All must perish!
The sword cleaveth the helmet;
The strong armor is pierced by the lance;
Fire devoureth the dwelling of princes;
Engines break down the fences of the battle.
All must perish!
The race of Hengist is gone--
The name of Horsa is no more!
Shrink not then from your doom, sons of the sword!
Let your blades drink blood like wine;
Feast ye in the banquet of slaughter,
By the light of the blazing halls!
Strong be your swords while your blood is warm,
And spare neither for pity nor fear,
For vengeance hath but an hour;
Strong hate itself shall expire!
I also must perish!
WALTER SCOTT: _Ivanhoe_.
We will not try to describe the fearful confusion which broke the
already straggling ranks of the rebels, when the fatal defile suddenly
revealed to them all its steep and bristling peaks, all its caverns
peopled with unlooked-for foes. It would be hard to say whether the
prolonged shout, made up of a thousand shrieks, which rose from the
columns of men thus unexpectedly mowed down, was a yell of despair, of
terror, or of rage. The dreadful fire vomited against them from every
side by the now unmasked platoons of the royal troops, grew hotter every
moment; and before another shot from their lines followed Kennybol’s
unfortunate volley, they were wrapped in a stifling cloud of burning
smoke, through which death flew blindly, where each man, shut off from
his friends, could but dimly distinguish the musketeers, lancers, and
dragoons, moving vaguely among the cliffs and upon the edge of the
thickets, like demons in a red-hot furnace.
The insurgents, thus scattered over a distance of a mile, upon a narrow,
winding road, bordered on one side by a deep torrent, on the other by a
rocky wall, which made it impossible for them to turn and fall back,
were like a serpent destroyed by a blow on the back, when he has unwound
all his spirals, and, though cut to pieces, still tries to turn and
coil, striving to unite his separate fragments.
When their first surprise was past, a common despair seemed to animate
all these men, naturally fierce and intrepid. Frantic with rage to be
thus overwhelmed without the possibility of defence, the rebels uttered
a simultaneous shout,--a shout which in an instant drowned the clamor of
their triumphant foes; and when the latter saw these men, without
leaders, in dire disorder, almost destitute of weapons, climbing
perpendicular cliffs, under a terrible fire, clinging with tooth and
nail to the bushes growing on the verge of the precipice, brandishing
hammers and pitchforks, the well-armed troops, well-drilled, securely
posted as they were, although they had not yet lost a single man, could
not resist a moment of involuntary panic.
Several times these barbarians clambered over a bridge of dead bodies,
or upon the shoulders of their comrades planted against the rock like a
living ladder, to the heights held by their assailants; but they had
scarcely cried, “Liberty!” had scarcely lifted their hatchets or their
knotted clubs,--they had scarcely showed their blackened faces, foaming
with convulsive rage, ere they were hurled into the abyss, dragging with
them such of their rash companions as they encountered in their fall,
hanging to some bush or hugging some cliff.
The efforts of these unfortunates to fly and to defend themselves were
fruitless. Every outlet was guarded; every accessible point swarmed with
soldiers. The greater part of the luckless rebels bit the dust,
perishing when they had shattered scythe or cutlass upon some granite
fragment; some, folding their arms, their eyes fixed upon the ground,
sat by the roadside, silently waiting for a ball to hurl them into the
torrent below; those whom Hacket’s forethought had provided with
wretched muskets, fired a few chance shots at the summit of the cliffs
and the mouth of the caves, from which a ceaseless rain of shot fell
upon their heads. A tremendous uproar, in which the furious shouts of
the rebel leaders and the quiet commands of the king’s officers were
plainly distinguishable, was mingled with the intermittent and frequent
din of musketry, while a bloody vapor rose and floated above the scene
of carnage, veiling the face of the mountains in tremulous mists; and
the stream, white with foam, flowed like an enemy between the two bodies
of hostile men, bearing away upon its bosom its prey of corpses.
In the earlier stage of the action, or rather of the slaughter, the
Kiölen mountaineers, under the brave and reckless Kennybol, were the
greatest sufferers. It will be remembered that they formed the
advance-guard of the rebel army, and that they had entered the pine wood
at the head of the pass. The ill-fated Kennybol had no sooner fired his
gun, than the forest, peopled as by magic with hostile sharpshooters,
surrounded them with a ring of fire; while from a level height,
commanded by a number of huge bowlders, an entire battalion of the
Munkholm regiment, formed in a hollow square, battered them unceasingly
with a fearful musketry. In this horrible emergency, Kennybol,
distracted and aghast, gazed at the mysterious giant, his only hope of
safety lying in some superhuman power such as that of Hans of Iceland;
but, alas! the awful demon did not suddenly unfold broad wings and soar
above the combatants, spitting forth fire and brimstone upon the
musketeers; he did not grow and grow until he reached the clouds, and
overthrow a mountain upon the foe, or stamp upon the earth and open a
yawning gulf to swallow up the ambushed army. The dreadful Hans of
Iceland shrank like Kennybol from the first volley of shot, and
approaching him, with troubled countenance asked for a carbine,
because, he said, in a very commonplace tone, at such a time his axe was
quite as useless as any old woman’s spindle.
Kennybol, amazed, but still credulous, offered his own musket to the
giant with a terror which almost made him forget his fear of the balls
showering about him. Still expecting a miracle, he looked to see his
fatal weapon become as big as a cannon in the hands of Hans of Iceland,
or to see it change into a winged dragon darting fire from eyes, mouth,
and nostrils. Nothing of the sort occurred, and the poor hunter’s
astonishment reached its climax when he saw the demon load the gun with
ordinary powder and shot, just as he himself might have done, take aim
like himself, and fire, though with far less skill than he would have
shown. He stared at him in stupid surprise, as this purely mechanical
act was repeated again and again; and convinced at last that all hope of
a miracle must be abandoned, he turned his thoughts to rescuing his
companions and himself from their evil predicament by some human means.
Already his poor old friend Guldon Stayper lay beside him, riddled with
bullets; already his followers, terrified and unable to escape,
surrounded on every hand, huddled together without a thought of defence,
uttering distressing cries. Kennybol saw what an easy target this mass
of men afforded the enemy’s guns, each discharge destroying a score of
the insurgents. He ordered his unfortunate companions to scatter, to
take refuge in the bushes along the road,--much thicker and larger at
this point than anywhere else in Black Pillar Pass,--to hide in the
underbrush, and to reply as best they could to the more and more
murderous fire from the sharpshooters and the Munkholm battalion. The
mountaineers, for the most part well armed, being all hunters, carried
out their leader’s order with a readiness which they might not have
displayed at a less critical moment; for in the face of danger men
usually lose their head, and obey willingly any one who has presence of
mind and self-possession to act for all.
Still, this wise measure was far from insuring victory, or even safety.
More mountaineers lay stretched upon the ground than still lived, and in
spite of the example and encouragement offered them by their leader and
the giant, several of them, leaning on their useless guns or prostrate
with the wounded, obstinately persisted in waiting to be killed without
taking the trouble to kill others in return. It may seem amazing that
these men, in the habit of exposing their life every day in their
expeditions over the glaciers in pursuit of wild beasts, should lose
heart so soon; but let no one forget that in vulgar hearts courage is
purely local. A man may laugh at shot and shell, and shiver in the dark
or on the edge of a precipice; a man may face fierce animals daily, leap
across fearful abysses, and yet run from a volley of artillery.
Fearlessness is often only a habit; and one who has ceased to fear death
under certain forms, dreads it none the less.
Kennybol, surrounded by heaps of dying friends, began himself to
despair, although as yet he had received only a slight scratch on his
left arm, and the diabolical giant still kept up his fire with the most
comforting composure. All at once he saw an extraordinary confusion in
the fatal battalion posted on the heights, which could not be caused by
the slight damage inflicted by the very feeble resistance of his
followers. He heard fearful shrieks of agony, the curses of the dying,
exclamations of terror, rise from the victors.
Soon their fire slackened, the smoke cleared away, and he distinctly saw
huge masses of granite falling upon the Munkholm musketeers from the top
of the high cliff overlooking the level height upon which they were
stationed. These bowlders succeeded one another with awful rapidity;
they crashed one upon the other, and rebounded among the soldiers, who
breaking their lines rushed in dire disorder down the hill, and fled in
every direction.
At this unexpected aid, Kennybol turned; but the giant was still there!
The mountaineer was dumfounded; for he supposed that Hans of Iceland had
at last found his wings and taken his place upon the cliff, from which
he overwhelmed the enemy. He looked up to the spot whence those fearful
masses fell, and saw nothing. He could therefore only suppose that a
party of rebels had succeeded in reaching this dangerous position,
although he saw no glitter of weapons, and heard no shouts of triumph.
However, the fire from the plateau had wholly ceased; the trees hid the
remnant of the royal troops, who were probably rallying their forces at
the foot of the hill. The musketry from the sharpshooters also became
less frequent. Kennybol, like a skilful leader, took advantage of this
unexpected interval; he encouraged his men, and showed them, by the
sombre light which reddened the scene of slaughter, the pile of corpses
heaped upon the height, and the bowlders which still fell at intervals.
Then the mountaineers in their turn answered the enemy’s groans with
shouts of victory. They formed in line, and although still harassed by
sharpshooters scattered among the bushes, they resolved, filled with
fresh courage, to force their way out of this ill-omened defile.
The column thus formed was about to move; Kennybol had already given the
signal with his horn, amid loud cries of “Liberty! liberty! No more
protectorate!” when the notes of trumpet and drum sounding a charge were
heard directly in front of them. Then the rest of the battalion from the
height, strengthened by reinforcements of fresh troops, appeared within
gunshot at a turn in the road, displaying a bristling line of pikes and
bayonets upheld by rank upon rank as far as the eye could reach.
Arriving thus unexpectedly in sight of Kennybol’s division, the troops
halted, and a man, who seemed to be the commanding officer, stepped
forward, waving a white flag and escorted by a trumpeter.
The unforeseen appearance of this troop did not dismay Kennybol. In time
of danger there is a point where surprise and fear become impossible.
At the first sound of trumpet and drum the old fox of Kiölen halted his
men. As the royal troops drew up before him in line of battle, he
ordered every gun to be loaded, and formed his mountaineers in double
ranks, so that they might not offer so broad a mark for the enemy’s
fire. He placed himself at the head, the giant at his side, as in the
heat of action, for he began to feel quite familiar with him, and
observed that his eyes did not flame quite so brightly as a smithy’s
forge, and that his pretended claws were by no means as unlike ordinary
human fingernails as was claimed for them.
When the officer in command of the musketeers stepped forward as if to
surrender, and the sharpshooters ceased firing, although their loud
shouts, ringing out on every hand, declared them still ambushed in the
forests, he suspended his preparations for defence.
Meantime, the officer with the white flag had reached the centre of the
space between the two hostile columns; here he paused, and the trumpeter
accompanying him blew three loud blasts. The officer then cried in a
loud voice, distinctly heard by the mountaineers, in spite of the ever
increasing tumult of the battle raging behind them in the mountain
gorges: “In the king’s name! The king graciously pardons all those
rebels who throw down their arms and surrender their leaders to his
Majesty’s supreme justice!”
The bearer of the flag of truce had scarcely pronounced those words,
when a shot was fired from a neighboring thicket. The officer staggered,
took a few steps forward, raising his flag above his head, and fell,
exclaiming: “Treason!”
No one knew whose hand had fired the fatal shot.
“Treason! Cowardly treason!” repeated the royal troops, with a thrill of
indignation.
And a fearful volley of musketry overwhelmed the mountaineers.
“Treason!” replied the mountaineers in their turn, made furious as they
saw their brothers fall.
And a general discharge answered the unexpected attack from the royal
troops.
“At them, comrades! Death to those vile cowards! Death!” cried the
officers of the musketeers.
And both parties rushed forward with drawn swords, the two contending
columns meeting directly over the body of the unfortunate officer, with
a fearful din of arms.
The broken ranks were soon inextricably confounded. Rebel chiefs, king’s
officers, soldiers, mountaineers, all pell-mell ran their heads
together, seized one another, grappled like two bands of famished tigers
meeting in the desert. Their long pikes, bayonets, and partisans were
now useless; swords and hatchets alone gleamed above their heads, and
many of the combatants, in their hand-to-hand struggle, could use no
other weapon than their dagger or their teeth.
The same rage and fury inspired both mountaineers and musketeers; the
common cry of “Treason! Vengeance!” sprang from every mouth. The fray
had reached a point when every heart was full of brutal ferocity, when
men walked with utter indifference over heaps of wounded and dead, amid
which the dying revive only to make one last attack on him who tramples
them under foot.
At this moment a short man, whom several combatants, amid the smoke and
streaming blood, took for a wild beast, in his dress of skins, flung
himself into the thick of the carnage, with awful laughter and yells of
joy. None knew whence he came, nor upon which side he fought; for his
stone axe did not choose its victims, but smote alike the skull of a
rebel and the head of a musketeer. He seemed, however, to prefer slaying
the Munkholm troops. All gave way before him; he rushed through the fray
like a disembodied spirit; and his bloody axe whirled about him without
a pause, scattering fragments of flesh, lacerated limbs, and shattered
bones on every side.
He shrieked “Vengeance!” as did all the rest, and uttered strange words,
the name of “Gill” recurring frequently. This fearful stranger seemed to
regard the slaughter as a feast.
A mountaineer upon whom his murderous glance fell threw himself at the
feet of the giant in whom Kennybol had placed such vain trust, crying:
“Hans of Iceland, save me!”
“Hans of Iceland!” repeated the little man.
He approached the giant.
“Are you Hans of Iceland?” he asked.
The giant, by way of answer, raised his axe. The small man sprang back,
and the blade, as it fell, was buried in the skull of the wretch who had
implored his aid.
The unknown laughed aloud.
“Ho! ho! by Ingulf! I thought Hans of Iceland was more skilful.”
“It is thus that Hans of Iceland saves those who pray to him for help!”
said the giant.
“You are right.”
The two dreadful champions attacked each other madly. Stone axe and
steel axe met; they clashed so fiercely that both blades flew in
fragments, with a myriad sparks.
Quicker than thought, the little man, finding himself disarmed, seized a
heavy wooden club, dropped by some dying man, and evading the giant, who
stooped to grasp him in his arms, dealt a furious blow with both hands
on the broad brow of his colossal antagonist.
The giant uttered a stifled shriek, and fell. The little man trampled
him under foot in triumph, foaming with joy, and exclaiming, “You bore a
name too heavy for you!” and brandishing his victorious mace, he rushed
in search of fresh victims.
The giant was not dead. The force of the blow had stunned him, and he
dropped senseless, but soon opened his eyes, and gave faint signs of
returning life. A musketeer, seeing him through the uproar, threw
himself upon him, shouting, “Hans of Iceland is taken! Victory!”
“Hans of Iceland is taken!” repeated every voice, whether in tones of
triumph or distress.
The little man had vanished.
For some time the mountaineers had realized that they must perforce
submit to superior numbers; for the Munkholm musketeers had been joined
by the sharpshooters from the forest, and by detachments of lancers and
foot dragoons, who poured in from deep gorges, where the surrender of
many of the rebel leaders had put a stop to slaughter. Brave Kennybol,
wounded early in the fight, was made a prisoner. Hans of Iceland’s
capture deprived the mountaineers of such courage as they still
possessed, and they threw down their arms.
When the first beams of the rising sun gilded the sharp peaks of lofty
glaciers still half submerged in darkness, mournful peace and fearful
silence reigned in Black Pillar Pass, broken only by feeble moans borne
away by the chill breeze.
Black clouds of crows flocked to those fatal gorges from every quarter
of the horizon; and a few poor goat-herds, who passed the cliffs at
twilight, hastened home in terror, declaring that they had seen an
animal with the face of a man in Black Pillar Pass, seated on a heap of
slain, drinking their blood.