Part 18 (1/2)

We could, nevertheless, live at peace with him only on condition that he determined to maintain peace with the above-mentioned European Powers, and to make full compensation for the injury he had done to them. We did not wish to conceal from him that Freeland intended to enter into a friendly alliance with these European States, and would then hold itself bound to regard the enemies of its friends as its own enemies. He was warned against mistaking the conspicuously pacific character of Freeland for cowardice or weakness. A week would be given him to relinquish his threatening att.i.tude and to furnish guarantees of peace and compensation. If within a week overtures of peace were not made, Freeland would attack him wherever he was found.

Of course, no one doubted the issue of this interchange of messages; and the preparations for the war were carried on with all speed.

Scarcely had the telegraph and the journals carried the first news of the Abyssinian attack through Freeland, before announcements and questions reached the central executive from all quarters, proving that the population of the whole country not merely had come to the conclusion that a war was imminent, but that, without any instruction from above, there had set themselves automatically in motion all those factors of resistance which could have been supplied by a military organisation perpetually on a war-footing. Freeland mobilised itself; and the event proved that this self-determined activity of millions of intelligent minds accustomed to act in common afforded very much better results than would have been obtained under an official system of mobilisation, however wisely planned and prepared for. From all the corps of thousands of the whole country there came in the course of the first few days inquiries whether the central executive thought the co-operation of the inquirers desirable. The corps of thousands of the first cla.s.s, belonging to the twelve northern and north-eastern districts, comprising the Baringo country and Lykipia, announced at once that on the next day they should be fully a.s.sembled--with the exception of any who might be travelling--since they a.s.sumed that the prosecution of the war with Abyssinia would be specially their business. It was the general opinion in Freeland that from 40,000 to 50,000 men would be sufficient to defeat the Abyssinians; and as the northern districts possessed eighty-five of the corps of thousands that had gained laurels in the district exercises, no one doubted that the work of the war would fall upon these alone. Many a young man in the other parts of the country felt in his breast the stirrings of a n.o.ble ambition; but there was nowhere manifested a desire to withdraw more labour from the country than was necessary, or to interfere with the rational plan of mobilisation by pus.h.i.+ng corps into the foreground from a distance. While the other corps thus voluntarily held back, those of the northern districts threw themselves, as a matter of course, into the campaign. But those thousands which during recent years had been victors at the great Aberdare games expressed the wish--so many of them as did not belong to the mobilised districts--to partic.i.p.ate in the mobilisation; and all who had been victors in the individual contests at the last year's district and national games begged, as a favour, to be incorporated among the mobilised thousands. Both requests were granted; and the additional material thus supplied amounted to four corps of thousands and 960 individuals. Altogether about 90,000 men prepared themselves--about twice as many as the general opinion held to be requisite. But the men themselves, of their own initiative, decided, on the next day, that merely the unmarried men of the last four years, between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-six, should take the field. The force was thereby reduced to 48,000, including 9,500 cavalry and 180 guns, to which last were afterwards added eighty pieces from the Upper Naivasha district.

Each thousand had its own officers. Some of them were married, but it was resolved that, notwithstanding this, they should be retained. The election of superior officers took place on the 23rd of August, after the four extra corps had arrived at the place in North Lykipia appointed for this purpose.

The chief command was not given to one of the officers present, but to a young engineer named Arago, living at Ripon as head of the Victoria Nyanza Building a.s.sociation. Arago of course accepted the position, but asked to have one of the head officials of the traffic department of the central executive as head of the general staff. Hastening from Ungama direct to North Lykipia, I applied to that official with the request that he would place me on the general staff--a request to which, as I was able to prove my possession of the requisite knowledge, and in consideration of my recent renunciation of my Italian birthright, he was doubly willing to accede.

David arrived at the same time as myself, bringing me the tenderest greetings and the cordial consent of my bride to the step I was taking, declaring at the same time that he should not jog from my side while the campaign lasted.

All the thousands were abundantly furnished with weapons and ammunition; and there was no lack of well-trained saddle-horses.

The commissariat was entrusted to the Food-providing a.s.sociations of Eden Vale and Dana City. The technical service--pioneering, bridge-construction, field-telegraphy, &c.--was undertaken by two a.s.sociations from Central and Eastern Baringo; and the transport service was taken in hand by the department of the central executive in charge of such matters. Within the Freeland frontiers, the perfection of the network of communication made the transport and maintenance of so small an army a matter of no difficulty whatever. But as the Freelanders did not intend to wait for the Abyssinians, but meant to carry the war into the Galla country and to Habesh, 5,000 elephants, 8,000 camels, 20,000 horses, and 15,000 buffalo oxen were taken with the army as beasts of burden. Tents, field-kitchens, conserves, &c., had to be got ready; in short, provision had to be made that the army should want nothing even in the most inhospitable regions outside of Freeland.

All these preparations were completed by the 29th of August. Two days previously Arago had sent 4,000 hors.e.m.e.n with twenty-eight guns over the Konso pa.s.s into the neighbouring Wakwafi country, with instructions to spread themselves out in the form of a fan, to discover the whereabouts of the Abyssinians, whose approach we expected in that quarter. To be prepared for all contingencies, he sent smaller expeditionary corps of 1,200 and 900 men, with eight and four guns respectively, to watch the Endika and Silali mountain-ranges, which lay to the north-east and the north-west of his line of operations. Further, at the Konso pa.s.s he left a reserve of 6,000 men and twenty guns; and on the 30th of August he crossed the Galla frontier with 36,000 men and 200 guns. In order to make long marches and yet to spare the men, each man's kit was reduced as much as possible. It consisted, besides the weapons--repeating-rifle, repeating-pistol, and short sword, to be used also as bayonet--of eighty cartridges, a field-flask, and a small knapsack capable of holding only _one_ meal. All the other luggage was carried by led horses, which followed close behind the marching columns, and of which there were twenty-five to every hundred men. This very mobile train, accessible to the men at all times, carried waterproof tents, complete suits and shoes for change of clothing, mackintoshes, conserves and drink for several days, and a reserve of 200 cartridges per man. In this way our young men were furnished with every necessary without being themselves overburdened, and they were consequently able to do twenty-five miles a day without injury.

The central executive had sent with the army a fully authorised commissioner, whose duty it was to carry out any wish of the leaders of the army, so far as the doing so was the business of the executive; to conduct negotiations for peace should the Negus be disposed to come to terms; and, finally, to provide for the security and comfort of the foreign military plenipotentiaries and newspaper correspondents who should join the campaign. Some of the latter accompanied us on horseback, while others were accommodated upon elephants; most of them followed the headquarters, and were thus kept _au courant_ of all that took place.

On the third day's march--the 2nd of September--our mounted advance-guard announced that they had come upon the enemy. As Arago, before he engaged in a decisive battle, wished to test practically whether he and we were not making a fatal mistake in imagining ourselves superior to the enemy, he gave the vanguard orders to make a forced reconnaisance--that is, having done what he could to induce the foe to make a full disclosure of his strength, to withdraw as soon as he was sure of the course the enemy was taking.

At dawn on the 3rd of September we came into collision (I was one of the advanced body at my own request) with the Abyssinian vanguard at Ardeb in the valley of the Jubba. The enemy, not much more in number than ourselves, was completely routed at the first onset, all their guns--thirty-six pieces--taken, as well as 1,800 prisoners, whilst we lost only five men.

The whole affair lasted scarcely forty minutes. While our lines were forming, the Abyssinian artillery opened upon us a perfectly ineffectual fire at three miles and three-quarters. Our artillery kept silent until the enemy was within a mile and a-half, when a few volleys from us silenced the latter, dismounted two of their guns, and compelled the rest to withdraw.

Our artillery next directed its attention to the madly charging cavalry of the enemy, which it scattered by a few well-aimed sh.e.l.ls, so that our squadron had nothing left to do but to follow the disordered fugitives and to ride down the enemy's infantry, thrown into hopeless confusion by their own fleeing cavalry. The affair closed with the pursuit of the panic-stricken foe and the bringing in of the prisoners. The enemy's loss in killed and wounded, though much greater than ours, was comparatively small.

Thus ended the prologue of the sanguinary drama. Our horse had scarcely got together again, and the prisoners, with the captured guns, sent to the headquarters, when dense and still denser ma.s.ses of the enemy showed themselves in the distance. This was the whole of the Abyssinian left wing, numbering 65,000, with 120 guns. Twenty of our guns were stationed on a small height that commanded the marching route of the enemy, and opened fire about seven in the morning. The ma.s.ses of the enemy's infantry were at once seen to turn aside, while ninety of the Abyssinian guns were placed opposite our artillery. The battle of cannons which now began lasted an hour without doing much harm to our artillery, for at so great a distance--three miles--the aim of the Abyssinian gunners was very bad, whilst our sh.e.l.ls silenced by degrees thirty-four of the enemy's pieces.

Twice the Abyssinians attempted to get nearer to our position, but were on both occasions driven back in a few minutes, so deadly was our fire at a shorter distance. As this did not answer, the enemy tried to storm our position. His ma.s.ses of infantry and cavalry had deployed along the whole of our thin front, and shortly after eight o'clock the whole of the vastly superior force was in movement against us.

What next took place I should not have thought possible, notwithstanding what I had seen of the skill in the manipulation of their weapons possessed by the Freeland youth. Even the easily gained victory over the enemy's vanguard had not raised my expectations high enough. I confess that I regarded it as unjustifiable indiscretion, and as a proof of his total misunderstanding of the task which had been committed to him by the commander-in-chief, that Colonel Ruppert, the leader of our little band, should accept battle, and that not in the form of a covered retreat, but as a regular engagement which, if lost, must inevitably issue in the annihilation of his 4,000 men. For he had deployed his cavalry--who had all dismounted, and fired with their splendid carbines--in a thin line of over three miles, extending a little beyond the lines of the enemy, and with very weak reserves behind him. Thus he awaited the Abyssinians, as if they had been advancing as _tirailleurs_ and not in compact columns. And I knew these storming columns well; at Ardeb and before Obok they had overthrown equal numbers of England's Indian veterans, France's Breton grenadiers, and Italy's _bersaglieri_; their weapons were equal to those of Freeland, their military discipline I was obliged to consider as superior to that of my present companions in arms. How could our thin line withstand the onset of fifteen times as many veteran warriors? I was firmly convinced that in another quarter of an hour they must be broken in pieces like a cord stretched in front of a locomotive; and then any child might see that after a few minutes' carnage all would be over. In spirit I took leave of distant loved ones--of my father--and I remembered you too, Louis, in that hour which I thought I had good reason to consider my last.

And, what was most astonis.h.i.+ng to me, the Freelanders themselves all seemed to share my feelings. There was in their demeanour none of that wild l.u.s.t for battle which one would have expected to see in those who--quite unnecessarily--engaged in the proportion of one against fifteen. A profound, sad earnestness, nay, repugnance and horror, could be read in the generally so clear and bright eyes of these Freeland youths and men. It was as if they, like myself, were all looking in the face of death. The officers also, even the colonel in command, evidently partic.i.p.ated in these gloomy forebodings: then why, in heaven's name, did they offer battle? If they antic.i.p.ated overthrow, why did they not withdraw in time? But what injustice had I done to these men! how completely had I mistaken the cause and the object of their anxiety! Incredible as it may sound, my comrades in arms were anxious not for their own safety, but on account of their enemies; they shuddered at the thought of the slaughter that awaited not themselves, but their foes. The idea that they, free men, could be vanquished by wretched slaves was as remote from their minds as the idea that the hare can be dangerous to him is from the mind of the sportsman.

But they saw themselves compelled to shoot down in cold blood thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures; and this excited in them, who held man to be the most sacred and the highest of all things, an unspeakable repugnance.

Had this been told me _before_ the battle, I should not have understood it, and should have held it to be braggadocio; now, after what I have shudderingly pa.s.sed through, I find it intelligible. For I must confess that a column advancing against the Freeland lines, and torn to pieces by their fire, is a sight which freezes the blood of even men accustomed to murder _en ma.s.se_, as I am. I have several times seen the destroying angel of the battlefield at work, and could therefore consider myself steeled against its horrors: but here....

I will not describe my fooling, but what occurred. When the Abyssinians were a little less than a mile from us, Ruppert's adjutants galloped along our front for the last time and bade our men to fire: 'But not a shot after they begin to waver!' Then among us there was a stillness as of death, whilst from the other side the noise of the drums and the wild music grew louder and louder, interrupted from time to time by the piercing war-cries of the Abyssinians. When the enemy was within half a mile our men discharged a single volley: the front line of the enemy collapsed as if smitten by a blast of pestilence; their ranks wavered and had to be formed anew. No second shot was as yet fired by the Freelanders; but when the Abyssinians again pressed forward with wild cries, and now at a more rapid pace, there thundered a second volley; and as the death-seeking brown warriors this time stormed forward over their shattered front rank, a third volley met them. This was enough for the enemy for the present; they turned in wild confusion, and did not stop in their flight until they thought themselves out of our range. Our fire had ceased as soon as the enemy turned, and it was high time it did. Not that our position would have been at all endangered by a further advance of the enemy: the Abyssinians had advanced little more than a hundred yards, and were still, therefore, between six and seven hundred, yards away, and it was most improbable that one of them could have reached our front. But it was this very distance, and the consequent absence of the special excitement of close combat, that made the horror of the slaughter too great for human nerves to have borne it much longer. Within a few minutes nearly a thousand Abyssinians had been killed or wounded; and many of the Freeland officers afterwards declared to me that they were seized with faintness at the sight of the breaking ranks and of the foes in the agonies of death. I can perfectly understand this, for even I felt ill.

The Freeland medical men and ambulance corps were already at work carrying the wounded foes from the field, when the Abyssinian artillery recommenced the battle, and their infantry at the same time opened a tremendous fire.

But as the infantry now kept themselves prudently at the respectable distance of a mile and a quarter, their fire was at first quite harmless and therefore was not answered by our men. But when a ball or two had strayed into our ranks, Colonel Ruppert gave orders that every tenth man should step far enough out of the ranks to be visible to the enemy and discharge a volley. This hint was understood; the enemy's infantry-fire ceased at once, as the Abyssinians learnt from the effects of this small volley that the Freeland riflemen could make themselves so unpleasant, even at such a great distance, that it would not be advisable to provoke them to answer an ineffective fire. The stubborn fellows, who evidently could not bear the thought of being driven from the field by such a handful of men, formed themselves afresh into storming columns, this time with a narrower front and greater depth. But these columns met with no better fate than their predecessors, the only difference being that they had to meet a more rapid fire. After a few minutes they were compelled to retire with a loss of eight hundred men, and could not be made to move forward again. In order to get possession of the Abyssinian wounded, who were much better cared for under Freeland treatment than under that of their own people, Ruppert sent out an advance-party before whom the enemy hastily retreated, so that we remained masters of the field. Our losses amounted to eight dead and forty-seven wounded; the Abyssinians had 360 killed, 1,480 wounded, and left thirty-nine guns behind. Our first care was to place the wounded--friend and foe alike--in the ambulance-waggons, of which there was a large number, all furnished with every possible convenience, and to send them towards Freeland. Then the captured guns and other weapons were hidden and the dead buried.

Just as the last duty was performed, and we had begun our retreat to headquarters, strong columns of Abyssinians appeared in the west, whilst at the same time the left wing of the enemy, which had retreated towards the north, again came into sight. Ruppert did not, however, allow himself to be diverted from his purpose. Ma.s.ses of the enemy's cavalry made a vigorous attempt to follow us, but were quickly repulsed by our artillery, and we accomplished our retreat to headquarters without further molestation.

We now knew from experience that the a.s.sumed superiority of Freeland troops over opponents of any kind was a fact. The Abyssinians had fought as bravely against us as they had formerly fought against European troops.

Their equipment, discipline, and training, upon which despotism had brought all its resources to bear for many years, left, according to European ideas, nothing to be desired; and these dark-skinned soldiers had repeatedly shown themselves to be a match for equal numbers of European troops. But we had repulsed a number fifteen times as many as ourselves, without allowing the issue to be for a moment uncertain. That the fight lasted as long as it did, and did not much sooner end in the complete overthrow of the Abyssinians, was due to the fact that the leader of the advance-guard adhered to his orders, to compel the enemy to disclose his whole force. Had our commander at once thrown himself with full force upon the enemy, given him no time to deploy his troops, and energetically made use of his advantage, the 65,000 men of the enemy's left wing would have been scattered long before the centre could have come into action. Not that Colonel Ruppert was wrong in waiting and confining himself rather to defensive action. Even he had to learn, by the issue of the conflict, that the presumed superiority of the Freelanders was an absolute fact; and the more doubtful the ultimate victory of our cause appeared, the more decisively was it the duty of a conscientious leader to avoid spilling the blood of our Freeland youth merely to perform a deed of ostentatious heroism. He, like the rest of us, naturally concluded that this first lesson would abundantly suffice to show the Negus the folly of continuing the struggle.

We had not, however, taken into account the obtuseness of a barbaric despot. When the commissioner of the executive, who accompanied the expedition, sent next day a flag of truce into the Abyssinian headquarters, announcing to John that Freeland was still prepared to treat with him for the restoration of the captured fortresses and s.h.i.+ps, and for the arrangement of peace guarantees, the Negus received the amba.s.sadors haughtily, and asked them if they were come offering terms of submission.

Because our advanced guard had retired, he treated the affair of the day before as an Abyssinian victory. He said the officers of the five repulsed brigades were cowards; we should see how _he_ himself would fight. In short, the blinded man would not hear of yielding. He evidently hoped for a complete change of fortune from a not badly planned strategic flunking manoeuvre which he had been meanwhile carrying out, and which had only one defect--it did not sufficiently take into account the character of his opponents. In short, more fighting had to be done.