military annals for the vicissitudes that have marked our operations.
The earliest war in 1839 was a rapid and brilliant success; within a
short year, through the treachery of our Afghan foes, thousands of
our countrymen, their wives and children, were slaughtered in the
mountain passes, and the country had to be re-conquered only to be
again abandoned. The Afghans were always troublesome neighbours, and
again in 1878 the insolence of the Ameer led to a new invasion. It was
called a triumphal progress; but there was some hard fighting--some
brilliant feats of arms. The capture of the fort of Ali Musjid by Sir
Sam Browne’s column, the crowning of the Peiwar Kotal, and the opening
of the Shuturgardan Pass by General Roberts were successful operations
that were followed by the flight of the Ameer, and paved the way to the
treaty of Gandamak, by which we placed a new Ameer on the throne and
stationed a British resident at his court.
The second invasion of Afghanistan, in the autumn of 1879, was to
revenge the base murder of this resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, in
Cabul, and it resulted in important operations. Sir Frederick Roberts,
who advanced through the Shuturgardan Pass, direct upon Cabul, reached
the capital after fighting the successful battle of Charasia, and was
occupied in meting out punishment and strengthening his hold until
the winter set in. But with the early snows there came very serious
troubles. Nearly the whole of the Afghan tribes had been aroused to
a _jehad_, or holy war, and the Ghazis gathered round the flag
of a chief named Mohammed Jan to the number of 40,000. It was said
that 100,000 might be expected to take up arms. Roberts’ whole force,
English and native, was barely 5,000, but the former were veteran
troops, and the latter made up of Sikhs and Goorkhas, the bravest of
our Indian levies. The force now arrayed against us was so threatening
that he withdrew entirely within our lines, and there, practically
besieged, held the enemy at bay. It was a humiliating change for an
invading army, but it was the only safe course to pursue. At last,
Mohammed Jan was rash enough to attack Sherpur, and was repulsed with
tremendous loss. We had not been strong enough to go out and meet him
in the field, but he was much too weak to capture our entrenchments.
Our restored supremacy was not again affected until the chiefs at
Ghazni showed signs of turbulence, and a force was detached from Cabul
to join hands with one coming from Candahar to punish the offenders.
The battle of Ahmed Khel, fought and won by Sir Donald Stewart, was a
brilliant victory over a most determined foe. Never in the annals of
Afghan warfare had Ghazis shown such indomitable courage. They came
right in among our men, fighting hand to hand, pistol and sword against
breechloader and bayonet, selling their lives so dearly that they did
great mischief before they were repulsed. A thousand dead Ghazis were
counted on the field, and some of them were women.
But this did not end the fighting, nor did success always smile upon
our arms. Another Afghan army, advancing from Herat under Ayoub
Khan, was met on the Helmund by General Burrows from Candahar, and
a deplorable defeat followed. The causes of the already mentioned
disaster at Maiwand were bad generalship and imprudence, but the sting
of the defeat was somewhat taken out of it by the devotion displayed.
Maiwand imperilled Candahar, which was speedily invested by the
triumphant Ayoub, and the garrison was in some danger. Two armies were
at once set in motion to relieve the place. General Phayre moved up
from Quetta; Sir Frederick Roberts was sent from Cabul, to perform the
great forced march which has become famous in military history. Cutting
himself adrift from his base--an act which is deemed most rash and
generally unjustifiable in military science--he started off with 10,000
men, hampered by 8,000 baggage animals to carry food and indispensable
supplies, with 8,000 camp followers, to march 300 miles across an
enemy’s country. His troops were the flower of the Indian army, their
temper was the finest; no privations checked, no terrors daunted them;
they bore without flinching the wide changes of temperature--between
45 degrees at daybreak and 105 degrees at noon; they were never sure
of food, and they knew that certain death awaited them if they lagged
behind.
The march from Cabul to Candahar was accomplished in twenty days,
making an average of fifteen miles daily march during that time: a
splendid feat in pluck and unyielding endurance; and they reached
Candahar travel-stained but unwearied, ready to join issue with the
enemy directly they met him. Ayoub had raised the siege at the approach
of Roberts, but he awaited him in a strong position; and then followed
the decisive victory of Candahar, fought under the walls of the city,
in which the defeat at Maiwand was fully avenged.
The Zulu war will be remembered with mixed feelings: sorrow for grave
and regrettable disasters, pride at great achievements, which in a
measure atoned for and avenged them. We entered into the struggle a
little too lightly, perhaps, although enough must have been known of
our opponents to have exacted respect for their prowess. The Zulus
were a military nation, every able-bodied man was a soldier, trained in
the skilful use of his weapons, light of foot, ardent for glory, highly
disciplined and drilled. The Zulu generals were admirable tacticians,
and their now well-known plan of attack with centre held back and two
great horns thrust out on each flank was quite scientific. Cetewayo,
the king, a despot who could deal with his braves as he pleased, could
send some 50,000 of them into the field, all ready to sacrifice their
lives for him.
Lord Chelmsford, when the invasion of Zululand was decided upon, did
not command more than 16,000 men, of whom 9,000 were native levies.
His plan of operations covered a wide front: his forces marched in
five columns, widely apart, from the sea-mouth of the Tugela River to
Luneberg and the borders of the Transvaal. The centre, which he led
himself, was the first to suffer, and barely escaped annihilation while
the general-in-chief was out on a reconnaissance with half his whole
force. The enemy he was looking for, some 20,000 Zulus, swooped down
upon the other half in an open undefended camp and destroyed it. The
massacre of Insandlwana, when a battalion of the 24th Regiment and a
number of native troops were cut to pieces, would have been avoided
with proper precautions. What even light entrenchments could do to
stave off even overwhelming attack was seen the same day at Rorke’s
Drift.
Retreat after Insandlwana was imperative. At one time it seemed
as though the Zulus would pursue, and invade the colony of Natal.
Fortunately, our arms were upheld elsewhere. The Tugela, or sea-coast
column, under Colonel Pearson, had advanced some way towards Ulundi,
and had established itself at Ekowe when the news arrived of Lord
Chelmsford’s misfortune. After a short debate, it was wisely and
bravely resolved to stand firm. Ekowe was roughly fortified and bravely
held against thousands of Zulus for more than three months, until it
was at last relieved by Lord Chelmsford in person, who on his way up
had fought and won the battle of Ghingilovo.
Another column, under Sir Evelyn Wood, the nearest to the two
overwhelmed at Insandlwana, had also been hardly pressed. Wood was
active, and his attitude firm. At the action called that of the Zlobane
Mountain he was for a time surrounded, but in the subsequent fight,
when he was attacked in “laager” at Kambula, his force gallantly
repulsed quite ten times their number. Two companies of the 80th,
with the fifth column, were, however, unfortunate, and one of the
detachments sent out to escort waggons coming in with supplies was
surprised and destroyed upon the Intombi River. The Zulus had come upon
them unawares in the mist--4,000 men to 150--and none of the British
escaped alive.
Presently reinforcements began to arrive, and before May the army
numbered 22,000 men, of whom 17,000 were Europeans. A new general--the
then Sir Garnet Wolseley--was also sent out to supersede Lord
Chelmsford; but the latter, utilising his greater means, was able to
recover his prestige before the arrival of his successor. Fresh columns
were organised; Generals Newdigate and Wood converged upon Ulundi from
the north side; General Crealock was to advance from the Tugela (but
never got very far); General Marshall, with a cavalry division, joined
in with Wood.
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT.]
The battle of Ulundi, when the king’s kraal was captured and burned,
ended the war. The Zulus by this time had lost much of their spirit;
they were “beginning to be frightened,” as one of their own chiefs
said; and no doubt they now realised that the strength was on our side.
Cetewayo was for some time a fugitive after Ulundi, and his pursuit and
eventual capture by Colonel Marter and Lord Gifford were not the least
exciting episodes of the Zulu war.
This was not to be our last campaign in South Africa. The war with
the Boers, which followed, is not a brilliant chapter in our military
history. In the Transvaal, as in Zululand, we began by under valuing
our enemy, and time was not allowed to recover our reputation. The fate
of the general whose name will always be associated with the Boer war
was its saddest episode. Misfortune pursued Sir George Colley: he was
one of the “unlucky.” Opinions differ concerning his latest failure,
but there are many who hold that the story of Majuba--of the craggy
and, seemingly, inaccessible hill climbed by Colley and his devoted
band, only to find death and defeat on the top--ought, with better
fortune, to have ranked with Wolfe’s scaling of the Heights of Abraham,
or Charles Napier’s desert march on Emaum Ghur.
[Illustration: “THEY CAME RIGHT IN AMONG OUR MEN”
(_p._ 18).]
Egypt has been our latest battle-ground. The campaign against Arabi and
his insurgent troops may not seem a very glorious achievement, but the
Egyptians were well disciplined; they had admirable weapons, and they
fought behind strong entrenchments, armed with most powerful artillery.
The cavalry combat at Kassassin, the storming of the lines of
Tel-el-Kebir, were very successful feats of arms. Fighting of a much
more serious character was in store for us before we were long in
Egypt. The Great Nile Expedition, for the relief of the ill-fated hero
Gordon, was akin to those to Magdala and Coomassie, but it differed
rather in scope and greatly in results. To ascend a mighty river,
running down with a steady stream five miles an hour and barred at
intervals by cataracts and rapids, was a greater task than scaling
mountains or penetrating the bush. The enterprise was further hampered
by the opposition of a most determined and courageous foe. “Fuzzy
Wuzzy,” as our soldiers christened the shock-headed Soudanese warrior,
was an opponent worthy of our steel. His contempt for British squares
and British breechloaders has been sung in strong language by Kipling,
the soldier’s poet, and was shown by the recklessness with which he
threw himself on the one and faced the other. Of all the brilliant
battles fought by British soldiers, they may be most proud of Abu-Klea,
Tamai, and El-Teb.
It has been often said in disparagement of our small wars, that they
have been mostly waged against savage foes. But this is surely to our
soldiers’ credit, for they have, in this way, encountered some of
the most warlike races in the world, many of impetuous, of reckless
fanatical bravery, who accepted none of the recognised canons and
conventions of civilised warfare. To kill or be killed was the only
watchword of the Afghan Ghazi, the stalwart Zulu, or the irrepressible
Soudanese. There was no quarter, no making prisoners, except for
subsequent butchery. In these desperate campaigns, our men fought with
their lives in their hands. It was truly war to the knife, and called
for the highest courage.
Nothing shows this better than the many deeds of heroism recorded in
these wars, deeds that earned the most coveted of English military
distinctions--the Victoria Cross. A chaplain, Mr. Adams, in the first
fight outside Sherpur, bravely extricated a trooper who was under
his dead horse in a _mêlée_, and who would certainly have been
slain. In the Mutiny, Sir Charles Fraser, now a gallant general, won
both the cross and the Humane Society’s medal at one and the same
time for saving, under a heavy fire, a man who was drowning. In the
closing affair of the Zulu war, before Ulundi, Lord William Beresford
gallantly picked up a trooper, whose horse had been shot under him,
and carried him off behind him on his own horse. The Zulus were near at
hand in great numbers, and the fate of the fallen man would have been
sealed. Commandant D’Arcy, of the frontier Light Horse, exhibited the
same self-sacrificing courage on this occasion, but his own horse was
wounded and fell under the double weight, whereupon D’Arcy mounted his
man upon another trooper’s horse, and saw them safely off before he
rode away.
* * * * *
Well, we have had our glance at the wars of the century--a cursory
glance enough, and attracted chiefly by the red coat of the British
soldier; let us now turn over the leaves of our book, and pass from
battle to battle. We shall “go as we please”--passing from Plevna to
Austerlitz, from Bull Run to Gravelotte, just as the spirit moves us,
and unfettered by sequence either of date or place. Now we shall follow
the fortunes of the Great Napoleon, now of Napoleon “the Little”; now
of Wellington, now of Roberts and Wolseley; now of Moltke, Skobeleff,
MacMahon, Sherman, Garibaldi. At one moment we shall be listening to
the thunder of a broadside from the _Victory_, at the next to the
bombardment of Alexandria. We shall pass from the shots and shells of
civilised warfare to the assegais and spears of the Zulu, the hatchets
of the Maori, the knives of the Soudanese. We shall see all the glories
of war, deeds of daring and heroism, acts of noble self-sacrifice and
devotion; but we shall see also that reverse side of the picture which
should indeed be engraved still deeper on our minds: we shall see
that its glories are outweighed by its horrors, its sufferings, its
pitifulness.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
Saarbrück
The Baptism _of_ Fire
By
Archibald Forbes
THE PRINCE IMPERIAL]
The pleasant little frontier town of Saarbrück was a very interesting
place at the beginning of the Franco-German war. Within the distance
of a mile from the low heights covering Saarbrück towards the west,
ran the frontier line dividing France from Germany. The place was
being held “on the bounce,” for its garrison consisted merely of one
battalion of the Hohenzollern infantry regiment and two squadrons of
the 7th Rhineland Uhlans. All along this frontier line down in the
broad smooth valley between the Saarbrück heights and the loftier and
more abrupt Spicheren heights inside of the French border, the hostile
piquets and videttes confronted each other.
As one stood in front of the little “Bellevue” public-house on the
Reppertsberg, one saw in the plain below among the trees a Prussian
piquet of Uhlans and infantry; and on the little knolls further in
advance the videttes circling singly, their lance-pennons fluttering
in the wind. Several hundred yards further away, by the side of the
Forbach road, was the frontier custom-house which the French now used
as a piquet house. Outside of it the red-breeched linesmen were to be
seen sitting or lounging about in considerable numbers. In their front
was the chain of their videttes. All along the frontier line, to the
right and left of this point, there ran this arrangement of outposts
confronting each other. On the Spicheren upland a French force was
gradually gathering until, by the end of July, the whole of Frossard’s
army corps was massed on the Spicheren, within gunshot distance of the
low heights covering Saarbrück.
In those pleasant early days, while as yet there were no graves
on the Spicheren Berg and no shattered men lying in the Saarbrück
hospitals or littering the platform of the Saarbrück railway station
on the blood-stained stretchers, the opposing piquets and videttes
formed quite the diversion of the Saarbrück people. After the day’s
work was over, the labouring folk used regularly to stroll up to the
“Bellevue” to watch, as they drank their beer, the dropping fire, fain
to see a German marksman proving his skill by hitting a Frenchman.
Both sides were very cautious and few casualties occurred. As yet the
Saarbrück hospital contained but two wounded Germans, both linesmen
of the Hohenzollern regiment. The French were reputed to be in force
in Forbach as well as on the Spicheren Berg--as many, it was said, as
15,000 men. Saarbrück, however, was in no trepidation and kept a good
face with its little garrison of some 1,200 men all told.
It was on one of the earliest of those early days that the midday
_table d’hôte_ in the Rheinischer Hof was broken up abruptly by
the report that French cannon were being moved forward to the edge
of the Spicheren Berg. Immediately the drummers paraded the town,
beating to arms. A company of the Hohenzollerns occupied each of the
two bridges and a third marched up the hill and took up a position
among the trees skirting the exercise-field. A detachment of the Uhlans
rode up on to the heights, while the rest stood to their horses in
the Central Platz. From the “Bellevue” the French cannon were easily
discernible through the field-glass, as they were being drawn forward
into position by infantrymen.
Almost immediately came a puff of white smoke from the mouth of one
of the guns, and a shell struck on the road close by the little
beer-house, bursting as it fell. There was a stampede on the part of
the civilians from their beer-mugs in the “Bellevue,” and they hurried
into cover behind the crest of the height. They were only just in
time. Another shell, ricocheting off the road, struck the front of the
beer-house, went through the wall as if it had been paper, and burst
inside, blowing out the windows and part of the roof. Four more shots
were fired, and then the French withdrew their cannon. Their practice,
no doubt experimental, was very good--of the six shells fired, three
struck the “Bellevue.” Two rooms of it had been blown into one, the
bar knocked into little pieces, the furniture wrecked, and a great
gap in the floor made by a shell on its way to the cellar to cause a
smash-royal among the bottles.
The outposts blazed away at each other until dusk. One of the last
shots killed a soldier on patrol--he was the first man killed in the
war. The poor fellow was hit full on the forehead, and he must have
died instantaneously. His comrades carried in the corpse on a stretcher
improvised of their rifles. The drops of blood pit-patted on the road
as they carried him past, the moonbeams falling on the pale dead face.
Quite a lad he was, with the down hardly grown on his face--likely
enough a mother might have been thinking of and praying for her lad,
little knowing that he was lying stark and cold, waiting for a grave.
The slow days passed in a strange bewildering calm, unbroken save
by the trivial skirmishes occurring in the course of the constant
reconnaissances and patrolling parties.
Frossard lay passive on the Spicheren save for the
“potato-reconnaissances” his hungry soldiers occasionally made, sending
out a screen of skirmishers to the front while the working parties dug
potatoes with great industry.
Brave old Major von Pestel of the Lancers, who commanded the handful of
men holding Saarbrück, had received an order from Moltke to evacuate
a place which was regarded as untenable; but von Pestel pleaded
successfully to be left where he was, on the undertaking that he would
not compromise his little command, but would fall back as soon as
serious danger threatened.
Meanwhile he was never out of the saddle. Every afternoon he would come
cantering over the Bellevue height with his cheery greeting and his
shout, “Come along, English sir! I go to draw de shoots of de enemy!”
The French marksmen expended a considerable quantity of ammunition on
the worthy major; but the range was long and they never succeeded in
hitting him, although certainly he gave them plenty of chances.
But in spite of Major von Pestel’s cordiality, it was rather a tedious
time. Men asked each other if it were possible that the French on
the Spicheren were not aware of the weakness of the land on the
other side of the frontier. The Prussian infantrymen and Uhlans, it
was true, were manipulated dexterously and assiduously to make a
battalion seem a brigade and a couple of squadrons a powerful cavalry
force; yet it was felt that the place was being held only by dint of
sheer impudence--for there were no supports as yet nigh at hand--and
that the bubble must burst summarily if Frossard should abandon his
unaccountable inactivity. Why the soldiers in red breeches lay so long
basking lazily in the sun on the Spicheren slopes the men of Saarbrück
could not comprehend; but the day must surely be near now, they said
one to the other, when the red-breeches would gird up their loins and
roll their columns on over the Reppertsberg, the exercise-ground, and
the Winterberg, and across the Saar into the Köllerthaler Wald or the
Pfalz. In their path--surely they must have known it--there stood but
an open town, a couple of bridges partially barricaded with barrels,
a single battalion of infantry and two reasonably strong squadrons of
Uhlans.
The 1st of August, while the French on the Spicheren Berg were still
supine, brought to near Saarbrück what all hoped was the earnest at
last of a host, not alone of resistance, but also of invasion. On the
afternoon of that day, the 1st and 3rd battalions of the Hohenzollern
regiment, with a battery of artillery, reached the vicinity and
bivouacked on the edge of the forest at Raschpfuhl, some two miles
north-west of the town. General Gneisenau also arrived and assumed the
command.
[Illustration:
LOCALITY of
the Battle of
SAARBRUCK]
On the morning of the 2nd, when the Hohenzollerns were basking in their
sunshiny bivouac, the French Emperor, with his son, was travelling by
train from Metz to Forbach. The German videttes down the valley heard
the gusts of cheering with which Frossard’s soldiers welcomed the
Head of the State and his heir. Ignorant of the cause, some attributed
the cheering to the announcement of a French success somewhere; others
ascribed it to an extra issue of wine. How were the honest Uhlans to
discern that the imperial parent had come to the frontier to make
a military promenade wherewithal to throw dust in the eyes of his
Parisians, and that “Lulu,” as they impertinently styled the heir of
the dynasty, accompanied his father that he might receive his “baptism
of fire”?
The night had passed in quiet along the frontier, and in the morning it
seemed as if the 2nd of August was to be as monotonous as had been the
1st. General Gneisenau and old von Pestel, now a lieutenant-colonel,
had made a reconnaissance from the “Bellevue” and had come back to
a leisurely breakfast. The soldiers in the barrackyards and in the
several posts on the environs of the town, slept and smoked and
gossiped, their arms stacked as usual; the officers sat under the trees
drinking their Rhine wine, and the whole place seemed oppressed by the
drowsiness of a fervently hot day.
[Illustration: SAARBRÜCK.]
But the torpor was soon to give place to alert activity. At ten a.m.
Saarbrück awoke at the announcement sent in from the outposts that the
enemy was at last advancing. The two companies in front of Saarbrück
moved at once into the line of defence. The company from St. Johann
hurried by at the double to occupy the “Red House.” Major von Horn
hastened to strengthen the post on the Winterberg, which was most
imminently threatened. Captain Gründer occupied the Löwenberg, and
moved with Leydecker’s company and the rest of his own out to St.
Arnual, where his rifle fire and the fire of two guns sent to him from
Raschpfuhl gave a warm reception to the enemy debouching from the
Stiftswald. As some English spectators hurried up to the “Bellevue”
height, there rattled past them at a sharp trot a couple of guns which
the general had ordered to be put in position on the Exercise Platz.
The battery chief waved his hand cheerily as he galloped to the front.