When the Tartar horse had advanced to within a half mile of his position, Meldritch launched a body of his cavalry under Nederspolt against them. These veteran troopers made a most brilliant charge and threw the enemy into confusion, but the numbers of the Christians were too small to permit them to follow up this advantage and they wisely retired within their lines. The Tartars now advanced their foot, whilst their horsemen reformed on either flank. The sky was presently darkened by flight after flight of countless arrows which, however, did comparatively little harm. The Christians retaliated with another charge, breaking the centre of the enemy and checking his advance. With ten thousand more cavalry Meldritch might have swept the ill disciplined assailants from the field, but he was too weak to venture upon aggressive tactics and once again had to retire his men in face of a success.
In anticipation of a renewal of the attack by the Tartar horsemen, Meldritch had formed his infantry, under Veltus, just beyond the palisade of stakes. They were ordered to hold their ground as long as possible and then to fall back behind the defence. The Tartars, confident in their superior numbers, as well they might be, charged repeatedly. Each time they were gallantly repulsed, but at length Veltus had lost so many men that he was forced to fall back. The enemy, brandishing their spears and yelling exultantly, followed close upon the retiring foot-soldiers and came quite unawares upon the rows of sharpened stakes. In a moment a mass of struggling men and horses lay at the mercy of Meldritch’s troops who slew two thousand of them.
This splendid success on the part of the pitiful handful of Christians now reduced to half their original number, dampened the ardor of the Tartars. There was a momentary cessation in the attack and the defence might have been maintained until darkness set in, perhaps, but the bodies of Turks which we have mentioned as surveying the field in readiness to render assistance if needed, now began to descend to the valley. The Earl realized that once these auxiliaries joined forces with the Tartars, all would be lost. He determined to seize the moment of hesitancy on the part of the latter to make an attempt to break through them and gain the town of Rothenthrum. Accordingly, he quickly formed his cavalry in the van and advanced to the attack. It was a forlorn hope but no better prospect offered. Five thousand men threw themselves upon thirty thousand with the desperation of despair. The Earl, upon his great white charger, rode in the lead, followed by his own regiment in which Captain Smith was now the senior officer. Straight at the Tartar cavalry they went and cut their way through the front ranks as though they had been but paper barricades. But rank after rank confronted them and with each fresh contact they left numbers of their own men behind. The slaughter was indescribable. Soon they were the centre of a maelstrom of frenzied human beings with scarce more chance for escape than has a canoe in the vortex of a whirlpool. They fought like heroes to the death and made fearful havoc among their enemies. The gallant Earl and a few hundred followers made their way as by a miracle through the surrounding mass and swimming the River Altus, escaped.
The setting sun looked down upon thirty thousand dead and dying strewn over the Valley of Veristhorne, but lying in gory heaps where the last desperate flower of that splendid army of thirty thousand veterans that the Earl of Meldritch had proudly led into Wallachia a few months before and amongst them almost all his leading officers. “Give me leave,” says Captain Smith, in his account of the affair, “to remember the names of my own countrymen in these exploits, that, as resolutely as the best, in the defense of Christ and his Gospel ended their days; as Baskerfield, Hardwicke, Thomas Milmer, Robert Molineux, Thomas Bishop, Francis Compton, George Davison, Nicholas Williams and one John, a Scot, did what men could do; and when they could do no more left there their bodies, in testimony of their minds. Only Ensign Carleton and Sergeant Robinson escaped.”
These men were members of Smith’s company and their captain lay among them where he had fallen covered with wounds. But he was not quite dead. The Turks and Tartars going over the field in search of spoils were attracted to him by the superiority of his armor. This led them to believe that he was a man of rank, and finding that he still lived they carried him into their camp with a view to preserving his life for the sake of ransom. His hurts were tended and he was nursed with care. When sufficiently recovered to travel, he was sent down to the slave market at Axopolis. Here Smith was put up to auction together with a number of other poor wretches who had escaped death on the field of battle to meet with a worse fate, perhaps, at the hands of cruel masters.
Our hero fetched a good price, as much on account of his vigorous appearance as because there seemed to be a prospect of profit in the purchase if he should turn out to be a nobleman as was suspected. He was bought by the Pasha Bogall and sent by him as a present to his affianced at Constantinople. Smith tells us that “by twenty and twenty, chained by the necks, they marched in files to this great city, where they were delivered to their several masters, and he to the young Charatza Tragabigzanda.”
[XII.]
SLAVERY AND A SEA-FIGHT
John Smith is delivered to the Lady Charatza, his future mistress—He falls into kind hands and excites the Turkish Maiden’s interest—Her mother intervenes and he is sent to an outlying province—He finds a brutal master and is subjected to treatment “beyond the endurance of a dog”—He slays the cruel Timariot and escapes upon his horse—Wanders about for weeks and at length reaches a Christian settlement—Adventures in Africa—A trip to sea with Captain Merham—The Britisher fights two Spanish ships and holds his own—Smith renders good service in the fight and employs one of his novel “stratagems”—Return to England.