The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill
according to civilized ideas, some difficulty in allowing the quality of heroism to a chief who dissects the writhing bodies of his captives in war, drives splinters under their fingernails, and lights slow fires upon their stomachs. But we must not expect to find the Red Indian- of all savages the most unteachable and the most impervious to civilized influences – endowed with Christian virtues. It would even be unfair to compare Sitting Bull and his athletic son, who headed his father’s rescue and shared his father’s fate, with Tecumseh and Uncas, or any other of Fenimore Cooper’s redskin heroes. There is a tolerably general opinion among those who have studied the Indian character in later days that Tecumseh and Uncas were impossible Indians. With all his craftiness and vindictiveness – faults that are virtues in savage codes of morality – Sitting Bull has been a very picturesque figure in American history for twenty years past as one of the last champions of a decaying race. His career will some day fill a page of romance.
The romancer, let us hope, will discreetly forget that his hero allowed himself to be dragged at the tail of Colonel Cody’s ‘Wild West Show.’ That reminiscence would rather jar upon the rest of the story. But let us not make too much of what seems to us a humiliation. The Indian stoic sees these things with different eyes. For him there is no more ignominy in exhibiting himself for hire in a circus than in wearing the hats and trousers of the white man, or begging for rum or rations. Whether herein he be a philosopher or a child, it is not for us to say.
President Harrison is reported to have expressed a confident hope that, the prime disturber of the peace being out of the way, the Indian difficulty would be settled without bloodshed. Those who know the Indians well are not equally hopeful. The skirmish or affray in which Sitting Bull lost his life – whether by the bullets of the Indian police. or of his rescuers – may prove to have precipitated the conflict which has been for a long time impending. Very probably Sitting Bull had, as the authorities allege, made up his mind to join the band of Sioux who were raiding settlers’ cattle from their strongholds in the ‘Bad Lands,’ and, if so, then it was right and expedient to arrest him, although not with the inadequate force despatched for the purpose. But, whatever his intentions, Sitting Bull can by no stretch of imagination be said to be the cause of the Messianic craze which is now inflaming the imaginations of not only Sioux, but Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Apaches, Utes, and other tribes. Although physical exhaustion and hard weather have apparently stopped the ‘ghost-dances,’ the exaltation and unrest arising from the predicted appearance of a deliverer from the whites still continue and have to be reckoned with. In this very combustible state of Indian feeling there is a danger that the fight near Sitting Bull’s camp may kindle a serious conflagration. The braves who attempted to rescue Sitting Bull have tasted blood.
Through the injudicious action of the authorities they were allowed to score a decided advantage over the arresting party before the arrival of cavalry armed with Gatlings made further conflict impossible. The Americans call it a victory; but it was a victory in which their own side seems to have suffered as severely as the Sioux, and to have brought away from the field a very lively appreciation of the accuracy of the rebels’ shooting: Moreover, no attempt was made to follow up the defeated party, who made good their retreat to the hostile camp in the ‘Bad Lands.’ It is certain that if the rebel Sioux, thus reinforced, think it worth while to resist, their subjugation will be a more serious business than GENERAL BROOKE’S telegram represents it, and, in the meanwhile, a general uprising of the Indians might change the situation altogether. The Americans owe it to their credit as a humane nation to see that the war of extermination to which some of their Generals look forward with complacency is not provoked by the ‘energetic treatment’ so popular in American military circles. The saying current among United States soldiers that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’ expresses a sentiment which is responsible for many atrocious massacres and needless wars.
The information provided to the American press was that that Sitting Bull and his son had been killed when the Indian police arrested Sitting Bull, as they had heard that he intended going to ‘Badlands’. A troop of cavalry followed the police, and upon their arrival at Sitting Bull’s camp, it was evident that arrangements had already been made for his departure. The police started back with Sitting Bull in custody. His followers rallied, however, and attempted a rescue. A mêlée ensued, in the course of which Sitting Bull, his son, and several Indians, as well as five of the Indian police, were killed.
Sitting Bull was one of the most cunning Indians who ever ruled a tribe. He will be best remembered in connection with the Indian rising of 1876, when he held the best troops of the United States at bay. He was not so much a fighting man as a statesman and although nominally in command of the Indian tribes when Colonel Custer with the 7th Cavalry was annihilated, it was really his fighting chief, Crazy Horse, to whom the credit of the Indian victory was due.
After the great Indian war, Sitting Bull escaped to Canada, where he lived until pardoned, though he never regained the position of chief of the six tribes forming the Sioux nation. Despite all the efforts of the United States authorities, Sitting Bull would never look upon the white men as other than his natural enemies. He declared that the white men were always secretly goading them into violence in order to have a pretext for shooting them down and seizing their lands. He took the bounty offered by the Government agents at the Indian Reservations, but with an ill grace. For some time he travelled in America witb Colonel Cody in his Wild West Show, but, though he took an intelligent interest in many things he saw, he remained to the last a typical Indian of the plains, untamed and untamable.
‘Organizer of victory’
25 AND 27 APRIL 1891
A GREAT SOLDIER HAS passed away. A foremost name has faded from contemporary history. The genius and skill of Moltke became apparent to the world only when he was 66 years old, for he was born in the first year of this century, and has thus lived on into his 91st year. His was a long, patient, and silent career of toil and of duty before suddenly his fame burst forth and the excellence of his labour was made manifest. Peace, hardly ruffled save by the campaign in the Elbe duchies, had been the fortune of Prussia for fifty years since Blücher hurled out of Belgium the columns of the first Napoleon after their repulse at Waterloo.
The startling victory of Königgrätz in 1866 surprised the world and woke it to the fact that one of the greatest strategists known to history was chief of the Prussian General Staff. Count Moltke had counselled King William to order the dispositions which allowed the three armies of the Crown Prince, Prince Frederick Charles, and Herwarth to strike a concentrated and crushing blow against the Austrian forces on the Upper Elbe. The war had endured but a few days. It was only on the morning of the 16th of June that the first Prussian corps stepped across the Saxon frontier, and war became inevitable. On the evening of the 3d of July the shattered battalions of Austria were hurrying in disordered flight along rain-sodden tracks to seek shelter under the guns of Olmütz. This sudden victory practically concluded the war between Austria and Prussia. The prize won was the unity of North Germany; and on that day the foundation-stone was laid of the modern German Empire. The military plans which led to this rapid and brilliant success were confessedly due to the inspiration of Moltke, and when the Emperor William some years later received the Crown of all Germany, his early thought was to thank the strategist to whom so much was due.
The war of 1866 made Count Moltke famous. This fame was won through hard work, constant perseverance, and rigid self-denial. Officers of every army can take no brighter example as their model than Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke. He was born on the 26th of October, 1800, at Parchim, in Mecklenburg. His parents were of good family, but poor, and he was their third son. His father, who had been a captain in the Prussian service, in 1801 inherited the family estate in Mecklenburg, but sold it in 1803 and retired to Lübeck. When nine years old young Helmuth was sent to school near Kiel, where he made rapid progress. He and his brother were in 1811 sent to Copenhagen, and in the following year were admitted as cadets into the Royal Military Academy there. In the beginning of 1818 young Moltke passed his examination for his commission as best of the candidates and in March, 1819, was