The column reached Orakau at dawn on March 31. The Maoris, though evidently taken by surprise, opened fire on the advance-guard, composed of 120 Royal Irish and a party of 20 men of an irregular corps, known as the Forest Rangers. Ring extended his men into skirmishing order, and, supported by a company of the 40th, led them to the attack. The position, which apparently had not been reconnoitred adequately, proved very formidable. On a swelling down the Maoris had thrown up an “earthwork with good flank defences, deep ditches, with posts and rails outside, and nearly covered from view by flax-bushes, peach-trees, and high fern.”[203] Though repulsed by the fire of their unseen enemies Ring’s men re-formed quickly, and reinforced by a second company of the 40th, made another but equally futile effort to storm the works, being again beaten back with the loss of several officers and men, among whom was Brevet-Major Ring, mortally wounded. When Captain Baker, XVIIIth, D.A.A.G., saw that Ring was down, he flung himself off his horse, and calling for volunteers led a third assault. This failed also, but though these three attacks were unsuccessful, they served their purpose by so completely occupying the attention of the enemy that he did not realise that the British troops were hemming him in on every side; and though the cordon was at first but slender it sufficed to prevent reinforcements from throwing themselves into the pah. At midday a large party of Maoris tried to break through our lines from the outside, but a few shells and the musketry of the outposts kept them at a respectful distance, unable to do more than excite their besieged comrades to further resistance by shouts and war dances. As soon as the detached columns detailed to surround the pah were in their places, Carey began to sap up to the works, covering his movements with artillery fire. In defending themselves against this bombardment the Maoris showed great resource. “Long bundles of fern were cut and bound with strips of green flax until an enormous mass of yielding fern received the harmless cannon-balls and guarded the earthworks.”[204]
Throughout the afternoon and night the besieged kept up a heavy fire upon the troops, who “dug themselves in” so effectually with their bayonets that the casualties were few. The sap was pushed on vigorously, and on the 1st of April various small reinforcements, snatched up from the line of communication, reached Carey. Among them was a party of the XVIIIth under Captain Inman, composed of 1 captain, 2 subalterns, 8 sergeants, 2 drummers, and 110 rank and file, and 70 officers and men of the 70th; after marching all night, they were sent at once into the trenches and rifle-pits with which the pah was being rapidly encircled. Though the enemy kept up a heavy fire upon the men digging in the sap, the work went on without intermission until the morning of the 2nd, when Lieutenant-Colonel Havelock brought into camp a quantity of hand-grenades, which a brave artilleryman, at the risk of his life, hurled into the enemy’s rifle-pits. Under cover of the confusion produced by these missiles Carey ran into the sap a 6-pr. Armstrong gun, whose fire breached the palisades, and beat down the musketry directed upon the working-parties. The situation had improved so much that he was preparing to assault, when General Cameron ordered him to stay his hand. The General had recently arrived on the scene, but not wishing to deprive Carey of his command announced that he was present as a spectator only; learning, however, that many women and children were in the pah, he desired that the garrison should be given the chance to surrender before the attack was pressed home. The condition of the Maoris was now desperate. When surprised by our sudden swoop on Orakau, they had little or no water in the pah; our line of outposts and rifle-pits proved impenetrable to the parties who sought for water in the night; their only food was raw potatoes; their losses in fighting men had been considerable, and their supply of bullets was almost exhausted. Yet they disdained to yield, and when an interpreter addressed them, saying, “Hear the word of the General: you have done enough to show that you are brave men; your case is hopeless; surrender, and your lives will be spared;” they haughtily replied, “This is the word of the Maori: we will fight for ever and ever and ever.” They were then invited to send away the women, and answered, “The women will fight as well as we.”
After this abortive negotiation fire was reopened on both sides, and some of the troops appear to have lost their heads and attempted to storm the pah without orders.[205] One of these unauthorised assaults was led by a soldier in the XVIIIth, Private Hannon, who, throwing his forage cap over a partially breached spot in the defences, dashed after it with some twenty men, for the most part belonging to New Zealand corps. After clambering over a stout fence they dropped into a ditch, where Hannon and nine other brave men were mown down by a volley fired at point-blank range. But though a similar attack by a party of regulars and volunteers also failed to carry another weak spot in the fortifications, every hour saw the Maoris less able to face the storm of grape-shot, hand-grenades, and rifle-bullets poured upon them on every side. Suddenly Rewi, their war chief, decided to cut his way out or to perish in the attempt. While his followers mustered among the huts round which their works were built, they sang one of the hymns taught them by the missionaries, and then, remembering the old days before white men had settled in New Zealand, chanted invocations to their ancient gods.
“Their voices,” says Rusden, “were heard by the wondering English, who were to marvel still more at their daring. At the rear a double line of the investing troops had been thrown back under cover to enable a gun to open fire. Through that opening, about four o’clock in the broad day, chanting their appeal to the God of battles and moving steadily as in scorn of their foes, the Maoris marched towards the narrow neck of swamp between the ridge and mound. Carey (in his official report) said they rushed. Mr Fox writes that an eye-witness told him ‘they were in a great column, the women, the children, and the great chiefs in the centre, and they marched out as cool and steady as if they had been going to Church.’ Rewi ordered that no shot should be fired. The little ammunition left was needed for defence in the desperate course through the swamp.... Some accounts state that as if to deceive the troops and gain time for the fugitives, a Maori, while his countrymen departed, sprang up with a white flag on the parapet and was riddled by bullets. One chief, more successful, diverted the English for a few moments; he walked coolly towards the troops and surrendered.”[206]
The regiment (not the XVIIIth) charged with the defence of the ground across which the Maori column was moving, was disposed in two lines, the foremost lying under a bank which, while it covered the men from fire from the pah, prevented their watching the ground in front of them. The Maoris marched towards this bank, and, incredible as it seems, passed through these two lines of British regular troops, apparently without opposition. It was rumoured at the time that before the men in the first line discovered that the natives were out of their trenches, the Maoris had actually jumped over their heads and were well on their way towards the second line! Thanks to the energy of the General and his staff and the zeal of the remainder of the troops, the natives did not escape in a body, but were headed off by a handful of mounted men, who punished them severely in a pursuit which lasted until nightfall. Thirty-three prisoners fell into our hands; more than a hundred bodies were found on the field; it was known that at least twenty men had been buried in the pah, while traces in the bush proved that a considerable number of killed and wounded had been carried away after the troops had been recalled to camp. The natives themselves acknowledged to a loss of two hundred, out of a strength considered by General Cameron not to exceed three hundred fighting men. Well might the British General in his despatch say that it was impossible not to admire the heroic courage and devotion of the Maoris in defending themselves so long against overwhelming numbers.[207]
When the Royal Irish were let loose, the men were wild to avenge the death of Captain Ring, who was deservedly respected and admired by all ranks in the regiment. Though the officers did all they could to prevent unnecessary slaughter, more than one Maori was slain in the belief that it was he who had fired the shot which laid Ring low. When a fugitive was overtaken the cry arose, “That’s the man that killed the Captain!”—then came a wild yell, a bayonet thrust, and all was over. Not all the XVIIIth, however, were believers in such stern methods: two instances of clemency are recorded, one of which unhappily ended fatally to the poor Irishman. A soldier overtook and seized a Maori and spared his life; the prisoner was lying on the ground exhausted and apparently harmless, and his captor had turned away for a moment, when the native seized a rifle and shot him dead. The savage’s triumph was short-lived, however, for other men of the XVIIIth were on the spot and silenced him for ever. In the other case there was no such tragedy. Early in the pursuit a Maori was taken prisoner and placed in the charge of two privates, who, as they heard the shouts of their comrades dying away in the distance, cursed their bad luck in being obliged to remain behind. An officer came up when their impatience reached its climax, and overheard this conversation. “Shall we kill him, Barney?” Barney thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “I couldn’t kill the craytur in cold blood, Pat, but I wish we were quit of him.” “Kick him and let him go,” was the ready response. No sooner said than done; the prisoner disappeared into the bush, while Pat and Barney hurried after the regiment!
The British losses were sixteen killed and fifty-two wounded. The casualties among the Royal Irish were one officer (Brevet-Major Ring) and eight of the other ranks killed or mortally wounded, nine non-commissioned officers and men wounded.[208] In his official report Brigadier-General Carey, after expressing his deep regret at the death of Brevet-Major Ring, brought the services of Captain Inman to the notice of the General Officer commanding in New Zealand.
After the capture of Orakau the enemy retired again into the mountains, whither Cameron did not deem it prudent to follow him; and when the disaffected tribes in other parts of the North island heard how inconclusively the campaign on the Waikato had ended, there was an insurrection in the east, chiefly memorable for our defeat at the Gate pah, while in the south-west (the Taranaki country) there were frequent skirmishes between the troops and hostile natives.[209] To neither of these scenes of action were the Royal Irish summoned; after occupying Ngaruawahia for three months the regiment marched to Otahuhu camp, where it formed part of the garrison of Auckland during the remainder of the year.
At the beginning of 1865, the Royal Irish were sent to the south-west coast of the North island, to reinforce the small number of regular troops holding the Taranaki (or New Plymouth) district, where since the war began the British had been able to do little more than to hold redoubts round a few settlements, and to send occasional punitive expeditions into the enemy’s country. In the beginning of the campaign the rebel tribes, the adherents of the King, had fought us solely on political grounds; they objected to our presence and wished to drive us out of New Zealand, but no question of religion entered into the quarrel. Many of the Maoris had embraced Christianity, and had become such strict Sabbatarians that on one occasion the garrison of a besieged pah left their works on a Sunday morning to attend chapel, with results disastrous to themselves. But early in 1864, the British learned that a set of fanatics had arisen, named Hau-Haus, whose tenets, appealing to all that was worst in the Maori character, were a weird mixture of cannibalism, paganism, and Christianity.[210] In April 1864, a detachment of the 57th was badly cut up near New Plymouth; an officer, Captain Lloyd, and six men were killed by the Hau-Haus, who cut off their heads and drank their blood. A few days later, according to the native accounts, the Angel Gabriel appeared and ordered Lloyd’s head to be exhumed and carried throughout New Zealand, to serve as the medium of Jehovah’s communication with man. As soon as the head was disinterred it appointed priests, and announced that thanks to the protection of Gabriel and his angels the followers of the new religion would be invulnerable: the Virgin Mary would be constantly present with them: the religion of England was false and its scriptures must be burned; men and women were to live together promiscuously; the priests would obtain victories by shouting the word “Hau,”[211] and could invoke the help of legions of angels for the extermination of the whites. As soon as New Zealand had rid itself of the English, men would arrive from heaven to teach the Maoris all the arts and sciences known to Europeans. This extraordinary creed is believed to have been evolved by educated and unscrupulous natives, who realised that the Maoris had been shaken in their allegiance to the “King movement” by the result of the Waikato campaign, and that a stronger bond of union was required than a purely political organisation, the fortunes of which were not then in the ascendant.
Though in several affairs with the 57th the Hau-Haus learned by bitter experience that they were by no means invulnerable to Enfield bullets, the new religion found many converts. The tribes in the south-west of the North island had always been turbulent and hostile. They had committed grave and unprovoked outrages, such as the murder of a party of soldiers in 1863, which heralded the outbreak of the war. They were now in a state of open hostility, and almost the only part of the district which acknowledged the Queen’s rule was the ground enclosed by the redoubts round the settlements of Taranaki and Wanganui. The Government of New Zealand decided that there could be no peace until the tribesmen had been chastised, their power broken, and their country opened up. To accomplish these objects General Cameron had about five thousand troops, a thousand white volunteers, and a thousand native auxiliaries. His plan of campaign was that two columns, one based on Taranaki, the other on Wanganui, should force their way along the coast until they joined hands on the road between these two settlements.