When Captain Grey became Governor of South Australia in 1839, the country was almost bankrupt from much the same causes (the native question excepted) as had brought New Zealand to the verge of ruin. Before the Governor left, South Australia was in a flourishing condition; by the aid and liberality of their chief the colonists had overcome their difficulties, and the prosperity of the colony seemed established. Is it any wonder, then, that the New Zealanders joyfully anticipated Captain Grey's arrival, and looked to him to do for them what he had done for their cousins on the other side of the Tasman Sea?
Moreover, Captain George Grey was believed to know more than any man living about native races, and how to induce them to adopt the manners and customs of civilised man. If there were some who shook their heads and declared that George Grey was "too much inclined to see that niggers got their rights," their growls were lost in the shriller chorus of satisfaction.
Captain Grey arrived on the 14th of November, 1845, at Auckland. Without loss of time he quieted the financial panic, smoothed away for the moment the land difficulty, and assured all loyal natives of the Queen's favour and protection. Then, having ascertained that Heke and Kawiti were still in arms, he sent them a message that, unless they sued for peace before a fixed date, he would again set the war dogs at their throats. As a gentle hint to all concerned, he immediately passed a bill to prevent Maori from purchasing munitions of war.
While Heke and Kawiti, unused to such swift decision, debated the question, the time limit expired, and their spies raced to them with the news that the Kawana (Governor) was sending against them the greatest "war-party" which the "Pakeha Chiefs" had ever put together. Heke was still forced by his wound to abstain from active participation; but old Kawiti had finished his strong pa, Ruapekapeka—"The Bat's Nest,"—and retired thither, convinced that it would be impossible for the British to dislodge him.
Kawiti felt both complacent and apprehensive. The pa he had built was immensely strong and provided with every means of scientific defence, and five hundred good fighting men lay behind its massive fences. Colonel Despard, on the other hand, commanded close upon twelve hundred men, with eleven guns, two of them being thirty-two-pounders. For the odds Kawiti cared not at all; but the prospect of so many guns pounding at him all at once did not please him. There was no help for it. The war-party was at his gates, which he did not mean to open without a struggle.
Colonel Despard, getting his first glimpse of "The Bat's Nest," made up his mind that he would reduce it by means of regular sap work, if it cost him a year. He had not to wait nearly so long; but neither he nor Kawiti had the least presentiment how swift was to be the fall of a fortress which at first sight looked impregnable.
It was now summer, and the dreadful mud and angry rivers were no longer to be feared; yet there were difficulties in getting into position, for old Kawiti had chosen his site with consummate skill. The troops left Kororareka on the 8th of December, and four days later reached the pa of a friendly chief, Tamati Pukutetu, whence Ruapekapeka could be seen, nine miles away. Only nine miles; yet it cost those twelve hundred men nine days to cross the intervening strip of country between Pukutetu's pa and their camp before Ruapekapeka, and another nine days elapsed before the whole of the guns and ammunition could be got up. Kawiti made no attempt to harass the troops. The country fought for him and, besides, he was in no hurry to begin. No Maori ever was.
The British camp lay distant eight hundred yards from Ruapekapeka, which stood on the side of a hill, surrounded by dense forest. A quarter of a mile of space had been cleared all around of bush, leaving a formidable glacis, which must be crossed before the massive palisades could be reached. Not that the colonel intended to cross it until he had sent ahead of him a good many iron notes of interrogation.
For the pa itself, with its one hundred and seventy yards of frontage and seventy yards of depth, all broken into flanks, if a purely technical description were to be given of its figure—the stockaded divisions of the enceinte, the curtains with their huge piquets, the trenches and covered ways, the loopholes on the ground-level for musket fire, the traverses, the subtle division of the interior into compartments so that the loss of one should not necessitate the loss of the rest, the subterranean cells, the bomb-proof shelters,—were these to be detailed, even a soldier would stare and, while still his wonder grew, ask not only how old Kawiti's head could carry all it knew of the science of defensive warfare, but also, to adapt a famous query, "Where the deuce got he that knowledge?"