Ambush

“ If, during the night, or in the course of the day, small reconnoitring parties, belonging to the enemy, should be discovered upon the road, or about it, one half of your patrole or scouring detachment, must be placed in ambush along one side of the road, in order to take them in the rear, whilst the other half attacks them in front, and by thus surrounding them, prevents any intelligence from being carried to the enemy. ”

“ Thereupon our soldiers who are in ambush will rush into the field and take the hostile army in the centre; and, if it please God most high, we will strike hard with our swords and seize their leaders, and take their flags, and tear in pieces their ensigns; and in this way will we overcome the foe.’ The king liked this plan of the vezir, and by this stratagem they sabred the foe and were again victorious. And the king returned smiling to his country. ”

“ The foe, retreating as we pressed forward, was always keeping up a rear-guard fight, and we never woke in the morning without being aware that we might strike an ambush before nightfall. We got so tired of the struggle that we often thought of the relief it would be to be captured ”

“ With the hide shields on their forearms, and the wild Nyanza road
Grew blue with smoking villages, grew red with flaring roofs,
Grew noisy with the shouting and the thunder of the hoofs
As we drove the plundered cattle—when we burned the night with haste—
When we leapt at dawn from ambush—when we laid the shambas waste! ”

“ Then comes the uproar of battle,—the dust, the blood, the advance, the retreat, the shock of arms, the murderous volleys of the infantry, the thunder storm of artillery; in short, the final desperate conflict of determined men for the mastery, all of them directed by cool-headed commanders, sitting on their horses at points of vantage for observation, and directing a reinforcement here, a withdrawal of men there, the hurrying of artillery to one point, an onset of cavalry at another, and at a critical moment an up-and-at-them charge with the bayonets. ”

“ With heads bowed, and limbs moving wearily, guns held at will, they swept by in unbroken column--cavalry, artillery, infantry--scarcely a face lifted to glance toward the house, with here and there a straggler limping to the roadside, or an aide spurring past--just a stream of armed men, who had been plodding on since daylight, footsore, hungry, unseeing, yet ready to die in battle at their commander's word. ”

“ It is a panorama of a battle, but the scenes follow one another in reversed order, from the end of the fight to its beginning. Thus I see successively images of soldiers fleeing and pursuing, then fighting, and later preparing for battle. Now there is a daring and bloody attack of a few regiments against a firm position of the enemy, then a wild combat of single regiments of horsemen, manœuvres of the infantry, movements of the artillery. At times I see only clouds of white smoke with occasional flashes of fire. The silence of a grave is spread over the entire scene. ”

“ Every inch of ground was disputed on both sides, and neither gave way until every means of resistance was exhausted. The field of battle was heaped with the dead; and yet the attack grew more impetuous, and the resistance more obstinate. The continued reverberations of more than six hundred pieces of artillery, the fire of the light troops, the frequent explosions of caissons blown up by shells, the hissing of balls, the clash of arms, the roar of the charges, and the shouts of the soldiery, produced a commingling of sounds whose effect it would be impossible to describe. ”

“ Trains of Artillery, cannon, ammunition—all that belong to our army fell into the hands of the enemy, for the dispersion was horrid. Our loss in dead, wounded and dispersed, is reckoned at six thousand men. The loss of the enemy is said to be greater, but you know that this way of expression among us is the fashion. ”

“ Seeing the invaders approach, the defenders went out to meet them, and gave them battle on the open space in front of the pa; but the sound of the guns, and the sight of men falling as by the hand of some invisible enemy, so terrorised the defenders that their lines were soon broken, and they fled, a demoralised host, back to their stronghold, which was immediately stormed and taken with great slaughter. ”

“ This siege warfare is a war of force against force, the force of machinery dealing ponderous, mighty blows against a wall of steel, smashing, smashing, smashing, always in the same place, until the line is bent, then broken, then the force of man coming into play in a wild onrush of storming infantry, with their primitive passions aflame, surging forward amid clouds of green and yellow and red smoke, bombing and slashing their way through the breach their machines have made. ”

“ How we closed hand to hand, and with what fury the enemy attacked us, wounding us with their clubs and lances and two-handed swords; while our cavalry, favoured by the even surface of the plain, rode through them at will with couched lances, bearing down the enemy wherever they came, and fighting most manfully though they and their horses were all wounded. We too of the infantry did our best, regardless of our former wounds and of those we now received, closing up with the enemy, and using every effort to bear them down with our swords. ”

“ Let any man fancy himself standing on the summit of a high hill, looking down on a plain covered with 150,000 men, from 10,000 to 15,000 horse, and from 300 to 400 pieces of artillery vomiting fire and death in every direction, and thousands of the infantry pointing their deadly weapons at each other, the space between the belligerents barely permitting them doing so without crossing the muzzles of their pieces,—and he will have some faint idea of what passed on the plains of Vittoria, and be able to paint in imagination a few of those extraordinary scenes to which we were witnesses. ”

“ Two hundred thousand men, lighted only by the flash of guns which mowed their ranks, with thousands of panic-stricken cavalry trampling over them, while the crash of musketry, the explosions of artillery, the shouts of the assailants and the fugitives, and the shrieks of the dying, blended in a roar more appalling than heaven's heaviest thunders, presented a scene which has few parallels even in the horrid annals of war. ”

“ The guns looked old, mailed, dead warriors; the gunboats sleeping forms; the grey troops battle-lines in a great war picture, the three horsemen by the cross-roads a significant group in the same; the dead and wounded over all the fields, upon the slope, in the woods, by the marshes, the jetsam, still and heavy, of war at its worst. For a moment longer the wide and dreary stretch rested so, then with a wild suddenness sound and furious motion rushed upon the scene. ”

“ All the attempts of the enemy, therefore, to induce our soldiers to part with their ammunition proving fruitless, the French, irritated at their obstinacy, attacked our squares sword in hand, but were always forced to make a precipitate flight, leaving the ground around each square, covered with their killed and wounded. ”

“ For the invasion of the enemy’s territory, with a constantly lengthening line of supply and a consequent dwindling of the main force through detachments necessary to protect this line, an army twice as great as the enemy’s was required for accomplishing the object of the campaign, which was the destruction or the surrender of the opposing host. ”

“ Reinforcements keep joining us, both French and English, almost every day; and we have a splendid army, in spite of our heavy losses, ready at our commander’s call to advance with the flag of old England, and plant it on the proud walls of this noble fortress, which has put all others in the shade. Hardly a day passes but more guns and mortars are being mounted, and what the next bombardment will be I do not know. ”

“ Therefore, while the battle raged with vast slaughter, each individual soldier rushing fiercely on the dense ranks of the enemy, the arrows and javelins flew like hail; the blows of swords were equally rapid; while the cavalry, too, pressed on, cutting down all who fled with terrible and mighty wounds on their backs; as also on both sides did the infantry, slaughtering and hamstringing those who had fallen down, and through fear were unable to fly. ”

“ Any officer who has been present at great operations of this nature will understand what it is for an army to land in narrow and widely separated creeks all its munitions of war—its shells, its cannon-shot, its heavy guns, mortars, its powder, its gun-carriages, its platforms, its fascines, gabions, sandbags, its trenching tools, and all the various matériel requisite for the siege of extensive and formidable lines of fortifications and batteries. ”

“ Fences gone, buildings in ruins, shrubbery destroyed, fields uncultivated—all showing the sad effects of [Pg 34] desolating war—while in every direction may be seen the “canvas home” of the soldier. Frequently we passed squads of men under drill—recruits, I suppose—their glistening bayonets and gleaming swords sparkling and flashing in the sunlight, innocent of the destructive work they will soon aid in executing. Every now and then we caught sight of the stars and stripes proudly floating from some strongly-fortified place, with its big guns bidding defiance to the enemy. ”

“ And so at daybreak, when the enemy were now in sight, the moment that they were discovered by their glittering helmets and bristling armour, our men sprang up vigorously to the conflict, and dashed at them with great courage; and although the enemy wielded their huge bows with great strength, and the glistening of their weapons increased the alarm of our soldiers, yet their rage, and the compactness of their ranks, kept alive and added fuel to their courage. ”

“ Under cover of a few bomb vessels and gun-brigs, the small craft advanced with great regularity, till within a short distance of the landing place, when a general cry of, "Devil take the hindmost," ran from right to left. The landing of troops in face of an enemy, being at all times a hazardous operation, considerable anxiety was apparent in every countenance, till the friends who had preceded us in the road to honour, had obtained a footing on the enemy's soil. ”

“ Assault is the rush of an armed force upon enemy forces in the battlefield, or upon intrenchments, fortifications, habitations, villages, or towns, such rushing force committing every violence against opposing persons and destroying all impediments. Siege is the surrounding and investing of an enemy locality by an armed force, cutting off those inside from all communication for the purpose of starving them into surrender or for the purpose of attacking the invested locality and taking it by assault. Bombardment is the throwing by artillery of shot and shell upon persons and things. ”

“ The record established by your indomitable courage is unparalleled in the annals of war. Your prowess has won for you even the respect and admiration of [280] your enemies. During the past six months although in most instances confronted by superior numbers, you have captured from the enemy, in open battle, one hundred and eleven pieces of field artillery, sixty-five battle flags, and upwards of ten thousand prisoners of war including seven general officers. ”

“ The hail of the assailants' bullets ceases; already the artillery of the attack has desisted lest it should injure friend as well as foe. The word runs along the line and the clumps of men lying prostrate there out in the open. The officers spring to their feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The men are up in an instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point begins. ”

“ The soldier, burning with fierce ardour, proposed that they should take post respectively the one at the head, the other at the outlet of the vale, and creeping as nigh the enemy as they could, deliver their fire, and then rushing on, before the savages could recover from their surprise, do their best to finish the affair with their hatchets,—a plan, which, as he justly said, offered the only prospect of cutting off the retreat of those who might survive the fire. ”

“ They were impatient for battles, charges, the kind of fighting that is done between great armies on the open field, when there is the roar and smoke of cannon, the rattle of small firearms, the clash of steel, the cries of captains, the shrieks and groans of wounded, the plenteous spilling of blood. ”

“ It was on this open ground that the extraordinary bravery of the enemy was most brilliantly shown. Standard-bearers with reckless gallantry could be seen rushing to certain destruction, falling perhaps within ten yards of the line of the Guides; men, who had used up all their ammunition, would rush forward with large rocks and hurl them at the soldiers, courting instant death. ”

“ We wormed our way round the corner, out of the square all right, and then we lost ourselves, and were wedged in among an awful crowd of people, carts and mules, cavalry and artillery all jumbled up together, jostling and shoving and cursing. ”

“ The surging masses of human beings intent on each others destruction with the death dealing artillery with its terrific roar and the more destructive missiles of small armies with their hateful hissing sounds, together with the deafening cheers of the moving armies, and the heartrending screams and moans of the wounded and dying make the scene agonizing to the extreme. ”

“ It is indeed difficult to conceive that any one should expect half-a-dozen expert gunners, each shut up in an iron box with a gun, to stop the rush of a thousand men, even by day. But imagine the feelings of the gunner on the night of a big attack, alone in his box, his nerves already strained by a preliminary bombardment and nights of watching. ”

“ They, too, prepared for combat; and, when the loud booming of the guns gave the signal that the battle was commenced, eighty cannon opened their destructive fire, and the light troops went sweeping onward with the rapidity of a thunder-cloud over the heavens, while the deep, dark columns marched sternly after, and charged, with terrible strength, the English lines. ”

“ Again I begged him to level the cannon, telling him, "The more dead, the fewer enemies;" which he did for my sake: and the shot killed fifteen or sixteen, and wounded many. Our men made sorties against the enemy, wherein many were killed and wounded on both sides, with gunshot or with fighting hand to hand; and our men often sallied out before their trenches were made; so that I had my work cut out for me, and had no rest either day or night for dressing the wounded. ”