Part 21

Anna Mills, able seaman on board the _Maidstone_ frigate in 1740, made herself famous for desperate valor.

Mary Ann, youngest of Lord Talbot’s sixteen natural children, was the victim of a wicked guardian who took her to the wars as his foot-boy. As a drummer boy she served through the campaigns in Flanders, dressing two severe wounds herself. Her subsequent masquerade as a sailor led to countless adventures. She was a seaman on a French lugger, powder monkey on a British ship of the line, fought in Lord Howe’s great victory and was crippled for life. Later she was a merchant seaman, after that a jeweler in London, pensioned for military service, and was last heard of as a bookseller’s housemaid in 1807.

Mary Dixon did sixteen years’ service, and fought at Waterloo. She was still living fifty years afterward, “a strong, powerful, old woman.”

Phœbe Hessel fought in the fifth regiment of foot, and was wounded in the arm at Fontenoy. After many years of soldiering she retired from service and was pensioned by the prince regent, George IV. A tombstone is inscribed to her memory in the old churchyard at Brighton.

In this bald record there is no room for the adventures of such military and naval heroines as prisoners of war, as leaders in battle, as victims of shipwreck, or as partakers in some of the most extraordinary love-affairs ever heard of.

Hundreds of stories might be told of women conspicuous for valor, meeting hazards as great as ever have fallen to the lot of men. In one case, the casting away of the French frigate _Medusa_, the men, almost without exception, performed prodigies of cowardice, while two or three of the women made a wonderful journey across the Sahara Desert to Senegambia, which is the one bright episode in the most disgraceful disaster on record. In the defenses of Leyden and Haarlem, besieged by Spanish armies, the Dutch women manned the ramparts with the men, inspired them throughout the hopeless months, and shared the general fate when all the survivors were butchered. And the valor of Englishwomen during the sieges of our strongholds in India, China and South Africa, has made some of the brightest pages of our history.

XLIX

THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA

Only the other day, the king of England was proclaimed emperor of India, and all the princes and governors of that empire presented their swords in homage. This homage was rendered at Delhi, the ancient capital of Hindustan; and it is only one hundred and ten years since Delhi fell, and Hindustan surrendered to the British arms. We have to deal with the events that led up to the conquest of India.

The Moslem sultans, sons of the Great Mogul, had long reigned over Hindustan, but in 1784 Shah Alam, last of these emperors, was driven from Delhi. In his ruin he appealed for help to Madhoji Scindhia, a Hindu prince from the South, who kindly restored the emperor to his palace, then gave him into the keeping of a jailer, who gouged out the old man’s eyes. Still Shah Alam, the blind, helpless, and at times very hungry prisoner, was emperor of Northern India, and in his august name Scindhia led the armies to collect the taxes of Hindustan. No tax was collected without a battle.

Scindhia himself was one of many turbulent Mahratta princes subject to the peshwa of Poona, near Bombay. He had to sit on the peshwa’s head at Poona, and the emperor’s head at Delhi, while he fought the whole nobility and gentry of India, and kept one eye cocked for British invasions from the seaboard. The British held the ocean, surrounded India, and were advancing inland. Madhoji Scindhia was a very busy man.

He had never heard of tourists, and when De Boigne, an Italian gentleman, came up-country to see the sights, his highness, scenting a spy, stole the poor man’s luggage. De Boigne, veteran of the French and Russian armies, and lately retired from the British service, was annoyed at the loss of his luggage, and having nothing left but his sword, offered the use of that to Scindhia’s nearest enemy. In those days scores of Europeans, mostly French, and scandalous rogues as a rule, were serving in native armies. Though they liked a fight, they so loved money that they would sell their masters to the highest bidder. Scindhia observed that De Boigne was a pretty good man, and the Savoyard adventurer was asked to enter his service.

De Boigne proved honest, faithful to his prince, a tireless worker, a glorious leader, the very pattern of manliness. The battalions which he raised for Scindhia were taught the art of war as known in Europe, they were well armed, fed, disciplined, and paid their wages; they were led by capable white men, and always victorious in the field. At Scindhia’s death, De Boigne handed over to the young prince Daulat Rao, his heir, an army of forty thousand men, which had never known defeat, together with the sovereignty of India.

The new Scindhia was rotten, and now the Italian, broken down with twenty years of service, longed for his home among the Italian vineyards. Before parting with his highness, he warned him rather to disband the whole army than ever be tempted into conflict with the English. So De Boigne laid down the burden of the Indian empire, and retired to his vineyards in Savoy. There for thirty years he befriended the poor, lived simply, entertained royally, and so died full of years and honors.

While De Boigne was still fighting for Scindhia, a runaway Irish sailor had drifted up-country, and taken service in one of the native states as a private soldier. George Thomas was as chivalrous as De Boigne, with a great big heart, a clear head, a terrific sword, and a reckless delight in war. Through years of rough and tumble adventure he fought his way upward, until with his own army of five thousand men he invaded and conquered the Hariana. This district, just to the westward of Delhi, was a desert, peopled by tribes so fierce that they had never been subdued, but their Irish king won all their hearts, and they settled down quite peacefully under his government. His revenue was eighteen hundred thousand pounds a year. At Hansi, his capital town, he coined his own money, cast his own cannon, made muskets and powder, and set up a pension fund for widows and orphans of his soldiers. All round him were hostile states, and whenever he felt dull he conquered a kingdom or so, and levied tribute. If his men went hungry, he starved with them; if they were weary, he marched afoot; the army worshiped him, and the very terror of his name brought strong cities to surrender, put legions of Sikh cavalry to flight. All things seemed possible to such a man, even the conquest of great Hindustan.

De Boigne had been succeeded as commander-in-chief under Scindhia by Perron, a runaway sailor, a Frenchman, able and strong. De Boigne’s power had been a little thing compared with the might and splendor of Perron, who actually reigned over Hindustan, stole the revenues, and treated Scindhia’s orders with contempt. Perron feared only one man on earth, this rival adventurer, this Irish rajah of the Hariana, and sent an expedition to destroy him.

The new master of Hindustan detested the English, and degrading the capable British officers who had served De Boigne, procured Frenchmen to take their place, hairdressers, waiters, scalawags, all utterly useless. Major Bourguien, the worst of the lot, was sent against Thomas and got a thrashing.

But Thomas, poor soul, had a deadlier enemy than this coward, and now lay drunk in camp for a week celebrating his victory instead of attending to business. He awakened to find his force of five thousand men besieged by thirty thousand veterans. There was no water, spies burned his stacks of forage, his battalions were bribed to desert, or lost all hope. Finally with three English officers and two hundred cavalry, Thomas cut his way through the investing army and fled to his capital.

The coward Bourguien had charge of the pursuing force that now invested Hanei. Bourguien’s officers breached the walls and took the town by storm, but Thomas fell back upon the citadel. Then Bourguien sent spies to bribe the garrison that Thomas might be murdered, but his officers went straight to warn the fallen king. To them he surrendered.

That night Thomas dined with the officers, and all were merry when Bourguien proposed a toast insulting his prisoner. The officers turned their glasses down refusing to drink. Thomas burst into tears; but then he drew upon Bourguien, and waving the glittering blade, “One Irish sword,” he cried, “is still sufficient for a hundred Frenchmen!” Bourguien bolted.

Loyal in the days of his greatness, the fallen king was received with honors at the British outposts upon the Ganges. There he was giving valuable advice to the governor-general when a map of India was laid before him, the British possessions marked red. He swept his hand across India: “All this ought to be red.”

It is all red now, and the British conquest of India arose out of the defense made by this great wild hero against General Perron, ruler of Hindustan. Scindhia, who had lifted Perron from the dust, and made him commander-in-chief of his army, was now in grave peril on the Deccan, beset by the league of Mahratta princes. In his bitter need he sent to Perron for succor. Perron, busy against his enemy in the Hariana, left Scindhia to his fate.

Perron had no need of Scindhia now, but was leagued with Napoleon to hand over the Indian empire to France. He betrayed his master.

Now Scindhia, had the Frenchmen been loyal, could have checked the Mahratta princes, but these got out of hand, and one of them, Holkar, drove the Mahratta emperor, the peshwa of Poona, from his throne. The peshwa fled to Bombay, and returned with a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley. So came the battle of Assaye, wherein the British force of four thousand five hundred men overthrew the Mahratta army of fifty thousand men, captured a hundred guns, and won Poona, the capital of the South. Meanwhile for fear of Napoleon’s coming, Perron, his servant, had to be overthrown. A British army under General Lake swept Perron’s army out of existence and captured Delhi, the capital of the North. Both the capital cities of India fell to English arms, both emperors came under British protection, and that vast empire was founded wherein King George now reigns. As to Perron, his fall was pitiful, a freak of cowardice. He betrayed everybody, and sneaked away to France with a large fortune.

And Arthur Wellesley, victor in that stupendous triumph of Assaye, became the Iron Duke of Wellington, destined to liberate Europe at Waterloo.

L

A. D. 1805

THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON

This story is from the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a conscript in the Grand Army of France, and to his horror drafted for a marine on board the battle-ship _Redoubtable_. The Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three battle-ships lay in Cadiz, and Villeneuve, the nice old gentleman in command, was still breathless after being chased by Lord Nelson across the Atlantic and back again. Now, having given Nelson the slip, he had fierce orders from the Emperor Napoleon to join the French channel fleet, for the invasion of England. The nice old gentleman knew that his fleet was manned largely with helpless recruits, ill-paid, ill-found, most scandalously fed, sick with a righteous terror lest Nelson come and burn them in their harbor.

Then Nelson came, with twenty-seven battle-ships, raging for a fight, and Villeneuve had to oblige for fear of Napoleon’s anger.

The fleets met off the sand-dunes of Cape Trafalgar, drawn up in opposing lines for battle, and when they closed, young Guillemard’s ship, the _Redoubtable_, engaged Lord Nelson’s _Victory_, losing thirty men to her first discharge.

Guillemard had never been in action, and as the thunders broke from the gun tiers below, he watched with mingled fear and rage the rush of seamen at their work on deck, and his brothers of the marines at their musketry, until everything was hidden in trailing wreaths of smoke, from which came the screams of the wounded, the groans of the dying.

Some seventy feet overhead, at the caps of the lower masts, were widespread platforms, the fighting tops on which the best marksmen were always posted. “All our topmen,” says Guillemard, “had been killed, when two sailors and four soldiers, of whom I was one, were ordered to occupy their post in the tops. While we were going aloft, the balls and grapeshot showered around us, struck the masts and yards, knocked large splinters from them, and cut the rigging to pieces. One of my companions was wounded beside me, and fell from a height of thirty feet to the deck, where he broke his neck. When I reached the top my first movement was to take a view of the prospect presented by the hostile fleets. For more than a league extended a thick cloud of smoke, above which were discernible a forest of masts and rigging, and the flags, the pendants and the fire of the three nations. Thousands of flashes, more or less near, continually penetrated this cloud, and a rolling noise pretty similar to the sound of thunder, but much stronger, arose from its bosom.”

Guillemard goes on to describe a duel between the topmen of the _Redoubtable_ and those of the _Victory_ only a few yards distant, and when it was finished he lay alone among the dead who crowded the swaying platform.

“On the poop of the English vessel was an officer covered with orders and with only one arm. From what I had heard of Nelson I had no doubt that it was he. He was surrounded by several officers, to whom he seemed to be giving orders. At the moment I first perceived him several of his sailors were wounded beside him by the fire of the _Redoubtable_. As I had received no orders to go down, and saw myself forgotten in the tops, I thought it my duty to fire on the poop of the English vessel, which I saw quite clearly exposed, and close to me. I could even have taken aim at the men I saw, but I fired at hazard among the groups of sailors and officers. All at once I saw great confusion on board the _Victory_; the men crowded round the officer whom I had taken for Nelson. He had just fallen, and was taken below covered with a cloak. The agitation shown at this moment left me no doubt that I had judged rightly, and that it really was the English admiral. An instant afterward the _Victory_ ceased from firing, the deck was abandoned.... I hurried below to inform the captain.... He believed me the more readily as the slackening of the fire indicated that an event of the highest importance occupied the attention of the English ship’s crew.... He gave immediate orders for boarding, and everything was prepared for it in a moment. It is even said that young Fontaine, a midshipman ... passed by the ports into the lower deck of the English vessel, found it abandoned, and returned to notify that the ship had surrendered.... However, as a part of our crew, commanded by two officers, were ready to spring upon the enemy’s deck, the fire recommenced with a fury it had never had from the beginning of the action.... In less than half an hour our vessel, without having hauled down her colors, had in fact, surrendered. Her fire had gradually slackened and then had ceased altogether.... Not more than one hundred fifty men survived out of a crew of about eight hundred, and almost all those were more or less severely wounded.”

When these were taken on board the _Victory_, Guillemard learned how the bullet which struck down through Lord Nelson’s shoulder and shattered the spine below, had come from the fighting tops of the _Redoubtable_, where he had been the only living soul. He speaks of his grief as a man, his triumph as a soldier of France, who had delivered his country from her great enemy. What it meant for England judge now after nearly one hundred years, when one meets a bluejacket in the street with the three white lines of braid upon his collar in memory of Nelson’s victories at Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar, and the black neckcloth worn in mourning for his death.

It seemed at the time that the very winds sang Nelson’s requiem, for with the night came a storm putting the English shattered fleet in mortal peril, while of the nineteen captured battle-ships not one was fit to brave the elements. For, save some few vessels that basely ran away before the action, both French and Spaniards had fought with sublime desperation, and when the English prize-crews took possession, they and their prisoners were together drowned. The _Aigle_ was cast away, and not one man escaped; the _Santissima Trinidad_, the largest ship in the world, foundered; the _Indomitable_ sank with fifteen hundred wounded; the _Achille_, with her officers shooting themselves, her sailors drunk, went blazing through the storm until the fire caught her magazine. And so with the rest of eighteen blood-soaked wrecks, burned, foundered, or cast away, while only one outlived that night of horror.

When the day broke Admiral Villeneuve was brought on board the _Victory_, where Nelson lay in state, for the voyage to England. Villeneuve, wounded in the hand, was unable to write, and sent among the French prisoners for a clerk. For this service Guillemard volunteered as the only uninjured soldier who could write. So Guillemard attended the admiral all through the months of their residence at Arlesford, in Devon, where they were at large on parole. The old man was treated with respect and sympathy.

Prisoners of war are generally released by exchange between fighting powers, rank for rank, man for man; but after five months Villeneuve was allowed to return to France. He pledged his honor that unless duly exchanged he would surrender again on the English coast at the end of ninety days. So, attended by Guillemard and his servant, he crossed the channel, and from the town of Rennes--the place where Dreyfus had his trial not long ago--he wrote despatches to the government in Paris. He was coming, he said in a private letter, to arraign most of his surviving captains on the charge of cowardice at Trafalgar.

Of this it seems the captains got some warning, and decided that for the sake of their own health Villeneuve should not reach Paris alive.

Anyway, Guillemard says that while the admiral lay in the Hotel de Bresil, at Rennes, five strangers appeared--men in civilian dress, who asked him many questions about Villeneuve. The secretary was proud of his master, glad to talk about so distinguished a man, and thought no evil when he gave his answers. The leader of the five was a southern Frenchman, the others foreigners, deeply tanned, who wore mustaches--in those days an unusual ornament.

That night the admiral had gone to bed in his room on the first floor of the inn, and the secretary was asleep on the floor above. A cry disturbed him, and taking his sword and candle, he ran down-stairs in time to see the five strangers sneak by him hurriedly. Guillemard rushed to the admiral’s room “and saw the unfortunate man, whom the balls of Trafalgar had respected, stretched pale and bloody on his bed. He ... breathed hard, and struggled with the agonies of death.... Five deep wounds pierced his breast.”

So it was the fate of the slayer of Nelson to be alone with Villeneuve at his death.

When he reached Paris the youngster was summoned to the Tuileries, and the Emperor Napoleon made him tell the whole story of the admiral’s assassination. Yet officially the death was announced as suicide, and Guillemard met the leader of the five assassins walking in broad daylight on the boulevards.

The lad kept his mouth shut.

Guillemard lived to fight in many of the emperor’s battles, to be one of the ten thousand prisoners of the Spaniards on the desert island of the Cabrera, whence he made a gallant escape; to be a prisoner of the Russians in Siberia; to assist in King Murat’s flight from France; and, finally, after twenty years of adventure, to return with many wounds and few honors to his native village.

LI

A. D. 1812

THE FALL OF NAPOLEON

The greatest of modern adventurers, Napoleon Bonaparte, was something short of a gentleman, a person of mean build, coarse tastes, odious manners and defective courage, yet gifted with Satanic beauty of face, charm that bewitched all fighting men, stupendous genius in war and government. Beginning as a penniless lieutenant of French artillery, he rose to be captain, colonel, general, commander-in-chief, consul of France, emperor of the French, master of Europe, almost conqueror of the world--and he was still only thirty-three years of age, when at the height of his glory, he invaded Russia. His army of invasion was gathered from all his subject nations--Germans, Swiss, Italians, Poles, Austrians, numbering more than half a million men, an irresistible and overwhelming force, launched like a shell into the heart of Russia.

The Russian army could not hope to defeat Napoleon, was routed again and again in attempting to check his advance, yet in retreating laid the country waste, burned all the standing harvest, drove away the cattle, left the towns in ashes. Napoleon’s host marched through a desert, while daily, by waste of battle, wreckage of men left with untended wounds, horrors of starvation, and wolf-like hordes of Cossacks who cut off all the stragglers, the legions were swept away. In Lithuania alone Napoleon lost a hundred thousand men, and that only a fourth part of those who perished before the army reached the gates of Moscow.

That old city, hallowed by centuries of brave endeavor, stored with the spoils of countless victories, that holy place at the very sight of which the Russian traveler prostrated himself in prayer, had been made ready for Napoleon’s coming. Never has any nation prepared so awful a sacrifice as that which wrenched a million people from their homes. The empty capital was left in charge of a few officers, then all the convicts were released and provided with torches. Every vestige of food had been taken away, but the gold, the gems, the silver, the precious things of treasuries, churches and palaces, remained as bait.

Despite the horrors of the march, Napoleon’s entry was attended by all the gorgeous pageantry of the Grand Army, a blaze of gold and color, conquered Europe at the heels of the little Corsican adventurer with waving flags and triumphal music. The cavalry found cathedrals for stabling, the guard had palaces for barracks, where they could lie at ease through the winter; but night after night the great buildings burst into flames, day after day the foraging parties were caught in labyrinths of blazing streets, and the army staled on a diet of wine and gold in the burning capital.

In mortal fear the emperor attempted to treat for peace, but Russia kept him waiting for a month, while her troops closed down on the line of escape, and the winter was coming on--the Russian winter.

From the time when the retreat began through a thousand miles of naked wilderness, not a single ration was issued to the starving army. The men were loaded with furs, brocades, chalices, ingots of silver, bars of gold and jewels, but they had no food. The transport numbered thousands of carts laden with grain, but the horses died because there was no forage, so all the commissariat, except Napoleon’s treasure train, was left wrecked by the wayside.