorer 7, for Windows Phone 7.

The browser has been scrutinized throughout its development for its use of third-party technology (such as the source code of Spyglass Mosaic, used without royalty in early versions) and security and privacy vulnerabilities, and the United States and the European Union have determined that the integration of Internet Explorer with Windows has been to the detriment of fair browser competition.

Internet Explorer 7 was supported on Windows Embedded Compact 2013 until October 10, 2023. The core of Internet Explorer 11 will continue being shipped and supported until at least 2029 as IE Mode, a feature of Microsoft Edge, enabling Edge to display web pages using Internet Explorer 11's Trident layout engine and other components. Through IE Mode, the underlying technology of Internet Explorer 11 partially exists on versions of Windows that do not support IE11 as a proper application, including newer versions of Windows 10, as well as Windows 11, Windows Server Insider Build 22463 and Windows Server Insider Build 25110.

Internet Explorer 1
The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon, who, according to former project lead Ben Slivka, used source code from Spyglass, Inc. Mosaic, which was an early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneering National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Mosaic browser. In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft's non-Windows revenues for the software. Although bearing a name like NCSA Mosaic, Spyglass Mosaic had used the NCSA Mosaic source code sparingly.

The first version, dubbed Microsoft Internet Explorer, was installed as part of the Internet Jumpstart Kit in the Microsoft Plus! pack for Windows 95. The Internet Explorer team began with about six people in early development. Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later for Windows NT and added support for basic table rendering. By including it free of charge with their operating system, they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc, resulting in a lawsuit and a US$8 million settlement on January 22, 1997.

Microsoft was sued by SyNet Inc. in 1996, for trademark infringement, claiming it owned the rights to the name "Internet Explorer." It ended with Microsoft paying $5 million to settle the lawsuit.

Internet Explorer 2
Internet Explorer 2 is the second major version of Internet Explorer, released on November 22, 1995, for Windows 95 and Windows NT, and on April 23, 1996, for Apple Macintosh and Windows 3.1.

Internet Explorer 3
Internet Explorer 3 is the third major version of Internet Explorer, released on August 13, 1996, for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997, for Apple Mac OS.

Internet Explorer 4
Internet Explorer 4 is the fourth major version of Internet Explorer, released in September 1997 for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX. It was the first version of Internet Explorer to use the Trident web engine.

Internet Explorer 5
Internet Explorer 5 is the fifth major version of Internet Explorer, released on March 18, 1999, for Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 SP3, Windows 98, Mac OS X (up to v5.2.3), Classic Mac OS (up to v5.1.7), Solaris and HP-UX (up to 5.01 SP1).

Internet Explorer 6
Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major version of Internet Explorer, released on August 24, 2001, for Windows NT 4.0 SP6a, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME and as the default web browser for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7 is the seventh major version of Internet Explorer, released on October 18, 2006, for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and as the default web browser for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. IE7 introduces tabbed browsing.

Internet Explorer 8
Internet Explorer 8 is the eighth major version of Internet Explorer, released on March 19, 2009, for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and as the default web browser for Windows 7 (later default was Internet Explorer 11) and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Internet Explorer 9
Internet Explorer 9 is the ninth major version of Internet Explorer, released on March 14, 2011, for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 with the Platform Update.

Internet Explorer 10
Internet Explorer 10 is the tenth major version of Internet Explorer, released on October 26, 2012, and is the default web browser for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. It became available for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in February 2013.

Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer 11 is featured in Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows RT 8.1, which was released on October 17, 2013. It includes an incomplete mechanism for syncing tabs. It is a major update to its developer tools, enhanced scaling for high DPI screens, HTML5 prerender and prefetch, hardware-accelerated JPEG decoding, closed captioning, HTML5 full screen, and is the first Internet Explorer to support WebGL and Google's protocol SPDY (starting at v3). This version of IE has features dedicated to Windows 8.1, including cryptography (WebCrypto), adaptive bitrate streaming (Media Source Extensions) and Encrypted Media Extensions.

Internet Explorer 11 was made available for Windows 7 users to download on November 7, 2013, with Automatic Updates in the following weeks.

Internet Explorer 11's user agent string now identifies the agent as "Trident" (the underlying browser engine) instead of "MSIE." It also announces compatibility with Gecko (the browser engine of Firefox).

Microsoft claimed that Internet Explorer 11, running the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, was the fastest browser as of October 15, 2013.

Internet Explorer 11 was made available for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Embedded 8 Standard, the only still supported edition of Windows 8 in April 2019.

End of life
Microsoft Edge was officially unveiled on January 21, 2015 as "Project Spartan." On April 29, 2015, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Edge would replace Internet Explorer as the default browser in Windows 10. However, Internet Explorer remained the default web browser on the Windows 10 Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) and on Windows Server until 2021, primarily for enterprise purposes.

Internet Explorer is still installed in Windows 10 to maintain compatibility with older websites and intranet sites that require ActiveX and other legacy web technologies. The browser's MSHTML rendering engine also remains for compatibility reasons.

Additionally, Microsoft Edge shipped with the "Internet Explorer mode" feature, which enables support for legacy internet applications. This is possible through use of the Trident MSHTML engine, the rendering code of Internet Explorer. Microsoft has committed to supporting Internet Explorer mode at least through 2029, with a one-year notice before it is discontinued.

With the release of Microsoft Edge, the development of new features for Internet Explorer ceased. Internet Explorer 11 was the final release, and Microsoft began the process of deprecating Internet Explorer. During this process, it will still be maintained as part of Microsoft's support policies.

Since January 12, 2016, only the latest version of Internet Explorer available for each version of Windows has been supported. At the time, nearly half of Internet Explorer users were using an unsupported version.

In February 2019, Microsoft Chief of Security Chris Jackson recommended that users stop using Internet Explorer as their default browser.

Various websites have dropped support for Internet Explorer. On June 1, 2020, the Internet Archive removed Internet Explorer from its list of supported browsers, due to the browser's dated nature. Since November 30, 2020, the web version of Microsoft Teams can no longer be accessed using Internet Explorer 11, followed by the remaining Microsoft 365 applications since August 17, 2021. WordPress also dropped support for the browser in July 2021.

Microsoft disabled the normal means of launching Internet Explorer in Windows 11 and later versions of Windows 10, but it is still possible for users to launch the browser from the Control Panel's browser toolbar settings or via PowerShell.

On June 15, 2022, Internet Explorer 11 support ended for the Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC). Users on these versions of Windows 10 were redirected to Microsoft Edge starting on February 14, 2023, and visual references to the browser (such as icons on the taskbar) would have been removed on June 13, 2023. However, on May 19, 2023 various organizations disapproved, leading Microsoft to withdraw the change. Other versions of Windows that were still supported at the time were unaffected. Specifically, Windows 7 ESU, Windows 8.x, Windows RT; Windows Server 2008/R2 ESU, Windows Server 2012/R2 and later; and Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC continued to receive updates until their respective end of life dates.

On other versions of Windows, Internet Explorer will still be supported until their own end of support dates. IE7 was supported until October 10, 2023 alongside the end of support for Windows Embedded Compact 2013, while IE9 was supported until January 9, 2024 alongside the end of ESU support for Azure customers on Windows Server 2008. Barring additional changes to the support policy, Internet Explorer 11 will be supported until January 13, 2032, concurrent with the end of support for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021.

Features

Internet Explorer has been designed to view a broad range of web pages and provide certain features within the operating system, including Microsoft Update. During the height of the browser wars, Internet Explorer superseded Netscape only when it caught up technologically to support the progressive features of the time.

Standards support
Internet Explorer, using the MSHTML (Trident) browser engine:
 * Supports HTML 4.01, parts of HTML5, CSS Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3, XML 1.0, and DOM Level 1, with minor implementation gaps.
 * Fully supports XSLT 1.0 as well as an obsolete Microsoft dialect of XSLT often referred to as WD-xsl, which was loosely based on the December 1998 W3C Working Draft of XSL. Support for XSLT 2.0 lies in the future: semi-official Microsoft bloggers have indicated that development is underway, but no dates have been announced.
 * Almost full conformance to CSS 2.1 has been added in the Internet Explorer 8 release. The MSHTML browser engine in Internet Explorer 9 in 2011, scored highest in the official W3C conformance test suite for CSS 2.1 of all major browsers.
 * Supports XHTML in Internet Explorer 9 (MSHTML Trident version 5.0). Prior versions can render XHTML documents authored with HTML compatibility principles and served with a  MIME-type.
 * Supports a subset of SVG in Internet Explorer 9 (MSHTML Trident version 5.0), excluding SMIL, SVG fonts and filters.

Internet Explorer uses DOCTYPE sniffing to choose between standards mode and a "quirks mode" in which it deliberately mimics nonstandard behaviors of old versions of MSIE for HTML and CSS rendering on screen (Internet Explorer always uses standards mode for printing). It also provides its own dialect of ECMAScript called JScript.

Internet Explorer was criticized by Tim Berners-Lee for its limited support for SVG, which is promoted by W3C.

Non-standard extensions
Internet Explorer has introduced an array of proprietary extensions to many of the standards, including HTML, CSS, and the DOM. This has resulted in several web pages that appear broken in standards-compliant web browsers and has introduced the need for a "quirks mode" to allow for rendering improper elements meant for Internet Explorer in these other browsers.

Internet Explorer has introduced several extensions to the DOM that have been adopted by other browsers.

These include the inner HTML property, which provides access to the HTML string within an element, which was part of IE 5 and was standardized as part of HTML 5 roughly 15 years later after all other browsers implemented it for compatibility, the XMLHttpRequest object, which allows the sending of HTTP request and receiving of HTTP response, and may be used to perform AJAX, and the designMode attribute of the content Document object, which enables rich text editing of HTML documents. Some of these functionalities were not possible until the introduction of the W3C DOM methods. Its Ruby character extension to HTML is also accepted as a module in W3C XHTML 1.1, though it is not found in all versions of W3C HTML.

Microsoft submitted several other features of IE for consideration by the W3C for standardization. These include the 'behavior' CSS property, which connects the HTML elements with JScript behaviors (known as HTML Components, HTC), HTML+TIME profile, which adds timing and media synchronization support to HTML documents (similar to the W3C XHTML+SMIL), and the VML vector graphics file format. However, all were rejected, at least in their original forms; VML was subsequently combined with PGML (proposed by Adobe and Sun), resulting in the W3C-approved SVG format, one of the few vector image formats being used on the web, which IE did not support until version 9.

Other non-standard behaviors include: support for vertical text, but in a syntax different from W3C CSS3 candidate recommendation, support for a variety of image effects and page transitions, which are not found in W3C CSS, support for obfuscated script code, in particular JScript.Encode, as well as support for embedding EOT fonts in web pages.

Favicon
Support for favicons was first added in Internet Explorer 5. Internet Explorer supports favicons in PNG, static GIF and native Windows icon formats. In Windows Vista and later, Internet Explorer can display native Windows icons that have embedded PNG files.

Usability and accessibility
Internet Explorer makes use of the accessibility framework provided in Windows. Internet Explorer is also a user interface for FTP, with operations similar to Windows Explorer. Internet Explorer 5 and 6 had a side bar for web searches, enabling jumps through pages from results listed in the side bar. Pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing were added respectively in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Tabbed browsing can also be added to older versions by installing MSN Search Toolbar or Yahoo Toolbar.

Cache
Internet Explorer caches visited content in the Temporary Internet Files folder to allow quicker access (or offline access) to previously visited pages. The content is indexed in a database file, known as Index.dat. Multiple Index.dat files exist which index different content—visited content, web feeds, visited URLs, cookies, etc.

Prior to IE7, clearing the cache used to clear the index but the files themselves were not reliably removed, posing a potential security and privacy risk. In IE7 and later, when the cache is cleared, the cache files are more reliably removed, and the index.dat file is overwritten with null bytes.

Caching has been improved in IE9.

Group Policy
Internet Explorer is fully configurable using Group Policy. Administrators of Windows Server domains (for domain-joined computers) or the local computer can apply and enforce a variety of settings on computers that affect the user interface (such as disabling menu items and individual configuration options), as well as underlying security features such as downloading of files, zone configuration, per-site settings, ActiveX control behavior and others. Policy settings can be configured for each user and for each machine. Internet Explorer also supports Integrated Windows Authentication.

Architecture
Internet Explorer uses a componentized architecture built on the Component Object Model (COM) technology. It consists of several major components, each of which is contained in a separate dynamic-link library (DLL) and exposes a set of COM programming interfaces hosted by the Internet Explorer main executable, iexplore.exe:

Internet Explorer does not include any native scripting functionality. Rather, MSHTML.dll exposes an API that permits a programmer to develop a scripting environment to be plugged-in and to access the DOM tree. Internet Explorer 8 includes the bindings for the Active Scripting engine, which is a part of Microsoft Windows and allows any language implemented as an Active Scripting module to be used for client-side scripting. By default, only the JScript and VBScript modules are provided; third party implementations like ScreamingMonkey (for ECMAScript 4 support) can also be used. Microsoft also makes available the Microsoft Silverlight runtime that allows CLI languages, including DLR-based dynamic languages like IronPython and IronRuby, to be used for client-side scripting.
 * WinInet.dll is the protocol handler for HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP. It handles all network communication over these protocols.
 * URLMon.dll is responsible for MIME-type handling and download of web content, and provides a thread-safe wrapper around WinInet.dll and other protocol implementations.
 * MSHTML.dll houses the MSHTML (Trident) browser engine introduced in Internet Explorer 4, which is responsible for displaying the pages on-screen and handling the Document Object Model (DOM) of the web pages. MSHTML.dll parses the HTML/CSS file and creates the internal DOM tree representation of it. It also exposes a set of APIs for runtime inspection and modification of the DOM tree. The DOM tree is further processed by a browser engine which then renders the internal representation on screen.
 * IEFrame.dll contains the user interface and window of IE in Internet Explorer 7 and above.
 * ShDocVw.dll provides the navigation, local caching and history functionalities for the browser.
 * BrowseUI.dll is responsible for rendering the browser user interface such as menus and toolbars.

Internet Explorer 8 introduced some major architectural changes, called loosely coupled IE (LCIE). LCIE separates the main window process (frame process) from the processes hosting the different web applications in different tabs (tab processes). A frame process can create multiple tab processes, each of which can be of a different integrity level, each tab process can host multiple web sites. The processes use asynchronous inter-process communication to synchronize themselves. Generally, there will be a single frame process for all web sites. In Windows Vista with protected mode turned on, however, opening privileged content (such as local HTML pages) will create a new tab process as it will not be constrained by protected mode.

Extensibility
Internet Explorer exposes a set of Component Object Model (COM) interfaces that allows add-ons to extend the functionality of the browser. Extensibility is divided into two types: Browser extensibility and content extensibility. Browser extensibility involves adding context menu entries, toolbars, menu items or Browser Helper Objects (BHO). BHOs are used to extend the feature set of the browser, whereas the other extensibility options are used to expose that feature in the user interface. Content extensibility adds support for non-native content formats. It allows Internet Explorer to handle new file formats and new protocols, e.g. WebM or SPDY. In addition, web pages can integrate widgets known as ActiveX controls which run on Windows only but have vast potentials to extend the content capabilities; Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight are examples. Add-ons can be installed either locally, or directly by a web site.

Since malicious add-ons can compromise the security of a system, Internet Explorer implements several safeguards. Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 2 and later feature an Add-on Manager for enabling or disabling individual add-ons, complemented by a "No Add-Ons" mode. Starting with Windows Vista, Internet Explorer and its BHOs run with restricted privileges and are isolated from the rest of the system. Internet Explorer 9 introduced a new component – Add-on Performance Advisor. Add-on Performance Advisor shows a notification when one or more of installed add-ons exceed a pre-set performance threshold. The notification appears in the Notification Bar when the user launches the browser. Windows 8 and Windows RT introduce a Metro-style version of Internet Explorer that is entirely sandboxed and does not run add-ons at all. In addition, Windows RT cannot download or install ActiveX controls at all; although existing ones bundled with Windows RT still run in the traditional version of Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer itself can be hosted by other applications via a set of COM interfaces. This can be used to embed the browser functionality inside a computer program or create Internet Explorer shells.

Security
Internet Explorer uses a zone-based security framework that groups sites based on certain conditions, including whether it is an Internet- or intranet-based site as well as a user-editable whitelist. Security restrictions are applied per zone; all the sites in a zone are subject to the restrictions.

Internet Explorer 6 SP2 onwards uses the Attachment Execution Service of Microsoft Windows to mark executable files downloaded from the Internet as being potentially unsafe. Accessing files marked as such will prompt the user to make an explicit trust decision to execute the file, as executables originating from the Internet can be potentially unsafe. This helps in preventing the accidental installation of malware.

Internet Explorer 7 introduced the phishing filter, which restricts access to phishing sites unless the user overrides the decision. With version 8, it also blocks access to sites known to host malware. Downloads are also checked to see if they are known to be malware-infected.

In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer by default runs in what is called Protected Mode, where the privileges of the browser itself are severely restricted—it cannot make any system-wide changes. One can optionally turn this mode off, but this is not recommended. This also effectively restricts the privileges of any add-ons. As a result, even if the browser or any add-on is compromised, the damage the security breach can cause is limited.

Patches and updates to the browser are released periodically and made available through the Windows Update service, as well as through Automatic Updates. Although security patches continue to be released for a range of platforms, most feature additions and security infrastructure improvements are only made available on operating systems that are in Microsoft's mainstream support phase.

On December 16, 2008, Trend Micro recommended users switch to rival browsers until an emergency patch was released to fix a potential security risk which "could allow outside users to take control of a person's computer and steal their passwords.” Microsoft representatives countered this recommendation, claiming that "0.02% of internet sites" were affected by the flaw. A fix for the issue was released the following day with the Security Update for Internet Explorer KB960714, on Microsoft Windows Update.

In 2010, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, known by its German initials, BSI, advised "temporary use of alternative browsers" because of a "critical security hole" in Microsoft's software that could allow hackers to remotely plant and run malicious code on Windows PCs.

In 2011, a report by Accuvant, funded by Google, rated the security (based on sandboxing) of Internet Explorer worse than Google Chrome but better than Mozilla Firefox.

A 2017 browser security white paper comparing Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer 11 by X41 D-Sec in 2017 came to similar conclusions, also based on sandboxing and support of legacy web technologies.

Security vulnerabilities
Internet Explorer has been subjected to many security vulnerabilities and concerns such that the volume of criticism for IE is unusually high. Much of the spyware, adware, and computer viruses across the Internet are made possible by exploitable bugs and flaws in the security architecture of Internet Explorer, sometimes requiring nothing more than viewing of a malicious web page to install themselves. This is known as a "drive-by install.” There are also attempts to trick the user into installing malicious software by misrepresenting the software's true purpose in the description section of an ActiveX security alert.

A number of security flaws affecting IE originated not in the browser itself, but in ActiveX-based add-ons used by it. Because the add-ons have the same privilege as IE, the flaws can be as critical as browser flaws. This has led to the ActiveX-based architecture being criticized for being fault-prone. By 2005, some experts maintained that the dangers of ActiveX had been overstated and there were safeguards in place. In 2006, new techniques using automated testing found more than a hundred vulnerabilities in standard Microsoft ActiveX components. Security features introduced in Internet Explorer 7 mitigated some of these vulnerabilities.

In 2008, Internet Explorer had a number of published security vulnerabilities. According to research done by security research firm Secunia, Microsoft did not respond as quickly as its competitors in fixing security holes and making patches available. The firm also reported 366 vulnerabilities in ActiveX controls, an increase from the previous year.

According to an October 2010 report in The Register, researcher Chris Evans had detected a known security vulnerability which, then dating back to 2008, had not been fixed for at least six hundred days. Microsoft says that it had known about this vulnerability, but it was of exceptionally low severity as the victim web site must be configured in a peculiar way for this attack to be feasible at all.

In December 2010, researchers were able to bypass the "Protected Mode" feature in Internet Explorer.

Vulnerability exploited in attacks on U.S. firms
In an advisory on January 14, 2010, Microsoft said that attackers targeting Google and other U.S. companies used software that exploits a security hole, which had already been patched, in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability affected Internet Explorer 6 from on Windows XP and Server 2003, IE6 SP1 on Windows 2000 SP4, IE7 on Windows Vista, XP, Server 2008, and Server 2003, IE8 on Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003, and Server 2008 (R2).

The German government warned users against using Internet Explorer and recommended switching to an alternative web browser, due to the major security hole described above that was exploited in Internet Explorer. The Australian and French Government issued a similar warning a few days later.

Major vulnerability across versions
On April 26, 2014, Microsoft issued a security advisory relating to (use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 through 11 ), a vulnerability that could allow "remote code execution" in Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11. On April 28, 2014, the United States Department of Homeland Security's United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) released an advisory stating that the vulnerability could result in "the complete compromise" of an affected system. US-CERT recommended reviewing Microsoft's suggestions to mitigate an attack or using an alternate browser until the bug is fixed. The UK National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK) published an advisory announcing similar concerns and for users to take the additional step of ensuring their antivirus software is up to date. Symantec, a cyber security firm, confirmed that "the vulnerability crashes Internet Explorer on Windows XP." The vulnerability was resolved on May 1, 2014, with a security update.

Market adoption and usage share

The adoption rate of Internet Explorer seems to be closely related to that of Microsoft Windows, as it is the default web browser that comes with Windows. Since the integration of Internet Explorer 2.0 with Windows 95 OSR 1 in 1996, and especially after version 4.0's release in 1997, the adoption was greatly accelerated: from below 20% in 1996, to about 40% in 1998, and over 80% in 2000. This made Microsoft the winner in the infamous 'first browser war' against Netscape. Netscape Navigator was the dominant browser during 1995 and until 1997, but rapidly lost share to IE starting in 1998, and eventually slipped behind in 1999. The integration of IE with Windows led to a lawsuit by AOL, Netscape's owner, accusing Microsoft of unfair competition. The infamous case was eventually won by AOL but by then it was too late, as Internet Explorer had already become the dominant browser.

Internet Explorer peaked during 2002 and 2003, with about 95% share. Its first notable competitor after beating Netscape was Firefox from Mozilla, which itself was an offshoot from Netscape.

Firefox 1.0 had surpassed Internet Explorer 5 in early 2005, with Firefox 1.0 at 8 percent market share.

Approximate usage over time based on various usage share counters averaged for the year overall, or for the fourth quarter, or for the last month in the year depending on availability of reference.

According to StatCounter, Internet Explorer's market share fell below 50% in September 2010. In May 2012, Google Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the most used browser worldwide, according to StatCounter.

Industry adoption
Browser Helper Objects are also used by many search engines companies and third parties for creating add-ons that access their services, such as search engine toolbars. Because of the use of COM, it is possible to embed web-browsing functionality in third-party applications. Hence, there are several Internet Explorer shells, and several content-centric applications like RealPlayer also use Internet Explorer's web browsing module for viewing web pages within the applications.

Removal
While a major upgrade of Internet Explorer can be uninstalled in a traditional way if the user has saved the original application files for installation, the matter of uninstalling the version of the browser that has shipped with an operating system remains a controversial one.

The idea of removing a stock install of Internet Explorer from a Windows system was proposed during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. One of Microsoft's arguments during the trial was that removing Internet Explorer from Windows may result in system instability. Indeed, programs that depend on libraries installed by IE, including Windows help and support system, fail to function without IE. Before Windows Vista, it was not possible to run Windows Update without IE because the service used ActiveX technology, which no other web browser supports.

Impersonation by malware
The popularity of Internet Explorer led to the appearance of malware abusing its name. On January 28, 2011, a fake Internet Explorer browser calling itself "Internet Explorer – Emergency Mode" appeared. It closely resembled the real Internet Explorer but had fewer buttons and no search bar. If a user attempted to launch any other browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, or the real Internet Explorer, this browser would be loaded instead. It also displayed a fake error message, claiming that the computer was infected with malware and Internet Explorer had entered "Emergency Mode.” It blocked access to legitimate sites such as Google if the user tried to access them.

title: Internet Explorer


text:
Imprecise language

Imprecise language, informal spoken language, or everyday language is less precise than any more formal or academic languages.

Language might be said to be imprecise because it exhibits one or more of the following features:
 * ambiguity – when a word or phrase pertains to its having more than one meaning in the language to which the word belongs.
 * vagueness – when borderline cases interfere with an interpretation.
 * equivocation – the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time).
 * accent – when the use of bold or italics causes confusion over the meaning of a statement.
 * amphiboly – when a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.

While imprecise language is not desirable in various scientific fields, it may be helpful, illustrative or discussion-stimulative in other contexts. Imprecision in a discourse may or may not be the intention of the author(s) or speaker(s). The role of imprecision may depend on audience, end goal, extended context and subject matter. Relevant players and real stakes will also bear on truth-grounds of statements.

title: Imprecise language


text:
IEEE 802.2

IEEE 802.2 is the original name of the ISO/IEC 8802-2 standard which defines logical link control (LLC) as the upper portion of the data link layer of the OSI Model. The original standard developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in collaboration with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) was adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1998, but it remains an integral part of the family of IEEE 802 standards for local and metropolitan networks.

LLC is a software component that provides a uniform interface to the user of the data link service, usually the network layer. LLC may offer three types of services:
 * Unacknowledged connectionless mode services (mandatory)
 * Connection mode services (optional)
 * Acknowledged connectionless mode services (optional)

Conversely, the LLC uses the services of the media access control (MAC), which is dependent on the specific transmission medium (Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, 802.11, etc.). Using LLC is compulsory for all IEEE 802 networks with the exception of Ethernet. It is also used in Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) which is not part of the IEEE 802 family.

The IEEE 802.2 sublayer adds some control information to the message created by the upper layer and passed to the LLC for transmission to another node on the same data link. The resulting packet is generally referred to as LLC protocol data unit (PDU) and the additional information added by the LLC sublayer is the LLC HEADER. The LLC Header consist of DSAP (Destination Service Access Point), SSAP (Source Service Access Point) and the Control field.

The two 8-bit fields DSAP and SSAP allow multiplexing of various upper layer protocols above LLC. However, many protocols use the Subnetwork Access Protocol (SNAP) extension which allows using EtherType values to specify the protocol being transported atop IEEE 802.2. It also allows vendors to define their own protocol value spaces.

The 8 or 16 bit HDLC-style Control field serves to distinguish communication mode, to specify a specific operation and to facilitate connection control and flow control (in connection mode) or acknowledgements (in acknowledged connectionless mode).

Operational modes
IEEE 802.2 provides two connectionless and one connection-oriented operational modes: The use of multicasts and broadcasts reduces network traffic when the same information needs to be propagated to all stations of the network. However the Type 1 service provides no guarantees regarding the order of the received frames compared to the order in which they have been sent; the sender does not even get an acknowledgment that the frames have been received.
 * Type 1 is an unacknowledged connectionless mode for a datagram service. It allows for sending frames
 * to a single destination (point-to-point or unicast transfer),
 * to multiple destinations on the same network (multicast),
 * or to all stations of the network (broadcast).
 * Type 2 is a connection-oriented operational mode. Sequence numbering ensures that the frames received are guaranteed to be in the order they have been sent, and no frames are lost.
 * Type 3 is an acknowledged connectionless service. It supports point-to-point communication only.

Each device conforming to the IEEE 802.2 standard must support service type 1. Each network node is assigned an LLC Class according to which service types it supports:

LLC header
Any 802.2 LLC PDU has the following format:

When Subnetwork Access Protocol (SNAP) extension is used, it is located at the start of the Information field:

The 802.2 header includes two eight-bit address fields, called service access points (SAP) or collectively LSAP in the OSI terminology:
 * SSAP (Source SAP) is an 8-bit long field that represents the logical address of the network layer entity that has created the message.
 * DSAP (Destination SAP) is an 8-bit long field that represents the logical addresses of the network layer entity intended to receive the message.

LSAP values
Although the LSAP fields are 8 bits long, the low-order bit is reserved for special purposes, leaving only 128 values available for most purposes.

The low-order bit of the DSAP indicates whether it contains an individual or a group address:
 * if the low-order bit is 0, the remaining 7 bits of the DSAP specify an individual address, which refers to a single local service access point (LSAP) to which the packet should be delivered. and
 * if the low-order bit is 1, the remaining 7 bits of the DSAP specify a group address, which refers to a group of LSAPs to which the packet should be delivered.

The low-order bit of the SSAP indicates whether the packet is a command or response packet: The remaining 7 bits of the SSAP specify the LSAP (always an individual address) from which the packet was transmitted.
 * if it's 0, the packet is a command packet, and
 * if it's 1, the packet is a response packet.

LSAP numbers are globally assigned by the IEEE to uniquely identify well established international standards.

The protocols or families of protocols which have assigned one or more SAPs may operate directly on top of 802.2 LLC. Other protocols may use the Subnetwork Access Protocol (SNAP) with IEEE 802.2 which is indicated by the hexadecimal value 0xAA (or 0xAB, if the source of a response) in SSAP and DSAP. The SNAP extension allows using EtherType values or private protocol ID spaces in all IEEE 802 networks. It can be used both in datagram and in connection-oriented network services.

Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) networks are an exception; the IEEE 802.3x-1997 standard explicitly allowed using of the Ethernet II framing, where the 16-bit field after the MAC addresses does not carry the length of the frame followed by the IEEE 802.2 LLC header, but the EtherType value followed by the upper layer data. With this framing only datagram services are supported on the data link layer.

IPv4, IPX, and 802.2 LLC
Although IPv4 has been assigned an LSAP value of 6 (0x06) and ARP has been assigned an LSAP value of 152 (0x98), IPv4 is almost never directly encapsulated in 802.2 LLC frames without SNAP headers. Instead, the Internet standard RFC 1042 is usually used for encapsulating IPv4 traffic in 802.2 LLC frames with SNAP headers on FDDI and on IEEE 802 networks other than Ethernet. Ethernet networks typically use Ethernet II framing with EtherType 0x800 for IP and 0x806 for ARP.

The IPX protocol used by Novell NetWare networks supports an additional Ethernet frame type, 802.3 raw, ultimately supporting four frame types on Ethernet (802.3 raw, 802.2 LLC, 802.2 SNAP, and Ethernet II) and two frame types on FDDI and other (non-Ethernet) IEEE 802 networks (802.2 LLC and 802.2 SNAP).

It is possible to use diverse framings on a single network. It is possible to do it even for the same upper layer protocol, but in such a case the nodes using unlike framings cannot directly communicate with each other.

Control Field
Following the destination and source SAP fields is a control field. IEEE 802.2 was conceptually derived from HDLC, and has the same three types of PDUs:
 * Unnumbered format PDUs, or U-format PDUs, with an 8-bit control field, which are intended for connectionless applications;
 * Information transfer format PDUs, or I-format PDUs, with a 16-bit control and sequence numbering field, which are intended to be used in connection-oriented applications;
 * Supervisory format PDUs, or S-format PDUs, with a 16-bit control field, which are intended to be used for supervisory functions at the LLC (Logical Link Control) layer.

To carry data in the most-often used unacknowledged connectionless mode the U-format is used. It is identified by the value '11' in lower two bits of the single-byte control field.

title: IEEE 802.2