Michael Collins

Memorial Number

Michael Collins

Dublin

The Free State, No. 28, Vol I

1922

Michael Collins, leader of the Free State armed forces and hero of the War of Independence, was killed in an ambush in County Cork by anti-Treaty rebels ten days after the death of Arthur Griffith. He was thirty-two years old. When, as part of the Irish delegation, he agreed to the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, conceding the partition of the Ulster counties and to Irish officials giving an oath to the British king, he said, “I have signed my death warrant.”