crossing the plain from the wooded heights on the French side of the
frontier, converge on Saarbrück. One of these is the great post-road
from Forbach. Another, starting from the village of Spicheren, winds
tortuously down the right flank of the precipitous “Rothe Berg”--the
“Red Crag”--crosses the hollow and enters Saarbrück between the
Reppertsberg and the Nussberg. The third, further to the east, is a
mere green track of considerable breadth, which falls abruptly down
into the valley by the poplar-clad slope from the plateau towards St.
Arnual.
Down all these three roads were flowing from the upland dense and
glittering streams of French troops, the stream on the great road
flowing swiftest and fastest. The sunrays flashed on the bright
bayonets, and threw up from the green or grey background the red
and blue of the uniforms. The troops came on in the true careless,
irregular French style, with scarcely a pretence of formation, but with
a speed that was remarkable. The moment that the head of a column
reached the valley, it broke into spray. As file after file reached
a certain point, it became dissipated; the nimble linesmen extended
further and further to right and left, till by the time that the heads
of all three columns were in the valley, an unbroken but loose chain of
skirmishers was drawn across the plain several hundred yards in advance.
[Illustration: LULU’S DÉBUT.]
Then began the steady deployments of company after company, battalion
after battalion, regiment after regiment; and almost before one had
realised the situation, a long dense line had been ruled along the
valley behind the more ragged line of the skirmishers. Squadrons of
cavalry streamed down, and forming line at a gallop, rapidly overtook
the infantry. Passing through the intervals, they re-formed and pushed
on to occupy and cover the flanks of the advance.
While all this was going on in the valley, the streams from behind the
wood and the hill seemed to flow from a source that never would run
dry. It was hardly a break that was caused in it by the two batteries
that came down and wheeled off the road on to the verge of the plateau,
the gunners unlimbering and standing ready by the venomous pieces that
presently gave fire from their wicked black, mouths. Higher up on the
crest were visible other batteries, apparently of larger guns. The
peculiarity of the movements described was their perfect quietness and
uninterruption. The French tirailleurs had already begun to breast the
gentle slope leading up to the positions held by the Germans, when the
chassepots began to give tongue; and then the silence gave place to a
steady rattle of musketry fire, through the smoke of which the main
advance moved steadily and swiftly forward.
Bataille’s division formed the first line; of it Bastoul’s brigade
on the right of the main road moved against the Reppertsberg, the
Winterberg, and St. Arnual; Pouget’s brigade on the left of the road
moved towards the exercise-ground. In the second line were the brigades
of Michelet and Valazé; the remainder of Frossard’s corps, the strength
of which reached 35,000 men, followed in reserve. An army corps was
marching against a couple of battalions.
Despite the disproportion, the Prussian defence was obstinate. It was
only after a brisk combat that the weak detachment were driven from St.
Arnual, the Winterberg, and the Reppertsberg. On the latter height a
Prussian half-company met the French skirmishers with the bayonet, and
then held them for a time at bay by a fire from behind the hedges.
The final withdrawal was conducted slowly, in excellent order. Baron
von Rosen held his company to the last on the exercise-ground. His
steadfast soldiers, lying down between the trees, waited until Pouget’s
skirmishers were within 300 yards, and then poured in a fire so heavy
that the French assailants were compelled to halt and lie down for a
time.
It was just as Rosen had received a peremptory order to retire that
the few spectators who waited to accompany that movement witnessed
the descent from the Spicheren height of a great _cortège_ of
mounted officers. The glittering procession rode forward at a slow
trot, crossed the intervening level, and then ascended the slope of
the Folster height, around which was massed the regiments of Valazé’s
brigade.
The _cortège_ halted on the low crest of the Folster height; and
through the telescope one saw the group open out and leave isolated
two personages on horseback, one of whom was clearly discerned to be
Napoleon III. The boyish figure on the smaller horse, whose gestures
were so animated, was presumed to be the young Prince Imperial; and
the cheers which rose above the din of the musketry-fire were taken to
indicate the congratulations of the soldiers at the Prince’s receiving
his “baptism of fire”--which, indeed, it has been supposed, was the
object of the otherwise pointless demonstration. Not on the Folster
Höhe, but nearer to Saarbrück, under the trees of the exercise-ground,
is now a stone with a somewhat brusque inscription, which being
translated reads:--“Lulu’s Début, 2nd August, 1870. Erected by H. H.
Baumann, Veteran of 1814–1815.”
It was just as Rosen was withdrawing his company from the immediate
front of Pouget’s advance that a curious and characteristic incident
occurred. Among the few civilians who remained on the exercise-ground
to the bitter end was a gallant British officer, Wigram Battye of the
famous “Guides,” who died fighting in Afghanistan in the campaign of
1878. A soldier was shot down close to him, whereupon Battye, who had
been rebelling against the retirement, snatched up the dead man’s
needle-gun and pouch-belt, ran out into the open, dropped on one
knee, and opened fire on Pouget’s brigade. Pouget’s brigade replied
with alacrity, and presently Battye was bowled over with a chassepot
bullet in the ribs. A German professor and a brother Briton ran out and
brought him in, conveyed him later to a village in the rear, plastered
successive layers of brown paper over the damaged ribs, and started him
off in a waggon to the Kreuznach hospital.
The French did not press upon the orderly Prussian retirement, and,
indeed, both of the bridges across the Saar remained in the possession
of the Prussians. The firing had almost died out when, soon after noon,
the French began to bombard the lower bridge and the railway station
from three batteries which they had brought up on to the heights
overhanging Saarbrück. One of these was a mitrailleuse, the storm of
bullets from which swept the bridge so that nothing could live on it,
and an unfortunate burgher, who did not believe in the mitrailleuse,
had to alter his views on this subject when the lower part of his
person was riddled by the bullets it poured forth. The Prussian
artillery about Malstatt tried with four guns to make head against the
French batteries, but had to give up the attempt and retire. The final
detachment of Prussians remained under the shelter of Hagen’s Hotel
while the French were shelling the railway station, but ultimately ran
the gauntlet and found refuge in the Köllerthal. The casualties of the
day were trivial. The Prussians had eight men killed, four officers and
seventy-one men wounded. The French loss amounted to six officers and
eighty men.
During their short stay in and about Saarbrück the French behaved with
great moderation. General Frossard, on the evening of the attack,
sent for the Mayor of Saarbrück, and told him that his orders were
very strict against marauding, and that if any cases occurred the
townspeople were to take the numbers on the caps of the evil-doers,
when the fellows would be severely punished. But there was little
occasion for complaint: the French soldiers paid their way honestly.
They did, to be sure, drink a brewery dry, but the brewer refrained
from reporting them. A corporal attempted to kiss pretty Fräulein
Sophie--the _dame du comptoir_ of the Rhinescher Hof; but a
captain caught him in the act, ran him off the premises, and himself
kissed the winsome lass. On the morning of the 6th the Prussian troops
were back again in Saarbrück: the French had gone back to the Spicheren
position on the previous night.
[Illustration:
THE STORMING OF THE TAKU FORTS
BY A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE]
“There’s many a victory, surely, decisive and complete,
As meant a sight less fightin’ than a hardly fought defeat;
And if people do their duty, every man in his degree,
Why defeat may be more glorious than a victory needs to be.”
These lines from a modern ballad put very clearly a truth that is too
often forgotten. Victories are remembered and commemorated by medals
and names inscribed in letters of gold on our regimental colours; but
people do not talk about defeats. Yet when brave men fail against
desperate odds, the story of their gallant efforts to carry their flag
to victory is quite as well worth the telling and the remembering as if
the chance of war had given them the coveted prize of success.
So it is that among the battles of the century that should not be
forgotten we count the one solitary defeat that English sailors or
soldiers ever suffered at the hands of the Chinese--Admiral Hope’s
failure to force the entrance of the Pei-ho River at the Taku Forts on
June 25th, 1859: a failure amply avenged by the gallant storming of the
same forts in the following year.
Taku is a town near the mouth of the Pei-ho (_i.e._ the “North
River”), which, flowing between low, muddy banks, runs into the Gulf of
Pe-chi-li. Thirty-four miles higher up the river is Tien-tsin, built
at the junction of the Pei-ho with the Grand Canal. It is the port of
Pekin, and a busy and prosperous place. Pekin, the capital, is some
eighty miles still further inland. In the year 1858 the French and
English had forced their way to Tien-tsin, passing the forts near Taku
at the river mouth with but little difficulty, for the works were badly
armed and held by an irresolute garrison which made but a poor defence.
When Tien-tsin was occupied, the Chinese asked for peace, and a treaty
was signed there containing, among other stipulations, an agreement
that the envoys of England and France were to be received at Pekin
within a year, and that the treaty was to be solemnly ratified there.
Now the Chinese, as soon as the allies withdrew from Tien-tsin, began
to regret having consented to allow the foreign ambassadors to enter
their capital, and endeavoured to have it arranged that the treaty
should be ratified elsewhere. But England and France insisted on the
original agreement being carried out, and when the envoys of the two
countries arrived off the mouth of the Pei-ho in June, 1859, and
announced their intention of proceeding up the river to Pekin, they
were escorted by an English fleet under the command of Rear-Admiral
Hope.
It was found that not only had the forts at the river mouth, which
had so easily been silenced the year before, been put into a state of
repair, but that the river was blocked against anything larger than
rowing-boats by a series of strong barriers. The admiral was informed
that these had been placed on the river to keep out pirates and it was
promised that they should be removed; but so far from keeping this
promise, the local mandarins set to work to strengthen the defences
of the river. On June 21st, the admiral sent the Chinese commander a
letter warning him that if the obstacles were not cleared out of the
channel of the Pei-ho by the evening of the 24th, he would remove them
by force.
The three days’ grace thus given to the Chinese he employed in
preparations to make good his warning message. He had several powerful
ships in his squadron, but none of these could take a direct part in
the coming fight, for the entrance to the Pei-ho is obstructed by a
wide stretch of shallows, the depth of water on the bar being only two
feet at low water, and hardly more than eleven at high tide; and this
only in a narrow channel scoured out by the river. Thus, for the actual
attack on the forts, he had to rely on the gunboats of his fleet, a
number of small wooden steamers of light draft built during the Crimean
war for service in the shallow waters of the Baltic and Black Seas. The
gunboats with which Admiral Hope crossed the bar and anchored below the
forts on the 23rd were the following:--
_Plover_, _Bunterer_, _Forester_, _Haughty_, _Janus_, _Kestrel_, _Lee_,
_Opossum_, _Starling_, each of four guns; _Nimrod_ and _Cormorant_,
each of six guns.
[Illustration: SCENE OF THE OPERATIONS OF 1859 AND 1860.]
Each had a crew of forty or fifty officers and men, so that the eleven
little steamers brought forty-eight guns and 500 men into action. The
heavier ships outside the bar were to send in 500 or 600 more men,
marines and bluejackets, in steam launches, boats and junks; this force
being intended to be used as a landing party when the fire of the forts
had been silenced. No one expected that this would prove a difficult
business.
It was true that there was a big fort on the south side, with mud
ramparts nearly half a mile long, and heavy towers behind them, and
another large fort on the north bank, placed so as to sweep the bend of
the river; but on all previous occasions the Chinese gunners had made
very bad practice with their guns, and had soon been driven from them
by the fire of English ships; and, besides, it was not supposed that
there were any large number of guns in position on the forts, for very
few embrasures had been cut in the mud walls, so far as anyone could
see.
On the evening of the 24th, no answer having been received from the
shore, it was announced that the attack would be made next day, and
after dark the admiral sent in one of his officers, Captain Willes (now
Admiral Sir George Willes, G.C.B.), to examine the obstacles in the
river and see what he could do to remove them. Willes was accompanied
by three armed boats, provided with explosives. Rowing up quietly under
cover of the darkness the boats came first to a row of iron stakes,
each topped with a sharp spike and supported on a tripod base, so that
they were just in the proper position to pierce the side or bottom of a
ship coming up the river at high water.
This first barrier was just opposite the lower end of the South Fort.
Passing cautiously between two of the spikes, the daring explorers
rowed up the river for a quarter of a mile, when they came to a second
barrier, formed by a heavy cable of cocoa fibre and two chain cables
stretched across the channel, twelve feet apart, and supported at every
thirty feet by a floating boom securely anchored up and down stream.
Two of the boats were left to fix a mine under the middle of this
floating barrier, while Willes pushed on further into the darkness with
the third. Just above the bend of the river he came to a third barrier,
formed of two huge rafts, moored so as to leave only a narrow zigzag
channel in mid-stream, this passage being still further secured with
iron stakes.
[Illustration: DEFENCES OF THE PEI-HO, 1859.]
Willes got out on one of the rafts and, crawling on hands and knees,
examined it carefully, and decided that mere ramming with a gunboat’s
prow would not be enough to displace it. As he crouched on the raft he
could see the Chinese sentries on the river bank, but was, happily,
unseen by them. Returning to his boat, he dropped down to the second
barrier. The mine was ready, and having lighted its fuse the boats
pulled down the stream to the flotilla. The explosion revealed their
presence to the Chinese, and a couple of harmless cannon shots were
fired at them from the South Fort. The plucky little expedition had
been a complete success; but before morning the Chinese had repaired
the gap blown by the mine in the floating boom.
[Illustration: “‘WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING, YOU
RASCALS?’” (_p. 30_).]
Early on Saturday, June 25th, the gunboat flotilla cleared for action.
Admiral Hope’s orders were that nine of the ships should anchor close
to the first barrier and bring their guns to bear on the forts, while
the two others broke through the barriers and cleared the way for a
further advance. High water was at 11.30 a.m., and it was expected that
all would be in position by that time; but the difficulty of working
so many ships in a narrow channel, not more than 200 yards wide, with
a strong current and with mud banks covered by shallow water on each
side, was so great that it was not till after one that the ships had
anchored, and even then two of them, the _Banterer_ and the
_Starling_, were stuck fast on the mud in positions from which it
was not easy to get their guns to bear.
All this time the forts had not shown the least sign of life. Their
embrasures were closed; a few black flags flew on the upper works, but
not a soul was to be seen on the mud ramparts. It was a bright summer
day, blazing hot, with a cloudless sky of deep blue overhead, and all
round the little flotilla the dark waters of the river came swirling
down on the ebb, so that already patches of yellow mud were showing
here and there under the rush-covered banks.
The _Plover_, with all steam up and the admiral on board, was
close to the first barrier of iron spikes, and the _Opossum_,
now commanded by Captain Willes, lay close by her, the special task
of this ship being to deal with this first obstacle. At a signal from
the admiral the _Opossum_ hitched a cable round one of the iron
stakes, and, passing it over one of her winches, reversed her engines
and tried thus to tear the stake out of the river. But it was so well
fixed that it was not until half-past two, after half-an-hour of
anxious work, that the obstacle gave way.
The admiral in the _Plover_ now steamed through the gap thus
formed, followed by the _Opossum_. As the two little ships
approached the floating barrier beyond, a flash from the long rampart
on the left, the boom of a heavy gun, the whistle of a round shot in
the air, warned them that the Chinese meant to resist.
Along the walls of the forts on either side banners were hoisted on
every flag pole, embrasures were opened, guns run out, and from some
six hundred yards of the rampart on the left, and from the North Fort
out in front, the Chinese artillery, rapidly served and well laid,
poured a storm of shot upon the leading ships.
Promptly came the English answer. Admiral Hope’s signal, “Engage the
enemy,” flew from the masthead of the _Plover_; her four guns
opened, three of them on the big fort away to the left, not more than
two hundred yards off, the other replying to the North Fort, while the
guns of the rest of the flotilla took up the loud chorus.
It was a fight at close quarters, and the English guns were worked
by men who knew their business; but the Chinese fire, instead of
slackening, seemed to grow heavier every minute. If a gun was silenced,
if a shell burst in an embrasure and swept away all within reach of its
explosion, another gun was promptly placed in battery, another band of
daring gunners took the places of the slain. They fired so steadily
and aimed so truly, that to this day many hold that they had trained
European artillerymen helping them. The iron storm to which they were
exposed began to tell upon the two leading ships. The _Plover_
had thirty-one out of her crew of forty killed or wounded in the first
half-hour. Her commander, Lieutenant Rason, was literally cut in two
by a round shot; the admiral was wounded in the thigh, but refused to
leave the deck; and Captain McKenna, who was attached to his staff, was
killed at his side. Nine unwounded men only were left on board, but
they, with the help of some of their wounded comrades, kept two of the
guns in action, though they fought on a deck slippery with blood, and
with the bulwarks, boats, and spars of their ship cut to pieces by the
Chinese shot.
It was about this time that a boat flying the Stars and Stripes came
pulling in from an American cruiser that lay outside the bar. Commodore
Tatnall of the United States navy was on board, and he had come to the
_Plover_, regardless of the Chinese fire, to offer some help to
the English admiral. As a midshipman he had fought against the British
in the war of 1812, but, as the old sailor said to Admiral Hope, “blood
is thicker than water”; and though, as a neutral, he could not join in
the attack, he offered to send in his steam launch and help to convey
the wounded out of danger, an offer that was gratefully accepted. When
he bade good day to the admiral and went back to his boat, he had to
wait a little for his men. They came aft, looking hot and with the
black marks of powder on their hands and faces. “What have you been
doing, you rascals?” said Tatnall. “Don’t you know we’re neutrals?”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the spokesman of the party, “but they were a
bit short-handed with the bow-gun, and we thought it no harm to give
them a hand while we were waiting.” The incident is remembered in the
navy to this day as a good deed done for the Old Country by Brother
Jonathan.
At three o’clock Admiral Hope ordered the _Plover_, now almost
disabled, to drop down the river to a safer station, and transferred
his flag to the _Opossum_, the _Lee_ and the _Haughty_ steaming up to
the place left vacant in the front of the fight. A few minutes more,
and a round shot crashed through the _Opossum’s_ rigging close to the
admiral, knocking him down and breaking three of his ribs; but though
suffering severely the brave commander made light of his injuries, a
bandage was adjusted round his chest, and seated on the deck of the
gunboat he still kept the command, and later on even insisted on being
lifted into his barge in order to visit and encourage the crews of the
_Haughty_ and the _Lee_.
“_Opossum_, ahoy!” hailed an officer from the _Haughty_. “Your stern is
on fire.”
“Can’t help it,” shouted back her commander. “Can’t spare men to put it
out. Have only just enough to keep our guns going.” But, in her turn,
the _Opossum_ had to give up the fight for awhile and drop down
to the first barrier. The _Lee_ and the _Haughty_ now bore
the brunt of the fight, and suffered severely. Everything that could be
smashed on their decks was knocked to pieces, and the _Lee_ was
hit badly in several places at and below the water-line. Woods, her
boatswain, informed her commander, Lieutenant Jones, that unless the
shot-holes could be plugged she would sink, as her pumps and donkey
engine could not get the water out as fast as it came in. “Well, then,
we must sink,” said the lieutenant; “you can’t get at the worst of the
holes from inside, and I’m not going to order a man to go over the
side with the tide running down like this, and our propeller going.”
But Woods replied by promptly volunteering to go over the side and see
what he could do. His commander warned him that the screw must be kept
going, or the ship would drift out of her place--so, besides the chance
of drowning, he would risk being killed by the propeller blades; but
Woods, remarking that the chance of being killed was much of a muchness
anywhere just then, went over the side, with a line round his waist
and a supply of shot-plugs and rags in his hands, and, diving again
and again, and more than once sweeping down with the tide under the
stern and rising just clear of the wash of the screw, he successfully
plugged several shot-holes. But for all that the ship continued to
fill, and before long had to give up her place in the fight and run
aground to prevent her sinking.
The _Cormorant_ replaced the _Lee_, the admiral, by his own
request, being seated in a chair on her deck. He had already once
fainted, and the doctors now persuaded him to allow them to send him
to the hospital ship on the bar, and Captain Shadwell, the next senior
officer, took the command of the attack. At half-past five, when the
battle had lasted three hours, the _Kestrel_ sank at her anchors.
Of the eleven gunboats, six were disabled or put out of action. But
the fire of the Chinese batteries was slackening, and at 6.30, after a
hurried council of war on board the _Cormorant_, it was resolved
to bring in the marines and sailors who had been waiting in boats and
junks inside the bar to act as a landing party, and try to carry the
South Fort by a bold rush.