Now when Sturt mentioned the circumstance to me yesterday, I asked him whether he thought they would select an officer as a permanent commandant, and his reply was, "God knows." Besides if it was to be, it would have been notified in Orders, being a decided innovation on the daily relief of the fort.
"One example is as good as a million:" these circumstances show how affairs are carried on. The General, unsettled in his purposes, delegates his power to the Brigadier, and the Brigadier tries to throw off all responsibility on the General's or any body's shoulders except his own: and the General is, as in the present instance, too gentlemanlike to tell him that he deviates a little from the exact line, and thus takes on himself the evasion.
Sturt came home quite disgusted; vowing that if those dear to him were not in cantonments, they might blow them up for what he cared.
I heard a piece of private intelligence to-day,—that three of the Envoy's Chuprassies and a Duffodar of the 4th Ressallah, with two other persons whose names have not transpired, are in connection with the enemy; and this treasonable correspondence has been discovered by some intercepted letters. The men had been disposing of their property two days previous to the discovery. The three Chuprassies are in confinement, and the Envoy talks of asking the General for a court-martial on them. The chances are they will escape punishment: whereas were they hanged as traitors at once, it might be an useful lesson to others. We have a Fakir and some Affghans in confinement also, who are suspected of being spies.
The General peremptorily forbade the camp followers trying to take away the piles of the bridge that remained; so the enemy, who are hard up for wood, came down in great numbers, and did it for us. To-day we have seven days' provisions left.
7th.—Sturt was anxious to take the recaptured fort; and as it appears that the men are determined not to keep it, he proposed to blow it up, and to call for volunteers for that purpose.
The 44th say they wish to wipe out the stain on their name, as do the 37th. Hawtrey's company volunteer to go with him, and take it without the assistance of any other troops.
In sending the Sipahees to that fort, the sixty men were taken six from each company, so that very few could have had their own officer, European or native, havildars, jemadars, or even their own comrades. It was certainly a particularly bad arrangement.
The General wished to know from Sturt whether the fort was practicable and tenable; at least this was the message brought by Capt. Bellew: to which Sturt said but one reply could be made—"Practicable if the men will fight: tenable if they do not run away!"—but that he considered that the great object was to destroy it; as he more than doubted the willingness of the troops to garrison it, although daily relieved.
Objections were raised as to any other measures being taken than firing at it to batter it down, which was accordingly done all day. The enemy showed again; but their numbers are thinning: they fired at us all day; and the balls from the brass seventeen-pounder just opposite came whizzing over and about Sturt's house and garden.