6 DECEMBER 1873, Page 7

THE NEWS FROM ASHAN TEE.

THE news from the Gold Coast which appeared on Tuesday is most important, and the importance consists in thin: It affords a measure of the capacity, so to speak, of the cam- paign in which we are engaged, and indicates that it will be about equal in length and duration to an Indian little war. The fighting strength of an average Ashantee has been fairly tested, and has been found to be, on the whole, rather less than that of an average Sepoy when not led by European officers. We see no evidence of any greater individual power or of any equal skill in organisation, and if that is the case, then, with a leader of Sir Garnet Wolseley's stamp, who does not like coloured soldiers, but will do anything, however great, with any force of Europeans, however small, victory of the com- plete and final kind is almost certain. Unless there is some force at Coomassie much better drilled than the men under Amaquatia, or of a higher type than those on this side of the Prah, we should expect to see the Ashantee power collapse as the Abyssinian power did, and Coomassie fall almost without defence. Nothing happens twice in precisely the same way, but the evidence for this general conclusion is ex- ceedingly strong. An Ashantee force of more than 5,000 men, led by a trusted General, Amaquatia, and possibly by one of the King's sons, attacks an obnoxious little village called Abrakrampa, in which Major Russell C.B., has constructed a sort of fort, with a wooden church for centre, sand-bags for shielding, some ditches for places to fire from, and an open clearing, five hundred yards across, for a glacis. The Ashantees number upwards of five thousand men, are armed with muskets with which they know, Major Russell says, how "to keep up a very serious fire" on the defences, enjoy the protection of the bush—that is, of forest almost beyond the penetration of Europeans—and have only to fire the fort to make victory certain. On his side, Major Russell has only fifty Marines, about 50 drilled West Indian negroes, a few Houssaa and Koasos—that is, extremely brave, but undrilled persons of dark colour—and some 400 Fantees accustomed to running away, and inclined very mach to respect their customs. The besiegers have plenty of time-48 hours—have leaders who show themselves momentarily outside the bush, and have every motive for punishing hereditary foes—the Abram protected by Major Russell—and yet they can never cross that open space. The fire of fifty Sniders is too much for them, even at night. The storm of bullets is like a shield whichthey cannot penetrate, and from which they incessantly recoil. Really disciplined men like the Sikhs would have constructed cover, and pushed it up to the trenches, marching in safety behind it. Really brave men like the English Marines would have crossed the open, regardless of the numbers they left behind ; but the .Ashantees cannot manage the affair either way, but only howl and fire, and taunt the Chief of Abra with fighting behind walls. Their numbers, their weapons, their zeal—for it appears from all the despatches they were seriously disposed to win—are all in vain, cannot even prevent their flying before small parties of natives or West Indians, till at last an accident gives them the final shock. Major Russell, after a most determined resistance, maintained for thirty hours with incessant loss to the Ashantees, fires off very slowly, and only when clumps of natives can be seen, the six rockets he had to spare—more reached him before the work was done, but he did not use them—and against the weapons of civilisation the Ashaatees, like the Abyssinians before them, are panic-struck and power- less. "Can I be expected to fight things like these f" said Theodore ; and so, probably, thought the Ashantee chiefs when one of the hissing missiles, meant originally, we believe, chiefly to frighten cavalry, burst into a group of them, killing Amaquatia, and possibly the King's son. It was too much, and they gave the battle up, all the more readily, perhaps, because they had seen the arrival of Sir Garnet Wolseley and 250 sailors and marines. So sudden was their retreat, that the Europeans scarcely knew of it ; that the Houssas, who are used, though previously declared useless, were thrown into the bush to find what the silence meant ; and found they had abandoned everything, camp, food, ornaments, and Amaquatia's chair. The spoil was endless, and enabled the Com- mander-in-Chief to march into Cape Coast Castle in a sort of triumph, to the intense excitement and encouragement of all native lookers-on. The rout is complete, the whole Ashantee rmy is flying towards the Prah, and there are hoFes that the natives who, with European officers at their head, have been ordered to intercept them, will finish the war on this side

of the stream,—that is, will disperse the whole Ashantee army which has been threatening the settlement. Fifty marines, or counting Sir Garnet Wolseley'e relieving force, though it did not come fairly into action, 300 Europeans, have defeated an army which for months has held the whole popula- tion of the Terai—of the slope, that is, between the highlands and the sea—in abject terror and submissiveness. To say that the Ashantees ran away from so small a force would not of course be strictly true, but they were utterly demoralised by its resistance, by its weapons, by its daring carelessness of their numbers, and that is all that is required. Surajah Dowlah'); army did not run away before Clive, it only disappeared, and Bengal lay at the feet of the man who bade it disappear. As a matter of course, the tidings of the defeat, of the white men's heroism, of the invaders' deadly fire, of the new and unintelligible weapons, will reach Coomassie long before Sir Garnet does, and will do half his work for him before a shell is fired. The despairing conclusion at which Asia has already arrived, that the white men are irresistible, will be reached in Ashantee also, with its regular result,—the paralysis of all existing forces, military, social, and political. Of course there may be difficulties in the way. Coffee Calcalli may be a man of genius, though that is not probable from his history, or he may have a fighting guard, or he may have better natural defences than the British know of ; but apart from these possibilities, the regiments landed on or about the 12th of December ought to terminate the war.

Another truth comes out strongly in these despatches,—that we have got the right man at the head of the invading force. Sir Garnet Wolseley either entertains the not uncommon hatred of black men, or he wrote his first despatch about the Houma under a sense of irritation at their indiscipline which clouded his judgment, but that feeling apart—a feeling Olive also entertained whenever he was opposite dusky soldiers—he is evidently exactly the man for the special work to be accom- plished. Up to November 8, the date of his last despatch, Sir Garnet Wolseley had not received one European regiment— the Colonial Office believing, no doubt, all those stories about the deadliness of Africa which were told at such length before' the Abyssinian war, and are true, no doubt, of the swamps of Africa, as they are of the swamps of Italy—and had to operate with two drilled negro regiments, neither of them up to full strength, with a handful of marines, with some forty good officers, and with native levies whom he distrusts, some justly, some apparently without much reason. With these materials, without a battery, and with only a few rockets, he has swept the Ashantee army, believed on the Coast to be irresistible, right out of British territory ; ha* raised an army of 30,000 levies, for much of Captain Glover'e credit must fairly go to his chief ; and has spread throughout the Coast a dread of British courage and resources. Much, if not all of this truly magnificent, if temporary result, is due to the confidence he inspires, to his trust in his subordinate); —shown in his system of out-stations, which he confides to an officer and fifty men, as if each stockade were an ironclad— but most of all to his own energy and daring. There was the true Indian contempt for arstacles in this very last push to Abrakrampa, a plunge into the bush with three hundred men, to relieve a place which, for aught he knew, might have ceased to exist as he arrived, and its place have been taken by an army large enough, at all events, to eat up his whole band, a band, moreover, which, till it heard firing, suffered so severely from the heat and the exertion of the march that a large number were left behind to recruit at Assaybo. The conquerors of India did no more, and had not a people behind them trembling for every life lost in battle, or an army of critics reading their despatches to see if perchance they may be- turned to party purposes. Read the events reported as lightly as we may, and still Sir Garnet Wolseley and his officers, without a European soldier behind them, have driven a well- armed Ashantee army out of a jungle province. That is not the kind of work which makes a European reputation, but it is the kind of work which is essential to Great Britain, and which, so far as modern history shows, none but the English- man can thoroughly accomplish. We shall see what the Dutch effect in Acheen, but in Elmina they were certainly content to exist very much on sufferance.