In Michael Collins, I found the embodiment of that Irish virtue and tragedy. Michael Collins remains one of the most obscure and controversial heroes in Irish history. A survivor of the disastrous 1916 Easter Rising, Collins forged the fragments of the revolutionary movement into a ruthless underground army that compelled the British to sue for peace. Reluctantly serving as a treaty negotiator under the orders of the Irish president, Éamon de Valera, Collins returned in 1921 with an agreement that left the country in its current state of partition into an independent south and a unionist north. De Valera and