1036 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



through the palisading. The outer lines were passed, but the inner fence being still 

 intact, and two officers and half the men down, the bugle sounded the retreat. This 

 ill-considered assault cost the British thirty-four killed and sixty-six wounded, among the 

 slain being Captain Grant, of the Fifty-eighth, and Lieutenant Philpott, while Lieutenant 

 Beattie, of the Ninety-ninth, was mortally wounded, and died within a few days after. 



On the 3rd of July, the enemy hoisted a flag of truce and invited the British to 

 remove their dead. For three days hostilities were suspended, and peace reigned in both 

 camps. On the ;th, the besiegers resumed their cannonade, and kept it up for four 

 days, besides taking care to prevent any supplies reaching the pah. During the night 

 of the loth, the pah was deserted. Heke withdrew to Ikorangi, ten miles away, and 

 Kawiti proceeded to entrench himself at Ruapekapeka, sixteen miles inland. Colonel 

 Despard destroyed the palisades and retired to Waimate, whence his forces returned to 

 Auckland. The settlers felt that the military operations had again proved unsuccessful, 

 while the Maoris, who appraise the issue of a conflict only by the relative numbers of 

 the slain on either side, and attach no importance whatever to the desertion of a pali, 

 marvelled at the prowess of Heke. His runners went all through the North saying, 

 "One wing of England is broken, and hangs dangling on the ground." 



Four months passed away, and Governor Fitzroy was about to resume the war 

 when he learned that he had been recalled. In November, 1845, Captain Grey, the new 

 Governor, arrived from Adelaide by the ship Elphinstonc, and at once repaired to the 

 Bay of Islands, where seven hundred troops were assembled. He wrote to Heke and 

 Kawiti, offering them the same terms of peace that had been tendered by his pre- 

 decessor. The insurgent chiefs replied with a distinct refusal to submit to any terms 

 which included the forfeiture of land. Fresh troops had now reached the Bay; and, on 

 the 22nd of December, Colonel Despard set out for Ruapekapeka with a force of one 

 thousand one hundred and seventy-three Europeans, consisting of the Fifty-eighth Regi- 



jf 



ment under Lieutenant-Colonel Wynyard, detachments of the Ninety-ninth, the Royal Artillery, 

 the Royal Marines, the East India Company's Artillery, and the Auckland Volunteers under 

 Captain Atkyns. In addition, there were thirty-three' officers and two hundred and eighty 

 seamen from H.M.S. Castor, North Star and Racehorse, and H.E.I. Company's ship 

 Elphinstonc, as well as four hundred and fifty natives under Tamati Waka Nene, Mohi 

 Tawhai, and other Ngapuhi chiefs. A native detachment under Macquarie, a friendly 

 chief, made a feigned attack upon Heke at Ikorangi, so as to keep him employed while 

 the main body of the allied forces concentrated its strength upon the reduction of 

 Kawiti's fortress at Ruapekapeka. 



This pah has been pronounced a masterpiece of Maori fortification, and the plans 

 of it, now lying among the archives of the Auckland Museum, still compel the admira- 

 tion and surprise of military experts. The bombardment began on the 3ist of December, 

 and on the 2nd of January the natives under Waka repulsed a sortie, and on the night 

 of the loth Heke arrived with seventy men. Finding the provisions exhausted and the 

 defences partly destroyed, he determined to abandon the place. He withdrew his forces 

 in security .accordingly, but Kawiti remained. On the Sunday, he withdrew his men from 

 the pah, in order to conduct Divine Service out of the range of the artillery. One of 

 the native allies, who was serving as a scout, gave the signal that the pah was empty, 



