[55] 'Camisas:' i. e. chemises; but at one time the word camisa was taken indifferently for shirt or chemise. And hence arose the term camisado for a night-attack, in which the assailants recognised each other in the dark by their white shirt-sleeves, sometimes further distinguished by a tight cincture of broad black riband. The last literal camisado, that I remember, was a nautical one—a cutting-out enterprise somewhere about 1807-8.
[56] Anglo-Indian authorities seem to spell this word in four different ways.—H.
[57] 'A sight to dream of, not to tell.'—Coleridge.
[58] Twenty-three and twenty-eight thousand of these two orders we have in our Bengal army.
[59] 'Loodiana:'—The very last station in Bengal, on going westwards to the Indus. In Runjeet Singh's time this was for many years the station at which we lodged our Affghan pensioner, the Shah Soojah—too happy, had he never left his Loodiana lodgings.
[60] For the sake of readers totally unacquainted with the subject, it may be as well to make an explanation or two. The East India regiments generally run to pretty high numbers—1000 or 1200. The high commissioned officers, as the captain, lieutenant, &c., are always British; but the non-commissioned officers are always native Hindoos—that is, sepoys. For instance, the naïk, or corporal; the havildar, or serjeant:—even of the commissioned officers, the lowest are unavoidably native, on account of the native private. Note that sepoy, as colloquially it is called, but sipahee, as in books it is often written, does not mean Hindoo or Hindoo soldier, but is simply the Hindoo word for soldier.
[61] 'The laurelled majesty,' &c.:—A flying reference to a grand expression—majestas laurea frontis—which occurs in a Latin supplement to the Pharsalia by May, an English poet, contemporary with the latter days of Shakspere.
[62] This truth, for the sake of making it more impressive, I threw long ago into this antithetic form; and I will not scruple, out of any fear that I may be reproached with repeating myself, to place it once again on record:—'Not that only is strictly a paradox, which, being false, is popularly regarded as true;' but that also, and in a prodigiously greater extent, which, being true, is popularly regarded as false.
[63] Here observe there were 2300 admirable British troops, and about 700 men of the mutineers, who might then have been attacked at a great advantage, whilst dispersed on errands of devastation. Contrast with these proportions the heroic exertions of the noble Havelock—fighting battle after battle, with perhaps never more than 1700 or 1800 British troops; and having scarcely a gun but what he captured from the enemy. And what were the numbers of his enemy? Five thousand in the earlier actions, and 10,000 to 12,000 in the last.
[64] Mr. D. B. Jones comes forward to defend the commandant of Meerut. How? The last sentence only of his letter has any sort of reference to the public accusation; and this sentence replies, but not with any mode of argument (sound or unsound), to a charge perfectly irrelevant, if it had ever existed—namely, an imaginary charge against the little army assembled on May 10 at Meerut. The short and summary answer is, that no such imaginary charge, pure and absolute moonshine, was ever advanced against the gallant force at Meerut.