What was done to restore order in Delhi after its recapture; who was appointed to command it; what arrangements were made for bringing to justice the wretched king who was now a prisoner; and what military plan was formed for pursuing the mutinous regiments which had escaped from the city—will more conveniently be noticed in subsequent pages.
The country did not fail to do honour to those who had been concerned in the conquest of the imperial city. The commander of the siege-army was of course the first to be noticed. Although he had no European reputation, Archdale Wilson had served as an artillery officer nearly forty years in India. He was employed at the siege of Bhurtpore in 1824, and in many other active services; but his chief duties confined him to the artillery depôts. It is a curious fact that most of the guns employed by him at the siege of Delhi, as well as those used by the enemy against him, had been cast by him as superintendent of the gun-foundry at Calcutta many years before, and bore his name as part of the device. He held in succession the offices of adjutant-general of artillery and commandant of artillery. At the commencement of the mutiny, his regimental rank was that of lieutenant-colonel of the Bengal artillery; but he acted as brigadier at Meerut, and was afterwards promoted to the rank of major-general. The Queen, in November, raised him to the baronetcy, and made him a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath; and thus the artillery officer had risen to the rank of ‘Major-general Sir Archdale Wilson, K.C.B.’ The East India Company, too, sought to bestow honour—or something more solid than honour—on the victorious commander; the court of proprietors, on the suggestion of the court of directors, voted a pension of £1000 per annum to Sir Archdale Wilson, to commence from the day when his troops entered Delhi.
What honours Brigadier Nicholson would have earned, had his valuable life been spared, it would be useless to surmise. He was an especial favourite among the soldiers in the Indian army—more so, perhaps, than some whose names are better known to English readers; and his death within the walls of Delhi was very generally deplored. He had not yet attained his 35th year—a very early age at which to obtain brigade command, either in the Company’s or the Queen’s armies. Nothing but the unbounded confidence of Sir John Lawrence in the military genius of Nicholson would have justified him in making so young a man, a simple regimental captain (brevet-major), brigadier of a column destined to fight the rebels all the way from the Punjaub to Delhi; yet even those seniors who were superseded by this arrangement felt that the duty was intrusted to one equal to its demands. He had seen hard service during the Afghan and Punjaub campaigns, as captain in the 27th Bengal native infantry; and had, instead of idling his time during a furlough visit to England, studied the armies and military organisation of continental Europe. An officer who served with him during the mutiny said: ‘He had a constitution of iron. The day we marched to Murdan he was twenty-six hours in the saddle, following up the mutineers.’ The Queen granted the posthumous dignity of Knight Commander of the Bath upon Brigadier-general John Nicholson; and as he was unmarried, the East India Company departed from their general rule, by bestowing a special grant of £500 per annum upon his widowed mother, who had in earlier years lost another son in the Company’s service.
One among many civil servants of the Company who fell during the siege was Hervey Harris Greathed, a member of a family well known in India. After filling various official situations in the Punjaub, Rajpootana, and Meerut, he became chief-commissioner of Delhi, after the foul murder of Mr Simon Fraser on the 11th of May. Serve or remain in Delhi itself he could not, for obvious reasons; but he was with Wilson’s army in the expedition from Meerut to Delhi, and then remained with the siege-army on the heights, where his intimate knowledge of India and the natives was of essential value. He died of cholera just before the conclusion of the siege. His brothers, Robert and George Herbert, had already died in the services of the Company or the crown; but two others, Edward Harris and William Wilberforce Harris, survived to achieve fame as gallant officers.
Another of those who fell on the day of the assault was Lieutenant Philip Salkeld, of the Bengal engineers. He was the son of a Dorsetshire clergyman, and went to India in 1850, in his twentieth year, in the corps of Sappers and Miners. He was employed for four years as an engineer in connection with the new works of the grand trunk-road, in Upper India; and was then transferred to the executive engineers’ department in the Delhi division. His first taste of war was in relation to the mutinies; he was engaged in all the operations of the siege of Delhi, and was struck down while gallantly exploding the Cashmere Gate. He lingered in great pain, and died about the 10th of October. The Rev. S. G. Osborne, in a letter written soon after the news of Salkeld’s death reached England, said: ‘This young officer has not more distinguished himself in his profession by his devotion to his country’s service of his life, than he stands distinguished in the memory of those who knew him for his virtues as a son and brother. His father, a clergyman in Dorsetshire, by a reverse of fortune some years since, was with a large family reduced, I may say, to utter poverty. This, his soldier son, supported out of his own professional income one of his brothers at school, helping a sister, obliged to earn her own bread as a governess, to put another brother to school. Just before his death he had saved a sum of £1000, which was in the bank at Delhi, and was therefore lost to him, and, more than this, it was lost to the honourable purpose to which, as a son and brother, he had devoted it. In his native county it has been determined to erect a monument to his memory by subscription. Cadetships having been given to two of his young brothers, it is now wisely resolved that while the memorial which is to hand down his name to posterity in connection with his glorious death shall be all that is necessary for the purpose, every farthing collected beyond the sum necessary for this shall be expended as he would have desired, for the good of these his young brothers.’
Lieutenant Duncan Home, another hero of the Cashmere Gate, was not one of the wounded on that perilous occasion; he lived to receive the approval of his superior in the engineering department; but his death occurred even sooner than that of his companion in arms, for he was mortally wounded on the 1st of October while engaged with an expeditionary force in pursuit of the fleeing rebels. It was on that day, a few hours before he received the fatal bullet, that he wrote a letter to his mother in England; in which, after describing the operations at the Cashmere Gate, he said: ‘I was then continually on duty until the king evacuated the palace. I had never more than four hours’ sleep in the twenty-four, and then only by snatches. I had also the pleasure of blowing in the gate of the palace; luckily no one fired at me, there being so few men left in the palace.’
Salkeld and Home received the ‘Victoria Cross,’ a much-coveted honour among the British troops engaged in the Indian war. As did likewise Sergeant Smith, who so boldly risked, yet saved, his life; and also Bugler Hawthorne of the 52d, who blew his signal-blast in spite of the shots whistling around him. Poor Sergeant Carmichael and Corporal Burgess did not live to share in this honour; they fell bullet-pierced.
State Palanquin.