581. The Irish Civil War: The Killing of Michael Collins (Part 2)

After the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson and the signing of the polarising Anglo-Irish Treaty, how did the bombastic Battle of the Four Courts break out in Dublin? With British guns opening fire on the building, how long did the men of the IRA hold out? What was the outcome of the battle? With the IRA split, were more people for or against the Anglo-Irish treaty? Was Michael Collins trying to bring the war to a close by this point? Why were he and Éamon de Valera so opposed? How was Michael Collins killed in 1922, and why? Who killed him? And, how significant was this for the future of Ireland? To end their mighty series on the Irish Civil War, Dominic and Tom are joined once more by historian Ronan McGreevy, to discuss the dramatic Battle of Dublin, the death of Michael Collins, and the fate of Ireland in that cataclysmic conflict. The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:03Speaker 00

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• 2:39Speaker 02

  My dear Miss Collins, don't let them make you miserable about it. How could a born soldier die better than at the victorious end of a good fight, falling to the shot of another Irishman? A damned fool. But all the same, an Irishman who thought he was fighting for Ireland? A Roman to a Roman. I met Michael for the first and last time on Saturday last, and I'm very glad I did. I rejoice in his memory. I will not be so disloyal as to snivel over his valiant death. So treat up your mourning and hang up your brightest colours in his honour. Let us all praise God that he did not die in a snuffy bed of a trumpery cough, weakened by age and saddened by the disappointments that would have attended his work had he lived.

• 3:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  So that, ladies and gentlemen, was original, authentic archive of George Bernard Shaw writing to Hanny Collins, the sister of Michael Collins, on the 25th of August, 1922. And three days earlier, Michael Collins, surely the most charismatic of all Ireland's independence heroes, the Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army, signatory to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and then the head of government, the provisional government of the Irish Free State and commander of its National Army. He had been shot dead by his former comrades at a crossroads near Béinablo in rural County Cork. Tom, you know, I'm a great fan of County Cork. And this is one of the most hotly debated moments in all Irish history, isn't it?

• 4:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Some people see it as a tragedy, others see it as, you know, Collins got his just desserts. A massive turning point in Ireland's history.

• 4:14Tom Holland?

  Well, is it? We will discuss that, whether Collins would have set Ireland on a different course. But certainly, it is the most emblematic moment in this terrible conflict, which follows on directly from the Irish War of Independence. And you see people who'd been fighting the British turning on themselves. And it's a moment in Irish history that is much less commemorated in Irish memory for obvious reasons, because all the romance, all the poetry of the War of Independence, it gets dissolved and crushed and ends up with this kind of squalid moment where the great hero of the Irish War of Independence is lying dead in his own county.

• 4:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, I think getting two Oxbridge Englishmen to talk about the Irish Civil War is madness. So the great news is that we're still in the Four Courts in Dublin, which is where the civil war started. So if you hear lorries rumbling past, that is why. But the most exciting thing, we are joined by a great friend of The Rest Is History, distinguished journalist for The Irish Times, the author of a brilliant book on the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, Great Hatred, our pal Ronan McGreevy. Ronan, welcome back to The Rest Is History.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Dominic.

• 5:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  So let's remind ourselves what's been going on. I'll attempt to summarise the world's most complicated historical question in about 40 seconds. So there's been a huge split over the Anglo-Irish treaty, a split both in the Irish nationalist elite and in the Irish Republican Army in the early months of 1922. And anti-treaty IRA men have occupied the building we're in right now, the Four Courts.

• 5:50Tom Holland?

  And Dominic, do you know what the Daily Mail said about this? They said that this sort of thing must stop.

• 5:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, they were right.

• 5:56Tom Holland?

  Which I think is a very far-fetched. I think Albert Ted approached the complexities of Irish history.

• 6:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  So the anti-treaty IRA men have been in this building. The trigger comes when Sir Henry Wilson, as we talked about last time, is assassinated in Belgravia in London. The British, particularly Lloyd George and Churchill, effectively deliver an ultimatum to the provisional government. And we ended last time with these howitzers on the bridges outside where we are now being brought out with British guns. Opening fire and shelling the building. So Ronan, take us through the story. What happens next? Because the fighting lasts for three days, I think, in this building.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Yes, so the fighting lasts for three days in the forecourt. First of all, they had to find some people to operate the guns. And this is an interesting part of the civil war is that there's a huge number of former British soldiers in the National Army. So initially, they hadn't embedded the guns down properly and the shells were flying way over the forecourt.

• 6:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  Don't they hit the British headquarters on the other side?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  They did, yes. And they were very, very inaccurate. But then eventually they did find their range and they started to, at really point blank range, started to make holes in the walls here. And it was a very dangerous thing that they were doing. I mean, they were basically storming the building. But on the third day, just when the garrison inside, their situation is hopeless, they're not able to escape, the public records office, which is on the site here, is blown up in a massive explosion. Public records office is the Irish National Archive. It's the archive going back to the 12th century. And everything in there is destroyed.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  The census going back to the first part of the pre-famine census going back to 1821. Chancery records, grants of land, payments made to spies, payments made to headhunters, the records of the various chief secretaries to Ireland, centuries of Church of Ireland parish records, everything goes up in this massive conflagration. And there's a famous quote in Ernie O'Malley's book, Ernie O'Malley was one of the anti-treaty, and he was talking about this white rain that was coming down, this paper that was coming down on top of the people of Dublin. So. So they basically, the archives were destroyed. That's the most famous thing about the battle

• 8:16Speaker 02

  for the forecourts. It lasts three days. The garrison surrenders and the provisional government hopes that's the end of it, but the anti-treatyists decide to fight on. So the fight moves to O'Connell Street, which is the site in 1916 where the GPO is located. And the whole of the west side of the GPO, of O'Connell Street had been very badly damaged in the 1916 riots. And so now it was the turn of the east side, northeast side, where there was a whole hotel complex, which was the Dublin IRA was located. And so again, the eighteen pounders are opened up and there's about eighty people killed in Dublin in this time

• 8:59Speaker 02

  period. And so the battle for Dublin is fairly quick and decisive. And so the anti-treaty rebels take to the countryside.

• 9:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  So to remind people, the IRA had split. On the one hand, you have Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy and people like that who are commanding what's now called the National Army.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  Fighting for the provisional government. On the other hand, you have, I guess, De Volera.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  And the other, the IRA irregulars, their commander is a guy called Liam Lynch.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Who's about thirty, thirty-one, very young.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Twenty-seven, I think.

• 9:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Twenty-seven, Greggy. So at that point, actually, if you look at the numbers, the anti-treaty people seem to have the, there are more of them, right?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  And they think they're going to win.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  That's right. So in March 1922, the anti-treaty IRA said that eighty percent of their, of their members are anti the treaty and they have over almost thirteen thousand men under arms. And only seven of the sixteen IRA divisions from the War of Independence are on the side of the Free State Government. So this looks like a fairly powerless position for the Free State Government. However, the Free State Government have the support of the British and the British have an unending arsenal of weapons that they have accumulated from the First World War. And within like two months, they've given the Irish forty thousand rifles.

• 10:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  And can I ask, do the treatyites fight harder than the British had done?

• 10:24Tom Holland?

  With these weapons.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Well, they absolutely did. And because they were fighting, I mean, most of those who had been involved in the Black and Tansilegal territories were mercenaries. They really didn't have a stake in this. It was mostly for money. But the provisional government, the pro treaty forces were fighting for their survival and they were fighting for the survival of an infant state that was like threatened to be stillborn.

• 10:47Tom Holland?

  And this state, Eamonn de Valera, who was elected president, I mean, he's against what the state bodies, large sections of the army, the IRA are against it as well. So what is the constitutional situation? Who is in command of the army and who is in command of the government, once de Valera and large numbers of the IRA have arranged an opposition to it?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Well, the provisional government is seven members famously described by Kevin O'Higgins as seven, eight young men sitting in a, in the building with wild men screaming through the keyhole and with one administration gone and another one not formed. So they're in a very precarious situation. But their situation is strengthened by the June 1922 election on the 16th of June, bearing in mind this is only six days before Wilson's assassinated, in which the anti treaty side are routed, right? They only get less than 22% of the vote. Most people in Ireland want to get on with their lives. They don't care about the oath. They don't care. They've had eight years of war, going back to the start of the First World War, want to get on with things. So, and the British government

• 11:55Speaker 02

  grasps this fact and Lloyd George and Churchill are telling the provisional government, you have the mandate to govern, get on with it.

• 12:03Tom Holland?

  And specifically to Michael Collins, right?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:05Tom Holland?

  Because Churchill in particular thinks Michael Collins is someone that the British government can negotiate with. And am I right that on the 1st of July, Collins announces that he is going to take over as commander in chief of the army?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:18Tom Holland?

  He's also in the government.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:20Tom Holland?

  And I know that this will sound maybe a provocative thing to say in the context of our Irish listeners. But I am reminded of Cromwell, a revolutionary against monarchy, whoever throws a monarchy, and then faced with divisions among parliamentarians and military opponents, makes himself essentially in command of both the military and the...

• 12:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Just for people listening who can't see the pictures, Ronan has just had to be physically restrained from doing injury to Tom.

• 12:52Tom Holland?

  But do you think, I mean, is there any justice in that comparison?

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think basically the Irish Civil War has been framed as a battle between Democrats and those who don't support democracy. So, as I explained, there had been three democratic votes in favour of the treaty, but the anti-treaty was aside and Dominic talked about this before, Emma Dabler said, "The people have no right to do wrong", right? So Collins, on the 1st of July, as you say, he becomes commander in chief, he's in the government as well, he has basically, the government assumes dictatorial powers. The parliament that's elected is in June, it doesn't sit until September because, because there's a civil war on.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  I mean, you could have the same, you could say as well, why isn't Zelensky being, you know, why is there elections in Ukraine? You can't have elections when there's a war going on, there's a civil war going on. So, yeah, he does, he does assume a huge amount of power in that time period.

• 13:51Tom Holland?

  But I suppose one way, which is, I mean, one of the many ways in which you don't like Cromwell, but a very salient one, is he hasn't actually had any military experience, has he?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  No, and that, we can talk about that when it comes to the circumstances in which he shot, but certainly the National Army starts to recruit very quickly. So any disadvantages they had in terms of men and material is gone very quickly. I mean, they basically, not unlike the First World War, they have, they set up recruiting stations and there's a huge response. And of course, there's a lot of, because the Ireland had participated inside the UK in the First World War, there's a lot of ex-servicemen... Or unemployed and looking for a job.

• 14:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  So let's look at the course of the war a little bit. And something that strikes me is a big problem for the anti-treatyites, or the irregulars, as they're called, is that if you if you support the treaty, if you're on Michael Collins's side, you know exactly what you want. You want the treaty, you want the free state, you just want to crack on and get over their lives. If you're anti the treaty, your goals are a little bit more nebulous, aren't they? They're not, you're not exactly for anything. You're you're for the nebulous idea of an Irish, independent Irish republic. Do you think that's a that that political issue is a big problem for them in terms of winning the war, the anti-treatyites?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yes, it is, because a republic's not an offer at this stage. And most people are, as I've said before, they're really ground down by the War of Independence, the Easter Rising, and they just want to get on with their lives. And you're right, they have framed it in the sense of being against something as as opposed to having a different offering. And they're talking about a republic, but the British are not going to grant a republic. David Leira knows this. So he comes up with this idea called Document Number Two. He comes up with this idea, and this is as nuanced as the differences between them. He talks about external association. He draws, because he's a mathematician, he draws, he tries to explain it with all these kind of pie charts and that. But essentially,

• 15:44Speaker 02

  what it means is that the free state is associated with the Commonwealth, but not part of the Commonwealth. And therefore, the British monarch is not the head of state, and there's no oath of allegiance.

• 15:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  Which is kind of genius, isn't it? I mean, it kind of works, but nobody, none of his enemies, whether they're British or pro-treaty, are going to accept that kind of formulation.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. And fast forward to 1927, when he's forced to take the oath of office, he says, this is just a piece of paper. If he only had said that in 1922, we could have avoided the civil war.

• 16:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  So on the civil war, the anti-treaty strategy effectively is to hold the South and West, right? They have, Liam Lynch, who we mentioned, has this dream of a Munster Republic. He thinks basically, if we can hold the South and West, then all that will be left is this treaty rump, and that will become unviable. Is that ever realistic that he can do this, have this Munster Republic?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  No, it's not. And this is the problem. You see, this war, this war, they're making it up as they go along. I mean, no matter what anybody says, they're not, neither side is prepared for a war. So they haven't made any contingencies. So Liam Lynch talks about setting up a fastnet between, in a line between Limerick and Waterford and everywhere south of that line is the Munster Republic. But that's quickly breached in July and August 1922. There's a new book by an Irish Army officer called Gar Prendgas, when he talks about this and how quickly they were able to overwhelm the garrisons in both Waterford and in Limerick. But there's also fighting, there's

• 17:13Speaker 02

  actually two armies fighting each other in Kilmahlech, County Limerick. So you have extraordinary spectacle. These guys were fighting together a year previously, and they're fighting over open territory in County Limerick. But the odds are all against the anti-treaty side once the war gets underway. And then in the coup de grâce, really, for the sort of conventional operations of the war is the amphibious landings that the National Army have at twice in Cork and once in Kerry.

• 17:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  And again, are they helped there by the British?

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yes, they are. They commandeer a couple of ferries and they have a British Royal Navy escort into the bays in Cork. So obviously, the British are on the side of the National Army. They want the National Army to win. The reason why they decide to take to the sea to attack the Munster Republic is because all the roads and railways have been destroyed. And there's a huge amount of physical destruction in the war done by the IRA.

• 18:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  So with the capture of Cork City, which is, I think, the 10th of August, that's the last great sort of dramatic set piece of the civil war. So actually, it's been done and dusted very quickly in a matter of weeks.

• 18:19Tom Holland?

  Well, apparently, two thirds of those killed in the civil war die in its first three months.

• 18:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  But here's the interesting thing. The civil war doesn't end there. The anti-treatyites think, well, we can now just revert to a guerrilla campaign.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  That's right. So they were going to do to the free state what they had done to the British. They were going to set up ambushes, what they call nowadays an asymmetrical war. So this is, this is, instead of sort of taking their beating, so to speak, they retreat to the countryside. A lot of them are now doctrinaire Republicans. They're not going to give up no matter what happens. And even though there are peace feelers out there, and we're talking about Emma de Valero, at that time was Thinking that maybe the game was up, but the reality is that the war was going to continue on.

• 19:04Tom Holland?

  Where is he at this point? Where is De Valera?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Funny enough, he's actually, when we come to the assassination of Michael Collins, he's actually in Cork. He's very close to where Collins is. But De Valera is kind of sidelined at this stage. I mean, he lights the match, but the conflagration goes off without him and he's basically ceded control to the militaries at this stage.

• 19:24Tom Holland?

  As to a degree, Michael Collins has too.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:27Tom Holland?

  Because Collins is a man from Cork, from the southwest of Ireland. He's a man who has sponsored kind of shadowy guerrilla warfare, who has taken on the forces of the British Crown. And now he finds himself facing rebels in, you know, around County Cork. He's fighting a guerrilla war. He's using guns and ammunition supplied to him by the British. I mean, he must find this very, very painful.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  It's painful for all of them. It's, it's really surreal thing to have people that, you know, were your comrades in arms and you've, and within the space of a year, you are killing people who are your own flesh and blood really. And, and it splits families. There are families on both sides of the divide as well. So Collins is, Collins wants the war ended. I mean, this is, this is one of the questions we ask when he goes down south in August 1922. Was he trying to bring an end to the civil war?

• 20:21Tom Holland?

  So why do you think he goes to Cork in, in?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Well, he goes to, he goes to Cork for three reasons. The first one is he, he, he wants to inspect the, the garrison cellar there. He wants to see what's happened. The second reason is that he has heard on the grapevine that the anti-treaty side who had been occupying Cork had taken a huge amount of money in, in revenues from customs and so on.

• 20:46Tom Holland?

  Of course, he'd been the finance minister.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, he wanted to get the money. He wanted to get the money back. And there's questions whether he was there to, to try and. Bring bang heads and bring sides together. You hear conflicting reports about that, but he does write to W T Cosgrave on the 21st of August, the day before he's bailing the block. He says, you know, the people don't want us to parley or they don't want any compromise with the with the irregulars as they're called at that stage. And he's also down there to, he wants to meet his own people, you know, he's, he's a Corkman through and through. He has, and you'll see on his final day, he's calling in and seeing his family he hasn't seen for a long time.

• 21:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. Well, after the break, we'll get on to the events of that day and we will go through Collins's movements and his fate. And then I'll ask what happens at the end of the civil war and how it's remembered. And we'll do that in a few moments. See you then.

• 21:39Tom Holland?

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• 21:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather, everybody else realizes that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

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• 23:23Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 24:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Ronan, it is the 22nd of August 1922 and Michael Collins has returned to his home county in Cork. Take us through the events of that day.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  So being the sort of energetic man that he is, he's up at 6.30 in the morning. They leave the Imperial Hotel in Cork and it's a very big contingent.

• 24:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's staying in the Imperial Hotel.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yes, I know. And there's a Michael Collins room there.

• 25:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh my God. The optics of that are very bad.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  So he's basically going around with a very large escort in an open top Leyland Touran car with a man by the name of Emmett Dalton, who is the general who takes Cork and he's only 24 years of age in August. So he's, he has a very busy day ahead of him. He's going to meet some of his commanders in the, in the southwest. He's also going to meet some friends. He's going to try and meet some of the people who are pro treaty. And the thing about this is even though we know that the conventional war is over, this is still very much anti-treaty territory. And it's a provocative gesture on the part of Collins to go into this part of West Cork. But as far as he's concerned, this is his home county and he's not going to be kept

• 25:47Speaker 02

  out of it. And he's alleged to have said, there are many apocryphal statements, so I can't vouch for this, but he's apparently said, they'll never shoot me in my own county. So he goes off and it's a, it's an absolute marathon day. And it's, it's beset with a lot of problems. They, there's a lot of roads that are blocked, there are trees that are down, one of the cars breaks down and needs to be fixed. And in the morning, they go past this pub called Long's Pub, which is at a crossroads just outside a place called, which will live in infamy in Irish history, is called Bellneblaw. And he is spotted there by a sentry attached

• 26:28Speaker 02

  to the anti-treaty side, entirely by coincidence, there's a meeting that day that the anti-treaty side have in Long's Pub. And somebody spots Michael Collins, but by the time they spot him, he's gone. So the opportunity is lost for them to, to ambush him then. He then goes on, he goes, he goes, visits the old homestead, he goes to visit his cousins in Carrbeg, he goes out as far as Skipperin, which is a long, long way. And this is with a big contingent of men. He meets his commanding officers at the Eldon Hotel. And then on his way back, he stops at Sam's Cross, the Four Oils Public House, and he buys drinks for everybody.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  It's the most infamous or famous drinking session in Irish history. He's, he visits his brother Johnny, and there's a drink taken, we don't know how many, but the question is then, is he a little bit sauced when he goes to his final challenge?

• 27:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, he's had a couple of pints.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  He's had a couple of pints in the Four Oils Public House. He's visiting his brother Johnny, he's in very good form, and he thinks, he thinks they're in the clear and they're going to go back to Dublin and he's going to resume his activities the following day.

• 27:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  But meanwhile, while he's been, you know, having a few pints and whatnot, these anti-treatyites have made their plans, haven't they? Because they know he's probably going to come back the same way.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Yes. And that is something that every army officer will tell you, never come back the same way if you're, if you're in enemy territory.

• 27:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  But he has no choice because they've kind of blocked off trees and things, haven't they?

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they're going to Bellneblaw, which is It's ideal ambush territory, right? There's a bend in the road, it's very steep on both sides of the road, and there is a watch for him. And most of them have cleared off by about eight thirty, as he passes the way. We think it was around eight thirty, it was certainly twilight. And what happens next is that the anti-treaty men who were left, there's not a huge amount of them, start fighting. And Emmett Dalton, who is a former British Army veteran of the First World War, tells Collins that they should drive like hell, but Collins overrules him. Collins gets out of the car and starts shooting back. And what happens next is still a matter of conjecture, but there's only one fatality

• 28:46Speaker 02

  in this incident, that's Michael Collins, he's shot through the head. And that's it, he's one bullet, one fatality. We believe the bullet was fired from about a hundred and fifty metres away. So whoever shot him must have been a trained marksman, so.

• 29:03Tom Holland?

  There's a guy called Sonny O'Neill, who a lot of people think it might have been?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yes, so he is the chief suspect, and he's named in a documentary in nineteen ninety by one of the men who was part of the IRA intelligence. But there's a guy called Paddy Colovan, who's done his own research on this, and he has a, he has a stage play called The Murder of Michael Collins, and he said it couldn't have been Dennis Sonny O'Brien, because Dennis Sonny O'Brien wasn't a marksman, and he had been in a German prisoner of war camp, and he had forty percent loss of movement in his trigger finger.

• 29:33Tom Holland?

  So was it the Mafia, or the Cubans?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  So his, his theory is that he was shot by someone on his own side.

• 29:39Tom Holland?

  His own side?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  At the behest of the British. With respect to Paddy, he's a friend of mine, he won't let me say this, but I'm not inclined to go with that theory. But the autopsy, there was no inquest, there were so many things that were done that have given rise to speculation over the years. But I believe that he was shot by the anti-treaty side. It was a terrible tragedy.

• 30:01Tom Holland?

  And isn't the broader theory that we mentioned, how Collins, despite being commander in chief, had never actually fought in a gun battle? That in a sense, he's kind of playing soldiers here.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Yes, Emmet Dalton, who fought at the Battle of the Somme, is a very interesting guy in his own right, and had been beside another lost leader of Ireland, Tom Kettle, who was killed at the Battle of the Somme. Tom Kettle had been talked about as the first leader of a home rule Irish parliament. So Emmet Dalton says, if he had known, if he'd ever been in scrap, he would have kept his head down. That's what he says. So Collins's reputation is on getting others to do his bidding for him.

• 30:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  So, and of course, he'd had, I mean, that's why there's pints are crucial, right? That he's had a couple of drinks and perhaps his judgment is, it only takes slightly impaired and make you a little bit more foolhardy than you would otherwise be. So here's the question with Collins. Collins is probably, with De Valera, he's one of the single best known men in Irish, in modern Irish history. Does it matter that he was killed in August 1922? In other words, when you think about the trajectory of Irish history after the Civil War, what happens in the 1930s and 40s and so on, you know, would Michael Collins's existence have changed all that? Does it really matter that he was killed?

• 31:13Tom Holland?

  I mean, the most famous, possibly pseudo-comment on this, and you quote it in your book on Henry Wilson, is the quotation from supposedly Eamon De Valera, which ends Neil Jordan's film on Michael Collins, which came out in 1996. De Valera's mentor said, "It's my considered opinion that in the fullness of time, history will record the greatness of Collins, and it will be recorded at my expense."

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Yes, 1966, he's alleged to have said that. A lot of people would agree with that. But you see, the trouble with Collins is, he's only 31 when he dies. He's not tainted by the messy compromises and the disappointments that would inevitably come trying to rule a new state. But I do think that the history of Ireland would have been different had he lived. I feel that he's a much more dynamic, practical-minded person than De Valera.

• 32:00Tom Holland?

  Very able, I mean, very good at the kind of practical business of running a go about.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yes, he was. And he was a trained banker and a trained, he trained in the post office as well.

• 32:09Tom Holland?

  And I think also what's really impressive when you read about him, say, going to the London to negotiate or whatever, or becoming, you know, involved in finance or military or whatever, is how quickly he learns.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's, he's, he's, he's just, he's just a generational talent. And of course, when he dies, he's thirty one and he's often cited, you know, what would, what would Michael Collins have done and so on. And there was even, I, I just goes to show you what the sort of cold he has on the imagination. There was an article in one of the Irish papers here. There's this incredibly arcane debate outside about, about whether Irish camogie players, it's an Irish form of hurling, should wear these things called scorches, which are a cross between shorts and a dress, or should they wear shorts? And the final paragraph in it is, well, if Michael Collins was around, he'd have shown the hypocrisy, the Camogie Association. And this is kind of, this is, this is, he's constantly invoked, oh, you know, he'd have done this, he'd have done that. I think, you know, you were in the great, the realms of the great

• 33:01Speaker 02

  man theory of history. I think the history of Ireland would have been different. It's certainly would not have accepted partition the way his colleagues in government accepted partition. I think that's fair to say.

• 33:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do you think the Catholic Church would have had the same degree of influence if he had lived? I mean, de Valera, clearly more sort of clerical temperament. Do you think Collins would have been different? I mean, he's still a very good Catholic boy, isn't he?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, no, I don't think so. I think if Collins had lived, I think what would have been different was he would have been much more dynamic in, in trying to build Ireland up economically and so on. But, I mean, people have always, people have been speculating, you know, what would, where was his attitude to the Catholic? There's no real evidence that he was any different from, from the rest of them. He was a very Catholic country. The Catholic Church had huge amount of power and sway here. I mean, they ran basically the health services and the education services and the people were very devout. So whether he could have changed that, I don't know.

• 33:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  So let's get back to the wider picture. Collins was killed on the twenty second of August. But as we've said, the war continues for months afterwards, until the following summer. Although the conventional fighting is over and we're now talking about guerrilla fighting, there is a kind of an, an edge to it now, a nastiness, is that right?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  So for example, the provisional government start summary executions. The British, I think, had executed twenty four people during the War of Independence. The provisional government executed, I think, almost eighty. And there's a sort of, there's a real

• 34:28Tom Holland?

  There's a real edge to this now, and do you think that's because both sides have been brutalised by fighting the war for so long, or is it because it's the difference between a civil war and a war against occupiers, or what is it?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Well, the provisional government didn't feel constrained in many ways as the British felt, and so what happens in September 1922 is that the government brings in the Public Safety Act, which is basically give military tribunals the power to try and execute anti-treaty forces. The anti-treaty side say that anybody who passes this legislation will be shot, and so you enter this phase of tit-for-tat killings, which seem extraordinary when you look back on it, how these people could have turned on each other like the way they did. So the provisional government starts executions in November 1922, and within a few weeks

• 35:20Speaker 02

  they've executed Erskine Childers, who is a very famous author, the author of The Riddle of the Sands, who is the secretary of the Anglo-Irish delegation. He's found with a pistol in his cousin's house and they execute him. And then, the worst aspect of it is, so the Free State comes into being officially a year after the treaty is signed, the 6th of December. On the 7th, Sean Hales, who's one of pro-treaty MPs or TDs, is shot dead here on the Keys, and the following morning, the newly established Free State government take out four men who'd been in the Four Courts and shoot them summarily, without any pretence of a trial.

• 35:56Tom Holland?

  So Yates says that they're fighting like, was it weasels in a hole?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 36:02Tom Holland?

  And of course, it's not just Free State on anti-treaty fighters. There is also, although the extent of it is, I know, very controversial, sectarian killings and expulsions of Protestants, and one of the great social transformations of this period is the decline of non-Catholics in southern Ireland.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 36:25Tom Holland?

  And I suppose the other notorious social change is the destruction of what are called the Great Houses, the stately homes of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, including Sir Henry Wilson's family home.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:38Tom Holland?

  All get burnt down.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Well, these houses were burnt in the War of Independence because they were regarded as being places where British armies, British troops were billeted and whatever. There was no rationale for the fact that there was over 100 of them burnt by the anti-treaty side. In the civil war, other than really revenge for whatever it was. And one of the reasons that Henry Wilson was so against the Anglo-Irish treaty, because he believed there are 300,000 of my fellow Protestant or Unionist in the South, what's going to be their fate? And I suppose he would might feel vindicated by the fact that on 16th of August 1922, six days after Dun and O'Sullivan are executed, Curragh Greenhouse is burnt to the ground,

• 37:23Speaker 02

  and the Wilson family leave Ireland forever after that. And they were not bad family. I mean, most of the people, their landlords and such, you know, they did an awful lot of good in Ireland, but they're gone and they never come back. And that is, that's a really sad thing. And of course, there is the issue, you know, of a lot of the, as you said, the big houses were burnt and a lot of the houses of belonging to some of the free state politicians were burnt as well. It was a, it was a very, very, very ugly time.

• 37:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  So on the war, the savagery of the war, so I was thinking about this, it does seem more savage in lots of ways than the War of Independence. But then I was thinking about contemporary conflicts. So we're in the early 1920s, in Eastern Europe, in the Baltic, with the Freikor, Greece and Turkey, of course. And a comparison that's often made, the Civil War in Finland, which kills, I think, about 25,000 people.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  In the space of three months.

• 38:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. By those standards, the Irish Civil War, as bloody and as brutal as it is, is pretty restrained. I mean, it's remarkable how few people die. And why do you think that is, given what is at stake?

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Well, it was paraphrased Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short. It was only 11 months. And the number of people who were killed is just over 1,400, which is not a huge amount, but the destruction is massive. And the caliber of people who were killed as well, you know, you're talking about some of the, some of the finest people, Michael Collins being the most obvious example, but he, but he wasn't the only one. And it's not as, it's not a civil war, like the Finnish Civil War, you mentioned, or the Spanish or the American Civil War, which goes on for years and years and years. And that is one of the reasons why. Relatively speaking, Ireland's able to recover fairly quickly after the civil war.

• 39:09Tom Holland?

  So it ends in, what are we, the spring, summer of nineteen twenty-three? The IRA chief of staff Liam Lynch.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Is killed.

• 39:15Tom Holland?

  Yeah, he's killed in April, isn't he?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  That's right. And his successor, Frank Aitken, has a dump arms order and De Valera says, you know, victory is with those who have destroyed the Republic. This is his melodramatic way of putting it. So it peters out more than that it ends. There's no, there's no armistice, there's no peace treaty, there's nothing like that. It just, it just ends.

• 39:39Tom Holland?

  But one intriguing way in which I think perhaps the hatreds and the violence are pacified remarkably quickly. And it's perhaps the greatest achievement of Collins's regime is the fact that after all the kind of paramilitary quality of policing in Ireland over the previous decade and more, he has instituted a kind of, almost, dare I say, British-style police force, a kind of unarmed civic police force. And that would be the Garda. And that is key, isn't it? That for the first time you start to get unarmed policemen going into police stations.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Policing by consent.

• 40:19Tom Holland?

  Policing by consent. And the vast mass of people in Ireland of all temperaments, religions, perspectives, kind of accept that.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  They do, yeah. And a lot of people say that the war wasn't necessary, it wasn't necessary, but it was decisive. And the most important legacy that the civil war left is that the state would never be challenged in the same way again. And in fact, in nineteen thirty-two, there's a peaceful transition from the pro to the anti-treaty side. So while it leaves a legacy of bitterness, the country survives. And I think that's the most important thing, that the state survives. The real cruel legacy of the civil war is that because the state was unable to deal with the issue of partition. So the afters in nineteen twenty-five, this Boundary Commission had set up to draw the boundaries.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  And as had originally been anticipated, would give large swathes of the north to the south. It doesn't do that. And because the freistate government is so impoverished. The Free State Government actually allows the border to stay in place as it is in return for about thirty million pounds, which was the Irish share of the British Imperial debt, because the Irish government's broke.

• 41:31Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And that sows the seeds for the troubles which occurs later on.

• 41:34Tom Holland?

  Could I also just read you something that Charles Townsend writes at the end of his book, The Republic? And he says, "In fact, and against the odds, the emergent Irish state, however tyrannical it seemed to its republican victims," so that's the anti-treatyites, "became a remarkably stable democracy. It may even have been too stable. The staters who battled the republic to a standstill seemed to have had their imaginative horizons shrunk by the experience." And I guess the stereotype of that would be that De Valera's island becomes kind of a craggy island.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:05Tom Holland?

  It's a place that people try to escape.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true. I mean, there was, if you look at the history of the Irish state from nineteen twenty-two, you're probably looking at the first fifty years were decades of underachievement. But then you look at the next fifty years and, you know, you get the full measure of independence and, you know, Ireland is a very stable, wealthy country. It's got its problems like everybody else, but it's a full part of the, full part of the, you know, the international community, so to speak. So it is remarkable. I mean, if you go to other countries like Spain, I've been to Spain, and the legacy of the Spanish Civil War is still there, but it's not in Ireland. The Civil War is not, it's not an issue that divides people anymore. It probably hasn't been for the last twenty-five years.

• 42:51Tom Holland?

  Although to this day, the Irish political parties are defined by the role that they played.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yes, but they're both in government now. So you have Fianna Fáil, which is, which is anti-treaty, and then you have Fine Gael, which is pro-treaty. But they've been in government together.

• 43:04Tom Holland?

  To keep out Sinn Féin.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yes, to twenty twenty.

• 43:06Tom Holland?

  It's all very confusing.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  I think Sinn Féin would probably be the real legacy of the anti-treaties.

• 43:11Tom Holland?

  Can I ask a question that I think would puzzle a lot of our listeners and is often interesting to me, which is why De Valera, who's, you know, he's the last man standing of the big characters that we've talked about to some extent. He had backed the losing side.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:22Tom Holland?

  And yet, he gets back into power reasonably quickly. I mean, you know, within the space of less than a generation, he's back in. And then he stays in and he dominates the century. How is that possible when he'd lost the war and he had, and he had lost the argument?

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Yes, he had lost the argument, but. Basically, essentially, next year's the 100th anniversary, the founding of Feenah Fall, he began to realise very quickly that this this old thing was was just a total impediment to to any kind of political advancement. And 1927, Kevin O'Higgins, who, by the way, and we're talking about the viciousness of the civil war, he's the Minister for Justice, who orders, one of them who orders the execution of his best man at his wedding, Rory O'Connor. Rory, Kevin O'Higgins is assassinated in 1927, it's afters from the from the war. And the provisional government or the Free State government at the time says, if you

• 44:18Speaker 02

  want to take part in the parliament, you've got to swear this oath. And De Valera walks into the walks in and he swears the oath. And then, of course, the the the coming agale government is becomes more and more unpopular. And De Valera starts saying, we'll do this, we'll do that. And by the 1930s comes along, 1932, you know, a lot of it has been forgotten about. The people want to change, the same government has been in for 10 years. And then he starts to dismantle the treaty, he gets rid of the oath of allegiance. 1938, he gets, he gets the treaty ports back. These are three ports that the British insisted on keeping. And Churchill says, we have to keep these ports. And Chamberlain says, no, no, we're giving them back.

• 44:58Tom Holland?

  So Collins was completely right.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Well, I

• 45:00Tom Holland?

  That that he had one island, the freedom to become free.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yes. And this is the thing. I mean, I think he's been vindicated. The one abiding issue, of course, in all of this is the issue of partition.

• 45:10Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  And this is the issue that is still a live subject today. I mean, I make the distinction between history and of civil war's history and partition, which is current affairs. It's still a very important issue for an awful lot of people.

• 45:24Tom Holland?

  So when the troubles break out in the 60s and intensify in the 70s.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:28Tom Holland?

  So much of the language and the visual language of that derives from the civil war period. So the provisional Irish Republican Army.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 45:37Tom Holland?

  The the shoot, you know, the, as Collins has said, about the only eulogy that that athenian needs is the gunman firing over the grave. And all this comes out. And in a sense, it's it's a kind of very

• 45:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Very violent form of cosplay, isn't it?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. And in fact, the provisional IRA in the 1970s would say that they were continuing on the fight from the anti-treaty side. And the IRA never went away after 1923. It just became, sort of went underground and morphed into something else until 1969. So there's a direct continuity between, you know, the end of the civil war and the beginning of

• 46:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  And also, reading through this account, all the hunger strikes and the role that hunger strikes play in the story of Irish independence, and you realise the resonance, say, of Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers, that I suspect largely in Britain, when completely nobody understood the resonance of that for Irish Republicans.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, because Terence McSweeney was, you know, he's the Lord Miracorp, who died on hunger strike in 1920 in Brixton Prison. And, I mean, that was a direct imitation of that, the hunger strikes in 1981.

• 46:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. Ronan, you know what? We're going to be kicked out of the forecourt, not by howitzers, but by, I think, a High Court judge. A judge who wants to use the room. So on that, I mean, thankfully, not a bombshell, only a metaphorical bombshell. We bring this mighty series to an end. Ronan, you've been a brilliant host and a great guest. Thank you very much for joining us on The Rest is History. It's been a huge pleasure to have you. We've been looking forward to it for a long time, and it's lived up to our expectations.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  The pleasure's been all mine, gentlemen. Thank you so much.

• 47:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  Thank you, Ronan, and goodbye.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Goodbye.

• 47:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Goodbye.

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