WOLSELEY AND THE BLACK WATCH IN ASHANTI
(1873-1874)
The Campbells are comin’, O ho, O ho!
The Campbells are comin’, O ho!
The Campbells are comin’ to bonnie Lochleven,
The Campbells are comin’, O ho, O ho!
Regimental March.

After the Mutiny we say farewell, as it were, to the Old Guard of the Crimea and India, and hear a great deal about the younger men, Wolseley, Roberts, and White, all of whom had been through the Mutiny, two of them being destined to attain to the highest distinction that the British Army can bestow.

Garnet Wolseley was born in Dublin on June 4, 1833. He lost the use of one eye in the Crimea, served in India during the Mutiny, and in the Chinese War of 1860. In 1861 he crossed to Canada, and in 1870 conquered Louis Riel, the half-breed. In 1873 he led an expedition to Ashanti. There have been many places of horror and oppression in the histories of savage peoples, but it is doubtful whether there was ever a town so foul and brutal as Coomassie, the capital of Ashanti. The shedding of blood was the daily delight and pastime of the king, while murder upon a prodigal scale was to him and to his people a kind of rite. His subjects, instead of rebelling against these practices, delighted in such spectacles, and encouraged Koffi Calcalli, the king, to further outrages and orgies. It was, as some one has called it, ‘a metropolis of murder.’ So far, however, Britain had not seen her way to interfere, and had she done so, simply on the ground of common humanity, it is probable that other nations would have suspected her of conspiring to take over the country. At last King Koffi, craving for something new, decided that he would attack the English at Cape Coast Castle. Fortunately he was not able to achieve very much, but on the other hand the English were not strong enough to retaliate. This position was rendered all the more dangerous by the policy of toleration, which from the year 1824, when the Ashantis defeated Sir Charles M’Carthy, to the year 1863, when a West Indian regiment failed most signally, had given the natives a poor opinion of the English arms. It was therefore necessary for the safety of the English settlers that an Expeditionary Force should leave for Ashanti. It sailed under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley, with whom were the Black Watch under Sir John Macleod.

It was no ‘picnic,’ to quote from a popular expression of to-day; and to give some idea of the country through which the Black Watch marched, I shall quote a paragraph from Sir Henry Stanley’s Coomassie and Magdala.

“Coomassie,” he says, “was a town insulated by a deadly swamp. A thick jungly forest—so dense that the sun seldom pierced the foliage, so sickly that the strongest fell victims to the malarias it cherished—surrounded it to a depth of one hundred and forty miles seaward, many hundred miles east, as many more west, and a hundred miles north. Through this forest and swamp, unrelieved by any novelty or a single pretty landscape, the British Army had to march one hundred and forty miles, leaving numbers behind sick of fever and dysentery.”

To force their way through this fastness of almost impenetrable jungle called for both patience and courage. Wolseley received some assistance from the Fantees, who were enemies of the Ashantis. These natives cut a passage through the forests for the British troops. By the time the Black Watch landed at Cape Coast Castle in January 1874 this preparatory work had been completed.

The Highlanders presented an unfamiliar appearance, being clothed in Norfolk grey, which for several excellent reasons was considered a safer form of dress for the troops than the kilt. Associated with the expedition were officers whose names were soon to become familiar to the whole of the English-speaking race. There were Evelyn Wood, Archibald Alison—future commander of the Highland Brigade—Redvers Buller, all men of sterling quality, while Wolseley, whose long life closed in 1913, was a leader possessed of infinite perseverance and with a genius for organisation.

For a time the Fantees gave their assistance as carriers, and without delay the expedition started into the interior, and, having crossed the Prah River, came in contact with the enemy, who were now only too anxious, were it possible, to come to conciliatory terms with the British. These negotiations failed, and a large number of presumably friendly natives having disappeared, the British expedition were faced by a jungle of ninety miles to their front, at the end of which was the stronghold of King Koffi.

Stanley, who was with the expedition, has related that when they came in touch with the enemy for the first time he turned out to see the Black Watch march past to the attack. “We had but barely finished our breakfasts,” he relates, “and buckled our belts on, when our servants informed us that the white troops were close by. Hastening to the square or plaza of the village, we were in time to witness the famous ‘Black Watch’ come up, all primed and ready for action. This was our first view of the fighting 42nd Highlanders, and I must say I improved the occasion to get a good look at them, as if I had never seen a British regiment in my life. Their march past was done with an earnest determined stride that promised well for their behaviour, whatever might lie at the front.”

The Black Watch was under the command of Major Macpherson of Cluny, to whom reference has already been made in a former chapter. He was a descendant of that Cluny Macpherson who, little more than a hundred years before, had been in arms for Prince Charlie.

The forest confronting the Highlanders was intersected by narrow paths, and, in order to advance, and keep in touch with one another, the 42nd ava............