The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-18 00:00:00

THE CAPTURE OF MAGDALA.

Disheartened by a crushing defeat, and finding his
troops utterly demoralised and deserting in large numbers,
Theodore endeavoured to obtain terms of peace. Bat
having given up the captives, he was told that he must
surrender himself, and was allowed twenty-four hours to
consider his position. He made no reply, but early next
moming the camp was full of rumours, as usual, contra-
dictory, of his flight by night from Magdala, and of
a a holesale massacre of the Abyssinian hostages. Some
of his leading men came early into camp to give
themselves up as prisoners, and to surrender Selassee, the
to peak which on the north commands Magdala, and
reported that nearly all Theodore's army had deserted
Lim. Before eight o'clock it was known, on trustworthy
authority, that Theodore had indeed fled from Magdala,
but had returned almost immediately, probably on find-
ing his retreat cut off by the fierce Wollo Gallas, his
batter foes, who since his defeat on Friday had
been swarming eagerly round km, like bloodhounds
oa the scent of wounded prey. Driven to desperation
lie W 33 now standing savagely at bay, prepared to
defend Magdala itself to the last, and sell his
life as dearly as he could. Before ten, all the
troop 3 here (except a small baggage guard)—two brigades,
;tering about 5,000 men, were marshalled in order of
,cic, under Sir Charles Staveley, on the terrace which
foeincd the principal scene of Friday's encounter, imme-
diately under Fahla, prepared to ascend the road up to it,
net le by Theodore for his guns, and carried through
Ishimg.2o (his camp) to Selassee, which projects, about a
„le further on, slightly north-east, and to Magdala,
al;out the same distance, which projects slightly south-west.
The task of taking the place was mere child's play.
Although the enemy had every advantage of position, and
might lave fired with their eyes shut upon the troops
ina.;:ied in tile narrow path below, not one of our men was
k;iled, and only about ten wounded in the path, a few
being t niched by stray shots elsewhere. Even of these
ten two or three—among them Major Pritchard, who
led the Engineers—were, it is believed, struck by
I:rlCsli bullets', the men keeping up am objectless fire
to of the interference of their own officers
icral in command, Sir Charles Staveley,
irst the perfect fee d'enfer raised by the
Sailers, as the head of the storming column moved up the
path, did, no doubt, admirable service. Volley followed
volley with a blinding, deafening vehemence and rapidity,
and shovers of bullets rattled, without an instant's inter-
,:,:en; round every crack and crevice of the gate and
a.l J,aning stockade, leaving scarcely an inch of wall f
rock unexplored from which an opposing shot could safely
flre,l, such. as might well have shaken a far cooler mul
snore eNpenenced foe than the Abyssinian. •
THE SCENE WITHIN THE FORTRESS.
Only a small number of Theodore's troops stood by him
to the last, It is said that eighty dead bodies have been

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fcarad within Alagdala. If so, I fear that many of the
slain were not fighting men, for I myself counted the
bodies near the gateway, at which nearly all the fighting
occurred, and I could not find more than ten, and
at least half of these were Theodore's chiefs, dis-
tinguished from the common soldiers by their shirts of
coloured silk. These few men stood by him to the last
with desperate devotion, but the rest must have made a
very poor stand, or our troops would have suffered far
more. As it is, it is little short of miraculous that even
six men, bent on selling their lives dearly, and with good
arms in their hands (nearly a dozen English breech-loaders
have been found in Magdala) should have failed to kill one
man out of a dense column advancing up such an ascent
as that to Magdala—it would have been less surprising if
they had between them killed a hundred men
than that they should have failed to kill one.
Theodore's body was found, not near those of his
chiefs in the gateway, but alone on the hill above.
I happened to be near Dr. Lumsdaine when he examined
the body, then still warm, and was told by him that he
believed Theodore to have committed suicide. This theory
is so exactly in accordance with what is known of the
man's character and his conduct up to the last moment
that lam inclined still to think it the right one. His face
seemed to me rather a disappointing one after all that has
been said about it, but then it was impossible to judge pro-
perly after death, especially as the eye was said to be, from
its fire and expression, the most remarkable feature.
There was a look of bloated, sensual indulgence
about the cheeks by no means heroic or kingly, but the
forehead was intellectual, and the mouth singularly deter-
mined and cruel. A very strange smile still lingered about
the lips, as if even in the death-throe his last thought had
been one of triumph at having baulked his conquerors by
dying a king. His death is universally regarded with
unmixed satisfaction. It would be affectation to pity a
tyrant who himself knew no pity, who was as unscru-
pulous, and crafty as he was cruel, and who had indeed
every reason to style himself the Scourge of God sent to
punish the people. He has met with a death far more
merciful than he dealt out to better men, and far more
honourable than any trait in his character, except, per-
haps, his dauntless bravery and invincible determination,
deserved. Those few to whom these qualities recom-
mended him to some sort of mercy had only to look for a
moment into the fearful charnel-house, the loathsome
human shambles which was exposed to our horrified gaze
as we neared Magdala, and every lingering trace of compas-
sion at once disappeared. We had been told by his prisoners,
our fellow-countrymen, that the day before the arrival of
the British army Theodore had summoned all the prisoners
to his presence, and had in cold blood butchered over 300
of them, some with his own hand, almost within sight
and hearing of the rest, who momentarily expected the
same fate. But though details of this kind make one
shudder, the mind of a civilised man, whose whole expe-
rience runs counter to a vivid faith in the actual existence
of such atrocities, somehow cannot fully realise them, or
take in their whole terrible import. On Easter Monday,
however, nothing was left to the imagination, the tragedy
was forced in all its naked horror upon our revolted
senses. A strange smell, for which there was no apparent
cause, made some of our party look over the edge of a
steep cliff, almost within a few yards of the spot from
which the guns were beginning to play upon Magdala, and
there, on a ledge about fifty feet below them, lay two large
heaps of mangled human bodies, closely piled upon each
other in ghastly confusion, their limbs protruding from the
mass in all sorts of repulsive attitudes and contortions,
and presenting altogether a scene of horror such as no
pen could adequately describe, could any pen be found
to undertake the task. Here was the latest, though
not by any means the worst, specimen of the pious
handiwork of the self-elected Scourge of God. More
commonly he mutilated and disabled his victims, leaving
them to die of their wounds, or to the more tender mercy
of the hyena. On Dalanta one of the force picked up two
human hands, evidently not long cut off. The only ex-
ceptionally cruel feature in this last massacre was its un-
usual wantonness. The victims were, many of them,
prisoners for very slight offences, and men of no im-
portance, who might with perfect safety have been set
free. Theodore feared the expense of keeping them during
a siege, and considered it perhaps derogatory to his dignity
to let them go ;so he massacred them. It is impossible to
feel pity for such a man.