Camps, Quarters, and Casual PlacesForbes, Archibald
History
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Forbes, Archibald
Military camps; Military history, Modern
It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by
which Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to
these would demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at
the Dilkoosha Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the
Residency; for on both occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid
Ali's twenty-foot wall has now given place to an earthen embankment
surrounding a beautiful pleasure park, and there are now smooth green
slopes instead of the dense forest through which Clyde's soldiers
marched on their turning movement. On a swell in the midst of the park,
commanding a view of the fantastic architecture of the Martinière down
by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of the once trim and dainty
Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one of the pepper-box
turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the Martinière on
his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell tells us,
a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After quietude
was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir Hope
Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope
behind the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock
died. We drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double
by the Black Watch on their way to carry the Martinière, past the great
tank out of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of
Claude Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which
he built, in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at
the angle of the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which
played so heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The
Martinière is now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European
boys, and the young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque
stone statues are in niches and along the tops of the balconies; you
may see on them the marks of the bullets which the honest fellows of
the Black Watch fired at them, taking them for Pandies. I go down into
a vault and see the tomb of Claude Martine; but it is empty, for the
mutineers desecrated his grave and scattered his bones to the winds of
heaven. Then I make for the roof, through the dormitories of the boys
and past fantastic stone griffins and lions and Gorgons, till I reach
the top of the tower and touch the flagstaff from which, during the
relief time, was given the answering signal to that hoisted on the
tower of the Residency. I stand in the niches where the mutineer
marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take pot shots at the
Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee, and note the
spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would have been
very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to drive it
home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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