and indulgent treatment, that the Empire of India was maintained for England. Mr. Ricketts had his reward in the appreciation of his conduct by such men as Canning, Lawrence, Montgomery and Nicholson, and in the honour conferred upon him by his sovereign. And this gallant gentleman was but a type and representative of many who put their lives to hazard in that memorable year, no less for the welfare of India than for the honour of England. For what more terrible calamity could have befallen the people of that fair land, than that the Sepoys and those who aided and abetted them in that struggle for mastery-the soi-disant Princes of Delhi and the Nana of Cawnpore at one end of the scale, and the Gougurs and liberated convicts at the other-should have crushed the British power, and have made themselves the masters of India? Our remarks upon what we may justly call Mr. Kaye's great work would be very incomplete if we neglected to direct the particular attention of our readers to the opening pages of the last chapter of this volume, in which is recorded the discussion between Sir John Lawrence and several of his ablest lieutenants upon a question of the greatest moment. The discussion was long and animated, but the question at issue between the disputants may be told in very few words. The Lieutenant-Governor held that the capture of Delhi was a matter of such paramount importance, that all other considerations, inconsistent with the attainment of that great end, must be regarded as light in the balance; and that if more troops were required to accomplish it than had already been contributed by the Punjab, that need must be supplied, even at the expense of withdrawing the whole force from Peshawur, and abandoning all the territory beyond the Indus to the Affghans. Those who dissented from this opinion-Edwardes, Cotton, Nicholson, and James, held with equal tenacity, that to retire from before Delhi-re infectâ deplorable as the event would be, would be the lesser of the two evils, and, therefore, the one which, in case of absolute necessity, it behoved us to choose. The dilemma was one of intense difficulty, and, judging from the passages which Mr. Kaye has quoted from the correspondence, the question appears to have been argued on both sides with great ability. So much so, indeed, and the conflicting arguments are so nicely balanced, that both the disputants seem to us to have proved, to their own satisfaction at least, that the result would have been the loss of our hold upon the whole of the North-Western Provinces in the one case, and on the Punjab in the other, leaving the eventual recovery of the lost territory to the army that mustered under the com VOL. CXXXIII. NO. CCLXXI. I more mand of Lord Clyde. Mr. Kaye appears to award the palm in this disputation to Sir John Lawrence, intimating that the distinguished officers who differed from him, being under the influence of local prepossessions, necessarily took a narrow view of the question than their chief. To us-while we differ with great reluctance from the master-mind of that eminent statesman-a consideration presents itself which appears sufficient to turn the scale against him. If it had been thought necessary to raise the siege of Delhi, there was no reason why the British force, though baffled by its walls, should not have kept the field, still less why it should have broken up from its position in disorder. There could not have been better fortune for that force than that the Sepoys should have come out from behind their fortifications to attack it on the plains. Nicholson's success at Nujufghur, and the repeated victories of Havelock on his advance to Cawnpore over the mutineers, in both cases strongly posted, to say nothing of minor instances, prove to demonstration how utterly unable the Sepoys were to stand against us in the open field. There was no necessity that we should have beaten a hurried and disastrous retreat to the Punjâb (which, by the hypothesis, would have been rendered secure by the troops withdrawn from Peshawur), as Sir John Lawrence appears to have assumed. The whole area of the North-Western Provinces was open to us, and nothing but gross mismanagement, such as those who commanded our force were not likely to have been guilty of, could have permitted the Sepoys to slip by us without fighting, in order to join their brethren at Lucknow. Whatever might have been lost for the moment would have been easily regained by the large force which England was sending to the rescue, and Delhi would have fallen as certainly as Lucknow. On the other hand, the abandonment of Peshawur would have involved the permanent loss of the whole trans-Indus territory, together with the command of the hither end of the KyberPass-a frontier post vastly superior to any that could be found upon the Indus. Its immediate consequence must have been the sacrifice of our military prestige in the most important quarter, to the utter discouragement and probable defection of the chiefs and their retainers, from whom Colonel Edwardes was raising the most efficient recruits to supply in the Punjâb the place of the troops despatched to Delhi. Add to this, that the great distance of the Upper Indus from the sea-board would have rendered the eventual vindication of British authority on that frontier most difficult. Happily the painful necessity of making a choice was not felt, for Lord Canning replied to Sir John Lawrence's telegram that our troops should stand fast at both points, and so Delhi was taken without stripping the Punjâb beyond its capacity for self-support. We cannot close to better purpose our necessarily brief notice of the progress of events in the Punjab than by placing record the names and services of two soldiers distinguished above their fellows (and that, in itself, is no mean glory), in that fierce struggle, of which neither survived to witness the triumphant issue. We speak of Nicholson and Hodson, men essentially different in character, but both daring to the very verge of rashness, and both endowed, in the largest degree, with that highest and rarest of moral qualities-the power of leading and governing their fellow-men. Of Nicholson Lord Lawrence says, in his Report of the 25th of May, 1858:- ' Brigadier-General John Nicholson is now beyond human praise and human reward. But so long as British rule shall endure in India, his fame can never perish. He seems especially to have been raised up at this juncture. He crowned a bright though brief career by dying of the wound that he received in the moment of victory at Delhi. The Chief Commissioner does not hesitate to affirm that without John Nicholson Delhi could not have been taken.' How well are General Nicholson's life and death celebrated, mutato nomine,' by Lord Byron: Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb, Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid, Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career. * He had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept." Hodson had not reached the height of command to which Nicholson attained, but of him it is recorded that Lord Clyde shed tears on his grave, saying that he was the greatest 'soldier he had ever known.' The like testimony is borne to his memory by a comrade who had received seven wounds while serving under his command: I am no friend of Major 'Hodson's, dead or alive; but if you speak of him as a soldier, 'there is no man above ground to be compared with him.' These are specimens-picked, indeed-of the men who eat in those days the salt of that old Company of merchants,' whom it is now the fashion to vilipend and misrepresent, but there were hundreds in 1857-58 who did not lag far behind them in bravery and self-devotion at least. And the proof'monumentum ære perennius is the preservation of India to England. Chapters IV. and V. of Mr. Kaye's Book VI. are devoted to a narrative of the siege of Delhi, but as they stop short of the final catastrophe, they read like a tragedy shorn of its fifth act. The subject-full of interest-may better be treated as a whole on some future occasion. But we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of transferring one episode to our pages. A body of Irregular Cavalry from Delhi had made a sudden, and, for a time, a successful foray into the British camp. They had been mistaken-the uniform being the same-for our own Irregulars, some of whom were more than suspected of being in complicity with them. They rushed furiously upon a piquet of the Carabineers, who were supported by two horse-artillery guns. These, for the reason given above, did not open fire. 'But,' says Mr. Kaye, there was something much worse than this. The mistake of the British Artillery was followed by the disgrace of the British Cavalry. As the Irregulars of the Eighth from Delhi swept on, the detachment of Carabineers, which formed a part of the piquet, turned and fled. Stillman, who commanded them, remained alone at his post. The first error was soon discovered. Hills, who was in charge of the Artillery-two horse-artillery guns of the piquet, saw presently that it was a hostile attack, and ordered out his guns for action. But the enemy were upon him; he had not time to open fire. In this emergency, the dashing Artillery subaltern-a man of light weight and short stature, young in years, but with the coolness of a veteran and the courage of a giant-set spurs to his horse and rushed into the midst of the advancing troopers, cutting right and left at them with good effect, until two of them charged him at the same time, and by the shock of the collision both horse and rider were thrown violently to the ground. Regaining his feet after his assailants had passed on, he recovered his sword in time to renew the combat with three Sowars, two mounted and one on foot. The two first he cut down, and then engaged the third, a young, active swordsman of good courage, who came fresh to the encounter, whilst Hills, scant of breath and shaken by his fall, had lost all his first strength though none of his first courage. The heavy cloak, too, which he wore as a protection against the rain, dragged at his throat and well-nigh choked him. The chances were now fearfully against him. Twice he fired, but his pistol snapped, and then he cut at his opponent's shoulder. The blow did not take effect; and the trooper watching his opportunity, clutched at the English subaltern's sword and wrested it from him. Hills then closed with his enemy, grappled him so that he could not strike out with the sabre, and smote him with clenched fist again and again on the face, until the Englishman slipped and fell to the ground.' Major Tombs, commanding the troop, was in the artillery mess-tent when the alarm was given: 'He hurried to his own tent, took his sword and revolver, and ordering his horse to be brought after him, walked down to the aroused piquet. As he approached the post, he saw the Carabineers drawn up in mounted array, and our guns getting ready for action. In a minute there was a tremendous rush of Irregular Horse, the troopers brandishing their swords and vociferating lustily; and then there was to be seen the sad spectacle of our Dragoons broken and flying to the rear, whilst one of our guns went to the right-about, some of the horses mounted and some riderless, and galloped towards our camp. Tombs was now in the midst of the enemy, who were striking at him from all sides, but with no effect. A man of a noble presence, tall, strong, of robust frame, and handsome countenance, dark-haired, dark-bearded, and of swart complexion, he was, in all outward semblance, the model of a Feringhee warrior, and the heroic aspect truly expressed the heroic qualities of the man. There was no finer soldier in the camp. Threading his way adroitly through the black horsemen, he ascended the mound, and looking down into the hollow where his two guns had been posted, he saw the remaining one overturned, the horses on the ground, struggling in their harness or dead, with some slain or wounded gunners beside them. Near the gun he saw the prostrate body of Hills apparently entangled in his cloak, with a dismounted Sowar standing over him with drawn sword, about to administer the death-stroke. At this time Tombs was some thirty paces from his friend. He could not hope to reach the enemy in time to cut him down with the sabre; so resting his revolver on his left arm, he took steady aim at the trooper, who was turned full-breasted towards him, and shot him through the body. The blood oozed out through the white tunic of the wounded rebel, and for a while at least Hills was saved. He 'But the danger was not yet passed. Tombs helped his fallen subaltern to rise, and together they ascended the slope of the mound. As they were watching the movement of the enemy they saw a little way beneath them another dismounted Sowar, who was walking away with Hills' revolver in his hand. They made at once towards him. was a young, strong, active trooper, who turned and attacked them with his sword, as one well skilled in the use of the weapon. His first blow aimed at Hills was parried; then he struck at Tombs, who with like address guarded the cut. But the third blow struck with despairing energy, as he sprang upon the younger of his opponents, broke down Hills' guard, and clove the skull to the brain. In a moment he had turned upon Tombs, who coolly parried the blow and drove his sword through the trooper's body.' It is pleasant to be able to add that Major Tombs' modesty was as signal as his courage. Mr. Kaye states, quoting Mr. Greathed's Letters:- Tombs' account of the affair of the 9th when the enemy's horse rode through our camp, was torn up 'by Colonel Mackenzie. He had omitted to say a word about himself, so Mackenzie gave the General the true version.' Both the actors in this conflict had fairly earned, and duly re ceived, the Victoria Cross. It remains to speak of Lord Canning, how he bore himself throughout the storm that had fallen on him so unexpectedly |