ireland poject

in ireland i saw a movie about michael collins and decided to do a project on his life. he was a great irish leader this is his life and how he changed the lives of the people in ireland.

Michael Collins was an irish revolutionary leader. He was born on October 16 1890 and died August 22 1922. He was born in County Cork, Ireland. He was the third son and youngest of eight children. His family had once been the lords of Uí Chonaill, but were reduced to the level of ordinary farmers. His sister had became a nun, his father had become a member of the republican Fenian movement in his youth, but had left and settled down to farming. his father died when he was six. When Michael was 15 he moved to london. In london he stayed with his other sister and her son Daniel. In February 1906, Collins took the British Civil Service examination. He later got a job at the post office. He joined the local Gaelic Athletic Association and, through this, the IRB, a secret oath-bound society introduced the 19 year old collins into the IRB. In time he would come to play a central role in this organisation. On Easter Monday he fought along side with Patrick Pearce and others in the General Post Office in Dublin. The rising became a military disaster. Collins, like many of the risings participants, was arrested, almost sent to the gallows and wound up at Frongoch Internment Camp. There, his leadership skills showed. By the time of the general release, Collins had already become one of the leading figures in the post-rising sinn fein , a small nationalist party which the British government and the Irish media wrongly blamed for the rising. By October 1917 Collins had risen to become a member of the executive of Sinn Fein and director of organisation of the irish volunteers. Like all senior Sinn Fein members, Michael Collins was nominated to seek a seat in the 1918 general election to elect Irish MPs to the British House of Commons in London. collins was elected he became MP for Cork South. In the summer he was elected president of the IRB. In September he was made Director of intelligence of the Irish Republican Army.

The Irish War Of Independence began in January 1919. Collins received another responsibility when de Valera appointed him to the Aireacht as Minister for Finance. Collins created a special assassination squad called The Twelve Apostles to kill British agents. he stole guns from police stations. michael collins started the first Guerilla war. Unlike a regular war he got people to appear and disappear so no one could find them like i said before they stole guns from police and killed british agents but made sure to not be noticed so as not to be found, Collins and Richard Mulcahy were the two principal central organisers for the Irish Republican Army. a great deal of IRA activity was carried out on the initiative of local leaders, with tactics and overall strategy developed by Collins or Mulcahy. By 1920, when he was 30 years old, the British offered a bounty of £10,000 for information leading to the capture or death of Michael Collins. Among national leaders, he made enemies of two particular people Cathal Brugha the Minister for Defense, and Éamom de Valera, the President of Dáil Éireann. Following a truce, arrangements were made for a conference between the British and the leaders of the as well as at the Versailles Peace Conference by Sean T. O'Kelly. De Valera then announced that, as the King would not attend, then neither should he as President of the Republic.
Instead, with the reluctant agreement of his advisers, de Valera nominated a team of delegates headed by Arthur Griffin, with Michael Collins as his deputy. With heavy misgivings, believing de Valera should head the delegation,Collins agreed to go to London.

In London Michael Collins signed a treaty saying that the Irish could govern themselves but remain in the British Empire. When he got back to ireland people did not like the treaty that he signed and many believed that he had sold out to the British government. Few seemed to realise that Collins was not a politician and that he had been put into a situation in which he had no experience of what to do. He was up against British politicians who were experienced in delicate negotiations. Some have argued that de Valera deliberately put Collins in this situation knowing that if he came back with an unacceptable treaty, it would seriously damage the reputation of Collins and weaken whatever political kudos he had in Ireland, therefore removing any potential threat he may have been to de Valera at a political level.

On August 22nd, 1922, Collins journeyed to County Cork. He was due to meet troops of the new Irish Army. His car was ambushed at a place called Beal na mBlath and Collins was shot. No one is completely sure who killed him. No one else was killed in the ambush. Collins' body lay in Dublin for three days and thousands paid their respects. Thousands also lined the streets for his funeral procession.

michael collins was a great leader. some believed he betrayed the irish people by signing the treaty and some believed he did what he had to. but before the civil war in ireland, irish against irish, he started the first gorrila war and changed the lives of many people in ireland.