FOOTNOTES:
[A] My informant was an English artist.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
THE SIEGE OF PARIS—Continued
WITH THE BESIEGED (1870-1871)
Moods in Paris—The Empress escapes—Taking down Imperial flags—Playing dominoes under fire—Cowards branded—Balloon post—Return of the wounded—French numbed by cold—The lady and the dogs—The nurse who was mighty particular—Castor and Pollux pronounced tough—Stories of suffering.
One who was in Paris on the 3rd of September, 1870, might have heard strange things said in the cafés as evening came on. The French had suffered a great disaster; they had surrendered to the Germans at Sedan! MacMahon was wounded and taken prisoner; the Emperor had given himself up, and was going to Germany as a first-class prisoner; 80,000 men captured, and 200 guns. Was not that news enough to sell every paper in the street?
Shouts were heard of “Déchéance! Vive la République!”
Where was the poor Empress all this time? “Never mind her; it was she who had stirred up the Emperor Napoleon III. to make this horrible war.” So the papers print cruel caricatures of her. On Sunday, the 4th, very early in the morning, a huge crowd thronged the Place de la Concorde; men were pulling down Imperial eagles while the mob cheered. The regular soldiers met the National Guard and made friends.
Men said to one another: “What will become of the Empress?” “Will she fall a victim to the new patriots?” And whilst some wondered, a few friends were even then helping her to escape to England.
Everywhere on walls of houses were bills fixed announcing the Republic, and inviting all men to rally to the rescue of “La patrie en danger.”
But the railway-stations were very full of men, women, and children, who were trying to get a little country air. Could it be possible that they feared Paris might before long be besieged?
Drums and bugles incessant, uniforms always, rifles and side-arms very often. Men stood before the black-draped statue of Strasbourg, and waved arms wildly, shouting and screaming, “Revenge!” “Liberty!” and the like.
By the 10th of the month the Prussian forces, 300,000 strong, were about twenty-five miles from the capital. People began to look grave, and the more thoughtful went to the stores, and made secret purchases of coffee, rice, sugar, and other portable provisions. Still, the Parisians have not lost their gaiety yet; comic songs and punchinello evoke hilarious laughter.
Then came the news, “Versailles has honourably capitulated.”
What! so near as that! People are becoming nervous, so that the new authorities proclaim by billposters that the fifteen strong forts beyond the line of ramparts are fully armed and manned by the sailors from the fleet.
A captive balloon goes up from Montmartre to watch the enemy. Then it occurs that obstacles outside the city must be cleared away, so that the chassepot may have space to reach the Prussians; and many houses and bridges go down.
“Well, if there is a siege, have we not got a goodly store of food—enough for two months? Are there not plenty of cattle and sheep, fodder and grain collected within the walls? Who cares for the Prussians?”
Yet when they see notices posted on the walls instructing the newly enrolled how to load their muskets, some have a twinge of doubt and anxiety. A few days more, and Paris begins to feel she is being encircled by the enemy. Great movement of troops towards Vincennes. Official notices now state that all men liable to military service must report themselves within twenty-four hours, under penalty of being treated as deserters—and shot.
Yet still many are placidly playing dominoes, or calmly fishing from the bridges in the Seine, quite content if they catch a gudgeon two inches long.
Yet, if some are betraying levity and selfishness, others are filled with a desire to do something for their country. The doctors offer their services in a body, and hospitals for the wounded are being established at various points.
Ladies wearing a brassard on the arm (the Red Cross badge) were almost too numerous; and some of these had more zeal than strength, and failed lamentably when brought face to face with horrible sights.
On the 19th of September some French forces, who occupied the heights of Chatillon, were attacked in force by the Germans, and driven away, and they ran through Paris crying, “We are betrayed!” but the people gloomily replied, “Cowards!”
The next day many of these fugitives were marched along the boulevards, their hands tied behind their backs, and the word Lâche (coward) printed in large letters between their shoulders. Yet still crowds of men in uniform and ladies fashionably dressed crowded the cafés, laughing and full of mirth.
As the bombardment grew, it became the fashion to gather at the Trocadero, and watch the Prussian shells exploding in mid-air.
The village folk who had lived within the lines of investment were brought inside the ramparts, and formed a class of bouches inutiles, though some of the men were employed to cut down trees and build barricades.
The Palace of St. Cloud was burnt down about this time—some said by the French themselves, either by accident or design.
A post by balloon and by carrier-pigeons had been introduced—par ballon monté—by which letters were sent away, but could not be received.
The Balloon Post used during the Siege of Paris
Letters could be sent away by this method, but not received.
In the middle of October Colonel Lloyd Lindsay arrived from England, bringing with him £20,000 as a gift from England to the sick and wounded. He came into Paris in the uniform of his rank. This did not prevent his being captured as a spy, and suffering some indignities at the hands of the great unwashed of Belleville. Some with questionable taste said, “The English send us money—all right!—but why do they not help us with men and guns?”
Trochu, the Governor of Paris, was thought to be rather infirm of purpose; his sympathies were given more to Napoleon than to the Republic, and he evidently distrusted the fighting men within Paris. Indeed, there were many officers quite unfit for work, who used to lounge about the cafés, their hands buried in a warm muff and their noses red with the little glasses they had emptied. Many battalions of Federals elected their own officers, and some men were seen to be soliciting votes, bottle in hand. The National Guard, which was somewhat like our militia, was distinct from the French army, and contained many bad characters; they were apt to desert in time of danger.
On the 21st of October there was a sortie against the Prussians on the west of Paris. They started at noon, as Mont Valérien fired three guns in quick succession. They took with them some new guns, called mitrailleuses, from which great things were expected. In the evening there came back a long procession of sixty-four carriages, all filled with wounded. Crowds of anxious mothers came clustering round, inquiring for friends. The people in the street formed two lines for the carriages to pass between; the men respectfully uncovered their heads.
November came, with snow and bitter frost. Strange skins of animals began to be worn; fuel was scarce, gas was forbidden, and epidemics arose. The very poor received free meals from the mairies, while the more respectable poor stayed at home, making no sign, but starving in dumb agony.
On the 30th of November another sortie was attempted. Some villages were taken by the French, Champigny and Brie, the mitrailleuses being found very useful in sweeping the streets; but towards evening the French were repulsed, and the commander of the 4th Zouaves was left by his own men on the ground wounded, a shell having dropped near them. Fortunately, the English ambulance was close by, and rendered such help as was possible. Then they drove the helpless officer in a private brougham back to Paris. What was their indignation when they found great crowds of people of both sexes indulging in noisy games, as if it was a holiday! The poor Chef de Bataillon only lived a few hours after being taken to the hospital.
Next day ambulances were sent out to search for the wounded, but they came upon many stragglers bent on loot. The wounded were in sore plight after spending a night on the frozen ground. Some had been able to make a little fire out of bits of broken wheels, and to roast horse-flesh cut from horses which the shells had killed. The French troops had remained in bivouac all that night, their strength impaired by fatigue and cold; the German troops, on the contrary, were withdrawn from the field of battle, their places being taken by others who had not seen the carnage of the previous day, who were well fed and sheltered, and thus far better fitted to renew the fight. No wonder that the poor benumbed French failed to make a stout resistance. Hundreds of wounded returned to Paris all the following day, and it became evident that no effort to break the circle of besiegers could succeed. Paris awoke at last to the humiliating truth. The day was cold and foggy; the transport of wounded was the only sound heard in the streets; in the evening the streets were dimly lit by oil-lamps, shops all closed at sundown, and the boom of heavy guns seemed to ring the knell of doom. All hope was now fixed on the provinces, but a pigeon-post came in, telling them of a defeat near Orleans.
“The Army of the Loire has been cut in two! Tant mieux! (So much the better!) Now we have two Armies of the Loire.” So the dandy of the pavement dismissed the disaster with an epigram.
The scarcity of meat was felt in various ways; even the rich found it difficult to smuggle a joint into their houses, for it was liable to arrest on its way: some patriots would take it from a cart or the shoulder of the butcher’s boy, saying, “Ciel! this aristocrat is going to have more than his share.” One day a fashionable lady was returning home carrying a parasol and a neat parcel under her shawl. After her came six hungry dogs, who could not be persuaded to go home, though she hissed and scolded and poked them with her gay parasol. On meeting a friend, she first asked him to drive them away, and then confided to him that she had two pounds of mutton in her parcel. And so the poor dogs got none!
Amongst the hungry folk we must not forget that there were nearly 4,000 English in Paris, about 800 of whom were destitute, and would have starved had it not been for the kindness of Dr. Herbert and Mr. Wallace. The wounded were well looked after, for there were 243 ambulances, of which the largest, the International, had its headquarters at the Grand Hotel. In one of the Paris journals it was stated that a lady went to the Mayor’s house of her district to ask to be given a wounded soldier, that she might nurse him back to life. They offered her a Zouave, small and swarthy.
“No, no,” she exclaimed; “I wish for a blonde patient, being a brunette myself.”
It was hardly worth while going to pay a visit to the Zoological Gardens, for most of the animals had been eaten.
Castor and Pollux were amongst the last to render up their bodies for this service. Castor and Pollux were two very popular elephants, on whose backs half the boys and girls in Paris had taken afternoon excursions. Poor fellows! they were pronounced later on by the critical to be tough and oily—to such lengths can human ingratitude go when mutton is abundant.
They were twins and inseparables in life. Their trunks were sold for 45 francs a pound, the residue for about 10 francs a pound. Besides the loss of the animals, all the glass of the conservatories in the Jardin des Plantes was shattered by the concussion of the big guns, and many valuable tropical plants were dying.
The citizens, usually so gay and hopeful, presented a woebegone appearance whenever they saw their soldiers return from unsuccessful sorties. They began to look about for traitors. “Nous sommes trahis!” was their cry. There was one private of the 119th Battalion who refused to advance with the others. His Captain remonstrated with him; the private shot his Captain rather than face the Germans. A General who was near ordered the private to be shot at once. A file was drawn up, and fired on him; he fell, and was left for dead. Presently an ambulance stretcher came by, and picked him up, as a wounded man; he was still alive, and had to be dealt with further by other of his comrades. Let us hope that this man’s relations never learnt how Jacques came to be so riddled by bullets.
The houses on the left bank of the Seine were so damaged that the citizens had to be transferred to the right bank. In a few days the terrible battery of Meudon opened fire upon the city. The shells now fell near to the centre of Paris; day and night without rest or stay the pitiless hail fell, and this went on for twelve days and nights. Meanwhile the cold increased and the fuel failed; diseases spread, and discontent with the Government arose. Women waiting in the streets for their rations would fall from exhaustion; others were mangled by shells. The daily ration for which the poor creatures struggled consisted now of 10 ounces of bread, 1 ounce of horse-flesh, and a quarter litre of bad wine.
One more effort the starving Parisians made to break through on the 19th of January. Early that morning people were reading the latest proclamation on the walls: “Citizens, the enemy kills our wives and children, bombards us night and day, covers with shells our hospitals. Those who can shed their life’s blood on the field of battle will march against the enemy—suffer and die, if necessary, but conquer!”
Three corps d’armée, more than 100,000 men, were taking up their positions under cover of Mont Valérien; but a dense fog prevailed, and several hours were lost in wandering aimlessly about, so that the French became worn out with fatigue, whereas the Germans had passed a quiet night, with good food to sustain their strength. Yet for many hours the French obstinately held their ground; then stragglers began to fall away, and officers tried in vain to rally their companies. Night fell on a beaten army hurrying back through the city gates.
Meanwhile the bombardment went on with increasing violence, until early on the night of the 26th there was a sudden lull; just before midnight a volley of fire came from all points of the circle round Paris, then a weird silence. Then it was known that the terms of surrender had been signed—not too soon, for all were at starvation point, and only six days’ rations remained. Paris had been very patient under great sufferings through the cold winter. It is pleasant to remember that supplies of food sent from England were then waiting admission outside the northern gates.
An English doctor residing in Paris during the siege writes thus:
“One lady to whom I carried a fowl was prostrate in bed, her physical powers reduced by starvation to an extremely low ebb. When I told her that she was simply dying from want of food, her reply was that she really had no appetite; she could not eat anything. Yet when I gave her some savoury morsel to be taken at once, and then the fowl to be cooked later on, her face brightened; she half raised herself in bed, and pressed the little articles I had brought to her as a child presses a doll. I was told also that the nurses in an ambulance which I had aided with the British supplies danced round the tables, and invoked blessings on our heads. As regards myself, what I most craved for was fried fat, bacon, and fruit, and, above all, apples.”
Besides the wild animals of the French Zoological Gardens, most of the domestic pets had been eaten. A story is told of one French lady who carefully guarded her little dog Fido, feeding him from her own plate with great self-sacrifice. One day the family had the rare treat of a hot joint, and in the middle of dinner the lady took up a small bone to carry to Fido in the next room. She returned in trouble, saying:
“Fido is not in the house; he would so have enjoyed this bone. I hope he has not got out. They will kill him—the brutes!—and eat him.”
The members of that starving family exchanged uneasy glances; they were even now engaged upon a salmi, or hash, formed from a portion of the lady’s pet!
“From Memoirs of Dr. Gordon.” By kind permission of Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein and Co.
[CHAPTER XIX]
METZ (1870)
Metz surrounded—Taken for a spy—Work with an ambulance—Fierce Prussians rob an old woman—Attempt to leave Metz—Refusing an honour—The cantinière’s horse—The grey pet of the regiment—Deserters abound—A village fired for punishment—Sad scenes at the end.
One Englishman, the Special Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, contrived to enter Metz shortly before it was besieged. But he had not been there long before a disagreeable experience befell him. He was riding quietly outside the city towards the French camps which were pitched all round it, when suddenly a soldier stepped across the road, and cried, “Halt!”
Two men seized his reins, asking, “Have you any papers?”
“Yes; here is my passport,” he replied confidently.
The passport puzzled them; it was taken to a superior officer, who knew that it was English, but looked suspiciously at the German visé which it bears.
The Englishman was taken to a General across the road, who shook his head and remanded him to another officer of the staff, a mile back towards Metz. It begins to look serious; this man may be shot as a spy.
Two gendarmes were called up to guard him; soldiers came up to stare with savage scowls—he was a spy undoubtedly; but cigarettes were offered by the spy, and things began to look less cloudy. Then up came General Bourbaki, and fresh questions were put and answered; then a mounted messenger was sent to Metz to find out if the prisoner’s statements were correct. On his return with a satisfactory account, the prisoner was told to mount and ride with escort to the head-quarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Bazaine. As he rode soldiers jeered and prophesied a speedy death in a ditch, which made him feel ill at ease.
A ride of a mile brought him to a pretty château, where he was received with courtesy and kindness. At a long common deal table in a wooden pavilion in the garden sat the Marshal and some twenty officers of the staff. Dispatches were being written, signed, and sent off by mounted messengers. In the corner was an electric telegraph, ticking off reports from distant points.
When the conference broke up, Marshal Bazaine motioned the suspect to a seat, and questioned him, made him show on a map where he had been riding, found he understood no German and was a fool at maps (perhaps a little stupidity was put on), then he left him to his secretary.
The latter said, with a sly glance: “We have so many spies that we are bound to be careful, but the arrest in this case is a stupid thing (une bêtise). I will give you a laissez-passer for the day, monsieur.”
So he went off, relieved at not being shot for a spy, but somewhat mortified.
There was hard fighting going on in the country round Metz. Our countryman managed to get attached to an ambulance, and went on to a battle-field at night.
“We lit our lanterns,” he says, “and went cautiously into the valley. There were Prussian sharpshooters in the wood beyond, and I confess I was very nervous at first: the still night, the errand we were on, all awed one. But so soon as we reached the outskirts of the battle-field all personal feelings gave way to others. Here at every turn we found our aid was wanted. Thousands of dead and wounded were around us, and we, a few strangers sent by the International Society of London, were all that were present to help them. Plugging and bandaging such wounds as were hopeful of cure, giving a life-saving drink here and there, moving a broken limb into a more easy position, and speaking a word of encouragement where the heart was failing—this was all we could do. But all that night each worked his utmost, and when our water failed two of us walked back four miles to Gravelotte and brought a bucketful. We can dress, but not remove, the wounded now. Often have I been tempted to put a poor fellow out of his pain; it seems kinder, wiser, and more Christian to blow out the flickering lamp than let it smoulder away in hours of anguish. Daylight begins to dawn, and we seek carriages—that is, jolting unhung carts—to convey some of the wounded. Now, as we raise them up and torture their poor wounds by moving them, for the first time we hear a cry. The groans of the dying, the shrieks of the wounded, are absent from the battle-field, but far more dreadful and awe-inspiring is the awful stillness of that battle-field at night. There is a low, quivering moan floats over it—nothing more; it is a sound almost too deep for utterance, and it thrills through one with a strange horror. Hardly a word is uttered, save only a half-wailed-out cry of ‘Ohé! ma pauvre mère!’ Nothing is more touching, nothing fills one’s eyes with tears more, than this plaintive refrain chanted out as a death-chant by so many sons who never more on this side the grave will see again that longed-for mother—‘Ohé! ma mère, ma pauvre mère!’
“We select sixty or seventy of those whose wounds will bear removal, and turn our faces towards Metz. Slowly and sadly we creep out of the death-valley. The quaint hooded forms of the sentinels who challenge us cut out strangely against the green and gold of the morning sky. Not a walking-stick, not a pipe is left us: they were cut up into tourniquet-keys. I am ashamed to say I regretted my pipe; but it came back to me after many weeks, being brought to me by the man whose life it had saved. Very grateful he was. As we toil upwards, musing on life and death, bang! right in our very faces spits out a cannon. Good heavens! they surely are not going to begin this devil’s work again! Yes; there goes a battery to the crest of the hill. We must take care of ourselves and those we have so far rescued from slaughter. On we tramp, but there is no food, not a crust of bread, not a drop of water for our wounded. It is nine miles more back to Metz, and tired as we are, we must walk it. Very tired and hungry and cross we enter Metz, and there see the French ambulances waiting with waggon-loads of appliances and well-groomed horses. They had stopped to breakfast, and many hundreds have died because they did so. Well, we have earned ours, at any rate.”
It was now the 28th of August. Metz was blockaded. No letters could be sent, for the German hosts were holding the heights all round. Ruthless rough-riders were riding into every French village. In one of these, the story goes, a poor old woman was washing her little store of linen. She was very old, and her grey hair sprouted in silver tufts from her yellow skin. All the rest had fled in panic; she alone was left busy at her tub, when up rode some score of huge Dragoons. They pulled up in front of her, speaking their barbarous tongue. One Dragoon dismounts and draws his sword. Poor old woman! she falls upon her knees and lifts up wrinkled hands and cries feebly for mercy. It is in vain! Neither age nor ugliness protects her. Raising his sword with one hand, he stretches out the other towards her—the Prussian monster!—and grasps her soap. He quietly cuts it in two, pockets the one half and replaces the other on the well wall, growling out, “Madame, pardon!”
The reaction was too great. When they rode away laughing, the old woman forgot to be thankful that they had not hurt her, and swore at them for hairy thieves.
On the 15th of September there were around Metz 138,000 men fit to take the field, 6,000 cavalry and artillery. The Prussians had not anything like that number. They were dying fast of dysentery and fever, and yet Bazaine did nothing. Yet, though Metz was not strongly held, it was very difficult to get through the lines, and many a man, tempted by the bribe of 1,000 francs, lost his life in the attempt.
The English journalist tried to be his own courier and carry his own letters. He presented himself at the Prussian outposts in daylight, showed his passport, and demanded permission to “pass freely without let or hindrance.” In vain. The German soldiers treated him to beer and cigars, and suggested he should return to Metz. Next time he dressed himself up as a peasant, with blouse, and sabots on his feet, and when it was growing dusk tried to slip through the posts. “Halte là!” rang out, and a sound of a rifle’s click brought him up sharp. He was a prisoner, taken to the guard-house, and questioned severely. He pretended to be very weak-headed, almost an idiot.
“How many soldiers be there in Metz, master? I dunno. Maybe 300. There’s a power of men walking about the streets, sir.”
They smiled a superior smile, and offered the poor idiot some dark rye-bread, cheese, and beer, and some clean straw to lie down upon. Officers came to stare at him, asked him what village he was bound for. One of them knew the village he named, and recognized his description of it, for luckily he had got up this local knowledge from a native in Metz. However, he was not permitted to go to it, for before dawn next morning they led him, shuffling in his wooden sabots, to a distant outpost, turned his face towards Metz, with the curt remark: “Go straight on to Metz, friend, or you will feel a bullet go through your back.”
Grumbling to himself, he drew near the French outposts, who fired at him. He lay down for some time, then, finding he was in a potato-field, he set to work and grubbed up a few potatoes to sell for a sou a piece. So at last he found his way back to Metz, and got well laughed at for his pains.
He then tried his hand at making small balloons to carry his letters away; but the Germans used to fire at them, wing them, and read the contents.
Many spies were shot in Metz, and some who were not spies, but only suspected. It was the only excitement in the city to go out to the fosse and see a spy shot.
There was one man whom all raised their hats to salute when he passed. He was a short, thick-set man, wore a light canvas jacket and leather gaiters. Under one arm hung a large game-bag, and over the other sloped a chassepot rifle. His name was Hitter, and he had made a great name by going out in front of the avant-poste and shooting the Prussian sentinels. One night he encountered some waggons, shot down the escort from his hiding-place, and brought four waggons full of corn into Metz, riding on the box by the driver, pistol in hand. This man organized a body of sharp-shooters for night work, and many a poor sentinel met his death at their hands.
One favourite dodge was to take out with them a tin can fastened to a long string. When they got near the Prussian outposts they made this go tingle tangle along the ground. Then cautious heads would peep out; more tangle tingle from the tin can, until the sentinels jump up and blaze away at the weird thing that startles them in the dark. Their fire has been drawn, and Hitter’s men have the outpost at their mercy. They either shoot them or bring them into Metz as prisoners.
At length Marshal Bazaine heard of Hitter’s prowess, and sent for him, wanting to decorate him; but Hitter was sensitive, and thought he ought to have been decorated weeks ago. He came reluctantly.
“My man, I have heard of your doings—your clever work at night—and in the name of France I give you this decoration to wear.”
“I don’t want it, Marshal. Pray excuse me, if you please.”
“Nonsense, my fine fellow. I insist on your acceptance of the honour.”
“Oh! very well,” said Hitter, “if you insist, I suppose I must; but, by your leave, I shall wear it on my back—and very low down, too.”
The Marshal glared at Hitter, turned red, and ordered him out.
As the siege went on the poor horses got thinner and thinner. Their coats stood out in the wet weather rough and bristly; often they staggered and fell dead in the streets. They were soon set upon, and in a short time flesh, bones, and hide had vanished, and only a little pool of blood remained behind to tell where some hungry citizens had snatched a good dinner.
One day a cantinière had left her cart full of drinkables just outside the gate while she went to the fort to ask what was wanted. She tarried, and her poor horse felt faint, knelt down, and tried to die. No sooner was the poor beast on his knees than half a score of soldiers rushed out to save his life by cutting his throat—at least, it made him eat better. They quickly slipped off his skin and cut him up in all haste. So many knives were “e’en at him,” they soon carried off his “meat.” Then, in a merry mood, seeing the gay cantinière was too busy flirting to attend to her cart, they carefully set to work and built him up again. They put the bones together neatly, dragged the hide over the carcass, and arranged the harness to look as if the animal had lain down between the shafts. Then they retired to watch the comedy that sprang out of a tragedy. Madame comes bustling out of the fort. Eh! what’s that? Poor Adolfe is down on the ground! The fat woman waddles faster to him, calls him by name, taunts him with want of pluck, scolds, gets out her whip; then is dumb for some seconds, touches him, cries, weeps, wrings her hands in despair. Sounds of laughter come to her ears; then she rises majestically to the occasion, pours out a volley of oaths—oaths of many syllables, oaths that tax a genius in arithmetic: diable! cent diables, mille diables, cent mille diables! and so on, until she loses her breath, puts her fat hand to her heart, and again falls into a pathetic mood, passing later on into hysteria, and being led away between two gendarmes. Poor madame! She had loved Adolfe, and would have eaten him in her own home circle rather than that those sacrés soldiers should filch him away.
Well, they ate horses, when they could get them; but donkeys were even more delicious, though very rare, for they seldom died, and refused to get fat. Food was growing so scarce in October that when you went out to dinner you were expected to take your own bread with you. Potatoes were sold at fifteen pence a pound; a scraggy fowl might be bought for thirty shillings. The Prussians had spread nets across the river, above and below, to prevent the French from catching too many fish. As for sugar, it rose to seven shillings a pound. Salt was almost beyond price. The poor horses looked most woebegone. Many of them were Arabs, their bones nearly through their skin, and they looked at their friends with such a pitiful, appealing eye that it was most touching. You might have gone into a trooper’s tent and wondered to see the big tear rolling slowly down the bronzed cheek of a brave soldier.
“What is it, m’sieur? I have just lost my best friend—my best friend. He was with me in Algeria. Never tumbled, never went lame. And he understood me better than any Christian. He would have done anything for me—in reason! Now he has had to go to the slaughter-house. Oh, it is cruel, m’sieur! I shall never be the same man again, for he loved me and understood me—and I loved him.”
At last there was only one horse left in that camp, and this was how he survived: He had laid himself down to die; his eyes were fogging over, he felt so weak; but one of the sick soldiers happened to pass that way, and being full of pity from his own recent sufferings, he bethought him of a disused mattress which he had seen in the hospital close by. He returned and took out a handful of straws, with which he fed the poor beast, a straw at a time. The flaccid lips mumbled them awhile. At last he managed to moisten the straw and eat a little. Another handful was fetched, and the horse pricked his ears, and tried to lift his head. That was the turning-point; life became almost worth living again. The story rapidly spread, and it became the charitable custom to spare a bit of bread from dinner for the white horse of the Ile Cambière. In time that spoilt child would neigh and trot to meet any trooper who approached, confidently looking for his perquisite of crust.
There were 20,000 horses in Metz at the beginning of the siege; at the time of the surrender a little over 2,000.
We are told by an Englishman who was with the German Army outside Metz that in October a good many Frenchmen deserted from Metz. On the 11th a poor wretch was brought into the German lines. He said that his desertion was a matter of arrangement with his comrades. The man was an Alsatian, and spoke German well. His regiment was supposed to be living under canvas, but the stench in the tents was so strong, by reason of skin diseases, that nearly all slept in the open air. The skin disease was caused by the want of vegetables and salt, and by living wholly on horse-flesh. The deserter reported that the troops had refused to make any more sorties, and they were all suffering from scurvy.
There was one village, Nouilly, which contained secret stores, to which the French used to resort, and which the Germans could not find; so the order was given to burn it. Most of its inhabitants had gone to live in Metz.
“I was sitting at supper with Lieutenant von Hosius and Fischer when an orderly entered with a note. It was read aloud:
“‘Lieutenant von Hosius will parade at nine o’clock with fifteen volunteers of his company, and will proceed to burn the village of Nouilly.’
“Von Hosius was fond of herrings, so he stayed at table to finish them, while Fischer went out for volunteers. In a few minutes von Hosius was putting on his long boots, taking his little dagger, which every officer wore to ward off the vultures of the battle-field in case of being wounded; then, taking his revolver, he sallied out to meet his little band. The service was full of danger, for the French lay very near, and had strong temptations for entering it by night. If he did encounter a French force inside the village, where would his fifteen volunteers be?
“A little group of us watched by the watch-fire as they marched down at the German quick step. For a while we could hear the crashing through the vines, then the hoarse challenge of the German rear sentry; then all became quiet. For a few minutes the officer in command of the outpost and myself were the only persons who enjoyed the genial warmth of the fire; then through the gloom came stalking the Major, who squatted down silently by our side. Presently another form appeared—the Colonel himself—and in half an hour nearly all the officers of the battalion were round that bright wood fire. They all tried to look unconcerned, but everybody was very fidgety.
“Von Hosius was a long time. An hour had gone, and Nouilly was but ten minutes or so distant, and the Colonel’s nervousness was undisguised as he hacked at the burning log with his naked sword. Suddenly the vigilant Lieutenant gave a smothered shout, and we all sprang to our feet. Flame-coloured smoke at last, and plenty of it. But, bah! it was too far away—a false alarm.
“The Colonel sat down moodily, and the Major muttered something like a swear. One thing was good: there was no sound of musketry firing.
“Another half-hour of suspense, and then a loud “Ha!” from both Lieutenant and sentry. This time it was Nouilly, and no mistake. Not from one isolated house, but in six places at once, belched out the long streaks of flame against the black darkness, and the separate fires made haste to connect themselves. In ten minutes the whole place was in one grand blaze, the church steeple standing up in the midst of the sea of flame until a firework of sparks burst from its top and it reeled to its fall.
“Presently they came back, von Hosius panting with the exertion (he was of a portly figure). The duty had been done without firing a single shot, and they brought with them a respectable old horse which they had found in a village stable.”
One evening, when the German officers were discussing the causes of the French defeats, a First Lieutenant told this story to illustrate it:
The Chief Rabbi of the Dantzic Jews had taken a new house, and his flock determined to stock his wine-butt for him. On a stated evening his friends went down one after another into the Rabbi’s cellar, and emptied each his bottle into the big vat. When the Rabbi came next day to draw off his dinner wine he found the cask was full of pure water. Each Jew had said to himself that one bottle of water could never be noticed in so great a quantity of wine, and so the poor Rabbi had not got a drop of wine in his butt.
Now, it was just the same with the French army. One soldier said to himself that it would not matter a copper if he sneaked away; but the bother was that one and all took the same line of reasoning, and the result was that nobody was left to look the enemy in the face.
In order to bring about the fall of Metz a little sooner, the Prussians drove out all the peasants from the neighbouring villages, and forced them down to Metz. The Mayor of Metz ordered them back; then the Prussians fired over their heads, and tried to frighten them down again. Meanwhile, the women and children were worn out and hungry, and sat down to cry and wish for death. These are some of the glories of war. Sometimes, when they returned to their village home after a week’s absence, they found a remarkable change. They had left a pretty villa, trim gardens, and tiny pond and summer-house. This is what an Englishman saw one day:
“I came on a little group, the extreme pathos of which made my heart swell. It was a family, and they sat in front of what had once been their home. That home was now roofless. The stones of the walls were all that was left. The garden was a wreck, and the whole scene was concentrated desolation. The husband leaned against the wall, his arms folded, his head on his chest. The wife sat on the wet ground, weeping over the babe at her breast. Two elder children stared around them with wonder and unconcern—too young to realize their misfortune. No home, no food, a waggon and a field with four graves in it—a sight enough to melt the hardest heart.”
But there were so many similar scenes, and some much more terrible to witness.
On the 29th of October, in torrents of rain, the French soldiers went out of Metz, casting down their rifles and swords in heaps at the gate, many glad enough to become prisoners of war and have a full stomach. The Germans came in very cautiously, examining fort and bastion and bridge, to prevent any mine explosions, and in a few hours “Metz la Pucelle” had become a German city. Marshal Bazaine, who had done so little to help them, was the object of every citizen’s curses. The women pelted him with mud and called him “Coward!” as he set off for the Prussian headquarters.
From “The Siege of Metz,” by Mr. G. T. Robinson, by kind permission of Messrs. Bradbury and Evans.
[CHAPTER XX]
PLEVNA (1877)
An English boy as Turkish Lieutenant—A mêlée—Wounded by a horseman—Takes letter to Russian camp—The Czar watches the guns—Skobeleff’s charge—The great Todleben arrives—Skobeleff deals with cowards—Pasting labels—The last sortie—Osman surrenders—Prisoners in the snow—Bukarest ladies very kind.
After Turkey had put down the insurrection in Bulgaria (1876) and had beaten Servia (October, 1876), Russia made her tenth attempt to seize Constantinople. The Czar, Alexander II., declared war against the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II., and the result was a war which in cruelty and horrors has had no equal since the first Napoleon retired to St. Helena.
There were a few young Englishmen fighting on the side of the Turks, one of whom, Lieutenant Herbert, has left us a full account of the siege of Plevna. He says in his preface:
“I have witnessed much that was heroic, much that was grand, soul-stirring, sublime, but infinitely more of what was hideous and terrible. If you have too firm a belief in the glories of soldiering, try a war.”
Herbert was soon made Mulazim, or Lieutenant, and his friend Jack Seymour was in the same company. The first successes of the Russians were checked when Osman Pasha stood at bay at Plevna, and the Turks literally dug themselves into the hills around the city, while the Russians lost thousands of men in vain assaults upon the earthworks.
It was in the second battle of Plevna that a Bimbashi, or Major, came up to Herbert and said:
“The General has sent for reinforcements. Take your company; an orderly will show the way. Do your best, Mulazim. You are but a boy, in a position which might unnerve a man twice your age. Rise to the occasion, as Englishmen are wont to do. The soldiers love you. You and your compatriot have but to lead, and they will follow. Remember the Czar Nicholas’ furious cry in the Crimean War: ‘We have been beaten by a handful of savages led by British boys!’”
As they climbed to a distant hill they suddenly overlooked a battle-field of twenty square miles in area—terrible to see, terrible to hear. The thunder of 240 guns seemed like the crash of so many volcanoes; the earth trembled like a living thing. It was like standing in the centre of a raging fire. Presently the Russian troops drew near. The Turks began a quick fire of three minutes’ duration. Deep gaps showed in their lines, but they were soon filled up, and still they drew nearer. The Russian “Hurrah!” and the wild Turkish cry of “Allah!” mingled together. Now there were only 100 paces between the charging lines, the Russians coming up hill, the Turks rushing down. Then came a chaos of stabbing, clubbing, hacking, shouting, cursing men: knots of two or three on the ground, clinging to each other in a deadlier Rugby football; butt-ends of rifles rising and falling like the cranks of many engines; horses charging into solid bodies of men; frantic faces streaming with blood. All the mad-houses of the world might be discharging their contents into this seething caldron of human passion.
“I remember nothing; all I know is that I discharged the six chambers of my revolver, but at whom I have no notion; that my sabre was stained with blood, but with whose I cannot tell; that suddenly we looked at one another in blank surprise, for the Russians had gone, save those left on the ground, and we were among friends, all frantic, breathless, perspiring, many bleeding, the lines broken, all of us jabbering, laughing, dancing about like maniacs. Fifteen minutes after the first charge the Russians returned. Of this charge I remember one item too well. A giant on a big horse—a Colonel, I think—galloped up to me and dealt me a terrific blow from above. I parried as well as I could, but his sword cut across my upturned face, across nose and chin, where the mark is visible to this day. I felt the hot blood trickle down my throat. He passed on. Sergeant Bakal, my friend and counsellor, spoke to me, pointing to my face. Jack said something in a compassionate voice. I fainted. When I came to myself, my head had been bandaged, the nose plastered all over. Water was given me. How grateful I was for that delicious drink! Then I was supported by friends to the outskirts of Plevna. As we went along I noticed a Russian Lieutenant who, after creeping along for a space, had sat down by the side of the track, leaning against the belly of a dead horse. He was calmly awaiting death in awful forsakenness. He counted barely twenty summers, poor boy! He looked at me, oh! so wistfully and sadly, with the sweet, divine light of deliverance shining in his tearful eyes. He said faintly: ‘De l’eau, monsieur?’
“I had some cold coffee left in my flask, which I got my companion to pour down his throat. He bowed his poor bruised head gratefully, and we left him to die. The ground was strewn with haversacks, rifles, swords, wounded men; riderless horses, neighing vehemently, trotted about in search of food. These sights were revealed to me by the peaceful, dying golden light of a summer sunset. Even war, that hell-born product of the iniquity of monarchs and statesmen, receives its quota of sunshine.”
A few weeks later Herbert was summoned to the Ferik, or General of Division, and asked if he could speak French well enough to take a letter into the Russian camp. He said “Yes,” made himself smart in new tunic and boots, and flattered himself that his tanned, smooth, youthful face looked well below the bright red fez with its jaunty tassel, in spite of his chin being still under repair. A corporal carrying a white flag and a bugler well mounted rode with him. They were handsome, strapping fellows, in the highest of spirits. After a ride of six miles they came in sight of a detachment of Cossacks. A young Russian Lieutenant rode to meet them, waving his handkerchief. Herbert stated his business in French, was asked to dismount while awaiting instructions. The Russians crowded round out of curiosity; the horses were fed and watered, cigarettes were exchanged, and friendly talk ensued. In half an hour a horseman rode up, and Herbert was bidden to mount. His eyes were bandaged, his horse was led. After a sharp trot of twenty minutes they halted, the handkerchief was taken off, and he found himself in a battery. An officer came up and took the letter, then handed Herbert over to an infantry Colonel, who took him into a small tent. Here, with some other officers, they had a cosy meal—wine, bread, and soup—a pleasant chat and smiles all round. It was a fortnight since the last battle, and the Russians were still lost in admiration of the bravery with which the Turks had defended their positions.
“Vos hommes, mon camarade, sont des diables. Jamais je n’ai vu pareille chose.”
That was just a glimpse of the enemy, and proved that, though men may fight by order, they may yet be friends at heart.
The Czar Alexander had been present, watching the varied issues of every fight and assault. The sappers had built for him a kind of outlook on a little hill beyond the line of fire, where he could see far away on all sides. A large tent was standing behind, supplied with food and wine, where his suite made merry; but the poor, worn, anxious Czar could not eat, could not bide in his safe tower, but would go wandering round among the gunners and the guns. It was his fête-day when the great September battle was being fought. There he stood alone on his little balcony, under the lowering sky of an autumn day, gazing through his glass at the efforts of his soldiers to storm the Gravitza redoubt. All the afternoon assault had followed assault in vain, and now the last desperate effort, the forlorn hope, was being pushed to the front. The pale, drawn face on the balcony was now quivering with agonized sorrow; the tall figure was bent and bowed, and seemed to wince under the lash of some destroying angel. With awful losses the Russian battalions staggered and struggled up the slopes slippery with their comrades’ blood.
“See, sire, they have entered the redoubt; it is carried at last!”
Hardly has the Czar time to smile and breathe a prayer of gratitude when from a second redoubt higher up a terrible fire is turned on the Russians, and they are swept out of the place they had so hardly won.
There was one Russian officer who seemed to have a charmed life. He was the bravest of the brave, was beloved by his men, and did marvels of heroic feats—Skobeleff. On a day of battle Skobeleff always wore a white frock-coat, with all his decorations. Seeing the battalions coming back from the Gravitza in disorderly route, the tall white figure on the white horse dashed at full speed down the slope, passed the linesmen, who gave their loved chief a great cheer as he galloped by, caught up the riflemen who were advancing in support, and swept them on at the double. Men sprang to their feet and rapturously cheered the white-clad leader. He reached the wavering beaten mass, pointed upwards with his sword, and imparted to daunted hearts some of his own courage and enthusiasm. They turned with him and tried yet once more. Then the white horse went down. The glass trembled in the hands of Alexander.
“He is down!”
“No, sire; he rises—he mounts again! See, they are over and into the Turkish entrenchments!”
What a medley of sights and sounds—flame and smoke and shouts and screams! But the Russians were for the present masters of the redoubt.
In the evening Skobeleff rode back without a scratch on him, though his white coat was covered with blood and froth and mud. His horse—his last white charger—was shot dead on the edge of the ditch; his blade was broken off short by the hilt. Every man of his staff was killed or wounded, except Kuropatkin.
“General Skobeleff,” wrote MacGahan to the Daily News, “was in a fearful state of excitement and fury. His cross of St. George twisted over his shoulder, his face black with powder and smoke, his eyes haggard and bloodshot, his voice quite gone. I never saw such a picture of battle as he presented.”
But a few hours later the General was calm and collected. He said in a low, quiet voice:
“I have done my best; I could do no more. My detachment is half destroyed; my regiments no longer exist; I have no officers left. They sent me no reinforcements. I have lost three guns!”
“Why did they send you no help? Who was to blame?”
“I blame nobody,” said Skobeleff; then solemnly crossing himself, he added: “It was the will of God—the will of God!”
Skobeleff’s heroism was magnificent, and did much to nerve the common soldier to face the Turkish batteries; but success came not that way. Men and officers began to ask one another why the Czar did not send them the help of the great Todleben, who had defended Sebastopol so brilliantly. It seems that the Grand Duke Nicholas had nourished a grudge against Russia’s most eminent engineer, and had kept him out of all honourable employment. But Alexander had sent for Todleben, and this was the turn of the tide. Todleben came in such haste from Russia that he had brought no horses with him. Now he was at last in the Russian camp—a handsome, tall, dignified man of sixty, straight and active, and very affable to all. The attack was to be changed. No more deadly assaults in front, but a complete investment, and wait till famine steps in to make Osman submit.
But Skobeleff had not yet finished with daring assaults. One day the “Green Hill,” which the Russians had taken under his command, was being endangered by Turkish sharp-shooters. Russian recruits who were posted near had fallen back in a scare, thrown down their rifles, and simply run like hares. Skobeleff met them in full flight, and in grim humour shouted: “Good health, my fine fellows—my fine, brave fellows!”
The men halted and gave the customary salute, being very shamefaced withal.
“You are all noble fellows; perfect heroes you are. I am proud to command you!”
Silent and confounded, they shambled from one leg to another.
“By the way,” said Skobeleff, still blandly smiling, “I do not see your rifles!”
The men cast their eyes down and said not a word.
“Where are your rifles, I ask you?” in a sterner tone.
There was a painful silence, which Skobeleff broke with a voice of thunder. His face changed to an awful frown, his glance made the men cower.
“So you have thrown away your weapons! You are cowards! You run away from Turks! You are a disgrace to your country! My God! Right about face! My children, follow me!”
The General marched them up to the spot where they had left their rifles, and ordered them to take them up and follow him. Then he led them out into the space in front of the trench, right in the line of the Turkish fire, and there he put them through their exercises, standing with his back to the Turks, while the bullets could be heard whistling over and around them. Only two of them were hit during this strange drill. Then he let them go back to their trenches, saying: “The next time any one of you runs away, he will be shot!”
The investment of Plevna went on relentlessly through October, November, and part of December. By the 9th almost all their food was exhausted, and Osman determined to try one last sortie before surrendering. Herbert had charge of a train of a battalion outside the town. He made up a fire, saw his men installed for the night, and then walked to the town. A snowfall was coming down lazily; bivouac fires lit up the gaunt figures of men and beasts. The men, talking of to-morrow’s fight in a subdued tone, were yet excited and eager. Many Turkish residents, with their carts and vehicles, were spending the night on the snow-covered plain, the men brooding and gloomy, the veiled women sobbing, the children playing hide-and-seek around the fires and among the carts. It was a weird sight—all these thousands eager to go out after the army when the last struggle should have carved them an open road through the surrounding foe.
At head-quarters an officer met Herbert, and asked him to post some labels at the ambulance doors of a certain street. He says:
“Armed with a brush and paste-pot, I turned bill-sticker, and affixed a notice on some twenty house doors which were showing the ambulance flag. Anything more dismal than that deserted town, abandoned by all but dying and helpless men and some 400 starving Bulgarian families, cannot be imagined. Desolate, dead, God-forsaken Plevna during the night of the 9th and 10th of December was no more like the thriving and pretty Plevna of July than the decaying corpse of an old hag is like the living body of a blooming girl. The streets, unlighted and empty, save for a slouching outcast here and there bent on rapine, echoed to the metallic ring of my solitary steps; while occasional groans or curses proceeding from the interior of the ambulances haunted me long afterwards as sounding unearthly in the dark. Twice I stumbled over corpses which had been thrust into the gutter as the quickest way of getting rid of them.
“As I walked I had to shake myself and pinch my flesh, so much like the phantasy of an ugly dream was the scene to my mind. As I plied my brush on the door-panels, I felt like one alive in a gigantic graveyard.
“At one of the ambulances I was bidden to enter, and found, by the feeble light of a reeking oil-lamp, some invalids fighting for a remnant of half-rotten food which they had just discovered in a forgotten cupboard. Men without legs, hands, or feet were clutching, scratching, kicking, struggling for morsels that no respectable dog or cat would look at twice. I pacified them, and distributed the unsavoury bits of meat. As I turned to go a man without legs caught hold of me from his mattress, begging me to carry him to the train bivouac, that he might follow the army. Happily an attendant turned up, and I wrenched myself away.”
Herbert was returning by a narrow dark lane when someone sprang upon him and tore the paste-pot away from him. He had doubtless seen it by the light of the Lieutenant’s lantern, and thought the vessel contained food.
He belaboured the fellow’s face with his brush, making it ghastly white, and setting him off to splutter and croak and swear, and finally he rammed the bristles hard down his throat. At this moment two other Bulgarians came up; but, taking time by the forelock, Herbert pasted their mouths and eyes before they could speak, then shouted out, “Good-night, gentlemen, and I wish you a very hearty appetite.” He then turned and ran for all he was worth to the officers’ mess-room. It was about ten o’clock p.m. when Osman Pasha and his staff rode up, preceded by a mounted torch-bearer, and escorted by a body of Saloniki cavalry.
When he came out again, the light from the torch fell full upon his face. His features were drawn and care-worn, the cheeks hollow; there were deep lines on the forehead, and blue rings under his eyes. Their expression was one of angry determination. He responded to the salute with that peculiar nod which was more a frown than a greeting. They all rose and went after him into the street to see him mount his fine Arab horse. He and his staff spent that last night in one of the farm-houses on the western outskirts of Plevna.
After a supper of gruel and bread, Herbert and the others walked in a body to the train bivouac. The night was intensely dark; a few snowflakes were flying about; it was freezing a little. They did not talk, for each was saying to himself, “It is all over with us now.” Hardly any expected to see the next nightfall.
Herbert and two other Lieutenants slept in a hut by the river’s brink; they could hear the water murmuring, and every now and then a lump of ice made music against the piles. A little after five in the morning he moved on, crossed with the first division the shaky pontoon bridge, and rejoined his company. Twenty-four crack battalions of the First Division were marching on to face the ring of Russian guns; the dark hoods of the great-coats drawn over the fez and pointing upwards gave an element of grotesqueness to the men. They were marching to certain death, with hope in their hearts.
In front the Russian entrenchments rose out of the vapours and fog in threatening silence; once beyond them, and they were free! The country and military honour called for this supreme sacrifice, and they offered it full willingly.
At 9.30 a.m. the bugles sounded “Advance,” and the whole line, two miles long, began to move in one grand column. The Turks went at the quick, hurling a hail of lead before them. The troops kept repeating the Arabic phrase, “Bismillah rahmin!” (In the name of the merciful God!), but the fire became so deadly that they came to a dead-stop. The men in the front line lay down on their stomachs. After an interval of ten minutes, the bugles of the First Division sounded “Storm.”
The men jumped to their feet and rushed at the nearest trench. A murderous discharge of rifle fire greeted them; many bit the dust.
But very soon the Turks had the first trench in their possession, then a second and third; and before they knew what they were about, they were in the midst of the Russian guns, hacking, clubbing, stabbing, shooting, whilst overhead flew countless shells, hissing and leaving a white trail in their track.
Then they waited for the support of the second line, which never came; but at noon the Russians came down upon them in force. Herbert was ordered to ride and report that they could not hold out longer without reinforcements. He says:
“As I rode towards the centre, I was drawn into the vortex of a most awful panic—a wild flight for safety to the right bank of the river.
“I had never been in a general retreat. It is far more terrible than the most desperate encounter. I was simply drawn along in a mad stream of men, horses, and carts. Officers, their faces streaming with perspiration in spite of the cold, were trying to restore order; the train got mixed with the infantry and the batteries, and the confusion baffles description. My horse slipped into a ditch, and I continued on foot. I heard that Osman had been wounded and carted across the river; the pitiless shells followed us even to the other side of the river. The screams of the women in the carts unnerved many a sturdy man. I came to a sort of barn, where two Saloniki horsemen stood sentry. Being dead-beat and hungry to starving-point, I sat down on a stone. Whilst I crunched a biscuit a cart drove up, and a man badly wounded in the leg was assisted into the building. So sallow and pain-drawn was his face that at first I failed to recognize Osman. There were tears in his eyes—tears of grief and rage rather than of physical pain—and in their expression lay that awful thought, ‘The game is up, the end is come,’ which we see in Meissonier’s picture of Napoleon in the retreat from Waterloo.”
The last sortie from Plevna was witnessed by Skobeleff from the heights above. The Turkish infantry were deploying with great smartness, taking advantage of the cover afforded by the ground. The skirmishers were already out in the open, driving before them the Russian outposts.
Skobeleff was very excited.
“Were there ever more skilful tactics?” he said. “They are born soldiers, those Turks—already half-way to Ganetzky’s front, hidden first by the darkness and now by the long bank under which they are forming in perfect safety. Beautiful indeed! Never was a sortie more skilfully prepared. How I should like to be in command of it!”
Skobeleff then turned his glass on the Russian defence line. He seldom swore, but now a torrent of oaths burst from his lips.
“Oh, that ass—that consummate ass—Ganetzky!” he shouted, striking his thigh with his clenched fist. “What fool’s work! He had his orders; he was warned of the intended sortie; he might have had any number of reinforcements. And what preparation has he made? None. He is confronting Osman’s army with six battalions when he might have had twenty-four. Mark my words: the Turks will carry our first line with a rush. We shall retrieve it, but to have lost it for ever so short a time will be our disgrace for ever.” Then Skobeleff spat angrily and rode off at a gallop. How true those words were we have seen already.
At 2 p.m. Osman had been obliged to surrender, and shortly after he met the Russian Grand Duke Nicholas—Osman in a carriage, Nicholas on horseback. They looked one another long in the face, then Nicholas offered his hand heartily, and said:
“General, I honour you for your noble defence of Plevna. It has been among the most splendid examples of skill and heroism in modern history!”
Osman’s face winced a little—perhaps a twitch of pain crossed it—as, in spite of his wound, he struggled to his feet and uttered a few broken words in a low tone. The Russian officers saluted with great demonstration of respect, and shouts of “Bravo!” rang out again and again.
Poor victorious Osman! conquered at last by King Famine. He had lived in a common green tent during the whole period of the investment; his last night at Plevna was the first he spent under a roof.
Lieutenant Herbert says concerning the surrender: “As the Roumanian soldiers seized our weapons I became possessed of an uncontrollable fury. I broke my sword, thrust carbine, revolvers, and ammunition into the waggon. A private with Semitic features perceived my Circassian dagger, but I managed to spoil it by breaking the point before handing it over. Another man annexed my field-glass. I never saw my valise again, which had been stored on one of the battalion’s carts. I had saved a portion of my notes and manuscripts by carrying them like a breast cuirass between uniform and vest. Having given vent to rage, I fell into the opposite mood, and, sitting down on a stone, I hid my face in my hands, and abandoned myself to the bitterest half-hour of reflection I have ever endured.”
Luckily Herbert fell in with a Roumanian Lieutenant whom he knew, who took him to the Russian camp, and gave him hot grog, bread, and cold meat. “How we devoured the food!” he says. “We actually licked the mugs out.”
As they walked away in the dark to their night quarters, they happened to pass the spot where Herbert’s battalion was encamped, without fires or tents, in an open, snow-covered field, exposed to the north wind. Cries of distress and rage greeted them, and they found that the drunken Russian soldiers were robbing their Turkish prisoners, not only of watches, money, etc., but also of their biscuits—their only food.
Herbert stopped for a minute, and gave away all he had left; but some Russians jumped upon him and rifled his pockets, before he could recall his companions to his aid. Everybody in camp seemed to be drunk. Herbert went to sleep in a mud hut, and slept for twelve hours without awaking, being very kindly treated by a Russian Major.
But the Turks suffered terribly. They spent the night of the 10th on the same cold spot. Their arms had been taken from them, also their money, biscuits, and even their great-coats. It froze and snowed, and they were allowed no fires.
It was a fortnight before all the prisoners had left the neighbourhood; during this time from 3,000 to 4,000 men had succumbed to their privations. The defence of Plevna had lasted 143 days. As the Grand Duke Nicholas told Osman, it was one of the finest things done in military history. But it cost the Russians 55,000 men, the Roumanians 10,000, and the Turks 30,000.
There is a Turkish proverb, “Though your enemy be as small as an ant, yet act as if he were as big as an elephant.” Had the Russians been guided by this, they might have saved many losses.
“One bitterly cold morning, with two feet of snow on the ground, I joined a detachment of prisoners, escorted by Roumanians. We travelled viâ Sistoon to Bukarest, crossing the Danube by the Russian pontoon bridge. This journey, which lasted eight days, was the most dreadful part of my experience, lying as it did through snow-clad country, with storms and bitter winds. I and fifty others had seats on carts; the bulk of the prisoners had to tramp. I saw at least 400 men drop, to be taken as little notice of as if they were so much offal, to die of starvation, or be devoured by the wolves which prowled around our column.
“Over each man who fell a hideous crowd of crows, ravens, vultures, hovered until he was exhausted enough to be attacked with impunity.
“Some of the soldiers of the escort were extremely brutal; others displayed a touching kindness; most were as stolid and apathetic as their captives. Of Osman’s army of 48,000 men, only 15,000 reached Russian soil; only 12,000 returned to their homes.
“In Bukarest our sufferings were at an end. In the streets ladies distributed coffee, broth, bread, tobacco, cigarettes, spirit. Our quarters in the barracks appeared to us like Paradise.”
Then by train to Kharkoff, where Herbert got a cheque from his father, and was allowed much freedom on parole; he made many friends, was lionized and feasted and fattened “like a show beast.” “I was treated,” he says, “with all the chivalrous kindness and open-handed hospitality which are the characteristics of the educated Russians. The effects of the brutal propensities developed in warfare wore off speedily, and I am now a mild and inoffensive being, whose conscience does not allow the killing of a flea or the plucking of a flower!”
From “The Defence of Plevna,” by W. V. Herbert, 1895, by kind permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co.
[CHAPTER XXI]
SIEGE OF KHARTOUM (1884)
Gordon invited to the Soudan—The Mahdi—Chinese Gordon—His religious feeling—Not supported by England—Arabs attack—Blacks as cowards—Pashas shot—The Abbas sent down with Stewart—Her fate—Relief coming—Provisions fail—A sick steamer—Bordein sent down to Shendy—Alone on the house-top—Sir Charles Wilson and Beresford steam up—The rapids and sand-bank—“Do you see the flag?”—“Turn and fly”—Gordon’s fate.
In January, 1884, Charles Gordon was asked by the British Government to go to Egypt and withdraw from the Soudan the garrisons, the civil officials, and any of the inhabitants who might wish to be taken away. It was a dangerous duty he had to perform, as the Mahdi, a religious pretender in whom many believed, had just annihilated an Egyptian army led by an Englishman, Hicks Pasha, and, supported by the Arab slave-dealers, had revolted against Egyptian rule.
Gordon had some years before been Governor-General of the Soudan for the Khedive Ismail. He had been then offered £10,000 a year, but would not take more than £2,000, for he knew it would be “blood money wrung from the wretches under his rule.” When previously “Chinese Gordon,” as he was called, had put down the Taiping rebels for the Chinese Government, he refused the enormous treasure which was offered him, in order to mark his resentment at the treachery of the Emperor for having executed the rebel chiefs after Gordon had promised them their lives.
Gordon was a man of simple piety. “God dwells in us”—this was the doctrine he most valued. After the Bible, the “Imitation of Christ,” the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, seem to have been his favourites. He once wrote: “Amongst troubles and worries no one can have peace till he stays his soul upon his God. It gives a man superhuman strength.... The quiet, peaceful life of our Lord was solely due to His submission to God’s will.”
Such was the man whom England sent out too late to face the rising storm of Arab rebellion. Gordon reached Khartoum on the 18th of February, taking up his quarters in the palace which had been his home in years before. He had come, he said, without troops, nor would he fight with any weapons but justice. The chains were struck off from the limbs of the prisoners in the dungeons.
“I shall make them love me,” he said; and the black people came in their thousands to kiss his feet, calling him “the Sultan of the Soudan.”
But time went by, and Gordon could not get the Government at home to second his schemes, so that the natives began to lose confidence in him, and sided with the Mahdi.
The Arabs began to attack Khartoum on the 12th of March, and from that date until his death Gordon was engaged in defending the city. Khartoum is situated on the western bank of the Blue Nile, on a spit of sand between the junction of that river with the White Nile. Nearly all the records of this period have been lost, but it is proved that wire entanglements were stretched in front of the earthworks, mines were laid down, the Yarrow-built steamers were made bullet-proof and furnished with towers, guns were mounted on the public buildings, and expeditions in search of food were sent out.
It was Gordon’s habit to go up on the roof at sunrise and scan the country around.
“I am not alone,” he would say, “for He is ever with me.”
On the 16th of March he had to look upon his native troops retiring before the rebel horsemen. He writes:
“Our gun with the regulars opened fire. Very soon a body of about sixty rebel horsemen charged down upon my Bashi-Bazouks, who fired a volley, then turned and fled. The horsemen galloped towards my square of regulars, which they immediately broke. The whole force then retreated slowly towards the fort with their rifles shouldered. The men made no effort to stand, and the gun was abandoned. Pursuit ceased about a mile from stockade, and there the men rallied. We brought in the wounded. Nothing could be more dismal than seeing these horsemen, and some men even on camels, pursuing close to troops, who with arms shouldered plodded their way back.”
But Gordon was no weak humanitarian. Two Pashas were tried, and found guilty of cowardice, and were promptly shot—pour encourager les autres. After that he tried to train his men to face the enemy by little skirmishes, and he made frequent sallies with his river steamers.
“You see,” he wrote, “when you have steam on the men can’t run away.”
Then began a long and weary waiting for the relief which came not until it was too late. The Arabs kept on making attacks, which they never pressed home, expecting to effect a surrender from scarcity of food.
A Strange Weapon of Offence
Lieut. Herbert was ordered to paste some labels at the ambulance doors in Plevna. In passing a dark lane someone sprang at him and seized his paste-pot, no doubt taking it for food. To defend himself he belaboured and plastered his opponents’ face with the paste-brush, and later on those of two others. He then turned and ran.
In September only three months’ food remained. No news came from England; they knew not if England even thought of them. The population of Khartoum was at first about 60,000 souls; nearly 20,000 of these were sent away as the siege went on as being friends of the Mahdi.
On the 9th of September Gordon sent down the Nile, in a small paddle-boat named the Abbas, Colonel Stewart, Mr. Power, M. Herbin, the French Consul, some Greeks, and about fifty soldiers. They took with them letters, journals, dispatches which were to be sent from Dongola. The Abbas drew little water, the river was in full flood, and they seemed likely to be able to get over the rapids with safety. Henceforth Gordon was alone with his black and Egyptian troops. One might have thought that his heart would have sunk within him at the loneliness of his situation, at the feeling of desertion by England, and of treachery in his own garrison. He had no friend to speak to, no sympathetic companion left at Khartoum. Yes, he had one Friend left, and in his journal he tells us that he was happier and more peaceful now than in the earlier months of the siege.
“He is always with me. May our Lord not visit us as a nation for our sins, but may His wrath fall on me, hid in Christ. This is my frequent prayer, and may He spare these people and bring them to peace.”
The ill-fated Abbas was wrecked, her passengers and crew were murdered, her papers were taken to the Mahdi, who now knew exactly how long Khartoum could hold out against famine.
On the 21st of September Gordon first heard the news of a relief expedition being sent from England, and three days later he resolved to dispatch armed steamers to Metemma down the Nile to await the arrival of our troops. They started on the 30th, taking with them many of Gordon’s best men; but Gordon went on, drilling, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, writing hopefully, and sometimes merrily, in his journals. For instance, writing of an official who had telegraphed, “I should like to be informed exactly when Gordon expects to be in difficulties as to provisions and ammunition,” Gordon remarks:
“This man must be preparing a great statistical work. If he will only turn to his archives he will see we have been in difficulties for provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the bank, having seen his friend in a river already bobbed down two or three times, hails, ‘I say, old fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the life-buoy. I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is a pity to throw you the life-buoy until you are in extremis, and I want to know exactly.’”
On the 21st of October the Mahdi arrived before Khartoum, and Gordon was informed of the loss of the Abbas and the death of his friends. To this Gordon replied:
“Tell the Mahdi that it is all one to me whether he has captured 20,000 steamers like the Abbas—I am here like iron.”
On the 2nd of November there were left provisions for six weeks, and he could not put the troops on half rations, lest they should desert.
On the 12th an attack was made upon Omdurman, a little way down the river, and on Gordon’s steamers Ismailia and Hussineyeh. The latter was struck by shells, and had to be run aground. In the journal we read:
“From the roof of the palace I saw that poor little beast Hussineyeh fall back, stern foremost, under a terrific fire of breechloaders. I saw a shell strike the water at her bows; I saw her stop and puff off steam, and then I gave the glass to my boy, sickened unto death. My boy (he is thirty) said, ‘Hussineyeh is sick.’ I knew it, but said quietly, ‘Go down and telegraph to Mogrim, “Is Hussineyeh sick?”’”
On the 22nd of November Gordon summed up his losses. He had lost nearly 1,900 men, and 242 had been wounded. And where were the English boats that were to hurry up the Nile to his rescue?
On the 30th of November only one boat had passed the third cataract, the remaining 600 were creaking and groaning under the huge strain that was hauling them painfully through the “Womb of Rocks.”
In December the desertions from the garrison increased, as the food-supply decreased. There was not fifteen days’ food left now in Khartoum. So the steamer Bordein was sent down to Shendy with letters and his journal. In a letter to his sister he writes:
“I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty.”
The last entry in his journal runs as follows:
“I have done the best for the honour of our country. Good-bye. You send me no information, though you have lots of money.”
Evidently this high-souled man was cut to the heart by what he thought was the ingratitude and neglect of England. He could not know that thousands of Englishmen and Canadians were toiling up the Nile flood to save him, if it were possible. But alas! they all started too late, since valuable time had been wasted in long arguments held in London as to which might be the best route to Khartoum.
Meanwhile, starvation was beginning: strange things were eaten by those who still remained faithful to the last. Only 14,000 now were left in the city. But Omdurman had been taken, the Arabs were pressing closer and fiercer, and Egyptian officers came to Gordon clamouring for surrender. Then he would go up upon the roof, his face set, his teeth clenched. He would strain his eyes in looking to the north for some sign, some tiny sign of help coming. He cared not for his own life—“The Almighty God will help me,” he wrote—but he did care for the honour of England, and that honour seemed to him to be sullied by our leaving him here at bay—and all alone!
Meanwhile, the English had fought their way to Gubat, where they found the steamers which Gordon had sent to meet them. So tired were the men that, after a drink of river-water, they fell down like logs. Four of Gordon’s steamers, with Sir Charles Wilson and Captain C. Beresford, started from Gubat on the 24th of January with twenty English soldiers and some undisciplined blacks. They were like the London penny steamers, that one shell would have sent to the bottom. They were heavily laden with Indian corn, fuel, and dura for the Khartoum garrison. Each steamer flew two Egyptian flags, one at the foremast and one at the stern. Every day they had to stop for wood to supply the engines, when the men would be off after loot or fresh meat.
When they reached the cataract and rapids the Bordein struck on a rock, and could not be moved for many hours, the Nile water running like a mill-race under her keel. Arabs on the bank were taking pot-shots at her, and the blacks on board grinned good-humouredly, and replied with a wasteful fusillade. After shifting the guns and stores, the crew got the Bordein to move on the 26th of January, but only to get fast upon a sand-bank. Precious time was thus lost, and on the 27th of January a camel man shouted from the bank that Khartoum was taken and Gordon killed. No one believed this news.
Near Halfiyeh a heavy fire was opened upon them at 600 yards from four guns and many rifles. The gunners on the steamers were naked, and looked like demons in the smoke.
“One huge giant was the very incarnation of savagery drunk with war,” writes Sir Charles Wilson.
When the steamers had passed the batteries the Soudanese crews screamed with delight, lifting up their rifles and shaking them above their heads.
Soon they saw the Government House at Khartoum above the trees, and excitement stirred every heart. The Soudanese commander, Khashm el Mus, kept on saying, “Do you see the flag?”
No one could see the flag.
“Then something has happened!” he muttered.
However, there was no help for it; they had to go on past Tuti Island and Omdurman, spattered and flogged with thousands of bullets.
“It is all over—all over!” groaned Khashm, as to the sound of the Nordenfeldt was added the deeper note of the Krupp guns from Khartoum itself.
As they reached the “Elephant’s Trunk”—so the sand-spit was called below Khartoum—they saw hundreds of Dervishes ranged under their banners in order to resist a landing; so the order was given with a heavy heart: “Turn her, and run full speed down.” Then the Soudanese on board, who till now had been fighting enthusiastically, collapsed and sank wearily on the deck. The poor fellows had lost their all—wives, families, houses!
“What is the use of firing? I have lost all,” said Khashm, burying his face in his mantle.
But they got him upon his legs, and the moment of sorrowful despair changed again to desperate revenge. After all the steamers got safely back.
And General Gordon—we left him alone in command of a hungry garrison—what of him? From examinations of Gordon’s officers taken later it seems that before daylight on the 26th of January the Arabs attacked one of the gates, and met with little or no resistance. There was reason to fear treachery. For some three hours the Arabs went through the city killing every one they met. Some of them went to the palace, and there met Gordon walking in front of a small party of men. He was probably going to the church, where the ammunition was stored, to make his last stand. The rebels fired a volley, and Gordon fell dead. It is reported that his head was cut off and exposed above the gate at Omdurman. We may be glad that it was a sudden death—called away by the God in whom he trusted so simply. Thus died one of England’s greatest heroes, one of the world’s most holy men.
The siege had lasted 317 days, nine days less than the siege of Sebastopol, and the Mahdi ascribed the result to his God. In a letter sent to the British officers on the steamers he says:
“God has destroyed Khartoum and other places by our hands. Nothing can withstand His power and might, and by the bounty of God all has come into our hands. There is no God but God.
“Muhammed, the Son of Abdullah.”
[CHAPTER XXII]
KUMASSI (1900)
The Governor’s visit—Pageant of Kings—Evil omens—The Fetish Grove—The fort—Loyal natives locked out—A fight—King Aguna’s triumph—Relief at last—Their perils—Saved by a dog—Second relief—Governor retires—Wait for Colonel Willcocks—The flag still flying—Lady Hodgson’s adventures.
In 1874 Sir Garnet Wolseley captured Kumassi, the capital of the Ashantis, whose country lies in the interior of the Gold Coast, in West Africa. In March, 1900, Sir Frederick Hodgson, Governor of the Gold Coast, set out with Lady Hodgson and a large party of carriers and attendants to visit Ashantiland. They had no anticipation of any trouble arising, and on their march held several palavers with friendly Kings and chiefs.
On Sunday, the 25th of March, they entered Kumassi in state. At the brow of a steep hill the European officials met the Governor’s party, and escorted them into the town. At the base of the hill they had to cross a swamp on a high causeway, and then ascend a shorter hill to the fort. Some children under the Basel missionaries sang “God Save the Queen!” at a spot where only a few years before human sacrifices and every species of horrible torture used to be enacted.
Soon they passed under a triumphal arch, decorated with palms, having “Welcome” worked upon it in flowers. Near the fort were assembled in a gorgeous pageant native Kings and chiefs, with their followers, who all rose up to salute the Governor, while the royal umbrellas of state were rapidly whirled round and round to signify the general applause. Everything seemed to promise order and contentment. But that night Lady Hodgson was informed by her native servants that very bad fetishes, or portents, had been passed on the road through the forest. One of these was a fowl split open while still alive, and laid upon a fetish stone; another was a string of eggs twined about a fetish house; a third was the presence of little mounds of earth to represent graves—a token that the white man would find burial in Ashanti.
The next day Lady Hodgson went to see the once famous Fetish Grove—the place into which the bodies of those slain for human sacrifices were thrown. Most of its trees had been blown up with dynamite in 1896, when our troops had marched in to restore order, and the bones and skulls had been buried. The executioners—a hereditary office—used to have a busy time in the old days, for every offence was punished by mutilation or death; for, as the King of the Quia country once told the boys at Harrow School, “We have no prisons, and we have to chop off ear or nose or hand, and let the rascal go.”
But the Ashanti victim had the right of appealing to the King against his sentence. This right had become a dead-letter, because, as soon as the sentence of execution had been pronounced, the victim was surrounded by a clamorous crowd, and a sharp knife was run through one cheek, through the tongue, and so out through the other cheek, which somewhat impeded his power of appeal. One would have thought that English rule and white justice would have been a pleasant change after the severity of the native law.
The fort is a good square building, with rounded bastions at the four corners. On each of these bastions is a platform on which can be worked a Maxim gun, each gun being protected by a roof above and by iron shutters at the sides. The only entrance to the fort lies on the south, where are heavy iron bullet-proof gates, which can be secured by heavy beams resting in slots in the wall. The walls of the fort are loopholed, and inside are platforms for those who are defending to shoot from. There is a well of good water in one corner of the square. The ground all round the fort was cleared, and it would be very difficult for an enemy to cross the open in any assault.
As soon as the Governor of the Gold Coast knew that the Ashanti Kings were bent on war, he telegraphed for help from the coast and from the north, where most of the Hausa troops were employed. They were 150 miles away from help, with a climate hot and unhealthy, the rainy season being near at hand; and they were surrounded by warlike and savage tribes. Fortunately, some of the native Kings, with their followers, were loyal to the English Queen; these tried to persuade the rebels to desist from revolt, and lay their grievances before the Governor in palaver. But the more they tried to pacify them, the more insolent were their demands. The first detachment of Hausa troops arrived on the 18th of April, to the great joy of the little garrison; but soon after their arrival the market began to fail: the natives dare not come with food-stuffs, and the roads were now closed. On the 25th a Maxim gun was run out of the fort to check the advance of the Ashantis; but they possessed themselves of the town, and loopholed the huts near the fort. The loyal inhabitants of Kumassi had left their homes, and were crowded outside the walls of the fort, bringing with them their portable goods, being upwards of 3,000 men, women, and children. The gates of the fort had hitherto remained open, but it was evident that the small English force would be compelled to concentrate in the fort; and as the refugees seemed to be bent on rushing the gates for safer shelter, the order was given to close the gates.
“Gradually the gate guard was removed one by one, and then came the work of shutting the gates and barricading them. Never shall I forget the sight. My heart stood still, for I knew that were this panic-stricken crowd to get in, the fort would fall an easy prey to the rebels, and we should be lost. It was an anxious moment. Could the guards close the gates in face of that rushing multitude? A moment later, and the suspense was over. There was a desperate struggle, a cry, a bang, and the refugees fell back.” Then they tried to climb up by the posts of the veranda. So sentries had to be posted on the veranda to force them down again. “I felt very much for these poor folk,” writes Lady Hodgson; “but, besides the fact that the fort would not have accommodated a third of them, the whole space was wanted for our troops.”
The hours of that day went on, with sniping from all sides. Sometimes the rebels would come out into the open to challenge a fight, but the machine guns made them aware that boldness was not the best policy.
At night, when our men flung themselves down to rest, the whole sky was lit up with the fire of the Hausa cantonments and of the town. Tongues of fire were leaping up to the skies on all sides, lighting up the horrors of the scene around, affrighting the women and children, and adding to the anxiety of all.
Night at Kumassi was not a time of quiet repose; the incessant chatter of the men and women just outside the walls, the yelling and squealing of children, all made sleep difficult. And there was ever the thought underlying all that to-morrow might be the end, that the fort might be rushed by numbers.
But, as it turned out, the 26th dawned quietly. So, later in the day, a strong escort of Hausas was sent to the hospital to recover, if possible, the drugs and medical stores which had been abandoned through lack of carriers when the sick were brought into the fort. Fortunately, the rebels had left the drugs and stores untouched, and they were brought in with thankful alacrity.
The next night there was a hurricane of wind rushing through the forest trees and drenching the poor refugees, who tried to light fires to keep themselves warm.
“There was a dear old Hausa sentry on the veranda near my bedroom, who regarded me as his special charge. On this occasion, and on others, when my curiosity prompted me to go on the veranda to see what was happening, this old man would push me back, saying in very broken English, ‘Go to room—Ashanti man come—very bad. You no come out, miss.’”
It had been hoped that by the 29th of April the Lagos Hausas would have arrived to rescue them, but they did not come, and the rebels fired the hospital. Not liking our shells bursting amongst them, the Ashantis, instead of retiring, swarmed out into the open, and advanced upon the fort. The refugees were cowering down close to the walls, and around them were the Hausa outposts ready with their rifles. In the fort were the gunners standing to their guns. As the rebels came on, jumping and shouting, and dancing and firing, the Maxims opened upon them; still they came on, and now the Hausa outposts took up the fire. At last the fight became a hand-to-hand struggle, and the guns in the fort had to cease firing, lest they should hit friend and foe alike. Then some 200 loyal natives, led by Captain Armitage, sallied out to the fight. “At their head were their chiefs, prominent amongst whom was the young King of Aguna, dressed in his fetish war-coat, in the form of a ‘jumper,’ and hung back and front with fetish charms made from snake and other skins. He also wore a pair of thick leather boots, and where these ended his black legs began, and continued until they met well above the knee a short trouser of coloured cotton. He also wore a fierce-looking head-dress, and carried war charms made of elephant tails. Proudly and well did he bear himself; and at last, to our joy, a great cheer rose in the distance, and proclaimed that the enemy were retiring. Soon King Aguna came back, triumphantly carried on the shoulders of two of his warriors to the gate of the fort, where he met with a great ovation from his ‘ladies,’ who flocked round him, pressing forward to shake his hand and congratulate him upon the victory.” So the day was won, and with the loss of only one man killed and three wounded, as the rebels fired over our heads.
Captain Middlemist had been too ill to take the command, and it devolved upon Captain G. Marshall, Royal West Kent Regiment, who, after his severe exertions, suddenly succumbed, and was brought into quarters half delirious. The heat of the sun, the excitement, and the work had been too much for him; fortunately, he was well again the next day.
By this victory the rebels had been driven out of Kumassi and across the swamps; they had left behind large supplies of food and war stores, which the garrison secured; even the refugees outside the walls began to smile and sing. It is astonishing how these children of Nature suddenly change from the depth of woe to an ecstasy and delirium of delight.
But where were the Lagos Hausas all this time?
Four o’clock came, five o’clock came, and still no sign of their arriving. Anxious faces scanned the Cape Coast road. Something must have happened to them; they had been met, checked, repulsed.
But at half-past five firing was heard in the forest. “There they are,” said each to his neighbour, and a feverish excitement made numbers run to the veranda posts, and climb up to get a better view. A force also was sent down the road to meet them. How slow the time went with the watchers in the fort!
Just before six o’clock there was a yell from the loyal natives, and shouts announced that the Hausas were coming round the bend of the road. The relief came in through two long lines of natives, who wanted to see the brave fellows who had fought their way up to Kumassi from the coast. But, poor fellows! they had had a terrible time: their officers were all wounded; they had had nothing to eat or drink since early morning, and they were fearfully exhausted.
However, after they had slept a few hours and drunk some tea, they were able to tell their tale. Captain Aplin, who led them, said:
“We got on all right till we came to a village called Esiago, when we were attacked on both sides by a large force concealed among the trees. I formed the men up two deep, kneeling, and facing the bush on either side. By Jove! it was a perfect hail of slugs; and we could not see a soul, as the black chaps slid down the trunks of the trees into the jungle. Captain Cochrane, who was with the Maxim, was hit in the shoulder, but would not leave his post, and Dr. Macfarlane was wounded while tending him. Then the machine-guns became overheated and jammed, and had to cease firing. Four times the enemy returned to the attack. I got this graze on my cheek from a bullet which passed through my orderly’s leg.
“Next day, after crossing the Ordah River, we were attacked at eleven a.m., and the fight lasted till five in the evening. A sudden turn in the track, and we saw a strongly-built stockade, horseshoe shape. Some Ashantis were looking over the top and peering between the logs. The track was so narrow that we had no front for firing, and the whole path was swept by their guns. I told off Captain Cochrane to outflank the stockade. He, with thirty Hausas, crept away into the bush to do so. Meanwhile, we ran short of ammunition, and had to load with gravel and stones. When I told the men to fix bayonets ready for a charge, I found they were so done up they could hardly stand. Our hour seemed to have struck, and the guns had again jammed. Just then three volleys sounded near the stockade. Cochrane was enfilading them. Hurrah! Instantly the Ashanti fire began to slacken. One charge, and it was ours.”
Amongst those who had come in with the Hausas was Mr. Branch, an officer in the telegraph department. In reply to Lady Hodgson as to how he was so lame, he replied:
“I and my men were busy putting the line right to Kumassi. We were peacefully going through the forest when—bang! one of my hammock-men went down, shot, and the rest, carriers and all, threw down their loads, and bolted into the tangle of trees and undergrowth. By good luck, I had taken off my helmet and placed it at the foot of my hammock. The rebels thought it was my head, and every gun was blazing away at my poor helmet. It was fairly riddled, I can tell you. I jumped out of the hammock, and made for the bush; but it was so thick and thorny, the brutes caught me and beat me with sticks about the legs and feet, so that I can scarcely walk, as you see. Well, it was my poor terrier dog that saved me; for he came nosing after me, but somehow took a wrong turn, was fired on and wounded, and went off whimpering into the bush in a different direction. The Ashantis followed my doggie, thinking he was with me; so I got away from them that night. I wandered about, trying to find the village, where a Kokofu chief was friendly to me. As daylight came I heard natives talking, and threw myself down under some leaves, thinking it would be rather unpleasant to be taken and tortured. Well, they came up, saw the grass had been disturbed, stopped, examined, found me! I was done for! No, I was not. I saw by their grinning and other signs that they were friendly. In fact, my carriers had told the friendly chief about me, and he had sent these men to bring me back; they had been looking for me all night. They carried me back to Esumeja, where I stayed until the Lagos Hausas came up on the 27th of April.”
Next day the garrison of Kumassi found that their rescuers had been compelled to abandon their rice, and to fire away most of their ammunition on the road. Now there were 250 more mouths to feed, and food was running short. Rations were served out every morning, and it was a very delicate operation, for the loyal natives thought it a clever thing to steal a tin of beef or biscuits. The biscuits and tinned meat had been stored four years in a tropical climate; the meat-tins were covered inside by a coating of green mould, and the biscuits were either too hard to bite or were half-eaten already by weevils. Captain Middleton died on the 6th of May, and when he was buried, his “boy” Mounchi lay down on his master’s grave like a faithful dog and sobbed bitterly. That boy became a famous nurse; they called him the “Rough Diamond.” The poor refugees had now left the walls of the fort and had gone to their huts; they looked so wan and piteous.
Night after night there came a fearful noise of drumming from the rebel camps. The loyal chiefs said the drums were beating out defiance and challenge to fight.
“Why not send for more white men?” Ah! why did they not come?
Every day news came of a rescue column; every night the rumour was proved false.
On the 15th of May, about 3.30 p.m., there was a terrific hubbub all round the fort. Officers rushed on to the veranda to see what was the matter. Hundreds of friendly natives were streaming along the north road.
“What is it, chief?”
“Heavy loads of food coming in. Much eat! much eat—very good for belly!”
In a few minutes the garrison saw a joyful sight: Major Morris leading in his troops from the northern territories—such a fine body of men, all wearing the picturesque many-coloured straw hats of the north. Some of the officers were on ponies. Oh, what shaking of hands! what delightful chatter! But they, too, had had to fight their way through several stockades, and some were wounded.
“The arrival of Major Morris,” writes Lady Hodgson, “seemed to take a load off our minds. He was so cheery, confident, and resourceful, and seemed always able to raise the spirits of the faint-hearted.... But the large loads of food did not in reality exist: they had only brought enough to last a week; they had, however, brought plenty of ammunition.”
Major Morris was now in command of 750 of all ranks, and he resolved to make a reconnaissance in force. They went after the rebels far from the fort, and whilst they were away fighting, the wives of the refugees were doing a slow funeral dance up and down the road, chanting a mournful dirge, their faces and bodies daubed with white paint. In spite of this appeal to their gods, many wounded were carried back to the fort.
Many a weary day came and went; no strong relief came—no news. The natives were dying of starvation: some went mad and shrieked; others sat still and picked their cloth to pieces. It was bad enough for all. A rat cost ten shillings; all pets had been eaten long ago.
Then it was determined that the Governor and Lady Hodgson and most of the garrison should try to force their way to the coast, as there were only three days’ supply of rations left. The 23rd of June was to be the day of departure.
The Governor’s last words to the men left behind in the fort were: “Well, you have a supply of food for twenty-three days, and are safe for that period; but we are going to die to-day.” Captain Bishop was left in command of the fort, with a small force.
From Captain Bishop’s report we learn that Major Morris had scarcely left Kumassi when he saw a band of Ashantis coming towards the fort from their stockade. They thought, no doubt, that the fort had been deserted, but the fire from two Maxims soon convinced them to the contrary. The refugees, who had built shelters round the walls, had all, with the exception of 150, gone away with the Governor’s column; but their empty shelters formed a pestilential area: over them hovered vultures—a sure proof of what some of them contained—and one of the first duties of the little garrison was to burn them up, after examining their contents.
The day after the column left three men died of starvation, and almost daily one or more succumbed. When no relief came, as promised—though they had been told it was only sixteen miles off—their hopes fell, and after ten days they gave up all hope of surviving.
“But,” he says, “we kept up an appearance of cheerfulness for the sake of our men. I regard the conduct of the native troops as marvellous; they maintained perfect discipline, and never complained. Some were too weak even to stand at the table to receive their rations, and lay about on the ground. All were worn to skin and bone, but there were a few who, to relieve their hunger, had been eating poisonous herbs, which caused great swellings of the body. Sometimes native women would come outside the fort and offer to sell food. A penny piece of cocoa realized fifteen shillings; bananas were eighteen-pence each; half a biscuit could be bought for three shillings. This may give some idea of the scarcity of food.
“On the 14th of July we heard terrific firing at 4.30 p.m. Hopes jumped up again, but most of the men were too weak to care for anything. It was very pathetic that now, when relief was at hand, some of the men were just at the point of death.
“At 4.45, amid the din of the ever-approaching firing, we heard ringing British cheers, and a shell passed over the top of the fort. We soon saw shells bursting in all directions about 400 yards off, and we fired a Maxim to show that we were alive. Then, to our intense relief, we heard a distant bugle sound the ‘Halt!’ and at six o’clock on this Sunday evening, the 15th of July, we saw the heads of the advance guard emerge from the bush, with a fox-terrier trotting gaily in front.
“Instantly the two buglers on the veranda sounded the ‘Welcome,’ blowing it over and over again in their excitement. A few minutes later a group of white helmets told us of the arrival of the staff, and we rushed out of the fort, cheering to the best of our ability. The meeting with our rescuers was of a most affecting character.
“Colonel Willcocks and his officers plainly showed what they had gone through. The whole of the force was halted in front of the fort, and three cheers for the Queen and the waving of caps and helmets formed an evening scene that none of us will ever forget.” So they won through by pluck and patience—33 Europeans and some 720 Hausas opposing many thousands of savage and cruel natives.
And what about the Governor’s party?
They stole away on the morning of the 23rd of June in a blue-white mist, through the swamp and the clinging bush, till they came to a stockade. Then they were seen by the Ashantis, who began to beat their tom-toms and drums, signalling for help from other camps. But they took the stockade, and found beyond it a nice little camp; before every hut a fire was burning and food cooking, and no one to look after it. Many a square meal was hurriedly snatched and eaten, but some who were too greedy and stayed behind to eat fell victims to the returning foe.
Then came a terrible wrestling with bad roads and sniping blacks and a deluge of rain, and most of their boxes were thrown away or lost.
Of course there were many cases of theft. On the third night two men were brought into the village in a dying state. One of them was clasping in his hand a label taken from a bottle of Scrubb’s ammonia. They had broken open a box, and finished the two bottles which they found there: one was whisky, the other ammonia!
Lady Hodgson writes: “One stream I remember well; it was some 30 feet wide, and flowing swiftly. Across it was a tree-trunk, very slippery. How was I to get over? The difficulty was solved by my cook carrying me over in his arms. He was a tall man, and managed to take me over safely; but more than once he stumbled, and I thought I should be dropped into the torrent. Often the road led through high reeds and long grass, and many a time I thought we had lost our way, and might suddenly emerge into some unfriendly village, to be taken prisoners or cut down.
“At last N’kwanta came in sight, perched on a hill. We could see the Union Jack flying on a flagstaff in the centre of the town, and the King’s people drawn up to receive the Governor. We were at last among friends.
“Fires were burning everywhere, and the cooking of food was the sole pursuit. Our poor starved Hausas had now before them the diet in which their hearts delighted. It was a pleasant sight to see the joy with which they welcomed their altered prospects, and the dispersal of the gloom which had so long rested upon all of us like a pall.”
From Lady Hodgson’s “Kumassi,” by kind permission of Messrs. C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
MAFEKING (1899-1900)
Snyman begins to fire—A flag of truce—Midnight sortie—The dynamite trolley—Kaffirs careless—A cattle raid—Eloff nearly takes Mafeking—Is taken himself instead—The relief dribble in—At 2 a.m. come cannon with Mahon and Plumer.
On the 7th of October, 1899, Colonel Baden-Powell issued a notice to the people of Mafeking, in which he told them that “forces of armed Boers are now massed upon the Natal and Bechuanaland borders. Their orders are not to cross the border until the British fire a shot. As this is not likely to occur, at least for some time, no immediate danger is to be apprehended.... It is possible they might attempt to shell the town, and although every endeavour will be made to provide shelter for the women and children, yet arrangements could be made to move them to a place of safety if they desire to go away from Mafeking....”
Mafeking is situated upon a rise about 300 yards north of the Matopo River. The railway, which runs north to Buluwayo, is to the west of the town, and crosses the river by an iron bridge. To the west of the railway is the native stadt, which consists of Kaffir huts, being called in Kaffir language “The Place Among the Rocks.”
The centre of the town is the market-square, from which bungalows built of mud-bricks, with roofs of corrugated iron, extend regularly into the veldt. The streets were barricaded, and the houses protected by sand-bags. An armour-plated train, fitted with quick-firing guns, patrolled the railway at times. The population during the siege included 1,500 whites and 8,000 natives. The town was garrisoned by the Cape Police and by the Protectorate Regiment, under Colonel Hore, by the Town Guard, and volunteers.
Great was the excitement of the inhabitants as the day of bombardment drew near. They had been very busy constructing earthworks and gun-emplacements, piling up tiers of sand-bags and banks of earth to face them; some had dug deep pits to sit in, but at first such makeshifts were derided by the inexperienced.
It had been notified that a red flag would fly from headquarters if an attack were threatening, together with an alarm bell rung in the centre of the town. Mines had been placed outside the town, and a telephone attached.
Commandant Snyman had prophesied that when he did begin to bombard Mafeking English heads would roll on the veldt like marbles. Mafeking had no artillery to speak of, so no wonder that many hearts felt uneasy tremors as the fatal Monday drew near. Yet curiosity ofttimes overcame fear, and many coigns of vantage were chosen by those who wished to climb up and see the gory sport. The bombardment began at 9.15 a.m., and the first shell sank in a sand-heap, and forgot to explode. The second and third fell short, but not very short. Then came shell after shell, falling into street or backyard, and exploding with a bang. Numbers rushed to find out what damage had been done. Then grins stole across surprised faces: the area of damage was about 3 square feet. Three shells fell into the hospital, luckily doing no harm to anyone. After some hours of terrible, thundering cannon-fire, it suddenly ceased. The garrison counted up their casualties. Three buildings had been struck—the hospital, the monastery, and Riesle’s Hotel; one life had been taken—it was a pullet that had never yet laid an egg!
The Boers, taken by surprise, were unsteady and panic-struck
An incident during the siege of Mafeking, when the British had sapped their way to within eighty yards of the Boer position.
Shortly after this bill of butchery had been presented the Boer General sent an emissary to Colonel Baden-Powell.
“Commandant Snyman presents his compliments, and desires to know if, to save further bloodshed, the English would now surrender.”
Baden-Powell is a great actor; he never smiled as he replied:
“Tell the Commandant, with my compliments, that we have not yet begun.”
But a few days later the Boers were seen to be very active on the veldt about three miles from the town, and the rumour spread that they had sent to Pretoria for siege guns. The townsfolk stood in groups and discussed the new peril.
About noon next day the red flag flew from head-quarters. Presently a great cloud of smoke rose on the skyline; then came a rush of air, a roar as of some great bird flying, a terrific concussion, and then flying fragments of steel buried themselves in distant buildings, creating a sense of terror throughout the town.
“Mafeking is doomed!” was the general cry that afternoon; those alone who had dug themselves deep pits were fairly comfortable in their minds. The second shot of the big Creusot gun wrecked the rear of the Mafeking Hotel, and the force of the explosion hurled the war correspondent of the Chronicle upon a pile of wood. Next day more than 200 shells were thrown into Mafeking, which was saved by its mud walls; where bricks would have been shattered and shaken, these walls only threw out a cloud of dust.
As the Boers began to construct trenches round the city, Captain Fitzclarence was ordered to make a midnight sortie. Shortly after eleven o’clock the little party started on their perilous expedition; they crept on over the veldt in extended order, noiseless as possible, nearer and nearer to the Boer entrenchments. Those who watched them felt the weirdness of the scene—the deep silence, the mysterious noises of the veldt, the shadows caused by the bush. Now they were within a few yards; as they fixed bayonets they rushed forward with a cheer. Then figures showed in the Boer position; shots rang out, horses neighed and stampeded in fright. The Boers, taken by surprise, were unsteady and panic-struck; not many in the first trenches resisted long and stubbornly. Captain Fitzclarence, a splendid swordsman, laid four Boers who faced him on the ground; his men pursued with the bayonet.
Botha said next day that they thought a thousand men had been hurled against them, and the Boers in the other trenches fired as fast as they could at anything they could see or not see, many of the bullets going as far as the town.
This useless firing went on for a long time. When the attacking party arrived at the town again, they found they had lost only six men, eleven wounded, and two taken prisoners. Next day the Boers fired no gun until evening, and had plenty to do in collecting their wounded.
Several such night attacks were made in order to check the Boers’ advance. After six weeks of siege, Colonel Baden-Powell said in a published order: “Provisions are not yet scarce, danger is purely incidental, and everything in the garden is lovely.” He was always trying to cheer up his little garrison with humorous speeches and funny doings, with concerts and dances and theatrical entertainments. It was the knowledge of what he had done to keep up the spirits of his men and the spirits of Englishmen at home which caused such a frenzy of delight when Mafeking was finally relieved. What seemed a madness of joy was a sure instinct in the nation. It is true that Mafeking, through the foresight of Julius Weil, the contractor, possessed immense stocks of food; but as to its defences, dummy camps and dummy earthworks built to affright the Boers would not have availed unless the loyalty and bravery of the colonists had been equal to the severest strain. There was a wild desire to spike “Big Ben,” but the Creusot was hedged round by barbed wire, guarded by mines, and flanked by Nordenfeldt guns. It seemed wearisome work, week after week, to find the Boers standing away four or five miles, while from their places of safety they launched their shells. Sometimes in the night Baden-Powell would go forth alone, and creep or stand and examine and ferret out the plans of the enemy. Often, as he returned, he would startle some dozing sentry, even as the great Napoleon, who once found a sentry asleep, and shouldered his musket until the fellow awoke with a start. “I will not tell, but don’t do it again!”
Seven weary weeks have passed, and Mafeking still endures the straits of a siege and the terrors of a bombardment. The Boers have summoned to their aid the finest guns from their arsenal in Pretoria to breach and pound the earthworks; they pour shot and shell into the little town: but everybody is living below ground now.
But they have bethought them of a new engine of terror and death. All was dark outside, the good folk in Mafeking were going to bed in peace, when a deafening roar shook the town to its foundation of rock; a lurid glow of blood-red fire lit up square and street and veldt, while pattering down on roofs of corrugated iron dropped a hailstorm of sand and stones, and twigs broken from many trees. The frightened folk ran out to see what had happened, and they saw a huge column of fire and smoke rising from the ground to the north of Mafeking. After the great roar of explosion came a weird silence and then the rattle of falling fragments on roof after roof; and then the cry of terror, the shriek of those who had been aroused from sleep to face the great trumpet-call of the Day of Judgment: for this they imagined that awful phenomenon to portend.
It was not until the morning that they knew what had caused the alarm. About half a mile up the line the ground was rent and torn; the rails were bent and scattered and flung about as by an earthquake.
On inquiry, they found that the Boers had filled a trolley with dynamite, and were to impel it forwards towards Mafeking. They lit the time-fuse, and proceeded to push the trolley up a slight incline. A few yards further, and it would reach the down incline, and would run merrily into town without need of further aid from muscle of man.
But they gave over pushing a little too soon; the trolley began to run back, and it was so dark they did not realize it until it had gathered way; then they called to one another, and some pushed, but others remembered the time-fuse, and stood aloof with their mouths open.
Very soon the time-fuse met the charge, and the dynamite hastened to work all the evil it could, regardless of friend or foe.
Piet Cronje was in command of the Boers now; he was vexed by this unlucky accident, but threatened to send to Pretoria for dynamite guns, just to make this absurd veldt-city jump and squeal. Cronje was willing to ride up and storm Mafeking, but the idle braggarts who formed the greater part of his army dared not face the steel; yet there was more than one lady in the trenches able and ready to use her rifle. The natives had suffered more from shell-fire than the whites. It is not easy to impress the Kaffir mind with the peril of a bursting shell; though the Kaffir may have helped to build bomb-proof shelters for Europeans, yet for himself and his family he thinks a dug-out pit too costly, and will lie about under a tarpaulin or behind a wooden box, until the inevitable explosion some day sends him and his family into the air in fragments.
An Amazon at Mafeking
Mrs. Davies, the lady sharpshooter, in the British trenches.
One such victim was heard to murmur feebly as they put him on the stretcher, “Boss, boss, me hurt very.” They bear pain very stoically, and turn their brown pathetic eyes on those who come to help them, much as a faithful hound will look in his master’s face for sympathy when in the agony of death. There were so many shells that missed human life that the people grew careless and ventured out too often.
Late in November a local wheelwright thought he would extract the charge from a Boer shell which had not exploded. The good man used a steel drill. For a time all went well, and his two companions bent over to watch the operation; then came a hideous row, a smell, a smoke, and the wheelwright, with both his comrades, was hurled into space.
The Boers had not spared the hospital or the convent. The poor Sisters had had a fearful time; the children’s dormitory was in ruins, and their home riddled with holes. Still the brave Sisters stuck to their post, comforted the dying, nursed the sick, and set an example of holy heroism. Here is an extract from a letter describing a scene with the Kaffirs:
“It is amusing to take a walk into the stadt, the place of rocks, and watch the humours of the Kaffirs, some 8,000 in number. Now and then they hold a meeting, when their attire is a funny mixture of savagery and semi-civilization. You come upon a man wearing a fine pair of check trousers, and nothing else, but mighty proud of his check; another will wear nothing but a coat, with the sleeves tied round his neck; some wear hats adorned with an ostrich feather, and a small loin-cloth. My black friend was such a swell among them that he wore one of my waistcoats, a loin-cloth, and a pair of tennis shoes. He wore the waistcoat in order to disport a silver chain, to which was attached an old watch that refused to go. But it was a very valuable ornament to Setsedi, and won him great influence in the kraal. Yet when my friend Setsedi wanted to know the time of day, if he was alone, he just glanced at the shadow of a tree; or if in company, he lugged out his non-ticker, and made believe to consult it in conjunction with the sun. The sun might be wrong—that was the impression he wished to create—and it was perhaps more prudent to correct solar time by this relic of Ludgate Circus. Thus Setsedi, like other prominent politicians, did not disdain to play upon the credulity of his compatriots.
“Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, when the Boers were keeping the Sabbath and no shells were flying around, the children of the veldt would begin a dance. They formed into groups of forty or fifty, and began with hand-clapping, jumping, and stamping of bare feet. The old crones came capering round, grinning and shrieking delight in high voices apt to crack for age. From stamping the young girls passed on to swaying bodies, every limb vibrating with rising emotion, as they flung out sinewy arms with languorous movement; then more wild grew the dance, more loud the cries of the dancers, as they threw themselves into striking postures, glided, shifted, retreated, laughed, or cried.
“I had been watching them for some time when Setsedi came up to me and said:
“‘Baas, I go now to mark some cows for to-night; will you come?’
“‘What! has the big white chief given you leave to make a raid?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, Marenna—yes; we are to go out to-night, and bring in a herd from beyond the brickfields yonder—if we can.’
“‘And you go now, this afternoon, to mark them down, and spy out the ground?’
“He smiled, showing a set of splendid teeth, pulled out his watch, hit it back and front with his knuckles till it rattled to the very centre of the works, spat carefully, and replied with some pride:
“‘We brought in twenty oxen last week; the chief very pleased with us, and gave us a nice share, Marenna.’
“Setsedi addressed me thus when he was pleased with himself and the universe: Marenna means sir.
“‘Well, Setsedi,’ said I, ‘if I can get leave, I would like to go out with you to-night. May I bring my boy, Malasata?’
“The idea of my asking his permission gave Setsedi such a lift up in his own opinion of himself that he actually reflected with his chin in the air before he finally gave his royal assent to my proposition.
“Time and place were settled, and I went back to the club for a wash. These black chaps, if they don’t help us much in fighting, have proved themselves very useful in providing us now and then with rich, juicy beef from the Boer herds that stray about the veldt. When I went home and told Malasata he was to accompany me to-night on a cattle-raiding foray, like a true Kaffir, he concealed his delight, and only said, ‘Ā-hă, Ā-hă, Unkos!’ but he could not prevent his great brown eyes from sparkling with pleasure. When it was pitch-dark we started—about a score of us—and crept along silently past the outposts, word having been passed that the raiders were to go and come with a Kaffir password or countersign.
“Most of the Kaffirs were stark naked, the better to evade the grasp of any Boer who might clutch at them. A sergeant had been told off to accompany them; he and I were the only white men out that night. After an hour’s careful climbing and crawling, stopping to listen and feel the wind, the better to gauge our direction, Setsedi came close to my ear and whispered:
“‘We can smell them, Baas; plenty good smell. You and sergeant stay here; sit down, wait a bit; boots too much hullabaloo; too loud talkee!’
“It was disappointing, but we quite saw the need of this caution, and we neither of us saw the necessity of walking barefoot upon a stony veldt; so we sat down in the black silence, and waited. Yet it was not so silent as it seemed: we could hear the bull-frogs croaking a mile away in the river-bed, and sometimes a distant tinkle of a cow-bell came to us on the soft breeze, or a meercat rustled in the grass after a partridge. In about half an hour we heard something; was it a reed-buck? Then came the falling of a stone, the crackling of a stick as it broke under their tread; then we rose and walked towards our black friends.
“Three or four Kaffirs were shepherding each ox, ‘getting a move’ on him by persuasion or fist-law. Sometimes one ox would be restive and ‘moo’ to his mates, or gallop wildly hither and thither; but always the persistent, ubiquitous Kaffir kept in touch with his beast, talking to him softly like a man and a brother, and guiding him the way he should go. And all this time the Boers were snoring not 300 yards off, sentry and all, very probably. But it would not do to count upon their negligence; any indiscreet noise might awake a trenchful of Mauser-armed men, and bring upon us a volley of death.
“When we had got the cattle well out of earshot of the Boer lines, the Kaffirs urged on the oxen by running up and pinching them, but without uttering a sound. As we drew near to the native stadt, a great number of natives who had been lying concealed in the veldt rose up to help their friends drive the raided cattle into the enclosure, and the sergeant went to head-quarters with the report of twenty-four head of cattle safely housed.”
The besieged had persevered in their “dug-outs” until May, 1900, being weary and sometimes sick, faint with poor food, and hopes blighted. They had been asked by Lord Roberts to endure a little longer; Kimberley had been relieved, and their turn would come soon.
Meanwhile, President Kruger’s nephew, Commandant Eloff, had come into the Boer camp with men who had once served as troopers at Mafeking, and who knew much about the fortifications. Eloff made a skilful attack upon the town on the 12th of May, and was successful in capturing a fort, Colonel Hore, and twenty-three men. This attack had been urgent, because news had reached the Boers that the British relief column had reached Vryburg on the 10th of May, and Vryburg is only ninety-six miles south of Mafeking. During the fight Mr. J. A. Hamilton, not knowing that the fort had been taken, thought that he would ride across to see Colonel Hore. It was a short ride from where he was—only a few hundred yards. The bullets whistled near his head, and he scampered across the open to reach cover. It was a bad light, and smoke was drifting about, but he saw men standing about the head-quarters or sitting on the stoep facing the town. As he rode his horse was struck, and swerved violently; some one seized his bridle and shouted “Surrender!” They were Boers, and amongst them were Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen. Many speaking at once, they ordered him to hold up his hands, give up his revolver, get off his horse.
“We had better all take cover, I think,” said Hamilton, as English bullets were falling rather near them.
Then they took him within the walls. But he had not yet obeyed any of their orders.
“Will you hold your hands up?” said one Boer, thrusting a rifle into his ribs with a grin.
“With pleasure, under the circumstances,” he replied, trying to smile.
“Will you kindly hand over that revolver?” said another.
“What! and hold my hands up at the same time?”
They were dull; they did not see the joke, but shouted, “Get off!”
Some one unstrapped the girths, and Mr. Hamilton rolled to the ground. It was only then that he saw his horse had been shot in the shoulder, and he asked them to put the poor beast out of his pain.
“No, no! Your men will do that soon enough,” said they.
The poor animal stood quietly looking at him, as he says, with a sad, pathetic, inquiring look in his eyes, as if he were asking, “What can you do for me? I assure you my shoulder gives me awful pain.”
Hamilton was taken inside the fort and made prisoner. When, later in the day, he came out, he found his poor horse lying with his throat cut and seven bullet-wounds in his body.
There were thirty-three prisoners crowded in a small, ill-ventilated store-room, and they grew very hungry. As dusk settled down they began to hear echoes of desperate fighting outside. Bullets came through the wall and roofing, splintering window and door; through the grating of the windows they could see limping figures scurry and scramble; they heard voices cursing them and urging Eloff to handcuff and march the prisoners across the line of fire as a screen for them in their retreat. Then the firing died down, and the Boers seemed to have rallied; then came a fresh outburst of heavy firing, and then a sudden silence. Eloff rushed to the door.
“Where is Colonel Hore?”
“Here!”
“Sir, if you can induce the town to cease fire, we will surrender.”
It was quite unexpected, this turn of events. No one spoke. Then Eloff said:
“I give myself up as a hostage. Get them to cease fire.”
The prisoners went out, waved handkerchiefs, shouted, “Surrender! Cease fire, boys.”
When this was done sixty-seven Boers laid down their rifles, and the prisoners stacked them up in their late prison.
Commandant Eloff was now a prisoner instead of being master of Mafeking; his partial success he owed to his own dash and gallantry, his failure to the half-hearted support of General Snyman. He dined at head-quarters, and a bottle of champagne was opened to console him and distinguish this day of surprises.
On the 16th of May there was great excitement in the town; the great activity in the Boer laagers, the clouds of dust rising in the south, all showed that something new and strange was coming. News had come of General Mahon having joined Colonel Plumer a few miles up the river. “When will they come?” everybody was asking. About half-past two General Mahon’s guns were heard, and the smoke of the bursting shells could be seen in the north-west.
In the town people were taking things very calmly. Had they not enjoyed this siege now for seven months, when it had been expected to last three weeks at the most? They were playing off the final match in the billiard tournament at the club. Then came a hubbub, and Major Pansera galloped by with the guns to get a parting shot at the retiring Boers.
Then fell the dusk, and the guns came back. Everybody went to dinner very elated and happy. “By noon to-morrow we shall be relieved,” they said.
It was now about seven o’clock; the moon was shining brightly in the square.
“Hello! what’s this? Who are you, then?”
There were eight mounted men sitting on horseback outside the head-quarters office.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” asked a man in the crowd.
“We are under Major Karie Davis with a despatch from General Mahon.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, we’ve come to relieve you fellows; but you don’t seem to care much whether you are relieved or not.”
Then the news travelled round the town; a great crowd gathered, and round after round of cheers broke out. The troopers were surrounded by enthusiastic citizens, cross-questioned, congratulated, slapped on the back, shaken by the hand, and offered—coffee!
Major Davis came out and called for cheers for the garrison; then all fell to hallooing of such anthems as “Rule Britannia” and “God save the Queen.”
Then the troopers of the Imperial Light Horse were taken in to supper.
About two in the morning the troops entered Mafeking—not quite 2,000 men; but when the townsfolk, hearing the noise, ran out into the starry, moonlit night, they saw such a host of horses, mules, and bullocks, such a line of waggons and camp-followers, and such a beautiful battery of bright Royal Horse and Canadian Artillery and Maxims that life seemed worth living at last. Those who did not laugh quietly went home and cried for joy. They had earned their day of delight.
Mafeking had endured 1,498 shells from the 100-pound Creusot; besides this, they had had to dodge 21,000 odd shells of smaller calibre. Men who saw Ladysmith said that the ruin at Mafeking was far greater.
Lord Roberts had, with his wonted generosity, sent a mob of prime bullocks and a convoy of other luxuries. So when the Queen’s birthday came, as it soon did, the town made merry and were very thankful.
England was thankful too, for although it was only a little town on the veldt, every eye at home had been upon the brave defenders who, out of so little material, had produced so grand a defence.
It is not too much to say that Colonel Baden-Powell and his gallant company had not only kept the flag flying; they had done far more: they had kept up the spirits of a nation beginning to be humiliated by defeat after defeat, when most of the nations of Europe were jeering at her, and wishing for her downfall. But God gave us victory in the end.
In part from J. A. Hamilton’s “Siege of Mafeking,” by kind permission of Messrs. Methuen and Co.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
THE SIEGE OF KIMBERLEY (1899-1900)
The diamond-mines—Cecil Rhodes comes in—Streets barricaded—Colonel Kekewich sends out the armoured train—Water got from the De Beers Company’s mines—A job lot of shells—De Beers can make shells too—Milner’s message—Beef or horse?—Long Cecil—Labram killed—Shelter down the mines—A capture of dainties—Major Rodger’s adventures—General French comes to the rescue—Outposts astonished to see Lancers and New Zealanders.
Kimberley is the second largest town in Cape Colony, and is the great diamond-mining district, having a population of about 25,000 whites. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was the Chairman of the De Beers Mines Company, which pays over a million a year in wages.
Kimberley could not at first believe war to be possible between the Dutch and English, though they saw the regular troops putting up earthworks and loopholed forts all round the town. Next a Town Guard was formed to man the forts, while the 600 regulars and artillery were to be camped in a central position ready for emergencies. Cecil Rhodes arrived the last day the railway was open, and began at once to raise a regiment at his own expense—the Kimberley Light Horse. All the streets were blocked with barricades and barbed wires to prevent the Boers rushing in. The main streets had a narrow opening left in the centre guarded by volunteers, who had orders to let none pass without a signed permit. Rhodes used to ride far out on the veldt, dressed in white flannel trousers, though the Boers hated him, and would dearly have liked to pot him at a safe distance.
Colonel Kekewich was in command—a man of Devon, and very popular with his men. On the 24th of October they had their first taste of fighting, when a patrol came across a force of Boers who were out with the object of raiding the De Beers’ cattle. Kekewich, from his conning-tower, could see his men in difficulties, and sent out the armoured train, and the Boers were speedily dispersed. There were many wounded on both sides, and the Mauser bullet was found to be able to drill a neat hole through bone and muscle, in some cases without doing so much damage as the old bullets of lower velocity in earlier wars.
At the beginning of the siege it was feared that water might fail, but in three weeks the De Beers Company had contrived to supply the town with water from an underground stream in one of their mines.
The bombardment began on the 7th of November, and, as at Mafeking, did not do much damage, for the shells, being fired from Spytfontein, four miles away, and being a “job lot” supplied to the Transvaal Government, did not often reach the houses, and often forgot to burst. So that, it is said, an Irish policeman, hearing a shell explode in the street near him, remarked calmly to himself: “The blazes! and what will they be playing at next?”
But by the 11th the Boers had brought their guns nearer, had found the range, and were becoming a positive nuisance to quiet citizens.
Sunday was a day of rest and no shelling took place, but on other days it began at daylight, and, with pauses for meals and a siesta, continued till nine or ten o’clock at night. As usual, there were extraordinary escapes. One shell just missed the dining-room of the Queen’s Hotel, where a large company were at dinner, and, choosing the pantry close beside it, killed two cats. Luckily there was time between the sound of the gun and the arrival of the shell to get into cover.
The De Beers Company, having many clever engineers and artisans, soon began to make their own shells, which had “With C. J. R.’s Compts.” stamped upon them—rather a grim jest when they did arrive.
On the 28th November Colonel Scott Turner, who commanded the mounted men, was killed in a sortie. He was a very brave, but rather reckless, officer, and was shot dead close to the Boer fort.
Sometimes our own men would go out alone, spying and sniping, and in many cases they were shot by their own comrades by mistake.
By December the milk-farms outside the town had been looted, and fresh milk began to be very scarce; even tinned milk could not be bought without a doctor’s order, countersigned by the military officer who was in charge of the stores. The result was that many young children died.
At Christmas Sir Alfred Milner sent a message to Kimberley, wishing them a lucky Christmas. This gave the garrison matter for thought, and the townsfolk wondered if England had forgotten their existence.
Those who could spent some time and care on their gardens, for they tried to find a nice change from wurzels to beet, and even beans and lettuce. For scurvy, the consequence of eating too much meat without green stuff, had already threatened the town. Those who wanted food had to go to the market hall and fetch it, showing a ticket which mentioned how many persons were to be supplied. When horse-flesh first began to be used by the officers, Colonel Peakman, presiding at mess, said cheerfully: “Gentlemen, very sorry we can’t supply you all with beef to-day. Beef this end, very nice joint of horse the other end. Please try it.” But the officers all applied for beef, as the Colonel had feared they would.
Then suddenly, when all had finished, he banged his hand on the table, and said: “By Jove! I see I have made a mistake in the joints. This is the capital joint of horse which I am carving! Dear! dear! I wanted so to taste the horse, but—what! not so bad after all? Then you will forgive me, I am sure, for being so stupid.”
All the same, some of them thought that the Colonel had made the mistake on purpose, just to get them past the barrier of prejudice.
Towards the end of January the bombardment grew more severe; the shells came from many quarters, and some were shrapnel, which caused many wounds. The new gun made by the De Beers Company did its best to reply, but it was only one against eight or nine. The Boers confessed that they directed their fire to the centre of the town, where there were mostly only women and children, for the men were away from home in the forts or behind the earthworks. The townsfolk tried to improve their shell-proof places, but most of them were deadly holes, hot and stuffy beyond description, but that made by Mr. Rhodes around the Public Gardens was far superior to the rest. The De Beers gun was named “Long Cecil,” after Mr. Rhodes, and was about 10 feet long; it threw a shell weighing 28 pounds. When it was first fired, the great question was, “Will it burst?”
But the Boers were surprised, when they sat at breakfast in a safe spot, to hear shells dropping around like ripe apples. That breakfast was left unfinished, as an intercepted letter informed the garrison.
However, the Boers soon placed a bigger gun near Kimberley, and shells began to fall in the market-place very freely.
In February the garrison had a great loss. The last shell of that day fell into the Grand Hotel and killed George Labram, the De Beers chief engineer. It was Labram who had arranged for the new water-supply, who had made the new shells, and planned “Long Cecil.” He was to Kimberley what Kondrachenko was to the Russians at Port Arthur—a man of many inventions, an American, ready at all points. He had just gone upstairs to wash before dinner, when a shell entered and cut him to ribbons, so that he died instantly. A servant of the hotel was in his room at the time, and was not touched.
Towards the middle of February notices signed by Cecil Rhodes were posted up all over the town to the effect that women and children should take shelter in the two big mines. So very soon the streets were full of people running to the mines with babies, blankets, bread, and bedding. The crowd was so great that it took from 5.30 p.m. to midnight to lower them all down the shafts. Kimberley mine took more than 1,000, the De Beers mine 1,500, and all were lowered without a single accident.
One day some natives came in with a story that the Boers had deserted the fort Alexandersfontein. Spies were sent out to investigate, and reported it to be a fact, so some of the Town Guard, with help from the Lancashires, sallied out and took possession of the fort. A few Boers who had been left there were wounded or taken prisoners.
“We will wait a bit in this fort, boys, to see what will turn up,” said the Captain; and in a short time they saw four waggons coming up, which were driven unsuspiciously right into his hands. Other waggons followed, all full of most delicious dainties for Boer stomachs, but likely to be received in starving Kimberley with greater enthusiasm—such things as poultry, grain, butter, fresh vegetables, and bacon. The waggons were drawn by fat bullocks—a sight for mirth and jollity.
In the afternoon the poor Boers knew what they had missed, and some very spiteful bullets were sent across for several hours.
Major Rodger had sent some men to spy out the country, and was waiting for their return. Presently he saw two men advancing towards him, and thinking they were his own men he rode up to them. On drawing near he saw they were Boers. His main body of men were far behind, and he realized that if he galloped away he would be shot, so he quietly walked his horse up to them. One of the Boers said: “Who are you?” “Only one of the fighting-men from Kimberley,” the Major replied. They did not draw their revolvers, they did not cry “Hands up!” and seize him by the collar—no, all they did was to utter a brief swear, turn their horses’ heads, and scamper over the veldt as fast as they could, stooping over the pommel to avoid the Major’s fire. But half a mile away they hit upon some of their own comrades, fired a few volleys, broke the Major’s arm, and retired.
Major Rodger, however, had not done his day’s work, and never told his men he had been shot until they returned to Kimberley in the evening. So much for a Kimberley volunteer!
Meanwhile, the little folks and the women deep down in the mine—some 1,500 feet—were busy devouring sandwiches of corned-beef and horse, and buckets of tea and coffee, with condensed milk, were lowered down too. The large chamber cut out of the rock was lit with electric light, and was not very hot, though it was crammed with children, many of whom were lying on rugs or blankets; they lay so thick on the floor that walking amongst them was the feat of an acrobat. But they were safe down there! No ghastly sights of mangled limbs met their gaze, no whizz of deadly shell, no scream of pain reached them there. It was worth something to have escaped the horrors of a siege, and to feel no nervous tremors, no cowardly panic, no dull despair.
Meanwhile Lord Roberts had not forgotten Kimberley. A force of some 5,000 sabres, led by General French, with two batteries of Horse Artillery, had galloped in the dead of night to the Modder River. Here a small Boer force fled from before them, and ever on through the quivering heat rode Hussars, Dragoons, and Lancers, until both men and horses fell out exhausted on the veldt. On the third day they came close to some kopjes, or hills, on which Boers were posted, who stared in amazement at the sight of the 9th Lancers sweeping in open order round the base of the hills. A hundred miles they had ridden with scant food and scanter water, so that the Boers might have been still more surprised to see many a trooper walking by his tired steed, and even carrying the saddle.
Dr. Conan Doyle tells us that “a skirmish was in progress on the 15th of February between a party of the Kimberley Light Horse and some Boers, when a new body of horsemen, unrecognized by either side, appeared upon the plain, and opened fire upon the enemy. One of the strangers rode up to the Kimberley patrol, and said:
“‘What the dickens does K.L.H. mean on your shoulder-strap?’
“‘It means Kimberley Light Horse. Who are you?’
“‘I am one of the New Zealanders.’”
How puzzled that member of the Kimberley force must have been—a New Zealander out on the African veldt!
Soon the little clouds of dust on the horizon drew hundreds of townsfolk to the earthworks, and as the glint of spear-head and scabbard flashed out of the cloud, and the besieged garrison knew their troubles were over, men waved their hats and shouted, and tearful, laughing ladies flocked round the first men who rode in, and nearly pulled them out of the saddle. Then they set to and hauled the rest out of the mines, finishing that job well by midnight.
For 124 days Kimberley had been besieged. The Boers had never once attacked the town, though not more than 550 mounted men were latterly available for offensive work; these, with the Town Guard, Lancashires, and Kimberley Rifles, made a total of 3,764. Colonel Kekewich might well look radiantly happy; he had administered everything with strict justice, and had earned the respect and admiration of all, while Cecil Rhodes and the De Beers officials had magnificently met and countered every difficulty with generous skill and unflagging energy.
[CHAPTER XXV]
THE SIEGE OF LADYSMITH (1899-1900)
Ladysmith—Humours of the shell—The Lyre tries to be funny—Attack on Long Tom—A brave bugler—Practical jokes—The black postman—A big trek—Last shots—Some one comes—Saved at last.
Ladysmith, where Sir George White and his men detained the Boers so long, is a scattered town lying on a lake-like plain, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of rocky hills. To the north-west was Pepworth Hill, where the Boer Long Tom was placed; north-east of the town, and four miles away, was Unbulwana: here the Boers had dragged a large siege-gun.
South of the town the Klip River runs close under the hills, and here many caves were dug as hiding-places for the residents. There were many women and children there all day long. On the 3rd of November the wires were cut; Ladysmith was isolated and besieged. On the next day it was discussed whether General Joubert’s proposal should be accepted—that the civilians, women, and children should go out and form a camp five miles off under the white flag. Archdeacon Barker got up, and said: “Our women and children shall stay with the men under the Union Jack, and those who would do them harm may come to them at their peril.”
The meeting cheered the tall, white-haired priest, and agreed thereto.
The townsfolk soon got used to shell-fire, but they spent most of the day by the river in their cool caves. There was a Dr. Starke, a visitor from Torquay, who used to go about with a fishing-rod, and spend hours by the river—a kindly man, who one day found a cat mewing piteously at a deserted house, and, making friends with it, used to carry it about with him. This gentleman, having the cat in his arms, was standing near the door of the Royal Hotel talking to Mr. McHugh, when a shell came through the roof, passed through two bedrooms, and whizzed out at the front-door, catching the poor doctor just above the knees. His friend escaped without a scratch. Dr. Starke had always tried to avoid the peril of shells, and they used to banter him on his over-anxiety. It is strange how many hits and how many misses are in the nature of a surprise.
Late in November a shell entered a room in which a little child was sleeping, and knocked one of the walls of the bedroom clean out. In the cloud of dust and smoke the parents heard the cry of the little babe, rushed in, and found her absolutely untouched, while 20 yards away a splinter of the same shell killed a man of the Natal Police. At the same house later in the evening two friends called to congratulate the mother; they were being shown two pet rabbits, when a splinter of a shell came in and cut in two one of the rabbits.
One day a Natal Mounted Rifleman was lying in his tent, stretched himself, yawned, and turned over. At that instant a shell struck the spot where he had just been lying, made a hole in the ground, and burst. The tent was blown away from its ropes, his pillow and clothes were tossed into the air. Poor fellow! his comrades ran towards him, and found him sitting up, pale, but unharmed. They could hardly believe their senses. “Why, man, you ought to have been blown to smithereens!” Another day a trooper of the 18th Hussars was rolled over, horse and all, yet neither of them suffered any severe injury.
December came, and by then the poor women were looking harassed and worn: so many grievous sights, so many perils to try and avoid, so many losses to weep over.
Some of the correspondents brought out a local paper, the Ladysmith Lyre, to enliven the spirits of the dull and timid and sick. The news may be sampled by the following extracts:
“November 14.—General French has twice been seen in Ladysmith disguised as a Kaffir. His force is entrenched behind Bulwen. Hurrah!
“November 20.—H.M.S. Powerful ran aground in attempting to come up Klip River; feared total loss. [Klip River is 2 feet deep in parts.]
“November 21.—We hear on good authority that the gunner of Long Tom is Dreyfus.
“November 26.—Boers broke Sabbath firing on our bathing parties. Believed so infuriated by sight of people washing that they quite forgot it was Sunday.”
The Ladysmith Lyre had come out three times before December.
On the 7th of December, at 10 p.m., 400 men, who had volunteered for the task, were ordered to turn out, carrying rifles and revolvers only, and to make no noise. A small party of Engineers were to be with them. Their object was to destroy Long Tom, which was now removed from Pepworth to Lombard’s Kop, on the north-east. They started when the moon went down on a fine starlight night. By a quarter to two a.m. they were close to the foot of Lombard’s Kop, but the Boer pickets had not been alarmed. General Hunter, who led them, explained how 100 of the Imperial Light Horse and 100 of the Carbineers would steal up the mountain and take the Boer guns, while 200 of the Border Mounted (on foot) would go round the hill to protect their comrades from a flank attack. The Engineers, carrying gun-cotton and tools, followed close after the storming party. As our men were creeping quietly up the hill on hands and knees, amazed that there were no outposts, a sudden challenge rang out behind them: “Wis kom dar?”
Had the Boer sentry been dreaming in the drowsy night?
“Wis (pronounced ve) kom dar? Wis kom dar?” he impatiently shouted. Our men sat down on the slope above him, grinning to themselves, and made no answer.
“Wis kom dar?” He was getting angry and frightened this time, by the tone of it.
“Take that fellow in the wind with the butt of a rifle, and stop his mouth.”
Then the Boer knew who they were, and yelled to his comrades for help; then they heard him say to his after-rider: “Bring my peart—my horse!” and he was safely off!
Further up the hill a shrill voice shouted: “Martinas, Carl Joubert, der Rovinek!” (the Red-neck). At this our men clambered up like goats, while a volley was fired, and bullets whizzed over their heads.
“Stick to me, guides!” shouted General Hunter.
As they neared the top Colonel Edwards, of the volunteers, shouted: “Now then, boys, fix bayonets, and give them a taste of the steel.” This was meant for the Dutchmen to hear, for there was not a bayonet amongst the assaulting party.
The Boers do not like cold steel, and they were heard slithering and stumbling down the other side of the mountain. Now they were up on the top. There stood Long Tom pointing at high heaven, loaded ready, and laid to a range of 8,000 yards, or over four miles. Not a Boer was to be seen or heard anywhere.
Quickly the Engineers got to work. Some removed the breech-block, others filled the barrel with gun-cotton, plugged both muzzle and breech, and ran a pretty necklace of gun-cotton round the dainty ribs of the barrel. Long Tom was looking quite unconscious of their attentions, and shone in the starlight.
He had been set on solid masonry, was mounted on high iron wheels, and a short railway line had been laid down for purposes of locomotion. A thick bomb-proof arch was built over him, and huge pyramids of shells were piled up round about him. A Howitzer and a field-gun, which stood close by, were then destroyed, and a Maxim was reserved to be brought away.
In about twenty minutes the Engineers announced that they were ready.
Like goats they had swarmed about him, and now it was Long Tom’s turn to say “Baa!”
The firing fuse was attached. “Keep back! keep back!”
There was heard a dull roar from the monster, and the whole mountain flared out with a flash as if of lightning.
“Had the gun-cotton done its work?” They ran back to inspect.
“Barrel rent, sir; part of the muzzle torn away.” Long Tom has fired his last shot. The ladies of Ladysmith will be very thankful for this small favour. The men came back, most of them carrying small trophies.
Down they scrambled; no barbed wire, no impediments. Who would have thought that these English would stir out o’ night? Had they no desire to sleep and rest? But when they got down they found some had been wounded. Major Henderson had been twice hit—thumb almost torn away, and a couple of slugs in his thigh. Yet he had never halted, and was the first to tackle the gun. A few privates were also hit, but only one so seriously as to be left behind in care of a surgeon.
Great rejoicing at breakfast, and congratulations from Sir George White.
But the time wore on, and sickness came—far worse and more fatal than shell-fire. There were hundreds of fever patients in the hospital outside at Intombi Spruit.
Fever—typhoid, enteric—and no stimulants, no jellies, no beef-tea!
The only luxury was a small ration of tinned milk. Scores of convalescents died of sheer starvation. The doctors were overworked, and they, too, broke down.
No wonder that many in the garrison chafed at inaction, found fault with their superiors, and asked bitterly: “Are we to stay here till we rot?”
By New Year’s Eve Ladysmith had endured some 8,000 rounds of shell; many buildings had been hit half a dozen times. On New Year’s Day an officer of the Lancers was sleeping in his house, when a shell exploded and buried him in a heap of timber. When they pulled the mess off him, he sat up, rubbed the dust out of his eyes, and asked, “What o’clock is it?” He was unhurt.
There was a small bugler of the 5th Lancers who was the envy of every boy in the town. This boy was in the battle at Elands Laagte, and when a regiment seemed wavering he sounded the call, the advance, the charge. The result was that that regiment faced the music, and did valiantly. A General rode up to the bugler after the fight, and took his name, saying: “You are a plucky boy. I shall report you!”
For this boy, after sounding the charge, had drawn his revolver, rode into the thick of the fight on his Colonel’s flank, and shot three Boers one after the other.
Scores of officers gave the boy a sovereign for his pluck, and he wore his cap all through the siege in a very swagger fashion.
Some of the regiments had their pet dogs in Ladysmith.
When the King’s Royals went into action their regimental dog went with them. He had never been out of the fighting line, and had never had a scratch, but seemed to enjoy the fun of barking and looking back, saying, “Come on—faster!”
There was another, a little red mongrel, who insisted on seeing every phase of warfare; he had lost a leg in India—it was so smashed up that the doctor had to cut it off. There he was, pottering about on three legs, full of inquisitive ardour, and when not engaged on sanitary inspection work, always to the front when the guns were at it. This was the Hussars’ dog.
The Boers were fond of playing practical jokes. On Christmas Day they had fired a shell containing a plum-pudding into the artillery camp. On the hundred and first day of the siege one of the Boers on Bulwana Hill called up the signallers at Cæsar’s Camp, and flashed the message, “A hundred and one, not out.”
The Manchesters flashed back: “Ladysmith still batting.”
“What is the use of shelling these Britishers?” once said a Boer artilleryman. “They just go on playing cricket. Look yonder!”
Ah! but that was in the early days of the siege, when they had some strength in them. Later, after having short rations of horse-flesh, they could hardly creep from hill to hill.
Another day a heliograph message came: “How do you like horse-meat?”
“Fine,” was the answer, “When the horses are finished we shall eat baked Boer!”
It became very difficult to get letters through the Boer pickets; they had so many ways of trapping the native runners. The Kaffir paths were watched; bell-wires were doubled—one placed close to the ground, the other at the height of a man’s head. When the Kaffir touched one of these an electric bell rang on one of the kopjes, or hills, and swarms of guards swooped down to intercept him. But the Kaffir, being paid £15 a journey, did his best too.
He left the outer line of our pickets at dusk, and flitted away silently to the nearest native kraal; he handed in the letters to the black chief, and wandered on empty-handed towards General Buller’s camp. Meanwhile a simple Kaffir girl would pass the Boer camp, calabash on head, going to fetch water from the spring in the early morning. The letters were in the empty water-vessel!
She put them under a stone by the spring, and another maiden would come from the other side, and take them on in her calabash or mealie-jar.
At last the native runner would call for them and carry the letters to the English lines.
On the 6th of January a determined attack was made by the pick of the Boers upon Cæsar’s Camp. Our pickets in Buller’s relieving army could hear the sound of the guns, muffled by distance; officers and men gathered in groups on the hill-sides and listened intently to the long low growl of the rifle. Then came a helio message from Sir George White to General Clery: “Attacked on every side.” The nervous strain on these men, condemned to inaction after each new failure to cross the Tugela and fight their way into Ladysmith, became almost insupportable. They sat outside the big camp, gazing on Bulwana with telescopes and field-glasses, hardly daring to utter their thoughts. A second helio was flashed across: “Enemy everywhere repulsed; fighting continues.” Then tongues were once more loosened, and hope arose as the distant firing sank to a sullen minute-gun. But half an hour later the booming of big guns on Bulwana was renewed, and away to the west arose a fierce rifle fire. “Attack renewed; enemy reinforced,” winked the helio from the top of Convent Hill, and again a dumb despair fell on the watchers. “Very hard pressed,” came the third message, firing our soldiers with indignant rage, as they thought of the poor part they had hitherto taken in relieving Ladysmith. But at length the heroism of the Devons, the Imperial Light Horse, and others of the Ladysmith garrison beat back the Boers’ desperate assault.
The Devons had climbed up the hill late in the afternoon to avenge their fallen comrades. They had charged straight up the hill in a line, but a deadly fire at short range brought down dozens of them as they rushed the top. However, there was no wavering in the Devons, but they pressed forward at the double with the steel advanced, and only a few Boers waited for that disagreeable operation in war. There was a terrific hailstorm going on as Colonel Park halted his men just below the crest: it was a moment to try the nerves of the strongest. Once over that lip of hillside and a fiercer storm than hail would meet them in the face, and call many of them to their last account. No wonder many a hand went for the water-bottle, and little nervous tricks of foot and hand betrayed the tension of the moment.
“Now then, Devons, get ready!” The men gripped their rifles in the old way of drill, quick and altogether, brows were knit, teeth set, and away they went into the jaws of death.
“Steady, Devons, steady!” No need to bid them be steady. They bore down upon the Boers with dogged and irresistible force, and the Boers turned and ran. Many an English officer fell that day, and several doctors were wounded while doing their duty.
The Boers who fought most fiercely were the old Dopper Boers, who nursed a bitter hatred for all Englishmen. These men would refuse all kind help even when lying hurt. They were suspected sometimes of cruelty to our wounded; for more than one of our men was found covered with bruises, as though he had been kicked or beaten to death. But these things were exceptional, and such conduct was confined to the most ignorant and uncivilized of the old Boers.
Many of the wounded lay where they fell for twenty-four hours and more. The Kaffir boys as they dug the long shallow graves would hum a low refrain; above wheeled the vultures, looking down upon the slain. The Boers confessed that it was the worst day they had ever had, and five days after the battle they were still searching for their dead. Our dead numbered about 150.
The Imperial Light Horse, containing many young Englishmen in their ranks, greatly distinguished themselves. The Brigadier commanding in the fight wrote to their chief officer: “No one realizes more clearly than I do that your men were the backbone of the defence during that day’s long fighting.” But sickness carried off far more than rifle or cannon. The Imperial Light Horse, who came to Ladysmith 475 strong, were now reduced to 150; the Devons, from 984 had gone down to 480.
As Majuba Day was coming near the messages brought by the runners became more hopeful: “All going well,” “Cronje is surrounded.”
But time after time came the news of Buller’s failure on the Tugela, and with every piece of ill news came reduced rations at Ladysmith. The artillery horses were nearly all eaten, the cavalry horses too; those that remained were too weak even to raise a trot. Would Buller ever cut his way through? The garrison were beginning to despond. If they had to fight a fierce battle again like that at Cæsar’s Camp a few weeks ago, when the pick of the Boer forces tried to take it by storm, would they not reel and faint for very want of food? Then, when all looked dark, and the far-off sound of Buller’s guns seemed to be dying away in another failure, something happened.
Men on outpost duty upon the hills round Ladysmith saw what seemed to them to be a long white snake crawling over the veldt. Officers seized their glasses, and started with an ejaculation of surprise, for what they saw was a long sinuous line of white-tilted waggons. “It’s the Boers coming away from the Tugela! By Jove! it’s a great trek!” Yes, the enemy were in full retreat at last; Buller had hammered them in so many places, and now at last he had succeeded.
There they came, waggon after waggon, in endless succession, as it seemed. Verily, it was a retreat of an army, for there were thousands of horsemen too, riding at a hand gallop, singly or in clusters, a continuous stream of moving figures coming round the corner of End Hill and then riding north behind Telegraph Hill. They were seeking their railway base.
But, though they rode fast in retreat, there was no confusion; the Boers know how to trek, and they do it well.
Oh! that we had had some horses, good strong horses, to gallop our guns in their direction. But the horses were all either eaten or too weak to trot. Those who looked to Bulwana Hill saw a strange black tripod being erected above the big Boer gun: they were going to take the gun away. The gunners of the Powerful saw the tripod too. They set to work to try and prevent that work from being accomplished; both the 4·7’s were in action, and made the red earth fly near the Boer redoubt.
The third shell burst upon the summit of the hill. The many clusters of men who were watching waited breathlessly for the white smoke to clear away, and when it cleared there was no tripod to be seen! Then an exultant shout rose up from hill-side and from spruit; some in their excitement danced and sang and shook hands and laughed. They were weak for want of food, and had not the usual English restraint. Then a great hailstorm came drifting by, and there was a rush into the town to tell the glad news.
What a Babel of talk there was at dinner that evening! Why, some officers were so hopeful now that they ventured to predict that by to-morrow some of Buller’s men would be in Ladysmith.
The dinner of horse-flesh was progressing merrily when all at once a strange clattering of shoes outside awoke attention. They listened in the mess-room, and heard eager voices, cries of men and boys as they hurried past. One went to the window and shouted: “What’s the row?”
“Buller’s troopers are in sight; they have been seen riding across the flats!”
What! Then they all jumped up, and the youngest and strongest fared forth with the hurrying crowd towards the nearest river-drift.
On reaching this they saw across the river and the flat ground beyond, riding down a little ridge, a column of horsemen trotting towards them. Horsemen at full trot! Then they could not be any of their men, for their horses could not trot to save their lives.
The evening sun shone upon their full kit, and no one could doubt that it was the relief column at last! God be thanked!
Now they had pulled up, and were welcomed by some officers of Sir George White’s staff. Meanwhile the motley crowd grew, at first too dazed to cheer or shout, but rather moist about the eyes. Malays were there in their red fezes, coolies in many-coloured turbans, and white-clad Indians, dhoolie-bearers, grinning a silent welcome. But the most excited and the noisiest in all that throng were the Kaffir boys and Zulus, the Basutos and Bechuanas. They felt no cold reserve strangle their expressions of delight, but danced and shouted and leapt like madmen, showing gleaming white teeth and sparkling eyes.
As they drew near the town they met many of the sick and wounded who had hobbled out, in their great joy, to receive the relievers, and who tried to wave their caps and say Hurrah! with the rest—a piteous sight of wan faces and poor shrunk shanks!
And the men of the Relief Column—so brown and well they looked—were feeling in their pockets for tobacco to distribute round, for the spectacle they saw of white-faced, feeble-kneed invalids smote them to the heart. They had never realized until at this moment all that the defenders of Ladysmith had suffered for England.
They rode in slowly, two by two, Dundonald and Gough and Mackenzie of Natal at the head of the column. All through the main street they rode, nodding to a friend here and a friend there, for the Imperial Light Horse had many friends in Ladysmith.
There were wild cheers half choked by emotion, and the little ones were hoisted on shoulder to be able to see the strong men who had come to save them. Then in the twilight came Sir George White and his staff to welcome the rescue party. As the leaders shook hands the excitement and joy of relief broke forth again. Men bit their lips as if nothing was happening, but women and children cried and laughed and cried again. All in their heart, many in their voices, were thanking God for this timely deliverance. And then they fell to and cheered Sir George White: just then his patient heroism and kindly grip of power appealed to them. And some who had not wept before cried now when they looked on the old soldier, sitting so erect and proud in his saddle, with all the heavy cloud of care suddenly removed from his brow and the light of joy and gratitude shining through wet eyes. Twice—aye, thrice—he tried to speak, but the tears were in his throat and he could not utter his thoughts. Then the cheers came again, and gave him time to pull himself together.
He lifted his bowed head and thanked them for all their loyal help, soldiers and civilians alike, and then finished by one solemn phrase that touched all hearts: “Thank God, we kept the old flag flying!”
Why, the very Zulus caught the enthusiasm and leapt high into the air, waving bare arms aloft and shouting the old war-cry of Cetewayo and his savage impis. That night there were long stories to be told in the camp of the Relief Column.
Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill, M.P., wrote his story down of how they rode into Ladysmith: “Never shall I forget that ride. The evening was deliciously cool. My horse was strong and fresh, for I had changed him at midday. The ground was rough with many stones, but we cared little for that—onward, wildly, recklessly, up and down hill, over the boulders, through the scrub. We turned the shoulder of a hill, and there before us lay the tin houses and dark trees we had come so far to see and save. The British guns on Cæsar’s Camp were firing steadily in spite of the twilight. What was happening? Never mind, we were nearly through the dangerous ground. Now we were all on the flat. Brigadier, staff, and troops let their horses go. We raced through the thorn-bushes by Intombi Spruit. Suddenly there was a challenge: ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ ‘The Ladysmith Relief Column.’ And thereat, from out of trenches and rifle-pits artfully concealed in the scrub a score of tattered men came running, cheering feebly, and some were crying. In the half-light they looked ghastly pale and thin, but the tall, strong colonial horsemen, standing up in their stirrups, raised a loud resounding cheer, for then we knew we had reached the Ladysmith picket-line.”
One word more on Sir Ian Hamilton, one of the greatest of our soldiers. It was he who held command on Cæsar’s Hill during those desperate seventeen hours of fighting. Spare, tall, quiet, smiling, he had the masterful manner of the born soldier, who fights and makes no fuss about it, and draws the soldiers after him in the forlornest of hopes by the magic of his sympathy and valour. Valour without sympathy, ability without the devotion of your men, can do little; but when both are united, steel and lead cannot prevail against them.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR (1904)
Port Arthur—Its hotel life—Stoessel not popular—Fleet surprised—Shelled at twelve miles—Japanese pickets make a mistake—Wounded cannot be brought in—Polite even under the knife—The etiquette of the bath—The unknown death—Kondrachenko, the real hero—The white flag at last—Nogi the modest—“Banzai”—Effect of good news on the wounded—The fleet sink with alacrity.
Port Arthur consists of a small land-locked harbour surrounded by hills. As you sail into the harbour you have on your right the Admiralty depots, dock-basin, and dockyard, sheltered by Golden Hill; next the waterfront, or commercial quarter; on the left the Tiger’s Tail, a sand spit which narrows the entrance, behind which the torpedo-boats lie moored. The new town lies south of Signal Hill, on a plateau rising to the west. All round the town were hill-forts elaborately fortified.
The hotels were, like the houses, very primitive: the best was a one-storied building containing about twenty rooms, each room being furnished with a camp bedstead and no bedding, one deal table, and one chair. Sometimes, if you swore hard at the Chinese coolie, you could get a small basin of water and a jug. There was a permanent circus, a Chinese theatre, music-halls, and grog-shops; a band played on summer evenings.
General Stoessel, the military commander, was not loved by soldier or citizen: he was very strict, and, during the war became despotic. They say he once struck a civilian across the face with his riding-whip because the man had not noticed and saluted him as he passed. His soldiers dreaded him, and would slink away at his appearing. Some such words as these would come from him on seeing a sentry:
“Who are you? Where do you come from? When did you join? Why are you so dirty? Take off your boots and let me inspect your foot-rags? Oh, got an extra pair in your kit? Show them at once. Go and wash your face.”
Though it was known that war between Russia and Japan was imminent, the officers and men of both navy and army took little heed, but relied on the strength of their fortress, its fleet, and batteries. What could the little yellow monkeys do against Russia? Well, on the 7th of February invitations were sent out for a great reception at the residence of the Port Admiral, for it was the name-day of his wife and daughter. Officers of all grades flocked thither from the forts and the ships. After the reception followed a dance, very enjoyable, gay, and delightful.
It was midnight, and many were down by the water’s edge waiting for gig and pinnace. A dull sound echoed through the streets that night.
“Dear me! what is that, I wonder?”
“Oh! only naval manœuvres, sir. We sailors must be practising a bit, you know, in case the Japs come.”
Then there was a laugh: “They won’t dare to come under our guns!”
But they had come! In their torpedo-boats the brave sailors of the “Rising Sun” were quietly steaming round the harbour, launching a deadly torpedo at battleship and cruiser.
Next morning, when the Russians went down to see what was going on, they found the Retvisan nose down and heeling over, the Tsarevich settling down by the stern and with a pretty list to starboard, other vessels looking very uncomfortable, and a long way off, near the horizon, some black specks that actually “had the cheek” to bombard Port Arthur.
Why, yes, as the curious citizen came to the Bund, he was so astonished that he forgot to run. Crates and sacks had been hurled about, double glass windows all smashed; and what was that big hole on the quay, big enough to hold an omnibus and four horses? “Good gracious! you don’t mean to say that those specks twelve miles away have done all this! Come, sir, let us seek shelter in the stone-quarries.”
And the Russian batteries on Golden Hill? They were returning the fire from 10-inch guns; but the Japanese possessed 13-inch guns and were outside striking distance.
A party of ladies and gentlemen had gone to the terrace before the Mayor’s house to see the pretty sight—it is not often you can see such a sight. A shell fell just below them! They scattered and went to bed.
“What was it like? Oh, my dear, a noise like a big rocket, a blaze, a bang, an awful clatter all round, as the glass breaks and falls. You are dazed, you see yellow smoke, you smell something nasty, you shake—you run—run!”
Yes, they all ran away from Port Arthur, all who could—merchants, tradesmen, coolies—all went by train or boat. Then there were no bakers or butchers, no servants, until the Russian troops were ordered to take the vacant places.
If the Japanese had only known they might have taken Port Arthur that night of the torpedo attack; but they left the Russians sixteen days of quiet to recover from their panic and to repair their ships. Then it was more difficult.
The hole in the Retvisan was 40 feet long and 20 feet in depth. Seven compartments were full of water, and many dead bodies floated in them. But, beached and water-logged as she was, she used her guns with effect many times during the siege, so difficult is it to destroy a battleship unless you can sink her in deep water.
It was not long before all foreigners, newspaper correspondents, or candid friends were ordered out of Port Arthur, so we have to rely on the evidence of those who witnessed the siege from the Japanese side. Even they did not at first find their freedom to see and pass from one hill to another very secure. One night two of them tried to get to the front under cover of the darkness. They soon met a Japanese officer, who reined in and asked where they were going. One of them could speak Japanese, and replied that they were looking for their camp. So he let them go. But what if they stumbled upon the Japanese outposts and were shot at as Russians? They must be very wary. In the starlight they saw a small hill in front of them, which they made for, hoping to see or hear more of the great fight which sounded louder as they walked—a roar of rifles broken by the rattle of machine-guns. As they climbed one of them said he saw a trench near the top of the hill and men sitting near it. They hesitated, but finally made up their minds to risk it, and advanced boldly, whistling carelessly as they went. The Japanese were all looking out in front, and did not at first notice the new-comers, who approached from behind. Then suddenly the thought came, “We are being taken in flank by the Russians.” The entire picket started to their feet. Many of them had been fast asleep, and, being aroused to hear the noise of heavy firing, they called out “Ruskies!” One Englishman tried to seize a Japanese by the hand to show he was a friend, but his intention failed, for both of them rolled into the trench. The other threw himself flat on the ground and called out in Japanese, “English friends!”
A Russian Torpedo-boat Destroyer eluding the Japanese Fleet
During the siege of Port Arthur the Raztoropny, with despatches, ran safely through the Japanese men-of-war in the teeth of a tremendous storm. She was pursued, but reached Chifu harbour, and her crew, having achieved their object, blew her up.
When at last the Japanese discovered their mistake they were all smiles and apologies, and “Please go to the front, sir.”
The Japanese made great mistakes at first: they lost many thousands by attacking in front hills and forts scientifically fortified. They were trying to do what was impossible. Some years before they had captured Port Arthur from the Chinese speedily and easily by a fierce assault. They had then been compelled by Russia, France, and Germany to give up their fair prize of victory. Afterwards Russia had seized Port Arthur and Manchuria. So honour and revenge both spurred on the Japanese to retake it from the Russians. The war became most cruel and sanguinary.
After one night attack the Japanese left 7,000 dead and wounded on the hill-side. They could not fetch them in, though they were within call. Some few crawled back to their friends at night; many lay out for days, being fed by biscuits and balls of rice thrown from the Japanese trenches—the Japanese were fed almost entirely on rice.
A naval surgeon tells a story which explains the conduct of the Japanese when suffering intense pain. He says:
“When the battleship Hatsure was sunk in May, a sailor was laid on the operating-table who had a piece of shell 2½ inches long bedded in his right thigh. I offered him a cigar as he came in, which he eagerly took, but the surgeon told him not to smoke it just then. His smaller injuries were first attended to, and then the surgeon turned to the severe wound in the man’s thigh.
“In order to pull out the piece of steel still embedded in the limb, he was obliged to pass his hand into the wound, which was deep enough to hide it as far as the wrist. During this painful operation the sailor never spoke or winced, but kept trying to reach the breast-pocket of his coat. At length the surgeon, irritated by his fidgety manner, asked: ‘What are you doing? Why can’t you keep quiet?’
“The sailor replied: ‘I want to give that English gentleman a cigarette in exchange for the cigar he kindly gave me.’ Even in the throes of that agony the Japanese sailor could not forget his politeness and gratitude.”
They are a curious mixture of opposites, these Japanese—one day facing machine-guns like fiends incarnate, or giving their bodies to be used as a human ladder in attempt to escalade a fort, the next day sucking sweetmeats like little boys. You come upon some groups by a creek: they are laughing and playing practical jokes as they sharpen up their bayonets with busy, innocent faces, making ready for the great assault at dawn to-morrow. A few yards further on you find them in all states of undress, their underwear fluttering to the breeze, some of them sitting on the stones and tubbing with real soap. You ask them, Why so busy this afternoon? They smile and nod their heads towards Port Arthur, and one who speaks English explains that they had been taught at school this proverb: “Japanese fight like gentlemen, and if they are found dead on the field, they will be found like gentlemen, clean and comely.”
There were so many forms of death in this siege—plurima mortis imago, as Virgil says—from the speedy bullet to the common shell, shrapnel, and pom-pom. But besides these common inventions there were mines that exploded under their feet as they walked, hand-grenades thrown in their faces as they approached the forts; there were pits filled with petroleum ready to be lit by an electric wire, and poisonous gases to be flung from wide-mouthed mortars. But the one which spread terror even amongst the bravest was what they called “the unknown death.” It was said that during the early attacks in August, one whole line of infantry which was rushing to the assault had fallen dead side by side, and that no wounds had been found on them. At last it was discovered the Russian chief electrician had ordered a “live” wire to be placed among the ordinary wire entanglements, furnished with a current strong enough to kill anyone who touched it.
Of course, it was liable to be destroyed by shell or cannon fire, but in many cases it proved fatal, and always made the attackers nervous. The Russians had such steel-wire entanglements placed at the foot of all their positions, and where success depended on the dash and speed of the infantry, they succeeded in stopping them and exposing them to a heavy fire. As a rule, volunteers went out at night with strong wire-nippers and cut the strands, or they set fire to the wooden posts and let them come to the ground together. Sometimes in a fierce charge the sappers used to lie down beneath the wires, pretending to be dead, and choose a moment for using their nippers; some even, in their desperate efforts to get through, would seize the wire between their teeth and try and bite it through.
The man among the Russians who was the mainspring of the defence was General Kondrachenko. He was an eminent engineer, very popular with the men, one of the bravest and most scientific of the Russian officers. On the 15th of December the General and his staff were sitting inside North Keikwansan Fort, in the concrete barrack just underneath the spot where a shell had made a hole in the roof. This had been repaired, and they had come to see if it had been well done. As luck would have it, a second 28-centimetre shell came through the same place and burst inside the barrack, killing the gallant Kondrachenko and eight other officers who were with him. This was the gravest blow that Port Arthur could have suffered, for this man was the spirit of resistance personified.
After his death Stoessel began to seek for excuses to surrender. He called a council of war, and proposed that, as the Japanese had taken so many forts and sunk their warships, terms of surrender should be proposed. Almost every one was opposed to it, and some officers were so disgusted that they privately suggested kidnapping Stoessel and locking him up.
The Japanese policy of mining and firing mines under the redoubts had succeeded so often that the Russians had got into a nervous state. On the 1st of January the fort of Wantai was rushed and captured; mountain-guns and quick-firers were sent up to help in holding the ground, ammunition was sent forward, everything made ready to rush the whole of the eastern defences, when, to the astonishment of all, from General to private, a white flag was seen fluttering over the valley. The news spread like wild-fire that Stoessel wished to capitulate. Could it be possible?
A Human Ladder
The Japanese soldiers made their bodies practically into a ladder, and thus enabled their comrades to escalade a fort.
At 9 a.m. on the following morning, the 2nd of January, a little group of foreign pressmen assembled as usual in the small room provided for them at head-quarters. They discussed the white flag incident; but they remembered that Stoessel had said that he would die in the last ditch, so it did not seem probable. Captain Zasuhara, whose duty it was to inform them of what was going on, was late in appearing, and when the door opened, it was not the Captain, but an orderly, who entered, carrying a tray on which was a bottle of liqueur brandy and several glasses. Something strange must be going to happen when a Japanese officer begins drinking liqueur so early!
A few moments later Captain Zasuhara came in.
“Gentlemen, General Stoessel has capitulated; Port Arthur has surrendered. Banzai!”
They all joined in the shout “Banzai!” which means “Live for ever!” and then gave three lusty Saxon cheers, which brought out General Nogi, the Commander-in-Chief. He who for so many months had borne the grave responsibility of sending so many thousands to their death, he who had lost both his sons before Port Arthur, and tried so hard to conceal his grief, now beamed with joy at the sudden relief, and the lines that used to seam his forehead were smoothed out and almost invisible. A grand gentleman was Nogi, gentle and polite and kind to all. Who could have grudged him this triumph after so much sorrow and disappointment?
He offered his hand, received their congratulations with dignity, and said with an under-current of sadness and a voice as soft as a woman’s: “I thank you all for staying with me through the dark days of disappointment and all the sorrowful hours of this terrible siege.”
The proud spirit of the Samurai soldier seemed blended with the gentle feeling of the Buddhist. It was a touching sight to have seen.
And how the news stirred the troops! Men broke into snatches of song, then shouted and yelled “Banzai!” until they choked. In the field-hospitals the wounded, trying to rise from their canvas stretchers, joined in the cheering with thin, weak voices. At night wood fires were lit all round the hills, and many of the Russian garrison left their dismal forts and came down to sip saké (rice wine), and after spending a night of carousal with their late enemies, the big, burly foemen of the North were glad to be helped homewards by their polite hosts, who bowed on leaving them and hoped they would not suffer from the after-effects of Japanese hospitality.
Astonishing, too, was the effect of the good news on the wounded. Desperately wounded men crawled over the stony hills and walked to the hospitals without aid. If you said to one such, “You are badly hurt; let me give you an arm,” he smiled proudly, and said with a salute, “No, no; Port Arthur has fallen!”
One man who had been shot in the head, and whose right arm had been smashed to pieces by a shell, walked to the dressing-station, had his arm amputated and his head dressed, and then walked two miles further to the field-hospital. The news was too good for him to think of his own pain. Another man had a bullet through his chest. He walked two miles to the hospital; there he coolly asked the surgeon if he thought he might live. The surgeon, though he knew the man’s case was hopeless, said, “Oh yes; but” (after a pause) “if you have any letter you wish written, do it at once.” The soldier replied, “All I desire is that a letter should be written to my mother.” No sooner had he uttered these words than he fell dead on the spot. It reminds one of a young Lieutenant in Browning’s poem, who had ridden with dispatches to Napoleon. “Why, my boy, you are wounded!” “Nay, sire; I am killed.”
In the harbour at Port Arthur there were riding at anchor five battleships and two cruisers. On the 10th of August they had gone out to meet Admiral Togo, and had returned next day badly damaged.
By the 1st of September they had been repaired. But on November the 27th began a tremendous battle for the possession of 203 Metre Hill. On the 5th of December that hill was taken at a fearful cost of lives, and a Japanese naval Lieutenant wormed his way into the shallow trench and by help of his nautical instruments was able to take observations and give the correct direction and distance to the artillery commander, who at once trained Howitzers on the fleet. All the ships were sunk by the 6th of December, with the exception of the Sevastopol, which steamed out under Captain von Essen and anchored under the batteries of Tiger’s Tail.
This brave officer tried to protect his ship by a wooden boom and by torpedo-nets. For three nights he was attacked by Japanese boats and torpedoes, and inflicted great damage on them. At last the boom was pierced and the ship’s steering-gear ruined by a torpedo. The Sevastopol showed signs of settling down, so that night steam was got up for the last time, and the gallant commander with a few picked men took her out into deep water, opened the sluice-cocks, and then, taking to his launch, pulled away a bit and watched the great battleship settle down stern first in the dim and misty moonlight.
It is only right that the pluck of this Russian Captain should be remembered when we think of the poor defence made by the Russian Navy.
As for the rest of the fleet, the battleships and cruisers were huddled together with a strong list and their upper works destroyed. They have since been raised and repaired, and belong to the Mikado.
The siege of Port Arthur cost General Nogi’s army 89,000 men in killed, wounded, and sick; of these 10,000 were officers.
The Japanese have read a great lesson in patriotism and sense of duty to the whole world. To the courtly and feudal chivalry of their old-world Samurai, or Noble, they have added the foresight and inventive genius of the European. They have suddenly sprung into the front rank of civilized nations, and no one can forecast the greatness of their future.
From “The Siege of Port Arthur,” by E. Ashmead Bartlet, by kind permission of Messrs. W. Blackwood and Sons.
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD