Editing Irish Civil War (section)

===Occupation of the Four Courts===
[[File:Four Courts Conflagration.jpg|thumb|The Four Courts along the [[River Liffey]] quayside. The building was occupied by anti-treaty forces during the Civil War, whom the National Army subsequently bombarded into surrender. The Irish national archives in the buildings were destroyed in the subsequent fire. The building was badly damaged but was fully restored after the war.]]
On 14 April 1922, 200 Anti-Treaty IRA militants, with [[Rory O'Connor (Irish republican)|Rory O'Connor]] as their spokesman, occupied the [[Four Courts]] and several other buildings in central Dublin, resulting in a tense stand-off.<ref>[[Tim Healy (politician)|Tim Healy]] wrote of the occupation in late March: "The Freeman published, on 26 March, an account of the secret debate of the mutineers supplied by the Provisional Government, whereupon Rory O'Connor sallied from the Four Courts and smashed its machinery. He had been levying toll on the civil population for weeks."</ref>{{sfn | Younger | 1968 | pp=258–259 |ps=: Younger gives the date as 14 April.}} These anti-treaty Republicans wanted to spark a new armed confrontation with the British, which they hoped would unite the two factions of the IRA against their common enemy. However, for those who were determined to make the Free State into a viable, self-governing Irish state, this was an act of rebellion that would have to be put down by them rather than the British.

Arthur Griffith was in favour of using force against these men immediately, but Michael Collins, who wanted at all costs to avoid civil war, left the Four Courts garrison alone until late June 1922. By this point, the Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party had secured a large majority in the general election, along with other parties that supported the Treaty. Collins was also coming under continuing pressure from London to assert his government's authority in Dublin.{{sfn | Hopkinson | 1988 | p=111|ps=: "The British (after the election) drew what appeared to them to be the obvious conclusion that it was time for the Provisional Government to assert its authority."}}