I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.
He fired, and down fell a body dressed in a tight-fitting red jacket and tight-fitting rose-coloured silk trousers; and the breast of the jacket bursting open with the fall, showed that the wearer was a woman, She was armed with a pair of heavy old-pattern cavalry pistols, one of which was in her belt still loaded, and her pouch was still about half full of ammunition, while from her perch in the tree, which had been carefully prepared before the attack, she had killed more than half-a-dozen men. When Wallace saw that the person whom he shot was a woman, he burst into tears, exclaiming: "If I had known it was a woman, I would rather have died a thousand deaths than have harmed her."
I cannot now recall, although he belonged to my company, what became of Quaker Wallace, whether he lived to go through the rest of the Mutiny or not. I have long since lost my pocket company-roll, but I think Wallace took sick and was sent to Allahabad from Cawnpore, and was either invalided to England or died in the country.
By this time all opposition had ceased, and over two thousand of the enemy lay dead within the building and the centre court. The troops were withdrawn, and the muster-roll of the Ninety-Third was called just outside the gate, which is still standing, on the level spot between the gate and the mound where the European dead are buried.
When the roll was called it was found that the Ninety-Third had nine officers and ninety-nine men, in all one hundred and eight, killed and wounded. The roll of the Fifty-Third was called alongside of us, and Sir Colin Campbell rode up and addressing the men, spoke out in a clear voice: "Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, you have bravely done your share of this morning's work, and Cawnpore is avenged!" Whereupon one of the Fifty-Third sang out, "Three cheers for the Commander-in-Chief, boys," which was heartily responded to.
All this time there was perfect silence around us, the enemy evidently not being aware of how the tide of victory had rolled inside the Secundrabâgh, for not a soul escaped from it to tell the tale. The silence was so great that we could hear the pipers of the Seventy-Eighth playing inside the Residency as a welcome to cheer us all. There were lately, by the way, some writers who denied that the Seventy-Eighth had their bagpipes and pipers with them at Lucknow. This is not true; they had their pipes and played them too! But we had barely saluted the Commander-in-Chief with a cheer when a perfect hail of round-shot assailed us both from the Târa Kothi on our left and the Shâh Nujeef on our right front. But I must leave the account of our storming the Shâh Nujeef for a separate chapter.
I may here remark that on revisiting Lucknow I did not see a single tablet or grave to show that any of the Ninety-Third are buried there. Surely Captains Dalzell and Lumsden and the men who lie in the mound to the east of the gate of the Secundrabâgh are deserving of some memorial! But it is the old, old story which was said to have been first written on the walls of Badajoz:
When war is rife and danger nigh,
God and the Soldier is all the cry;
When war is over, and wrongs are righted,
God is forgot and the Soldier slighted.
I am surprised that the officers of the Ninety-Third Regiment have never taken any steps to erect some monument to the memory of the brave men who fell in Lucknow at its relief, and at the siege in March, 1858. Neither is there a single tablet in the Memorial Church at Cawnpore in memory of the Ninety-Third, although almost every one of the other regiments have tablets somewhere in the church. If I were a millionaire I would myself erect a statue to Sir Colin Campbell on the spot where the muster-roll of the Ninety-Third was called on the east of the gate of the Secundrabâgh, with a life-sized figure of a private of the Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, a sailor and a Sikh at each corner, with the names of every man who fell in the assault on the 16th of November, 1857; and as the Royal Artillery were also there, Sir Colin should be represented in the centre standing on a gun, with a royal artilleryman holding a port-fire ready.
Since commencing these reminiscences I met a gentleman in Calcutta who told me that he had a cousin in the Ninety-Third, General J. A. Ewart, who was with the regiment in the storming of the Secundrabâgh, and he asked me if I remembered General Ewart. This leads me to believe that it would not be out of place if I were to relate the following narrative. General Ewart, now Sir John Alexander Ewart, I am informed, is still alive, and some mention of the part played by him, so far as I saw it, will form an appropriate conclusion to the story of the taking of the Secundrabâgh. And should he ever read this narrative, I may inform him that it is written by one who was present when he was adopted into the Clan Forbes by our chief, the late Sir Charles Forbes, of Newe and Edinglassie, Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, and this fact alone will make the general receive my remarks with the feelings of a clansman as well as of my old commander.