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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gentlemen Rovers, by E. Alexander Powell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Gentlemen Rovers
+
+Author: E. Alexander Powell
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2011 [EBook #37812]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENTLEMEN ROVERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by paksenarrion, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       GENTLEMEN ROVERS
+  [Illustration: Commodore Truxtun leaped into the shrouds.]
+
+
+                       GENTLEMEN ROVERS
+
+               BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL, F.R.G.S.
+              AUTHOR OF "THE LAST FRONTIER," ETC.
+
+                         ILLUSTRATED
+
+                   CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+                        NEW YORK 1913
+
+                     COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+                   CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                  Published September, 1913
+
+                        [Illustration]
+
+                              To
+                 THE FINEST GENTLEMAN I KNOW
+                          MY FATHER
+
+
+           "There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
+           That carries no colors or crest,
+           But, split in a thousand detachments,
+           Is breaking the road for the rest.
+
+              *       *       *       *       *
+
+           The ends o' the Earth were our portion,
+           The ocean at large was our share,
+           There was never a skirmish to windward
+           But the Leaderless Legion was there.
+
+              *       *       *       *       *
+
+           We preach in advance of the Army,
+           We skirmish ahead of the Church,
+           With never a gunboat to help us
+           When we're scuppered and left in the lurch.
+           But we know as the cartridges finish
+           And we're filed on our last little shelves,
+           That the Legion that never was 'listed
+           Will send us as good as ourselves.
+
+              *       *       *       *       *
+
+           Then a health (we must drink it in whispers)
+           To our wholly unauthorized horde--
+           To the line of our dusty foreloopers,
+           To the Gentlemen Rovers abroad!"
+
+           --_The Lost Legion._
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+This book is written as a tribute to some men who have been overlooked
+by History and forgotten by Fame. Though they won for us more than half
+the territory comprised within our present-day borders, not only have no
+monuments been erected to perpetuate their exploits in bronze and
+marble, but they lie for the most part in forgotten and neglected
+graves, some of them under alien skies. Boyd, Truxtun, Eaton, Reed,
+Lafitte, Smith, Ide, Ward, Walker--even their names hold no significance
+for their countrymen of the present generation, yet they played great
+parts in our national drama. After two decades of history-making in
+Hindustan, Boyd came back to his own country and ably seconded William
+Henry Harrison in breaking the power of the great Indian confederation
+which threatened to check the white man's westward march. When both
+France and England were our enemies, and the gloom of despondency hung
+like a cloud over the land, it was Truxtun and his bluejackets who put
+new heart into the nation by their victories. Eaton and his motley army
+marched across six hundred miles of African desert, and by bringing the
+Barbary despots to their knees accomplished that which had been
+unsuccessfully attempted by every naval power in Europe. Captain Reed,
+of the _General Armstrong_, after holding off a British force twenty
+times the strength of his own, sunk his vessel rather than surrender. To
+a pirate and smuggler named Jean Lafitte, more than any other person
+save Andrew Jackson, we owe our thanks for saving New Orleans from
+capture and Louisiana from invasion. Jedediah Smith blazed the route of
+the Overland Trail and showed us the way to California, and a quarter of
+a century later Fremont, Ide, Sloat, and Stockton made the land beyond
+the Sierras ours. William Walker came within an ace of changing the map
+of Middle America, and made the name of American a synonym for courage
+from the Rio Grande to Panama, while on the other side of the world
+another American, Frederick Townsend Ward, raised and led that ever
+victorious army whose exploits were General Gordon's chief claim to
+fame. There was not one of these men of whom we have not reason to be
+proud. But because they did their work unofficially, in what might
+aptly be described as "shirt-sleeve warfare," and because they went
+ahead without waiting for the tardy sanction of those who guided our
+ship of state, the deeds they performed have never received befitting
+recognition from those who follow by the trails they made, who grow rich
+from the mines that they discovered, who dwell upon the lands they won.
+And that is why I am going to ask you, my friends, as in the following
+pages I lead these forgotten heroes before you in imaginary review, to
+raise your hats in respect and admiration to this company of brave
+soldiers and gallant gentlemen who so stoutly upheld American prestige
+and American traditions in many far corners of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                            PAGE
+
+    FOR RENT: AN ARMY ON ELEPHANTS                             1
+    WHEN WE FOUGHT NAPOLEON                                   19
+    WHEN WE CAPTURED AN AFRICAN KINGDOM                       45
+    THE LAST FIGHT OF THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG"                 73
+    THE PIRATE WHO TURNED PATRIOT                             89
+    THE MAN WHO DARED TO CROSS THE RANGES                    125
+    THE FLAG OF THE BEAR                                     153
+    THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS                              179
+    CITIES CAPTURED BY CONTRACT                              217
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    Commodore Truxtun leaped into the shrouds               _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                                    FACING
+                                                                     PAGE
+    The death of Tippo-Sahib at the storming of Seringapatam          12
+
+    The battle of Tippecanoe                                          16
+
+    The frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of
+    Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge
+    and his entire crew                                               54
+
+    But even in those days the fame of American gunners
+    was as wide as the seas                                           86
+
+    The battle of New Orleans                                        120
+
+    Westward pressed the little troop of pioneers, across the
+    sun-baked lava beds of southwestern Utah                         136
+
+    The Sacramento Valley in 1845                                    164
+
+    General William Walker and his men, after a long and stormy
+    voyage, landing at Virgin Bay, en route to Costa Rica            196
+
+    General Walker reviewing troops on the Grand Plaza, Granada      200
+
+    The programme was always the same: the sudden rush
+    of the filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the
+    taking of the barracks and the cathedral in the Plaza            206
+
+    "Come on, boys!" shouted Ward. "We're going in!" and plunged
+    through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand              230
+
+
+
+
+FOR RENT: AN ARMY ON ELEPHANTS
+
+
+The pitiless Indian sun had poured down upon the Hyderabad _maidan_
+until its sandy surface glowed like a stove at white heat. Drawn up in
+motionless ranks, which stretched from end to end of the great
+parade-ground, was a division of cavalry: squadron after squadron of
+scarlet-coated troopers on sleek and shining horses; row after row of
+brown and bearded faces peering stolidly from under the white turbans.
+The rays of the sun danced and sparkled upon ten thousand lance-points;
+the feeble breeze picked up ten thousand pennons and fluttered them into
+a white-and-scarlet cloud. Now and then the silence would be broken by a
+clash of steel as a horse tossed its head or a _sowar_ stirred uneasily
+in his saddle. Sitting a white Arab, a score of paces in advance of the
+foremost rank, very stiff and soldierly in his gorgeous uniform, was a
+tall young man whose ruddy cheeks and pleasant eyes looked strangely out
+of place in so Oriental a setting.
+
+From somewhere within the city walls a bugle spoke shrilly and was
+answered by another and then another, each nearer than the one
+preceding. The young man in the splendid uniform barked an order, and
+men and horses stiffened into rigidity as sharply as though an electric
+current had gone through them. Through the twin-towered gateway of the
+city advanced a procession, colorful as a circus, dazzling as a durbar.
+The two figures who rode at the head of the glittering cortege formed an
+almost startling contrast. One of them answered in every detail the
+popular conception of an Asiatic potentate: haughty of manner, portly of
+person, with a clear, dark skin and wonderfully piercing eyes and a
+great black beard, spreading fan-wise upon his breast. An aigret of
+diamonds flashed and scintillated in his flame-colored turban; rubies,
+large as robin's eggs, gleamed in his ears, and hanging from his neck
+over his pale blue surtout was a rope of pearls which would have roused
+the envy of an empress. His companion, to whom he paid marked attention,
+was equally noticeable, though in quite a different fashion: a lean,
+smooth-shaven, lantern-jawed man, still in the middle thirties, very
+cold and reserved of manner, with a great beak of a nose and a jaw like
+a granite crag. It did not need the cocked hat and gold epaulets of a
+British general to mark him as a soldier.
+
+As the cortege cantered onto the _maidan_ the massed bands of the
+cavalry burst into a wild, barbaric march, brass and kettle-drums
+crashing together in stirring discord. The strains ceased as abruptly as
+they began, and the youthful commander, rising in his stirrups, shot his
+blade into the air and called in a voice like a trumpet:
+
+"Cheers for his Highness!"
+
+And back came a guttural roar from ten thousand throats:
+
+"Long live the Nizam!"
+
+Obviously gratified at the warmth of his greeting, the ruler of the
+Deccan wheeled his horse and came cantering up to the cavalryman, whose
+sword flashed in salute.
+
+"Boyd Sahib," he said, "you are a veritable magician. You turn ryots
+into soldiers as readily as a fakir turns a stone into bread. Your men
+are admirable. I congratulate you on their appearance."
+
+Then, turning to his taciturn companion:
+
+"Sir Arthur Wellesley, permit me to present to you Boyd Sahib, commander
+of my cavalry and my trusted friend. General Boyd," he added, glancing
+at the Englishman with a malicious smile, "is a very brilliant
+soldier--and an American."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus met, when the nineteenth century was still in its
+swaddling-clothes, two extraordinary men: Sir Arthur Wellesley, who in
+later years, as the Duke of Wellington, was to gain undying fame by
+conquering Napoleon; and General John Parker Boyd, an American soldier
+of fortune, who rendered most gallant service to his own people, but
+whose very name has been forgotten by them.
+
+Jack Boyd, as his boyhood companions in Newburyport used to call him,
+was born with the spirit of adventure strong within him. Almost before
+he had graduated from dresses to knee-trousers he would linger about the
+wharfs of the quaint old town, drinking in the stories of strange places
+and stranger doings told him by the seafarers who were wont to
+congregate along the water-front, or staring wistfully at the big, black
+merchantmen about to sail for foreign parts. He was wont to say that it
+was a perverse and unkind fate which caused him to be born in so
+inauspicious a year as 1764, for, though there was no more ardent
+youngster in all New England, his youth caused the recruiting sergeants
+of the Continental Army to whom he applied for enlistment to pat him on
+the shoulder and remark encouragingly: "Come again, son, when you're a
+few years older."
+
+Thus it was that he saw unroll before him that marvellous moving-picture
+of the birth of a nation, which began on the greensward at Lexington and
+ended before the British lines at Yorktown, without being able to play
+any greater part in those stirring events than does a spectator in the
+thrilling scenes which he pays his five cents to see depicted on a
+screen. Indeed, a twelve-month passed after the last British soldier
+left our shores before young Boyd achieved the ambition of his life by
+obtaining an ensign's commission in the 2d Regiment of Foot and donned
+the blue coat and buff breeches of an officer in the American army.
+Although within a year he had been promoted to lieutenant, his was not
+the temperament which could long endure the monotony of garrison life,
+with its unending round of guard-mounting and small-arms practice and
+company drill. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that before
+the gold braid on his lieutenant's uniform had time to tarnish he had
+handed in his papers and had booked passage on an East Indiaman sailing
+out of Boston for Madras. The year 1788, then, saw this youngster of
+four-and-twenty landed on the coast of Coromandel, poor in acquaintances
+and pocket but rich in adventurousness and pluck.
+
+He could have taken his military talents to no better market, for at
+this period of India's troubled history a brilliant career awaited a man
+whose wits were as sharp as his sword. The last quarter of the
+eighteenth century found all India ablaze with racial and religious
+hatred. Wars were as frequent as strikes are in the United States.
+Though the French were still supreme in the south of the peninsula, the
+English power was steadily rising in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. There
+were really two distinct struggles in progress: the English were
+fighting the French and the Hindus were fighting the Mohammedans. The
+most powerful of the native princes at this time were the Nizam of
+Hyderabad, and the Peishwa, as the ruler of the Mahratta tribes was
+called--both of whom had, for reasons of policy, espoused the English
+cause--and Tippoo Sahib, the son of a Mohammedan military adventurer who
+had made himself Sultan of Mysore, who was an ally of the French. Ranged
+on the one side, then, were the British, with their allies, the Nizam
+and the Peishwa, while opposed to them were the French and Tippoo of
+Mysore. All of the reigning princes of India maintained extensive
+military establishments, and soldiers of fortune found at their courts
+rapid promotion and lavish pay. When Boyd landed in India he was
+confronted with the problem which of the rival causes he should make his
+own, and it speaks well for his sagacity and foresight that he promptly
+decided to offer his services to the allies of the English, for at that
+time most students of politics, in India and out of it, believed that
+the future of the peninsula was to be Gallic rather than Anglo-Saxon.
+
+From Madras Boyd made his way on horseback to the Mahratta country,
+where his attractive personality and soldierly appearance so impressed
+the Peishwa that he gave the young American the command of a cavalry
+brigade of fifteen hundred men. Boyd was now in possession of the raw
+material for which he had hankered, and he forthwith proceeded to show
+his extraordinary skill in welding, tempering, and sharpening it. From
+daybreak until dark his camp resounded to the call of bugles, the words
+of command, and the clatter of galloping hoofs. He hammered his men into
+shape as a blacksmith hammers a bar of iron, until they combined the
+inflexible discipline of Prussian foot-guards with the mobility and
+endurance of Texas rangers. His chance to test the quality of his
+handiwork came in 1790, when Tippoo Sultan, failing in his attempt to
+bring on a renewal of the war between England and France, turned loose
+his hordes and overran the land. In the three years' war which followed,
+the British, under Lord Cornwallis, who was striving to regain in India
+the reputation he had lost at Yorktown, were aided by the Mahrattas and
+the Nizam, who were induced by fear and jealousy to join in the struggle
+against their powerful neighbor. Thus Opportunity knocked sharply on
+Boyd's door. Commanding a body of as fine horsemen as ever threw leg
+across saddle, his name quickly became a synonym for audacity and
+daring. Riding, wholly without support, into the very heart of Tippoo's
+dominions, he would strike a series of paralyzing blows, burn a dozen
+towns, capture or destroy immense stores of ammunition, exact a huge
+indemnity, and be back in his own territory again before any troops
+could be brought up to oppose him. Boyd's flying columns played no small
+part, indeed, in the campaign which ended in 1792 with the defeat of
+Tippoo--a defeat for which the Sultan had to pay by ceding half his
+dominions, paying an indemnity of three thousand lacs of rupees (one
+hundred million dollars), and giving his two sons as hostages for his
+future good behavior.
+
+Boyd, meanwhile, had never let slip an opportunity for improving his
+knowledge of Hindustani and its kindred dialects or familiarizing
+himself with the complex conditions, racial, religious, and political,
+which prevailed in Hindustan. Realizing that the Mahratta power was on
+the wane, he resigned from the service of the Peishwa, and, bearing
+letters of the highest commendation from that ruler to the British envoy
+at the court of the Nizam, he turned his horse's head toward Hyderabad.
+In a letter to his father, written at this time, he says: "On my arrival
+I was presented to his Highness in form by the English consul. My
+reception was as favorable as my most sanguine wishes had anticipated.
+After the usual ceremony was over he presented me with the command of
+two _kansolars_ of infantry, each of which consists of five hundred
+men." Continuing, he described in detail the army of the Nizam, which at
+that time consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand infantry, sixty
+thousand cavalry, and five hundred elephants, each of which bore a
+"castle" containing a nabob and his attendants. Can't you picture the
+scene when that letter, with its strange foreign postmarks, reached the
+old brick house in the quaint New England town; how the parents read and
+re-read that message from the son who was adventuring in foreign parts,
+and how the neighbors dropped in of evenings to hear the latest news of
+the boy they all knew, who was carving out a career with his sword half
+the world away? Success is, after all, a rather tasteless thing if there
+are no home folks to rejoice in it.
+
+Fortuna, that capricious beauty whose favor so many brave men have
+sought in vain, seemed to have lost her heart to the stalwart American,
+for in 1799, when Tippoo and his savage soldiery once more broke loose
+and swept across the peninsula, leaving a trail of corpses and burning
+villages behind them, the Nizam, recalling the tales he had heard of
+Boyd's exploits as a cavalry leader, gave him the command of a division
+of ten thousand turbaned troopers. Nor did the fair goddess desert him
+even when he was captured by a body of Mysore horsemen, taken before
+Tippoo Sahib himself, and, upon his stoutly refusing to turn traitor to
+the Nizam, condemned to death by torture. And the torturers of the
+tyrant of Mysore bore a most evil reputation. Overpowering the sentries
+who were set to guard him, he succeeded in making his way, thanks to his
+fluency in Hindustani, through the enemy's lines, rejoining the Nizam's
+forces in time to take part in the storming of the Sultan's capital of
+Seringapatam, Tippoo being killed in a hand-to-hand struggle after a
+last stand at the city gates. Thus died, as he would have wished--with
+his boots on--the most dangerous adversary with whom Britain had to
+contend in the winning of her Eastern empire.
+
+[Illustration: The death of Tippo-Sahib at the storming of Seringapatam.
+
+From a painting by R. de Moraine.]
+
+Early in the nineteenth century Boyd, who, as the result of the generous
+rewards he had received from his royal employers, had by this time
+become possessed of considerable means, left the service of the Nizam,
+much against the wishes of that monarch, and organized an army of his
+own. Numerically, it wasn't much of an army, as armies go, having at no
+time exceeded two thousand men, but it was as businesslike a force as
+ever responded to a bugle. Boyd, whose reputation as a cavalry leader
+extended from Bengal to Malabar, had the horsemen of all India to draw
+from, and he recruited nothing but the best, the men with whom he filled
+his ranks being as hard as nails and as keen as razors. His second in
+command was an Irish soldier of fortune named William Tone, a brother of
+Wolf Tone, the famous rebel patriot.
+
+As Boyd reckoned on counterbalancing the smallness of his force by its
+extreme mobility, he adopted the novel expedient of transporting his
+artillery on the backs of elephants, thus making it possible for the
+guns to keep pace with the cavalry even on his whirlwind raids, for an
+elephant, though burdened with a field-piece and half a dozen soldiers,
+can put mile after mile behind it at a swinging, ungainly gait which it
+will tax any horse to maintain. Military history presents no more
+fantastic picture than that of this sun-tanned Yankee adventurer
+spurring across an Indian countryside with a brigade of beturbaned
+lancers and a score or so of lumbering elephants, the muzzles of brass
+field-guns frowning from their howdahs, tearing along behind him. What a
+pity that the folk in Newburyport could not have seen him!
+
+The entire outfit--elephants, horses, cannon, and weapons--was Boyd's
+personal property, and he rented it to those princes who had need of and
+were able to pay for its service precisely as a garage rents an
+automobile. The prices he obtained for it were enormous, and ere long he
+became a wealthy man. From one end of the country to the other he led
+his scarlet-coated mercenaries, selling their services in turn to his
+former employers, the Nizam and the Peishwa, and to the rulers of
+Gwalior and Indore. When a force was needed for a particularly desperate
+service or for a hopeless hope they sent for Boyd. And he always
+delivered the goods. Fighting was going on everywhere, and he never
+lacked employment. But he was far too discerning not to recognize the
+fact that the power of England was steadily, if slowly, increasing, and
+that her complete domination of India, which could not much longer be
+delayed, must inevitably put an end to independent soldiering as a
+profitable profession. In 1808, therefore, he sold his army, elephants
+and all, to Colonel Felose, a Neapolitan who had seen service under many
+flags, and with misted eyes and a choking throat for the last time rode
+along the lines of his faithful troopers. A few days later he set sail
+for Paris, for, with the Corsican's star high in the heavens, there
+seemed no better place for such a man to seek adventure and advancement.
+Disappointed in his hope of obtaining a commission under the Napoleonic
+eagles, he turned his face toward home, and in 1810, after an absence of
+more than twenty years, he felt the cobblestones of his native
+Newburyport beneath his feet once more.
+
+Boyd's adventurous career under his own flag and in the service of his
+own people forms quite another though a scarcely less thrilling story.
+Trained and experienced officers being in those days few and far
+between, the government offered him the colonelcy of the 4th Regiment of
+Infantry, which he promptly accepted, displaying such energy in drilling
+his men that when his regiment marched through the streets of Boston on
+its way to Pittsburg the local papers commented editorially on the
+smartness of its appearance. When William Henry Harrison, then governor
+of the Territory of Indiana (which included the present States of
+Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin), realizing the imperative
+necessity of smashing the great Indian confederation which Tecumseh, the
+Shawnee warrior-statesman, was so painstakingly building to oppose the
+white man's further progress westward, called for troops to do the
+business, Boyd put his men on flat-boats, floated them down to the falls
+of the Ohio, and marched them overland to Vincennes, his dusty, footsore
+column tramping into Harrison's stockaded headquarters almost before
+that veteran frontiersman had realized that they had started. Boyd was
+in direct command, under Harrison, of the little expeditionary force of
+nine hundred men throughout the whirlwind campaign which culminated on a
+drizzling November morning in 1811 on the banks of the Tippecanoe
+River. Tippecanoe was, I suppose, the only battle which our army ever
+fought in high hats, for the absurd uniform of the American infantry,
+discarded a few months later, consisted of blue, brass-buttoned
+tail-coats, skin-tight pantaloons, and "stovepipe" hats with red, white,
+and blue cockades. Though taken by surprise and outnumbered six to one,
+Boyd's soldiery showed the result of their training by standing like a
+stone wall against the onset of the whooping redskins, pouring in a
+volley of buckshot at close range which left the hordes of warriors
+wavering, undecided whether to come on or to retreat. At this
+psychological moment Boyd ordered up the squadron of dragoons which he
+had been holding in reserve for just such an opportunity. "Right into
+line!" he roared in the voice which had resounded over so many fields in
+far-off Hindustan. "Trot! Gallop! _Charge!_ Hip, hip, here we go!" It
+was the charge of the cavalry, delivered with all the smashing
+suddenness with which a boxer delivers a solar-plexus blow, which did
+the business. The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncoming
+troopers in their brass helmets and streaming plumes of horsehair, broke
+and ran. Tippecanoe was won; Harrison was started on the road which was
+to end in the White House; the peril of Tecumseh's Indian confederation
+was ended forever, and the civilization of the West was advanced a
+quarter of a century.
+
+[Illustration: The battle of Tippecanoe.
+
+From a print in the New York Public Library.]
+
+In the following year, upon the outbreak of our second war with England,
+Boyd, who had been commissioned a brigadier-general, commanded a
+division of Wilkinson's army in the abortive American invasion of Upper
+Canada, and, on November 11, 1813, fought the drawn battle of Chrysler's
+Field. "Taps" were sounded to his picturesque career on October 4, 1830.
+He died, not as he would have wished, sword in hand at the head of
+charging squadrons, but quite peacefully in his bed, holding the prosaic
+position of port officer of Boston, to which post he had been appointed
+by that other gallant fighter, President Andrew Jackson. As the end
+approached I doubt not that in mind he was far away from the brick and
+plaster of the New England city, and that his thoughts harked back to
+those mad, glad days when he and his lancers rode across the plains of
+Hindustan and his elephants rocked and rolled behind him.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN WE FOUGHT NAPOLEON
+
+
+This is the story of some forgotten fights and fighters in a forgotten
+war. The governments of the two nations which did the fighting--France
+and the United States--refused, indeed, to admit that there was any war
+at all, and, in a sense, they were right, for there was never any
+declaration of hostilities, and there was never signed a treaty of
+peace. But it was a very real war, nevertheless, with some of the
+fiercest battles ever fought on deep water, and when it was over we had
+laid the foundations of a navy, we had won the respect of the European
+powers, and we had humbled the pride of Napoleon as it had been humbled
+only once before, when Nelson annihilated the French fleet in the battle
+of the Nile.
+
+At the time that this narrative opens Bonaparte had just finished his
+wonderful campaign in northern Italy, and the French nation, flushed
+with confidence by his remarkable series of victories, was swaggering
+about with a chip on its shoulder, and defying the nations of the world
+to knock it off. In fact, the leaders of the Reign of Terror, drunk with
+unaccustomed power, had lost their heads as completely as the victims
+whom they had guillotined on the Place de la Revolution. Thoroughly
+typical of this insolent and arrogant attitude was the French
+Directory's peremptory demand that we instantly abrogate the treaty
+which John Jay, our minister to England, had just concluded with that
+country, basing its unwarrantable interference with our affairs on the
+ground that the terms of the treaty were injurious to the commercial
+interests of France. Upon our curt refusal to accede to this
+preposterous demand, Charles C. Pinckney, our minister at Paris, was
+notified by the French Government that it would hold no further
+intercourse with him, and the very next mail-packet brought the news
+that he had been expelled from France. Not content with this
+extraordinary and uncalled-for affront to a friendly nation, French
+cruisers began seizing our ships under a decree of their government
+authorizing the capture of neutral vessels having on board any of the
+products of Great Britain or her colonies, for at this time, remember,
+France and England were at war, as they were, indeed, throughout nearly
+the whole of Napoleon's reign. As the bulk of our trade at this period
+was with the British colonies in the West Indies, it was evident that
+this decree was aimed directly at us. Every packet that came from West
+Indian waters brought news of American ships overhauled and plundered,
+of sailors beaten and kidnapped, and of cargoes seized and confiscated
+by the French, the authenticated despatches to the State Department
+naming nearly a thousand vessels which had been captured. So bold did
+the French become that one of their privateers actually had the audacity
+to sail into Charleston Roads and, almost under the guns of the
+batteries, to burn to the water's edge a British vessel which was lying
+in the harbor.
+
+Though it was evident that nothing short of a miracle could avert war,
+President Adams, appreciating the ill-preparedness of the United States,
+which had only recently emerged from the Revolution in a weakened and
+impoverished condition, determined to make one more try for peace by
+despatching to France a special mission composed of Minister Pinckney,
+Elbridge Gerry, and John Marshall, the last-named later Chief Justice of
+the United States. Though in all our diplomatic history we have sent
+abroad no more able or distinguished embassy, the reception its members
+received at the hands of the French Government was as disgraceful as it
+was ludicrous. The French Directory at this time was composed of low
+and irresponsible politicians of the ward-heeler type who had climbed to
+power during the French Revolution, so that, incredible as such a state
+of affairs may seem in these days, the negotiations soon degenerated
+into an attempt to fleece the American envoys, who were informed quite
+frankly that their success depended entirely upon their agreeing to
+bribe--or, as the French politely put it, to give a _douceur_
+to--certain avaricious members of the Directory. Not only this, but the
+American diplomatists were told that, if the bribes demanded were not
+forthcoming, orders would be given to the war-ships on the French West
+Indian station to ravage the coasts of the United States. The chronicles
+of our foreign relations contain nothing which, for sheer impudence and
+insult, even approaches this attempt to levy blackmail on the nation.
+Even the astute Talleyrand, at that time French Foreign Minister, so far
+misjudged the characters of the men with whom he was dealing as to
+insinuate that a gift of money to members of the government was a
+necessary preliminary to the negotiations, and that a refusal would
+bring on war. Then all the pent-up rage and indignation of Pinckney
+burst forth. "War be it, then!" he exclaimed. "Millions for defence,
+sir, but not one cent for tribute!"
+
+Upon learning of this crowning insult to his representatives, President
+Adams, on March 19, 1798, informed Congress that the mission on which he
+had built his hopes of peace had proved a failure. Then the war-fever,
+which had temporarily been held in abeyance, swept over the country like
+fire in dry grass. Talleyrand's attempt to whip America into a
+revocation of Jay's treaty had ignominiously failed. He had made the
+inexcusable mistake of underestimating the spirit and resources of his
+opponents. Congress promptly abrogated all our treaties with France,
+prohibited American vessels from entering French ports, and French
+vessels from coming into American waters, and voted a large sum for
+national defence. The land forces were increased, the coastwise
+fortifications strengthened, ships of war were hurriedly laid down,
+volunteers from every walk of life besieged the recruiting stations,
+Washington reassumed command of the army. At Portland, Portsmouth,
+Salem, Chatham, Norwich, Philadelphia, and Baltimore the shipyards
+resounded to the clatter of tools, for those were before the days of big
+guns and armor-plate, and a man-of-war could, if necessary, be built and
+equipped in ninety days.
+
+Out from behind this war-cloud rose the thrilling strains of "Hail,
+Columbia." When the war-fever was at its height, a young actor and
+singer named Fox--a vaudeville artist, we should call him nowadays--who
+was appearing at a Philadelphia theatre, called one morning on his
+friend Joseph Hopkinson, a young and clever lawyer, and a son of that
+Francis H. Hopkinson whose signature may be seen at the bottom of the
+Declaration of Independence.
+
+"Look here, Joe," said Fox, dropping into a chair, "I need some help and
+you're the only man I know who can give it to me. No, no, old man, it's
+not money I'm after. To-morrow night I'm to have a benefit at the
+theatre, but not a single box has been sold; so, unless something can be
+done to attract public attention, I'm afraid I shall have a mighty thin
+house. Now it strikes me that, with all this war-fever in the air, if I
+could get some patriotic verses, something really fiery and inspiriting,
+written to the tune of 'The President's March,' I might draw a crowd.
+Several of the people around the theatre have tried it, but they have
+all given it up as a bad job, and say that it can't be done. So you're
+my last hope, Joe, and I think you could do it."
+
+Shutting himself up in his study, within an hour Hopkinson had completed
+the first verse and chorus of what was to prove one of the greatest of
+our national songs, and had submitted them to his wife, who sang them
+to a harpsichord accompaniment. The tune and the words harmonized. A few
+hours later the song was completed and was being memorized by Fox. The
+next morning Philadelphia was placarded with announcements that that
+evening Mr. Fox would sing, for the first time on any stage, a new
+patriotic song. The house was packed to the doors. As the orchestra
+broke into the familiar opening bars of "The President's March," and
+Fox, slender and debonair, bowed from behind the footlights, the
+audience grew hushed with expectancy. When the now familiar words,
+
+    "Immortal patriots, rise once more!
+    Defend your rights, defend your shore!"
+
+went rolling through the theatre from pit to gallery, the audience went
+wild. Eight times they made him sing it through, and the ninth time they
+rose and joined in the rousing chorus:
+
+    "Firm, united let us be,
+    Rallying round our Liberty.
+    Like a band of brothers joined,
+    Peace and safety we shall find."
+
+Night after night the singing of "Hail, Columbia," in the theatres was
+applauded by audiences delirious with enthusiasm, and within a few days
+it was being sung by boys in the streets of every city from Portland to
+Savannah. Never since the days of Bunker Hill had the nation been so
+stirred as it was in that summer of 1798.
+
+On July 6, with the red-white-and-blue ensign streaming proudly from her
+main truck, the sloop of war _Delaware_, twenty guns, of Baltimore,
+under Stephen Decatur, Sr., put to sea to an accompaniment of booming
+cannon. Cape Henry had scarcely sunk below the horizon before she was
+hailed by a merchantman which had been boarded and plundered by a French
+privateer only the day before. Upon hearing this news Decatur set off in
+a pursuit as eager as that with which a bloodhound follows the trail of
+a fugitive criminal. A few hours later his lookouts reported four
+vessels dead ahead. Being unable to determine which was the privateer,
+he ran in his guns, closed his ports, and keeping on his course until he
+was sure that he had been seen, stood hurriedly off, as though afraid of
+being captured. Just as he had anticipated, the Frenchman fell into the
+trap, and piling on his canvas, bore down upon him. It was not until the
+privateersman drew close enough to make out the gun-ports and the
+unusual number of men on the American's decks, that he discovered
+Decatur's ruse and attempted to escape. But it was too late. The
+_Delaware's_ superior speed enabled her easily to overhaul the
+Frenchman, which proved to be _La Incroyable_, fourteen guns and seventy
+men. So accurate and deadly was the fire poured into her by the
+_Delaware's_ gunners (forerunners, remember, of those bluejackets who
+handle the twelve-inch guns on the dreadnaught _Delaware_ to-day) that
+within ten minutes after the action had commenced the French tricolor
+came fluttering down. We had struck our first blow against the power of
+France.
+
+The captured vessel was sent into port under a prize crew, was refitted,
+added to the American Navy as the _Retaliation_--fitting name!--went to
+sea under command of William Bainbridge (the same who a few years later
+was to lose the war-ship _Philadelphia_ to the Barbary pirates in the
+harbor of Tripoli), and shortly afterward was recaptured by the French
+frigate _l'Insurgente_, being the only vessel of our little navy taken
+by the French.
+
+By the beginning of 1799 the West Indian waters were as effectually
+patrolled by American war-ships as a great city is patrolled by
+policemen. The newly built American frigates were objects of great
+amusement and derision to the French and British officers stationed in
+the West Indian colonies, for they were far too heavily armed,
+according to European ideas, carrying almost double the number of guns
+usual to vessels of their class. It is interesting to recall the fact,
+however, that sixty-odd years later European officers were equally
+derisive and sceptical of another American innovation in war-ships which
+was destined to revolutionize naval warfare--the monitor. But before
+long the sceptics were compelled to revise their opinions of the
+fighting qualities of our infant navy. Our fleet was at this time
+divided into two squadrons, both of which made their headquarters at St.
+Christopher, or, as it was more commonly called, St. Kitts, on the
+island of Antigua; one, under Commodore Barry, running as far south as
+the Guianas, while the other, under Commodore Truxtun, cruised northward
+to Santo Domingo, thus effectually cutting off from commercial
+intercourse with the mother country the rich French colonies in the
+Caribbean.
+
+Truxtun was a most picturesque and romantic figure. Short and stout,
+red-faced, gray-eyed, loud-voiced, gallant with women and short-tempered
+with men, he was as typical a sea fighter as ever trod a quarter-deck
+with a brass telescope tucked under his arm. From the time when, as a
+boy of twelve, he ran away to sea, until, a national hero, he was laid
+to rest in Christ Church graveyard in Philadelphia, his life was as full
+of hair-breadth escapes and hair-raising adventures as that of one of
+Mr. George A. Henty's heroes. A sailor before the mast when scarcely in
+his teens, he was impressed into the British Navy, where his ability
+attracted such attention that he was offered a midshipman's warrant,
+which he refused. When only twenty years of age he commanded his own
+ship, in which he succeeded, though at great personal hazard, in
+smuggling large quantities of much-needed powder into the rebellious
+colonies. Eventually his ship was captured and he was made a prisoner.
+Escaping from the British prison in the West Indies where he was
+confined, he made his way to the United States, obtained letters of
+marque from the first Continental Congress, and was the first to get to
+sea of that long line of privateersmen who, first in the Revolution, and
+afterward in the War of 1812, practically drove British commerce from
+the Atlantic. At the close of the Revolution Truxtun returned to the
+merchant service, in which he rose to wealth and position. When the
+American Navy was organized under the stimulus of French aggression, he
+was offered and accepted the command of the thirty-eight-gun frigate
+_Constellation_, a new and very beautiful vessel, splendidly officered
+and manned, and with heels as fast as her gun-fire was heavy.
+
+While cruising off Antigua, on February 9, 1799, the _Constellation's_
+lookout reported a French war-ship, which, upon being overhauled, proved
+to be _l'Insurgente_, forty guns, which had the reputation of being one
+of the fastest ships in the world, and was commanded by Captain
+Barreault, an officer celebrated in the French Navy as a desperate
+fighter and a resourceful sailor. As the _Constellation_, with her crew
+at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming down upon
+him, Captain Barreault broke out the French tricolor at his masthead and
+fired a gun to windward, which signified, in the language of the seas,
+that he was ready for a yard-arm to yard-arm combat. Truxtun's reply was
+to range alongside his adversary, a flag of stripes and stars at every
+masthead, and pour in a broadside which raked _l'Insurgente's_ decks
+from stem to stern. The first great naval action in which the American
+Navy ever bore a part had begun.
+
+Waiting until the _Constellation_ was well abreast of her, at a distance
+of perhaps thirty feet (modern war-ships seldom fight at a range of less
+than three miles), _l'Insurgente_ replied, firing high in an attempt to
+disable the American by bringing down her rigging. Midshipman David
+Porter, a youngster barely in his teens, was stationed in the foretop.
+Seeing that the top-mast, which had been seriously damaged by the French
+fire, was tottering and about to fall, but being unable to make himself
+heard on deck above the din of battle, he himself assumed the
+responsibility of lowering the foretopsail yard, thus relieving the
+strain on the mast and preventing a mishap which would probably have
+changed the result of the battle. That midshipman rose, in after years,
+to be an admiral and the commander-in-chief of the American Navy.
+
+Barreault, who had a much larger crew than his adversary, soon saw that
+his vessel was in danger of being pounded to pieces by the American
+gunners who were making every shot tell, and that his only hope of
+victory lay in getting alongside and boarding, depending upon his
+superior numbers to take the American vessel with the cutlass. With this
+in view, he ordered the boarding parties to their stations, sent men
+into the rigging with grappling-irons with which to hold the ships
+together when they touched, directed the guns to be loaded with small
+shot that they might cause greater execution at close quarters, and
+then, putting his helm hard down, attempted to run alongside the
+_Constellation_. But Truxtun had anticipated this very manoeuvre, and
+was prepared for it. Seizing his opportunity--and in sea-battles
+opportunities do not last long or come often--he whirled his ship about
+as a polo player whirls his pony, and ran squarely across the enemy's
+bows, pouring in a rain of lead as he passed, which all but annihilated
+the boarding parties drawn up on the deck of _l'Insurgente_.
+
+Foiled in his attempt to get to hand-grips with his enemy, the Frenchman
+sheered off and the duel at short range continued, the _Constellation_,
+magnificently handled, sailing first along _l'Insurgente's_ port side,
+firing as she went, and then, crossing her bows, repeating the manoeuvre
+on her starboard quarter. Nothing is more typical of the iron discipline
+enforced by the American naval commanders in those early days than an
+incident that occurred when this duel between the two frigates was at
+its height. As a storm of shot from the Frenchman's batteries came
+crashing and smashing into the _Constellation_, a gunner, seeing his
+mate decapitated by a solid shot, became so demoralized that he
+retreated from his gun, whereupon an officer drew his pistol and shot
+the man dead.
+
+Time after time Truxtun repeated his evolution of literally sailing
+around _l'Insurgente_, until every gun in her main batteries had been
+dismounted, her crew being left only the small guns with which to
+continue the action. It speaks volumes for Barreault's bravery that,
+with half his crew dead or wounded, and with a terribly battered and
+almost defenceless ship, he did continue the action, his weary,
+blood-stained, powder-blackened men loading and firing their few
+remaining guns dauntlessly. Seeing the weakened condition of his enemy,
+Truxtun now prepared to end the battle. Before the French had time to
+grasp the full significance of his manoeuvre, he had put his helm hard
+down, and the _Constellation_, suddenly looming out of the battle smoke,
+bore down upon _l'Insurgente_ with the evident intention of crossing her
+stern and raking her with a broadside to which she would be unable to
+reply. Though no braver man than Barreault ever fought a ship, he
+instantly appreciated that this would mean an unnecessary slaughter of
+his men; so, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, he ordered his
+colors to be struck, and in token of surrender the flag of France
+slipped slowly and mournfully down. The young republic of the West had
+avenged the insult of Talleyrand.
+
+It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the desperate fighting
+which characterized this battle, the _Constellation_ had only two of her
+crew killed and three wounded, while the French loss was nearly twenty
+times that number. Lieutenant Rodgers and Midshipman Porter were
+immediately sent aboard the captured vessel with a prize crew of only
+eleven men. After the dead had been buried at sea, the wounded cared for
+by the American surgeons, and about half of the prisoners transferred to
+the _Constellation_, Rodgers set such sails on _l'Insurgente_ as the
+wrecked rigging would permit, and laid his course for St. Christopher,
+it being understood that Truxtun would keep within hail in case his
+assistance was needed. During the night a heavy gale set in, however,
+and when day broke upon the heaving ocean the _Constellation_ was
+nowhere to be seen. It was a ticklish situation in which the thirteen
+Americans found themselves, for they had their work cut out for them to
+navigate a leaking, shattered, and dismasted ship, while below decks,
+awaiting the first opportunity which offered to rise and overpower their
+captors, were nearly two hundred desperate and determined prisoners.
+There were neither shackles nor handcuffs on board, and the hatchcovers
+had been destroyed in the action, so that the prisoners were perfectly
+aware that, could they once force their way on deck by a sudden rush,
+the ship would again be theirs. But they reckoned without Rodgers, for
+the first men who put their heads above the hatchway found themselves
+looking into the muzzles of a pair of pistols held by the American
+lieutenant, whose fingers were twitching on the triggers. During the
+three days and two nights which the voyage to St. Christopher lasted, a
+guard of American bluejackets stood constantly around the open hatchway,
+a pile of loaded small arms close at hand, and a cannon loaded with
+grape-shot trained menacingly into the prisoner-filled hold. On the
+evening of the third day, after Truxtun had given her up for lost,
+_l'Insurgente_ limped into port with the flag of the United States
+flaunting victoriously above that of France.
+
+The 1st of February of the following year found the _Constellation_,
+still under the command of Commodore Truxtun, cruising off Guadaloupe in
+the hope of picking up some of the French privateers which were using
+that colony as a base from which to prey on our West Indian commerce.
+While loitering off the port of Basse Terre, and praying that something
+would turn up to pay him for his patience, Truxtun sighted a vessel
+coming up from the southeast, which from her size and build was
+evidently a French frigate of the first class. As she approached, the
+keen-eyed American naval officers, scanning her through their glasses,
+recognized her as the fifty-two-gun frigate _La Vengeance_, one of the
+most formidable vessels in the French Navy. It was evident from the
+first, however, that she would much rather run than fight, this anxiety
+to avoid an encounter being due to the fact that she had on board a
+large number of officials, high in the colonial service, whom she was
+bringing out to the colonies from the mother country. No sooner did she
+perceive the character of the _Constellation_, therefore, than she piled
+on every yard of canvas and headed for Basse Terre and the protecting
+guns of its forts. Never had the _Constellation_ a better opportunity to
+display her remarkable sailing qualities, and never did she display them
+to better advantage. It was well after nightfall, however, before she
+was able to overhaul the flying Frenchman, so that it was by the light
+of a full moon, which illumined the scene almost as well as though it
+were day, that the preparations were completed for the combat. The sea,
+which was glasslike in its smoothness, as is so often the case in
+Caribbean waters, seemed to be covered with a veil of shimmering silver,
+while the battle-lanterns which had been lighted on both vessels swung
+like giant fireflies across the purple sky.
+
+Seeing that escape was hopeless, the French commander hove to and
+prepared for a desperate resistance. Now, Truxtun had made up his mind
+that this was to be no long-range duel, in which the Frenchman's heavier
+metal could not fail to give him an advantage, but a fight at close
+quarters, in which the smashing broadsides which the _Constellation_ was
+specially designed to deliver could not fail to tell. Just before the
+beginning of the battle the stout commodore, red-faced, white-wigged,
+cock-hatted, clad in the blue tail-coat and buff breeches of the
+American Navy, descended to the gun-deck and walked slowly through the
+batteries, acknowledging the cheers of the gunners, but emphatically
+warning them against firing a shot until he gave the word. No one knew
+better than Truxtun the demoralizing effect of a smashing broadside
+suddenly delivered at close quarters, and it was this demoralization
+which he intended to create aboard the enemy. "Load with solid shot," he
+ordered, and added, speaking to his officers so that the men could hear:
+"If a man fires a gun before I give the order, shoot him on the spot."
+Then with boarding-nettings triced up, decks sanded, magazines opened,
+and the tops filled with marines whose duty it was to pick off the
+French gunners, the _Constellation_, stripped to her fighting canvas,
+swept grandly into action. As she came within range the French commander
+opened with his stern-chasers, and in an instant the ordered decks of
+the American were turned into a shambles. The wounded were carried
+groaning to the cockpit, where the white-aproned surgeons, their arms
+bared to the elbow, awaited their grim work, while the dead were hastily
+ranged along the unengaged side--rows of stark and staring figures
+beneath the placid moon. Again and again the guns of _La Vengeance_
+belched smoke and flame, and redder and redder grew the sand with which
+the _Constellation's_ decks were spread, but she still kept coming on.
+Not until she was squarely abreast of the Frenchman did Truxtun, leaping
+into the shrouds, bellow through his speaking-trumpet: "Now, boys, give
+'em hell!" The American gunners answered with a broadside which made _La
+Vengeance_ reel. The effect was terrible. On the decks of the Frenchman
+the dead and dying lay in quivering, bleeding heaps. But not for an
+instant did the French sailors flinch from their guns. Broadside
+answered broadside, cheer answered cheer, while the men, French and
+American alike, toiled and sweated at their work of carnage. So rapidly
+were the American guns fired that the men actually had to crawl out of
+the ports, in the face of a withering fire, for buckets of water with
+which to cool them off.
+
+The different tactics adopted by the two commanders soon began to show
+results, for, whereas Truxtun had given orders that his men were to
+disregard the upper works and to concentrate their fire on the main-deck
+batteries and the hull, the French commander had from the first directed
+his fire upon the American's rigging in the hope of crippling her.
+Shortly after midnight the French fire, which had grown weaker and
+weaker under the terrible punishment of the _Constellation's_ successive
+broadsides, ceased altogether, and an officer was seen waving a white
+flag in token of surrender. Twice before, in fact, _La Vengeance_ had
+struck her colors, but owing to the smoke and darkness the Americans had
+not perceived it. And there was good reason for her surrender, for she
+had lost one hundred and sixty men out of her crew of three hundred and
+thirty, while the _Constellation_ had but thirty-nine casualties out of
+a crew of three hundred and ten. Though the French fire had done small
+damage to the _Constellation's_ hull, and had killed a comparatively
+small number of her crew, it had worked terrible havoc in her rigging,
+it being discovered, just as she was preparing to run alongside her
+capture and take possession, that every shroud and stay supporting her
+mainmast had been shot away, and that the mast was tottering and about
+to fall. The men in the top were under the command of a little
+midshipman named James Jarvis, who was only thirteen years old. He had
+been warned by one of his men that the mast was likely to fall at any
+moment, and had been implored to leave the top while there was still
+time, which he would have been entirely justified in doing, particularly
+as the battle was over. But that thirteen-year-old midshipman had in him
+the stuff of which heroes are made, and resolutely refused to leave his
+post without orders. The orders never came, for before the crew had time
+to secure it the great mast crashed over the side, carrying with it to
+instant death little Jarvis and all of his men save one. Though his name
+and deed have long since been forgotten by the nation for which he died,
+he was no whit less a hero than that other boy-sailor, Casabianca, whose
+self-sacrifice at the battle of the Nile has been made familiar by song
+and story.
+
+The falling of the _Constellation's_ mast reversed conditions in an
+instant, for the surrendered frigate, taking prompt advantage of the
+victor's temporary helplessness, crowded on all sail and slowly
+disappeared into the night. By the time the wreck had been chopped away
+any pursuit of her was hopeless. A few days later she put into the Dutch
+port of Curacao in a sinking condition.
+
+Thus continued until February, 1801, an unbroken series of American
+successes, French war-ships, French privateers, and French merchantmen
+alike being sunk, captured, or driven from the seas. France's trade with
+her West Indian colonies was paralyzed, and the prestige of her navy was
+enormously diminished. Napoleon, as First Consul, had abolished the
+Directory, and was now the virtual ruler of France, having entire
+command of all administrative affairs, both civil and military. Forced
+to admit that from first to last his ships had been out-sailed,
+out-fought, and out-manoeuvred by the despised Americans, and that a
+continuance of the war could only result in further disaster and loss of
+prestige, he began negotiations which led, about the time that the
+nineteenth century passed its first birthday, to a suspension of
+hostilities.
+
+During the two and a half years of this unofficial war with the most
+powerful military nation in the world our infant navy had captured
+eighty-four armed French vessels, mounting over five hundred guns--a
+success all the more remarkable when it is remembered that our entire
+naval establishment at the outbreak of hostilities comprised but
+twenty-two vessels, with four hundred and fifty-six guns. In other
+words, we had captured almost four times as many ships as we possessed.
+Not only had we practically destroyed French commerce on this side of
+the Atlantic, but our own commerce had risen, under the protection of
+our guns, from fifty-seven million dollars in 1797 to more than
+seventy-eight million dollars in 1799. Most important of all, however,
+we had shown to France and to Europe that, when occasion demanded, we
+both would and could, in the words of our national song, defend our
+rights and defend our shore.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN WE CAPTURED AN AFRICAN KINGDOM
+
+
+Did you ever, by any chance, leave the Boston State House by the back
+door? If so, you found yourself in a quiet and rather shabby
+thoroughfare, cobble-paved and lined on the farther side by
+old-fashioned red-brick houses, with white, brass-knockered doors, and
+iron balconies, and green blinds. That is Derne Street. Though a man
+standing on Boston Common could break one of its violet-glass windows
+with a well thrown ball, it is, as it were, a placid backwater of the
+busy streams of commerce which flow so noisily a few rods away. I wonder
+how many of the smug frock-coated politicians who hurry through it as a
+short cut daily have any idea how it got its name; I wonder if any of
+the people who live upon it know. Though the exploit which this Boston
+byway was named to commemorate has been overlooked by nearly all our
+historians, perhaps because its scene was laid in a remote and barbarous
+country, yet it was a feat which, for picturesqueness, daring, and
+indomitable courage, is deserving of a more generous share of the
+calcium light of public appreciation. Though I am perfectly aware that
+history only too often makes dull reading, this chronicle, I promise
+you, is as bristling with romance and adventure as a hedgehog is with
+quills.
+
+You must understand, in the first place, that the declining years of the
+eighteenth century found a perfectly astounding state of affairs
+prevailing in the Mediterranean, where the four Barbary states--Morocco,
+Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli--which stretched along its African shore,
+collected tribute from every nation whose vessels sailed that sea as
+methodically as a street-car conductor collects fares. Asserting that
+they were no common, vulgar buccaneers who plundered vessels
+indiscriminately, the Barbary corsairs, claiming for themselves the
+virtual ownership of the Mediterranean, turned it into a sort of
+maritime toll-road, and professed themselves at war with all who refused
+to pay roundly for using it. Nor was their boast that they were the
+masters of the Middle Sea a vain one, scores of captured merchantmen and
+thousands of European slaves laboring under the African sun proving
+indubitably that they were amply capable of enforcing their demands. As
+far as the question of economy was concerned, it was about as cheap for
+a nation to be at war with these bandits of the sea as at peace, for so
+heavy was the tribute they demanded that their friendship came almost as
+high as their enmity. It cost Spain, at that time a rich and powerful
+empire, upward of three million dollars to obtain peace with the Dey of
+Algiers in 1786. Though England boasted herself mistress of the seas,
+and in token thereof English admirals carried brooms at their mastheads,
+she nevertheless spent four hundred thousand dollars annually in
+propitiating these African despots. Previous to the Revolution there
+were close on a hundred American vessels, manned by more than twelve
+hundred seamen, in the Mediterranean, but with the withdrawal of British
+protection this commerce was entirely abandoned. The ink was scarcely
+dry on the treaty of peace, however, before we had despatched diplomatic
+agents to the Barbary coast to purchase the friendship of its rulers,
+and had taken our place in the line of regular contributors. We were in
+good company, too, for England, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland,
+Denmark, and the Italian states had been paying tribute so long that
+they had acquired the habit. Think of it, my friends! Every great
+seafaring nation in the world meekly paying tribute to a few thousand
+Arab cutthroats for the privilege of using one of the seven seas, and
+humbly apologizing if the payment happened to become overdue!
+
+Our friendly relations with the Dey of Algiers were of short duration,
+however, and by 1793 his swift-sailing, heavily armed cruisers had
+captured thirteen American vessels, and sixscore American slaves were at
+work on the fortifications of his capital. In his prison-yard, indeed,
+one could hear every American inflection, from the nasal twang of Maine
+to the drawl of Carolina. After two years of procrastination, Congress,
+spurred to action by public indignation, purchased the liberty of the
+captives and peace with Algiers for eight hundred thousand dollars,
+though the Dey remarked gloomily, as he scrawled his Arabic flourish at
+the foot of the treaty: "If I keep on making peace at this rate, there
+will soon be no one left to fight. Then how shall I occupy my corsairs?
+What shall I do with my fighting men? If they have no one else to rob
+and slaughter, they will rob and slaughter me!"
+
+The Bashaw of Tripoli at this time was a peculiarly insolent and
+tyrannical Arab named Yussuf Karamanli, who had gained the throne by
+the effective method of winning over the body-guard, quietly
+surrounding the palace one night, and deposing his elder brother, Ahmet,
+whom he promptly exiled. Despite the annual tribute of twenty-two
+thousand dollars which we were paying to the Bashaw, not to mention the
+seventeen thousand dollars' worth of presents which we presented
+biennially to the officers and officials of his court, he complained
+most bitterly to the American consul at Tripoli that he was not getting
+as much as his neighboring rulers, and that unless the matter was
+remedied immediately, he would have to get some American slaves to teach
+him English. Now, Yussuf was a bad man to have for an enemy, for his
+cruisers were numerous and loaded to the gunwales with pirates who would
+rather fight than eat, and he had, in addition, the reputation of being
+most inconsiderate to those sailors who fell into his hands, sometimes
+going so far as to wall a few of them up in the fortifications which he
+was constantly building. To put it bluntly, he was not popular outside
+of his own circle. As Mr. Cathcart, the American consul, did not take
+his demands for a larger tribute very seriously, the Bashaw wrote to
+President Jefferson direct, mincing no words in saying that the American
+government had better grant his request, and be quick about it, or
+American seamen would find the Mediterranean exceedingly unhealthy for
+them.
+
+Incredible as it may seem in this day and age, the authorities at
+Washington ordered a vessel to be loaded with the arms, ammunition, and
+naval stores demanded by the Bashaw, their total value being thirty-four
+thousand dollars, and hurriedly despatched it to Tripoli, with profuse
+apologies for the delay. A few months later the Bashaw, who evidently
+knew a good thing when he saw it, suggested that a token of our esteem
+for him in the form of jewels would be highly acceptable, whereupon the
+American minister in London was instructed to purchase jewelry to the
+value of ten thousand dollars and have it hurried to Tripoli by special
+messenger. Emboldened by his undreamed-of success in shaking the
+republican tree, the Bashaw reached the very height of audacity by again
+sending a peremptory note to President Jefferson, demanding that the
+United States immediately present him with a thirty-six-gun war-ship! As
+no attention was paid to this modest request (and in view of the other
+outrageous concessions made by our government, it is somewhat surprising
+that this demand was not granted also), the Bashaw ordered the flagstaff
+of the American consulate to be chopped down as a sign of war, and
+turned his corsairs loose on American commerce in the Mediterranean. The
+war opened most disastrously for the United States, for a few months
+later the frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli,
+the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire crew. No
+wonder the Bashaw went to the mosque that day to give thanks to Allah,
+for had he not received an even larger war-ship than he had demanded,
+and did he not have two hundred American slaves to instruct him in the
+English tongue? "God is great!" exclaimed the Bashaw devoutly, as he
+knelt on his silken prayer-rug, and "God is great!" echoed the rows of
+corsairs who knelt behind him.
+
+It was shortly after this American misfortune that William Eaton,
+soldier, diplomat, and Indian-fighter, swaggered upon the scene, and
+things began to happen with a rapidity that made the Bashaw's turbaned
+head whirl. By birth and upbringing Eaton was a Connecticut Yankee, and
+he possessed all the shrewdness, hardihood, and perseverance so
+characteristic of that race. The son of a schoolmaster farmer, before he
+was sixteen he had run away from home to join the Continental Army,
+which he left at the close of the Revolution with the chevrons of a
+sergeant on his coat-sleeve. Far-sighted enough to see the value of a
+college education, he went from the camp straight to the college
+classroom. Graduating from Dartmouth in 1790, he re-entered the army as
+a captain, served against the Indians in Georgia and Ohio, and in 1798
+received an appointment as American consul at Tunis. Resolute,
+energetic, and daring, impatient with any one who did not agree with his
+views, no better man could have been selected for the place. Thoroughly
+understanding the Arab character, from the very outset he took a high
+hand in his dealings with the Tunisian ruler. He alternately quarrelled
+with and patronized the Bey, bullyragged his ministers, and actually
+horsewhipped an insolent official of the court in the palace courtyard,
+for five years keeping up an uninterrupted series of altercations,
+provocations, and procrastinations over the payment of tribute-money. He
+acted with such energy and boldness, however, that he secured to the
+commerce of his country complete immunity from the attacks of Tunisian
+cruisers, and made the name American respected on that part of the
+Barbary coast at least. In 1801, as I have already remarked, the
+American flagstaff in the adjoining kingdom of Tripoli came crashing
+down at the Bashaw's order, and war promptly began between that
+country and the United States. Two years later the Bey of Tunis, harried
+beyond endurance by the half-insolent, half-patronizing fashion in which
+Eaton treated him, ordered that gentleman to leave the country.
+
+[Illustration: The frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of
+Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire
+crew.]
+
+Returning to the United States, Eaton went immediately to Washington and
+laid before President Jefferson and his Cabinet a scheme for bringing
+the war with Tripoli to a successful conclusion, and exchanging our
+humiliating position as a contributor to a gang of pirates for one more
+consistent with American ideals. The plan which he proposed was,
+briefly, that the United States should assist in restoring to the
+Tripolitan throne the exiled Bashaw, Ahmet Karamanli, on the
+understanding that, upon his restoration, the exaction of tribute from
+the American government and the depredations on American commerce should
+cease. Eaton was outspoken in urging the desirability of carrying out
+this plan, arguing that the dethronement of one of the Barbary despots
+would impress the people of all that region as nothing else could do. I
+can see him standing there beside the long table in the Cabinet room of
+the White House, his lean Yankee face aglow with enthusiasm, his every
+motion bespeaking confidence in himself and his plan, while Jefferson
+and his sedate, conservative advisers lean far back in their chairs and
+regard this visionary half curiously, half amusedly, as he outlines his
+schemes for overturning thrones and reapportioning kingdoms. From the
+President and his Cabinet he received the sort of treatment which timid
+governments are apt to bestow on men of spirit and action. He was given
+to understand that he was at liberty to carry out his plans, but that,
+if he was successful, the government would take all the credit, and
+that, if he failed, he would have to take all the blame. The only way to
+explain the astounding apathy of the American government to events in
+the Mediterranean is that a bitter political struggle was then in
+progress in the United States, and that the very remoteness of the
+theatre of war probably lessened its importance in the eyes of the
+administration. At any rate, President Jefferson signed the appointment
+of Eaton as American naval agent in the Mediterranean, and, happy as a
+schoolboy at the beginning of the long vacation, at the wide latitude of
+action conferred upon him by this purposely vague commission, he sailed
+a few days later with the American fleet for Egypt. His great adventure
+had begun.
+
+Aware that the dethroned Bashaw had fled to Cairo, Eaton landed at
+Alexandria, and, hastening to the Egyptian capital by camel, succeeded
+in locating the exiled Ahmet, whom he found in the depths of poverty and
+despair. Seated cross-legged beside him in a native coffee-house, Eaton
+outlined his plan and proposition. He told Ahmet that the United States
+would undertake to restore him to the Tripolitan throne upon his
+agreeing to repay the expenses of the expedition immediately upon his
+restoration, and upon the condition that Eaton should be
+commander-in-chief of the land forces throughout the campaign, Ahmet and
+his followers to promise him implicit obedience. Ahmet snapped at the
+chance, slim though it was, to regain his kingdom, as a starving dog
+snaps at a proffered bone. Eaton's plan of campaign was as simple as it
+was reckless. He proposed to recruit a force of Greek and Arab
+mercenaries, officered by Americans, in Alexandria, and, following the
+North African coast-line westward across the Libyan Desert, to surprise
+and capture Derna (or, as it was spelled in those days, Derne), the
+capital of the easternmost and richest province of Tripoli. With Derna
+as a base of operations, and with the co-operation of the American
+fleet, he held that it would be a comparatively simple matter to push on
+along the coast, taking in turn Benghazi, Tobruk, and the city of
+Tripoli itself. The chief merit of the scheme lay in its sheer
+audacity, for of all the leaders who have invaded Africa, this unknown
+American was the only one who had the courage to face the perils of a
+march across a waterless, trackless, sun-scorched, and uninhabited
+desert. But there was in Eaton the stuff of which great conquerors are
+made, and instead of letting his mind dwell on the dangers which the
+desert had to offer, he dreamed of the triumphs which awaited him beyond
+it.
+
+To raise the men for so hazardous an expedition, Eaton had need of all
+the energy and magnetism at his command, alternately employing the
+specious promises of a recruiting sergeant and the persuasive arguments
+of a campaign orator. On March 3, 1805, Eaton and the man to whom he had
+promised a kingdom reviewed their forlorn hope--and it was very forlorn
+indeed--at a spot called the Arab's Tower, some forty miles southwest of
+Alexandria. I doubt if so strangely assorted a force ever marched and
+fought under the shadow of our flag. The army, if army it could be
+called, consisted of eight Americans besides Eaton: Lieutenant O'Barron,
+Sergeant Peck, and six marines borrowed from the American fleet;
+thirty-four Greeks, who went along professedly because they wanted to
+fight the Moslem, but really because they needed the money; twenty-five
+Egyptian Copts, Christians at least in name, who claimed to be trained
+artillerymen, and to lend color to their assertion brought with them a
+small brass field-gun; those of Ahmet's personal adherents who had fled
+with him into exile, numbering about ninety men; and a squadron of Arab
+mercenaries, whose services had been obtained by the promise of
+unlimited opportunities for loot--these with the drivers of the
+baggage-camels bringing the total strength of the "Army of North Africa"
+to less than four hundred men. With this motley and ill-disciplined
+force behind him, and six hundred miles of yellow sand in front, Eaton
+turned his horse's nose Tripoliward, so that at about the time President
+Jefferson was delivering his second inaugural address the adventurous
+American was leading his little army across the desert, with the courage
+of an Alexander the Great, to conquer an African kingdom.
+
+The task which lay before him was one which great military leaders, all
+down the ages, had declared impossible. For a distance equal to that
+from Philadelphia to Chicago stretched an unbroken expanse of pitiless,
+sun-scorched desert, boasting no single living thing save an occasional
+band of nomad Arabs or a herd of gazelles. Midway between Alexandria
+and Derna was the insignificant port of Bomba, where, according to a
+prearranged plan, the _Argus_, under Captain Isaac Hull--the same who
+became famous a few years later for his victories over the British in
+the War of 1812--was to meet the expedition with supplies. Unless you
+have seen the desert it will be difficult for you to appreciate how
+hazardous this adventure really was. Imagine a sea of yellow sand with
+billow after billow stretching in every direction as far as the eye can
+see; without a tree, a shrub, a plant, a blade of grass; without a
+river, a brook, a drop of water except, at long intervals, a stagnant,
+green-scummed pool; the air like a blast from an open furnace-door and
+overhead a sky pitiless as molten brass! During the seven weeks of the
+march the thermometer never dropped during the day below 120 degrees.
+
+The arrangements for the transport had been left to Ahmet Pasha, and it
+was not until the expedition was two hundred miles into the desert, and
+the camel-drivers abruptly halted and announced that they were going
+back to Egypt, that Eaton learned that they had been engaged only to
+that point. As the desertion of the camel-drivers and the consequent
+inability to transport the tents, ammunition, and supplies would wreck
+the expedition, Eaton pleaded with the men to stick by him two or three
+days longer, until he could reach an encampment of Arabs with whom he
+could make another contract. This they consented to do on condition that
+they were paid in advance. By borrowing every piaster which his
+Americans and Greeks had to lend, Eaton succeeded in raising six hundred
+and seventy-three dollars, and with this the camel-drivers were
+apparently content. Nothing shows more strikingly the shoe-string on
+which the enterprise was being run than the fact that this unexpected
+disbursement reduced Eaton's war-chest to three Venetian
+sequins--equivalent to six dollars and fifty-four cents! Despite this
+payment, all but four of the camel-drivers deserted the very next night,
+and the four that remained sullenly refused to go any farther. In the
+darkness of the following night they, too, quietly untethered their
+camels and slipped silently away. Here, then, were three hundred and
+fifty men, with a rapidly diminishing supply of food and water and
+absolutely no means of transport, as completely marooned as though they
+were on a desert island.
+
+To make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Eaton learned that
+Ahmet had induced his Tripolitans and the Arabs to refuse to advance
+until they had news of the arrival of the _Argus_ at Bomba. Eaton,
+striding across to Ahmet's tent, shook his fist menacingly in the face
+of the cringing Tripolitan. "I know you're a coward," said he, "and I
+suspect that you're a traitor and I've a damned good mind to have you
+shot." The Pasha, now thoroughly frightened, replied that his men were
+too tired to march any farther. "You can take your choice between
+marching and starving," Eaton retorted, turning on his heel, and placing
+a guard of American marines around the tent containing the provisions,
+he ordered them to shoot the first Arab who approached it. This resolute
+action had an immediate effect, for the Pasha and his men lost their
+tired feeling with amazing quickness, fifty of the camel-drivers
+returned, and the desperate march was resumed. It was but a day or two,
+however, before the Arabs became as turbulent and unruly as ever. Then
+another mutiny broke out, Ahmet and his people announcing that they
+preferred to be well-fed cowards rather than starved heroes, and that
+they were going back to the flesh-pots of Egypt forthwith. Just as they
+were on the point of departure, however, a messenger who had been
+despatched to Bomba reached camp with the news that the _Argus_ was
+awaiting them in the harbor. These unexpected delays had wholly
+exhausted the supplies, which were slim enough, goodness knows, in the
+beginning, so that during the remainder of the march to Bomba they were
+compelled to kill some of the camels for food, living upon them and upon
+such roots as they could gather on the way.
+
+It was a half-starved and utterly exhausted expedition that plodded up
+the sand dunes which overlook the little port of Bomba, so what must
+their despair have been when they found no vessel awaiting them in the
+harbor, and that the town itself had been deserted. Captain Hull,
+apparently having given them up as lost, had departed. This time a more
+serious mutiny occurred, the Arabs, desperate with hunger and furious
+from disappointment, preparing to attack Eaton and his handful of
+Europeans. Appreciating the peril of his position, Eaton hastily formed
+his men into a hollow square. Just as the Arabs were preparing to charge
+down upon them the musket of one of the marines was prematurely
+discharged, the bullet whistling in uncomfortable proximity to the
+Pasha's ear. So terror-stricken was that worthy that he called off his
+men and attempted to parley with Eaton, who, standing alone well in
+front of his command, relieved his mind by telling Ahmet his opinion of
+him in what, according to the accounts of those who heard it, must have
+been an epic in objurgation. While the two factions were growling at
+each other like angry bull-dogs one of the Americans, happening to
+glance seaward, suddenly broke the dangerous tension by shouting: "A
+sail! A sail!" Hull, true to his promise, was returning, and the
+expedition was saved. Supplies were quickly landed from the _Argus_ for
+the starving men; with full stomachs the courage of the Arabs returned,
+and Eaton and his little band once more turned their faces toward the
+setting sun.
+
+On the evening of April 25 the vanguard sighted the walls of Derna. A
+feat that veteran soldiers had jeered at as impossible had been
+accomplished, and Eaton, without the loss of a man, had brought his army
+across six hundred miles of desert, in the heat of an African spring,
+and in the remarkable time, when the scantiness of the rations and the
+many delays are considered, of fifty-two days. With their goal actually
+in sight, still another mutiny took place, the craven Arabs claiming
+that they were too few in number to attempt the capture of a walled and
+heavily garrisoned city, and it was not until Eaton promised them a
+bonus of two thousand dollars if they succeeded in taking it that they
+could be induced to advance. The more one learns of this man the more
+one must admire his unfailing resource, his tenacity of purpose, and his
+bull-dog courage; for, in addition to the appalling natural obstacles
+which he overcame, he was constantly harried by intrigue, treachery, and
+cowardice.
+
+On the morning of the 26th a message was sent to the governor of Derna,
+under a flag of truce, offering him full amnesty if he would surrender
+and declare his allegiance to his rightful sovereign, Ahmet. The answer
+that came back was as curt as it was conclusive: "My head or yours," it
+read. Just as the sun was rising above the sand-dunes the following
+morning the _Argus_, the _Nautilus_, and the _Hornet_ swept grandly into
+the harbor, their crews at quarters, their decks cleared for action, and
+the red-white-and-blue ensign of the oversea republic floating defiantly
+from their main trucks. Under cover of a terrific bombardment by the
+war-ships, Eaton's force advanced upon the city, planning, with their
+single field-piece, to effect a breach in the walls and carry the place
+by storm. So murderous was the fire that the Tripolitan riflemen poured
+into them from the walls and housetops, however, that they were thrown
+into confusion, their single piece of artillery was put out of action
+by a well-directed cannon-shot, and Eaton himself was severely wounded.
+Seeing that his raw troops were on the verge of panic, and knowing that
+his only chance of holding them together lay in a charge, Eaton ordered
+his buglers to sound the advance, and with a cheer like the roar of a
+storm his whole line--Americans, Greeks, and Arabs--swept forward on a
+run. "Come on, boys!" shouted Eaton, as he raced ahead, sword in one
+hand, pistol in the other. "At the double! Follow me! Follow me!" And
+follow him they did. Cheering like madmen they crossed a field swept by
+a withering rifle-fire. They clambered over the ramparts, and by the
+very fury of their assault drove back the defenders, who outnumbered
+them twenty to one. They fought with them hand to hand, sabre against
+cimiter, bayonet against clubbed matchlock. Swarming into the batteries,
+they cut down the gunners and turned their guns upon the town. The
+defences of the city once in his possession, Eaton directed an assault
+upon the palace, where the governor had taken refuge, utilizing his Arab
+cavalry meanwhile to cut off the retreat of the flying garrison. Before
+the sun had disappeared into the Mediterranean, Eaton, at a cost of only
+fourteen killed and wounded (all of whom, by the way, were Americans
+and Greeks), had made himself master of Derna. His moment of triumph
+came when, still begrimed with dirt and powder, his arm in a
+blood-stained sling, he stood with drawn sword before the line formed by
+his ragged soldiers and the trim bluejackets from the fleet, and,
+watching a ball of bunting creep up that palace flagstaff from which so
+recently had flaunted the banner of Tripoli, saw it suddenly break out
+into the Stars and Stripes. Our flag, for the first and only time, flew
+above a fortification on that side of the Atlantic.
+
+Reinforced by a party of bluejackets from the fleet, Eaton wasted not a
+moment in preparing the city for defence. He was none too soon, either,
+for the Bashaw, learning of the loss of his richest province, despatched
+an overwhelming force for its recapture. This army arrived before the
+walls of Derna on May 13, and immediately made an assault, which Eaton
+repulsed, as he did a second one a few weeks later. By this time the
+news of Eaton's victory had spread across North Africa as fire spreads
+in dry grass, and thousands of natives, many of them deserters from the
+Bashaw's forces, hastened to assert their undying loyalty and to offer
+their services to Ahmet, for your Arab is far-seeing and takes good care
+to be found on the side which he believes to be the winning one. With
+his army thus largely augmented, with ample supplies, with Derna as a
+base of operations, and with his own prestige equivalent to an
+additional regiment, Eaton had completed the preparations for continuing
+his victorious advance along the African coast-line. There is little
+doubt, indeed, that with the co-operation of the fleet he could have
+marched on to Benghazi, taken that city as easily as he did Derna, and
+in due time planted the American flag on the castle of Tripoli itself.
+
+So it was with undisguised amazement and indignation that on June 12 he
+received orders from Commodore Rodgers to evacuate Derna and to withdraw
+his forces from Tripoli, Colonel Tobias Lear, the American consul at
+Algiers, having, in the face of Eaton's successes, signed an inglorious
+treaty of peace with the Bashaw of Tripoli. No more degrading terms were
+ever assented to by a civilized power. The Bashaw at first demanded two
+hundred thousand dollars for the release of Bainbridge and the
+_Philadelphia's_ crew, but as Eaton had captured a large number of
+Tripolitans in the storming of Derna, an exchange was eventually
+arranged, the United States agreeing to pay the pirate ruler sixty
+thousand dollars to boot. The city of Derna and the great province of
+which it was the capital were surrendered without so much as the mention
+of an equivalent, not even the relinquishment of the ransom of the
+American prisoners. The unfortunate Ahmet Pasha, who had been decoyed
+from his refuge in Egypt on the promise of American assistance in
+effecting his restoration, was deserted at a moment when success was
+actually ours, and had to fly for his life to Sicily, his wife and
+children being held as hostages by his brother and the heads of his
+adherents being exposed on the walls of the Tripolitan capital. Thus
+shamefully ended one of the most gallant and romantic exploits in the
+history of American arms; thus terminated an episode which, more than
+any other agency, compelled the rulers of the Barbary coast to respect
+the citizens and fear the wrath of the United States. Though an
+expedition of scarcely four hundred men may sound insignificant, the
+humbling of a Barbary power was an achievement which every European
+nation had attempted and which none of them had accomplished.
+
+Disappointed and disgusted, Eaton returned to the United States in
+November, 1805, to find himself a national hero. From the moment he set
+his foot on American soil he was greeted with cheers wherever he
+appeared; it was "roses, roses all the way." The cities of Washington
+and Richmond honored him with public dinners; Massachusetts, "desirous
+to perpetuate the remembrance of an heroic enterprise," granted him ten
+thousand acres of land in Maine; Boston named a street after the city
+which he had captured against such fearful odds; President Jefferson
+lauded him in his annual message; and in recognition of his services in
+effecting the release of some Danish captives in Tripoli, he was
+presented by the King of Denmark with a jewelled snuff-box. He was
+complimented everywhere except at the seat of government, and received
+every honor except that which he most deserved--a vote of thanks from
+Congress. Though his expedition had involved an expense of twenty-three
+thousand dollars, for which he had given his personal notes and the
+repayment of which exhausted all his means, Congress never reimbursed
+him. Notwithstanding the astounding indifference and ingratitude of the
+nation on whose flag he had shed such lustre, he indignantly rejected
+the advances of Aaron Burr, who tried ineffectually to enlist him in his
+conspiracy to establish an empire beyond the Mississippi, and died,
+poverty-stricken and broken-hearted, on June 1, 1811. Though the most
+modest of monuments marks his resting-place in Brimfield churchyard, and
+though not one in a hundred thousand of his countrymen have so much as
+heard his name, his fame still lives in that wild and far-off region
+where it took an Italian army of forty thousand men to repeat the
+exploit which he accomplished with four hundred.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST FIGHT OF THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG"
+
+
+We leaned over the rail of the _Hamburg_, Colonel Roosevelt and I, and
+watched the olive hills of Fayal rise from the turquoise sea. Houses
+white as chalk began to peep from among the orange groves; what looked
+at first sight to be a yellow snake turned into a winding road; then we
+rounded a headland, and the U-shaped harbor, edged by a sleepy town and
+commanded by a crumbling fortress, lay before us. "In there," said the
+ex-President, pointing eagerly as our anchor rumbled down, "was waged
+one of the most desperate sea-fights ever fought, and one of the least
+known; in there lies the wreck of the _General Armstrong_, the privateer
+that stood off twenty times her strength in British men and guns, and
+thereby saved Louisiana from invasion. It is a story that should make
+the thrills of patriotism run up and down the back of every
+right-thinking American."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything about her, from the carved and gilded figure-head, past the
+rakish, slanting masts to the slender stern, indicated the privateer.
+As she stood into the roadstead of Fayal late in the afternoon of
+September 26, 1814, black-hulled and white-sparred, carrying an amazing
+spread of snowy canvas, she made a picture that brought a grunt of
+approval even from the surly Azorian pilot. Hardly had the
+red-white-and-blue ensign showing her nationality fluttered to her peak
+before a harbor skiff bearing the American consul, Dabney, shot out from
+shore; for these were troublous times on the Atlantic, and letters from
+the States were few and far between. Rounding her stern, he read, with a
+thrill of pride, "_General Armstrong, New York_."
+
+The very name stood for romance, valor, hair-breadth escape. For of all
+the two-hundred-odd privateers that put out from American ports at the
+outbreak of the War of 1812 to prey on British commerce, none had won so
+high a place in the popular imagination as this trim-built, black-hulled
+schooner. Built for speed, and carrying a spread of canvas at which most
+skippers would have stood aghast, she was the fastest and best-handled
+privateer afloat, and had always been able to show her heels to the
+enemy on the rare occasions when the superior range of her seven guns
+had failed to pound him into submission. Her list of captures had made
+rich men of her owners, and had caused Lloyd's to raise the insurance on
+a vessel merely crossing the English Channel to thirteen guineas in the
+hundred.
+
+The story of her desperate encounter off the mouth of the Surinam River
+with the British sloop of war _Coquette_, with four times her weight in
+guns, had fired the popular imagination as had few other events of the
+war. Although her commander, Samuel Chester Reid, was not long past his
+thirtieth birthday, no more skilful navigator or daring fighter ever
+trod a quarter-deck, and his crew of ninety men--Down-East fishermen,
+old man-o'-war's men, Creole privateersmen who had fought under Lafitte,
+reckless adventurers of every sort and kind--would have warmed the heart
+of bluff old John Paul Jones himself.
+
+Just as dusk was falling the officer on watch reported a sail in the
+offing, and Reid and the consul, hurrying on deck, made out the British
+brig _Carnation_, of eighteen guns, with two other war-vessels in her
+wake: the thirty-eight-gun frigate _Rota_, and the _Plantagenet_, of
+seventy-four. Now, as the privateer lay in the innermost harbor, where a
+dead calm prevailed, while the three British ships were fast approaching
+before the brisk breeze which was blowing outside, Reid, who knew the
+line which marks foolhardiness from courage, appreciating that the
+chances of his being able to hoist anchor, make sail, and get out of the
+harbor before the British squadron arrived to block the entrance were
+almost infinitesimal, decided to stay where he was and trust to the
+neutrality of the port, a decision that was confirmed by the assurances
+of Consul Dabney that the British would not dare to attack a vessel
+lying in a friendly harbor. But therein the consul was mistaken, for
+throughout the entire duration of the war the British as cynically
+disregarded the observance of international law and the rights of
+neutrals as though they did not exist.
+
+The _Carnation_, learning the identity of the American vessel from the
+pilot, hauled close into the harbor, not letting go her anchor until she
+was within pistol-shot of the _General Armstrong_. Instantly a string of
+signal-flags fluttered from her mast, and the message was promptly
+acknowledged by her approaching consorts, which thereupon proceeded to
+stand off and on across the mouth of the harbor, thus barring any chance
+of the privateer making her escape. So great was the commotion which
+ensued on the _Carnation's_ deck that Reid, becoming suspicious of the
+Englishman's good faith, warped his ship under the very guns of the
+Portuguese fort.
+
+About eight o'clock, just as dark had fallen, Captain Reid saw four
+boats slip silently from the shadow of the _Carnation_ and pull toward
+him with muffled oars. If anything more were needed to convince him of
+their hostile intentions, the moon at that moment appeared from behind a
+cloud and was reflected by the scores of cutlasses and musket-barrels in
+all four of the approaching boats. As they came within hailing distance
+Reid swung himself into the shrouds.
+
+"Boats there!" he shouted, making a trumpet of his hands. "Come no
+nearer! For your own safety I warn you!"
+
+At his hail the boats halted, as though in indecision, and their
+commanders held a whispered consultation. Then, apparently deciding to
+take the risk, and hoping, no doubt, to catch the privateer unprepared,
+they gave the order: "Give way all!" The oars caught the water together,
+and the four boats, loaded to the gunwales with sailors and marines,
+came racing on.
+
+"Let 'em have it, boys!" roared Reid, and at the word a stream of flame
+leaped from the dark side of the privateer and a torrent of grape swept
+the crowded boats, almost annihilating one of the crews and sending the
+others, crippled and bleeding, back to the shelter of their ship.
+
+By this time the moon had fully risen, and showed the heights
+overlooking the harbor to be black with spectators, among whom were the
+Portuguese governor and his staff; but the castle, either from weakness
+or fear, showed no signs of resenting the outrageous breach of
+neutrality to which the port had been subjected. Angered and chagrined
+at their repulse, the British now threw all caution aside. The
+long-boats and gigs of all three ships were lowered, and into them were
+crowded nearly four hundred men, armed with muskets, pistols, and
+cutlasses. Reid, seeing that an attack was to be made in force,
+proceeded to warp his vessel still closer inshore, mooring her stem and
+stern within a few rods of the castle. Moving two of the nine-pounders
+across the deck, and cutting ports for them in the bulwarks, he brought
+five guns, in addition to his famous "long tom," to bear on the enemy.
+With cannon double-shotted, boarding-nets triced up, and decks cleared
+for action, the crew of the _General Armstrong_ lay down beside their
+guns to await the British attack.
+
+It was not long in coming. Just as the bells of the old Portuguese
+cathedral boomed twelve, a dozen boats, loaded to the water's edge with
+sailors and marines, whose burnished weapons were like so many mirrors
+under the rays of the moon, swung around a promontory behind which they
+had been forming and, with measured stroke of oars, came sweeping down
+upon the lone privateer. The decks of the _General Armstrong_ were black
+and silent, but round each gun clustered its crew of half-naked gunners,
+and behind the bulwarks knelt a line of cool, grim riflemen, eyes
+sighting down their barrels, cheeks pressed close against the butts. Up
+and down behind his men paced Reid, the skipper, cool as a winter's
+morning.
+
+"Hold your fire until I give the word, boys," he cautioned quietly.
+"Wait till they get within range, and then teach 'em better manners."
+
+Nearer and nearer came the shadowy line of boats, the oars rising and
+falling with the faultless rhythm which marks the veteran man-o'-war's
+man. On they came, and now the waiting Americans could make out the
+gilt-lettered hat-bands of the bluejackets and the white cross-belts and
+the brass buttons on the tunics of the marines. A moment more and those
+on the _Armstrong's_ deck could see, beneath the shadow of the leather
+shakoes, the tense, white faces of the British boarders.
+
+"Now, boys!" roared Captain Reid; "let 'em have it for the honor of the
+flag!" and from the side of the privateer leaped a blast of flame and
+lead, cannon and musketry crashing in chorus. Never were men taken more
+completely by surprise than were those British sailors, for they had
+expected that Reid, relying on the neutrality of the port, would be
+quite unprepared to resist them. But, though the American fire had
+caused terrible havoc in the crowded boats, with the bull-dog courage
+for which the British sailors were justly famous, they kept indomitably
+on. "Give way! Give way all!" screamed the boy-coxswains, and in the
+face of a withering rifle-fire the sailors, recovering from their
+momentary panic, bent grimly to their oars. Through a perfect hail-storm
+of lead, right up to the side of the privateer, they swept. Six boats
+made fast to her quarter and six more to her bow. "Boarders up and
+away!" bellowed the officers, hacking desperately at the nettings with
+their swords, and firing their pistols point-blank into the faces they
+saw above them. The _Armstrong's_ gunners, unable to depress the muzzles
+of their guns enough so that they could be brought to bear, lifted the
+solid shot and dropped them from the rail into the British boats,
+mangling their crews and crashing through their bottoms. From the
+shelter of the bulwarks the American riflemen fired and loaded and fired
+again, while the negro cook and his assistant played their part in the
+defence by pouring kettles of boiling water over the British who were
+attempting to scramble up the sides, sending them back into their boats
+again scalded and groaning with pain.
+
+There has been no fiercer struggle in all the annals of the sea. The
+Yankee gunners, some of them gray-haired men who had seen service with
+John Paul Jones in the _Bon Homme Richard_, changed from cannon-balls to
+grape, and from grape to bags of bullets, so that by the time the
+British boats drew alongside they were little more than floating
+shambles. The dark waters of the harbor were lighted up by spurts of
+flame from muskets and cannon; the high, shrill yell of the Yankee
+privateersmen rose above the deep-throated hurrahs of the English
+sailors; the air was filled with the shouts and oaths of the combatants,
+the shrieks and groans of the wounded, the incessant trampling of
+struggling men upon the decks, the splash of dead and injured falling
+overboard, the clash and clang of steel on steel, and all the savage,
+overwhelming turmoil of a struggle to the death. Urged on by their
+officers' cries of "No quarter! Give the Yankees no quarter!" the
+British division which had attacked the bow hacked its way through the
+nettings, and succeeded by sheer weight of numbers in getting a footing
+on the deck, all three of the American lieutenants being killed or
+disabled in the terrific hand-to-hand struggle that ensued.
+
+At this critical juncture, when the Americans on the forecastle, their
+officers fallen and their guns dismounted, were being pressed slowly
+back by overwhelming numbers, Captain Reid, having repulsed the attack
+on the _Armstrong's_ quarter, led the after division forward at a run,
+the privateersmen, though outnumbered five to one, driving the English
+overboard with the resistless fury of their onset. As the British boats,
+now laden with dead and dying, attempted to withdraw into safety, they
+were raked again and again with showers of lead; two of them sank, two
+of them were captured by the Americans. Finally, with nearly three
+hundred of their men--three-quarters of the cutting-out force--dead or
+wounded, the British, now cowed and discouraged, pulled slowly and
+painfully out of range. Some of the most brilliant victories the British
+navy has ever gained were far less dearly purchased.
+
+At three in the morning Reid received a note from Consul Dabney asking
+him to come ashore. He then learned that the governor had sent a letter
+to the British commander asking him to desist from further hostilities,
+as several buildings in the town had been injured by the British fire
+and a number of the inhabitants wounded. To this request Captain Lloyd
+had rudely replied that he would have the Yankee privateer if he had to
+knock the town into a heap of ruins. Returning on board, Reid ordered
+the dead and wounded taken ashore, and told the crew to save their
+personal belongings.
+
+At daybreak the _Carnation_, being of lighter draught than the other
+vessels, stood close in for a third attack, opening on the privateer
+with every gun she could bring to bear. But even in those days the fame
+of American gunners was as wide as the seas, and so well did the crew of
+the _General Armstrong_ uphold their reputation that the _Carnation_ was
+compelled to beat a demoralized retreat, with her rigging cut away, her
+foremast about to fall, and with several gaping holes between wind and
+water. But Reid, appreciating that there was absolutely no chance of
+escape, and recognizing that further resistance would entail an
+unnecessary sacrifice of his men's lives, by which nothing could be
+gained, ordered the crew to throw the nine-pounders which had rendered
+such valiant service overboard and to leave the ship. The veteran
+gunners, who were as much attached to their great black guns as a
+cavalryman is to his horse, obeyed the order with tears ploughing
+furrows down their powder-begrimed cheeks. Then Reid with his own hand
+trained the long-tom down his vessel's hatchway, and pulling the lanyard
+sent a charge of grape crashing through her bottom, from which she at
+once began to sink. Ten minutes later, before a British crew could reach
+her side, the _General Armstrong_ went to the bottom with her flag still
+defiantly flying.
+
+Few battles have been fought in which the odds were so unequal, and in
+few battles have the relative losses been so astounding. The three
+British war-ships carried two thousand men and one hundred and thirty
+guns, and of the four hundred men who composed the boarding party they
+lost, according to their own accounts, nearly three hundred killed and
+wounded. Of the American crew of ninety men, two were killed and seven
+wounded. This little crew of privateersmen had, in other words, put out
+of action more than three times their own number of British, and had
+added one more laurel to our chaplet of triumphs on the sea.
+
+The Americans had scarcely gained the shore before Captain Lloyd--who,
+by the way, had been so severely wounded in the leg that amputation was
+necessary--sent a peremptory message to the governor demanding their
+surrender. But the men who could not be taken at sea were not the men to
+be captured on land, and the Americans, retreating to the mountainous
+centre of the island, took possession of a thick-walled convent, over
+which they hoisted the stars and stripes, and from which they defied
+British and Portuguese alike to come and take them. No one tried.
+
+[Illustration: But even in those days the fame of American gunners was
+as wide as the seas.]
+
+All of the following day was spent by the British in burying their one
+hundred and twenty dead--you can see the white gravestones to-day if you
+will take the trouble to climb the hill behind the little town--but it
+took them a week to repair the damage caused by the battle. And so deep
+was their chagrin and mortification that when two British ships put into
+Fayal a few days later, and were ordered to take home the wounded, they
+were forbidden to carry any news of the disaster back to England.
+
+To Captain Reid and his little band of fighters is due in no small
+measure the credit of saving New Orleans from capture and Louisiana from
+invasion. Lloyd's squadron was a part of the expedition then gathering
+at Pensacola for the invasion of the South, but it was so badly crippled
+in its encounter with the privateer that it did not reach the Gulf of
+Mexico until ten days later than the expedition had planned to sail.
+The expedition waited for Lloyd and his reinforcements, so that when it
+finally approached New Orleans, Jackson and his frontiersmen, who had
+hastened down by forced marches from the North, had made preparations to
+give the English a warm reception. Had the expedition arrived ten days
+earlier it would have found the Americans unprepared, and New Orleans
+would have fallen.
+
+Captain Reid and his men, landing on their native soil at Savannah,
+found their journey northward turned into a triumphal progress. The
+whole country went wild with enthusiasm. There was not a town or village
+on the way but did them honor. The city of Richmond gave Captain Reid a
+great banquet, and the State of New York presented him with a sword of
+honor. But of all the tributes which were paid to the little band of
+heroes, none had the flavor of the concluding line of a letter written
+by one of the British officers engaged in the action to a relative in
+England. "If this is the way the Americans fight," he wrote, "we may
+well say, 'God deliver us from our enemies.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE PIRATE WHO TURNED PATRIOT
+
+
+How many well-informed people are aware, I wonder, that the fact that
+the American flag, and not the British, flies to-day over the
+Mississippi valley is largely due to the eleventh-hour patriotism of a
+pirate? Of the many kinds of men of many nationalities who have played
+parts of greater or less importance in the making of our national
+history, none is more completely cloaked in mystery, romance, and
+adventure than Jean Lafitte. The last of that long line of buccaneers
+who for more than two centuries terrorized the waters and ravaged the
+coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, his exploits make the wildest fiction
+appear commonplace and tame. Although he was as thorough-going a pirate
+as ever plundered an honest merchant-man, I do not mean to imply that he
+was a leering, low-browed scoundrel, with a red bandanna twisted about
+his head and an armory of assorted weapons at his waist, for he was
+nothing of the sort. On the contrary, from all I can learn about him, he
+appears to have been a very gentlemanly sort of person indeed, tall and
+graceful and soft-voiced, and having the most charming manners. Though
+he regarded the law with unconcealed contempt, there came a crisis in
+our national history when he placed patriotism above all other
+considerations, and rendered an inestimable service to the country whose
+laws he had flouted and to the State which had set a price on his head.
+Indeed, we are indebted to Jean Lafitte in scarcely less measure than we
+are to Andrew Jackson for frustrating the British invasion and conquest
+of Louisiana.
+
+Though the palmy days of piracy in the Gulf of Mexico really ended with
+the seventeenth century, by which time the rich cities of Middle America
+had been impoverished by repeated sackings and the gold-freighted
+caravels had taken to travelling under convoy, even at the beginning of
+the nineteenth century these storied waters still offered many
+opportunities to lawless and enterprising sea-folk. But the pirates of
+the nineteenth century, unlike their forerunners of the seventeenth,
+preyed on slave-ships rather than on treasure-galleons. Consider the
+facts. On January 1, 1808, Congress passed an act prohibiting the
+further importation of slaves into the United States. By this act the
+recently acquired territory of Louisiana, over which prosperity was
+advancing in three-league boots, was deprived of its supply of labor.
+With crops rotting in the fields for lack of laborers, the price of
+slaves rose until a negro fresh from the coast of Africa would readily
+bring a thousand dollars at auction in New Orleans. At the same time,
+remember, shiploads of slaves were being brought to Cuba, where no such
+restrictions existed, and sold for three hundred dollars a head. Under
+such conditions smuggling was inevitable. At first the smugglers bought
+their slaves in the Cuban market, and running them across the Gulf of
+Mexico, landed them at obscure harbors on the Louisiana coast, whence
+they were marched overland to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The smugglers
+soon saw, however, that the slavers carried small crews, poorly armed,
+and quickly made up their minds that it was a shameful waste of money to
+buy slaves when they could get them for nothing by the menace of their
+guns. In short, the smugglers became buccaneers, and as such drove a
+thriving business in captured cargoes of "black ivory," as the slaves
+were euphemistically called.
+
+As the demand was greatest on the rich new lands along the Mississippi,
+it was at New Orleans that the buccaneers found the most profitable
+market for their human wares, for they could easily sail up the river to
+the city, dispose of their cargoes, and be off again with the quick
+despatch of regular liners to resume their depredations. But the
+buccaneers did not confine their attention to slave-ships, so that in a
+short time, despite the efforts of British, French, and American
+war-ships, the waters of the Gulf became as unsafe for all kinds of
+merchant-vessels as they were in the days of Morgan and Kidd.
+
+As a base for their piratical and smuggling operations, as well as for
+supplies and repairs, the buccaneers chose Barataria Bay, a place which
+met their requirements as though made to order. The name is applied to
+all of the Gulf coast of Louisiana between the mouth of the Mississippi
+and the mouth of another considerable stream known as the Bayou La
+Fourche, the latter a waterway to a rich and populous region. The Bay of
+Barataria is screened from the Gulf, with which it is connected by a
+deep-water pass, by the island of Grande Terre, the trees on which were
+high enough to effectually hide the masts of the buccaneers' vessels
+from the view of inquisitive war-ships cruising outside. Between the
+Mississippi and the La Fourche there is a perfect network of small but
+navigable waterways which extend almost to New Orleans, so that the
+buccaneers thus had a back-stairs route, as it were, to the city, which
+brought their rendezvous at Grande Terre within safe and easy reach of
+the great mart of the Mississippi valley.
+
+Such supplies as the buccaneers did not get from the ships they
+captured, they obtained by purchase in New Orleans. For the chains which
+were used in making up the caufles of slaves for transportation into the
+interior, they were accustomed to patronize the blacksmith-shop of the
+Brothers Lafitte, which stood--and still stands--on the northeast corner
+of Bourbon and St. Philippe Streets. Of the history of these brothers
+prior to their arrival in New Orleans nothing is definitely known. From
+their names, and because they spoke with the accent peculiar to the
+Garonne, they are credited with having been natives of the south of
+France, though whence they came and where they went are questions which
+have never been satisfactorily answered. They were quite evidently men
+of means, and might have been described as gentlemen blacksmiths, for
+they owned the slaves who pounded the iron. Being men of exceptional
+business shrewdness, it is not to be wondered at that from doing the
+buccaneers' blacksmithing they gradually became their agents and
+bankers, the smithy in St. Philippe Street coming in time to be a sort
+of clearing-house for many questionable transactions. Now Jean Lafitte
+was an extremely able man, combining a remarkable executive ability with
+a genius for organization, and had he lived a century later these
+traits, together with his predatory instincts and his utter contempt for
+the law, would undoubtedly have made him the president of a trust.
+Through success in managing their affairs, he gradually increased his
+usefulness to the buccaneers until he obtained complete control over
+them, and ruled them as despotically as a tribal chieftain. This was
+when his genius for organization had succeeded in uniting their
+different, and often rival, efforts and interests into a sort of
+pirates' corporation, composed of all the buccaneers, privateers, and
+freebooters doing business in the Gulf, this combination of outlaws,
+incredible as it may seem, as effectually controlling the price of
+slaves and many other things in the Mississippi valley as the Standard
+Oil Company controls the price of petroleum to-day.
+
+The influence of this new element in the buccaneer business soon made
+itself felt. At that time New Orleans was a sort of cross between an
+American frontier town and a West Indian port, its streets and barrooms
+being filled with swaggering adventurers, gamblers, and soldiers of
+fortune from every corner of the three Americas, the presence of most of
+whom was due to the activity of the sheriffs in their former homes. It
+was from these men, cool, reckless, resourceful, that Lafitte recruited
+his forces. Leaving his brother Pierre in charge of the New Orleans
+branch of the enterprise, Jean Lafitte took up his residence on Grande
+Terre, where, under his directions, a fort was built, around which there
+soon sprang up a veritable city of thatched huts for the shelter of the
+buccaneers, and for the accommodation of the merchants who came to
+supply their wants or to purchase their captured cargoes. Within a year
+upward of a dozen armed vessels rendezvoused in Barataria Bay, and their
+crews addressed Jean Lafitte as "_bosse_." One of the Baratarians, a
+buccaneer of the walk-the-plank-and-scuttle-the-ship school named
+Grambo, who boldly called himself a pirate, and jeered at Lafitte's
+polite euphemism of privateer, was one day unwise enough to dispute the
+new authority. Without an instant's hesitation Lafitte drew a pistol and
+shot him through the heart in the presence of the whole band. After that
+episode there was no more insubordination.
+
+By 1813 the Baratarians, who had long since extended their operations to
+include all kinds of merchandise, were driving such a roaring trade that
+the commerce and shipping of New Orleans was seriously diminished (for
+why go to New Orleans for their supplies, the sea-captains and the
+plantation-owners argued, when they could get what they wanted at
+Barataria for a fraction of the price), the business of the banks
+decreased alarmingly under the continual lessening of their deposits,
+while even the National Government began to feel its loss of revenue.
+The waters of Barataria, on the contrary, were alive with the sails of
+incoming and outgoing vessels; the wharfs which had been constructed at
+Grande Terre resounded to the creak of winches and the shouts of
+stevedores unloading contraband cargoes, and the long, low warehouses
+were filled with merchandise and the log stockades with slaves waiting
+to be sold and transported to the up-country plantations. So defiant of
+the law did Lafitte become that the streets of New Orleans were
+placarded with handbills announcing the auction sales at Barataria of
+captured cargoes, and to them flocked bargain-hunters from all that part
+of the South. An idea of the business done by the buccaneers at this
+time may be gained from an official statement that four hundred slaves
+were sold by auction in the Grande Terre market in a single day.
+
+Of course the authorities took action in the matter, but their efforts
+to enforce the law proved both dangerous and ineffective. In October,
+1811, a customs-inspector succeeded in surprising a band of Baratarians
+and seizing some merchandise they had with them, but before he could
+convey the prisoners and the captured contraband to New Orleans Lafitte
+and a party of his men overtook him, rescued the prisoners, recovered
+the property, and in the fight which ensued wounded several of the
+posse. Some months later Lafitte killed an inspector named Stout, who
+attempted to interfere with him, and wounded two of his deputies. Then
+Governor Claiborne issued a proclamation offering a reward for the
+capture of Lafitte dead or alive, at the same time appealing to the
+legislature for permission to raise an armed force to break up the
+buccaneering business for good and all. The cautious legislators
+declined to take any action, however, because they were unwilling to
+interfere with an enterprise that, however illegal it might be, was
+unquestionably developing the resources of lower Louisiana, and
+incidentally adding immensely to the fortunes of their constituents. As
+for the Baratarians, they paid as scant attention to the governor's
+proclamation as though it had never been written. Surrounded by groups
+of admiring friends, Lafitte and his lieutenants continued to swagger
+through the streets of New Orleans; his men openly boasted of their
+exploits in every barroom of the city, and in places of public resort
+announcements of auctions at Barataria continued to be displayed.
+
+Then Governor Claiborne played his last card, and secured indictments of
+the Lafittes on the charge of piracy. Pierre Lafitte was arrested in his
+blacksmith-shop and confined without bail in the calaboose. Jean Lafitte
+promptly trumped the governor's card by retaining the services of Edward
+Livingston and John R. Grymes, the two most distinguished members of the
+Louisiana bar, at the enormous fee of twenty thousand dollars apiece.
+Grymes was then the district attorney, but he resigned his office for
+the fee. When his successor accused him in open court of having bartered
+his honor for pirate gold Grymes challenged him to a duel, and crippled
+him for life with a pistol bullet through the hip. When the two eminent
+lawyers had cleared their poor, innocent, persecuted clients of the
+unfounded and outrageous charges brought against them, and had taught
+them certain legal tricks whereby they could continue doing business at
+the old stand and still keep on the right side of the bars, Pierre
+Lafitte sent them an invitation to visit Barataria and collect their
+fees in person. Livingston, a cautious gentleman who had no desire to
+risk himself among the pirates whose virtues he had just extolled so
+highly to a jury, declined the invitation with thanks, offering his
+colleague a commission of ten per cent to collect his fee for him.
+Grymes, who was a hard-drinking, high-living Virginian, and afraid of
+nothing on two feet or four, accepted the invitation with alacrity, and
+until the end of his life was wont to convulse his friends with lurid
+descriptions of the magnificent entertainment which Lafitte provided for
+him. After a carouse which lasted for a week, and which, from Grymes's
+accounts, was a combination of the feasts of Lucullus with the orgies of
+Nero, Lafitte sent his legal adviser back to New Orleans in a sailing
+vessel, together with several huge chests containing his fee in Spanish
+gold pieces. It is an interesting commentary on the customs which
+prevailed in those days that by the time Grymes reached New Orleans,
+after having visited the various plantations along the lower Mississippi
+and tried his luck at their card-tables, not a dollar of his fee
+remained.
+
+Now, it should be understood that the feebleness which characterized all
+the attempts of the Federal Government to break the power of the
+buccaneers was not due to any reluctance to prosecute them, but to the
+fact that it already had its attention taken up with far more pressing
+matters, for we were then in the midst of our second war with Great
+Britain. The long series of injuries which England had inflicted on the
+United States, such as the plundering and confiscation of our ships, the
+impressment into the British Navy of our seamen, and the interruption of
+our commerce with other nations, had culminated on June 18, 1812, by
+Congress declaring war. So unexpected was this action that it found the
+country totally unprepared. Our military establishment was barely large
+enough to provide garrisons for the most exposed points on our far-flung
+borders; the numerous ports on our seaboard were left unprotected and
+unfortified; and our navy consisted of but a handful of war-ships. The
+history of the first two years of the struggle, which was marked by
+brilliant American victories at sea, but by a disastrous attempt to
+invade Canada, has no place in this narrative. Early in the summer of
+1814, however, the British Government, exasperated by its failure to
+inflict any vital damage in the northern States, determined to bring
+the war to a quick conclusion by the invasion and conquest of Louisiana.
+The preparations made for this expedition were in themselves startling.
+Indeed, few Americans have even a faint conception of the strength of
+the blow which England prepared to deal us, for with Napoleon's
+abdication and exile to Elba, and the ending of the war with France, she
+was enabled to bring her whole military and naval power against us. The
+British armada consisted of fifty war-ships, mounting more than a
+thousand guns. It was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane,
+under whom was Sir Thomas Hardy, the friend of Nelson, Rear-Admiral
+Malcolm, and Rear-Admiral Codrington, and was manned by the same sailors
+who had fought so valorously at the Nile and at Trafalgar. This great
+fleet acted as convoy for an almost equal number of transports, having
+on board eight thousand soldiers, which were the very flower of the
+British Army, nearly all of them being veterans of the Napoleonic
+campaigns. Such importance did the British Government attach to the
+success of this expedition that it seriously considered giving the
+command of it to no less a personage than the Duke of Wellington. So
+certain were the British that the venture would be successful that they
+brought with them a complete set of civil officials to conduct the
+government of this new country which was about to be annexed to his
+Majesty's dominions, judges, customs-inspectors, revenue-collectors,
+court-criers, printers, and clerks, together with printing-presses and
+office paraphernalia, being embarked on board the transports. A large
+number of ladies, wives and relatives of the officers, also accompanied
+the expedition, to take part in the festivities which were planned to
+celebrate the capture of New Orleans. And, as though to cap this
+exhibition of audacity, a number of ships were chartered by British
+speculators to bring home the booty, the value of which was estimated
+beforehand at fourteen millions of dollars. Whether the British
+Government expected to be able to permanently hold Louisiana is
+extremely doubtful, for it must have been fully aware that the Western
+States were capable of pouring down a hundred thousand men, if
+necessary, to repel an invasion. It is probable, therefore, that they
+counted only on a temporary occupation, which they expected to prolong
+sufficiently, however, to give them time to pillage and lay waste the
+country, a course which they felt confident would quickly bring the
+government at Washington to terms.
+
+This formidable armada set sail from England early in the summer of 1814
+and, reaching the Gulf of Mexico, established its base of operations,
+regardless of all the laws of neutrality, at the Spanish port of
+Pensacola. One morning in the following September a British brig hove to
+off Grande Terre, and called attention to her presence by firing a
+cannon. Lafitte, darting through the pass in his four-oared barge to
+reconnoitre, met the ship's gig with three scarlet-coated officers in
+the stern, who introduced themselves as bearers of important despatches
+for Mr. Lafitte. The pirate chief, introducing himself in turn, invited
+his unexpected guests ashore, and led the way to his quarters with that
+extraordinary charm of manner for which he was noted even among the
+punctilious Creoles of New Orleans. After a dinner of Southern
+delicacies, which elicited exclamations even from the blase British
+officers, Lafitte opened the despatches. They were addressed to Jean
+Lafitte, Esquire, commandant at Barataria, from the commander-in-chief
+of the British forces at Pensacola, and bluntly offered him thirty
+thousand dollars, payable in Pensacola or New Orleans, a commission as
+captain in the British Navy, and the enlistment of his men in the naval
+or military forces of Great Britain if he would assist the British in
+their impending invasion of Louisiana. Though it was a generous offer,
+no one knew better than the British commander that Lafitte's
+co-operation was well worth the price, for, familiar with the network of
+streams and navigable swamps lying between Barataria Bay and New
+Orleans, he was capable of guiding a British expedition through these
+secret waterways to the very gates of the city before the Americans
+would have a hint of its approach. It is not too much to assert that at
+this juncture the future of New Orleans, and indeed of the whole
+Mississippi Valley, hung upon the decision of Jean Lafitte, a pirate and
+a fugitive from justice with a price upon his head.
+
+Whether Lafitte seriously considered accepting the offer there is, of
+course, no way of knowing. That it must have sorely tempted him it seems
+but reasonable to suppose, for he was not an American, either by birth
+or naturalization, and the prospect of exchanging his hazardous outlaw's
+life, with a vision of the gallows ever looming before him for a
+captain's commission in the royal navy, with all that that implied,
+could hardly have failed to appeal to him strongly. That he promptly
+decided to reject the offer speaks volumes for the man's strength of
+character and for his faith in American institutions. Appreciating that
+at such a crisis every hour gained was of value to the Americans, he
+asked time to consider the proposal, requesting the British officers to
+await him while he consulted an old friend and associate whose vessel,
+he said, was then lying in the bay. Scarcely was he out of sight,
+however, before a band of buccaneers, acting, of course, under his
+orders, seized the officers and hustled them into the interior of the
+island, where they were politely but forcibly detained. Here they were
+found some days later by Lafitte, who pretended to be highly indignant
+at such unwarrantable treatment of his guests. Releasing them with
+profuse apologies, he saw them safely aboard their brig, and assured
+them that he would shortly communicate his decision to the British
+commander. But that officer's letter was already in the hands of a
+friend of Lafitte's in New Orleans, who was a member of the legislature,
+and accompanying it was a communication from the pirate chief himself,
+couched in those altruistic and patriotic phrases for which the rascal
+was famous. In it he asserted that, though he admitted being guilty of
+having evaded the payment of certain customs duties, he had never lost
+his loyalty and affection for the United States, and that,
+notwithstanding the fact that there was a price on his head, he would
+never miss an opportunity of serving his adopted country. A few days
+later Lafitte forwarded through the same channels much valuable
+information which his agents had gathered as to the strength, resources,
+and plans of the British expedition, enclosing with it a letter
+addressed to Governor Claiborne in which he offered the services of
+himself and his men in defence of the State and city on condition that
+they were granted a pardon for past offences.
+
+Receiving no reply to this communication, Lafitte sailed up the river to
+New Orleans in his lugger and made his way to the residence of the
+governor. Governor Claiborne was seated at his desk, immersed in the
+business of his office, when the door was softly opened, and Lafitte,
+stepping inside, closed it behind him. Clad in the full-skirted,
+bottle-green coat, the skin-tight breeches of white leather, and the
+polished Hessian boots which he affected, he presented a most graceful
+and gallant figure. As he entered he drew two pistols from his pockets,
+cocked them, and covered the startled governor, after which ominous
+preliminaries he bowed with the grace for which he was noted.
+
+"Sir," he remarked pleasantly, "you may possibly have heard of me. My
+name is Jean Lafitte."
+
+"What the devil do you mean, sir," exploded the governor, "by showing
+yourself here? Don't you know that I shall call the sentry and have you
+arrested?"
+
+"Pardon me, your Excellency," interrupted Lafitte, moving his weapons
+significantly, "but you will do nothing of the sort. If you move your
+hand any nearer that bell I shall be compelled to shoot you through the
+shoulder, a necessity, believe me, which I should deeply regret. I have
+called on you because I have something important to say to you, and I
+intend that you shall hear it. To begin with, you have seen fit to put a
+price upon my head?"
+
+"Upon the head of a pirate, yes," thundered the governor, now almost
+apoplectic with rage.
+
+"In spite of that fact," continued Lafitte, "I have rejected a most
+flattering offer from the British government, and have come here, at
+some small peril to myself, to renew in person the offer of my services
+in repelling the coming invasion. I have at my command a body of brave,
+well-armed, and highly disciplined men who have been trained to fight.
+Does the State care to accept their services or does it not?"
+
+The governor, folding his arms, looked long at Lafitte before he
+answered. Then he held out his hand. "It is a generous offer that you
+make, sir. I accept it with pleasure."
+
+"At daybreak to-morrow, then," said Lafitte, replacing his pistols, "my
+men will be awaiting your Excellency's orders across the river." Then,
+with another sweeping bow, he left the room as silently as he had
+entered it.
+
+Governor Claiborne immediately communicated Lafitte's offer to General
+Andrew Jackson, then at Mobile, who had been designated by the War
+Department to conduct the defence of Louisiana. Jackson, who had already
+issued a proclamation denouncing the British for their overtures to
+"robbers, pirates, and hellish bandits," as he termed the Baratarians,
+promptly replied that the only thing he would have to do with Lafitte
+was to hang him. Nevertheless, when the general arrived in New Orleans a
+few days later, Lafitte called at his headquarters and requested an
+interview. By this time Jackson was conscious of the feebleness of the
+resources at his disposal for the defence of the city and of the
+strength of the armament directed against it, which accounts, perhaps,
+for his consenting to receive the "hellish bandit." Lafitte, looking the
+grim old soldier squarely in the eye, repeated his offer, and so
+impressed was Jackson with the pirate's cool and fearless bearing that
+he accepted his services.
+
+On the 10th of December, 1814, ten days after Jackson's arrival in New
+Orleans, the British armada reached the mouth of the Mississippi. Small
+wonder that the news almost created a panic in the city, for the very
+names of the ships and regiments composing the expedition had become
+famous through their exploits in the Napoleonic wars. It was a
+nondescript and motley force which Jackson had hastily gathered to repel
+this imposing army of invasion. Every man capable of bearing arms in New
+Orleans and its vicinity--planters, merchants, bankers, lawyers--had
+volunteered for service. To the local company of colored freedmen was
+added another one composed of colored refugees from Santo Domingo, men
+who had sided with the whites in the revolution there and had had to
+leave the island in consequence. Even the prisoners in the calaboose had
+been released and provided with arms. From the parishes round about came
+Creole volunteers by the hundred, clad in all manner of clothing and
+bearing all kinds of weapons. From Mississippi came a troop of cavalry
+under Hinds, which was followed a few hours later by Coffee's famous
+brigade of "Dirty Shirts," composed of frontiersmen from the forests of
+Kentucky and Tennessee, who after a journey of eight hundred miles
+through the wilderness answered Jackson's message to hurry by covering
+the one hundred and fifty miles between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in
+two days. Added to these were a thousand raw militiamen, who had been
+brought down on barges and flat-boats from the towns along the upper
+river, four companies of regulars, Beale's brigade of riflemen, a
+hundred Choctaw Indians in war-paint and feathers, and last, but in many
+respects the most efficient of all, the corps of buccaneers from
+Barataria, under the command of the Lafittes. The men, dragging with
+them cannon taken from their vessels, were divided into two companies,
+one under Captain Beluche (who rose in after years to be
+admiral-in-chief of Venezuela) and the other under a veteran
+privateersman named Dominique You. These men were fighters by
+profession, hardy, seasoned, and cool-headed, and as they swung through
+the streets of New Orleans to take up the position which Jackson had
+assigned them, even that taciturn old soldier gave a grunt of
+approbation.
+
+Jackson had chosen as his line of defence an artificial waterway known
+as the Rodriguez Canal, which lay some five miles to the east of the
+city, and along its embankments, which in themselves formed pretty good
+fortifications, he distributed his men. On the night of December 23 a
+force of two thousand British succeeded, by means of boats, in making
+their way, through the chain of bayous which surrounds the city, to
+within a mile or two of Jackson's lines, where they camped for the
+night. Being informed of their approach (for the British, remember, had
+the whole countryside against them), Jackson, knowing the demoralizing
+effect of a night attack, directed Coffee and his Tennesseans to throw
+themselves upon the British right, while at the same moment Beale's
+Kentuckians attacked on the left. Trained in all the wiles of Indian
+warfare, the frontiersmen succeeded in reaching the outskirts of the
+British camp before they were challenged by the sentries. Their reply
+was a volley at close quarters and a charge with the tomahawk--for they
+had no bayonets--which drove the British force back in something closely
+akin to a rout.
+
+Meanwhile Jackson had set his other troops at work strengthening their
+line of fortifications, so that when the sun rose on the morning of the
+day before Christmas it found them strongly intrenched behind
+earthworks, helped out with timber, sand-bags, fence-rails, and
+cotton-bales--whence arose the myth that the Americans fought behind
+bales of cotton. The British troops were far from being in Christmas
+spirits, for the truth had already begun to dawn upon them that men can
+fight as well in buckskin shirts as in scarlet tunics, and that these
+raw-boned wilderness hunters, with their powder-horns and abnormally
+long rifles, were likely to prove more formidable enemies than the
+imposing grenadiers of Napoleon's Old Guard, whom they had been fighting
+in Spain and France. On that same day before Christmas, strangely
+enough, a treaty of peace was being signed by the envoys of the two
+nations in a little Belgian town, four thousand miles away.
+
+On Christmas Day, however, the wonted confidence of the British soldiery
+was somewhat restored by the arrival of Sir Edward Pakenham, the new
+commander-in-chief, for even in that hard-fighting day there were few
+European soldiers who bore more brilliant reputations. A brother-in-law
+of the Duke of Wellington, he had fought side by side with him through
+the Peninsular War; he had headed the storming party at Badajoz; and at
+Salamanca had led the charge which won the day for England and a
+knighthood for himself. An earldom and the governorship of Louisiana, it
+was said, had been promised him as his reward for the American
+expedition.
+
+Pakenham's practised eye quickly appreciated the strength of the
+American position, which, after a council of war, it was decided to
+carry by storm. During the night of the 26th the storming columns, eight
+thousand strong, took up their positions within half a mile of the
+American lines. As the sun rose next morning over fields sparkling with
+frost, the bugles sounded the advance, and the British army, ablaze with
+color, and in as perfect alignment as though on parade, moved forward to
+the attack. As they came within range of the American guns, a group of
+plantation buildings which masked Jackson's front were blown up, and the
+British were startled to find themselves confronted by a row of ship's
+cannon, manned as guns are seldom manned on land. Around each gun was
+clustered a crew of lean, fierce-faced, red-shirted ruffians, caked with
+sweat and mud: they were Lafitte's buccaneers, who had responded to
+Jackson's orders by running in all the way from their station on the
+Bayou St. John that morning. Not until he could make out the brass
+buttons on the tunics of the advancing British did Lafitte give the
+command to fire. Then the great guns of the pirate-patriots flashed and
+thundered. Before that deadly fire the scarlet columns crumbled as
+plaster crumbles beneath a hammer, the men dropping, first by twos and
+threes, then by dozens and scores. In five minutes the attacking
+columns, composed of regiments which were the boast of the British army,
+had been compelled to sullenly retreat.
+
+The British commander, appreciating that the repulse of his forces was
+largely due to the fire of the Baratarian artillery, gave orders that
+guns be brought from the fleet and mounted in a position where they
+could silence the fire of the buccaneers. Three days were consumed in
+the herculean task of moving the heavy pieces of ordnance into position,
+but when the sun rose on New Year's morning it showed a skilfully
+constructed line of intrenchments, running parallel to the American
+front and armed with thirty heavy guns. While the British were thus
+occupied, the Americans had not been idle, for Jackson had likewise
+busied himself in constructing additional batteries, while Commodore
+Patterson, the American naval commander, had gone through the sailors'
+boarding-houses of New Orleans with a fine-tooth comb, impressing every
+nautical-looking character on which he could lay his hands, regardless
+of nationality, color, or excuses, to serve the guns. With their
+storming columns sheltered behind the breastworks, awaiting the moment
+when they would burst through the breach which they confidently expected
+would shortly be made in the American defences, the British batteries
+opened fire with a crash which seemed to split the heavens. Throughout
+the artillery duel which ensued splendid service was rendered by the men
+under Lafitte, who trained their guns as carefully and served them as
+coolly as though they were back again on the decks of their privateers.
+The storming parties, which were waiting for a breach to be made, waited
+in vain, for within an hour and thirty minutes after the action opened
+the British batteries were silenced, their guns dismounted, and their
+parapets levelled with the plain. The veterans of Wellington and Nelson
+had been out-fought from first to last by a band of buccaneers,
+reinforced by a few-score American bluejackets and a handful of
+nondescript seamen.
+
+Pakenham had one more plan for the capture of the city. This was a
+general assault by his entire army on the American lines. His plan of
+attack was simple, and would very probably have proved successful
+against troops less accustomed to frontier warfare than the Americans.
+Colonel Thornton, with fourteen hundred men, was directed to cross the
+river during the night of January 7, and, creeping up to the American
+lines under cover of the darkness, to carry them by assault. His attack
+was to be the signal for a column under General Gibbs to storm Jackson's
+right, and for another, under General Keane, to throw itself against the
+American left, General Lambert, who had just arrived with two fresh
+regiments, being held in reserve. So carefully had the British
+commanders perfected their plans that the battle was already won--in
+theory.
+
+No one knew better than Jackson that this was to be the deciding round
+of the contest, and he accordingly made his preparations to win it with
+a solar-plexus blow. He also had received a reinforcement, for the
+long-expected militia from Kentucky, two thousand two hundred strong,
+had just arrived, after a forced march of fifteen hundred miles, though
+in a half-naked and starving condition. Our history contains nothing
+finer, to my way of thinking, than the story of how these mountaineers
+of the Blue Ridge, foot-sore, ragged, and hungry, came pouring down from
+the north to repel the threatened invasion. The Americans, who numbered,
+all told, barely four thousand men, were scattered along a front of
+nearly three miles, one end of the line extending so far into a swamp
+that the soldiers stood in water to their waists during the day, and at
+night slept on floating logs made fast to trees.
+
+Long before daybreak on the morning of the 8th of January the divisions
+of Gibbs and Keane were in position, and waiting impatiently for the
+outburst of musketry which would be the signal that Thornton had begun
+his attack. Thornton had troubles of his own, however, for the swift
+current of the Mississippi, as though wishing to do its share in the
+nation's defence, had carried his boats a mile and a half down-stream,
+so that it was daylight before he was able to effect a landing, when a
+surprise was, of course, out of the question. But Pakenham, naturally
+obstinate and now made wholly reckless by the miscarriage of his plans,
+refused to recall his orders; so, as the gray mists of the early morning
+slowly lifted, his columns were seen advancing across the fields.
+
+"Steady now, boys! Steady!" called Jackson, as he rode up and down
+behind his lines. "Don't waste your ammunition, for we've none to spare.
+Pick your man, wait until he gets within range, and then let him have
+it! Let's get this business over with to-day!" His orders were obeyed
+to the letter, for not a shot was fired until the scarlet columns were
+within certain range. Then the order "Commence firing" was repeated down
+the line. Neither hurriedly, nor excitedly, nor confusedly was it
+obeyed, but with the utmost calmness and deliberation, the frontiersmen,
+trained to use the rifle from boyhood, choosing their targets, and
+calculating their ranges as unconcernedly as though they were hunting in
+their native forests. Still the British columns pressed indomitably on,
+and still the lean and lantern-jawed Jackson rode up and down his lines,
+cheering, cautioning, exhorting, directing. Suddenly he reined up his
+horse at the Baratarian battery commanded by Dominique You.
+
+"What's this? What's this?" he exclaimed. "You have stopped firing? What
+the devil does this mean, sir?"
+
+"Of course we've stopped firing, general," said the buccaneer, touching
+his forelock man-o'-war fashion. "The powder's good for nothing. It
+might do to shoot blackbirds with, but not redcoats."
+
+Jackson beckoned to one of his aides-de-camp.
+
+"Tell the ordnance officer that I will have him shot in five minutes as
+a traitor if Dominique complains again of his powder," and he
+galloped off. When he passed that way a few minutes later the rattle
+of the musketry was being punctuated at half-minute intervals with the
+crash of the Baratarian guns. "Ha, friend Dominique," called Jackson,
+"I'm glad to see you're at work again."
+
+[Illustration: The battle of New Orleans.
+
+From a painting by D.M. Carter.]
+
+"Pretty good work, too, general," responded the buccaneer. "It looks to
+me as if the British have discovered that there has been a change of
+powder in this battery." He was right. Before the combined rifle and
+artillery fire of the Americans the British columns were melting like
+snow under a spring rain. Still their officers led them on, cheering,
+pleading, threatening, imploring. Pakenham's arm was pierced by a
+bullet; at the same instant another killed his horse, but, mounting the
+pony of his aide-de-camp, he continued to encourage his disheartened and
+wavering men. Keane was borne bleeding from the field, and a moment
+later Gibbs, mortally wounded, was carried after him. The panic which
+was just beginning to seize the British soldiery was completed at this
+critical instant by a shot from one of the Baratarians' big guns which
+burst squarely in the middle of the advancing column, causing terrible
+destruction in the solid ranks. Pakenham's horse fell dead, and the
+general reeled into the arms of an officer who sprang forward to catch
+him. Terribly wounded, he was carried to the shelter of a spreading
+oak, beneath which, five minutes later, he breathed his last. Then the
+ebb-tide began. The shattered regiments, demoralized by the death of
+their commander, and themselves fearfully depleted by the American fire,
+broke and ran. Ten minutes later, save for the crawling, agonized
+wounded, not a living foe was to be seen. But the field, which had been
+green with grass half an hour before, was carpeted with scarlet now, and
+the carpet was made of British dead. Of the six thousand men who took
+part in the attack, it is estimated that two thousand six hundred were
+killed or wounded. Of the Ninety-third Regiment, which had gone into
+action nine hundred strong, only one hundred and thirty-nine men
+answered to the roll-call. The Americans had eight men killed and
+thirteen wounded. The battle had lasted exactly twenty-five minutes. At
+eight o'clock the American bugles sounded "Cease firing," and
+Jackson--whom this victory was to make President of the United
+States--followed by his staff, rode slowly down the lines, stopping at
+each command to make a short address. As he passed, the regimental fifes
+and drums burst into "Hail, Columbia," and the rows of weary,
+powder-grimed men, putting their caps on the ends of their long rifles,
+swung them in the air and cheered madly the victor of New Orleans.
+
+There is little more to tell. On March 17 the British expedition,
+accompanied by the judges and customs-inspectors and revenue-collectors,
+and by the officers' wives who had come out to take part in the
+festivities which were to mark the conquest, set sail from the mouth of
+the Mississippi, reaching Europe just in time to participate in the
+Waterloo campaign. In the general orders issued by Jackson after the
+battle the highest praise was given to the Lafittes and their followers
+from Barataria, while the official despatches to Washington strongly
+urged that some recognition be made of the extraordinary services
+rendered by the erstwhile pirates. A few weeks later the President
+granted a full pardon to the inhabitants of Barataria, his message
+concluding: "Offenders who have refused to become the associates of the
+enemy in war upon the most seducing terms of invitation, and who have
+aided to repel his hostile invasion of the territory of the United
+States, can no longer be considered as objects of punishment, but as
+objects of generous forgiveness." Taking advantage of this amnesty, the
+ex-pirates settled down to the peaceable lives of fishermen and
+market-gardeners, and their descendants dwell upon the shores of
+Barataria Bay to this day. As to the future movements of the brothers
+Lafitte, beyond the fact that they established themselves for a time at
+Galveston, whence they harassed Spanish commerce in the Gulf of Mexico,
+nothing definite is known. Leaving New Orleans soon after the battle,
+they sailed out of the Mississippi, and out of this story.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO DARED TO CROSS THE RANGES
+
+
+About the word frontiersman there is a pretty air of romance. The very
+mention of it conjures up a vision of lean, sinewy, brown-faced men, in
+fur caps and moccasins and fringed buckskin, slipping through virgin
+forests or pushing across sun-scorched prairies--advance-guards of
+civilization. Hardy, resolute, taciturn figures, they have passed
+silently across the pages of our history and we shall see their like no
+more. To them we owe a debt that we can never repay--nor, indeed, have
+we even publicly acknowledged it. We followed by the trails which they
+had blazed for us; we built our towns in those rich valleys and pastured
+our herds on those fertile hillsides which theirs were the first white
+men's eyes to see. The American frontiersman was never a self-seeker.
+His discoveries he left as a heritage to those who followed him. In
+almost every case he died poor and, more often than not, with his boots
+on. David Livingstone and Henry M. Stanley, the two Englishmen who did
+more than any other men for the opening up of Africa, lie in Westminster
+Abbey, and thousands of their countrymen each year stand reverently
+beside their tombs. To Cecil Rhodes, another Anglo-African pioneer, a
+great national memorial has been erected on the slopes of Table
+Mountain. Far, far greater parts in the conquest of a wilderness, the
+winning of a continent, were played by Daniel Boone, William Bowie, Kit
+Carson, Davy Crockett; yet how many of those who to-day enjoy the fruits
+of the perils they faced, the hardships they endured, know much more of
+them than as characters in dime novels, can tell where they are buried,
+can point to any statues or monuments which have been erected to their
+memories?
+
+There are two million four hundred thousand people in the State of
+California, and most of them boast of it as "God's own country." They
+have more State pride than any people that I know, yet I would be
+willing to wager almost anything you please that you can pick a hundred
+native sons of California, and put to each of them the question, "Who
+was Jedediah Smith?" and not one of them would be able to answer it
+correctly. The public parks of San Francisco and Los Angeles and San
+Diego and Sacramento have innumerable statues of one kind and another,
+but you will find none of this man with the stern old Puritan name; they
+are starting a hall of fame in California, but no one has proposed
+Jedediah Smith as deserving a place in it. Yet to him, perhaps more than
+to any other man, is due the fact that California is American: he was
+the greatest of the pathfinders; he was the real founder of the Overland
+Trail; he was the man who led the way across the ranges. Had it not been
+for the trail he blazed and the thousands who followed in his footsteps
+the Sierra Nevadas, instead of the Rio Grande, might still mark the line
+of our frontier.
+
+The westward advance of population which took place during the first
+quarter of the nineteenth century far exceeded the limits of any of the
+great migrations of mankind upon the older continents. The story of the
+American onset to the beckoning West is one of the wonder-tales of
+history. Over the natural waterway of the great northern lakes, down the
+road to Pittsburg, along the trail which skirted the Potomac, and then
+down the Ohio, over the passes of the Cumberland into Tennessee, round
+the end of the Alleghanies into the Gulf States, up the Missouri, and so
+across the Rockies to the head waters of the Columbia, or south-westward
+from St. Louis to the Spanish settlements of Santa Fe, the hardy
+pioneers poured in an ever-increasing stream, carrying with them little
+but axe, spade, and rifle, some scanty household effects, a small store
+of provisions, a liberal supply of ammunition, and unlimited faith,
+courage, and enterprise.
+
+During that brief period the people of the United States extended their
+occupation over the whole of that vast region lying between the
+Alleghanies and the Rockies--a territory larger than all of Europe,
+without Russia--annexed it from the wilderness, conquered, subdued,
+improved, cultivated, civilized it, and all without one jot of
+governmental assistance. Throughout these years, as the frontiersmen
+pressed into the West, they continued to fret and strain against the
+Spanish boundaries. The Spanish authorities, and after them the Mexican,
+soon became seriously alarmed at this silent but resistless American
+advance, and from the City of Mexico orders went out to the provincial
+governors that Americans venturing within their jurisdiction should be
+treated, whenever an excuse offered, with the utmost severity. But,
+notwithstanding the menace of Mexican prisons, of Indian tortures, of
+savage animals, of thirst and starvation in the wilderness, the pioneers
+pushed westward and ever westward, until at last their further progress
+was abruptly halted by the great range of the Sierra Nevada,
+snow-crested, and presumably impassable, which rose like a titanic wall
+before them, barring their further march.
+
+It was at about the time of this halt in our westward progress that
+Captain Jedediah Smith came riding onto the scene. You must picture him
+as a gaunt-faced, lean-flanked, wiry man, with nerves of iron, sinews of
+rawhide, a skin like oak-tanned leather, and quick on his feet as a
+catamount. He was bearded to the ears, of course, for razors formed no
+part of the scanty equipment of the frontiersman, and above the beard
+shone a pair of very keen, bright eyes, with the concentrated wrinkles
+about their corners that come of staring across the prairies under a
+blazing sun. He was sparing of his words, as are most men who dwell in
+the great solitudes, and, like them, he was, in an unorthodox way,
+devout, his stern and rugged features as well as his uncompromising
+scriptural name betraying the grim old Puritan stock from which he
+sprang. His hair was long and black, and would have covered his
+shoulders had it not been tied at the back of the neck by a leather
+thong. His dress was that of the Indian adapted to meet the
+requirements of the adventuring white man: a hunting-shirt and trousers
+of fringed buckskin, embroidered moccasins of elkhide, and a cap made
+from the glossy skin of a beaver, with the tail hanging down behind. On
+hot desert marches, and in camp, he took off the beaver-skin cap and
+twisted about his head a bright bandanna, which, when taken with his
+gaunt, unshaven face, made him look uncommonly like a pirate. These
+garments were by no means fresh and gaudy, like those affected by the
+near-frontiersmen who take part in the production of Wild West shows;
+instead they were very soiled and much worn and greasy, and gave
+evidence of having done twenty-four hours' duty a day for many months at
+a stretch. Hanging on his chest was a capacious powder-horn, and in his
+belt was a long, straight knife, very broad and heavy in the blade--a
+first cousin of that deadly weapon to which William Bowie was in after
+years to give his name; in addition he carried a rifle, with an
+altogether extraordinary length of barrel, which brought death to any
+living thing within a thousand yards on which its foresight rested. His
+mount was a plains-bred pony, as wiry and unkempt and enduring as
+himself. Everything considered, Smith could have been no gentle-looking
+figure, and I rather imagine that, if he were alive and ventured into a
+Western town to-day, he would probably be arrested by the local
+constable as an undesirable character. I have now sketched for you, in
+brief, bold outline, as good a likeness of Smith as I am able with the
+somewhat scanty materials at hand, for he lived and did his pioneering
+in the days when frontiersmen were as common as traffic policemen are
+now, added to which the men who were familiar with his exploits were of
+a sort more ready with their pistols than with their pens.
+
+The dates of Smith's birth and death are not vital to this story, and
+perhaps it is just as well that they are not, for I can find no record
+of when he came into the world, and only the Indian warrior who wore his
+scalp-lock at his waist could have told the exact date on which he went
+out of it. It is enough to know that, just as the nineteenth century was
+passing the quarter mark, Smith was the head of a firm of fur-traders,
+Smith, Jackson & Soublette, which had obtained from President John
+Quincy Adams permission to hunt and trade to their hearts' content in
+the region lying beyond the Rocky Mountains. It would have been much
+more to the point to have obtained the permission of the Mexican
+governor-general of the Californias, or of the great chief of the
+Comanches, for they held practically all of the territory in question
+between them. Those were the days whose like we shall never know again,
+when the streams were alive with beaver, when there were more elk and
+antelope on the prairies than there are cattle now, and when the noise
+made by the moving buffalo herds sounded like the roll of distant
+thunder. They were the days when a fortune, as fortunes were then
+reckoned, awaited the man with unlimited ammunition, a sure eye, and a
+body inured to hardships. What the founder of the Astor fortune was
+doing in the Puget Sound country, Smith and his companions purposed to
+do in the Rockies; and, with this end in view, established their base
+camp on the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake, not far from where
+Ogden now stands. This little band of pioneers formed the westernmost
+outpost of American civilization, for between them and the nearest
+settlement, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,
+stretched thirteen hundred miles of savage wilderness. Livingstone, on
+his greatest journey, did not penetrate half as far into unknown Africa
+as Smith did into unknown America, and while the English explorer was at
+the head of a large and well-equipped expedition, the American was
+accompanied by a mere handful of men.
+
+In August, 1826, Smith and a small party of his hunters found
+themselves in the terrible Painted Desert, that God-forsaken expanse of
+sand and lava where the present States of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada
+meet. Water there was none, for the streams had run dry, and the horses
+and pack-mules were dying of thirst and exhaustion; the game had
+entirely disappeared; the supplies were all but finished--and five
+hundred miles of the most inhospitable country in the world lay between
+them and their camp on Great Salt Lake. The situation was perilous,
+indeed, and a decision had to be made quickly if any of them were to get
+out alive.
+
+"What few supplies we have left will be used up before we get a quarter
+way back to the camp," said Smith. "Our only chance--and I might as well
+tell you it's a mighty slim one, boys--is in pushing on to California."
+
+"But California's a good four hundred miles away," expostulated his
+companions, "and the Sierras lie between, and no one has ever crossed
+them."
+
+"Then I'll be the first man to do it," said Smith. "Besides, I've always
+had a hankering to learn what lies on the other side of those ranges.
+Now's my chance to find out."
+
+"I reckon there ain't much chance of our ever seeing Salt Lake or
+California either," grumbled one of the hunters, "and even if we do
+reach the coast the Mexicans 'll clap us into prison."
+
+"Well, so fur's I'm concerned," said Smith decisively, "I'd rather be
+alive and in a Greaser prison than to be dead in the desert. I'm going
+to California or die on the way."
+
+History chronicles few such marches. Westward pressed the little troop
+of pioneers, across the sun-baked lava beds of southwestern Utah, over
+the arid deserts and the barren ranges of southern Nevada, and so to the
+foot-hills of that great Sierran range which rears itself ten thousand
+feet skyward, forming a barrier which had theretofore separated the
+fertile lands of the Pacific slope from the rest of the continent more
+effectually than an ocean. The lava beds gave way to sand wastes dotted
+with clumps of sage-brush and cactus, and the cactus changed to stunted
+pines, and the pines ran out in rocks, and the rocks became covered with
+snow, and still Smith and his hunters struggled on, emaciated, tattered,
+almost barefooted, lamed by the cactus spines on the desert, and the
+stones on the mountain slopes, until at last they stood upon the very
+summit of the range and, like that other band of pioneers in an earlier
+age, looked down on the promised land after their wanderings in the
+wilderness. No explorer in the history of the world, not Columbus, nor
+Pizarro, nor Champlain, nor De Soto, ever gazed upon a land so fertile
+and so full of beauty. The mysterious, the jealously guarded, the
+storied land of California lay spread before them like a map in
+bas-relief. Then the descent of the western slope began, the transition
+from snow-clad mountain peaks to hillsides clothed with subtropical
+vegetation amazing the Americans by its suddenness. Imagine how like a
+dream come true it must have been to these men, whose lives had been
+spent in the less kindly climate and amid the comparatively scanty
+vegetation of the Middle West, to suddenly find themselves in this
+fairyland of fruit and flowers!
+
+[Illustration: _Copyright, 1906, by P.F. Collier & Son._
+
+Westward pressed the little troop of pioneers, across the sun-baked lava
+beds of southwestern Utah.]
+
+"It is, indeed, a white man's country," said Smith prophetically, as,
+leaning on his long rifle, he gazed upon the wonderful panorama which
+unrolled itself before him. "Though it is Mexican just now, sooner or
+later it must and shall be ours."
+
+Heartened by the sight of this wonderful new country, and by the
+knowledge that they must be approaching some of the Mexican settlements,
+but with bodies sadly weakened from exposure, hunger, and exhaustion,
+the Americans slowly made their way down the slope, crossed those
+fertile lowlands which are now covered with groves of orange and lemon,
+and so, guided by some friendly Indians whom they met, came at last to
+the mission station of San Gabriel, one of that remarkable chain of
+outposts of the church founded by the indefatigable Franciscan, Father
+Junipero Serra. The little company of worn and weary men sighted the
+red-tiled roof of the mission just at sunset, and though Smith and his
+followers came from stern New England stock which prided itself on
+having no truck with Papists, I rather imagine that as the sweet, clear
+mission bells chimed out the angelus they lifted their hats and stood
+with bowed heads in silent thanksgiving for their preservation.
+
+I doubt if there was a more astonished community between the oceans than
+was the monastic one of San Gabriel when this band of ragged strangers
+suddenly appeared from nowhere and asked for food and shelter.
+
+"You come from the South--from Mexico?" queried the father superior,
+staring, half-awed, at these gaunt, fierce-faced, bearded men who spoke
+in a strange tongue.
+
+"No, padre," answered Smith, calling to his aid the broken Spanish he
+had picked up in his trading expeditions to Santa Fe, "we come from the
+East, from the country beyond the great mountains, from the United
+States. We are Americans," he added a little proudly.
+
+"They say they come from the East," the brown-robed monks whispered to
+each other. "It is impossible. No one has ever come from that direction.
+Have not the Indians told us many times that there is no food, no water
+in that direction, and that, moreover, there is no way to cross the
+mountains? It is, indeed, a strange and incredible tale that these men
+tell. But we will offer them our hospitality in the name of the blessed
+St. Francis, for that we withhold from no man; but it is the part of
+wisdom to despatch a messenger to San Diego to acquaint the governor of
+their coming, for it may well be that they mean no good to the people of
+this land."
+
+Had the good monks been able to look forward a few-score years, perhaps
+they would not have been so ready to offer Smith and his companions the
+shelter of the mission roof. But how were they to know that these ragged
+strangers, begging for food at their mission door, were the skirmishers
+for a mighty host which would one day pour over those mountain ranges to
+the eastward as the water pours over the falls at Niagara; that within
+rifle-shot of where their mission stood a city of half a million souls
+would spread itself across the hills; that down the dusty Camino Real,
+which the founder of their mission had trudged so often in his sandals
+and woollen robe, would whirl strange horseless, panting vehicles,
+putting a mile a minute behind their flying wheels; that twin lines of
+steel would bring their southernmost station at San Diego within twenty
+hours, instead of twenty days, of their northernmost outpost at Sonoma;
+and that over this new land would fly, not the red-white-and-green
+standard of Mexico, but an alien banner of stripes and stars?
+
+The four years which intervened between the collapse of Spanish rule in
+Mexico and the arrival of Jedediah Smith at San Gabriel were marked by
+political chaos in the Californias. When a governor of Alta California
+rose in the morning he did not know whether he was the representative of
+an emperor, a king, a president, or a dictator. As a result of these
+perennial disorders, the Mexican officials ascribed sinister motives to
+the most innocent episodes. No sooner, therefore, did Governor Echeandia
+learn of the arrival in his province of a mysterious party of Americans
+than he ordered them brought under escort to San Diego for examination.
+Though those present probably did not appreciate it, the meeting of
+Smith and Echeandia in the palace at San Diego was a peculiarly
+significant one. There sat at his ease in his great chair of state the
+saturnine Mexican governor, arrogant and haughty, beruffled and
+gold-laced, his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet jacket heavy with
+bullion, while in front of him stood the American frontiersman, gaunt,
+unshaven, and ragged, but as cool and self-possessed as though he was at
+the head of a conquering army instead of a forlorn hope. The one was as
+truly the representative of a passing as the other was of a coming race.
+Small wonder that Echeandia, as he observed the hardy figures and
+determined faces of the Americans, thought to himself how small would be
+Mexico's chance of holding California if others of their countrymen
+began to follow in their footsteps. He and his officials cross-examined
+Smith as closely as though the frontiersman was a prisoner on trial for
+his life, as, in a sense, he was, for almost any fate might befall him
+and his companions in that remote corner of the continent without any
+one being called to account for it. Smith described the series of
+misfortunes which had led him to cross the ranges; he asserted that he
+desired nothing so much as to get back into American territory again,
+and he earnestly begged the governor to provide him with the necessary
+provisions and permit him to depart. His story was so frank and
+plausible that Echeandia, with characteristic Spanish suspicion,
+promptly disbelieved every word of it, for why, he argued, should any
+sane man make so hazardous a journey unless he were a spy and well paid
+to risk his life? For even in those early days, remember, the Mexicans
+had begun to fear the ambitions of the young republic to the eastward.
+So, despite their protests, he ordered the Americans to be
+imprisoned--and no one knew better than they did that, once within the
+walls of a Mexican prison, there was small chance of their seeing the
+outside world again. Fortunately for the explorers, however, it so
+happened that there were three American trading-schooners lying in San
+Diego harbor at the time, and their captains, determined to see the
+rights of their fellow countrymen respected, joined in a vigorous and
+energetic protest to the governor against this high-handed and
+unjustified action. This seems to have frightened Echeandia, for he
+reluctantly gave orders for the release of Smith and his companions, but
+ordered them to leave the country at once, and by the same route by
+which they had come.
+
+When the year 1827 was but a few days old, therefore, the Americans
+turned their faces northward, but instead of retracing their steps in
+accordance with Echeandia's orders, they crossed the coast range,
+probably through the Tejon Pass, and kept on through the fertile region
+now known as the San Joaquin Valley, in the hope that by crossing the
+Sierra farther to the northward they would escape the terrible rigors of
+the Colorado desert. When some three hundred miles north of San Gabriel
+they attempted to recross the ranges, but a feat that had been hazardous
+in midsummer was impossible in midwinter, and the entire expedition
+nearly perished in the attempt. Several of the men and all the horses
+died of cold and hunger, and it was only by incredible exertions that
+Smith and his few remaining companions, terribly frozen and totally
+exhausted, managed to reach the Santa Clara Valley and Mission San Jose.
+So slow was their progress that the news of their approach preceded them
+and caused considerable disquietude to the monks. Learning from the
+Indians that he and his tatterdemalion followers were objects of
+suspicion, Smith sent a letter to the father superior, in which he gave
+an account of his arrival at San Gabriel, of his interview with the
+governor, of his disaster in the Sierras, and of his present pitiable
+condition. "I am a long way from home," this pathetic missive
+concludes, "and am anxious to get there as soon as the nature of the
+case will permit. Our situation is quite unpleasant, being destitute of
+clothing and most of the necessaries of life, wild meat being our
+principal subsistence. I am, reverend father, your strange but real
+friend and Christian brother, Jedediah Smith." As a result of this
+appeal, the hospitality of the mission was somewhat grudgingly extended
+to the Americans, who were by this time in the most desperate condition.
+
+Hardships that would kill ordinary men were but unpleasant incidents in
+the lives of the pioneers, however, and in a few weeks they were as fit
+as ever to resume their journey. But, upon thinking the matter over,
+Smith decided that he would never be content if he went back without
+having found out what lay still farther to the northward, for in him was
+the insatiable curiosity and the indomitable spirit of the born
+explorer. But as his force, as well as his resources, had become sadly
+depleted, he felt it imperative that he should first return to Salt Lake
+and bring on the men, horses, and provisions he had left there.
+Accordingly, leaving most of his party in camp at San Jose, he set out
+with only two companions, recrossed the Sierra at one of its highest
+points (the place he crossed is where the railway comes through to-day)
+and after several uncomfortably narrow escapes from landslides and from
+Indians, eventually reached the camp on Great Salt Lake, where he found
+that his people had long since given him and his companions up for dead.
+
+Breaking camp on a July morning, in 1827, Smith, with eighteen men and
+two women, turned his face once more toward California. To avoid the
+snows of the high Sierras, he chose the route he had taken on his first
+journey, reaching the desert country to the north of the Colorado River
+in early August. It was not until the party had penetrated too far into
+the desert to retreat that they found that the whole country was burnt
+up. For several days they pushed on in the hope of finding water. Across
+the yellow sand wastes they would sight the sparkle of a crystal lake,
+and would hasten toward it as fast as their jaded animals could carry
+them, only to find that it was a mirage. Then the horrors preliminary to
+death by thirst began: the animals, their blackened tongues protruding
+from their mouths, staggered and fell, and rose no more; the women grew
+delirious and babbled incoherent nothings; even the hardiest of the men
+stumbled as they marched, or tried to frighten away by shouts and
+gestures the fantastic shapes which danced before them. At last there
+came a morning when they could go no farther. Such of them as still
+retained their faculties felt that it was the end--that is, all but
+Jedediah Smith. He was of the breed which does not know the meaning of
+defeat, because they are never defeated until they are dead. Loading
+himself with the empty water-bottles, he set out alone into the desert,
+determined to follow one of the numerous buffalo trails, for he knew
+that sooner or later it must lead him to water of some sort, even if to
+nothing more than a buffalo-wallow. Racked with the fever of thirst, his
+legs shaking from exhaustion, he plodded on, under the pitiless sun,
+mile after mile, hour after hour, until, struggling to the summit of a
+low divide, he saw the channel of a stream in the valley beneath him.
+The expedition was saved. Stumbling and sliding down the slope in his
+haste to quench his intolerable thirst, he came to a sudden halt on the
+river-bank. It was nothing but an empty watercourse into which he was
+staring--the river had run dry! The shock of such a disappointment would
+have driven most men stark, staring mad. Only for a moment, however, was
+the veteran frontiersman staggered; he knew the character of many
+streams in the West--that often their waters run underground a few feet
+below the surface, and in a moment he was on his knees digging
+frantically in the soft sand. Soon the sand began to grow moist, and
+then the coveted water slowly began to filter upward into the little
+excavation he had hollowed. Throwing himself flat on the ground, he
+buried his burning face in the muddy water--and as he did so a shower of
+arrows whistled about him. A war-party of Comanches, unobserved, had
+followed and surrounded him. He had but exchanged the danger of death by
+thirst for the far more dreadful fate of death by torture. Though struck
+by several of the arrows, he held the Indians off until he had filled
+his water-bottles; then, retreating slowly, taking advantage of every
+particle of cover, as only a veteran plainsman can, blazing away with
+his unerring rifle whenever an Indian was incautious enough to show a
+portion of his figure, Smith succeeded in getting back to his companions
+with the precious water. With their dead animals for breastworks, the
+pioneers succeeded in holding the Indians at bay for six-and-thirty
+hours, but on the second night the redskins, heavily reinforced, rushed
+them in the night, ten of the men and the two women being killed in the
+hand-to-hand fight which ensued, and the few horses which remained alive
+being stampeded. I rather imagine that the women were shot by their own
+husbands, for the women of the frontier always preferred death to
+capture by these fiends in paint and feathers.
+
+How Smith, calling all his craft and experience as a plainsman to his
+assistance, managed to lead his eight surviving companions through the
+encircling Indians by night, and how, wounded, horseless, and
+provisionless as they were, he succeeded in guiding them across the
+ranges to San Bernardino, is but another example of this forgotten
+hero's courage and resource. Having lost everything that he possessed,
+for the whole of his scanty savings had been invested in the ill-fated
+expedition, Smith, with such of his men as were strong enough to
+accompany him, set out to rejoin the party he had left some months
+previously at Mission San Jose. Scarcely had he set foot within that
+settlement, however, before he was arrested and taken under escort to
+Monterey, where he was taken before the governor, who, he found to his
+surprise and dismay, was no other than his old enemy of San Diego, Don
+Jose Echeandia. This time nothing would convince Echeandia that Smith
+was not the leader of an expedition which had territorial designs on
+California, and he promptly ordered him to be taken to prison and kept
+in solitary confinement as a dangerous conspirator. Thereupon Smith
+resorted to the same expedient he had used so successfully, and begged
+the captains of the American vessels in the harbor of Monterey for
+protection. So forcible were their representations that Echeandia
+finally agreed to release Smith on his swearing to leave California for
+good and all. To this proposal Smith willingly agreed and took the oath
+required of him, but, upon being released from prison, was astounded to
+learn that the governor had given orders that he must set out
+alone--that his hunters would not be permitted to accompany him. His and
+their protestations were disregarded. Smith must start at once and
+unaccompanied. He was given a horse and saddle, provisions, blankets, a
+rifle--and nothing more. It was a sentence of death which Echeandia had
+had pronounced on this American frontiersman, and both he and Smith knew
+it. Without having committed any crime--unless it was a crime to be an
+American--Jedediah Smith was driven out of the territory of a supposedly
+friendly nation, and told that he was at perfect liberty to make his way
+across two thousand miles of wilderness to the nearest American
+outpost--if he could.
+
+Striking back into that range of the Sierras which lies southeast of
+Fresno, Smith succeeded in crossing them for a fourth time, evidently
+intending to make his way back to his old stamping-ground on the Great
+Salt Lake. Our knowledge of what occurred after he had crossed the
+ranges for the last time is confined to tales told to the settlers in
+later years by the Indians. While emerging from the terrible Death
+Valley, where hundreds of emigrants were to lose their lives during the
+rush to the gold-fields a quarter of a century later, he was attacked at
+a water-hole by a band of Indians. For many years afterward the
+Comanches were wont to tell with admiration how this lone pale-face,
+coming from out of the setting sun, had knelt behind his dead horse and
+held them off with his deadly rifle all through one scorching summer's
+day. But when nightfall came they crept up very silently under cover of
+the darkness and rushed him. His scalp was very highly valued, for it
+had cost the lives of twelve Comanche braves.
+
+But Jedediah Smith did not die in vain. Tales of the rich and virgin
+country which he had found beyond the ranges flew as though with wings
+across the land; soon other pioneers made their way over the mountains
+by the trails which he had blazed; long wagon-trains crawled westward
+by the routes which he had taken; strange bands of horsemen pitched
+their tents in the valleys where he had camped. The mission bells grew
+silent; the monk in his woollen robe and the _caballero_ in his
+gold-laced jacket passed away; settlements of hardy, energetic,
+nasal-voiced folk from beyond the Sierras sprang up everywhere. Then one
+day a new flag floated over the presidio in Monterey--a flag that was
+not to be pulled down. The American republic had reached the western
+ocean, and thus was fulfilled the dream of Jedediah Smith, the man who
+showed the way.
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAG OF THE BEAR
+
+
+Because the battles which marked its establishment were really only
+skirmishes, in which but an insignificant number of lives were lost, and
+because it boasted less than a thousand citizens all told, certain of
+our historians have been so undiscerning as to assert that the Bear Flag
+Republic was nothing but a travesty and a farce. Therein they are wrong.
+Though it is doubtless true that the handful of frontiersmen who raised
+their home-made flag, with its emblem of a grizzly bear, over the
+Californian presidio of Sonoma on that July morning in 1846 took
+themselves much more seriously than the circumstances warranted, it is
+equally true that their action averted the seizure of California by
+England, and by forcing the hand of the administration at Washington was
+primarily responsible for adding what is now California, Nevada,
+Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more than half of Wyoming and Colorado to
+the Union. The series of intrigues and affrays and insurrections which
+resulted in the Pacific coast becoming American instead of European
+form a picturesque, exciting, and virtually unwritten chapter in our
+national history, a chapter in which furtive secret agents and haughty
+_caballeros_, pioneers in fringed buckskin, and naval officers in
+gold-laced uniforms all played their greater or their lesser parts.
+
+To fully understand the conditions which led up to the "Bear Flag War,"
+as it has been called, it is necessary to go back for a moment to the
+first quarter of the last century, when the territory of the United
+States ended at the Rocky Mountains and the red-white-and-green flag of
+Mexico floated over the whole of that vast, rich region which lay
+beyond. Under the Mexican regime the territory lying west of the Sierra
+Nevadas was divided into the provinces of Alta (or Upper) and Baja (or
+Lower) California, the population of the two provinces about 1845
+totalling not more than fifteen thousand souls, nine-tenths of whom were
+Mexicans, Spaniards, and Indians, the rest American and European
+settlers. The foreigners, among whom Americans greatly predominated,
+soon became influential out of all proportion to their numbers. This was
+particularly true of the Americans, who, solidified by common interests,
+common dangers, and common ambitions, obtained large grants of land,
+built houses which in certain cases were little short of forts,
+frequently married into the most aristocratic of the Californian
+families, and before long practically controlled the commerce of the
+entire territory.
+
+It was only to be expected, therefore, that the Mexicans should become
+more and more apprehensive of American ambitions. Nor did President
+Jackson's offer, in 1835, to buy Southern California--an offer which was
+promptly refused--serve to do other than strengthen these apprehensions.
+And to make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Commodore T.
+ApCatesby Jones, having heard a rumor that war had broken out between
+the United States and Mexico, and having reason to believe that a
+British force was preparing to seize California, landed a force of
+bluejackets and marines, and on October 21, 1842, raised the American
+flag over the presidio at Monterey. Although Commodore Jones, finding he
+had acted upon misinformation, lowered the flag next day and tendered an
+apology to the provincial officials, the incident did not tend to
+relieve the tension which existed between the Mexicans and the
+Americans, for it emphasized the ease with which the country could be
+seized, and hinted with unmistakable plainness at the ultimate
+intentions of the United States. That our government intended to annex
+the Californias at the first opportunity that offered the Mexicans were
+perfectly aware, for, aroused by the descriptions of the unbelievable
+beauty and fertility of the country as sent back by those daring souls
+who had made their way across the ranges, the hearts of our people were
+set upon its acquisition. The great Bay of San Francisco, large enough
+to shelter the navies of the world and the gateway to the Orient, the
+fruitful, sun-kissed land beyond the Sierras, the political domination
+of America, and the commercial domination of the Pacific--such were the
+visions which inspired our people and the motives which animated our
+leaders, and which were intensified by the fear of England's designs
+upon this western land.
+
+As the numbers of the American settlers gradually increased, the
+jealousy and suspicion of the Mexican officials became more pronounced.
+As early as 1826 they had driven Captain Jedediah Smith, the first
+American to make his way to California by the overland route, back into
+the mountains, in the midst of winter, without companions and without
+provisions, to be killed by the Indians. In 1840 more than one hundred
+American settlers were suddenly arrested by the Mexican authorities on
+a trumped-up charge of having plotted against the government, marched
+under military guard to Monterey, and confined in the prison there under
+circumstances of the most barbarous cruelty, some fifty of them being
+eventually deported to Mexico in chains. Thomas O. Larkin, the American
+consul at Monterey, upon visiting the prisoners in the local jail where
+they were confined, found that the cells had no floors, and that the
+poor fellows stood in mud and water to their ankles. Sixty of the
+prisoners he found crowded into a single room, twenty feet long and
+eighteen wide, in which they were so tightly packed that they could not
+all sit at the same time, much less lie down. The room being without
+windows or other means of ventilation, the air quickly became so fetid
+that they were able to live only by dividing themselves into platoons
+which took turns in standing at the door and getting a few breaths of
+air through the bars. These men, whose only crime was that they were
+Americans, were confined in this hell-hole, without food except such as
+their friends were able to smuggle in to them by bribing the sentries,
+for eight days. And this treatment was accorded them, remember, not
+because they were conspirators--for no one knew better than the Mexican
+authorities that they were not--but because it seemed the easiest means
+of driving them out of the country. Throughout the half-dozen years that
+ensued American settlers were subjected to a systematic campaign of
+annoyance, persecution, and imprisonment on innumerable frivolous
+pretexts, being released only on their promise to leave California
+immediately. By 1845, therefore, the harassed Americans, in sheer
+desperation, were ready to grasp the first opportunity which presented
+itself to end this intolerable tyranny for good and all.
+
+It was not only the outrageous treatment to which they were subjected,
+however, nor the weakness and instability of the government under which
+they were living, nor even the insecurity of their lives and property
+and the discouragements to industry, which led the American settlers to
+decide to end Mexican rule in the Californias. Texas had recently been
+annexed by the United States against the protests of Mexico, an American
+army of invasion was massed along the Rio Grande, and war was certain.
+It required no extraordinary degree of intelligence, then, to foresee
+that the coming hostilities would almost inevitably result in Mexico
+losing her Californian provinces. Now it was a matter of common
+knowledge that the Mexican Government was seriously considering the
+advisability of ceding the Californias to Great Britain, and thus
+accomplishing the threefold purpose of wiping out the large Mexican debt
+due to British bankers, of winning the friendship and possibly the
+active assistance of England in the approaching war with the United
+States, and of preventing the Californias from falling into American
+hands. The danger was, therefore, that England would step in before us.
+Nor was the danger any imaginary one. Her ships were watching our ships
+on the Mexican coast, and her secret agents who infested the country
+were keeping their fingers constantly on the pulse of public opinion.
+Though it remains to this day a matter of conjecture as to just how far
+England was prepared to go to obtain this territory, there is little
+doubt that she had laid her plans for its acquisition in one way or
+another. If California was to be added to the Union, therefore, it must
+be by a sudden and daring stroke.
+
+Meanwhile the authorities at Washington had not been idle. Though Larkin
+was ostensibly the American consul at Monterey and nothing more, in
+reality he was clothed with far greater powers, having been hurried from
+Washington to California for the express purpose of secretly encouraging
+an insurrectionary movement among the American settlers, and of keeping
+our government informed of the plans of the Mexicans and British.
+Receiving information that a powerful British fleet--the largest, in
+fact, which had ever been seen in Pacific waters--was about to sail for
+the coast of California, the administration promptly issued orders for a
+squadron of war-ships under Commodore John Drake Sloat to proceed at
+full speed to the Pacific coast, the commander being given secret
+instructions to back up Consul Larkin in any action which he might take,
+and upon receiving word that the United States had declared war against
+Mexico to immediately occupy the Californian ports. Then ensued one of
+the most momentous races in history, over a course extending half-way
+round the world, the contestants being the war-fleets of the two most
+powerful maritime nations, and the prize seven hundred thousand square
+miles of immensely rich territory and the mastery of the Pacific.
+Commodore Sloat laid his course around the Horn, while the English
+commander, Admiral Trowbridge, chose the route through the Indian Ocean.
+The first thing he saw as he entered the Bay of Monterey was the
+American squadron lying at anchor in the harbor.
+
+Never was there a better example of that form of territorial expansion
+which has come to be known as "pacific penetration" than the American
+conquest of California; never were the real designs of a nation and the
+schemes of its secret agents more successfully hidden. Consul Larkin, as
+I have already said, was quietly working, under confidential
+instructions from the State Department, to bring about a revolution in
+California without overt aid from the United States; the Californian
+coast towns lay under the guns of American war-ships, whose commanders
+likewise had secret instructions to land marines and take possession of
+the country at the first opportunity that presented itself; and, as
+though to complete the chain of American emissaries, early in 1846 there
+came riding down from the Sierran passes, at the head of what pretended
+to be an exploring and scientific expedition, the man who was to set the
+machinery of conquest actually in motion.
+
+The commander of the expedition was a young captain of engineers, named
+John Charles Fremont, who, as the result of two former journeys of
+exploration into the wilderness beyond the Rockies, had already won the
+sobriquet of "The Pathfinder." Born in Savannah, of a French father and
+a Virginian mother, he was a strange combination of aristocrat and
+frontiersman. Dashing, debonair, fearless, reckless, a magnificent
+horseman, a dead-shot, a hardy and intrepid explorer, equally at home
+at a White House ball or at an Indian powwow, he was probably the most
+picturesque and romantic figure in the United States. These
+characteristics, combined with extreme good looks, a gallant manner, and
+the great public reputation he had won by the vivid and interesting
+accounts he had published of his two earlier journeys, had completely
+captured the popular imagination, so that the young explorer had become
+a national idol. In the spring of 1845 he was despatched by the National
+Government on a third expedition, which had as its ostensible object the
+discovery of a practicable route from the Rocky Mountains to the mouth
+of the Columbia River, but which was really to lend encouragement to the
+American settlers in California in any secession movement which they
+might be planning and to afford them active assistance should war be
+declared. Just how far the government had instructed Fremont to go in
+fomenting a revolution will probably never be known, but there is every
+reason to believe that his father-in-law, United States Senator Benton,
+had advised him to seize California if an opportunity presented itself,
+and to trust to luck (and the senator's influence) that the government
+would approve rather than repudiate his action.
+
+[Illustration: The Sacramento Valley in 1845.
+
+From a steel engraving of the period.]
+
+All told, Fremont's expedition numbered barely threescore men--no
+great force, surely, with which to overthrow a government and win an
+empire. In advance of the little column rode the four Delaware braves
+whom Fremont had brought with him from the East to act as scouts and
+trackers, and whose cunning and woodcraft he was willing to match
+against that of the Indians of the plains. Close on their heels rode the
+Pathfinder himself, clad from neck to heel in fringed buckskin, at his
+belt a heavy army revolver and one of those vicious, double-bladed
+knives to which Colonel Bowie, of Texas, had already given his name, and
+on his head a jaunty, broad-brimmed hat, from beneath which his long,
+yellow hair fell down upon his shoulders. At his bridle arm rode Kit
+Carson, the most famous of the plainsmen, whose exploits against the
+Indians were even then familiar stories in every American household.
+Behind these two stretched out the rank and file of the
+expedition--bronze-faced, bearded, resolute men, well mounted, heavily
+armed, and all wearing the serviceable dress of the frontier.
+
+Fremont found the American settlers scattered through the interior in a
+state of considerable alarm, for rumors had reached them that the
+Mexican Government had decided to drive them out of the country, and
+that orders had been issued to the provincial authorities to incite the
+Indians against them. As they dwelt for the most part in small, isolated
+communities, scattered over a great extent of country, it was obvious
+that, if these rumors were true, their lives were in imminent peril.
+They had every reason to expect, moreover, that the news of war between
+Mexico and the United States would bring down on them those forms of
+punishment and retaliation for which the Mexicans were notorious. They
+were confronted, therefore, with the alternative of abandoning the homes
+they had built and the fields they had tilled and seeking refuge in
+flight across the mountains, or of remaining to face those perils
+inseparable from border warfare. Nor did it take them long to decide
+upon resistance, for they were not of the breed which runs away.
+
+Leaving most of his men encamped in the foot-hills, Fremont pushed on to
+Monterey, then the most important settlement in Upper California, and
+the seat of the provincial government, where he called upon Don Jose
+Castro, the Mexican commandant, explained the purposes of his
+expedition, and requested permission for his party to proceed northward
+to the Columbia through the San Joaquin valley. This permission Castro
+grudgingly gave, but scarcely had Fremont broken camp before the
+Mexican, who had hastily gathered an overwhelming force of soldiers and
+vaqueros, set out upon the trail of the Americans with the avowed
+purpose of surprising and exterminating them. Fortunately for the
+Americans, Consul Larkin, getting wind of Castro's intended treachery,
+succeeded in warning Fremont, who instead of taking his chances in a
+battle on the plains against a greatly superior force, suddenly occupied
+the precipitous hill lying back of and commanding Monterey, known as the
+Hawk's Peak, intrenched himself there, and then sent word to Castro to
+come and take him. Although the Mexican commander made a military
+demonstration before the American intrenchments, he was wise enough to
+refrain from attempting to carry a position of such great natural
+strength and defended by such unerring shots as were Fremont's
+frontiersmen. Four days later Fremont, feeling that there was nothing to
+be gained by holding the position longer, and confident that the
+Mexicans would be only too glad to see his back, quietly broke camp one
+night and resumed his march toward Oregon.
+
+Scarcely had he crossed the Oregon line, however, before he was
+overtaken by a messenger on a reeking horse, who had been despatched by
+Consul Larkin to inform him that an officer with urgent despatches from
+Washington had arrived at Monterey and was hastening northward to
+overtake him. Fremont immediately turned back, and on the shores of the
+Greater Klamath Lake met Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, who had
+travelled from New York to Vera Cruz by steamer, had crossed Mexico to
+Mazatlan on horseback, and had been brought up the Pacific coast to
+Monterey in an American war-ship. The exact contents of the despatches
+with which Gillespie had been intrusted will probably never be known,
+for having reason to believe that his mission was suspected by the
+Mexicans, and being fearful of arrest, he had destroyed the despatches
+after committing their contents to memory. These contents he
+communicated to Fremont, and the fact that the latter immediately turned
+his horse's head Californiawards is the best proof that they contained
+definite instructions for him to stir up the American settlers to revolt
+and so gain California for the Union by what some one has aptly
+described as "neutral conquest."
+
+The news of Fremont's return spread among the scattered settlers as
+though by wireless, and from all parts of the country hardy, determined
+men came pouring into camp to offer him their services. But his hands
+were tied. His instructions from Washington, while ordering him to lend
+his encouragement to an insurrectionary movement, expressly forbade him
+to take the initiative in any hostilities until he received word that
+war with Mexico had been declared--and that word had not yet come. These
+facts he communicated to the settlers. Fremont's assurance that the
+American Government sympathized with their aspirations for independence,
+and could be counted upon to back up any action they might take to
+secure it, was all that the settlers needed. On the evening of June 13,
+1846, some fifty Americans living along the Sacramento River met at the
+ranch of an old Indian-fighter and bear-hunter named Captain Meredith,
+and under his leadership rode across the country in a northwesterly
+direction through the night. Dawn found them close to the presidio of
+Sonoma, which was the residence of the Mexican general Vallejo and the
+most important military post north of San Francisco. Leaving their
+horses in the shelter of the forest, the Americans stole silently
+forward in the dimness of the early morning, overpowered the sentries,
+burst in the gates, and had taken possession of the town and surrounded
+the barracks before the garrison was fairly awake. General Vallejo and
+his officers were captured in their beds, and were sent under guard to
+a fortified ranch known as Sutter's fort, which was situated some
+distance in the interior. In addition to the prisoners, nine field-guns,
+several hundred stands of arms, and a considerable supply of ammunition
+fell into the hands of the Americans. The first blow had been struck in
+the conquest of California.
+
+The question now arose as to what they should do with the town they had
+captured, for Fremont had no authority to take it over for the United
+States, or to muster the men who took it into the American service. The
+embattled settlers found themselves, in fact, to be in the embarrassing
+position of being men without a country. After a council of war they
+decided to organize a _pro-tem_. government of their own to administer
+the territory until such time as it should be formally annexed to the
+United States. I doubt if a government was ever established so quickly
+and under such rough-and-ready circumstances. After an informal ballot
+it was announced that William B. Ide, a leading spirit among the
+settlers, had been unanimously elected governor and commander-in-chief
+"of the independent forces"; John H. Nash, who had been a justice of the
+peace in the East before he had emigrated to California, being named
+chief justice of the new republic.
+
+For a full-fledged nation not to have a flag of its own was, of course,
+unthinkable; so, as most of its citizens were hunters and adventurers,
+when some one suggested that the grizzly bear, because of its
+indomitable courage and tenacity and its ferocity when aroused, would
+make a peculiarly appropriate emblem for the new banner, the suggestion
+was adopted with enthusiasm and a committee of two was appointed to put
+it into immediate execution. A young settler named William Ford, who had
+been imprisoned by the Mexicans in the jail at Sonoma, and who had been
+released when his countrymen captured the place; and William Todd, an
+emigrant from Illinois, were the makers of the flag. On a piece of
+unbleached cotton cloth, a yard wide and a yard and a half long, they
+painted the rude figure of a grizzly bear ready to give battle. This
+strange banner they raised, at noon on June 14, amid a storm of cheers
+and a salute from the captured cannon, on the staff where so recently
+had floated the flag of Mexico, and from it the Bear Flag Republic took
+its name.
+
+Scarcely had Fremont received the news of the capture of Sonoma and the
+proclamation of the Bear Flag Republic than word reached him that a
+large force of Mexicans was on its way to retake the town. Disregarding
+his instructions from Washington, and throwing all caution to the
+winds, Fremont instantly decided to stake everything on giving his
+support to his imperilled countrymen. His own men reinforced by a number
+of volunteers, he arrived at Sonoma after a forced march of thirty-six
+hours, only to find the Bear Flag men still in possession. The number of
+the enemy, as well as their intentions, had, it seems, been greatly
+exaggerated, the force in question being but a small party of troopers
+which Castro had despatched to the Mission of San Rafael, on the north
+shore of San Francisco Bay, to prevent several hundred cavalry remounts
+which were stabled there from falling into the hands of the Americans.
+Realizing the value of these horses to the settlers in the guerilla
+campaign, which seemed likely to ensue, Fremont succeeded in capturing
+them after a sharp skirmish with the Mexicans. Hurrying back to Sonoma,
+he learned that during his absence Ide and his men had repulsed an
+attack by a body of Mexican regulars, under General de la Torre,
+reinforced by a band of ruffians and desperadoes led by an outlaw named
+Padilla, inflicting so sharp a defeat that the only enemies left in that
+part of the country were the scattered fugitives from this force; these
+being hunted down and summarily dealt with by the frontiersmen. Having
+now irrevocably committed himself to the insurgent cause, and feeling
+that, if he were to be hanged, it might as well be for a sheep as for a
+lamb, Fremont decided on the capture of San Francisco. The San Francisco
+of 1846 had little in common with the San Francisco of to-day, remember,
+for on the site where the great Western metropolis now stands there was
+nothing but a village consisting of a few-score adobe houses and the
+Mexican presidio, or fort, the latter containing a considerable supply
+of arms and ammunition. Accompanied by Kit Carson, Lieutenant Gillespie,
+and a small detachment of his men, Fremont crossed the Bay of San
+Francisco in a sailing-boat by night, and took the Mexican garrison so
+completely by surprise that they surrendered without firing a shot. The
+gateway to the Orient was ours.
+
+Fremont now prepared to take the offensive against Castro, who was
+retreating on Los Angeles, but just as he was about to start on his
+march southward a messenger brought the great news that Admiral Sloat,
+having received word that hostilities had commenced along the Rio
+Grande, had landed his marines at Monterey, and on July 7, to the
+thunder of saluting war-ships, had raised the American flag over the
+presidio, and had proclaimed the annexation of California to the Union.
+When the Bear Flag men learned the great news they went into a frenzy of
+enthusiasm; whooping, shouting, singing snatches of patriotic songs,
+and firing their pistols in the air. Quickly the standard of the
+fighting grizzly was lowered and the flag of stripes and stars hoisted
+in its place, while the rough-clad, bearded settlers, who had waited so
+long and risked so much that this very thing might come to pass, sang
+the Doxology with tears running down their faces. As the folds of the
+familiar banner caught the breeze and floated out over the flat-roofed
+houses of the little town, Ide, the late chief of the three-weeks
+republic, jumping on a powder barrel, swung his sombrero in the air and
+shouted: "Now, boys, all together, three cheers for the Union!" The
+moist eyes and the lumps in the throats brought by the sight of the old
+flag did not prevent the little band of frontiersmen from responding
+with a roar which made the windows of Sonoma rattle.
+
+Now, as a matter of fact, Admiral Sloat had placed himself in a very
+embarrassing position, for he had based his somewhat precipitate action
+in seizing California on what he had every reason to believe was
+authentic news that war between the United States and Mexico had
+actually begun, but which proved next day to be merely an unconfirmed
+rumor. If a state of war really did exist, then both Sloat and Fremont
+were justified in their aggressions; but if it did not, then they might
+have considerable difficulty in explaining their action in commencing
+hostilities against a nation with which we were at peace. So Sloat began
+"to get cold feet," asserting that he was forced to act as he had
+because he had received reliable information that the British, whose
+fleet was lying off Monterey, were on the point of seizing California
+themselves. Fremont, on his part, claimed to have acted in defence of
+the American settlers in the interior, who without his assistance would
+have been massacred by the Mexicans. At this juncture Commodore Stockton
+arrived at Monterey in the frigate _Congress_, and as Sloat was now
+thoroughly frightened and only too glad to transfer the responsibility
+he had assumed to other shoulders, Stockton, who was the junior officer,
+asked for and readily obtained permission to assume command of the
+operations. Fremont, who had reached Monterey with several hundred
+riflemen, was appointed commander-in-chief of the land forces by
+Stockton, and was ordered to embark his men on one of the war-ships and
+proceed at once to capture San Diego, at that time by far the most
+important place in California. Stockton himself, after raising the
+American flag over San Francisco and Santa Barbara, sailed down the
+coast to San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, where he disembarked a
+force of bluejackets and marines for the taking of the latter city,
+within which the Mexican commander, General Castro, had shut himself up
+with a considerable number of troops, and where he promised to make a
+desperate resistance.
+
+As Stockton came marching up from San Pedro at the head of his column he
+was met by a Mexican carrying a flag of truce and bearing a message from
+Castro warning the American commander in the most solemn terms that if
+his forces dared to set foot within Los Angeles they would be going to
+their own funerals. "Present my compliments to General Castro," Stockton
+told the messenger, "and ask him to have the kindness to have the church
+bells tolled for our funerals at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, for at
+that hour I shall enter the city." Upon receipt of this disconcerting
+message Castro slipped out of Los Angeles that night, without firing a
+shot in its defence, and at eight o'clock on the following morning,
+Stockton, just as he had promised, came riding in at the head of his
+men.
+
+After garrisoning the surrounding towns and ridding the countryside of
+prowling bands of Mexican guerillas, Stockton officially proclaimed
+California a Territory of the United States, instituted a civil
+government along American lines, and appointed Fremont as the first
+Territorial governor. Before the year 1846 had drawn to a close these
+two Americans, the one a rough-and-ready sailor, the other a youthful
+and impetuous soldier, assisted by a few hundred marines and
+frontiersmen, had completed the conquest and pacification of a territory
+having a greater area and greater natural resources than those of all
+the countries conquered by Napoleon put together. Thus ended the happy,
+lazy, luxury-loving society of Spanish California. Another society, less
+luxurious, less light-hearted, less contented, but more energetic, more
+progressive, and better fitted for the upbuilding of a nation, took its
+place. There are still to be found in California a few men, white-haired
+and stoop-shouldered now, who were themselves actors in this drama I
+have described, and who delight to tell of those stirring days when
+Fremont and his frontiersmen came riding down from the passes, and the
+embattled settlers of Sonoma founded their short-lived Republic of the
+Bear.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS
+
+
+In one of the public squares of San Jose, which is the capital of Costa
+Rica, there is a marble statue of a stern-faced young woman, with her
+foot planted firmly on a gentleman's neck. The young woman is symbolic
+of the Republic of Costa Rica, and the gentleman ground beneath her heel
+is supposed to represent the American filibuster and soldier of fortune,
+William Walker. Now, before going any farther, justice requires me to
+explain that Walker's downfall was not due to Costa Rica, as the
+citizens of that little republic would like the world to believe, and as
+the bombastic statue in the plaza of its capital would lead one to
+suppose, but to a far greater and richer power, whose victories were won
+with dollars instead of bayonets, whose capital was New York City, and
+whose name was Cornelius Vanderbilt.
+
+To the younger generation the name of William Walker carries no
+significance, but to the gray-heads whose recollections antedate the
+Civil War the mention of it brings back a flood of thrilling memories,
+while throughout the length and breadth of that wild region lying
+between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Isthmus of Panama it is still
+a synonym for unfaltering courage. His weakness was ambition; his fault
+was failure. Had he succeeded in realizing his ambitions--and he failed
+only by the narrowest of margins--he would have been lauded as another
+Cortez, and would have received stars and crosses instead of bullets.
+Had his life not been cut short by a Honduran firing-party, it is
+possible, indeed probable, that, instead of there being six states in
+Central America there would be but one, and in that one the institution
+of slavery might still exist. Though I have scant sympathy with the
+motives which animated Walker, and though I believe that his death was
+for the best good of the Central American peoples, he was the very
+antithesis of the cutthroat and blackguard and outlaw which he has been
+painted, being, on the contrary, a very brave and honest gentleman, of
+whom his countrymen have no reason to feel ashamed, and that is why I am
+going to tell his story.
+
+The eldest son of a Scotch banker, Walker was born in 1824 in Nashville,
+Tennessee. His father, a stiff-necked Presbyterian who held morning and
+evening prayers, asked an interminable grace before every meal, and
+took his family to church three times on Sunday, had set his heart on
+his son entering the ministry, and it was with a pulpit and parish in
+view that young Walker was educated. By the time that he was ready to
+enter the theological school, however, he decided that he preferred M.D.
+instead of D.D. after his name, whereupon, much to his father's
+disappointment, he insisted on taking the medical course at the
+University of Tennessee, following it up by two years at the University
+of Edinburgh. Thoroughly equipped to practise his chosen profession, he
+opened an office in Philadelphia, but in a few months the routine of a
+doctor's life palled upon him, so, taking down his brass door-plate, he
+went to New Orleans, where, after two years of study, he was admitted to
+the bar. But he soon found that briefs and summonses were scarcely more
+to his liking than prescriptions and pills, so, with the prompt decision
+which was one of his most marked characteristics, he closed his
+law-office and obtained a position as editorial writer on a New Orleans
+newspaper. Within a year the restlessness which had led him to abandon
+the church, medicine, and the bar caused him to give up journalism in
+its turn. At this time, 1852, the Californian gold fever was at its mad
+height, and to the Pacific coast were pouring streams of
+fortune-seekers and adventure-lovers from every quarter of the globe.
+One of the latter was Walker, and it was while editor of the San
+Francisco _Herald_, when only twenty-eight years old, that his amazing
+career really began.
+
+Walker was not of the sort who could content himself for any length of
+time within the stuffy walls of an editorial sanctum. His fingers were
+made to grasp something more virile than the pen. Nor did he make any
+attempt to win a fortune with pick and shovel in the gold fields. His
+ambitions were neither intellectual nor mercenary, but political, for
+from his boyhood days in Nashville he had dreamed, as all boys worth
+their salt do dream, of some day founding a state, with himself as its
+ruler, in that wild and savage region below the Rio Grande. Enlisting
+half a hundred kindred souls from the hordes of the reckless, the
+adventurous, and the needy which were pouring into California by boat
+and wagon-train, Walker chartered a small vessel and set sail from San
+Francisco for the coast of Mexico. His avowed object was a purely
+humanitarian one: to protect the women and children living along the
+Mexican frontier from massacre by the Indians, the state of Sonora being
+at that time more under the dominion of the Apaches than it was under
+that of Mexico. But it was not the protection of the women and
+children--though they needed protection badly enough, goodness
+knows--which led Walker to embark on this hare-brained expedition. He
+was lured southward by a dream of empire, an empire of which he should
+be the ruler, and which should be founded on slavery. By this time,
+remember, the slavery question in the United States had become
+exceedingly acute, the future of the institution on this continent
+largely depending upon whether the next States admitted to the Union
+should be slave or free. Walker was a sincere, even fanatical, believer
+in slavery. Born and reared in an atmosphere of slavery, to Walker it
+was as sacred, as God-given an institution as the Fast of Ramadan is to
+the Moslem or the Feast of the Passover to the Jew. Convinced that
+friction over this question would sooner or later force the
+slave-holding States to secede from the Union, he determined to extend
+the area of slavery by conquering that portion of northern Mexico
+immediately adjacent to the United States, to establish an independent
+government there, and eventually to annex his country to the South, thus
+counteracting the growing movement for abolition, which, with the
+admission of new Northern territories, already hinted at the overthrow
+of slavery.
+
+Financed by Southern friends whose motives were probably considerably
+less altruistic than his own, Walker landed at Cape San Lucas, the
+extreme southern point of the Mexican territory of Southern California,
+in October, 1852, with an "army of invasion" of forty-five men. Instead
+of hastening to protect the women and children of whom he had talked so
+feelingly, he sailed up the coast to the territorial capital of La Paz,
+which he seized, where he issued a proclamation announcing the
+annexation of the neighboring state of Sonora, in which he had not yet
+set foot, giving to the two states the name of the "Republic of Sonora,"
+and proclaiming himself its first president. As soon as the news of this
+initial success reached San Francisco, Walker's sympathizers there
+busied themselves in recruiting reinforcements, three hundred
+desperadoes who boasted that they were afraid of nothing "on two feet or
+four" being shipped to him at La Paz a few weeks later. These men were
+looked upon as hard cases even in the San Francisco of the early
+fifties, and, if they had not consented to leave the country to assist
+Walker, many of them would probably have left it sooner or later at the
+end of a rope in the hands of the local vigilance committee. When this
+force of scoundrels arrived at La Paz and found themselves under the
+command of a quiet, mild-mannered, beardless youth of twenty-eight,
+instead of the brawny, foul-mouthed, swashbuckling leader whom they had
+expected, they promptly hatched a scheme to blow up the magazine, seize
+the ship and the stores of the expedition in the ensuing confusion, and
+make their way back to the United States, leaving Walker to shift for
+himself. Warning of the conspiracy reaching him, however, Walker
+displayed for the first time those traits which were later to make his
+name a word of terror in the ears of men who bragged that they feared
+neither God nor man. Arresting the ringleaders, he had two of them tried
+by court-martial and shot within an hour; two of the others he ordered
+flogged and drummed out of camp, to take their chances among the hostile
+Mexicans and Indians. But, though this act gained Walker the fear and
+respect of his followers, the newcomers among them had no stomach for a
+leader who could punish, so when he called for volunteers to accompany
+him in the conquest of Sonora less than a hundred men offered to follow
+him.
+
+From the very first the shadow of failure hung over the enterprise. To
+begin with, there is no more savage and desolate region on the American
+continent than the peninsula of Lower California, it being so barren and
+destitute that even the lizards have to scramble for an existence.
+Mexicans and Indians hung upon the flanks of the little column night and
+day, as buzzards follow a dying steer. There was neither medicine nor
+medical instruments with the expedition, and the wounded died from lack
+of the most elementary care. Their shoes gave out and the men marched
+bare-foot over sun-scorched rocks and needle cactus, leaving a trail of
+crimson behind them in the sand. Their provisions were soon exhausted,
+and their only food was beef which they killed on the march. For years
+afterward the route of that ill-fated expedition could be traced from La
+Paz to the Colorado River by the bleaching skeletons of the men who fell
+by the way. By the time the head of the Gulf of California was reached
+the expedition had dwindled to barely twoscore men. It was no longer a
+question of conquering Sonora; it was a question of getting back to the
+States alive.
+
+With sinking heart, but imperturbable face, Walker led his little band
+of starving, fever-racked, exhausted men toward the Californian line.
+Three miles of road led through a mountain pass into the United States
+and safety. But the pass was held by a force of Mexican soldiery under
+Colonel Melendrez, and his Indian allies were scattered over the plain
+below. And, as though to give a final touch of irony to the situation in
+which Walker and his men found themselves, from their position on the
+Mexican hillside they could look across into American territory, could
+see the American flag, their flag, fluttering over the military post
+south of San Diego, could even see the sun glinting upon the bits and
+sabres of the troop of American cavalry drawn up along the border. Four
+Indians bearing a flag of truce approached. They bore a message from the
+Mexican commander to the filibusters. If they would surrender their
+leader and give up their arms, Melendrez sent word, they would be
+permitted to leave the country unmolested. But after you have fought and
+bled and marched and starved with a man for a year, you are not likely
+to abandon him, particularly when the end is in sight, so they sent back
+word to Melendrez that if he wanted their arms he would have to come and
+take them. Meanwhile the American commander, Major McKinstry, had drawn
+up his troopers along the boundary-line and awaited the result of the
+unequal struggle like an umpire at a foot-ball game. Walker, who knew
+perfectly well that he deserved no aid from the United States, and that
+he would get none, appreciated that if he was to get out of this
+predicament alive it must be by his own wits. Concealing a dozen of his
+men among the rocks and sage-brush which lined the road on either side,
+with the remainder of his force he pretended to beat a panic-stricken
+retreat. Melendrez, confident that it was now all over but the shouting,
+swept down the road in pursuit. But as the Mexicans rode into the ambush
+which Walker had prepared for them the hidden filibusters emptied a
+dozen saddles at a single volley, and the soldiers, terrified and
+demoralized, wheeled and fled for their lives. Thirty minutes later the
+President, the Cabinet, and all that remained of the standing army of
+the late Republic of Sonora stumbled across the American boundary and
+surrendered to Major McKinstry. It was May 8, 1854, and in such fashion
+Walker celebrated his thirtieth birthday.
+
+Sent to San Francisco as a political prisoner, Walker was tried for
+violating the neutrality laws of the United States, was acquitted--for
+the members of a Californian jury could not but sympathize with such a
+man--and once again found himself writing editorials for the San
+Francisco _Herald_. His narrow escape from death in Mexico had only
+served to whet his appetite for adventure, however, so when he was not
+doing his newspaper work he was poring over an atlas in search of some
+other land where a determined man might carve out a career for himself
+with his sword. Staring at the map of Middle America, his finger again
+and again paused, as though by instinct, on Nicaragua. Here was indeed a
+fertile field for the filibuster. Not only was the country enormously
+rich in every form of natural resources, but it had a kindly and
+moderately healthy climate, and, what was the most important of all,
+owing to its peculiar geographical position, it commanded what was at
+that time one of the great trade-routes of the world. At this time there
+were three routes to the Californian gold-fields: one, the long and
+weary voyage around the Horn; another, by the dangerous and costly
+Overland Trail; and the third, which was the shortest, cheapest, and
+most popular, across Nicaragua. If you will glance at the map, you will
+see that, barring the Isthmus of Panama, which is several hundred miles
+farther south, Nicaragua is the narrowest neck of land between the two
+great oceans, and that in the middle of this neck is the great Lake
+Nicaragua, which is upward of fifty miles in width. An American
+corporation known as the Accessory Transit Company, of which the first
+Cornelius Vanderbilt was president, had obtained a concession from the
+Nicaraguan Government to transport passengers across Central America by
+this route. Passengers _en route_ from New York or New Orleans to the
+gold-fields were landed by the company's steamers at Greytown, on the
+Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, and transported thence by light-draught
+steamers up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua. Here they were
+transferred to larger steamers and taken across the lake to Virgin Bay,
+the twelve-mile journey from there to the port of San Juan del Sur, on
+the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, being performed in carriages or on the
+backs of mules. During a single year twenty-five thousand passengers
+crossed Nicaragua by this route. It did not take Walker long to
+appreciate, therefore, that the man who succeeded in making himself
+master of this, the shortest route to California, would be in a position
+of considerable strength. Not only this, but Nicaragua was torn by
+internal dissensions; the army was divided into a dozen factions; the
+peasantry were down-trodden and poverty-stricken; the government was
+inconceivably corrupt; and the usual revolution was, of course, in
+progress, in which the sister republics of Honduras and Costa Rica were
+preparing to take a hand. Everything considered, Nicaragua's only hope
+of salvation from anarchy lay in finding for a ruler a man with an
+inflexible sense of justice and an iron hand. Walker determined to be
+that man.
+
+In view of what I have already told of his exploits, you have doubtless
+pictured Walker as a tall, broad-shouldered man of commanding presence.
+As a matter of fact, he was nothing of the sort. In height he was but
+five feet five inches, and correspondingly slender. A remarkably square
+jaw and a long chin lent strength and determination to features which
+were plain almost to the point of coarseness. His eyes, which were of a
+singularly light gray, are universally spoken of as having been his most
+noticeable feature, for they were so large and fixed that the eyelids
+scarcely showed, and so penetrating that they seemed to bore holes into
+the person at whom they were looking. He was extremely taciturn, and
+when he did speak it was briefly and to the point. He had an unusual
+command of English, however, and his words were always carefully chosen.
+A stranger to fear, men who followed him on his campaigns assert that
+even under the most trying and perilous circumstances they had never
+seen him change countenance or betray emotion by so much as the
+contraction of a muscle. He was wholly lacking in personal vanity, and
+when in the field wore his trousers tucked into his boots, a flannel
+shirt open at the neck, and a faded black campaign hat. In a land where
+all three habits were universal, he neither drank, smoked, nor swore; he
+never looked at women; his word, once given, was never broken; the
+justice he meted out to disobedient followers, though stern to the point
+of brutality, was absolutely impartial. Highly ambitious, it is paying
+but the barest justice to his memory to say that his aspirations,
+however little we may sympathize with them, were wholly political and
+never mercenary, his whole career showing him to be utterly careless of
+wealth. Taking everything into consideration, we have good reason to be
+proud that William Walker was an American.
+
+In 1854, as I have already remarked, Nicaragua was split asunder by
+civil war. The opposing parties were the Legitimists and the Democrats.
+What they were fighting about is of no consequence; perhaps they did not
+know themselves. In any event, in August of that year an American named
+Byron Cole, acting as an agent for Walker, arrived at the headquarters
+of the Democratic forces with a novel offer. Briefly, he agreed to
+contract to supply the Democratic party with three hundred American
+"colonists liable to military duty," these settlers to receive a grant
+of fifty-two thousand acres of land, and to have the privilege of
+becoming citizens of Nicaragua. This contract was approved and signed by
+General Castillon, the Democratic leader, and with it in his pocket Cole
+hastened to San Francisco and Walker. After taking the precaution of
+submitting the contract to the civil and military authorities in San
+Francisco, and receiving their assurances that it did not violate the
+neutrality laws of the United States, Walker immediately set about
+recruiting his "colonists," and in May, 1855, just a year after his
+escape from Mexico, he was ready to sail. Although, as I have said, the
+Federal authorities had passed upon the legality of the contract, it was
+a noticeable fact that the peaceable settlers took with them Winchester
+rifles instead of spades, and Colt's revolvers instead of hoes, and that
+the hold of the brig _Vesta_, on which they sailed from San Francisco,
+was filled with ammunition and machine guns instead of agricultural
+implements and machinery.
+
+After a long and stormy voyage down the Pacific coast Walker and his
+men landed, on June 16, at the port of Realejo, in Nicaragua, where he
+was met by Castillon. Walker was at once commissioned a colonel;
+Achilles Kewen, who had just come from Cuba, where he had been fighting
+under the patriot Lopez, a lieutenant-colonel; and Timothy Crocker, a
+fighting Irishman, who was a veteran of Walker's Sonora expedition, a
+major; the corps being organized as an independent command under the
+name of _La Falange Americana_--the American Phalanx. At this time the
+Transit route from the Atlantic to the Pacific was held by the
+Legitimist forces, and these Walker was ordered to dislodge, it being
+essential to the success of the Democrats that they gain possession of
+this interoceanic highway. Accordingly, a week after setting foot in
+Nicaragua, Walker, at the head of fifty-seven of his Americans and one
+hundred and fifty native soldiers, set out for Rivas, a town on the
+western shore of Lake Nicaragua held by twelve hundred of the enemy. The
+first battle of his Nicaraguan campaign ended in the most complete
+disaster. At the first volley his native allies bolted, leaving the
+Americans surrounded by ten times their number of Legitimists. The enemy
+instantly perceived this defection, and pressed the Phalanx so hard
+that its members were driven to take shelter behind a row of adobe huts.
+No one knew better than Walker that if the enemy charged he and his men
+were done for, so he decided to do the charging himself. Out from behind
+the huts dashed the red-shirted filibusters, firing as they came, and so
+ferocious was their onslaught that they succeeded in cutting their way
+through the encircling army and escaping into the jungle. Though six of
+the Americans were killed, including Walker's two lieutenants, Kewen and
+Crocker, and twice as many wounded, the battle of Rivas established the
+reputation of Americans in Central America for years to come, for a
+hundred and fifty of the enemy fell before their deadly fire.
+
+[Illustration: General William Walker and his men, after a long and
+stormy voyage, landing at Virgin Bay, en route to Costa Rica.
+
+From a print in the New York Public Library.]
+
+Bleeding and exhausted from battle and travel, Walker and his men, after
+an all-night march through the jungle, limped into the port of San Juan
+del Sur, and, finding a Costa Rican vessel in the harbor, they seized it
+for their own use. Still bearing in mind the necessity of getting
+control of the Transit route, Walker gave his men only a few days in
+which to recover from their wounds and weariness, and then was off
+again, this time for Virgin Bay, the halting-place for passengers going
+east or west. Though in the fight which ensued Walker was outnumbered
+five to one, his losses were only three natives killed and a few
+Americans wounded, while one hundred and fifty of the enemy fell before
+the rifles of the filibusters. This disparity of losses emphasizes, as
+does nothing else, the deadliness of the American fire.
+
+After the fight at Virgin Bay Walker received from California fifty
+recruits, thus bringing the force under his command up to some four
+hundred men, about a third of whom were Americans. The Legitimists,
+learning that he was planning to again attack Rivas, hastened to
+reinforce the garrison of that town by hurrying troops there from their
+headquarters at Granada, which was farther up the lake, planning to give
+Walker a warm and unexpected reception. But it was Walker who did the
+surprising, for, having his own channels of secret information, he no
+sooner learned of the weakened condition of Granada than he determined
+to direct his efforts against that place, instead of Rivas, and by
+capturing it to give the Legitimist cause a solar-plexus blow. Embarking
+his men on a small steamer with the announced intention of attacking
+Rivas, as soon as night fell he turned in the opposite direction and,
+with lights out and fires banked, steamed silently up the lake. Dawn
+found him off Granada, the garrison and inhabitants of which were
+sleeping off a drunken debauch with which they had celebrated a recent
+victory. Even the sentries drowsed at their posts. Unobserved, the
+Americans landed in the semi-darkness of the early dawn, and it was not
+until they had reached the very outskirts of the town that a sentry
+suddenly awakened to their presence and gave the alarm by letting off
+his rifle, the shot being instantly answered by a crackle of musketry as
+the Americans opened fire. "Charge!" shouted Walker, "Get at 'em! Get at
+'em!" and dashed forward at a run, a revolver in each hand, with his
+followers, cheering like madmen, close at his heels. "Los Filibusteros!
+Los Filibusteros!" screamed the terror-stricken inhabitants, catching
+sight of the red shirts and scarlet hat-bands of the Americans. "Run for
+your lives!" The demoralized garrison made a brief and ineffective stand
+in the Plaza, and then threw down their arms. Walker was master of
+Granada. He at once instituted a military government, released over a
+hundred political prisoners confined in the local jail, policed the town
+as effectually as though it were a New England village, and when he
+caught one of his native soldiers in the act of looting, ran him through
+with his sword.
+
+Walker was now in a position to dictate his own terms of peace, and,
+four months after he and his fifty-seven followers landed in Nicaragua,
+an armistice was arranged and the side to which the Americans had lent
+their aid was in power. A native named Rivas was made provisional
+president, and Walker was appointed commander-in-chief of the army,
+which at that time numbered about twelve hundred men. Though
+insignificant in numbers when judged by European standards, this was
+really a remarkable force, and perhaps the most effective for its size
+known to military history. The officers had all seen service under many
+flags and in many lands--in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Algeria,
+Italy, Egypt, Russia, India, China--and the men, nearly all of whom had
+been recruited in San Francisco, boasted that "California was the pick
+of the world, and they were the pick of California." There was scarcely
+a man among them who could not flick the ashes from a cigar with his
+revolver at a hundred feet, or with his rifle hit a dollar held between
+a man's thumb and forefinger at a hundred yards. All the strange, wild
+natures for whom even the mining-camps of California had grown too tame
+were drawn to Walker's flag as iron filings are drawn to a magnet.
+Frederick Townsend Ward, the New England youth who raised, trained, and
+led the Ever-Victorious Army, who rose to be an admiral-general of
+China, and who performed the astounding exploits for which General
+Charles Gordon received the credit, gained much of his military training
+under Walker; Joaquin Miller, "the poet of the Sierras," was another of
+his devoted followers, while scores of the other men who fought under
+the blue-and-white banner with the scarlet star in later years achieved
+name and fame in many different lands.
+
+[Illustration: General Walker reviewing troops on the Grand Plaza,
+Granada.
+
+From a print in the New York Public Library.]
+
+Says General Charles Frederic Henningsen, the famous English soldier of
+fortune who was Walker's second in command: "I have heard two greasy
+privates disputing over the correct reading and comparative merits of
+AEschylus and Euripides. I have seen a soldier on guard incessantly
+scribbling strips of paper, which turned out to be a finely versified
+translation of his dog's-eared copy of the _Divina Commedia_." The same
+officer, who had fought with distinction under Don Carlos in Spain,
+under Schamyl in the Caucasus, and under Kossuth in Hungary, who had
+introduced the Minie rifle into the American service, and was a
+recognized authority on the use of artillery, and therefore knew whereof
+he spoke, also testifies to the heroism and astounding fortitude of
+Walker's men. "I have often seen them marching with a broken or a
+compound-fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the
+rifle or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh, or with wounds which
+rendered them incapable of removal, often (or rather, in early times,
+always) shot themselves, sooner than fall into the hands of the enemy.
+Such men do not turn up in the average of every-day life, nor do I ever
+expect to see their like again. I was on the Confederate side in many of
+the bloodiest battles of the late war, but I aver that if, at the end of
+that war I had been allowed to pick five thousand of the bravest
+Confederate or Federal soldiers I ever saw, and could resurrect and pit
+against them one thousand of such men as lie beneath the orange-trees of
+Nicaragua, I feel certain that the thousand would have scattered and
+utterly routed the five thousand within an hour. All military science
+failed, on a suddenly given field, before assailants who came on at a
+run, to close with their revolvers, and who thought little of charging a
+battery, pistol in hand." As a matter of fact, at the first battle of
+Rivas, ten Americans, all officers of the Phalanx, armed only with
+bowie-knives and revolvers, actually did charge and capture a battery
+manned by more than a hundred Costa Ricans, half of the little band
+being killed in that astounding exploit. Some estimate of the deeds of
+these unsung heroes, so many of whom lie in unmarked graves beneath an
+alien sky, may be gathered from the surgical reports, which showed that
+the proportion of wounds treated was _one hundred and thirty-seven to
+every hundred men_.
+
+For several months after the taking of Granada and the establishment of
+a provisional government, the dove of peace hovered over Nicaragua as
+though desirous of alighting, but in February, 1856, it was driven away,
+at least for a time, by a fresh splutter of musketry along the southern
+frontier, where Costa Rica, alarmed by Walker's reputed ambition to make
+himself master of all Middle America, had begun an invasion with the
+expressed purpose of driving the _gringos_ from Central American soil.
+After a few months of desperate fighting, in which the Americans fully
+maintained their reputation for reckless bravery, the Costa Ricans were
+driven across the border, and for a brief time the harassed Nicaraguans
+were able to exchange their rifles for their hoes. The country now being
+for the moment at peace, Rivas called a presidential election,
+announcing himself as the candidate of the Democrats. The Legitimists,
+recognizing in Walker the one strong man of the country, had the
+political shrewdness to choose him, their former enemy, to head their
+ticket. Two other candidates, Ferrer and Salazar, were also in the
+field. The election was regular in every respect, the voting being
+entirely free from the usual disturbances. According to the Nicaraguan
+constitution, every male inhabitant over eighteen years of age,
+criminals excepted, is entitled to the suffrage. When the votes were
+counted it was found that Rivas had received 867 votes; Salazar, 2,087;
+Ferrer, 4,447; and Walker, 15,835. By such an overwhelming majority, and
+in an absolutely fair election, was William Walker made President of
+Nicaragua--the first and only time an American has ever been chosen
+ruler of a foreign and independent state.
+
+In all its troubled history Nicaragua has never been governed so justly
+and so wisely as it was by the American soldier of fortune. Had he been
+free from foreign interference there is little doubt that he would have
+made Nicaragua a progressive, prosperous, and contented country, and
+that he would in time have brought under one government and one flag all
+the states lying between Yucatan and Panama. But that was precisely what
+the peoples of those states were fearful of, so that, a few weeks after
+Walker was inaugurated, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, and San
+Salvador declared war. This time Walker took the field with three
+thousand trained and seasoned veterans, while opposed to him were
+twenty-one thousand of the allies. To describe the campaign that ensued
+would be as profitless as it would be tedious. The programme was always
+the same: the march by night through the silent, steaming jungle, and
+the stealthy surrounding of the threatened town in the early dawn; the
+warning crack of a startled sentry's rifle; the sudden rush of the
+filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the taking of the barracks and
+the cathedral in the Plaza, nearly always at the pistol's point; and the
+panic-stricken retreat of the little brown men in their uniforms of
+soiled white linen. Everywhere the arms of Walker were triumphant, and
+had he not at this time deliberately crossed the path of a soldier of
+fortune of quite another kind, in a few months more he would have
+realized his life-dream and have made himself the ruler of a Central
+American empire.
+
+Upon investigating national affairs after his election, Walker found
+that the Accessory Transit Company had not lived up to the terms of its
+concession from the government of Nicaragua. By the terms of its charter
+it had agreed to pay to the Nicaraguan Government ten thousand dollars
+annually, and ten per cent of its net profits. The company claimed, and
+the government as stoutly denied, that the ten thousand dollars had been
+regularly paid, though the concessionaires admitted that the ten per
+cent on the profits had not been paid, giving as their excuse that there
+had been no profits. Upon an examination of the books it was quickly
+discovered that the company had so juggled with the accounts as to make
+it appear that there were no profits, when, as a matter of fact, the
+enterprise was an enormously profitable one. Upon discovering the fraud
+which had been perpetrated upon the government and people of Nicaragua,
+Walker demanded back payments to the amount of two hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars, and upon the company insolently refusing to pay them,
+he promptly revoked its charter, and seized its steamboats, wharves, and
+warehouses as security for the debt. Though this action was perfectly
+justifiable under the circumstances, it was, in view of the instability
+of Walker's position, an unwise move, for it made an implacable enemy of
+one of the most powerful and perhaps the most unscrupulous of the
+financiers of the time.
+
+[Illustration: The programme was always the same: the sudden rush of the
+filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the taking of the barracks and
+the cathedral in the Plaza.
+
+From a print in the New York Public Library.]
+
+Cornelius Vanderbilt was not a person who could be bluffed or
+frightened. Infuriated at the action of the filibuster President, he
+immediately withdrew from service the ships of the Transit Company in
+both oceans, thus cutting off communication between Nicaragua and the
+United States, and thereby Walker's source of supplies. But the grim old
+financier was not content with that. Recruiting a force of foreign
+adventurers on his own account, he despatched them to Central America
+with orders to assist the Costa Ricans, whom he liberally supplied with
+money, arms, and ammunition, in their war against Walker. Turning then
+to Washington, he had little difficulty in inducing Secretary of State
+Marcy, who was known to be one of his creatures, to use the government
+forces in driving Walker out of Nicaragua. To Commodore Mervin, who was
+his personal friend, Secretary Marcy communicated his wishes, or rather
+Vanderbilt's wishes, and these Mervin in turn transmitted to Captain
+Davis, commanding the man-of-war _St. Mary's_, who was ordered to
+proceed at full speed to San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific coast of
+Nicaragua, and to force Walker out of that country. Never has the
+government of the United States lent itself to the designs of predatory
+wealth so disgracefully and so flagrantly as it did when, at the
+dictation of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and without a shadow of right or
+excuse, it used the American navy to oust William Walker from the
+presidency to which he had been legally elected by a sovereign people.
+Its unjustified persecution of Walker to serve the spite of a money-lord
+forms one of the darkest stains on our national history.
+
+When Davis arrived in Nicaragua he found Walker, his forces terribly
+reduced by death, fever, and desertion (for his means of supply had, as
+I have said, been stopped), besieged by the allies in the town of Rivas.
+Food was running short, the hospital was filled with wounded, and many
+of his men were helpless from fever. Captain Davis demanded that Walker
+surrender to him upon the ground of humanity, but the indomitable
+filibuster replied that when he did not have enough men left to man the
+guns he intended to take refuge on board his little schooner, the
+_Granada_, which lay in the harbor, and seek his fortune elsewhere. "You
+will not do that," answered Davis, "for I am going to seize your
+vessel." With his only hope of escape thus cut off, there was nothing
+for Walker to do but capitulate. Therefore, on May 1, 1857, William
+Walker, President of Nicaragua, whose title was as legally sound as that
+of any ruler in the world, surrendered to the forces his own country had
+sent against him, and one more argument was given to those who claimed
+that it was not liberty which we upheld and worshipped, but the almighty
+dollar. When Walker arrived in New York a few weeks later he found the
+city bedecked with flags and bunting in his honor. On but two other
+occasions has the American metropolis given such a reception to a
+visitor: once when Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, rode up Broadway, and
+years later, when Dewey returned, fresh from his victory at Manila.
+Walker's drive from the Battery to Madison Square was like a triumphal
+progress, for his gallantry in action and his successes against
+overwhelming odds had aroused the admiration of his countrymen, just as
+his outrageous treatment by the government had excited their
+indignation. Though legally he had serious grounds for complaint, he
+received scant consideration when he placed his demands for reparation
+before the Department of State at Washington. But the cold shoulder
+turned toward him by official Washington was more than made up for by
+the welcome he received in the South, where he was acclaimed as a hero
+and a martyr. He was banqueted in every town and city from Baltimore to
+New Orleans, and when he entered a box in the opera-house of the latter
+place, the audience, forgetting the play, rose as one man to cheer him.
+
+Within a month Walker had raised enough money and recruits in the South
+to enable him to try his fortunes once more in Nicaragua. Sailing from
+New Orleans with one hundred and fifty men, he landed at San Juan del
+Norte, on the Caribbean side, marched upon and captured the town of
+Castillo Viejo together with four of the Transit Company's steamers, and
+was, indeed, in a fair way to again make himself master of Nicaragua
+when the United States once more interfered, the frigate _Wabash_, under
+command of Commodore Hiram Pawlding, dropping anchor in a position where
+her guns commanded the filibusters' camp, her commander demanding
+Walker's immediate surrender. The flag-officer who presented Walker with
+Pawlding's demand tactlessly remarked: "General, I'm sorry to see you
+here. A man like you deserves to command better men." "If I had even a
+third of the force you have brought against me," Walker responded
+grimly, "I'd soon show you who commands the better men." For the third
+time in his career Walker was forced to surrender to his own countrymen,
+and was sent north under parole as a prisoner of war. But, although
+Pawlding had acted precisely as Davis had done, President Buchanan,
+instead of thanking him, not only publicly reprimanded him, but retired
+him from active service, and when Walker presented himself at the White
+House as a prisoner, refused to receive his surrender, or to recognize
+him as being in the custody of the United States. All of which, however,
+was scant consolation for Walker.
+
+To regain the presidency of which he had been unjustly deprived had now
+become an obsession with Walker. In spite of a proclamation issued by
+President Buchanan forbidding him to take further part in Central
+American affairs, he sailed from Mobile, on December 1, 1858, with a
+hundred and fifty of his veterans. His voyage was brought to a sudden
+and wholly unlooked-for termination, however, for he was wrecked in a
+gale off the coast of Honduras, whence he was rescued by a British
+war-ship which happened to be in the vicinity and brought back to the
+United States. By this time Walker had become almost as much of a
+nightmare to the governments of the United States and Great Britain (for
+the latter, both because of the proximity of her colony of British
+Honduras and of her large financial interests in the other Central
+American countries, had no desire to see that region again plunged into
+war) as Napoleon was to the Holy Alliance, and as a result both the
+Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Nicaragua were patrolled by the
+war-ships of the two nations to prevent Walker's return. Appreciating
+that, under the circumstances, it was about as easy for him to land on
+Nicaraguan soil as it was to land on the moon, Walker, with a hundred of
+his devoted followers, slipped silently out of Mobile harbor on an
+August night in 1860, and landed, a few days later, on a little island
+off the coast of Honduras known as Ruatan.
+
+And so we come to the last chapter in this extraordinary man's
+extraordinary career. Within a day after his landing at Ruatan, Walker
+had crossed to the mainland and captured the important seaport of
+Trujillo. But the ill-fortune which from the beginning had dogged him
+like a shadow was not to desert him now, for scarcely had the flag of
+Honduras which fluttered above the barracks been replaced by the
+blue-and-white banner of the filibusters when a British frigate dropped
+anchor off the town. Twenty minutes later a boat's crew of British
+bluejackets tossed their oars as they ran alongside Trujillo wharf, and
+a naval officer immaculate in white and gold, stepping ashore, inquired
+for General Walker, and presented him with a message. It was from
+Captain Salmon, commanding the British man-of-war _Icarus_, which lay
+outside, and demanded the immediate evacuation of the city by the
+filibusters, as the British Government held a mortgage on the revenues
+of the port and intended to protect them, by force if necessary. Walker
+answered that as he had made Trujillo a free port, the British claims
+were no longer valid. "Captain Salmon instructs me to inform you, sir,"
+replied the British officer, as he prepared to re-enter his gig, "that
+he will give you until to-morrow morning to make your decision. If you
+do not then surrender he will be compelled to bombard the town." As a
+strong force of Hondurans had in the mean time appeared on the land side
+of the city and were preparing to attack, Walker realized that his
+position had become untenable, so that night he and his men slipped
+silently out of the sleeping city and started down the coast with the
+intention of making their way overland to Nicaragua. When the British
+landed the next morning they were only just in time to prevent the sick
+and wounded whom Walker had been forced to leave behind him in his
+retreat from falling into the hands of the ferocious Hondurans. Learning
+of Walker's flight, Salmon immediately started down the coast on the
+_Icarus_ in pursuit.
+
+They overtook Walker at a little fishing village near the mouth of the
+Rio Negro, several boat-loads of sailors and marines being sent up the
+river to take him. But the coast of Honduras is a good second to the
+Gold Coast in the deadliness of its climate, so that when the landing
+party reached the little cluster of wretched hovels where Walker and his
+men had taken refuge, they found the filibusters too far gone with fever
+to oppose them. To Captain Salmon's demand for an unconditional
+surrender, Walker, who was so weak that he could scarcely stand,
+inquired if he was surrendering to the English or to the Hondurans.
+Captain Salmon twice assured him distinctly that it was to the English,
+whereupon the filibusters, at Walker's orders, laid down their arms and
+were taken aboard the _Icarus_. No sooner had he arrived back at
+Trujillo, however, than Captain Salmon, breaking the word he had given
+as an officer and a gentleman, and in defiance of every law of humanity,
+turned his prisoners over to the Honduran authorities. Salmon, who was
+young and pompous and had a life-size opinion of himself and his
+position, interceded for all of the prisoners except Walker, and
+obtained their release, but he informed the filibuster chieftain that he
+would plead for him only on condition that he would ask his intercession
+as an American citizen. But Walker, imbittered by the treatment he had
+received at the hands of his own government and disdaining to turn to it
+for assistance in his adversity, answered proudly: "The President of
+Nicaragua is a citizen of Nicaragua," and turned his back upon the
+Englishman who had betrayed him.
+
+He was tried by court martial on September 11, 1860, and after the
+barest formalities was sentenced to be shot at daybreak the next
+morning. The place selected for his execution was a strip of sandy
+beach, and to it the condemned man walked as coolly as though taking a
+morning stroll. Before him tramped a detachment of slovenly Honduran
+infantry, who, with their brown, wizened faces, their ill-fitting
+uniforms, and their jaunty caps, looked more like monkeys than men;
+behind him marched the firing-party, with weapons at the charge; beside
+him was a priest bearing a crucifix and murmuring the prayers for the
+dying. As the little procession came to a halt within the hollow square
+of soldiery, Walker waved away the handkerchief with which they would
+have blindfolded him, and, cool and straight and soldierly as though in
+command of his Phalanx, took his stand before the firing-party.
+
+"I die a Roman Catholic," he said in Spanish in a voice clear and
+unafraid. "The war which I made upon you was wrong and I take this
+opportunity of asking your pardon. I die with resignation, though it
+would be a consolation for me to feel that my death is for the good of
+society." As he ceased speaking, the officer in command of the troops
+dropped the point of his sword, the levelled rifles of the firing-party
+spoke as one, and Walker fell. But, though every bullet entered his
+body, he still lived. So a sergeant stepped forward with a cocked
+revolver and blew out his brains. With that shot there passed the soul
+of a very brave and gallant gentleman who deserved from his country
+better treatment than he received.
+
+
+
+
+CITIES CAPTURED BY CONTRACT
+
+
+I have known men who, from need of money or from love of adventure, have
+contracted to do all sorts of seemingly impossible things. Some
+conquered apparently unconquerable chasms by means of daring bridges;
+others built railways across waterless, yellow deserts, where experts
+had asserted that no railway could go; one contracted to find and raise
+a treasure galleon sunk three hundred years ago; another agreed to
+compose an opera in a week; while still another engaged to find a man
+who for two years had been lost in equatorial Africa. It took a New
+Englander, however, to sign a contract to capture walled and hostile
+cities, at a stipulated price per city, just as a Chicago meat-packer
+would contract to supply a government with beef at so much a pound.
+
+The man who entered into this amazing agreement was baptized Frederick
+Townsend Ward, but bore at his death the adopted name of Hwa. Though
+born within biscuit-throw of Salem wharves he was by residence a citizen
+of the world, and by profession a soldier of fortune. Now the trouble
+with most soldiers of fortune is that they don't make good in the end.
+They are generally entertaining fellows, with vast stores of information
+on an amazing variety of subjects, wide acquaintanceships with
+personages whose names you see in the daily papers, and an intimate
+knowledge of the little-known places, but they rarely save any money,
+they seldom rise to high positions, and they usually end their checkered
+careers by being ingloriously arrested for breaking the neutrality laws,
+or by dying, picturesquely but quite uselessly, between a stone wall and
+a firing-party.
+
+That Frederick Ward was a striking exception merely proves the soundness
+of my remarks. Though he was a soldier of fortune (he fought under at
+least six flags) he did make money, for he capitalized his remarkable
+military genius by signing a contract to capture rebellious cities, at
+seventy-five thousand dollars a city, and took a dozen of them, one
+after another; he rose to be an admiral-general of China, and a Mandarin
+of the Red Button, which was equivalent to being a Dewey, a Kitchener,
+and a Cromer rolled into one; and though he died when scarcely thirty,
+it was on the walls of a captured city, directing a victorious charge.
+Though the Manchu dynasty of China, to which he gave an additional
+half-century of existence, has fallen, the soldiers of the new republic
+continue to invoke his spirit as that of a god of battles, and the
+priests of Confucius still burn incense before his tomb.
+
+The story of how this adventurous American youth recognized the splendid
+fighting material into which the Chinese were capable of being
+transformed; how he took that material and heated and hammered and
+tempered it into a serviceable weapon, and gave that weapon a keen
+cutting edge; how, with a force which never numbered more than six
+thousand men, he broke the backbone of a rebellion which turned China
+into a shambles; and how his battalions came to be known, in the annals
+of time, as the "Ever-Victorious Army," forms a chronicle of courage and
+thrilling incident the like of which can not be found in history. If the
+almost incredible exploits of Ward have escaped the notice of our
+historians, it is because, at the time they took place, Americans were
+too intent on the business of their own great slaughter-house to be
+interested in a similar performance going on, in much less workmanlike
+fashion, half the world away. Though British writers slightingly allude
+to Ward as "an obscure Yankee adventurer," the officer who succeeded
+him, General Charles George Gordon, merely completed the work which his
+predecessor had begun, and built his military reputation on the
+foundations which the American had laid. Though the name of Frederick
+Townsend Ward holds but little meaning for the vast majority of his
+countrymen, it is still a name to conjure with in that country which he
+saved from anarchy.
+
+Though a youth in appearance and in years, Ward was a seasoned veteran
+long before he set out on his last campaign. Before he was
+five-and-twenty he had had enough experiences to satisfy a dozen
+ordinary men. Coming from New England seafaring stock, it was only to be
+expected that a passion for adventure should course through his veins.
+From the time he donned short trousers he dreamed of a cadetship at West
+Point, and a commission under his own flag. But it was destined that his
+military genius should profit another country than his own, and that he
+should fight and die under an alien banner. His father, a stern old
+merchant captain, held that there was no training for a boy like that to
+be had in the school of the sea, and so, when young Ward was scarce
+half-way through his teens, he was packed off aboard a sailing-vessel
+bound for the China seas. By the time he was twenty he held a first
+mate's warrant, and had paid for it with three long voyages. Joining
+Garibaldi's famous Foreign Legion, he saw service under that great
+soldier in the war between the Republic of the Rio Grande and Brazil.
+Afterward he helped the young Republic of Uruguay to defeat Manuel
+Rosas, the Argentine dictator. At the outbreak of the Crimean War he
+obtained a lieutenant's commission in a regiment of French zouaves, and
+followed the tricolor until the Treaty of Paris brought that bloody
+campaign to an end. Turning his steps toward Latin America again, he
+joined William Walker in his ill-fated Nicaraguan adventure, and after
+that leader's execution in Honduras he offered his sword and services to
+Juarez, and helped to win for him the presidency of Mexico. With the
+triumph of Juarez, peace settled for a time upon the western hemisphere,
+and Ward, finding no market for his military talents, was driven by
+financial necessities to take up the occupation of a ship-broker in New
+York City. But the shackles of trade soon proved intolerable to this man
+of action. He was like a race-horse harnessed to a milk-wagon. Though
+his talk was of cargoes and bottomry and tonnage, his thoughts were far
+away, on those distant seaboards of the world where history was in the
+making. At the beginning of 1859, the only country in the world where
+fighting on a large scale was going on was China, which was being
+devastated by the great Taiping Rebellion. In the spring of that year
+Ward, unable to longer resist the call to action which was forever
+sounding in his ears, turned the key in the door of his New York office,
+saddled his horse, and, unaccompanied, rode across the continent to San
+Francisco, where he booked a passage for Shanghai. It was no random
+adventure which he had undertaken. He had laid his plans carefully and
+knew exactly what he intended doing. Nor did the magnitude of his
+project dishearten him. He had set out to save an empire, and he
+intended to win fame and fortune in doing it.
+
+The conditions which prevailed in China between 1850 and 1863 can be
+compared only to the French Reign of Terror, or to the rule of the Mahdi
+in the Sudan. About the time that the nineteenth century was approaching
+the half-way mark, a Chinese schoolmaster named Hung-siu-Tseuen,
+inflamed by the partially comprehended teachings of Christian
+missionaries, had inaugurated a propaganda to overthrow the Confucian
+religion, and incidentally the reigning dynasty. There speedily rallied
+to his banners all the floating scoundrelism of China. In 1852 the rebel
+hordes had moved into the province of Hunan, murdering, pillaging, and
+burning as they went; advanced down the Kiang River to the Yang-tse,
+down which they sailed, capturing and sacking the cities on its banks.
+Making Nanking his capital, the rebel leader assumed the title of Tien
+Wang, or "Heavenly King," and proclaimed the rule of the Ping Chao, or
+"Peace Dynasty," which, with the prefix Tai ("great") gave the rebellion
+its name, Taiping. Wang's great hordes of tatterdemalions, flushed with
+their unbroken series of successes, gradually overran the silk and tea
+districts, the richest in the empire, threatened Peking, and advanced
+almost to the gates of Shanghai, carrying death and destruction over
+fifteen of the eighteen provinces of China. Perhaps it will give a
+better idea of the magnitude of this rebellion when I add that reliable
+authorities estimate that it cost China _two billion five hundred
+million dollars, and twenty million human lives_. By the autumn of 1859
+such of the imperial forces as remained loyal had been whipped to a
+stand-still, and the European powers having interests in China had their
+work cut out to defend the treaty ports; the rebels were undisputed
+masters of all Central China; the rivers were literally choked with
+corpses, and the smoke of burning cities overhung the land. The
+atrocities committed by order of the Taiping leader shocked even the
+dulled sensibilities of China. On one occasion, six thousand people,
+suspected of an intention to desert, were gathered in the public square
+of Nanking. A hundred executioners stood among the prisoners with bared
+swords, and, at a signal from the Wang, slashed off heads until their
+arms were weary, and blood stood inches deep in the gutters. Ward had
+indeed chosen a good market in which to sell his services.
+
+Through an English friend in the Chinese service, Ward obtained an
+introduction to Wu, the Taotoi of Shanghai, and to a millionaire
+merchant and mandarin named Tah Kee. The plan he proposed was as simple
+as it was daring. He offered to recruit a foreign legion, with which he
+would defend Shanghai, and at the same time attack such of the Taiping
+strongholds as were within striking distance, stipulating that for every
+city captured he was to receive seventy-five thousand dollars in gold,
+that his men were to have the first day's looting, and that each place
+taken should immediately be garrisoned by imperial troops, leaving his
+own force free for further operations. Wu on behalf of the government,
+and Tah Kee as the representative of the Shanghai merchants, promptly
+agreed to this proposal, and signed the contract. They had, indeed,
+everything to gain and nothing to lose. It was also arranged that Tah
+Kee should at the outset furnish the arms, ammunition, clothing, and
+commissary supplies necessary to equip the legion. These preliminaries
+once settled, Ward wasted no time in recruiting his force, for every day
+was bringing the Taipings nearer. A number of brave and experienced
+officers, for the most part soldiers of fortune like himself, hastened
+to offer him their services, General Edward Forester, an American, being
+appointed second in command. The rank and file of the legion was
+recruited from the scum and offscourings of the East, Malay pirates,
+Burmese dacoits, Tartar brigands, and desperadoes, adventurers, and
+fugitives from justice from every corner of the farther East being
+attracted by the high rate of pay, which in view of the hazardous nature
+of the service, was fixed at one hundred dollars a month for enlisted
+men, and proportionately more for officers. The non-commissioned
+officers, who were counted upon to stiffen the ranks of the Orientals,
+were for the most part veterans of continental armies, and could be
+relied upon to fight as long as stock and barrel held together. The
+officers carried swords and Colt's revolvers, the latter proving
+terribly effective in the hand-to-hand fighting which Ward made the
+rule; while the men were armed with Sharp's repeating carbines and the
+vicious Malay _kris_. Everything considered, I doubt if a more
+formidable aggregation of ruffians ever took the field. Ward placed his
+men under a discipline which made that of the German army appear like a
+kindergarten; taught them the tactics he had learned under Garibaldi,
+Walker, and Juarez; and finally, when they were as keen as razors and as
+tough as rawhide, he entered them in battle on a most astonished foe.
+
+The first city Ward selected for capture was Sunkiang, on the banks of
+the Wusung River, some twenty-five miles above Shanghai. In choosing
+this particular place as his first point of attack, Ward showed himself
+a diplomatist as well as a soldier, for it was one of the seven sacred
+cities of China, and to it had been wont to come thousands of pilgrims
+from the most distant provinces, to prostrate themselves in the temple
+of Confucius, the oldest and most revered shrine in the empire. Its
+capture by the Taipings and their desecration of its altars had sent a
+thrill of horror through the imperialists, such as was not even caused
+by the loss of the great metropolis of Nanking.
+
+Ward, who appreciated the necessity of winning the recognition and
+confidence of the higher authorities, well knew that the regaining of
+this sacred city would endear him to the religious heart of China as
+nothing else could do. But Sunkiang, with its walls twenty feet high and
+five miles in circumference, and with a garrison of five thousand
+fanatics to defend those walls, was no easy nut to crack even for a
+powerful force well supplied with artillery. The idea of its being taken
+by Ward and his five hundred desperadoes was preposterous, unthinkable,
+absurd. He first tried the weapon he had so painstakingly forged on a
+July morning, in 1860. Just as his European critics in Shanghai had
+prophesied, the attack on Sunkiang proved the most dismal of failures.
+His stealthy approach being discovered by the Taipings, he was greeted
+with such a withering fire upon reaching the walls that, being without
+supports, and perceiving the hopelessness of the situation, he ordered
+his buglers to sound the retreat.
+
+But Ward was one of those rare men to whom discouragements and disasters
+are but incidents, annoying but not disheartening, in the day's work. He
+spent a fortnight in strengthening the weakened _morale_ of his force,
+and then he tried again, making his onset with the suddenness and fury
+of a tiger's spring just at break of day. Slipping like ghosts through
+the grayness of the dawn, Ward and his men stole across the surrounding
+rice-fields, and were almost under the city walls before the Taiping
+sentries discovered their approach. As the first rifle cracked, Ward and
+one of his lieutenants raced ahead with bags of powder, placed them
+beneath the main gate of the city, and lighted the fuse. Like an echo of
+the ensuing explosion rose the shrill yell of the legionaries, who
+dashed forward like sprinters in a race. Instead of the gates being
+blown to pieces as they had expected, they found that they had been
+forced apart only enough for one man to pass at a time--and on the other
+side of that door of death five thousand rebels waited eagerly for the
+first of the attackers to appear. "Come on, boys!" roared Ward, his
+voice rising above the crash of the musketry, "We're going in!" and
+plunged through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand. Hard on his
+heels crowded his legionaries. Though they were going to what was almost
+certain death, such was the magnetism of their leader that not a man
+hung back, not a man faltered. Before half a dozen men were through they
+were attacked by hundreds, but, so deadly was the fire they poured in
+with their repeaters, they were able to hold off the defenders until
+the whole attacking force was within the gate. Then began one of the
+most desperate and unequal fights in history. The key to the city was
+the howitzer battery, which was stationed on the top of the massive main
+gate, forty feet above. Up the narrow ramps the legionaries fought their
+way, five hundred against five thousand, hacking, stabbing, firing, at
+such close range that their rifles set fire to their opponents'
+clothing, driving their bayonets into the human wall before them as a
+field-hand pitchforks hay. Wherever there was space for a man to plant
+his feet or swing his sword, there a Taiping was to be found. The
+passageway was choked with them, but they sullenly gave way before the
+frenzy of Ward's attack as a hillside slowly disintegrates before the
+stream from a hydraulic nozzle. Ward was wounded, and his men were
+falling about him by dozens, but those that were left, mad with the lust
+of battle, fought on, until with a final surge and cheer they reached
+the top, and the position which commanded the city was in their hands.
+Then the Taipings broke and fled, some to be overtaken and slaughtered
+by the legionaries, others throwing themselves into the streets below.
+Bayoneting the rebel gunners, the howitzers were turned upon the city,
+raking the streets, sweeping the crowded walls and house-tops, and
+leaving heaps of dead and dying where Taiping regiments had stood
+before.
+
+[Illustration: "Come on, boys!" shouted Ward. "We're going in!" and
+plunged through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand.]
+
+For four-and-twenty hours Ward and the exhausted survivors of his
+legion, without food and without water, held the gate in the face of the
+most desperate efforts to retake it. Then the Chinese reinforcements for
+which he had asked tardily arrived, and Sunkiang was an Imperial city
+again. The American had taken the first trick in the great game he was
+playing. It was at fearful cost, however, for of the five hundred men
+who followed him into action, but one hundred and twenty-eight remained
+alive, and of these only twenty-seven were without wounds. In other
+words, the casualties amounted to _more than ninety-four per cent of the
+entire force_. Ward had ridden out of Shanghai a despised adventurer to
+whom the foreign officers refused to speak. He returned to that city a
+hero and a power in China. The priesthood acclaimed him as the saviour
+of the sacred city; the emperor made him a Mandarin of the Red Button;
+the merchants of Shanghai voiced their relief by adding a splendid
+estate to the promised reward of seventy-five thousand dollars. His
+reputation would have been secure if he had never fought another
+battle.
+
+Leaving Sunkiang heavily garrisoned by imperial troops, Ward withdrew to
+Shanghai for the purpose of recruiting his shattered forces. Such a
+glamour of romance now surrounded the legion that Ward was fairly
+besieged by European as well as Oriental volunteers. Shortly after the
+capture of Sunkiang, Ward had occasion to visit Shanghai with reference
+to the care of his wounded. While riding through the streets of the city
+he was arrested by a British patrol, and despite his protestations that
+he was an officer in the imperial service, was hustled aboard the
+flag-ship of Admiral Sir James Hope, which lay in the harbor, and was
+placed in close confinement. In reply to his inquiries he was told that
+he was to be tried for recruiting British man-o'-war's-men for service
+in his legion. Though the arrest was high-handed and unjustified, there
+seemed no immediate prospect of release, for the American consul-general
+refused to interfere on the ground that Ward, by taking service under
+the Chinese government, had forfeited his right to American protection;
+the imperial authorities were powerless to take any action; while the
+British were notoriously fearful of the dangerous ascendancy which this
+American might gain if his successful career was permitted to continue.
+The only hope for Ward--and for China--lay in his escape. A friend
+perfected a plan of flight. While visiting Ward, who was confined in an
+outside cabin of the flag-ship, with a marine constantly on guard at the
+door, he synchronized his watch with that of the cabin clock, and
+whispered to the prisoner that he would be in a sampan under his cabin
+window at precisely two o'clock in the morning. Taking off his coat and
+shoes that he might be unhampered in the water, Ward sat on the edge of
+his berth with his eyes on the face of the clock. Just as the
+minute-hand touched the figure II, Ward made a dash for the window and
+sprang head-foremost through the sash, for the windows of the old
+fashioned men-of-war were much larger than the ports of modern
+battle-ships. He had hardly touched the water before he was pulled
+aboard a sampan, which disappeared in the darkness long before the
+flag-ship's boats could be manned and lowered. This daring exploit
+enormously increased Ward's prestige among both Chinese and Europeans,
+with whom the British, as a result of their insolent and overbearing
+attitude, were intensely unpopular. Some days later Admiral Hope sent a
+message to Ward requesting an interview, and, upon Ward assuring him
+that he would no longer recruit his ranks from the British navy, the
+old sea fighter became his strong partisan and friend.
+
+With his ranks once more repleted, Ward made preparations for a second
+venture. This time it was the city of Sing-po toward which he turned;
+but the Taipings, getting wind of his intentions, secretly threw an
+overwhelming force into the place under a renegade Englishman named
+Savage. Ward was without artillery with which to breach the walls, and,
+after several desperate assaults, in leading which he was severely
+wounded, he was forced to retire. Ten days later, regardless of his
+wounds, he tried again, but this time he was taken in the rear by a
+Taiping army of twenty thousand men, his little force being completely
+surrounded. So certain was the rebel leader that the famous general was
+within his grasp, that he consulted with his officers as to what methods
+of torture they should use upon him. But he was a trifle premature, for
+Ward struck the Taiping cordon at its weakest point, fought his way
+through, and reached Shanghai with a loss of only one hundred men. His
+secret agents bringing him word that the powerful force from which he
+had just escaped was to be used in the recapture of Sunkiang, Ward, by
+making night marches, slipped unperceived into that city. When the
+Taipings attempted to carry it by storm a few days later, instead of
+meeting with the half-hearted resistance which they had grown to expect
+from Chinese garrisons, they were astounded to see the helmeted figure
+of the dreaded American upon the walls, and were greeted with a blast of
+rifle fire which swept away their leading columns and crumpled up their
+army as effectually as though it had encountered an earthquake.
+
+Dangerously weakened by half a dozen wounds, Ward was reluctantly
+compelled to go to Paris in the fall of 1860 for surgical attention.
+Back at Shanghai again at the beginning of the following summer, he
+found that the Taipings, emboldened by his absence, were flaunting their
+banner within sight of the city walls. From end to end of the empire
+there existed an unparalleled reign of terror, the rebels now having
+grown so strong that they demanded the recognition of the European
+powers. Ward, meanwhile, had become convinced that the true solution of
+the problem lay in raising an army of natives, rather than foreigners,
+for not only was the supply of Chinese unlimited, but his experience had
+shown him that there was splendid fighting material in them if they were
+properly drilled and led. When he asked permission of the imperial
+government to raise and drill a Chinese force, therefore, it was gladly
+granted.
+
+An opportunity to put his theories regarding the fighting capabilities
+of the Chinese to a test soon came. Learning that a force of rebels, ten
+thousand strong, was advancing in the direction of Shanghai, Ward
+sallied forth from his headquarters at Sunkiang with two thousand five
+hundred men, struck the Taiping army, curled it up like a withered leaf,
+and drove it a dozen miles into the interior. Pressing on, he captured
+the city of Quan-fu-ling, which the rebels had garrisoned and fortified,
+and with it several hundred junks loaded with supplies. Throughout these
+actions his Chinese displayed all the steadiness and courage of European
+veterans. That he showed sound judgment in pinning his faith to natives
+is best proved by the fact that from that time on he never met with a
+reverse. His motto was "Cold steel," and his tactics would have
+delighted the old-time sea fighters, for, appreciating the fact that few
+Oriental troops are capable of remaining steady under a galling
+long-range fire, he invariably threw his men against the enemy in an
+overwhelming charge, and finished the business at close quarters with
+the bayonet.
+
+Moving up from Sunkiang with a thousand of his men, Ward joined a
+combined force of French and British bluejackets, who had with them a
+light howitzer battery, in an attack on Kaschiaou, just opposite
+Shanghai, which was the city's main source of supplies, and which the
+rebels had seized and fortified. Using the contingent from the war-ships
+as a reserve, Ward and his Chinamen did the work alone, carrying the
+stockades by storm and capturing two thousand rebels, as a result of
+which the enemy fell back from the neighborhood of Shanghai. So strongly
+impressed were the British officers with the behavior of Ward's soldiery
+that Sir James Mitchel, the commander-in-chief on the China station,
+strongly urged that the task of suppressing the rebellion be placed in
+the American's hands, and that he be empowered to raise his force to ten
+thousand men. A few weeks later Ward received an imperial rescript
+acknowledging his great services to China, and appointing him an
+admiral-general of the empire, the highest rank that the emperor could
+bestow. With this came the authority to recruit his force to six
+thousand men, and its baptism, by imperial order, with the sonorous and
+thrilling title of _Chun Chen Chun_, or the Ever-Victorious Army.
+
+As the barometer of Ward's fortunes steadily rose, that of his native
+country began to fall, the dark cloud of secession hanging
+threateningly over the land. It has been said of Ward that he
+denationalized himself by marrying a Chinese wife and adopting a Chinese
+name, but there is no doubt that it was only his stern sense of duty
+which kept him at the task he had undertaken in China when the guns of
+Sumter boomed out the beginning of the Civil War. He immediately sent a
+contribution of ten thousand dollars to the Union war fund, however,
+with a message that his services were at the disposal of the North
+whenever they were required. At the time of the _Trent_ affair, when war
+between England and the United States was momentarily expected, and the
+British in China had laid plans to seize American shipping and other
+property in the treaty ports, Ward effected a secret organization of
+American sympathizers and prepared to surprise and capture every British
+war-ship and merchant vessel in Chinese waters. In view of his success
+in equally daring exploits, there is good reason to believe that he
+would have accomplished even so startling a _coup_ as this.
+
+While recruiting his army to its newly authorized strength, Ward did not
+give the Taipings a moment's rest. He kept several flying columns
+constantly in the field, attacking the rebels at every opportunity,
+cutting up their outposts, harrying their pickets, breaking their lines
+of communication, and demoralizing them generally. One day Ward would be
+reported as operating in the south, and the Wang would draw a momentary
+breath of relief, but the next night, without the slightest warning, he
+would suddenly fall upon a city a hundred miles to the northward and
+carry it by storm. By such aggressive tactics as these Ward struck fear
+to the heart of the Taiping leader, who saw the despotism he had built
+up crumbling about him before the American's smashing blows. It was
+said, indeed, that the mere sight of Ward's white helmet in the van of a
+storming party was more effective than a brigade of infantry. With a
+thousand men of his own corps and six hundred royal marines he attacked
+and captured Tsee-dong, a walled city of considerable strength, and
+cleared the rebels from the surrounding region as though with a
+fine-tooth comb. The town of Wong-kadza was in the possession of the
+Taipings, and Ward decided to capture it. General Staveley, who had
+succeeded Sir James Mitchel in command of the British forces, offered to
+co-operate with him. It was agreed that they should rendezvous outside
+the town. Ward reached there first with six hundred of his men. Without
+waiting for the British to come up, he ordered his bugles to sound the
+charge, and after a quarter of an hour of desperate fighting he carried
+the stockade, and the rebels broke and ran, Ward's men killing more of
+them in the pursuit than they themselves numbered. When General Staveley
+arrived a few hours later he was chagrined to see the imperial standard
+flying over the city and to find that the impetuous American had done
+the work and reaped the glory. The allied forces now pressed on to the
+Taiping stronghold of Tai-poo, which was held by a strong and well-armed
+garrison. While the British engaged the attention of the rebels in front
+with a fierce artillery fire, Ward and his Chinamen made a detour to the
+rear of the city, and were at and over the walls almost before the
+garrison realized what had happened.
+
+The Ever-Victorious Army now numbered nearly six thousand men. It was
+well drilled and under an iron discipline; it was fairly well armed; it
+was magnificently officered; it was emboldened with repeated successes.
+The man who was the maker and master of such a force might well go a
+long way. That Ward dreamed of eventually making himself dictator of
+China there can be but little doubt. Louis Napoleon, remember, climbed
+to a throne on the bayonets of his soldiers. By this time the American
+soldier of fortune had become by long odds the most popular figure in
+the empire; the army was with him to a man; he possessed the confidence
+of the great mandarins and merchant princes; and he had to his credit an
+almost unparalleled succession of victories. Dictator of the East! What
+American ever had a more ambitious dream and was within such measurable
+distance of realizing it? It is no exaggeration to say that, had Ward
+lived, the whole history of the Orient would have been changed, and
+China, rather than Japan, would doubtless have held the balance of power
+in the Farther East.
+
+In April, 1862, Ward, the Viceroy Lieh, and the French and British
+commanders held a council of war in Shanghai. Ward suggested a plan of
+campaign designed to break the Taiping power in that part of China for
+good and all. Briefly put, his scheme was to capture a semicircle of
+cities within a radius of fifty miles of Shanghai and the coast. This
+would result in the rebels being held within their own lines by a cordon
+of bayonets, and, as they had utterly devastated the regions they had
+overrun, would mean starvation for them. Thus cut off from the seaboard,
+Ward argued, they would be unable to obtain ammunition and supplies,
+and the rebellion would soon wither. The series of operations was
+carried out as planned, Ward's corps being reinforced by three thousand
+French and British. It ended in the capture, in rapid succession, of the
+cities of Kah-ding, Sing-po, Najaor, and Tsaolin. In every case Ward
+insisted on being given the post of honor; he and his Chinamen, who
+fought with an appalling disregard for life, carrying the defences at
+the bayonet's point, while his European allies covered his advance with
+artillery fire and supported his whirlwind attacks. Leaving garrisons
+barely large enough to hold the captured cities, he pushed on by forced
+marches to Ning-po, which was a large and strongly fortified city. Twice
+his storming parties were driven back. The third time the men, exhausted
+by the continuous fighting in which they had been engaged and the long
+marches they had been called upon to perform, momentarily faltered in
+the face of the terrible fire which greeted them. Instantly Ward ordered
+the recall sounded, formed them into line within easy rifle-range of the
+city walls, and calmly put them through the manual of arms with as much
+precision as though they were on parade, while a storm of bullets
+whistled round them, and men were momentarily dropping in the ranks.
+Then, his men once more in hand, the bugles screamed the charge and the
+yellow line roared on to victory.
+
+Ward gave his last order to advance--he had forgotten how to give any
+other--on September 21, 1862. With a regiment of his men he was about to
+attack Tse-Ki, a small fortified coast town a few miles from Ning-po.
+With his habitual contempt for danger he was standing with General
+Forester, his chief of staff, well in advance of his men, inspecting the
+position through his field-glasses. Suddenly he clapped his hand to his
+breast. "I've been hit, Ed!" he exclaimed, and fell forward into the
+arms of his friend. Very tenderly his devoted yellow men carried him
+aboard the British war-ship _Hardy_, which was lying in the harbor, but
+the naval surgeons shook their heads when an examination showed that the
+bullet had passed through his lungs. "Don't mind me," whispered Ward.
+"Take the city." So Forester, heavy at heart, ordered forward the
+storming parties. That night the great captain died. The last sound he
+heard was his Chinamen's shrill yell of triumph.
+
+With extraordinary solemnity the dead soldier was laid to rest in the
+temple of Confucius in Sunkiang, the most sacred shrine in China and
+the very spot where he had established his headquarters after his first
+great victory. His body, which was followed to the grave by imperial
+viceroys, European admirals, generals, and consuls, and Chinese
+mandarins, was borne between the silent lines of his Ever-Victorious
+Army. By order of the emperor his name was placed in the pantheon of the
+gods. Temples to commemorate his victories were built at Sing-po and
+Ning-po, and a magnificent mausoleum was erected in his honor in
+Sunkiang. In it the yellow priests of Confucius still burn incense
+before his tomb. In all his history there can be found no hint of
+dishonor, no trace of shame. He was a great soldier and a very gallant
+gentleman, but he has been forgotten by his own people. To paraphrase
+the lines of Matthew Arnold:
+
+    "Far hence he lies,
+    Near some lone Chinese town,
+    And on his grave, with shining eyes,
+    The Eastern stars look down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+    Punctuation normalized.
+
+    Page 66: "cimiter" retained as printed.
+
+    Various: retained as printed "Tippo-Sahib" and "Tippoo Sahib".
+
+    Page 104: "govenment" replaced with "government" in "government
+    of this new country which was about to be annexed".
+
+    Page 115: "alignement" changed to "alignment".
+
+    Page 116: "caufles" retained as printed.
+
+    Page 157: "lowered the flag next day" and "Commodore T. ApCatesby
+    Jones" retained as printed.
+
+    Duplicate chapter headings removed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gentlemen Rovers, by E. Alexander Powell
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