A Radical History Of Britain by Edward Vallance

Author:Edward Vallance [Vallance, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405527774
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

With the speakers off the platform, the yeomanry went on the rampage, kicking up a cloud of dust that obscured the goings-on from the eyes of the magistrates peering down from 6 Mount Street. At 1.50 p.m., the Hussars, led by Colonel L’Estrange, were ordered to assist them, the chairman of the magistrates William Hulton telling him ‘[the protesters] are attacking the Yeomanry. Disperse them.’ (Some witnesses had seen stones and sticks being hurled at the yeomanry, but only after they had charged the crowd with swords drawn.) L’Estrange obeyed, forming his men into a line across the eastern end of the field, who then charged the crowd. They were joined by the Cheshire Yeomanry, attacking from the south. The fleeing crowd, trapped between these advancing troops, found their escape through Peter Street blocked by the 88th Infantry’s bayonets. Meanwhile, the yeomanry were warming to their task, hurling insults between blows: ‘Damn you, I’ll reform you’ – ‘I’ll let you know I’m a soldier today’ – ‘Spare your lives? Damn your bloody lives.’ The worst carnage occurred by the Friends’ meeting house as the demonstrators were hemmed in by the infantry and pursued by the Hussars. ‘The people came in great crowds past my door, and a parcel of them beat down the fence,’ a woman living near by reported.

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