were satisfied that the Treaty was the best that could be achieved at the time. However, a substantial number opposed it. Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, voted by 64 votes to 57 to ratify it, the majority believing that the treaty created a new base from which to move forward. Éamon de Valera, who had served as President of the Irish Republic during the war, refused to accept the decision of the Dáil and led the opponents of the treaty out of the House. The pro-Treaty republicans organised themselves into the Cumann na nGaedheal party, while the anti-Treaty republicans retained the Sinn Féin name. The IRA itself split between pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty elements, with the former forming the nucleus of the new Irish National Army. Michael Collins became Commander-in-Chief of the National Army. Shortly afterwards, some dissidents, apparently without the authorisation of the anti-Treaty IRA Army Executive, occupied the Four Courts in Dublin and kidnapped JJ "Ginger" O'Connell, a pro-Treaty general. The new government, responding to this provocation and to intensified British pressure following the assassination by an anti-treaty IRA unit in London of Henry Wilson, ordered the regular army to take the Four Courts, thereby beginning the Irish Civil War. It is believed that Collins continued to fund and supply the IRA in Northern Ireland throughout the civil war, but, after his death, W. T. Cosgrave (the new President of the Executive Council, or prime minister) discontinued this support. By May 1923, the war ended in the order by Frank Aiken, telling IRA members to dump arms. However, the harsh measures adopted by both sides, including assassinations, executions and other atrocities, left a bitter legacy in Irish politics for decades to follow. In October 1923 mass hunger strikes were undertaken by Irish republican prisoners protesting the continuation of their internment without trial by the newly formed Irish Free State - 1923 Irish Hunger Strikes. De Valera, who had strongly supported the Republican anti-treaty side in the Civil War, reconsidered his views while in jail and came to accept the ideas of political activity under the terms of the Free State constitution. Rather than abstaining from Free State politics entirely, he now sought to republicanise it from within. However, he and his supporters —which included most Sinn Féin TDs failed to convince a majority of the anti-treaty Sinn Féin of these views and the movement split again. In 1926, he