c. 1996 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The death of Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary leader who is the subject of the current Neil Jordan film of the same name, is not only one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. It is also one of the great mysteries.

Collins was a”master of mayhem”in the war of Irish Independence from Britain. At war’s end, he became a man of peace, and found himself caught between the rock of British imperialism and the hard place of revolutionary zealots who wanted total freedom for Ireland.

He died in the”Vale of Blossoms”in County Cork on a late evening in August 1921 after a brief firefight with a rag-tag band of Irish”Irregulars,”guerilla soldiers who would not accept the peace agreement Collins had brokered with Britain.

Thinking that the shooting was over, he emerged from behind the protection of the car behind which he had been firing at the enemy. There was one last shot; Collins dropped to the ground, much of his head blown away.

Collins was at the time the chief of government of the Irish Free State and the commander of its army. It would seem that he was trying to find some leaders of the Irregular forces _ which had just been driven out of Cork City _ to fashion a truce.

If Collins had lived, the Irish Civil War, which turned out to be a much more bloody conflict than the just-concluded war of independence from Britain, might have ended almost before it began. And Northern Ireland’s tragic descent into sectarian violence may well have been avoided.

Collins was an administrative and political genius, as well as a military genius. He served as finance minister to the infant Irish Free State, as well as chief of intelligence and head of the army.

A devout Catholic, he received Holy Communion daily, but he had little use for bishops or clergy. He was sufficiently pragmatic and flexible that he might have worked out a solution to the problem of the six secessionist counties in Northern Ireland that bedevils Ireland to this day.

Irish heroes die and rarely are they killed by their own.

But who did kill him? Some say he was shot in the back by one of his own men. Some say the culprit was someone ambitious or who held a grudge or who disagreed with his policies. Perhaps the British arranged the shooting, to throw Ireland into chaos and provide a pretext for re-occupying the country. Perhaps was it fellow activist Eamon DeValera _ the man who, decades later, would become Ireland’s first elected president. It was DeValera who sent Collins to represent Ireland in treaty negotions in London, so as not to risk his own reputation by signing a treaty that was the best Ireland could expect but not what the young firebrands wanted.

Filmmaker Jordan presents the killer as a young man, hardened already to the horror of war. The most probable solution to the mystery is that the rifle was fired by a man named Dennis”Sonny”O’Neill, who had been a soldier in the English army during the war and had a reputation as a sharpshooter.

At first, the Irregulars did not know whom they had killed, although they were aware that Collins was in the convoy. When the news of his death spread across the country, hundreds of Irregulars were imprisoned by the Free State and fell on their knees to recite the rosary for the repose of his soul. No one was proud of what had happened.

Tim Pat Coogan, author of the best of the biographies of Collins, suggests that the Irregulars were so embarrassed that they deliberately covered up the truth.

The best we’ll ever know seems to be that he was indeed shot, probably by mistake, by a member of that small and inept guerrilla band.

Yet there is another version of the story, which was told to me by an Irish-American who had interviewed the survivors of the Irregular party.

My informant pointed out that it had been a long, hot and humid day. Collins had been wandering around West Cork, speaking with families and friends. Perhaps he was trying to establish a line of communication with the Irregulars, maybe even with DeValera. Most of these encounters were in country pubs.

The squad that prepared for the ambush was also headquartered in a pub in the Valley of Flowers. Can anyone believe, my source asked me, that on a day like that there would not have been a lot of the drink taken on both sides? So, he says, it is very likely that a lot of people on both sides were fluttered and that none of them ought to have been outside in that hazy drizzle shooting at one another at the end of the day.

Stereotypes about Irish drinking habits are largely inaccurate. In fact, Ireland has the lowest per capita consumption of alcohol in Europe. Yet any who know anything about the Irish should know that both parties were likely to have been affected by having had in the course of the day more than a few”jars.” If this scenario is true, surely, there are many ironies in the fire.

The contradictory life of Michael Collins, master of mayhem, gifted leader, a man who loved his God, loved his country and did not shrink from violence, nevertheless transformed himself into a man who worked for peace.

The idea that he may have been killed not only by accident, but by an accident in which the participants were not in full possession of their faculties makes the life and death of Michael Collins a thoroughly Irish tragedy.

KC END GREELEY