General Nicholson
Nicholson’s column on the march was surrounded by his own wild guards riding in couples, so that he, their god, searched the whole country with five hundred eyes. After one heart-breaking night march he drew up his infantry and guns, then rode along the line giving his orders: “In a few minutes you will see two native regiments come round that little temple. If they bring their muskets to the ‘ready,’ fire a volley into them without further orders.”
As the native regiments appeared from behind the little temple, Nicholson rode to meet them. He was seen to speak to them and then they grounded their arms. Two thousand men had surrendered to seven hundred, but had the mutineers resisted Nicholson himself must have perished between two fires. He cared nothing for his life.
Only once did this leader blow mutineers from the guns, and then it was to fire the flesh and blood of nine conspirators into the faces of a doubtful regiment. For the rest he had no powder to waste, but no mercy, and from his awful executions of rebels he would go away to hide in his tent and weep.
He had given orders that no native should be allowed to ride past a white man. One morning before dawn the orderly officer, a lad of nineteen, seeing natives passing him on an elephant, ordered them sharply to dismount and make their salaam. They obeyed—an Afghan prince and his servant, sent by the king of Cabul as an embassy to Captain Nicholson. Next day the ambassador spoke of this humiliation. “No wonder,” he said, “you English conquer India when mere boys obey orders as this one did.”
Nicholson once fought a Bengal tiger, and slew it with one stroke of his sword; but could the English subdue this India in revolt? The mutineers held the impregnable capital old Delhi—and under the red walls lay four thousand men—England’s forlorn hope—which must storm that giant fortress. If they failed the whole population would rise. “If ordained to fail,” said Nicholson, “I hope the British will drag down with them in flames and blood as many of the queen’s enemies as possible.” If they had failed not one man of our race would have escaped to the sea.
Nicholson brought his force to aid in the siege of Delhi, and now he was only a captain under the impotent and hopeless General Wilson. “I have strength yet,” said Nicholson when he was dying, “to shoot him if necessary.”
The batteries of the city walls from the Lahore Gate to the Cashmere Gate were manned by Sikh gunners, loyal to the English, but detained against their will by the mutineers. One night they saw Nicholson without any disguise walk in at the Lahore Gate, and through battery after battery along the walls he went in silence to the Cashmere Gate, by which he left the city. At the sight of that gaunt giant, the man they believed to be an incarnate god, they fell upon their faces. So Captain Nicholson studied the defenses of a besieged stronghold as no man on earth had ever dared before. To him was given command of the assault which blew up the Cashmere Gate, and stormed the Cashmere breach. More than half his men perished, but an entry was made, and in six days the British fought their way through the houses, breaching walls as they went until they stormed the palace, hoisted the flag above the citadel, and proved with the sword who shall be masters of India.
But Nicholson had fallen. Mortally wounded he was carried to his tent, and there lay through the hot days watching the blood-red towers and walls of Delhi, listening to the sounds of the long fight, praying that he might see the end before his passing.
Outside the tent waited his worshipers, clutching at the doctors as they passed to beg for news of him. Once when they were noisy he clutched a pistol from the bedside table, and fired a shot through the canvas. “Oh! Oh!” cried the Pathans, “there is the general’s order.” Then they kept quiet. Only at the end, when his coffin was lowered into the earth, these men who had forsaken their hills to guard him, broke down and flung themselves upon the ground, sobbing like children.