The Red Year: A Story of the Indian MutinyTracy, Louis
History
The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny
Tracy, Louis
India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction
On the 27th, Archdale Wilson led the garrison towards the rendezvous
fixed on by the force hurriedly collected in the Punjab for the relief
of Delhi. On the afternoon of the 30th, cavalry vedettes reported the
presence of a strong body of mutineers on the right bank of the river
Hindun, near the village of Ghazi-ud-din Nuggur and at a place where a
high ridge commanded an iron suspension bridge. It was found afterwards
that the rebels meant to fight the two British forces in detail before
they could effect a junction. The generalship of the idea was good, but
the sepoys did not count on the pent-up wrath of the British soldiers,
who were burning to avenge their murdered countrymen and dishonored
countrywomen, for it was now becoming known that many a fair English
lady had met a fate worse than death ere sword or bullet stilled her
anguish.
A company of the 60th Rifles dashed forward to seize the bridge,
Lieutenant Light and his men took up the enemy's challenge with their
heavy eighteen-pounders, and Colonel Mackenzie and Major Tombs, at the
head of two batteries of horse artillery, crossed the river and turned
the left flank of the sepoy force. Then the Rifles extended and charged,
the mutineers yielded, and Colonel Custance with his dragoons sabered
them mercilessly for some miles.
Next morning, Whit-Sunday, while the chaplains were conducting the
burial service over those who had fallen, the mutineers came out of
Delhi again. A severe action began instantly. Tombs had two horses shot
under him, and thirteen out of fifty men in his battery were killed or
wounded. But the issue was never in doubt. After three hours' hard
fighting the rebels broke and fled. So those men in Meerut could give a
good account of themselves when permitted! Actually, they won the two
first battles of the campaign.
Exhausted by two days' strenuous warfare in the burning sun, they could
not take up the pursuit. The men were resting on the field when a
battalion of Ghoorkahs, the little fighting men of Nepaul, arrived under
the command of Colonel Reid. They had marched by way of Bulandshahr, and
Malcolm heard to his dismay that the native infantry detachment
stationed there, aided by the whole population of the district, had
committed the wildest excesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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