A broken and a routed host,
Their standards gone, their leaders lost.
So ends the tale of the mightiest army, and the best organized, which India has seen.
I hope you will have got a scrap I wrote after the fight at Sobraon in hopes it would reach you before the newspapers, as I have no doubt you were all anxious enough on my account, and indeed you well might be, for I can hardly imagine (humanly speaking) how it was possible to go through that storm of bullets and shot unhurt. I have indeed much to be thankful for, and I hope I shall not forget the lesson. A campaign is a wonderful dispeller of false notions and young imaginations, and seems too stern a hint to be soon forgotten.
About this time Mr. Thomason says, in a letter to my father:—
"I hear of William constantly from friends in camp, and am glad to find that he is a great favorite in his regiment. I had some little fear that his great superiority in age and attainments to those of his own standing in the army might make him the object of envy and disparagement. I felt that he had no easy task before him, and that it would be difficult to conduct himself with discretion and becoming humility in such a position. He was quite aware of the difficulty when we talked the matter over at Agra, and I am much pleased to see the success which has attended his prudent exertions."
Lahore, March 4th, 1846.
The army breaks up now very soon, but I shall be posted before that. I am trying to get into the 1st European regiment, now stationed at Umbâla, who have just been styled Fusileers for their distinguished service. It is the finest regiment in India, with white faces, too, and a very nice set of officers. I have been brigaded with them all along.
It seems an age since the campaign opened. One day of fighting such as we have had fastens itself on the memory more than a year of peaceful life. We must really have a natural taste for fighting highly developed, for I catch myself wishing and "asking for more," and grumbling at the speedy settlement of things, and the prospect of cantonments instead of field service. Is it not marvellous, as if one had not had a surfeit of killing? But the truth is, that is not the motive, but a sort of undefined ambition.... I remember bursting into tears in sheer rage in the midst of the fight at Sobraon at seeing our soldiers lying killed and wounded. Don't let any of my friends forget me yet. I have found a new one, I think, in Major Lawrence,[3] the new President at this Court, thanks to the unwearying kindness of Mr. Thomason.
In a letter of the same date to Hon. J. Thomason, the following sentence occurs:—