chose not to mobilise the military. However in 1823, after an Aboriginal raiding group led by a man named 'Jingler' got hold of muskets and ammunition and successfully stalled British expansion, Lawson decided to order the formation of a patrol composed of armed settlers and four soldiers of the 40th Regiment. He also placed soldiers at the properties of the most regarded colonists. Lawson still took a conciliatory stance with the Aboriginal population and appears to have had good relations with at least one local clan. However, with the escalation of violence, the authorities decided in late 1823 to replace Lawson as Commandant of Bathurst with a veteran of the Peninsula War in Major James Morisset. In mid 1824, conflict with the Wiradjuri soared, around a hundred Aboriginal people including women and children had been murdered, while twenty-two whites had been killed. Lawson's properties in the region had been attacked, hundreds of his sheep destroyed and another four of his employees were dead. His son, William Lawson Jnr, admitted the situation had become a war and wished that the Wiradjuri could be exterminated. This war has become known as the Bathurst War. In July 1824, Lawson with 12 other major colonists around Bathurst signed a petition requesting a large military force to be sent out to subjugate the "natives". In August, Governor Thomas Brisbane obliged the settlers by announcing martial law in the Bathurst region and ordered Commandant Morisset to implement measures to control the situation. In September, Morisset organised a large military punitive expedition containing soldiers of the 40th Regiment and armed settlers, to sweep the area around Bathurst and Mudgee. Lawson provided the horses for the group and commanded one of the four divisions within the expedition. Officially there was no death toll recorded from this military campaign, but witness reports from the time and oral evidence indicate that multiple massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out. The Bathurst War ended later in 1824 with martial law being revoked and Wiradjuri leader Windradyne suing for peace. Member of the elite squattocracy After the Bathurst War, Lawson retired from the British Army and became focused on acquiring land. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s he obtained further large parcels of land especially along the Coolaburragundy River and at Kurrajong. By the 1840s, he had become one of the largest landholders in the colony, a powerful squatter with 150,000 acres, 84,000