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Updated: June 27, 2025
The three imprisoned officers opened their last comfort, a half bottle of champagne, and drank success to their comrades. Several of the troops died while the fighting was going on, the excitement being too much for their weakened frames. At last the Ashantis were seen flying in terror.
As this defeat had never been avenged, the Ashantis were justified in the belief that they were capable of overrunning our country; and in 1873 a large force crossed the Prah and fell upon the villages of the Fantis, as the natives of this part under British protection are called.
Till midnight the attack was continued, then the Ashantis fell back to their camp. At Accroful, a village on the main road some four miles distant, the attack had been heard, and a messenger sent off to Cape Coast to inform Sir Garnet Wolseley. In the morning fifty men of the 2d West India regiment marched from Accroful into Abra Crampa without molestation.
Later on some Abra scouts approached the Ashanti camp and shouted tauntingly to know when the Ashantis were coming into Abra Crampa. They shouted in return, "After breakfast," and soon afterwards, a rocket fired from the roof of the church falling into the camp, they again sallied out and attacked. It was a repetition of the fight of the day before.
Even then it was given out that the expedition was going down the coast, and it was not until the ships anchored off Elmina at three in the morning that the officers and troops were aware of their destination. All the West Indian troops at Cape Coast had been taken, Captain Peel of the Simoon landing fifty sailors to hold the fort in case the Ashantis should attack it in their absence.
They were in close alliance with the tribes at Elmina, which place we had taken over from the Portuguese, some years before Sir Garnet Wolseley's expedition. This occupation was bitterly opposed by the Ashantis, who felt that it cut them off from free trade with the coast.
Although the attacking force was very greatly superior, and took the little garrison by surprise for they did not expect, while a great battle was raging within a distance of a mile, that the Ashantis would be able to spare a force to attack a detached party the garrison defended itself with great gallantry and complete success, not only beating off the enemy whenever they attacked, but sallying out and assisting to bring in a convoy of stores which was close at hand when the attack began.
The Ashantis, as the story runs, once dug treasure near Sakánya; and, as the chiefs and people were becoming too independent of them, the high priests put the precious metal 'in fetish, with the penalty of blindness to all who worked it. A Danish governor once filled his pockets, and recovered sight only by throwing away the plunder.
Even Whydah is not blood-stained like Agbóme, because it has been occupied by a few slavers, white and brown. Why, then, should the Ashantis be refused the opportunity and the means of amendment?
The Ashantis were now becoming thoroughly dispirited. Their sufferings had been immense. Fever and hunger had made great ravages among them, and, although now the wet season was over a large quantity of food could be obtained in the forest, the losses which the white men's bullets, rockets, and guns had inflicted upon them had broken their courage.
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