Hundreds of stories might be told of women conspicuous for valor, meeting hazards as great as ever have fallen to the lot of men. In one case, the casting away of the French frigate _Medusa_, the men, almost without exception, performed prodigies of cowardice, while two or three of the women made a wonderful journey across the Sahara Desert to Senegambia, which is the one bright episode in the most disgraceful disaster on record. In the defenses of Leyden and Haarlem, besieged by Spanish armies, the Dutch women manned the ramparts with the men, inspired them throughout the hopeless months, and shared the general fate when all the survivors were butchered. And the valor of Englishwomen during the sieges of our strongholds in India, China and South Africa, has made some of the brightest pages of our history. XLIX THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA Only the other day, the king of England was proclaimed emperor of India, and all the princes and governors of that empire presented their swords in homage. This homage was rendered at Delhi, the ancient capital of Hindustan; and it is only one hundred and ten years since Delhi fell, and Hindustan surrendered to the British arms. We have to deal with the events that led up to the conquest of India. The Moslem sultans, sons of the Great Mogul, had long reigned over Hindustan, but in 1784 Shah Alam, last of these emperors, was driven from Delhi. In his ruin he appealed for help to Madhoji Scindhia, a Hindu prince from the South, who kindly restored the emperor to his palace, then gave him into the keeping of a jailer, who gouged out the old man’s eyes. Still Shah Alam, the blind, helpless, and at times very hungry prisoner, was emperor of Northern India, and in his august name Scindhia led the armies to collect the taxes of Hindustan. No tax was collected without a battle. Scindhia himself was one of many turbulent Mahratta princes subject to the peshwa of Poona, near Bombay. He had to sit on the peshwa’s head at Poona, and the emperor’s head at Delhi, while he fought the whole nobility and gentry of India, and kept one eye cocked for British invasions from the seaboard. The British held the ocean, surrounded India, and were advancing inland. Madhoji Scindhia was a very busy man. He had never heard of tourists, and when De Boigne, an Italian gentleman, came up-country to see the sights, his highness, scenting a spy, stole the poor man’s luggage. De Boigne, veteran of the French and Russian armies, and lately retired from the British service, was annoyed at the loss of his luggage, and having nothing left but his sword, offered the use of that to Scindhia’s nearest enemy. In those days scores of Europeans, mostly French, and scandalous rogues as a rule, were serving in native armies. Though they liked a fight, they so loved money that they would sell their masters to the highest bidder. Scindhia observed that De Boigne was a pretty good man, and the Savoyard adventurer was asked to enter his service.