The Romance of Modern Sieges: Describing the personal adventures, resource and daring of besiegers and beseiged in all parts of the worldGilliat, Edward
History
The Romance of Modern Sieges: Describing the personal adventures, resource and daring of besiegers and beseiged in all parts of the world
Gilliat, Edward
Adventure and adventurers; Battles; Sieges; War
“Yet another surprise! Suddenly the straw roofs of the native boats
burst into flame, and from either shore of the river grape and musket
shot were poured in relentlessly. The wounded lay still and were burnt
to death. Ladies and children sought the protection of the water,
and crouched in the shallows under the sterns of the barges. The men
tried to push off, but the keels stuck fast. Out of two dozen boats
only three drifted slowly down from the stage. Of these three two went
across to the Oude bank, where stood two cannon, guarded by a battalion
of infantry and some cavalry. The third boat, containing Vibart and
Whiting and Ushe, Delafosse and Bolton, Burney and Glanville and Moore,
the bravest of the brave, got clear away, and drifted down the main
channel.”
Mrs. Bradshaw thus describes what she saw: “In the boat where I was
to have gone were the school-mistress and twenty-two missies. General
Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water near a
boat. I was standing close by. He said, ‘Carry me a little further near
the boat.’ But a trooper said, ‘No; get out here.’ As the General got
out of the palkee, head foremost, the trooper gave him a cut with his
sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near
him. I saw it--alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others were
cut down with swords and knives. Little infants were torn in pieces.
We saw it, we did, and tell you only what we saw. Other children were
stabbed and thrown into the river. The school-girls were burnt to
death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few
paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel
Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet, when she
said, ‘My father was always kind to sepoys.’ He turned away, and just
then a villager struck her on the head with his club, and she fell into
the water.”
After a time the women and children who had not been shot, stabbed, or
burnt were collected and brought to shore, some of them being rudely
handled by the sowars, who tore from ear or finger such jewels as
caught their fancy.
About 120 sat or lay on the shore or on logs of timber, full of misery,
fear, and despair. There they waited in the blinding sun on the Ganges
shore all that morning. Then they were herded back along the narrow
lane by which they had come with hope in their bosoms, while the sepoys
who guarded them grinned with fiendish delight, and showed gleefully
all their spoils. Past the bazaar and the chapel and the racquet-court
and the entrenchments they limped along, until they were paraded before
the pavilion of the Maharajah, who looked them well over, and ordered
them to be confined in the Savada House. Two good-sized rooms, which
had been used by native soldiers for a month, were given them to live
in, and a guard was placed over them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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