ON THE ROAD TO SIMLA
Almost quicker than could have been expected, considering the heavy work imposed upon the telegraph wires, the communication arrived from Berlin that Captain Heideck should, for the time being, do duty in the Russian army, and that it should be left to his judgment to take the first favourable opportunity to return to Germany.
He forthwith waited upon the commanding general, was initiated into his new role formally and by handshake, and was in all due form attached as captain to the detachment that was commanded to proceed to Simla.
The next morning the cavalcade set out under the command of Prince Tchajawadse.
Their route led across a part of the battlefield lying east of Lahore, where the battle between the sepoys and the pursuing Russian cavalry had principally taken place.
The sight of this trampled, bloodstained plain was shockingly sad. Although numerous Indian and Russian soldiers under the military police were engaged in picking up the corpses, there still lay everywhere around the horribly mutilated bodies of the fallen in the postures in which they had been overtaken by a more or less painful death. An almost intolerable odour of putrefaction filled the air, and mingled with the biting, stifling smoke of the funeral pyres upon which the corpses were being burnt.
The greater part of the Russian army was in the camp and in the city. Only the advance guard, which had returned from the pursuit of the fleeing English, had taken up a position to the south of the city. The reinforcements which had been despatched from Peshawar, and which had been impatiently expected, had not yet arrived.
Heideck heard that about 4,000 English soldiers and more than 1,000 officers were dead and wounded, while 3,000 men and 85 officers were prisoners in the hands of the Russians. The losses of the sepoy regiment could not at present be approximately determined, as the battle had extended over too wide an area.
Prince Tchajawadse, although showing the same friendly feeling towards Heideck, now adopted more the attitude of his military superior. He narrated during the journey that the Russian army was taking the road through the west provinces, and would leave the valley of the Indus, and the country immediately bordering it, unmolested.
“We shall march to Delhi,” he said, “and then probably advance upon Cawnpore and Lucknow.”