The March to Magdala

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Henty George Alfred. The March to Magdala

PREFACE

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

THE MARCH TO MAGDALA

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The Abyssinian expedition has, from the time it was first determined upon, attracted an amount of attention, not only in Great Britain but throughout the civilised world, altogether disproportionate to the strength of the army employed, or to the extent of the interests at stake. The total force engaged was under, rather than over, 10,000 men; not one-fifth the strength of an army which we might ourselves put into the field for a campaign in India; scarcely a fiftieth of the force at the command of either of the great Continental Powers. It was clearly not the magnitude of the expedition, then, which attracted attention: it was the extraordinary and novel circumstances under which it was undertaken; the almost insurmountable difficulties to be overcome; the unknown nature of the country to be traversed, and the romantic disinterestedness of the motives which led England to embark upon it, which has rendered it one of the most interesting and notable campaigns ever undertaken. Since the expedition of Pizarro and Cortes in the middle ages, no such novel and hazardous expedition is on record. The country itself was like that of the far-famed Prester John – everything about it smacked of the marvellous. It was more mountainous, more inaccessible, more war-loving, more wild than any other country in the world. The king with whom we waged war was a potentate who by his military talents had raised himself from a comparatively obscure position to the sovereignty of all Abyssinia: he was enlightened beyond his race; patronised strangers, encouraged manufactures, endeavoured in every way to improve the condition of his country, and was yet a bloodthirsty tyrant. The people themselves were a strange race, far more civilised than other African nations, Christians in the midst of a Mahometan and Pagan continent, a mixture of many races – African, Greek, Arab, and Jew. Altogether it was a land of romance. Nor had travellers done much to enlighten us as to the country. Some had described it as fertile in the extreme; others had spoken of it as a land of mountain and defile, where no sustenance could be hoped for for the army. They had united only in prophesying evil things – hunger and thirst, inaccessible mountain and pathless wastes, fever, cholera, small-pox, dysentery, the tetse-fly, tapeworm, and guinea-worm. We were to be consumed with fire; we were to be annihilated with stones rolled upon us when in ravines; we were to be cut off in detail upon our marches; we were to be harassed to death by repeated night and day attacks. All these and many other prophecies were freely uttered, and it really appeared as if our expedition was to partake strongly of the nature of a forlorn-hope. The friends of officers and men said good-bye to them as if they were going to certain death, and insurance-offices doubled and trebled the premium upon their lives. All this assisted to raise the public interest and anxiety to the highest point. It is needless now to say that almost the whole of the adverse predictions were entirely falsified, and that we have met with no difficulties whatever beyond mountain and ravine, the want of transport, and the scarcity of food.

Generally as the subject is known, it is yet necessary, before commencing the history of the campaign, to say a few words upon the events which preceded and caused it; and as the subject has been exhausted by Dr. Beke in his able work on the Abyssinian captives, I cannot do better than preface my story with a brief epitome of the facts recited in his volume. Dr. Beke was well-acquainted with Mr. Plowden, our late Consul there, and knew thoroughly the whole of the events which led to the captivity of the English party, and he was in intimate communication with their friends here. His statements are supported by numerous official documents; and this volume, in which he now sets forth the state of the case, may be apparently received with confidence as reliable in every particular.

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The news of the imprisonment of Captain Cameron appeared in the Paris and London papers of the 15th of December; but no one could believe it, the favour in which the British Consul stood being a matter of notoriety. Lord Clarendon, however, stated in the House of Lords, in the debate on February 9, 1866, that the news had been received at the early date given of the Consul’s detention; but it was only upon March 16, 1864, or three months after it was known at the Foreign Office, that the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews received and made public the sad intelligence. Mrs. Stern wrote a petition to the Queen, asking her to send a letter under the sign-manual, written by herself to the Emperor. Lord Shaftesbury handed this letter to Earl Russell, adding his own prayer to that of Mrs. Stern’s, and requesting him to present the petition to the Queen. On the following day, May 7th, Earl Russell returned the petition, unpresented, to Lord Shaftesbury, saying that “after much deliberation he had come to the conclusion that he ought not to advise the Queen to write to the King of Abyssinia.”

So matters might have remained to the present day had not a note which Captain Cameron had written during his captivity been received by his relatives, and by them most indiscreetly published in the papers. In this he said that there was no hope of his release unless an answer was sent to the Emperor’s letter. Everyone was filled with indignation at the delay of fourteen months which had taken place in sending an answer to so important a document, and Earl Russell and his colleagues came to the conclusion that after all they ought to advise her Majesty to reply to the letter, which she accordingly did, and towards the end of June the letter was sent off. But so inefficiently was this done, that after it had reached Cairo it was sent back to England to have alterations made in it, and even then it was not perfect, for it was discovered many months afterwards that the royal signet had not been attached, and a fresh letter was accordingly sent out in February or March 1865. The person selected to carry out this delicate business was a Mr. Rassam, who had acted as paymaster to the men employed by Mr. Layard at Nineveh, and who was instructed to demand the release of Consul Cameron, but that as the other captives were not British subjects, he was not to speak too authoritatively in their behalf. But Mr. Rassam had, Dr. Beke affirms, another and far more delicate mission. “He was to make a good case for the British Government – to remove the blame from their shoulders, even if it were thrown on those of anyone else. It did not matter who might be the scapegoat as long as the Government were exonerated. This is said quite advisedly.” Mr. Rassam went to Massowah, where he remained a year doing apparently nothing whatever. Dr. Beke thinks that all along, both in this and in his subsequent conduct, when he went into the interior and saw the Emperor, his conduct was not, to say the least of it, judicious. The release of the prisoners when Mr. Rassam did at last see the Emperor and present the Queen’s letter, and their subsequent imprisonment, together with Mr. Rassam, are known to all.

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