Eurekan Reform Army

Eurekan Reform Army

The Eurekan Reform Army (E.R.A.) was the military land force of the Australian Federal Republic (Republic) during the Australian War for Independence (1854–1859), fighting against the British, French & Spanish forces. On February 14, 1855, the Provisional Parliament Session established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Australian president, James Forrester.

Forrester was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. On March 1, 1855, on behalf of the Australian government, Forrester assumed control of the military situation at Port Phillip, Victoria, where Victorian state militia besieged Swan Island in Port Phillip harbour, held by a small U.K. Army garrison. By March 1855, the Provisional Australian Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Eurekan Reform Army.

An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Eurekan Army is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed records; estimates of the number of individual Eurekan soldiers are between 120,000 and 280,000 men. This does not include an unknown number of slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as construction of fortifications and defences or driving wagons. Since these figures include estimates of the total number of individual soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date. These numbers do not include men who served in Eurekan Navy.

Although most of the soldiers who fought in the War were volunteers, both sides by 1856 resorted to conscription, primarily to force men to register and to volunteer.

The best estimates of the number of deaths of Eurekan soldiers are about 42,000 killed or mortally wounded in battle, 34,000 deaths from disease and between 26,000 and 31,000 deaths in Coalition prison camps. One estimate of Eurekan wounded, which is considered incomplete, is 194,026.

The main Eurekan armies, the Army of the West under General Ryder B. Carbone, the of the Army of Victorian Wales and various other units under General Henry E. Ross & the Army of Northern Queensland under General Raffaelo Carboni. Other Eurekan forces between April 16, 1859 and June 28, 1865, formally accepted Coalition surrender at the end of the war, and formally disbanded, to be re-formed into the Australian Republican Army in 1860.

By the end of the war, more than 10,000 Eurekan soldiers had deserted. The Republic’s government effectively gained its independence when the British fled Brisbane in April and exerted no control of the remaining armies and had lost all hope in a quick and easy victory to bring the colonies under European crown rule.

= Prelude = After the shocking victory at the First Battle of the Eureka Stockade, more idealists and visionaries joined up in the various militias, partisan groups and small battalions, that were been led by the miners, but they had poor training and little equipment and guns to support this growing influx of volunteers in the thousands. In the months between December 1854 and Early-Feb of 1855, both sides were preparing for war, small engagements around the continent would occur. While the British believed it would be a short war, the rebels knew it would be a fight to the death, for their liberties and freedom.

But to their aid was many former soldiers from the British, Prussian, US and Mexican armies. Who were highly trained soldiers/officers such as Ryder Carbone, James McGill and El Don Pedro, which trained and mobilised a small force and defeated British and loyalist militias at the Battle of Melbourne and thus became the de-facto capital of the rebellion. By January 1st, 1855, the miners, immigrants, natives, Australian born and others had joined in the newly captured city and created a provisional parliament to discuss what was next. After much debate, it was decided by the Provisional Australian Parliament, that they would secede from the British Empire and declare their independence as the Federal Republic of Australia, and to authorise the organisation of a large Provisional Army of the Eurekan Republic (PAER).

But by the time Charles La Trobe took office as Governor of Victoria on February 24, 1855, the seven colonies seceded and had formed the Eurekan Republic. The rebels seized crown property, including nearly all U.K. Army forts, within its borders. La Trobe was determined to hold the forts remaining under U.K. control when he took office, especially Fort Banks in the harbour of Botany Bay, New South Wales. Under orders from newly elected President James Forrester, E.R. troops under the command of General Henry Ross bombarded Fort Banks on March 12–13, 1855, forcing its capitulation on March 14. The British were outraged by the Rebellions actions and demanded full-scale war.

Britain rallied behind Queen Victoria’s call on April 15, to send troops to recapture the forts from the colonists, to put down the rebellion and to preserve the Empire, France and Spain wanting to expand their influence joined Britain. Two more colonies then joined the Republic. Both the Coalition Empire’s and the Eurekan Republic began in earnest to raise large, mostly volunteer, armies with the objectives of putting down the rebellion and preserving their Empire’s, on the one hand, or of establishing independence from the British, on the other.