Captains Ross and Nealson
hastened with their divisions across the bush to intercept the expected troops,
so as to get at their arms and ammunition. All proved in vain.
When a revolution explodes as conspired and planned by able leaders,
it is usually seen that it was their care from the very beginning,
that arms and ammunition should be at hand when and wherever required;
while usury, ambition, or vengeance lavishly provide the money to render
the revolution popular: but we had never dreamed of making any preparation,
because we diggers had taken up arms solely in self-defence; and as up to
Saturday the Council of the Eureka Stockade counted in the majority honest men,
themselves hard-working diggers, they would not turn burglars
or permit anybody to do so in their name.
Truly, I heard from Manning, that a certain committee kept on their
hallucinated yabber-yabber at the Star Hotel. I never was there,
and know nothing about Star blabs. They, with the exception of Vern,
were not with us, thank God; up to Saturday four o'clock any how.
Chapter XLVI.
Non Irascimini.
Saturday morning. The night had been very cold, we had kept watch for fear
of being surprised; every hour the cry, was "The military are coming."
Vern had enlarged the stockade across the Melbourne road,
and down the Warrenheip Gully.
Suppose, even that all diggers who had fire arms had been present and plucky,
yet no man in his right senses will ever give Vern the credit
for military tactics, if that gallant officer had thought that an acre
of ground on the surface of a hill accessible with the greatest ease
on every side, simply fenced in by a few slabs placed at random,
could be defended by a handful of men, for the most part totally destitute
of military knowledge, against a disciplined soldiery, backed by swarms
of traps and troopers.
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