The official
abridged version:
Extract from the Book:
Peter
Fitzsimons
EUREKA
THE
UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
When
trooper William Revell of the Mounted 40th
goes after one pike-bearing digger, Thomas Dignum – born and bred
in Sydney – who to this point had also 'fought like a tiger [and]
repented not of having put on stretchers a couple of Redcoats,' the
Australian suddenly turns on Revell and thrusts his pike at him.
Though it misses, the pike strikes home into a Redcoat mate beside
him, whereupon the enraged Revell instantly strikes the Australian on
the head with his sword. Dignum goes down with a heavy wound to his
skull.
Some 20 minutes
after the first shots, however, as more diggers fall and others flee,
the worst of the fighting is over. And yet, even after it is clear
that the resistance of the diggers has ceased, that the government
forces have won the day, still the killing does not stop. A terrible
kind of madness appears to have overtaken some of the uniformed men
and they continue their murdering and maiming, hunting down every
digger they can see, whether or not he has even been involved in any
of the hostilities. The worst of the murderers, cruel revenge for the
humiliations they have suffered in recent times.
By now, many of
those diggers not killed in the initial assault or its aftermath have
taken refuge back in their tents, but this presents no problem for
the conquering forces. As it happens, Martin and Anne Diamond have
not been remotely involved in the uprising beyond having had their
place sequested for some crucial meetings of the Council for the
Defence. Their whole presence within the Stockade is no more than a
geographical quirk, as the boundaries of the Stockade left their
half-in and half-out of it. None of this registers on the soldiers
and troopers. As the couple run out of their tent to try and get to
the relative safety of the bush, Martin stumbles and falls flat on
his face. He attempts to rise when the first soldier reaches him and
triumphantly impales him in the back with his bayonet, and the
soldier is soon joined by police, who slash at him with their swords.
Diamond is dead within a minute, all of it in front of his screaming
wife.
There must be a
lot of others in those tents? Well then, says Sub-Inspector Carter,
'Set the tents on fire!
The order is
instantly obeyed as Carter's foot police take the cool ends of some
burning logs and sticks from one of the fires in the middle of the
Stockade and run from tent to tent, setting them alight. (Oh so very
strange, these British, how they love to put the torch to anything
that will burn.)
One of the
first tents to go down is Diamond's store, which blazes in an instant
after a 'Vandemonian-looking trooper' – though this frankly
describes most of them – sets fire to the northern end and lets the
rising wind from that very direction take care of the rest. In short
order, dozens of tents are ablaze, along with the wounded, who are
burnt alive. As Carboni would recall, 'The howling and yelling was
horrible.'
That
will bring
them out once more.
And
so it does, as the fires soon illuminate screaming, coughing figures
rushing out into the open air. Who knows if they have been involved
in the rebellion or not? It doesn't matter anymore. The butchering
goes on.
____________
Up on the
courthouse verandah back at the camp, Samuel Huyghue and other
officials see the flames and smoke billowing from the Stockade with
some relief. The soldiers have clearly made it inside and are now
destroying whatever it is they have found.
_____________
As other
diggers and their families rush from their tents, the troopers
inevitably knock the men down and let the screaming women and
children go where they will. If the men resist and try to fight back,
their end comes quickly. If they submit, they are immediately
arrested and dragged away. When one group of diggers falls back to
some tents near the blacksmith's workshop, those tents are quickly
torched, smoking the rebels out, and another furious outbreak of
violence takes place – hand to hand, pike to bayonet, dirty rebel
to loyal servant of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. This group of diggers
fights well, but the weight of numbers against them is so strong that
it is not long before they are quelled.
'When we were
in that helpless state, an unconditional surrender ought to have been
proposed to us,' digger John Lynch would later recall. 'It would have
been accepted, and the future spared many bitter memories. But the
spirit of revenge was uppermost, and revelled in a fierce saturnalia
of carnage. More than half the loss of life took place after
resistance had ceased. A few, who surrendered on challenge – and
very few got the chance – were placed under guard; but as the
wantonness of destruction on the one side grew with hopelessness of
resistance on the other, the guards had enough to do to save their
charges from being shot or hacked to pieces'.
Still not
content that they have wrought enough destruction, many of the
Redcoats now decided to spread the inferno to other tents well
outside the Stockade walls. After all, they took fire from some
treasonous diggers in those canvas caves. They must be put to the
torch also.
In all the
madness, atrocities abound. One 23-year-old digger, Henry Powell, has
had nothing to do with anything – he had come over the day before
from Creswick to visit a friend. Curious about the shots and screams,
he has just ventured from his friend's tent and is in the open when
soldiers on horseback come roaring over the rise. At the first sight
of them, Powell realises the danger he is in and starts to run,
something that automatically makes the police – the scent of
victory in their nostrils – pursue him hard and bring him down. All
is chaos and quick-fire, but at least Powell recognises one of the
horsemen, a young fellow called Arthur Akehurst – a Clerk of the
Peace, usually seen in the Ballarat courthouse inside the Camp –
notable for his fair complexion and reddish hair.
Not only is
this no time for pleasantries, but Akehurst, who has been sworn in as
a special constable just that morning, is violently aggressive from
the first.
'Stand up in
the Queen's name, you bastard,' he says.
'Very good,
sir,' the frightened Powell replies, now with as many as 30 troopers
surrounding him. 'Very well, gentleman, don't be alarmed, there are
plenty of you.
There is no
fight in him at all – just fear and the earners hope that he will
not be hurt. Alas, with nary another word, Akehurst takes his
three-and-a-half-foot sword and strikes him a fearful blow on the
head.
Powell first
falls down, then gets up, bleeding, only to have one of the troopers
now fire into him and shout, 'There, you bugger, that shows you!
Even as the
young man screams for help, the other troopers take their horses back
and forth over him, their hooves inflicting cruel damage. When he
again tries to rise, they first fire pistols and then slash viciously
at him with their swords, and again he falls. Thomas Pierson would
write of such acts in his diary, 'It was a most cowardly disgraceful
Butchery, worthy only of such scamps as those who instigated it.
In their own
tent inside the Stockade, Matthew Faulds and his heavily pregnant
wife, Mary, cower in terror. Mary is due to give birth at any moment,
fleeing is out of the question, and all Matthew can do is have her
lie on her back, roll two logs either side of her for protection and
put a blanket over her as they pray for a miracle. A mounted trooper
suddenly slashes open the tent, the flooding light revealing the
situation. He turned and leaves them be. Their daughter, Adeliza, is
born not long afterwards.
Ah, but there
are many more atrocities to come, as recorded by Samuel Lazarus:
'Another man, a considerable distance from the Stockade . . . went
out of his tent in his shirt and drawers and seeing the savage
butchery going on cried out in terror to a trooper galloping by, “For
God's sake don't kill my wife and children,” his prayer may as well
have been addressed to a devil. He was shot dead on his own
threshold. Not far away and only shortly afterwards, former Ballarat
Times and Melbourne
Morning Herald correspondent
Frank Hasleham turned digger and part-time reporter (he provides
information to the current Geelong Advertiser
correspondent) is trying to find
a safe place away from the danger of the Stockade. He happens upon a
quiet gully when he looks up to see three horsemen heading his way.
'One
of them,' he would later recount, ' who rode considerably ahead of
the other two arrived within hailing distance, [and] he hailed me as
a friend.
The
trooper now addresses him, asking pleasantly,'Do you wish to join our
force?'
'No,'
Hasleham replies a little uncertainly, surprised by the question. 'I
am unarmed, and in a weak state of health. I hope this madness with
the diggers will soon be over.'
Ah,
but there is some madness yet to go: at a distance of just four
paces, the trooper raises his pistol, points at Haslehham's breast
and shoots.
Hasleham
falls hard, bleeding heavily. The trooper isn't done, however.
Dismounting, he handcuffs the innocent man, who lies there for the
next 'two hours, bleeding from a wound in his breast, until his
friends send for a blacksmith who forces off the handcuffs with a
hammer and cold chisel'.
And:
But
the slaughter is still not over, as there remain many other targets
for the soldiers to go after. The soldiers, as recorded by Captain
Pasley, 'hated the insurgents . . . for having wounded a drummer boy,
and dangerously wounded Captain Wise, [and] were very anxious to kill
the prisoners and it was with great difficulty, that they were
restrained by the offices from doing so'.
When
Pasley comes across a party of prisoners who are about to be
bayoneted by their guards, he takes out his revolver and declares, 'I
will shoot the first man who injuries a digger who has surrendered.'
And:
All
around him are scenes that no man who believes in a just God should
ever have to witness – much of it powered by the devil in the
dynamic between victor and vanquished. And just as many of the police
have enjoyed boosting their income by purloining a good chunk of the
fines levied on the diggers when they were alive, so now do many of
them loot the bodies of the dead. And not just the police, for
Redcoats, too, rifle through the corpses and the prisoners, taking
everything they can get as they 'search' for hidden weaponry – from
pound notes to small collections of gold. One wounded rebel even has
two Redcoats kneeling on his chest, holding him down, while another
goes through his pockets.
Finally,
however, one of the officers has had enough and gives a sharp command
to his soldiers, who instantly obey. Taking their pistols from their
holsters, they clear the Stockade – under pain of being shot on the
spot – of everyone bar the prisoners, the dead and the dying.
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