At five in the evening on the twenty-eighth of June, the Nana held a
state review in honour of his victory of the preceding day. His force
looked well on paper, and made a very respectable show in the field.
There turned out six entire regiments of foot, and two of horse;
besides strong detachments from battalions which had been disbanded at
a distance from Cawnpore. The ranks of the artillery were perceptibly
thinned by three weeks of desperate fighting. To them was especially
due the success of the cause: and they now bore the brunt of the
rejoicing. Few but zealous, they worked their pieces with a will, and
fired away their ammunition as if henceforward there was no occasion
for keeping any against the day of battle; as if the clubs of villagers
and the daggers of banditti might safely be trusted to gather up the
leavings of the sepoys. Bala Rao was welcomed on to the ground with
seventeen discharges. The Maharaja himself at length enjoyed the
compliment of the royal reception which had been so ardently coveted
and so strenuously denied. He was greeted on his appearance by the
full sum of twenty-one explosions, each bought with a day of carnage.
His ears tingling at the unaccustomed sensation, he congratulated
the mutineers on their common triumph, and promised to distribute a
hundred thousand rupees as an instalment of the debt which he owed to
the army: an announcement that produced a repetition of the salute.
Then he took his departure: but the enthusiasm which he left behind
could evaporate only in a wholesale expenditure of Government powder.
The nephew of the Nana, and his brother Baba Bhut, were each honoured
with seventeen reports. Bala, who was deservedly a favourite with
that gang of disciplined assassins, came in for a second bout of
eleven guns: while Jwala Pershad and Tantia Topee got the same number
a-piece. This closed the proceedings: during which Tantia, whose mind
had decidedly a practical cast, was better employed than in listening
to an idle cannonade. He was closeted with a man of business named
Dabeedeen, liquidating accounts with the owners of the flotilla which
had been sunk or burned. Between four and five thousand rupees were
paid over as compensation for the boats; and fifty pounds were put
aside to remunerate the bargemen for their share in the operations. It
was afterwards asserted that Dabeedeen took undue precautions to avoid
cheating himself in the transaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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