The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-03-15 00:00:00

Our ,wanhit 6orrestyriOent.
[We deem it right to state that we do net at all times
identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]


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The detailed accounts of the disaster at Imandula,
showing the loss of life to be even greater than the
first reports led the nation to expect, have been fol-
lowed with an interest which very seldom attaches to
an event where the scene was enacted so far away from
these islands. The Zulus have made it abundantly
clear that they are a foe not to be despised; indeed, in
the plan of the attack upon the camp at Isandula,
whoever drew it up followed just precisely the tactics
pursued by the famous Carthaginian general, Hannibal,
more than two thousand years ago. Hannibal, as is
well known, was the first man who ever led an army
across the Alps, burning down the rocks with fire and
vinegar. He defeated the Romans in the four great
battles of Ticinus, Trebia, Thrazymene, and Cannm ;
and at the last-mentioned spot 40,000 Romans are
said to have been slain. The victor sent to Carthage
three bushels of rings taken from the Roman knights;
and to this day the place is denominated "The Field
of Blood." The crowning triumph of Cannn was won
precisely in the way that the Zulus overwhelmed our
camp at Isandula— the attacking force was drawn up in
horse-shoe fashion, turned the flanks of its opponents,
and gradually surrounded them. There is another
point of similarity between Cannw and Isandala—the
victors failed to follow up their advantage. The
Roman army was so completely disorganised after the
battle of Cannm, crowding as it did in vast throngs
through the city gates a mere reeling panic-stricken
rabble, that if Hannibal had then marched upon Rome
the place must have been at his mercy, and the whole
course of history for centuries would have been changed.
But, instead of pursuing the retreating Romans, he
turned off to Canna, where his men spent the winter
and became enervated with luxury. The Roman;
thus allowed a breathing time, were not quite the
people to allow the grass to grow under their feet.
Instead of being at the conqueror's mercy, they were
soon enabled to carry the war into the enemy's country;
Hannibal's invasion of Italy had to be changed into a
defence of Carthage itself; and at the batte of Zama,
where the Romans were led by Scipio Africanus,
Hannibal was defeated with enormous loss. The fate
of Carthage was thenceforward sealed; the decree
went forth from the Roman Senate that it should be
destroyed; and one of the most flourishing of the
African Republics was blotted out from the history of
the earth.

-When the news of the annihilation of the British
force at Isandala first reached this country, the
greatest apprehensions existed for the safety of the
important colony of Natal. Practically, and so far as
military strength was concerned, it was left defence-
less ; and there was only the stream of the Tugela
river between the settlers and a savage and remorseless
foe. The slaughter of nearly nine hundred British
soldiers in a few hours had reduced to a perilous
minimum the number of white armed men in the
colony; and the people had the painful reflection
that two months must elapse before reinforcements
could arrive from England. There was no tele-
graphic communication—a want which happily is now
to be remedied—and a steamer must carry the news
over thousands of miles of ocean before the question
couldhe answered, "What will they say in England?"
What they have said in England is best answered by
the fact that very soon eight thousand troops were
speeding over the seas towards the menaced colony.
After the battle of Novara, between the Austrians and
the Piedmontese. in 1849, it was well said that every
succeeiiog day which witnessed the existence of the
kingdom of Piedmont was a victory gained. So
with Natal; every day which the Zulus per-
mitted to pass without invading our valuable
possession there was a victory gained. Each day
brought the mail steamer, with its terrible message,
nearer to England; and like the Romans after their
overwhelming defeat at the hands of Hannibal, every
hour was of importance as giving the colonists time to
prepare for their defence. As the first of our rein-
forcements left this country on the 18th February, no
very long period will now elapse before the conflict
between civilization and barbarism in South Africa
will be fought out upon a basis very different from the
surroundings of the Isandula disaster.
Prince Louis Napoleon, who is now on his way to
the Cape, will spend his 23rd birthday at sea. Three-
and-twenty years are but a speck in the history of a
state; and very differently does March, 1879, find
the city of Paris as compared with March, 1856. The
plenipotentiaries of the great Powers were at that
time assembled in the French capital, negotiating the
Treaty of Peace which was to put an end to the war
with Russia, and the Emperor of the French was at
the height of his popularity. Everything then seemed
going in his favour. The French troops had fought
gallantly and gloriously at. Alma, Inkerman, and
Sebastopol; England was in close alliance with France,
and between them they had beaten back the great
Colossus of the North from the banks of the Danube to-
wards his frozen home. There was only one thing wanted
to secure the Emperor's happiness, and that was what
he termed the consolidation of his dynasty by the birth
of a son. When, therefore, on the 16th of March,
1856, the thunder of the gems announced to the city of
Paris, as in peal after peal their loud reverberations
echoed upon the city, that a son had been given to the
Emperor, great were the rejoicings, and general were
the illuminations. The delighted Sovereign himself
granted an amnesty to a thousand political exiles, and
the utmost importance was attached to the announce-
ment made in the highest household in the land
of France—" Unto us a son is given." The truth
of the old saying that the world's glory passeth
away has seldom received a stronger illustration
than in this case. A decade waned away, and
brought the world to 1866, when Prussia, after
the battle of Sadowa, threatened to become an all-
absorbing, all-conquering Power in Europe, and when
France entered upon that career of competition with
her Teutonic rival which ended so disastrously at
Sedan. It is now just nine years ago that, in the
spring of 1870, the Emperor, broken in health, might
have been seen, on any of those bright sunshiny days,
leaning upon a stick in the park of St. Cloud, contem-
plating that invasion which terminated so disastrously
a few months subsequently. It may be here mentioned
that the description of Prince Louis Napoleon as the
Prince Imperial, which is still kept up by some news-
papers, is totally wrong. If there were any descendants
of the Stuarts now alive, it would be just as correct
for the French journals to style them Royal High-
nuns as for us to speak of the Prince Imperial. The
Stuarts and the Napoleonic dynasty were alike de-
posed, and the verdict in each case was ratified by the
country.
How welcome have been those soft and beautiful
spring days which have lately shone upon the land
What a bright and eheerfal contrast to the terrible
severity of the long and dreary winter! It was in the
middle of October, now five months age, that the in-
creasing frigidity of the atmosphere warned LIB of the
approach of an exceptionally severe season, one from
which we are only just emerging. For a winter to
last five-twelfths of the year in these latitudes is a very
uncommon experience; and, unfortunately, it swept
down upon us at the time when trade was more de-
pressed, and poverty more widespread than had been
the case for a generation. When the House of Com-
mons separatei for the Christmas recess, on the 17th
of December, the prospect was the gloomiest which had
ever been presented to the vision of the man
in middle life. The bitter cold was stopping the
work of thousands even where they could find it
to do; and to thousands more who were without
any kind of employment, the intensity of the
cold added to the intensity of the existing suffering.
Now that the worst has pegged away, it is not too
much to hope that the substitution of material sun-
shine for material gloom will be coequal with the
departure of those heavy commercial clouds that have
so long overspread an horizon once radiant with
Prosperity. Let us look forward to the gradual en-
livening of a firmament that has too long been tinged
with grey, and to the revival of that industry, the
paralysis of which haa so deeply affected the Interests
of all classes.

Let the seven marriages of the Queen's children
form a companion picture to the Seven Ages of Man.
The former, it is true, do not extend over a period such
as is represented by the latter; but they do certainly
cover a time which tells very censiderably upon the
life of a human being. It is now more than one-
and•twenty years ago that, upon a wintry day
in January, 1858, a wedding procession set out
from Buckingham Palace for the Palace of St.
James's, amid the cheers of a vast multitude. The
bride and bridegroom were our own Princess Royal
and the Crown Prince of Prussia, who have now come
over to be present at the marriage of the Duke of
Connaught, at that time a little fellow under eight
years old, The Queen, the Prince Consort, and the
Duchess of Kent were there; and upon her Majesty's
right hand, Lord PAIMeTBtOD, the Prime Minister of
that day, brandished the Sword of State with a most
martial air, as though seventy-four winters had not
had time to pass over his venerable Lead. Four
years and a half then rolled away; the Queen's
mother and husband had been stricken down; and the
marriage of her Majesty's second daughter was in
every way a contrast to that of her first. It was that
of the beloved Princess Alice, which took place in the
private chapel at Osborne on the let July, 1862, the
Queen attending in the deepest mourning. Then
ollowed the wedding of the Prince of Wales, at St.
George's Chapel, Windsor, on the 10th March, 1863;
the Princess Helena, aleo at Windsor, on the sth July,
1866; the Plinecss Louise, likewise at Windsor, on
the 21st 171; the Duke of Edinburgh, at

St. Petersburg, on the 23rd January, 1874; and
now the Duke of Connaught, at Windsor, on the
13th March, 1879. Wondrous changes have been
wrought upon the Continent of Europe in one-and-
twenty years; yet here is the Sovereign of
England, at the marriage of her seventh child,
as secure upon the throne of her ancestors as
she has ever been. Queen Victoria was eighteen
years old when she began to reign; and forty
and two years has she ruled over this empire.
At no epoch in our national history have such
marvellous strides been made in a people's progress, or
in those discoveries which have resulted in bending
science to the will of man. High in the estimation of
all classes of her subjects, and firm in the security of
a sceptre which none out ot a long line of predecessors
have more worthily wielded, the reflections of the
Queen, in the eventide of life, may well be those of
the sage who, in his maturer years, described the
brightness of the glory which this world put on to
those who could go forth amid the cheerfirsunlight
and call up memories of duties well-performed and
days well spent.

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