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be a no-win for him if he wanted to stay in power. According to Tim Pat Coogan’s biography of de Valera, he was heard commenting of the plenipotentiaries: “We must have scapegoats.” Ultimately, he persuaded Collins to lead the delegation in his stead. Collins resisted – he knew that he could not bring back a Republic. “To me the task is a loathsome one,” Collins wrote. “I go in the spirit of a soldier who acts against his best judgment at the orders of his superior.” Collins was wary of the whole deal. In London he brought his own staff and even lived apart from the rest of the delegation. He was highly suspicious of Erskine Childers, secretary to the delegation, who he was sure was a de Valera spy. The negotiations dragged on for a month without any progress. One night with their meetings going nowhere, Churchill suggested they return to his townhouse for drinks before continuing work on the Treaty. Collins and Churchill proceeded to drink a lot of cognac (Collins liked his spiked with Curaçao to keep his sweet tooth sated) and the talk turned ugly. At one point Collins reportedly exclaimed, “You put a £5,000 bounty on my head!” to Churchill. Churchill, years later, wrote that “[Collins] was in his most difficult mood, full of reproaches and defiances, and it was very easy for everyone to lose his temper.” Churchill took him by the hand to the other end of the room to show him a wanted poster. It was for the young Churchill in the Boer War. “At any rate it was a good price – £5,000,” said Churchill. “Look at me – £25 dead or alive. How would you like that?” Collins roared with laughter, the tension was broken, and on December 6, 1921 Michael Collins signed the Treaty creating the Irish Free State. Collins knew that to give Ireland life he had most likely to pay with his own. “Think – what have I got for Ireland?” he wrote. “Something which she has wanted these past 700 years. Will anyone be satisfied with the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this – early this morning I signed my own death warrant.”
The Treaty and the Oath of Allegiance
In early January 1922 the Dáil began to debate the Treaty. It came down to Collins vs. de Valera. Collins viewed the Treaty as a vehicle. “In my opinion,” he wrote, “it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire ... but the freedom to achieve it.” De Valera viewed the Treaty as a failure because it did not bring back a Republic. There was also the problem of the oath of allegiance to the king. It was mandatory that all members of the Dáil had to take the oath. This was verboten to de Valera and his followers, people like Cathal Brugha and the Countess Markievicz. “Deputies have spoken about whether dead men would approve of it,” said Collins during the Dáil debate, “and they have spoken of whether children yet unborn would approve it, but few have spoken of whether the living approve it.” De Valera and his loyalists plotted every parliamentary trick they could to derail the Treaty, frustrating and infuriating Collins to no end. “We will have no Tammany Hall methods here!” shouted Collins in the Dáil. “Whether you are for the Treaty or whether you are against it, fight without Tammany Hall methods. We will not have them.” Not getting their way, de Valera and cohorts deserted their duty as the loyal opposition and marched out of the Dáil. The Dáil passed the Treaty by a vote of 64 to 57 and Ireland, finally, was a nation once again – albeit a nation in civil war. 54 IRISH AMERICA FEBRUARY / MARCH 2016
Death at Béal na mBláth
Because of de Valera’s withdrawal, Collins and Arthur Griffith were left to run the country. Griffith became President of the Dáil and Collins ran the army as he continued to work with the British over the transferal of government agencies. In April, anti-Treaty forces took over the Four Courts in Dublin. Collins, because he had so many friends among the anti-Treaty forces, did not immediately react. He wanted to find a way out through negotiations. He waited two months, until under pressure from Churchill, he blasted them out. Large sections of the country had to be retaken by the new Free State army, particularly in the west and in the south. Things were seemingly beginning to coalesce for the new government when President Griffith suddenly died on August 12th from a cerebral hemorrhage. The weight of the nation once again fell on Michael Collins’s shoulders. Collins, still looking for a mediated settlement to the Civil War, decided to travel to his home county – strongly hostile to the Treaty – to not only show the flag, but to politic among the locals. Also, it was known that de Valera was also in the vicinity. Perhaps a settlement could be reached? When told he was a fool to go to rebel Cork, Collins reportedly replied, “Yerra, they’ll never shoot me in my own county.” On August 22nd Collins and his entourage traveled the back roads of West Cork, stopping in pubs to talk with the locals. In the early evening at a road called Béal na mBláth – “the mouth or the gap of the flowers” in Irish – shots rang out. “Drive like hell!” shouted General Emmet Dalton, his traveling companion. But Collins would have none of it: “Stop! Jump out and we’ll fight them.” Minutes later he was dead from a bullet wound to the back of his head. Seán O’Connell, a member of the entourage, whispered an act of perfect contrition into the General’s ear. Collins’s service to his country was finished.
Michael Collins Today
At his last meeting before traveling for Béal na mBláth Collins told Churchill, “I shall not last long; my life is forfeit, but I shall do my best. After I am gone it will be easier for others.” But it was not easy – the Civil War would last until 1923 with terrible atrocities committed by both sides, polluting the political waters of Ireland for the rest of the 20th century. With Collins’s death, de Valera’s star began to rise. In 1927 he entered the Dáil and, in the hypocrisy of hypocrisies, took the oath of allegiance. By 1932 he was the President once again and slowly but surely the figure of Michael Collins was airbrushed out of Irish history. Then, 50 years after his death, there was a resurrection. Margery Forester wrote a wonderful biography called Michael Collins: The Lost Leader, which brought Collins alive to a new generation of Irish. She was followed by new and thorough biographies by the likes of Tim Pat Coogan and T. Ryle Dwyer. With these books the Irish rediscovered their Dublin Pimpernel, a man who made James Bond look foppish. Then Hollywood came calling with Academy Award winner Liam Neeson filling the big screen with a bigger rendition of the Big Fellow. What is the legacy of Michael Collins today? Most would say that it is rather simple: he found a way to beat the British and in doing so returned nationhood – albeit an imperfect nationhood – to the Irish people. Perhaps the greatest salute comes from his old antagonist, Eamon de Valera: “It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Michael Collins and it IA will be recorded at my expense.”