SAMUEL MITCHELL AND THE VICTORIA CROSS; OR, THE GATE PA AT TAURANGA.
[Illustration: New Zealand Arms.]
When the intelligence of the Gate Pa disaster reached England from New
Zealand, the news was received with feelings of sorrow and surprise.
The public at home were not prepared to hear of the disaster which
had overtaken our arms in that distant colony. We have been so long
successful by land and by sea, that we have come almost to regard victory
as our right, and when our arms meet with any reverse we are apt to be
unjust, and to ascribe our failure to any but the true cause. Sir Duncan
A. Cameron, the general commanding the forces in New Zealand, has been
most unjustly assailed as the cause of the recent disaster at Tauranga,
and a portion of the English press have been unmeasured in their abuse
of that distinguished officer. He has been charged with incapacity,
mismanagement, and the reckless sacrifice of valuable lives; and while
such charges can have no effect upon those who are on the spot, and have
had frequent opportunities of witnessing his capacity for command, they
have doubtless tended to injure him in the opinion of those who have only
an imperfect knowledge of the circumstances of the case. Though we were
not present at the attack on the Gate Pa, we have derived our information
from some of the principal actors in that unfortunate affair, so that the
following narrative may be safely accepted as a faithful account of what
occurred. We shall confine ourselves to the simple facts of the case, and
leave our readers to draw their own conclusions.
Tauranga is the native name of a district on the east coast of New
Zealand, about a hundred miles south of Auckland. It has long been the
site of a missionary establishment under the charge of Archdeacon Brown,
who has laboured among the natives during more than twenty years, and
remained unmolested at his field of duty during the progress of the
present war. A few British settlers had established themselves there for
purposes of trade, and a resident magistrate was appointed to watch over
the interests of justice. The Maoris of Tauranga are and always have
been a warlike race, but there was no reason at first to question their
loyalty. During the prevalence of the war in the Waikato district, the
principal seat of the late campaign, the Maoris at Tauranga remained
faithful in their adherence to the British Crown. It was only after the
hostile tribes, driven from their land in the Waikato by the advance
of our army, had dispersed themselves in the south, that symptoms of
disaffection appeared among the natives of Tauranga. The fugitives
excited the alarm of their countrymen by asserting that they also would
be stripped of their lands, and thus inciting them to revolt. The effects
of these incentives to rebellion became so marked, that the 68th and 43rd
Regiments, which had recently arrived from India, were sent to Tauranga
to overawe the disaffected. This movement brought matters to a crisis;
a small portion of the natives remained faithful to the British Crown,
while the great majority left their homes and joined the insurgents. Our
forces encamped on a small peninsula called Te Papa, which is connected
with the mainland by a narrow isthmus: the command was intrusted to
Lieutenant-Colonel Greer, of the 68th Regiment. The hostile natives
continued to hover round our camp, cutting off our supplies, and seizing
the commissariat cattle within a few hundred yards of our sentries,
without any attempt on our part to punish their audacity. Emboldened by
our supineness and their own success, they resolved at length to erect a
pa, and the site they selected would have secured the approval of Vauban,
if he had been still alive. In truth, the Maoris of New Zealand, though
they have never studied at Woolwich, are adepts in military engineering;
instinct in their case has supplied the want of science. The sites of
their pas, which are simply redoubts built of earth and inclosed with a
wooden palisade, have always been chosen with the double intention of
inflicting the greatest possible injury on their assailants, and securing
their own retreat when their position becomes untenable. No attempt was
made to restrain the natives from erecting a pa at Tauranga; the work
went on for weeks, and our men quietly looked on. It is a far easier
matter to prevent the erection than to effect the capture of a pa, but
there may have been causes for this inactivity unknown to us. Be that as
it may, the pa was built without interruption on the narrow slip of land
which connects the peninsula of Te Papa with the mainland. This isthmus
is the gate which commands the entrance to the whole district; hence the
pa erected on it was known as the Gate Pa. On either side was a swamp
extending to the water, so that it was impossible for our men to force
their entrance into the interior without dislodging the enemy from their
stronghold. An order had been issued for the 43rd Regiment to proceed
to Auckland, but Colonel Greer, in the exercise of a wise discretion,
retained them at Tauranga, in the belief that their services would soon
be required.
On the night of Thursday, the 28th of April, General Cameron, who had
arrived at Tauranga with his staff some days before, commenced his
preparations for attack. The forces under his command seemed to be amply
sufficient for securing success: they consisted of the 68th Light
Infantry, the 43rd, the Flying Column, made up of detachments from the
14th, 65th, and 70th Regiments, and the Naval Brigade, consisting of more
than two hundred sailors from the different men-of-war stationed there.
The attacking party were strong in artillery, having with them eleven
Armstrong guns, besides two howitzers and six mortars. The only arms
possessed by the enemy, whose numbers did not exceed six hundred men,
were their rifles and tomahawks; but this inferiority was compensated for
by the advantage of fighting behind the walls of the pa.
The general’s object was to intercept the enemy in the rear, and thus
cut off their retreat. Under cover of the night, the 68th Regiment and
thirty men of the Naval Brigade forced their way through the swamp, and
took up their position in the rear of the pa, without attracting the
notice of the insurgents. April is one of the brightest and sunniest
months in New Zealand, but the morning of the 28th was dark and lowering;
heavy rains began to fall, and the rays of the sun were obscured by the
murky atmosphere. By the imperfect light of dawn the 68th could be seen
extended in skirmishing order behind the pa, so that the enemy were
completely hemmed in. They might hold out for a time, but it was only a
question of time; the general’s arrangements were perfect, and no doubt
was entertained of our ultimate success. At half-past seven o’clock the
cannonade began; the artillery, officers and men, displayed the greatest
courage and skill in working the guns; shot and shell continued to be
poured upon and into the redoubt without intermission till four o’clock
in the afternoon. The few natives who had appeared in the rifle-pits at
the commencement of the attack were soon dislodged, and retreated into
the pa by a hole not larger than an ordinary covered drain. During the
cannonade they seldom returned our fire; the general impression was,
that the shot and shell had done their deadly work so effectually as to
leave few of them alive. The general, however, delayed his attack till
a breach had been effected in the walls sufficiently large to admit
the storming party—a fact which seems to have been wilfully ignored by
his assailants at home, who have unjustly accused him of recklessly
sacrificing the lives of his officers and men by commanding them to
mount an impracticable breach, when his proper course would have been
a mine or a distant cannonade. All that could be done by a distant
cannonade was already effected; the breach was there staring them in
the face; the storming party had only to enter in and take possession.
The wanton sacrifice of human life is the last charge that would be
brought against General Cameron by those who have taken part in this
campaign; in this respect he resembles his friend and countryman Lord
Clyde, who never exposed his men to unnecessary danger. If human skill
could always command success, he had a right to count upon victory; but
we need not anticipate. At four o’clock in the afternoon the storming
party, consisting of the Naval Brigade and the 43rd Regiment, were formed
into line, while the covering party advanced within a hundred yards
of the pa, and opened fire. The enemy showed themselves on the walls,
and briskly replied. The storming party, led by Commander Hay, of the
_Harrier_, now advanced swiftly in column; the men were in the highest
spirits, and rushed forward with a ringing cheer. Nothing could withstand
the impetuosity of their attack; in a moment they had cleared the ditch,
scaled the embankment, and plunged through the breach into the redoubt.
The reserve party thought that the day was won; for a time no sound was
heard save a straggling shot or an occasional cheer. But this silence was
not to last; it was only the treacherous lull that precedes the storm.
That storm soon burst forth with the greatest fury; all at once the pa,
the supposed grave of its Maori defenders, became instinct with life;
volley succeeded volley in rapid succession; in the intervals might be
heard savage yells such as never issued from any British throat. It was
a moment of intense interest to the spectator, who for a time could
see nothing but the clouds of smoke that rose from the pa after each
volley; enough, however, soon became visible to show that our arms had
met with a sudden reverse. Soldiers and sailors, mixed up in confusion,
came thronging through the breach, plunged into the ditch, and rushed
forward in the wildest disorder; some sudden panic had seized them, but
there might still be sufficient time to turn the tide of war and retrieve
the honour of the day. General Cameron at once ordered the supports to
advance; a braver officer than Captain Hamilton, of the _Esk_, could
not have been found to lead them on. If a single arm could have changed
the fortune of the war, the disaster of the Gate Pa would never have
occurred; but the supports came too late. The gallant Hamilton sprang
upon the embankment, waved his sword in the air, and shouted, “Follow
me, men!” Scarcely had the words passed his lips when a bullet struck
him on the head, the sword dropped from his hand, and he fell to rise
no more. The death of their leader increased the panic of the men; the
supports became mixed with the fugitives; all discipline was forgotten;
all remonstrance on the part of the officers was unavailing; _sauve qui
peut_ became the order of the day. The enemy, profiting by this panic,
took deliberate aim, and poured a destructive fire into the retreating
mob, whose only thought was of escape. The day was lost; the instrument
had broken in the hands of him who knew how to use it so skilfully. It
was too much for even the strongest nature to bear with equanimity; the
general dashed his field-glass on the ground, turned his back on the
fugitives, and retired to his tent to conceal his emotion.
Various causes have been assigned for this disastrous retreat. It has
been affirmed that the storming party, on entering the pa, met with no
resistance, and saw no traces of the enemy, except a few wounded Maoris
lying on the ground, apparently abandoned by their comrades. Believing
that the redoubt was evacuated, they threw aside their arms, and began
to help themselves to the plunder which was scattered about. It may be
that the Maoris had recourse to this artifice in order to throw them off
their guard, as they are already familiar with the looting propensities
of the British soldier; it is certain that they had not all evacuated the
pa. A considerable number had done so; but the majority had concealed
themselves in chambers dug out in the ground, and covered with boughs of
trees and earth. They had remained there during the cannonade, and it
is a singular fact, worthy of the notice of military strategists, that
the storm of shot and shell which descended upon the pa for upwards of
eight hours could not reach them. The killed and wounded were those who
exposed themselves on the walls; no shot or shell could reach their
more prudent comrades, who with heroic patience awaited the result in
their subterraneous retreat. When the defenders of the walls retreated
before the impetuous onset of the storming party, and tried to escape
by the rear, the others remained in their hiding-place, and bided their
time. When they saw through the thin covering of boughs and earth that
the storming party had abandoned their arms and given themselves up
to plunder, they opened a destructive fire upon them. The effect was
much the same as if a volcano had suddenly opened beneath their feet,
and begun to pour forth volumes of smoke and flame; many of our men
were killed and wounded at the first discharge; discipline might have
done much, but all discipline was at an end; mere courage could avail
nothing against this invisible foe. Our officers behaved with their usual
coolness and bravery, but every effort to restore order was unavailing;
the confused mass staggered and reeled like a drunken man, as volley
after volley was poured into them from beneath. Meanwhile the insurgents
who had striven to escape by the rear, repulsed by the steady fire of
the 68th, returned to the pa, and increased the panic by the suddenness
of their attack. The cry rose among our men that the enemy were being
reinforced by the arrival of fresh troops: some one, it is said, gave
the order to retire. Be that as it may, the day was already lost; the
panic became general; soldiers and sailors rushed in a confused mass to
the walls, and precipitated themselves into the ditch below. It was at
this moment that Captain Hamilton came up with his supports: he came soon
enough to find a death of glory on the walls of the Gate Pa, but too late
to turn the tide of war. The supports were borne back by the flood of
fugitives, and the Maoris remained masters of the field.
The soldiers blame the sailors as the cause of this disastrous retreat,
and the sailors are ready enough to retaliate. It is matter of regret
that they should have been mixed up together during the attack. Both
fight well in their own way, but they fight best apart. The soldier has
not the dash of the sailor, and the sailor is wanting in the steadiness
of the soldier. It is certain that on entering the pa both became mixed
up together, and the confusion which thus ensued prevented the officers
from exercising that authority over the men which they might otherwise
have done. When a panic once sets in, all discipline is at an end. The
officers encouraged the men by voice and example; they remained at the
post of duty when those under their command began to retreat; this fact
alone is sufficient to explain the great disproportion between officers
and men killed and wounded. It is painful to relate that our soldiers and
sailors abandoned their wounded officers to their fate, and left them in
the hands of the enemy; but there was one honourable exception. Samuel
Mitchell, captain of the foretop of Her Majesty’s ship _Harrier_, who
formed one of the storming party, did all that could be expected from the
British sailor in the hour of danger. He entered the pa with Commander
Hay, and when that officer was mortally wounded he refused to leave him,
though repeatedly urged by him to consult his own safety. The gallant
sailor listened to the voice of humanity, and refused to leave his dying
officer; raising him in his arms, he carried him outside the pa amid a
shower of bullets. There must have been a cherub aloft watching over his
safety and sheltering him from danger; no hostile bullet reached his
person; the body of his leader was rescued from falling into the hands
of the enemy. Mitchell, on this occasion, was doing duty as captain’s
coxswain, and his heroic deed was not overlooked or forgotten. It was
reported to Commodore Sir William Wiseman, who recommended him for the
decoration of the Victoria Cross, and we are glad to observe, from the
_London Gazette_ of the 26th of July, that this honourable distinction
has been awarded to him. Long may he be spared to wear it!—a living
witness that England can appreciate and reward such acts of gallantry. We
were glad to learn that the services of Dr. Manley, R.A., had met with
the same recognition. The duties of an army surgeon rarely afford him
an opportunity of displaying gallantry in the field; but he has often
to exhibit a moral courage as worthy of our admiration as the dashing
bravery of him who heads a forlorn hope. It requires no usual amount of
courage to minister to the wants of the wounded and dying on the field of
battle amid the bullets of the enemy, and this was done by Dr. Manley
with as much _sang froid_ as if he had been performing an operation in
St. George’s Hospital.
It has often struck us how little faith can be placed in the best
historical narratives, when we consider the difficulty, if not the
impossibility, of attaining to the truth regarding an affair of recent
occurrence, even when we have an opportunity of consulting the principal
actors. The storming of the Gate Pa is no exception to this rule. The
fugitives assert that an officer gave the order to retire; the officers
deny that such an order was ever given. We have mentioned above that
the panic originated from the return to the pa of the Maoris who had
endeavoured to escape, and were driven back by the fire of the 68th; we
have heard it strenuously urged that the Maoris never left the pa, but
had merely concealed themselves in the subterraneous chambers, where
they lay _perdus_ till they heard the approach of the storming party.
It went the round of the papers that the 68th Regiment three times in
succession endeavoured to storm the pa, and were as often repulsed. It
was not the duty of the 68th to storm the pa; they were assigned their
position in the rear to cut off the enemy’s retreat; they indignantly
deny that they ever attempted an assault or suffered a repulse. Their
trifling loss in killed and wounded renders it impossible that they ever
quitted their position. We merely mention these discrepancies to show
that a little scepticism is not out of place in the study of history, and
that the future historian of the war in New Zealand will find some little
difficulty in arriving at the truth.
The night of the 29th of April was, in the British camp at Tauranga, a
night of deep humiliation and mutual reproach. The men were disgraced in
their own eyes, and what would the people of England say? There is not a
more gallant regiment in the service than the 43rd; Napier, who belonged
to them, has commemorated their deeds of valour in the Peninsula, and
the memory of the numerous engagements in which they have taken part is
preserved on their colours. But now where were all the laurels they had
won in the Peninsula and India? Soiled and trampled in the dust, and by
whom? Not by forces equal to them in arms and discipline; not by foemen
worthy of their steel; but by a horde of half-naked, half-armed savages,
whom they had been taught to despise. They erred in despising them
overmuch; they forgot, or they had never learned, that the defenders of
that pa belonged to a race reckless of life, loving war for its own sake,
who were then fighting, as such a race ever will fight, for their homes,
their lands, their liberty, their all.
The time may come when the Maori race will be subdued, but that will only
be when the Maori race has been extirpated. Would that the people of
England knew this as well as the colonists of New Zealand! A disgraceful
chapter in the future history of our country might then have never to
be written. The storming party learned when it was too late that the
courage of despair rises superior to all human calculations of success,
and that no bounds can be assigned to the heroic powers of endurance of
men fighting for their liberty. It could be no ordinary race that waited
patiently for eight hours, with no other shelter from the descending
hurricane of shot and shell than a few boughs of trees covered with
earth, till the moment had arrived for rushing forth and rolling back
their assailants like a broken wave. It adds nothing to our glory to
detract from the virtues of our adversaries. In the Maori character there
is much to condemn, but much also to admire and to imitate. If, instead
of being exterminated, they were embodied into regiments, commanded by
men who spoke their language and studied their character, they would
be found as useful as the Sikhs in India; and, on the ground of public
expediency as well as of Christian principle, it would be better to save
than to destroy. The Maori race once extinguished can never be restored,
and it would be impious to imagine that any one race has been created in
vain.
But what was the fate of the wounded and dying officers left in the pa?
Night closed over them and concealed them in impenetrable darkness. No
less than seven officers of the 43rd were there, besides others belonging
to the navy. They were in the hands of those who cut off Captain Lloyd’s
head, and sent it round among the other tribes as a trophy of victory.
The vanquished soldiery could hear the yells of triumph from the
pa; some even imagined that they heard the shrieks of their tortured
countrymen, but this was only the work of the imagination. The Maoris
remembered mercy in the hour of victory, and treated our dying officers
with humanity worthy of the imitation and admiration of all civilized
nations. No hostile hand hastened on the hour of death, already fast
approaching. Their persons and their property were alike respected. An
effort was made to relieve the sufferings of those who were still alive.
Lieutenant-Colonel Booth, commanding the 43rd, was shot through the spine
and the arm. His wounds, though mortal, did not produce immediate death.
He stood leaning against the wall of the pa, suffering intensely from
thirst; around him lay his slaughtered officers. Our pen shrinks from
recording the sufferings he endured throughout the night of horror which
he survived. He had risen rapidly to command, and was in the very prime
of his strength and manhood. Tall, erect, and powerful, he looked like a
man who could ward off death for half a century; he had done so in India
and elsewhere, but now he had met his fate at the Gate Pa at Tauranga.
This was the first time that he had led his regiment into action, and had
they behaved in a manner worthy of their high reputation? Alas!
There lay the two Glovers, the sons of an English clergyman, on the field
of gore, but not of glory. They were lovely in their lives, and in death
they were not separated. We had seen the elder fall in the foremost of
the fray, and the younger, who loved him with more than a brother’s love,
rush forward with a loud and bitter cry. A brother’s love may do much,
but it cannot reverse the iron decrees of fate, which take no account of
human affection or sorrow. It was in vain that he raised him in his arms,
and strove to bear him from the field—a hostile bullet brought both the
brothers to the ground, and left them side by side, with the tide of life
ebbing fast away. If there is a mother in some distant English rectory
weeping, like Rachel, for her children, because they are not, or a father
lamenting their loss, let us comfort them with the assurance that in life
and in death they were all that the fondest parent could wish.
We have read of a martyr’s sufferings at the stake: we question whether
in intensity they equalled those endured by Colonel Booth during that
fearful night. He never lost his consciousness, and an occasional groan
escaped from his lips. An armed Maori stole up to him. There was no
sorrow in the thought that he had come to give him the _coup de grâce_;
but it was not so. The heart of the half-savage man was touched by the
spectacle of woe. Colonel Booth read this feeling in his face, and
muttered, “Water.” The Maori shook his head, to show that there was none
in the pa, and slipped out in search of some. He never returned, but next
morning his body was found at the brink of the swamp, with a pannikin
by his side. A soldier of the 68th, ignorant of his purpose, had fired
at him with fatal precision, and arrested him on his errand of mercy.
The will must be taken for the deed. The exposure of his life to all but
certain death from the humane desire to give a cup of water to a dying
enemy shall not be without its reward.
In the course of the night the insurgents abandoned the pa, and made good
their retreat by the rear, without suffering much loss from the 68th, who
had been placed there to intercept them. No blame can be attached to the
68th; no regiment has ever been able to prevent the Maoris from effecting
their escape. They pass with ease through swamps where the British
soldier could never gain a footing. Amphibious in their habits, they are
as much at home in the water as on land. Their loss on this occasion was
trifling: it certainly did not exceed thirty men, while ours amounted to
104 killed and wounded, including a larger portion of officers than on
any other occasion where British troops have been engaged. The causes of
this disproportion are already known to our readers.
For a time it was not known in the British camp that the enemy had
evacuated the pa. The frantic yells had died away—no sound was heard
to disturb the stillness of the night. Tempted by the long-continued
silence, Major Greaves, of the 70th, stole up to the ditch, mounted the
breach, and found the pa empty. Returning to camp, he reported what he
had seen, but no attempt was made to enter the pa till daybreak. The
enemy had fled, carrying their wounded with them. Colonel Booth was
still alive, but the surgeon told him that his hours were numbered. He
was borne to the camp, where he survived till the following day. Before
his death he was visited by General Cameron. “I endeavoured, sir, to
carry out your orders; I am sorry that I have failed. I at least tried
to do my duty.” “You have done so nobly,” was the general’s reply, as
he pressed the hand of the dying soldier, in whose breast the sense
of duty was stronger than the love of life. It is pleasing to record
the virtues of men who, in this inglorious warfare, have gone down to
the grave unwept, unhonoured, and unsung, because England takes little
interest in a war with savages, and dismisses the subject for others
more attractive. The other dead or dying officers were removed from the
pa. Captain Hamilton, of the 43rd, breathed only once after his body was
found. A bullet had passed through his head, and so altered his features
that it was difficult to recognise the handsome face with which we were
once so familiar. We had known him years ago in the East, when he was an
ensign in the 10th Regiment. During the interval he had served throughout
the whole of the Indian campaign, and followed Havelock to Lucknow. He
belonged to a race of soldiers, and was every inch a soldier himself.
Poor Hamilton! we think of him still as he sat at the mess-table,
expatiating on the capture of Lucknow, or some cognate subject, to a
group of admiring ensigns who loved him for the dangers he had passed.
He served in the 10th Regiment with the present Sir Henry Havelock, now
on the staff in New Zealand, who always spoke of him with respect as a
gallant soldier, and betrayed the deepest sorrow on learning that he had
fallen.
The cause of the sudden panic which seized our men at the Gate Pa will
never be known with certainty. It would be easy to show, from ancient
and modern history, that the best troops are subject to such panics,
which often spring from the most trifling causes. Terror, like courage,
is sympathetic; it spreads like an infectious disease, from man to man,
till all are swept away before it. At the battle of Fridlingen, fought on
the 14th of October, 1702, between the French and Austrians, the former
almost lost the day through a sudden panic which seized their ranks. The
infantry had reached the summit of a hill to dislodge the German cavalry,
and had succeeded in doing so, when a voice suddenly exclaimed, “_Nous
sommes coupés!_” On this every regiment turned and fled. It was fortunate
that in Marshal Villars they had a leader equal to the occasion.
“_Allons, mes amis!_” he cried; “_la victoire est à nous! Vive le roi!_”
“_Vive le roi!_” replied the soldiers, still retreating as fast as they
could. With some difficulty Villars rallied them, and led them back to
victory; but if a single regiment had attacked them at that moment the
result would have been the same as at the Gate Pa. The most trifling
incident may make a whole army retire in confusion. Such an incident
occurred during the Indian campaign. A body of our men were on the march,
preceded by some of their officers on horseback. A horse became restive,
and threw its rider; other horsemen rushed to his assistance; clouds of
dust were raised; the cry rose from the ranks that the rebels were upon
them; a sudden panic was the result, and our soldiers fled when no one
pursued. It was fortunate no enemy was at hand to profit by the confusion
and terror occasioned by the nowise remarkable incident of a surgeon
falling from his horse.
The 43rd Regiment have already atoned for the disaster at Te Papa. A few
weeks after that event they again encountered the enemy at Te Ranga,
and proved themselves worthy of their Peninsular fame and the glorious
names inscribed on their standards. A temporary reverse is no proof
that a regiment has degenerated; it is often the occasion, as in this
instance, of eliciting the display of a higher amount of courage than
might have attended ordinary success, and of teaching a deeper respect
for those whose military spirit and capacity we have been disposed to
under-estimate.
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