The entire party speedily entered the vehicle, and, after profound salaams from the native and his wife to the "Guriparwan" or protectors of the poor, headed northward toward Kurnal.
The journey was not without incident, but nothing of a serious nature took place. The sight of a native driving such a cart, and accompanied by several others who seemed to be natives, was so common as to attract little notice. They were beyond the ring of fire that encircled Delhi, and the next day they reached the little town where the position of the British government was so strong that it may be said all peril of the flight from the capital of the newly proclaimed Mogul Empire was at an end.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SALAAM!
This narrative touches only the fringe of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Its subsequent history is written in letters of flame. Never has the world witnessed such scenes of atrocity, perfidy and massacre as swept over India during those lurid months, when the legions of darkness were loosed for a season.
The Mogul Empire was proclaimed at Delhi in May. On the last day of the same month took place the mutiny at Cawnpore; the city was invested by Nana Sahib on the 6th of June; it surrendered twenty days later, and the garrison were butchered the next day. On the 16th of July, General Havelock was so close that the most awful massacre of all (that of the women and children) was perpetrated and Nana Sahib withdrew, Havelock relieving it the it the day following.
The principal massacres down to the close of July were at Mutta, Delhi, Lucknow, Bareilly, Neemuch, Fyzabad and Cawnpore.
But the wail of British India was borne across the thousands of miles of land and sea to England, who arose in the might of her wrath and sent her veterans of the Crimea to visit retribution on the merciless Sepoys. In the face of a flaming climate, malignant disease and wholesale treachery on every hand, her heroes hurled themselves against the united Hindoos and Mussulmans, and her vengeance was all the more terrible because it was delayed.
Delhi, the Mogul capital, was invested by General Barnard on June 8, assaulted September 14, and captured on the 20th. The wretched puppet, Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen Shah Gezee, over four score years old, fled before the furious hosts. He was pursued and captured by Captain Hodson, who promised his life in case of surrender. On the same day, two sons and one grandson of the Emperor, all three among the leading demons of the numerous atrocities, were shot dead by Captain Hodson with his revolver, as they were sitting in a carriage, surrounded by a frenzied mob that was about to rescue them.
Order having been ultimately restored in Delhi, a military commission was appointed to try such leading mutineers as had been captured in or near the city. Such commissions generally convict, and by the sentence of this one twenty members of the Delhi royal family were executed, together with a number of red handed Ghoojur chiefs.