The March to Magdala

by G. A. Henty

As the long line wound up the steep ascent in Fahla the effect was very pretty, and elicited several remarks that this was our Easter-Monday review. On the way up we met a large number of men, women, and children upon their way down. Once upon the shoulder which connects Fahla and Salamgi, we found ourselves in the midst of a surprising scene. A perfect exodus was in progress. Many thousands of men, women, and children were crowded everywhere, mixed up with oxen, sheep, and donkeys. The women, children, and donkeys were laden with the scanty possessions of the inhabitants. Skins of grain and flour, gourds and jars of water and ghee, blankets for coverings and tents—these were their sole belongings. It was a Babel of noises. The women screamed their long, quavering cry of admiration and welcome; men shouted to each other from rock to rock; mothers who had lost their children screamed for them, and the children wailed back in return; sheep and goats bleated, and donkeys and mules brayed. It was an astonishing scene. [pg 396]All seemed extremely glad to see us, and to be relieved from the state of fear and starvation in which they had existed; men, women, and children bent until their foreheads touched the ground in token of submission. The men who bore no arms carried burdens, as did the women; but the warriors only carried their arms. The number of gaudy dresses among the latter was surprising, and their effect was very gay and picturesque. Shirts of red, blue, or purple brocade, with yellow flowers, and loose trousers of the same material, but of a different hue, were the prevailing fashion with the chiefs. These were distinguished from the soldiers by having silver ornaments upon their shields. At present all retained their arms; but the 10th Native Infantry had been left at the foot of the hill with orders to disarm them as they came down the road. All along our march over Salamgi this extraordinary scene continued; and we saw more people than we have seen during the whole time we have been in Abyssinia. The general opinion is, that there could not have been less than thirty thousand people congregated here; and I believe that this computation is rather under than over the mark.

There was a universal feeling of thankfulness that we had not been obliged to bombard the place, as the slaughter among this defenceless crowd of people would have been terrible. Wherever was a level piece of ground, there their habitations were clustered. They were mere temporary abodes—a framework of sticks, covered with coarse grass, placed regularly and thickly, so as to turn the rain. They were about the size and shape of ordinary haycocks, and show that the people must sleep, as they sit, curled almost into a ball.

From the shoulder we climbed up the very winding road [pg 397]on the face of the natural scarps to Salamgi. The natural strength of these positions is astounding. Fahla is tremendously strong; but yet it is as nothing to Salamgi, which commands it. Colonel Milward, who commands the artillery, remarked to me that in the hands of European troops it would be not only impregnable, but perfectly unattackable. Gibraltar from the land side is considered impregnable; but Gibraltar is absolutely nothing to this group of fortresses. After capturing Fahla and Salamgi—if such a thing were possible—an attacking force would still have Magdala to deal with; and Magdala rises from the end of the flat shoulder which connects it with Salamgi in an unbroken wall, except at the one point where a precipitous road leads up to the gate. It is 2500 yards from the top of Salamgi to Magdala, and even the heaviest artillery could do nothing against the wall of rock. We may well congratulate ourselves that Theodore sent his army to attack our baggage; for had they remained and defended the place, provided as they were with forty cannon, our loss would have been very heavy; and even with our superior weapons it is a question whether we could have succeeded, the road in many cases winding along the face of a precipice, which a few men from above merely rolling down stones could have cleared. When we had reached the brow of Salamgi—a still higher scarp of which rose two hundred feet above us—Major Baigrie halted for orders, and I rode on with two or three others to the little body of the 3d Native Cavalry, who were half a mile further on, at the edge of the flat between Salamgi and Magdala.

I should say that early in the morning we had received news that Theodore had left in the night with a small body of his adherents, and intended to gain the camp of the Queen [pg 398]of the Gallas, and to throw himself upon her hospitality, the Gallas being wandering tribes, who, like the Arabs, would protect their bitterest enemy if he reached their tents and claimed hospitality. When we were nearly at the top of the hill, we had received a message from the cavalry, saying that there was a rumour that Theodore had returned, and had committed suicide.

When we reached the cavalry, however, we found a state of some excitement prevailing: some eight or ten horsemen, among whom Captain Speedy had recognised Theodore himself, having just galloped up brandishing spears and discharging their muskets in defiance. Colonel Locke could not, of course, charge without orders; and, indeed, it would have been most imprudent to do so, as the whole of the shoulder, a quarter of a mile wide, and six or seven hundred yards to the fort of Magdala, were covered with the little huts, behind and in which any number of men might be concealed. Colonel Locke then threw-out a few of his men as skirmishers. The horsemen continued to gallop about, sometimes approaching to within three hundred yards, sometimes dashing across the plateau as if they meditated a descent into the valley far below by one of the winding paths which led down. To prevent this, Colonel Locke called to five or six soldiers of the 33d, and two or three artillerymen, who had somehow got separated from their corps and had come down towards us, to take up a position to command the path, and to open fire if the horsemen attempted to go down it.

At the same time we saw upon the top of Salamgi, behind us, a company of the 33d, who had gone up there to plant the colours. Colonel Locke had the advance blown, and [pg 399]signalled to them to come down to command the opposite side of the shoulder, in case the horsemen might attempt to descend into the valley by any path which might exist upon that side. The horsemen again moved in and discharged their rifles at us; and the cavalry keeping their places, our little party of 33d answered with their Sniders. As they did so, they moved forward, and in another hundred yards we came upon no less than twenty cannon, which Theodore had, no doubt, intended to have moved across into Magdala, but had had no time to accomplish. These were, of course, taken possession of; and, as an officer remarked with a laugh to me, it is probably the first time that twenty guns were ever captured in the face of an enemy by six men of the line, two artillerymen, three or four officers, and the press. In the tumbrils of the guns were their ammunition; and Lieutenant Nolan, of the Artillery, assisted by two artillerymen, Captain Speedy, and the civilians, at once proceeded to load them, and opened fire with ball upon the foot-men, a hundred or so of whom we could now see clustered at the foot of the road up to Magdala; the 33d men keeping up a fire upon the horsemen and a few foot-men running over the plains, and who occasionally answered; and the company of the 33d, who had now come down nearly to the foot of the slope behind us, also opening fire. It was one of the funniest scenes I ever saw. There was Magdala at 500 yards’ distance, with its garrison keeping up a scattered fire at us, none of the bullets, however, reaching so far; there were a few shots from behind the little haycock huts; there was Theodore himself galloping about with half a dozen of his chiefs—picturesque figures in their bright-coloured robes; and there was our little party waging a war upon them, with not another soldier in sight, [pg 400]or, indeed, within half a mile of us. This lasted for ten minutes or so; and then an officer rode up to order the infantry to retire into the slope, but to keep the guns under their fire. The cavalry had previously been ordered to retire. In another quarter of an hour Penn’s battery came down to us and opened fire, and the steel shells soon drove the enemy up the road into the fortress. For a quarter of an hour they continued their fire; and, when they had once got the range, every shell burst close to the gateway, through which the road passed. Then there came an order to cease firing; and Murray’s guns, which had taken up their position upon the top of Salamgi, Twiss’s battery more to the right, and the Naval Rocket Brigade, took up the fire. For nearly two hours, with occasional intervals, these guns and Twiss’s battery kept up their fire. While this was going on, we discovered in a small tent, a hundred yards or so in our front, the Frenchman Bardel, who is sick with a fever, and was at once carried to the rear. We had, too, plenty of time to examine the guns. Some were of English, some of Indian manufacture: all were of brass, and varied in size from a fourteen-pounder downwards. There were two or three small mortars among them. This was evidently the arsenal, for here were tools and instruments of all descriptions—files, hammers, anvils, &c. There were bags of charcoal and a forge; and here were many hundreds of balls, varying in size from grape-shot to immense stone balls for the giant mortar, which shattered to pieces the other day at the first attempt to fire it.

At this time we made a discovery which quite destroyed the feeling of pity which the gallantry of Theodore in exposing himself to our fire had excited. The Beloochees had [pg 401]joined us, and were posted near the edge of a precipice to our right. Their attention being attracted by an overpowering stench, they looked over the edge of the rock; and there, fifty feet below, was one of the most horrifying sights which was ever beheld: there, in a great pile, lay the bodies of the three hundred and fifty prisoners whom Theodore had murdered last Thursday, and whom he had then thrown over the edge of the precipice. There they lay—men, women, and little children—in a putrefying mass. It was a most ghastly sight, and recalled to our minds the horrible cruelty of the tyrant, and quite destroyed the effect which his bravery had produced.

At last, at half-past three, the troops came down and took their places; and at a quarter to four the whole of the guns and rockets opened a tremendous fire to cover the advance; and the 33d, preceded by a small band of Engineers and Sappers under Major Pritchard, and followed by the 45th, advanced to the assault, the 4th and the rest of the first brigade retaining their places as a reserve. When within three hundred yards of the rock, the 33d formed line and opened fire at the gateway and high hedge which bordered the summit of the precipice—the most tremendous fire I ever heard. Even the thunder—which was, as during the fight of Good Friday, roaring overhead—was lost in the roar of the seven hundred Snider rifles, and which was re-echoed by the rocks in their front. Under cover of this tremendous fire the Engineers and the leading company advanced up the path. When they were half-way up, the troops ceased firing, and the storming-party scrambled up at a run. All this time answering flashes had come back from a high wall which extended for some feet at the side [pg 402]of the gateway, and from behind the houses and rocks near it. When the Engineers, headed by Major Pritchard, reached the gateway, several shots were fired through loopholes in the wall, and two or three men staggered back wounded, Major Pritchard himself receiving two very slight flesh-wounds in the arm. The men immediately put their rifles through the holes, and kept up a constant fire, so as to clear-away their enemies from behind it.

Then there was a pause, which for a time no one understood; but at last a soldier forced his way down the crowded path with the astounding intelligence that the Engineers, who had headed the storming-party for the purpose of blowing the gate in, had actually forgotten to take any powder with them! Neither had they crowbars, axes, or scaling-ladders. General Staveley at once despatched an officer to bring up powder from the artillery-wagons.

The 45th opened fire to prevent the enemy’s skirmishers doing damage; and a few pioneers of the 45th were sent up with axes to force open the gate. In the mean time, however, the men of the 33d, upon the road leading up to the gate, discovered a spot half-way up, by which they were able to scramble up to the left, and, getting through the hedge, they quickly cleared away the defenders of the gate. A large portion of the regiment entered at this spot, the gate not being fairly opened for a quarter of an hour after the storming-party arrived at it; for when it was broken down, it was found that the gate-house was filled with very large stones; and therefore, had powder been at hand, and the gate been blown in, a considerable time must have elapsed before the party could have entered. Behind the gateway were a cluster of huts, many of whose inhabitants still remained in them in [pg 403]spite of the heavy fire which had for two hours been kept up. Behind them was a natural scarp of twenty-five or thirty feet high, with a flight of steps wide enough only for a single man to ascend at a time. At the top of this was another gate, which had been blown open by the rifles of the 33d. I entered with the rear of the regiment; but all was by that time over. By the first gateway were six or seven bodies, and two or three men by the second. Beyond this was the level plateau, thickly scattered with the native huts of their ordinary construction—not the haycock-fabrics which had covered the other hills and plateau. At a hundred yards from the gate lay the body of Theodore himself, pierced with three balls, one of which, it is said, he fired with his own hand. He was of middle height and very thin, and the expression of his face in death was mild rather than the reverse. He had thrown-off the rich robe in which he had ridden over the plain, and was in an ordinary chief’s red-and-white cloth.