Some months later my brother wrote with reference to this matter:—
Camp, on the left bank of the Ganges, opposite Cawnpore,
Feb. 12th, 1858.
... I see that many people suppose that I had promised the old King his life after he was caught. Pray contradict this. The promise was given two days before, to induce him to leave the rebel troops and return to the near neighborhood of Delhi within reach. General Wilson refused to send troops in pursuit of him, and to avoid greater calamities I then, and not till then, asked and obtained permission to offer him his wretched life, on the ground, and solely on the ground, that there was no other way of getting him into our possession. The people were gathering round him. His name would have been a tocsin which would have raised the whole of Hindostan, and the Rajahs and Rajpootana in the south would have been forced to have joined in the rising, which would then have been universal. Was it not better to get rid of all this, and secure ourselves from further mischief at the simple cost of sparing the life of an old man of ninety? It must be remembered, too, that we had no troops left to meet any further augmentation of our enemies. A small force under Colonel Greathed was with difficulty found, some days later, to go towards Agra; and it was clear to me then (as experience has since shown) that we had still months to wait for reinforcements from home. Here is February; the King was caught in September, and yet up to this present day the Commander-in-Chief has not been able to send a single soldier of all that have arrived from England up as far as Delhi; and all Rohilcund, all Oude, a great part of Central India, all Bundelcund, and most of Behar, are still in the hands of the enemy. Would it have been wise to have given, in addition to all this, so strong an incentive to combination, to the warlike men of the northwest, as they would have had in the person of a sacred and "heaven-born" monarch, dethroned, wandering, and homeless, but backed by a whole army in rebellion? I am blamed for it now; but knowing that there was no other way of getting him into our power, I am quite content to take the obloquy. It will hereafter be admitted that one of the greatest blows was struck at the root of the rebellion when the old King was led a captive into his own palace on the 21st of September, 1857.[58] Strange, that some of those who are loudest against me for sparing the King, are also crying out at my destroying his sons. "Quousque tandem?" I may well exclaim. But in point of fact, I am quite indifferent to clamor either way. I made up my mind at the time to be abused. I was convinced I was right, and when I prepared to run the great physical risk of the attempt, I was equally game for the moral risk of praise or blame. These have not been, and are not times when a man who would serve his country dare hesitate as to the personal consequences to himself of what he thinks his duty.
I am indebted to Sir T. Seaton for an answer to inquiries addressed to my brother, which never reached him:—
"I see you are anxious to clear up the two 'vexed questions:'—Why did he guarantee the life of the King? Why did he strip the princes? He guaranteed the life of the King, because he was ordered to do so by General Wilson; and I think that under the circumstances it was wise and prudent (though highly distasteful to the General), for it enabled us to get hold of the nominal head of the great rebellion, and to secure the capture of those greater scoundrels, the princes. No one ever thought out here of asking why he stripped the princes, or rather why he made them take off their upper garments. It certainly was not as the French stupidly assert, 'pour ne pas gâter le butin,' for if the upper corresponded with the nether clothes in which the bodies were laid out, they would have been dear at a shilling the lot. He made them strip off their upper garments, to render their death and subsequent exposure at the Kotwàlla more impressive and terrible. Some people ask, 'Why did he shoot them himself?' To this I will reply by another question, 'What would have been the effect on that vast crowd of a single moment's hesitation or appearance of hesitation?'"
Before this chapter closes, I will insert one or two anecdotes and descriptions of my brother, from letters written at this time by officers before Delhi, which have been kindly placed at my disposal. They will help to fill up the picture of him, which may be drawn from his own diary.
One says:—
"The way Hodson used to work was quite miraculous. He was a slighter man and lighter weight than I am. Then he had that most valuable gift, of being able to get refreshing sleep on horseback. I have been out with him all night following and watching the enemy, when he has gone off dead asleep, waking up after an hour as fresh as a lark; whereas, if I went to sleep in the saddle, the odds were I fell off on my nose.
"He was the very perfection of a 'free-lance,' and such an Intelligence Officer! He used to know what the rebels had for dinner in Delhi.