Peterloo massacre

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Peterloo massacre (1819). An unhappy example of military aid to the civil power, the Peterloo massacre was so called in ironic reference to Waterloo. On 16 August 1819 a large crowd gathered at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, to listen to an address by Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt, the radical agitator. The local magistrates had decided to arrest Hunt and other leaders, who were prepared to be detained peaceably.

Col Guy L'Estrange commanded a force of some infantry, two guns, six troops of the 15th Hussars, and six of Cheshire yeomanry. The magistrates retained a troop of Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, and while L'Estrange deployed his own troops with discretion, the yeomanry, their horses not used to working together, pushed on towards the speakers' platform. Cheers and jeers frightened horses and excited men, and after the arrests were made there was a shout of ‘Have at the flags’ which encouraged some yeomen to slash at the crowd while trying to ride down its banners.

The magistrates ordered L'Estrange to disperse the meeting and rescue the yeomanry, and the 15th Hussars charged. Although troopers tried to use the flat of their swords, there were inevitably casualties as horses crashed into the crowd. There were widely conflicting versions of events, whose enduring significance still divides historians. Perhaps a dozen people were killed, and many more injured. The poor training of the yeomen and horses was partly responsible for the affair, and the fact that many of the yeomen were well-to-do tradesmen with an animus against the reformers did not help.

Bibliography

• Read, Donald, Peterloo: The ‘Massacre’ and its Background (London, 1958).
• Walmsley, Robert, Peterloo: The Case Reopened (London, 1969)

— Richard Holmes