Video: 'IRELAND: IRA leader Michael Collins killed in ambush (1922)'

(Tuesday, August 22, 1922, as Collins’ convoy approached Béal na Bláth between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. Irish Standard Time; during the Irish Civil War, part of the Irish revolutionary period) — Michael Collins, a founder of the Irish Republican Army and a key figure in Ireland’s independence movement, was shot to death today in an ambush at Béal na Bláth in County Cork, Ireland, apparently by Irish Republican Army members opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty that Collins had co-signed.

Video: 'Michael Collins - Ireland's Greatest (Documentary)' (Aug. 22, 1922, at 42:50)

The Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, established the Irish Free State but depended on an oath of allegiance to the Crown. This was the clause in the treaty Éamon de Valera and other republican leaders found it hardest to accept.

Collins, 31, viewed the treaty as offering “the freedom to achieve freedom”, and persuaded a majority in the Dáil to ratify the treaty.

A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922 but was soon disrupted by the Irish Civil War, in which Collins was commander-in-chief of the National Army.