Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines Part 9

Unfortunately she was mistaken. An officer, who had hitherto been loyal and energetic as Colonel Lawrence, secretly sent word to the officer commanding the besieging force that if protection were given him he would deliver up the castle. The proposal was welcomed, and after much secret correspondence it was settled that fifty men of the Parliamentarian army should disguise themselves as Royalists, and be admitted into the castle by the traitor.

This plan succeeded. The men were admitted without arousing any suspicion, and not until the following morning did the garrison discover that they had been betrayed. A brief fight ensued, but resistance was useless, and with a sad heart Lady Bankes surrendered the castle which she had so n.o.bly defended for nearly three years.

The Parliamentarian officer who accepted the surrender was a humane man, and took care that his troops should not fulfil their vow to put to death every man, woman and child found in the castle. After the place had been plundered, an attempt was made to destroy it, but the walls were so ma.s.sive that its destruction was impossible, and to-day much of it is still standing.

Lady Bankes was not kept prisoner for long, and Oliver Cromwell ordained that she should not be made to suffer for her loyalty and bravery. Throughout the Commonwealth the heroine of Corfe Castle lived peacefully, and did not die until Charles II. had been upon the throne nearly a year. She died on April 11, 1661, and in Ruislip Church, Middles.e.x, there is a monument, erected to her memory by her son, Sir Ralph Bankes, on which is inscribed a record of her brave defence.

LADY HARRIET ACLAND.

A HEROINE OF THE AMERICAN WAR.

It was at the beginning of the year 1776 that Major Acland was ordered to proceed with his regiment to America, to take part in the attempt to quell the rising of the colonists. His wife, to whom he had been married six years, at once asked to be allowed to accompany him, but he hesitated to give his consent, being doubtful whether she would be able to bear the hardships of a campaign.

Hitherto her life had been one of comfort. She was the third daughter of the first Earl of Ilchester, and her training had not been such as would qualify her for roughing it. Major Acland did not, however, offer any objections when his wife, fearing that he thought the life would be too hard for her, declared that she had made up her mind to accompany him.

Arriving in Canada, she soon found that campaigning was more arduous than she had imagined. Her husband's regiment was continually on the march, and she suffered greatly from cold, fatigue and want of proper food.

When they had been in Canada about a year, Major Acland became dangerously ill, and his wife, herself in ill-health, was his only nurse. Although the twenty-seven years of her life had been without any experience of nursing, she soon became efficient, and before long had the pleasure of knowing that by her care and attention she had saved her husband's life. But before Major Acland had fully regained his strength he was ordered to rejoin his regiment, to take part in the attack upon Ticonderoga.

So far Lady Harriet had followed her husband from place to place, and she prepared to accompany him to Ticonderoga; but, knowing that the fight would be a severe one, he insisted upon her remaining behind.

She obeyed him, but was miserable during his absence, and would have preferred the greatest hardships to sitting idle, waiting to hear the result of the battle. It was a hard-fought one, but Ticonderoga was captured by the British, and the news filled Lady Harriet with joy, for her husband, who sent her the message, told her that he was unhurt.

The joy was short-lived, however. Two days later Lady Harriet was informed that on the day following the capture of Ticonderoga her husband had been dangerously wounded. Reproaching herself for having been away from him in time of danger, she started off at once to where he lay, and by careful nursing she again saved his life.

Lady Harriet had decided, during her husband's last illness, to follow him everywhere, no matter how great the danger; and when she was once more on the march some of the artillerymen, anxious to make her self-imposed task lighter, constructed for her a small two-wheeled carriage.

Major Acland commanded the grenadiers, whose duty it was to be at the most advanced post of the army, and consequently Lady Harriet was always in danger of being killed or captured. She, like the officers, lay down in her clothes, so that she might be ready at any moment to advance. One night the tent in which she and her husband were sleeping caught fire, and had it not been for the prompt and gallant conduct of an orderly-sergeant, who at great personal risk dragged them out, they would have been suffocated or burnt to death. As it was, Major Acland was severely burnt, and all their personal belongings were lost.

Instead of being disheartened by the hardships and mishaps which fell to her lot, Lady Harriet became more cheerful as time went on; but another severe trial was in store for her. Major Acland informed her that as they would in all probability engage the enemy in a day or two, she would have to remain in the care of the baggage guard, which was unlikely to be exposed to danger. Lady Harriet protested, being anxious to accompany her husband into battle, but she was compelled to do as the major desired. Here among the baggage she had for companions two other ladies, wives of officers.

When the action began Lady Harriet was seated in a small hut which she had found unoccupied, and here she remained listening to the artillery and musketry fire, and praying that her husband might come out of the fight uninjured. Soon, however, she had to vacate the hut, for the surgeons told her that they required it, as the fight was fierce, and the men were falling fast. Unwittingly the surgeons had alarmed her.

If men were falling fast there was little chance of her husband, whose place was in the front line of attack, escaping injury.

For four hours the battle raged fiercely, but Lady Harriet could obtain no news other husband. He was not among the wounded or dead who had been brought to the rear, but she feared that at any moment she might see him lying white and still on a stretcher. The two ladies who waited with her were equally anxious for news from the front, and for them it came soon, and cruelly. The husband of one was brought back mortally wounded, and a little later the other was told that her husband had been shot dead.

The battle ceased, and the last of the wounded was brought to the surgeons, but still Lady Harriet was without news of Major Acland, and it was not until many hours later that she heard he was still alive.

Her joy was tempered by the knowledge that the fighting would be renewed before many days had elapsed.

At last, on October 7, 1777, the second battle of Saratoga was fought.

Lady Harriet was once again doomed to listen to the sound of cannon and musketry, and to see a sad procession of wounded moving to the rear.

As time pa.s.sed without any news of her husband reaching her, she began to hope that he would pa.s.s through the battle uninjured; but this was not to be. Soon the news came that the British, under General Burgoyne, had been defeated, and that Major Acland, seriously wounded, had been taken prisoner.

For a time Lady Harriet was overcome with grief, but growing calmer she determined to make an attempt to join her husband in the American camp and nurse him there. 'When the army was upon the point of moving after the halt described,' General Burgoyne wrote in his account of the campaign, 'I received a message from Lady Harriet, submitting to my decision a proposal (and expressing an earnest solicitude to execute it, if not interfering with my designs) of pa.s.sing to the camp of the enemy, and requesting General Gates's permission to attend her husband.

Though I was ready to believe (for I had experienced) that patience and fort.i.tude in a supreme degree were to be found, as well as every other virtue, under the most tender forms, I was astonished at this proposal.

After so long an agitation of the spirits, exhausted not only for want of rest, but absolutely want of food, drenched in rains for twelve hours together, that a woman should be capable such an undertaking as delivering herself to the enemy, probably in the night, and uncertain of what hands she might first fall into, appeared an effort above human nature. The a.s.sistance I was enabled to give was small indeed; I had not even a cup of wine to offer her; but I was told she had found, from some kind and fortunate hand, a little rum and dirty water. All I could furnish to her was an open boat and a few lines, written upon dirty and wet paper, to General Gates, recommending her to his protection.'

Accompanied by an army chaplain and two servants, Lady Harriet proceeded up the Hudson River in an open boat to the enemy's outposts; but the American sentry, fearing treachery, refused to allow her to land, and ignoring the white handkerchief which she held aloft, threatened to shoot anyone in the boat who ventured to move. For eight hours, unprotected from the night air, Lady Harriet sat shivering in the boat, but at daybreak she prevailed upon the sentry to have her letter delivered to General Gates. The American general readily gave permission for her to join her husband, who, she found, had been shot through both legs, in addition to having received several minor wounds.

His condition was serious, but Lady Harriet succeeded in nursing him into comparatively good health.

When Major Acland was sufficiently recovered to be able to travel he returned with his wife to England, where the story of Lady Harriet's bravery and devotion was already well-known. A portrait of her, in which she is depicted standing in the boat holding aloft a white handkerchief, was exhibited in the Royal Academy and engraved. Sir Joshua Reynolds also painted a portrait of her.

Lady Harriet, 'the heroine of the American War,' lived, admired and respected, for thirty-seven years after her husband's death, dying deeply mourned at Tatton, Somersetshire, on July 21, 1815.

'Let such as are affected by these circ.u.mstances of alarm, hardship and danger, recollect,' General Burgoyne wrote, 'that the subject of them was a woman, of the most tender and delicate frame, of the gentlest manners, habituated to all the soft elegances and refined enjoyments that attend high birth and fortune. Her mind alone was formed for such trials.' But in very many cases heroines have been women from whom few would have expected heroism. The bl.u.s.tering braggart does not often prove to be a hero in time of danger, and the gentle, una.s.suming woman is the type of which heroines are frequently made. The aristocracy the middle and the lower cla.s.ses, have each given us many heroines of this type.

AIMeE LADOINSKI AND THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.

Napoleon was entering Moscow in triumph. It was night, and the streets of the Russian capital were deserted, but at a window of one house past which the victorious troops were marching sat a French lady, eagerly scanning the faces of the officers. Her husband, Captain Ladoinski, of the Polish Lancers, was somewhere among the troops, but she failed to recognise him as he rode by. Soon, however, he was at her house, and great was the joy of meeting after long separation.

After the first greeting, Aimee Ladoinski noticed that her husband was wounded, and although he spoke lightly of his wound, it was not a slight one. Moreover, it had been aggravated by want of attention, for Napoleon's surgeons did not at this time possess the proper appliances for dressing wounds. Captain Ladoinski's wound had been dressed with moss and bandaged with parchment! In a few minutes after making this discovery Madame Ladoinski had bandaged her husband's wound with lint and linen. It was a great relief to the warrior, and settling down in a comfortable chair he proceeded to question his wife as to how she had fared during his absence, and then to relate his own adventures.

Suddenly, as they sat talking, a fierce red light shone into the room, which had until then been in darkness, except for the feeble glimmer from a shaded lamp in the corner. Rising quickly, Madame Ladoinski went to the window, closely followed by her husband, who uttered an exclamation of surprise when he saw that a fire was raging in the newly captured city.

Taking up his lance Captain Ladoinski hurried out, to order his men to a.s.sist in subduing the fire, but at the doorway he was met by a messenger who made known to him Napoleon's command, that the troops billeted in that portion of the town were not to leave their quarters.

Surprised at this order, Captain Ladoinski returned to his wife, and together they watched from their window the rapidly extending fire.

The burning part of the city was at a considerable distance from where they stood, but it seemed to them that unless prompt measures were taken it would be impossible to save the city from utter destruction.

Hundreds of soldiers were resting near them who might have been busily employed in checking the progress of the flames. The truth dawned on both of them. Napoleon did not see his way to save Moscow from this new calamity.

Now Aimee Ladoinski had resided for some time in Moscow, and its streets and palaces were familiar to her, and the thought of their ruthless destruction to thwart the designs of one man filled her with shame--shame that he who had caused this act of vandalism was a Frenchman.

Madame Ladoinski did not admire Napoleon, for she was at heart a Bourbon, and regarded him as an usurper. The reckless sacrifice of thousands of his fellow countrymen for his own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt filled her with loathing for the man, and she did not conceal her feelings from her husband, who made no attempt to defend the emperor. It was not for love of him that Captain Ladoinski had fought under 'the Little Corporal.' He was a Pole, and it was because Napoleon was fighting the oppressor of the Polish race--Russia--that he fought for the French.

The Russians had been humbled, and he, a Pole, had marched as one of a victorious army into their capital. But secretly he wondered if the condition of much-persecuted Poland would be better under Napoleon than it was under Russia. His wife candidly declared that it would not be.

Napoleon had promised he would free Poland from the Russian yoke, but she felt convinced that it would simply be to place the country under French rule.

'And, wherefore,' she said to her husband, as we read in Watson's _Heroic Women of History_, 'should Poland find such solitary grace in the eyes of Europe's conquerors? Shall all the nations lie prostrate at his feet, and Poland alone be permitted to stand by his side as an equal? Be wise, my dear Ladoinski. You confess that the conqueror lent but a lifeless ear to the war-cry of your country. Be timely wise; open your eyes, and see that this cold-hearted victor--wrapped in his own dark and selfish aims--uses the sword of the patriot Pole only, like that of the prostrate Prussian, to hew the way to his own throne of universal dominion.... Believe it, this proud man did not enslave all Europe to become the liberator of Poland. Ah! trust me, that is but poor freedom which consists only In a change of masters. O Ladoinski! Ladoinski! give up this mad emprise; return to the bosom of your family; and when your compatriots arise to a.s.sert their rights at the call of their country, and not at the heartless beck of a stranger despot, I will buckle the helmet on your brow.'

Captain Ladoinski was inclined to believe that his wife had spoken the truth when she said that Napoleon would forget the Poles, now that Russia was crushed. Posing as a disinterested man eager to deliver the Poles from the hands of their oppressor, Napoleon had gathered round him a band of brave men, who fought with the determination of men fighting for their homes and liberty. They had served his purpose, and he would reward them, not with the freedom he had promised, but with the intimation that they were now his subjects. It was a terrible disappointment, but Captain Ladoinski consoled himself with the belief that French rule would not be so hard to bear as the Russian had been.

The fire spread apace. It was a grand yet terrible scene, the like of which, it is to be hoped, will never again be witnessed. Soon the heat became unbearable in the quarter of the city where the Ladoinskis stood and watched, and sparks and big flaring brands fell in showers. Unless they departed quickly they would be burned to death.

Captain Ladoinski could not seek safety in flight, for he had been commanded to remain in his quarters, and the order had not been cancelled. a.s.suring his wife that he would soon be at liberty to leave his post, he urged her to depart with their child and wait for him outside the city. This she refused to do, declaring that as long as he remained where he was she would stay with him. And this determination he could not alter, although he used every persuasion possible to that end.

On came the flames, crackling, hissing and roaring, and soon the houses facing the Ladoinskis would be engulfed in them. The captain would not quit his post without orders, and his wife would not leave him. Death seemed certain, and they were preparing to meet it, when suddenly an order came from head-quarters ordering the troops to evacuate the city with all despatch. Instantly the retreat began, but many men fell in the scorching, suffocating streets never to rise again. Captain Ladoinski and his wife and child had many narrow escapes from the fiery brands which fell hissing into the roads as they hurried on towards the suburbs, but fortunately they received no injury.

Arriving on high ground, and safe from the fire's onslaught, the Ladoinskis stood, with thousands of Napoleon's army, gazing at the destruction of Moscow. The captain, remembering the havoc which the Russians had wrought by fire and sword in Warsaw, rejoiced to see their capital in flames; but his wife checked his rejoicing by warning him that the destruction of Moscow would not bring freedom to Poland.

And now began Napoleon's retreat. Terrible were the sufferings of the men, but it is only with Madame Ladoinski's trials that we are concerned. Knowing that after the burning of Moscow it would be dangerous for any French person to remain in Russia, she, with many other people of her nationality, accompanied the French army on its disastrous retreat. She travelled in a baggage-wagon, which at any rate afforded her and her child some protection from the frost and snow. To her the journey was not so terrible an undertaking as to some of her compatriots, for she had the pleasure of being daily with her husband, after some years of separation. But her pleasure soon received a rude shock. The Cossacks hung on with tenacity to the remains of the great French army, swooping down at unexpected times upon some dispirited, disorganised section, cutting it to pieces, and recapturing some of the spoil with which the troops were loaded.

Captain Ladoinski was present when one of these attacks was made, and, while a.s.sisting to repel the attackers, received a dangerous wound. A place was found for him in the baggage-wagon, and there he lay for days, tenderly nursed by his wife. The road was blocked in many places with abandoned guns, dead horses, and broken-down wagons, and travelling was difficult. Some of the wagons had not broken down accidentally or through hard wear, but had been tampered with by the drivers. Many a terrible act was perpetrated in baggage-wagons during the retreat from Moscow. In these wagons, among the spoil taken from the capital, were placed the wounded, frequently unattended and without protection. Many of the drivers, anxious to possess some of the spoil with which their wagons were loaded, weakened the axle, so that it should collapse. The bedraggled soldiers would march on, and when the drivers were well in rear of the force they murdered their wounded pa.s.sengers and looted the wagons.

One night Madame Ladoinski was awakened by the stoppage of their wagon.

She had heard stories of the murdering of the wounded by wagon-drivers, but she had not believed them, and after peeping out at the snow-covered country, and seeing that soldiers and other wagons were near, she lay down again, and in a few minutes was sleeping soundly--a sleep from which in all probability she would not have awakened, so intense was the cold, had not the wagon arrived at Smolensk, a depot of the French army, an hour later. Her life was saved by the prompt attention of a young officer, who glanced into the wagon, and was surprised to find her lying insensible with her child beside her.

Calling to some brother officers, he jumped into the wagon and poured a little brandy into Madame Ladoinski's mouth. Then, when she began to show signs of returning consciousness, he and his companions lifted her from the wagon to carry her and her boy to a house where they would be properly warmed, fed and nursed.