Atlas of the Irish Revolution: Michael Collins and the Intelligence War

In this extract from the Atlas of the Irish Revolution, Michael Foy writes that Michael Collins’s intelligence operations had a reputation for omniscience and, though this was not the case, the myth became a political weapon.

AFTER the rebel surrender in Moore Street, Dublin on 29 April 1916, Volunteer Michael Collins vowed, “By Christ, I’ll have my revenge for this”.

By early 1919, as Irish Volunteers director of intelligence, he — in partnership with Chief of Staff Richard Mulcahy and Dublin Brigadier Dick McKee — were clandestinely preparing for renewed war with the British. This triumvirate envisaged a Volunteers intelligence organisation attacking British agents — especially the detectives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police ‘G’ Division — in order to provoke the military conflict they regarded as inevitable.