On 18 August 1922, Collins met the playwright George Bernard Shaw for the first and only time. Shaw, who was visiting Ireland, was sanguine. ‘Ireland is obviously on the point of losing its temper savagely,’ he told the press after the meeting:
When the explosion comes, General Collins will be able to let himself go in earnest, and the difficulty of the overcrowded jail and the disbanded irregular who take to the road again the moment the troops have passed will be solved, because there will be no prisoners; the strain will be on the cemeteries.
General Collins beat Sir Hamar Greenwood at the wrecking game because he had the people with him. What chance against him has Mr de Valera without military aptitude or any of Sir Hamar Greenwood’s enormous material resources? Of course he can enjoy the luxury of dying for Ireland after doing Ireland all the damage he can. ‘What matter if for Ireland dear we fall’ is still the idiot’s battle song. The idiocy is sanctified by the memories of a time when there was really nothing to be done for Irish freedom but to die for it; but the time has now come for Irishmen to learn to live for their country. Instead of which they start runaway engines down the lines, blow up bridges, burn homesteads and factories, and gain . nothing by it except such amusements as making my train from Waterford to Rosslare several hours late. Ireland would be just as free at this moment if I had arrived punctually. You see, the cause of Ireland is always dogged by the ridicule which we have such a fatal gift of provoking, and such a futile gift of expressing.
I suppose it will have to be settled, as usual, by another massacre of Irishmen by Irishmen. If Mr de Valera had any political genius he might avert it. But with the strongest sentimental bias in his favour I cannot persuade myself that he has any political faculty at all …
I cannot stand the stale romance that passes for politics in Ireland. I cannot imagine why people bother so much about us; I am sure we don’t deserve it … But what matter if for Ireland dear we fall! It is too silly: I must hurry back to London. The lunatics there are comparatively harmless.. 1..
After Collins was dropped in Greystones, his car was involved in an ambush near Stillorgan on returning to Dublin. To his disappointment, the incident was not reported. ‘I recounted the incident to the government meeting last night, but apparently it was not of sufficient interest for publication,’ he wrote to the director of publicity. ‘The commander-in-chief’s car was ambushed on Friday at 1 p.m. about one mile the Dublin side of Stillorgan, on its way from Greystones. 2nd Driver Rafter was wounded on hip and is now in Baggot Street Hospital. One bomb and between 20 and 30 rifles shots fired. Fire was returned, casualties of attackers unknown. The car is badly damaged.’. 2..
The morning after the Stillorgan ambush Collins visited the Foxrock home of Sir Henry Robinson, who had been put through a frightening ordeal the previous evening when his home was . robbed at gunpoint. After the withdrawal of the RIC and British army, Robinson noted that officials like himself ‘were left at the mercy of any thugs that happened to take a dislike to us’. Those who had started the War of Independence had not been able to call it off at the stroke of a pen. ‘The habit of taking what you want at the end of a revolver is not got rid of as easily as that and, Treaty or no Treaty, there were a whole heap of private vendettas to be settled up, and there was quite a lot of loot available for bandits without any police to interfere with them,’ Robinson’s son wrote.. 3..
Collins had told them that ‘the new government were in no position to protect anybody. We had much better clear out, and come back later on when things had settled down a bit.’ The following day they learned the raiders ‘were not republicans at all but just local hooligans, led by a very bad hat, who luckily was not there on the night of the raid’.. 4..
‘I find myself in far more danger since the peace came than ever I did in the war,’ Collins joked in an interview published in a London newspaper on 19 August.. 5.. The danger was closer than he probably realised. That evening he was in a touring car that was involved in an accident in Dun Laoghaire when it collided with a military tender carrying troops. ‘The crowd which collected round the damaged vehicles recognised the general and cheered him,’ according to The Irish Times.. 6..
Next day the Stillorgan ambush was plastered across a seven-column headline as the lead story in the Sunday Independent. It was also fully reported on Monday in The Irish Times, which went on to mention that it had learned ‘on good authority’ that Collins was not actually in the car at the time.. 7.. General Macready, who . noted that Collins was not in the car, reported to the cabinet in London that ‘this attack was probably intended to avenge the death of Harry Boland’. He noted that republican propagandists were holding Collins responsible for Boland’s ‘so-called murder’.. 8..
Collins did not attend the cabinet meeting on Monday morning when it took a momentous decision on the north. Ernest Blythe, who had been vocal in favour of a militant policy in the south before the arrival of the Black and Tans, warned the cabinet that the aggressive policy towards the six counties was counterproductive. He advocated that the pro-Treaty IRA be disbanded in the north. The Provisional Government formally adopted this ‘peace policy’, but it is significant that it only did so subject to ‘the approval of the commander-in-chief’. As he began his fatal tour of the south, it was obvious that members of the cabinet still looked to Collins as the man in charge.. 9..
As was the case with Shaw, the Irish public still tended to see the conflict as a kind of contest between Collins and de Valera. The latter had actually become preoccupied with the thought of arranging peace. ‘In Fermoy, Mallow, and other towns, the people looked at us sullenly, as if we had belonged to a hostile invading army,’ recalled Robert Brennan, who sometimes acted as secretary for the Long Fellow. ‘Dev had seen all this, as had I, and that was one of the reasons he was so desperately trying for peace while he still had some bargaining power.’. 10..
‘The people must be won to the cause before any successful fighting can be done,’ de Valera believed.. 11.. Like Collins, he appreciated the value of propaganda, but the republicans had no newspapers on their side and they were badly organised. De Valera was trying to persuade them to give up the fight. ‘Dev passing . through your area talking peace,’ Liam Lynch wrote to his deputy chief of staff, Liam Deasy. ‘Give him no encouragement.’. 12..
‘Dev’s mission is to try to bring the war to an end,’ Deasy told his men, adding that they were ‘on no account to give Dev any encouragement as his arguments don’t stand up’.. 13..
De Valera met Deasy in Gurranereagh, County Cork, on 21 August. ‘We discussed the war situation far into the night,’ Deasy recalled. ‘His main argument was that, having made our protest in arms and as we could not now hope to achieve a military success, the honourable course was for us to withdraw.’ Deasy agreed to an extent but pointed out that the majority of the IRA ‘would not agree to an unconditional cease fire’.. 14..
Having arrived in Cork on the evening of 20 August, the following morning Collins visited some local banks in an effort to trace republican funds lodged during their occupation of the city. During July the IRA had collected £100,000 in customs revenue and hidden this money in the accounts of sympathisers. Collins got the bank directors to identify suspicious accounts. He concluded that ‘three first-class independent men’ were needed to conduct a forensic investigation of the banks and the Customs and Excise in Cork. He asked Cosgrave to consider three people ‘but don’t announce anything until I return’.. 15.. At the end of a long day the Big Fellow strode into the lobby of the Imperial Hotel in Cork to find the two hotel guards sleeping on duty. He grabbed them and banged their heads together.
The next day Collins set out early with a small escort convoy which consisted of a motorbike outrider, Lieutenant Smith, followed by an open Crossley tender with two officers, two machine gunners with a Lewis gun and eight riflemen. A Leyland Thomas . touring car with Collins and Emmet Dalton in the back seat, and two drivers in front followed this. An armoured car brought up the rear of the convoy. Collins noted in his pocket diary that they departed at 6.15 a.m. He planned to go to Macroom first, where he had promised the Lewis gun to the local captain. Only a few miles outside Cork they ran into difficulties as the retreating republicans had destroyed a number of bridges in the area.
Shortly before 8 a.m. they reached Macroom, where he met Florrie O’Donoghue. Although O’Donoghue had been very prominent in the IRA, he was taking a neutral stand in the Civil War. He recalled that the Big Fellow was acting like he believed his opponents were afraid of him. ‘I’ve been all over this bloody country but no one has said a bloody word to me,’ Collins said.
As a bridge on the main road to Bandon had been blown up, the Collins convoy had to take a back road. On the way they passed through Béalnabláth at around 9 a.m. The locality was a hive of republican activity. Volunteers retreating from Limerick, Kilmallock and Buttevant as well as from Cork city were all in the general area. They planned to have a staff meeting at Béalnabláth that day. Denis Long, who was on guard duty there, gave Lt Smith, the motorcycle outrider, directions to Bandon. He noticed Collins in the convoy as it passed.
It was just after nine o’clock when de Valera and Deasy reached Béalnabláth and were told that Collins and a small military convoy had passed through only minutes earlier. Deasy remarked that the IRA should prepare an ambush in case Collins returned by the same route later that day. ‘De Valera then remarked that it would be a great pity if Collins were killed because he might be succeeded by a weaker man,’ according to Deasy.. 16..
. The republicans were determined to respond to what they considered his audacious challenge. They placed a mine in a metal tin with sticks of gelignite and buried it in the road near Béalnabláth. They then commandeered a four-wheel dray, driven by Stephen Griffith, who was told to take his horse to a local farm and await further developments. They took one of the wheels off the dray, propped it up on boxes of bottles and then waited throughout the remainder of the day. The number lying in wait fluctuated from twenty-five, estimated by Deasy, to much more, depending on who was telling the story.
Having reached Bandon, Collins and his party went on to Clonakilty. They had a good deal of trouble with the touring car, possibly caused by dirty petrol. They had to push it on a number of occasions, especially up some of the steeper hills. Although Collins was commander-in-chief, he was always ready to lend a hand with the pushing. ‘It was a beautiful August day,’ Dalton recalled. ‘Because there were still daily ambushes, I was in trepidation of what could happen, but Collins saw no danger.’. 17.. They were both confident that the Civil War could not last much longer.
‘It’s almost over,’ Collins said. In a sense it was a prophetic remark.
The group stopped for a meal at Clonakilty, and Collins met some old friends. Afterwards they went to Rosscarbery and then on to Skibbereen, where Collins and Dalton had a brief exchange with the famous writer Edith Sommerville, before heading back for Cork shortly after 4.30 p.m.
On reaching Sam’s Cross, the convoy stopped off at the pub of Collins’ cousin, Jeremiah. The Big Fellow bought two pints of Clonakilty Wrastler for each of his crew. While there he met his . brother Johnny, and two of Johnny’s daughters – Mary and Kitty – as well as his first cousin Michael O’Brien. He told them that his main goal was to end the Civil War and then he would be rededicating himself to the task of securing full national freedom. He was not about to be content with the Treaty settlement but would get further concessions from the British government once peace was restored. He seemed in good form, according to Johnny, but this was probably because his spirits were lifted in the midst of his family and friends, not to mention that he had consumed a fair bit of alcohol that day.
‘I hope you are travelling in the armoured car, Mick, because there is still danger around,’ Johnny said.
‘Not at all, this is my bus,’ Michael replied motioning towards the open touring car.
He crossed the road for a brief visit to his aunt and some other people in the neighbourhood. ‘Take care Michael,’ one of them said to him, according to Johnny, ‘take good care of yourself.’
‘They will never shoot me in my own country,’ he replied.. 18..
The convoy moved on to Bandon and from there back by the same route through Béalnabláth, where the republicans had been waiting to ambush him throughout the day. As the convoy had not returned by 7 p.m. they assumed that he had either taken a different route or was not coming back that night, and the ambush was called off. Seven men were left to dismantle the mine and clear the road. With the light failing, around 7.15 the Free State convoy approached the ambush site. It was surrounded by hills and when the first shot was fired Dalton realised it was an ideal spot for an ambush. ‘Drive like hell!’ Dalton shouted, but Collins put a hand on the driver’s shoulder.
. ‘Stop!’ he ordered. ‘We’ll fight them.’. 19..
Collins got to his feet and went over behind the armoured car to use it for cover as he fired some shots. ‘Come on boys!’ Collins shouted, apparently believing the ambushers were on the run. He left the protection of the car and moved about fifteen yards up the road. He dropped into the prone firing position and opened up on the retreating republicans. A few minutes had elapsed when Commandant O’Connell came running up the road under fire and threw himself down beside Dalton asking, ‘Where is the Big Fellow?’. 20..
‘He’s round the corner,’ Dalton replied.. 21.. They could hear Collins shooting. At one point he was standing up on the road firing as if he was daring somebody to shoot him. It seemed an amazingly foolish thing to do. Had the drink dulled his senses, or was he incredibly naïve when it came to an ambush situation?
‘Next moment,’ Dalton said later, ‘I caught a faint cry: Emmet I’m hit.’. 22..
Dalton and O’Connell found Collins lying on the road, still clutching his rifle. He had a gaping wound at the base of the skull behind his right ear. ‘It was quite obvious to me with the experience I had of a ricochet bullet, it could only have been a ricochet or a “dum-dum”,’ Dalton recalled.. 23..
O’Connell dragged Collins behind the armoured car. ‘I bandaged the wound and O’Connell said an “Act of Contrition” to him,’ Dalton said. ‘He was dying if not already dead.’. 24.. The body was placed in the armoured car and moved down the road out of danger and it was then transferred to the touring car. They asked a local man, Ted Murphy, to guide them to the nearest priest. He got into the tender.
. ‘This is a night that will be remembered,’ one of the soldiers remarked.
‘Why?’ Murphy asked.
‘The night Michael Collins was killed.’. 25..
They drove about two miles to house of Fr Timothy Murphy in Cloughduv. A soldier asked him to come out to the car. The soldier was carrying an old carbide lamp that was providing very bad light. At the car the body of Collins was propped up with his head lying against Dalton’s shoulder.
‘I was crying and so was O’Connell,’ Dalton recalled.. 26..
The priest realised they were looking for the last rites for their dead comrade, so he turned to go back into the house for the necessary oils. They thought he was refusing to anoint Collins’ body. O’Connell raised his rifle to shoot the priest. ‘Only that I struck up the barrel the priest would have been shot,’ Dalton explained later. ‘The bullet was actually discharged.’ They then drove off, incensed at what they considered the unchristian behaviour of the priest. ‘This incident left a grim impression on the minds of the entire party,’ Dalton added.. 27..
As with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy over forty years later, the question of who actually shot Michael Collins has become more complicated with the years. Only seven men initially formed the remnants of the ambush party, but one or two others joined during the shooting. Afterwards the remnants of the ambush retired to Bill Murray’s kitchen for tea.
‘Fifteen minutes earlier and the lot would have been wiped out,’ one of the men remarked.
Sonny Neill said he ‘dropped one man’. This was war. He did not know who the man was.
. When the men had finished eating Seán O’Galvin arrived with the news that ‘Michael Collins was shot’. Anne White, the priest’s housekeeper, had sent word to him.
One of the men jumped up and said, ‘There’s another traitor gone.’
‘He’s dead,’ Neill said, rising from the table. ‘May the Lord have mercy on his soul.’ With that he walked out of the house.. 28..