On the evening of May II, 1857, fifty Christian people, men, women, and children, were brought to the palace and confined in an underground apartment without a window and only one door, so that little of light and air entered the dreary dwelling. After being confined for five days in this gloomy, pestilential dungeon, starved and insulted, but defying their tormentors to the last, they were led into a courtyard and hewn tQ pieces. The whole dark truth of what took place can never be told. But swift came the hour of retribution. A few months passed away, when the British soldiers stormed the palace and bivouacked in the Diwan-i-Am, the great Hall of Audience, where travellers from all quarters of the globe in the days of old had admired the magnificence of the Moghul Cesars. On Sunday morn ing, September 20, the soldiers assembled in the Diwan-i Khas. It was no vain pomp or unmeaning ceremony, but the humble recognition of their merciful deliverance and final triumph. Through the Diwan-i-Khas rolled the words of our noble liturgy, and marble wall and gilded pillar echoed the cry that went forth from the depths of their brave hearts—" Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the praise." During my last visit to Delhi I enjoyed a delightful ex perience. Lord Roberts, who was at the time making a short stay in the Imperial capital, kindly undertook to describe to me on the theatre of their enactment the princi pal operations of the great siege which decided the destinies of India. One afternoon in March we made our expedition. Lord Roberts drove me first to the ramp which leads to the Cabul Gate, and here, alighting from the carriage, we walked up a narrow lane bounded on the right by the walls of the city, and on the left by houses with flat roofs, afford ning convenient shelter for sharpshooters. Sixty yards from the ramp the wall and lane suddenly bend, and on the city side there is a strong, lofty house, with a blank wall broken by only two windows. From one of these windows, in all probability, was fired the shot which proved fatal to John Nicholson. A tablet marks the spot where he fell. Of all the heroes who have made the Indian Mutiny our Iliad, none strikes the imagination like John Nicholson. Tall of person and of majestic presence, he well justified the title of " Lion of the Punjab." Strong and brave, he had the high moral grace which makes bravery and strength beautiful. He became to the wild races he governed a semi-divine figure, and they allowed him to drill them and lead them to Delhi. He reached the lane on the. morning of the assault at the moment when the soldiers, seeing their leaders swept away by a torrent of grape and musketry, had begun to waver. Springing forward, Nicholson called with a stentorian voice upon the men to follow him. and instantly he was shot through the chest. Near the spot grows a tall and graceful tree ; and, as his favourite personal orderly, Khaj a Khan Raus. an Afghan who stormed with him the breach at Delhi, informs us : " The General then desired to be laid in the shade, and said, ' I will remain here till Delhi is taken.' He then called for some cold water. At that time I ordered a dooly from Delhi, and sent Latief Khan (with the General) to the General Hospital in camp, where Dr. gave him some medicine and he became a little better." Lord Roberts, in his Forty-one Years in India, states that at the Cashmere Gate he found a dooly deserted by its bearers. On opening the curtains, he discovered Nicholson, who said that he was in great agony, and asked him to have him removed to the hospital. Lord Roberts, with some difficulty, collected four men and had him carried into camp. The Afghan orderly tells us that " On September 20 the victory at Delhi was complete, the faces of the rebels were blackened, and they fled. I went to the Sahib and told him of the victory. He was greatly delighted, and said, ' My desire was that Delhi might be taken before I die, and it has been so.' " The news of the capture of the Moghul Palace and the complete acquisition of the city consoled the death-bed of John Nichol son. From the first there was little hope, and the pain he suffered was most excruciating. " Throughout those nine days of suffering," wrote Neville Chamberlain, " he bore himself nobly ; not a lament or a sigh ever passed his lips, and he conversed as calmly and clearly as if he were talking of some other person's condition and not his own." His first care was for his country, and from his bed he aided the last military operations with his counsels. Day by day he grew weaker, but his intellect remained unclouded, and when life was fast ebbing away the stern warrior sent a message of tender humility to his oldest and dearest friend, Herbert Edwardes, and one to his mother, counselling 112r to be patient for his loss. " Tell my mother that I do not think we shall be unhappy in the next world." On the morning of September 23 the noble and fearless spirit of John Nicholson sped to the world " where God shall wipe away all tears." " He looked so peaceful," wrote the comrade who had watched by his bed. " The Sirdars of the Mool tanee Horse, and some other natives, were admitted to see him after death ; and their honest praise could hardly find utterance for the tears they shed as they looked on their late master." Leaving Rampart Road, we drove through the Cashmere gate, and stopped to read the inscription on the simple tablet which that fine soldier Lord Napier of Magdala had erected to the gallant men who sacrificed their lives in blowing up the gate the day the guilty city was stormed. The band of heroes had to advance in daylight to the gateway in the very teeth of a hot fire from all sides. The powder-bags were
coolly laid and adjusted by the advance party, when Lieuten ant Salkeld advanced to do his duty. While endeavouring to fire the charge he " was shot through the leg and arm, and handed over the slow match to Corporal Burgess, who fell mortally wounded just as he had successfully performed his duty." Thus in a few prosaic words the official despatch records one of the most heroic deeds which illustrate the annals of England. On the slab are inscribed the names of the four sepoys who also took part in that brave deed. Two were wounded and one was killed. It is meet and right to honour the memory of those who, in spite of terrible tempta tion, remain faithful to their colours. The history of the Mutiny abounds with examples of heroic deeds wrought by Englishmen ; it also abounds with examples of noble self sacrifice displayed by sepoys for their officers.
Leaving the Cashmere Gate, we drove through a road lined with fine trees, till we came to a low wall which separates Ludlow Castle from the road. It was here on the morning of the assault that Lord Roberts saw Nicholson at the head of his column. Leaving the carriage, we walked through the grounds till we came to two blocks of masonry marking the site of the famous No. 2 Battery, which made the breach for our troops to enter. Three days before the assault it was completed. Lord Roberts writes : " I was posted to the left half of No. 2 Battery, and had charge of the two right guns. At eight o'clock on the morning of September II we opened fire on the Cashmere bastion and the adjoining curtain ; and as the shots told and the stones flew into the air and rolled down, a loud cheer burst from the Artillerymen and some of the men of the Carabineers and gth Lancers, who had volunteered to work in the batteries. The enemy had got our range with wonderful accuracy, and immediately on the screen in front of the right gun being removed, a round shot came through the embrasure, knocking two or three of us over. On regaining my feet, I found that the young Horse Artilleryman who was serving the vent while I was laying the gun had had his right arm taken off. . . .
On the evening of September 13 Nicholson came to see whether we gunners had done our work thoroughly enough to warrant the assault being made the next morning. He was evidently satisfied, for when he entered our battery he said : ' I must shake hands with you fellows ; you have done your best to make my work easy to-morrow.' " After leaving Ludlow Castle we proceeded along the road till we reached the top of the ridge where was enacted one of the great events of our nation's history. This rocky ridge, sixty feet above the city, was not only a coign of vantage for attack, but a rampart for defence. Below the centre, and extending to the left, the British camp was pitched in and around the old cantonment. Deserting the carriage, we walked to the military cemetery, where the majority of those who fell during the siege were buried. Of all desolate sights this is the most desolate. A few stunted trees stand within the enclosure, and every yard of ground is a raised mound covered with dried yellow grass. Interspersed among the mounds are a few substantial tombs. But this barren spot is full of soul-stirring associations, for here lies the dust of heroes. After some search we found the tomb of Lieutenant Quintin Battye, Commandant of the Guide Cavalry, who fell mortally wounded by a bullet from the ramparts. " Now I have a chance of seeing service," was his joyous exclama tion, as he set forth with his corps from the frontier to Delhi. A keen soldier, good swordsman, and fine rider, there was every prospect of a splendid career for the intrepid lad. But he fell at his first fight, and as life ebbed away he murmured with his failing voice the old Roman saying engraved on his tomb, that it is well and proper for a man to die for his country. But for the heroes lying beneath the yellow mounds there is not the empty fame, " In the glistening foil set off to the world." Their names are not inscribed on tablets, but " the working of the good and the brave, seen or unseen, endures literally for ever, and cannot die." Leaving the cemetery, we retraced our steps till we reached the Flagstaff Tower, which was one of our four great posts on the ridge during the siege, and was held by a strong infantry picquet. Farther on to the south of the Tower is an old Pathan mosque, whose stout walls also afforded shelter to a picquet. Not far from it was the Observatory erected by the great Rajpoot astronomer, a strong old build ing, near which our heavy gun battery was erected. Three hundred yards from the Observatory, we came to Hindu Rao's house, built by a Mahratta nobleman, who was in the old days famous for his hospitality. Our troops found it deserted, and occupied it. The enemy knew it was the key of our position, and all through the siege made the most desperate attempts to capture it. But the post of honour and danger was confided to Major Reed and his gallant Gurkhas, and all attempts to dislodge them were made in vain. At first Major Reed had only his own battalion and two companies of the both Rifles, but after a time the Guides Infantry was added, and on an alarm he was reinforced by two more companies of the both Rifles. The house in which he resided with his corps was within perfect range of nearly all the enemy's heavy guns, and was riddled through and through with shot and shell. He never quitted the ridge save to attack the enemy below it, and never once visited the camp until carried to it wounded the day of the assault.