G. le M. Gretton

“ The men were wild with delight at their success, but the senior officers realised that the situation was a desperate one: a few hundred British troops were entangled among the unbreached works of a fort, whose garrison, though undoubtedly surprised, had suffered but little in the attack. To retire was out of the question, but to scale the wall looming high and grim above them appeared impossible, until the fugitives, whom the soldiers were chasing with their bayonets, solved the problem by darting to a part of the wall where much grass grew, and hauling themselves up from tuft to tuft. ”

“ The town was in a wretched condition and quite unfit to stand a siege; the Austrians, to whom it then belonged, had allowed the fortifications to fall into disrepair; the artillery was deficient in guns and stores of every kind, and the three thousand infantry, insufficient for the perimeter they had to guard, were not soldiers of the same nation commanded by generals of their own army, but detachments of British, of Austrians, and of Dutch—men with no common language and dissimilar in discipline, habits, and sentiment. ”

“ A few tribesmen, captured by the irregulars who guarded the lines of communication, were the only enemies seen; they were wild-looking savages, short but wiry, with fierce eyes gleaming under shocks of matted hair, and armed with formidable spears more than five feet in length. They did not form part of the Mahdi’s regular army, but were local freebooters, more disposed to plunder than to fight. When the Royal Irish were a few miles north of Gakdul they met messengers hurrying to Korti with the news that Khartoum had fallen. ”

“ On these deep and sheltered waters the whole of the Russian fleet could ride in safety, protected by a ring of forts from attack by land or sea, and the labours of successive generations of engineers had converted the western shore of the creek, or inner harbour, into a vast arsenal and dockyard, round which a thriving and populous city had sprung up. ”

“ Collinson’s “Light Bobs” dashed down the slope of the rampart, scaled the mud walls and, followed by the remainder of the regiment, fell furiously on the Tartars, who, after a stout resistance, broke and fled. Not all, however, of the enemy had lost heart. Just as the regiment had re-formed after the charge, a gigantic Tartar rushed towards the line, brandishing a sword in each hand; the officers, unwilling to send so brave a man to his death, made signs to him to retire, but in vain, and he was almost amongst the men when a well-aimed bullet laid him low. ”

“ While Smith’s grenadiers were looking for the warlike stores, the light infantry outposts were attacked and driven back into Concord by a very superior force of provincials, who from far and wide had collected to do battle with the red-coats. Boys, full-grown men, greybeards almost tottering to the grave, turned out with splendid enthusiasm from the hamlets of Lincoln, Bedford, Carlisle, and Chelmsford, and surrounding the village like a swarm of bees, set themselves to sting the intruders to death with musketry. ”

“ After a short cannonade, Ginkell breached and stormed the defences on the Leinster side of the river, and, driving the enemy before him across the bridge, made himself master of the eastern half of Athlone. But now his real difficulties began. Batteries bristled on the bank above the ford; the guns of the castle commanded the bridge, which was so narrow that a few men could hold it against a regiment; and General St Ruth, a French officer of great experience, from his camp hard by could reinforce the garrison without hindrance from the besiegers. ”

“ Though the Royal Irish had mastered the ways of a whale-boat in the rapids, they were new to the tricks of the camel-drivers, who, from idleness or dishonesty, often fastened the loads so insecurely that in the night everything slipped off the saddles and fell in a cascade upon the sand. ”

“ The Russians, magnificently stubborn fighters as they were, began to realise that the place was becoming untenable. The parapets were crumbling under the projectiles of the Anglo-French artillery; many guns were disabled or worn out, and though there was still a large reserve of cannon in the arsenal, the fire of our mortars made it impossible to mount them on the shattered batteries. Round the disabled guns the dead lay in great heaps, while the wounded could not be moved till darkness brought some respite to the harassed garrison. ”

“ Many of the young Americans believed that as all danger of an attack by France had been removed by the British conquest of Canada, they would be better off as citizens of a republic than as subjects of King George. Both sides were unable to regard the matters at issue from a point of view other than their own: the English Government failed to appreciate the restlessness and desire for expansion natural to young and growing communities of British stock; the provincials were equally unable to realise how slowly new ideas penetrated into the brains of the governing classes at home. ”

“ Their introduction to campaigning in the Crimea was a rude one; a blizzard raged as they floundered through deep snow along a track, marked by the bodies of transport animals killed by starvation and overwork; and when late in the afternoon they reached Eyre’s camp, they were told off by companies to find shelter in the lines of other corps, for their own tents had been left standing at Balaclava from want of transport to move them. When the Royal Irish succeeded in bringing up their tents from Balaclava, they settled down in camp with the handiness of seasoned troops. ”

“ By the 20th of May the brass guns began to droop at the muzzle, the iron guns to burst, and ammunition to run short. Gradually the enemy’s fire died down, and when there were but nineteen pieces left in action against them the British restored their shattered works, and mounting thirteen new guns and more than a hundred mortars poured upon the Spaniards a storm of projectiles almost equalling that which had scourged the defenders of the Rock. ”

“ Thus when the provincials determined to take up arms against England, many of the men who later became generals of note in the republican army had served their apprenticeship to war under the Colours of the mother-country. They had studied our drill; they understood our tactics; they knew the merits and demerits of our soldiers, and very soon learned how best to meet our slow and cumbrous movements with their imperfectly trained volunteers, who at the beginning of the War of Independence had many points in common with the Boers of 1899. Both were ardently patriotic; self-reliant to a fault ”

“ In one respect, however, the Boers and the American colonists differed widely. In none of their encounters with the British did the burghers ever hold their ground with determination when things had begun to go badly with them, while at Bunker’s Hill, the first real battle of the revolutionary war, the provincials “fought to a finish” with such grim tenacity that, had our army been engaged, not with a raw militia, but with European regular troops, its dearly bought success would have been extolled as a feat of arms equal to any in the annals of England. ”

“ As General Havelock-Allan and Colonel Lawrence crossed on the voyage without meeting in any port, the former landed at Bombay with an unbiassed mind; without stopping to see the battalion at Rawal Pindi he hastened to the frontier, and after the fullest inquiries in every direction was able to assert proudly that the Royal Irish had behaved like good soldiers in the Tirah campaign. ”

“ This road was crowded with Boers, who, after saving their guns, were now in full retreat; the mass presented a splendid target for musketry, but just as the men were bringing their rifles into play down fell a mountain mist, completely veiling the burghers from their view. To pursue amidst the precipices in such a fog was impossible; the only thing left to do was to fire volleys in the direction [345] taken by the enemy, who is said to have suffered some loss from these unaimed bullets. The British casualties were small; and in the Royal Irish only one man was wounded. ”

“ It would be impossible to describe in words strong enough the carnage that took place during the first attack, which lasted a good hour or more. We were all fighting hand to hand, hurling them back as they clutched at the parapet; men were slaying, or tearing at the muzzles of guns and the bayonets which pierced their entrails; crushing under their feet their own wounded comrades, and even gouging out their opponents’ eyes with their nails, when the grip was so close that neither could make use of their weapons. ”

“ Long before daylight the troops were under arms, and when morning service had been read at the head of every regiment, the Duke rode through his army, correcting faulty dispositions and sending to their places in the line of battle the horse and dragoons who during the night had arrived from Tournai. They had left behind them on the road the infantry, who came on as best they could, the last to reach the battlefield being the Royal Irish, whose march was retarded by the slow-moving guns they had to escort. ”

“ That cultivated country is practically impassable to a regular army, being irrigated and cut up in every direction by deep canals. I had ascertained by frequent reconnaissance that the enemy did not push his outposts far beyond his works at night, and I had good reasons for believing that he then kept a very bad look-out. These circumstances, and the very great reliance I had in the steadiness of our splendid infantry, determined me to resort to the extremely difficult operation of a night march, to be followed by an attack before daybreak on the enemy’s position. ”

“ On the enemy’s side of this mountain the slopes are steep and rocky; and as much labour had been expended in increasing their natural difficulties, Faron was considered so impregnable that only four hundred and fifty men were employed to guard its two miles of frontage. At daylight every work upon this hill was attacked and, though none of the British posts were driven in, the French poured through the gaps left by the Spaniards and Neapolitans, and established themselves upon the shoulder of Mont Faron from which Toulon is overlooked. ”

“ At every siding stood long trains, shunted to give passage to the troops—some composed of “empties” going back to the base to refill, others laden with supplies of every kind for the front. At long intervals there were halts at stations to give the men time to eat the meals, for which preparations had been made in advance by the Railway staff officers in charge of the line; and as the troop-train gradually neared railhead it passed several villages where French had met and beaten back the enemy while the battalion was still upon the sea. ”

“ Many of the men in his ranks had seen powder burned in earnest, and though their muskets were heavy and unwieldy, they had learned to use them in the pursuit of big game, where an ill-aimed bullet may cost the hunter his life. By the glimmer of dark lanterns Prescott led his men across the isthmus connecting the Charlestown peninsula with the mainland, then crossed Bunker’s Hill and halted on a lower ridge, Breed’s Hill, where he quickly traced the lines of a redoubt. ”

“ At Toulon none of the senior officers of the Allies were men of genius, and it is doubtful whether even a great soldier, with so curiously composed a force, could have withstood the savage energy that Napoleon, then a young officer of artillery on his first campaign, infused into the Generals commanding the besieging troops. ”

“ The head of a fierce-looking Maori appeared above the parapet, but the Englishman was a quick shot and the head disappeared. When the troops got into the works the officer looked for the man he had hit. The Maori had dropped with a bullet through his brain, but this death-wound was not his only injury. Some time during the siege his leg had been broken and roughly bound up with flax and a tent-peg, to enable him to go on fighting. In the retreat a native for some time escorted a party of women and children. ”

“ Very soon shells from guns scattered along a ridge about five thousand yards to the eastward began to fall among them, and for a time our artillery gave no great help, until a field-battery dashed through the ranks, caught up half a company to serve as escort, and pushed on to a ridge where it came into action. The burghers at once turned their pieces against the audacious battery, and thanks to this diversion the battalion had been able to move forward to within rifle-shot of the enemy’s trenches, when an order brought it to a halt. ”

“ Malta was full of trained soldiers, eager to be employed on active service; in short, the Army, purified by the ordeal it had passed through, had become once more a first-rate fighting machine. But the troops arriving after the fall of the fortress had no opportunity of distinguishing themselves, for though the enemy annoyed us by cannonading Sebastopol from the northern shore of the harbour, he made no offensive movement against the camps on the Upland. ”

“ A young officer who had recently brought out a number of recruits to the battalion thus describes his experiences in this, his first engagement: “The regiment was the left flank-guard. It was the first time that many of us had been in action, and we realised the truth of the saying that ‘it takes a ton of lead to kill a man,’ for though for several hours we were under a hot rifle fire from invisible enemies at more or less effective range, with shells falling among us, I don’t think we lost more than one man killed. [296] Our militia reservists were splendid in their ignorance of danger. ”