The romance of empire 1924

Front matter

h @bS9hSY

UMN

WINN

Part II The New World Early English Settlements In North America

- THE PILGRIM FATHERS - S = ii

REDSKINS ON THE WAR-PATH - - : PURITANS AND QUAKERS - - 2

. THE WITCH-FINDERS~ - 3 j

THE CROWN AND THE COLONIES = = THE STORY OF ACADIA - - - .

PART. LU THE CONQUEST OF CANADA

THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA - .

FIGHTS ALONG THE FRONTIER - ~ A GREAT DISASTER - : - - A BARONET OF THE BACKWOODS % - THE TRAGEDY OF FORT WFLLIAM HENRY - WILLIAM PITT AND ENGLAND’S AWAKENING - THE HEROES OF LOUISBOURG - - - BEFORE QUEBEC - : ~ - ~ HEROIC FAILURE - = - - THE GREAT ADVENTURE > = = THE PRIZE OF VICTORY - “ - 1X

PAGE

95 10]

CHAPTER

THE LOSS OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES

Part IV

XXII. STRAINED RELATIONS - " 2 XXIV. BROKEN BONDS - - - = s XXV. THE MEN OF BUNKER’S HILL - - - XXVI. THE SIEGE OF BOSTON - ‘ z J

XXVII. A VICTORIOUS RETREAT . :

XXVIII. BURGOYNE’S SURRENDER : - -

XXIX. THE VALLEY FORGE - . ‘ "

XXX. THE FALL OF YORKTOWN - - “

XXXI. THE PRICE OF PEACE - - ° - PART V

XXXII.

XXXII.

XXXIV.

XXXV, XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII, XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIIl.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

ENO.

XLVITI.

XLIX.

THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE

THE THE THE THE THE

THE EMPIRE IN THE EAST

STORY OF INDIA - - = COMING OF CLIVE - - -

DEFENCE OF ARCOT = 4 ct:

WAR WITH SURAJAH DOWLAH - os STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY 5 .

NATIVE WARS - - > = STORY OF A GREAT TRAGEDY - < CONQUEST OF THE PUNJAB = INDIAN MUTINY = - °

PARI WI THE STORY OF AUSTRALIA

DISCOVERY | - = < = AUSTRALIAN PIONEERS - a +) GREAT GOLD RUSH - = BUSHRANGERS > = > - NEW NATION - . = .

PART VII

NEW ZEALAND AND HER PEOPLE

COOK AND HIS FOLLOWERS - = =

THE TWO ISLANDS - - - = THE MAORI RACE - » - - SOUTH SEA RUFFIANS cS ° .

PAGE

250 261 290 297 311

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

L.

OR 0

Lil.

LIII.

LIV.

LV.

LVI.

LVII.

EVIE, LIX.

Lx.

LXI.

LXII.

LXITI.

LXIV.

LXV.

LXVI.

LXVII.

LXVIII.

LXIX.

LKX.

LXXI.

LXXII.

LXXIII.

LXXIV.

THE BIBLE AND THE MAORIS - THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS - RIVAL CLAIMS - - a THE FIRST WAR = - - HEROIC ENEMIES - - - THE LAST STAND “ - -

PART VIII RIVAL RACES IN SOUTH

BOERS AND BLACK MEN = - BOERS AND’ BRITISH — - - > THE ZULU IMPIS = : - THE TRAGEDY OF MAJUBA HILL - DIAMONDS AND GOLD - - CECIL RHODES - = - THE JAMESON RAID - - - THE MATABELE . - - THE UITLANDERS - = - THE ARBITRAMENT OF WAR : THE BATTLE OF LADYSMITH - es DISASTERS AND DEFEATS - - ALONG THE TUGELA - - - THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH - = ROBERTS TO THE RESCUE. - G THE HEROES OF MAFEKING - - HOW ROBERTS REACHED PRETORIA - THE END OF THE WAR - THE EMPIRE AND THE WORLD WAR

INDEX = = c =

AFRICA

Keep not standing, fixed and rooted, Briskly venture, briskly roam ;

Head and hand, where’er thou foot it, And stout heart are still at home.

In what land the sun does visit, Brisk are we whate’er betide :

To give space for wandering is it That the world was made so wide.

t

Trayay

1 ? d ve nen se - r Pe ye ra . , . : ‘ a ay

Saat: weal |

-* h ne

Bee ve

Paik Dial UNROLLING THE MAP

CHAPTER I ile LAE SEA

Tue British Empire was founded in its beginning not on land, but on sea. It was our seamen, not our soldiers, who first planted the flag in far countries, and who were first of their race to unroll the map of the world, so great a part of which is now called Britain Beyond the Seas. Even now the Empire depends not a little for its prosperity and its safety upon British seamen; one-third the trade of the whole world is carried in British ships. Not only a large proportion of the Empire’s wealth depends upon those great merchant fleets, but the food-supplies of the mother-country, and therefore our very lives, and the continued existence of the Empire itself, are subject to the safeguarding of British merchant-ships by British battleships in time of war. It was by obtaining the supremacy of the sea that our forefathers were able to build up the Empire; and it is by maintaining that supremacy that we and our descendants may alone hold it.

England—‘ this little isle set in a silver sea,’ as Shakespeare called it—is the inheritance of men who were truly ‘rocked in the cradle of the deep.’ The first Englishmen—Angles,

I

Saxons, and Jutes—were sea-rovers who came with the north-east wind, and they were followed by the Danes, who lived by piracy, and whose captains were sea-kings, holding their titles by right of conquest over wind and wave. Even when Angles, Saxons, and Danes had abandoned their sea-life to till the rich soil, and to found their rival kingdoms on this good English land, the voice of the sea was still in their ears, their pulses still beat to the tune of the surf breaking upon our rugged coasts, and they were kept hard and tough by the cold, keen winds booming over holt and headland. As Charles Kingsley sang in his ‘ Ode to the North-East Wind,’

**Tis the hard gray weather — Breeds hard Englishmen.’

And those, at least, who dwelt within sound of the sea, and who gazed with gray English eyes, eastward or westward, through sea-mist and spray, could never wholly lose that spirit of adventure and that love of the great waters which had stirred the Viking’s blood.

It is not strange, therefore, that Englishmen should have ~ ‘gone down to the sea in ships, and ploughed the furrows of the world of waters with the keels of English boats. It is strange, rather, that our countrymen should have been behindhand at first in tracking their way to unknown oceans, and should have let seamen of other nations lead the way and put new lands—new worlds almost—upon their charts before they themselves were quickened into the desire for similar discoveries.

It is strange that for several hundreds of years, until the approach of that wonderful sixteenth century which was to be the Golden Age of’ England, the spirit of English seamanship seemed to be sleeping. Although King Alfred, who is justly called the Father of the English Navy, had been quick to realize that the sea was England’s ‘first line of defence,’ and had built and manned a little fleet of battleships, his example was speedily forgotten by those who followed him, and England

THE CALL OF THE SEA 3 had no Royal Navy even when Henry VIII. first came to the throne, and the dawn of modern England broke through the darkness of the Middle Ages. |

England, however, was never without her sailors. In Devon and Cornwall, along the south coast and the east, there was always a hardy race of fisherfolk who knew the secrets of the sea; and when, after foreign and civil wars, plagues and peasant rebellions, and the tyrannies of usurping kings, the English people began to find some measure of liberty, peace, and prosperity, a goodly trade with foreign parts was built up by merchant-ships which sailed from English ports to Cork, to Antwerp, to Bordeaux, to Venice and Genoa, and other markets of Europe, with ‘Frankish wools’ from London and Norwich; with ‘Suffolk stuffs,’ ‘village medleys,’ kerseys of all colours, friezes, white and unshorn, and all manner of fustians and cloths, for which England became renowned.

But even then our merchant seamen kept to the well-known sea-tracks between their own island and the European ports. Good money or profitable exchange for English cargoes was all they sought, and as yet it never entered their heads to plunge into unknown seas for new lands, where there might be greater riches,

It was the Portuguese and Spaniards who were first daring enough to set out upon voyages of discovery, to find out what lay upon the other side of the great Atlantic. For centuries there had been legends among them of a land of fabulous wealth, peopled by strange monsters, far away across the western sea, where the sun went down. ‘The Voyages of St. Brandan and St. Malo’ and ‘The Travels of the Seven Spanish Bishops,’ in which these old legends are narrated, were as well known to the Spaniards and Portuguese as the story of ‘Sindbad the Sailor’; and, although the most intelligent amongst them did not believe in the marvellous tales of the ‘Isle of Saints,’ which was the abode of the blessed dead, or of the ‘Isle of Delight,’ laden with fruits and sweet spices and precious stones, or in the story of the ‘ back of the whale,’

1-—2 upon which St. Brandan had lighted a fire, which stirred the island monster from its sleep, there were many men of learning who thought that at the bottom of these old legends there must be some truth about a land lying on the other side of the unknown sea.

Among the men who brooded over these popular tales was Prince Henry of Portugal, called afterwards Prince Henry the Navigator. It is pleasant to know that he had English blood in his veins, for he was the son of Philippa, daughter of our John of Gaunt—‘ time-honoured Lancaster ’—and the wife of King John of Portugal, who reigned between the years 1383 and 1433. Prince Henry was made Governor of Algarves, the southernmost province of his father’s kingdom, and here, at the seaport of Sagres, near Lagos town, he spent forty years of a busy and noble life. He did not care for the ordinary luxury and idleness of a prince’s Court, but he gathered around him a little company of hardy and gallant sailors, who were ready to serve him to the death, and to undertake any perilous enterprise with which he might entrust them.

Prince Henry had four aims in life: to push aside the veil of darkness which hung over the undiscovered world; to found a Portuguese Empire beyond the seas ; to increase the wealth of Portugal by establishing a steady trade with the East; and to carry the blessings of Christianity into heathen lands. He, like many others of his time, believed that there must be a way to India by pushing round by Africa, of which only the northern coast had been explored; and he believed, also, that by sailing straight towards the setting sun, a ship might find a nearer way to ‘far Cathay,’ which we now call China, where, according to old travellers’ tales, might be found the world’s storehouse of gold and precious stones, silks and spices, and Nature’s most luscious fruits.

It was with these ideas that he inspired the seamen at his Court, and at his cost, in good stout ships built under his direction, with charts drawn by his chartographers and with instruments invented by his men of science, they set out from time to

THE CALL OF THE SEA ; time on perilous voyages, away from the well-known highways of the sea. Although Prince Henry and his navigators failed in their great designs, they were rewarded by some measure of success, and were able to put many new names on their charts. In 1420 one of Henry’s captains named Zarko, in beating round Africa to find a passage to India, discovered the island of Madeira. Some years later Gonzalez Cabral, after an adventurous voyage, sighted the Azores, and, having explored them, went back with joy to report these new additions to his master’s maps.

In 1460 Diego Gomez and Antonio de Nolli. sighted those ‘islands in the ocean,’ as they called them for want of a general name, which are now known as the Cape Verde group, and, exploring them, called the largest Santiago.

Other great captains of Henry the Navigator— Nuno Tristan, Diego de Sevill, Anton Gonzalez — although they never reached the great goal of which their master dreamt— the southernmost point of Africa—yet have the honour of being the first seamen to lead the way towards the Cape of Good Hope, the discovery of which ‘changed directly or indirectly the knowledge, the trade, the whole face of the world at once and for ever.’

It was only twenty-six years after Prince Henry’s death that the Cape was at last rounded, but it was by one of the captains trained in his school of navigation, Bartholomew Diaz, who in 1486 sighted the magnificent promontory which showed at last that the end of Africa had been reached, and that the Open sea was indeed a highway to the East.

Two years before this great discovery a young man named Bartholomew Columbus set out from Lisbon ona vessel bound for England. He carried with him a number of charts and a letter addressed to King Henry VII., who was then upon the English throne, and considered one of the most learned and enlightened sovereigns of Europe. This Bartholomew Columbus was the brother of one Christopher, a Genoese by birth, who had been vainly petitioning King John of

Portugal to find the money for an expedition to sail across the Atlantic to the land that lay beyond. He believed that this ocean covered the whole space between the east of Asia and the west of Europe, so that a ship starting westward from Portugal or Spain, and sailing in a straight line, would eventually reach the Indies. King John was pleased ‘to consider the matter,’ and while he kept poor Christopher Columbus fretting and fuming in a fever of impatience, he was treacherous enough to send off secretly three caravels with instructions to sail westward on the line shown on the chart of the Genoese sailor. Fortunately, in this case, as in most others, trickery was not successful. After a little while King John’s captains lost heart, and returned with the report that no land could be seen. Christopher Columbus had meanwhile heard of the secret voyage, and ‘ when,’ said his son, ‘ this underhand dealing came to my father’s ears, he took a great aversion to Lisbon and the Portuguese nation.’

It was then that he Snerutied his brother Bartholomew with a mission to the English King, who might look with favour upon the great scheme, and deal honestly with the sailor who proposed it.

By great misfortune, however, Bartholomew’s ship was attacked and captured by pirates, and he was taken prisoner. For some years he remained in captivity, and when at last he escaped and managed to reach London, he had lost all his belongings, his charts and his letter among them, and was absolutely destitute. To earn sufficient money for food and lodging he wasted much valuable time in drawing and selling maps to English sailors. But his brother’s business was always in his mind, and as soon as he could afford to purchase a decent suit of clothes, he presented himself at the English Court. King Henry received him kindly, and heard his proposals with interest. He, like King John of Portugal, promised ‘to consider the matter,’ but the vague promise went no further, and meanwhile the English nation lost that great and priceless opportunity by which they might have been the first

Pere CALL OF “THE SRA 7 to discover the New World, and to found that great empire in the West which was to make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe.

For Christopher Columbus, despairing of ever again hearing news of his long-lost brother, took his charts to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and, after being ridiculed and scorned as a dreamer and a madman, did at last persuade the King and © Queen that his story might have some truth in it, and his scheme be worth the venture. So it happened that in the service of Spain Columbus sailed West, and, in spite of the superstitions, the cowardice, andshe mutinous conduct of his crews, after a long voyage across a seemingly endless ocean, heard the shout of ‘Land! land!’ and, stepping from his cabin, where he had been brooding over his beloved charts, saw with actual eyes that land of which he had so often dreamed.

The dawn was just breaking, and as the golden arrows of the sun shot over the islands of the Bahamas, as they were afterwards called, the sailors in their thankfulness broke into the solemn chant of the Te Deum. The boats were manned, and Columbus, going first, carried aloft the Royal standard of Spain, while behind each of his captains bore a banner of the Green Cross; and so, with colours flying and music playing, they rowed to the beach, where a group of natives crowded in awe and astonishment at the white strangers.

Columbus was the first to step ashore. He wore a rich dress, and carried in his hand a drawn sword. Kneeling, he kissed the sand, giving thanks to God with tears in his eyes. Then the Royal standard was set up, and the banners of the Cross were raised, and with a loud voice Columbus took possession of the land on behalf of Spain.

‘The New World had been discovered. The curtain which had long hidden the land beyond the sea was at last drawn up, and in a few years, following upon the track of Columbus, a great Spanish Empire was to be built up with a wealth and magnificence of which the mind of man had never dreamed.

The sailors of England were still fishing or trading between well-known ports when those of Spain and Portugal were thus employed, but before long they, too, would go ‘ Westward- Ho!’ and then would begin the long rivalry between Spain and England in which the victory was with us.

CHAPTER MEN(OF BRISTOL CIT

To Bristol City ‘in the West Countree’ there came toward the end of the fifteenth century some news of what the Portuguese sailors were daring and doing in their voyages of discovery. At that time Bristol was one of the most prosperous seaports of England, and it was crowded with merchant-ships trading with foreign parts, and with vessels flying the flags of Spain and Portugal, Venice and Genoa, France and Flanders, bringing into this country rich cargoes of foreign fruits, silks, spices, and metals. In the Bristol taverns might be seen any day of the week a motley crowd of sea-faring men of all nations, drinking and dicing with English skippers and merchant-men, and in such places as these many were the strange stories of the sea told in foreign lingo and broad West-Country dialect—of magic islands, where every grain of sand was gold; of fabulous monsters who kept guard over them, destroying any ship or crew bold enough to sail near them; and tales less marvellous, but not less thrilling, of Moorish corsairs and Irish pirates, of mutinies, shipwrecks, and wild deeds on foreign coasts.

It is quite possible that among the sailors who came to Bristol were one or two of those who had sailed with Gonzalez or Cabral, or some other of those famous captains who served under Prince Henry the Navigator. Be that ds it may, it was at this time that the Bristol merchants first learnt of the legends of St. Brandan, and of the legendary land lying across the \Western seas. These stories so fastened themselves upon

MEN OF BRISTOL CITY 9 the imagination of those shrewd traders that in June of the year 1480 one of them, named Master John Jay, equipped at his own cost a vessel of 80 tons, and got together a crew of Bristol men, and sent it out under Captain Thomas Lloyd (who is called by the old chronicler William of Worcester, ‘ the most skilful master-mariner of all England’), to seek the fabulous islands of St. Brandan and the ‘Seven Spanish Cities’ described in the old stories. Fortune was against the first voyage of discovery which ever set out from Bristol towards the New World. The little ship, hardly so big as a modern pleasure yacht, was battered about by fearful storms, and, having sailed six weeks without once sighting land, her head was turned round for home, and she came into the Port of Bristol again on September 15 of the same year, three months and three days after her departure.

This failure seems to have discouraged our Bristol men for a time, for we hear of no more expeditions going out until eleven years later. It was then that there came to Bristola remarkable man named John Cabot, bringing with him his wife and three sons, of whom one (Sebastian) was to become famous in the history of the sea.

John Cabot was, like Christopher Columbus, a Genoese by birth, but before settling in England he had been a citizen of Venice. Not much is known of his early life, but he is described as a maker of charts and maps. At one time he travelled as a trader to the East, and it was at Mecca, when he was buying spices from the East, the idea first came to him that, on account of the roundness of the earth, there might be a shorter way to Cathay (or China) and the Indies by sailing straight out into the West from Europe.

When he settled down in Bristol somewhere about the year 1491, he once again stirred the imagination of the Bristol traders into a belief of a great land across the Atlantic; for, according to the Spanish Ambassador in England, who in 1498 wrote a report of John Cabot to his Government, ‘ It is seven years since those of Bristol used to send out every year a fleet of two, three, or four caravels to go and search for the Isle of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of this Genoese.’

Of these voyages of discovery which had their beginning in Bristol we have no records, and it is evident that they were all unsuccessful.

But four years after Columbus had set foot in the New World John Cabot resolved to go himself in search of undiscovered lands. In 1496 he petitioned King Henry VII. for permission to take possession of any such countries in the name of England. King Henry, having lost his opportunity with Columbus, was glad of this new chance of extending his dominion to new lands beyond the seas, and duly sent his Royal. patent to Master John Cabot, of Bristol City. Doubtless he had hoped that Henry would provide some of the cost of the expedition, but generosity was not the strong point of the English King, and in this expectation Cabot was disappointed. Nevertheless, as far as it went, the Royal warrant was satisfactory, and it is worth quoting as the first ever issued by a Sovereign of England for the purpose of establishing new colonies under our flag.

‘The tenury hereafter ensuing’ (so runs the introduction) ‘ fox the discovery of new and unknown lands:

‘Henry by the Grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting :

‘Be it known that we have given and granted, and by these presents do give and grant for us and our heirs to our well-beloved John Cabot, citizen of Venice, to Lewis, Sebastian, and Sanctius, sons of the said John and to the heirs of them and every one of them, and their deputies, full and free authority, leave and power to sail to all ports, countries and seas of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensigns, with five ships of what burthen or quality soever they be, and as many mariners or men as they shall have with them

MEN OF BRISTOL CITY tt in the said ships, upon their own proper costs and charges, to seek out, discover, and find whatsoever isles, countries, regions, or provinces of the heathens and infidels whatsoever they be and in what part of the world soever they be, which before this time have been known to all Christians :

‘We have granted to them and also to every of them, the heirs of them and every, of them and their deputies, and have given them licence to set up our banners and ensigns in every village, town, castle, island or mainland by them newly found, And that the aforesaid John and his sons, or their heirs and assigns, may subdue occupy and possess all such towns, cities, castles, and isles by them found which they can subdue, occupy and possess as our vassals and lieutenants, getting unto us the rule, title and jurisdiction of the same villages, towns, castles, and firm land so found.’

After some more of such legal rigmarole, in which it was agreed that the King should receive a fifth part of all profits, this remarkable document concludes as follows:

‘Willing and most straitly commanding all and singular our subjects, on land as on sea, to give good assistance to the aforesaid John and his sons and deputies, and that as well in arming and furnishing their ships or vessels as in provision of food and in buying of victuals for their money, and all other things by them to be provided necessary for the said navigation, they do give them ail their help and favour. In witness whereof we have caused to be made these our letters patent.

‘ Witness ourself at Westminster, the fifth day of March, in the eleventh year of the reign (1496).’

With this wordy and wonderful document in his possession, magnificently inscribed on parchment, and duly signed and sealed by the Royal hand, Cabot had little difficulty in getting the assistance of the Bristol merchants to build him good and seaworthy vessels, and to equip them with all things necessary for a long voyage, while there was no lack of volunteers in

12 THE ROMANCE OF EMPIRE Bristol to man the vessels bound on such an adventure under royal patronage.

It was probably in May of the following year (the exact date is uncertain) that a little fleet of five boats with John Cabot’s flagship, the Matthew, left the Port of Bristol, and, in the words of Kingsley’s song, ‘went sailing out into the West.’ According to contemporary accounts, Cabot did not steer a straight course, but after touching the west coast of Ireland, went so far northwards that ‘he found monstrous heaps of ice swimming in the sea and in manner continual daylight. Thus, seeing such heaps of ice before him, he was enforced to turn his sails and follow the West.’ Sailing continually ‘ with the North Star on his right hand,’ he at last struck new land, since identified by most authorities as that part of North America which we now call Newfoundland. Here he planted the flag of England, the first English flag to be set up in the New World, or in any colony beyond the seas, and took possession on behalf of King Henry VII. Then he sailed southwards for ‘three hundred leagues,’ along a country inhabited by natives who used needles for making nets and snares for catching game.

‘He found also,’ continues Peter Martyr, who heard the narrative from John Cabot’s son Sebastian, who claimed to have accompanied his father, ‘the people of those islands — covered with beasts’ skins, yet not without the use of reason. He saith also that there is great plenty of bears in those regions which use to eat fish. For plunging themselves into the water, where they perceive a multitude of those fish to lie, they fasten their claws in their scales, and so draw them to land and eat them.’

On his return, Cabot sighted ‘two large and fertile islands ’ on the starboard (since conjectured to be one of the Newfoundland promontories and a part of the mainland), and one is strongly reminded of Don Quixote and the fabulous island which he promised to his faithful squire Sancho Panza when one learns that John Cabot presented one of these ‘islands’

MEN OF BRISTOL CITY 13 to his Genoese barber, and the other to a poor Burgundian servant who had sailed with him on the voyage.

‘Both of them,’ wrote an Italian gentleman to the Duke of Milan, ‘regard themselves as counts, nor does my lord the Admiral esteem himself anything less than a prince.’

John Cabot and his Bristol men, although they had not found any ‘towns, cities, or castles’ to ‘subdue, occupy, and possess,’ as enumerated with so much solemnity in the Royal warrant, were, nevertheless, well pleased, and had a right to be well pleased with the success of their mission. For they had planted the English flag on the coast of North America (which they still believed to be the East Indies), and John Cabot himself, in a conversation with the Italian gentleman above mentioned, declared himself abundantly satisfied with the produce of the waters, stating that the sea was full of fish, which were taken both with the net and in baskets weighted ‘with a stone, and that, in a word, so much stock fish could be brought thence that England would have no further need of its old commerce with Iceland.

No doubt worthy Master Cabot bore himself a little braggishly in Bristol upon his return, for he found himself a hero in the old English seaport, and indeed in the whole nation. King Henry was highly pleased, and sent him a sum of money (not overmuch, for Henry was a careful man) ‘wherewith to amuse himself,’ and promised that in the spring he should have ten ships armed to his order, and any number of prisoners, except those confined for high treason, to man his fleet.