THE THREE HUNDRED WHO SAVED AN ARMY
Twenty-three hundred and fifty years ago, three hundred men beat back
an army of three millions of the Great King, as the King of Persia was
rightly called. The kingdom of Xerxes, who then ruled over Persia,
stretched from India to the Ægean Sea and from the Caspian to the Red
Sea. He reigned over Chaldean, Jew, Phoenician, Egyptian, Arab,
Ethiopian and half a hundred other nations. From these he assembled an
army, the greatest that has ever gone to war. This mass of men from all
over the Eastern world he hurled at the tiny free states in Greece. It
was as if the Czar of all the Russias with his vast armies from Europe
and Asia should suddenly attack the state of Connecticut.
Greece's best defense was the ring of rugged mountains which surrounded
its seacoast. The Persian army had gathered at Sardis. From there to
gain entrance into Greece they must follow a narrow path close to the
seashore with a precipice on one side and impassable morasses and
quicksands on the other. Beyond this the way widened out into a little
plain and narrowed again at the other end. It was an ideal place to be
held by a small army of brave men. A Council of all the states of
Greece was held at the Isthmus of Corinth. There all the states except
one resolved to fight to the death for their freedom. Thessaly alone,
which lay first in the path of the Great King, sent earth and water to
his envoys who had come to all the states in Greece to demand
submission. The Council sent to guard this pass, which was named
Thermopylæ, a little army of four thousand men. It was commanded by
Leonidas, one of the two kings of Sparta, who led a little band of
three hundred Spartans who had sworn never to retreat. Before they left
Sparta, each man celebrated his own funeral rites. This little army
built a wall across the pass and camped there waiting for the enemy.
Before long they were seen coming, covering the whole country with army
after army until the plain below the pass was filled as far as the eye
could see with hordes of marching, shouting warriors. High on the
mountainside a throne had been built for Xerxes where he could see and
watch his armies sweep through the little force which stood in their
way. His great nobles waited for the chance to display before him their
leadership and the splendid equipment and discipline of the armies
which they led. The first attack was made by an army of the Persians
and Medes themselves, supported by archers and slingers and flanked
with cohorts of magnificently appareled horsemen mounted on Arab
steeds. With a wild crash of barbaric music they rushed to the charge
expecting by mere weight of numbers to break through the thin line of
men who manned the little wall across the path, but the slave regiments
of the Persians were made up of men who were trained under the lash.
They were officered by great nobles who had led self-indulgent lives of
luxury and pleasure. Against them was a band of free men, every one an
athlete and able to use weapons which the lighter and weaker Persians
could not withstand. The onslaught broke on the spears and long swords
of the Spartan warriors and in a minute there was a huddle of beaten,
screaming men and plunging horses and demoralized officers. Into the
broken and defeated ranks plunged the Greeks and drove them far down
the plain, returning in safety to their ramparts with the loss of
hardly a man. Again and again this happened and regiment after regiment
from the inexhaustible forces of the Persians were hurled against the
wall only to be dashed backward and driven defeated down the plain by
the impenetrable line of heavy-armed Greeks. Three times did Xerxes the
Great King leap from his throne in rage and despair as he saw his best
troops slaughtered and defeated by this tiny band of fighters. For two
days this went on until the plain in front of the wall was covered with
dead and dying Persians and mercenaries while the Greeks had hardly any
losses.
Baffled and dispirited Xerxes was actually on the point of leading back
his great army when a traitor, for a great sum of gold, betrayed a
secret path up the mountainside. It was none other than the bottom of a
mountain torrent through the shallow water of which men could wade and
find a way which would lead them safely around to the rear of the
Grecian army. On the early morning of the third day word was brought to
Leonidas that the enemy had gained the heights above and that by noon
they would leave the plain and entirely encircle the little Grecian
army. A hasty council of war was called. All of the allied forces
except the Spartans agreed that the position could not be held further
and advised an honorable retreat. The Spartan band alone refused to go,
although Leonidas tried to save two of his kinsmen by giving them
letters and messages to Sparta. One of them answered that he had come
to fight and not to carry letters and the other that his deeds would
tell all that Sparta needed to know. Another one named Dienices, when
told that the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows
darkened the sun, replied, "So much the better, for we shall fight in
the shade."
The little band took a farewell of their comrades and watched them
march away and then without waiting to be attacked, this tiny body of
three hundred men marched out from behind their ramparts and attacked a
force nearly ten thousand times their own number. Right through the
slave-ranks they broke and fought their way to a little hillock where
back to back they defended themselves against the whole vast army of
the Persians. Again and again waves of men dashed up from all sides
against this little hill, but only to fall back leaving their dead
behind. At last the spears of the Spartans broke and they fought until
their swords were dulled and dashed out of their hands. Then they
fought on with their daggers, with their hands and their teeth until
not one living man was left, but only a mound of slain, bristled over
with arrows and surrounded by ring after ring of dead Persians, Medes,
Arabs, Ethiopians and the other mercenaries which had been dashed
against them. So died Leonidas and his band of heroes. Nearly ten
thousand of the Persian army lay dead around them during the three days
of hand-to-hand fighting. By their death they had gained time for the
armies of the Grecian states to organize and, best of all, they had
taught Persian and Greek alike that brave men cannot be beaten down by
mere numbers.
Leonidas and his band are drifting dust. The stone lion and the pillar
with the names of those that died that marked the battle-mound have
crumbled and passed away long centuries ago. Even the blood-stained
Pass itself has gone and the sea has drawn back many miles and there is
no longer the morass, the path or the precipice.
After the passage of more than twoscore centuries in a new world of
which Leonidas never dreamed, in another great war between freedom and
slavery, this same great deed was wrought again by another three
hundred men who laid down their lives to hold back an enemy and dying
saved an army and perhaps a nation. Their story might almost be the
old, old hero story of the lost Spartan band.
The great Civil War was in its third year. Disaster after disaster had
overtaken the Union armies. English writers were already chronicling
The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. It was a time of
darkness and peril. The great leaders who were afterward to win great
victories had not yet arrived. Under McClellan nothing had been
accomplished. At the first trial Burnside failed at the terrible battle
of Fredericksburg where nearly thirteen thousand Union soldiers--the
flower of the army--died for naught. There was another shift and
"Fighting Joe Hooker" took command of the Army of the Potomac. Through
continuous defeats, the great army had become disheartened and the men
were sullen and discouraged. It was a time of shameful desertions. The
express trains to the army were filled with packages of citizens'
clothes which parents and wives and brothers and sisters were sending
to their kindred to help them desert from the army. Hooker changed all
this. He was brave, energetic and full of life and before long the
soldiers were again ready and anxious to fight. Unfortunately, their
general, in spite of his many good qualities, did not have those which
would make him the leader of a successful army. He was vain, boastful
and easily overcome and confused by any unexpected check or defeat.
Encamped on the Rappahannock River he had one hundred and thirty
thousand men against the sixty thousand of the Confederate forces on
the other side. These sixty thousand, however, included Robert E. Lee,
the great son of a great father, as their general. "Light-Horse Harry
Lee," his father, had been one of the great cavalry commanders of the
Revolution and one of Washington's most trusted generals. With Robert
E. Lee was Stonewall Jackson, the great flanker who has never been
equaled in daring, rapid, decisive, brilliant flanking, turning
movements which so often are what decide great battles. Hooker decided
to fight. By the night of April 30, 1863, no less than four army corps
crossed the river in safety and were assembled at the little village of
Chancellorsville under his command. His confidence was shown in the
boastful order which he issued just before the battle.
"The operations of the last three days," he declared, "have determined
that our enemy must either ingloriously fly or come out from behind his
defenses and give us battle on our own ground where certain destruction
awaits him."
Well might it have been said to him as to another boaster in the days
of old, "Let not him that girdeth on his armor boast as him that taketh
it off."
The morning of the battle came and Hooker said to his generals that he
had the Confederates where God Almighty Himself could not save them. At
first Lee retreated before his advance, but when he had reached a
favorable position, suddenly turned and drove back the Union forces
with such energy that Hooker lost heart and ordered his men to fall
back to a better position. This was done against the protests of all of
his division commanders who felt as did Meade, afterward the hero of
Gettysburg, who exclaimed to General Hooker, "If we can't hold the top
of a hill, we certainly can't hold the bottom of it."
[Illustration: In the Woods Near Chancellorsville]
Hooker took a position in the Wilderness, a tangled forest mixed with
impenetrable thickets of dwarf oak and underbrush. Here he hoped that
Lee would make a direct attack, but this pause gave the great
Confederate general the one chance which he wanted. All that night
Jackson with thirty thousand men marched half-way round the Union Army.
Again and again word was sent to Hooker that the Confederate forces
were marching toward his flank, but he could see in the movement
nothing but a retreat and sent word that they were withdrawing so as to
save their baggage trains. At three o'clock the next afternoon Jackson
was at last in position. In front of Hooker's army lay the main forces
of Lee. Half-way to the rear of his forces were Jackson's magnificent
veterans. The first warning of the fatal attack which nearly caused the
loss of the great Union Army of the Potomac came from the wild rush of
deer and rabbits which had been driven from their lairs by the quick
march of the Confederate soldiers through the forest. Following the
charge of the frightened animals came the tremendous attack of
Jackson's infantry, the toughest, hardiest, bravest, best-trained
troops in the Confederate Army. The Union soldiers fought well, but
they were new troops taken by surprise and as soon as the roar of the
volleys of the attacking Confederates sounded from the rear, Lee
advanced, with every man in his army and smashed into Hooker's front.
The surprise and the shock of possible defeat instead of expected
victory was too much for a man of Hooker's temperament. At the time
when he most needed a clear mind and unflinching nerve, he fell into a
state of almost complete nervous collapse. The battle was practically
fought without a leader, every corps commander did the best he could,
but in a short time the converging attacks of the two great Confederate
leaders cut the army in two and defeat was certain. At this time came
the greatest loss which the Confederate Army had received up to that
day. Stonewall Jackson's men had charged through the forest and cut
deeply into the flank of the Union Army. After their charge the
Confederate front was in confusion owing to the thick and tangled woods
in which they fought. Jackson had ridden forward beyond his troops in
order to reform them. The fleeing Union soldiers rallied for a minute
and fired a volley at the little party which Jackson was leading. He
turned back to rejoin his own troops and in the darkness and confusion
he and his men were mistaken for Union cavalry and received a volley
from their own forces which dashed Jackson out of his saddle with a
wound in his left arm which afterward turned out to be mortal. At that
time General Lee sent his celebrated message to Jackson, "You are
luckier than I for your left arm only is wounded, but when you were
disabled, I lost my right arm."
In a short time the whole Union Army was nothing but a disorganized
mass of men, horses, ambulance-wagons, artillery and commissary trains,
all striving desperately to cross the Rappahannock before the pursuing
Confederates could turn the retreat into a massacre. Unless the
Confederate pursuit could be held back long enough to let the men cross
the river and reform on the opposite bank, the whole army was lost.
History is full of the terrible disasters which overtake an army which
is caught by the enemy while in the confusion of crossing a river.
General Pleasonton of Pennsylvania was in command of the rear of the
Federal retreat. He was striving desperately to mount his guns so as to
sweep the only road which led to the river and hold back the
Confederate forces long enough to let his men cross. Already the van of
the Union Army had reached the ford when far down the road appeared the
whole corps of Stonewall Jackson, maddened by the loss of their great
leader. Every man that Pleasonton had was working desperately to get
the guns into position, but it was evident that they would be captured
and their pursuers would sweep into the huddle which was crossing the
river unless something could be done to hold them back. As the general
looked silently down the road, he saw near to him Major Keenan of the
Pennsylvania cavalry. Keenan had been a porter in a Philadelphia store,
but his rare faculty for handling men and horses had made him one of
the most efficient cavalry officers of any Pennsylvania regiment. The
three companies which were with him were all the cavalry that
Pleasonton had. They were bringing up the rear of the retreat like a
pack of wolves who, though driven back from their prey, move off
sullenly only waiting for the signal from their leader to turn again
and fight. General Pleasonton had rallied his gunners and they would
stand if only they had a chance. There was no hope of bringing any
order into the mass of broken, terrified infantry rushing on toward the
river.
"Major Keenan," shouted General Pleasonton, "how many men have you
got?"
"Three hundred, General," replied Keenan, quietly.
"Major," said the general, low and earnestly, riding up to him, "we
must have ten minutes to save the Army of the Potomac. Charge the
Confederate advance and hold them!"
Keenan never hesitated. When the Six Hundred charged at Balaclava, some
of them came back from the bite of the Russian sabres and the roar of
the Muscovite guns. When Pickett made that desperate, fatal charge at
Gettysburg, there was still a chance to retreat, but Major Keenan knew
that when three hundred cavalry met the fixed bayonets of thirty
thousand infantry on a narrow road, not one would ever return. It was
not a splendid charge which might mean laurels of victory, but a
hopeless going to death, the buying of ten minutes of time with the
lives of three hundred men, yet neither Keenan nor his men questioned
the price nor flinched at the order.
The sunlight of the last day he was to see on earth caught the gleam of
his uplifted sabre as he gave the quick, sharp command to charge. He
flung his cap into the bushes, bent his head and rode bareheaded in
front of his flying column and then like an avalanche, like a hurricane
of horse, he and his three hundred men thundered down the narrow road.
Just around the curve, with a crash that broke the necks of a score of
the leading horses, this charging column hurled themselves against the
astonished, packed ranks of infantry rushing on with fixed bayonets.
For five, for ten, for fifteen minutes horses rose and fell to the
clashing of dripping sabres and the bark of revolvers thrust into the
faces of the oncoming foemen. For fifteen long minutes there was a
swirl and a flurry which held back the head of the charging forces and
then shattered by volley after volley of musketry and pierced by
thousands of charging bayonets, horse and men alike went down. Not one
ever came back. Keenan and his Three Hundred had bought the ten minutes
and had thrown in five more for good measure and the price was paid.
The head of the Confederate column reformed, passed over and by the
struggling horses and the silent, mangled men and then again swept on
around the bend and down the road toward the fords crowded with a
hundred thousand helpless, escaping soldiers. General Pleasonton,
however, had made good use of those precious moments. As the
Confederate column came around the curve, they were met by a hell of
grape and canister from the batteries which at last had been mounted in
position. Right into their front roared the guns and the road was a
shamble of writhing, struggling, dying men. No army ever marched that
could stand up against the grim storm of death that swept down that
road and in a moment the Confederate forces broke and rushed back for
shelter. The Army of the Potomac was saved. Bought at a great price, it
was yet to be hammered and forged and welded under a great leader into
the sword which was to save the Union.
"Year after year, the pine cones fall,
And the whippoorwill lisps her spectral call.
They have ceased, but their glory will never cease,
Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace.
The rush of the charge is sounding still,
That saved the Army at Chancellorsville."