WHEN IT comes to having thwarted Britain’s military ambitions, Michael Collins stills ranks among the most formidable.
The IRA leader, whose death took place 90 years ago this August, has come second in an online poll conducted by London’s National Army Museum to establish Britain’s greatest military foe.
He was eclipsed for the top spot by Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who repelled the Allied advance at the Dardanelles in 1915, by only a few hundred votes.
The poll, which closed yesterday, ranked Ataturk as Britain’s public enemy number one, with 3,090 votes, followed closely by Collins on 2,787.
The Corkman was ranked ahead of military commanders such as Erwin Rommel, Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington.
Collins waged a brutal guerrilla war against the British state and its so-called “proxies” in Ireland during the War of Independence.
His strategy of using “flying columns” – small bands of IRA volunteers tasked with ambushing various targets – is credited with dismantling the British intelligence network in Ireland.
The “Big Fella” was for a time the most wanted man in the British empire, with a reward of £10,000 (€360,000 in today’s money) offered for his capture.
A criminal card issued by British Intelligence during the War of Independence, which was recently unearthed, described him as the “Chief of IRA organiser of all ambushes and murders”.
With the bounty still on his head, Collins went to London with the other plenipotentiaries to negotiate the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. He was killed the following year during the Civil War in the infamous Béal na mBláth ambush, one of the most controversial moments in Irish history.
The museum said the aim of the poll was to highlight the achievements of Britain’s most celebrated enemies, but also to draw attention to some of the country’s lesser-known adversaries.
Other commanders on the list include the German Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who led attacks on British positions in East Africa during the first World War. Also included are Ntshingwayo kaMahole, who commanded the Zulu rout of British forces in the battle of Isandlwana in 1879, and Tomoyuki Yamashita, who led the rapid Japanese invasion of Britain’s colony in Malaya and the capture of Singapore in 1941.
The top five military commanders in the poll will be represented by five historians who will speak at an event in the museum next month.
