ponderous squadrons of clanking giants straight at the Egyptian
battalions, which in a few more moments had been trampled and sabred
into positive annihilation. “Now we have them!” Sir Baker Russell had
cried out to the men; “trot--gallop--charge!” Sir Baker’s own horse was
shot under him, but he caught another, and was soon again in the thick
of the fray. Many were the feats of personal adventure in connection
with this glorious charge. Some of the troopers were killed, some lost
themselves in the darkness and were taken prisoners, happy to escape
the barbarous mutilations that were perpetrated by the Egyptians on the
British dead and wounded.
The cavalry charge at Kassassin was a splendid feat of arms, but it
somehow or other became the subject of as curious a myth as that which
gathered round the sinking of the _Vengeur_ on the “glorious 1st
of June.” At Balaclava the Light Brigade had ridden down upon the
Russian guns, and nothing would content the chroniclers of Kassassin
but the performance of a similar act of glory. The illustrated papers
of the day which had artists in Egypt gave stirring pictures of our
Life Guardsmen dashing through the smoke of the Egyptian batteries,
slashing and thrusting at the gunners as they crouched for shelter
beneath their pieces. But this was pure imagination. If commanded to do
so the Life Guards would have charged into the very “mouth of hell,”
not to speak of Egyptian guns. But what they were ordered to “go for”
was the Egyptian infantry, which was considerably in front of its
guns, and these had limbered up and retired from action, rendering it
impossible for our victorious troopers to see and capture them in the
darkness. But the day had been won all the same, and another bright
name blazoned on the victory roll of the British army.
A few days later, on 9th September, another attack of the Egyptians
on Kassassin was beaten off in the most brilliant manner, the 13th
Bengal Lancers, in their picturesque turbans, especially distinguishing
themselves; and there were many who thought that Sir Garnet Wolseley
ought to have rushed the not far-distant entrenchments of Tel-el-Kebir
there and then. But though this might certainly have been done, there
were certain weighty reasons of military policy against the step. For a
commander must not be too much of a Hotspur, but think of ulterior aims
as well as of present opportunities. It is the man who can bide his
time that will ultimately win.
Foiled in their repeated attempts to bar the British advance, Arabi
and his Egyptians now finally withdrew behind the entrenched lines of
Tel-el-Kebir, there to stand on the defensive and await attack. These
formidable lines, which ran along a ridge of rising ground, presented
a front of about four miles long, and had been constructed according
to the most advanced principles of military engineering. The Egyptians
are great hands at the spade, being constantly employed in the throwing
up of waterdams and the like, and many thousands of willing hands had
been at the disposal of Arabi in the task of raising his famous line of
earthworks. How many men of all kinds--Egyptians, Nubians, Bedouins,
etc.--Arabi had behind the shelter of these parapets Sir Garnet
Wolseley did not exactly know, but concluded that the number could not
be far short of 22,000.
On the other hand, the English commander had now with him about 17,000
officers and men, with sixty-seven guns, wherewith to crack the nut
that was presented by Arabi’s entrenchments, and these Sir Garnet
resolved to storm at the hour when darkness was beginning to glide
into dawn--for the reasons that at this cool hour his troops would
naturally fight much better than under the roasting rays of the sun,
that they would be less exposed to the enemy’s fire in the faint light,
and that they would also profit by the demoralisation which invariably
seizes upon soldiers when set upon unawares. But, to make the surprise
complete, it was necessary that the very utmost care should be taken
to give no indication to the watchful Egyptians behind the earthworks
of the stealthy approach of their British foes. When ranked into line,
the storming columns were to advance--not to the word of command,
but by the mere guidance of the stars, like so many ships at sea.
Not a pipe was to be lit, not a whisper heard in the ranks, and one
man of the Highland Light Infantry, whose high-strung feelings found
vent in sudden shouts, only escaped bayoneting on the spot by being
chloroformed to keep him still and left behind.
[Illustration: SABA BIER.
The Valley of the Saba Bier (Seven Wells), along which the
troops marched on the advance upon Tel-el-Kebir.]
The night (September 12–13) was more than usually dark, and it was some
time before the troops could be placed in the positions assigned them.
On the right marched the 1st Division, commanded by General Willis,
the front, or leading Brigade, under Graham, consisting of the Royal
Irish, Royal Marines, York and Lancasters, and Royal Irish Fusiliers.
Behind them, at a distance of about a thousand yards, was the Brigade
of Guards (Grenadiers, Scots, and Coldstreams), under the Queen’s
soldier-son, the Duke of Connaught. The left of the attacking line was
occupied by the 2nd Division, led by General Hamley (a great writer
on the art of war), the front position of honour and of danger being
accorded to the Highland Brigade of one-armed Sir Archibald Alison
(son of the celebrated historian of “Europe”), composed of the famous
Black Watch, Gordon Highlanders, Cameron Highlanders and Highland
Light Infantry, four of the finest battalions that ever wore the kilt
and trews or thrilled to the stirring strains of the Celtic war-pipe.
Behind these Scottish battalions marched, as a reserve, Ashburnam’s
Brigade of the King’s Royal Rifles and Duke of Cornwall’s Infantry,
while in the interval between the two Divisions was placed General
Goodenough’s crushing mass of artillery of forty-two guns. On the
extreme right rear flank of the assaulting force marched Drury Lowe’s
cavalry heroes of Kassassin, already spoiling for another charge;
while on the extreme left of the British line, on the other side of
the Fresh-water Canal, followed the Indian contingent of General
Macpherson, consisting of the Seaforth Highlanders, three battalions of
native infantry, Bengal Cavalry, and some mountain guns, the task of
this contingent being to turn Arabi’s right flank, which rested on the
canal.
[Illustration: “CARRYING THEM WITH THE BAYONET”
(_p._ 203).]
Arabi and his men fondly believed that all this British force was
sleeping the sleep of wearied soldiers at Kassassin and other points
between that place and the Suez Canal. As a matter of fact, it was
marshalling itself in line of battle array as above detailed on an
elevation called Ninth Hill, about five and a half miles from Arabi’s
lines, from which it remained hidden by the impenetrable curtain of
the night. Some of the regiments--notably the Highlanders--had but
a few hours before hurried up to the front from Ismailia[4]; yet,
though wearied by the long and strenuous march, they were all eager
to be led on to the fight without further delay. Until the hour of
starting, all the men stretched themselves on the sand to snatch what
brief and hurried sleep they could. From previous experience it was
reckoned that the actual progress over the desert, with its darkness
and other difficulties, would be about one mile per hour--just think
of that!--so that by starting at 1.30 a.m., Sir Garnet calculated to
reach the enemy’s works just before the first gleam of dawn--so nicely
was everything planned beforehand. “The long sojourn at Ninth Hill,”
wrote General Hamley, “while waiting for the moment to advance was of
a sombre kind: we sat in silence on our horses or on the sand, while
comrades moving about appeared as black figures coming out of the
darkness, unrecognisable except by their voices. A skirmish had taken
place some days before near this spot, in which men and horses were
slain, and tokens of it were wafted to us on the breeze.” Once there
was a false alarm on the right, and the prostrate men sprang to their
feet; but it turned out to be only a body of British cavalry moving
across the front of the line.
[Illustration: ARABI PASHA.]
At last, in the lowest undertone, word was passed along all the line
to advance, and soon nothing was heard but the “swish-swish” of
the battalions footing it warily across the sand as if it had been
snow--silence otherwise and darkness around and above, with the stars
shining down as they had done in the time of the Pharaohs and the
other dynasties of Egyptian kings lying entombed in the Pyramids. Well
might the British troops have been impressed with the suspense of the
moment and the awful solemnity of the scene. Directing poles had been
previously fixed in the sand by the Engineers, but they proved of
little or no use, the only effective finger-posts being the everlasting
stars, and even these were now and then obscured by clouds. Sometimes
the mounted men of the Headquarters’ Staff, moving up to the columns
with whispered instructions, were mistaken for prying Bedouins; but
silence and discipline were wonderfully well preserved, and forward,
ever forward, moved the invisible and barely audible masses of fighting
men. Once the Highland Brigade lay down to rest for twenty minutes, and
this was the occasion of some confusion which was like to have ended in
a calamity. For the order thus given in the centre of the Highland line
did not reach the outer flanks, by reason of its being so cautiously
passed from mouth to mouth, till some time after, the consequence
being that as the flanks continued to step out, while maintaining
touch with the recumbent centre, those flanks lost their direction and
circled round in such a manner that the Brigade finally halted in a
crescent-shaped formation, with the right and left almost confronting
each other; and but for the intelligence and efforts of the officers,
these opposing flanks, mistaking each other for enemies, might have
come to actual blows.
With great difficulty the proper march-direction was restored, and on
again swept--or, rather, crept--the whole line, like thieves in the
night. Weird and ghostly was the effect of the dim streaks, looking
like shadows of moving clouds, but which were really lines of men
stealing over the desert. All these men knew that they were forbidden
to fire a single shot until within the Egyptian lines, and that these
were to be carried with a cheer and a rush at the point of the bayonet;
so that they almost held their breath with eagerness, and plodded ever
on like phantoms of the desert--silent, resolute, and prepared. For
nearly five hours they had thus advanced, and then they knew that the
supreme moment must now be near. Nearer, indeed, than they fancied!
For, to use again the words of General Hamley, who was riding behind
his Highlanders: “Just as the paling of the stars showed dawn to be
near, but while it was still as dark as ever, a few scattered shots
were fired in our front, probably from some sentries, or small pickets,
outside the enemy’s lines. No notice was taken of this, though one of
the shots killed a Highlander; the movement was unchanged, and then a
single bugle sounded within the enemy’s lines. These were most welcome
sounds, assuring us that we should close with the foe before daylight,
which just before seemed very doubtful. Yet a minute or two of dead
silence elapsed after the Egyptian bugle was blown, and then the whole
extent of entrenchment in our front, hitherto unseen and unknown of,
poured forth a stream of rifle fire. Then, for the first time that
night, I could really be said to see my men, lighted by the flashes.
The dim phantom lines which I had been looking on all night suddenly
woke to life as our bugles sounded the charge, and, responding with
lusty, continued cheers, and without a moment’s pause or hesitation,
the ranks sprang forward in steady array.”
It was as if the footlights of the rebel Pasha’s long-extended stage
had suddenly flashed out with blinding flame; and now the vast and
solemn theatre of the desert, which a moment before had been wrapped in
the deepest silence and darkness, grew luminous with lurid jets of fire
and resonant with the deafening rattle of Egyptian musketry and the
roar of guns--a transformation scene as sudden as it was impressive.
Never had British soldiers been actors on such a grandly picturesque
stage. But do you suppose that these soldiers returned the volleys
rained on them by the Remingtons of Arabi’s men? Not a bit of it. Not
a single shot was fired from our lines; but bayonets were fixed, and
away like an avalanche dashed the redcoats on the foe. Their distance
from the blazing line of entrenchment was deemed to be about 150 yards,
and in the interval nearly 200 men went down, the 74th (Highland Light
Infantry) on the left losing five officers and sixty men before it got
to the ditch. This was six feet wide and four feet deep, and beyond was
a parapet ten feet high from the bottom. The first man to mount this
parapet was Private Donald Cameron, of the Cameron Highlanders, a brave
young soldier from the braes of Athol; but he at once fell back among
his struggling comrades with a bullet through his brain, dying the
noblest of all deaths. Little wonder that, on passing the 79th, after
the battle, General Alison exclaimed, “Well done, the Cameron men!
Scotland will be proud of this day’s work!”
It so happened that in the darkness the Highland Brigade, which
formed the left of the attack, had got considerably in front of the
rest of the line, so that it was the first, so to speak, to break its
bayonet-teeth on Arabi’s entrenchments; and the seizure of these works
for the first ten minutes to a quarter of an hour of the fight was the
history of the advance of the kilted warriors from the North. They had
not fought better even at Fontenoy, Quebec, and Quatre Bras; nor were
their present foes to be despised, seeing they were allowed by all to
have borne the charge with a discipline and a desperation worthy of the
best troops. “I never saw men fight more steadily,” said Sir A. Alison.
“Five or six times we had to close on them with the bayonet, and I saw
those poor men fighting hard when their officers were flying before us.
All this time, too, it was a goodly sight to see the Cameron and Gordon
Highlanders--mingled together as they were in the stream of the fight,
their young officers leading in front, waving their swords above their
heads--their pipes playing, and the men rushing on with that proud
smile on their lips which you never see in soldiers save in the moment
of successful battle.”
When the Black Watch had reached the crest of the works, and were being
re-formed to attack some other guns in the interior entrenchments, a
battery of the newly-formed Scottish Division of the Royal Artillery
swept past them, shouting out “Scotland for ever!” as the Greys and
the Highlanders had done on the ensanguined slopes of Waterloo. Here
the Black Watch had to mourn the death of Sergeant-Major MacNeill, who
fell pierced by three bullets after laying low six of the enemy with
his good claymore. There is a story that at one time some confusion
was caused in the onward rushing ranks of the Camerons by some voices
shouting “Retire! retire!” and that these cries were found to have
emanated from a couple of “Glasgow Irishmen”--Fenians who wished no
good to the cause of England and her army--and that they were put an
end to there and then, meeting with the just fate of all traitors.
But this has been shown to be incorrect. There were no traitors at
Tel-el-Kebir. The Irish soldiers did their fair share of the fighting.
The Royal Irish on the extreme right, with a wild yell, and all the
splendid valour of their nation, went straight as a dart at their
particular portion of Arabi’s works, carrying them with the bayonet,
and turning the flank of his position.
All along the line the engagement now became general, our men plying
butt and bayonet upon the Egyptians, who fell in scores--in swarms. At
the bastions stormed by the Highland Brigade the enemy lay in hundreds.
On the other hand, the total losses of the British army at Tel-el-Kebir
amounted to 339, of which 243 occurred in the Highland Brigade, leaving
96 to represent the losses of the rest of the force.
Under the Queen’s soldier-son the Guards were in the second line as a
reserve, but so quickly and successfully had the works been stormed
that they were not required to fire a shot. Some, however, were wounded
(Father Bellew, their Roman Catholic chaplain, and Colonel Sterling
amongst others), for Arabi’s men shot high, sometimes over the heads
of the attacking party. On the other side of the canal, the Indian
contingent, with the Seaforth Highlanders, the bronzed companions of
Roberts in his immortal march from Cabul to Candahar, had met with less
opposition, and came up just in the nick of time to turn Arabi’s right
flank and complete the rout of his broken men. His camp, stores, and
ordnance were all captured, and he himself fled alone from the field
of battle on a swift steed.
It was asserted by some of our ill-natured foreign critics who were
rather jealous of our brilliant victory, that we had dimmed its lustre
by massacring many of the wounded Egyptians. But this was not true in
the sense implied. None but savage nations commit such barbarities,
and British troops have never been wanting in a humanity equal to
their courage. Certainly some of the wounded soldiers of Arabi had to
be bayoneted as they lay, but this was simply owing to the fact that
when our triumphant troops were rushing on through the prostrate ranks
of their foes, numbers of the latter, feigning to be dead, suddenly
raised themselves and fired at the backs of our forward-bounding men.
There was even one case, at least, where a wounded Egyptian did this
after being treated to a pull from the water-bottle of a kind-hearted
Highlander (the Sergeant Palmer to whose account of the battle
reference has already been made in a note); and for such an act of base
ingratitude and treachery, there could only have been one possible
answer--the bayonet point. By the time the action was over, our own
men were suffering frightfully from thirst, nor could many of them be
restrained from rushing to quench their thirst in the adjacent canal,
although the water was almost putrid from the corpses of men and the
carcases of animals.
The battle had been won by the British infantry, but the artillery and
cavalry (as well as a splendid body of Blue Jackets) came up to carry
on the pursuit of the flying foe and pluck the fruits of victory,
which, on the night of the following day, fell into the hands of the
English, when their cavalry, after a splendid forced march of about
forty miles under a blazing sun, entered Cairo just in time to save the
city from destruction and capture Arabi himself.
After Waterloo we sent the despot Napoleon to St. Helena, and after
Tel-el-Kebir we sent the rebel Arabi to Ceylon, where he had leisure
enough to reflect on the folly of having called out into the field
against him as finely-organised a force as ever added lustre to the
British arms.
[Illustration: ARABI SURRENDERING TO GENERAL DRURY LOWE.]
[Illustration: _SHILOH_
_BY ANGUS EVAN ABBOTT_]
It must have seemed to the people of the United States as if Sunday
was to be for them a day of fate. Bull Run, the initial battle of the
Civil War, was fought on a Sunday, and Shiloh, the battle which may
be considered the second clear point of the great struggle, began
on a Sunday. But here coincidences between the battles did not end.
A General Johnston (Albert Sidney at Shiloh and Joseph Eggleston at
Bull Run) and General Beauregard commanded the Southern forces on both
occasions; moreover, each battle may be said to have had two clearly
defined parts, and in each first appearances, as is so often the case
in things civic or military, proved deceptive. At noon on the Sunday of
Bull Run the Federals had carried all before them; and at noon on the
Sunday of Shiloh the South was in as favourable a position. Yet, in the
end, the North suffered defeat at Bull Run, as did the South at Shiloh.
The fortunes of war, ever fickle, went sadly against the Confederates
at Shiloh. Skilfully planned and boldly executed by the Southern
leaders, if luck had been at all equally divided between the two
armies, the Confederates must surely have won. But in the thick of the
action, when Sherman had been driven back step by step, when Prentiss
and his whole command had been captured, and when nothing seemed able
to stay the march of the South, and none to withstand their savage
charges--when, in fact, it looked as though Grant and his army must
inevitably be annihilated or swept into the Tennessee River--then it
was that a rifle-bullet struck General Johnston. The leader of the
Confederate army fell, and in a few minutes bled to death.
The news ran along the Southern line, and to everyone who heard it,
foretold disaster. It checked the charges of the South more effectively
than ten thousand Federals could have done. The men from the South lost
heart. Their ardour cooled, and the partial cessation of the fight
allowed the Northerners the breathing-time they so sorely needed.
To add to the confusion of the Confederates, General Beauregard, second
in command to Johnston, could not at once be found, and for a time the
army was leaderless. When Beauregard learned of the death of his chief,
he hastened to assume command; but before he could get his army in
hand, two invaluable hours were lost. This left him with far too short
a spell of daylight before him to successfully accomplish all that was
needed to be done for victory. Night came on, and with the night came
General Buell and 30,000 men to the relief of Grant.
Next day General Beauregard found himself outnumbered, an army of fresh
men opposing him, and the victory so nearly won was snatched from him.
The defeat of the Federal forces at Bull Run came as a great
humiliation to the North, but it served a good purpose nevertheless.
Up to the destruction of McDowell’s army at Bull Run, the people of
the Free States had looked upon the rebellion of the Slave States as a
trivial matter, of little moment, scarcely a rebellion at all. But when
the dead, wounded, and missing of Bull Run were counted, the gravity
of the situation came home to a people unused to war. It was then
recognised that the enlisting of 75,000 men, and these for three months
only, had been but trifling with a situation full of grave danger.
President Lincoln called for 500,000 men to serve for three years, and
this call was answered by close upon 700,000. These men enlisted in
all sincerity, and from that day to the close of the war there were no
longer lighthearted, boisterous mobs, tramping gaily to the South, but
armies moving seriously, and fully recognising that a stubborn contest
lay ahead. Bull Run was fought near Washington on the Atlantic slope,
but Shiloh brings us to the Mississippi Valley. The battle-field is in
the State of Tennessee, near to the border of the State of Mississippi,
and rests on the Tennessee River at a place called Pittsburg Landing.
Indeed, the battle would have been more appropriately named the Battle
of Pittsburg Landing--many do speak of it as such.
Leading up to the Battle of Shiloh were several important movements and
events. In the first place, at the outbreak of rebellion, the State of
Kentucky, to use an American expression, attempted to “sit astraddle
the fence.” A majority of those in authority in that important State,
sympathising with the South, but recognising that the people of the
State were largely in favour of maintaining the Union, tried to induce
them to declare neutrality--to notify both North and South that any
attempt to send troops into Kentucky would be resisted by the troops of
the State.
This, on the face of it, was an impossible position. If President
Lincoln had recognised the right of a State to remain neutral, and to
forbid the passage across it of national troops, he would soon have
found a barrier of such States running clear across the continent, and
in the end he would have been unable to stamp out the rebellion at
all. Lincoln refused to recognise such a position, and the people of
Kentucky, thinking better of it, declared their loyalty and offered
service.