Perhaps, however, Hodson was scarcely a cool judge as to what “duty” might be in such a case. The outrages which accompanied the Mutiny had kindled his fierce nature into a flame. “If ever I get into Delhi,” he had said, weeks before, “the house of Timour won’t be worth five minutes’ purchase!” Hodson’s “five minutes” proved inadequate; but, writing afterwards, on the very day he shot the princes, he recorded, “In twenty-four hours I disposed of the principal members of the house of Timour the Tartar. I am not cruel, but I confess I did rejoice in the opportunity of ridding the earth of these ruffians.”
Macdowell writes the epitaph of the princes: “So ended the career of the chiefs of the revolt and of the greatest villains that ever shamed humanity.”
The bodies were driven into Delhi and cast on a raised terrace in front of the Kotwallee. Cave-Browne, who was chaplain to the forces at the time, comments on the curious fact that this was the very spot where the worst crimes of the princes had been committed. “It was,” he says, “a dire retribution! On the very spot where, four months ago, English women and children had suffered every form of indignity and death, there now lay exposed to the scoff and scorn of the avenging army, three scions of the royal house, who had been chief among the fiends of Delhi.”
The story of the siege of Delhi is one of the most wonderful chapters in the history of war. The besieging army never amounted to 10,000 men; it sometimes sank below 5000. For weeks the British had thus to face an enemy exceeding themselves in number sometimes by a ratio of ten to one, and with an overwhelming superiority of artillery. They fought no fewer than thirty-two battles with the enemy, and did not lose one! For three months every man, not sick, in the whole force had to be under arms every day, and sometimes both by night and day. The men were scorched by the heat of the sun, wasted with dysentery and cholera, worn out with toil.
A new and strange perplexity was added to the situation by the fact that many of the native troops on the Ridge were notoriously disloyal. The British officers sometimes ran as much danger of being shot by their own troops behind them as by the Sepoys in front. Early in July the 4th Sikhs were purged of Hindustanis, as these could not be trusted. General Barnard had to abandon one plan of assault on Delhi, because at the last moment he discovered a conspiracy amongst the native soldiers in the camp to join the enemy. The strength of the force was sapped by sickness as well as by disloyalty.
On August 31, for example, out of under 11,000 men 2977 were in hospital. Of their total effective force, nearly 4000—or two out of every five—were killed, or died of wounds received in battle. Yet they never lost heart, never faltered or murmured or failed. And after twelve weeks of such a struggle, they at last stormed in open day a strong city, with walls practically unbreached, and defended by 30,000 revolted Sepoys. This is a record never surpassed, and seldom paralleled, in history!
Months afterwards, Lawrence, looking from the Ridge over the scene of the long and bloody struggle, said to his companion with a sigh, “Think of all the genius and bravery buried here!” The environs of Delhi, the reverse slope of that rocky crest from which the British guns thundered on the rebel city, are indeed sown thick with the graves of brave men who died to maintain the British Empire in India.
CHAPTER XIII
THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW
With the fall of Delhi the tale of the Great Mutiny practically ends. Lucknow, it is true, remained to be captured. The broken forces of the mutineers had to be crushed in detail. A new system of civil administration had to be built up. The famous Company itself vanished—the native prophecy that the raj of the Company would last only a hundred years from Plassey thus being curiously fulfilled; and on September 1, 1858—less than a year after Delhi fell—the Queen was proclaimed throughout India as its Sovereign. But Hodson, who in addition to being a great soldier had a wizard-like insight into the real meaning of events, was right when, on the evening of the day on which the British flag was hoisted once more over the royal palace at Delhi, he wrote in his journal: “This day will be a memorable one in the annals of the empire. The restoration of British rule in the East dates from September 20, 1857.”