Rede immediately knew about the burnt licences and the harsh words that had been spoken. He also knew that the moderate forces of the Ballarat Reform League had been defeated. This no doubt pleased him as any show of militancy on the part of the diggers would give him the excuse he needed to unleash his much better trained and armed forces. He persisted with the belief that they were being influenced by a handful of agitators who were using the licence issue to promote revolution, and that he only needed to show them he would not hesitate to use whatever means were necessary to get them to capitulate. To test this belief he ordered another licence hunt for the following morning, Wednesday, 30 November. The Gravel Pits were chosen as there was a clear view of this field from the camp should anything untoward happen.
Under the leadership of Assistant Commissioner Johnston, the police set out accompanied by soldiers with their bayonets drawn. They were soon under attack from the diggers who pelted them with stones, sticks, bottles and anything they could get their hands on. The diggers also refused to show their licences and would not disperse when Rede rode among them with great difficulty; his horse, spooked by the noise and flying missiles, kept rearing up. Rede read the Riot Act as more troops advanced in skirmish formation across the flat. Shots were fired from both sides, and one policeman and a digger were slightly hurt. Eight diggers were arrested and hauled up to the camp.
When word of the bloody licence hunt reached the other Ballarat fields, the diggers began to make their way to Bakery Hill in the hope that one of their number would know how they should respond to what was certainly an escalation of the violence with which Rede intended to enforce the law. Again it fell to Peter Lalor who, while admitting that he had no military experience, recommended that the diggers take steps to defend themselves. Standing beneath the flag of the Southern Cross, he called on them to form into groups and to elect captains from amongst their ranks. He asked Alfred Black, the brother of the secretary of the Ballarat Reform League, to note down the names of the captains. Lalor turned to his friend Raffaello Carboni, who’d had much experience fighting against much better equipped and organised forces in his native Italy, and asked him to be his right-hand man. His first task was to use his gift for languages to translate Lalor’s message to the foreign diggers.
As Bakery Hill could be kept under observation from the government camp, Lalor directed the diggers to follow him to the Eureka Lead, where they would be afforded some protection from the undulating ground. A young Canadian called Henry Ross, who had been responsible for designing and commissioning the flag of the Southern Cross, lifted it up so that the companies of diggers could fall in behind it as they marched towards Eureka.
Once there, Lalor addressed them again. He said nothing about rebellion as his primary concern was that of protection of his fellow diggers from unprovoked attacks by the goldfields administration, and if possible to rescue the men who had been arrested earlier in the day. He drew together the men he could trust into a council of thirteen who would help him formulate a strategy to deal with any future attacks. It included Carboni, his friend Timothy Hayes, John Manning from the Ball a rat time s, and Patrick Curtin who would be in charge of manufacturing the pikes. The Black brothers were almost certainly involved and there were a couple of Germ a ns, one of whom, Frederick Vern, claimed to have had military training and was most put out when he was not given the title of commander-in-chief, which Lalor took for himself. The rest of the council were English and American; of these, a young man called James McGill was supposed to have been trained at West Point. Lalor was disappointed that the Ballarat Reform League leaders seemed unwilling to continue, but he pledged himself to the service of the diggers. He told them: ‘I tell you gentlemen, if once I pledge my hand to the diggers, I will neither defile it with treachery, nor render it contemptible by cowardice.’
The site Lalor chose to defend was about 200 metres further along the Melbourne Road from the remains of the Eureka Hotel and was about an acre (0.4 of a hectare) in size. Although it was pitted with shallow holes where speculators called shepherds had secured claims they intended to work once they knew the direction the underground streams had taken, it had not been mined much. It already contained several tents belonging to the mainly Irish diggers and their families, and there were a couple of shops. Lalor had erected his own tent there. They were all allowed to remain where they were while a fence made of slabs of timber used to line walls of shafts, tree trunks and whatever material was available was built around the perimeter. Earth was shovelled against this fence to provide extra strength.
One of the men earnestly knocking slabs into place and levelling the ground inside the fence was Henry Good enough, a police constable who was being paid to spy. He returned to the camp later that day to tell Rede the diggers planned to launch an attack at 4am the next morning. Nothing was further from the diggers’ minds. After a hard day’s work they returned to Bakery Hill where the Southern Cross was once again unfurled. Diggers who had not gone with them to the stockade joined them to listen to Lalor, who stood before them, a rifle in his left hand, asking all those who were not prepared to swear an oath to leave. Some drifted away but the 500 who remained fell in behind their captains and joined with their commander-in-chief who went down on one knee, his right hand pointed towards the flag fluttering above, and led the assembled diggers in the first oath sworn in the Colony of Victoria under a flag that was not British. They pledged: ‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.’ Then they returned to the Eureka.
Over the next two days, diggers were seen coming and going from the stockade. Some we re on official business seeking weapons and supplies from the various businesses. They issued receipts for everything they obtained. Unfortunately some of the more unruly elements on the goldfields seized the opportunity to harass store keepers and loot their supplies. Reports of lawless mobs reached the camp and detachments of police were sent out as Rede wanted a chance to catch the diggers with arms in their hands. Unfortunately for him, none could be found.
December 1854 began quietly enough. It was a Friday and Rede expected to see the men at their claims, but the goldfields were at a standstill. No work was being done. By 1am a crowd had begun to congregate at Bakery Hill and the police were sent to disperse them. The Riot Act was read and two more diggers were arrested, one of whom was armed; a sure sign that there was rebellion afoot.
Unbeknown to Lalor, Kennedy and Black had decided to spread the news that the diggers at Ballarat were under attack by the goldfields administration. They addressed a large gathering of diggers in Creswick, informing them that there were arms and food available to those who wished to help fight for the rights they all wanted. Four hundred diggers volunteered and were led triumphantly into Ballarat singing the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, in recognition of the similarities of their march with the storming of the Bastille, only to find that no provision had been made for them and there were no weapons to spare. A local butcher provided meat to feed the new comers but most returned to Creswick once they discovered that Lalor still hoped for a peaceful outcome to the dispute, and their services were not welcome.
By Saturday, 2 December, the diggers in the stockade and elsewhere in Ballarat had begun to relax. Licence hunts were generally confined to week days and occasionally Saturday mornings. After midday, the defence of the stockade could be relaxed until Monday morning. Father Smyth visited and was given permission by Lalor to address the Catholics. He expressed his grave concerns over the futility of their activities and his fears that much blood would be spilt if they persisted. He exhorted them to attend Mass the following morning. Many, though well-intentioned, would never attend again.
The men continued to drill, and the manufacture of pikes continued as they all looked forward to the next day, Sunday, when the diggers would meet again at the Adelphi Theatre to recorganise the Ballarat Reform League and put forward some resolutions for relieving the crisis. In the meantime, Goodenough and his fellow spies kept Rede supplied with a constant stream of bizarre reports about what was happening in the stockade so that by Saturday evening he believed that there were companies of men formed up in well-drilled national groups. He told Hotham in a letter that there were individual companies of French, Swedish and Germans as well as Irish and Vandemonians. The Americans were not mentioned.
That night Lalor and his lieutenants decided they would send a deputation to Rede in an attempt to prevent bloodshed. They would inform him that the diggers were prepared to lay down their weapons and return to their claims if the resident commissioner would give an assurance that licence hunts would be suspended, and the men arrested on the Gravel Pits were released. After dark Carboni, George Black and Father Smyth crossed the fields towards the camp but when they came to the bridge over Yarrowee Creek only the priest was allowed go any further. He was taken in to see Rede, who returned with him to meet Carboni and Black waiting near the bridge. Carboni could not help but be amused by Rede’s appearance. Dressed in his heavily braided uniform and with one hand tucked inside his tunic, he looked for all the world like Napoleon.
Adopting the same attitude as Hotham had earlier in the week, Rede informed them he would not trade with them. He claimed that the arrested men had fired on the police and troopers and would be charged with riot, a far greater offence than merely being without a licence. They would not be released, although he was prepared to offer bail for two of the arrested men. This offer was rejected. He voiced his opinion that opposition to the licences was a smokescreen to the real agenda of the diggers, which was to mount a democratic revolution. This was hotly denied and Carboni and Black reiterated their opposition to licence hunts being held at the point of a bayonet. Carboni assured Rede that he spoke for all the foreign diggers who would lay down their arms if the licence hunts could be suspended. The meeting ended with the three delegates returning empty handed.
Father Smyth tried again later that night to no avail. Rede would not tell him when and where the next licence hunt would take place so that he could warn the diggers. Disappointed and deeply concerned, he took the audacious step of writing to the governor. He told him that the diggers were not the aggressors. They had carried no arms until forced to do so to protect themselves from attack by the government forces. Father Smyth asked again for the licence hunts to be suspended until such time as a detailed examination of goldfields administration could be completed. While he could make no promises on behalf of the diggers, he felt sure they would return to their work if this assurance was made. The letter, when it arrived the next day, nearly suffered the fate of all previous appeals, but after ordering it to be filed away, Hotham decided he should answer the priest to remind him that the law had to been forced.
Rede interpreted the fact that the deputation had come, and the priest had returned on his own, as an indication that the diggers were frightened and wanted a way out of the dangerous situation they were in. He had already sent another message, in cipher, to Hotham that he was in need of more reinforcements. Hotham dispatched the commander-in-chief of the forces in the colonies, Major General Sir Robert Nickle, and a contingent of marines from HMS Electra together with an additional 600 soldiers from the 12th and the 40th regiments and four pieces of field artillery. This was to supplement the 700 to 800 soldiers already in the Ballarat camp. That left Melbourne completely undefended, from within and without, and necessitated the swearing in of several hundred special constables to maintain some semblance of law and order while the troops were away. Fortunately for the diggers, Nickle’s forces found the going hard, especially as they were hauling cannon and ammunition. They were still only at the halfway point at Bacchus Marsh when the massacre at Eureka took place.
While Lalor’s council was concerned only with the a buses of the licence system and the build-up of military might in the government camp, there was a much more republican sentiment gathering force under the direction of Alfred Black, who drew up a Declaration of Independence at the Star Hotel on the afternoon of Friday, 1 December. Frederick Vern was one of the signatories. Although he was widely seen as a leader of the diggers, his refusal to work with the council and assist in drilling the men could have weakened the situation inside the stockade so as to cause it to be abandoned. It was saved by the arrival of Captain McGill, who had gone off and enlisted the assistance of his fellow Americans in Ballarat to form the 200 strong Independent Californian Rangers whom he brought into the stockade. McGill was appointed second-in-command in place of Vern, with the responsibility for tactical arrangements. He was able to instil a little order among the diggers and was responsible for putting together a roster of sentries to guard the stockade, otherwise the massacre by the military could have been greater.
As the sentries did not know every man coming in and out of the stockade it was decided to introduce a password. Whether it was McGill or someone else who chose Vinegar Hill as the password is not known, but it was the cause of some tension because of its Irish connections. Vinegar Hill had been the site of the final battle in the 1798 Uprising of the United Irishmen in Ireland and was the term used by the convicts in the 1804 rebellion in New South Wales, most of whom were Irish. Some of the diggers resented its use in Ballarat and left the stockade. Later, the choice of password would be used to accentuate the role played by the Irish in the conflict and to discount the contribution by other British subjects and foreigners in the defiance of British authority.
When McGill heard the rumours that more troops were on their way from Melbourne, he decided to take two-thirds of his Californian rifle brigade along the Melbourne road to hinder their approach and prevent them from attacking the stockade from the rear. While the idea had merit, the force never eventuated and the stockade was left dangerously under-manned and under-armed on the Saturday night. By midnight, there were only about 120 diggers inside the stockade with about 100 rifles or pistols and enough ammunition to shoot off one or two rounds each. The rest had pikes. They we re not to know that Rede had decided that a surprise attack was the best means of crushing the rebellion once and for all.
Initially Captain Thomas had considered attacking the stockade on Saturday, 2 December, but once it became obvious that many of the diggers had dispersed, he decided to delay until they were collected in one spot. He apparently didn’t know that the stockade was not intended to accommodate all those willing to defend their rights and that many had gone to their own homes and the public houses after dark. He did have a good idea about the layout of the fortifications the diggers had put in place and where the buildings inside it were, as the spies had passed on this information over the course of the day.
For Rede the decision to go before light on the Sunday was perfect. He wanted to prevent the next meeting of the Reform League, which was scheduled for 2pm. The plans were made in complete secrecy to prevent informants in the camp, if there were any, spreading word of the attack to the stockade. At about 2.30am, 182 mounted and foot soldiers, and 92 police accompanied by seventeen officers left the government camp. They had all been given a glass of rum and instructed to shoot any digger who offered resistance. Only those who surrendered immediately were to be spared. To consolidate the surprise, the troops did not take the direct route up through Bakery Hill to the stockade, Instead, guided by Assistant Commissioner Amos, who had responsibility for the Eureka Lead, the column left quietly from the rear of the camp and following Yarrowee Creek to Black Hill they were able to approach the stockade without being seen. Once they had crossed the creek they regrouped on a rise 300 metres from the stockade. At around 3am, they began their final approach. It was not until they were 150 metres from the stockade that the sentry spotted them and fired his rifle.
Only then did Captain Thomas give the command to sound the bugle call to signal that firing was to commence. A small group of 40 men led by Captain Wise, who would lose his life in the battle, hurried to the other side of the stockade to act as a rearguard while the police and foot soldiers fanned out to cover the sides. They were supported by mounted police and soldiers who came around them so that the stockade was almost completely surrounded and anyone trying to escape was immediately cut down.
The diggers, woken from their sleep, grabbed whatever weapons they could find but they were no match for the oncoming soldiers. Lalor, taking command, ordered the men to cover in the shepherding holes and to hold their fire until the troops were in close range, as they could not afford to waste the small amount of ammunition they had. Outnumbered by well-equipped soldiers spoiling for blood, surrender for the diggers, like escape, had become impossible. Anyone unfortunate enough to be wounded during the firing risked being bayoneted to death once the stockade walls were breached. The pikemen, who had taken up their positions near the stockade wall, ready to impale the cavalry as it broke through, found their pikes inadequate and they were mown down by horses’ hooves and the sabres their riders wielded.
Lalor himself was gunned down but his comrades had the good sense to hide him under some fallen timber, otherwise he would have suffered the same fate as so many of the diggers. Fortunately or unfortunately for Carboni, his tent was outside the stockade walls. Woken by the sound of gunfire he was unable to find a way to help his comrades. However, he was able to assist many of the wounded after the fighting was over. He was arrested and released by Captain Thomas, only to be arrested again some time later, while he was helping Doctor Carr treat the injured, by the spy Henry Goodenough who had been searching for him since the battle had finished.
The death toll was terrible. Young Captain Ross did not live to see a constable called John King haul his precious flag of the Southern Cross down and carry it away. Twenty-two diggers were killed. The government troops lost three privates and Captain Wise, and a handful of soldiers were wounded. Once the last shots had been fired, carts were sent down from the camp to collect the bodies and bring the casualties to the hospital while troops scoured the countryside making arrests of all and sundry. In total, 125 diggers, some of them quite badly wounded, were driven at the point of a bayonet up to the camp to await their fate. Other soldiers ripped through the remains of the stockade, burning tents and driving mourning women and children away. Fortunately, nobody thought to lift the slabs under which a semi-conscious Peter Lalor lay. He would make his escape to Warrenheip where he had friends who could take him in.