The Romance of Modern Sieges

Lieutenant Herbert says concerning the surrender: “As the Roumanian soldiers seized our weapons I became possessed of an uncontrollable fury. I broke my sword, thrust carbine, revolvers, and ammunition into the waggon. A private with Semitic features perceived my Circassian dagger, but I managed to spoil it by breaking the point before handing it over. Another man annexed my field-glass. I never saw my valise again, which had been stored on one of the battalion’s carts. I had saved a portion of my notes and manuscripts by carrying them like a breast cuirass between uniform and vest. Having given vent to rage, I fell into the opposite mood, and, sitting down on a stone, I hid my face in my hands, and abandoned myself to the bitterest half-hour of reflection I have ever endured.”

Luckily Herbert fell in with a Roumanian Lieutenant whom he knew, who took him to the Russian camp, and gave him hot grog, bread, and cold meat. “How we devoured the food!” he says. “We actually licked the mugs out.”

As they walked away in the dark to their night quarters, they happened to pass the spot where Herbert’s battalion was encamped, without fires or tents, in an open, snow-covered field, exposed to the north wind. Cries of distress and rage greeted them, and they found that the drunken Russian soldiers were robbing their Turkish prisoners, not only of watches, money, etc., but also of their biscuits – their only food.

Herbert stopped for a minute, and gave away all he had left; but some Russians jumped upon him and rifled his pockets, before he could recall his companions to his aid. Everybody in camp seemed to be drunk. Herbert went to sleep in a mud hut, and slept for twelve hours without awaking, being very kindly treated by a Russian Major.

But the Turks suffered terribly. They spent the night of the 10th on the same cold spot. Their arms had been taken from them, also their money, biscuits, and even their great-coats. It froze and snowed, and they were allowed no fires.

It was a fortnight before all the prisoners had left the neighbourhood; during this time from 3,000 to 4,000 men had succumbed to their privations. The defence of Plevna had lasted 143 days. As the Grand Duke Nicholas told Osman, it was one of the finest things done in military history. But it cost the Russians 55,000 men, the Roumanians 10,000, and the Turks 30,000.

There is a Turkish proverb, “Though your enemy be as small as an ant, yet act as if he were as big as an elephant.” Had the Russians been guided by this, they might have saved many losses.

“One bitterly cold morning, with two feet of snow on the ground, I joined a detachment of prisoners, escorted by Roumanians. We travelled viâ Sistoon to Bukarest, crossing the Danube by the Russian pontoon bridge. This journey, which lasted eight days, was the most dreadful part of my experience, lying as it did through snow-clad country, with storms and bitter winds. I and fifty others had seats on carts; the bulk of the prisoners had to tramp. I saw at least 400 men drop, to be taken as little notice of as if they were so much offal, to die of starvation, or be devoured by the wolves which prowled around our column.

“Over each man who fell a hideous crowd of crows, ravens, vultures, hovered until he was exhausted enough to be attacked with impunity.

“Some of the soldiers of the escort were extremely brutal; others displayed a touching kindness; most were as stolid and apathetic as their captives. Of Osman’s army of 48,000 men, only 15,000 reached Russian soil; only 12,000 returned to their homes.

“In Bukarest our sufferings were at an end. In the streets ladies distributed coffee, broth, bread, tobacco, cigarettes, spirit. Our quarters in the barracks appeared to us like Paradise.”

Then by train to Kharkoff, where Herbert got a cheque from his father, and was allowed much freedom on parole; he made many friends, was lionized and feasted and fattened “like a show beast.” “I was treated,” he says, “with all the chivalrous kindness and open-handed hospitality which are the characteristics of the educated Russians. The effects of the brutal propensities developed in warfare wore off speedily, and I am now a mild and inoffensive being, whose conscience does not allow the killing of a flea or the plucking of a flower!”

From “The Defence of Plevna,” by W. V. Herbert, 1895, by kind permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co.

CHAPTER XXI

SIEGE OF KHARTOUM (1884)

Gordon invited to the Soudan – The Mahdi – Chinese Gordon – His religious feeling – Not supported by England – Arabs attack – Blacks as cowards – Pashas shot – The Abbas sent down with Stewart – Her fate – Relief coming – Provisions fail – A sick steamer —Bordein sent down to Shendy – Alone on the house-top – Sir Charles Wilson and Beresford steam up – The rapids and sand-bank – “Do you see the flag?” – “Turn and fly” – Gordon’s fate.

In January, 1884, Charles Gordon was asked by the British Government to go to Egypt and withdraw from the Soudan the garrisons, the civil officials, and any of the inhabitants who might wish to be taken away. It was a dangerous duty he had to perform, as the Mahdi, a religious pretender in whom many believed, had just annihilated an Egyptian army led by an Englishman, Hicks Pasha, and, supported by the Arab slave-dealers, had revolted against Egyptian rule.

Gordon had some years before been Governor-General of the Soudan for the Khedive Ismail. He had been then offered £10,000 a year, but would not take more than £2,000, for he knew it would be “blood money wrung from the wretches under his rule.” When previously “Chinese Gordon,” as he was called, had put down the Taiping rebels for the Chinese Government, he refused the enormous treasure which was offered him, in order to mark his resentment at the treachery of the Emperor for having executed the rebel chiefs after Gordon had promised them their lives.

Gordon was a man of simple piety. “God dwells in us” – this was the doctrine he most valued. After the Bible, the “Imitation of Christ,” the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, seem to have been his favourites. He once wrote: “Amongst troubles and worries no one can have peace till he stays his soul upon his God. It gives a man superhuman strength… The quiet, peaceful life of our Lord was solely due to His submission to God’s will.”

Such was the man whom England sent out too late to face the rising storm of Arab rebellion. Gordon reached Khartoum on the 18th of February, taking up his quarters in the palace which had been his home in years before. He had come, he said, without troops, nor would he fight with any weapons but justice. The chains were struck off from the limbs of the prisoners in the dungeons.

“I shall make them love me,” he said; and the black people came in their thousands to kiss his feet, calling him “the Sultan of the Soudan.”

But time went by, and Gordon could not get the Government at home to second his schemes, so that the natives began to lose confidence in him, and sided with the Mahdi.

The Arabs began to attack Khartoum on the 12th of March, and from that date until his death Gordon was engaged in defending the city. Khartoum is situated on the western bank of the Blue Nile, on a spit of sand between the junction of that river with the White Nile. Nearly all the records of this period have been lost, but it is proved that wire entanglements were stretched in front of the earthworks, mines were laid down, the Yarrow-built steamers were made bullet-proof and furnished with towers, guns were mounted on the public buildings, and expeditions in search of food were sent out.

It was Gordon’s habit to go up on the roof at sunrise and scan the country around.

“I am not alone,” he would say, “for He is ever with me.”

On the 16th of March he had to look upon his native troops retiring before the rebel horsemen. He writes:

“Our gun with the regulars opened fire. Very soon a body of about sixty rebel horsemen charged down upon my Bashi-Bazouks, who fired a volley, then turned and fled. The horsemen galloped towards my square of regulars, which they immediately broke. The whole force then retreated slowly towards the fort with their rifles shouldered. The men made no effort to stand, and the gun was abandoned. Pursuit ceased about a mile from stockade, and there the men rallied. We brought in the wounded. Nothing could be more dismal than seeing these horsemen, and some men even on camels, pursuing close to troops, who with arms shouldered plodded their way back.”

But Gordon was no weak humanitarian. Two Pashas were tried, and found guilty of cowardice, and were promptly shot —pour encourager les autres. After that he tried to train his men to face the enemy by little skirmishes, and he made frequent sallies with his river steamers.

“You see,” he wrote, “when you have steam on the men can’t run away.”

Then began a long and weary waiting for the relief which came not until it was too late. The Arabs kept on making attacks, which they never pressed home, expecting to effect a surrender from scarcity of food.

In September only three months’ food remained. No news came from England; they knew not if England even thought of them. The population of Khartoum was at first about 60,000 souls; nearly 20,000 of these were sent away as the siege went on as being friends of the Mahdi.

On the 9th of September Gordon sent down the Nile, in a small paddle-boat named the Abbas, Colonel Stewart, Mr. Power, M. Herbin, the French Consul, some Greeks, and about fifty soldiers. They took with them letters, journals, dispatches which were to be sent from Dongola. The Abbas drew little water, the river was in full flood, and they seemed likely to be able to get over the rapids with safety. Henceforth Gordon was alone with his black and Egyptian troops. One might have thought that his heart would have sunk within him at the loneliness of his situation, at the feeling of desertion by England, and of treachery in his own garrison. He had no friend to speak to, no sympathetic companion left at Khartoum. Yes, he had one Friend left, and in his journal he tells us that he was happier and more peaceful now than in the earlier months of the siege.

“He is always with me. May our Lord not visit us as a nation for our sins, but may His wrath fall on me, hid in Christ. This is my frequent prayer, and may He spare these people and bring them to peace.”

The ill-fated Abbas was wrecked, her passengers and crew were murdered, her papers were taken to the Mahdi, who now knew exactly how long Khartoum could hold out against famine.

On the 21st of September Gordon first heard the news of a relief expedition being sent from England, and three days later he resolved to dispatch armed steamers to Metemma down the Nile to await the arrival of our troops. They started on the 30th, taking with them many of Gordon’s best men; but Gordon went on, drilling, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, writing hopefully, and sometimes merrily, in his journals. For instance, writing of an official who had telegraphed, “I should like to be informed exactly when Gordon expects to be in difficulties as to provisions and ammunition,” Gordon remarks:

“This man must be preparing a great statistical work. If he will only turn to his archives he will see we have been in difficulties for provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the bank, having seen his friend in a river already bobbed down two or three times, hails, ‘I say, old fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the life-buoy. I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is a pity to throw you the life-buoy until you are in extremis, and I want to know exactly.’”

On the 21st of October the Mahdi arrived before Khartoum, and Gordon was informed of the loss of the Abbas and the death of his friends. To this Gordon replied:

“Tell the Mahdi that it is all one to me whether he has captured 20,000 steamers like the Abbas– I am here like iron.”

On the 2nd of November there were left provisions for six weeks, and he could not put the troops on half rations, lest they should desert.

On the 12th an attack was made upon Omdurman, a little way down the river, and on Gordon’s steamers Ismailia and Hussineyeh. The latter was struck by shells, and had to be run aground. In the journal we read:

“From the roof of the palace I saw that poor little beast Hussineyeh fall back, stern foremost, under a terrific fire of breechloaders. I saw a shell strike the water at her bows; I saw her stop and puff off steam, and then I gave the glass to my boy, sickened unto death. My boy (he is thirty) said, ‘Hussineyeh is sick.’ I knew it, but said quietly, ‘Go down and telegraph to Mogrim, “Is Hussineyeh sick?”’”

On the 22nd of November Gordon summed up his losses. He had lost nearly 1,900 men, and 242 had been wounded. And where were the English boats that were to hurry up the Nile to his rescue?

On the 30th of November only one boat had passed the third cataract, the remaining 600 were creaking and groaning under the huge strain that was hauling them painfully through the “Womb of Rocks.”

In December the desertions from the garrison increased, as the food-supply decreased. There was not fifteen days’ food left now in Khartoum. So the steamer Bordein was sent down to Shendy with letters and his journal. In a letter to his sister he writes:

“I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty.”

The last entry in his journal runs as follows:

“I have done the best for the honour of our country. Good-bye. You send me no information, though you have lots of money.”

Evidently this high-souled man was cut to the heart by what he thought was the ingratitude and neglect of England. He could not know that thousands of Englishmen and Canadians were toiling up the Nile flood to save him, if it were possible. But alas! they all started too late, since valuable time had been wasted in long arguments held in London as to which might be the best route to Khartoum.

Meanwhile, starvation was beginning: strange things were eaten by those who still remained faithful to the last. Only 14,000 now were left in the city. But Omdurman had been taken, the Arabs were pressing closer and fiercer, and Egyptian officers came to Gordon clamouring for surrender. Then he would go up upon the roof, his face set, his teeth clenched. He would strain his eyes in looking to the north for some sign, some tiny sign of help coming. He cared not for his own life – “The Almighty God will help me,” he wrote – but he did care for the honour of England, and that honour seemed to him to be sullied by our leaving him here at bay – and all alone!

Meanwhile, the English had fought their way to Gubat, where they found the steamers which Gordon had sent to meet them. So tired were the men that, after a drink of river-water, they fell down like logs. Four of Gordon’s steamers, with Sir Charles Wilson and Captain C. Beresford, started from Gubat on the 24th of January with twenty English soldiers and some undisciplined blacks. They were like the London penny steamers, that one shell would have sent to the bottom. They were heavily laden with Indian corn, fuel, and dura for the Khartoum garrison. Each steamer flew two Egyptian flags, one at the foremast and one at the stern. Every day they had to stop for wood to supply the engines, when the men would be off after loot or fresh meat.

When they reached the cataract and rapids the Bordein struck on a rock, and could not be moved for many hours, the Nile water running like a mill-race under her keel. Arabs on the bank were taking pot-shots at her, and the blacks on board grinned good-humouredly, and replied with a wasteful fusillade. After shifting the guns and stores, the crew got the Bordein to move on the 26th of January, but only to get fast upon a sand-bank. Precious time was thus lost, and on the 27th of January a camel man shouted from the bank that Khartoum was taken and Gordon killed. No one believed this news.

Near Halfiyeh a heavy fire was opened upon them at 600 yards from four guns and many rifles. The gunners on the steamers were naked, and looked like demons in the smoke.

“One huge giant was the very incarnation of savagery drunk with war,” writes Sir Charles Wilson.

When the steamers had passed the batteries the Soudanese crews screamed with delight, lifting up their rifles and shaking them above their heads.

Soon they saw the Government House at Khartoum above the trees, and excitement stirred every heart. The Soudanese commander, Khashm el Mus, kept on saying, “Do you see the flag?”

No one could see the flag.

“Then something has happened!” he muttered.

However, there was no help for it; they had to go on past Tuti Island and Omdurman, spattered and flogged with thousands of bullets.

“It is all over – all over!” groaned Khashm, as to the sound of the Nordenfeldt was added the deeper note of the Krupp guns from Khartoum itself.

As they reached the “Elephant’s Trunk” – so the sand-spit was called below Khartoum – they saw hundreds of Dervishes ranged under their banners in order to resist a landing; so the order was given with a heavy heart: “Turn her, and run full speed down.” Then the Soudanese on board, who till now had been fighting enthusiastically, collapsed and sank wearily on the deck. The poor fellows had lost their all – wives, families, houses!

“What is the use of firing? I have lost all,” said Khashm, burying his face in his mantle.

But they got him upon his legs, and the moment of sorrowful despair changed again to desperate revenge. After all the steamers got safely back.

And General Gordon – we left him alone in command of a hungry garrison – what of him? From examinations of Gordon’s officers taken later it seems that before daylight on the 26th of January the Arabs attacked one of the gates, and met with little or no resistance. There was reason to fear treachery. For some three hours the Arabs went through the city killing every one they met. Some of them went to the palace, and there met Gordon walking in front of a small party of men. He was probably going to the church, where the ammunition was stored, to make his last stand. The rebels fired a volley, and Gordon fell dead. It is reported that his head was cut off and exposed above the gate at Omdurman. We may be glad that it was a sudden death – called away by the God in whom he trusted so simply. Thus died one of England’s greatest heroes, one of the world’s most holy men.

The siege had lasted 317 days, nine days less than the siege of Sebastopol, and the Mahdi ascribed the result to his God. In a letter sent to the British officers on the steamers he says:

“God has destroyed Khartoum and other places by our hands. Nothing can withstand His power and might, and by the bounty of God all has come into our hands. There is no God but God.

“Muhammed, the Son of Abdullah.”

CHAPTER XXII

KUMASSI (1900)

The Governor’s visit – Pageant of Kings – Evil omens – The Fetish Grove – The fort – Loyal natives locked out – A fight – King Aguna’s triumph – Relief at last – Their perils – Saved by a dog – Second relief – Governor retires – Wait for Colonel Willcocks – The flag still flying – Lady Hodgson’s adventures.

In 1874 Sir Garnet Wolseley captured Kumassi, the capital of the Ashantis, whose country lies in the interior of the Gold Coast, in West Africa. In March, 1900, Sir Frederick Hodgson, Governor of the Gold Coast, set out with Lady Hodgson and a large party of carriers and attendants to visit Ashantiland. They had no anticipation of any trouble arising, and on their march held several palavers with friendly Kings and chiefs.

On Sunday, the 25th of March, they entered Kumassi in state. At the brow of a steep hill the European officials met the Governor’s party, and escorted them into the town. At the base of the hill they had to cross a swamp on a high causeway, and then ascend a shorter hill to the fort. Some children under the Basel missionaries sang “God Save the Queen!” at a spot where only a few years before human sacrifices and every species of horrible torture used to be enacted.

Soon they passed under a triumphal arch, decorated with palms, having “Welcome” worked upon it in flowers. Near the fort were assembled in a gorgeous pageant native Kings and chiefs, with their followers, who all rose up to salute the Governor, while the royal umbrellas of state were rapidly whirled round and round to signify the general applause. Everything seemed to promise order and contentment. But that night Lady Hodgson was informed by her native servants that very bad fetishes, or portents, had been passed on the road through the forest. One of these was a fowl split open while still alive, and laid upon a fetish stone; another was a string of eggs twined about a fetish house; a third was the presence of little mounds of earth to represent graves – a token that the white man would find burial in Ashanti.

The next day Lady Hodgson went to see the once famous Fetish Grove – the place into which the bodies of those slain for human sacrifices were thrown. Most of its trees had been blown up with dynamite in 1896, when our troops had marched in to restore order, and the bones and skulls had been buried. The executioners – a hereditary office – used to have a busy time in the old days, for every offence was punished by mutilation or death; for, as the King of the Quia country once told the boys at Harrow School, “We have no prisons, and we have to chop off ear or nose or hand, and let the rascal go.”

But the Ashanti victim had the right of appealing to the King against his sentence. This right had become a dead-letter, because, as soon as the sentence of execution had been pronounced, the victim was surrounded by a clamorous crowd, and a sharp knife was run through one cheek, through the tongue, and so out through the other cheek, which somewhat impeded his power of appeal. One would have thought that English rule and white justice would have been a pleasant change after the severity of the native law.

The fort is a good square building, with rounded bastions at the four corners. On each of these bastions is a platform on which can be worked a Maxim gun, each gun being protected by a roof above and by iron shutters at the sides. The only entrance to the fort lies on the south, where are heavy iron bullet-proof gates, which can be secured by heavy beams resting in slots in the wall. The walls of the fort are loopholed, and inside are platforms for those who are defending to shoot from. There is a well of good water in one corner of the square. The ground all round the fort was cleared, and it would be very difficult for an enemy to cross the open in any assault.

As soon as the Governor of the Gold Coast knew that the Ashanti Kings were bent on war, he telegraphed for help from the coast and from the north, where most of the Hausa troops were employed. They were 150 miles away from help, with a climate hot and unhealthy, the rainy season being near at hand; and they were surrounded by warlike and savage tribes. Fortunately, some of the native Kings, with their followers, were loyal to the English Queen; these tried to persuade the rebels to desist from revolt, and lay their grievances before the Governor in palaver. But the more they tried to pacify them, the more insolent were their demands. The first detachment of Hausa troops arrived on the 18th of April, to the great joy of the little garrison; but soon after their arrival the market began to fail: the natives dare not come with food-stuffs, and the roads were now closed. On the 25th a Maxim gun was run out of the fort to check the advance of the Ashantis; but they possessed themselves of the town, and loopholed the huts near the fort. The loyal inhabitants of Kumassi had left their homes, and were crowded outside the walls of the fort, bringing with them their portable goods, being upwards of 3,000 men, women, and children. The gates of the fort had hitherto remained open, but it was evident that the small English force would be compelled to concentrate in the fort; and as the refugees seemed to be bent on rushing the gates for safer shelter, the order was given to close the gates.

“Gradually the gate guard was removed one by one, and then came the work of shutting the gates and barricading them. Never shall I forget the sight. My heart stood still, for I knew that were this panic-stricken crowd to get in, the fort would fall an easy prey to the rebels, and we should be lost. It was an anxious moment. Could the guards close the gates in face of that rushing multitude? A moment later, and the suspense was over. There was a desperate struggle, a cry, a bang, and the refugees fell back.” Then they tried to climb up by the posts of the veranda. So sentries had to be posted on the veranda to force them down again. “I felt very much for these poor folk,” writes Lady Hodgson; “but, besides the fact that the fort would not have accommodated a third of them, the whole space was wanted for our troops.”