Liam Lynch (9 November 1893 – 10 April 1923) was an Irish Republican Army general during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. While he fought for the independence of Ireland from the United Kingdom, he would ultimately be killed by the Irish government in 1923.
Biography[]
Liam Lynch was born on 9 November 1893 in Barnagurraha, County Limerick, Ireland in the United Kingdom to a Catholic Irish family. After witnessing two men being killed by constables during the 1916 Easter Rising, Lynch was motivated to join the Irish republican cause, and he fought in the Irish War of Independence as an Irish Republican Army officer. He took part in the capture of British Army general Cuthbert Lucas, and the British killed two other men named "Lynch" in failed assassination attempts on the IRA leader. Lynch was one of the greatest IRA leaders of the wars with the United Kingdom, and he believed that the treaty of 1921 was merely a brief respite from war with the British. He sided with the IRA against Michael Collins and the Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War, and he was killed by rifle fire from Irish Army troops near the Knockmealdown Mountains on 10 April 1923. The Good Friday Agreement, the agreement that ended the worst of the IRA-British conflict, was signed on the 75th anniversary of his death.