The Yusafzai country was then controlled by the fort at Mardan, usually garrisoned by the Corps of Guides; in the middle of May, however, this regiment had started upon its famous march to Delhi, and its place at Mardan had been taken by part of the 55th Native Infantry. On the night of the 21st May news reached General Cotton at Peshawar that some companies of the 55th, stationed at Nowshera, had mutinied, and that some of these had joined their comrades at Mardan. On the night of the 23rd a small force, accompanied by John Nicholson as political officer, quitted Peshawar for the purpose of disarming the 55th Native Infantry at Mardan. At sunrise on the 25th the disaffected regiment saw the column approaching Mardan; “and then all but a hundred and twenty, who were restrained by the threats and persuasions of the officers, broke tumultuously from the fort, and fled. The column pressed on in pursuit; but the mutineers were far ahead; the ground was so heavy that the artillery could not get within range; and the chase was all in vain until Nicholson, taking with him a few of the police sowars, dashed to the front and rode into the fugitive masses. Breaking before his charge, they scattered themselves over the country in sections and companies; but all day long he pursued them, hunted them out of the villages in which they sought for refuge, drove them over ridges, cut down their stragglers in ravines, and never rested till, having ridden over seventy miles, slain a hundred and twenty, and wounded between three and four hundred of the traitors, taken a hundred and fifty prisoners, and recovered two hundred and fifty stand of arms and the regimental Colours, he was forced by the approach of night to draw rein, while those who had escaped him fled across the border into the hills of Swat.”[26]