Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857-59 / Including the relief, siege, and capture of Lucknow, and the campaigns in Rohilcund and Oude

WILLIAM FORBES-MITCHELL, LATE NINETY-THIRD SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS.
CALCUTTA, April, 1893.

These Reminiscences are submitted to the public in the trust that they will be welcomed alike by soldier and civilian. They are recorded by one who was himself an actor in the scenes which he describes, and who viewed them from a novel and most unusual position for a military historian—the ranks.
They have been carefully perused by an officer who was present at many of the operations mentioned; and considerable pains have been taken to verify, wherever possible, those incidents of which he was not personally cognisant.
The interest of Mr. Forbes-Mitchell's straightforward and soldierlike story is enhanced by the coincidence that he takes up the pen where Lady Inglis laid it down; and it is hoped that this volume may prove an acceptable continuation of her touching narrative of the Defence of Lucknow, and that, as a record of the Great Mutiny, it may furnish another thrilling chapter in that unparalleled story of suffering and of heroism,—of man's bravery and of woman's devotion.


I cannot truthfully commence these reminiscences with the usual formula of the amateur author,—namely, by stating that, At the solicitation of numerous friends, the writer was most reluctantly prevailed upon to publish his narrative, and so forth. No one has asked me to write my recollections of the past and my impressions of the present. I do so to please myself, because on revisiting the scenes of the Mutiny I have been forcibly impressed with the fact that, like so many memories, the soldiers and civilians who were personal actors in the great uprising are fast passing away.
They live but in time-stricken men, Or else lie hushed in clay.
Having served in the old Ninety-Third Sutherland Highlanders, and been present at every action in which that famous regiment played a part from the actual relief of Lucknow in November, 1857, till the final operations in Oude ended in November, 1859, and being blessed with a fairly retentive memory, I feel tempted to put on record the recollections of the past and the impressions which my recent return to those scenes has revived.