Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India. W. S. R. Hodson
fight for it yet."
Lahore, May 7th.
I expect to be busy in catching a party of rascals who have been trying to pervert our Sepoys by bribes and promises. We have a clue to them, and hope to take them in the act. We are surrounded here with treachery. No man can say who is implicated, or how far the treason has spread. The life of no British officer, away from Lahore, is worth a week's purchase. It is a pleasant sort of government to prop up, when their head-men conspire against you and their troops desert you on the slightest temptation.
Lumsden, the commandant of the Guides, and I want something sensible for the protection of our heads from sun and blows, from coups de soleil equally with coups d'épée. There is a kind of leathern helmet in the Prussian service which is light, serviceable, and neat. Will you try what you can do in the man-millinery line, and send me a brace of good helmets? We don't want ornament; in fact, the plainer the better, as we should always wear a turban over them, but strong, and light as a hat. I have no doubt your taste will be approved. I hope this wont be a bore to you, but one's head wants protecting in these stormy days.
The helmets on their arrival were pronounced "maddening." This was the first of a series of commissions connected with the clothing and arming of the Guide Corps, which was left mainly, if not entirely, in my brother's hands, and was a matter of much interest to him. The color selected for their uniform was "drab," as most likely to make them invisible in a land of dust. Even a member of the Society of Friends could scarcely have objected to send out drab clothing for 900 men, but to this succeeded directions to select the pattern of, and send out, 300 rifle carbines, which seemed scarcely a clerical business. The result, however, was satisfactory, and in the following year my brother wrote:—
Many thanks for the trouble you have taken about the clothing for the Guides. Sir C. Napier says they are the only properly dressed light troops he has seen in India.
Camp, Deenanuggur, June 5th, 1848.
You will hardly have been prepared to hear that I am once more on the move, rushing about the country, despite climate, heat, and rumors (the most alarming).
I wrote last the day after our successful capture of the conspirators, whom I had the satisfaction of seeing hung three days later. I then tried a slight fever as a variety for two days; and on the 14th started to "bag" the Ranee in her abode beyond the Ravee, she having been convicted of complicity in the designs of the conspirators. Lumsden and myself were deputed by the Resident to call on her, and intimate that her presence was urgently required. A detachment was ordered out to support us, in case any resistance should be offered. Fortunately it was not required, as the Ranee complied at once with our "polite" request to come along with us. Instead of being taken to Lahore, as she expected, we carried her off to Kana Kutch, on the Ferozepoor road, where a party of Wheeler's Irregulars had been sent to receive her. It was very hard work—a long night march to the fort, and a fourteen hours' ride across to Kana Kutch, whence I had two hours' gallop into Lahore to report progress, making sixteen hours in the saddle, in May, when the nights are hot. On the next Sunday night I was off again, to try and seize or disperse a party of horse and foot collected by a would-be holy man, Maharaja Singh, said to amount to four or five hundred. I made a tremendous march round by Umritsur, Byrowal-Ghat, on the Beas, and up that river's bank to Mokeria, in the Jullundur Doâb, whence I was prepared to cross during the night with a party of cavalry, and attack the rascals unawares. Everything succeeded admirably up to the last, when I found that he had received notice from a rogue of a native magistrate that there would be attempts made to seize him, when he fairly bolted across the Ravee, and is now infesting the Doâb between that river and the Chenab. I have scoured this part of the country (which my late surveys enabled me to traverse with perfect ease) got possession of every boat on the Ravee from Lahore to the Hills, placed horsemen at every ferry, and been bullying the people who supplied the Saint with provisions and arms. I have a regiment of Irregular Horse (Skinner's) with me, and full powers to summon more, if necessary, from the Jullundur Doâb. Meantime, a party from Lahore are sweeping round to intercept the fellow, who is getting strong by degrees; and I am going to dash across at midnight with a handful of cavalry, and see if I cannot beat up the country between this and Wuzeerabad. I am very well, hard at work, and enjoying the thing very much. I imagine this will be the sort of life we shall lead about once a week till the Punjaub is annexed. Every native official has fraternized with the rebels he was ordered to catch.
Lahore, July 5th, 1848.
I wrote last from Deenanuggur, on the eve of crossing the Ravee to look after the Gooroo, Maharaja Singh. I remained in the Rechnab Doâb some days, hunting up evidence and punishing transgressors.
I was very fairly successful in obtaining information of the extent of the conspiracy, which has been keeping the whole country in a ferment these two months past. All that has occurred is clearly traceable to the Ranee (now happily deported) and her friends, and has been carried out with a fearful amount of the blackest treachery and baseness. There have been stirring events since I wrote last. Twice within a fortnight has Herbert Edwardes fought and defeated the Mooltan rebels in pitched battles, and has succeeded, despite of treacherous foes and doubtful friends, in driving them into the fort of Mooltan. His success has been only less splendid than the energy and courage which he has shown throughout, especially that high moral courage which defies responsibility, risks, self-interest, and all else, for the good of the State, and which, if well directed, seems to command fortune and ensure success. I have been longing to be with him, though after my wonderfully narrow escape of being murdered with poor Agnew at Mooltan, I may well be content to leave my movements in other hands. I was summoned into Lahore suddenly (as usual!) to take command of the Guides and charge of Lumsden's duties for him, as he had been sent down the river towards Bhawulpoor. I came in the whole distance (one hundred miles), with bag and baggage, in sixty hours, which, considering that one can't travel at all by day, and not more than four miles an hour by night, required a great amount of exertion and perseverance. It is strange that the natives always knock up sooner than we do on a march like this. The cavalry were nine days on the road, and grumbled then! I know few things more fatiguing than when exhausted by the heat of the day, to have to mount at nightfall, and ride slowly throughout the night, and for the two most disagreeable hours of a tropical day, viz: those after sunrise. One night, on which I was making a longer march than usual, had a fearful effect on a European regiment moving upon Ferozepoor, the same hot night-wind, which had completely prostrated me for the time, fell upon the men as they halted at a well to drink; they were fairly beaten, and lay down for a few minutes to pant. When they arose to continue their march, a captain and nine or ten men were left dead on the ground! It was the simoom of Africa in miniature. I have happily escaped fever or sickness of any kind, and have nothing to complain of but excessive weakness. Quinine will, I trust, soon set me up again.
Lahore, Sept. 3d, 1848.
We have had stirring times lately, though I personally have had little share in them. Mooltan is at last invested, and we expect daily to hear of its fall. Meanwhile, a new outbreak has occurred in Huzàra, a wild hilly region on the left bank of the Indus, above Attok, where one of the powerful Sirdars has raised the standard of revolt.
I suppose I may say to you at so great a distance, what I must not breathe here, that it is now morally certain that we have only escaped, by what men call chance and accidents, the effects of a general and well-organized conspiracy against British supremacy in Upper India. Our "ally" Gholab Singh, the creature of the treaty of 1848, the hill tribes, the whole Punjaub, the chiefs of Rajpootana, and the states round Umbâla and Kurnàl, and even the King of Cabul, I believe, have been for months and months securely plotting, without our having more than the merest hints of local disturbances, against the supremacy of the British Government. They were to unite for one vast effort, and drive us back upon the Jumna. This was to be again the boundary of British India. The rising in Mooltan was to be the signal. All was prepared, when a quarrel between Moolraj and the treacherous khan, Singh Mán, who was sent to commence the war, spoilt their whole scheme. The proud Rajpoot, Gholab Singh, refused to follow in the wake of a Mooltan merchant, and the merchant would not yield to the soldier. We have seen the mere ebullitions of the storm, the bubbles which float at the surface. I believe that now we are safe from a general