Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (73 page)

The gravediggers are just finishing when another procession arrives, this one bearing an equally rough coffin that holds the cadaver of the poor Welshman Llewellyn Rowlands. All those bodies that are identified and claimed are accorded individual funerals, though many are unclaimed, meaning that over the next two days – just like this first funeral – three batches of unidentified rebels are collectively interred. When the time comes to bury the poor German pike-man Hafele, the huge procession is accompanied closely by the same faithful terrier who hovered by the morgue all night long, and now follows his ‘dead master to the grave, perhaps the deepest mourner in the procession’.

Hafele is buried just a short distance from James Scobie, the Scot’s grave marked by a broken column – the symbol of a life cut short. While the biggest of the many funeral processions that occurs over the next two days is 300 strong – for brave Captain Ross – the most devastated group is the rather small one behind a coffin trimmed with white, as recorded by Samuel Lazarus, ‘[Inside] was the body of a woman who was mercilessly butchered by a mounted trooper while she was pleading for the life of her husband. The mind recoils with horror & disgust from the thought that an Englishman can be found capable of an act so monstrous & inhuman.’

Privates Roney and Wall are also buried with full military honours on this day, the previous joy of their fellow soldiers now entirely gone as they face the bitter reality that they are putting two of their own beneath the sod.

Sunday evening, 3 December 1854, a mysterious figure arrives on Ballarat

A priest? He certainly has the garb of one, with the black shirt, white collar and heavy black coat, but there is something about this lone figure traipsing through the goldfields that just doesn’t look quite right. Real priests in these parts rarely just go about their business – they insert themselves into other people’s business and stop along the way to chat to diggers, make visits, comfort the ill and soothe the troubled. After what has happened on this day, one would have expected a priest to be talking to everyone. But this priest does no such thing. With eyes down and one arm clearly across his belly in a manner reminiscent of Napoleon, he shuffles along – stumbling a little – and talks to no-one, heading to parts unknown.

Watching him closely, digger Stephen Cummins realises that something is badly amiss, that the man is only just staying upright. He engages him in conversation and quickly realises just what is wrong. The man has been shot and has lost a lot of blood. Why, it is Peter Lalor!

At this point, if there is not quite fear in Lalor’s eyes then there is at least enormous wariness. Will Cummins turn him in? Having spent the better part of the day in a tent in the bush near Warrenheip, Lalor knows he needs help and is now at the mercy of this first man he has come across.

But not a bit of it. Cummins admires Lalor, has been present at the monster meetings that he has addressed and now quickly ushers the critically wounded Irishman back to his tent, where he feeds and waters him, and tries to tend to his terrible wounds.

As Lalor slips in and out of consciousness, it is soon going to be a matter of life and death if he doesn’t get serious medical help. Rousing him and helping him to his feet, Cummins gathers Lalor’s big coat back around him and the two make their way to Father Smyth’s presbytery in the soft light of the evening. There, Lalor is immediately bustled inside and taken into the care of not only the Father himself, but also Anastasia Hayes. She has taken refuge there with her six children after the Hayes tent and everything inside it was burnt to the ground. Now, by the light of a lamp, it is Anastasia who slowly, carefully, tries to clean the terrible wounds on the groaning Lalor’s shattered and bloody left shoulder.

Late Sunday night/early Monday morning, 3-4 December 1854, on Ballarat, in the lockup

The piteous darkness presses, the misery rises. Inside the stinking lockup there is no respite as too many men in too little space compete for too little foetid, filthy air.

Even in hell, however, there proves to be humanity. Long after the main troop of guards has gone to bed, the 40th Regiment’s Sergeant Edward Harris – he had been at the forefront of the fight against these same men less than 24 hours earlier – makes repeated visits to offer words of comfort, water and even ‘ease [manacles] or replace them with others more easily fitting’.

Finally the moans, groans and outright howling from the lockup reaches the ears of Commissioner Rede, and at two o’clock in the morning he arrives to make an inspection. He is clearly troubled by how desperate the prisoners’ situation is and immediately orders their transfer from the lockup. They are taken to a ‘new and more commodious building, lined with zinc and intended for a commissariat store which was nearer the entrance of the Camp’ – a place where they can at least spread out from one another, and are able to move and breathe fresh air.

Seeing the Commissioner, Raffaello Carboni, who is by now delirious, gathers himself and addresses Rede in French, knowing that the man is proud of how well he can speak the language. After Carboni conveys just how unjust and appalling his situation is – given that Dr Carr could affirm that he was not even in the Stockade at the time it was all happening – he implores him to
do
something.

‘I will be sure to speak to Doctor Carr,’ Commissioner Rede replies, ‘and if what you say is true, I will get involved in looking after you.’

‘You are very kind,
Monsieur le Commissionaire.
But what cruel enemies I must have in the Camp! Are they thirsty for my blood, or are they mercenaries? This is a real secret, and I’d give my life to know it. God may pardon them, but I never will be able to.’

Rede leaves and goes back to bed. Around and about the storehouse, however, the Camp remains under arms, ‘as it was reported that a number of insurgents, including a corps of eighty riflemen, were assembled among the ranges’. Who knew but that the vengeful diggers might be about to launch on them? In the night, every footstep sounds like thunder, every night-noise a harbinger of doom.

Early Monday morning, 4 December 1854, Melbourne, thundering hooves are heard

The sound of thundering hooves on city streets is unnerving enough in daylight, let alone at three o’clock in the morning in the streets of Melbourne.
What is going on?
The people of this bustling metropolis are about to find out as the exhausted despatch rider, now on his fourth fresh horse, finally arrives with news of the battle.

Sir Charles is woken in his Toorac residence to receive the devastating news: two privates killed, with Captain Wise of the 40th Regiment dangerously wounded, Lieutenant Paul of the 12th Regiment severely wounded, and 11 privates of the 12th and 40th Regiments wounded. As to the insurgents, Captain Thomas confesses in his report that, while it is not easy to determine, he has reason to believe that ‘not less than thirty [were] killed on the spot, and I know that many have since died of their wounds’.

Sir Charles knows from the first that he needs to move quickly, for the situation is precarious. Certainly his soldiers have recorded a rousing victory at this point, but what now? How will the diggers on other goldfields react when they hear the news? What about the people of Melbourne? Among other things, he is keenly aware from the first that, apart from those special constables’ that have been sworn in, Melbourne stands essentially unprotected, denuded of troops, for they are now all in Ballarat. Messengers are quickly dispatched and the sun is not long risen before the Lieutenant-Governor’s Executive Council is on its way to Government House to decide what course of action to take.

Once so gathered, the first and most obvious thing to do, the council decides, is for Hotham to proclaim martial law for the district around Ballarat. Sir Charles is careful, however, to also include in the proclamation that no-one be executed without his ‘express consent’.

Another key question to be resolved is whether, with all the soldiers gone, the Council members would be prepared to bear arms themselves and do everything in their power to encourage the other men in their circles to defend the city.

As to just
how
they will defend the city, that, too, is discussed. A first step, they agree, will be to call for more volunteers to enrol as special constables, while also calling for reinforcements. Each man then takes his leave, many of them wondering about the safety of their families.

His Excellency now takes time to dash off a quick letter to Lieutenant-Governor Denison in Van Diemen’s Land, advising him that the insurgents are ‘principally foreigners, well drilled, and said to be well commanded’. On the one hand Denison is not to worry, as Sir Charles assures him, ‘They have been . . . completely routed, and may I hope now be discouraged from assembling again in force’.

On the other hand, as there are so many goldfields and so many disaffected people, ‘it is impossible to say from hour to hour, whether disaffection may not show itself in some other quarter. And I am therefore obliged to request that you will allow as many companies of the 99th Regiment as can be spared to proceed to Melbourne forthwith, bringing with them any available field pieces.’

Sir Charles needs men and he needs artillery. As he would later put in a letter to Sir George Grey, he needs a battery of 32-pounder artillery rockets from Britain ‘to dissuade the disaffected.’ It is a matter of urgency.

He further directs Colonial Secretary Foster to write to Commissioner Rede, complimenting his ‘sound and wise discretion in attacking the insurgents’ and thanking ‘all the officers and men, civil and military . . . for their zeal and ability, and especially to Captain Thomas.’ While Hotham seeks a concerted effort in arresting all those who spoke at the license-burning meeting – if they have not been already – he also calls for ‘the exercise of moderation and forbearance.’

Monday morning, 4 December 1854, in offices of
The Ballarat Times
, the fourth estate is escorted to a fifth estate

Henry Seekamp is incandescent with rage: infuriated that good men have been needlessly massacred, that innocent men have been taken prisoner, that the authorities have acted with such callous disregard for both the law and common decency.

The outlet for his outrage is of course the editorial for the special edition of the paper he is then and there preparing to put out. The words for his editorial pour out of him as never before, each one a literary bullet aimed directly at the breasts of the beasts – for he will not call them ‘men’ – who have done this.

‘Surely the massacre of these human beings call from their fellow country-men – from all who call themselves miners – from nature? – from even Heaven itself – a vengeance deep and terrible and that vengeance is as sure to follow as death succeeds life . . . May the God of Liberty and Justice defend the right!’

And yet in the early afternoon, just as he is putting the finishing touches to the typesetting of this very editorial, there is a sudden commotion outside, some angry shouts, then police under the command of Sub-Inspector Charles Jeffries Carter burst into the offices and arrest Seekamp ‘in consequence of certain articles which have appeared in his paper and which [are] seditious and calculated to excite disturbances on the diggings’.

The outrage! The infamy! The
injustice!

In lock-step protest, Henry Seekamp, that good and noble man, moustache bristling, is dragged away to the cells at Government Camp. Upon his arrival, troopers gather round and gawk at their latest prize scalp, gleefully braying ‘
The Times! The Times!
’

Still, in the grand traditions of the free press, the paper must come out regardless. Stepping into the breach, his wife, Clara, oversees getting the edition out, adding only beneath her husband’s thundering editorial the words:

THE EDITOR of the BALLARAT

TIMES has been arrested since

the above was written!

Oh, but she is proud of him, alright, and would later say, ‘If Lalor was the sword of the movement, my husband was the pen.’

In the cells, Seekamp is chained to Charles Ferguson. The American feels sorry for this poor, sick fellow, who is clearly taking the whole thing very badly and seems without any resilience left to rise up.

‘What do you think they will do with us?’ Ferguson asks.

‘The government has shown no mercy before,’ Seekamp replies bleakly, ‘and there is none to be expected now. At least I expect none.’

Monday morning, 4 December 1854, panic in the lockup

In the Camp cells, things remain grim, and all the more so because a rumour is circulating among the prisoners, passed on by a guard, that a gang of Redcoats have been sighted digging a very large hole just a few hundred yards away, within the boundaries of the Camp.

Could it be . . .?

Is it possible . . .?

Are these troops digging a
mass grave
?

From the windows of their new quarters in the storeroom, the prisoners can certainly hear the sound of digging going on not far away. The cold grip of panic begins to tighten their chests and even loosen their bowels.

‘Are they going to bury us alive without any flogging?’ Carboni asks the Irishman next to him. ‘That’s not half so merciful as Haynau’s rule in Austria.’

Ah yes, Carboni knows Julius Jacob von Haynau’s rule, alright. The notoriously brutal Austrian General whose army had occupied Italy and then moved into Hungary had not been known as ‘the Hyena of Brescia’ or ‘the Hangman of Arad’ for nothing.

‘Where did you read in history,’ the Irishman sorrowfully replies, ‘that the British Lion was ever merciful to a fallen foe?’