The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

Besides the Dervenaki and the Nemean way to the west, two other possible roads led over the pass, both to the east. Of these one lay parallel with the Dervenaki, and only five or six hundred yards from it, till nearly the top of the pass. The roads then joined and, after running for some half-mile one on each side of a narrow, wedge-shaped hill, became one. Farther away, again to the east, lying in a long loop, was a third road. Both of these branched off from the Dervenaki before coming to the spot where the irregular Greeks on that pass were encamped. The road farthest away to the east was held by the English-speaking Niketas. He had with him two thousand men, including many Mainats.

The advance-guard of the Turks preceded the main army by some half-hour. Dramali rode with the second body of cavalry, and when he saw the Albanians take the western road, which he knew was held by Kolocotrones, he burst into a torrent of Mussulman abuse. He had been betrayed, sold, bartered; these Albanians were in league with the Greeks. So he ordered an advance up the shortest and most direct road—namely, the Dervenaki. His scouts soon returned saying it was held by the Greeks, and Dramali turned eastward into the parallel road, which appeared to be untenanted. A low ridge divided the two, and as he crossed it he was seen by Niketas's outposts. He, without a moment's hesitation, divided his band into two parts. With one he crossed the road Dramali was taking, and took up a position near the top of the pass on the steep, wedge-shaped hill that separated it from the Dervenaki, and on the road itself, blocking it. To the others he gave orders to hang on the right flank of the Turks as they advanced northward. Of the Turks, now that the Albanians were separated from them, the greater part of the cavalry came first as an advance-guard; the most of the infantry followed. Between them marched an army of luggage-mules, with tents and all the appurtenances of Turkish warfare, mules and camels carrying embroidered clothes, gold-chased arms, money, women, and behind, again, the lesser part of the cavalry and the remainder of the infantry.

Meantime the men in camp at Lerna, more than half Mainats, had seen the road the Turks had taken, and were in pursuit. Now that it was seen that the Turks were in retreat, and had no thought of attempting the relief of Nauplia, since the fleet had not arrived, there was nothing to be gained by continuing to hold the Larissa; it was better to concentrate all forces on the hills over which the Turks had to pass, if so be that they passed. The cavalry they had seen had gone first. It was no time to think of prudence and security, and they dashed through Argos and its empty and silent streets and out to the right at the tail of the Ottoman forces, risking an attack as they crossed the plain. But Dramali had no longer any thought of attacking. Those doomed lines with their trains of baggage-beasts moved but slowly, and Petrobey reached the outlying foot-hills before the rear of the Turks had left the plain.

The pass on each side of which Niketas's troops were posted narrowed gradually as it went, and near the top where they waited it was just a road, flanked on the left side by the steep promontory of hill, on the other by a stream riotous only in the melting of the snows, but now a mere starved trickle of water. Beyond that was a corresponding hill, covered sparsely with pines, which grew up big among big bowlders of white limestone, lying like some petrified flock of gigantic sheep. The day had broken with a pitiless and naked sky, and as the sun rose higher it seemed that the world was a furnace eaten up with its own heat. Niketas himself with some hundred men had already taken up his position on the left side of the pass through which the Turks would come on the steep turtle-backed ridge dividing it from the Dervenaki. Another contingent was on the road itself, employed in heaping up a rough wall of stones across it to shelter themselves and delay the advance of the cavalry vanguard. On the right of the road were the remainder of Niketas's troops, some five hundred in number, dispersed among the pines and bowlders of the hill-side, which rose so sheerly that each man could see the road, as it were a stage from the rising tiers of theatre-seats, and shoot down on to it. Petrobey sent Yanni forward to find Niketas and ask him where he would wish the fresh troops from Lerna to be posted, and the answer came back that they were most needed in the road to help the building of the barricade and stop the first cavalry charges. Those already there were under Hypsilantes and the priest Dikaios; would Petrobey take council with them? It was possible also that a reinforcement would be needed on the right of the road; if so, let the Mainats be divided. He himself had sufficient men to hold the hill on the left, and it was all "damn fine." Finally he wished Petrobey good appetite for the feast; Mainats he knew were always hungry.

The Turks were still half an hour away, and Petrobey led his troops down on to the road from off the uneven ground of the hill, so that they should make more speed, and in ten minutes they reached the place where the rest were building the barricade. Here all set themselves to the work: some rolled down stones from the slopes into the valley, others fetched them from the bed of the stream, while those on the road carried them to the site of the growing wall and piled them up. Now and then a warning shout would come from the hill-side, and a rock would leap down, gathering speed, and rush across the road, split sometimes into a hundred fragments and useless, but for the most part—for the limestone was hard—a valuable building stone. Eight or ten men, like busy-limbed ants at work, would seize it and roll it up to the rising barricade, piling it on top if not too heavy, or using it to form part of a buttress. But their time was short and the wall was but an uneven ridge across the road and stream, four feet high or so in places, elsewhere only a heap of stones, when it was shouted from the outposts that the cavalry was approaching, and the men ceased from their work and, gathering up their arms, retreated to behind the improvised barricade and waited.

To the left of the road, and below the barricade, rose the wedge of hill on which Niketas's contingent was stationed. They were drawn up in five ranks of about two hundred men each, in open order, with a space of some thirty paces between the last three ranks, so that, owing to the steepness of the ground, each man commanded a view of the road and each rank could fire over the heads of those in front. The ground, however, was of a more gradual slope as it approached the road, and the first rank lay, sheltering themselves as far as possible, among the bowlders not twenty paces from the road itself; the second rank, five paces behind it, knelt; and the third stood. On the right of the road the hill was too rugged and uneven, being strewn with bowlders and sown with shrubs and trees, to allow of any formation, and was in fact one great ambuscade, the men being hidden by the trees and stones. Here and there a gun-barrel glistened in the sun, but a casual passer-by might have gone his way and never suspected the presence of men. A bend in the road, some two hundred yards below, concealed the barricade and its defenders from the Turks.

The vanguard of the Turks halted a moment, seeing that the hill to the left of the road was occupied, and then set forward again at a brisk trot, meaning perhaps to go under fire along the road commanded by Niketas and then, wheeling at the top of the pass, attack him, and thus enable the rest of the troops to march through the ravine while they were engaging its defenders, and reach the open ground which lay beyond. Just before the first ranks reached the bend in the road Niketas opened fire on them, but they did not wait to return it, and putting their horses into a canter swept round the bend.

At that the hill-side on their right flank blazed and bristled, and every shrub and stone seemed to burst into a flame of fire. On each side the Greeks, at short range, poured a storm of bullets into them; at each step another and another fell. Suddenly from in front the Mainats from between their barricades opened fire; retreat was impossible, for the whole of the cavalry were now advancing from behind; to stop meant one congestion of death, and they spurred savagely on. In a moment they were at the wall. Some leaped the lower parts of it, alighting, it seemed, in a hell of flame; others were checked by the higher portion, and their horses reared and wheeled into their own ranks; others passed through the stream-bed, or putting their horses at the wall of defenders as at a fence, found themselves faced by the rear rank of Mainats, who were waiting patiently higher up the road till they should have penetrated into their range.

Meantime the check given to the first division of the cavalry at the barricade had resulted in a congestion all down the advancing lines. The second division had closed up with the first, the third with the second, and on the heels of the cavalry came the infantry. Dramali, who was stationed in the rear still, almost on the plain of Argos, had ordered them to advance, at all costs, till they gained the top of the pass, whence they could intrench themselves on the open ground, and every moment added a crust to the congealment of destruction. The masses of those moving on from behind pushed the first rank forward and forward, all squeezed together, and pressing against the wall of barricade, as a river in flood presses against the arches of a bridge. At two or three points it had been entirely broken down, and through these—now free for a moment, now choked again with the bodies of horses and their riders—a few escaped through the first ranks of Mainats and into the road beyond, raked indeed by the other ranks, who held the pass higher up, but no longer exposed to the full threefold short range fire from Niketas, the barrier, and those in ambush on the left. Already the wall of dead and dying was heaped higher than the barricade that the Mainats had raised, and the horses of the Turks who forced their way through trampled on the bodies of the fallen. But pass they must, for they were forced forward, as by some hideous, slow-moving glacier, by a stream of dead and living. Here and there a dead horse carrying a dead rider was borne on upright and unable to fall because of those who pressed so closely on each side, the rider bowed forward over the neck of his horse or sprawling sideways across the knee of his fellow, the horse's head supported on the quarters of the beast in front or wedged between it and the next. More terrible even was some other brute, wounded and screaming, but unable to move except as it was moved and carried along for some seconds perhaps, till two or three of those in front forced their way through the breaches in the barricade of horses and riders and gave it space, so that it fell and was mercifully trampled out of pain and life.

For five deadly minutes they pressed on hopelessly and gallantly, while the leaden hail hissed from either flank and from in front into the congested horsemen; but at the end the Turks broke and fled in all directions, some up the hill where Niketas's troops, still untouched and unattacked, were stationed, others up the hill-side opposite, which still spurted and blazed with muskets. There every bush was an armed man, every stone a red flower of flame. But the rush could not be stopped any more than a rush even of cattle or sheep can be withstood by armed men. The Turks fled, scattering in all directions, northward for the most part towards Corinth, where they would find safety, and the Greeks troubled not to pursue, but shot as a man shoots at driven deer. Almost simultaneously with the breaking of the troops, those of the cavalry who had passed the first ranks of the Mainats who guarded the wall, once of stones, but now a heap of men and horses, succeeded, in spite of the steady fire of the rear ranks and with the cool courage of desperation, in clearing some sort of passage round by the stream-bed, which was now fuller than it had been, but red and with a froth of blood, and through this some four hundred of the cavalry passed. They drove the Mainats from the barricade with much slaughter, forcing them up the two hill-sides which bounded the ravine, and charging forward passed the other ranks without sustaining heavy loss, and made their way into the open ground, reaching Corinth that night.