THE BATTLE OF DORKING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 187, 9 August 1871, Page 2

THE BATTLE OF DORKING.

(Continued.) We left our volunteer encamped on the hill near Dorking, and meditating upon the folly, mismanagement and neglect that . had resulted in English soil being once again, after the lapse of so many centuries, desecrated by _the foot of the invader. For twelve hours tbey were waiting for the approaching .struggle, till at last it seemed almost as if the invasion were but a bad dream, and the enemy, as yet unseen, bad no existence, but suddenly, the listless state tbey bad fallen into was disturbed by a gunshot fired from the top of the hill on their right. " This," says the writer, "was the first time Iliad ever heard a shotted gun fired, and although it is 50 years ago, the angry whistle of the shot as ifc left the gun is in my ears now." And so the battle opened; gradually the roar of artillery increased, and in a short time the regiment began to hear the singing of rifle bullets over their heads showing that tbe enemy wa3 advancing. The volunteer corps to which the narrator belonged was drawn up under the shelter of a bank, and soon they saw for the first time the dark blue figures of the enemy, an irregular outline in front, but very solid in rear ; the whole body moving forward by fits and starts, the men firing and advancing, the officers waving their swords, the columns closing and gradually making way. "Our people were almost conceak-d by the bushes at tbe top of the bank, whence the smoke and tbeir fire could be seen proceeding; presently, from the bushes on the crest came out a red line, and dashed down the brow of the hill, a flame of fire belching out from the front as it advanced. The enemy hesitated, gave way, and finally run back in a confused crowd down the hill. Then the mist covered the scene, but the glimpse of this splendid charge was inspiriting, and I hoped we should show the same coolness when it came to our turn." Attack after attack was made upon this position, and, as frequently, successfully repelled, regulars, militia, and volunteers fightiDg with undaunted courage and daring, bnt, at last, there arose a cry, "We are taken in flank." Then ensued a scene of confusion. There was no officer to be found to give any orders until " somebody on horseback called out from behind ' Now then. Volunteers ! give a British cheer, and go at them — charge ! ' and with a shout we rushed at the enemy. Some of them ran, some stopped to meet us, and for a moment it was a real hand-to-hand fight. I felt a sharp sting in my leg, as I drove my bayonet right through the man in front of me. I confess I shut my eyes, for I just got a glimpse of the poor wretch as he fell back, his eyes starting out of his head, and, savage though we were, tbe sight was almost too horrible to look at. But the struggle was over in a second, and we had cleared the ground again right up to the rear hedge of the lane. Had we gone on, I believe we might have recovered the lane too, but we were now all out of order; there was no one to say what to -do; the enemy began to line the hedge and open fire, and they were streaming past our left; and how it came about I know not, but we fouud ourselves falling back towards our right rear, scarce any resemblance of a line remaining, and the volunteers who had given way on our left mixed up with us and adding to the confusion." Then followed a complete scene of disorder throughout the whole of that particular division of the army, regiments and detachments being hopelessly mixed up, and all were hurrying rearward until at last they were told to bait. "Tbis first gave us time to think about what had happened. The long day of expectancy had been succeeded by the excitement of battle ; and when each minute may be your last, you do not think much about other people, nor when you are facing another man with a rifle have you time to consider whether he or you is the invader, or that you are fighting for your home and hearths. But now we had time for reflection, and although we did not quite understand how far the day had gone against us, un uneasy feeling of selfcondemnation must have come up in the minds of most of us ; while, above all, we now began to realise what the ioss of this battle' meant to the country." Soon the word oame that the army was to retreat

and take up a position on Epsom Downs, which was nri.hed nt dayligbt on- the following morning*, and hern the same misniauageintnt with regard to the commissariat appeared as was the case at Shoreditcb, but a cart ladened with stores made its appearance after a time, and with a cry of " Food " the men rushed upon it and helped themselves. After having obtained refreshment in the midst of the direst confusion, the army pushed od, and after being on their legs for 16 hours arrived at a bill near the Surbiton station. Here they lay wearily on the ground, from whence tbey could see the Thames glistening like a silver field in the bright suushiue, the palace at Hampton Court, the bridge at Kingston, and the old church tower rising above the haze of the town, with the woods of Richmond Park behind it. "To most of us the scene could not but call up the association of happy days of peace— days now ended, and. peace destroyed through national iufatuation. We did not say ibis to, each other, but a deep depression had come upon us, partly due to weakness and futigue, no doubt, but we saw that auother stand was going to be made, and we had no longer auy confidence in ourselves. If we could not hold our own when stationary in line, on a good position,- but had been broken up iuto a rabble at the first shock, what chance had we now of manoeuvring against a victorious enemy in this open ground ? A feeling of desperation came over v?, a determination to struggle on against hope; but auxiely for the future of tbe country and our friends, and all dear to us, filled our thoughts now that we had time for reflection." Then comes another fight in which ammunition runs short, aud tools for loopholding the walls of houses that are taken possession of to resist tbe advance of the ] enemy, are not forthcoming, tbe result, as might be expected being another defeat. Our volunteer has received a bayonet wound in the leg, a rifle shot in the arm, and a blow on the head from the falling bricks of a house he was defending, and being unable to hold his rifle, and altogether useless, he tries to make his way homewards. In doing so he arrives at the villa residence of a friend who had been seriously wounded in tbe action near Dorking, and he determined to look in and see whether he has reached home. What here happens is so graphically told, and he describes so vividly oue of those scenes of misery that must so frequently occur in a country invaded by a foreign enemy that we must give it in the writer's own words : — "The little garden was as trim as ever, and a blaze of flowers, but the hall door stood ajar. I steeped in and saw little Arthur standing in the hall. He bad been dressed as neatly as ever that day, and as he stood there in his pretty blue frock and white trousers nnd socks showing his chubby little legs, with his golden locks, fair fa? - "--, aud large dark eyes, the picture of childish beauty, in the quiet hall just as it used to 100k — the vases of flower's; the hat and coats hanging up, the familiar pictures on the walls — this vision of peace in tbe midst of war made me wonder for a moment, faint and giddy as I was, if the pandemonium outside had any real existence. But the roar of the guns making the house shake, and the rushing of the shot, gave a ready answer. The little fellow appeared almost unconscious of the scene around him, and was walking up the stairs holding by the railing, one step at a time, as I had seen him do a hundred times before, but

turned round as I came id. My appearance frightened him, and staggering as I did into the hall, my face and clothes covered with blood and dirt, I must have looked an awful object to tbe child, for he gave a cry and turned to run toward ihe basement stairs. But be stopped on hearing my voice calling him back, and after a ■while came timidly up to me. Papa has been to the battle, he said, and was very ill, mamma was with papa. Telling him to stay in tbe hall for a minute till I called him, I climbed upstairs and opened the bedroom door. My poor friend lay there, his body resting on the bed, and his head supported on his wife's shoulder, as she sat by the bedside. He breathed heavily, but the pallor of bis face, tbe closed eyes, the prostrate arms, the clammy foam she was wiping from his mouth, all spoke of approaching death. The poor woman was too intent on her charge to notice the opening of the door, and as the child would be better away, I closed it gently and went down lo the hall to take little Arthur to the shelter of tbe cellar where the maid was hiding . Too lale !He lay at tbe foot of the stairs on his face, his little arms stretched out, his hair dabbled in blood. I bad not noticed the crash among the other noises, but a splinter of a shell must have come through the opening doorway ; it bad carried away the back of his head. The poor child's death must have been instantaneous. I tried to lift up the little corpse with one arm, but even this load was too much for me, and while stooping down I fainted away." On recovering bis senses, the volunteer found himself still in the house of bis friend with tbe enemy in possession, a number of whom were making themselves at home, feasting on what they found in the larder, and criticising the shortcomings of the volunteers to whom they had been opposed. Going out into tbe road he found that the army to which he had belonged was utterly routed, and every bouse in possession of the enemy. There was the same story of humiliation and degradation everywhere. " After the first staud in line, and when once they had got ns on the march, the enemy laughed at us. Our handful of regular troops was sacrificed almost to a man in a vain conflict with numbers ; our volunteers and militia, with officers who did not know their work, without ammunition, or equipment, or staff to superintend, starving in the midst of plenty, we had soon become a helpless mob, fighting desperately here and there, but with whom, as a manoeuvring army, the disciplined invaders did just what they pleased. Happy those whose bones whitened the fields of Surrey ; they at least were spared the disgrace we lived to endure." Tbe results of this crushing defeat are thus told : — " We had heard of generosity in war; we found none; the war was made by us, it was said, and we must take the consequences. London and our only arsenal captured, we were at the mercy of our captors, and right heavily did they tread on our necks. Need I tell you the rest ? — of the ransom we had to pny } and the taxes raised to cover it, which keep us paupers to this day? — tbe brutal frankness that announced we must give place to a new naval Power and be made harmless for revenge — the victorious troops living at free quarters, the yoke tbey put on us made the more galling that their requisitions had a semblance of method and legality ? Better bave been robbed at first hand by the soldiery themselves, j than through our own magistrates made the instruments for extortion. How we lived through the degradation we daily and hourly underwent, I hardly now even understand. And what was there left to us to live for ? Stripped of our colonies ; Canada and the West Indies gone to America ; Australia forced to separate ; India lost for ever, after the English there had all been destioyed, vainly trying to hold the country when cut off from aid by their countrymen ; Gibraltar and Malta ceded to the new naval power ; Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution. When I look at my country as it is now — its trade gone, its factories silent, its harbors empty, a prey to pauperism and decay — when I see all this, and think what Great Britain was in my youth, I ask myself whether I have really a heart or any sense of patriotism that I should have witnessed such degradation and still care to live." On this great national disaster, the writer moralises as follows : — "After all, the bitterest part of our reflection is, that all this misery and decay might have heen so easily prevented, and that we brought it about ourselves by our own shortsighted recklessness. There, across the narrow Straits, was the writing on the wall but we could not choose to read it. The warnings of the few were drowned in the voice of the multitude. Power was then passing away from the class which had been used to rule, and to face political dangers, and which had brought the nation with honor' unuullied through for

mer struggles, into the hands of the lower classes, uneducated; untrained to the use of political rights, and swayed by demagogues ; and the few who were wise ia their generation were denounced as alarmists, or as aristocrats who sought their own aggrandisement by wasting public money on bloated armaments. The rich were idle and luxurious ; the poor grudged the cost of defence. Politics had become a mere bidding for Radical votes, and those who should have led the nation stooped rather to pander to tbe selfishness of the day, and humored the popular cry which denounced those who would secure the defence of the uatiou by enforced arming of its manhood, as interfering with the liberties of tbe people. Truly the nation was rip 9 for a fall; but when I reflect how a little firmness and self-denial, or political courage and foresight, might have averted the disaster, I feel that the judgment must have really been deserved. A nation too selfish to defend its liberty could not have been fit to retain it. To you, my grandchildren, who are now going to seek a new home in a more prosperous land, let not this bitteriesson be lost upon you in the country of your adoption. For me, I am too old to begin life again in a strange country; and bard and evil as have been my days, it is not much to await in solitude tbe time which cannot now be far off, wheu my old bones will be laid to rest in the soil I have loved so well, and whose happiness and honor I have so long survived." A New South Wales paper has the following on standard compasses : — "The efficiency of the standard compasses on board the vessels belonging to the A. S. N. Co. is due to the principle adopted by tbe company's marine superintendent, Captain Munro; and a careful testing has proved them to be invariably correct, although in many instances the vessels have been altered. In tbe case of the City of Adelaide, which steamer has undergone so complete an alteration as to be hardly recognisable, the deviation card shows only 2of deviation, and that only on 5 points, thus proving that the idea as carried out by Captain Munro of placing the standard compass in a tripod immediately in front of the helm, at a sufficient elevation, removes the compass from all attraction, and can safely be depended upon as being correct." The Foxton correspondent of tbe Wanganui Chronicle says :— " The Horowhenua dispute, between the Ngatiraukawa and Ngatiapa tribes, appears no nearer a settlement than ever. There is not, I think, much probability of blood being shed between them; with the Maoris ifc is generally much noise an J little work ; still it is hard to say, as independently of this quarrel, there has been existing for many years past a bitter hatred between the two tribes, the Ngatiapas having on several occasions assumed a threatening attitude as at present, with the view of dispossessing the Ngatiraukawas of some of their conquered lands. The fact of their being; now well armed, and the Ngatiraukawas being almost without arms or ammunition, makes them (the Ngatiapas) disinclined to submit to the mediation of the Government. The Argus has the following : — " In an article upon Mr. Lowe's financial fiasco, which recently appeared, we mentioned that the idea of imposing a tax on lucifer matches was probably borrowed from America. Since then a copy of the New York Herald, of the 27th of April, has come under our notice, in which are published the following telegrams : — * The Chancellor of the Exchequer at London to Revenue Commissioner at Washington. — Please cable immediately how tax on friction matches works. Did imposition derange manufacture or check consumption ? What yield this year ? General Pleasonton made the following reply : — Right Hon. Robert Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, London. — Tax on friction matches works well. Manufacture hot deranged, nor consumption checked. Yield 2,000,000 dol. per annum.— A. Pleasonton, Commissioner.' The interchange of communications of this kind is a new feature in national finance." '* It is only our duty as journalists," says the New York Tribune, "to chronicle all improvements in the fine art of strangulation. In Greenwood country, Kunsas, the ' Vigilance Committee ' have siezed 'eight men known to be thieves,' shot three of them, tbe remainder being reserved for a more effective and original despatch. Tbey were, in fact, hung up by the heels, and left: to perish leisurely by cerebral congestion. Whatever the soft-hearted may think of the humanity' of this method, it is impossible to deny its originality." ( The Hobart Town Mercury of a recent date contains a notice of one of the literary antiquities of Tasmania, a copy of the Hobart Town Gazette, $t, 4th, JplyyXSW. Among the items it contains is the follow-

ing, as summarised by the Mercury. "We" have here recorded the recovery of a black woman, a native of Kangaroo Island, from tbe South Cape of New Zealand. She bad been carried off by a gang of sealers who had settled there, but were assassinated by the Maoris, from whom, with a child at her breast, she -had hidden, sustaining herself afterwards, without fire, on birds and seals for eight months."