Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1904-10-31

halo over the Redan and the Malakoff,
those supposedly impregnable forts.
The year 1857 was made memoir
| able by the siege of Lucknow. Here in
this city of glittering Oriental beauty
| 300 English soldiers, with the in
domtable spirit of the Anglo-SaXon,
| beat back the hordes of Sepoys that
swarmed about the residency, While
the women, knowing their fate if sur
render came, prayed every hour for
death or rescue. Four months of this
slow torture went by, and despair be
gan to settle on the garrison; defeat
seemed inevitable, when one day new
sound mingled with the noises the gar
rison already knew. and a Scotch las
sic, with her ear to the ground, recog-
niZed the new note and cried out the
O. the Hishlanders! We are saved
we are saved" And to the music of
those pipes that gallant band OF Scots
and English cut their way to their
starving cOuntrymen, leaving behind a
path of blood thick-StreWn with SepOy
dead.
In the FranCo-PrusSian war Paris
held the enemy back for 49, days,
Il,
save her children from the horrors of
starvation. Then there is Plevna.
Here the Turks. under Osman Pasha.
intrenchcd themselves against the
Russians. and in the 142 days of siege
that followed 10000 men gave up their
lives Then the Pasha capitulated.
The siege and capture of Plevna make
interesting reading for the student of
military tactics.
In the history of our own country
sitges are rare. There was the so
called siege of Boston: the twenty days
at Yorktown. which closed the revolu
ton. and in the Civil War the siege of
Nicksburg. which city held out against
Grant for some seventy days. During
much of this time the people of the
town lived in their cellars or burrowed
into the bluffs and cliffs to escape the
bursting shells of the assailants. Here
in Memphis was heard the detonation
of that fierce bombardment. During
the Spanish American war there befell
the siege of Santiago, too familiar fon
more than mention. During the
Boer war. in South Africa, people all
over the world asked for 11S days:
What is the news from Ladysmith?'
for during that length Of time Lady
smith was holding out against the be-
leaguered foe.
These are some of the famous sieges
of history, ancient and modern. Each
one of them had it's own record of
brave deeds of gallant sallies. of
bloody assaults; each one ended with
it's sigh of DESPAIR, it's far-blown bugle
call of victory. Chronologists have
set them down coldly and succinctly;
poets and orators have told of them in
words that burn. But the story of
each will probably fade in interest and
vivid picturesqueness when the his
tory of Port Arthur is told to the
world: for in those other days there
were wooden walls and spears. and
man propelled battering-rams: or, at
best, guns of but primitive power. But
before Port Arthur there stands today |
the very steel-personified spirit of war.
the materalized genius of invention. |
No improvements of weapons or ex-
plosive that the mind has conceived or !
matter lent itself to perfect have been |
overlooked or neglected by be-
leagures or beleagured; and when the
siege ends and the crash comes it will
be stupendous. drowning in it's mighty
roar the Homeric echoes of Troy, the
clash and cry at Plevna and the indy
ing guns of the Malakoff.