The Project Gutenberg eBook of Battles of the nineteenth century vols 1 to 7
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Title: Battles of the nineteenth century vols 1 to 7
Author: Archibald Forbes
Arthur Griffith
G. A. Henty
Release date: January 13, 2026 [eBook #77688]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Cassell & Co Ltd, 1901
Credits: Brian Coe, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY VOLS 1 TO 7 ***
[Illustration: “The Duke gives the magic word, ‘The Whole
Line Will Advance’” (_p._ 70).]
BATTLES
OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
DESCRIBED BY
ARCHIBALD FORBES, G. A. HENTY,
MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS,
_And other Well-known Writers_
VOL. I.
SPECIAL EDITION
_WITH COLOURED PLATES AND NUMEROUS OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. By Major Arthur Griffiths 1
SAARBRÜCK: THE BAPTISM OF FIRE. AUG. 2, 1870. By
Archibald Forbes 22
THE STORMING OF THE TAKU FORTS. JUNE 25, 1859–AUG. 21, 1860.
BY A. Hilliard Atteridge 27
PALERMO: THE COMING OF GARIBALDI. MAY-JUNE, 1860. By
Stoddard Dewey 35
THE RED MAN’S LAST VICTORY: THE FIGHT OF THE LITTLE BIG
HORN. JUNE 10–27, 1876. By Angus Evan Abbott 43
WATERLOO. JUNE 18, 1815. By D. H. Parry 51
KÖNIGGRÄTZ (OR SADOWA). JULY 3, 1866. By Charles Lowe 74
AYACUCHO. DEC. 9, 1824. By W. B. Robertson 85
THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN. JULY 21, 1861. By Angus
Evan Abbott 92
THE JULY BATTLES BEFORE PLEVNA. JULY 20–JULY 30, 1877.
By Archibald Forbes 101
THE SHANGANI PATROL. DEC. 3–4, 1893. By E. F. Knight 110
THE SIEGE AND STORMING OF DELHI. MAY-SEPT., 1857. By
Charles Lowe 120
GISLIKON. NOV. 23, 1847. By A. J. Butler 137
INSANDHLWANA. JAN. 22, 1879. By C. Stein 147
LISSA. JULY 20, 1866. By A. Hilliard Atteridge 156
MACMAHON AT MAGENTA. JUNE 4, 1859. By Stoddard Dewey 164
THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA. SEPT. 20, 1854. By Major Arthur
Griffiths 174
AUSTERLITZ. DEC. 2, 1805. By C. Stein 183
KASSASSIN AND TEL-EL-KEBIR. SEPT. 9 AND SEPT. 13, 1882.
By Charles Lowe 195
SHILOH. APRIL 6–7, 1862. By Angus Evan Abbott 205
AMOAFUL. JAN. 31, 1874. By G. A. Henty 215
THE REDOUBTS OF DÜPPEL. APRIL 18, 1864. By Charles Lowe 224
ROBERTS’ BATTLES ABOUT CABUL. SEPT.-DEC., 1879. By
Archibald Forbes 234
CUSTOZZA. JUNE 24, 1866. By A. Hilliard Atteridge 247
THE TAKING OF BADAJOZ. APRIL 6, 1812. By D. H. Parry 256
THE BLOCKADE OF CALLAO. NOV., 1820. By W. B. Robertson 267
THE TAKING OF THE GATE PAH. APRIL 27, 1864. By A. Hilliard
Atteridge 276
WARSAW. SEPT. 6–7, 1831. By A. S. Krausse 284
THE STORMING OF THE NILT FORTS. DEC., 1891. By E. F. Knight 290
ASPROMONTE. AUG. 29, 1862. By Charles Lowe 299
NAPOLEON’S MOSCOW CAMPAIGN. JUNE-DEC., 1812. By D. H. Parry 307
RORKE’S DRIFT. JAN. 22, 1879. By C. Stein 330
MARS-LA-TOUR (VIONVILLE OR REZONVILLE). AUG. 16, 1870.
By Charles Lowe 341
THE RETREAT OF CORUNNA. NOV., 1808–JAN., 1809. By D. H. Parry 354
NAVARINO. OCT. 20, 1827. By Herbert Russell 363
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Sir John Moore 3
“He fell furiously on his nearest enemies” 4
Marshal Ney 5
Marshal Soult 5
Sir Charles Napier 7
Lord Gough 8
Charge of cavalry through the breaches at Sobraon 9
Sir Colin Campbell 10
Sir James Outram 11
Sir Henry Havelock 11
“‘This gun belongs to my regiment--2nd Goorkha, Prince of
Wales’s!’” 12
The Maori War: Attack upon the Orakao Pah 13
Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards German Emperor) 15
Sir Garnet (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley 16
The “Black Watch” (42nd Royal Highlanders) at bay at Quatre
Bras 17
General Grant 19
“They came right in among our men” 20
Lord William Beresford and the Trooper 21
Plan of the Battle of Saarbrück 23
Saarbrück 24
Lulu’s Début 25
Plans of the Taku Forts operations 28
“‘What have you been doing, you rascals?’” 29
“Rogers got in, helped up by Lieutenant Lenon” 33
“The Picciotti picked off their men” 36
Palermo Harbour 37
“‘General, it smiles on you!’” 40
The coast of Palermo, looking towards Termini 41
The erection of the barricades 42
“Until one day a grizzly trapper peered out of the bushes” 44
“And the Sioux saw in amazement the long train of
white-topped waggons” 44
“The warriors danced the war-dance” 45
Plan of the Battle of Little Big Horn 46
“They plunged into the seething mass of painted and
befeathered red men” 49
The farm of Quatre Bras 52
Picton’s Division off to the front 53
The field of Waterloo on the morning of the battle 56
“A shout of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ rolled along the field” 57
Sir Thomas Picton 59
The farm of Hougoumont 60
“Some got as far as the loopholes and seized the bayonets” 61
Defence of La Haye Sainte by the German Legion 64
“A gallant artillery driver rushed his horses to the wall” 65
La Haye Sainte 68
The Union Brigade capturing the French guns at Waterloo 69
La Belle Alliance 72
Mont St. Jean 72
Marshal Blücher 73
“Major von Ungar came spurring in with a great piece of news” 76
Königgrätz 77
Plan of the Battle of Königgrätz 78
General Benedek 79
“The Prussians pushed battery after battery into action” 80
“Boldly the Prussians advanced upon this village and its wood” 81
Gravestones erected on the battle-field in memory of the
fallen 83
“The Crown Prince rode up and met his father” 84
Plan of the Battle of Ayacucho 86
“‘There lies my last horse!’” 88
“The routed Spaniards clambered up the rugged sides” 89
Lima 91
“They would not keep in rank, order as much as you pleased” 93
Plan of the Battle of Bull Run 94
General Sherman 96
“Time after time the attempt to scale the height was made” 97
General “Stonewall” Jackson 99
“The army of the North broke and fled, panic-stricken” 100
Plan of the second Battle of Plevna 102
Grand Duke Nicholas 103
“The General had risen and was standing against a tree” 104
“Then there followed a headlong rush” 105
“They gathered to the sound” 108
Environs of Plevna 109
Mr. Riley, Umjan, and Mr. Dawson 112
“They fought on grimly” 113
The Shangani Patrol: Plan 114
Zimbabwe temple and kraal 116
“He sold his life dearly” 117
Lobengula 118
“The cool-headed signaller died at his post” 121
Jumma Musjid, Delhi 124
“The officers then, having helped the women to follow,
carried them up the opposite side” 125
Major Tombs 127
“It was bayonet to bayonet” 128
Plan of Delhi and environments 129
The Palace, and the Chandnee Chouk, Delhi 132
“Our devoted men worked on with a will” 133
The Victoria Cross 136
At Bern 138
Lucerne and surrounding district 139
At Fribourg 140
“Major Scherrer seized the colours” 141
The neighbourhood of Gislikon 143
“Rust’s battery galloped through Honau” 145
Lake Zug 146
King Cetewayo 148
“The camp was a picturesque sight” 149
Vicinity of Insandhlwana: Plan 151
“They raised the ominous Zulu war shout, and dashed forward” 153
Lord Chelmsford 155
“From this point Tegethoff kept on the bridge” 157
Shores and ports of the Adriatic 158
The Battle of Lissa, 10 a.m. The fleets closing 159
Trieste Harbour 160
“The ram crushed in her iron side” 161
“General Lebœuf dashed up” 165
“On the track lay a body covered with a blue cloak” 168
“In their frenzy his Zouaves broke through the defences” 169
Plan of the Battle of Magenta 170
“He dictated the telegraphic despatch” 172
“The doctors began their all night’s work” 173
Prince Mentschikoff 175
The Heights of Alma 176
“Then young Anstruther raced forward” 177
Marshal St. Arnaud 178
Plan of the Battle of Alma 179
The Highlanders at Alma 180
“Turner himself hurried up two of his guns” 181
Lord Raglan 182
“The saying passed, ‘Our Emperor does not make use of
our arms in this war so much as of our legs’” 184
Napoleon Bonaparte 185
Marshal Prince Murat (afterwards King of Naples) 188
“Thousands of lights flared upwards” 189
Charge of the Chevalier Guards 192
Plan of the Battle of Austerlitz 193
The Sweet-Water Canal at Ismailia 196
“The Egyptian battalions had been trampled and sabred into
positive annihilation” 197
Plan of the Battles of Tel-el-Kebir and Kassassin 198
The Valley of the Saba Bier 200
“Carrying them with the bayonet” 201
Arabi Pasha 202
Arabi surrendering to General Drury Lowe 204
Shiloh battle-field 208
The march to Shiloh 209
Plan of the Battle of Shiloh 211
Shiloh battle-field: scene where General Johnston fell 212
“Up the bank they struggled and scrambled” 213
President Lincoln 214
Cape Coast Castle 216
“The Bonny men led the advance” 217
Map of Ashanti 219
“Each little rise was held obstinately by the enemy” 221
Coomassie 223
Field-Marshal von Wrangel 225
Map showing the position of Düppel 227
Prince Frederick Charles 228
The German soldiers making sentries out of clay 229
The Prussians attacking the Danish breastworks 232
Lieutenant Anker taken prisoner 233
The British Residency after the attack 236
“He held a durbar” 237
Cabul 240
“Colonel Cleland led his lancers” 241
Plan of Roberts’ battles about Cabul 242
North end of Sherpur entrenchments, Cabul 244
“The roar surged forward” 245
Sir Frederick Roberts in 1880 246
Sketch map of the war in Italy in 1866 248
Verona 249
Archduke Albert 252
The charge of the Austrian lancers 253
Plan of the Battle of Custozza 254
Badajoz 257
Map of Spain and Portugal to illustrate the Peninsular War 260
“The next, they were leaping, sliding, climbing” 261
Plan of Badajoz in 1812 264
“‘Will you drink, old boy?’” 265
Lord Cochrane 268
Valparaiso 269
Plan of Callao in 1819 271
“The Chilian cutlasses swept the deck” 273
The attack on the Gate Pah 277
Plan of the Gate Pah and surroundings 279
“The brave fellow brought him out at considerable risk” 280
The Gate Pah after occupation 281
A Maori dwelling 283
Old town, Warsaw 285
Plan of the Russian operations against Warsaw 286
Emperor Nicholas 287
“The Russians closed up in their strength and charged
with their bayonets” 288
The Jews’ market, Warsaw 289
Sketch map to illustrate the Hunza Nagar campaign 292
“Captain Aylmer ignited the fuse” 293
“He actually succeeded in climbing quite alone” 296
Nilt forts, from the south 297
Gilgit Residency 298
General Garibaldi 300
“Everywhere this free-lance evoked enthusiasm” 301
Garibaldi’s movements of 1862: Plan 302
Catania 304
“Raising his cap in the air he cried, ‘Viva l’Italia’” 305
King Victor Emmanuel 306
Alexander I., Czar of Russia 308
General view of the city of Moscow 309
Napoleon’s march from the Niemen to Moscow: Plan 310
Gardens of the Kremlin 312
Napoleon’s entry into Moscow 313
Plan of the Battle of Borodino 314
General Junot 316
The retreat from Moscow 317
“A mutilated spectre crawled towards the startled soldiers” 320
Smolensk from the banks of the Dnieper in 1812 321
Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow: Plan 324
“The Engineer set fire to their sole means of escape” 325
“In a towering passion the Marshal drew his sword” 328
Lieutenant Chard 332
Lieutenant Bromhead 332
Rorke’s Drift at the present time 333
Plan showing the lines of communication in the Zulu
campaign 335
Defence of Rorke’s Drift: Plan 336
“There was a hand-to-hand struggle” 337
“The British flag still waved over the storehouse” 340
Count Von Moltke 344
“The Prussians pushed into the woods, driving the French
skirmishers from them” 345
Plan of the Battle of Mars-la-Tour 346
Map showing scope of operations of the Franco-German War
of 1870–71 348
Mitrailleuse 349
Marshal Bazaine 351
Charge of the 16th Uhlans 352
French uniforms in 1870 353
Map showing neighbourhood of Corunna 356
“A hussar dashed in with the news that the enemy were
upon us” 357
Corunna 360
Death of Sir John Moore 361
The burial of Sir John Moore 362
Zante 365
Plan of the Battle of Navarino 368
“The battle was maintained with unabated fury for above
four hours” 369
Navarino 370
LIST OF PLATES.
THE DUKE GIVES THE MAGIC WORD, “THE WHOLE LINE WILL
ADVANCE!” (Coloured) _Frontispiece_
SERGEANT EWART CAPTURING THE EAGLE AT WATERLOO
(Coloured) _To face p. 62_
THE STORMERS DASHED OVER THE _DÉBRIS_ OF THE
BREACH _To face p. 132_
SIMULTANEOUSLY FOLLOWED THE LEVELLED BAYONETS OF
SUCHET’S DIVISION (Coloured) _To face p. 190_
THE FIFTH DIVISION STORMING BY ESCALADE THE
RAMPARTS OF SAN VINCENTE _To face p. 262_
WHEN THE REMNANT OF THE GUARD WAS SEEN CLEARING
A WAY FOR THE EMPEROR THERE WAS A RUSH _To face p. 326_
[Illustration:
BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
_INTRODUCTION_]
BY MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
[Illustration]
“BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY”--the words are like a trumpet-call,
summoning up in array before us a hundred familiar forms of great
soldiers--Napoleon and Wellington, Grant and Moltke, MacMahon and
Garibaldi--great soldiers of all nations--great soldiers long dead,
and great soldiers still living. Let us glance for an instant or two,
in this introduction, at the individual careers of some of the most
famous of them ere we pass on to the pages which shall deal with their
exploits, battle by battle, and shall tell in detail of their skill and
prowess, and their fortunes of war, their victories and their defeats.
* * * * *
The earliest wars of the present century were the nursery of military
reputations, and in them several great soldiers grew on to imperishable
fame. Two figures stand out prominently, a head and shoulders above
all the rest--Napoleon and Wellington. It is needless to compare or
contrast them--Napoleon, the Emperor-General, sole arbiter of the fate
of millions; Wellington, the loyal servant of his country, who put duty
before mere glory, and whose first thought in his triumphs was the
vindication of the national honour and the re-establishment of peace.
Napoleon was all for self; but this very selfishness re-acted on his
surroundings, and elicited an unbounded, unquestioning devotion to
his person, which was the parent of many heroic deeds. Men suffered
themselves to be cut to pieces to win a word of his approval; the
wounded raised themselves in their agony to cheer on their comrades;
the dying with their last gasp cried “_Vive l’Empereur!_”
Over and above the glamour of his personal ascendancy, and his
long-sustained prestige, Napoleon had a still stronger hold upon his
followers, in that he held the supreme power in his own hands, the sole
and exclusive right to reward or blame. Small wonder, therefore, if
the soldiers of the First Empire were among the finest types of their
class. No military _régime_ has ever brought better men to the
front or secured them more rapid advancement. Promotion to the very
highest grades was to be had for the earning of it. How fast men rose
from the lowest rungs to the top of the ladder will be understood from
a few prominent cases. Marshal Ney was the son of an old soldier, and
threw up a small appointment to enlist as a private hussar; Massena,
the Prince of Essling’s father, kept a wine-shop in Nice, and the
marshal had begun life as a cabin-boy; Lannes’ father was a livery
stable-keeper, and Augereau the son of a mason. Junot was a sergeant
of artillery at the siege of Toulon, who first attracted Napoleon’s
attention by his coolness under fire: a round shot kicked up the dust
close to where Junot was receiving an order in writing, and the young
sergeant, unmoved, merely said, “That will do to dry the ink.”
Wellington could not have made use of such incentives to valour as
Napoleon did, even if he had had them at his command. But he did
not need them. It was with the British rank and file as with their
generals: they did their best because it was their duty, and it was
there to do. They fought because they were expected to fight, and
fought well, because they liked it. So it was that throughout the
long campaign in Spain the British were almost invariably successful.
Wherever they met the enemy, they beat them. Even at Corunna, after a
long and disastrous retreat, overmatched by numbers, led for a time by
Napoleon himself, Sir John Moore turned on his pursuers, and snatched
a difficult victory at the expense of his own life. He was struck down
just as the French were repulsed, but his troops, undismayed, continued
the action, which ended entirely in our favour, and permitted us to
re-embark without loss. Moore’s death on the battle-field has been
honoured in song; it was a hero’s death, and to the last moment he
would not surrender his sword, although the hilt had entered the wound.
His body had to be buried on the battle-field; and it is greatly to
the credit of a chivalrous foe that the French, recognising his merit,
raised a monument over his remains.
Wellington’s career was one of almost unequalled success. If he was
compelled to retreat more than once, it was only to make a newer and
a bolder advance. In all his battles he was victorious: thanks to
his own great genius and the matchless bravery of his troops. The
Peninsular records are full of great deeds done on great battle-fields,
in combats, charges, and on the deadly breach; and in this book of
ours we shall have pictured to us fully and completely the scenes
of these deeds of valour and heroism: but here let us just glance
at two or three of Wellington’s victories to see what stuff he and
his troops were made of. That passage of the Douro, for instance, in
1809, when he crossed in the face of Soult and a veteran army--one
of his most brilliant exploits. Do you remember how Colonel Waters,
one of his staff-officers, got over alone in a skiff and brought back
three barges, and how, when the first boat was ready with its petty
complement of twenty-five, he said simply, “Let the men cross”; and
how this handful gained a foothold which they never relaxed till their
comrades followed in thousands, and the surprised French were driven
out of the town?
Talavera was both a general’s and a soldiers’ battle: the first because
Wellington (then only Sir Arthur Wellesley) showed that imperturbable
coolness and self-reliance, mixed prescience of danger and promptitude
in meeting it, which are the highest qualities of leadership; the
second, because it was won mainly by a single regiment, which acted
with marvellous precision and courage at the decisive point just in
the nick of time. The French in this battle were the assailants: the
genius of their soldiers is for onslaught, and their greatest deeds
have been in attack. But they were met and repulsed. It was of Talavera
that Jomini, the well-known military writer, said it proved that the
British infantry could dispute the palm with the best in Europe.
Another instance of its prowess of another kind was shown at Talavera,
when Crawfurd’s famous Light Brigade of the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th
Regiments came up, determined at all costs to take part in the action.
They met crowds of Spanish fugitives, who declared the English army was
defeated, its general a prisoner, the French only a few miles off. But
still they pressed on undaunted, and “leaving only seventeen stragglers
behind,” says Napier, “in twenty-six hours crossed the field of battle,
a compact body, having during the time marched sixty-two English miles
in the hottest season of the year, each man carrying from fifty to
sixty pounds weight.”
At Busaco, again, the French were the assailants: veteran troops led
by some of the bravest of French generals; and their numbers gave
them the advantage. But the British were strongly posted on a craggy
ridge of hills, so strongly that it was thought the French leader,
Massena, would not attack. “But if he does, I shall beat him,” replied
Wellington quietly; and he did. The French fought with signal bravery,
but the ascent was toilsome, and they were met by men as brave.
In the retreat before the battle, two affecting incidents occurred
which showed the quality of the soldiers Wellington commanded. There
was a man in the famous 43rd, named Stewart, only nineteen years of
age, but of gigantic strength and stature, whose comrades called him
“The Boy.” He was deeply chagrined, and at a bridge which he was the
last to cross, he turned, and facing the French advancing columns, he
was heard to say: “So, this is the end of our boasting! This is our
first battle (Talavera), and we retreat. The boy Stewart will not live
to hear that said.” “Then,” says Napier, “striding forward in his giant
might, he fell furiously on his nearest enemies with the bayonet,
refused the quarter they seemed desirous of granting, and died fighting
in the midst of them.”
The other story tells of a still finer instance of the noble spirit of
the British soldier. It was at the passage of the Coa, a month before
Busaco, when the 52nd would have been cut off from the bridge but for
the gallantry with which McLeod of the 52nd came back rushing at full
speed with a couple of companies, which charged “as if a whole army had
been at their backs,” and repulsed the enemy. One of McLeod’s officers
was the afterwards famous Sir George Brown, at this time only sixteen,
who was leading his men gallantly up a slope, at the top of which
were a couple of Frenchmen with muskets levelled at him. A sergeant
interposed--M’Quade, himself only twenty-four--and, pulling his officer
back, with the words, “You are too young, sir, to be killed,” offered
himself as a target, and fell dead, pierced by both bullets.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN MOORE.
(_After the Engraving by C. Turner._)]
Three great sieges, ending in the storming and capture of three strong,
almost impregnable, fortresses, were among the laurels gained in
Spain--laurels tarnished, unhappily, by the shameful excesses of the
victorious troops. When the breaches at Ciudad Rodrigo were declared
practicable, Wellington’s order was simply, “The place must be stormed
this evening”; his soldiers’ still simpler comment, “We will do it.”
The forlorn hope raced up to their death, followed by the no less eager
body of stormers, and the main breach was carried with a furious shout.
At Badajoz, Phillipon, the brave Frenchman, stood at bay to the last,
and the “possession of Badajoz had become a point of personal honour
with the soldiers of each nation.... Ridge had himself placed a ladder
where the wall was low, and climbed it; a second ladder alongside gave
access to another officer, Canch; and as soon as these two were on the
ramparts the stormers followed, and gained possession.” Yet the fight
elsewhere continued for hours, and Wellington had to organise a second
assault, and the captors of the castle were in some danger, although
inside the town. Badajoz was taken, but at tremendous cost. No age, no
nation, ever sent forth braver troops to battle than those who stormed
Badajoz.
In the course of this book we shall hear much more of these triumphs
of Wellington: how at Salamanca he caught Marmont in an egregious
tactical error, fell upon him in flank, and defeated 40,000 men in
forty minutes; how at Vittoria he routed King Joseph, beating him at
every point, and capturing everything the French possessed: “all their
equipages, all their guns, all their treasure, all their stores, all
their papers”; how, in the Pyrenees, pitted against Soult, Napoleon’s
ablest lieutenant, he won battle after battle: at Sauroren, at the
Bidassoa, at the Nivelle, and finally, invading France, at Orthez and
Toulouse. The passage of the Adour was a combined military and naval
operation, carried out in the teeth of a fierce February storm. The
bridge of boats which the British staff corps formed across the river
was a “stupendous undertaking” which ranks amongst the prodigies of
war; for the tide rose and fell fourteen feet, and large boats could
only be employed. It was at Orthez that Soult, thinking victory secure,
put forward all his reserves too rashly. Then Wellington, as he watched
him, smote his thigh, and cried exultingly, “At last I have him!” On
the spur of the moment he changed his plan of battle, and by a turning
movement cut off Soult’s line of retreat.
The greatest of all the great achievements of the great duke was,
of course, his victory at Waterloo--a battle which will always rank
among the most important and decisive that have been fought, because
so much depended upon the issue. The only hope of securing peace
to Europe was in beating Napoleon, and it was not easy to do it.
There were moments in the brief campaign, both before and during the
great battle which finished it, when victory hung in the balance and
inclined to the French. At the outset, Napoleon stole a march upon the
Allies; he placed his whole force at a point between them, whence he
might separate and roll up each in turn. He beat the Prussians badly
at Ligny, but Ney was checked by our tenacious resistance at Quatre
Bras. Still, the British and the Prussians retired divergently, as it
is called; and had Napoleon followed up quickly, he might have fought
them one by one. But Wellington drew off, retreating--not without
danger--upon Waterloo; and Blucher, recovering his communications with
us, was able to come up at the close of the great fight, and make
victory the more complete.
[Illustration: “HE FELL FURIOUSLY ON HIS NEAREST ENEMIES”
(_p. 2_).]
* * * * *
By degrees new men, imbued with much the same high qualities, replaced
the veterans of Spain and Waterloo; but till more than half the
century was ended it was the generals who had been trained to war
under Wellington who chiefly led the troops to victory and maintained
British prestige. Charles Napier in Scinde, Hugh Gough in the Punjaub,
Fitzroy-Somerset (Lord Raglan) in the Crimea, Colin Campbell,
afterwards Lord Clyde, in China, the Crimea, and India, had all learnt
and practised their profession in the early wars. They were all,
however, men advanced in years before they came to a supreme command in
the field. The long peace after Waterloo, lasting some thirty years,
denied soldiers all chance of active service, and it was not till Sir
Charles Napier was sixty years of age that he found himself winning
battles on his own account. Sir Hugh Gough was older by five years when
he led an army against the Sikhs, and began the difficult conquest of
the Punjaub. Lord Raglan was also an aged man when he was selected to
command our armies in the Russian war of 1854–5.
Both Napier and Gough had won early laurels in Spain, and both as
majors, temporarily in command of their regiments, had helped to win
great battles, and paid in their persons for their valour. Napier
was with Sir John Moore at Corunna, and at the head of the 50th (the
gallant “Half-hundred”) had repulsed the French attack at one important
point. Then when--to quote another Napier, his brother, and the famous
historian of the war--“he was encompassed by enemies and denied
quarter, he received five wounds. But he still fought and struggled
for life till a French drummer, with a generous heart and indignation
forcibly rescued him from his barbarous assailants.” The wounds he
received were terrible: he had his leg broken by a bullet, a sabre-cut
laid open his head, and he had had a bayonet stab in his back. It was
at this battle of Corunna, when the young major (he was only twenty-six
at the time) took command, that he found his men of the line wavering
under the fierce fire. In order to steady them, he put them through
several movements of the manual exercise, ordering them to “Slope
arms!” “Carry arms!” and so on, until they recognised his voice and
hardened under his hand.
Hugh Gough like Charles Napier, owed to the chance absence of his
colonel the opportunity of winning early distinction. As a major, of
barely thirty, he was in command of his regiment--the gallant 87th,
long famous as the Irish Fusiliers--at the battle of Talavera, where
he was severely wounded, but so distinguished himself as to earn
promotion; he was at the head of the 87th when they made their famous
charge at Barrosa, which decided the fate of that hard-fought day; and
he was so foremost in the repulse of the French from Tarifa that he
received the sword of the French leader when he failed in his assault
upon the town.
[Illustration: MARSHAL SOULT.
(_From the Portrait by Rouillard._)]
Lord Raglan had never commanded troops in the field, but he had been
the secretary and close confidant of the Iron Duke, his companion in
every campaign; as Fitzroy-Somerset, he rode by Wellington’s side
through the day at Waterloo, and was one of the few survivors of his
staff. But he lost his arm by a shot--one of the last fired--just after
his chief had run imminent danger, and had been warned to withdraw, but
held his ground, saying, “Never mind; let them fire away. The battle’s
won; my life is of no consequence now.” The duke turned to ride off the
field, when a stray bullet shattered Lord Fitzroy’s arm at the elbow.
It was the right arm unfortunately, and it had to be amputated at once;
but Wellington retained his services as secretary, and Lord Raglan
soon learnt to write with his left hand, so as to become a neat, rapid
penman.
[Illustration: MARSHAL NEY.
(_From the Painting by F. Gérard._)]
Colin Campbell was junior in years and rank to the three great soldiers
just mentioned, but he graduated in the stirring school of war when
he was but sixteen, and learnt hardihood as a stripling. It was the
custom in those days to send boys into the army at an age when many
nowadays are still at school. They were brave boys, as their successors
of to-day will admit. Let me tell you how young Campbell behaved in
his first encounter with the enemy. To be shot at for the first time
is a startling experience. Young Campbell, at Vimiera, suffered like
many more, but his captain, an old and war-hardened campaigner, seeing
his trouble, took him quickly by the hand, and led him out into the
front of the regiment, upon which the enemy’s guns had just begun to
play, and for several anxious minutes walked him up and down under
fire. The treatment calmed him completely, and he never knew the want
of confidence again. On the contrary, Colin Campbell, just five years
later, performed prodigies of valour in leading the forlorn hope at the
storming of San Sebastian. He had just forced his way to the summit
of the breach, when he fell back, desperately wounded in the hip; but
finding he could still move forward, he re-climbed the breach, to be
fully disabled by another shot in the thigh. Three months later he
lay in hospital, with his wounds but half healed, when he heard that
Wellington’s army was on the point of invading France, and he resolved
to be one of the party. Escaping from hospital, with an equally ardent
comrade, “by dint of crawling and an occasional lift from vehicles
proceeding along the road, they made their way to the 5th division in
which the 9th were brigaded, and were in action (on the Bidassoa) on
the following day.”[1] His desertion from hospital was a breach of
discipline, and Campbell would have been sharply dealt with; but in the
fight he led his company so gallantly, and was again so badly wounded,
that it was impossible to do otherwise than praise his bravery and
ignore his bad conduct.
They were giants, these soldiers of the Peninsula, setting an example
of courage and endurance to their successors for all time: an example
which you may be sure has always, and will always, be followed by
British troops of all ranks, from leader to fighting-man. Wellington’s
veterans never fell away from the traditions in which they had been
raised, and which they bequeathed. Sir Charles Napier, at sixty, began
his Scinde campaign with a daring operation which ranks with the
boldest in war. His march upon the desert fortress of Emaun Ghur, with
a few hundred English soldiers carried on camels--a lonely journey of
eight days--was a feat, both in its performance and its consequences,
which is not outdone by Wolfe’s scaling of the Heights of Abraham, the
great American General Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea, Drury
Lowe’s and Herbert Stewart’s raid upon Cairo after Tel-el-Kebir, when
1,500 horsemen galloped into the old capital of the Caliphs and seized
it for the Queen. At that moment Cairo was held by a garrison of 10,000
of Arabi’s men.
Again, Napier’s victory at Meanee was a triumph over the most
tremendous odds, when 2,400 British troops, 500 of whom alone were
white, the rest native sepoys, encountered, attacked, and defeated
36,000 Beloochees in the open field. Napier would not stand on the
defensive--that might have seemed to imply fear of the result, and
injuriously affect the spirit of his native troops--so he resolved to
attack, instead of waiting to be attacked. They met in mid-shock--for
the Beloochees made a counter-attack; and for three hours the unequal
contest went on with a foe as brave and undaunted as ourselves. It was
long a hand-to-hand fight, bayonet against sword and spear; but at
the critical moment Napier sent all his cavalry against the enemy’s
right, and broke it. Then the 22nd charged home with tremendous force,
and the battle was won. Not the least brilliant feat in this glorious
victory was the self-sacrificing devotion of a captain of the 22nd--Tew
by name--who gave his life for his duty. Before the fight, Napier had
discovered that some 6,000 of the enemy occupied a building surrounded
by a high stone wall, through which there was but one egress--a narrow
doorway, which could, he thought, be completely blocked by a few
determined men. Captain Tew was posted there with his company, and
told he must die, if need be, but that he must never give way. He died
where he was posted; but with his handful of men he closed the opening
throughout the fight, and thus paralysed the action of a large portion
of the enemy.
Sir Hugh Gough--afterwards Lord Gough--had long to wait for promotion
to the higher ranks, and he was more than sixty when he commenced
the campaigning in China which led to the cession of Hong-Kong.
Soon afterwards he won the hard-fought battle of Mahrajpoor, in
Gwalior, against that warlike and turbulent race the Mahrattas, whose
subjugation had cost so much in the earlier days of the century. Gough
won Mahrajpoor by a direct attack, marching right up to the enemy’s
position, and trusting to the British bayonet for success. “Nothing,”
as he himself wrote in his dispatch, “could withstand the rush of the
British soldiers. They drove the enemy from their guns, bayoneting the
gunners at their posts.” Two officers--Stopford and Codrington--were
found lying wounded just under the muzzles of the Mahratta artillery.
The same tactics--for Gough was essentially a forward fighter--served
him well at Moodkee, the first of the battles in the Sikh war.
The campaign was forced upon us suddenly. Gough was called up to
support Lord Hardinge, the Governor-General, who, when making a
progress through the Punjaub, found the Sikhs on the point of declaring
war. The force which Gough collected numbered only 14,000 men, and
it had to traverse 150 miles to reach the scene of action. It was a
toilsome march, under an Indian sun; water was scarce; the troops
reached Moodkee worn-out with privations and fatigue; but when they
heard their enemy was in front of them, they went, without resting,
straight into the fight. The Sikhs--splendid soldiers, trained by
European officers--were more than double our numbers, with a fine
cavalry and many guns; but the British infantry, “trusting to that
never-failing weapon the bayonet,” drove the Sikhs out of their
positions.
A second battle--a greater trial of strength, demanding higher
qualities of fortitude and endurance--was near at hand. Gough moved
forward at once, and attacked the Sikh entrenchments at Ferozeshah, Sir
Henry Hardinge, who was with him, waiving his rank of Governor-General,
and serving under Gough, in command of the left wing. The struggle
was terrific: the Sikhs fought with splendid courage, and when night
fell the battle was not ended. It was a drawn game so far, and some
despondent spirits in the camp suggested retreat--the rash and
inglorious course of cutting a road through to Ferozepore. Gough would
not agree. “I tell you, my mind is made up. If we must perish, our
bones must bleach honourably where we are.” Hardinge was no less firm.
When an officer told him that Sir Hugh Gough feared it would be a fatal
risk to renew the battle, Sir Henry scouted the idea. “Gough knows,” he
cried, “that a British army must not be foiled; and foiled this army
shall not be.” The contest, when it recommenced, was most unequal.
Fresh reinforcements reached the enemy, but our troops met them
undaunted, and went forward nobly to the attack. In the end, a turning
movement of cavalry on both flanks, followed by a fresh infantry
charge, decided the day in our favour, and the Sikhs were routed with
tremendous loss.
These victories did not end the war or complete the conquest of the
Punjaub. The Sikhs fell back upon the Sutlej, and established an
entrenched camp in front of the village of Sobraon: they did not care
to meet us again in the open field, but they stood a gallant siege at
Sobraon, which had to be stormed like a fortress. A curious feature in
this battle was the great charge of cavalry made through the breaches,
in which the horsemen cut down the defenders at their guns. Another
interesting fight was that at Aliwal, won by Sir Harry Smith as a
detached operation, in which the 16th Lancers greatly distinguished
themselves. These various victories broke the courage of the Sikhs, but
only for a time; and the peace that followed was of short duration.
[Illustration: SIR CHARLES NAPIER.]
It was abruptly ended by a deed of treachery such as has not been
uncommon in our Eastern Empire: the British resident and another
officer were murdered in Mooltan, and it was necessary to resume active
operations. But the occasion furnished an opportunity of distinction
to a gallant young officer, Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes, who, without
waiting for orders, united his small detachment, posted on the Indus,
to that of Colonel Courtrand, and fell upon the Sikhs, forcing them to
retreat into Mooltan. Then followed the gathering of forces anew on
both sides, and fresh battles, achieving at first but incomplete and
unsatisfactory results. The name of Chillianwallah and the misfortune
of that day will not be readily forgotten. It was a day of carnage,
disaster, and disgrace; for an English cavalry regiment, weakened
by previous losses and fearing an ambuscade, gave way to panic and
galloped off the field. It may, however, be said, in extenuation of
this happily unusual military crime, that an injudicious order given
by the brigadier originated the stampede. The consequences in any case
were disastrous, and it followed upon the nearly complete massacre of a
line regiment--H.M.’s 24th, that which suffered afterwards so terribly
at Insandlwana--which, emerging from a swampy jungle, was all but cut
to pieces, because it paused to spike guns it had captured from the
Sikhs.
A storm of indignation arose in England, and the public discontent
was poured out on the Commander-in-chief. Lord Gough was immediately
superseded by Sir Charles Napier, his previous brilliant services
being entirely ignored; but before the conqueror of Scinde could reach
India, Gough had completely vindicated our arms and his own reputation.
Mooltan was carried by storm, and the final decisive victory at
Goojerat--at first an artillery duel, in which our guns showed their
marvellous superiority--completed the discomfiture of the Sikhs. From
that time forth the Punjaub was incorporated in our British Indian
Empire. The Queen has no more loyal subjects, no more devoted soldiers
in her ranks, than the descendants of our former sturdy foes.
[Illustration: LORD GOUGH.
(_After the Painting by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A._)]
The time was approaching when England was to be once more engaged in
European war. Just when the nations hoped they had reached an era of
universal peace, the clouds collected quickly, and two traditional
foes joined hands to attack Russia. The expeditionary force which left
these shores for Turkey in 1854, and which ere long won new victories,
but at a terrible outlay of men and material, was one of the finest,
as regards physique and fighting power, that England has collected.
It was well armed, as the time went, and well commanded. Lord Raglan
was at its head, and his lieutenants were mostly Peninsular veterans:
Sir George Brown, already mentioned for his gallantry at the Coa; Sir
De Lacy Evans, who had fought in Spain and America, and at Waterloo;
Sir George Cathcart, who had been on Wellington’s staff; Sir Colin
Campbell, of whom more directly; and Sir John Burgoyne, a famous
engineer officer, who had helped to construct the lines of Torres
Vedras, and had served in the great sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz,
Burgos, and San Sebastian. But the army was unprovided with the trains,
transport services, and means of supply which are of little less
importance than valour in the field; and for the want of them, bravery
was as nought, victories were wasted, and men’s lives poured out like
water.
The three principal battles fought in the Crimea by the English were
essentially triumphs for the rank and file. At the Alma it was sheer
hard slogging, headlong rushes against a strong position, which was
carried, in spite of all resistance. The fighting fell mostly to the
share of the 1st and 2nd Light Divisions, the Guards, the Highlanders,
and the Fusilier and Rifle battalions; and it was done in the famous
old formation--the thin red line. At one time the Guards were hard
pressed, and they came to Colin Campbell, who commanded the 2nd
Brigade, saying the Guards would be destroyed if they did not fall
back. “Better that every man of Her Majesty’s Guards should be dead
on the field than that they should turn their backs upon the enemy,”
replied Campbell, as he hastened with his Highlanders to their support.
At Balaclava, when “some one had blundered,” and the gallant Six
Hundred went into the jaws of death, the English light cavalry were all
but destroyed, but it won imperishable renown. “Magnificent, but not
war,” was the French general’s comment on the mad charge: an attack by
cavalry on guns in position; but the whole of these reckless horsemen
went forward with the same spirit that animated their leader, Lord
Cardigan, who, rising in his stirrups, cried, “Here goes the last of
the Brudenells!” It was a hopeless enterprise, but it was performed;
and all the world wondered.
Inkerman, again, was pre-eminently the soldiers’ battle--a hard
personal hand-to-hand fight, where the Russians numbered thousands
to our hundreds, and it was no less the almost impudent courage of
the British than the impossibility to believe that so few could
resist so many, except backed up by strong reserves, that prevented
the Russians from carrying all before them. The attack was made at
daylight, when the mists still lay thick on the ground, and concealed
the meagreness of our forces; the Russian hosts came on in dense
columns along a narrow front which prevented their opening out, and our
men in the proverbial “thin line” could hit the head of the advance
with tremendous effect. The onslaught fell first on Pennefather, who
had won early fame at Meanee against overwhelming odds; now, with a
bare 3,000 men all told, he hurried down, and came to immediate blows
against the Russians, nearly 20,000 strong, with powerful artillery.
It was so throughout the battle. Attack was met by counter-attack; our
handfuls constantly met the shock of great masses, checked them, drove
them back, and followed, fighting lustily. The Light Division, under
Codrington--1,400 men, no more--was as daring and tenacious. Until
half-past seven, for nearly a couple of hours, these two kept the whole
of the attackers at bay. Fresh troops then began to come up on both
sides; another Russian general’s corps, that of Dannenberg--19,000
men--renewed the assault; the Guards and 4th Division came up to
stiffen Pennefather. It was at this period that the gallant general
made a famous reply to General Cathcart, who had asked where he could
give best assistance. “Get in anywhere,” cried Pennefather; “there’s
lots of fighting going on all round.”
[Illustration: CHARGE OF CAVALRY THROUGH THE BREACHES AT
SOBRAON (_p._ 7).]
The final Russian attack was made about 10 a.m., the sharpest and best
intentioned of any in the day, but by this time the opponents were
more equal in numbers. Bosquet’s Frenchmen had come up to support, and
we had gained the help of the two celebrated 18-pounder guns under
Collingwood Dickson, which 150 artillerymen themselves dragged from
the 1st Division camp to the field. This, with two batteries of French
Horse Artillery, pushed gallantly forward to the “bare slopes fronting
the enemy,” had readjusted the balance of artillery fire; and at last
the Russians fell back, sullenly, overmastered, but they were followed
by no final charge. “When hopeless of success,” the enemy “seemed to
melt from the lost field; the English were too few and too exhausted;
the French too little confident in the advantage gained to convert the
repulse into a rout.” The victory at Inkerman was but the prelude to
terrible sufferings during the long-protracted siege, but these could
be borne with patience, because Inkerman had proved that we were more
than a match for the Russians in the open field. Had we not won the
battle, the whole of the allied armies, taken in reverse, would have
been swept off the plateau in front of Sebastopol right into the sea.
The fortress itself proved a very hard nut to crack, and although
frequently assaulted, was never actually taken by force of arms. The
winter troubles, the inclement weather, the difficulties of supply
which starved the troops and reduced the siege into a mere blockade,
forbade attack. On the contrary, the besieged displayed such activity
under the intrepid Todleben, that the initiative often passed to them,
and by bold sorties they gained ground rather than lost it. Even our
incessant bombardments, causing terrific carnage, did not dismay the
defenders, and fresh reinforcements constantly arrived. It was not till
June that the first real assault was delivered, and then only through
the indomitable determination of the allied generals. The French were
especially hampered by the interference of the Emperor Napoleon, who,
with no military knowledge, claimed to control and advise from Paris.
It was the first occasion on which the telegraph line began to be
largely used in campaigning, a practice greatly calculated to paralyse
the action of generals in the field. Napoleon was all in favour of
leaving the siege to linger on, while field armies cut off the supplies
to the fortress; but Pelissier, the French general, was a strong man
who held to his own views, and he persisted in attacking Sebastopol.
[Illustration: SIR COLIN CAMPBELL (AFTERWARDS LORD CLYDE).]
Early in June the French took the Mamelon, the English “the Quarries,”
important outworks, and it seemed as if the end was near. But a second
assault, delivered within a week or two upon the Malakoff and the
Redan, was repulsed with terrible loss; only a detached attack, under
the English General Eyre, upon the Cemetery succeeded, and for a time
we were actually within the walls. But we could not stay there. Two
months more elapsed, chequered by the death of Lord Raglan, who had
won the love and respect of all, and by another fierce effort, made
upon our communications. The battle of the Tchernaya was fought nearly
on the same ground as Balaclava, and was won by the French and the
newly-arrived Sardinian troops. Then, finally, on the 8th September,
the French stormed the Malakoff again, and this time took it. The
English had the more difficult task, because the Redan, which they
attacked, was constantly reinforced by the masses driven out of the
Malakoff. But our assault had not been planned on a big enough scale;
it was not properly supported, although the trenches behind were
crammed with reserves, and it failed. That night the Russians, feeling
that in the Malakoff they had lost the key of their defence, evacuated
the town, but not before they had blown up the forts, and set the whole
place on fire. The sight will never be forgotten by those who saw it,
as did the writer. The town in flames, great forts crumbling to pieces
as though by magic, heavy columns of Russians crossing the bridge under
an incessant fire from the allied batteries.
Peace with Russia had not long been signed when the British Empire was
threatened in a most vulnerable place. For a time it seemed as though
we might lose India. The revolt of the native or sepoy army burst out
so suddenly--it was marked with such base treachery, disgraced by such
cold-blooded atrocities--that the world still shudders at the details.
The English were everywhere outnumbered; our hold on India depended
greatly on prestige; implicit faith had been placed in these very
mutineers. The force of white troops at hand was very small; very soon
Upper India was in the hands of the insurgents: only here and there
little groups, generally isolated and surrounded, fought with desperate
courage against overwhelming odds, almost against hope. No page in
our national annals is more glorious than that which enshrines the
heroism of those who then saved India. Not only were soldiers brave,
but civilians, unused to arms, showed dauntless pluck--frail women
performed, too, great deeds in defence of their honour.
Although the whole country was more or less involved in the struggle,
the principal interest was centred in the three great cities which were
the scene of the fiercest efforts: at Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow the
conflict was long-sustained. Delhi, the seat of the new Empire, was
thronged with mutineers from many neighbouring garrisons. It was held
by numbers of disciplined, well-armed troops, with powerful artillery,
to the use of which they had been fully trained, and it stood a long
siege in which, at first, owing to the weakness of our forces, the
besiegers were themselves besieged. But the little army was a band of
braves led by heroes. Such men as the Nicholsons and the Chamberlains
roused them to superhuman efforts; and when the place was captured,
after a three months’ siege, it was carried by the assault of four weak
columns of barely a thousand each.
Cawnpore was another large station, which fell at once into the power
of the miscreant, Nana Sahib, who has earned for himself undying
execration as the most cruel and unprincipled of our foes. But the
handful of Europeans would not easily yield; many were only women
and children; the fighting men were few; yet they held out in rough
entrenchments for nineteen days, standing a siege under the tropical
sun of June, and displaying a calm fortitude beyond all praise. Gentle
ladies gave their stockings to make cartridge-cases; they nursed the
wounded, fed the troops. One brave woman--a soldier’s wife--mounted
sentry, sword in hand, over a number of sepoy prisoners. The roll
of heroes was well filled at Cawnpore. Such soldiers as Moore (of
the 32nd), Jenkins, Mowbray Thomson; such civilians as Heberden and
Moncrieffe, make us proud of our race. Who shall forget the cool
courage of Delafosse, who stood over a tumbril of ammunition, the
woodwork of which had been set alight by the enemy’s fire--stood
over it in imminent peril, while he tore off the burning timbers,
and stifled the danger with earth? And yet the defenders could not
escape their fate. When resistance became hopeless, they capitulated
under promise of a safe conduct to Allahabad, and a general massacre
followed, from which only two or three of these devoted martyrs
escaped.
[Illustration: SIR JAMES OUTRAM.]
The story of Lucknow is very similar; it is no less harrowing, but a
source of equal pride in our race. The siege of the Residency, into
which Sir Henry Lawrence retired with all his force and all their
dear ones, was protracted to the utmost limits of endurance. Lawrence
himself was struck down by an exploding shell; but the legacy he left
his comrades was the watchword “No surrender!” His dying words were:
“Let every man die at his post, but never make terms. God help the
women and children!” Lucknow held out till it was relieved by Havelock
and Outram in September, only to be again besieged when the relieving
force had got within the lines. It was not until November, when Sir
Colin Campbell advanced with all the reinforcements that could be
got together at Calcutta--bluejackets from the men-of-war, regiments
detained on their way to China, a small band of volunteer cavalry
recruited in the capital. He had to fight his way in. First, there was
the relief of the Alum Bagh, which was held, although the enemy were in
an entrenched position before it; then the capture of the Dilkhoosha
Palace; then the Martinière Palace, which the enemy occupied with guns
in position; after that the Secundra Bagh, where the 92nd and the Sikhs
raced up to the breach neck-and-neck. Other buildings were stormed--the
Mess House, the Moti Mahal--and from the latter an entrance was
effected into the Residency, which at last was relieved.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY HAVELOCK.]
Assuredly there has been no falling off in the spirit of the British
soldier, singly or collectively, whatever his rank. Our most recent
military annals record episodes as gallant and as creditable to the
pluck and manhood of our race as any that have gone before. Every
form of courage has been displayed: reckless daring enterprise, calm
self-reliant heroism in the most despairing situations. Who shall
forget the 24th at Insandlwana, massacred to a man by the countless
Zulu hosts? A brave, pitiless, but chivalrous foe, who could pay
the following tribute to their fearless demeanour in that unequal
conflict: “Ah, those red soldiers! How few they were, and how they
fought! They fell like stones, each man in his place.” There is
nothing finer, again, in war than the manner in which another British
regiment--the 66th (Berkshire)--met death to a man at Maiwand, in
Afghanistan. The general reporting it wrote that “history does not
afford a grander instance of devotion to Queen and country.” The
66th, although outnumbered a hundred to one, received undaunted the
furious attacks of the Ghazis or Mohammedan fanatics vowed to slay the
infidel, and were gradually slaughtered till only eleven officers and
men remained. This small band stood back to back, unconquerable, still
facing and keeping the foe at bay, until they were finally shot down
from a distance.
Another famous story is that of Rorke’s Drift, when two young
subalterns, Chard and Bromhead, holding a river ford which was the only
possible line of retreat for Lord Chelmsford’s force, were threatened
by overwhelming numbers. The Zulus were quite 3,000 strong, and the
little English garrison no more than 139, of whom thirty-five were
on the sick list. But there was no thought of surrender. A line of
trenches was hastily contrived with biscuit-boxes and flour-bags,
behind which our men fought gallantly the whole night through. At one
time the hospital was a sheet of fire, and the feeble breastwork had
been penetrated in more than one place. But the garrison never quailed:
their heroic subaltern leaders never despaired, and they had beaten off
their assailants when at daylight relief arrived.
The only parallel to Rorke’s Drift is the gallant defence of Arrah
during the Indian Mutiny, when a handful of English civilians defended
a detached two-storeyed house for seven days against an army of sepoy
mutineers. The collector, Mr. Wake, with fifteen other civilians, fifty
Sikh police and one faithful Mohammedan, composed the garrison, and the
assailants numbered 3,000, with two field-pieces. They had but little
food, a motley lot of arms, unlimited ammunition, and there was not a
military man among them. But they held out till they were relieved by
a man as gallant as themselves, Major Vincent Eyre, who was ascending
the Ganges with a battery of artillery when he heard of the siege. He
steamed back at once to Buxar, collected a small force of infantry,
154 bayonets in all, marched fifty miles to Arrah, was met by the
enemy, twenty times his strength, but at once attacked them, and put
them to flight. The sepoys could not face us in the open, even in such
disproportionate numbers.
[Illustration: “‘THIS GUN BELONGS TO MY REGIMENT--2ND
GOORKHA, PRINCE OF WALES’S!’”]
The spirit shown collectively has, perhaps, been outdone by
individuals. Endless instances of personal heroism exhibited singly
might be quoted. What British boy can read without a thrill of the
little Scotch drummer on the march with Roberts to Cabul, who, weary
and footsore, refused to fall out, saying, “Nae, nae, I’ll nae fall
out till I’ve washed my hands in the waters of the Caspian”? What of
Major White, of the 92nd Highlanders, the present commander-in-chief in
India, who cried to his men in the battle of Candahar: “Highlanders!
will you take those guns”--which were galling them terribly--“if I give
you the lead?” What of the men who followed him to their very mouth?
What, especially, of the little Goorkha warrior who went up with his
Scotch friends, and who took one of the first of the guns, shouting as
he thrust his cap into the muzzle in sign of proprietorship, “This gun
belongs to _my_ regiment--2nd Goorkha, Prince of Wales’s!” What
of Sergeant Cox, of the 72nd, bringing in wounded officers to Sherpur,
and who, with only ten men, faced the whole garrison of the Bala Hissar
and forced his way through, advancing firing, till the enemy broke and
fled? The _dhoolie_ bearers (the natives carrying the officers)
would have set down their loads and fled, but Cox threatened to shoot
them if they did not do their duty. Sergeant Cox, by his coolness
and intrepidity, set such a good example that his men seconded him
admirably, and all the wounded were brought in safe to the cantonments.
Cox had already received the distinguished service medal for his
gallantry in the campaign.
* * * * *
We have, of course, no monopoly in brilliant feats of arms. Other
nations have shown equal prowess, whether against us or each other.
Bravery, indeed, will never go out of fashion; the will and power to
show it, as well as the spirit to appreciate it, may be met with in
every civilised country. Other nations, moreover, have been tried
more seriously than ourselves in longer, larger, and more portentous
struggles. France sacrificed much treasure and many men in assisting
the Italians to throw off the Austrian yoke, and the campaign of 1859
was distinguished by at least two great battles. Both are, perhaps,
better remembered by the colours called after them; but Magenta was a
narrowly lost battle, and Solferino was gained by the devoted gallantry
of the French troops. Austria was an intruder, and had no heart in the
struggle.
[Illustration: THE MAORI WAR: ATTACK UPON THE ORAKAO BAH.]
The War of Secession between the Northern and Southern States of
America was a deplorable civil struggle fought out to the bitter
end, but it was full of pregnant military lessons, full of strange
vicissitudes in which victory inclined to either side, of tremendous
conflicts over a vast extent of country. It was a war which embraced
almost a whole continent: the whole of America was affected, from the
gulf of Mexico to the Rocky Mountains. The campaigns and battles were
commensurate with the territory affected. In the first instance the
two capitals of the opponents--Washington and Richmond--were chiefly
threatened. Both lay comparatively near their respective frontiers;
both were in imminent danger more than once. McClellan, after
Fredericksburg was in striking distance of Richmond and Lee, but for
Gettysburg, would have swooped down on Washington.
But as General Grant rose in fame and authority through his splendid
successes in the west, he urged upon the Federal Government the
necessity for more comprehensive operations. The Confederates, as the
Southerners were called, could only be conquered by something like
extermination; they must be attacked with equal vigour on every line,
isolated alike from supplies and from supports. The North commanded
endless resources, unlimited credit, the means of purchasing recruits
without number, any quantity of munitions of war. The South, shut in
within narrow limits, saw its population drained of fighting men, and
was dependent upon blockade runners for powder and shot. Grant was
absolutely right, as the end proved. When Sherman, having triumphed
in the west, made the famous flank march from Atlanta to the sea,
he could swing round and threaten Richmond from the south. This
was the beginning of the end. Grant now reaped the benefit of his
long-protracted, bitterly-contested campaign in the “Wilderness,” north
of Richmond, and the armies closing round Richmond, the surrender of
Lee became inevitable, and the Confederacy collapsed.
The war had brought forward many heroes, and several great commanders:
Grant, Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson--the name he earned, some say (for
there is another version of the story), because once, when hardly
pressed, he said his men would stand like a stone wall--Stuart, the
Southern cavalry raider; Sheridan, a cavalry leader, hardly inferior
to Seidlitz or Murat; Sherman, Johnson, Hooker, and many more. Some of
them were recurring types--Grant, silent as Moltke, and as tenacious
and prescient; Robert Lee, the patriot soldier, who thought only of
his country, a man of duty like Wellington; Jackson, who might have
been a Puritan Cromwellian, praying and fighting by turns, a Charles
Gordon in his absolute trust in Divine help, an Ironsides in his
eagerness to smite the foe. The rank and file comprised all classes
of the community--artisans, handicraftsmen, scientists--and not the
least remarkable features in the war were its engineering achievements:
miles of road made in a single night, bridges built, forests removed,
extensive entrenchments thrown up as if by magic when the order was
given.
The “Seven Weeks’ War,” as it has been styled by its historian,
Colonel H. M. Hozier, was the first of the short, sharp, and decisive
conflicts which are to be the rule in modern campaigns. It was between
the Prussians and the Austrians, and it was fought for the future
supremacy in the great empire of Germany. Before it no one knew how
marvellously the Prussians had improved in the science and practice of
war; how admirably their troops were trained, how splendidly armed,
and with weapons of the newest invention. Still less was it expected
that untried Prussian leaders would develop such unexpectedly superior
generalship. From first to last this rapidly successful war was a
surprise. It was carried into the enemy’s country with extreme boldness
and celerity; the young soldiers of Prussia, under grey-haired but
mostly inexperienced officers, soon established a marked superiority
over Austrian veterans who had served in many hard-fought campaigns.
It was proved in the earliest engagements that the possession of the
needle-gun, the breech-loading rifle long carried by a portion of the
Prussian army, but never hitherto used, put the Austrians, with their
muzzle-loaders and their traditional belief in the bayonet, on very
unequal terms. In the fight Austrian soldiers could not stand before
the Prussians at all. Then the Prussian generals always out-manœuvred
the Austrian; they largely used a system of flanking attack, of turning
the enemy’s position at one end or side of it, while he was occupied
and engaged by another attack on the front.
These were the tactics that led to the crowning victory of Sadowa, or
Königgrätz, as it is sometimes called. After it the Austrians had no
hope of success, and a retreat began, which soon after was completed
by the ending of the war. At this battle the Austrians lost 40,000
men, the Prussians barely 6,000. Such is often the effect of superior
generalship and better _morale_.
Not the least interesting part of this great battle was that Englishmen
assisted in it as something more than mere spectators. The war
correspondents of the _Times_ on either side were both English
officers. Captain Hozier rode with the Crown Prince of Prussia through
the day, sharing his dangers as he noted the varying fortunes of the
fight. On the Austrian side, Colonel C. B. Brackenbury was close by
Benedek’s side from first to last; and the Austrian commander-in-chief,
in spite of his misfortunes, found time to ask for “his Englishman,”
and to praise him for his gallantry in facing the risks of the battle.
War is said to be full of surprises; and, again, that success is earned
by the general who makes fewest mistakes. Napoleon III felt the bitter
truth of both these sayings. The Franco-German war was a terrible
surprise to him, and both the Emperor and his generals made innumerable
mistakes. The French began by expecting a “walk over”--a parade march
to Berlin; they found they had caught a Tartar, and that they could
not keep the Germans out of France. Napoleon had been assured that
everything was ready for the campaign: not a “single button was wanting
on a single gaiter” was the boast of his War Minister, General Le Bœuf.
Yet, when the first blow was struck, inextricable confusion still
reigned within the French army--neither men nor supplies were properly
organised; while, from the very first collision, it was clear that
the science was all on the German side. Man to man, the French fought
as well as their opponents; but they were never manœuvred wisely nor
judiciously led.
On the other hand, from the moment war became inevitable, everything
worked with clocklike precision. It is said that von Moltke, the famous
chief of the Prussians, had only to touch a bell and all went forward.
Anyhow, the Prussians and their allies were quickly mobilised, and able
to take the field long before the French. The Crown Prince fell upon
the French general when still unprepared, won the first battle, and
held the advantage from then to the end.
It was a strategical advantage; in other words, the general movements
of the armies put them in superior strength at decisive points, and
this secured success all along the line.
[Illustration: [_Photo.: Reichard & Lindner, Berlin._
FREDERICK, CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA (AFTERWARDS GERMAN
EMPEROR).]
Marshal MacMahon, beaten at Worth, had to retire, and become separated
both from Bazaine about Metz and the army of the South. In between,
the “Red Prince,” with the 1st German army, held Bazaine; and, after
a series of fierce conflicts, the famous battles of Vionville,
Gravelotte, and Mars La Tour drove him under the walls of the great
fortress. MacMahon, frantic to regain communication with Bazaine,
made a long detour--a dangerous flank march, as it was called--and
found himself “headed off” at Sedan, with the Germans circling round
him, and the neutral territory of Belgium, which he was forbidden to
enter, in his rear. The surrender of the French army at Sedan, with the
Emperor Napoleon at its head, was a disaster from which France never
recovered. It was followed by the surrender of Metz and the whole of
Bazaine’s army. Within five weeks France had been defeated in eight
pitched battles; the bulk of the French regular troops were prisoners
of war. France was not yet conquered. While the Germans pressed on to
invest Paris--while their armies moved north, south, and west--the new
Government which had replaced the fallen Emperor made the most heroic
and unheard-of efforts to improvise new levies. To place recruits
and moblots--youths half-trained and inexperienced civilians--in
the front line against regular troops flushed with victory, seemed
hopeless enough. It is to the undying credit of the French nation
that it was able to maintain the struggle for so many months longer,
and to the sturdy patriotism of such men as Thiers and Gambetta, who
never despaired. France fought it out alone: she had no allies, or the
result might have been different. There are those who say that the
intervention of a couple of English army corps in favour of France
would have changed the situation. But it was not our quarrel, and
England could not have thrown her weight into the scale, except on the
most sentimental and insufficient grounds.
Nearly five-and twenty years have elapsed since this great struggle
occurred, and its legacy of hate still rankles unappeased. France is
once more as strong as her late foe--stronger, perhaps--and she is
still pining to regain her provinces and her prestige. It may be that
her rulers and her people are loth to be the first to draw the sword:
the cost of unsuccessful war is a dear price in these latter days; and
when she fights again it will be at the most fitting opportunity, when
chance and a better cause than last time may be on her side. But that
she will fight some day is nearly certain; and it is this conviction
which keeps Europe on tenter-hooks, and converts the whole Continent
into a standing camp.
England, happily, has been spared any life and death contest, any war
on the gigantic scale of the foregoing. But while her neighbours have
been at each other’s throats, she has been engaged in numerous “little
wars”--wars misnamed little, indeed, for the issues have often been
immense and the efforts made most severe. In an empire so extensive
as ours, causes of conflict abound, and fighting must be frequent.
Since the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny, we have had at least half a
dozen campaigns. A diplomatic war with China, a war for supremacy
in New Zealand, a war for the deliverance of captives in Abyssinia,
of retaliation in Ashanti, of self-defence in Zululand, against
a too-powerful neighbour, of aggression followed by “scuttle” in
Afghanistan, of interference in Egypt, followed by the dire necessities
of occupation.
[Illustration:
[_Photo: Fradelle & Young, Regent Street._
SIR GARNET (AFTERWARDS VISCOUNT) WOLSELEY.]
In many of these the chief work lay in combating the physical and
climatic difficulties. There was not much fighting in the march to
Magdala, but it was a stupendous undertaking to convey a British
army across the “mountains of Rasselas,” to the nearly inaccessible
stronghold of King Theodore. When Sir Robert Napier reached his goal,
his troops had only four days’ rations left, other than meat, and
everything had been carried up from the sea on mule- or donkey-back.
In Ashanti there was the same urgency as regards supplies, but as no
four-legged animals will live on the Gold Coast, the only means of
conveyance was on the heads of native men and women. The organisation
of transport was one of the greatest, although not the only difficulty.
There was also the climate, which was at times, and in most places,
pestilential. There was the absence of all means and appliances, almost
of food, and there was the certainty of encountering a brave, if
savage, enemy in the field. How well the Ashantis fought was shown by
their stubborn stand at Amoaful, and again in front of Coomassie.
The most trying phases of the campaign were those anticipatory to the
arrival of the white troops. A small and select band of staff-officers,
under the then new and little tried General Sir Garnet Wolseley, were
sent out to prepare the way, to make roads and bridges, secure native
allies, carriers, and last, not least, to hold their own as best they
could against the enemy, who was close at hand and threatening the
very existence of the Cape Coast Colony. Within five months the whole
of the arrangements were completed; two good black regiments had been
organised and drilled under Colonels Evelyn Wood and Baker Russell,
Rait’s artillery was an effective body, and with these and a few
sailors and marines from the fleet, the Ashantis had been driven back
to the bush.
A good hard road had been made to the Prah, a rapid river which the
engineers--under the indefatigable Colonel Home--had bridged, and when
the English regiments arrived they had simply to go in and win. Two
sharp engagements checked their progress, but only for a time, and
Coomassie fell directly our army arrived before it.
[Illustration: THE “BLACK WATCH” (42ND ROYAL
HIGHLANDERS) AT BAY AT QUATRE BRAS.
(_From the Painting by W. B. Wollen, R.I._)]
Afghanistan is a country that will be always memorable in British
military annals for the vicissitudes that have marked our operations.
The earliest war in 1839 was a rapid and brilliant success; within a
short year, through the treachery of our Afghan foes, thousands of
our countrymen, their wives and children, were slaughtered in the
mountain passes, and the country had to be re-conquered only to be
again abandoned. The Afghans were always troublesome neighbours, and
again in 1878 the insolence of the Ameer led to a new invasion. It was
called a triumphal progress; but there was some hard fighting--some
brilliant feats of arms. The capture of the fort of Ali Musjid by Sir
Sam Browne’s column, the crowning of the Peiwar Kotal, and the opening
of the Shuturgardan Pass by General Roberts were successful operations
that were followed by the flight of the Ameer, and paved the way to the
treaty of Gandamak, by which we placed a new Ameer on the throne and
stationed a British resident at his court.
The second invasion of Afghanistan, in the autumn of 1879, was to
revenge the base murder of this resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, in
Cabul, and it resulted in important operations. Sir Frederick Roberts,
who advanced through the Shuturgardan Pass, direct upon Cabul, reached
the capital after fighting the successful battle of Charasia, and was
occupied in meting out punishment and strengthening his hold until
the winter set in. But with the early snows there came very serious
troubles. Nearly the whole of the Afghan tribes had been aroused to
a _jehad_, or holy war, and the Ghazis gathered round the flag
of a chief named Mohammed Jan to the number of 40,000. It was said
that 100,000 might be expected to take up arms. Roberts’ whole force,
English and native, was barely 5,000, but the former were veteran
troops, and the latter made up of Sikhs and Goorkhas, the bravest of
our Indian levies. The force now arrayed against us was so threatening
that he withdrew entirely within our lines, and there, practically
besieged, held the enemy at bay. It was a humiliating change for an
invading army, but it was the only safe course to pursue. At last,
Mohammed Jan was rash enough to attack Sherpur, and was repulsed with
tremendous loss. We had not been strong enough to go out and meet him
in the field, but he was much too weak to capture our entrenchments.
Our restored supremacy was not again affected until the chiefs at
Ghazni showed signs of turbulence, and a force was detached from Cabul
to join hands with one coming from Candahar to punish the offenders.
The battle of Ahmed Khel, fought and won by Sir Donald Stewart, was a
brilliant victory over a most determined foe. Never in the annals of
Afghan warfare had Ghazis shown such indomitable courage. They came
right in among our men, fighting hand to hand, pistol and sword against
breechloader and bayonet, selling their lives so dearly that they did
great mischief before they were repulsed. A thousand dead Ghazis were
counted on the field, and some of them were women.
But this did not end the fighting, nor did success always smile upon
our arms. Another Afghan army, advancing from Herat under Ayoub
Khan, was met on the Helmund by General Burrows from Candahar, and
a deplorable defeat followed. The causes of the already mentioned
disaster at Maiwand were bad generalship and imprudence, but the sting
of the defeat was somewhat taken out of it by the devotion displayed.
Maiwand imperilled Candahar, which was speedily invested by the
triumphant Ayoub, and the garrison was in some danger. Two armies were
at once set in motion to relieve the place. General Phayre moved up
from Quetta; Sir Frederick Roberts was sent from Cabul, to perform the
great forced march which has become famous in military history. Cutting
himself adrift from his base--an act which is deemed most rash and
generally unjustifiable in military science--he started off with 10,000
men, hampered by 8,000 baggage animals to carry food and indispensable
supplies, with 8,000 camp followers, to march 300 miles across an
enemy’s country. His troops were the flower of the Indian army, their
temper was the finest; no privations checked, no terrors daunted them;
they bore without flinching the wide changes of temperature--between
45 degrees at daybreak and 105 degrees at noon; they were never sure
of food, and they knew that certain death awaited them if they lagged
behind.
The march from Cabul to Candahar was accomplished in twenty days,
making an average of fifteen miles daily march during that time: a
splendid feat in pluck and unyielding endurance; and they reached
Candahar travel-stained but unwearied, ready to join issue with the
enemy directly they met him. Ayoub had raised the siege at the approach
of Roberts, but he awaited him in a strong position; and then followed
the decisive victory of Candahar, fought under the walls of the city,
in which the defeat at Maiwand was fully avenged.
The Zulu war will be remembered with mixed feelings: sorrow for grave
and regrettable disasters, pride at great achievements, which in a
measure atoned for and avenged them. We entered into the struggle a
little too lightly, perhaps, although enough must have been known of
our opponents to have exacted respect for their prowess. The Zulus
were a military nation, every able-bodied man was a soldier, trained in
the skilful use of his weapons, light of foot, ardent for glory, highly
disciplined and drilled. The Zulu generals were admirable tacticians,
and their now well-known plan of attack with centre held back and two
great horns thrust out on each flank was quite scientific. Cetewayo,
the king, a despot who could deal with his braves as he pleased, could
send some 50,000 of them into the field, all ready to sacrifice their
lives for him.
Lord Chelmsford, when the invasion of Zululand was decided upon, did
not command more than 16,000 men, of whom 9,000 were native levies.
His plan of operations covered a wide front: his forces marched in
five columns, widely apart, from the sea-mouth of the Tugela River to
Luneberg and the borders of the Transvaal. The centre, which he led
himself, was the first to suffer, and barely escaped annihilation while
the general-in-chief was out on a reconnaissance with half his whole
force. The enemy he was looking for, some 20,000 Zulus, swooped down
upon the other half in an open undefended camp and destroyed it. The
massacre of Insandlwana, when a battalion of the 24th Regiment and a
number of native troops were cut to pieces, would have been avoided
with proper precautions. What even light entrenchments could do to
stave off even overwhelming attack was seen the same day at Rorke’s
Drift.
Retreat after Insandlwana was imperative. At one time it seemed
as though the Zulus would pursue, and invade the colony of Natal.
Fortunately, our arms were upheld elsewhere. The Tugela, or sea-coast
column, under Colonel Pearson, had advanced some way towards Ulundi,
and had established itself at Ekowe when the news arrived of Lord
Chelmsford’s misfortune. After a short debate, it was wisely and
bravely resolved to stand firm. Ekowe was roughly fortified and bravely
held against thousands of Zulus for more than three months, until it
was at last relieved by Lord Chelmsford in person, who on his way up
had fought and won the battle of Ghingilovo.
Another column, under Sir Evelyn Wood, the nearest to the two
overwhelmed at Insandlwana, had also been hardly pressed. Wood was
active, and his attitude firm. At the action called that of the Zlobane
Mountain he was for a time surrounded, but in the subsequent fight,
when he was attacked in “laager” at Kambula, his force gallantly
repulsed quite ten times their number. Two companies of the 80th,
with the fifth column, were, however, unfortunate, and one of the
detachments sent out to escort waggons coming in with supplies was
surprised and destroyed upon the Intombi River. The Zulus had come upon
them unawares in the mist--4,000 men to 150--and none of the British
escaped alive.
Presently reinforcements began to arrive, and before May the army
numbered 22,000 men, of whom 17,000 were Europeans. A new general--the
then Sir Garnet Wolseley--was also sent out to supersede Lord
Chelmsford; but the latter, utilising his greater means, was able to
recover his prestige before the arrival of his successor. Fresh columns
were organised; Generals Newdigate and Wood converged upon Ulundi from
the north side; General Crealock was to advance from the Tugela (but
never got very far); General Marshall, with a cavalry division, joined
in with Wood.
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT.]
The battle of Ulundi, when the king’s kraal was captured and burned,
ended the war. The Zulus by this time had lost much of their spirit;
they were “beginning to be frightened,” as one of their own chiefs
said; and no doubt they now realised that the strength was on our side.
Cetewayo was for some time a fugitive after Ulundi, and his pursuit and
eventual capture by Colonel Marter and Lord Gifford were not the least
exciting episodes of the Zulu war.
This was not to be our last campaign in South Africa. The war with
the Boers, which followed, is not a brilliant chapter in our military
history. In the Transvaal, as in Zululand, we began by under valuing
our enemy, and time was not allowed to recover our reputation. The fate
of the general whose name will always be associated with the Boer war
was its saddest episode. Misfortune pursued Sir George Colley: he was
one of the “unlucky.” Opinions differ concerning his latest failure,
but there are many who hold that the story of Majuba--of the craggy
and, seemingly, inaccessible hill climbed by Colley and his devoted
band, only to find death and defeat on the top--ought, with better
fortune, to have ranked with Wolfe’s scaling of the Heights of Abraham,
or Charles Napier’s desert march on Emaum Ghur.
[Illustration: “THEY CAME RIGHT IN AMONG OUR MEN”
(_p._ 18).]
Egypt has been our latest battle-ground. The campaign against Arabi and
his insurgent troops may not seem a very glorious achievement, but the
Egyptians were well disciplined; they had admirable weapons, and they
fought behind strong entrenchments, armed with most powerful artillery.
The cavalry combat at Kassassin, the storming of the lines of
Tel-el-Kebir, were very successful feats of arms. Fighting of a much
more serious character was in store for us before we were long in
Egypt. The Great Nile Expedition, for the relief of the ill-fated hero
Gordon, was akin to those to Magdala and Coomassie, but it differed
rather in scope and greatly in results. To ascend a mighty river,
running down with a steady stream five miles an hour and barred at
intervals by cataracts and rapids, was a greater task than scaling
mountains or penetrating the bush. The enterprise was further hampered
by the opposition of a most determined and courageous foe. “Fuzzy
Wuzzy,” as our soldiers christened the shock-headed Soudanese warrior,
was an opponent worthy of our steel. His contempt for British squares
and British breechloaders has been sung in strong language by Kipling,
the soldier’s poet, and was shown by the recklessness with which he
threw himself on the one and faced the other. Of all the brilliant
battles fought by British soldiers, they may be most proud of Abu-Klea,
Tamai, and El-Teb.
It has been often said in disparagement of our small wars, that they
have been mostly waged against savage foes. But this is surely to our
soldiers’ credit, for they have, in this way, encountered some of
the most warlike races in the world, many of impetuous, of reckless
fanatical bravery, who accepted none of the recognised canons and
conventions of civilised warfare. To kill or be killed was the only
watchword of the Afghan Ghazi, the stalwart Zulu, or the irrepressible
Soudanese. There was no quarter, no making prisoners, except for
subsequent butchery. In these desperate campaigns, our men fought with
their lives in their hands. It was truly war to the knife, and called
for the highest courage.
Nothing shows this better than the many deeds of heroism recorded in
these wars, deeds that earned the most coveted of English military
distinctions--the Victoria Cross. A chaplain, Mr. Adams, in the first
fight outside Sherpur, bravely extricated a trooper who was under
his dead horse in a _mêlée_, and who would certainly have been
slain. In the Mutiny, Sir Charles Fraser, now a gallant general, won
both the cross and the Humane Society’s medal at one and the same
time for saving, under a heavy fire, a man who was drowning. In the
closing affair of the Zulu war, before Ulundi, Lord William Beresford
gallantly picked up a trooper, whose horse had been shot under him,
and carried him off behind him on his own horse. The Zulus were near at
hand in great numbers, and the fate of the fallen man would have been
sealed. Commandant D’Arcy, of the frontier Light Horse, exhibited the
same self-sacrificing courage on this occasion, but his own horse was
wounded and fell under the double weight, whereupon D’Arcy mounted his
man upon another trooper’s horse, and saw them safely off before he
rode away.
* * * * *
Well, we have had our glance at the wars of the century--a cursory
glance enough, and attracted chiefly by the red coat of the British
soldier; let us now turn over the leaves of our book, and pass from
battle to battle. We shall “go as we please”--passing from Plevna to
Austerlitz, from Bull Run to Gravelotte, just as the spirit moves us,
and unfettered by sequence either of date or place. Now we shall follow
the fortunes of the Great Napoleon, now of Napoleon “the Little”; now
of Wellington, now of Roberts and Wolseley; now of Moltke, Skobeleff,
MacMahon, Sherman, Garibaldi. At one moment we shall be listening to
the thunder of a broadside from the _Victory_, at the next to the
bombardment of Alexandria. We shall pass from the shots and shells of
civilised warfare to the assegais and spears of the Zulu, the hatchets
of the Maori, the knives of the Soudanese. We shall see all the glories
of war, deeds of daring and heroism, acts of noble self-sacrifice and
devotion; but we shall see also that reverse side of the picture which
should indeed be engraved still deeper on our minds: we shall see
that its glories are outweighed by its horrors, its sufferings, its
pitifulness.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
Saarbrück
The Baptism _of_ Fire
By
Archibald Forbes
THE PRINCE IMPERIAL]
The pleasant little frontier town of Saarbrück was a very interesting
place at the beginning of the Franco-German war. Within the distance
of a mile from the low heights covering Saarbrück towards the west,
ran the frontier line dividing France from Germany. The place was
being held “on the bounce,” for its garrison consisted merely of one
battalion of the Hohenzollern infantry regiment and two squadrons of
the 7th Rhineland Uhlans. All along this frontier line down in the
broad smooth valley between the Saarbrück heights and the loftier and
more abrupt Spicheren heights inside of the French border, the hostile
piquets and videttes confronted each other.
As one stood in front of the little “Bellevue” public-house on the
Reppertsberg, one saw in the plain below among the trees a Prussian
piquet of Uhlans and infantry; and on the little knolls further in
advance the videttes circling singly, their lance-pennons fluttering
in the wind. Several hundred yards further away, by the side of the
Forbach road, was the frontier custom-house which the French now used
as a piquet house. Outside of it the red-breeched linesmen were to be
seen sitting or lounging about in considerable numbers. In their front
was the chain of their videttes. All along the frontier line, to the
right and left of this point, there ran this arrangement of outposts
confronting each other. On the Spicheren upland a French force was
gradually gathering until, by the end of July, the whole of Frossard’s
army corps was massed on the Spicheren, within gunshot distance of the
low heights covering Saarbrück.
In those pleasant early days, while as yet there were no graves
on the Spicheren Berg and no shattered men lying in the Saarbrück
hospitals or littering the platform of the Saarbrück railway station
on the blood-stained stretchers, the opposing piquets and videttes
formed quite the diversion of the Saarbrück people. After the day’s
work was over, the labouring folk used regularly to stroll up to the
“Bellevue” to watch, as they drank their beer, the dropping fire, fain
to see a German marksman proving his skill by hitting a Frenchman.
Both sides were very cautious and few casualties occurred. As yet the
Saarbrück hospital contained but two wounded Germans, both linesmen
of the Hohenzollern regiment. The French were reputed to be in force
in Forbach as well as on the Spicheren Berg--as many, it was said, as
15,000 men. Saarbrück, however, was in no trepidation and kept a good
face with its little garrison of some 1,200 men all told.
It was on one of the earliest of those early days that the midday
_table d’hôte_ in the Rheinischer Hof was broken up abruptly by
the report that French cannon were being moved forward to the edge
of the Spicheren Berg. Immediately the drummers paraded the town,
beating to arms. A company of the Hohenzollerns occupied each of the
two bridges and a third marched up the hill and took up a position
among the trees skirting the exercise-field. A detachment of the Uhlans
rode up on to the heights, while the rest stood to their horses in
the Central Platz. From the “Bellevue” the French cannon were easily
discernible through the field-glass, as they were being drawn forward
into position by infantrymen.
Almost immediately came a puff of white smoke from the mouth of one
of the guns, and a shell struck on the road close by the little
beer-house, bursting as it fell. There was a stampede on the part of
the civilians from their beer-mugs in the “Bellevue,” and they hurried
into cover behind the crest of the height. They were only just in
time. Another shell, ricocheting off the road, struck the front of the
beer-house, went through the wall as if it had been paper, and burst
inside, blowing out the windows and part of the roof. Four more shots
were fired, and then the French withdrew their cannon. Their practice,
no doubt experimental, was very good--of the six shells fired, three
struck the “Bellevue.” Two rooms of it had been blown into one, the
bar knocked into little pieces, the furniture wrecked, and a great
gap in the floor made by a shell on its way to the cellar to cause a
smash-royal among the bottles.
The outposts blazed away at each other until dusk. One of the last
shots killed a soldier on patrol--he was the first man killed in the
war. The poor fellow was hit full on the forehead, and he must have
died instantaneously. His comrades carried in the corpse on a stretcher
improvised of their rifles. The drops of blood pit-patted on the road
as they carried him past, the moonbeams falling on the pale dead face.
Quite a lad he was, with the down hardly grown on his face--likely
enough a mother might have been thinking of and praying for her lad,
little knowing that he was lying stark and cold, waiting for a grave.
The slow days passed in a strange bewildering calm, unbroken save
by the trivial skirmishes occurring in the course of the constant
reconnaissances and patrolling parties.
Frossard lay passive on the Spicheren save for the
“potato-reconnaissances” his hungry soldiers occasionally made, sending
out a screen of skirmishers to the front while the working parties dug
potatoes with great industry.
Brave old Major von Pestel of the Lancers, who commanded the handful of
men holding Saarbrück, had received an order from Moltke to evacuate
a place which was regarded as untenable; but von Pestel pleaded
successfully to be left where he was, on the undertaking that he would
not compromise his little command, but would fall back as soon as
serious danger threatened.
Meanwhile he was never out of the saddle. Every afternoon he would come
cantering over the Bellevue height with his cheery greeting and his
shout, “Come along, English sir! I go to draw de shoots of de enemy!”
The French marksmen expended a considerable quantity of ammunition on
the worthy major; but the range was long and they never succeeded in
hitting him, although certainly he gave them plenty of chances.
But in spite of Major von Pestel’s cordiality, it was rather a tedious
time. Men asked each other if it were possible that the French on
the Spicheren were not aware of the weakness of the land on the
other side of the frontier. The Prussian infantrymen and Uhlans, it
was true, were manipulated dexterously and assiduously to make a
battalion seem a brigade and a couple of squadrons a powerful cavalry
force; yet it was felt that the place was being held only by dint of
sheer impudence--for there were no supports as yet nigh at hand--and
that the bubble must burst summarily if Frossard should abandon his
unaccountable inactivity. Why the soldiers in red breeches lay so long
basking lazily in the sun on the Spicheren slopes the men of Saarbrück
could not comprehend; but the day must surely be near now, they said
one to the other, when the red-breeches would gird up their loins and
roll their columns on over the Reppertsberg, the exercise-ground, and
the Winterberg, and across the Saar into the Köllerthaler Wald or the
Pfalz. In their path--surely they must have known it--there stood but
an open town, a couple of bridges partially barricaded with barrels,
a single battalion of infantry and two reasonably strong squadrons of
Uhlans.
The 1st of August, while the French on the Spicheren Berg were still
supine, brought to near Saarbrück what all hoped was the earnest at
last of a host, not alone of resistance, but also of invasion. On the
afternoon of that day, the 1st and 3rd battalions of the Hohenzollern
regiment, with a battery of artillery, reached the vicinity and
bivouacked on the edge of the forest at Raschpfuhl, some two miles
north-west of the town. General Gneisenau also arrived and assumed the
command.
[Illustration:
LOCALITY of
the Battle of
SAARBRUCK]
On the morning of the 2nd, when the Hohenzollerns were basking in their
sunshiny bivouac, the French Emperor, with his son, was travelling by
train from Metz to Forbach. The German videttes down the valley heard
the gusts of cheering with which Frossard’s soldiers welcomed the
Head of the State and his heir. Ignorant of the cause, some attributed
the cheering to the announcement of a French success somewhere; others
ascribed it to an extra issue of wine. How were the honest Uhlans to
discern that the imperial parent had come to the frontier to make
a military promenade wherewithal to throw dust in the eyes of his
Parisians, and that “Lulu,” as they impertinently styled the heir of
the dynasty, accompanied his father that he might receive his “baptism
of fire”?
The night had passed in quiet along the frontier, and in the morning it
seemed as if the 2nd of August was to be as monotonous as had been the
1st. General Gneisenau and old von Pestel, now a lieutenant-colonel,
had made a reconnaissance from the “Bellevue” and had come back to
a leisurely breakfast. The soldiers in the barrackyards and in the
several posts on the environs of the town, slept and smoked and
gossiped, their arms stacked as usual; the officers sat under the trees
drinking their Rhine wine, and the whole place seemed oppressed by the
drowsiness of a fervently hot day.
[Illustration: SAARBRÜCK.]
But the torpor was soon to give place to alert activity. At ten a.m.
Saarbrück awoke at the announcement sent in from the outposts that the
enemy was at last advancing. The two companies in front of Saarbrück
moved at once into the line of defence. The company from St. Johann
hurried by at the double to occupy the “Red House.” Major von Horn
hastened to strengthen the post on the Winterberg, which was most
imminently threatened. Captain Gründer occupied the Löwenberg, and
moved with Leydecker’s company and the rest of his own out to St.
Arnual, where his rifle fire and the fire of two guns sent to him from
Raschpfuhl gave a warm reception to the enemy debouching from the
Stiftswald. As some English spectators hurried up to the “Bellevue”
height, there rattled past them at a sharp trot a couple of guns which
the general had ordered to be put in position on the Exercise Platz.
The battery chief waved his hand cheerily as he galloped to the front.
From the “Bellevue” one looked upon an imposing spectacle. Three roads,
crossing the plain from the wooded heights on the French side of the
frontier, converge on Saarbrück. One of these is the great post-road
from Forbach. Another, starting from the village of Spicheren, winds
tortuously down the right flank of the precipitous “Rothe Berg”--the
“Red Crag”--crosses the hollow and enters Saarbrück between the
Reppertsberg and the Nussberg. The third, further to the east, is a
mere green track of considerable breadth, which falls abruptly down
into the valley by the poplar-clad slope from the plateau towards St.
Arnual.
Down all these three roads were flowing from the upland dense and
glittering streams of French troops, the stream on the great road
flowing swiftest and fastest. The sunrays flashed on the bright
bayonets, and threw up from the green or grey background the red
and blue of the uniforms. The troops came on in the true careless,
irregular French style, with scarcely a pretence of formation, but with
a speed that was remarkable. The moment that the head of a column
reached the valley, it broke into spray. As file after file reached
a certain point, it became dissipated; the nimble linesmen extended
further and further to right and left, till by the time that the heads
of all three columns were in the valley, an unbroken but loose chain of
skirmishers was drawn across the plain several hundred yards in advance.
[Illustration: LULU’S DÉBUT.]
Then began the steady deployments of company after company, battalion
after battalion, regiment after regiment; and almost before one had
realised the situation, a long dense line had been ruled along the
valley behind the more ragged line of the skirmishers. Squadrons of
cavalry streamed down, and forming line at a gallop, rapidly overtook
the infantry. Passing through the intervals, they re-formed and pushed
on to occupy and cover the flanks of the advance.
While all this was going on in the valley, the streams from behind the
wood and the hill seemed to flow from a source that never would run
dry. It was hardly a break that was caused in it by the two batteries
that came down and wheeled off the road on to the verge of the plateau,
the gunners unlimbering and standing ready by the venomous pieces that
presently gave fire from their wicked black, mouths. Higher up on the
crest were visible other batteries, apparently of larger guns. The
peculiarity of the movements described was their perfect quietness and
uninterruption. The French tirailleurs had already begun to breast the
gentle slope leading up to the positions held by the Germans, when the
chassepots began to give tongue; and then the silence gave place to a
steady rattle of musketry fire, through the smoke of which the main
advance moved steadily and swiftly forward.
Bataille’s division formed the first line; of it Bastoul’s brigade
on the right of the main road moved against the Reppertsberg, the
Winterberg, and St. Arnual; Pouget’s brigade on the left of the road
moved towards the exercise-ground. In the second line were the brigades
of Michelet and Valazé; the remainder of Frossard’s corps, the strength
of which reached 35,000 men, followed in reserve. An army corps was
marching against a couple of battalions.
Despite the disproportion, the Prussian defence was obstinate. It was
only after a brisk combat that the weak detachment were driven from St.
Arnual, the Winterberg, and the Reppertsberg. On the latter height a
Prussian half-company met the French skirmishers with the bayonet, and
then held them for a time at bay by a fire from behind the hedges.
The final withdrawal was conducted slowly, in excellent order. Baron
von Rosen held his company to the last on the exercise-ground. His
steadfast soldiers, lying down between the trees, waited until Pouget’s
skirmishers were within 300 yards, and then poured in a fire so heavy
that the French assailants were compelled to halt and lie down for a
time.
It was just as Rosen had received a peremptory order to retire that
the few spectators who waited to accompany that movement witnessed
the descent from the Spicheren height of a great _cortège_ of
mounted officers. The glittering procession rode forward at a slow
trot, crossed the intervening level, and then ascended the slope of
the Folster height, around which was massed the regiments of Valazé’s
brigade.
The _cortège_ halted on the low crest of the Folster height; and
through the telescope one saw the group open out and leave isolated
two personages on horseback, one of whom was clearly discerned to be
Napoleon III. The boyish figure on the smaller horse, whose gestures
were so animated, was presumed to be the young Prince Imperial; and
the cheers which rose above the din of the musketry-fire were taken to
indicate the congratulations of the soldiers at the Prince’s receiving
his “baptism of fire”--which, indeed, it has been supposed, was the
object of the otherwise pointless demonstration. Not on the Folster
Höhe, but nearer to Saarbrück, under the trees of the exercise-ground,
is now a stone with a somewhat brusque inscription, which being
translated reads:--“Lulu’s Début, 2nd August, 1870. Erected by H. H.
Baumann, Veteran of 1814–1815.”
It was just as Rosen was withdrawing his company from the immediate
front of Pouget’s advance that a curious and characteristic incident
occurred. Among the few civilians who remained on the exercise-ground
to the bitter end was a gallant British officer, Wigram Battye of the
famous “Guides,” who died fighting in Afghanistan in the campaign of
1878. A soldier was shot down close to him, whereupon Battye, who had
been rebelling against the retirement, snatched up the dead man’s
needle-gun and pouch-belt, ran out into the open, dropped on one
knee, and opened fire on Pouget’s brigade. Pouget’s brigade replied
with alacrity, and presently Battye was bowled over with a chassepot
bullet in the ribs. A German professor and a brother Briton ran out and
brought him in, conveyed him later to a village in the rear, plastered
successive layers of brown paper over the damaged ribs, and started him
off in a waggon to the Kreuznach hospital.
The French did not press upon the orderly Prussian retirement, and,
indeed, both of the bridges across the Saar remained in the possession
of the Prussians. The firing had almost died out when, soon after noon,
the French began to bombard the lower bridge and the railway station
from three batteries which they had brought up on to the heights
overhanging Saarbrück. One of these was a mitrailleuse, the storm of
bullets from which swept the bridge so that nothing could live on it,
and an unfortunate burgher, who did not believe in the mitrailleuse,
had to alter his views on this subject when the lower part of his
person was riddled by the bullets it poured forth. The Prussian
artillery about Malstatt tried with four guns to make head against the
French batteries, but had to give up the attempt and retire. The final
detachment of Prussians remained under the shelter of Hagen’s Hotel
while the French were shelling the railway station, but ultimately ran
the gauntlet and found refuge in the Köllerthal. The casualties of the
day were trivial. The Prussians had eight men killed, four officers and
seventy-one men wounded. The French loss amounted to six officers and
eighty men.
During their short stay in and about Saarbrück the French behaved with
great moderation. General Frossard, on the evening of the attack,
sent for the Mayor of Saarbrück, and told him that his orders were
very strict against marauding, and that if any cases occurred the
townspeople were to take the numbers on the caps of the evil-doers,
when the fellows would be severely punished. But there was little
occasion for complaint: the French soldiers paid their way honestly.
They did, to be sure, drink a brewery dry, but the brewer refrained
from reporting them. A corporal attempted to kiss pretty Fräulein
Sophie--the _dame du comptoir_ of the Rhinescher Hof; but a
captain caught him in the act, ran him off the premises, and himself
kissed the winsome lass. On the morning of the 6th the Prussian troops
were back again in Saarbrück: the French had gone back to the Spicheren
position on the previous night.
[Illustration:
THE STORMING OF THE TAKU FORTS
BY A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE]
“There’s many a victory, surely, decisive and complete,
As meant a sight less fightin’ than a hardly fought defeat;
And if people do their duty, every man in his degree,
Why defeat may be more glorious than a victory needs to be.”
These lines from a modern ballad put very clearly a truth that is too
often forgotten. Victories are remembered and commemorated by medals
and names inscribed in letters of gold on our regimental colours; but
people do not talk about defeats. Yet when brave men fail against
desperate odds, the story of their gallant efforts to carry their flag
to victory is quite as well worth the telling and the remembering as if
the chance of war had given them the coveted prize of success.
So it is that among the battles of the century that should not be
forgotten we count the one solitary defeat that English sailors or
soldiers ever suffered at the hands of the Chinese--Admiral Hope’s
failure to force the entrance of the Pei-ho River at the Taku Forts on
June 25th, 1859: a failure amply avenged by the gallant storming of the
same forts in the following year.
Taku is a town near the mouth of the Pei-ho (_i.e._ the “North
River”), which, flowing between low, muddy banks, runs into the Gulf of
Pe-chi-li. Thirty-four miles higher up the river is Tien-tsin, built
at the junction of the Pei-ho with the Grand Canal. It is the port of
Pekin, and a busy and prosperous place. Pekin, the capital, is some
eighty miles still further inland. In the year 1858 the French and
English had forced their way to Tien-tsin, passing the forts near Taku
at the river mouth with but little difficulty, for the works were badly
armed and held by an irresolute garrison which made but a poor defence.
When Tien-tsin was occupied, the Chinese asked for peace, and a treaty
was signed there containing, among other stipulations, an agreement
that the envoys of England and France were to be received at Pekin
within a year, and that the treaty was to be solemnly ratified there.
Now the Chinese, as soon as the allies withdrew from Tien-tsin, began
to regret having consented to allow the foreign ambassadors to enter
their capital, and endeavoured to have it arranged that the treaty
should be ratified elsewhere. But England and France insisted on the
original agreement being carried out, and when the envoys of the two
countries arrived off the mouth of the Pei-ho in June, 1859, and
announced their intention of proceeding up the river to Pekin, they
were escorted by an English fleet under the command of Rear-Admiral
Hope.
It was found that not only had the forts at the river mouth, which
had so easily been silenced the year before, been put into a state of
repair, but that the river was blocked against anything larger than
rowing-boats by a series of strong barriers. The admiral was informed
that these had been placed on the river to keep out pirates and it was
promised that they should be removed; but so far from keeping this
promise, the local mandarins set to work to strengthen the defences
of the river. On June 21st, the admiral sent the Chinese commander a
letter warning him that if the obstacles were not cleared out of the
channel of the Pei-ho by the evening of the 24th, he would remove them
by force.
The three days’ grace thus given to the Chinese he employed in
preparations to make good his warning message. He had several powerful
ships in his squadron, but none of these could take a direct part in
the coming fight, for the entrance to the Pei-ho is obstructed by a
wide stretch of shallows, the depth of water on the bar being only two
feet at low water, and hardly more than eleven at high tide; and this
only in a narrow channel scoured out by the river. Thus, for the actual
attack on the forts, he had to rely on the gunboats of his fleet, a
number of small wooden steamers of light draft built during the Crimean
war for service in the shallow waters of the Baltic and Black Seas. The
gunboats with which Admiral Hope crossed the bar and anchored below the
forts on the 23rd were the following:--
_Plover_, _Bunterer_, _Forester_, _Haughty_, _Janus_, _Kestrel_, _Lee_,
_Opossum_, _Starling_, each of four guns; _Nimrod_ and _Cormorant_,
each of six guns.
[Illustration: SCENE OF THE OPERATIONS OF 1859 AND 1860.]
Each had a crew of forty or fifty officers and men, so that the eleven
little steamers brought forty-eight guns and 500 men into action. The
heavier ships outside the bar were to send in 500 or 600 more men,
marines and bluejackets, in steam launches, boats and junks; this force
being intended to be used as a landing party when the fire of the forts
had been silenced. No one expected that this would prove a difficult
business.
It was true that there was a big fort on the south side, with mud
ramparts nearly half a mile long, and heavy towers behind them, and
another large fort on the north bank, placed so as to sweep the bend of
the river; but on all previous occasions the Chinese gunners had made
very bad practice with their guns, and had soon been driven from them
by the fire of English ships; and, besides, it was not supposed that
there were any large number of guns in position on the forts, for very
few embrasures had been cut in the mud walls, so far as anyone could
see.
On the evening of the 24th, no answer having been received from the
shore, it was announced that the attack would be made next day, and
after dark the admiral sent in one of his officers, Captain Willes (now
Admiral Sir George Willes, G.C.B.), to examine the obstacles in the
river and see what he could do to remove them. Willes was accompanied
by three armed boats, provided with explosives. Rowing up quietly under
cover of the darkness the boats came first to a row of iron stakes,
each topped with a sharp spike and supported on a tripod base, so that
they were just in the proper position to pierce the side or bottom of a
ship coming up the river at high water.
This first barrier was just opposite the lower end of the South Fort.
Passing cautiously between two of the spikes, the daring explorers
rowed up the river for a quarter of a mile, when they came to a second
barrier, formed by a heavy cable of cocoa fibre and two chain cables
stretched across the channel, twelve feet apart, and supported at every
thirty feet by a floating boom securely anchored up and down stream.
Two of the boats were left to fix a mine under the middle of this
floating barrier, while Willes pushed on further into the darkness with
the third. Just above the bend of the river he came to a third barrier,
formed of two huge rafts, moored so as to leave only a narrow zigzag
channel in mid-stream, this passage being still further secured with
iron stakes.
[Illustration: DEFENCES OF THE PEI-HO, 1859.]
Willes got out on one of the rafts and, crawling on hands and knees,
examined it carefully, and decided that mere ramming with a gunboat’s
prow would not be enough to displace it. As he crouched on the raft he
could see the Chinese sentries on the river bank, but was, happily,
unseen by them. Returning to his boat, he dropped down to the second
barrier. The mine was ready, and having lighted its fuse the boats
pulled down the stream to the flotilla. The explosion revealed their
presence to the Chinese, and a couple of harmless cannon shots were
fired at them from the South Fort. The plucky little expedition had
been a complete success; but before morning the Chinese had repaired
the gap blown by the mine in the floating boom.
[Illustration: “‘WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING, YOU
RASCALS?’” (_p. 30_).]
Early on Saturday, June 25th, the gunboat flotilla cleared for action.
Admiral Hope’s orders were that nine of the ships should anchor close
to the first barrier and bring their guns to bear on the forts, while
the two others broke through the barriers and cleared the way for a
further advance. High water was at 11.30 a.m., and it was expected that
all would be in position by that time; but the difficulty of working
so many ships in a narrow channel, not more than 200 yards wide, with
a strong current and with mud banks covered by shallow water on each
side, was so great that it was not till after one that the ships had
anchored, and even then two of them, the _Banterer_ and the
_Starling_, were stuck fast on the mud in positions from which it
was not easy to get their guns to bear.
All this time the forts had not shown the least sign of life. Their
embrasures were closed; a few black flags flew on the upper works, but
not a soul was to be seen on the mud ramparts. It was a bright summer
day, blazing hot, with a cloudless sky of deep blue overhead, and all
round the little flotilla the dark waters of the river came swirling
down on the ebb, so that already patches of yellow mud were showing
here and there under the rush-covered banks.
The _Plover_, with all steam up and the admiral on board, was
close to the first barrier of iron spikes, and the _Opossum_,
now commanded by Captain Willes, lay close by her, the special task
of this ship being to deal with this first obstacle. At a signal from
the admiral the _Opossum_ hitched a cable round one of the iron
stakes, and, passing it over one of her winches, reversed her engines
and tried thus to tear the stake out of the river. But it was so well
fixed that it was not until half-past two, after half-an-hour of
anxious work, that the obstacle gave way.
The admiral in the _Plover_ now steamed through the gap thus
formed, followed by the _Opossum_. As the two little ships
approached the floating barrier beyond, a flash from the long rampart
on the left, the boom of a heavy gun, the whistle of a round shot in
the air, warned them that the Chinese meant to resist.
Along the walls of the forts on either side banners were hoisted on
every flag pole, embrasures were opened, guns run out, and from some
six hundred yards of the rampart on the left, and from the North Fort
out in front, the Chinese artillery, rapidly served and well laid,
poured a storm of shot upon the leading ships.
Promptly came the English answer. Admiral Hope’s signal, “Engage the
enemy,” flew from the masthead of the _Plover_; her four guns
opened, three of them on the big fort away to the left, not more than
two hundred yards off, the other replying to the North Fort, while the
guns of the rest of the flotilla took up the loud chorus.
It was a fight at close quarters, and the English guns were worked
by men who knew their business; but the Chinese fire, instead of
slackening, seemed to grow heavier every minute. If a gun was silenced,
if a shell burst in an embrasure and swept away all within reach of its
explosion, another gun was promptly placed in battery, another band of
daring gunners took the places of the slain. They fired so steadily
and aimed so truly, that to this day many hold that they had trained
European artillerymen helping them. The iron storm to which they were
exposed began to tell upon the two leading ships. The _Plover_
had thirty-one out of her crew of forty killed or wounded in the first
half-hour. Her commander, Lieutenant Rason, was literally cut in two
by a round shot; the admiral was wounded in the thigh, but refused to
leave the deck; and Captain McKenna, who was attached to his staff, was
killed at his side. Nine unwounded men only were left on board, but
they, with the help of some of their wounded comrades, kept two of the
guns in action, though they fought on a deck slippery with blood, and
with the bulwarks, boats, and spars of their ship cut to pieces by the
Chinese shot.
It was about this time that a boat flying the Stars and Stripes came
pulling in from an American cruiser that lay outside the bar. Commodore
Tatnall of the United States navy was on board, and he had come to the
_Plover_, regardless of the Chinese fire, to offer some help to
the English admiral. As a midshipman he had fought against the British
in the war of 1812, but, as the old sailor said to Admiral Hope, “blood
is thicker than water”; and though, as a neutral, he could not join in
the attack, he offered to send in his steam launch and help to convey
the wounded out of danger, an offer that was gratefully accepted. When
he bade good day to the admiral and went back to his boat, he had to
wait a little for his men. They came aft, looking hot and with the
black marks of powder on their hands and faces. “What have you been
doing, you rascals?” said Tatnall. “Don’t you know we’re neutrals?”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the spokesman of the party, “but they were a
bit short-handed with the bow-gun, and we thought it no harm to give
them a hand while we were waiting.” The incident is remembered in the
navy to this day as a good deed done for the Old Country by Brother
Jonathan.
At three o’clock Admiral Hope ordered the _Plover_, now almost
disabled, to drop down the river to a safer station, and transferred
his flag to the _Opossum_, the _Lee_ and the _Haughty_ steaming up to
the place left vacant in the front of the fight. A few minutes more,
and a round shot crashed through the _Opossum’s_ rigging close to the
admiral, knocking him down and breaking three of his ribs; but though
suffering severely the brave commander made light of his injuries, a
bandage was adjusted round his chest, and seated on the deck of the
gunboat he still kept the command, and later on even insisted on being
lifted into his barge in order to visit and encourage the crews of the
_Haughty_ and the _Lee_.
“_Opossum_, ahoy!” hailed an officer from the _Haughty_. “Your stern is
on fire.”
“Can’t help it,” shouted back her commander. “Can’t spare men to put it
out. Have only just enough to keep our guns going.” But, in her turn,
the _Opossum_ had to give up the fight for awhile and drop down
to the first barrier. The _Lee_ and the _Haughty_ now bore
the brunt of the fight, and suffered severely. Everything that could be
smashed on their decks was knocked to pieces, and the _Lee_ was
hit badly in several places at and below the water-line. Woods, her
boatswain, informed her commander, Lieutenant Jones, that unless the
shot-holes could be plugged she would sink, as her pumps and donkey
engine could not get the water out as fast as it came in. “Well, then,
we must sink,” said the lieutenant; “you can’t get at the worst of the
holes from inside, and I’m not going to order a man to go over the
side with the tide running down like this, and our propeller going.”
But Woods replied by promptly volunteering to go over the side and see
what he could do. His commander warned him that the screw must be kept
going, or the ship would drift out of her place--so, besides the chance
of drowning, he would risk being killed by the propeller blades; but
Woods, remarking that the chance of being killed was much of a muchness
anywhere just then, went over the side, with a line round his waist
and a supply of shot-plugs and rags in his hands, and, diving again
and again, and more than once sweeping down with the tide under the
stern and rising just clear of the wash of the screw, he successfully
plugged several shot-holes. But for all that the ship continued to
fill, and before long had to give up her place in the fight and run
aground to prevent her sinking.
The _Cormorant_ replaced the _Lee_, the admiral, by his own
request, being seated in a chair on her deck. He had already once
fainted, and the doctors now persuaded him to allow them to send him
to the hospital ship on the bar, and Captain Shadwell, the next senior
officer, took the command of the attack. At half-past five, when the
battle had lasted three hours, the _Kestrel_ sank at her anchors.
Of the eleven gunboats, six were disabled or put out of action. But
the fire of the Chinese batteries was slackening, and at 6.30, after a
hurried council of war on board the _Cormorant_, it was resolved
to bring in the marines and sailors who had been waiting in boats and
junks inside the bar to act as a landing party, and try to carry the
South Fort by a bold rush.
It was after seven, and very little daylight was left for the daring
attempt, when the boats were towed in by the _Opossum_ and the
_Toey ’Wan_, a little Chinese steamer. Captain Shadwell took
command of the landing party, which was made up of bluejackets under
Captain Vansittart, and Commanders Heath and Commerell, R.N. Sixty
French sailors, under Commander Tricault, of the French frigate
_Duhalya_, the marines under Colonel Lemon, and a party of sappers
with scaling-ladders, under Major Forbes, R.E.
As the boats pulled in to the shore, the fire from the North Fort had
ceased, and only an occasional shot was fired from the long rampart
of the South Fort. The landing place was five hundred yards in front
of the right bastion of this fort. The tide had fallen so far that it
was not possible to get any nearer, and the column had to make its way
across these five hundred yards of mud covered with weeds and cut up
with ditches and pools, the ground being so soft in places that the men
sank to their waists in it. And as the first boat’s crew landed on this
mud bank, suddenly, to the surprise of everyone, the whole front of the
South Fort burst into flame.
The silence of its guns was only a clever _ruse_, to lure the
British to a closer attack. Now every gun opened fire again, while the
Chinese, regardless of the covering fire from the gunboats, crowded on
to the crest of the rampart, and opened fire with small arms upon the
landing party. As they struggled onwards to the river bank round shot
and grape, balls from swivels and muskets, rockets, and even arrows,
fell among them in showers. Captain Shadwell was one of the first to be
wounded; Vansittart fell, with one leg shattered by a ball; dead and
wounded men lay on all sides, and the wounded had to be carried back to
the boats to save them from being smothered in the mud.
Three broad ditches lay between the landing place and the fort.
Not 150 men reached the second of these, and only fifty the third,
which lay just below the rampart. Several of this gallant band were
officers--Tricault, the Frenchman, Commerell and Heath, Parke and
Hawkey of the Marines, and Major Forbes of the Engineers. Their
cartridges were nearly all wet and useless, and they had only one
scaling-ladder. It was reared against the rampart, and ten men were
climbing up it, when a volley from above killed three and wounded five
of them, and then the ladder was thrown down and broken. There was no
help for it but to retire.
It was now dark, but the Chinese burnt flaring blue lights and sent
up rockets and fire-balls, and by their light fired on their retiring
enemies. Sixty-eight men were killed and nearly 300 wounded, in the
advance and retreat of the landing party. Several of the boats had been
sunk, and many of the men had to wait up to their waists, and even
their necks, in water, on the river’s brink, till they could be taken
off.
It was 1 a.m. before Commanders Heath and Commerell, the two last of
the party, reembarked. Then the gunboats slipped down to the bar, a
party being sent in next day to blow up or burn those of the grounded
ships that could not be got off.
So ended the disastrous battle on the Pei ho. Next year an allied force
of British and French troops, under General Sir Hope Grant and General
de Montauban, taught the Chinese that, notwithstanding their victory
over Admiral Hope’s little gunboats, they were in no position to cope
with the great Powers of the West. While the allied fleets watched the
entrance of the river, 11,000 British and Indian troops and between
6,000 and 7,000 Frenchmen were landed at Peh-tang, some eight miles
north of Taku. A wide expanse of marshes separated Peh-tang from the
forts which were to be the first object of the allied operations; but
these obstacles were turned by a march inland, in which the allies
defeated the Chinese field-army at Sin-ho, on August 12th, and coming
down the north bank of the Pei-ho, seized the walled town of Tang-ku,
three miles above the forts, on the 14th.
These forts were four in number. There were, first, the North and South
Forts, which Admiral Hope had attacked the year before, and a little
higher up the river there were two others, known as the small North
Fort and the small South Fort. They stood on opposite banks of the
river, and were both alike--square structures enclosed by embattled
walls of sun-dried mud, a few heavier guns being placed on a high
platform in the centre, and the whole being surrounded with a double
ditch, full of water, too deep to ford. Between the inner ditch and the
rampart were broad belts of sharpened bamboo spikes, about fifteen feet
wide. The swampy nature of the country rendered the approach to the
forts difficult for artillery.
At first there was a difference of opinion between the two generals
as to how the forts were to be attacked. It was agreed that as they
were built to protect the river mouth, and their strongest fronts were
toward the sea, they should be assailed from the land side; but General
de Montauban wanted to cross the river, and take the great South Fort
first of all. Sir Hope Grant, however, insisted that a much better plan
would be to begin with the small North Fort, and predicted confidently
that if it were taken all the other forts would be quickly surrendered,
as each of them in turn could bring its fire to bear upon those still
in the hands of the Chinese. Happily, this plan was adopted, though
the French general was so dissatisfied with it that he only sent a few
hundred men to help in the attack of the fort, and came to look on
himself, without even wearing his sword, as if he wished to disclaim
all part in the business.
The swamps so narrowed the available ground in front of the small North
Fort that the attacking force was limited to 2,500 English and some 400
French. On the evening of the 20th of August, forty-four guns and three
8-inch mortars had been placed in battery before the fort.
At five a.m. on the 21st they began the bombardment, which was to
prepare the way for the storming party. The English fire soon began
to silence the Chinese guns, and about an hour after the bombardment
began, a shell from the mortar battery penetrated into one of the
magazines of the fort. It blew up with a deafening explosion, and so
dense was the cloud of smoke that settled down upon the scene of the
disaster, so utterly silent was every Chinese gun in the work, that at
first it seemed as if the fort had ceased to exist; but as the smoke
cleared the Chinese bravely reopened fire.
Down at the mouth of the river, Admiral Hope’s ships were once more
engaging the two outer forts; but this was done merely to keep their
garrisons well occupied, and to prevent them sending help to the
smaller fort. Here, too, fortune helped the British, and one of Hope’s
shells blew up a magazine in the South Fort, doing a fearful amount of
damage to its defenders.
Soon after six o’clock the storming column was ordered to advance
against the small North Fort, the English force being mainly composed
of the 44th and 67th regiments. In front of the column a party of
marines carried a pontoon-bridge for crossing the ditches; but as they
approached the walls they were met with such a heavy fire of musketry
that the attempt to bring up the pontoons was abandoned. Fifteen of the
men carrying them fell under a single volley.
The French had adopted a simpler plan. They had bamboo ladders, which
were carried for them by Chinese coolies. Heedless of the fire of their
own countrymen, the coolies laid the ladders across the ditches, and,
standing up to their necks in water, supported them while the Frenchmen
scrambled across. “These poor coolies behaved gallantly,” wrote Sir
Hope Grant in his journal, “and though some of them were shot down,
they never flinched in the least.” The fact is, that a Chinaman does
not seem to know what the fear of death is; and while these men were
exposing their lives for a few pence, their countrymen on the ramparts
were just as recklessly standing up on the very crest of the wall in
order to get a better shot at the stormers.
The English crossed the ditches, partly by swimming and struggling
through the muddy water, partly by the French ladders, partly over a
drawbridge which Major Anson of the Staff very gallantly brought into
use by crossing the ditch almost alone, and cutting through with his
sword the ropes that held it up.
The stormers were now crowded together between the inner ditch and the
rampart. The Chinese could no longer fire on them with their muskets,
but they dropped cannon shot, big stones, explosive grenades, jars of
lime, and stifling stink-pots on to their heads. The scaling ladders
were replaced against the rampart, but the Chinese caught them and
pulled them into the fort, or threw them down, spearing and shooting
all who mounted them.
[Illustration: “ROGERS GOT IN, HELPED UP BY LIEUTENANT
LENON” (_p._ 34).]
Men and officers tried to scramble in where the bombardment had broken
down the embrasures for the guns. One brave Frenchman reached the top
of the wall, fired his rifle at the Chinese, took another which was
handed up to him and fired it, and then fell speared through the face.
Another, pickaxe in hand tried to break down the top of the wall. He
was shot dead, but as he fell Lieutenant Burslem, of the 67th, seized
his pick and went on with the work.
He and his comrade--Lieutenant Rogers, of the same regiment (now
Major-General Rogers, V.C.)--climbed into an embrasure, only to be
thrown out; but Rogers got in through another, helped up by Lieutenant
Lenon, who made a stepping-place for him by driving the point of his
sword well into the mud wall, and holding up the hilt. Rogers helped
up Lenon and the others near at hand, and at the same time Fauchard, a
drummer of the French storming party, got in close by.
Behind him came the standard-bearer of his regiment (the 102nd of
the Line), and as the Chinese gave way there was a race between the
Frenchman and young Lieutenant Chaplin (now Major-General Chaplin,
V.C.), who carried the colours of the 67th, to see who would first get
a standard fixed on the top of the fort. Chaplin, though he was wounded
in three places, won this gallant race, and planted the British flag on
the high central battery of the fort.
“The poor Chinese now had a sad time of it,” writes Sir Hope Grant.
“They had fought desperately, and with great bravery, few of them
apparently having attempted to escape. Indeed, they could hardly have
effected their retreat by the other side of the fort. The wall was
very high, and the ground below bristled with innumerable sharp bamboo
stakes. Then intervened a broad deep ditch, another row of stakes, and
finally another ditch. The only regular exit--the gate--was barred by
ourselves. Numbers were killed, and I saw three poor wretches impaled
upon the stakes, and yet a considerable number succeeded in getting
off. The fort presented a terrible appearance of devastation, and
was filled with the dead and dying. The explosion of the magazine
had ruined a large portion of the interior. Many of the guns were
dismounted, and the parapets battered to pieces.”
The Chinese lost 400 men out of a garrison of 500. The English loss
was 21 killed and 184 wounded. The loss would have been heavier if
the Chinese had had better cartridges. Thus, for instance, Sir Robert
Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala), who led the advance of the
storming column, was hit in five places by bullets, but none of them
had force enough to do more than inflict a bruise.
The capture of the remaining forts was an easy matter. The smaller
South Fort, only 400 yards from the North Fort, and commanded by its
guns, was at once abandoned by the Chinese, and white flags were
hoisted on the two larger forts; but on the great North Fort being
summoned to surrender the garrison sent back a refusal. The guns of
the captured fort were turned on it; other guns were brought up from
the English batteries, and the attack was about to be begun by a
bombardment, when General Collineau, of the French army, noticing that
there was no one on the rampart nearest him, marched forward rapidly
with 600 men, sent a lot of them in through a big embrasure, opened a
gate, and took the fort without firing a shot. About 2,000 prisoners
were taken here, and, to their great delight, they were simply disarmed
and told to go home. They evidently expected to be massacred. In the
fort were some of the guns taken from the ships lost in the fight of
June 25th, 1859.
In the afternoon the fort on the south bank was summoned to surrender,
and, after some parleyings, Hang-Foo, the officer in command, agreed
to hand it over next day. Early on the 22nd Sir Robert Napier took
possession of the southern forts, in which he found no less than 600
guns, large and small.
The same day Admiral Hope’s gunboats steamed up the river, and cleared
away the barriers below which the fierce fight of the year before had
raged so long, and thus the defeat on the Pei-ho was avenged and the
way to Tien-tsin and Pekin was open.
A few weeks later, the armies of England and France marched in triumph
into the imperial city.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
PALERMO:
THE COMING OF GARIBALDI
BY STODDARD DEWEY]
The night of the 26th of May, 1860, came down on the city of Palermo,
on the plains around it and on the hills which close it in beyond,
amid anxious uncertainty everywhere. Everyone was asking, “Where is
Garibaldi?”
The city itself was held in a state of siege by its king, Francis
II. of Naples. The sympathies of the great mass of the inhabitants
were known to be with the Thousand men of Garibaldi and the Sicilian
insurgents who had joined him in his march from the western coast to
the hills above Palermo.
No one was allowed to leave the city, or to walk through the streets
by day in company with others, or by night without a lighted torch or
lantern.
Soldiers were picketed at the corners of the unlighted streets;
companies of soldiers guarded each of the city gates which had not been
walled up; and two lines of military outposts surrounded the whole city
without.
On the plain to the west and north of the city 20,000 soldiers of the
king were in camp; 4,000 more had for some days been pushing back the
insurgents in the hills. Their general imagined it was Garibaldi who
was retreating before them. No military man could understand how a
thousand foot-soldiers, aided only by a few thousand ill-armed and
untrained recruits, could give the slip to the pursuing columns of
regular troops, and surprise the entrance to a city guarded at every
point by battalions of trained men and commanded by the artillery of
the forts and the warships in the bay.
Even now the descent of the Thousand into Palermo does not become plain
until we go over carefully the condition of the city on that fateful
night, the situation of the various bodies of troops that were guarding
it, and the movements down the mountain side of Garibaldi and his men.
I.--IN PALERMO.
The Bourbons had now ruled over Naples, with the whole southern part of
Italy and the island of Sicily, for 125 years.
Ferdinand II., who was dead but a single year, had been peculiarly
unfortunate through the whole of his long reign. During its first
years, after 1830, the secret societies of _carbonari_ conspiring
against him multiplied everywhere in Sicily. The cholera year of 1837
reduced the pride of Palermo; but in 1848, when France again gave the
signal of revolution, the city rebelled and held out for a year and
four months. For four weeks King Ferdinand had the city bombarded from
his fort in the harbour. This did not help to make the citizens love
him the more when he finally conquered, and his name was handed down as
“King Bomba.”
In 1859, his young and inexperienced son, Francis, found things in the
worst possible condition.
In the north, Italians had united under the King of Sardinia against
the Austrians and the petty princes who had so long divided up their
country. With the help of France, the war was soon over. The Austrians
were driven out of Lombardy; the Duchies of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany
expelled their reigning houses; and a good part of the States of the
Church was taken from the Pope.
All these, with Sardinia, now made up the one kingdom of Italy, with
Victor Emanuel as constitutional monarch.
It was a long step forward toward the realisation of what had hitherto
been but a dream--a united Italy. And Garibaldi had been the one hero
of its making.
In Sicily a secret committee had been formed, under the name of
the _Buono publico_ (commonweal), to collect subscriptions
among the nobles and property-holders for the purchase of arms and
other munitions of war. It was in constant correspondence with the
revolutionary committee existing at Genoa, of which Garibaldi was the
soul. King Victor Emanuel was bound not to give open aid to any revolt
against his cousin, the King of Naples, with whom he was supposed to be
at peace. But it was known that his Government would put no hindrance
in the way. Everyone knew also that no revolution would break out in
Southern Italy except in the name of Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi.
[Illustration: “THE PICCIOTTI PICKED OFF THEIR MEN”
(_p._ 38).]
The counsellors of Francis II. had but one remedy for this evil state
of things--the remedy of King Bomba and all the Bourbons before
him. The city of Palermo was strongly garrisoned by troops from the
mainland--Neapolitans or Swiss and Austrian mercenaries. Then fuller
powers than ever were given to Maniscalco, the director of police,
and his spies were placed everywhere. At Santa Flavia, eleven miles
from Palermo by the sea, an armed insurrection suddenly broke out. It
was crushed at once; but it was made the pretext for throwing several
notable citizens into prison. Next Maniscalco was grievously wounded
at the door of the cathedral, and, in spite of all the efforts of the
police, the would-be assassin escaped with the help of the people. A
reign of terror was now begun, especially against the nobles and the
rich. In every house searches were made by Maniscalco’s _shirri_,
or detectives, for guns and swords and bayonets. It was felt that,
among the 200,000 inhabitants of Palermo, only the soldiers, the host
of Government employés, and the countless members of the secret police
were loyal to the king.
At last the Committee of Sicilian Liberties, as it was henceforth
called, decided that the time had come to summon the citizens to
revolt. Rizzo, a master mechanic of means, organised the movement. The
rendezvous was given for the night between the 3rd and 4th of April,
at the Franciscan convent of La Gancia, in the heart of the city.
Rizzo’s house was next door, and the arms which had been gathered were
secreted in an unused well of his courtyard. A communication had been
broken through the wall of the convent church. The friars were in the
secret and in full sympathy with the conspirators. There was but one
exception. He carried the news of what was going on to Maniscalco.
It was eight o’clock in the evening when the betrayal was made. General
Salzano, who was in command at Palermo, was notified at once, and the
convent was soon surrounded by troops. Rizzo and twenty-seven of his
companions were already inside waiting for the coming of the others.
Day broke, and no one had arrived. Looking out through the shutters,
the little band saw the soldiers under arms, and understood that they
had been betrayed. They resolved to sell their lives dearly, and Rizzo
opened fire from the windows.
The troops brought their cannon to bear on the great door of the
convent. Two shots were enough to batter it down, and the soldiers
charged with their bayonets. They were met by the father superior,
and ran him through on the spot. The insurgents held them back for a
time, firing from the shelter of the friars’ cells along the narrow
corridors. Another friar was killed, and four more were wounded. Then
Rizzo with his band made a last effort to escape in a determined sally
through the courtyard, by the great door which the cannon had burst
open. The troops were beaten back, but Rizzo fell with his leg broken
by a bullet above the knee. The soldiers discharged their guns at him
where he lay, inflicting lingering but mortal wounds. A dozen of his
companions were taken prisoners with him; the others made good their
escape.
[Illustration: PALERMO HARBOUR.
(_From a Drawing by J. W. McWhirter A.R.A._)]
The citizens, without arms and without a leader, kept to the shelter of
their houses. The soldiers shot at anyone showing himself at a window.
All who were connected with the conspiracy fled from the town into the
fastnesses of the hills. The insurrection was again over in Palermo.
The _picciotti_--young men from fifteen to twenty-five years of
age--had long been ready to join in the uprising. In the large town
of Carini, ten miles to the west of Palermo, the impatience was so
great that they anticipated the signal to be given at La Gancia. On
the 3rd of April the tri-coloured flag of United Italy was unfurled,
and barricades were thrown up across the mountain roads. Misilmeri, a
few miles to the east of the city, next took up the cry. With the two
priests at their head, the insurgents drove out the Neapolitan garrison
of four soldiers, eight mounted gendarmes, and eight of Maniscalco’s
_sbirri_. On the 11th of the month the _picciotti_ swept
down on a body of troops and forced them back to the bridge over the
Oreto, almost within gunshot of the city. Soon all the villages along
the coast and in the surrounding country were in full insurrection. The
city began suffering from this blockade on the side of the land. All
its provisions had to be brought in the king’s vessels from Naples.
At Naples the news of the revolt led to the taking of extreme measures.
The vessels of the royal marine, along with merchant ships appropriated
by the Government for the occasion, were despatched to Palermo. All
were filled with soldiers and munitions of war. In a few days there
were 13,000 of the king’s troops in and around the city, to face the
insurrection.
In spite of the vigilance of the police, a newspaper from northern
Italy had been smuggled into Palermo, making known to the inhabitants
that the committee at Genoa was organising an expedition to come to the
aid of the Sicilian patriots. On the 10th of April a secret messenger,
Rosolino Pilo, who had been under proscription in his native land for
ten years, succeeded in landing safely at Messina. He made his way from
village to village by night. In the morning the sign of his presence
was found written on the walls--
“_Viene Garibaldi! Viva Vittorio Emanuele!_”
Soon, in Palermo itself, the very children cried after the _sbirri_ as
they passed--“Garibaldi is coming!”
Word was passed around that, on a certain day, all whose sympathies
were with the revolution should walk in the fashionable promenade of
the Via Maqueda--the broad, straight street that divides the city in
two halfway up from the sea. Even the greatest ladies came on foot;
there was no room for the splendid equipages for which Palermo has
always been noted. No one was armed. All kept an ominous silence.
Maniscalco was at his wits’ end. He sent a band of soldiers and
_sbirri_ along the promenade to cry from time to time, “_Viva Francesco
Secondo!_” There was no response from the crowd. Then the _sbirri_
surrounded a group of the citizens and ordered them to repeat the cry,
“_Viva Francesco Secondo!_” After a moment of deep silence one of the
group, tossing his hat in the air, shouted, “_Viva Vittorio Emanuele!_”
The soldiers bayoneted him on the spot, and then discharged their guns
into the crowd. Two men were killed, and there were thirty women and
children among the wounded. The mounted gendarmes charged on their
horses, and swept the streets clear. But the next morning Maniscalco
could read in huge red letters on every dead wall of the city,
“_Garibaldi viene!_”--“Garibaldi is coming!”
II.--WITH THE KING’S ARMY.
The regular troops were now kept constantly on the alert, and daily
and nightly drawn by new alarms from the city toward the mountains, it
was useless for them to give chase to the _picciotti_ in their
retreat along the winding goat-paths of the hills. In return, they
brought their artillery against houses sheltering the helpless women
and children of the insurgent villages.
It was on the 9th of May that the demonstration of the Via Maqueda took
place, followed by the bloody police outrage on the people and the
threatening prophecy written by night upon the walls. On the 13th word
passed through the city that the prophecy was fulfilled.
“Garibaldi has landed at Marsala!”
It was on the 11th of May that Garibaldi and his expedition of a
thousand men succeeded in entering the island. Two English ships
stood between him and the royal cruisers, which gave chase, until men
and arms were all safely on shore. The two Genoese merchant vessels
that had brought the expedition were abandoned to capture, and the
march began across the island. Nothing was left to the adventurous
Thousand--old revolutionists and young university students from
northern Italy, Hungarian officers of 1848, and French and Polish
sympathisers with all that invoked the name of liberty--but to take
Palermo or die.
The next day they were at Salemi, where, on the 14th, Garibaldi
proclaimed himself Dictator of the island in the name of King Victor
Emanuel. The guerilla bands and the _picciotti_ began coming in
from every quarter.
On the 15th the Thousand came face to face with the royal troops,
which had taken strong positions along the hills overlooking the road
at Calatafimi, fifty miles from Palermo. The only pitched battle of
the campaign took place here. The _picciotti_, with all their
goodwill, showed that they would be of little use in open warfare.
They could not endure the fire of regular soldiers, and still less
execute the charges necessary for capturing the positions of the
enemy. But the Thousand of Garibaldi were a host in themselves. The
Genoese Carabineers were accustomed to his methods of fighting. Even
the university students had been trained and hardened to practise his
maxim, “Lose no time with artillery, but use your bayonets!”
General Landi and his thousands of regular soldiers were driven back,
and the next day they beat a disorderly retreat as far as Palermo.
The _picciotti_, from the shelter of every rock and clump of
bushes, picked off their men by the way. The soldiers, in turn, sacked
and pillaged the villages of Partanico and Borghetto. The Neapolitan
officers complained bitterly that their mercenaries preferred pillage
to fighting. Garibaldi, ever seeking to draw all Italians to himself,
praised the bravery of the Neapolitans while congratulating his own
army on its victory. It had cost him dear. There were eighteen of the
Thousand among the killed, and 128 were wounded.
After a day of rest, Garibaldi marched forward, and on the 18th he was
already on the mountains in sight of Palermo. There his men bivouacked
in the rain. On the 20th he advanced his outposts to within a mile of
Monreale, whence the high road leads directly down to Palermo, not
five miles away. He now decided not to try to force an entrance into
the city from the side of Monreale. He could not hope to make his way
across the plain and past the headquarters of the royal army, even by
night, without sacrificing half his men. He chose instead a movement
that, perhaps, no other military man of the age would have attempted.
Garibaldi himself said ever after that it could have been executed only
in Sicily, under the circumstances of the time. To its success it was
essential that the enemy, lying below in sight of his own camp fires,
should have no knowledge of what was going on until all was over. The
_picciotti_ may not have been able to take their part in regular
battle; but there were no traitors among them, nor in the mountain
villages through which the expedition was to pass.
The evening of the 21st fell dark and rainy. With nightfall the
Thousand set out on a toilsome march by unfrequented paths over three
mountain tops to Parco. Garibaldi wished to move round from the west
to the south of Palermo, nearer to the sea. Their few pieces of cannon
were dismounted and carried on the backs of the men. At three in the
morning the little army was at its destination, wet, and worn out
with fatigue, but without a man or gun or precious cartridge missing.
The _picciotti_ had kept the camp fires blazing above Monreale.
General Lanza, who had just been appointed the king’s _alter ego_
in Sicily, was not to learn of the stolen march for many hours to come.
The day was passed in taking up positions along the zigzag mountain
road leading up to Piana dei Greci, six miles further back from
Palermo. Only then, after a night and a day of toil, the men bivouacked
around their works.
At daydawn of the 23rd Garibaldi and Türr--the Hungarian, who was
his other self in the expedition--climbed a summit whence they could
command a view of Palermo and the plains around. The mayor of Parco had
just provided the dreaded leader and his companion with sorely-needed
trousers. They looked down on a gallant display of arms. With the
exception of the necessary garrison for the forts and a few posts
in the city, the royal troops were all in camp on the plains to the
west and north of the city or by the headquarters of the general in
the great place before the royal palace. Garibaldi’s practised eye
estimated their number at 15,000 men, and new reinforcements were
arriving. To oppose them in serious conflict he could count on not 800
valid men.
Even as they looked, a body of troops, 3,000 to 4,000 strong, began its
march on Monreale. When they reached the hills their movements were
impeded by the ceaseless fire of the _picciotti_ sheltered behind
the positions left by the Thousand. The firing continued during the day
and into the night.
When the morning of the 24th came, Garibaldi could see that General
Lanza, with thousands of men at his disposal, was carrying out a plan
of attack skilfully designed to envelop and sweep away his little
army. Beyond Monreale the corps which had marched out yesterday was
rapidly advancing toward Piana to surround his left. From below another
strong body of troops was marching directly on Parco. Türr was at
once sent to save their few pieces of artillery, and, with the help
of the Carabineers and _picciotti_, to guard the left. Garibaldi
began hurrying on the march to Piana. Türr’s men were soon attacked by
three times their number, and the _picciotti_ fled in dismay. The
Carabineers succeded in escaping amid the hills, while Türr, with two
companies, held the enemy with his cannon.
At half-past two in the afternoon the whole army arrived safety in
Piana. In the evening General Garibaldi held a council of war with
his colonels, Türr, Sirtori, and Orsini, and with Signor Crispi, a
long-exiled Sicilian lawyer whom he had made his Secretary of State.
He proposed his final plan, which was to deceive again and divide the
forces of the enemy. It was put in operation on the spot.
Orsini, with the artillery and baggage and fifty men for escort, began
an ostentatious retreat along the road leading to Corleone, many miles
further in the interior. For one half-mile the general and the bulk of
the army followed after. The royal outposts on the left hastened to
bring the information to General Lanza, who was commanding in person,
and he at once sent his whole body of troops in cautious pursuit. In
the dense wood of Cianeto, Garibaldi and his men left Orsini to draw
the enemy further and further away, while they turned into a path that
led to Marineo.
The night was clear, and Türr and Garibaldi, as they marched side
by side, looked to the star of the Great Bear, which the latter
had connected with his destiny from a child. “General,” said the
Hungarian, “it smiles on you. We shall enter Palermo.”
At midnight the little army bivouacked in the forest. At four o’clock
they were again on foot, and at seven they were at Marineo, where
they passed the day. With the night they took up again their secret
march, and at ten they reached Misilmeri. La Masa was there with a
few thousand _picciotti_, and there were a few members of the
Committee of Sicilian Liberties. These were told to notify their
friends in the city that the attack would be made on the morning of the
27th. Türr sent word to Colonel Ebers, his compatriot and correspondent
of the London _Times_ in Palermo, to come out and share in the
adventure.
[Illustration: “‘GENERAL, IT SMILES ON YOU.’”]
The day of the 26th was employed in making ready. Garibaldi passed
the _picciotti_ in review at their camp of Gibilrossa. Then he
ascended Monte Griffone to study the city and plain beneath. The royal
guards along this south-east side of the city were almost within
hearing of a trumpet blast from his mouth. They did not dream that he
was nigh.
III.--THE DESCENT OF THE THOUSAND.
The sun set on the evening of the 26th in a mass of red vapours,
portending the heat of the night. The army of Garibaldi was already
forming on the table land of Gibilrossa, in the order which they were
to follow in their attack on the Porta di Termini of Palermo.
First came the leaders, with Captain Misori at their head, and three
men from each company of the Thousand under the command of Colonel
Tukery. They were in all thirty-two men. Immediately behind them was
the first corps of the _picciotti_. The first battalion of the
Thousand followed, under the command of Bixio, who was afterwards a
famous general. Garibaldi came next, with Türr and the remainder of his
Staff, followed by the Second battalion under Carini. Last of all was
the second corps of _picciotti_ and the Commissariat. In all they
were 750 trained and veteran soldiers--all that was available of the
original 1,065--with two or three thousand _picciotti_, preparing
to face 18,000 regular troops of the King of Naples.
It was essential to the success of their enterprise that the alarm
should not be given in Palermo until as late as possible. Even if they
had wished to follow it, there was no direct road to the city. With
as much order as might be, they clambered down the sides of a ravine
which led to the valley opening on the highway. It was eleven o’clock
when they arrived at this point. Tukery halted his men to see if
order was being kept in the rear. The _picciotti_ had completely
disappeared. A false alarm on the mountain-side had sent them flying.
Two hours were needed to re-form the line, when it was found that
their numbers were now reduced to 1,300 men. With all these delays, at
half-past one in the morning they were still three miles from the city.
They marched forward in close columns until they came up with the
Neapolitan outposts. It was now half-past three, and still dark. The
soldiers fired three gun-shots and retreated to their guard-house. This
was enough to disperse two-thirds of the _picciotti_ who remained.
The thirty-two men composing the vanguard of Garibaldi now dashed
forward to the bridge over the Oreto. This Ponte dell’ Ammiraglio,
by a strange coincidence, was the scene of the first combat of Robert
Guiscard, the Norman, with the Saracen lords of Palermo, nearly 800
years before, and of Metellus with the Carthaginians 1,200 years before
that. It was now defended by some 400 men. The soldiers of Garibaldi
first attacked them by a running fire from behind the trees along the
road, and then entered on a hand-to-hand fight. A single captain,
Piva, was able to bring down four Neapolitans with six shots from his
revolver. Misori hastened back to summon Bixio. The first battalion
charged, followed by Türr at the head of the second. The bayonets now
came into play, and the Thousand had won their first position.
The alarm was now thoroughly given. While the defenders of the bridge
were fleeing to the right, a strong column of the royal troops advanced
on the left. Türr sent thirty men to stop their advance, and the rest
of the Thousand charged past with fixed bayonets.
[Illustration: THE COAST OF PALERMO, LOOKING TOWARDS TERMINI.]
The Neapolitans now fell back on the street leading to the gate of
Sant’ Antonino, at the end of the Via Maqueda. This road was lined with
the houses of a small suburb, and cut across the street of Termini, by
which Garibaldi’s men hoped to enter the town. The old gate of Termini
had been torn down by King Bomba, and the street leading to the bridge
widened to facilitate the movement of his troops. It now served the
purpose of those who were trying to overthrow the rule of his son.
The Neapolitan commander had already placed two cannons in the Via
Sant’ Antonino, and at every moment their shots swept across the path
of Garibaldi. Even his veterans held back for a moment. A carabineer
seated himself in a chair in full line of the firing, to persuade the
_picciotti_ to go on.
Garibaldi now came up, just as his faithful Tukery fell mortally
wounded. As if animated by his death, one of the leaders seized the
banner of United Italy, and bore it unharmed through the enemy’s fire.
He was followed by five others, and, little by little, the whole line
passed under the eyes of their general. He alone was on horseback, and
the most exposed, as he urged his men forward.
Two hundred men were soon scattered through the different streets
of the city, nearest to the gate; and their leaders penetrated to
the old market, which had been the place of the revolution in 1848.
Garibaldi soon arrived in the midst of the fire which the royal troops
were keeping up on the rear of the little column. The members of the
Committee of Palermo were waiting to receive him. He at once gave
orders to make barricades behind, and thus entrenched himself in the
midst of his enemies.
The people in the houses remained deaf to his first appeal; but by
dint of calling they were at length induced to appear at the windows,
where the sight of their deliverers gave them courage. Mattresses were
flung from every window, and soon piled up over the barricades most
exposed to the royal artillery. Then a few of the inhabitants began
showing themselves in the streets. They had but one answer to give to
the invitation to join with the invaders: “We have no arms.” But they
lent themselves bravely to the tearing up of paving-stones for the
barricades, and the soldiers of Garibaldi found places of vantage in
their houses.
With a part of his men Garibaldi now made his way to the centre of the
city, where the Via Maqueda is crossed at right angles by the long Via
Toledo (now the Corso Vittore Emanuele), leading from the port through
the whole length of the city to the Royal Palace. The number of his
men was greatly exaggerated in the imaginations of his opponents,
and he easily drove back the royal troops close to their general’s
headquarters at the Palace. The Bourbon Government had just been paving
this street with large flags. These were now torn up and built into
barricades, while waggons and obstructions of every kind were thrown
across the neighbouring streets.
At this moment the bombardment of the city began from the Fort of
Castellamare, in the bay, and from the Royal Palace. The warships
with their great guns swept all the streets within line of their
fire. Three days were next taken up with the constant advancing and
retreating of the now infuriated soldiers of the king, aided by the
steady downpour of shot and shell on the quarters where the men of
Garibaldi--the Italians, as they were now called, even by their
enemies--had entrenched themselves. But the crumbling of walls only
aided to the making of new barricades, and impeded all the movements of
the regular troops. As the royal mercenaries abandoned their positions,
they set fire to the buildings they had left. The convent of the White
Benedictines was burned, with fifty of the prisoners who had been
confined in it. All Palermo worked actively with Garibaldi and his men,
in a fury of rage against the royal army. Soon there remained to the
latter only the two forts of the harbour, the Royal Palace, and the
post at the Flora below the Porta di Termini, by the bay. Even these
could no longer communicate with each other nor receive provisions.
Garibaldi had now conquered once more. On the fourth day the king’s
general asked for an armistice--to bury his dead. It was prolonged,
and at last the king ordered that the troops should evacuate the city,
provided that the garrison in the forts might depart with the honours
of war. To save the lives of the prisoners still confined, this was
granted. On the 20th of June the last Neapolitan soldier had left
Palermo. Two days later the Thousand of Garibaldi were on the way to
deliver Messina, the last hold of the Bourbons in Sicily.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_The Red Man’s Last Victory_:
The Fight of the Little Big Horn
_By Angus Evan Abbott_]
The Red man has fought his last great fight. The long and bloody
struggle waged between the White man and the Red for the possession
of the North American continent has ended, and ended for all time:
the weaker has gone to the wall. From the day in 1609 when Samuel
de Champlain and his hardy followers burst upon the Iroquois at
Ticonderoga, and, armed with sticks that spoke with fire and spat out
unseen death he put these hitherto invincible warriors to flight,
to the day when the United States were preparing to celebrate with
unheard-of splendour the centennial of their independence, a ceaseless
state of war existed between the children of the forest and prairie and
the pale-faced usurpers. Every year had its tragedy, every mile its
white gravestone in history. And as a fit ending to these centuries of
conflict and bloodshed came the crimson tragedy of the blotting-out of
Custer and his cavalrymen in the Bad Lands of the Yellowstone. Many
notable tragedies, dramatic in execution as appalling in effect, marked
the long years, but none struck home to the hearts of the American
people with such searching directness and force as the finale to the
Indian tragedy, in which Sitting Bull, chief of the Sioux, and General
Custer, one of America’s most dashing cavalry leaders, played the
leading _rôles_.
Surely never were such Aborigines as the North American Indian! Surely
never in the history of the world did the White man encounter so
nearly his match as when he first plunged into the forests of the New
World. A mere handful in numbers were these Red men at the best, and
yet it can hardly be said that they were ever subdued. In turn they
met and fought the Spaniard, then in all his glory, the Frenchman, the
Englishman--long and savage wars these--and when Spaniard, Frenchman,
and Englishman as such disappeared and the American took their place,
the Indian fought him more fiercely than ever. When one thinks of the
White man’s countless numbers and the weapons which his ingenuity and
handicraft supplied, the marvel is that the Indian has not long since
disappeared from the face of the earth. But given their numbers and
weapons and all, it has been estimated that in the wars which the
White man waged against the Indians they lost more than ten killed
to the Redskin’s one. Yet notwithstanding the skill, the craftiness,
the sensible recognition of existing facts, the clever stratagem
and resistless ferocity which characterises the Indian nature, the
level-headed way in which he set about his wars, to kill and not be
killed his motto: notwithstanding all this, the prophecy of the great
orator Red Jacket has come true. He said, “When I am gone and my
warnings are no longer heeded, the craft and avarice of the White man
will prevail. My heart fails me when I think of my people so soon to be
scattered and forgotten.”
The feud which began on the Atlantic coast hundreds of years before,
was destined to end in the far North-West, away up in a corner of the
United States then almost wholly unknown to the White man, an angle
of territory bounded on the west by the Rockies, and on the north
by what formerly was known as Rupert’s Land--British territory. The
immediate cause of the trouble which led up to the massacre of Custer
and his battalion was one which had often before provoked active
hostilities. It was the refusal of sundry bands of Indians to settle
down on the reservations placed at the disposal of the Indians by the
United States Government. The Indians resented the attempt to confine
them to restricted districts. The Red man of the prairie had been,
from time immemorial, a notorious nomad. On his lean, shaggy, ungainly
pony, his bow and quiver slung across his back, his buckskin breeches
and shirt fringed with horsehair and painted in gaudy colours, his
long, greasy black hair stuck full of the feathers of the turkey, hawk
and eagle, he had for centuries roamed the vast prairie at will: now
fighting his hereditary foe, and again camping for weeks at a time on
the trail of the mighty herds of buffalo in their wanderings over the
boundless prairie. For ages the chafings of restriction were unknown to
him, until freedom had become almost as necessary to the savage of the
plains as the air itself. This he enjoyed, until one day the advance
guard of civilisation, a grizzly trapper, dressed in leather, and
carrying a flintlock under his arm, peered out of the bushes and saw
in astonishment the great rolling prairie, the home of the buffalo and
the Sioux. The hardy pioneer soon followed, restless, and ever pressing
westward; and one day, the Sioux, sitting astride his barebacked pony,
saw in amazement the long train of white-topped waggons--the prairie
schooner--drawn by oxen, trailing westward through the tall grass,
and realised that his ancient fastness had been invaded. Immediately
there began massacres on the one hand and retaliation on the other. The
Sioux, the Bedouins of the prairie, were gradually driven back and back
in the process. They strained fiercely at the bonds, but were unable to
break them.
[Illustration: “UNTIL ONE DAY A GRIZZLY TRAPPER PEERED OUT OF
THE BUSHES.”]
During the winter of 1875–6 the authorities at Washington, after every
peaceable means had been tried in vain, found it necessary to sanction
the use of force to compel certain refractory bands of Indians to cease
their wanderings and outrage, to place themselves under the control of
the Indian officials, and to settle on the reservations set aside for
their use. These recalcitrant savages were Sioux, than whom there were
none more warlike and cruel, and in their raids they wandered over an
area of something like 100,000 square miles in the then territories
of Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. There were a number of these bands
of “Hostiles,” each having a chief of its own; but as dissatisfaction
spread among them, all gradually centred around two great chiefs,
“Sitting Bull” and “Crazy Horse.” “Sitting Bull,” at the time
hostilities commenced, was with his band in the vicinity of the Little
Missouri River in Dakota, and “Crazy Horse” and band were camped on
the banks of the Powder River in Wyoming. The region was a wilderness:
rugged, mountainous, and deeply scarred by rapid streams and small
rivers, and, as has been told, totally unknown to the United States
soldiers. As guides to this unfamiliar region and to scout by the way,
the command took with it Ree Indians under “Bloody Knife” Chief, and
Crows, led by Chief “Half-Yellow Face.” These Indians did the scouting
well, but the Rees took the earliest opportunity afforded them to slip
away when fighting began.
[Illustration: “AND THE SIOUX SAW IN AMAZEMENT THE LONG TRAIN
OF WHITE-TOPPED WAGGONS.”]
The first move made against these Sioux was on March 1st, 1876. General
Sheridan, a distinguished leader in the American Civil War, was given
the direction of the campaign, with headquarters at Chicago. General
Terry held the active command of the troops in the disaffected country.
Subordinate to Terry were Generals Custer and Crook, at the head of
mounted columns. Terry ordered these leaders to move out against the
“Hostiles,” specifying the route each was to take. Crook marched on
March 1st, and on March 17th encountered “Crazy Horse” and his braves,
and the command was so severely handled in the engagement that Crook
fell back to his base. Custer had been unable to make a simultaneous
advance with Crook, owing to the weather being so bad that it was found
impossible to venture into the region of heavy snows and swollen rivers.
[Illustration: “THE WARRIORS DANCED THE WAR-DANCE.”]
The news of Crook’s defeat spread like wildfire among the Indian
agencies. Couriers sped from the camps of “Crazy Horse” and “Sitting
Bull.” To every Indian encampment in that part of the States one or
more messengers came, and squatting on the hardened earth of some smoky
Tepee, to the listening braves told of the killing of the Paleface and
the triumph of the Red, and before he had finished his tale, wigwams
were struck and loaded to the patient ponies, the squaws strapped
their papooses to their backs, and the warriors, with faces painted
in ghastly and fantastical streaks, danced the war-dance, snatched
up their rifles, and mounting their ponies, set out to take part in
reaping the harvest of scalps.
The defeat of Crook made a long war inevitable. General Sheridan
reinforced the troops in the disaffected region, and remodelled his
plan of campaign. The troops were formed into three columns instead of
two; and as soon as the weather moderated, so as to admit of favourable
progress, all set out to trap the Indians. The three columns were
commanded respectively by Generals Terry, Crook, and Gibbon. Custer
would have led in place of Terry, had it not been that just before the
setting out of the expedition he fell from the good graces of President
Grant. Indeed, so displeased was Grant with Custer, that he sent
definite instructions that Custer was not to be allowed to accompany
the expedition; and it was only after a personal appeal to Grant by
Custer, and the intercession of Sheridan, that the famous cavalry
leader was allowed to take his place at the head of his regiment and
march away, never to return.
George Armstrong Custer’s career, from the day he graduated at the
United States Military Academy to the day of his death, fifteen years
after, was one of meteoric brilliancy. A native of New Rumley, Ohio,
he graduated at West Point on the very outbreak of the Civil War. From
West Point he went direct to Washington, and on the day of his arrival
at the capital he was entrusted by General Scott with despatches for
General McDowell, then on his way with the army of the Potomac to fight
the first general battle of the Civil War--Bull Run.
Custer arrived in the nick of time, was assigned to duty as lieutenant
of the 5th Cavalry, and took his place in the company just in time to
take part in the fight that followed. In his first battles he attracted
the attention of his superior officers by his daring and dash and his
brilliancy in handling men; and in 1862 his many exploits effected his
promotion to the captaincy of the company. Immediately afterwards, by
a clever ruse, he surprised the Southerners and captured the first
colours taken by the army of the Potomac from the South in the war.
Continuing as he had begun, in each successive engagement he did some
notable deed which brought him again and again to the attention of
his superior officers, and in 1865 he had risen to the position of
Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and was given command of the Michigan
brigades.
He participated in all but one of the battles of the army of the
Potomac, and was in a position to say with truth to his men: “You
have never lost a gun, never lost a colour, and never been defeated;
and notwithstanding the numerous engagements in which you have borne
a prominent part, you have captured every piece of artillery which
the enemy has dared to open upon you.” He was a man of close upon six
feet in height, lithe, active, handsome, a staunch teetotaller, and
abstainer from the use of tobacco. Such was the soldier who took his
place in command of the 7th United States Cavalry and rode away to the
Bad Lands of the Yellowstone.
On May 17th the column marched from Fort Abraham Lincoln, on the
Missouri River, and proceeding by easy stages, crossed the Little
Missouri River on May 31st, and camped on the banks of the Powder, a
tributary of the Yellowstone. The 7th Cavalry was divided into two
columns, commanded by Major Reno and Captain Benteen. As the Indian
country had now been reached, on June 10th General Terry sent Major
Reno with his command (six troops) to scout up the Powder, and General
Custer, with the left wing of the 7th, marched to the mouth of the
Tongue and there awaited Reno’s return. The major reached Custer’s camp
on the 19th, and reported plenty of Indian “signs” leading up the banks
of the Rosebud. The whole command set out at once for that stream and
pitched tents at its mouth on June 21st, and made ready for immediate
active operations. At a consultation between Generals Terry, Gibbon and
Custer, it was arranged that the 7th United States Cavalry, commanded
in person by General Custer, should set out on the trail Major Reno had
discovered, overtake the Indians, corner them, and bring about a fight.
This they did.
[Illustration: FIGHT OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN
PLAN OF THE BATTLE-FIELD; SHOWING ROUTES TAKEN BY THE TWO
DIVISIONS AND THE SPOT WHERE CUSTER FELL.]
With truly Anglo-Saxon superiority the generals wofully underestimated
the fighting strength of the foe. General Custer, with his 700
cavalrymen, believed he would be able to cope with more savages than he
was likely to have the good fortune to meet, and his brother generals
were under the same impression. They found out their mistake when too
late.
“Sitting Bull,” chief of a band of Uncpapa Sioux Indians, was at
this time forty-two years old. A great, squatty, hulking, low-browed
savage, of forbidding looks and enormous strength, and in height as
near as might be to five feet eight inches. He had the reputation
among his own followers, as well as the warriors of other bands, of
being a Medicine-man of mark, a dealer in omens, a conjurer of demons,
a weaver of magic, a foreteller of dire events, and a familiar of
departed spirits. Outside of his magic he was known as a coward, but
this defect they overlooked in the belief that his soothsayings fully
compensated for the deficiency in his personal valour. Their faith
in his incantations was unbounded. In the fight of the Little Big
Horn, “Sitting Bull” divided his energies between getting as far from
the scene of strife as his fat legs would carry him, and performing
fanatical rites to the confounding of the White man. The actual leaders
in the fight were “Crazy Horse,” “Gall,” and “Crow King”; and in a
lesser degree, “Low Dog,” “Big Road,” “Hump,” “Spotted Eagle,” and
“Little Horse,” all chiefs of bands and men of ability and unflinching
personal courage. These superintended the movements of the “Hostiles,”
and by their personal feats of daring encouraged their followers, while
“Sitting Bull” looked after the Fates and took the _kudos_ of the
game.
At noon on June 22nd Custer and his men set out for the wilderness.
Warnings and omens do not seem to have been confined to the wigwam of
the Red man, for on the fatal march to the Little Big Horn there were
many that foretold disaster to the expedition.
Captain Godfrey, who marched with the columns, in his written account
of the calamitous affair, mentions many incidents which were taken to
point to disaster. He tells, for instance, that on the evening of the
first day of their march Custer sent for his officers.
After a “talk,” Lieutenant Wallace said to Godfrey, as they walked away
from the general’s tent, “Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to
be killed.” Asked his reasons for this belief, he simply answered: “I
have never heard Custer speak in that way before.”
A little later in the evening Captain Godfrey came upon a camp-fire,
around which sat “Bloody Knife,” “Half-Yellow-Face,” and the
interpreter Bouyer. The half-breed asked the captain if he had ever
fought against the Sioux. Answered in the affirmative, the interpreter
gazed into the fire for a few moments before saying emphatically, “I
can tell you we are going to have a ---- big fight.”
Then again an ominous thing happened. The general’s headquarters-flag
was blown down and fell to the rear, and in being replanted again fell
to the rear.
These and many other eerie happenings seem to have sent a thrill of
foreboding through the whole command as it went on its way to the
unexplored valley of the Little Big Horn. In their tents, when night
had fallen and the fires were out--for on this march no fire burned
and nothing was done likely to attract the eye of any Indian who might
happen to be roaming about in the vicinity--the men sat in the dark
and told stories of scalpings and burnings at the stake. Even the Red
scouts caught the prevailing current of premonition, and hastened to
their Medicine-man to be anointed as a charm against the cruelty of the
dreaded Sioux.
During the march up the Rosebud, Indian “signs” were met with at every
turn. Camping-place after camping-place was found. The grass had been
closely cropped by herds of ponies; the ashes of a hundred camp-fires
lay grey on the bare ground. On June 24th the column passed a great
camping-place, the gaunt frame of a huge sundance-lodge still standing,
and against one of the posts the scalp of a White man fluttered in the
wind.
Soon after this the Crow scouts, who had been working energetically,
returned to the camp and reported to Custer that although they had
come across no Sioux, still, from indications discovered, they felt
sure that the command was in the neighbourhood of an encampment. That
night the column was divided into two, so as to raise as little dust
as possible, and made a forced march; and on the morning of June 25th
Custer, in a personal reconnoitre, discovered the foe of which he
was in search. Although he found himself unable to locate the actual
village, he saw great herds of ponies, saw the smoke curling up in
the air of morning, and heard the barking of the dogs, denoting the
presence of a village behind a hill that lay in front of him. It had
been Custer’s intention to remain quietly where his command rested
until night fell, when he would advance his forces, and in the grey
of morning sweep down upon the Sioux. But this plan miscarried. Word
reached the leader that a Sioux Indian had discovered the presence
of the United States troops and had galloped off to warn his tribe.
Custer resolved to attack at once.
The command set out for “Sitting Bull’s” village shortly before noon.
It was divided into three battalions--Major Reno commanding the
advance, General Custer following with the second, and Captain Benteen
the third, the pack train being under the charge of Lieutenant Mathey.
Custer’s battalion consisted of Troops “C,” commanded by the general’s
brother, T. W. Custer; “I,” Captain Keogh; “F,” Captain Yates; “E,”
Lieutenants Smith and Sturgis; “L,” Lieutenants Calhoun and Crittenden;
with Lieutenant Cook adjutant, and Dr. G. E. Lord medical officer.
The whole command marched down a valley for some distance and then
separated, intending to strike the village at different points.
Custer’s battalion took to the right to cross the hills and ride down
upon the encampment, and Major Reno branched off to the left and forded
the Little Big Horn--a stream that gives the battle its name--at the
mouth of a stream now called Benteen’s Creek. As they were separating,
Custer sent an order to Reno to “move forward at as rapid gait as he
thought prudent, and charge the village afterwards, and the whole
outfit would support him.”
After separation the only word received from Custer was an order
signed by the adjutant, and addressed to Captain Benteen, which
read: “Benteen, come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring Packs;” and a
postscript, “Bring Packs.” About the time this message must have been
despatched, those with Reno beheld the general and his men on top of
a hill two miles or more away, looking down upon the village, and saw
Custer take off his hat and wave it in the air, as if either beckoning
the other battalions to his assistance or cheering his men.
The battalion disappeared over the brow of the hill, and after that no
word or sign ever came from Custer or anyone of his whole command. Not
a man of the hundreds that followed the general in the charge lived
to tell the tale. The battalion was simply wiped out of existence. In
after years, some of the Indians who took part in the massacre, laying
aside their inbred taciturnity, consented to show a few United States
officers over the field and explain what had happened and how it had
happened; but beyond these meagre reports, and the position in which
the bodies of the soldiers were found after the Indians had finished
with their rejoicings and the mutilations of the dead, nothing is known
of Custer’s last charge. But those acquainted with Custer and with
Indian fighting are able to picture the scene.
When Custer reached the top of the hill, instead of a village of some
800 or 1,000 warriors, he saw beneath him a veritable city of wigwams
spread out in the valley. The smoke from the fires clouded the sky,
great herds of ponies cropped the grass as far as the eye could see,
thousands of painted Sioux, armed, and astride their shaggy ponies,
galloped in circles, working themselves into a frenzy of fury to fight
the White man. Medicine-men danced and yelled their incantations, and
squaws busily struck the tents and hurried their papooses and swarms
of dusky children out of harm’s way. When this scene of angry life
met his gaze, General Custer, old Indian fighter that he was, must
have recognised that he was in for what seemed likely to be his last
fight. But the mistake had been made. The time had passed for new plans
of battle. He could not turn his back on the warriors to join his
battalion with the others, for already the painted bucks were circling
round him and firing into his ranks, and already, in all probability,
he heard the crack of rifles to his left, telling him that the Indians
were upon Reno. Hemmed in, retreat out of the question, and trusting
that his other battalions would hurry to his support, he called to his
men, and together they plunged into the shrieking, shouting, seething
mass of painted and befeathered Red men--and died.
Reno acted differently. Whether or no he carried caution to an
unjustifiable length is a question that has been fiercely discussed,
at least some of the officers who were with him being his greatest
denouncers. So bitter were the charges made against him that a
Government inquiry was instituted, and, it is only right to say, it
exonerated him from blame.
Reno’s battalion struck the Indians shortly after crossing the Little
Big Horn, and the Ree scouts at once made for the rear to be out of
danger. When the Sioux Indians appeared in considerable force on his
front, instead of charging the village as Custer had ordered, Reno
dismounted his troops to fight on foot, and taking advantage of timber
he remained stationary for some long time in almost absolute security.
Later he ordered a retreat to the Bluffs, and while executing this
order, and in the preceding skirmishes, Lieutenants McIntosh and
Hodgson, Dr. De Wolf, and twenty-nine men and scouts were killed.
Soon after reaching the Bluffs Captain Benteen’s battalion joined Reno,
placing the latter in command of a larger force than Custer had with
him; but notwithstanding this, no active measures were adopted, the
two battalions standing nerveless and inactive, listening to heavy
firing and much ominous noise in the direction of the village, where
Custer was engaged in his death-struggle. True, an advance was made to
a hill--the hill from which earlier in the day Custer had been seen
to wave his hat. From the top of this elevation could be seen a great
commotion in the valley, much riding and shouting and firing; but still
Reno and his men were not near enough to the spot to make out what it
was all about. The officers with field-glasses tried their best to
find out where Custer and his battalion were, but, of course, this was
impossible, for by this time every man, with Custer, had been slain.
[Illustration: “THEY PLUNGED INTO THE SEETHING MASS OF
PAINTED AND BEFEATHERED RED MEN” (_p._ 48).]
Chief “Gall” afterwards said that the news of the two columns of troops
advancing against the village struck consternation to the heart of the
Indians, but when Reno was seen to dismount and remain stationary, they
were glad, for it allowed the whole Indian force to be hurled against
Custer. Him out of the way, they concentrated against Reno. When this
latter movement took place Reno retreated again to the Bluffs, where
close to the river he picked upon a strong position and successfully
withstood all the afternoon a heavy fire. Darkness came down, and the
troops spent an anxious night intrenching themselves, and wondering
what had happened to their companions with Custer, but knowing nothing
except that the general must have been defeated.
Lying under the stars, surrounded by the “Hostiles,” they passed a
night of restlessness and alarm. The sky was aglare with light from
the bonfires; the silence of the night pierced by many strange cries
of exultation and hate, by shots, and the monotonous beating of the
tom-tom for the scalp-dance. At times a nervous man would spring
from his bivouac on the earth to shout that he heard the march of
approaching relief, and bugles rang out a welcome that was only
answered by the echoes from the hills.
When morning dawned the Sioux opened fire, and the day which followed
was one of fevered sorties and galling waiting. On the stronghold
that day Reno’s men lost eighteen killed and had fifty-two wounded,
and they spent a second anxious night. But on the morning of June
27th General Terry raised the siege and rode into camp. Terry, in his
journey, had come across more than a hundred dead, and that an awful
tragedy had been enacted he knew. But he did not know the full extent
of the slaughter. On the 28th the army marched to the battle-field of
the Little Big Horn. Scattered on the slope of the hill they found
212 dead. General Custer, his brother--Captain T. W. Custer--Captains
Keogh and Yates, Lieutenants Cook, Crittenden, Reily, Calhoun, Smith,
and other officers of their men were found, each scalped and mutilated
except Custer himself. He lay apparently as he had fallen, the Indians
refraining from wreaking vengeance on the leader, who was well known
to “Sitting Bull” and others of the chiefs. The bodies of Lieutenants
Porter, Harrington, and Sturgis, and Dr. Lord, were never found.
The killed of the entire command was 265, and the slaying of Custer and
his men was the crimson spot of the first Centennial Year of the United
States.
It is also rendered memorable as being the last great victory the Red
man achieved over the White in the fight for the American continent.
For as though frightened at the thoroughness of their victory, and
fearing as harsh a retribution, the followers of “Sitting Bull”
afterwards flitted from place to place, refusing to join issues with
the armies sent to catch them, and gradually melted away, breaking up
into small bands, or returning to the agencies from which they had
surreptitiously marched but a few weeks before. The great armies which,
immediately the news of Custer’s massacre reached Washington, were sent
to trap the Indians, marched up and down the Bad Lands; but in all
their marching and countermarchings were never able to find an Indian
to fight.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
WELLINGTON
WATERLOO
BY D.H. PARRY
NAPOLEON]
The great Imperial Eagle of France had been caught and caged at Elba,
and after close on twenty-five years of storm and tumult, Europe was at
peace.
The armies which had driven the Eagle out of France had marched home
again, robbing the Eagle’s nest of many ill-gotten trophies and leaving
in his place a horde of vultures who claimed the nest as theirs.
As is the manner of vultures, there was much gorging: Louis XVIII., the
man “who had learned nothing, and _forgotten_ nothing,” brought
back in his train a host of hungry folk, princes of the blood royal,
dukes, and noble dames; and France soon found that it would be made
to suffer for its Revolution and its Republic, and that the victories
of its Emperor were like to cost it dear. Royalists filled the high
places in Church and State. Shameless rapacity and mean reprisals were
seen on every side; and in the army the most scandalous injustices were
unblushingly practised.
People began to look with regret towards the Mediterranean isle where
the Eagle plumed his ruffled feathers moodily.
There were mysterious nods and glances, and allusions to a certain
flower which a certain “little corporal” was known to have loved.
“He will return again with the violet,” they said in whispers.
Ladies affected violet-coloured silks, and rings of the same hue became
fashionable, bearing the motto “It will re-appear in Spring.”
Nor were they wrong, for on the 1st March, 1815, at five o’clock in
the afternoon, Napoleon the Great, with a hundred dismounted Lancers
of the Guard, some veteran Grenadiers and a few officers, landed in
the Gulf of San Juan, and began that triumphal progress which ended at
WATERLOO.
His advance is curiously recorded in the papers of the day: I quote
from the _Moniteur_:--
“The cannibal has left his den.”
“The Corsican wolf has landed in the Bay of San Juan.”
“The tiger has arrived at Gay.”
“The wretch spent the night at Grenoble.”
“The tyrant has arrived at Lyons.”
“The usurper has been seen within fifty miles of Paris.”
“Bonaparte is advancing with great rapidity, but he will not set
his foot inside the walls of Paris.”
“To-morrow Napoleon will be at our gates!”
“The Emperor has arrived at Fontainebleau.”
“His Imperial Majesty Napoleon entered Paris yesterday,
surrounded by his loyal subjects.”
At midnight on the 19th March, Louis the Gross got into his carriage
by torchlight, and was driven off to Lille; the Comte d’Artois and the
Court followed an hour later, and the good citizens found when they
rose next morning, two notices fastened to the railings of the Place
Carrousel--
“Palace to let, well furnished, except the kitchen utensils,
which have been carried away by the late proprietor.”
And the other--
“A large fat hog to be sold for one Napoleon.”
At eight o’clock that evening the Emperor was carried up the grand
staircase of the Tuileries on the shoulders of his officers, and from
that moment until the 12th June the master-mind was wrestling with a
task vast enough to have discouraged twenty brains!
Out of chaos he produced order; a new Government was formed, a new army
created: five days after his entry the Allied Sovereigns declared him
an outlaw; on the 1st June he distributed Eagles to his troops, and
took an oath of allegiance to the new Constitution. But Europe had
meanwhile flown to arms, and 300,000 Austrians were to enter France by
Switzerland and the Rhine; 200,000 Russians were marching on Alsace;
Prussia had 236,000, half of whom were ready for action, so that,
including our English 80,000, the Netherland contingent and the minor
States of Germany, he had to face the onslaught of more than 1,000,000
men, with only 214,000 at his immediate command. England and Prussia
were the first to arrive; it would be July before the others could
reach the frontier, so, Napoleon, leaving armies of observation at
various points, marched against Belgium, hoping to defeat Wellington
and Blücher in time to turn about and face the storm clouds gathering
in the east.
* * * * *
It was the month of June, and the weather was intensely warm. An army
under Wellington, some 100,000 strong, including British, King’s German
Legion, Hanoverian, Brunswick, Dutch, Belgian, and Nassau troops,
was distributed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the Charleroi
_chaussée_.
It was a heterogeneous force, hastily got together, and a large
proportion of it by no means to be depended upon.
Of the British regiments, many were formed of weak second and third
battalions which had never been under fire, and nearly 800 militiamen
fought in the ranks of the 3rd Guards and 42nd Highlanders, those in
the Guards actually wearing their Surrey jackets.
Blücher’s force, seasoned veterans for the most part, lay in four
separate corps on the frontier south of Brussels, and so masterly were
Napoleon’s movements, that until the lights of his bivouac fires were
suddenly seen glowing redly in the darkness beyond Charleroi, no one
knew exactly where he was.
* * * * *
Brussels swarmed with fashionable folk, and the families of officers
who were with the army.
[Illustration: THE FARM OF QUATRE BRAS.]
The Duchess of Richmond gave a ball on the night of the 15th June, the
list of invited guests being curious, and not a little melancholy.
Among the two hundred odd names we read those of Wellington, Uxbridge,
and Hussey Vivian; two Ponsonbys, one of whom was to die three days
later; Hay, the handsome lad who had won a sweepstake at Grammont
the Tuesday before, and whose young life ebbed out on the Friday at
Quatre Bras; Cameron, of Fassifern, who also fell there; Dick of the
42nd, killed at Sobraon in ’46; and _aide-de-camp_ Cathcart, who
lived till Inkerman, where a ball and three bayonet thrusts closed his
strange career. These and many others of more or less note danced in
the long, low-roofed, barn-like room which His Grace of Richmond had
hired for the occasion from his neighbour, Van Asch, the coachbuilder.
About midnight Wellington, having already learned that the outposts had
been engaged, went to the ball, where he found the Prince of Orange.
Now, the Prince of Orange, who seemed fated to cause the useless
sacrifice of valuable life, ought to have been at his post at Binche,
and thither the duke promptly sent him, after first inquiring if there
were any news.
“No, nothing, but that the French have crossed the Sambre, and
had a brush with the Prussians!” Müffling had previously brought
the intelligence, which should have arrived much sooner, the duke
afterwards saying to Napier: “I cannot tell the world that Blücher
picked the fattest man in his army to ride with an express to me, and
that he took thirty hours to go thirty miles.”
Far from being surprised (as some writers have it), the duke’s
orders were despatched _before_ he went to that now historic
entertainment, and the dancing continued long after he and his officers
had left.
At two o’clock, while it was yet dark, strange sounds were heard under
the trees--the shuffling of men’s feet, the ringing of musket-butts
on the ground, short words of command, and the running ripple of the
roll-call along the ranks.
People opened their windows and looked out; carriages returning from
the ball drew up and waited: it was Picton’s Division off to the front.
[Illustration: PICTON’S DIVISION OFF TO THE FRONT.]
At four o’clock Pack’s Highlanders, in kilt and feather bonnet, swung
across the Place Royale and passed through the Namur Gate--the rising
sun glinting on their accoutrements, their bagpipes waking the sleeping
streets. “Come to me and I will give you flesh,” was the weird pibroch
of the Black Watch, and many a Highland laddie heard it that morning
for the last time.
Some of the officers marched in silk stockings and dancing-pumps.
Lingering too long at the ball, they had not had time--or perhaps, as
the night was warm, they had not troubled--to change them; and there
were not a few who never found time again.
Out in the early morning along the great highway they went, past
lonely farms and clustering villages, through the grey-green gloom
of the beech woods of Soigne to Mont St. Jean, where they halted for
breakfast, and where about eight the duke passed them with his staff,
leaving strict orders to keep the road clear; and at noon the troops
were on the march again for Quatre Bras, which was the fiery prelude to
the greatest battle fought in modern times.
The heat was so intense that one man of the 95th Rifles went mad,
and fell dead in the road; but the others pushed on, and were soon
afterwards under fire.
If you take a map of Belgium, placing your finger on Brussels, and pass
it down the great road running south, you will find, some twelve miles
from the capital, the village of Mont St. Jean; a little beyond which
place a cross-road from Wavre intersects the _chaussée_, and at
that point move your finger at right angles, right and left, for a mile
or so each way, and you have, roughly, the English position on the 18th
June.
Continuing again, still southward, you will pass La Belle Alliance and
Genappe, and nine miles from the cross-roads before Mont St. Jean is
Quatre Bras.
Rolling ridges of waving grain, some woods in all their summer beauty,
a gabled farmhouse, and a few cottages where four ways meet--that is
one’s impression of Quatre Bras, which Ney had orders to take, and
drive out Perponcher’s Dutch Belgians posted there; but we arrived
to their assistance, corps after corps, at intervals, and forming up
in line and square, repulsed the Cuirassiers and Lancers who charged
through the tall rye.
The crops were so high that the gallant French cavalry had to resort
to a curious device in singling out our regiments. A horseman would
dash forward, find out the position, plant a lance in the ground, and
disappear; then, in a few moments, guided by the fluttering pennon,
his comrades would burst upon us--invisible until within a few
horse-lengths.
Waterloo has put Quatre Bras into the shade, but few conflicts have
been more brilliant.
Our 69th--thanks to Orange, who interfered with its formation just as
the 8th Cuirassiers came through the corn--lost its only colour, taken
by Trooper Lami, although Volunteer Clarke received twenty-three wounds
and lost the use of an arm in its defence.
The 69th’s other colour had been captured at Bergen-op-Zoom, and was
hung in the Invalides.
By four o’clock the 44th had upwards of 16 officers and 200 men killed
and wounded.
A grey-headed French lancer drove his point into Ensign Christie’s
left eye, down through his face, piercing his tongue and entering the
jaw; but in that shocking condition he still stuck manfully to the
colour-pole, until, finding himself overpowered, he threw the colour
down and lay upon it, and some privates of the regiment closing round
the Frenchman, lifted him out of his saddle on their bayonet points!
The 92nd Highlanders--the old Gordons of Peninsular fame--were the last
of Picton’s men to reach the field, and were formed up in line.
“Ninety-second, don’t fire till I tell you!” cried Wellington, as a
mass of Cuirassiers charged them in his presence; and the word was not
given until the dashing horsemen were within twenty yards.
A little later, the duke said again: “Now, 92nd, you must charge these
two columns of infantry”; and charge they did, over a ditch, driving
the French before them, but their beloved colonel, Cameron, received a
death-wound from the upper windows of a house.
His horse turned and bolted with him, back along the road, until he
came to his master’s groom holding a second mount, when, stopping
suddenly, the dying man was pitched on his head on to the stone
causeway. But he had been terribly avenged; for the kilted Highlandmen
burst into the house with a roar and put every soul inside to the
bayonet.
“Where is the rest of the regiment?” asked Picton in the evening. Alas!
upwards of half the “gay Gordons” had perished in the fray.
Through the broiling heat of that summer day our infantry stood
firm, growing stronger as regiment after regiment arrived, and fresh
batteries unlimbered in the trampled corn, until at night Ney fell
back, leaving us in possession; our cavalry came up, jaded by their
long marches; and we bivouacked on the battle-field, cooking our
suppers in the cuirasses of the slain.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Napoleon had beaten Blücher a few miles away at Ligny,
but had neglected, in most un-Napoleonic fashion, to follow up his
advantage, and the wily old hussar--he was over seventy-three--slipped
off in the dark and retreated on Wavre.
When Wellington learned this next morning, he said to Captain Bowles:
“Old Blücher has had a ---- good licking, and has gone back to Wavre.
As he has gone back, we must go too. I suppose in England they will
say we have been licked. I can’t help that.” So back we went, along
the Brussels road, our cavalry covering the retreat until we reached
the stronger position before Mont St. Jean, where we halted and faced
about, and glued ourselves on the ridge across the causeway in such a
manner that all the magnificent chivalry of France could never move us.
During the retreat from Quatre Bras on the 17th, all went well until
the middle of the day. The wounded had been collected; the columns
filed off along the road; one of the regiments even found time to halt
and flog a marauder: when, the enemy’s cavalry pressing our rear-guard
too closely, some Horse Artillery guns opened fire, and the discharge
seemed to burst the heavy rainclouds.
It poured down in torrents; roads were turned into watercourses, the
fields and hollows became swamps; we had a smart brush with some
Lancers at Genappe, where our 7th Hussars and 1st Life Guards charged
several times; the 10th Hussars had also occasion to dismount some
men and line a hedgerow with their carbines; but the main feature of
the retreat was a weary tramp in a deluge of rain. The cavalry had
their cloaks, it is true, but the greatcoats of the foot-soldiers
had been sent back to England. Soaked to the skin, we arrived at the
ridge above La Haye Sainte, and prepared to pass the night without
covering of any kind. The French advanced almost up to us, and Captain
Mercer was giving them a few rounds from his 9-pounders when a man in
a shabby old drab overcoat and rusty round hat strolled towards him
and began a conversation. Mercer, who thought him one of the numerous
_amateurs_ with whom Brussels was swarming, answered curtly
enough, and the stranger went away.
That shabby man was General Picton, who fell next day on the very spot
where he received this unmerited snubbing. He fought at Quatre Bras
in plain clothes, having joined the army hurriedly in advance of his
baggage, and there is good reason to believe that he wore the same
dress at Waterloo.
Now commenced preparations for a dismal bivouac. The French fell back
and did not disturb us again, they too suffering from the drenching
rain, which beat with a melancholy hissing on the cornfields, the
clover, the potato patches and ploughed land which formed both
positions.
Some of our officers found shelter in neighbouring cottages; Lord
Uxbridge, afterwards Marquis of Anglesey, crept into a piggery and
sipped tea with Waymouth of the 2nd Life Guards; but most of them
cowered with their men round wretched fires which here and there were
coaxed into burning.
One of Mercer’s lieutenants had an umbrella, which had caused much
merriment during the march, but he and his captain found it a haven of
refuge under the lee of a hedge that night.
The cavalry stood to their horses, cloaked, with one flap over
the saddle; some few were lucky enough to get a bundle of straw
or peasticks to sit down upon, and all looked anxiously for the
dawn--fated to prove the last to thousands of them. With morning the
rain gradually declined to a drizzle, which finally ceased; fires
sprang up, arms were cleaned, and a buzz of voices rose along the line
as tall Lifeguardsmen went down behind La Haye Sainte to dig potatoes,
where, a few hours later, they were charging knee to knee, and every
one made shift to get what he could--with most it was only a hard
biscuit--and to dry himself, which was a still more difficult matter.
Wet to the skin, splashed from head to foot in mud and mire, cold,
shivering, unshaven (the foundation laid of acute rheumatism, to which
a pension of _five pence_ a day, in some cases ten pence, was
applied by a grateful country, to its indelible disgrace), such was
the condition of those brave hearts who were about to make the name of
“Waterloo-man” a household word for all the ages.
* * * * *
The Brussels road runs across a shallow valley, three-quarters of a
mile in width, all green and golden with the ripening grain, dipping
sharply into it by the white-walled, blue-roofed farmstead of La Haye
Sainte, and rising gently out again at the cabaret of La Belle Alliance
on its way to the frontier beyond Charleroi.
The valley is bounded by two ridges: on the northern one along the
cross road which runs nearly the whole length of the position, our
army was posted in the form of a thin crescent; on the southern ridge
and the slopes leading down into the valley the French forces were
afterwards distributed, also, to some extent, in crescent shape.
These crescents had their tips advanced towards each other, and
enclosed in the oval thus formed were two important strongholds--La
Haye Sainte, in advance of our left centre, and the château of
Hougoumont, some distance in front of our right wing; while away to the
extreme left, the white buildings of Papelotte partly concealed Ter La
Haye farm and the red-tiled hamlet of Smohain, the end of our line in
that direction.
[Illustration:
_D. H. Parry, inv._] _R. Simkin, del._
THE FIELD OF WATERLOO ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE, SUNDAY,
JUNE 18, 1815.
A and B, Napoleons first and second positions; C, Napoleon’s
last position, from which he saw the defeat of the Imperial
Guard; D, Wellington’s position when the battle began; E,
where Wellington stood when he ordered the whole line to
advance; F, Mercer’s post when he repulsed three charges of
the Guard; G, post of 27th Regiment when Lambert’s Brigade
came into the front line; H, the 23rd Regiment, of Mitchell’s
Brigade, is shown, behind Byng, the others are out of plan
at H, except company of 51st keeping the _abattis_. The
spectator is supposed to be behind Mont St. Jean farm, a
little to the left, and raised above the field.]
[Illustration: “A SHOUT OF ‘VIVE L’EMPEREUR!’ ROLLED
ALONG THE FIELD” (_p._ 58).]
The cross-road which I have mentioned as lying along our position, and
which was the celebrated “sunken road of Ohain,” runs in some places
between banks, at others on the level; it is paved down its centre,
like most Belgian roads, with irregular stones, terrible to traverse
for any distance, and it undulates gently, as the ridge rises and
falls, until it joins the Nivelle _chaussée_ beyond Hougoumont.
Hougoumont, surrounded by a quadrangle of tall trees, lies in a hollow
in front of our ridge, perhaps halfway between it and the enemy’s line.
A Flemish château with a garden laid out in the French style, and a
smaller garden full of currant bushes; barns and quaint outbuildings
clustering round the château, a brick wall about the height of a tall
man, built on lower courses of grey stone, enclosing the garden, and at
the east end of it a large open orchard; from the north-west corner,
an avenue of ancient poplars winding into the Nivelle road with an
_abattis_ of tree trunks there, held by a company of the 51st
Light Infantry; between the south wall and the French, a beech wood,
through which one could see the corn-clad slopes beyond: and that was
Hougoumont on the day of the battle.
The beech wood has been cut down, the apple-trees are sparse and scanty
now, the château was burned by the French shells, and the garden is
a grassy paddock; but the rest remains, loopholed and pockmarked
with balls, a monument to the gallantry of two brave nations. The
light companies of the Foot Guards occupied it on the 17th, and all
night long they were busy, boring walls, barricading the gateways and
erecting platforms from which to pour their fire.
* * * * *
On the high ground behind Hougoumont on our side the 2nd Brigade of
British Guards was posted, having Maitland’s Guards on its left;
beyond Maitland was Alten’s Infantry and Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians,
flanked in their turn by the gallant King’s German Legion, in the pay
of England, whose left rested on the Brussels _chaussée_, behind
La Haye Sainte. On the other side of the _chaussée_ was Kempt,
then Pack’s Highlanders, the Royal Scots, and 44th Regiment, some more
Hanoverians, under Best, the 5th Hanoverians of Vincke, Vandeleur’s
Light Dragoons, and Vivian’s Hussar Brigade.
The 2nd Rifles of the German Legion held La Haye Sainte, three
companies of our 95th occupying a knoll and sandpit on the other side
of the road, and Papelotte was garrisoned by Dutch Belgians, who
behaved with the greatest gallantry.
Along the front of this, our first fighting line, the artillery was
posted at intervals, and sufficient justice has not been done to the
brave gunners, the duke always being unfairly severe on that arm of the
service. Our heavy cavalry stood, in hollows behind the line, right and
left of the great road in front of the farm of Mont St. Jean, already
full of the Quatre Bras wounded. Other troops were in reserve out of
sight of the enemy, behind our ridge, ready to advance and fill up any
gaps, and we had a strong force in and about Braine l’Alleud, two miles
to our right, in case the French should try to turn us there.
Crops, as at Quatre Bras, covered the valley and ridges, and the
whole plain undulated in every direction. The battle-field to-day is
full of surprises. Sudden dips occur where the land seems flat from a
little distance; tongues of ground and barley-covered hillocks rise
unexpectedly as you approach them; and it is possible to lose sight of
the entire field by a few yards of walking in some directions; so that,
flat as Belgium is generally considered, it is not astonishing that the
survivors of Waterloo could only speak to events in their own immediate
vicinity.
* * * * *
Between nine and ten there was loud cheering, as the Duke of Wellington
rode along the line with his Staff. He wore a blue frock coat, white
cravat, and buckskin breeches, with tasselled Hessian boots; a short
blue cloak with a white lining, and a low cocked hat with the British
black cockade, and three smaller ones for Spain, Portugal, and the
Netherlands. He was mounted on his favourite chestnut, Copenhagen, a
grandson of Eclipse, and carried a long field-telescope drawn out for
use.
At nine o’clock there was a movement on the opposite side of the
valley; columns debouched into the fields right and left of the
_chaussée_, and took up their positions as orderly as if upon
parade; glittering files of armoured Cuirassiers trotted through the
corn, and formed behind the infantry, lance-pennons fluttered on each
flank, and by half-past ten 61,000 French soldiers were drawn up in
battle array, their right opposite Papelotte, their centre at La Belle
Alliance, their left wing somewhat beyond Hougoumont.
The two greatest living commanders were about to measure swords for the
first and only time; and as Napoleon galloped along his line, the music
of the French bands was distinctly heard; helmets and weapons were
brandished in the air, and a shout of “Vive l’Empereur!” rolled across
the field.
Blue-coated infantry formed their first ranks, with batteries of brass
cannon dotted here and there; behind stood the heavy cavalry with more
guns, supported, on their right, by the gay light horse of the Guard,
on the left by the heavy cavalry of the Imperial cohort, and in rear of
the centre about the farm of Rossomme, stood the invincible infantry of
the Guard, the most renowned body of warriors in Europe.
* * * * *
Napoleon was unwell.
At two in the morning he had been reconnoitring, and his horses were
ordered for seven; at ten he still sat in an upper room in an attitude
of bodily and mental suffering.
A little later he came down the steep ladder, and as his page, Gudin,
was helping him into the saddle he lifted the Imperial elbow too
suddenly, and Napoleon pitched over on the offside, nearly coming to
the ground.
“_Allez_” he hissed, “_à tous les diables!_” and away he
started in a great rage.
The page stood watching the _cortège_ with tearful eyes, but when
it had gone some hundred yards the ranks of the Staff opened, and
Napoleon came riding back alone.
With one hand placed tenderly on the lad’s shoulder he said, very
softly, “My child, when you assist a man of my girth to mount, it is
necessary to proceed more carefully.” Yet it was of this man that
Wellington could say, in after years, “The fellow was no gentleman”!
The page became a general, and fell in a sortie from Paris during the
Franco-Prussian war.
* * * * *
There was a lull before the storm, and the duke went to have a final
look at Hougoumont, where, in addition to the Guards, he had posted,
in the woods and grounds, some Nassauers, Hanoverians, and Luneberg
riflemen.
These foreigners were dissatisfied at their position, and as Wellington
rode away _several bullets came whistling after him_! “How can
they expect me to win a battle with troops like those?” was his only
comment.
About half-past eleven came the FIRST ATTACK!
One booming cannon echoed dully in the misty Sabbath morning, and a
cloud of dark-blue skirmishers ran forward against Hougoumont, firing
briskly into the wood.
Puffs of white smoke issued from the trees; here and there a blue-coat
turned a somersault and lay still; but the cloud increased, and a loud
rattle of musketry was kept up on both sides, which lasted, with short
intervals, the whole day.
Our men fell back upon the buildings through the open beech-trees, and
in twenty minutes the French supporting columns were pouring up the
hill towards the château grounds.
Cleeve’s German battery opened on them, and his first shot killed
_seventeen_ men, the guns checking the advance and sending the
column, broken and bleeding, down the ridge again.
Our batteries on the right now began; the French artillery replied;
Kellermann’s horse batteries joined in, and the infernal concert was in
full blast.
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS PICTON.
(_From the Painting by Sir M. A. Shee, P.R.A._)]
The green Lunebergers and the yellow knapsacks of the Hanoverians
came helter-skelter back across the orchard, but the Foot Guards went
forward at a run and drove the enemy off.
Bull’s howitzers sent a shower of 5½-inch shells over the château
into the wood, and as often as the death-dealing globes fell crashing
through the branches, so often did the enemy retire in confusion,
until Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, who was in command at
Hougoumont, brought up Foy’s Division to help the attack.
Bravely led by their officers, the tall shakoes and square white
coat-facings of the line regiments, the dark-blue and black gaiters
of the light infantry, pressed through the wood until they reached a
stiff quickset hedge, separated by a thin strip of apple orchard from
the long south wall, over which peeped the head-gear of our Guardsmen,
and in the confusion of smoke and skirmish the bright-red brickwork was
mistaken for a line of British--you can see to-day where the French
balls crumbled that barrier. But soon discovering their error, the
brave fellows struggled through the hedge and rushed forward.
A line of loopholes perforated the wall about three feet from the
ground, crossed bayonets protruded viciously from the openings, and
a hail of bullets poured forth with such ghastly effect that in
half-an-hour there were _fifteen hundred_ of God’s creatures dead
and dying on the green grass in the orchard, and still the others came
on.
Some got as far as the loopholes, and seized the bayonets; others
struck with their gunbutts at the men, who, on platforms behind
the wall, fired down over the top, piling up the dead in dreadful
heaps--privates and officers, conscripts and veterans.
From time to time our Foot Guards charged over the large orchard at
the east end of the enclosed garden, and also at the south-west angle
of the farm buildings, where a haystack helped to cover them until the
French burned it; and this repulse and attack went on, time and again,
until the evening, the enemy gaining no advantage but the beechwood for
all their desperate valour.
[Illustration: THE FARM OF HOUGOUMONT.]
The rest of our line had remained passive listeners to the firing,
except for a little skirmishing here and there, but a hurricane was
brewing and about to burst against our left and centre.
* * * * *
La Haye Sainte was a farm, lying like Hougoumont in a hollow; it was
on the Brussels road, and was built with barn and stabling round three
sides of an oblong yard, the fourth side being a high white wall, with
a gate and a piggery alongside the roadway.
Towards the French position stretched a long orchard, a small garden
lay behind the house, and a large double door opened from the yard into
the fields on the Hougoumont side, half of which door had been burned
for bivouac fires the night previous. The 2nd Rifles of the German
Legion, dressed like our own in green with slate-coloured pantaloons,
held the post, and held it like the heroes of old, three companies in
the orchard, two in the building, and one in the garden, Major Baring,
who had two horses shot under him, being in command.
The post was not as strong as Hougoumont, all the pioneers having been
sent to fortify the latter place, and the “Green Germans” had a very
insufficient supply of ammunition; Wellington afterwards admitting that
he had neglected to make the most of the position there.
At 1:30 p.m. Marshal Ney had gathered seventy-four guns, mostly
12-pounders, on a ridge very near to La Haye Sainte on the French
_right_ of the road, and this was known as the “Great Battery.”
Behind the guns the whole of D’Erlon’s Corps, together with Bachelu’s
Division, was massed in columns for the attack twenty regiments,
Bachelu being in reserve. Ney sent to the Emperor to tell him all was
ready, and with an appalling cannonade on our left and centre, they
commenced the SECOND ATTACK.
When the smoke which hung about the guns had drifted slowly away across
the slopes we could see four massive columns, led by the brave Ney,
pouring steadily forward straight for our ridge.
The firing became general as we opened on the advance; men had to shout
to be audible to their neighbours; long lanes were ploughed through
Picton’s Division, and the balls went tearing through our cavalry
in reserve, many of them striking the hospital farm, and some even
travelling into the village beyond.
Bylandt’s Dutch Belgians, posted in front of the cross-road, forgot
their gallantry at Quatre Bras, and bolted, almost running over the
Grenadiers of our 28th, who were restrained with difficulty from firing
into them. One ball cut a tall tree into half at the hedgerow above the
sandpit, bringing the feathery top down and half-smothering two doctors
of the 95th, who had stationed themselves beneath it.
[Illustration: “SOME GOT AS FAR AS THE LOOPHOLES AND
SEIZED THE BAYONETS” (_p._ 59).]
Nearly 24,000 men advanced, with loud cries and the hoarse rolling of
drums, in four masses: Durutte against Papelotte, Alix and Marcognet in
front of Kempt and Pack, Donzelot upon the devoted Rifles in La Haye
Sainte, the shock taking place about two o’clock, and lasting for more
than an hour.
Durutte took Papelotte, but was driven out again; Alix and Marcognet
breasted the rise, and gained the ridge under a murderous discharge;
the smell of trampled corn mingling with the powder smoke as the Great
Battery ceased firing lest it should kill its comrades, and with shouts
of “Vive l’Empereur!” the two columns hurled themselves against the
steel barrier of bayonets on the hedge-lined bank above them.
Hand to hand, no quarter asked or given, veteran and conscript came on
yelling like mad, Picton’s Division meeting them in line.
Some of Marcognet’s fellows crossed the Wavre road and blazed into the
92nd; but our men advanced, after a withering volley, and, jumping into
the cross-road, went at them with a will. Cameron Highlanders, 32nd and
28th, Scots Royals, and Black Watch, Gordons and 44th, with colours
waving and courage high, over the causeway they rushed, into the wheat
and barley.
“Charge, charge! Hurrah!” cried Picton, his little black eyes
sparkling, his florid complexion redder with excitement--a ball struck
his right temple, he fell dead from his horse, and his men passed over
him driving the foe down hill.
A mounted French officer had his horse shot, and getting to his feet
seized the regimental colour of the 32nd, which was nearly new.
Belcher, who carried it, grasped the silk and the Frenchman groped
for his sabre hilt, but Colour-sergeant Switzer thrust a pike at his
breast. “Save the brave fellow!” was the cry, but it came too late; a
private, named Lacy, fired point blank into him, and he fell lifeless.
Ney stood in the road beyond La Haye Sainte watching Donzelot’s attack
on the farm, where the “Green Germans” were forced, after a struggle,
out of the long orchard into the buildings, and simultaneously a mass
of Cuirassiers tore past the Hougoumont side and rode at the ridge.
Our Household Cavalry and Ponsonby’s Heavies had walked on foot to the
height overlooking the struggle; the trumpets rang out “Mount,” and
swinging into their saddles they swooped down into the thick of it.
With a clatter across the causeway, and the muffled thunder of hoofs
on the ground beyond it, the scarlet-coated Life Guards, wearing no
armour then, and mounted on black horses, dashed past the Wellington
tree into the potato field, with the Blues and King’s Dragoon Guards,
swinging, slashing, stirrup to stirrup, to meet Kellermann’s troopers
and Ordoner’s Cuirassiers. There was the snort of eager horses, the
creaking of leather, the clash of sword on steel cuirass, the yell
of passion and the scream of agony; a seething mass of fighting-men
and steeds, glinting and gleaming, swaying this way and that way, but
always onward, jostling down the hill.
The 1st Lifes got jammed in the road beyond the farm with a body of
Cuirassiers, on the spot where Ney had just before been standing,
voltigeurs firing into them, on friend and foe alike!
Their Colonel, Ferner, led eleven charges, although badly wounded by
sabre and lance.
The King’s Dragoons jumped their horses over a barrier of trees which
our Rifles had built across the causeway and went thundering along
that way, while the Blues were reaping a harvest of glory in another
direction, and the 2nd Life Guards charged to the left for a great
distance beyond the sandpit alongside the farm, where Corporal Shaw met
his fate after slaying _nine_ of the enemy singlehanded.
After the battle men remembered this mighty swordsman, and told in
solemn voices his deeds of derring-do. One cuirassier sat, out of the
_mêlée_, coolly loading his carbine and picking off our troopers,
and it is believed he gave Shaw his mortal hurt.
A survivor narrated how, exhausted at nightfall, he had lain down on a
dung-heap, when Shaw crawled beside him, bleeding from many wounds. In
the morning the life-guardsman was still there, his head resting on his
arm as if asleep, but it was the sleep which knows no waking.
Ponsonby’s Union Brigade was meanwhile making its immortal onslaught,
more towards Papelotte, the ground they went over being billowy, and
the troops before them infantry of the line.
The Royals gave a ringing cheer; “Scotland for ever!” was the war-cry
of the Greys; and the Inniskillings went in with an Irish howl.
As they passed the 92nd, many of the Highlanders caught hold of their
stirrup-leathers and charged down with them; the very ground seemed
trembling under the iron hoofs; Marcognet and Alix were broken and
trampled, and in three minutes more than 2,000 prisoners were wending
their disconsolate way to the rear.
“Those beautiful grey horses!” said Napoleon, as he watched the charge.
Did he see that struggle round the Eagle of his 45th, I wonder--that
famous “Battle for the Standard” which Ansdell has painted so well?
What says Sergeant Ewart, the hero of the incident? “It was in the
charge I took the Eagle from the enemy. He and I had a hard contest for
it. He made a thrust at my groin; I parried it off, and cut him down
through the head. After this a lancer came at me; I threw the lance off
by my right side, and cut him through the chin and upwards through the
teeth. Next a foot-soldier fired at me, and then charged me with his
bayonet, which I also had the good luck to parry, and then I cut him
down through the head. Thus ended the contest.”
[Illustration: Sergeant Ewart Capturing the Eagle at Waterloo
(_p._ 62).
(_From a Painting by W. B. Wollen, R.I._)]
Captain Clarke and Corporal Styles, of the Royals, took an Eagle from
the 105th between them--a glorious gilded thing, embroidered with the
names of Jéna, Eylau, Eckmühl, Essling, and Wagram--the gallant captain
losing the tip of his nose in the struggle.
A man of the Inniskillings named Penfold claimed to have taken that
colour; but his story is vague, and I incline to think that a blue silk
camp-colour of the 105th, now at Abbotsford, was the one that Penfold
seized and afterwards lost in the fray.
Sir William Ponsonby led the charge on a restive bay hack, and was
killed; while some of the Greys got as far as the Great Battery,
disabling many of the guns, and getting slain in the end.
Part of the 28th lost its head, and charged with the brigade;
Lieutenant Deares of that regiment being taken prisoner, stripped of
his clothes, rejoining at night in nothing but shirt and trousers.
Tathwell, of the Blues, tore off a colour, but his horse was shot and
he lost it; and the greater part of the two brigades rode along the
battery until heavy bodies of Cuirassiers and Lancers came to drive
them back.
Vandeleur charged to their relief with his Light Dragoons--the 12th
with bright yellow lancer facings, the 16th with scarlet, the buff 11th
remaining in reserve.
“Squadrons, right half-wheel! Charge!” and the sabres of our light
horsemen were soon busy in the valley below. The ground was very soft,
for a month after the battle some of the holes made by horses’ feet
were measured, and found to be _eighteen_ inches deep, and in
speaking of artillery movements it must be remembered that the guns
were at times up to the axle in clay.
The heavy cavalry regained our position; but so much had they
suffered that, later in the day, when they were drawn up in line
to show a bold front, there were only fifty of them; Somerset, who
led the “Households,” losing his hat, and wearing the helmet of a
life-guardsman, with its red and blue worsted crest, until nightfall.
The attack had failed, and there was a long pause, broken only by the
firing at Hougoumont and some feeble attempts on La Haye Sainte; but it
was now the turn of our troops in the centre, from the _chaussée_
to the back of the château; and a terrible time they had!
A renewal of the cannonade--a forming of our regiments into squares
and oblongs--and then the grandest cavalry affair in history, as
_forty_ squadrons of Cuirassiers and Dragoons crossed from the
French right in beautiful order, wheeled up until they almost filled
the space from Hougoumont to La Haye Sainte, and, about four o’clock,
put spurs to their horses and began the THIRD ATTACK!
A forest of sword-blades, an undulating sea of helmets, a roar of
mighty shouting as they came through the yet untrampled grain.
Wave after wave, far as the eye could scan, now glinting with thousands
of bright points as the sullen sun shone for a moment upon them, now
grey and sombre as the clouds closed together again. Nearer! nearer!
nearer! Men clutched their muskets tighter and breathed hard; gunners
rammed home and hastened to re-load before the smoke had drifted from
the cannon.
Suddenly they left their guns, and ran to the infantry for protection
as the sea burst upon us, and our ridge became alive with furious
horsemen, surging and foaming round and round the squares. There were
many who thought that all was over, but the little clumps of scarlet
fringed with steel were impenetrable.
In vain the moustached troopers cut desperately at the bayonets;
in vain they rode up and fired their pistols into the faces of our
lads. For three-quarters of an hour they expended their strength in a
hopeless task; and when our fresh cavalry from Dörnberg’s and Grant’s
Brigades charged them, they went down the slope again, leaving the
ground dotted with dead and dying.
A moment’s respite to re-form in the hollows below, and back they came
once more, in the face of a fearful fire from our artillery, whose guns
were double-shotted--some loaded with scattering grape and canister.
Lanes, sickening to behold, were torn through the squadrons; but
Milhaud’s men were not to be daunted, and the same strange scene was
repeated many times.
A small body of Cuirassiers that had surrendered was being escorted to
the rear by a weak party of the 7th Hussars, when they made a bold dash
for liberty along the Nivelle road, stampeding, _ventre à terre_,
until they reached the _abattis_ at the end of the Hougoumont
avenue.
Here they met Ross’s company of the 51st, who killed eight men and
twelve horses, the rest--about sixty--surrendering again.
One artilleryman was seen, under his gun, dodging a French trooper, who
tried to reach him with his long sword.
After some moments the cuirassier’s horse was shot, and the gunner,
sallying out, hit him over the head with his rammer, and packed him off
to the rear with a parting kick.
[Illustration: DEFENCE OF LA HAYE SAINTE BY THE GERMAN
LEGION (_p._ 66).]
The ridge was once more cleared, and Mercer’s battery brought into
the front line. The whole field was now littered with corpses and
accoutrements. Gaily-dressed trumpeters, and officers on whose breasts
hung crosses of the Legion of Honour, lay bleeding in the barley among
hundreds of dead and wounded horses. Here a lancer in green and light
blue, there a heap of cuirassiers of the 1st Regiment, mown down by
grape shot; yonder a _chasseur-à-cheval_, propped against his
charger, while swords and cuirasses were almost as numerous as the
stalks of corn.
All the slope was torn and trampled; flies were busy in the now
loathsome hollows; there was constant firing still at Hougoumont
and La Haye Sainte, when the trumpets sounded again, and with
_seventy-seven_ squadrons, including the cavalry of the Guard,
France returned to the charge. Every arm of the mounted service
was represented in this attack, the beauty and brilliancy of the
uniforms baffling description. Carabiniers, white-coated, with brass
cuirasses and red-crested helmets; Lancers, Dragoons, and Chasseurs
in green, with facings of every hue; the Red Lancers of the Guard,
clad in scarlet from head to heel, and Napoleon’s own favourite
_Chasseurs-à-cheval_, with hussar caps and red pelisses, richly
braided with orange lace; tall bearskinned Horse Grenadiers, with white
facings to their blue coats; the Cuirassiers, dark and sombre looking;
the high felt shakoes of the Hussars--it was as though a flower garden
in all its summer dress were moving at a slow trot upon us, heralded by
the thunder of hell from the batteries behind it.
When the thunder stopped, which it always did as the leading files
reached the crest of the ridge, our men could hear in the momentary
intervals of their own firing the jingling of bits and scabbards, and
the heavy breathing of the horses. Mounted skirmishers came close to
the batteries and commenced firing at the gunners, who were literally
dripping with perspiration from the exertions they made. One fellow
took several pot-shots at Captain Mercer, who was coolly walking his
horse backwards and forwards along a bank to set an example to his
men. He missed each time, and grinned grimly as he reloaded, but as
the head of the squadrons closed up the skirmishers vanished and were
succeeded by the rush which threatened death to every soul on the
plateau. Wellington’s orders were to retire into the squares and leave
the batteries, but Mercer’s men stuck to their guns, repulsing three
charges of the Horse Grenadiers, and dealing such slaughter that the
position of “G Troop” was known next day by the enormous heap of slain
lying before it, visible from a considerable distance.
The carnage on the slope was shocking--the oldest soldiers had seen
nothing like it: men and horses lay piled one on another, five and six
in a heap, every fresh discharge adding to the ghastly pyramid. The
1st Cuirassiers numbered 300 of the Legion of Honour in its ranks--it
lost 117, including two lieutenants and the brave Captain Poinsot, page
to the Emperor in 1807, wounded at Moscow and Brienne. One officer,
finding the fire from a particular gun playing havoc with his men, rode
straight at it and was blown to atoms.
[Illustration: “A GALLANT ARTILLERY DRIVER RUSHED HIS
HORSES TO THE WALL” (_p._ 66).]
The horses during the battle suffered cruelly, and some of the details
are heartrending: the charger of a very stout officer with the Duke’s
staff, probably Müffling, was seen to rear for some time without the
rider being able to bring it down--its front legs had been both shot
off. Another trooper’s horse was seen next morning sitting on its tail,
its hind legs gone; and one poor beast ran for sympathy to six guns in
succession, and was driven off from each with exclamations of horror
until it reached “G Troop,” where they mercifully killed it: the whole
of its face below the great brown pleading eyes had been carried away
by a round shot!
After a repulse and a re-attack, the remnant of the seventy-seven
squadrons reeled back to their own lines: the cavalry of France,
magnificent, irresistible, brave as lions, and nobly led, had shattered
itself without result, and _the third great attempt had failed_!
* * * * *
All the afternoon there had been great doings at Hougoumont. About one
o’clock Colonel Hepburn had relieved Saltoun in the large orchard with
a battalion of the 3rd--now the Scots Guards--and the combat on that
side became a long succession of advances with the bayonet to the front
hedge and retirings into a green dry ditch, which is known to us as the
“friendly hollow-way.” When our men fell back, a terrific fire from the
short east wall would stagger the foe, and the Scots, having formed
again, would scramble out of the hollow and clear the orchard of all
but the dead.
Along the terrible south wall a staff-officer, who had been through all
the Peninsula battles, afterwards said that the slain lay thicker than
he had ever seen them elsewhere.
The château and barns were now burning furiously, fired by Haxo’s
howitzers at Napoleon’s orders, and many of our wounded perished in
the flames; some officers’ horses tore out of the barn, galloped madly
round the yard, and rushed into the fire again to be destroyed.
Twice the enemy got in: once by a little door in the west wall,
through which they never got out alive; and the second time, when
our Guardsmen had sallied out into the lane to drive off a body of
infantry, about fifty French entered on their heels through the north
gate. Then, by main strength of arm, Colonel Macdonell, Sergeant
Graham, and three or four more, shut and barred the wooden gate in the
faces of the others, and those inside were all shot down.
A brave fellow climbed on to the beam that crossed the gateway; but
Graham fired, and he dropped with a scream on to the heads of his
comrades outside the wall.
The fire stopped at the door of the château chapel, which was full of
wounded, and a wooden figure of our Saviour had the feet nibbled by the
flames, at which the superstitious marvel greatly to this day.
Columns of smoke hung over everything. A gallant artillery driver
rushed his horses to the wall, and flung a barrel of welcome cartridges
over into the yard. At the corner, before the gardener’s house, Baron
de Cubières lay wounded under his horse; afterwards, when Governor of
Ancona, he expressed himself very grateful that we had not fired on him!
Crawford of the 3rd Guards was killed in the kitchen garden, Blackman
of the Coldstreams died in the orchard; but the attack and repulse grew
gradually weaker, as both sides tired of the hideous slaughter.
Meanwhile, a serious trouble which had been menacing the Emperor on his
right flank for some time at last grew terribly imminent.
The Prussians were coming in spite of Grouchy, who had been sent in
their pursuit.
They should have arrived about one o’clock; but, thanks to the bad
roads, a fire in the town of Wavre, which had to be extinguished before
the ammunition-waggons could be got through, and some hesitation on the
part of Gneisenau, Blücher’s Chief of Staff, who doubted Wellington’s
good faith, it was _half-past four_ when part of Bülow’s corps
came out of the woods at St. Lambert and confirmed Napoleon’s
previously awakened fears.
In the hazy weather they thought it was Grouchy, and a false report
was afterwards sent through the French army to cheer the wearied men;
but the Emperor and Soult knew otherwise, and the line of battle was
weakened by a strong force being detached to meet the new arrivals.
There was no time to be lost; drums rolled and trumpets sounded again,
and the last remnants of the cavalry had not regained their position
when the Fourth Grand Attack began with a fury that even exceeded the
others.
While fresh bodies of horse and foot advanced up the ridge, a most
determined rush was made on La Haye Sainte. Baring had been reinforced,
it is true; but, although he sent time after time for more ammunition,
not a single cartridge was forthcoming!
A feeble excuse has been made that there were no means of getting it
into the building; but a large door and several windows faced our line
at the back of the house then, as now. They may still be seen by the
visitor to Waterloo.
A horde of French infantry flung themselves on the buildings, setting
the barn on fire, and besieging the broken gateway.
While the brave Germans filled their camp-kettles from the pond and
extinguished the flames, others, with their bayonets only, kept the
door leading into the field. Seventeen corpses they piled up there
in a few minutes, one gallant fellow defending a breach with a brick
torn from the wall! The individual acts of heroism on authentic record
would fill many pages: but, without ammunition, they were at a fearful
disadvantage.
The voltigeurs climbed on to the roof of the stable, and shot them down
at their ease: the half barn-door is preserved to the present day,
with eighty bullet-holes in it! Alten sent the brave Christian Ompteda
to their aid, if practicable, with the 5th Battalion. He pointed to
an overwhelming force; but the irrepressible Orange repeated Alten’s
suggestion in a tone that brooked no delay, and Ompteda went down with
his 5th Battalion, and they died, almost to a man!
Baring dismounted to pick up his cap, knocked off by a shot; four balls
had lodged in the cloak rolled on his saddle-bow, and a fifth then
pierced the saddle itself, while the Scotch Lieutenant Græme, sitting
on the rafters of the piggery, in which a calf was lowing, raised his
shako to cheer his men, and his right hand was taken off at the wrist.
He was only eighteen.
It was hopeless. “If I receive no cartridges,” said Baring in his last
appeal, “I not only must, but _will_ abandon the post!” And very
soon those neglected heroes retreated slowly through the house and out
through the garden beyond, the French, bursting into the yard, chasing
the remnant round and round and bayoneting them on the dungheaps.
A roar of cheering rang above the battle. At last they were
victorious, and the French had taken La Haye Sainte.
Without a moment’s hesitation their conquest was turned to the best
possible advantage. Smart red-braided Horse Artillery galloped down
the causeway, dragging their guns to the knoll above the sandpit,
from which our 95th had been driven, and, unlimbering, opened fire at
_sixty yards range_ on to our line.
Skirmishers filled the hedgerows and the farm buildings. The Great
Battery renewed its work of death, and in a few moments there was a
serious gap in the centre of our position.
Lambert’s brigade had been brought up before this, and suffered
terribly.
The 27th, which had lain down and slept soundly behind Mont St. Jean
until after three o’clock, lost 478 out of 698 in its new quarters; and
the 40th thirteen officers and 180 rank and file, one round shot taking
off the head of Captain Fisher and killing twenty-five men.
Ompteda’s brigade mustered a mere handful, Kielmansegge was almost
destroyed, Halkett had two weak squares, one of his regiments being
very shaky indeed, and, altogether, things were unpleasant when the
Duke came up with reinforcements to patch our front as best he could.
Far off on our right Chassé’s Dutch Belgians had arrived, shouting and
singing, from Braine l’Alleud, _very drunk_, narrowly escaping
a volley from us, as they wore the French uniform; and at this time,
by reason of the bolting of Hake’s Cumberland Hussars and some of our
supports, with the enormous losses from the six hours of carnage, the
British affairs were in bad case.
Halkett’s 30th and 73rd in square had been charged no less than eleven
times: the Duke pointed to a scarlet mass in front through the smoke,
and inquired what regiment it was. It was the dead and wounded of those
two corps, huddled together where they had fallen.
The green-faced 73rd was at one time commanded by Lieutenant Stewart,
all the other officers having been killed or wounded; and at half-past
seven the colours of both regiments were sent to the rear.
The 2nd Line Battalion of the German Legion went into action with 300
men, but mustered only six officers and thirty-six privates after
the battle; but Blücher was now nearing the French right rear with
nearly 52,000 troops and 104 guns, and the Emperor was obliged to send
General Duhesme with eight battalions of the young Guard down into the
straggling village of Planchenoit to help to check them.
He had been at La Belle Alliance all day, and Prussian shot were now
falling about him.
Marshal Ney sent for more infantry to renew the attack. “Où voulez
vous que j’en prenne: voulez vous que j’en fasse?” was the Emperor’s
impatient reply--“Where can I get them: do you wish me to make them?”
The long June day was drawing into evening, and shadows began to
lengthen across the fields. Wellington, who had always been seen where
the fire was hottest, rode with a calm, inscrutable face, followed by a
sadly diminished staff, his eagle eye taking note of the strength and
weakness of our line.
The Hussars had been moved in rear of the centre; and Adams’ Brigade
took position immediately behind the ridge. In front of the clover
field where the 52nd stood in square, a pretty little tortoiseshell
kitten, which had been frightened out of Hougoumont by the firing, lay
dead--a strange feature in the scene of destruction.
The men were growing accustomed to the hideous sights and sounds around
them, and became impatient at the inactivity which doomed them to
endure without reprisal. Suddenly the brass guns blazed forth once more
upon us; the _pas de charge_ was rolling from a thousand drums;
a serried line was seen advancing along our entire front, and, led by
the Emperor himself, on his grey charger Marie, his famous _redingote
gris_ open and showing the well-known dark-green chasseur coat, the
Grenadiers of the Guard marched in solid columns into the valley.
Two winding serpents of determined men; ten battalions in tall black
bearskins, white facings and dark-blue pantaloons--that was their dress
at Waterloo--with Friant and Morand, Petit, whom Napoleon had kissed
at Fontainebleau, Poret de Morvan, and old Cambronne. The _élite_
of the French army, the Grenadiers and Chasseurs of the Old and Middle
Guard, marching sternly to victory or death. Marcognet, Alix, and
Donzelot, with their remnants, against our reeling left; Reille, Foy,
and Jérôme renewing on Hougoumont--cavalry in the gaps and spaces--a
simultaneous, mighty LAST ATTACK!
The yet unbroken Imperial Guard set their faces towards the spot
where Maitland’s, Adams’ and Byng’s redcoats looked to their priming
and closed their ranks: had Napoleon hurled them against the cross
road behind La Haye Sainte, the story of Waterloo had been written
differently.
He missed his chance; he threw away his final hope. The greatest of
his many mistakes was committed, and, handing over the leadership to
Ney, he remained on a hillock above the farm, and watched the downfall
of France and the death-blow of his empire! For the last time in this
world their Emperor addressed them, pointing towards the heights with a
gesture all could understand.
“_Déployez les aigles. En avant! Vive l’Empereur!_” and with a
great shout they quickened their pace, passing proudly, unheeding, over
the bodies of those comrades who had gone before.
Red tongues of flame burst from the smoke of our guns; whiz came
the fiery rockets, darting into their ranks, scorching, blinding,
and burning in their course; humming shells dropped among them with
terrible destruction; but the Old Guard pressed on, and began to mount
the ridge.
Ney’s horse fell--the _fifth_ killed under him that day, and the
“bravest of the brave,” went forward on foot. Alas, would that it had
been to death!
Our Guards were lying down to avoid the hurricane from the French
artillery. A shell dropped in one of the squares, and Colonel Colquitt,
picking it up, fizzing and fuming, walked to the edge and flung it
outside to burst harmlessly. Another officer, mortally wounded, said
faintly:
“I should like to see the colours of the regiment again before I quit
them for ever”: they were brought and waved round his body, and with a
smile, he was carried away, to die.
[Illustration: LA HAYE SAINTE.]
It was men like those that the oncoming columns had to face, and
batteries as famous as those of Bull and Bolton, of Norman Ramsay,
Whinyates, and Webber Smith, with guns double shotted and served as on
parade; no need to sight so carefully, for the moving target is a wide
one, and they hit in every time!
Now the skirmishers run out, shouting and firing as before, and when
they have said their say, they fall back leaving all clear for the
others; but the columns seem to get no nearer, though they are marching
steadily; front rank after front rank is blown to shreds--_that is
why they appear stationary_!
The gunners have done their work; the guns recoil, and are left there:
it is the turn of the infantry now, and the time has come for that
historic signal, “Up, Guards, and at ’em!” which in reality was never
said.
But whatever the word was, they _do_ “up,” and they _do_ “at
’em”; and again it is bayonet to bayonet, and man to man.
One Welsh giant, named Hughes, six feet seven inches in height, is seen
to knock over a dozen of the Old Guard single handed; the redcoats and
the blue-coats mingle for a moment and the blue-coats melt away.
The second column, a little behind the other, is in good order: it
has suffered less from the cannonade, and is full of fire and fury;
but so also are our 52nd lads, who advance down the slope with three
tremendous cheers.
Colborne is leading, and when they get abreast of the column he cries--
“Halt! Mark time!”
The men touch in to their left, and regain their dressing; Colborne’s
horse is shot, and he comes forward wiping his mouth with a white
handkerchief, still wearing Ensign Leeke’s blue boat-cloak.
“Right shoulders forward!”
[Illustration: THE UNION BRIGADE CAPTURING THE FRENCH GUNS AT
WATERLOO.
(_From the Picture by W. B. Wollen, R.I._)]
The regiment swings round, and, four deep, faces the column’s flank two
hundred yards away.
“Forward, 52nd--charge!” and the Foot Guards, who are back on the
ridge again, behold a noble spectacle.
The crash is terrific; the Imperial phalanx is taken in flank. The
contest is fierce, but it is soon over.
Brave Michel, in response to our officers, replies with glorious
_esprit de corps_, “The Guard dies, and never surrenders!” his
words instantly fulfilled, as he falls lifeless, sword in hand, while
Cambronne, grown old in the service (to whom these words have been
falsely attributed), gives up his weapon to William Halkett.
Halkett’s horse is shot, and Cambronne hastens away, but his captor is
too quick for him, and seizing his gold aiguillette, hands him to a
sergeant to be taken care of.
On presses the 52nd, driving the broken Guard before it: it is a sight
probably never repeated in history--one regiment traversing the field
alone, in sight of the army; sending the foe like sheep into the
hollow; dispersing and pushing them relentlessly back, until they turn
and fly, and other corps make haste to join in that glorious progress.
There is a movement along the ridge as the setting sun shines out in a
burst of sinking splendour, and the Duke, with cocked hat raised above
his head, gives the magic word, “The whole line will advance!” and then
spurs down after the 52nd.
On the rising ground near La Haye Sainte, Napoleon sits on horseback,
close to a small battalion which has formed square.
Jérôme, his brother, bleeding and exhausted, is with him, with honest
old Drouot in his artillery uniform, in the pocket of which is a
well-worn Bible; Soult and Gourgaud, Bertrand and brave young La
Bédoyère are there, too: but the English Hussars are coming on at a
fast trot.
All day long the waves of valour have been rolling northward, and
breaking against an iron-bound shore; now the tide has turned, and
rushes madly south again.
Nothing but confusion meets the eye: everywhere the French are in full
retreat--solitary men, groups of three and four, ruined regiments, and
the skeletons of squadrons.
Jérôme rides close to his brother, and says in a meaning tone--
“It were well for all who bear the name of Bonaparte to perish here!”
Napoleon orders some guns to open on the Hussars, and one shot hits
Lord Uxbridge on the right knee as, mounted on a troop horse belonging
to a sergeant-major of the 23rd Light Dragoons, he is leading the
pursuit.
“Here we must die on the field of battle,” exclaims the Emperor,
preparing to head the weak column; but Soult seizes his bridle, saying,
“They will not kill you: you will be taken prisoner”; and, held up in
the saddle by two faithful officers, for he is worn out, Napoleon is
galloped away in the gathering darkness.
* * * * *
On the left of the Brussels road some Prussian guns had come up and
fired _on our men_.
They were the sole representatives of Blücher’s force present before
Mont St. Jean until _after_ the retreat had begun; and they had
been far better absent, as their pounding was cruelly felt by Mercer’s
battery and several of our regiments.
They were induced, after some time, to change the direction of their
range, and then all went well. The 52nd still pursued its march,
halting for a moment near La Haye Sainte to face and charge some
rallying squares, where a Belgian soldier was seen killing a wounded
Frenchman, and was run through by an officer of the regiment.
Leeke, who carried the King’s colour, found a foot and a half of the
pole wet with blood; Holman, the brother of the blind traveller, had
three musket balls through his sword blade, and wore it for many years;
Colborne and Major Rowan, being both dismounted, jumped on to two
horses attached to an abandoned gun, calling to their men to cut the
harness; but the advance continuing, they had to dismount with a hearty
laugh and march on again on foot.
It was getting dark, and our Hussars were clearing the field in
splendid style, the 10th, whose sabres were soon red as their scarlet
cuffs, engaging with some strong remnants of the Old Guard and losing
two officers.
Major Murray, of the dashing 18th, met a gun going at full speed, and
leaped his charger over the traces, between the leaders and wheelers,
while his men proceeded to cut the gunners down.
Colquhoun Grant, who had lost five horses and was then mounted on a
magnificent chestnut, sent the gallant remains of his brigade at the
retreating foe; and until it was impossible any longer to pick one’s
way among the vast heaps of dead, disabled cannon, and miserable
wounded--in short, the absolute wreck of an army--our light cavalry
went wheeling and slashing right and left, hurrying on the veteran,
the conscript, the artillery driver and the officer alike, all the
French accounts doing justice to these light horsemen. It is only in
private letters, hardly in the official documents, that England can
learn the heroism of her Hussars at Waterloo.
Meanwhile the 52nd had crossed to the left of the road and scattered a
column debouching from Planchenoit, behind the buildings of La Belle
Alliance, in front of which a mass of guns had been left to their fate.
The regiment passed on, and on its return found them marked with the
numbers of other corps that had succeeded them.
All the causeway was crammed with flying troops: a terrible struggle
for liberty took place, in which discipline gave way to terror. General
officer and baggage waggon fled side by side; rifles and accoutrements
were thrown away that their owners might hurry faster. The fields, the
by-lanes, the woods, were all filled with fugitives--even the Emperor
had to turn aside in order to get past.
Marshal Ney was one of the last to go. He had joined the army on the
15th, without money, without horses, almost without a uniform. He was
to be found everywhere on that dreadful 18th, planting batteries,
heading charges, rallying, raging, facing death at every stride, and
when it was over he tottered exhausted away on foot, leaning on the
shoulder of a compassionate corporal.
Now the Prussians have arrived in force. Planchenoit, its churchyard
and crooked street, its orchards and barnyards, are full of French and
Prussian slain.
The young Guard fought well, but they were outnumbered, and Blücher
rides into the _chaussée_ at La Belle Alliance.
A Uhlan band plays “God Save the King,” and farther along the road they
meet the Duke returning on his way in the dark to write his despatches
announcing the victory.
The two soldiers embrace, and sit talking for ten minutes while the
stream goes hurrying by. Then the fiery old German follows up the
retreat with a fury that is incredible.
At Genappe the Silesians have taken the Emperor’s baggage; Gneisenau
mounts a drummer on one of the cream-coloured carriage horses, and away
they go into the darkness after the fugitives, driving them from seven
bivouacs, slaying, hacking, giving no rest, until the land is strewn
for leagues with dead men, fallen under the Prussian steel.
Merciless it may seem to us, looking back with fourscore years between
us and that moonlit night; but such was the vitality of the French that
the most drastic steps were necessary to prevent their army mustering
again.
* * * * *
What can I say of the battle-field, after the pursuit had rolled away,
and it was left to the searcher and the plunderer?
If I could re-create one tithe of the horror those slopes and roads
revealed you would sicken and turn away in disgust.
Prussian, Belgian, _and_ British, there were, out on the plain
that night, bent on no errand of mercy; stragglers and camp-followers
creeping from group to group, tearing the rings from the fingers, and
the teeth from the jaws!
Many a life was foully taken that tender nursing might have saved; but
there were some groups who sought for a lost comrade or a favourite
officer, and women there were, with woman’s gentle sympathy, soothing
and tending as only they can soothe.
The bulk of the British force had gone to bivouac beyond and about
Rosomme, which was behind the French position; but some detached
portions remained where they had fought, too weary to advance with the
others.
Mercer was one of these, and creeping under the cover of a waggon, worn
out with slaughter, he slept--waking to find a dead man stark and stiff
beneath him! His men came to him in the morning, and asked permission
to bury one of their comrades.
“Why him in particular?” asked the captain, for many a bearskin-crested
helmet was empty in “G Troop.”
Then they showed him the horror of it.
The whole of the man’s head had been carried away, leaving the fleshy
mask of what had been a face, from which the eyes were still staring
wildly.
“We have not slept a wink, sir,” they said. “Those eyes have haunted us
all night!”
With daybreak men stood aghast at the spectacle of that battle-ground.
The losses have never been satisfactorily reckoned; but I have seen
it stated, curiously, that of the redcoats 9,999 were actually killed
there. The French loss for the four days’ campaign has been counted
as 50,000; and you can tell off the survivors of both armies to-day,
perhaps, on the fingers of _one_ hand.
Every house in the neighbourhood was full of wounded. For three days,
the doctors tell us, they were being brought in by the search parties,
a sharp frost having congealed the wounds of many and so saved them,
and lines of carts jolted the shrieking wretches over that dreadful
causeway to Brussels in endless succession.
[Illustration]
At Hougoumont, where the orange-trees were in blossom, they flung
three hundred bodies down a well: it was a simple method, saving time
and trouble; but a dark tradition lingers that voices were heard
afterwards, faintly imploring, from the cavernous depths.
Wild strawberries hung their red clusters, and the little, blue
forget-me-not peeped in the woods; birds of prey came croaking on the
wing; and within twenty-four hours ten thousand horses had been flayed
by the Flemish peasants, many of whom made fortunes by plunder!
Men gathered jewelled decorations and crosses by handfuls: it was
impossible to take three strides without treading on a sword, a broken
musket, a carbine, or a corpse!
Near La Haye Sainte they found a pretty French girl in hussar uniform,
and the farm itself was encrusted with blood; tufts of hair adhered to
the doorways, the yard presenting a sight never to be forgotten. A pole
to which a scrap of torn silk clung was picked up under the body of
Ensign Nettles: it was the King’s colour.
The remains of three French brothers named Angelet were among the
slain, and the history of one was most romantic. Wounded in some of
the Napoleonic wars, where he had lost a leg, he was taunted by a lady
with the fact that he could only talk of what he _had_ done for
France--that he could _do_ no more. The brave fellow seized his
crutches, limped after the army, and met his fate at Waterloo.
Picton’s body--wounded at Quatre Bras, though none but his valet knew
it--was taken to England, and by a strange coincidence was laid, at the
Fountain Inn, Canterbury, on the very table at which he had dined, a
fortnight before, on his way to join the army.
Byng of the Guards said to Sir John Colborne in Paris: “How do your
fellows like our getting the credit of what you did at Waterloo? I
could not advance because our ammunition was all done.”
The Foot Guards got their bearskins as a well-merited reward, only the
Grenadier companies wearing them during the battle. The 52nd, for their
great share in the closing scene, received--_nothing!_ and the
Duke, when approached on the subject of that glaring injustice, said,
“Oh, I know nothing of the services of particular regiments. There was
glory enough for all!”
* * * * *
They are nearly all gathered to the “land o’ the leal” now. The last
of Hougoumont’s defenders--Von Trovich of the Nassauers--died in 1882;
Albemarle, who fought with the 14th Foot, passed away quite recently;
while the Guards turned out to bury a veteran not long since who
paraded for the last time in Caterham workhouse! In 1894 John Stacey,
aged _ninety-six_, of the German Legion, _walked_ from Yorkshire to
London to see if his _tenpence a day_ might not be increased.
For thirty years you could mark, by the deeper colour of the corn,
where they had buried the dead in greatest numbers: they still find
buttons in the plough-land after rain, with bullets cut in half against
our sword-blades, and sometimes bones! Ten thousand people, on an
average, visit the field each year; and, though the land lies dozing
under its wealth of crops, and the lark trills his requiem where the
guns once thundered, and the herdboy’s song rises in place of “Vive
l’Empereur!”--never will the nations forget that fearful Sunday or the
names of WELLINGTON and WATERLOO.
[Illustration: MARSHAL BLÜCHER.
(_After Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A._)]
[Illustration:
_Königgrätz_
_By Charles Lowe_
_King William I of Prussia_
_The Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria_]
Not since the “Völkerschlacht,” or Armageddon of the nations at
Leipzig, in 1813, when the allies overthrew the hosts of Napoleon,
had Europe witnessed such a stupendous conflict as was fought near
Königgrätz, on the Upper Elbe, in Bohemia, on the 3rd July, 1866. This
battle was called of Königgrätz by the Prussians, of Sadowa by the
Austrians; and, as a matter of topographical fact, the latter was the
more correct title, just as the field of Waterloo is known as Mont
Saint Jean to the French, and Belle Alliance to the Prussians--in both
cases with more justice. At Leipzig about 430,000 men had mingled
in fight, while at Königgrätz, as we shall call it in compliment to
our ancient and honoured allies the Prussians, the total number of
combatants was about 435,000, or close on half a million of men.
What had called these armed hosts into the field? Briefly put,
it was the question which was to be the leading Power among the
German-speaking peoples--Austria or Prussia. For centuries the former
had asserted this position of proud pre-eminence, but there came a
time when this claim of the Hapsburgs was no longer allowed by the
great and growing monarchy of the Hohenzollerns. Austria wanted to
have everything in Germany done after her particular way of thinking,
and Prussia began to find it quite incompatible with her honour and
her self-respect to be thus lorded over by a State which in many
respects she deemed to be her inferior in point of light and leading.
Thus it came to pass that these two rival Powers began to lead a very
cat-and-dog life at the council-board of the Germanic Confederation
of States; and Bismarck, who was the rising statesman of his time,
prophesied that this condition of things could go on no longer, and
that the only remedy for this eternal quarrelling between the two was a
policy of “blood and iron” on the part of Prussia.
Once, however, they seemed to have suddenly become the best of
friends. This was when they joined their forces, in 1864, to snatch
Schleswig-Holstein, or the Elbe Duchies, as they were called, from the
rule of the Danes. Bismarck was the great champion of “Germany for the
Germans,” and he thought it scandalous and unreasonable that a foreign
people like the Danes should continue to domineer over the Teutons in
the Elbe Duchies. Prussia and Austria, therefore, at his far-seeing
instigation, combined to oust the Danes from the Duchies, and this they
finally did after storming the Danish redoubts at Düppel.
But the worst of it was that the conquerors could not agree as to their
spoil. Prussia wanted to do one thing with the Duchies, and Austria
another. It is a common enough thing for thieves to fall out over the
distribution of their booty, and this was precisely what the rival
German Powers did with regard to Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck, the
long-headed statesman that he was, clearly foresaw that they must and
would do so, and this was the very thing he wanted. He wished to have
a good pretext for going to war with Austria, in order that this Power
might be altogether excluded from the German family of nations, and
that Prussia, taking her place, might inaugurate a new and better era
for the Teutonic peoples. Austria had fallen into the trap which he
had laid for her, and she had no choice but to fight. Each, of course,
claimed to be the injured party, and the old game of the wolf and the
lamb was played over again to the amusement of all Europe. Some of the
other German States sided with Austria, and some with Prussia, but the
former were soon defeated and disarmed, and then Prussia was free to
direct her whole strength against the Austrians.
It was known that the latter were collecting all their strength in
Bohemia, and King William, who had General von Moltke, the greatest
soldier of his time, for his Chief of the Staff, or principal
counsellor in affairs of war, resolved to make a dash into this
province before its Austrian defenders knew where they were, and
smite them, as David did the Philistines, hip and thigh. Accordingly,
he divided the forces of his kingdom into three main armies, each
composed of several Army Corps. The command of the First, or centre,
Army, numbering about 93,000, was entrusted to the King’s nephew,
Prince Frederick Charles, called by his soldiers the “Red Prince,”
from the scarlet uniform of the Zieten Hussars which he generally
wore; the Second, or left-hand Army, totalling 100,000 men, was given
to the King’s high-souled and chivalrous son, the Crown Prince, Queen
Victoria’s son-in-law; while the Third, or right-hand host, called
of the Elbe, fell to General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, who fought
throughout the campaign with a courage worthy of “Hereward, the last
of the English.” But these three huge armies did not invade Bohemia in
one overwhelming mass. Moltke, the great “battle-thinker,” the “Silent
One in Seven Languages,” as his friends fondly called him, knew a trick
worth two of that. His maxim was, “march separately, strike combined”;
and yet it behoved him to keep the Austrians in perfect ignorance of
where he meant to strike. The Crown Prince, on the left, started with
his army from Silesia; the Red Prince set out from Lusatia, while
Herwarth’s point of departure was Thuringia.
Did Moltke himself also take the field? No, not at once; for it
meanwhile sufficed this great military chess-player, this mathematical
planner of victory, to sit quietly among his maps and papers at
the offices of the Grand General Staff in Berlin, with his hand on
the telegraph wire, and direct the movements of the three armies
of invasion. Take the following description that was penned by an
English witness of the crossing of the frontier by the army of the Red
Prince:--“It was here” (at a toll-house gate) “that Prince Frederick
Charles took his stand to watch his troops march over the border. He
had hardly arrived there before he gave the necessary orders, and in
a few moments the Uhlans, or Lancers, who formed the advance guard of
the regiments, were over the frontier. Then followed the infantry. As
the leading ranks of each battalion arrived at the first point on the
road from which they caught sight of the Austrian colours that showed
the frontier, they raised a cheer, which was quickly caught up by those
in the rear, and repeated again and again till, when the men came up
to the toll-house and saw their soldier-prince standing on the border
line, it swelled into a rapturous roar of delight, which only ceased to
be replaced by a martial song that was caught up by each battalion as
it poured into Bohemia. The chief himself stood calm and collected; but
he gazed proudly on the passing sections, and never did an army cross
an enemy’s frontier better equipped, better cared for, or with a higher
courage than that which marched out of Saxony that day.”
Over the picturesque hills of Saxony, over the Giant Mountains into the
fertile plains of Bohemia, swiftly sped the three superbly-organised
armies like huge and shining serpents; and ever nearer did they
converge on the point which, with mathematical accuracy, had been
selected as the place where they would have to coil and deliver their
fatal sting of fire. Hard did the Austrians try to block the path of
the triune hosts and crush them in detail; but the terribly destructive
needle-gun, with the forceful lance of the lunging Uhlan and the
circling sabre of the ponderous Cuirassier, ever cleared the way, and a
series of preliminary triumphs marked the progress of the three armies
towards junction and final victory. By the 29th the Red Prince had
reached Gitschin, the objective point of the invasion, while his cousin
the Crown Prince lay at Königinhof, on the left, a long day’s march
distant. Meanwhile the Austrians had all retired under the shelter of
the guns of Königgrätz, a strongly fortressed town on the left bank of
the Upper Elbe, there to take their final stand, with their backs, as
’twere, to the wall.
The Austrians were commanded by Feldzeugmeister Benedek, and their
army had been reinforced by the troops of the King of Saxony, who had
sided with the foes of Prussia in the impending conflict, and were sure
to give a good account of themselves. An equally stubborn resistance
was to be expected from the Hungarian subjects of the Emperor Francis
Joseph, who were second to none in all his polyglot dominions in
respect of that ancient valour and other chivalrous qualities which
had caused this gallant people to be called the “English of the
East.” Finer horsemen than the Hungarians existed in no army in all
the world; and in this campaign, as in every other in which they had
ever been engaged, the Austrians were particularly strong in cavalry.
But, on the other hand, the Prussians were known to be armed with the
lately-invented breech-loading needle-gun, while the Austrians still
clung to the older-fashioned muzzle-loader, and professed to make light
of their opponents’ new-fangled rifle. They were soon to be shown
convincingly which was the better weapon.
It was not till June 30th that King William and his paladins, Moltke,
Bismarck, and von Roon, left Berlin by rail for the seat of war. They
had scorned to witness the preliminary heats, so to speak, and only
wanted to be present at the grand final. On July 2nd, after reaching
Gitschin, which was near the headquarters of the Red Prince, Bismarck
wrote to his wife: “Just arrived from Sichrow. The field of battle
there is still covered with corpses, horses, and arms. Our victories
(so far) are greater than we thought. It appears that we have over
15,000 prisoners, while the loss on the Austrian side is still greater
in dead and wounded, being no less than 20,000. Two of the Army Corps
are utterly scattered, and some of the regiments are wiped out to the
last man. I have, indeed, up till now seen more Austrian prisoners than
Prussian soldiers.”
[Illustration: “MAJOR VON UNGAR CAME SPURRING IN WITH A
GREAT PIECE OF NEWS” (_p._ 77)]]
On the night of the same day (2nd July) King William, now in his
seventieth year, had retired to rest in a little room of the “Golden
Lion,” which overlooks the market-place of Gitschin--a quaint little
old town nestling among the hills of Northern Bohemia, on the southern
side of the Giant Mountains. Wearied out with the fatigues of the day,
he had hardly closed his eyes in sleep when he was unceremoniously
woke up. His Majesty opened his eyes, and found Moltke standing by his
bedside, the bearer of most important news, which General Voigts-Rhetz
had just brought in from the Red Prince, whose headquarters were
some six miles further to the east, at the château of Kamenitz on the
Königgrätz road. Voigts-Rhetz had first of all carried his momentous
news to Moltke, who lodged on the opposite side of the square, and who
was the real ruler of Prussia’s battles, now and after in the French
war. The King did nothing without consulting Moltke, nor did his
Majesty ever issue an order that was not based on the well-thought-out
advice of his Chief of the Staff.
The message of the Red Prince was of the very highest importance,
for it upset all the resolutions which had previously been taken at
the Prussian headquarters. Early in the day the exact whereabouts
of the Austrians was unknown. It was _supposed_ that they
were on the left, or eastern, side of the Elbe, furthest from the
Prussians, with their right and left flanks resting on two strong
fortresses--Josephstadt and Königgrätz, respectively--a position which
it would have been terribly difficult, if not impossible, for their
adversaries to assail; so that, pending the discovery of their real
whereabouts, it had been resolved to let the Prussian troops rest on
the 3rd, as they had been wearied out by their incredible feats of
marching and fighting. Presently, however, “from information received,”
this resolution was revoked and replaced by another which deprived the
fagged-out Prussians of the prospect of their much-needed day’s rest;
and a bold and rapid rider--Lieutenant von Norman--was despatched
across country to the Crown Prince at Königinhof to ensure his
co-operation with the Red Prince in a particular manner on the morrow.
[Illustration: KÖNIGGRÄTZ.]
But von Norman had barely started on his long and perilous ride when,
lo and behold! another officer, Major von Ungar, came spurring in to
the quarters of the Red Prince with a great piece of news. Attended
by only a few dragoons, this officer had gone out scouting in the
direction of Königgrätz, and discovered that the bulk of the Austrian
army was without doubt on the right, or Prussian, side of the Elbe,
holding a strong position on the further bank of the Bistritz brook,
which ran very nearly parallel with the Elbe at a distance from it
of some four miles. The position was strong, but not half so much so
as the dreaded one beyond the Elbe, and the hearts of the Prussians
jumped for joy. It seemed to them as if God had already delivered the
Austrians into their hands, as Cromwell avowed of the Scots when they
left their high ground at Dunbar and descended to meet his Ironsides
on the plain. After gleaning this priceless intelligence, von Norman
had to ride for his life. A squadron of Austrian cavalry made a dash to
catch him, but he rode like an English fox-hunter, and only left behind
him, as a souvenir of his audacious visit to the enemy’s lines, a part
of his tunic which had been carried away by an Austrian lance-thrust.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF KÖNIGGRÄTZ.]
This, then, was the news which Voigts-Rhetz had brought to Moltke and
the King at Gitschin, and then the situation underwent an immediate and
final change. It was resolved to assail the Austrian position early
on the morrow with the whole force of the united Prussian armies, and
another message to this effect, cancelling all previous ones, as a
codicil does a will, was at midnight despatched to the Crown Prince on
one hand and Herwarth on the other, informing them of the altered state
of things, and desiring them on the morrow to assail the flanks of
the Austrians as fast and furiously as ever they could; while the Red
Prince would apply his battering-rams to their elevated and strongly
entrenched centre. This urgent message was entrusted to Colonel von
Finckenstein, who, after a very dark and dangerous ride of twenty
miles, reached the Crown Prince’s quarters about four o’clock on the
morning of the 3rd July.
That fateful morning was a very wet and raw one, pretty similar to
that which, after a rainy night, had dawned upon the English at
Waterloo. Long before midnight the troops had all been in motion to
the front. The moon occasionally blinked out, but was mostly hidden
behind clouds, and then could be distinctly seen the decaying bivouac
fires in the places which had been occupied by the troops along the
road from Gitschin to Sadowa and Königgrätz. These fires looked like
large will-o’-the-wisps as their flames flickered about in the wind
and stretched for many a mile, for the bivouacs of so large a force as
that of the Red Prince’s army of nearly 100,000 men spread over a wide
extent of country. With the first signs of dawn a drizzling rain came
on, which lasted until late in the afternoon. The wind increased and
blew coldly upon the soldiers, and they were short of both sleep and
food, while frequent gusts bore down the water-laden corn on both sides
of the ground along the way.
Moltke and his staff had left Gitschin by four o’clock, driving to
Horitz, where, mounting their horses, they rode on to Dub and joined
Prince Frederick Charles. For this was the centre point of assembly.
“A few short words,” wrote the _Times_ correspondent, “passed
from the Commander of the First Army to his Chief of the Staff; a few
_aides-de-camp_, mounting silently, rode away; and, as it were,
by the utterance of a magician’s spell, one hundred thousand armed
Prussian warriors, springing into sight as if from the bowels of the
earth, swept over the southern edge of the Milowitz ravine towards the
hill of Dub.”
About eight o’clock, King William, with Bismarck and others of his
great men, arrived upon the scene. Behind the King, besides his staff,
were his royal guests, with their numerous retinues of adjutants and
equerries, grooms and horses, in number equal unto about a couple
of squadrons--making a fine mark for the shells of the Austrians.
Before mounting his good mare “Fenella”--thenceforth to be called
“Sadowa”--the King had got into his great-coat and put on goloshes
over his boots. A wrong pair of spurs had been brought from Gitschin
and would not fit. A groom whipped his off, and strapped them on over
the royal goloshes; and thus equipped, with a field-glass slung round
his neck by a long strap, the King rode away to view the course of the
terrific fight, being everywhere received with tremendous cheering by
his enthusiastic troops. For it touched their hearts to see so hoary a
king come forth at the head of his “_Volk in Waffen_” or people in
arms, to do strenuous battle with the alien. No _roi fainéant_,
or stay-at-home monarch he, but one of the good old sort, like our own
royal Edwards and Harries, under whose personal leadership the French
were “beaten, bobbed, and thumped” at Crécy and at Agincourt.
It had been thought incredible by the Prussian leaders that the
Austrians should have waived the advantages of a position behind the
Elbe, and come forward several miles on its hither bank so as to meet
their adversaries on the terms of the latter. But a closer inspection
of their line of battle showed that it had been singularly well chosen.
Along their front ran the boggy Bistritz brook, its banks dotted with
farmsteads, villages, and clumps of wood, forming fine cover for
infantry; while beyond this the ground rose in gentle undulations till
it finally assumed the appearance of a commanding swell or ridge,
from which Benedek’s batteries could pour down death and destruction
on the advancing Prussians over the heads of his own infantry when
engaging the helmeted wielders of the needle-gun. From the top of the
slight elevation whereon stands the village of Dub the ground slopes
gently down to the Bistritz, which the road crosses at the village of
Sadowa, a mile and a quarter from Dub. From Sadowa the ground again
rises beyond the Bistritz to the little village of Chlum (mark that
village!), conspicuous by its church-tower crowning the gentle hill, a
mile and a half beyond Sadowa--a beautiful bit of country not unlike
some parts of England with its hill and dale, clustering cottages,
peeping châteaux, hedgerows, groves, and waving grain-fields. Profiting
to the full by the defensive advantages of this terraced terrain, the
Austrians had seamed it with entrenched batteries, and palisaded their
approaches with felled trees and intertwisted branches, making of the
whole a natural fortress formidable to their assailants.
[Illustration: GENERAL BENEDEK.]
But nothing could daunt the hearts of the Prussians. They had got to
beat Benedek and his 220,000 men, and the sooner the better. The Red
Prince was afraid that, after all, Benedek might seek to retire behind
the Elbe, and this had to be prevented at all costs and hazards. The
Prince might not be able to beat him off-hand, but he could at least
fasten on Benedek like a bulldog and hold him fast there till the
arrival of the Crown Prince, when the bull could be altogether felled
and laid upon its back. Bang, therefore, went the Prussian batteries,
and presently the whole sinuous line of battle, extending about five
miles from Cistowes (opposite Chlum) on the Prussian left, to Nechanitz
on the right, began to be wrapped in wreathed cannon smoke. The
Austrians returned shot for shot, and neither side either gained or
lost ground. In the centre the Prussians pushed battery after battery
into action, and kept up a tremendous fire on the Austrian guns; but
these returned it with interest, knowing the ground well, and every
shell fell true, heaping the ground with dead and wounded men and
horses.
While this furious cannonade was going on, columns of Prussian
infantry were moved down towards the Bistritz, with intent to storm
the line of villages--Sadowa, Dohalitz, and Dohalicka--on the further
side. Shortly before their preparations were complete, the village
of Benatek, on the Austrian right, caught fire, and the 7th Prussian
Division made a dash to secure it; yet the Austrians were not driven
out by the flames, and here, for the first time in the battle, it
came to desperate hand-to-hand fighting. But the bloody _mêlée_
here was nothing to what was now mixing up the combatants in the wood
of Sadowa, and converting it into a perfect slaughter-house and hell
upon earth. Boldly the Prussians advanced upon this village and its
wood, plying the rapid needle-gun with awful effect upon the wood’s
defenders. But nothing could have exceeded the splendid courage with
which the Austrian battalions clung to their cover, and their volleys,
supplemented as they were by a truly infernal fire from the batteries
behind and above, seemed to mow down whole ranks of their assailants.
But neither bullets nor shells could decide the fierce struggle; the
bayonet had to be called in to do this. And now ensued most horrible
scenes of carnage, which ended, however, before eleven o’clock, in the
capture by the Prussians of the aforesaid villages. And no wonder that
the Austrians chose to call the tremendous battle after the village and
wood where they had made so glorious but ineffectual a stand.
[Illustration: “THE PRUSSIANS PUSHED BATTERY AFTER
BATTERY INTO ACTION” (_p._ 79)]
Moltke himself afterwards related that, while he was watching the
progress of events in front of Sadowa wood some roe-deer, startled from
their leafy glades by the infernal pother around them, came bounding
out and past him; and also how, when he and his suite rode forward a
little way along the Lissa road to reconnoitre the Austrian position,
he encountered an ownerless ox plodding along, serenely indifferent
to the shells that were bursting all around it. Opposite the Sadowa
wood on the Lissa heights, the Austrians had planted a most formidable
entrenched line of guns, and Moltke afterwards told how he succeeded in
getting the King to counter-order a command to storm these entrenched
batteries from the front, which could only have ended in the bloodiest
of disasters to their assailants.
About this time Bismarck, seeing how little headway the Prussians
were making, began to be rather apprehensive as to the general
result, fearing even that, if the Crown Prince came not up soon, they
might, after all, be beaten. But one little incident gave him fresh
hope. Taking out his cigar-case he offered a weed to Moltke, who
deliberately chose the best of the lot. “Oh,” thought Bismarck to
himself, “if Moltke is calm enough to do that, we need have no fear
after all.”
The coming of the Crown Prince, with his additional hundred thousand
men, had been as anxiously looked for as the arrival of Blücher on the
field of Waterloo, and in truth the two situations were closely alike.
Suddenly Bismarck, who had been looking intently in the Crown Prince’s
direction, lowered his glass and pointed to certain lines in the far
distance, but these the others pronounced to be furrows. “No,” said
Bismarck, looking again, “the spaces are not equal: they are advancing
lines.” And so they were; and by eleven o’clock the smoke of some
Austrian batteries furnished a convincing proof that their fire was
directed, not against the Red Prince’s, but “Unser Fritz’s” army; and
the words “The Crown Prince is coming!” passed from lip to lip. But,
some time before his advance had thus been signalised, Moltke made
answer to the King, who had been questioning him as to the prospects of
the fight, “To-day your Majesty will win, not only the battle, but also
the campaign.”
[Illustration: “BOLDLY THE PRUSSIANS ADVANCED UPON THIS
VILLAGE AND ITS WOOD” (_p._ 80).]
“The Prussian reserves,” wrote a correspondent with the Austrians,
“were once more called upon; and from half-past twelve till nearly
one o’clock there was an artillery fire from centre to left for six
miles or more, which could not well have been exceeded by any action
of which history makes mention. The battle was assuming a more awful
and tremendous aspect, and the faint rays of sunshine which shot at
intervals through the lifting clouds only gave the scene a greater
terror.” About this time, also, “Benedek and his staff passed through
the 6th Corps, which was in reserve. As the green plumes were seen
rapidly advancing, the bands broke forth into the National Anthem, and
the men cheered their commander with no uncertain note. Faces broke
into broad smiles; Jäger hats were thrown into the air; all seemed
joyous in the anticipation of an approaching triumph. Benedek, however,
waved to them to cease shouting, saying, in his peculiar tone of voice,
‘Not now, my children: wait till to-morrow.’” And it was wise advice;
for by this time Benedek had begun to suspect that he and his men would
soon all have a very different song to sing.
The storm and stress of battle were now beginning to tell heavily on
the Austrians. They were, it is true, still holding their own, or
something like it, on the line of the Bistritz; but what is that which
suddenly attracts the attention of Benedek and his staff behind the
village of Chlum? They gallop away thither to inquire into the cause
of all this new turmoil, and are greeted with a destructive volley
from the needle-guns of “Unser Fritz,” who had by this time, after
a forced march of frightful difficulty across the sodden country
from Königinhof, come upon the scene with his Guards, and not only
turned the flank, but positively fastened on the rear of the Austrian
fighting line, at which he was now hammering away with might and main.
But his path, so far, had been encumbered with corpses and mutilated
bodies in sickening masses. “Around us,” he wrote in his Diary, “lay
or hobbled about so many of the well-known figures of the Potsdam and
Berlin garrisons. A shocking appearance was presented by those who
were using their rifles as crutches, or were being led up the heights
by some other unwounded comrades. The most horrid spectacle, however,
was that of an Austrian battery, of which all the men and horses had
been shot down.... It is a shocking thing to ride over a battle-field,
and it is impossible to describe the hideous mutilations which present
themselves. War is really something frightful, and those who create it
with a stroke of the pen, sitting at a green-baize table, little dream
of what horrors they are conjuring up.... In Rosberitz, where the fight
must have been frightfully bitter, to judge from the masses of dead and
wounded, I found my kinsman, Prince Antony of Hohenzollern, who had
been shot in the leg by three balls,” and died of his wounds soon after.
With the turning of the Austrian right by the Crown Prince, the battle
was virtually won. On the extreme left, Herwarth had played similar
havoc with the Saxons, in spite of the heroic desperation with which
they fought; and by four o’clock the Prussian line of attack resembled
a huge semi-circle hemming in the masses of battered and broken
Austrian troops. Half an hour later the latter, perceiving that victory
had at last been snatched from their grasp, began to give way all along
their line; and then, with drums beating and colours flying, the Red
Prince’s men, with one accord, rose from their positions and began a
general advance. Perceiving his opportunity, the King now gallantly
placed himself at the head of the whole cavalry reserve of the First
Army, which “charged and completely overthrew,” to quote his Majesty’s
own words, a similar mass of Austrian horsemen.
The nature of the ground had hitherto prevented the cavalry of
either army from acting in masses, but the country was more open on
the line of retreat to Königgrätz, and it now became the scene of
several splendid lance and sabre conflicts. As the squadrons of the
3rd Prussian Dragoons were rushing forward to charge some Austrian
battalions near the village of Wiester, an Austrian Cuirassier brigade,
led by an Englishman of the name of Beales, charged them in flank.
They drove the Prussians back, and, smiting them heavily with their
ponderous swords, nearly destroyed the dragoons; but Hohenlohe’s
Prussian Uhlans, seeing their comrades worsted, charged with their
lances couched against the Austrian flanks, and compelled them to
retire. Pressed by the Lancers they fell back, fighting hard, but then
the scarlet Zieten Hussars charged them in turn in the rear. A fierce
combat ensued, and the gallant Beales himself was borne wounded to the
ground.
But all would not avail. The Austrians were in full flight towards the
fortress of Königgrätz, pursued by cavalry, volleyed at by infantry,
and exposed to ever-increasing showers of shell-fire. Yet from some
positions of advantage they continued to retaliate in kind; and it was
while standing watching the pursuit that King William and his suite
became exposed to a terrific counter-fire of shells. Bismarck, who was
still with him, ventured to chide his Majesty for thus exposing his
precious person so unnecessarily. “Does your Majesty, then, think they
are swallows?” asked Bismarck, on the King affecting to make light
of the whizzing of shells and bullets. “No one,” wrote Bismarck to
his wife, “would have ventured to speak to the King as I did, when a
whole mass of ten troopers and fifteen horses of a Cuirassier regiment
lay wallowing in their blood close to us, and the shells whizzed in
unpleasant proximity to the King, who remained just as quiet and
composed as if he had been on the parade-ground at Berlin.” In spite of
all remonstrances the King would not budge, so, edging up on his dark
chestnut behind the King’s mare, Bismarck gave her a good sly kick with
the point of his boot, and made her bound forward with her royal rider
out of the zone of fire.
[Illustration: GRAVE-STONES ERECTED ON THE BATTLE-FIELD IN
MEMORY OF THE FALLEN.]
On coming up with the troops of the Crown Prince, the King had been
nearly swallowed up by them for sheer joy. At sight of the venerable
monarch, who had been exposing his person throughout the bloody fray
like the most dutiful of his soldiers, battalion after battalion--some
the mere shadows of their former selves--burst into frenzied cheering
and rushed forward, officers and men, to kiss the hand, the boot, the
stirrup of their beloved leader. But presently a scene more touching
still was presented to the victorious Prussian troops, when the heroic
Crown Prince rode up and met his father. “I reported to the King,”
wrote the Crown Prince, “the presence of my army on the battle-field,
and kissed his hand, on which he embraced me. Neither of us could speak
for a time. He was the first to find words, and then he said he was
pleased that I had been successful, and had proved my capacity for
command, handing me at the same time the order ‘_Pour le mérite_’
(highest of Prussian war decorations) for my previous victories.”
Earlier in the day “Unser Fritz” had met his cousin the Red Prince.
“We waved our caps to one another from afar, and then fell into one
another’s arms amid the cheering of the troops of my extreme right and
his extreme left wing.... Two years ago I embraced him as victor at
Düppel; to-day we were both victors: for, after the stubborn stand made
by his troops, I had come to decide the day with my army.”
The battle had been won, but at what a terrible cost! Even the victors
shuddered at the sight of the multitudes of bodies which heaped
the bloody field. By superior arms, superior numbers, and superior
strategy, Prussia, at the cost of 10,000 of her bravest sons, had
won a crowning victory over her Austrian rival, who lost 40,000 men
(including 18,000 prisoners), 11 standards, and 174 guns. “I have
lost all,” exclaimed the defeated Benedek, “except, alas! my life!”
The highest proportion of the Prussian loss of 10,000 had fallen on
Franzecky’s Division, whereof 2,000, out of 15,000, had bitten the
Bohemian dust. But “_Franzecky vor!_” (“Franzecky to the front!”)
will always live in the Prussian soldier’s song as a memory of the
ever-ready leader who bore the brunt of the awful struggle on the line
of the Bistritz.
That same night the King slept at Horitz--not upon a bed, but on his
carriage cushions spread out on a sofa. Bismarck’s couch was at first
formed by a wisp of straw under the open colonnade of the same townlet,
though afterwards he was invited to share the wretched room of the
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg. Moltke rode back to Gitschin, a distance of
about twenty miles from the battle-field, where a cup of weak tea was
all the refreshment that could be got for him; and then, in a fever of
fatigue, he threw himself down to sleep in his clothes, as he had to be
up betimes and return to Horitz to procure the King’s sanction for his
further plans.
[Illustration: “THE CROWN PRINCE RODE UP AND MET HIS
FATHER” (_p._ 83).]
It was he, the “Great Silent One,” who had won the greatest and most
momentous battle of modern times.
It had taken Frederick the Great seven long years to humble the
pride of Austria; it took William the Victorious, with Moltke as his
“battle-thinker,” but seven short days to achieve the same result. The
Prussian soldier preferred to call the battle which he had just helped
to win, Königgrätz, because this name sounded to his ears as but a pun
on the words “_Dem König geräth’s_” (“The King will win”). But the
King had only won by acting on the sage advice of his all-calculating
Moltke, whose motto was “_Erst wägen, dann wagen_”--that is,
“First weigh, then away!”
[Illustration: AYACUCHO
By W. B. ROBERTSON]
That war whereby the power of Spain was broken in South America, is
known as the South American War of Independence. On the one side
was the imperial power of Spain fighting for supremacy; on the
other side were her colonists--creoles, American natives of Spanish
blood--fighting for freedom.
The first pitched battle was fought in Mexico near Aculco, in 1810; the
last, on the plain of Ayacucho, in Peru, on December 9th, 1824.
Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador had already thrown off the Spanish
yoke when General Bolivar, towards the end of 1823, arrived with
his victorious army in Peru. He was hailed as “The Deliverer,” and
addressed the National Congress at Lima in these words:--
“The soldiers who have come from the Plate, the Maule, the Magdalena,
and the Orinoco as the deliverers of Peru will not return to their
native country till they are covered with laurels, till they can pass
under triumphal arches, nor till they can carry off as trophies the
standards of Castille. They will conquer and leave Peru free, or they
will die. This I promise.”
These words spoken, it remained to make them actualities; and how this
was done will form our story.
In June of the following year Bolivar took the field with 10,000
infantry and 2,000 cavalry. His cantonments were at Truxillo, and from
there he began to move southwards to meet the enemy. The Spanish troops
comprised 3,500 at Cuzco under the Viceroy of Peru, Laserna; 6,500
at Arequipa and Jauja under Canterac, and 1,000 away in the remote
south under General Valdez, who was soon to be recalled to assist his
companions in arms. The Spanish force nearest to Bolivar was thus
General Canterac’s. This force was remarkably efficient and in the
highest state of discipline. Its equipments were superior and complete;
its artillery and cavalry particularly well appointed; and, what was
not always the case with the liberating army, the troops were paid with
the greatest regularity--a strong conducive to good discipline and
order.
On August 2nd Bolivar reviewed his army on the tableland between Rancas
and Pasco, a little north of Reyes, situated at an altitude of 12,000
feet above the level of the sea, and amid a scene as majestic as may
be found in the world. On the west rose the Andes, while on the east,
and stretching away to the Brazils were the sublime ramifications of
the Cordilleras. Surrounded by natural displays of such magnitude,
Bolivar’s army, composed of veterans who had fought in the Peninsular
War, seen the conflagration of Moscow and the capitulation of Paris--as
well as purely South American troops--looked a mere handful. Still it
was enthusiastic, and the hills rang with “Vivas” at the termination
of the General’s stirring address that was read simultaneously to each
corps.
“Soldiers,” so ran the address, “you are about to finish the
greatest undertaking Heaven has confided to men--that of saving
an entire world from slavery.
“Soldiers! the enemies you have to overthrow boast of fourteen
years of triumphs; they are, therefore, worthy to measure their
swords with ours, which have glittered in a thousand combats.
“Soldiers! Peru and America expect from you Peace, the
daughter of Victory. Even liberal Europe beholds you with
delight, because the freedom of the New World is the hope of
the universe. Will you disappoint it? No! No! No! You are
invincible.”
Meanwhile, Canterac, having united his forces at Jauja, was marching
northwards to meet Bolivar. Between the two there lay a lake, and the
patriot army marched south on the west side of this lake, while the
Spanish army marched north on the east side. The result of this was
to delay for four months the general engagement that was expected.
Instead of the armies meeting face to face on the line of their march,
only detachments entered into action on the plain of Junin, which
lies to the south of the lake. It was purely a cavalry engagement,
this--not a shot was fired; the lance and sabre alone were used. As it
was, the Royalists were worsted, losing nineteen officers, 345 rank
and file, and eighty prisoners. The Patriots lost only three officers
and forty-two rank and file, with a few wounded. Canterac now fell
back upon Cuzco, which he reached with less than 5,000 men, his ranks
thinned mostly by heavy desertions. The Patriot army continued to
advance towards Cuzco, falling in, however, with no enemy. In October,
Bolivar, expecting no further engagements that year, left the army and
set out for Lima to hasten forward reinforcements that were expected
from Colombia. He gave instructions to his second in command, General
Sucre, to go into cantonments at Andahuaylas and Abancay, and, as the
rainy season was about to commence, to cease active hostilities for the
time being.
Bolivar had not been gone three days, when General Sucre began
to question in his own mind the wisdom of his superior officer’s
instructions; so he called a council-of-war, at which, besides himself,
were Generals La Mar, Lara, and Miller--the last, a distinguished
British soldier. At this council-of-war it was agreed that if they did
as Bolivar had commanded, and lay idle in their tents, the Spanish
forces, recruited and united at Cuzco, would come upon them and
annihilate them. The position was a delicate one, for obedience to a
superior officer is a soldier’s first duty. Still, there was Valdez
marching from the south to join Canterac and Laserna at Cuzco, and it
was proposed to endeavour to intercept Valdez. Operations were thus
entered upon in the face of Bolivar’s strict orders to the contrary,
and these operations had the effect of drawing the enemy out of his
stronghold.
Now followed two months of the most extraordinary manœuvring that ever
preceded a battle. The Royalists, under the Viceroy Laserna, began to
move in a westerly direction from Cuzco, and the Patriots to fall back.
Twice the Patriot army offered battle, and twice it was refused. The
Royalists, sure of success, sought to get behind the Patriots, thus
cutting off their retreat and so annihilating them. At length, after
several brushes--of which the most serious occurred in the Valley of
Corpuguayco, where, besides losing their spare horses and some mules,
the Patriots had 200 men killed, as against a death-roll of thirty on
the other side--a position was reached which seemed to satisfy the
requirements of both parties for the final grip. That position was
on the plain of Ayacucho; and it is here that Bolivar’s address to
the soldiers should have been delivered rather than on the eve of the
affair of Junin: for it was here that the blow was struck that made the
power of Spain in South America reel and totter to its fall.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF AYACUCHO.
Dec. 9 1824.]
The plain of Ayacucho is situated at an altitude of 11,000 feet above
sea-level, in the Peruvian department of Ayacucho. It is square-shaped
and about two or three miles in circuit. On its north and south sides
it is flanked by deep and rugged ravines. On the west it descends
gradually for a couple of leagues to what was then the high road to
Lima, and which runs along the base of a lofty mountain range which
rises like a wall. On this side was stationed the Patriot army, its
retreat by this road cut off by detachments sent by the Spanish Viceroy
to destroy the bridges and render the defiles impassable. On the east
side the plain was terminated by the abrupt ridge of Condorkanki, and
a little below the summit of this ridge the Royalist army bivouacked
during the night preceding the fight. It was on the afternoon of the
8th of December that the respective armies reached these positions.
The eve of battle is worth describing. After the men on each side had
been refreshed, and about two hours before sunset, a Spanish battalion
of light infantry filed down into the plain and extended itself at
the foot of the hill. A light infantry battalion of the Patriot army
went forth to meet it. The opposing battalions, arrayed in extended
files, engaged in skirmishing and performed evolutions to the sound
of the bugle. The steadiness and behaviour of the men on each side
were admired by the officers, and both parties agreed now and then to
intervals of rest. During these intervals officers from the opposing
sides approached one another and engaged in conversation. In the
Patriot army was a Spaniard, Lieutenant-Colonel Tur, whose marriage to
a beautiful woman of Lima had made him espouse the native cause. In the
other army was his brother, Brigadier-General Tur, who sent a message
to the former, saying how he regretted to see him, a Spaniard, in the
ranks of rebels, and bearing arms against his king and country. “Yet,”
the message continued, “you may rely upon my protection when the coming
battle will have placed you at the mercy of the Loyalists.” The other
brother was disposed to resent this message as an insult; still, they
drew near to each other and ultimately embraced in view of both armies.
When the shadows began to deepen across the plain, the different
battalions retired to their quarters to waken to more serious work in
the morning.
To waken, we have said. It is doubtful, however, if a single eye on
Ayacucho were closed in slumber that night. All knew that they were
about to engage in battle; none knew what the result might be, and
whether this might not be his last night on earth. Both sides were
wearied with the terrible marches and counter-marches, over mountains,
down rocky defiles, and with the harassing watchfulness that had been
continuously maintained. It was with the greatest difficulty that
the officers of the Royalist army had kept their troops together.
To prevent them from deserting, the different corps had habitually
bivouacked in column, surrounded by sentinels, and outside of these
again had been placed a circle of officers on constant duty. No soldier
was allowed to pass the sentinels, who had strict orders to shoot
down any one attempting to do so. Even detachments were not sent out
for cattle and provisions, in case they should refuse to return; so
the Royalists had been obliged to eat the flesh of horses, mules, and
asses. These galling restraints the soldiers knew could be ended in
only one way, and that was by a decisive engagement with the enemy.
So eager were they thus rendered for the fray that they had begun
to murmur against their leaders, and were loudly accusing them of
cowardice in avoiding a conflict with the foe.
On the other side, the Patriots, too, were sick of manœuvring. They
had been subject to constant harassing attacks from hostile Indians,
who hurled stones down the mountain sides into their ranks while on
the march, attacked detached parties, even made prisoners, whom they
cruelly ill-treated. Again, their provisions were nigh exhausted, and
so scarce had their horses become that many of the cavalry soldiers
were mounted on mules. These matters, instead of improving, were with
the progress of time only becoming worse. All, then, were anxious to
have a termination put to the weary round of monotonous marching, with
increasing exposure to dangers that from their continual presence had
ceased to be exciting. Men so placed are not likely to sleep during the
night preceding the day of battle. Besides, the distance between the
two armies measured only a mile, and Sucre, fearing that the Royalists
might descend from their heights to surprise them in the dark, kept
his corps in close column ready for the attack. He also sent forward
the bands of two battalions with a company to the foot of the ridge.
These continued to play during the night while a sharp fire was kept
up upon the Royalist outposts, the idea being to make believe that
the Patriots were under arms waiting to join in fight. In this way a
lieutenant-colonel and three men were killed in the Spanish camp by
chance bullets, so near were the opposing armies.
Under Sucre were 5,780 men, and these were arranged on the plain in the
following order:--
Bogota, Caracas, Voltigeros, and Pinchincha regiments, under General
Cordova, on the right.
Hussars of Junin, Granaderos of Colombia, Hussars of Colombia,
Granaderos of Buenos Ayres regiments, cavalry, under General Miller, in
the centre.
Nos. 1, 2, and 3 Legions regiments, under General La Mar, on the left.
Bargas, Vencedores, Rifles regiments, under General Lara, in reserve.
Artillery: one 4-pounder in front, under Commandant La Fuente.
The Royalist army numbered 9,310, and was commanded by the Viceroy,
Laserna. It was posted on Condorkanki--a division under General Valdez
on the north side of the height or extreme right of the Royalists; next
to him, and still on the Royalist right, a division of infantry under
General Monet, in the centre cavalry, and on the left a division of
infantry with seven pieces of artillery under General Villalobos. At
dawn of day, an unperceived movement took place in the Royalist camp.
The division under General Valdez, comprising four field-pieces, four
battalions, and two squadrons of hussars, stole away to the north.
[Illustration: ‘“THERE LIES MY LAST HORSE!”’
(_p._ 90.).]
It was a chilly morning while the men were buckling on their armour,
saddling their horses, examining their bayonets, and putting in order
their various accoutrements. Amongst the things that the Colombia
cavalryman had to do on mounting was the fixing of his bridle reins
above his knees. By this means he guided his charger, and so had his
hands left free to wield his heavy lance--a strong, tough sapling from
twelve to fourteen feet long. The Patriot cavalry, let it be mentioned,
were the finest horsemen in the world, drawn from the _gauchos_
of the pampas, the _guasos_ of Chili, and the _llaneros_ of
Colombia--all accustomed to ride from childhood.
Well, while such little details as we have mentioned were in progress,
and the mounting sun had tempered the chilly air, the men on both sides
were observed rubbing their hands and in other trifling ways showing
the satisfaction which the nearness of the onset gave them.
At nine o’clock the first move forward began.
[Illustration: “THE ROUTED SPANIARDS CLAMBERED UP THE
RUGGED SIDES” (_p._ 90).]
Then the division of infantry on the Royalist left under General
Villalobos commenced to wind down the rugged side of Condorkanki.
Laserna, the Viceroy, on foot, placed himself at the head of the
descending files, and, obliquing to the left, led them into the plain.
The other division of Royalist infantry, under General Monet, came
down direct, while between these two divisions similarly descended
the cavalry, the men leading their horses. As the different files
reached the plain they silently formed into column. Meanwhile, General
Sucre, of the Patriot army, rode along his line, and to each corps
individually, in forcible words, recalled the achievements of the past.
This done, he took up a position in the centre, and to his whole army
in a loud voice, said: “Soldiers! Remember that upon the efforts of
this day depends the fate of South America.”
Then began the forward movement of the Patriots, the division of
infantry under General Cordova and two regiments of cavalry being
ordered to advance. Cordova, in front of his division, now formed into
four parallel columns with cavalry in the intervals, having gone a few
steps, dismounted, and plunging his sword into his charger, exclaimed:
“There lies my last horse! I have no means of escape, and we must fight
it out together.”
This display of spirit on the part of their leader roused the men to
such enthusiasm that they became irresistible. They thought of the
enemy, not as something to be feared, but only as something to be
vanquished. The consequence was that, having discharged their muskets,
and Cordova’s shout of “Onward, with the step of conquerors!” ringing
in their ears, they pressed forward and crossed bayonets with the foe.
For four minutes, which contained the work of hours, the two contending
forces struggled, the mass swaying now this way and now that, so that
it was impossible to tell which would give way. At an opportune moment
the Colombian cavalry charged at full gallop, and with both hands free
wielding their tough lances with such force that, their onset proved
irresistible, and the Royalists lost ground. The vigour of the Patriots
was only increased by this advantage, which they followed up with such
effect that the Royalists were hopelessly driven back with terrible
slaughter. Colonel Silva, who led the cavalry charge, had fallen,
covered with wounds. Wounded now, too, and taken prisoner, was Laserna,
the Viceroy himself--representative of the proud monarch of Spain. The
routed Spaniards clambered up the rugged sides of Condorkanki, and the
chasing Patriots deploying, fired upon the fugitives, whose lifeless
bodies rolled down the height till stayed by jutting crags or bushes.
While the crags and bushes of Condorkanki are being thus bathed in
Spanish blood, quite a different fortune is attending the Patriot
arms on their left. As already mentioned, General Valdez, with four
field-pieces, four battalions and two squadrons of cavalry, had stolen
at dawn of day, unperceived by the Patriots, away northwards from
the Spanish camp. The object of that manœuvre now became apparent.
He had made a _detour_ of several miles, and while the contest
we have just witnessed was still in the balance, suddenly opened a
heavy fire from his four field-pieces and a battalion in extended
files upon the Patriot left. This obliged two battalions of General La
Mar’s division, posted on the left, to fall back, and its retreat was
not prevented by the battalion Bargas from General Lara’s division,
which had been kept in reserve, sent to support it. Two of Valdez’s
battalions had now crossed the ravine into the plain, and pressed at
the double-quick upon the retiring Patriots. At this juncture General
Miller, who held a portion of the Patriot cavalry in reserve, led the
Hussars of Junin against the Spaniards, and drove them back across the
ravine. This brilliant charge conducted by Miller saved the battle.
La Mar’s division was thereby enabled to rally, and came to Miller’s
support. The Patriots in this part of the field, animated by Cordova’s
success against the Viceroy and the shouts of victory that were echoed
back from Condorkanki, proved an easy match for Valdez’s now somewhat
scattered forces, and the Spanish general, so famous for his marches
and tactical skill, soon found his division broken, his artillery
taken, his cavalry flying in disorder, and his infantry dispersed.
The day was now lost and won in little more than an hour, and the
vanquished Royalists flying in all directions.
Among the Hussars of Junin so effectively led by Miller at the critical
moment, were twenty-five who, owing to the scarcity of horses, had
no better steeds than baggage-mules. This was simply for display and
to lead the enemy to think their cavalry numbered more than their
horsemen actually did. These Hussars on mules were ordered to remain in
the rear and not to take part in Miller’s charge. But they answered:
“No; we will conquer or die with our comrades.” And their bravery was
soon rewarded, for after the charge they were able to substitute good
Spanish horses, whose riders had fallen, for their less nimble mules.
Six weeks previously, when on a reconnoitring expedition towards Cuzco,
General Miller had been surprised at a place called Chuquibamba, and
his horse, which was the finest in the army, and which he had ridden
at Junin, with an orderly, fell into the enemy’s hands. This horse was
now seen amongst Valdez’s retreating troops. Its rider was immediately
singled out for pursuit, cut down, and the horse restored to its old
master. Another object of interest to the pursuing Patriots were the
silver helmets of the Spanish Hussars. The landscape gleamed with these
helmets wherever bodies of cavalry moved. These became so attractive to
the enemy that many threw them off to stop the pursuit, and the gleam
was quickly removed, the Patriots snatching them off and stowing them
away in their valises.
At one o’clock on the day of the battle the divisions of the
Patriot army, under Generals La Mar and Lara, reached the summit of
Condorkanki. Here General Canterac was stationed, but before sunset
he sued for terms of peace, and an hour later rode to General Sucre’s
tent, where the terms were agreed to. By these terms Canterac, as
supreme commander in Peru, agreed to surrender to the liberating
army the whole of the territory possessed by Spain as far as the
Desaguadero. So in effect ended the War of Independence, and so was
extinguished the power of Spain across the seas.
The losses on that day, on the side of the vanquished, were 1,400
killed and 700 wounded. Amongst the captured, besides the Viceroy and
generals, were 16 colonels, 68 lieutenant-colonels, 484 officers, and
3,200 rank and file. The victors won at a cost of 370 killed and 609
wounded. The battle of Ayacucho was regarded as the most brilliant ever
fought in South America. The discipline of the troops, seasoned with
years of fighting, was considered such as would have been creditable to
the best European armies, while they were led by the ablest officers on
both sides. Bravery was conspicuous on every hand, the victory being
not a matter of chance, but of determination, fire, and valour.
Besides General Miller, who played so important a part in this action,
other countrymen of ours were that day engaged fighting for the cause
of Independence. Among them were Major-General Francis B. O’Connor,
brother of Fergus O’Connor; Major-General James Whittle, Colonel
William Ferguson, Lieutenant Martin, who was killed, Major-General
Arthur Sand, Captain George Brown, wounded, Captain Henry Wyman,
wounded, and Captain Miller Hallowes. These were chiefly officers
in the Colombian battalion of Rifles, which was originally composed
entirely of British subjects. During the long course of the war these
had died or been killed, and the regiment was recruited from Colombian
Indians, the officers, however, being still British. This regiment was
the foremost in the fight amongst the troops that routed the divisions
of Monet and Villalobos at the base of the Heights of Condorkanki.
[Illustration: LIMA.]
[Illustration: _The first Battle of Bull Run._
_By Angus Evan Abbott_]
Major-General Robert Patterson, sixty-nine years old, ripe with
experience gained in at least two wars, but burdened it may be with
more of the indecision and fears of old age than is the usual lot of
man--seeing before him, in fact, bogey numbers of enemies--marched his
army one day this way and the next day that; and frittering away the
time, at length, instead of fighting, he allowed General Johnston and
9,000 Confederate soldiers to slip quietly away from him. The result
was the result to be expected. General Johnston by a rapid march
reached General Beauregard’s lines in time to turn the tide of battle
in favour of the South, and the first decisive struggle of the American
Civil War was scored to the credit of the Confederates.
Four o’clock on the morning of April 12th, 1861, the Civil War began.
At that hour a shell fired from a battery on shore struck Fort Sumter,
a tiny fort built on a mudbank in the very centre of Charleston
harbour; and this shot opened hostilities that were destined to last
for years. The next day, Saturday, the news reached Washington that
Fort Sumter, in possession of a United States garrison, had been
bombarded by Southern militia acting under instructions from the
Governor of South Carolina. President Abraham Lincoln realised at
once that the time for pacific negotiations had passed and the time
for the employment of force had come. On Sunday he drew up his first
proclamation relating to the war. It called for 75,000 militia to
assemble under arms to “repossess the forts, places, and properties
which have been seized from the Union.” In the two days which followed
the issue of this call more than double the number of men asked for had
volunteered for service. Every Free State in the Union responded with
citizens eager to uphold the integrity of the Union. On the other hand,
every Slave State insultingly refused her quota of the men required.
But ready and numberless as were the volunteers from the North, the
resources of the States in the way of arms and ammunition, officers,
and organisation, were utterly inadequate for the crisis. Although by
many it had long been feared that the differences between the North and
South were being accentuated to a dangerous degree, yet when the worst
fears were realised and the actual outbreak of rebellion came, it took
the country, as a country, completely by surprise. More than this, it
caught those in authority unprepared. So it was that between the firing
on Fort Sumter and the first great battle--Bull Run--three months
elapsed. Those three months were spent in arming the volunteers--for
the United States, then as now, had no standing army to speak of--in
organising commissariat and other departments, transporting troops to
various centres, and arranging the thousand and one details which,
unless carefully attended to, would render the bravest army helpless.
But during the months of April, May, and June the absence of any
organised body of opponents in the field allowed much telling work to
be done by small parties of Southern soldiers. Unfortunately for the
North, Washington, the capital of the Union, was to all intents and
purposes within the sphere of Southern influence--on the one side the
State of Virginia, among the first States to refuse troops to Abraham
Lincoln, and on the other, Maryland, riotous and to all appearances
likely to cast in her lot with the rebel States. Federal soldiers on
their way to guard the capital were shot and trampled to death in the
streets of Baltimore, Maryland, but a few miles north from Washington.
On the same day the railway bridges of lines running northward were
destroyed, thus completely cutting Washington off from the North. To
complete the dangerous position of the capital, a force of Confederate
soldiers seized Harper’s Ferry--the Harper’s Ferry of John Brown
notoriety--then a famous national arsenal, and there established a
Southern camp. Next the important navy yard at Gosport, after the
officers in charge had attempted to destroy it by fire, was captured
by Southerners; and a number of other important points bearing on the
capital city falling into the hands of the Confederates, Washington was
surrounded. The battle of Bull Run was brought on by the North with
the intention of relieving the capital of the Union by dispersing the
enemies that surrounded it.
[Illustration: “THEY WOULD NOT KEEP IN RANK, ORDER AS
MUCH AS YOU PLEASED” (_p._ 95).]
Bull Run, the stream that gave its name to the battle, is a sluggish,
uneven waterway running in a south-easterly direction, and at the
point where the engagement took place some five-and-thirty miles from
Washington. Its banks are steep and at some places rocky, with heights,
densely wooded, on its western shore, and the stream itself deep and
sullen, yet at points fordable. A short distance south of Bull Run is
Manassas Junction--a railway junction--and here General Beauregard had
his headquarters.
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, born in 1818, was a native of
Louisiana, and passed through the United States Military Academy at
West Point. Strangely enough, one of his class-mates at the Academy was
the Federal general McDowell, who at this battle of Bull Run commanded
the Northern forces. Beauregard had served through the Mexican campaign
with distinction, taking part in the siege operations at Vera Cruz, and
at Mexico he was twice wounded. To him fell the distinction of being
chosen to open the war for the South, and it was he who bombarded and
finally, captured Fort Sumter.
General Beauregard had assembled a strong force of Confederates at
this point with the evident intention of marching upon Washington, but
before he was ready to move on the capital, a large army of Northerners
managed to reach the city, and Beauregard found his plans defeated.
Consequently, he entrenched himself securely and waited for the time
to arrive when, sufficient troops furnished him, he could carry out
his plan to capture the capital. The position for encampment had been
carefully chosen. Along the western bank of Bull Run, from Manassas
Junction to a stone bridge some eight miles up stream, the Southern
forces were posted, each ford strongly guarded, the rocky banks and the
deep water forming a natural breastwork, and the dense woods a natural
stockade. Across Bull Run, a few miles towards Washington, is the
village of Centreville, and here the advance guards, or more properly,
a scouting party, was stationed to give news of any movement that might
be made by the North; and, central and convenient, the headquarters at
Manassas commanded the whole.
[Illustration: FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
POSITION OF THE FORCES AT NOON.]
Woods, stream, and rolling country made General Beauregard’s position
a peculiarly strong one. In fact, as General McDowell, the commander
of the forces of the North, soon found, the position was well-nigh
invulnerable. To attack the Confederates in front, fording Bull
Run, scaling the high bank and charging into a wood, was out of the
question. Moreover, to strengthen Beauregard’s hands, General J.
E. Johnston, a soldier of energy and experience, was stationed at
Winchester, to which town he had retreated from Harper’s Ferry when
he found himself confronted by General Patterson. General Patterson’s
orders from Washington were to retake Harper’s Ferry from General
Johnston. But the Southern general, fully convinced that Harper’s Ferry
was of no strategical importance, and more of a trap than anything
else, fell back at Patterson’s approach, and entrenched himself at
Winchester. To the Federals the great danger lay in the risk of
Johnston by a forced march joining Beauregard, and opposing a united
force to McDowell. To prevent this, General Patterson’s second orders
were to hold Johnston in Winchester. Patterson had plenty of men for
the purpose, but failed to do what was expected of him. When the
crucial moment arrived, Johnston arrived with it and ruined McDowell’s
chance of victory.
McDowell marched from Washington. It had originally been General
Scott’s intention to give the command of the Federal forces to Robert
E. Lee; but that officer, destined to become the most famous general of
the South, resigned his position, and journeying south, took charge of
the raising of Confederate soldiers. McDowell, however, was an officer
in every way competent to worthily represent the North.
A civil war makes strange opponents. Men hitherto the closest friends,
found themselves divided, friends still, but facing one another on the
field of battle, and fighting to the death for what each considered
the right. This curious division affected officers and men alike.
In fact, a large majority of the officers who, at the outbreak
of hostilities found themselves in charge of the newly-enlisted
regiments, had been educated together at West Point, and together
received their baptism of fire and learned what real war meant under
the sweltering sun of Mexico. General Irvin McDowell, as has been
told, stood side by side with General Beauregard at West Point, and
side by side with him on the battle-fields of Mexico. For some years
he acted as assistant-instructor in infantry tactics in the Military
Academy, and when war broke out he was relieved of his duties in the
Adjutant-General’s Department at Washington, and placed in command of
the Army of the Potomac, now on its way to Bull Run.
When he set out from Washington he carried with him full instructions
and the confidence of all concerned. Never was a battle more carefully
planned. Every move likely to take place had been canvassed and
discussed, President Lincoln and General Scott giving their personal
consideration and assistance to McDowell. When the latter marched away
at the head of his 30,000 men, it was thought that he had nothing to
do but to act quickly and victory must rest with him. General Sherman
afterwards said that Bull Run was one of the best planned and one of
the worst fought battles of the Civil War.
On July 16th McDowell issued his orders to march. J. G. Nicolay, who
was private secretary to Lincoln, gives this as the organisation of
McDowell’s army:--
“First Division, commanded by Tyler: an aggregate of 9,936 men, divided
into four brigades, respectively under Keyes, Schenck, Sherman, and
Richardson.
“Second Division, commanded by Hunter: an aggregate of 2,648 men,
divided into two brigades, under Porter and Burnside.
“Third division, commanded by Heintzelman: an aggregate of 9,777 men,
divided into three brigades, under Franklin, Wilcox, and Howard.
“Fourth Division, commanded by Runyon: an aggregate of 5,752 men; no
brigade commanders.
“Fifth Division, commanded by Miles: an aggregate of 6,207 men, divided
into two brigades, under Blenker and Davies.”
From these figures, it will be seen that McDowell marched with
more than 34,000 men. But as Runyon’s division was left to guard
communications, and as some days before the fight a number of the
volunteers were mustered out, their three months’ time having expired,
defections left the Federal general in command of something like 28,000
men to meet an equal or larger number of Confederates, entrenched, as
we have seen, in a strong position, and fully prepared for a stubborn
fight.
When the news flashed across the length and breadth of the great
continent that at last a Northern army was to attack the South, the
question on everybody’s lips was “How will the American fight?”
McDowell, in his army of 30,000, had but 800 regulars--the rest were
volunteers who had never been trained to war. Raw, inexperienced,
undisciplined, gathered from the four corners of the continent: rugged
bushmen from the backwoods of Michigan, rough and restless men,
hunters born and bred every one, marching side by side with workers
from the Pennsylvania mines and New York factory hands; carters from
Philadelphia and Chicago, farmers from Ohio and Illinois, clerks from
Buffalo and Boston, all untried and untrained, having volunteered for
what the most of them looked upon as a jaunt and picnic in the South,
with, maybe, a little shooting by the way--all trudged merrily along
under the sweltering July sun, joking and playing pranks as they turned
their faces to the South, and paying but small heed to their officers’
attempts to keep them in order. McDowell, writing of this march to Bull
Run, tells many strange things. He says that the advance was rendered
tediously slow by the “fooling” of the men on the march. “They stopped
every moment to pick blackberries or to get water; they would not keep
in rank, order as much as you pleased; when they came where water was
fresh, they would pour the old water out of their canteens, and fill
them with fresh water. They were not used to denying themselves much;
they were not used to journeys on foot.” Before the long war was ended
the troops became very used indeed to denying themselves much, and to
weary journeys on foot.
On Thursday, July 18th, Tyler, commanding the first division, moved
warily on Centreville, only to find that the Confederates stationed
there showed no disposition to fight, but that they fell rapidly back
towards Bull Run. This being so, on towards Bull Run Tyler continued
his march, his orders being to carefully observe roads, positions, and
lay of the land, but under no circumstances to engage in battle. He was
to scout, to gather information for future use. But Tyler’s enthusiasm
got the better of his discretion, and, it is feared, caused him to
forget his orders. He had seen the Confederates retreat before him from
Centreville, as though fearing to fight, and then a temptation was
thrown in his way in the shape of a favourable position for a battery
from which a few shells could be dropped on the enemy. He planted a
battery, and fired on a Confederate battery still on the Centreville
side of Bull Run. The Southerners retired to Blackburn’s Ford, and
Tyler threw forward skirmishers against the Confederate skirmishers,
and these getting into a hot exchange, Tyler was soon forced to bring
forward a brigade, and then a second; and almost before he knew what
was happening he found his battery and his men in a trap. Before he
managed to bring away his battery and withdraw his men, he lost close
upon a hundred killed, and his soldiers retired in confusion, the
officers chagrined over the first serious check of the war.
But disastrous as was this the first skirmish of Bull Run to the
Northern cause, it on the other hand exposed to General McDowell the
position of the Confederates, and showed to him the hopelessness of
an attack in front. McDowell’s first plan of battle, perfected at
Washington, was to make a vigorous attack on Beauregard’s front,
and when this action raged, to cross Bull Run lower down, and while
the Confederates were concerned about the safety of their van to
fall unexpectedly upon Beauregard’s right and turn it. A personal
reconnaissance, made at the moment of Tyler’s unfortunate experiment,
proved to McDowell that this plan could not be carried out. The
ground on Beauregard’s right was totally unsuited to the job. High
hills, densely wooded and strongly held, rendered the scheme clearly
unfeasible. Some other plan must be devised. He rode to Centreville
with all speed, and there Tyler and his officers reported rifle-its
and strong barricades, natural and artificial, in front of every ford,
the one bridge spanning the stream strongly guarded and prepared for
blowing up if need be, and not the slightest chance of his untrained
soldiers carrying the position. These reports convinced McDowell that
only a demonstration must be made in front, and his whole energies
applied to reaching the southern side of Bull Run, and fighting the
battle across fields instead of across deep water. Richardson’s brigade
was ordered forward to continue the menace at Blackburn’s Ford, and
the engineers were sent up stream to survey Bull Run for a ford. But a
ford they were unable to find until Saturday, and the battle of Bull
Run could not be fought before Sunday, July 21st. A fatal delay this
proved to be. News of Tyler’s engagement at Blackburn’s Ford on the
Thursday reached Johnston at Winchester, and that energetic officer,
seeing that a general action must soon take place, slipped away from
the aged General Patterson, and by a forced march through Ashby’s Gap
of the Blue Ridge, he took train at Piedmont and marched most of his
men into Beauregard’s camp on Saturday evening. One of his companies,
indeed, did not arrive until Sunday afternoon, when by falling upon the
Federals’ right, it gave the first intimation to McDowell that Johnston
had given Patterson the slip.
[Illustration: GENERAL SHERMAN.]
A close, hot night preceded the eventful day. A mist, such as is
so often seen on sultry nights in America, hung over the valley of
Bull Run, blurring everything into a grey, indistinguishable mass,
notwithstanding that the moon shone brightly. Shortly after midnight
the Northern army bestirred itself to begin the work that lay before
it. Tyler’s orders were to get away early from Centreville and to
commence a hot attack on the stone bridge, as if it were McDowell’s
intent to force his way across the stream at that point. As soon
as Tyler and his men cleared the camp at Centreville, Hunter and
Heintzelman were to march rapidly to the ford which the engineers
had located, cross, and at the topmost speed consistent with a good
formation advance upon Beauregard’s left, fall upon the rear of the
defenders of the stone bridge and clear them away, and so allow Tyler
to cross and join forces. McDowell hoped in this way not only to
disorganise the Confederate arrangements, but also to prevent any
chance of Johnston from Winchester joining Beauregard. He had no idea
that Johnston had already effected the juncture. The Northern men,
new to war, turned but drowsily from their sleep. It was night, and,
unused to the necessity of quick and silent action, the men delayed and
refused to be hurried. Consequently, before Tyler had got his men out
of the way of Hunter, the hour for moving had long since passed. Tyler
intended to attack the stone bridge at four in the morning. It was not
until six that he fired his first gun. Hunter and Heintzelman were
proportionately delayed.
[Illustration: “TIME AFTER TIME THE ATTEMPT TO SCALE THE
HEIGHT WAS MADE” (_p._ 99).]
Strange to tell, it was Johnston’s intention to attack McDowell that
very morning. This General Joseph Eggleston Johnston--Beauregard’s
superior in rank, and an officer of energy, foresight, and initiative,
fifty-four years old--besides having served through the war with
Mexico, had seen much fighting with the Red Indians in many parts of
America; and, as never were trickier fighters alive than the Red men,
Johnston’s wits had been sharpened to a wonderful degree by his border
experiences. He suffered desperate wounds at Cerro Gordo, and again at
Chapultepec, was particularly active at Vera Cruz and in half-a-dozen
battles in Mexico, and at the very outbreak of the Civil War captured
Harper’s Ferry. In withdrawing his forces from Winchester to Bull
Run--successfully outwitting General Patterson--he gave early proof of
his skill in handling large bodies of men and readiness in rising to
the occasion. He and Beauregard had planned on Saturday night to bring
about a battle before it would be possible for General Patterson from
Harper’s Ferry to join with McDowell, which, Johnston felt convinced,
Patterson would hasten to do when he found that the Confederates had
marched away from him. Johnston had already given the orders for an
attack on McDowell, when the guns thundered out from the stone bridge.
Instantly General Johnston countermanded the order to advance. As
McDowell had begun the attack, it were better to fight the battle with
all the advantages Bull Run gave to the South. He awaited developments.
Colonel Evans held the stone bridge for the Confederates. He had with
him, behind the timber _abattis_, a regiment and a half and four
guns; and when Tyler opened fire it seemed to him that a determined
attempt would be made to force his position, and he prepared to hold
it at all hazards. But after the fighting had lasted a short time, it
occurred to Evans that the attack was conducted with nothing like the
vigour he would have expected under the circumstances, and he cast
about him for an explanation. An explanation was not long in coming.
Scouts hurrying from the wood to his left told him that a large force
of men had forded Bull Run some miles above the stone bridge and were
marching to fall upon his rear. Without a moment’s hesitation, and
waiting for no orders, Evans, leaving four companies with two guns to
hold the bridge, posted the remainder of his men in as favourable a
position to resist attack as he could come upon in the limited time at
his disposal. When Hunter emerged from the wood, at ten o’clock in the
morning, he found that his advance had been made known, and that there
was now no chance of taking the Confederates by surprise.
First began an artillery duel. The sound of guns on his side of
Bull Run told Johnston that the Federals had crossed the stream and
had attacked his left. He hurried General Bee with four regiments
and two companies to the support of Evans, already sorely pressed.
Next Heintzelman, having now safely crossed the stream, came at the
double-quick with a regiment to the assistance of Hunter, and joining
forces, bore down upon the Southern lines. The front of battle at once
changed from Bull Run stream to what had been the Confederates’ left.
And now began the battle proper. The men who, a few hours before had
refused discipline and disregarded orders from whatever quarter given,
at last, within shot of the enemy, faced the situation seriously and
fought well. With now the advantage of position and numbers, the men
from the North drove the Southerners steadily down the hill, the
Confederates fighting every inch of the way with that fiery courage
that distinguished them all through the war. Every fence, house, and
wood, every hillock, every stone on the way, every hollow and every
ditch, was made a standing-place by the South, and tenaciously held
to as long as mortal could endure the hail of bullets and crash of
cannon-ball. But the Federals fought splendidly, and carried position
after position with the courage and dash of veterans. McDowell, coming
upon the scene of action at this point, hurried word to Tyler to
press his attack upon the stone bridge. This Tyler did not do, but
instead, fording Bull Run a short distance above the bridge, came upon
the rear of the defenders and swept them away from their stronghold.
Then, marching towards the sound of the fighting, he safely joined his
commander-in-chief. At noon McDowell had the satisfaction of knowing
that not a hitch had taken place in his plans. The bridge had been
cleared, the Confederates’ left turned, and his men had driven the
enemy down the hillside, over a creek, across the valley, and up into
a wood. The morning’s work was all the North could desire. Everything
pointed to a Northern victory, full and complete.
Johnston and Beauregard now found a difficult task before them. Their
men, numbers of them thinking all lost, were hurrying to the rear in
dire confusion, throwing away their arms and accoutrements as they ran.
Many companies were entirely disorganised, and others cut to pieces
in the fight. But the two Southern generals, riding to the front,
personally supervised the re-formation of the lines. On top of the
hills up which the Confederates had been forced was a large plateau,
thickly wooded, and on this plateau the generals checked the retreat,
and swung their disorganised regiments into line. Early’s Brigade
formed the left flank, and faced Wilcox and Porter, Elzey’s fronted
Sherman, and Hampton lay nearest to Bull Run. The Confederate position
for the renewal of the fight was clearly a strong one. Down in the
valley lay the Federals. To reach the Southerners, they must charge up
a hill and into a dense wood. This proved altogether too difficult a
task. Sherman said afterwards that had McDowell ignored the partially
defeated and strongly entrenched army of the South, and, instead of
attempting to carry the plateau, marched around the hill and captured
the enemy’s headquarters, Manassas Junction, the Southerners would
have been defeated by the very act. But probably neither McDowell nor
Sherman thought of this at the time. The order was to further rout the
apparently routed, and the Federals dashed themselves to pieces in the
attempt. When Johnston and Beauregard got their men ready, the latter
took personal command, and Johnston--superior in rank--hastened to
headquarters to superintend the whole.
The battle of the afternoon was a battle of hopeless confusion. No
two on the Federal side could afterwards agree as to what had taken
place. The want of cohesion, of discipline; the rawness of the
troops, the ignorance and lack of executive ability on the part of
the officers, added to the disadvantageous position, soon brought the
army of the North into a state of helpless chaos. The Confederates,
strongly situated, lay quietly in the wood firing grimly down the hill.
When the Northerners were first ordered to charge, they did so with
determination; but scarcely had they advanced a few hundred feet than
they came under an appalling fire, volley after volley sweeping down
the steep incline. Time after time the attempt to scale the height was
made; and the right did at one time gain a footing, but to no purpose.
It was a hopeless task from the first.
[Illustration: GENERAL “STONEWALL” JACKSON.]
In the woods on top of the plateau lay Thomas Jonathan Jackson and his
men. Jackson was of English descent, and having been left an orphan at
seven, he grew to manhood on a rough farm in Western Virginia, joined
the army, fought in Mexico, and after teaching school was with Johnston
at Harper’s Ferry. Jackson’s brigade was the first to get into position
and check the advance of the Federals, the panic-stricken Southerners
rallying upon his line. During the crisis, General Bee, rallying his
men, shouted: “See; there is Jackson, standing like a stone wall. Rally
on the Virginians.” Immediately afterwards General Bee was shot dead;
but the nickname “Stonewall” stuck to Jackson, and became probably the
most familiar nickname of the war.
To the Confederate left stood Henry House. Built on a knoll, it
commanded the whole field of action, and here McDowell deemed it
important to plant a battery. To this ground two batteries were sent,
and Ellsworth’s Zouaves ordered to support them. In making their way to
the position the officers of the Zouaves mistook an Alabama regiment
for a Northern one, and did not find out their mistake until they had
exposed their men to a fire that wiped the regiment out of existence.
Another and another regiment was sent to the support of the battery,
and the battle raged its wildest around the knoll at Henry House.
Keyes, on the right, after a successful charge was driven back, Sherman
in the centre charged again and again up the hill, each charge only
resulting in a heavier loss, and the batteries at Henry House were
taken and retaken time and time again. As the afternoon grew older,
confusion gradually settled on the Northern lines. Companies beaten
back from the brow of the hill got mixed with companies charging up
the hill; men lost their officers and officers their companies, until
after a few hours’ fighting all was confusion, and the Northern army,
victorious as it seemed a little earlier in the day, degenerated into
a mob of struggling men, into which the South continued to pour a
merciless fire.
Just when the army had been reduced to this pitiable state of
confusion, a body of close upon two thousand fresh men came hurrying
across the fields to take part in the conflict. They were the last
arrivals from Winchester, Johnston’s men, who hearing the roar of
battle, stopped their train at the nearest point to the scene of
action, and running as fast as legs could carry poured a volley into
the Federals’ right. This proved to be the last straw. Raising the
cry: “Here’s Johnston from the valley!” the army of the North broke and
fled panic-stricken across Bull Run, along the turnpike to Centreville
and on to Washington, to let the President and the people of the North
know that an appalling disaster had befallen the Federal cause. General
McDowell tried his utmost to stay the flight, but to no purpose. It was
every man for himself, and never was rout more complete.
[Illustration: “THE ARMY OF THE NORTH BROKE AND FLED
PANIC-STRICKEN.”]
When the sum of battle came to be reckoned, it was found that the North
had 481 men killed, 1,011 men wounded, and 1,461 taken prisoners; while
the Southern loss was 387 killed and 1,582 wounded.
Public opinion held General McDowell responsible for the crushing
defeat, and as a consequence he was superseded in his command by
General McClellan; and although a capable and honourable officer, he
played no great part in the subsequent events of the war. The first
battle of Bull Run brought the seriousness of the situation vividly
to the minds of the people of the North, and showed how fatally the
position had been underestimated by everyone from President to peasant.
[Illustration: THE JULY BATTLES BEFORE PLEVNA
BY ARCHIBALD FORBES]
In the early days of July, 1877, the soldiers of the Tzar were
jubilant. So early as April Russian army-corps after army-corps had
come tramping across the Pruth into Roumania, and in May the Danubian
Principalities swarmed with sturdy Russian soldiers along the left
bank of the great river, from Galatz on the east to Kalafat on the
west. They gazed eagerly across the brown water of the Danube to
the precipitous Bulgarian bank on the further side, but had to wait
impatiently until the falling of the river gave them the opportunity
for which they craved so ardently. At length, however, they had
effected the crossing of the Danube from Simnitza to Sistova and from
Braila to Matchin, and the whole Russian army was now on Turkish
soil. By the middle of the month Gourko was beyond the Balkans on
that adventurous raid of his which spread panic from Hankioj to
Constantinople. “Hey for Adrianople!” was the hilarious and confident
shout, as army-corps after army-corps started on the enterprise which
seemed so ridiculously easy. Princes and staff-officers betted with
each other in hundreds of dingy paper-roubles as to the day on which
they would dine in Stamboul.
The route which the main advance over the Balkans was to take was by
Tirnova and the Shipka Pass, and thence on Adrianople through the
rose-gardens of Kazanlik and down the beautiful valley of the Tundja.
Two corps had been sent to the left to protect the advance from the
Turks holding the Bulgarian quadrilateral. Old Krüdener, the chief of
the 9th Corps, had been sent off to the right, with the airy order
to storm the fortress of Nicopolis and then to march to the Balkans
without delay, leaving as he passed detachments in Plevna and Loftcha
for the protection of the right wing, and to cross the great range
into Roumelia by the Trajan Pass. “Grandfather” Krüdener, grimmest and
toughest of warriors, began handsomely. He so smothered with shell-fire
the obsolete and crumbling fortress of Nicopolis, that after two days’
endurance of the Russian cannonade the garrison capitulated. It was
quick work, and there were not wanting hints that he had backed his
shell-fire by a bribe to the pasha in command. Anyhow, Krüdener scored,
when on the 17th there surrendered to him 7,000 men, including the
pasha--the cost of the triumph 1,300 Russians killed and wounded, and
the trophies of it, among other things, six flags and 110 guns.
FIRST BATTLE OF PLEVNA, JULY 20TH.
Next day the Grand Duke Nicolas telegraphed to Krüdener to “occupy
Plevna as promptly as possible.” That smart old warrior had
anticipated this order by pushing out towards Plevna, which is about
twenty miles south-east of Nicopolis, an infantry regiment and the
brigade of Caucasian Cossacks, and on the same day moved out General
Schilder-Schuldner with an infantry brigade. In all this there was
no apprehension in regard to Plevna; the order and movements just
mentioned were simply in the line of fulfilment of the original
instructions that Krüdener should hasten to cross the Balkans by the
Trajan Pass.
But no Russian troops were to enter Plevna for six long months to come.
Osman Pasha, whose fame was soon to ring through Europe, was on the
march down the Bulgarian bank of the Danube from Widdin, with an army
of 40,000 of the best troops in Turkey. Learning that the Russians had
already crossed the Danube, he had turned inland, reached Plevna on the
17th, and, recognising the strategical and defensive characteristics
of the place and its immediate surroundings, settled himself there,
and promptly set about throwing up a line of entrenchments along the
northern ridge from the village of Bukova eastward to the site of the
subsequently famous Grivitza redoubt.
In utter ignorance that Plevna was already in Osman’s occupation,
Schilder-Schuldner advanced in its direction without the commonest
precautions. He made no reconnaissances, for he had no cavalry with his
main body; and the result of this stupid neglect was that, as he was
unconcernedly crossing the Verbitza heights, he was suddenly halted
by Turkish artillery fire from the Grivitza ridge. He had already
sent the Kostroma regiment eastward to Zgalevitza, and the Caucasian
brigade to Tutchenitza, actually south-east of Plevna. The disposal of
his little force by Schilder-Schuldner for the night of the 19th July
was a lively instance of an almost comic inability how to make war.
His troops--6,500 men all told, with forty-six guns--were distributed
over a distance of seventeen miles. Osman Pasha must have smiled as
he posted his 40,000 men and ninety guns in the shelter-trenches and
battery-emplacements with which his northern and eastern front was
already garnished. Schilder-Schuldner scouted the suggestion that he
should wait for reinforcements. No! He had his orders to attack on the
morning of the 20th; he had always obeyed orders, and he meant to do so
now!
[Illustration: Second battle of PLEVNA.
July 30th 1877.
PLEVNA: THE POSITION OF THE RUSSIANS.]
Accordingly, at daybreak of that morning, he moved forward from Riben,
three batteries in the centre, a regiment on either flank. After an
hour’s cannonade, the troops moved forward and assailed the Grivitza
heights. The western extremity of the trenches was carried after a
desperate struggle, in which both sides freely used the bayonet. The
Vologda regiment, with part of the Archangel regiment on its left,
notwithstanding a withering fire from the Turkish shelter-trenches,
was able to continue the advance; and, after repelling a succession of
attacks made by Turkish battalions, the Vologdas and Archangels fought
their way to the northern outskirts of Plevna, where, at seven o’clock,
they were brought to a halt by a very hot fire from behind the hedges
and ditches on the edge of the town. They nevertheless hung on here
for some hours, fighting hard and losing heavily, until about eleven
o’clock they received the order to withdraw.
The Kostroma regiment, coming from Zgalevitza, advanced from the
south-east on the Grivitza position, where the subsequently famous
redoubt had as yet scarcely been traced, and after a short cannonade
delivered its assault in columns of companies. Over and over again the
successive tiers of trenches were taken and retaken at the point of the
bayonet and with cruel slaughter. A moment’s hesitation in front of
the last and strongest line of defence ended in the breaking up of the
regiment into small columns of attack. The lines of those columns were
strewn with dead and wounded, and all the superior officers went down.
There was, therefore, no one who could order a retreat, and the troops
charged forward under the command of a simple lieutenant, and finally
carried the last Turkish entrenchment. They then chased the Turks right
up to the edge of the town, where the latter found prepared positions
in the gardens and houses of the eastern suburb, whence a cross-fire of
artillery caused terrible losses in the Kostroma ranks. These losses,
the exhaustion of ammunition, and the lack of reserves compelled its
reluctant retreat, which was followed by heavy swarms of Turkish
skirmishers and by volley after volley of artillery.
The Russian troops had been engaged to the last man for hours, and were
worn out with their exertions. A general retreat was, therefore, wisely
ordered at about noon; but in effecting it heavy losses were sustained
by the sallies made by the Turks, who, however, did not pursue beyond
their trenches. The Russians left on the field all their dead and most
of their wounded, as well as two guns, twenty ammunition waggons, and
all the baggage of the Kostroma regiment. Their losses were close on
3,000 men; nearly two-thirds of the officers and over one-third of
the men were _hors de combat_. There are no data from which to
estimate the Turkish loss. The Russians reckoned it about 4,000; the
Swiss writer Le Compte calls it “about 200”--a wide discrepancy indeed.
The Russian army was furious against Schilder-Schuldner, and there was
a great clamour for a court-martial; but he was not even called upon
to resign, and he blundered cheerfully along to the very end of the
campaign. There is no need to point out his faults and errors. Without
having learned anything about the strength or position of the enemy,
and with no reserves, he sent his troops blindly to the assault in
two lines which had no communication with each other, and against an
enemy more than four times their own strength. He had the doubtful and
dangerous virtue of acting on his orders to their very letter. True,
that is one way of avoiding responsibility.
[Illustration: GRAND DUKE NICOLAS.]
THE SECOND BATTLE OF PLEVNA, JULY 30TH.
The Grand Duke Nicolas, commander-in-chief of the Russian armies in
Bulgaria, was an obstinate and narrow-minded man. He would not believe
that the Turks were in force in Plevna, notwithstanding the crushing
defeat which Schilder-Schuldner had received on July 20th. He would
not take the trouble to come down from Tirnova to the Plevna front,
contenting himself with ordering Krüdener to make a renewed attack
on Plevna with his own corps (the 9th), strengthened by the addition
of an infantry and a cavalry brigade from the 11th corps, under the
command of Lieutenant-General Prince Schahofskoy, and of the 30th
division (4th corps), which had just crossed the Danube. Krüdener had
reconnoitred the Plevna position with great care; and on account of
its natural strength and the force of the enemy, which he estimated
at not less than 50,000 men, he did not at all fancy the task laid
upon him. He had even ventured to remonstrate against the risk of
failure which he apprehended; but he received a peremptory and even
angry order from the Grand Duke to obey orders without delay, and not
bother the headquarters with any more querulous croaking. Krüdener now
became furious; he had the full belief that with 30,000 men in the
open field against 50,000 in a strong fortified position, he was bound
to be beaten disastrously, a belief which the event justified--but
he was resolved to put in his last man, and as regarded himself he
would rather prefer that he did not come out of the business alive.
Throughout the Russian camp there was little of that excitement of
anticipation which had been manifest on the evening before the crossing
of the Danube. The Russian officer, subject of a despot though he is,
has a habit of speaking his mind; and on the eve of this battle the
ears of the Grand Duke Nicolas would have tingled had he heard the
comments made upon him. Meanwhile the Turks were working with the
utmost diligence upon their fortifications, confident that they would
be again attacked in the course of a few days. By the 30th, the day
of the battle, the Grivitza redoubt and four redoubts of the “middle
group” east of Plevna were in condition for defence.
Krüdener was in chief command of the assailing forces. His orders for
the 30th were that the troops of his own corps, forming the right wing,
should advance to the attack of the Grivitza redoubt and the adjacent
positions on the northern heights, the 31st division to lead, the
5th to follow in support; and that the left wing under Schahofskoy,
consisting of two infantry brigades, should occupy the Radischevo
ridge to the south-east of Plevna, and assail the redoubts of the
“middle group” on the lower swell, due east of the town. Krüdener’s
whole army was a little over 30,000 men, consisting of 36 battalions,
30 squadrons, and 176 guns; of which 24 battalions, 110 guns, and 10
squadrons belonged to his own (the right) wing, 11 battalions, 54
guns, and 8 squadrons constituted Schahofskoy’s (the left) wing, and 1
battalion, 12 guns, and 12 squadrons was Skobeleff’s detached command
on the extreme left. The main fault of the dispositions was that
Krüdener and Schahofskoy were practically independent of each other, so
that the two attacks were far apart and with no connecting link; but
the gravest evil was the weakness of the assailing force. The key of
the Turkish position was the Grivitza redoubt.
[Illustration: “THE GENERAL HAD RISEN, AND WAS STANDING
AGAINST A TREE” (_p._ 106).]
Schahofskoy’s advance from Poradim began at 6 a.m. As the infantry
went swinging past their general, they cheered vigorously, and seemed
ready for anything. After a two-hours’ march the head of the column
reached the upland in front of Pelischat, whence the whole Plevna
region lay before it. The headquarter stood temporarily halted near the
apex of a great horse-shoe, closed in at the heel by a wooded valley
running north and south, in the centre of which lay the town of Plevna,
its white minarets, on which the sun was shining, visible above the
encircling trees. On the long ridge forming the northern section of
the horse-shoe were discernible the tents of the Turkish camps, and on
its nearer shoulder lay the Grivitza redoubt, of which later the world
was to hear so much. Now it did not seem very formidable--merely a
rough parallelogram--all of defence visible being a bank of earth with
a ditch at its outer foot, a few guns here and there, and a good many
Turks inside the work. To his left front, as Schahofskoy looked toward
Plevna, he saw the long ridge of Radischevo, forming the southern edge
of the horse-shoe, and the valley behind it into which his advance
troops were already moving.
Some of the gay young officers of Schahofskoy’s staff would have it
that slow old Krüdener had not yet got out of bed. But the old warrior
was wide awake and well to the front. About 9 a.m. the Turkish guns
opened fire on him from the Grivitza redoubt. Answering smoke rose to
the eastward, and the cannon thunder came booming down on the wind.
[Illustration: “THEN THERE FOLLOWED A HEADLONG
RUSH” (_p._ 107).]
Krüdener’s guns were in action, playing fiercely on the Grivitza
redoubt. The artillery duel between the Turks and Krüdener lasted
until after two p.m. Then the Russian, infantry were sent forward to
the attack. The brave Penza regiment led the way. Its first battalion
carried the first line of trenches, a thousand yards north-east of
the redoubt; the second line was carried by the second battalion, and
the two battalions drove the Turks at the bayonet point across the
intervening ravine, when three companies made a rush for the redoubt
and actually reached the parapet, where, however, all perished. In a
few minutes, so fierce was the Turkish fire, the three Penza battalions
lost thirty officers and 1,006 men--half their officers and more than
one-third of the men. Officers of the two regiments in reserve, looking
through their telescopes, swore that they saw the blood of the Penzas
flowing in streams down the outer face of the parapet of the Turkish
redoubt. The Kosloff regiment followed the Penzas up to the second
line, and a few men of it did reach the redoubt, but only to meet their
death. Then the supports, consisting of the 17th and 18th regiments,
made their effort, only to fail; the bitter and steadfast rifle from
the redoubt struck them down by ranks. The left column, the Tamboff and
Galitz regiments, tried to storm the southern face of the redoubt, but
only filled with their dead bodies the outlying trenches. At sundown
the stubborn Krüdener gave orders for a final general assault. It was
made with such desperation that a general officer was killed within a
few paces of the redoubt; but the attack utterly failed with terrible
slaughter. Then Krüdener gave the order to retire; but so maddened were
the troops that the fighting lasted all night, and the withdrawal was
not completed till after daybreak of the 31st. In fine, the attack of
the right wing had been an utter and bloody failure.
On the left wing, about ten a.m., Schahofskoy sent twenty-eight guns
up on to the crest of the Radischevo ridge, which promptly opened fire
on the Turkish positions of the “middle group,” whence a fire was as
promptly returned. The infantry moved forward into the valley in rear
and into the glades about the village of Radischevo, about which were
falling many Turkish shells which had flown over the ridge crowned by
the Russian artillery. It was strange to witness the peasant villagers
standing in scared groups in front of their cottages, shuddering as
the shells crashed into the place, while the children were playing
about the dust heaps without any sense of their danger. A couple of
correspondents, leaving their horses in the village, went up to the
storm-swept crest where the Russian batteries were in action, and lay
down between two guns to watch the scene. From their point of vantage
they looked right down into the Turkish positions. Several guns in an
earthwork (Redoubt No. 1) about a hamlet or farmhouse, which seemed
the most advanced of the Turkish works on the central elevation, were
vigorously replying to the Russian fire. On its right were three more
redoubts reaching backward to the edge of the valley in which the roofs
and spires of Plevna sparkled in the sunshine from out the cincture of
verdure. The place seemed so near that a short ride might bring one
there to a sorely needed breakfast; but thousands of men were to die
and many months were to elapse before Plevna should be accessible to
others than Turks. As the watchers lay by the guns men were falling
fast around them; for the elevated position was greatly exposed and the
Turkish practice was most uncomfortably true.
Two o’clock came. Schahofskoy rode up the slope from the village to
see for himself from the crest how things were going. As he reached
the sky line the Turks marked the mounted group, and a volley of
shell-fire was directed upon it. Schahofskoy promptly rolled out of
the saddle and crept forward to where the two correspondents were
squatting. His eyes were blazing and his face was flushed, as he swore
most vigorously in the colloquial Russian of the common soldier. He
looked at his watch; it was a few minutes past two. Krüdener seemed,
after all these long hours, to be making no headway. Schahofskoy in
his impatience threw his orders to the wind and determined to act
independently. He turned to his Chief of Staff and shouted, “Bring
up the 125th and 126th regiments at once! Quick!” These were his own
two regiments which had accompanied him from the foot of the Balkans.
General Tchekoff, the brigade commander, came up the slope at a canter
and told the Prince the two regiments were following close. They
came up with swift swinging stride and deployed just before reaching
the crest, breaking to pass through the intervals between the guns.
The General had risen, and was standing against a tree saluting his
soldiers as they streamed past him. His guns recommenced firing
as soon as the infantrymen were descending the further slope, and
continued their fire while the regiments were crossing the intervening
hollow to the assault of the Turkish positions. The Turkish shells
crashed through the ranks as the regiments pressed forward; men were
already down in numbers, but the long, undulating line pushed through
the undergrowth of the descent and then tramped steadily over the
stubble-fields below. No skirmishing line was thrown out in advance.
The fighting line retained its formation for a time till, what with
eagerness and what with men falling, it broke into a ragged spray of
humanity and surged on swiftly, but with no close cohesion. It was a
rush of vehement fighting-men on which the spectators looked down with
eyes intent--a helter-skelter of men impelled by a burning ardour to
get forward and come to close quarters with the enemy calmly firing
upon them from behind the shelter of his earthworks. The Turkish
position was neared; and now men held their breath. The crackle of
the musketry fire rose in a sharp continuous peal. The clamour of
the cheering of the fighting-men came back on the wind, making the
blood tingle with excitement. The wounded were beginning to withdraw,
limping and groaning; the dead and the more severely wounded lay where
they fell among the stubbles and amidst the maize. The living wave
of fighting-men was pouring over them ever on and on. Suddenly the
disconnected men were drawing together, the officers signalling for
the concentration by the waving of their swords. Then there followed
a headlong rush, led by a brave colonel. The Turks in the shelter
trench held their ground, firing steadily and with terrible effect into
the advancing assailants. The colonel staggered a few paces and then
fell--he was a dead man.
His men, bayonets at the charge, rushed to avenge their gallant dead
leader. They were over the shelter trench and over the parapet, and
then down in among the Turks like an avalanche. The first redoubt was
thus taken; but the Turks had got away ten guns; leaving only two in
Russian hands. The captured redoubt was No. 1, which had fallen to
the 126th regiment, the right regiment of Schahofskoy’s first line.
His left regiment, the 125th, was advancing simultaneously on Redoubt
No. 8, about midway between No. 1 and Plevna, but No. 8 was much the
stronger, an isolated mamelon with batteries on the rearward slope.
Schahofskoy sent forward to No. 1 two batteries and two battalions, and
a third battalion to strengthen his left flank, and then he ordered
both his front line regiments to converge on redoubt No. 8 and to
carry it, no matter at what cost. One could see through the glass
Turkish officers on horseback standing behind its parapet and watching
the oncoming Russian forces. Presently two rode away at a gallop and
immediately returned with a swarm of men on foot, who clapped tackle on
the guns in the redoubt and withdrew them all before the Russians took
it. The capture at the last was curiously sudden. All of a moment along
the lip of the Turkish parapet there was a final spurt of white smoke,
through which were visible dimly swarms of dark-coated men scrambling
over the ditch and up the outer slope of the work. On the crest of the
parapet itself there was a short but sharp struggle. Then through the
telescope was seen a crowd of men in lighter blue in apparent full
flight across the great stretch of vineyard behind the redoubt.
The Russians, then, at about half-past five of this bloody afternoon,
had possessed themselves of two of the Turkish redoubts, but their
tenure was very precarious. The Turks had not fled far from the
second redoubt, about the northern and western faces of which they
hung obstinately, while their cannon from further rearward dropped
shell after shell into it with extraordinary precision. Schahofskoy
sent forward eight guns to an intermediate knoll, to cover the troops
in the redoubt and cope with the Turkish artillery fire which was
punishing them so severely; but about six o’clock the Turks pressed
forward a strong body of infantry to its recapture. The defence was
stubborn, but the Moslems were not to be denied; and in spite of the
stubborn Russian resistance, they reoccupied the redoubt half an
hour later. In the course of the original advance on it, part of the
troops of Schahofskoy’s left had penetrated by a ravine up to near
the south-eastern verge of Plevna. From the first, this body was very
hard pressed by fresh Turkish reserves issuing from the town. The
Russians, bent on entering the place, charged again and again till
they could charge no more for sheer fatigue; and then the stubborn,
gallant fellows stood leaderless--for nearly all the officers were
down--sternly waiting death there for want of leaders to march them
back. To their help Schahofskoy sent in succession the two battalions
which were his last reserve; but all that these could do was to
maintain a front with cruel losses, until the darkness would permit of
a retirement to the Radischevo ridge. The ammunition had failed, for
the carts had been left far in the rear; and all hope died out of the
most sanguine as the sun sank in lurid glory behind the blood-stained
and smoke-mantled field.
Then the Turks struck without stint. They had the upper hand now, and
were clearly determined to show that they knew how to make the most of
it. Through the dusk they advanced in swarms into their original first
positions, and recaptured their two guns which the Russians had taken
in their first assault, but which they had found no opportunity to
withdraw. Turkish shells now again began to whistle and yell over the
Radischevo ridge, and to crash into the village behind, by this time
crammed with wounded men. The streams of wounded were incessant. The
badly-wounded lay where they fell, and were butchered ruthlessly by the
Turkish irregulars, who swarmed over the battle-field and slaughtered
indiscriminately. The moon rose on their bloodthirsty devilry; and
in the hot, still night-air one could hear--and shuddered in the
hearing--the shrieks of pain, the futile entreaties for mercy, and the
yells of cruel, fanatical triumph.
[Illustration: “THEY GATHERED TO THE SOUND.”]
The Russian defeat was complete. The remains of the army came sullenly
back, companies that had gone down hundreds strong returning by tens
and twenties. For three hours there had been a steady current of
wounded men up from out of the battle to the reverse slope of the
Radischevo ridge, to which Schahofskoy still held on grimly. All
round, the air was heavy with the moaning of the wounded who had cast
themselves down by the fountain at the foot of the slope, craving
with a pitiful longing for a few drops of the scanty water. In this
awful hour Schahofskoy’s attitude was admirable: now that the day
was lost beyond remedy, he was cool and collected. To protect his
wounded, and rally what remained of his force, he was determined to
hold the ridge to the last extremity. He ordered his bugle to sound
the “Assembly.” They gathered to the sound, singly and by twos and
threes, many bleeding from flesh-wounds, yet willing still to fight
on. But it appeared scarcely a company that came together; it seemed
as if the rest of the army was quite dispersed. Schahofrkoy was loth
to fall back, for he still hoped that belated troops would come back
out of the valley of the shadow of death down below him; but he was
disappointed. Meanwhile, as the ambulance work was going on apace, and
the wounded withdrawn into the comparative safety of the village in the
valley behind, the Turks continued to pour on the ridge a heavy fire
of shells and bullets. At length, near midnight, Schahofskoy and his
staff quitted the front, now protected, after a fashion, by a cordon
of cavalry. As the forlorn _cortège_ rode slowly away in the
moonlight, an aide-de-camp remarked in an undertone to his neighbour:
“We are following a general who has lost his army going in search of
an army which has lost its general, who now, to make the day’s loss
complete, has lost his way.” It was a miserable business.
But it was in a measure retrieved by the conduct of Skobeleff. His
orders were to prevent any reinforcement from Loftcha from entering
Plevna, and in general to cover the extreme left flank of Schahofskoy.
For this wide range of duty he had at his disposal one infantry
battalion, twelve squadrons of Caucasian Cossacks, and twelve 4-pounder
horse-guns. His first undertaking was to make a reconnaissance on
Plevna from the south-west, till he looked down on the place from a
height within three hundred yards of it. When Schahofskoy began his
cannonade on the redoubts, Skobeleff opened fire on the town, and
drew upon himself a large body of Osman’s forces. When attacked in
strength he, of course, had to withdraw to his main force at Krishin;
but he discovered that, from a hill two miles south of Plevna the Turks
could enfilade Schahofskoy’s line, and take his advance in reverse.
To hinder the enemy from occupying this point he resolved to attack
energetically; and he was able, by dint of skill and dexterity, to keep
up an active fight throughout the day and on until after nightfall, and
also to remove all his wounded. After dark, he made good his retreat to
Krishin, and re-assembled there what remained of his little command. He
had not spared it, for fifty per cent. was _hors de combat_. But
he had gained his object in keeping the Turks away from the Green Hill,
from which, had they occupied it, they would have cut Schahofskoy’s
force to pieces.
[Illustration: ENVIRONS OF PLEVNA.
_a_, Plevna; _b_, Plevna Redoubt; _c_,
Grivitza Village; _d_, Grivitza Redoubt; _e_,
Radischevo Ridge; _f_, Balkan Mountains in distance.]
The Russian losses were 169 officers and 7,136 men, out of a total
of 30,000 engaged. Of this number, 2,400 were killed and left on the
field. One of Schahofskoy’s regiments (the 126th) had 725 killed and
over 1,200 wounded--a total loss of about 75 per cent. of its strength.
Over their respective responsibility, Krüdener and Schahofskoy
quarrelled bitterly. Schahofskoy complained that Krüdener had not
supported him. Krüdener retorted that Schahofskoy had disobeyed his
orders in assaulting without permission. But the real responsibility
for the defeat rested on the shoulders of the Grand Duke Nicolas, who
had given peremptory orders from a distance to attack a position of
which he knew nothing, and in the teeth of a remonstrance on the part
of a commanding-officer who had carefully studied the subject.
[Illustration: _THE SHANGANI PATROL_
_BY E. F. KNIGHT_]
“They were men of men, and their fathers were men before them,”
were the words of old Umjan, the chief induna of the Imbezu
Impi--Lobengula’s Royal Regiment--as he described the gallant stand
of that handful of men under Major Allan Wilson which was cut to
pieces by the Matabele, hard by the Shangani river, on December 4th,
1893. Umjan, a full-blooded Zulu warrior, who, as a stripling, had
taken part in the conquest of Matabeleland with Moselekatse’s raiding
horde, led the force that slaughtered Major Wilson’s party, and the
terms of keen admiration which he employed when speaking of those
brave men but represented the feeling of his whole people. That day’s
fight produced a deep impression throughout the country. Till then
the Matabele were inclined to despise the white men, and considered
them weak and timorous. True, the Matabele had been vanquished; but
they argued that they had not been routed in fair fight, but by the
aid of witchcraft--by the deadly fire of those invincible Maxims,
which spirits had manufactured for the white men; they boasted that
without Maxims the white men would never have had the heart to face the
valorous _amajakas_ of Lobengula. But they were undeceived by the
brave doings of December 4th, which cannot rightly be called a day of
disaster--valuable though were the lives we lost--when it is remembered
how glorious was that gallant stand, how far-reaching were its results.
That engagement brought the war to a sudden conclusion, and obviated
further bloodshed. It inspired the Matabele with a profound respect
and regard for their conquerors, which our previous victories alone
would not have given them. Without that sacrifice it would have been
long before we had brought about a true peace. Our vanquished foes
would have regarded any clemency on our part as a sign of cowardice;
the young _amajakas_ would have bragged at their periodic
beer-drinkings, and organised risings against the white men. But
having suffered so severely from that stubborn resistance to the death
of a handful of white men unprovided with Maxims, they realised the
hopelessness of again trying conclusions with the Chartered Company’s
forces; they were terrified at their own victory, and, as I myself
experienced, it was possible, immediately after the Shangani fight,
for a white man to travel alone and unarmed with safety throughout
the greater portion of Matabeleland. The death of Wilson and his men
brought a complete peace to the land, so they did not fall in vain. The
story of the Shangani will be told in many a kraal; and the prestige
these Britons won for their countrymen will go far to check the ardour
of turbulent tribes and to preserve the peace of Africa.
Not one man of Wilson’s party survived to tell the tale of that
hopeless but fierce stand of the thirty-four against thousands; but
various native rumours reached us. I was at Inyati when Dawson,
some three months after the fight, returned from his mission to the
Shangani: he gave me the full details he had gathered from Matabele
who had taken part in the fight; and later on old Umjan himself came
in, and told us all that had taken place, extolling the bravery of
the white men with a simple but most impressive eloquence. It is his
narrative I purpose to repeat here.
It will be well first to recall the events that led up to the despatch
of Wilson’s patrol. Lobengula’s impis had been broken in two decisive
battles; Buluwayo had been occupied by the Company’s troops; a
considerable proportion of the disheartened Matabele, having been
offered by Dr. Jameson easy terms of peace, and, realising that they
would be treated with generosity, were quite ready to “come in,” but
dared not so long as the King was still holding out with a large force
of his followers. It was therefore essential that the King should be
captured or be induced to submit, in order to effect the pacification
of the country and avoid further bloodshed. Lobengula, in reply to
Dr. Jameson’s messages inviting him to surrender and guaranteeing
his safety, had at first promised to “come in,” but had subsequently
either altered his intention, or had been constrained by his warlike
following. Spies brought in information that he was retreating to the
north with a considerable force consisting of the remnants of his
broken impis, with the object either of organising a stand further on,
or of crossing the Zambesi to establish another military despotism
beyond the great river.
Dr. Jameson accordingly sent a force, under Major P. W. Forbes, in
pursuit of the King; but this column failed to come up with the
fugitive, for, having exhausted its supplies, it was compelled to
retire on Inyati, a mission station forty miles to the north-east of
Buluwayo. It was afterwards ascertained that Lobengula was only three
miles away when his pursuers turned back.
Reinforcements with food and ammunition were then sent to Shiloh,
another mission station between Buluwayo and Inyati, and from this
place Major Forbes set out afresh with 300 men, on November 25th,
to overtake the King. There had been very heavy rains, and the
roadless wilderness through which they had to go was little better
than a morass, almost impassable for waggons. They had made but
little progress by November 29th, and Major Forbes, finding that his
horses and oxen were becoming exhausted and realising that the King
would never be caught unless the column travelled faster, sent all
his waggons and a considerable portion of his force back to Inyati,
only retaining 160 men, mounted on the best of the horses, of whom
sixty were troopers of the Bechuanaland Border Police, the remainder
volunteers of the Salisbury, Victoria, and Tuli columns. He took with
him two Maxims, and horses carrying ten days’ rations for each man.
This little force then pushed on rapidly, despite the heavy rains and
the fever that prevails at that season in the lowlands. They were on
a hot scent, and knew that the King could not be far ahead of them.
Each day they came to his recently abandoned camps, and found frequent
signs of his retreat. They thrust their way through the thick bush and
across the swamps, following the spoor of the King’s three waggons,
occasionally capturing stragglers from his force or some, of his
cattle. The Matabele hovered round, watching them all the while; but no
attack was made upon them, though the scouts had narrow escapes.
At last, on the 3rd of December, they came to a valley near the banks
of the Shangani and found a _scherm_ (enclosure of bushes), which
had evidently been vacated but a very short time before, for the fires
were still burning within it. A chiefs son, who was captured at this
place, confessed that the King had slept there on the previous night,
and was not far off. This was good news, and all hoped that they would
be rewarded for the privations they had undergone by the speedy capture
of Lobengula. But it was now five o’clock in the evening, and darkness
would soon make it impossible for the column to proceed; so Major
Forbes, having selected a strong position in which to laagar for the
night, decided to send Major Allan Wilson with a party of about twenty
men, to reconnoitre. Among those who volunteered to go on this patrol
were several officers and some of the leading settlers in Mashonaland:
it consisted, indeed, of the very pick of frontier manhood. Major
Wilson’s instructions were to follow the King’s spoor and ascertain
his whereabouts, and to return to the laagar before dark. It was Major
Forbes’s intention to remain where he was until dawn, and then to
make a final dash for the King. Supplies were now running short, and
unless Lobengula was captured on the morrow the chase would have to be
abandoned, and the column would have to return to Inyati. Shortly after
the patrol had set out, a native prisoner gave Major Forbes reliable
information to the effect that an impi of about 3,000 Matabele was then
hemming in his force, so extra precautions were taken to guard the
laagar against surprise during the night, which was an exceedingly dark
one.
Early in the night, two of Major Wilson’s party rode in with a message
for the commanding officer. They reported that the patrol had crossed
the Shangani, and that Major Wilson, having ascertained that the King,
accompanied by but few of his followers, was only a short distance
ahead of him, had thought it best not to return that night, but would
bivouac where he was, close on the King’s heels.
Before midnight three more men came in from Major Wilson. They
corroborated the report that the King had sent his impi to surround
the column and prevent its crossing the river. They said that the
patrol had found a native to guide them, had followed the King’s
spoor for some distance, and passed several _scherms_ full of
women, children, and cattle. Then they fell in with some of the King’s
men, who offered no resistance, possibly imagining that this was the
advance guard of the whole column, and that the dreaded Maxims were
close behind. An officer, who was acting as interpreter, shouted to
the natives that the white men would not injure them, but wanted to
talk to the King. Just as it was getting dark, they approached some
_scherms_, in one of which, the guide told them, was the King
himself. A number of armed Matabele came out with threatening action
ready to protect the waggons, and were surrounding the patrol. A heavy
rain-storm now rendered the obscurity intense, so Major Wilson was
compelled to retire, and took up his position for the night in the bush
half a mile away.
[Illustration:
MR. RILEY. UMJAN. MR. DAWSON.
(The waggon is the one in which Messrs Dawson and Riley
returned from the Shangani with the King’s wives as
described.)]
Major Forbes, hemmed in as he was by the enemy’s impi, would have been
guilty of extreme rashness had he ventured to take his whole force and
his Maxims across a difficult river and through dense bush on a dark
night, when the Matabele could have easily rushed the column with their
assegais and annihilated it; but he at once despatched Captain Borrow
to Major Wilson with a reinforcement of twenty men, while he explained
in a letter that he would cross the river at daylight with the column
to join him.
At dawn, the column under Major Forbes prepared to advance, and,
while doing so, heavy firing was heard across the river, showing that
Wilson’s party was already in action with the enemy. Major Forbes
followed the King’s spoor towards the Shangani drift, and no sooner
had the column reached the high river bank than a heavy fire was
opened on it by the enemy concealed in the surrounding bush. The
troopers were quickly formed up, the Maxims were got into action, and
a smart skirmish ensued, in the course of which the white force lost
sixteen horses, and had five men wounded. At last the enemy’s fire was
silenced, and Major Forbes was able to retire along the river bank and
take up a better position where bush afforded cover.
In every way luck seemed to be against the white men on this fatal
day; for it was now observed that the Shangani, which had been easily
fordable on the previous day, had, as is the way of African rivers,
suddenly swollen by the morning to a broad, deep, and rushing flood,
across which it would be impossible to take a body of armed men, to
say nothing of the Maxims. Heavy storms had been raging on the distant
hills, and all the rivers were up, so that the main column and the
patrol were cut off from one another.
But while the action I have described was taking place, three men had
succeeded with some difficulty in swimming the Shangani. These were
three troopers from Wilson’s party. They rode up to the column with
haggard faces that plainly told of disaster, and one of them--Burnham,
the American scout--came up to Major Forbes, and said with breathless
emotion: “I think I may say that we are the sole survivors of that
fight.”
[Illustration: “THEY FOUGHT ON GRIMLY” (_p._
118).]
Then he told his story. Captain Borrow and the reinforcement had
reached Major Wilson’s camp on the previous night, without falling in
with the enemy.
At dawn, Major Wilson decided to make a rush on the King’s waggons. The
whole force galloped up to within a few yards of the _scherm_,
and then halted, while the interpreter shouted out to the King to come
out and speak with the white men. The reply was a heavy fire from the
King’s _scherm_ and from the bush on either side. The fire was
returned by our men; but, finding that the enemy were surrounding him,
Major Wilson retreated for about half a mile, and took up a position
on one of the gigantic ant-heaps which are frequent in this part of
Africa. Here the action was carried on for some time, the Matabele fire
being very wild and-producing little effect; but as the enemy were
again surrounding him, under cover of the dense bush, Major Wilson
ordered his men to remount, and the party commenced their retreat
towards the river, retracing their way along the spoor of the King’s
waggons.
Major Wilson then asked Burnham to make an attempt to reach the column
and inform Major Forbes of the position of affairs. Burnham took with
him two of the best-mounted troopers, and the three galloped off. They
had not ridden far before they came upon a large body of Matabele,
which was evidently marching to cut off Major Wilson’s retreat. The
three troopers rode for their lives through the storm of bullets that
was directed upon them, and contrived to escape uninjured to the
river-bank. As they rode, they heard a heavy firing behind them, which
told them that the body of the enemy they had just passed had attacked
Wilson’s party. Burnham said that the patrol must have been completely
surrounded by several thousands of Matabele warriors, and that it was
impossible that a single trooper could escape; for the patrol, as he
explained, could only retreat slowly, if at all--it could not cut its
way through the Matebele: several of the horses had been killed, so
that some horses had to carry two men; most of the horses were worn
out, and there would be wounded men also to carry off. True, the
best-mounted men might have galloped through and saved their lives;
but a _sauve qui peut_ is an expedient not resorted to in African
warfare by white men, and still less so by men of the stamp of Wilson
and his companions: they would certainly have stood by each other to
the end.
[Illustration: THE SHANGANI PATROL.]
On reaching the river at the point they had crossed it on the previous
day, Burnham and his two companions found it in flood, and had to
follow the bank for a considerable distance before they came to a place
where they could swim across.
There was now nothing left to Major Forbes but to save the remnant of
his force, and retreat on Inyati and Buluwayo. The river was still
up, and might remain so for days. It was absolutely impossible to
transport Maxims across it, and to have sent men over the river without
Maxims would have been to condemn them to certain slaughter. Major
Forbes remained where he was for one day, in the hope of hearing some
news of Wilson’s party; but none came. He then commenced his retreat
along the left bank of the Shangani river, having first despatched two
troopers to find their way to Buluwayo and ask Dr. Jameson to send
reinforcements, food, and ammunition to meet him.
The hazardous retreat to Inyati occupied eleven days. The column
suffered great privations, and was perpetually harassed by the
Matabele, who hovered round it, creeping along through the bush on
either side of the line of march, watching for an opportunity to
rush the white men, but having a due respect for the Maxims. They
occasionally opened a hot fire on the troopers and their horses, they
attempted surprises, and were not repulsed without further loss to
the already weakened column. In these skirmishes, the enemy succeeded
in shooting a number of the horses, while many other horses died, or
became so feeble that they had to be abandoned on the way: in all,
about 130 horses were lost. The wounded men rode, but the troopers
who were not ill and Major Forbes himself were now without mounts,
and had to march over such rough ground that their boots soon wore
out, and many of the men were walking in their wallets. At last there
were no horses left sufficiently strong to carry the Maxims, so the
gun-carriages were abandoned, and the Maxims were carried by men on
foot. All baggage also was thrown away, the men retaining but a blanket
each.
The men were worn out by the hard marching and constant anxiety, but
displayed an admirable spirit. All supplies had run out, and they lived
on the tough flesh of their exhausted horses. On one occasion they
captured some of Lobengula’s cattle; but the enemy then fell on the
column, and, during the progress of a smart skirmish, recovered the
cattle and drove them all off again.
At last, when they were within a day’s march of Inyati, the troopers
met the relief column that had been sent from Buluwayo with a good
supply of food: they had now done with their privations and alarms, and
reached Buluwayo without further difficulties.
At the end of January another patrol of 180 troopers of the
Bechuanaland Border Police, under Colonel Gould Adams, with two Maxims,
set out for the scene of the Shangani disaster, with the object of
recovering the remains of Major Wilson’s party and the abandoned
gun-carriages. It was also the aim of this expedition to follow up the
Matabele _amajakas_--who were still holding out in force on the
Shangani, and were preventing others from coming in--and to bring the
King to terms if possible. This patrol, which I accompanied, did not
get farther than Inyati. Very heavy rains made it impossible to push
beyond that point for some weeks, and then, as the rainy season had set
in in earnest, and the men, bivouacking night after night on the muddy
ground, would have suffered much from the lowland fever, the Imperial
authorities countermanded the patrol.
Dr. Jameson was still very anxious to enter into communication
with Lobengula, whose whereabouts was unknown. There could be no
secured peace until he had come to terms. Several natives whom the
Administrator had sent with messages to the King failed to reach him;
they came back and confessed that when they had fallen in with raiding
parties of young warriors from the King’s force they had been afraid to
go further, lest they should be put to death as spies of the white men.
As native messengers, not unnaturally, shirked the duty, it became
apparent that Lobengula could only be approached by some white man who
happened to be a _persona grata_ to the King, and who was willing
to undertake the perilous adventure. Mr. James Dawson--a Scotchman, who
had for some years been residing in Buluwayo as a trader, respected
by both white and black, a man possessed of the tact so necessary to
one negotiating with suspicious savages, and whose relations with the
King had always been most friendly--now pluckily volunteered to go to
the King himself and deliver Dr. Jameson’s message. He accordingly
set out with a Scotch cart on February the 4th, 1894, accompanied by
one other brave white man, Mr. Patrick Riley, also an old resident in
Matabeleland and a friend of Lobengula’s.
We waited anxiously until March the 7th, on which day Messrs. Dawson
and Riley, having successfully accomplished the objects of their
hazardous mission, returned to Inyati. As it came in there were signs
to show that the party had had a very rough journey. The Scotch cart,
dilapidated, its tent-cover torn by the thorny bush, was slowly drawn
towards the camp by weary oxen; while the natives, who had set out from
here thirty-two days before, active, well-nourished, and cheerful, now
painfully crawled along with a miserable air, lean, haggard, their
wasted limbs aching with the fever of the pestilential region they had
traversed.
Mr. Dawson told me the story of his journey. The heaviest rains of
the season fell while he and his companions were away, and their
progress was very slow. Four days after their departure they came to
an uninhabited country, where they travelled with difficulty among
rocky _kopjies_ or across deep morasses, often having to cut a
way through the dense bush. Here wild beasts abounded, and each night
numbers of lions roared around their camp. On reaching the banks of
the Shangani they fell in with small parties of Matabele, who had
decided to “come in,” and were on their way to Buluwayo. From these
Dawson first learnt that the King was dead, and that his message would,
therefore, have to be delivered to the chief indunas. On February 13th
the mission arrived at the Shangani drift, and there found a number of
natives suffering terribly from disease and lack of proper food: they
had no grain of any sort, and had been subsisting on flesh alone. They
were all anxious to “come in,” but had been afraid to do so, thinking
that the white men would kill them in revenge for the cutting off of
Major Wilson’s party. They were delighted to see Dawson and to hear his
reassuring promises.
On the further side of the river was stationed a large force of
Matabele, the _amajakas_ of the Royal Regiment and others. These
young warriors, suspecting that the two white men were the scouts of
some patrol that was advancing to attack them, at first made hostile
demonstrations; and it was, possibly, fortunate for Dawson and Riley
that the Shangani was full at the time and quite impassable. The river
did not subside until February 22nd; but in the meanwhile Dawson
and the indunas of the regiments opposite communicated with each
other by shouting across the swollen stream. Dawson thus succeeded
in delivering his message of peace, allayed the apprehension of the
Matabele, and established friendly relations with them. On the 22nd
some men swam across the river to Dawson, and he was enabled to more
fully explain to them the treatment they would receive if they “came
in.”
[Illustration: ZIMBABWE TEMPLE.]
[Illustration: ZIMBABWE KRAAL.]
On February 23rd the two white men crossed the river. This district
must be excessively pestilential, for out of the thousands of Matabele
whom Dawson found on the further bank of the Shangani, there was
scarcely a man who was not down with fever, while numbers had perished.
Their condition was most pitiable: many looked more like skeletons
than men. Dawson found that even the young _amajakas_, weakened
and dispirited by the sufferings they had undergone, had no heart for
further fighting, but were anxious to “come in.” Dawson succeeded in
convincing them that the white men, far from wishing to kill those who
had fought in the war, respected these men most, and would treat them
honourably. Umjan, who conducted the negotiations, was rejoiced to hear
this, and said he knew the white indunas meant the Matabele well, for
had they not sent to them as envoys the old friends of their people,
Dawson and Riley, whom they trusted, and not strangers? So all agreed
to go in and lay down their arms. The object of the mission was thus
effected, and the rapid pacification of the country was insured.
Dawson found at this deadly spot not only Umjan, the old
commander-in-chief, but several others of the leading indunas. He
learnt that a number of people of note had died of disease or had
committed suicide, and on Lobengula’s death several of his wives had
hung themselves. Umjan told Dawson the story of the King’s decease and
obsequies. Lobengula was suffering from fever and smallpox, but his
heart was broken because the _amajakas_ of his own--his favourite
regiment, the Imbezu--had deserted him after the last fight: he
contemplated suicide. Buzungwan, the head dance-doctor, or master of
the ceremonies at the great festival of the first fruits, was the only
man of note with the dying King. Umjan was sent for, but arrived too
late to see Lobengula alive. “It is now time for your work--to bury the
King,” said Buzungwan to him, pointing to the corpse. Umjan performed
this honourable duty according to the traditional custom. He carried
the body to a hollow under a precipice, and placed it on a stone so
that it sat upright with the face turned towards the rising sun. He
put upon it the richest royal raiment and ornaments, and placed the
King’s war assegais in the dead hands. After piercing the body with an
assegai, Umjan built a chamber of stones around it, with one great flat
stone at the top, and then went away leaving Lobengula, the Calf of the
Great Elephant, sitting in state, just as he was wont to do when alive.
[Illustration: “HE SOLD HIS LIFE DEARLY” (_p._
119).]
All the people now prepared to leave the deadly banks of the Shangani
and “come in.” Numbers were too weak to travel, so Dawson promised that
food and medicine should be sent to them without delay. Some of the
indunas accompanied him back to Inyati to represent the others. I was
present when they were brought before Dr. Jameson. The Administrator
explained to them that there would be no more king, and the white
men would govern the country, but the indunas who behaved well would
still rule their people, being answerable to the white magistrates;
and there must be no more killing or witchcraft. He promised them full
protection, and told them to return to the cultivation of the lands
they had occupied before the war. He assured them that the white men
bore no grudge against those of the Matabele who had taken up arms
against them and killed their soldiers. White men knew they must lose
some of their number when they went to war. The man he respected most
in the whole country was old Urnjan, who had fought hardest against
us, and had stood by his King to the very end. Dr. Jameson then asked
the indunas if they had anything to say. They replied that, having no
other road to go, they had come to lay down their heads before the
great white chief, who could kill them or not. They were pleased with
the treatment they had received at the hands of the white man. “And
now we can sleep,” they concluded by saying--the usual Zulu method of
expressing relief from anxiety. Often when men came in to surrender
at Buluwayo, and Dr. Jameson asked them what they wanted, they would
reply: “We have come to learn if we may sleep.”
When Dawson and Riley were on the Shangani, the natives took them to
the spot where Wilson’s party had fallen--about four miles from the
river-bank. They found the bones of the thirty-four troopers lying
close together where the men had stood at bay and died fighting. Dawson
buried these remains temporarily under a mopani tree, on which he cut
the simple inscription: “To brave men.” He described the trees and
bushes all round this spot as being cut about by what must have been a
tremendous fire. It is estimated that the thirty-four white men killed
ten times their number of the enemy, at least, on that day before they
were slaughtered.
[Illustration: LOBENGULA.
(_From a sketch from life by Mr. A. E. Maund._)]
The fine old warrior, Umjan, whom I met at Buluwayo when he “came in”
to surrender to the Administrator, gave a graphic and clear account of
all that occurred. Umjan said that the King was not with his waggons
when Major Wilson’s party attacked them: he had fled the day before
with several of his indunas. Umjan had been sent by Lobengula on
December 2nd with a strong impi to fall on Forbes’ column in the dense
bush. Finding the column encamped in the open near the river, Umjan had
to alter his plans. He left a portion of his force to lie in ambush on
either side of the drift, and returned with the remainder to guard the
King.
On the night of the 3rd, Umjan returned to the King’s waggons and
learnt that the King had gone, and he was informed that Major Wilson’s
patrol was encamped not far off in the bush. Umjan decided to do
nothing that night, and await dawn. Wilson’s party was thus caught in a
trap: behind it was the force ambushed at the drift, which had allowed
the white men to ride by; in front was the force with Umjan.
In the morning Major Wilson attacked the waggons, and was repulsed
in the manner described by Burnham. Umjan said that the white men
retreated towards the river for about three miles, fighting gallantly
all the while; and it was then that their further retreat was cut
off by the other Matabele force which had crossed the river in the
night, and which, hearing the heavy firing, had left the drift and was
hurrying along the King’s spoor to take part in the fight.
Umjan and those with him saw Burnham and the other two troopers ride
off just before the white men were completely hemmed in by overwhelming
numbers. The Matabele did not understand that these three men had been
despatched to obtain reinforcements, and marvelled that those others
of the white men who had horses did not also “take refuge in flight
instead of fighting by the side of their comrades until all were
dead together.” We have only the Matabele account of what took place
subsequent to the riding off of Burnham. Umjan said that the white men
made several desperate attempts to break through the encircling swarms
of Matabele, who were continually being reinforced by fresh arrivals.
At last, having lost several horses and having some men wounded, the
troopers determined to sell their lives dearly. They formed into a
close ring and, under cover of their fallen horses, opened a deadly
fire on the Matabele whenever a rush was attempted. Umjan spoke with
keen enthusiasm of the grand standing at bay of his white foemen. As
they repelled each fresh attack with rifles and revolvers, and added
to the heaps of Matabele dead that surrounded them, the troopers,
said Umjan, “cheered and jeered at us as cowards, challenging us to
come nearer.” The Matabele perpetually raised their guttural war-cry,
“_Shzee! shzee!_” while, from under cover of the bush, they poured
a constant fire into the thick of the white men. There was no crying
for quarter on the part of the latter. They fought on grimly: when
a man was wounded he laid down and continued to fire, or, if he was
unable to fight, handed up his ammunition to his companions. “The white
men are indeed the right men to meet in battle, even when they have no
Maxims!” exclaimed old Umjan with flashing eyes.
And so they fought on, until at last all were either killed or wounded
so severely that they could not fight longer, with the exception of
one big man “who would not die.” “We could not kill him, often though
we wounded him,” declared Umjan, “and we thought that he must have
been a wizard.” This man, who was never identified, stood on the top
of a large ant-heap, which was in the centre of an open space. He had
collected round him the revolvers and the rifles, and ammunition of
several of his dead comrades, and he killed a number of his assailants.
The Matabele could not muster courage to approach him, for, according
to their description, “he picked up weapon after weapon and fired
rapidly, and with wonderful accuracy in all directions--in front of
him, to the side of him, and over his shoulders--whenever Matabele
ventured to come out of the bush into the open.” After killing many of
them, he was at last shot in the hip, and had to fight sitting down.
He sold his life dearly, and it was not till he sank exhausted from
loss of blood from many wounds, that the Matabele made a rush on him,
and stabbed him to death with their assegais. Even then it was not
all over, for some of the dying troopers summoned sufficient strength
to fire their revolvers at the approaching Matabele; and by this time
the indomitable resistance they had met with, and the extent of their
losses, had so awed and scared the enemy that they fled precipitately
into the bush from that narrow circle of dead and dying Englishmen, and
did not come back until some hours later when they found all was quiet:
not one of their brave foemen was left alive.
Umjan, himself a gallant leader, far superior to his degenerate Zulu
warriors, who often refused to follow him, thoroughly appreciated the
dogged valour displayed by Wilson and his men. These were men after his
own heart. Speaking to some of his _amajakas_ in Dawson’s hearing,
he said: “We were fighting then with men of men, whose fathers were
men of men before them. They fought and died together: those who could
have saved themselves chose to remain and die with their brothers. Do
not forget this. You did not think that white men were as brave as
Matabele; but now you must see that they are men indeed, to whom you
are as but timid girls.”
Our men, it appears, did not exhaust their ammunition before they were
slaughtered, as was at first reported, and Dawson found cartridges in
the pouches and in the revolvers of the dead troopers; so it is more
than probable that Wilson and his comrades gave a very good account of
themselves, and sold their lives dearly as they fell, man after man, to
the very last; and it is certain that they did not die before they had
killed some four hundred of the enemy.
Dawson made a second journey to the banks of the Shangani, to carry
supplies of food and medicine to the suffering Matabele, and brought
back with him several leading natives and the surviving queens
of Lobengula. The appearance of these people fully bore out his
description of their condition. Though he had selected the strongest
and most fit to travel, they were frightfully emaciated, some being
reduced by famine and fever to the nearest approach to skeletons
possible for a living creature: despite all his care, twenty-five
people perished on the journey. On this occasion, Dawson disinterred
the remains of Wilson’s party, and brought back with him the
thirty-four skulls, most of which, we observed, had been pierced by
bullets. These skulls are to be buried in consecrated ground near those
grand remains of an unknown civilisation and religion--the ruins of
the Zimbabwe temple. Here Mr. Cecil Rhodes proposes to raise a granite
monolith to the memory of these brave men. I have seen the site,
than which none more suitable could have been selected--a bare rocky
mound rising above a wilderness of dense tropical bush and flowering
trees, halfway between the pagan temple on the plain and the rugged
Zimbabwe _kopjie_, crowned with massive fortifications of immense
antiquity. A monument of simple dignity, standing amid these mysterious
ruins, and surrounded by this wild and lonely scenery, will produce a
most impressive effect.
[Illustration:
THE SIEGE AND STORMING OF DELHI
BY CHARLES LOWE]
Delhi, the ancient and magnificent capital of the Grand Moguls,
or Mahomedan rulers of India, became the focus of the great and
ever-memorable mutiny which made our Indian Empire run with blood
during the year 1857. Of this mutiny among the native Indian troops,
or sepoys, in British pay, some ugly signs had already been observed
early in the year; but it was only on the 10th of May that military
revolt openly raised its terrible head at Meerut--a place about forty
miles north-east of Delhi. There were several causes of this rebellion,
but perhaps the chief one was the fact that the native troops had been
forced to use greased cartridges, which their religious principles or
prejudices forbade them even to touch, as being encased with the fat
of so unclean an animal as a pig. Out of respect for their scruples on
this head, new rules had been made allowing the sepoys to tear, instead
of bite, off the ends of the cartridges; but even this concession did
not satisfy them, and, for positively refusing to touch the cartridges
that were offered them, about a squadron of native cavalry at Meerut
were sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. In presence of the whole
garrison, they were stripped of their uniforms, fitted with fetters,
and marched off to prison, yelling out curses at their colonel as they
went. Next evening the storm of evil and long-pent-up passions broke
loose. The sepoy regiments at Meerut rose in open revolt, rushed to
the gaol and released their comrades, murdered some of their English
officers and their wives, plundered and slew like demons, and, leaving
the place running with blood and wrapt in flames, fled to Delhi, the
great stronghold of the Mahomedan dynasty and faith. So sudden and
sanguinary had been this outburst against the British rule and name
that the English commanders--all but a few whose energetic counsel
was rejected--lost their heads completely for the time being, as if
paralysed with astonishment and unbelief; and by the time they had
recovered their senses the fugitive mutineers were safe within the
walls of Delhi.
Standing on the right, or western, bank of the Jumna, which is here
about a quarter of a mile broad, Delhi had a circumference of about
seven miles and a population of nearly 200,000. In its palmiest days
the city was said to have covered an area of twenty square miles. At
the time of the mutiny it formed a magnificent collection of temples,
mosques, and palaces. Of the mosques the chief was that of the Jumma
Musjid, or great Mahomedan cathedral--a truly noble structure,
towering above the rest of the city. Again, there was the mosque of
Roushan-ud-Daulah, where, in 1739, Nadir Shar sat and witnessed the
massacre of the unfortunate inhabitants. But that was nothing to what
the present king of Delhi, Bahadoor Shah, was now about to look upon.
Under the English, this descendant of Timour the Tartar had become
the mere shadow of a king, and the thought that he was no longer a
potentate, but a mere puppet in the hands of the real masters of India,
had inflamed his heart against them with a passion which only needed
a spark of fire to set it in a blaze. That spark was supplied by the
sudden advent of the mutineers from Meerut on the 11th of May.
Crossing the Jumna by the bridge of boats they swarmed into the
courtyard of the palace, where they were eagerly joined by the royal
guards. Captain Douglas, the commander of these guards, rushed down
from the presence of the King to quiet the turmoil, but his presence
only made it worse. He was joined by Mr. Fraser, the Commissioner, and
Mr. Hutchinson, the Collector; but the surging, roaring crowd closed in
upon them with murder in their eyes The Englishmen attempted flight,
Captain Douglas flinging himself into the moat; but he was badly hurt
by his fall, while Mr. Hutchinson was also wounded. As these two were
being carried to the apartments over the palace gateway, Mr. Fraser
made one last effort to appease the multitude; but while in the act
of speaking he was cut down and hewn to pieces. The whole ferocious
crew then rushed to the upper rooms, where Mr. Jennings, the Chaplain,
his daughter, and a young lady friend were tending the wounds of
Captain Douglas and Mr. Hutchinson. Bursting open the doors, the dark,
demoniacal throng poured in and hacked them to pieces. Then the sepoys,
maddened with blood, streamed forth from the palace, and, accompanied
by the scum of the city--the very vilest of mankind--flew to the
European quarters, where they slew, burned, ravished, and raged without
mercy--tossing English babies up on the points of their bayonets, and
committing the most inhuman barbarities on their mothers, of which
the very description would still bring burning tears to the eyes. An
English telegraph clerk heard the awful uproar, but even when the flood
of murder came surging towards him he went on with his work--click,
click, click--flashing his warning message up to the authorities at the
various military stations in the Punjab. “The sepoys,” he wired, “have
come in from Meerut and are burning everything. Mr. Todd is dead, and,
we hear, several Europeans. We must shut up.” The last click died away.
The red-handed rebels burst in, and the staunch, cool-headed signaller
died at his post, as most of his English countrymen did, and all were
prepared to do, on that awful day of blood.
[Illustration: “THE COOL-HEADED SIGNALLER DIED AT HIS POST.”]
Among these Englishmen in Delhi none acted with greater heroism than
Lieutenant Willoughby--a “shy, refined, boyish-looking subaltern,”
scarce capable of saying “Bo!” to a goose in piping times of peace,
though his friends well knew what his spirit could be in the hour
of danger. On this terrible day Willoughby chanced to be in charge
of the magazine, containing vast stores of ammunition which he knew
would be coveted by the mutineers. At once taking in the situation, he
sent for help to Brigadier Graves, who was in command of the native
garrison outside the city in its cantonments; but no help came, and
for the simple reason that at this very time the English officers of
this garrison were being massacred by their mutinous men. Willoughby
could not trust his own native troops, but he had eight of his own
countrymen, whom he knew to be as staunch as steel--Lieutenants
Forrest and Raynor, Conductors (_i.e._ warrant-officers of the
Ordnance Department) Buckley, Shaw, and Scully; Sub-Conductor Crow;
and Sergeants Edwards and Stewart. Barricading the outer gates of the
magazine, Willoughby placed guns there, double-charged with grape,
which made the mutineers pause: but not for long.
Encouraged by the reports of their scouts, who had been sent out to see
whether there was yet any prospect of English succour arriving from
Meerut, they at last sent to demand the surrender of the magazine, “in
the name of the King of Delhi,” who had meanwhile assumed the title of
Sovereign of all Hindostan. To this insulting request only one answer
was possible--none at all. Then the red-handed hordes of murderers
came on against the magazine with ladders to scale the walls, and were
mown down by the grape-shot of Willoughby’s guns. But the gaps made in
their ranks were swiftly filled by fresh men swarming up the ladders,
and within fifty yards they poured upon the “noble nine” Englishmen
below a deadly shower of bullets. Two of them fell mortally wounded,
but Forrest and Buckley, heedless of the leaden hail, continued to
work their guns with a coolness as if on parade. At last they were
struck--one in the hand and another in the head, and the guns could now
be worked no longer. A loud shout of triumph rose from the mutineers,
but this was shouting before they were out of the wood.
Willoughby saw that his case was now indeed desperate. He had kept
the rebels at bay for about three hours, during which time he had
repeatedly run to the bastion to strain his eyes and see whether he
could discern the coming of any English help from Meerut. But neither
from Meerut nor from the cantonments outside the city walls did any
help make its appearance; and now the rebels were bursting in upon
him in a roaring, bloodthirsty crowd. His countrymen at Meerut had
not been true to him; but he would be true to himself. Foreseeing the
possibility of his defences being forced, he had taken other measures
of precaution. A train had been laid from the powder store to a tree
standing in the magazine yard, and by this tree stood Conductor Scully,
who had heroically volunteered to fire the train at a given signal
from his chief. For this signal the time had come when the guns of
Willoughby could no longer be worked. Then he quietly gave the order
to Buckley, who raised his hat to Scully, who in turn fired the train;
and in a moment more the city of Delhi was shaken to its foundations
as with the shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a terrific roar of
thunder and the flames and smoke of a volcano.
Scully fell an immortal martyr to the cause of his country, but with
himself he blew into the air more than a thousand rebels, and, above
all things, baulked the mutineers of their inestimable prey--the
magazine. Four of the “noble nine,” wounded, shattered, and bruised,
made good their retreat from the ruins; but the heroic Willoughby only
survived to be murdered on his way to Meerut. Never has the Victoria
Cross been given for a more heroic deed than the defence and blowing up
of the Delhi magazine; and it was well said that the 300 Spartans, who
in the summer morning sat “combing their long hair for death” in the
passes of Thermopylæ, have not earned a loftier estimate for themselves
than these nine modern Englishmen.
While the fight for the magazine had been going on, a tragedy of equal
horror was taking place at the Cashmere Gate, and in the cantonments
beyond the city walls. At both these places the sepoys had shot down
or bayoneted their English officers, and when the magazine blew up,
the natives of the 38th Regiment, throwing off the mask, suddenly
fired a volley at their officers, three of whom fell dead. “Two of the
survivors,” writes an historian of that awful time, “rushed up to the
bastion of the main guard and jumped down thirty feet into the ditch
below. The rest were following, when, hearing the shrieks of the women
in the guard-room, they ran back under a storm of bullets to rescue
them. The women were shuddering as they looked down the steep bank, and
asking each other whether it would be possible to descend, when a round
shot whizzing over their heads warned them not to hesitate. Fastening
their belts and handkerchiefs together, the officers let themselves
down, and then, having helped the women to follow, carried them with
desperate struggles, up the opposite side,” whence the fugitives could
reach the jungle. At the cantonments the fate of the English--women,
children, and a few surviving officers--was something similar, and then
began that piteous flight, with all its frightful sufferings, which
hardened the hearts of the British to inflict a terrible revenge.
Meanwhile, in the city of Delhi itself rebellion was triumphant and
merciless. All the Europeans that could be found were massacred and
tortured in the most barbarous manner. Some fifty of them at the first
sound of alarm had barricaded themselves--men and women--in one of the
strongest houses of the English quarter. But they were ill-armed and
without supplies, and what could they do against the furious rabble
or ruffians who besieged them? They were dragged to the palace and
lodged in a dungeon without windows, and with only one door. After
five days these were all taken out into a courtyard and butchered in
cold blood, their mangled bodies being piled on carts and thrown into
the Jumna. That was on the 16th May--five days after the arrival of
the mutineers from Meerut; and now Delhi had been cleansed of its last
Christian. Murder and rapine, arson and outrages which cannot even be
named, had done their fell work, and the English _Raj_, or rule,
had been trampled underfoot no less at Delhi than at Cawnpore, Lucknow,
and other centres of revolt. The climax of the rebellion had now been
reached, but there still had to come the inevitable anti-climax. The
blood of hundreds of English men, and women, and children, wantonly
slaughtered, was crying aloud for vengeance, and a terrible vengeance
it would be.
The mill-wheels of God, it has been said, grind slowly if surely;
but rarely had they turned round so slowly as they now seemed to be
doing after the terrible news from Delhi reached Meerut and the chief
places in the Punjab. The mutiny had broken out so suddenly that the
authorities were at first quite unable to cope with it, and precious
time had to elapse before the army of retribution could be got to
take the road. But meanwhile a cheerful and plucky spirit prevailed
both amongst officers and men, notwithstanding all their fatigues,
privation, and sickness; and if there was one man more than another,
as his brother afterwards wrote of him, who helped to inspire and keep
up this spirit--if there was one more than another who merited that
which a Roman would have considered the highest praise, that he never
despaired of his country--it was Lieutenant Hodson, of the 1st Bengal
Fusiliers, formerly of the Guides. “I can but rejoice,” he wrote,
“that I am employed again; certain, too, as I am, that the star of Old
England will shine brighter in the end, and we shall hold a prouder
position than ever. The crisis is an awful one, but with God and our
Saxon arms to aid us, I have firm faith in the result.”
“Hodson is at Umballa, I know,” wrote an officer at Meerut; “and I’ll
bet he will force his way through, and open up communication between
the Commander-in-Chief and ourselves. At about 3 o’clock that night
I heard my advanced sentries firing. I rode off to see what was the
matter, and they told me that a part of the enemy’s cavalry was
approaching their post. When day broke in galloped Hodson! He had left
Kurnal (seventy-five miles off) at 9 o’clock the night before, with one
led horse and an escort of Sikh cavalry, and, as I anticipated, here he
was with despatches for Wilson! How I quizzed him for approaching an
armed post at night without knowing the parole! Hodson rode straight
to Wilson, had his interview, a bath, breakfast, and two hours’ sleep,
and then rode back the seventy-five miles, having to fight his way for
about thirty miles of the distance.” It was no wonder that another
officer, writing to his wife at this time, said: “Hodson’s gallant
deeds more resemble a chapter from the life of Bayard or Amadis de Gaul
than the doings of a subaltern of the nineteenth century. The only
feeling mixed with admiration for him is envy.” “The pace pleased him”
(the Commander-in-Chief, General Anson), wrote Hodson himself, “for he
ordered me to raise a Corps of Irregular Horse, and appointed me its
commandant.”
At last, after a delay which nearly fretted to death the hearts of
men like Hodson, the bulk of the army of vengeance started from
Umballa under General Anson, who was presently, however, stricken down
with cholera and carried off. He was succeeded by General Sir Henry
Barnard in the chief command of the Delhi field force, consisting of
only three Brigades, totalling about 3,000 Europeans, 1,000 native
troops, and twenty-two guns--a poor enough army, surely, to be sent to
recapture Delhi, with its hordes of highly-disciplined and well-armed
sepoys behind its cannon-bristling walls. The plan of operations was
that the two Umballa Brigades should advance to Baghput, where they
would be joined by the Meerut Brigade, under Archdale Wilson, and then
sweep on to the work of vengeance at Delhi. As it was the hottest
season of the year, with its burning suns and blistering airs, the
men rested in their tents during the day, and marched by night. “The
nights were delicious,” wrote one who took part in the campaign; “the
stars bright in the deep dark sky, the fireflies flashing from bush
to bush, and the air, which in Europe would have been called warm and
close, was cool and refreshing to cheeks that had felt the hot wind
during the day. Along the road came the heavy roll of the guns, mixed
with the jingling of bits, and the clanking of the steel scabbards of
the cavalry. The infantry marched on behind with a dull, deep tread;
long lines of baggage-camels and bullock-carts, with the innumerable
sutlers and camp-servants, toiled along for miles in the rear, while
the gigantic elephants stalked over bush and stone by the side of the
road.”
[Illustration:
[_Photo.: Frith, Reigate._
JUMMA MUSJID, DELHI.]
The Meerut Brigade, being much nearer Delhi, set out on its march some
days later than the Umballa force, and it had to fight its desperate
way to the point of junction. After three nights’ marching the Meerut
column, at dawn on May 30th, reached the village of Ghazi-ud-din-Nagar,
near the river Hindun, about ten miles from Delhi; and here the bugler
had barely time to call to arms when the rebels opened fire with heavy
guns placed on a ridge. “The first few rounds from the insurgent guns,”
wrote an eye-witness, “were admirably aimed, plunging through our camp;
but they were ably replied to by our two eighteen-pounders in position,
under Lieutenant Light, and Major Tombs’ troop, most admirably led by
Lieutenant-Colonel Murray-Mackenzie, who, raking them in flank with
his six-pounders, first made their fire unsteady, and in a short time
silenced the heavy guns.” At the same time the 60th Rifles went for the
rebels in a most spirited manner, and captured several of their heavy
guns. But in doing so Captain Andrews and four of his men were blown up
by the explosion of an ammunition waggon fired by one of the mutineers.
The 6th Dragoon Guards, or Carabineers, then charged and completed the
rout of the rebels, who left in the hands of their victors all their
ordnance, ammunition, and stores. That night the officers drank in
solemn silence to the memory of their brave departed comrades, who were
buried at dawn beside a babool tree.
[Illustration: “THE OFFICERS THEN, HAVING HELPED THE
WOMEN TO FOLLOW, CARRIED THEM UP THE OPPOSITE SIDE.”
(_p._ 123).]
Next day, which was Whit-Sunday, the rebels again returned to the
attack, for they had been taunted with cowardice on presenting
themselves at Delhi, and reinforced in order that they might redeem
their reputation by hurling back the advancing force of Feringhees,
or hated Franks--the name by which the English were known in India.
But again the hurling back was all on the side of the sepoys, and once
again they were sent scampering home to Delhi, though the English, at
death’s door almost with the scorching heat and their parching thirst,
were unable to follow up this second victory of theirs by pursuit.
Twenty-three of the enemy lay together in one ditch, and for three
miles the road to Delhi was strewn with dead bodies. The English had to
mourn the loss of four officers and fifty men--among the former being
Napier, an ensign of the Rifles, so active, so full of life, so brave,
that he won the love and admiration of all. A bullet struck his leg,
and the moment he was brought into camp it had to be amputated. During
the operation never a sigh betrayed any sensation of pain. “I shall
never lead the Rifles again,” he plaintively murmured; “I shall never
lead the Rifles again.” A few weeks later the brave and generous lad
was laid in his grave.
Next day the Meerut Brigade, which had done all the fighting hitherto,
was reinforced by a battalion of Goorkhas, who were so overjoyed at the
prospect of another fight that they threw somersaults and cut capers
like so many mountebanks. But, much to their disappointment, the enemy
did not return. Six days later the whole Meerut force crossed the Jumna
and joined General Barnard’s Umballa Brigade at Alipur, being loudly
cheered as they marched into headquarters camp with the captured guns
and other trophies of their victories.
A day or two previously the intrepid Hodson had again been on the
war-path. It was impossible for Barnard to move forward on Delhi
without knowing something of the positions of the rebels in front of
the city, and who but Hodson should volunteer to ride on and discover
all that his commander wished to know! Taking with him a few troopers,
he rode, as he wrote, “right up to the Delhi parade-ground, and the
few Sowars (or native horsemen) whom I met galloped away like mad at
the sight of one white face. Had I had a hundred Guides with me I
would have gone up to the very walls.” A day or two later (8th July)
he wrote:--“Here we are, safe and sound, after having driven the enemy
out of their position in the cantonments up to and into the walls of
Delhi. I write a line in pencil on the top of a drum to say that I am
mercifully untouched, and none the worse for a very hard morning’s
work. Our loss has been considerable, the rebels having been driven
from their guns at the point of the bayonet.”
This was a reference to the battle of Badli-Ki-Serai, where the 75th
(Stirlingshire) Regiment and the 60th Rifles again carried the day by
a magnificent bayonet charge, though at a cost of 53 killed and 130
wounded, while the rebel loss amounted to about 1,000. The British loss
had been severe; but the victory was worth the price, for the enemy had
now been forced to surrender to their conqueror a commanding position,
from which he could attack them with the greatest advantage, and the
rebels had been driven ignominiously by a force far inferior to their
own to take refuge within the walls of the city from which they had but
lately expelled every Christian whom they had not slaughtered.
So here then, at last, on the 8th of June, our tiny British force had
established itself in front of walled and embattled Delhi. Had anything
so audacious, not to say impudent, ever been heard of before in the
annals of warfare? Troy, surely, was mere child’s play to this, and
Sebastopol a game of battledore. But weakness of numbers can sometimes
be made up for by strength of inspiration; and every British soldier
felt his heart swell to the size of that of twenty men when he looked
around the cantonments before Delhi and beheld the still extant traces
of the late massacre of his countrymen--the marks of blood, the broken
furniture, the blackened walls, the shreds of ladies’ dresses, and even
the locks of their hair, and, more maddening than all, the tiny boots
of English babies who had been barbarously slaughtered and tossed up
on the bayonets of the rebels. What the British soldiers, heroically
strong in their numerical weakness, now longed with a fierce and
overmastering desire to do was to cross bayonets with those incarnate
fiends whom they had already swept back behind the walls of Delhi.
These walls, with a circumference of about seven miles, were made of
large blocks of grey freestone, crowned by a good loopholed parapet.
At intervals along the circumference they were provided with bastions,
each armed with ten, twelve, or fourteen guns, a hundred and fourteen
in all, in addition to sixty field-guns. The city had ten gates,
strong, and aptly named after the cities or provinces towards which
they opened--Cashmere, Cabul, Lahore, etc. The walls were about
twenty-four feet in height, while in front ran a dry ditch, twenty-five
feet wide and about twenty feet deep. The counter-scarp--_i.e._
the outer side of the ditch--and the glacis, or smooth open slope
leading away from the edge of the ditch, were such as to move the
admiration of the English engineers. One side of the city, the eastern,
was washed by the broad and deep Jumna, and could not be thought of.
On the other hand, with his tiny force, it was equally impossible for
Barnard to invest the whole place. So he selected the northern front of
the city as the object of his attack when he should be in possession of
heavy enough siege-artillery to breach the wall and let in the avenging
flood.
Meanwhile his position was the famous “Ridge”--a rocky elevation of
about sixty feet above the general level of the city, extending along a
line, obliquely to the front of attack, of a little over two miles, its
left resting upon the Jumna some three miles above Delhi, and its right
approaching the Cabul gate at a distance of about a thousand yards.
Prominent points on this “Ridge” were the Flagstaff Tower, a ruined
mosque, an ancient observatory, Hindoo Rao’s House, and Swami House,
which, in the mouth of Tommy Atkins, speedily became “Sammy” House.
These were all good points in favour of the British. But, on the other
hand, the rebels, sallying out of the city, could profit by the cover
afforded them by the suburban villages (Subzee Mundee, or “vegetable
market,” the chief of them), gardens, groves, house-clusters, and
walled enclosures, to indulge in a perpetual series of attacks on the
British position. For though the English had come to besiege, the
fewness of their numbers and the temporary want of heavy guns reduced
them at first to the position of besieged; and for a long time--more
than three months, in fact--their energies were consumed in fending off
the ferocious sorties of the Delhi garrison. These sorties they began
on the very day after the sitting down of the British on the “Ridge,”
but were sent packing back again with serious loss. The repulse of
their first sally was mainly due to the bravery of the famous Corps
of Guides, composed of stalwart frontier men of all races, arrayed in
their own loose, dusky shirts, and sun-proof, sword-proof turbans, who
had marched into camp with a swinging stride that very morning, after
moving for twenty-seven miles a day for three weeks, at the hottest
time of the year--one of the greatest feats of the war. Three hours
after their arrival they were launched against the rebels, whom they
pursued up to the city walls, but at the cost of their dearly-loved
commander, Lieutenant Quintin Battye. “Now I have a chance of seeing
service,” he had joyfully exclaimed on setting out with his regiment,
for he was a keen soldier, a good swordsman, and a splendid rider.
But he fell in his very first fight, saying gaily to a comrade as he
breathed his last: “Well, old fellow, _dulce et decorum est pro
patriâ mori_; you see it’s my case.”
[Illustration: MAJOR TOMBS.]
A few days after this General Barnard, believing with Macbeth that
“’twere well it were done quickly,” had yielded to a scheme for
storming the city offright--a scheme in which the bold and fiery
Hodson had a prominent share. Under cover of the darkness, two columns
were to steal up to as many gates, blow these in with gunpowder, and
then rush into the city. But owing to a misunderstanding on the part
of one of the commanders, the plan had finally to be abandoned--much
to the disgust of the younger members of Barnard’s staff, who were
simply dying for the performance of such a feat. Another council of
war debated the chances of its success; but cautious--call it not
timorous--counsels meanwhile prevailed, for the news of a repulse,
following upon an ill-advised assault, would have added fresh fuel to
the fire of the mutiny, which was now blazing up more furiously than
ever, beyond the extinguishing power of rivers of blood, over the
length and breadth of Hindostan.
From every part of the country the mutineers continued to stream in
to Delhi, and ever, as fresh contingents arrived, they were sent out
to try their prowess on the holders of the “Ridge”; and hold it they
did with a tenacity which neither wounds, nor death, nor disease, nor
pestilence could in the least degree relax. In the men’s tents they
made merry, and, like the Greeks before Troy, had their sports just
as if they had been far away at home on the village-greens of Old
England. Stricken to death, the soldier told his officer he would soon
be up again and ready for another brush with the mutineers. In the
space at our disposal we cannot detail, we can scarcely enumerate, the
actions that were fought in front of Delhi--more than thirty of them
in twelve weeks, and all to the glory of the British name. Let one or
two instances of conspicuous personal valour before the foe serve to
illustrate the spirit which animated all our little besieging army.
[Illustration: “IT WAS BAYONET TO BAYONET”
(_p._ 130).]
“I must tell you,” wrote an officer, “of a noble action of Lieutenant
Hills of the Artillery (a young man who only four years ago had been
a pupil at the Edinburgh Academy). He was on picket, with his two
horse-artillery guns, when the alarm was sounded and an order sent him
to advance, given under the impression that the enemy were at some
distance. He was supported by a body of Carabineers--eighty, I believe,
in number. He advanced about 100 yards, while his guns were being
limbered up to follow, and suddenly came on about 120 of the enemy’s
cavalry close upon them.
Disgraceful to say, the Carabineers turned and bolted. His guns being
limbered up, he could do nothing, but, rather than fly, he charged
them by himself. He fired four barrels of his revolver and killed two
men, hurling the empty pistol in the face of another and knocking him
off his horse. Two horsemen then charged full tilt at him, and rolled
him and his horse over. He got up with no weapons, and, seeing a man
on foot coming at him to cut him down, rushed at him, got inside his
sword, and hit him full in the face with his fist. At that moment he
was cut down from behind, and a second blow would have done for him had
not Tombs, his captain, the finest fellow in the service, who had been
in his tent when the row began, arrived at the critical moment and
shot his assailant--by a splendid shot, fired at thirty paces. Hills
was able to walk home, though his wound was severe; and on the road
Tombs saved his life once more by sticking another man who attacked
him. If they don’t both get the Victoria Cross, it won’t be worth
having.” But they both did.
Another personal exploit of a similar kind was thus recorded by an
officer:--“We took Khurkonda by surprise, and Hodson immediately placed
men over the gates and we went in. Shot one scoundrel _instanter_,
cut down another, and took a ressaldar (native officer) and some sowars
prisoners, and came to a house occupied by some more, who would not
let us in at all. At last we rushed in, and found the rascals had
taken to the upper storey, still keeping us at bay. There was only one
door and a kirkee (window). I shoved in my head through the door, with
a pistol in my hand, and got a clip over my turban for my pains. My
pistol missed fire at the man’s breast, so I got out of that as fast
as I could, and then tried the kirkee with the other barrel, and very
nearly got another cut. We tried every means to get in, but could not,
so we fired the house, and out they rushed--running amuck among us. The
first fellow went at Hugh (the writer’s brother), and somehow or other
he slipped and fell on his back. I saw him fall, and, thinking he was
hurt, rushed to the rescue. A Guide got a chop at the fellow, and I
gave him such a swinging back-hander that he fell dead. I then went at
another fellow rushing by my left, and sent my sword through him like
butter, and bagged him. I then looked round and saw a sword come crash
on the shoulders of a poor little boy--oh, such a cut! and up went the
sword again, and the next moment the boy would have been in eternity;
but I ran forward and covered him with my sword and saved him.”
“What a sight our camp would be,” wrote another officer, “even to those
who visited Sebastopol! The long lines of tents, the thatched hovels of
the native servants, the rows of horses, the parks of artillery, the
British soldier in his grey linen coat and trousers, the dark Sikhs
with their red and blue turbans, the Afghans with the same, their wild
air and coloured saddle-cloths, and the little Goorkhas, dressed up
like demons of ugliness in their black worsted Kilmarnock bonnets and
woollen coats. In the rear are the booths of the native bazaars, and
further out, on the plain, thousands of camels, bullocks, and horses
that carry our baggage. The soldiers are loitering through the lines
or in the bazaars. Suddenly an alarm is sounded, and everyone rushes
to his tent. The infantry soldier seizes his musket and slings on his
pouch; the artilleryman gets his gun horsed; the Afghan rides out to
explore; and in a few minutes everyone is in his place.”
[Illustration: Siege of DELHI.]
Such was the state of the camp in repose. And now for a picture, from
another hand, of the same camp when roused into action. “I was out
this night,” wrote an officer, “in one of our principal batteries with
a party of my Guides, placed there to protect the guns; and I shall
never forget the scene at two o’clock in the morning. The sight was
a most magnificent one--all our batteries and all the city ones were
playing as hard as they could, the shells bursting, round shot tearing
with a _whooshing_ sound through our embrasures, the carcasses
(or large balls of fire) flying over our heads, the musketry rolling
and flashing, made the place as light as day. The noise was terrific,
though the roar of the cannon was frequently drowned in the roar of
human voices, for, when the whole city turned out, there could not
have been less than 20,000 voices all screaming at once. The mutineers’
yell of ‘Allah! Allah! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!’ was answered by our
jolly English hurrahs, and the din was most frightful. I never remember
seeing such a beautiful sight or hearing such a noise. The mutineers,
though they tried very hard to take our batteries, could not succeed,
though some of them got up near enough to throw hand-grenades into
them. The grand attack lasted about two hours, when the enemy gave in
a little, though they didn’t retire. The fighting went on all the rest
of the night, and up to two o’clock next day, when both sides retired.
We were all glad of a little rest, as most of us had been fighting for
upwards of thirty hours.”
It was only after the 23rd of June that the prospects of the besiegers
had begun to brighten. This was the hundredth anniversary of the day
on which Clive, at Plassey, had founded British rule in India; and
there had been a superstitious belief among the natives that on this
centenary the English Raj would also come to an end. Accordingly, the
Delhi mutineers, hounded on by their priests and astrologers, as well
as encouraged by copious draughts of bhang (the native intoxicant),
made an unusually vigorous push for the British position with intent to
turn it and assail it in the rear; but they were finally repulsed with
great slaughter, carrying back with them the bitter conviction that,
far from being exterminated, the British Raj was now again in a fair
way of being restored to its previous supremacy.
But perhaps the most brilliant action fought in front of Delhi--or,
rather, several miles to the west of it--was that of Nujuf-gurh. The
mutineers had got to know that our heavy siege-train, with but a
slender escort, was at last approaching, and they determined to make a
dash for it. But this was a game at which two could play, and Brigadier
Nicholson, one of the greatest heroes of the war, who had by this time
come down from the Punjab to take part in, and indeed conduct, the
siege, was despatched with the Movable Column to do diamond cut diamond
against the rebels. He found them in a very strong position, and
greatly superior to him in numbers and guns. But what did that matter?
Turning to his infantry, whom he ordered to lie down to avoid the
showers of grape, Nicholson thus addressed them: “Now, 61st, I have but
a few words to say. You all know what Sir Colin Campbell said to you
at Chillianwallah, and you must also have heard that he used a similar
expression (to his Highlanders) at the Alma: that is, ‘Hold your fire
till within twenty or thirty yards of the battery, and then, my boys,
we will make short work of it.’”
Let one of Nicholson’s officers now take up the tale:--“Our guns went
away to the flank. We got ‘Fix bayonets; quick--march!’ On we went,
in a beautiful line, at a steady pace. On we went, and we got within
some fifty yards of them, when the men gave a howl, and on we dashed,
and were slap into them before they had time to depress the guns. It
was bayonet to bayonet in a few moments, but we cut them up and spiked
the guns. We had very few men killed in the charge, as we got in
before they fired the grape. Lieutenant G., 61st, was bayoneted by a
sepoy after cutting down two. N. shot the man that did it. He had his
horse shot under him, and I saw him hand-to-hand with a sepoy, whom he
polished off with his sword.... On we went after the brutes, and cut up
a heap at the serai and behind it. We then drew up in line, rallied,
and went at the camp, took it, sent a party to take the village, and
then we went and took the guns at the bridge, over which the enemy was
bolting in thousands. Here we took six guns more. Up came our guns, and
blazed away at the enemy, and off they went, leaving a host of stores,
etc., all along the road.... I was so tired that I lay down on a hide
and fell asleep. Next morning the work of destruction was finished,
and off we marched with a lot of treasure, etc., and thirteen guns,
and brought all safe into camp, after a hard march, arriving at the
camp-bridge just in the cool of the evening, when the camp turned out
to meet us, and gave us ‘three times three,’ and played us in with some
lively airs, with a final ‘Hip--hip--hurrah!’ for the gallant 61st, who
had reserved their fire, as the Highlanders of the ‘thin, red line’
had done at Balaclava, until they had almost seen the whites of their
enemy’s eyes, and then ‘given them beans’ with bullet and bayonet.”
On the 4th of September the siege train, each gun drawn by twenty pairs
of bullocks, at last arrived, and the hearts of all the British beat
high at the thought that the assault must now soon be delivered on the
doomed city. Two days later also considerable reinforcements came in,
bringing up our little siege army to 6,500 infantry, 1,000 cavalry,
and 600 artillery--of which only 3,317 were British troops, and the
European corps were now mere skeletons of their former selves. In order
to stimulate the spirits of this miscellaneous host, Wilson issued
a general order, in which he expressed his assurance that “British
pluck and determination will carry everything before them, and that
the bloodthirsty and murderous mutineers whom we are fighting will be
driven headlong out of their stronghold and exterminated”; but, to
enable them to do this, he warned the troops of the absolute necessity
of their keeping together, and not straggling from their columns.
By this only could success be secured. “Major-General Wilson,” he
continued, “need hardly remind the troops of the cruel murders of their
officers and comrades, their wives and children, to move them to the
deadly struggle. No quarter should be given to the mutineers! At the
same time, for the sake of humanity and the honour of the country they
belong to, he calls upon them to spare all women and children that may
come in their way.”
Meanwhile the Engineers, directed by Baird-Smith, another of the giants
of this Trojan-Delhi fray, set to work in the darkness and silently
traced out the siege-batteries. A long string of camels brought in
fascines and sandbags, and hundreds of men exerted themselves to the
utmost in raising them, as the work had to be completed before dawn.
Showers of grape-shot were rained on them from the battlements, but our
devoted men worked on with a will, and by morning Battery No. 1 was in
working order and belching forth its eighteen-pound shot at such a rate
that the Moree Bastion soon became a heap of ruins. This battery was
commanded by Major Brind, of whom it was said that “he never slept,”
and would say to his men as he shouldered a musket--“Now, you lie and
rest; your commandant will defend the battery.” “We talk about Victoria
Crosses,” said someone; “Brind should be covered with them from head
to foot!” Battery No. 2, of eighteen guns, was constructed in two
portions on the left about 500 yards from the Cashmere Gate, its task
being to knock away the parapet right and left that gave cover to the
defenders, and to open the main breach by which the city was to be
stormed. Conspicuous for his cool bravery in this battery was a young
lieutenant--Roberts--who had some very narrow shaves during the siege,
but luckily escaped death in all its various forms to become one of
the most distinguished fighters ever produced by India, that cradle of
great soldiers, and to gain for himself an immortal name as the hero of
the famous march from Cabul to Candahar.
Two other batteries, Nos. 3 and 4, were also raised, one of them
mounting six eighteen-pounders; and at eight o’clock on the morning
of the 11th of September a terrific roar announced that our biggest
breaching-guns had opened fire. A loud cheer, sending the smoke
whirling away in eddies, burst from the throats of our artillerymen
as they saw how well their fire had taken effect, and beheld huge
blocks of stone tottering and tumbling down from the parapets of the
walls. Cheer after cheer went up at this most gratifying sight, and in
about ten minutes the enemy’s counter-fire from the bastions had been
completely silenced. Yet they did not at once give up the artillery
duel. For what they could not do from the walls they tried to compass
in the open, and ran out several guns, with which they did great damage
by enfilading our batteries. They also sent out rockets from their
Martello towers, and kept up a storm of musketry from their advanced
trench as well as from the walls, causing us severe loss. But who
cared for loss when Delhi was there to be won? Night and day, day and
night, did our siege-batteries belch forth their thunderbolts against
the city walls; and by the 13th of September it was concluded that the
long-wished-for time had at last arrived. Yet it behoved the besiegers
to proceed with caution, and so four Engineer officers were selected to
steal forward to the Cashmere and Water Bastions and find out whether
the breaches there were now big enough to allow of the assault.
There was no moon, but the sky was bright with stars, and with the
lurid light of flashing rockets and fire-balls. Suddenly, as the clock
struck ten, the thunder of the guns ceased, and then the explorers,
drawing their swords and feeling for their revolvers, began to creep
towards the ditch. Medley and Lang, Home and Greathed were the officers
who had volunteered for this perilous service. The two former got down
into the ditch undiscovered; but then, to quote the words of Medley
himself, “a number of figures appeared on the top of the breach, their
forms clearly discernible against the bright sky, and not twenty
yards distant. We, however, were in the deep shade, and they could
not apparently see us. They conversed in a low tone, and presently
we heard the ring of their steel ramrods as they loaded. We waited
quietly, hoping they would go away, when another attempt might be
made. Meanwhile, we could see that the breach was a good one, the slope
easy of ascent, and that there were no guns on the flank. We knew by
experience, too, that the ditch was easy of descent. It was, however,
desirable to get to the top, but the sentries would not move.” Medley
then gave the signal, and the party started to return to the camp. But
the sound of their departing feet betrayed them. “Directly we were
discovered a volley was sent after us; the balls came whizzing about
our ears, but no one was touched.” A favourable report being also
received from Home and Greathed, orders were given for the assault at
dawn.
[Illustration: THE PALACE, DELHI.]
[Illustration:
[_Photo: Frith & Co., Reigate._
THE CHANDNEE CHOUK, DELHI.]
The infantry of the storming force was divided into five columns, the
duty of the first, under Brigadier Nicholson, being to storm the breach
near the Cashmere Bastion. The second, under Brigadier Jones, had
likewise to storm the Water Bastion. To the third, commanded by Colonel
Campbell, fell the task of storming through the Cashmere Gate after it
had been blown in; while the fourth column, under Major Reid, was told
off to assault the suburb of Kissengunge and support the main attack by
effecting an entrance at the Cabul Gate after it should be taken; and
the fifth, under Brigadier Longfield, was to follow the first and act
according to circumstances.
By three o’clock the whole camp was astir. Many of the officers and
men had taken the Holy Communion the night before, and in some tents
the Old Testament lesson for the day had been read--the chapter being
that in which the doom of Nineveh was foretold. Some 6,000 men, of whom
only about 1,200 were British soldiers, were going to take a walled
city defended by 30,000 desperate and disciplined rebels. The news of
the foul and treacherous massacre at Cawnpore by the Nana Sahib had by
this time reached the soldiers, and inflamed their hearts anew with
the desire to take fearful vengeance on such barbarous foes. They had
suffered more than tongue could tell; but the hour of their retribution
and their great reward was now at hand.
[Illustration: “THE STORMERS DASHED OVER THE
_DÉBRIS_ OF THE BREACH” (_p._ 133).]
Suddenly the roar of the guns ceased, and the columns started to their
feet as the Rifles, with a loud cheer, dashed to the front in
skirmishing array. In a stern silence the storming columns tramped away
towards the ditch; but it was now bright day, for, owing to some hitch,
they had not been able to move with the dawn. The consequence was that
before they had reached the crest of the glacis, with the Engineers and
laddermen in front, numbers of them had fallen under the truly infernal
shower of bullets that was rained upon them from the walls. For several
minutes the first column found it impossible to lower the ladders and
descend into the ditch while the fiendish-looking rebels cursed and
yelled at them from the other side, daring them to come on. Presently
the ladders were thrown into the ditch, and the men, leaping down
after them, planted them against the scarp and swarmed up. Nicholson
himself, the “Lion of the Punjab,” as he was well called, was the first
to mount the breach, waving with his sword for his men to follow. In a
similar manner Lieutenant Fitzgerald led the escalade of the adjoining
bastion and fell mortally wounded. With a rousing cheer the stormers
dashed over the _débris_ of the breach like an irresistible wave
bursting in a breakwater wall. For a few minutes there was a wild chaos
of cheers, groans, yells, blazing of musketry, and clash of crossing
bayonets, and then the rebels turned and fled like a pack of wolves,
leaving this portion of their ramparts in possession of the victorious
Nicholson.
[Illustration: “OUR DEVOTED MEN WORKED ON WITH A
WILL” (_p._ 131).]
Meanwhile, the second column on the extreme left had carried the Water
Bastion by an equally successful, but an equally sacrificial, rush. For
of the thirty-nine laddermen preceding the column, twenty-nine were
struck down in a few minutes; but their comrades seized the ladders and
reared them up against the scarp, while others rushed up the breach,
and bayoneting all before them, drove the rebels from the walls. Then,
turning to the right, the stormers swept along the ramparts towards the
Cashmere Bastion, where they were joined by some of Nicholson’s men,
and, rushing ever along the walls, reached the Moree Bastion, where
they slew the gunners and leapt on to the parapets, sending up a cheer
and waving their caps to their comrades on the Ridge as a signal of
victory.
All this work had been short and sharp, and done with a splendid
courage. But perhaps the scene of the finest acts of individual heroism
was the Cashmere Gate, where the third column, under Colonel Campbell,
had meanwhile also forced an entrance in the following manner: Covered
by the fire of the 60th Rifles, a party of sappers and miners advanced
at the double toward the Cashmere Gate. Lieutenant Home, with Sergeants
Smith and Carmichael, and Havildar Mahoo leading and carrying the
powder-bags, followed by Lieutenant Salkeld, Corporal Burgess, and some
others. They reached the gateway unhurt, and found that part of the
drawbridge had been destroyed; but passing by the precarious footing
supplied by the remaining beams, they proceeded to lodge their powder
against the gate. The wicket was open, and through it the enemy kept up
a heavy fire upon them. Sergeant Carmichael was killed while laying his
powder, but when this was at last laid, the advanced party slipped down
into the ditch to allow the firing party, under Lieutenant Salkeld,
to do its duty. While endeavouring to fire the charge, Lieutenant
Salkeld was shot through the leg and arm, and handed over the match to
Corporal Burgess, who fell mortally wounded just as he had successfully
done his duty. Then a terrific thunder-roar and explosion, scattering
large masses of masonry, and mangled human forms in all directions,
announced that these acts of heroism had been crowned with success.
Lieutenant Home now ordered Bugler Hawthorne to sound the regimental
call of the 52nd Regiment as the signal for the advance of the column;
and this was thrice repeated, lest, amid the noise and tumult of the
assault, the tones of the trumpet should not be heard. Then, after
having thus coolly blown his bugle, the brave Hawthorne turned to
Lieutenant Salkeld and bound up his wounds under a heavy musketry fire,
thus ensuring for himself the Victoria Cross, which was also conferred
on the few survivors of this “glorious deed--the noblest on record in
military history,” as Baird-Smith justly called it when bringing it
to the notice of his chief. “Salkeld mortally wounded,” said another
writer, “handing over the portfire and bidding his comrade light the
train, is one of those incidents which will remain till the end of time
conspicuous on the page of history.”
With a way thus opened up for it, Colonel Campbell’s storming column
now burst into the city, slaughtering all it met; and was only stopped
in its career of conquest when it reached the Chandnee Chouk, or
Piccadilly of Delhi, running right through the city from the Lahore
Gate to the Palace.
In the meantime Major Reid’s fourth column, whose task was to advance
against the Cabul Gate, had been less successful--had, in fact, come
to grief. For having to fight his way through some suburbs affording
splendid cover to the rebels, his men were very much cut up, and, on
the fall of their leader, had to retire. At one time it was gravely
feared that the enemy, elated with their success at this point, would
issue in overwhelming numbers and seek to turn the flank of the British
outside position and thus threaten the camp. But at the critical moment
Hope Grant brought up the Cavalry Brigade, which had been covering
the assaulting columns, and made the rebels pause. For two hours the
troopers, drawn up in battle array, sat like statues, while the ranks
were every minute rent by musket ball and grape. Not a man flinched
from his post, though under this galling fire for two hours. Of Tombs’
troop alone twenty-five men out of fifty, and seventeen horses were
hit. The 9th Lancers had thirty-eight men wounded, sixty-one horses
killed, wounded and missing, and the officers lost ten horses. Nothing
daunted by these casualties, these gallant soldiers held their ground
with a patient endurance, and on their commander praising them for
their good behaviour they declared their readiness to stand the fire
as long as ever he chose. Against such firmness the foe could make no
headway, and outside the city their counter-attack was at last foiled.
It would take a volume to describe the course and incidents of the
conquering career of the various storming columns which had forced
their way into the heart of the city; but let the following description
of the doings of Nicholson’s first column serve as a sample of the
fighting which had still to be done. The writer, Mr. Forrest, drew up
his narrative after visiting the spot in the company of Lord Roberts.
“On reaching the head of the street at the Cabul Gate, the enemy again
made a resolute stand, but were speedily driven forward. A portion of
the first column was halted here, and proceeded to occupy the houses
round the Cabul Gate, while the remainder continued the pursuit. As
the troops advanced up the Rampart Road, the enemy opened a heavy and
destructive fire from the guns on the road and a field-piece planted on
the wall. The English soldiers, raising a shout, rushed and took the
first gun on the road, but were brought to a check within ten yards of
the second by the grape and musketry with which the enemy plied them,
and by the stones and iron shot which they rolled on them. Seeking all
the scanty shelter they could find, the men retired, leaving behind
the gun they had captured. After a short pause they were re-formed,
and the order given to advance. Once again the Fusiliers, scathed with
fire from both sides, rushed forward and seized and secured the gun.
They plunged forward, and had gone but a few yards when their gallant
leader, Major Jacob, fell mortally wounded. As he lay writhing in agony
on the ground, two or three of his men wished to carry him to the rear;
but he refused their aid, and urged them to press forward against the
foe. The officers bounding far ahead of their men, were swiftly struck
down, and the soldiers, seeing their leaders fail, began to waver.
At this moment the heroic Nicholson arrived, and, springing forward,
called with a stentorian voice upon the soldiers to follow him, and
instantly he was shot through the chest. Near the spot grows a tall,
graceful tree, and Nicholson ordered himself to be laid beneath its
shade, saying he would wait there till Delhi was taken. But for once he
was disobeyed and removed to his tent on the Ridge.”
Had Nicholson been allowed to lie under the tree, he would have had to
wait several days yet before the capture of the city was completed. So
far the besiegers had done little more than effect a foothold within
its walls, and at a cost of 66 officers and 1,100 men in killed and
wounded--or about two men in nine. The bullets of the rebels had worked
sad havoc among the stormers, and what these bullets had spared drink
and debauchery threatened to destroy. For, knowing the weakness of the
British soldier for strong drink, the rebels had cunningly strewn the
deserted shops and pavements with bottles of beer, wine, and spirits;
and now there ensued scenes of revelry and abandoned indulgence in
liquor which recalled to mind the assault and capture of Badajoz. But
the demon of destruction filled the breast of the British soldier as
well as the demon of drink, and though, true to the injunction of his
commander, he spared, and was even kind to, women and children, he
slaughtered without mercy all the males who crossed his avenging path.
But if provocation be any excuse for massacre, or blood be the just
equivalent of blood, then certainly the British soldier in Delhi must
have had many apologists.
The task of carrying the rest of the town was carried out day by day
with skill and caution. From the first a continuous fire from our guns
was kept up on all the remaining strongholds of the rebels--the Palace,
Jumma Musjid, etc.; and at dawn on the 16th the magazine was stormed
and taken with but slight loss. The same day the rebels evacuated the
suburb Kissengunge. On the evening of the 19th the Burn Bastion was
surprised and captured by a party from the Cabul Gate, and early next
morning the Lahore Gate, to which the Engineers had sapped their way
through the adjacent houses, was taken, as well as the Garsten Bastion;
finally, on the same afternoon, the gates of the Palace, which had
witnessed the cruel murder of English officers, women, and children,
were blown in, and our troops raised a final shout of victory before
the throne of Bahadoor Shah. That shadow of a monarch had fled and
taken refuge in the tomb of the Emperor Humayoon, outside the city;
but here he was sought and found by Lieutenant Hodson, who, escorted
by only a few sowars, undertook the exceedingly dangerous task of
capturing the king.
The story of this capture, as told by one of Hodson’s comrades, reads
like a romance. After securing his captives, “the march towards the
city began--the longest five miles, as Hodson said, that he had ever
ridden; for, of course, the palkees only went at a foot-pace, with
his handful of men around them, and followed by thousands, any one of
whom could have shot him down in a moment. His orderly told me it was
wonderful to see the influence which his calm, undaunted look had on
the crowd. They seemed perfectly paralysed at the fact of one white
man carrying off their king alone. Gradually, as they approached the
city, the crowd slunk away, and very few followed up to the Lahore
Gate. Then Captain Hodson rode on a few paces, and ordered the gate
to be opened. The officer on duty asked simply as he passed what he
had got in his palkees. ‘Only the King of Delhi,’ was the answer, on
which the officer’s enthusiastic exclamation was more emphatic than
becomes ears polite. The guard were for turning out to greet him with
a cheer, and could only be repressed on being told that the king would
take the honour to himself. They passed up the magnificent deserted
street to the Palace Gate, where Captain Hodson met the civil officer,
and formally delivered over his royal prisoner to him. His remark was
amusing: ‘By Jove! Hodson, they ought to make you Commander-in-Chief
for this.’”
Next day Hodson returned for the king’s sons, but to them he was
less merciful. “I came,” he wrote, “just in time, as a large mob had
collected and were turning on the guard. I rode in among them at a
gallop, and in a few words I appealed to the crowd, saying that these
were the butchers who had slaughtered and brutally ill-used helpless
women and children, and that the Government had now sent their
punishment. Seizing a carbine from one of the men, I deliberately
shot them one after another. I then ordered the bodies to be taken
into the city, and thrown out on the ‘Chiboutra,’ in front of the
‘Kotwalie,’ where the blood of their innocent victims could still be
traced. The bodies remained before the Kotwalie until this morning,
when, for sanitary reasons, they were removed. Thus in twenty-four
hours, therefore, I disposed of the principal members of the house of
Timur the Tartar. I am not cruel, but I confess I did rejoice at the
opportunity of ridding the earth of these wretches.”
This summary act of vengeance aroused much difference of opinion as to
its justice and humanity, but Hodson himself wrote: “I am too conscious
of the rectitude of my own motives to care what the few may say, while
my own conscience and the voice of the many pronounce me right.”
That same night the toast of “Her Majesty the Queen,” proposed by the
conqueror of Delhi, was drunk with all honour in the Dewan-i-Khas by
the headquarters staff. Never had the old building re-echoed with any
sound half so fine. The cheer was taken up by the gallant Goorkhas of
the Sirmoor Battalion who formed the General’s personal guard, and was,
indeed, soon re-echoed all over India, all over the English world.
Thus, then, ended this famous siege, one of the greatest and most
memorable in the history of England--a siege which, out of an effective
force that never amounted to 10,000 men, entailed a loss of 992 killed
and 2,845 wounded, apart from all those who died from disease and
exposure; but a siege, at the same time, which added an imperishable
leaf to England’s laurel crown, and enabled her to retain her imperial
hold on Hindostan.
[Illustration: THE VICTORIA CROSS.]
[Illustration: _Gislikon by A: J: Butler_]
“What battle is this?” we can conceive our readers asking; “and where
is Gislikon?” The form of the name may put some on the right track.
In one of the most frequented regions of Switzerland “-ikons” are as
common as “-inghams” in England, and no one who has travelled over any
of the railways about Zürich or Lucerne can have failed to notice some
instance of the odd-looking termination. Switzerland is indeed the
country to which we are going, and among those of our readers who have
already visited that “playground of Europe,” we will venture to say
that at least one-half have been close to, if they have not actually
passed over, the field on which the battle that we are going to
describe was fought. For Gislikon lies not more than six miles from the
top of the world-famous Rigi; it is a station on the not less famous
St. Gotthard railway.
Having got so far, we are prepared for further inquiries, not unmixed
with incredulity. It is hard for us to realise that a battle has been
fought in Switzerland during the last fifty years. One can almost
as easily imagine a battle in England as in that prosperous little
country, which many of us look upon as almost an appendage to England,
and associate with nothing more serious than holidays and hotels and
mountain-rambles. The better-informed have heard of cantons, and
probably think that they are something equivalent to English counties
or French departments; while they suppose that the country called
“Switzerland” has always been much where it is now, with the same
frontier and the same territory. How many, we wonder, realise when they
cross the well-known Gemmi Pass from Leukerbad to Kandersteg that they
are passing from one sovereign State, with its own laws, into another,
and that while the State into which they are going, Bern, has been part
of the Confederation which is now called Switzerland for more than 500
years, the one which they are leaving, Valais, only became so at a
date when Mr. Gladstone was already six years old? So it is, however,
and men much younger than Mr. Gladstone can remember a time when Bern
and Valais were actually at war with each other, just as, a few years
later, Pennsylvania and Louisiana were at war. Happily, in the case of
Switzerland the war was quickly finished, lasting hardly as many weeks
as the greater conflict lasted years, and involving, as we shall see, a
far smaller loss of life and property than many wars which have had far
less important results. It is probably not too much to say that had the
battle not been fought where it was, or had the issue been different,
there would now be no Switzerland at all on the map of Europe.
* * * * *
Before describing the battle, we must give some account of the events
which led to it. The years of peace which followed the battle of
Waterloo, were by no means years of domestic tranquillity for most
of the Continental States. The various absolute governments had been
thoroughly frightened by the events of the French Revolution, and
ruled more absolutely than ever. The rearrangement of Europe also,
which followed the fall of Napoleon, had, in many cases, produced much
discontent; and, in one way or another, every country was going through
a critical period. Kings were driven from their thrones; men were
constantly punished for the mere expression of their opinions; secret
societies were formed, and assassinations were frequent.
Switzerland, too, had its troubles, though as the form of government
in every canton was already republican, these took the shape rather
of fights between contending parties than of rebellion followed by
repression. One great cause of difference was to be found in the
various views as to a revision of the “Federal Pact,” or treaty, which
governed the relations of the States to the Confederation, the Liberals
wishing to see these drawn closer, while the Conservatives favoured
cantonal independence. Other differences were due to local causes.
Thus in Schwyz a serious quarrel arose over the use of the common
pastures. The wealthier men who could keep cows were thought to have
unfair privileges over those who had only sheep and goats. The former
were known as “horn-men,” the latter as “hoof-men.” They represented
the Clerical (or Conservative) and Liberal parties respectively, and
the Federal Diet had, in 1838, to interfere to keep the peace between
them. The comparative strength of parties varied very much in the
different States, and even in the same State sudden changes of feeling
were not infrequent. Moreover, matters were complicated by religious
differences. Some of the cantons were Catholic, some Protestant, while
in others the population was more or less evenly divided between
the two forms of faith. It by no means followed that the political
divisions went on the same lines as the religious; and in almost every
canton there were representatives of both parties. Lucerne was the
most powerful of the Catholic cantons, and until 1841 had been on the
Liberal side, and in favour of a revision of the Federal Pact. In that
year, however, the Government was utterly overthrown at the polls, and
the Clerical party came into power, headed by Constantine Siegwart,
an able and ambitious man, who had formerly been strong on the other
side. The neighbouring canton of Aargau, which was divided between
Catholics and Protestants, and which had only joined the Confederation
in 1803, had in the previous year found it necessary to suppress its
monasteries, which had fomented opposition to the Government. Lucerne
made a strong effort to persuade the Federal Diet to treat this as a
breach of the Constitution, according to which all religions were to
be respected; and Aargau, although many of the Catholic inhabitants
were in favour of the suppression, only escaped stronger measures by
consenting to restore some of the monasteries. This business, which
was not finally settled till 1843, embittered the feeling between the
two cantons, and in Switzerland generally. Seven cantons--Lucerne,
Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais--made a formal
protest against the decision of the Diet to leave Aargau alone; and
subsequently formed themselves into a separate league, “for the
protection of the Catholic religion.” This league was known as the
_Sonderbund_.
[Illustration: AT BERN.]
Events now began to move rapidly. In May, 1844, fighting took place in
Valais, not far from the spot where tourists now go to see the “Gorge
of the Trient,” and the Liberals, who had been in power until the
previous year, were driven out, not without bloodshed; the leaders only
escaping by swimming the Rhone. About the same time Lucerne called in
the Jesuits to direct education in the canton. There has always been
in Switzerland a good deal of suspicion of this order, who have been,
rightly or wrongly, believed to exercise a considerable underhand
influence in politics; indeed, the recent conflict in Valais was
thought to have been instigated by them; and though they already had
a footing in some cantons, their introduction into what was at this
time the leading State of the Federation was viewed with alarm, even
by many Catholics and Conservatives; while it grievously offended
all the cantons in which there was a Liberal majority. Matters were
not improved when the Lucerne Government seized and imprisoned its
leading opponents. In the following winter and spring armed bands of
irresponsible volunteers from Aargau, Bern, and other cantons, with
some exiles from Lucerne, made attempts to invade that State. In the
second and more serious of these 3,600 men, under Colonel Ochsenbein
(who, a year or two later, was President of the Diet), succeeded, on
March 31st, 1845, in getting within a few miles of the city of Lucerne,
but were beaten back by the cantonal troops, with a loss of 140 killed
and 1,800 prisoners. Herein they got no more than they deserved; but
the Lucerne Government put itself in the wrong by the extreme severity,
amounting to a Reign of Terror, with which it now proceeded to treat
its opponents, and by the undisguised manner in which it promoted the
organisation of the separate league. The Government also began to
intrigue with foreign powers, especially France and Austria, obtaining
arms from the former and money from the latter. Three thousand muskets
with ammunition which the Austrians attempted to forward from Milan,
were impounded by the authorities of Canton Ticino; and so audacious
were the Lucerne Government grown, that they actually complained of
this as a violation of State rights.
It was obvious that the remaining fifteen cantons, comprising nearly
five-sixths of the whole population, could not long tolerate the
presence of this hostile league in their midst. A glance at the map
will show that of the seven cantons composing it, one, Fribourg,
lies apart, while the others stretch continuously from the extreme
south-west of Switzerland, near Chamonix, away to the Lake of Zürich.
Not only do they divide the Confederation almost in two, but they hold
three out of the five main roads which lead through Switzerland into
Italy, including the two which at that time were, and probably still
are, by far the most frequented--the Simplon and the St. Gothard.
Moreover, the attitude of the Great Powers showed plainly that the very
existence of Switzerland as a separate and independent nation was at
stake. None of the Continental Governments had any love for the little
State, which, besides showing that men could live and thrive under a
republican constitution, was always ready to offer shelter to those of
their subjects whose political views made residence in their native
countries unsafe. Accordingly, we find the Protestant King of Prussia
no less anxious than the Protestant M. Guizot, Minister of Louis
Philippe, for the success of the Catholic Sonderbund; while Austria and
Sardinia, who a few months later were to be at each other’s throat,
agreed at least in sending help to Lucerne.
[Illustration: LUCERNE AND SURROUNDING DISTRICT.]
The task of the loyal cantons was not easy. In several of them
parties were very evenly divided. The only central authority at this
time consisted of the Federal Diet, in which every canton, no matter
what its size, had an equal representation, while the members were
only deputies, bound to vote as the majority of their State directed
them. The important canton of St. Gallen, the fifth in numbers, and
one of the wealthiest, was long in deciding. The Catholics form
about three-fifths of the population there, and it was not till May,
1847, that the local elections resulted in a Liberal majority, and
consequently the return of a Liberal member to the Diet. On July
20th the Diet was at last able to pass a resolution calling upon the
Sonderbund to dissolve itself, as being in contravention of the Federal
Constitution. The next three months were spent in efforts to bring this
about peaceably, but the leaders had gone too far to retreat. They
relied, also, not merely on the intervention of the Great Powers, but
on their own favourable position in a district almost inaccessible
from most sides, on the ancient reputation of the so-called “Forest
Cantons”--Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, and Lucerne, which had been the
original cradle of Swiss liberty.
[Illustration: AT FRIBOURG.]
On October 29th the Sonderbund deputies offered to dissolve their
league, but only on conditions which were equivalent to a concession by
the other side of all the claims to assert which the league had been
formed, and on the rejection of these terms by the majority, they left
the Diet, Bernard Meyer, the deputy from Lucerne, calling upon God
to decide between them. “You had better not speak of God,” exclaimed
the deputy from Catholic Solothurn; “this business is not His, but
the Devil’s work.” On November 4 the Diet finally resolved that the
Sonderbund be put down by force of arms, that the frontiers of the
seceding cantons be occupied, and all intercourse with them be broken
off.
The command of the Federal forces had been entrusted to Colonel William
Henry Dufour, of Geneva. Switzerland possesses no standing army; but
every able-bodied man goes through military training, and there is a
permanent staff of superior officers, on which Dufour held the post
of Quartermaster-General. He was now sixty years old; and though in
his youth he had served in the French army during all the time of
Napoleon’s great campaigns, and risen to the rank of captain, he had
seen no active service, having passed those stirring years as an
engineer-officer in the island of Corfu, which for most of the time was
blockaded by the English fleet. When Geneva became part of Switzerland,
in 1815, he transferred his services to the Confederation, and gained a
considerable reputation as a student and teacher of military science.
He was also at the head of the Commission which from 1833 onwards was
engaged in the production of the finest map of any country which up
till then had existed--the Ordnance Map of Switzerland. Only a few days
before he had remarked to one of his officers that it was lucky for
them both that their duties would prevent them from taking an active
part in the conflict! As the result showed, no better man could have
been chosen. On October 25th he received the rank of General, and took
the oath of office as Commander-in-Chief. In a few days he had under
his orders a force of nearly 100,000 men and 174 guns.
The Sonderbund leaders had been unable to find a commander among the
citizens of the seceding cantons. Their choice finally fell upon
Colonel Ulrich Salis-Soglio, of Chur in Graubünden. Like Dufour, he
was an elderly man, but had had the advantage of actual military
experience. He had served in the Bavarian army during the Leipzig
campaign, and had distinguished himself at the battle of Hanau. For
twenty-five years he had been an officer in the Swiss regiment in
the Dutch service. He is described as a man of charming manners and
chivalrous courage; but by no means Dufour’s equal as a strategist.
Curiously enough he was a Protestant. The Sonderbund forces amounted in
all to about 78,000 men and 72 guns. He commanded only the forces of
the “Forest Cantons” and Zug. General Maillardoz commanded in Fribourg,
General Kalbermatten in Valais.
[Illustration: “MAJOR SCHERRER SEIZED THE COLOURS”
(_p._ 144).]
Dufour’s first care was to secure himself from attack in the rear by
subduing Fribourg, which, as we have said, is separated by the cantons
of Bern and Vaud from the rest of those composing the Sonderbund.
His strategy for this purpose was simple, but effective. The town of
Fribourg is not more than sixteen or seventeen miles from Bern, in a
westerly direction. It was strongly fortified, and defended by a force
of from 12,000 to 15,000 men. The defenders naturally expected that
the attack would come from the direction of the Federal capital, and
they had made their arrangements to resist it on that side by throwing
up batteries and blocking the roads with trees. Dufour caused his
first division, under Colonel Rilliet, to advance in three brigades
from Vevey, Moudon, and Payerne, in Canton Vaud, with instructions
to reach Matran, some four miles south-west of Fribourg, on November
12th. This manœuvre was executed punctually. At the same time Colonel
Burckhardt’s division, which had been stationed in Canton Bern, instead
of advancing directly upon Fribourg, made a night-march to the right,
and took up a position about the same distance north-west of the town.
Lastly, Colonel Ochsenbein was directed to make a demonstration on the
side of Bern, so as to draw off the attention of the defenders from
the movements on the west and north, and at the same time to watch the
approaches from the south. These dispositions were all so accurately
carried out that on the morning of November 13th Dufour was able to
send a missive to the mayor of Fribourg, pointing out that his city was
surrounded by superior forces--they were from 25,000 to 30,000 men,
with sixty guns--and that under the circumstances he could surrender
without discredit. The authorities of the city saw the force of his
arguments, and agreed to an armistice for twenty-four hours; and on
the following day a capitulation was signed, the first article of
which bound Fribourg to leave the Sonderbund forthwith. This success
was not quite bloodless, for on the afternoon of the 13th some of the
outposts of the first division who were stationed in a wood on the
west of a town, and had not heard of the armistice, made, under some
misconception, an attack upon a redoubt which was close in front of
them. The artillery on both sides came into action, and the Federal
troops lost seven killed and fifty wounded.
The fall of Fribourg, says Dufour, fell like a thunderclap on the
Sonderbund, and astonished the rest of Europe. His own task became
much easier, owing to the spirit of cheerfulness and unanimity which
now took the place of the indecision and even reluctance which had
been felt in many quarters. He lost no time in grappling with the more
arduous part of his work--the subjection of Lucerne. Hitherto he had
given strict orders to his subordinate commanders that they were to
act entirely on the defensive, and his orders had been obeyed, though
to do so must have required some self-restraint on the part of those
officers. For the Sonderbund forces were by no means inactive. The
canton of Aargau runs down in a long tongue between Lucerne and Zug,
forming the district known as the Freiamt. At the northern end of this
tongue, where it widens out to the full breadth of the canton, is the
village of Muri, where one of the suppressed monasteries had been
situated. Perhaps the Sonderbund expected to find some sympathisers
in that district. At all events, on November 12th a strong force, in
two columns, under General Salis and his Chief of the Staff, Colonel
Elgger, respectively, entered Aargau, with the intention of marching
by different routes upon Muri. The General, starting from Gislikon,
entered the Freiamt at its southernmost point; while Elgger, keeping
within the territory of Lucerne, was to take a parallel line and
approach Muri from the south-west. It was a foggy day, and the two
columns, separated by a range of lofty hills, completely lost touch
of each other. In the afternoon, Salis made an attempt to destroy a
bridge which the Federal engineers had thrown over the river Reuss, to
connect Zürich with Aargau. But he was met with a stout resistance, and
compelled to retire. Near Muri he again fell in with troops from St.
Gallen and Appenzell, who received him with a vigorous fire, and he
found nothing to do but return to his starting-point. Colonel Elgger
was at first more fortunate, and drove the Aargau troops back with some
loss. His own son, who was acting as his aide-de-camp, got a bullet in
his head, but lived to edit the Swiss Military Gazette thirty years
later. Presently an order to the artillery to retire in order to take
up a better position, caused a panic among some troops from Valais,
who probably did not understand the words, and only saw the movement.
They fled, and Elgger, having lost a part of his force and hearing the
sound of Salis’ guns grow fainter and fainter, had nothing to do but
to withdraw. A third column, which was to have invaded Aargau further
to the westward, succeeded in surprising the Federal outposts and
bombarding an unfortified village; but did not wait for the arrival
of the Aargau battalions, which hastened up at the summons of the
alarm-bells.
In the south, where the Federal strength was less, matters for a few
days looked more promising for the Sonderbund. On November 17th a
body of 2000 men, with four guns, crossed the St. Gotthard Pass in a
storm of wind and snow, and fell upon Airolo. The Ticino troops, who
were holding that place, 2700 strong, hardly expected a visit in such
weather, and allowed themselves to be surprised. Before they knew what
was happening, the village was surrounded by the riflemen of Uri,
and cannon-balls were crashing through the snow-covered roofs. They
fled in disorder to Bellinzona, with a loss of six killed and thirty
wounded, leaving weapons, ammunition, baggage, even their colonel’s
despatch-boxes and dressing-case, in the enemy’s hands. This was the
nearest approach to success which the Sonderbund had. It was hoped that
Ticino, being a Catholic canton, at least a portion of the population
might welcome the invaders; but they received no encouragement, and in
a few days the approach of the Federal army to Lucerne rendered their
retreat necessary.
For Dufour did not let the grass grow under his feet. Two days after
the capitulation of Fribourg had been signed, his headquarters were
at Aarau, the capital of Aargau, and all his dispositions made for
striking the decisive blow. Lucerne is very well situated for defence
against an enemy approaching from the north. The stream of the Reuss,
flowing out of the lake towards the north-west, presently sweeps round
to the north-east. Just at the angle the smaller River Emme joins it
from the south-west, so that a continuous obstacle is offered to an
attacking force. Between the Reuss and the Kussnacht arm of the lake
(which washes the foot of the Rigi) is a range of lofty wooded hills
called the Rooterberg, which continue almost to the Lake of Zug; and in
the other direction, a similar line of hills, cut by deep gorges, runs
parallel to the Emme. It was on this latter side that the ill-starred
attempt of the Free Corps had been made in 1845. Dufour determined on
this occasion to approach from the other direction, along the line
of the Reuss, and between that river and the Rooterberg. It was a
hazardous operation: in his own words, “taking the bull by the horns.”
Gislikon, the point where the main road crosses the river, while that
on the right bank comes close to it, was strongly fortified; and
the Rooterberg afforded an admirable position for sharpshooters and
artillery. But by advancing from this side he would, if successful,
separate Lucerne and Schwyz, and would strike at the heart of the
secession. Therefore, while ordering all the five divisions which he
intended to employ, to converge by various roads on Lucerne, from east,
north, and west, he resolved to make his main attack with the fourth
and fifth, under Colonels Ziegler and Gmür. Of these, the former was at
present quartered in Aarau, the latter between the Reuss and the Lake
of Zürich.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF GISLIKON.]
The attack was fixed for November 23rd. Two days before, the little
canton of Zug, which had entered the Sonderbund somewhat reluctantly,
seeing that further resistance was useless, capitulated, thereby
relieving Dufour of anxiety for his left flank. On the 22nd the
General issued a proclamation to his troops, reminding them that
they were performing a duty to their country, and bidding them lay
aside all feeling of hostility as soon as the victory was won. They
were specially enjoined to respect all churches and buildings used
in the service of religion, and to see that no injury was done to
non-combatants or to private property.
That evening Colonel Ziegler’s division bivouacked in the “Freiamt,”
right up to the frontier of Lucerne. It was a clear night, and round
the Lake of Zug they could see the watch-fires of the fifth division,
which was now occupying that canton. In the early morning of the 23rd
the Aargau engineers threw a bridge of boats over the Reuss at Sins,
another being placed a couple of miles higher up, at Oberrüti. Ziegler,
with two brigades of his division, under Colonels Egloff and König,
crossed to the right bank, and came into touch with Colonel Gmür and
the fifth division, advancing from the Lake of Zug. The third brigade,
under Colonel Müller, was to remain on the left bank, and attack
Gislikon from the direction of Klein Dietwyl. It should have acted
in conjunction with the third division, under Donatz, which occupied
the next place to the westward, but bad roads hindered that commander
from arriving in time to take part in the main action. About nine
in the morning the batteries of Gislikon opened fire upon Müller’s
brigade, compelling it to retire for a time. One of the first shots
killed Captain Buk, a refugee from Lucerne, who was marching with the
column. Colonel Ziegler, meanwhile, was making progress on the other
side of the Reuss. In spite of the fire from the Rooterberg, and from
the Lucerne artillery in front of the village of Honau, he pressed on,
and presently his guns coming into action caused the enemy’s batteries
to retire. They made a short stand in Honau, but were soon forced
back upon Gislikon, where regular earthworks had been thrown up.
Here they made a resolute defence, the battery under Captain Mazzola
specially distinguishing itself. On the other side, Rust’s battery
(from Solothurn) galloped through Honau, leaving the infantry behind,
and took up its position in an orchard, five hundred paces--this was
before the days of rifled cannon--from the earthworks. Its first shot
killed and wounded five men in Hegi’s company, which retired, leaving
Mazzola’s left flank uncovered. Mazzola, however, literally “stuck
to his guns,” though the artillery on the further side of the Reuss
was now playing upon him, and presently compelled Rust to retire
behind the fighting line, barely saving his guns from capture by the
Lucerne _chasseurs_. A plucky action on the part of one of his
subordinates is recorded. Just after the Solothurn guns had retired,
a body of troops was seen in the spot they had occupied. In the smoke
and haze of the November day, it was not certain whether they were
friend or foe. Corporal Pfiffer asked his captain’s permission to go
and ascertain, which Mazzola willingly gave. Pfiffer left the battery,
and went forward till he could see the others clearly; then, waving his
sword, cried: “Fire, Captain; it is the enemy!” and made his way back.
General Salis, who had taken up his position in the battery, pressed a
piece of gold into his hand; but the sturdy Swiss rejected it, saying:
“No need for that, General; I only did my duty.” The narrator of this
story, himself a bitter partisan on the Catholic side, adds that
Pfiffer was a well-known adherent of the Liberals. Here, as later in
the American Civil War, when hostilities had once begun, men put the
defence of their homes first, and let their private opinions wait for
quieter times.
The troops whose identity Corporal Pfiffer had ascertained were some
battalions of Egloff’s and König’s brigades. These were Appenzellers
under Benziger, and Aargauers under Häusler. The former could not face
the storm of grape with which they were received, and took shelter in
some gravel-pits. Häusler’s men, with whom the Brigadier-Colonel Egloff
was himself riding, began in their turn to waver. At this moment Major
Scherrer, whose own battalion was also unsteady, seized the colours,
and fixing them into the ground, cried out: “Switzers, do you know what
that means?” Thus encouraged, Häusler’s men held their ground, and,
presently, through the personal efforts of Egloff and his staff, the
fugitives were rallied, and the line restored. Meanwhile, the Lucerne
and Unterwarden companies had pressed too far in the direction of the
Rooterberg, allowing the Federal skirmishers to penetrate between them
and the artillery, so that the earthworks were denuded of all covering
infantry. Egloff at once ordered up three batteries, and under the
fire of these, combined with that from others on the other bank, the
intrepid Mazzola, after nearly an hour’s duel between his one battery
and five or six of the enemy’s, was compelled to withdraw, and abandon
Gislikon. General Salis, too, who had taken up his position in the
battery, had been severely wounded in the temple by a grape-shot,
though he made light of his wound, and refused to leave the fight.
König’s brigade, meanwhile, to which had been assigned the duty of
clearing the west slopes of the Rooterberg and sheltering Egloff’s left
flank, had met with a sudden resistance. Again and again they had to
fall back, until Ziegler himself, dismounting and leading the right
wing, succeeded in pressing the enemy so far up the hill as to secure
Egloff from a flank attack, and set part of his own main force to
operate against Mazzola. König, with the left wing, attempted to force
the position of Michelskappel, on the crest of the ridge, but could
not succeed in dislodging the troops from Schwyz who held it. Gmür’s
division, meanwhile, had captured Meyerskappel, on the eastern side of
the ridge, and was advancing upon Lucerne by the road between the hills
and the lake.
But the retreat from Gislikon had decided the battle. At 3 p.m. General
Salis gave the order to retire upon Ebikon, a village not more than
three miles from Lucerne. In the city itself men had been listening
all day long, with painful anxiety, to the thunder of the cannon, but
no news of the fight had reached them. At four, arrived an orderly
from the General, bringing a message couched in the form usual with
defeated commanders, to the effect that he had been compelled to retire
temporarily upon Ebikon, but hoped to maintain his ground there for a
time. He added, however, that the loss of Gislikon had rendered the
position of Lucerne very precarious. A steamer had been in readiness
all day, and on the receipt of this news, the Council-of-War, with
Siegwart and Meyer at its head, went on board, taking the military
treasury and all documents, papers, etc., with them, and steamed up
the lake to Flüelen, leaving orders to General Salis to arrange for
an armistice. The General himself arrived about 8 p.m., suffering
from his wound, and after giving the requisite instructions, departed
to Unterwalden. As an old soldier, he doubtless knew that further
resistance meant useless bloodshed. Colonel Elgger, his Chief of the
Staff, had been for two days maintaining a stout resistance in the
Valley of Entlebuch, west of the city, to the seventh Federal division,
under Colonel Ochsenbein--who had his former defeat on almost the
same ground to avenge--and had hastened back to Lucerne, when night
put an end to further fighting on the 23rd. He was at first in favour
of defending the city; but was soon convinced of the hopelessness of
the situation, and agreed to communicate with Dufour. At 9 in the
morning of the 24th came the reply that it was too late to countermand
the advance, but that if the Federal troops were allowed to enter
peaceably, and the Federal flag was displayed, no warlike measures
would be taken.
[Illustration: “RUST’S BATTERY GALLOPED THROUGH
HONAU” (_p._ 144).]
Accordingly, at midday on the 24th, the Federal forces marched into
Lucerne by all the gates. Twenty days had finished the civil war. The
total losses were, on the Federal side, 60 killed and 386 wounded; on
that of the Sonderbund, 36 and 119. Dufour attributes the smallness of
these figures to the fact that the fighting took place in a broken and
thickly-wooded country, where cover was plentiful. Something was, no
doubt, also due to the inexperience of the gunners.
Great care was taken to prevent any excesses on the part of the
victors. The Bern division, between whom and Lucerne bitter feelings
had existed ever since 1845, was not allowed to take part in the entry
into the city, but had to remain, by Colonel Ochsenbein’s orders, in
the suburbs. Dufour ordered a joint “Church-parade” to be held, the
Catholic troops attending Mass in the chief church of Lucerne, while
a service was held in the open-air for the Protestants. Subsequently
he wrote, “The troops on both sides showed by their conduct that every
Swiss is a born soldier.”
The Confederation had had a narrow escape. On the day when war had been
declared, M. Guizot had, on behalf of France, proposed to the other
Great Powers that a joint note should be sent to the Swiss Diet calling
upon them to submit the questions at issue to foreign arbitration.
As it was hardly doubtful that the proposal would be rejected, this
meant armed intervention, with the certainty of an ultimate partition
of Switzerland. The Continental Powers were ready enough, but Lord
Palmerston, then English Foreign Secretary, who had, as he said, “no
wish to see Switzerland made a Poland of,” managed, by objections and
suggestions, to postpone the delivery of the note till November 30th.
By that time the Diet was able to reply that there was no longer any
Sonderbund. In the course of the following year, Prussia, Austria, and
France had matters enough of their own to attend to; and the Swiss were
able to proceed unmolested with the revision of their Constitution into
the form under which the country has prospered ever since. Formerly a
Confederation of States, they have since 1848 been a Confederated State.
The conflict left--except, perhaps, among a few of the Sonderbund
leaders--no ill-feeling behind. Some years later Dufour could write:
“The citizens of the old cantons (I.E. the Forest Cantons)
nearly all have pipes with my picture on them, and call me ‘Our little
Dufour.’” His long and useful life ended in 1875.
[Illustration: LAKE ZUG.]
[Illustration: INSANDHLWANA
BY C. STEIN]
About ten miles from the Buffalo river, which forms the eastern
frontier of Natal, rises conspicuous a tall, rocky, precipitous hill,
called in the language of the natives “Insandhlwana,” or “The place
of the little hand,” from a fancied resemblance in its form to an
outstretched hand. Near this hill was fought, on the 22nd January,
1879, one of the most desperate actions ever engaged in under the
British flag. Here, overwhelmed by numbers, an English force suffered
a complete and most disastrous defeat, and here, bravely facing
inevitable overthrow and death, English soldiers sternly answered to
the call of duty and fell with honour, grimly defiant to the last.
Of the actual details of the battle there are no complete records. The
men who could have furnished them lie under the shade of the hill, and
the veldt grass grows green over their silent and glorious bed. But
sufficient is known, as much from the subsequent testimony of their
gallant foes as from the words of the few survivors of the fatal field,
to tell us how determined, though unavailing, was the courage, how
great the self-abnegation, of the warriors who then maintained the
honour of our country.
Let us tell the story as far as it can be gathered, and if it ends with
no shout of victory, at least we can impress on our minds that the
heroic dead left a memory of which we may be sadly proud, and that they
were not found wanting in carrying on the noblest traditions of the
English people.
The Zulu kingdom was a military power that, under a line of despotic
and warlike sovereigns, had long been a standing menace to the English
colony of Natal and to the Transvaal, the Dutch Republic, which in
1878 was annexed by England. The first king of Zululand, Chaka, had so
organised his realm that it was always ready for war at short notice,
and his system was maintained by his successors--Dingaan, Panda, and
finally Cetewayo, who became monarch in 1872. Every able-bodied Zulu
was enrolled in one or other of the king’s regiments, and no one was
allowed to marry without the king’s permission. The permission to marry
was generally given as a mark of favour to a whole regiment at once for
long or good service, particularly if it had “bathed” its assegais--or,
in other words, had covered them with blood in conflict. The discipline
of the Zulu army was the sternest. Implicit obedience was required, and
every fault was punished with death. Cowardice was unknown, for the
coward dare not meet the vengeance and wrath of his king. The saying
of each man was, “I am the king’s ox”--meaning, I accept life or death
as the king may award, and my only business is to carry out his orders
without question. The burden of one of their war-songs was, “If I go
back I am killed; if I go on I am killed. It is better to go on.”
With such feelings, added to their natural fierceness and hardihood,
influencing a peculiarly powerful and athletic race of men, it may be
conceived how formidable was the Zulu array, and with how much truth it
came to be called “a very perfect man-slaying machine.”
The war-dress worn by the Zulu soldiers made them striking and
alarming-looking figures. On the head of each man was a plume of
feathers, or sometimes a single beautiful feather, taken from the bell
crane, rising a good two feet into the air. Round his waist hung a kilt
of white oxtails, and beneath his right knee and shoulder were small
circles of white goat’s hair. For the rest, he was naked; unless he was
a chief, in which case he wore a leopard’s-skin kaross, or cloak, as
an emblem of authority. In his left hand he carried a fighting shield
made of oxhide, of which the colour varied according to the regiment
to which he belonged. In his right hand he held his great broad-bladed
“bangwan,” or stabbing assegai. He also had three lighter and smaller
assegais for throwing as javelins, and a “knobkerrie,” or club, made
of hard “umzimbete” wood. Many of them had rifles, but very few were
good shots, and their fire only became formidable when they had a broad
mark, like a body of men, to aim at.
The Zulu tactics were always the same. They always tried to attack in
a half-circle, throwing forward both flanks of their fighting force,
like two horns, which strove to encircle and threaten the rear of their
enemy, while their centre, in successive waves of men, charged to their
front with irresistible determination.
[Illustration:
[_Photo.: Crewes._
KING CETEWAYO.]
It has been said that the warlike Zulu kingdom had been a standing
menace for years to the European colonies on its frontier. Except in
the towns these colonies were only occupied by farmers, whose solitary
homesteads were scattered over the country at wide distances from
each other, each European’s house having near it a small “kraal,” or
village, where lived the peaceful and unwarlike Kaffirs who formed the
native population. In days not long gone by, the first settlers had
frequently been obliged to fight for their lives, and the Dutch names
of such places as “Weenen” (weeping) kept alive the memory of old Zulu
incursions. Many were the alarms which spread through the country from
time to time lest these incursions should be renewed, and many were
the frontier farms which had been, in consequence, deserted by their
owners. Causes of dispute had arisen, moreover, with Cetewayo, and the
savage potentate had showed that war would be far from unwelcome to
him. The English Governor and High Commissioner in South Africa in 1878
was Sir Bartle Frere, one of the ablest of the many able politicians
and administrators who have been produced by our Indian Empire, and
he did all in his power to induce the Zulu king to come to such terms
as might secure the continuance of peace--to no purpose. Finally, an
ultimatum was sent to Cetewayo, and he was warned that if it was not
complied with before the 11th January, 1879, operations against him
would be at once commenced.
It had long been foreseen in Natal that war was almost inevitable,
and all the available troops had been massed along the frontier,
under the command of Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford, K.C.B. The
whole resources of the colony had been organised and prepared for a
campaign. There were seven regiments of English regular infantry, a
naval brigade, seventeen guns and a rocket battery Royal Artillery,
and two companies Royal Engineers. There was no regular cavalry, but
there were two squadrons of mounted infantry, and nearly 800 colonial
volunteers and police, besides more than 300 native Basuto horse. There
was also a native contingent, about 9,000 strong. The whole amounted
to 6,639 Imperial and colonial troops, 9,035 native contingent, with
802 conductors and drivers in charge of nearly 700 waggons, forming the
transport train.
The period allowed to Cetewayo for reply to the ultimatum having
expired, a declaration of war was made by Sir Bartle Frere, who then
placed in the hands of Lord Chelmsford the further enforcement of all
demands.
Lord Chelmsford’s army as detailed above was divided into five
columns, which were to march into Zululand at different points, and
to move on Ulundi, Cetewayo’s capital, where they were expected to be
able to concentrate victoriously. For our present purpose we need only
consider the 2nd and 3rd columns, as the others were in no way involved
in the operations which led to the battle of Insandhlwana. The 2nd
column, under Colonel Durnford, R.E., was almost entirely composed of
natives, and was, in the first instance, more intended to be used as
support and communication between the 1st and 3rd columns than for any
other purpose. The 3rd column was the strongest and most important, and
to it Lord Chelmsford attached himself and his staff. It was under the
immediate command of Colonel Glyn, C.B., and was formed by six guns,
R.A., one squadron mounted infantry, the 1st battalion 24th Regiment,
the 2nd battalion 24th Regiment, about 200 Natal volunteers, 150 Natal
police, three battalions of the native contingent, and some native
pioneers. This force crossed the Buffalo river on the 11th of January,
and encamped on the further side. The rainy season was not yet over,
and not only was there some difficulty and even danger in crossing the
flooded river, but the broken country in front of the column was nearly
impassable from swamps and heavy ground, so that much road-making had
to be undertaken to enable the guns and transport to push forward.
[Illustration: “THE CAMP WAS A PICTURESQUE SIGHT”
(_p._ 150).]
A successful attack was made on the 12th against the Isipezi Hill, but
the stubborn resistance that was then made by the induna, or chief,
Sirayo and his followers showed that no final success was to be hoped
for except at the cost of hard fighting. Several long reconnaissances
were made by the mounted men into Zululand, and shots were exchanged
with detached parties of the enemy, but there was nothing to show how
fearful a storm was gathering in the horizon and was nearly ready to
burst.
By the 20th of January all the first difficulties had been overcome,
and the 3rd column was encamped at the foot of the Insandhlwana
Hill. The position of the camp was thus described:--“We had a small
‘kopjie’ (stony hillock) on the right of our road, and then about
fifty yards to our left rises abruptly the Insandhlwana mountain,
entirely unapproachable from the three sides nearest to us, but on the
further--viz., that to the north--it slopes more gradually down, and it
is there connected with the large range of hills on our left by another
broad neck of land. We just crossed over the bend, then turned sharp
to the left, and placed our camp facing the valley, with the eastern
precipitous side of the mountain behind us, leaving about a mile of
open country between our left flank and the hills on our left, the
right of the camp extending across the neck of land we had just come
over, and resting on the base of the kopjie before mentioned.”
The camp was a martial and picturesque sight in the glow of the
African sunset. Here were the tents of the Queen’s Infantry, the men
busy cleaning their arms and cooking their rations, there the long
lines of picqueted horses, there the gun-park, there the swart native
contingent, as savage-looking as the foe that they had come to fight,
while the flag of England waved over the marquee of the general,
speaking pride and defiance to all assailants. There was one fatal
mistake, however. The waggons, which should have been ranged end to
end in front of or round the camp, in the fashion called in Africa
a “laager,” forming a defensible barricade against sudden assault,
were drawn up uselessly in line behind the camp, and many a veteran
of the old colonial wars saw with apprehension that old lessons were
neglected, and that undue confidence had taken the place of the caution
taught by experience.
It was known that, at about twelve miles from Insandhlwana, there
was, on the Inhlazatye range of hills, the stronghold of a chief
called Matyana; and on the 21st two separate parties were despatched
from the camp at an early hour to reconnoitre and, if possible,
attack the place. One of these parties consisted entirely of mounted
men--Natal volunteers and police--under Major Dartnell, the other of
two battalions of the native contingent under Commandant Lonsdale.
Major Dartnell, the head of the police, was an experienced soldier, who
had served with the highest credit in the English army, and had taken
part in several campaigns. Commandant Lonsdale was also an old soldier
of proved knowledge and judgment. Major Dartnell’s force encountered
Matyana’s men about ten o’clock in the morning, and, though the enemy
appeared anxious to fight, it was not considered prudent to engage
them without supports. The Zulus occupied a rugged “kloof,” or cleft
in the hills; and whenever the mounted men approached they sallied out
in large numbers. Mr. Mansel, of the police, a most daring officer,
was sent forward with a small body to try to make them show their
force, and succeeded in this, as the Zulus advanced to attack, throwing
forward their two “horns” and trying to surround Major Dartnell. The
volunteers and police then retired before superior numbers, and joined
Commandant Lonsdale’s men about three miles from the kloof.
The native contingent had shown on several occasions that they were
subject to panics, and were not to be depended upon; so Major Dartnell
decided that he and Lonsdale would bivouac for the night where they
were, and sent a messenger to Lord Chelmsford asking for the assistance
of some regular infantry to enable them to storm Matyana’s position.
In the middle of the night Dartnell’s communication was received,
and, as it told of the enemy being in far greater numbers on the
Inhlazatye hills than had been supposed, the general considered that
an overwhelming strength should be brought against them, and that an
opportunity was presented of striking a paralysing blow against an
important part of the Zulu army. He therefore ordered the 2nd battalion
24th Regiment, the mounted infantry, and four guns to be put under arms
at once in readiness to march, and, placing himself at their head, he
moved with the first faint grey of morning to join Major Dartnell. As
this detachment would considerably weaken the camp, Lord Chelmsford at
the same time sent orders to Colonel Durnford--who, with a portion of
the 2nd column, was now near Rorke’s Drift--telling him to move at once
to Insandhlwana with the rocket battery and the Basuto horse.
Lieutenant-Colonel Pulleine, of the 24th Regiment, was left in command
of the camp. He had with him six companies of the 24th, two guns R.A.,
about eighty mounted men, including mounted infantry, police, and
volunteers, and four companies of the native contingent. His orders
were to draw in his line of defence and infantry outposts, but to keep
his mounted vedettes still far advanced.
After the departure of Lord Chelmsford with the detached column,
nothing unusual occurred in the camp till between seven and eight
o’clock, when it was reported from a picquet about 1,500 yards to
the north that a body of the enemy could be seen approaching from
the north-east, and the appearance of various other small bodies was
subsequently noticed. Then, in the camp, there was all the bustle of
quick preparation for battle. Lieutenant-Colonel Pulleine put every
available man under arms. The draught oxen, which had been grazing,
were driven into camp and tied to the yokes; the native contingent was
pushed forward on advanced duty on the hills to the left; the guns were
put in position on the left of the camp; the mounted men stood ready by
their horses; and the 24th were formed up, awaiting the duty which the
turn of events might bring.
About ten o’clock Colonel Durnford arrived in camp, and, as the
senior officer, became by right the commander. He did not, however,
take the dispositions out of Colonel Pulleine’s hands, and the two
officers worked cordially together. Colonel Durnford had served for
more than six years in South Africa, knew the natives and their
customs thoroughly, and, with the most undaunted valour, which he
had proved in war and to which a disabled arm bore testimony, he
combined a chivalrous and sympathetic heart towards all who were
brought in contact with him, whether Europeans or natives. A handsome,
soldier-like man, with a long, fair moustache, he had an anxious
expression of face, as of one who is born to misfortune.
Repeated and more or less conflicting reports now came rapidly from the
outposts on the left: “The enemy are in force behind the hills;” “The
enemy is in three columns, one moving to the left rear, and one towards
the general;” “The enemy is retiring in all directions.” The estimates
of the enemy’s strength were most varied, but none approximated to the
real numbers that were threatening the doomed English force, and the
full extent of the danger was not realised.
On hearing these reports Colonel Durnford sent one troop of his
Natal Native Horse to reinforce his baggage-guard, which had not yet
joined him, and two troops, under Captains G. Shepstone and Barton,
to the hills on the left, while he himself determined to go out to
the front with the remaining two troops, which were to be followed by
Major Russell’s rocket battery, escorted by a company of the native
contingent.
[Illustration: VICINITY OF INSANDHLWANA]
It is here worth while to say a word about the Natal Native Horse,
than which no corps fought more loyally, bravely, and disinterestedly
during the troubles in South Africa. They were principally recruited
in Edendale, a Basuto agricultural settlement formed by Wesleyan
missionaries, who had recognised that Christianity could best be taught
to people who had given up a savage life, and had been trained in and
appreciated the arts of peace. The good missionaries had taught the
wild Basutos to build houses, to make waggons, and to cultivate the
ground scientifically, and, in conjunction with these benefits, had
inculcated the Christian’s moral law and the Christian’s sentiments.
The settlement at Edendale flourished exceedingly, and the Basutos
became not only prosperous citizens, but God-fearing men. When war
threatened, they were appealed to to give their services to the Queen,
and they eagerly responded. As soldiers, they were like the old
Covenanters. Every morning they assembled round their head-man for
prayer, during the day no troops were more daring and trustworthy, and
at night, before they lay down to rest, they again assembled for united
worship. In truth, they were soldiers whom any general would be glad to
command, and disciples whom any religious body would be proud to claim.
Colonel Durnford had asked Colonel Pulleine to let him have two
companies of the 24th, but when it was represented that they could ill
be spared, the request was not pressed.
As has been said, the full amount of the impending danger was not
realised, and there was no expectation of an attack on that day. As a
precautionary measure, however, a company of the 24th, under Lieutenant
Cavaye, was sent out as a picquet about 1,200 yards north of the camp,
while the remainder of the troops were dismissed from parade, but to
remain in readiness to fall in at a moment’s notice.
The two troops which had been sent out under Shepstone and Barton had
proceeded about five miles from the camp, when they met a large Zulu
force on the march. Captain Shepstone at once ordered a retreat, and
himself rode in with the warning that an attack was probably imminent,
but the appearance of masses of the enemy surging over the hills
had already given the alarm. Meantime, Colonel Durnford had, with
two troops, moved to the front at a canter, followed by the rocket
battery at a slower pace. After he had proceeded some miles, his
advanced files reported an immense “impi” behind the hills, and almost
immediately the Zulus appeared in force on his front and left in loose
order, ten or twelve deep, with heavy masses in support. They opened
fire and advanced with the startling rapidity which marked all their
movements. Colonel Durnford retired a little way behind the shelter
of a “donga,” a ravine-like crack in the plain. There he extended his
men and commenced a steady fire, but the numbers against him were so
overwhelming that he had to continue his retreat, only to find that
the enemy had been beforehand, and had annihilated the rocket battery,
slaying its commander, Major Russell, with all his gunners. Deserted
by the escort of the native contingent, the battery had fought with
unflinching courage, but had been overwhelmed by the fierce charge.
Durnford, sorely pressed, disputed every inch of ground until he
reached another donga, where he found himself in line with the camp
troops, and was reinforced by thirty or forty Natal Volunteers, under
Captain Bradstreet. Here his last desperate stand was made.
Two companies of the 24th, under Captains Mostyn and Younghusband, had
been pushed forward to the support of Cavaye’s picquet, but they were
too weak for the gigantic task, and all were driven in upon the main
body.
The situation was now this: The usual Zulu attack in half-circle was
being made on the camp, while a whole Zulu regiment, the Undi, was
pushing round the English left to gain possession of the waggon road
and line of retreat upon Rorke’s Drift.
The two guns and the whole of the 24th were in line, the native
contingent was on the right of the 24th, and then came Durnford’s
shattered and weary band. All were doing their duty manfully and well.
The guns were in action, served coolly and steadily as on a home
parade. The 24th, one of the smartest battalions in the service, was
dealing withering volleys, and Basutos and Volunteers fought stubbornly
for the homesteads of Natal. The enemy fell in hundreds, but kept on
advancing with undiminished resolution. Rank after rank of the foremost
were swept away, but still others pressed forward. The air was rent
with the roar of battle. The guns, which had been firing shell, now at
such close quarters were pouring in case, and each shot of the infantry
told on the dense masses. Even Zulu courage could not maintain an
advance against the deadly hail, and Cetewayo’s chosen warriors wavered
and lay down, seeking shelter and covering the valley in detached
groups to the depth of three-quarters of a mile. It almost seemed for
a space as if English tenacity was once again, as in the past, to be
rewarded with victory.
But the dire crisis of the day was at hand. The widespread horns of
the Zulu army had worked their way round the flanks, and were even
now showing themselves in rear of the English position. The native
contingent had always been a broken reed upon which to lean, and it
now broke and fled in the utmost disorder, thus laying open the right
and rear of the 24th. The ammunition began to fail, and the Zulu
opportunity had come. Nor were their chiefs slow to note and profit
by it. Hitherto the attack had been made in the silence of perfect
discipline. Now, as the iron-hearted warriors recovered from their
momentary check they raised the ominous Zulu war-shout, and dashed
forward in a last irresistible charge. They poured through the fatal
gap in the line of defence, and in a moment the English soldiers were
lost in the midst of the seething savage crowd.
[Illustration: “THEY RAISED THE OMINOUS ZULU WAR-SHOUT,
AND DASHED FORWARD” (_p._ 152).]
So sudden was the catastrophe, so rapid the charge, that but few of the
English soldiers had time to fix their bayonets and prepare for the
hand-to-hand struggle. Many a brave heart among the defenders was cold
in death long ere this, and sadly reduced were the numbers that strove
desperately against the nervous Zulu arms and the assegais thirsting
for blood. The savage warriors closed upon the doomed men with a shout
of “Bulala umlongo!”--Kill the white man! Then followed a scene of
direst confusion. Horse and foot, English and Zulu, friend and foe, in
one writhing slaughtering mass, slowly pushed through the camp towards
the road to Rorke’s Drift, the road of retreat to safety. But of the
24th, few, if any, left the ground where they had fought so well. The
battalion fell and lay by companies, surrounded by slain enemies. When
the battle-field was revisited, the remains of officers and men were
all found in the line of their last parade. No man had flinched, and
all had died as they had lived, shoulder to shoulder. When all was
lost, the artillery had limbered up and striven to save the guns, and
the mounted men who were yet unwounded forced their way, weapons in
hand, through the press. But the right of the enemy already occupied
the waggon road and barred the outlet. There was no safety except in
seeking another passage to the Buffalo River, and the ground to be
traversed was rugged, boulder-strewn and broken. None but mounted men
had escaped from the precincts of the camp, and the ground was such
that an active Zulu could cover it even faster than a horse. The guns
were soon hopelessly impeded, and the drivers were assegaied in their
saddles. The long ravine, which has since been called the “fugitives’
path,” was a scene of continuous slaughter, and even when the Buffalo
was reached, it ran swift, deep and fordless, an alternation of
boiling current and sharp rocks. Not half even of those who arrived
on its bank succeeded in crossing. Many were drowned, many assegaied,
some were shot, and the unrelenting pursuit continued even into Natal.
The only troops which had maintained a semblance of cohesion were some
of the Natal Native Horse. These gallant Basutos assisted many in the
flight, which they covered as well as they could under Captain Barton,
who rendered essential service by checking the pursuit on the Natal
bank of the Buffalo.
Such a day as that of Insandhlwana could not pass without the
performance of many deeds of gallantry and devotion, but the actors
and spectators in too many cases were left among the slain, and
their voices are dumb. We know of the heroic death of Captain George
Shepstone, who, having disengaged his men, and finding that Colonel
Durnford was still among the foe, said, “I must go and see where my
chief is,” and turned his horse again into the _mêlée_, there to
lay his body with that of his friend and leader. Private Wassall, of
the mounted infantry, gained the Victoria Cross by plunging a second
time into the torrent of the Buffalo, under a heavy fire, to save a
wounded comrade, who would otherwise have been lost. Captains Melville
and Coghill, of the 24th, who were both mounted, saved the Queen’s
colour of their regiment after they had fought to the last in its
ranks. They made their way to the river, and Coghill managed to get
to the further side. Melville lost his horse, and was left struggling
in the swift current. With sublime chivalry Coghill rode back to his
assistance, when his horse also was shot. Both these brave officers
succeeded in reaching the Natal shore, but, exhausted and wounded, they
could do no more, and were overtaken and killed, fighting till the
fatal “bangwan” did its work.
In this terrible disaster there perished twenty-six imperial officers
and 600 non-commissioned officers and men, while the loss of the
colonial forces was not less severe, twenty-four officers being among
the slain. All the waggons and oxen, two guns, 1,200 rifles, and an
immense quantity of ammunition and commissariat supplies, were also
lost.
Of all the regiments in the Queen’s army, the 24th has perhaps paid as
high a price as any for the glorious legends inscribed on its colours.
Insandhlwana was the second battle-field in which a battalion had been
practically annihilated. About thirty years before, at Chillianwallah,
thirteen officers and the greater part of the non-commissioned officers
and men had laid down their lives for the honour of England. Then
the cheers of victory had been raised over the dead. The evening of
the second fatal day in the regimental history closed in gloom and
unrelieved sorrow.
We must return to Lord Chelmsford and the column which he had led forth
in the morning to the support of Major Dartnell. Between six and seven
in the morning the general had joined the force, which had bivouacked
out during the night, and operations against what was then supposed
to be the main portion of the Zulu army were at once commenced. The
mounted infantry were despatched to the left front to press the enemy
seen in the distance, while the general with the main body and the
guns, protected on the right by the police and volunteers, moved up the
valley against the position which had checked Dartnell on the previous
day. That “kloof” was now found deserted, but a strong force was seen
to be established on the mountain spurs. It was engaged and driven
back with heavy loss. Everywhere the English troops gained ground;
everywhere the Zulus retired before them. But it is more than probable
that the retirement was a piece of elaborate strategy, intended to draw
the general farther and farther away from his camp and thus reduce
the force available for its defence. Whether such was the case or
not, the result was the same, and at midday the general found himself
twelve miles from Insandhlwana, looking for a spot on which to form a
second camp. Several messengers had been despatched to him by Colonel
Pulleine, telling of the threatened attack, but by fatal mischance none
of them reached him. Between twelve and one reports were brought in
by scouts that firing had been heard at Insandhlwana, but when, from
the top of a hill, careful examination had been made with a powerful
telescope, nothing unusual could be detected, and, consequently, no
uneasiness was felt. The presence of large bodies of Zulus on the plain
which had been traversed in the morning was now announced, and Lord
Chelmsford resolved to retrace his steps with the mounted men and the
native contingent, leaving the artillery and the second battalion of
the 24th in bivouac. At four p.m., when he was within six miles of the
camp, a solitary horseman met him, reeling in his saddle and riding
at a foot’s pace. It was Commandant Lonsdale, who, having been taken
ill with fever in the morning, had sought medical aid. He brought the
ghastly news, “The camp is in possession of the enemy.” It appeared
that when, riding in the half-lethargy of sickness, he was entering
the camp, he was startled by a shot fired at him. He looked up and
saw, sitting in and around the tents, groups of redcoats. He then saw
a gigantic Zulu stalking out of a tent with a blood-smeared assegai in
his hand. Looking more carefully, he saw that the wearers of the red
coats were black men, and black men only. The real state of the case
flashed upon his mind, and he turned and galloped off under a scattered
fire. Providentially he was not hit, and was able to meet the general
and prevent him from riding with his staff into the trap of destruction.
Orders were at once sent to the guns and the 24th to join the general,
but it was six o’clock before they came. The force then collected was
in little case for much exertion. They had covered nearly thirty miles
under an African sun with only the slight supply of food which each man
carried in his haversack. They knew that a nearly equal force of their
comrades had been destroyed, and that a victorious army was between
them and support. English soldiers never lose heart, however, in the
hardest straits, and Lord Chelmsford’s men did not fail to respond
gallantly to the call which he made for renewed effort. The march was
resumed, and at nightfall they were again beneath the “little hand.”
There was no sign of life or movement, but the enemy might be lying
hidden ready to break forth. Two or three rounds of shell were fired,
but they only awoke the slumbering echoes. Then two companies of the
24th, under Major Black, ascended to the neck of ground south of the
great hill. The enemy had gone, bearing with them their blood-stained
plunder.
The night had fallen, and the silence of death was around. There was
nothing for it but to bivouac on the spot. No one who shared that
bivouac will ever forget its horrors. The air was heavy with the scent
of blood, and mangled corpses of English soldiers and Zulu warriors
lay thickly around. It was well that the shades of night hid the
blood-curdling details. The infantry lay down grasping their rifles,
and the mounted men held the reins of their horses during the long,
anxious night. Shots were fired and alarms spread at intervals, but it
is doubtful whether the enemy wished to make any real attack. If they
had, though each man was prepared to die in his place, the attempt
would in all probability have been successful.
With the earliest light of morning the retreat to Rorke’s Drift was
continued unmolested. Bodies of the enemy were seen on the hills
overhanging the road, but no collisions with them took place. When the
Buffalo River was reached a first gleam of encouragement and hope for
the future came from the British flag, still waving over the feeble
fortifications which Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead had so resolutely
made good against the long assault by a numerous and determined foe.
[Illustration: LORD CHELMSFORD.]
[Illustration: LISSA
BY A HILLIARD ATTERIDGE]
“Give me iron in the men, and I shall not mind much about the iron
in the ships,” said the American admiral Farragut, when some of his
officers were discussing the changes that would be introduced into
naval warfare by the new ironclad navies. And Farragut was right in
holding that, whatever the ships might be made of, the most important
thing was to have enough “iron in the men” who worked and fought them.
We are sometimes too apt to think that the power of rival fleets
can be estimated by setting off their weight of guns and thickness
of armour in two parallel columns, and striking a balance, as if it
were an account in a ledger. But all naval history goes to prove
that, within certain wide limits, the power of navies depends chiefly
upon an element that can only be tested by the stress of storm and
battle--namely, the courage, the nerve, and the “grit” of their
officers and men.
No more striking proof of this was ever given than that which is
afforded by the sea-fight of Lissa, the only battle between ironclads
that has yet taken place in European waters. In ships, in guns, in
armour the Italian fleet was superior to the Austrian. On paper there
could be no doubt on which side lay the power that would secure, in
event of war, the command of the Adriatic. The war came, and its grim
reality showed how fallacious was the comparison made beforehand.
The object of the Italians in 1866 was to drive the Austrians out of
Venetia, by attacking them there while they were occupied elsewhere by
the struggle with Prussia. The Italian plan of campaign was to march
against the Austrians in northern Italy, and, after defeating their
land army, besiege Venice by sea and land. The fleet was to crush
the Austrians at sea, in the early days of the war, so to be ready
to co-operate in the operations against Venice. It all worked out
beautifully on paper. But the plan was never reduced to practice. War
was declared on June 20th, and four days later the Italian field army
was defeated by the Austrians at Custozza.
Nearly a month before war was declared, Count Persano had been placed
in command of the Italian fleet, and ordered to prepare it for active
operations in the Adriatic, making Ancona his headquarters. On June
20th, the day of the declaration of war, eight ships (including two
ironclads) were at Ancona. Persano with the main body of the fleet,
consisting of ten wooden ships and nine ironclads, was still at the
naval arsenal of Taranto. Admiral Tegethoff, the Austrian commander,
was getting his fleet ready for sea at Fasana and Pola, at the head
of the Adriatic. He had taken command on the 9th of May, and ever
since had been hard at work fitting out his ships and training his
crews. The only effective portion of the fleet was a squadron of seven
ironclads, broadside ships, with thin armour, and no guns of really
heavy calibre. At first, the Austrian Admiralty suggested that the
fleet should consist only of these ironclads and a few light steamers
to act as scouts and despatch-vessels. But there were lying in the
dockyard at Pola and in the port of Trieste an old wooden screw line
of battle-ship, the _Kaiser_, and six wooden frigates. Tegethoff
asked for these to be added to his command. “Give me every ship
you have,” he said: “you may depend on it I will find good use for
them.” He was given a free hand, and he organised his fleet in three
divisions. The first was composed of seven ironclads. The second, under
his friend Commodore Petz, consisted of the seven wooden ships. The
third was made up of gunboats, paddle-steamers, and other light craft.
The crews were rapidly recruited among the fishing population of the
Dalmatian coast, and the sailors of Trieste and Pola. So new were many
of them to work on board a man-of-war that they were not even uniformed
when the fleet sailed, and they still wore at Lissa the clothes in
which they enlisted. But they were brave and hardy seamen to begin
with, and Tegethoff had given them some weeks of training in which the
crews were busy from morning to night at target practice, the captains
of the guns being taught to lay a whole broadside so as to converge on
a single mark; and there was also practice in manœuvring under steam,
in which great stress was laid on the importance of rapid turning so
as to avoid the enemy’s rams, and use the same weapon successfully
against them. The result was that even the newly-enlisted men learned
confidence in themselves and in the brave and skilful leader who
commanded them.
[Illustration: “FROM THIS POINT TEGETHOFF KEPT ON THE
BRIDGE” (_p._ 160).]
As soon as war was declared, Tegethoff sent one of his steamers out
with orders to reconnoitre the Italian coast from Ancona southwards as
far as Bari. On June 23rd she returned to the Admiral’s headquarters at
Fasana, and reported that there were only a few ships at Ancona, and
no sign yet of the enemy’s main fleet coming up the coast. Tegethoff,
on this, resolved to see if it was possible to make a rapid attack on
Ancona, and on the 26th he put to sea with thirteen ships, including
six of his ironclads. He arrived off Ancona next day, and saw for
himself that in the meantime Persano had collected his entire force in
the harbour. But the Italians showed no signs of coming out to meet
him, and he had no intention of fighting both their forts and their
ironclads at one and the same time. So he steamed back to Fasana.
Persano’s orders were “to clear the Adriatic of the enemy’s fleet by
destroying it or blockading it in its harbours.” But though he had on
his side superior numbers, heavier guns,[2] and thicker armour, he
seemed very reluctant to begin. The fact is, he had not much confidence
either in his own powers or in his officers and men. He remained at
Ancona till July 8th, and only put out to sea on that day because he
had received a telegram from the Government bidding him to look for
the Austrian fleet, and blockade it if it was still at Pola. But even
then all he did was to steam across to the Dalmatian coast and come
back to Ancona on the 13th, after practising some fleet manœuvres.
The appearance of his fleet off the island of Grossa was telegraphed
to Tegethoff, who, however, refused to sail from Fasana till he knew
clearly what were the plans and destination of the enemy.
[Illustration: SHORES & PORTS OF THE ADRIATIC.
(Naval Campaign of 1866.)]
Two days after the Italian fleet returned to Ancona its admiral
received a peremptory message from his Government informing him that,
after the great hopes that had been built upon the fleet, everyone was
disappointed with his inactivity, and that if he did not do something
at once he would be removed from the command. It was suggested that he
should attempt to capture by a _coup-de-main_ the fortified island
of Lissa on the Dalmatian coast, and several battalions were placed at
his disposal to act as a landing party in case he decided to adopt this
plan.
Persano was thus driven to venture upon what has always been recognised
as one of the most dangerous of naval operations. He was to escort
a fleet of transports across the Adriatic, and co-operate with the
troops embarked in them in an attack upon a maritime fortress, having
all the time a hostile fleet watching for the opportunity to fall upon
him, while he was engaged in the siege. True, the Austrian fleet was
supposed to be inferior to that which he commanded; but, if this was
so, the sound course for him was to blockade it in its harbours or
crush it if it tried to come out. The enemy’s fleet ought to have been
dealt with before anything else was attempted. If he was not strong
enough to do this, he could not hope to reduce Lissa and keep Tegethoff
at bay at the same time. But the fact is, he was not acting on any
sound principle of naval war. He was merely trying to “do something”
to satisfy public opinion; and there was just the chance that he might
reduce Lissa before the Austrians arrived, or that Tegethoff might
shrink from attacking him; or, if there was a battle, he might still
hope that numbers and weight of metal would give Italy the victory over
Austria.
Lissa is an island about thirty miles from the Dalmatian coast, and
one hundred and thirty from Ancona. As the nearest of the Dalmatian
Islands to Italy, it has always been a naval station of some importance
when a war has been in progress in the Adriatic; and in our last war
with France its waters were the scene of a brilliant frigate action in
which our sailors defeated a much superior French force. In 1866 the
chief harbour of Lissa, that of San Giorgio, and the neighbouring inlet
of Porto Carober were protected by strong batteries. There were also
batteries on the high rocks at Porto Comisa and at Manego. The signal
station on Monte Hum, the highest point in the island (about 1,600 feet
above the sea), commanded in clear weather a view of both sides of the
Adriatic, and the island was connected by a submarine cable with the
neighbouring island of Lesina and the Dalmatian coast. The garrison
of Lissa consisted of 1,800 men, with eighty-eight guns, commanded by
Colonel Urs de Margina.
On July 17th Persano steamed round the island, reconnoitred its
defences, and decided on his plans for the attack. Next day Admiral
Vacca, with three of the Italian ironclads and one wooden ship,
attacked the batteries of Porto Comisa. The main body of the fleet
closed in upon the harbour batteries of San Giorgio, in order to keep
the garrison there as much occupied as possible while Admiral Albini,
with another squadron, brought six large screw steamers crowded with
troops into the bay at Porto Manego in order to effect a landing
there. At Porto Comisa, Vacca found he could not elevate his guns
sufficiently to do any serious damage to the high batteries, and he
was driven off by their shells. At Porto Manego, a heavy surf on the
beach and the fire of the Austrians from the shore made the landing
impossible. At San Giorgio, Persano silenced the low-lying batteries
at the harbour mouth, blowing up two of their magazines, but the
inner batteries prevented his ships from entering the port. During
the day one of his steamers had gone in to the neighbouring island of
Lesina and cut the telegraph cable there. While the Italians were in
possession of the telegraph station at Lesina, a message from Tegethoff
came through. It was addressed to Colonel de Margina, and told him to
hold out to the last, promising that the fleet would come to rescue
him. Persano tried to persuade himself that this message was intended
to fall into his hands, and was a piece of mere “bluff” on the part of
his opponent.
On the following day he renewed the attack on Lissa, but again failed
to force his way into the harbour, while an attempt to land troops at
Porto Carober was repulsed with heavy loss. On this same day, July
19th, Tegethoff put to sea with every ship he could muster. His last
order to his captains was to close with the enemy before Lissa, and
once the battle began, to “Ram everything painted grey.” This was the
colour of the Italian ships. He gave his own hulls a coat of black
paint before they started, in order to make it easier to distinguish
friends from foes in the coming _mêlée_.
On the evening of the 19th Persano was undecided what to do next day.
He had been two days in action, and though his ships had received only
slight injuries, his supply both of coal and ammunition was running
short. Yet if he went back to Ancona without having obtained a decided
success he would be deprived of his command. So he at last resolved to
capture Lissa by a combined attack by land and sea. Early next day he
signalled to his colleague Albini to prepare for the landing. It was a
fine morning, with a good deal of white haze on the sea shutting off
the distant view. Albini was getting the soldiers into the boats, and
two of his frigates were standing in towards the creek of Carober to
clear the way for the landing. A hospital ship had joined the fleet
and was taking its wounded on board. The ironclads had assembled, and
were getting up anchor for the attack on San Giorgio. It was eight
o’clock: the attack was to begin at nine; but suddenly out of the haze
to the north-westward appeared the frigate _Esploratore_, which
had been scouting in the offing. She was steaming her fastest, and as
she came nearer, Persano was able to read the signal she was flying.
“_Suspicious-looking ships are in sight._” He knew at once that he
had to deal with the Austrian fleet.
[Illustration: THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF LISSA.]
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF LISSA. 10 a. m.
The Fleets closing.]
Tegethoff’s fleet had been steaming all night in three lines, the
ironclads leading, the wooden ships and gunboats following. The
despatch-boat _Stadion_ was out ahead, and at seven a.m., long
before Persano knew what was coming, six of his ships were sighted by
the keen eyes of the look-out at the masthead of the leading Austrian
ship. She signalled to her consorts, “_Six steamers in sight_.”
Then the haze closed down ahead, and Tegethoff slackened speed in
hopes it would clear, for in such thick weather he did not care to
venture into the narrow waters between Lissa and Lesina. He formed
for battle, each of his lines throwing forward its centre so as to
assume the shape of a flattened wedge. He led the first line in the
_Ferdinand Max_, with three ironclads on either beam. The second
line also consisted of seven ships, Petz in the _Kaiser_ leading,
with three frigates on each side. Thus the squadron moved towards Lissa
under easy steam. The haze was breaking up: it was a hot summer day,
and a little before ten o’clock the sky was bright, the air clear, and
the sea smooth; and close ahead the Austrians saw the forts of Lissa
with the imperial flag still waving over them, and in front of the
harbour mouth the mass of wooden ships, transports, and small craft,
interrupted in their preparations for the landing, and nearer still the
Italian ironclads steaming out in one long line ready for battle.
[Illustration: TRIESTE HARBOUR.]
Persano, regarding his wooden ships as useless, had decided to take
only his ten ironclads with him, believing that they would be able
to deal with the seven which Tegethoff was bringing against him. He
formed his ironclads in three divisions, each of three ships, with the
turret ship and ram _Affondatore_, then the most powerful vessel
in the Adriatic,[3] on the starboard side of the central division.
The _Affondatore_, with her ram and her heavy turret guns (two
300-pounders), was to come to the help of whichever of the three
divisions was in need of succour. At the last moment he himself went
on board of her--an unfortunate move, which led to much confusion
during the battle, as his captains were mostly unaware that the
_Ré d’Italia_, a large broadside ship, which had till then been
flagship, no longer carried the Admiral.
When the haze cleared, the Italian fleet was steaming across the
Austrian front. Tegethoff had already signalled to clear for action.
He now signalled to open fire with the bow guns, and the distant shots
from the leading Austrian ships were answered by the broadsides of
Admiral Vacca’s division, which led that of Italy. But the range was
fully two miles, and these “long bowls” did no harm. The fleets were
wrapped in drifting clouds of smoke, and geysers of foam shot up here
and there from the blue water in the space between. “Full steam ahead,”
signalled Tegethoff. The fleets were closing, the Italians still
keeping their broadsides to the advancing foe. The fire was closer,
and now spars and ropes were cut away, boats and wooden fittings were
knocked to splinters, and signalmen and others who had not yet got
under cover were wounded or killed by bursting shells. “_Ironclads
will ram and sink the enemy_,” signalled Tegethoff, the last order
he gave till the battle was won. From this point he kept on the bridge
of the _Ferdinand Max_, regardless of personal danger, and led his
fleet by showing his consorts what a well-handled battle-ship could do.
Two of his captains, Molb of the ironclad _Drache_, and Klint of
the _Novara_, were killed as the fleets came to close quarters,
Molb being struck down by the first Italian shot that fell on board his
ship.
[Illustration: “THE RAM CRUSHED IN HER IRON SIDE.”]
The two lines of ironclads closed amid thick clouds of smoke. The
Austrian ships broke into the gap between Vacca’s three ironclads
and the rest of the Italian fleet, and Petz, with the wooden ships
coming up on their right, co-operated with them in their attack on
the Italian centre. In a moment all order was lost, and the battle
became a _mêlée_. The _Ferdinand Max_ twice rammed a grey
ironclad without succeeding in sinking her, when suddenly up out of
the smoke loomed the tall masts of the _Ré d’Italia_, which came
up to the rescue of her consort. Tegethoff, thinking he was dealing
with the Italian flagship, charged her full speed and struck her fairly
amidships. This time he had succeeded: the ram crushed in her iron
side, and the tall masts toppled over as the ironclad went down with
her crew of 600 men. The _Ferdinand Max_ had reversed her screw to
clear the wreck, when another Italian vessel, the name of which could
not be made out by the Austrians, came bearing down upon her, trying
to ram. The Austrian flagship just avoided the collision, and the two
ships grazed past each other almost touching. As she thus ranged up
alongside, the Italian ship fired a broadside. What followed would be
incredible, only for the clear evidence which supports the Austrian
record. So close were the muzzles of the Italian guns to the side of
the Austrian flagship that the smoke of the broadside poured in through
the open portholes of the _Ferdinand Max_ and made her gun-deck
for the moment dark as night. But neither the ship nor the men were
injured, for in their hurry and confusion the Italian gunners had fired
_a broadside of blank cartridge_!
Admiral Ribotti, with the rearward division of the Italian fleet, as he
came into the fight encountered only the wooden squadron of Commodore
Petz. Ribotti ought to have sunk them one by one, but the Austrians
evaded his attempts at ramming, and Petz in the _Kaiser_ boldly
drove the oaken bows of his battle-ship against the iron sides of his
adversaries. He was not able to do them much damage. He hit the _Ré
di Portogallo_, Ribotti’s own ship, one good blow, that left its
mark on her armour, but in doing so his own ship was disabled. The
bowsprit was carried away, the foremast fell across the funnel, and the
wreck of mast and spars took fire. The _Kaiser_, her crew working
hard at cutting away the _débris_ and putting out the fire,
steamed through the Italian fleet and stood in to the harbour of Lissa,
exchanging shots with some of the Italian wooden vessels. Cheered by
the garrison, she passed the harbour mouth and anchored under the guns
of the forts, the first of the relieving squadron to arrive at San
Giorgio.
Meanwhile the _mêlée_ continued. While Tegethoff was in the thick
of the fight, Persano made the great ram _Affondatore_ nearly
useless by persisting in keeping on the outskirts of the conflict.
If he had ventured in with her it is very likely he would have been
sunk by the better-handled Austrian ships. The _Palestro_, which
had gone into action immediately astern of the _Ré d’Italia_,
had been almost as severely handled as her leader. She had been
rammed. Her steering gear and rudder had been knocked to pieces, and
her gun-decks were on fire. She drew out of the fight, her commander
getting his steam hose to work to drown the magazine. The Austrian
ships were now clearing the Italian line, and steering for Lissa. The
_mêlée_, which had lasted for rather more than half-an-hour, was
over. The position of the two fleets was reversed. The Austrians with
their left near Lissa, were forming up in line across the channel
between that island and Lesina. Everyone of their ironclads was still
in good condition, and even the disabled _Kaiser_, which had
gone into the harbour with her foremast burning and her decks strewed
with nearly two hundred killed and wounded, was again clearing for
action. The Italian wooden ships were assembling off the western end
of the island. To the northward the ironclads were scattered here and
there, on the waters that had just been the scene of the fight. As
the smoke cleared, Persano signalled to the nearest ship--“Where is
the _Ré d’Italia_?” and got for answer, “Sunk to the bottom.”
Close astern of the _Affondatore_ lay the _Palestro_, the
black smoke pouring from hatchway and porthole. Her crew believed
that the magazine had been successfully drowned, and that they were
getting the fire under. As they recognised Persano on the bridge of the
_Affondatore_, they gave him a cheer. His own crew were answering
it when there was a burst of flame and a volume of dense smoke from the
_Palestro_, and an explosion louder than all the din of battle
went echoing over sea and shore. It was the death-knell of 400 men, for
the _Palestro_ had blown up with all on board.
Admiral Vacca, thinking that Persano had gone down with the _Ré
d’Italia_, had signalled to the fleet to re-form in line of battle.
The same signal from the _Affondatore_ showed him where his
commander was. And the ironclads, now reduced from ten to eight,
re-formed in line. It was noon on a blazing hot day, and for some time
the two fleets watched each other across the sunny space of open water
that divided them. Persano had still the advantage of numbers, and
everyone expected that he would signal to renew the attack. But if he
had very little confidence in his fleet before the battle, he was now
reduced to a condition of something like despair. Even the wooden ships
of the Austrian squadron had passed in safety through his line, while
their ironclads had destroyed two of his ships and more than a thousand
of his men. It must be added that he had now been three times in
action, and his stock of both coals for his engines and ammunition for
his guns must have run very low. In this state of affairs, he persuaded
himself that he need not actually attack the Austrians; all that honour
demanded of him was to give them the opportunity of renewing the trial
of strength if they wished. So for another hour he remained in line of
battle, just out of long range of his enemy’s guns.
But Tegethoff had accomplished the task assigned to his fleet. He had
relieved Lissa, by bringing the guns, the men, and the supplies of his
fleet to the help of its brave little garrison. He had done this, too,
not by slipping past the Italians in the morning fog, but by fighting
his way through their most powerful squadron, making them pay dearly
for their attempt to intercept him. Why should he renew the fight when
there was nothing more to be gained for the moment?
Persano at last decided that he, too, had done enough for honour. He
signalled to the fleet to steam away to the north-west, and shortly
after altered his course for Ancona. He anchored there next day, and
added to all his previous blunders the final folly of sending to his
Government, and wiring all over Italy, the report that he had fought a
pitched battle with the Austrians, and won a victory over them in the
waters of Lissa. That night Florence (then the capital) was illuminated
in honour of his “triumph.” Next day the facts began to be known. It
was impossible to deny that the Austrian fleet was intact; that the
Italians had lost two ships, and had been forced to raise the siege
of Lissa. It was in vain that Persano argued that he was the victor
because he had remained in possession of the waters in which the battle
had been fought, and that he had for a whole hour dared the Austrians
to come on again. There was the obvious reply that a naval battle is
not fought for the possession of a stretch of open water; that Persano
had tried to prevent the Austrians reaching Lissa, that they had gone
there in spite of him; and that they would have been fools to come
back in order to show twice over that they were not afraid to fight
him. There was a wild outburst of indignation against the unfortunate
admiral; there were riots at Florence, and a royal decree removed him
from the command of the fleet. As if to add to the general collapse
of the Italian navy, the _Affondatore_, supposed to be its most
powerful ship, whether through injuries received at Lissa, or through
mere defects in her structure, sank at her anchors in the harbour of
Ancona.
On the side of Austria, there were rejoicings in which the name of
Tegethoff was celebrated as that of an heroic sailor who had given
his country the consolation of a naval victory at a time when her
fortunes on land were at the lowest. He had won his great victory with
comparatively little loss. The _Kaiser_ was the only ship that
suffered at all heavily. In some of the ironclads there were only a few
wounded, and every one of the ships was in a position to continue the
fight when the Italian fleet retired. The battle was the first that had
been fought by ironclad fleets in European waters, and the impression
it made upon naval experts was that the ram would be the chief weapon
of future battles on the sea. Yet, though we have by no means clear or
full accounts of what happened in the _mêlée_ while the two fleets
were passing through each other’s lines, it is certain that the number
of attempts to ram made by the Austrians was out of all proportion to
their two successful attacks. All the attempts of the Italians to ram
ended in failure. It must be remembered that since Lissa a great change
has come over naval tactics, through the development of the torpedo and
the quick-firing gun, and it is now generally recognised by naval men
that to attempt to ram an adversary till he is disabled by gunfire or
otherwise is to invite failure and disaster. Tegethoff regarded the ram
as his chief weapon. Nowadays it is looked upon as the means of giving
the _coup de grâce_ and completing a victory that is already half
won.
The victor of Lissa was rightly honoured by his sovereign and his
countrymen, while Admiral Persano was put on his trial on the charge
of having lost the battle through cowardice and incompetence. He was
acquitted of the charge of cowardice, but found guilty of having
sacrificed his fleet through his incompetent conduct at Lissa, and
he was deprived of all rank and dismissed from the navy. There is no
doubt that although he alone was condemned, he was not the only officer
of the Italian fleet who was responsible for the defeat of Lissa.
Throughout there was a lamentable want of energy, pluck, and decision.
Otherwise the Austrians would not have achieved their victory with so
slight a loss. Albini’s conduct in looking on idly with his frigates
while Petz on the Austrian side was leading his wooden squadron against
Ribotti’s ironclads, is a good instance of this.
Indeed, the Battle of Lissa, considered in its details, shows that
success on the sea, as well as on land, is primarily a question of
brave and competent leadership. Good officers are the first condition
of naval success; well-trained and disciplined crews the second;
powerful ships are the third. Public opinion is often so ill informed
as to put in the first place what really stands last; but none of these
elements of naval power can be safely neglected by a maritime State,
and one which claims the Empire of the Sea must spare no effort to
possess all three, and to possess them in abundance.
[Illustration:
MACMAHON AT MAGENTA
BY STODDARD DEWEY]
It was noon of the 4th of June, 1859, before the French general,
Trochu, at the head of his division, could move out in turn from
Novara along the high road leading to Milan across the river Ticino.
The Emperor, Napoleon III., was commanding in person the united French
and Italian armies. He had gone on ahead, and was himself preceded by
several divisions of the French troops. It was known, in a general way,
that the Austrian enemy was not far distant to the south and eastward
beyond the river. An attack was expected, but it was uncertain where it
would be made.
Suddenly the noise of cannon was heard from the front, several miles
away. It went on steadily increasing.
“What is the meaning of that?” inquired Trochu of an officer he met
watering his horse by the roadside.
“At first we thought it was a fight,” was the answer; “but it is only
General Lebœuf trying his cannon.”
“Cannon would not thunder like that under trial,” replied Trochu.
“Those guns are loaded with something heavier than powder.”
He hastened the march of his troops with not a little anxiety. Soon
another officer, in the sky-blue uniform which marked the personal
staff of the Emperor, dashed up.
“Ah, General, what a fearful surprise! The Emperor has been attacked by
the Austrians when he least expected them. We are all but beaten.”
“Where is MacMahon?” asked the General.
“MacMahon had orders to march forward, no matter what happened, to the
church-tower of Magenta.”
“Then nothing is yet lost. MacMahon is not a Cæsar, but he is stubborn.
If he has been told to march on the tower of Magenta, he will reach
it in spite of all. And then it is we who shall have outflanked the
Austrian army.”
Several hours passed before the guns of MacMahon made themselves
heard. It was late at night before the Emperor learned what MacMahon
and his men had been doing. Generals and soldiers, wearied out with
the afternoon’s bloody fighting by the river, could not believe that a
great victory had been won in the evening without them over by Magenta.
In the morning, when they looked for the battle to be renewed, they
found that the enemy was indeed drawing off, sullen and beaten.
Even afterwards, when each movement of the hostile troops was known and
could be followed on the map, great authorities in practical warfare,
like the Prussian general, von Moltke, criticised the winning of the
battle. MacMahon at Magenta is an instance of a battle won contrary to
rule.
I.--THE PREPARATIONS OF BATTLE.
The enmity between Austrians and Italians was of old date. It belonged
to the great popular movement in favour of a common government for all
of the Italian race and language. Until now the whole of Italy had
been divided up piecemeal among many rulers. To the north-west Victor
Emanuel had his kingdom of Sardinia, or Piedmont. He represented the
Italian hopes in this war with Austria which held possession of the
rich provinces of Lombardy and Venice to the east of his dominions.
Toward the south were the petty duchies of Parma and Modena, the
grand-duchy of Tuscany, the States of the Church, and the kingdom of
Naples, or the Two Sicilies. All these were at one with Austria in
striving to keep things as they had been so long; but their people
were ripe for the revolution which was bound to come. Magenta was
the first decisive victory won, after an invasion of the Austrian
territory, in the name of United Italy.
The war had been long preparing. In 1849 the Austrians crushed for a
time the Italian uprising by a victory over the Sardinians here at
Novara. For many years nothing could be done but by way of diplomacy.
This was the work of Cavour, the Minister of King Victor Emanuel. From
1852 he had been persuading the governments of Europe that there was an
Italian question which would soon have to be settled.
[Illustration: “GENERAL LEBŒUF ... DASHED UP”
(_p._ 166).]
Louis Napoleon, who was now Emperor in France, had himself been a
revolutionist in Italy when he was only a needy adventurer. That was
in 1831, when he took part in an insurrection in the Papal States.
He then became a _carbonaro_, or member of one of those secret
societies in which the chief obligation was to forward the cause of
Italian unity. For a long time after he became emperor he shrank from
precipitating the war to which his oath obliged him. The explosion of a
bomb under his carriage in Paris by Orsini, the son of the man who had
stood sponsor for him in the revolutionary society, reminded him that
the _carbonari_ were relentless in their vengeance on traitors to
their cause. In July, 1858, it was made known that the Emperor of the
French had entered into close alliance with the King of Sardinia.
Austria, seeing that war was inevitable, preferred that it should come
sooner rather than later. On the 19th of April, 1859, she summoned
Sardinia to put her army on a peace footing within three days. Cavour
refused, and on the 29th the Austrian commander Gyulaï invaded the
Sardinian territory.
Napoleon III. now announced that the acts of Austria constituted a
declaration of war on France, the ally of Sardinia. At once he set
about organising his army for the Italian campaign. On the 4th of May
his troops were entering the valley of the Po, along which lay the open
way to Lombardy. On the 10th the Emperor himself left Paris for the
seat of war, to command the allied armies in person.
The news of Napoleon’s coming was enough to send Gyulaï back from the
threatening movement which he had already made on Turin, the capital
of Sardinia. Napoleon had not yet his artillery, but the Austrian
commander did not know the essential weakness and confusion of the
forces that were coming to meet him. Until the battle of Magenta, when
consistent and energetic measures were already too late, the Austrian
movements were a strange alternation of forward marches leading to no
decisive action, and of hasty and fatiguing retreats when no enemy
pursued.
General Gyulaï’s mind in the matter is now known. He was continually
urged from Vienna, and afterwards from Verona, in Italy, where the
Austrian Emperor had placed himself to direct the campaign, to push
forward with his numerous, well-drilled, and well-equipped troops,
and take the offensive. He himself was beset with fears that the
enemy might pass him by and take Lombardy unprotected. He was not
reassured when a division of his army in the north had succeeded in
driving the free bands of Garibaldi to the very edge of the neutral
Swiss territory. He gradually drew back to the region where the river
Ticino, in its lower course, separated Lombardy from Sardinia. There he
gave all his attention to concentrating his forces around the strong
defensive positions which he had already prepared. But all this gave
time to the French army to perfect its order and equipment, and to
concentrate its own strength in line with the Sardinian troops.
Such was the general situation of things on the 1st of June, when
Napoleon was directing the main body of the allied troops along the
great highway leading to Milan, the capital of Lombardy, only twenty
miles beyond the Ticino. On that day Gyulaï again retreated with all
his forces, leaving the astonished French Emperor free to enter Novara.
Napoleon could not believe that the Austrians would long delay their
attack. On both sides the service of scouts was so ill-organised that
neither commander had any clear idea of the other’s strength and
position.
On the 2nd of June Napoleon sent forward two divisions of MacMahon’s
corps to see what was awaiting them along the Ticino. General Camou
reached the river, with his light infantry, at Porto di Turbigo, six
miles to the north-east of Novara. He found no one facing him from the
Austrian side but the single Customs officer, who was still faithful to
the post which he had occupied in time of peace. From the yellow and
black flagstaff beside him floated the double-headed eagle of Austria.
Camou ordered first one, and then a second cannon-shot to be fired.
The functionary disappeared open-mouthed. General Lebœuf, who was in
command of the artillery, dashed up, pale with indignation.
“General,” he cried to Camou, “what are you firing at? It is lucky
there is no one in front of you. Do you wish to bring the enemy down on
us?”
In this campaign of blunders fortune steadily favoured the French and
Italian armies. Unmolested by any sharpshooters that might have been
hidden in the marshy thickets across the river, the bridge of pontoons
was completed, boat by boat, and at half-past six in the evening a
division of the light infantry was safely established on the enemy’s
ground.
General Espinasse, with his division, had gone forward along the high
road to Milan as far as the stone bridge of San Martino. This was
expected to be a strong defensive position of the Austrians. To his
surprise he found that it too had been abandoned, after an ineffectual
attempt to blow it up. The only two arches that had been seriously
injured were repaired that same afternoon, and another way lay open
into the enemy’s country.
It now seemed evident that the Austrians would make their stand along
the Naviglio Grande--the broad and deep canal which here follows the
general course of the Ticino, at from one to three miles’ distance
toward Milan. The indecision of the French Emperor was still great. He
could not determine on any general advance of the allied armies further
to the east, fearing always that the invisible enemy might be turning
back to attack him from the south.
At three o’clock in the morning of the 3rd of June, the light infantry
reached a bridge over the canal. It was untouched, and the Austrians
were not there to defend it. Two companies of the French troops at once
installed themselves in houses on the bank, and, by mattresses at the
windows and otherwise, prepared a defence against any sudden attack.
The remainder of the battalion crossed the bridge and disposed itself
behind the stone walls of the gardens and the haystacks which were near
at hand. In this way an enemy would be covered by the fire from each
bank. MacMahon’s entire corps, comprising the divisions of Generals
Espinasse and Lamotterouge, besides the light infantry of Camou, had
been ordered to cross the river and canal by the bridges which had
thus been secured. While the greater part were still at the pontoons,
MacMahon and Camou, with a large body of troops, pushed on beyond the
canal to Turbigo, a village farther north. The corps thus took the
position, which it kept through all the subsequent fighting, of left
wing (farthest to the north and east) of the long, scattered line of
the allied armies.
General Mellinet, with the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, was
substituted for Espinasse at the bridge of San Martino to the south.
The Austrian division of Clam-Gallas, which was occupying Magenta,
faced all these troops approaching it from the north and west.
The Turcos, whom MacMahon had brought with his other soldiers from
their posts in Algiers, soon dislodged the few Austrian companies that
were on guard at Turbigo. Seeing the way clear, MacMahon, with Camou
and a small escort, rode forward to the hamlet of Robecchetto, where
the two generals climbed the church-tower with the hope of ascertaining
the position of the enemy. Instead, they saw a large number of the
Austrian troops charging down on them. They had barely time to get
to their horses and ride away, with the Austrians behind them in hot
pursuit. The Algerian sharpshooters came to the rescue, and soon a
serious battle was raging around Turbigo.
At the same time a column of 4,000 men, preceded by a battalion of
Tyrolese sharpshooters, was directed against the bridge over the canal,
which the French troops had occupied in the early morning. The Austrian
commander now foresaw the results of the negligence which allowed
the allied troops to cross both river and canal above the positions
on which he relied for defence. It was too late. Before the Austrian
attack could dislodge the French infantry, who answered their fire from
each end of the bridge, MacMahon had gained the day at Turbigo, and
his cannon sounded nearer and nearer. The enemy, fearing to be cut off
from their main body, hastily retreated. It was seven o’clock in the
evening. The combat of Turbigo, which was the prelude of the morrow’s
work, had been fought and won. Napoleon, who came up during the fray,
gave the name to one of the broad, new streets he was opening in Paris.
The Emperor returned to Novara for the night, and made out the
necessary orders for a general movement forward of the allied armies on
the following day. These orders were changed next morning in several
of their details. As they were based on no precise knowledge of the
enemy’s position and movements, they were again upset by the fighting
and surprises of the midday.
II.--THE RIDE OF THE COMMANDANT.
At six o’clock in the morning of the 4th of June, Napoleon despatched
Commandant Schmitz of his staff with his final orders.
“Go first to the King. Inform him of my march forward, and tell him
to begin moving his men, following Camou over the left side of the
river.” This was for Victor Emanuel, who was in command of 22,000 men,
one-half of the Italian regiments of the allied armies. He was but a
short distance to the west of the pontoon bridges which had been thrown
across the Ticino at Porto di Turbigo.
“Go on next to the Ticino. I have ordered two of the bridges to be
brought down to San Martino, to hasten what will be the long crossing
of our own troops.” The Emperor referred to the main portion of his
army, made up of the 41,000 men of Canrobert and Niel, who were still
back of Novara, and of 40,000 more belonging to the corps of Baraguey
d’Hilliers and the second Italian division. The latter were so many
miles in the rear that they could be of no use in any battle to be
fought that day.
“Then find MacMahon, who must be already beyond Turbigo. Ask him what
he counts on doing if he has the enemy in his front. Inform him of
the march and position of the Guard, which he has at his right.” This
was General Mellinet’s division, which had been detached from Camou
and was already across the river at San Martino. With the remainder
of the Guard under Camou, and the entire divisions of Espinasse and
Lamotterouge, this brought to 32,000 the number of men sharing in
MacMahon’s offensive movement on Magenta.
“I shall be at Trecate” (halfway from Novara to the bridge of San
Martino), continued the Emperor, “at noon precisely. Make the entire
round, and be exact in reporting to me at that hour.”
The line of march thus formed left MacMahon in command of the left
wing of the army. This was already in great part across both river and
canal, and was to be followed closely by King Victor Emanuel with his
Italian regiments as a reserve. The Emperor was commanding in person
the centre and right--that is, the long line of troops which was to
advance, division after division, along the high road of Milan. He had
to expect a sharp fight in forcing the strong defensive positions held
by the enemy where the road crosses the canal, before reaching Magenta.
The movement of MacMahon’s corps on Magenta from the other side was
designed by him to divide the Austrian forces during this attack.
In the absence of all precise information, Napoleon still believed that
the bulk of the Austrian army was disposed in a long line parallel to
his own, and several miles to the south. To avoid a possible general
attack all along the line, he had arranged the march of his troops so
that division trod on the heels of division from far beyond Novara. He
hoped, by forcing back the right wing of the Austrian army, which alone
he supposed to be defending the approaches to Magenta, to be able to
pass by the main body of the enemy and march on Milan. At least, this
is the only way of explaining the Emperor’s orders for this 4th day
of June. As a line of battle his forward movement was preposterous,
straddling a river and canal, which were not easy of passage, and
without any defensive positions to support him in case a concentrated
attack should be made in the meantime.
[Illustration: “ON THE TRACK ... LAY A BODY COVERED WITH
A BLUE CLOAK” (_p._ 170).]
General Gyulaï did not know the advantages of his position. The line
of battle which he opposed to the French advance admitted of a quick
concentration of his troops which might, by the mere force of numbers,
have crushed the corps of MacMahon and the Guard before the divisions
of Novara could have marched up to their aid. Around Magenta the troops
of Clam-Gallas faced MacMahon to the north, and the high road from San
Martino to the west. There was a strong body of cavalry at Corbetta
close at hand. The divisions of Liechtenstein were at Ponte Vecchio
(the Old Bridge) and Robecco, along the canal below where the road
crosses it. These, which formed the right and centre of the line of the
Austrian army as it was actually engaged in battle, numbered 36,000
men. The left was in the immediate neighbourhood, with Zobel not two
miles to the south and the rest just beyond at Abbiategrosso, 28,000
in all. At Vigevano across the Ticino there were 24,000 more, quite as
near as the central divisions of the French. The remaining 25,000 men
of the Austrian army, like the extreme rear of the allies, were too far
away to be counted on for this day’s work.
As it was, between ignorance and indecision, the battle was to be
fought with about equal forces on either side. It was to be an instance
of an adage often in the mouths of military men--“Victory belongs to
him who makes the fewest blunders.”
[Illustration: “IN THEIR FRENZY HIS ZOUAVES BROKE THROUGH
THE DEFENCES” (_p._ 172).]
Commandant Schmitz galloped off on his long morning ride. He warned the
King to hasten the movement of his troops, which would be needed as
a reserve in case MacMahon should be attacked. Only one of the pontoon
bridges would be left him for the tedious crossing over the Ticino.
Beyond the river he found the division of Camou already on the way to
follow the main column led by MacMahon. It was half-past ten o’clock
before he came up with MacMahon himself, riding at the head of the
division of Lamotterouge.
“The Emperor asks what you reckon on doing if you meet the enemy.”
[Illustration:
Battle of
MAGENTA.
Position of
HOSTILE FORCES.]
“I have no news yet, and there is no attack along the front. On account
of the narrow road I have only the division of Lamotterouge with me. I
have sent Espinasse by a roundabout way at a half-hour’s march from my
left. He is keeping up with me. Camou is behind. Tell the Emperor that
I count on being at Magenta at two o’clock.”
The Commandant rode back, after warning MacMahon that the King had not
yet begun crossing the river with the troops which ought to be his
final reserve for the day. He reached Trecate at noon, just as the
Emperor was alighting from his carriage. All along the way he had heard
the noise of cannon from beyond San Martino. Napoleon received his
report, mounted his horse, and rode off hastily with his escort in the
direction of the firing.
It was the portion of the Guard which was under General Mellinet
that had been violently engaged beyond the bridge at the village of
Buffalora by the canal. Napoleon sent back at once to hurry on the
corps of Niel, which was marching forward along the road from Novara.
The disposition which had been made of the troops rendered this no easy
task, and Mellinet was obliged to hold his own as best he might for
three hours longer.
At half-past four the Emperor, more and more disquieted at hearing
nothing from MacMahon, sent Commandant Schmitz once more by the weary
round of the morning to get news of him. There was no nearer way by
which he might escape the enemy’s fire in crossing the canal. At
six o’clock the Commandant reached the pontoons, which the Italian
regiments had not yet finished crossing. Victor Emanuel asked if it was
Canrobert who was attacked.
“No, sire: it is the whole army. Have you nothing from MacMahon?”
“Yes; a word in pencil, signed by his aide-de-camp; but it is not
pressing.”
Commandant Schmitz could only conjure the King not to lose a moment
of time, and asked for an officer to keep him company in his own
search. As they rode off, the Piedmontese infantry was straggling over
the pontoons. Some of the men were stopping to heat their soup in
the islands of the river, and all, when a new burst of artillery was
heard from the distance, gave vent to their patriotic cry--“_Viva
l’Italia!_”
It was eight o’clock and night was falling when Commandant Schmitz
reached the line of railway from Milan, just beyond Magenta. On the
track before him lay a body covered with a blue cloak and guarded
by a staff-officer in tears. It was General Espinasse, who had been
shot dead as he entered Magenta. At the other end of the town a sharp
fusilade was still going on. In the confusion, it was some time before
MacMahon could be found; and it was half-past eleven at night before
the Commandant arrived with his news at Napoleon’s quarters by the
river. The Emperor was lying, dressed, on the bed in an attic room
of the little inn. He arose, and by the light of a candle dictated
the telegraphic despatch to the Empress Eugénie which set all Paris
rejoicing next day.
“A great battle--a great victory!”
III.--THE FIGHT AT MAGENTA.
From the beginning, the task assigned to the troops of MacMahon was
long, difficult, and dangerous. After crossing both river and canal,
they had to march down toward Magenta in a line trending always to
the right. They would thus be ready to aid in the attack which the
divisions under the command of the Emperor were bound to make on the
enemy’s positions along the canal.
Shortly after Commandant Schmitz left him in the morning, MacMahon
came suddenly on the enemy in front of Buffalora. This small village,
situated on both sides of the canal, was one of the strongest Austrian
positions, and the first serious obstacle which Napoleon would
encounter in his own movement forward from the other side. MacMahon
at once ordered the attack. It was made, with their wonted violence,
by the Turcos and the foot-soldiers of the 49th Regiment of the line.
They were in the thick of the fray when a strong column of the enemy
was discovered moving up to attack the divisions of MacMahon from the
right. So far as he could discern, he would have to face the main body
of the Austrian army. The smoke of battle already clouded the air,
heavy from the damp rice-fields by the river, and it would be no light
task to bring his various divisions into line from their march across
country. The enemy’s advance already threatened to separate him from
the troops led by Espinasse, and from Camou, who was not yet in sight.
Before him, where the combat was actually engaged, disorder had already
begun. The shells, on which the Austrians chiefly relied in this
campaign, were whizzing through the air and leaving clouds of smoke
and dust that added to the difficulty of his movements. One regiment,
which had been ordered to fall back, found itself marching straight on
the enemy; and another, wishing to rush forward to the attack which had
been begun, turned back in the opposite direction.
MacMahon now gave orders that the Turcos and foot-soldiers should give
over the attack on Buffalora and rally to his main column. This was a
work of time. It was necessary to tear the men from a mortal combat
which they were sharing with the Grenadiers of the Guard. These, at the
head of Mellinet’s division, had come up from the other side and were
already taking their position in the village. MacMahon next ordered
Espinasse to move his men steadily to the right until he should be able
to act in concert with the division led by himself. He then suspended
his own movements until he could enter into communication with Camou,
who was approaching but slowly from behind.
In these first movements of the day, General MacMahon has been
reproached for his sudden attack on Buffalora; but this seems to have
been in harmony with the essential plan of the Emperor, who had little
idea of the real strength of the Austrian troops concentrated round
Magenta.
He is next blamed for withdrawing his men from the attack when the
Guard was in most danger; but it was the business of the Emperor to
protect his own line of attack. MacMahon had been made responsible for
the important attack on Magenta itself; and the advance of the enemy on
his right threatened to render this impossible. Besides, the Grenadiers
of Colonel d’Alton-Shee had already secured possession of Buffalora,
which they had now only to defend.
Most of all, MacMahon is criticised for the long pause which now ensued
in his operations, while the enemy was attacking in force close at
hand. This was contrary to the tradition of the French army, praised
by Moltke, that haste should be made where the cannon sounds. It can
only be answered that MacMahon had been positively ordered to match
forward to the church-tower of Magenta; that he was not responsible for
the slowness of Camou which retarded his own movements; and that the
victory which he won when he did move on the enemy shows who it was
made the fewest blunders on that day.
In directing the movements of his thirteen battalions, General Camou,
whose experience of war went back to the First Napoleon, had been
following all the rules. At the sound of the cannonading in front, he
marched straight across the fields toward the church-tower of Magenta,
on which he knew MacMahon was advancing before him. The fields were
separated from each other by dense thorn-hedges, and divided into small
patches of maize. These, in turn, were separated by rows of mulberry
trees bound together by wires, along which grape-vines were trained.
At each moment the Sappers were called on to use their axes, and the
other soldiers their sword-bayonets. This needed no great time; but,
at every open space, the command of the tactician Camou was heard,
stopping all movement in order to straighten properly the line of his
advance.
[Illustration: “HE DICTATED THE TELEGRAPHIC
DESPATCH” (_p._ 171).]
At half-past four o’clock MacMahon himself, with his uniform in
disorder and accompanied only by a few officers of his staff, dashed up
to hurry forward this reserve which was necessary to his own attack. On
the way he had run into a body of Austrian sharpshooters who saluted
him as one of their own commanders, not dreaming of the presence of
the French general. Hastening back to give directions to Espinasse, he
again barely escaped being captured by the Uhlans. Camou had taken six
hours for less than five miles of march.
The drums now beat the charge, and a determined attack was made on the
enemy’s main column. It was taken between two fires, from the division
of Espinasse on one side, and from that of Lamotterouge, led by
MacMahon in person, on the other. Step by step, resisting desperately
to the end, the Austrian troops fell back on Magenta, where their
general and his staff were watching the fortunes of the battle from the
church-tower.
Espinasse, by order of MacMahon, hastened his movement on the town
from the side of the railway, to stop the fire of artillery which
fell obliquely on the troops of Lamotterouge. A company of Tyrolese
sharpshooters had entrenched themselves in one of the first houses.
General Espinasse and his orderly fell dead under their unerring shots.
In their frenzy, his Zouaves broke through the defences of the house
and put to the bayonet each man of the three hundred Tyrolese. The
bloody fight was continued around the railway station and through the
narrow streets of the town. It left everywhere dead bodies clothed with
the hostile uniforms, the red breeches of the French mingling with the
white jackets of the Austrians.
On his side, MacMahon charged again and again, but the resistance
was still obstinate around the church. At last, from the tower,
the Austrian commander caught sight of the four regiments of Camou
advancing in that regular order which became old soldiers of the Guard.
They were impatient to share in the fray, but the Austrian general
abandoned the place before them. Not one of their number had burned a
cartridge or received a scratch. Their coming two hours earlier would
have saved no end of good French blood. The Italian reserve, under King
Victor Emanuel in whose cause the war was waging, did not appear all
this day.
With nightfall, the soldiers of MacMahon--those who had fought and
those who had only marched bravely--bivouacked as best they could
outside the town. The doctors began their all night’s work among the
wounded in the church.
* * * * *
General Trochu had brought his battalions forward at quick step along
the road from Novara. At the bridge over the Ticino he found the
Emperor quite alone, listening intently to the sounds of the battle.
The officers of his escort had been despatched in every direction for
information to relieve his uncertainty. Trochu asked for directions.
Napoleon, white and trembling, could not answer. At last, in a
scarcely intelligible whisper, he said, pointing to the bridge--
“Pass!”
From General Regnauld de Saint-Jean d’Angély, who was in command on
the other side, Trochu learned that the enemy still held out at the
Old Bridge (Ponte Vecchio) over the canal, in spite of Canrobert’s
impetuous onsets. He ordered his men to move forward, rifle on shoulder
and all the drums beating and trumpets sounding. The Austrians,
believing in the arrival of a large body of fresh troops, abandoned
their last positions. At four o’clock in the morning Trochu followed
them to the south with his artillery, and their defeat became a rout.
When Napoleon, on this day (the 5th of June), sent 50,000 men against
what he still supposed to be the main body of the enemy, not an
Austrian was to be found.
After a day for rest, on the 6th, MacMahon, with his corps, was off to
check the advance from the north of General Urban, who was hurrying
back from his chase of Garibaldi. Napoleon stood at the bridge of San
Martino to see the troops pass by. Calling MacMahon to alight from his
horse, he said:
“I thank you for what you have done. I name you Marshal of France and
Duke of Magenta.”
At the request of the generals who could not yet understand how the
battle had been won without them, the dignity of Marshal was also
bestowed on the modest and valiant commander-in-chief of the Imperial
Guard, General Regnauld de Saint-Jean d’Angély. It was the heroic
resistance of General Mellinet and his Grenadiers of the Guard, left
unaided for hours at Buffalora, that allowed to Camou all the time he
required for bringing up his men according to military rules. It also
gave MacMahon the shorter time needed to march forward and to reach the
church-tower of Magenta.
[Illustration: “THE DOCTORS BEGAN THEIR ALL NIGHT’S
WORK” (_p._ 172).]
[Illustration: _The Battle of The Alma_
_By Major Arthur Griffiths_]
It is now more than forty years since we entered upon our last great
European war, when, allied with the French and the Turks, we were
opposed to Russia. The early part of 1854 was spent in complete
inaction at Varna, on the Black Sea. Cholera made terrible havoc in
our camp, and the men were growing disheartened, while everybody at
home was dissatisfied. The great strength of the Russians lay about
Sebastopol, a nearly impregnable fortress on the opposite shore; and
it was at length decided to invade the Crimea and attack Sebastopol.
A magnificent armada was prepared, and the allied armies were carried
across in a vast flotilla of steam and sailing transports, escorted by
a proud array of battle ships. All who saw it, declare that it was one
of the most imposing spectacles in modern war.
A powerful Russian fleet lay in the harbour of Sebastopol, but it made
no attempt at resistance, although it might have done much mischief;
and the allied armies were all safely landed on the 19th September, at
a place called Old Fort, in the Crimea.
The Russians did not oppose us at first. Prince Mentschikoff, who was
in supreme command throughout the Crimea, preferred to wait. Although
he knew all our movements, and might easily have interfered with the
disembarkation, he thought he could do us more mischief when he had us
well on shore. He had chosen a fine position for his army--that, in
fact, on which the battle of the Alma was fought two days later, and
he thought it impregnable. He was a self-sufficient, headstrong man; a
poor soldier, and very presumptuous, as we shall see.
He believed that the allies would soon waste themselves fruitlessly;
that he might easily hold them at bay, perhaps for weeks. Then, when
they were weakened by losses, and disheartened by failure, he meant to
strike back, confidently hoping to drive them into the sea. Not a man,
he declared, should regain the ships.
Pride often goes before a fall, and the result of the first battle was
very different from what Mentschikoff expected. He was wrong all round:
wrong in his estimate of the fighting qualities of the troops opposed
to him, especially of the British; wrong in his belief in the great
strength of his position; altogether wrong in his dispositions for
defence.
It was very extensive, this position: from the sea, its westernmost
limit, to the eastern slopes of the Kourgané Hill was some five and a
half miles; the whole front was covered by the river Alma--a river in
places deep and rapid, at others fordable, and there was a good timber
bridge at Bourliouk, in the centre of the position, which carried the
great causeway or post road from Eupatoria to Sebastopol. The western
cliffs, nearest the sea, were steep, and supposed to be inaccessible;
but the hills fell away as they trended further inland, and the
approach from the river became practicable, although still offering a
rather stiff climb. The ground about the centre and right rose high
at two particular points: one was called the Telegraph Height, and it
dominated the principal road; the other was the famous Kourgané Hill,
an elevated peak around which the battle ebbed and flowed, and which is
now acknowledged to have been the key to the position.
Mentschikoff was but scantily supplied with troops to occupy so long
a line as this. But he was not very greatly concerned about it.
According to his view--and he arrived at the conclusion a little too
readily, as he soon found to his cost--the west cliff, that part of
the position nearest the sea, could defend itself, he felt sure. They
were untenable, too, as he told himself, for the whole surface of this
plateau was within range of the allied fleets, and the fire of their
guns would soon have swept it of the Russian troops. These reasons
sufficed to justify him in holding his chief strength, about 36,000
infantry, between the two hills just mentioned, the Telegraph and
the Kourgané, a front limited to less than three miles. His cavalry,
in which he was especially strong, having about 3,600 sabres in all,
guarded his right flank when the more open down-land was favourable to
their movement. His ninety-six guns were distributed over the whole
ground: some commanded the causeway, some were with the cavalry, some
with the great reserves, some in the two redoubts.
These dispositions showed both carelessness and want of skill. The
Prince had not satisfied himself of the impregnability of the west
cliff. Had he visited and inspected it, he would have found that a good
waggon track ascended the hill from the village of Almatamack, which
could be used, and was, for artillery. Yet he could easily have broken
up this road; just as easily as he could have thrown up formidable
entrenchments to make assurance doubly sure, and forbid absolutely all
attempt to attack on this side. This neglect to fortify all along the
front, although the ground lent itself admirably to such defensive
works, was no less blamable. Whether or not the position was everywhere
naturally strong, it might soon have been made so. If the heights
of the Alma had been converted into a properly and scientifically
entrenched camp, the allies would hardly, perhaps never, have captured
them.
All Mentschikoff did was to construct two works, one named by our men
the “Greater,” the other the “Lesser” Redoubt. The first was nothing
more than a breastwork--breast high, that is to say, without a ditch,
and some three hundred yards above the Alma, just on the lower slopes
of the Kourgané Hill. The Prince was very proud of this fortification,
which had two short sides for flanking fire, and was armed with twelve
heavy guns. More to the right, on the same hill, was another slight
entrenchment facing north-east, and armed with field artillery. This
was the Lesser Redoubt.
The allied forces marching on Sebastopol, arrived in front of this
position on the 20th September, 1854. It was a momentous occasion. For
the first time in modern history the French and English, two hereditary
foes, were about to fight side by side. A newer and a better rivalry
had effaced old feuds. The fierce contests in Spain and at Waterloo
were forgotten, although the English commander and many of his generals
had won their laurels against the French. Now the two old enemies were
the fastest of friends. Lord Raglan, who, as Fitzroy Somerset, had
lost his arm at Waterloo, was revered by all ranks in the French army;
and when Marshal St. Arnaud, the French commander-in-chief, passed
along the British line, he was received with loud cheers, to which he
replied, lifting his hat, and speaking in good English, “Hurrah for old
England!”
[Illustration: PRINCE MENTSCHIKOFF.]
Emulation in great deeds is a fine thing, but when allies fight side
by side there is always the fear of divided counsels, the chance of
divided action in the field. The English and French generals did not
exactly disagree, but each went very much his own way. St. Arnaud
wished to take the front attack from the sea to beyond the causeway,
leaving Lord Raglan to turn the Russian right. This the English general
did not choose to do: he thought a flanking movement would be dangerous
in the presence of a superior cavalry, over ground especially suited to
it--like a racecourse, in fact, open, and covered with smooth, springy
turf. It ended in an agreement that each army should go up against what
was before it, the French attacking the west cliff, from the causeway
to the sea, the English taking the hills from the causeway to the
extreme right.
The result of this was that the French found no enemy, and the brunt
of the battle fell upon us. The honour was all the greater, of course.
But this arrangement neutralised all our advantages of superior
numbers. French and English together numbered some 63,000, as against
30,000 Russians. As, however, Mentschikoff held the bulk of his forces
about his centre and right--in other words, just opposite the English
attack--it followed that Russians and English would fight upon pretty
equal terms. This was all the more emphasised by the French moving so
much to their right that a large portion of their army was quite out of
the action, while the rest was only partially engaged.
The allied troops were astir at daylight on the 20th September, but
the battle was not really fought till the afternoon. Delays that were
vexatious yet inevitable interposed. Lord Raglan was obliged to draw
towards him two of his divisions, with which he had been covering his
exposed left flank, and at the same time he gave a safer direction for
his baggage train. The slow transfer of the latter from the left to his
own immediate rear occupied the whole forenoon, and the French, who had
no such troubles, chafed greatly at the delay.
But at length Bosquet began the ball at 2 p.m. He led off with his,
the extreme right or seaward French division, and went up against the
west cliff. One brigade, Bonat’s, followed by the Turks, crossed the
river Alma at its mouth, and scaling the heights without difficulty,
advanced--to do no more. His 15,000 men met no enemy, and were put
out of action for the rest of the day. Bosquet’s other brigade,
D’Autemare’s, with which he rode in person, faced the stiff slope and
surmounted it. Both men and guns got up, and were ready to go in and
win; but, like Bonat, they found nothing in front of them. Bosquet’s
successful climb had only placed him alone in an isolated and really
unsafe position. He was quite unsupported. Bonat was detached far
away on his right; Canrobert, his nearest neighbour, had got mixed up
among the rocky, broken country above him, and could barely hold his
own, much less extend his hand. Next to Canrobert was Prince Napoleon;
but the latter hung back unaccountably--unless the stories afterwards
published discrediting his courage are deemed true.
[Illustration: THE HEIGHTS OF ALMA.]
At this moment, it is generally thought, the allies were within reach
of grave disaster. Had Mentschikoff been a Napoleon or a Wellington,
with the genius to see and the skill to use his opportunity, he might
now have dealt a crushing blow at the allies. He was in between his
foes: one army was caught amongst a difficult country, and separated
in two parts by a wide interval; the other army, not yet engaged. Had
he sent his cavalry to hold the English in check, just as the German
cavalry at Mars la Tour with such desperate gallantry turned Bazaine
back to Metz, he might have fallen upon Canrobert and almost eaten
him up. The utter defeat of one French division at this early part of
the day would have probably decided the battle, and in favour of the
Russians.
But such masterly tactics were not to be expected from such an
incapable general. All Mentschikoff could do when Bosquet scaled the
west cliff, was to hurry up eight battalions from his reserve to
confront him; then, hesitating to join issue, to march them back whence
they came, and thus lose their services for more than an hour. His
cavalry remained inactive till the golden opportunity was lost, and
then he found himself so fiercely assailed by the hitherto despised
English that he lost the power of the offensive.
While the French were in this critical condition, the English, who were
also jeopardised, still remained passive, halted, and lying down under
a dropping artillery fire. But now, at length, Lord Raglan gave the
signal for attack; and the order was received with soldier-like glee
by our troops, to whom the long inaction was very irksome. At last the
battle was to be fought in real earnest, but to understand what follows
we must realise exactly how our forces were arrayed.
1. Sir De Lacy Evans with the 2nd Division stood next the French. His
right rested on the village of Bourliouk opposite the causeway bridge;
his left joined on to and was rather jammed in with the right of--
2. The Light Division under Sir George Brown, who faced the Kourgané
hill, with its two redoubts heavily armed, and a garrison of eighteen
battalions: a very formidable position to storm. At the same time his
left was what soldiers call “in the air”--resting on nothing, that is
to say, and exposed.
3. Immediately behind the Light Division came the Duke of Cambridge
with the 1st, composed of the Guards and the Highland Brigades.
4. The 3rd Division supported the 2nd, but at a long interval.
5. The cavalry under Lords Cardigan and Lucan, not a thousand sabres,
were held withdrawn to the left rear.
6. The 4th Division of infantry were a long way behind, and did not
come up till after the action.
The first fighting fell to Evans, but at the moment of his advance
the enemy set fire to the village of Bourliouk, which burst up
into instantaneous flames, and Evans, to avoid it, drew one
brigade--Pennefather’s--to the left, and sent the other--Adams’--by a
long _détour_ to his right, where it was in touch with the French.
All Pennefather’s men got across the river, but were stayed by the
fierce fire of the causeway batteries; and one of his regiments--the
95th--crushed in by the right of the Light Division, joined it and its
fortunes for the rest of the day. Evans had thus only three battalions
left, and with so scanty a force he could make no impression: he could
but simply hold his ground beyond the river.
[Illustration: “THEN YOUNG ANSTRUTHER RACED FORWARD”
(_p._ 178).]
Part of the Light Division, the right, or Codrington’s Brigade, was
soon engaged in a weightier battle. The left, or Buller’s, also moved
forward, but being entrusted with the protection of the exposed flank
of the whole army, two of its regiments were held in hand while the
rest became involved in Codrington’s attack; for this gallant soldier
was no sooner across the river with his regiments all disorganised, and
in no sort of formation, than he led them immediately forward.
His superior officer, the divisional general, Sir George Brown, was
not within hail, and Codrington felt that his plain duty was to go
ahead. He himself headed the desperate charge upon the Great Redoubt,
which was now made in quite inferior numbers, and in the teeth of a
murderous fire of big guns. His colonels, especially Lacy Yea of the
7th Fusiliers, took the cue, and springing to the front cried to their
men:
“Come on--never mind forming! Come on anyhow.”
“Forward! forward!” was the universal cry of all; pell-mell,
higgledy-piggledy, but always straight on, the first brigade of the
Light Division rushed up the slope.
The Russians were really in tremendous strength. There were heavy
columns of them all around; the Redoubt was armed with twelve big
guns, yet they could not resist an onslaught which seemed only the
vanguard of an imposing attack.
There was another cause, no doubt, for their weakness, as we shall
presently see; but now already they were limbering up their guns
and going to the rear. Then young Anstruther, a mere boy fresh from
school, raced forward with the Queen’s colour of the 23rd, and placed
it triumphantly on the crown of the breastworks. He was shot dead, the
colour falling with him. A sergeant, Luke O’Connor, following close,
succeeded to his mission, and raised the flag erect.
[Illustration: MARSHAL ST. ARNAUD.]
He, too, was struck down, but would not yield, and although desperately
wounded, carried the colours for the rest of the day. This was the
crisis of the fight; the flag was the rallying point; crowds came
rushing in, and the Redoubt was carried--for a time. The battle itself
would probably have been completely won had reinforcements been at
hand. But the 1st Division, which had been ordered to support the Light
Division, had not yet crossed the river. Its advance was hastened by
the Quartermaster-General, General Airey, speaking for Lord Raglan,
who, as we shall see, was at another part of the field. So the Duke
of Cambridge moved forward, but slowly; the Guards Brigade to the
right, in line--a well-dressed two-deep “thin, red line,” which kept
its formation even when crossing the stream, each man walking on
whatever was before him, shallow water or deep pool. On the left were
Sir Colin Campbell’s three famous Highland regiments--the 42nd, 93rd,
and 79th--advancing in an echelon of deployed lines, one behind and
a little further to the left of the one in front of it. Such a stern
array would have more than sufficed to stiffen our hold upon the Great
Redoubt; but it came too late, and other untoward events had also
occurred.
The Russians, of whom there were eighteen battalions in these parts,
could not brook the loss of the Redoubt to what seemed only a handful
of redcoats, and they came forward again in great strength to recover
the work. The Vladimir regiment, approaching close, was mistaken
for a French column, and no one fired at it; then some misguided
English bugler sounded the “retire”--by whose orders it was never
ascertained--but the call was taken up and repeated, till at length,
most reluctantly, Codrington’s men in possession of the Redoubt
prepared to leave it. They clung for a time to its reverse slopes, but
presently gave way, and under a murderous fire retreated down the hill.
Only indomitable Lacy Yea, with his bold regiment, the 7th Fusiliers,
refused to withdraw, and, in line against a column double his strength,
alone maintained the fight.
All this time the French were not prospering. Bosquet still clung,
isolated, upon the west cliff; Canrobert had climbed it, but had made
no forward movement; Prince Napoleon stood halted, irresolute, on the
safe side of the river. The Russian general in command of the centre,
which was posted around the Telegraph Height, now put in motion eight
of his battalions, in dense double column, and crossed the plateau
to smite Canrobert, who forthwith crumbled back over the cliff. He
had supports at hand--a brigade (D’Aurelle’s) of Forey’s Division,
which was on the hilly road jammed in between him and Prince Napoleon,
and the Prince himself was close behind; but these supports were in
marching columns, with no frontage for attack, and could not help
Canrobert. Had Kiriakoff, the Russian general, pressed on, he would
probably have completely “rolled up” the French. But he paused, and the
battle meanwhile passed into a fresh phase.
Strange as it may seem, the turning-point in the action was a
hazardous, and, speaking by the book, a perfectly indefensible step
taken by the English commander-in-chief. Lord Raglan, with his staff
and a few dragoons--not twenty horsemen in all--had ridden boldly,
blindly, into the very centre of the enemy’s line. He had gone down
towards Bourliouk, but avoiding the burning village, and, anxious to
see what was in progress beyond the river, had dashed into it, crossed,
and galloped up the opposite slope. He came out at a point under the
Telegraph Height and _above_ the causeway, and thence could survey
at ease--for no enemy, happily, was near enough to injure him--the
whole state of the battle. Better still, he looked into the enemy’s
line of defence, taking it in reverse, and realised at once the
supreme advantage his really dangerous position gave him.
“If only we had a couple of guns up here!” he cried, and two artillery
officers--Dacres and Dickson, who rode with his staff--dashed off
to fetch them, while General Airey was sent to bring up the nearest
infantry, Adams’ brigade of Evans’ 2nd Division.
The messengers found Turner’s battery struggling across the ford, and
Turner himself hurried up two of his guns, which were soon unlimbered
and worked--one, at least--by Colonel Dickson’s own hands.
[Illustration: The Battle of the ALMA.]
Their very first shot was a surprise to the whole field. It proved to
the enemy, whose guns were posted in advance in the causeway, that they
had been taken in reverse and had better retire. It overjoyed Evans,
who still stood checked by this causeway battery. “Hark! that is an
English gun,” he cried, and prepared at once to advance, knowing that
the barrier in front would soon be removed. And so it was. Evans swept
forward triumphantly with his three remaining regiments, their left
still covered by stout Lacy Yea and his splendid Fusiliers, who just
about this time had finally conquered the Russian column with which
they had so long been engaged. Yea’s obstinate heroism had not only
paved the way for the advance of the 2nd Division, but it had made
another attack possible upon the Kourgané Hill.
The Scots Fusilier Guards had been the first of the Duke of Cambridge’s
troops to get across the river in support of Codrington’s discomfited
brigade. The Russians on the hill now numbered some 15,000 men, part of
them being the Vladimir column, which had retaken the Great Redoubt.
A very stout resistance was made. The Scots Fusiliers were met with
so bold a front and such a withering fire that they fell back in
some disorder. It seemed as though the Grenadier Guards would also
be involved, but this regiment, under Colonel Hood, stood firm, and
presently advanced in beautiful order--a well-dressed, steady line, as
perfect as though it was in Hyde Park. To the left of the Scots Guards
were the Coldstreams, another regiment in magnificent array, which had
not been touched by the fire, and moved up the hill with admirable
precision. The Duke of Cambridge rode with the Coldstreams.
So fierce was the fight into which the Guards now entered, so
strong the opposition, that some cried in alarm, “The Brigade will
be destroyed.” There was a talk of falling back, and then it was
that stout old Sir Colin Campbell made his famous speech to the
Duke:--“Better, sir, that every man in her Majesty’s Guards should lie
dead upon the field than that they should turn their backs upon the
enemy.” The Guards needed no stiffening--they were only too eager to
get on. But Campbell did more than exhort in words. He had here, close
at hand, his three superb Highland regiments, and he was ready to use
them, to the last man, in support.
The Highlanders were now on the left of the whole line. Although
Buller’s two regiments on this extremity, the 88th and the 77th,
had held their own during the day, they were now beginning to fall
back. But Campbell took charge of the flank, and, despising the still
irresolute Russian cavalry, he brought up his deployed regiments in
echelon, and prolonging our line, threw them at the Russian right. Our
front was very extensive, for the line was only the depth of two men;
but it looked so threatening, that the Russian general, Gortschakoff,
concluding there were heavy masses behind, thought himself outnumbered
and overpowered.
[Illustration: THE HIGHLANDERS AT THE ALMA.]
Sir Colin spoke a few words of encouragement to his men. “Be
steady--keep silence--fire low;” and then, with fierce emphasis, he
finished--“Now, men, the army will watch us: make me proud of the
Highland Brigade!” He was about to engage twelve battalions with his
three; each regiment as it advanced, the 42nd first, seemed to be
outflanked by a heavy column; but beyond each flank came the next
regiment in the echelon behind, and in this formation the Highlanders
carried all before them. The Russians, after another despairing and
unavailing stand, began to retreat, and the Guards and Highlanders took
possession of the Kourgané Hill.
[Illustration: “TURNER HIMSELF HURRIED UP TWO OF HIS
GUNS” (_p._ 179).]
All this time Lord Raglan had held his ground--no longer
perilous--above the causeway; but now he was joined by Adams’ two
regiments, and a red line was seen surmounting the slope. He left
them there, to be used, if needs were, in hastening the retreat of
the Russian columns; a brigade of the 3rd Division, Eyre’s, had also
arrived, and was across the Bourliouk bridge. Now the French made
head against Kiriakoff, who could not hold out with his comrades in
full retreat; and as he fell back Canrobert came on, and, gaining the
heights, took full possession of the Telegraph Hill. There was very
little more fighting to be done, except with a handful of forgotten
riflemen: the Russians were gone. Following Canrobert, Prince Napoleon
and D’Aurelle advanced, so that soon two strong and unbroken French
divisions and a whole brigade occupied the ground.
Then followed the grievous mistake of not following up the beaten
enemy. It was clear that the English could not do this with effect:
the bulk of our men had been engaged, we had suffered severely, and
the survivors were worn out with their exertions. Our cavalry could do
little against the Russian, which was still quite fresh, and ready,
if not too anxious, to cover the retreat. Lord Raglan hoped that the
French would now reap the full advantage of the victory, and urged St.
Arnaud to press on in pursuit. The only answer was that any further
advance of the French that day was “impossible.” The men, when moving
up to the attack, had left their knapsacks on the other side of the
river, and they could not go on without them. So the Russian army,
which was now nearly dissolved, a broken, helpless mass of fugitives,
was suffered to continue its headlong retreat upon Sebastopol. A little
more energy on the part of the victors would have dealt a crushing blow
and probably annihilated it.
In this first error was sown the seeds of the long and disastrous siege
of Sebastopol.
[Illustration: LORD RAGLAN.
(_From the Painting by Andrew Morton._)]
[Illustration:
AUSTERLITZ
BY C. STEIN]
On the 21st of November, 1805, a striking and warlike cavalcade was
traversing at a slow pace a wide and elevated plateau in Moravia. In
front, on a grey barb, rode a short, sallow-faced man with dark hair
and a quick, eager glance, whose notice nothing seemed to escape.
His dress was covered by a grey overcoat, which met a pair of long
riding-boots, and on his head was a low, weather-stained cocked hat.
He was followed by a crowd of officers, evidently of high rank, for
their uniforms, saddle-cloths, and plumed hats were heavily laced, and
they had the bold, dignified bearing of leaders of men. In front and in
the flanks of the party were scattered watchful vedettes, and behind
followed a strong squadron of picked cavalry in dark green dolmans
with furred pelisses slung over their shoulders, and huge fur caps
surmounted by tall red plumes. The leading horseman rode in silence
over the plateau, first to one point then to another, examining with
anxious care every feature of the ground. He marked carefully the
little village from which the expanse took its name, and the steep
declivity which sloped to a muddy stream below. No one addressed
him, for he was a man whose train of thought was not to be lightly
interrupted. Suddenly, at length, he drew rein, and, turning to the
body of officers, said: “Gentlemen, examine this ground carefully.
It will be a field of battle, upon which you will all have a part to
play.” The speaker was Napoleon. His hearers were his generals and
staff. He had been reconnoitring, surrounded and guarded by his devoted
Chasseurs of the Guard, the plateau of Pratzen, the main part of the
arena where was to be fought in a few days the mighty conflict of
Austerlitz.
Napoleon’s headquarters were then at Brunn. The French host, then for
the first time called the “Grand Army,” had, at the command of its
great chief, in the beginning of September broken up the camps long
occupied on the coasts of France in preparation for a contemplated
invasion of England, and had directed its march to the Rhine. It was
formed in seven corps under Bernadotte, Marmont, Davoust, Soult,
Lannes, Ney, and Augereau, with its cavalry under Prince Murat, and the
Imperial Guard as a reserve.
The Rhine was crossed at different points, and the tide of invasion
swept upon the valley of the Danube. From the beginning the movements
had been made with a swiftness unprecedented in war. Guns and cavalry
had moved in ceaseless and unhalting stream along every road. Infantry
had pressed forward by forced marches, and had been aided in its
onward way by wheeled transport at every available opportunity. The
Emperor had resolved to strike a blow by land against his foes which
should counterbalance the several checks which the indomitable navy
of England had inflicted on his fleets at sea. Austria and Russia
were in arms against France, and he was straining every nerve to
encounter and shatter their separate forces before they would unite in
overwhelming power. The campaign had opened for him with a series of
brilliant successes. The veterans of the revolutionary wars, of Italy
and of Egypt, directed by his mighty genius, had proved themselves
irresistible. The Austrians had been the first to meet the shock,
and had been defeated at every point--Guntzberg, Haslach, Albeck,
Elchingen, Memmingen--and the first phase of the struggle had closed
with the capitulation at Ulm of General Mack with 30,000 men.
But there had been no stay in the rush of the victorious French. The
first defeats of the Austrian army had been rapidly followed up.
The corps which had escaped from the disaster at Ulm were pursued
and, one after another annihilated. The Tyrol was overrun, and its
strong positions occupied by Marshal Ney. From Italy came the news of
Massena’s successes against the celebrated Archduke Charles, and at
Dirnstein Marshal Mortier had defeated the first Russian army under
Kutusow. The Imperial headquarters had been established at Schönbrunn,
the home of the Emperor of Austria. Vienna had been occupied and the
bridge across the Danube secured by Lannes and Murat. Kutusow, after
his defeat at Dirnstein, had been driven back through Hollabrunn on
Brunn by the same marshals at the head of the French advanced guard,
and had now joined the second Russian army, with which was its Emperor
Alexander in person, and an Austrian force under Prince Lichtenstein,
accompanied by the Emperor of Austria.
[Illustration: “THE SAYING PASSED, ‘OUR EMPEROR DOES NOT MAKE
USE OF OUR ARMS IN THIS WAR SO MUCH AS OF OUR LEGS.’”]
The main body of the “Grand Army” had, under Napoleon, followed
its advanced guard into the heart of Moravia. Its headquarters and
immediate base were now at Brunn, but its position was sufficiently
critical, at the extremity of a long line of operations, numbering less
than 70,000 disposable men, while the Russo-Austrian army in front
amounted to 92,000. So rapid had been the movements since the camp at
Boulogne was left, that the common saying passed in the ranks that “Our
Emperor does not make use of our arms in this war so much as of our
legs”; and the grave result of this constant swiftness had been that
many soldiers had fallen to the rear from indisposition or fatigue,
and even the nominal strength of corps was thus for the time seriously
diminished. It is recorded that in the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Guard
alone there was a deficiency of more than four hundred men from this
cause. But all these laggards were doing their best to rejoin the army
before the great battle took place which all knew to be inevitable, and
in which all were eager to bear their part.
Napoleon had himself arrived at Brunn on the 20th of November, and
during the following days till the 27th he allowed his army a measure
of repose to enable it to recover its strength after its long toils--to
repair its arms, its boots and worn material, and to rally every man
under its eagles. His advanced guard had been pushed forward under
Murat towards Wischau on the Olmutz road, Soult’s corps on his right
had pressed Kutusow’s retreat towards Austerlitz, and the remainder
were disposed in various positions to watch Hungary and Bohemia and to
maintain his hold upon Vienna.
On the 27th the French advanced guard was attacked and driven back by
the Russians at Wischau, and certain information arrived that this
had been done by a portion of the main Russian army under the Emperor
Alexander. It had been thought possible by Napoleon that peaceful
negotiations might be opened, but this confident advance of his
enemies seemed to show that they had by no means lost heart, and when
on the 28th he had a personal interview with Prince Dolgorouki, the
favourite of Alexander, he found the Russian proposals so insulting and
presumptuous that he broke off abruptly any further communication.
We have seen Napoleon reconnoitring on the 21st of November, and we
have marked the marvellous _coup d’œil_ and prescience with which
he foresaw the exact spot where the great battle, then looming before
him, must take place. Every succeeding day saw the reconnaissances
renewed, and never was a battle-field more thoroughly examined, never
was forecast by a general of the actual turn of events to be expected
more completely justified by fulfilment.
It had become certain that the united army of two mighty empires was
close at hand. From the tone of Dolgorouki’s communication it was
evident that both the Russian and Austrian monarchs had resolved to
trust their fortunes to the ordeal of battle, and that they, with
their generals and soldiery, were eager to retrieve their previous
misfortunes, and full of confidence that they would do so. That
confidence had been increased by the repulse of the French advanced
guard at Wischau; and they now longed to complete their work by pouring
their superior numbers on the comparatively weak French main body.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
(_From the Painting by Paul Delaroche._)]
With this knowledge before him, Napoleon proceeded to carry out the
plan of action which he had carefully matured. To the astonishment of
many veterans in his army, a general retreat of his advanced troops was
ordered. Murat fell back from Posoritz and Soult from near Austerlitz.
But this retrograde movement was short, and they were halted on the
ground chosen by Napoleon for his battle-line. The outlying corps of
Bernadotte and Davoust were summoned to complete his array. Munitions,
food, ambulances were hurried to their appointed posts, and it was
announced that the battle would be fought on the 1st or 2nd of December.
The line of a muddy stream, called the Goldbach, marked the front of
the French army. This stream takes its source across the Olmutz road,
and flowing through a dell, of which the sides are steep, discharges
itself into the Menitz Lake. At the top of its high left bank stretches
the wide Pratzen plateau, and it appeared to Napoleon’s staff that he
had made an error in relinquishing such a vantage ground to his enemy;
but he told them that he had done so of set purpose, saying, “If I
remained master of this fine plateau, I could here check the Russians,
but then I should only have an ordinary victory; whereas by giving it
up to them and refusing my right, if they dare to descend from these
heights in order to outflank me, I secure that they shall be lost
beyond redemption.”
Let us examine the positions occupied by the French and the
Austro-Russian armies at the close of November, and we shall the better
understand the general strategy of the two combatant forces and the
tactics which each made use of when they came into collision. The
Emperor Napoleon rested his left, under Lannes and Murat, on a rugged
eminence, which those of his soldiers who had served in Egypt called
the “Santon,” because its crest was crowned by a little chapel, of
which the roof had a fancied resemblance to a minaret. This eminence
he had strengthened with field works, armed and provisioned like a
fortress. He had, by repeated visits, satisfied himself that his orders
were properly carried out, and he had committed its defence to special
defenders under the command of General Claparède, impressing upon them
that they must be prepared to fire their last cartridge at their post
and, if necessary, there to die to the last man.
His centre was on the right bank of the Goldbach. There were the corps
of Soult and Bernadotte, the Grenadiers of Duroc and Oudinot, and the
Imperial Guard with forty guns. Their doubled lines were concealed by
the windings of the stream, by scattered clumps of wood, and by the
features of the ground.
His right was entrusted to Davoust’s corps, summoned in haste to the
battle-field, and of which only a division of infantry and one of
Dragoons had been able to come into line. They were posted at Menitz,
and held the defiles passing the Menitz Lake and the two other lakes
of Telnitz and Satschau. Napoleon’s line of battle was thus an oblique
one, with its right thrown back. It had the appearance of being only
defensive, if not actually timid, its centre not more than sufficiently
occupied, its right extremely weak, and only its left formidable and
guaranteed against any but the most powerful attack. But the great
strategist had weighed well his methods. He trusted that the foe would
be tempted to commit themselves to an attack on his right, essaying to
cut his communications and line of retreat on Vienna. If they could be
led into this trap, the difficulty of movement in the ground cut up by
lake, stream, and marsh would give to Davoust the power to hold them in
check until circumstances allowed of aid being given to him. Meantime,
with his left impregnable and his centre ready to deal a crushing blow,
he expected to be able to operate against the Russo-Austrian flank and
rear with all the advantage due to unlooked-for strength.
The right of the Russo-Austrians, commanded by the Princes Bagration
and Lichtenstein, rested on a wooded hill near Posoritz across the
Olmutz road. Their centre, under Kollowrath, occupied the village of
Pratzen and the large surrounding plateau; while their left, under
Doctorof and Kienmayer, stretched towards the Satschau Lake and the
adjoining marshes.
The village of Austerlitz was some distance in rear of the
Russo-Austrian position, and had no immediate connection with the
movements of the troops employed on either side, but the Emperors of
Russia and Austria slept in it on the night before the battle, and
Napoleon afterwards accentuated the greatness of his victory by naming
it after the place from which he had chased them.
The two great armies now in presence of each other were markedly
unequal in strength--92,000 men were opposed to 70,000, and the
advantage of 22,000 was to the allies. But this inequality was to a
great extent compensated by the tactical dispositions of the leader of
the weaker force. Of the two antagonist lines, one was wholly exposed
to view, the other to a great extent concealed--first advantage to
the latter. They formed, as it were, two parallel arcs of a circle,
but that of the French was the more compact and uninterrupted--second
advantage; and this last was soon to be increased by the imprudent
Russian manœuvres. The two armies, barely at a distance of two
cannon-shot from each other, had by mutual tacit consent formed their
bivouacs, piled arms, fed and reposed peaceably round their fires, the
one covered by a thick cloud of Cossacks, the other by a sparse line of
vedettes.
Napoleon quitted Brunn early in the morning of the 1st December,
and employed the whole of that day in examining the positions which
the different portions of his army occupied. His headquarters were
established in rear of the centre of his line at a high point, from
which could be seen the bivouacs of both French and allies, as well
as the ground on which the morrow’s issue would be fought out. The
cold was intense, but there was no snow. The only shelter that could
be found for the ruler of France was a dilapidated hut, in which were
placed the Emperor’s table and maps.
The Grenadiers had made up a huge fire hard by, and his travelling
carriage was drawn up, in which he could take such sleep as his
anxieties would permit. The divisions of Duroc and Oudinot bivouacked
between him and the enemy, while the Guard lay round him and towards
the rear.
In the late afternoon of the same day Napoleon was watching the allied
position through his telescope. On the Pratzen plateau could be seen a
general flank movement of Russian columns, in rear of their first line,
from their centre to their left and towards the front of the French
position at Telnitz. It was evidently supposed by the enemy that the
French intended to act only on the defensive, that nothing was to be
feared from them in front, and that the allies had only to throw their
masses on their right, cut off their retreat upon Vienna, and thus
inflict upon them a certain and disastrous defeat. It was forgotten
by the Russo-Austrians that in thus moving their principal forces to
the left, the centre of their position was weakened, and on the right
their own line of operations and retreat was left entirely unprotected.
When Napoleon detected what was being done, trembling with satisfaction
and clapping his hands, he said: “What a manœuvre to be ashamed of!
They are running into the trap! They are giving themselves up! Before
to-morrow evening that army will be in my hands!” In order still more
to add to the confidence of his enemy and to encourage them in the
prosecution of their mistaken plan, he ordered Murat to sally forth
from his own position with some cavalry, to manœuvre as if showing
uneasiness and hesitation, and then to retire with an air of alarm.
This order given, he returned immediately to his bivouac, dictated and
issued the famous proclamation in which he assured his army that the
Austro-Russians were exposing their flank and were offering certain
glory to the soldiers of France as a reward for their valour in the
coming struggle: he said that he himself would direct their battalions,
but that he would not expose himself to danger unless success was
doubtful, and he promised that, after their victory, they should have
comfortable cantonments and peace.
The evening of the 1st of December closed in. The allied movement
towards their left was still continuing, and Napoleon, after renewing
his orders, again visiting his parks and ambulances and satisfying
himself by his own observation that all was in order, threw himself
on a bundle of straw and slept. About eleven o’clock he was awakened
and told that a sharp attack had been made on one of the villages
occupied by his right, but that it had been repulsed. This further
confirmed his forecast of the allied movements, but, wishing to make
a last reconnaissance of his enemy’s position, he again mounted, and,
followed by Junot, Duroc, Berthier, and some others of his staff, he
ventured between the two armies. As he closely skirted the enemy’s
line of outposts, in spite of several warnings that he was incurring
great risk, he, in the darkness, rode into a picquet of Cossacks. These
sprang to arms and attacked him so suddenly that he would certainly
have been killed or taken prisoner if it had not been for the devoted
courage of his escort, which engaged the Cossacks while he turned
his horse and galloped back to the French lines. His escape was so
narrow and precipitate that he had to pass without choosing his way
the marshy Goldbach stream. His own horse and those of several of
his attendants--amongst others Ywan, his surgeon, who never left his
person--were for a time floundering helpless in the deep mud, and the
Emperor was obliged to make his way on foot to his headquarters past
the fires round which his soldiery were lying. In the obscurity he
stumbled over a fallen tree-trunk; and it occurred to a grenadier who
saw him, to twist and use some straw as a torch, holding it over his
head to light the path of his sovereign.
In the middle of the anxious night, full of disquietude and
anticipation, the eve of the anniversary of the Emperor’s coronation,
the face of Napoleon, lighted up and suddenly displayed by this flame,
appeared almost as a vision to the soldiers of the nearest bivouacs.
A cry was raised, “It is the anniversary of the coronation! Vive
l’Empereur!”--an outburst of loyal ardour which Napoleon in vain
attempted to check with the words, “Silence till to-morrow. Now you
have only to sharpen your bayonets.” But the same thought, the same
cry, was taken up and flew with lightning quickness from bivouac to
bivouac. All made torches of whatever material was at hand. Some
pulled down the field-shelters for the purpose--some used the straw
that had been collected to form their beds; and in an instant, as if
by enchantment, thousands of lights flared upwards along the whole
French line, and by thousands of voices the cry was repeated, “Vive
l’Empereur!” Thus was improvised, within sight of the astonished
enemy, the most striking of illuminations, the most memorable of
demonstrations, by which the admiration and devotion of a whole army
have ever been shown to its general. It is said that the Russians
believed the French to be burning their shelters as a preliminary
to retreat, and that their confidence was thereby increased. As
to Napoleon, though at first annoyed at the outburst, he was soon
gratified and deeply touched by the heartfelt enthusiasm displayed,
and said that “This night is the happiest of my life.” For some time
he continued to move from bivouac to bivouac, telling his soldiers
how much he appreciated their affection, and saying those kindly and
encouraging words which no one better than he knew how to use.
[Illustration: MARSHAL PRINCE MURAT (AFTERWARDS KING OF
NAPLES).
(_From the Painting by Gérard._)]
The morning began to break on the 2nd of December. As he buckled on his
sword, Napoleon said to the staff gathered round--“Now, gentlemen, let
us commence a great day.” He mounted, and from different points were
seen arriving to receive his last orders the renowned chiefs of his
various _corps-d’armée_, each followed by a single aide-de-camp.
There were Marshal Prince Murat, Marshal Lannes, Marshal Soult, Marshal
Bernadotte, and Marshal Davoust. What a formidable circle of men, each
of whom had already gathered glory on many different fields! Murat,
distinctively the cavalry general of France, the intrepid paladin who
had led his charging squadrons on all the battle-fields of Italy and
Egypt; Lannes, whose prowess at Montebello had made victory certain;
Soult, the veteran of the long years of war on the Rhine and in
Germany, the hero of Altenkirchen, and Massena’s most distinguished
lieutenant at the battle of Zürich; Bernadotte, not more renowned as
a general in the field than as the minister of war who prepared the
conquest of Holland; Davoust, the stern disciplinarian and leader,
unequalled for cool gallantry and determination--all were gathered
at this supreme moment round one of the greatest masters of war in
ancient or modern times, to receive his inspiration and to part like
thunder-clouds bearing the storm which was to shatter the united armies
of two Empires.
The Emperor’s general plan of action was already partly known, but
he now repeated it to his marshals in detail. He was more than ever
certain, from the last reports which he had received, that the enemy
was continuing the flank movement, and would hurl the heaviest attacks
on the French right near Telnitz.
To Davoust was entrusted the duty of holding the extreme right and
checking, in the defiles formed by the lakes, the heads of the
enemy’s columns which, since the previous day, had been more and more
entangling themselves in these difficult passes.
Of Soult’s three divisions, one was to assist Davoust on the right,
while the other two, already formed in columns of attack, were to hold
themselves ready to throw their force on the Pratzen plateau.
Bernadotte’s two divisions were to advance against the same position on
Soult’s left. This combined onslaught of four divisions on the centre
of the Russo-Austrians which they had weakened by the movement to their
left, would be supported by the Emperor himself with the Imperial Guard
and the Grenadiers of Oudinot and Duroc. Lannes was ordered to hold
the left, particularly the “Santon” height; while Prince Murat, at
the head of his horsemen, was to charge through the intervals of the
infantry upon the allied cavalry which appeared to be in great strength
in that part of the field.
It was thus Napoleon’s intention to await and check the enemy’s attacks
which might be expected on both his flanks, and more especially on
his right, while he himself made a determined and formidable forward
movement against their centre, where he hoped to cut them in two,
and then, from the dominant position of the Pratzen plateau, turn an
overwhelming force against the masses on their too-far-advanced left,
which, entangled and cramped in its action among the lakes, would then
be crushed or forced to yield as prisoners.
It was eight o’clock. The thick wintry mist hung in the valley of the
Goldbach and rolled upwards to the Pratzen plateau. Its obscurity,
heightened by the lingering smoke of bivouac fires, concealed the
French columns of attack. The thunder of artillery and the rattle of
musketry told that the allied attack on the French right had begun and
was being strenuously resisted, while silence and darkness reigned
over the rest of the line. Suddenly, over the heights, the sun rose,
brilliantly piercing the mist and lighting the battle-field--the “Sun
of Austerlitz,” of which Napoleon ever after loved to recall the
remembrance.
[Illustration: “THOUSANDS OF LIGHTS FLARED UPWARDS”
(_p._ 188.)]
The moment of action for the French centre had come, and the corps of
Soult and Bernadotte, led by the divisions of Vandamme and St. Hilaire,
rushed forwards. No influence that could animate the minds of these
gallant troops was wanting. They fought directly under the eye of their
Emperor. They were led by chiefs in whom they had implicit confidence.
Their ardour was fired by the proclamation which had been issued on the
previous evening, and the bands accompanied their regiments, playing
the old attack march--
“On va leur percer le flanc
Rataplan, tire lire en plan!”
The Pratzen height was escaladed at the double, attacked in front
and on the right and left, and the appearance of the assailants was
so sudden and unexpected, as they issued from the curtain of mist,
that the Russians were completely surprised. They had no defensive
formation ready, and were still occupied in the movement towards their
left. They hastily formed in three lines, however, and some of their
artillery were able to come into action. Their resistance was feeble.
One after another, their lines, broken by the stern bayonet charge,
were driven back in hopeless confusion, and at nine o’clock Napoleon
was master of the Pratzen plateau.
Meanwhile, on the left, Lannes and Murat were fighting an independent
battle with the Princes Lichtenstein and Bagration. Murat, as the
senior marshal and brother-in-law of the Emperor, was nominally the
superior; but, in real fact, Lannes directed the operations of the
infantry, which Murat powerfully supplemented and aided with his
cavalry. General Caffarelli’s division was formed on the plain on
Lannes’s right, while General Suchet’s division was on his left,
supported by the “Santon” height, from which poured the fire of
eighteen heavy guns. The light cavalry brigades of Milhaud and
Treilhard were pushed forward in observation across the high road
to Olmutz. The cavalry divisions of Kellermann, Walther, Nansouty,
and d’Hautpoul were disposed in two massive columns of squadrons on
the right of Caffarelli. Against this array were brought eighty-two
squadrons of cavalry under Lichtenstein, supported by the serried
divisions of Bagration’s infantry and a heavy force of artillery.
The combat was commenced by the light cavalry of Kellermann, which
charged and overthrew the Russo-Austrian advanced guard. Attacked
in turn by the Uhlans of the Grand Duke Constantine, Kellermann
retired through the intervals of Caffarelli’s division, which, by
a well-sustained fire in two ranks, checked the Uhlans and emptied
many of their saddles. Kellermann re-formed his division and again
charged, supported by Sebastiani’s brigade of Dragoons. Then followed
a succession of charges by the chivalry of France, led by Murat with
all the _élan_ of his boiling courage. Kellermann, Walther, and
Sebastiani were all wounded, the first two generals seriously. In
the last of these charges the 5th Chasseurs, commanded by Colonel
Corbineau, broke the formation of a Russian battalion and captured
its standard. Caffarelli’s infantry were close at hand, and, pushing
forward, made an Austrian battalion lay down its arms. A regiment of
Russian Dragoons made a desperate advance to rescue their comrades,
and, mistaking them for Bavarians in the smoke and turmoil, Murat
ordered the French infantry to cease firing. The Russian Dragoons, thus
encountering no resistance, penetrated the French ranks and almost
succeeded in taking Murat himself prisoner. But, consummate horseman
and man-at-arms as he was, he cut his way to safety through the enemy,
at the head of his personal escort.
The allies profited by this diversion to again assume the offensive.
Then came the opportunity for the gigantic Cuirassiers of Nansouty,
which hurled the Russian cavalry back upon their infantry, and, in
three successive onslaughts, scattered the infantry itself, inflicting
terrible losses with their long, heavy swords and seizing eight pieces
of artillery. The whole of Caffarelli’s division advanced, supported
by one of Bernadotte’s divisions from the centre, and, changing its
front to the right, cut the centre of Bagration’s infantry, driving its
greater part towards Pratzen, separated from those who still fought at
the extremity of their line.
The Austro-Russian cavalry rallied in support of Bagration, who was
now hotly pressed by Suchet. Then came a magnificently combined
movement of Dragoons, Cuirassiers, and infantry. The Dragoons drove
back the Austro-Russian squadrons behind their infantry. Simultaneously
followed the levelled bayonets of Suchet’s division and the crushing
shock of d’Hautpoul’s mailclad warriors. The victory was decided--the
Russian battalions were crushed, losing a standard, eleven guns, and
1,800 prisoners. The rout was completed by the rapid advance of the
light cavalry brigades of Treilhard and Milhaud on the left, and
of Kellermann on the right, which swept away all that encountered
them, and drove the shattered allied troops towards the village of
Austerlitz. The Russo-Austrian losses on this part of the field of
battle amounted to 1,200 or 1,500 killed, 7,000 or 8,000 prisoners, two
standards, and twenty-seven pieces of artillery.
[Illustration: “Simultaneously followed the levelled bayonets
of Suchet’s Division” (_p._ 150).]
While Napoleon had thus struck a heavy blow at the allied centre and
had been completely victorious on his left, his right, under Davoust,
was with difficulty holding its own against Buxhowden (who had assumed
the command of the columns of Doctorof and Kienmayer), and but that
the masses brought against it were unable to deploy their strength it
must inevitably have been crushed. Thirty thousand foemen of all arms
were pressing in assault upon 10,000 French, already wearied by a long
and rapid march to their position at Raygern. But Davoust was able to
concentrate what power he had, and to meet at advantage the heads
only of the columns which were winding their way along the narrow
passes that opened between the lakes and through the marshy ground
in his front. Even so the strain was terrible, and would have been
more than less hardy troops under a less able and determined leader
could have stood. But Napoleon was quite alive to the necessities of
the gallant soldiers who were standing their ground so staunchly. He
ordered his reserve of Grenadiers and the Imperial Guard to move up
to the support of his right centre and to threaten the flank of the
columns that were attacking Davoust, while he also directed the two
divisions of Soult’s corps, which had made the attack on the Pratzen
plateau against Buxhowden’s rear.
It was one o’clock, and at this moment, while the orders just given
were being executed, the Russian infantry, supported by the Russian
Imperial Guard, made a desperate effort to retrieve the fortunes of
the day near Pratzen, and threw themselves in a fierce bayonet charge
on the divisions of Vandamme and St. Hilaire, which offered a stout
resistance. But, with the Russian Guard ready to join in the combat,
the odds against the French divisions were too great. It was the crisis
of the day.
Napoleon, from the commanding position where he stood, saw before him
the Emperor Alexander’s guard advancing in dense masses to regain their
morning position and to sweep before them his men, wearied and harassed
by the day’s struggle. At the same time he heard on his right the
redoubled fire of the advanced Russian left, which was pressing Davoust
and was threatening his rear. From the continued and increasing roar of
musketry and artillery it almost seemed as if success must, after all,
attend the great flank movement of the allies. Small wonder if even his
war-hardened nerves felt a thrill of confusion and anxiety when he saw
dimly appearing through the battle smoke another black mass of moving
troops.
“Ha! Can those, too, be Russians?” he exclaimed to the solitary
staff-officer whom the exigencies of the day had still left at his
side. Another look reassured him, however. The tall bearskins of the
moving column showed him that it was his own Guard, which, under Duroc,
was moving towards the lakes to the support of Soult and Davoust. His
right and rear were, at any rate, so far safe.
But the Russian infantry attack had been followed by a headlong charge
of the Chevalier Guards and Cuirassiers of the Russian Guard, under the
Grand Duke Constantine, brother of the Emperor Alexander, supported
by numerous lines of cavalry. So well led and so impetuous was the
attack, that the two battalions on the left of Vandamme’s division
were broken and swept away in headlong flight. One of these battalions
belonged to the 4th of the line, of which Napoleon’s brother Joseph
was colonel, and the Emperor saw it lose its eagle and abandon its
position, shattered and destroyed, forming the one dark spot to sully
the brilliancy of French steadfastness on that day of self-devotion.
The tide of panic-stricken fugitives almost surged against the Emperor
himself. All efforts to rally them were in vain. Maddened with fear,
they heard not the voices of generals and officers imploring them not
to abandon the field of honour and their Emperor. Their only response
was to gasp out mechanically: “Vive l’Empereur!” while still hurrying
their frantic pace. Napoleon smiled at them in pity; then, with a
gesture of contempt, he said: “Let them go!” and, still calm in the
midst of the turmoil, sent General Rapp to bring up the cavalry of his
Guard.
Rapp was titular Colonel of the Mamelukes, a corps which recalled the
glories of Egypt and the personal regard which Napoleon, as a man, had
been able to inspire into Orientals. They, with the Grenadiers à Cheval
and the Chasseurs of the Guard, now swooped upon the Russian squadrons.
The struggle of the _mêlée_ was bloody and obstinate between the
picked horsemen of Western and Eastern Europe; but the Russian chivalry
was at length overwhelmed and driven back with immense loss. Many
standards and prisoners fell into the hands of the French, amongst
others Prince Repnin, Colonel of the Chevalier Guards. His regiment,
whose ranks were filled with men of the noblest families in Russia, had
fought with a valour worthy of their name, and lay almost by ranks upon
the field. It had been the mark of the giant Grenadiers à Cheval, whose
savage war-cry in the great charge had been, as they swayed their heavy
sabres, “Let us make the dames of St. Petersburg weep to-day!”
When success was assured, Rapp returned to report to Napoleon--a
warlike figure, as he approached, alone, at a gallop, with proud mien,
the light of battle in his eye, his sword dripping with blood and a
sabre cut on his forehead.
“Sire, we have overthrown and destroyed the Russian Guard and taken
their artillery.”
“It was gallantly done: I saw it,” replied the Emperor. “But you are
wounded.”
“It is nothing, sire: it is only a scratch.”
“It is another quartering of nobility, and I know of none that can be
more illustrious.”
Immediately afterwards the young Count Apraxin, an officer of
artillery who had been taken prisoner by the Chasseurs, was brought
before Napoleon. He struggled, wept, and wrung his hands in despair,
crying: “I have lost my battery; I am dishonoured: would that I could
die!” Napoleon tried to console and soothe him with the words, “Calm
yourself, young man, and learn that there is never disgrace in being
conquered by Frenchmen.”
[Illustration: CHARGE OF THE CHEVALIER GUARDS.]
The French army was now completely successful on its centre and
left. In the distance could be seen, retiring towards Austerlitz,
the remains of the Russian reserves, which had relinquished hope of
regaining the central plateau and abandoned Buxhowden’s wing to its
fate. Their retreat was harassed by the artillery of the Imperial
Guard, whose fire ploughed through their long columns, carrying with
it death and consternation. Napoleon left to Murat and Lannes the
completion of their own victory. To Bernadotte, with the greater part
of the Guard, he entrusted the final crushing of the enemies who had
been driven from the Pratzen plateau; while he himself, with all of
Soult’s corps, the remainder of his cavalry, infantry, and reserve
artillery descended from the heights and threw himself on the rear of
the Austro-Russian left near Telnitz and the lakes. This unfortunate
wing--nearly 30,000 men--had in vain striven since the morning to force
its way through Davoust’s 10,000. Now, still checked in front and
entangled in the narrow roads by the Goldbach and the lakes, it found
itself in hopeless confusion, attacked and ravaged with fire from three
sides simultaneously by Davoust, Soult, Duroc with his Grenadiers and
Vandamme. It fought with a gallantry and sternness which drew forth
the admiration of its enemies, but surrounded, driven, overwhelmed, it
could not hope to extricate itself from its difficulties. There was no
way of escape open but the Menitz lake itself, whose frozen surface
seemed to present a path to safety, and in an instant the white expanse
was blackened by the flying multitude. The most horribly disastrous
phase of the whole battle was at hand. The shot of the French artillery
which was firing on the retreat broke the ice at many points, and
its frail support gave way. The water welled through the cracks and
washed over the broken fragments. Thousands of Russians, with horses,
artillery and train, sank into the lake and were engulfed. Few
succeeded in struggling to the shore and taking advantage of the ropes
and other assistance which their conquerors strove to put within their
reach. About 2,000, who had been able to remain on the road between the
two lakes, made good their retreat. The remainder were either dead or
prisoners.
At four o’clock in the afternoon the battle was over, and there was
nothing left for the French to do but to pursue and collect the
spoils of their conquest. This duty was performed with energy by
all the commanders except Bernadotte (even then more than suspected
of disloyalty to his great chief), who allowed the whole of the
Russo-Austrian right, which had been defeated by Lannes and Murat and
driven from its proper line of retreat on Olmutz, to defile scatheless
past his front and to seek shelter in the direction of Hungary.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ
Dec. 2, 1805.]
After the great catastrophe on the Menitz lake which definitely
sealed the issue of the conflict, Napoleon passed slowly along the
whole battle-field, from the French right to their left. The ground
was covered with piles of the poor remains of those who had died a
soldier’s death, and with vast numbers of wounded laid suffering on
the frozen plain. Surgeons and ambulances were already everywhere at
work, but their efforts were feeble in comparison with the shattered,
groaning multitude who were in dire need of help. The Emperor paused
by every disabled follower and spoke words of sympathy and comfort. He
himself, with his personal attendants and his staff, did all in their
power to mitigate the pangs of each and to give some temporary relief
till better assistance should arrive. As the shades of night fell on
the scene of slaughter and destruction, the mist of the morning again
rolled over the plain, bringing with it an icy rain, which increased
the darkness. Napoleon ordered the strictest silence to be maintained,
that no faint cry from a miserable sufferer should pass unheard; and
his surgeon Ywan, with his Mameluke orderly Roustan, gave to many a
one, who would otherwise have died, a chance of life by binding up
their hurts and restoring their powers with a draught of brandy from
the Imperial canteen.
It was nearly ten o’clock at night when the Emperor arrived at the
Olmutz road, having almost felt his way from one wounded man to another
as they lay where each attack had been made and each stubborn defence
maintained. He passed the night at the small posthouse of Posoritz,
supping on a share of the soldiers’ rations, which was brought from the
nearest bivouac, and issuing order after order about searching for the
wounded and conveying them to the field hospitals.
Though many of the most noted leaders in the French army were wounded
in the great battle, comparatively few were killed. One of the most
distinguished dead was General Morland, who commanded the Chasseurs à
Cheval of the Guard. His regiment had suffered terrible losses in the
charge under Rapp against the Russian Guard, and he himself had fallen,
fighting amongst the foremost. Napoleon, who was always anxious to
do everything to raise the spirit of his troops and to excite their
emulation, ordered that the body of General Morland should be preserved
and conveyed to Paris, there to be interred in a specially magnificent
tomb which he proposed to build on the Esplanade of the Invalides. The
doctors with the army had neither the time nor the materials necessary
to embalm the general’s body, so, as a simple means of conservation,
they enclosed it in a barrel of rum, which was taken to Paris. But
circumstances delayed the construction of the tomb which the Emperor
intended for its reception until the fall of the Empire in 1814. When
the barrel was then opened for the private interment of the body by
General Morland’s relations, they were astonished to find that the rum
had made the dead general’s moustaches grow so extraordinarily that
they reached below his waist.
The defeat suffered by the Russians was so crushing, and their army
had been thrown into such confusion, that all who had escaped from the
disaster of Austerlitz fled with all speed to Galicia, where there
was a hope of being beyond the reach of the conqueror. The rout was
complete. The French made a large number of prisoners, and found the
roads covered with abandoned guns, baggage, and material of war. The
Emperor Alexander, overcome by his misfortunes, left it to his ally,
Francis II., to treat with Napoleon, and authorised him to make the
best terms he could for both the defeated empires.
On the very evening of the 2nd December the Emperor of Austria had
asked for an interview with Napoleon, and the victor met the vanquished
on the 4th. An armistice was signed on the 6th, which was shortly
afterwards followed by a treaty of peace concluded at Presburg.
The total losses of the Austro-Russians at Austerlitz were about 10,000
killed, 30,000 prisoners, 46 standards, 186 cannon, 400 artillery
caissons, and all their baggage. Their armies practically no longer
existed, and only about 25,000 disheartened men could be rallied from
the wreck.
In the joy of victory Napoleon showed himself generous to Austria and
Russia in the terms which he imposed, and he at once set free Prince
Repnin, with all of the Russian Imperial Guard who had fallen into his
hands. To his own army he was lavish of rewards and acknowledgments of
its valour, and in the famous order of the day which he published he
first made use of the well-known expression--“Soldiers, I am content
with you.” Besides a large distribution of prize-money to his troops,
he decreed that liberal pensions should be granted to the widows of
the fallen, and also that their orphan children should be cared for,
brought up, and settled in life at the expense of the State.
The campaign of Austerlitz is probably the most striking and dramatic
of all those undertaken by Napoleon, and its concluding struggle was
the most complete triumph of his whole career. It was the first in
which he engaged after assuming the title of Emperor and becoming the
sole and irresponsible ruler of France. Unlike the vast masses of men
which he directed in subsequent wars, his army was then almost entirely
composed of Frenchmen, and its glories belonged to France alone. Though
for several years to come the great Emperor’s fame was to remain
undimmed by the clouds of reverse, it never shone with a brighter
lustre than at the close of 1805.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: KASSASSIN TEL-EL-KEBIR
BY CHARLES LOWE
LORD WOLSELEY]
Arabi Pasha and his rebellious ambition were the cause of the
British campaign in Egypt (1882) which culminated in the battle of
Tel-el-Kebir--a word which simply means “the large village.” Arabi was
of low origin, but had risen by his ability and force of character
to be a very popular colonel in the Egyptian army of the Sultan of
Turkey’s Viceroy, or Khedive, Tewfik. He was an ardent advocate of
the policy of “Egypt for the Egyptians”; but in the championship of
this policy he forgot that, amongst other countries, England had
immense interests at stake in Egypt, not only as the holder of about
four millions sterling of Suez Canal stock, but also as the mistress
of India, to which the Canal formed a commercial and military route.
But Arabi, making light of these things, became violently opposed to
the growth of English influence in his native country, and to such an
extent that at last he even sought to substitute his own power for that
of his master, the Khedive.
To let things go on in Egypt in this way would have been to allow them
to drift into chaos, and therefore England resolved to put down the
rebellious Pasha. The latter had been making great progress with his
plans at Alexandria, which became the scene of a massacre of Europeans;
and he had begun to arm the seaward forts of the city in a manner most
threatening to the British fleet. Thereupon he was told that if he
placed any more guns in position, he would draw upon himself the fire
of Sir Beauchamp Seymour’s ironclads in the bay. Arabi made bold to
disregard this warning, and, accordingly, on the morning of July 11th,
Sir Beauchamp’s war-vessels opened fire on Arabi’s forts, battering
some to pieces and silencing all before sunset. This was the first
noteworthy action which the British fleet had fought since the days of
Sebastopol, proving that its glory--founded on the courage, skill, and
discipline of its sailors--had by no means departed.
But his defeat at Alexandria, far from breaking the power and pride
of Arabi, had the effect only of deepening his hatred of the English,
and he retired into the interior with the view of organising further
opposition to our arms. He had thrown down the gauntlet, and England
could not refuse to pick it up. As our fleet could not sail up the Nile
to Cairo, it behoved us to equip and send out an army which should
land in Egypt, seek out Arabi wherever he was to be found, and make an
end, once and for ever, of him and his rebellious force. This army was
entrusted to the command of Sir Garnet (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley,
who had already distinguished himself in so many of our “little wars”
that he was facetiously termed “our only General.”
Nor could the command of the expedition have been given to a better
man. Sir Garnet was a tried soldier, and now he became a prophet as
well. Before leaving England he had laid his hand, with remarkable
foresight, upon the map, and, pointing to Tel-el-Kebir, said that
he would engage and beat the army of Arabi there, about the 13th
September; and he kept his word to the very letter. At first the French
seemed inclined to share with us the work of restoring order in Egypt;
but at the last moment they stood aside and left England to deal with
the task of quelling Arabi.
To accomplish this task, England at once began to bring together in
Egypt an army--or Army Corps--of about 40,000 men. Some came from our
garrisons in the Mediterranean--Malta, Cyprus, and Gibraltar--others
were brought from India, and the remainder sent out straight from
England.
Being gathered, as it was, from so many different sources, this huge
force could not, of course, all land at once; but the marvel was that
its component parts reached the trysting-ground in Egypt so soon as
they did, and it was admitted on all hands that no other nation in the
whole world could have performed such a difficult transport operation
so swiftly and so well.
It was known that Arabi had about 60,000 fighting men at his disposal,
which was 20,000 more than were commanded by Sir Garnet Wolseley; and
if these two armies had met one another in full force, there is no
saying but that the result of the campaign might have been different.
But the beauty of Sir Garnet’s war-policy was that he kept his opponent
so long in the dark as to where he meant to strike; with the natural
result that Arabi, deeming it wise to be prepared on every hand, had
his 60,000 men portioned out at the likeliest places, all over the
Delta--some in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, some at Cairo, and some
at Tel-el-Kebir, a commanding point on the railway between Ismailia, on
the Suez Canal, and the capital. This suited Sir Garnet to perfection,
and his great aim was to make Arabi think that he meant to land the
bulk of the British force in Alexandria, and challenge him to battle at
the Egyptian lines of Kafr Dowar.
[Illustration: THE SWEET-WATER CANAL, AT ISMAILIA.]
[Illustration: THE SWEET-WATER CANAL.]
In order to encourage this delusive belief in the mind of the rebel
Pasha, a considerable force had already landed here and indulged in
feints against the foe. Sir Garnet had craftily caused it to be spread
abroad that the gross of his force aboard the transports in the bay was
going to be put ashore; but what was the surprise of everyone--for the
secret had been in the keeping of only one or two--to behold one night
the magnificent flotilla of troopships, escorting-ironclads and all,
steaming away in majestic procession towards the east and the mouth of
the Suez Canal!
Ismailia, on the Canal, midway between Port Said and Suez, had been
aimed at by Sir Garnet from the beginning; and here, in truth, on the
20th August--only a short eighteen days after he had left England by
the sea route--the British army began to disembark on the burning sands
of Egypt.
Among these burning sands water was more precious than gold and silver
to the British soldier; but the only source of its supply was the
Fresh-water Canal running through the arid desert from the Nile to
Ismailia alongside of a railway line, and it therefore behoved the
English commander to secure the water in this canal from being cut off
by the enemy. But to do this it was necessary above all things to push
forward an advance force about twenty miles into the very heart of the
desert as far as a place called Kassassin, where there was a lock, and
accordingly this was done with the utmost courage and promptitude.
[Illustration: “THE EGYPTIAN BATTALIONS ... HAD BEEN
TRAMPLED AND SABRED INTO POSITIVE ANNIHILATION”
(_p._ 199).]
At Mahuta the Egyptians had made an attempt to bar this advance, but
their opposition was swept away like chaff, and soon thereafter General
Graham reached Kassassin Lock with his vanguard, entrenching himself in
that position with strict orders to hold it against all comers. Well
aware of the importance of this position for the British, the Egyptians
made several attempts to drive them out of it and back to Ismailia
before reinforcements could reach them; but each time they recoiled
from the enterprise with the bitter conviction that British bullets and
sabres were things on which no one could reasonably hope to whet his
teeth and thrive. Two main actions were fought at Kassassin--though
these formed the mere prelude, so to speak, to the grand spectacular
drama that was presently to be enacted at Tel-el-Kebir.
The chief of these preliminary actions, fought on the 28th August, will
always be memorable for the grand cavalry charge which closed it. Early
in the morning General Graham had become aware that the Egyptians were
making preparations to attack him from a circle of sand-hills which
formed a kind of amphitheatre around Kassassin. Graham’s force was
by no means a large one, but it was impossible for the Egyptians to
make out how strong it really was, and it is always half the battle to
be able to conceal your plans and numbers from the enemy. A few days
previously Arabi had sent out his second-in-command, Mahmoud Fehmi
Pasha, a great engineer and reader of military signs, to discover the
strength and dispositions of Graham, but by a curious accident he fell
into the hands of the English and never returned to his own side. To
this capture Arabi himself afterwards attributed the sole blame of his
not having been able to oust the audacious English from their advanced
post at Kassassin--and the incident will show how very important it
must always be in warfare to seize and detain spies.
[Illustration:
MAP TO ILLUSTRATE
BATTLES OF
TEL-EL-KEBIR & KASSASSIN]
Graham’s force at Kassassin was not a large one (under 2,000),
consisting mainly of a company of Royal Marine Artillery, the Duke
of Cornwall’s regiment, the York and Lancasters, with some mounted
infantry and a few guns, one of which, under Captain Tucker, was
mounted on a railway truck. But the Egyptians, taking a leaf out of our
own book of war, had by this time imitated us in this respect--though
they were very bad range-finders, and did us little harm.
Drury Lowe’s Cavalry Brigade, consisting of the 7th Dragoon Guards
and three squadrons of Household Cavalry (contributed by the 1st and
2nd Life Guards, and “Blues,” or Horse Guards, respectively) were
stationed some miles to the rear at Mehsameh, and Graham heliographed
to these splendid troopers to come and help him on his right flank in
the impending battle. Come they also did with right good will, for they
were all burning for a fight, but only to hear that the Egyptians,
after using their guns for some time, had apparently retired again
behind their sand-hills; so back they went to Mehsameh and off-saddled
again.
The heat was terrific, and bucketfuls of water from the canal had to
be poured on the heads of the English artillerists to enable them to
stick to their guns. Sunstrokes were numerous, but our men bore all
their sufferings with a fortitude truly heroic. The scorching heat was
probably the reason why the Egyptians had drawn off from their first
attack on Kassassin, but towards the cool of the evening they again
began to push forward from their sand-hills and threaten the British
position. The left of this position was well protected, but the right
less so; and, indeed, General Graham expressly made such a disposition
of his force on the latter flank as might tempt the enemy down from his
sand-hills so as to essay a turning movement, when they would be caught
in the trap which he was preparing for them.
To this end, about 5.20 p.m., he despatched his aide-de-camp,
Lieutenant Pirie, 4th Dragoon Guards, with a message to Drury Lowe, in
the rear, at Mehsameh, or wherever he should be found, “to take the
cavalry round by our right, under cover of the hill, and attack the
left flank of the enemy’s skirmishers.”
But when Lieutenant Pirie did at last reach Lowe, after a long and
fatiguing ride through the arid desert sand--in the course of which
his horse fell under him from sheer exhaustion and he had to borrow
another mount from a gunteam--he delivered his message in this altered
form, that “General Graham _was only just able to hold his own_,
and wished General Drury Lowe to attack the left of the enemy’s
infantry skirmishers.” The famous cavalry charge at Balaclava had been
due to a similar mistake in the delivery of a verbal order, though at
Kassassin, as it turned out, the repetition of this mistake did not
result in disaster, but in victory. So far was Graham from not being
able to hold his own that, about two hours after despatching Lieutenant
Pirie for the cavalry, he had ordered a counter-attack and a general
advance of his line, which had meanwhile been reinforced by a fresh
battery, for his other guns had been obliged to retire out of action,
owing to want of ammunition, it having been found impossible to drag
the battery carts through the deep and yielding sand.
It was while Graham was engaged in this general advance that at last
Drury Lowe arrived upon the scene with his cavalry. The sun had now
set, but a bright moon was shining, and the flashes from the Horse
Artillery and infantry afforded some guide for the movement of the
British horsemen, which was directed on the evening star--the orbs of
heaven being the only landmarks in the nocturnal desert. Suddenly the
cavalry came in sight of the extreme left of the Egyptians, and was at
once exposed to a heavy fire. “Shells screamed and shrapnel bullets
tore up the road on either side of us.” Rushing to the front, the guns
of the Horse Artillery attached to the Cavalry Brigade unlimbered and
belched out several rounds of shell on the Egyptian masses. Then the
front of these British guns was rapidly cleared, and Drury Lowe gave
the Household Cavalry the order to charge.
Led on by Colonel Ewart, away with a wild cheer went the three
ponderous squadrons of clanking giants straight at the Egyptian
battalions, which in a few more moments had been trampled and sabred
into positive annihilation. “Now we have them!” Sir Baker Russell had
cried out to the men; “trot--gallop--charge!” Sir Baker’s own horse was
shot under him, but he caught another, and was soon again in the thick
of the fray. Many were the feats of personal adventure in connection
with this glorious charge. Some of the troopers were killed, some lost
themselves in the darkness and were taken prisoners, happy to escape
the barbarous mutilations that were perpetrated by the Egyptians on the
British dead and wounded.
The cavalry charge at Kassassin was a splendid feat of arms, but it
somehow or other became the subject of as curious a myth as that which
gathered round the sinking of the _Vengeur_ on the “glorious 1st
of June.” At Balaclava the Light Brigade had ridden down upon the
Russian guns, and nothing would content the chroniclers of Kassassin
but the performance of a similar act of glory. The illustrated papers
of the day which had artists in Egypt gave stirring pictures of our
Life Guardsmen dashing through the smoke of the Egyptian batteries,
slashing and thrusting at the gunners as they crouched for shelter
beneath their pieces. But this was pure imagination. If commanded to do
so the Life Guards would have charged into the very “mouth of hell,”
not to speak of Egyptian guns. But what they were ordered to “go for”
was the Egyptian infantry, which was considerably in front of its
guns, and these had limbered up and retired from action, rendering it
impossible for our victorious troopers to see and capture them in the
darkness. But the day had been won all the same, and another bright
name blazoned on the victory roll of the British army.
A few days later, on 9th September, another attack of the Egyptians
on Kassassin was beaten off in the most brilliant manner, the 13th
Bengal Lancers, in their picturesque turbans, especially distinguishing
themselves; and there were many who thought that Sir Garnet Wolseley
ought to have rushed the not far-distant entrenchments of Tel-el-Kebir
there and then. But though this might certainly have been done, there
were certain weighty reasons of military policy against the step. For a
commander must not be too much of a Hotspur, but think of ulterior aims
as well as of present opportunities. It is the man who can bide his
time that will ultimately win.
Foiled in their repeated attempts to bar the British advance, Arabi
and his Egyptians now finally withdrew behind the entrenched lines of
Tel-el-Kebir, there to stand on the defensive and await attack. These
formidable lines, which ran along a ridge of rising ground, presented
a front of about four miles long, and had been constructed according
to the most advanced principles of military engineering. The Egyptians
are great hands at the spade, being constantly employed in the throwing
up of waterdams and the like, and many thousands of willing hands had
been at the disposal of Arabi in the task of raising his famous line of
earthworks. How many men of all kinds--Egyptians, Nubians, Bedouins,
etc.--Arabi had behind the shelter of these parapets Sir Garnet
Wolseley did not exactly know, but concluded that the number could not
be far short of 22,000.
On the other hand, the English commander had now with him about 17,000
officers and men, with sixty-seven guns, wherewith to crack the nut
that was presented by Arabi’s entrenchments, and these Sir Garnet
resolved to storm at the hour when darkness was beginning to glide
into dawn--for the reasons that at this cool hour his troops would
naturally fight much better than under the roasting rays of the sun,
that they would be less exposed to the enemy’s fire in the faint light,
and that they would also profit by the demoralisation which invariably
seizes upon soldiers when set upon unawares. But, to make the surprise
complete, it was necessary that the very utmost care should be taken
to give no indication to the watchful Egyptians behind the earthworks
of the stealthy approach of their British foes. When ranked into line,
the storming columns were to advance--not to the word of command,
but by the mere guidance of the stars, like so many ships at sea.
Not a pipe was to be lit, not a whisper heard in the ranks, and one
man of the Highland Light Infantry, whose high-strung feelings found
vent in sudden shouts, only escaped bayoneting on the spot by being
chloroformed to keep him still and left behind.
[Illustration: SABA BIER.
The Valley of the Saba Bier (Seven Wells), along which the
troops marched on the advance upon Tel-el-Kebir.]
The night (September 12–13) was more than usually dark, and it was some
time before the troops could be placed in the positions assigned them.
On the right marched the 1st Division, commanded by General Willis,
the front, or leading Brigade, under Graham, consisting of the Royal
Irish, Royal Marines, York and Lancasters, and Royal Irish Fusiliers.
Behind them, at a distance of about a thousand yards, was the Brigade
of Guards (Grenadiers, Scots, and Coldstreams), under the Queen’s
soldier-son, the Duke of Connaught. The left of the attacking line was
occupied by the 2nd Division, led by General Hamley (a great writer
on the art of war), the front position of honour and of danger being
accorded to the Highland Brigade of one-armed Sir Archibald Alison
(son of the celebrated historian of “Europe”), composed of the famous
Black Watch, Gordon Highlanders, Cameron Highlanders and Highland
Light Infantry, four of the finest battalions that ever wore the kilt
and trews or thrilled to the stirring strains of the Celtic war-pipe.
Behind these Scottish battalions marched, as a reserve, Ashburnam’s
Brigade of the King’s Royal Rifles and Duke of Cornwall’s Infantry,
while in the interval between the two Divisions was placed General
Goodenough’s crushing mass of artillery of forty-two guns. On the
extreme right rear flank of the assaulting force marched Drury Lowe’s
cavalry heroes of Kassassin, already spoiling for another charge;
while on the extreme left of the British line, on the other side of
the Fresh-water Canal, followed the Indian contingent of General
Macpherson, consisting of the Seaforth Highlanders, three battalions of
native infantry, Bengal Cavalry, and some mountain guns, the task of
this contingent being to turn Arabi’s right flank, which rested on the
canal.
[Illustration: “CARRYING THEM WITH THE BAYONET”
(_p._ 203).]
Arabi and his men fondly believed that all this British force was
sleeping the sleep of wearied soldiers at Kassassin and other points
between that place and the Suez Canal. As a matter of fact, it was
marshalling itself in line of battle array as above detailed on an
elevation called Ninth Hill, about five and a half miles from Arabi’s
lines, from which it remained hidden by the impenetrable curtain of
the night. Some of the regiments--notably the Highlanders--had but
a few hours before hurried up to the front from Ismailia[4]; yet,
though wearied by the long and strenuous march, they were all eager
to be led on to the fight without further delay. Until the hour of
starting, all the men stretched themselves on the sand to snatch what
brief and hurried sleep they could. From previous experience it was
reckoned that the actual progress over the desert, with its darkness
and other difficulties, would be about one mile per hour--just think
of that!--so that by starting at 1.30 a.m., Sir Garnet calculated to
reach the enemy’s works just before the first gleam of dawn--so nicely
was everything planned beforehand. “The long sojourn at Ninth Hill,”
wrote General Hamley, “while waiting for the moment to advance was of
a sombre kind: we sat in silence on our horses or on the sand, while
comrades moving about appeared as black figures coming out of the
darkness, unrecognisable except by their voices. A skirmish had taken
place some days before near this spot, in which men and horses were
slain, and tokens of it were wafted to us on the breeze.” Once there
was a false alarm on the right, and the prostrate men sprang to their
feet; but it turned out to be only a body of British cavalry moving
across the front of the line.
[Illustration: ARABI PASHA.]
At last, in the lowest undertone, word was passed along all the line
to advance, and soon nothing was heard but the “swish-swish” of
the battalions footing it warily across the sand as if it had been
snow--silence otherwise and darkness around and above, with the stars
shining down as they had done in the time of the Pharaohs and the
other dynasties of Egyptian kings lying entombed in the Pyramids. Well
might the British troops have been impressed with the suspense of the
moment and the awful solemnity of the scene. Directing poles had been
previously fixed in the sand by the Engineers, but they proved of
little or no use, the only effective finger-posts being the everlasting
stars, and even these were now and then obscured by clouds. Sometimes
the mounted men of the Headquarters’ Staff, moving up to the columns
with whispered instructions, were mistaken for prying Bedouins; but
silence and discipline were wonderfully well preserved, and forward,
ever forward, moved the invisible and barely audible masses of fighting
men. Once the Highland Brigade lay down to rest for twenty minutes, and
this was the occasion of some confusion which was like to have ended in
a calamity. For the order thus given in the centre of the Highland line
did not reach the outer flanks, by reason of its being so cautiously
passed from mouth to mouth, till some time after, the consequence
being that as the flanks continued to step out, while maintaining
touch with the recumbent centre, those flanks lost their direction and
circled round in such a manner that the Brigade finally halted in a
crescent-shaped formation, with the right and left almost confronting
each other; and but for the intelligence and efforts of the officers,
these opposing flanks, mistaking each other for enemies, might have
come to actual blows.
With great difficulty the proper march-direction was restored, and on
again swept--or, rather, crept--the whole line, like thieves in the
night. Weird and ghostly was the effect of the dim streaks, looking
like shadows of moving clouds, but which were really lines of men
stealing over the desert. All these men knew that they were forbidden
to fire a single shot until within the Egyptian lines, and that these
were to be carried with a cheer and a rush at the point of the bayonet;
so that they almost held their breath with eagerness, and plodded ever
on like phantoms of the desert--silent, resolute, and prepared. For
nearly five hours they had thus advanced, and then they knew that the
supreme moment must now be near. Nearer, indeed, than they fancied!
For, to use again the words of General Hamley, who was riding behind
his Highlanders: “Just as the paling of the stars showed dawn to be
near, but while it was still as dark as ever, a few scattered shots
were fired in our front, probably from some sentries, or small pickets,
outside the enemy’s lines. No notice was taken of this, though one of
the shots killed a Highlander; the movement was unchanged, and then a
single bugle sounded within the enemy’s lines. These were most welcome
sounds, assuring us that we should close with the foe before daylight,
which just before seemed very doubtful. Yet a minute or two of dead
silence elapsed after the Egyptian bugle was blown, and then the whole
extent of entrenchment in our front, hitherto unseen and unknown of,
poured forth a stream of rifle fire. Then, for the first time that
night, I could really be said to see my men, lighted by the flashes.
The dim phantom lines which I had been looking on all night suddenly
woke to life as our bugles sounded the charge, and, responding with
lusty, continued cheers, and without a moment’s pause or hesitation,
the ranks sprang forward in steady array.”
It was as if the footlights of the rebel Pasha’s long-extended stage
had suddenly flashed out with blinding flame; and now the vast and
solemn theatre of the desert, which a moment before had been wrapped in
the deepest silence and darkness, grew luminous with lurid jets of fire
and resonant with the deafening rattle of Egyptian musketry and the
roar of guns--a transformation scene as sudden as it was impressive.
Never had British soldiers been actors on such a grandly picturesque
stage. But do you suppose that these soldiers returned the volleys
rained on them by the Remingtons of Arabi’s men? Not a bit of it. Not
a single shot was fired from our lines; but bayonets were fixed, and
away like an avalanche dashed the redcoats on the foe. Their distance
from the blazing line of entrenchment was deemed to be about 150 yards,
and in the interval nearly 200 men went down, the 74th (Highland Light
Infantry) on the left losing five officers and sixty men before it got
to the ditch. This was six feet wide and four feet deep, and beyond was
a parapet ten feet high from the bottom. The first man to mount this
parapet was Private Donald Cameron, of the Cameron Highlanders, a brave
young soldier from the braes of Athol; but he at once fell back among
his struggling comrades with a bullet through his brain, dying the
noblest of all deaths. Little wonder that, on passing the 79th, after
the battle, General Alison exclaimed, “Well done, the Cameron men!
Scotland will be proud of this day’s work!”
It so happened that in the darkness the Highland Brigade, which
formed the left of the attack, had got considerably in front of the
rest of the line, so that it was the first, so to speak, to break its
bayonet-teeth on Arabi’s entrenchments; and the seizure of these works
for the first ten minutes to a quarter of an hour of the fight was the
history of the advance of the kilted warriors from the North. They had
not fought better even at Fontenoy, Quebec, and Quatre Bras; nor were
their present foes to be despised, seeing they were allowed by all to
have borne the charge with a discipline and a desperation worthy of the
best troops. “I never saw men fight more steadily,” said Sir A. Alison.
“Five or six times we had to close on them with the bayonet, and I saw
those poor men fighting hard when their officers were flying before us.
All this time, too, it was a goodly sight to see the Cameron and Gordon
Highlanders--mingled together as they were in the stream of the fight,
their young officers leading in front, waving their swords above their
heads--their pipes playing, and the men rushing on with that proud
smile on their lips which you never see in soldiers save in the moment
of successful battle.”
When the Black Watch had reached the crest of the works, and were being
re-formed to attack some other guns in the interior entrenchments, a
battery of the newly-formed Scottish Division of the Royal Artillery
swept past them, shouting out “Scotland for ever!” as the Greys and
the Highlanders had done on the ensanguined slopes of Waterloo. Here
the Black Watch had to mourn the death of Sergeant-Major MacNeill, who
fell pierced by three bullets after laying low six of the enemy with
his good claymore. There is a story that at one time some confusion
was caused in the onward rushing ranks of the Camerons by some voices
shouting “Retire! retire!” and that these cries were found to have
emanated from a couple of “Glasgow Irishmen”--Fenians who wished no
good to the cause of England and her army--and that they were put an
end to there and then, meeting with the just fate of all traitors.
But this has been shown to be incorrect. There were no traitors at
Tel-el-Kebir. The Irish soldiers did their fair share of the fighting.
The Royal Irish on the extreme right, with a wild yell, and all the
splendid valour of their nation, went straight as a dart at their
particular portion of Arabi’s works, carrying them with the bayonet,
and turning the flank of his position.
All along the line the engagement now became general, our men plying
butt and bayonet upon the Egyptians, who fell in scores--in swarms. At
the bastions stormed by the Highland Brigade the enemy lay in hundreds.
On the other hand, the total losses of the British army at Tel-el-Kebir
amounted to 339, of which 243 occurred in the Highland Brigade, leaving
96 to represent the losses of the rest of the force.
Under the Queen’s soldier-son the Guards were in the second line as a
reserve, but so quickly and successfully had the works been stormed
that they were not required to fire a shot. Some, however, were wounded
(Father Bellew, their Roman Catholic chaplain, and Colonel Sterling
amongst others), for Arabi’s men shot high, sometimes over the heads
of the attacking party. On the other side of the canal, the Indian
contingent, with the Seaforth Highlanders, the bronzed companions of
Roberts in his immortal march from Cabul to Candahar, had met with less
opposition, and came up just in the nick of time to turn Arabi’s right
flank and complete the rout of his broken men. His camp, stores, and
ordnance were all captured, and he himself fled alone from the field
of battle on a swift steed.
It was asserted by some of our ill-natured foreign critics who were
rather jealous of our brilliant victory, that we had dimmed its lustre
by massacring many of the wounded Egyptians. But this was not true in
the sense implied. None but savage nations commit such barbarities,
and British troops have never been wanting in a humanity equal to
their courage. Certainly some of the wounded soldiers of Arabi had to
be bayoneted as they lay, but this was simply owing to the fact that
when our triumphant troops were rushing on through the prostrate ranks
of their foes, numbers of the latter, feigning to be dead, suddenly
raised themselves and fired at the backs of our forward-bounding men.
There was even one case, at least, where a wounded Egyptian did this
after being treated to a pull from the water-bottle of a kind-hearted
Highlander (the Sergeant Palmer to whose account of the battle
reference has already been made in a note); and for such an act of base
ingratitude and treachery, there could only have been one possible
answer--the bayonet point. By the time the action was over, our own
men were suffering frightfully from thirst, nor could many of them be
restrained from rushing to quench their thirst in the adjacent canal,
although the water was almost putrid from the corpses of men and the
carcases of animals.
The battle had been won by the British infantry, but the artillery and
cavalry (as well as a splendid body of Blue Jackets) came up to carry
on the pursuit of the flying foe and pluck the fruits of victory,
which, on the night of the following day, fell into the hands of the
English, when their cavalry, after a splendid forced march of about
forty miles under a blazing sun, entered Cairo just in time to save the
city from destruction and capture Arabi himself.
After Waterloo we sent the despot Napoleon to St. Helena, and after
Tel-el-Kebir we sent the rebel Arabi to Ceylon, where he had leisure
enough to reflect on the folly of having called out into the field
against him as finely-organised a force as ever added lustre to the
British arms.
[Illustration: ARABI SURRENDERING TO GENERAL DRURY LOWE.]
[Illustration: _SHILOH_
_BY ANGUS EVAN ABBOTT_]
It must have seemed to the people of the United States as if Sunday
was to be for them a day of fate. Bull Run, the initial battle of the
Civil War, was fought on a Sunday, and Shiloh, the battle which may
be considered the second clear point of the great struggle, began
on a Sunday. But here coincidences between the battles did not end.
A General Johnston (Albert Sidney at Shiloh and Joseph Eggleston at
Bull Run) and General Beauregard commanded the Southern forces on both
occasions; moreover, each battle may be said to have had two clearly
defined parts, and in each first appearances, as is so often the case
in things civic or military, proved deceptive. At noon on the Sunday of
Bull Run the Federals had carried all before them; and at noon on the
Sunday of Shiloh the South was in as favourable a position. Yet, in the
end, the North suffered defeat at Bull Run, as did the South at Shiloh.
The fortunes of war, ever fickle, went sadly against the Confederates
at Shiloh. Skilfully planned and boldly executed by the Southern
leaders, if luck had been at all equally divided between the two
armies, the Confederates must surely have won. But in the thick of the
action, when Sherman had been driven back step by step, when Prentiss
and his whole command had been captured, and when nothing seemed able
to stay the march of the South, and none to withstand their savage
charges--when, in fact, it looked as though Grant and his army must
inevitably be annihilated or swept into the Tennessee River--then it
was that a rifle-bullet struck General Johnston. The leader of the
Confederate army fell, and in a few minutes bled to death.
The news ran along the Southern line, and to everyone who heard it,
foretold disaster. It checked the charges of the South more effectively
than ten thousand Federals could have done. The men from the South lost
heart. Their ardour cooled, and the partial cessation of the fight
allowed the Northerners the breathing-time they so sorely needed.
To add to the confusion of the Confederates, General Beauregard, second
in command to Johnston, could not at once be found, and for a time the
army was leaderless. When Beauregard learned of the death of his chief,
he hastened to assume command; but before he could get his army in
hand, two invaluable hours were lost. This left him with far too short
a spell of daylight before him to successfully accomplish all that was
needed to be done for victory. Night came on, and with the night came
General Buell and 30,000 men to the relief of Grant.
Next day General Beauregard found himself outnumbered, an army of fresh
men opposing him, and the victory so nearly won was snatched from him.
The defeat of the Federal forces at Bull Run came as a great
humiliation to the North, but it served a good purpose nevertheless.
Up to the destruction of McDowell’s army at Bull Run, the people of
the Free States had looked upon the rebellion of the Slave States as a
trivial matter, of little moment, scarcely a rebellion at all. But when
the dead, wounded, and missing of Bull Run were counted, the gravity
of the situation came home to a people unused to war. It was then
recognised that the enlisting of 75,000 men, and these for three months
only, had been but trifling with a situation full of grave danger.
President Lincoln called for 500,000 men to serve for three years, and
this call was answered by close upon 700,000. These men enlisted in
all sincerity, and from that day to the close of the war there were no
longer lighthearted, boisterous mobs, tramping gaily to the South, but
armies moving seriously, and fully recognising that a stubborn contest
lay ahead. Bull Run was fought near Washington on the Atlantic slope,
but Shiloh brings us to the Mississippi Valley. The battle-field is in
the State of Tennessee, near to the border of the State of Mississippi,
and rests on the Tennessee River at a place called Pittsburg Landing.
Indeed, the battle would have been more appropriately named the Battle
of Pittsburg Landing--many do speak of it as such.
Leading up to the Battle of Shiloh were several important movements and
events. In the first place, at the outbreak of rebellion, the State of
Kentucky, to use an American expression, attempted to “sit astraddle
the fence.” A majority of those in authority in that important State,
sympathising with the South, but recognising that the people of the
State were largely in favour of maintaining the Union, tried to induce
them to declare neutrality--to notify both North and South that any
attempt to send troops into Kentucky would be resisted by the troops of
the State.
This, on the face of it, was an impossible position. If President
Lincoln had recognised the right of a State to remain neutral, and to
forbid the passage across it of national troops, he would soon have
found a barrier of such States running clear across the continent, and
in the end he would have been unable to stamp out the rebellion at
all. Lincoln refused to recognise such a position, and the people of
Kentucky, thinking better of it, declared their loyalty and offered
service.
When those at the head of Southern affairs saw that Kentucky could not
be hoodwinked even by such a plausible plea as negative action, General
Polk, commanding a Southern force of considerable dimensions, was
ordered to push up into the State. This he did, and seizing Columbus,
an important town some twenty miles or so south of the junction of the
Mississippi and Ohio rivers, established there his headquarters.
Another force of Southern troops took possession of Bowling Green,
an important centre on the far east of Kentucky. Between these two
Confederate centres the rivers Tennessee and Cumberland flowed, the
rivers themselves and their valleys forming natural highways to the
very heart of the South. To prevent any such use being made of these
by the Federals, the Confederates built two forts--Fort Henry on the
Tennessee River, and Fort Donaldson on the Cumberland River. These were
placed at points where the two rivers were only twelve miles apart;
and a line drawn from General Polk’s headquarters, Columbus, on the
Mississippi east to Bowling Green, intersecting the two forts, would be
the line between the North and the South.
This General Polk, commanding at Columbus, was a character in
his way. When war broke out it found him Bishop of the Episcopal
Church in Louisiana; and without resigning his ecclesiastical
position--intending, in fact, to again resume active work when the
war should be over--he accepted command of a Confederate force and
served with considerable distinction, effectively checking Grant at the
Battle of Belmont, and holding Columbus until the capitulation of Fort
Donaldson, when he fell back to join General Johnston at Corinth, which
movement brought him on the field of Shiloh. He was killed on Pine
Mountain by a cannon shot in 1864.
When Polk and his Confederates seized Columbus, a Federal force was
massed at Cairo, in the State of Illinois, not many miles north of the
Confederate headquarters. Among the officers stationed at Cairo there
was one who, although as yet in a comparatively subordinate position,
was destined to become the central figure of the war. Before the
struggle ceased the name Ulysses S. Grant became known throughout the
length and breadth of the land.
Like a large majority of the officers engaged in the war, Grant had
served through the Mexican campaign, and at the taking of Mexico
won personal compliments from General Worth for, among many other
remarkable deeds, mounting a Howitzer in a church belfry, and from that
elevation firing upon the enemy. When the Mexican war collapsed, Grant
retired from the army and lived in obscurity, at one time tilling a
small farm near St. Louis, at another clerking in a hardware store,
and again, earning his living as a carter; but when the civil strife
began, the Governor of Illinois appointed him mustering officer, and
step by step he advanced until the capture of Fort Donaldson brought
his personality vividly before the people of America. From that day his
fame as a leader spread. After years of fighting he brought the war to
a conclusion, and before he died had been twice elected President of
his country.
But stationed at Cairo, and confronting General Polk, he had his
reputation still to make. The headquarters of the Northern forces
were at St. Louis, General Halleck being then the commander of the
Federals in that part of the country. To him Grant proposed a scheme,
and applied for permission to break the Southern line by an attack and
capture of the twin forts, Henry and Donaldson. Supplementing Grant’s
appeal, this plan was urged upon Halleck by many prominent military
experts in the North.
For a long time General Halleck did not even reply to Grant’s request.
However, on February 1st, 1862, Grant obtained the permission for
which he sought, and, marching against Fort Henry, quickly reduced
it. Without losing a moment’s time he pushed across the twelve miles
intervening, and set about the taking of Fort Donaldson. This proved
a much more difficult undertaking than Fort Henry had been, but on
account of divided authority among the Confederates holding the fort,
and excellent fighting by the Northern forces, this in time fell.
For these successes General Halleck was assigned to the command of
the Department of the Mississippi, and Grant, raised to the rank of
major-general, assigned to the command of the military district of
Tennessee.
Polk evacuated Columbus, made a stand at “Island No. 10,” was driven
from there, and the Southern line was shattered.
Grant drove the Southern forces out of the State of Kentucky and across
the whole breadth of the State of Tennessee.
General Johnston, the Southern commander, ordered a concentration
at a place called Corinth, near the border-line of Tennessee and
Mississippi, and the Northern forces concentrating at Savannah,
twenty-three miles farther north, made the battle of Shiloh inevitable.
On March 11th President Lincoln in a war order commanded, “That the
two departments now under the respective commands of Generals Halleck
and Hunter, together with so much of that under General Buell as lies
west of a north and south line indefinitely drawn through Knoxville,
Tennessee, be considered and designated the Department of the
Mississippi, and that, until otherwise ordered, Major-General Halleck
have command of said Department.” Halleck was an exacting officer,
who carried caution and prudence to such an extent that they ceased
to be virtues. About the time Lincoln issued this war order, Grant
in some way had offended Halleck, and, as a consequence, had been
superseded for the time being in the command by General C. F. Smith, a
sturdy soldier, held in high esteem by his superiors. Smith was first
ordered to Savannah, and when there, General Halleck instructed him
to search out a fit position in the vicinity to assemble the Federal
army preparatory to advancing on Corinth. Pittsburg Landing, nine miles
south of Savannah on the Tennessee River, and on the direct line to
Corinth, was the chosen spot, and thither General Grant, reinstated in
his command, proceeded to take up his position to await the arrival
of General Buell and 22,000 Northern troops who were on their way to
reinforce him before he advanced to Corinth. Both North and South,
recognising the inevitability of a decisive battle, set about the
amassing of troops at their respective centres--Pittsburg Landing and
Corinth.
Albert Sidney Johnston, a general who had seen much service against the
Mexicans and Indians, and who was looked upon as the most brilliant of
all the Southern leaders, had his headquarters at Nashville, Tennessee,
when the crushing news of the capture of Forts Henry and Donaldson
reached him. He saw that he must without delay fall back and at some
point consolidate the scattered forces of the South. On February 18th
he moved out, evacuating Nashville, and leaving in that city only
a small company to preserve order, made Corinth his object point.
General Beauregard, second in command at this time as at Bull Run, was
guarding the Mississippi, and Johnston now set about joining their two
armies to check the advance of the Federals under Grant. To accomplish
this it was imperative that Johnston should give up his hold either
on the Mississippi or Central Tennessee, and he decided to hold the
Mississippi at all hazard. For this purpose, and to retain control of
railways indispensable to the South, he decided that Corinth was the
proper point for concentration. Picking up on his way all those who
had escaped capture at Fort Donaldson, he arrived at Corinth on March
24th with 20,000 men. To meet him came General Bragg, from Pensacola,
with 10,000 men; General Polk, from Columbus; General Ruggles, from
New Orleans; and General Beauregard, commanding the whole. In all,
his force numbered about 50,000 men. General Grant, already stationed
on what was destined to be the field of the Battle of Shiloh, had
about 38,000 men, and General Buell, marching to reinforce Grant, had
something like 22,000 men. Johnston’s troops as a whole were poorly
armed. Thousands of them were, in fact, practically without arms,
and many regiments were under the necessity of borrowing rifles from
other regiments with which to do their drills. Moreover, there was a
serious deficiency in ammunition, and the clothing of the majority
of the troops was in a deplorable condition. But Johnston and his
officers set to work with the greatest determination. Green regiments
were broken into their duties, the country was scoured for volunteers,
and train-loads of arms were hurried from the Atlantic coast. Johnston
strained every nerve to complete arrangements and to get his army in a
proper state to admit of his attacking Grant and beating him, before
Buell could arrive with reinforcements. He had been so fortunate as
to effect the concentration of his forces first, and there was, so
it seemed to him, a good chance of finding himself in a position to
fight the Northern army in sections. If he could but come at Grant
before Buell arrived he entertained no fears of the results. Grant once
beaten, a highway to the north would be thrown open to him. Buell, as
it happened, was being seriously delayed by broken bridges and roads
well-nigh impassable from heavy rains and overflowing streams; but
Grant, with false security, awaited his coming with no impatience.
It seems never to have crossed Grant’s mind that there existed a
possibility of Johnston attacking him. He erected no breastworks, nor
does he seem to have taken the simple precaution of keeping a sharp
look-out with scouts or pickets at a reasonable distance in front of
him. The absence of ordinary prudence must have cost him thousands of
lives in this, the Battle of Shiloh.
[Illustration: SHILOH BATTLE-FIELD: SCENE ABOVE THE RIVER
WHERE THE CONFEDERATES’ ADVANCE WAS CHECKED IN THE EVENING OF
THE FIRST DAY.]
All matters carefully arranged, Johnston determined to strike at Grant
without further delay, issuing marching orders on the afternoon of
April 3rd, and the Confederate army set out to surprise the Federal
army as it lay on the banks of the Tennessee. The marching force
consisted of 40,000 men divided into three corps, commanded by Generals
Bragg, Hardee, and Polk; Breckenridge commanding the reserve. Johnston,
of course, assumed supreme command, and Beauregard was second in
command, without specific orders. Hardee led the van, Bragg followed,
and Polk and Breckenridge on the left and right brought up the rear.
As it turned out, the march to Shiloh was one of galling hardship.
Blinding sleet, and snow, and rain beat upon the advancing hosts
that struggled along knee-deep in slush and mire, painfully dragging
after them ladened waggons and heavy guns. Ill clad, poorly fed, and
sore-footed from long marches to the place of concentration, the
soldiers of the South still made the best of matters, and seemed as
eager as their commander to strike the blow before it would be too
late. Johnston hoped to reach a position to permit of his attacking
Grant early on Saturday, April 5th; but when he saw the slow progress
his men made along roads that were nothing but stretches of quagmire,
he almost despaired of ever covering the miles that lay before him,
and, indeed, gave up all hope of surprising the Federals. That Grant
would fail to hear of his approach he could not believe. But in this he
was mistaken. Grant seemed to have abandoned all caution, and to have
made very little, if any, attempt to keep himself in touch with the
movements of the Confederates.
[Illustration: THE MARCH TO SHILOH.]
After two days wallowing through the mire, Johnston bivouacked his
army within four miles of the Federal camp, and neither Grant nor his
officers knew anything about the movement.
To show how completely in the dark the Federal commander must have
been, it is only necessary to look at official reports.
Sherman on Saturday reported to Grant--“All is quiet along my line”;
and later, “I do not apprehend anything like an attack upon our
position.”
The same day Grant, reporting to his superior, Halleck, wrote--“I have
scarcely the faintest idea of an attempt being made upon us”; and in an
earlier telegram he said--“The main force of the enemy is at Corinth.”
When he was writing these words the Confederate army, 40,000 strong,
was at his very door.
It clearly could never have entered the head of General Smith, when
he picked upon Pittsburg Landing as the proper camping-place for
the Northern army until such time as accumulated forces warranted a
march against Corinth, that there was a ghost of a chance of the
South assuming the offensive. Three sides of the camp were bordered
by waterways impassable to troops. To the rear of the camp the broad
Tennessee River flowed, to the right Snake Creek, to the left Lick
Creek--both deep, sluggish, and unfordable. The ground enclosed by
these waters was high, and in places deeply scarred with gullies.
The situation was a _cul-de-sac_, the only opening that towards
Corinth. And when on that Sunday morning General Johnston’s army
suddenly appeared, stretching across this opening, the army of the
North found itself in a trap from which, if beaten, there could be no
escape. Retreat was utterly impossible. There was nowhere to retreat.
Never was an army more hopelessly hemmed about than the army of Grant
at Shiloh.
Shiloh Church stood at what may be called the entrance to the
_cul-de-sac_. Against it, forming the right wing of Grant’s army,
lay Sherman, clearly the hero of the battle. In the centre, and on
a line with Sherman, was stationed Prentiss, while at the extreme
left near Lick Creek lay Stewart. To the left and rear of Sherman was
McClernand, while in the rear lay the divisions of Generals Hurlbut
and W. H. L. Wallace. Another General Wallace, Lewis by name, with
5,000 reserves, was encamped some miles distant on the northern side
of Snake Creek. On the Tennessee River, opposite Pittsburg Landing,
a few gunboats rode at anchor, and these, later in the day, played a
prominent part in the action.
It was a few minutes after five o’clock on Sunday morning, April the
6th, that Johnston ordered his army to advance. A short distance from
the Northern army the Federal pickets were encountered. These were
brushed aside, and the Southern soldiers came cheering and firing
through the wood. Before the Federals encamped on the banks of the
Tennessee were rightly awake, the Confederates came charging down upon
the camp. Sherman’s men were the first encountered. The firing of the
pickets and the subsequent cannonading had awakened this general to the
situation, and he called his men under arms, and drew them up to resist
the attack. Sherman’s brigades standing firm as a rock, the Confederate
attack glanced off his ranks and struck Prentiss with irresistible
force. This unfortunate general attempted to stay the charge, and for
some minutes his men, half-dressed and in confusion, fought valiantly;
but in a very short time Prentiss himself and whole companies of his
men were surrounded and taken prisoners, his guns captured, and his
camp overrun and destroyed.
Grant on Saturday had received a request from General Buell to meet him
at Savannah on this Sunday morning. Little thinking that an engagement
was imminent, Grant had gone thither to keep the appointment, and the
first news he had of the Confederate movements was conveyed to him
by the thundering of the cannon. Listening, he soon realised that a
serious engagement was beginning. Taking steamer to Pittsburg Landing,
he arrived on the scene of battle at eight o’clock, and found the whole
Confederate army about his ears. With 33,000 men, to all intents and
purposes men who had been taken by surprise, he had to fight 40,000,
who for days had been looking forward to the fray. Already his men
had been driven back all along the line. The situation was desperate,
Sherman alone having for the three hours made a good struggle of it.
Stubbornly fighting against overwhelming odds, himself sorely wounded,
and his men falling by scores about him, General Sherman held his
ground so that those behind him might have time to get into line and
take up favourable positions. Hard pressed, and in the thick of the
fire, he rode up and down the lines, personally supervising every
detail of the fight, and nerving his men to the great occasion. But
the soldiers of the South were not to be gainsaid. Like a wedge, they
drove themselves between Sherman and Prentiss, being slaughtered by
hundreds in the process; but, unflinchingly persevering, they assailed
Sherman’s left so savagely that the general was in the end forced to
use his right as a pivot, and in that way to swing his whole command
into a fresh position to save his left being turned. In the process
he lost two of his batteries and his camp. This movement of Sherman’s
permitted General Johnston to hurl his forces against McClernand, who,
unable to withstand the ferocity of the charge, was driven far back.
Stewart, who held the extreme left near Lick Creek, also fell back,
and Hurlbut in the centre was only saved from annihilation by General
W. H. L. Wallace’s division coming to his succour, and allowing his
command to retire from the open ground into a wood, where all the day
he was obliged to fight like a tiger, withstanding charge after charge
delivered by the fiery Southerners. In the defence of this position
General W. H. L. Wallace was killed.
General Lewis Wallace, in command of the Federal reserves--5,000
men--lay the other side of Snake Creek, and for his arrival Grant
waited with impatience, for matters were becoming desperate. The only
way Wallace could possibly reach the scene of battle was by means of
a bridge across Snake Creek, and so it seemed to Grant the existence
of his army now depended on this bridge being held against capture.
Sherman knew this, too, and he gradually fell back, until to fall back
any further meant the loss of the bridge. Then he took up as favourable
a position as he could find, and refused to retreat one step more,
although one-half of the Confederate army dashed against his lines.
During the long hours that he stood there, waiting for Lewis Wallace
and the reserves, it seemed as though his whole command must be wiped
out of existence.
Drawn up in the partial cover of a wood, with before them open rough
country, across which the enemy’s forces must rush, and with the
knowledge that should they allow themselves to be forced back their
whole army would be exterminated, each Federal under Sherman and
McClernand stood and fought with the desperation of a trapped and
stricken tiger. General Johnston, hoping to force the position, hurried
forward brigade after brigade, and hurled them against the soldiers
of the North. Again and again the van of the Confederates pierced the
ranks of the Federals, fighting hand to hand and face to face, with
thrust of bayonet and crash of clubbed rifle, but pierced the line
only to be blotted out of existence by the men who stood, as it were,
with their backs to a wall, and who fought the fight of grim despair.
This was the first great slaughter-pen of the bloody battle of Shiloh.
Whole companies of Southern troops, bareheaded, barefooted, in rags,
hungry, and ill-equipped, but undaunted and determined, rushed headlong
across the rugged ground, and with the fury of fanatics flew at the
hemmed-in ranks of the North, only to be beaten back by those who could
go back no farther. The men of the North grimly held to their position,
trusting that fate would soon bring Lewis Wallace and his reserves on
the scene to succour an already defeated army.
The South fought for victory, but the North fought for time, for
darkness, for life.
[Illustration:
THE
BATTLE
OF
SHILOH.]
At ten o’clock in the morning General Johnston had the satisfaction of
knowing that all his plans had worked out to a nicety. He had forced
Grant into a corner, carried position after position, captured many
guns, and taken prisoners by hundreds. Grant’s army was now confined in
a space of not more than 400 acres. At eleven o’clock there came a lull
in the fight. The time had arrived for General Johnston to begin the
second movement of his plan of battle. This was to turn Grant’s left,
sweep him from Pittsburg Landing, and crush the left against Sherman on
the right. To do this the Confederates must advance across open ground
in the very teeth of batteries and entrenched infantry. In the thick of
this, the most difficult work of the day, the South suffered a sudden
and irreparable loss. General Johnston while directing the movement was
struck by a rifle-bullet. He fell, and almost immediately died. The
news ran from lip to lip, and checked the charge. And, to add to the
confusion, General Beauregard, on whom the command devolved, could not
at once be found to be told that his chief was dead. The fight still
continued, but during the time it took to find Beauregard, and the
further time that elapsed before he could get the strings of battle
into his hands, the Southerners fought themselves into some confusion,
and Grant was able to re-form and tighten up his lines. Moreover, the
Southerners had driven the Federals so close to the river that they
themselves, in following up their successes, found themselves within
range of the guns aboard the boats on the Tennessee River, and shells
from the gunboats began to play havoc in the Confederate lines. But
this could not be helped. It was the price of success. The afternoon
was advancing, and Beauregard hastened to the task of the turning of
the left before darkness should make further fighting impossible.
Across the ground that divided Federal from Confederate ran a deep
scar, and on the shoulder of the opposite bank of this Grant had thrown
up some hasty breastworks. When the Southerners dashed into this gully,
shot and shell from the gunboats on the river shrieked up the length of
it, and an appalling rifle-fire came down the slope and into the mass
of men that struggled forward to take the breastwork. The Federals were
at their last resource. If the breastwork should be taken, and their
left turned, it meant the end of all things to them. The Confederates,
too, were in desperation, for night was falling upon the land, and
victory still unwon. Into the valley they poured, and up the bank they
struggled and scrambled, but scarcely one of them reached the top. Shot
and shell and bayonet-thrust soon filled the valley with Southern dead
and wounded; and while the fight still continued, darkness fell, and
put an end to the day’s struggle. Beauregard, reporting the state of
things after the first day’s fight, said:
“At six o’clock p.m. we were in possession of all his encampments
between Owl (a tributary of Snake Creek) and Lick Creeks but one,
nearly all his field artillery, about thirty flags, colours, and
standards, over three thousand prisoners, including a division
commander (General Prentiss) and several brigade commanders, thousands
of small-arms, an immense supply of subsistence, forage, and munitions
of war, and a large amount of means of transportation--all the
substantial fruits of a complete victory--such, indeed, as rarely have
followed the most successful battles.”
[Illustration: SHILOH BATTLE-FIELD: SCENE WHERE GENERAL
JOHNSTON FELL.]
But this was to be the end of the fruits of victory for the South.
When the bugles rang out on the evening air the order to cease
fighting, the soldiers of the North, as well as those of the South,
sank to the ground in hopeless exhaustion. They had fought like fiends
from early morning, travelled miles of country, scrambled through
thickets, across quagmires and stagnant waters, hauling guns and
waggons and stores, assisting the wounded, savagely attacking and
repulsing attack; and now that a truce for the night had been declared,
the soldiers found themselves so worn and weak that many paid no
attention to the cravings of hunger and the urgings towards material
comforts, but lay down on the ground and bivouacked where they had
stood when the order to cease fighting reached them.
[Illustration: “UP THE BANK THEY STRUGGLED AND
SCRAMBLED” (_p._ 212).]
All the dark, stormy night it rained a chilling rain. A cold wind
moaned through the trees, and so exhausted were the unwounded that the
wounded lay in the main unattended. Grant himself lay with no other
covering than the clothes he wore, his head to the stump of a tree,
and passed the night as best he could. To add to the horrors of the
night, the two gunboats, riding safely upon the bosom of the Tennessee,
kept up a deafening bombardment of the Confederate quarters throughout
the whole of the night, the shells shrieking and crashing among the
trees, hurling great limbs, and even whole tree-tops, to the ground,
and finally setting fire to the leaves that were on the ground and the
underbrush, until the badly wounded were burned where they lay.
It was indeed a night of horror, of suffering, and of despair.
But worst of all for the South, in the middle of the night Buell
arrived, and had the field of battle explained to him; and when the
morning dawned, his army--22,000 men--fresh and eager to fight,
marched upon the scene, together with General Wallace’s 5,000 reserve.
When Beauregard arose to continue the battle, he found himself
hopelessly outnumbered, and, fighting bravely still, was rapidly driven
from all the advantages he had gained, and in the end routed. His men
marched a miserable march to Corinth, again through sleet and mire,
but, fortunately for them, the North had been too sorely cut up to
follow for any great distance. In this woeful retreat 300 men died of
cold and privation.
In this Battle of Shiloh about 100,000 troops all together were
engaged, and of these 23,269 were killed, wounded, or missing. It was
simply a hard, stubborn fight from start to finish; and the death of
Johnston, and Buell’s fortunate arrival in the nick of time, in all
likelihood saved the Northern army from a most disastrous defeat. The
Confederates fought with the fury that distinguished them all through
the war. On the other hand, the Federals fought with the dogged
determination which ultimately won them the rights for which they had
taken up arms. Draper, in his history of the American Civil War, gives
the following as the Federal and Confederate losses:--
In Grant’s army there were six divisions. Their losses, in killed and
wounded, were:--
1st. McClernand’s, loss both days 1,861
2nd. W. H. L. Wallace’s, loss both days 2,424
3rd. Lewis Wallace’s, loss second day 305
4th. Hurlbut’s, loss both days 1,985
5th. Sherman’s, loss both days 2,031
6th. Prentiss’ (no report), loss estimated 2,000
------
Aggregate loss 10,606
Of Buell’s army, four divisions had marched to Grant’s aid; of these,
three were engaged:--
2nd. McCook’s loss 881
4th. Nelson’s loss 693
5th. Crittenden’s loss 390
-----
Aggregate loss 1,964
The Confederate losses were 1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, 959 missing.
Total, 10,699.
General Beauregard, after Shiloh, retired from the command of the
Confederate forces on the plea of ill-health, and General Bragg was
made permanent commander.
[Illustration:
[_Photo., Handy, South Washington, D.C._
PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]
[Illustration:
AMOAFUL
BY G. A. HENTY]
The 31st of January, 1874, will long be a day noted in the memories
of the people who were, prior to that time, a scourge to their
neighbours and a standing menace to the native tribes under the British
protectorate at Cape Coast. It is probable that the exact date itself
has long ere this been forgotten, even if--which is very doubtful--the
Ashantis possess a calendar, or have any means of calculating the dates
of events, unless these happen to occur on the longest or shortest day,
or, perhaps, on the occasion of a new or full moon. The memory of the
battle, however, owing to a singular custom that prevails among them
and the other peoples of the coast, will never be lost as long as the
Ashantis remain a tribe. As the Greeks and Romans used to swear by
their divinities, the Ashantis swear by their misfortunes; and the most
solemn oath that can be taken by a king or chief of these peoples is
a national defeat or disaster. Assuredly, then, Amoaful will for many
generations be one of the most binding oaths among the Ashantis.
Ashanti had long shared with Dahomey the reputation of being the most
warlike and bloodthirsty of the peoples of West Africa; they were
constantly at war with their neighbours, the object of the incursions
committed being not so much the extension of territory as the carrying
away of large numbers of prisoners, to be sacrificed on the occasions
of their solemn festivals. They had long borne ill-will to the British
at Cape Coast, because of the protection granted by us to the Fanti
tribes; and from the commencement of the present century hostilities
have broken out at frequent intervals, and more than once the Ashantis
have carried fire and sword up to the very walls of Cape Coast, and on
one occasion defeated and destroyed a British force under Sir Charles
Macarthy.
This state of occasional warfare might have continued indefinitely,
had not the British exchanged some possessions with the Portuguese,
acquiring by this transaction the town of Elmina, some five miles north
of Cape Coast Castle, and the protectorate of the district lying behind
it. The tribe of this district had been allies of the Ashantis, and
Elmina itself had been their port of trade. The Portuguese had been in
the habit of paying a small annual sum to the Ashanti; this sum was
considered by them to be a present, but was regarded by the Ashantis as
a tribute. Ashanti, therefore, objected to the transfer, and marched an
army across the Prah to the assistance of their allies in the districts
dependent on Elmina. Early in June, having brushed aside the resistance
of the Fantis, the invading army reached Elmina, being joined by all
the tribes in its neighbourhood. A small party of Marines and Marine
Artillery were landed from the ships on the coast, and inflicted a
severe blow on the invaders as they were on the point of entering the
town.
The position was so serious that the British Government sent out Sir
Garnet Wolseley, with some twenty British officers, to organise, if
possible, a native force to cope with the enemy; or, if this could
not be done, to prepare the way for the landing of a British force of
sufficient strength to strike a heavy blow at the Ashantis in their
own country. Just as the party left England, a disaster befell us.
Commodore Commerell started to ascend the Prah with boats from the
squadron on the coast. They had gone but a short distance when they
were fired upon by the Ashantis, in ambush behind the bushes lining the
bank of the river. Commodore Commerell was severely wounded, as were
other officers and many seamen, and the expedition was forced to return.
The attempt to get up a large native force failed; but an expedition
was undertaken from Elmina, composed of bluejackets and marines, and a
portion of the 2nd West Indian Regiment, and this, after a sharp brush
with the enemy, burnt several villages and cleared the neighbourhood of
the Ashantis, who had been suffering very much during the wet season
from disease and the want of food. An attack on Abra Crampa, whose
king had joined us heartily, was repulsed; there was sharp fighting at
Dunqua and other skirmishes; and the Ashantis, disheartened by want
of success, and more than decimated by fever, fell back across the
Prah. The invasion had, thus far, been repelled solely by the naval
forces, aided by the 2nd West Indian Regiment and two native regiments
commanded by Sir Evelyn Wood and Major Baker Russell, each of whom had
some eight English officers under him.
[Illustration: CAPE COAST CASTLE.]
A road was made to the Prah, huts erected at suitable distances for the
use of the white troops, and when these landed, early in January, all
was ready for their advance. The force consisted of a battalion of the
Rifle Brigade and the 42nd; the 23rd Regiment remained on board the
transport that had brought them, it being considered that it was better
for them to stay in reserve, as the difficulties of carriage were so
great that the fewer the number of men taken up the better. There
was also a naval brigade, composed of bluejackets and marines, some
companies of the 1st and 2nd West Indian Regiments, Wood and Russell’s
native regiments, and a battery of little mountain guns commanded by
Captain Rait, and manned by natives trained by him, and a small party
of Royal Engineers. After a few skirmishes of no great importance, the
force made their way nearly to Amoaful, where it was known that the
Ashanti army was assembled in force to oppose their further advance.
[Illustration: “THE BONNY MEN LED THE ADVANCE”
(_p._ 221).]
The white regiments halted at Ingafoo, while the two native
regiments, with the Engineers and Rait’s artillery, marched forward to
Quarman, a little more than half a mile from the enemy’s outposts. Lord
Gifford, who commanded the scouts, lay all day in the bushes within
sound of the voices of the Ashanti, while Major Home, R.E., with the
sappers, cut paths almost up to the edge of the bush. At half-past
seven on the morning of the 31st of January, a naval brigade, with
two companies of the 23rd who had just come up, the 42nd, and Rifle
Brigade, arrived at Quarman and marched on without a halt, followed
by the force already in the village, where a garrison was left with
the baggage. The two native regiments were now reduced to but seven
companies altogether, owing to the necessity for leaving garrisons at
the various posts along the road. The plan of operations had already
been determined upon. The 42nd Regiment were to form the main attacking
force. They were first to drive the enemy’s scouts from the little
village of Agamassie, just outside the bushes where Gifford’s scouts
were lying, and were then to move straight on, extending to the right
and left of the path, and, if possible, to advance in a skirmishing
line through to the bush. Two guns of Rait’s battery were to be in
their centre, and to move upon the path itself. Half the naval brigade
and Wood’s regiment were first to cut a path out to the right, and then
to turn parallel with the main path, so that the head of the column
should touch the right of the skirmishing line of the 42nd, while
the other half of the naval brigade, with Russell’s regiment, was to
proceed in similar fashion on the left.
The two companies of the 23rd were to come on behind the headquarter
staff; the Rifle Brigade were to remain in reserve. The intention was
that the whole should form a sort of hollow square, the column on the
right and left protecting the 42nd from the flanking movements upon
which the Ashantis were always accustomed to rely for victory. With
each of the flanking columns were detachments of Rait’s battery with
rocket tubes.
The 42nd, as they burst out from the bush, encountered but little
opposition; the eight or ten houses composing the village being
occupied by but a small party of the enemy, who fled at once into the
bush beyond. This was so thick, and the open ground round the village
so small, that it was necessary to clear away a space for the bearers
of the litters, surgical appliances, and spare ammunition, and it was
nearly half an hour before the rest of the force issued from the narrow
path into the open.
The pause had been a trying one, for a tremendous roar of fire told
that the Black Watch were hotly engaged, and, indeed, had gained but a
distance of a couple of hundred yards while the native labourers were
clearing the bush round the village. As soon as they reached the open
space, the flanking columns turned off to the right and left, and it
was not long before the increasing roar of musketry showed that they,
too, were engaged.
The scene bore little resemblance to that presented by any modern
battle-field. The Ashanti bush consists of a thick wood of trees
some forty or fifty feet high, covered and interlaced with vines and
creepers, while the heat and moisture enable a dense undergrowth to
flourish beneath their shade. Above all tower the giants of the forest,
principally cotton trees, which often attain a height of from 250 to
300 feet.
Progress through this mass of jungle and thorn is impossible even
for the natives, except where paths are cut with hatchet or sword.
These paths are generally wide enough only for a single file, and two
persons meeting in opposite directions have a difficulty in passing
each other, the more so as long use wears down the soft, moist earth
until the tracks are converted into ditches two or three feet deep.
The ground across which the 42nd were trying to force their way was
more open than usual, owing probably to the undergrowth having been
cleared away to furnish firing to the little village. It was somewhat
undulating, and the depressions were soft and swampy. Each little rise
was held obstinately by the enemy, who, lying down beyond the crest,
behind trees, or in clumps of bush, kept up an incessant fire against
the Black Watch; and even the aid of Rait’s two little guns and two
rocket troughs failed to overcome their resistance. The two flanking
columns encountered even more strenuous opposition: before they could
advance into the bush a way had to be cut for them by the natives under
the orders of the Engineer officers. Although the troops endeavoured to
cover this operation by an incessant fire into the bush on either side,
the service was a desperate one. Several of the men fell dead from the
fire of their hidden foes, others staggered back badly wounded, and
Captain Buckle, of the Royal Engineers, one of the most zealous and
energetic officers of the expedition, fell mortally wounded by two
slugs in the neighbourhood of the heart.
Little wonder was it that, although the natives behaved with singular
courage, at times they quailed under the fire to which they were
exposed; consequently the advance of the two columns soon came to a
standstill, and the men lying down kept up a constant fire on the
unseen enemy, directing their aim solely at the puffs of smoke spurting
from the bushes. So difficult was it to keep the direction in this
dense bush that both columns had swerved from the line on which it was
intended that they should advance. The roar of fire was so general and
continuous that none of the three columns were in any degree certain
as to the direction in which the others lay, and from each of them
messenger after messenger was sent back to Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had
taken up his position with his staff at the village, complaining that
the men were exposed to the fire from the other columns.
The noise was, indeed, out of all proportion to the number of
combatants. The Ashantis use enormous charges of powder--which, indeed,
would be absolutely destructive to the old Tower muskets with which
they were armed were these loaded with tightly-fitting bullets. This,
however, was not the case, as on the powder three or four slugs of
roughly chopped-up lead were dropped loosely down: the noise made
by the explosion of the muskets so charged was almost as loud as
that of small field-pieces; and, indeed, although but two or three
hundred yards from the village the reports of Rait’s mountain guns
were absolutely indistinguishable in the din. The trees broke up the
sound in a singular manner, and the result was a strange and confused
reverberation, mingled with the hissing sound rising from the storm of
bullets and slugs mingled with that of the rockets. Well was it for
our soldiers that the enemy used such heavy charges, for these caused
the muskets to throw high, and the slugs for the most part whistled
harmlessly over the heads of the troops and almost covered them with
the showers of leaves cut from the trees overhead.
For an hour this state of things continued, the two companies of the
23rd were then ordered to advance along the main path and to aid the
42nd in clearing the bush, where the Ashantis still fought stubbornly
not two hundred yards from the village. Two companies of the Rifle
Brigade were sent up the left-hand road to keep that path intact up to
the rear of the Naval Brigade, while on the right, the rear of Colonel
Wood’s column was ordered to advance further to the right, so that the
column might form a diagonal line, and firing to their right only,
not only cover the flank of the 42nd, but do away with the risk of
stray shots striking them. Wounded men were now coming fast into the
village--42nd, Rifles, Naval Brigade, and natives.
[Illustration: ASHANTI]
On the left the firing gradually ceased, and Colonel McLeod, who
commanded there, sent in to the general to say that he was no longer
hotly attacked, but that he had altogether lost touch of the left of
the 42nd. He was therefore ordered to cut a road north-east until he
came in contact with them. He experienced a resolute opposition, but
the rockets gradually drove the Ashantis back. In the meantime, the
42nd were fighting hard. In front of them was a swamp, and on the rise
opposite the ground was covered with the little arbours that constitute
an Ashanti camp. Not an enemy was to be seen, but from the opposite
side the puffs of smoke came thick and fast, and a perfect rain of
slugs swept over the ground on which the 42nd were lying. The path was
so narrow that Rait could bring but one gun into position. This he
pushed boldly forward, and, aided by Lieutenant Saunders, poured round
after round of grape into the enemy until their fire slackened and the
42nd were again able to advance.
Step by step they won their way, each advance being covered by the
little gun, which did terrible execution among the crowded, though
unseen, ranks of the enemy. The camp was won; but beyond it the bush
was thick and absolutely impenetrable for a white soldier, and it was
necessary to advance solely by the narrow path. This was swept by
a storm of slugs from the bush on either side, although the Snider
bullets searched the bush and the guns poured in showers of grape. At
last the Ashanti fire diminished, and the troops dashed forward up the
lane, and the bush thickened on either side until too dense even for
the Ashantis to occupy it. With a cheer the Black Watch issued from the
upper end of the pass, and spread out into the wide open space dividing
the village of Amoaful into two sections. For a short time the Ashantis
kept up a fire from the houses and from the other end of the cleared
space, but the 42nd soon drove them from the houses; and a shell from
a gun fell among a group at the farther end of the clearing and killed
eight of them, and the rest retreated at once. Major McPherson and
eight other officers were wounded, and the total of 104 casualties in a
force of 450 men showed how severe had been the struggle.
It was now twelve o’clock, and although they had lost their camp and
village and had suffered terribly, the Ashantis were not yet finally
beaten. The principal part of the force that had been engaged upon our
left had swept round to the right, and were pressing hard upon our
right column, and cutting in between them and the 42nd. Fortunately,
however, the left column had cut its path rather too much to the east
and now came into the main path, and so formed a connecting link
between the 42nd at Amoaful and the head of the right column. Although
the latter had been strengthened by the addition of a company of the
Rifles, it suffered severely: Colonel Wood and six naval officers were
wounded, together with some forty men. The fire of the enemy at last
slackened, and it seemed as if all was over, when suddenly a tremendous
fire broke out from the rear of the column, showing that the Ashantis
were making a last and desperate effort to turn our right flank, and to
retake the village from which they had been driven in the morning.
For a few minutes the scene in the village was exciting. So near were
the enemy that the slugs came pattering down among the remainder of
the Rifles still held in reserve there, and they and the guard of
the reserve ammunition prepared to resist an attack, three companies
of the Rifles at once moving out to prolong the rear of the right
column, and so to cover that side of the village. For a while the
roar of musketry was as heavy and continuous as it had been during
the morning, and continued so for three-quarters of an hour. While it
was going on another strong body of the enemy attacked Quarman, but
the small force of forty men of the 2nd West Indian Regiment and half
a company of Wood’s regiment, under the command of Captain Burnett,
although taken by surprise--for with a great battle raging but half a
mile away, they had no idea of being attacked--defended themselves with
great gallantry, and even sallied out and brought in a convoy that had
arrived near the village, and finally, being reinforced by a company of
Rifles, took the offensive and drove off their assailants.
Finding themselves met on whatever side they attacked, the Ashanti
fire began to relax. As soon as it did so, Sir Garnet gave the word
for the line to advance, sweeping round from the rear so as to drive
the enemy northward before them. The movement was admirably executed.
A company of men who had been raised at Bonny, and who had fought
steadily and silently all the time they had been on the defensive, now
raised their shrill war-cry, and slinging their rifles and drawing
their swords, dashed eagerly forward, while by their sides, skirmishing
as steadily and quietly as if on parade, the men of the Rifle Brigade
searched every bush with their bullets; and in five minutes from the
commencement of their advance the Ashantis were in full retreat.
The number of casualties on the part of the white and native troops
amounted to about 250--a very heavy proportion, considering the
comparatively small number of the force engaged. Fortunately the
wounds, for the most part, were comparatively slight: the flying slugs
inflicted ugly-looking gashes, but seldom penetrated far. Captain
Buckle, of the Engineers, was the only officer killed, but the number
of wounded was large, and included two other Engineer officers out of
the total of five engaged.
No one had shown more determined bravery than the natives, who worked
as sappers under their orders. The work was trying enough for the
men, who for five hours remained prone, returning the fire of their
invisible foes. The natives, however, for the same time, were working
continuously, cutting paths through the thick bush and exposed
defenseless to the enemy’s fire. Nearly half their number were among
the wounded. The total number of deaths did not exceed twenty. On the
side of the Ashantis no accurate record was obtained of the number who
fell. It is their custom always to carry off the killed and wounded,
unless hotly pressed; and therefore, until the last rush of the Black
Watch into Amoaful, they had ample time to follow their usual custom.
Nevertheless, the number of dead found was very large, and the lowest
calculation placed their loss at 2,000. Among these was Ammon O̰uatia,
the general-in-chief of the Ashantis, and Aboo, one of the six great
tributary kings of Ashanti. The Ashantis fought with extraordinary
pluck and resolution; they, indeed, enormously outnumbered the
little British force, and their position was admirably adapted for
their peculiar method of fighting. But, on the other hand, they were
wretchedly armed, and their old and worn-out muskets were poor weapons
indeed compared with the breechloaders of the whites, who had, in
addition, the assistance of their guns and rocket tubes.
[Illustration: “EACH LITTLE RISE WAS HELD OBSTINATELY BY
THE ENEMY” (_p._ 218).]
Great credit was due to both sides: to the Ashantis for their obstinate
and long-continued defence, and for the vigour with which, when
their centre was penetrated, they strove to redeem the day by their
flank attack upon us; to the British for their long endurance of a
terrific fire from unseen foes, by the manner in which they fought
under conditions so absolutely novel to them, and for the unwavering
resolution with which they won their way through the bush and finally
defeated a foe of ten times their own numerical force. The victory of
Amoaful virtually decided the result of the campaign, for although the
Ashantis fought again on the other side of the river Dah, the terrible
punishment inflicted upon them at Amoaful had greatly reduced their
spirit; nevertheless, they fought stoutly.
On this occasion the Bonny men led the advance up the path beyond
the river, and before they had gone half a mile were hotly engaged.
Lieutenant Saunders, with one of Rait’s guns, endeavoured to clear the
bushes, but little progress was made for two hours, and Lieutenant
Eyre, the adjutant of Wood’s regiment, fell mortally wounded when
standing near the gun. The Rifles now relieved the Bonny men, and led
the advance, and made their way slowly forward until within fifty yards
of a large clearing, surrounding a village; then with a cheer they
rushed forward, drove the enemy from the clearing, and occupied the
village. But behind them the combat raged for another two hours. The
troops lined the sides of the path, and repulsed all the efforts of the
Ashantis to break through them, holding the position while the native
carriers took the stores, spare ammunition, and medical comforts along
the path and up to the village. As soon as the last of these had passed
along, the troops followed, until the whole force were gathered in and
round the village.
The loss of the Ashantis can have been but little inferior to that
which they suffered at Amoaful, for they several times approached
in such masses that the whole bush swayed and moved as they pushed
forward. On the other hand, our casualties were very slight, for as
the road was, like all the paths in the country, hollowed out by the
traffic fully two feet below the general level, the troops lying there
were protected as by a breastwork of that height. When the whole
force were assembled in the village, the enemy still kept up serious
and desperate attacks upon the rear, but were always repulsed by the
Rifles, who lined the edge of the clearing. Mingled with the continued
din of musketry was the lugubrious roar of the great war-horns
throughout the woods, and the wild war-cry of the Ashantis.
The halt was a short one; Coomassie was still six miles distant, and
soon after the force were gathered round the village the Highlanders,
with Rait’s guns, moved forward along the path. For the first twenty
minutes the fire of the enemy was very heavy, but when the Black Watch
gained the crest of the rise beyond the village, the resistance became
more feeble, and they dashed forward at the double, sweeping all
opposition aside. The resistance of the Ashantis at once ceased; they
had done all that was possible for them to do to oppose our advance,
and had failed. Their main body was still in the rear of the village,
engaged in unavailing attacks upon the force there. Probably their best
and bravest troops were with this force, and at the rapid advance of
the 42nd a panic seized the defenders of the path; those in the bush
could not hope to move forward as rapidly as did the troops in the
open, while those in the villages along the path, warned by flying
fugitives of the rapid approach of the foe, joined in their flight. The
road was strewn with articles of clothing, the stools of state of the
chiefs, weapons, and food.
From this time no single shot was fired. The warriors in the bush,
seeing that they could not hope to get ahead of the advancing force and
make another effort to defend the capital, either went off at once to
their villages, or made a wide circuit and came down behind Coomassie
upon the road between that town and a spot, five miles away, where the
kings of Ashanti were buried, and where, doubtless, another battle
would have been fought had the troops advanced to the sacred spot. The
42nd halted at the last village before arriving at Coomassie, until
they were there joined by the rest of the force; then, after crossing
a deep and fetid marsh surrounding the town, they entered the capital
of the enemy. It was not, as might have been expected, deserted: a good
many of the inhabitants remained, some of the men being still armed,
and watched with curiosity rather than with alarm, the entry of the
white warriors who had broken the strength of their nation. Orders were
given to disarm them at once; but as soon as they perceived that this
was the case, they gradually withdrew, and in half an hour the whole of
the natives of Coomassie had disappeared in the bush.
Several fires broke out in various parts of the town. Some of these may
have been the work of the Ashantis themselves, but most of them were
caused unquestionably by the native camp-followers, who, in spite of
the stringent orders against looting, stole away in the darkness to
gather plunder. Some of them were flogged, and one was hung, and then,
after posting pickets thickly outside the town, the troops went off to
sleep.
The next morning the captured town could be fairly seen. The streets
were very wide; trees grew in them; and from the irregularity with
which the houses were scattered about, it resembled a great straggling
village rather than a town. The houses were of the kind with which the
troops had already become familiar, and resembled the architecture of
a Chinese temple rather than that of any other known building. Outside
was an alcove with red steps, high raised floor, and white pillars
supporting the roof. This formed the front of the house, and as there
was no entrance from it into the interior, it was, in fact, a sort of
summer-house and balcony, where the master must have sat to look at the
passing world and chat with his acquaintances. Inside, the houses were
all of the same character, comprising a number of little courts with
alcoves on one or more sides. Everything in Coomassie bore signs of
the superstitious belief of the inhabitants in fetish. Over every door
was suspended a variety of charms--old stone weapons, nuts, gourds,
amulets, beads, bits of china, bones, and odds-and-ends of all kinds.
The principal apartments of the larger houses were lumbered up with
drums, great umbrellas, and other paraphernalia of processions; but
there were no real valuables of any kind.
The great objects of interest to the troops in the town were the
palace and the great fetish-tree from which Coomassie took its name.
In a large clump of bushes adjoining the latter were found the remains
of some thousands of victims sacrificed in the bloody festivals. The
majority were, of course, but skeletons; but there were hundreds that
could have lain there but a few weeks, many which must have been
sacrificed within a few days. The stench from this charnel-place was
horrible, and pervaded the whole town. The palace occupied a very large
extent of ground. It consisted of a central stone building of European
architecture, which was used as a storehouse and was crowded with
articles of furniture, silver plate, gold masks, clocks, glass, china,
guns, cloth, and caskets, resembling in its confusion and the variety
of its contents a succession of auction-rooms. The rest of the palace
was of native work--similar, but on a much larger scale, to the houses
of the great chiefs.
A horrible smell of blood pervaded the whole place--for many of the
executions were held in the palace itself. During the day the rain
fell in torrents; and as it became known that the king had gone right
away into the interior of the country, as provisions were running very
short, the troops were already feeling much the effects of the climate,
and as the rains would swell every stream and fill every swamp, it was
decided to make a start for the coast the next morning, after burning
down the place that had been the scene of such countless horrors and
atrocities. This was done as the column marched out of the town. The
Engineers fired the houses and blew up the king’s palace; and a vast
cloud of smoke rising high into the air must have told the Ashantis,
scattered far and wide through the forests, that vengeance had at last
fallen on the city that had for so many years been regarded by them as
sacred, and had been the object of superstitious terror and hate to the
tribes for hundreds of miles round.
[Illustration: COOMASSIE.]
[Illustration:
THE REDOUBTS OF DÜPPEL
BY CHARLES LOWE]
Schleswig-Holstein, the cradle of the Anglo-Saxon race, was the
beautiful and interesting province which formed the bone of bloody
contention between the Prussians and the Danes in the year 1864, just
a year after the Prince of Wales had wedded the Danish “sea-king’s
daughter from over the sea,” and made all Englishmen take the very
deepest interest in the hopeless struggle of her undaunted countrymen
against an overwhelming foe.
The cause of quarrel was one of the most complicated questions which
ever vexed the minds of statesmen, and seemed so incapable of solution
that an irreverent Frenchman once declared it would remain after the
heavens and the earth had passed away. But on the death of Frederick
VII. of Denmark, in November, 1863, Herr von Bismarck, who had the
year before become Prussian Premier, determined that the difficulty
should now be settled by “blood and iron.” Briefly put, the new King of
Denmark, Christian IX., father of the Princess of Wales, wanted to rule
over the Elbe Duchies, as Schleswig-Holstein was called, in a way, as
was thought at Berlin, unfavourable to the rights and aspirations of
their German population; while, on the other hand, the Germanic Diet,
or Council of German Sovereigns at Frankfort, was resolved that this
should not be so. And rather than that this should be so, it decreed
“execution” on the King of Denmark, who had a seat in the Diet as for
the Duchies, and selected two of its members, Hanover and Saxony, to
enforce its decision.
But not content with this, Austria and Prussia, the leading members of
the Diet, also resolved to take the field, as executive bailiffs, so to
speak, of the judgment of the German Court; and this they did at the
beginning of 1864 with a united force of about 45,000 men. That was
not so very large a force, considering the size of modern armies, but
it was much larger than that opposed to it by the valiant Danes, about
36,000 in number, who were commanded by General de Meza. The Austrians
were commanded by Field-Marshal von Gablenz, and the Prussians by their
own Prince Frederick Charles, surnamed the “Red Prince,” from the
scarlet uniform of his favourite regiment, the Zieten Hussars.
The Commander of the combined Austro-Prussian army was the Prussian
Field-Marshal von Wrangel--“old Papa Wrangel,” as he was fondly
called--who looked, and spoke, and acted like a survival from the time
of the Thirty Years’ or the Seven Years’ War. He was a grim old _beau
sabreur_, who, in his later days, used to grind his teeth (what of
them were left) and scatter groschen among the street arabs of Berlin,
under the impression that he was sowing a crop of bullets that would
yet spring up and prove the death of all democrats and other nefarious
characters dangerous to military monarchy and the rule of the sword in
the civil state.
“_In Gottes Namen drauf!_”--“Forward in God’s name”--“Papa”
Wrangel had wired to the various contingents of his forces on the 1st
February, when at last the Danes had replied to his demands with an
emphatic “No!” and then the combined Austro-Prussian army swept over
the Eider amid a blinding storm of snow.
The Prussians took the right, the Austrians the left of the advance
into the Duchies; and after one or two preliminary actions of no
great moment, the invaders reached the Danewerk, a very strong line
of earthworks which had taken the place of the bulwark thrown up by
the Danes in ancient times against the incursions of the Germans. Here
the Prussians prepared for a stubborn resistance, but what was their
surprise and their delight, on the morning of the 6th February, to
find that the Danes had evacuated overnight this first bulwark line of
theirs, leaving 154 guns and large quantities of stores and ammunition
a prey to their enemies! Caution, not cowardice, had been the motive
of this retreat of theirs, for they saw that, if they had remained,
they would have run the risk of being outflanked and outnumbered; so
they determined, from reasons of military policy, to retire further
northward and take up their dogged stand behind their second line
of entrenchments at Düppel, there to await the assault of their
overwhelming foes.
[Illustration: FIELD-MARSHAL VON WRANGEL.]
Sending on the Austrians on the left into Jutland to dispose of the
Danes in that quarter, “Papa” Wrangel selected the “Red Prince” and
his Prussians to crack the nuts which had been thrown in their way
in the shape of the redoubts of Düppel. Prince Frederick Charles was
one of the best and bravest soldiers that had been produced by the
fighting family of the Hohenzollerns since the time of Frederick the
Great. A man about the middle height, strongly built, broad-shouldered,
florid-faced, sandy-bearded, bull-necked, rough in manner and speech,
and homely in all his ways--he was just the sort of leader to command
the affections and stimulate the courage of the Prussian soldier. There
was much of the bulldog in the “Red Prince,” so he was the very man to
entrust with such a task as that of hanging on to the Danes at Düppel.
Yet this task was one of exceeding difficulty, for the redoubts of
Düppel formed such a formidable line of defence as had rarely, if ever,
before opposed the advance of an invading army in the open field. All
the natural advantages of ground, with its happy configuration of
land and water, were on the side of the Danes, whose main object it
was to prevent their foes from setting foot on the Schleswig island
of Alsen, forming a stepping-stone, so to speak, to Denmark itself,
much in the same way as the island of Anglesey does to Ireland. To
continue the comparison, the Menai Strait corresponds to the Alsen-Sund
which separates the mainland of Schleswig from the island of Alsen.
Of this island the chief town is Sonderburg, which was connected by
the mainland, into which it looks over, by two pontoon bridges, at the
end of which the Danes threw up a _tête-du-pont_, or bridge-head
entrenchment, to defend the approach and passage; while about a couple
of miles further inland they had constructed a chain of no fewer than
ten heavy forts, or redoubts, all connected by lesser earthworks and
entrenchments.
This line of redoubts, about three miles long, ran right across the
neck of a peninsula of the mainland, called the Sundewitt, one end
resting on the Alsen-Sund and the other on a gulf, or bay, of the
Baltic, called the Wenningbund. The redoubts were placed along the
brow of a ridge which overlooked and commanded all the undulating
country for miles in front, while in the rear again the ground dipped
away gently down towards the Alsen-Sund and its bridge-head, affording
fine shelter and camping-ground to the Danes. A lovelier or more
romantic-looking region, with its winding bays and silver-glancing
straits, its picturesque blending of wood and water, could scarcely be
imagined.
Such a position as that which the Danes had taken up would have been
of no value whatever against foes like the English, seeing that the
latter might have gone with their warships and shelled the Danes clean
out of their line of redoubts without ever so much as landing a single
man, for, as already explained, the line of forts rested on the sea at
both ends. But at this time, fortunately for the Danes, the Prussians
had little or nothing of a navy, so that they must needs essay on land
what they could not attempt by sea; while the Danes, on the other hand,
though weaker on land, were decidedly superior to their foes on water.
In particular, they had one warship, or monitor, the _Rolf Krake_,
which gained immortal fame by the bold and devil-may-care manner in
which it worried, and harassed, and damaged, and kept the Prussians
perpetually awake. It lurked like a corsair in the corners of the bays,
and creeks, and winding sea-arms of that amphibious region, and darted
out upon occasion to shell and molest the Prussians in their trenches
before the Düppel lines.
For the Prussians had soon come to see that it would be quite
impossible for them to capture the Düppel redoubts save by regular
process of sap and siege. The redoubts proved to be far more formidable
than they ever fancied; and it would have involved an enormous
sacrifice of life on the part of the Prussians to rush for them at
once. The pretty certain result of such impetuosity would have been
that not a soul almost of the stormers would have lived to tell the
tale. For three whole years the Danes had been at work on these
redoubts, and what it takes three years to construct cannot by any
possibility be captured in as many days. Much had to be done by the
Prussians, then, before sitting down before the redoubts. If a simile
may be borrowed from the game of football, the “forwards” of the Danes
had first to be disposed of. For not only did they occupy the redoubts,
but likewise all the strong points in the country for two or three
miles in front of them, just as modern ironclads hang out nets to guard
their hulls from the impact of torpedoes. In a similar manner the Danes
had thrown out a network of men to fend off all hostile approach to
their forts and prevent the Prussians from settling down near enough to
them for the purposes of sap and siege.
While, therefore, the Prussians were busy bringing to the front their
heavy guns and other siege-material, others of them were set to the
work of sweeping clean, as with a broom of bayonets, the open positions
in front of the redoubts held by their defenders. But this sweeping
process was by no means either an easy or a bloodless task. For while
the Danes numbered 22,000 troops, the “Red Prince” in front of them
disposed at this time (though later he was reinforced) of no more than
16,000 men, and there was always the danger that the Danes, assuming
the offensive, would sally out of their lines and seek to overwhelm
their numerically weaker foes. Consequently the Prussians had recourse
to the spade in order to supplement the defensive power of their
rifles, and thus they first of all took up an entrenched position
running in a long semi-circle from Broacker on their right to Satrup
on the left, at a distance of about three miles or more from the real
object of their ambition--the line of Danish redoubts.
Two positions in front of these redoubts--the villages of Düppel and
Rackebüll--were fiercely contested by the Danes; but on the 17th of
March, after fighting in a manner which gave their foes a very high
opinion of their courage, they retired behind their earthworks with the
loss of 676 men, while the Prussians, on their part, had to pay for
their victory by only 138 lives. This disparity in loss was doubtless
due to the fact that, while the Danes were only armed with the old
smooth-bore muzzle-loading musket, the Prussians had adopted the
new _Zündnadelgewehr_, or needle-gun, the parent of all modern
breech-loading and repeating rifles, which gave them a tremendous
advantage over their opponents. In one of the preliminary encounters
above referred to, a party of Danes, against whom a superior force
of Prussian light-infantry (_Jäger_) was advancing, threw down
their arms in token of submission; but as the Prussians came forward,
they snatched them up again, fired a volley, and rushed on with the
bayonet. The Prussians let them come to within twenty-yards’ distance,
and then, raising their deadly needle-guns, shot them down to a man.
The treacherous conduct of the Danes above referred to caused great
bitterness among the Prussians; but, even after death, the latter
showed their foes the respect which brave men owe to one another, and
in West Düppel they raised a cross with this inscription:--“Here lie
twenty-five brave Danes, who died the hero’s death, 17th February,
1864.”
The result of these preliminary tussles was that the Danes attempted
no more outfalls, and from the 17th to the 28th of March one might
almost have concluded that an armistice had been agreed to but for an
occasional sputtering and spitting of rifle-fire between the foreposts,
who thus employed their time when not exchanging other courtesies in
the form of pipe-lights, tobacco-pouches, and spirit-flasks. But now
the time was come when it behoved the Prussians to get as close to the
redoubts as possible, for the purpose of opening their siegetrenches,
and General von Raven’s Brigade was selected to sweep the ground in
front of the Danish position of all its outposts. It was an early
Easter this year, and just when the preachers were proclaiming to their
congregations that the season of peace and goodwill to all men had now
again come round, the Danes and Prussians were lighting like fiends
under cover of the darkness.
The 18th Prussian Fusiliers had crept forward as far nearly as the
wire-fencing and palisades in front of the redoubts, when the dawn
suddenly revealed them to the Danes; and just at this moment, too, what
should appear upon the scene but the ubiquitous _Rolf Krake_,
which, at a distance of about five hundred yards, opened upon the
advancing Prussians such a shower of shell and grape-shot as forced
them to retire, causing these baffled fusiliers to curse the very name
of the ship-builder who had ever laid the keel of such a bold and
bothersome vessel.
[Illustration]
At length, during the night of the 30th March, the Prussians managed
to open their first parallel at a distance of about eight hundred
paces from the line of the redoubts, and now, so to speak, they had
reached the beginning of the end. The men on duty in this parallel,
or shelter-trench (about eight feet deep), were relieved at first
every forty-eight hours, and then every twenty-four, the former period
having been found to be too great a strain on the soldiers, who, in
consequence, had soon as many as ten per cent. on the sick list. For
nothing could have been more trying to the constitution than this
trench-life, with its cold nights, and rain, and mud, and manifold
wretchedness.
Yet the Prussian soldiers, who were all very young fellows--mere boys
some of them--kept up their spirits in the most wonderful manner,
and indulged in all kinds of fun--mounting a gas-pipe on a couple of
cart-wheels, and thus drawing the fire of the Danes, who imagined it
to be a cannon; making sentries out of clay, and otherwise indulging
in the thousand-and-one humours of a camp. They were also cheered by
frequent visits from their commander, the “Red Prince,” who--although
housed in most comfortable, not to say luxurious, quarters at
the Schloss, or château, of Gravenstein, about six miles to the
rear--failed not to ride to the front every day and acquaint himself
with all that was going on. With such a commander soldiers will do
anything, and hence the whole Prussian force in front of the Danish
redoubts began to burn with a fighting ardour which neither cold, nor
wet, nor knee-deep mud could in the least degree damp or depress.
On the other hand, the Danes, though better off for shelter in
their blockhouses, wooden barracks, and casemates, were not in such
good spirits. One of the few things, apparently, that cheered their
hearts was the sight of the numerous English tourists--“T. G.’s,”
or “travelling gents,” as they used to be called in the Crimea,
and _Kriegsbummler_, or war-loafers, as they are dubbed in
Germany--who, arrayed in suits of a most fearful and wonderful make,
streamed over to the Cimbrian Peninsula in quest of sensation and
adventure, exposing themselves on parapet and sky-line to the shells of
the Prussians with a devil-me-care coolness which proved a source of
new inspiration to the Danskés.
Simultaneously with the pushing on of their parallel work, the
Prussians kept up a tremendous fire on the forts, but the Danes showed
their good sense by lying quietly in their casemates and scarcely
noticing the storm of missiles directed against them. These missiles
did them and their earthworks very little harm, and they were not to be
terrified by mere noise. Before the Prussians had settled down to their
trench-work, their batteries over the bay at Gammelmark firing day and
night had in the course of a fortnight thrown about 7,500 shot and
shell into the Danish redoubts, yet not more than seventy-five officers
and men had been killed or disabled by all this roaring volcano of
heavy guns; and, indeed, it was computed about this time that the
Prussians were purchasing the lives of their enemies at about 500
cannon-shots per head. “The huge earthen mounds or humps (of forts),”
wrote a correspondent, “might have marked the graves of an extinct
race, or been the result of some gigantic mole’s obscure toil,” for all
the signs of life which the Prussian bombardment drew from the redoubts.
[Illustration: PRINCE FREDERICK CHARLES.]
One night a curious thing happened to a company of the 60th Prussian
regiment. In the course of some skirmishing it got too far forward,
and, when day broke, it found itself in a slight hollow of the ground
so near to Forts 1 and 2 that, had it tried to return to its own
lines, it must have been annihilated by the grape-shot of the Danes.
The shelter afforded it by the nature of the ground was so trifling
that the men were forced to lie down flat upon their bellies to avoid
being shot. In this unpleasant position they lay the whole day, for the
Danes, strange to say, did not seek to sally out and capture them; and
it was not till late in the evening that the company, under cover of
the darkness, was able to rejoin their friends. They had eaten nothing
in the interval, for, though they had provisions in their pockets,
or haversacks, the least movement they made to get at this provender
exposed them to the enemy’s fire.
The first parallel had been opened on the 30th of March, and the
second was accomplished in the night of the 10th of April. It was now
expected that the “Red Prince,” without more ado, would make a rush
for the forts and be done with them--the more so as there now began
to be whisperings of a political conference of the Powers which might
meet and baulk the Prussian soldier of the final reward of all his
toil. But still Prince Frederick Charles gave not the signal for the
assault, and then it oozed out that this delay was simply due to the
command of his royal uncle, King (afterward Kaiser) William, a very
humane monarch, who, wishing to spare as much as possible the blood of
his brave soldiers, had directed that still another--a third--parallel
should be made, so as to shorten the distance across which the stormers
would have to rush before reaching the redoubts. Meanwhile the
Prussians prepared themselves for the assault, among other things by
getting up sham works in imitation of those they had to attack, where
the battalions destined for the purpose were practised in breaking
down palisades and using scaling-ladders, as well as in disposing of
_chevaux de frise_ and other impediments usual in the defence of
forts. The Danish redoubts were known to the Prussians as Nos. 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, beginning from their--the Prussian--right on
the sea, and their foremost parallel fronted this line of forts from
1 to 6. Against these forts the Prussians had thrown up twenty-four
batteries mounting ninety-four guns, and now at last these guns were to
give voice in a chorus such as had not rent the sky since the fall of
Sebastopol.
But just as every storm is preceded by a strange delusive silence,
so the day before the assault on the Düppel redoubts--the 17th of
April--was a beautifully calm, sunny Sunday, with earth and sky
embracing in a common joy over the birth of spring, and the encircling
sea smooth as glass--a lovely day, and the last but one that many a
brave man was doomed to see. For the order had gone forth from Prince
Frederick Charles that at 10 o’clock precisely on the following
(Monday) morning the redoubts should at last be stormed. At dawn of day
the whole line of Prussian batteries should open fire on the forts,
pouring upon them one continuous cataract of shot and shell till 10
o’clock, when the storming columns would start out of their trenches
and “go for” the redoubts with might and main.
At 2 o’clock a.m. these columns--six in number, drawn by lot from the
various brigades so that all might have an impartial share in the
honour of the day--emerged from the Büffell-Koppel wood well in the
rear, and silently marched in the darkness to the parallels. Each
of these six columns was thus composed:--First of all a company of
infantry with orders to take extended front about 150 paces from its
particular redoubt, and open fire on the besieged. Following these
sharpshooters, pioneers and engineers with spades, axes, ladders, and
all other storming gear, including bags of blasting powder, and after
them, at 100 paces distance, the storming column itself, followed at
150 paces by a reserve of equal strength, together with a score of
artillerists for manning the captured guns of the Danes.
[Illustration: THE GERMAN SOLDIERS MAKING SENTRIES OUT OF
CLAY (_p._ 227).]
The Danes, in the darkness of the night, knew nothing whatever of all
these preparations, and it was only when the first streaks of dawn
began to chequer the eastern sky that they were aroused out of their
sleep by such an infernal outburst of cannon-thunder all along their
front as had never before, in lieu of the twittering and chirping of
birds, greeted the advent of a beautiful day in spring. For six long
mortal hours did the Prussians continue this terrific cannonade, of
which the violence and intensity may be inferred from the fact that
during this time no fewer than 11,500 shot and shell were hurled at and
into the Danish redoubts. The material damage done to these redoubts
was less, perhaps, than the demoralisation thereby caused to their
defenders; but the latter was the result which the Prussians, perhaps,
aimed at and valued most.
Shortly before ten the awful cannonade suddenly ceased, and was
followed by a few minutes’ painful silence. During this brief interval
the field-preachers, who had given the Sacrament to all the stormers
the night before, now again addressed to them a few fervid words of
religious encouragement, and then at the “_Nun, Kinder, in Gottes
Namen!_” (“Now, my children, away with you in God’s name!”) of their
commanders, the six storming columns, raising a loud and simultaneous
cheer, dashed out of their trenches and across to their respective
redoubts to the stirring music of the _Preussenlied_ played by
the bands of three regiments--“_Ich bin ein Preusse: kennt Ihr meine
Färbe?_” (“I am a Prussian: know ye then my colours?”)
For a few seconds the Danes seem to be taken aback by this sudden
onrush of their foes, and then they recognise that this is no mere
outpost affair such as caused them some time before to boast that they
had repulsed a Prussian attack all along their line. They look and
comprehend; and by the time their Prussian assailants have half covered
the distance between the trenches and the forts, their parapets are
fringed with the smoke of sharp-crackling volleys of musketry, for,
strange to say, they do not use their guns and dose their assailants
with destructive rounds of grape. The Prussians rush forward, and many
of them fall. Their pioneers cut down the wires, hack and blow up the
palisades, tug, strain, and open up a passage for the stormers, who
swarm down into the ditch and up the formidable face of the breastwork.
The Crown Prince, at the side of “Papa” Wrangel, is looking on from
the Gammelmark height on the opposite side of the bay, while his
cousin, the “Red Prince,” and his staff have taken their stand on the
Spitzberg, well to the rear of the line of zigzags. The stormers swarm
up the breastworks like ants, and some of them fall back upon the heads
of their comrades mortally struck by Danish bullets. At last they reach
the top of the parapets and see the whites of their enemies’ eyes, and
a short but desperate hand-to-hand encounter ensues. Many of the Danes,
seeing the foe thus upon them, throw down their arms and surrender,
but many will not give in, and are shot or struck down with bullet,
bayonet, and butt.
At Fort 2 the Prussians cannot force their way through the palisades,
and are consequently slaughtered as they stand. “Better one of us than
ten!” cries a pioneer, Klinké by name (for a monument now stands to
his memory on the exact scene of his heroism), who rushes forward with
a bag of powder and blows at once the palisades and his own person
into atoms--sacrificing himself to save his comrades, and thus secure
himself a golden register in the annals of the Prussian army. The
stormers now dash on and up, and presently the black-and-white flag
of Prussia is seen waving on the parapets of the redoubt. It sinks
again, but is once more raised to remain, and in less than a quarter of
an hour from the time that the stormers sprang out of their trenches
they are masters of six redoubts. It was all done, so to speak, in the
twinkling of an eye--short, sharp, and decisive. From the six redoubts
thus so swiftly rushed, the Prussians made a sweep to the rear of the
others, and captured them in much the same manner, though one fort
spared them the necessity of fighting for it by surrendering.
As it was at Fort 2 where the highest act of individual heroism had
been performed on the side of the Prussians by brave pioneer Klinké,
so it was also within this redoubt that Danish courage found its most
brilliant exponent in the person of Lieutenant Anker. The Prussians
were quite aware that a man of more than usual bravery was posted
here, for they had admired the stubborn valour with which the redoubt
had always been defended. And when at last they had stormed their
way behind its parapets, they beheld the man himself whose acts had
hitherto moved their admiration. He had spiked some of his guns, and
was in the act of firing another when a Prussian officer sprang upon
him, and, clapping a revolver to his breast, cried, “If you fire, I
fire!” Anker hesitated, and finally desisted. But just afterwards he
took up a lighted match and was making for the powder magazine, when
the Prussian officer cut him over the head with his sword, only just in
time to prevent him from blowing up himself and a considerable number
of his foes. He was then taken prisoner, and his lifelike figure may
now be seen on the fine bronze bas-relief of the Storming of the Düppel
Redoubts, which adorns the Victory Column in Berlin.
The Danes had been defeated--not so much because the Prussians were
braver men, which they were not, as because the latter were armed with
better guns and rifles, and more expert at handling them; but, above
all things, because they had taken their foes by surprise. For it
cannot be doubted that this was the fact. Said a Danish officer who
was taken prisoner: “We waited all morning, thinking the assault might
still be given, although we had expected that it would take place still
sooner; we waited under the terrific cannonade kept up against us,
while hour after hour passed slowly away. At last we said to ourselves
that we must have been misinformed, or that the Prussians had changed
their minds, and the reserves were withdrawn. It was past nine o’clock
when I left the forts and went back to breakfast. While thus engaged,
I heard somebody utter an exclamation of dismay. ‘What is that? The
Prussian flag floats over Fort 4!’ And so it was--the forts were lost.”
But there was still another and a better reason for concluding that the
Danes had not yet awhile expected the Prussian assault, and that was
the circumstance that the _Rolf Krake_, most daring and deviceful
of warships, did not immediately appear upon the scene to pour its
volleys of shell and shrapnel into the flanks of the storming columns.
True, it was lying at the entrance to the bay (Wenningbund), like an
ever-vigilant watch-dog; but by the time it had got its steam up and
come to where it was most wanted, the Prussians were already within
the Danish redoubts, and, after firing a few ineffectual rounds, the
monitor had to retire again well battered with Prussian cannon-balls,
but by no means beaten yet like the battalions which had held the forts.
Yet even these battalions, when beaten out of the redoubts, continued
to cling tenaciously to the ground behind them, and once or twice they
even made a counter-attack with the object of recovering their lost
positions. But Prussian ardour proved too much for Danish obstinacy;
and at last the Danes in the country behind the forts, after several
hours’ fighting, were all swept back to the bridge-head in their rear,
and then over into the island of Alsen, leaving their foes undisputed
masters of all the field.
This latter phase of the fight was well described by a correspondent
with the Danes, who wrote:--“Düppel was lost, but the battle was by
no means at an end. Indeed, as we watched the terrible cannonade
from 12 at noon till 3 or 4 p.m., the violence of the fire seemed to
increase at every moment. Anything more sublime than that sight and
sound no effort of imagination can conjure up, and we stood spellbound,
entranced, rooted to the spot, in a state that partook of wild
excitement and dumb amazement--a state of being which spread equally
to the dull hinds, ploughmen, woodmen, and the foresters, and their
families of wives and children, as they emerged from fields, woods,
and huts, and clustered in awestruck, dumbfounded groups around us.
The flashes of the heavy artillery outsped the rapidity of the glance
that strove to watch them; the reports were far more frequent than
the pulsations in our arteries, and the reverberation of the thunder
throughout the vast spreading forest lengthened out and perpetuated the
roar with a solemn cadence that was the grandest of all music to the
dullest ear. The air seemed all alive with these angry shells. I have
witnessed fearful thunderstorms in my day in southern and in tropical
climates; but here the crash and rattle of all the tempests that ever
were seemed to be summed up in the tornado of an hour. Nor was all that
noise by any means deafening or stunning. It came to us lingering far
and wide in the still air, softened and mellowed by the vastness of
space, every note blending admirably and harmonising with the general
concert--the greatest treat that the most consummate pyrotechnic art
could possibly contrive for the delight of the eye and ear.”
Many of the Danes surrendered, but many more were taken prisoners; and
as they came along the Prussian soldiers shook them good-naturedly by
the hand and tried to cheer them up. Few of the men seemed to want
cheering up, being only too glad, apparently, to have escaped with
their lives, though their officers looked gloomy enough over their
defeat. The Prussians found these captive Danes “sturdy fellows, but by
no means soldierly-looking,” with their “rich sandy hair reaching far
below the nape of their necks.” And, to tell the truth, their victors,
no less than their admirers throughout Europe, expected that they would
have made a far more vigorous defence; for desperate a defence could
scarcely have been called which resulted in the capture of their chief
redoubts within the brief space of about ten minutes.
The Prussians had won a glorious victory, but a dear one; for in dead
they had lost 16 officers and 213 men, and in wounded 54 officers and
1,118 men. Among the officers who were wounded--mortally, as afterwards
proved--was the brave General von Raven, who, as he was being borne to
the rear, exclaimed: “It is high time that a Prussian General should
again show how to die for his King.” On the other side General du
Plat was also killed, while in dead and wounded officers and men and
prisoners the Danish loss otherwise amounted to about 5,500. Among the
trophies of victory which fell into the hands of the Prussians were 118
guns and 40 colours.
On being informed of all this, King William telegraphed from
Berlin--“To Prince Frederick Charles. Next to the Lord of Hosts,
I have to thank my splendid army under thy leadership for to-day’s
glorious victory. Pray convey to the troops the expression of my
highest acknowledgment and my kingly thanks for what they have done.”
On seeing that victory was his, the “Red Prince” had bared his head
and muttered a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord of Hosts, while some
massed bands played a kind of _Te Deum_. “In the broad ditch
to the rear of Fort No. 4,” wrote Dr. Russell, “the bands of four
regiments had established themselves, and while the cannon were firing
close behind them, they played a chorale, or song of thanksgiving,
for the day’s success. The effect was striking, and the grouping of
the troops and of the musicians, with their smart uniforms and bright
instruments, standing in the deep trench against the shell-battered
earthwork, and by palisades riven and shattered and shivered by shot,
was most picturesque.”
[Illustration: THE PRUSSIANS ATTACKING THE DANISH
BREASTWORKS (_p._ 230).]
But King William was not content with telegraphing to his troops,
through his nephew Prince Frederick Charles, his acknowledgment of
their bravery. Following hard on his telegram his Majesty himself
hurried to the seat of war, with his “blood-and-iron” Minister,
Bismarck, at his side, and passed in review the troops who had so
stoutly stormed the redoubts of the Danes. These troops appeared on
parade in the dress and equipment they had worn on the day of their
great feat, and in the course of their march past jumped a broad drain
to show his Majesty how nimbly they had stormed in upon the Danes. A
fortnight later a select number of the Düppel stormers escorted into
Berlin the guns--more than a hundred in number--which they had captured
from the Danes, and were received with tremendous enthusiasm.
But this popular jubilation grew louder still when a few weeks later
the war was ended altogether by the storming of the island of Alsen,
into which the Danes had retired after their defeat at Düppel and
entrenched themselves down to the water’s edge. In the deep darkness
of a summer night (June 29th) the Prussians, in 160 boats, crossed the
channel--about eight hundred yards broad--between the mainland and the
island, though not without the usual amount of harassing opposition
from the _Rolf Krake_, and under a murderous fire jumped ashore
and made themselves master of the position in a manner which made some
observers describe the affair as a mere “skirmish and a scamper.”
But all the same it was a feat which recalled the “Island of the
Scots,” as sung by Ayton, and will always live in military history as a
splendid feat of arms.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT ANKER TAKEN PRISONER
(_p._ 230).]
[Illustration:
ROBERTS’ BATTLES ABOUT CABUL
BY ARCHIBALD FORBES
LORD ROBERTS OF CANDAHAR & WATERFORD]
The Afghan War of 1878–79 was terminated by the completion of what is
known as the “Treaty of Gundamuk,” which was signed at that place in
May, 1879, by Yakoub Khan--who, on the flight of his father, Shere Ali,
had succeeded that ill-starred potentate as Ameer of Afghanistan--and
by Major (afterwards Sir Louis) Cavagnari, representing Lord Lytton,
the Viceroy of India. This treaty gave practical--although, as it
turned out, only temporary--effect to the “scientific frontier”
of North-Western India, on the attainment of which the late Lord
Beaconsfield, when Prime Minister, greatly plumed himself. The
“scientific frontier” detached from Afghanistan and annexed to British
India for the time being a large tract of territory. The Treaty of
Gundamuk stipulated that a British envoy should thenceforth be resident
in the Afghan capital; and to the onerous and dangerous post, at his
own request, was assigned the resolute and cool-headed officer to whose
wise and calm strength of will was mainly owing the accomplishment of
the treaty. Sir Louis Cavagnari took with him to Cabul a subordinate
Civil Servant, a surgeon, and a small escort of the famous “Guides,”
commanded by the gallant Hamilton.
On the night of September 4th, 1879, a weary trooper of the Guides--one
of the few who had escaped the slaughter--rode into a British outpost
on the Shutargurdan height, with the startling tidings that Sir Louis
Cavagnari, the members of his mission and the soldiers of his escort,
had been massacred in the Balla Hissar of Cabul on the 3rd. The news
reached Simla by telegraph on the morning of the 5th, and next day Sir
Frederick Roberts, accompanied by Colonel Charles Macgregor, C.B.,
was speeding with relentless haste to the Kurum valley, the force
remaining in which from the previous campaign was to constitute the
nucleus of the little army of invasion and retribution, to the command
of which Roberts was appointed. In less than a month he had crossed the
Shutargurdan, and temporarily cutting loose from his base in the Kurum
valley, was marching swiftly on Cabul, whence the Ameer Yakoub Khan had
fled and thrown himself on Roberts’ protection.
All told, the army which Roberts led on Cabul was the reverse of a
mighty host. Its entire strength was little greater than that of a
Prussian brigade on a war-footing. Its fate was in its own hands,
for, befall it what might, it could hope for no timely reinforcement.
It was a mere detachment marching against a nation of fighting-men
plentifully supplied with artillery, no longer shooting laboriously
with jizails, but carrying arms of precision equal or little inferior
to those in the hands of our own soldiery. But the men of Roberts’
command, Europeans and Easterns, hillmen of Scotland and hillmen of
Nepaul, plainmen of Hampshire and plainmen of the Punjaub, strode along
buoyant with confidence and with health, believing in their leader,
in their discipline, in themselves. Of varied race, no soldier who
followed Roberts but came of fighting stock; ever blithely rejoicing
in the combat, one and all burned for the strife now before them
with more than wonted ardour, because of the opportunity it promised
to exact vengeance for a deed of foul treachery. Roberts’ column of
invasion consisted of a cavalry brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General
Dunham Massy, and of two infantry brigades, the first commanded by
Brigadier-General Macpherson, the second by Brigadier-General Baker,
with three batteries of artillery, a company of sappers and miners, and
two Gatling guns.
The soldiers had not long to wait for the first fight of the campaign.
At dawn, of October 6th, Baker marched out from Charasiah towards
his left front, against the heights held by an Afghan host in great
strength and regular formation. Sweeping back the Afghan hordes with
hard fighting, Baker wheeled to his right, marched along the lofty
crest, rolling up and driving before him the Afghan defence as he moved
towards the Sung-i-Nagusta gorge, which the gallant Major White[5]
had already entered. While Baker had been turning the Afghan right,
White and his little force had been distinguishing themselves not a
little. After an artillery preparation, the detached hill covering
the mouth of the pass had been won as the result of a hand-to-hand
struggle. Later had fallen into the hands of White’s people all the
Afghan guns, the heights to the immediate right and left of the gorge
had been carried, the defenders driven away, and the pass opened up.
Artillery fire crushed the defence of a strong fort commanding the road
through the pass. The Afghans were routed, and on the following day the
whole division passed the defile and camped within sight of the Balla
Hissar, and the lofty mountain chain overhanging Cabul. In the fight of
Charasiah less than half of Roberts’ force had been engaged, and this
mere brigade had routed the army of Cabul and captured the whole of the
artillery the latter had brought into the field. The Afghan loss was
estimated at about three hundred; the British loss was twenty killed
and sixty-seven wounded.
On the 9th the camp was moved forward to the Siah Sung heights, a mile
eastward from the Balla Hissar (the palace and citadel of Cabul), to
dominate which a regiment was detached; and a cavalry regiment occupied
the Sherpur cantonment, the great magazine of which had been blown up,
and whence the regiments which had been quartered in the cantonment had
fled.
It was a melancholy visit which Sir Frederick Roberts made to the Balla
Hissar on the 11th. Through the dirt and squalor of the lower portion,
he ascended the narrow lane leading to the ruin which a few weeks
earlier had been the British Residency. The commander of the avenging
army looked with sorrowful eyes on the scene of heroism and slaughter,
on the smoke-blackened ruins, the blood-splashes on the white-washed
walls, the still smouldering _débris_, the half-burned skulls and
bones in the blood-dabbled chamber where apparently the final struggle
had been fought out. He stood in the breach in the quarters of the
staunch and faithful Guides, where the gate had been blown in after the
last of the sorties made by the gallant Hamilton, and lingered in the
tattered wreck of poor Cavagnari’s drawing-room, its walls dinted with
bullet-pits, its floor and divans brutally defiled. Next day, under the
flagstaff from which waved the banner of Britain, he held a durbar in
the audience chamber of the palace--in front and in flank of him the
pushing throng of obsequious sirdars, arrayed in all the colours of
the rainbow; behind them, standing immobile at attention, the guard of
British infantry, with fixed bayonets which the soldiers longed to use.
Promptitude of advance on the part of the force to which had been
assigned the supporting line of invasion by the Khyber-Jellalabad route
was of scarcely less moment than the rapidity of the stroke which
Roberts was commissioned to deliver. But delay on delay marked the
mobilisation and advance of the troops operating by the Khyber line.
There was no lack of earnestness anywhere, but the barren hills and
rugged passes could furnish no supplies; the country in rear had to
furnish everything, and there was nothing at the base of operations,
neither any accumulation of supplies nor means to transport supplies if
they had been accumulated. Communications were opened from Cabul with
the Khyber force and India, it was true, but no reinforcement came to
Roberts from that force until the 11th December, when there arrived the
Guides, 900 strong, brought up by Jenkins from Jugdulluck by forced
marches. Five weeks earlier, when the Kurum line of communication was
closed for the winter, Roberts had received the welcome accession of a
wing of the 9th Lancers, Money’s Sikh regiment, and four mountain guns:
his strength was thus increased to about 7,000 men.
For some weeks after Roberts’ arrival at Cabul, almost perfect quiet
prevailed in and around the Afghan capital, but the chief was well
aware how precarious and deceitful was the calm. When the impending
announcement of Yakoub Khan’s dethronement and deportation should be
made, Roberts knew the Afghan nature too well to doubt that the tribal
blood-feuds would be soldered for the time, that Dooranee and Baraksai
would strike hands, that Afghan regulars and Afghan irregulars would
rally under the same standards, and that the fierce shouts of “Deen!
deen!” would resound on hill-top and in plain. He was ready for the
strife, and would not hesitate to strike quick and hard, for Roberts
knew the value of a resolute and vigorous offensive in dealing with
Afghans. But it behoved him, above all things, to make timely choice
of his winter-quarters where he should collect his supplies and house
his troops and their followers. After careful deliberation the Sherpur
cantonment, a mile outside of Cabul, was selected. It was overlarge for
easy defence, but hard work, skilled engineering, and steadfast courage
would remedy that evil. And Sherpur had a great advantage in that,
besides being in a measure a ready-made defensive position, it had
shelter for all the troops and would accommodate also the horses of the
cavalry, the transport animals, and all the needful supplies and stores.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH RESIDENCY AFTER THE ATTACK.]
The deportation to India of Yakoub Khan and his three principal
ministers was the signal for a general rising. The Peter the Hermit
of Afghanistan in 1879 was the old Mushk-i-Alum, the fanatic chief
moulla (or priest) of Ghuznee, who went to and fro among the tribes
proclaiming the sacred duty of a religious war against the unbelieving
invaders. The combination of fighting tribes found a competent leader
in Mahomed Jan, a Warduk general of proved courage and capacity. The
plan of campaign was comprehensive and well devised. A contingent
from the Logur country south of Cabul was to seize the Sher Darwaza
heights, stretching southward from Cabul toward Charasiah. The northern
contingent from the Kohistan and Kohdaman was to occupy the Asmai
heights north-west of the city, while the troops from the Maidan and
Warduk territory away to the south-westward of the capital, led by
Mahomed Jan in person, should come in by Urgundeh across the Chardeh
Valley, take possession of Cabul, and rally to their banners the
disaffected population of the city and the surrounding villages. The
concentration of the three bodies effected, Cabul and the ridge against
which it leans occupied, the next step was to be the investment of
the Sherpur cantonment, preparatory to an assault in force upon that
stronghold.
The British general, through his spies, had information of those
projects. To allow the projected concentration would be fraught with
mischief, and both experience and temperament enjoined in Roberts a
prompt initiative. He resolved, in the first instance, to deal with
Mahomed Jan’s force, which was reckoned some 5,000 strong; the other
contingents might be disregarded for the moment. On the 8th of December
Baker marched out with a force consisting of 900 infantry, two and a
half squadrons, and four guns, with instructions to break up the tribal
assemblage in the Logur valley, march thence south-westward, and take a
position across the Ghuznee road in the Maidan valley, on the line of
retreat which it was hoped that Macpherson would succeed in enforcing
on Mahomed Jan. Macpherson was to move westward with 1,300 bayonets,
three squadrons, and eight guns, across the Chardeh valley to Urgurdeh,
where it was expected that he would find Mahomed Jan’s levies, which
he was to attack and drive southward to Maidan upon Baker. Should this
combination come off, the Afghan leader would find himself, it was
hoped, between the upper and the lower millstone, and would be punished
so severely as to hinder him from giving further trouble.
[Illustration: “HE HELD A DURBAR” (_p._ 235).]
It happened, however, as Macpherson was about starting on the
9th, that a cavalry reconnaissance found the Kohistanee levies in
considerable strength about Karez Meer, some ten miles north-west of
Cabul. It was imperative promptly to disperse them, and Macpherson,
on the 10th, had to alter his line of advance and move against the
Kohistanees, a divergence from the original plan which had the effect
of wrecking the previously arranged combined movement and bringing
about a very critical situation. After a sharp fight Macpherson routed
the Kohistanees, and halted on the ground for the night. In the hope
that the combination might still be effected, he was ordered to march
south-west toward Urgundeh on the morning of the 11th, where it was
hoped he would find Mahomed Jan and drive him towards Baker. Macpherson
had left his cavalry and wheeled guns at Aushar on the eastern edge
of the Chardeh valley; and he was informed that they would leave that
place at 9 a.m. of the same day, under the command of Brigadier-General
Massy, and move across the valley in the direction of Urgundeh, where
Macpherson, it was expected, would re-unite himself with them. Massy’s
orders were to proceed cautiously to join Macpherson, but “on no
account to commit himself to an action until the latter had engaged the
enemy.”
Macpherson marched from Karez Meer at eight a.m. of the 11th. Massy
left Aushar an hour later, and went across country instead of keeping
to the road. His force consisted of two squadrons 9th Lancers, a troop
of Bengal Lancers, and four horse artillery guns. Near Killa Kazee his
advance guard sent back word that the hills in front were occupied by
the enemy in considerable force. Massy halted when he saw some 2,000
Afghans forming across the road, and from the hills to right and left
broad streams of armed men pouring down the slopes and massing in the
plain. The surprise was complete, the situation full of perplexity.
There was no Macpherson within ken of Massy. If he retired, he probably
would be rushed. If, on the other hand, he should show a bold front,
and, departing from his orders in the urgent crisis face to face with
which he found himself, should strain every nerve to “hold” the Afghan
masses in their present position, there was the possibility that he
might save the situation and give time for Macpherson to come up.
Massy, for better or for worse, committed himself to the offensive,
and opened fire on the Afghan masses. But they were not daunted, and
the guns had again and again to be retired. The outlook was ominous
when Roberts arrived on the scene. He acted promptly, as was his wont,
directing Massy to retire till he found an opportunity to charge;
he sent General Hills back to Sherpur to warn its garrison to be on
the alert, and to order the despatch at speed of a wing of the 72nd
Highlanders to the village of Deh Mazung in the throat of the gorge of
the Cabul river, which the Highlanders were to hold to extremity.
The moment seemed to have come for the action of the cavalry. Colonel
Cleland led his lancers straight for the centre of the Afghan line.
Captain Gough, away on the Afghan left, eagerly “conformed,” crushing
in on the enemy’s flank at the head of his troop. There have been
few forlorner hopes than the errand on which, on this ill-starred
day, over 200 troopers rode into the heart of 10,000 Afghans flushed
with unwonted good fortune. Through the dust-cloud of the charge
were visible the flashes of the Afghan volleys and the sheen of the
British lance-heads as they came down to the “engage.” There was a
short interval of suspense, the din of the _mêlée_ faintly heard,
but invisible behind the bank of smoke and dust. Then from out the
obscurity of the battle riderless horses came galloping back, followed
slowly by broken groups of dismounted troopers. Gallantly led home,
the charge had failed. What other could have been the result? Sixteen
troopers had been slain, seven were wounded; two brave young officers
lay dead where they fell. Cleland came out with a sword cut and a
bullet wound, which latter gave him his death a few months later. The
Afghans pressed on. A gun had to be spiked and abandoned, its officer,
Lieutenant Hardy, remaining by it until killed; three other guns stuck
fast in a watercourse. All four were gallantly recovered by Colonel
Macgregor the same afternoon by a most skilful and daring effort, which
only he would have ventured upon. The retreat was stubborn and orderly;
but there was an anxious interval at Deh Mazung until the Highlanders
came through the gorge at the double; when, after a short interval of
firing, the Afghans climbed the slopes of the Sher Derwasa heights,
and occupied the summit of the Tahkt-i-Shah. Macpherson, marching
in, struck and broke the Afghan rear. On the 12th, Baker fought his
steadfast way back to Sherpur. The casualties of the 11th were not
light--thirty men killed and forty-four wounded. The Afghans were
naturally elated by the success they had achieved, and it was clear
that Mahomed Jan had a quick eye for opportunities and some skill in
handling men.
From the Sher Derwasa heights Macpherson, with barely 600 men,
attempted, on the morning of the 12th, to carry the rocky summit of
the Tahkt-i-Shah, but after a prolonged and bitter struggle it had to
be recognised that the direct attack by so weak a force, unaided by a
diversion, could not succeed. Macpherson remained on the ground he had
actually won, informed that on the following morning he was to expect
Baker’s co-operation from the south. The casualties of the abortive
attempt included three officers, one of whom--Major Cook, V.C., of the
Goorkhas, than whom the British army contained no better soldier--died
of his wounds.
The lesson of the result of attempting impossibilities had been
taken to heart, and the force which Baker led out on the morning
of the 13th was exceptionally strong, consisting as it did of the
92nd Highlanders and the Guides infantry, a wing of the 3rd Sikhs, a
cavalry regiment, and eight guns. Marching in the direction of the
lateral spur stretching out from the main ridge eastward towards Beni
Hissar, Baker observed that large masses of the enemy were quitting
the plain villages in which they had been spending the winter night,
and were hurrying upward to gain and hold the summit of the spur,
which constituted the main defensive position of the Afghan reserve.
His opportunity flashed upon the ready-witted Baker. By gaining the
centre of the spur he would cut in two the Afghan mass, holding its
continuous summit, and so isolate and neutralise the portion of that
mass in position from the centre of the spur to its eastern extremity.
To effect this stroke it was, however, necessary that he should act
with promptitude and energy. His guns opened a hot fire on the Afghan
bodies holding the crest of the spur. His Sikhs, extended athwart the
plain, protected his right flank; his cavalry on the left cut into
the groups of Afghans hastening to ascend the eastern extremity of
the spur. With noble emulation the Highlanders and the Guides sprang
up the rugged slope, their faces set towards the centre of the summit
line. Major White, who had already earned many laurels in the campaign,
led on the 92nd; the Guides, burning to make the most of their first
opportunity to distinguish themselves, followed eagerly the gallant
Jenkins, the chief who had so often led them to victory on other
fields. Lieutenant Forbes, a young officer of the 92nd, heading the
advance of his regiment, reached the summit accompanied only by his
colour-sergeant. A band of Ghazees rushed on the pair, and the sergeant
fell dead. As Forbes stood covering the body, he was overpowered and
slain. The sudden and bloody catastrophe staggered for a moment the
soldiers following their officer, but Lieutenant Dick Cunyngham rallied
them immediately and led them forward at speed. For his conduct on this
occasion Cunyngham worthily received the Victoria Cross.
With rolling volleys the Highlanders and the Guides reached and won the
rocky summit. The Afghans momentarily defended the position, but the
British fire swept them away, and the bayonets disposed of the Ghazees,
who fought and died under their standards. The severance of the Afghan
line was now complete. A detachment was left to maintain the isolation
of some 2,000 of the enemy who had been cut off; and then swinging to
their right with a cheer Baker’s regiments swept along the spur towards
the main ridge and the Takht-i-Shah. As they rushed forward they rolled
up the Afghan line, and the enemy fled in panic flight. Assailed from
both sides, for Macpherson’s men were climbing the north side of the
peak, and shaken by the fire of the mountain guns, the garrison of the
Takht-i-Shah evacuated the position. Baker’s soldiers toiled vigorously
upward towards the peak, keen for the honour of winning it; but that
honour justly fell to their comrades of Macpherson’s command, who had
striven so valiantly to earn it on the previous afternoon, and who had
gained possession of the peak and the standards left flying on its
summit a few minutes in advance of the arrival of White’s Highlanders
and Jenkins’ Guides. As the midday gun was fired in the Sherpur
cantonment, the flash of the heliograph from the peak told that the
Takht-i-Shah was won.
While the fight was proceeding on the mountain summits, another was
being fought on the Siah Sung upland springing out of the plain, within
artillery range of Sherpur. On this elevation had gathered masses
of Afghans from the turbulent city and from the villages about Beni
Hissar, with intent to hinder Baker’s return march. The Sherpur guns
shelled them, but they held their ground, and the cavalry galloped
out from the cantonment to disperse them. The Afghans showed unwonted
resolution; but the British horsemen were not to be denied. Captains
Butson and Chisholme led their squadrons against the Afghan flanks,
and the troopers of the 9th Lancers swept their fierce way through
and through the hostile masses. But in the charge Butson was killed,
and Chisholme and Trower were wounded; the sergeant-major and three
men were killed, and seven men were wounded. Brilliant charges were
delivered by the other cavalry detachments, and the Siah Sung heights
were ultimately cleared. The Guides’ cavalry attacked, defeated, and
pursued for a long distance a body of Kohistanees marching north
apparently with intent to join Mahomed Jan. The casualties of the
day were sixteen killed and forty-five wounded--not a heavy loss,
considering the amount of hard fighting. The Afghans were estimated to
have lost in killed alone from 200 to 300 men.
The operations of the 13th were successful so far as they went, but
the actual results attained scarcely warranted the belief that the
Afghans had suffered so severely that they would now break up their
combination and disperse to their homes. The General, indeed, was
under the belief that the enemy had been “foiled in their western and
southern operations.” But the morning of the 14th effectually dispelled
the optimistic anticipations indulged in overnight. At daybreak large
bodies of Afghans, with many standards, were discerned on a hill
about a mile northward of the Asmai heights, from which hill and
from the Kohistan road they were moving on to the Asmai crest. They
were presently joined there by several thousands climbing the steep
slopes rising from the village of Deh Afghan, the northern suburb of
Cabul. It was estimated that about 8,000 men were in position on the
Asmai heights, and occupying also a low conical hill beyond their
north-western termination. The array of Afghans displayed itself
within a mile of the west face of the Sherpur cantonment, and formed a
menace that could not be brooked. To General Baker was entrusted the
task of dislodging the enemy from the threatening position, with a
force consisting of about 1,200 bayonets, eight guns, and a regiment
of native cavalry. Baker’s first object was to gain possession of
the conical hill already mentioned, and thus debar the Afghan bodies
on the Asmai heights from receiving accessions either from the hill
further north or by the Kohistan road. Under cover of the artillery
fire, the Highlanders and Guides occupied the conical hill after a
short conflict. A detachment of all arms was left to hold it, and
Colonel Jenkins, who commanded the attack, set about the arduous task
of storming from the northward the formidable position of the Asmai
heights. The assault was led by Brownlow’s brave Highlanders of the
72nd, supported on their right by the Guides operating on the enemy’s
flank, and the Afghan position was heavily shelled from the plain and
the cantonment.
[Illustration: CABUL.]
In the face of a heavy fire the Highlanders and Guides climbed the
rugged hillside leading up to the Afghan breastworks, on the northern
edge of the summit. The British shrapnel fire had driven many of its
defenders to seek shelter down in Deh Afghan; but the Ghazees in the
breastworks fought desperately, and died under their standards as
the Highlanders carried the defences with a rush. The crest--about
a quarter of a mile long--was traversed under heavy fire, and the
southern breastwork on the Asmai peak was approached. It was strong,
and strongly held; but a cross-fire was brought to bear on its
garrison, and then the frontal attack, led gallantly by Corporal Sellar
of the 72nd, was delivered. After a hand-to-hand grapple, in which
Highlanders and Guides were freely cut and slashed by the Ghazees, the
position, which was full of dead, was carried, but with considerable
loss. The Afghans streamed down from the heights, torn as they
descended by shell-fire and musketry-fire: when they took refuge in Deh
Afghan that place was heavily shelled. The whole summit of the Asmai
heights was now in British possession, and it seemed for the moment
that a decisive victory had been won.
But scarcely had Jenkins found himself in full possession of the
Asmai position, when the fortune of the day was suddenly overcast. A
great host of Afghans, estimated to number from 15,000 to 20,000, had
debouched from the direction of Indiki into the Chardeh valley, and was
moving swiftly northward with the apparent object of forming a junction
with the masses occupying the hills to the north-west of the Asmai
heights.
[Illustration: “COLONEL CLELAND LED HIS LANCERS”
(_p._ 238).]
Cavalry scouts galloping from the Chardeh valley brought in the tidings
that large bodies of hostile infantry and cavalry were hurrying
across the valley in the direction of the conical hill, which was
being held by Lieutenant-Colonel Clark, with only 120 Highlanders and
Guides. Baker, recognising Clark’s weakness, reinforced that officer
with four mountain guns and 100 bayonets--a reinforcement which
proved inadequate. The guns, indeed, opened fire on the Afghan bodies
crossing the valley and drove them out of range; but these bodies
coalesced dexterously with the host advancing from Indiki, and then
the great Afghan mass, suddenly facing to the right, struck the whole
range of the British position, stretching from near the Cabul gorge
on the south to and beyond the conical hill on the north. The most
vulnerable point was about that eminence. Baker sent Clark a second
reinforcement, and 200 Sikhs doubled out from Sherpur to further
strengthen him. But the Afghans, swarming up from out the Chardeh
valley, had the shorter distance to travel, and were beforehand with
the hurrying reinforcements. As the Afghan front and flank attacks
developed themselves, they encountered from the garrison of the conical
hill a heavy rifle fire, and shells at short range tore through the
loose rush of Ghazees; but the bhang-maddened fanatics sped on and
up without wavering. As they gathered behind a mound for the final
onslaught, Captain Spens with a handful of his Highlanders, charged
out on the forlorn hope of dislodging them. A rush was made on the
gallant Scot; he was overpowered and slaughtered after a desperate
resistance, and the charge of the infuriated Ghazees swept up the
hillside. In momentary panic the defenders yielded the ground, carrying
downhill with them the reinforcement of Punjaubees which Captain Hall
was bringing up. Two of the mountain guns were lost, but there was a
rally at the foot of the hill, under cover of which the other two were
extricated. The Afghans refrained from descending into the plain, and
directed their efforts towards cutting off the British troops still in
position on the Asmai heights.
[Illustration:
ROBERTS’
BATTLES ABOUT
CABUL.
December, 1879.]
It was estimated that the Afghan strength disclosed this day did
not fall far short of 40,000 men; and General Roberts, reluctantly
compelled to abandon for the time any further offensive efforts,
determined to withdraw the troops from all isolated positions and
to concentrate his whole force within the protection of the Sherpur
cantonment. The orders issued to Baker and Macpherson, gradually to
retire into the cantonment, were executed with skill and steadiness.
Macpherson coolly marched through Deh Afghan, his baggage sent on
in front under a guard. Jenkins’ evacuation of the Asmai position
was conspicuously adroit. Baker held a covering position until all
the other details had steadily made good their retirement, and he
was the last to withdraw. By dusk the whole British force was safely
concentrated within the cantonment, and the period of the defensive
had begun. The casualties of the day were serious--35 killed and
107 wounded. During the week of fighting the little force had lost
altogether, in officers and men, 83 killed and 192 wounded.
Although overlarge for its garrison, the Sherpur cantonment possessed
many of the features of a strong defensive position. On the southern
and western faces the massive and continuous enceinte made it
impregnable against any force unprovided with siege artillery; but on
the eastern face the incomplete wall was low, and the northern line of
defence on the Behmaroo heights was defective until strengthened by
a series of blockhouses supporting a continuous entrenchment studded
with batteries. The space between the north-western bastion and the
heights was closed by an entrenchment supported by a laager of Afghan
gun-carriages and limbers; the open space on the north-eastern angle
was similarly fortified; the unfinished eastern wall was heightened by
built-up tiers of logs, and its front, as elsewhere, was covered with
_abattis_ wire entanglements, and other obstacles. The enceinte
was divided into sections, to each of which was assigned a commanding
officer with a specified detail of troops; and a strong brigade of
European infantry was under the command of Brigadier-General Baker,
ready at short notice to reinforce any threatened point. Before the
enemy cut the telegraph wire, in the early morning of the 15th,
Sir Frederick Roberts had informed the authorities in India of his
situation and need for reinforcement.
During the 15th and 16th the Afghan troops were busily engaged in
sacking the Hindoo and Kuzzilbash quarters of Cabul, in looting and
wrecking the houses of chiefs and townsfolk who had shown friendliness
to the British, and in fiercely quarrelling among themselves over
the spoil. On the 17th and 18th they made sundry ostentatious
demonstrations against Sherpur, but these were never formidable.
Although they made themselves troublesome with some perseverance during
the daytime, they consistently refrained from night-attacks, to which
ordinarily the Afghan hillmen are much addicted. There never was any
investment of Sherpur, nor indeed any approximation to an investment.
The Afghan offensive was not dangerous, but annoying and wearisome. It
was pushed, it was true, with some resolution on the 18th, when several
thousand men poured out of the city, and skirmished forward under a
cover of the gardens and enclosures on the plain between Cabul and the
cantonment. Some of the more adventurous were able to get within four
hundred paces from the enceinte, but could make no further headway,
although they long maintained a brisk fire. The return fire was chiefly
restricted to volleys directed on those few of the enemy who offered
a sure mark by exposing themselves; and shell-fire was chiefly used
to drive the Afghan skirmishers from their cover in the gardens and
enclosures. On the morning of the 19th it was found that in the night
they had occupied the Meer Akhor fort, a few hundred yards in front
of the eastern face of the enceinte. Baker went out on the errand of
destroying it, with 880 bayonets, two guns, and a party of sappers. In
the approach through the mist, a sudden volley struck down several men,
and Lieutenant Montenaro, of the mounted battery, was mortally wounded.
The fort was heavily shelled, its garrison was driven out, and it was
blown up.
For the moment circumstances had enforced on Roberts the wisdom of
accepting the defensive attitude, but he nevertheless knew himself
the virtual master of the situation. He had but one anxiety--the
apprehension lest the Afghans should not harden their hearts to deliver
a real assault on his position. That apprehension was not long to
give him concern. On the 20th the enemy took strong possession of
the Mahomed Shereeff fort on the southern face of Sherpur; and they
maintained themselves there during the two following days against the
fire of siege guns mounted on the bastions of the enceinte. On the
21st and 22nd large numbers of Afghans quitted the city, and passing
eastward behind the Siah Sung heights, took possession in great force
of the forts and villages outside the eastern face of Sherpur, which
should have been destroyed previously. On the afternoon of the 22nd a
spy brought in the intelligence that Mahomed Jan and his brother chief
had resolved to assault the cantonment early on the following morning.
His tidings were true; and the spy was even able to communicate the
details of the plan of attack. The 2,000 men who were holding the
King’s Garden and the Mahomed Shereeff post had been equipped with
scaling-ladders, and were to make a false attack, which might become
a real one, against the western section of the front. The principal
assault, however, was to be made against the eastern face of the
Behmaroo village, unquestionably the weakest part of the defensive
position. The 23rd was the last day of the Mohurrum--the great
Mahomedan religious festival--when fanaticism would be at its height;
and further to stimulate that incentive to valour, the Mushk-i-Alum was
his holy self to kindle the beacon fire on the Asmai height which would
be the signal to the faithful to rush to the attack.
The information proved perfectly accurate. All night long the shouts
and chants of the Afghans filled the air. Purposeful silence reigned
throughout the cantonment. In the darkness the soldiers mustered and
quietly fell into their places. The officers commanding sections of the
defence made their dispositions. The reserves were silently standing to
their arms. Every eye was toward the Asmai height, shrouded still in
the gloom of the night. A long tongue of flame shot up into the air,
blazed brilliantly for a few moments, and then waned. At the signal
a fierce fire opened from before one of the gateways of the southern
face, the flashes indicating that the marksmen were plying their rifles
within two hundred yards of the enceinte. The bullets sped harmlessly
over the defenders sheltered behind the parapet, and in the dusk of the
dawn reprisals were not attempted. But this outburst of powder-burning
against the southern face was a mere incident. What men listened
for and watched for was the development of the true assault on the
eastern end of the great parallelogram. The section-commanders there
were General Hugh Gough, in charge of the eastern end of the Behmaroo
heights, and Colonel Jenkins from the village down past the native
hospitals to the bastion at the south-eastern corner. The defending
troops were the Guides from Behmaroo to the hospital, in which were
100 Punjaubees; and beyond to the bastion the 67th reinforced by two
companies of the 92nd. From beyond Behmaroo and the eastern trenches
and walls as day broke, there came a roar of voices so loud and
menacing that it seemed as if an army 50,000 strong was charging down
on our thin line of men. Led by Ghazees, the main body of Afghans,
who had been hidden in the villages and orchards on the east side of
Sherpur, rushed out in one dense horde, and every throat was filling
the air with shouts of “Allah-il-Allah!” The roar surged forward as the
line advanced, but it was answered by such a roll of musketry that it
was drowned for the moment, and then merged into the general turmoil of
sound that told our men with Martinis and Sniders were holding their
own against the assailants.
[Illustration: NORTH END OF SHERPUR ENTRENCHMENTS, CABUL.]
[Illustration: “THE ROAR SURGED FORWARD” (_p._
243).]
When the first attack was made the morning was so dark and misty
that the outlook from the trenches was restricted, and the order
to the troops was to hold their fire until the enemy should be
distinctly visible. The Punjaubee detachment in the hospital opened
fire prematurely, and presently the Guides, holding Behmaroo and
the trenches on the slopes, followed the example, and sweeping with
their fire the terrain in front of them broke the force of the attack
when its leaders were still several hundred yards away. Between the
hospital and the corner bastion, the men of the 67th and 92nd awaited
with impassive discipline the word of permission to begin firing. From
out the mist at length emerged dense masses of men, some of whom were
brandishing swords and knives, while others loaded and fired when
hurrying forward. The order to fire was not given until the leading
Ghazees were within eighty yards, and the mass of assailants not more
than two hundred. Heavily struck by volley on volley, they recoiled,
but soon gathered courage to come on again; and for several hours
there was sharp fighting, repeated efforts being made to carry the low
eastern wall. So resolute were the Afghans that more than once they
reached the _abattis_, but each time they were driven back with
heavy loss. About ten o’clock there was a lull, and it seemed that the
attacking force was owning the frustration of its attempts; but an
hour later there was a partial recrudescence of the fighting, and the
assailants once more came on. The attack, however, was not pushed with
much vigour, and was soon beaten down, but the Afghans still maintained
a threatening attitude, and the fire from the defences was ineffectual
to dislodge them. The General then determined to take them in flank,
and with this intention sent out into the open through the Behmaroo
gorge four field-guns escorted by a cavalry regiment. Bending to the
right, the guns came into action on the Afghan right flank, and the
counterstroke had an immediate effect. The enemy wavered, and soon
were in full retreat. The Kohistanee contingent, some 5,000 strong,
cut loose and marched away northward with obvious recognition that
the game was up. The fugitives were scourged with artillery and rifle
fire; and Massy led out the cavalry, swept the plain, and drove the
lingering Afghans from the slopes of Siah Sung. The false attacks on
the southern face from the King’s Garden and the Mahomed Shereef fort
never made any head. Those positions were steadily shelled until late
in the afternoon, when they were finally evacuated, and by nightfall
all the villages and enclosures between Sherpur and Cabul were entirely
deserted. Some of these had been destroyed by sappers from the
garrison during the afternoon, in the course of which operation two
gallant Engineer officers, Captain Dundas and Lieutenant Nugent, were
unfortunately killed by the premature explosion of a mine.
Mahomed Jan had been as good as his word: he had delivered his stroke
against Sherpur; and that stroke had utterly failed. With its failure
came promptly the collapse of the national rising. Before daybreak
of the 24th the formidable combination, which had included all the
fighting elements of North-Eastern Afghanistan, and under whose banners
it was believed that more than 100,000 armed men had mustered, was
no more. Not only had it broken up--it had disappeared. Neither in
the city itself nor in the adjacent villages, nor on the surrounding
heights, was a tribesman to be seen. So hurried had been the Afghan
dispersal that the dead were left to lie unburied where they had
fallen. His nine days on the defensive had cost Sir Frederick Roberts
singularly little in casualties: his losses were eighteen killed and
sixty-eight wounded. The enemy’s loss in killed and wounded, from first
to last of the rising, was reckoned to be not under 3,000.
On the 24th the cavalry rode far and fast in pursuit of the fugitives,
but they overtook none, such haste had the fleeing Afghans made.
On the same day Cabul and the Balla Hissar were reoccupied, and
General Hills resumed his functions as military governor of the city,
_vice_ the old moulla Mushk-i-Alum, departed precipitately to
regions unknown. Cabul had the aspect of having undergone a siege at
the hands of an enemy; the bazaars were broken up and deserted. After
making a few examples, the General issued a proclamation of amnesty,
excluding therefrom only five of the principal leaders and fomenters
of the recent rising. This policy of conciliation bore good fruit; and
a durbar was held on January 9th, 1880, at which were present about
300 sirdars, chiefs, and headmen from the various provinces. Although
the country remained disturbed, there were no more outbreaks. Cabul
and Sherpur were strongly fortified, military roads were made, and
all cover and obstructions for the space of 1,000 yards outside the
enceinte of Sherpur were swept away. In March the Cabul force had
increased to a strength of about 11,500 men and twenty-six guns; and
General Roberts formed it into two divisions, one of which he himself
commanded, the other being commanded by Major-General John Ross.
On 2nd May, Sir Donald Stewart arrived at Cabul from Candahar, and
took over from Sir Frederick Roberts the command in North-Eastern
Afghanistan.
[Illustration:
[_Photo., Lock & Whitfield. Regent St., W._
SIR FREDERICK ROBERTS IN 1880.]
[Illustration:
CUSTOZZA.
_By A. Hilliard Atteridge._]
When Nicholas Nickleby suggested to Mr. Vincent Crummles that the
“terrific broadsword combat” on his stage would look better if the two
adversaries were more of a size, the veteran manager replied that the
remark showed how little he knew about the business. What the public
really liked to see was the little fellow getting the better of the
big one. And Mr. Crummles was right. Most men have a “weakness for the
weaker side,” and if there is one thing they like better to see than a
fair and even fight, it is the spectacle of a victory won by skill and
pluck against superior strength. Such was the victory that splendid old
soldier the Archduke Albert of Austria won at Custozza during the brief
campaign of Northern Italy in 1866.
As it happened, it was--so far as tangible results were concerned--a
barren success. The prize that was fought for was the possession of
Venice and its territory; and by the course of events this went to
Italy at the close of the war, notwithstanding her defeats by land and
sea. But for all that, Custozza and Lissa were a solid gain to Austria,
for they enabled her to yield to fate without losing heart and hope for
the future. Broken as her power was on the wider field of the struggle
with Prussia, she could yet trust to sailors of the stamp of Tegethoff,
soldiers like the Archduke Albert, to secure for her the respect even
of the victors, and to ensure that before long she would again be a
factor to be reckoned with in the councils of Europe.
The Archduke Albert was the son of a famous soldier, the Archduke
Charles, who was one of the most formidable opponents of the Great
Napoleon, and who by the victory of Aspern brought him within sight of
ruin many years before Waterloo was fought and won. The Archduke Albert
had distinguished himself in the campaigns of Italy in 1848 and 1849,
taking part in more than one hard-fought action on the very ground
which he held in 1866. When, in that year, Italy began to prepare to
take the field against Austria as the ally of Prussia, the Government
at Vienna concentrated the bulk of its forces on the northern frontiers
of the empire to meet the more formidable attack that was threatened
from Berlin, and the Archduke was left to hold Venetia against the
Italians with very inferior forces. It was this marked inferiority that
gave special interest to his successful campaign against the great
armies that were marshalled against him.
At the end of the month of May the Italians had concentrated a main
army of 140,000 men in Lombardy, and a second force of about 60,000
between Ferrara and Bologna in the Romagna. The army in Lombardy
was commanded nominally by the King, Victor Emmanuel; really by his
chief of the staff, the veteran General La Marmora, the same who had
commanded the Sardinian contingent in the Crimea. The army was divided
into three corps under Durando, Cucchiari, and Della Rocca. The King’s
eldest son, Prince Humbert, then Crown Prince and now King of Italy,
commanded a division in Della Rocca’s corps. His brother, Prince
Amadeo, afterwards King of Spain, commanded a brigade of Grenadiers
in the first corps. This army was destined to cross the little river
Mincio, which formed the boundary between Lombardy and Venetia, thus
attacking the Austrians in front; while the second army of 60,000 men
under Cialdini would be in a position to cross the lower course of the
Po, and fall upon their flank. On the left of the royal army Garibaldi
was assembling a third force of between 30,000 and 40,000 men, with
which he was to invade the Tyrol.
To meet these three armies--amounting in all to at least 235,000
men--the Archduke Albert had nominally at his disposal a force of
135,000. Thus he had a majority of 100,000 against him at the very
outset, but even this does not represent the whole deficiency. First
he had to detach 12,000 men for the defence of the Tyrol. These
were expected to be able to deal with Garibaldi’s 30,000 or 40,000
volunteers; 12,000 more were assigned to the defence of Istria and the
neighbourhood of Trieste and Pola, where, considering the strength
of Italy on the sea, there was supposed to be some danger of a naval
descent; 40,000 were employed in the garrisons of the Quadrilateral
(Mantua, Verona, Peschiera and Legnago) and in the fortresses of Rovigo
and Venice; finally 6,000 had to be left to guard his communications
with Austria. This reduced the field army to a little over 60,000 men,
and with these he had to meet the 200,000 of Italy.
The Italians had divided their forces, and the Archduke saw that his
best chance of success would lie in an attempt to deal with one of
their armies before the other could come to its assistance. In order
to do this it would be necessary from the very outset to conceal his
own position and movements, and be fully informed of those of his
opponents. Therefore, concentrating his army in a central position
behind the Adige, a little to the east of Verona, a point from which
he could move either against the King or against Cialdini, he left
only a screen of cavalry outposts along the Mincio, between Peschiera
and Mantua, and along the north bank of the Po, opposite Ferrara. Once
war was declared they allowed no one to pass the frontier in either
direction, and even before that only those few privileged persons who
had obtained a special passport from the Austrian military authorities
were allowed to cross.
[Illustration:
SKETCH MAP
OF THE
SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY
1866.]
The cavalry scouts and vedettes did their work to perfection. They
prevented the Italians from obtaining any information as to the plans
or movements of the Archduke, and they kept him well informed as to all
that was going on upon the Lombard shore of the Mincio. The Archduke
had in the last few days before the declaration of war made up his mind
to attack the King’s army. If Victor Emmanuel crossed the Mincio he
would fall upon him on the ground between that river and the Adige; or
if the Italians remained in Lombardy he intended himself to cross the
Mincio, trusting to be able to defeat them, and then return in time to
deal with Cialdini. In both cases he would have the advantage of being
able to make one or other of the four fortresses of the Quadrilateral
the base of his attack. On June 20th he received notice that war had
been declared. On the same day he had reports from his cavalry outposts
to the effect that both the Italian armies were preparing to advance.
From the westward the King’s army was closing in upon various points
on the Mincio, and to the southward Cialdini was collecting material
to construct bridges across the Po at Francolinetto, and had actually
occupied an island in the middle of the wide stream at that point. The
Archduke remained quiet near Verona for nearly two days longer. His
plan was to lull his enemy into a false sense of security, and then
strike swiftly and sharply. All the bridges on the Mincio were left
standing, and the screen of cavalry posts received orders not to oppose
the Italians seriously at any point when they tried to cross. When
the invaders entered Venetia the Austrian horsemen were to fall back
before them, to do as little fighting as possible, but never to lose
sight of them.
On Thursday, June 22nd, the royal army of Italy was concentrated on
the right or Lombard bank of the Mincio. At Monzambano the engineers
were at work constructing bridges. At Valeggio and Goito the cavalry
of De Sonnaz was ready to seize the existing bridges as soon as the
word was given to advance. In the grey of the early morning of Friday
they crossed the river at both points. The Austrian cavalry, under
Colonel Pulz, fell back without firing a shot. Avoiding the hills that
lie northward towards the Garda lake, Pulz retired across the level
ground of the plain of Villafranca. The plain is thickly populated.
There are numerous villages and hamlets, and plenty of roads,
footpaths, and tracks; but it is difficult country to manœuvre in, for
everywhere the ground is cut up with small watercourses and irrigation
channels--hedgerows, orchards, and plantations restrict the view.
Along the course of the streams are swampy rice-fields, and on every
stretch of sloping ground there are thickly-planted vineyards. Pulz was
able to make the Italians very slow and cautious in their advance. It
was the afternoon before he retired from Villafranca, and behind the
little country town he made a stand with his horsemen and a battery
of artillery; and though he again retreated after a short skirmish,
the result was that the Italian cavalry of De Sonnaz did not push
their explorations any further that day. They reported to the royal
headquarters that the Austrians had no force between the Adige and the
Mincio beyond a couple of regiments of cavalry and a battery of horse
artillery; and this confirmed La Marmora in his idea that the Archduke
would be compelled by his inferior numbers to remain on the defensive
near Verona.
[Illustration: VERONA.]
All day the Italian army had been pouring across the bridges of the
Mincio, and advancing by the hot, sandy roads--the right into the plain
of Villafranca, the left towards the low hills that border it on the
northward, stretching from the lake of Garda to Custozza and Somma
Campagna. General La Marmora was confident of victory. He was occupying
the very ground where the allied armies of France and Italy had stayed
their onward march in 1859. He was going to take up the work of
conquest where Napoleon III. had left off, and he hoped to complete it
by entering Venice as a victor. North and south and away to his front
lay the famed fortresses of the Quadrilateral, the keys of Northern
Italy; but their garrisons were cowering behind the ramparts, and doing
nothing to disturb his movements.
On the Saturday night about half the Italian army was across the
river, and the rest was close up to the bridges, ready to follow in
the morning. The troops were to be moving by 3.30 a.m., and La Marmora
had issued orders for an advance upon Verona. The right was to move by
the plain of Villafranca to the hills round Somma Campagna; the left
was to enter the hill country, more directly marching from Monzambano
and Valeggio on Castelnuovo and Sona. The object of the movement was
to occupy the mass of hills to the south-east of the lake of Garda,
cut off Peschiera from Verona, and threaten the positions held by the
Archduke near that fortress.
On the Sunday morning the Italians were under arms at half-past three,
and soon after their columns were on the move. The men had no breakfast
before starting, beyond a piece of bread or a biscuit taken from the
haversack and eaten as they waited for the order to march off. It was
intended to halt later on for breakfast, but the Italian staff was
anxious to get the march over as early as possible, as it was expected
that it would be a very hot day. So sure were they that the enemy would
not be encountered in force that no cavalry were sent out to scout in
front. In front of each column there was an advance guard; but so badly
was the march arranged, and so loosely was the connection between the
advance guards and those that followed them kept up, that the vanguard
of Sirtori’s division, consisting of some 2,500 men with six guns, took
the wrong road, and got in front of the vanguard of Cerale’s division;
while, by a blunder of the leading portion of Cerale’s column, his main
body wandered on to the road assigned to General Sirtori. Thus there
was the singular spectacle of two advance guards following each other
on one road, while their main bodies calmly marched in long procession
along another.
The start had been made shortly before four o’clock. The march had
proceeded for a little more than an hour, and five had just struck
from the village bell towers, when General La Marmora, who was riding
with centre, was surprised at hearing far away to the right, in the
direction of Villafranca, the roar of guns in action. The two divisions
of the Italian third corps, commanded by the Crown Prince Humbert
and by General Bixio, had been attacked by Austrian cavalry and
horse artillery. The Italians behaved well. The infantry formed into
squares, and beat off three cavalry charges; the artillery galloped
up, unlimbered, and drove away the Austrian guns with a few well-aimed
shells. By six o’clock the fight was over, and the enemy was in
retreat. La Marmora had ridden towards the firing, and when he received
the report of what had happened, he at once made up his mind that the
affair was of very little importance. He felt sure that the Austrian
force consisted only of Pulz’s regiments, the same which had been
watching the river two days before, and had retired through Villafranca
when the Italians advanced on the Saturday.
The divisions of his first corps on the left had now entered the hilly
country, and at half-past six, a good half-hour after the last shot had
been fired at Villafranca, there was a still more startling incident
on the left. Sirtori was marching his division across the deep little
valley through which the Tione flows, and the leading regiment was
ascending the slope beyond its left bank. Sirtori himself rode near the
head of the column. Suddenly a volley was fired at the leading ranks by
riflemen lying in ambush among the trees and enclosures of a farmstead
at the top of the slope. Sirtori, pulling up his horse, looked through
his field-glasses at the wreaths of smoke that hung in the still,
clear morning air; but so well hidden were the riflemen that he could
not make out their uniforms. Nevertheless, he felt so sure that the
Austrians were not in front of him, and he so little suspected that
his vanguard was on another road, that he told those near him that the
ambushed foes must be their own comrades of the vanguard firing on them
by mistake, and he sent two of his officers galloping forward to stop
the fire. They came careering back down the slope to tell him that they
had narrowly escaped being killed or captured by a regiment of Austrian
Jagers, and the next minute the sight of guns unlimbering on the ridge
told the startled Italian general that he had come upon a hostile army
in battle array. A minute more and the deep voice of the first gun
told even La Marmora that he had made a terrible mistake, and that the
Austrians were in action on his left as well as his right.
What had happened? The Italian columns working their way into the
hills--one by this road, another by that, with no connection between
them, with no concerted plan of action, and, what was worse, with the
men fasting and unprepared for a long day’s battle, were one by one
coming into collision with the army drawn up to receive them under
the cover of the first ridges of the hills. Late on the Friday the
Archduke had learned of the Italian advance, and had given orders
for the crossing of the Adige, near Verona. On the Saturday, while
the Italians believed he was still inactive behind the river, he had
got his whole army across it, and he bivouacked for the night within
striking distance of the royal army, in which no one, from the King
to the youngest soldier, had an idea that 60,000 foes were so close
in their front. Considering how densely peopled the whole district
is, it is a marvel that none of the inhabitants warned the Italians
of their danger. If any of them made an effort to pass the Austrian
outposts, the attempt was a failure. At midnight the Archduke received
a telegram from General Scudier, who commanded on the lower Po. It
informed him that Cialdini’s vanguard was crossing the river, and the
Austrians were slowly retiring before his advance. But this made no
change in the arrangements for next day. The Archduke still counted
on smashing up the King’s army before the two Italian armies could
get near enough to help each other. He believed the King’s plan would
be to march direct through the plain of Villafranca to the Adige; and
his own orders for next day were that the various corps were to face
southward and westward, moving from their camps at 2 a.m., gaining
the hills, and then sweeping round, so as to descend on the flank of
the Italian advance. Although he had not completely divined the plans
of the Italians, his own plans were so sound that they met even their
altered arrangements. Instead of falling on their flank, he struck the
heads of their ill-connected columns as they strove to gain the hills.
His own march had begun at 2 o’clock, in the darkness of a midsummer
night. There was soon enough light to move rapidly and surely. At
five the sound of guns engaged in the brief action at Villafranca led
the Austrians for awhile to believe that the main Italian advance was
in the plain; but their scouts soon brought them news of the real
direction in which the enemy was moving, and when the Italians entered
the hills they blundered into a fight for which they were not prepared,
while the Austrians met them with a well-organised battle line, every
unit in which worked well with those to the right and left of it,
and proved once more that even enormous numbers count for less than
discipline and union under one strong will directed by a clear and
well-trained mind.
So far as the Italians were concerned, Custozza was a series of
detached fights; for the Austrian commander it was a tremendous
struggle, of which he controlled and co-ordinated all the parts.
Let us return to the fight at the point where it began on the Italian
left. As soon as Sirtori found that he had an Austrian force to deal
with, he got his division into line on the very unfavourable ground
on which its leading battalion stood when the first shots were fired,
and made repeated efforts to drive the enemy from the farm and the
ridges round Pernisa. Soon he heard firing away to the left and right.
The battle was becoming general. To the left, about a mile and a half
away, his advanced guard, under General Villahermosa, had come upon the
Austrian reserve division holding the slopes of Monte Cricol, a bold
ridge over which the Valeggio road runs about two miles to the south of
Castelnuovo. The fight here had a very important effect on the fortunes
of the day. Villahermosa, believing that he had the whole of Sirtori’s
division close behind him, resolved to clear the way for it by driving
the Austrians from the hill, and sent forward his riflemen--the famous
Bersaglieri--whose ordinary marching pace is a smart run. They made
a gallant dash at the Monte Cricol, but the attack was a failure.
Outnumbered and over-weighted, the Italian riflemen fell back, and then
the Austrians came charging down the hill after them, and began to
drive Villahermosa and his vanguard along the Valeggio road. More than
an hour had passed in this fight in front of Monte Cricol, when again
the tide was turned by the arrival of the leading troops of General
Cerale’s division, which had marched towards the firing. The division
consisted of some 12,000 men, with eighteen guns. First came General
Villarey, a Savoyard soldier, with two battalions of Bersaglieri
as the vanguard. Then came the rest of Villarey’s brigade--eight
battalions--and behind it the guns and a brigade of eight more
battalions under General Dhô. As Cerale brought his division into
action he saw not only the victorious Austrians in front, but other
white-coated columns moving on the hills to his right, beyond the
Tione. These were part of the corps that was attacking his colleague
Sirtori, but they brought their guns to bear even upon the Valeggio
road, so that Cerale had to turn some of his own artillery upon them.
His main force he threw against the Austrians in front, in order to
rescue Villahermosa, and for the moment superior force was on the side
of the Italians. They cleared the road, captured two guns, and, pushing
boldly on, got to the crest of the Monte Cricol, and also turned the
enemy out of Mongabia on the right of the road. It looked as if here,
on the extreme western edge of the battle, the Italians were winning.
[Illustration: ARCHDUKE ALBERT.]
But now came an incident which shows how, even in modern war with tens
of thousands in the field, a handful of brave men can change the whole
aspect of a battle. Across the Tione, to the right of this portion
of the fight, there was a regiment of Austrian cavalry, known as the
Sicilian Uhlans (lancers, who had formerly had the King of the Two
Sicilies for their honorary colonel). Colonel de Berres, who commanded
the lancers, had been watching through his field-glass the fight for
the Monte Cricol, and seeing that the Austrian brigade, which was now
retiring before the Italians, was hard pressed, he thought he could
help his friends by a sudden charge on Cerale’s flank. One Italian
brigade was in line of battle driving in the Austrians; the other was
in a long marching column on the road. Berres called up one of his
captains--Bechtoldsheim--and ordered him to take three troops and
attack the enemy on the road. The three troops numbered exactly 103
officers and men. The brigade of General Dhô was at least 5,000 strong,
but the hundred without a moment’s hesitation trotted off to charge the
5,000. They descended the slope to the Tione, found a ford, got across,
and quietly made their way up the hill to the right of the Italians.
These seem not to have had the least warning of the coming attack.
They were moving slowly forward in column when the handful of splendid
horsemen came rushing down the hill like a hurricane. Generals Cerale
and Dhô, with their staff, were riding at the head of the column. The
Uhlans, falling on the flank of the foremost regiment, crashed through
it with levelled lances, and then rode for the crowd of officers,
and scattered them right and left. The two generals escaped with
difficulty. Cerale was hit by a revolver bullet in the _mêlée_,
and Dhô received three lance wounds. Two guns which were on the road
just behind the staff were galloped back to the rear by their teams,
and battalion after battalion broke and ran as the lancers dashed down
the road cheering and striking right and left with their lances, the
retiring guns being now the main object of their charge. At last the
frightened gunners cut the traces, and the guns were overturned in the
press. But, with the exception of one battalion, Dhô’s division was now
a panic-stricken mob. On both sides of the road the valley was full of
men who had thrown away their arms and were running for their lives.
Two thousand of them did not stop till they had put the bridges of
Monzambano and Valeggio between them and the enemy. And yet that enemy
consisted only of a handful of lancers. If one company had stood its
ground and fired one steady volley the charge would have been stopped.
When the lancers at last pulled bridle and turned to ride back they
had not lost a score of their small number. Captain Bechtoldsheim,
their brave leader, had had his horse killed under him, but close by an
Italian major had just been run through with a lance, and Bechtoldsheim
caught the horse of his fallen foe and again put himself at the head
of his men. But as they rode back they found the one Italian battalion
that had kept together had lined the ditches on both sides of the only
possible track. The lancers had to gallop through a sheet of flame from
the hostile rifles, and the road was strewn with men and horses. When
Bechtoldsheim regained the hill there were only sixteen of his brave
Uhlans beside him. They had left two officers, eighty-four men, and
seventy-nine horses in the valley, killed and wounded; but they had
done their work, and their charge had decided the fortune of the day.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE OF THE AUSTRIAN LANCERS
(_p._ 252).]
Villarey’s brigade was now all that was left of Cerale’s division. The
Austrians had been reinforced, and they promptly attacked and retook
the Monte Cricol, and drove the Italians down the hill and along the
same valley which had just witnessed the charge of the lancers. The
Italians tried more than once to make a stand, but they were driven
from position after position, and their commander, Villarey, was shot
dead while forming the 30th Regiment for a counter-attack on the
victors. After his fall there was nothing but wild confusion on the
Italian left. Here and there, however, handfuls of brave men acted in
a way that did something to redeem the honour of the Italian arms.
A little group of ten officers and thirty men of the 44th Regiment,
finding that they were abandoned by their panic-stricken comrades,
threw themselves into a farmhouse, taking the flag of the regiment
with them. They held it for two hours against the Austrians, and only
surrendered it when the building was set on fire. But their flag was
not captured. They had cut it into forty pieces, and each of them took
a piece. When they came back from Austria after the war the pieces were
sewn together, and the flag was restored to the regiment.
[Illustration:
BATTLE-FIELD
OF
CUSTOZZA.]
The village of Oliosi, between the Valeggio road and the Tione, was
held by the Italians, and afforded some protection to their retreat
from the disastrous fight before the Monte Cricol. It was stormed by
a column of two Austrian regiments under General Piret, which crossed
the river, and cleared the village without much difficulty. In one
house--the presbytery, near the village church--the Italians held out
for nearly two hours. When the house was all but demolished the little
garrison surrendered, and five officers and forty-nine men were made
prisoners.
What was left of Cerale’s division, together with part of Sirtori’s
vanguard, now rallied on the bold ridge of Monte Vento. To their left
General Pianelli’s division, which had just crossed the Mincio, was
coming up from the bridges of Monzambano, bringing some 12,000 fresh
men to support them. The Austrians were pushing in between the hill and
the river; and one of their rifle regiments advancing over-boldly, was
surrounded by Pianelli’s troops, and the 700 Jagers were all either
shot down or captured. The reserve of the Italian 1st corps, consisting
chiefly of Bersaglieri, was also directed upon Monte Vento. On the
possession of this ridge the safety of the whole army depended, for
if the Austrians took it they would be in a position to cut off the
Italians from the bridges over the Mincio.
So far the fight on the left had gone by ten o’clock. On the rest
of the field it was the same. Everywhere the Italians had come into
action piecemeal against solid masses of Austrians, and in every one
of the detached fights that was in progress from left to right they
were being pushed back. In the Tione valley Sirtori had failed to carry
the ridge near Pernisa. He had himself been routed and driven across
the river by the advancing Austrians, and had lost three guns. He had
rallied his men and crossed the stream a second time, only to be a
second time driven back. Still further to the right among the hills
towards Custozza Brignone’s division had come to grief. The Italians
had fought well and lost heavily, Prince Amadeo and General Gozzani
both falling severely wounded at the head of their brigades. About
ten, La Marmora was so alarmed by the reports that reached him from
every side that he told the King he thought it was a lost battle, and
was on the point of giving the order to retire to the bridges when an
encouraging message from Durando, who was bringing the reserves into
action on the left, led him to change his mind, and continue the fight.
Having made at the outset such a terrible mistake as to the position
of the Austrians, he seemed all day to be expecting some new surprise
and disaster; and though really there were only Pulz’s cavalry in the
plain to his extreme right, he was so anxious about a possible attack
in that direction that he kept Bixio and Prince Humbert’s division
inactive all day at Villafranca. They had not fired a shot since the
short skirmish with the cavalry in the early morning, and all through
the blazing heat of the day the men sat or lay stretched in the shadows
of the trees, listening to the roar of the fight in the hills, while
their officers impatiently waited for orders to move. The only order
they got was a message that all was lost, and the moment had come to
retreat. But this was some hours later. By eleven o’clock the Austrians
had disposed of Sirtori’s division, and crossing the river after his
retreating battalions, they stormed the strong position of Santa
Lucia, thus almost interposing between the Italian left and right.
Artillery was massed against Monte Vento, and further westward a column
of attack moved forward to attempt to seize the bridges on the Mincio
at Monzambano. On the right the two fresh divisions of Cugia and Govone
strengthened the Italian line, and delayed for a while the advance of
the Austrians, whose object in this quarter was the capture of the
village of Custozza, which stands on a bold hill overlooking the plain
of Villafranca.
The loss of Santa Lucia made it very difficult for the Italians to
hold on to Monte Vento. General Durando was actually discussing the
question of retiring when he was shot down, and General Chilini, who
had assumed the command in his stead, abandoned the position as soon
as the Austrians advanced upon it. This made the defeat of the whole
Italian army inevitable, for the Austrians could now advance and seize
the ground between Monte Vento and the Mincio, the very ground over
which the Italian army must retire if it was to withdraw to its own
territory, and across which it would have to keep up its communications
with Lombardy, even if it could maintain itself in Venetia.
On the right the Italians had been driven back upon Custozza. It was
near four o’clock. The Austrians had every available man and every
gun in action. Their men were weary with the night march and the long
fight among the hills under the blazing midsummer sun, which shone in
a cloudless sky. But it was worse for the Italians. Most of them had
eaten nothing all day, and they had none of the inspiration of success.
They had been losing ground all day, and they had lost all confidence
in their chiefs and in themselves. Yet they had still forty thousand
men who either had not fired a shot or had not been seriously engaged.
These were the two divisions at Villafranca (Bixio’s and the Crown
Prince’s) and the two reserve divisions of Cucchiari’s corps, which
were struggling along roads so encumbered with a confused mass of
baggage and ammunition waggons that it was only when all was over that
they approached the field. It would be difficult to find more striking
proof of the hopeless incapacity of La Marmora and his staff.
At five o’clock the village and hill of Custozza were stormed with a
fierce rush by the columns on the Austrian left. The hills were now
completely in the possession of the Archduke. He had driven the last of
the Italians on to the low ground, and everywhere they were retiring
towards the river, thousands having already streamed across the bridges
in a confused and disorderly march. The Austrians were so exhausted
with their nineteen hours of marching and fighting that there was no
pursuit. If the Archduke had had a few thousand fresh troops he might
have captured whole masses of the fugitives, who were huddled together
along the Mincio, waiting to cross. Next day the Austrian cavalry
pushed into Lombardy, and such was the impression made on the Italian
army by the collapse of Custozza that La Marmora made no effort to stop
them, but retired first behind the Chiese and then behind the Oglio,
abandoning a considerable part of Lombardy. Meanwhile, the Archduke had
marched from the scene of his victory back to the Adige, in order to be
able to fall on Cialdini if he persisted in his invasion of Venetia.
But the lesson of Custozza was enough to make the second Italian army
withdraw into the Romagna.
The Austrians lost in the battle 960 killed, 3,690 wounded, and some
hundreds of prisoners, chiefly the Jagers captured by Pianelli’s
division. The Italian loss in killed and wounded was not quite so
heavy, the killed being 720 and the wounded 3,112, but they lost in
prisoners and missing 4,315 officers and men. On the Italian side
General Villarey was killed, and Generals Dhô, Durando, Gozzani, and
Prince Amadoe were wounded. But a mere comparison of losses can give no
idea of the effect of the battle on the two armies. The Austrian army
was for all practical purposes intact, full of confidence in itself
and in its leader. A great part of the Italian army had degenerated
into something like an armed mob, all confidence in the generals was
gone, and, instead of talking of a march upon Venice, men were asking
themselves if they could hold Northern Italy against an Austrian
invasion. Custozza had given one more proof of the fact that victory is
not always with the big battalions, and that a skilful leader can bring
to nought the onset of less ably handled troops, though they outnumber
his own by tens of thousands.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _The Taking of Badajoz_
_By D. H. Parry_]
On the 16th of March, 1812, when the poplar trees that fringed the
Guadiana were bending under a tempest of wind and rain, a British
force some 15,000 strong, with a battering train of fifty-two guns,
reached Badajoz--a strongly-fortified Spanish town near the frontier of
Portugal--the bugles of the “95th” playing “St. Patrick’s Day” as they
faced the furious equinoctial gale.
About a year before, the scoundrel Imas had delivered up the place
to Marshal Soult, whose clubfoot did not prevent his being one of
the most active men and fearless riders in the French service; and
although we had made two attempts to retake it, we had failed on each
occasion after heavy losses, our battering train being shamefully
insufficient, and the enemy very much on the alert; the third time we
were successful, and it is of this I am about to tell.
Badajoz was the _pax augusta_ of the Romans, and a granite bridge
with twenty-eight arches, dating from Roman times, still spanned the
sluggish river on the north-west; but, save that the town had been
frequently taken and retaken by Moors, Goths, and Spaniards, and
was the birthplace of Morales, the painter, there was nothing very
remarkable about its quaint, crooked streets and massive cathedral
beyond the natural strength of its position, rising some 300 feet above
the marshy plain, with eight bastions and their connecting curtains to
protect it from attack.
It remained for Philippon and his gallant garrison, and our veteran
troops under the Earl of Wellington--as he was then styled--to render
Badajoz immortal, and bring a flush of pride and a thrill of horror to
future generations who may read the tale.
The General of Brigade Philippon, colonel of the 8th of the French
Line, and member of the Legion of Honour, commanded in Badajoz with a
force of 4,742 men--composed partly of the 9th Light Infantry, the 88th
Regiment, the Hesse-Darmstadt, some dragoons and chasseurs, artillery,
engineers, and invalids, and seventy-seven Spaniards who ought to have
been fighting on the other side.
Although somewhat short of powder and shell, Badajoz presented a
formidable task to a besieging army, being protected on one side by the
river, 500 yards wide in places, and having several outworks, or forts,
notably one called the Picurina, on a hill to the south-east, whose
defenders could be reinforced along a covered-way leading to the San
Roque lunette close to the town walls.
Philippon had, moreover, taken every means possible to strengthen his
post: mines were laid, the arch of a bridge built up to form a large
inundation, ravelins constructed and ramparts repaired, ditches cut and
filled with water, and that he should have no useless mouths to fight
for, the inhabitants were ordered to lay up three months’ provisions or
march out there and then.
Such was Badajoz when Picton’s 3rd, or “Fighting,” Division; Lowry
Cole’s 4th--or, as they were nicknamed at the close of the war,
“Enthusiastic”--Division; and the Light, known as “_The_”
Division, invested it in the rain.
The rest of the army watched Soult’s movements closely, and prepared to
oppose the relief of the town if that should be attempted, and the 5th
Division was on its way from Beira to assist the siege.
As soon as darkness had fallen on the night of the 17th, 2,000 men
moved silently forward to guard our trenching parties, and, with
mattock and shovel, we began to break ground, 160 yards from the
Picurina, the sentinels on the ramparts hearing nothing, as the howling
of the wind drowned the sound of digging, and the sputtering rain
fell incessantly into the works. So well had the volunteers from the
3rd Division laboured, for we had no regular sappers, that the light
of the misty March morning revealed 4,000 feet of communication, and
a parallel 600 yards long, on perceiving which the garrison opened
a tremendous fire of cannon and musketry. The deafening roar of the
heavy guns and the crack of rifles and smooth-bores continued with
little cessation for many days, increasing as we finished battery after
battery and brought them to bear upon the doomed town.
The condition of our siege artillery would hardly be credited were
it not borne out by the unanimous published statements of credible
witnesses.
[Illustration: BADAJOZ.]
Of the fifty-two pieces, some dated from the days of Philip II. and
the Spanish Armada; others were cast in the reigns of Philip III. and
also John IV. of Portugal, who reigned in 1640; we had 24-pounders of
George II.’s day, and Russian naval guns; the bulk of the extraordinary
medley being obsolete brass engines which required seven to ten minutes
to cool between each discharge, lest the overheating should cause the
muzzles to drop.
The ammunition was little better, and an engineer officer tells us
that his 18-pound shot was of _three_ distinct sizes, which had
to be sorted out and painted different colours, while it was often
possible to put a finger between the ball and the top of the gun, when
the former was placed ready for ramming. Yet, with this miserable
_matériel_ we were expected to fight the most intelligent army in
Europe!
Wellington learned from his spies that the garrison were to make a
sally on the 19th, and at 1 o’clock the Talavera Gate suddenly opened,
a little body of horsemen jingling out, followed by 1,300 infantry, who
concealed themselves in the covered trench connecting San Roque with
the Picurina.
The cavalry pretended to skirmish, and, dividing into two parties, one
pursued the other towards our lines, where they were challenged, and
allowed to pass, on replying in Portuguese.
There was some excuse for the conduct of our pickets, as the French
dragoons, in consequence of the difficulty of procuring new uniforms
from France, were allowed to use the brown cloth so general all over
the Peninsula, and were thus easily mistaken for our Portuguese allies,
some of whom also dressed in brown. But we were soon undeceived, for
the troopers dashed at the engineers’ park, cut down some men, and
galloped off with several hundreds of the entrenching tools, for which
Philippon had offered a large reward.
Simultaneously the infantry sprang out of the covered-way with a part
of the Picurina garrison, and, rushing forward, began to destroy our
works.
We drove them back almost to the walls of Badajoz, killing thirty and
wounding 287. But we lost heavily, for it was a sharp encounter; and,
unhappily, our chief engineer, Colonel Fletcher, was badly hit, a
bullet striking a silver dollar in his fob and forcing it an inch into
the groin, confining him to his tent until the latter end of the siege,
the Earl going each morning to consult about the day’s operations.
Our movements were by no means faultless, Wellington having great
difficulties to contend with in many directions; in fact, during the
whole of the Peninsular War he may be said to have fought the French
with one hand, and Spanish pride, obstinacy, and selfishness with the
other--fortunate indeed in possessing a genius which was ever at its
best the more trying the emergency. We stationed a cavalry regiment to
prevent any further surprises, and continued our digging, the pitiless
rain slanting unceasingly on the trench guards in their grey overcoats
and oilskin shakoe-covers, while the working-parties shovelled and
measured, and piled up long ridges of earth, standing ankle-deep in the
water which filled the saps and trenches.
Many a man of the 3rd Division spun round and fell on the wet ground,
for the enemy kept up a steady fire, and one shell dropped, fizzing,
into a parallel and exploded, killing fifteen of the workers in a
moment.
The Guadiana, too, rose in full flood and tore away the pontoon bridge
which connected us with our stores at Elvas: it was replaced, however,
and the garrison of Badajoz saw us creeping nearer and nearer to their
walls, until, at last, our men finding the fire from the Picurina
terribly galling, it was decided to storm that fort on the 24th.
* * * * *
The rain had ceased, and the dark mass of the fort, held by some of the
Hesse-Darmstadt Regiment, loomed up, stern and silent, as five hundred
of Picton’s Division mustered before it about nine o’clock on a fine
night.
A hundred men were kept in reserve, while the remainder, divided into
two bodies, were to advance against the right and left flanks, also
securing the communication with San Roque to prevent any succour coming
from the town.
Scarcely had the word to march been given, when soaring rockets went up
from the ramparts, port-fires illuminated the darkness in places, and
the stillness became a babel of sounds, as shells came hissing towards
us, drums rolled, and the bells of Badajoz rang wildly amid the deep
booming of the heavy cannon. Red flashes streamed through the openings
in the palisading, the Hesse-Darmstadt opened a murderous fire, but we
swarmed irresistibly up the rocks and groped for the gate, the pioneers
of the Light Division leading with their axes.
Down in the communication our fellows repulsed a battalion coming to
the rescue, but it seemed for a time as if we had been baffled; the
sides of the hill were dotted with our dead. Oates, of the Connaught
Rangers, three engineer officers, with Majors Rudd and Shaw, who
commanded the attack, and many a private soldier had fallen there. But
as Powis, of the 83rd, brought up the reserve and forced the palings
in front, the pioneers discovered the gateway on the town side, and,
battering it down, rushed in with a shout.
Nixon, of the 52nd, was shot two yards within the entrance, and we
fought with gun-butt and bayonet against a most heroic resistance; but
at last they were overpowered, and half the garrison slain. One officer
and thirty men floundered through the inundation and gained Badajoz in
safety, but brave Gaspard Thierry, with the eighty-six survivors, were
compelled to surrender, and the death-dealing Picurina was ours.
The firing from the town ceased at midnight, but with the dawn of day
they turned their guns on to the captured fort, driving us out and
crumbling it to pieces.
Philippon had hoped to have held the work for four or five days, while
he completed certain partially-finished defences, and its capture and
destruction were a severe blow to him. But he urged his garrison to
fresh efforts by reminding them of the English prison-hulks, which, as
Napier justly says, were a disgrace to our country.
Three breaching-batteries were now constructed, one against the
Trinidad bastion, another to shatter the Santa Maria, and the
third--which consisted of howitzers--was to throw shrapnel into the
ditch, and so prevent the garrison from working there. We had been
eleven days before the town, and in spite of all the obstacles had made
considerable progress, although latterly a bright moon had interfered
with our nocturnal operations.
Overcoats were laid aside, and our men appeared in the well-worn
scarlet coatee with white-tape lace, and the black knee-gaiter, which
was the dress of a British-infantry private at that time. Pigtails had
been done away with four years previously, and the well-known grey
trousers were not issued to the troops until the following September.
The Rifle Corps wore dark green, and used a wooden mallet to drive the
ball down the grooved barrel; fusiliers and the grenadier companies of
the line had bearskin caps, and light infantry were distinguished by
green tufts in their felt shakoes, while our Portuguese friends were
mostly clad in blue or brown, with green for the _caçadores_, or
riflemen, each man carrying--including knapsack, accoutrements, kit,
and weapons, etc.--a weight of seventy-five pounds twelve ounces, or
ten pounds more than their opponents. The soldiers were enraged at the
inhabitants of Badajoz for admitting the French, a sentiment which
boded ill to them if we took the town. But, in the meantime, many
instances of pluck on both sides were exhibited. One morning, early,
before the working-party arrived, a brave fellow crept out of Badajoz
and moved a tracing-string nearer to the walls, so that when we began
digging in fancied security, their guns suddenly opened and bowled the
men over like nine-pins. Another time, two of our officers and some men
stole forward in the night, gagged a sentry, and laid barrels of powder
against the dam which confined the inundation, and got back in safety;
but the explosion did not have the desired effect.
At last, the stones began to fall from the Trinidad bastion, amid
clouds of dust, as ball after ball went home with terrific force; the
Santa Maria also crumbled under the cannonade, but, being casemated, it
resisted better than the other, which, by the 2nd of April, yawned in a
manner that must have dismayed the garrison, for they commenced to form
what is known as a retrenchment, or second line of defence, within the
walls, by levelling houses behind the growing breach. In places where
the fortifications had not been completed the energetic Frenchman hung
brown cloth which resembled earth, and his men were able to pass freely
along; they also made a raft with parapets and crossed the inundation
to our side. But all their efforts were useless: the breaches became
larger as masses of stone and rubbish fell like mimic avalanches into
the fosse below; and, on the 6th, a tremendous gap showed in the
ancient masonry of the curtain between the two bastions which had not
been renewed when the bastions themselves were rebuilt about 1757.
Then came a moment’s pause. Soult, Drouet, and Daricau were advancing:
a battle was imminent, and would need all our forces. In twenty-one
days we had expended 2,523 barrels of gunpowder, each barrel containing
ninety pounds, and we had fired 35,346 rounds of ammunition. Badajoz
must be taken at all risk; and orders were now given for the most
terrible of all species of warfare--_the night-attack by storm_!
* * * * *
Wellington’s commands were precise and to the point, but they were
terribly eloquent to those who read them. I have extracted a few
paragraphs from the original memorandum, and give them word for word:--
“1. The fort of Badajoz is to be attacked at 10 o’clock this night (6th
of April). 2. The attack must be made on three points--the castle, the
face of the bastion of La Trinidad, and the flank of the bastion of
Santa Maria. 3. The attack of the castle to be by escalade; that of the
two bastions, by the storm of the breaches.... 20. The 4th Division
must try and get open the gate of La Trinidad; the Light Division must
do the same by the gate called the Puerta del Pillar. 21. The soldiers
must leave their knapsacks in camp.... 24. Twelve carpenters with axes,
and ten miners with crowbars, must be with the Light, and ditto with
the 4th Division.”
The time had been altered from 7.30 to 10 o’clock, and during that
interval the French placed the celebrated _chevaux-de-frise_
of sharpened sword-blades in the gap we had made in the connecting
curtain; piles of shot and shell were laid along the ramparts, with
beams of wood, old carriage-wheels, and every conceivable missile that
their ingenuity could devise; each soldier had three loaded muskets
beside him, and, as the unusual stillness in our trenches warned them
that something was in preparation, an officer tried to reconnoitre us
with a little escort of cavalry, but we drove him back, and all was
quiet once more.
It was the calm before the storm, and men grew silent and thoughtful as
the time drew near.
Letters were written home by hands that would never use pen again;
absent friends were talked of in hushed voices, wills hastily made
as in the presence of death; the married soldiers lingered in their
quarters till the last moment, and then gave it out that they were
“going on guard”!
The April day drew into evening; a grey mist rose from the river and
stole among the trenches and the marshy ground, where frogs piped
dismally and field-crickets kept up their perpetual chirp; then night
came, still and cloudy, not a star visible, but here and there lights
flitted along the ramparts, and the challenge of the sentries could be
distinctly heard.
There was no bustle to show that eighteen thousand men were forming for
a desperate attack; company after company they mustered and got under
arms silently, words of command being given in a whisper.
Picton had been hurt by a fall, and his famous 3rd Division was led by
Kempt in consequence.
Its destination was the castle, whose walls were from eighteen to
twenty-four feet high; and the regiments which formed it were the 5th,
45th, 74th, 77th, 83rd, 88th, and 94th British, and the 9th and 21st
Portuguese.
The 5th Division, under Lieutenant-General Leith--composed also of
English and Portuguese--had to make a feint upon the Pardaleras outwork
to the left, and then march round and storm the San Vincente bastion
in rear of the town, while General Power made a false attack on the
bridge-head beyond the Guadiana.
[Illustration:
SPAIN & PORTUGAL
to illustrate
THE PENINSULAR WAR.]
The Light Division and the 4th, under Generals Colville and Barnard,
were to tackle the trenches, and were composed of the following
corps--the Light having the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th British, the 1st and
3rd Portuguese Caçadores; and the 4th Division, the 7th, 23rd, 27th,
40th, 48th, and 97th British, with the 11th and 23rd Portuguese, and
the 1st Battalion of the Lusitanian Legion.
The trench-guards and the “forlorn hope” fell in, and about 9 o’clock
four companies of the 95th Rifles crept forward and lay down, under the
crest of the glacis, within a few yards of the French sentinels, whose
heads could be seen, passing to and fro, against the sky.
Not a word was spoken as they crouched, unnoticed, in the mist that
veiled their dark uniforms. They waited the arrival of the “forlorn
hope” to begin the attack. At length a sentry peered over the parapet:
something had caught his quick ear, for he cried “_Qui vive?_” and
there was a moment of keen suspense.
Not satisfied, he again challenged, and, receiving no reply, fired his
musket into the darkness; and instantly the drums of Badajoz beat to
arms.
Still, for ten minutes more the riflemen lay motionless, until the
“forlorn hope” came up, and then, each man sighting carefully at the
heads above the rampart, they poured in a volley, and the attack began.
[Illustration:
“THE NEXT THEY WERE LEAPING, SLIDING, CLIMBING”
(_p._ 262).]
It was unfortunate--as it happened--for Wellington wished all our
assaults to take place simultaneously, but it could not be undone;
moreover the garrison threw a huge mass of combustibles, called “a
carcass,” from the walls, and by its powerful blaze they saw the 3rd
Division drawn up under arms; so, “Stormers to the front!” was our cry,
and we rushed on with an uproar of cheers and shouting.
The ladder-parties and those carrying the grass-bags ran forward,
scrambling across the trenches and broken ground, and, filing over the
Rivillas by a narrow bridge, reached the foot of the castle wall under
a heavy fire.
Brave Kempt, who afterwards fought at Waterloo, fell, badly wounded,
and as they carried him back he met Picton hurrying to take command
with his sword drawn.
The 3rd Division had only twelve ladders, and eighty to a hundred men
were all that could mount at a time; but they reared them against the
masonry, and fought with each other who should be first to ascend.
Stones, earth, live shells, beams, heavy shot, and a rain of musket
balls poured down; those who reached the top were stabbed and flung
on to the others behind them--here a cheer as a man grasped the
coping--there a howl of rage as the ladder was hurled broken from the
wall and all its occupants flung in a heap below.
“Forward the 5th Fusiliers--Come on, Connaught Rangers.” A corporal
of the 45th fell wounded on hands and knees, a ladder was placed on
his back in the confusion, his comrades mounting above him, and he was
found next day crushed to death, the blood forced from his ears and
nose.
Several of the ladders were broken, and those that remained were flung
off repeatedly by the garrison on the ramparts, until the French cried
“Victory,” and the 3rd Division retired for a moment, to re-form under
the crest of the hill.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the 4th and Light Divisions, after a double allowance of
grog had been served out, marched quickly on to the breaches, and the
trench-guard rushed at San Roque with such fury that they bayoneted its
defenders and carried the lunette without a rebuff.
As the stormers of the Light Division moved off, Major Peter
O’Hare--who had risen from the ranks to a commission in the 95th (a
most unusual thing in those days), and who was, moreover, one of the
ugliest men and one of the bravest in the army--shook hands with George
Simmonds, of the Rifles, saying--“A lieutenant-colonel or cold meat in
a few hours!” They found him next morning stone dead and stark naked,
with nearly a dozen bullets in his gallant frame. Officers were divided
into two categories by the Peninsular soldiers--the “Come on” and the
“Go on.” O’Hare was one of the former.
As the firing commenced at the castle, the heads of the double columns
reached the glacis to find all quiet and the place wrapped in profound
gloom.
The ditch yawned beneath them, and the stormers threw their grass-bags,
which measured some six feet by three feet, into it, lowered the
_five_ ladders which did duty for both divisions, and the “forlorn
hope” of the Light Division descended into the chasm, doomed to a man!
A musket-shot told them that the silence was a treacherous one; but
none were prepared for the awful scene that followed. The ditch was
crowded with the stormers, and men waited their turn to follow down
the ladders, when all at once a tongue of flame lit up the darkness, a
terrific explosion seemed to rend the earth itself, and five hundred
brave fellows were blown into eternity under the eyes of their comrades
on the glacis above them.
One second’s space the Light Division stood aghast, the next, they were
leaping, sliding, climbing, never heeding the depth, into the gory
grave that lay between them and the breaches, with a roar that went
echoing along the walls of Badajoz--a roar of fury never to be appeased
until bayonet should meet bayonet on the towering ramparts, fringed
with the foe, beyond.
Down poured the 4th Division and mingled with them: the ditch was full
of shouting redcoats, all struggling, regardless of rank, to get at
the French, who, yelling defiance in their turn, showered grape, round
shot, canister, hand grenades, stones, shells, and buckshot upon them;
rolling huge cannon-balls from the parapet, sending baulks of timber
thudding into the tumult, and coach-wheels that acquired a fearful
velocity as they bounded down the rocks into the living mass of British
valour pent up in the deathtrap below.
Bursts of dazzling light were succeeded by moments of intense darkness;
for an instant the huge bastions showed, bristling with armed men, to
be lost again in a Stygian gloom, re-illumined the next minute by the
flashing guns--by wavering port fires, and trailing rockets. A hundred
Albuera men of the Fusiliers were drowned in an unexpected water-ditch;
the air was heavy with gunpowder smoke and the sickening stench of the
stagnant pools; individuals and regiments alike surged and scrambled
to find a passage; until at last, getting on to an unfinished ravelin,
mistaken in the confusion for a breach, both divisions were jumbled
together, and great disorder ensued.
Wellington, watching from a hill, and seeing the pause, exclaimed
repeatedly: “What can be the matter?” sending aide-de-camp after
aide-de-camp to report progress, as the glare revealed the faces on the
ramparts and the peculiar hollow booming reached him, caused by the
garrison firing down into the cavernous depths of the ditch.
[Illustration: THE 5TH DIVISION STORMING BY ESCALADE
THE RAMPARTS OF SAN VINCENTE (_p._ 263).]
At length there was a rush for the great breach. Officers and men,
having extricated themselves from the carnage below, rushed on, to find
an impenetrable barrier of sword-blades fixed in wooden beams and set
firmly across the opening, while the _débris_ in front was strewn
with planks covered with spikes: if a soldier trod on one of them it
slid down, either throwing him on the spikes or sending him back on
to the bayonets of his comrades; and, to crown all, the garrison rolled
barrels of powder into the middle of us, which exploded with shocking
effect, filling the nostrils with the smell of burning flesh and singed
hair, and strewing the breach with scarlet figures in every conceivable
attitude of agony and death!
Our gallant fellows charged madly in masses, in groups, and even
singly, one private of the Rifles forcing himself among the
sword-blades, where the enemy shattered his bare head with their
musket-butts.
It was not until the cruel slaughter had lasted _two hours_
that the diminished divisions withdrew to the bottom of the slope
and stood furious and exhausted, but powerless to effect their aim,
and still under a fire that was thinning their broken ranks, while
the enemy cried mockingly down to them, “Why don’t you come into
Badajoz?” Captain Nicholas, of the Engineers, gathered a few men and
made frantic efforts to force the Santa Maria breach, and he was
joined by Lieutenant Shaw, of the 43rd, who collected fifty men from
various regiments and struggled over the broken masonry with them,
but, two-thirds of the way up a hail of balls and hissing grape-shot
mowed them nearly all down, and the divisions remained stolidly
confronting inevitable death, unable to advance, unwilling to retire,
for the bugles sounded twice unheeded, while, strange irony it seemed,
a bright moon shining peacefully overhead, the Santa Maria, or “Holy
Mary,” looking down upon them on the one hand, La Trinidad, “The
Trinity,” on the other, and all around an Inferno such as Dante never
dreamed of! About midnight Wellington ordered them back to re-form for
another attack, and in the meantime Picton’s Division, whom we left
also re-forming, had rushed forward again, led by Colonel Ridge, who
placed a ladder against the castle wall, where an embrasure offered a
chance of foothold. A grenadier officer named Canch reared a second
one alongside it, and the two mounted together, followed by their men,
securing the ramparts after a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, and
driving the enemy out of the castle into the town.
The garrison sent a reinforcement, and there was a sharp passage of
arms at the gate, our redcoats firing from one side almost muzzle to
muzzle with the blue-clad, square-shakoed French on the other; but we
kept the castle, though, unhappily, the gallant Ridge was slain.
Our reserves found the two ladders still standing, the top rungs of
one being broken; and when the 28th Regiment practised storming a dry
bridge with these, a couple of months afterwards, they were even then
covered with blood and brains!
It was about half-past eleven when the 3rd Division succeeded in
their escalade, and, retarded by unforeseen obstacles, it was not
until the same hour or thereabouts that the 5th Division, under
Lieutenant-General Leith, came under the breastwork before San Vincente
at the west end of the town. As the 1st, 4th, 9th, 30th, 38th, and 44th
Regiments, with a Portuguese brigade, halted, undiscovered, a few yards
from a guard-house where the French could be heard talking, the roar of
a distant explosion sounded, and the men whispered among themselves,
“It is at the breaches!”
All was intensely silent around them; the murmur of the river rose on
their left, the fortifications showed clearly before them as the moon
came out; they knew that their comrades far off on the other side of
the citadel were engaged, and an eager thrill went through the ranks. A
sentinel discovered the mass of men and the glint of the moonbeams on
the bayonets at the moment when our engineer guide exclaimed “Now’s the
time!” and as he fired we ran forward against the gateway.
Seized by a sudden panic the Portuguese ladder-party bolted, but we
snatched up the heavy ladders and our axemen chopped fearlessly at
the gate and wooden palings that fringed the covered-way, while from
the walls which towered thirty-one feet overhead, the same tempest of
beams, and shot, and bags of powder showered down on the heads of the
5th Division.
We cleared the paling and jumped into the ditch, crossing the cunette
with difficulty and finding the ladders too short for our purpose;
the engineer was killed, and a small mine exploded under our feet,
but, as luck would have it, the ramparts at San Vincente had been
thinned of some of their defenders, who had gone off at the double to
attack Picton’s men in the castle, and we placed three ladders under
an embrasure where there was a gabion instead of a gun, and where the
scarp was only twenty feet high.
Hand over hand, the troops clambered up under a concentrated fire
that dropped them off by dozens, and the topmost stormers had to be
pushed up by those behind before they could reach the embrasure, as
the ladders were all too short; but at last the bold fellows got a
foothold, and pulled the others up alongside them, until the redcoated
mass grew larger and larger, and half the King’s Own charged the houses
while the rest of the division went roaring along the ramparts, Brown
Bess in hand, hurling the stubborn garrison out of three bastions in
succession. There was a great shouting, mingled with the scream of
the grape-shot and the whistling hum of shells; yells, howls, prayers
and curses were drowned or half-heard amid the boom of cannon and the
incessant bang-bang of the deadly muskets fired at close-quarters.
[Illustration: BADAJOZ
1812.]
The awestruck watchers on the hill above our camp stood in an agony
of suspense, spectators of the terrific struggle; the entire citadel
seemed full of flame and noise, as mine after mine exploded, and
fire-ball after fire-ball was flung over the walls to light the
besieged in their heroic resistance: never had Napoleon’s soldiers
fought with more determined gallantry, officer and man vying with each
other in their efforts to keep us out, and as we drove them from one
defence they retired into another and stood once more at bay.
Philippon, and Vielland, the second in command, though both wounded,
flew from rampart to rampart, sword in hand, encouraging their brave
fellows by word and deed, while the solemn chime of the cathedral rang
out unnoticed hour after hour of that night of horrors.
A strange incident occurred at San Vincente when General Walker fell
riddled with balls on the parapet: either by accident or design, he
made a masonic sign as he staggered backwards, and a brother-mason
in the French ranks dashed aside the threatening bayonets of his
countrymen and saved him: afterwards, it is said, the general found his
preserver a prisoner-of-war in Scotland, and procured his exchange in
remembrance of his chivalry on the ramparts of Badajoz.
The 5th Division had obtained firm hold, knowing nothing of what was
happening at the castle or the breaches, and as a portion of them were
pursuing the enemy along the walls they rounded an angle and came upon
a solitary gun with one artilleryman, who flung a portfire down as they
approached.
Instantly there arose a cry of “A mine! a mine!” and our fellows
retired helter-skelter, followed by a fresh body under Vielland, who
drove them back to the parapet again and pitched several over into
the ditch, but a reserve of the 38th, under Colonel Nugent, about two
hundred strong, poured a volley into them, and we rallied and charged
along the wall towards the breaches.
The King’s Own had entered the town at the first onslaught of Leith’s
Division, and a strange contrast they found it to the uproar of the
bastions, as, with bayonets fixed and bugles blowing, they filed
through the streets, silent and deserted as the tomb; every door shut,
lamps alight in many of the windows, but not a soul abroad, except some
soldiers leading ammunition mules, who were promptly taken prisoners.
Sometimes a window opened and was immediately closed again; voices were
heard, but the speakers were invisible; a few shots came from beneath
the doors, but they were unheeded, and the adventurous 4th continued
its march into the great square, where the same silence reigned,
although the houses round it were brilliantly lighted.
The renewed fury at the breaches turned their steps in that direction,
and they hurried off to take the garrison in rear: the attempt was
well meant, but they were met by a fire that repulsed them, and they
continued their wandering down streets and lanes, but the French began
to be disheartened, as well they might.
The castle in our possession they could possibly have besieged from
the town side, as there was only one gate by which the 3rd Division
could have issued; the Trinidad and Santa Maria were also well-nigh
impregnable in spite of their shattered condition, had the garrison
been able to concentrate there, but the forcing of San Vincente had
let us in _behind_ them, and the struggle was only a matter of
time; so, brave Philippon and Vielland, with their remnants, forced the
bridge and shut themselves up in San Christoval across the Guadiana,
sending a few horsemen on the spur to carry news to Soult, and, the
bleeding 4th and Light Divisions scrambling up again and rushing the
breaches, BADAJOZ WAS OURS!
As the heavy firing died away towards morning, a mighty shout arose
inside the walls, caught up and echoed far and near by our victorious
soldiery, “Hurrah! hurrah! the town’s our own, hurrah!” and the
carnage-maddened men, breaking from all control, began a wild orgy,
which lasted for two days and two nights, indelibly sullying the glory
of our triumph.
[Illustration: “‘WILL YOU DRINK, OLD BOY?’”
(_p._ 266).]
Churches and mansions were entered and pillaged; costly sacramental
plate and silver money from the military chest strewed the rugged
pavement of the town; wine flowed down the gutters as freely as
blood had done on the ramparts, and men staggered along with their
shakoes full of liquor. One bestrode a cask with a loaded musket and
compelled officer and private alike to drink as they passed him; here
a group fired aimlessly down a street, caring little whom they hit,
others blazed away at the convent bells, while some masqueraded in
court-dresses, in French uniforms, and monks’ cowls, howling, singing,
dancing, like men possessed.
Many of the wretched inhabitants placed lighted candles and flasks of
aquadienta on their tables and sought to hide themselves, hoping the
marauders would drink and go away; they drank, but every cranny of the
house was ransacked before they took their leave, and things were done
of which we cannot speak, for the sake of humanity and the honour of
the army.
“The town is ours, hurrah!”
Women and children ran shrieking to the officers for protection, which,
alas, it was not always in their power to afford. Many an indignant
subaltern risked his life among his own men in frantic attempts to
recall them to order; an officer of the Brunswickers was shot while
struggling for the possession of a canary bird; one party was seen
tormenting a wounded baboon that had belonged to the colonel of the
4th French Regiment. And breaking open the jail, they liberated the
prisoners, some of the 5th and 88th holding candles aloft as the scum
of a Spanish prison poured out to add to the disorder. Wellington
himself was surrounded by a mob of drunkards, who fired their muskets
to his infinite peril, shouting as they brandished bottles of wine and
brandy--“Will you drink, old boy? The town’s our own, hurrah!”
At length a gallows with three nooses reared its ominous form in
the square, and a man named Johnny Castles, of the 95th, was placed
beneath it; but no one was hanged, and by degrees the troops were
drawn out of the town, credited with having murdered eighty-five of
the inhabitants--in actual fact, the number being thirty-two. In
fearful contrast to the licence within the walls was the scene outside.
Philippon had surrendered to the future Lord Raglan, and retired from
the service, in 1816, a General of Division, Baron of the Empire, and
wearer of the Legion of Honour and the Order of St. Louis. The ditch,
the slope, from the edge of the glacis to the top of the bastions,
resembled a huge slaughter-house, nearly 2,500 of our men having
fallen between the Santa Maria and La Trinidad alone, within a space
of a hundred square yards; the 43rd and 52nd, respectively the gayest
and the most sedate regiments in Spain, losing 670 men between them,
and the place presenting an unusually shocking appearance from the
explosions which had taken place there.
In one place the wife of a grenadier of the 83rd moaned over the corpse
of her husband; in another a little drummer-boy of the 88th lay with
his leg broken beside his dead father; the most heartrending sights
were witnessed as the women and children sought frantically for their
dear ones amid thousands of bodies, and the mangled fragments of what
had once been living men.
Amid the horror of it all, two Spanish ladies came out of the town and
implored two officers of the Rifles to assist them: one of them, Donna
Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon, afterwards married her protector,
who became Sir Harry Smith, of Aliwal fame, and was long a prominent
figure in English society--a curious instance of the “romance of war.”
We took the colours of the garrison and the Hesse-Darmstadt, but there
were no eagles in the town. The first man to die at the Santa Maria was
a Portuguese grenadier, and there was a story current in the army that
José de Castro, bugle-boy of the 7th Caçadores, had sounded the French
“recall” at a critical moment, for which he received a hundred guineas
from the Earl of Wellington: certain it is that when a very old man,
gaining a bare living by teaching the cornet in the town of Golega, he
was still petitioning the Portuguese Government for a pension.
Five generals wounded, five thousand officers and men fallen during the
siege--that is the story of Badajoz. And when Wellington stood in the
breach and looked around him, stern Spartan though he was, he burst
into tears.
[Illustration: THE BLOCKADE OF CALLAO
BY W. B. ROBERTSON]
At the invitation of the newly-created Republic of Chili, Admiral
Thomas Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, sailed from England in the
month of August, 1818, in the _Rose_, merchantman, to organise and
take supreme command of the Chilian navy. With him he took, besides his
wife and two children, English naval officers upon whom he could rely
in the arduous fighting he was soon to engage in against the superior
armaments of Spain. He landed on November 28th at Valparaiso, whither
General O’Higgins, Supreme Director of the Chilian Government, had
come to receive him. His reception was so warm both at Valparaiso and
at Santiago, the capital, and the continuation of proposed festivities
in his honour threatened to be so prolonged, that he had to remind his
Excellency O’Higgins that he had come to Chili to fight, and not to
feast.
Preparations were accordingly pushed forward to get such ships of war
as the Chilians possessed into some kind of fighting order. These
ships were the _O’Higgins_, formerly the _Maria Isabel_,
a Spanish frigate of 50 guns, which the Chilians had captured and
re-named after their adored chief; the _San Martin_, formerly the
_Cumberland_, Indiaman, with 56 guns; the _Lautaro_, also a
purchased Indiaman, with 44 guns; the _Galvarino_, recently the
British sloop-of-war _Hecate_, with 18 guns; the _Chacabuco_,
with 20 guns; and the _Araucano_, with 16 guns. This modest
squadron of seven vessels was to contend with and conquer the Spanish
fleet, made up of four frigates--the _Esmeralda_, 44 guns,
the _Venganza_, 42 guns, the _Sebastiana_, 28 guns; four
brigs--the _Maipo_, 18 guns, the _Pezuela_, 22 guns, the
_Potrillo_, 18 guns, and another, whose name is not known; one
schooner, name not known; six armed merchantmen--the _Resolution_,
36 guns, the _Cleopatra_, 28 guns, _La Focha_, 20 guns, the
_Guarmey_, 18 guns, the _Fernando_, 26 guns, and the _San
Antonio_, 18 guns; and twenty-seven gunboats.
Such were the opposing forces, whose operations for the next two
years now were to command the attention of the civilised world. Under
any other but Cochrane’s leadership the result could never have been
doubtful. Cochrane, however, had already shown under the British flag
that odds made no difference to him--a reputation that he was still
further to maintain.
It is necessary here to say that though Chili had vanquished the
Spanish forces in the interior and had overthrown the Spanish
Government, her long line of coast was still exposed to attacks from
the Spanish fleet. Besides, the enemy still held the impregnable forts
that commanded the port of Valdivia. These advantages, added to the
fact that her power in Peru was still intact, made Spain even yet a
formidable foe to the newly-acquired liberties of the Chilians. Thus,
before Chili could rest assured that Spanish dominion would not again
be re-asserted over her, she must break the power of the Spanish navy,
clear the Spanish garrisons out of Valdivia, and see her neighbour,
Peru, liberated. It was to contribute to the accomplishment of these
ends that Admiral Cochrane had now conferred upon him by commission the
titles of “Vice-admiral of Chili” and “Admiral and Commander-in-Chief
of the Naval Forces of the Republic.”
On December 22nd, nearly a month after his arrival at Valparaiso,
Cochrane hoisted his flag on the _O’Higgins_, named, as already
mentioned, in honour of the Supreme Director, who was the son of an
Irish gentleman of great distinction, who had risen so high in the
Spanish service as to occupy the position of Viceroy of Peru--the
highest post at that time in South America. The son, however, on the
outbreak of revolution, joined the patriots, and, as a reward for his
signal services in the field, was chosen head of the young Republic.
Resuming our narrative, we find Cochrane sailing from Valparaiso on
January 16th, 1819, with only four ships--the other three being not
yet ready. On that day Lady Cochrane with the children had come on
board to bid him adieu. She had gone ashore, and the last gun to summon
all hands on board had been fired, when suddenly a loud hurrah near
the house in which she was residing made her go to the window to see
what the matter might be. She was petrified at the sight that met her
gaze. Her little boy of five years, who had slipped away from her
unperceived, was perched on the shoulders of Cochrane’s flag-lieutenant
who was hurrying with him down to the beach. The excited populace were
shouting and hurrahing, while the little fellow, who had begged of the
by no means unwilling lieutenant to be taken aboard, was waving his
cap over their heads and crying “_Viva la patria_.” Before Lady
Cochrane could interfere, the two were being rapidly rowed off in a
small boat to the flagship which was already under weigh. It was thus
impossible, to the delight of the sailors as well as the youngster, for
him to be sent back; and though he had only the clothes that were on
him, which were altogether insufficient, the sailors said that didn’t
matter--they would make him others!
[Illustration: LORD COCHRANE.
(_From the Painting by Stroehling._)]
During this cruise Cochrane inflicted so many disasters upon the
Royalist cause, as to become known amongst the Spaniards by the title
“_El diablo_.” These disasters cannot be given in detail: so we
pass to the end of February, when he entered the port of Callao with
the _O’Higgins_ and _Lautaro_ under American colours. In
this port was practically concentrated the naval force of Spain in
the Pacific; yet such was the terror with which Cochrane had already
inspired them, that the Spaniards dared not go out to meet him. Instead
of this they dismantled their ships of war, and with the topmasts
and spars made a double boom across their anchorage to prevent his
approach. An unimportant action, however, took place, and at the
commencement of the firing Cochrane locked his little boy in the
after-cabin. In the middle of the engagement a round shot took off a
marine’s head. This attracted Cochrane’s attention to the spot, where
he was horror-stricken to see his son, close by the decapitated marine,
and covered with blood. The boy had escaped from his confinement
through the quarter-gallery window, and throughout the fight, in the
little midshipman’s uniform that the seamen had made for him, had been
busily engaged in handing powder to the gunners. His father now thought
him killed. But it was only the blood and brains of the unfortunate
marine that he was bespattered with, and up he ran to his agonised
father. “I am not hurt, papa; the shot did not touch me: Jack says the
ball is not made that can kill mama’s boy.” “Mama’s boy,” however, was
forthwith ordered to be carried below.
It may here be pardonable to cite a few words as showing what kind of
“mama” that boy had. By a writer in the _North British Review_,
we are told that one night whilst Lord Cochrane was in command of the
Chilian fleet, “his ship got becalmed under a battery from which he
was assailed with red-hot shot. His men were seized with a panic and
deserted their guns. If the fire from the shore were not returned, it
would speedily become steady, sustained, and fatal. He went down to the
cabin, where her ladyship lay: ‘If a woman sets them the example, they
may be shamed out of their fears: it is our only chance.’ She rose and
followed him upon the deck. We have heard her relate that the first
object that met her eye was the battery with its flaming furnaces,
round which dark figures were moving, looking more like incarnate
demons than men. A glance at her husband’s impressive features and his
‘terrible’ calmness reassured her. She took the match, and fired the
gun when he had pointed it. The effect on the crew was electrical: they
returned to their posts with a shout, and the battery was speedily
silenced.”
[Illustration: VALPARAISO.]
One more glimpse at Lady Cochrane. General Miller--subsequently the
hero of Ayacucho, and as brave an officer as ever unsheathed sword--was
on one occasion sent on a secret service under the orders of Lord
Cochrane. With his force, comprising 600 infantry and sixty cavalry, he
proceeded to Huacho, a little to the north of Lima. “On the day after
his arrival there,” the account proceeds, “and whilst he was inspecting
the detachments in the Plaza, Lady Cochrane galloped on to the parade
to speak to him. The sudden appearance of youth and beauty on a fiery
horse, managed with skill and elegance, absolutely electrified the
men, who had never before seen an English lady. ‘_Que hermosa!_ _Que
graciosa!_ _Que linda!_ _Que airosa!_ _Es un angel de cielo!_’ were
exclamations which escaped from one end of the line to the other.
Colonel Miller, not displeased at this involuntary homage to the beauty
of his countrywoman, said to the men, ‘This is our _generala_;’ on
which Lady Cochrane, turning to the line, bowed to the troops, who
no longer confining their expressions of admiration to suppressed
interjections, broke out into loud ‘_vivas_.’”
* * * * *
After the action in Callao Harbour, already referred to, Lord Cochrane,
on March 2nd, sent Captain Foster with a Spanish gunboat and crew
they had captured, and the launches of the _O’Higgins_ and
_Lautaro_, to take possession of San Lorenzo, a small island
about three miles distant. Here they found thirty-seven Chilians, who
had been taken prisoners eight years before, and who, all that time,
had worked in chains under the supervision of a military guard. The
military guard were now taken prisoners, and the Chilians released.
These showed their liberators the filthy shed in which, chained by
one leg to an iron bar, they had been compelled to sleep. From them,
too, it was learnt that the patriot prisoners in Lima were in a more
deplorable plight still, and that the fetters on their legs had worn
their ankles to the bone. The pitiful tale told by these men moved
Cochrane to send a flag of truce to the Viceroy in Lima, with a request
for an exchange of prisoners, and complaining of the harsh treatment
accorded the Chilian prisoners, while the Spanish prisoners in Chili
were well treated. To this message the Viceroy replied that he had a
right to treat the prisoners as pirates, and that he was surprised
that a British nobleman should be found in command of the maritime
forces of a Government “unacknowledged by all the Powers of the globe.”
So he refused to treat for an exchange of prisoners. To the Viceroy,
Cochrane replied that a British nobleman was a free man, and therefore
had a right to adopt any country which was endeavouring to re-establish
the rights of aggrieved humanity, and that he had, hence, adopted the
cause of Chili with the same freedom of judgment that he had previously
exercised when refusing the offer of an admiral’s rank in Spain,
made to him not long before by the Duke de San Carlos in the name of
Ferdinand the Seventh.
So ended Cochrane’s humane endeavour on behalf of the prisoners of both
parties. Meanwhile, with the rather contemptible force and appliances
at his command being unable to successfully attack the Spanish fleet,
which lay under the shelter of the guns of the forts of Callao, he put
to sea and made some important captures. Among these was a vessel laden
with treasure lying in the river Barrança; another on the way from Lima
to Guambucho with 70,000 dollars, the pay of the Imperial troops; and
on April 10th the _Gazelle_, with 60,000 dollars. He also landed
parties at various points on the Peruvian coast, routed the different
Spanish garrisons with his marines, and captured their military stores.
In this way he was able to make the enemy provide for the wants of his
squadron, and his extraordinary success was due to his treatment of
the natives. These he always paid for everything required from them.
He also paid them highly for any information they might bring him
regarding the movements of the enemy. Thus the natives became a kind
of detective force working on his behalf. On June 16th he returned to
Valparaiso, where, laden with the spoils of many victories, he was
received with loud and warm acclamations.
It was not for these, however, that he had returned. It was to organise
a more effective force, whereby he might not only blockade--that was
too slow and luxurious a method of fighting for him--but even drive
the enemy out of Callao, and so himself command the approach to Lima
from the sea. His plan was, by means of rockets and explosives, to
blow up the booms protecting the enemy’s ships to seaward, and to burn
the shipping. To superintend the making of the rockets Mr. Goldsack,
principal assistant of Sir William Congreve, at Woolwich, was engaged,
and to actually make the rockets the Government foolishly employed the
prisoners-of-war. These prisoners, knowing that the explosives they
were engaged in making were intended for the destruction of their own
friends, put sand, sawdust, manure, and whatever other rubbish they
could find, at intervals in the tubes, which should otherwise have
contained a continuous packing of gunpowder. The result was that when,
some months later, Cochrane again found himself before Callao, and
proceeded to put his scheme into execution, the rubbish in the rockets
prevented the progress of their combustion, and reduced his elaborate
design to a fiasco. It was then the Spaniards fired red-hot shot upon
him, and, after losing twenty men and a lieutenant, who was cut right
in two by a round shot, he was forced to abandon the attempt.
However, he did not proceed home until he had gathered fresh laurels,
equipped though he was with weapons more useless than toys. He captured
one or two treasure-ships, of which one, the _Potrillo_, had on
board 30,000 dollars, the pay of the garrisons at Valdivia; he also
captured Pisco, in the square of which town General Miller was shot
with three bullets--one entered the arm, another entered his chest and
passed out at his back, while the third shattered his left hand. He
even captured Valdivia itself--a feat that was considered impossible.
The result of all these achievements was that, when he again put in at
Valparaiso, he was covered with fresh glory, to the discomfiture of
those who had been sedulously seeking to discredit him and to put upon
him the entire blame of the failure of the expedition against Callao.
Strange to say--and, indeed, mortifying to those who would entertain
favourable views of human nature--Cochrane’s brilliant exploits and
consequent popularity had awakened feelings of jealousy against him
amongst political intriguers at Santiago. Their machinations drove him
to offer his resignation. Thereupon the officers of his fleet tendered
him their commissions, with the assurance that under him, and him
alone, would they serve. This brought his enemies to their senses. He
was implored to withdraw his proffered resignation, and induced to do
so by the promise of more earnest support.
The Chilian Government had not behaved well to the sailors who had been
fighting so bravely for them under Cochrane. These sailors actually
had not been paid their wages, and had not received their proper
prize-money, though their captures of money and stores had been more
than sufficient to keep the squadron afloat. The result was that, when
preparations for the next expedition were nearing completion, seamen,
naturally, refused to enlist. To overcome this difficulty the following
proclamation was issued:
“On my entry into Lima I will punctually pay to all foreign
seamen who shall voluntarily enlist into the Chilian service the
whole arrears of their pay, to which I will also add to each
individual, according to his rank, one year’s pay over and above
his arrears, as a premium or reward for his services, if he
continue to fulfil his duty to the day of the surrender of that
city and its occupation by the liberating forces.
“(Signed) JOSE DE SAN MARTIN.
“COCHRANE.”
General San Martin signed this proclamation as commander-in-chief; but
his signature alone would not have moved the men. They knew Cochrane
was their friend. In him they had faith; on him they could rely to do
whatever he promised, if it were humanly possible. Consequently, on the
appearance of this proclamation the crews were immediately completed,
and the squadron sailed, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the people,
on August 21st, 1820.
Under convoy Cochrane had transport vessels, laden with 4,200 troops
under the command of General San Martin. These troops were to be
disembarked in close proximity to Lima, and to march upon the city by
land, while the ships-of-war engaged the enemy by water at Callao.
Differences between Cochrane and San Martin early developed themselves.
Cochrane was for an immediate attack upon Lima. San Martin delayed, and
was landed, according to his varying wishes, now here and now there,
all the while accomplishing nothing; so that at last Cochrane lost
patience, and on the 30th of September they parted company in the roads
of Callao. Cochrane had reconnoitred the fortifications, and urged
San Martin to immediately disembark and storm the forts of Callao.
He himself would see that the troops were safely landed. San Martin,
however, shrank from the undertaking, and insisted on being landed at
Ancon, a little to the north. Cochrane, having no power as regarded
the disposition of the troops, detached from his squadron the _San
Martin_, _Galvarino_, and _Araucano_ to convoy the transports to Ancon.
He himself retained the _O’Higgins_, _Independencia_ (an American-built
corvette that had been added to the squadron in the previous year), and
_Lautaro_, under the pretence of continuing the blockade. In reality,
he had, while reconnoitring the fortifications, formed a daring plan of
attack, which he kept concealed even from the commander-in-chief. That
plan was nothing short of capturing the brigs-of-war in Callao harbour,
moored though they were beneath the ordnance of the surrounding forts,
putting their crews to the sword, cutting adrift or burning the entire
shipping of the enemy, and getting possession of a treasure-ship
on which he had learnt was embarked a million of dollars, kept in
readiness in case it should be necessary for the authorities at Lima
to seek safety in flight. How far he succeeded in carrying out his
ambitious design, it now remains for us to describe.
The attack was to begin on the _Esmeralda_--a frigate of 44 guns
and manned by 370 picked sailors and marines, who slept every night at
quarters in readiness against surprises. The _Esmeralda_, with two
other frigates, lay under the protection of 300 pieces of artillery
mounted in the batteries ashore. Surrounding her, in semi-lunar shape,
were 27 gunboats and armed blockships; and exterior to them, as the
first line of defence, was a strong boom with chain moorings. How on
earth was Cochrane to capture this, the finest ship on the Pacific
Ocean? How even was he to get near her, situated amid such defences?
As well try, one would think, to capture the Castle of Callao itself
by proposing to creep into the mouths of the cannon and pluck out the
charges! However, Cochrane went to work; and for three days, without
divulging his design to anyone, continued to make ready for the final
_coup_. Let it here be said that two neutral warships were lying
in Callao--the British man-of-war _Hyperion_ and the American
_Macedonian_.
[Illustration: CALLAO in 1819.]
On the evening of November 5th, Cochrane’s intentions were revealed
with this proclamation, which was posted up on his own ship, the
_O’Higgins_, and sent to be similarly posted up on the other two,
_Independencia_ and _Lautaro_, which comprised his squadron:
“Marines and seamen! This night we are going to give the enemy
a mortal blow. To-morrow you will present yourselves proudly
before Callao, and all your comrades will envy your good
fortune. One hour of courage and resolution is all that is
required of you to triumph. Remember that you have conquered in
Valdivia, and be not afraid of those who have hitherto fled from
you.
“The value of all the vessels captured in Callao will be yours,
and the same reward in money will be distributed amongst you as
has been offered by the Spaniards in Lima to those who should
capture any of the Chilian squadron. The moment of glory is
approaching, and I hope that the Chilians will fight as they
have been accustomed to do, and that the English will act as
they have ever done at home and abroad.
“(Signed) COCHRANE.”
While the men on the different ships, gathered in groups, discussed the
proclamation, it was announced that Cochrane was to lead the attack
in person, and volunteers were invited to come forward, as he would
lead no man unwilling to go into so hazardous an undertaking. A buzz
of excitement followed this, and the whole of the marines and seamen
on the three ships stepped forward. As it was impossible to take them
all, the captains of the ships were ordered to select men from each
crew--the total not to exceed 160 seamen and 80 marines. These having
been assembled on the flagship, Cochrane gave the signal for the
_Independencia_ and _Lautaro_ to weigh anchor with all haste,
and put off to sea as if in pursuit of some vessel in the offing. This
manœuvre had the desired effect. The look-out on the _Esmeralda_
reported the departure of the two vessels, and the officer in command,
as he received the report, observed: “Ah, well, then we may sleep
soundly to-night!” It had been all along the constant fear of the
Spaniards that Cochrane would spring a night-attack upon them; and, in
the case of such, an arrangement had been made with the two neutral
vessels, the _Hyperion_ and _Macedonian_, that they should
display certain peculiar lights, so as not to be mistaken for the enemy
by those directing the fire from the batteries ashore.
The Spanish officer had scarcely finished his comforting remark, “We
may sleep soundly to-night,” when the picked men from Cochrane’s crews,
who had been receiving minute instructions as to what each was to do,
were paraded on the deck of the _O’Higgins_. It was now dark; so
the enemy, however keen their vision, could see no movement. The men
presented a ghostly appearance as they moved quietly to the ship’s
sides and dropped into the fourteen boats arranged below to receive
them. Not a word was spoken, not even an order given. Besides, the men
were draped in white with a blue band round each left arm--this, that
in the conflict so soon to stain the waters of Callao Harbour, and in
the blindness of their ferocity, with their blood boiling, they might
not in mistake fall upon and slay one another. In each right hand was
a gleaming cutlass and in each left a loaded pistol. In each man’s
ears, too, still lingered Cochrane’s last command, given below: “Not a
word, not a sound, not a whisper; use your cutlasses alone: now come
and do your duty.” It must have been a weird sight that band of 200
white-sheeted men, in the darkness of night, dropping silently and
stealthily into the boats.
[Illustration: “THE CHILIAN CUTLASSES SWEPT THE
DECK” (_p._ 274).]
By ten o’clock this strange company, every one with visage firmly set,
began to move slowly towards the small opening left in the boom for
the enemy’s own convenience. Cochrane’s boat led the way. The boats
were in two divisions--the first commanded by Flag-Captain Crosbie, the
second by Captain Guise. One division was to board the _Esmeralda_
at different points on one side, while the other division was
simultaneously to board her from the other side. Thus, in the same
instant of time upon the unsuspecting Spaniards would rush from every
point a couple of hundred armed and determined men. Meanwhile, these
daring seamen have more than two hours’ silent rowing--for the oars
are muffled--before them, and during their progress to the scene of
action we shall give an extract from the orders issued, as revealing
somewhat of Cochrane’s full design. “On securing the frigate,” runs
the order, “the Chilian seamen and marines are not to give the Chilian
cheer; but to deceive the enemy, and give time for completing the
work, they are to cheer ‘_Viva el Rey_.’ The two brigs-of-war
are to be fired on by the musketry from the _Esmeralda_, and
are to be taken possession of by Lieutenants Esmonde and Morgell, in
the boats they command; which, being done, they are to cut adrift,
run out, and anchor in the offing as quickly as possible. The boats
of the _Independencia_ are to turn adrift all the outward
Spanish merchant-ships; and the boats of the _O’Higgins_ and
_Lautaro_, under Lieutenants Bell and Robertson, are to set fire
to one or more of the headmost hulks; but these are not to be cut
adrift so as to fall down upon the rest.” This shows that Cochrane
meant nothing less than clearing out the entire port so far as Spain
was concerned in it.
Just on midnight, to return to our surpliced dare-devils, they are
nearing the opening in the boom and are challenged by the vigilant
gunboat set to guard it. Cochrane himself is well in front of his
party, and in a low voice, but with a look that means all he says,
gives the watch to know that instant death will follow any attempt at
raising the alarm. So no alarm is raised, and in a few minutes the
boats are in line alongside the unsuspecting frigate. Another moment
and that peaceful deck is the scene of a hundred fights. The Chilian
crews have swarmed up her sides, and their bare cutlasses are already
drenched in blood. Cochrane, boarding her by the main chains, has
been knocked back by the butt-end of a sentry’s musket and has fallen
on the thole-pin of his boat. The pin has entered his back near the
spine, and inflicted a severe injury. He feels it not, however, and,
recovering his feet, re-ascends. This time he reaches the deck, and is
immediately shot through the thigh. Hastily a handkerchief is bound
round the bleeding wound and he takes his place in the fight, hewing
down Spaniards till he meets Captain Guise with his party hewing them
down from the other side. Together they drive them back now, and
the Spaniards retreat to take their final stand on the forecastle.
Meanwhile Cochrane hails the foretop, and receives an “Ay, ay, sir,”
from his own men; he similarly hails the main-top, and is similarly
answered. So far his orders have been carried out, and his men have got
possession of the ship.
The Spaniards, however, entrenched on the forecastle have yet to be
overcome. The Chilians charge them with their cutlasses, and are driven
back scorched with their fire. The Spaniard, as the Chilian knows by
experience, cannot face cold steel; so another charge immediately
follows, and again the Chilians have to retire. It is only for a
second, and, at the third charge, the Spanish musketry being spent,
the Chilian cutlasses sweep the deck. At this juncture it became
known that this scene of carnage had its onlookers. The British ship
_Hyperion_ was so near the _Esmeralda_ that those on board
witnessed the whole proceeding, and a midshipman standing at the
gangway so far forgot his neutrality as to cheer at the way Cochrane
cleared the forecastle. For this he was immediately ordered below by
his commander, Captain Searle, and, further, threatened with arrest.
After the forecastle was cleared as described, the fight was renewed
on the quarter-deck--only for a moment, however, the Spanish marines
who did not leap overboard or into the hold being instantly cut down.
Meanwhile, the last quarter of an hour’s uproar had attracted the
attention of the garrisons ashore, and these, presuming that what
had been so much dreaded--viz., the capture of their frigate--had
been accomplished, opened fire upon the _Esmeralda_. For this,
however, Cochrane was prepared. He knew the arrangement made with the
neutral vessels whereby they were to be distinguished by carrying
certain lights, so he hoisted similar lights on the captured frigate.
The result was that the garrisons were puzzled, and struck the neutral
vessels oftener than they did the _Esmeralda_. This made these
vessels cut their cables and move away.
Now it was that Cochrane’s orders began to be departed from. Wounded
twice, as we have already seen, he was at length obliged to retire
from the direction of the conflict. The command, accordingly, fell
upon Captain Guise, who gave orders to cut the _Esmeralda’s_
cables. This done, there was nothing for it but to loose her topsails
and follow the retiring neutrals. Captain Guise’s excuse for so
violating his superior’s commands was that he had lost all control of
the men, who had burst into the spirit-room of the _Esmeralda_,
and had otherwise broken up into disorganised bands bent solely upon
pillage. But for this, seeing that they had succeeded in capturing the
_Esmeralda_, with her picked and specially equipped crew, they
might surely have chased the Spaniards from the other ships, one after
another, as fast as their boats would take them, and so the whole fleet
might either have been seized or burned. This was Cochrane’s intention,
and to this end all his previous plans had been laid. But Cochrane
now lay a wounded and exhausted man, and perhaps, under any other
leadership, his daring design--if attempted in full--would have ended
disastrously.
As it was, their prize was no mean one. They certainly missed the
treasure-ship with its million of dollars, which the captured frigate,
provisioned for three months and with stores sufficient for a two
years’ cruise, was meant to convoy. Aboard, however, they found and
made prisoner the Spanish admiral, with his officers and 200 seamen.
The rest of the 370, who had originally manned her, had been either
killed or drowned. On Cochrane’s side the losses were eleven killed and
thirty wounded. The whole affair, from the moment of boarding to the
cutting of the frigate’s cables, occupied only a quarter-of-an-hour.
Yet in that quarter-of-an-hour, according to Captain Basil Hall, who
at the time was commanding the British warship _Conway_ in the
Pacific--Cochrane had struck “a death-blow to the Spanish naval force
in that quarter of the world; for although there were still two Spanish
frigates and some smaller vessels in the Pacific, they never afterwards
ventured to show themselves, but left Lord Cochrane undisputed master
of the coast.”
The bitter feelings aroused in the breasts of the Spaniards by the
disaster of that night received brutal exemplification next morning.
Then, as usual, the market-boat put off from the United States ship
_Macedonian_ for the shore for provisions. As the boatmen jumped
ashore they were surrounded with an angry crowd, who began to accuse
them of assisting the Chilians the previous night. The boatmen’s
denials were made in vain, and were answered with the confident and
positive statement that, without such assistance, the feat had been
impossible. Then the mob, their anger increasing and their belief in
the charges they were making becoming more assured by the mere force of
repetition, set upon the innocent boatmen and foully massacred them.
After this, Cochrane tried hard to draw the Spaniards from the shelter
of their guns by placing the _Esmeralda_ in positions that might
tempt them to try to recapture her. Only once, when she was placed in
a more than usually tempting position, did they venture out with their
gunboats, and an hour’s sharp firing followed. As soon, however, as
they saw the _O’Higgins_ manœuvring to cut them off, they hastily
retreated. Thus, finding it impossible to draw the enemy into an
engagement afloat, Cochrane induced General San Martin to lend him 600
soldiers, and with these and the ships of his squadron he so harassed
the Peruvian coast from Callao to Arica, that he virtually compelled
Lima to capitulate on July 6th, 1821. Three weeks later, on the 28th
of July, the national flag was hoisted in the city of the Incas and in
these words Peruvian Independence declared:--
“Peru is from this moment free and independent by the general vote of
the people and by the justice of her cause, which God defend.”
[Illustration:
_The Taking of the Gate Pah_
_by A. Hilliard Atteridge_]
“A poor benighted heathen, but a first-rate fighting-man,” is the
description of a savage adversary which Mr. Rudyard Kipling puts into
the mouth of Tommy Atkins. The New Zealanders who fought against us in
the sixties were not all of them “poor benighted heathens”: some of
them had been pupils in the mission schools, others had come into the
mission stations as grown men to learn something of the religion of the
white men. When the everlasting quarrel between natives and settlers
over land rights led to strife and bloodshed, and the Maories, or
natives, took to the bush, most of them forgot what Christianity they
had learned, though some of them clung to the old observances; and it
is said that when one of their forts was surprised on a Sunday morning,
they told the victors that, had it not been for a service which they
were holding, they would have been at their posts, and that the English
must be strange Christians to fight on Sunday. But whatever were the
opinions of the Maori tribesmen in such matters, there is no doubt the
second part of the description applied to them. They were “first-rate
fighting men.” They had a skill in constructing earthworks which no
other race has ever surpassed, and they held them with desperate
courage. Frequently when they abandoned them it was not from any fear
of their adversaries, for it was one of the principles of their mode
of warfare that the rapidly constructed pah, or fort, was only to be
held long enough to inflict labour, delay, and loss upon the enemy, and
then it was to be secretly evacuated and another work of the same kind
held further inland. Of all the battles they fought against us, none
displayed their soldierly qualities in a higher degree than the fight
at the Gate Pah, which for a time seemed likely to end in a serious
disaster to a force that far outnumbered the Maori garrison of the
pah, and that brought against it all the resources of modern civilised
warfare.
The fight was one in a long series, all of which ended in successes
for our arms. Sir Duncan Cameron, who commanded the British forces
operating against the rebel Maories in the North Island of New Zealand,
was a brave and skilful Highland soldier, and the temporary check at
Gate Pah was no fault of his, for he had done everything to ensure
success, and it was the first time that there was anything like failure
in his whole career. In the spring of 1864, which in that southern
climate is the late summer and early autumn of the year, he had made
Auckland his base of operations, and while the navy blockaded the coast
to prevent arms and ammunition being conveyed to the rebels, he had
made a successful expedition up the valley of the Thames, and with very
little bloodshed had broken up the Maori power on that river and on the
Waikato.
Early in April all fighting was over in the province of Auckland and
the district of the Thames. The natives who had been in arms against
the Government had returned to their allegiance. General Cameron was
discussing with the local authorities the steps to be taken for the
further pacification of the North Island, when news arrived that there
was a considerable gathering of armed natives near Tauranga, in the
Bay of Plenty, and the General resolved to transfer the forces under
his command from Auckland and the mouth of the Thames to this new
centre of disturbance. A detachment of the 68th Regiment, under Colonel
Greer, was already encamped near the mission station of Tauranga. With
the help of the naval squadron on the coast, the troops were rapidly
transferred from the Thames Estuary to the Bay of Plenty, and by April
26th General Cameron had collected at Tauranga a formidable little
force of nearly 1,700 men, including a naval brigade of 400 men and
officers, the 68th Regiment, 700 strong, the 43rd, nearly 300 strong,
detachments of the 14th and 70th Regiments, each about 100 strong, and
a small force of the Royal Artillery, with two 40-pounder Armstrongs,
and two 6-pounders, two 24-pounder howitzers, and eight mortars. In the
harbour, or close at hand and within call, was a strong naval squadron
made up of her Majesty’s ships _Curaçoa_, _Esk_, _Miranda_, _Harrier_,
and _Eclipse_, under the command of Commodore Sir William Wiseman, and
there was a small garrison at Maketu.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK.]
The enemy had taken up a position about three miles and a half from
the Tauranga mission station, on a neck of high ground about 500 yards
wide, over which ran the road or track from Tauranga to the interior.
The ridge was a swell of the ground about fifty feet high. On both
sides it sloped easily to a tract of swampy land very difficult to pass
anywhere, even by men on foot. To the right beyond the swamp was one of
the inlets of Tauranga Harbour. The Maories had rapidly fortified the
high ground, the spot where they fixed their pah, or earthwork, being
evidently suggested to them by the fact that just below the highest
swell of the ridge it was crossed by a three-foot trench, which
marked the boundary between the mission station property and the bush
and native lands. They deepened and widened this trench, carrying it
down to the swamp on either side. Behind it they dug out their pah--an
oblong enclosure, about eighty yards long by thirty wide. The military
despatches of the time describe it as a “redoubt,” but the word is
rather misleading. The Maori pah in this case, as in all others, was a
series of trenches, one within the other, and communicating by cross
cuts, and looking at first sight like a labyrinth. In the sides of the
trenches shelters were hollowed out so that the garrison could crouch
in them until the assault was actually begun. Further shelter was
secured by roofing in the trenches with wattle hurdles, made with twigs
and branches, thatching over this with ferns, and sometimes shovelling
earth upon it. The eaves of the roofs were kept up by posts at a height
of six or eight inches above the edge of the trench, so that the
garrison could sweep the ground in front with their guns. At the Gate
Pah, as this improvised fortress was called, there were three tiers
of rifle-pits or trenches, one within the other, all having a zigzag
trace, so that it was all the more difficult to make out at first sight
their general plan. On either side of the ridge, a line of trenches or
rifle-pits ran down the hill towards the swamps, so as to sweep with
their fire the approaches to the flanks of the main work. In these
rifle-pits, at intervals, traverses or banks of earth lying across the
general direction of the trench, had been erected to protect them from
flanking fire. In front of the works a light, open fence of posts and
rails, a kind of loosely-constructed stockade, had been erected to
impede the rush of a storming party. The whole was a work which would
have done credit to European engineers. The garrison was certainly not
more than 400 natives, perhaps less. They had very few rifles, their
favourite firearm being double-barrelled shot-guns, which they were
able to load and fire much more rapidly, and at close quarters quite
as effectively, as the old-fashioned muzzle-loading Enfield rifle
then carried by the soldiers. They loaded with slugs and bullets, and
sometimes even with buckshot. For the fight at close quarters they
had their spears of hard wood, small axes, or tomahawks, sometimes of
stone, and the beautiful greenstone or jade war-clubs or _merés_
of the chiefs.
On Thursday, April 27th, General Cameron began his preparations
for the siege of the pah. The naval brigade had made a formidable
addition to his artillery force by getting ashore from one of the
ships an Armstrong 110-pounder gun, then the heaviest gun in the
service, and probably the heaviest gun ever used on shore against a
tribe of half-savage warriors. On the 27th the 68th Regiment, and a
detachment of 170 men under Major Ryan, of the 70th, moved up to a
point about 1,200 yards from the front of the pah and encamped there.
As the Maories had no artillery, and no long-range rifles, and were
not likely to risk a sortie, the camp was safe from disturbance. On
that and the following day the guns and mortars were being got into
position for the attack, the handy bluejackets from the fleet lending,
as they always do on such occasions, invaluable assistance. During
the day it was ascertained that at low water it was possible to pass
along the beach outside the swamp on the enemy’s right, and so get to
the rear of his position. Acting on this information, Colonel Greer,
with the 68th Regiment, left the camp after dark on the Friday evening
and slipped down to the beach, working along quietly in the dark, so
as to outflank the Maories. To prevent the garrison of the pah from
paying any attention to chance noises coming from the beach and so
discovering this move, the main body at the camp pushed forward a few
riflemen, who fired long-ranging shots at the stockade, from which the
double-barrelled guns of Maori sentries answered with random shots
fired in the dark, without much idea of range, or even of direction.
This firing was soon over, and meanwhile Greer’s men had got round the
back of the swamp and were settling down for the night among the tall
ferns to landward of the enemy’s position. At the camp the sailors and
gunners spent the dark hours making the last preparations for next
day’s bombardment. When the sun rose, the Armstrong guns, including
the big 110-pounder, besides a battery of mortars, were in position,
waiting for the word to open fire. Inland the 68th held a position
from which they could shoot down any of the garrison of the pah who
ventured out of the work to get water from the stream behind it, or who
attempted to escape inland.
At half-past six a thin line of skirmishers pushed forward to the edge
of the swamp on the left of the pah and in front of the British right.
General Cameron thought it possible that the enemy would abandon the
work and bolt across the swamp, and took this means of hemming them in
on all sides. The natives in the rifle-pits on the slope above thought
this move must be the beginning of an attack, and fired ineffectually
at the redcoats. This was taken as the signal for opening fire from
the batteries, and guns and mortars began to send their shells roaring
through the air. Over the pah a red flag waved on a tall mast. From the
batteries this seemed to be the centre of the pah, and at first most
of the gunners took it for their mark in laying their pieces. When the
pah was captured, it was discovered that the flagstaff really stood,
not in the centre of the pah, but further off, just behind its rearward
stockade. The result of this mistake was that for the first two hours
many of the shells passed harmlessly over the Maori position.
[Illustration: THE GATE PAH.]
Not long after the artillery opened fire the Maori musketry ceased. The
garrison had got under cover, but they were watching the proceedings
of the besiegers, for when the guns were directed on the left angle
of their fort in order to demolish the stockade and make a breach in
the parapet, every now and then a brave rebel would creep up to the
crumbling mound, shovel a few spadefuls of earth into the gap, and slip
back again, heedless of the imminent danger of being blown to pieces by
a bursting shell. Once a plucky fellow actually succeeded in hanging
a blanket across the stockade, evidently to conceal the movements of
those who were bringing up material to repair the breach close by. By
this time the mortars had got the range, and were dropping shells into
the work. The place was completely surrounded. The 68th and the naval
brigade had closed in, and were firing at the pah on the right and in
the rear. Twelve guns and mortars were blazing away at the front and
breaching the left angle. A thirteenth gun had been got into position
beyond the swamp on the left, so as to rake the rifle-pits on the
slope, and thirty riflemen on the edge of the marsh were firing into
the pah at a range of only 400 yards. Surrounded on all sides, and with
shells bursting over the wattle roofs of their trenches, the garrison
was in a position in which most European troops would have given up the
defence as hopeless. The big Armstrong gun fired no less than a hundred
110-pound shells at the pah before it had to cease firing (towards 3
o’clock) for want of ammunition. The marvel is that the wretched little
fort was tenable. But subsequent inquiry showed that the Maories had
constructed their shelters so well, and lay so close in them, that they
lost very few men. About noon they replied for awhile with musketry
to the storm of bullets and shells that was pouring into the pah, but
their fire was ineffectual. Indeed, in the earlier stage of the attack,
the only losses of the assailants appear to have been three men of the
68th Regiment, wounded by shells that flew over the pah and burst close
in their front.
Crouching in the hollowed sides of the trenches, or stealing round to
the front to look out over the parapet, the Maories must have realised
that before nightfall the storm of fire would suddenly cease to allow
a superior force to rush their shattered fort with the bayonet. But
they waited quietly for the supreme trial of strength, encouraged,
doubtless, by finding that even the huge shells thrown by the white
men, though they made a terrible noise, killed or wounded very few of
the garrison against whom they were directed. It was an anticipation
many years earlier of the experience of the Turkish garrison of the
Gravitza redoubt at Plevna, who lost only a handful of men under the
volcano-like fire of the great bombardment.
After three o’clock the bombardment slackened. The breach was
considered to be wide enough to be rushed by a strong storming party
on a broad front, and there were no obstacles on the slope before it.
When, just before four o’clock, the stormers were drawn up behind the
batteries and received the order to advance, the immediate capture of
the Gate Pah seemed to be a certainty. The storming column was 600
strong. The vanguard, under Colonel Booth and Commander Hay, of H.M.S.
_Harrier_, was made up of 150 men of the 43rd Regiment and as many
more of the naval brigade. The support, which was led by Captain John
Hamilton, of H.M.S. _Esk_, consisted of the rest of the seamen
and marines and of the 43rd--in all, 300 men. At four o’clock General
Cameron gave the word to advance, and, with a cheer, the men dashed up
the slope. A few shots were fired from the pah, and some heavy volleys
from the rifle-pits, but, until they were almost in, a swell of the
ground gave some cover to the stormers, and the loss they suffered was
trifling. Still cheering, they streamed in through the wide gap in the
stockade, poured like a flood over the shattered parapet, and found
themselves almost without opposition masters of the left corner of the
pah.
[Illustration: “THE BRAVE FELLOW BROUGHT HIM OUT AT
CONSIDERABLE RISK” (_p._ 281).]
What happened next will never be known with absolute certainty, for
many of those who survived, after being in the thickest of the wild
scene of slaughter that followed, give contradictory accounts of what
occurred. It seems certain that a part of the garrison was attempting
to retire by the back of the pah, when they were met by a sharp fire
from the 68th Regiment, which was closing in upon the works, answering
with a loud cheer the cheering of the stormers. The Maories, on this,
rushed back into the pah, giving some of the stormers the impression
that the garrison had been suddenly reinforced. When they first passed
the parapet, all that the naval officers and those of the 43rd noticed
of the garrison were a few wounded men lying near the breach. The
openings of the trenches close by looked like a tangled labyrinth, and
it was not easy to see which was the easiest way into the centre of
the work. The roofs of the Maori shelters jutted up here and there,
and the men seem in some cases to have broken their ranks, and even
laid down their weapons under the impression that these were abandoned
houses that could be safely entered in search of curios and plunder.
Suddenly gun barrels were pushed out from under the eaves, and several
officers and men dropped, struck by shots that appeared to come out of
the earth. On all sides dusky figures sprang up as if from trapdoors,
yelling, firing, flourishing spears and axes. From the rear of the
work came a wild rush of spears and guns. The soldiers, especially
those who had broken their formation, seemed seized with a sudden
panic. They felt as if they had been led into an ambuscade. Instead of
resistance being over, it was only beginning. Several of their officers
had fallen at the first volley. A few men gave way to the surprise and
terror of the moment, and then the panic spread with that mysterious
suddenness with which it seems to be able to run through a mass of even
individually brave men. What happened at the Gate Pah has happened in
every army in the world; and if there was headlong panic among many of
the men, there were many, too, who stood bravely. The officers and the
sergeants of the 43rd, and the officers and leading seamen of the naval
brigade, did their duty splendidly, and suffered losses that bore only
too striking evidence to the tenacity with which they strove to restore
the fortune of the fight. There was more than one cry to retire,
though the officers were calling out to the men to push forward. At
this moment Captain Hamilton brought up the reserve, pushed gallantly
forward to the second line of trenches, and sprang upon the bank above
them, waving his sword and calling out, “Come on, my men!” A shot
struck him in the head and he fell, closing by an heroic death a career
of high distinction and great promise. His fall renewed the courage
of the defenders, the panic of the assailants. The struggling mass of
sailors and soldiers streamed back out of the breach, leaving nearly
all the officers of the 43rd and several of the naval officers dead and
wounded in the pah. Major Ryan of the 70th Regiment and Captain Jenkins
of H.M.S. _Miranda_ were among the last to leave the work, after
hopeless efforts to rally what were left of the six hundred stormers.
[Illustration: THE GATE PAH AFTER OCCUPATION.]
How many brave deeds were done amid the wild panic in the breach of
the Gate Pah would take a long time to tell. Two Victoria Crosses
were won in the disaster, one of them by Surgeon Manley, R.A., who
exposed himself most recklessly in order to remove and give first help
to the wounded close under the fire of the victorious Maories. The
other was secured by Samuel Mitchell, the captain of the foretop of
the _Harrier_. He had entered the breach close beside Commander
Hay, and when his officer fell mortally wounded, he took him up to
carry him out of danger. Hay told Mitchell to leave him where he was,
and take care of his own life; but the brave fellow brought him out
at considerable risk to himself, and then dashed back into the fight.
Watts, the gunner of the _Miranda_, charged by the side of Captain
Hamilton. He marked out and cut down the Maori who had killed his
leader, but the next moment he was himself brained with a tomahawk.
James Harris, a seaman of the _Curaçoa_, actually dashed right
through the pah. He chased a Maori out of the rear of the work, hunted
him down to the position of the 68th Regiment, bayoneted him there, and
was shot while making a reckless attempt to again traverse the pah and
rejoin his comrades.
While the storming column was engaged with the enemy in the pah, the
68th had made an attempt to rush it in the rear, but were met with
such a heavy fire that they gave up the attempt. The repulse of the
attack was hailed with loud cheers by the garrison. The General with
his staff rallied the storming column as it retired, and then rode
forward to reconnoitre the pah. At this point someone told him that
the troops had got into and were holding the rifle-pits on the left.
Turning in this direction to verify the report, he was met by a volley
which wounded his horse and put two bullets into the saddle of an
officer who rode beside him. The enemy held all the works, from which
they fired occasional shots at intervals for the rest of the evening.
It was soon dark, and the night was cloudy and starless. In the dusk
Captain Jenkins had a narrow escape. There had not been a shot for some
time, and he went out to see if the pah had been abandoned. A volley
fired at close quarters told him he was mistaken, and showed him that
he had wandered into the lower part of one of the enemy’s trenches.
Dispirited by the collapse of the 43rd Regiment, the repulse of the
whole column and the loss of so many officers, the troops spent a
wakeful, anxious night. More than once after dusk the Maories called
out to them in English, daring them to come on again; but Cameron had
resolved not to make an attempt in the dark, which might only end
in confusion and renewed disaster, but to rush the pah at daybreak.
Meanwhile, the men were set to work to throw up a line of advanced
entrenchments within about a hundred yards of the stockade, so as to
maintain possession of all the ground that had been won. During this
work, all fire having ceased from the pah, Major Greaves, of the staff,
crept up the slope to see if the natives were retiring from it. In the
dark he could make nothing out for certain. Just before midnight he
went up again and penetrated into the breach. All was silent within,
but away landwards, to the rear of the work, some shots were fired.
The natives had scattered in small parties and withdrawn towards the
interior, and the shots came from the outposts of the 68th, some of
whose sentries heard the Maories stealing by in the dark, but could not
stop them.
How little the officers relied upon their men after the previous day’s
experience is shown by the fact that they did not venture to lead them
into the fort until the first light of the dawn appeared on the early
morning of the Sunday, 30th. When the pah was entered a grim sight met
the eyes of the victors. A few yards inside the breach four captains of
the 43rd lay heaped together: two were dead, killed by bullet wounds
in the head and neck, another had been slain at close quarters with a
tomahawk, which had cut through his shoulder into the chest; a fourth,
struck in the head by a bullet, was still breathing when his comrades
found him, but died before he could be removed. A little further on
lay Colonel Booth, of the same regiment, shot in the spine and the
right arm, still alive after that terrible night, but not far from
his death. Captain Muir, of the 43rd, and Captain Hamilton, R.N., lay
dead together well forward in the second trench, with no other bodies
near them. A little to the left lay Lieutenant Hill, R.N., of the
_Curaçoa_, shot in the neck and through both cheeks. He had been
alive some time after he fell, for he had tied his handkerchief round
his wounded face. Watts, the gunner of the _Miranda_, lay dead
with his head split from crown to chin with a tomahawk. Another seaman
had had his head cut in two crosswise by the same weapon, scattering
all the brains. The body of a Maori was found in the centre of the pah
fairly cut in two by a bursting shell. There, too, the chief, Reweti,
or Davis of Tauranga, was picked up, with seven bullets in his body and
his legs broken by a shell-burst, but still not only alive but ready to
talk to the white men, and wondering why his countrymen had not carried
him off with the other wounded, whom they had removed. In all, during
the attack, 9 officers and 23 men had been killed, and 5 officers and
75 men wounded, a total loss of 112 officers and men, nearly all of
whom fell in the actual assault, and most of whom would have come out
of the affair, safe in life and limb, if the advanced party of the
43rd had stood by their officers. At the moment of the panic there is
no doubt the stormers were well into the work, and standing as most
of them did on the high ground between the trenches, they could have
bayoneted the Maories as they scrambled out, or shot them through the
roofs. Of the British wounded many died within a week of the fight.
The garrison had lost very few in killed and wounded. Twenty dead and
six wounded men were found in the pah. Ten more were picked up dead in
the swamp, and the retreating Maories must have carried some wounded
men with them. But their whole loss seems to have been under fifty.
The chief, Rawiri, who commanded the defence, escaped unhurt. The
wounded chief, Davis, told the English that if his advice had been
taken there would have been no such prolonged defence of the pah; but,
he added, there were a lot of big chiefs present, and they wanted a
fight. It is pleasant to be able to record that both sides acted with
that chivalrous respect for each other which was worthy of brave men.
The Maories had not touched the watches and chains or rings worn by
the dead and wounded soldiers and sailors who fell in the pah, nor
had they in any way injured the bodies. General Cameron showed his
sense of this conduct on their part by ordering that the dead Maories
should be given a respectful burial, and all possible care bestowed on
the wounded men. Even the fragments of the body that had been torn by
the shell were laid together in the row of dead outside the pah, and
word was sent to some friendly Maories, belonging to a tribe which had
helped to garrison the Gate Pah, that they might come in and bury their
dead kinsmen, the messenger adding that, if they did not, the English
would do it for them. Before noon on Sunday they came to the fort and
dug a grave for the twenty dead warriors from the pah. In the bottom of
it they laid the men of lower rank, that they might form a bed across
which lay the corpses of the chiefs. “It is well that the warrior
should die, to be a couch for his chief,” runs an old proverb of the
warrior Maori race.
Later in the day the English dead were laid in rows of graves at the
Tauranga mission station, under a great tree, not far from the beach,
and the volleys rang out their parting salute to the men who had fallen
so bravely trying to stem the tide of disaster. The struggle between
the white man and the Maori has, happily, ended years ago, and now
both parties to the quarrel remember only that it was bravely fought
out, and that in the tribes of the North Island even British soldiers
and sailors found foemen well worthy of their steel. The last traces
of the Gate Pah have long since been removed from the ridge above
Tauranga. A monument commemorates the gallant dead. Hamilton has found
another memorial in a flourishing town on the Waikato River, founded
and named after him by the colonists, in the very year of his death, in
admiration of his splendid valour.
[Illustration: A MAORI DWELLING.]
[Illustration:
WARSAW
BY A.S. KRAUSSE]
Throughout the summer of 1831 the city of Warsaw lay like a city of the
dead. Its magnificent palaces appeared as though deserted; its streets
were lonesome, and the few who ventured from within their dwellings
moved about as though smitten.
Although not declared, Warsaw lay in a state of siege. The struggle for
liberty, long maintained by the brave nation of Poles, was drawing to a
close, and all felt that though hitherto victorious in the field, they
must fall before the countless hordes of Russia in the end.
There had been a rising in the previous year. Undeterred by the
knowledge that they were a handful against millions, and encouraged
by the recent examples of France and Belgium, the Poles of Warsaw had
risen in revolt against the despotism of Russia, as personified by
Constantine, the ferocious governor of their city.
The direct cause of the outbreak was, as is usual in such cases,
slight--a bogus trial on a popular officer for an imaginary offence.
A verdict contrary to the weight of evidence, a street row among
the military students, a dozen of whom were promptly flogged with
the knout, while others were imprisoned, and the mischief was done.
The young Poles rose in November, and without ceremony broke into
the prison and freed their comrades. The gates of the palace were
forced, and the governor sought; but without success, he having
escaped. But while Constantine evaded the vengeance of his victims,
his lieutenants fared otherwise, and many of them fell into the hands
of their relentless enemies. For the moment the Polish capital was in
the hands of the Poles. The Russian aristocracy disappeared, and at
every street-corner meetings were held at which the proceedings were
constantly interrupted by cries of “Niech zyie Polska”--Poland for ever!
This state of things continued throughout the winter of 1830. The
icebound steppes forbade the Russians taking action. But the Czar vowed
vengeance, and he kept his vow. In the first days of spring a large
army was despatched against the rebel Poles under General Chlopicki,
who, while in command of the thirteenth and fourteenth Army Corps,
had earned for his troops the nickname of the Lions of Varna. The war
was waged to the death. The Russian troops, well drilled and ably
commanded, elated with the successes of the past, met the untutored
Polish soldiers with a confidence bred of conceit. The Poles, imbued
with a sense of patriotism, and recognising that it was to do or to
die, fought each man for his own hand, neither giving nor expecting
quarter, and the slaughter was frightful. Even at Ostralenka, where
the Poles left seven thousand dead on the field, the Russian loss was
over fifteen thousand; and at Waror the Poles took ten thousand Russian
prisoners, besides a number of cannon, which were exhibited in the
streets of Warsaw, amid the enthusiastic applause of the inhabitants.
After being beaten all along the line the Russian army withdrew,
leaving the flower of its surviving officers imprisoned in Warsaw, and
for a while the Poles had rest. But only for a while. In the early
summer another army marched on the capital, and at the end of June
General Paskewitsch, who had been specially chosen by the Czar, took
the command. This officer enjoyed the personal friendship of the ruler
of Russia, and he took the field with the express instruction from
his master to teach the rebels a lesson which they would not forget.
He lost no time in resuming operations, but changed his predecessor’s
plans. Hitherto, all attempts on Warsaw had been made from the right
bank of the Vistula. With the exception of the Praga suburb the city
lies on the left or south bank, so that to capture it from the north
the Russians would have to fight their way across the Vistula either
through the streets and across the bridges of Praga, or under the
fire of the guns in the Polish works. Paskewitsch decided upon making
a flank march down the right bank of the river, crossing it near the
Prussian frontier, where he had secretly arranged to obtain supplies
and bridging material from the Prussian fortress of Thorn, and then
marching up the south bank of the Vistula he could attack Warsaw on
the side on which it was not protected by the broad river which had
hitherto barred the Russian advance.
[Illustration: OLD TOWN, WARSAW.]
The Polish Government was at this period presided over by General
Skryznecki, a patriot of good family and education, and a man of the
highest principle. Skryznecki recognised the danger too late. He
hurriedly occupied a strong position on the line of the Bzura river
with 30,000 men, in the hope of barring the Russian advance; but on
August 15th the Russians, in overwhelming force, drove the Poles from
the river bank and forced them back upon Warsaw. Their city was now
threatened by 60,000 troops, who cut them off from the country to the
south of the Vistula, from which they had hitherto drawn supplies
and reinforcements. While Paskewitsch thus hemmed in the Poles on
the south, another Russian army watched Praga; and thus by the end
of August, while the roads for miles round were guarded by Russian
legions, the Poles found themselves shut in like rats in a trap.
And now for the first time the Poles realised their position.
Surrounded by a relentless horde, their supplies cut off, they realised
the futility of the claims of a just cause against the exigences of
necessity. The whole of the resources of Russia were against them;
and while the sympathies of France and England went far to cheer the
desperate band of patriots who yet fought for freedom, the fact that
Prussia, though nominally a neutral state, was aiding the common enemy,
was not reassuring. So far back as June this fact had been known, and
General Skryznecki had written to the King of Prussia enumerating the
various acts indulged in by his ministers, and demanding that they
should cease. In this historic document the General proved that the
Prussians were supplying the Russians with food from the storehouses at
Thorn, that they had lent their skilled artillery to the Russians, that
they had supplied ammunition and uniforms made in Prussia, and that
most of the engineering works required by the Russians--including the
bridge over the Vistula--had been executed by German engineers.
This letter was never answered, and Prussia continued in her breach of
the laws of war, while the outlook in Warsaw became blacker every day.
Nor were the dangers only from without. The Polish mob began to become
turbulent, and necessitated the watching of soldiers who would have
been better employed negotiating the enemy. But even these measures
were insufficient to keep the rough element down. The irresistible
descent of the Russian army was the excuse for an outcry against the
noble Skryznecki; and in the hope of uniting the besieged he resigned
his command of the Polish army, General Dembinski being appointed in
his place.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN OPERATIONS AGAINST WARSAW. 1831.]
But even this step did not succeed in quieting the rabble. On the
night of the 15th August the mob rose and marched to the State prison,
where Russian officers who had been taken prisoners in the war had
been incarcerated. The excitement of the mob was intense. Their blood
was up, and this is the only excuse that can be urged for the foulest
deed that blemishes the history of Poland. The gates of the prison
were forced, and the prisoners led out and shamefully ill-treated. The
crowd behaved like wild beasts, chasing and attacking the unfortunate
Russians; and after being tortured in every way that occurred to the
imagination of their captors, the miserable beings were butchered in
the streets, the gutters literally running in blood. Among the victims
of this tragedy were four Russian generals and several ladies of high
birth, who had been suspected of sympathising with the enemy. All were
brutally murdered, the atrocities being continued for two days. At
length order was restored by the military, who were withdrawn from the
defence of the city for this purpose.
While these events were taking place within the city General
Paskewitsch was pressing on in pursuit of the Polish army, which he had
compelled to retreat from the Bzura. But even here the defenders were
unable to hold their ground, and on the 1st of September they retired
behind the entrenchments which had been thrown up immediately before
Warsaw. Here the final stand had to be made. The headquarters of the
Russians was only three miles away from the city walls, and the capital
was threatened on every side. The position was, in short, so acute that
it is a matter of some surprise that the Poles did not retire within
the city and stand a siege. This question has been ably discussed by a
trustworthy historian, who writes as follows:--
“It would have been very easy,” says M. Brozozowski, “for the
army to defend itself within the walls and from house to house.
It had already performed more difficult feats, and Europe
doubtless would have rung with its heroism if, after the example
of Saragossa, it had buried itself under the ruins of Warsaw.
But the Poles could not, for the sake of a mere empty renown,
consent to the destruction of a city which is the hearth-stone
of their patriotism and the centre of their nationality--a city
which in future struggles is yet destined to play an important
part, for the Poles are far from succumbing under their present
misfortunes--very far from abandoning the hope of again becoming
a nation.”[6]
But still, the attacking army waited before striking the final blow.
Reinforcements from the south were expected. Several days were wasted
pending their arrival, and when they arrived their pontoons stuck in
the mud. But Paskewitsch did not mind the delay. He is reported to have
said to one of his staff, “I await the aid of two armies--the army of
the south and the army of famine.” Nor were these expectations vain.
While beleaguered from without, the doomed city was ravaged within.
Gaunt famine marched unchecked through the fine streets, and starvation
claimed more victims than did shot or shell.
[Illustration: EMPEROR NICHOLAS.]
Then it was that, recognising all resistance as futile, the Poles
attempted to open negotiations with the enemy; but the mob would not
have it, and the overtures made were cancelled in order to prevent a
revolution, while an offer of terms made by Paskewitsch was rejected
for a similar reason.
These preliminaries over, the attack upon Warsaw began in earnest on
the morning of the 6th September. The fighting on this day was mostly
at long range, but the Russian attack was so strong and the firing so
fierce that the Poles had to abandon their first line of entrenchment.
The assault then ceased, and both sides rested during the night; but
at daybreak on the 7th the attack was renewed, and the slaughter was
terrible. The Poles--especially the battalions occupying the redoubt on
the Wola side of the Vistula--made an heroic resistance. The Russians
had on this day no fewer than 386 guns in position, and the fire from
them was so fierce and so continuous that nothing could stand before
it. The Poles were ploughed down by the hail of projectiles, and those
spared by the shells were despatched by small arms. After some hours of
bombardment, when a mere handful of the garrison of the Wola redoubt
remained, the Russians closed up in their strength and charged with
their bayonets. The result was disastrous in the extreme. General
Sowinski, who commanded the outpost, fell pierced through and through;
and when the Russians finally occupied the redoubt only eleven men
remained alive out of three thousand.
While this scene of carnage was being enacted outside, the city was
itself the scene of intense excitement. The majority of the inhabitants
foresaw that their fate was sealed. Their only chance of salvation--the
interposition of England or France--had failed them. Were even that
to come now it would be too late. The cannonade of the besiegers was
continuous, and every now and again a stray shell would fall in the
streets, scattering death and devastation around. And all that could be
done in response was to fire occasional charges from the few guns left
to the garrison. Men there were in plenty in Warsaw, and women, too,
willing to play the man’s part in fighting for their country; but the
guns were few, and it was no uncommon sight to see eager, able men tear
the rifles from the hands of the wounded as they fell, in order that
the most might be made of the slender sources at their disposal.
Amid all this scene of horror there was one item of news which caused
rejoicing. Marshal Paskewitsch had been wounded. It was said that
he was, indeed, disabled. This was the one cheering event of the 7th
September.
[Illustration: “THE RUSSIANS CLOSED UP IN THEIR STRENGTH
AND CHARGED WITH THEIR BAYONETS” (_p._ 287).]
The 8th opened still and fine, but it was destined to be a bitter day
in the story of Poland. The Russians had moved up to the very gates
of the town in the night, and only the innermost line of trenches and
the shaky walls stood between them and the inhabitants. The cannonade
recommenced soon after daybreak, and the attack was even more furious
than on the previous day. At least, it seemed so to those within the
doomed city. The men in the trenches were ploughed down like flies,
but their bravery was indomitable, and as each man fell, another took
his place, to be ploughed down in turn. The men finally stood upon the
brink of their trenches, and used the dead bodies of their comrades as
cover; but it was futile. On and on came the Russian host, back and
back went the Poles, until only the gaunt walls of Warsaw stood between
them and those they sought to save. The enemy fought with irresistible
fury, carrying everything before them, inch by inch, at the point of
the bayonet, while their guns were busied in sending missiles within
the city, which spread fire and rapine in their train. The day was
still undone when the walls were gained. The inmost line of defence
was captured, its last defender slain. The plain for a mile around was
strewn with the mutilated remains of what had once been brave men, and
the tyrants of the North held Warsaw in their hands.
The city capitulated as the sun sunk in the west, and its inhabitants
realised too late that their doom was sealed. What that doom was to be
even the most imaginative failed to realise.
Having taken Warsaw, Paskewitsch spoke fair. He would, he declared,
not enter the city till the following day, and meanwhile the Polish
army, what was left of it, might retire to Plosk. The Marshal admitted
to having 3,000 men and 63 officers killed, and 7,500 and 445 officers
wounded, while the Polish loss was found to amount to 9,000 slain.
Defeated though they were, reduced in numbers, without the hope of
succour, and exhausted by the events of the past few days, the Poles
retained their heroism. The army, what was left of the 30,000 men of
which the garrison had consisted, formed in order in the great place in
the centre of the city, and marched towards the gate. But it did not
march to Plosk. It went instead to the fortress of Modlin, and made
preparations for a final stand--a forlorn hope--trusting to fortune
to turn the Russians yet. But the scheme was foredoomed. Paskewitsch,
whose wound was slighter than was supposed, heard of the move, and
promptly despatched a brigade against the Polish remnant. The garrison
of Modlin was promptly surrounded, all retreat cut off. Entrapped,
defenceless, without guns or food, the band of heroes lay down their
arms and sought refuge on neutral territory across the Prussian
frontier.
It does not come within the province of this history to detail the
events which followed the capture of Warsaw. So far as the military
history of this, the last great struggle for Polish independence,
is concerned, the battle of Warsaw brings the story to a close. The
horrors that followed still linger in the memories of the very old. The
fearful outbreak of Asiatic cholera which devastated Central Europe,
the tragic fate of the thousands of Poles who, trusting in the charity
of the King of Prussia, were hounded across the frontier into the hands
of the Russians; the equally tragic fortunes of those who took the word
of the Czar and gave themselves up to the authorities; and the bitter
savageries committed by the Russians in compulsorily emigrating the
bulk of the people of Warsaw, sending children away from parents and
husbands from wives, even to the furthest parts of Eastern Russia, are
all part of history. Of the civilising efforts of the Russians while in
occupation of Warsaw, we have a sample in the fact that the conquerors
took nearly a million volumes of books from the city--400,000 from the
Zuluski Library alone.
[Illustration: THE JEWS’ MARKET, WARSAW.]
[Illustration:
THE STORMING OF THE NILT FORTS.
BY E.F. KNIGHT.]
Of our recent wars on the frontiers of India, the Hunza campaign was
in many respects the most remarkable, and the storming of the enemy’s
defences at Nilt afforded an ample proof of what excellent material our
Indian army is composed. At the extreme north corner of British India,
or rather of the territories of our feudatory the Maharajah of Kashmir,
buried amid the loftiest and wildest mountains of the Hindoo Koosh,
hemmed in by glaciers which are the vastest in the world outside the
arctic regions, and by hundreds of barren leagues of rock and snow, are
two little States of hereditary robbers, the Hunzas and the Nagars, the
first occupying the right bank, the second the left bank of the Hunza
or Kanjut torrent. These people belong to what is known as the Dard
race, and are supposed to be of the purest Aryan stock: many of them
have the features and the fair complexions of Europeans.
This inhospitable region is the very cradle, some say, of the Aryan
race; and the Hunza-Nagars present one of the most interesting
ethnological problems in the world--a problem, however, which up till
now could only be studied from a safe distance, for the half-dozen or
so of Europeans who had penetrated the Hunza valley previous to the
campaign I am about to describe had done so at considerable risk to
their lives. From the earliest times the Hunza-Nagars have engaged in
organised brigandage and slave-hunting; they were the most redoubtable
warriors of the Hindoo Koosh. The head waters of the Hunza and its
tributaries are on the slopes of the Pamirs, and the tribesmen,
ascending the passes that lead from their valleys on to the “roof of
the world,” were wont to raid into Turkistan and fall on the caravans
that carry on the trade between India and Yarkand. For hundreds
of years they have thus amassed rich booty, and they sold all the
prisoners they captured to the Kirghiz nomads. When the Kashmir State
conquered the Gilgit district it did its utmost to quell these two
lawless tribes, but all in vain: secure in their mountain strongholds,
they successfully resisted the largest forces that were sent against
them, and carried their forays both into Kashmir territory and into
Central Asia, though a Kashmir garrison of 6,000 men was always
stationed at Gilgit. It was estimated that the “thums,” or kings, of
these two valley States could muster 5,000 fighting men, fairly well
armed with native matchlocks, Martini-Henrys, Berdans (supplied by the
Russians), Sniders, and other rifles. They also had some smooth-bore
six or seven pound guns of their own manufacture.
When the Indian Government undertook to exercise a more direct control
over the affairs of the grossly mismanaged State of Kashmir, an agency
was established at Gilgit which then became the northernmost outpost
of our Empire in Asia. The Hunza river flows into the Gilgit river
two miles below Gilgit fort, and the frontier of the robber States is
some thirty miles up the Hunza valley. The thums, though jealous of
the establishment of British influence in their close vicinity, were
persuaded by Colonel Durand, our agent at Gilgit, to enter into a
treaty by which they recognised Great Britain as the suzerain power,
and agreed to desist from raiding and slave-hunting, while the Indian
Government was to pay the thums an annual subsidy each. But the thums,
stirred up by Captain Gromchevtsky--who had visited the Hunza valley
with a party of Cossacks, and had done his utmost to damage British
prestige in these regions--soon broke their faith with Colonel Durand;
they recommenced their evil practices, and in the spring of 1891,
having first greatly strengthened their defences in the gorges near
Nilt, they defied the Maharajah and the British agent, declared that
they would renew their raids, threatened the Kashmir fortress of Chalt
with a considerable force, and so endangered our position at Gilgit
that the long-suffering Government of India found it necessary to send
a punitive expedition into the Hunza valley.
At this time the Agent’s bodyguard consisted only of a score or so
of Pathans of the 20th Punjab Infantry, while the Kashmir troops who
garrisoned the forts were scarcely to be relied on, for these were the
same men who had been repeatedly defeated by the Hunzas. They belonged,
it is true, to regiments of the recently organised Imperial Service
troops which the Maharajah had set aside for purposes of Imperial
defence, and which had been trained for some months by specially
selected British officers; but they had never been tried in actual
warfare since the new system had been inaugurated, and it was therefore
considered advisable to despatch from Abbotabad 200 men of our 5th
Gurkha regiment, and two seven-pound guns of the Hazara mountain
battery.
The present road from Kashmir to Gilgit had not then been completed,
and great difficulties had to be overcome in sending even this small
force to the North. The distance from Srinagur to Gilgit is 240 miles,
or twenty-two marches. The track winds among the mountains, and crosses
two high passes, one being over the main chain of the Himalayas, which
divides Kashmir proper from the northern possessions of the Maharajah.
These passes are only open for about four months; for the rest of the
year they are closed by deep snow and are exposed to violent gales of
extreme coldness, which prove fatal to travellers overtaken by them.
One of these storms sprang up while the 5th Gurkhas and a number of
transport coolies were on the march, and nearly 100 men perished of
frostbite. Captain Barrett himself, who was in command, lost several
toes on this occasion, and was incapacitated from taking part in the
campaign. This dreary road traversed for many marches a rainless and
almost desert region. Of wild vegetation there is scarcely any: it is
only by means of artificial irrigation from the glacier streams above
that the sparse population succeeds in raising scanty crops here and
there. There are signs of a more extensive cultivation in the past, but
the forays of the Shinakas--raiding tribes who occupy a little-explored
region beyond the mountains that border the Gilgit road on the
west--have long since made these valleys desolate. The road, where not
winding over the barren mountain ridges, follows the bottoms of the
gloomy ravines where the discoloured torrents rush between cliffs and
huge slopes of fallen boulders. The country affords no supplies to an
invading force, and even the forage for our horses had to be imported
from a distance.
During the four summer months of 1891 thousands of coolies were
employed in carrying up to Gilgit the supplies required for the
expedition; but despite all the efforts of our transport officers, a
large quantity of necessaries never crossed the Himalayas: an early
winter and heavy snowstorms suddenly closed the passes, and our little
force was cut off from all chance of reinforcement or communication
with the outer world for several months. Isolated by impassable
mountains, we were now left to fight it out, not only with the 5,000
Hunzas, but probably also with the Shinakas, who could put 15,000 men
in the field, for they were known to have a defensive alliance with
the Hunzas, and our line of communication was open to their attack at
several points.
The force at Colonel Durand’s disposal consisted of three regiments of
Kashmir Imperial Service troops, 188 men of the 5th Gurkha regiment,
about thirty men of the Agency bodyguard, two guns of the Hazara
mountain battery, and 160 irregulars from the mountains of Puneal--in
all about 2,000 men. Of these 1,000 men were left to garrison the
forts and to guard our long line of communication. The field force,
therefore, numbered roughly 1,000 men, of whom more than 700 were
untried sepoys of the Kashmir regiments (Dogras and Gurkhas), and quite
untrained irregulars. Only thirteen British officers were with the
field force. To Mr. Spedding, C.E., and his staff of six civilians,
was entrusted the duty of opening out a road for the column: these
civilians were on the roster, and had under them 200 Pathan navvies,
who were armed with Snider carbines, and took part in the fighting.
Despite the rigour of the climate in these highlands, it was decided
to prosecute the campaign in mid-winter, for it is only at that season
that Hunza can be invaded with any hope of success. The tribesmen
have purposely left the approaches to their country as difficult as
possible. The awful gorges of the lower Hunza valley afford position
after position that would be impregnable if properly held. A very
narrow track, trying to the nerves of any but cragsman, was then the
one route by which the valley could be ascended in the summer months;
for at that season the torrent, swollen by the snows melting on the
mountains, rages deep and unfordable, filling the bottom of the ravines
from the precipices on one side to those on the other, so that one
has no choice but to follow the dangerous path high up the hillside,
in places crossing the precipices by frail scaffoldings of wood which
a single man could in a moment dislodge and send tumbling into the
torrent below, leaving impassable walls of rock to face the invader.
But in the winter the difficulties are much lessened. The intense
frost silences all the tributary streams, the Hunza torrent shrinks
considerably in volume, is generally fordable, and it is possible in
most parts of the valley to follow the dried margin of the river bed
instead of scaling the precipices above.
[Illustration:
SKETCH MAP
TO ILLUSTRATE THE
HUNZA NAGAR CAMPAIGN.]
Mr. Spedding and his men quickly opened out a road, just practicable
for a mule battery, to Chalt, the last Kashmir fort in the valley. Here
the field force collected, and all being ready, we crossed the river on
December 1st, and having formed a zereba, encamped for the night in the
enemy’s territory. The tribesmen were known to have gathered in force
ten miles higher up the valley at a point where several large forts
defended a naturally very strong position. It was Colonel Durand’s
intention to make an immediate attack on the most important and the
nearest to us of these forts--that of Nilt.
Accordingly, at daybreak on December 2nd, our force advanced; but it
was not until midday that we reached our destination, for our road
lay across very difficult ground, and at some precipitous places the
enemy had broken away the track, so that the column had to halt while
Spedding’s Pathans with pick, shovel, and gunpowder cleared the way.
The enemy offered no opposition, and, indeed, we saw no signs of them
until we had turned a rocky spur of the mountain side, when we suddenly
beheld, right in front of us and only two hundred yards or so distant,
the grey fortress of Nilt, with the quaint triangular flags of the
Hunzas waving on its walls.
The illustration (on p. 297) will render clear the following
description of the enemy’s position at what the tribesmen have for
centuries considered to be the impregnable gateway of their country. On
the right and left are the great gorges of Nilt and Maiun, which pour
their tributary waters into the Hunza river. At the mouth of the Nilt
gorge stands the fortress of Nilt, while on the cultivated terraces
beyond the two gorges are the large fortresses of Thol and Maiun and
several smaller forts. The two gorges descend from the glaciers and
snowfields of mighty mountains whose peaks attain a height of 25,000
feet. The cliffs that fronted us on the opposite slopes of both gorges
are inaccessible in most parts, and were lined at their summits
from the edge of the glaciers high above down to the river bed with
_sangas_, or stone breastworks, filled with the enemy’s marksmen
ever ready to roll down avalanches of rocks on any foe that should
attempt the scaling. The high cliffs also that fell from the cultivated
terraces on either side forming the river banks were lined with
_sangas_ for several miles up the valley, so that an attempt to
turn this formidable position by an advance up the river bed would be
met by a withering fire on either flank. We were confronted, in short,
by a line of defence which extended from the glaciers on one side to
those on the other, held by some 4,000 determined men.
Our first object was to capture Nilt fort, the only one of the enemy’s
defences which was on our side of the tributary gorges. Our troops
had by no means an easy task before them. As the Hunzas and Nagars,
when not united to raid on foreign soil or to repel an invader, used
frequently to wage war on each other, all their villages are strongly
fortified. Nilt consists of a congregation of stone houses, some of
which are two or three storeys in height, all strongly built, and
having flat roofs of large stones so well put together that our shells
produced no effect on them. These houses are built close together,
and often open out one into another, while a labyrinth of very narrow
alleys intersects this human rabbit-warren. The town is enclosed by
a massive stone wall nearly twenty feet in height and twelve feet in
breadth, loopholed for musketry, with towers at intervals. This wall
is surrounded by another loopholed wall eight feet in height, distant
some six yards from the first wall. This outer wall, where it does not
hang over the precipice, has a deep trench outside it, at the bottom of
which the enemy had placed a strong abatis of branches lashed together,
and, lastly, another abatis lined the outer edge of the trench.
[Illustration: “CAPTAIN AYLMER IGNITED THE FUSE”
(_p._ 294).]
As soon as we turned the spur of the mountain the Hunzas opened fire
upon us from their loopholes. Our troops deployed on to the flat
terrace of irrigated fields and returned the fire. The 5th Gurkhas,
who led the attack, made short rushes, section after section, availing
themselves of the cover afforded by the low walls that divided the
fields, and directed a brisk fire on the loopholes of the fort at 100
yards range. The Punialis and the men of the 20th Punjab Infantry
scaled the steep mountain spur above the fort to the ridge on which we
afterwards had our “ridge picket” (_see_ illustration on p. 297),
and fired down into the centre of the fort. The two seven-pounders
took up a position about 150 yards from the fort, and opened fire upon
it with shrapnel and shot, which appeared to produce no effect on the
strong walls.
The action continued thus for about an hour. The loopholes of the
fort offered but small targets to our riflemen, and the losses of
the enemy must have been slight. On the other hand, our own men
began to drop pretty fast, and it was soon obvious that the enemy’s
marksmen were picking off the British officers, most of whom had narrow
escapes. Colonel Durand himself was severely wounded in the groin, and
the command devolved on Captain Bradshaw, 35th Bengal Infantry. The
loopholes of Nilt were luckily but few in number, or our losses would
have been very severe.
Just before he was wounded Colonel Durand ordered that an attempt
should be made to blow up the main gate of the fort, and take the place
by assault. The story of how this was carried out should be one to stir
the blood of Englishmen, for few so gallant deeds have been recorded
even in the glorious annals of our Indian warfare. Under cover of a
very heavy fire opened upon the loopholes of the fort by the rest of
the force the storming party of one hundred men of the 5th Gurkhas,
led by Lieutenants Boisragon and Badcock, and accompanied by Captain
Aylmer (on whom, as our engineer officer, fell the duty of blowing up
the gate), made a rush on the outer abatis. Through this the kukris
of the Gurkhas quickly clove a narrow opening, and then the three
officers, followed by their men, leapt into the trench and began to cut
their way through the other abatis at the bottom. The officers, with
some half-a-dozen men at their heels, scrambled through first, climbed
the side of the trench, and found themselves before the outer wall.
They ran along it till they came to a small gate, through which they
had little difficulty in hacking their way. Passing through this they
found themselves between the two walls, and exposed to the fire from
the lower loopholes of the main wall, which could not be silenced by
the covering party. Turning to the right they followed the main wall
till they came to a large and strongly-built wooden gate flanked by
two towers. To cut through this gate, which had been barricaded within
with a wall of stones, was impossible, so Captain Aylmer, accompanied
by his Pathan orderly and a Gurkha sepoy, ran up to the foot of the
gate, and as rapidly as possible made his preparations to blow it up,
the enemy all the while firing at him through the loopholes of the
towers and gate, and throwing large stones over the parapets upon
him. His companions protected him as far as they could by firing into
the loopholes at the range of a few feet, the officers using their
revolvers. That a single man of this gallant handful escaped death is
indeed marvellous.
Captain Aylmer, stooping down, removed some stones from under the foot
of the gate, inserted his slabs of guncotton, packed them with stones,
and ignited the fuse. While he was doing this he was shot through the
leg from a loophole so near to him that his clothes and flesh were
burnt; and of the two men who were in the gateway with him the Gurkha
was shot dead, and the Pathan orderly was severely wounded in the head.
Captain Aylmer and the orderly then crawled along the foot of the wall
to a safe distance, and awaited the explosion. The given time elapsed,
and there was no sound. It was obvious that the fuse had failed. So
Captain Aylmer, wounded as he was, once more returned to an almost
certain death, in order to complete his task. He cut the fuse with his
knife, readjusted it, lit a match after several attempts, for the wind
was strong, reignited the fuse, and again withdrew to safe shelter.
This time while at work in the gateway he received a second wound. His
hand and arm were very badly crushed by a large stone that was thrown
at him over the walls.
This time, happily, the fuse did its work. There was a loud explosion;
the stones came toppling down from the shaking walls, and it was
seen that the gate and the barricade had been blown in. Then, even
before the cloud of smoke and dust had cleared, the three British
officers--for Captain Aylmer was ready for the fight, indomitable
as ever, though streaming with blood from his wounds--and the five
surviving sepoys rushed through the breach, and were within the fort.
Here they at once engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight with the
bravest of the enemy who flocked down the alleys leading to the gate.
This handful of men, standing close together in this narrow place,
resolutely held the position they had gained against the whole Hunza
garrison. They gave a very good account of themselves, and killed a
number of the enemy with bullet and cold steel: Lieutenant Badcock,
with his revolver, shot the commander himself, Mahomet Shah, Wazir of
Nagar. But the odds against them were too overwhelming: two more of the
sepoys were soon killed, and nearly all were wounded. Captain Aylmer
was now wounded for yet a third time, being shot through the arm with a
jezail, while Lieutenant Badcock was severely wounded in the shoulder.
It was evident that not one of the little party at the gateway would be
left alive unless support came up quickly. They had thus been fighting
for about a quarter of an hour, when Lieutenant Boisragon volunteered
to go out and find his men, thus exposing himself both to the fire of
the enemy and that of the covering party. He got through safely, and
was very soon back in the fort at the head of a number of Gurkhas,
eager to avenge their fallen comrades. They fought, as is their wont,
like little demons with their deadly kukris. The tribesmen defended
themselves with desperate valour, but they could not long withstand the
fierce attack of the Gurkhas, who at last drove them back with great
loss, and hunted them panic-stricken through the labyrinth of alleys
into the surrounding gorges.
That the Gurkhas had not more quickly followed their officers and six
comrades to the gateway was not due to any unreadiness on their part,
for Gurkhas are never backward in a fight. It seems that after they had
cut through the abatis and crossed the trench they were unable to see
which way their officers had gone before them, and turning to the left,
instead of to the right, had missed the gateway, and had been checked
by a great abatis which extended from the wall to the brink of the
precipice.
The storming of Nilt only cost our force six men killed and
twenty-seven wounded. The enemy left about a hundred dead behind them
in the alleys of the fort, and many were shot down while escaping
to their defences beyond the gorge. Captain Aylmer and Lieutenant
Boisragon were both decorated with the Victoria Cross in recognition
of their gallantry on this day, and Lieutenant Badcock, who was also
recommended for a V.C., received the Distinguished Service Order.
Thus fell Nilt Fort; but its capture was only the first step towards
the subjugation of the Hunza-Nagars. The real strength of their
position lay before us, and the enemy, not in the least disheartened
by their defeat, prepared to make a resolute stand along their line of
defence beyond the two gorges. They omitted no precaution: not only did
they break away all the roads across the ravines, but, taking advantage
of the hard frost, they turned the irrigation canals over the river
cliffs where they were assailable, and so formed smooth ramparts of ice
to oppose us.
For eighteen days we vainly endeavoured to turn this formidable
position. On December 3rd an attempt was made to repair the road and
push across the Nilt gorge; but no sooner did our men appear in the
open than they were driven back by a volley from the _sangas_
opposite, which killed three men and wounded six others, among the
latter being Lieutenant Gorton. We now had five of our officers
_hors de combat_, and in all forty men killed or wounded. Several
reconnaissances were made by day and by night, to find out a weak spot
in the enemy’s line of defence. Once a party explored the river bed
for some distance, and found that it was obstructed by barricades that
ran across the beach: a heavy fire from either bank compelled this
patrol to beat a hasty retreat. It was quite evident that an attempt
to advance that way would mean the annihilation of our force. On the
night of December 8th another futile endeavour was made to force the
mouth of the Nilt gorge. On one dark night a small party that had
crossed the river to surprise Maiun was discovered and repulsed.
We even attempted to find a way across the glaciers at the head of
the gorge, but were frustrated by impassable crevasses. Whenever a
night surprise was attempted at some point of the cliff that appeared
accessible the ever-watchful enemy would roll down their avalanches of
rocks and also great fire-balls of resinous wood, whose blaze disclosed
the whereabouts of our men, and enabled the defenders above to open a
deadly musketry fire.
Day after day our men were engaged in these perilous but fruitless
efforts to force a way past these rocky bulwarks of the enemy. Still we
were held in check, and our position became one of considerable peril.
The Hunzas, emboldened by the success of their resistance, threatened
our line of communication with Gilgit, and the Shinaka tribes also were
mobilising with the intention of falling upon us from below. Had they
done so our small force would have probably been caught in a trap and
cut to pieces, even as was the fate of a far larger force of Kashmir
troops some years before in this very valley. Shut out, as we were,
from all hope of succour for several months by the wintry Himalayas,
but one course lay before our commander--at all risks to force the
enemy’s position before their Shinaka allies could come to their
assistance.
To Nagdu, a gallant Dogra sepoy of one of the Kashmir Imperial Service
regiments, the credit is due for having discovered what was possibly
the only practicable method of effecting our object. This man, like
all his race, a good cragsman, volunteered to explore the precipices
on the further side of the Nilt gorge, with a view of finding a point
at which they could be scaled by our troops. Night after night he
did this at great risk, for the enemy, perceiving him, used to roll
down rocks and fire upon him from above. At last on one dark night
he actually succeeded in climbing quite alone from the bottom of the
gorge to the top of the cliff, undetected by the enemy, and reached the
foot of the four strong _sangas_ indicated in the illustration.
The enemy evidently considered this to be a vulnerable point, for we
had observed that they used to roll down their rock avalanches from
these _sangas_ at intervals each night, until at last a regular
chute was worn apparently as a light streak against the darker cliff.
Nagdu climbed down again in safety, returned to camp, and propounded
his scheme. Nagdu, of his own native wit, realised a truth the
ignorance of which has on more than one occasion brought commanders to
grief--namely, that an almost perpendicular cliff is but a treacherous
position under certain circumstances, and proves a deathtrap to those
who would defend its summit. Nagdu pointed out that the cliff was so
steep that the enemy would have to come out of their _sangas_
and lean over the edge of the precipice in order to fire at a scaling
party, and this, he said, we ought to be able to prevent them from
doing with a covering party of picked marksmen posted on our side of
the gorge.
[Illustration: “HE ACTUALLY SUCCEEDED IN CLIMBING QUITE
ALONE.”]
Nagdu’s plan was so obviously the right one that it was adopted, and
it was decided to storm the enemy’s position at this point in broad
daylight. Captain Colin Mackenzie, of the Seaforth Highlanders, who
was in command during Captain Bradshaw’s temporary absence at Gilgit,
despatched this forlorn hope without any delay. The 5th Gurkhas had
borne the brunt of the first action; it was now the turn of the
Imperial Service troops. Accordingly, Lieutenant Manners-Smith and
Lieutenant Taylor, with 100 men of the Kashmir Bodyguard Regiment,
left the camp noiselessly on the night of December 19th, which was
very dark, and bivouacked in the Nilt gorge at a spot sheltered from
rock-rolling, and just below the precipice that Nagdu had scaled. That
night in camp we listened anxiously for any sound, for had the enemy
detected the party as it ascended the gorge the rock avalanches would
have wrought great havoc at several exposed places on the way. But we
had luckily at last caught the tribesmen off their guard, and all was
quiet.
Before dawn on the 20th the covering party, consisting of 135 marksmen
selected from the different regiments, ascended the ridge and took up
a position near the block house indicated in the illustration. Our men
lined the edge of the cliff, having been divided into four parties,
each of which was instructed to open a steady independent fire upon
one particular _sanga_ of the four that were to be stormed. I was
in command of one of these parties, and was therefore a spectator of
what I am about to describe. The enemy opened fire upon us from the
four _sangas_ (which were about 450 yards from our ridge) and
from other _sangas_ that dotted the hillside. It was not long
before the four _sangas_ were completely silenced by the fire we
directed upon them: not a defender dared stand behind a loophole. Then
Lieutenant Manners-Smith commenced the difficult ascent, followed by
fifty of the sepoys, Lieutenant Taylor coming after with the other
fifty. We saw the men, forming a long scattered stream, slowly and with
difficulty scale the 1,200 feet of precipice, often coming to a check
and having to return some distance to try again at some more accessible
point. Only cragsmen, such as these were, could have climbed this
frightful wall of rock.
At last, when they were two-thirds of the way up, Lieutenant
Manners-Smith came to a sheer precipice no man could scale: he tried
to the right and left of it, but could find no way of getting by, and
then, to our dismay, abandoned the hopeless attempt, and took all his
men down again to the foot of the gorge. But Manners-Smith, himself an
expert cragsman, was determined to scale the cliffs somewhere that day
and to try conclusions with the enemy at close quarters. So he started
again at a point higher up the gorge, and this time, as we fired over
his head, we saw him and a few of the most active of his followers
attain a ledge only sixty yards below one of the four _sangas_.
Here he waited a few seconds until more of his men had come up, and
then he rapidly clambered to the edge of the cliff.
[Illustration: NILT FORTS, FROM THE SOUTH.]
It was only at this moment, when the storming party had all but
effected its task, that it became visible to the defenders of Maiun and
of the other forts below, who, hearing the unwonted heavy firing, had
come out upon the roof-tops and were gazing upwards at the ridge. They
shouted a warning across the river, which was taken up by _sanga_
after _sanga_ on the cliff side, till it reached the men in the
four _sangas_ that were the object of our attack, who for the
first time realised that a party of men were scaling the cliff beneath
them. They then, but too late, made a desperate attempt to defend
their position. They threw rocks over the parapets, and some brave
Hunzas rushed boldly out of the _sangas_ and rolled down the
ready-piled-up mounds of stone, whose falling stirred great showers
of rocks, ever increasing in volume as they thundered down the gorge.
From our side we shot down each man as he appeared in the open, in most
cases before he had time to roll down a single stone. Luckily, our men
had by this time passed the most dangerous part of the ascent, and the
greater portion of the stones rushed harmlessly to the left of them.
Some men, however, were wounded, and Lieutenant Taylor was knocked
down, but not severely injured, by a rock. Had the enemy received
their warning but a few minutes earlier, the cataracts of rock would
probably have swept a large proportion of the scaling party off the
face of the cliff.
And now the order was given to the covering party to cease firing, and,
as the smoke cleared, we saw Lieutenant Manners-Smith and a few men
reach the foot of the _sanga_ to the right. They ran quickly round
to the opening at the back of the _sanga_, a few shots were fired
by the attacking party and the defenders, and then the former, rushing
in, took the _sanga_ at the point of the bayonet, slaying most
of those within. The rest of the sepoys now came up, and, despite the
gallant stand of many of the enemy, _sanga_ after _sanga_ was
taken by assault, and the whole hillside was covered with the flying
tribesmen hurrying to the forts below. Upwards of 100 of them were shot
down by our riflemen, but the greater portion escaped. This gallant
forlorn hope had been rewarded with complete success, and the Kashmir
Imperial Service troops had proved on this their first trial how well
they could acquit themselves when properly led.
And now the defenders of Maiun, Thol, and all the fortifications
on the plain below, seeing that their position--which they had
deemed impregnable, and which from time immemorial had defied their
enemies--had been actually turned, and knowing that we should cut off
their retreat unless they escaped at once, lost heart, and, abandoning
their posts, took to their heels. We saw the tribesmen in their
hundreds fleeing up the valley for their lives on both sides of the
river. They were not given time to recover from their panic and to
organise a stand higher up. Our covering party was at once brought down
the hill, our sappers quickly opened a rough track across the mouth
of the gorge; we effected a junction with Lieutenant Manners-Smith’s
party; and then, leaving baggage and commissariat behind, our whole
force pushed up the valley in pursuit of the routed enemy. A forced
march of thirty miles over the most difficult ground, along the face
of precipices, across frozen torrents, glaciers, and wastes of rocky
_débris_, brought us to the capital of Nagar in about twenty-four
hours--a most creditable performance. The enemy offered no further
resistance, and on the following day we occupied the thums’ hitherto
inviolate citadel in the capital of Hunza.
The complete pacification of the country quickly followed. The
Hunza-Nagars, having been treated with clemency, are now very well
disposed to us. They acknowledge our suzerainty, but are ruled by their
thums as of old; and we do not interfere with them in the least so
long as they abstain from raiding and slave-hunting. The Hunza valley
provides a new recruiting ground for India. When it was proposed to
raise a Hunza levy for frontier defence, the young tribesmen gladly
volunteered; and within a few months of the Hunza War, a small body of
our recent foes, led by British officers, completely defeated a far
superior force of Shinakas which had attacked our outposts on the Indus.
Lieutenant Manners-Smith, in recognition of his gallant leading of the
forlorn hope on the 20th, received the Victoria Cross--the third that
had been gained in the course of this short but memorable campaign.
[Illustration:
GILGIT RESIDENCY.]
[Illustration:
ASPROMONTE
BY CHARLES LOWE.]
Giuseppe (or Joseph) Garibaldi was for many years the most picturesque
and interesting figure in all Europe. He might be called the William
Wallace, or the William Tell, of Italy. His name (which is still a
common enough one in Genoa among all ranks of life) is said to have
been a corruption of Garibaldo, _i.e._ “Bold in War.” At any rate,
a warlike star presided over his birth (at Nice in 1807), for he first
saw the light in the very house where, forty years before, Masséna, one
of the Great Napoleon’s greatest generals, was born.
At the time of his birth his native country--Italy--was in a
woful state of disunion, and much of it was under the yoke of the
foreigner--the Austrians in particular. It was cut up into several
conflicting monarchies; while the Pope, the spiritual head of the
Roman Church, also claimed--and had his claim allowed--to be temporal
sovereign of Rome. But as the century grew older, the Italian people
began to be stirred with a deep desire for national unity, without
which they knew they could never become great, strong, or respected;
and of all who threw themselves into this movement, none did so with
more ardour than the son of the humble Nice skipper who sailed his own
little vessel all over the Mediterranean.
This son, Giuseppe, took to his father’s calling, and began life as
a sailor. Once, when second in command of a brig, he was attacked by
Greek pirates, after which he landed at St. Nicholas to re-victual
without so much as shoes to his feet. An Englishman, taking pity on
him, offered him a pair, and this touched him to the heart.
“When I look back upon it now,” wrote Garibaldi in 1870 to _Cassell’s
Magazine_, “I cannot help remembering that it was the first of the
many acts of kindness which bind me with such strong and lasting ties
of gratitude to your noble nation.”
In 1836 he had joined a revolutionary movement, which failed; and,
after many privations and vicissitudes, he finally sailed for South
America, where for the next ten years he led a life of the most
stirring excitement and adventure among the quarrelsome young Republics
of that continent--fighting now on one side and then on the other, like
Rittmeister Dugald Dalgetty in the Thirty Years’ War, and gaining a
name for the greatest personal bravery. The wanderings and adventures
of Ulysses were nothing to those of Garibaldi, which would fill volumes
of as fascinating reading as can be found in the pages of a novelist.
When the revolutionary movement of 1848 swept over Europe--including
Italy--Garibaldi returned home with a knowledge of guerilla--or
irregular--warfare such as was possessed probably by no other man
alive; and then, with his volunteers, he threw himself heart and soul
into the movement for “making Italy free,” as the phrase ran, “from the
Alps to the Adriatic.”
With his Red-Shirt Volunteers, Garibaldi took a prominent part in
the fighting of 1848 and 1859, and with his “Thousand”--as famous a
fighting force as Xenophon’s “Ten Thousand”--he, in 1860, attacked
and conquered the Two Sicilies (_i.e._ the island of Sicily
and Naples), and made a present of these kingdoms to his sovereign
Victor Emmanuel, after which he returned to his solitary farm on the
little island of Caprera. Here, on this rocky island--fifteen miles
in circumference, and five in length--Garibaldi was monarch of all he
surveyed.
“The absence of priests,” he wrote, “is one of the especial blessings
of this spot. Here God is worshipped in purity of spirit without
formalism, free from mockery, under the canopy of the blue heavens,
with the planets for lamps, the sea winds for music, and the green
sward of the island for altars.”
This was the den, so to speak, into which the lion-patriot retired
when no political prey was stirring. But no sooner did he scent the
opportunity for action than out again he would rush with a roar, which
was sometimes just as disquieting to his friends as to his foes. This
was more particularly the case on the occasion which led to Aspromonte.
But, before proceeding to the tragic scene of this encounter, let us
see what sort of fighters Garibaldi and his red-shirted followers were.
[Illustration: GENERAL GARIBALDI.]
“Garibaldi,” wrote a correspondent of _The Times_, “was a
middle-sized man, and not of an athletic build, though gifted with
uncommon strength and surprising agility. He looked to the greatest
advantage on horseback, since he sat in the saddle with such perfect
ease, and yet with such calm serenity, as if he were grown to it,
having had, though originally a sailor, the benefit of a long
experience in taming the wild mustangs of the Pampas. But his chief
beauty was the head and the unique dignity with which it rose on
the shoulders. The features were cast in the old classic mould: the
forehead was high and broad, a perpendicular line from the roots of the
hair to the eyebrows. His mass of tawny hair and full red beard gave
the countenance its peculiar lion-like character. The brow was open,
genial, sunny; the eyes dark grey, deep, shining with a steady reddish
light; the nose, mouth, and chin exquisitely chiselled, the countenance
habitually at rest, but at sight of those dear to him beaming with a
caressing smile, revealing all the innate strength and grace of his
loving nature.
“His garb consisted of a plain red shirt and grey trousers, over which
he threw the folds of the Spanish-American _poncho_--an ample
upper garment of thin white woollen cloth with crimson lining, which
did duty as a standard, and round which his volunteers were bidden to
rally in the thick of the fight, as did the French Huguenot chivalry
round Henry of Navarre’s ‘_panache blanche_.’ His sword was a fine
cavalry blade, forged in England and the gift of English friends, and
with it he might be seen at his early breakfast on the tented field
cutting his bread and slicing his Bologna sausage, and inviting those
he particularly wished to distinguish, to share that savoury fare.
The sabre did good slashing work at need, however, and at Milazzo, in
Sicily, it bore him out safely from the midst of a knot of Neapolitan
troopers who caught him by surprise and fancied they had him at their
discretion. Garibaldi carried no other weapons, though the officers in
his suite had pistols and daggers at their belts; and his negro groom,
by name Aguyar, who for a long time followed him as his shadow, like
Napoleon’s Mameluke, and was shot dead by his side at Rome, was armed
with a long lance with a crimson pennon, used as his chief’s banner.
“His staff officers were a numerous, quaint, and motley crew, men of
all ages and conditions, mostly devoted personal friends--not all of
them available for personal strength or technical knowledge, but all
to be relied upon for their readiness to die with or for him. The
veterans he brought with him from Montevideo, a Genoese battalion whom
his friend Augusto Vecchi helped to enlist, and the Lombard Legion,
under Manara, were all men of tried valour, well trained to the use
of the rifle, inured to hardships and privations; and they constituted
the nucleus of the Garibaldian force throughout its campaigns. The
remainder was a shapeless mass of raw recruits from all parts of Italy,
joining or leaving the band almost at their pleasure--mere boys from
the Universities, youths of noble and rich family, lean artisans from
the towns, stout peasants and labourers from the country, adventurers
of indifferent character, deserters from the army, and the like, all
marching in loose companies, like Falstaff’s recruits, under improvised
officers and non-commissioned officers; but all, or most of them,
entirely disinterested about pay or promotion, putting up with long
fasts and heavy marches, only asking to be brought face to face with
the enemy, and when under the immediate influence of Garibaldi himself
or of his trusty friends seldom guilty of soldierly excesses or of any
breach of discipline. The effect the presence of the hero had among
them was surprising. A word addressed to them in his clear, ringing,
silver voice electrified even the dullest. An order coming from him was
never questioned, never disregarded. No one waited for a second bidding
or an explanation. ‘Your business is not to inquire how you are to
storm that position. You must only go and do it.’ And it was done.”
[Illustration: “EVERYWHERE THIS FREE-LANCE EVOKED
ENTHUSIASM” (_p._ 302.)]
“On the approach of a foe,” wrote one of his Lombard volunteers,
Emilio Dandolo, “Garibaldi would ride up to a dominating point in the
landscape, survey the ground for hours with the spyglass in brooding
silence, and come down with a swoop on the enemy, acting upon some
well-contrived combination of movements by which advantage had been
taken of all circumstances in his favour.” And as this was his custom
in the field of war, so it was ever also his habit in what must be
called the field of politics. After finishing a campaign he would
sheathe his sword and return to Caprera, there to stand and strain
his eyes towards the mainland, watching for his next opportunity of
action. Not an event escaped his notice, and he heard with a smile of
contentment how Victor Emmanuel had stormed the fortress of Gaeta,
and the two crowns of the Sicilies had been placed upon the head
of the Piedmontese King. But the national unity was still far from
complete. Above all things, Venice still remained under the yoke of
the Austrians, while Rome was equally in the power of the French, who
remained there to champion with their bayonets the pretensions of the
Pope.
They had been there ever since 1849, when the Romans rose against the
Pope, declared a Republic, and were supported by Garibaldi and his Red
Shirts. But then the French rushed to the assistance of the Pope, and
after a three months’ siege--during which the Garibaldians behaved with
splendid bravery--at last stormed the city, restored the authority of
the Pope, and compelled the Hero of Caprera to retire to the mountains.
“Soldiers!” he had said, on leading his men away from the Eternal City,
“that which I have to offer you is this: hunger, thirst, cold, heat;
no pay, no barracks, no rations; but frequent alarms, forced marches,
charges at the point of the bayonet;” and 4,000 men had readily
answered to this appeal.
[Illustration: GARIBALDI’S MOVEMENT OF 1862.]
The memory of this defeat rankled ever after in Garibaldi’s mind, and
he determined to seize the first opportunity of retrieving it. This
opportunity, he deemed, had at last come in the year 1862, soon after
the death of the great statesman Cavour, who had been the Bismarck,
so to speak, of Italian unity, as Victor Emmanuel had been its King
William. But while Garibaldi had been their greatest support, he had
also been the source of their greatest weakness. For he was not a
regularly appointed servant of the Government, but the self-constituted
soldier and champion of his country. He chose his own time for
fighting, irrespective of what the King and his ministers wished, and
thus often placed them in the greatest difficulty. So little, indeed,
did Garibaldi consider his times and seasons for action, that he was
said by many to have “an ass’s head linked to a lion’s heart.” He was
nothing but a headlong soldier, who scorned the arts of statesmen; and
his head was turned with his extraordinary popularity among the masses
of the Italian people, who paid him something like Divine honours.
Everywhere this free-lance hero evoked far more enthusiasm than was
even shown the King, who, naturally enough, followed Garibaldi’s
movements with the greatest solicitude, whilst recognising that he had
done so much for his country that the very greatest indulgence and
forbearance had to be shown him.
But there came a time when it was thought that Garibaldi should not
be allowed the free hand which had hitherto been granted him. This
was when he announced his intention of placing the national flag on
the walls of Rome, which still owned the dominion of the Pope, and
was garrisoned by the French. However much Victor Emmanuel desired
to see Rome become the capital of Italy, he could not forget the
debt of gratitude which he owed the French, who had been his allies
in the successful war against Austria in 1859; and when he heard of
Garibaldi’s proposed enterprise, he issued a proclamation to his
subjects, saying: “It is painful to me to see deluded and inexperienced
young men forgetting their duties and the gratitude we owe our best
allies, and making the name of Rome a watchword of war.... Italians!
beware of guilty impatience and incautious agitation. When the hour to
finish the Government work shall have come, the voice of your King will
be heard among you. A call which does not come from him is a call to
rebellion and to civil war. The responsibility and the rigour of the
law will fall upon those who do not listen to my words.”
But this warning had no restraining effect on the eager Garibaldi, who
only panted to recover for his country the Eternal City, exclaiming:
“Rome! Rome! Who is not urged by thy very name to take up arms for
thy deliverance?” At the same time, there is considerable reason
for believing that the King and his Government had given secret
encouragement to Garibaldi to embark upon his mad enterprise, in order
to have a pretext for arresting the lion-hearted but inconvenient
rebel. In any case, away to Sicily he went to make preparations for
his Quixotic expedition. He probably calculated that the news of his
enterprise would induce his countrymen to rise _en masse_, and
that the French Emperor, seeing the enthusiasm of the Italian people,
would withdraw his troops from Rome.
He landed at Palermo, whence a body of his volunteers marched to
Corleone, a town of the interior, where they overpowered the National
Guard and armed themselves with their muskets. Then they took up their
quarters in a camp at Ficuzza, a forest district about twenty miles
from Palermo. Here they were visited on August 1st by Garibaldi, who
thus addressed them:
“My young fellow-soldiers! To-day again the holy cause of our country
unites us. Again to-day, without asking whither going, what to do,
with what hope of reward to our labours, with a smile on your lips and
joy in your hearts, you hasten to fight our overbearing dominators,
throwing a spark of comfort to our enslaved brethren.... I can
only promise you toils, hardships, and perils; but I rely on your
self-denial. I know you, ye brave young men, crippled in glorious
combat! It is needless to ask you to display valour in fight. What
I ask is discipline, for without that no army can exist. The Romans
were disciplined, and they mastered the world. Endeavour to conciliate
the goodwill of the population we are about to visit, as you did in
1860, and no less to win the esteem of our valiant army, in order,
thus united with that army, to bring about the longed-for unity of the
country.”
Garibaldi now went to Catania, where the royal troops already began to
close round him with intent to take him prisoner. But many deserted to
his side in the hope of sharing the martial glory which they believed
to be again in store for the wayward Hero of Caprera. His force soon
swelled to a very considerable body; but here it was on the island
of Sicily, and how was it to get across to the mainland in order to
commence its march on Rome? Garibaldi had no ships; but in the harbour
of Catania there were lying three vessels--a French frigate, the
_Marie Adelaide_; a French steamer, _Le Général Abbatucci_;
and an Italian steamer, _Il Dispaccio_, belonging to the Florio
Company. In addition to these vessels there was a royal Italian
man-of-war--_Il Duca di Genova_--the commander of which gave out
that he would fire on any of the other three ships which made bold to
carry over Garibaldi and his Red Shirts to the mainland.
One day, however, the _Duca di Genova_ took it into its head to go
for a little cruise outside the Straits of Messina--probably, indeed,
because it had received secret orders to do so, in order the better
to lure Garibaldi into the trap which had been laid for him. On the
disappearance of the _Duca di Genova_, Garibaldi stepped into a
boat with several trusty followers, and was rowed off to the other
three vessels above referred to, when he put their respective captains
under arrest, and then proceeded to fill them up with his impatient Red
Shirts.
“At five o’clock in the afternoon,” says one of his biographers, “the
embarkation commenced, and the good people of Catania crowded the
harbour, waving handkerchiefs and cheering. Menotti” (Garibaldi’s
son) “and his ‘Guides,’ the Tuscans, and the flower of the Sicilian
volunteers, moved off for _Il Dispaccio_; General Corrao, with
some more Sicilians, occupied _Le Général Abbatucci_; whilst
Garibaldi took the command of the former and put Burratini in command
of the _Marie Adelaide_, with orders to get her filled with troops
as soon as possible. During this time it had been growing dark, and
each ship was filled to suffocation, no one being able to lie down, or
get any rest, as boats were for ever arriving with their cargoes of
men. About midnight the ships were got under way; and after crossing
the Straits in the dark, without any mishap, the troops were all safely
landed at Melito next morning, on the spot celebrated as the one on
which the former expedition had gone ashore.”
Garibaldi landed in Calabria with a force of about 3,000 men--a very
insignificant body, one would have thought, to march against walled and
embattled Rome with its formidable French garrison. But by the time he
came into collision with the royal troops, who had been sent after him
to arrest his progress, his little army of Red Shirts had dwindled by
about a half on account of the privations to which it was exposed and
the rapid marches which had been exacted of it.
On hearing of Garibaldi’s naval _coup-de-main_ at Catania, and his
crossing over to Calabria, General Cialdini at once gave chase, and in
order to catch the Hero of Caprera, he sent two of his generals--Revel
and Vialardi--with a body of royal troops to draw a cordon across
the isthmus of Tiriolo at its narrowest point, between Nicastro and
Catanzaro, so as thus to bar the Rome-ward march of the Red Shirts.
Having done this, he next ordered three vessels of war to cruise about
the Straits so as to prevent Garibaldi from re-embarking, and then
despatched Major-General Pallavicini, at the head of a considerable
force, from Reggio, with instructions to drive the Red Shirts
northwards in the direction of the aforesaid cordon on the isthmus,
as game is driven by the beaters towards the sportsmen--Pallavicini’s
instructions being to attack Garibaldi “anywhere and anyhow,” unless he
consented to an unconditional surrender.
[Illustration: CATANIA.]
Things had thus assumed a very serious aspect indeed for the
disillusioned Hero of Caprera, who, on the evening of the 28th August,
after a long and tiring day’s march, had pitched his camp on the brow
of the far-famed hill of Aspromonte, on a plateau overlooking the
sea, with a wood behind which connected it with a high range of the
Apennines, and would afford ample shelter for his troops. The men were
encamped _al fresco_ under cover of this wood, whilst Garibaldi
occupied one of two woodmen’s huts which were on the plateau, and gave
the spot the name of “_i forestali_.” It was wet and gloomy, the
rain put out the bivouac fires, every rag on their backs was soaked,
and they had no provisions with them; so that the position of the
volunteers was far from enviable.
Next morning General Pallavacini came up with the Red Shirts, and at
once proceeded to carry out his orders. How he did this let us see from
his own pen.
“On the morning of the 29th I set forth early, directing my course
towards San Stefano, where I arrived at about half-past eight a.m.
There, from secret information received, I knew that General Garibaldi
had encamped with his force during the night on the plateau of
Aspromonte. I ordered the troops to pursue the march until within a
short distance of the plateau, and before allowing them to proceed I
caused the troops to rest themselves, as they were excessively fatigued
by a long march by abrupt paths. In the meantime I learned that only
two hours previously General Garibaldi had encamped at the foot of the
plateau of Aspromonte, and I saw that by two paths I could descend
towards his camp.
“I then divided my troops into two columns, which arrived at the same
time in view of the Garibaldian encampment, already abandoned by him,
he having taken up a position on the crest of a rugged hillock to
the east of the plateau of Aspromonte. I then sent an order to the
commandant of the left column, while making the right column fall
back by a rapid movement. I attacked the left flank of the rear of
the rebels, in order to cut off their retreat. In the meantime, with
a battalion, I caused the entrance of the valley to be occupied, that
they might not regain the plateau. The left column, with the 6th
Battalion of the Bersaglieri at their head, then attacked the rebels,
and after a smart fire carried the position at the point of the
bayonet with cries of ‘_Viva il Re!_’ ‘_Viva Italia!_’ while
the left side was also attacked by our troops. General Garibaldi and
his son Menotti” (who had written to a friend in Liverpool, “In three
weeks we shall be in Rome!”) “having been wounded, and the rebels being
surrounded on all sides, resistance became useless, whereupon the
Garibaldians gave the signal to cease firing.”
Their own account of the engagement was somewhat different. Garibaldi
himself wrote:--“They thirsted for blood, and I wished to spare
it.... Yes, they thirsted for blood. I perceived it with sorrow, and
I endeavoured, in consequence, to do my utmost to prevent that of our
assailants from being shed. I ran to the front of our line, crying
out to them not to fire, and from the centre to the left, where my
voice and those of my aides-de-camp could be heard, not a trigger was
pulled. It was not thus on the attacking side. Having arrived at a
distance of two hundred metres, they began a tremendous fire, and the
party of _Bersaglieri_ who were in front of me, directing their
shots against me, struck me with two balls--one in the left thigh, not
serious; the other in the ankle of the right foot, making a serious
wound.
“As all this happened at the opening of the conflict, and I was carried
to the skirt of the wood after being wounded, I could see nothing
more, a dense crowd having formed round me while my wound was being
dressed. I feel certain, however, that up to the end of the line (of
troops) which was at my litter, and to that of my aides-de-camp, not
a single musket shot was fired.... It was not so on our right. The
_Picciotti_, attacked by the regular troops, replied by a fire
along the whole line, and, although the trumpets sounded to cease
firing, there was at that spot a smart fusilade, which lasted not more
than a quarter of an hour. My wounds led to some confusion in our line.
Our soldiers, not seeing me, began to retreat into the woods, so that,
little by little, the crowd around me broke up, and the most faithful
alone remained.”
[Illustration: “RAISING HIS CAP IN THE AIR, HE CRIED
‘VIVA L’ITALIA!’” (_p._ 306).]
A Garibaldian officer who was present thus wrote: “When the general
received the bullet he was passing along our front, ordering the men
not to fire. I saw a slight shiver pass through his body; he took two
or three steps, and then began to stagger. We ran to him, holding him
up; he was regardless of his sufferings. Raising his cap in the air, he
cried ‘_Viva l’Italia!_’ I had his poor foot resting on my thigh;
he called out to his assailants, and asked what they were doing with
his people. I felt a shivering in all his limbs; and, reminding him of
his wounds, I implored him to be quiet.”
While the surgeon was dressing his wounds, the sturdy soldier calmly
produced a cigar and began to smoke, inquiring of the doctor whether
he thought amputation would be necessary. Twenty minutes later he had
an interview with his conqueror and captor, General Pallavacini, who
assured him, with tears in his eyes, that this was the most miserable
day of his life. Yet he had received certain orders, and he had no
choice but to obey.
It was the bitterest of all moments for the hero of Italian unity
when, staggering from the effects of his double wound, he fell forward
upon the Italian soil to which he had devoted his whole life. Generals
Cialdini and Pallavacini had been his friends and comrades, their
troops were his compatriots and brothers-in-arms.
Two bullets had thus put an end, sudden and complete, to Garibaldi’s
march on Rome, though he was to live to make another and an equally
unsuccessful attempt upon the Eternal City. Meanwhile, the illustrious
rebel was carried to prison at Spezzia, where he was, however, kept
but a short time, and then removed to Pisa. There Dr. Nélaton, of
Paris, who came all the way for the purpose, succeeded in extracting
the bullet from Garibaldi’s ankle, for which bullet a hero-worshipping
Englishman offered as much as 30,000 francs.
Two years later, when he had recovered from his wounds, he visited
England, a country which had always taken the keenest interest in
his adventures, and even sent him volunteers, as well as a doctor to
attend him in his illness. High and low welcomed him with the warmest
enthusiasm, and the attentions that were rained upon the Hermit of
Caprera culminated in a grand banquet given in his honour by the Lord
Mayor and City of London.
[Illustration: KING VICTOR EMMANUEL.]
[Illustration:
_Napoleon’s Moscow Campaign_
_By D.H. Parry_.]
One must go back through centuries of history to find anything
approaching the horrors of the Russian War of 1812.
Towards the end of June, 610,058 armed men and an enormous multitude of
non-combatants--women and children--crossed the broad Niemen, joined
afterwards by 37,100 more, making a total of 647,158; and on the 13th
December--or rather less than six months later--16,000 alone repassed
that river with weapons in their bruised and frozen hands, almost the
sole remains of a magnificent army whose bones are to this day turned
up by the plough of the Russian peasant.
* * * * *
The Niemen flows between Prussia and Poland; and in the forest of
Pilwisky, behind the rocky heights on the Prussian side, a multitude of
men lay concealed, speaking a score of tongues, and wearing a strange
variety of uniform, many nations having sent their best and bravest to
swell the ranks of the _Grande Armée_.
The famous Imperial Guard was sleeping in the green corn, dreaming of
future conquests, and that mighty host awaited the word of one man to
embark on a campaign whose disasters have had no equal--one little
pale-faced man dressed now in a long grey riding-coat and a Polish
cap--the man who, by the force of his own intellect and the marvellous
power of using men and circumstances to his own ends, had ground the
whole of Europe--England alone excepted--under the heel of his military
boot!
At two o’clock in the morning of June 23rd Napoleon mounted his horse
and rode off to reconnoitre the river, his charger stumbling and
throwing him on to the sandy bank.
A voice exclaimed in the darkness: “That is a bad augury: a Roman would
go back.” But no one knew who had spoken, and, after ordering three
bridges to be constructed for the following night, the little party
returned to its quarters, the words sinking ominously into their hearts.
Next evening some sappers, with their white leather aprons and keen
axes, crossed in a boat, and were met by a Cossack officer, who rode
forward alone to inquire what they wanted in Russia.
“We are Frenchmen,” said one of the sappers, “come to make war upon
you--to take Wilna--to liberate Poland!”
The solitary horseman disappeared without a word, and the sappers fired
their muskets into the silent woods.
For three whole days the tramp of men and the heavy rumble of guns
filled the air as the army filed down to the banks, and poured across
the bridges--Grenadiers, Voltigeurs, Chasseurs, and Dragoons, regiment
succeeding regiment, corps after corps. Now the scarlet and green of
the 8th Hussars; again the heavy squadrons of Sebastiani’s Cuirassiers,
smart Polish Lancers of the Guard and Line, Carabineers with brass
body-armour and snow-white uniforms, long trains of lumbering
artillery, waggons and field-forges, carriages, and caissons, the
sutler’s cart jostling the caleche of the general officer, a sultry sun
overhead, and the river dancing in merry ripples beneath them as the
bridges trembled under the tread of the marching thousands.
Napoleon crossed at Poniemen with his Guard, the corps of Marshals
Davout, Oudinot, and Ney, and Murat’s dashing cavalry; Prince Eugène,
with the army of Italy, passed at Piloni on the 29th; and Jérôme
Bonaparte’s Westphalians advanced upon Grodno which they reached on the
30th.
To the north Macdonald attacked Riga on the Baltic, and Prince
Schwartzenberg marched through Galicia in the south; but it is the army
of the centre, under the Emperor himself, whose fortunes we shall most
closely follow, omitting the marches of the thirteen divisions into
which the invading forces were formed, and not pausing to notice the
minor actions in which they were sooner or later engaged.
Hardly had Napoleon gained the enemy’s side than a black cloud gathered
in the sky, and a furious storm broke over the country for fifty
leagues right and left. The rain descended with surprising violence,
the air grew piercingly cold, and the flat land covered with tall black
pine-trees became a swamp, through which they splashed dismally onward.
Ten thousand horses died, heated by the green corn which formed their
forage, and then chilled by the rain as they stood shivering in their
exposed bivouacs.
The bridge across the Vilia having been destroyed by retreating
Cossacks, Napoleon impatiently ordered a squadron of the Polish Lancers
of the Guard to swim the swollen stream, and, clad in crimson uniforms,
faced with dark blue and laced with silver, they gained the centre,
only to be carried away by the current, and many of them drowned,
crying “_Vive l’Empereur!_” as their heads disappeared under water.
Beyond Wilna, Octave de Ségur (brother of the historian) and his 8th
Hussars drew first blood from the Russians, and were sadly cut up;
but Oudinot drove Witgenstein back at the same moment, and, sending
Murat in pursuit, the Emperor returned to Wilna, to waste twenty
days in raising unsatisfactory levies, and to disgust the Poles with
disappointing hopes of liberty.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER I., CZAR OF RUSSIA.]
Russian proposals of peace were rejected by Napoleon, whose entire
conduct during the campaign has baffled his friends and foes; and
leaving Wilna at half-past eleven at night on the 16th July, he marched
to attack Barclay de Tolly, provided he could find him.
Two hundred and fifty thousand Russians had been formed into three
distinct armies--the First Army of the West under De Tolly; the Second,
under Prince Bagration; and the Third, which was not then completed,
under the cavalry general Tormasoff; 18,000 Cossacks being distributed
among them, those of the Hetman Platoff especially destined to win a
terrible renown.
The infantry wore green, with slate pantaloons and mud-coloured
greatcoats, the officers affecting wasp waists, tremendous curled
whiskers, and gold rings in their ears. The Cossacks of the Line were
dressed for the most part in blue, with fur caps and long lances;
generally swarming with vermin, they were mounted on active little
horses, which they urged on with whips, there being also bands of
wild horsemen called Baskirs, who used _bows and arrows_ with a
precision that caused mourning in many a French home.
The war assumed a curious character: on through the swamps and lonely
forests of Lithuania, interspersed here and there by deserts of choking
sand, the long columns wound; the Russians burning their villages as
they retired, the French in their turn destroying what the Russians had
left, devastation and disorder marking every league of the way; the
roads dotted with the bodies of dead men and horses, who had sunk with
fatigue, and the rear-guard of the enemy disappearing as the French
advance-guard came in sight of it.
Napoleon derided the foe as arrant cowards; but the persistent retreat
was all part of a wise policy, originated by De Tolly, to draw them
into an unknown country, far from their magazines, until hunger, forced
marches, the burning heat of the days followed by nights of intense
cold, and last of all the terrible winter of those latitudes, should
crumble away the army and utterly destroy it.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY OF MOSCOW.]
The young blood of Russia naturally revolted at such a course and
wished to fight, but results have justified its adoption, the
significant fact remaining as additional proof of its wisdom, that in
nearly every instance during the advance, where the two forces came
into contact, the French proved victorious.
At Ostrowno the remnants of the 8th Hussars came up with three Russian
cavalry regiments, and routed them in quick succession among the birch
woods; Murat ordering some Poles of the Line to charge, and being
obliged to lead them, although, as commander, he should have kept out
of danger.
The lances were lowered in a glittering row behind him, and the
troopers, gay in blue and yellow, came thundering on. From the nature
of the ground escape was impossible, so, making a virtue of necessity,
the King of Naples flourished his famous riding-switch, galloped at
their head, and the charge was successful: the 106th took the Russians
on one side, Piré’s Hussars and 16th Chasseurs on the other. The French
artillery resumed its fire; and falling back in disorder, the foe
melted away into the forest that hid Witepsk.
At that place De Tolly made a stand, hearing that Bagration was about
to join him; and Napoleon saw the sun glinting on the arms of eighty
thousand men on a bright July morning, as two hundred voltigeurs of the
9th crossed a narrow bridge and formed in front of the Russian horse.
[Illustration:
NAPOLEON’S MARCH
From the Niemen to Moscow.
1812.]
Murat sent the 16th Chasseurs-à-cheval at the enemy, without any
support; but though their sky-blue facings had figured in almost every
campaign since 1793, they had no chance singlehanded on broken ground,
and the Cossacks of the Guard put them to the right-about, pursuing as
far as a hill on which the Emperor stood, and only being driven off by
the carbines of his personal escort. On their way back the Cossacks
attacked the voltigeurs with great fury, the army holding its breath
and regarding them as lost; but the little band took post in some
brushwood, and routed the Lancers in full view of both forces, the
French clapping their hands and cheering their comrades to the echo,
Napoleon sending to inquire to what corps the heroes belonged.
“To the Ninth,” was the reply; “and three-fourths of us are lads of
Paris.”
“Tell them that they are brave fellows,” said the Emperor to his
aide-de-camp, “and that they all deserve the Legion of Honour”--one
account stating that every man received it.
Murat, Eugène, and Lobau rushed on the enemy’s left, and compelled him
to retire behind the Luczissa; but believing that De Tolly meant at
last to stand his ground, Napoleon stopped the conflict, although it
was only eleven o’clock, saying to Murat: “To-morrow at five you will
see the sun of Austerlitz.”
The morrow came; the sun rose redly through the mists; but the wise
Barclay had vanished, having learned during the night that Bagration
had been worsted, the French discovering _one_ Russian asleep in a
thicket, and not a reliable trace of the direction the others had taken.
The expedition had never been popular, either with officers or men, and
they began to grumble with good cause; for an army that had conquered
Prussia in fourteen days, and whose standards were heavy with the
gilded names of a hundred glorious victories, had now penetrated for
more than a month into a land teeming with discomforts. Many of the
regiments were shoeless, the cavalry horses died by dozens every day,
the hospitals were full of sick; extremes of heat and cold, bad food
and little of it, blinding dust, a draught of muddy water to wash it
down--all this and more had been their daily lot since they crossed the
Niemen, and there had been no great battle to revive their drooping
hearts; besides which, the rye bread seriously disagreed with them,
and dysentery and deadly typhus laying its wasting hand upon them, had
already sadly thinned their ranks.
Their pride, too, sustained a shock when news came that the
advance-guard had been repulsed at Aghaponovtchina; and at length
awaking from a lethargic dream, the Emperor sent the various corps into
cantonments on the skirts of Poland, Russia proper still before them;
and returning to Witepsk with his Guard, took off his sword and laid
it on his maps, saying: “Here I halt.... The campaign of 1812 is over;
that of 1813 will do the rest!”
But his ambition gave him no peace. Murat came riding in from the
front, his green surtout all laced and bejewelled, and urged his
brother-in-law to action; and although Napoleon went daily to inspect
the huge ovens, where 39,000 loaves of bread were baked at a time, and
arranged that theatrical companies should come from Paris to enliven
the dreary winter months, his suite soon began to find him bending down
to his maps again, turning his eyes towards Smolensk and Moscow.
Soon afterwards he came across a proclamation calling upon Russia to
rise and exterminate the invaders, and containing some very forcible
hometruths which enraged him; and hearing, to his great chagrin, that
Alexander had made peace with Turkey, he gathered up his legions in
four days, left Witepsk to join them on the 13th of August, and rushed
headlong into difficulties and disaster, from which neither he nor his
army ever recovered.
By one of those masterly movements of his (so conspicuously absent
during the rest of the war), he crossed the front of the Russian army
unknown to them, and two days later fell unexpectedly on their left
flank at Krasnoë.
Ney forced the town, to find General Néwérowskoi beyond it, with 6,000
infantry and Cossacks belonging to Bagration, which formed into a
square of such thickness that the French cavalry sabred its way far
in without being able to break it, and the tall corn, now mellowed by
Autumn’s breath, saw some ghastly work as Néwérowskoi came to a strong
palisade and had to halt; his rear ranks facing round to fire on the
Wurtemberg Horse, while the front-rank tore down the obstacle; the
body succeeding in their escape, although they left 1,200 dead, 1,000
wounded, and eight guns in the hands of the French, who fired a salute
in honour of the victory, which happened to have fallen on Napoleon’s
birthday.
The good folk of Smolensk were coming out of church, where they
had been returning thanks somewhat prematurely, when Néwérowskoi’s
fugitives poured panting into the city, closely followed by Marshal
Ney, who, receiving a ball in the neck, lost his temper, and led a
battalion at the charge against the citadel, under a hail of musketry
that slew two-thirds of them.
Falling back to a hill whence he could reconnoitre, he conducted
Napoleon thither, who exclaimed, “At last I have them!” as several
immense columns of men were seen hastening towards them on the other
side of the Dnieper, being nothing less than Barclay and Bagration with
120,000 troops, coming on at a run, after learning how the Emperor had
outwitted them, and arriving out of breath to succour the threatened
city.
Some sanguinary fighting took place, and a great battle was expected
for the next day; but the wily De Tolly again retreated, his black
columns being discovered on the opposite bank marching swiftly away, to
the mortification of the invaders.
Even the fiery Murat tired of the campaign, and at length urged
Napoleon to stop; but the Emperor persevered, and the King of Naples,
exclaiming prophetically as he strode out of Napoleon’s tent, “Moscow
will be our destruction!” galloped to the front of a Russian battery,
flung himself from his horse, and waited for a ball to kill him.
A violent attack was made on the city; twenty-two men fell by a single
shot from a Russian gun, while Murat, who courted death, was unhurt.
The gorgeous artillery of the Guard pounded unceasingly. An attempt to
storm the place was baffled by the defenders, and when night descended,
Smolensk was seen to be in flames, the army finally entering the city
to find it a heap of smouldering ruins, and the state of the army
itself truly terrible.
General Rapp, who had ridden post to join Napoleon, and who
consequently followed their route, gave a vivid recital of the misery
and devastation he had witnessed in the rear. Sebastiani revealed the
condition of affairs in the heavy cavalry, and the Emperor could close
his eyes no longer.
“It is frightful, I am fully aware,” he said. “I must extort peace from
the enemy, and that can be done only at Moscow.”
At the hill of Valoutina a shocking conflict was waged by the gallant
Ney far into the night, both sides fighting with terrible fury. Junot,
Duke of Abrantes, the Emperor’s old companion-in-arms, showed symptoms
of the insanity that caused him to commit suicide not long after; and
failing to charge at the right moment, the enemy saved his baggage and
wounded. General Gudin was killed, the whole army mourning the loss of
as gallant and good a man as ever fell in action.
Lieutenant Etienne, of the 12th, took the Russian General Toutchkoff,
in the middle of his troops. Napoleon gave eighty-seven crosses to
Gudin’s regiments, and presented an eagle to the 127th with his own
hands; but the misery of the troops outweighed the glory they had
gained: they had seen seven hundred wounded Russians left untended
for three days at Witepsk, and the French surgeons tearing up their
own shirts for bandages; at Smolensk, fifteen large brick buildings
saved from the fire were then full of groaning men, Lariboissiere’s
gun-wadding and the parchments in the city archives being used to dress
their wounds. There, also, a hospital containing a hundred sick was
overlooked for three days, until Rapp discovered it by chance. Eleven
thousand Bavarians had been _marched_ to death without firing a
shot, and discipline was so lax that at Slawkowo the Guard burnt for
firewood the only bridge by which the Emperor could continue his route
next day.
[Illustration: GARDENS OF THE KREMLIN.]
Many Cuirassiers rode on native ponies, regiments straggled along and
pillaged without check, Davout’s corps alone preserving anything like
its usual order: the popular impression that the French disasters began
with the winter’s snow is utterly false; the Army of the Centre alone,
under Napoleon in person, having lost 105,500 in fifty-two days, and
advancing on Moscow with only 182,000, after deducting 13,500 left at
Smolensk.
Everything pointed to a decisive battle to restore the _morale_
of the _Grande Armée_, and Napoleon seemed for the moment to pull
himself together, if we may be permitted a homely phrase. Countless
orders were despatched, every carriage was to be destroyed that was
likely to retard the advance, and meeting with that of his aide-de-camp
Narbonne, he had it burned before his eyes, without allowing the
general to remove a single article.
A change came over the Russian tactics at the same time: all
ranks clamoured for a leader who would fight and not retreat,
and consequently De Tolly was replaced by old Kutusoff, who,
notwithstanding his defeat at Austerlitz, was a Russian, and beloved
by the army for his superstitious practices, and an affectation of
Suvarrow’s eccentricity of manner.
The French advanced in three columns, and troops of Cossacks began
to hover round them threateningly. Beyond Gjatz, Murat became so
annoyed at the hordes of those filthy, unkempt horsemen, that he
rushed forward, and standing in his stirrups, with the very sublimity
of conceit, waved them back with his sword, and they retired in
astonishment and admiration.
But soon the high road debouched on to a natural battle-ground, and
dark masses of troops were seen drawn up in solid bodies, there being
no longer any doubt that the Russians intended fighting to cover “The
Holy City,” Moscow, a large field-work commanding the road itself,
bristling with cannon in a threatening manner.
The army attacked without delay, and drove the foe back to a range of
hills, General Compans leading the 61st, with bayonets fixed, against
the fortification.
Three times they took it, and three times they were dislodged; but at
length, other positions being forced in their rear, the brave garrison
evacuated the blood-stained ramparts, and Compans retained possession.
Among the heaped-up slain inside, a Russian artilleryman, decorated
with several crosses, lay beside his gun, grasping it even in death
with one hand, and clenching the hilt of his broken sword with the
other; while next day, when Napoleon reviewed the survivors of the
61st, he asked, with surprise, what had become of the 3rd Battalion.
“It is in the redoubt,” said the colonel grimly.
A cold drizzle began to fall that night, and Napoleon, through the
striped curtains of his tent, pitched in a square of the “Old Guard,”
saw a great semi-circle of fire from the Russian bivouacs.
He slept little, and went early in his grey riding-coat to reconnoitre
once more, afraid even then that the foe might retreat; but when
morning came the huge force was still in position, extending for six
miles, the flanks retired, and the centre advanced towards him.
Its right was protected by a marsh, its centre strongly entrenched, a
strong redoubt mounting twenty-two guns frowned near the left centre,
and the entire left wing was on lower ground, terminating on the old
Moscow road, with two more redoubts before it. To turn that left
wing, storm the works, and drive the Russians into the marshes on
the opposite flank was the Emperor’s plan, the battle proving one of
the most murderous ever fought by the _Grande Armée_, and known
afterwards by them as the “Battle of the Generals,” from the number
who fell there, or, officially, the Mosqua, from the river flowing
near--the Russians naming it after the village of Borodino, where some
of the hardest fighting took place.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON’S ENTRY INTO MOSCOW.]
Marmont’s aide-de-camp arrived with the news of that marshal’s
defeat at Salamanca, but the disaster was forgotten in another
incident--namely, the unexpected receipt of a portrait of Napoleon’s
little son, the King of Rome, which he showed to the grenadiers at his
tent door.
A proclamation was issued to the army, beginning: “Soldiers! behold
the battle which you have so ardently desired! Victory now depends
on yourselves,” and concluding with the words, “Let it be said of
you--‘he was in the great battle under the walls of Moscow’;” but being
distributed late, many regiments went into action without reading it.
It was the 7th September. A sky of cloudless blue stretched over
the amphitheatre of hills, where the leaves were already falling,
and at six o’clock Count Sorbier opened fire. Pernetty and Compans
were in full march; the Russian processions of priests in glittering
vestments that had chanted hymns and invoked the aid of Heaven retired
precipitately, and an hour later Davout had his first horse killed
under him as the fighting became general.
Compans’ division found itself before one of the enemy’s works, and
Charriere, colonel of the famous 57th, gave the simple command, “To
the redoubt!” the regiment running briskly forward up the slope with a
shout.
Compans fell wounded, Dessaix had his arm broken a little later, and
Rapp took command.
“Grape shot, grape shot--nothing but grape shot!” cried Belliard to
the artillery, as a heavy column of Russians poured down to resist
the attack. Within sixty minutes Rapp was hit four times, the fourth
time on the left hip--the twenty-second wound received in his exciting
career; and while Poniatowski struggled with his weak corps among the
pine-trees on the Russian left, Delzon advanced with drums beating, on
the village of Borodino, where Plauzonne was killed at the head of the
116th, and where the 30th had to fight its way out, leaving General
Bonnomy badly wounded, Morand’s eighty guns tearing the dense mass
before him, and Ney seizing the heights of Chewarino.
The fiercest conflict raged about the redoubts. Two were retaken by
the Russians, and the third was in danger, when Murat dismounted and,
waving his plumed cap with one hand, laid about him with a private’s
musket.
So terrible was the carnage that one colonel ordered his men to retire,
and Murat, seizing him by the collar, demanded what he was doing.
“We can stay here no longer,” said the colonel, pointing to half his
regiment dead on the trampled ground.
“I can stay here very well myself,” exclaimed Murat.
“_Eh bien_,” replied the officer, looking steadily at him:
“soldiers, face to the foe--_to be slain_!”
Rapp, carried wounded before the Emperor, had said to him, “The Guard
is required to finish it,” but Napoleon shook his head, saying, “No, I
will not have that destroyed--I will gain the battle without it.”
[Illustration: Battle of BORODINO. 1812.
(Sept. 7. 5 a.m.)]
It was noon, and though the Russian left had been forced, they still
stood their ground obstinately. Murat sent four times for the Guard,
but Napoleon paced slowly up and down, always returning to his chair,
some cannon shot rolling almost to his feet; and it was obvious that he
was not himself, he saying repeatedly during the day that “he did not
see the moves clearly on his chess board,” the old activity of mind and
body having apparently forsaken the greatest warrior that Europe has
ever produced.
The thunder of a thousand guns boomed and echoed far and near, the
French alone firing ninety thousand rounds and many _millions_ of
ball cartridge.
The Russians re-formed for the third time, and General Montbrun, at the
head of the heavy cavalry, was killed by a ball from the great redoubt.
“Do not weep,” said Auguste Caulaincourt, who took command, to
Montbrun’s aides. “Follow me, and avenge him!” and crying to Murat,
“You shall see me there immediately, dead or alive!” he placed himself
at the head of the 5th Cuirassiers, whose long swords gleamed in the
bright sunshine, and turning to the left, entered by a gorge, and took
the work, falling mortally wounded at the moment of victory, and dying
within an hour. He was only thirty, and had left Paris to join the army
on his wedding day.
Dense smoke clouded the heights, rolling into the ravines to shroud the
wretched wounded; flames showed where villages were blazing, the crash
of muskets and the shouts of 250,000 men only diminishing as they fell
by thousands to redden the soil, or to crawl shrieking to the rear,
where the surgeons, under Baron Larrey, were busy from morning until
long after darkness came.
Kutusoff had made so sure of victory that he was feasting with his
staff well out of danger, the bulletin announcing a French defeat
already written, when officers came crying for reinforcements, the
conceited old man at first refusing to listen to any details that
differed from his own idea of what _ought_ to be taking place,
his long pigtail wagging incredulously the while. But the reports were
true. The French had won the plain, and were battling for the heights
with irresistible fury.
Eugène improved Caulaincourt’s success; Belliard shattered the last
Russian attack with the concentrated fire of thirty guns; Lauriston
galloped up the reserve artillery, and did tremendous execution;
and Grouchy--so well known in after years from the undeserved abuse
showered on his brave head--had swept the high road and the plain
beside it. The Russians, beaten in detail, retired to a second range
of heights, from which the army was too exhausted to dislodge them
without the assistance of the Guard, and night saw the two battered and
bleeding forces still facing each other amid a fearful _débris_ of
slain.
On the French side Davout had been hit three times; Generals Montbrun,
Caulaincourt, Plauzonne, Huard, Compere, Marion, and Lepel were killed;
Nansouty, Grouchy, Rapp, Cempans, Dessaix, Morand, Lahoussaye, and many
more--some forty in all--had been hit; and of the soldiers 35,000 lay
dead and wounded, mangled by the showers of grape and the large musket
balls used by the Russians.
They, on their side, counted three generals, 1,500 officers, and 36,000
men killed and wounded, accounts varying greatly as to the number of
prisoners taken by the French, some making them 5,000, others 700 or
800 at the most.
Riding slowly across the battle-field, when the surgeons and the
burial-parties were doing their ghastly work, the hoof of Napoleon’s
charger brought a groan from a prostrate form, and one of the staff
remarked in his hearing, that “it was only a Russian”!
“After a victory,” exclaimed Napoleon severely, “none are enemies, all
are men.”
The army advanced and fought a sharp action at Mojaisk, where the
Emperor lay for three days, burnt up with fever, and compelled,
notwithstanding, to transact enormous arrears of business--dictating
to seven people at once, and, when his voice left him, explaining with
difficulty by writing and signs.
He left Mojaisk on the 12th of September to join the advance-guard
in that famous travelling-carriage which Londoners know so well, his
legions reduced to 198,000; and two days later, having mounted his
horse once more, he saw the goal of his ambition, the ancient capital
of Russia, glowing in the light of the afternoon sun.
In the centre of a vast plain, and built, like Rome, on seven hills,
the two hundred and ninety-five churches and countless magnificent
buildings of the “city of the gilded cupolas,” twenty miles in
circumference, with a river meandering through it, burst on the view of
the army as it crested the “Mount of Salvation,” and a shout went up
of “Moscow! Moscow!” as the soldiers cheered and clapped their hands;
whole regiments of Poles falling on their knees to thank the God of
Battles for delivering it into their grasp.
Fairy-like it stretched before them, dazzling with the green of
its copper domes and the minarets of yellow stone. Oriental in its
architecture, and constructed in Asiatic style with five enclosures one
within the other, it was like some fabled city of the Arabian Nights,
sparkling with brilliant colours, the famous Kremlin towering above the
palaces and gardens.
The advance-guard under Murat mingled with bands of Cossacks, who
applauded him for his known valour, and the King distributed his
jewellery and that of his staff among them; but an officer arrived from
Miloradowitch with a threat of burning the city if his rear-guard were
not allowed time to evacuate it.
Napoleon stayed his march therefore, and the day wore on. When Murat
at last entered by the Dorogomilow Gate, he found that Moscow was
deserted: the streets were empty, the houses closed, a few loathsome
wretches released from the prisons, and a handful of the lowest of
the low, alone surged round their horses near the Kremlin; but the
inhabitants were gone, in a cloud of dust that hid the retreating
Russian army, towards Voladimir. The gates of the Kremlin were battered
open by cannon shot, a convoy of provisions captured, some thousands of
stragglers were afterwards taken, but that was all; and on the gate of
the Governor’s mansion at Voronowo, the following notice was found in
French:--
“I have passed eight years in embellishing this retreat, in
which I have lived happily in the bosom of my family; the
inhabitants of this property, to the number of seventeen hundred
and twenty, quit it at your approach, and I set fire to my house
in order that it may not be defiled by your presence. Frenchmen,
I have abandoned to you my two houses in Moscow, with furniture
to the value of half a million of roubles. _Here_ you will
find nothing but ashes.--ROSTOPSCHIN.”
With the army singing the “Marseillaise” Napoleon entered at night,
and appointed Marshal Mortier governor, saying: “No pillage--your head
shall be responsible for it.” And though several French residents
acquainted him with the Russian intention of burning the city--that the
senate had agreed to it with only seven dissentient voices, that all
the engines had been removed, and they were treading on the brink of a
volcano--he refused to believe it, and tried in vain to sleep.
[Illustration: GENERAL JUNOT.]
At two o’clock in the morning they brought him news that Moscow was on
fire!
When daylight came he hurried to the spot to reprimand Mortier and
the Young Guard, but the marshal showed him that black smoke was
issuing from houses that had not been opened, and the whole affair had
evidently been carefully planned.
He went to the Kremlin--a vast structure, half palace, half castle,
surmounted by the great Cross of Ivan, and built on a hill--from which
he wrote overtures of peace to the Czar, overtures that received no
attention.
In spite of the efforts of the soldiers the flames spread, a ball of
fire had been let down into Prince Trubetskoi’s palace, the bazaar was
in a blaze, and the strong north wind blew towards the Kremlin itself,
which, report whispered, was undermined.
Murat, Eugène, and Berthier urged the Emperor to leave the city,
without success: he had come there, and there he would remain--a
conqueror in the very centre of the Russian empire. But the cry arose
that the Kremlin itself was on fire: a police-agent was discovered near
the burning tower, and bayoneted by the Old Guard almost in Napoleon’s
presence. There was no longer time for hesitation, or dreams of empty
glory, and passing down the northern staircase, where the massacre of
the Strelitzes took place under Peter the Great, he left the city for
the castle of Petrowsky, a league on the St. Petersburg road.
The army also marched out, encamping in the fields, eating their
horseflesh from silver dishes and swathing their wounds with costly
silks, the rain falling in torrents, and Moscow a sheet of fire for
four days.
Much has been written of Napoleon’s escape by a postern, of hurried
wanderings through burning lanes, past convoys of powder, which the
whirling sparks might have ignited at any moment, and various dramatic
situations dear to the French historian. In point of fact, he ran
little personal risk, and left the Kremlin by the great gate, returning
thither when the flames had abated, and ordering the Guard to occupy
the ruins of the city on the 20th and 21st.
[Illustration:
_By permission of the Council of the Manchester City Art
Gallery._|
THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.
(_From the Painting by Adolphe Yvon._)]
About a tenth of the houses remained intact, especially in the
Kitaigorod, or Chinese quarter; many rich merchants’ dwellings, and
here and there a palace or church reared their barbaric forms amid
the general chaos; gay flower-beds still bloomed in the suburbs,
and the old red wall that surrounded the Kremlin was comparatively
unharmed; but the aspect of the place, which should have furnished
winter quarters for the _Grande Armée_, struck a chill into the
hearts of all, and caused the Emperor to say that “the commerce of
Russia was ruined for a century, and the nation had been put back fifty
years.” In _six_, however, a new Moscow had arisen and Napoleon
was a captive in St. Helena!
Six thousand Russian wounded are said to have been in the city when the
French entered: what became of them one dare not contemplate.
On the return of the troops universal pillage became the order of
the day, and readers of the early French editions of Labaume’s
narrative will understand why I pass much over in silence. Some of the
inhabitants had returned, others had been concealed in the vaults of
churches and the cellars of their homes; but the grenadiers routed them
out and committed unmentionable excesses.
In the camps and quarters all the wealth of the East lay scattered
about under foot: priceless carpets, velvet hangings, lamps of gold and
silver set with gems, ecclesiastical vestments and works of art, became
the prey of settlers and the riff-raff of Parisian slums; choice wines
and liqueurs flowed like water; lace, linen, and ladies’ jewellery were
taken from carved chests and coffers of exquisite workmanship, for the
household effects had been left untouched when the city was abandoned.
Drunken sappers lolled on sofas covered with costly satin, and muddy
boots were cleansed on rich furs and Cashmere shawls of enormous value:
seldom had an army, famed for its rapacity, had such an opportunity for
its gratification, while, with the Russian forces, white bread was six
shillings a loaf, sugar ten shillings a pound, and butter unprocurable
at any price.
In the midst of this disorder, the real originator of it all dated his
correspondence from the Kremlin Palace, and thought of pushing on to
St. Petersburg. A march of nine hundred leagues, with sixty conflicts
_en route_, had produced nothing, difficulties were increasing,
winter was coming fast. Still the Czar kept an ominous silence, and
although an armistice had been declared, the Russians daily cut off the
foraging parties, and the peasantry rose to arms.
“Take your three-pronged forks,” wrote Rostopschin in his proclamation
to them. “A Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of corn!”
Murat, always to the front, had followed Kutusoff in his circuitous
march round Moscow, and lay observing him between that city and
Kalouga, fighting two sharp but indecisive actions--Czerikowo and
Winkowo.
During the truce the Russian officers asked the French if they had not
corn, and air, and _graves_ enough in their own country; adding,
“In a fortnight the nails will drop from your fingers.”
The little pale-faced man grew visibly paler with anxiety, and went on
hoping against hope; discussing poetry just arrived from Paris, drawing
up regulations for the _Comédie Française_, and trying to reassure
himself that the winter was still far off by poring over the almanacks
for forty years back, and trusting to the hot sun that still shone in a
blue sky above him.
_Chef d’escadron_ Marthod, with fifty Dragoons of the Guard--_his_
Guard, so seldom defeated--had been cut off while foraging. A slight
fall of snow lay white for a few hours on the plain--a foretaste of
what was coming. No message arrived from Alexander, and one day, to
crown all, while he was reviewing some troops, young Beranger galloped
in with the alarming news that Murat had been overthrown at Tarutina,
near Winkowo, two generals being killed, the King wounded, and the
advance guard almost destroyed.
It was clearly time to go, and dismissing the troops, Napoleon issued
orders for immediate departure, leaving Moscow late the same evening,
October 18th, or, as some say, before dawn on the 19th, Marshal Mortier
remaining behind with the Young Guard to cover the retreat and blow up
the Kremlin.
* * * * *
Where are the words that will paint that enormous and disorderly throng
moving in a ragged column over the plain to the south of the ruined
city? Coats and gaiters were patched and mended; shakoes assumed every
shape but the regulation one; brass no longer shone, and steel had
grown rusty, as the troops straggled onward, their knapsacks bulging
with plunder; bearskin-capped grenadiers pushing wheelbarrows full of
gold and silver plate, and the ambulance waggons creaking and groaning
with costly brocade, household furniture, pictures, statuary, and every
conceivable articles of value the pillagers could carry away.
Napoleon set the example; for the huge Cross of Ivan, torn down by
his orders, lumbered along with many other trophies, under a strong
escort, and miles of carts of every description thronged the road and
the fields on either side.
The French residents fled in the wake of the army; delicate ladies,
clad in thin dresses and stuff shoes, peering at the strange procession
from the windows of travelling-carriages; wounded soldiers jolted by,
lying on piles of loot, their aching limbs ill-tended amid the lavish
profusion of spoil, for never has man’s selfishness displayed itself
more forcibly than during that terrible retreat.
Night fell, and the host halted only a league from the city. With
the 103,000 men who marched, more than 500 guns were dragged by lean
horses, the Emperor insisting that they should not be abandoned; but
at the present moment the bulk of them are ranged in rows in the great
square of the Kremlin--a lasting memorial of that awful war.
Two roads led from Moscow to Kalouga, and Napoleon pushed along the old
one, on which Kutusoff awaited him; but at Krasno Pachra, the Emperor
turned off to the right and crossed the fields to the _new_ road,
in the rain, which hampered the artillery and lost much time; but once
on the causeway, which they gained on the 23rd, they set their faces
towards Kalouga again, trusting to pass Kutusoff undetected in one
day’s march.
Napoleon slept at Borowsk that night, and Delzons had occupied Malo
Jaroslavetz, four leagues in advance.
In the early morning, however, Doctoroff, with the 6th Corps of
Kutusoff’s army, came shouting out of the woods, drove Delzons down the
steep hill, and commenced one of the fiercest battles of the campaign.
At sunrise Delzons forced the town again, and the victory seemed won,
but a ball through the head slew him. His brother tried to carry him
out of the _mêlée_, and another ball laid _him_ lifeless.
Guilleminot placed a hundred grenadiers in the churchyard on the left
of the road, and for hours it became a mimic Hougoumont, the Russians
alternately charging past it and being driven up again, exposed to a
hot fire from the loopholed wall.
The whole of the 14th Division was engaged, and the fight surged along
the high road, now on the heights, now in the valley by the river;
the wooden town ignited by the howitzers, and burning the wounded,
while the guns, breasting the hill at a gallop, scrunched the charred
corpses, grinding the living and the dead into a sickening pulp.
The 15th Division, mostly Italians, attacked the burning town and
suburbs, and took it for the fourth time, but were driven back to the
foot of the slope, and as a last resource, Eugène advanced with his
Guard. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Divisions rallying, and Colonel Peraldi
charging bravely with the Italian Chasseurs, they gained the heights
for the last time, and the Russians, 50,000 strong (some say 90,000),
retired from their vantage ground before 18,000 men, who had fought
_uphill_ against the most stubborn resistance.
All the eye witnesses speak of the awful sight presented by the high
road and churchyard. The brothers Delzons were buried in one grave, and
the Grenadiers of the 35th fired a salute over General Fontane; while
Napoleon himself had a narrow escape as he hurried towards the sound of
the cannonading.
The road was blocked by the baggage train; stragglers marched along in
safety in the midst of the army, when the Emperor, Rapp, Berthier, and
a few officers, having outstripped the escort, saw bands of Cossacks
darting out of the woods, between the rear of the advance-guard and the
head of the _Grande Armée_.
“Turn back!” shouted Rapp; “it is they!” and grasping the bridle, he
pulled the Emperor’s charger round.
Reining in by the roadside, Napoleon drew his sword, and they awaited
the attack, Rapp riding forward to shield his Emperor.
A Cossack’s lance penetrated six inches into the chest of Rapp’s horse
and brought him down, but the staff rescued him, and unconscious of the
prize within their reach, the Cossacks rode for the baggage waggons,
until the cavalry of the Guard came up and drove them into the woods
again. They were 6,000 of Platoff’s men, and Napoleon’s life had hung
in the balance!
That night, in a weaver’s hut, filthy beyond expression, an emperor,
two kings, and three marshals of France held a stormy council of
war, at which Murat and Davout quarrelled, as was their wont, and
which Napoleon broke up by saying, “It is well, messieurs--_I_
will decide,” electing eventually to retreat by the most difficult
road--that which the army had wasted on its advance.
It was the last time that they had any option in the matter. A few
days more, and the retreat became a disorderly rout--emperor, kings,
marshals, and men glad to seize the first road that led them from their
remorseless enemies.
On the 23rd, at half-past one in the morning, a hollow boom
had startled their ears, even those who were expecting it. The
_capitaine_ Ottone, of the Naval Artillery, had fired his train.
Mortier’s orders were executed, and the Kremlin had been partially
blown up by 180,000 lbs. of gunpowder, Mortier rejoining, to the
surprise of all, at Vereia with 8,000 men, mostly dismounted cavalry.
At Vereia there was another brush with Platoff, and his son, mounted on
a magnificent white Ukraine horse, was killed by a Polish trooper.
On a hill covered with sombre fir trees the Cossacks buried the dead
boy, riding slowly round him with lances lowered, uttering wild cries
of grief, and then filing silently away with vengeance in their hearts.
Every village at which the French halted was burned on their departure,
each succeeding corps helping to complete the devastation, so that the
route was marked by ruined homes, huge dogs from each hamlet following
the army until they increased to enormous packs, _living on the
dead_ who lined the road, and adding a new terror to the retreating
invaders.
At Mojaisk the sky lost its intense blue, and the landscape became
gloomy, the cold wind sobbing and wailing down the avenues of
melancholy pines, and the men drawing closer to each other as they
marched.
The columns debouched on to the field of Borodino, and sad memories
were aroused at every step; for, although thousands of bodies had
been burned by the Russians, the plain, the heights, and especially
the redoubts were littered with broken weapons and innumerable
accoutrements, the hands and feet of the hastily buried slain
protruding from the sandy soil in all directions.
[Illustration: “A MUTILATED SPECTRE CRAWLED TOWARDS THE
STARTLED SOLDIERS.”]
One ghastly incident, vouched for by the great majority of writers,
occurred as the head of the army traversed the field. Cries were heard,
and a mutilated spectre crawled towards the startled soldiers. It was
a Frenchman, whose legs had been broken during the battle more than
_seven weeks_ before, and who, unaided, had lived on the putrid
flesh around him, sleeping in the stinking carcase of a disembowelled
horse.
Taking him tenderly up, the army hurried on. The skeletons they were
leaving behind grinned silently as the straggling band passed by. A
little further on, the wounded at the abbey of Klotskoi held out their
hands beseechingly, and an order was issued that every vehicle should
carry at least _one_ of them, the weakest being left to the tender
mercies of the Russians.
Every now and again a dull explosion came from the line of march as
caisson after caisson was blown up when the horses became too weak to
drag them; and a few miles on the road to Gjatz a terrible outcry arose
as wounded men were found lying on the ground, having been thrown out
of the sutler’s carts in order that the vile wretches might save their
plunder--one sufferer, _a general_, living just long enough to
tell the tale.
[Illustration: SMOLENSK, FROM THE BANKS OF THE DNIEPER, IN
1812.
(_From a Contemporary Print._)]
As evening drew down and Napoleon approached Gjatz a fresh horror
awaited him; for Russian dead, still warm, and with their brains
battered out in a peculiar manner, were met with at every few yards.
The escort of Poles, Portuguese, and Spaniards told off to guard the
prisoners had chosen that method of ridding themselves of the weakly
ones who lagged behind.
A stringent order went forth, and the murders ceased; but every night
the miserable captives were herded together like cattle, without fire,
on the bare ground, a meagre ration of raw horseflesh served out to
them, and when that failed the frantic wretches _turned cannibals and
devoured each other_.
The 4th Corps, under Eugène, meanwhile followed the Imperial column,
and Davout commanded the rear-guard, five days’ march behind.
Intense cold had now set in, and the land was icebound; violent winds
fluttered the ragged uniforms, the fifteen days’ rations brought from
Moscow were exhausted, and the depth of misery seemed to have been
reached. Yet all this was as nothing to the sufferings in store.
Napoleon waited thirty-six hours at Wiazma for the rear-guard to
come up, and seeing no sign of it, left Ney there to relieve it,
and marched for Dorogobouje on the 1st November; while Eugène and
Davout, arriving at Wiazma on the 3rd, found Ney hotly engaged with
Miloradowitch, the Russian Murat, who opposed further advance.
A battle ensued, lasting many hours. Great heroism was displayed,
especially by the 25th, 57th, and 85th Regiments, and at length Eugène
got away through the town; Davout, in his turn, retiring step by step
before 20,000 men and the crashing fire of twenty-four guns, was met by
another force in the winding streets, and only extricated himself after
tremendous loss, the bulk of the Russians under old Kutusoff remaining
motionless within earshot, in spite of all the efforts of Sir Robert
Wilson to induce him to attack.
During the fourteen days since the _Grande Armée_ left Moscow it
had lost 43,000 men, reducing its numbers to 60,000; and its condition
may be understood from the fact that the day after Wiazma a little
flour, carefully measured out in a spoon, formed the only food of the
officers of the 4th Corps.
The dogs howled round the tail of the straggling columns, croaking
ravens followed in black flocks. When a horse fell the hungry soldiers
rushed upon it and tore it to pieces before life was extinct; and
on the 6th November the sun disappeared, a grey fog enveloped the
troops, the wind dashed them one against the other as they stumbled
mechanically along, AND IT BEGAN TO SNOW!
Whirled on the storm wind, the flakes shut out the country on either
hand. No sooner had a waggon--a gun carriage--a decimated regiment gone
by than it was instantly lost to sight. The road vanished, the hollows
were filled up; one could pass within twenty yards of a log hut and not
see it. Everything became white--a pitiless, monotonous, dead level of
snow, and strong men sobbed struggling onward--as they hoped--towards
that _Belle France_ that not a third of their number were destined
to reach again.
Napoleon was on the heights above Mikelewska when the snow began, and
news of the most serious import reached him at the same moment, Count
Daru arriving with the account of General Mallet’s attempted conspiracy
in Paris.
Surrounded by a circle of his Chasseurs, shivering in their scarlet
pelisses, the Emperor listened to the startling narrative, the storm
howling round him as he bent over the neck of his horse; and even when
he retired into a posthouse to digest the alarming intelligence his
cup of bitterness was not full, for Colonel Dalbignac came from the
rear-guard, which Ney had taken over, with a terrible report of the
disorder that the marshal had discovered at Dorogobouje.
“I do not ask you for these details, colonel,” said Napoleon; but
some waggons arriving from Smolensk laden with provisions, he waved
Bessières, who wished to keep them for the Guard, aside, and sent them
on to Ney, saying, “Those who fight shall eat before the rest,” begging
him, if possible, to check the foe, and allow the main body some time
to reorganise at Smolensk.
The bulk of the Russian spoil, including the great Cross of Ivan,
had been sunk in the lake of Semlewo, and cannon were abandoned at
every mile. Generals and staff officers marched in bands, without
men, without thought of anything but their own preservation. Twelve
to sixteen horses were required to draw a single gun up the slightest
hill, slippery as glass, and, with the thermometer registering
twenty-eight and thirty degrees of frost, 10,000 wretched animals died
in a single night--the terrible night of sixteen hours of darkness. In
some Italian villages they still speak with horror of “the night of the
fifteen hundred frozen”--that being the number of Italians that died on
one occasion between sunset and sunrise.
Even the Russian Miloradowitch suffered from a frozen eye, and men who
sat to rest a moment on the snow fell back in a stupor, a little blood
gushed from mouth and nose, and their earthly woes were over.
Horrible the fate of those who straggled from the track and fell in
with the villagers. Sir Robert Wilson at one place saw sixty naked
Frenchmen laid in a row, their necks on a felled tree, while men _and
women_ hopped round them, singing in wild chorus, and battering out
their brains in succession with faggot sticks.
At Wiazma fifty were _burned alive_; at Selino the same number,
still breathing, were _buried_, the dog belonging to one of them
returning daily to the graveside for a fortnight before the peasants
slew it.
Yet amid all this misery, his men wearing bed quilts, pieces of carpet,
women’s clothes from the baggage waggons which they began to pillage
on the 7th November, and existing too often on the bodies of their
comrades roasted by the flames of a burning log hut. Marshal Ney, well
styled “the bravest of the brave,” set his face to the foe, and fought
for ten days and nights against Cossacks--artillery, horse, foot,
and dragoons--and, worst of all, the terrible _Général Morizov_,
as the Russians called the frost. Holding each wood, contesting every
hill, knowing that he was virtually sacrificed to save the wreck of the
army, his men deserting, despairing, dying, he fought on foot to give
them courage, his face livid with the cold, and almost unrecognisable
from the long red beard he had allowed to grow.
Some idea of the stubborn character of those wild Cossacks may be
formed from one little incident. One of them came into the Russian
camp, having ridden twenty miles after being hit by a cannon shot. His
arm was taken out at the shoulder-joint by the famous Doctor Wiley, who
afterwards amputated Moreau’s legs at Dresden. During the operation,
which lasted four minutes, the man never spoke, the next morning walked
about his room, and drank tea, and, getting into a cart which jolted
him fourteen miles over a Russian road, was afterwards heard of, many
hundreds of miles on his journey homeward to the Don, doing well!
Small wonder, then, that the hoarse _hourra_ struck terror into
the fugitives, and that half a dozen of the barbarians would send
a battalion of bleeding conscripts flying for their lives down the
glittering aisles of drooping birches, whose fairy-like branches
glistened with magic beauty in the wintry sunshine.
Eugène was attacked as his corps crossed the Wop with five or six
thousand soldiers under arms, double that number of stragglers and
wounded, and more than a hundred guns. The ford became blocked, the
current was very rapid, and the river only partially frozen. A shameful
pillage of the waggons took place, gold, silver, and costly plunder
being scattered in the mud; and it was not until a brave Italian
colonel named Delfanti crossed up to his waist in the floating ice that
the others took heart and followed him.
Colonel Labaume tells us that he picked up a magnificent cup of
splendid workmanship, drank some muddy water out of it, and flung it
aside with indifference; but others, thinking only of gain, exchanged
silver money for gold at a great sacrifice, secretly laughing at their
comrades, who soon sank under the weight, while they escaped with the
lesser bulk.
One officer, apparently lifeless, felt a man pulling off his boots, and
exclaimed, “Ah, rascal, I have still need of them. I am not quite dead.”
“_Eh bien, mon général_,” said the soldier, coolly sitting down
beside him, “_I can wait_.”
Napoleon rested five days at Smolensk; but so neglected had been
his orders that no meat was found there--only rye flour, rice, and
brandy--and the army fought desperately at the doors of the magazines,
killing many men, raging at the Guard, whom they accused, with great
reason, of being unduly favoured, and breaking out into excesses of
every kind.
On the 14th November, at four o’clock in the morning, the main column
left for Krasnoë, leaving little or nothing behind them for Eugène,
Davout, and the valiant Ney, who had instructions to evacuate the city
with a day’s interval between each corps, Ney to blow up the place when
he took his departure.
Out of 37,000 dashing cavalry who had crossed the Niemen only
_eight hundred_ remained mounted at Smolensk, the 20th Chasseurs
being credited with a hundred; and this remnant was collected under
Latour-Maubourg, a brave and very popular officer, who, on losing a leg
at Leipzig the following year, said to his weeping servant, “_Mon
ami_, why do you grieve? In future there’s only one boot to clean.”
The army was now 42,000 strong, having lost 18,000 in the previous
eight days; but it was estimated that 60,000 unarmed stragglers still
impeded the march. Before leaving Smolensk, however, a reinforcement
brought the force up to 47,000, to meet _four_ Russian armies, one
of them with 90,000, under Kutusoff, another commanded by Miloradowitch
with 20,000 men.
The artillery of the Guard took twenty-two hours to do the first five
leagues out of Smolensk. One company of sturdy Wurtembergers mustered
_four_ men, and when Eugène reached the abandoned city in a
furious gale his men had to mount the slippery hill literally _on
their knees_.
Beyond Korythnia Miloradowitch opened on the Imperial column, and
Napoleon rode in the centre of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard. He
seemed to bear a charmed life, for three times a certain Captain
Finkein had penetrated Moscow to kill him, and he was often under fire
during the retreat. This time, however, he had to pass a hill bristling
with cannon, and the band struck up a then well-known air, “Where can
one be happier than in the bosom of his family?”
“Stop,” cried Napoleon, fearful of the memories it might raise in the
minds of the men. “Rather play, ‘Let us watch over the safety of the
Empire.’” And to that air they marched past the batteries, soon leaving
the danger behind them.
When the column had gone, Miloradowitch descended from the hills, drew
across the road, and cut off the rear corps, who had to fight their way
through with terrible loss.
[Illustration:
NAPOLEON’S RETREAT
from Moscow.
1812.]
Eugène tried to force a passage, but failed; and leaving his fires
burning--and what miserable fires they were!--turned the flank of the
Russians, and got by in the night.
At the critical moment the moon shone out, and the wretched band was
challenged.
“Hist, fool,” whispered a Polish officer named Klisby in Russian. “Do
you not see that we belong to Suvarow, bound on a secret mission?” And
so, without interruption save from the Cossacks, the Viceroy joined
his stepfather at Krasnoë, where Napoleon made a retrograde march to
succour Davout, who came in, his baggage gone, his marshal’s baton
taken, his men reduced to a few platoons, and with no news of Ney, who
was reluctantly left to his fate, the army moving on Orcha, Mortier and
the wreck of the Young Guard retiring slowly in the rear, after holding
Krasnoë as long as possible, Laborde saying to the troops, “The marshal
orders the ordinary time--do you hear?--the ordinary time, soldiers,”
although under a heavy fire of balls and grape shot.
At Orcha Napoleon destroyed his papers. At Lubna the twenty-one
staff officers of the 4th Corps crouched round a miserable fire in a
cart-shed, with their horses behind them. At Krasnoë the brave Delfanti
limped along on the arm of Villeblanche. A round shot struck him
between the shoulder blades, carried off Villeblanche’s head, and they
fell dead on the snow. Wherever one turned it was horror upon horror.
Delicate women and little children lay by the roadside. The Cossacks
stripped everyone they found.
Wilson has some dreadful details in his interesting diary. At one
place a number of naked men sat round a burning hut, their backs quite
frozen, when, turning to warm them, the fire caught the congealed flesh
and roasted it in his presence.
Again, he saw four wretches huddled together, hands and limbs
immovable, _but minds yet vigorous_, with two dogs snarling and
tearing at their frozen feet; while nearly all the dead he came across
seemed to have been “writhing with some agony at the moment their
heart’s blood congealed.”
Woe to the man who lost his bivouac, and strayed to another fire. He
was driven away with blows and curses from one after another until he
sank and died. If anyone fell on the march, and implored a helping
hand, the passers-by shook their heads and passed on, although many
were still laden with plunder.
An awful thing occurred as Ney left Smolensk, showing the depths to
which human nature can sink, a female sutler being seen to throw her
little five-year-old boy off her heavily-laden sledge and leave him.
Twice the marshal had him placed in her arms, and twice she flung the
child from her, saying, “He had never seen France, and would never
regret it, while she was resolved to see it again.” The soldiers could
stand it no longer, They carried the boy safely through the rest of the
march, and left the unnatural woman to perish in the snow!
Ney’s retreat with the rear-guard was one of the great events in French
history, and has never been exceeded by any general for courage,
determination, and self-reliance.
With barely 6,000 men, twelve guns, and 300 crawling skeletons--which
it is a mockery to call horses--and burdened with 7,000 stragglers,
whose wants and selfishness added greatly to the difficulties, he
followed the traces of the _Grande Armée_, easily recognisable by
the burnt-out bivouacs with their circles of dead--the white mounds
that indicated where a cuirassier, a dragoon, a barefooted voltigeur,
slept his last sleep, and the patches of trampled, blood-stained snow
strewn with helmets and corpses, over which the dogs wrangled and the
ravens croaked in the dull light that showed a battle-ground.
[Illustration: “THE ENGINEER SET FIRE TO THEIR SOLE MEANS
OF ESCAPE” (_p._ 327).]
Beyond the plain of Katova, where, three months before, they had driven
Newerowskoi through the cornfields, they were summoned by an officer
in the name of Kutusoff; but while he was speaking forty guns opened
on the French, and Ney exclaimed, “A marshal never surrenders--you are
my prisoner,” the astonished Russian marching with them for twenty-six
days without attempting to break his parole.
Ney boldly attacked the _eighty thousand_ men, heading his feeble
band in person. They broke the first line, and were rushing on the
second when the guns began again, sweeping the columns and killing some
women in the waggons.
The French fell back in confusion, but Ney rallied them again, replying
with his _six_ remaining guns, and showing his teeth with the
_two thousand_ ragged wretches who kept their ranks. If Kutusoff
had sent a single corps against them, not a man would have survived to
tell the tale. As it was, when night fell Ney turned his back on them,
and retreated towards Smolensk.
After an hour’s dreary march they halted, Ney, as usual, in the rear;
and breaking the ice on a streamlet to find which way the current ran,
followed its course through the silent forests until they reached the
Dnieper.
Guided by a lame peasant, they found a spot where the ice would bear
them, although a thaw was setting in; and, after lighting fires to
deceive the hovering Cossacks, the intrepid marshal rolled himself in
his cloak and slept on the river bank for three hours.
At midnight they began to cross, the ice parting and letting many of
them in as they crept in single file. An attempt was made to get the
wounded over in the waggons, but the treacherous blocks gave way, and
they were drowned with heartrending screams, Ney himself rescuing one
survivor, an officer named Brigueville.
Using the cowardly stragglers as a shield, by placing them between his
men and the foe, he pursued his way, taking advantage of the woods,
surrounded by 6,000 Cossacks, and repeatedly played upon by cannon;
lying in the forests by day, and marching when darkness had set in,
until, with 1,500 men under arms, most of the stragglers slain or
taken, and all his guns and baggage gone, he rejoined the wreck of the
army at Orcha on the 20th November, Napoleon well saying before his
arrival, “I have two hundred millions (francs) in the cellars of the
Tuileries, and I would have given them all to save Marshal Ney.”
Oudinot and Victor also joined the wreck about this time, bringing
up the total number to 30,000 or thereabouts, the Emperor’s column
mustering only _seven_ thousand men and _forty_ thousand
stragglers, mingled with the enormous baggage train of the 2nd
and 9th Corps that had escaped much of the previous disaster; and
closely pressed on each flank by the immense armies of Kutusoff and
Witgenstein, the doomed men prepared to cross the Berezina in the face
of Admiral Tchitchakof, who lined the opposite bank.
Latour-Maubourg had only 150 horsemen left, and Napoleon formed 500
mounted cavalry officers into what he called his Sacred Squadron,
Grouchy and Sebastiani commanding it, and generals of division serving
in it as captains; but in a few days this last romantic idea had
crumbled away.
Corbineau, with the remains of the 8th Lancers and 20th Chasseurs, saw
a peasant riding a wet horse, and compelled him to show them the ford
opposite to Studzianka; and while the French made all the parade they
could lower down the river to attract Tchitchakof’s attention, the
brave engineer Eblé arrived at Studzianka in the dark winter evening
of the 25th November with two field forges, six chests of tools, some
clamps made from waggon tyres, and a few companies of pontoniers, and
began to make a bridge, the water rising, the ice floating in blocks,
and the men working up to their necks without even a draught of brandy
to protect them from the cold.
As the grey dawn broke, the first pile was driven; eight hours’ work
was required before the bridge would be practicable, and the haggard
fugitives waited with agonised hearts for the cannonade that would
destroy their last hope; but to the astonishment of all, the admiral
was seen in full retreat on the farther bank, disappearing into the
woods with all his guns.
A caricature exists, showing Kutusoff and Witgenstein tying Napoleon
up in a sack, while Tchitchakof is cutting a hole in the bottom of it;
clearly indicating the Russian view of that individual’s conduct.
Napoleon wished to question a prisoner, and two officers swam their
horses across, through the ice, Jacqueminot, Oudinot’s aide-de-camp,
seizing a Russian, holding him on his saddle-bow, and _swimming back
with him_.
When an old man he mounted to the top of Strasbourg Cathedral, and hung
fearlessly from an arm of the cross with hundreds of feet of space
beneath him: it was natures like his alone that survived the retreat.
_Chef d’escadron_ Sourd, with fifty men of the 7th Chasseurs,
carried some infantry over behind them, and two rafts conveyed four
hundred more across to defend the bridge head. A second bridge for
artillery and baggage was finished at four o’clock; it broke twice
during the night, and again the following evening: all was confusion
and disorder. The Russians were expected any moment on the heights that
commanded the low-lying snow-covered shore, yet the stragglers waited
fatuously until the morning of the 27th, and then all attempted to
cross at the same time.
[Illustration: “WHEN THE REMNANT OF THE GUARD WAS SEEN
CLEARING A WAY FOR THE EMPEROR, THERE WAS A RUSH”
(_p._ 326).]
When the remnant of the Guard was seen clearing a way for the Emperor,
there was a rush; the bridges were blocked--men, women, and children
were crushed to death and many drowned. Yet that night--the panic
over--thousands returned to the bivouacs of Studzianka, and the bridges
were deserted again.
Victor, with 6,000 men, kept Witgenstein in check; Tchitchakof, a
martyr to the cold, who had by that time warmed his toes thoroughly,
returned to the opposite shore and began firing, and another terrible
rush was made for the frail structures on the 28th, while Ney, across
the river, was repulsing the admiral, and Victor fought all day long to
give the wretches time.
The waggons and carriages were more than could have crossed in six
days, said Eblé--who died soon after from exposure. Ney wished them
burned, but Berthier, who was little better than a writer of reports
and a species of machine actuated by Napoleon himself, opposed it
on his own responsibility, and caused the death of a multitude of
sufferers in consequence; for when the shot and shell began to fall
in the river and splinter the ice, the drivers charged down on the
bridges, tearing their way remorselessly through the living obstacle.
Sword in hand, single horsemen cut a passage for themselves; women,
waistdeep in the water alongside, were frozen with their arms raised to
preserve their children, who were too often left to freeze there by the
passers-by.
The Countess Alesio--a young Italian bride of eighteen, who had
accompanied her husband on that ghastly wedding-trip--survived all
these horrors, and _lives_, as I write these lines, full of
terrible memories of the retreat.
Selfishness and heroism went hand in hand. An artilleryman jumped from
the bridge to save a mother and her two little ones, succeeding in
rescuing one boy; others pushed their comrades off to find room for
themselves. And even when the early night settled down, the Russians
knew where to point their guns by the screams and curses that rang over
the waste amid a fearful snowstorm.
When the 4th Corps reached the other side, their only fire was a
miserable blaze lighted for Eugène, of wood begged from some Bavarians,
and his officers ran about _all night_ to keep warm.
The artillery bridge had long since broken down--hundreds being
engulfed--and only one remained, leading into a marsh choked with
carriages, guns, waggons, wounded, dead and dying; across which, at
nine o’clock, Victor’s shattered battalions had to force their way over
with their bayonets.
One instance of remarkable coolness is recorded of an artillery officer
named Brechtel, whose wooden leg was smashed by a cannon ball. “Look
for another leg in waggon No. 5,” he said to a gunner; and when it was
brought, he screwed it on, and calmly continued his firing.
Ney’s pay-waggons were crossing at the same time under the care of
Nicolas Savin, a hussar who had been at Toulon in 1793, in Egypt with
Bonaparte, at Austerlitz, Iena, and in the Peninsula; but through
a breakage of the bridge he and his gold were taken by Platoff’s
Cossacks, and marvellous to relate, the veteran died in Russia, during
the winter of 1894, at the extraordinary age of 127.
In vain Eblé urged the fugitives to fly--many still lingering on, until
at half-past eight on the morning of the 29th, the engineer set fire to
their sole means of escape on the approach of the enemy.
Heartrending was the scene; language fails to describe it, though many
men of many nations have poured forth all their eloquence upon the
theme.
Snow, flames, round shot and shells; the half-frozen river, the army
already passed on its way; France, friends, home, _everything_
gone. A father on one bank, a mother on the other, never to meet again
in this world; brothers, children, old men and young girls, the bridges
blazing, and the hoarse “Hourra!” of the Cossacks as they tore down the
bank among the forsaken crowd like vultures on a carcass.
A little while and the frozen land was still again; the wolves came out
of the woods to sniff at the ghastly heaps; the white dogs, no longer
lean and famished, wrangled with each other for the choicer morsels,
finding the mother and the babe more to their liking, and leaving the
war-worn veteran to the carrion crows.
When spring thawed the ice, _thirty thousand_ bodies were found
and burned on the banks of the Berezina; and happy they whose troubles
had ended there. For the weather grew colder, the storms were more
frequent, hundreds of miles had yet to be traversed; the Old Guard had
lost from cold and missing a _third_ of its diminished numbers,
the Young Guard _half_, and the army was reduced to a wandering
mob of _nine thousand_, twenty-one thousand having fallen in three
days and four actions.
Over the marshes in the keen north wind they hurried, Ney still
commanding the rear-guard; on the 30th, Oudinot, badly wounded,
defended himself in a wooden house with _seventeen men_ for
several hours, and drove the Russians out of the village.
The sun shone out to mock them; there was hard fighting almost every
day; and at length, when the main body reached Smorgoni, the Emperor
resolved to put in practice an intention he had formed some time before
of hurrying secretly to Paris to forestall the real truth of his
disasters.
[Illustration: “IN A TOWERING PASSION THE MARSHAL DREW
HIS SWORD” (_p._ 329).]
He has been unjustly accused of deserting his men when they were at
their last gasp; but in reality no blame attaches to him, as his
presence in France was absolutely necessary, and had he remained with
the army he could have done nothing to restore it, for things had gone
too far. To what extent he had contributed to those disasters is, of
course, another matter.
After revising his 29th Bulletin, and appointing Murat to the chief
command, he got into his carriage with Caulaincourt (brother of
Auguste), Rustan the Mameluke, and Captain Wukasowitch sitting on the
box, Duroc and Lobau following in a sledge, and escorted by some Polish
lancers, drove off in the dark on the night of the 5th December.
Later on he exchanged the carriage for another sledge, the peasant
driver of which died in Bavaria as recently as 1887, preserving to the
last some of the coins Napoleon had given him.
On the 18th the Emperor arrived in Paris. The day after his departure
the cold increased to a frightful degree; men lost their reason, and
sprang into the burning huts. At Wilna, where there were great stores
of food, they pillaged without check; and even the Old Guard paid no
heed to the _générale_. All Napoleon’s linen and his state tent
were burned there, and the few remaining trophies, drawings being made
of them before their destruction by his orders.
The Jews committed nameless cruelties on the French wounded, and
although Durutte’s division increased the army by 13,000, they died by
hundreds, immense numbers having been frozen and suffocated at the gate
of the city in their mad attempt to get in.
The day after their arrival the Russians were on them again. De Wrede’s
Bavarians were routed, Murat lost his head and bolted, and everything
devolved on the heroic Ney, who volunteered again for rear-guard duty,
keeping Kutusoff at bay while the army retreated on the road to Kowno,
the last Russian town before they could reach the Niemen, 4,000 men
alone preserving an orderly demeanour under arms.
At the hill of Ponari the Cossacks fell foul of them, and, while under
fire, Napoleon’s private treasure was portioned out equally among such
of the Guard as remained, every man who survived afterwards accounting
for his share to the last coin.
The final scene may be summed up by a brief narration of the fabulous
gallantry of Marshal Ney.
It had been his invariable custom to halt and rest from five in the
evening until ten, and then resume the march; but at Evé, near Kowno,
he woke up to find his _fourth_ rear-guard gone, their arms still
piled, and glistening in the frosty night.
When he overtook them they were in disorder, and could not be rallied,
Ney entering the town attended only by his aides, but instantly setting
to work to form a _fifth_ guard.
He found 2,000 drunken men dead on the snow, and the fugitives gone
on to the river; but with 300 German Artillery and 400 others, under
General Marchand, he set about to defend Kowno.
The last remnant, having crossed the Niemen, were flying through the
Pilwisky forest, from which they had issued five months before in very
different plight, only 13,000 in reality mustering behind that river.
Kowno was attacked on the morning of the 14th December, and hastening
to the Wilna Gate, Ney found the German artillery had spiked their guns
and fled.
In a towering passion the marshal drew his sword and rushed at the
officer in command, who still remained there, and, but for his
aide-de-camp averting the blow, would have slain him. The officer
escaped, and Ney summoned one of his two weak battalions, also German,
and after a spirited address, formed them behind the snow-capped
palisade as the enemy approached, but fate was against him.
A ball broke the colonel’s thigh, and he blew out his brains before his
men, who instantly threw down their guns and fled, leaving Ney alone.
Gathering all the muskets he could reach, the marshal fired them
through the palisade--_one_ man against _thousands_--until
others came to his help; the town was attacked on the opposite side at
the same time, and though he maintained his post with thirty ragged
scarecrows until dark, he had to retreat step by step, through the town
and across the Niemen, the last man, after forty days’ and nights’
incessant fighting with the rear-guard, to leave the Russian shore.
* * * * *
In Gumbinnen, Mathieu Dumas was sitting down to breakfast, when a man
in a brown coat entered, his beard long, his face blackened and looking
as though it had been burnt, his eyes red and glaring.
“At length I am here,” he exclaimed. “Don’t you know me?” “No,” said
the general. “Who are you?” “I am the Rear-Guard of the _Grande
Armée_; I have fired the last musket-shot on the bridge of Kowno;
I have thrown the last of our arms into the Niemen, and come hither
through the woods. I am Marshal Ney.”
* * * * *
Macdonald, in the North, was reduced by hardship and the defection
of the Prussians; Schwartzenberg, in the South, had been obliged to
retire, and the magnificent army of the Centre, led by masters in the
art of war, under the Emperor himself, we have seen dwindled down to
13,000 in less than six months. It was not altogether the Russians,
it was not entirely the frost, although both contributed to its
destruction: when all laws, physical and moral, are transgressed, when
flesh and blood are tried beyond the limits of possible endurance, and
wild ambition takes the place of common-sense, something will give, and
disaster is certain in the long run.
By one of the most careful of contemporary computations it is concluded
that 552,000 unfortunate creatures who had marched under the eagles of
Napoleon never returned from that campaign, and the medal struck by
Alexander to commemorate it, sums up the whole case in a sentence of
singular piety.
On one side, in a triangle surrounded by rays, is the Eye of
Providence, with the date beneath it; on the other, the inscription:
“_Not unto us; not unto me; but unto Thy Name_.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_RORKE’S DRIFT_
_BY C. STEIN_.]
At the end of 1878 there stood upon a rocky terrace on the Natal side
of the Buffalo River two stone buildings with thatched roofs, which had
formed a Swedish mission station, one of them having been used as a
church and the other having been the dwelling of the missionary. These
two humble edifices were destined to be, on the 22nd January, 1879, the
scene of the most brilliant feat of arms performed during the whole
Zulu War--a defence by a small determined force against the attack of
vastly superior numbers, an exploit whose lustre, relieving a period of
disaster, maintained the prestige of British arms, and whose success,
there can be little doubt, secured Natal from invasion when failure
would have laid the colony open to the advance of a savage enemy.
So perfect was the conduct of the officers and men concerned in the
episode, and so well conceived and executed were the measures adopted,
that even foreign military books quote the exploit as an example of the
value of improvised fortifications when they are held by brave men.
When war was declared by Sir Bartle Frere, the High Commissioner
for South Africa, against Cetewayo, the Zulu king, the conduct
of operations was placed in the hands of Lieutenant-General Lord
Chelmsford, K.C.B., as Commander-in-Chief. It was determined to invade
Zululand, and all the forces available for this purpose were moved
to the frontier. They were divided into five columns, of which three
were to advance into the enemy’s country from different points, with
the intention of finally concentrating at Ulundi, the Zulu capital,
while the other two were in the first instance to guard the frontier
against possible Zulu raids. The third column, under the command of
Colonel Glyn, C.B., the centre of the three columns of invasion, was to
assemble near Rorke’s Drift and cross the Buffalo River at that spot,
within a mile of the old Swedish mission station.
The river at Rorke’s Drift was, like most African streams, an
impassable torrent after rain, but the flood quickly ran off, and a
passage could then be effected by the “drift,” or ford. There had also
been established two ponts, or big, flat-bottomed ferry-boats, each of
which could transport an African wagon or a company of infantry.
Colonel Glyn’s column crossed the river on the 11th January, 1879,
and from that time was engaged in operations in Zululand. Its line
of communications with Pietermaritzburg, the chief city of Natal,
was through Rorke’s Drift to Helpmakaar, and thence by Ladysmith and
Estcourt, or by the shorter, though more difficult, route through
Greytown. Rorke’s Drift, as the actual starting-point of invasion,
was formed into a depôt of stores and a hospital. The deserted
mission-station buildings were utilised for this purpose, the old
church being converted into a storehouse and the missionary’s dwelling
forming the hospital. As a garrison for this important post and to
secure the passage across the river, Colonel Glyn left B Company of
the second battalion of the 24th Regiment, under command of Lieutenant
Gonville Bromhead. With him were also Major Spalding, who was in
general charge of the line of communications, Lieutenant Chard, Royal
Engineers, Surgeon Reynolds, Army Medical Department, and other
officers. This garrison was encamped near the store and hospital.
For some days after the departure of the third column, which was also
accompanied by Lord Chelmsford and the Headquarter Staff, the quiet
routine of duty was pursued. Letters were passed to and from the front,
necessary stores and supplies were sent on, and the men wounded in the
first engagements were received into the hospital. Among these last
was one of the enemy, who had been shot through the thigh at Sirayo’s
kraal, and who was treated and nursed with the same care and attention
as the Englishmen against whom he had fought. On the 20th January,
however, a large portion of the second column, under Colonel Durnford,
Royal Engineers, arrived at Rorke’s Drift and encamped. Their stay
was brief, for they were summoned to the fatal camp of Insandhlwana
on the morning of the 22nd, Colonel Durnford leaving a company of
the Natal Native Contingent, under Captain Stephenson, to strengthen
the little post. It became evident from various circumstances that
Colonel Glyn’s column was encountering a stronger resistance than
had been anticipated, and that, as the enemy were in force within a
few miles, they might make a rapid descent upon the weakly-guarded
line of communications. It was known that two companies of the
first battalion of the 24th were at Helpmakaar, ten miles distant,
and Major Spalding resolved to go there at once in order to bring
them up as a reinforcement to Lieutenant Bromhead’s force. In his
absence, Lieutenant Chard became senior officer at Rorke’s Drift, and
responsible for its well-being.
Although on the 22nd January there was thus a feeling of uneasiness at
the river post, nothing had occurred till some hours after midday to
cause any special alarm to its garrison. We may believe that a general
plan of action had been considered if an attack should be made upon
it, but in the meantime all the officers and men were engaged in their
usual employments. Lieutenant Chard was at the ponts, and Lieutenant
Bromhead was in his little camp hard by the store and hospital.
Shortly after 3 p.m. two mounted men were seen galloping at headlong
speed towards the ferry from Zululand. There is little difficulty in
recognising messengers of disaster, the men who ride with the avenger
of blood close on their horses’ track, and Chard, as he met them, knew
that something terrible had happened. His worst anticipations were
more than realised when the two fugitives--Lieutenant Adendorff, of
the Native Contingent, and a Natal volunteer--told their story: the
camp at Insandhlwana had been attacked and taken by the enemy, of whom
a large force was now advancing on Rorke’s Drift. The Natal volunteer
hurried on to give the alarm at Helpmakaar; but one man was enough for
this service, and Adendorff--gallant fellow!--said that he would remain
at Rorke’s Drift, where every additional European would be a valuable
reinforcement, and cast in his lot with its defenders. Chard at once
gave orders to the guard at the ponts to strike their tents, put all
stores on the spot into the wagon, and withdraw to the main body of
the post. Now occurred the first incident which testified to the
spirit which animated the small force on the banks of the Buffalo. The
ferryman--Daniells--and Sergeant Milne, of the 3rd Buffs (who was doing
duty with the 24th), proposed that they should be allowed to moor the
two ponts in the middle of the river, and offered, with the ferry-guard
of six men, to defend them against attack--a brave thought, indeed, but
it was put aside. Chard was too good a soldier to divide his few men in
any way. He saw at once that the commissariat stores and hospital would
require every available rifle for their defence, and that the safety of
every other place was comparatively a very minor consideration.
While he was giving his orders an urgent message came from Bromhead
asking him to join him at once. To Bromhead also had come several
mounted men fleeing from Insandhlwana, bearing the same dread
intelligence which Adendorff had brought to the ferry, and the trained
officer of engineers was required to concert and decide upon measures
of defence. But when he joined the infantry subaltern he found that the
latter, aided by Assistant-Commissary Dunne and Assistant-Commissary
Dalton, had already set to work, and that there was nothing to change,
if much was still left to complete. The three officers held a hurried
consultation, and prompt use was made of all ordinary expedients of
war, while materials never before employed in fortification were
pressed into service. The store and hospital were loopholed and
barricaded, the windows and doors blocked with mattresses; but it was
necessary to connect the defence of the two buildings by a parapet.
There were no stones at hand with which to build a wall, and if there
had been, there was no time to make use of them; the hard rocky soil
could not be dug and formed into ditch and breastwork; but there was a
great store of bags of mealies, or the grain of Indian corn, which had
been collected as horse provender for the army. Assistant-Commissary
Dalton suggested that these should be used in the fashion of sandbags
for the construction of the required parapet. Everybody laboured
with the energy of men who know that their safety depends on their
exertions. Chard and Bromhead, Reynolds, Dunne, and Dalton not merely
directed, but engaged most energetically in the work of preparation.
When the alarm was first given it was intended to remove the worst
cases from the hospital to a place of safety, and two wagons were
prepared for the purpose; but it was found that the attempt to move
the patients at the slow pace of ox-teams when the Zulus were so close
at hand would only result in offering them as easy victims to the
murderous assegai. The two wagons were therefore used as part of the
defences, and mealie bags were piled underneath and upon them, so that
each formed a strong post of vantage.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT CHARD.
(_Photo, J. Hawke, Plymouth._)]
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT BROMHEAD.
(_Photo, Elliott & Fry, Baker Street, W._)]
The ferry-guard had joined the rest of the force at 3.30 p.m., and a
few minutes later an officer of Durnford’s Natal Native Horse, with a
hundred of his men who had been heavily engaged at Insandhlwana, rode
up and asked for orders. Chard directed him to watch for the approach
of the enemy, sending out vedettes, and when he was pressed, to fall
back and assist in the defence of the post. So far it seemed certain
that when the threatened Zulu attack developed itself against the
Rorke’s Drift fortifications they would be found, though hurriedly
devised and executed, to be adequately defended by the company of the
24th, Captain Stephenson’s company of the Native Contingent, and about
a hundred Basutos of the Natal Native Horse. But if the gallant English
officers who had striven so hard and with so much military genius to
make their position tenable looked forward to this amount of support,
they were destined to grievous disappointment and mortification. At
4.15 p.m. the sound of firing was heard behind a hill towards the
south, and told that the vedettes of the Native Horse were engaged with
the enemy. Their officer returned, reporting that the Zulus were close
at hand, and that his men would not obey orders. Chard and his comrades
had the sore trial of seeing them all moving off towards Helpmakaar,
leaving the garrison to its fate. Nor was this all. The evil example
was only too soon followed. Captain Stephenson’s company of the Native
Contingent also felt their hearts fail, and, accompanied by their
commander, also fled from the post of duty. For the Native Horse there
is some excuse to be made. They had been in the saddle since daybreak;
they were the survivors of a terrible defeat and massacre; they had
seen a large number of their comrades slain, and they were demoralised
by the loss of their beloved commander, Colonel Durnford. If on this
occasion their valour failed them, it is to be remembered that they had
behaved nobly in the early part of the day, and that in later episodes
of the war their gallantry and self-devotion were proverbial. But for
the Native Contingent company nothing can be said. They were fresh,
and as yet unscathed by war; they had the best example in the calm
demeanour of their English comrades, and they had many causes of feud
and quarrel with the enemy. But, as in all other occasions of the war
where Natal Kaffirs were employed, they gave way in time of stress,
and the greatest shame of the matter was that their colonial European
officer now shared their misconduct.
[Illustration: RORKE’S DRIFT AT THE PRESENT TIME.
(_From a Photo by Mr. G. T. Ferneyhough, Pietermaritzburg,
South Africa._)]
The garrison at Rorke’s Drift was now reduced to Bromhead’s company
of the 24th--about eighty strong--and some men of other corps, the
total number within the post being 139, of whom thirty-five were
sick or wounded men in hospital. The original scheme of defence had
provided for a much larger force, and Chard recognised that it would
now be impossible long to occupy effectively the range of parapets and
loopholes which had been prepared. There was nothing for it but to form
an inner line of defence, to which the garrison might fall back when
the outer line became untenable. He decided that, if necessary, the
hospital must be abandoned, and that the defence must be restricted to
the store and the space in front of it, including a well-built stone
kraal or enclosure which abutted on it to the eastward. To carry out
this plan he commenced an inner retrenchment, forming a parapet of
biscuit-boxes across the larger enclosure. This was only about two
boxes high when the expected flood of attack hurled its first waves
against the frail solitary bulwark which stood between Natal and savage
invasion.
About 4.30 p.m. five or six hundred of the enemy appeared, sweeping
round the rocky hill to the south of the post, and advancing at the
swift pace characteristic of the Zulu warriors against the south wall
which connected the store and hospital. But they had to deal with
stern men who were braced up for the encounter by feelings of duty,
patriotism, and the long habit of regimental discipline and comradeship
which makes each feel assured and confident that all are striving
shoulder to shoulder, and that none will blench from his appointed
place. From the parapet of mealie bags and from the hospital poured
forth a heavy and well-sustained fire, which was crossed by a flanking
discharge from the store. No man wasted a shot, and the aim was cool
and deliberate. Even Zulu valour and determination could not face the
deadly leaden hail, and the onslaught weakened and broke within fifty
yards of the British rifles. Some of the assailants swerved to their
left, and passed round to the west of the hospital; some sought cover
where they could, and occupied banks, ditches, bushes, and the cooking
place of the garrison. But this first attack was only the effort of the
enemy’s advanced guard. Masses of warriors followed and flowed over the
elevated southward ledge of rocks overlooking the buildings. Every cave
and crevice was quickly filled, and from these sheltered and commanding
positions they opened a heavy and continuous fire. It was fortunate
that the spoil in rifles and ammunition taken at Insandhlwana was not
yet available for use against the English, as at Kambula and later
engagements, but the enemy’s firearms were still the old muskets and
rifles of which they had long been in possession. Even so, at the short
range these were sufficiently effective, and, in the hands of better
marksmen than Zulus usually are, might have inflicted crushing losses.
The first attack repulsed, a second desperate effort was made by the
enemy against the north-west wall just below the hospital; but here
again the defenders were ready to meet it, and again the assailing
torrent broke and fell back. Such of the sick and wounded in the
hospital as were able to rouse themselves from their beds of pain
had by this time seized rifle and bayonet and joined their comrades;
but though every man was now mustered, the total number was all too
small for the grim task before them. The misfortune of the extreme
hurry in the preparations for defence was now painfully apparent. In
strengthening any position for defensive occupation one of the first
measures taken by a commander is to clear as large an open space as
possible round the parapet or fortifications which he proposes to hold.
All ditches and hollows should be filled up; all buildings, walls, and
heaps of refuse should be pulled down and scattered; all trees, shrubs,
and thick herbage should be cut and removed; so that no attack can be
made under cover, no safe place may be found from which deliberate fire
may be delivered, or any movement can be made by an enemy unseen, and
therefore unanticipated. At Rorke’s Drift, not only were the buildings
and parapets overlooked and commanded to the southward by a rocky hill
full of caves and lurking-places, but there was a garden to the north,
a thick patch of bush which was close to the parapet, a square Kaffir
house and large brick oven and cooking trenches, besides numerous
banks, walls, and ditches, all of which offered a shelter to the enemy,
which they were not slow to profit by. The post was encircled by a
dense ring of the foe, and from every side came the whistle of their
bullets.
Up till this time, though several men had been wounded, no one had been
struck dead. Suddenly a whisper passed round among the 24th, “Poor old
King Cole is killed.” Private Cole, who was known by this affectionate
barrack-room nickname, was at the parapet when a bullet passed through
his head, and he fell doing his duty--a noble end.
If the Zulu fire was telling, however, the steady marksmanship of the
English officers and men was still more effective. Private Dunbar, of
the 24th, laid low a mounted chief who was conspicuous in directing
the enemy, and immediately afterwards shot eight warriors in as many
successive shots. Everywhere the officers were present with words of
encouragement, exposing themselves fearlessly and showing that iron
coolness and self-possession which rouses such confidence and emulation
in soldiery on a day of battle.
Assistant-Commissary Dalton was continually going along the parapet,
cheering the men and using the rifle with deadly effect. There was a
rush of Zulus against the spot where he was, led by a huge man, whose
leopard-skin kaross marked the chief. Dalton called out “Pot that
fellow!” and himself aimed over the parapet at another, when the rifle
dropped from his hand, and he spun round with suddenly pallid face,
shot through the right shoulder. Surgeon Reynolds was by his side at
once, and bound up the wound.
Unable any longer to use his rifle, Dalton handed it to storekeeper
Byrne, but continued unmoved to superintend the men near to him and
to direct their fire. Byrne took his place at the parapet, and his
bullets were not wasted. In a few minutes Corporal Scammel, Natal
Native Contingent, who was next to him, was shot through the shoulder
and back. He fell, and crawling to Chard, who was fighting side by side
with the men, handed him the remainder of his cartridges. In his agony
he asked for a drink of water. Byrne at once fetched it for him, and
whilst handing it to the suffering soldier, was himself shot through
the head, and fell prone, a dead man.
While fighting was thus going on all round the post, a series of
specially determined attacks was made against the northern side. Here
the Zulus were able to collect under cover of the garden and patch
of bush, and from that shelter were able to rush untouched close up
to the parapet. Soon they were on one side of the barricade, while
the defenders held the other, and across it there was a hand-to-hand
struggle of the bayonet against the broad-bladed _bangwan_, the
stabbing assegai. So close were the combatants that the Zulus seized
the English bayonets, and in two instances even succeeded in wrenching
them from the rifles, though in each case the breechloader took a stern
vengeance. The muzzles of the opposing firearms were almost touching
each other, and the discharge of a musket blew the broad “dopper” hat
from the head of Corporal Schiess, of the Natal Native Contingent. This
man (a Swiss by birth), who had been a patient in hospital, leaped on
to the parapet and bayoneted the man who fired, regained his place, and
shot another; then, repeating his former exploit, again leaped on the
top of the mealie bags and bayoneted a third. Early in the fight he had
been struck by a bullet in the instep, but though suffering acute pain,
he left not his post, and was only maddened to perform deeds of heroic
daring.
[Illustration:
LINES OF COMMUNICATION
ZULU CAMPAIGN. 1879.]
The struggle here was too severe and unequal to be long continued.
Besides the ceaseless attacks of their enemy in front, the defenders of
the parapet were exposed to the fire which took them in reverse from
the high hill to the south. Five soldiers had been thus shot dead in a
short space of time. At six p.m. the order was given to retire behind
the retrenchment of biscuit-boxes. When the defence of the parapet was
thus removed, the dark crowd of Zulus surged over the mealie bags to
attack the hospital; but such a heavy fire was sent from the line of
the retrenchment that nearly every man who leaped into the enclosure
perished in the effort. Again and again they charged forward, shouting
their war-cry “Usutu! Usutu!” and ever the death-dealing volleys smote
them to the ground.
The story has now been told of the struggle during the first hour and
a half about the storehouse and large enclosure, till the moment came
when it was no longer possible to hold the whole of the defences as
they were at first organised, and Chard was constrained to withdraw
behind the biscuit-box retrenchment which his foresight had provided.
All this time the enemy had been making fierce and constantly
reiterated attempts to force their way into the hospital, which was at
the west end of the enclosure. Here Bromhead personally superintended
the resistance, and here such deeds of military prowess, cool presence
of mind, and glorious self-devotion were performed as our nation may
well inscribe on its proudest records. It has been said that the
building had a thatched roof, and the Zulus not only strove to force
an ingress, but used every expedient to set the thatch on fire, and
thus to destroy the poor stronghold which so long mocked at their
attempts to take it. While many of the patients whose ailments were
comparatively slight had risen from their pallets and taken an active
part in the defence, there were several poor fellows, utterly helpless,
distributed among the different wards; and it is difficult to conceive
a situation more trying than theirs must have been, listening to the
demoniac yells of the savages, only separated from them by a thin wall,
thirsting for their blood. At every window were one or two comrades,
firing till the rifles were heated to scorching by the unceasing
discharge. Bullets splashed upon the walls, and the air reeked with
dense sulphurous smoke. The combatants may have been excited and
carried away by the mad fury of battle; but to men depressed by
disease, weakened and racked with pain, truly the minutes must have
been long and terrible in their mental and physical suffering. Shortly
after five o’clock the Zulus had been able so far to break down the
entrance to the room at the extreme end of the hospital that they were
able to charge at the opening; but Bromhead was there, and drove them
back time after time with the bayonet. As long as the enclosure was
held, they failed in every fierce attempt. Private Joseph Williams was
firing from a small window hard by, and on the next morning fourteen
warriors were found dead beneath it, besides others along his line of
fire. When his ammunition was expended, he joined his brother, Private
John Williams, and two of the patients who also had fired their last
cartridge, and with them guarded the door with their bayonets. No
longer able to keep their opponents at a distance, the four stood
grimly resolute, waiting till the door was battered in and they stood
face to face with the foe.
[Illustration:
DEFENCE OF
RORKE’S DRIFT.]
Then followed a death struggle. The English bayonet crossed the
broad-bladed _bangwan_, the stalwart Warwickshire lads met the
lithe and muscular tribesmen of Cetewayo, and the weapons glinted
thirsty for blood. In the _mêlée_ poor Joseph Williams was
grappled with by two Zulus, his hands were seized, and, dragged out
from among his comrades, he was killed before their eyes. But now it
was known that the hospital must be abandoned, and as the usual path
was occupied by the enemy, a way had to be made through the partition
walls. John Williams and the two patients succeeded in making a passage
with an axe into the adjoining room, where they were joined by Private
Henry Hook. John Williams and Hook then took it in turn to guard the
hole through which the little party had come, with the bayonet, and
keep the foe at bay, while the others worked at cutting a further
passage. In this retreat from room to room, another brave soldier,
Private Jenkins, met the same fate as did Joseph Williams, and was
dragged to his death by the pursuers. The others at last arrived at a
window looking into the enclosure towards the storehouse, and leaping
from it, ran the gauntlet of the enemy’s fire till they reached their
comrades behind the biscuit-box retrenchment. To the devoted bravery
and cool resource of Privates John Williams and Hook, eight patients,
who had been in the several wards which they had traversed, owed their
lives. If it had not been for the assistance of these two gallant men,
all the eight would have perished where they lay. These, however, were
only some of the hairbreadth escapes from the hospital, and only some
of the deeds of stubborn hardihood performed in it.
A few of the sick men were half carried, half led by chivalrous
comrades across the enclosure to the retrenchment, but many had to
make their own way over the space now swept by the Zulu bullets, and
that that space was clear was due to the steady fire maintained by
Chard, which prevented the Zulus themselves from leaving the spots
where they were under cover. Trooper Hunter, Natal Mounted Police,
a very tall young man, who had been a patient, essayed the rush to
safety, but he was hit and fell before he reached his goal. Corporal
Mayer, Natal Native Contingent, who had been wounded in the knee by
an assegai-thrust in one of the early engagements of the campaign,
Bombardier Lewis, Royal Artillery, whose leg and thigh were swollen and
disabled from a wagon accident, and Trooper Green, Natal Police, also
a nearly helpless invalid, all got out of a little window looking into
the enclosure. The window was at some distance from the ground, and
each man fell in escaping from it. All had to crawl (for none of them
could walk) through the enemy’s fire, and all passed scathless into
the retrenchment except Green, who was struck on the thigh. In one of
the wards facing the hill on the south side of the hospital, Privates
William Jones and Robert Jones had been posted. There were seven
patients in the ward, and these two men defended their post till
six of the seven patients had been removed. The seventh was Sergeant
Maxfield, who, delirious with fever, resisted all attempts to move him.
Robert Jones, with rare courage and devotion, went back a second time
to try to carry him out, but found the ward already full of Zulus, and
the poor sergeant stabbed to death on his bed.
[Illustration: “THERE WAS A HAND-TO-HAND STRUGGLE”
(_p._ 335).]
It has been mentioned that a wounded prisoner was being treated in the
hospital. So much had he been impressed by the kindness which he had
received, that he was anxious to assist in the defence. He said “he was
not afraid of the Zulus, but he wanted a gun.” His new-born goodwill
was not, however, tested. When the ward in which he lay was forced,
Private Hook, who was assisting the Englishmen in the next room, heard
the Zulus talking to him. The next day his charred remains were found
in the ashes of the building. That communication was kept up with the
hospital at all, and that it was possible to effect the removal of
so many patients, was due in great part to the conduct of Corporal
Allen and Private Hitch. These two soldiers together, in defiance of
danger, held a most exposed position, raked in reverse by the fire from
the hill, till both were severely wounded. Their determined bravery
had its result in the safety of their comrades. Even after they were
incapacitated from further fighting, they never ceased, when their
wounds had been dressed, to serve out ammunition from the reserve
throughout the rest of the combat.
When the defence of the hospital was relaxed, it had been easy for the
enemy to carry out their plan of setting fire to the thatched roof,
and now the whole was in a blaze, the flames rising high and casting
a lurid glare over the scene of conflict. The last men who effected
their retreat from the building had as much to dread from the spreading
conflagration as from the Zulu assegais. We have seen that, from
the want of interior communication, it had been necessary for those
who did escape to cut their way from room to room. Alas! to some of
the patients, it had been impossible for the anxious leader and his
staunch, willing followers to penetrate. Defeated by the flames and by
the numbers of their opponents, Chard records in his official despatch,
“With the most heartfelt sorrow, I regret we could not save these poor
fellows from their terrible fate.”
While in the hospital the last struggle was going on, Chard’s unfailing
resource had provided another element of strength to his now restricted
line of defence, and had formed a place of comparative security for
the reception of his wounded men. In the small yard by the storehouse
were two large piles of mealie bags. These, with the assistance of two
or three men and Assistant Commissary Dunne, who had from the first
been working with energy and determination, he formed into an oblong
and sufficiently high redoubt. In the hollow space in its centre were
laid the sick and wounded, while its crest gave a second line of fire,
which swept much of the ground that could not be seen by the occupiers
of the lower parapets. As the intrepid men were making this redoubt,
their object was quickly detected by the enemy, who poured upon them
a rain of bullets; but Providence protected them, and unhurt, they
completed their work. The night had fallen, and the light from the
burning hospital was now of the greatest service to the defenders, as
it illumined every spot for hundreds of yards round, and gave every
advantage to the trained riflemen of the 24th. The Zulu losses had been
tremendously heavy; but still they pressed their unremitting attack.
Rush after rush was made right up to the parapets so strenuously held,
and their musketry fire never slackened. The outer wall of the stone
kraal on the east of the store had to be abandoned, and finally the
garrison was confined to the commissariat store, the enclosure just in
front of it, the inner wall of the kraal, and the redoubt of mealie
bags. But the steadfastness of the defenders was never impaired. Still
every man fired with the greatest coolness. Not a shot was wasted,
and Rorke’s Drift Station remained still proudly impregnable. At 10
p.m. the hospital fire had burnt itself out, and darkness settled over
defence and attack. It was not till midnight, however, that the Zulus
began to lose heart, and give to the garrison some breathing space
and repose. Desultory firing still continued from the hill to the
southward, and from the bush and garden in front; but there were no
more attacks in force, and stress of siege was practically over. The
dark hours were full of anxiety, and even the stout hearts which had
not quailed during the long period of trial that was past must have had
some feeling of disquietude for the morrow, lest wearied, reduced in
numbers, and with slender supply of water, they should be called upon
to meet renewed efforts made by a reinforced foe.
The dawn came at last, and the eyes of all were gladdened by seeing the
rear of the Zulu masses retiring round the shoulder of the hill from
which their first attack had been made. The supreme tension of mind and
body was over, and if the struggle had been long and stern the victory
was for the time complete. How bitterly it had been fought out was
shown by the piles of the enemy’s dead lying around, and by the silence
of familiar voices when the roll was called. There was yet no rest. The
enemy might take heart and return, for, though many of their warriors
had seen their last fight, still their numbers were so overwhelming,
and they must have known so well how close had been the pressure of
their attack, that they might well think that, with renewed efforts,
success was more than possible. Patrols were sent out to collect the
arms left lying on the field. The defences were strengthened, and,
mindful of the fate of the hospital, a working party was ordered to
remove the thatch from the roof of the store. The men who were not
employed otherwise were kept manning the parapets, and all were ready
at once to snatch up their rifles and again to hold the post which
they had guarded so long. A friendly Kaffir was sent to Helpmakaar,
saying that they were still safe, and asking for assistance. About
7 a.m. a mass of the enemy was seen on the hills to the south-west,
and it seemed as if another onslaught was threatened. They were
advancing slowly when the remains of the third column appeared in the
distance, coming from Insandhlwana, and, as the English approached, the
threatening mass retired, and finally disappeared.
Lord Chelmsford, Colonel Glyn, and that part of their force which,
having been engaged elsewhere, had not been in the Insandhlwana camp
when it was attacked and taken, had passed the night in sad and anxious
bivouac among the dead bodies of their comrades and the _débris_
of a most melancholy disaster. Full of disquietude about the fate of
the post at Rorke’s Drift, and the line of communications, they had
pushed on with earliest dawn. Their advanced guard of mounted men
strained eager eyes towards Rorke’s Drift. The British flag still waved
over the storehouse, and figures in red coats could be seen moving
about the place. But smoke was rising where the hospital had stood,
and, remembering that the victorious Zulus at Insandhlwana had clad
themselves in the uniforms of the dead, there was a moment of dread
uncertainty to the officer who was leading the way. But surely that was
a faint British cheer rising from the post! A few hundred yards more
of advance, and it was known that here at least no mistake had been
made; here courage and determination had not been shown in vain; and
that here something had been done to restore the confidence in British
prowess which had just received so rude a shock elsewhere. What a
sight was the spot in the bright morning sunlight! There lay hundreds
of Zulus either dead or gasping out the last remains of life; there
was the grim and grey old warrior lying side by side with the young
man who had come “to wash his assegai”; there a convulsive movement of
arm or leg, the rolling of a slowly glazing eye, or the heaving of a
bullet-pierced chest showed that life was not quite extinct; and there
were the defenders wan, battle-stained, and weary, but with the proud
light of triumph in their glance, standing by the fortifications which
they had so stoutly held--fortifications so small, so frail, that it
seemed marvellous how they had been made to serve their purpose. The
skeleton of the hospital still was there, but its roof and woodwork had
fallen in, and in the still smoking pile men were searching for the
remains of lost comrades. And there, in the corner of the enclosure,
reverently covered and guarded, were the bodies of the dead who had
given their lives for England and sealed their devotion to duty with
their blood. Well might Lord Chelmsford congratulate the defenders of
Rorke’s Drift on the brilliant stand that they had made, and well might
the colony of Natal look upon them as Heaven-sent saviours from cruel
invasion.
In telling the story of the events of the 22nd, it has been said that
Major Spalding left Rorke’s Drift to seek reinforcements at Helpmakaar.
There he found two companies of the 24th, under Major Upcher, and with
them he at once commenced to march to the river post. On their way
they met several fugitives who asserted that the place had fallen, and
when they arrived within three miles of their destination, a large
body of Zulus was found barring the way, while the flames of the
burning hospital could be seen rising from the river valley. It was
only too probable that if they went on, they would merely sacrifice
to no purpose the only regular troops remaining between the frontier
and Pietermaritzburg. Helpmakaar was the principal store depôt for the
centre column, full of ammunition and supplies, and it seemed best that
its safety should, at any rate, be provided for as far as possible. The
two companies were therefore ordered to return, and preparations for
the defence of the stores were commenced.
Many names have been mentioned of men who, when all did their duty
nobly, were particularly remarkable in the duty which they did and in
their manner of doing it. Two men have not, in this narrative, been
yet specially named, but they were each as heroic as any of those who
stood behind Chard’s improvised defences. Theirs was not the duty of
handling deadly weapons; theirs was not the lot to meet the enemy hand
to hand. It was for them to comfort the dying, to tend the sick, to
give aid to the wounded--and right worthily they played their part.
The Rev. George Smith, acting chaplain to the forces, and Surgeon
Reynolds, Army Medical Department, were exposed to all the dangers that
surrounded every man of the garrison, and to every man they showed the
example of treating those dangers with a grand indifference. Besides
performing to the full the tasks of their noble professions, they
were constantly present among the soldiers with words of cheer and
encouragement. They distributed such poor refreshment as was available,
and were indefatigable in supplying reserve ammunition to those whose
cartridge-boxes were empty. Never can British soldiers hope to have
with them, in a time of trial, better men than the Rev. George Smith
and Surgeon Reynolds.
According to the closest estimate, the number of Zulus who attacked
Rorke’s Drift was about 4,000, composed of Cetewayo’s Undi and Udkloko
regiments, and about 400 dead bodies were buried near the post after
the attack. The wounded were all carried away from the field. The loss
of the garrison was fifteen killed and twelve wounded, of whom two died
almost immediately.
No military rewards could have been too great for the glorious actions
at Rorke’s Drift, and of rewards there was no niggardly distribution.
Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead became Captains and Brevet-Majors.
The Rev. George Smith, a missionary chaplain in Natal, received a
commission as Army chaplain. Every officer was promoted in his corps
or department, and besides the decorations given to others, Chard,
Bromhead, and Dalton, Corporal Allen, Privates John Williams, Henry
Hook, William Jones, Robert Jones, and Frederick Hitch received the
Victoria Cross; Colour-Sergeant Brown and eight men received medals for
distinguished service in the field.
Many brave exploits have been performed by men of the English army,
and we may believe that the scroll of glory is not yet complete; but
whatever the future may have in store, it would be difficult to find
in past history any action which excels in brilliancy the defence of
Rorke’s Drift.
[Illustration: “THE BRITISH FLAG STILL WAVED OVER THE
STOREHOUSE” (_p._ 339).]
[Illustration:
Mars-la-Tour
By Charles Lowe]
“Look out for cavalry!” Such was the cry that was raised on the
sanguinary field of Vionville-Mars-la-Tour oftener than in any other
battle of the Franco-German war.
When France declared war against Germany in July, 1870, she sent all
her available troops--numbering about 300,000 men--as fast as ever
she could to her eastern frontier, where they formed themselves into
what was called the “Army of the Rhine,” under the supreme command
of the Emperor Napoleon. This “Army of the Rhine” was composed of
eight separate Army Corps, or Corps d’Armée, commanded by Marshals
Bazaine, MacMahon, and Canrobert, and by Generals Bourbaki, Frossard,
Ladmirault, Failly, and Félix Douay.
On the other hand, the Germans divided their forces into three main
armies--each also consisting of several Army Corps--of which the
combined strength was about 384,000 men; and so quickly had the
Germans--who are famous for their powers of organisation--done the
difficult work of mobilising their forces (that is to say, preparing
them to take the field), that, within a fortnight after the order for
this process had been issued, no fewer than 300,000 helmeted defenders
of the Fatherland stood ranked up and ready along the Rhine. Old King
William of Prussia assumed the nominal command of all this tremendous
fighting force; but in reality the man who directed and controlled its
movements was Field-Marshal Count von Moltke, who was perhaps the most
studious and scientific soldier the world had ever seen. He had divided
all the field strength of Germany into three separate armies--each
also composed of several Army Corps. The First Army, on the right,
was commanded by General von Steinmetz; the Second, in the centre, by
Prince Frederick Charles, known as the “Red Prince,” and the Third, on
the left, by the Crown Prince, son-in-law of Queen Victoria.
The Crown Prince was the first to draw blood, on the 4th August (war
had only been formally declared on the 19th July), when he won the
great battle of Weissenburg, and on the 6th at Wörth, when he completed
the defeat of Marshal MacMahon’s army. On this very same day, too,
Steinmetz, on the right, had stormed the heights of Spicheren at a very
great sacrifice of life, causing Frossard, who held these heights, to
fall back on the excessively strong fortress of Metz, which stands in
the lovely valley of the Moselle. MacMahon had retreated towards the
great training camp--the Aldershot, so to speak, of France--at Châlons;
while the rest of the “Army of the Rhine” meanwhile retired on Metz,
and thither the Germans now also began to push with might and main.
It was thought probable by Moltke, from all appearances, that the
French meant to make a desperate stand in front of Metz. But he met
with less resistance there than he expected; and on the 14th August
a victory gained by the Germans at Colombey-Nouilly had the effect
of making all their opponents in the open field thereabouts withdraw
towards the fortressed city. This battle had been fought on the east of
Metz, while on the west side ran the high road to Verdun and Paris. On
the 15th the Germans came to the conclusion that the French in Metz,
not wishing to expose themselves to the risk of being cooped up and
rendered useless within their fortress, meant to escape towards Verdun,
to join hands with MacMahon’s beaten forces, and then give battle to
the advancing Germans in the plain.
For the French were confident that they could give a good account of
their hitherto victorious foes, could they but meet them on pretty
equal terms in the open. The Germans saw very well that the object
of the French at Metz was to escape to the west, and they therefore
determined to strain every nerve to prevent this. Yet they sadly feared
they would not succeed, for they were on the right, or east, bank of
the Moselle, while the French were on the left, or west side; and it
was necessary for their pursuers to make a wide sweep in order to cross
the river and insert themselves in good time between Metz and Paris, so
as to have the retreating Frenchmen face to face.
As early as the evening of the 15th a Division of Cavalry--the 5th,
under Rheinbaden--had crossed the Moselle, and pressed round and
forward with prying intent as far as the village of Mars-la-Tour, on
the Verdun road, where it bivouacked for the night. It had seen certain
masses of French troops away in the direction of Metz, but was unable
to conclude whether this formed the rear-guard of the French army
retreating on Verdun, or only its vanguard. As a matter of fact, this
army was still struggling with the difficulties of getting away from
Metz.
Early on the morning of the 16th the French Emperor, escorted by two
brigades of cavalry, had driven away to Verdun by the Etain road, which
was still comparatively safe, leaving the command of the Metz army to
Marshal Bazaine.
All the roads from Metz were blocked by heavy baggage, and the French
army could not get away from the fortress with expedition and method.
The left wing of the army was ready to march, but not the right; and
so the left had been sent back to its bivouacs until the afternoon.
Thus Bazaine lost much valuable time, and what he lost the “Red
Prince” won. For by 10 a.m. on the morning of the 16th August, the
3rd, or Brandenburg, Army Corps--one of the best and bravest in all
Germany--had come within sight of the Verdun road, marked at intervals
of about a mile by the successive villages (coming from Metz) of
Gravelotte, Rezonville, Vionville, and Mars-la-Tour, which the German
soldiers punningly called _Marche-rétour_ after the French had
been finally beaten back on Metz. It was an excessively hot day, the
sun pouring down its rays on field and wood with almost tropical force;
and by the time the brave Brandenburgers of General von Alvensleben,
who had crossed the Moselle at Novéant the previous night, and resumed
their forced march after a brief snatch of rest--by the time, I say,
they had threaded the wooded glen of Gorze, leading right on to the
Verdun road, they beheld to their great joy that a French force was in
front of them.
After some preliminary skirmishing and wood-fighting, Alvensleben came
to the conclusion that he had to deal with the whole, or at least the
greater part, of Bazaine’s army, which had thus not escaped after all.
But before the arrival of Alvensleben’s Corps on the scene, the action
had been opened by the horse-batteries of Rheinbaden, which, advancing
from Mars-la-Tour towards Vionville, opened a destructive shell-fire on
Murat’s dragoons, who, encamped thereabout, were engaged in cooking. A
regular stampede ensued, the dragoons bolting through the camp. But the
French infantry were quickly on their guard, and opened so heavy a fire
on the audacious German horsemen--who had, of course, followed their
guns--that the latter were soon driven to seek shelter in hollows and
behind copses.
It was at this time that Alvensleben’s Corps made its timely
appearance, and began to enter into action, although it could not doubt
that it had to contend against desperate odds. But it had been sent
forward by its old commander, Prince Frederick Charles--who still wore
the scarlet uniform of one of its Hussar (Zieten) regiments, and hence
was known as the “Red Prince”--to seek out and hold Bazaine at bay,
as a bulldog would a bull, until the arrival of reinforcements; and
the doughty Brandenburgers were ready to resist to the very last man,
if they must die for it. What would their beloved “Red Prince” say if
they allowed the game to escape? Their only chance lay in the hope that
Bazaine would not be able to concentrate all his colossal host and hurl
it against them at once, and that the 10th Prussian Corps, with other
parts of their army which they knew to have been despatched on the same
errand as themselves, would meanwhile hurry up to their assistance and
save them from complete annihilation.
The infantry part of the battle began on some wooded hills above the
village of Gorze, about eight miles south-west of Metz, on a stream
running from Mars-la-Tour into the Moselle at Novéant. “The Prussians,”
said a correspondent of the _Daily News_, “pushed into the woods,
gradually, by dint of numbers and sheer hard fighting, driving the
French skirmishers from them. What happened in this part of the battle
no one knows or can know, as it was entirely in the woods and valleys,
and no general view of it could be obtained. The French position here
was a most formidable one, and the wonder is, not that it took the
Prussians seven hours to take it, but that they ever got it at all.
The woods above Gorze extend to within about two miles of Gravelotte,
behind which village the French lay in the morning, as also at
Rezonville, another village higher up on the road from Metz to Verdun.
Nearly the whole of the Prussian second position was backed by the
thick woods they had got possession of in the morning.
“The plain on which the battle was fought extends from the woods to
the Verdun road, about one mile and a half, and is about three miles
in length. On the French right the ground rises gently, and this was
the key of the position, as the artillery, which could maintain itself
there, swept the whole field. More towards the centre are two small
valleys, one of which, being deep, was most useful to the Prussians in
advancing their troops. In the centre of the field is the road from
Gorze to Rezonville and Gravelotte, joining the main road to Verdun
between the two villages.[7] From the woods to Rezonville, on the
Verdun road, there is no cover, except one cottage midway on the Gorze
road. This cottage was held by a half-battery of French mitrailleuses,
which did frightful execution in the Prussian ranks as they advanced
from the wood.”
The Brandenburg Corps consisted of two Divisions, one (the 5th)
commanded by Stülpnagel, and the other (the 6th) by Buddenbrock.
The latter was on the right of the German line, and it fought its
way to the front with desperate courage, but with varying fortune.
One regiment in particular--the 52nd--lost heavily in recovering
some ground which had been wrested from it by the French. Its first
battalion lost every one of its officers, the colours were passed from
hand to hand as the bearers were successively shot down by the bullets
of the chassepôts, and the commander of the brigade, General von
Döring, fell mortally wounded. General von Stülpnagel rode along the
line of fire to encourage the men, while General von Schwerin collected
the remnants of the troops bereft of their leaders, and held the most
commanding point on the field of battle until reinforced by a portion
of the 10th Corps.
But it was Buddenbrock’s Division, on the left wing, which began to be
so sorely pressed. This Division had been ordered to advance on the
old Roman road, also leading from Metz to Verdun, on the assumption
that Bazaine might choose this as his main line of retreat. But on
approaching Tronville, near Mars-la-Tour, it was quick to see how
matters stood, and then, wheeling to the right, it advanced with the
most death-despising courage against Vionville and Flavigny.
It is impossible in the space at my disposal to describe all the ins
and outs of the tremendous conflict which now ensued; I can only give
its salient points and incidents. When Bazaine had seen the Germans
advance _from the direction of Verdun_, whither he himself was
bound, he muttered to himself: “_C’est une reconnaissance_” (“It
is only a scouting affair”). But he was quickly undeceived, and saw
that he would have to fight and conquer before he could continue his
westward march. The position of the French was one of great advantage,
their left flank being protected by the fortress of Metz and their
right by formidable batteries along the old Roman road, while they
also had at their disposal a very strong force of cavalry (three and
a-quarter Divisions to two German ones), so that they could thus afford
to wait an attack on their centre.
The two Infantry Divisions of the Germans began to get very much mixed;
but, by taking advantage of every rise in the ground for cover, the
regimental officers got their men steadily forward in spite of the
very heavy fire from the French infantry and guns. Flavigny was taken
by assault, and one cannon, with a number of prisoners, fell into the
hands of the brave Brandenburgers. Slowly, but surely, the Prussians
made their way beyond Flavigny and Vionville, and, assisted by a heavy
fire from their artillery, compelled the right wing of the 2nd French
Corps to retire on Rezonville--a movement which turned into a perfect
flight when the French generals Bataille and Valazé had been killed.
To regain the lost ground, the French Cuirassier Guards turned
resolutely on their Prussian pursuers; but their charge was cut short
by the _schnellfeuer_ (or rapid fire) of two companies of the 52nd
Regiment, drawn up in line (like the 93rd Highlanders at Balaclava),
who waited until the rushing horsemen, with their flashing swords and
waving plumes, were within 250 yards, and then poured a murderous
volley into the teeth of their assailants. The latter, parting to
right and left, rushed past and into the fire of more infantry behind,
leaving 243 of their horses and riders lying on the plain. These
French Cuirassiers barely escaped complete annihilation; for scarcely
had they turned to retire when they were set upon by Redern’s Horse
Brigade (of Rheinbaden’s Division), consisting of the 11th Black
Brunswickers--Prussia’s “Death or Glory” boys--and 17th Hussars, who,
emerging from a hollow behind Flavigny, dashed straight at the flying
foe and cut many more of them out of their saddles.
[Illustration: COUNT VON MOLTKE.]
But their pursuit was presently checked by a French battery in front of
Rezonville, which began to blaze away at them; and for this battery,
in turn, they went like the wind. Shots and sabre-cuts are exchanged
in the wild _mêlée_, the gunners are cut down, and only a knot of
mounted French officers remain. One of them--a short, broad-shouldered,
bull-necked man, with drawn sword--is evidently a general of high rank
from the richness of his uniform. As a matter of fact it is Bazaine
himself, the commander-in-chief of the French army, who has placed this
battery in position. A knot of the Black Brunswickers make a dash at
him, but his Staff surrounds him, parrying the sabre-thrusts and cuts
of the Hussars, till at last he is rescued by a timely charge of the
5th French Hussars forming his escort, and many of the Brunswickers
straightway find death as well as glory.
But now the 6th Cavalry Division of the Prussians--Cuirassiers,
Lancers, and Hussars--led on by the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
rushes up in turn to repel this cavalry counterstroke of the French
which had the effect of rescuing Bazaine; and then is seen another
surging mass of mounted combatants mingling in a “murder grim and
great.” Presently the eye is diverted from this dust-enveloped
spectacle by the sight of the red-tunicked Zieten Hussars--so called
after the Great Frederick’s greatest horse-captain--emerging from
the dust-clouds and dashing themselves with a wild cheer at a line
of French infantry--Grenadier Guards--in their front. But at about
500 paces distance they are received with a truly infernal fire from
chassepôt, field-gun, and mitrailleuse, and their colonel--also a Herr
von Zieten--falls dead out of the saddle, while Captain von Grimm
is mortally wounded, and the horse of the adjutant, Lieutenant von
Winterfeldt, is literally torn to pieces by a shell. The bravest men
on earth cannot face such a fire; so the Zieten Hussars wheel round
and rush back to their lines, leaving the ground strewn with scarlet
uniforms, as if it were an English battle-field. The French fire is too
murderous; the Germans must check their advance; the battle for some
little time after becomes an artillery duel.
It was now two o’clock. So far, Alvensleben had skilfully deceived the
enemy, with regard to the slender number of his troops, by incessant
assaults. But the battle was now at a standstill, the battalions
visibly thinned by four hours of the hardest and bloodiest fighting,
while the infantry had almost exhausted their cartridges. There was not
a battalion, not a battery, left in reserve all along the exposed line.
Nevertheless the Brandenburgers would not yield a single inch of the
ground they had so bravely won.
Presently, however, they were threatened with a new danger. Their left
wing at Vionville was very much exposed to the French artillery on the
Roman road, and they were threatened with a turning of this weakest
flank. At the same time Marshal Canrobert, our old Crimean ally,
discerned from his position in the centre the true moment to make a
push for Vionville with all his forces. Ruin or retreat stared the
Germans in the face. It looked as if they were going to be completely
overwhelmed in this part of the field. The reinforcements from the
10th Corps, which they were so anxiously awaiting, had not yet made
their appearance, and the French were assuming an ever more threatening
attitude. What was to be done?
In a hollow behind Vionville was standing Bredow’s heavy Cavalry
brigade, consisting of the 7th Magdeburg Cuirassiers (Prince Bismarck’s
regiment) and 16th Uhlans, or Lancers, both of the Old Mark of
Brandenburg. The former was commanded by Colonel Count von Schmettow,
the latter by Colonel von der Dollen. The regiments were in a reduced
condition, having only three squadrons each instead of five. Before
them were the enemy’s guns, and behind these, dense masses of infantry,
fresh to the front. “That infantry over there must be broken!” said
an aide-de-camp to General von Bredow. “That infantry?” echoed the
General, in some surprise, as his eye ranged along its bristling front
behind the guns. “The fate of the day depends upon it,” was the brief
reply.
[Illustration: “THE PRUSSIANS PUSHED INTO THE WOODS ...
DRIVING THE FRENCH SKIRMISHERS FROM THEM” (_p._
342.)]
That was quite enough. Leading his brigade out of the hollow in column,
he quickly formed it into line of squadrons--the Cuirassiers on the
left and the Uhlans on the right, a little thrown back--and then, with
a “Forward!” “Trot!” “Charge!” while their thrilling clarions rang
out above the din of battle, away dashed the devoted troopers with a
loud and long-continued roar more than a cheer. It is Balaclava over
again. In a few moments they are among the first French guns, sabring
and stabbing the gunners; and then, in the teeth of a frightful hail
of bullets from cannon, musket, and mitrailleuse, they storm across to
the next infantry line, with which they play equal havoc. The second
infantry line was next broken through by the ponderous horsemen, many
of whom had already fallen, and the panic they created by their heroic
_Todtenritt_, or ride to death, even spread to the remoter line of
batteries, which prepared to limber up. In its excitement the brigade,
like the Scots Greys at Waterloo, rode far beyond its mark, and, like
the gallant Greys, it suffered terribly for its excess of ardour.
After charging on thus for about 3,000 paces, it was set upon in the
most furious manner by an overwhelming force of French horsemen--the
cavalry brigades of Murat and Gramont, and the entire division of
Vallabreque. Thinned as Bredow’s ranks now were, and exhausted by their
exertions so far, how were they to cope with such hordes of horsemen?
Yet cope they did with them stoutly and gallantly, like Scarlet’s
Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, riding in and out of the ranks of their
assailants and bearing many of them to the ground.
And as “Scotland for Ever!” was the cry of the “Greys,” both at
Waterloo and Balaclava, so Scotland is also again to the front on this
battle-field of Vionville in the person of one of her adventurous sons.
This is young Campbell of Craignish, in the shire of Argyll, who is
serving as a lieutenant in the Bismarck Cuirassiers, and who, rushing
where the fight is thickest, captures a French eagle after cutting
down its bearer. Then he is set upon by a crowd of French troopers,
who are determined to win this darling badge of honour back. It is the
one French standard which has been captured, and at all costs it must
be recovered. A pistol-shot shatters Lieutenant Campbell’s hand, and
he has to relinquish his trophy. But some of his men, hewing their way
into the circle of his assailants, succeed in cutting him out of the
_mêlée_.
[Illustration:
Battle of Mars-la-Tour or Rezonville.
Aug. 16. 1870. (6. p.m.)]
All that the little remnant of the brigade could now do was to rally
as well as possible and sabre its way back to its own lines. This it
did, pursued by the masses of French horsemen, volleyed at by infantry,
and rained upon by mitrailleuse bullets, but game to the last. Less
than half of the men returned to Flavigny alive, where they were
reorganised into two squadrons--two, instead of six. Of 310 Cuirassiers
who had gone into action, only 104 came out of it; while only 90 Uhlans
answered to the roll-call. Of our Light Brigade charge at Balaclava,
Marshal Canrobert observed that it might be magnificent, but it
certainly was not war. But the charge of Bredow’s Heavy Brigade at
Vionville, which was equally witnessed by Canrobert, was both one and
the other, as the gallant Marshal himself must have been the first to
admit. It had been beautiful to look at, and it had entailed a fearful
sacrifice of life; but it had achieved its object, which was to save
Buddenbrock’s infantry Division and give it breathing-time. The French
had received such a shock from the charge of Bredow’s Brigade that,
for the present, they abandoned their attempt to encircle the German
left and advance on Vionville and Flavigny. The loss of life had been
immense, but it had been justified by the result; and, after all, that
is the main thing in war.
General Henry, of Canrobert’s Corps, afterwards said: “On taking
position with my battery nothing was to be seen of Prussian cavalry.
Where in the world had these Cuirassiers come from? All of a sudden
they were upon my guns like a whirlwind, and rode or cut down all my
men save only one. And this one was saved by Schmettow. The gunner ran
towards the Cuirassiers, crying ‘_Je me rends! je me rends!_’
But the Prussians, not understanding this, were for despatching him,
and were only prevented from doing so by their colonel, Count von
Schmettow.” The man lived to tell the tale, and to receive the golden
medal. General Henry continued: “It was only by the skin of my teeth
that I myself escaped as the mass of furious horsemen swept past
me, trampling down or sabring the gunners. But it was a magnificent
military spectacle, and I could not help exclaiming to my adjutant as
we rode away, ‘_Ah! Quelle attaque magnifique!_’”
On the other hand, Count von Schmettow, who commanded the Cuirassiers,
gave the following account of their “death-ride”:--“Every one of the
gunners of the first battery on which the troopers fell were cut
down or pierced” (the Count himself striking down the captain). “In
approaching the second battery my helmet was pierced by two bullets,
and my orderly officer thrown from his horse, wounded in two places.
Lieutenant Campbell, the Scottish officer, when the French Cuirassiers
fell in turn upon us, seized the eagle of the regiment in his left
hand, which was at once shattered by a bullet, and he was surrounded
by the French horsemen; but some of our own Cuirassiers cut their way
desperately towards him, and saved him. Never shall I forget the moment
when I gave the order to the first trumpeter I met to sound the rally.
The trumpet had been shattered by a shot, and produced a sound which
pierced us to the quick.” This incident has been immortalised by the
great German poet Freiligrath in the following ballad, entitled “The
Trumpeter of Mars-la-Tour”--the spirited English version being by his
daughter, Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker:--
Death and destruction they belched forth in vain,
We grimly defied their thunder;
Two columns of foot and batteries twain--
We rode and cleft them asunder.
With brandished sabres, with reins all slack,
Raised standards, and low-couched lances,
Thus we Uhlans and Cuirassiers wildly drove back,
And hotly repelled their advances.
But the ride was a ride of death and of blood;
With our thrusts we forced them to sever,
But of two whole regiments, lusty and good,
Out of two men, one rose never.
With breast shot through, with brow gaping wide,
They lay pale and cold in the valley,
Snatched away in their youth, in their manhood’s pride--
“Now, Trumpeter, sound to the rally!”
And he took the trumpet, whose angry thrill
Urged us on to the glorious battle,
And he blew a blast--but all silent and still
Was the trump, save a dull hoarse rattle;
Save a voiceless wail, save a cry of woe,
That burst forth in fitful throbbing--
A bullet had pierced its metal through,
For the Dead, the wounded was sobbing!
For the faithful, the brave, for our brethren all,
For the Watch on the Rhine, true-hearted!--
Oh! the sound cut into our inmost soul!--
It brokenly wailed the Departed!
And now fell the night, and we galloped past,
Watch-fires were flaring and flying,
Our chargers snorted, the rain poured fast--
And we thought of the Dead and the Dying!
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING SCOPE OF OPERATIONS OF THE
FRANCO-GERMAN WAR OF 1870–71.
NOTE.--Many battle-fields are called by some
authorities by their German names and by others by
their French names, thus: Spicheren = Forbach; Wörth =
Reichshoffen; Colombey-Nouilly = Borny; Rezonville =
Mars-la-Tour or Vionville; Gravelotte = St. Privat. In all
these names the German precedes the French.]
Then take the following from a correspondent of The _Times_,
who was a witness of the battle:--“The want of infantry caused a
somewhat serious sacrifice of cavalry, which had repeatedly to charge
both infantry and artillery to hold them in check. The men do not
ride particularly well to look at, but the manner in which they ride
into the jaws of death is really quite _à la_ Balaclava. One
regiment--the 7th Cuirassiers--was ordered to charge a battery of
artillery, and actually got into it, one of the first in, I am proud to
say, being a young Englishman, who has taken service in the Prussian
army, and has just got his lieutenancy. It went in some 300 strong,
and what its loss is I tremble to say. When I next saw it, it scarcely
seemed to me a hundred all told. At 2.30 the reserve artillery was
brought up, and the cannonade became heavier than ever. The sun, too,
at this moment seemed to have come nearer to us, as if to see this
fearful butchery of mankind, and the heat became tremendous. Then,
wherever you went, came the pleading cry of ‘Water! water! For pity’s
sake give me water!’ The _Krankenträger_, or bearers of the
sick, had now more than they could do, admirable as the whole machinery
of the corps is worked.... The positions of both the combative forces
were perfectly stationary for about an hour, a sort of duel being
carried on between them, which, though at some distance, was quite
near enough to have fearful results. I saw a whole string of (French)
prisoners brought in of every description. There was the burly giant of
cuirassiers beside the little French liner, the green-jacketed hussar,
and the artilleryman--all chattering away, and seeming to me uncommonly
glad to be out of the affair at any price.
“Seeing some of the infantry engaged on the extreme right, I went
there, and met one regiment just coming out of action to recruit,
being at that moment commanded by a youth of nineteen, having lost
thirteen of its officers since the morning. The number of it was the
52nd, and to the usual inquiring glance that all officers who had not
seen me before threw over my most unregimental attire, I replied by
offering him a drink of some of the dirtiest water I ever saw, which I
had procured from a pond, and which to both of us was better than the
best iced champagne. There was no inquiring then. I was instantly the
best fellow he ever saw, and he told me all about what fun it was to
be in command, and that he was sure to get something now, and that he
meant to have another go in directly, etc. He was the most thoroughly
English-German boy I ever saw. We stood under a tree together, and I
gave him some cigars and left him. Two hours afterwards I saw his dead
body laid out with others in a row, the cigars still stuck between the
buttons of his coat. This one little anecdote--when I say it is but a
fair sample of other regiments--will show how fearful the loss has been
on the Prussian side.”
[Illustration: MITRAILLEUSE (BACK VIEW).]
At a subsequent roll-call near Tronville it was found that the 24th
Regiment had lost 1,000 men and 52 officers, while every officer of the
2nd battalion of the 20th Regiment was killed. It was not till three in
the afternoon that the 3rd Corps, which had been fighting singlehanded
for five hours against a fivefold force, received any efficient
assistance from the 10th Corps, which was now to the Brandenburgers
what Blücher’s army had been to Wellington at Waterloo. It was only the
devotion of the artillery which had meanwhile saved the infantry from
complete annihilation. For, after recovering from the shock of Bredow’s
brigade, the French had again concentrated their attack on the German
left, and compelled it to retire, fighting as it went.
[Illustration: MITRAILLEUSE (FRONT VIEW).]
But presently reinforcements from the 10th Corps began to come up,
and these were followed by the arrival of a man who was a host in
himself--Prince Frederick Charles. His headquarters were away at
Pont-à-Mousson, about fourteen miles to the south; and on hearing
rather late in the day that his own Brandenburgers were up to the hilt
in action and so hotly pressed, he mounted his horse and galloped away,
without ever once drawing rein, to the field of battle. And now let
Mr. Archibald Forbes, the famous war-correspondent, give us one of his
telling battle-pictures:--
“It was barely four o’clock when he” (the “Red Prince”) came galloping
up the narrow hill road from Gorze, the powerful bay he rode all foam
and sweat, sobbing with the swift exertion up the steep ascent, yet
pressed ruthlessly with the spur, staff and escort panting several
horse-lengths in rear of the impetuous foremost horseman. On and up he
sped, craning forward over the saddle-bow to save his horse, but the
attitude suggesting the impression that he burned to project himself
faster than the beast could cover the ground. No wolfskin, but the red
tunic of the Zieten Hussars, clad the compact torso; but the straining
man’s face wore the aspect one associates with that of the berserkar.
The bloodshot eyes had in them a sullen lurid gleam of bloodthirst.
The fierce sun and the long gallop had flushed the face a deep red,
and the veins of the throat stood out. Recalling through the years the
memory of that visage with the lowering brow, the fierce eyes, and
the strong-set jaw, one can understand how to this day the mothers in
the French villages invoke the terrors of ‘Le Prince Rouge,’ as the
Scottish peasants of old used the name of the Black Douglas to awe
their children wherewithal into panic-stricken silence.
“While as yet his road was through the forest, leaves and twigs cut
by bullets showered down upon him. Just as he emerged on the open
upland a shell burst almost among his horse’s feet. The iron-nerved
man gave heed to neither bullet-fire nor bursting shell; no, nor even
to the cheers that rose above the roar of battle from the throats of
the Brandenburgers through whose masses he was riding, and whose chief
he had been for many years. They expected no recognition, for they
knew the nature of the man--knew that, after his fashion, he was the
soldier’s true friend, and also that he was wont to sway the issues of
battle. He spurred onward to Flavigny, away yonder in the front line;
the bruit of his arrival darted along the fagged ranks; and strangely
soon came the recognition that a master-soldier had gripped hold of the
command as in a vice.”
With the arrival of the “Red Prince” and of reinforcements, the battle
now again took the form of a desperate infantry fight. Let me notice
only one of its leading incidents, which was graphically described by
Moltke. When General von Wedell’s Brigade, no more than five battalions
strong, advanced to the attack by way of Tronville, he found himself
in front of the extensive line of the 4th French Brigade. The two
Westphalian regiments advanced steadily under the storm of shell and
mitrailleuse fire until they suddenly reached the edge of a deep
ravine. This, however, they soon crossed; but, after scaling the
opposite bank, they were met by a murderous shower of bullets from the
French infantry, who were everywhere close upon them. Almost every one
of the generals and officers were killed, the remnant of the broken
battalions fell back into the ravine, and 300 men--unable to re-ascend
the steep southern slope after the fatigue of a twenty-four-miles
march, almost at the double--were taken prisoners. Those who escaped
mustered at Tronville around the bullet-riddled colours which Colonel
von Cranach--the only officer who still had a horse under him--brought
back in his hand. Seventy-two officers and 2,542 men were missing out
of 95 officers and 4,546 men--more than a half.
And now there occurred another of those magnificent cavalry charges
in which the battle of Vionville-Mars-la-Tour was so sacrificially
rich. Raising a shout of triumph over the repulse--almost the
annihilation--of Wedell’s brigade, the French infantry advanced at the
double for the purpose of completing the wreck of the German left, and
all seemed lost. But just at this critical moment out rushed the 1st
Dragoon Guards in their sky-blue tunics and dashed straight at the
pursuing foe, who poured into the ranks of their assailants a murderous
bullet-fire, while shrapnel played upon their flanks. But “_immer
vorwärts!_” stormed the devoted dragoons, and plied their sabres on
the French _fantassins_ with terrible effect.
Again this cavalry regiment had achieved its object--which was to
save its own infantry from destruction--but at a frightful cost.
Colonel von Auerswald was mortally wounded, and it was reserved for
the youngest Captain, Prince Hohenlohe, to rally the remnants of the
brave regiment and lead it out of action. Only about a third of the
troopers afterwards answered to the roll-call. The regiment had left
on the field 15 officers, 11 non-commissioned officers, 7 trumpeters,
103 privates, and 250 horses. The importance of this great sacrifice
of life may be gathered from a remark made by the Emperor William
two years later, on the occasion of a visit he paid to the barracks
in Berlin. “Gentlemen,” he said, “but for your gallant attack at
Mars-la-Tour, who knows whether we should have been here to-day?” This
gallant regiment afterwards became the “Queen of England’s Own,” and a
higher military compliment could scarcely have been paid her Majesty by
her German grandson, William II.
Among the ranks of the 1st Dragoon Guards at Mars-la-Tour were the two
sons of Prince Bismarck, riding as private troopers; for this happened
to be the year in which they were doing their compulsory term of
military service. The Chancellor’s sons--one in his twenty-first, the
other only in his eighteenth year--behaved in action with a courage
worthy of their father. The elder, Herbert, had received no fewer than
three shots, one through the front of his tunic, another in his watch,
and the third in the thigh; while his brother William (Count “Bill” he
was always called) had come out of the deadly welter unscathed. “During
the attack at Mars-la-Tour,” said Bismarck once, “Count Bill’s horse
stumbled with him over a dead or wounded Gaul, within fifty feet of
the French square. But after a few moments he shook himself together
again, jumped up, and not being able to mount, led the brown horse back
through a shower of bullets. Then he found a wounded dragoon, whom he
set upon his horse, and, covering himself thus from the enemy’s fire
on one side, he got back to his own people. The horse fell dead after
shelter was reached.”
[Illustration: MARSHAL BAZAINE.]
But the charge of the 1st Dragoon Guards was scarcely over when it
became apparent that the French were preparing for another attack on
the invincible left wing of the Germans by hurling upon it a stupendous
mass of their cavalry. Three regiments of Le Grand’s Division, and
both regiments of the Guards Cavalry Brigade, were seen trotting up to
the west side of the Grayère ravine. Opposite to them stood the whole
of the Prussian cavalry, concentrated to the south of Mars-la-Tour,
in the first line being the 13th Uhlans, 4th Cuirassiers, and 19th
Dragoons, and behind them the 16th Dragoons and 10th Hussars. The
13th Uhlans dashed straight against the foremost French cavalry line;
but the regiment had become somewhat disordered, and the French
Hussars rode right through it. Then, however, the 10th Hussars turned
up for the second time, and repulsed the enemy’s cavalry. The two
evenly-balanced masses of horsemen rushed upon each other in an awful
cavalry _mêlée_. But, as a mighty cloud of dust concealed the
ensuing hand-to-hand encounter of 5,000 men swaying to and fro, it was
impossible to follow with minuteness the incidents of the conflict.
Fortune gradually decided in favour of the Prussians, for, man to man,
they were heavier than their opponents. General Montaigu was taken
prisoner, severely wounded, and General Le Grand fell while leading his
Dragoons to the assistance of the Hussars. This, the greatest cavalry
combat of the war, had the effect of making the French right wing give
up all attempts to act on the offensive. But out of this gigantic
combat of horsemen the victorious Prussians had again emerged with
great loss; and among those who had fallen was Colonel Finckenstein of
the 2nd Dragoon Guards, who had been the midnight bearer of Moltke’s
momentous message from Gitschin to Königinhof during the Bohemian
campaign of 1866.
Darkness was now approaching, and the battle had practically been
won by the Germans. The troops were utterly exhausted, most of the
ammunition spent, while the horses had been saddled for fifteen hours
without anything to eat. Some of the batteries could only be moved at
a slow pace, and the nearest Prussian troops on the left bank of the
Moselle were a day’s march off. Nevertheless the impetuous Red Prince,
desiring to increase the moral impression of the day’s endeavours, and,
if possible, destroy altogether the internal cohesion of the French,
ordered a general advance against their position. But the poor Prussian
troops were too utterly fagged out by their incessant exertions during
the day to do much more than make a formal response to this cruel and
unnecessary command; and, again, they suffered great loss without
inflicting a corresponding one on the French.
Fighting did not entirely cease till ten o’clock--that is to say, the
bloody battle had lasted for twelve long hours, entailing a loss of
about 16,000 officers and men on either side. But the Germans had won
the battle. For they had achieved their object--which was to prevent
the escape of Bazaine. Yet, in his despatch to the Emperor, Bazaine had
made bold to assert that “the enemy, beaten, retreated on all points,
leaving us masters of the battle-field.” Moltke, on the other hand,
wrote that “the troops, worn out by a twelve-hours’ struggle, encamped
on the victorious but bloody field immediately opposite the French
lines.” And Moltke wrote the truth. Bazaine had evidently learned the
habit of lying about his reverses from the Great Napoleon, and even
from Napoleon the Little.
[Illustration: CHARGE OF THE 16TH UHLANS (_p._
346).]
Yet Mars-la-Tour was only the prologue to the still bloodier and more
decisive drama of Gravelotte two days later. “The battle of Vionville,”
said the Emperor William II. once, “is without a parallel in military
history, seeing that a single Army Corps, about 20,000 men strong,
hung on to and repulsed an enemy more than five times as numerous
and well equipped. Such was the glorious deed that was done by the
Brandenburgers, and the Hohenzollerns will never forget the debt they
owe to their devotion.”
Several years later I visited the field of battle just described.
Leaving Gorze, with its gilded statue of _la Sainte Vierge_ on
the brow of a beetling cliff, I passed up the steep and wooded defile
through which the Brandenburgers pressed on the 16th of August,
and here the first affecting relics of the bloody strife appeared.
In a little, lonely green valley skirted by the road, a few grassy
mounds luxuriant with the crimson poppy and the wild fern, each
being surmounted by a white wooden cross, told where the _tapfere
Krieger_ began to drop from the bullets of the chassepôt. But when
the summit is reached, what a touching sight! The rising plateau on
every side is dotted with white crosses, which thicken, thicken,
thicken as you advance, and the not far distant horizon edge is
bristling with obelisks and stone memorials of more pretentious and
lasting form, making the whole region look like one colossal cemetery.
An involuntary sadness comes over the traveller, and when approaching
every tomb and commemorative tablet he feels instinctively moved by
the mute appeal contained in the inscription: “_Sta, viator, heroen
calcas!_” The graceful obelisk, with its lengthy death-roll of
officers and men, the railing-encircled and ivy-grown mound looking
like a well-filled family vault, the silver-edged cross still hung with
withered oaken wreaths and immortelles, the slender column snapped
in twain to indicate the fate of hopeful youth suddenly cut off, the
neatly-trimmed sepulture and the graveyard plot of flowers--conceive
all these objects scattered over the summit of a bare plateau facing
northwards to the west of Metz, and you will have some idea of the
scene.
On an eminence behind Vionville, which formed the centre of the
German position, is a pyramidal kind of monument of roughly-hewn
stone, surmounted by the Hohenzollern eagle, and surrounded by a
railing hung with shield-like tablets bearing the multitudinous names
of those officers of the 5th Division who fell on that fatal day.
The reverse and coverless side of the plateau--densely dotted with
mounds and monuments testifying to the terrible losses of the brave
Brandenburgers--leads you down to the village of Vionville, where
tombstones on the public highway point to where the dust of Gaul and
German is commingled in the reconciliation of death. “_Mit Gott für
König und Vaterland_” is the recorded war-cry on the monument of
one Teutonic soldier; while at its side there stands a marble cross,
tastefully wreathed with flowers, to the memory of one brave and noble
young lieutenant of the Empire who died on the field of honour with
these words, preserved in golden letters, on his lips: “_Dites à
ma mère_,” he cried, “_que je meurs en soldat et en chrétien.
Marchez en avant!_”--“Tell my mother that I died like a soldier and
a Christian. Forward!”
[Illustration: FRENCH UNIFORMS IN 1870.]
[Illustration:
THE RETREAT OF CORUNNA
BY D. H. PARRY
SIR JOHN MOORE]
East of the kingdom of Portugal lie the great plains of Leon, bordered
north and south by mighty mountain ranges; and in the short December
days of 1808, when wintry winds swept howling through the passes and
across the level land, and the red roofs of Salamanca were covered with
snow, a small British army, some 23,000 strong, was preparing to assist
Spain against Napoleon.
Led by the gallant Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore, and wearing the
red cockade out of compliment to the nation, we had been received with
great enthusiasm, and were given to understand that the country burned
with patriotic zeal and had large forces, perfectly equipped; but
this was soon found to be untrue, for, while the Spaniards were ready
for any amount of castanet playing and looking-on, the English were
expected to do their fighting for them.
Their magnificent army dwindled upon investigation to half its supposed
numbers, and, with a few honourable exceptions, proved itself one of
the wretchedest collections of ragamuffins of which history bears any
record, so that Sir John Moore found himself in as awkward a position
as ever fell to the lot of a British general. Nevertheless, in spite
of the severity of the weather, the impertinent meddling of Mr. Frere,
the English Minister at Madrid, the poor equipment of our troops and
the absence of Spanish aid, we marched boldly out of Salamanca on the
11th December to attack Soult in the north, and afterwards succour the
capital if that should be practicable.
It was a brave little army, and its doings are deeply carved on the
pillar of British fame. There were five cavalry regiments, all Hussars,
dashing fellows in braided pelisses, and mounted on active nagtailed
horses: viz., the 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th, with the 3rd of the King’s
German Legion.
Artillery, Engineers, Waggon Train, and a detachment of the
scarlet-coated Staff Corps filed out across the plain, white and
monotonous under a gloomy sky.
Two battalions of the 1st Guards and thirty-two of the Line completed
our force, including amongst others such splendid regiments as the
Royal Scots, the 4th, 5th, and the 9th, nicknamed the “Holy Boys,”
because they afterwards sold their Bibles for wine; the Welsh Fusiliers
and 28th “Slashers,” the Black Watch, the Fighting 43rd, the 71st
Glasgow Highland Light Infantry, now the strictest regiment in the
service, the Cameron Highlanders, and the green 95th Rifles.
* * * * *
General Baird was hastening from Corunna to join us, and we had
already advanced several marches towards the enemy, when a blustering
French aide-de-camp got himself murdered in a village; his papers were
purchased for twenty dollars, and Sir John Moore learned for the first
time the true extent of the overwhelming odds against him.
Madrid, which was to have made such a brave defence, had held out
_one_ day; the shops were open and the people tranquil; Toledo,
Ocaña, and the whole of La Manche were in the hands of the French; a
strong force was about to march on Badajoz, and the Emperor Napoleon
was reviewing 60,000 veteran troops, including part of his famous
Imperial Guard, at the capital.
Two hundred and fifty-five thousand men were mustering to oppose us;
their cavalry alone exceeded our entire army by 12,000, and to linger
on the plains with such a horde closing round us would have been
absolute madness. There was nothing for it but to show a bold front
to Soult, and gain the sea with as much honour as possible before the
others could come up; and though the word “retreat” has an unpleasant
sound to English ears, when it is attended with as great a display of
heroism as upon that unfortunate occasion, it becomes a page in British
annals which we could ill afford to spare.
* * * * *
The Reserve, on whom, with the cavalry, most of the fighting devolved
until the army reached Corunna, was formed of the 20th and 52nd, and
the 28th, 91st, and 95th, under Generals Anstruther and Disney. First
blood was drawn at Rueda, where the 18th Hussars took fifty prisoners,
and the same evening the band of the 7th Hussars played the Reserve
into Toro, on the Douro.
Paget, afterwards Marquis of Anglesea, whose brother, Lord Edward,
was in command of the Reserve, marched the 10th and 15th Hussars on a
bitter and intensely dark night to Sahagun, arriving in the grey dawn
to find the place full of French cavalry. Without a moment’s hesitation
the 15th charged and overthrew them, taking thirteen officers and a
hundred and fifty-four men in twenty minutes.
The 15th was the Duke of Cumberland’s regiment, and one of the most
expensive in the army.
Napoleon heard of our advance on the same day that Sahagun was fought,
and, leaving 10,000 men to overawe Madrid, marched with 50,000 to cross
the Guadarama range.
Pushing on in the depth of winter--the Spaniards forced to cut roads
through the snow for them--they reached the passes, and toiled up for
twelve hours without the advance guard being able to gain the summit;
but so tremendous was the wind that the Emperor had to dismount and
struggle forward on foot, holding on to the arms of Marshals Lannes and
Duroc, the staff following linked together, with heads bent before the
driving snow.
Half-way up they stopped, the generals exhausted in their heavy
jack-boots, and bestriding some brass guns, Napoleon and his officers
in that manner arrived at the top, seeing through the whirling flakes
the plains of Leon far below them.
Scrambling down, he hurried the jaded troops ten and twelve leagues a
day until he came within three miles of the river Esla--only to find
that we had already crossed it, and had had two days’ rest at Benevente.
Furious at our escape, he sent his favourite Chasseurs-à-Cheval of
the Guard in hot pursuit, with a support of infantry; but without
waiting for the foot-soldiers, the gallant Charles Lefebvre Desnouettes
splashed through the fords with his horsemen into the open fields full
of camp-followers, and drove our pickets back towards the town.
Six hundred of those splendid troopers, in green jackets and red
pelisses, careered magnificently over the trampled snow; but behind
some straggling houses Paget was waiting with the 10th Hussars, until
they should have got sufficiently forward.
Then a line of blue and silver, and curving sabres and brown busbies,
tore out of the concealment, gathered up the retiring pickets, and
rushed upon the Chasseurs. There was slashing and shouting and riding
down, and the French squadrons returned through the fords again at full
gallop, leaving fifty-five killed and wounded, and seventy prisoners.
They re-formed on their own side, and for a moment it was thought they
would charge us, but a couple of guns put them to the right-about, and
their leader remained in our hands.
Private Levi Grisdale, of the 10th, saw him riding for the river, in a
green frock, with a hat and feather, and, spurring after him, dodged a
pistol-ball and cut him over the left cheek.
Grisdale was promoted, although the 3rd Germans claimed that a private
of theirs, named Bergmann, had taken the general; but the uniforms
of the two regiments were very similar then, both being in blue with
yellow facings and white braid, and it is difficult to distinguish
things accurately in the hurry of a combat.
Desnouettes lived at Malvern and Cheltenham, where he made many
friends, until May, 1812, when, breaking his parole, he escaped to
France, only to be taken again at Waterloo, where Grisdale also fought
as a sergeant, and the unlucky general was eventually drowned off the
Irish coast in 1822.
At Benevente the 3rd Hussars alone lost forty-six men and twenty-two
horses, with forty-seven more wounded; but we had checked the Guard
and shown our teeth; and when the night winds were howling among the
porcelain friezes and broken porphyry columns of the old castle on the
hill, we withdrew cautiously in a thick fog and continued our retreat.
Captain Darby and seventeen privates of the 10th died of fatigue during
the march to Bembibre, and they shot sixty horses that could go no
farther.
Deep snow lay on the ground, rutted and trampled by the passage of
the guns and bullock carts; this had frozen like iron, and then been
concealed by another snowstorm, so that men and horses stumbled and
lamed themselves at every stride.
One officer lost a boot among the ruts on Christmas morning, and
marched all day without it!
Every regiment had received a new blanket per man and a hundred and
fifty new soles and heels, but the execrable roads quickly wore out the
leather.
Astorga was found to be full of miserable Spanish soldiers, who had
eaten up most of the stores, and whose condition was summed up in their
own words: “Very hungry--very sick--very dry!”
[Illustration:
BATTLE OF
CORUNNA.
JAN. 16, 1809.]
A number of women and children followed the army, and their sufferings
were truly terrible. Soldiers began to fall out, unable to keep up
with the columns, and the rear-guard passed scores of poor wretches
frozen to death in the snow, while at Bembibre, where there were
large wine-vaults, discipline began to relax its hold, and shameful
drunkenness stained the hitherto excellent record of the troops.
Meanwhile, Napoleon made the most strenuous efforts to overtake us.
He insisted on marching from Benevente to Astorga in one short winter
day, a distance of thirty odd miles, under an icy rain, the infantry
being obliged to strip five or six times and scramble through the
streams, holding their clothing and ammunition above the water.
So exhausted was his army that three veteran grenadiers of the Old
Guard blew out their brains, unable to go on, and knowing that the
sullen peasants in their sheepskin _capas_ would murder them if
they lagged behind.
Napoleon was much affected, but he still pushed forward, and late at
night, drenched to the skin, and attended only by Lannes, the staff,
and a hundred Chasseurs, he dashed into Astorga. Had Paget, who was
only six miles off, learned this, he might have swooped down with the
Hussars and changed the future fate of Europe by capturing the Emperor
himself. Napoleon had marched two hundred miles in ten days with 50,000
troops in the depth of winter, but for all his haste, we had eluded him
and gained the mountains, and at Astorga the Emperor handed the reins
to Soult, reviewed his legions, and returned to Valladolid, leaving the
Marshal Duke of Dalmatia to drive us into the sea.
The features of the retreat now underwent a change: our columns began
to ascend into a wild and dreary region, the road winding along the
mountain sides halfway between the summits and the rushing water in the
valleys below.
Here and there a solitary cottage showed its slate roof; at intervals
the weary leagues were marked on stone pillars by the way; the droning
hum of the axles of the bullock carts could be heard for a great
distance, and slanting rain beat on the tired stragglers, whose numbers
were by this time terribly increased.
Bembibre, when the Reserve entered it on New Year’s Day, was full
of drunken soldiers from Baird’s divisions; officers and men grew
careless, and thought only of themselves, and it was found necessary to
flog and hang to restore some semblance of order, with an active enemy
on our very heels.
The light troops had marched for Vigo, whither Sir John Moore intended
to follow, but at Orense a message overtook them, bidding them send the
transports round to Corunna, and Captain Heisse, after a hard gallop
through the snow, was just in time to despatch the vessels before an
unfavourable wind set dead into the harbour mouth.
At Calcabellos, while Lord Edward Paget was haranguing the Reserve on
the subject of the growing insubordination, two plunderers were caught
in the act. The troops were instantly formed in hollow square round a
tree to witness their execution, when a hussar dashed in with news that
the enemy were upon us.
“I don’t care if the entire French cavalry are here,” roared the
general; “I’ll hang these scoundrels!”
They were lifted in the arms of the provost-marshal’s men, the ropes
were adjusted, and in another moment they would have dangled in
mid-air, when a second hussar came up, and carbine shots rang out from
the 3rd Germans at the bridge.
[Illustration: “A HUSSAR DASHED IN WITH THE NEWS THAT THE
ENEMY WERE UPON US!” (_p._ 356).]
“Soldiers,” cried Lord Edward, “if I pardon these men will you
promise better behaviour for the future?”
“Yes,” was the unanimous reply.
“Say it again!”
“Yes, yes!” from a thousand throats.
“A third time!”
It was done with a cheer, the men were released, and the troops went
off at the double towards the firing.
Colbert attacked us there with a large body of cavalry, and our
Rifles, posted in a vineyard, emptied a score of saddles as the French
dragoons and light horse tore up the road to the bridge-head. Colbert
was not only a splendid soldier, but a good man, in an army where,
unfortunately, virtue was at a low ebb, and two days before, at the
review, Napoleon had said to him, “General, you have proved in Egypt,
Italy, and Germany that you are one of my bravest warriors: you shall
soon receive the reward due to your brilliant successes.”
“Make haste, sire,” replied Colbert, “for, while I am not yet thirty, I
feel that I am already old.”
At Calcabellos, an Irishman of the 95th, named Tom Plunkett, ran out
and threw himself on his back in the snow. Passing the sling of his
rifle over his foot, he sighted and fired, and Colbert fell from his
horse. Jumping up Plunkett cast about and reloaded, firing again and
killing the aide-de-camp who had rushed to his general’s assistance,
after which the lucky marksman rejoined his comrades in safety (only
to be discharged some years afterwards, without promotion, a victim to
drink, that curse of our Peninsular armies).
Wherever the danger was pressing, Sir John Moore was to be
found--nothing could exceed his personal exertions on the retreat.
At Villa Franca, romantically situated in a deep valley, with the
pointed turrets of a Dominican convent rising against a background of
bare hills, and where the ferocious Duke of Alva once had a castle,
the army committed great disorders, and Sir John had a man shot in the
market-place as a warning to the others.
Although we checked the enemy wherever the rear-guard faced about, the
march had not been resumed long when their horsemen were again riding
among the stragglers, cutting them down without mercy--man, woman, and
child!
The 28th, with its brown calfskin knapsacks, taken from the French
stores in Egypt, toiled over the snow, and the handsomest man of the
Grenadier company, named McGee, fell lame and dropped behind, his
comrades carrying his pack and musket for him, but two French troopers
came up, and, unarmed as he was, slashed him to pieces almost in sight
of his company.
Misery and disorder increased; the cavalry were sent on ahead, with
the exception of a part of the 3rd Hussars, and the rear-guard fought
every yard of the way until they reached Lugo, where Sir John drew up
in order of battle, and discipline was again restored.
All day, in the drenching rain, we waited for the French to attack, but
Soult was too wary; and at night, leaving the fires burning, the army
continued its retreat, gaining several hours’ start before the enemy
became aware of it.
The pay-waggons, heavily laden with silver dollars, were abandoned, as
the oxen were quite used up, and Lieutenant Bennet stood with a drawn
pistol and orders to shoot any soldier who lingered there.
Hugo, of the 3rd Hussars, gave an equal proportion to each man of his
detachment, and it was carried in their corn-sacks to Corunna and
delivered to the Commissariat; but the rest--£25,000 worth--was pitched
over into the valley, the barrels breaking on the rocks and sending a
silver cascade far down beyond the reach of the marching army.
The stragglers crowded round and fought for the money spilled on the
road, one woman--wife of Sergeant Maloney, of the 52nd--making her
fortune for life; but, stepping from the boat on to a transport at
Corunna, she slipped, and the weight of the stolen treasure took her to
the bottom of the harbour, never to rise again!
While the miserable wretches were scrambling in the snow, the enemy
came up and slaughtered without mercy, stopping in their turn to gather
up the spoil, and giving us a little breathing-time.
Farther on we met some Spanish troops discharging their muskets
briskly, as though skirmishing, and it was feared that the French
had intercepted us, but on getting closer we were told that the
contemptible riff-raff were “_only firing to warm their hands_!”
At Lugo Sir John Moore had issued an order in which he said: “It is
evident that the enemy will not fight this army, notwithstanding the
superiority of his numbers, but will endeavour to harass and tease it
on its march.... The army has now eleven leagues to march; the soldiers
must make an exertion to complete them. The rear-guard cannot stop, and
those that fall behind must take their fate!”
Many of the troops were now barefooted, and all were more or less in
rags. Far too many camp-followers had been allowed to accompany us, and
all were starving in a wild and sterile country, where a yellow fowl
was often the only result of a plundered cottage.
The 28th found nothing at Villa Franca but one piece of salt pork,
which Major Browne tied to his holsters--to lose it in the night-march
to Herrerias.
The same officer, on embarking, exchanged his horse for a pig, but in
the confusion the major was shipped on board one transport and the pig
on to another!
Small wonder that the “Slashers,” on finding some Spaniards frozen to
death among the _débris_ of two bread-waggons, moved the corpses
to hunt ravenously for the crusts among which they were lying!
At length it was the custom to stop all stragglers and take from them a
proportion of the food they carried, and by that means they collected
sufficient to serve out a ration to every man of the rear-guard!
At Nogales--where the country reminds one of Glencoe--a private who
had been sent on ahead found a quantity of potatoes, which he boiled,
and as the 28th filed past the house he distributed three or four to
officer and man alike, without distinction; and at the same place some
officers of the “Slashers” went into a cottage where there was a fire,
and where they stripped to dry their clothes.
A Spanish general was sleeping snugly in an inner room, well wrapped in
furs, and his two aides-de-camp were standing by the fire.
One of the “Slashers” laid his valuable watch down, and, returning from
the door, where he had been directing some stragglers, found that one
of the aides-de-camp had walked off with it!
“I cannot be held responsible for all the people about me,” was the
grumpy remark of the Spanish general. What could be expected from an
army whose officers were thieves?
The last halt was made at Betanzos, and while the rear-guard covered
the partial destruction of the bridge there, the army marched in column
to Corunna, only to find the Atlantic roaring on the rocks, but not a
sail in sight!
The French were in great force at Betanzos, and furious at our
continued escape. One sergeant charged _alone_ in advance of his
squadron, to the centre of the bridge, but a private of the 28th, named
Thomas Savage, stepped out and shot him, securing his cloak before the
others came up.
The Engineers bungled the bridge, and blew up one of their officers
with it, while we had to fall back on Corunna before it was properly
destroyed.
Fine weather now dried our rags. On the 11th January the Guards were
quartered in the town, the Reserve near St. Lucia, and the other
regiments posted in strong positions. Vast stores were meanwhile
destroyed in Corunna, and two hundred and ninety horses of the German
Legion shot in the arsenal square at St. Lucia, amid the tears of the
brave troopers.
The 12th proved damp and foggy, and no trace of the fleet could be
seen. The French still held back, our officers exchanging pot-shots
with them until Paget put a stop to it; and on the 13th a terrific
explosion from 4,000 powder-barrels caused something very like a panic
in both armies. Corunna was shaken, its windows smashed, and a rain of
white ashes fell for a considerable time.
At last, on the afternoon of the 14th, the transports hove in sight,
and as soon as they were anchored we began to embark the wounded and
the guns, the cavalry being ordered to ship thirty horses per regiment
and shoot the rest as there was not time to get them on board with a
heavy sea running. The 15th Hussars brought four hundred to Corunna,
and landed in England with thirty-one! The 10th--the Prince of Wales’s
particular regiment, and the first in our service to wear the showy
Hungarian dress, which its hussar troop had adopted in 1803 and the
entire corps two years later--began the campaign with six hundred
handsome chargers and took thirty home again.
The greatest confusion took place among the camp-followers, but by
degrees the embarkation proceeded, our gallant tars going in some cases
two days without food in their noble efforts to help us.
There was a little skirmishing, but no very decided movement, until the
16th--in fact, French officers were seen picking up shells on the sands
at low water within range of our muskets--but at last the infantry
alone remained on shore, and the 28th, among others, was ordered to
fall in at two o’clock on the 16th to march down to the boats.
Scarcely had they mustered when, a violent cannonade being opened
upon us, and a forward movement being observed, they went off at the
double towards the enemy again. They had done eighty miles in the last
twelve days, standing several nights under arms in the snow; they had
repulsed the French seven times, and the 28th alone had lost more than
two hundred men; yet, when the battle of Corunna began, the Reserve had
fewer men missing than any other division!
[Illustration: CORUNNA.]
Some of the generals wished Moore to come to terms with Soult, but
nothing was farther from the brave Scotchman’s thoughts.
Circumstances had compelled us to retreat, but it was no part of a
British soldier’s training to shirk a battle at the last moment;
consequently, the low hills behind Elvina were soon echoing to the
rattle of musketry as our black-gaitered infantry opened fire on the
French columns.
There was little or no manœuvring during the engagement: Soult advanced
in three masses, driving our pickets out of the village of Elvina.
Baird, of Seringapatam fame, held the right of our line, Sir John Hope
formed the centre and left with his division, while Paget and Fraser
were in reserve before Corunna: 14,500 men in all, facing 20,000.
Sir John Moore sent the 50th and 42nd to retake Elvina, which was
rendered formidable by sunken lanes and stone walls, but after a brave
scrimmage which lasted half an hour, the French were driven out and the
Guards advanced to take up the position originally occupied by the two
regiments.
The Black Watch having exhausted their cartridges fell back, thinking
the Guards were marching to support them, and the enemy returned in
force and entered the village again.
Sir John rode up to the 42nd, and learning that their ammunition
was expended, said, “You have still your bayonets, my brave
Highlanders--remember Egypt!” and with a yell the Black Watch rushed
forward once more.
While Sir John Moore was watching the struggle, a round shot struck
him on the left breast and dashed him out of the saddle; but without a
groan, he sat up, resting on his arm and for a moment gazed intently at
the Highlanders driving the French steadily back.
Then, as a happy look came into his handsome face, the staff crowded
round him and saw the shocking state of his wound. The shoulder was
completely shattered, and the left arm hung by a piece of skin; the
ribs over the heart were broken and bared of flesh, while the muscles
of the breast were torn into shreds and strips, among which the hilt of
his sword had got entangled.
“I had rather it should go out of the field with me,” said the dying
hero, as Hardinge made an attempt to disengage it.
Men of the 42nd and Guards carried him tenderly in a blanket, taking an
hour to reach Corunna, the general frequently making them halt and turn
him round.
Like Wolfe at Quebec, his anxiety was for the success of the army, and
like Wolfe his last moments were cheered by the knowledge that we had
beaten the French.
Soult had fallen back, General Baird was badly wounded, and Hope
carried out Sir John’s original plans for the embarkation.
“I hope the people of England will be satisfied,” said the dying
man. “I hope my dear country will do me justice. Oh, Anderson!” he
whispered to his friend, “you will see my friends at home; tell them
everything--my mother----” then he broke down.
He was believed to be devotedly attached to Lady Hester Stanhope,
eldest daughter of the third Earl Stanhope, famous alike for his
eccentricity and his study of the electric fluid; and Moore’s last
recorded words were in remembrance of her, addressed to her brother,
his aide-de-camp.
[Illustration: DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE.]
He passed away very quietly in his forty-eighth year, and England lost
one of her most chivalrous soldiers.
His burial, in the citadel at night by some men of the 9th, has been
described in a poem which does immortal honour to the Irish clergyman
who penned it, and the gallant enemy flew the tricolour halfmast
high on the citadel and fired a salute over his grave, Marshal Soult
afterwards erecting a tomb to his memory.
Our loss at Corunna was 800, the French, from their own accounts, 3,000.
Six cannon, 3-pounders, sent on without Sir John’s orders, had been
abandoned during the retreat, and nearly 4,000 men left their bones
to whiten the plains of Leon and the rugged roads of Gallicia; but
the retreat won praise from Wellington and Napoleon alike, and not a
regimental colour remained in the enemy’s hands.
The 95th was the last regiment to enter Corunna, the 23rd the last to
leave it.
Great confusion existed on board the vessels, and an attempt to
transfer the men to their respective ships was prevented by the enemy
opening fire from St. Lucia. The cables were cut, and the three hundred
transports put to sea on the 17th, convoyed by several men-of-war, the
old _Victory_ amongst them, and after cruising about in the offing
for two days, they put helm up for England, where the army landed in a
wretched condition.
All the clothing of the Rifles was burned behind Hythe barracks, in a
state that spoke volumes for the misery undergone.
The _Smallbridge_ went ashore near Ushant, and over two hundred of
the German Legion were drowned. Then the newspapers began to raise a
disgraceful outcry against the whole expedition, and the good name of
Sir John Moore was placed under a cloud by men whose information was
false, and whose opinion was of no more value than a spent cartridge.
We have learned the true state of things since then, and ample justice
has been rendered to Moore’s noble character in the subsequent
histories of that glorious period.
The last survivor of Corunna, Thomas Palmer, of the 23rd, died at the
great age of a _hundred_, and was buried at Weston-super-Mare,
with full military honours, in April, 1889--_eighty years_ after
his chief was laid to rest “with his martial cloak around him.”
[Illustration: THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
“We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeams’ misty light,
And the lanterns dimly burning.”
REV. CHARLES WOLFE.]
[Illustration:
NAVARINO
BY HERBERT RUSSELL]
The immediate causes which led to the battle of Navarin, or Navarino,
are of a romantic and dramatic character. On the 6th of July, 1826--the
Greeks having risen in revolt against the oppression of the Turks
in 1820--a treaty had been signed in London on the part of Great
Britain, France, and Russia, having for its object the pacification
of the Levant by intervention between Turkey and Greece. Through the
indiscretion of some unknown official the treaty found its way to the
_Times_, which published it in its issue of July 12th, 1826--six
days after its signature. It thus became fully known to all concerned
before the official instructions which it rendered necessary could be
delivered. As a result, Sir Edward Codrington, the British admiral in
the Mediterranean, found himself in a situation of perplexity, and was
directed to consult with the French and Russian admirals, and arrange a
plan of action with them.
The instructions of the three admirals in question definitely required
an armistice between Turkey and Greece, and limited the period for its
acceptance to one month. If the result of negotiations should be--as
was, of course, anticipated--acceptance by Greece and rejection by
Turkey, the admirals were instructed to enter into friendly relations
with the former country, and unite their fleets to prevent all Turkish
or Egyptian reinforcements or warlike stores from being transported
for employment against the Greeks. Each of the allied admirals had
particular instructions to take care, if possible, that any measures
they might adopt in restraining the Ottoman navy should not wear the
aspect of open hostilities. They were directed to endeavour to carry
their arguments rather by a display of force than by the employment of
it. This, briefly, is a review of the situation whose climax was the
battle of Navarino.
Sir Edward Codrington, the British admiral in the Levant, as we
have already said, found himself in a situation of perplexity on
the publication of the treaty. The French squadron was at Milo, and
the Russians had not yet arrived. But with that instant resolution
which has always been such a fine characteristic of the British naval
officer’s spirit, Sir Edward determined to take the initiative, and
with three sail of the line he placed himself before Hydra to oppose,
“when all other means are exhausted, by cannon shot” the whole of the
Turkish and Egyptian fleet. The “general order,” which he issued to all
his captains on September 8th, 1827, well illustrates the policy which
the English commander-in-chief resolved to adopt.
“You are aware,” he writes from on board the _Asia_, “that a
treaty has been signed between England, France, and Russia for the
pacification of Greece. A declaration of the decision of the Powers
has been presented to the Porte, and a similar declaration has been
presented to the Greeks. The armistice proposed to each, in these
declarations, has been acceded to by the Greeks, whilst it has been
refused by the Turks. It becomes, therefore, the duty of the allied
naval forces to enter, in the first place, on friendly relations with
the Greeks; and, next, to intercept every supply of men, arms, etc.,
destined against Greece, and coming either from Turkey or Africa in
general. The last measure is that which requires the greatest caution,
and, above all, a complete understanding as to the operations of the
allied naval forces. Most particular care is to be taken that the
measures adopted against the Ottoman navy do not degenerate into
hostilities. The formal intention of the Powers is to interfere as
conciliators, and to establish, in fact, at sea the armistice which the
Porte would not concede as a right. Every hostile proceeding would be
at variance with the pacific ground which they have chosen to take, and
the display of forces which they have assembled is destined to cause
that wish to be respected; but they must not be put into use, unless
the Turks persist in forcing the passages which they have intercepted.
All possible means should be tried, in the first instance, to prevent
the necessity of proceeding to extremities; but the prevention of
supplies, as before mentioned, is to be enforced, if necessary, and
when all other means are exhausted, by cannon shot. In giving you this
instruction as to the duty which I am directed to perform, my intention
is to make you acquainted thoroughly with the object of our Government,
that you may not be taken by surprise as to whatever measures I may
find it necessary to adopt. You will still look to me for further
instructions as to the carrying any such measures into effect.”
On September 11th Sir Edward Codrington, with the _Genoa_
and _Albion_, arrived off Navarino, and beheld the whole of
the expedition from Alexandria at anchor in the harbour, where it
had arrived two days previously. The English squadron hovered off
this place for above a week, awaiting the coming of the allies.
On the 19th September Sir Edward Codrington notified the admiral
commanding the Ottoman force in the port of Navarino that he would
be prevented--by extreme measures, if necessary--from attacking
the Greeks. Notwithstanding, on the 21st a division of the Turkish
expedition got under way, and came out of the harbour. Their intentions
were clear, and the British ships cleared for action. What the issue
of this incident might have been it is difficult to say, had not the
sails of a strange squadron appeared upon the horizon to windward
whilst the English and Turks were still manœuvring near the land. The
vessels turned out to be the French fleet, under Admiral de Rigny, and
whatever might have been the intentions of the commander of the Ottoman
expedition, it retired back into the harbour immediately the strangers
were near enough for the French colours to be visible.
By the arrival of Admiral de Rigny at Navarino, not only was Sir
Edward Codrington’s force largely augmented, but he was relieved of
his isolated and critical responsibility by the certainty of a joint
action in whatever steps might now be taken. The Russian squadron
had not yet appeared; but the British and French admirals at once
commenced proceedings by interviewing Ibrahim Pacha, the commander
of the Turkish forces at Navarino, and clearly impressing upon him
the determination of the allied Courts to carry out the spirit of the
treaty, and the necessity imposed on them (the admirals) to enforce
the armistice referred to in their instructions. The interview was
a long one. Ibrahim said that the admirals must be aware he was a
soldier like themselves, and that it was as imperative for him to obey
orders as for them; that his instructions were to attack Hydra, and
that he must put them into execution, it being for him merely to act
and not to negotiate. The admirals replied that they quite sympathised
with the feelings of a brave man under such circumstances, and that
they congratulated him upon having a force opposed to him which it
was impossible to resist. They reminded him that if he put to sea in
defiance of their amicable warning they must carry their instructions
into execution, and that if he resisted by force the total destruction
of his fleet must follow, which, they added archly and significantly,
was an act of madness the Grand Seignior could not applaud. Amidst
a profusion of Oriental compliments, French politeness, and British
bluntness was this interview between the warlike Turk and the allied
admirals carried on; and, although in conclusion Ibrahim pledged his
word of honour to observe the armistice, yet the actual result of the
long palavar was to leave things very much in the same situation in
which they had been before.
Admiral Codrington’s description of Ibrahim, contained in a letter
written by him to his sister Jane shortly after the interview referred
to, is particularly interesting. After a very graphic description of
the Turkish camp and of Ibrahim’s tent, he proceeds:--“They first began
with the ceremony of introduction, which, as there were a good many
of us on either side, was proportionally long.... At length, however,
I got settled, and began to look around me again.... This tent also
was open, and from his sofa he looked down over the whole harbour,
and really the sight was beautiful, covered as it was by the ships
and boats of all sorts continually passing to and fro. His tent was
_outside_ the walls of Navarin; and, indeed, what force he had
with him appeared to be outside of the town. Altogether, I thought he
had chosen the coolest and most convenient place to pitch his tent in
that could be found. But to return thither. He is a man of about forty
years old, not at all good-looking, but with heavy features, very much
marked with the smallpox, and as fat as a porpoise. Though I had no
opportunity of seeing his height--as he was on his sofa, lying down or
sitting the whole time--I should not think him more than five feet
seven inches. He was, _for a Pacha_, plainly dressed, I think,
particularly as his followers and officers were covered with gold and
embroidery; and, for _a Turk_, I think his manners were very
good indeed. The conversation first began about the weather, and such
common-place things; for I learnt (from the interpreter) he does not
talk of business till _after coffee_.”
[Illustration: ZANTE.]
Ibrahim proved treacherous. He disregarded his own word of honour to
accept the armistice, and there followed a long series of negotiations,
in which the attitude of the allied admirals gradually grew more
threatening and that of the Ottoman leader proportionately defiant.
On the 2nd of October, in the midst of a heavy thunderstorm, the
Turkish fleet boldly put to sea. This was a direct breach of the
parole which had been passed, and the Honourable Captain Spencer, in
the _Talbot_, was instructed to inform the Turkish admiral that
he would not be permitted to proceed, and that if he allowed a single
gun to be fired at the English flag the whole of his fleet would be
destroyed. This message speedily caused the Turks to bring their ships
to the wind, and the second in command, Halhil Bey, came on board
the _Asia_. He admitted that he had been present at Sir Edward
Codrington’s interview with Ibrahim Pacha, when the latter bound
himself in honour not to send any of his fleet out of the port, but
pretended to believe that it had been sanctioned for a Turkish squadron
to go to Patras. The British admiral bluntly informed Halhil that,
having broken their faith with him, he would not trust them henceforth,
and that if they did not put about and return to Navarino he would make
them. This message was accompanied by the _Asia_ firing a gun and
filling her main-topsail; on which the Turkish fleet, by a signal from
their admiral, swung their yards afresh and stood back towards the
harbour.
This little incident confirmed Sir Edward Codrington in his intention
of summarily enforcing the treaty he had been despatched to uphold.
Admiral de Rigny, on his part, showed no less a degree of determination
to maintain the pledge which his nation had conjointly given to the
Greeks. Down to this period, however, the Russians had not appeared
upon the scene; but on the 15th of October their squadron, under
Count Heiden, joined the French and British fleets off Zante. Sir
Edward Codrington, from seniority of rank, was commander-in-chief of
the combined fleet. On the 18th of October the three admirals held a
conference for the purpose of concerting the measures of effecting the
object specified in the Treaty of London--namely, an armistice _de
facto_ between the Turks and Greeks. They considered: “That Ibrahim
Pacha having violated the engagement he entered into with the admirals
on September 25th for a provisional suspension of arms, by causing his
fleet to come out and proceed towards another point in the Morea; that
since the return of the fleet, owing to meeting Admiral Codrington near
Patras, the Pacha’s troops had carried on a warfare more destructive
and exterminating than before, killing women and children, burning
habitations, etc., for completing the devastation of the country; and
that all endeavours to put a stop to these atrocities by persuasion
and conciliation, by representations to the Turkish chiefs, and advice
given to Mehemet Ali have been treated as mockeries, though they could
have been stopped by a word: Therefore the admirals found that there
remained to them only three modes of action:--
“1st. The continuing throughout the whole of the winter a
blockade--difficult, expensive, and perhaps useless, since a storm
might disperse the squadrons, and afford to Ibrahim the facility of
conveying his destroying army to different parts of the Morea and the
islands;
“2nd. The uniting the allied squadrons in Navarin itself, and securing
by this permanent presence the inaction of the Ottoman fleets, but
which mode alone leads to no termination, since the Porte persists in
not changing its system;
“3rd. The proceeding to take a position with the squadrons in Navarin,
in order to renew to Ibrahim propositions which, entering into the
spirit of the Treaty, were evidently to the advantage of the Porte
itself.”
Having taken these three modes into consideration, the admirals
unanimously agreed that the last method was best calculated, without
bloodshed, but simply by the imposing presence of the squadrons, to
produce the desired end. Sir Edward Codrington had a considerable
difficulty to contend with in the jealousy which existed between the
Russian and French admirals, and it called for no small exercise of
tact on his part to maintain harmony in the combined fleet. The allied
force was as follows:--
English: Three line-of-battle ships, four frigates, four brigs, one
cutter.
French: Three line-of-battle ships, one double-banked frigate, one
frigate, two cutters.
Russian: Four line-of-battle ships, four frigates.
In all twenty-four ships of war.
The Ottoman force was as follows:--Three line-of-battle ships,
four double-banked frigates, thirteen frigates, thirty corvettes,
twenty-eight brigs, six fire brigs, five schooners, forty-one
transports.
In all, one hundred and thirty sail of vessels. The Turks had in
addition to this imposing force an army of 35,000 Egyptian troops in
the Morea, of whom 4,000 were on board the transports.
On the 19th of October Admiral Codrington issued his instructions to
his colleagues as to the manner in which the combined fleet was to be
disposed on entering the port of Navarino.
“It appears,” runs the order, “that the Egyptian ships in which the
French officers are embarked are those most to the south-east.[8] It
is, therefore, my wish that his excellency Rear-Admiral Chevalier
de Rigny should place his squadron abreast of them. As the next
in succession appears to be a ship of the line with a flag at the
main, I propose placing the _Asia_ abreast of her, with the _Genoa_
and _Albion_ next to the _Asia_; and I wish that his excellency
Rear-Admiral Count Heiden will have the goodness to place his squadron
next in succession to the British ships of the line. The Russian
frigates in this case can occupy the Turkish ship next in succession to
the Russian ships of the line; the English frigates forming alongside
such Turkish vessels as may be on the western side of the harbour
abreast of the British ships of the line; and the French frigates
forming in the same manner, so as to occupy the Turkish frigates,
etc., abreast of the French ships of the line. If time permits, before
any hostility is committed by the Turkish fleet, the ships are to moor
with springs on the ring of each anchor. No gun is to be fired from the
combined fleet without a signal being made for that purpose, unless
shot be fired from any of the Turkish ships, in which case the ships so
firing are to be destroyed immediately. The corvettes and brigs are,
under the direction of Captain Fellows, of the _Dartmouth_, to remove
the fire vessels into such a position as will prevent their being
able to injure any of the combined fleet. In case of a regular battle
ensuing, and creating any of that confusion which must necessarily
arise out of it, it is to be observed that, in the words of Lord
Nelson, ‘no captain can do very wrong who places his ship alongside
that of an enemy.’--Edward Codrington, Vice-Admiral.”
The combined fleet made an attempt to stand into Navarino on the 19th
of October, but the wind was too light and the current too strong to
enable them to effect their purpose. On the following day, however, at
about two o’clock in the afternoon, the allied squadrons passed the
batteries at the entrance to the harbour to take up their anchorage.
The Turkish ships lay moored in the form of a great crescent, with
springs upon their cables, the large ones presenting their broadsides
towards the centre, and the smaller craft filling up the intervals
between them. The allied fleet was formed in the order of sailing in
two columns, the British and French forming the starboard or weather
line, and the Russian the lee column. Sir Edward Codrington, in the
_Asia_, led in, closely followed by the _Genoa_ and _Albion_, and
anchored in succession close alongside a line-of-battle ship flying
the flag of the Capitana Bey, another ship of the line, and one of the
large double-banked frigates, each thus having her proper opponent in
the front line of the enemy’s fleet. The four ships to windward, which
formed a portion of the Egyptian squadron, were allotted to Admiral
de Rigny’s vessels; and those to leeward, in the bight or hollow of
the crescent, were to mark the stations of the whole Russian squadron,
the ships of their line covering those of the English line, and being
followed by the frigates of their division.
Admiral Codrington had been very express in his instructions that no
gun should be fired until some act of open hostility was committed
by the Turks, and this order was strictly carried out. The three
English ships were permitted to pass the batteries, and proceeded to
moor in their respective stations with great celerity. But upon the
_Dartmouth_ sending a boat to one of the six fire vessels lying
near the entrance to the harbour, Lieutenant Fitzroy and several seamen
in her were killed by a volley of musketry. This immediately produced a
responsive fire of musketry from the _Dartmouth_ and likewise from
_La Syrène_, the flagship of the French admiral, followed almost
at once by the discharge of a broadside gun from one of the Egyptian
ships, and in a breath almost the action became general.
The _Asia_ was ranged alongside the ship of the Capitana Bey, and
equally close to that of Moharem Bey, the commander of the Egyptian
squadron. As neither of these ships opened upon the British flagship,
notwithstanding the action was raging briskly to windward, Sir Edward
Codrington withheld his fire. No interchange of hostilities between
the vessels took place, therefore, for a considerable while after the
_Asia_ had returned the first volley of the Capitana; and, indeed,
it was evidently the intention of the enemy to try and avoid a regular
battle, for Moharem sent a message that he would not fire at all. Sir
Edward Codrington, equally willing to avert bloodshed, sent the British
pilot, Peter Mitchell, who also acted as interpreter, to Moharem with
a message to the effect that it was no desire of his to proceed to
extreme measures. As the boat went alongside, a discharge of musketry
from the Egyptian ship killed Mitchell, and at the same time she opened
fire upon the _Asia_. Upon this Admiral Codrington opened his
broadside in real earnest, and so furious was the fire from his ship
that in a very little while the ship of the Capitana Bey and that of
Moharem were reduced to total wrecks, and went drifting away to leeward.
The French and Russian squadrons played their part gallantly and well.
“The conduct of my brother admirals, Count Heiden and the Chevalier
de Rigny, throughout,” wrote Sir Edward to the Duke of Clarence,
“was admirable and highly exemplary.” In the British division the
_Genoa_ and _Albion_ took their stations with magnificent precision,
and maintained a most destructive fire throughout the contest. The
_Glasgow_, _Cambrian_, and _Talbot_ followed the example set by the
intrepid Frenchman who commanded the _Armide_, which effectually
destroyed the leading frigate of the enemy’s line and silenced the
batteries ashore. Captain Fellows, in the _Dartmouth_, succeeded in
frustrating the designs of the fireships stationed near the mouth of
the harbour, and preserved the _Syrène_ from being burnt. The battle
was maintained with unabated fury for above four hours, and owing to
the crowded formation of the Ottoman fleet, and the close quarters
at which the allied ships engaged them, the havoc and bloodshed were
prodigious. As the Turkish vessels were one after another disabled,
their crews set them on fire and deserted them, and the lurid scene
was rendered infinitely more terrible and weird by the flaming ships
and incessant explosions among the huddled and shattered craft. The
resistance of the enemy then began to sensibly slacken. By the time
that night had closed down upon the scene, the Turkish fleet was so
crippled as to cease any longer to be a menace to the violation of
the Treaty. “When I found,” wrote Sir Edward Codrington, “that the
boasted Ottoman’s word of honour was made a sacrifice to wanton, savage
destruction, and that a base advantage was taken of our reliance upon
Ibrahim’s good faith, I own I felt a desire to punish the offenders.”
And most terribly punished they were. Never did British arms bear part
in a more complete and decisive victory. When the dusk of the Oriental
evening, obscured into a pall-like gloom by the dense banks of smoke,
descended over the terrific spectacle, the enemy’s cannonade had grown
feeble and scattered, and presently ceased altogether. Their vessels
continued to blaze and to explode. Out of the proud fleet which in
the noontide of that day had floated serenely upon the blue waters of
Navarin harbour sixty ships were totally destroyed, and the remainder
driven ashore in a shattered condition, with the exception of the
_Leone_, four corvettes, six brigs, and four schooners, which remained
afloat after the battle. The carnage was frightful. According to the
statistics furnished by Monsieur Letellier, the French instructor
to the Egyptian navy, to Commander Richards, of the _Pelorus_, the
enemy’s losses amounted to 3,000 killed and 1,109 wounded. The defeat,
indeed, practically amounted to annihilation. At ten o’clock on the
night of the battle, Sir Edward Codrington was writing an account of
the victory to his wife: “Well, my dear, the Turks have fought, and
fought well too, and we have annihilated their fleet. We have lost poor
Smith, Captain Bell, R.M., and many good men.... I am entirely unhurt,
but the _Asia_ is quite a wreck, having had her full allowance of the
work.” The admiral, however, had a succession of marvellous escapes,
and, indeed, almost seems to have borne a charmed life throughout the
battle. Mr. Lewis, the boatswain of the _Asia_, while speaking to him
early in the action, was struck dead. Mr. Smith, the master, was also
shot down whilst talking with him. Sir Edward was a tall man, and in
his uniform must have made a conspicuous figure upon the _Asia’s_ deck.
Instead of his cocked hat he wore a round hat, which afforded better
shade to his eyes; this was pierced in two places by bullet-holes. His
coat-sleeve, which chanced to be rather loose, had two bullet-holes
in it just above the wrist. A ball struck the watch in his fob and
shivered it, but left him uninjured. Tahir Pacha afterwards admitted to
Mr. Kerigan, on board the _Blonde_, that he himself posted a company of
riflemen to aim at the British admiral and shoot him if they could.
[Illustration: Battle of NAVARINO.]
The combined fleets quitted the harbour of Navarino on the 25th of
October, having tarried awhile, unmolested, to repair damages. They
were suffered to depart by the Turks without the firing of a single
shot, although it had been quite expected that the batteries would open
upon them as they passed the harbour mouth. On the 3rd of November they
arrived at Malta. Here they spent some considerable time in refitting.
For his services Sir Edward Codrington received the Grand Cross of the
Bath; the King of France conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the
Military Order of St. Louis; and the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, in
an autograph letter, bestowed upon him the rare honour of wearing the
second class of the Military Order of St. George.
[Illustration: “THE BATTLE WAS MAINTAINED WITH UNABATED
FURY FOR ABOVE FOUR HOURS” (_p._ 368).]
Navarino was fought without any declaration of war, and the news of
hostilities created great surprise in England. Many questions were
asked in Parliament as to whether the British Commander-in-Chief
had done wisely to treat the Turks as enemies, and there was much
vacillation displayed by the weak Government--Lord Goderich’s--then
in power. In the following June Sir Edward Codrington received a
letter of recall from Lord Aberdeen, dated at the Foreign Office,
London, May, 1828. It was a most elaborate document of twenty
paragraphs, embodying a number of charges of misconception and actual
disobedience of his instructions, and concluded: “His Majesty’s
Government have found themselves under the necessity of requesting
the Lord High Admiral to relieve you in the command of the squadron
in the Mediterranean.” He left Malta for England on September 11th,
amid the hearty regret of his companions-in-arms, and arrived home in
the _Warspite_ on the 7th of October, 1828. A revulsion of public
feeling had meanwhile taken place during the interval--indignation at
his recall and general reprobation of the injustice with which he had
been treated. The Duke of Wellington’s ministry was now in office.
His Grace summoned Sir Edward to an interview, but seems to have
behaved in a very cavilling manner. The pride and sense of honour of
the fine old naval officer were deeply injured by the treatment he
was receiving from a country to whose annals he had just added fresh
laurels. His resentment of the injustice done him is well illustrated
by the following anecdote:--About a year after he had been recalled,
Sir Edward Codrington was present at a party given by Prince Leopold,
when the Duke of Wellington came up to him and said: “I have made
arrangements by which I am enabled to offer you a pension of £800
for your life.” The admiral’s answer was ready, and immediate: “I am
obliged to your Grace, but I do not feel myself in a position to accept
it.... I cannot receive such a thing myself while my poor fellows who
fought under me at Navarin have had no head-money, and have not even
been repaid for their clothes which were destroyed in the battle.” The
duke remonstrated, said there was no precedent for head-money, and
insisted that, as the pension was bestowed by the king, Sir Edward
could not refuse it. But refuse it he did, stoutly and resolutely.
Shortly afterwards one of the duke’s political friends inquired: “What
are you going to do with Codrington?” “Do with him!” answered the duke,
“what are you to do with a man who won’t take a pension?” But time
rights most things; and Sir Edward Codrington lived to see full honour
accorded to him, and those who had fought under him at the battle of
Navarino.
[Illustration: NAVARINO.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Shadwell’s “Life of Lord Clyde,” p. 33.
[2] The heavier armament of most of the Austrian ships consisted of
smooth-bore 48-pounders. New rifled guns of larger calibre were being
made for the Austrian fleet by Krupp at Essen, but when war became
probable the Prussian Government stopped the delivery of them. On the
other hand, one of the Italian ships carried 300-pounder Armstrong
guns, mounted in a turret, and some of the other ironclads had
150-pounders in their armament.
[3] The _Affondatore_ was a new ship built in the Thames just
before the war. A correspondent of the _Times_ who saw her at
Cherbourg, where she called on her way down Channel, wrote that she
looked sufficiently formidable to destroy the whole Austrian ironclad
fleet singlehanded.
[4] For an account of many striking incidents of the march, some of our
readers may be glad to be referred to the graphic narrative of Sergeant
Arthur V. Palmer, of the 79th Highlanders, in the _Nineteenth
Century_ for March, 1890, entitled “A Battle Described from the
Ranks,” and to the controversy to which it gave rise in ensuing numbers
of the same publication.
[5] Now Sir George White, Commander-in-Chief in India.
[6] “La Guerre de la Pologne.”
[7] There is a slight inaccuracy here. The Gorze road runs into the
main road to Verdun at Rezonville.
[8] It was known that a number of French officers were in the enemy’s
ships, and to these Admiral de Rigny addressed a letter of warning.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
3. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
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