<P> Some have questioned whether this sole contemporaneous report of the otherwise unaccounted for Union Jack being present is accurate . In defence of this alternative scenario it has been stressed that the investigating journalist may have had available eyewitness reports of the two flags having been seized, and that it was possibly an 11th hour response to the divided loyalties among the heterogeneous rebel force which was in the process of melting away (at one stage 1,500 of 17,280 men in Ballarat were present, with only 150 taking part in the battle), with Lalor's choice of password for the night of 2 December--"Vinegar Hill"--causing support for the rebellion to fall away among those who were otherwise disposed to resist the military, as word spread that the question of Irish home rule had become involved . </P> <P> Gregory Black, military historian and author of Eureka Stockade: A Ferocious and Bloody Battle, concedes two flags may have been flown on the day of the battle, as the miners were claiming to be defending their British rights, with a further article in The Argus on 9 December 1854, reporting that Constable Hugh King had found a Union Jack like flag being carried by a prisoner; and, according to The Eureka Encyclopedia, Sergeant John McNeil at the time shredded a flag at the Spencer Street Barracks in Melbourne, which was said to be the Eureka flag, but which may well have been a Union Jack . </P> <P> It is certain that Irish - born people were strongly represented at the Eureka Stockade . Eureka historians have discovered that as well as comprising most of the miners inside the stockade at the finish, the area where the defensive position was established was overwhelmingly populated by the Irish to begin with . Professor Geoffrey Blainey has advanced the view, that the white cross behind the stars on the Eureka flag "really (is) an Irish cross rather than being (a) configuration of the Southern Cross". </P> <P> During 2 December, the peak rebel force trained in and around the stockade . A further two hundred Americans, the Independent Californian Rangers, under the leadership of James McGill, arrived about 4pm . The Americans were armed with revolvers and Mexican knives and possessed horses . In a fateful decision, McGill decided to take most of the Californian Rangers away from the stockade to intercept rumoured British reinforcements coming from Melbourne . Rede's spies observed these actions . That night many of the miners went back to their own tents after the traditional Saturday night carousing, with the assumption that the Queen's military forces would not be sent to attack on the Sabbath (Sunday). A small contingent of miners remained at the stockade overnight, which the spies reported to Rede . </P>

What were the events before during and after the eureka stockade