[[140]] Not received by the Secret Committee.
[[141]] Eleven guns since ascertained to be sunk in the river, total sixty-seven; thirty odd jingalls fell into our hands.
[[142]] He wrote these lines in September, 1846.
[[143]] No one but those who have encountered it, can be aware of the difficulty there is in disposing of the stores and captured guns of your enemy. I had 52 to move, and most of their own draught animals had been killed in action or shot by the victors. The country yields no resources in aid, thus I had to use the transport of my own 32 guns to send on to Loodiana 47 of the enemy’s, and this delayed my return to Headquarters three days.—H. G. S.
[[144]] A trooper in the 16th Lancers, named Eaton, writing on 2nd Feb., 1846, of the battle of Aliwal, says, “As soon as the Commander-in-Chief received the dispatches, which he did on horseback while reconnoitring, he leaped from his horse and gave three cheers, a salute of eighteen guns was fired, and the line gave three hearty cheers for us, their gallant comrades, as they called us.” The same writer gives a very characteristic picture of Sir Harry Smith: “The General told us that when our regiment was in Lahore in 1837, the King thought us all gentlemen, but had he seen us on that day, he would have proclaimed us all devils, ‘for you charged their ranks more like them than anything else.’ As he left us we saw tears in the poor old man’s eyes, and he said, ‘God bless you, my brave boys; I love you.’”—See Cambridge Independent Press, 4th April, 1846.
Of the above letter Professor Sedgwick wrote, “Excepting Harry Smith’s dispatch, which nothing can reach, it is one of the most soul-stirring letters that has come from India.”—Life of Sedgwick, ii. p. 102.
[[145]] Prince Waldemar of Prussia, travelling as Count Ravensburg, was present with his suite at the battles of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Aliwal, and Sobraon.
[[146]] His aide-de-camp, now General Sir Edward A. Holdich, K.C.B.
[[147]] A coloured print of the 31st Regiment at Sobraon was published afterwards by Ackermann. There is also a large engraving, “The triumphal reception of the Seikh guns” (at Calcutta), after W. Taylor, in which Sir Harry Smith is a prominent figure.
[[148]] The following extract from a letter from Lieut.-Col. Bellers, who believes himself to be the only officer now surviving who served in the 50th during the Sikh War (during the greater part of which he was Adjutant), shows that the admiration expressed by Sir Harry for the 50th regiment was fully reciprocated. “With us Sir Harry Smith was ever most popular, I may say, beloved: a strict disciplinarian, but never exacting more than was necessary. His figure on ‘Aliwal’ with his cloak on in front of our Division is well in my memory.”