On the Eureka they are either getting ready for an onslaught of soldiers or getting ready to launch their own attack - no-one is yet sure. Up and about from well before dawn, with their night-time lookouts now relieved and fresh lookouts posted so the rebels will not be taken by surprise, many of the men are going through their drills, marching back and forth, shouldering arms, while others are sorting out whatever ammunition they have. Those who have previously served their own country’s military are trying to awaken long-forgotten skills; those who are new to such practices are trying to pick up the basics. In one corner of the Stockade, Friedrich Vern is holding court, giving all and sundry his copious views on exactly the kind of tactics that should be used when the soldiers come. And it is he who has made the decision to expand the Stockade a little so that it now goes right across the road from Melbourne. Any reinforcements, any supply columns coming up that road, will now have to pass through them. Und … zey … von’t!
Just as the last soft light of dawn gives way to the fullness of the day, a stream of diggers who slept in their own tents the night before begins to return to the Stockade. A few hours later, the divisions of Captain Ross and Captain Nelson, who have been out to Warrenheip, waiting to ambush whatever reinforcements are on their way from Melbourne, also return. The renewed presence of these two companies of armed men gives ever more energy and confidence to the rebels. With this surge, as Carboni recalled, ‘the scene became soon animated, and the usual drilling was pushed on with more ardour than ever’.45
Around 10.30 in the morning, an extremely worried Father Smyth, dressed in his clerical garb, makes his way into the Stockade. He immediately begs Lalor to be allowed to address those of his flock who are in the Stockade.
The Father is no fool: he knows that the whole situation is a powder keg where just one spark is capable of setting the whole thing off. An editorial in today’s edition of The Ballarat Times, written by Henry Seekamp, sets the tone and is being passed from hand to hand by those diggers who can read English:
Those men who have the power and can exercise it will take the law into their own hands and enforce their principles where the Government now little expect. Instead, therefore, of the diggers looking for remedies where none can be found let them strike deep at the root of rottenness and reform the chief government … If they are not satisfied the gathering clouds of popular indignation will burst like a whirlwind over guilty and suspecting heads and sweep the length and breadth of the land.46
Yes, the good Father knows, despite Commissioner Rede’s ongoing refusal to bend even a little bit, he must personally do everything he can to stop this madness - now.
Lalor, a Catholic to his core, cannot deny the priest’s request to speak to his men. The opportunity to listen to the soothing words of a priest is embraced by the large contingent of devout Catholics among the rebels.
And yet most of the Father’s words are not so much sayings of solace as words of warning. Smyth wishes to tell them, as a man free to move between opposing camps, that they must understand the forces they are up against. The Government Camp is awash with men under arms, ‘some seven or eight hundred strong’47 with another squadron of mounted police just arrived from Castlemaine a few hours earlier - and they still have more men on their way from Melbourne at this very time!
Bravery is one thing, he says, but bloodshed without gain is quite another, and they must understand exactly just how hopeless their position is. In short, as good Catholics he does hope that they are men of peace and he desires to see as many of them as possible at Mass on the morrow in that rickety wooden building up at the Gravel Pits that he is pleased to call his ‘chapel’. And he hopes that in the meantime they will reflect on his words and the duty they bear to their families to keep themselves safe.48
Yes, Father. Thank you, Father, and God bless you, too, Father. The priest is known to be a good man and is listened to respectfully, but precious few choose to lay down their arms because of his admonitions. What most of them are fighting for is justice, and a democracy too long denied them. First in Europe, and now here. They have had enough. In this fight, there are more important things than personal wellbeing.
In fact, it is only a short time after this that some of the diggers ask the question: Why wait to be attacked? Why not attack the government forces ourselves, before their reinforcements arrive?
It is a view put most forcefully by the journalist John Manning, who with every passing day is less a believer that the pen is mightier than the sword - the musket and pike, in the hands of a band of committed men, is mightier than both of them. The diggers number in their thousands, and the troops are still only in their hundreds. With one enormous attack, the diggers would surely overwhelm them!49
Lalor is not convinced, and though he is firm in his order that, ‘If the soldiers attack you, resist them,’ he does not want to take the step of attacking first.
Others - most particularly George Black and Tom Kennedy - agree with Lalor and feel it is more important to stay on the defensive and let the Redcoats come to them. Though Kennedy, at least for the moment, is with Lalor and Black on the winning side of this argument, he shortly afterwards makes himself scarce, returning to his tent to be with his wife and four children.
Once the newly formed companies are properly organised, it is Friedrich Vern who gives quick instructions as to which ones must defend which part of the Stockade. At 11 o’clock a yell goes up: a report has just come in that the Redcoats have been spotted emerging from the Camp. Quickly each company races to its appointed part of the perimeter, even as hurried improvements to the bulwark are made - more slabs added, more earth heaped to its side as a protection against flying musket balls, more nooks filled with spare bits of wood.
Unbeknownst to the diggers at the Stockade, the Redcoats are merely making a preliminary sortie to deal with other groups of angry diggers who have started to gather, in particularly large numbers about Bath’s Hotel. No, it is not yet a riotous assembly, but it has the potential to become so and the Camp is not taking any chances.
Strangely, however, when these diggers are told to disperse, they reply very pleasantly, ‘We’ve only come here to get out of the way of the mob, and would be very willing to be sworn as special constables.’50
Told of this, Commissioner Rede is astonished that this could really be the case, and frankly doubtful. Nevertheless, he decides to give them the benefit of the doubt and sends over two magistrates to swear them in.
And, sure enough …
The magistrates have no sooner arrived than the cry goes up, ‘Joe!’ ‘Joe!‘ ‘JOE!’51 The diggers break out into derisive, hooting laughter. Under such trying circumstances Rede has no hesitation in sending out Civil Commissary George Webster to read the now rather familiar Riot Act, at which point the mounted police move in to enforce the order to disperse and clear the diggers from the township and away from the hotel. It is noticed that many of them are insolently carrying poorly secreted revolvers inside their shirts, but at least they obey - even if two more diggers are arrested in the process. They are dragged away to the lockup, where they can see firsthand how their mates imprisoned the day before are faring.
And then another report comes in
‘A body of armed men [is] marching in order around the Black Hill,’ the breathless messenger gets out, ‘as if to take the Camp in the rear.’52
They are reporterly around 300 strong, while there are 1200 on Bakery Hill and 400 collected about the township - some 2000 diggers all up. Doing what, exactly?
Exactly. Rede reports to his superiors, ‘[The diggers] were in hopes that we would go out to disperse the armed men on Bakery Hill, in which case those on the township were to take the Camp in the rear and burn it, and the Black Hill people were to have made a diversion also.’53
Saturday morning, 2 December 1854, Government Camp, lockdown
Just inside the picket fence that marks the extended boundary of the expanding Government Camp, all along
Lydiard Street, myriad horses are munching on the fodder that has been fed to them by their exhausted masters. All around, fresh tents have been pitched on every spare bit of space to squeeze in the latest arrivals from the 12th and 40th Regiments. Everywhere there is hustling, bustling movement as troops drill, bugles sound, supplies are handed out. Extra security measures are taken on every building and, indeed, the palisade itself.
Yes, a part of the influx of people into the Camp are those flitting figures with nervous, darting eyes, never sure who is watching their entry - the government spies who have just come from the Eureka to report on the doings of the diggers. So it is on this morning that Captain Thomas receives a full briefing from one of his spies who has managed to inveigle himself right into the heart of the rebels.
The news is that the situation is now well out of hand. Not only have the diggers continued to build up their Stockade, not only have they been joined by yet more rebels coming from Creswick, but the previous evening they had even sent out a force to intercept and attack the government troops en route from Melbourne. They may very well do the same tonight.
Thomas, a softly spoken man not given to flights of great emotion one way or t’other but always considered and crisply professional, thanks his informer and orders him to keep in close touch. He then begins to make his detailed plans.
Noon, 2 December 1854, on Ballarat, if you are not with us you are agin us
Around and about Ballarat, as Samuel Huyghue records it, ‘an ominous and oppressive silence [broods] over the deserted workings, and no one [is] now to be seen in the neighbouring streets’.54
That is not the case inside the Stockade, however, where the intense military drilling goes on.
Thomas Allen, an old fellow who runs a coffee house on the Eureka and is known as ‘Old Waterloo’ because he had been in that very battle, cannot help but compare this ragged brigade with the highly disciplined troops he once fought with. Back then, fighting the French under the leadership of the Duke of Wellington, they had shiny uniforms with bright buttons and boots almost as polished as their manoeuvres. But this lot, with their pikes, blundberbusses and pretend drills? It is a joke!
It is, perhaps, a measure of both the violence in the air and the edge of desperation that for some it is not enough to see Thomas Allen just standing there watching. Some want this aged man to participate.
‘Come, Old Waterloo,’55 says one company officer, trying to put a pike into his withered hand. But Old Waterloo declines to take it, whereupon he is marched to his quarters with three pikes in his back and two sentries to guard him. The feeling is getting stronger: if you are not with us, you are against us.
Some men, however, really do manage a middle course. One who decides to follow Father Smyth’s advice is the fiercely religious father of six, Timothy Hayes. Over these last few days the whole movement has got away from him, and he knows it. All his life he has been an advocate of reform, but up until the last few days the BRL’s actions had always been within the realms of legal and constitutional reform. Yes, he had briefly waxed violent lately, calling on the men to free by force any of them who were arrested, but on this afternoon he realises it just isn’t in him. When it comes to bearing arms and causing bloodshed, his own blood runs cold - he has no passion for it, no feeling, and he now quietly slips away.
And even for those who do remain resolute, as the heat of the day rises, it is time to cease drilling. As there has been no license-hunt all morning it seems unlikely that there will be one this afternoon. In their entire time on the diggings, no-one can ever recall there being such a hunt on a Saturday afternoon. As for Sunday, well, not even Rede has ever sent out troopers on the Sabbath, and it is inconceivable that he will do so tomorrow.
That certainty takes a lot of the tension and emotion from the day. Instead, the focus begins to switch to the next meeting of the Ballarat Reform League leadership, at the Adelphi Theatre on the morrow at 2 pm, when, as proposed by Peter Lalor, they will elect a new executive.
Besides which, as the sun climbs and the temperature rises, there is one thing even more imperative than fomenting revolution: finding shade. There is little inside the Stockade to speak of, apart from the 30 or 40 tents that cannot possibly accommodate everyone there. So, one by one, after carefully reciting the password, the diggers simply drift away.
Most go back to their own tents, where at least they can be comfortable. Some go as far as the bottom of their diggings where, whatever else, it is cooler. In this high point of the sweltering day, there is no sense of impending doom. The mood is more hopeful that ‘Charley’56, as the diggers are wont to refer to His Excellency, Sir Charles Augustus Hotham, KCB, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony of Victoria, will soon dismiss the mostly hated Goldfield Commissioners - only Amos is respected as being basically decent and honest - and restore a just system to the goldfields. Rede’s recent assurance that he will refer the issue of the manner of the license-hunts to Melbourne before conducting another contributes to this current easing of tension …
A notice is posted in the afternoon on buildings and the few remaining trees all over the diggings by order of Captain Thomas of the 40th Regiment:
NOTICE.
No light will be allowed to be kept burning in any tent within musket-shot of the line of sentries after 1 o’clock p.m. No discharge of firearms in the neighbourhood of the Camp will be permitted for any purpose whatever.
The sentries have orders to fire upon any person offending against these rules.
(By order),
T. BAILEY RICHARDS
Lieut. 40th Regt., Garrison Adjutant.57
Midafternoon, Saturday, 2 December 1854, Melbourne, news travels fast
While it is the nature of mere rumours to rumble, panic pursues a much faster course. And this is a panic. Word’s out, racing from customer to shopkeeper to pedestrians to passers-by and back again … diggers are on the march! Five hundred of them! Armed and heading to Melbourne!
The best informed of the rumour-mongers knows that on the track between Ballarat and Melbourne there is a particularly narrow pass and, apparently, the rebels’ plan is to wait for the soldiers going towards Ballarat and, at that strategic point, do them in. That pass, if properly defended, is almost impregnable. If the soldiers, fatigued by the long, rapid marches and with a long column of drays behind, really are ambushed, they would be easily overcome and have all their arms and munitions confiscated.
Once the diggers have done this, they are going to be joined by a mass of diggers from other fields, and together they will march on Melbourne, where they hope that the dregs of the population will join them in the uprising. They’re going to sack the Treasury and the banks, pillage the city and take the Governor - it’s looking like revolution, I tells ya!
4 pm, 2 December 1854, Eureka Stockade, here they come!
Here they come.
On yonder hill, marching double time towards them with a few mounted officers, comes what is clearly an armed group of men.
On the instant, Vern, still needled by the fact that he was not elected as Commander-in-Chief, cries out for all the world as if he had been so elected after all: ‘Here zey are coming, boys: now I vill lead you to death or wictory!’58
The chill of the battle knell instantly falls upon those in the Stockade, a shadow across the souls of all men as they suddenly contemplate their own mortality. From performing impotent training exercises, they about to be in the fight of their lives, for their very lives? As one, the men reach for their rifles, their pistols, their ammunition, their pikes, their wooden swords, even as they look closer …
Which is when they realise: it is not the Redcoats at all.
Instead of 200 lackeys of the British government trying to impose their iniquitous rule, it proves to be 200 men of the mighty ‘Independent Californian Rangers’ Revolver Brigade’59 as they have titled themselves, composed of mostly Californian 49ers from more distant parts of the diggings and under the command of the apparentl
y West-Point-trained American60 James McGill. He has no sooner dismounted from his horse with easy grace than he asks the assembled diggers, ‘What’s up?’61
Not a lot.
But the fact that the Californians - who have come complete with huge Colt revolvers tucked into their belts and sashes, Bowie knives and a pleasingly insolent swagger - are now here in force lifts morale and confidence.
Yes, they might be in for the battle of their lives, for their lives, but they are not alone.
A large part of the upswing in mood is the confidence projected by the very attractive character of McGill himself. But why wouldn’t he be confident? In his belt he has a .44-calibre six-shot Colt Walker revolver, known as the most powerful black-powder repeating handgun yet made - capable of firing six bullets twice the size of the ones in the normal Colt. McGill looks like a natural leader of men from the first.
‘His complexion,’ as Carboni would describe it, ‘bears the stamp of one born of a good family, but you can read in the white of his eyes, in the colouring of his cheeks, in the paleness of his lips, that his heart is for violence. When he gets a pair of solid whiskers, he may pass for a Scotchman, for he has already a nose as if moulded in Scotland. He speaks the English language correctly, and when not prompted by the audacity of his heart, shows good sense, delicate feelings, a pleasing way of conversation.’62
Lalor himself is so pleased to see McGill and impressed by the force that he commands that he installs the American on the spot as his second-in-command, replacing Vern, something that enrages the German, who has cherished the post.
For all the rest, however, it seems that McGill and his men have arrived in the nick of time.
Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution Page 45