MUTINY MEMORIES.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 141, 20 June 1910, Page 6

MUTINY MEMORIES.

NEW LIGHTS ON THE GREAT FIGHT iJN INDIA. The story of the Indian Mutiny like that of Waterloo, will never grow stale, seeing that it is at once the darkest and most dazzling episode in . all our military annals, and it were hard to say whether the relief of Lucknow or the siege and capture of Delhi was the most thrilling act in the terrible tragedy. The Delhi portion of the drama has been described by many eye witnesses, but a high • rank among that mass of first-hand evidence will be taken by a book which comes from Mr John Murray, "A Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, with an Account of the Mutiny at Ferozepore, in 1857," bj r Captain C. J. Griffiths, edited by Captain H. J. • Xonge. Captain Griffiths went through the greater part of the siege with the old 61st Regiment (now the 2nd Glbucesters), after helping to sup-" press the rising at Ferozepore. It was here that a dozen mutineers and murderers of women were blown from the mouths of our guns. We do not remember to have seen this ghastly execution described in detail by any previous writer, and even at this distance of time the mere account is enough to make the flesh creep:— ' "The artillerj'men had neglected putting up backboards to their guns, so that, horrible to relate, at -each discharge the recoil threw back pieces of burning flesh, bespattering the 'men, and covering them with blood and calcined remains." BUTCHERED I Referring to the butchering of some English ladies and children at Delhi, Captain Griffiths says:— "From what I gathered after the siege from some Delhi natives, it was /.reported that ladies were stripped , naked at the palace, tied in that condition to the wheels of gun carriages, dragged iip the main street of Delhi, and there, in the presence of the King's sons, cut to pieces." After the capture of the city the avenger of these ladies came down upon these barbarously cruel princes "like a wolf on the fold," in the person of the famous Hodson, of Hodson's Horse. "Whose orders were precise as to the fate of these blood-thirsty ruffians Three princes were placed in a 'gharee,' or native carriage, and, guarded by Hodson's native troopers, were conducted towards the city. Before they entered the carriage was stopped, and Hodson spoke to his men of the crimes committed by the prisoners. Then, dismounting from his horse, and opening the door of the 'gharee,' he fired two shots from a Colt's revolver into each of their hearts. . Then, on the very spot where our countrymen and women had suffered death, the three bodies were stripped save a rag round the loins, and laid naked* on the stone slabs outside the building—where they remained exposed for three days, and were then buried in dishonored graves."

FIGHTING FIENDS. The knowledge of all the hellish barbarities perpetrated upon our women and children had converted our soldiers besieging Delhi ' into fighting fiends, whose hearts were steeled against giving the least quarter:—

5 "The party I was with in the great caravanserai ranged the place like demons, the English soldiers putting to death every Sepoy they could find. Their aspect was certainly inhuman—eyes flashing with passion and revenge, faces wet'and blackened from powder through biting cartridges; it would have been useless to attempt to check them in their work of slaughter. . . in short one of the most cruel and vindictive wars the world has ever seen." And when at last the besiegers—on the third anniversary of the Alma—had battered and bayonetted their way into the doomed city, beating down all opposition, how did they behave Y—- ' 'There is no more terrible spectacle than a city by storm. All the pentup passions of men are here let loose without restraint, roused to a pitch of fury from long continued resistance, and eager to take vengeance on the murderers of women and children, no mercy, and the dark days of Badajos and San Sebastian were re-newed-on a small scale at Delhi. Strong drink is now and in all ages has been the bane of the English soldier " But Captain Griffiths might, peradventure, have drawn a veil over the way in which those war-worn' soldiers broke into the drink stores of Delhi in consideration of the truly heroic manner in which they had so long besieged, and then, at last, burst into it as avengers—if not, perhaps, of the angelic kind.