CHAPTER V
THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI
In battle the charge is the climax. In other kinds of fighting men have a certain amount of shelter and respite and at long range it makes little difference whether the fighter is strong or weak. In a charge, however, the fighting is hand to hand. As in the days of old, men fight at close grips with their enemy and each one must depend upon his own strength and skill and bravery.
There have been three charges in modern battles which have been celebrated over and over again. The first of these was the last desperate charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo. A thin red line of English held a hill which Napoleon, the greatest of modern generals, saw was the keystone of the battle. If that could be taken, the whole arch of the English and Belgium forces would crumble away into defeat. Again and again the French stormed at this hill and each time were driven back by the coolly-waiting deadly ranks of the English. Toward nightfall Napoleon made one last desperate effort. The Old Guard was to him what the great Tenth Legion had been to Julius Cæsar, the best and bravest veterans of his army who boasted that they had never yet been defeated. Calling them up with every last one of his reserves, he ordered a final desperate charge to break the battle center. To the grim drumming of what guns the little general had left, they rushed again up that blood-stained slope in desperate dark masses of unbeaten men. With a storm of cheers, the columns surged up in a vast blue battle-wave which seemed as if it must dash off by its weight the little group of silent, grim defenders. The Englishmen waited and waited and waited until the rushing ranks were almost on them. Then they poured in a volley at such close range that every bullet did the work of two and with a deep English cheer sprang on the broken ranks with their favorite weapon, the bayonet. That great battle-wave broke in a foam of shattered, dying and defeated men and the sunset of that day was the sunset of Napoleon's glory.
Fifty years later in the great war which England with her allies was waging to keep the vast, fierce hordes of Russia from ruling Europe, happened another glorious, useless charge. Owing to a misunderstanding of orders, a little squad of six hundred cavalrymen charged down a mile-long valley flanked on all sides by Russian artillery against a battery of guns whose fire faced them all the way. Every schoolboy who has ever spoken a piece on Friday afternoon knows what comes next. How the gallant Six Hundred, stormed at with shot and shell, made the charge to the wonder and admiration of three watching armies and how they forced their way into the jaws of death and into the mouth of hell and sabred the gunners and then rode back – all that was left of them.
In our own Civil War occurred the most famous charge of modern days, Pickett's charge at the battle of Gettysburg. For three days raged the first battle which the Confederates had been able to fight on Northern soil. If their great General Lee, with his seventy thousand veterans, won this battle, Washington, Philadelphia and even New York were at his mercy. On the afternoon of the third day he made one last desperate effort to break the center of the Union forces. Pickett's division of the Virginia infantry was the center of the attacking forces and the column numbered altogether over fifteen thousand men. For two hours Lee cannonaded the Union center with one hundred and fifteen guns. He was answered by the Union artillery although they could only muster eighty guns. Finally the Union fire was stopped in order that the guns might cool for Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, realized that the cannonade was started to mask some last great attack. Suddenly three lines, each over a mile long, of Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee regiments started to cover the mile and a half which separated them from the Union center. The Union crest was held by the Pennsylvania regiments who were posted back of the stone wall on the very summit. As the gray lines rushed over the distance with a score of fierce battle flags flaming and fluttering over their ranks, the eighty guns which had cooled so that they could now be used with good effect opened up on them first with solid shot and then with the tremendous explosive shells. As they charged, the Virginia regiments moved away to the left leaving a gap between them and the men from Alabama on the right. The Union leaders took advantage of this gap and forced in there the Vermont brigade and a half brigade of New York men. By suddenly changing front these men were enabled to attack the charging thousands on their flank. The Union guns did terrible execution, opening up great gaps through the running, leaping, shouting men. As the charge came nearer and nearer the batteries changed to the more terrible grape and canister which cut the men down like grass before a reaper. Still they came on until they were face to face with the waiting Union soldiers who poured in a volley at short range. For a moment the battle flags of the foremost Confederate regiments stood on the crest. The effort had been too much. Over half of the men had been killed or wounded and many others had turned to meet the flank attack of the Vermont and New York regiments so that when the Pennsylvania troops met them at last with the bayonet, the gray line wavered, broke, and the North was saved.
All three of these great charges were brave, glorious failures. This is the story of a charge, an almost forgotten charge, just as brave, just as glorious, which succeeded, a charge in which one hundred and sixty men and boys broke and routed a force of over two thousand entrenched infantry and cavalry.
At the breaking out of the war, one of the most popular of the Union commanders was John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder. He had opened up the far West and had made known to the people the true greatness of the country beyond the Mississippi. At the birth of the Republican or Free-Soil Party, he was the first candidate. The country rang with a campaign song sung to the tune of the Marseillaise, the chorus of which was:
"March on, march on, ye braves,
And let your war cry be,
Free soil, free press, free votes, free men,
Fremont and victory."
He was one of the first generals appointed. Among those whom the fascination of his romantic and adventurous life had attracted to his side was a Hungarian refugee named Zagonyi. In his boyhood he had fought in the desperate but unsuccessful war which Hungary made to free herself from the Austrian yoke. He served in the Hungarian cavalry; and in a desperate charge upon the Austrians, in which half the force were killed, Zagonyi was wounded and captured and for two years was a prisoner. He was finally released on condition that he leave his country forever. As an experienced soldier, he was welcomed by General Fremont and was authorized to raise a company to be known as Fremont's Body-Guard. In a few days two full companies, composed mostly of very young men, had been enrolled. A little later another company composed entirely of Kentucky boys was included in the guards. They were all magnificently mounted on picked horses and very handsomely uniformed. Because of their outfit and name they soon excited the envy of the other