The Governor moved his headquarters from the market-place to the Parliament buildings, and issued his orders from there. Colonel MacNab, in recompense for his withdrawal, was given command of the main body.
The force, drawn up “in order of battle” on the street and esplanade by the Archdeacon’s house, only numbered some eleven hundred men, and those whom they were about to attack were considerably less. But the interests at stake, the results involved, their historical significance, remove from the affair that ludicrous view attached to it by unthinking persons as a kind of mimic battle, in keeping with “the mimic king,” the Governor, and “the mimic Privy Council,” the Executive.
About eleven o’clock, his Excellency, surrounded by his staff, galloped up, and was received with three hearty British cheers. Immovable in his saddle, he looked with pride, not unmixed with relief, at the picture before him, wondering why, now they were so well got together, they did not proceed, when an officer galloped up and said it was the wish of the militia that the Governor himself should give the word of command. He did so, and in the bright summer-like sunshine, not a cloud in the blue sky above them, the two bands playing, arms and accoutrements flashing unpleasant signals to those awaiting them on Gallows Hills, people in windows and on housetops cheering them and waving small flags and those not in sympathy remaining discreetly silent, they went off at his bidding.
“This,” says Colonel FitzGibbon, “was the only command he (Sir Francis) gave till the action was over.”
By now the name rebel was almost as odious as some others, very high in dignity, had recently been. There is not a doubt that much of the cheering came from that ignorance of the point at issue which made Solicitor-General Blake in after years say, “I confess I have no sympathy with the would-be loyalty ... which, while it at all times affects peculiar zeal for the prerogative of the Crown, is ever ready to sacrifice the liberty of the subject. That is not British loyalty. It is the spurious loyalty which at all periods of the world’s history has lashed humanity into rebellion.”
The curious, and those who were anxious to see the result of the fight as the turning point to decide which side of their coat of two colours should be displayed, followed, like the tail of a comet, the vanishing point of splendour. One militia colonel came prepared to contribute two fat oxen to the rebel cause; they made equally good beef for the loyalists. Another colonel presented the patriots with a sword, pistol and ammunition--a much worse kind of soldier than the man who wears a uniform and will not fight. There were the actively loyal, the actively rebellious, and the connecting link of such as were passively either or both.