the district of the Thames. The natives who had been in arms against
the Government had returned to their allegiance. General Cameron was
discussing with the local authorities the steps to be taken for the
further pacification of the North Island, when news arrived that there
was a considerable gathering of armed natives near Tauranga, in the
Bay of Plenty, and the General resolved to transfer the forces under
his command from Auckland and the mouth of the Thames to this new
centre of disturbance. A detachment of the 68th Regiment, under Colonel
Greer, was already encamped near the mission station of Tauranga. With
the help of the naval squadron on the coast, the troops were rapidly
transferred from the Thames Estuary to the Bay of Plenty, and by April
26th General Cameron had collected at Tauranga a formidable little
force of nearly 1,700 men, including a naval brigade of 400 men and
officers, the 68th Regiment, 700 strong, the 43rd, nearly 300 strong,
detachments of the 14th and 70th Regiments, each about 100 strong, and
a small force of the Royal Artillery, with two 40-pounder Armstrongs,
and two 6-pounders, two 24-pounder howitzers, and eight mortars. In the
harbour, or close at hand and within call, was a strong naval squadron
made up of her Majesty’s ships _Curaçoa_, _Esk_, _Miranda_, _Harrier_,
and _Eclipse_, under the command of Commodore Sir William Wiseman, and
there was a small garrison at Maketu.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK.]
The enemy had taken up a position about three miles and a half from
the Tauranga mission station, on a neck of high ground about 500 yards
wide, over which ran the road or track from Tauranga to the interior.
The ridge was a swell of the ground about fifty feet high. On both
sides it sloped easily to a tract of swampy land very difficult to pass
anywhere, even by men on foot. To the right beyond the swamp was one of
the inlets of Tauranga Harbour. The Maories had rapidly fortified the
high ground, the spot where they fixed their pah, or earthwork, being
evidently suggested to them by the fact that just below the highest
swell of the ridge it was crossed by a three-foot trench, which
marked the boundary between the mission station property and the bush
and native lands. They deepened and widened this trench, carrying it
down to the swamp on either side. Behind it they dug out their pah--an
oblong enclosure, about eighty yards long by thirty wide. The military
despatches of the time describe it as a “redoubt,” but the word is
rather misleading. The Maori pah in this case, as in all others, was a
series of trenches, one within the other, and communicating by cross
cuts, and looking at first sight like a labyrinth. In the sides of the
trenches shelters were hollowed out so that the garrison could crouch
in them until the assault was actually begun. Further shelter was
secured by roofing in the trenches with wattle hurdles, made with twigs
and branches, thatching over this with ferns, and sometimes shovelling
earth upon it. The eaves of the roofs were kept up by posts at a height
of six or eight inches above the edge of the trench, so that the
garrison could sweep the ground in front with their guns. At the Gate
Pah, as this improvised fortress was called, there were three tiers
of rifle-pits or trenches, one within the other, all having a zigzag
trace, so that it was all the more difficult to make out at first sight
their general plan. On either side of the ridge, a line of trenches or
rifle-pits ran down the hill towards the swamps, so as to sweep with
their fire the approaches to the flanks of the main work. In these
rifle-pits, at intervals, traverses or banks of earth lying across the
general direction of the trench, had been erected to protect them from
flanking fire. In front of the works a light, open fence of posts and
rails, a kind of loosely-constructed stockade, had been erected to
impede the rush of a storming party. The whole was a work which would
have done credit to European engineers. The garrison was certainly not
more than 400 natives, perhaps less. They had very few rifles, their
favourite firearm being double-barrelled shot-guns, which they were
able to load and fire much more rapidly, and at close quarters quite
as effectively, as the old-fashioned muzzle-loading Enfield rifle
then carried by the soldiers. They loaded with slugs and bullets, and
sometimes even with buckshot. For the fight at close quarters they
had their spears of hard wood, small axes, or tomahawks, sometimes of
stone, and the beautiful greenstone or jade war-clubs or _merés_
of the chiefs.
On Thursday, April 27th, General Cameron began his preparations
for the siege of the pah. The naval brigade had made a formidable
addition to his artillery force by getting ashore from one of the
ships an Armstrong 110-pounder gun, then the heaviest gun in the
service, and probably the heaviest gun ever used on shore against a
tribe of half-savage warriors. On the 27th the 68th Regiment, and a
detachment of 170 men under Major Ryan, of the 70th, moved up to a
point about 1,200 yards from the front of the pah and encamped there.
As the Maories had no artillery, and no long-range rifles, and were
not likely to risk a sortie, the camp was safe from disturbance. On
that and the following day the guns and mortars were being got into
position for the attack, the handy bluejackets from the fleet lending,
as they always do on such occasions, invaluable assistance. During
the day it was ascertained that at low water it was possible to pass
along the beach outside the swamp on the enemy’s right, and so get to
the rear of his position. Acting on this information, Colonel Greer,
with the 68th Regiment, left the camp after dark on the Friday evening
and slipped down to the beach, working along quietly in the dark, so
as to outflank the Maories. To prevent the garrison of the pah from
paying any attention to chance noises coming from the beach and so
discovering this move, the main body at the camp pushed forward a few
riflemen, who fired long-ranging shots at the stockade, from which the
double-barrelled guns of Maori sentries answered with random shots
fired in the dark, without much idea of range, or even of direction.
This firing was soon over, and meanwhile Greer’s men had got round the
back of the swamp and were settling down for the night among the tall
ferns to landward of the enemy’s position. At the camp the sailors and
gunners spent the dark hours making the last preparations for next
day’s bombardment. When the sun rose, the Armstrong guns, including
the big 110-pounder, besides a battery of mortars, were in position,
waiting for the word to open fire. Inland the 68th held a position
from which they could shoot down any of the garrison of the pah who
ventured out of the work to get water from the stream behind it, or who
attempted to escape inland.
At half-past six a thin line of skirmishers pushed forward to the edge
of the swamp on the left of the pah and in front of the British right.
General Cameron thought it possible that the enemy would abandon the
work and bolt across the swamp, and took this means of hemming them in
on all sides. The natives in the rifle-pits on the slope above thought
this move must be the beginning of an attack, and fired ineffectually
at the redcoats. This was taken as the signal for opening fire from
the batteries, and guns and mortars began to send their shells roaring
through the air. Over the pah a red flag waved on a tall mast. From the
batteries this seemed to be the centre of the pah, and at first most
of the gunners took it for their mark in laying their pieces. When the
pah was captured, it was discovered that the flagstaff really stood,
not in the centre of the pah, but further off, just behind its rearward
stockade. The result of this mistake was that for the first two hours
many of the shells passed harmlessly over the Maori position.
[Illustration: THE GATE PAH.]
Not long after the artillery opened fire the Maori musketry ceased. The
garrison had got under cover, but they were watching the proceedings
of the besiegers, for when the guns were directed on the left angle
of their fort in order to demolish the stockade and make a breach in
the parapet, every now and then a brave rebel would creep up to the
crumbling mound, shovel a few spadefuls of earth into the gap, and slip
back again, heedless of the imminent danger of being blown to pieces by
a bursting shell. Once a plucky fellow actually succeeded in hanging
a blanket across the stockade, evidently to conceal the movements of
those who were bringing up material to repair the breach close by. By
this time the mortars had got the range, and were dropping shells into
the work. The place was completely surrounded. The 68th and the naval
brigade had closed in, and were firing at the pah on the right and in
the rear. Twelve guns and mortars were blazing away at the front and
breaching the left angle. A thirteenth gun had been got into position
beyond the swamp on the left, so as to rake the rifle-pits on the
slope, and thirty riflemen on the edge of the marsh were firing into
the pah at a range of only 400 yards. Surrounded on all sides, and with
shells bursting over the wattle roofs of their trenches, the garrison
was in a position in which most European troops would have given up the
defence as hopeless. The big Armstrong gun fired no less than a hundred
110-pound shells at the pah before it had to cease firing (towards 3
o’clock) for want of ammunition. The marvel is that the wretched little
fort was tenable. But subsequent inquiry showed that the Maories had
constructed their shelters so well, and lay so close in them, that they
lost very few men. About noon they replied for awhile with musketry
to the storm of bullets and shells that was pouring into the pah, but
their fire was ineffectual. Indeed, in the earlier stage of the attack,
the only losses of the assailants appear to have been three men of the
68th Regiment, wounded by shells that flew over the pah and burst close
in their front.
Crouching in the hollowed sides of the trenches, or stealing round to
the front to look out over the parapet, the Maories must have realised
that before nightfall the storm of fire would suddenly cease to allow
a superior force to rush their shattered fort with the bayonet. But
they waited quietly for the supreme trial of strength, encouraged,
doubtless, by finding that even the huge shells thrown by the white
men, though they made a terrible noise, killed or wounded very few of
the garrison against whom they were directed. It was an anticipation
many years earlier of the experience of the Turkish garrison of the
Gravitza redoubt at Plevna, who lost only a handful of men under the
volcano-like fire of the great bombardment.
After three o’clock the bombardment slackened. The breach was
considered to be wide enough to be rushed by a strong storming party
on a broad front, and there were no obstacles on the slope before it.
When, just before four o’clock, the stormers were drawn up behind the
batteries and received the order to advance, the immediate capture of
the Gate Pah seemed to be a certainty. The storming column was 600
strong. The vanguard, under Colonel Booth and Commander Hay, of H.M.S.
_Harrier_, was made up of 150 men of the 43rd Regiment and as many
more of the naval brigade. The support, which was led by Captain John
Hamilton, of H.M.S. _Esk_, consisted of the rest of the seamen
and marines and of the 43rd--in all, 300 men. At four o’clock General
Cameron gave the word to advance, and, with a cheer, the men dashed up
the slope. A few shots were fired from the pah, and some heavy volleys
from the rifle-pits, but, until they were almost in, a swell of the
ground gave some cover to the stormers, and the loss they suffered was
trifling. Still cheering, they streamed in through the wide gap in the
stockade, poured like a flood over the shattered parapet, and found
themselves almost without opposition masters of the left corner of the
pah.
[Illustration: “THE BRAVE FELLOW BROUGHT HIM OUT AT
CONSIDERABLE RISK” (_p._ 281).]
What happened next will never be known with absolute certainty, for
many of those who survived, after being in the thickest of the wild
scene of slaughter that followed, give contradictory accounts of what
occurred. It seems certain that a part of the garrison was attempting
to retire by the back of the pah, when they were met by a sharp fire
from the 68th Regiment, which was closing in upon the works, answering
with a loud cheer the cheering of the stormers. The Maories, on this,
rushed back into the pah, giving some of the stormers the impression
that the garrison had been suddenly reinforced. When they first passed
the parapet, all that the naval officers and those of the 43rd noticed
of the garrison were a few wounded men lying near the breach. The
openings of the trenches close by looked like a tangled labyrinth, and
it was not easy to see which was the easiest way into the centre of
the work. The roofs of the Maori shelters jutted up here and there,
and the men seem in some cases to have broken their ranks, and even
laid down their weapons under the impression that these were abandoned
houses that could be safely entered in search of curios and plunder.
Suddenly gun barrels were pushed out from under the eaves, and several
officers and men dropped, struck by shots that appeared to come out of
the earth. On all sides dusky figures sprang up as if from trapdoors,
yelling, firing, flourishing spears and axes. From the rear of the
work came a wild rush of spears and guns. The soldiers, especially
those who had broken their formation, seemed seized with a sudden
panic. They felt as if they had been led into an ambuscade. Instead of
resistance being over, it was only beginning. Several of their officers
had fallen at the first volley. A few men gave way to the surprise and
terror of the moment, and then the panic spread with that mysterious
suddenness with which it seems to be able to run through a mass of even
individually brave men. What happened at the Gate Pah has happened in
every army in the world; and if there was headlong panic among many of
the men, there were many, too, who stood bravely. The officers and the
sergeants of the 43rd, and the officers and leading seamen of the naval
brigade, did their duty splendidly, and suffered losses that bore only
too striking evidence to the tenacity with which they strove to restore
the fortune of the fight. There was more than one cry to retire,
though the officers were calling out to the men to push forward. At
this moment Captain Hamilton brought up the reserve, pushed gallantly
forward to the second line of trenches, and sprang upon the bank above
them, waving his sword and calling out, “Come on, my men!” A shot
struck him in the head and he fell, closing by an heroic death a career
of high distinction and great promise. His fall renewed the courage
of the defenders, the panic of the assailants. The struggling mass of
sailors and soldiers streamed back out of the breach, leaving nearly
all the officers of the 43rd and several of the naval officers dead and
wounded in the pah. Major Ryan of the 70th Regiment and Captain Jenkins
of H.M.S. _Miranda_ were among the last to leave the work, after
hopeless efforts to rally what were left of the six hundred stormers.
[Illustration: THE GATE PAH AFTER OCCUPATION.]
How many brave deeds were done amid the wild panic in the breach of
the Gate Pah would take a long time to tell. Two Victoria Crosses
were won in the disaster, one of them by Surgeon Manley, R.A., who
exposed himself most recklessly in order to remove and give first help
to the wounded close under the fire of the victorious Maories. The
other was secured by Samuel Mitchell, the captain of the foretop of
the _Harrier_. He had entered the breach close beside Commander
Hay, and when his officer fell mortally wounded, he took him up to
carry him out of danger. Hay told Mitchell to leave him where he was,
and take care of his own life; but the brave fellow brought him out
at considerable risk to himself, and then dashed back into the fight.
Watts, the gunner of the _Miranda_, charged by the side of Captain
Hamilton. He marked out and cut down the Maori who had killed his
leader, but the next moment he was himself brained with a tomahawk.
James Harris, a seaman of the _Curaçoa_, actually dashed right
through the pah. He chased a Maori out of the rear of the work, hunted
him down to the position of the 68th Regiment, bayoneted him there, and
was shot while making a reckless attempt to again traverse the pah and
rejoin his comrades.
While the storming column was engaged with the enemy in the pah, the
68th had made an attempt to rush it in the rear, but were met with
such a heavy fire that they gave up the attempt. The repulse of the
attack was hailed with loud cheers by the garrison. The General with
his staff rallied the storming column as it retired, and then rode
forward to reconnoitre the pah. At this point someone told him that
the troops had got into and were holding the rifle-pits on the left.
Turning in this direction to verify the report, he was met by a volley
which wounded his horse and put two bullets into the saddle of an
officer who rode beside him. The enemy held all the works, from which
they fired occasional shots at intervals for the rest of the evening.
It was soon dark, and the night was cloudy and starless. In the dusk
Captain Jenkins had a narrow escape. There had not been a shot for some
time, and he went out to see if the pah had been abandoned. A volley
fired at close quarters told him he was mistaken, and showed him that
he had wandered into the lower part of one of the enemy’s trenches.
Dispirited by the collapse of the 43rd Regiment, the repulse of the
whole column and the loss of so many officers, the troops spent a
wakeful, anxious night. More than once after dusk the Maories called
out to them in English, daring them to come on again; but Cameron had
resolved not to make an attempt in the dark, which might only end
in confusion and renewed disaster, but to rush the pah at daybreak.
Meanwhile, the men were set to work to throw up a line of advanced
entrenchments within about a hundred yards of the stockade, so as to
maintain possession of all the ground that had been won. During this
work, all fire having ceased from the pah, Major Greaves, of the staff,
crept up the slope to see if the natives were retiring from it. In the
dark he could make nothing out for certain. Just before midnight he
went up again and penetrated into the breach. All was silent within,
but away landwards, to the rear of the work, some shots were fired.
The natives had scattered in small parties and withdrawn towards the
interior, and the shots came from the outposts of the 68th, some of
whose sentries heard the Maories stealing by in the dark, but could not
stop them.
How little the officers relied upon their men after the previous day’s
experience is shown by the fact that they did not venture to lead them
into the fort until the first light of the dawn appeared on the early
morning of the Sunday, 30th. When the pah was entered a grim sight met
the eyes of the victors. A few yards inside the breach four captains of
the 43rd lay heaped together: two were dead, killed by bullet wounds
in the head and neck, another had been slain at close quarters with a
tomahawk, which had cut through his shoulder into the chest; a fourth,
struck in the head by a bullet, was still breathing when his comrades
found him, but died before he could be removed. A little further on
lay Colonel Booth, of the same regiment, shot in the spine and the
right arm, still alive after that terrible night, but not far from
his death. Captain Muir, of the 43rd, and Captain Hamilton, R.N., lay
dead together well forward in the second trench, with no other bodies
near them. A little to the left lay Lieutenant Hill, R.N., of the
_Curaçoa_, shot in the neck and through both cheeks. He had been
alive some time after he fell, for he had tied his handkerchief round
his wounded face. Watts, the gunner of the _Miranda_, lay dead
with his head split from crown to chin with a tomahawk. Another seaman
had had his head cut in two crosswise by the same weapon, scattering
all the brains. The body of a Maori was found in the centre of the pah
fairly cut in two by a bursting shell. There, too, the chief, Reweti,
or Davis of Tauranga, was picked up, with seven bullets in his body and
his legs broken by a shell-burst, but still not only alive but ready to
talk to the white men, and wondering why his countrymen had not carried
him off with the other wounded, whom they had removed. In all, during
the attack, 9 officers and 23 men had been killed, and 5 officers and
75 men wounded, a total loss of 112 officers and men, nearly all of
whom fell in the actual assault, and most of whom would have come out
of the affair, safe in life and limb, if the advanced party of the
43rd had stood by their officers. At the moment of the panic there is
no doubt the stormers were well into the work, and standing as most
of them did on the high ground between the trenches, they could have
bayoneted the Maories as they scrambled out, or shot them through the
roofs. Of the British wounded many died within a week of the fight.
The garrison had lost very few in killed and wounded. Twenty dead and
six wounded men were found in the pah. Ten more were picked up dead in
the swamp, and the retreating Maories must have carried some wounded
men with them. But their whole loss seems to have been under fifty.
The chief, Rawiri, who commanded the defence, escaped unhurt. The
wounded chief, Davis, told the English that if his advice had been
taken there would have been no such prolonged defence of the pah; but,
he added, there were a lot of big chiefs present, and they wanted a
fight. It is pleasant to be able to record that both sides acted with
that chivalrous respect for each other which was worthy of brave men.
The Maories had not touched the watches and chains or rings worn by
the dead and wounded soldiers and sailors who fell in the pah, nor
had they in any way injured the bodies. General Cameron showed his
sense of this conduct on their part by ordering that the dead Maories
should be given a respectful burial, and all possible care bestowed on
the wounded men. Even the fragments of the body that had been torn by
the shell were laid together in the row of dead outside the pah, and
word was sent to some friendly Maories, belonging to a tribe which had
helped to garrison the Gate Pah, that they might come in and bury their
dead kinsmen, the messenger adding that, if they did not, the English
would do it for them. Before noon on Sunday they came to the fort and
dug a grave for the twenty dead warriors from the pah. In the bottom of
it they laid the men of lower rank, that they might form a bed across
which lay the corpses of the chiefs. “It is well that the warrior
should die, to be a couch for his chief,” runs an old proverb of the
warrior Maori race.
Later in the day the English dead were laid in rows of graves at the
Tauranga mission station, under a great tree, not far from the beach,
and the volleys rang out their parting salute to the men who had fallen
so bravely trying to stem the tide of disaster. The struggle between
the white man and the Maori has, happily, ended years ago, and now
both parties to the quarrel remember only that it was bravely fought
out, and that in the tribes of the North Island even British soldiers
and sailors found foemen well worthy of their steel. The last traces
of the Gate Pah have long since been removed from the ridge above
Tauranga. A monument commemorates the gallant dead. Hamilton has found
another memorial in a flourishing town on the Waikato River, founded
and named after him by the colonists, in the very year of his death, in
admiration of his splendid valour.
[Illustration: A MAORI DWELLING.]
[Illustration:
WARSAW
BY A.S. KRAUSSE]
Throughout the summer of 1831 the city of Warsaw lay like a city of the
dead. Its magnificent palaces appeared as though deserted; its streets
were lonesome, and the few who ventured from within their dwellings
moved about as though smitten.
Although not declared, Warsaw lay in a state of siege. The struggle for
liberty, long maintained by the brave nation of Poles, was drawing to a
close, and all felt that though hitherto victorious in the field, they
must fall before the countless hordes of Russia in the end.
There had been a rising in the previous year. Undeterred by the
knowledge that they were a handful against millions, and encouraged
by the recent examples of France and Belgium, the Poles of Warsaw had
risen in revolt against the despotism of Russia, as personified by
Constantine, the ferocious governor of their city.