What happened to McGill's
men left in the stockade?
Unfortunately, the Brigade members in the stockade, led by a bloke called Ferguson, appear to have received a message at around 1am that there was a weapons cache hidden in the town. Who it came to, or who instructed Ferguson is unclear. If the story about McGill being in charge of the stockade at this time is true, this could have been his last instruction before deserting his post. Was he perhaps trying to reduce the forces in the stockade for some reason, or perhaps even trying to save his last men in the stockade? If the latter, it didn't work.
Anyway, Ferguson reckoned he and his men headed off to find the cache. They presumably left some others on sentry duty, although perhaps Ferguson's men were the missing sentries said to have been out in the field, but who were absent from their positions when the British marched by. Now, this might seem as though they were finding their own excuse to bugger off. But, Ferguson later wrote, after several hours fruitless searching, they decided to head back to the stockade, arriving just before the attackers.
Unfortunately, although they took part in the battle, it's reported the revolver shooters got in the way of long gun shooters behind them, principally because they weren't placed appropriately to make the most of their very short range weapons. Is it stretching things too far to wonder if this was purposeful, to minimise soldier deaths? Probably, especially as despite being able to think of a range of reasons why this might have been so, we can see none that are in any way convincing, although, of course that doesn't mean there isn't one. But we do wonder at the apparent fact these 20 or 30 "experienced" fighters with six shot revolvers, that's 120 to 180 shots per volley, don't appear to have caused the soldiers any problems at all.
Mind you, during world war two, the US army historian, S. L. A. Marshall, carried out extensive research on whether or not soldiers actually shot at the enemy. Interestingly, he found that even in experienced units of their largely "civilian" army 75% of soldiers either don't fire their guns or shoot in the air, even when under threat of imminent death. This research enabled the US to change its training, which today includes computer games, to increase the proportion of troops who shoot at the enemy. By the time of the Vietnam war, the ratio was around 90%, and is higher again now.
Whether these figures would apply to the US Eureka rebels, many of whom were combat veterans, is unknown, especially as many veterans and historians question Marshall's research and his interpretation of his results, to the extent of claiming that his work is substantially fake. This is, of course, not the time or place for this argument, but we toss it in as a possible reason for the low rate of success of the American fire.
We should mention here that various sources mention various Americans in the stockade during the battle. One source puts the number at twenty, and says they were McGill's men, another that it was thirty. As there were other American brigades besides McGill's, particularly the First (Californian) Rifles Brigade (this group appears to have had a couple of names, but they range around this one), captained by a bloke called Nelson, or Nealson (we don't know his given name), it's quite possible others were from other brigades.
Many of the First (Californian) Rifles are said to have been militarily experienced, principally in the Mexican-American (or Mexican-Texan) Wars. They were, presumably, at least mostly armed with rifles. These men are said to have been the best of the formations at Eureka, but having written that they, like so many others, seem to have mostly absented themselves on Saturday night.
We note that Carboni said that an unnamed American performed extremely well as a leader-on-the-spot among the riflemen. But as Carboni, according to some, mainly Vern, went to hide in a chimney pretty much at the start of the battle, the accuracy of his description of the battle is a little unclear. However, we'll come to the only funny scene during the battle, as far as can see, which indicates Carboni was both a participant in the battle, and not a coward.
Anyway, Ferguson reckoned he and his men headed off to find the cache. They presumably left some others on sentry duty, although perhaps Ferguson's men were the missing sentries said to have been out in the field, but who were absent from their positions when the British marched by. Now, this might seem as though they were finding their own excuse to bugger off. But, Ferguson later wrote, after several hours fruitless searching, they decided to head back to the stockade, arriving just before the attackers.
Unfortunately, although they took part in the battle, it's reported the revolver shooters got in the way of long gun shooters behind them, principally because they weren't placed appropriately to make the most of their very short range weapons. Is it stretching things too far to wonder if this was purposeful, to minimise soldier deaths? Probably, especially as despite being able to think of a range of reasons why this might have been so, we can see none that are in any way convincing, although, of course that doesn't mean there isn't one. But we do wonder at the apparent fact these 20 or 30 "experienced" fighters with six shot revolvers, that's 120 to 180 shots per volley, don't appear to have caused the soldiers any problems at all.
Mind you, during world war two, the US army historian, S. L. A. Marshall, carried out extensive research on whether or not soldiers actually shot at the enemy. Interestingly, he found that even in experienced units of their largely "civilian" army 75% of soldiers either don't fire their guns or shoot in the air, even when under threat of imminent death. This research enabled the US to change its training, which today includes computer games, to increase the proportion of troops who shoot at the enemy. By the time of the Vietnam war, the ratio was around 90%, and is higher again now.
Whether these figures would apply to the US Eureka rebels, many of whom were combat veterans, is unknown, especially as many veterans and historians question Marshall's research and his interpretation of his results, to the extent of claiming that his work is substantially fake. This is, of course, not the time or place for this argument, but we toss it in as a possible reason for the low rate of success of the American fire.
We should mention here that various sources mention various Americans in the stockade during the battle. One source puts the number at twenty, and says they were McGill's men, another that it was thirty. As there were other American brigades besides McGill's, particularly the First (Californian) Rifles Brigade (this group appears to have had a couple of names, but they range around this one), captained by a bloke called Nelson, or Nealson (we don't know his given name), it's quite possible others were from other brigades.
Many of the First (Californian) Rifles are said to have been militarily experienced, principally in the Mexican-American (or Mexican-Texan) Wars. They were, presumably, at least mostly armed with rifles. These men are said to have been the best of the formations at Eureka, but having written that they, like so many others, seem to have mostly absented themselves on Saturday night.
We note that Carboni said that an unnamed American performed extremely well as a leader-on-the-spot among the riflemen. But as Carboni, according to some, mainly Vern, went to hide in a chimney pretty much at the start of the battle, the accuracy of his description of the battle is a little unclear. However, we'll come to the only funny scene during the battle, as far as can see, which indicates Carboni was both a participant in the battle, and not a coward.