Chapter XIX: Part 19

“A poor benighted heathen, but a first-rate fighting-man,” is the description of a savage adversary which Mr. Rudyard Kipling puts into the mouth of Tommy Atkins. The New Zealanders who fought against us in the sixties were not all of them “poor benighted heathens”: some of them had been pupils in the mission schools, others had come into the mission stations as grown men to learn something of the religion of the white men. When the everlasting quarrel between natives and settlers over land rights led to strife and bloodshed, and the Maories, or natives, took to the bush, most of them forgot what Christianity they had learned, though some of them clung to the old observances; and it is said that when one of their forts was surprised on a Sunday morning, they told the victors that, had it not been for a service which they were holding, they would have been at their posts, and that the English must be strange Christians to fight on Sunday. But whatever were the opinions of the Maori tribesmen in such matters, there is no doubt the second part of the description applied to them. They were “first-rate fighting men.” They had a skill in constructing earthworks which no other race has ever surpassed, and they held them with desperate courage. Frequently when they abandoned them it was not from any fear of their adversaries, for it was one of the principles of their mode of warfare that the rapidly constructed pah, or fort, was only to be held long enough to inflict labour, delay, and loss upon the enemy, and then it was to be secretly evacuated and another work of the same kind held further inland. Of all the battles they fought against us, none displayed their soldierly qualities in a higher degree than the fight at the Gate Pah, which for a time seemed likely to end in a serious disaster to a force that far outnumbered the Maori garrison of the pah, and that brought against it all the resources of modern civilised warfare.

The fight was one in a long series, all of which ended in successes for our arms. Sir Duncan Cameron, who commanded the British forces operating against the rebel Maories in the North Island of New Zealand, was a brave and skilful Highland soldier, and the temporary check at Gate Pah was no fault of his, for he had done everything to ensure success, and it was the first time that there was anything like failure in his whole career. In the spring of 1864, which in that southern climate is the late summer and early autumn of the year, he had made Auckland his base of operations, and while the navy blockaded the coast to prevent arms and ammunition being conveyed to the rebels, he had made a successful expedition up the valley of the Thames, and with very little bloodshed had broken up the Maori power on that river and on the Waikato.

Early in April all fighting was over in the province of Auckland and the district of the Thames. The natives who had been in arms against the Government had returned to their allegiance. General Cameron was discussing with the local authorities the steps to be taken for the further pacification of the North Island, when news arrived that there was a considerable gathering of armed natives near Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty, and the General resolved to transfer the forces under his command from Auckland and the mouth of the Thames to this new centre of disturbance. A detachment of the 68th Regiment, under Colonel Greer, was already encamped near the mission station of Tauranga. With the help of the naval squadron on the coast, the troops were rapidly transferred from the Thames Estuary to the Bay of Plenty, and by April 26th General Cameron had collected at Tauranga a formidable little force of nearly 1,700 men, including a naval brigade of 400 men and officers, the 68th Regiment, 700 strong, the 43rd, nearly 300 strong, detachments of the 14th and 70th Regiments, each about 100 strong, and a small force of the Royal Artillery, with two 40-pounder Armstrongs, and two 6-pounders, two 24-pounder howitzers, and eight mortars. In the harbour, or close at hand and within call, was a strong naval squadron made up of her Majesty’s ships _Curaçoa_, _Esk_, _Miranda_, _Harrier_, and _Eclipse_, under the command of Commodore Sir William Wiseman, and there was a small garrison at Maketu.

The enemy had taken up a position about three miles and a half from the Tauranga mission station, on a neck of high ground about 500 yards wide, over which ran the road or track from Tauranga to the interior. The ridge was a swell of the ground about fifty feet high. On both sides it sloped easily to a tract of swampy land very difficult to pass anywhere, even by men on foot. To the right beyond the swamp was one of the inlets of Tauranga Harbour. The Maories had rapidly fortified the high ground, the spot where they fixed their pah, or earthwork, being evidently suggested to them by the fact that just below the highest swell of the ridge it was crossed by a three-foot trench, which marked the boundary between the mission station property and the bush and native lands. They deepened and widened this trench, carrying it down to the swamp on either side. Behind it they dug out their pah--an oblong enclosure, about eighty yards long by thirty wide. The military despatches of the time describe it as a “redoubt,” but the word is rather misleading. The Maori pah in this case, as in all others, was a series of trenches, one within the other, and communicating by cross cuts, and looking at first sight like a labyrinth. In the sides of the trenches shelters were hollowed out so that the garrison could crouch in them until the assault was actually begun. Further shelter was secured by roofing in the trenches with wattle hurdles, made with twigs and branches, thatching over this with ferns, and sometimes shovelling earth upon it. The eaves of the roofs were kept up by posts at a height of six or eight inches above the edge of the trench, so that the garrison could sweep the ground in front with their guns. At the Gate Pah, as this improvised fortress was called, there were three tiers of rifle-pits or trenches, one within the other, all having a zigzag trace, so that it was all the more difficult to make out at first sight their general plan. On either side of the ridge, a line of trenches or rifle-pits ran down the hill towards the swamps, so as to sweep with their fire the approaches to the flanks of the main work. In these rifle-pits, at intervals, traverses or banks of earth lying across the general direction of the trench, had been erected to protect them from flanking fire. In front of the works a light, open fence of posts and rails, a kind of loosely-constructed stockade, had been erected to impede the rush of a storming party. The whole was a work which would have done credit to European engineers. The garrison was certainly not more than 400 natives, perhaps less. They had very few rifles, their favourite firearm being double-barrelled shot-guns, which they were able to load and fire much more rapidly, and at close quarters quite as effectively, as the old-fashioned muzzle-loading Enfield rifle then carried by the soldiers. They loaded with slugs and bullets, and sometimes even with buckshot. For the fight at close quarters they had their spears of hard wood, small axes, or tomahawks, sometimes of stone, and the beautiful greenstone or jade war-clubs or _merés_ of the chiefs.

On Thursday, April 27th, General Cameron began his preparations for the siege of the pah. The naval brigade had made a formidable addition to his artillery force by getting ashore from one of the ships an Armstrong 110-pounder gun, then the heaviest gun in the service, and probably the heaviest gun ever used on shore against a tribe of half-savage warriors. On the 27th the 68th Regiment, and a detachment of 170 men under Major Ryan, of the 70th, moved up to a point about 1,200 yards from the front of the pah and encamped there. As the Maories had no artillery, and no long-range rifles, and were not likely to risk a sortie, the camp was safe from disturbance. On that and the following day the guns and mortars were being got into position for the attack, the handy bluejackets from the fleet lending, as they always do on such occasions, invaluable assistance. During the day it was ascertained that at low water it was possible to pass along the beach outside the swamp on the enemy’s right, and so get to the rear of his position. Acting on this information, Colonel Greer, with the 68th Regiment, left the camp after dark on the Friday evening and slipped down to the beach, working along quietly in the dark, so as to outflank the Maories. To prevent the garrison of the pah from paying any attention to chance noises coming from the beach and so discovering this move, the main body at the camp pushed forward a few riflemen, who fired long-ranging shots at the stockade, from which the double-barrelled guns of Maori sentries answered with random shots fired in the dark, without much idea of range, or even of direction. This firing was soon over, and meanwhile Greer’s men had got round the back of the swamp and were settling down for the night among the tall ferns to landward of the enemy’s position. At the camp the sailors and gunners spent the dark hours making the last preparations for next day’s bombardment. When the sun rose, the Armstrong guns, including the big 110-pounder, besides a battery of mortars, were in position, waiting for the word to open fire. Inland the 68th held a position from which they could shoot down any of the garrison of the pah who ventured out of the work to get water from the stream behind it, or who attempted to escape inland.

At half-past six a thin line of skirmishers pushed forward to the edge of the swamp on the left of the pah and in front of the British right. General Cameron thought it possible that the enemy would abandon the work and bolt across the swamp, and took this means of hemming them in on all sides. The natives in the rifle-pits on the slope above thought this move must be the beginning of an attack, and fired ineffectually at the redcoats. This was taken as the signal for opening fire from the batteries, and guns and mortars began to send their shells roaring through the air. Over the pah a red flag waved on a tall mast. From the batteries this seemed to be the centre of the pah, and at first most of the gunners took it for their mark in laying their pieces. When the pah was captured, it was discovered that the flagstaff really stood, not in the centre of the pah, but further off, just behind its rearward stockade. The result of this mistake was that for the first two hours many of the shells passed harmlessly over the Maori position.

Not long after the artillery opened fire the Maori musketry ceased. The garrison had got under cover, but they were watching the proceedings of the besiegers, for when the guns were directed on the left angle of their fort in order to demolish the stockade and make a breach in the parapet, every now and then a brave rebel would creep up to the crumbling mound, shovel a few spadefuls of earth into the gap, and slip back again, heedless of the imminent danger of being blown to pieces by a bursting shell. Once a plucky fellow actually succeeded in hanging a blanket across the stockade, evidently to conceal the movements of those who were bringing up material to repair the breach close by. By this time the mortars had got the range, and were dropping shells into the work. The place was completely surrounded. The 68th and the naval brigade had closed in, and were firing at the pah on the right and in the rear. Twelve guns and mortars were blazing away at the front and breaching the left angle. A thirteenth gun had been got into position beyond the swamp on the left, so as to rake the rifle-pits on the slope, and thirty riflemen on the edge of the marsh were firing into the pah at a range of only 400 yards. Surrounded on all sides, and with shells bursting over the wattle roofs of their trenches, the garrison was in a position in which most European troops would have given up the defence as hopeless. The big Armstrong gun fired no less than a hundred 110-pound shells at the pah before it had to cease firing (towards 3 o’clock) for want of ammunition. The marvel is that the wretched little fort was tenable. But subsequent inquiry showed that the Maories had constructed their shelters so well, and lay so close in them, that they lost very few men. About noon they replied for awhile with musketry to the storm of bullets and shells that was pouring into the pah, but their fire was ineffectual. Indeed, in the earlier stage of the attack, the only losses of the assailants appear to have been three men of the 68th Regiment, wounded by shells that flew over the pah and burst close in their front.

Crouching in the hollowed sides of the trenches, or stealing round to the front to look out over the parapet, the Maories must have realised that before nightfall the storm of fire would suddenly cease to allow a superior force to rush their shattered fort with the bayonet. But they waited quietly for the supreme trial of strength, encouraged, doubtless, by finding that even the huge shells thrown by the white men, though they made a terrible noise, killed or wounded very few of the garrison against whom they were directed. It was an anticipation many years earlier of the experience of the Turkish garrison of the Gravitza redoubt at Plevna, who lost only a handful of men under the volcano-like fire of the great bombardment.

After three o’clock the bombardment slackened. The breach was considered to be wide enough to be rushed by a strong storming party on a broad front, and there were no obstacles on the slope before it. When, just before four o’clock, the stormers were drawn up behind the batteries and received the order to advance, the immediate capture of the Gate Pah seemed to be a certainty. The storming column was 600 strong. The vanguard, under Colonel Booth and Commander Hay, of H.M.S. _Harrier_, was made up of 150 men of the 43rd Regiment and as many more of the naval brigade. The support, which was led by Captain John Hamilton, of H.M.S. _Esk_, consisted of the rest of the seamen and marines and of the 43rd--in all, 300 men. At four o’clock General Cameron gave the word to advance, and, with a cheer, the men dashed up the slope. A few shots were fired from the pah, and some heavy volleys from the rifle-pits, but, until they were almost in, a swell of the ground gave some cover to the stormers, and the loss they suffered was trifling. Still cheering, they streamed in through the wide gap in the stockade, poured like a flood over the shattered parapet, and found themselves almost without opposition masters of the left corner of the pah.

What happened next will never be known with absolute certainty, for many of those who survived, after being in the thickest of the wild scene of slaughter that followed, give contradictory accounts of what occurred. It seems certain that a part of the garrison was attempting to retire by the back of the pah, when they were met by a sharp fire from the 68th Regiment, which was closing in upon the works, answering with a loud cheer the cheering of the stormers. The Maories, on this, rushed back into the pah, giving some of the stormers the impression that the garrison had been suddenly reinforced. When they first passed the parapet, all that the naval officers and those of the 43rd noticed of the garrison were a few wounded men lying near the breach. The openings of the trenches close by looked like a tangled labyrinth, and it was not easy to see which was the easiest way into the centre of the work. The roofs of the Maori shelters jutted up here and there, and the men seem in some cases to have broken their ranks, and even laid down their weapons under the impression that these were abandoned houses that could be safely entered in search of curios and plunder. Suddenly gun barrels were pushed out from under the eaves, and several officers and men dropped, struck by shots that appeared to come out of the earth. On all sides dusky figures sprang up as if from trapdoors, yelling, firing, flourishing spears and axes. From the rear of the work came a wild rush of spears and guns. The soldiers, especially those who had broken their formation, seemed seized with a sudden panic. They felt as if they had been led into an ambuscade. Instead of resistance being over, it was only beginning. Several of their officers had fallen at the first volley. A few men gave way to the surprise and terror of the moment, and then the panic spread with that mysterious suddenness with which it seems to be able to run through a mass of even individually brave men. What happened at the Gate Pah has happened in every army in the world; and if there was headlong panic among many of the men, there were many, too, who stood bravely. The officers and the sergeants of the 43rd, and the officers and leading seamen of the naval brigade, did their duty splendidly, and suffered losses that bore only too striking evidence to the tenacity with which they strove to restore the fortune of the fight. There was more than one cry to retire, though the officers were calling out to the men to push forward. At this moment Captain Hamilton brought up the reserve, pushed gallantly forward to the second line of trenches, and sprang upon the bank above them, waving his sword and calling out, “Come on, my men!” A shot struck him in the head and he fell, closing by an heroic death a career of high distinction and great promise. His fall renewed the courage of the defenders, the panic of the assailants. The struggling mass of sailors and soldiers streamed back out of the breach, leaving nearly all the officers of the 43rd and several of the naval officers dead and wounded in the pah. Major Ryan of the 70th Regiment and Captain Jenkins of H.M.S. _Miranda_ were among the last to leave the work, after hopeless efforts to rally what were left of the six hundred stormers.

How many brave deeds were done amid the wild panic in the breach of the Gate Pah would take a long time to tell. Two Victoria Crosses were won in the disaster, one of them by Surgeon Manley, R.A., who exposed himself most recklessly in order to remove and give first help to the wounded close under the fire of the victorious Maories. The other was secured by Samuel Mitchell, the captain of the foretop of the _Harrier_. He had entered the breach close beside Commander Hay, and when his officer fell mortally wounded, he took him up to carry him out of danger. Hay told Mitchell to leave him where he was, and take care of his own life; but the brave fellow brought him out at considerable risk to himself, and then dashed back into the fight. Watts, the gunner of the _Miranda_, charged by the side of Captain Hamilton. He marked out and cut down the Maori who had killed his leader, but the next moment he was himself brained with a tomahawk. James Harris, a seaman of the _Curaçoa_, actually dashed right through the pah. He chased a Maori out of the rear of the work, hunted him down to the position of the 68th Regiment, bayoneted him there, and was shot while making a reckless attempt to again traverse the pah and rejoin his comrades.

While the storming column was engaged with the enemy in the pah, the 68th had made an attempt to rush it in the rear, but were met with such a heavy fire that they gave up the attempt. The repulse of the attack was hailed with loud cheers by the garrison. The General with his staff rallied the storming column as it retired, and then rode forward to reconnoitre the pah. At this point someone told him that the troops had got into and were holding the rifle-pits on the left. Turning in this direction to verify the report, he was met by a volley which wounded his horse and put two bullets into the saddle of an officer who rode beside him. The enemy held all the works, from which they fired occasional shots at intervals for the rest of the evening. It was soon dark, and the night was cloudy and starless. In the dusk Captain Jenkins had a narrow escape. There had not been a shot for some time, and he went out to see if the pah had been abandoned. A volley fired at close quarters told him he was mistaken, and showed him that he had wandered into the lower part of one of the enemy’s trenches.

Dispirited by the collapse of the 43rd Regiment, the repulse of the whole column and the loss of so many officers, the troops spent a wakeful, anxious night. More than once after dusk the Maories called out to them in English, daring them to come on again; but Cameron had resolved not to make an attempt in the dark, which might only end in confusion and renewed disaster, but to rush the pah at daybreak. Meanwhile, the men were set to work to throw up a line of advanced entrenchments within about a hundred yards of the stockade, so as to maintain possession of all the ground that had been won. During this work, all fire having ceased from the pah, Major Greaves, of the staff, crept up the slope to see if the natives were retiring from it. In the dark he could make nothing out for certain. Just before midnight he went up again and penetrated into the breach. All was silent within, but away landwards, to the rear of the work, some shots were fired. The natives had scattered in small parties and withdrawn towards the interior, and the shots came from the outposts of the 68th, some of whose sentries heard the Maories stealing by in the dark, but could not stop them.

How little the officers relied upon their men after the previous day’s experience is shown by the fact that they did not venture to lead them into the fort until the first light of the dawn appeared on the early morning of the Sunday, 30th. When the pah was entered a grim sight met the eyes of the victors. A few yards inside the breach four captains of the 43rd lay heaped together: two were dead, killed by bullet wounds in the head and neck, another had been slain at close quarters with a tomahawk, which had cut through his shoulder into the chest; a fourth, struck in the head by a bullet, was still breathing when his comrades found him, but died before he could be removed. A little further on lay Colonel Booth, of the same regiment, shot in the spine and the right arm, still alive after that terrible night, but not far from his death. Captain Muir, of the 43rd, and Captain Hamilton, R.N., lay dead together well forward in the second trench, with no other bodies near them. A little to the left lay Lieutenant Hill, R.N., of the _Curaçoa_, shot in the neck and through both cheeks. He had been alive some time after he fell, for he had tied his handkerchief round his wounded face. Watts, the gunner of the _Miranda_, lay dead with his head split from crown to chin with a tomahawk. Another seaman had had his head cut in two crosswise by the same weapon, scattering all the brains. The body of a Maori was found in the centre of the pah fairly cut in two by a bursting shell. There, too, the chief, Reweti, or Davis of Tauranga, was picked up, with seven bullets in his body and his legs broken by a shell-burst, but still not only alive but ready to talk to the white men, and wondering why his countrymen had not carried him off with the other wounded, whom they had removed. In all, during the attack, 9 officers and 23 men had been killed, and 5 officers and 75 men wounded, a total loss of 112 officers and men, nearly all of whom fell in the actual assault, and most of whom would have come out of the affair, safe in life and limb, if the advanced party of the 43rd had stood by their officers. At the moment of the panic there is no doubt the stormers were well into the work, and standing as most of them did on the high ground between the trenches, they could have bayoneted the Maories as they scrambled out, or shot them through the roofs. Of the British wounded many died within a week of the fight.

The garrison had lost very few in killed and wounded. Twenty dead and six wounded men were found in the pah. Ten more were picked up dead in the swamp, and the retreating Maories must have carried some wounded men with them. But their whole loss seems to have been under fifty. The chief, Rawiri, who commanded the defence, escaped unhurt. The wounded chief, Davis, told the English that if his advice had been taken there would have been no such prolonged defence of the pah; but, he added, there were a lot of big chiefs present, and they wanted a fight. It is pleasant to be able to record that both sides acted with that chivalrous respect for each other which was worthy of brave men. The Maories had not touched the watches and chains or rings worn by the dead and wounded soldiers and sailors who fell in the pah, nor had they in any way injured the bodies. General Cameron showed his sense of this conduct on their part by ordering that the dead Maories should be given a respectful burial, and all possible care bestowed on the wounded men. Even the fragments of the body that had been torn by the shell were laid together in the row of dead outside the pah, and word was sent to some friendly Maories, belonging to a tribe which had helped to garrison the Gate Pah, that they might come in and bury their dead kinsmen, the messenger adding that, if they did not, the English would do it for them. Before noon on Sunday they came to the fort and dug a grave for the twenty dead warriors from the pah. In the bottom of it they laid the men of lower rank, that they might form a bed across which lay the corpses of the chiefs. “It is well that the warrior should die, to be a couch for his chief,” runs an old proverb of the warrior Maori race.

Later in the day the English dead were laid in rows of graves at the Tauranga mission station, under a great tree, not far from the beach, and the volleys rang out their parting salute to the men who had fallen so bravely trying to stem the tide of disaster. The struggle between the white man and the Maori has, happily, ended years ago, and now both parties to the quarrel remember only that it was bravely fought out, and that in the tribes of the North Island even British soldiers and sailors found foemen well worthy of their steel. The last traces of the Gate Pah have long since been removed from the ridge above Tauranga. A monument commemorates the gallant dead. Hamilton has found another memorial in a flourishing town on the Waikato River, founded and named after him by the colonists, in the very year of his death, in admiration of his splendid valour.

WARSAW

BY A.S. KRAUSSE]

Throughout the summer of 1831 the city of Warsaw lay like a city of the dead. Its magnificent palaces appeared as though deserted; its streets were lonesome, and the few who ventured from within their dwellings moved about as though smitten.

Although not declared, Warsaw lay in a state of siege. The struggle for liberty, long maintained by the brave nation of Poles, was drawing to a close, and all felt that though hitherto victorious in the field, they must fall before the countless hordes of Russia in the end.

There had been a rising in the previous year. Undeterred by the knowledge that they were a handful against millions, and encouraged by the recent examples of France and Belgium, the Poles of Warsaw had risen in revolt against the despotism of Russia, as personified by Constantine, the ferocious governor of their city.

The direct cause of the outbreak was, as is usual in such cases, slight--a bogus trial on a popular officer for an imaginary offence. A verdict contrary to the weight of evidence, a street row among the military students, a dozen of whom were promptly flogged with the knout, while others were imprisoned, and the mischief was done. The young Poles rose in November, and without ceremony broke into the prison and freed their comrades. The gates of the palace were forced, and the governor sought; but without success, he having escaped. But while Constantine evaded the vengeance of his victims, his lieutenants fared otherwise, and many of them fell into the hands of their relentless enemies. For the moment the Polish capital was in the hands of the Poles. The Russian aristocracy disappeared, and at every street-corner meetings were held at which the proceedings were constantly interrupted by cries of “Niech zyie Polska”--Poland for ever!

This state of things continued throughout the winter of 1830. The icebound steppes forbade the Russians taking action. But the Czar vowed vengeance, and he kept his vow. In the first days of spring a large army was despatched against the rebel Poles under General Chlopicki, who, while in command of the thirteenth and fourteenth Army Corps, had earned for his troops the nickname of the Lions of Varna. The war was waged to the death. The Russian troops, well drilled and ably commanded, elated with the successes of the past, met the untutored Polish soldiers with a confidence bred of conceit. The Poles, imbued with a sense of patriotism, and recognising that it was to do or to die, fought each man for his own hand, neither giving nor expecting quarter, and the slaughter was frightful. Even at Ostralenka, where the Poles left seven thousand dead on the field, the Russian loss was over fifteen thousand; and at Waror the Poles took ten thousand Russian prisoners, besides a number of cannon, which were exhibited in the streets of Warsaw, amid the enthusiastic applause of the inhabitants.

After being beaten all along the line the Russian army withdrew, leaving the flower of its surviving officers imprisoned in Warsaw, and for a while the Poles had rest. But only for a while. In the early summer another army marched on the capital, and at the end of June General Paskewitsch, who had been specially chosen by the Czar, took the command. This officer enjoyed the personal friendship of the ruler of Russia, and he took the field with the express instruction from his master to teach the rebels a lesson which they would not forget. He lost no time in resuming operations, but changed his predecessor’s plans. Hitherto, all attempts on Warsaw had been made from the right bank of the Vistula. With the exception of the Praga suburb the city lies on the left or south bank, so that to capture it from the north the Russians would have to fight their way across the Vistula either through the streets and across the bridges of Praga, or under the fire of the guns in the Polish works. Paskewitsch decided upon making a flank march down the right bank of the river, crossing it near the Prussian frontier, where he had secretly arranged to obtain supplies and bridging material from the Prussian fortress of Thorn, and then marching up the south bank of the Vistula he could attack Warsaw on the side on which it was not protected by the broad river which had hitherto barred the Russian advance.

The Polish Government was at this period presided over by General Skryznecki, a patriot of good family and education, and a man of the highest principle. Skryznecki recognised the danger too late. He hurriedly occupied a strong position on the line of the Bzura river with 30,000 men, in the hope of barring the Russian advance; but on August 15th the Russians, in overwhelming force, drove the Poles from the river bank and forced them back upon Warsaw. Their city was now threatened by 60,000 troops, who cut them off from the country to the south of the Vistula, from which they had hitherto drawn supplies and reinforcements. While Paskewitsch thus hemmed in the Poles on the south, another Russian army watched Praga; and thus by the end of August, while the roads for miles round were guarded by Russian legions, the Poles found themselves shut in like rats in a trap.

And now for the first time the Poles realised their position. Surrounded by a relentless horde, their supplies cut off, they realised the futility of the claims of a just cause against the exigences of necessity. The whole of the resources of Russia were against them; and while the sympathies of France and England went far to cheer the desperate band of patriots who yet fought for freedom, the fact that Prussia, though nominally a neutral state, was aiding the common enemy, was not reassuring. So far back as June this fact had been known, and General Skryznecki had written to the King of Prussia enumerating the various acts indulged in by his ministers, and demanding that they should cease. In this historic document the General proved that the Prussians were supplying the Russians with food from the storehouses at Thorn, that they had lent their skilled artillery to the Russians, that they had supplied ammunition and uniforms made in Prussia, and that most of the engineering works required by the Russians--including the bridge over the Vistula--had been executed by German engineers.

This letter was never answered, and Prussia continued in her breach of the laws of war, while the outlook in Warsaw became blacker every day. Nor were the dangers only from without. The Polish mob began to become turbulent, and necessitated the watching of soldiers who would have been better employed negotiating the enemy. But even these measures were insufficient to keep the rough element down. The irresistible descent of the Russian army was the excuse for an outcry against the noble Skryznecki; and in the hope of uniting the besieged he resigned his command of the Polish army, General Dembinski being appointed in his place.

But even this step did not succeed in quieting the rabble. On the night of the 15th August the mob rose and marched to the State prison, where Russian officers who had been taken prisoners in the war had been incarcerated. The excitement of the mob was intense. Their blood was up, and this is the only excuse that can be urged for the foulest deed that blemishes the history of Poland. The gates of the prison were forced, and the prisoners led out and shamefully ill-treated. The crowd behaved like wild beasts, chasing and attacking the unfortunate Russians; and after being tortured in every way that occurred to the imagination of their captors, the miserable beings were butchered in the streets, the gutters literally running in blood. Among the victims of this tragedy were four Russian generals and several ladies of high birth, who had been suspected of sympathising with the enemy. All were brutally murdered, the atrocities being continued for two days. At length order was restored by the military, who were withdrawn from the defence of the city for this purpose.

While these events were taking place within the city General Paskewitsch was pressing on in pursuit of the Polish army, which he had compelled to retreat from the Bzura. But even here the defenders were unable to hold their ground, and on the 1st of September they retired behind the entrenchments which had been thrown up immediately before Warsaw. Here the final stand had to be made. The headquarters of the Russians was only three miles away from the city walls, and the capital was threatened on every side. The position was, in short, so acute that it is a matter of some surprise that the Poles did not retire within the city and stand a siege. This question has been ably discussed by a trustworthy historian, who writes as follows:--

“It would have been very easy,” says M. Brozozowski, “for the
army to defend itself within the walls and from house to house.
It had already performed more difficult feats, and Europe
doubtless would have rung with its heroism if, after the example
of Saragossa, it had buried itself under the ruins of Warsaw.
But the Poles could not, for the sake of a mere empty renown,
consent to the destruction of a city which is the hearth-stone
of their patriotism and the centre of their nationality--a city
which in future struggles is yet destined to play an important
part, for the Poles are far from succumbing under their present
misfortunes--very far from abandoning the hope of again becoming
a nation.”[6]

But still, the attacking army waited before striking the final blow. Reinforcements from the south were expected. Several days were wasted pending their arrival, and when they arrived their pontoons stuck in the mud. But Paskewitsch did not mind the delay. He is reported to have said to one of his staff, “I await the aid of two armies--the army of the south and the army of famine.” Nor were these expectations vain. While beleaguered from without, the doomed city was ravaged within. Gaunt famine marched unchecked through the fine streets, and starvation claimed more victims than did shot or shell.

Then it was that, recognising all resistance as futile, the Poles attempted to open negotiations with the enemy; but the mob would not have it, and the overtures made were cancelled in order to prevent a revolution, while an offer of terms made by Paskewitsch was rejected for a similar reason.

These preliminaries over, the attack upon Warsaw began in earnest on the morning of the 6th September. The fighting on this day was mostly at long range, but the Russian attack was so strong and the firing so fierce that the Poles had to abandon their first line of entrenchment. The assault then ceased, and both sides rested during the night; but at daybreak on the 7th the attack was renewed, and the slaughter was terrible. The Poles--especially the battalions occupying the redoubt on the Wola side of the Vistula--made an heroic resistance. The Russians had on this day no fewer than 386 guns in position, and the fire from them was so fierce and so continuous that nothing could stand before it. The Poles were ploughed down by the hail of projectiles, and those spared by the shells were despatched by small arms. After some hours of bombardment, when a mere handful of the garrison of the Wola redoubt remained, the Russians closed up in their strength and charged with their bayonets. The result was disastrous in the extreme. General Sowinski, who commanded the outpost, fell pierced through and through; and when the Russians finally occupied the redoubt only eleven men remained alive out of three thousand.

While this scene of carnage was being enacted outside, the city was itself the scene of intense excitement. The majority of the inhabitants foresaw that their fate was sealed. Their only chance of salvation--the interposition of England or France--had failed them. Were even that to come now it would be too late. The cannonade of the besiegers was continuous, and every now and again a stray shell would fall in the streets, scattering death and devastation around. And all that could be done in response was to fire occasional charges from the few guns left to the garrison. Men there were in plenty in Warsaw, and women, too, willing to play the man’s part in fighting for their country; but the guns were few, and it was no uncommon sight to see eager, able men tear the rifles from the hands of the wounded as they fell, in order that the most might be made of the slender sources at their disposal.

Amid all this scene of horror there was one item of news which caused rejoicing. Marshal Paskewitsch had been wounded. It was said that he was, indeed, disabled. This was the one cheering event of the 7th September.

The 8th opened still and fine, but it was destined to be a bitter day in the story of Poland. The Russians had moved up to the very gates of the town in the night, and only the innermost line of trenches and the shaky walls stood between them and the inhabitants. The cannonade recommenced soon after daybreak, and the attack was even more furious than on the previous day. At least, it seemed so to those within the doomed city. The men in the trenches were ploughed down like flies, but their bravery was indomitable, and as each man fell, another took his place, to be ploughed down in turn. The men finally stood upon the brink of their trenches, and used the dead bodies of their comrades as cover; but it was futile. On and on came the Russian host, back and back went the Poles, until only the gaunt walls of Warsaw stood between them and those they sought to save. The enemy fought with irresistible fury, carrying everything before them, inch by inch, at the point of the bayonet, while their guns were busied in sending missiles within the city, which spread fire and rapine in their train. The day was still undone when the walls were gained. The inmost line of defence was captured, its last defender slain. The plain for a mile around was strewn with the mutilated remains of what had once been brave men, and the tyrants of the North held Warsaw in their hands.

The city capitulated as the sun sunk in the west, and its inhabitants realised too late that their doom was sealed. What that doom was to be even the most imaginative failed to realise.

Having taken Warsaw, Paskewitsch spoke fair. He would, he declared, not enter the city till the following day, and meanwhile the Polish army, what was left of it, might retire to Plosk. The Marshal admitted to having 3,000 men and 63 officers killed, and 7,500 and 445 officers wounded, while the Polish loss was found to amount to 9,000 slain.

Defeated though they were, reduced in numbers, without the hope of succour, and exhausted by the events of the past few days, the Poles retained their heroism. The army, what was left of the 30,000 men of which the garrison had consisted, formed in order in the great place in the centre of the city, and marched towards the gate. But it did not march to Plosk. It went instead to the fortress of Modlin, and made preparations for a final stand--a forlorn hope--trusting to fortune to turn the Russians yet. But the scheme was foredoomed. Paskewitsch, whose wound was slighter than was supposed, heard of the move, and promptly despatched a brigade against the Polish remnant. The garrison of Modlin was promptly surrounded, all retreat cut off. Entrapped, defenceless, without guns or food, the band of heroes lay down their arms and sought refuge on neutral territory across the Prussian frontier.

It does not come within the province of this history to detail the events which followed the capture of Warsaw. So far as the military history of this, the last great struggle for Polish independence, is concerned, the battle of Warsaw brings the story to a close. The horrors that followed still linger in the memories of the very old. The fearful outbreak of Asiatic cholera which devastated Central Europe, the tragic fate of the thousands of Poles who, trusting in the charity of the King of Prussia, were hounded across the frontier into the hands of the Russians; the equally tragic fortunes of those who took the word of the Czar and gave themselves up to the authorities; and the bitter savageries committed by the Russians in compulsorily emigrating the bulk of the people of Warsaw, sending children away from parents and husbands from wives, even to the furthest parts of Eastern Russia, are all part of history. Of the civilising efforts of the Russians while in occupation of Warsaw, we have a sample in the fact that the conquerors took nearly a million volumes of books from the city--400,000 from the Zuluski Library alone.

THE STORMING OF THE NILT FORTS.

BY E.F. KNIGHT.]

Of our recent wars on the frontiers of India, the Hunza campaign was in many respects the most remarkable, and the storming of the enemy’s defences at Nilt afforded an ample proof of what excellent material our Indian army is composed. At the extreme north corner of British India, or rather of the territories of our feudatory the Maharajah of Kashmir, buried amid the loftiest and wildest mountains of the Hindoo Koosh, hemmed in by glaciers which are the vastest in the world outside the arctic regions, and by hundreds of barren leagues of rock and snow, are two little States of hereditary robbers, the Hunzas and the Nagars, the first occupying the right bank, the second the left bank of the Hunza or Kanjut torrent. These people belong to what is known as the Dard race, and are supposed to be of the purest Aryan stock: many of them have the features and the fair complexions of Europeans.

This inhospitable region is the very cradle, some say, of the Aryan race; and the Hunza-Nagars present one of the most interesting ethnological problems in the world--a problem, however, which up till now could only be studied from a safe distance, for the half-dozen or so of Europeans who had penetrated the Hunza valley previous to the campaign I am about to describe had done so at considerable risk to their lives. From the earliest times the Hunza-Nagars have engaged in organised brigandage and slave-hunting; they were the most redoubtable warriors of the Hindoo Koosh. The head waters of the Hunza and its tributaries are on the slopes of the Pamirs, and the tribesmen, ascending the passes that lead from their valleys on to the “roof of the world,” were wont to raid into Turkistan and fall on the caravans that carry on the trade between India and Yarkand. For hundreds of years they have thus amassed rich booty, and they sold all the prisoners they captured to the Kirghiz nomads. When the Kashmir State conquered the Gilgit district it did its utmost to quell these two lawless tribes, but all in vain: secure in their mountain strongholds, they successfully resisted the largest forces that were sent against them, and carried their forays both into Kashmir territory and into Central Asia, though a Kashmir garrison of 6,000 men was always stationed at Gilgit. It was estimated that the “thums,” or kings, of these two valley States could muster 5,000 fighting men, fairly well armed with native matchlocks, Martini-Henrys, Berdans (supplied by the Russians), Sniders, and other rifles. They also had some smooth-bore six or seven pound guns of their own manufacture.

When the Indian Government undertook to exercise a more direct control over the affairs of the grossly mismanaged State of Kashmir, an agency was established at Gilgit which then became the northernmost outpost of our Empire in Asia. The Hunza river flows into the Gilgit river two miles below Gilgit fort, and the frontier of the robber States is some thirty miles up the Hunza valley. The thums, though jealous of the establishment of British influence in their close vicinity, were persuaded by Colonel Durand, our agent at Gilgit, to enter into a treaty by which they recognised Great Britain as the suzerain power, and agreed to desist from raiding and slave-hunting, while the Indian Government was to pay the thums an annual subsidy each. But the thums, stirred up by Captain Gromchevtsky--who had visited the Hunza valley with a party of Cossacks, and had done his utmost to damage British prestige in these regions--soon broke their faith with Colonel Durand; they recommenced their evil practices, and in the spring of 1891, having first greatly strengthened their defences in the gorges near Nilt, they defied the Maharajah and the British agent, declared that they would renew their raids, threatened the Kashmir fortress of Chalt with a considerable force, and so endangered our position at Gilgit that the long-suffering Government of India found it necessary to send a punitive expedition into the Hunza valley.

At this time the Agent’s bodyguard consisted only of a score or so of Pathans of the 20th Punjab Infantry, while the Kashmir troops who garrisoned the forts were scarcely to be relied on, for these were the same men who had been repeatedly defeated by the Hunzas. They belonged, it is true, to regiments of the recently organised Imperial Service troops which the Maharajah had set aside for purposes of Imperial defence, and which had been trained for some months by specially selected British officers; but they had never been tried in actual warfare since the new system had been inaugurated, and it was therefore considered advisable to despatch from Abbotabad 200 men of our 5th Gurkha regiment, and two seven-pound guns of the Hazara mountain battery.

The present road from Kashmir to Gilgit had not then been completed, and great difficulties had to be overcome in sending even this small force to the North. The distance from Srinagur to Gilgit is 240 miles, or twenty-two marches. The track winds among the mountains, and crosses two high passes, one being over the main chain of the Himalayas, which divides Kashmir proper from the northern possessions of the Maharajah. These passes are only open for about four months; for the rest of the year they are closed by deep snow and are exposed to violent gales of extreme coldness, which prove fatal to travellers overtaken by them. One of these storms sprang up while the 5th Gurkhas and a number of transport coolies were on the march, and nearly 100 men perished of frostbite. Captain Barrett himself, who was in command, lost several toes on this occasion, and was incapacitated from taking part in the campaign. This dreary road traversed for many marches a rainless and almost desert region. Of wild vegetation there is scarcely any: it is only by means of artificial irrigation from the glacier streams above that the sparse population succeeds in raising scanty crops here and there. There are signs of a more extensive cultivation in the past, but the forays of the Shinakas--raiding tribes who occupy a little-explored region beyond the mountains that border the Gilgit road on the west--have long since made these valleys desolate. The road, where not winding over the barren mountain ridges, follows the bottoms of the gloomy ravines where the discoloured torrents rush between cliffs and huge slopes of fallen boulders. The country affords no supplies to an invading force, and even the forage for our horses had to be imported from a distance.

During the four summer months of 1891 thousands of coolies were employed in carrying up to Gilgit the supplies required for the expedition; but despite all the efforts of our transport officers, a large quantity of necessaries never crossed the Himalayas: an early winter and heavy snowstorms suddenly closed the passes, and our little force was cut off from all chance of reinforcement or communication with the outer world for several months. Isolated by impassable mountains, we were now left to fight it out, not only with the 5,000 Hunzas, but probably also with the Shinakas, who could put 15,000 men in the field, for they were known to have a defensive alliance with the Hunzas, and our line of communication was open to their attack at several points.