It was only at this moment, when the storming party had all but effected its task, that it became visible to the defenders of Maiun and of the other forts below, who, hearing the unwonted heavy firing, had come out upon the roof-tops and were gazing upwards at the ridge. They shouted a warning across the river, which was taken up by sanga after sanga on the cliff side, till it reached the men in the four sangas that were the object of our attack, who for the first time realised that a party of men were scaling the cliff beneath them. They then, but too late, made a desperate attempt to defend their position. They threw rocks over the parapets, and some brave Hunzas rushed boldly out of the sangas and rolled down the ready-piled-up mounds of stone, whose falling stirred great showers of rocks, ever increasing in volume as they thundered down the gorge. From our side we shot down each man as he appeared in the open, in most cases before he had time to roll down a single stone. Luckily, our men had by this time passed the most dangerous part of the ascent, and the greater portion of the stones rushed harmlessly to the left of them. Some men, however, were wounded, and Lieutenant Taylor was knocked down, but not severely injured, by a rock. Had the enemy received their warning but a few minutes earlier, the cataracts of rock would probably have swept a large proportion of the scaling party off the face of the cliff.

And now the order was given to the covering party to cease firing, and, as the smoke cleared, we saw Lieutenant Manners-Smith and a few men reach the foot of the sanga to the right. They ran quickly round to the opening at the back of the sanga, a few shots were fired by the attacking party and the defenders, and then the former, rushing in, took the sanga at the point of the bayonet, slaying most of those within. The rest of the sepoys now came up, and, despite the gallant stand of many of the enemy, sanga after sanga was taken by assault, and the whole hillside was covered with the flying tribesmen hurrying to the forts below. Upwards of 100 of them were shot down by our riflemen, but the greater portion escaped. This gallant forlorn hope had been rewarded with complete success, and the Kashmir Imperial Service troops had proved on this their first trial how well they could acquit themselves when properly led.

And now the defenders of Maiun, Thol, and all the fortifications on the plain below, seeing that their position—which they had deemed impregnable, and which from time immemorial had defied their enemies—had been actually turned, and knowing that we should cut off their retreat unless they escaped at once, lost heart, and, abandoning their posts, took to their heels. We saw the tribesmen in their hundreds fleeing up the valley for their lives on both sides of the river. They were not given time to recover from their panic and to organise a stand higher up. Our covering party was at once brought down the hill, our sappers quickly opened a rough track across the mouth of the gorge; we effected a junction with Lieutenant Manners-Smith’s party; and then, leaving baggage and commissariat behind, our whole force pushed up the valley in pursuit of the routed enemy. A forced march of thirty miles over the most difficult ground, along the face of precipices, across frozen torrents, glaciers, and wastes of rocky débris, brought us to the capital of Nagar in about twenty-four hours—a most creditable performance. The enemy offered no further resistance, and on the following day we occupied the thums’ hitherto inviolate citadel in the capital of Hunza.

The complete pacification of the country quickly followed. The Hunza-Nagars, having been treated with clemency, are now very well disposed to us. They acknowledge our suzerainty, but are ruled by their thums as of old; and we do not interfere with them in the least so long as they abstain from raiding and slave-hunting. The Hunza valley provides a new recruiting ground for India. When it was proposed to raise a Hunza levy for frontier defence, the young tribesmen gladly volunteered; and within a few months of the Hunza War, a small body of our recent foes, led by British officers, completely defeated a far superior force of Shinakas which had attacked our outposts on the Indus.

Lieutenant Manners-Smith, in recognition of his gallant leading of the forlorn hope on the 20th, received the Victoria Cross—the third that had been gained in the course of this short but memorable campaign.

Giuseppe (or Joseph) Garibaldi was for many years the most picturesque and interesting figure in all Europe. He might be called the William Wallace, or the William Tell, of Italy. His name (which is still a common enough one in Genoa among all ranks of life) is said to have been a corruption of Garibaldo, i.e. “Bold in War.” At any rate, a warlike star presided over his birth (at Nice in 1807), for he first saw the light in the very house where, forty years before, Masséna, one of the Great Napoleon’s greatest generals, was born.

At the time of his birth his native country—Italy—was in a woful state of disunion, and much of it was under the yoke of the foreigner—the Austrians in particular. It was cut up into several conflicting monarchies; while the Pope, the spiritual head of the Roman Church, also claimed—and had his claim allowed—to be temporal sovereign of Rome. But as the century grew older, the Italian people began to be stirred with a deep desire for national unity, without which they knew they could never become great, strong, or respected; and of all who threw themselves into this movement, none did so with more ardour than the son of the humble Nice skipper who sailed his own little vessel all over the Mediterranean.

This son, Giuseppe, took to his father’s calling, and began life as a sailor. Once, when second in command of a brig, he was attacked by Greek pirates, after which he landed at St. Nicholas to re-victual without so much as shoes to his feet. An Englishman, taking pity on him, offered him a pair, and this touched him to the heart.

“When I look back upon it now,” wrote Garibaldi in 1870 to Cassell’s Magazine, “I cannot help remembering that it was the first of the many acts of kindness which bind me with such strong and lasting ties of gratitude to your noble nation.”

In 1836 he had joined a revolutionary movement, which failed; and, after many privations and vicissitudes, he finally sailed for South America, where for the next ten years he led a life of the most stirring excitement and adventure among the quarrelsome young Republics of that continent—fighting now on one side and then on the other, like Rittmeister Dugald Dalgetty in the Thirty Years’ War, and gaining a name for the greatest personal bravery. The wanderings and adventures of Ulysses were nothing to those of Garibaldi, which would fill volumes of as fascinating reading as can be found in the pages of a novelist.

When the revolutionary movement of 1848 swept over Europe—including Italy—Garibaldi returned home with a knowledge of guerilla—or irregular—warfare such as was possessed probably by no other man alive; and then, with his volunteers, he threw himself heart and soul into the movement for “making Italy free,” as the phrase ran, “from the Alps to the Adriatic.”

With his Red-Shirt Volunteers, Garibaldi took a prominent part in the fighting of 1848 and 1859, and with his “Thousand”—as famous a fighting force as Xenophon’s “Ten Thousand”—he, in 1860, attacked and conquered the Two Sicilies (i.e. the island of Sicily and Naples), and made a present of these kingdoms to his sovereign Victor Emmanuel, after which he returned to his solitary farm on the little island of Caprera. Here, on this rocky island—fifteen miles in circumference, and five in length—Garibaldi was monarch of all he surveyed.

“The absence of priests,” he wrote, “is one of the especial blessings of this spot. Here God is worshipped in purity of spirit without formalism, free from mockery, under the canopy of the blue heavens, with the planets for lamps, the sea winds for music, and the green sward of the island for altars.”

This was the den, so to speak, into which the lion-patriot retired when no political prey was stirring. But no sooner did he scent the opportunity for action than out again he would rush with a roar, which was sometimes just as disquieting to his friends as to his foes. This was more particularly the case on the occasion which led to Aspromonte. But, before proceeding to the tragic scene of this encounter, let us see what sort of fighters Garibaldi and his red-shirted followers were.

“Garibaldi,” wrote a correspondent of The Times, “was a middle-sized man, and not of an athletic build, though gifted with uncommon strength and surprising agility. He looked to the greatest advantage on horseback, since he sat in the saddle with such perfect ease, and yet with such calm serenity, as if he were grown to it, having had, though originally a sailor, the benefit of a long experience in taming the wild mustangs of the Pampas. But his chief beauty was the head and the unique dignity with which it rose on the shoulders. The features were cast in the old classic mould: the forehead was high and broad, a perpendicular line from the roots of the hair to the eyebrows. His mass of tawny hair and full red beard gave the countenance its peculiar lion-like character. The brow was open, genial, sunny; the eyes dark grey, deep, shining with a steady reddish light; the nose, mouth, and chin exquisitely chiselled, the countenance habitually at rest, but at sight of those dear to him beaming with a caressing smile, revealing all the innate strength and grace of his loving nature.

“His garb consisted of a plain red shirt and grey trousers, over which he threw the folds of the Spanish-American poncho—an ample upper garment of thin white woollen cloth with crimson lining, which did duty as a standard, and round which his volunteers were bidden to rally in the thick of the fight, as did the French Huguenot chivalry round Henry of Navarre’s ‘panache blanche.’ His sword was a fine cavalry blade, forged in England and the gift of English friends, and with it he might be seen at his early breakfast on the tented field cutting his bread and slicing his Bologna sausage, and inviting those he particularly wished to distinguish, to share that savoury fare. The sabre did good slashing work at need, however, and at Milazzo, in Sicily, it bore him out safely from the midst of a knot of Neapolitan troopers who caught him by surprise and fancied they had him at their discretion. Garibaldi carried no other weapons, though the officers in his suite had pistols and daggers at their belts; and his negro groom, by name Aguyar, who for a long time followed him as his shadow, like Napoleon’s Mameluke, and was shot dead by his side at Rome, was armed with a long lance with a crimson pennon, used as his chief’s banner.

“His staff officers were a numerous, quaint, and motley crew, men of all ages and conditions, mostly devoted personal friends—not all of them available for personal strength or technical knowledge, but all to be relied upon for their readiness to die with or for him. The veterans he brought with him from Montevideo, a Genoese battalion whom his friend Augusto Vecchi helped to enlist, and the Lombard Legion, under Manara, were all men of tried valour, well trained to the use of the rifle, inured to hardships and privations; and they constituted the nucleus of the Garibaldian force throughout its campaigns. The remainder was a shapeless mass of raw recruits from all parts of Italy, joining or leaving the band almost at their pleasure—mere boys from the Universities, youths of noble and rich family, lean artisans from the towns, stout peasants and labourers from the country, adventurers of indifferent character, deserters from the army, and the like, all marching in loose companies, like Falstaff’s recruits, under improvised officers and non-commissioned officers; but all, or most of them, entirely disinterested about pay or promotion, putting up with long fasts and heavy marches, only asking to be brought face to face with the enemy, and when under the immediate influence of Garibaldi himself or of his trusty friends seldom guilty of soldierly excesses or of any breach of discipline. The effect the presence of the hero had among them was surprising. A word addressed to them in his clear, ringing, silver voice electrified even the dullest. An order coming from him was never questioned, never disregarded. No one waited for a second bidding or an explanation. ‘Your business is not to inquire how you are to storm that position. You must only go and do it.’ And it was done.”

“On the approach of a foe,” wrote one of his Lombard volunteers, Emilio Dandolo, “Garibaldi would ride up to a dominating point in the landscape, survey the ground for hours with the spyglass in brooding silence, and come down with a swoop on the enemy, acting upon some well-contrived combination of movements by which advantage had been taken of all circumstances in his favour.” And as this was his custom in the field of war, so it was ever also his habit in what must be called the field of politics. After finishing a campaign he would sheathe his sword and return to Caprera, there to stand and strain his eyes towards the mainland, watching for his next opportunity of action. Not an event escaped his notice, and he heard with a smile of contentment how Victor Emmanuel had stormed the fortress of Gaeta, and the two crowns of the Sicilies had been placed upon the head of the Piedmontese King. But the national unity was still far from complete. Above all things, Venice still remained under the yoke of the Austrians, while Rome was equally in the power of the French, who remained there to champion with their bayonets the pretensions of the Pope.

They had been there ever since 1849, when the Romans rose against the Pope, declared a Republic, and were supported by Garibaldi and his Red Shirts. But then the French rushed to the assistance of the Pope, and after a three months’ siege—during which the Garibaldians behaved with splendid bravery—at last stormed the city, restored the authority of the Pope, and compelled the Hero of Caprera to retire to the mountains.

“Soldiers!” he had said, on leading his men away from the Eternal City, “that which I have to offer you is this: hunger, thirst, cold, heat; no pay, no barracks, no rations; but frequent alarms, forced marches, charges at the point of the bayonet;” and 4,000 men had readily answered to this appeal.

The memory of this defeat rankled ever after in Garibaldi’s mind, and he determined to seize the first opportunity of retrieving it. This opportunity, he deemed, had at last come in the year 1862, soon after the death of the great statesman Cavour, who had been the Bismarck, so to speak, of Italian unity, as Victor Emmanuel had been its King William. But while Garibaldi had been their greatest support, he had also been the source of their greatest weakness. For he was not a regularly appointed servant of the Government, but the self-constituted soldier and champion of his country. He chose his own time for fighting, irrespective of what the King and his ministers wished, and thus often placed them in the greatest difficulty. So little, indeed, did Garibaldi consider his times and seasons for action, that he was said by many to have “an ass’s head linked to a lion’s heart.” He was nothing but a headlong soldier, who scorned the arts of statesmen; and his head was turned with his extraordinary popularity among the masses of the Italian people, who paid him something like Divine honours.

Everywhere this free-lance hero evoked far more enthusiasm than was even shown the King, who, naturally enough, followed Garibaldi’s movements with the greatest solicitude, whilst recognising that he had done so much for his country that the very greatest indulgence and forbearance had to be shown him.

But there came a time when it was thought that Garibaldi should not be allowed the free hand which had hitherto been granted him. This was when he announced his intention of placing the national flag on the walls of Rome, which still owned the dominion of the Pope, and was garrisoned by the French. However much Victor Emmanuel desired to see Rome become the capital of Italy, he could not forget the debt of gratitude which he owed the French, who had been his allies in the successful war against Austria in 1859; and when he heard of Garibaldi’s proposed enterprise, he issued a proclamation to his subjects, saying: “It is painful to me to see deluded and inexperienced young men forgetting their duties and the gratitude we owe our best allies, and making the name of Rome a watchword of war.... Italians! beware of guilty impatience and incautious agitation. When the hour to finish the Government work shall have come, the voice of your King will be heard among you. A call which does not come from him is a call to rebellion and to civil war. The responsibility and the rigour of the law will fall upon those who do not listen to my words.”

But this warning had no restraining effect on the eager Garibaldi, who only panted to recover for his country the Eternal City, exclaiming: “Rome! Rome! Who is not urged by thy very name to take up arms for thy deliverance?” At the same time, there is considerable reason for believing that the King and his Government had given secret encouragement to Garibaldi to embark upon his mad enterprise, in order to have a pretext for arresting the lion-hearted but inconvenient rebel. In any case, away to Sicily he went to make preparations for his Quixotic expedition. He probably calculated that the news of his enterprise would induce his countrymen to rise en masse, and that the French Emperor, seeing the enthusiasm of the Italian people, would withdraw his troops from Rome.

He landed at Palermo, whence a body of his volunteers marched to Corleone, a town of the interior, where they overpowered the National Guard and armed themselves with their muskets. Then they took up their quarters in a camp at Ficuzza, a forest district about twenty miles from Palermo. Here they were visited on August 1st by Garibaldi, who thus addressed them:

“My young fellow-soldiers! To-day again the holy cause of our country unites us. Again to-day, without asking whither going, what to do, with what hope of reward to our labours, with a smile on your lips and joy in your hearts, you hasten to fight our overbearing dominators, throwing a spark of comfort to our enslaved brethren.... I can only promise you toils, hardships, and perils; but I rely on your self-denial. I know you, ye brave young men, crippled in glorious combat! It is needless to ask you to display valour in fight. What I ask is discipline, for without that no army can exist. The Romans were disciplined, and they mastered the world. Endeavour to conciliate the goodwill of the population we are about to visit, as you did in 1860, and no less to win the esteem of our valiant army, in order, thus united with that army, to bring about the longed-for unity of the country.”

Garibaldi now went to Catania, where the royal troops already began to close round him with intent to take him prisoner. But many deserted to his side in the hope of sharing the martial glory which they believed to be again in store for the wayward Hero of Caprera. His force soon swelled to a very considerable body; but here it was on the island of Sicily, and how was it to get across to the mainland in order to commence its march on Rome? Garibaldi had no ships; but in the harbour of Catania there were lying three vessels—a French frigate, the Marie Adelaide; a French steamer, Le Général Abbatucci; and an Italian steamer, Il Dispaccio, belonging to the Florio Company. In addition to these vessels there was a royal Italian man-of-war—Il Duca di Genova—the commander of which gave out that he would fire on any of the other three ships which made bold to carry over Garibaldi and his Red Shirts to the mainland.

One day, however, the Duca di Genova took it into its head to go for a little cruise outside the Straits of Messina—probably, indeed, because it had received secret orders to do so, in order the better to lure Garibaldi into the trap which had been laid for him. On the disappearance of the Duca di Genova, Garibaldi stepped into a boat with several trusty followers, and was rowed off to the other three vessels above referred to, when he put their respective captains under arrest, and then proceeded to fill them up with his impatient Red Shirts.

“At five o’clock in the afternoon,” says one of his biographers, “the embarkation commenced, and the good people of Catania crowded the harbour, waving handkerchiefs and cheering. Menotti” (Garibaldi’s son) “and his ‘Guides,’ the Tuscans, and the flower of the Sicilian volunteers, moved off for Il Dispaccio; General Corrao, with some more Sicilians, occupied Le Général Abbatucci; whilst Garibaldi took the command of the former and put Burratini in command of the Marie Adelaide, with orders to get her filled with troops as soon as possible. During this time it had been growing dark, and each ship was filled to suffocation, no one being able to lie down, or get any rest, as boats were for ever arriving with their cargoes of men. About midnight the ships were got under way; and after crossing the Straits in the dark, without any mishap, the troops were all safely landed at Melito next morning, on the spot celebrated as the one on which the former expedition had gone ashore.”

Garibaldi landed in Calabria with a force of about 3,000 men—a very insignificant body, one would have thought, to march against walled and embattled Rome with its formidable French garrison. But by the time he came into collision with the royal troops, who had been sent after him to arrest his progress, his little army of Red Shirts had dwindled by about a half on account of the privations to which it was exposed and the rapid marches which had been exacted of it.

On hearing of Garibaldi’s naval coup-de-main at Catania, and his crossing over to Calabria, General Cialdini at once gave chase, and in order to catch the Hero of Caprera, he sent two of his generals—Revel and Vialardi—with a body of royal troops to draw a cordon across the isthmus of Tiriolo at its narrowest point, between Nicastro and Catanzaro, so as thus to bar the Rome-ward march of the Red Shirts. Having done this, he next ordered three vessels of war to cruise about the Straits so as to prevent Garibaldi from re-embarking, and then despatched Major-General Pallavicini, at the head of a considerable force, from Reggio, with instructions to drive the Red Shirts northwards in the direction of the aforesaid cordon on the isthmus, as game is driven by the beaters towards the sportsmen—Pallavicini’s instructions being to attack Garibaldi “anywhere and anyhow,” unless he consented to an unconditional surrender.

Things had thus assumed a very serious aspect indeed for the disillusioned Hero of Caprera, who, on the evening of the 28th August, after a long and tiring day’s march, had pitched his camp on the brow of the far-famed hill of Aspromonte, on a plateau overlooking the sea, with a wood behind which connected it with a high range of the Apennines, and would afford ample shelter for his troops. The men were encamped al fresco under cover of this wood, whilst Garibaldi occupied one of two woodmen’s huts which were on the plateau, and gave the spot the name of “i forestali.” It was wet and gloomy, the rain put out the bivouac fires, every rag on their backs was soaked, and they had no provisions with them; so that the position of the volunteers was far from enviable.

Next morning General Pallavacini came up with the Red Shirts, and at once proceeded to carry out his orders. How he did this let us see from his own pen.

“On the morning of the 29th I set forth early, directing my course towards San Stefano, where I arrived at about half-past eight a.m. There, from secret information received, I knew that General Garibaldi had encamped with his force during the night on the plateau of Aspromonte. I ordered the troops to pursue the march until within a short distance of the plateau, and before allowing them to proceed I caused the troops to rest themselves, as they were excessively fatigued by a long march by abrupt paths. In the meantime I learned that only two hours previously General Garibaldi had encamped at the foot of the plateau of Aspromonte, and I saw that by two paths I could descend towards his camp.

“I then divided my troops into two columns, which arrived at the same time in view of the Garibaldian encampment, already abandoned by him, he having taken up a position on the crest of a rugged hillock to the east of the plateau of Aspromonte. I then sent an order to the commandant of the left column, while making the right column fall back by a rapid movement. I attacked the left flank of the rear of the rebels, in order to cut off their retreat. In the meantime, with a battalion, I caused the entrance of the valley to be occupied, that they might not regain the plateau. The left column, with the 6th Battalion of the Bersaglieri at their head, then attacked the rebels, and after a smart fire carried the position at the point of the bayonet with cries of ‘Viva il Re!’ ‘Viva Italia!’ while the left side was also attacked by our troops. General Garibaldi and his son Menotti” (who had written to a friend in Liverpool, “In three weeks we shall be in Rome!”) “having been wounded, and the rebels being surrounded on all sides, resistance became useless, whereupon the Garibaldians gave the signal to cease firing.”

Their own account of the engagement was somewhat different. Garibaldi himself wrote:—“They thirsted for blood, and I wished to spare it.... Yes, they thirsted for blood. I perceived it with sorrow, and I endeavoured, in consequence, to do my utmost to prevent that of our assailants from being shed. I ran to the front of our line, crying out to them not to fire, and from the centre to the left, where my voice and those of my aides-de-camp could be heard, not a trigger was pulled. It was not thus on the attacking side. Having arrived at a distance of two hundred metres, they began a tremendous fire, and the party of Bersaglieri who were in front of me, directing their shots against me, struck me with two balls—one in the left thigh, not serious; the other in the ankle of the right foot, making a serious wound.

“As all this happened at the opening of the conflict, and I was carried to the skirt of the wood after being wounded, I could see nothing more, a dense crowd having formed round me while my wound was being dressed. I feel certain, however, that up to the end of the line (of troops) which was at my litter, and to that of my aides-de-camp, not a single musket shot was fired.... It was not so on our right. The Picciotti, attacked by the regular troops, replied by a fire along the whole line, and, although the trumpets sounded to cease firing, there was at that spot a smart fusilade, which lasted not more than a quarter of an hour. My wounds led to some confusion in our line. Our soldiers, not seeing me, began to retreat into the woods, so that, little by little, the crowd around me broke up, and the most faithful alone remained.”

A Garibaldian officer who was present thus wrote: “When the general received the bullet he was passing along our front, ordering the men not to fire. I saw a slight shiver pass through his body; he took two or three steps, and then began to stagger. We ran to him, holding him up; he was regardless of his sufferings. Raising his cap in the air, he cried ‘Viva l’Italia!’ I had his poor foot resting on my thigh; he called out to his assailants, and asked what they were doing with his people. I felt a shivering in all his limbs; and, reminding him of his wounds, I implored him to be quiet.”

While the surgeon was dressing his wounds, the sturdy soldier calmly produced a cigar and began to smoke, inquiring of the doctor whether he thought amputation would be necessary. Twenty minutes later he had an interview with his conqueror and captor, General Pallavacini, who assured him, with tears in his eyes, that this was the most miserable day of his life. Yet he had received certain orders, and he had no choice but to obey.

It was the bitterest of all moments for the hero of Italian unity when, staggering from the effects of his double wound, he fell forward upon the Italian soil to which he had devoted his whole life. Generals Cialdini and Pallavacini had been his friends and comrades, their troops were his compatriots and brothers-in-arms.

Two bullets had thus put an end, sudden and complete, to Garibaldi’s march on Rome, though he was to live to make another and an equally unsuccessful attempt upon the Eternal City. Meanwhile, the illustrious rebel was carried to prison at Spezzia, where he was, however, kept but a short time, and then removed to Pisa. There Dr. Nélaton, of Paris, who came all the way for the purpose, succeeded in extracting the bullet from Garibaldi’s ankle, for which bullet a hero-worshipping Englishman offered as much as 30,000 francs.

Two years later, when he had recovered from his wounds, he visited England, a country which had always taken the keenest interest in his adventures, and even sent him volunteers, as well as a doctor to attend him in his illness. High and low welcomed him with the warmest enthusiasm, and the attentions that were rained upon the Hermit of Caprera culminated in a grand banquet given in his honour by the Lord Mayor and City of London.

One must go back through centuries of history to find anything approaching the horrors of the Russian War of 1812.

Towards the end of June, 610,058 armed men and an enormous multitude of non-combatants—women and children—crossed the broad Niemen, joined afterwards by 37,100 more, making a total of 647,158; and on the 13th December—or rather less than six months later—16,000 alone repassed that river with weapons in their bruised and frozen hands, almost the sole remains of a magnificent army whose bones are to this day turned up by the plough of the Russian peasant.

The Niemen flows between Prussia and Poland; and in the forest of Pilwisky, behind the rocky heights on the Prussian side, a multitude of men lay concealed, speaking a score of tongues, and wearing a strange variety of uniform, many nations having sent their best and bravest to swell the ranks of the Grande Armée.

The famous Imperial Guard was sleeping in the green corn, dreaming of future conquests, and that mighty host awaited the word of one man to embark on a campaign whose disasters have had no equal—one little pale-faced man dressed now in a long grey riding-coat and a Polish cap—the man who, by the force of his own intellect and the marvellous power of using men and circumstances to his own ends, had ground the whole of Europe—England alone excepted—under the heel of his military boot!

At two o’clock in the morning of June 23rd Napoleon mounted his horse and rode off to reconnoitre the river, his charger stumbling and throwing him on to the sandy bank.

A voice exclaimed in the darkness: “That is a bad augury: a Roman would go back.” But no one knew who had spoken, and, after ordering three bridges to be constructed for the following night, the little party returned to its quarters, the words sinking ominously into their hearts.

Next evening some sappers, with their white leather aprons and keen axes, crossed in a boat, and were met by a Cossack officer, who rode forward alone to inquire what they wanted in Russia.

“We are Frenchmen,” said one of the sappers, “come to make war upon you—to take Wilna—to liberate Poland!”

The solitary horseman disappeared without a word, and the sappers fired their muskets into the silent woods.

For three whole days the tramp of men and the heavy rumble of guns filled the air as the army filed down to the banks, and poured across the bridges—Grenadiers, Voltigeurs, Chasseurs, and Dragoons, regiment succeeding regiment, corps after corps. Now the scarlet and green of the 8th Hussars; again the heavy squadrons of Sebastiani’s Cuirassiers, smart Polish Lancers of the Guard and Line, Carabineers with brass body-armour and snow-white uniforms, long trains of lumbering artillery, waggons and field-forges, carriages, and caissons, the sutler’s cart jostling the caleche of the general officer, a sultry sun overhead, and the river dancing in merry ripples beneath them as the bridges trembled under the tread of the marching thousands.

Napoleon crossed at Poniemen with his Guard, the corps of Marshals Davout, Oudinot, and Ney, and Murat’s dashing cavalry; Prince Eugène, with the army of Italy, passed at Piloni on the 29th; and Jérôme Bonaparte’s Westphalians advanced upon Grodno which they reached on the 30th.

To the north Macdonald attacked Riga on the Baltic, and Prince Schwartzenberg marched through Galicia in the south; but it is the army of the centre, under the Emperor himself, whose fortunes we shall most closely follow, omitting the marches of the thirteen divisions into which the invading forces were formed, and not pausing to notice the minor actions in which they were sooner or later engaged.

Hardly had Napoleon gained the enemy’s side than a black cloud gathered in the sky, and a furious storm broke over the country for fifty leagues right and left. The rain descended with surprising violence, the air grew piercingly cold, and the flat land covered with tall black pine-trees became a swamp, through which they splashed dismally onward.

Ten thousand horses died, heated by the green corn which formed their forage, and then chilled by the rain as they stood shivering in their exposed bivouacs.

The bridge across the Vilia having been destroyed by retreating Cossacks, Napoleon impatiently ordered a squadron of the Polish Lancers of the Guard to swim the swollen stream, and, clad in crimson uniforms, faced with dark blue and laced with silver, they gained the centre, only to be carried away by the current, and many of them drowned, crying “Vive l’Empereur!” as their heads disappeared under water.

Beyond Wilna, Octave de Ségur (brother of the historian) and his 8th Hussars drew first blood from the Russians, and were sadly cut up; but Oudinot drove Witgenstein back at the same moment, and, sending Murat in pursuit, the Emperor returned to Wilna, to waste twenty days in raising unsatisfactory levies, and to disgust the Poles with disappointing hopes of liberty.

Russian proposals of peace were rejected by Napoleon, whose entire conduct during the campaign has baffled his friends and foes; and leaving Wilna at half-past eleven at night on the 16th July, he marched to attack Barclay de Tolly, provided he could find him.

Two hundred and fifty thousand Russians had been formed into three distinct armies—the First Army of the West under De Tolly; the Second, under Prince Bagration; and the Third, which was not then completed, under the cavalry general Tormasoff; 18,000 Cossacks being distributed among them, those of the Hetman Platoff especially destined to win a terrible renown.

The infantry wore green, with slate pantaloons and mud-coloured greatcoats, the officers affecting wasp waists, tremendous curled whiskers, and gold rings in their ears. The Cossacks of the Line were dressed for the most part in blue, with fur caps and long lances; generally swarming with vermin, they were mounted on active little horses, which they urged on with whips, there being also bands of wild horsemen called Baskirs, who used bows and arrows with a precision that caused mourning in many a French home.

The war assumed a curious character: on through the swamps and lonely forests of Lithuania, interspersed here and there by deserts of choking sand, the long columns wound; the Russians burning their villages as they retired, the French in their turn destroying what the Russians had left, devastation and disorder marking every league of the way; the roads dotted with the bodies of dead men and horses, who had sunk with fatigue, and the rear-guard of the enemy disappearing as the French advance-guard came in sight of it.

Napoleon derided the foe as arrant cowards; but the persistent retreat was all part of a wise policy, originated by De Tolly, to draw them into an unknown country, far from their magazines, until hunger, forced marches, the burning heat of the days followed by nights of intense cold, and last of all the terrible winter of those latitudes, should crumble away the army and utterly destroy it.

The young blood of Russia naturally revolted at such a course and wished to fight, but results have justified its adoption, the significant fact remaining as additional proof of its wisdom, that in nearly every instance during the advance, where the two forces came into contact, the French proved victorious.

At Ostrowno the remnants of the 8th Hussars came up with three Russian cavalry regiments, and routed them in quick succession among the birch woods; Murat ordering some Poles of the Line to charge, and being obliged to lead them, although, as commander, he should have kept out of danger.

The lances were lowered in a glittering row behind him, and the troopers, gay in blue and yellow, came thundering on. From the nature of the ground escape was impossible, so, making a virtue of necessity, the King of Naples flourished his famous riding-switch, galloped at their head, and the charge was successful: the 106th took the Russians on one side, Piré’s Hussars and 16th Chasseurs on the other. The French artillery resumed its fire; and falling back in disorder, the foe melted away into the forest that hid Witepsk.

At that place De Tolly made a stand, hearing that Bagration was about to join him; and Napoleon saw the sun glinting on the arms of eighty thousand men on a bright July morning, as two hundred voltigeurs of the 9th crossed a narrow bridge and formed in front of the Russian horse.

Murat sent the 16th Chasseurs-à-cheval at the enemy, without any support; but though their sky-blue facings had figured in almost every campaign since 1793, they had no chance singlehanded on broken ground, and the Cossacks of the Guard put them to the right-about, pursuing as far as a hill on which the Emperor stood, and only being driven off by the carbines of his personal escort. On their way back the Cossacks attacked the voltigeurs with great fury, the army holding its breath and regarding them as lost; but the little band took post in some brushwood, and routed the Lancers in full view of both forces, the French clapping their hands and cheering their comrades to the echo, Napoleon sending to inquire to what corps the heroes belonged.

“To the Ninth,” was the reply; “and three-fourths of us are lads of Paris.”

“Tell them that they are brave fellows,” said the Emperor to his aide-de-camp, “and that they all deserve the Legion of Honour”—one account stating that every man received it.

Murat, Eugène, and Lobau rushed on the enemy’s left, and compelled him to retire behind the Luczissa; but believing that De Tolly meant at last to stand his ground, Napoleon stopped the conflict, although it was only eleven o’clock, saying to Murat: “To-morrow at five you will see the sun of Austerlitz.”

The morrow came; the sun rose redly through the mists; but the wise Barclay had vanished, having learned during the night that Bagration had been worsted, the French discovering one Russian asleep in a thicket, and not a reliable trace of the direction the others had taken.

The expedition had never been popular, either with officers or men, and they began to grumble with good cause; for an army that had conquered Prussia in fourteen days, and whose standards were heavy with the gilded names of a hundred glorious victories, had now penetrated for more than a month into a land teeming with discomforts. Many of the regiments were shoeless, the cavalry horses died by dozens every day, the hospitals were full of sick; extremes of heat and cold, bad food and little of it, blinding dust, a draught of muddy water to wash it down—all this and more had been their daily lot since they crossed the Niemen, and there had been no great battle to revive their drooping hearts; besides which, the rye bread seriously disagreed with them, and dysentery and deadly typhus laying its wasting hand upon them, had already sadly thinned their ranks.

Their pride, too, sustained a shock when news came that the advance-guard had been repulsed at Aghaponovtchina; and at length awaking from a lethargic dream, the Emperor sent the various corps into cantonments on the skirts of Poland, Russia proper still before them; and returning to Witepsk with his Guard, took off his sword and laid it on his maps, saying: “Here I halt.... The campaign of 1812 is over; that of 1813 will do the rest!”

But his ambition gave him no peace. Murat came riding in from the front, his green surtout all laced and bejewelled, and urged his brother-in-law to action; and although Napoleon went daily to inspect the huge ovens, where 39,000 loaves of bread were baked at a time, and arranged that theatrical companies should come from Paris to enliven the dreary winter months, his suite soon began to find him bending down to his maps again, turning his eyes towards Smolensk and Moscow.

Soon afterwards he came across a proclamation calling upon Russia to rise and exterminate the invaders, and containing some very forcible hometruths which enraged him; and hearing, to his great chagrin, that Alexander had made peace with Turkey, he gathered up his legions in four days, left Witepsk to join them on the 13th of August, and rushed headlong into difficulties and disaster, from which neither he nor his army ever recovered.

By one of those masterly movements of his (so conspicuously absent during the rest of the war), he crossed the front of the Russian army unknown to them, and two days later fell unexpectedly on their left flank at Krasnoë.

Ney forced the town, to find General Néwérowskoi beyond it, with 6,000 infantry and Cossacks belonging to Bagration, which formed into a square of such thickness that the French cavalry sabred its way far in without being able to break it, and the tall corn, now mellowed by Autumn’s breath, saw some ghastly work as Néwérowskoi came to a strong palisade and had to halt; his rear ranks facing round to fire on the Wurtemberg Horse, while the front-rank tore down the obstacle; the body succeeding in their escape, although they left 1,200 dead, 1,000 wounded, and eight guns in the hands of the French, who fired a salute in honour of the victory, which happened to have fallen on Napoleon’s birthday.

The good folk of Smolensk were coming out of church, where they had been returning thanks somewhat prematurely, when Néwérowskoi’s fugitives poured panting into the city, closely followed by Marshal Ney, who, receiving a ball in the neck, lost his temper, and led a battalion at the charge against the citadel, under a hail of musketry that slew two-thirds of them.

Falling back to a hill whence he could reconnoitre, he conducted Napoleon thither, who exclaimed, “At last I have them!” as several immense columns of men were seen hastening towards them on the other side of the Dnieper, being nothing less than Barclay and Bagration with 120,000 troops, coming on at a run, after learning how the Emperor had outwitted them, and arriving out of breath to succour the threatened city.

Some sanguinary fighting took place, and a great battle was expected for the next day; but the wily De Tolly again retreated, his black columns being discovered on the opposite bank marching swiftly away, to the mortification of the invaders.

Even the fiery Murat tired of the campaign, and at length urged Napoleon to stop; but the Emperor persevered, and the King of Naples, exclaiming prophetically as he strode out of Napoleon’s tent, “Moscow will be our destruction!” galloped to the front of a Russian battery, flung himself from his horse, and waited for a ball to kill him.

A violent attack was made on the city; twenty-two men fell by a single shot from a Russian gun, while Murat, who courted death, was unhurt. The gorgeous artillery of the Guard pounded unceasingly. An attempt to storm the place was baffled by the defenders, and when night descended, Smolensk was seen to be in flames, the army finally entering the city to find it a heap of smouldering ruins, and the state of the army itself truly terrible.

General Rapp, who had ridden post to join Napoleon, and who consequently followed their route, gave a vivid recital of the misery and devastation he had witnessed in the rear. Sebastiani revealed the condition of affairs in the heavy cavalry, and the Emperor could close his eyes no longer.

“It is frightful, I am fully aware,” he said. “I must extort peace from the enemy, and that can be done only at Moscow.”

At the hill of Valoutina a shocking conflict was waged by the gallant Ney far into the night, both sides fighting with terrible fury. Junot, Duke of Abrantes, the Emperor’s old companion-in-arms, showed symptoms of the insanity that caused him to commit suicide not long after; and failing to charge at the right moment, the enemy saved his baggage and wounded. General Gudin was killed, the whole army mourning the loss of as gallant and good a man as ever fell in action.

Lieutenant Etienne, of the 12th, took the Russian General Toutchkoff, in the middle of his troops. Napoleon gave eighty-seven crosses to Gudin’s regiments, and presented an eagle to the 127th with his own hands; but the misery of the troops outweighed the glory they had gained: they had seen seven hundred wounded Russians left untended for three days at Witepsk, and the French surgeons tearing up their own shirts for bandages; at Smolensk, fifteen large brick buildings saved from the fire were then full of groaning men, Lariboissiere’s gun-wadding and the parchments in the city archives being used to dress their wounds. There, also, a hospital containing a hundred sick was overlooked for three days, until Rapp discovered it by chance. Eleven thousand Bavarians had been marched to death without firing a shot, and discipline was so lax that at Slawkowo the Guard burnt for firewood the only bridge by which the Emperor could continue his route next day.