Chapter IX (1)

1858-1882.

RAISING OF THE SECOND BATTALION: THE WAR IN NEW ZEALAND.

After the Indian Mutiny a considerable increase in the strength of the army was sanctioned by Parliament, for the reasons stated in chapter x., and additional units of infantry were raised, not as new regiments but as second battalions of existing organisations. The XVIIIth was one of the regiments selected for this augmentation, and on March 25, 1858, forty-four years after the original second battalion had been disbanded,[183] the nucleus of a new second battalion was formed at Enniskillen by the transfer from the first battalion of a hundred seasoned soldiers.[184] A hundred and fifty men joined from the Dublin City militia; other militia regiments contributed volunteers, and recruits came in fast from the north of Ireland. For the first few months of its existence the new battalion was in charge of Major A. W. S. F. Armstrong; then Lieutenant-Colonel A. N. Campbell, on promotion from the first battalion, assumed the command which he continued to hold until October, 1859, when he exchanged with Lieutenant-Colonel A. A. Chapman, 48th regiment. In the same month the battalion was sent to England, and two years later to the Channel Isles, where the detachment at Alderney did good service in fighting a great fire which threatened to devastate the island. Though the greater part of the rank and file was composed of growing lads, “the ready and willing spirit displayed by all and their coolness under such circumstances”[185] greatly impressed the local authorities. This incident proved, if proof had been necessary, that the task of converting a mass of recruits into trained and disciplined soldiers had been entrusted to good hands; and early in 1863, the second battalion was considered to be fit for foreign service, and was selected to relieve one of the regiments then garrisoning New Zealand. When the various detachments from Jersey, Guernsey, and Alderney had concentrated at Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight, they were inspected by Major-General Lord William Paulet, who in a complimentary speech commented with pleasure on the great increase in the height of the men since he had last seen the battalion eighteen months before.

On April 2, 1863, the headquarters and eight companies under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Chapman sailed from Portsmouth in the ship _Elizabeth Anne Bright_, followed on the 12th by the two service companies under Brevet-Colonel G. J. Carey in the ship _Norwood_.[186] The depôt companies were stationed at Buttevant. After a prosperous and, for a sailing-ship, a rapid voyage of ninety-one days, the _Elizabeth Anne Bright_ on the 4th of July reached Auckland, where three weeks later the _Norwood_ arrived also. When the leading ship dropped anchor, the Royal Irish learned that war had broken out with the natives, and that the battalion was to take the field at once. Before describing the part played by the XVIIIth in the campaign a short account must be given of the Maoris, the enemy at whose hands the second battalion was to receive its baptism of fire. According to native traditions, New Zealand was peopled many centuries ago by an adventurous race (said by ethnologists to be of Malay stock) who, swarming off from the Melanesian archipelago, crossed the Southern Pacific in war canoes and landed in New Zealand, which they named the Land of the Long White Cloud. Either the country was uninhabited or the aborigines were easily conquered, for no trace of their presence is found in Maori folklore. The newcomers first occupied the coasts, and then gradually spread over the whole of the North and South islands, forming clans which recognised no central authority and held all land within their borders as the property not of individuals but of the tribe. Between the tribes there was incessant strife, which hardened the Maoris into a nation of fighting men, skilled not only in every wile of savage warfare but also, as we shall see, in the art of fortifying their strongholds.

The existence of the Maoris and the very position of the country they inhabited remained unknown to Europeans until 1642, when Tasman, the great Dutch navigator, sighted the Land of the Long White Cloud. His government kept the information to themselves; and Captain Cook, a British explorer even more celebrated than his Dutch forerunner, rediscovered New Zealand in 1769, established friendly relations with the natives, and took formal possession of the country for his sovereign, George III. But neither at that time nor for many years later was England in the mood to develop her new acquisition. Her conflict with the American colonists, her struggle with the European coalition which supported their rebellion, and her gigantic efforts to save the Continent of Europe from the domination of Napoleon, had taxed her resources to the utmost; and it was not until seventy years after Cook had annexed the country that definite official steps were taken to assert British authority in New Zealand. But long before our Government decided to occupy the islands, adventurous Britons had established themselves among the Maoris. The penal settlement, formed towards the close of the eighteenth century at Sydney, provided a port from which New Zealand became accessible from the mainland of Australia, and a brisk trade gradually sprang up between the natives and ship’s captains in timber, potatoes, and native flax. Nor were these the only articles of commerce. Collectors of curiosities in Europe were eager to possess specimens of the tattooing or face ornamentation for which the Maoris were celebrated, and the heads of warriors, defeated and slain in battle and preserved as trophies in the villages of the victors, were eagerly exchanged for the muskets with which the white strangers were armed. By degrees little settlements of Europeans grew up at various points along the coast--each an Alsatia to which escaped convicts, deserters from the garrison of Sydney, run-away sailors, riff-raff of every kind, sought a refuge from the trammels of civilisation. Many of these wanderers threw in their lot with the natives: some perished miserably; others were well treated and lived with the Maoris for many years. A few of the survivors were men of some education, and from their reminiscences, and those of the missionaries and pioneers who arrived from England in the early “forties,” it is possible to form an idea of the Maoris before they became tamed by British influence. Their character as a nation was very complex. Though cannibals, and bloodthirsty to a degree, their sense of honour was high, and their word once pledged was considered inviolable. They were by no means devoid of chivalry; their language was full of poetry; their manners were dignified; their laws were well defined, and the tenure of land and the ownership of movable property were regulated by customs, enforced by the power of the whole clan.

In the course of years the condition of the European settlements became a serious scandal; law and order were unknown, and there were constant collisions between the natives and the Europeans, in which the white men appear to have been frequently the aggressors. The Governor of New South Wales, who was supposed to exercise a shadowy authority over the British in New Zealand, reported strongly to the Colonial Office on the subject, and the missionaries loudly complained that their efforts among the Maoris were hampered by the presence of a considerable number of Europeans, whose conduct was unrestrained by any form of government. In 1840, England yielded to the pressure of public opinion and formally annexed New Zealand. This step, ostensibly taken solely for the benefit of the Maoris, was also influenced by political considerations, for the French had long desired to establish themselves in the Southern Pacific: ever since the time of Cook their ships had occasionally visited New Zealand, and it was known that France was preparing to found a colony in the South island. An English frigate, the _Druid_, sailed with the newly-appointed Governor about the same time as _L’Aube_, a French man-of-war started in charge of a transport full of emigrants for New Zealand. Our ship outstripped the French vessels, and when _L’Aube_ reached the South island her captain, to his bitter mortification, found that the Union Jack had been hoisted forty-eight hours before!

The terms upon which New Zealand passed into the hands of the Crown were almost unique in the history of England. Our possessions in the East have been won by the sword in wars forced upon us by the lawlessness of the neighbouring States. In America the presence of a large French garrison in Canada and at the mouth of the St Lawrence was a thunder cloud constantly overhanging the New England colonies until we captured Quebec in the Seven Years’ War. In the southern hemisphere Australia was a no-man’s land--a wilderness inhabited only by a few tribes of degraded savages. The necessity of defending the colonists in South Africa against the attacks of marauding Kaffirs has caused the gradual extension of British rule from Cape Town on the Atlantic to Zululand on the Indian Ocean. But in New Zealand the chiefs were treated as our equals when, at the solemn treaty of Waitanga in 1840, they ceded on behalf of their clans the sovereignty of their territories to Queen Victoria, and accepted her protection, and with it all the rights and privileges of British subjects.

For several years after this treaty was made the country seemed thoroughly quiet: large numbers of emigrants arrived from England and prospered greatly in their new homes; and the majority of Maoris appeared to acquiesce in our presence. Some of the clans were glad to be saved from internecine strife; others appreciated the increased demand for their staple productions of flax and timber, which was one of the results of the European influx; but others again, especially the tribes in the centre of the North island, grew dissatisfied with the new order of things, and elected a king to rule over them, who established a capital at Ngaruawahia, a strategic point at the junction of the Waikato and Waipa rivers.[187] From a mistaken policy of non-intervention this movement was not put down, and it rapidly degenerated into openly expressed antagonism towards the settlers. In 1862, to quote the words of one of the Ministers of the Crown, it “presented the following features:--

“An elected king, a very young man of no force of character,
surrounded by a few ambitious chiefs who formed a little mock
court, and by a body-guard who kept him from all vulgar contact
and from even the inspection of Europeans, except on humiliating
terms; entirely powerless to enforce among his subjects the
decisions of his magistrates; an army, if it might be called
so, of 5000 to 10,000 followers scattered over the country, but
organised so that large numbers could be concentrated at any
one point on short notice; large accumulated supplies of food,
of arms and ammunition; a position in the centre of the island
from which a descent could be made in a few hours on any of
the European settlements; roads prohibited to be made through
two-thirds of the island; the large rivers barred against
steamers so that nine-tenths of the country was closed against
the ordinary means of travel and transport; the Queen’s law set
at utter defiance; her magistrates treated with supercilious
contempt; her writs torn to pieces and trampled under foot;
Europeans who had married native women driven out of the King’s
districts, while their wives and children were taken from
them, unless they would recognise and pay an annual tribute to
the King; all this accompanied by an exhibition of the utmost
arrogance and undisguised contempt for the power of the Queen,
the Governor and the Europeans.”[188]

The safety of the colony was threatened seriously by these sullenly rebellious tribes; and when in 1863, a body of the King’s followers intervened in a dispute between Maoris and Europeans in the south-west of the North island, war became inevitable. The King’s party, which was largely composed of the Waikato tribe, planned to open the campaign by raiding Auckland and exterminating its white inhabitants. Lieutenant-General Sir Duncan A. Cameron, who was in command of the Imperial troops in New Zealand, and Sir George Grey, the Governor of the colony, decided to anticipate the Maoris by advancing upon their strongholds in the wild country south of the Waikato. This river rises in the centre of the North island and winds its way northwards from its source to within forty miles of Auckland, when it turns sharply to the south-west at the native village of Te Ta. Here a tributary, the Mangatawhari creek, joins it from the north-east, and the two streams marked the northern limit of the district held by the followers of the King. Civilisation had spread about twenty-five miles to the south of Auckland, and a metalled road ran past scores of prosperous farms, tangible proofs of the success which had attended the colonists in this part of New Zealand. At the village of Drury the good road was replaced by a rough and narrow track, which winding through a broad belt of bush known as the Hunua forest, crossed very undulating country much cut up by deep ravines, half buried in ferns and scrub. This dense forest, which a series of almost impenetrable thickets rendered ideal for Maori offensive tactics, was to be the scene of many skirmishes in which detachments of the XVIIIth greatly distinguished themselves.

The arrival of the Royal Irish brought up the number of regular battalions in New Zealand to seven;[189] but by no means all of these were available for the front. It was necessary to keep up the strength of the detachments in various parts of both islands; the line of communication absorbed a great quantity of fighting men, and garrisons had to be provided for the settlers in lonely hamlets and isolated farms. Though at one time during the war the armed whites in the colony reached the respectable total of 15,000 men, the greatest force of regular and volunteer troops actually under the hand of the General at any time appears never to have exceeded two thousand five hundred. To form an accurate estimate of the numbers against us is impossible, for many tribes remained neutral, others were on our side, while others again took but a fitful part in the operations and preferred to plunder settlers rather than to meet soldiers in the field. One point, however, seems quite clear; on every occasion when there was serious fighting we greatly out-numbered our savage but very gallant foes.

As soon as the Royal Irish landed they were sent to Otahuhu, a camp a little to the south of Auckland, where General Cameron was concentrating his troops. Here the battalion received their campaigning kit: officers and men were provided with blue serge “jumpers,” haversacks, water-bottles and pannikins: all ranks carried a blanket and waterproof sheet, rolled, and slung over the left shoulder; the men were armed with Enfield rifles and bayonets. Five days later the column marched through Drury to the Queen’s redoubt, a work which commanded the crossing of the Waikato at Te Ta. A detachment of two hundred of the XVIIIth, under Captain Inman, was dropped at Drury to hold that post on the line of communication, and a few days later the whole of the battalion appears to have been echeloned along the bush track between Drury and the Queen’s redoubt. On hearing that Cameron was in motion the Maoris divided their forces: one column was to hold the British at the Waikato while the other was to turn Cameron’s left, harass his communications, and if possible swoop upon Auckland. It was with the enemy’s right wing that the Royal Irish were chiefly engaged for the first few months of the war, but before giving an account of their doings it is necessary to sketch very briefly the operations south of the Waikato.

On July 12, 1863, Cameron crossed the river and dislodged the enemy from the heights of Koheroa above the Mangatawhari creek. He was, however, unable to follow up this initial success; for nearly three months difficulties of land transport, the want of steamers of sufficiently light draught for river work, and the activity of the Maoris on his rear prevented further movements against the series of works which at various points commanded the right bank of the Waikato. The military genius of the Maoris and its limitations were alike revealed in these fortifications, in which the system of defence evolved by a long series of inter-tribal conflicts had been cleverly adapted to new conditions of war. Before firearms were introduced into New Zealand, the

“Maoris’ _pahs_, or stockaded and entrenched villages, usually
perched on cliffs and jutting points overhanging river or sea,
were defended by a double palisade, the outer fence of stout
stakes, the inner of high solid trunks. Between them was a
shallow ditch. Platforms as much as forty feet high supplied
coigns of vantage for the look-out. Thence, too, darts and stones
could be hurled at the besiegers. With the help of a throwing
stick, or rather whip, wooden spears could be thrown in the
sieges more than a hundred yards. Ignorant of the bow and arrow,
and the boomerang, the Maoris knew and used the sling; with it
red-hot stones would be hurled over the palisades among the
rush-thatched huts of an assaulted village, a stratagem all the
more difficult to cope with as Maori _pahs_ seldom contained
wells or springs of water.”[190]

In the series of skirmishes dignified by the name of the Maori war of 1860-61 the natives had carefully studied our tactics and our weapons; and in the war of 1863-66, in order to bring into play the muskets and double-barrelled guns with which they were armed, and to minimise the effect of our rifle and shell fire, they selected positions open in front, with flanks resting on rivers, swamps, or impenetrable bush. They made great use of earthworks and of redoubts, square or oblong in shape, flanked at opposite angles by bastions and surrounded by ditches, in some cases twelve feet wide and measuring eighteen feet from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the parapet. Pushed out to the front and flanks were two or three tiers of rifle-pits or short trenches, connected by sunk roads with each other and with the main work. The marksmen in these pits were often protected by head cover, made of trunks of trees or of hurdles thatched with fern and covered deep with earth; and to break the force of a bayonet charge, stout palisades were sometimes built in front of the rifle-pits with spaces left for grazing fire to sweep over the glacis. Yet though this system of fortification showed that to their natural cleverness the Maoris added the power of rapidly absorbing new ideas, their intelligence failed them in one essential particular. In the selection of a position they never realised the importance of a good water-supply, and when an attack was threatened they neglected to store their works with water, trusting to their young men to bring in by night the quantity required for the next day’s consumption. Thus after a close investment of a few days they had no alternative but to cut their way out or to surrender.

While General Cameron was waiting for his river steamers, a rumour reached the Maoris at Meri-Meri, the position nearest to Cameron’s encampment, that the General and his soldiers were short of food. Under a flag of truce the Chiefs sent down the river a little fleet of canoes laden with potatoes and milch-goats as a present to the British troops. This was by no means an isolated instance of native chivalry, for, to use the slang of the present day, the Maoris were “sportsmen,” and always said that there was no glory in fighting hungry men. When at length the arrival of river craft enabled Cameron to move, he threatened the front of the works of Meri-Meri with five hundred men, among whom were a detachment of Royal Irish, while a turning party of rather greater strength, in barges mounted with Armstrong guns, was towed to a landing-place in rear of the enemy’s works. The Maoris did not await the attack, but fled southwards across country which recent rains had made impassable for Europeans. Cameron occupied their position, which the detachment of the XVIIIth fortified under the direction of the Royal Engineers. In November the General took an important step towards freeing the line of communication from the natives who harassed his convoys in the Hunua forest and ravaged the farms in the neighbourhood of Auckland. Many of these guerillas came from the country round the estuary of the Thames river, and thither he sent an expedition under Brevet-Colonel Carey, XVIIIth regiment, to overawe the district and establish a line of blockhouses between the Thames and the Waikato. While Carey was carrying out his mission successfully Cameron pushed up the river, and on November 20th, attacked the formidable works at Rangiriri, the Maoris’ second position on the Waikato. Before the enemy had been thoroughly shaken by artillery the order was given for the assault, and though repeated and gallant charges were delivered, the troops that day achieved but a partial success, bought at the cost of 132 casualties. Under cover of the night several hundred of the enemy escaped; the remainder, 183 in number, surrendered at daybreak and were made prisoners of war. In this engagement the Royal Irish were represented only by one officer, Captain and Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Sir H. Havelock, V.C.,[191] then serving on the headquarter staff as D.A.Q.M.G., and a few men. The losses at Rangiriri greatly dispirited the enemy, who allowed Cameron to march unmolested up the right bank of the Waikato, and on December 9, 1863, to occupy Ngaruawahia, the capital of the rebellious country.

The Royal Irish were hard at work on the line of communication during this time. Tracks had to be cut through virgin forest and garrisons provided for settlers’ farms; convoys needed large escorts, while the road along which the waggons lumbered had to be strongly piquetted and constantly patrolled. In these duties detachments of the XVIIIth met with many exciting adventures; they alternately rescued parties of other regiments from imminent danger or were themselves saved from destruction by the timely arrival of reinforcements. Many laurels were won in these skirmishes, of which the details, as far as they have been preserved, are here recorded.[192] Six days after the headquarters of the battalion had reached the Queen’s redoubt Captain Ring, with Ensign Bicknell, two sergeants, and forty-seven rank and file, was sent in charge of a convoy to Drury. The track passed through a forest, thus described by an officer of great experience of campaigning in the forests of many parts of the British Empire: “The bush of New Zealand is wonderfully dense and entangled. A European going into it about twenty yards and turning round three times is quite at a loss to find his way out again unless he is somewhat of an Indian path-finder and can judge of the points of the compass by the bark of the trees, the sun, &c. Trying to run through the bush one is tripped up by the supplejack and other creepers.”[193] While on the march Ring fell into an ambuscade of about 140 Maoris; fire was opened by invisible enemies upon his advance-guard, his right flank, and his rear; a driver and two horses in the centre of the convoy fell wounded; the line of waggons was thrown into confusion, and the Maoris attacked his left flank. He retired immediately with as many men as he could concentrate, and, in skirmishing order, kept the enemy at bay for some time; then seeing himself nearly surrounded he retreated into a settler’s farm, which he held until some of Inman’s detachment at Drury extricated him from his dangerous situation. In this affair four men were killed and ten wounded.[194]

Soon after this affair Ring found himself in charge of a mixed body of troops at Keri-Keri, on the road which runs north-east from Drury through the Wairoa country to the coast. With him were five officers and about two hundred rank and file of the battalion, and two officers and a hundred men of a New Zealand militia regiment. In the morning of the 22nd of July he learned that a number of natives had murderously attacked two settlers, and immediately afterwards heard heavy firing about two miles off near Pukekewereke, where sixteen volunteers were defending themselves against very heavy odds. Leaving the militia and two officers and a hundred of his own men to hold the post, he hurried to the rescue with Lieutenant Wray, Ensigns Jackson and Butts, and the remainder of the Royal Irish. On reaching the scene of the skirmish Ring opened fire, and, to use the words of his report, “the natives retreated to my former entrenchment above the _wharé_[195] at Keri-Keri; the fire of the skirmishers drove them down the side of the hill into the brushwood; the leading skirmishers on the right, under Lieutenant Wray, took possession of the hill and kept up fire on them; I, with another body of skirmishers, proceeding to take that on the right flank, but found that the natives, who mustered a strong force, nearly surrounded me; here I lost a man killed, whose rifle and bayonet were taken possession of by the natives, though not without serious loss to them. I then concentrated my men on the entrenchment, and having heard from a Royal Artillery officer who rode up to my position that the 65th regiment was in my immediate vicinity, I requested that he would inform the officer commanding the 65th that there was a track in the enemy’s rear, and that if an attack were made in that direction it would be of great service. As it was quite impossible for me to follow so strong a force of the enemy into the bush with my small force, I remained in the entrenched position until close on sunset, keeping a steady fire on the enemy, who were endeavouring to obtain the body of the private who was killed and whom I would not leave. I repeatedly tried to obtain possession of the body by sending out volunteers of the man’s company, but desisted, finding it would entail greater loss. I was about to retire, leaving a rear-guard in the entrenchment, when the mounted artillery arrived.” The gunners were closely followed by a party of the 65th, who threw themselves into the fray with great spirit. On the appearance of these fresh troops the natives drew off into bush so thick that no pursuit was possible, and after the body of the dead soldier had been recovered the whole force returned to their entrenchments. This affair cost the battalion one man killed and four wounded.[196] For Ring’s conduct and good judgment on this occasion General Cameron recommended him for a brevet-majority, to which he had been gazetted in England before he fell mortally wounded at the engagement of Orakau on March 31, 1864. The detachment was commended for the firmness with which they had held their ground against superior numbers.

The next time any of the XVIIIth were in action seems to have been on the 25th of August. The attack on Ring’s convoy had shown how easily traffic could be stopped in the Hunua forest. To make communication safer through this belt of bush the Government of New Zealand set a large number of men to cut down the scrub on either side of the road. Soldiers as well as civilians were employed on the work; among the former were a party of a corps which appears not only to have been ignorant of the first principles of warfare, but grossly disobedient to orders. General Cameron had officially reminded the troops that axe-men should always be protected by a covering party; but the detachment disregarded this order and, far from taking precautions for their safety, piled arms near the road under charge of a single sentry. The Maoris crawled through the bush, rushed the sentry, and before the detachment could regain their rifles nearly all the arms had fallen into the enemy’s hands. Several of the ---- were hit; the remainder, defenceless without their rifles, had fallen back for shelter into the forest, when the guard of a convoy, chiefly composed of a company of the Royal Irish, under Captain R. P. Bishopp, appeared on the scene, and after an hour’s sharp skirmishing succeeded in driving away the enemy. In this affair one man of the XVIIIth was wounded.[197] Early in September the headquarters of the Royal Irish were moved to Drury, leaving two companies under Captain Noblett to man the Queen’s redoubt. During the month three detachments of the battalion had brushes with the enemy. Half a mile from the village of Pokeno, near the Queen’s redoubt, a party of 62 non-commissioned officers and men, under Ensign C. Dawson, were attacked by a body of natives, who fired into them from the rear. A bayonet charge drove the enemy into a gully, down which the Royal Irish pursued them for half a mile, when a burst of war-whoops and yells from the village warned Dawson to collect his men to meet a fresh danger. Making his way back to Pokeno, he was received by a volley from Maoris hidden among the stumps and logs of timber in a clearing in front of the village, and from another party on his left flank. Dawson had his men well in hand, kept them in skirmishing order, and maintained a steady fire from all available cover, until he was extricated from this unpleasant situation by the arrival of a party of the 40th, and later by a further reinforcement, the escort to a convoy commanded by Captain Noblett, XVIIIth regiment. The Maoris fled before the levelled bayonets of the combined detachments and took refuge in the bush, into which the soldiers could not follow. A few days later, a convoy in charge of a body of volunteers broke down at Pukekohe, near Drury; some of the Royal Irish, under Captain Inman, were sent to its assistance, and found the waggons stuck in deep mud, while the Maoris were attacking the stockade which contained the garrison of the post. Inman’s party rescued the convoy; then, reinforced by the volunteers, they went in with the cold steel, and received praise from General Cameron for “the gallant manner in which they charged the enemy, driving him back into the bush with severe loss from the position he had taken up near the stockade.” For his services on this and other occasions Captain Inman received a Brevet-Majority.

About the same time another party of the XVIIIth were in action on the Wairoa road, along which various blockhouses had been built to cover the approach to Auckland. One of these works, the Galloway redoubt, was in charge of Major Lyon, an ex-imperial officer, under whose orders some of the battalion were placed. On the 15th of September the Maoris attacked the redoubt, but were beaten off, after an affair in which the steadiness of the Royal Irish was conspicuous. Two days later Lyon, who had been reinforced by another party of the XVIIIth under Lieutenant Russell, took the offensive, and under cover of darkness led his troops towards Otau, a native village occupied by local insurgents. It was found to be on the far side of a river, and while Lyon searched for a ford, he engaged the enemy with musketry--according to a well-known historian, with unexpectedly important results--

“Across the stream at early dawn a detachment of the XVIIIth
regiment poured concentrated fire upon the _wharés_ [huts]. They
did not know that within them was a band of Maoris, who had come
to join the fighting, and who, under the volleys poured upon the
huts, fell like sheep. The troops, unable to cross the stream,
withdrew, unconscious of what they had done. Major Lyon, who
made a circuit by a bridge, found the settlement deserted. ‘The
_wharés_,’ he said, ‘were riddled with shot, blood in profusion
both inside and out. They were unmistakably taken by surprise.’
In after years a Maori who was present told how extensive was the
slaughter unwittingly inflicted by the XVIIIth, who exercised
themselves by firing at the huts without knowing how they were
occupied. As the wounded and dead were carried away before Major
Lyon reached the spot, he also was ignorant of the severity of
the blow inflicted.”[198]

In October, the battalion were again fortunate enough to rescue a party of New Zealand volunteers from a dangerous situation. An officer of the irregulars while reconnoitring a large body of natives near his post at Manku, was drawn into an engagement, forced back into his stockade, and closely surrounded. The news reached Drury in the evening, and a strong party of the XVIIIth under Captain Noblett was at once sent, with some of the 70th, to the relief of the volunteers. Pushing on throughout the night the troops early in the morning reached Manku, from which the Maoris decamped promptly, thus depriving the Royal Irish of the excitement of a skirmish. They at once returned to Drury, where they arrived after twenty-two hours’ continuous marching. At the end of the month two companies in charge of Captain Noblett reinforced Ring’s post in the Wairoa country; and in November an expedition, largely composed of the Royal Irish, was sent to avenge outrages committed on the settlers in this district. The marauders had stockaded themselves in a position surrounded by dense bush, swamps, and precipitous ravines, but after a skirmish the _pah_ was captured and destroyed.

In war opportunities of distinction do not come to every officer, and such in a marked degree was the case in New Zealand, where much good work was done by some of the officers of the XVIIIth whose names do not appear in General Cameron’s reports. Though the vigorous action of the troops on the line of communication and in the Wairoa country prevented the Maoris from raiding Auckland itself, it was impossible for Cameron with the small number of men at his disposal to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and at the same time protect all the outlying farms cleared in the bush by enterprising settlers. In most cases the colonists abandoned their farms, sent their women and children to Auckland, and turned themselves into a militia, which proved a valuable asset in the British force. Occasionally, however, the entire population of a settlement held its ground, and required help from the troops. Thus, in September, Captain Kemp[199] with 150 of the Royal Irish was sent to the relief of one of these outposts of civilisation; a forced march through virgin forest, past many farms which the Maoris had looted and burned to the ground, brought him to his destination, where he found the colonists had thrown up stockades round their tiny church, in peaceful times used by various denominations as a place of worship, but now turned into the keep of the primitive fortress. Leaving these brave pioneers a supply of provisions and cartridges, and a small party of troops to give backbone to the defence, he returned to Drury, where his next duty was to form a post at a deserted farm on the line of communication. With his own company and fifty men under Lieutenant Briggs he cut down tree ferns, and with their trunks, lashed together with wild vines (locally known as supplejack), built a strong palisade, eight feet in height, enclosing not only the farm buildings but also space enough for the tents of his detachment. As soon as the farm had been placed in a state of defence, the British instinct of cleanliness asserted itself, and the house and outbuildings were thoroughly cleansed; then parties of men were sent out to “round up” the farmer’s cattle which had strayed into the forest, while others improved the defences and escorted the convoys to the next post on the way to the front. Encouraged by the presence of the detachment the farmer returned with his family to his house, which can hardly be described as a peaceful home, for, to quote Captain Kemp’s diary, “Our nights were disturbed by seeing lights in the bush. I burned all the low scrub (near the farm), and twice a-week took out a skirmishing party and scoured the forest: we saw a few natives but they always escaped us in the thick undergrowth. However we were not further molested.” Kemp’s diary then briefly records a succession of escorts to convoys and to prisoners taken at the fight of Rangariri; much road-making, and marches knee-deep in swamps.

In January, 1864, the Royal Irish were employed in various ways.[200] Part of the battalion was sent to guard the line of communication from the Queen’s redoubt southward to Ngaruawahia; the remainder formed the garrisons of the chain of works which Brevet-Colonel Carey had established between the Waikato and the estuary of the Thames. Thanks to Captain Kemp, we know something of the hard work done by those of the XVIIIth who were in charge of these posts. On the 7th of January, with two hundred men, he

“marched to the Surrey redoubt; it was very hot as we skirted the
swamps and many men fainted from the heat. We placed a detachment
in the redoubt, slept in the open outside it, and marched at 5.30
A.M. next day eight miles to the Esk redoubt on high ground in
open fern-covered country. Here I left Briggs and a detachment
and took my company down to the Miranda redoubt, four miles
farther on, situated at the edge of a steep cliff overlooking
the estuary of the Thames and defended by a small river on the
north side. Here I had command of two hundred men, one half being
Waikato militia. We enlarged the redoubt and made a road down to
the landing-place (previously all stores were dragged up the face
of the cliff and the Commissariat suffered heavy losses). We made
a floating bridge over the small river, sunk a well for drinking
water, and built a small redoubt on the approach from the south
in which a strong piquet was posted at night. Boats being unable
to come in at low water we made a causeway across the mud flats
to a deep-water landing-place.... We were annoyed at first by
spies and small parties of the enemy at night, so I sent out
scouring parties and destroyed their villages, bringing in large
quantities of beautiful peaches, potatoes, and other vegetables.”

At the end of January, General Cameron had accumulated enough stores at Ngaruawahia to warrant his advancing farther to the southward. He therefore worked up the right bank of the Waipa, building and garrisoning redoubts as he advanced, and in a few days reached the village of Te Rore, where for nearly three weeks he was brought to a halt--not by the enemy, but by the eternal difficulty of supply and transport. Shoals in the rivers made water-carriage uncertain, and though the crews of the little steamers, the flat-bottomed row-boats, and the other craft specially built for the expedition did their best, this mode of transport was always liable to break down. By land things were no better. In the plain between the Waikato and Waipa rivers there were hardly any roads, and the native paths, winding through forests of tree ferns, were so narrow that men could only march in single file. These paths crossed innumerable creeks running in deep watercourses, impassable for guns or waggons till roads had been cut down the steep banks and bridges thrown over the streams. The difficulty of keeping supplied even the small number of men--less than 2500--who were concentrated at Te Rore was enormous, for though Cameron’s headquarters were only eighty miles from his base at Auckland, every box of “stores had to be shifted twelve or fourteen times on account of changes of land and water carriage.”[201] To relieve this strain Cameron cut a road through the bush to Raglan, a port twenty miles distant on the west coast, and thus gained a second or subsidiary base, but as a set-off to this advantage a considerable number of men were necessarily withdrawn from active operations to guard the new line of communication.

While the advance depôt at Te Rore was being gradually filled up, the Maoris threw up a formidable chain of works to bar farther advance into their country; but after a few skirmishes they were manœuvred from these positions and disappeared into the mountains in the centre of the island. To prevent their return down the Waikato river, a post was formed on its left bank at Pukerima, and manned by the headquarter companies of the XVIIIth from Ngaruawahia. The stay of the battalion at the Maori capital had been uneventful, though to celebrate the temporary reunion of most of the companies pony races and sports for the men were organised, and made a welcome break in the monotony of the campaign, for in the long intervals between active operations amusements for all ranks were not to be obtained. An officer writes: “There were very few opportunities during the war for gymkhanas and that sort of thing, and a ‘sing-song’ over the camp-fire was as much as could be attempted. Occasionally a little duck-shooting from canoes was obtainable if we were stationed near a river, or more rarely a raid on the semi-wild boar sometimes to be met with in the bush. Pigeon-shooting was sometimes to be had, but this was about all.”

Not all the companies went with headquarters to the new post; some held the works on the lower reaches of the river, and a detachment of four companies under Captain Ring was at Te Awamutu, where Colonel Carey, recently promoted to be Brigadier-General and second-in-command of the forces in New Zealand, was throwing up strong redoubts. Here everything appeared to be quiet until a scouting party of colonists discovered that a number of Maoris had slipped back to the Waikato plain, and were vigorously entrenching themselves a few miles off near the native village of Orakau. Carey at once reconnoitred the _pah_, and decided to move on the enemy’s position during the night; the main column was to advance on Orakau,[202] while smaller parties were to place themselves by forced marches on the enemy’s flank and rear. Like a good soldier, Carey did not issue his orders till the last moment, and it was not till after dark on the 30th of March that the officers of the detachment of the XVIIIth heard the news, which reached them in a very dramatic manner. They were sitting at mess in a native hut, dimly lighted by a few camp lanterns, when the voice of a staff officer was heard calling for Ring, who in a few minutes returned, looking pale and depressed. Waiting until the soldier servants had left the hut to reply to his comrades’ inquiries as to the cause of his sudden gloom, he explained that the detachment was to march that night to attack the _pah_, and he added in confidence that he had a presentiment that his last hour was close at hand. “I have taken part in many affairs of this kind,” he said, “but I have never felt as I do now.” When his friends “chaffed” him and tried to cheer him up, he answered, “Oh! never fear. I’ll do my duty.” After issuing the necessary orders to the detachment he wrote his farewell letters, hastily put his affairs in order, and then marched off with the advance-guard, which he had the honour on this occasion to command.

The column reached Orakau at dawn on March 31. The Maoris, though evidently taken by surprise, opened fire on the advance-guard, composed of 120 Royal Irish and a party of 20 men of an irregular corps, known as the Forest Rangers. Ring extended his men into skirmishing order, and, supported by a company of the 40th, led them to the attack. The position, which apparently had not been reconnoitred adequately, proved very formidable. On a swelling down the Maoris had thrown up an “earthwork with good flank defences, deep ditches, with posts and rails outside, and nearly covered from view by flax-bushes, peach-trees, and high fern.”[203] Though repulsed by the fire of their unseen enemies Ring’s men re-formed quickly, and reinforced by a second company of the 40th, made another but equally futile effort to storm the works, being again beaten back with the loss of several officers and men, among whom was Brevet-Major Ring, mortally wounded. When Captain Baker, XVIIIth, D.A.A.G., saw that Ring was down, he flung himself off his horse, and calling for volunteers led a third assault. This failed also, but though these three attacks were unsuccessful, they served their purpose by so completely occupying the attention of the enemy that he did not realise that the British troops were hemming him in on every side; and though the cordon was at first but slender it sufficed to prevent reinforcements from throwing themselves into the _pah_. At midday a large party of Maoris tried to break through our lines from the outside, but a few shells and the musketry of the outposts kept them at a respectful distance, unable to do more than excite their besieged comrades to further resistance by shouts and war dances. As soon as the detached columns detailed to surround the _pah_ were in their places, Carey began to sap up to the works, covering his movements with artillery fire. In defending themselves against this bombardment the Maoris showed great resource. “Long bundles of fern were cut and bound with strips of green flax until an enormous mass of yielding fern received the harmless cannon-balls and guarded the earthworks.”[204]

Throughout the afternoon and night the besieged kept up a heavy fire upon the troops, who “dug themselves in” so effectually with their bayonets that the casualties were few. The sap was pushed on vigorously, and on the 1st of April various small reinforcements, snatched up from the line of communication, reached Carey. Among them was a party of the XVIIIth under Captain Inman, composed of 1 captain, 2 subalterns, 8 sergeants, 2 drummers, and 110 rank and file, and 70 officers and men of the 70th; after marching all night, they were sent at once into the trenches and rifle-pits with which the _pah_ was being rapidly encircled. Though the enemy kept up a heavy fire upon the men digging in the sap, the work went on without intermission until the morning of the 2nd, when Lieutenant-Colonel Havelock brought into camp a quantity of hand-grenades, which a brave artilleryman, at the risk of his life, hurled into the enemy’s rifle-pits. Under cover of the confusion produced by these missiles Carey ran into the sap a 6-pr. Armstrong gun, whose fire breached the palisades, and beat down the musketry directed upon the working-parties. The situation had improved so much that he was preparing to assault, when General Cameron ordered him to stay his hand. The General had recently arrived on the scene, but not wishing to deprive Carey of his command announced that he was present as a spectator only; learning, however, that many women and children were in the _pah_, he desired that the garrison should be given the chance to surrender before the attack was pressed home. The condition of the Maoris was now desperate. When surprised by our sudden swoop on Orakau, they had little or no water in the _pah_; our line of outposts and rifle-pits proved impenetrable to the parties who sought for water in the night; their only food was raw potatoes; their losses in fighting men had been considerable, and their supply of bullets was almost exhausted. Yet they disdained to yield, and when an interpreter addressed them, saying, “Hear the word of the General: you have done enough to show that you are brave men; your case is hopeless; surrender, and your lives will be spared;” they haughtily replied, “This is the word of the Maori: we will fight for ever and ever and ever.” They were then invited to send away the women, and answered, “The women will fight as well as we.”

After this abortive negotiation fire was reopened on both sides, and some of the troops appear to have lost their heads and attempted to storm the _pah_ without orders.[205] One of these unauthorised assaults was led by a soldier in the XVIIIth, Private Hannon, who, throwing his forage cap over a partially breached spot in the defences, dashed after it with some twenty men, for the most part belonging to New Zealand corps. After clambering over a stout fence they dropped into a ditch, where Hannon and nine other brave men were mown down by a volley fired at point-blank range. But though a similar attack by a party of regulars and volunteers also failed to carry another weak spot in the fortifications, every hour saw the Maoris less able to face the storm of grape-shot, hand-grenades, and rifle-bullets poured upon them on every side. Suddenly Rewi, their war chief, decided to cut his way out or to perish in the attempt. While his followers mustered among the huts round which their works were built, they sang one of the hymns taught them by the missionaries, and then, remembering the old days before white men had settled in New Zealand, chanted invocations to their ancient gods.

“Their voices,” says Rusden, “were heard by the wondering
English, who were to marvel still more at their daring. At the
rear a double line of the investing troops had been thrown back
under cover to enable a gun to open fire. Through that opening,
about four o’clock in the broad day, chanting their appeal to the
God of battles and moving steadily as in scorn of their foes,
the Maoris marched towards the narrow neck of swamp between
the ridge and mound. Carey (in his official report) said they
rushed. Mr Fox writes that an eye-witness told him ‘they were in
a great column, the women, the children, and the great chiefs in
the centre, and they marched out as cool and steady as if they
had been going to Church.’ Rewi ordered that no shot should be
fired. The little ammunition left was needed for defence in the
desperate course through the swamp.... Some accounts state that
as if to deceive the troops and gain time for the fugitives, a
Maori, while his countrymen departed, sprang up with a white
flag on the parapet and was riddled by bullets. One chief, more
successful, diverted the English for a few moments; he walked
coolly towards the troops and surrendered.”[206]

The regiment (not the XVIIIth) charged with the defence of the ground across which the Maori column was moving, was disposed in two lines, the foremost lying under a bank which, while it covered the men from fire from the _pah_, prevented their watching the ground in front of them. The Maoris marched towards this bank, and, incredible as it seems, passed through these two lines of British regular troops, apparently without opposition. It was rumoured at the time that before the men in the first line discovered that the natives were out of their trenches, the Maoris had actually jumped over their heads and were well on their way towards the second line! Thanks to the energy of the General and his staff and the zeal of the remainder of the troops, the natives did not escape in a body, but were headed off by a handful of mounted men, who punished them severely in a pursuit which lasted until nightfall. Thirty-three prisoners fell into our hands; more than a hundred bodies were found on the field; it was known that at least twenty men had been buried in the _pah_, while traces in the bush proved that a considerable number of killed and wounded had been carried away after the troops had been recalled to camp. The natives themselves acknowledged to a loss of two hundred, out of a strength considered by General Cameron not to exceed three hundred fighting men. Well might the British General in his despatch say that it was impossible not to admire the heroic courage and devotion of the Maoris in defending themselves so long against overwhelming numbers.[207]