Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (64 page)

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’.

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,’ 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’, 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.

Mid-afternoon, 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!’

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’ as they have titled themselves, composed of mostly Californian 49ers from more distant parts of the diggings and under the command of the apparently West-Point-trained American James McGill. He has no sooner dismounted from his horse with easy grace than he asks the assembled diggers, ‘What’s up?’

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.’

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.

For have you heard?

Once again, they say that the whole of the Melbourne Road is swarming with Redcoats. Hundreds of them, coming this way. The word spreads. The situation is changing. An attack really might be imminent. The response is not one of panic – certainly not from Vern, who tells anyone who will listen to just let the Redcoats attack – he and his riflemen, the very ones who are still expected any time, will make short work of them. But certainly many a man does become anxious.

In the face of such rumours, Carboni leaves the Stockade to see for himself the state of the Melbourne Road, and he does indeed sight a mass of 200 Redcoats stationed at Black Hill, under arms and clearly spoiling for some kind of action. Worse, he hears that they are intent on massacring the lot of them! (In truth, it later came out that the Redcoats marching up from Melbourne had indeed been overheard while camping at Ballan, making jokes about ‘ripping’ the rebels on the points of their bayonets and how they would shoot even their own brothers should they find them amongst the ‘revolters’.)

Of course, Carboni must get this information to Lalor as quickly as possible, but therein lies a real problem. With the arrival of the Californians, the Council room has been placed under the strict security imposed by Captain McGill – for fear of spies, which would be the worst possible thing. Since the Italian does not know the password that has been instituted that afternoon, they won’t let him in. And no, the newly installed Californian sentries have no idea who Captain Raffaello Carboni is and don’t care to discuss it. Move on.

It is in vain for the aggrieved Italian to
protesta
that – Madonna! – he is part of this Council. The Americans, as Americans are wont to do, refuse to bend, insisting that the formula is simple: no password = no access.

Move on,
fella.

He moves on.

And yet even in the short time he has been away it is obvious that the word of the approaching Redcoats has spread and unleashed a kind of manic energy about the place – the first wisps of wind from the coming storm, causing men to charge to and fro, back and forth, getting ready for come-what-may. All round and about, the Stockade old-fellows, with the weather-beaten visages and squinty eyes of men who have lived long in a land of glaring sun, are carrying guns and boxes of ammunition, canisters of gunpowder and bags of shot. Others are doing what they can to strengthen the Stockade against any full-on charges that might be coming.

Look there, for example, as a sly-grog seller with no less than a small keg of brandy hanging around his neck is moving among the diggers, offering them a nobbler in return for just a few coins. Many diggers are availing themselves of it, some knocking it back like water. Appalled, Lalor gives an order to kick the sly-grog seller out – the last thing they need in this situation is drunkenness.

And now two diggers on horseback are seen crossing the gully that, crisscrossed by small streams, lies below.

At one glance, Secretary of War Alfred Black decides the opportunity is too good to miss to purloin the steeds for the war effort and immediately orders Raffaello Carboni to take some men and confiscate the horses. In the urgency of the moment, the mood abroad to simply take whatever is needed in the name of the uprising is strengthening.

But Carboni is appalled. While it is one thing to take munitions and the like from the government, it is quite something else again to take from fellow diggers, and he has no hesitation in telling this upstart Black – who to this point has not even been in the Stockade, let alone the committee room – exactly that.

‘I won’t do the bushranger yet,’ says he, flatly refusing.

Others from within the Stockade are not so reluctant, however, and in short order men entirely unknown to Carboni rush upon the horsemen, draw their revolvers and order them to bring their fine steeds within the Stockade. The Italian is even more appalled, and there are other things amiss.