Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (71 page)

It is now that Doctor Carr and Raffaello Carboni come to the fore, and it is at their direction that the severely wounded are at least separated from the rest, put on makeshift stretchers and carried up the Melbourne Road to the London Hotel, which is being converted into an even more makeshift hospital.

(And if several diggers are staring at Carboni with wonder on their faces, it is for very good reason. ‘Old fellow, I am glad to see you alive!’ a digger by the name of Binney says to Carboni, gripping him with one hand while pointing at a dead digger with flowing red hair and bushy red beard with the other. ‘Everyone thinks that’s [you]!’) Another case of a mistaken identity, mercifully, proves to be the tragic report about the brother of the servant girl of the Seekamps. Yes, he has been shot and has lost an arm, but he will live.

———

An officer gallops into the Camp at full cry. He has come from the Stockade and reports to all the soldiers, officers and officials now gathered around that it is all over. They have won the day, and now he needs horses and carts to bring in the dead and wounded.

What is left of the Stockade is already being pulled down or simply burnt. By the end of the day it will be no more than a black scar on the earth, much like the Eureka Hotel had been. Terrified groups of prisoners who have been rounded up and put in manacles are now vainly trying to come to terms with their fate. Yes, the prospect of the battle had been so exciting yesterday that it stiffened the sinews, flared the nostrils and had them breathing fire, but now they are left with a truly horrifying reality. The danger of fighting for your freedom is that you are not only in danger of losing the freedom you do enjoy but the spectre of an even worse possibility dances before you.

‘What will become of us?’ many of the prisoners want to know.

Their jeering guards are quick with their response: ‘Why, hung of course!’

It is a matter of curiosity to Charles Ferguson that, in regards to the prisoners, ‘Some who were the most frightened were the bravest only a few hours before; others were sullen and said nothing.’

A shattering bugle call rings out across the Stockade . . . and there is an instant reaction from the soldiers – ‘general assembly’. It is time for the victorious forces to gather the dead, the wounded and their prisoners and head back to the Camp. One of those prisoners is a digger, Samuel Perry, and though he has just been arrested after being caught in the thick of the fight, his chief hope is that the gold nugget he has managed to secrete in flour in a baker’s trough will remain undetected until he can get free once more.

In a curious resemblance to the Stockade itself, the prisoners are put in the rough formation of a ‘hollow square’, wedged between the three carts in front and three carts behind, bearing the government force’s wounded and dead – and, more particularly, the digger dead. And there are many of them.

On a rough count by Captain Thomas, ‘not less than thirty [were] killed on the spot’, while others have clearly not got long to live.

A little over half are identifiable, while the rest will have to go to their graves anonymously. At least ten of the latter group are likely Americans, perhaps because, given the political sensitivities of the day, it is better not to have it recorded that these men of a famous and newly important republic have taken part.

The thing now is to get everyone back to the Camp.

Alas, when the body of John Hafele is lifted into the dray, his little terrier reaches new depths of misery and jumps up to sit on his master’s chest, where he once more tries to lick him awake as the cart crunches and sways its leaden way towards the Government Camp.

‘No human being,’ Christopher Cook would later write, ‘could have lamented more at the loss of their dearest relative or friend than that affectionate and faithful dog bewailed the loss of his master.’

Those judged able are marched to the Government Camp. No matter that some of the rebels can barely walk, they must limp along the best they can, sooled from behind by military bayonet. Those unconscious are piled on top of each other in the drays like sacks of potatoes, in the same manner as the digger dead.

It does not matter that there appears to be little fight left in this defeated group, just to be sure, the troopers guard them closely on each side, their swords up and ready to strike, their pistols and carbines cocked and primed to fire.

The order comes –
move out
– and the first mass of 40 prisoners heads off with some mounted troopers in front and beside. The joyous foot soldiers fall in behind, pricking the stragglers with the points of their bayonets, even as many of the other soldiers joyously throw around the captured ‘Australian flag’ between them, waving it around in the air and then throwing it in the dust to trample upon it. Eventually, it is hilariously tied to a horse’s tail and dragged to the Camp.

And the indignities do not stop there. As they continue on their way towards the Camp, there are many troopers jumping around, flourishing their swords in victory and mockingly shouting in the face of their prisoners, ‘We have waked up Joe!’ to which other troopers reply uproariously, ‘And sent Joe to sleep again!’

Ah, the fun of it. The sergeant of the detachment jeers, ‘I think we roused ‘em up early enough this morning. Joe’s dead now’.

And yet this is not merely a trail of triumph, for on one dray, behind the victorious soldiers, come their own dead. Privates Michael Roney and Denis Brien of the 40th Regiment, the latter of whom was killed shortly after the former, are far more respectfully laid out in their bloodied uniforms with their eyes closed and arms crossed in the manner of readiness for Christian burial. It is a shocking sight, ‘the dead soldiers stretched stiff and silent in carts, their showy uniforms a mockery now’.

In another dray close behind are the 13 men classified as ‘dangerously wounded’, including Captain Henry Wise, whose blue military trousers are drenched to the bottom of his boots with his own blood. (And, not that it matters, but he is also missing his watch, as it was stolen by one of the soldiers who carried him away.) They must get him back to the Camp quickly to try to save his life and the lives of at least two others thought to be mortally wounded – but they’ll do their best.

For one of the prisoners being marched, however, it is already too late. He stumbles out of the line, faint from blood loss. John Lynch and another man are ordered to assist him and, though they do their best, ‘as he was fast dying we had to lay him down’.

———

Even now, however, as this catastrophic cavalcade heads back down to the gully before crossing Yarrowee Creek and climbing to the Government Camp, the atrocities do not cease. When a few prisoners try to make a break for it, they are furiously pursued just at a time when an anonymous Welsh digger – who has had no involvement with either the battle or the Stockade in general – has come on the scene. He just happens to be talking to the father of young Barnard Welch, Benjamin Welch, sitting on a hill just below the late Eureka Hotel discussing the whole affair, when the two of them spy some of the prisoners making a run for it to.

‘Oh, here’s a lark,’ says the fellow upon spying the prisoners running down the opposite hill by the Catholic Chapel, ‘I will go and see what is the matter.’

‘Do not run,’ warns Mr Welch. ‘If you run you may be mistaken for one of them.’

But the Welsh digger does not listen and immediately takes off on this bit of fun when to his horror he sees two mounted troopers, one apparently a sergeant, galloping towards him with intent. ‘Stop!’ the sergeant calls out. Panicking, the Welshman about-faces and quickly squeezes under the flap of a nearby tent. ‘Surrender!’ orders the trooper in pursuit.

‘No,’ replies the digger. ‘I’m going home. I had nothing to do with the fight. I’ve just come from my work.’

Once more, the trooper calls on him to surrender. Once more, the terrified Welshman refuses.

‘Fire!’ the sergeant shouts at a distance. The trooper mechanically dismounts, removes his pistol from its holster, points its muzzle at the digger’s chest and pulls the trigger. When the troopers have left, Mr Welch rushes to the fallen man where he lies, and finds him ‘totally dead’. The bullet appears to have pierced his heart and passed clean out the other side.

It is with a quivering hand that he removes the poor fellow’s wallet from his pocket and opens it. Within, he finds a fully paid up, fully registered license from which he learns this poor soul’s name.

Llewellyn Rowlands.

Another good man, gone to God.

And for what?

———

As the tragic train of drays squeaks and scrapes into the Government Camp, bearing its catastrophic cargo, those untouched by the morning’s battle lust gaze upon the bodies with horror.

‘The dead rebels,’ records Commissioner Rede’s Chief Clerk, Samuel Huyghue, ‘presented an example of humanity in its worst guise, their faces ghastly and passion-distorted and their eyes staring with stony fixedness, and in some instances, with their arms upraised, and fingers bent as though grasping a weapon in the death struggle.’

As the prisoners are crammed into the log lockup, chaos reigns, a chaos that worsens when shortly afterwards another, larger, body of prisoners arrives under guard. As they are all crammed together the authorities quickly lose track of who had been arrested under arms and who had simply been picked up in the general area. In the miserable madness of it all, there is one question that all those under guard want answered.

What, pray God, is going to happen now? Are they really going to be hanged?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AFTER THE TEMPEST

But the light of the morning was deadened an’

smoke drifted far o’er the town.

An’ the clay o’ Eureka was reddened ere the flag o’ the diggers came down.

Henry Lawson,
The Fight at Eureka Stockade
, 1890

Seven o’clock, Sunday morning, 3 December 1834, ‘The tumult and the shouting dies / the captains and the kings depart’

With the vast bulk of the Redcoats and police gone, those who had secreted Peter Lalor beneath the slabs decide to risk returning to see if he is still alive. There is so much blood apparent on the earth beside those slabs that the first man there – Lalor’s former shipmate and now fellow digger and rebel, James Ashburner – fears the worst. And yet, when he whispers to Lalor that most of the Redcoats have headed back to the Camp, a whispered response comes back. In a moaning muttering, Lalor asks him to go get Father Smyth.

Ashburner is outside the Stockade in the company of Timothy Hayes, tending to some of the wounded when he finds the priest, and the three men quickly make their way back towards where Lalor lies. They are spotted by someone in the crowd, who immediately calls out to Police Sub-Inspector Thomas Langley.

‘There goes Hayes. He is one of the ringleaders,’ the informant blabbers. ‘He deserves more than those poor fellows.’ Moving quickly, Langley immediately claims the prize arrest of the Irishman Hayes, together with Ashburner. But there is a problem once the trooper takes Hayes in hand. Though shocked – he had not been in the Stockade at the time of the battle and had taken no part in the clash – Hayes is by nature a gentle man and simply does not have it in him to lash out verbally or physically. This, however, is not the case with his wife, the worthy Anastasia, who had a part in sewing the flag that has been so worthily fought for.

Sub-Inspector Langley is just leading the manacled Hayes and Ashburner away to join the line of prisoners when the red-headed Anastasia, her blue eyes flashing with anger, rushes up from where she has been tending some wounded diggers. After a withering look at her husband, she approaches Lieutenant Richards, Adjutant Commander of the 40th, as he marches with the wounded and prisoners back to Government Camp. Through clenched teeth, she says, ‘If I had been a man, I would not have allowed myself to be taken by the likes of you.’

One look in her eyes and Lieutenant Richards does not doubt it. More pointedly, she follows up directly to the English officer. ‘Why didn’t you attack the Stockade yesterday, when we were prepared to receive you?’ It is less a question than a statement of real regret. She clearly would have loved to have seen the soldiers take on the diggers when the latter had been present in force and capable of delivering far greater firepower to their rebellion.

And she is not the only one disappointed in her husband. After all that has happened, Mrs Shanahan found her husband hiding in the small outhouse.

———

With only his grey horse for company, Father Smyth heads off to the pile of slabs, where, after establishing that Lalor is still alive, he furiously waves his arms to signal to some passing men that he needs help. One of the men who answers the call is still in his nightshirt, under-drawers and slippers. A group of them have all just assembled before the slabs when a stray trooper, coming from parts unknown, thunders up on horseback and, ignoring the Father while all the others quickly shrink away, aggressively addresses himself to the half-dressed man.

‘Oh!’ he roars, his sword raised above his head, as if ready to smite him dead. ‘You bloody bastard, you was one of them. Come along with me, and if you look back I will cut you down.’

With no choice but to follow the tragic line of prisoners, off the unfortunate man goes in his nightclothes, careful not to look back, the trooper close behind.

At last, at last, the mournful bugle calls the last of the police and troopers away from the Stockade. Only then do the other diggers re-join Father Smyth before the pile of slabs. It is now judged safe and they can even speak openly to the still-buried Lalor, who now weakly whispers back up to them, ‘For God’s sake, boys, go and leave me.’