Planning the attack

The attack on the Eureka Stockade in the early hours of Sunday 3 December 1854 demonstrated the superiority of regular military forces against rebels. [1] By early December, there were 450 men in the Government Camp including 150 mounted men and their horses. Conditions were increasingly difficult. Contractors were reluctant to supply fresh water and food and the need to keep a constant vigil against attack meant that sleep was at a premium and troops slept on the ground next to their horses. A plan for defending the Camp had been developed in late October that included burning down adjacent building that could be used for cover by attacking rebels and turning the stone-built Bank of Victoria into a fortified outpost garrisoned by armed civilians.

 

On Saturday, the decision was finally made to assault the Stockade at a meeting between Robert Rede, Captain J. W. Thomas of the 40th Regiment, Captain Pasley and District Commissioner Amos. Amos, who had briefly been detained by the diggers and ‘robbed of his horse’, played a crucial role because of his intimate knowledge of the Eureka diggings and the Stockade. The construction of the Stockade with its implied threat to the Camp and to communications with Melbourne and the knowledge of the planned meeting of the Reform League on 3 December at which it was possible that the miners’ militant wing might emerge dominant increased the need for the authorities to suppress the rebellion quickly. Rede’s report of the attack suggested that Amos’ detention ‘decided us at once to put a stop to this state of anarchy and confusion’. [2] Once the military option had been decided, Rede had no further control over events. Captain Thomas assumed overall authority for suppressing the rebellion.

 

 

Thomas’ plan was deceptively simple. He would march his men under the cover of darkness across the diggings and surprise the rebels at dawn. The critical issue was how to get to the Stockade without rousing every miner in the area. This precluded a direct approach down the Melbourne Road but using Amos’ intimate knowledge of the diggings Thomas decided on an indirect approach that would keep any observers guessing as to the intention of the force. He would halt his forces behind Stockyard Hill to the north of the Stockade and would then advance against its north-western defences. It was also important for Thomas to reduce the number of defenders within the Stockade and he was able to exploit the rebels’ uncertainty about when Nickle’s column would arrive from Melbourne. The previous night two divisions of rebels had left the Stockade to confront the anticipated reinforcements. The Camp had made widespread use of spies and there is evidence that a false warning about Nickle’s column was delivered to the rebels. [3] Whether this was the reason why McGill left the Stockade with over a hundred of the best-armed rebels or whether McGill had other incentives to do so is unclear, but the outcome was the same, a depleted rebel force at Eureka.

 

Although Thomas advanced knowing that his men might have to fight, this was not inevitable. Police Magistrates Charles Hackett and George Webster were part of the force that marched out of the Camp suggesting that Thomas did not plan an unprovoked attack and considered that only police action might be needed. Hackett wrote immediately after the attack that he ‘had no opportunity of calling upon the people to disperse’. [4] Neither did Thomas order his men to fix bayonets when they deployed to advance; this did not occur until they closed with the rebels some ten minutes after the initial firing took place. Whatever Thomas’ intentions once hostilities broke out, what might have been a police action was transformed into a full-scale military engagement.

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[1] See, ‘Fatal Collision at Ballaarat’, Argus, 4 December 1854, p. 5, ‘Further Particulars of the Ballaarat Affray’, Argus, 5 December 1854, pp. 4-5.

[2] Rede to Chief Gold Commissioner Wright, 3 December 1854: PROV, 1085/P Duplicate 162, Enclosure no. 9.

[3] Ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, pp. 105-107, examines the somewhat tenuous evidence for Thomas’ ruse.

[4] Charles Hackett to Charles MacMahon, 3 December 1854, PROV, 1085/P Unit 8, Duplicate 162, Enclosure no. 9.

A false dawn

Rumours were rife in Melbourne. The goldfield was said to be in rebel hands and people became uncomfortably aware that the diggers could form an army tens of thousands strong and be on their way to pillage their defenceless town. A citizens’ rifle brigade was formed and Hotham was applauded when he announced that special constables would be sworn in to meet the emergency. In Ballarat, some more radical diggers met at the Star Hotel where Alfred Black drew up a ‘Declaration of Independence’ but they were a small minority and Lalor, who favoured force only in defence, played no part in it. Vern did and Lalor felt sufficiently insecure in his leadership to offer his resignation on Friday 1 December in order to maintain unity within the movement. However, he was dissuaded from doing so largely because Vern and others recognised that, without him the movement would fall apart. [1] Vern had promised to raise 500 armed German diggers and sought the position of second-in-command but contented himself with enlarging the Stockade. [2] Carboni thought this absurd as there was no possibility of defending the original space let alone an extended one. [3] Vern may have promised the best hope for military leadership but largely from accounts written by Carboni who detested him, he appears vague and contradictory in his military organisation. [4] He did, however, approach the task of forming a rebel army with some energy but he is best remembered for fleeing the subsequent battle though not, as some suggested, at its outset but when a large number of the defenders fled ten minutes into the battle.

 

Few diggers slept in the Stockade on Friday night returning early on Saturday morning, 2 December. Drilling recommenced at 8.00 am and the blacksmith inside the stockade continued to make pikes for the diggers who had no firearms. Drilling stopped around midday when Father Smyth arrived to tend to the needs of the Irish Catholics. He had permission from Lalor to address the Catholics and pointed out to them their poor defences and their lack of experience in the face of well-armed troops and police, with more reinforcements on the way. He pleaded for them to stop before blood was spilled, and to attend Mass the following morning, but was largely unsuccessful. No license hunt occurred in the morning and by midday most diggers agreed that nothing would happen until Monday at the earliest and Lalor believed that this would take the form of further license hunts not a direct attack on their camp. By mid-afternoon, 1,500 men were drilling in and around the Stockade. Captain Thomas suggested that the rebels were ‘forcing people to join their ranks’. [5]

 

 

 



Around 4.00 pm, 200 Americans, the Independent Californian Rangers under James McGill, arrived in the Stockade.[6] Their arrival bolstered men’s spirits as McGill had some military knowledge and was promptly appointed second-in-command to Lalor. There is considerable ambiguity over the extent of McGill’s military experience. [7] But he put whatever military training he had to work and set up a sentry system to warn the rebels of a British attack. Even so McGill and two-thirds of his Californians left before midnight on the pretext that they were going to intercept further reinforcements from Melbourne. McGill’s wife later claimed that a representative of the American consul, a friend of Hotham, had ordered McGill to get his men out of the Stockade. [8] Vern, also without providing any evidence to support his assertion, suggested that McGill accepted a bribe of £800 to absent himself from the Stockade. This left the Stockade seriously under-manned and Rede’s spies observed these actions. In the evening, most men had drifted home to their families or visited friends outside the boundary. Lalor had retired to the stores tent within the Stockade for much needed sleep by midnight and there were only about 120 diggers within the Stockade with a hundred or so firearms between them.

 

Although it appears that Lalor did not anticipate an imminent military assault, this was not the position in the Camp where tension was rising. Captain Thomas later stated that shots were fired over the heads of sentries and that the rebels in the ‘intrenched camp… [had] the avowed intention of intercepting the force under the Major-General’s command en route from Melbourne.’ [9] Rede knew that unless he used his available men, he could lose the opportunity to end the rebellion quickly. Soldiers and mounted police had poured in from around the state; 106 men from the 40th Regiment and 39 mounted troopers arrived from Geelong. Reinforcements were also sent from Castlemaine, as well as directly from Melbourne. Rede was informed by his spies that the Californian Rangers had left the Stockade depleting its defenders. There was a hint of things to come when on the day before the attack Rede had written to Hotham:

 

I am convinced that the future welfare of the Colony and the peace and prosperity of all the Gold Fields depends upon the crushing of this movement in such a manner that it may act as a warning.

 

Now, he concluded, was the ideal time to attack and destroy the Stockade.

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[1] Ibid, Molony, John, Eureka, pp. 146-147, draws attention to the ‘alleged’ nature of this document but says nothing more.

[2] Vern, Frederick, ‘Col. Vern’s Narrative of the Ballarat Insurrection, Part I’, Melbourne Monthly Magazine, November 1855, pp. 5-14, Part II, does not appear to have been published.

[3] Ibid, Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, pp. 80-81.

[4] Ibid, Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, p. 84.

[5] Thomas to Major Adjutant-General, 3 December 1854, PROV, 1085/P Duplicate 162, Enclosure no. 7.

[6] Ibid, Carboni, Raffaelo, The Eureka Stockade, pp. 84-86, 88.

[7] Ibid, Blake, Gregory, To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart: A Military History of The Battle for The Eureka Stockade 3 December 1854, pp. 49-51.

[8] SLV, MS 13518, Charles Evans, Diary, 3 December 1854, pp. 134-135, gives an alternative explanation suggesting that one government spy ‘[possibly McGill] had decoyed a large body of men from the Stockade last night on some pretence or other, leaving only about 150 in it and they imperfectly armed…’

[9] Thomas to Major Adjutant-General, 3 December 1854, PROV, 1085/P Duplicate 162, Enclosure no. 7.