Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 33
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Double Battle of Queenstown.
Soon after eight o’clock on the morning of Monday the 13th of October 189—, Admiral St George, in command of as large a fleet as could be spared from the several maritime places about the world which it had become necessary to defend, passed Roche’s Point and was piloted into the harbour under some vigorous objections in the form of shells from Fort Carlisle, which the enemy held almost overhead starboard. However, he not only ran the gauntlet of this fire without crippling damage, but even survived the far more serious ordeal of torpedoes; and shortly the two fleets were hot at it inside the basin between Queenstown and Whitegate, the Allies having this great advantage over the British, that they delivered their fire from a position sheltered on its flanks and taken up at leisure, while the English admiral had no time to make any arrangements, and hardly to come to the attack in any order whatever.
At the sound of the cannonade inside the harbour, which commenced a few minutes before nine, the defending forces on land were ordered to advance against an enemy who desired nothing better than to give them the warm reception upon which he had founded all his plans. The first shots were exchanged on the British left, where an onset was made against the wood immediately above Trabolgan House, eastward, which the invaders occupied. A sharp rifle fire rang through this thick plantation for some time without any visible result; at last, the English dashed in with fixed bayonets, and in a hand-to-hand conflict drove their enemies from tree to tree down the hill to the open pleasure-grounds of the mansion, and here a desperate combat raged; the English striving to carry by storm the garrisoned house. Every window was spitting fire upon them; the lower apartments were strongly barricaded, and a succession of fierce rushes against the house, first on one side then on another, was for a time repulsed with telling loss. But the French had not reckoned on their right wing being dislodged from the wooded hill opposite and driven in; hence reinforcements were not to hand for the moment. Meanwhile, the determined gallantry of two English battalions at last overpowered the house garrison, and after a stubborn cut-and-thrust struggle up the stairs, the British colours waved from the roof of the mansion.
Elated by this success, Lord Redhill prepared to advance the whole line. All his batteries which had been brought to bear upon the centre of the valley opened at once, while—the real movement—a strong body of cavalry, backed up by infantry, in fact, the whole of his right wing, swooped upon Whitegate and achieved a success even more brilliant than that which had just been gained on the left. Dashing along the road which acts as a sea wall in front of the village [ref. Chap. XIII.], they fell upon the Americans with a sudden shock and drove them pell-mell out of the village, forcing them to shelter in the wood which clothes the shoulder of the ridge and in the hollow behind it, where their reserve was stationed. Thus, both wings of the invader being already repulsed, the assault upon his centre began; but it failed, because the French centre was as good as impregnable. The crest of their hill was an enceinte of redoubts and wall-faced embankments which offered no weak point; while on the British side of the valley the hedgerows were not yet trampled down sufficiently to allow cavalry to advance unimpeded. At the onset, a hot encounter took place on the main road itself, at the very spot where our heroine had turned back in her walk a year before [ref. Chap. XIII.]; and here again the French got worsted and were forced up the hill, disputing the ground yard by yard; but as they retreated behind their strong places above, their artillery swept the hill side with a deadly fire; this was followed up by a simultaneous cavalry charge from the right and left centre which decimated the impetuous assailants, driving what remained of them back across the valley; and the British general feared for the moment that his own centre was broken. But La Roche’s tactics were more patient and cautious, and he did not permit the counter-charge to be followed up.
It proved very soon that the carrying by assault of Whitegate, though it was certainly magnificent, was not war. It should not have been done until the success of the British fleet had been made sure of; and Admiral St George did not succeed. His position was altogether a weak one. He could not break the enemy’s serried line of battle off Whitegate, strengthened as it was by the possession and fortification of the islet in front of the village; the new American dynamite rams darted about his ships like gadflies and inflicted great damage; lastly, he was rather annoyed than assisted by the blundering fire of Port Camden, which commanded his rearmost squadron, and whose shells, falling short of the enemy’s vessels, did execution, when they did any at all, upon British ships. The consequence was that no support whatever could be given by the fleet to the attack on Whitegate. On the contrary, as soon as the American naval commander, whose division of the Allied fleet was posted inside, next the shore, understood what had happened, he opened a withering cannonade upon the village. Its effect became immediately visible in a stampede of the English; then the American corps which had been forced to take refuge among the reserve behind the wooded shoulder of the ridge, came on again in good order, re-occupied the shattered village, and even pushed its outposts further eastward, gaining ground.
Trabolgan was still held in the grip of the English who had stormed it; and their commander, seeing that matters stood badly on the right and on the centre, concentrated all the force he could spare upon that advanced post of his left. A battery was brought to bear upon the hillside below Roche’s Tower from the opposite slope; cavalry was massed behind the wood on the same slope; and the wood itself was again filled with infantry, taking the place of the force which had gone forward and captured the house.
General La Roche, on his side, perceived too that the brunt of the fight would next be about Trabolgan, and subsequently either at Roche’s Tower or on the opposite rising ground, according to which side should repulse the other. He therefore quietly drew off a considerable force, his now secure left wing, so as to leave his reserve intact for unforeseen emergencies, and hurried this force southwards along the rear of the ridge, between the line and the reserve, where it passed hidden from the enemy’s view. It debouched at Roche’s Tower, the infantry in front, just in time to engage in the fiercest contest of the day, with an English foot regiment which had poured across the low ground near the cliff and stormed the hill. This was a desperate move, because it must have been evident that a mass of men, if repulsed from Roche’s Tower, must literally be driven into the sea over the cliff. And such was actually the result. A tremendous charge of the French cavalry cleared the ground, bearing down the tall signal-staff as an avalanche would a reed, and with a horrid smash, sacrificing many horses, as well as the limbs of their riders against the squat, round, white lighthouse, Roche’s Tower [ref. Chap. XIII.].[1] But the charge did its work; the British regiment was driven over the cliff along with the foremost of its assailants; then the guns arrived at the spot, and it became an artillery duel between the opposing hills, each side seeking to clear the way for a decisive advance across the valley. But the Allies had the best of it; they were twenty thousand stronger than the British at this point in the field, and Providence was declaring for the big battalions. The French at Roche’s Tower having both a superior force and a superior position, might assume the offensive at any moment, supported by cavalry, which the now trampled hedges would allow to act in the valley; and Lord Redhill could spare no additional force, without drawing away his reserve, which had to watch the Americans at Whitegate, who were preparing to attempt a flank movement.
This concentration of force by the invader at Roche’s Tower sealed the fate of Trabolgan, verifying the prophetic words which our heroine had uttered on the spot a year before, ‘The place is doomed.’ The intervening fringes of fir plantation having been now gapped by the artillery, aim could be taken at the mansion itself, which was still crammed from basement to roof with English soldiers. The roar of the guns was soon answered by the crash of masonry and the rising of smoke and flames from the ill-fated house, where the main staircase was one of the first parts to fall, involving in hopeless destruction most of those who were inside. And now, bit by bit, the solid wedge of the enemy’s advance from Roche’s Tower began to elbow out of the mansion grounds, and to push into the shelter of the wood above it, the English force which, since the morning, had held obstinately that point of vantage. And this, although the British battery, which was still in position near the cliff, mowed lanes in the assaulting column; because those gunners were exposed to a heavier cannonade, and from a greater elevation. Three o’clock found the wood above the burning house carried by the French; and the sharp ping of rifles filled it from end to end, as the fight grew on eastward like a rising tide, superior force prevailing steadily over stubborn endurance.
His right now gaining ground, and his centre secure, La Roche prepared to execute the flank movement on the left for which the Americans were eager, to avenge their early repulse. The rising water in the basin would now enable at least the smaller vessels to co-operate with the advance by land along the harbour-side road eastwards. Accordingly, the twenty thousand Americans in line, together with five thousand French cavalry of the reserve, received orders to push forward and turn the English right flank, while the ten thousand American reserve came forward to occupy Whitegate and maintain communications. It was now between four and five o’clock, and the attention of the British right wing was turning irresistibly to the crisis at Trabolgan, where the firing was becoming more furious every minute, the peppering of the rifles in the wood being overpowered by the booming of the big guns and the crackling explosions of the mitrailleuses. Suddenly they were surprised by a galling fire from a long fringe of trees on the right rear, and then by the sight of the Stars and Bars waving amid the smoke along their turned flank. The mischief was difficult to avoid; Lord Redhill was undermanned for his battlefield, and could hardly avoid one danger without running into another. Either he must have continued to give way on the left and centre, or by reinforcing them he must have exposed his right flank, as had now happened. The order flashed to the reserve, ‘Change front half right back!’ but the movement was executed under a murderous fire, and when at last the men fronted to the north-east, they had more than enough to hold their ground against the elevated position and greater numbers of the Americans. To support them with the centre was out of the question, while the centre itself was being forced upon the other side, and the left repulsed and driven in. There remained but one desperate chance—to carry the enemy’s centre by a sudden onslaught, giving time to the assailants—when successful—to join with the reserve in maintaining the line of retreat. That did not mean victory, but it might give a chance of orderly retreat. Such a plan needs only to he stated to show its wild impracticability. The wise and humane course now would have been to send forward flags of truce, acknowledge a by no means disgraceful defeat, and surrender with the whole army. But the same temper which had prompted the would-be defenders of the unfriendly country to hurry on and stake their fortune on a pitched battle again prevailed over their better judgment, and the General called up the Life Guards, and formed them in column attack, thus weakening his reserve, and depriving it of its very faint chance of cutting a way out of the field.
‘It’s all over but the shouting, Barford,’ he said, with a forced and livid smile, as the Colonel rode to his side; ‘we’re between the devil and the deep sea. Unless we can carry that ridge by assault, we must throw up the sponge.’
‘Hopeless, General,’ was the reply. ‘But I see with you there’s nothing else left. I believe my men would mutiny rather than surrender—but it rests with you; we wait orders.’
‘Well, a soldier’s death to us, old fellow, that’s all.’ Then, taking his place,—
‘Attack in close column! Carry swords!’ The bristling steel flashed together.
‘Trot, march!’ The bugles sounded, and the French commander, on the opposing ridge, saw a great billow of cavalry coming end on down the slope to the valley in front of his centre.
‘Gallop!’ The bugles sounded, and the grass fields, by this time trampled into mud between their flattened hedgerows, quivered under the weight of the bounding mass, which flowed across the road, and began to ascend among the débris of breached and battered defences on the French hillside.
‘Charge!’ The bugles sounded, and up went the disciplined column, over all obstacles, compact, swift, and heavy as a rushing train, into the gaping jaws of destruction. The mitrailleuses were ready for them; there was a hell of flame and thunder; then a dense pall of white smoke, out of which, right and left, emerged a few score of mangled and shrieking horses, many dragging their dead riders in the stirrups, and all careering madly back across the valley, braining the scared wounded lying about, who tried painfully to get out of the way. This was the finish; the Life Guards had perished with the General, the reserve was broken up, the Americans were pressing on the rear; and now, under a panic no army could be expected to endure, the over-matched British troops gave up the vain struggle, and fled.
Admiral St George had been pounding away all day at the Allied fleet securely drawn up between the friendly shore of Queenstown and the guarded village of Whitegate. As explained already, he fought at immense disadvantage; it was no question of merely giving and taking hard knocks in the Nelson fashion. Still the English hammered away with their old pluck, clinging to the hope that success of the army on land might make up for the failure of the fleet; which indeed, from the patriotic point of view, would be the more important success after all But when they saw the smoke of the American flank movement gaining onwards and onwards up the south-eastern slope; still more, when they perceived that the thunders of the battle were growing inland across the valley from the ridge of Roche’s Tower, they knew that Redhill must have been outflanked, and that all was lost. Then the human imstincts of life and safety took the place of emulation and self-sacrifice; they had done all that men could do; and the Admiral signalled to cease firing, and struck his flag.
In a few minutes all was quiet on the water, and the heavy canopy of smoke lifted slowly from the basin of Cork Harbour, which lay calm and blue in the mellow October sunset. But, for two hours afterwards, the men in the ships could hear the roar of the pursuit on land rolling away past Midleton toward Youghal, until darkness put an end to slaughter and savagery, but not to untold miseries, which lay overborne by the headlong torrent of rout.
- ↑ See Frontispiece.