Upon the afternoon of the arrival of the English column upon the Dah the king made another attempt to arrest their progress, with a view no doubt of bringing up fresh reinforcements. A flag of truce came in with a letter to the effect that our rapid advance had much disconcerted him, which was no doubt true, and that he had not been able to make arrangements for the payments claimed; that he would send in hostages, but that most of those whom the general had asked for were away, and that he could not agree to give the queen mother or the heir apparent. These were, of course, the principal hostages, indeed the only ones who would be of any real value. The answer was accordingly sent back, that unless these personages arrived before daybreak the next morning we should force our way into Coomassie. The Dah is a river about fifteen yards wide and three feet deep at the deepest place. The Engineers set to work to bridge it directly they arrived, Russell's regiment at once crossing the river and bivouacking on the opposite bank.
It was unfortunate that this, the first night upon which the troops had been unprovided with tents, should have turned out tremendously wet. The thunder roared, the lightning flashed, and the rain came down incessantly. Tired as the troops were there were few who slept, and there was a general feeling of satisfaction when the morning broke and the last day of the march began.
The rain held up a little before daybreak, and the sky was clear when at six o'clock Wood's Bonny men, who had come up by a forced march the evening before, led the advance. Lieutenant Saunders with one of Rait's guns came next. The Rifles followed in support.
Before the Bonny men had gone half a mile they were hotly engaged, and the combat was for two hours a repetition of that of Amoaful. Saunders advanced again and again to the front with his gun, and with a few rounds of grape cleared the sides of the path of the enemy. At last, however, the Bonny men would advance no farther, and Lieutenant Byre, the adjutant of Wood's regiment, was mortally wounded.
Lieutenant Saunders sent back to say it was impossible for him to get on farther unless supported by white troops. The Rifles were then sent forward to take the Bonny men's place, and slowly, very slowly, the advance was continued until the clearing round a village could be seen fifty yards away. Then the Rifles gave a cheer and with a sudden rush swept through to the open and carried the village without a check. In the meantime the whole column had been following in the rear as the Rifles advanced, and were hotly engaged in repelling a series of flank attacks on the part of the enemy. These attacks were gallantly persevered in by the Ashantis, who at times approached in such masses that the whole bush swayed and moved as they pushed forward.
Their loss must have been extremely large, for our men lined the road and kept up a tremendous Snider fire upon them at a short distance. Our casualties were slight. The road, like almost all roads in the country, was sunk two feet in the center below the level of the surrounding ground, consequently the men were lying in shelter as behind a breastwork, while they kept up their tremendous fire upon the foe.
The village once gained, the leading troops were thrown out in a circle round it, and the order was given to pass the baggage from the rear to the village. The operation was carried out in safety, the path being protected by the troops lying in a line along it. The baggage once in, the troops closed up to the village, the disappointed foe continuing a series of desperate attacks upon their rear. These assaults were kept up even after all had reached the cleared space of the village, the enemy's war horn sounding and the men making the woods re-echo with their wild war cry. The Naval Brigade at one time inflicted great slaughter upon the enemy by remaining perfectly quiet until the Ashantis, thinking they had retired, advanced full of confidence, cheering, when a tremendous fire almost swept them away.
It was six hours from the time at which the advance began before the rear guard entered the village, and as but a mile and a half had been traversed and Coomassie was still six miles away, it was evident that if the Ashantis continued to fight with the same desperation, and if the baggage had to be carried on step by step from village to village, the force would not get halfway on to Coomassie by nightfall.
The instant the baggage was all in, preparations were made for a fresh advance. Rait's guns, as usual, opened to clear the way, and the 42d this time led the advance. The enemy's fire was very heavy and the Highlanders at first advanced but slowly, their wounded straggling back in quick succession into the village. After twenty minutes' work, however, they had pushed back the enemy beyond the brow of the hill, and from this point they advanced with great rapidity, dashing forward at times at the double, until the foe, scared by the sudden onslaught, gave way altogether and literally fled at the top of their speed.
War drums and horns, chiefs' stools and umbrellas, littered the next village and told how sudden and complete had been the stampede. As the 42d advanced troops were from time to time sent forward until a despatch came in from Sir A. Alison saying that all the villages save the last were taken, that opposition had ceased, and that the enemy were in complete rout. Up to this time the attack of the enemy upon the rear of the village had continued with unabated vigor, and shot and slug continually fell in the place itself. The news from the front was soon known and was hailed with a cheer which went right round the line of defense, and, whether scared by its note of triumph or because they too had received the news, the efforts of the enemy ceased at once, and scarcely another shot was fired.
At half past three the baggage was sent forward and the headquarter staff and Rifle Brigade followed it. There was no further check. The 42d and several companies of the Rifle Brigade entered Coomassie without another shot being fired in its defense. Sir Garnet Wolseley soon after arrived, and taking off his hat called for three cheers for the Queen, which was responded to with a heartiness and vigor which must have astonished the Ashantis. These were still in considerable numbers in the town, having been told by the king that peace was or would be made. They seemed in no way alarmed, but watched, as amused and interested spectators, the proceedings of the white troops.
The first thing to be done was to disarm those who had guns, and this seemed to scare the others, for in a short time the town was almost entirely deserted. It was now fast getting dark, and the troops bivouacked in the marketplace, which had so often been the scene of human sacrifices on a large scale.
Their day's work had, indeed, been a heavy one. They had been twelve hours on the road without rest or time to cook food. Water was very scarce, no really drinkable water having been met with during the day. In addition to this they had undergone the excitement of a long and obstinate fight with an enemy concealed in the bush, after work of almost equal severity upon the day before, and had passed a sleepless night in a tropical rainstorm, yet with the exception of a few fever stricken men not a single soldier fell out from his place in the ranks.
Nor was the first night in Coomassie destined to be a quiet one. Soon after two o'clock a fire broke out in one of the largest of the collections of huts, which was soon in a blaze from end to end. The engineers pulled down the huts on either side and with great difficulty prevented the flames from spreading. These fires were the result of carriers and others plundering, and one man, a policeman, caught with loot upon him, was forthwith hung from a tree. Several others were flogged, and after some hours' excitement the place quieted down. Sir Garnet was greatly vexed at the occurrence, as he had the evening before sent a messenger to the king asking him to come in and make peace, and promising to spare the town if he did so.
Although Coomassie was well known to Frank he was still ignorant of the character of the interior of the chiefs' houses, and the next day he wandered about with almost as much curiosity as the soldiers themselves. The interiors even of the palaces of the chiefs showed that the Ashantis can have no idea of what we call comfort. The houses were filled with dust and litter, and this could not be accounted for solely by the bustle and hurry of picking out the things worth carrying away prior to the hurried evacuation of the place. From the roofs hung masses of spiders' web, thick with dust, while sweeping a place out before occupying it brought down an accumulation of dust which must have been the result of years of neglect. The principal apartments were lumbered up with drums, great umbrellas, and other paraphernalia of processions, such as horns, state chairs, wooden maces, etc. Before the door of each house stood a tree, at the foot of which were placed little idols, calabashes, bits of china, bones, and an extraordinary jumble of strange odds and ends of every kind, all of which were looked upon as fetish. Over the doors and alcoves were suspended a variety of charms, old stone axes and arrow tips, nuts, gourds, amulets, beads, and other trumpery articles.
The palace was in all respects exactly as the king had left it. The royal bed and couch were in their places, the royal chairs occupied their usual raised position. Only, curiously enough, all had been turned round and over. The storerooms upstairs were untouched, and here was found an infinite variety of articles, for the most part mere rubbish, but many interesting and valuable: silver plate, gold masks, gold cups, clocks, glass, china, pillows, guns, cloth, caskets, and cabinets; an olla podrida, which resembled the contents of a sale room.
In many of the native apartments of the palace were signs that human sacrifice had been carried on to the last minute. Several stools were found covered with thick coatings of recently shed blood, and a horrible smell of gore pervaded the whole palace, and, indeed, the whole town. The palace was full of fetish objects just as trumpery and meaningless as those in the humblest cottages. The king's private sitting room was, like the rest, an open court with a tree growing in it. This tree was covered with fetish objects, and thickly hung with spiders' webs. At each end was a small but deep alcove with a royal chair, so that the monarch could always sit on the shady side.
Along each side of the little court ran a sort of verandah, beneath which was an immense assortment of little idols and fetishes of all kinds.
From one of the verandahs a door opened into the king's bedroom, which was about ten feet by eight. It was very dark, being lighted only by a small window about a foot square, opening into the women's apartments. At one end was the royal couch, a raised bedstead with curtains, and upon a ledge by the near side (that is to say the king had to step over the ledge to get into bed) were a number of pistols and other weapons, among them an English general's sword, bearing the inscription, “From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashanti.” This sword was presented to the predecessor of King Coffee. Upon the floor at the end opposite the bed was a couch upon which the king could sit and talk with his wives through the little window.
In the women's apartments all sorts of stuffs, some of European, some of native manufacture, were found scattered about in the wildest confusion. The terror and horror of the four or five hundred ladies, when they found that their husband was about to abandon his palace and that they would have no time to remove their treasured finery, can be well imagined.
In almost every apartment and yard of the palace were very slightly raised mounds, some no larger than a plate, others two or even three feet long. These were whitewashed and presented a strong contrast to the general red of the ground and lower walls. These patches marked the places of graves. The whole palace, in fact, appeared to be little better than a cemetery and a slaughterhouse in one. A guard was placed over the palace, and here, as elsewhere through the town, looting was strictly forbidden.
All day the general expected the arrival of the king, who had sent a messenger to say he would be in early. At two o'clock a tremendous rainstorm broke over the town, lasting for three hours. In the evening it became evident that he was again deceiving us, and orders were issued that the troops, in the morning, should push on another three miles to the tombs of the kings, where he was said to be staying. Later on, however, the news came that the king had gone right away into the interior, and as another storm was coming up it became evident that the rainy season was setting in in earnest. The determination was therefore come to, to burn the town and to start for the coast next morning.
All night Major Home with a party of Engineers was at work mining the palace and preparing it for explosion, while a prize committee were engaged in selecti............