Before this reached him he had drifted into the last and worst of his misfortunes, an unsuccessful war, the direct result of the defeat at the Wairau and the weakness shown thereafter. It was not that he and his missionary advisers did not try hard enough to avert any conflict with the Maoris. If conciliation pushed to the verge of submission could have kept the peace, it would have been kept. But conciliation, without firmness, will not impress barbarians. The Maoris were far too acute to be impressed by the well-meaning, vacillating Governor. They set to work, instead, to impress him. They invited him to a huge banquet near Auckland, and danced a war-dance before their guest with the deliberate intention of overawing him. Indeed, the spectacle of fifteen hundred warriors, stripped, smeared with red ochre, stamping, swaying, leaping, uttering deep guttural shouts, and brandishing their muskets, while their wild rhythmic songs rose up in perfect time, and their tattooed features worked convulsively, was calculated to affect even stronger nerves than the Governor's. It was among the discontented tribes in the Bay of Islands, where Alsatia was now deserted by its roaring crews of whalers and cheated of its hoped-for capital, that the outbreak came. In the winter of 1844, Honé Heké, son-in-law of the great Hongi, presuming on the weakness of the Government, swaggered into Kororáreka, plundered some of the houses, and cut down a flagstaff on the hill over the town on which the English flag was flying. Some White of the beach-comber species is said to have suggested the act to him by assuring him that the flag-staff represented the Queen's sovereignty--the evil influence which had drawn trade and money away to Auckland. Heké had no grievance whatever against the Government or colonists, but he and the younger braves of the Northern tribes had been heard to ask whether Rangihaeata was to do all the _Pakeha_-killing? At the moment Fitzroy had not two hundred soldiers in the country. He hurried up to the scene of disturbance. Luckily Heké's tribe--the Ngapuhi--were divided. Part, under Waka Nené, held with the English. Accepting Nené's advice Fitzroy allowed Heké to pay ten muskets in compensation for the flagstaff, and then foolishly gave back the fine as a present and departed. Nené and the friendly chiefs undertook to keep peace--but failed, for Heké again cut down the flagstaff. This, of course, brought war definitely on. The famous flagstaff was re-erected, guarded by a block-house, and a party of soldiers and sailors were sent to garrison Kororáreka. As H.M.S. _Hazard_ lay off the beach in the Bay and guns were mounted in three block-houses, the place was expected to hold out. Heké, however, notified that he would take it--and did so. He marched against it with eight hundred men. One party attacked the flagstaff, another the town. The twenty defenders of the flag-staff were divided by a stratagem by