Michael Collins: A Man Against an Empire

On the evening of August 22, 1922, a small military convoy carrying 31-year-old Michael Collins was driving along the war torn roads of County Cork, Ireland. Collins was deeply troubled. What should have been the happiest summer of his life had turned into the most tragic. The previous December, Collins had helped negotiate a treaty in which Britain, after 750 years of occupation, had finally agreed to withdraw from the 26 counties of southern Ireland. Within a few months of the treaty, however, Ireland was engulfed in a civil war in which the Irish Free State Army, which supported the treaty, was fighting the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which opposed it for failing to include the northern counties.

In an attempt to put an end to the war, Collins, who had been the IRA’s director of intelligence and who was now the commander in chief of the Irish Free State Army, had gone to Cork. When asked about the dangers, Collins had replied that ‘my own fellow countymen won’t kill me.’ He probably knew he was wrong. As the lightly armed convoy made its way along the lonely Irish roads, Collins was killed in an IRA ambush. The repercussions of that evening are still being felt in Ireland to this day.

Although his image as a legendary and romantic hero or a prototypical terrorist depends on one’s point of view, there is little disagreement over Michael Collins’ being a tragic figure in the end. As the military and political genius behind the IRA’s fight for Irish independence, he led a small force of guerrillas to fight the British empire, which at the time was the world’s mightiest power, to a stalemate and forced the British to the negotiating table. The tactics that he developed and perfected caused him to be widely regarded as the father of 20th century urban guerrilla warfare. Future revolutionaries such as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong and Yitzak Shamir studied and adopted Collins’ tactics. In fact, Shamir admired Collins so much that he used the code-name Michael during the Israeli war of independence.

All of Collins’ biographies state that he was born in Woodfield, County Cork, on October 16, 1890, although it is interesting to note that his tombstone presents it as October 12, 1890. His father, who had married at age 60, was 75 at the time of Michael’s birth, the youngest of eight children. Michael’s father died in March 1897.

At an early age, Collins was influenced by his school teacher, Denis Lyons, and the village blacksmith, James Santry. Both of those individuals instilled in him a burning desire to free Ireland from British rule. Although his formal education ended at age 12, Collins was a voracious reader throughout his life. At age 15, Collins moved to London and became a clerk. During his time there, he became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret organization dedicated to Irish independence. He remained in London until 1916, when he returned to Ireland to help fight in the Easter Rebellion, which was planned and organized by the IRB. During the rising, Collins served as aide-de-camp to one of its leaders, Joseph Mary Plunkett. The Easter Rebellion started on Monday, April 24, 1916 and the last rebels surrendered on Saturday, April 29. The leaders were all executed and hundreds of participants, including Collins, were sent to an internment camp in Wales. Collins was released as part of a general amnesty in December 1916, and returned home on Christmas Day. Collins’ time spent in the internment camp had not been wasted. During his incarceration, he studied past Irish insurrections and analyzed why they had always failed. He concluded that the fatal flaw of each had been of a lack of organization. He vowed that the next rebellion would succeed-because he would lead it. When Collins returned to Ireland, he found several organizations dedicated to establishing an Irish republic. In addition to the IRB, there was the Irish Volunteers, which was the forerunner of the IRA, and the Sinn Fein political party. Over the next few years, Collins would play major roles in all three organizations.