Book: Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland




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. Masses 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 assumed 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 ships, and for the
arrangement of peace guarantees, the Negus received the ambassadors
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.

On the 5th of September the two armies stood face to face. The Negus, with
265,000 men and 680 guns, had entrenched himself in a very favourable
position, and seemed indisposed to take the offensive. Our commander also
felt little inclined to storm the enemy's camp, a course which would have
involved an unnecessary sacrifice. To lie here, on the Jubba river, in an
inhospitable district in which his army must soon run short of provisions,
could not possibly be the intention of the enemy. He merely wished to keep
us here a little while until he could by stratagem outflank us. Arago,
having guarded against that, determined to wait; but in the meantime, in
order to tire the enemy of waiting, he caused our cavalry to intercept the
enemy's provisioning line. Our men lacked for nothing: the commissariat was
managed admirably. Among the Abyssinians, on the contrary, Duke Humphrey
was the host. Nevertheless the enemy kept quiet for three days in his
evidently untenable position, and the field-telegraph first informed us of
the motive of his doing so.

The Negus had sent out 45,000 men, who, making a wide circuit eastwards
beyond our outposts, were to cross the Endika range of hills, and to effect
an entrance into Freeland behind us, and in that way compel us to retreat.
Even if his plot had succeeded it would have helped him but little, for the
men left behind in the northern districts of Freeland would have very
quickly overcome these 45,000 men. But a few days of Abyssinian activity
might have been inconvenient for the prosperous fields and cities of North
Baringo and Lykipia; and it was therefore well that the passes of the
Endika range were guarded by 1,200 Freeland soldiers and eight guns. The
Abyssinians came upon these on the 7th of September, and through the whole
day vainly attempted to force a passage. Next morning they found themselves
shut in on their rear by our reserves, who had been left at the Konso pass,
and who had hastened to the scene of action by forced marches. After a
brief and desperate resistance the Abyssinians were compelled to lay down
their arms.

This news reached us about, noon on the 8th of September. This Job's
message must have reached the Negus about the same time, for towards two
o'clock we saw the enemy leaving the camp and preparing to give battle.
Arago rightly judged that, in order to avoid useless bloodshed, the
Abyssinians must this time be prevented from storming our lines in masses,
and must be completely routed as quickly as possible and deprived of any
power of offering further resistance. He therefore sent our artillery to
the front, repelled an attack from the enemy's centre by a couple of sharp
volleys from our mounted rifles, and at the same time moved 14,000 men on
the left flank of the enemy. Thence he opened fire about half-past three,
and, simultaneously making a vigorous attack on the front, he so completely
broke up the Abyssinian order of battle that the columns which a little
while before had been so well ordered were in a very short time crushed
into a chaotic mass, which our lines of rifles swept before them as the
beaters drive the game before the sportsmen. After the panic had once
seized the enemy there was but little firing. It was fortunate that the
Negus had posted on his left wing the troops that had learnt our mode of
fighting at Ardeb. These poor fellows remembered, after they had received a
murderous volley from our column advancing on their flank, that the
Freelanders stop firing as soon as the enemy gives way. Hence they could
not be made to stand again; and the cry of terror, 'Don't shoot, or you are
dead men!' with which they threw themselves upon their own centre--which in
the meantime had been attacked--was not calculated to stimulate the latter
to resistance. By five o'clock all was over; the centre and the left wing
of the Abyssinians were fleeing in wild confusion, the right wing, 54,000
men strong, was thrown, with the loss of all the artillery, into the
entrenchment they had just left, and there laid down their weapons as soon
as our guns began to play against the improvised earthworks. The other
prisoners taken on the field and during the pursuit, which lasted until
nightfall, amounted to 72,000; so that including the 41,000 unwounded men
who had fallen into our hands in the Endika passes, we now had 167,000
prisoners. The second battle cost the enemy 760 killed and 2,870 wounded;
our own losses in this last encounter were 22 killed and 105 wounded.

Assuming that the Negus succeeded in collecting the scattered remnants of
his army, he would still have nearly 130,000 men at his disposal, and it
was possible that he might still persist in the campaign. To prevent this,
the pursuit was carried on with all possible energy. All the cavalry and a
part of the artillery kept at the heels of the enemy; the rest of the army,
after the wounded and prisoners were provided for and the dead were buried,
followed rapidly the next morning. The retreating Abyssinians made no
further serious resistance, but allowed themselves to be easily taken
prisoners. In this way, during a five days' chase through the Galla
country, 65,000 more men fell into our hands. John had lost nearly all his
artillery in the engagement on the Jubba; during the pursuit he lost
twenty-six more guns, and then had only seventeen left. With these, and
about 60,000 utterly demoralised and for the most part disarmed men, the
Negus succeeded on the 13th of September in reaching the southern frontier
of his country, which he had recently left with such high hopes. Among the
hill-districts of Shoa he attempted to stop our pursuit. In spite of the
formidable natural advantages afforded him by his strong position, it would
not have been difficult to drive him out by a vigorous attack in the front.
But here again Arago shrank from causing unnecessary bloodshed, aid by
means of a skilful flank manoeuvre he induced the Negus, on the next day,
voluntarily to leave his position. Thence the pursuit continued without
intermission through the provinces of Shoa, Anchara, and Tigre, to the
coast. If the Negus had hoped to attract fresh troops on the way, or to
inflame the national fanaticism of his subjects against us, he was
disappointed. The utterly demoralised panic-stricken fragments of his army
which he carried with him were a _Mene, Tekel_, which caused his own people
to vanish wherever he came as if the ground had swallowed them up, to
reappear after he had gone and to receive us (his pursuers) with
palm-branches and barley, the Abyssinian emblems of peace. This led the
hunted man, when he had reached the frontier of Tigre, to leave the rest of
his army to their fate, and to throw himself, with a small guard of
horsemen, into his newly acquired coast possessions. Arrived there, with
masterly rapidity he concentrated all his available troops in the coast
fortresses, which he hoped, with the help of the fleet, to be able to
defend long enough to give time for a possible diversion in his favour
among the hill-tribes at our rear. This was the state of things when, on
the 18th of September, our advance-guard appeared before the walls of
Massowah. The Negus did not then know how short a time his fancied security
would last.

The fleet which the Negus had taken from the European Powers at this time
still contained thirteen men-of-war and nineteen gunboats and
despatch-boats; at the attack on Ungama, three ironclad frigates and four
smaller vessels had been either totally lost or so seriously damaged that
the Abyssinians, who had no means of repairing them, could make no further
use of them. A few days after the first unsuccessful attempt the
Abyssinians reappeared in greater force before Ungama, whose well-known
extensive wharves now for the first time seemed attractive to them; but at
the first greeting from our giant guns they wisely vanished, and did not
allow themselves to be sighted again.

On the other hand, they now watched all the more carefully the two
entrances into the Red Sea--from Bab-el-Mandeb in the south, and from Suez
in the north. They did not immediately expect any stronger naval power to
come from the Indian Ocean, as, besides the two ironclads and the two
despatch-boats which lay damaged at Ungama, there were no English, French,
or Italian warships of importance for thousands of miles in those seas; and
it would take months to get together a new fleet and send it round by the
Cape of Good Hope. Moreover, the Abyssinian agents in Europe reported that
the allies were preparing an expedition for the canal route, and not for
the Cape route. The fact that the French were collecting materials at
Toulon was not decisive evidence, as that Mediterranean port was as
convenient for the one route as for the other. That the Italians
concentrated their ships at Venice instead of at Genoa, which would be much
more convenient for an Atlantic expedition, spoke somewhat more plainly;
but that the English had chosen Malta as their rendezvous made the
destination of the fleet clear to everybody. But the Abyssinians could not
understand how the allies expected to pass the Suez Canal, which the
Abyssinian guns were able so completely to command that any vessel entering
the canal could be sunk ten times before it could fire a broadside.
Besides, the Abyssinians cruising at the mouth of the canal had made it
impassable by a sunken vessel laden with stones. To remove this obstacle
under the fire of 184 heavy guns--the number possessed by the Abyssinian
fleet--was an undertaking at which John grimly smiled when he thought of
it. And as he now needed his ironclads as least as much at Massowah as at
Suez and Bab-el-Mandeb, he had the larger part of them brought to him in
order to keep the Freeland besieging army in check, while merely four
ironclad frigates, two gunboats, and one despatch-boat remained at Suez,
and one ironclad frigate, three gunboats, and two despatch-boats at
Bab-el-Mandeb.

The ships ordered to Massowah reached that port on the 18th and 19th of
September; but our newly constructed Freeland fleet had already started
from Ungama on the 16th.

Immediately after receiving news of the capture of the coast fortresses and
the ships of the allies, the central executive had determined upon the
construction of this fleet, and the work was not delayed an hour. There was
no time to construct an armoured fleet; but they did not think they needed
one. What the executive decided upon was the construction of fast wooden
vessels with guns of such a range that their shots would destroy the
ironclads without allowing the shots of the latter to reach our vessels.
The government relied not merely upon the greater speed of the vessels and
the longer range of the guns, but chiefly upon the superiority of our
gunners. It was calculated that if our vessels could come within a certain
distance of the enemy, our guns would destroy the strongest ship of the
enemy before our vessels could be hit. The Freeland shipbuilding and other
industries were fully capable, if the work were undertaken with adequate
energy and under skilful organisation, of constructing and equipping a
sufficient number of wooden vessels of from 2,000 to 3,500 tons in the
course of a few weeks. As early as the 23rd of August the keels of
thirty-six such vessels were laid at Ungama; there was sufficient timber in
stock, and the machine-works of Ungama also had in stock enough
ship-engines of between 2,000 and 3,000 horse-power to furnish the new
vessels, the larger of which were to be supplied with four such engines.
The best and largest guns were collected from all the Freeland
exercise-grounds; twenty-four new ones, which threw all former ones into
the shade, were made in the steel-works at Dana City. The work was carried
out with such energy that within twenty-two days the final touch had been
given to the last of the thirty-six floating batteries. These constructions
were not perfect in elegance; but in mechanical completeness they were
faultless. They were flat-decked, so as to present as little surface as
possible to the enemy's balls, and were divided into water-tight
compartments to prevent their being sunk by shells striking them under the
water-line. Each vessel had at least two engines working in complete
independence of each other, so that it could not easily be deprived of its
power of locomotion. Only the powder-magazines were armour-plated, but the
plates used were of the strongest kind. The guns, which moved freely on the
deck, weighed from 100 to 250 tons, and were distributed, to some vessels
one, to others two, and to others three; altogether thirty-six vessels
possessed seventy-eight guns. The maximum speed ranged for the different
vessels from twenty-three to twenty-seven knots per hour.

As we had promised the Western Powers that we would open the Suez Canal to
the European transport-ships, we had to proceed at once to carry this task
into execution. On the evening of the 19th of September our vessels sighted
the Abyssinian squadron cruising in the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. These,
mistaking us for passenger-steamers, at once gave chase, and were not a
little astonished to find that the harmless looking crafts did not alter
their course. It was not until the enemy had got within a little more than
nine miles and had had a taste of a few of our heaviest shot, that they
recognised their error and beat a hasty retreat. The greater part of our
fleet kept on its way into the Red Sea; only six of our largest and fastest
vessels pursued the fleeing Abyssinians, sunk two of their ships by a
well-directed fire, which, on account of the distance, the enemy could not
effectively return, and drove the others ashore. Our sloops picked as many
of the men as they could reach out of the water, and the vessels then
proceeded on their way to Suez. The affair with the Bab-el-Mandeb squadron
lasted only about two hours and a-half.

The greater part of our fleet steamed unperceived past Massowah in the
night of the 19th-20th; the other six were, however, in the early dawn,
seen and pursued by a hostile cruiser. As it was not our intention to make
a halt at Massowah or prematurely to warn the Abyssinian ships lying there
by giving a lesson to a cruiser as we passed, our vessels did not answer
the enemy's shots--though several of the latter struck us--but endeavoured
to get out of reach as quickly as possible. They succeeded in doing this
without suffering any serious damage. As we learnt afterwards, our vessels
were mistaken at Massowah also for mail-ships which were heedlessly running
into the hands of the cruisers guarding the canal. All that the Negus did
was to set his vessels industriously cruising off Massowah for several
nights in order to prevent the six supposed mail-steamers from escaping if
they should turn back from Suez.

On the afternoon of the 22nd our fleet appeared off Suez, attacked the
enemy's ships forthwith, and, after a short engagement, sank three of them.
The others, including three ironclad frigates, ran ashore, and the crews
were taken by the Egyptian troops. Our admiral provisionally handed over to
the Egyptians the Abyssinian sailors and marines who had been rescued from
drowning, and told off three of our vessels to assist the Egyptian and
English canal officials in raising the sunken stone-ship. These officials
told us that the allied fleet had reached Damietta the day before. If the
last obstacle to the navigation of the canal could be removed so soon, the
first ships of the allies could enter the Red Sea on the 24th, and the
expedition might be expected at Massowah by the end of the month. In order
to open Massowah by that time, our fleet at once returned southwards, and
on the 24th of September appeared off the Negus's last place of refuge.

The Freeland array had, in the meantime, remained inactive outside of
Massowah, knowing that the co-operation of our vessels would enable us to
take the place without difficulty. When those vessels appeared in the
offing, several small Abyssinian war-ships steered towards them. A few
shots from ours put the enemy's vessels to flight, and the Negus at last
understood the situation. However, he still hoped to demolish our wooden
ships, until the terrible execution effected by the first charges from our
enormous guns taught him and his admirals better. Continually withdrawing
out of range of the heavy ironclads as they steamed towards our vessels,
the destructive long-ranged guns of the latter poured forth their shot and
sank two of the frigates, before even _one_ of the enemy's balls had struck
a Freeland vessel. The enemy then turned and fled, but our vessels, keeping
at the same advantageous distance, pressed hard after them, and, before the
hostile fleet had reached the harbour, sank a third ironclad. Even in the
harbour the enemy found as little security as in the open sea; the dreadful
armour-crushing guns sent in shot after shot; a fourth ship sank, and then
a fifth. At the same time our gigantic guns battered at the harbour
bastions with tremendous effect, and we expected every moment to see the
white flag as a token of surrender. Instead of that, the Negus, finding
that he could not hold the fortress, and expecting no mercy from us,
suddenly made a desperate sortie, in the hope of fighting his way through
our lines to the hills. He succeeded in passing only our first line of
outposts; before he had reached the first Freeland line several volleys had
brought his party to a standstill and had given him his death. The
Abyssinians threw their arms away, and the war was ended.

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