CHAPTER XIII
THE THREE HUNDRED WHO SAVED AN ARMY
Twenty-three hundred and fifty years ago, three hundred men beat back an army of three millions of the Great King, as the King of Persia was rightly called. The kingdom of Xerxes, who then ruled over Persia, stretched from India to the Ægean Sea and from the Caspian to the Red Sea. He reigned over Chaldean, Jew, Phœnician, Egyptian, Arab, Ethiopian and half a hundred other nations. From these he assembled an army, the greatest that has ever gone to war. This mass of men from all over the Eastern world he hurled at the tiny free states in Greece. It was as if the Czar of all the Russias with his vast armies from Europe and Asia should suddenly attack the state of Connecticut.
Greece's best defense was the ring of rugged mountains which surrounded its seacoast. The Persian army had gathered at Sardis. From there to gain entrance into Greece they must follow a narrow path close to the seashore with a precipice on one side and impassable morasses and quicksands on the other. Beyond this the way widened out into a little plain and narrowed again at the other end. It was an ideal place to be held by a small army of brave men. A Council of all the states of Greece was held at the Isthmus of Corinth. There all the states except one resolved to fight to the death for their freedom. Thessaly alone, which lay first in the path of the Great King, sent earth and water to his envoys who had come to all the states in Greece to demand submission. The Council sent to guard this pass, which was named Thermopylæ, a little army of four thousand men. It was commanded by Leonidas, one of the two kings of Sparta, who led a little band of three hundred Spartans who had sworn never to retreat. Before they left Sparta, each man celebrated his own funeral rites. This little army built a wall across the pass and camped there waiting for the enemy. Before long they were seen coming, covering the whole country with army after army until the plain below the pass was filled as far as the eye could see with hordes of marching, shouting warriors. High on the mountainside a throne had been built for Xerxes where he could see and watch his armies sweep through the little force which stood in their way. His great nobles waited for the chance to display before him their leadership and the splendid equipment and discipline of the armies which they led. The first attack was made by an army of the Persians and Medes themselves, supported by archers and slingers and flanked with cohorts of magnificently appareled horsemen mounted on Arab steeds. With a wild crash of barbaric music they rushed to the charge expecting by mere weight of numbers to break through the thin line of men who manned the little wall across the path, but the slave regiments of the Persians were made up of men who were trained under the lash. They were officered by great nobles who had led self-indulgent lives of luxury and pleasure. Against them was a band of free men, every one an athlete and able to use weapons which the lighter and weaker Persians could not withstand. The onslaught broke on the spears and long swords of the Spartan warriors and in a minute there was a huddle of beaten, screaming men and plunging horses and demoralized officers. Into the broken and defeated ranks plunged the Greeks and drove them far down the plain, returning in safety to their ramparts with the loss of hardly a man. Again and again this happened and regiment after regiment from the inexhaustible forces of the Persians were hurled against the wall only to be dashed backward and driven defeated down the plain by the impenetrable line of heavy-armed Greeks. Three times did Xerxes the Great King leap from his throne in rage and despair as he saw his best troops slaughtered and defeated by this tiny band of fighters. For two days this went on until the plain in front of the wall was covered with dead and dying Persians and mercenaries while the Greeks had hardly any losses.
Baffled and dispirited Xerxes was actually on the point of leading back his great army when a traitor, for a great sum of gold, betrayed a secret path up the mountainside. It was none other than the bottom of a mountain torrent through the shallow water of which men could wade and find a way which would lead them safely around to the rear of the Grecian army. On the early morning of the third day word was brought to Leonidas that the enemy had gained the heights above and that by noon they would leave the plain and entirely encircle the little Grecian army. A hasty council of war was called. All of the allied forces except the Spartans agreed that the position could not be held further and advised an honorable retreat. The Spartan band alone refused to go, although Leonidas tried to save two of his kinsmen by giving them letters and messages to Sparta. One of them answered that he had come to fight and not to carry letters and the other that his deeds would tell all that Sparta needed to know. Another one named Dienices, when told that the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows darkened the sun, replied, "So much the better, for we shall fight in the shade."
The little band took a farewell of their comrades and watched them march away and then without waiting to be attacked, this tiny body of three hundred men marched out from behind their ramparts and attacked a force nearly ten thousand times their own number. Right through the slave-ranks they broke and fought their way to a little hillock where back to back they defended themselves against the whole vast army of the Persians. Again and again waves of men dashed up from all sides against this little hill, but only to fall back leaving their dead behind. At last the spears of the Spartans broke and they fought until their swords were dulled and dashed out of their hands. Then they fought on with their daggers, with their hands and their teeth until not one living man was left, but only a mound of slain, bristled over with arrows and surrounded by ring after ring of dead Persians, Medes, Arabs, Ethiopians and the other mercenaries which had been dashed against them. So died Leonidas and his band of heroes. Nearly ten thousand of the Persian army lay dead around them during the three days of hand-to-hand fighting. By their death they had gained time for the armies of the Grecian states to organize and, best of all, they had taught Persian and Greek alike that brave men cannot be beaten down by mere numbers.
Leonidas and his band are drifting dust. The stone lion and the pillar with the names of those that died that marked the battle-mound have crumbled and passed away long centuries ago. Even the blood-stained Pass itself has gone and the sea has drawn back many miles and there is no longer the morass, the path or the precipice.
After the passage of more than twoscore centuries in a new world of which Leonidas never dreamed, in another great war between freedom and slavery, this same great deed was wrought again by another three hundred men who laid down their lives to hold back an enemy and dying saved an army and perhaps a nation. Their story might almost be the old, old hero story of the lost Spartan band.
The great Civil War was in its third year. Disaster after disaster had overtaken the Union armies. English writers were already chronicling The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. It was a time of darkness and peril. The great leaders who were afterward to win great victories had not yet arrived. Under McClellan nothing had been accomplished. At the first trial Burnside failed at the terrible battle of Fredericksburg where nearly thirteen thousand Union soldiers—the flower of the army—died for naught. There was another shift and "Fighting Joe Hooker" took command of the Army of the Potomac. Through continuous defeats, the great army had become disheartened and the men were sullen and discouraged. It was a time of shameful desertions. The express trains to the army were filled with packages of citizens' clothes which parents and wives and brothers and sisters were sending to their kindred to help them desert from the army. Hooker changed all this. He was brave, energetic and full of life and before long the soldiers were again ready and anxious to fight. Unfortunately, their general, in spite of his many good qualities, did not have those which would make him the leader of a successful army. He was vain, boastful and easily overcome and confused by any unexpected check or defeat. Encamped on the Rappahannock River he had one hundred and thirty thousand men against the sixty thousand of the Confederate forces on the other side. These sixty thousand, however, included Robert E. Lee, the great son of a great father, as their general. "Light-Horse Harry Lee," his father, had been one of the great cavalry commanders of the Revolution and one of Washington's most trusted generals. With Robert E. Lee was Stonewall Jackson, the great flanker who has never been equaled in daring, rapid, decisive, brilliant flanking, turning movements which so often are what decide great battles. Hooker decided to fight. By the night of April 30, 1863, no less than four army corps crossed the river in safety and were assembled at the little village of Chancellorsville under his command. His confidence was shown in the boastful order which he issued just before the battle.
"The operations of the last three days," he declared, "have determined that our enemy must either ingloriously fly or come out from behind his defenses and give us battle on our own ground where certain destruction awaits him."