Camps, Quarters, and Casual PlacesForbes, Archibald
History
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Forbes, Archibald
Military camps; Military history, Modern
modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot
sent him to that other well thence never to return.
The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it
is in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore
would have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all
time, of the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible
in the condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the
garrison. The grandest monument in the world is the Residency of
Lucknow, which remains and is kept up substantially in the condition in
which it was left when Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in
November 1857; and the Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still
nobler memorial as the abiding testimony to a defence even more
wonderful, although unfortunately unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow.
But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore will always be interesting by
reason of its site and of the memorial tablets on the walls of its
interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To the memory of the
Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were killed in the
great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate remembrance by
their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On the left side
of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of poor young
John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra Ghaut.
Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals, a
drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and
other regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the
memory of A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who
both perished during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they
which came out of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain
Gordon and Lieutenant Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the
Gwalior Contingent. In the right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred
to the memory of Philip Hayes Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and
her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on
27th June." Another is to Lieutenant Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers
Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in the boat massacre; and a third
is to the memory of the gallant Stuart Beatson, who was Havelock's
adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of cholera, did his work at
Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the right transept are
tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught Rangers, and of the
officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who fell in defence of
Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen officers and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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