Description
Title: To Pierce the Tyrant’s Heart – The Battle for Eureka Stockade – 3 December 1854
Author: Blake, Gregory
Condition: Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 9780980475326
Cover: Hard Cover with Dust Jacket – 252 pages
Comments: This is an epic account of the battle for the Eureka Stockade on the Ballarat goldfield in 1854, an iconic moment in Australia’s history. It was a battle between British soldiers with Victorian colonial police and insurgent gold miners. The battle lasted a mere 20 minutes and 40 insurgent goldminers and 18 soldiers and police lay dead.
The Eureka Stockade of 1854 was an organised rebellion by gold miners which occurred at Eureka Lead in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Battle of Eureka Stockade (by which the rebellion is popularly known) was fought on 3 December 1854 and named for the stockade structure erected by miners during the conflict. Resulting in the deaths of 22 miners, it was the most significant conflict in the colonial history of Victoria.
The event was the culmination of civil disobedience in the Ballarat region during the Victorian gold rush with miners objecting to the expense of a Miner’s Licence, taxation (via the licence) without representation and the actions of the government and its agents (the police and military). The local rebellion in Ballarat grew from a Ballarat Reform League movement and culminated in organised battle at the stockades against colonial forces.
Mass public support for the captured ‘rebels’ in the colony’s capital of Melbourne when they were placed on trial resulted in the introduction of full white male suffrage for elections for the lower house in the Victorian parliament. The Eureka Rebellion is controversially identified with the birth of democracy in Australia and interpreted by some as a political revolt.
