The number of public servants, factory and farm workers leaving for the goldfields to seek their fortune led to a chronic labour shortage that needed to be resolved.

The response was a universal mining tax based on time stayed, rather than what was seen as the more equitable option, being an export duty levied only on gold found, meaning it was always designed to make life unprofitable for most prospectors.

[13] Licence inspections, known as "digger hunts", were treated as a great sport and "carried out in the style of an English fox-hunt"[14] by mounted officials who received a fifty per cent commission from any fines imposed.

[16] Miners were often arrested for not carrying licences on their person because of the typically wet and dirty conditions in the mines, then subjected to such indignities as being chained to trees and logs overnight.

[20] On 28 November 1854, there was a skirmish as the approaching 12th (East Suffolk) Regiment of Foot had their wagon train looted in the vicinity of the Eureka lead, where the rebels ultimately made their last stand.

The league's founding charter proclaims that "it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey" and "taxation without representation is tyranny",[22] in the language of the United States Declaration of Independence.

On 30 November 1854, there was further rioting where missiles were once again directed at military and law enforcement by the protesting miners who had henceforth refused to cooperate with licence inspections en masse.

Other notable Victorian police commanders at the Eureka Stockade include sub-inspectors Ladislaus Kossak, Samuel Furnell, Thomas Langley, and Hussey Chomley.

[60] The location of the stockade has been described by Eureka man John Lynch as "appalling from a defensive point of view" as it was situated on "a gentle slope, which exposed a sizeable portion of its interior to fire from nearby high ground".

[61][note 2] In the early hours of 1 December, the rebels were observed to be massing on Bakery Hill, but a government raiding party found the area vacated.

The rebels continued to fortify their position as 300-400 men arrived from Creswick's Creek, and Carboni recalls they were: "dirty and ragged, and proved the greatest nuisance.

[69] [note 3] Among those willing to credit the first report of the battle as being true and correct it has been theorised that the hoisting of a Union Jack at the stockade was possibly an 11th-hour response to the divided loyalties among the heterogeneous rebel force which was in the process of melting away.

[72][73][74] Lalor's choice of Vinegar Hill as the password the night before the battle did not resonate with the non-Irish members of the protest movement and has been cited as the main reason why support for the armed rebellion collapsed.

[78] FitzSimons points out that although the number of reinforcements converging on Ballarat was probably closer to 500, there is no doubt that as a result of the choice of password "the Stockade is denied many strong-armed men because of the feeling that the Irish have taken over".

[82] In 2009, military historian Gregory Blake advanced the theory that two flags may have been flown on the day of the battle, as the miners were claiming to be defending their British rights.

In a fateful decision, McGill decided to take most of his two hundred Californian Rangers away from the stockade to intercept rumoured British reinforcements coming from Melbourne.

[4] Lalor's command was riddled with informants, and Rede was kept well advised of his movements, particularly through the work of government agents Henry Goodenough and Andrew Peters, who were embedded in the rebel garrison.

[92] Rede planned to send the combined military police formation of 276 men[note 6] under the command of Captain John Thomas to attack the Eureka Stockade when the rebel garrison was observed to be at a low watermark.

[97] For at least 10 minutes, the rebels offered stiff resistance, with ranged fire coming from the Eureka Stockade garrison such that Thomas's best formation, the 40th Regiment, wavered and had to be rallied.

[98] Despite Lalor's insistence that his standing orders to all but the riflemen were to engage at a distance of fifteen feet and that "the military fired the first volley", it appears as if the first shots came from the Eureka Stockade garrison.

[99] It has been claimed that Harry de Longville, who was on picket duty when the early morning shootout started, fired the first shot that was possibly intended to be a warning that the government forces were approaching.

[100] A magistrate by the name of Charles Hackett said to have been generally well-liked by the miners in Ballarat, had accompanied Captain Thomas in the hopes of being able to read the riot act to the rebels; however, he had no time before the commencement of hostilities.

After the rebel garrison had already begun to flee and all hope was lost a number of them gamely joined in the final melee bearing their trademark colt revolvers.

The Commission of Inquiry would later find that: The foot police appear, as a body, to have conducted themselves with creditable temper; but assuredly, on the part of the mounted division of that force there seems to have been a needless as well as ruthless sacrifice of human life, indiscriminate of innocent or guilty, and after all resistance had disappeared with the dispersed and fleeing rioters.

[114] Captain Thomas finally ordered the bugler to sound the retreat, with around 120 rebels, some wounded, being rounded up and marched back to the government camp two kilometres away as prisoners.

[citation needed] The Geelong Advertiser, 6 December 1854 edition, reported that: They all lay in a small space, with their faces upwards, looking like lead; several of them were still heaving, and at every rise of their breasts, the blood spouted out of their wounds, or just bubbled out and trickled away.

[120] The report of Captain John Thomas dated 14 December 1854 mentioned: "the fact of the Flag belonging to the Insurgents (which had been nailed to the flagstaff) being captured by Constable King of the Force".

[124] The morning after the battle, "the policeman who captured the flag exhibited it to the curious and allowed such as so desired to tear off small portions of its ragged end to preserve as souvenirs".

However, the diary of Charles Evans describes a funeral cortege for a woman who was mercilessly butchered by a mounted trooper while pleading for the life of her husband during the battle.

During the 1876 Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute Fine Arts Exhibition, Mrs Bath put a pike on display that was apparently used at the Eureka Stockade, which she claims to have found the morning after the battle.