The Junior Classics Volume Vii Part 33

Great indeed would be the issue of the contest between the two hostile armies. Should the British and their allies be defeated there was nothing before them but a disastrous retreat over hundreds of miles of country already laid waste by sword and fire; while if Tippoo suffered a reverse nothing remained for him but a humiliating surrender. The ardour of Cornwallis's troops had been kindled by the stories of the frightful tortures which the despot had practiced upon his helpless prisoners, and they were pa.s.sionately desirous of avenging them.

Although his forces were far inferior in number, Lord Cornwallis decided upon an immediate attack on the enemy's camp in three divisions. The evening was calm and beautiful, the moon just rising to shed her silvery light over the scene, as the troops moved on in silence, but with hearts beating high with courage and hopes of success.

Lord Cornwallis himself led the centre division, sword in hand, and headed several bayonet charges, during which he received a wound in the hand. The attack took Tippoo by complete surprise. On the first alarm he rushed from his gorgeous tent and sprang on to his horse, and as he did so a ma.s.s of fugitives thronged past him, conveying the intelligence that his centre had been penetrated, and a column was marching to cut off his retreat from the great ford leading across the river Cauvery to Seringapatam. He had only just time to make good his escape.

All night the fighting raged, and by morning Tippoo reckoned he had lost, in killed, wounded, and missing, no less than 23,000 men.

Being unable to recapture his largest--the sultan's--redoubt, he abandoned all the others, and, in a fit of despair, withdrew his forces to the island and fortress of Seringapatam, there to make a last stand.

The besiegers pressed forward with vigour, and on its two princ.i.p.al sides the city was completely invested. The pioneers and working-parties were actively at work, and soon turned Tippoo's wonderful garden into a scene of desolation. The sultan saw that his situation was becoming desperate, and made an attempt to negotiate, but at the same time thought to paralyse the efforts of the English and end the war, by procuring the a.s.sa.s.sination of their chief. A number of hors.e.m.e.n, drugged and maddened by _bhang_, vowed to bring to the sultan the head of his foe, and lay it at his feet as an offering. They made a dash into the British camp, but before they could secure their trophy were routed, and most of them slain.

It is impossible to enumerate all the deeds of heroism performed during the battle and the progress of the siege--the bravery of Captain Hugh Sibbald, who, with a hundred Highlanders, captured and defended the sultan's redoubt against innumerable odds; of the courage of Major Dalrymple, with his Highlanders and Bengal infantry, who, to draw attention from the working-parties, crossed the Cauvery, and fell furiously upon Tippoo's cavalry camp. Every British soldier seemed animated with a dauntless courage. Meantime a trench had been opened within 800 yards of the walls, and the advances carried on with spirit and energy. The anger of the Oriental despot manifested itself by a continual discharge of cannon.

Eighteen days after the battle everything was ready for a grand attack upon the citadel of Seringapatam. The British soldiers, flushed with success, and burning to avenge the cruel sufferings and murders of their countrymen, were eager to commence the a.s.sault.

The besieged, crushed, despairing, expected every minute to hear the roar of the breaching batteries, and to see their stately mosques in flames. At this moment, so full of antic.i.p.ation, orders were issued to cease all acts of hostility. Tippoo had sued for peace; but at the very instant the order for cessation of firing was issued, every gun that could be brought to bear upon the trenches, and the musketry from all available points, were ordered by the sultan to be fired.

In the treaty which was now drawn up Tippoo not only agreed to release all his prisoners, but to pay the equivalent of $16,500,000, yield up half his possessions, and to place in the hands of the British his two eldest sons, to be retained as hostages till the due performance of his pledges.

Never before had Indian history presented so touching a spectacle as that seen on the day when the young princes were delivered into the hands of their father's conquerors. On the morning of the 26th of February, twenty days only after the appearance of the British before the walls, the two youthful hostages, each mounted on a richly-caparisoned elephant, left the fort. Soldiers and citizens, stirred by deep sympathy, thronged the ramparts to take one last look at the two boys. Even the stern and cruel Tippoo himself was moved, and found it difficult to repress his emotion as, standing on the bastion above the great entrance, he watched the procession.

When the youthful hostages issued from the fortress the guns of Seringapatam thundered forth a salute; and as they approached the British lines they were received with similar honors. Accompanied by the English negotiator of the terms of peace and a guard of honour, they were met at the outposts and conveyed to the camp.

"Each was seated in a howdah of chased silver. They were arrayed in robes of white, with red turbans in which a spray of pearls was fastened, while jewels and diamonds of great value were around and suspended from their necks. _Harcarrahs_, or Brahmin messengers of trust, headed the procession, and seven standard-bearers, each carrying a small green banner displayed on a rocket-pole. After these marched 100 pikemen, whose weapons were inlaid with silver.

Their escort was a squadron of cavalry, with 200 sepoy soldiers.

They were received by the troops in line, with presented arms, drums beating, and officers in front saluting."

Being conducted to the tent of Lord Cornwallis, who stood at the entrance surrounded by his staff and the various colonels of the regiments, they descended from their howdahs and approached him.

Embracing them both, he took them by the hand and led them inside.

Although of the respective ages of ten and twelve years, the children appeared to possess all the politeness and reserve of manhood. The princ.i.p.al officer of Tippoo, after having formally surrendered them to the general, said--

"These children were this morning the sons of my master, the sultan.

Their situation is now changed; they must look up to your lordship as their father."

Early in the year 1794, Tippoo having fulfilled all the terms of the treaty, the two youthful hostages were restored to their father.

They were conducted by an officer to Deonhully, on a plain near which the sultan had pitched his tent. The two boys knelt to their father, placing their heads at his feet. He received them apparently unmoved, touched their necks, and when they arose pointed to their seats; and this was all the welcome they publicly received.

THE MAN WHO SPOILED NAPOLEON'S "DESTINY"

By Rev. W. H. Fitchett, LL.D.

From March 18 to May 20, 1799--for more than sixty days and nights, that is--a little, half-forgotten, and more than half-ruined Syrian town was the scene of one of the fiercest and most dramatic sieges recorded in military history. And rarely has there been a struggle so apparently one-sided.

A handful of British sailors and Turkish irregulars were holding Acre, a town without regular defences, against Napoleon, the most brilliant military genius of his generation, with an army of 10,000 war-hardened veterans, the "Army of Italy"--soldiers who had dared the snows of the Alps and conquered Italy, and to whom victory was a familiar experience. In their ranks military daring had reached, perhaps, its very highest point. And yet the sailors inside that ring of crumbling wall won! At Acre Napoleon experienced his first defeat; and, years after, at St. Helena, he said of Sir Sidney Smith, the gallant sailor who baffled him, "That man made me miss my destiny." It is a curious fact that one Englishman thwarted Napoleon's career in the East, and another ended his career in the West, and it may be doubted which of the two Napoleon hated most--Wellington, who finally overthrew him at Waterloo, or Sidney Smith, who, to use Napoleon's own words, made him "miss his destiny,"

and exchange the empire of the East for a lonely pinnacle of rock in the Atlantic.

Sidney Smith was a sailor of the school of Nelson and of Dundonald--a man, that is, with a spark of that warlike genius which begins where mechanical rules end. He was a man of singular physical beauty, with a certain magnetism and fire about him which made men willing to die for him. He became a middy at the tender age of eleven years; went through fierce sea-fights, and was actually mate of the watch when fourteen years old. He was a fellow-middy with William IV in the fight off Cape St. Vincent, became commander when he was eighteen years of age, and captain before he was quite nineteen.

But the British marine, even in those tumultuous days, scarcely yielded enough of the rapture of fighting to this post-captain in his teens. He took service under the Swedish flag, saw hard fighting against the Russians, became the close personal friend of the king, and was knighted by him. One of the feats at this period of his life with which tradition, with more or less of plausibility, credits Sidney Smith, is that of swimming by night through the Russian fleet, a distance of two miles, carrying a letter enclosed in a bladder to the Swedish admiral.

Sidney Smith afterwards entered the Turkish service. When war broke out betwixt France and England in 1790, he purchased a tiny craft at Smyrna, picked up in that port a mixed crew, and hurried to join Lord Hood, who was then holding Toulon. When the British abandoned the port--and it is curious to recollect that the duel between Sidney Smith and Napoleon, which reached its climax at Acre, began here--Sidney Smith volunteered to burn the French fleet, a task which he performed with an audacity and skill worthy of Nelson, and for which the French never forgave him.

Sidney Smith was given the command of an English frigate, and fought a dozen brilliant fights in the Channel. He carried with his boats a famous French privateer off Havre de Grace; but during the fight on the deck of the captured ship it drifted into the mouth of the Seine above the forts. The wind dropped, the tide was too strong to be stemmed, and Sidney Smith himself was captured. He had so harried the French coast that the French refused to treat him as an ordinary prisoner of war, and threw him Into that forbidding prison, the Temple, from whose iron-barred windows the unfortunate sailor watched for two years the horrors of the Reign of Terror in its last stages, the tossing crowds, the tumbrils rolling past, crowded with victims for the guillotine. Sidney Smith escaped at last by a singularly audacious trick. Two confederates, dressed in dashing uniform, one wearing the dress of an adjutant, and the other that of an officer of still higher rank, presented themselves at the Temple with forged orders for the transfer of Sidney Smith.

The governor surrendered his prisoner, but insisted on sending a guard of six men with him. The sham adjutant cheerfully acquiesced, but, after a moment's pause, turned to Sidney Smith and said, if he would give his parole as an officer not to attempt to escape, they would dispense with the escort. Sidney Smith, with due gravity, replied to his confederate. "Sir, I swear on the faith of an officer to accompany you wherever you choose to conduct me." The governor was satisfied, and the two sham officers proceeded to "conduct"

their friend with the utmost possible despatch to the French coast.

Another English officer who had escaped--Captain Wright--joined Sidney Smith outside Rouen, and the problem was how to get through the barriers without a pa.s.sport. Smith sent Wright on first, and he was duly challenged for his pa.s.sport by the sentinel; whereupon Sidney Smith, with a majestic air of official authority, marched up and said in faultless Parisian French, "I answer for this citizen, I know him"; whereupon the deluded sentinel saluted and allowed them both to pa.s.s!

Sidney Smith's escape from the Temple made him a popular hero in England. He was known to have great influence with the Turkish authorities, and he was sent to the East in the double office of envoy-extraordinary to the Porte, and commander of the squadron at Alexandria. By one of the curious coincidences which marked Sidney Smith's career, he became acquainted while in the Temple with a French Royalist officer named Philippeaux, an engineer of signal ability, and who had been a schoolfellow and a close chum of Napoleon himself at Brienne. Smith took his French friend with him to the East, and he played a great part in the defence of Acre. Napoleon had swept north through the desert to Syria, had captured Gaza and Jaffa, and was about to attack Acre, which lay between him and his ultimate goal, Constantinople. Here Sidney Smith resolved to bar his way, and in his flagship the _Tigre_, with the _Theseus_, under Captain Miller, and two gunboats, he sailed to Acre to a.s.sist in its defence. Philippeaux took charge of the fortifications, and thus, in the breaches of a remote Syrian town, the former prisoner of the Temple and the ancient school friend of Napoleon joined hands to wreck that dream of a great Eastern empire which lurked in the cells of Napoleon's masterful intellect.

Acre looks like a blunted arrow-head jutting out from a point in the Syrian coast. Napoleon could only attack, so to speak, the _neck_ of the arrow, which was protected by a ditch and a weak wall, and flanked by towers; but Sidney Smith, having command of the sea, could sweep the four faces of the town with the fire of his guns, as well as command all the sea-roads in its vicinity. He guessed, from the delay of the French in opening fire, that they were waiting for their siege-train to arrive by sea. He kept vigilant watch, pounced on the French flotilla as it rounded the promontory of Mount Carmel, captured nine of the vessels, carried them with their guns and warlike material to Acre, and mounted his thirty-four captured pieces on the batteries of the town. Thus the disgusted French saw the very guns which were intended to batter down the defences of Acre--and which were glorious with the memories of a dozen victories in Italy--frowning at them, loaded with English powder and shot, and manned by English sailors.

It is needless to say that a siege directed by Napoleon--the siege of what he looked upon as a contemptible and almost defenceless town, the single barrier betwixt his ambition and its goal--was urged with amazing fire and vehemence. The wall was battered day and night, a breach fifty feet wide made, and more than twelve a.s.saults delivered, with all the fire and daring of which French soldiers, gallantly led, are capable. So sustained was the fighting, that on one occasion the combat raged in the ditch and on the breach for _twenty-five_ successive hours. So close and fierce was it that one half-ruined tower was held by _both_ besiegers and besieged for twelve hours in succession, and neither would yield. At the breach, again, the two lines of desperately fighting men on repeated occasions clashed bayonets together, and wrestled and stabbed and died, till the survivors were parted by the barrier of the dead which grew beneath their feet.

Sidney Smith, however, fought like a sailor, and with all the cool ingenuity and resourcefulness of a sailor. His ships, drawn up on two faces of the town, smote the French stormers on either flank till they learned to build up a dreadful screen, made up partly of stones plucked from the breach, and partly of the dead bodies of their comrades. Smith, too, perched guns in all sorts of unexpected positions--a 24-pounder in the lighthouse, under the command of an exultant middy; two 68-pounders under the charge of "old Bray,"

the carpenter of the _Tigre_, and, as Sidney Smith himself reports, "one of the bravest and most intelligent men I ever served with"; and yet a third gun, a French bra.s.s l8-pounder, in one of the ravelins, under a master's mate. Bray dropped his sh.e.l.ls with the nicest accuracy in the centre of the French columns as they swept up the breach, and the middy perched aloft, and the master's mate from the ravelin, smote them on either flank with case-shot, while the _Theseus_ and the _Tigre_ added to the tumult the thunder of their broadsides, and the captured French gunboats contributed the yelp of their lighter pieces.

The great feature of the siege, however, was the fierceness and the number of the sorties. Sidney Smith's sorties actually exceeded in number and vehemence Napoleon's a.s.saults. He broke the strength of Napoleon's attacks, that is, by antic.i.p.ating them. A crowd of Turkish irregulars, with a few naval officers leading them, and a solid ma.s.s of Jack-tars in the centre, would break from a sally-port, or rush vehemently down through the gap in the wall, and scour the French trenches, overturn the gabions, spike the guns, and slay the guards. The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged, however, by the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the sortie. But the process was renewed the same night or the next day with unlessened fire and daring. The French engineers, despairing of success on the surface, betook themselves to mining; whereupon the besieged made a desperate sortie and reached the mouth of the mine. Lieutenant Wright, who led them, and who had already received two shots in his sword-arm, leaped down the mine followed by his sailors, slew the miners, destroyed their work, and safely regained the town.

The British sustained one startling disaster. Captain Miller of the _Theseus_, whose ammunition ran short, carefully collected such French sh.e.l.ls as fell into the town without exploding, and duly returned them, alight, and supplied with better fuses, to their original senders. He had collected some seventy sh.e.l.ls on the _Theseus_, and was preparing them for use against the French. The carpenter of the ship was endeavouring to get the fuses out of the loaded sh.e.l.ls with an auger, and a middy undertook to a.s.sist him, in characteristic middy fashion, with a mallet and a spike-nail. A huge sh.e.l.l under his treatment suddenly exploded on the quarter-deck of the _Theseus_, and the other sixty-nine sh.e.l.ls followed suit.

The too ingenious middy disappeared into s.p.a.ce; forty seamen, with Captain Miller himself, were killed; and forty-seven, including the two lieutenants of the ship, the chaplain, and the surgeon, were seriously wounded. The whole of the p.o.o.p was blown to pieces, and the ship was left a wreck with fire breaking out at half-a-dozen points. The fire was subdued, and the _Theseus_ survived in a half-gutted condition, but the disaster was a severe blow to Sir Sidney's resources.

As evening fell on May 7, the white sails of a fleet became visible, and all firing ceased while besiegers and besieged watched the approaching ships. Was it a French fleet or a Turkish? Did it bring succour to the besieged or a triumph to the besiegers? The approaching ships flew the crescent. It was the Turkish fleet from Rhodes bringing reinforcements. But the wind was sinking, and Napoleon, who had watched the approach of the hostile ships with feelings which may be guessed, calculated that there remained six hours before they could cast anchor in the bay. Eleven a.s.saults had been already made, in which eight French generals and the best officers in every branch of the service had perished. There remained time for a twelfth a.s.sault. He might yet pluck victory from the very edge of defeat. At ten o'clock that night the French artillery was brought up close to the counterscarp to batter down the curtain, and a new breach was made. Lannes led his division against the shot-wrecked tower, and General Rimbaud took his grenadiers with a resistless rush through the new breach. All night the combat raged, the men fighting desperately hand to hand. When the rays of the level morning sun broke through the pall of smoke which hung sullenly over the combatants, the tricolour flew on the outer angle of the tower, and still the ships bringing reinforcements had not reached the harbour! Sidney Smith, at this crisis, landed every man from the English ships, and led them, pike in hand, to the breach, and the shouting and madness of the conflict awoke once more. To use Sidney Smith's own words, "the muzzles of the muskets touched each other--the spear-heads were locked together." But Sidney Smith's sailors, with the brave Turks who rallied to their help, were not to be denied.

Lannes's grenadiers were tumbled headlong from the tower, Lannes himself being wounded, while Rimbaud's brave men, who were actually past the breach, were swept into ruin, their general killed, and the French soldiers within the breach all captured or slain.

One of the dramatic incidents of the siege was the a.s.sault made by Kleber's troops. They had not taken part in the siege hitherto, but had won a brilliant victory over the Arabs at Mount Tabor. On reaching the camp, flushed with their triumph, and seeing how slight were the apparent defences of the town, they demanded clamorously to be led to the a.s.sault. Napoleon consented. Kleber, who was of gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice--a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry--he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with eager eyes--the French grenadiers running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets that barred it, the sudden roar of the English guns as from every side they smote the staggering French column. Vainly single officers struggled out of the torn ma.s.s, ran gesticulating up the breach, and died at the muzzles of the British muskets. The men could not follow, or only died as they leaped forward. The French grenadiers, still fighting, swearing, and screaming, were swept back past the point where Kleber stood, hoa.r.s.e with shouting, black with gunpowder, furious with rage. The last a.s.sault on Acre had failed. The French sick, field artillery, and baggage silently defiled that night to the rear. The heavy guns were buried in the sand, and after sixty days of open trenches Napoleon, for the first time in his life, though not for the last, ordered a retreat.

Napoleon buried in the breaches of Acre not merely 3,000 of his bravest troops, but the golden dream of his life. "In that miserable fort," as he said, "lay the fate of the East." Napoleon expected to find in it the pasha's treasures, and arms for 300,000 men.

"When I have captured it," he said to Bourrienne, "I shall march upon Damascus and Aleppo. I shall arm the tribes; I shall reach Constantinople; I shall overturn the Turkish Empire; I shall found in the East a new and grand empire. Perhaps I shall return to Paris by Adrianople and Vienna!" Napoleon was cheerfully willing to pay the price of what religion he had to accomplish this dream. He was willing, that is, to turn Turk. "Had I but captured Acre," Napoleon added, "I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies; I would have changed the face of the world. But that man made me miss my destiny."

A FIRE-FIGHTER'S RESCUE FROM THE FLAMES

By Arthur Quiller-Couch

About a hundred years ago, long before James Braidwood had arisen to organise the fire-brigades of Edinburgh and London and set the example which has since been followed by every town in the civilised world, late on a dark afternoon a young stableman, John Elliot by name, was sauntering carelessly homewards down Piccadilly, London, when a glare in the sky, the confused murmurs of a large crowd, and the hurrying footsteps of pedestrians who pa.s.sed him, told of a not distant fire.

Following the footsteps of the pa.s.sers-by, he found himself in one of the side streets leading off Piccadilly, and there at the end of the street, a large house was blazing furiously. He worked his way vigorously through the spectators, now so densely gathered as to form a living wedge in the narrow street and block it against all traffic, and at length found himself in a position to see clearly the ruin that had already been wrought on the burning pile.

As a matter of fact, all was pretty well over with the house. How far the upper storeys were intact he had little means of judging; but he saw that the ceilings of the first and second floors had given way, and also that the fire was running along the rafters of the floor above. Flames were pouring from half a dozen windows. He turned to a man who stood next him in the concourse.

"The house is nearly done for," he remarked.