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Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

Orakau

Orakau.

Guerilla wars have no history, and the war in the Waikato was a guerilla war. It had its picturesque features and varying fortunes. The Maoris fought with the desperate bravery of men defending their national existence, and the English too often with the lack of skill usually shown in bush warfare. One particular passage-at-arms has evoked the unstinted admiration even of unfriendly historians and has been enshrined in not unworthy verse. The siege of Orakau stands out as one of the most heroic incidents in the war. A chief of the Maniopoto, Rewi (the Maori transliteration of Levi), short, wiry, and fiery, held the pah with some three or four hundred Maoris, women and children included. It was besieged by a British force of 1,250 men, consisting of artillery armed with Armstrong guns, infantry, and militia. Every natural advantage had been used with the science of a Vauban to make it impregnable. Gabions and sap-rollers, earthworks with flank defences, deep ditches, posts and rails, all concealed from view behind flax bushes, trees and high ferns, enabled the small garrison to resist many assaults. Hand-grenades and shells poured from the heavy guns had no effect. At last page 147the situation grew untenable while the fortification was still unbroached. The water supply of the garrison was exhausted, and they had little food left. Their ammunition was almost spent. Still they had no thought of yielding. Summoned to surrender, the heroic leader answered in a single repeated memorable word: ake, ake, ake! Never, never, never! His word was kept to the letter. They sang a hymn to the Christian God, who seemed to have deserted them. Then, as if by a sudden revulsion of feeling, they flung back to their old beliefs and the gods they had deserted, and shouted a frenzied karakia, or imprecation on their enemies. Finally, in broad daylight, and in the face of the foe, all the occupants of the pah marched out in a solid column, the greater chiefs and the women and children in the centre. They were hotly fired on, yet with some restraint arising from the respect felt for such a deed, but succeeded in making their way to a place of safety. "Does ancient or modern history," asks Sir W. Fox, "or even our own rough island story, record anything more heroic?" Twenty years later the writer was present when the poem composed by Thomas Bracken, immortalising the event, and marked by the ringing refrain, "ake," etc., was shown to Rewi, now loyal to the bone and a pensioner, but no unmanly exultation betrayed itself at the pointed reminder. An hour or two before in the great drawing-room of Sir George Grey's mansion at Kawau, Rewi had sternly arraigned the Maori king, Tawhiao, who sat beside him, accused him of giving way to intemperate habits, and threatened him, unless he could overcome these, with the total failure of his projected mission to England. It was a striking scene. "He is a man," said Sir George Grey, "to whom life is a reality."