between two and three acres The military force was disposed as follows. Two squadrons of the 15th hussars, having been marched into town about ten o'clock, were dismounted in a wide street to the north of St. Peter's Field, and at the distance of nearly a quarter of a mile from it; the Cheshire Yeomanry were formed on their left in the same street; of the remaining troops of the hussars, one was attached to the artillery, which took up a position between the cavalry barracks and the town, and the other remained in charge of the barracks. The Manchester Yeomanry were stationed in a street to the east of the field. The infantry were kept in readiness but were not called upon to act till after the meeting had been dispersed. The whole work, as will presently appear, was done by the forty Manchester Yeomanry, and the two squadrons-four troops, or three hundred and twenty men-of the 15th hussars.

The band which accompanied Hunt and his party on their approach played the national airs of Rule Britannia and God save the King, during which, it is said, the people generally, or many of them at least, held their hats off. No time was then lost in proceeding to the business of the day. As soon as Hunt and his friends had mounted the hustings, the music ceased, upon which it was formally proposed that Mr. Hunt should take the chair; the motion, being seconded, was carried by acclamation, and the orator, advancing to the front of the stage, took off his white hat, and addressed the now silent and listening multitude. He had only, however, uttered a few sentences when a confused murmur and pressure, beginning at one verge of the field, and rapidly rolling onwards, brought him to a pause. The soldiers were upon the people.

The account given by Mr. Hulton, the chairman of the bench of magistrates, when he was afterwards examined on the trial at York, was that, when after the meeting had assembled, the warrant for the apprehension of the reform leaders was given to Nadin, the chief-constable, that person declared that he could not execute it without military aid; upon which two letters were despatched, one to the commander of the Manchester Yeomanry, the other to Colonel L'Estrange, requiring them to come to the house

6

where the magistrates were. The yeomanry, being nearest at hand, made their appearance first. They came from Mosley Street. These must have been the troops that were seen by Bamford as he was retiring from the ground with a friend to get some refreshment. I stood on tiptoe,' he says, ' and looked to the direction whence the noise proceeded, and saw a party of cavalry in blue and white uniform come trotting sword in hand round the corner of a garden-wall, and to the front of a row of new houses, where they reined up in a line.' This was in front of the house where the magistrates were. Mr. Hulton says that the troop came up at a quick pace, and that, the moment they appeared, the crowd set up a tremendous shout. The shout, as Bamford understood it, was one of good-will. It appears that, when Hunt first saw the confusion, he exclaimed that it was some trick, meaning, perhaps, an attempt to frighten the meeting, and called to the people to be firm, and to give three cheers, which was done. All parties agree that after the people had shouted, the yeomanry, who had now halted about three minutes, waved their swords and advanced. There are contradictory accounts of the pace at which they endeavoured to move forward; in point of fact, they appear to have penetrated the dense crowd not in a body at all, or in any kind of marching order, but singly and separately. Of course they were soon brought to a stand. This was the state in which things were when the two squadrons of hussars came up, having made their way round by the west side of the field. It was then,' says Sir W. Jolliffe, 'for the first time that I saw the Manchester troop of yeomanry; they were scattered singly, or in small groups, over the greater part of the field, literally hemmed up, and wedged into the mob, so that they were powerless either to make an impression or to escape: in fact, they were in the power of those whom they were designed to overawe; and it required only a glance to discover their helpless position, and the necessity of our being brought to their rescue.' Here, then, was the second device of the magistrates for the execution of the warrant utterly baffled; their first notion was to intrust it to Nadin, the constable, who told them that to execute it with the force at his

command was impossible; and now the troop of armed yeoman, which was next tried, and which had actually made the attempt, was stuck fast, and could neither advance nor retreat. Mr. Hulton's own account is that, at the moment when the hussars arrived, he conceived the Manchester yeomanry to be completely beaten. When Colonel L'Estrange, he says, asked him what he was to do, he exclaimed: Good God, sir, do you not see how they are attacking the yeomanry? Disperse the crowd.' On this the word 'Forward was instantly given, the trumpet sounded, and the cavalry dashed among the multitude. Their charge swept everything before it. People, yeomen, and constables,' says Sir W. Jolliffe, 'in their confused attempts to escape, ran one over the other; so that, by the time we had arrived at the end of the field, the fugitives were literally piled up to a considerable elevation above the level of the ground.' As soon as he had given his orders to Colonel L'Estrange, Mr. Hulton tells us he left the window, because he would rather not see any advance of the military.' The hussars generally, Sir W. Jolliffe states, drove the people forward with the flats of their swords; 'but sometimes,' he adds, as is almost inevitably the case when men are placed in such situations, the edge was used, both by the hussars, and, as I have heard, by the yeomen also; but of this latter fact, however, I was not cognizant; and, believing though I do that nine out of ten of the sabre wounds were caused by the hussars, I must still consider that it redounds highly to the humane forbearance of the men of the 15th, that more wounds were not received, when the vast numbers are taken into consideration with whom they were brought into hostile collision.' There can be no doubt, however, as he observes, that the far greater amount of injuries arose from the pressure of the routed multitude.' The scene during the few minutes that it took to effect the dispersion must have been terrific in the extreme. Bamford, who does not distinguish between the advance of the yeomanry and that of the hussars, and whose situation did not allow him to do so, has described it with perhaps a little rhetorical licence in some particulars, but with probably little exaggeration of the general effect. Stand fast,' he called out to those

around him, when he saw the troops darting forward; 'they are riding upon us; stand fast.' 'And there was a general cry,' he says, 'in our quarter, of "Stand fast." The cavalry were in confusion: they evidently could not, with all the weight of man and horse, penetrate that compact mass of human beings; and their sabres were plied to hew a way through naked held-up hands and defenceless heads; and then chopped limbs and wound-gaping skulls were seen; and groans and cries were mingled with the din of that horrid confusion. "Ah! ah!" "For shame! for shame!" was shouted. Then "Break! break! They are killing them in front, and they cannot get away!" and there was a general cry of "Break! break!" For a moment the crowd held back as in a pause; then was a rush, heavy and resistless as a headlong sea, and a sound like low thunder, with screams, prayers, and imprecations from the crowd, moiled and sabre-doomed, who could not escape. In ten minutes from the commencement of the havoc, the field was an open and almost deserted space. The sun looked down through a sultry and motionless air. . . . The hustings remained, with a few broken and hewed flag staves erect, and a torn and gashed banner or two dropping; whilst over the whole field were strewed caps, bonnets, hats, shawls, and shoes, and other parts of male and female dress, trampled, torn, and bloody.. Several mounds of human beings still remained where they had fallen, crushed down and smothered. Some of these still groaning, others with staring eyes, were gasping for breath; and others would never breathe more. All was silent, save those low sounds, and the occasional snorting and pawing of steeds. Persons might sometimes be noticed peeping from attics and over the tall ridgings of houses, but they quickly withdrew, as if fearful of being observed, or unable to sustain the full gaze of a scene so hideous and abhorrent.' About thirty wounded persons were carried to the infirmary in the course of that afternoon and the following day; and about forty more were able to come themselves to have slighter injuries looked at and dressed. There were, no doubt, some cases besides that were not heard of. The greater number of the injuries were contusions or fractures; the cases of sabre wounds do not

appear to have been more than twenty or thirty. Three or four persons were wounded on the evening of the fatal day by the fire of one of the regiments of foot, which was ordered to clear the streets where the people had reassembled in great numbers and their conduct had begun to be threatening. Altogether the number of lives lost appears to have been five or six, including one of the special constables, ridden over by the hussars, and one of the Manchester yeomen, struck off his horse by a brickbat, and who had his skull fractured either by the blow or the fall.

Hunt and some eight or ten of his friends were seized by the first of the military who came up to the hustings; and, being brought up before the magistrates on the Friday following, were then remanded on a charge of high treason. On that day week, however, by which time Bamford and one or two others who had made their escape on the day of the meeting had been apprehended, having been brought up again, they were informed that government had for the present abandoned that charge, and that they would be only detained till they should find bail, to be tried for the misdemeanour of having conspired to alter the law by force and threats.

CHAPTER XVII.

Conduct of the Manchester Magistrates-Conduct of the GovernmentGeneral Excitement-Session of Parliament-Death of George III.

THE Manchester Massacre, as it came very generally to be designated, was at once felt on all hands to have made an epoch in the history of the contest with Radicalism. A new scene of that drama had commenced. Other feelings were called up, and a change was to come over the course of action, on both sides. The Manchester magistrates themselves were probably as much astonished as anybody at what they had done. Many other Radical meetings had been held in all parts of the country, but nothing had

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