MEMORABLE BRITISH SIEGES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 284, 15 June 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

MEMORABLE BRITISH SIEGES.

A DEFENCE THAT LASTED FORTY THREE MONTHS. Even with a war waging its course through rivers of blood, dwarfing utterly any struggle that, has gone before, we can recall with a thrill of 1 ride the grim pertinacity of General White at Ladysmith, keeping the old Hag flying till the army of relief arrived, 119 days after the siege Lad opened. A remarkable feature or this memorable investment was the undoubted fact that had the enemy, instead of attempting storming tactics in the first week in January post polled his big onslaught until the middle of February he must have succeeded, so reduced in numbers and pitifully weak had the original army of defence, 16,000 strong, become. The siege cf Mafeking lasted, as we know, much longer—just seven months to be precise—but it was a gallant performance of a different calibre, the besieged numbering onlv T 00, while the besiegers rarely exceeded 2000. Then the investment of the more important town of Kimberley, though it endured five days longer than that of Ladysmith, neve" caught the public eye as the other two did. Bur the main feature in all three cases was that the end came heralded by throaty huzzas and th • waim hand-grip of friends.

LUCKNOW, DELHI. AXD KHARTOUM. So. too, was it with the British sieges of the Indian Muting, with this distinction, however, that they presented grim and ghastly which an entire century of war could not equal. The greatest of them all was the scige of Delhi, but the most enthralling was inw v-':0'l«' cf Lucknow. From die month of May till September the of ih>s thickly populated town in rU-arn grips with a merciless and demonaic foe, and only by the sheer devotion and heroism of every British unit was the blood-thirsty enemy kept at arm':' reach. No finer thing is there in our history than the defence of the Residency. Taken unawares, Lucknow was ill-prepared for an attack, there being only a single British regiment and battery, and less than three native regiments that could be depended upon, against SOOO superbly armei mutineers and 12 ponderous pieces of cannon. A strange feature concerning this siege was that no sooner had the town been relieved than it war- rigidly invested again for six months.

Delhi, however, must rank as the most important British seige of t'ne nineteenth century. Never was the pluck of our men more patent than in the defence cf this teeming city of the Punjaub, now the capital of the great Indian Empire, and volumes can be written of the glorious deeds performed. In thos3 days Delhi was one of the largest cities in India, yet there were only 1 0,000 defenders to fight 30,000 well-armed mutineers and keep guard over a large population reeking with treacherous fees. As the city proper has a circumference of fully seven miles our men were of necessity thinly spread out, and hideous gaps in the line were soon made, and ere a relief force tec a way at the point of the bayonet into the town the defenders had sustained 4000 casualties, in addition to many hundreds of cases of sickness. For sheer duration General Gordon's heroic defence of Khartoum excelled all other sieges recorded herd for it lasted 317 days, or just nine days shorter than the Russian retention of Sebastopol. Unfortunately, as we all know, its termination was :i tragedy, embittered by the fact that a very few days later the would-bo armv of relief ir time to pick up the threads of the pitiful disaster. . GIBRALTAR'S RECORD.

But the greatest of all great sieges in British annals was undou jtedl\ tha». of Gibraltar, then as now the most strategic fortress in the world. Captured bv us in 170 1 as the outcome oi a magnificent feat of arms, the ac miration of friends and »oes alii e. advantage was taken by the Spaniards during cur conflict with America in 1 779 to make -i really i st upcr dous effort to regain it. G<_n '•r.tl l-.iliot who was entrusted with the defence, was thrown iunr. his own resources, and he deteri.'ined to defend this grand position '.o his last cartridge. Those were the days when every British sorgeant and corporal had to carry a mould to cast bullets and a ladle to melt lead in, so ouick firing, almost needless to say was out of the question. But the enemy sought to ensure a steady and devastating rain of missiles lrreccurse to creating" floating batte: ies on a prodigiccs scale \\ eli versed in the peculiar typography of Gibraltar, he put his knowledge to signal advantage. The aptly-ex-pressed "Key to the Mediterranean ' o-enpiee a tongue of country rising to a height of K'.OO feet of perpendicular reck. with, however, el?nredefined ridges traversing it on the west nMo on which the town i* built. From their floating batteries of i size liitherio undreamt of. ti»-. besiegers raked the ridges, while m the land side of the little penin u til.'. [ large forces were concentrate:! men- ; acingly. As months passed without prospect of relief the deciders became | desperately short of food. and even I munitions'had to he careiully hj". - ! banded. Everything possible was ! done to eke out th" scanty supplies —everv foot of land being made to

yield something. while chickens wenartificially hatched and roared Ficknosr.'esi efi.'ilh- scurvy. bcuan I ' lay a heavy hand on the brave sarar;r.on. and all the time th" men continued to fall victims to the nlasue of red-hot shot and the accompanying deadly rain of splinters. .Ju?t who-, tliingn were looking decidedly black. Adniiial £'r (Seorge Kodney cruched a way into the har'nc ;r with t relief 'madron, leaving holnai him a. wealth of stores and a tho.i---nnd Highland soldiers; hut ex-