On the 5th the Battalion paraded at ten o’clock in the street of Coomassie. The wounded were sent down, escorted by Cope’s company, under Lieutenant Sackville, and some native troops.
On the 6th the Battalion paraded at half-past six, and marched out of Coomassie about an hour afterwards. The palace was to be blown up, and the town burned. As soon as the Engineers reported that all was ready at the palace, the guard of the Rifle Brigade was marched off, with orders to rejoin its Battalion, and orders were given for the palace to be blown up.
Heavy rains had now set in. The marsh at the entrance of the town was knee deep, and the rivers, trifling streams on the march up, were now wide torrents, five feet deep in mid-channel. The Engineers made a bridge with a felled tree, but the men had often to wade, almost waist deep. On arrival at Ordah about three in the afternoon, the bridge was found to be submerged some two or three feet deep, and the Riflemen had to wade across it. This was so slow a process that the rear companies did not get over till six. The Battalion then camped on the ground it had occupied on the 3rd.
They started at a quarter-past six on the morning of the 7th, and marched to Aggemamu. The stream before entering this village had been bridged over by Captain Cope, and steps had been cut by him in the steep path ascending from it.
We left him detailed to the charge of Aggemamu on the 2nd. He had with him 17 sick or weakly Riflemen, and 15 sick men of the other regiments, 100 native troops, 50 or 60 labourers, under a sergeant of Engineers, a few native police, and 5 officers. But the men were so ill, that had he been attacked, he could barely have mustered 20 Europeans fit to fight. As soon as the force had marched, he set to work to make his post defensible. He pulled down the greater part of the village, keeping only a small square of houses, which he loop-holed; and built small redoubts and a kind of redan at the fork of the roads, in which he placed his native soldiers. He brought the baggage into his enclosure, and, indeed, used some of it in building his defences. In levelling the outside of the village, the native labourers most foolishly, and in direct violation of his orders, set fire to some houses. The fire came raging towards the intrenchment; but he happily succeeded in making a gap, and thus saving the stockade and the baggage from the flames. Scouts informed him that the Ashantees were in force all round, and that he would most probably be attacked. After the troops had left, he heard heavy firing in front, and his patrols brought in a prisoner, who stated that the king would fight at Kasie.
On the 4th he still continued his work of fortifying his post. No news came to him from the front, but heavy firing was heard to the north and north-west. Five prisoners were brought in. On the 5th he went on with his work, and sent some of his blacks out into the woods to gather plantains for food, thus utilising them as outposts; for on the approach of an enemy they would have fled back, and given the earliest intimation of danger. He was short of rations too, and was obliged to keep his men on half-rations. He had another cause of anxiety, besides being without any intelligence from the front: that though the road was clear to the rear, no convoy of provisions came up; and he feared the troops on their return from Coomassie might find Aggemamu unprovisioned. He sent out a reconnaissance of 30 men, under Lieutenant de Hoghton, 10th Foot, who went three miles along the right-hand road, and brought in a good deal of corn. They burned a large village, but saw no Ashantees.
At last, in the middle of the night between the 5th and 6th, Colonel Colley came in from the front, ‘in thunder, lightning, and in rain,’ with intelligence of the proceedings of the last three days. This was the first communication Cope had received from the front since the troops left Aggemamu on the morning of the 3rd. It was a most anxious time; but his exertions were rewarded, for ‘Sir Garnet on his return complimented Captain Cope much on the measures he had taken for defence; and added that they were so good that he could not have wished him better fortune than to have been attacked.’[336]
‘We found,’ says Colonel Brackenbury, ‘that a perfect fortress had been constructed by Captain Cope, which would have defied the attacks of an army. In the execution of his duty he had spared no person and no thing; and we shall not soon forget the despairing face of one non-combatant officer, who with tears in his eyes complained that his baggage had been built into the fortification, and that he was told he could not have it out.’[337]
In the same way Mr. Henty observes, ‘I found [Aggemamu] changed beyond recognition; the whole place, in fact, having been levelled with the ground, except the principal group of houses, which had upon the way up been used as Head-quarters. These had been loop-holed, and formed an interior citadel, which could have been defended by the garrison had the breast-work round the village been carried.’[338]
On Colonel Colley’s information that the force was on its way back, Captain Cope set his people to build huts for the troops.