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
In the centre of the inner court of the Secundrabâgh there was a large
peepul-tree (Indian fig), with a very bushy top, and round the foot of
it were set some jars full of cool water. Captain Dawson noticed that
many of our men lay dead under this tree, and he called out to Wallace,
a good shot, to look up and try if he could see anyone in the top, as
the dead seemed to be shot from above.
Wallace stepped back and scanned the tree. “I see him, sir,” he
shouted, and cocking his rifle, he fired. Down fell a body dressed in
a tight-fitting red jacket and rose-coloured silk trousers. The breast
of the jacket bursting open with the fall showed that the wearer was a
woman.
She was armed with a pair of heavy old-pattern cavalry pistols. From
her perch in the tree, which had been carefully prepared before the
attack, she had killed more than half a dozen men. Poor Wallace burst
into tears, saying: “If I had known it was a woman I would never have
harmed her.”
When the roll was called it was found that we had lost nine officers
and ninety-nine men. Sir Colin rode up and said: “Fifty-third and
Ninety-third, you have bravely done your share of this morning’s work,
and Cawnpore is avenged.”
“On revisiting Lucknow many years after this I saw no tablet or grave
to mark the spot where so many of the 93rd are buried. It is the old,
old story which was said to have been first written on the walls of
Badajos:
“When war is rife and danger nigh,
God and the soldier is all the cry;
When war is over and wrongs are righted,
God is forgot and the soldier slighted.”
“After the Secundrabâgh we had to advance on the Shâh Nujeef. As the
24-pounders were being dragged along by our men and Peel’s sailors a
poor sailor lad just in front had his leg carried clean off above the
knee by a round shot, and although knocked head over heels by the force
of the ball, he sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood spouting
from the stump of his limb like water from the hose of a fire-engine,
and shouted:
“‘Here goes a shilling a day--a shilling a day! Pitch into them, boys!
Remember Cawnpore, 93rd--remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties!’
and then he fell back in a dead faint. He was dead before a doctor
could reach him.”
Sir Colin himself was wounded by a bullet after it had passed through
the head of a 93rd Grenadier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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