“The Commander-in-Chief is proud thus publicly to declare his high sense
of the gallantry of Lieutenant Gahagan, of the ---- cavalry. In the
storming of the fortress, although unprovided with a single ladder,
and accompanied but by a few brave men, Lieutenant Gahagan succeeded in
escalading the inner and fourteenth wall of the place. Fourteen ditches
lined with sword-blades and poisoned chevaux-de-frise, fourteen walls
bristling with innumerable artillery and as smooth as looking-glasses,
were in turn triumphantly passed by that enterprising officer. His
course was to be traced by the heaps of slaughtered enemies lying thick
upon the platforms; and alas! by the corpses of most of the gallant
men who followed him!--when at length he effected his lodgment, and the
dastardly enemy, who dared not to confront him with arms, let loose
upon him the tigers and lions of Scindiah's menagerie. This meritorious
officer destroyed, with his own hand, four of the largest and most
ferocious animals, and the rest, awed by the indomitable majesty of
BRITISH VALOR, shrank back to their dens. Thomas Higgory, a private,
and Runty Goss, havildar, were the only two who remained out of the nine
hundred who followed Lieutenant Gahagan. Honor to them! honor and tears
for the brave men who perished on that awful day!”
*****
I have copied this, word for word, from the Bengal Hurkaru of September
24, 1803: and anybody who has the slightest doubt as to the statement,
may refer to the paper itself.
And here I must pause to give thanks to Fortune, which so marvellously
preserved me, Sergeant-Major Higgory, and Runty Goss. Were I to say that
any valor of ours had carried us unhurt through this tremendous
combat, the reader would laugh me to scorn. No: though my narrative is
extraordinary, it is nevertheless authentic; and never, never would
I sacrifice truth for the mere sake of effect. The fact is this:--the
citadel of Allyghur is situated upon a rock, about a thousand feet
above the level of the sea, and is surrounded by fourteen walls, as his
Excellency was good enough to remark in his despatch. A man who would
mount these without scaling-ladders, is an ass; he who would SAY he
mounted them without such assistance, is a liar and a knave. We HAD
scaling-ladders at the commencement of the assault, although it was
quite impossible to carry them beyond the first line of batteries.
Mounted on them, however, as our troops were falling thick about me, I
saw that we must ignominiously retreat, unless some other help could
be found for our brave fellows to escalade the next wall. It was about
seventy feet high. I instantly turned the guns of wall A on wall B, and
peppered the latter so as to make, not a breach, but a scaling
place; the men mounting in the holes made by the shot. By this simple
stratagem, I managed to pass each successive barrier--for to ascend a
wall which the General was pleased to call “as smooth as glass” is an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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