Memorial plaque in All Saints' church, Leek Wootton, to Capt. Henry Christopher Wise of H.M.40th 2nd Somerset Regiment who died of wounds received during the Eureka Rebellion, Ballarat, 1854.
The plaque reads:
Sacred
to the memory
of
HENRY CHRISTOPHER WISE Esq.
Captain in
H.M.40th 2nd Somerset Regiment,
eldest son of
HENRY CHRISTOPHER & HARRIETT WISE,
of Woodcote,
who died on the 21st December 1854,
aged 25,
at Ballarat, Victoria, South Australia,
of wounds received
on the 3rd of the same month,
while gallantly leading his company
to the assault of the
rebel stockade at Eureka, Ballarat.
This tablet is erected by the
officers of the 40th regiment.His name also appears on the memorial to those who died as a result of the Eureka Stockade, located in the Eureka Memorial Park Association.
"Henry Christopher Wise was the eldest son of Henry Christopher and Henrietta Wise of Woodcote, England.
Goldfields Involvement, 1854 -
Captain Henry Wise was with the 40th Regiment that came up from Geelong. "On 27 November in Melbourne two officers and 50 men of the 40th Regiment proceeded by the one o'clock steamer to Geelong, to reinforce the detachment there to 100. Their orders were to proceed to Ballarat at once." They marched through the diggings with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed. This was a full show of force by the military. "They were hooted by the populace, and stones were thrown at them.....Soon after Lieut Gardyne with the mounted troops from Melbourne and Gisborne reached the Camp, and met with the same reception....Lieut Hall, with the mounted men from Castlemaine, and the police from Sawpit Gully arrived without molestation, having come by Creswick's Creek."
Henry Christopher Wise, Captain of the 40th Regiment, and only 26 years of age, died eighteen days the Eureka Stockade battle and is interred at the Ballaarat Old Cemetery. In eyewitness accounts he is portrayed as gallantly leading his command in the attack on the Stockade and being shot in the leg. He continued his assault and was then fatally wounded. Colonel Edward Macarthur, Deputy Adjutant General, issued a General Order on 22 December 1854 - "The Major General has deep regret in announcing to the Troops within the Australian Command, the Death, at Ballaarat Camp, yesterday morning, the 21st Instant, of Captain Henry Christopher Wise of the 40th Regiment. He died from the effect of Wounds received on the 3rd Instant, while bravely leading his Company, in storming the "Eureka" Stockade, which a numerous band of Foreign Anarchists and Armed Ruffians had converted into a stronghold. His name will long be held in Honour by the Troops, whose good fortune it was to bear testimony to his gallantry; and Sir Robert Nickle has heartfelt satisfaction, in recording in General Orders, the Name of an Officer, who has thus worthily distinguished himself. His Remains are to be buried with the Honours due to his rank in the Graveyard at Ballaarat Gold Fields, beside those of the three other meritorious Soldiers which lie there interred." There is a general order no. 169 re the death at the battle of Eureka Stockade of Captain Henry Christopher Wise in the holdings of the Public Record Office Victoria."
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"The Eureka Rebellion was a rebellion in 1854, instigated by gold miners in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, who revolted against the colonial authority of the United Kingdom. It culminated in the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, which was fought between miners and the colonial forces of Australia on 3 December 1854 at Eureka Lead and named for the stockade structure built by miners during the conflict. The rebellion resulted in the deaths of at least 27 people, the majority of whom were rebels.
The rebellion was the culmination of a period 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, the police and military. The local rebellion grew from a Ballarat Reform League movement and culminated in the erection by the rebels of a crude battlement and a swift and deadly siege by 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 the Electoral Act 1856, which mandated suffrage for male colonists in the lower house in the Victorian parliament. This is considered the second instituted act of political democracy in Australia. Female colonists of South Australia were awarded suffrage 5 years later on condition of owning property, much in the way men did not have full suffrage in the absence of property ownership. As such, the Eureka Rebellion is controversially identified with the birth of democracy in Australia and interpreted by some as a political revolt.
By the beginning of December, the police contingent at Ballarat had been joined and surpassed in number by soldiers from British Army garrisons in Victoria, including detachments from the 12th (East Suffolk) Regiment of Foot and 40th (2nd Somersetshire) Regiment of Foot.
At 3 am on Sunday, 3 December, a party of 276 soldiers and police, under the command of Captain John W. Thomas approached the Eureka Stockade and a battle ensued.
There is no agreement as to which side fired first, but the battle was fierce, brief, and terribly one-sided. The ramshackle army of miners was hopelessly outclassed by a military regiment and was routed in about 10 minutes. 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.
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." Early in the battle "Captain" Henry Ross was shot dead.
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. Three months after the Eureka Stockade, Peter Lalor wrote: "As the inhuman brutalities practised by the troops are so well known, it is unnecessary for me to repeat them. There were 34 digger casualties of which 22 died. The unusual proportion of the killed to the wounded, is owing to the butchery of the military and troopers after the surrender."
During the battle, trooper John King the police constable, took down the Eureka flag. By 8 am, 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. Pasley's valuable assistance was acknowledged in despatches printed and laid before the Victorian Legislative Council.
One hundred and fourteen diggers, some wounded, were marched off to the Government camp about two kilometres away, where they were kept in an overcrowded lock-up, before being moved to a more spacious barn on Monday morning.
The materials used to build the stockade were rapidly removed to be used for the mines, and the entire area around the site was so extensively worked that the original landscape became unrecognisable, so identifying the exact location of the stockade is now virtually impossible.
A diggers' memorial was erected in the Ballarat Cemetery on 22 March 1856 near marked graves. Sculpted in stone from the Barrabool Hills by James Leggatt in Geelong it features a pillar bearing the names of the deceased miners and bearing the inscription "Sacred to the memory of those who fell on the memorable 3rd of December, 1854, in resisting the unconstitutional proceedings of the Victorian Government."
A soldiers' memorial was erected many years later in 1876 and is an obelisk constructed of limestone sourced from Waurn Ponds with the words "Victoria" and "Duty" carved in its north and south faces respectively. In 1879 a cast iron fence was added to the memorials and graves."
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"RELIC OF EUREKA. - CAPTAIN WISE'S SWORD. BALLARAT Thursday - Mr. H. Barnett, of Ballarat East, has presented to the Fine Art Gallery, the sword said to have been carried by Captain Wise, who led the military forces in the attack on the Eureka Stockade on the morning of Sunday, December 3, 1854, and who was fatally wounded during the progress of hostilities. It is stated that a digger saw the sword fall from Captain Wise's hand when he was wounded. This man secured the weapon and hid it. The sword was found by John Bentley, a digger, who died recently at Ballarat North. Before his death Bentley presented the sword on to Mr. Barnett, who has now passed it on to the trustees of the Art Gallery, where it will display alongside the tattered flag said to have been hoisted over the stockade by the diggers on the memorable occasion of the riots."
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