shakergt
Moderating Team
At 3 am on Sunday, 3 December 1854, a party of 276 soldiers and police, under the command of Captain John W. Thomas approached the Eureka Stockade. Inside the stockade 150 diggers armed with muskets, picks, poles and shovels waited.
The demand was made for the diggers to come out and disband. Refusing, a single shot rang out and the troopers attacked the stockade. Which side fired that first shot is still debated today.
The battle was fierce, brief, and terribly one-sided with the ramshackle army of miners hopelessly outclassed by a heavily armed military regiment.
During the height of the battle, Lalor was shot in his left arm, took refuge under some timber and was smuggled out of the stockade and hidden. His arm was later amputated.
'Captain' Henry Ross one of the seven 'Captains' of the rebellion and credited with designing the Eureka flag was also killed.
Stories tell how women ran forward and threw themselves over the injured to prevent further indiscriminate killing. The Commission of Inquiry would later say that it was "a needless as well as a ruthless sacrifice of human life indiscriminate of innocent or guilty, and after all resistance had disappeared."
Newspapers labelled the battle "The Slaughter at Eureka"
According to Lalor's report, fourteen miners (mostly Irish) died inside the stockade and an additional eight died later from injuries they sustained. A further dozen were wounded but recovered.
Captain Charles Pasley, the second in command of the British forces, sickened by the carnage, saved a group of prisoners from being bayoneted and threatened to shoot any police or soldiers who continued with the slaughter.
Six soldiers also died in the battle which lasted 10-15min.
News of the battle spread quickly to Melbourne and other gold field regions, turning a perceived Government military victory in repressing a minor insurrection into a public relations disaster. Thousands of people in Melbourne turned out to condemn the authorities.
The actual significance of Eureka upon Australia's politics is not decisive. It has been variously interpreted as a revolt of free men against imperial tyranny, of independent free enterprise against burdensome taxation, of labour against a privileged ruling class, or as an expression of republicanism.
In his 1897 travel book Following the Equator, American writer Mark Twain wrote of the Eureka Rebellion:
"... I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolutionsmall in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. ... It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument."
The demand was made for the diggers to come out and disband. Refusing, a single shot rang out and the troopers attacked the stockade. Which side fired that first shot is still debated today.
The battle was fierce, brief, and terribly one-sided with the ramshackle army of miners hopelessly outclassed by a heavily armed military regiment.
During the height of the battle, Lalor was shot in his left arm, took refuge under some timber and was smuggled out of the stockade and hidden. His arm was later amputated.
'Captain' Henry Ross one of the seven 'Captains' of the rebellion and credited with designing the Eureka flag was also killed.
Stories tell how women ran forward and threw themselves over the injured to prevent further indiscriminate killing. The Commission of Inquiry would later say that it was "a needless as well as a ruthless sacrifice of human life indiscriminate of innocent or guilty, and after all resistance had disappeared."
Newspapers labelled the battle "The Slaughter at Eureka"
According to Lalor's report, fourteen miners (mostly Irish) died inside the stockade and an additional eight died later from injuries they sustained. A further dozen were wounded but recovered.
Captain Charles Pasley, the second in command of the British forces, sickened by the carnage, saved a group of prisoners from being bayoneted and threatened to shoot any police or soldiers who continued with the slaughter.
Six soldiers also died in the battle which lasted 10-15min.
News of the battle spread quickly to Melbourne and other gold field regions, turning a perceived Government military victory in repressing a minor insurrection into a public relations disaster. Thousands of people in Melbourne turned out to condemn the authorities.
The actual significance of Eureka upon Australia's politics is not decisive. It has been variously interpreted as a revolt of free men against imperial tyranny, of independent free enterprise against burdensome taxation, of labour against a privileged ruling class, or as an expression of republicanism.
In his 1897 travel book Following the Equator, American writer Mark Twain wrote of the Eureka Rebellion:
"... I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolutionsmall in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. ... It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument."
ower: 
