The reforms of Abd-el-Kader included a regular police, schools, and

local tribunals of justice. All the chief towns had factories conducted

by Europeans, working in brass and iron, cotton and wool. The army

contained the finest irregular cavalry in the world, amounting, with all

the contingents from the tribes, to about sixty thousand men, only a

third of whom, however, were ever assembled for any single military

operation. His regular force comprised eight thousand infantry, two

thousand cavalry, twenty field-guns, and two hundred forty artillerymen.

His great ideal embraced the making the Arabs into one nation; the

recall of the whole people to a strict observance of religious duties;

the inspiring them with true patriotism; the calling forth of all their

capabilities for war, for commerce, for agriculture, and for mental

improvement; and the crowning of the whole by the impress of European

civilization. In laying the foundation for this mighty work, he had

already overcome vast difficulties by means of wonderful enterprise,

activity, and vigor. His intellectual greatness had caused him to shine

as a warrior, diplomatist, orator, and statesman. The Provinces of Oran

and Tittery and the plains of the Northern Sahara had been won by his

military prowess.

A still nobler triumph in the exhibition of moral power was beheld in

his dealings with the region called Great Kabylia, the superb range of

the Djurjura Mountains extending eastward from Algiers. The hardy

Kabyles of that territory had remained unsubdued amid the changing

governments which had risen and fallen around them. As independent

little republics, bound together by the most exalted spirit of freedom,

they had ever preserved their usages, customs, and laws. In September,

1839, Abd-el-Kader, attended by only fifty horsemen, suddenly appeared

among them. Thousands gathered around his tent from the valleys and

fastnesses. He addressed them in a stirring and argumentative harangue,

pointing out union under his standard as the only safeguard against

French conquest. With loud shouts they accepted his faithful caliph, Ben

Salem, as their chief in war, and agreed to pay the regular imposts and

to go forth to the Djehad. For thirty days the Sultan made a progress

through the country, everywhere received with joy and enthusiasm as a

venerated _hadji_ and marabout, as a teacher of the law, as a man of

pious life, as a renowned warrior and an eloquent preacher. We cannot

dwell here on his educational and moral reforms, his earnest efforts to

enforce the teaching of the _Koran_, which was his guide in his public

and private life. His beneficent intentions were all to be frustrated by

the ambition of a European nation which was to signally fail, not in the

work of conquering Abd-el-Kader, but in turning her conquest to good

account.

Hastily drawn treaties are a prolific source of war. The Treaty of the

Tafna was a flagrant example of this class of diplomatic documents.

There were two drafts: one in Arabic, with the Sultan's seal; the other

in French, with Bugeaud's. The drafts were not carefully compared. The

limits of territory assigned to each of the parties were not made clear.

One instance of the lack of identity in the two forms of the instrument

will suffice. The French form declared that Abd-el-Kader acknowledged

the sovereignty of France. The Sultan had never dreamed of making an

admission which, in its effect on the tribes, would have cost him his

throne. What he had written, in Arabic, in the article which he

subscribed, was, properly translated, "The Emir Abd-el-Kader

acknowledges that there is a French Sultan, and that he is great."

A new Governor-General, Marshal Valée, had assumed his functions at

Algiers in November, 1837. Disputes arose as to the territorial rights

of the Sultan under the Tafna Treaty, and after vain negotiations and

missions to and fro matters were brought to a head by Marshal Valée in

the despatch of an expedition to march over some disputed ground as a

demonstration of French power and an assertion of French rights. A

column under the Duc d'Orléans started from Milah, in the Province of

Constantine, lately conquered by the French, to march across the

disputed territory and thence onward. A way was gained through a

formidable pass called the "Iron Gates," in October, 1839, by a simple

process. The defile was one which a few hundred men could have held

against any force, but the Kabyle sheiks were shown passports bearing

Abd-el-Kader's seal and authorizing the passage of French troops. The

seal of the Sultan had been forged. On November 1st Valée and the French

Prince made a triumphant entry into Algiers, after this despicable piece

of treachery, and were saluted as the heroes of the "Iron Gates."

The news reached Abd-el-Kader at Tekedemt. He sprang on his horse, and

in forty-eight hours, riding night and day, was at Medea, whence he

despatched a reproachful and defiant letter to the French Governor. He

called the tribesmen to arms, formally declared war, swept down on the

plains, destroyed the French cantonments, agricultural establishments,

and outposts; slew many colonists, burned the villages and drove

panic-stricken fugitives headlong into the city of Algiers. The French

Government then ostentatiously declared the adoption of a firm policy

and announced Algeria to be "henceforth and forever a French province."

Reënforcements were rapidly sent to Algiers, and the effective army of

Valée was soon raised to thirty thousand men. The Sultan headed about

the same number of cavalry, regular and irregular, and six thousand

regular infantry. A fair trial of strength, Frenchman against Arab, was

now to be made.

Concentrating his army at Blidah, at the foot of the lesser Atlas range,

the French Marshal marched on Medea and Millana. The river Chiffa was

passed on April 27, 1840. The Sultan's cavalry appeared in large numbers.

By a feigned movement, Abd-el-Kader induced his enemy to enter the

mountains by the gorges of the Monzaia, which he had spent months in

fortifying. Every eminence useful for the purpose was cut into

intrenchments. A redoubt with heavy batteries crowned the highest peak.

Near this were placed his regular infantry, officered by French

deserters. Arabs and Kabyles swarmed in all directions, and, crouching

in nooks, were ready to open fire on the French army as it wound its way

with steady march along the narrow causeway which hung midway on the

mountain slopes.

Valée had divided his force into three columns, one of which was led by

Lamoricière, a man to become famous in Algerian warfare. The Sultan was

now to see the value of French infantry. To the astonishment of the

Arabs, the enemy, leaving the road, came darting over the steeps.

Ravines, woods, and rocks were all mastered in the rush. Slowly but

surely they were reaching the intrenchments, when a thick veil came over

the scene from the smoke of incessant fire. The mist rolled away before

the breeze sweeping through the pass, and the combatants met and fought

hand to hand. The Arabs and Kabyles clung desperately to their places of

shelter, but the French clambered up, grasping at shrubs and branches,

ever winning their way. Abd-el-Kader made a last stand in person at the

great redoubt, while his regulars and masses of Kabyles gathered round

him. The converging columns of the French came creeping on amid the roll

of drums and the blare of trumpets. The Arabs, bewildered by foes

attacking them both in front and rear, wavered, broke, and fled.

Lamoricière and his Zouaves, Changarnier and the Second Light Infantry,

burst over the intrenchments, and the tricolor waved on the summit of

the Atlas.

Abd-el-Kader retreated on Miliana, while the conqueror, entering Medea,

found it abandoned and half burned. The Sultan had made his last attempt

to fight the French on the principles of European warfare. His caliphs

and chiefs were ordered never again to meet the enemy in masses, but to

harass them in hanging on their flanks and rear, cutting their

communications, attacking baggage and transports, and waging a contest

of feigned retreats, ambuscades, and sudden sallies in order to bewilder

and weary the foe. Miliana was evacuated by Abd-el-Kader on Valée's

approach, but the chance of Arab warfare came when the French entered

the mountain passes. Unceasing attacks, day and night, caused severe

loss to the lately victorious French, with the capture of baggage and

the abandonment of all wounded men. The French garrisons in Medea and

Miliana were soon reduced to want by blockade of the surrounding

country, and by October, 1840, the garrison of Miliana had almost

disappeared, from the effects of fever and famine. Out of fifteen

hundred men, the half had perished; five hundred were in hospital and

the remainder were haggard wretches who could hardly hold their muskets.

Such was the warfare in the mountains of the Province of Tittery, and

Abd-el-Kader by his swift movements kept the enemy ever on the alert,

and often in trouble, from the frontiers of Morocco to those of Tunis.

The real and decisive struggle began early in 1841. The right man was at

last found by the French to deal with the hitherto indomitable Sultan of

Tittery and Oran. The Government at Paris had begun in some sort to

understand the power of their formidable adversary, and a serious effort

was to be made. On February 22, 1841, General Bugeaud assumed office as

Governor-General of Algeria. He had now come, not in the mood and with

the policy of the day when he concluded the Treaty of the Tafna, but as

one whose task it was to crush every rival power in Algeria. For this

end, eighty-five thousand men were placed under his command. Thomas

Bugeaud was a man of great ability, and he has the credit of devising

the only method by which such an antagonist as Abd-el-Kader, in such a

country, could be subdued.

Against an adversary so mobile, so full of expedients and resource,

mobility and incessantly offensive movements offered the only chance of

success. The French Commander knew that it was no mere army, but a

people in arms, that he was to encounter. His forces were at once

organized in many small, compact columns, each composed of a few

infantry battalions and two squadrons of horse, with a little transport

train of mules and camels and two mountain howitzers. Picked men alone,

acclimatized and used to toil, were employed, and they carried nothing

but their muskets and ammunition, with a little food. These columns were

placed under the command of such energetic leaders as Changarnier and

Cavaignac, Canrobert and Pélissier, Bedeau and Lamoricière, St. Arnaud

and the Duc d'Aumale.

The campaign opened with the revictualling of Medea and Miliana, with

great losses to the French, as Abd-el-Kader disputed every inch of the

ground. Bugeaud, personally operating in Oran, reached Tekedemt on May

25th, and found it deserted and in flames. Boghar, Saida, and other

fortresses were successively destroyed. The enemies of the Sultan were

paying a heavy price for success. At the end of 1841 Bugeaud, out of

sixty thousand men in the field, had only four thousand fit for duty.

The rest had perished or were invalided for the time, from the toil of

marches, incessant fighting, and the heat of the climate. The French

Government's proposals of peace, on certain terms, only confirmed

Abd-el-Kader in his resolve to try the extremities of war.

Bugeaud's main object was to establish permanent centres of action in

the very heart of the Arab confederation of tribes, and, by rapidly

consecutive expeditions radiating from these centres, to give his troops

the ubiquity of Abd-el-Kader's forces. The chief seat of the Sultan's

power was the Province of Oran, and this was made the principal scene of

operations. Mascara was held by Lamoricière, Tlemsen by Bedeau.

Changarnier was in observation on the western frontier of the plain of

Algiers; Tittery was menaced by D'Aumale. From Oran and Mostaganem three

columns were sent forth against the tribes occupying the large expanse

of territory lying between the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean,

and the tribes extending toward the Sahara. The first force, headed by

Bugeaud in person, marched along the valley of the Chéliff, and then

joined the second column under Changarnier, coming from Blida. The third

body, under Lamoricière, aimed at pushing Abd-el-Kader back to the south

in order to separate him from the tribes assailed by Changarnier and

Bugeaud.

The plan of campaign was formidable for the Arabs, but it was

encountered by the Sultan with wonderful skill and daring in a struggle

which involved some thrilling episodes, Lamoricière, in his efforts to

overtake the foe, was constantly baffled. Hearing that Abd-el-Kader was

before Mascara, he hurried thither by forced marches, only to find that

his enemy had passed by his rear and was raiding a tribe friendly to the

French. Pursuing in the new direction, the French leader was outmaneuvre

by the Sultan's bold and rapid dash across the Chéliff, placing his

Arabs between Bugeaud and the sea, and recovering his ascendency over

the tribes in that region. Abd-el-Kader then swept in a _razzia_ to the

south of Miliana, and soon appeared in full force in the Sahara as the

bewildered French pursuers returned to their cantonments in despair of

reaching him. This is a sample of the evolutions by which genius made

amends for inferiority of force. The ablest military combinations were

rendered abortive by an enemy that was ever slipping between columns,

flitting in the front, hovering on the flanks, assailing the rear, and,

with perfect knowledge of the country, was sometimes in the mountains

and again in the plains, ubiquitous, unattainable for serious conflict.

Abd-el-Kader, leaving his caliphs to maintain this exasperating species

of warfare in the Province of Oran, made for the frontiers of Morocco.

There many tribes had submitted under the influence of Bedeau's military

and diplomatic skill. The Sultan's communications with the country

whence he drew his weapons, clothing, and ammunition were seriously

threatened. His appearance at once brought back the Kabyles of Nedrouma

to their allegiance, and their example was followed by other tribes,

with the result that his army was increased to the number of three

thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry. Able now to confront the

enemy, Abd-el-Kader during the months of March and April, 1842, had

frequent encounters with Bedeau, The issue was yet indecisive when the

Sultan was called away to Mascara to deal with Lamoricière, who had been

gaining ground and winning over tribes, including even a large part of

Abd-el-Kader's own people, the Hashems. Lamoricière, believing the

Sultan to be still engaged with Bedeau, had marched toward the Sahara,

and Abd-el-Kader, by a mingling of severe punishment and mild treatment,

regained most of his old authority.

Lamoricière, on receiving the news of his presence, hastened back to

find his recent work undone and to be assailed by the tribes who had so

lately joined him. Fighting his way bravely on to an encounter with the

great leader of the Arabs, the French general heard of him as in force

at Tekedemt. When he reached that place he found that Abd-el-Kader had

fallen on Changarnier toward Miliana. That general, knowing nothing of

the Sultan's approach, found himself enveloped by a vast force of Arabs

and Kabyles, regulars and irregulars, horse and foot, led on by

Abd-el-Kader in person and charging furiously on all sides.

After two days and nights of incessant battle, in which men closed

fiercely with pistols, swords, bayonets, and yataghans, the Sultan

vanished with his force, leaving the French too exhausted and crippled

by their losses for pursuit. Two days later tidings reached them that he

was in the Metidja, ravaging the plain and carrying terror to the very

gates of Algiers. Abd-el-Kader then bore away to the Atlas, ascended the

mountains, penetrated beyond Tittery and reached the Sahara, everywhere

inspiriting the tribes and raising fresh forces. After sweeping over

three hundred leagues of ground he returned, in recruited strength and

new energy, to press upon Lamoricière and his garrison at Mascara with

all the rigors of a winter blockade.

In spite of his wonderful efforts, the Sultan could not but feel that he

was struggling with adverse fortune. The enemy by the seizure of his

fixed establishments had gained possession of a large part of his

territory and of the strongholds that had contained his stores of war.

His regular army had almost disappeared, and much of his credit among

the Arabs had departed. The _ketna_, which was his ancestral abode, had

been laid waste. He could not protect the families of his most faithful

adherents from constant exposure, in spite of his vigilant activity, to

the outrages of the detested infidels. In this position, he resolved to

remove from the scene of warfare those whom it was impossible for him to

desert with any regard to feelings of religion and humanity. He formed

his famous _smala_, a new and remarkable organization consisting of a

gathering of private families. To this moving asylum of refuge and

safety the Arab tribes sent their treasure, their herds, their women and

children, their sick and aged persons.

The smala was a great travelling capital, containing at first more than

twenty thousand souls, following the Sultan's movements; sometimes in

advance to the more cultivated regions, or in retreat to the Sahara,

according to the fluctuations of the contest which he was so bravely

waging. In the Sahara, the tents of the smala spread to the distant

horizon. In the Tell, they filled the valley and rose up the slopes of

the hills. All the arrangements were of military regularity. The

different _deiras_, or households, with tents varying in number with

their dwellers, were distributed into four great encampments. Each deira

knew its appointed place. Each chief had his station marked and his

special duties assigned. Four tribes were set apart to protect and guide

the smala in its wanderings, and the guard was composed of regular

troops. The existence of this organization, ever growing in extent,

became a powerful check on the disaffection of the tribes. When the

French leaders tempted them with fair promises, the warriors bethought

them of the pledges: the women, the children, the flocks and herds,

which were in the Sultan's hands. The genius of Abd-el-Kader had created

a new and widely extended political engine.

When the French leaders had learned to appreciate the importance of the

smala its capture or dispersal became a chief object with all officers

from the generals of corps to the colonels in charge of detachments. The

campaign of 1843 was opened by Lamoricière, who occupied Tekedemt.

Abd-el-Kader with about fifteen hundred horsemen watched his movements

from some neighboring woods. He knew that the French commander's object

was the smala, and he remained in ambush for twenty days. He and his men

lived on acorns; the horses were fed on leaves. One day a stray sheep

was found. The Sultan would have none of it, and said, "Take it to my

starving soldiers," as he turned to his meal of acorns. Twice was

Lamoricière repulsed in his search, and then a traitor revealed the

exact place of the smala encampment.

Lamoricière remained to occupy the attention of Abd-el-Kader, and the

French column stationed at Medea was selected for the attack. The

leadership was intrusted to the Duc d'Aumale, and on May 10, 1843, he

started from Boghar with thirteen hundred infantry, six hundred horse,

and two field-guns.

The indicated place of encampment was found empty, and the French column

wandered about in uncertain fashion.

At break of day on May 16th the traitor made known the new spot of the

smala's halt, and D'Aumale at once daringly advanced with his cavalry

alone. The surprise created a panic among the people. The guard of five

hundred regulars fired a volley and fled. A handful of the Hashem tribe

bravely strove to stem the torrent, but they were swept away in the

rout, and in an hour all was over. The smala was broken up amid scenes

of terrible confusion and despair, including the extraordinary sight of

a promiscuous mass of camels, dromedaries, horses, mules, oxen, and

sheep careering and plunging on the plain. There was little bloodshed,

but the French victors were in possession of hostages of the utmost

value in the families of Abd-el-Ka-der's most influential chiefs. His

own family had escaped. The booty taken was immense, comprising

thousands of animals; the Sultan's valuable library of rare Arabic

manuscripts; the military chest containing some millions of francs, and

the chests of his caliphs and other high officers, filled with gold and

silver coins and costly jewellery. The French soldiers baled out dollars

and doubloons in their shakos, and helped themselves to diamonds and

pearls.

This dreadful blow, when the news reached him in the woods where he

watched near Lamoricière's command, almost overwhelmed, for a time, even

the exalted and undaunted spirit of the Sultan. He spent some hours

alone in his tent, in meditation and prayer. He came forth with a smile

and addressed his chiefs, his officers, and men as they stood outside in

groups, some downcast and silent, some bitterly cursing their foe and

fate. He reminded them that the dear objects now lost had impeded the

movements of the holy war against the infidels, and that those who had

fallen were now in paradise. The next day he wrote to his caliphs,

bidding them not to be discouraged; they would thenceforth be lighter

and in better order for war. In fact at the time of the Duc d'Aumale's

attack, the population of the smala amounted to not less than sixty

thousand. Not more than three thousand prisoners were taken; the rest of

the Arabs were dispersed in all directions. Some fell among Arab tribes

who plundered them; others were overtaken by Lamoricière.

The blow was, on the whole, irreparable in its effects upon the

influence of the Sultan. Every day brought tidings of the defection of

some great tribe. The ranks of his enemies were swelled by large

contingents of Arabs.

Worse things were in store for the brave man contending with

ill-fortune. His ablest caliphs were removed by captivity or death in

action; the distant provinces fell a prey to the foe. The Province of

Oran became the scene of a desperate struggle. With a chosen and devoted

band of five thousand men Abd-el-Kader made his presence felt at all

points. Now he fell on recreant tribes; now he made head against the

French columns. Ever in the van, leading on the charge, plunging into

the thickest of the fight, by his example he encouraged and inspired his

followers. His bravest warriors fell around him; his horses were slain

under him; his burnoose was torn with bullets; but still he fought on.

The world's record can show no more brilliant instance of almost

superhuman heroism.

Once he was taken unawares. On September 23, 1843, he was encamped near

Sidi Yusuf with a battalion of infantry and five hundred irregular

horse. A spy made known his position to Lamoricière, who was at a

distance of six leagues. The French General at once led out in person

the Second Chasseurs d'Afrique. A night's march covered the intervening

space and the spot was reached in the gray of dawn. The Sultan was

aroused from sleep by cries of "The French! the French!" He had barely

time to mount. He might have escaped, but he preferred the risk of death

to the double stain of surprise and flight. His infantry seized their

arms and fired a volley; his cavalry rallied at his voice. Then as the

smoke slowly rolled away he dashed into the French chasseurs, dispersed

them by the sudden shock, and after a few minutes' hard fighting drew

off his whole force in perfect order.

The Beni-Amers, the men whose four thousand sabres had waved in

exultation around the young leader of the Djehad; the men whose splendid

courage had opened before him the path of glory and of empire, had gone

over to the French. Abd-el-Kader resolved to attack them. Suddenly

descending upon them he swept through their encampments, slew numbers,

and carried off a great booty. A French battalion stationed among them

vainly strove to arrest his progress. An Arab chief, one of his old

followers, boldly singled him out, rode up, and fired at him

point-blank. The ball missed, and Abd-el-Kader shot the traitor dead

with his pistol.

The Sultan knew that all was lost unless he could obtain external aid.

The smala was now reduced to his own deira, a bare thousand souls,

wandering about in miserable fashion. After another desperate engagement

with Lamoricière during which the Arab women cheered on the warriors,

and Abd-el-Kader and his men fighting in the presence of their wives and

children performed new prodigies of valor, he succeeded in safely

establishing the noncombatants on the territory of Morocco.

Bugeaud, now become a marshal, wrote to his Government declaring that

all serious warfare was finished. In the summer of 1844, the violation

of Abderrahman's territory by French troops under Lamoricière and Bedeau

led to some warfare, in which the Moroccan troops were twice defeated.

The people of the country were strongly in favor of Abd-el-Kader; and

when their Sultan, after a French bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador,

made a treaty with France by which the Algerian hero was "placed beyond

the pale of the law throughout the Empire of Morocco, as well as in

Algeria," and was to be "pursued by main force by the Moroccans on their

own territory," the Moorish population was filled with resentment.

Letters reached Abd-el-Kader from Fez, the capital, dictated and signed

by the first grandees in the State, both civil and military, and from

the commercial classes, inviting him to ascend the throne of his

ancestors. Had he been a mere adventurer or usurper he might have lived

henceforth, and died, Emperor of Morocco, But his whole soul was

patriotically bent on one object, the freedom and independence of

Algeria. He disdained to wear a borrowed crown. As he afterward

declared, "His religion forbade him to injure a sovereign chosen and

appointed by God."

During the year 1844 the Sultan had made a rapid incursion into the

Tell, everywhere appealing to the tribes; but he found the national

spirit overawed by the presence of French detachments in all directions,

and he returned to his deira in despondent spirit. He now received

appeals from some of his devoted caliphs to undertake a fresh campaign,

especially from the loyal and chivalrous Ben Salem, who dwelt in the

gorges of the Djur jura Mountains. To him Abd-el-Kader replied,

promising to come "as soon as affairs in the west were settled."

Months passed away and the Arab tribes who had submitted began to feel

the pressure of French domination and to resent the supercilious conduct

of French officials. In the spring of 1845 their former Sultan

reappeared. He swept down into the valley of the Tafna and routed and

cut to pieces a French detachment. In this action the lower part of his

right ear was carried away by a musket-ball, the only wound which he

ever received. Another detachment of six hundred men laid down their

arms without firing a shot. Some stir was made among the Arabs by these

successes, and the French commanders took alarm. Lamoricière, Cavaignac,

and Bedeau wrote pressing letters for reinforcements, and urged the

return of Bugeaud. The most formidable foe of Abd-el-Kader reached the

scene of action in October, 1845, bringing fresh forces, and in a week

he took the field at the head of a hundred twenty thousand men. This

fact is the highest eulogy that can be accorded to the military prowess

of a man who so long defied the power of France.

The end of the great career was rapidly coming. After another vain

appeal to the Moorish ruler even Abd-el-Kader felt that all was lost. A

French writer in the _Biographie générale_ truly declares:

"The greatness of the man was strikingly displayed in the very hour of

his downfall. Destitute of resources, surrounded by foes, at open enmity

with the Emperor of Morocco, wandering like a hunted lion, with hardly

any comrade but his horse, no shelter except his tent, Abd-el-Kader

still inspired a terror which forced his enemies to keep a great army on

foot in Algeria for protection against possible attacks at his hand."

In his deira, at this time, all was despondency and grief. His own

brothers had abandoned him. Ben Salem, the faithful, long-tried, devoted

friend and follower, was a voluntary prisoner in the French camp.

Abd-el-Kader's whole force was fewer than two thousand men, but among

these were twelve hundred horsemen, the flower of the Algerian cavalry.

Most of them had been his inseparable comrades, partakers in all his

hardships and dangers, throughout his career. During a short period of

rest he summoned them daily around him and aroused new enthusiasm among

the bronzed veterans by his eloquent words.

On December 9, 1847, the deira was stationed on Moorish territory, at

Agueddin, on the left bank of the Melouia. It comprised in all about

five thousand souls. The next day news arrived that a great Moorish host

under the Sultan's two sons was only three hours' march away. On January

11th, Abd-el-Kader gathered his armed force, marched at dead of night

and fell furiously on the first division of the Moors and Arabs. The

slumbering foe awoke to see the thick darkness illumined by flashes of

light from muskets. Seized with panic, the men rushed away in all

directions, abandoning arms, tents, and baggage. In the mean time

Abd-el-Kader and his men swept onward and attacked the second division,

which was also defeated and dispersed. In half an hour the third

division was reached. This force had time to prepare for defence, and

the assailants withdrew before a steady fire of infantry and artillery

to an adjacent hill. At midday five thousand Moorish cavalry moved out

against Abd-el-Kader's little army. At charging distance he led on his

men, swept through the foe, and by a skilful combination of assault and

retreat regained his deira by the river Melouia, before sunset. The

deira had nearly effected its passage across the river, with the baggage

and the spoils taken from the enemy, when the Moorish army was seen

cautiously advancing.

The situation was full of peril. The deira had never been so exposed.

The ammunition was expended and the infantry was thus counted out of the

fight. Abd-el-Kader could only depend on his "Old Guard"--his matchless

cavalry. At length the Melouia was passed, and, although the foe was

pressing on, he would not leave its bank until the noncombatants had

gained a full hour in advance. Then the deira crossed another stream and

reached a place of safety, for the time, on French territory. Not a life

had been lost nor a beast of burden of all that crowd of men, women,

children, and animals. Coolness, intrepidity, and skill had been their

protectors. Of the fighting men, however, more than two hundred had been

slain, and nearly all the rest were suffering from wounds.

Abd-el-Kader now turned toward the hills inhabited by a tribe which

still, in part, adhered to him. His horsemen followed him in anxious

silence, suffering and exhausted. The rain fell in torrents. Their chief

was tormented by conflicting thoughts. A French camp was visible in the

distance, three hours' march away, occupying a pass. He and his cavalry

might yet escape by narrow defiles into the Sahara. But what of his aged

mother, his wife and children, his helpless followers in the deira? All

would become captives to the foe. He called his men around him and

reminded them of the oath which, eight years before on the renewal of

the war, they had taken at Medea that they would never forsake him in

any danger or suffering. All declared themselves ready still to adhere

to it. He set before them the peril of the people in the deira and

suggested submission. All the warriors cried: "Perish women and children

so long as you are safe and able to renew the battles of God. You are

our head, our Sultan; fight or surrender, as you will, we will follow

you wherever you choose to lead." After a few moments' pause

Abd-el-Kader declared that the struggle was over. The tribes were tired

of the war and there was nothing left but submission. He would ask the

French for a safe-conduct for himself and his family, and for all who

chose to follow him, to another Mussulman country. The universal answer

was, "Sultan, let your will be done!"

The incessant rain rendered it impossible to write down any terms.

Abd-el-Kader therefore affixed his seal to a piece of paper, and

despatched it in charge of two horsemen to the French general as a sign

of authorization on his part for demands to be verbally made. It was

Lamoricière who received the two emissaries; and he sent a verbal reply,

acceding to all proposals. Abd-el-Kader then sent a letter, and received

in reply a written promise and stipulation that the Sultan and his

family should be conducted to St. Jean d'Acre or Alexandria. The new

Governor-General, the Duc d'Aumale, was close at hand, and on the

evening of December 23, 1847, the fallen hero, attended by some of his

chiefs and men, escorted by five hundred French cavalry, who showed

great respect and sympathy for the captives, arrived at headquarters.

Abd-el-Kader, attended by Lamoricière and Cavaignac, was presented to

the son of Louis Philippe. The Prince pledged himself that Lamoricière's

promise and stipulation should be strictly observed. He knew little that

his father's throne was about to fall, and that the decision as to

Abd-el-Kader's fate would, within a few weeks, rest in far different

hands. The ex-Sultan then withdrew to his deira, which had now joined

the French encampment.

On the next morning, December 24th, the Governor-General held a review.

His honored prisoner and guest, riding a splendid black charger of the

purest Arab breed, and surrounded by his chiefs, awaited his return from

the field. When the Prince approached, Abd-el-Kader dismounted and

offered his steed as a present in testimony of his gratitude, and

expressed the hope that he might always bear his new master in safety

and happiness. The Duc d'Aumale replied, "I accept it as a homage

rendered to France, the protection of which country will henceforth be

ever extended toward you, and as a sign that the past is forgotten."

On December 25th the Algerian hero embarked with his family and

followers in a French frigate for Toulon. He had seen the last of his

native land. Lamoricière accompanied him on board and supplemented his

poor resources with a present of four thousand francs, receiving

Abd-el-Kader's sword in return. The _Moniteur_ of January 3, 1848, paid

a high tribute to the genius and ascendency of the captive in these

words: "The subjugation of Abd-el-Kader is an event of immense

importance to France. It assures the tranquillity of our conquest.

To-day France can, if necessary, transport to other quarters the hundred

thousand men who hold the conquered populations under her yoke."

(1847) THE MEXICAN WAR, John Bonner

When President Polk began his Administration, the United States

Government had become involved in two boundary disputes--one relating to

Oregon, the other to Texas and Mexico. Out of the latter came the

Mexican War, concerning the political causes and merits of which there

were then and ever since have been wide differences of opinion among the

American people. Polk's election by the Democrats in 1844 had turned

mainly upon the question of annexing Texas. Just before he came into

office the annexation was made.

Texas claimed as her western boundary the Rio Grande. Mexico held that

the western limit was the Nueces. Between the two rivers there was a

large area of disputed territory. The Texan claim was opposed by many

American statesmen and publicists, and by some was denounced--as the

annexation of Texas had been--as an aggressive move against Mexico. But

the United States Government supported the cause of Texas. General

Zachary Taylor, who had served in the War of 1812, and afterward in

several Indian wars, took command of the army in Texas in 1845. In

January, 1846, he was ordered to occupy positions on or near the left

bank of the Rio Grande del Norte. This order and its execution have been

held by some writers to constitute an act of war, but war was not

formally declared by the United States till May 11th. Taylor, with a

small force, had several slight encounters with Mexican troops, after

which he won the battle of Palo Alto (May 8, 1846), near the southern

extremity of Texas; and that of Resaca de la Palma (May 9th), also in

Texas, four miles north of Matamoros, Mexico. He took possession of

Matamoros May 18th. With six thousand men, against about ten thousand

Mexicans under Ampudia, Taylor captured Monterey, Mexico (September

24th), and at Buena Vista, February 22-23, 1847, with five thousand

troops, he defeated fifteen thousand Mexicans under Santa Anna, then

President of Mexico and commander of her army.

The war was now transferred to the district between Vera Cruz and the

City of Mexico, the capital, and was henceforth conducted for the United

States by General Winfield Scott, whose previous military career had

been much the same as General Taylor's. Scott had been made

Major-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1841. His first

operation in Mexico was the taking of Vera Cruz, the principal Mexican

seaport, on the Gulf of Mexico. With the aid of a fleet he besieged the

city in March, 1847, and on the 27th received its surrender. At Cerro

Gordo (April 17th and 18th) he won an important victory that opened his

way through the mountains toward his objective, the city of Mexico.

Reënforcements gradually reached him, and by the first of August he was

ready to move on the valley of Mexico with about eleven thousand men.

From this stage to the fall of the capital, completing the conquest of

the country, Bonner's account gives a graphic recital of events. The

city was held by Americans from September 14, 1847, the day they entered

it, until the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (February 2,

1848), which ended the war.

With the energy that characterized Santa Anna throughout the Mexican

War, he had prepared for a desperate defence. Civil strife had been

silenced, funds raised, an army of twenty-five thousand men mustered,

and every precaution taken which genius could suggest or science

indicate. Nature had done much for him. Directly in front of the

invading army lay the large lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. These

turned, vast marshes, intersected by ditches and for the most part

impassable, surrounded the city on the east and the south--on which side

Scott was advancing--for several miles. The only approaches were by

causeways; and these Santa Anna had taken prodigious pains to guard. The

national road to Vera Cruz--which Scott must have taken had he marched

on the north side of the lakes--was commanded by a fort mounting

fifty-one guns on an impregnable hill called El Peñon. Should he turn

the southern side of the lakes, a field of lava, deemed almost

impassable for troops, interposed a primary obstacle; and fortified

positions at San Antonio, San Angel, and Churubusco, with an intrenched

camp at Contreras, were likewise to be surmounted before the southern

causeways could be reached. Beyond these there yet remained the

formidable castle of Chapultepec and the strong enclosure of Molino del

Rey, to be stormed before the city gates could be reached. Powerful

batteries had been mounted at all these points, and ample garrisons

detailed to serve them. The bone and muscle of Mexico were there.

Goaded by defeat, Santa Anna never showed so much vigor; ambition fired

Valencia; patriotism stirred the soul of Alvarez; Canalizo, maddened by

the odium into which he had fallen, was boiling to regain his soubriquet

of the "Lion of Mexico." With a constancy equal to anything recorded of

the Roman Senate, the Mexican Congress, on learning of the defeat at

Cerro Gordo, had voted unanimously that anyone opening negotiations with

the enemy should be deemed a traitor; and the citizens with one accord

had ratified the vote. Within six months Mexico had lost two splendid

armies in two pitched battles against the troops now advancing against

the capital; but she never lost heart, and her spirit quailed not.

The engineers reporting that the fortress on El Peñon could not be

carried without a loss of one-third the army, Scott decided to move by

the south of the lakes; and Worth accordingly advanced, leading the van,

as far as San Augustin, nine miles from the city of Mexico. There a

large field of lava, known as the Pedregal, barred the way. On the one

side, two miles from San Augustin, the fortified works at San Antonio

commanded the passage between the field and the lake; on the other, the

ground was so much broken that infantry alone could advance, and General

Valencia occupied an intrenched camp, with a heavy battery, near the

village of Contreras, three miles distant. Scott determined to attack on

both sides, and sent forward General William J. Worth on the east, and

General Gideon J. Pillow and General David E. Twiggs on the west. The

latter advanced as fast as possible over the masses of lava on the

morning of the 19th, and by 2 P.M. a couple of light batteries were

placed in position and opened fire on the Mexican camp.

At the same time General Persifor Smith conceived the plan of turning

Valencia's left, and hastened along the path through the Pedregal in the

direction of a village called San Jeronimo. Colonel Riley followed.

Pillow sent Cadwallader's brigade on the same line, and later in the day

Morgan's regiment was likewise despatched toward that point. They drove

in the Mexican pickets and skirmishers, dispersed a few parties of

lancers, and occupied the village without loss. Seeing the movement,

Santa Anna hastened to Valencia's support with twelve thousand men. He

was discovered by Cadwallader just as the latter gained the village

road; and appreciating the vast importance of preventing a junction

between the two Mexican generals, that gallant officer did not hesitate

to draw up his brigade in order of battle. So broken was the ground that

Santa Anna could not see the amount of force opposed to him, and

declined the combat. This was all Cadwallader wanted. Shields's brigade

was advancing through the Pedregal, and the troops which had already

crossed were rapidly moving to the rear of Valencia's camp. Night too

was close at hand. When it fell, Smith's, Riley's, and Cadwallader's

commands had gained the point they sought. Shields joined them at ten

o'clock; and at midnight Captain Lee crossed the Pedregal, with a

message from General Smith to General Scott, to say that he would begin

the attack at daybreak next morning.

It rained all night and the men lay in the mud without fires. At three

in the morning (August 20th) the word was passed to march. Such pitchy

darkness covered the face of the plain that Smith ordered every man to

touch his front file as he marched. Now and then a flash of lightning

lighted the narrow ravine; occasionally a straggling moonbeam pierced

the clouds and shed an uncertain glimmer on the heights; but these

flitting guides served only to make the darkness seem darker. The

soldiers groped their way, stumbling over stones and brushwood, and did

not gain the rear of the camp till day broke. Then Riley bade his men

look to the priming of their guns, and reload those which the rain had

wet. With the first ray of daylight the firing had begun again between

the Mexican camp and Ransom's corps stationed in front and Shields's

brigade at San Jeronimo. Almost at the same moment Riley began to ascend

the height in the rear. Before he reached the crest, his engineers, who

had gone forward to reconnoitre, came running back to say that his

advance had been detected, that two guns were being pointed against him,

and a body of infantry were sallying from the camp, The news braced the

men's nerves. They gained the ridge, and stood a tremendous volley from

the Mexicans without flinching. Hanson of the Seventh--a gallant officer

and an excellent man--was shot down with many others; but the Mexicans

had done their worst.

With steady aim the volley was returned; and ere the smoke rose a cheer

rang through the ravine, and Riley fell with a swoop on the

intrenchments. With bayonet and butt of musket, the Second and Seventh

drove the enemy from his guns, leaping into his camp and slaughtering

all before them. Up rushed Smith's own brigade on the left, driving a

party of Mexicans before them, and charging with the bayonet straight at

Torrejon's cavalry, which was drawn up in order of battle. Defeat was

marked on their faces. Valencia was nowhere to be found. Salas strove

vainly to rouse his men to defend themselves with energy; Torrejon's

horse, smitten with panic, broke and fled at the advance of our

infantry. Riley hurled the Mexicans from their camp after a struggle of

a quarter of an hour; and as they rushed down the ravine, their own

cavalry rode over them, trampling down more men than the bayonet and

ball had laid low. On the right, as they fled, Cadwallader's brigade

poured in a destructive volley; and Shields, throwing his party across

the road, obstructed their retreat and compelled the fugitives to yield

themselves prisoners of war. The only fight of any moment had taken

place within the camp. There, for a few minutes, the Mexicans had fought

desperately; two of our regimental colors had been shot down, but

finally Anglo-Saxon bone and sinew had triumphed. To the exquisite

delight of the assailants, the first prize of victory was the guns

O'Brien had abandoned at Buena Vista, which were regained by his own

regiment. Twenty other guns and more than a thousand prisoners,

including eighty-eight officers and four generals, were likewise

captured, and about fifteen hundred Mexicans killed and wounded. The

American loss in killed, wounded, and missing was about one hundred men.

Barely taking time to breathe his troops, Smith followed in pursuit

toward the city. By ten o'clock in the morning he reached San Angel,

which Santa Anna evacuated as he approached. The General-in-Chief and

the generals of division had by this time relieved Smith of his command.

Scott rode to the front, and in a few brief words told the men there was

more work to be done that day. A loud cheer from the ranks was the

reply. The whole force then advanced to Coyacan, within a mile of

Churubusco, and prepared to assault the place.

Santa Anna considered it the key to the city, and awaited the attack in

perfect confidence with thirty thousand men. The defences were simple.

On the west, in the direction of Coyacan, stood the large stone convent

of San Pablo, which, as well as the wall and breastworks in front, was

filled with infantry, and which contained seven heavy guns. A breastwork

connected San Pablo with the _tête de pont_ over the Churubusco River,

four hundred yards distant. This was the easternmost point of defence,

and formed part of the San Antonio causeway leading to the city. It was

a work constructed with the greatest skill--bastions, curtain, and wet

ditch, everything was complete and perfect--four guns were mounted in

embrasure and barbette, and as many men as the place would hold were

stationed there. The reserves occupied the causeway behind Churubusco.

Independently of his defences, Santa Anna's numbers--nearly five to

one--should have insured the repulse of the assailants.

By eleven--hardly seven hours having elapsed since the Contreras camp

had been stormed, five miles away--Twiggs and Pillow were in motion

toward the San Antonio causeway. Nothing had been heard of Worth, who

had been directed to move along the east side of the Pedregal on San

Antonio, but it was taken for granted he had carried the point, and

Scott wished to cut off the retreat of the garrison. Twiggs was

advancing cautiously toward the convent when a heavy firing was heard in

advance. Supposing that a reconnoitring party had been attacked, he

hastily sent forward the First Artillery, under Dimmick, through a field

of tall corn, to support them. No sooner had they separated from the

main body than a terrific discharge of grape, canister, and musketry

assailed them from the convent. In the teeth of the storm they advanced

to within one hundred yards of that building, and a light battery under

Taylor was brought up on their right, and opened on the convent.

More than an hour the gunners stood firm to their pieces under afire as

terrible as troops ever endured; one-third of the command had fallen

before they were withdrawn. Colonel Riley meanwhile, with the stormers

of Contreras, had been despatched to assail San Pablo on the west, and,

like Dimmick, was met by a murderous rain of shot. Whole heads of

companies were mowed down at once. Thus Captain Smith fell, twice

wounded, with every man beside him; and a single discharge from the

Mexican guns swept down Lieutenant Easley and the division he led. It

was the second time that day the gallant Second had served as targets

for the Mexicans, but not a man fell back. General Smith ordered up the

Third in support, and these, protecting themselves as best they could

behind a few huts, kept up a steady fire on the convent. Sallies from

the works were continually made, and as continually repelled, but not a

step could the assailants make in advance.

By this time the battle was raging at three different points. Worth had

marched on San Antonio that morning, found it evacuated, and given chase

to the Mexicans with the Fifth and Sixth Infantry. The causeway leading

from San Antonio to the _tête de pont_ of Churubusco was thronged with

flying horse and foot; our troops dashed headlong after them, never

halting till the advance corps--the Sixth--were within short range of

the Mexican batteries. A tremendous volley from the _tête de pont_ in

front, and the convent on the flank, then forced them to await the

arrival of the rest of the division. This was the fire which Twiggs

heard when he sent Dimmick against the convent.

Worth came up almost immediately; and directing the Sixth to advance as

best they could along the causeway in the teeth of the _tête de pont_,

despatched Garland's and Clarke's brigades through the fields on the

right to attack it in flank. Every gun was instantly directed against

the assailants; and though the day was bright and clear, the clouds of

smoke actually darkened the air. Hoffman, waving his sword, cheered on

the Sixth; but the shot tore and ripped up their ranks to such a degree

that in a few minutes they had lost ninety-seven men. The brigades on

the right suffered as severely. One hundred men fell within the space of

an acre. Still they pressed on, till the Eighth (of Clarke's brigade)

reached the ditch. In they plunged, Lieutenant Longstreet bearing the

colors in advance; he scrambled out on the other side, dashed at the

walls without ladders or scaling implements, and bayoneted the defenders

as they took aim. At last, officers and men mixed pell-mell, some

through the embrasures, some over the walls, rushed or leaped in and

drove the garrison helter-skelter upon their reserves.

The _tête de pont_ gained, its guns were turned on the convent, whence

the Mexicans were still slaughtering our gallant Second and Third.

Duncan's battery, too, hitherto in reserve, was brought up and opened

with such rapidity that a bystander estimated the intervals between the

reports at three seconds! Stunned by this novel attack, the garrison of

San Pablo slackened fire. In an instant the Third, followed by Dimmick's

artillery, dashed forward with the bayonet to storm the nearest bastion.

With a run they carried it, the artillery bursting over the curtain; but

at that moment a dozen white flags waved in their faces. The whole

fortified position of Churubusco was taken.

Meantime, however, a conflict as deadly as either of these was raging

behind the Mexican fortifications. Soon after the battle commenced,

Scott sent Pierce's and Shields's brigades by the left, through the

fields, to attack the enemy in the rear. On the causeway, opposed to

them, were planted Santa Anna's reserves--four thousand foot and three

thousand horse--in a measure protected by a dense growth of maguey.

Shields advanced intrepidly with his force of sixteen hundred. The

ground was marshy, and for a long distance--having vainly endeavored to

outflank the enemy--his advance was exposed to their whole fire. Morgan,

of the Fifteenth, fell wounded. The New York regiment suffered

fearfully, and their leader, Colonel Burnett, was disabled. The

Palmettos of South Carolina, and the Ninth under Ransom, were as

severely cut up; and after a while all sought shelter in and about a

large barn near the causeway. Shields, in an agony at the failure of his

movement, cried imploringly for volunteers to follow him.

The appeal was instantly answered by Colonel Butler, of the Palmettos:

"Every South Carolinian will follow you to the death!" The cry was

contagious, and most of the New Yorkers took it up. Forming at angles to

the causeway, Shields led these brave men, under an incessant hail of

shot, against the village of Portales, where the Mexican reserves were

posted. Not a trigger was pulled till they stood at a hundred fifty

yards from the enemy. Then the little band poured in their volley,

fatally answered by the Mexican host. Butler, already wounded, was shot

through the head and died instantly. Calling to the Palmettos to avenge

his death, Shields gives the word to charge. They charge--not four

hundred in all--over the plain and down upon four thousand Mexicans

securely posted under cover. At every step their ranks are thinned.

Dickenson, who succeeded Butler in command of the Palmettos, seizes the

colors as the bearer falls dead; the next moment he is down himself,

mortally wounded, and Major Gladden snatches them from his hand.

Adams, Moragne, and nearly half the gallant band are prostrate. A very

few minutes more and there will be no one left to bear the glorious

flag.

But at this very moment a deafening roar is heard in the direction of

the _tête de pont_. Round shot and grape, rifle-balls and canister, come

crashing down the causeway into the Mexican ranks from their own

battery. Worth is there, the gallant fellow, just in time. Down the road

and over the ditch, through the field and hedge and swamp, in tumult and

panic the Mexicans are flying from the bayonets of the Sixth and

Garland's brigade. A shout, louder than the cannon's peal; Worth is on

their heels with his men. Before Shields reaches the causeway he is by

his side driving the Mexican horse into their infantry, and Ayres is

galloping up with a captured Mexican gun. Captain Kearny, with a few

dragoons, dashes past, rides straight into the flying host, scatters

them right and left, sabres all he can reach, and halts before the gate

of Mexico. Not till then does he perceive that he is alone with his

little party, nearly all of whom are wounded; but, despite the hundreds

of _escopetas_ that are levelled at him, he gallops back in safety to

headquarters.

The sun, which rose that morning on a proud army and a defiant

metropolis, set at even on a shattered, haggard band, and a city full of

woe-stricken wretches who did nothing all night but quake with terror,

and cry, at every noise, "_Aqui viene los Yanquies_!" ("Here come the

Yankees!") All along the causeway, and in the fields and swamps on

either side, heaps of dead men and cattle intermingled with broken

ammunition-carts, marked where the American shot had told. A gory track

leading to the _tête de pont_, groups of dead in the fields on the west

of Churubusco, over whose pale faces some stalks of tattered corn still

waved; red blotches in the marsh next the causeway, where the rich blood

of Carolina and New York soaked the earth, showed where the fire of the

heavy Mexican guns and the countless _escopetas_ of the infantry had

been most murderous. Scott had lost, in that day's work, more than a

thousand men in killed and wounded, seventy-nine of whom were officers.

The Mexican loss, according to Santa Anna, was one-third of his army,

equal probably to ten thousand men, one-fourth of whom were prisoners,

the rest killed and wounded. As the sun went down the troops were

recalled to headquarters; but all night long the battlefield swarmed

with straggling parties seeking some lost comrade in the cold and rain,

and surgeons hurrying from place to place and offering succor to the

wounded.

It would have been easy for Scott to march on the city that night, or

next morning, and seize it before the Mexicans recovered from the shock

of their defeat. Anxious to shorten the war, and assured that Santa Anna

was desirous of negotiating; warned, moreover, by neutrals and others,

that the hostile occupation of the capital would destroy the last chance

of peaceable accommodation and rouse the Mexican spirit to resistance

all over the country, the American general consented, too generously

perhaps, to offer an armistice to his vanquished foe. It was eagerly

accepted, and negotiations were commenced which lasted over a fortnight.

In the mean time General Scott had the satisfaction of hanging several

of the Irishmen who had deserted to the Mexicans, and, serving as the

battalion of San Patricio, had shot down so many of their old comrades

at Buena Vista and Churubusco. This act of justice was approved by the

army and the nation. Early in September the treachery of the Mexicans

became apparent. No progress had been made in the negotiations; and, in

defiance of the armistice, an American wagon, proceeding to the city for

provisions, had been attacked by the mob and one man killed and others

wounded. Scott wrote to Santa Anna, demanding an apology, and

threatening to terminate the armistice on the 7th if it were not

tendered. The reply was insulting in the extreme; Santa Anna had

repaired his losses and was ready for another fight.

On the evening of September 7th Worth and his officers were gathered in

his quarters at Tacubaya. On a table lay a hastily sketched map showing

the position of the fortified works at Molino del Rey, with the Casa

Mata on one side and the castle of Chapultepec on the other. The Molino

was occupied by the enemy; there was reason to believe it contained a

foundry in full operation, and Worth had been directed to storm it next

morning. Over that table bent Garland and Clarke, eager to repeat the

glorious deeds of August 20th at the _tête de pont_ of Churubusco;

Duncan and Smith, already veterans; Wright, the leader of the forlorn

hope, joyfully thinking of the morrow; famous Martin Scott, and

dauntless Graham, little dreaming that a few hours would see their livid

corpses stretched upon the plain; fierce old M'Intosh, covered with

scars; Worth himself, his manly brow clouded, and his cheek paled by

sickness and anxiety. Each officer had his place assigned to him in the

conflict; and they parted to seek a few hours' rest.

At half-past two on the morning of the 8th the division was astir. 'Twas

a bright starlight night whose silence was unbroken as the troops moved

thoughtfully toward the battlefield. In front, on the right, about a

mile from the encampment, the hewn-stone walls of the Molino del Rey--a

range of buildings five hundred yards long, and well adapted for

defence--were distinctly visible, with drowsy lights twinkling through

the windows. A little farther off, on the left, stood the black pile of

the Casa Mata, the arsenal, crenelled for musketry, and surrounded by a

quadrangular field work. Beyond the Casa Mata lay a ravine, and from

this a ditch and hedge ran, passing in front of both works, to the

Tacubaya road. Far on the right the grim old castle of Chapultepec

loomed up darkly against the sky. Sleep wrapped the whole Mexican line,

and but few words were spoken in the American ranks as the troops took

up their respective positions: Garland, with Dunn's battery and Huger's

24-pounders, on the right, against the Molino; Wright, at the head of

the stormers, and followed by the light division under Captain Kirby

Smith, in the centre; M'Intosh, with Duncan's battery, on the left, near

the ravine looking toward the Casa Mata; and Cadwallader, with his

brigade, in reserve.

Night still overhung the east when the Mexicans were roused from their

slumbers by the roar of Huger's 24-pounders, and the crashing of the

balls through the roof and walls of the Molino. A shout arose within

their lines, spreading from the ravine to the castle; lights flashed in

every direction, bugles sounded, the clank of arms rang from right to

left, and every man girded himself for the fray. With the first ray of

daylight Major Wright advanced with the forlorn hope down the slope. A

few seconds elapsed; then a sheet of flame burst from the batteries, and

round shot, canister, and grape hurtled through the air. "Charge!"

shouted the leader, and down they went, with double-quick step, over the

ditch and hedge, and into the line, sweeping everything before them. The

Mexicans fell from their guns, but soon, seeing the smallness of the

force opposed to them and reassured by the galling fire poured from the

_azoteas_ and Molino on the stormers, they rallied, charged furiously,

and drove our men back into the plain. Here eleven out of the fourteen

officers of Wright's party, and the bulk of his men, fell killed or

wounded. All of the latter who could not fly were bayoneted where they

lay by the Mexicans.

Captain Walker, of the Sixth, badly shot, was left for dead; he saw the

enemy murdering every man who showed signs of life, but the agony of

thirst was so insupportable that he could not resist raising his canteen

to his lips. A dozen balls instantly tore up the ground around him;

several Mexicans rushed at him with the bayonet, but at that moment the

light division, under Kirby Smith, came charging over the ditch into the

Mexican line and diverted their attention.

Garland meanwhile moved down rapidly on the right with Dunn's guns,

which were drawn by hand, all the horses having been wounded and become

unmanageable. These soon opened an enfilading fire on the Mexican

battery; and some of the gunners flying, the light division charged,

under a hot fire, and carried the guns for the second time. Their

gallant leader was shot dead in the charge. But the enemy could afford

to lose the battery. From the tops of the _azoteas_, from the Casa Mata

and the Molino, a deadly shower of balls was rained crosswise upon the

assailants. Part of the reserve was brought up; and Dunn's guns and the

Mexican battery were served upon the buildings without much effect at

first. Lieutenant-Colonel Graham led a party of the Eleventh against the

latter; when within pistol-shot a terrific volley assailed him, wounding

him in ten places. The gallant soldier quietly dismounted, pointed with

his sword to the building, cried "Charge!" and sank dead on the field.

As fiercely raged the battle at the other wing where Duncan and M'Intosh

had driven in the enemy's right toward the Casa Mata. M'Intosh started

to storm that fort, and, in the teeth of a tremendous hail of musketry,

advanced to the ditch, only twenty-five yards from the work. There a

ball knocked him down; it was his luck to be shot or bayoneted in every

battle. Martin Scott took the command, but as he ordered the men forward

he rolled lifeless into the ditch. Major Waite, the next in rank, had

hardly seen him fall before he too was disabled. By whole companies the

men were mowed down by the Mexican shot; but they stood their ground. At

length some one gave the word to fall back, and the remnants of the

brigade obeyed. Many wounded were left on the ground; among others

Lieutenant Burnell, shot in the leg, whom the Mexicans murdered when his

comrades abandoned him. After the battle his body was found, and beside

it his dog, moaning piteously and licking his dead master's face.

At the head of four thousand cavalry, Alvarez now menaced our left.

Duncan watched them come, driving a cloud of dust before them, till they

were within close range; then opening with his wonderful rapidity, he

shattered whole platoons at a discharge. Worth sent him word to be sure

to keep the lancers in check. "Tell General Worth," was his reply, "to

make himself perfectly easy; I can whip twenty thousand of them." So far

as Alvarez was concerned, he kept his word.

On the American right the fight had reached a crisis. Mixed confusedly

together, men of all arms furiously attacked the Molino, firing into

every aperture, climbing to the roof, and striving to batter in the

doors and gates with their muskets. The garrison never slackened their

terrible fire for an instant. At length Major Buchanan, of the Fourth,

succeeded in bursting open the southern gate; and almost at the same

moment Anderson and Ayres, of the artillery, forced their way into the

buildings at the northwestern angle. Ayres leaped down alone into a

crowd of Mexicans--he had done the same at Monterey--and fell covered

with wounds. Our men rushed in on both sides, stabbing, firing, and

felling the Mexicans with their muskets. From room to room and house to

house a hand-to-hand encounter was kept up. Here a stalwart Mexican

hurled down man after man as they advanced; there Buchanan and the

Fourth levelled all before them. But the Mexicans never withstood the

cold steel. One by one the defenders escaped by the rear toward

Chapultepec, and those who remained hung out a white flag. Under

Duncan's fire the Casa Mata had been evacuated, and the enemy was

everywhere in full retreat. Twice he rallied and charged the Molino; but

each time the artillery drove him back toward Chapultepec, and parties

of the light infantry pursued him down the road. Before ten in the

morning the whole field was won; and, having blown up the Casa Mata,

Worth, by Scott's order, fell back to Tacubaya.

With gloomy face and averted eye the gallant soldier received the thanks

of his chief for the exploits of the morning. His heart was with the

brave men he had lost--nearly eight hundred out of less than thirty-five

hundred and among them fifty-eight officers, many of whom were his

dearest friends. All had fallen in advance of their men, with sword in

hand and noble words on their lips. 'Twas a poor price for these to have

stormed Molino del Rey, and cut down nearly a fifth of Santa Anna's

fourteen thousand men. Sadly the General returned to his quarters.

The end was now close at hand. Reconnoissances were carefully made, and,

the enemy's strength being gathered on the southern front of the city,

General Scott determined to assail Chapultepec on the west. By the

morning of the 12th the batteries were completed, and opened a brisk

fire on the castle, without, however, doing any more serious damage than

annoying the garrison and killing a few men. The fire was kept up all

day; and at night preparations were made for the assault, which was

ordered to be made next morning.

At daybreak on the 13th the cannonade began again, as well from the

batteries planted against Chapultepec as from Steptoe's guns, which were

served against the southern defences of the city in order to divert the

attention of the enemy. At 8 A.M. the firing from the former ceased, and

the attack commenced. Quitman advanced along the Tacubaya road, Pillow

from the Molino del Rey, which he had occupied on the evening before.

Between the Molino and the castle lay first an open space, then a grove

thickly planted with trees; in the latter, Mexican sharpshooters had

been posted, protected by an intrenchment on the border of the grove.

Pillow sent Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston with a party of _voltigeurs_ to

turn this work by a flank movement; it was handsomely accomplished; and

just as the _voltigeurs_ broke through the redan, Pillow, with the main

body, charged it in front and drove back the Mexicans. The grove gained,

Pillow pressed forward to the front of the rock; for the Mexican shot

from the castle batteries, crashing through the trees, seemed even more

terrible than it really was, and the troops were becoming restless.

The Mexicans had retreated to a redoubt half way up the hill; the

_voltigeurs_ sprang up from rock to rock, firing as they advanced, and

followed by Hooker, Chase, and others, with parties of infantry. In a

very few minutes the redoubt was gained, the garrison driven up the

hill, and the _voltigeurs_, Ninth, and Fifteenth were in hot pursuit

after them. The firing from the castle was very severe. Colonel Ransom,

of the Ninth, was killed, and Pillow himself was wounded. Still the

troops pressed on till the crest of the hill was gained. There some

moments were lost owing to the delay in the arrival of scaling-ladders,

during which two of Quitman's regiments and Clarke's brigade reenforced

the storming party. When the ladders came, numbers of men rushed forward

with them, leaped into the ditch, and planted them for the assault.

Lieutenant Selden was the first man to mount. But the Mexicans collected

all their energies for this last moment. A tremendous fire dashed the

foremost of the stormers into the ditch, killing Lieutenants Rogers and

Smith and clearing the ladders. Fresh men instantly manned them, and,

after a brief struggle, Captain Howard, of the _voltigeurs_, gained a

foothold on the parapet. M'Kenzie, of the forlorn hope, followed; and a

crowd of _voltigeurs_ and infantry, shouting and cheering, pressed after

him, and swept down upon the garrison with the bayonet. Almost at the

same moment, Johnston, of the _voltigeurs_, who had led a small party

round to the gate of the castle, broke it open and effected an entrance

in spite of a fierce fire from the southern walls. The two parties

uniting, a deadly conflict ensued within the building.

Maddened by the recollection of the murder of their wounded comrades at

Molino del Rey, the stormers at first showed no quarter. On every side

the Mexicans were stabbed or shot down without mercy. Many flung

themselves over the parapet and down the hillside and were dashed in

pieces against the rocks. More fought like fiends, expending their

breath in a malediction, and expiring in the act of aiming a treacherous

blow as they lay on the ground. Streams of blood flowed through the

doors of the college, and every room and passage was the theatre of some

deadly struggle. At length the officers succeeded in putting an end to

the carnage; and the remaining Mexicans having surrendered, the Stars

and Stripes were hoisted over the castle of Chapultepec by Major

Seymour.

Meanwhile Quitman had stormed the batteries on the causeway to the east

of the castle, after a desperate struggle in which Major Twiggs, who

commanded the stormers, was shot dead at the head of his men. The

Mexicans fell back toward the city. General Scott, coming up at this

moment, ordered a simultaneous advance to be made on the city, along the

two roads leading from Chapultepec to the gates of San Cosme and Belen,

respectively. Worth was to command that on San Cosme, Quitman that on

Belen. Both were prepared for defence by barricades, behind which the

enemy were posted in great numbers. Fortunately for the assailants an

aqueduct, supported by arches of solid masonry, ran along the centre of

each causeway. By keeping under cover of these arches, and springing

rapidly from one to another, Smith's rifles and the South Carolina

regiment were enabled to advance close to the first barricade on the

Belen road, and pour in a destructive fire on the gunners. A flank

discharge from Duncan's guns completed the work; the barricade was

carried; and without a moment's rest Quitman advanced in the same manner

on the _garita_ San Belen, which was held by General Torres with a

strong garrison.

It too was stormed, though under a fearful hail of grape and canister;

and the rifles moved forward toward the citadel. But at this moment

Santa Anna rode furiously down to the point of attack. Boiling with rage

at the success of the invaders, he smote General Torres in the face,

threw a host of infantry into the houses commanding the _garita_ and the

road, ordered the batteries in the citadel to open fire, planted fresh

guns on the Paseo, and infused such spirit into the Mexicans that

Quitman's advance was stopped at once. A terrific storm of shot, shell,

and grape assailed the _garita_, where Captain Dunn had planted an

8-pounder. Twice the gunners were shot down, and fresh men sent to take

their places. Then Dunn himself fell, and immediately afterward

Lieutenant Benjamin and his first sergeant met the same fate. The

riflemen in the arches repelled sallies; but Quitman's position was

precarious, till night terminated the conflict.

Worth meanwhile had advanced in like manner along the San Cosme

causeway, driving the Mexicans from barricade to barricade, till within

two hundred fifty yards of the _garita_ of San Cosme. There he

encountered as severe a fire as that which stopped Quitman. But Scott

had ordered him to take the _garita_, and take it he would. Throwing

Garland's brigade out to the right and Clarke's to the left, he ordered

them to break into the houses, burst through the walls, and bore their

way to the flanks of the _garita_. The plan had succeeded perfectly at

Monterey, nor did it fail here. Slowly but surely the sappers passed

from house to house, until at sunset they reached the point desired.

Then Worth ordered the attack. Lieutenant Hunt brought up a light gun at

a gallop, and fired it through the embrasure of the enemy's battery,

almost muzzle to muzzle; the infantry at the same moment opened a most

deadly and unexpected fire from the roofs of the houses, and M'Kenzie,

at the head of the stormers, dashed at the battery and carried it almost

without loss. The Mexicans fled precipitately into the city.

At one that night two parties left the citadel and issued forth from the

city. One was the remnant of the Mexican army, which slunk silently and

noiselessly through the northern gate, and fled to Guadalupe-Hidalgo;

the other was a body of officers who came under a white flag, to propose

terms of capitulation.

The sun shone brightly on the morning of September 14th. Scores of

neutral flags float from the windows on the Calle de Plateros, and in

their shade beautiful women gaze curiously on the scene beneath. Gayly

dressed groups throng the balconies, and at the street-corners

dark-faced men scowl, mutter deep curses, and clutch their knives. The

street resounds with the heavy tramp of infantry, the rattle of

gun-carriages, and the clatter of horses' hoofs. "_Los Yanquies_!" is

the cry, and every neck is stretched to obtain a glimpse of the six

thousand bemired and begrimed soldiers who are marching proudly to the

Grand Plaza. On him especially is every eye intently fixed, whose

martial form is half concealed by a splendid staff and a squadron of

dragoons, as he rides, with flashing eye and beating heart, to the

National Palace of Mexico. But six months before, Winfield Scott had

landed on the Mexican coast; since then he had stormed the two strongest

places in the country, won four battles in the field against armies

double, treble, and quadruple his own, and marched without reverse from

Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico; losing fewer men, making fewer

mistakes, and creating less devastation, in proportion to his victories,

than any invading general of former times. Well might the Mexicans gaze

upon his face!

(1847) FAMINE IN IRELAND, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy

From the fact that its immediate cause was the almost complete failure

of the potato crop, due to the rot, the great Irish famine is known as

the "potato famine." The crop that suffered so was that of 1845, and the

famine began in the following year and reached its climax in 1847. It is

estimated that by this calamity two hundred thousand persons perished.

Many compensating features in connection with this appalling distress

have been pointed out. Some writers friendly toward Ireland have

declared that the famine proved one of the greatest blessings to the

country; that it hastened free trade, better drainage of the island, and

the passage of the Land Improvement Act; that it relieved the

overcrowded labor market, led to more scientific farming, and in other

ways produced changes that have been of lasting benefit. But though all

this be true, the misfortune itself gave to modern history one of its

most harrowing chapters.

The population of Ireland in 1845 is supposed to have been nearly nine

millions. The manufactures were small, and the people depended on the

potato crop, and had no other resource in time of scarcity. For several

years the potato yield had been abundant, the country was comparatively

prosperous, and the temperance movement led by Father Mathew promised a

happier future. A great harvest was expected in 1845, but almost at a

single stroke this expectation was blasted; for although the crop was

large the greater part of it was destroyed in the ground, and the

potatoes that were gathered "rotted in pit and storehouse." The farmers

taxed all their means and energies to secure even a larger crop in 1846,

but the blight of that year was even more fatal than the last. To

pinching want was added discouragement, and the people sat in the shadow

of a frightful catastrophe. In vain the British Government was called

upon to give relief through Parliament, until, in the autumn of 1846,

parliamentary authority was obtained to grant baronial loans. But these

and every local endeavor to mitigate the suffering failed, and the

destructive work of the famine continued, the number of victims

increasing, to the end of that fatal year. The horrors of 1846 were more

than equalled by those of the year that followed, and the woful picture

presented by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, the distinguished Irish patriot,

statesman, and historian, is but too amply justified by the accepted

records of the time.

The condition of Ireland at the opening of the year 1847 is one of the

most painful chapters in the annals of mankind. An industrious and

hospitable race were in the pangs of a devouring famine. Deaths of

individuals, of husband and wife, of entire families, were becoming

common. The potato-blight had spread from the Atlantic to the Caspian;

but there was more suffering in one parish of Mayo than in all the rest

of Europe. From Connaught, where distress was greatest, came batches of

inquests with the horrible verdict "died of starvation." In some

instances the victims were buried "wrapped in a coarse coverlet," a

coffin being too costly a luxury. The living awaited death with a

listlessness that was at once tragic and revolting. Women with dead

children in their arms were seen begging for a coffin to bury them.

Béranger has touched a thousand hearts by the picture of _Pauvre

Jacques_, who, when the tax-gatherer came in the King's name, was

discovered dead on his miserable pallet. But at Skibbereen, in the

fruitful County Cork whose seaports were thronged with vessels laden

with corn, cattle, and butter for England, the rate collector told a

more tragic tale. Some houses he found deserted; the owners had been

carried to their graves. In one cabin there was no other occupant than

three corpses; in a once prosperous home a woman and her children had

lain dead and unburied for a week; in the fields a man was discovered so

fearfully mangled by dogs that identification was impossible. The relief

committee of the Society of Friends described the state of the town in

language which it was hard to read with dry eyes. The people were dying

of the unaccustomed food which mocked their prayer for daily bread, and

were carried to the graveyard in a coffin from which the benevolent

strangers who had come to their relief had to drop them, like dead dogs,

that there might be a covering for the next corpse in its turn.

"This place is one mass of famine, disease, and death. The poor

creatures, hitherto trying to exist on one meal a day, are now sinking

under fever and bowel complaints, unable to come for their soup, which

is not fit for them. Rice is what their whole cry is for, but we cannot

manage this well, nor can we get the food carried to the houses, from

dread of infection. I have got a coffin constructed with movable sides,

to convey the bodies to the churchyard, in calico bags prepared, in

which the remains are wrapped up. I have just sent it to bring the

remains of a poor creature to the grave, who having been turned out of

the only shelter she had, a miserable hut, perished the night before

last in a quarry."

The people saw the harvest they had reared carried away to another

country without an effort, for the most part, to retain it. The sole

food of the distressed class was Indian-meal, which had paid freight and

storage in England, and had been obtained in exchange for English

manufactures. Under a recent law a peasant who accepted public relief

forfeited his holding, and thousands were ejected under this cruel

provision. But landowners were not content with one process alone; they

closed on the people with ejectments, turned them out on the roads, and

plucked down their rooftrees. In more than one county rents falling due

in November for land that no longer yielded food to the cultivator, were

enforced in January. In the southwest the peasantry had made some

frantic efforts to clutch their harvest and to retaliate for their

sufferings in blind vengeance, but the law carried a sharp sword. Eight

counties, or parts of counties, were proclaimed, and a special

commission, after a brief sitting in Clare and Limerick, left eleven

peasants for the gallows. Chief Justice Blackburn took occasion to note

that "The state of things in 1847 was exactly that described by an act

passed in 1776." The disease was permanent, so were the symptoms. One

well-head of Irish discontent was English prejudice, which refuses to

listen to any complaint till it threatens to become dangerous.

It was a fearful time for men who loved their country, not only with

deep affection, but with a wise and forecasting interest. A revolution

of the worst type was in progress. Not the present alone, but the

future, was being laid waste. The marvellous reform accomplished by

Father Mathew, the self-reliance which had grown up in the era of

monster meetings, and the moral teachings of Davis and his friends were

being fast swallowed up by this calamity. The youth and manhood of the

middle classes were scrambling for pauper places from the Board of

Works, and the peasants were being transformed into mendicants by

process of law. These calamities, related of a distant and savage tribe,

would move a generous heart; but seeing them befall our own people, the

children of the same mother, and foreseeing all the black, unfathomable

misery they foreshadowed, it was hard to preserve the sober rule of

reason.

The gentry, who were responsible in the first place for the protection

of the people from whom they drew their income, insisted that the

calamity was an imperial one and ought to be borne out of the exchequer

of the empire. It was an equitable claim. If there was no irresistible

title of brotherhood, at lowest the stronger nation had snatched away

from the weaker the power of helping itself, and still drew away during

this terrible era half a million pounds every month in the shape of

absentee rents. The demand was put aside contemptuously. The claim of

the Nationalists to reënter on the management of their own affairs,

since it was plain England could not manage them successfully, was

treated as sedition. We were proffered, instead of our own resources,

which were ample--

"Alms from scornful hands, to hands in chains,

Bitterer to taste than death."

All the nations of the earth were appealed to and they gave generously;

but the result was far from being proportionate to the need. During the

year 1846 the contributions fell short of two thousand pounds a week.

And it was not forgotten that after the great fire of London, when the

citizens were in deep distress, the Irish contributed twenty thousand

fat cattle for their relief, which at their present value would amount

to a sum greater than England and Europe sent to the aid of Ireland in

1846.

To lie down and die, like cattle in a murrain, was base. No people are

bound to starve while their soil produces food cultivated by their own

hands. No other people in Europe would have submitted to such a fate.

But the leader whom they were accustomed to follow had involved himself

in a tangle of false doctrines by his unhappy "Peace Resolutions," and

he exhorted them to endure all with patience and submission. His son had

the amazing assurance to add that if they starved with complete

resignation the repeal of the union was near at hand.

On the relief committees, doctors, clergymen, and country gentlemen bore

the burden of the work, but a multitude of the gentry stood apart as if

the transaction did not concern them. They were busy in transferring the

harvest to England or clearing the population off their estates. The

English officials in Ireland accused them of jobbing in public works, or

quartering their relations and dependents on the Relief Fund, as

overseers, and, in some extreme cases, of obtaining grants for their own

families of money designed for the suffering poor on their estates. The

benevolence of the minority could not counterbalance these odious

offences, and deadly hatred was sown, which has since borne an abundant

harvest.

The state of the country grew worse from day to day. It is difficult now

to realize the condition of the western population in the autumn of

1847; but a witness of unexceptionable impartiality has painted it in

permanent colors. A young Englishman representing the Society of

Friends, who in that tragic time did work worthy of the Good Samaritan,

reported what he saw in Mayo and Galway in language which for plain

vigor rivals the narratives of Defoe. This is what he saw in Westport:

"The town of Westport was in itself a strange and fearful sight, like

what we read of in beleaguered cities; its streets crowded with gaunt

wanderers, sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-stricken

look; a mob of starved, almost naked women around the poorhouse

clamoring for soup tickets; our inn, the headquarters of the

road-engineer and pay-clerks, beset by a crowd begging for work."

As he approached Galway, the rural population were found to be in a more

miserable condition: "Some of the women and children that we saw on the

road were abject cases of poverty and almost naked. The few rags they

had on were with the greatest difficulty held together, and in a few

weeks, as they are utterly unable to provide themselves with fresh

clothes unless they be given them, they must become absolutely naked."

And in another district: "As we went along our wonder was not that the

people died, but that they lived; and I have no doubt whatever that in

any other country the mortality would have been far greater; that many

lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to

want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely,

touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his

starving neighbor."

The fishermen of the Cladagh, who were induced to send the Whig

Attorney-General to Parliament a few months before, had to pledge the

implements of their calling for a little daily bread. "Even the very

nets and tackle of these poor fishermen, I heard, were pawned, and,

unless they be assisted to redeem them, they will be unable to take

advantage of the herring shoals, even when they approach their coast. In

order to ascertain the truth of this statement, I went into two or three

of the largest pawnshops, the owners of which fully confirmed it and

said they had in pledge at least a thousand pounds' worth of such

property and saw no likelihood of its being redeemed."

In a rural district which he revisited after an interval, he paints a

scene which can scarcely be matched in the annals of a mediaeval plague:

"One poor woman whose cabin I visited said, 'There will be nothing for

us but to lie down and die.' I tried to give her hope of English aid,

but alas! her prophecy has been too true. Out of a population of two

hundred forty I found thirteen already dead from want. The survivors

were like walking skeletons; the men gaunt and haggard, stamped with the

livid mark of hunger; the children crying with pain; the women in some

of the cabins too weak to stand. When there before I had seen cows at

almost every cabin, and there were besides many sheep and pigs owned in

the village. But now all the sheep were gone, all the cows, all the

poultry killed, only one pig left; the very dogs which had barked at me

before had disappeared; no potatoes; no oats."

The young man pointed the moral, which these horrible spectacles

suggested, with laudable courage: "I would not now discuss the causes of

this condition, nor attempt to apportion blame to its authors; but of

this one fact there can be no question: that the result of our social

system is that vast numbers of our fellow-countrymen--of the peasantry

of one of the richest nations the world ever knew--have not leave to

live. Surely such a social result as this is not only a national

misfortune but a national sin crying loudly to every Christian citizen

to do his utmost to remove it. No one of us can have a right to enjoy

either riches or repose until to the extent of his ability he strive to

wash himself of all share in the guilt of this fearful inequality, which

will be a blot in the history of our country and make her a byword among

the nations."

The weekly returns of the dead were like the bulletins of a fierce

campaign. As the end of the year approached, villages and rural

districts, which had been prosperous and populous a year before, were

desolate. In some places the loss amounted to half the resident

population. Even the poorhouses shut up, and paupers did not escape.

More than one in six perished of the unaccustomed food. The people did

not everywhere consent to die patiently. In Armagh and Down groups of

men went from house to house in the rural districts and insisted on

being fed. In Tipperary and Waterford corn stores and bakers' shops were

sacked. In Donegal the people seized upon a flour-mill and pillaged it.

In Limerick five thousand men assembled on Tory Hill and declared that

they would not starve. A local clergyman restrained them by the promise

of speedy relief. "If the Government did not act promptly, he himself

would show them where food could be had." In a few cases crops were

carried away from farms.

The offences which spring from suffering and fear were heard of in many

districts, but they were encountered with instant resistance. There were

thirty thousand men in red jackets, carefully fed, clothed, and lodged,

ready to maintain the law. Four prisoners were convicted at the Galway

assizes of stealing a filly, which they killed and ate to preserve their

own lives. In Enniskillen two boys under twelve years of age were

convicted of stealing one pint of Indian-meal cooked into "stirabout,"

and Chief Justice Blackburn vindicated the outraged law by transporting

them for seven years. Other children committed larcenies that they might

be sent to jail where there was still daily bread to be had. In Mayo the

people were eating carrion wherever it could be procured, and the

coroner could not keep pace with the inquests; for the law sometimes

spent more to ascertain the cause of a pauper's death than would suffice

to preserve his life.

The social disorganization was a spectacle as afflicting as the waste of

life; it was the waste of whatever makes life worth possessing. All the

institutions which civilize and elevate the people were disappearing,

one after another. The churches were half empty; the temperance

reading-rooms were shut up; the Mechanics' Institute no longer got

support; only the jails and the poorhouses were crowded. A new

generation, born in disease and reared in destitution, pitiless and

imbecile, threatened to drag down the nation to hopeless slavery. Trade

was paralyzed; no one bought anything which was not indispensable at the

hour. The loss of the farmers in potatoes was estimated at more than

twenty millions sterling; and with the potatoes the pigs, which fed on

them, disappeared. The seed, procured at a high price in spring, again

failed; time, money, and labor were lost, and another year of famine was

certain. All who depended on the farmer had sunk with him; shopkeepers

were beggared; tradesmen were starving; the priests living on voluntary

offerings were sometimes in fearful distress when the people had no

longer anything to offer.

The poor-rate was quite inadequate to support the burden thrown upon it

by the suspension of public works, but there was another claim upon it

which could not wait. When the elections were over and the Government

majority secure, the Treasury called on the poor-law guardians to levy

immediately a special rate for the repayment of a million and a quarter

lent by the State in a previous year. They were warned that, if they

refused, their boards would be dissolved and the rates levied by the

authority of the Commissioners. The guardians in many districts declared

that an additional rate could not be collected. All that could be got

would be too little to support the distressed class. But the Treasury

would listen to no excuse, and a dozen boards were dissolved and paid

guardians put in their place. The Treasury had lent seven millions

sterling in 1846; five millions of it had been spent in making roads

which were not needed nor desired, and one million was diverted from the

wages fund to purchase land for this experiment. The aid which the

stronger country proposed to give to the weaker, from the Treasury to

which both contributed, was the remission of one-third of this debt. A

blunder in foreign policy, the escapade of an ambitious minister in

India or Africa, has cost the British taxpayer more in a month than he

spent to save millions of fellow-subjects beyond the Irish Sea.

When the increased mortality was pressed on the attention of the

Government, Lord John Russell replied that the owners of property in

Ireland ought to support the poor born on their estates. It was a

perfectly just proposition if the ratepayers were empowered to determine

the object and method of the expenditure; but prohibiting productive

work, and forcing them to turn strong men into paupers and keep them

sweltering in workhouses instead of laboring to reclaim the waste

lands--this was not justice. The _Times_, commenting on the new policy,

declared that Ireland was as well able to help herself as France or

Belgium, and that the whole earth was doing duty for inhuman Irish

landlords. An unanswerable case, if Ireland, like France and Belgium,

had the power of collecting and applying her own revenue; otherwise not

difficult to answer.

The people fled before the famine to England, America, and the British

colonies. They carried with them the seed of disease and death. In

England a bishop and more than twenty priests died of typhus, caught in

attendance on the sick and dying. The English people clamored against

such an infliction, which it cannot be denied would be altogether

intolerable if these fugitives were not made exiles and paupers by

English law. They were ordered home again, that they might be supported

on the resources of their own country; for though we had no country for

the purpose of self-government and self-protection, we were acknowledged

to have a country when the necessity of bearing burdens arose.

More than a hundred thousand souls fled to the United States and Canada.

The United States maintained sanitary regulations on shipboard which

were effectual to a certain extent. But the emigration to Canada was

left to the individual greed of shipowners, and the emigrant-ships

rivalled the cabins of Mayo or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen. Crowded

and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were

ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the

holds, says an eyewitness, were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and

deaths occurred in myriads. The survivors, on their arrival in the new

country, continued to die and to scatter death around them.

At Montreal, during nine weeks, eight hundred emigrants perished, and

over nine hundred residents died of diseases caught from emigrants.

During six months the deaths of the new arrivals exceeded three

thousand. No preparations were made by the British Government for the

reception or the employment of these helpless multitudes. The _Times_

pronounced the neglect to be an eternal disgrace to the British name.

Ships carrying German emigrants and English emigrants arrived in Canada

at the same time in a perfectly healthy state. The Chief Secretary for

Ireland was able to inform the House of Commons that of a hundred

thousand Irishmen who fled to Canada in a year, six thousand one hundred

perished on the voyage, four thousand one hundred on their arrival, five

thousand two hundred in the hospitals, and one thousand nine hundred in

the towns to which they repaired. The Emigrant Society of Montreal

paints the result during the whole period of the famine in language not

easily to be forgotten:

"From Grosse Island up to Port Sarnia, along the borders of our great

river, on the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, wherever the tide of

immigration has extended are to be found one unbroken chain of graves

where repose fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, in a commingled

heap--no stone marking the spot. Twenty thousand and upward have gone

down to their graves!"

This was the fate which was befalling our race at home and abroad as the

year 1847 closed. There were not many of us who would not have given our

lives cheerfully to arrest this ruin, if we could only see a possible

way--but no way was visible.

(1848) MIGRATIONS OF THE MORMONS, Thomas L. Kane

Among the numerous religious bodies that have grown up in the United

States, the sect of Mormons, officially called "The Church of Jesus

Christ of Latter-day Saints," is perhaps the most unique in its origin

and organization, and the most singular in its history. The sect was

founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, of Vermont. He declared that he had

discovered one of its authoritative writings, the _Book of Mormon_, at

Cumorah, New York. This book, he said, was found by him buried in the

earth at a place revealed to him by an angel. According to the Mormons,

the book, written in mystic characters on golden plates, is a record of

certain ancient people---"the long-lost tribes of Israel," Smith

declared--inhabiting North America. This book is said to have been

abridged by the prophet Mormon, and translated by Smith. By anti-Mormons

it is supposed to be based on a manuscript romance written by Solomon

Spaulding.

The Mormon Church is governed by a hierarchy with two orders of

priesthood, a president, two counsellors, twelve apostles, and elders

and other officers. Peculiar as their polity appears, it has proved

remarkably successful in the development of their church and community,

notwithstanding stern hostility and widespread disapproval. They present

an impressive example of shrewdness, thrift, and administrative skill,

resulting in great material prosperity. Besides their separate books,

they accept the Bible as authoritative, and many of their doctrines and

rites resemble those common to the Christian sects. More than anything

else, their teaching and their practice of polygamy have brought them

into collision with "Gentiles" and with the United States Government.

The first Mormon settlement was at Kirtland, Ohio, the next was in

Missouri. From those States they were expelled, and in 1840 they founded

Nauvoo in Illinois. Their later experience, up to their permanent

establishment in Utah, is recounted in the following narrative of the

hardships endured and surmounted by this extraordinary people. But it

should be added that the cause of the exodus was not, as is generally

supposed, religious persecution. The leaders of the sect at Nauvoo had

set up a bank without capital and passed thousands of its worthless

notes upon the unsuspecting farmers and traders; and it was this and

other crimes that exasperated the inhabitants of that region to the

point of driving away the whole community of Mormons.

Once, while ascending the upper Mississippi in the autumn, when its

waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of

the rapids. My road lay through the "Half-Breed Tract," a fine section

of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land titles had appropriated

as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had left

my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Fall, to hire a carriage,

and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming

flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the

deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere

sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers, and a country marred, without being

improved, by their careless hands.

I was descending the last hillside upon my journey, when a landscape in

delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the

river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its

bright new dwellings set in cool green gardens ranging up around a

stately dome-shaped hill which was crowned by a noble marble edifice

whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city

appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background,

spread a fair rolling country, checkered by symmetrical lines of

fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable evidences of industry, enterprise,

and educated wealth, everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most

striking beauty.

It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a

skiff and rowing across the river landed at the principal wharf of the

city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one: I heard no

movement: though the stillness everywhere was such that I heard the

flies buzz, and the ripples break against the shallows of the beach. I

walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under

some deadening spell of loneliness from which I almost feared to wake

it. Plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing in the

paved ways and rain had not washed away the prints of footsteps in the

dust. Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty ropewalks,

workshops, and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had

gone from his workbench and left his sash and casing unfinished. Fresh

bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood

piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his

coal-heap and ladling-pool and crooked water-horn were all there, as if

he had just gone off for a holiday. No workpeople, anywhere, looked to

know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket latch

loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers,

and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain;

or, knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and

sunflowers, hunting among the beds for cucumbers and love-apples--no one

called out to me from any opened window; no dog sprang forward to bark

an alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in the houses, but the

doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered, I found dead

ashes cold upon the hearth, and had to tread on tiptoe, as if walking

down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes

from the naked floors.

On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard. But there was no

record of plague there, nor did it in any wise differ much from other

Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded;

some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black

inscriptions glossy in the hardly dried lettering-ink. Beyond the

graveyard, out in the fields, I saw, in one spot hard by where the

fruited boughs of a young orchard had been torn down, the still

smoldering embers of a barbecue fire that had been constructed of rails

from the fencing around it. It was the latest sign of life there. Fields

upon fields of heavy-headed grain lay rotting ungathered upon the

ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the

eye could reach, they stretched away--they, sleeping too in the hazy air

of autumn.

Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this

mysterious solitude. In the southern suburb the houses looking out upon

the country showed, by their splintered woodwork and walls battered to

the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive

cannonade. And in and around the splendid temple, which had been the

chief object of my admiration, armed men were barracked, surrounded by

their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged

me to render an account of myself, and to tell the reason why I had had

the temerity to cross the water without a written permit from a leader

of their band.

Though these men were generally more or less under the influence of

ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger they

seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told me the story of the

"dead city": that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial

mart, sheltering over twenty thousand persons; that they had waged war

with its inhabitants for several years, and had been finally successful

only a few days before my visit, in an action fought in the ruined

suburb; after which, they had driven them forth at the point of the

sword. The defence, they said, had been obstinate, but gave way on the

third day's bombardment.

They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the

curious temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were

accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They

particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building, which,

having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, they

had as matter of duty sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites

of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed, and various

sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well constructed, they

believed, with a dreadful design. Besides these, they led me to see a

large and deeply chiselled marble vase, or basin, supported upon twelve

oxen, also of marble and of life size, and of which they told some

romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were

emigrants from a great distance, believed their deity countenanced their

reception here of a baptism of regeneration as proxies for whomsoever

they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come:

that here parents "went into the water" for their lost children,

children for their parents, widows for their spouses, and young persons

for their lovers: that thus the great vase came to be associated with

all their most cherished memories, and was therefore the chief object of

all others in the building, upon which they bestowed the greatest degree

of their idolatrous affection. On this account, the victors had so

diligently desecrated it as to render the apartment in which it was

contained too noisome to abide in.

They permitted me also to ascend into the steeple to see where it had

been struck by lightning on the Sabbath before; and to look out, east

and south, on wasted farms--like those I had seen near the

city--extending till they were lost in the distance. Close to the scar

left by the thunderbolt were fragments of food, cruses of liquor and

broken drinking-vessels, with a bass-drum and a steamboat signal-bell,

of which, with pain, I learned the use.

It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return.

The wind had freshened since sunset and, the water beating roughly into

my little boat, I headed higher up the stream than the point I had left

in the morning, and landed where a faint glimmering light invited me to

steer. Among the rushes--sheltered only by the darkness, without roof

between them and the sky--I came upon a crowd of several hundred human

creatures whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber.

Dreadful indeed was the suffering of these forsaken beings. Cowed and

cramped by cold and sunburn alternating as each weary day and night

dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of

disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor

poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not minister to the

needs of their sick; they had no bread to quiet the fractious, hungry

cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents,

all alike were clothed in tatters, lacking even sufficient covering for

the fever-stricken sufferers.

These were the Mormons, famishing, in Lee County, Iowa, in the fourth

week of the month of September, 1846. The deserted city was Nauvoo,

Illinois. The Mormons were the owners of that city and the smiling

country around it. And those who had stopped their ploughs, who had

silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles and the wheels of

their workshops; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their

food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of

acres of unharvested grain--these were the keepers of their dwellings,

the carousers in their temple, the noise of whose drunken rioting

insulted the ears of the dying.

They were, all told, not more than six hundred forty persons who were

thus lying on the river-flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its

environs had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand.

Where were they? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful trains

their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western

horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was

known of them; and people asked with curiosity, "What had been their

fate--what their fortunes?"

The party encountered by me at the river shore were the last of the

Mormons that left the city. They had all of them engaged the year before

that they would vacate their homes and seek some other place of refuge.

It had been the condition of a truce between them and their assailants;

and, as an earnest of their good faith, the chief elders, and some

others of obnoxious standing, with their families, were to set out for

the West in the spring of 1846. It had been stipulated in return that

the rest of the Mormons might remain behind, in the peaceful enjoyment

of their Illinois abode, until their leaders, with their exploring

party, could, with all diligence, select for them a new place of

settlement beyond the Rocky Mountains, in California, or elsewhere, and

until they had opportunity to dispose to the best advantage of the

property which they were then to leave.

Some renewed symptoms of hostile feeling had however determined the

pioneer party to begin their work before the spring. It was of course

anticipated that this would be a perilous service; but it was regarded

as a matter of self-denying duty. The ardor and emulation of many,

particularly the devout and the young, were stimulated by the

difficulties it involved; and the ranks of the party were therefore

filled up with volunteers from among the most effective and responsible

members of the sect. They began their march in midwinter; and by the

beginning of February nearly all of them were on the road, many of their

wagons having crossed the Mississippi on the ice.

Under the most favoring circumstances, an expedition of this sort,

undertaken at such a season of the year, could scarcely fail to be

disastrous. But the pioneer company had to set out in haste, and were

very imperfectly supplied with necessaries. The cold was intense. They

moved in the teeth of keen-edged northwest winds, such as sweep down the

Iowa peninsula from the icebound regions of the timber-shaded Slave Lake

and Lake of the Woods. Along the scattered watercourses, where they

broke the thick ice to give their cattle drink, the annual autumn fires

had left but little firewood. To men, insufficiently furnished with

tents and other appliances of shelter, wood was almost a necessary of

life. After days of fatigue their nights were often passed in restless

efforts to prevent themselves from freezing. Their stock of food also

proved inadequate; and as their constitutions became more debilitated

their suffering from cold increased. Afflicted with catarrhal

affections, manacled by the fetters of dreadfully acute rheumatism, some

contrived for a while to get over the shortening day's march and drag

along some others. But the sign of an impaired circulation soon began to

show itself in the liability of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The

hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time

the strength of their draught animals began to fail. The small supply of

provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached

prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment; and they could only keep

them from starving by seeking for the "browse," as it is called, this

being the green bark and tender buds and branches of the cottonwood and

other stunted growths in the hollows.

To return to Nauvoo was apparently the only escape; but this would have

been to give occasion for fresh mistrust and so to bring new trouble to

those they had left there behind them. They resolved at least to hold

their ground, and to advance as they might, were it only by limping

through the deep snows a few slow miles a day. They found a sort of

comfort in comparing themselves to the exiles of Siberia, and sought

consolation in earnest prayers for the spring.

The spring came at last. It overtook them in the Sac and Fox country,

still on the naked prairie, not yet half way over the trail they were

following between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. But it brought

its own share of troubles with it. The months with which it opened

proved nearly as trying as the worst of winter.

The snow and sleet and rain which fell, as it appeared to them, without

intermission, made the road over the rich prairie soil as impassable as

one vast bog of heavy black mud. Sometimes they would fasten the horses

and oxen of four or five wagons to one, and attempt to get ahead in this

way, taking turns; but at the close of a day of hard toil for themselves

and their cattle, they would find themselves a quarter or a half a mile

from the place they left in the morning. The heavy rains raised all the

watercourses; the most trifling streams were impassable. Wood, fit for

bridging, was often not to be had, and in such cases the only resource

was to halt for the freshets to subside--a matter in the case of the

headwaters of the Chariton, for instance, of over three weeks' delay.

These were dreary waitings upon Providence. The most spirited and sturdy

murmured most at their forced inactivity. And even the women, whose

heroic spirits had been proof against the severest cold, confessed their

tempers fluctuated with the ceaseless variations of the barometer. They

complained too that the health of their children suffered more. It was

the fact that the damp winds of March and April brought with them more

mortal sickness than the sharpest freezing weather.

The frequent burials discouraged and depressed the hardiest spirits; but

the general hopefulness of human nature was well illustrated by the fact

that even the most provident were found unfurnished with burial

necessaries, and as a result they were often driven to the most

melancholy makeshifts.

The usual expedient adopted was to cut a log of some eight or nine feet

long, and slitting the bark longitudinally, strip it off in two

half-cylinders. These, placed around the body of the deceased and bound

firmly together with withs made of alburnum, formed a rough sort of

tubular coffin, which surviving relatives and friends, with a little

show of black crape, could follow to the hole or bit of ditch dug to

receive it in the wet ground of the prairie. The name of the deceased,

his age, the date of his death, and the surrounding landmarks were all

registered with care. His party was then ready to move on. Such graves

mark all the line of the first years of Mormon travel--dispiriting

milestones to failing stragglers in the rear.

The hardships and trials which they had suffered developed a spirit of

self-sacrifice among these indomitable people. Hale young men gave up

their own food and shelter to the old and helpless, and worked their way

back to parts of the frontier States, chiefly Missouri and Iowa where

they were not recognized, and hired themselves out for wages, to

purchase more. Others were sent there to exchange for meal and flour, or

wheat and corn, the table-and bed-furniture and other remaining articles

of personal property which a few had still retained.

In a kindred spirit of fraternity, others laid out great farms in the

wilds and planted the grain saved for their own bread; that there might

be harvests for those who should follow them. Two of these, in the Sac

and Fox country and beyond it, Garden Grove and Mount Pisgah, included

within their fences about two miles of land each, carefully planted with

grain, with a hamlet of comfortable log cabins in the neighborhood of

each.

Through all this the pioneers found comfort in the thought that their

own suffering was the price of immunity from similar hardships their

friends at home, in following their trail, would otherwise have had to

pay. But the arrival of spring proved this a delusion. Before the warm

weather had made the earth dry enough for easy travel, messengers came

in from Nauvoo to overtake the party with fear-exaggerated tales of

outrage, and to urge the chief men to hurry back to the city that they

might give counsel and assistance there. The enemy had only waited until

the emigrants were supposed to be gone on their road too far to return

to interfere with them, and then renewed their aggressions.

The Mormons outside Nauvoo were indeed hard pressed, but inside the city

they maintained themselves very well for two or three months longer.

Strange to say, the chief part of this respite was devoted to completing

the structure of their quaintly devised but beautiful temple. Since the

dispersion of Jewry, probably, history affords us no parallel to the

attachment of the Mormons for this edifice. Every architectural element,

every most fantastic emblem it embodied, was associated, for them, with

some cherished feature of their religion. Its erection had been enjoined

upon them as a most sacred duty: they were proud of the honor it

conferred upon their city, when it grew up in its splendor to become the

chief object of the admiration of strangers upon the upper Mississippi.

Besides, they had built it as a labor of love; they could count up to

half a million the value of their tithings and freewill offerings laid

upon it. Hardly a Mormon woman had not given up to it some trinket or

pin-money; the poorest Mormon man had at least served the tenth part of

his year on its walls; and the coarsest artisan could turn to it with

something of the ennobling attachment an artist has for his own

creation.

Therefore, though their enemies drove on them ruthlessly, they succeeded

in parrying the last sword-thrust, till they had completed even the

gilding of the angel and trumpet on the summit of its lofty spire. As a

closing work, they placed on the entablature of the front, like a

baptismal mark on the forehead, these words: