The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence by E. F. Benson
CHAPTER V
THE HORNETS' NEST AT VALTETZI
Since his arrival at Valtetzi three days before, Petrobey had hardlyrested night or day. The ground he had occupied and was fortifyingwith feverish haste was the top of a large spur of hill, going steeplydown into the valley, and commanding a good view of it. Its advantageswere obvious, for the cavalry, which at present they were particularlyincompetent to meet, could not possibly attack them on such a perch,and also it would be difficult for the Turks to get up any of theirbig guns, of which there were several in Tripoli, to make an assault.They knew that in that town there were at least ten six-pounders, andcertainly fifteen more nine-pounders, though since they had occupiedthe place, and found that the Turk had made no efforts whatever tobring artillery to bear on them, Petrobey suspected, and as it turnedout rightly, that they were not all serviceable. Furthermore, occupyingValtetzi, they cut off Tripoli from Kalamata, whither before long,in all probability, the Turks would send a relief expedition by sea.However, by this occupation of Valtetzi there would be two passes tocapture before they could send help to Tripoli, and, as he said, "theywill be strong men if they take this."
Tripoli itself lay about eight miles to the northeast, and at presentthe whole body of Greeks was occupied in fortifying the post they hadtaken. A village, largely Turkish, had stood on the spot, and thedemolition of the houses went on from daybreak to nightfall to makematerial for building up a defensive wall. The soldiers, meantime, astheir barracks were converted into fortifications, substituted forthem huts made of poles woven in with osiers and brushwood, similar tothose they used on Taygetus. The walls, it must be confessed, presenteda curiously unworkmanlike aspect--here and there a course of regularsquare stones would be interrupted by a couple of Byzantine columnsfrom the mosque, or the capital of a Venetian pillar in which a strangehuman-faced lion looked out from a nest of conventional acanthusleaves. Farther on in the same row would come a packet of roof tilesplastered together with mud, and a plane-tree standing in the line ofthe wall was pressed into the service, and supplied the place of a bigstone for eight upright courses. Above that it had been sawn off, andthe next section of the trunk being straight made a wooden coping forfive yards of wall. Here a chimney-pot filled with earth and stonestook its place among solider materials; here a hearthstone placed onend, with two inches of iron support for the stewing-pot, staringfoolishly out into vacancy. Then came a section where the builders haddrawn from a richer quarry, and a fine slab of porphyry and two _rossoantico_ pillars formed an exclusive coterie in the midst of roughblocks of limestone. But though heterogeneous and uncouth, the wallswere stout and high, and, as Petrobey said, their business was not tobuild a pretty harem to please the women.
Inside, a hardy sufficiency was the note. The soldiers' huts, thoughsmall, would stand a good deal of rough weather; they were builtsquarely in rows, camp-wise, and the floors were shingled with gravelfrom a quarry close by. Two houses only had been kept, in one ofwhich were stored the arms, in the other the ammunition, Petrobey andNicholas, as before, occupying huts exactly like those tenanted by thecommon soldiers. The mules and herds of sheep and goats were drivenout every morning under an armed escort to pasture on the hills near,and penned to the south of the camp for the night. Food was plentiful,and the men seemed well content, for the booty already taken was veryconsiderable.
In ten days more, before the end of April, the walls were complete, andPetrobey, following out the plan he had formed from the first, sent outdaily and nightly skirmishing expeditions, who made unlooked-for raidson the villages scattered on the plain about Tripoli, the inhabitantsof which, feeling secure in their neighborhood to the fortress, hadnot yet sought refuge within its walls. Men, women, and children alikewere slain, the valuables seized, the flocks and herds driven up tothe camp, and the villages burned. In such operations, inglorious andbloody it is to be feared, but a necessary part of the programme ofextermination, which the Greeks believed, not without cause, to betheir only chance of freedom, their losses were almost to be numberedon the fingers; once or twice some house defended by a few men insideresisted the attack and fired upon them, in which case the assailantsdid not scruple to set light to the place; and in ten days more onlyheaps of smoking ruins remained of the little white villages, which hadbeen dotted among the vineyards like flocks of feeding sheep.
Petrobey also established another small camp on the hills to the eastof Tripoli, to guard the road between it and the plain of Argos andNauplia. They had already intercepted and had a small skirmish withtroops coming to that place from Nauplia. The loss on the Greek sidewas about one hundred; on that of the Turks nearly double, for whenit came to hand-to-hand fighting the slow and short-legged Turk wasno match for the fresh vigor of the mountain-folk. On this occasionthey had lain in ambush on both sides of the road, and opened firesimultaneously at the regiment as it passed. The Turks had with thema contingent of cavalry, but on the rocky and wooded ground they wereperfectly useless; and their infantry, leaving the road, had driventhe Greeks from their ground, though in the first attack they had lostseverely. But this readiness to retreat when necessary, and not wasteeither powder or lives profitlessly, was in accordance with the policywhich Nicholas had indicated, and had been the first to put in practiceat Karitaena; and it was exactly this harassing, guerilla warfare,in which cavalry could not be brought into play, in which attackwas unexpected and flight was immediate upon any sign of a regularengagement, which made the Turks feel they were fighting with shadows.Though their number at the beginning of the war exceeded those of theGreeks, yet each engagement of the kind lessened them in a far greaterproportion than their enemies, who seemed, on the other hand, to bemustering fresh troops every day. Had Petrobey at this period consentedto give battle in the plains it is probable that his army would havebeen wiped out if they had fought to a close, and it says much for hiswisdom that he persisted in a policy which was tedious and distastefulto him personally. But the Greeks were acquiring every day freshexperience and knowledge, while the strength of the Turks, which lay intheir admirable cavalry and their guns, was lying useless.
In the north, however, affairs had not sped so prosperously. Germanos,who was practically commander-in-chief of the army at Kalavryta--lesswise than his colleague at Valtetzi--had risked an attack on thecitadel at Patras and suffered a severe defeat. As at Karitaena, acavalry charge ought to have made him follow Nicholas's example, buthe stuck with misplaced bravery to his attempt, until a second body ofcavalry took him in the rear and cut off his retreat. With desperatecourage his men cut their way through the latter, but a remnant onlycame through; his loss was enormous compared to that sustained by theTurks, and nothing was gained by it, for the citadel of Patras stillremained in the hands of the enemy.
News of this disaster was brought to Valtetzi about the 5th of May,with the information that Turkish soldiers, consisting of eight hundredcavalry and fifteen hundred infantry, had set out eastward along theGulf of Corinth, under the command of an able Turkish officer, AchmetBey. Five days afterwards it was reported that they had reached Argos,and next day, while a skirmishing party engaged the Greeks on thehills opposite, the rest of the force passed quietly down the road andreached Tripoli the same evening. It was a splendid achievement boldlyand successfully carried out, and Petrobey from that hour held himselfin readiness to repel any attack that might be made.
Achmet Bey found Tripoli in a poorer state than the Greeks knew, fortheir incessant ravages on the plain, their destruction of crops andcapture of flocks and herds, as well as the great influx of population,had even now begun to make themselves felt within the walls, for thetown and the plain in which it stood were cut off from all assistance,and the plain lay barren and desolate. He saw at once that it wasnecessary to establish connection with Messenia, for the plain ofArgos was occupied by bands of insurgent Greeks, and he had himselfscarcely won his way through. Though its port, Nauplia, was still inthe hands of the Turks, it also was isolated from connection with th
It was early on the morning of the 24th of May that the attack wasmade. At dawn the sentries on the walls of Valtetzi saw a troop ofcavalry issue from the southern gate of Tripoli, followed by longcolumns of infantry, and in a quarter of an hour the camp was humminglike swarming bees. Petrobey had established a system of signals withthe post on the other side of the valley, but he made no sign to them,for it seemed possible that Achmet, hoping to draw them into the plain,would try to seize the pass they held, which communicated with Argos.
It was a clear blue morning after a cold night, and the troops,defiling from the gate, looked at that distance like lines ofbright-mailed insects. First, came the infantry marching in eightseparate columns, each containing some five hundred men; next, a longline of baggage-mules, followed by horses pulling two guns; and last,the cavalry on black Syrian horses very gayly caparisoned. Nicholas hadan excellent telescope, which he had been given by the captain of anEnglish ship in return for some service, and he and Petrobey watchedthem until the gates closed again behind.
Petrobey shut up the glass with a happy little sigh.
"That will do very nicely," he said to Nicholas. "They will want toentice us and our post on the other side into the plain; but I thinkwe will both of us just stay at home. I don't want to meet thosegay cavalry just now, nor yet those two bright guns. We will havebreakfast, dear cousin."
The bugle sounded for rations, and Petrobey told the men to eat well,"for," said he, "there will be no dinner to-day, I am thinking,but"--and his eye sparkled as he pointed to the enemy--"there will,perhaps, be a little supper."
The men grinned, and soon the light-blue smoke went up from a hundredfires where they were making their coffee. Two or three sentries onlyremained on the walls, who were told to report to Petrobey when thecolumn left the road on which it was marching and turned off eitherwestward towards Valtetzi or eastward towards the post on the oppositehills. He and Nicholas had hardly sat down to breakfast, however, whenan orderly ran in saying that the post on the other side of the valleywas signalling. Petrobey finished an egg beaten up with sugar and milkbefore replying.
"I am not of the signalling corps, my friend," he said; "let themessage be read and brought to me. Some more coffee, Nicholas; itstrikes me as particularly good this morning."
The message from the signalling body came back in a minute or two. Theywere merely asking for orders.
"Stop where you are," dictated Petrobey, "and watch to see if Turkishreinforcements are coming from Argos. If so, signal here at once. Ifthe troops which have come out of Tripoli turn and attack you, runaway, drawing them after you if possible. There will be fighting forus. Pray for your comrades."
"And now, dear cousin," he said to Nicholas, when they had finishedbreakfast, "we will talk, if you please."
An hour afterwards an orderly came in to say that the troops had leftthe road and were making straight towards Valtetzi, and Petrobey got up.
"Every one to his post on the walls," he said, "but let no one firetill the word is given. Yanni, take the order to all the captains ofthe companies."
The wall was pierced in all its length with narrow slits for firing,and in half an hour each of these was occupied by four men, two of whomcould fire at the same time, while the two behind were employed inreloading their muskets. Outside, the walls were some nine feet high,built on ground which sloped rapidly away in some places at roof anglefor two hundred feet, while inside it rose to within five feet of thetop of the wall. There a man standing up could see over, and Petrobeytook up his place over the gate, where he could watch the troops.
He observed that the infantry had separated into two parties, one ofwhich had left the road and was marching away from them towards thepost on the other side of the valley, while the other and larger halfwas advancing towards them. The cavalry followed the latter, but haltedwhen the hills began to rise more steeply out of the plain. The smallerportion of the infantry was evidently going to try to draw the Greeksfrom the far post down into the plain, while the cavalry who stayed atthe bottom of the pass below Valtetzi would hinder help being sent fromthere. This Petrobey noticed with a pleasant smile. The others knewexactly what to do, and meantime the force which would assault Valtetziwould be weakened by more than a quarter of its men. Most of it,however, consisted of Albanian mercenaries who were largely in Turkishpay, and who, as he well knew, earned their pay, for they were men ofthe hills and the open air, who could use a sword and were masters oftheir limbs.
Each hundred men in the Greek camp--that is to say, twenty-five ofthese groups of four--were under the orders of a captain, who in turnwas under the direction of Petrobey, and in all about two thousand menlined the walls. Of the remainder, fifty were employed in distributingammunition, and were in readiness to bring fresh supplies to thedefenders; a hundred more were ready to take the place of any who mightbe killed at their posts; and the rest, some eight hundred men, werestanding under arms on the small parade-ground in the centre of thecamp, under command of Nicholas. They would not, however, according tothe scheme he and Petrobey had devised, be required just yet, and hetold them to pile arms and fall out, but not to leave the ground sothat they could not be recalled in a moment if wanted. Mitsos was inattendance on Nicholas, and Yanni stood by Petrobey ready to take hisorders to any part of the camp.
An hour elapsed before the Albanian infantry appeared above theridge some five hundred yards off, and still in the Greek camp therewas perfect silence. Then, opening out, they advanced at a double,intending evidently to try to storm the place. But they had clearlynot known how completely it had been fortified, and while they werestill about four hundred yards off they halted at a word of command andsheltered among the big bowlders that strewed the hill-side. Still, inthe Greek camp there was no sound or movement, only Yanni ran acrossto Nicholas with the order "Be ready," and he called his men up andthey stood in line with their arms. Then a word was shouted by thecommander of the advancing troop, and Petrobey saw the Albanians allmassing behind a small spur of hill about a quarter of a mile away,where they were hidden from sight.
There was a long pause; each individual man in the camp knew that theenemy was close, that in a few minutes the shot would be singing, butin the mean time they could not see any one. Two miles away on theplain stood the glittering mailed insects, the Turkish cavalry; and sixmiles off, a mere black speck, was the troop which had gone across tothe east. The suspense was almost unbearable; every nerve was stretchedto its highest tension, and every man exhibited his nervous discomfortin his own peculiar way. Christos, who was stationed at one of theloop-holes straight towards the enemy, merely turned cold and damp andwiped the sweat off his forehead with a flabby hand, expectoratingrapidly; Yanni, on the other hand, at his post by Petrobey, had a mouthas dry as sirocco, got very red in the face, and swore gently andatrociously to himself; a young recruit from Megalopolis suddenly threwback his head and laughed, and the sergeant of his company vented hisown tension by cuffing him over the ears, and yet the boy laughed on;Mitsos, standing by Nicholas, whistled the "Song of the Vine-diggers"between his teeth; Father Andrea, who had begged to be allowed to servein some way, and was a loader for the two men next Petrobey, chantedover and over again gently below his breath the first verse of the"Te Deum," last sung at Kalamata; Nicholas stood still, his hawk eyesblazing; but most were quite silent, shifting uneasily at their posts,standing now on one leg, now on the other. Petrobey, perhaps alone,for he had to think for them all, was quite calm, and his mind fullyoccupied. The spur behind which the Albanians were massed was almostopposite the gate o
At last round the shoulder of the hill poured the troops in twodivisions, still four hundred yards distant. When the rear had comeinto the open, the first were about two hundred and seventy yards off,and Petrobey, glancing hastily at their numbers and disposition, spoketo Yanni without turning his head.
"They will make a double attack here and on the other gate," he said."Run like hell there, and direct the fire yourself; you know the order."
Yanni rushed across the camp, and just as he got up to the other gatehe heard a volley of musketry from Petrobey's side. The Albanians hadseparated into two columns, one of which, skirting round the camp outof musket-range, soon appeared opposite the second gate, at a distanceof about two hundred and fifty yards. He waited till he saw the whitesof their eyes, and then "Fire!" he cried.
They were moving in open file at first, but they closed as they gotnearer, and a solid column of men advanced at a rapid double up thehundred yards incline. The first volley took them when the foremostwere about sixty yards off, but it was rather wild, and the men forthe most part shot over their heads. Two more volleys were deliveredwith greater precision before they got up to the gate, but they stillpressed on. A party of men had halted on the hill behind, about ahundred and twenty yards off, and were returning the fire, but withouteffect, for the defenders were protected by the wall, and the bulletseither struck that or whistled over the top.
Meantime the Greeks in the centre of the walls between the two gateswere still unemployed, but before ten seconds were passed Petrobey sawthat they would be wanted, and he sent a sergeant flying across tomarshal them, the first rows kneeling, the others standing, oppositethe gate on which he stood, which he saw was on the point of yieldingto the assault. Nicholas, meantime, had drawn up his men by the gateopposite, and was prepared, in case it was forced, to receive them inthe same manner.
Before five minutes had elapsed since the first appearance of theAlbanians round the hill, Petrobey's gate burst in with a crash, butthe assailants were met by a torrent of bullets from those in reserveinside, which fairly drove them off their feet, and next moment thegate was clear again. Then Nicholas knew his time had come. He dividedhis men into two parts, and, charging out at the wrecked gate, ledthem at a double's double, half to the right, half to the left, roundthe camp, and close under the walls, so that the Greeks' fire wentover their heads, and they fell on both flanks of the Albanians whowere attacking the opposite gate. At that moment, Yanni, seeing whatwas happening, stopped the fire from inside the walls, and at an orderfrom Petrobey caused the gate to be opened, and a company of those whohad been manning the walls hurled themselves onto the assailants. Thistriple attack was irresistible, and in a couple of minutes more thephalanx of Albanians was in full rout, and the hill-sides were coveredwith groups of men in individual combat. The party they had left on thehill, being no longer able to fire into the melee, rushed down to joinin the scrimmage, and Petrobey, leaving only a small number of meninside, sufficient to defend both gates, called out all the rest andheaded in person the charge on the first attacking party.
Up and down the stony hill-sides chased, and were chased, the Greeks.Now and then a party of Albanians would try to form in some sort oforder to make a combined assault on the broken-down gate, and as oftenthey were scattered again by knots of men who rushed wildly uponthem from all sides. In point of numbers, the Albanians had had theadvantage at the first attack, but that short-range fire from the wallshad been of a decimating nature, and now the Greeks had the superiority.
Mitsos, who had gone out with Nicholas, found himself almost swept offhis feet by the rush of his own countrymen from the gate, and for a fewmoments he was carried along helpless, neither striking nor being ableto strike, but with a curious red happiness in his heart, singing the"Song of the Vine-diggers," though he knew not he was singing it. Thensuddenly at his elbow appeared a glaring, fierce face, as crimson assunset, and he found himself jammed shoulder to shoulder with Yanni,who was swearing as hard as he could lay tongue to it, not that he wasangry, but because the madness of fighting was on him, and it happenedto take him that way.
"Don't shout, you big pig," called he to Mitsos; "why, in the name ofall the devils in the pit, don't you get out of my way?"
"Fat old Yanni!" shouted Mitsos. "Come on, little cousin.
"'Dig we deep among the vines.'
Eh, but there are fine grapes for the gathering!"
"Go to hell!" screamed Yanni. "Hullo, Mitsos, this is better."
They had squeezed themselves out into a backwater of the congestedstream of men, and in full front stood a great hairy Albanian with hissword just raised to strike. But Mitsos, flying at him like a wild-cat,threw in the man's face the hand which grasped his short, dagger-likesword as you would throw a stone; the uplifted sword swung over hisback harmlessly, while the blade of his own dagger made a great redrent in the man's face, and he fell back.
"Your mother won't know you now," sang out Mitsos, burying his knife inhis throat. "'Dig we deep'--that's deep enough, Yanni--'the summer'shere.'"
There was little work for muskets, for no man had time or room to load,and Yanni went on his blasphemous way swinging his by the barrel, anddealing blows right and left with the butt, and in a few minutes he andMitsos found themselves out of the crowd alone but for a dead Greeklying there, on a little hillock some fifty yards from the gate, whilethe fight flickered up and down on each side of them.
"Eh, but there's little breath left in this carcass," panted Yanni."Why, Mitsos, your head's all covered with blood; there's a slice outof your forehead."
"MITSOS, FLYING AT HIM LIKE A WILD-CAT"]
Mitsos' black curls, in fact, were dripping from a cut on his head,and what with the blood and the dust and the sweat, he was in a finemess; but he himself had not known he was touched. Yanni bound it upfor him with a strip of his shirt, and the two ran down again into thefight. There the tide was strongly setting in favor of the Greeks;but the Albanians were beginning to form again on a spur of rock,and stragglers from below kept joining them. Petrobey, thinking thatthis was preparatory to another attack on the gate, as an additionaldefence drew off some hundred men from the Mainats--who had stucktogether, and were the only company who preserved even the semblanceof order--when he saw that there was no such intention on the enemy'spart, for the body suddenly wheeled and disappeared over the brow ofthe hill in the direction of the plain, followed by those who werefighting in other parts of the field. For the time they had had enoughof this nest of hornets.
They retreated in good order, pursued by skirmishing parties from theGreeks, who followed them with derision, and bullets; but Petrobey'sorders had been that they should not advance beyond the broken groundand expose themselves to an attack by the cavalry, and in half an hourmore they had all come back to camp.
The skirmish had lasted about three hours; but Petrobey knew thatthe fighting was not over yet. The cavalry had been moved from theplain onto one of the lower foothills to which the routed Albaniansretreated, while the detachment which had started as if to attack theGreek post on the hills to the east had evidently been recalled, forit had passed the road along which the troops had first come, and wasnow marching straight across the narrow strip of plain which separatedit from the range on which Valtetzi stood; an hour afterwards it hadjoined the cavalry below, and half an eye could see that anotherassault was being planned. The long train of baggage mules was lefton the plain, but between them and the Greeks was the whole bodyof Albanian and Turkish troops, which, so it had seemed, and notincautiously, to Achmet Bey, was protection enough. Soon it was seenthat the troops were in motion again, and the whole body of infantryand cavalry together moved up the slope towards the camp. They weremarching up one side of a long ravine which was cut in the mountainfrom top to bottom, and they had posted scouts along the two ridges toguard against
Petrobey saw what was coming, but he hesitated. His mouth watered afterthe baggage train below, but he feared to weaken the defence of thecamp by sending men for that purpose. Nicholas, however, was clear.Guns and ammunition and baggage were fine things in their way, but notworth measurable risk; every hand was needed at Valtetzi, and, besides,any movement from the Greek camp, even if they sent the men round by acircuitous route down the next ravine, would be observed by the scouts;an opportunity, however, might come later.
For three hours more desultory and skirmishing attacks were made bythe Albanians on the camp; four times they advanced a column right upto one or other gate, and as many times it was driven back--twice bya sortie from the inside, twice by the heavy firing from the walls;and at last, as the sun began to decline towards the west, they werecalled back, and retreated hurriedly towards the cavalry. Then Nicholassaw the opportunity; the scouts had been withdrawn from the ridges,for they no longer expected an attack from the flank, and he with ahundred Mainats set off down a parallel ravine hotfoot to the plain,while the rest of the men, under Petrobey's orders, followed the enemyat a distance, keeping their attention fixed on them in expectation ofanother attack. Achmet Bey at last thought that the Greeks had falleninto the trap he had baited so many times, and hoped to draw them downinto the plain, where he would turn and crush them with his cavalry.
They were already approaching the last hill which bordered on the levelground when Petrobey, who kept his eye on the plain, saw Nicholas andhis band wheel round the baggage animals, shooting down their drivers,and force them up the ravine down which they had come. On the momenthe gave the order to fire, and the Greeks poured a volley into therear of the infantry. The Turks were fairly caught. If Achmet sent thecavalry on to rescue the baggage, the Greeks, whose numbers were nowfar superior to the infantry, would in all probability annihilate them;if, on the other hand, he kept the cavalry to support the infantry, thebaggage would be lost. He chose the lesser evil, and as the ground wasnow becoming smoother and more level, he directed the cavalry to chargeon the Greeks, and Petrobey fairly laughed aloud.
"Run away, run away," he cried; "let not two men remain together."
The cavalry charged, but there was simply nothing to charge. Up thehill-sides in all directions fled the Greeks, choosing the stoniest andsteepest places, and dispersing as they ran as a ball of quicksilverbreaks and is spread to all parts of the compass.
Again the retreat of the Turks began, and once more the Greeks gatheredand engaged their attention. In the growing dusk no attack could bemade, for the horses were already beginning to stumble and pick theirway carefully to avoid falling, while the Greeks still hung on theirrear and flanks like a swarm of stinging insects. When the hills beganto sink into the plain Petrobey, too, sounded the retreat, and the men,though tired and hungry, went singing up the hill-side. At first somesang the "Song of the Vine-diggers," others the "Fountain Mavromati,"others the "Swallow Song," but by degrees the "Song of the Klepht"gained volume, and by the time they entered the camp again the men wereall singing it, and it rang true to the deed they had wrought. And thusthey sang:
"Mother, to the Turk I will not be a slave, That will I not endure. Let me take my gun, Let me be a Klepht, Dwelling with the beasts On the hills and rocks; Snow shall be my coverlet, Stones shall be my bed. Weep not, mother; mother, mine, Pray that many Turks Bite the dust through me."