More negotiations: Friday 1 December

For Charles Evans and many others, the night of 30 November was spent in sleepless dread of an impending confrontation:

 

…a fearful thunder storm the most violent I have witnessed since I have been on the diggings, broke over our heads. The lightning was truly awful, but scarcely more awful than the objects its light revealed. The diggings & for a moment the eye would rest on groups of armed men talking in low earnest tone & then all was darkness. We are now waiting in darkness and uncertainty for some fearful crisis, every hour is expected to usher in a scene of blood and calamity. [1]

 

By Friday 1 December, the Camp was virtually under siege and the surrounding country in a state of growing tension. Initially, at least, communications were maintained between the protagonists. Despite their aggressive mood, Lalor was still prepared to talk with the authorities. Once the diggers arrived back at Eureka after taking the oath under the Southern Cross, Lalor met with the elected captains who decided to send one last deputation to Rede. Although Carboni suggested that this meeting took place on 30 November, it is now generally agreed that it took place early the following day. [2] Carboni, George Black and Father Smyth met Rede outside the Camp because Rede was concerned that the meeting might be a ruse to gain intelligence of the layout of the Camp and its fortifications if the diggers were planning an attack. Lalor proposed that the diggers would lay down their arms and return to work if the prisoners were released and no more license hunts were carried out until the findings of the Royal Commission were released. Father Smyth believed it was up to Rede to make concessions but Rede was unbending stating that he would maintain the Queen’s authority and not negotiate with men who were using the license as ‘a mere cloak to cover a democratic revolution’. Carboni and George Black and Father Smyth returned to the Stockade to report the failure of the meeting. Nonetheless, unknown to the leaders at Eureka, Smyth returned to the Camp a few hours later in a final attempt to reach some sort of compromise but again Rede refused.

 

The authorities were being kept informed of the situation on the diggings by ‘spies’ placed amongst the diggers. Constable Henry Goodenough, an agent provocateur had urged diggers to attack the Camp and informed Rede about a proposed 4.00 am attack on 1 December. Only a few diggers assembled at Bakery Hill, but soon dispersed when they heard that some of the Camp forces had turned out to confront them. Yet, the suspicious movements of diggers kept the Camp in a state of constant alert and troops were sent out again at 11.00 am to clear the streets and hotels at the back of the Camp and two diggers were arrested, one of whom was armed. Rede believed that the Camp was in danger and urged Hotham to send more reinforcements, including artillery. As a result, Major-General Sir Robert Nickle left Melbourne for Ballarat on Friday 1 December with a force of 800 men and 4 artillery pieces.

 

When the Council at Eureka, now the governing body for the rebels, heard that the military had mobilised, an attack on the Stockade was expected. As a result, further fortifications were constructed and positions manned but within two hours things had settled down. Carboni made the point that the diggers’ lack of weapons was clear evidence that no revolution was intended and that they had ‘taken up arms solely in self-defence’. [3] Although the making of weapons as primitive as pikes suggests that there was a shortage of arms at Eureka, contrary to Carboni’s assertions the defenders lacked neither firearms nor ammunition. [4] Ballarat had become a more settled community and this meant there was less need for diggers to carry weapons but this did not mean they were without revolvers, rifles and especially shotguns. What the rebels lacked were weapons for close quarter fighting; few had bayonets and this meant that once a musket had been fired at advancing troops, unless it could be quickly reloaded, its use was limited to being a club. The use made of pikes, far from being a consequence of shortages of other weapons, proved effective against mounted troops especially when used in a coordinated way and could also be used against soldiers with bayonets to prevent them closing with the rebels. The problem with pikes is that, unless supported by rebels with firearms they could not keep firearm-equipped soldiers at bay for long, as proved the case during the assault. The contrast generally made between military organisation of the Camp and with what is seen as the amateurish nature of preparations in the Stockade needs to be reassessed.

 

There was a problem with criminality as Carboni highlighted:

 

…a similar gang, four strong, had entered the store of D. O’Conner, on the Golden Point...but the vagabonds did not care so much for the ammunition for their guns, as for the stuff for their guts, what tempted them most was fine good Yorkshire hams, and coffee to wash it down. In short they ransacked the whole store…[5]

 

The diggings were in turmoil as roaming bands of diggers raided stores commandeering guns, ammunition and food supplies and horses for the use of the ‘diggers under arms’, shops closed and mining ceased. Evans commented:

 

Bodies of armed men visited the stores demanding arms -I was in the Rifle Gallery when two men appointed by the main body came for their rifles & guns. It was useless to resist so they gave up at once what they had in the gallery -The rest they had previously sent to the township. Soon afterwards 7 or 8 others armed with swords guns & revolvers came in & made a second demand, and would not believe that they had been given up already -[6]

 

Lalor made some attempt to combat lawlessness and picquets were sent out to prevent the seizures being made a cover for robbery.

 

Early on 1 December, Black and Kennedy rode the nine miles to Creswick’s Creek to persuade its miners to sever ties with the English but their endeavours were rejected by the majority as a call to take up arms against the Victorian Government. The Argus reported that ‘great intimidation’ was used by those under arms and that ‘every one of them that did not come out and fight would be marked and would sure to gain nothing in the end.’ [7] Kennedy assured the crowd that Ballarat was ready to revolt and weapons, food and accommodation were available. The diggers at Eureka needed to know whether they had support on the other fields but what they did not need was a contingent of unarmed and exhausted diggers. Although several hundred miners left Creswick in heavy rain, by 4.30 pm, only 150 men arrived from Creswick making a colourful spectacle as a band played the ‘Marseillaise’ but feeding, arming and housing them put an enormous strain on the limited resources of the Stockaders. Most were soon disillusioned by what they saw at the Stockade and returned home. This was, however, the extent of physical support from outside Ballarat. The following day, 600 people at Bendigo heard Henry Holyoake report on the situation in Ballarat but even though the diggers did not support the Ballarat militants and reaffirmed their policy of peaceful constitutional change, they agreed not to pay the license fee and to wear red ribbons as a sign of support. On 2 December, the Ballarat correspondent of the Argus wrote:

 

We are standing here on the brink of a great event. What the next forty eight hours will bring forth, I feel, will form a page in the future history of Victoria…The tranquillity of this day has been absolutely agonising. I am now writing amidst the reports and flashes of a thousand stands of arms. Everyone is excited and confused. I wish the crisis were over; the suspense is fearful.[8]

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[1] SLV, MS 13518, Charles Evans, Diary, 30 November 1854, pp. 125-126.

[2] Ibid, Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, pp. 73-76.

[3] Ibid, Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, p. 80.

[4] Ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, pp. 26-29, examines the evidence for the miners being better armed than some of the contemporary statements suggested.

[5] Ibid, Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, pp. 93-94.

[6] SLV, MS 13518, Charles Evans, Diary, 30 November 1854, pp. 125-126.

[7] ‘Further Particulars of the Ballaarat Affray’, Argus, 5 December 1854, pp. 4-5.

[8] ‘Ballaarat’, Argus, 4 December 1854, p. 5, written before the attack on the Stockade.

The Stockade

The precise function of the Stockade is also a matter of dispute. [1] The authorities clearly saw its construction and the swearing of oaths to a flag not of the sovereign country as dangerous acts of rebellion. Their view was reinforced by its construction across the Melbourne road, the most practical way for reinforcements to reach Ballarat. This was not Lalor’s view when he highlighted its role in early 1855. [2] He went to great pains to emphasise that his intention in building the Stockade was not warlike:

 

Well-grounded fears being entertained that Government spies would mix with the volunteers, and betray their movements, and it also being found necessary that a distinct place should be marked off, in which the men could muster together and be drilled, a piece of ground at Eureka was enclosed with slabs for that purpose…The government laid great stress on the erection of this enclosure, and have dignified it with the titles of stockade, barricade, fortified entrenchment, and camp. It may suit their policy to give it these titles, but in plain truth, it was nothing more than an enclosure to keep our men together, and was never erected with an eye to military defence…It is of importance to observe that we never contemplated remaining within the enclosure till attacked. [3]

 

Lalor’s view of the Stockade, something Carboni supported, was of a poor even flimsy structure that was never conceived in terms of military defence but simply a means of keeping his men together. Those who attacked it took a different view seeing it as a reasonably solid structure capable of resisting musket balls and a barrier to horsemen.[4] Although it was not capable of resisting an artillery attack, it certainly provided protection for its defenders against small-arms fire.

Although there are many contemporary accounts of what the Stockade looked like, there is no definitive description. Situated at the point where the Eureka Lead took its bend by the old Melbourne Road, its precise location was not resolved until the 1990s. [5] There is also some disagreement about the evolution of the Stockade. Although a basic structure was begun on the Thursday 30 November, Carboni said Vern superintended its building on Friday 1 December, following instructions from Lalor.[6] However, Stephen Cummins who had been on watch on Friday night awoke next morning to see the Stockade being completed. It seems probable that initial construction began on Thursday and not completed until Friday but that during the Saturday morning, it was further strengthened. As to its size: Carboni described at as covering an acre of land, while others estimated that it was four times larger but it also included some tents, huts, a store and several shafts^[7]

 

Huyghue, a clerk at the Government Camp, described it as a semi-circle while Assistant-Commissioner Amos saw it as a parallelogram, stated that the timber breastwork was in some places nearly seven feet high and consisted of various materials such as felled trees, branches, bags of sand, and towards the Melbourne road, partly overturned carts. [8] It was, however, largely made of thick slabs that were normally used to timber shafts. The split posts were inserted into a trench about four feet in depth, the round sides facing inwards and the rough split sides to the exterior of the Stockade. [9]

 

 

Marlene Gilson: Mount Warrenhelp and Eureka Stockade, 2013

 

‘The Aboriginal people played a big role on the Ballarat goldfields and at the Eureka Stockade—my ancestors the Wadawurrung clan cared for the miners’ children in the bush as the battle raged. I also acknowledge the Woirung and Boonerung clans, proud native police and black trackers. They all are a part of Ballarat’s history.’

 

It is evident that the Stockade was a stronger defensive position that Lalor and others admitted. Events during the assault indicate that it was of reasonably strong construction providing adequate cover from musket fire for the rebels sheltering behind its slabs for at least ten minutes. The major problem was that the rebels were not engineers and the area enclosed was too large to be defended. The Stockade may have been a physical challenge to an increasingly isolated Government Camp and provided a protected headquarters for the rebellion but how it was viewed depended on what the intention of the rebels was. Those who were involved in the rebellion had a vested interest in its aftermath to play down or even deny the confrontational intentions of the rebels. Carboni may well have been right when he lamented the rebels being seduced by their militaristic infatuations. [10]

 

 

 

Vicars and Tarts!! Well almost

Tom Hughes Clerical Errors: A Victorian Series, Volume 1, (Kindle edition), £3.86

The behaviour of public figures has always been subject to scrutiny from an often prurient public. This has been particularly the case with clergymen especially those who pronounce solemnly on issues of personal morality and then demonstrate a hypocritical disregard for their own words.  Often their indiscretions were--and still are in some cases--brushed under the carpet by moving individuals to different parishes but often not before their actions had become newsworthy.  Public attention was magnified by the dramatic expansion of the local press during the nineteenth century--then as now scandal sold newspapers.  Clerical Errors mines the local press to explore five such scandals.  There is the case of a married London clergyman accused of writing an obscene letter to his supposed mistress; a country clergy accused of breach of promise and a Manchester curate who stole the affections of a wealthy cotton merchant's wife; a slander trial when a Berkshire clergyman sued a farmer who claimed to have seen the vicar and a female parishioner in a compromising position; and a vicar with a sickly wife who advertised for a cook with unfortunate consequences. 

 

 

Not only are the stories of these five scandals well told and are based on an obvious detailed understanding of the contemporary press, but they provide important insights into social attitudes in Victorian Britain to the politics of class and gender and the ways in which both the common law and ecclesiastical courts were used  in clerical scandals.  Reputation was critical for individuals, especially clergymen, and they were prepared to go to great lengths to protect it. 

This is an excellent book in which Tom Hughes writes with verve on a subject he knows well.  It combines well-structured, interesting narrative with analysis of why the five stories are important in illustrating social attitudes to clerical misdemeanours.  I look forward to further volumes on the subject.

The ‘Southern Cross’

Given the symbolic importance of the Southern Cross and the Eureka Stockade to the later history of Australia, it is perhaps not surprising that both have been issues of controversy. The Southern Cross, first flown at Bakery Hill on 29 November and then over the Eureka Stockade until the assault on 3 December, was viewed by diggers as the symbol of their resistance to colonial authority. It was not the flag of revolution but an assertion by the people that their dignity and rights would be defended against an insensitive and despotic government. The design of the flag was taken by Charles Ross, one of Eureka’s miners from Canada to three women Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Elizabeth Hayes to sew in time for a large rally at Bakery Hill. There is no evidence who designed the flag, although Ross was known on the diggings as the ‘bridegroom’ of the flag and is often credited with having created its unique design.  

 

 

During the battle on December 3 1854, he was mortally wounded near the flagpole and the Eureka flag was torn down, trampled, hacked with sabres and peppered with bullets. It was retrieved by Trooper John King and the King family kept the flag for 40 years, until loaned to the Ballarat Art Gallery in 1895, where it remained in continued obscurity until it was ‘rediscovered’ by Len Fox during the 1930s. However, it took decades to convince authorities properly to authenticate it. [1] Final proof was found in the sketchbooks of Charles Doudiet, auctioned in 1996. Doudiet, a French Canadian artist-digger, had been prospecting at Ballarat in 1854 where he had befriended another digger, ‘Charlie’ Ross. When ‘Captain’ Ross, as the diggers called him, was severely wounded in the attack on the Stockade, it was Doudiet who took Ross to a hotel to nurse him.[2] Doudiet, eyewitness of these events, then recorded meticulously in his sketchbook the two major events of the Eureka story: the diggers taking the famous oath of allegiance beneath the flag and also the storming of the Stockade that he labelled, ‘Eureka Slaughter 3 December’. Both of his paintings show the flag flying, its design exactly as described by Len Fox’s research. The remnant of the original Eureka Flag remains today, preserved for public display in Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, along with Doudiet’s sketches.[3]

Taxation and the politics of envy

So should politicians and, if some people have their way other people in ‘public life’, choose to do what the rest of us will never be asked to do…reveal how much tax we pay?  Like the confessional, our tax affairs are sacrosanct; they are between us and the Inland Revenue and if we breach the rules we are subject to the Law.  Our personal relationship with the Inland Revenue is not governed by our morality but by the taxation rules enshrined in statute law structured so that people, by following the rules, pay no more tax than they are legally obliged to.  It is my right to plan my payment of taxes within those rules and that includes gifting to my children money on which they will not pay inheritance tax as long as I survive for seven years. So is this tax avoidance…well, yes it is, you are avoiding paying tax on your estate after you die.  We live in a society where tax avoidance has taken on a morally unjustifiable, and in the case of ‘aggressive tax avoidance’ repugnant, status especially if you’re wealthy while we are all quite prepared to avoid paying tax if we possibly can. 

 

Parallels have been drawn with the expenses scandal and the publication of David Cameron’s summary of his tax affairs that are to my mind spurious.  MPs’ expenses was about how some MPs defrauded the tax-payer of public monies and for which they could quite justifiably be held publically and legally accountable.  Politicians’ personal tax affairs or the tax affairs of anyone in the public eye may well be legally accountable to the rules controlled by Inland Revenue but they are not—and nor should they be—subject to public scrutiny.  As long as they operate their own tax affairs within the rules, whether we think they are avoiding paying tax is beside the point…they are acting within the rules.

I have on several occasions in the past commented on our tax system and the ways in which it operates.  Why should individuals because they hold a particular position in society be ‘compelled’ by public opinion or political opponents to reveal private tax affairs when Inland Revenue is perfectly happy with the amount of taxation those individuals are paying?  Ah, I hear you say, precisely because they are in the public eye and because they may well be wealthy in their own rights.  So it’s not really about how much tax they pay but because they’re ‘rich boys’.  I can see you getting greener as this goes on!!  But is the genie now out of the green bottle?  Not necessarily if politicians of whatever party have the guts to stand up to the pressure that they will undoubtedly be put under.  Some will publish and to refuse to do so raises the question…why not?   But you have to question the motivation of those calling for transparency…is it about people breaking the rules or is it moral indignation or is it about causing political embarrassment and making party political points?  If you don’t like the rules that apply to personal taxation than—and there’s a very strong case for doing so—change them but until that occurs why shouldn’t people apply those rules so that they do not have to pay any more tax than they are legally obliged to do so.  But then being morally affronted is so much easier!!!

Under the Southern Cross

On 28 November, the Argus commented in its leader:

Canada could not get a British statesman to listen to her grievances till she broke out in rebellion…We must warn the diggers that it is no slight affair upon which they are entering. [1]

The first sentence may have been a warning to the authorities but, if the second was to warn the diggers, it was almost an open invitation to rebel. Two days later, it was clear that neither the authorities nor the diggers had heeded the warnings and the mood in Ballarat hardened on both sides. After the license hunt on 30 November, several thousand diggers, many armed rushed to Bakery Hill. [2] None of their usual spokesmen were present to conduct the meeting. Humffray and George Black had already distanced themselves from the movement and it is unlikely that diggers would have listened to their calls for calm. The leaderless crowd was about to disperse when Peter Lalor took charge calling on the diggers to unite and fight to free themselves from tyranny. Critical in the shift from peaceful protest to direct action was belief in the right to bear arms in one’s own defence.

The concept of self-defence was an ambiguous Common Law right but legal opinion suggested that it did not extend to those who resisted the lawful authority of the state. However, Captain Wise’s untimely parading of his troops on 28 November and especially the clash at the Gravel Pits two days later confirmed the fear of many diggers that the authorities were preparing to use force against them. The miners would have been fully aware that the British government had used troops to deal with dissent and unrest in Britain and in the colonies. It does however seem that it was the prominence of the bayonet in both incidents that aggravated the situation: the bayonet was seen as ‘the iconic weapon of despotic coercion’. [3] Carboni was not alone in expressing his outrage at the threatened use of the weapon:

John Bull…was born for law, order and safe money making on land and sea…he hates the bayonet: I mean of course that he does not want to be bullied by the bayonet. [4]

Hundreds enrolled as volunteers and were organised into companies by Lalor while George Black’s brother, Alfred recorded the names of each division and its captain. The companies were made up of men from all nationalities on the diggings according to the weapons they brought with them. Charles Ross, for instance, took command of the division of men armed with rifles and muskets while Irishmen Michael Hanrahan and Patrick Curtain commanded a division armed with pikes, seen by some as an archetypically Irish weapon and the Prussian Edward Thonen took charge of another company of riflemen. [5] Lalor asked Carboni to tell those without firearms to make pikes. This was not, as some have argued, a reflection of the shortage of firearms among the rebels but recognition of the value of the pike as a weapon for defence. What was important about pikes was that they were easily made and could be used to some effect with little training. About 1,000 diggers with their leaders, Lalor, ‘Captain’ Ross, Timothy Hayes, Frederick Vern and Raffaelo Carboni then marched to the Eureka diggings with the Southern Cross flying before them. [6] This made tactical sense since Bakery Hill was an open, cleared space where diggers could be surrounded by troops from the nearby Camp. Eureka was less exposed.

Charles Doudiet, Swearing Allegiance to the Southern Cross, watercolour

At a meeting of the thirteen captains, Lalor was chosen as ‘commander-in-chief’ with a mandate to ‘resist force by force’.[7] After his election, the diggers began to erect a simple fortification about 200 metres from the remains of Bentley’s hotel. They enclosed about an acre of relatively flat ground with slabs of timber shovelling some earth round the slabs to strengthen them. Once the palisade had been completed, the men who had marched to Eureka, already reduced to 500, marched back to Bakery Hill, the symbolic centre of digger resistance. Lalor and his captains returned to Bakery Hill and as the sun was setting Captain Ross, sword in hand hoisted the Southern Cross. Holding his rifle in his left hand, Lalor mounted a stump nearby and ordered those not prepared to swear an oath to leave immediately, which many did. He then knelt at the foot of the flagpole and with his right hand raised towards the flag, swore in the men who remained:

We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

As dusk fell, they took down the Southern Cross and marched back to Eureka. Although they did not know it, the diggers had won the first round of the Battle of Eureka. They had not thrown away their arms or deserted the Stockade, that frail symbol of resistance and returned to their diggings.[8]

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[1] ‘Government by Artillery’, Argus, 28 November 1854.

[2] ‘Ballaarat: Serious Outbreak at Ballaarat’, Argus, 2 December 1854, p. 5.

[3] Ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, p. 19.

[4] Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, (Melbourne University Press), 2004, p. 6, cit, ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, p. 19.

[5] Thonen was German-born Jew from Elbertfeld, Prussia and in 1851 the twenty-three year old was in Britain earning a living as a teacher of languages. Thonen, just five foot tall, travelled about the diggings with a keg as a ‘lemonade seller’, probably a euphemism for sly grog of some kind.

[6] O’Grady, Desmond, Raffaelo! Raffaelo!: A Biography of Raffaelo Carboni, (Hale and Iremonger), 1985, is an good study of this enigmatic figure. In addition to his The Eureka Stockade, it was known that he had published another book about his experiences in Australia in 1853-1855 ­ Gilburna, this book, first published in 1872 had been thought to have been lost until a copy was discovered in Rome in 1990. It throws new light on the forgotten people in the Eureka story, ­ the indigenous inhabitants of the land. Carboni, Raffaelo, Gilburna, translated and annotated by Tony Pagliaro, (Jim Crow Press), 1993.

[7] The thirteen captains included: Lalor, Frederick Vern, Carboni, Edward Thonen, a Prussian who sold lemonade, John Manning, Timothy Hayes, Patrick Curtain who led the pikemen and George Black. It is probable that Captain James McGill and Thomas Kennedy were also there: ibid, Molony, John, Eureka, pp. 129-130.

[8] Ibid, Molony, John, Eureka, pp. 136-137.