Michael Collins

Killed in an ambush on 22 August 1922 at Beal na Blath in County Cork during the Irish Civil War by anti-Treaty IRA fighters.

Overview

Collins, architect of the IRA guerrilla campaign and chairman of the provisional government that accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty, was inspecting his home county when his convoy ran into a roadblock ambush at the crossroads of Beal na Blath. He was the only fatality, hit in the head after leaving cover; the identity of the shooter remains unknown. His death, at thirty-one, removed the one leader admired on both sides and made the civil war genuinely tragic for the new state. The anti-Treaty side lost its best chance of eventual reconciliation; the pro-Treaty side lost its driving genius. The man who had run the intelligence war against the British Empire and signed the Treaty saying he had signed his death warrant became the founding martyr of the Irish state.