ARRIVE AT THE CAPE—VALUABLE ASSISTANCE FROM LOCAL AUTHORITIES—A CORPS OF VOLUNTEERS FORMED—GENERAL SIR HARRY SMITH’S DIFFICULTIES—DAMAGED STATE OF STORES AND AMMUNITION—OBLIGED TO INVENT A MINIE BALL—HAPPY JACK—THE COMPOSITION OF THE CORPS—REFLECTIONS—COLONEL NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN—HIS PRESENT OF A SWORD AND ITS SUBSEQUENT HISTORY IN TURKEY.

We now proceeded in the same pleasant manner on our way to the Cape, and landed there, after what was then thought a rapid passage of thirty-five days. We found the news from the seat of war was full of the excitement of actual strife, which was being carried on as fiercely as ever. Governor Darling, who appeared to me rather diffident as to his powers of doing good in the colony, with the instructions he had from the Home Government, was nevertheless very active in his efforts to help me. Through his assistance I was enabled, within twenty-four hours of landing, to open an enlisting office. He also stirred up the local authorities and the police to second my efforts. These, and many other kind offices of his, for which I never afterwards had the opportunity of thanking him, I here beg to acknowledge. He is gone now, and I may seem very tardy in expressing my gratitude, but perhaps some of the many who loved him may still listen to my thanks.

Sir Harry Smith, for whom I had letters from the Duke of Wellington, in which, amongst other things, he had kindly said that he believed me to be a real soldier—not only had all the resources of Cape Castle and of the commissariat department placed at my disposal, but offered an extra Government bounty of two pounds, besides the two offered by me, for every man that enlisted. Poor Sir Harry! Although a fine soldier of the olden class, equal to almost any act of gallantry that required no further intuition than that inspired by actual contact with the foe, he failed during this war for the same reasons that rendered Lord Chelmsford equally unsuccessful during the last. The dual character of the local Government, it being at the same time civil and military, places serious, almost insurmountable, obstacles, in the way of a commander in the field. On emergencies he is required to consult the wishes and give way to the exigencies of both powers. It would require the capacity and the energy of a Clive or a Stratford to combine, direct, and successfully wield such a power.

In the course of a fortnight upwards of fifty men had joined the corps, and everything promised well for our success; but now difficulties as to the clothing and arming occurred. As the bales were landed from the Harbinger, it was found that the leather jackets for the men had become so shrunk, from the extreme heat in the hold of the ship, that there was no possible means of restoring them to their original shape. The cartridges also had been reduced by water to a mealy pulp, stuck over here and there by pieces of oily white paper like suet in a black pudding. It appeared that the idea of the cartridges being of a highly inflammable nature had pursued the Woolwich authorities so far, that, out of consideration for the safety of the ship and its precious freight, some considerate souls at the dockyard had filled the tin cases, in which the cartridges were packed, with water, and then carefully soldered them down.

An enterprising clothier, named Taylour, undertook to make other jackets of a similar nature to those spoiled; and a most intelligent mechanic (a Mr Rawbone, gunsmith of Cape Town) engaged to replace the Minie bullet by another equally effective.

It was an absolute necessity to make another-shaped bullet, as the original Minie was useless without the socket of condensed paper, which I could not procure in the colony. Putting our heads together, we invented a bullet in two unequal sizes, slightly dovetailed together in the centre, and which, under the concussion of lighted gunpowder, were driven into one another, and thus expanding, filled up the grooves of the rifle, took the twist, and went spinning through the air on its axis, as true in its flight as the Minie. I was also greatly aided by a Mr Andersen, a Norwegian gentleman, an enthusiastic sportsman and traveller, at the Cape. He took an almost passionate interest in me, my task, and the Minie rifle. From him I gained much useful information concerning bush-life, and the habits, history, and traditions of the Kaffir tribes. He had very little faith in the half-worldly, half-sentimental policy of the British Government towards the Kaffir and the Dutch settler; and my experience afterwards only confirmed the truth of his observations.

I now began to practise the men with their firelocks. As this was almost the only drilling they got, there remained plenty of spare time for drinking-bouts in public-houses, and for them to spend their bounty-money and report on the glorious advantages of being soldiers in prospective.

I had, amongst the men, enlisted a noted character at Cape Town called “Happy Jack.” Evans was his real name, a common sailor now, but who had been boatswain in the navy.

He was rarely in barracks, but always to be hailed, as he good-naturedly explained to the guard on duty, in such or such a public-house. It may be readily supposed that men enlisted under the auspices of Happy Jack were not the best of characters; in fact, many of them were what they termed at the Cape, laggers—that is to say, men who, having got away from Norfolk Island, or other penfolds for black sheep, lag behind, under guardianship of Dutch laws at the Cape, instead of trusting their precious selves to the supervision of their own natural police at home.

The local authorities, however, with the praiseworthy object of dispersing the scabby flock under their charge, provided the ranks of my corps with some desperate cases, whom they ordered to enlist as the alternative of going to prison. I had a shrewd guess as to the meaning of these energetic efforts to strengthen the force under my command; but I used to shut my eyes as closely as possible in accepting the proffered services of some of my recruits, and unless something too glaring forced itself on my attention—such as a man with one arm, a wooden leg, or stone blind—I used to accept the services of almost all, and place them at her Majesty’s disposal,—taking often, when tempted, a cripple, as the necessary evil attendant upon the services of a good man, these being the conditions on which the contract was several times concluded between myself and the police. No doubt I was often undecided as to whether or not I should attempt to knock down the authors of some of the practical jokes that were played upon me; but when I came to reflect that my best friends at the Cape advised me strongly to go home and leave the Kaffirs alone, I could not feel much surprised that stupid people, to whom I was unknown, should be much more practical in their method of enforcing the same opinion upon me.

And truly my position seemed a riddle in more ways than one. I was very young—scarcely twenty-two, and looked still younger. I was spending large sums at the Cape to regain a footing in the British army, when I might have easily purchased, for a tenth of the money, a commission at home. My ways were foreign. I had been brought up mostly abroad—in France and Germany. My military notions were based on their schools. My actual experience of war had been gained in Algeria, Hungary, and in the streets of Paris and Vienna during the late revolutions, where I had taken somewhat more than a strict observer’s part on the side of legal authority.

I could not understand the half-military, half-civilian existence of a British officer, and, excepting the Artillery and Engineers, thought them a very unscientific lot. No one could doubt their fighting capacity; but their capabilities for undertaking a campaign against European armies was very dubious in my sight.

An enthusiast myself in my belief in Christ, I yet belonged to no Church in Christendom—in short, I have often wondered since how I escaped shipwreck amidst the shoals and breakers that surrounded me.

Two bright spots alone shone through this turmoil and anxiety. At the Cape, Colonel Neville Chamberlain and Major Quinn (two nobler specimens of the conquerors of India could hardly be found) took me kindly by the hand; and as they told me, how with quiet demeanour and ironside determination of will, native levies were led, and victories won in India, I humbly resolved to follow, if I could, the noble example they gave me. An anecdote concerning a sword which Colonel Neville Chamberlain presented me with, may not be out of place in these pages. It was a weapon that had fallen into his hands after an engagement, and was considered a splendid specimen of Indian workmanship.

In the year 1853 I was sent on a mission to Constantinople, and took the sword with me, and used to wear it in my frequent visits to the Seraskierat. Riza Pasha, who then presided there, asked me one day to allow him to look at it, and after gravely reading the Arabic characters embossed upon the blade, passed it on to other members of the Council Board. One and all seemed much surprised at the writing, and at my being the possessor of such a weapon. Mr Sarel, the dragoman of the Embassy, who was with me at the time, explained how it came from India, and into my possession. Riza asked to be allowed to show it to the Sultan, to which I consented, but never could get it returned. As, however, I repeatedly asked for it, and threatened to speak to the Ambassador on the subject, Riza one day sent me another sword, with a firman in a white satin bag, containing my nomination to the colonelcy of the second regiment of the Sultan’s Roumelian Guard. I was rather induced to look upon the affair as a mystification; but Sarel explained to me that it was quite serious, and in reality a compliment paid to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and that I had better accept the sword and the commission, as I should never see Colonel Chamberlain’s sword again. In this manner I entered the Turkish army; and although I never assumed the actual command as colonel, it was (by a strange coincidence) one of those regiments that formed the brigade of cavalry which I afterwards commanded on the Danube. It was a curiously-officered regiment. I, the colonel, had been named through being the possessor of a certain sword; the lieutenant-colonel, Said Bey, through being the possessor of a wonderful flute (he had been chief flute-player to the Sultan); one of the majors, Mourad Bey, for being a renegade Frenchman; and the other major, an Irishman, for being the supposed son of an English Prime Minister. The men, however, were splendid fellows, and some became passionately attached to me. As a proof of this, one day when, as quartermaster-general of the Turkish forces, I was sending to Eupatoria, in the Crimea, Osman Pasha’s army from Cisebole, in the Bay of Bourgas, Halil Pasha, brother-in-law of the Sultan, and commander of the Turkish cavalry, refused to obey my repeated orders concerning the embarkation of the women of his harem (a proceeding to which I was opposed), when, at my command, two of my orderlies—Mourad and Mahamet-Chousch—took him by the “scruff” of the neck, before the whole of his staff, and pitched him off the pier into the sea, after his screaming women.

Not a man stirred an inch to save him until I gave orders to do so; and the half-drowned Pasha contented himself with writing a long letter of complaint to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who, in reply, said he only got what he deserved.