With two rival Irish armed forces now in the country, civil war looked likely from the spring of 1922. Three events set it off. The first was the election of 18 June 1922, which the pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party won, giving the Free State a popular mandate. The second was the assassination by Irish republicans in London of a retired British general Henry Hughes Wilson. While it is not clear who ordered the killing, the British government assumed it was the anti-Treaty IRA and ordered Collins to act against them or risk armed British intervention to do it. The third trigger was the kidnapping by the IRA in the Four Courts of Free State general, JJ "Ginger" O'Connell. This combination of events forced the Collins government to assault and take the anti-Treaty positions in Dublin, which it succeeded in doing after a week's fighting in July 1922. Éamon de Valera declared his support for the anti-Treaty IRA after the outbreak of hostilities.