had lost, in killed, wounded, and missing, no less than 23,000 men.
Being unable to recapture his largest--the sultan's--redoubt, he
abandoned all the others, and, in a fit of despair, withdrew his
forces to the island and fortress of Seringapatam, there to make
a last stand.
The besiegers pressed forward with vigour, and on its two
principal sides the city was completely invested. The pioneers and
working-parties were actively at work, and soon turned Tippoo's
wonderful garden into a scene of desolation. The sultan saw that his
situation was becoming desperate, and made an attempt to negotiate,
but at the same time thought to paralyse the efforts of the English
and end the war, by procuring the assassination of their chief. A
number of horsemen, drugged and maddened by _bhang_, vowed to bring
to the sultan the head of his foe, and lay it at his feet as an
offering. They made a dash into the British camp, but before they
could secure their trophy were routed, and most of them slain.
It is impossible to enumerate all the deeds of heroism performed
during the battle and the progress of the siege--the bravery of
Captain Hugh Sibbald, who, with a hundred Highlanders, captured
and defended the sultan's redoubt against innumerable odds; of
the courage of Major Dalrymple, with his Highlanders and Bengal
infantry, who, to draw attention from the working-parties, crossed
the Cauvery, and fell furiously upon Tippoo's cavalry camp. Every
British soldier seemed animated with a dauntless courage. Meantime
a trench had been opened within 800 yards of the walls, and the
advances carried on with spirit and energy. The anger of the Oriental
despot manifested itself by a continual discharge of cannon.
Eighteen days after the battle everything was ready for a grand
attack upon the citadel of Seringapatam. The British soldiers,
flushed with success, and burning to avenge the cruel sufferings and
murders of their countrymen, were eager to commence the assault.
The besieged, crushed, despairing, expected every minute to hear the
roar of the breaching batteries, and to see their stately mosques
in flames. At this moment, so full of anticipation, orders were
issued to cease all acts of hostility. Tippoo had sued for peace;
but at the very instant the order for cessation of firing was
issued, every gun that could be brought to bear upon the trenches,
and the musketry from all available points, were ordered by the
sultan to be fired.
In the treaty which was now drawn up Tippoo not only agreed to
release all his prisoners, but to pay the equivalent of $16,500,000,
yield up half his possessions, and to place in the hands of the
British his two eldest sons, to be retained as hostages till the
due performance of his pledges.
Never before had Indian history presented so touching a spectacle
as that seen on the day when the young princes were delivered into
the hands of their father's conquerors. On the morning of the 26th
of February, twenty days only after the appearance of the British
before the walls, the two youthful hostages, each mounted on a
richly-caparisoned elephant, left the fort. Soldiers and citizens,
stirred by deep sympathy, thronged the ramparts to take one last
look at the two boys. Even the stern and cruel Tippoo himself was
moved, and found it difficult to repress his emotion as, standing
on the bastion above the great entrance, he watched the procession.
When the youthful hostages issued from the fortress the guns of
Seringapatam thundered forth a salute; and as they approached the
British lines they were received with similar honors. Accompanied
by the English negotiator of the terms of peace and a guard of
honour, they were met at the outposts and conveyed to the camp.
"Each was seated in a howdah of chased silver. They were arrayed
in robes of white, with red turbans in which a spray of pearls was
fastened, while jewels and diamonds of great value were around and
suspended from their necks. _Harcarrahs_, or Brahmin messengers
of trust, headed the procession, and seven standard-bearers, each
carrying a small green banner displayed on a rocket-pole. After
these marched 100 pikemen, whose weapons were inlaid with silver.
Their escort was a squadron of cavalry, with 200 sepoy soldiers.
They were received by the troops in line, with presented arms,
drums beating, and officers in front saluting."
Being conducted to the tent of Lord Cornwallis, who stood at the
entrance surrounded by his staff and the various colonels of the
regiments, they descended from their howdahs and approached him.
Embracing them both, he took them by the hand and led them inside.
Although of the respective ages of ten and twelve years, the children
appeared to possess all the politeness and reserve of manhood. The
principal officer of Tippoo, after having formally surrendered them
to the general, said--
"These children were this morning the sons of my master, the sultan.
Their situation is now changed; they must look up to your lordship
as their father."
Early in the year 1794, Tippoo having fulfilled all the terms of
the treaty, the two youthful hostages were restored to their father.
They were conducted by an officer to Deonhully, on a plain near
which the sultan had pitched his tent. The two boys knelt to their
father, placing their heads at his feet. He received them apparently
unmoved, touched their necks, and when they arose pointed to their
seats; and this was all the welcome they publicly received.
THE MAN WHO SPOILED NAPOLEON'S "DESTINY"
By Rev. W. H. Fitchett, LL.D.
From March 18 to May 20, 1799--for more than sixty days and nights,
that is--a little, half-forgotten, and more than half-ruined Syrian
town was the scene of one of the fiercest and most dramatic sieges
recorded in military history. And rarely has there been a struggle
so apparently one-sided.
A handful of British sailors and Turkish irregulars were holding
Acre, a town without regular defences, against Napoleon, the most
brilliant military genius of his generation, with an army of 10,000
war-hardened veterans, the "Army of Italy"--soldiers who had dared
the snows of the Alps and conquered Italy, and to whom victory was
a familiar experience. In their ranks military daring had reached,
perhaps, its very highest point. And yet the sailors inside that
ring of crumbling wall won! At Acre Napoleon experienced his first
defeat; and, years after, at St. Helena, he said of Sir Sidney
Smith, the gallant sailor who baffled him, "That man made me miss
my destiny." It is a curious fact that one Englishman thwarted
Napoleon's career in the East, and another ended his career in
the West, and it may be doubted which of the two Napoleon hated
most--Wellington, who finally overthrew him at Waterloo, or Sidney
Smith, who, to use Napoleon's own words, made him "miss his destiny,"
and exchange the empire of the East for a lonely pinnacle of rock
in the Atlantic.
Sidney Smith was a sailor of the school of Nelson and of Dundonald--a
man, that is, with a spark of that warlike genius which begins where
mechanical rules end. He was a man of singular physical beauty,
with a certain magnetism and fire about him which made men willing
to die for him. He became a middy at the tender age of eleven
years; went through fierce sea-fights, and was actually mate of the
watch when fourteen years old. He was a fellow-middy with William
IV in the fight off Cape St. Vincent, became commander when he was
eighteen years of age, and captain before he was quite nineteen.
But the British marine, even in those tumultuous days, scarcely
yielded enough of the rapture of fighting to this post-captain in his
teens. He took service under the Swedish flag, saw hard fighting
against the Russians, became the close personal friend of the
king, and was knighted by him. One of the feats at this period of
his life with which tradition, with more or less of plausibility,
credits Sidney Smith, is that of swimming by night through the
Russian fleet, a distance of two miles, carrying a letter enclosed
in a bladder to the Swedish admiral.
Sidney Smith afterwards entered the Turkish service. When war broke
out betwixt France and England in 1790, he purchased a tiny craft
at Smyrna, picked up in that port a mixed crew, and hurried to join
Lord Hood, who was then holding Toulon. When the British abandoned
the port--and it is curious to recollect that the duel between
Sidney Smith and Napoleon, which reached its climax at Acre, began
here--Sidney Smith volunteered to burn the French fleet, a task
which he performed with an audacity and skill worthy of Nelson,
and for which the French never forgave him.
Sidney Smith was given the command of an English frigate, and fought
a dozen brilliant fights in the Channel. He carried with his boats
a famous French privateer off Havre de Grace; but during the fight
on the deck of the captured ship it drifted into the mouth of the
Seine above the forts. The wind dropped, the tide was too strong
to be stemmed, and Sidney Smith himself was captured. He had so
harried the French coast that the French refused to treat him as
an ordinary prisoner of war, and threw him Into that forbidding
prison, the Temple, from whose iron-barred windows the unfortunate
sailor watched for two years the horrors of the Reign of Terror
in its last stages, the tossing crowds, the tumbrils rolling past,
crowded with victims for the guillotine. Sidney Smith escaped at
last by a singularly audacious trick. Two confederates, dressed
in dashing uniform, one wearing the dress of an adjutant, and the
other that of an officer of still higher rank, presented themselves
at the Temple with forged orders for the transfer of Sidney Smith.
The governor surrendered his prisoner, but insisted on sending a
guard of six men with him. The sham adjutant cheerfully acquiesced,
but, after a moment's pause, turned to Sidney Smith and said, if he
would give his parole as an officer not to attempt to escape, they
would dispense with the escort. Sidney Smith, with due gravity,
replied to his confederate. "Sir, I swear on the faith of an officer
to accompany you wherever you choose to conduct me." The governor
was satisfied, and the two sham officers proceeded to "conduct"
their friend with the utmost possible despatch to the French coast.
Another English officer who had escaped--Captain Wright--joined
Sidney Smith outside Rouen, and the problem was how to get through
the barriers without a passport. Smith sent Wright on first, and
he was duly challenged for his passport by the sentinel; whereupon
Sidney Smith, with a majestic air of official authority, marched up
and said in faultless Parisian French, "I answer for this citizen,
I know him"; whereupon the deluded sentinel saluted and allowed
them both to pass!
Sidney Smith's escape from the Temple made him a popular hero
in England. He was known to have great influence with the Turkish
authorities, and he was sent to the East in the double office of
envoy-extraordinary to the Porte, and commander of the squadron at
Alexandria. By one of the curious coincidences which marked Sidney
Smith's career, he became acquainted while in the Temple with a
French Royalist officer named Philippeaux, an engineer of signal
ability, and who had been a schoolfellow and a close chum of Napoleon
himself at Brienne. Smith took his French friend with him to the
East, and he played a great part in the defence of Acre. Napoleon
had swept north through the desert to Syria, had captured Gaza and
Jaffa, and was about to attack Acre, which lay between him and his
ultimate goal, Constantinople. Here Sidney Smith resolved to bar
his way, and in his flagship the _Tigre_, with the _Theseus_, under
Captain Miller, and two gunboats, he sailed to Acre to assist in
its defence. Philippeaux took charge of the fortifications, and
thus, in the breaches of a remote Syrian town, the former prisoner
of the Temple and the ancient school friend of Napoleon joined hands
to wreck that dream of a great Eastern empire which lurked in the
cells of Napoleon's masterful intellect.
Acre looks like a blunted arrow-head jutting out from a point in the
Syrian coast. Napoleon could only attack, so to speak, the _neck_
of the arrow, which was protected by a ditch and a weak wall, and
flanked by towers; but Sidney Smith, having command of the sea,
could sweep the four faces of the town with the fire of his guns,
as well as command all the sea-roads in its vicinity. He guessed,
from the delay of the French in opening fire, that they were waiting
for their siege-train to arrive by sea. He kept vigilant watch,
pounced on the French flotilla as it rounded the promontory of Mount
Carmel, captured nine of the vessels, carried them with their guns
and warlike material to Acre, and mounted his thirty-four captured
pieces on the batteries of the town. Thus the disgusted French saw
the very guns which were intended to batter down the defences of
Acre--and which were glorious with the memories of a dozen victories
in Italy--frowning at them, loaded with English powder and shot,
and manned by English sailors.
It is needless to say that a siege directed by Napoleon--the siege
of what he looked upon as a contemptible and almost defenceless
town, the single barrier betwixt his ambition and its goal--was
urged with amazing fire and vehemence. The wall was battered day
and night, a breach fifty feet wide made, and more than twelve
assaults delivered, with all the fire and daring of which French
soldiers, gallantly led, are capable. So sustained was the fighting,
that on one occasion the combat raged in the ditch and on the breach
for _twenty-five_ successive hours. So close and fierce was it that
one half-ruined tower was held by _both_ besiegers and besieged
for twelve hours in succession, and neither would yield. At the
breach, again, the two lines of desperately fighting men on repeated
occasions clashed bayonets together, and wrestled and stabbed and
died, till the survivors were parted by the barrier of the dead
which grew beneath their feet.
Sidney Smith, however, fought like a sailor, and with all the cool
ingenuity and resourcefulness of a sailor. His ships, drawn up on
two faces of the town, smote the French stormers on either flank
till they learned to build up a dreadful screen, made up partly of
stones plucked from the breach, and partly of the dead bodies of
their comrades. Smith, too, perched guns in all sorts of unexpected
positions--a 24-pounder in the lighthouse, under the command of
an exultant middy; two 68-pounders under the charge of "old Bray,"
the carpenter of the _Tigre_, and, as Sidney Smith himself reports,
"one of the bravest and most intelligent men I ever served with";
and yet a third gun, a French brass l8-pounder, in one of the
ravelins, under a master's mate. Bray dropped his shells with the
nicest accuracy in the centre of the French columns as they swept
up the breach, and the middy perched aloft, and the master's mate
from the ravelin, smote them on either flank with case-shot, while
the _Theseus_ and the _Tigre_ added to the tumult the thunder of
their broadsides, and the captured French gunboats contributed the
yelp of their lighter pieces.
The great feature of the siege, however, was the fierceness and
the number of the sorties. Sidney Smith's sorties actually exceeded
in number and vehemence Napoleon's assaults. He broke the strength
of Napoleon's attacks, that is, by anticipating them. A crowd of
Turkish irregulars, with a few naval officers leading them, and a
solid mass of Jack-tars in the centre, would break from a sally-port,
or rush vehemently down through the gap in the wall, and scour the
French trenches, overturn the gabions, spike the guns, and slay the
guards. The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged,
however, by the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the
sortie. But the process was renewed the same night or the next day
with unlessened fire and daring. The French engineers, despairing
of success on the surface, betook themselves to mining; whereupon
the besieged made a desperate sortie and reached the mouth of the
mine. Lieutenant Wright, who led them, and who had already received
two shots in his sword-arm, leaped down the mine followed by his
sailors, slew the miners, destroyed their work, and safely regained
the town.
The British sustained one startling disaster. Captain Miller of
the _Theseus_, whose ammunition ran short, carefully collected such
French shells as fell into the town without exploding, and duly
returned them, alight, and supplied with better fuses, to their
original senders. He had collected some seventy shells on the
_Theseus_, and was preparing them for use against the French. The
carpenter of the ship was endeavouring to get the fuses out of the
loaded shells with an auger, and a middy undertook to assist him,
in characteristic middy fashion, with a mallet and a spike-nail. A
huge shell under his treatment suddenly exploded on the quarter-deck
of the _Theseus_, and the other sixty-nine shells followed suit.
The too ingenious middy disappeared into space; forty seamen, with
Captain Miller himself, were killed; and forty-seven, including the
two lieutenants of the ship, the chaplain, and the surgeon, were
seriously wounded. The whole of the poop was blown to pieces, and
the ship was left a wreck with fire breaking out at half-a-dozen
points. The fire was subdued, and the _Theseus_ survived in a
half-gutted condition, but the disaster was a severe blow to Sir
Sidney's resources.
As evening fell on May 7, the white sails of a fleet became visible,
and all firing ceased while besiegers and besieged watched the
approaching ships. Was it a French fleet or a Turkish? Did it
bring succour to the besieged or a triumph to the besiegers? The
approaching ships flew the crescent. It was the Turkish fleet
from Rhodes bringing reinforcements. But the wind was sinking, and
Napoleon, who had watched the approach of the hostile ships with
feelings which may be guessed, calculated that there remained six
hours before they could cast anchor in the bay. Eleven assaults
had been already made, in which eight French generals and the best
officers in every branch of the service had perished. There remained
time for a twelfth assault. He might yet pluck victory from the
very edge of defeat. At ten o'clock that night the French artillery
was brought up close to the counterscarp to batter down the curtain,
and a new breach was made. Lannes led his division against the
shot-wrecked tower, and General Rimbaud took his grenadiers with a
resistless rush through the new breach. All night the combat raged,
the men fighting desperately hand to hand. When the rays of the
level morning sun broke through the pall of smoke which hung sullenly
over the combatants, the tricolour flew on the outer angle of the
tower, and still the ships bringing reinforcements had not reached
the harbour! Sidney Smith, at this crisis, landed every man from
the English ships, and led them, pike in hand, to the breach, and
the shouting and madness of the conflict awoke once more. To use
Sidney Smith's own words, "the muzzles of the muskets touched each
other--the spear-heads were locked together." But Sidney Smith's
sailors, with the brave Turks who rallied to their help, were not
to be denied.
Lannes's grenadiers were tumbled headlong from the tower, Lannes
himself being wounded, while Rimbaud's brave men, who were actually
past the breach, were swept into ruin, their general killed, and
the French soldiers within the breach all captured or slain.
One of the dramatic incidents of the siege was the assault made
by Kleber's troops. They had not taken part in the siege hitherto,
but had won a brilliant victory over the Arabs at Mount Tabor. On
reaching the camp, flushed with their triumph, and seeing how slight
were the apparent defences of the town, they demanded clamorously
to be led to the assault. Napoleon consented. Kleber, who was of
gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master
or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach
and stood there, while with gesture and voice--a voice audible
even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry--he
urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French
battery, watched the sight with eager eyes--the French grenadiers
running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets
that barred it, the sudden roar of the English guns as from every
side they smote the staggering French column. Vainly single officers
struggled out of the torn mass, ran gesticulating up the breach,
and died at the muzzles of the British muskets. The men could not
follow, or only died as they leaped forward. The French grenadiers,
still fighting, swearing, and screaming, were swept back past the
point where Kleber stood, hoarse with shouting, black with gunpowder,
furious with rage. The last assault on Acre had failed. The French
sick, field artillery, and baggage silently defiled that night to
the rear. The heavy guns were buried in the sand, and after sixty
days of open trenches Napoleon, for the first time in his life,
though not for the last, ordered a retreat.
Napoleon buried in the breaches of Acre not merely 3,000 of his
bravest troops, but the golden dream of his life. "In that miserable
fort," as he said, "lay the fate of the East." Napoleon expected
to find in it the pasha's treasures, and arms for 300,000 men.
"When I have captured it," he said to Bourrienne, "I shall march
upon Damascus and Aleppo. I shall arm the tribes; I shall reach
Constantinople; I shall overturn the Turkish Empire; I shall found
in the East a new and grand empire. Perhaps I shall return to Paris
by Adrianople and Vienna!" Napoleon was cheerfully willing to pay
the price of what religion he had to accomplish this dream. He was
willing, that is, to turn Turk. "Had I but captured Acre," Napoleon
added, "I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies; I would
have changed the face of the world. But that man made me miss my
destiny."
A FIRE-FIGHTER'S RESCUE FROM THE FLAMES
By Arthur Quiller-Couch
About a hundred years ago, long before James Braidwood had arisen
to organise the fire-brigades of Edinburgh and London and set the
example which has since been followed by every town in the civilised
world, late on a dark afternoon a young stableman, John Elliot by
name, was sauntering carelessly homewards down Piccadilly, London,
when a glare in the sky, the confused murmurs of a large crowd,
and the hurrying footsteps of pedestrians who passed him, told of
a not distant fire.
Following the footsteps of the passers-by, he found himself in one
of the side streets leading off Piccadilly, and there at the end
of the street, a large house was blazing furiously. He worked his
way vigorously through the spectators, now so densely gathered as
to form a living wedge in the narrow street and block it against all
traffic, and at length found himself in a position to see clearly
the ruin that had already been wrought on the burning pile.
As a matter of fact, all was pretty well over with the house. How
far the upper storeys were intact he had little means of judging;
but he saw that the ceilings of the first and second floors had
given way, and also that the fire was running along the rafters of
the floor above. Flames were pouring from half a dozen windows. He
turned to a man who stood next him in the concourse.
"The house is nearly done for," he remarked.
"Quite," replied the man. "You see it is burned through, and it
is only a question of minutes before the roof must tumble in. The
firemen do not dare to make any further attempt. It is a dreadful
business."
"What?"
"Why, don't you know? This is Lady Dover's house--poor old soul!
and she is still there, in the top room. No one can save her now,
but it is a hideous death all the same."