Such too were the bands which, with banners and music, fell in with them on their route, and together parted the dense multitude as a wedge, on their way to the decorated platform. Thence Samuel Bamford observed that other leaders had been less temperate. There were to be seen black banners and placards inscribed with seditious mottoes and emblems: caps of liberty, skull and crossbones, “Bread or Blood,” “Liberty or Death,” “Equal Representation or Death;” this last with an obverse of clasped hands and heart, and the one word “Love,” but all of the same funereal black and white.
But ere he could well note or deplore this, the scattered bands struck up “God save the King,” and “Rule, Britannia,” deafening shouts rent the air, and Henry Hunt, drawn in an open barouche by white horses, made his way slowly to the hustings amidst the enthusiastic cheering of the multitude. A Mrs. Fildes, arrayed in white, with a cap of liberty on her head, and a red cap borne on a pole before her, sat on the box-seat. It is said she had been hoisted there from the crowd. Be this as it may, she paid dearly for her temerity before the day was out.
Barely had Henry Hunt ascended the platform, taken off his white hat, and begun to address his attentive auditory, when there was a startling cry, “The soldiers are upon us!” and the 15th Hussars, galloping round a corner, came with their spare jackets flying loose, their sabres drawn, and threw themselves men and horse, upon the closely-packed mass, without a note of warning. All had been preconcerted, pre-arranged.
From the early morning, magistrates had been sitting in conclave at the “Star Inn,” and there Hugh Birley, a cotton-spinner, was said to have regaled too freely the officers and men of his yeomanry corps, so soon to be let loose on the “swinish multitude,” as they called them.
A cordon of military and yeomanry had been drawn round St. Peter’s Field, like a horde of wolves round a flock of sheep. The boroughreeve and other magistrates issued their orders from a house at the corner of Mount Street, which overlooked the scene; and thence (not from a central position, where he could be properly seen and heard) a clerical magistrate read the Riot Act from a window in an inaudible voice.
Then Nadin, the cowardly bully, having a warrant to apprehend the ringleaders—although he had a line of constables thence to the hustings,—declared he dared not serve it without the support of the military.
His plea was heard; and thus through the blindness, the incapacity, the cowardice, or the self-importance of this one man, soldiery hardened in the battle-field, yeomanry fired with drink, were let loose like barbarians on a closely-wedged mass of unarmed people, and one of the most atrocious massacres in history was the result.
Amid the shouts and shrieks of men and women, cries of “Shame! shame!” “Break! break!” “They are killing them in front!” “Break! break!” hussars, infantry, yeomanry rushed on the defenceless people. They were sabred, stabbed, shot, pressed down, trampled down by horse and infantry; and in less than ten minutes, the actual field was cleared of all but mounds of dead and dying, severed limbs, torn garments, pools of blood, pawing steeds and panting heroes(?). Men and maidens, mothers and babes, had been butchered by their own countrymen for no crime.
Hunt had been taken, Bamford had escaped—to be arrested afterwards—and Mrs. Fildes, hanging suspended by a nail in the platform which had caught her white dress, was slashed across her exposed body by one of the brave cavalry.
But the butchery and the panic had spread from the deserted Aceldama over the whole town; and the roar of cannon began to add its thunder to the terrors of the day. As the first shrieking fugitives rushed for their lives down Mosley Street, with the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry in swift pursuit, Mrs. Ashton, for the first time alarmed for the safety of Augusta, hurried through the warehouse in search of Mr. Ashton, who was nowhere to be found. On the stairs she met Jabez in a state of equal excitement.