The Life and Times of a Hero

General Michael Collins

16 October 1890, One of the greatest ever Irish statesmen was born in Sam's Cross near the town of Clonakilty in Co.Cork. Youngest of eight children and the third son to parents Michael and Marianne. On his death bed the elder Collins turned to his family and told them to take care of Michael, because "One day he'll be a great man. He'll do great work for Ireland."

A young michael Collins with family.

 Indeed he was correct, for a young Michael, just six years old at the time of his fathers death, would grow up to become perhaps the most decorated soldier and political personality that this country has ever known. Though the later years of his life would be plagued with controversy.

A revolutionary leader he was Minister for Finance and Cork South TD in the First Dail in 1919. He was Director of Intelligence for the IRA, a member of the Irish delegation during negotions for the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He was the Commander-in-Chief of the National Army.

He was also President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and, therefore, under the bylaws of the Brotherhood, Collins was considered President of the Irish Republic.

Though he did not come to prominence until 1916 due to his part in the fighting at the GPO in Dublin,  he was in fact a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood since 1910, a secret, oath-bound society dedicated to achieving Irish Independence. This early life membership was due to his affiliation with the London GAA, which he joined whilst studying in King's College London.

He infact did not return to Ireland until 1916 when he began working for  Craig Gardiner & Co. A firm of accountants in Dublin. It was at this time that he was made financial advisor to Count Plunkett. Whose son Joeseph Plunkett was one of the organisers of the Easter Rising itself.

Durng the Rising, which as expected was a military disaster, Collins fought alongside his republican comrades and as a result was imprisioned in Frongoch internment camp. By 1917 Collins had risen to the executive of Sinn Féin and director of organisation of the Irish Volunteers.

Like all senior Sinn Féin members, in the 1918 general election Collins was elected as an Irish MP with the right to sit in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London. However, unlike their rivals in the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Féin MPs had announced that they would not take their seats in Westminster, but instead would set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin.

The First Dail in 1919

 That new parliament, called Dáil Éireann met in the Mansion House, Dublin, in January 1919, although Eamon de Valera and leading Sinn Féin MPs had been arrested. Collins, who was tipped off by his network of spies, had warned his colleagues of the dangers of arrest; de Valera and others ignored these warnings, believing if the arrests happened, they would constitute a propaganda coup. In de Valera's absence, Cathal Brugha was elected Príomh Aire ('Prime', Minister', but often translated as 'President of Dáil Éireann'), to be replaced by de Valera, when Collins helped him escape from Lincoln Prison in April 1919.

It was in 1919 that Collins was elected to the different roles in the IRA and the ministry. Collins produced a Finance Ministry that was able to organise a large bond issue in the form of a "National Loan" to fund the new Irish Republic, even though no state gave diplomatic recognition to the 1919 republic, despite sustained lobbying in Washington by de Valera and prominent Irish-Americans, as well as attempts  to have representatives of the Irish Republic invited to the 1919 Versailles conference. Despite this the Russian Republic, in the midst of its own civil war, ordered Ludwig Martens acquire a "national loan" from the Irish Republic through Harry Boland, offering some of the Russian Crown Jewels as collateral.

Collins and Richard Mulcahy were the two principal organisers for the Irish Republican Army, insofar as it was possible to direct the actions of scattered and heavily localised guerrilla units.

In 1920, such was his importance to the Republcan movement, the British offered a bounty of £10,000 (equivalent to £300,000 / €360,000 in 2010) for information leading to the capture or death of Collins. To prevent anyone claiming the reward, Collins regularly joined his foot soldiers in hiding at safe-houses.

In July 1921, the British suddenly offered a truce. Collins later said that at that time, the IRA was weeks—or even days—from collapse for want of ammunition. As they were walking out of Downing Street after signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Collins said to the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, Hamar Greenwood: "You had us dead beat. We could not have lasted another three weeks. When we were told of the offer of a truce we were astounded. We thought you must have gone mad."
Though at the time of the ceasefire in July 1921 a major operation had been planned to wipe out every enemy agent in Dublin, while a major ambush involving eighty officers and men was also planned for Templeglantine in Co. Limerick.

Arrangements were made for a conference between the British government and the leaders of the as-yet unrecognised Irish Republic.

Treaty negotiations in London in 1921

 In August 1921, de Valera made the Dáil upgrade his office from Prime Minister to President of the Irish Republic, which made him equivalent to George V in the negotiations. Earlier while in America, de Valera had begun using the title "President" while speaking across that country trying to raise funds, a move which brought him into conflict with some members of the IRB, whose constitution and bylaws declared Collins President of the Irish Republic. Eventually, however, he announced that as the King would not attend, then neither would he. Instead, with the reluctant agreement of his cabinet, de Valera nominated a team of delegates headed by Vice-President Arthur Griffith, with Collins as his deputy. Though he thought that de Valera should head the delegation, Collins agreed to go to London.

Collins himself protested his appointment to the delegation, as he was not a statesman and in revealing himself to the British (he had previously kept his public presence to a minimum) it would reduce his effectiveness as a guerilla war leader should hostilities resume. The negotiations ultimately resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty which was signed on 6 December 1921, which envisaged a new Irish state, to be named the "Irish Free State". The treaty provided for a possible all-Ireland state, subject to the right of a six-county region in the northeast to opt out of the Free State. If this happened, an Irish Boundary Commission was to be established to redraw the Irish border, which Collins expected would so reduce the size of Northern Ireland as to make it economically unviable, thus enabling unity.

The new state was to be a Dominion of the King but exercised by an Irish government elected by a  Dáil Éireann, an independent courts system, and a level of internal independence that far exceeded anything sought by Charles Stewart Parnell or his Irish Parliamentary Party. Though it fell short of the republic that he'd originally fought to create, Collins concluded that the Treaty offered Ireland "the freedom to achieve freedom." Nonetheless, he knew that the treaty, and in particular the issue of partition, would not be well received in Ireland. Upon signing the treaty, Collins stated that "I may have signed my actual death warrant".

The Dail debates the Free State Constitution.

 Republican purists saw it as a sell-out. Sinn Féin split over the treaty, and the Dáil debated the matter bitterly for ten days until it was approved by a vote of 64 to 57. De Valera joined the anti-treaty faction opposing the concessions. Though his opponents claimed that he had prior knowledge that the crown would have to feature in whatever form of settlement was agreed.

The Treaty was extremely controversial in Ireland. Éamon de Valera had been unhappy that Collins had signed any deal without his and his cabinet's authorisation. The contents of the Treaty were bitterly disputed. De Valera and many other members of the republican movement objected to Ireland's status as a dominion of the British Empire. Also controversial was the British retention of Treaty Ports on the south coast of Ireland for the Royal Navy. Both of these things threatened to give Britain control over Ireland's foreign policy. Most of the Irish Republican Army opposed the Treaty, opening the prospect of civil war.

Under the Dáil Constitution adopted in 1919, Dáil Éireann continued to exist. De Valera resigned the presidency and sought re-election (in an effort to destroy the newly approved Treaty), but Arthur Griffith replaced him after the close vote on 9 January. However, this government had no legal status in British constitutional law, so another co-existent government emerged, nominally answerable to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland.
The new Provisional Government was formed under Collins, who became "President of the Provisional Government" (i.e., Prime Minister). He also remained Minister for Finance of Griffith's republican administration.
According to British constitutional theory, he met  Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount Fitzalan (the head of the British administration in Ireland) to be duly installed in office.

In his biography of Michael Collins, Tim Pat Coogan recounted that, when Lord Lieutenant Fitzalan remarked that Collins had arrived seven minutes late for the 16 January 1922 ceremony, Collins replied, "We've been waiting over seven hundred years, you can have the extra seven minutes".

the first Brigade of the Irish Free State army

Despite the controversial treaty, the partition of Ireland was not as controversial. One of the main reasons for this was that Collins was secretly planning to launch a clandestine guerrilla war within the Northern State. Throughout the early months of 1922, he had been sending IRA units to the border and sending arms and money to the northern units of the IRA. In May–June 1922, he and IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch organised an offensive of both pro- and anti-treaty IRA units along the new border. British arms supplied to Collins's Provisional government were instead swapped with the weapons of IRA units, which were sent to the north.

This offensive was officially called off under British pressure on 3 June and Collins issued a statement that "no troops from the 26 counties, either those under official control [pro-treaty] or those attached to the [IRA] Executive [anti-treaty] should be permitted to invade the six county area." However, low level IRA attacks on the border continued.

In the months leading up to the outbreak of civil war in June 1922, Collins tried desperately to heal the rift in the nationalist movement and prevent civil war. De Valera, having opposed the Treaty in the Dáil, withdrew from the assembly with his supporters. Collins secured a compromise whereby the two factions of Sinn Féin, pro- and anti-Treaty, would fight the soon-to-be Free State's first election jointly and form a coalition government afterwards.
He proposed that the envisaged Free State would have a republican constitution, with no mention of the British king, without repudiating the Treaty, a compromise acceptable to all but the most extreme republicans. To foster military unity, he established an "army re-unification committee" with delegates from both Treaty factions. He also made efforts to use the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood of which he was still president, to get IRA officers to accept the Treaty. However, the British vetoed the proposed republican constitution under the threat of an economic blockade, arguing they had signed and ratified the Treaty in good faith and its terms could not be changed so quickly.

On 14 April 1922, a group of 200 anti-Treaty IRA men occupied the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the Provisional government. Collins, who wanted to avoid civil war at all costs, did not attack them until June 1922, when British pressure also forced his hand. On 22 June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson, a retired British Army field marshal now serving as Military Advisor was shot dead by two IRA men in Belgravia, London. At the time, it was presumed that the anti-Treaty faction of the IRA were responsible and Winston Churchill told Collins that unless he moved against the Four Courts garrison, he (Churchill) would use British troops to do so. It has since been claimed that Collins ordered the killing of Wilson in reprisal for failing to prevent the attacks on Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland, and that he ordered the rescue of  the two gunmen before they were executed.

The attack by  the Irish Free State Armyon the fourcourts

In any event, this forced Collins to take action against the Four Courts men and the final provocation came when they kidnapped J.J. "Ginger" O'Connell, a provisional government general. After a final attempt to persuade the men to leave, Collins borrowed two 18 pounder artillery pieces from the British and bombarded the Four Courts until its garrison surrendered.

And so the Irish Civil War was born. De Valera and the other anti-Treaty TDs sided with the anti-Treaty IRA, whose forces held the control Munster and several other areas of the country. By mid-1922, Collins in effect laid down his responsibilities as Chairman of the Provisional Government to become Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, a formal, structured, uniformed army that formed around the nucleus of the pro-Treaty IRA.

Collins, along with Richard Mulcahy and Eoin O'Duffy decided on a series of seaborne landings into republican held areas that re-took Munster and the west in July–August 1922. As part of this offensive, Collins travelled to his native Cork, against the advice of his companions and despite suffering from stomach ache and depression. Collins reputedly told his comrades that "They wouldn't shoot me in my own county". In Cork city, he met with neutral IRA men Seán O'Hegarty and Florrie O'Donoghue, with a view to contacting Anti-Treaty IRA leaders Tom Barry and Tom Hales to propose a truce and bring an end to the war.

Collins's personal diary outlined his plan for peace. Republicans must "accept the People's Verdict" on the Treaty, but could then "go home without their arms. We don't ask for any surrender of their principles". He argued that the Provisional Government was upholding "the people's rights" and would continue to do so. "We want to avoid any possible unnecessary destruction and loss of life. We do not want to mitigate their weakness by resolute action beyond what is required". But if Republicans did not accept his terms, "further blood is on their shoulders".

The last known photo of Michael collins on the road to Béal na Bláth

 On the road to Bandon, at the village of Béal na Bláth, Collins's column stopped to ask directions. However, the man whom they asked, Dinny Long, was also a member of the local Anti-Treaty IRA. On 22 August 1922 an ambush was prepared for the convoy when it made its return journey back to Cork city. They knew Collins would return by the same route, as the two other roads from Bandon to Cork had been rendered impassable by Republicans. The ambush party, commanded by Liam Deasy, had mostly dispersed to a nearby pub by 8:00 p.m., when Collins and his men returned to Béal na Bláth but the remaining five ambushers on the scene opened fire on the Collins convoy.

Collins was killed in the subsequent gun battle, which lasted about 20 minutes, from 8:00 p.m. to 8:20 p.m. He was the only fatality. There is no consensus as to who fired the fatal shot. The most recent authoritative account suggests that the shot was fired by Denis ("Sonny") O'Neill, an Anti-Treaty IRA fighter and a former British Army marksman who died in 1950.

Collins's men brought his body back to Cork where it was then shipped to Dublin because it was feared the body might be stolen in an ambush if it were transported by road. His body lay in state for three days in Dublin City Hall where tens of thousands of mourners filed past his coffin to pay their respects. His funeral mass took place at Dublin's Pro Cathedral where a number of foreign and Irish dignitaries were in attendance. Some 500,000 people attended his funeral, almost one fifth of the country's population at the time.

Since his death there have been many conspiracy theories, and even the identity and motives of the assassin are subject to debate. Some Pro-Treaty accounts claim that de Valera ordered an assassination. Others allege that Collins was killed by one of his own soldiers, Jock McPeak, who defected to the Republican side with an armoured car three months after the ambush. However, historian Meda Ryan, who researched the incident exhaustively, concluded that there was no real basis for such theories. "Michael Collins was shot by a Republican, who said [on the night of the ambush], 'I dropped one man'". Liam Deasy, who was in command of the ambush party, said, "We all knew it was Sonny O'Neill's bullet." Despite this account, the theories will never cease to be.

Enda Kenny at Béal na Bláth in 2012

Collins' Grave in Glasnevin

Collins is rememered today as one of the most prominent and important figureheads in the movement for Irish freedom. An annual commemoration ceremony takes place each year in August at the ambush site at Béal na Bláth, Cork.  In 2012 on the 90th anniversary of the death of Collins, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny gave the oration,  becoming the first serving head of government to do so.
There is also a remembrance ceremony in Glasnevin Cemetery at Collins's grave.

Dvd cover of Neil Jordan' 1996 film

 

Collins s remembered in popular culture through several mediums including numberous documentaries from both British and Irish production companys. In 2005 Cork Opera House commissioned a musical about Collins, which was last seen in the Olympia Theatre in Dublin.

 Perhaps the most popular however is the 1996 film  Michael Collins with Liam Neeson in the title role. Though the film does contain some historical accuracies including the death of Ned Broy who in real-life became Commissioner of An Garda Siochana in 1932. Neil Jordan defended his film by saying that it could not provide an entirely accurate account of events, given that it was a two-hour film that had to be understandable to an international audience who would not know the minutiae of Irish history." The documentary on the DVD release of the film also discusses its fictional aspects.

  Whatever ones opinion of Collins, there is no denying that he was Instrumental in the foundation of Ireland as an Independent nation and in that his legacy will always live. Happy Birthday 'Big Fellow'.