The Quarter-Gunner's Yarn.
This ballad is founded on fragmentary lines communicated to the author by Admiral Sir Windham Hornby, K.C.B., who served under Sir Thomas Hardy in 1827.
Væ Victis.
See Livy, XXX.,43, Diodorus Siculus, XIX., 106.
Seringapatam.
In 1780, while attempting to relieve Arcot, a British force of three thousand men was cut to pieces by Hyder Ali. Baird, then a young captain in the 73rd, was left for dead on the field. He was afterwards, with forty-nine other officers, kept in prison at Seringapatam, and treated with Oriental barbarity and treachery by Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Sahib, Sultans of Mysore. Twenty-three of the prisoners died by poison, torture, and fever; the rest were surrendered in 1784. In 1799, at the siege of Seringapatam, Major-General Baird commanded the first European brigade, and volunteered to lead the storming column. Tippoo Sahib, with eight thousand of his men, fell in the assault, but the victor spared the lives of his sons and forbade a general sack of the city.
Clifton Chapel.
Clifton is one of the schools from which the largest number of boys pass direct into the R.M.A., Woolwich, and R.M.C., Sandhurst. Thirty-five Old Cliftonian officers served in the campaign of 1897 on the Indian Frontier, of whom twenty-two were mentioned in despatches and six recommended for the Distinguished Service Order. Of the three hundred Cliftonians who served in the war in South Africa, thirty were killed in action and fourteen died of wounds or fever.
Clifton, remember these thy sons who fell
Fighting far oversea;
For they in a dark hour remembered well
Their warfare learned of thee.
The Echo.