TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FALL OF THEODORE.
►1THE little cloud of which we spoke a fortnight since that has so long been rolling up and over the Abyssinian hills has burst at last, and Theodore and his sovereignty have alike disappeared. Never in modern warfare has so romantic an expedition had so perfect and dramatic a conclusion. No need any more to defend Sir Robert Napier from the charge of want of " d ash." The hour for which all his farseeing preparations had been made at length arrived, the enemy to reach whom he had traversed so many Alps was at last in sight, and the youngest hot-brain in the British Army could not have sprung upon the foe with swifter or more irresistible impetus than did the old Engineer, the " Addiscombe man" who seemed to critics at home so cautious and so slow. A single telegram, and England recognized with a flash of insight what India had long known, that the old Indian Army had produced one more soldier of the stamp England so specially needs, the organizing dare-devil, the man who can lead a forlorn hope, or plan out an African campaign ; who, if need be, will hurl a minute brigade upon a disciplined army of fifteen times its strength—as he did in 1858—or, as in 1867, will foresee that in the depths of an African mountain range he may have ravines to cross over which elephants alone can be trusted to convey artillery, and, under a storm of ridicule and protest, will insist that the costly, greedy beasts shall form part of the expedition. The long mountain march in which nothing was forgotten, and nothing left to chance, was crowned by one of the most daring and romantic feats of arms ever performed, a feat which reads more like one of the exploits of the great founder of the Marhatta power than anything done by the general of a civilized army. We do not mean the battle of Talanta, which was probably a very ordinary affair. No details have yet been received, but Theodore, it seems clear, remained ignorant to the last of the strength of the little army creeping up his hills, descended from his fortress to the lofty platform at its foot, and endeavoured to crush the first brigade after it had crossed the Bashilo, and before the remainder of the army had reached the plain. He can hardly have had 1,500 men opposed to him, but they were 1,500 men armed with all the means science has placed at the disposal of civili- zation ; and the Abyssinian soldiery apparently never reached them, failed utterly to break through that withering spray of lead and iron with which a modern army protects itself from a crushing charge. At least, no European was killed, while the Abyssinians lost 500 men, and retreated so hopelessly demoralized that they threw down their arms in thousands, and surrendered a most important point,—as we guess, a hill covering the only approach to the fortress. This is but a usual incident in a war between barbarism and civilization, and occurred at Plassey just as it must have happened at Talanta. The real feat was the assault of Magdala itself, the capture by sheer daring of a fortress perched upon a hill 2,000 feet high— or say, twice the height of Arthur's Seat—accessible only by a single path, and from all descriptions defensible by a dozen reso- lute men. Whatever advantage Sir R. Napier may have derived from the surrendered position, that ascent into the clouds from a plateau 8,000 feet above the level of the sea, by a single road, in the teeth of a force which, however small, died fighting, must have been strangely exciting and picturesque, a deed to be classed with Wallace's seizure of Stirling. The feat was the greater because it was, as we are almost certain, performed solely to keep faith with our Abyssinian allies. The prisoners had been surrendered after the battle, and the demand for Theodore's person was made, we doubt not, because without that pledge Kasai would have been an enemy, and the Chief of Lasta a dangerous assailant. Neither would have assisted us if exposed to the future vengeance of the des- cendant of Menilek. Theodore, it seems certain, fought
desperately to the last, and when all hope was gone, and it was clear that the red-coats would take him prisoner, chose, like an old Caesar, to die a king by his own hand, rather than surrender to the invaders. The act was of a piece with all that is known of a man who, after a career resembling only that of Ivan the Terrible, had at last roused two Empires to exact the retribution his subjects were too abject to inflict. With his death, and the release of the prisoners, the war ended, and Sir Robert Napier, scarcely waiting to survey Magdala, issued orders for the immediate evacuation of the kingdom he had subdued. The shipments from Zoulla to Bombay have already commenced, each division of the force along the route is falling back upon the post quitted by the one nearest the sea, the fighting brigades will have no impedimenta to pick up as they pass, and no roads to make, half the animals will be sold to Abys- sinians or presented to our allies, and by 30th May the last man will be afloat, and the Army, complete at all points, will be on its way to Bombay, ready to perform any service Sir Stafford Northcote may require, or subside noiselessly once more into the hot monotony of Indian cantonment life. Long before Parliament breaks up all that will remain to testify to the Abyssinian War will be a new name on the roll of Peers, and the subscription of one pound to be demanded from every man with 1001. a year. For that, surely not very exhausting, price the Anglo-Indian Chief has swept away the boldest and the worst of African tryants, has conquered a country which baffled the early Caliphs, and which even geogra- phers scarcely profess to know ; and 400 miles in the interior of Africa, amidst a system of mountains as defensible as the Himalayas, has rescued a few obscure men to whose protection the British faith was pledged, and slain the king who ventured to think that pledge was irredeemable. The honour of Great Britain has been redeemed, and throughout Asia, wherever a Mohammedan pilgrim moves—and in Asia the Mohammedan pilgrim is ubiquitous—men will repeat in fifty dialects the new story which so strongly illustrates the power of the white masters of India, India, which is still counted by every Mohammedan among the rightful possessions of the Faithful. Mecca. is the Rome of the Mohammedan, and in Mecca, just across the narrow sea, the story of the Feringhee's rage, of the passage over the mountains, of the battle of Talanta, of the storm of the hill fort, of the Chris- tian Emperor's suicide, and of the sudden disappearance of the conquering force, will be first and most accurately told..
The arm which reached Magdala might, if too far irritated, reach Mecca,—that is the thought which will send a chill through every Mohammedan breast, deepening, it may be, the dislike, but deepening still more the awe, felt for the Christian power. Cannot a white man, then, be imprisoned even beyond the African mountains without armies marching to his release, armies no more to be resisted by us than a bullet by cheese ? Hm I Let the white man go free, lest worse things follow..
That will be the conclusion throughout Asia, additional freedom for the Englishman to go forward on his appointed task, the remelting of the stereotyped social organizations of the Eastern world, of one clear half, and not in all respects the baser half, of the human race. Is not that worth the subscription of a pound ?
The gain in prestige, however, considerable as it will prove, is but a trifle, compared with the gain in our own self-confi- dence. We can, then, be efficient, can do the work we intend to do without blunder, or disaster, or endless liability. The utter inefficiency of the English departments, their cumbrous- ness, and their cost, had begun to daunt the country, till it al- most believed that a foreign expedition was beyond its strength, that except for a great war amidst which departments could be revolutionized it was powerless, that it could not rid itself of the risk of humiliating and dangerous failure. So extreme was the depression, that at the outset of this very campaign scarcely any one ventured to hope for a supreme success. Everybody who had ever suffered from African fever found a hearing for his most gloomy predictions. There would be a. failure of water, a failure of bread, a failure of transport.. The army would be destroyed by sunstroke and dysentery, the beasts would be killed by the tsetse, the stores would be stolen by the people, and all that would remain from the expedition would be the lesson that Africa and the people who inhabit it are alike accursed ; that Englishmen ought not to enter the continent, or if they enter it, ought to be left to a cruel but thoroughly deserved fate. All such predictions chimed in with the national mood, and were listened to by statesmen and soldiers, and but that the country had in some sulky fashion admitted its duty to itself, would in the eleventh hour have prevented the expedition. Fortunately the sense of duty is still all-powerful with Englishmen, and the work being done reluctantly, was done patiently and well. A single in- dividual was declared Dictator, that individual was selected in India, where men still believe that conquest is one of the duties of civilization, the "British taxpayer " was postponed for an instant to the Briton, the " man who had been in Africa " was believed, but disregarded, and the old conditions being once more accepted, the old result was once more obtained. Sir Robert Napier won Magdala as Clive won Plassey, in the teeth alike of the counsel of the wise and of
the wishes of the multitude. We may never repeat the ex- periment, but, at least, we have learned, or rather re-learned, the principles which make such experiments successful,—un- divided authority, unlimited power, a definite task, and a certainty of home support. Double that army, leaving it the same leader, with the same powers, and there is no empire in Asia it could not conquer • treble it, and there is no power in Europe to which it would not be formidable ; raise it to the size of the force which, in 1857, sixteen thousand miles from home, invaded and re-conquered India, and the first of military monarchies would feel that its resources were severely strained. The supply of resources is not the English difficulty, but the skill to use them ; it is as difficult to us to create a perfect corps dame's of .5,000 men as a perfect army of 50,000, and in performing the task Sir Robert Napier has shown us all that our strength is not yet neutralized by senile foolishness. The Continent makes no mistakes as to its neighbours' power of slaving, and, in our judgment, the five millions we shall have spent in Abyssinia is amply repaid by the Continental verdict that there is no knowing the English, no safety in ever reckoning that they are fairly out of the great game. It is as easy, if the Householder Parliament chooses, to reorganize the British Army on the principle successful in Abyssinia, un- divided authority, as to allow it to be rendered powerless by a footman-like reverence for an always injurious and now dying Royal prerogative.
One word it remains to say, in justice to our enemies. To us, this Ministry, with its contempt alike for the Constitution, for the people, and for political truthfulness, is anathema maranatha, a mere evil to be abolished, if it costs us a revolu- tion ; but in the matter of this expedition it has done well. It accepted a duty from which Liberals shrunk, it applied means to ends as Liberals have seldom done, and it has succeeded with a completeness and a rapidity unknown in our recent annals. Sir Stafford Northcote is not a great Minister, still less a great man ; but the consequences of failure would have been visited on his head, and to refuse him the credit of unexampled success, of a success which makes every English- man feel more hopeful than he felt yesterday, is not to fight, but to swindle, one's political foes. The man has earned his Viceroyalty, and if there is a trace of decency left in Mr. Disraeli, if he can understand ever so little that service to England constitutes a greater claim than service to himself, Sir Stafford Northcote, if he desires it, will be the next ruler .of the Indian Empire.
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