agencies. Couriers sped from the camps of “Crazy Horse” and “Sitting
Bull.” To every Indian encampment in that part of the States one or
more messengers came, and squatting on the hardened earth of some smoky
Tepee, to the listening braves told of the killing of the Paleface and
the triumph of the Red, and before he had finished his tale, wigwams
were struck and loaded to the patient ponies, the squaws strapped
their papooses to their backs, and the warriors, with faces painted
in ghastly and fantastical streaks, danced the war-dance, snatched
up their rifles, and mounting their ponies, set out to take part in
reaping the harvest of scalps.
The defeat of Crook made a long war inevitable. General Sheridan
reinforced the troops in the disaffected region, and remodelled his
plan of campaign. The troops were formed into three columns instead of
two; and as soon as the weather moderated, so as to admit of favourable
progress, all set out to trap the Indians. The three columns were
commanded respectively by Generals Terry, Crook, and Gibbon. Custer
would have led in place of Terry, had it not been that just before the
setting out of the expedition he fell from the good graces of President
Grant. Indeed, so displeased was Grant with Custer, that he sent
definite instructions that Custer was not to be allowed to accompany
the expedition; and it was only after a personal appeal to Grant by
Custer, and the intercession of Sheridan, that the famous cavalry
leader was allowed to take his place at the head of his regiment and
march away, never to return.
George Armstrong Custer’s career, from the day he graduated at the
United States Military Academy to the day of his death, fifteen years
after, was one of meteoric brilliancy. A native of New Rumley, Ohio,
he graduated at West Point on the very outbreak of the Civil War. From
West Point he went direct to Washington, and on the day of his arrival
at the capital he was entrusted by General Scott with despatches for
General McDowell, then on his way with the army of the Potomac to fight
the first general battle of the Civil War--Bull Run.
Custer arrived in the nick of time, was assigned to duty as lieutenant
of the 5th Cavalry, and took his place in the company just in time to
take part in the fight that followed. In his first battles he attracted
the attention of his superior officers by his daring and dash and his
brilliancy in handling men; and in 1862 his many exploits effected his
promotion to the captaincy of the company. Immediately afterwards, by
a clever ruse, he surprised the Southerners and captured the first
colours taken by the army of the Potomac from the South in the war.
Continuing as he had begun, in each successive engagement he did some
notable deed which brought him again and again to the attention of
his superior officers, and in 1865 he had risen to the position of
Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and was given command of the Michigan
brigades.
He participated in all but one of the battles of the army of the
Potomac, and was in a position to say with truth to his men: “You
have never lost a gun, never lost a colour, and never been defeated;
and notwithstanding the numerous engagements in which you have borne
a prominent part, you have captured every piece of artillery which
the enemy has dared to open upon you.” He was a man of close upon six
feet in height, lithe, active, handsome, a staunch teetotaller, and
abstainer from the use of tobacco. Such was the soldier who took his
place in command of the 7th United States Cavalry and rode away to the
Bad Lands of the Yellowstone.
On May 17th the column marched from Fort Abraham Lincoln, on the
Missouri River, and proceeding by easy stages, crossed the Little
Missouri River on May 31st, and camped on the banks of the Powder, a
tributary of the Yellowstone. The 7th Cavalry was divided into two
columns, commanded by Major Reno and Captain Benteen. As the Indian
country had now been reached, on June 10th General Terry sent Major
Reno with his command (six troops) to scout up the Powder, and General
Custer, with the left wing of the 7th, marched to the mouth of the
Tongue and there awaited Reno’s return. The major reached Custer’s camp
on the 19th, and reported plenty of Indian “signs” leading up the banks
of the Rosebud. The whole command set out at once for that stream and
pitched tents at its mouth on June 21st, and made ready for immediate
active operations. At a consultation between Generals Terry, Gibbon and
Custer, it was arranged that the 7th United States Cavalry, commanded
in person by General Custer, should set out on the trail Major Reno had
discovered, overtake the Indians, corner them, and bring about a fight.
This they did.
[Illustration: FIGHT OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN
PLAN OF THE BATTLE-FIELD; SHOWING ROUTES TAKEN BY THE TWO
DIVISIONS AND THE SPOT WHERE CUSTER FELL.]
With truly Anglo-Saxon superiority the generals wofully underestimated
the fighting strength of the foe. General Custer, with his 700
cavalrymen, believed he would be able to cope with more savages than he
was likely to have the good fortune to meet, and his brother generals
were under the same impression. They found out their mistake when too
late.
“Sitting Bull,” chief of a band of Uncpapa Sioux Indians, was at
this time forty-two years old. A great, squatty, hulking, low-browed
savage, of forbidding looks and enormous strength, and in height as
near as might be to five feet eight inches. He had the reputation
among his own followers, as well as the warriors of other bands, of
being a Medicine-man of mark, a dealer in omens, a conjurer of demons,
a weaver of magic, a foreteller of dire events, and a familiar of
departed spirits. Outside of his magic he was known as a coward, but
this defect they overlooked in the belief that his soothsayings fully
compensated for the deficiency in his personal valour. Their faith
in his incantations was unbounded. In the fight of the Little Big
Horn, “Sitting Bull” divided his energies between getting as far from
the scene of strife as his fat legs would carry him, and performing
fanatical rites to the confounding of the White man. The actual leaders
in the fight were “Crazy Horse,” “Gall,” and “Crow King”; and in a
lesser degree, “Low Dog,” “Big Road,” “Hump,” “Spotted Eagle,” and
“Little Horse,” all chiefs of bands and men of ability and unflinching
personal courage. These superintended the movements of the “Hostiles,”
and by their personal feats of daring encouraged their followers, while
“Sitting Bull” looked after the Fates and took the _kudos_ of the
game.
At noon on June 22nd Custer and his men set out for the wilderness.
Warnings and omens do not seem to have been confined to the wigwam of
the Red man, for on the fatal march to the Little Big Horn there were
many that foretold disaster to the expedition.
Captain Godfrey, who marched with the columns, in his written account
of the calamitous affair, mentions many incidents which were taken to
point to disaster. He tells, for instance, that on the evening of the
first day of their march Custer sent for his officers.
After a “talk,” Lieutenant Wallace said to Godfrey, as they walked away
from the general’s tent, “Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to
be killed.” Asked his reasons for this belief, he simply answered: “I
have never heard Custer speak in that way before.”
A little later in the evening Captain Godfrey came upon a camp-fire,
around which sat “Bloody Knife,” “Half-Yellow-Face,” and the
interpreter Bouyer. The half-breed asked the captain if he had ever
fought against the Sioux. Answered in the affirmative, the interpreter
gazed into the fire for a few moments before saying emphatically, “I
can tell you we are going to have a ---- big fight.”
Then again an ominous thing happened. The general’s headquarters-flag
was blown down and fell to the rear, and in being replanted again fell
to the rear.
These and many other eerie happenings seem to have sent a thrill of
foreboding through the whole command as it went on its way to the
unexplored valley of the Little Big Horn. In their tents, when night
had fallen and the fires were out--for on this march no fire burned
and nothing was done likely to attract the eye of any Indian who might
happen to be roaming about in the vicinity--the men sat in the dark
and told stories of scalpings and burnings at the stake. Even the Red
scouts caught the prevailing current of premonition, and hastened to
their Medicine-man to be anointed as a charm against the cruelty of the
dreaded Sioux.
During the march up the Rosebud, Indian “signs” were met with at every
turn. Camping-place after camping-place was found. The grass had been
closely cropped by herds of ponies; the ashes of a hundred camp-fires
lay grey on the bare ground. On June 24th the column passed a great
camping-place, the gaunt frame of a huge sundance-lodge still standing,
and against one of the posts the scalp of a White man fluttered in the
wind.
Soon after this the Crow scouts, who had been working energetically,
returned to the camp and reported to Custer that although they had
come across no Sioux, still, from indications discovered, they felt
sure that the command was in the neighbourhood of an encampment. That
night the column was divided into two, so as to raise as little dust
as possible, and made a forced march; and on the morning of June 25th
Custer, in a personal reconnoitre, discovered the foe of which he
was in search. Although he found himself unable to locate the actual
village, he saw great herds of ponies, saw the smoke curling up in
the air of morning, and heard the barking of the dogs, denoting the
presence of a village behind a hill that lay in front of him. It had
been Custer’s intention to remain quietly where his command rested
until night fell, when he would advance his forces, and in the grey
of morning sweep down upon the Sioux. But this plan miscarried. Word
reached the leader that a Sioux Indian had discovered the presence
of the United States troops and had galloped off to warn his tribe.
Custer resolved to attack at once.
The command set out for “Sitting Bull’s” village shortly before noon.
It was divided into three battalions--Major Reno commanding the
advance, General Custer following with the second, and Captain Benteen
the third, the pack train being under the charge of Lieutenant Mathey.
Custer’s battalion consisted of Troops “C,” commanded by the general’s
brother, T. W. Custer; “I,” Captain Keogh; “F,” Captain Yates; “E,”
Lieutenants Smith and Sturgis; “L,” Lieutenants Calhoun and Crittenden;
with Lieutenant Cook adjutant, and Dr. G. E. Lord medical officer.
The whole command marched down a valley for some distance and then
separated, intending to strike the village at different points.
Custer’s battalion took to the right to cross the hills and ride down
upon the encampment, and Major Reno branched off to the left and forded
the Little Big Horn--a stream that gives the battle its name--at the
mouth of a stream now called Benteen’s Creek. As they were separating,
Custer sent an order to Reno to “move forward at as rapid gait as he
thought prudent, and charge the village afterwards, and the whole
outfit would support him.”
After separation the only word received from Custer was an order
signed by the adjutant, and addressed to Captain Benteen, which
read: “Benteen, come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring Packs;” and a
postscript, “Bring Packs.” About the time this message must have been
despatched, those with Reno beheld the general and his men on top of
a hill two miles or more away, looking down upon the village, and saw
Custer take off his hat and wave it in the air, as if either beckoning
the other battalions to his assistance or cheering his men.
The battalion disappeared over the brow of the hill, and after that no
word or sign ever came from Custer or anyone of his whole command. Not
a man of the hundreds that followed the general in the charge lived
to tell the tale. The battalion was simply wiped out of existence. In
after years, some of the Indians who took part in the massacre, laying
aside their inbred taciturnity, consented to show a few United States
officers over the field and explain what had happened and how it had
happened; but beyond these meagre reports, and the position in which
the bodies of the soldiers were found after the Indians had finished
with their rejoicings and the mutilations of the dead, nothing is known
of Custer’s last charge. But those acquainted with Custer and with
Indian fighting are able to picture the scene.
When Custer reached the top of the hill, instead of a village of some
800 or 1,000 warriors, he saw beneath him a veritable city of wigwams
spread out in the valley. The smoke from the fires clouded the sky,
great herds of ponies cropped the grass as far as the eye could see,
thousands of painted Sioux, armed, and astride their shaggy ponies,
galloped in circles, working themselves into a frenzy of fury to fight
the White man. Medicine-men danced and yelled their incantations, and
squaws busily struck the tents and hurried their papooses and swarms
of dusky children out of harm’s way. When this scene of angry life
met his gaze, General Custer, old Indian fighter that he was, must
have recognised that he was in for what seemed likely to be his last
fight. But the mistake had been made. The time had passed for new plans
of battle. He could not turn his back on the warriors to join his
battalion with the others, for already the painted bucks were circling
round him and firing into his ranks, and already, in all probability,
he heard the crack of rifles to his left, telling him that the Indians
were upon Reno. Hemmed in, retreat out of the question, and trusting
that his other battalions would hurry to his support, he called to his
men, and together they plunged into the shrieking, shouting, seething
mass of painted and befeathered Red men--and died.
Reno acted differently. Whether or no he carried caution to an
unjustifiable length is a question that has been fiercely discussed,
at least some of the officers who were with him being his greatest
denouncers. So bitter were the charges made against him that a
Government inquiry was instituted, and, it is only right to say, it
exonerated him from blame.
Reno’s battalion struck the Indians shortly after crossing the Little
Big Horn, and the Ree scouts at once made for the rear to be out of
danger. When the Sioux Indians appeared in considerable force on his
front, instead of charging the village as Custer had ordered, Reno
dismounted his troops to fight on foot, and taking advantage of timber
he remained stationary for some long time in almost absolute security.
Later he ordered a retreat to the Bluffs, and while executing this
order, and in the preceding skirmishes, Lieutenants McIntosh and
Hodgson, Dr. De Wolf, and twenty-nine men and scouts were killed.
Soon after reaching the Bluffs Captain Benteen’s battalion joined Reno,
placing the latter in command of a larger force than Custer had with
him; but notwithstanding this, no active measures were adopted, the
two battalions standing nerveless and inactive, listening to heavy
firing and much ominous noise in the direction of the village, where
Custer was engaged in his death-struggle. True, an advance was made to
a hill--the hill from which earlier in the day Custer had been seen
to wave his hat. From the top of this elevation could be seen a great
commotion in the valley, much riding and shouting and firing; but still
Reno and his men were not near enough to the spot to make out what it
was all about. The officers with field-glasses tried their best to
find out where Custer and his battalion were, but, of course, this was
impossible, for by this time every man, with Custer, had been slain.
[Illustration: “THEY PLUNGED INTO THE SEETHING MASS OF
PAINTED AND BEFEATHERED RED MEN” (_p._ 48).]
Chief “Gall” afterwards said that the news of the two columns of troops
advancing against the village struck consternation to the heart of the
Indians, but when Reno was seen to dismount and remain stationary, they
were glad, for it allowed the whole Indian force to be hurled against
Custer. Him out of the way, they concentrated against Reno. When this
latter movement took place Reno retreated again to the Bluffs, where
close to the river he picked upon a strong position and successfully
withstood all the afternoon a heavy fire. Darkness came down, and the
troops spent an anxious night intrenching themselves, and wondering
what had happened to their companions with Custer, but knowing nothing
except that the general must have been defeated.
Lying under the stars, surrounded by the “Hostiles,” they passed a
night of restlessness and alarm. The sky was aglare with light from
the bonfires; the silence of the night pierced by many strange cries
of exultation and hate, by shots, and the monotonous beating of the
tom-tom for the scalp-dance. At times a nervous man would spring
from his bivouac on the earth to shout that he heard the march of
approaching relief, and bugles rang out a welcome that was only
answered by the echoes from the hills.
When morning dawned the Sioux opened fire, and the day which followed
was one of fevered sorties and galling waiting. On the stronghold
that day Reno’s men lost eighteen killed and had fifty-two wounded,
and they spent a second anxious night. But on the morning of June
27th General Terry raised the siege and rode into camp. Terry, in his
journey, had come across more than a hundred dead, and that an awful
tragedy had been enacted he knew. But he did not know the full extent
of the slaughter. On the 28th the army marched to the battle-field of
the Little Big Horn. Scattered on the slope of the hill they found
212 dead. General Custer, his brother--Captain T. W. Custer--Captains
Keogh and Yates, Lieutenants Cook, Crittenden, Reily, Calhoun, Smith,
and other officers of their men were found, each scalped and mutilated
except Custer himself. He lay apparently as he had fallen, the Indians
refraining from wreaking vengeance on the leader, who was well known
to “Sitting Bull” and others of the chiefs. The bodies of Lieutenants
Porter, Harrington, and Sturgis, and Dr. Lord, were never found.
The killed of the entire command was 265, and the slaying of Custer and
his men was the crimson spot of the first Centennial Year of the United
States.
It is also rendered memorable as being the last great victory the Red
man achieved over the White in the fight for the American continent.
For as though frightened at the thoroughness of their victory, and
fearing as harsh a retribution, the followers of “Sitting Bull”
afterwards flitted from place to place, refusing to join issues with
the armies sent to catch them, and gradually melted away, breaking up
into small bands, or returning to the agencies from which they had
surreptitiously marched but a few weeks before. The great armies which,
immediately the news of Custer’s massacre reached Washington, were sent
to trap the Indians, marched up and down the Bad Lands; but in all
their marching and countermarchings were never able to find an Indian
to fight.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
WELLINGTON
WATERLOO
BY D.H. PARRY
NAPOLEON]
The great Imperial Eagle of France had been caught and caged at Elba,
and after close on twenty-five years of storm and tumult, Europe was at
peace.
The armies which had driven the Eagle out of France had marched home
again, robbing the Eagle’s nest of many ill-gotten trophies and leaving
in his place a horde of vultures who claimed the nest as theirs.
As is the manner of vultures, there was much gorging: Louis XVIII., the
man “who had learned nothing, and _forgotten_ nothing,” brought
back in his train a host of hungry folk, princes of the blood royal,
dukes, and noble dames; and France soon found that it would be made
to suffer for its Revolution and its Republic, and that the victories
of its Emperor were like to cost it dear. Royalists filled the high
places in Church and State. Shameless rapacity and mean reprisals were
seen on every side; and in the army the most scandalous injustices were
unblushingly practised.
People began to look with regret towards the Mediterranean isle where
the Eagle plumed his ruffled feathers moodily.
There were mysterious nods and glances, and allusions to a certain
flower which a certain “little corporal” was known to have loved.
“He will return again with the violet,” they said in whispers.
Ladies affected violet-coloured silks, and rings of the same hue became
fashionable, bearing the motto “It will re-appear in Spring.”
Nor were they wrong, for on the 1st March, 1815, at five o’clock in
the afternoon, Napoleon the Great, with a hundred dismounted Lancers
of the Guard, some veteran Grenadiers and a few officers, landed in
the Gulf of San Juan, and began that triumphal progress which ended at
WATERLOO.
His advance is curiously recorded in the papers of the day: I quote
from the _Moniteur_:--
“The cannibal has left his den.”
“The Corsican wolf has landed in the Bay of San Juan.”
“The tiger has arrived at Gay.”
“The wretch spent the night at Grenoble.”
“The tyrant has arrived at Lyons.”
“The usurper has been seen within fifty miles of Paris.”
“Bonaparte is advancing with great rapidity, but he will not set
his foot inside the walls of Paris.”
“To-morrow Napoleon will be at our gates!”
“The Emperor has arrived at Fontainebleau.”
“His Imperial Majesty Napoleon entered Paris yesterday,
surrounded by his loyal subjects.”
At midnight on the 19th March, Louis the Gross got into his carriage
by torchlight, and was driven off to Lille; the Comte d’Artois and the
Court followed an hour later, and the good citizens found when they
rose next morning, two notices fastened to the railings of the Place
Carrousel--
“Palace to let, well furnished, except the kitchen utensils,
which have been carried away by the late proprietor.”
And the other--
“A large fat hog to be sold for one Napoleon.”
At eight o’clock that evening the Emperor was carried up the grand
staircase of the Tuileries on the shoulders of his officers, and from
that moment until the 12th June the master-mind was wrestling with a
task vast enough to have discouraged twenty brains!
Out of chaos he produced order; a new Government was formed, a new army
created: five days after his entry the Allied Sovereigns declared him
an outlaw; on the 1st June he distributed Eagles to his troops, and
took an oath of allegiance to the new Constitution. But Europe had
meanwhile flown to arms, and 300,000 Austrians were to enter France by
Switzerland and the Rhine; 200,000 Russians were marching on Alsace;
Prussia had 236,000, half of whom were ready for action, so that,
including our English 80,000, the Netherland contingent and the minor
States of Germany, he had to face the onslaught of more than 1,000,000
men, with only 214,000 at his immediate command. England and Prussia
were the first to arrive; it would be July before the others could
reach the frontier, so, Napoleon, leaving armies of observation at
various points, marched against Belgium, hoping to defeat Wellington
and Blücher in time to turn about and face the storm clouds gathering
in the east.
* * * * *
It was the month of June, and the weather was intensely warm. An army
under Wellington, some 100,000 strong, including British, King’s German
Legion, Hanoverian, Brunswick, Dutch, Belgian, and Nassau troops,
was distributed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the Charleroi
_chaussée_.
It was a heterogeneous force, hastily got together, and a large
proportion of it by no means to be depended upon.
Of the British regiments, many were formed of weak second and third
battalions which had never been under fire, and nearly 800 militiamen
fought in the ranks of the 3rd Guards and 42nd Highlanders, those in
the Guards actually wearing their Surrey jackets.
Blücher’s force, seasoned veterans for the most part, lay in four
separate corps on the frontier south of Brussels, and so masterly were
Napoleon’s movements, that until the lights of his bivouac fires were
suddenly seen glowing redly in the darkness beyond Charleroi, no one
knew exactly where he was.
* * * * *
Brussels swarmed with fashionable folk, and the families of officers
who were with the army.